Global warming

[David Rodale]

You don't like 'Denier', but it's acceptable to use 'Warmers'?

Personally, I wouldn't describe myself with either term. I'm no 'Warmer', whatever that is, but I'm more and more certain I'm not in the same camp as you either.

For one thing, I think peer review is bloody marvellous. Whereas for your camp, it's like kryptonite.

Well Pipirr, since you brought it up, let's start with this one:
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~juminder/pcc587/lectures/Roe_Baker_2007.pdf

Uncertainties in projections of future climate change have not lessened substantially in past decades.

Had the climate modelers simply read Poincare, they would have known the folly of their ways.

What your side is trying to create is an irrefutable hypothesis.

 

[mhaze]

Well Pipirr, since you brought it up, let's start with this one:
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~juminder/pcc587/lectures/Roe_Baker_2007.pdf


Had the climate modelers simply read Poincare, they would have known the folly of their ways.

What your side is trying to create is an irrefutable hypothesis.

I have read Baker 2007 but thought it was brain dead obvious. What is there to discuss? Is there a clear way to use climate models and ignore Baker 2007?

 

[a_unique_person]

Well Pipirr, since you brought it up, let's start with this one:
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~juminder/pcc587/lectures/Roe_Baker_2007.pdf


Had the climate modelers simply read Poincare, they would have known the folly of their ways.

What your side is trying to create is an irrefutable hypothesis.

http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/statements/scs14.pdf

For large parts of southern and eastern Australia, dry conditions have now persisted since October 1996, a total of eleven years. For some areas, the accumulated total rainfall deficit over this period now exceeds a full year’s normal rain.
For the agriculturally important Murray-Darling Basin, however, October 2007 marks the sixth anniversary of lower than average rainfall totals, with the November 2001 to October 2007 period being its equal driest such six-year period on record.
This extreme dry period for the Murray-Darling Basin has also been accompanied by high temperatures, exacerbating the low rainfall. Both daytime maximum and daily mean temperatures for the six years from November 2001 to October 2007 have surpassed the previous records by a considerable margin.

It's happening, plenty of proven projections.

 

[Megalodon]

The Lyman paper was not official until October 26, and posted October 31. Would it be wise to quote the former versions which were erroneous? I could only imagine the howling now.

David, you brought up the Lyman paper without even a link. That, again, is bad form.

Anyhow, there's a manuscript that addresses Lyman et al 2006. Please see

http://oceans.pmel.noaa.gov/Pdf/heat_2006.pdf

Now, if I understand from your unreferenced posts, Lyman corrected the OCHA values recently. Was the correction the removal of the data from the ARGOs, or did he correct for the bias of the XBTs also?

You quoted the paper saying that there was no cooling or warming. How does that support your assertions that the oceans are cooling?

The original paper was focused on a cooling (described as spurious in their 2007 manuscript) from 2003-2005. Does the new version you're talking about include later years? Or did you assume this global cooling from the two last years in a 12 year trend?

Levitus et al. (2005) estimated an increase of 14.5x10E22 J for the period between 1955 and 1998 (0-300m depth), and Willis et al.(2004) estimated an increase of 9.2x10E22 J from 1993 to 2003 (0-750m). Do you think this trends are to be discarded in favour of the 2 years added by Lyman et al (2006)?

Get over it, you were snookered. If you want to argue his findings, that's great, maybe it is still wrong. However, there's nothing to indicate a positive move, so what is the likelihood the oceans have warmed since one year ago?

First things first... You still have to answer why, if the atmosphere temperatures are not important, you introduced them into the debate (until proven wrong);

Then, you didn't explain what was so wrong about my graphs that I had to go educate myself. It must have been something scientific and obvious, since both you and hazy refused to talk about it;

Then, you can explain why you're arguing that the planet is not warming because a 22 year strongly positive trend turned flat in the last 2 years...

Lyman et al (2006) explicitly say about the 55-98 and 93-03 trends:

"These increases provide strong evidence of global warming. Climate models exhibit similar rates of ocean warming, but only when forced by anthropogenic influences"

Maybe you should get your information from various sources rather than the "CO2 is the center of the universe" dogma. Pielke repeatedly discussed OHC right up until the last day before retiring his blog in September.

Well, isn't that nice? and who exactly said anything about CO2 being the centre of the Universe? Maybe you're just making things up, again?

BTW, NOAA predictions for 2007 hurricane season in August. How can consensus be wrong (again)?:
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/outlooks/hurricane.shtml

Yes, the old 'how can we model climate when we can't forecast weather' question... Well we can, and we did, and it panned out. It's out there, open the window.

 

[mhaze]

David, you brought up the Lyman paper without even a link. That, again, is bad form.

Anyhow, there's a manuscript that addresses Lyman et al 2006. Please see

http://oceans.pmel.noaa.gov/Pdf/heat_2006.pdf

Now, if I understand from your unreferenced posts, Lyman corrected the OCHA values recently. Was the correction the removal of the data from the ARGOs, or did he correct for the bias of the XBTs also?

You quoted the paper saying that there was no cooling or warming. How does that support your assertions that the oceans are cooling?

The original paper was focused on a cooling (described as spurious in their 2007 manuscript) from 2003-2005. Does the new version you're talking about include later years? Or did you assume this global cooling from the two last years in a 12 year trend?

Levitus et al. (2005) estimated an increase of 14.5x10E22 J for the period between 1955 and 1998 (0-300m depth), and Willis et al.(2004) estimated an increase of 9.2x10E22 J from 1993 to 2003 (0-750m). Do you think this trends are to be discarded in favour of the 2 years added by Lyman et al (2006)?



First things first... You still have to answer why, if the atmosphere temperatures are not important, you introduced them into the debate (until proven wrong);

Then, you didn't explain what was so wrong about my graphs that I had to go educate myself. It must have been something scientific and obvious, since both you and hazy refused to talk about it;

Then, you can explain why you're arguing that the planet is not warming because a 22 year strongly positive trend turned flat in the last 2 years...

Lyman et al (2006) explicitly say about the 55-98 and 93-03 trends:

"These increases provide strong evidence of global warming. Climate models exhibit similar rates of ocean warming, but only when forced by anthropogenic influences"



Well, isn't that nice? and who exactly said anything about CO2 being the centre of the Universe? Maybe you're just making things up, again?



Yes, the old 'how can we model climate when we can't forecast weather' question... Well we can, and we did, and it panned out. It's out there, open the window.

That answers my question as to how to disregard Baker 2007.

Here is Lyman.

http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/people/gjohnson/hc_bias_jtech_v1.pdf and
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/people/gjohnson/hc_integrals_v1.pdf

 

[Pipirr]

Well Pipirr, since you brought it up, let's start with this one:
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~juminder/pcc587/lectures/Roe_Baker_2007.pdf

What your side is trying to create is an irrefutable hypothesis.

That is an interesting paper, isn't it? Peer reviewed, and in Science, no less. Pretty much at the top of my personal scale of credible sources.

Do you have a commentary from, shall we say, 'your side', on this paper? I'd like to be able to get an overview of opinion from both sides. Or even add your own, if you wish.

As for creating an 'irrefutable hypothesis', how do you get that? To which particular hypothesis are you referring?

 

[mhaze]

Originally Posted by mhaze
Here it is. This was posted by UC at climateaudit. UC's blog is pretty interesting, by the way.

Now, let me explain what this is. This chart comes from Mann et al 1998 algorithm which as you are aware produced the famous hockey stick of global warming. What you are looking at here is solar energy plugged into the same algorithm.

Bingo! Another Hockey Stick. How about that. Any data series you pick, plug it into Mann's formula, and you get a hockey stick.
​

You can Bingo! all you want. A posting on climateaudit is not equivalent to a peer reviewed paper, nor to an assessment by the US National Academy of Sciences. I find it helps to try and keep these things in perspective. UC may have you convinced, but for me blog postings are pretty much at the bottom of the scale.

I presume UC's discovery is going to be submitted to a peer reviewed climate science journal? That hockey stick won't debunk itself, and climate scientists should be told how wrong they are. Get it through peer review, and I (and no doubt many others) may start to think that your accusations of ‘fake science’ have merit.

You will be happy, then that the assessment by the US National Academy that you cite lists many serious criticisms of the hockey stick. Published as I recall in June, it was followed in July by the Wegman Report, which focused strictly on statistical methods used by Mann et al. Other peer reviewed work also indicates the use of principal components analysis as done by Mann is flawed.

Two others briefly -

Burger and Cubasch 2005 "Are Multiproxy Climate Reconstructions Robust"

Burger et. al. criticism of Osborn and Briffa 2006 paper debunked the "anamolous 20th century warming" found by Osborn and Briffa, that supposedly supporting the zombie-like re-emergence of the hockey stick (Previously discussed on this thread).

Accordingly, then I requote your concerns and allay them.

You can Bingo! all you want. A posting on climateaudit is not equivalent to a peer reviewed paper, nor to an assessment by the NAS.
​

Agree completely with you on these matters.

Abundant peer reviewed papers, and the assessment by the NAS and the Wegman report in agreement with the premise of improper use of statistical techniques by Mann., I am inexorably lead back to the conclusion (noted in satire, but technically correct by UC) -

Bingo! Another Hockey Stick. How about that. Any data series you pick, plug it into Mann's formula, and you get a hockey stick.
​

Has Mann corrected his use of the statistical procedures in accordance with the guidance provided to him by NAS and the Wegman report?

 

[a_unique_person]

You will be happy, then that the assessment by the US National Academy that you cite lists many serious criticisms of the hockey stick.

Have you actually read that report? It's a storm in a teacup that the NAS pretty well ignores in the context of all the other evidence available for consideration. McIntyre makes out he was the star witness, he was just a small curiosity.

 

[a_unique_person]

A reproduction by a climate scientist of an opinion piece in The Australian newspaper.

It touches on a lot of the misrepresentations and myths that are out there, including here.

http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2006/07/26/a-critique-of-wood-on-global-warming/

The Wegman et al. paper is interesting but for the wrong reasons: It summarises palaeoclimatic proxies and carries out an analysis of how to produce hockey sticks from random data. They did not produce a bootstrap analysis of the data used by Mann et al., which would prove that the hockey stick through Mann et al’s analysis was or was not an artifact. They merely showed that the analysis could produce spurious results, not that it did. The corroborating scientific analyses produced since (by scientists that were unrelated to Mann in Wegman et al’s analysis) show that underlying data was not red noise.
The social network analysis is highly flawed. It all hangs on the following statement: In particular, if there is a tight relationship among the authors and there are not a large number of individuals engaged in a particular topic area, then one may suspect that the peer review process does not fully vet papers before they are published. Indeed, a common practice among associate editors for scholarly journals is to look in the list of references for a submitted paper to see who else is writing in a given area and thus who might legitimately be called on to provide knowledgeable peer review. Of course, if a given discipline area is small and the authors in the area are tightly coupled, then this process is likely to turn up very sympathetic referees.
So one may suspect peer review does not fully vet papers and it is likely that the reviews will be sympathetic. That word likely is the same one that the IPCC used to say that the 20th century Northern Hemisphere warming was the largest in the past millennium and that the 90’s were the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year. So, without any foundation, suspicion and likelihood is attributed. To then link the Mann network which is a close network, with the palaeoclimate reconstruction network, which is not, the authors use common data sets of temperature proxies. This is like accusing economists of collusion when they use the same GDP data. Wegman and his colleagues manage to gainsay recent debates that have surrounded the use of peer review. Those debates have been widely publicized and have concluded that it is not flawless but is the best method going.
The recommendations about the IPCC and how it operates come with no analysis in the report, and thus there are no grounds for the recommendations the report makes. The report attacks the whole notion of peer review both within science and the IPCC without a shred of evidence.
That they want to involve statisticians in ongoing work is interesting. What level of education in statistics does one need to have? Skill in statistics does not mean a better understanding of science or even uncertainty. For example, Bjorn Lomborg in his book The Skeptical Environmentalist notoriously misrepresents the underlying science contributing to a range of environmental risks (not to mention his selective use of statistics). Ian Castles also, attacked the IPCC SRES scenarios on statistical grounds, without showing that the underlying assumptions relating population and energy use were in fact incorrect. The idea of using statisticians without training and a publication record in the relevant science, or as an integral part of a larger team should not be given air. However, more resources would also be required to fund the greater scrutiny if it were applied. My own experience in the current funding environment is that the biggest restriction to peer review is resources. I apply a skeptical filter to the papers I review and to my best knowledge, so do my colleagues. However, peer review is a gift economy that does not sit well with targeted funding.
What the Wegman et al. report does not do is assess the scientific nature of Mann et al.’s work and whether it has been supported by other research (although it summarises some of that research).
In his article Wood also overlooks a National Academies of Science report published in the previous week that does address the science. http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11676.html
However that report was not conclusive on the matter of the hockey stick. The NAS report says:

Not all individual proxy records indicate that the recent warmth is unprecedented, although a larger fraction of geographically diverse sites experienced exceptional warmth during the late 20th century than during any other extended period from A.D. 900 onwards. Based on the analyses presented in the original papers by Mann et al. and this newer supporting evidence, the committee finds it plausible that the Northern Hemisphere was warmer during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period over the preceding millennium. The substantial uncertainties currently present in the quantitative assessment of large-scale surface temperature changes prior to about A.D. 1600 lower our confidence in this conclusion compared to the high level of confidence we place in the Little Ice Age cooling and 20th century warming. Even less confidence can be placed in the original conclusions by Mann et al. (1999) that “the 1990s are likely the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, in at least a millennium” because the uncertainties inherent in temperature reconstructions for individual years and decades are larger than those for longer time periods, and because not all of the available proxies record temperature information on such short timescales.
​

The report confirmed that the latter part of the twentieth century was warmer than for the previous 400 years but ducked on extending this conclusion to the last millennium despite the attribution of plausibility above. However, that the larger fraction of sites showing that a warmer 20th century has occurred suggests that the “warmest period over the last millennium in the Northern Hemisphere” could only be false if some contra-indication was introduced into the numbers and analysis (this allows also for area-weighting of the data).
The NAS report has been claimed as vindication by Mann and his supporters and also by McIntyre and McKitrick and their supporters. Why is this so?
By not quantifying their levels of confidence in these conclusions the NAS committee has allowed the reader to interpret this information in any way they see fit. But, they do not say that Mann et al.’s statement was implausible. The inference is that it is difficult to verify on the available evidence.
However, the committee does say that support evidence exists for the statement that warming during the late twentieth century is more spatially coherent at any other time since the 9th century A.D. and the larger number of sites shows exceptional warming. Given that the committee found itself unable to clarify any levels of confidence in their findings, or even come to any conclusions as to whether simple or area-weighted averages were preferable to determine areal trends, the whole report does little to clarify an issue where entrenched views that have little to do with the science of palaeoclimatology abound.
The NAS report suffers by not treating uncertainty and confidence in any rigorous manner, so has served to muddy the debate rather than clarify it. People will interpret words like likely, plausible and less confidence but still plausible in the way they see fit if not provided with internally consistent methodology and guidance. In its Third Assessment Report, the IPCC introduced methods to quantify and clarify uncertainty and confidence. Although not perfect, this development should now be seen as best practice in communicating contentious issues. It is a pity that the NAS does not do this.

 

[mhaze]

Have you actually read that report? It's a storm in a teacup that the NAS pretty well ignores in the context of all the other evidence available for consideration. McIntyre makes out he was the star witness, he was just a small curiosity.

Yes, of course I have read them.

Anti-AGW people do not have scripts....

 

[a_unique_person]

 

[Pipirr]

Abundant peer reviewed papers, and the assessment by the NAS and the Wegman report in agreement with the premise of improper use of statistical techniques by Mann., I am inexorably lead back to the conclusion (noted in satire, but technically correct by UC) -

Bingo! Another Hockey Stick. How about that. Any data series you pick, plug it into Mann's formula, and you get a hockey stick.​

Realclimate have three commentaries that discuss your Bingo!

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=8
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=98
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=121

They are well worth the read and provide balance to your claims.

One might also care to note that MBH98 (the original 'hockey stick') featured in the 2007 IPCC WG1 AR4 Report (page 466-7).

It ain't dead.​

 

[a_unique_person]

Realclimate on Roe_baker

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/10/the-certainty-of-uncertainty/#more-490

The bottom line is that climate sensitivity is uncertain, but we can pretty much rule out low values that would imply there is nothing to worry about. The possibility of high values will be much harder to rule out. This is something policy makers should recognize and confront.

 

[mhaze]

Realclimate have three commentaries that discuss your Bingo!

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=8
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=98
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=121

They are well worth the read and provide balance to your claims.

One might also care to note that MBH98 (the original 'hockey stick') featured in the 2007 IPCC WG1 AR4 Report (page 466-7).

It ain't dead.

Indeed.
Dead I did not say.
Zombie lurched up from where it lay..

And it is only appropriate to look for counter arguments at the website established to counter anti hockey stick arguments, established after McIntyre's peer reviewed article debunking the hockey stick.

www.realclimate.org.

script central.

But I must use your standard here, and discount blog commentary for peer reviewed articles. Have you read the ones central to this issue? MBH 1998 and M&M?

Also note my prior question based on your reference-

Has Mann corrected his use of the statistical procedures in accordance with the guidance provided to him by NAS and the Wegman report?

 

[Pipirr]

But I must use your standard here, and discount blog commentary for peer reviewed articles. [/I]

My standard would simply be that blog commentary does not 'trump' a peer reviewed paper. Blog commentaries on peer reviewed papers can be very insightful.

As you usually present only one side of an argument, often in dogmatic terms, I have found it useful to seek out the 'other side' for balance and perspective. Realclimate is a valuable resource in that regard; hence why I linked to it in my previous post.

I could have tried to regurgitate what they had to say in my own words, but it would be too much work and outside my field of expertise. I'm no climatologist. They are.

 

[mhaze]

Realclimate have three commentaries that discuss your Bingo!

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=8
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=98
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=121

They are well worth the read and provide balance to your claims.

One might also care to note that MBH98 (the original 'hockey stick') featured in the 2007 IPCC WG1 AR4 Report (page 466-7).

It ain't dead.

Regarding the specific claims in the above mentioned RC pages, the following statements from Steve McIntyre to Trenberth regarding RC post 8 and 81.

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=629

The arguments that you cite have been rejected by two journals. They were made (inter alia) in a submission by Mann et. al. to Climatic Change in late 2003, to which the Editor asked me to respond. Based on my response, the article was rejected in 2004.Related arguments were recently repeated by Wahl and Amman in submissions to Geophysical Research Letters and Climatic Change and touted in an NCAR press release in May 2005. I was asked to respond to both these submissions. Based on our replies, the GRL submission was rejected.
​

I am sure that seeing this, you will want to balance your reading of realclimate.org with www.climateaudit.com and Mohl in order to maintain a balanced view, which we do all sincerely strive to achieve and maintain.

 

[a_unique_person]

Indeed.
Dead I did not say.
Zombie lurched up from where it lay..

And it is only appropriate to look for counter arguments at the website established to counter anti hockey stick arguments, established after McIntyre's peer reviewed article debunking the hockey stick.

www.realclimate.org.

script central.

But I must use your standard here, and discount blog commentary for peer reviewed articles. Have you read the ones central to this issue? MBH 1998 and M&M?

Also note my prior question based on your reference-

Has Mann corrected his use of the statistical procedures in accordance with the guidance provided to him by NAS and the Wegman report?

Not Mann, but others have. They came up with a hockey stick.

 

[lenny]

so have we discussed anything new on this thread in the last few months?

is there anything new in the science here, beyond the (sometimes important) back and forth on issues which were already widely discussed last July?

 

[Megalodon]

That answers my question as to how to disregard Baker 2007.

No, it doesn't. Nothing in that post refered or applied to Roe and Baker 2006 which, btw, is the correct way to refer to the paper. If they were equal authors it would have been Baker and Roe.

And since you seem to think that it strenghtens your argument somehow, I guess you didn't understand it.

Here is Lyman.

http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/people/gjohnson/hc_bias_jtech_v1.pdf and
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/people/gjohnson/hc_integrals_v1.pdf

Any comments on the manuscripts? It was DR who brought Lyman to the table without realizing that a) it was not talking about the "deep ocean" b) it didn't back up his argument. He still didn't address my comments, so you might actually want to take a shot at it.

 

[mhaze]

so have we discussed anything new on this thread in the last few months?

is there anything new in the science here, beyond the (sometimes important) back and forth on issues which were already widely discussed last July?

Here is July....

Recent temperature history and conclusions thereof
We know that temperature has risen - check.
We know that carbon dioxide has risen - check.
Since carbon dioxide should cause warming therefore carbon dioxide rise caused the temperature rise - no its doesn't.

The fallacy of correlation implying causation is used hundreds of times on this Forum, and not exclusively to Global Warming, but AGW is certainly mainlining it like its going out of fashion.

No change. Correlation and logical fallacies by AGW believers are rampant, in spite of numerous peer reviewed articles that have introduced, linked to and which suggest the contrary.
​

IPCC forecasts have no scientific merit

Armstrong et al. We conducted an audit of Chapter 8 of the IPCC’s WG1 Report. We found enough information to make judgments on 89 out of the total of 140 principles. The forecasting procedures that were used violated 72 principles. Many of the violations were, by themselves, critical. We have been unable to identify any scientific forecasts to support global warming. Claims that the Earth will get warmer have no more credence than saying that it will get colder.

Does anyone care to discuss the theory and practice of his approach to the IPCC Chapter 8 findings?

No takers. Extensive attempts to discredit Armstrong failed resulting in this challenge (unanswered).
​

Unpredictability of climate sensitivity
Is it a 0.5 C rise over 50 years (does not matter at all) a 6 C rise over 50 years (not good) or a completely unknown rise because we ain't that smart to figure it out?

No takers. (Currently possibly under discussion with Roe Baker 2006 and Schwartz 2007.
​

IPCC projections have gone done repeatedly, with each new report.

Extensive attempts to deny this by AGW believers were refuted, (it is simply a factual statement)
​

Insults and name calling.
Calling someone a name, and apparently a name that has some sort of insulting meaning, (I never heard the word denialist until I read these forums), is not civil or intelligent. It is dumb.....And insulting. If all you got is calling someone a made up word, you got nothing.

Basically unchanged.
​