Here's the full quote that you think shows Halley seriously considering the notion of bias, so people can access it easily:
Lol, I thought "people" were going to "read" the paper? I've already quoted the majority of that section anyway, so people following the thread have already read the relevant bits.
Now, Halley discusses the variance in the models, recognizing wide disagreement.
Right. Analogy time: we have a bunch of people claiming to measure something to an accuracy of one centimetre, and the measurements differ by over twenty centimetres.
To a scientist, this would raise a red flag immediately. A scientist would ask questions at this point: why are these so inconsistent? How can we draw any meaningful conclusions knowing that the uncertainties are so far in error? How can we resolve these problems? To you, not so much.
Yet these models support his finding because they all relate to the data in the same way: natural variance would have to be much stronger on all of them. Thus, it falls so far outside the range that any compilation of the models leads to the same result.
Yawn.
The only explanation for this that doesn't rule out natural variance is that they all support Halley's conclusion in the same way because they're all biased in the same way. This is technically possible, but unlikely
No, it is not unlikely, it is highly likely, due to the problems of variance matching, and the problems of limited calibration. These are well known and directly evidenced in the disagreement between the variance in Mann and D'Arrigo, which supposedly measure the same thing, BUT THE SERIES VARIANCE DIFFERS BY 4X.
So it is not only technically possible, but IT HAS HAPPENED BEFORE.
I have to shout because this is obvious and you don't get it. It is like someone sitting on a fence watching cars go by saying "another car is really unlikely to go by now".
You have asserted as evidence that Halley treated the bias argument seriously his listing of other scientists who make that argument.
Firstly: you don't know Halley's opinion on this, so don't try and make it up.
Secondly: there is solid evidence to support the case in the peer-reviewed literature.
Follow the footnotes and here are the scientists one ends up with:
Edward Wegman of "Hockeystick" fame:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/08/followup-to-the-hockeystick-hearings/
Hans von Storch, the gentleman who resigned over the Soon and Baliunas controversy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soon_and_Balliunas_controversy
Then went on to publish another highly derided Hockeystick paper.
Oh great, I come to discuss peer-reviewed scientific literature and the best you have is hit pieces on blogs and Wikipedia. I can see the level of "debate" you work with.
Hans von Storch is a well respected climate scientist and your childish hit pieces are largely irrelevant.
Hans von Storch's criticisms of MBH98 were absolutely spot on. He made one mistake in implementation - actually, the mistake wasn't his, the original MBH method had no integrity, and von Storch made an implementation decision that actually had integrity (detrending data prior to regression to avoid spurious correlations). Wegman's criticisms were absolutely spot on.
Let me make this clear: Hans von Storch has forgotten more about climate science than you will ever know. He is also co-author of Rybski et al. FWIW.
Halley was making a point about the silliness of people arguing bias. He directly dismisses the idea in his conclusion and references notorious climate screw ups.
Unlike you, I do not claim to know what Halley was thinking at the time. However, he makes strong points about the bias, and most scientists take bias very seriously. And to suggest Halley is mocking von Storch for being a "notorious climate screw up" - I'm hoping that is some kind of a joke, but I don't think you are capable of it.
