Moderated Global Warming Discussion

[aleCcowaN]

I can't understand why anyone would want to keep weather records secret, confidential, hidden or otherwise try and prevent people from knowing what the weather was. If it really was "teh governments" telling the CRU not to release weather info, that doesn't make any difference. It's still crazy.

I can't understand why the Pope summoned Martian scientists to release radon from the earth's crust.

«I can't understand <yada yada yada>» doesn't mean <yada yada yada> is real, but, how authoritative and indignant sounds <yada yada yada>.

You started with "inquiring minds", later a crescendo, now something between a philippic and "something is rotten in the state of Denmark". Each one and all are not scientific arguments, are not related with climate science, and are verging the off-topic. They are indeed more related with manipulation, propaganda, advertising, psychology of masses and similar disciplines. You say you were in the field of?

And yes. It's still crazy!

Looking forward to the information and scientific insight you may provide,
Alec

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Really? And considering that you've just conceded that you can't judge the science, how can you judge a handful of private emails¹, selectively quoted out of something like 50,000 to give the worst possible picture with no context², that nearly ALL pertain to specific scientific questions³? Would you like to list some examples of emails that you believe demonstrate this duplicitousness that you see in them?⁴

1. Their expertise had nothing to do with their denial of data for independent review, their intimidation of contrary authors and neutral journal editors, their manipulation of the peer review process, and mendacity when questioned. I don't need any scientific expertise to see that.
2. There's a lot of context. Just read the Climate Audit blog.
3. This is flat false. Read the climate Audit blog.
4. Read the article to which I linked.

 

[AlBell]

I can't understand why anyone would want to keep weather records secret, confidential, hidden or otherwise try and prevent people from knowing what the weather was.

So that interested observers cannot actually examine what was done with and to raw data.

If it really was "teh governments" telling the CRU not to release weather info, that doesn't make any difference. It's still crazy.

Undocumented, patent, ********. CRU / Mann / Brillo (sp?) are the entities that fear release for the reason I mentioned above.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

The point was, that the data wasn't CRU's to release, the national meteorological organizations in each of the individual nations own the rights to that data. The data was shared with CRU but they did not have the right to share that data.

That's the point at issue in the Climate Audit post to which I supplied the link. Please read it.

 

[Trakar]

1. Their expertise had nothing to do with their denial of data for independent review, their intimidation of contrary authors and neutral journal editors, their manipulation of the peer review process, and mendacity when questioned. I don't need any scientific expertise to see that.
2. There's a lot of context. Just read the Climate Audit blog.
3. This is flat false. Read the climate Audit blog.
4. Read the article to which I linked.

The partisan pseudoscience blog you recommend is much more guilty of all the charges you hurl at these researchers than any of the researchers you slander, how do you justify this?

 

[Trakar]

So that interested observers cannot actually examine what was done with and to raw data.

Since the data has all been long since released, where is the evidence that anything untoward was done with or to the data to support your conspiracy filled bilge?

 

[Reality Check]

Yes, those of us that are familiar with statistical analysis are comfortable calling it an "educated guess".

No, those of us that are familiar with statistical analysis would never do that. Try learning what a educated guess is:

An estimate, a guess value based on experience or theoretical knowledge

Note the lack of

1. statistics and
2. analysis.

 

[Reality Check]

The PETM saw the greatest expansion of terrestrial species the world had seen up to that point according to the fossil record.

The problem is that you are ignoring the extinctions.
PETM

The PETM is accompanied by a mass extinction of 35-50% of benthic foraminifera (especially in deeper waters) over the course of ~1,000 years - the group suffering more than during the dinosaur-slaying K-T extinction. Contrarily, planktonic foraminifera diversified, and dinoflagellates bloomed. Success was also enjoyed by the mammals, who radiated profusely around this time.

What is really missing from your assertion about "warmth equates to properity" (prosperity) is that you have no definition of "properity" which means that you have no posibility of citing the evidence that "warmth equates to properity". That in turn means that this is just your personal opinion rather than anything backed up by science.

It is more accurate to say that changes in climate can drive changes in species. An interesting recent paper is Cenozoic climate change influences mammalian evolutionary dynamics with a press release from the Brown University here: North American mammal evolution tracks with climate change.

As you must know trying to compare the PETM to global warming is fairly ridiculous since it had a 0.0003 °C increase per year over 20,000 years and we have about a 0.8 °C increase per year over the last century (1000 times faster!)

 

[Reality Check]

Furcifer, please cite your evidence that Real Climate is a pseudoscience site

RealCrapClimate is a website.

What is this RealCrapClimate web site you keep talking about?
My guess - you think that every web site on the Internet needs the word Crap in its name. I wonder what you think the name of the JREF should be? JCRCECF?

There is Real Climate. It is a blog run by a group of climate scientists.
It does do work - it mostly explains and comments on scientific studies (there are also guest commentaries, etc.).

Calling it a pseudoscience web site is totally ignorant because it reports about climate science and climate science is not pseudoscience.
But maybe you have evidence that the majority of scence cited on Real Climate is pseudoscience so Furcifer, please cite the evdence.

 

[Reality Check]

So that interested observers cannot actually examine what was done with and to raw data.

You forgot the to emphasize that this is a sarcastic global conspiracy comment.
Of course every government in the world was in a conspiracy with the CRU scientists to hide the raw data from interested observers !

A pity that the actual techniques used to analyze the raw data were published - silly climate scientists !

Patent truth that CRU / Mann / Brillo (sp?) were the entities that had nothing to so with the raw data which was held by the countries that collected it.

 

[Furcifer]

No, those of us that are familiar with statistical analysis would never do that. Try learning what a educated guess is:


Note the lack of

1. statistics and
2. analysis.

Note the word "estimate", which is exactly what the proxy reconstructions are.

Anyone familiar with math will tell you "statistics" are in fact "theoretical knowledge". If you flip a coin 10 times "theoretically" it should come up heads 5 times. Basic math.

 

[aleCcowaN]

I notice they don't mention the more than 30,000 humans who died in the European heat wave back in 2003, or the 56,000 that died in the 2010 Russian heat wave...but, these don't really fit with the narrative being pushed.

... and my mother, who died Dec 23th 2010, during the local heat wave that lasted some 12-14 days, which was said to have peaked a dead toll of 90 per day just in Capital Federal (strict Buenos Aires city, 3,000,000 inhabitants, 27% of them 60 or older), though the whole metropolitan area of Buenos Aires (13,500,000 inhabitants) and other major cities, including Montevideo, suffered it, so the death toll must have been really important.

The background cause of her death was an advanced coronary disease, having she declined a specially perilous quadruple bypass surgery that in case of success wouldn't have improve much her prognosis because of her age. The circumstantial cause of death was the heat wave: I was having her at home and taking care of her when the heat wave came, there was a surge of blackouts owing to millions and millions of air conditioners working at the same time on an electrical system without much investment in the latter 9 years. I find myself with temperature rising in my flat, from 23° to 25, 27 and up, while I was using every available resource to keep her as cool as possible, all to little avail. Opening the windows wasn't allowed as the outside temperature kept about 30-37° during the afternoon. She quickly fell in renal failure; electrolytes in her blood distorted; all the medicines started to accumulate and interact weirdly, and she developed quickly an extreme arrhythmia, so an ambulance took her to the hospital (all the emergency rooms were a chaos, and the streets filled with the sound of ambulance sirens at hundreds of intersections without working traffic lights that the blackouts had created) where she finally developed an irreversible condition causing her death some hours later.

Her body was in the packed hospital morgue all December 24ts and 25th (all cemeteries were closed) and was released in a starting state of decomposition -the morgue had so many corpses that they hadn't refrigeration to everyone-, the wake was cancelled and finally she was buried the 27th. About the 30th the heat wave started to ease up.

So, a heat wave -one of the increasingly common and increasingly intense that these times of GW have brought- determined the "when" of her demise.

I'm not saying GW killed her, or yanks driving SUVs killed her. I am not a lunatic. But hell that I have a strong opinion against those who give a darn about the inner workings of their own minds and promote all this tales of cold times by distorting and misrepresenting anecdotal evidence. An anecdote is just an anecdote, and I have mine.

Beware of they who try to promote their cherry picked anecdotes into "state of the whole subject".

[You may imagine all the adjectives not used in this post]

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

The partisan pseudoscience blog you recommend is much more guilty of all the charges you hurl at these researchers than any of the researchers you slander, how do you justify this?

Your characterization is simply false. McIntyre was a reviewer for the IPCC and has published peer reviewed articles on climate issues. He is routinely polite even to people who smear him (like those you evidently read). I recommend the linked article, to start.

 

[Furcifer]

My guess - you think that every web site on the Internet needs the word Crap in its name. I wonder what you think the name of the JREF should be? JCRCECF?

More nonsense.

Calling it a pseudoscience web site is totally ignorant because it reports about climate science and climate science is not pseudoscience.

And how exactly does this preclude it from being a pseudoscience site?

But maybe you have evidence that the majority of scence cited on Real Climate is pseudoscience so Furcifer, please cite the evdence.

I've explained numerous times why RealCrapClimate.com and the rest of these warring, agenda driven,politically motivated and biased websites are pseudoscience and how the journals which publish the science aren't (although there are some serious accusations about journals not allowing scientists the equal opportunity to publish)

 

[Trakar]

That's the point at issue in the Climate Audit post to which I supplied the link. Please read it.

I don't do blogs, particularly with regards to science. If you would like to restate the information sans the political demagoguery and sticking to verifiable (non-blog) facts and findings, I would be happy to read what you have to say and will respond to it as openly and honestly as I can.

 

[aleCcowaN]

Patent truth that CRU / Mann / Brillo (sp?) were the entities that had nothing to so with the raw data which was held by the countries that collected it.

It's amazing the amount of information that is available if you just ask by mail and show you are not fooling around. The thousands of fellows that swarm in web sites about 'weathergate' could have managed to get all the raw data in a few weeks. But guessing where a good conspiracy may hide is more fun and more adrenalin releasing that being a good boy or girl, asking properly and then doing something with such insipid raw data.

In fact, any intent of reaching the data makes the conspiracy inviable. Not good for the fun!

 

[Trakar]

...As you must know trying to compare the PETM to global warming is fairly ridiculous since it had a 0.0003 °C increase per year over 20,000 years and we have about a 0.8 °C increase per year over the last century (1000 times faster!)

Ouch! That is the main problem with the moderated nature of this thread, it makes correcting typos or unintentional mistakes a bit difficult.

0.8 x 100 = 80º C (and that would be undenialble by even the most hard core ideologue)

the actual yearly rate over the last century is 0.8º C/100 = 0.008º C
or about 27x faster PETM average

Or if you want to look at the actual current rate, I believe it is 0.15º C/decade or 0.015º C per year or about 50X faster than PETM average.

Stuff happens, but your general point stands and is nonetheless sobering in portent.

 

[Trakar]

Your characterization is simply false. McIntyre was a reviewer for the IPCC and has published peer reviewed articles on climate issues. He is routinely polite even to people who smear him (like those you evidently read). I recommend the linked article, to start.

McIntyre's professional career, what there is left of it, is not the point, what is published and not published on his blog, is the issue. Hynek was once a well published and respected astrophysicist/astronomer who worked with Fred Whipple at Harvard and the Smithsonian observatory, that didn't keep him from chasing UFOs and advocating alien visitor explanations. Pseudoscience nonsense is judged by the content, not by the prestige of those presenting it.

 

[Trakar]

... and my mother, who died Dec 23th 2010, during the local heat wave that lasted some 12-14 days, which was said to have peaked a dead toll of 90 per day just in Capital Federal (strict Buenos Aires city, 3,000,000 inhabitants, 27% of them 60 or older), though the whole metropolitan area of Buenos Aires (13,500,000 inhabitants) and other major cities, including Montevideo, suffered it, so the death toll must have been really important.

The background cause of her death was an advanced coronary disease, having she declined a specially perilous quadruple bypass surgery that in case of success wouldn't have improve much her prognosis because of her age. The circumstantial cause of death was the heat wave: I was having her at home and taking care of her when the heat wave came, there was a surge of blackouts owing to millions and millions of air conditioners working at the same time on an electrical system without much investment in the latter 9 years. I find myself with temperature rising in my flat, from 23° to 25, 27 and up, while I was using every available resource to keep her as cool as possible, all to little avail. Opening the windows wasn't allowed as the outside temperature kept about 30-37° during the afternoon. She quickly fell in renal failure; electrolytes in her blood distorted; all the medicines started to accumulate and interact weirdly, and she developed quickly an extreme arrhythmia, so an ambulance took her to the hospital (all the emergency rooms were a chaos, and the streets filled with the sound of ambulance sirens at hundreds of intersections without working traffic lights that the blackouts had created) where she finally developed an irreversible condition causing her death some hours later.

Her body was in the packed hospital morgue all December 24ts and 25th (all cemeteries were closed) and was released in a starting state of decomposition -the morgue had so many corpses that they hadn't refrigeration to everyone-, the wake was cancelled and finally she was buried the 27th. About the 30th the heat wave started to ease up.

So, a heat wave -one of the increasingly common and increasingly intense that these times of GW have brought- determined the "when" of her demise.

I'm not saying GW killed her, or yanks driving SUVs killed her. I am not a lunatic. But hell that I have a strong opinion against those who give a darn about the inner workings of their own minds and promote all this tales of cold times by distorting and misrepresenting anecdotal evidence. An anecdote is just an anecdote, and I have mine.

Beware of they who try to promote their cherry picked anecdotes into "state of the whole subject".

[You may imagine all the adjectives not used in this post]

Indeed!

My heartfelt and sincere condolences on your loss. All too many of us lose sight of the human face of the tragedies we so often discuss in terms of numbers and facts.

 

[Trakar]

Note the word "estimate", which is exactly what the proxy reconstructions are.

Anyone familiar with math will tell you "statistics" are in fact "theoretical knowledge". If you flip a coin 10 times "theoretically" it should come up heads 5 times. Basic math.

You seem to be saying that any time you flip a coin more than once and half of the flips don't result in a 50% distribution that you have disproven statistics?

Theories only require a single instance of deviance from projected outcome to be falsified.

perhaps you were thinking of a different meaning for the term theoretical?

Statistics are maths, maths are not considered theoretical knowledge. Abstractions, yes, theoretical, no.

Mathematics is derived from the Greek word manthanein, "to learn," and deals with the logical reasoning and quantitative calculation of the properties of numbers, shapes, and space resulting in an exact language used to communicate about them.