Moderated Global Warming Discussion

[CapelDodger]

IOW, permafrost that's now submerged under rising sea levels of the last several thousand years (8-12)?

Pretty much. The general sense is that this is not likely to be sensitive to AGW if it was apparently insensistive to inundation, which is quite a shock to the system. That's not to say it made no contribution to the CO₂ feedback during the most recent glacial/inter-glacial transition, but it doesn't appear to have been a startling one.

RealClimate http://www.realclimate.org/ have been drawing attention to this reality to counter media hype. Some may call that political. I call it sound, in every aspect.

 

[W.D.Clinger]

2. McIntyre has a B.Sc. in Math, an MA in economics, and considerable statistical expertise. Those are "climate science related".

This does not answer my question. I allowed that some denialists have credentials. I disagree with you that McIntyre's credentials are relevant to climate science.

Math and statistics are relevant to climate science. The University of East Anglia's Science Assessment Panel expressed surprise "that research in an area that depends so heavily on statistical methods has not been carried out in close collaboration with professional statisticians."

McIntyre is not a professional statistician, however, and his credentials (as listed above by Malcolm Kirkpatrick) are not terribly impressive.

That doesn't mean McIntyre has nothing to contribute. It just means Malcolm Kirkpatrick's argument from the authority of McIntyre's credentials is unconvincing.

Speaking of science, when was the last time McIntyre submitted a paper on climate science for peer review?

The following paper appears to have been peer-reviewed:

Ryan O'Donnell, Nicholas Lewis, Steve McIntyre, and Jeff Condon. Improved methods for PCA-based reconstructions: case study using the Steig et al. (2009) Antarctic temperature reconstruction. Journal of Climate 24(8), April 2011, pages 2099-2115.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2010JCLI3656.1​

Indeed, Steig appears to have been one of the reviewers.

 

[uke2se]

1. Read the linked post.

You read the eight independent reports.

2. Then they lied.

More likely, McIntyre is lying.

Why do you believe one person with no relevant credentials to climate science (no, statistics doesn't cut it) and no real publishing record over the world's top climate scientists?

It's like believing a carpenter over a doctor when it comes to the treatment of smallpox.

 

[Trakar]

Math and statistics are relevant to climate science. The University of East Anglia's Science Assessment Panel expressed surprise "that research in an area that depends so heavily on statistical methods has not been carried out in close collaboration with professional statisticians."

This is fairly true for all science fields. Though most areas of science involvement require extensive statistical education and training, very few pure statisticians seek or find career engagement among science research, focussing instead upon economics, finance and more pure mathematical fields of endeavor.

This isn't to say that either the climate researchers in question are incapable of producing rigorous statisitical analyses, nor that dedicated statisticians would be unwelcome or superfluous to climate research. Rather, merely that the lack of a dedicated statistician among groups of researchers performing climate research should not seem that unusual, nor as automatically indicative of procedural lacking or inadequacy.

McIntyre is not a professional statistician, however, and his credentials (as listed above by Malcolm Kirkpatrick) are not terribly impressive.

Indeed, if anything his inclusion raises more questions about the motivations and goals of the other researchers than it raises his own bonefides.

That doesn't mean McIntyre has nothing to contribute. It just means Malcolm Kirkpatrick's argument from the authority of McIntyre's credentials is unconvincing.


The following paper appears to have been peer-reviewed:

Ryan O'Donnell, Nicholas Lewis, Steve McIntyre, and Jeff Condon. Improved methods for PCA-based reconstructions: case study using the Steig et al. (2009) Antarctic temperature reconstruction. Journal of Climate 24(8), April 2011, pages 2099-2115.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2010JCLI3656.1​

Indeed, Steig appears to have been one of the reviewers.

As the study's lead researcher qualifies after submitting the paper in Feb. of 2010 and then completing nearly a year's worth of reviews and rewrites to get it to the point of being acceptable for publication in Dec. of 2010:

“Overall, we find that the Steig reconstruction overestimated the continental trends and underestimated the Peninsula – though our analysis found that the trend in West Antarctica was, indeed, statistically significant. I would hope that our paper is not seen as a repudiation of Steig’s results, but rather as an improvement.

In my opinion, the Steig reconstruction was quite clever, and the general concept was sound.”
– Ryan O’Donnel

It definitely modifies Steig's finding of recent temperature change in the antarctic, but not in a manner denialists have any reason to cheer about as can be seen from a comparison of the results.

(from: http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2010JCLI3656.1)

If anything this later paper makes a stronger case for rapid and intense warming than Steig's original paper and more Antarctic warming on average overall than found in Steig's original study as well.

None of this seems to involve or require the skills of a BSc in Statistics who spent the next 30 years as a corporate officer for hard-rock mineral exploration companies. Seems more like an "emeritus" inclusion rather like Watt's publication citation, but that is my own opinion and not something I'm prepared to provide strongly compelling evidence in support of.

 

[Pardalis]

Someone linked me this video from NASA:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoOrtvYTKeE

The first question that comes to mind is how accurate and reliable is the data from 1800? To me, the video doesn't as much show warming but increasingly better technology in detecting temperatures.

Now I'm not denying warming, the data from at least the last 40 years seems to show warming, but why the need to go way back to 1800, where they didn't monitor the temperature at different regions of the world.

Is there something I'm missing? Is there a way to infer past temperatures?

 

[DC]

Someone linked me this video from NASA:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoOrtvYTKeE

The first question that comes to mind is how accurate and reliable is the data from 1800? To me, the video doesn't as much show warming but increasingly better technology in detecting temperatures.

Now I'm not denying warming, the data from at least the last 40 years seems to show warming, but why the need to go way back to 1800, where they didn't monitor the temperature at different regions of the world.

Is there something I'm missing? Is there a way to infer past temperatures?

Dunno how reliable they are, but i think the problem is that proper measurement and documentation as we know it today only started after the industrialisation, so when you want to show the effect of industrialisation you need to go back that far.

 

[W.D.Clinger]

None of this seems to involve or require the skills of a BSc in Statistics who spent the next 30 years as a corporate officer for hard-rock mineral exploration companies. Seems more like an "emeritus" inclusion rather like Watt's publication citation, but that is my own opinion and not something I'm prepared to provide strongly compelling evidence in support of.

So far as I know, none of the four authors have a BSc in statistics.

Ryan O'Donnell (the first and corresponding author) described his occupation and background:

My present occupation is vertically integrating metal injection molding for a medical device company….

My educational background is a bachelor’s degree in physics from the United States Naval Academy. Following graduation, I served on nuclear submarines, and, upon completing my obligation, moved to the civilian sector working as an engineer for a medical device company.

Nicholas Lewis (the second author) described his background:

My academic background is mainly mathematics and physics; I have a undergraduate degree (first class) from Cambridge University. I also have a M.Sc. in Economics. I am an amateur rather than a professional climate scientist.

Stephen McIntyre has a BSc in math, but says his "focus was on pure mathematics", not statistics. His master's degree (from Oxford) was in philosophy, politics, and economics. He has no academic degree in statistics. So far as I know, he has not published anything in the journals devoted to statistics.

Jeff Condon (the fourth author, aka Jeff Id) describes himself as an engineer. He's a prolific blogger who writes about "climategate" (which is mentioned 33 times on the current front page of his blog), politics (mentioned 34 times), "leftists" (mentioned 5 times), and similar topics.

So none of the four authors have a degree in statistics. Of the four, McIntyre probably has the most practical experience with that subject.

Here's another recent peer-reviewed paper by McIntyre and his friends:

Ross McKitrick, Stephen McIntyre, and Chad Herman. Panel and multivariate methods for tests of trend equivalence in climate data series. Atmospheric Science Letters 11(4), October/December 2010, pages 270-277.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asl.290/full​

Ross McKitrick is a professor of economics, which is one of the many subjects that uses statistics. (I see he has signed the Cornwall Alliance's Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming, which gives religious reasons for denial of climate science.)

Chad Herman has a BS in mechanical engineering.

Personally, I think it's great that people with such weak credentials in the relevant sciences and math have been able to contribute to the research literature on climate science, even if their motivations are political, religious, or economic.

 

[BenBurch]

...

The first question that comes to mind is how accurate and reliable is the data from 1800? To me, the video doesn't as much show warming but increasingly better technology in detecting temperatures.

Well you need to show that warming is above a baseline and is not usual. The period of time when human fossil CO2 began to be added to the atmosphere begins with the Industrial Revolution, or around 1800.

Now I'm not denying warming, the data from at least the last 40 years seems to show warming, but why the need to go way back to 1800, where they didn't monitor the temperature at different regions of the world.

Is there something I'm missing? Is there a way to infer past temperatures?

Yes, there are a lot of ways that temperature records (mostly from ships) are calibrated. There are a number of temperature proxies like tree rings and ice cores that can give us error bars for these historical readings.

 

[Reality Check]

Furcifer, where is RealCrapScience.com

What's spelled wrong? I think the wrong assertion here might be yours?

Now you cannot even read !

Originally Posted by Reality Check
Just to emphasis how wrong that assertion is.
Firstly RealCrapScience.com does not exist. You need to learn how to spell Furcifer .

The web site RealCrapScience.com does not exist.

You thus have misspelled RealCrapScience.com or are referring to some unknown web site that does not exist anymore. If the latter then just say so and

1. You did not misspell the URL for the web site and
2. this conversation is moot.

I don't follow these pseudoscience websites.

That has little to do with what I posted:

There is a blog about climate science run by climate scientists called RealClimate.com. So how many political articles are there on their front page?
The dog is the weather (educational cartoon)
Open Climate 101 Online (education)
An online model of methane in the atmosphere (science education)
An Arctic methane worst-case scenario (science)
Much ado about methane (science)

A totol of zero articles about politics.

Your post implies that you are arguing from a position of ignorance of the web sites you cannot spell (e.g. RealClimate.com) and the meaning of pseudoscience and politics.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

You read the eight independent reports¹.
More likely, McIntyre is lying. Why do you believe one person with no relevant credentials to climate science (no, statistics doesn't cut it) and no real publishing record over the world's top climate scientists?²It's like believing a carpenter over a doctor when it comes to the treatment of smallpox³.

1. Eight for eight? Deal, if I get to pick the eight McIntyre posts.
2. As I said before, deportment. Plus, McIntyre criticizes within his area of expertise (statistics) and within his experience (the Hockey Team's response to requests for data).
3. If the PhD is in some bogus discipline like Communication or __X__ Studies (fill in the blank), and makes arguments like "I'm a top climate sientist and you're an ignorant carpenter" and the carpenter has demonstrated judgement, I might suppose that the PhD has reason to be insecure.

 

[Trakar]

So far as I know, none of the four authors have a BSc in statistics...
Stephen McIntyre has a BSc in math, but says his "focus was on pure mathematics", not statistics. His master's degree (from Oxford) was in philosophy, politics, and economics. He has no academic degree in statistics. So far as I know, he has not published anything in the journals devoted to statistics...

Indeed, the mistake must be mine! I have always assumed his mathematics degree was in statistics because his first published paper with McKitrick revolved around a statistical refinement of Mann's work, and then the entire kerfluffle with Wegman, not to mention the fact that he is (or at least used to be) constantly labelled a "statistician" by fans and supporters with nary a correction uttered¹, looking at his CV, however, you are entirely correct, his academic focus seems to have been more involved with mathematical theory and as expressed in subjects like algebraic topology, group theory and differentiable manifolds. All of which makes his relevent "expertise" that much more curious.

¹ - http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Steve_McIntyre
- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/...rst-scientific-scandal-of-our-generation.html
- http://globalpoliticalshenanigans.blogspot.com/2010/06/statistical-shenanigans-ipccs.html
- http://drtimball.com/2011/statistics-impact-on-modern-society-and-climate/
- http://news.heartland.org/newspaper...mperatures-flat-despite-record-rise-emissions

(many, many more. as any simple google search demonstrates)

I do admit, however, that this changes my consideration for Mr. McIntyre, on average, no better or worse, just different.

 

[Trakar]

Dunno how reliable they are, but i think the problem is that proper measurement and documentation as we know it today only started after the industrialisation, so when you want to show the effect of industrialisation you need to go back that far.

Large-scale Western civ. industrialization itself (or rather the massive burning of coal, oil and natural gas), began in earnest in the mid-late 19th century. We can take the temp record back fairly steadily before that for at least a couple of millenia via a large collection of well studied proxies and historical period document inferences, as we look at the paleo record, the error bars get a little larger but the science is robust. The point to using that as a point of interest is to coordinate the large scale release of combustion emissions with a marked and measurable increasing rate of increase in surface temperature in direct relation to these emissions.

 

[uke2se]

1. Eight for eight? Deal, if I get to pick the eight McIntyre posts.

Deal. Hit me with them. You can find links to the reports on wikipedia.

2. As I said before, deportment.

That's not a good answer, for two reasons:

1. Science is separate from scientist.

2. No wrongdoing have been proven, despite McIntyre's lies.

Plus, McIntyre criticizes within his area of expertise (statistics)

Not his area of expertise, as has been shown here.

and within his experience (the Hockey Team's response to requests for data).

Data which he does nothing with and which he asked the wrong people for (i.e, not the owners of the data).

3. If the PhD is in some bogus discipline like Communication or __X__ Studies (fill in the blank), and makes arguments like "I'm a top climate sientist and you're an ignorant carpenter" and the carpenter has demonstrated judgement, I might suppose that the PhD has reason to be insecure.

But I said doctor, not PhD in "some bogus dicipline".

You are denying science by people working within their field of expertise and accepting blindly the word of someone working outside his field of expertise. It's not rational, and I want to know why you do it.

 

[lomiller]

The first question that comes to mind is how accurate and reliable is the data from 1800? To me, the video doesn't as much show warming but increasingly better technology in detecting temperatures.

The older data has more noise and bigger error bars but these are fairly well quantified. The data itself has quite a few things that need to be corrected for, but again these have largely been indentified and quantified.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/

To some degree looking at surface station temperature data is an exercise in signal processing, the signal is there but needs to be extracted from the noise. The fact that 4 completely separate groups have looked at the data and come up with nearly identical results gives a good deal of confidence in them.

Is there something I'm missing? Is there a way to infer past temperatures?

Quite a few actually. Tree rings, various isotopes, borehole measurements, sea level, vegetation patterns, ranges of birds and animals, sea ice patterns and quite a few others. These do support the surface station temperature record pre 1950. Post 1950 some isotopes are unusable due to the advent of atomic testing, some tree ring records are known to diverge for unknown reasons (the leading theory is CO2 fertilization) and some of the other proxies simply lack the time resolution to keep up with the current rate of change but in general the proxies support the post 1950 surface station record as well.

 

[Furcifer]

Now you cannot even read !

Nonsense. This is an obvious lie.

The web site RealCrapScience.com does not exist.

I believe everyone but you is aware of this.

You thus have misspelled RealCrapScience.com or are referring to some unknown web site that does not exist anymore. If the latter then just say so and

1. You did not misspell the URL for the web site and
2. this conversation is moot.

It's not misspelled. It's called "satire".

Your post implies that you are arguing from a position of ignorance of the web sites you cannot spell (e.g. RealClimate.com) and the meaning of pseudoscience and politics.

More lies. The spelling is fine and I'm sure you are fully aware of this. You've fabricated this strawman.

 

[CapelDodger]

1. Eight for eight? Deal, if I get to pick the eight McIntyre posts..

How's the selection coming along? Don't feel you need all eight at once, you can post them in batches. You must have a few all-time favourites at least.

 

[uke2se]

How's the selection coming along? Don't feel you need all eight at once, you can post them in batches. You must have a few all-time favourites at least.

I'm all geared up and waiting.

Malcolm, if you need me to link the investigations, just say so. I just felt you should have the opportunity to discover them for yourself as it is obvious you've never bothered to look for them despite them debunking your claims.

 

[Reality Check]

Nonsense. This is an obvious lie.

Nonsense. This is what I wrote:

Now you cannot even read !

Originally Posted by Reality Check
Just to emphasis how wrong that assertion is.
Firstly RealCrapScience.com does not exist. You need to learn how to spell Furcifer .

(note the ).
So it looks like you cannot understand sarcasm (or what pseudoscience or politics or sceince mean) !

More lies.

Wrong

Originally Posted by Reality Check
Your post implies that you are arguing from a position of ignorance of the web sites you cannot spell (e.g. RealClimate.com) and the meaning of pseudoscience and politics.

and this was in reply to

Originally Posted by Furcifer
I don't follow these pseudoscience websites.

That has little to do with what I posted:
Originally Posted by Reality Check
There is a blog about climate science run by climate scientists called RealClimate.com. So how many political articles are there on their front page?
The dog is the weather (educational cartoon)
Open Climate 101 Online (education)
An online model of methane in the atmosphere (science education)
An Arctic methane worst-case scenario (science)
Much ado about methane (science)

A totol of zero articles about politics.

So you

1. Are arguing from a position of ignorance of the RealClimate.com web site:
   "I don't follow these pseudoscience websites"
2. Have no idea what pseudoscience means since the RealClimate.com comments on actual climate science.
3. Have lied about RealClimate.com having more political than sceince articles:
   "I've checked in the past few days and there are more political articles on the front page of RealCrapScience.com than science."

 

[Halsu]

It's not misspelled. It's called "satire".

Have you looked up the articles on RealClimate for your comparision challenge yet?

Could you please finally answer these questions (7th time and counting)?:

If i ask you to tell us how the very arguments you use for claiming the linked article is pseudoscience actually apply to the article in question, i'm shifting goal posts??

Nope, i most certainly am not. So, for the sixth time:

Could you please point out what in that text, which is a commentary about a confrence, and in your own words, has nothing to do with climate science....

- makes science and idology unseparable (and/or)
- misrepresents scientific findings to promote or draw attention for publicity (and/or)
- distorts the facts of science for short-term political gain

...because i can not find anything in that article that would fit any of the above??

 

[Halfcentaur]

The Daily Caller has cracked the case! 16 international scientists claim climate change is good for life and it's all a conspiracy because scientists love money and not science. And the people who knew it all along through, um, intuition suddenly can trust in science?

http://dailycaller.com/2012/01/27/1...gument-for-drastic-actions-on-global-warming/

Courtesy of Google news,....