Global Warming Scam

[idunno]

not true.
research shows a similar pattern betwen climate changes and volcanic eruptions and sun activity thoughout the centuries, but as we reach the 1990s the gap betwen the patterns change dramatically which shows we are the main responsible for the change

 

[BobK]

AUP,
You're entitled to your opinion on whether it's well reasoned, just as I am.

I think you're grasping at straws when you disparage his use of UN instead of IPCC. It's plain to see he's talking about climate. Who in the UN is involved with that other than the IPCC? Are you really making the lame argument that somehow the IPCC isn't a UN agency?

You also contend it is "a blatant lie" that Geophysical Research Letters is a leading scientific journal. You're kidding. Right? If not, why would one of your idols, Michael Mann, have at least a dozen papers published by such a lousy journal?

In any event. I posted those links for those that are open to reading a different perspective than they get from you.

 

[BobK]

Here's how well the EU emissions trading scheme is doing.
Article

The EU's innovative emissions trading scheme risks becoming "pointless" because members are giving more pollution permits that industrial plants need, the EU environment commissioner said Monday.

"If member states put more allowances into the market than are needed to cover real emissions, the scheme will become pointless and it will be difficult to meet our Kyoto targets," commissioner Stavros Dimas told journalists in Luxembourg.

snip ...

"Much to my regret, taking together the first 17 national allocation plans that have been notified to us proposing emissions caps, that is about 15 percent above the emissions levels in those case," Dimas added.

Looks like they're all anxious to do their part.

 

[rockoon]

A technique so 'unprecedented' that it appears in the standard texts on PCA (see index).


A technique so 'unprecendented' that it crops up in the fields of computer graphics, document management, network management and genetics (to name but a few).

Unprecedented in climatology.

Nobody
Ever
Used
The
Technique
Before

Instead of a critical analysis of it (which would have FOUND the known flaws in Manns technique, which isnt PCA exactly since he doesnt know much about statistics and fails to impliment it properly), the IPCC told the world that Manns report is very robust and that it had been thoroughly peer reviewed.

Were ALL the reviewers statistically incompetent too? Seems likely since nobody in climatology ever used the technique before. Now if the IPCC had gotten some statisticians to review the unprecidented work, they would have discovered the problems.

 

[oponol]

Unprecedented in climatology.

Nobody
Ever
Used
The
Technique
Before

The Journal of Climate begs to differ

Journal of Climate, 1996
Definition of Climate Regions in the Northern Plains Using an Objective Cluster Modification Technique

Abstract:
...Principal component analysis (PCA) was used to reduce a 147-station dataset, consisting of 24 climatic variables averaged over the 1931–1990 period, to three orthogonal components.

Journal of Climate, 1992
Regional Climates in the GISS Global Circulation Model: Synoptic-Scale Circulation

A methodology for validating the daily synoptic circulation using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is described, and the methodology is then applied to the GCM simulation of sea level pressure over the continental United States (excluding Alaska). The analysis demonstrates that the GISS 4°×5° GCM Model II effectively simulates the synoptic-scale atmospheric circulation over the United States

Journal of Climate, 1992
Singular Value Decomposition of Wintertime Sea Surface Temperature and 500-mb Height Anomalies

Absract: Single field principal component analysis (PCA), direct singular value decomposition (SVD), canonical correlation analysis (CCA), and combined principal component analysis (CPCA) of two fields are applied to a 39-winter dataset consisting of normalized seasonal mean sea surface temperature anomalies over the North Pacific and concurrent 500-mb height anomalies over the same region...

Journal of Climate, 1990
A Method of Relating General Circulation Model Simulated Climate to the Observed Local Climate. Part I: Seasonal Statistics

Abstract: Important surface observations such as the daily maximum and minimum temperature, daily precipitation, and cloud ceilings often have localized characteristics that are difficult to reproduce with the current resolution and the physical parameterizations in state-of-the-art General Circulation climate Models (GCMs). Many of the difficulties can be partially attributed to mismatches in scale, local topography. regional geography and boundary conditions between models and surface-based observations. Here, we present a method, called climatological projection by model statistics (CPMS), to relate GCM grid-point flee-atmosphere statistics, the predictors, to these important local surface observations. The method can be viewed as a generalization of the model output statistics (MOS) and perfect prog (PP) procedures used in numerical weather prediction (NWP) models. It consists of the application of three statistical methods: 1) principle component analysis (FICA), 2) canonical correlation, and 3) inflated regression analysis. The PCA reduces the redundancy of the predictors The canonical correlation is used to develop simultaneous relationships between linear combinations of the predictors, the canonical variables, and the surface-based observations. Finally, inflated regression is used to relate the important canonical variables to each of the surface-based observed variables.

Journal of Climate, 1988
An Investigation of Interannual Rainfall Variability in Africa

Abstract: Interannual variations in African rainfall are examined using rotated principal component analysis (PCA) applied to anomalies from the annual mean as well as seasonal anomalies...

And that's just the tip of the iceberg in just one climatology journal

 

[a_unique_person]

AUP,
You're entitled to your opinion on whether it's well reasoned, just as I am.

I think you're grasping at straws when you disparage his use of UN instead of IPCC. It's plain to see he's talking about climate. Who in the UN is involved with that other than the IPCC? Are you really making the lame argument that somehow the IPCC isn't a UN agency?

You also contend it is "a blatant lie" that Geophysical Research Letters is a leading scientific journal. You're kidding. Right? If not, why would one of your idols, Michael Mann, have at least a dozen papers published by such a lousy journal?

In any event. I posted those links for those that are open to reading a different perspective than they get from you.

"Leading" to me means something that's leading. There are a lot of scientific journals out there that are doing the usual scientific work but aren't leading.

The UN is not the IPCC. The IPCC is made up of scientists, from around the world, from many universities, research centres, etc. They are not employed by the UN, they do not work for the UN, they come together to make the IPCC report every five years. The UN is made up of people who work for the UN, work on UN projects, etc. The UN is a convenient means of bringing together people from around the world for various projects, that is one of it's chief functions, and one of the reasons it was created. The scientists work autonomously.

Once again, the 'hockey stick' is being hammered, but what does that mean.

Read this from one presentation to congress.

Based on the analyses presented in the original papers by Mann et al. (1998, 1999) 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. However, 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. We also question some of the statistical choices made in the original papers by Dr. Mann and his colleagues. However, our reservations with some aspects of the original papers by Mann et al. should not be construed as evidence that our committee does not believe that the climate is warming, and will continue to warm, as a result of human activities.

By a member of the committee that M&M refer to on their own web page.

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/trc.html

Can you understand that? M&M, the hockey stick, etc, should be understood in the context of that last sentence. They refer to that paper on their own web site, as backing their point of view, but it says exactly what others have been saying. The current scientific research shows that human activities are causing the climate to warm. And IT WILL CONTINUE TO WARM.

 

[a_unique_person]

I'll add the next paragraph as well.

Large-scale surface temperature reconstructions are only one of multiple lines of evidence supporting the conclusion that climatic warming is occurring in response to human activities, and they are not the primary evidence. The scientific consensus regarding human-induced global warming would not be substantively altered if, for example, the global mean surface temperature 1,000 years ago was found to be as warm as it is today. This is because reconstructions of surface temperature do not tell us why the climate is changing. To answer that question, one would need to examine the factors, or forcings, that influence the climate system. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the primary climate forcings were changes in volcanic activity and in the output of the Sun, but the strength of these forcings is not very well known. In contrast, the increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere over the past century are consistent with both the magnitude and the geographic pattern of warming seen by thermometers.

This is what I call well reasoned, by a scientist, not yet another layman throwing his hat in the ring, and getting published with no peer review, etc.

 

[BobK]

I added some bold portions to your quotes, to make them more understandable.

Based on the analyses presented in the original papers by Mann et al. (1998, 1999) and this newer supporting evidence, the committee finds it plausible [Webster: superficially fair, reasonable, or valuable but often specious] that the Northern Hemisphere was warmer during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period over the preceding millennium. However, 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 the above plausibility] compared to the high level of confidence we place in the Little Ice Age cooling and 20th century warming. Even less confidence [than the already reduced plausibility just expressed] 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. We also question some of the statistical choices made in the original papers by Dr. Mann and his colleagues.[Because we can't see the justification for his statistical usage. However, our reservations with some aspects of the original papers by Mann et al. should not be construed as evidence that our committee does not believe that the climate is warming, and will continue to warm, as a result of human activities. [It also should not be construed that our committee believes it is caused mainly by human activities, or we would say so.]

Sounds like they have a lot of confidence the LIA existed. And that it has warmed since then. I feel fortunate about that warming. How about you? They show little confidence in anything else.

Large-scale surface temperature reconstructions are only one of multiple lines of evidence supporting the conclusion that climatic warming is occurring in response to human activities, and they are not the primary evidence. [We won't tell you what the primary evidence is. But it's not reconstructions.] The scientific consensus regarding human-induced global warming would not be substantively altered if, for example, the global mean surface temperature 1,000 years ago was found to be as warm as it is today. This is because reconstructions of surface temperature do not tell us why the climate is changing.Don't rely on reconstructions to tell if it's human-induced.] To answer that question, one would need to examine the factors, or forcings, that influence the climate system.[So keep working on it. We wouldn't consider it a need if it had already been reliably done.] Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the primary climate forcings were changes in volcanic activity and in the output of the Sun, but the strength of these forcings is not very well known.[There is little known about some important forcings.] In contrast, the increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere over the past century are consistent with both the magnitude and the geographic pattern of warming seen by thermometers.[Since correlation shouldn't be construed to be causation; in the relatively short 200 year time frame of thermometers; greenhouse gases are consistent with warming, but cannot be said to be it's major cause. Or we would say so.]

The only thing they say is reconstructions aren't reliable, and they won't or can't tell us what is reliable. They didn't mention anything that can be considered reliable with respect to human-induced warming.

Sounds like the proportion of natural to human-induced warming is still not known, or they would have assigned percentage numbers. They are statisticians after all. Unlike Mann who is not, but apparently has no qualms about assigning numbers.

 

[DeviousB]

Funny, because Webster's also says...

Theory: a plausible or scientifically acceptable general principle or body of principles offered to explain phenomena[1].

[1] As in the Theory of Evolution and the Theory of Relativity.

Mind you, they also define it as...

Theory; an unproved assumption[2].

[2] As in the Theory of Evolution and the Theory of Relativity.

So not the best scientific resource to resort to then.

 

[DeviousB]

I added some bold portions to your quotes, to make them more understandable.

Great game! Let's all do it.

They are statisticians [Heritage: from G. statistik, meaning 'political science', hence their conclusions are politically motivated] after all. Unlike Mann who is not[politically motivated, that is], but apparently has no qualms [Oxford: momentary faint feeling, i.e. Mann's made of sturner stuff that the lily-livered politicos] about assigning numbers.

Good to see you backing AGW to the hilt there.

 

[a_unique_person]

I added some bold portions to your quotes, to make them more understandable.



Sounds like they have a lot of confidence the LIA existed. And that it has warmed since then. I feel fortunate about that warming. How about you? They show little confidence in anything else.



The only thing they say is reconstructions aren't reliable, and they won't or can't tell us what is reliable. They didn't mention anything that can be considered reliable with respect to human-induced warming.

Sounds like the proportion of natural to human-induced warming is still not known, or they would have assigned percentage numbers. They are statisticians after all. Unlike Mann who is not, but apparently has no qualms about assigning numbers.

Some admiral creativity there, but nothing to do with what he was saying, and very informative as to how you distort what someone says to what you want it to say. He stated quite clearly, the hockey stick is not the prime evidence of AGW. The investigation was only into the Hockey Stick, as requested, and of course it had to ignore the majority of evidence about the actual problem. But that is what will happen if you demand an inquiry into only one part of the evidence of a problem. Kind of like asking a heart surgeon to work out what is wrong, but telling him he can only use a stethoscope, because it is open to debate about how much a stethoscope can tell you, and how reliable it is.

 

[Brian the Snail]

Some of those that are unsure about what is going on might be interested in this article. Climate chaos? Don't believe it

Here is more info in the pdf he has linked in his article. A well reasoned presentation.

It's rubbish. Read this.

To expand on the point about climate sensitivity, the use of the Stefan-Boltzmann law assumes that the Earth's temperature responds to a forcing in order to re-establish thermal equilibrium, but that nothing else changes. This is obviously not true, since the concentration of water vapour responds to temperature, leading to a further enhancement of the greenhouse effect, and ice and snow melts, leading to a decrease in the planetary albedo. Clouds might also be expected to change, leading to changes in both the greenhouse effect and albedo. So the evaluation of the temperature response to a given forcing requires these feedback mechanisms to be taken into account, and you can't just rely on Stefan-Boltzmann. It''s useful for pedalogical purposes, but not for quantitative predictions.

There's many other problems with his discussion of climate sensitivity and greenhouse effect, but it is generally so confused (and self-contradictory) that it makes by brain bleed even reading it. For example, he mixes up the figure of climate sensitivity expressed in units of K/(W m^-2) with the value in units of (2x CO_2). He multiplies a forcing by the climate sensitivity to get another forcing, completely mixing up his units. He implies that the IPCC "multiplies" their forcing from CO_2 by the climate sensitivity, but not the forcing from the sun, which is complete nonsense.

This is quite apart from citing a silly bit of pseudohistory from Gavin Menzies as the gospel truth, which is probably the funniest thing he does.

 

[BobK]

An article on the current state of the GW debate. NY Times


snip ...

Some argue that CO2 fluctuations over the Phanerozoic follow climate trends fairly well, supporting a causal relationship between high gas levels and high temperatures. “The geologic record over the past 550 million years indicates a good correlation,” said Robert A. Berner, a Yale geologist and pioneer of paleoclimate analysis. “There are other factors at work here. But in general, global warming is due to CO2. It was in the past and is now.”

Other experts say that is an oversimplification of a complex picture of natural variation. The fluctuations in the gas levels, they say, often fall out of step with the planet’s hot and cold cycles, undermining the claimed supremacy of carbon dioxide.

“It’s too simplistic to say low CO2 was the only cause of the glacial periods” on time scales of millions of years, said Robert Giegengack, a geologist at the University of Pennsylvania who studies past atmospheres. “The record violates that one-to-one correspondence.”

He and other doubters say the planet is clearly warming today, as it has repeatedly done, but insist that no one knows exactly why. Other possible causes, they say, include changes in sea currents, Sun cycles and cosmic rays that bombard the planet.

“More and more data,” Jan Veizer, an expert on Phanerozoic climates at the University of Ottawa, said, “point to the Sun and stars as the dominant driver.”

I don't see a whole lot of consensus.

 

[lenny]

Sounds like the proportion of natural to human-induced warming is still not known, or they would have assigned percentage numbers.

in a nonlinear system, this simply cannot be done coherently.

They are statisticians after all. Unlike Mann who is not, but apparently has no qualms about assigning numbers.

i am pleasantly surprised at the praise this forum repeatedly heaps upon statisticians. nevertheless, in terms of the analysing data from complicated physical systems, the analysis of physical scientists is often more insightful. in practice, the twain do meet.

but if they didn't: would you rather test fly in an experimental plane build by statisticians or engineers?

(assuming both got off the ground)

 

[gurugeorge]

The "Global Warming" schtick is going to turn out, in retrospect, to have been the scientific Tulipmania of the late 20th - early 21st centuries.

All that's happened is that a certain selection of climate scientists, with a certain set of theories, have been thrust into the spotlight because their predictions are friendly to government action, and contribute to a media sense of emergency which sells newspapers. If a big enough fuss is made, and a big enough sense of politically-correct emergency can be created, governments can thrust themselves forward as our saviours, and waste even more of our money on slowing our economy down even more.

There's going to be a lot of embarrassment in 20 years' time. Or maybe not; the defeat of Communism didn't leave many of its supporters embarrassed at the end of the 80s, they just blithely carried on as if nothing had happened, and have now transferred their affections to Islamism. Nothing is going to come of "global warming", but its supporters will simply find another bunch of obscure scientists with a prediction of doom, and thrust them, blinking, into the limelight.

 

[a_unique_person]

Don't have to worry about 20 years time, countries that already existed on the margin, such as Australia, are already well into the experience of global change. While the regular arrival of severe droughts with El-Nino weather events was expected, the severity of the past events has been extreme. Australia is experiencing unprecedented drought.

 

[lenny]

Unprecedented in climatology.
Nobody
Ever
Used
The
Technique
Before

The Journal of Climate begs to differ
<snip>
And that's just the tip of the iceberg in just one climatology journal

the first use of "PCA/SSA/EOF/KL" techniques (that i know of) in the atmospheric sciences was by Lorenz (of 1963 chaos paper fame), writing in 1956:

Empirical Orthogonal Functions and Statistical Weather Prediction, December 1956 Scientific Report no. 1 Statistical Forecasting Project. MIT.

As i recall he did look at spacial fields which has many but not all of the complications of applying the analysis to different observables.

 

[lenny]

Studies have shown that urban heat islands do not significantly contribute to global warming:

note there are two separate questions here:

the contribution of the islands themselves (?minor?)

the potential for bias implied by the fact that many met stations are located in or near such islands (hopefully accounted for in a reasonable way, as per your Hadley link).

did the peterson manuscript that goes with the NOAA abstract appear any where?

 

[Oleron]

Perhaps someone can point to where I'm going wrong here but if we assume the world is heating up due to the CO2 being released by burning oil/gas/coal then what effect could the reduction of emission of these gases really have?

For example, no-one is realistically suggesting that we stop the use of these fuels altogether, merely slow down the consumption. Does it really matter to the environment whether we use up all the oil in 20 years or 50? Given the vast timescales involved in climate science.

Coal will last much longer and continue to be a problem long after oil and gas are a distant memory but by then new technologies will have replaced fossil fuels anyway.

So what are we worrying about?

There is simply no practical way to stop or usefully limit the emission of CO2 worldwide, at least until new technologies come on stream in a generation or 2. Why bother trying?

 

[gurugeorge]

Perhaps someone can point to where I'm going wrong here but if we assume the world is heating up due to the CO2 being released by burning oil/gas/coal then what effect could the reduction of emission of these gases really have?

For example, no-one is realistically suggesting that we stop the use of these fuels altogether, merely slow down the consumption. Does it really matter to the environment whether we use up all the oil in 20 years or 50? Given the vast timescales involved in climate science.

Coal will last much longer and continue to be a problem long after oil and gas are a distant memory but by then new technologies will have replaced fossil fuels anyway.

So what are we worrying about?

There is simply no practical way to stop or usefully limit the emission of CO2 worldwide, at least until new technologies come on stream in a generation or 2. Why bother trying?

Because a bunch of our so-called intelligentsia think they and people like them would do a better job controlling the economy than the "invisible hand" of the market economy. To this end, any and every suggestion that there might be a possible emergency in the works is whipped up and exacerbated in the public mind, so that the public will be malleable to the notion of emergency control of the economy in order to save us from an impending catastrophe.

It's an old trick. I fancy most of the pseudo-intellectual psuedo-intelligentsia of today care as little about the climate as the average SUV-driving, gas-guzzling Republican. Their real aim is simply to take the "captains of industry" down a peg or two.