How To Be A Global Warming Sceptic

[mhaze]

Look at the graph which Alric posted, particularly on the circled bit towards the upper-right. There you see the shape that originated the term "hockey-stick". So what exactly do you mean by the "hockey stick [not being] real"?

Am I right in thinking that by "hockey-stick" you mean "entire edifice of climate science"?

It would naturally appear to you that the hockey-stick is of importance because you keep bringing it up. It's in the nature of a bore not to notice how self-absorbed they are. They remember every conversation as having turned to their chosen obsessions; what they don't register is that they have no other conversation than their own pet subjects.

It's in the nature of a self-promoter like Steve McIntyre that he keeps on about his one tarnished "triumph" because without it he's got nothing. Except the retrospective cooling of the US in the early 90's, which may still have some legs to it.

In summary, the hockey-stick looms enormously large in your world, but not so much in the normal one. The same can be said about Al Gore. ("... a certain non mentionable ex VP ..." - if you're playing the victim card there that's really sad, if you're not it's still sad. Do you dream about him?)

If you do not understand what the hockey stick concept implies, that is quite interesting. It is certainly explained on wikipedia. Do your homework.

 

[Pixel42]

Am I right in thinking that by "hockey-stick" you mean "entire edifice of climate science"?

Mann's original graph showed a fairly flat temperature for the last couple of thousand years, followed by a kick upwards in the last century or so. That's the "hockey stick" shape. Many sceptics have concentrrated not so much on disputing the recent increase in temperature (after all there are real instrument measurements to back that up) but on the flat bit, which is derived from proxies like tree rings etc. They've been trying to show that there have been peaks that are as big as the current peak in that period. The logic is that if such a peak did occur before we started dumping GHG into the atmosphere then the current peak could be due to whatever caused that one.

Unfortunately for them the Medieval Warm Period, which is what they've latched on to, appears to (a) not have been as warm as historical anecdotal accounts suggest, (b) to have been a local phenomenon rather than a global one and (c) to have happened at different times in those areas where it did happen. You can see this clearly in the graph Alric posted: there are peaks in each regional line which are sometimes almost as high as the current peak, but they're spread out; only in the last 50 years do almost all the lines appear to be rising simultaneously.

But the sceptics still keep trying to find proxy data which shows that it's been as warm as it is now over all the world simultaneously at some point in the last two thousand years. It's the various papers published which attempt to show this that are said to "debunk" the hockey stick.

Here's the section of the OU course I keep plugging that deals with the first debunking attempt:

http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=172091

If you don't have time to read the whole thing, at least try to find 30 minutes to listen to the BBC Radio 4 documentary that's linked to within it. It was made in 2004, but I don't think anything much has changed since. Just a load more papers showing local temporary increases in temperature in various locations.

 

[Alric]

The funny thing is that the only Mann's "hockey stick" has been the subject of controversy. Since then, other undisputed "hockey sticks" using other proxies have been published. My favorite being:

Extracting a Climate Signal from 169 Glacier Records
Science Vol. 308, No. 5722, pp. 675-677, 29 April 2005.

Its hard to use statistical voodoo to attack absolute calibrated measurements of glacier retreat.

But there is also this:

and this:

All undisputed hockey sticks.

 

[Pixel42]

The funny thing is that the only Mann's "hockey stick" has been the subject of controversy. Since then, other undisputed "hockey sticks" using other proxies have been published

None of those three graphs go back further than 1600, though. Not really far enough to prove that the present warming is unprecedented in human history.

Still they're better than the graphs which are currently most popular with the contrarians - they only go back ten years

ETA: I've just re-read my previous post, and I realise that by using a quote from CD I may have given the impression that I think CD doesn't already know all this. I'd just like to make it clear that I'm quite sure CD knows more about it than I do; I was actually addressing mhaze's suggestion in the previous post that people who disagree that the hockey stick has been debunked don't understand it.

 

[mhaze]

None of those three graphs go back further than 1600, though. Not really far enough to prove that the present warming is unprecedented in human history.

Still they're better than the graphs which are currently most popular with the contrarians - they only go back ten years

ETA: I've just re-read my previous post, and I realise that by using a quote from CD I may have given the impression that I think CD doesn't already know all this. I'd just like to make it clear that I'm quite sure CD knows more about it than I do; I was actually addressing mhaze's suggestion in the previous post that people who disagree that the hockey stick has been debunked don't understand it.

If you do not understand what the hockey stick concept implies, that is quite interesting. It is certainly explained on wikipedia. Do your homework.

Never be surprised at ignorance. Some wear it proudly.

Garbage in, gospel out.

 

[Pixel42]

Never be surprised at ignorance. Some wear it proudly.

Having argued extensively with creationists, ghost hunters, CTers and AGW sceptics here and on other boards, I can assure you that I am well aware of that.

So do you still contend that the hockey stick is "not real" and is no longer part of the IPCC's summaries and reports?

 

[mhaze]

None of those three graphs go back further than 1600, though. Not really far enough to prove that the present warming is unprecedented in human history.

Still they're better than the graphs which are currently most popular with the contrarians - they only go back ten years

ETA: I've just re-read my previous post, and I realise that by using a quote from CD I may have given the impression that I think CD doesn't already know all this. I'd just like to make it clear that I'm quite sure CD knows more about it than I do; I was actually addressing mhaze's suggestion in the previous post that people who disagree that the hockey stick has been debunked don't understand it.

If you do not understand what the hockey stick concept implies, that is quite interesting. It is certainly explained on wikipedia. Do your homework.

Never be surprised at ignorance. Some wear it proudly.

 

[TrueSceptic]

Mann's original graph showed a fairly flat temperature for the last couple of thousand years, followed by a kick upwards in the last century or so. That's the "hockey stick" shape. Many sceptics have concentrrated not so much on disputing the recent increase in temperature (after all there are real instrument measurements to back that up) but on the flat bit, which is derived from proxies like tree rings etc. They've been trying to show that there have been peaks that are as big as the current peak in that period. The logic is that if such a peak did occur before we started dumping GHG into the atmosphere then the current peak could be due to whatever caused that one.

Plus, they are also trying to claim that it isn't really that warm now, that temps have levelled or dropped, that the instrument data is tainted by UHI, that statistical analyses are flawed, etc., etc.

Unfortunately for them the Medieval Warm Period, which is what they've latched on to, appears to (a) not have been as warm as historical anecdotal accounts suggest, (b) to have been a local phenomenon rather than a global one and (c) to have happened at different times in those areas where it did happen. You can see this clearly in the graph Alric posted: there are peaks in each regional line which are sometimes almost as high as the current peak, but they're spread out; only in the last 50 years do almost all the lines appear to be rising simultaneously.

But the sceptics still keep trying to find proxy data which shows that it's been as warm as it is now over all the world simultaneously at some point in the last two thousand years. It's the various papers published which attempt to show this that are said to "debunk" the hockey stick.

Here's the section of the OU course I keep plugging that deals with the first debunking attempt:

http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=172091

If you don't have time to read the whole thing, at least try to find 30 minutes to listen to the BBC Radio 4 documentary that's linked to within it. It was made in 2004, but I don't think anything much has changed since. Just a load more papers showing local temporary increases in temperature in various locations.

Thanks, will catch up with that later.

 

[Diamond]

Indeed. Cheap and fleeting fame is better than none at all, to some. Who'd have ever heard of Wegman, or Steve McIntyre, or the late unlamented John Daly, or Senator Frickin' Inhofe, if CO2 wasn't a greenhouse gas? Only a very select few; family, friends, and colleagues. But in this Universe they're big fish (in a very shallow pond).

We would have heard of Fred Singer, though, because he's not a one-trick guy.

We have heard of James "Lysenko" Hansen, or Michael Mann or Gavin Schmidt or any number of hoaxers if carbon dioxide were not conveniently rising and the same time as a short part of the 20th Century?

You make a very weak point about Steve McIntyre and the statistical climatologists. McIntyre was the first person to actually reproduce Mann's result from first principles. As far as I am aware, none of the statistical climatologists mentioned have laid a glove on McIntyre's work or on Wegman's response. Neither did the NAS Panel.

Is this the best you can do?

 

[Diamond]

Having argued extensively with creationists, ghost hunters, CTers and AGW sceptics here and on other boards, I can assure you that I am well aware of that.

So do you still contend that the hockey stick is "not real" and is no longer part of the IPCC's summaries and reports?

The Hockey Stick is meaningless. Its certainly real, but in the sense that the Piltdown Man is real.

 

[Diamond]

The funny thing is that the only Mann's "hockey stick" has been the subject of controversy. Since then, other undisputed "hockey sticks" using other proxies have been published. My favorite being:

[qimg]http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/oerlemans2005/fig3a-sm.jpg[/qimg]

Extracting a Climate Signal from 169 Glacier Records
Science Vol. 308, No. 5722, pp. 675-677, 29 April 2005.

http://www.worldclimatereport.com/i...ng-a-climate-signal-from-169-glacier-records/

Its hard to use statistical voodoo to attack absolute calibrated measurements of glacier retreat.

But does glacial retreat mean a) warming b) loss of precipitation at the head or c) both? So exactly what are you calibrating?

But there is also this:

[qimg]http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images/thumb/f/f4/Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png/350px-Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png[/qimg]

And nobody knows how that graph is constructed. But for the record, the claim made by Jones in 1990 that UHI is minor appears to be based in part on a scientific fraud: http://www.informath.org/pubs/EnE07a.pdf

and this:

[qimg]http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images/thumb/7/7e/Satellite_Temperatures.png/350px-Satellite_Temperatures.png[/qimg]

All undisputed hockey sticks.

Hockey sticks are not straight lines, they suddenly change direction near the ends.

The point about the canonical Mann Hockey Stick is that it overweights a single proxy, the Graybill Bristlecone Pines of Western Colorado. Without that one proxy, the Hockey Stick shape disappears.

 

[mhaze]

And nobody knows how that graph is constructed. But for the record, the claim made by Jones in 1990 that UHI is minor appears to be based in part on a scientific fraud: http://www.informath.org/pubs/EnE07a.pdf

Hockey sticks are not straight lines, they suddenly change direction near the ends. The point about the canonical Mann Hockey Stick is that it overweights a single proxy, the Graybill Bristlecone Pines of Western Colorado. Without that one proxy, the Hockey Stick shape disappears.

Warmers, ignorant of their central concepts actual definition, do not comprehend what they have lost. Some are more perceptive.

The general public.
The more they know about "global warming"...
The less they care.

A challenge for warmers:
Name an ice sheet breakup that was due to natural causes in the last 30 years.

 

[TrueSceptic]

We have heard of James "Lysenko" Hansen, or Michael Mann or Gavin Schmidt or any number of hoaxers if carbon dioxide were not conveniently rising and the same time as a short part of the 20th Century?

Care to rephrase that so that we can tell what you are trying to say?

You make a very weak point about Steve McIntyre and the statistical climatologists. McIntyre was the first person to actually reproduce Mann's result from first principles. As far as I am aware, none of the statistical climatologists mentioned have laid a glove on McIntyre's work or on Wegman's response. Neither did the NAS Panel.

Is this the best you can do?

Well, you wouldn't be aware, would you, as you only get your information from GWS sources?

 

[mhaze]

Care to rephrase that so that we can tell what you are trying to say? Well, you wouldn't be aware, would you, as you only get your information from GWS sources?

Successful refutation of an argument is done with logic, evidence, facts.

 

[Alric]

None of those three graphs go back further than 1600, though. Not really far enough to prove that the present warming is unprecedented in human history.

Doesn't need to be. Our economy and way of life is different from the neolithic. The graphs I showed are undisputed and show how temperature has risen along with unprecedented increses in anthropogenic greenhouse houses like CO2.

Good enough for me!

 

[Alric]

Successful refutation of an argument is done with logic, evidence, facts.

Irony can be so delightfully funny!!

 

[TrueSceptic]

Successful refutation of an argument is done with logic, evidence, facts.

Thanks for falsely grouping those 2 replies. Now, what did Diamond say in that first sentence? Does it make sense?

 

[mhaze]

Thanks for falsely grouping those 2 replies. Now, what did Diamond say in that first sentence? Does it make sense?

Sure. If Lysenko does not ring a bell, look it up.

 

[TrueSceptic]

Sure. If Lysenko does not ring a bell, look it up.

What an arrogant offensive jerk you are!

Parse this and tell us what it actually means

We have heard of James "Lysenko" Hansen, or Michael Mann or Gavin Schmidt or any number of hoaxers if carbon dioxide were not conveniently rising and the same time as a short part of the 20th Century?

 

[CapelDodger]

The general public.
The more they know about "global warming"...
The less they care.

"A telephone survey of 1,093 Americans", well stop the presses.

"The study showed high levels of confidence in scientists among Americans led to a decreased sense of responsibility for global warming."

These people are supposed to be informed of, and have confidence in, what scientists are saying so scientists clearly aren't being alarmist. I'm glad that's been out to rest.

"Measuring knowledge about global warming is a tricky business, Kellstedt adds"

Not in all cases.

"Now, for better or worse, scientists have to deal with the public's abundant confidence in them."

Do what now? The 'Murrican public has abundant confidence in scientists? I've heard that a fair chunk of it is Creationist. A journalistic leap too far, I fear.

""But it cannot be comforting to the researchers in the scientific community that the more trust people have in them as scientists, the less concerned they are about their findings," the researchers conclude in their study."

I doubt they'll be alarmed by it, though. Amused, possibly. Political "scientists" .

Perhaps some of those informed people feel less personal responsibility because they've already taken steps to reduce their carbon-footprint (however token or illusory it may be in practical terms)? "Holier than thou" comfort. Just a thought. They may also feel less concerned because they think they're prepared for it - forewarned is forearmed, after all.