How To Be A Global Warming Sceptic

[CapelDodger]

ideas on the very edge

Of Sanity, Reality, Pseudoscience, Alarmist mythology, Political propaganda?

By the way - did he explain this set of facts?

[URL]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_1422447fe820aa4e19.png[/URL]

No?

Figures.

The first thing that strikes me about that graph is that it doesn't include actual data (the black line) after 2001, only what the author says is a "Cochrane Orcutt" fit to said data. Nor does he stipulate what parameters he inserted into the formula, nor why he doesn't use simple regression (which, as we know, shows a warming trend this century).

I'm thinking that the parameters are very carefuly chosen to produce a downward trend, given that 2005 was the warmest (or equal warmest) on record, and 2007 about the third warmest, despite a La Nina towards the end. Was 2001 as a starting point also very carefully chosen?

The legend refers to an "IPCC short-term projection", but is there such a thing? I'm not aware of it. Perhaps he just means the first few years of the TAR projection, which is hardly meant to be relevant over such a short term.

Which brings up the point that this is yet another GWSceptic piece focusing on the post-98 period, one which they feel comfortable with because (with judicious choice of statistical methods and parameters) it can be presented as not exhibiting a warming trend. In the case of a true carpet-chewer (such as Melanie Philips) temperatures can be presented as "dropping like a stone".

What are you guys going to be clinging to in two-to-seven years time? Solar Cycle 24 and its up-phase? That would be unfair on Solar Cycle 23's down-phase, whcih hardly ever gets mentioned, but nobody ever said life would be fair. So I do expect to see that. Al Gore? For sure (barring accident; he's relatively young, with an excellent health-plan and no history of substance abuse). A 60-80 year cycle? That's rapidly running out of legs. Singer's 1000-2000 year cycle, on the other hand, is a long-term fallback, so I guess that'll come up.

(And the burying of heads in bristlecone pines will never get old for some people.)

Or perhaps something entirely new. You guys are nothing if not inventive. Who saw the cosmic ray thing coming back in '98? Not me. I didn't see the '98 El Nino coming either, but I do see one coming in the next two-to-seven years, and that's going to present you guys with quite a challenge.

 

[CapelDodger]

Hey! They look like inverse hockey sticks!!

That's something of an exaggeration, I think. More like an inverted banana to my eye.

 

[CapelDodger]

Hey! They look like inverse hockey sticks!!

In quite a few places I've come across references to the record amount of Arctic freezing this NH winter; if that was graphed it might well show a hockey-stick. My reasoning being that the more open water there is when the long night closes in, the more there is to freeze over. And most of what's available will freeze during those dark months.

This coming NH summer (soon, please! it's bloody cold in these parts for the time of year) is going to be very interesting to watch. Both in terms of what happens to Arctic ice-extent, and of the GWSceptic response to it. Last year they took to talking about Antarctica in the SH winter but that may have been drained dry.

If there's more ice this year they'll be on it like a bad suit, even if it's still far less than 2005. That's the most likely scenario. If there's less ice something pretty drastic is going on and it'll be "bristlecone pines" from dawn to dusk. Mark my words .

 

[Diamond]

Then they'll have to explain not just the Arctic sea ice extent but also the Antarctic sea ice extent: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.south.jpg

It looks like an explanation is due. We might hear how the cooling of Antarctica is due to greenhouse gases just like the warming of the Arctic is caused by the same.

Or not.

 

[CapelDodger]

Quite fascinating. A denial of "a source".

Please show where "the source" was first mentioned by Diamond.

It was M&M. Point out anybody else who've concluded that without brittlecone pines the hockey-stick goes away. It's McIntyre's only "triumph", unless you want to count retrospectively cooling the mainland US by a fraction ten years after the event. We all know Diamond sucked this belief from McIntyre's tit, you included.

What TrueSceptic said about you is true and very evident. This kind of inept weaseling just reinforces the case.

 

[Diamond]

The delusion is that one peer-reviewed paper can overturn anything on its own just by merely existing.

Go tell that to Albert Einstein. In 1905 he produced four papers that overturned a massive scientific consensus.

And he wasn't, at the time, a professional academic or even possess a PhD. He was a patent clerk (3rd class) at the Swiss Patent Office.

The notion that a single paper can overturn all that went before it is one of the glories of the scientific method. If you're referring to consensuses then you're talking about politics and not science.

And you are talking about politics. From the very beginning of this thread, its not about science, but about numbers of people who believe proposition X and why some very, very good scientists don't believe proposition X.

 

[CapelDodger]

It looks like an explanation is due. We might hear how the cooling of Antarctica is due to greenhouse gases just like the warming of the Arctic is caused by the same.

Your graph represents sea-ice anomaly, not temperature. What evidence do you have that Antarctica is cooling? (Antarctica is the continent that sticks up out of the sea. As they do.)

 

[Diamond]

It was M&M. Point out anybody else who've concluded that without brittlecone pines the hockey-stick goes away. It's McIntyre's only "triumph", unless you want to count retrospectively cooling the mainland US by a fraction ten years after the event. We all know Diamond sucked this belief from McIntyre's tit, you included.

That "belief" sprung from a peer-reviewed study of Mann's method. You can even see it for yourself.

It is no more a belief sucked from someone's breast than my belief that the Earth goes around the Sun or that life evolved on Planet Earth over billions of years.

What TrueSceptic said about you is true and very evident. This kind of inept weaseling just reinforces the case.

Unfortunately the inept weasel is you. Unable to grasp maths or science, you are reduced to this tedious passive-aggressive babble that wastes precious electrons.

 

[Diamond]

Your graph represents sea-ice anomaly, not temperature. What evidence do you have that Antarctica is cooling? (Antarctica is the continent that sticks up out of the sea. As they do.)

Of course! Sea ice gets bigger from a warming continent! Why didn't I think of that?

I have no intention of presenting any evidence to you. You can't understand it. You can't grasp it.

Evidence interferes too much with what you really believe about the world. Catastrophe. The inevitable end of the world killed by capitalism. That's why you avoid evidence like the plague.

Its for everybody else to produce evidence for you to ignore. Not for you to produce evidence because that would interfere with the Capeldodgy Method.

 

[CapelDodger]

Go tell that to Albert Einstein. In 1905 he produced four papers that overturned a massive scientific consensus.

Einstein did no such thing. The scientific consensus was that there were observations in sorry want of explanation, and Einstein (having turned his remarkable mind to the matter) came up with it. No consensus was overturned, in fact there was general euphoria that a bottleneck had been overcome.

And he wasn't, at the time, a professional academic or even possess a PhD. He was a patent clerk (3rd class) at the Swiss Patent Office.

He had a remarkable mind. Do you really want to put McIntyre in the same bracket?

The notion that a single paper can overturn all that went before it is one of the glories of the scientific method. If you're referring to consensuses then you're talking about politics and not science.

You can count those papers on the fingers of a boxing-glove, and they don't come out of nowhere. Again, are you really putting McIntyre up on that pedestal? Are your horizons so narrowed that you actually think bristlecone pines will reverberate through history as the Achillle's Heel of the AGW plot?

And you are talking about politics. From the very beginning of this thread, its not about science, but about numbers of people who believe proposition X and why some very, very good scientists don't believe proposition X.

It's very obvious that for the likes of you (and mhaze) ideology comes first, not an interest in science. It's also very obvious that your small and aging coterie of scientists put ideology first and shape their "science" to fit. It may not be obvious to you, hunkered down in the bunker with like-minded people, but out here in the light of normality it is very obvious.

eta : crossed posts, but thanks for the supplementary evidence, Diamond.

 

[CapelDodger]

That "belief" sprung from a peer-reviewed study of Mann's method. You can even see it for yourself.

Is that good enough for you, mhaze? It all comes back to McIntyre.

 

[CapelDodger]

Rubbish. Diamond made a claim. I challenged it. All you have done is provide "evidence" from the source in dispute in the first place. See a problem with that?

I moved no goalposts.

Perish the thought. Nobody needs to with these guys, they just don't recognise them. Their goals are different ...

Your argument (!) is based on claims from the source in question. A tactic that even you should see as ridiculous.

Amongst the problems that those guys are amassing is the focus on McIntyre, a narcisist and not a very clever one. Not the sort of mast to nail your colours to, IMO. Any more than the "global warming stopped in '98 or so" line. They're boxing themselves into an ever-tightening corner.

At least they have Singer's 1000-2000 year cycle to fall back on during their unrequited wait for cooling to actually kick in. There's at least another thousand years to run before that redoubt has to be abandoned.

 

[mhaze]

By the way - did he explain this set of facts?
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting...e820aa4e19.png
No?
Figures.

The first thing that strikes me about that graph is that it doesn't include actual data (the black line) after 2001

The link explains all that stuff. EG, what is the data, how was the statistic applied, etc. Not that your comments may not have validity.

Care to equally apply them to the charted IPCC curve?

Originally Posted by mhaze
Quite fascinating. A denial of "a source".
Please show where "the source" was first mentioned by Diamond.

It was M&M.

We all know this, which made the ignorance of TS on the issue even funnier.

He asked for a citation because he didn't believe Diamond's assertion. And stepped in a big pile of steaming ****. Poor TS, he just couldn't believe it might be true. Education is very frustrating for some.

Point out anybody else who've concluded that without brittlecone pines the hockey-stick goes away.

Sure. Loehle 2007. Anyway, it isn't about "without pines the HS goes away". It's simply about whether tree rings are good thermometers of the past. Your Warmer Hat keeps you blind to the science.

By the way, don't like Loehle 2007?

Try Ababneh 2006.

 

[a_unique_person]

Then they'll have to explain not just the Arctic sea ice extent but also the Antarctic sea ice extent: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.south.jpg

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.south.jpg

It looks like an explanation is due. We might hear how the cooling of Antarctica is due to greenhouse gases just like the warming of the Arctic is caused by the same.

Or not.

Get with the program. The mass is reducing at low altitudes, growing at higher altitudes.

 

[Round Robin]

Go tell that to Albert Einstein. In 1905 he produced four papers that overturned a massive scientific consensus.

TrueSceptic, I don't recall Argumentum ad Einsteinum in your OP; it could be a good addition along with Galileo and Darwin!

 

[mhaze]

Originally Posted by Diamond
Then they'll have to explain not just the Arctic sea ice extent but also the Antarctic sea ice extent: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosph...anom.south.jpg
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosph...anom.south.jpg
It looks like an explanation is due. We might hear how the cooling of Antarctica is due to greenhouse gases just like the warming of the Arctic is caused by the same.

Or not.​

Get with the program. The mass is reducing at low altitudes, growing at higher altitudes.

Uhh.... that's a new one..... Sea ice at higher altitudes?

I'd like to know more about that program.

 

[TrueSceptic]

TrueSceptic, I don't recall Argumentum ad Einsteinum in your OP; it could be a good addition along with Galileo and Darwin!

I did consider Einstein but Galileo and Darwin were already enough IMO. There is also the fact that the cases are somewhat different: Galileo and Darwin were in conflict with religious dogma rather than a scientific consensus (did "science" as we know it exist in Galileo's time anyway?), whereas Einstein devised a new way of looking at the world that explained and reconciled some serious and difficult problems in physics. He didn't falsify existing theories; his theories had greater explanatory power but allowed the old (Newton, Maxwell, etc.) continued validity, albeit with restricted application.

Any comparison with McIntyre is not only laughable but also offensive.

 

[Alric]

So say we all!

I find the whole McIntyre deal distasteful. If he has a problem he should go and get his own data rather than nitpick others. If he's right there should be other proxies that should prove him correct.

However, all other proxy studies do agree with Mann's. Why this doesn't obviate McIntyre is beyond my understanding of basic logic.

 

[mhaze]

So say we all!
I find the whole McIntyre deal distasteful
TS:McIntyre is not only laughable but also offensive.

My my....

warm happy basket of feelings not so warm and happy?

Awww......

Reality does that, unfortunately.

If he's right there should be other proxies that should prove him correct.

You are right there, they sure do.

However, all other proxy studies do agree with Mann's.

On what planet?

 

[TrueSceptic]

Quite fascinating. A denial of "a source".

Please show where "the source" was first mentioned by Diamond.

Diamond made a claim. He neglected to cite a source but the only such source I'm aware of is MM05. If there is another, independent, source then he should say so.

What on earth do you mean by "denial" of a source?