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Simple climate change refutation challenge

TrueSceptic said:
Unless I missed it, Alric didn't give a value, just suggested that the correlation is visually obvious. As you have already given a figure, you first. ;)
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Thanks for the invite, but it is unnecessary.

Why don't you contribute a bit?

See what you come up with using a bit of google fu.

Report back and let us know, please.
 
If there are other parameters with better correlations (assuming the correlations mhaze speak of are valid) they should look visually better as well. Any graphs that visually correlate those parameters with global temperature?
 
mhaze said:
Thanks for the invite, but it is unnecessary.

Why don't you contribute a bit?

See what you come up with using a bit of google fu.

Report back and let us know, please.
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No, I want you to back up something you claimed. Until you do so, I have no option but to assume it is fictional.

I have already asked Alric to provide more support for the OP.

I think that's quite reasonable.
 
TrueSceptic said:
No, I want you to back up something you claimed. Until you do so, I have no option but to assume it is fictional.

I have already asked Alric to provide more support for the OP.

I think that's quite reasonable.
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Well, I've also asked him to, and qualified it by saying that if he was not inclined technically, that was okay and we could go ahead and discuss the subject. But the burden of proof is on the one who said there was such a great visual correlation, not on one who quoted well known numbers from the literature. As I mentioned, you can do a quick check of such things.

To put it bluntly, there is not much reason to discuss correlations with someone who does not know what the word means, is there? There would certainly not be any reason to go scurry off and look up technical references in such a situation.
 
a_unique_person said:
As I said, they incorporate the known factors of climate, not just CO2. The idea that they only model for CO2 is a notion that is entirely wrong.
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Well, if you had that impression from what I said, then I said it poorly. I was agreeing with you, and noting that the reason for these climate models was the absence of the reality that Alric seems to believe exist, wherein co2 has a physical property leading to temperature increase and this is easily shown on a graph.

Trueskeptic: No, I want you to back up something you claimed. Until you do so, I have no option but to assume it is fictional.

It's puzzling why you would say such a thing, really. Not that it matters to me what you choose to think is fictional. Go do some research, I encourage you to.
 
Alric said:
If there are other parameters with better correlations (assuming the correlations mhaze speak of are valid) they should look visually better as well. Any graphs that visually correlate those parameters with global temperature?
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Long-term CO2 vs temp graphs show a very good correlation, as do recent ones, although the direction of causation is ambiguous. It is strange that mhaze is claiming that the correlation is poor.

There is also strong correlation between ENSO events and temperature swings, but no correlation with the upward temperature trend as ENSO events are oscillations that cancel out overall.

There seems to be a good correlation between sustained low sunspot counts and periods of low temps like the LIA but don't think the LIA has been shown to be global, and why is the sunspot influence not obvious now?
 
mhaze said:
Well, if you had that impression from what I said, then I said it poorly. I was agreeing with you, and noting that the reason for these climate models was the absence of the reality that Alric seems to believe exist, wherein co2 has a physical property leading to temperature increase and this is easily shown on a graph.

Trueskeptic: No, I want you to back up something you claimed. Until you do so, I have no option but to assume it is fictional.
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What did I claim? Please tell me.
 
TrueSceptic said:
What did I claim? Please tell me.
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I thought you simply using my request back at me but were you just quoting me?

Ignoring the direction of causation, I don't understand why you would try to claim a poor correlation. The long term correlation is well accepted by just about everyone.
 
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Alric said:
If there are other parameters with better correlations (assuming the correlations mhaze speak of are valid) they should look visually better as well. Any graphs that visually correlate those parameters with global temperature?
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Alric, it is very easy to juggle the axis on graphs and make things look "visually better". This is particularly noticable when there are two curves plotted and compared with differing metrics. Whole books have been written on this subject. It's been done in climate science quite a bit.

That's why people talk about correlations, instead of the visual appearance of the graph. And yes, it's possible to produce a chart for which -
  • person A says there is a good visual relation
  • person B says there is no visual relation
And they are both staring at exactly the same picture!!!

AUP and me went through this once on glacier melt trends (I think that was the subject, it's been a while) and finally gave up, deciding it was an "inkblot effect".

Granted, that particular graphic was much more confusing than the one of the OP of this thread.
 
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mhaze said:
Alric, it is very easy to juggle the axis on graphs and make things look "visually better". This is particularly noticable when there are two curves plotted and compared with differing metrics. Whole books have been written on this subject. It's been done in climate science quite a bit.

That's why people talk about correlations, instead of the visual appearance of the graph. And yes, it's possible to produce a chart for which -
  • person A says there is a good visual relation
  • person B says there is no visual relation
And they are both staring at exactly the same picture!!!

AUP and me went through this once on glacier melt trends (I think that was the subject, it's been a while) and finally gave up, deciding it was an "inkblot effect".

Granted, that particular graphic was much more confusing than the one of the OP of this thread.
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Would you consider this graph, showing long-term temps against CO2 displays strong correlation? Would you demand a numerical value?
 
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Pixel42 said:
Oh come on. "If CO2 concentration increases, temperature increases" is not a bogus statement. Just because many other factors also affect atmospheric temperature, and the cumulative effect of all those other factors can sometimes cancel out - or even more than cancel out - the effect of an increase in CO2 concentration doesn't make the statement bogus.
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Of course it is a bogus statement. It was presented as an absolute truth, and from that absolute truth conclusions were being drawn. Sure, other factors exist, but that is the point, isn't it? You cannot make absolute statements about CO2 concentrations because there are other factors. Do you contest that point?
 
a_unique_person said:
As he said, based on it's physical properties.
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...and what? What happens based on its physical properties in a complex system like the Earth's climate? He said that the temperature does up when carbon dioxide concentration goes up. That is absolutely false.
 
Alric said:
I don't know. It looks like a hockey stick to me.
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Squinting is not a statistical test.

Even on the graphs used to show "its not a hockey stick". Like this:

[qimg]http://www.climateaudit.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/gore_a15.gif[/qimg]

Don't you see the abrupt increase in temperature at the end?

On that link they are using a baseline mean temperature in the 1990's!? What makes logical sense is to use a baseline from pre-industrial times.
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It's not temperature, you moron. The Hockey Stick is dominated by one proxy: the bristlecone pines of Sheep Mountain in Colorado. Some of them grew very strongly in the past 100 years even though the temperatures in that region did not rise by very much. It was believed by the samplers that this was the result of carbon dioxide fertilization although recent much larger sampling appears to show that the apparent growth spurt is an artifact of a small sample size - a fluke in other words.

Without the bristlecone pines, the Hockey Stick shape disappears. The reason why the bristlecone pines are so heavily weighted is because of the strong correlation between them and "global mean temperature". It's called SPURIOUS CORRELATION.

There is no temperature in that graph. Statistically it cannot be distinguished from "red noise", a type of random variation which has some autocorrelation. The Hockey Stick means nothing at all - it has no meaning except to idiots who think they see patterns in random data where there is no signal.

I remember some idiot many moons ago who claimed to have pictures of demons. It turned out that he was taking pictures of white noise from a disconnected webcam and then seeing leering faces in the random distribution of light and dark - paradoleia in other words. The human talent for recognizing faces and patterns in random noise is well attested in the literature.

You're the same. You repeat trite syllogisms that don't mean anything and you see patterns in pictures where none actually exist.

And yet somehow, WE are supposed to prove to YOU that these things that you're seeing do not exist.

We have better things to do with our lives than try to de-convince someone of an irrational belief.
 
jsfisher said:
...and what? What happens based on its physical properties in a complex system like the Earth's climate? He said that the temperature does up when carbon dioxide concentration goes up. That is absolutely false.
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Allowing for short-term noise, how do you know that it is false, rather than just unproven?
 
jsfisher said:
...and what? What happens based on its physical properties in a complex system like the Earth's climate? He said that the temperature does up when carbon dioxide concentration goes up. That is absolutely false.
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All other things being equal, that is what must happen. The CO2 is effectively adding another layer of 'insulation' around the earth. That must cause it to warm up. (This insulation has the interesting property of not stopping radiation from coming in, but hindering it from leaving the earth. This happens because in the process of arriving and leaving, the wavelength is changed, because the CO2 which is transparent to the radiation, is opaque to the radiation that is leaving). There is nowhere else for the radiation to go, so it must warm the earth.

CO2 in this context is referred to as a "forcing". That is, it jacks of the temperature of the whole system, contained chaotic system and all. There was the documentary on chaotic behaviour, which showed a turbulent fluid held in a container with a transparent window. If I heat that whole system up, it's still going to be behaving chaotically, but it's temperature as a whole will rise.
 
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Diamond said:
Squinting is not a statistical test.

It's not temperature, you moron.
The Hockey Stick is dominated by one proxy: the bristlecone pines of Sheep Mountain in Colorado. Some of them grew very strongly in the past 100 years even though the temperatures in that region did not rise by very much. It was believed by the samplers that this was the result of carbon dioxide fertilization although recent much larger sampling appears to show that the apparent growth spurt is an artifact of a small sample size - a fluke in other words.

Without the bristlecone pines, the Hockey Stick shape disappears. The reason why the bristlecone pines are so heavily weighted is because of the strong correlation between them and "global mean temperature". It's called SPURIOUS CORRELATION.

There is no temperature in that graph. Statistically it cannot be distinguished from "red noise", a type of random variation which has some autocorrelation. The Hockey Stick means nothing at all - it has no meaning except to idiots who think they see patterns in random data where there is no signal.

I remember some idiot many moons ago who claimed to have pictures of demons. It turned out that he was taking pictures of white noise from a disconnected webcam and then seeing leering faces in the random distribution of light and dark - paradoleia in other words. The human talent for recognizing faces and patterns in random noise is well attested in the literature.

You're the same. You repeat trite syllogisms that don't mean anything and you see patterns in pictures where none actually exist.

And yet somehow, WE are supposed to prove to YOU that these things that you're seeing do not exist.

We have better things to do with our lives than try to de-convince someone of an irrational belief.
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Are you really the Skeptic Wiki Founder, or is that a joke I'm not getting?
 
TrueSceptic said:
Would you consider this graph, showing long-term temps against CO2 displays strong correlation? Would you demand a numerical value?
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Except that in high resolution, the temperatures rise first and then eight centuries later the carbon dioxide rises. Never the other way around. Carbon dioxide rise has never ever caused a measureable temperature rise in the real atmosphere. It is a feedback, not a forcing.

So explain how cause follows effect by centuries without invoking time travel.

The correlation is the other way around from your beliefs. Are you going to change your beliefs in the light of new evidence? Or are you going to steadfastly maintain your beliefs by alleging that the data is faulty or I am biased or something else equally irrational.

I know which way I'm betting.
 
Diamond said:
Except that in high resolution, the temperatures rise first and then eight centuries later the carbon dioxide rises. Never the other way around. Carbon dioxide rise has never ever caused a measureable temperature rise in the real atmosphere. It is a feedback, not a forcing.
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And we haven't been doubling the CO2 concentration ever in the past. It can be a feedback and a forcing. The basic physics dictate that it is a greenhouse gas.
 
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