The warmers are becoming skeptics

[BeAChooser]

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/02/22/tom-karl-tried-to-suppress-data-critics-charge/

The scientist who has been put in charge of the Commerce Department's new climate change office is coming under attack from both sides of the global warming debate over his handling of what they say is contradictory scientific data related to the subject.

Thomas Karl, 58, was appointed to oversee the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Climatic Data Center, an ambitious new office that will collect climate change data and disseminate it to businesses and communities.

… snip …

Karl, who has played a pivotal role in key climate decisions over the past decade, has kept a low profile as director of National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) since 1998, and he has led all of the NOAA climate services since 2009. His name surfaced numerous times in leaked "climate-gate" e-mails from the University of East Anglia, but there was little in the e-mails that tied him to playing politics with climate data. Mostly, the e-mails show he was in the center of the politics of climate change decisions

… snip …

But Roger Pielke Sr., a climatologist affiliated with the University of Colorado who has crossed horns with Karl in the past, says his appointment was a mistake. He accused Karl of suppressing data he submitted for the IPCC's most recent report on climate change and having a very narrow view of its causes.

… snip …

Pielke said he agrees that global warming is happening and that man plays a significant role in it, but he said there are many factors in addition to the release of carbon into the atmosphere that need to be studied to fully understand the phenomenon. He said he resigned from the IPCC in August 2005 because his data, and the work of numerous other scientists, were not included in its most recent report.

In his resignation letter, Pielke wrote that he had completed the assessment of current knowledge for his chapter of the report, when Karl abruptly took control of the final draft. He said the chapter he had nearly completed was then rewritten with a too-narrow focus.

One of the key areas of dispute, he said, was in describing "recent regional trends in surface and tropospheric temperatures," and the impact of land use on temperatures. It is the interpretation of this data on which the intellectual basis of the idea of global warming hangs.

By the way, folks, Dr Thomas Karl told Congress that "it is very likely (>95 percent probability) that humans are largely responsible for many of the observed changes in climate." 95% huh? Pretty sure of himself when he apparently he can't say with ANY certainty what actually happened to global temperatures in Medieval Times (other than that it did apparently get about as hot as now in the Northern hemisphere). Hmmmmmm.

What sort of things is Karl predicting based on his near certainty? Is he cautious in these predictions? Not at all. He was involved in a study that predicts sea levels will rise 3 to 4 feet during this century. That while US temperatures rose about 1.5 degrees in the past 50 years, they will rise 2 to 11 additional degrees this century. That extreme heat waves will become commonplace in this country. All sorts of very dire things. But do any of those predictions bear any resemblance to what has apparently been happening in the US since 1995 … 15 years ago? Hmmmmm?

Speaking of which, Dr Karl …

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/02/22/scientist-retracts-paper-rising-sea-levels-errors/

Scientists have been forced to retract a paper that claimed sea level were rising thanks to the effects of global warming, after mistakes were discovered that undermined the results.

The study was published in Nature Geoscience and predicted that sea levels would rise by as much as 2.7 feet by the end of the twenty-first century.

However, mistakes in time intervals and inaccurately applied statistics have forced the authors to retract their paper -- the first official retraction ever for the three-year-old journal, notes the Guardian. In an officially published retraction of their paper, the authors acknowledged these mistakes as factors that compromised the results.

"We no longer have confidence in our projections for the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and for this reason the authors retract the results pertaining to sea-level rise after 1900," wrote authors Mark Siddall, Thomas Stocker and Peter Clark.

 

[Corsair 115]

One person enters some information in the report that was poorly sourced. The error is pointed out to him, by people in the IPCC but he does not remove it. Therefore the whole IPCC is responsible for this one persons error. Therefore AGW is a lie, and the laws of physics no longer apply.

It seems to me it ultimately comes down to one of three possibilties. The thousands of scientists and climatologists around the world engaged in climate research are either:

(A) All simply mistaken about their findings indicating human-induced global warming;

(B) Know that the findings towards global warming are false, but choose to remain silent;

(C) Are actively engaged in a massive, world-wide conspiracy to promote a fraudulent theory.

None of these possibilities seems particuarly reasonable.

 

[GreyICE]

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/02/22/tom-karl-tried-to-suppress-data-critics-charge/



By the way, folks, Dr Thomas Karl told Congress that "it is very likely (>95 percent probability) that humans are largely responsible for many of the observed changes in climate." 95% huh? Pretty sure of himself when he apparently he can't say with ANY certainty what actually happened to global temperatures in Medieval Times (other than that it did apparently get about as hot as now in the Northern hemisphere). Hmmmmmm.

What sort of things is Karl predicting based on his near certainty? Is he cautious in these predictions? Not at all. He was involved in a study that predicts sea levels will rise 3 to 4 feet during this century. That while US temperatures rose about 1.5 degrees in the past 50 years, they will rise 2 to 11 additional degrees this century. That extreme heat waves will become commonplace in this country. All sorts of very dire things. But do any of those predictions bear any resemblance to what has apparently been happening in the US since 1995 … 15 years ago? Hmmmmm?

Speaking of which, Dr Karl …

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/02/22/scientist-retracts-paper-rising-sea-levels-errors/

What amuses the hell out of me is who brought this to their attention: Stephen Rahmstorf and Martin Vermeer, who brought it to the attention of the authors. Their paper predicted a sea level rise in the 21st century inconsistent with the results of that paper (they predict higher), so they examined their evidence in light of the paper, and the paper. They forwarded the differences to the authors, who retracted the paper.

The point is that none of the deniers caught this, because this error was so far over their heads it wasn't even funny. And the people who caught it didn't just throw out 'crazy alarmist predictions,' they examined best evidence and predicted based on it, and continued to examine new evidence when it came out.

Of course in AAA and BAC's world, climate scientists were 'forced to retract' another inaccurate and misleading paper on evil climate change by valiant deniers (nevermind they were fellow 'warmers' who think the effects will be worse) which shows how poor the methodology of these scientists are, who just throw whatever out there and never examine their results against other things (like Vemeer and Rahmstorft never examined their hysterical predictions).

And they wonder at the name 'deniers.'

 

[tyr_13]

I like how evidence of scientists being completely ethical and telling the truth even when it might appear to hurt their conclusions is held up as evidence of exactly the opposite.

That's very telling.

 

[BeAChooser]

(A) All simply mistaken about their findings indicating human-induced global warming;

Why is it not reasonable that most scientists are simply mistaken if in fact they've been using only biased sets of data in their analyses? For example, it now appears that climate stations on land are biased towards hotter locations because many that were in colder, high altitude locations have been eliminated?

And it is becoming more and more apparent that the global warming literature is simply filled with mistakes in analyses and data. For example, I just got done posting a retraction from scientists who had earlier predicted sea levels would rise by nearly 3 feet by the end of the century … a claim that has been widely promoted by everyone from Gore to Obama's new Climate Data Center head. Then that claim simply gets repeated by other scientists who have not worked directly with the data leading them into mistaken conclusions. It's like a snowball of bad data and conclusions, only growing bigger over time.

 

[BenBurch]

I like how evidence of scientists being completely ethical and telling the truth even when it might appear to hurt their conclusions is held up as evidence of exactly the opposite.

That's very telling.

Typical propaganda tactic; Newspeak.

 

[BeAChooser]

What amuses the hell out of me

GreyICE, I'm equally amused that so-called global warming experts like Dr Karl would promote as fact the statement that sea levels will probably rise by 3 to 4 feet by the end of this century (with 95% confidence apparently), when the study by the IPCC in 2007 only predicted the sea level would rise between 18 cm and 59 cm. And you wonder why some of us have simply decided to stop believing any of these scientists until ALL the data (including that which has been ignored or suppressed) is actually looked at with a fresh eye?

And for the record, should I point out that a study published in Nature Geoscience last year predicted sea levels would rise by between 7 and 82 centimeters by the end of the century … at the lower bound that's even less than what the original IPCC study predicted.

And even if it is a 3 feet, is such a sea level rise really that unprecedented? The answer is no. Scientists already know that the sea level has varied nearly 200 meters between ice ages and hot periods, dwarfing any fears by chicken little. If the planet is now warming because of increasing solar input (and, in fact, every planet in the solar system appears to be warming because of that), then it's no surprise that sea levels have been rising recently. And the increase in sea levels historically has been quite rapid … just a fast as what the global walarmists are claiming:

http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v1/n9/abs/ngeo285.html

we use terrestrial and marine records of the deglaciation to identify two periods of rapid melting during the final demise of the Laurentide ice sheet, when melting ice contributed about 1.3 and 0.7 cm of sea level rise per year, respectively. (BAC - In other words, 0.7 to 1.3 meters in a hundred years.)

http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v1/n1/abs/ngeo.2007.28.html

High rates of sea-level rise during the last interglacial period … snip … We find average rates of sea-level rise of 1.6 m per century.

And there's more that can be said about sea level.

Here's the rise in sea level over the last 20,000 years or so:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Post-Glacial_Sea_Level.png

As you can see, sea level rose a 100 meters in a relatively linear fashion over a 10,000 year period (that's 1 meter per century) without any input from man. Yet all of a sudden, we are DEFINITELY the culprit for a similar rise? Call me a SKEPTIC.

Here is the sea level rise over the last 8000 years:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Holocene_Sea_Level.png

Notice that between 8000 and 7000 years ago, when man wasn't producing much CO2, sea levels rose about 10 meters in a linear fashion (an average of about 1 meter every century). So why are you sure man is the culprit now?

Here are measurements from 23 tide gauges over the last 100 years:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Recent_Sea_Level_Rise.png

Notice that from 1900 to 2000 it's linear with an increase of only 18.5 cm in that time. Why is it linear when CO2 has been pumped out in increasing amounts by man over this period? And how do you know that the increase is due to CO2 and not increasing solar radiance?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_variation#Solar_irradiance_of_Earth_and_its_surface

On May 6, 2000, however, New Scientist magazine reported that Lassen and astrophysicist Peter Thejll had updated Lassen's 1991 research and found that while the solar cycle still accounts for about half the temperature rise since 1900, it fails to explain a rise of 0.4 °C since 1980. "The curves diverge after 1980," Thejll said, "and it's a startlingly large deviation. Something else is acting on the climate.... It has the fingerprints of the greenhouse effect."

So even global walarmists admit that solar irradiation seemed to account for most of the warming until around 1980? And then something else started causing their calculations to diverge? Hmmmmmm? Wonder what that could be? What could possibly have happened around 1980 to start this divergence? Weeeeelllllll … here's a possibility. Remember that around 1990 NOAA started eliminating ground based climate stations, predominately in cooler locations around the globe, thus biasing the temperature data towards hotter temperatures (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/feb/18/more-errors-in-temperature-data/ )?

And they wonder at the names "global walarmist" and now, "Chicken Little".

 

[varwoche]

And how do you know that the increase is due to CO2 and not increasing solar radiance?

Here you go:

None of the natural processes can account for the overall warming trend in global surface temperatures ... solar forcing contributed negligible long-term warming in the past 25 years and 10% of the warming in the past 100 years link

Cyclical changes in the sun's energy output are not responsible for Earth's recent global warming ... Instead the findings put the blame for climate change squarely on human-created carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases—reinforcing the beliefs of most climate scientists. link

brightening of the Sun is unlikely to have had a significant influence on global warming since the seventeenth century link

no indication of a systematic trend in the level of solar activity that can explain the most recent global warming link

Solar variability is unlikely to have been the dominant cause of the strong warming during the past three decades link

 

[BenBurch]

varwoche, those are JUST research institutions! Of course they lack the required political and ideological purity to get to the REAL truth.

 

[BeAChooser]

Here you go:

Did ANY of those studies use data from the 75% of land based climate stations that were eliminated in the preceeding decade or two? Hmmmmm?

 

[varwoche]

Did ANY of those studies use data from the 75% of land based climate stations that were eliminated in the preceeding decade or two? Hmmmmm?

An unsurprising, anti-science wave of the arm. Hmmmm?

varwoche, those are JUST research institutions! Of course they lack the required political and ideological purity to get to the REAL truth.

And there you have it.

 

[BeAChooser]

Originally Posted by BeAChooser
Did ANY of those studies use data from the 75% of land based climate stations that were eliminated in the preceeding decade or two? Hmmmmm?

An unsurprising, anti-science wave of the arm.

Not at all. I simply asked you whether those studies were based on data from all around the world ... or just data from the hotter places like those that make up the bulk of the climate stations that remained from the original 6000. And apparently you don't want to answer that question.

 

[GreyICE]

Not at all. I simply asked you whether those studies were based on data from all around the world ... or just data from the hotter places like those that make up the bulk of the climate stations that remained from the original 6000. And apparently you don't want to answer that question.

I'm 80% on knowing exactly what piece of nonsensical lies you're angling towards, but perhaps you can link us so I don't waste time refuting the wrong lie (unless you have good evidence this happened of course... good evidence... BAC...).

 

[a_unique_person]

Did ANY of those studies use data from the 75% of land based climate stations that were eliminated in the preceeding decade or two? Hmmmmm?

They weren't 'eliminated', they simply stopped reporting, something entirely out of the GISS hands.

 

[lomiller]

when the study by the IPCC in 2007 only predicted the sea level would rise between 18 cm and 59 cm.

First off, the IPCC doesn’t do their own studies they conduct literature reviews. All their results are from peer reviewed papers and generally fall on the conservative side of the literature.

The IPCC report specifically does not include *any* acceleration of glacier melting, but we already know this is happening. The IPCC deliberately and explicitly chose the conservative route of reporting based on current melt rates because how much these rates are accelerating is to difficult to quantify. Work based on Paleoclimate evidence suggests much higher rates of sea level rise.

 

[Corsair 115]

Just look at America and Europe right now … record snowfalls and lower temperatures.

Aside from confusing weather with climate, perhaps in your part of America or Europe there are record snowfalls and lower temperatures, in my area it's a different story. The city of Toronto, for the first time in well over a hundred years, failed to record any appreciable snowfall in the month of November. As of the weekend, the snowfall so far this winter is less than half the normal amount. Then there's Vancouver, which has had its warmest winter in some thirty-seven years.

And if we go down under, Australia was suffering through some record heat waves not long ago.

 

[BeAChooser]

They weren't 'eliminated', they simply stopped reporting, something entirely out of the GISS hands.

Curious how mostly the cold ones "stopped reporting".

 

[BeAChooser]

The IPCC report specifically does not include *any* acceleration of glacier melting, but we already know this is happening.

Why is it also happening on Mars? Why are the other planets getting warmer?

 

[Hallo Alfie]

Aside from confusing weather with climate, perhaps in your part of America or Europe there are record snowfalls and lower temperatures, in my area it's a different story. The city of Toronto, for the first time in well over a hundred years, failed to record any appreciable snowfall in the month of November. As of the weekend, the snowfall so far this winter is less than half the normal amount. Then there's Vancouver, which has had its warmest winter in some thirty-seven years.

And if we go down under, Australia was suffering through some record heat waves not long ago.

Not surprising either. The earth is warming you know and records are only some 150 years old.

But I must say I am curious: You say that weather isn't climate - which I think we all agree with - then give us evidence of weather as climate?

 

[varwoche]

Not at all. I simply asked you whether those studies were based on data from all around the world ... or just data from the hotter places like those that make up the bulk of the climate stations that remained from the original 6000. And apparently you don't want to answer that question.

I've observed there to be a considerable overlap between the populations of gw pseudo-skeptics and wannabe circus masters. Unfortunately I have no aspirations to be a trained bear, so you're gonna have to do your own legwork to support these conspiratorial infereneces.