The merely interfere with the truly important

[Andre]

the merely urgent interfere with the truly important

It was inevitable, I guess. A stress reaction on a non-problem. Here it is, http://www.odpm.gov.uk/stellent/groups/odpm_planning/documents/page/odpm_plan_032088.pdf , isued by the Deputy Prime Minister of the UK.

I think I missed it but evidently...

There is now a body of scientific evidence that man-made greenhouse gasses are having a demonstrable effect on the Earths climate.

Well here it seems to be then:

Assessments carried out for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) show that temperature rises in the last 100 years outstrip any naturally occurring variability experienced in the last 1000 years

So there it is, the unrefutable evidence, the hockeystick of Mann et al (MBH99).

Anyone ready to draw swords?

 

[Andre]

Hey, there are a few bom shells to follow. Perhaps read Rich Mullers balanced comments of last year about the problems of the Hockeystick.

do not let the merely urgent interfere with the truly important

And what is the truly important?

... I would love to believe that the results of Mann et al. are correct, and that the last few years have been the warmest in a millennium.

Love to believe? My own words make me shudder. They trigger my scientist’s instinct for caution. When a conclusion is attractive, I am tempted to lower my standards.

But please read the whole article, fireworks ahead.

 

[Phobos]

Good article by Mullers (who seems not to lower his standards fortunately) - thanks for the link.

 

[pebrew]

That Muller article is very good. Distilling out the problems of one of the AGW alarmists' pillars supporting their urgency. However, his balanced and, more importantly, very thoughtful comments do not argue that CO2 is not a problem. As he said,

Let me be clear. My own reading of the literature and study of paleoclimate suggests strongly that carbon dioxide from burning of fossil fuels will prove to be the greatest pollutant of human history. It is likely to have severe and detrimental effects on global climate.

I realize he is just one scientist and may not have done thorough research to back that comment (though it sounds like he's a decent authority) so I'm not asking anyone to hang their hat on his comments. But I think this comment of his underlines one of the great confusions in the general debate about AGW and climate change. The fact that science shows the important roles that atmospheric CO2 plays in the survival of most living things, yet that AGW is an undeveloped theory with little solid evidence to back it.
As he wrote,

We drift into ad hominem counterattacks. Criticize the hockey stick and some colleagues seem to think you have a political agenda, I've discovered this myself. Accept the hockey stick, and others accuse you of uncritical thought.

I agree with him that it is hard to tell some one that you do or do not agree with AGW theory without being instantly labeled liberal/conservative, scientist/oil magnate, etc, depending on whom you're talking to. And that's a big problem. How are we supposed to have the important public scientific debate about this issue when people on both sides won't consider any other theory than the one they currently hold to? And how can we fund and execute the mountains of climate research needed when it looks like your work might not be published if it ends up coming to the 'wrong' conclusion? I realize that may not be the only reason the Soon and Baliunas paper was criticized, but appears to be the driving reason.

Until the scientific community recognizes that the current AGW theory is not very well proven BUT that climbing CO2 is almost certainly going to be a major, if future, problem (or until they prove AGW), I don't see how we'll have any progress made in public understanding or the world's governments' reactions. It's good that more scientists appear to be questioning AGW, but the message they tend to be sending is that CO2 is a non-issue. And so now we have another public misunderstanding to correct.

 

[Andre]

Holdit, not so fast. Do not let the merely urgent interfere with the truly important. And remember,

When a conclusion is attractive, we are tempted to lower our standards.

Perhaps it's better to do some philosophizing before entering the battle of the hockeystick (and the war is hot).

What is an attractive conclusion? We have to sort something like that out beforehand. After all we do start investigation with an expectation. We have an idea and we look for proof. But if we do, we bias ourselfs, tending to raise the standards of acceptance for anything that counters our bias while lowering it for anything that confirms it.

Why would we bias in favour of global warming and why against it:

Global warming:
- costs money
- destroy nature
- gives us a chance to promote nuclear power
- if I warn against it I get more funding for my explorations
- if I fight hard against it, everybody accepts me as a social person and I can continue establishing my leadership
- if I against it I'm a crook
- if I accept it I won't stick out to have my head chopped off.

Yes Rich Muller also believes in Global warming. I do too but there is large difference between: act-immediately-and-pay-or-fry-tomorrow and a tiny irrelevant increase of temperatures, more than compensated with increasing biomass.

So why not drop all bias and have a neutral look into the physics of greenhouse gas like in this thread.

I also recommend this thread.

 

[Andre]

Now before analysing the hockeystick. Let's try and identify bias in the reasoning of pro and cons of global warming.

Let me recap first.

After reviewing that one it should be clear that the direct greenhouse effect of carbon gasses (CO2, CH4) is only logarithmic proportional to the concentration and large increases in concentrations due to burning of fossil fuel for instance, has only minimum effect on the direct greenhouse gas effect.

And again this is not a biased opinion, this is common knowledge in climate science. The bias starts with the assumption that possible positive feedback factors may be outperforming the negative feedback factors.

Positive feedback: higher temperature melts more ice, this means less reflection of sunlight and more heat is retained. More heat also causes higher sea surface temperatures which causes less CO2 to be absorbed and a higher water vapour content in the air. More CO2 and more water vapour is more greenhouse gas effect etc etc.

Negative feedback is: more heat causes more water vapour, this is causing more cloud formation. This causes more direct sunlight to be reflected and hence the Earth cools again.

Why would we assume that the positive feedback outweights the negative? Because we think to see it in other cases, like Planet Venus, the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum and the recent Pleistocene ice ages. The common denominator is that whenever the CO2 is high, the temperature is high.

And when a conclusion is attractive, we are tempted to lower our standards. Consequently, we endorse those conclusions unquestioned and it may not be wise to review it more detailed.

However the common fallacy here could be http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/post-hoc.html. And of course, detailed study of these three cases reveals that the temperature - CO2 relationship is not unambigious at all.

Furthermore, study has been done to the direct feedback factors. Here is an excellent overview of the truly important:

Douglass, David H., Eric G. Blackman, and Robert S. Knox, 2004. Temperature response of Earth to the Annual Solar Irradiance Cycle. Physics Letters A Vol. 323, No 3-4, pp. 315-322. Working document online

<http://www.arxiv.org/ftp/astro-ph/papers/0403/0403271.pdf>

Abstract: We directly determine the sensitivity and time delay of Earth's surface temperature response to annual solar irradiance variations from 60 years of data. A two-layer energy balance model is developed to interpret the results. Explaining both the resulting low sensitivity and time delay of 1-2 months requires negative feedback

(...)

Karner, O., 2002: On non-stationarity and anti-persistency in global temperature series. J. Geophys. Res. 107, D20.

(See http://www.aai.ee/~olavi/2001JD002024u.pdf).

Abstract: Statistical analysis is carried out for satellite-based global daily tropospheric and stratospheric temperature anomaly and solar irradiance data sets. Global average tropospheric temperature anomaly behaves similarly to the solar irradiance anomaly. Their daily increments show antipersistency for scales longer than 2 months. The property points at a cumulative negative feedback in the Earth climate system governing the tropospheric variability during the last 22 years. The result
emphasizes a dominating role of the solar irradiance variability in variations of the tropospheric temperature and gives no support to the theory of anthropogenic climate change.

Now I think that we are looking here at unbiased science. But the mere term "think" suggests that I'm biased.

Anyway, the http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/ does not refer to those studies. One may wonder if those are rejected because it is assumed to be wrong?

When a conclusion is not attractive, we are tempted to raise our standards (of acceptance).

Now I challenge anyone to show that the bias on the Pro Global Warming side is only imaginary and/or that there is standards lowering at the "skeptic" side.

Next time hockeysticks (I think).

 

[Andre]

I wonder why it's so silent here. Don't like monologues. Does all of this make some sense?

Anyway, let's try and look at the idea of the hockeystick.
We want to prove "global warming"
If carbon dioxide has such a strong influence on climate we should investigate the last dozens of centuries or so. Before 1850 the CO2 level was pretty steady, about 280ppm, then the "anthropogenic" rise began. Consequently, we can predict that the global temperature in the same era was pretty steady too, before 1850 and after that, the global warming began, proportional to the rise in CO2.

And sure enough, there it is, the http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Temperature_record_of_the_past_1000_years . A great joy for the global warmers, can you want more proof? When a conclusion is attractive, we tend to lower our standards.

It's also a nightmare for the "skeptics". Well that's how bias works of course. And when a conclusion is not attractive, we raise our standards of acceptance.

So for instance, what happened to the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and the Little Ice Age (LIA)? Were they real? (Skeptics) or imaginairy? (Global warmists).

If the MWP was warmer than today and the LIA much colder than today then the MBH99 Hockeystick is false and temperature variation is mostly natural, not nearly depending on the concentration of Greenhouse gasses.

So the efforts of the skeptics concentrated on falsifying the hockeystick. Two directions can be followed, independent evidence of both a global MWP and LIA and finding the mistakes of the Hockeystick.

(to be continued)

As in intermezzo, the current http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/GW-trend.jpg up to September 2004 has decreased to 0.00001 degree per month or 0.012 degrees per century.

 

[Phobos]

Andre - do you have an example of what the hockeystick graph would look like with the MWP & LIA included?

What do AGW'ers usually say about the MWP & LIA? (i.e., what is their argument in saying those events were imaginary?)

 

[Andre]

Sure, Phobos

This could have been the global temperature in the last two millenia according to Rich Muller. http://www.greeningEarth'society.org/wca/2004/images/wca24c2.jpg is from a very recent http://www.greeningEarth'society.org/wca/2004/wca_24cpf.html.

The mainstay of the arguments against the MWP & LIA are that it were local events concentrated in the North Atlantic area and that the timing was not synchronous. When it is was warm in one location it was supposed to be compensated with cooling in other areas. More about that later.

 

[Andre]

Anyway, the approach of finding http://www.marshall.org/pdf/materials/136.pdf of both a global MWP and LIA was conducted by Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas

Summary: Was the Climate of the 20th Century Unusual?
We know that global average surface temperature rose during the 20th century, and that the 1990s were the warmest period in the 140 year-long direct temperature measurement record. However, these facts, alone, do not support a claim that the climate of the 20th century was unusual.

Support for a claim that the climate of the 20th century was unusual could come from either a valid reconstruction of the climate of the past 1,000 years or from a valid estimate of natural climate variability. Neither is available. Lacking this knowledge, the claim that the temperature of the 20th century was unusual cannot be supported.

Proxy information (tree growth, isotope concentrations in coral reefs and ice cores, etc.) can be used to estimate past local temperatures. A survey of the scientific literature shows that 79 of the 102 proxy temperature studies identified a 50-year period during the past millennium that was warmer than any 50 years in the 20th century. While these results do not allow estimation of globally-averaged surface temperature for the past 1,000 years, they are strong evidence that the temperatures experienced during the 20th century were not unusual.

http://www.forestcouncil.org/tims_picks/view.php?id=508

As it turns out, the report by Baliunas and Soon was funded in part by the American Petroleum Institute. It was also coauthored by Craig Idso and Sherwood Idso, whose Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide has been funded by the coal industry and ExxonMobil.

Those allegations make me outrageous. This is how science gets killed. You can refute their work by showing that they are wrong and that they falsely wrongly quoted / interpreted their references. But to the general public it is clear. Soon and Baliunas are corrupt crooks and hence they are wrong.

 

[Locrian]

I wonder why it's so silent here. Don't like monologues.

Nothing wrong with monologues. As with any speech, silence could mean people aren't paying attention... or that they are listening very carefully.

Since I am primarily gathering information, I have very few responses to your posts. Feel free to call roll any time you want to see if I'm reading

 

[Andre]

Okay It would be a very interesting case to investigate and compare the acceptance standards of pro- and con- papers by the pro's and con's.

And there are a few more fireworks papers by the Dave's also know als M&M or David McKittrick and David McVea, equally ignorant villains or shrewd scientist, depending on bias and subsequent standards-manipulation.

We can also have a look into a dozen or more studies about temperatures in the last millenium. But I'm a little preoccupied at the moment, back soon, Promise.

 

[Locrian]

Here is a question Andre: could you list a few journals that regularly contain papers pertinent to this issue? You've mentioned some, but a short formal list would be of help.

Also, in other journals I read there are regularly "the state of" publications where they summarize the state of a particular research area by going over what information has been published. Is there such a thing concerning atmospheric science? I'm not shure there would be in the midst of such a large debate, but it doesn't hurt to ask.

Thanks in advance for all the time you spend posting here

 

[Andre]

Well, the current discussion contains atmopspheric science, 3environmental science, climatology, paleo climatology, oceanography, dendrochronology, glaciology and probably a couple more each of those has its own litterature.

Of course you could try http://www.sciencemag.org or http://www.nature.com or http://www.agu.org and especially recommendent: http://www.sciencedirect.com/ but you may find those difficult and expensive.

the superior tool to find all that material for free is http://www.google.com You'll be surpised.

For instance browse for "medieval warm ". and find:

http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/lia/vikings_during_mwp.html
http://www.agu.org/revgeophys/mayews01/node5.html

but also as nr3:
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2004-2_archives/000406.html

(We'll discuss adapting standards later again)


But then of course, the sources may not be trustworthy so check the references. In case of the Medieval Warm Period you will indeed see some justification in the variable period of that particular phenomon as I mentioned earlier, answering to Phobos.

Generally the MWP is defined as from the mid 900's to anywhere between 1350 and 1450. However Soon & Baliunas define it between about 1000-1300. But there is also sincere evidence of a short warm period around the mid 1500's and the year 1540 for instance is a serious candidate for being the year with the warmest summer in the last millenium.

http://healthinfo.cedars-sinai.edu/healthnews/reuters/20040218elin007.htm
http://www.crumbtrail.org/mt/archives/000412.html

 

[Andre]

And it can't hurt to check those sources regularely to find:

http://www.nature.com/news/2004/041025/full/041025-15.html

Cold snap

The period between about 1650 and 1700, when astronomers saw virtually no sunspots, is known as the Maunder Minimum. It coincided with the coldest part of a chilly period on Earth called the Little Ice Age, and some scientists have speculated that this provides evidence that the Sun's activity significantly affects our climate.

 

[Andre]

Now again try for instance http://www.sciencedirect.com and type in the "quick search box" - "medieval warm" including parentheses and click "go" to find 51 articles concerning the MWP.

Click on "abstract" (full text costs pecunia) of the first article and there we are:

Extra-tropical Northern Hemisphere land temperature variability over the past 1000 years

Edward R. Cooka, et al

Available online 23 September 2004.

Abstract
The Northern Hemisphere (NH) temperature reconstruction published by Esper, Cook, and Schweingruber (ECS) in 2002 is revisited in order to strengthen and clarify its interpretation. This reconstruction, based on tree-ring data from 14 temperature-sensitive sites, is best interpreted as a land-only, extra-tropical expression of NH temperature variability. Its strongly expressed multi-centennial variability is highly robust over the AD 1200–1950 interval, with strongly expressed periods of “Little Ice Age” cooling indicated prior to AD 1900. Persistently above-average temperatures in the AD 960–1050 interval also suggest the large-scale occurrence of a “Medieval Warm Period” in the NH extra-tropics. However, declining site availability and low within-chronology tree-ring replication prior to AD 1200 weakens this interpretation considerably. (...)

Quaternary Science Reviews
Volume 23, Issues 20-22 , November 2004, Pages 2063-2074
Holocene climate variability - a marine perspective

Despite the weakening last sentence, this certainly does not support the Hockeystick of Mann et al.

It's so easy to do your homework this way.

 

[Andre]

Now, if you try the fifty other hits of that query you will find that many of those articles suggest some form of local or global Medieval Warming. You could also have done that with http://www.sciencemag.org/ but you'd need a (free) subscribtion first. Then hit "Search science magazin" and put in into the first author box "storch" this time. Next click on the abstract again and this is the result:

Reconstructing Past Climate from Noisy Data
Hans von Storch,1* Eduardo Zorita,1 Julie M. Jones,1 Yegor Dimitriev,1 Fidel González-Rouco,2 Simon F. B. Tett3

Empirical reconstructions of the Northern Hemisphere (NH) temperature in the past millennium based on multiproxy records depict small-amplitude variations followed by a clear warming trend in the past two centuries. We use a coupled atmosphere-ocean model simulation of the past 1000 years as a surrogate climate to test the skill of these methods, particularly at multidecadal and centennial time scales. Idealized proxy records are represented by simulated grid-point temperature, degraded with statistical noise. The centennial variability of the NH temperature is underestimated by the regression-based methods applied here, suggesting that past variations may have been at least a factor of 2 larger than indicated by empirical reconstructions.

Science
Volume 306, Number 5696, Issue of 22 Oct 2004, pp. 679-682

I don't know, but objectively speaking (with numerous peer reviewed articles) it's starting to look pretty bad for the hockeystick. This makes the research case for variable acceptance standards pretty interesting let alone the justification of the Brittish government to preach global warming.

Whatsay?

 

[Andre]

Now let's assume that this was it.

The broad outline was:

A- Hey, the world may be in danger, due to global warming caused by antropogenic production of greenhouse gasses.

B - Okay that's bad, let's investigate how bad it really is.

A - I found a hockeystick somewhere, saying that it's really bad.

B - Okay I found several independ pieces of evidence in multiple disciplines that suggest that the current warming can be attributed to a lot of other factors, whilst the anthropogenic contribution seems to be minor, if at all. Besides that, your hockeystick seems to be doubtfull.

Now what would you expect to be the reaction of A?

1 - Wheeew, that's great, close call but we're off the hook
2 - Are you very very sure that your independent evidence is superior to my hockeystick?
3 - Can't be, my hockeystick is right of course and since you are a crook, you're wrong. We have consensus here that the world shall fry and we have made models, working according to the garbage-in-garbage-out principle, which prove that we are right.

Guess what happened to M&M?

 

[pebrew]

If parties A and B were well-educated scientists and all the evidence had been pulished in peer-reviewed, referreed literature then I WOULD expect that A's final response would be 1. ("whew, we're off the hook. AGW isn't happening")

PLEEEEEEAAASSSE don't be so cynical, Andre. Most of the people on either side of the debate are sincerely looking for the right answer. Of course there are ignorant people out there entirely disregarding the other side's arguments, good or bad. They don't even think about it, they just react against it. (I'm not talking about you or anyone here, but Greenpeace and the coal industry fall into that category, on opposite sides, obviously).

But it is horribly cynical to act like the whole scientific process is going down the tubes. What has happened is that the initial reports, simulations, theories about AGW scared a lot of people, including scientists, into believing that even if we weren't certain about AGW the risks of enormous catastrophic environmental destruction that "could" happen was motivation enough to take measures against it (and I AM NOT endorsing or agreeing with the predictions of "enormous catastrophic environmental destruction" so you needn't address them. I'm just explaning how I think things have happened). Then the policymakers got (are still getting) on board and said "We need to stop this...let's impose restrictions on CO2 emmissions". And now as the scientists realize that the previous models/predictions/paleoclimate models might not have been right at all they are starting to really investigate whether or not the current AGW theory is valid or not at all. The politicians don't want to admit they might have been wrong about AGW so they are still going at anti-CO2 measure. (Mind you, we don't know yet whether AGW is valid and even if it is not, the rapid CO2 rise is probably going to upset our environment in some major ways so it is not foolish to at least start addressing it, that is, looking at ways to reduce its production. And I AM NOT endorsing Kyoto or other potentially economy-halting legaslation, I'm just saying based on our knowledge of CO2's important role in the environment (not just climate) it is wise to take caution with CO2 emissions).

I don't think anyone in the world wants anthropogenic global warming to occur. In fact no one wants any sort of massive climatalogically destabilizing event to happen, man made or natural. But people, scientists and the non-science public alike, are worried, because if AGW is true then we may be in trouble and maybe we can save ourselves. Scientists are notorius risk avoiders. Before detonating the first atomic bomb the Manhattan project carried out serious detailed calculations to make sure the risk that an atomic bomb explosion would ignite the whole atmosphere was minimal. Very very minimal. You can't expect the scientific community to disregard the AGW theory so quickly.

As long as all valid research is still published in our respected scientific journals, we as the public have a way to know which research is good. As Andre has pointed out, these journals publish research that disagrees with AGW theory. Some research has not been accepted by these journals. I assume this means that research was not valid. Do you, Andre, believe the journals are ignoring research they reject because the reviewers think the theory of AGW is just such a great thing they don't want to see it challenged? These journals are the bastians of science, where the research is evaluated with objective rigor by some of the greatest scientists in the field. If we can't trust the peer-reviewed journal system to be an impartial judge then we can no longer trust the scientific community. I'm not saying the reviewers are perfect, but I don't see what the motivation would be to continue a huge scientific lie. Once it was discovered, and it would be discovered, everyone involved in the lie would lose their jobs and their prestige and the public would lose faith in science, and that would be very bad.

The argument that scientists would keep up a lie of AGW just for funding,

- if I warn against it I get more funding for my explorations

is the same as the argument that scientists could be swayed by oil companies funding their research,

As it turns out, the report by Baliunas and Soon was funded in part by the American Petroleum Institute. It was also coauthored by Craig Idso and Sherwood Idso, whose Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide has been funded by the coal industry and ExxonMobil.

Either scientists are corrupt or they aren't. I certainly don't think they generally are so I don't consider that a rule. But I would expect fossil fuel companies to hire scientists who already believe AGW is false, as Soon and Baliunas have for many years. That doesn't mean that Exxon-funded research is necessarily wrong or bad, but you know how it's going to turn out. Do you think that if Soon and Baliunas suddening discovered a smoking gun for AGW completely proving it was true while doing research funded by Exxon that Exxon would let them publish it? Nope. I trust scientists, but not huge companies that have a huge stake in the debate.

Most of what I've read criticizing the M&M, B&S, and muller research cites errors in the authors mathematical/statistical calculations. Typically their research consisted of taking Mann's data but using a different mathematical/statistical outlook. I am not knowledgeable enough about that math to assess Mann, M&M, or anyone else's statistical methods, nor do I have the time. So I rely on others, namely the journals, to do this for me and determine what research is scientifically robust.

Other people who have problems with the recent work of M&M, soon&baliunas, and muller:
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2004-2_archives/000406.html (noted earlier in this thread)

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000829C7-70D9-1EF7-A6B8809EC588EEDF&pageNumber=1&catID=4



I don't feel compelled to give much consideration for the paper that Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon wrote on the MWP. They are both astrophysicists (not climatologists, paleoclimatologists, etc. ) and have a personnel scientific stake in the idea that AGW is false. If AGW was false their own theory of sunspots' would quite possibly be accepted as the best explanation of the major force in Earth's climate change. It appears they might have gone out of their own area of expertise to try and dissprove a competing theory. http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Willie_Soon
One might find it offensive that I would consider the possibility that a scientist would partake in poor science just to further their own theories and prestige, but if you believe climatologists would lie about AGW to do that, why not astrophysicists?



So. What's my point anyway.
I'm not saying S&B are wrong about sunspots.
I'm not saying AGW is going to create a horrible mess in 50 years.
I'm not saying AGW is going to do anything more than raise the temps 0.5 F over 100 years, if that.
I'm not even saying the hockeystick is true. It may be a complete artifact of the statistical methods used by Mann (though I'll be rather upset at the journal reviewers if there is nothing else at all to it).

But I think we have to trust the established review process to determine which AGW-disproving research is valid. And trust them not to change their standards for such research.
But I don't want them to lower their standards either. Of course, if some AGW-disproving research is bad science that does NOT mean that AGW is true. In the same way, if some one claims Saddam Hussein has nuclear warheads and I say 'No he doesn't, he's too nice a guy to have nukes'. I would be wrong, but that doesn't mean that he has nukes.


If journals have raised their standards for work disproving AGW it might be because there is no single theory to replace AGW being proposed, rather a number of separate theories about different factors affecting the environment. As Andre mentioned in his hypothetical argument,

B - Okay I found several independ pieces of evidence in multiple disciplines that suggest that the current warming can be attributed to a lot of other factors, whilst the anthropogenic contribution seems to be minor, if at all. Besides that, your hockeystick seems to be doubtfull.

I'm not saying that is a valid reason to keep AGW theory, but scientists do like it when a theory brings together disparite data from multiple disciplines and melds it all into one clean mechanism. Of course we all like they idea that things can be explained in a neat package that humans are smart enough to figure out.
And I also wonder if scientists (and humans in general, for that matter) just like the idea that we've become so powerful data we actually alter the entire natural system around us. Arrogance, some would call it.


I don't think science is going down the tubes because scientists are being unethical and unscientific about AGW. But I don't think Andre is going to exactly agree with me there, so what I'm interested in is:
If we are keeping up a myth of AGW, why do we do it? Arrogance?

 

[Andre]

Splendid, thanks pebrew.

Why I act so cynical? It's not me BTW. I mostly try to stay strickly neutral but that didn't work. Since this is attempt nr X+ to explain why global warming is a hoax and nobody has moved an inch. But I do see the terrible allegations against anybody who turns against the main stream. I thought I should mirror that for a change.

Mirroring for instance:

I don't feel compelled to give much consideration for the paper that Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon wrote on the MWP. They are both astrophysicists (not climatologists, paleoclimatologists, etc. ) and have a personnel scientific stake in the idea that AGW is false.

What is the scientific method of reasoning here, do you need to be a climatologist to review the literature and jot down the yes and no's? why would they alter their standards?

but scientists do like it when a theory brings together disparite data from multiple disciplines and melds it all into one clean mechanism.

Which suggests that the cases in the past are all done deals. Nothing is further from the truth. We have worked on the PETM, I don't know if you have seen my https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=2974. I just finished a detailed geological study and believe I see a strong melting it all into one clean mechanism.

In the adjacent mammoth thread I will show that the ice ages are more and more mysterious and that we should start all over, explaining them.

Anyway:

If we are keeping up a myth of AGW, why do we do it?

Now there is the really scary part. What is the psychology behind the thing? This is human nature that as also been responsible for the Russian revolution, WW I and WW II and some other cataclysms. You have to believe in a good cause, no matter how wrong it is, but it is that what the leader preaches you, that's for one.

 

[Andre]

OK Another intermezzo
More proof -another independent source- that a little more carbon dioxide (albeit double or triple or so) is not going to have catastrophic results is here:

When did we (think that we) have had ice ages in the more distant past?

http://www.geocities.com/karunakarm/TectonicPause.html

Ice age on the Gondwana land around 200 million years ago (ma) is the recent Supercontinental global ice age.
(...)
In the Permian age (290 to 248 ma) all the continents were collided reducing the subduction rate and releasing less magma into the oceans. This caused the ocean to cool and started to freeze from the poles. When all the ridges were closed in the Supercontinental "Tectonic Pause", frozen ice sheets spread to most part of the Supercontinent reducing the sea level.
(...)
Breakup and the subsequent increase in the speed of the Indian plate from the African plate around 65 million years ago added more magma to the oceans and heated the oceanic waters causing a global warming. Global warming caused the ice caps to melt at the poles

So we had ice (a lot) in those times. So what was the http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/carbon.gif

Between about two to six times the current level and still ice ages? At times it was even 18 times the current level? And yet the Earth still exists? And we think that we have a problem with twice the level of the last ice age? And we think that carbon dioxide and ice ages (-the roots of the global warming hype) are corrolated directly?

But again

If we are keeping up a myth of AGW, why do we do it?

I'd like to elaborate a bit more about this. Isn't this question the heart of the matter? The truly important?

Of course our Mr A a couple of posts back has risen his standards of acceptance for unattractive conclusions beyond any level. He is convinced and can no longer be persuaded that the case may be different. To him Global warming is as sure a valid theory as aerodynamics for instance (heard a PHD saying that)

Are there shrinks out there who can explain it? I think we always need an enemy to fight against united in a social pact. There is always leadership that bravely guides us fighting the enemy. However, we ran a little low on enemies the last decades, so we needed another one.

And http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/page6333.asp :

You can't even call this a hidden agenda:

The scientific evidence of global warming and climate change: UK leadership in environmental science.
(...)

I said earlier it needed global leadership to tackle the issue.

(...)

To acquire global leadership, on this issue Britain must demonstrate it first at home.

Follow the leader and dead to the enemy. Easy as pie isn't it? No wonder that it is so natural to http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/ad-hominem.html the skeptics. Aren't they traitors of a good cause?

 

[NileQueen]

Ice age on the Gondwana land around 200 million years ago (ma) is the recent Supercontinental global ice age.
(...)
In the Permian age (290 to 248 ma) all the continents were collided reducing the subduction rate and releasing less magma into the oceans. This caused the ocean to cool and started to freeze from the poles. When all the ridges were closed in the Supercontinental "Tectonic Pause", frozen ice sheets spread to most part of the Supercontinent reducing the sea level.

Let's take a look.
http://pubs.usgs.gov/publications/text/historical.html
I noticed that their (USGS) dates for the Permian, Triassic and Jurassic are a little different than above (above is corroborated by http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/help/timeform.html a Geologic time chart)
But we get the idea from the graphics.

Now it's all very well to make hypotheses about ice sheets that far back in time. BUT, I have been looking at Silurian and Devonian deposits Friday (443 to 354 mya) in the USA. At those times, the entire country was a shallow sea with lots of corals and marine shells.

Permian is a bit later, 290 - 248
Up to 290 years ago things were pretty tropical in Indiana. After that, glaciers removed deposits from the Permian through Cretaceous.

So if we had shallow seas, the world would have been pretty watery. And then at least the USA would have had to uplift. Questions that come to mind:

1. Were the other continents shallow marine at the same time?
If so, then so much land mass under the sea, would mean the ocean was not as deep anywhere, because there is a fixed amount of water on Earth (pretty much).

2. When the continents rose, hydraulic principles say that something else had to submerge. What was it? And can we tell it was shallower then?

3. Why would continents collide only to drift apart again?

 

[NileQueen]

Oh and if a glacial ice sheet had covered Pangaea, then these corals would not be evident today...

If they are not talking about land ice, then it would be sea pack ice.

If there is not magma exchange in the sea in this static Pangaea world, it is most likely that land volcanic activity will increase. It's a dynamic planet, and always has been.

 

[liz1976]

Hi, I'm new here.

I'm not going to comment on the climate aspects of this thread, but I am a geologist, so I'm going to try to help with the tectonic part.

Now it's all very well to make hypotheses about ice sheets that far back in time. BUT, I have been looking at Silurian and Devonian deposits Friday (443 to 354 mya) in the USA. At those times, the entire country was a shallow sea with lots of corals and marine shells.

The entire US was not a shallow sea. Only the eastern and western seaboards were continental seas at this time. The mid-US was terrestrial. Great palaogeographic maps can be found here:
http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~rcb7/mollglobe.html

You'll notice on the Devonian that the US (equator) has large continental areas. Geologists often use the term shallow sea when they are describing a continental sea. Most (if not all) US deposits of this age were formed in shallow seas. This does not mean that the whole US was underwater!

So if we had shallow seas, the world would have been pretty watery. And then at least the USA would have had to uplift. Questions that come to mind:

1. Were the other continents shallow marine at the same time?
If so, then so much land mass under the sea, would mean the ocean was not as deep anywhere, because there is a fixed amount of water on Earth (pretty much).

2. When the continents rose, hydraulic principles say that something else had to submerge. What was it? And can we tell it was shallower then?

3. Why would continents collide only to drift apart again?

Although I am currently based in the US, America is not the world! European Devonian deposits are largely aeolian sandstones - hardly wet!

This also answers question 1 - no, other continents were not shallow marine. Although there is a (roughly) fixed amount of water on and in the Earth, the presence of shallow seas (even extensive ones) does mean shallower oceans. It is likely that oceans were still 4km deep in the abyssal plains and 8km or more at any trenches.

Question 2: Continents do not "rise and fall" like a giant see-saw. Mountain ranges are built by continent-continent collisions. Subduction zones take away oceanic plates, building more mountains above. These highpoints then erode and infill sedimentary basins. These infilled basins can then be subducted or incorporated into orogenic belts and so continues the cycle. Although this sounds simple, in detail it is much more complex!

Question 3: Plate are in constant motion. There is no "tectonic pause". The Wilson cycle shows how plates come together (collide) and then break apart (rift). A decent diagram is here:
http://earth.leeds.ac.uk/dynamicearth/history/wilson/
You have to understand that the continents were always moving. During the Permian, Pangea formed, building vast mountain chains, which would keep building during the formation of Pangea. Just look at the Himalayas now. They get higher each year due to the ongoing collision between India and Eurasia. The continents would break apart when a mantle plume thinned the continental crust at anyone location. For a modern analogy look at the East African Rift.

I would suggest to anyone who is interested in this field to read "Global Tectonics" by Kearey and Vine. Search for it on Amazon - it'll be there.

Hope this helps answer your questions!

 

[Andre]

Interesting Liz, and welcome to these forums. You seem to be the first pro here. We'd certainly appreciate your opinion about these matters. For instance, we have an unfinished thread that stalled at the Paleocene Eocene Thermal maximum (actually page 2) probably waiting for some professional comments.

ave a comment too. Looking at this figure http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~rcb7/Pleistmoll.jpg, I'm afraid the ice sheet projection is way off the real situation.

 

[NileQueen]

Hi Liz,

thanks very much for your explanation. I am just starting to learn about this time period, and so this is helpful. Looking at the link to the (very nice) maps at different time periods, I can't quite get my bearings on what's what...

 

[NileQueen]

I'll study what you've posted. I also shared this link with students in my class.
thanks
NQ

 

[NileQueen]

Hi Liz. Thanks again for your explanation. I've had time to read your information now, and I have a few questions.


"Question 2: Continents do not "rise and fall" like a giant see-saw. "

No, but there is isostacy. If a continent has been loaded with an ice sheet, it is going to rebound (slowly) once that ice has melted and the weight is gone. The Earth is hydraulic, with that hot molten inner core inside it, and magma in the crust/mantle (no it is not a jelly sandwich anymore)


"Mountain ranges are built by continent-continent collisions. "

Right. I understand that.

"Subduction zones take away oceanic plates, building more mountains above. "

I thought one plate was slipping under the other. It is not a collision, it's a bypass slippage of sorts, so why do you say mountains are building? Can you give an example?

"Question 3: Plate are in constant motion. There is no "tectonic pause". The Wilson cycle shows how plates come together (collide) and then break apart (rift)."

And so, what is the mechanism? Has that been decided upon?

"You have to understand that the continents were always moving. During the Permian, Pangea formed, building vast mountain chains," which would keep building during the formation of Pangea."

So did the continents rise/form/uplift from the sea at the beginning of Pangea? Or were there already continents floating around and they just happened to all come together and crash plates to make mountains?

" The continents would break apart when a mantle plume thinned the continental crust at anyone location. For a modern analogy look at the East African Rift."

I think there is a mantle plume under the African plate uplifting it. It is not rifting it, but I guess we have to give it time?

 

[Andre]

Thanks, however we're not done with the hockeystick yet. On the contrary, the firework is still ahead.

Perhaps http://technologyreview.com/articles/04/10/wo_muller101504.asp is the best explainer:

But now a shock: Canadian scientists Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick have uncovered a fundamental mathematical flaw in the computer program that was used to produce the hockey stick. In his original publications of the stick, Mann purported to use a standard method known as principal component analysis, or PCA, to find the dominant features in a set of more than 70 different climate records.

But it wasn’t so. McIntyre and McKitrick obtained part of the program that Mann used, and they found serious problems. Not only does the program not do conventional PCA, but it handles data normalization in a way that can only be described as mistaken.

Now comes the real shocker. This improper normalization procedure tends to emphasize any data that do have the hockey stick shape, and to suppress all data that do not. To demonstrate this effect, McIntyre and McKitrick created some meaningless test data that had, on average, no trends. This method of generating random data is called “Monte Carlo” analysis, after the famous casino, and it is widely used in statistical analysis to test procedures. When McIntyre and McKitrick fed these random data into the Mann procedure, out popped a hockey stick shape!

And here is somebody else who also came to a similar conclusion:

http://www.lelarge.homepage.t-online.de/PhZT/Temperatur_Intcal.gif

Compare the blue nr 2, the hockeystick with the red nr3, random data into the model. A predestined hockeystick I'd say.

 

[Andre]

Now I'm very curious if anyone who struggled through the thread, -including the links- all the way up until here, changed or considers to change his/her personal ideas about global warming?

 

[pebrew]

And here is somebody else who also came to a similar conclusion:

http://www.lelarge.homepage.t-online.de/PhZT/Temperatur_Intcal.gif

Compare the blue nr 2, the hockeystick with the red nr3, random data into the model. A predestined hockeystick I'd say.

Actually, the red #3 data is not the result taking random data and putting them through Mann's methods/calculations. Rather it is the result of taking the black #1 data (a simulation of the global temperature the past 1000 years produced with the ECHO-G simulation), producing theoretical proxy data from that ECHO-G simulation, and then putting these simulated proxy data through Mann's methods/calculations. The original press release of the article can be found at http://www.mad.zmaw.de/Research/Presse/press040927-1Storch.pdf
This is a summary of the important piece by Storch published in Science at the end of September that Muller refers to in his article.
Storch et al’s work does not support the claim that any random data processed with Mann's methods would produce a hockeystick. In their own words:

The main conclusion of this study is that many statistical methods that are based on linear regression considerably underestimate the centennial and decadal past temperature variations. When applied to the model data these methods return an estimate of past model temperatures that hardly resemble the true model temperatures. Also, the associated error bars do not describe the real error adequately.

Their work covers “many statistical methods that are based on linear regression”, not just Mann et al’s methods. Though if it is verified, this work will cast a heavy light of uncertainty on the ‘hockeystick’. Making it important since “proxy-based temperature reconstructions have been used to assess climate change over the past millennium, in particular by the IPCC…” (Storch et al).
While casting question on a traditional pillar of AGW theory, this is not a refutation of the broader, developing AGW theory:

However, in spite of this reassessment of claims about past temperature variations, the study does not question claims about the detection of signals of anthropogenic climate change in the recent decades based on the speed of change nor perspectives of probable or possible future climate change.(Storch et al)

(And from that more recent Richard Muller article http://technologyreview.com/articles/04/10/wo_muller101504.asp)

If you are concerned about global warming (as I am) and think that human-created carbon dioxide may contribute (as I do), then you still should agree that we are much better off having broken the hockey stick. Misinformation can do real harm, because it distorts predictions. Suppose, for example, that future measurements in the years 2005-2015 show a clear and distinct global cooling trend. (It could happen.) If we mistakenly took the hockey stick seriously--that is, if we believed that natural fluctuations in climate are small--then we might conclude (mistakenly) that the cooling could not be just a random fluctuation on top of a long-term warming trend, since according to the hockey stick, such fluctuations are negligible. And that might lead in turn to the mistaken conclusion that global warming predictions are a lot of hooey. If, on the other hand, we reject the hockey stick, and recognize that natural fluctuations can be large, then we will not be misled by a few years of random cooling.
A phony hockey stick is more dangerous than a broken one--if we know it is broken. It is our responsibility as scientists to look at the data in an unbiased way, and draw whatever conclusions follow. When we discover a mistake, we admit it, learn from it, and perhaps discover once again the value of caution.

 

[Andre]

You are right, Pebrew, thanks for the contribution. But the point is made, the hockeystick is broken. There should never have been a hockeystick. But it was so temping because of the relationship of standards and attractiveness of conclusions. But how badly does it expose the scaremongers?

The hockeystick is the mainstay of the IPCC and British Government and stands for the prediction of a couple of degrees warming -what is it now? 1,8-5 degrees or so in 2100? And it's the reason for immediate crash actions. The Dutch government already has bought CO2 emission rights from an East European country. The good point is that the money is used to make the energy production over there much more efficient. The bad point is that it is based on a lie.

Now is that that global warming exactly again. If the Earth was an ideal black body it's temperature would rise 0,69 degrees C for every doubling of the CO2. But the Earth is not a black body, so some say we need to increase that to about 1 degree C. I think that's an thinking error. Since the Earth reflexs quite a lot of sunlight directly some 30% I believe, compared to a black body, not all the light is absorbed and consequently less energy is reradiated as infrared and captured by greenhouse gas effect. So perhaps 0,5 degrees per doubling could be more correct

Assuming that the positive and negative feedback factors cancel each other (although Kärner shows that negative feedback seems to be stronger) we can simply estimate the effect of the increased CO2. In 1850 before the start of fossil fuel use, it was about 280ppm, now almost 380 ppm So about one third increase on a logaritmic scale would be about 0,3 degrees. But we need 560 ppm CO2 in total to get to that 0,5 degrees of warming since 1850 and with some 1ppm a year that would be somewhere around 2180. So my estimate for 2100 is over the thumb some 0,4 degrees of warming maximum, compared to 1850.

But we may be heading for http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/GW-trend.jpg

Don't let the mere urgent interfere with the real important.

 

[Locrian]

This thread is gold. Thanks to all the participants.

 

[Andre]

Thanks, Locrian

Although most things have been accounted for, perhaps a little analysis of a standard scaremonger message may be in order.

We all are confronted regulary with the average text going something like this:

An increasing body of observations gives a collective picture of a warming world and other changes in the climate system.

Additional data from new studies of current and palaeoclimates, improved analysis of data sets, more rigorous evaluation of their quality, and comparisons among data from different sources have led to greater understanding of climate change.

The global average surface temperature has increased over the 20th century by about 0.6°C. Global average sea level has risen and ocean heat content has increased.

Temperatures have risen during the past four decades in the lowest 8 kilometres of the atmosphere.

Snow cover and ice extent have decreased.

Emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols due to human activities continue to alter the atmosphere in ways that are expected to affect the climate.

Concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases and their radiative forcing have
continued to increase as a result of human activities.

Confidence in the ability of models to project future climate has increased.

There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities.

Human influences will continue to change atmospheric composition throughout the 21st century.

Global average temperature and sea level are projected to rise under all IPCC SRES scenarios.

Further action is required to address remaining gaps in information and understanding.

This is what politicians have to tuck into their heads, it's the boldface text of the http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/spm22-01.pdf .

Hence, you can't blame them for demanding Kyoto action now, whilst slamming the fist on the table, can you?

Perhaps we should try and find the fallacies, let alone the plain incorrectnesses.

 

[Andre]

I was planning to go over these step by step, however I just found another jewel hidden in the gigantic scientific data heap.

One continues to wonder why environmental good news is stashed away and any random claim - like alleged mass extinction or catastrophic melting of ice sheets conquers the world.

So let's look at models.

Confidence in the ability of models to project future climate has increased.

Really? Well how about:

Geophys. Res. Lett., Vol. 31, No. 13, L13208 10.1029/2004GL020103
09 July 2004

Altitude Dependence of Atmospheric Temperature Trends: Climate Models vs Observation

David H. Douglass, Benjamin D. Pearson and S. Fred Singer

Abstract

As a consequence of greenhouse forcing, all state-of-the-art general circulation models predict a positive temperature trend that is greater for the troposphere than the surface. This predicted positive trend increases in value with altitude until it reaches a maximum ratio with respect to the surface of as much as 1.5 to 2.0 at about 200-400 hPa. However, the temperature trends from several independent observational data sets show decreasing as well as mostly negative values. This disparity indicates that the three models examined here fail to account for the effects of greenhouse forcings.

The whole publication is http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/fulltext?format=application/pdf&identifier=oai%3AarXiv.org%3Aphysics%2F0407074 too