News Has Kristen Uncovered More Inconvenient Truths?

[Skyhunter]

Edward,

In the posting above, you comment on oil companies funding sceptics. What about the funding of AGW research by extreme environmental groups like Greenpeace? What about the various projects that were funded by the US that were lobbied for by the same? It seems unfair to mention only one side.

As for the Iris hypothesis article you linked, that was a 5 year old article where the three scientific teams came to different conclusions (not surprising since there are three different locations being observed at three different times) and at least the two teams listed in the article stand by their findings. Both teams are very reputable. Is there an update? Surely there must be more by now.

An important distinction should be made here about funding.

Funding for research is how science is advanced.

Funding for propaganda is how agendas are advanced.

 

[Kirsten-B]

That's right Sky, and both the oil companies and the environmental groups are looking to get their agendas advanced. One usually uses their own money to do it. The other lobbys the government to get the money to do it.

 

[edward]

Edward,

In the posting above, you comment on oil companies funding sceptics. What about the funding of AGW research by extreme environmental groups like Greenpeace? What about the various projects that were funded by the US that were lobbied for by the same? It seems unfair to mention only one side.

I did mention the other side. The biggest contributor to AGW studies is the United States Government. Greenpeace, unlike Exxon has no ulterior profit motive involved in whatever financial contributions they may have made.

As for the Iris hypothesis article you linked, that was a 5 year old article where the three scientific teams came to different conclusions (not surprising since there are three different locations being observed at three different times) and at least the two teams listed in the article stand by their findings. Both teams are very reputable. Is there an update? Surely there must be more by now.

I would like to see an update on that myself. I am concerned that the acceptance of AGW by the majority may hamper further scientific studies on both sides of the issue. This would be totally wrong and I hope that it never happens.

In a way that is how we got ourselves into the fossil fuel predicament. It was cheap and plentiful, so for the most part, we just quit looking for cleaner energy sources.

 

[Skyhunter]

I reckon you would. I guess I'm too old to play the kid that exclaimed that the emperor wears no clothes. Indeed I do not analyse ice cores. I analyse the reasoning of the analysers. It was better it the analysers sticked to analysing only.

Strawman, I said that the nett resulting feedback is not positive.



Were are the data? I only see some expressions. The test is with the actual data. So why would a mere mathematical expression have the power to refute data testing?

Back later.

Not a strawman, a poor choice of words.

You are claiming that there is no net positive feedback evident in the ice core data. I don't believe you to be qualified to make that claim. I found your analysis of the date to be amateurish and biased. You start with an erroneous assumption as to how the feedback should look, and then when it doesn't meet your false assumption you declare it evidence that AGW is a hoax.

By your own words it is based on analyzing the reasoning of a person or persons you do not even know. Not very scientific. I think the term you would use for that is "ad hominem".

Andre you accuse the scientific community and the worlds governments of a grand conspiracy to plunge the world into a totalitarian state. And yet, when someone questions your questionable sources, you accuse them of fallacy.

See any contradiction there?

I'll make it easy for you.

You show me a peer reviewed study that explains the warming and cooling trends contained in the data without CO₂ and then we have something to talk about. You cannot do this because there is no way to explain past and present climate without CO₂!

I am not saying that CO₂ explains everything, it does not. There is an ocean of ignorance about climate and how the planet will react to the AGHG forcings.

I have seen experiments go badly wrong with disastrous effects. We only have one planet. I suggest we stop this experiment now. The projected results are not looking favorable for the subject.

 

[Kirsten-B]

Edward,

Money and power. Oil = money, Greenpeace = power. Both are just as bad and neither should be involved in furthering their agendas by corrupting science, yet both try to do it.

As for the "fossil fuel predicament," I read that the problem was conservation and pollution. Pollution was reduced by adding pollution equipment in cars. Conservation was a problem because certain politicians could not get campaign contributions from oil companies. So they started yelling conservation, we are going to run out next year. Back in the 70's there was little geologic data to refute this claim. They gave tax breaks to people for solar and etc. That changed along with the oil lobby getting the tax breaks reversed. The story is different now because we are using so much more, especially China and India are stressing the supply so much that it made a large contribution to the price increases of recent years. (mid east instability being the other) Thats just oil prices, the gas prices in the US went up more because environmentalists stopped independent refiners from opening up (i bet the oil companies did not lobby against this, all they did was upgrade their existing refineries). So now what do you have? Oil companies sell more gas for 3 times the price. Exxon/Mobile in the first 3 months of this year had record profits of 9.8 billion. That will not change until a whole lot of people change to electric cars that are charged by, for instance, a solar charger in their driveway at home.

 

[Kirsten-B]

Comment from Sky,

"You show me a peer reviewed study that explains the warming and cooling trends contained in the data without CO2 and then we have something to talk about. You cannot do this because there is no way to explain past and present climate without CO2!"

You do not need one, NOAA data sets are available on line. Compare the world temp and the ENSO and see where it comes from. But do not make the same mistake that the rest did by using a basis temp (ocean) from 20 years before. You have to use the ocean temp from the year before. You cannot forget the 11,000 year solar high that we have experienced in the last 70 years and the way it heated the oceans during this time.

CO2 in the vostoc ice cores lags temps. There is no evidence that even supports the claim that CO2 amplified temps in this time. Temperature increase in the last 100 years lead 80% of the CO2 rises. The global cooling from 1944 to 1975 correlates very well with ENSO, not the hypothesized and now disproven idea that global smog cooled the world during this time. And finally, there is no way, using AGW theory, to explain the leveling out of temps in the last 5 years.

 

[Skyhunter]

IIn a way that is how we got ourselves into the fossil fuel predicament. It was cheap and plentiful, so for the most part, we just quit looking for cleaner energy sources.

Jimmy Carter foresaw the problem 30 years ago. The policy he set in motion was changed by Ronald Reagan.

It wasn't because it was cheap, it was because it was profitable.

I don't think that we run the risk of not studying the AGW enough. There is so much that is still unexplained that there will be no shortage of funding for research.

There is a problem for the denialist think tank funding however. Murdoch has quit funding them, and I believe that Exxon has approached the Union of Concerned Scientists, to come to an agreement where they will stop funding think tanks to spread "uncertainty."

The problem with the denialists, is they are not being objective. I don't see any evidence of "warmers" being convinced of AGW as gospel truth.

I do see plenty evidence of denial from the skeptics, without any real evidence, or with cherry picked and distorted evidence. The most vocal of the climate deniers are not scientists. Nor are they propagating scientific findings.

When I read the scientific papers I see little bias, whether it be Lindzen or Mann. I will say that Lindzen has written some op-ed pieces that I found to be somewhat ludicrous. But on the whole climate scientists are in agreement about GHG's and there contribution to GW.

To claim that there is little or no evidence to support the current conclusions of the scientific community, using questionable sources and then ignoring evidence and the work of 10's of 1000's of real scientists is IMO ludicrous.

 

[Kirsten-B]

Sky's comment,

"Jimmy Carter foresaw the problem 30 years ago. The policy he set in motion was changed by Ronald Reagan." If I recall correctly, Carter was the guy who could not get money from the oil companies and Reagan was the one who did.

As for the rest of the comments, can you show me a measurment of AGW? To this point it has all been calculated and the observations do not support it.

 

[Skyhunter]

That's right Sky, and both the oil companies and the environmental groups are looking to get their agendas advanced. One usually uses their own money to do it. The other lobbys the government to get the money to do it.

Neither Greenpeace nor Exxon fund research into global warming. Greenpeace lobbies congress and has some access to the media, as well as lots of members to raise awareness of issues it is concerned with.

The Exxon agenda as outlined in this http://www.environmentaldefense.org/documents/3860_GlobalClimateSciencePlanMemo.pdf is quite specific about the strategy and funding. Exxon funds think tanks to promote their agenda.

I would not consider Greenpeace to be an extreme environmental group. ALF and ELF are extreme environmental groups.

But I digress.

Let us look at the motives of the two groups.

Greenpeace motive:

Save the whales.

Exxon motive:

Profit.

So I contribute to Greenpeace and live a low carbon lifestyle.

 

[Moridin]

Greenpeace is a political organization with many goals. One of which happens to be a raving assault of globalization. It has also shown that they are not afraid to use unorthodox methods, as well as not being able to separate a harmful pollutant from water.

For an interesting look at their past.

http://web.archive.org/web/ INSERT Asterix /http://www.greenpeace.org/

Sorry for the strange formatting, but the correct one broke the forum design.

 

[Kirsten-B]

Like the memo says, the funding is through the API (American Oil Institute). Exxon Mobil gives them money for this.

Now let's look at Greenpeace. Their lobbiest goes to a member of congress and has them get money for a certain scientist who, like the API, will give them the desired result.

Either way, this is how science is corrupted and both sides are as guilty as the other regardless of the motivation.

 

[Skyhunter]

Comment from Sky,

"You show me a peer reviewed study that explains the warming and cooling trends contained in the data without CO2 and then we have something to talk about. You cannot do this because there is no way to explain past and present climate without CO2!"

You do not need one, NOAA data sets are available on line. Compare the world temp and the ENSO and see where it comes from. But do not make the same mistake that the rest did by using a basis temp (ocean) from 20 years before. You have to use the ocean temp from the year before. You cannot forget the 11,000 year solar high that we have experienced in the last 70 years and the way it heated the oceans during this time.

CO2 in the vostoc ice cores lags temps. There is no evidence that even supports the claim that CO2 amplified temps in this time. Temperature increase in the last 100 years lead 80% of the CO2 rises. The global cooling from 1944 to 1975 correlates very well with ENSO, not the hypothesized and now disproven idea that global smog cooled the world during this time. And finally, there is no way, using AGW theory, to explain the leveling out of temps in the last 5 years.

A. I don't understand how you can conclude that NOAA scientists have made a fatal flaw in their analysis of the temperature data.

B. What does El Nino have to do with GHG concentrations and their effect on climate?

The fact that CO₂ lags temperature is no surprise. In fact it had been predicted 30 years ago and is well understood by the scientific community.

Andre would call that a strawman argument, since the point is irrelevant.

It is quite effective however since on the surface it appears to contradict what people thought they knew about global warming.

Here is a great question and response from a climatologist:

Dear Jeff,

I read your article "What does the lag of CO2 behind temperature in ice cores tell us about global warming?" You mention that CO2 does not initiate warmings, but may amplify warmings that are already underway. The obvious question comes up as to whether or not CO2 levels also lag periods when cooling begins after a warming cycle...even one of 5,000 years?

If CO2 levels on planet Earth also lag the cooling periods, then how can it be that CO2 levels are causally related to terrestrial heating periods at all? I am not sure what the ice core records are related the time response of CO2 to the cooling trends. If there is also a lag in CO2 levels behind a cooling period, then it appears that CO2 levels not only do not initiate warming periods but are also unrelated to the onset of cooling periods. It would appear that the actual CO2 levels are rather impotent as an amplifier either way...warming or cooling. We are talking about planet Earth after all and not Venus whose atmospheric pressure is many times larger than Earth's.

If there is also a time lag upon the onset of cooling, then it appears that some other mechanism actually drives the temperature changes. So what is the time difference between CO2 levels during the onset of a cooling period at the end of a warming period and the time history of the temperature changes in the ice cores?

Dear John,

The coolings appear to be caused primarily and initially by increase in the Earth-Sun distance during northern hemisphere summer, due to changes in the Earth's orbit. As the orbit is not round, but elliptical, sunshine is weaker during some parts of the year than others. This is the so-called Milankovitch hypothesis [this really should say "theory" -- eric], which you may have heard about. Just as in the warmings, CO2 lags the coolings by a thousand years or so, in some cases as much as three thousand years.

But do not make the mistake of assuming that these warmings and coolings must have a single cause. It is well known that multiple factors are involved, including the change in planetary albedo, change in nitrous oxide concentration, change in methane concentration, and change in CO2 concentration. I know it is intellectually satisfying to identify a single cause for some observed phenomenon, but that unfortunately is not the way Nature works much of the time.

Nor is there any requirement that a single cause operate throughout the entire 5000 - year long warming trends, and the 70,000 year cooling trends.

Thus it is not logical to argue that, because CO2 does not cause the first thousand years or so of warming, nor the first thousand years of cooling, it cannot have caused part of the many thousands of years of warming in between.

Think of heart disease - one might be tempted to argue that a given heart patient's condition was caused solely by the fact that he ate french fries for lunch every day for 30 years. But in fact his 10-year period of no exercise because of a desk job, in the middle of this interval, may have been a decisive influence. Just because a sedentary lifestyle did not cause the beginning of the plaque buildup, nor the end of the buildup, would you rule out a contributing causal role for sedentary lifestyle?

There is a rich literature on this topic. If you are truly interested, I urge you to read up.

The contribution of CO2 to the glacial-interglacial coolings and warmings amounts to about one-third of the full amplitude, about one-half if you include methane and nitrous oxide.

So one should not claim that greenhouse gases are the major cause of the ice ages. No credible scientist has argued that position (even though Al Gore implied as much in his movie). The fundamental driver has long been thought, and continues to be thought, to be the distribution of sunshine over the Earth's surface as it is modified by orbital variations. This hypothesis was proposed by James Croll in the 19th century, mathematically refined by Milankovitch in the 1940s, and continues to pass numerous critical tests even today.

The greenhouse gases are best regarded as a biogeochemical feedback, initiated by the orbital variations, but then feeding back to amplify the warming once it is already underway. By the way, the lag of CO2 of about 1000 years corresponds rather closely to the expected time it takes to flush excess respiration-derived CO2 out of the deep ocean via natural ocean currents. So the lag is quite close to what would be expected, if CO2 were acting as a feedback.

The response time of methane and nitrous oxide to climate variations is measured in decades. So these feedbacks operate much faster.

The quantitative contribution of CO2 to the ice age cooling and warming is fully consistent with current understanding of CO2's warming properties, as manifested in the IPCC's projections of future warming of 3±1.5 C for a doubling of CO2 concentration. So there is no inconsistency between Milankovitch and current global warming.

Hope this is illuminating.

Jeff

 

[Kirsten-B]

One more thing, there is nothing wrong with saving the whales or making a profit. But there is something wrong when you corrupt science to do either.

 

[Kirsten-B]

Sky comment:

"A. I don't understand how you can conclude that NOAA scientists have made a fatal flaw in their analysis of the temperature data.

B. What does El Nino have to do with GHG concentrations and their effect on climate?"

You misunderstood me. NOAA publishes both temp and ENSO figures. There are no fatal flaws in the NOAA temp data (although they will downgrade their warming estimates in July because they are eliminating urban heat island effect that skews the data)

The warming effects of ENSO are clear in the temperature record. My point is that ENSO correlates with temperature changes where changes in GHG's do not.

The points made in the letter you provide is not new. But when the tops and bottoms of the peaks on the graph do not support the idea that CO2 was an amplifier. I do agree with the guy in the letter that CO2 was something from biological processes.

 

[Skyhunter]

Sky's comment,

"Jimmy Carter foresaw the problem 30 years ago. The policy he set in motion was changed by Ronald Reagan." If I recall correctly, Carter was the guy who could not get money from the oil companies and Reagan was the one who did.

As for the rest of the comments, can you show me a measurment of AGW? To this point it has all been calculated and the observations do not support it.

Were you alive then?

We just allocated another $100 billion to occupy an oil rich nation. And you are comparing the influence of Greenpeace to the influence of the worlds biggest corporations?

I think your understanding of global politics is as naive as your understanding of climate science.

I don't know what you are looking for when you say measurement. My sense is that you are looking for some simple explanation to a complex system and if you don't get one you will not accept any conclusions.

If you cannot find in all your research evidence that CO₂ contributes roughly 30% of observed warming then I don't think there is anything I can provide you that will change your mind.

Your first fallacy is that AGW is just calculated. That is incorrect and I believe related to your misunderstanding and xenophobic reaction to the computer climate models.

The models are calibrated to the observed record. The more data, the more observation, and the more understanding of the dynamics, the better the models get.

 

[Kirsten-B]

LOL Sky, I was not alive then, like I said, I had to read about it. Personally I would rather concentrate on the science.

The comment about being naive is really insulting. Is that what you do to all of the students who visit this forum who disagree with you? You cannot provide a single scientific study that measures the warming of the GHG hypothesis so you begin the insults? I thought this was a place for learning.

As for the computer models, they have never and they never will. Not only do they not understand clouds and water vapor, but they cannot predict solar, volcanoes, ENSO, PDO or kelvin waves. These things are tuned to death and after 39485723490857 simmulations they are given a large range to account for "Natural Variation." Under these circumstances I can program my Nintendo 007 game to say all the spies were killed by GHG's.

 

[Skyhunter]

How does it not support CO₂ as an amplifier?

I think you are making the same mistake that Andre has. You are assuming that for A to be true then B must fit your preconceived notion as to how the graph should look. This is a simplistic assumption and your analysis is meaningless, since neither you nor I are qualified to interperet the data.

As the letter points out, there is a lot going on, and still huge gaps in our knowledge. But my point is, and let me make it very clear:

Scientists cannot, let me repeat, cannot account for the observed warming and cooling trends today, nor throughout the geological history of our planet without CO₂.

All the climate models include the effect of atmospheric CO₂ because if they did not they would not match the observed record! If you want to question that assumption you must provide a plausable alternative.

 

[Skyhunter]

I was alive then and have a much richer experience from which to draw, than whatever historical literature I might have been exposed to.

I don't mean to sound insulting but when you offer simplistic arguments to complex issues, it demonstrates a certain naivety.

 

[Kirsten-B]

Sky comments:

"How does it not support CO2 as an amplifier?

I think you are making the same mistake that Andre has. You are assuming that for A to be true then B must fit your preconceived notion as to how the graph should look. This is a simplistic assumption and your analysis is meaningless, since neither you nor I are qualified to interperet the data.

As the letter points out, there is a lot going on, and still huge gaps in our knowledge. But my point is, and let me make it very clear:

Scientists cannot, let me repeat, cannot account for the observed warming and cooling trends today, nor throughout the geological history of our planet without CO2.

All the climate models include the effect of atmospheric CO2 because if they did not they would not match the observed record! If you want to question that assumption you must provide a plausable alternative."

Before I begin, can we please avoid the language such as "preconceived notions." I have not made those kinds of accusations with you.

If in fact all of the models all consider CO2 then that is probably why they can not get it right. They have tried to add anthropogenic aerosols in a big way to explain 1944-1976 cooling and to prevent run-away warming scenarios. When you look at the monthly graphs you can see the effects of the different things that affect climate. Vilcanoes, solar and etc. There were record keeping problems around world war 2. You can see these things in the temperature record. Also, you can definitely see ENSO in the temperature record. What you can not see is a temperature departure caused by CO2 when all these things are considered.

As for qualifications, it is not necessary, given all of the literature on this subject, to give simmulation and calculation better weight than observation.

 

[Evo]

When I read the scientific papers I see little bias, whether it be Lindzen or Mann.

You seem to be unaware that Mann's "hockeystick" turned out to be a disgrace for Mann.

The “hockey stick” representation of the temperature behavior of the past 1,000 years is broken, dead. Although already reeling from earlier analyses aimed at its midsection, the knockout punch was just delivered by Nature magazine. Thus the end of this palooka: that the climate of the past millennium was marked by about 900 years of nothing and then 100 years of dramatic temperature rise caused by people. The saga of the “hockey stick” will be remembered as a remarkable lesson in how fanaticism can temporarily blind a large part of the scientific community and allow unproven results to become “mainstream” thought overnight.

The “Hockey Stick” is dead.

But, the “hockey stick” was remarkable. And as such, it will be remembered as a remarkable lesson in how fanaticism can temporarily blind a large part of the scientific community and allow unproven results to become mainstream thought overnight. The embarrassment that it caused to many scientists working in the field of climatology will not be soon forgotten. Hopefully, new findings to come, as remarkable and enticing as they may first appear, will be greeted with a bit more caution and thorough investigation before they are widely accepted as representing the scientific consensus.

http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2005/03/03/hockey-stick-1998-2005-rip/

To claim that there is little or no evidence to support the current conclusions of the scientific community, using questionable sources and then ignoring evidence and the work of 10's of 1000's of real scientists is IMO ludicrous.

So true, so why do you still believe in AGW?

 

[Skyhunter]

You seem to be unaware that Mann's "hockeystick" turned out to be a disgrace for Mann.



http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2005/03/03/hockey-stick-1998-2005-rip/

So true, so why do you still believe in AGW?

So you finally came off the fence.

I would suggest reading an unbiased view of the controversey regarding the hockey stick before jumping on a bandwagon.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4349133.stm

"This is a tiny step in the hockey stick analysis. If you do it in different ways, you still get the answer you got before, providing you don't throw away any significant data," said Gavin Schmidt, of the US space agency's (Nasa) Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, US, who has worked in the past with Michael Mann.

Dr Schmidt points out that McIntyre and McKitrick use a different convention but do not alter subsequent steps in their analysis to account for this.

As a result, he says, McIntyre and McKitrick's analysis removes crucial data included in the original hockey stick work.

Sorry, the opinion of a blogger does not constitute a disgrace.

However the opinion of the National Academy of Sciences should not be held so lightly.

http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060626/full/4411032a.html

The academy essentially upholds Mann's findings, although the panel concluded that systematic uncertainties in climate records from before 1600 were not communicated as clearly as they could have been. The NAS also confirmed some problems with the statistics. But the mistakes had a relatively minor impact on the overall finding, says Peter Bloomfield, a statistician at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, who was involved in the latest report. "This study was the first of its kind, and they had to make choices at various stages about how the data were processed," he says, adding that he "would not be embarrassed" to have been involved in the work.

You should follow the story to it's end, not get caught up in some sensationalist claim being perpetuated on a denialist blog.

 

[Skyhunter]

Why do I believe in AGW?

The ice is melting.

[edit] Is that being to naive?

 

[Pythagorean]

I was alive then and have a much richer experience from which to draw, than whatever historical literature I might have been exposed to.

As far as your judgments on the scientific community or judgments on AGW? Because if you're saying that you can judge AGW on a lifetime of experience (are you even half a century old?) then you're looking at too small of a sample period.

If you're saying you have more experience in the scientific field and understand the politics well enough, then extrapolate on that in the academic section of PF, tell me about the politics of my future career and academia...

Kristen:

Are you trying to discourage climate research or are you trying to discourage bad conclusions? I've seen this become a thing about the naughty climatologists want to support the fear for funding. I don't think there's any problem with researching the way petroleum products affect our environment.

 

[Pythagorean]

Why do I believe in AGW?

The ice is melting.

Eh... why does it have to be Anthropogenic just because the ice is melting?

Why can't it just be Global Warming?

 

[Evo]

So you finally came off the fence.

I would suggest reading an unbiased view of the controversey regarding the hockey stick before jumping on a bandwagon.

I have read a ton about it. The data was skewed to create the wanted effect.

Sorry, the opinion of a blogger does not constitute a disgrace.

Being found to be a fraud by Harvard Scientists is.

"The first sign that something amiss with the “hockey stick” was published in 2003 by Harvard scientists Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas. Soon and Baliunas performed a survey of the existing scientific literature concerning the climate of the past 1,000 years and compiled evidence for and against the existence of the MWP and the LIA. They found that overwhelmingly, within the scores of scientific articles that they reviewed, there was strong evidence to support the existence of these well-known climatic episodes that were largely absent from the “hockey stick” reconstruction. Apparently, the handle of the “hockey stick”—that part of it which represents natural variation—is too flat.

These aren't bloggers.

"The issue focuses on a paper by them that supports the widely held view that the climate of the last millennium has been quite variable and includes a Medieval Warm Period and subsequent Little Ice Age. This is only controversial because it, and the wider body of scientific literature that exists, directly contradicts recent research by Michael Mann, a leading global warming proponent. Mr. Mann argues global air temperatures have been stable over the last 1,000 years, with the exception of the last 100. It is the "Mann-made" warming to which Mr. Soon and Ms. Baliunas have objected.

While most of these arguments are confined to academic discussions that the general public would find less than boring, this fight played out recently in front of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works. It has also been echoed in several news accounts from academic journals to the New York Times.

Mr. Mann testified before the Senate committee that his research is the "mainstream view" because it is featured in a chapter of the U.N. Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, of which Mr. Mann was a lead author. Mr. Soon and Ms. Baliunas challenged Mr. Mann's claim by reviewing the large body of literature that shows his claims to be unsubstantiated and his research to be fatally flawed. In truth, Mr. Mann's work is the scientific outlier — the one study that does not fit with the wealth of scientific evidence.

Mr. Soon and Mr. Baliunas argue that Mr. Mann's conclusions rest on a dubious manipulation of data. While many of the problems in Mr. Mann's work require scientific expertise to understand, one flaw is so basic that everyone can understand it. Mr. Mann and his colleagues compiled a historical climate reconstruction — called the "hockey stick" because of its shape — primarily using tree ring records to infer air temperature trends. Their use of proxy data is not novel, but the methods they used and thus the results, certainly are. For example, Mr. Mann and his colleagues simply attached the surface temperature record of the 20th century to the end of the proxy record. This is an apples-to-oranges comparison as air temperature readings are not directly comparable to proxy records. However, putting the two different sets of data together in this way makes a stunning visual display for the average reader.

Also, in his analysis for the Northern Hemisphere prior to 1400, Mr. Mann uses data from nine locations in addition to statistical summaries derived from data for the Western United States only. Four of these additional locations are in the Southern Hemisphere, including Tasmania and Patagonia.

The widespread acceptance of this revisionist history was possible because the global-warming community was eager to accept the "hockey stick" as proof of human-caused climate change.

continued...

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:AOjOzcvbz5gJ:www.washtimes.com/commentary/20030825-090130-5881r.htm+Willie+Soon+and+Sallie+Baliunas+hockey+stick&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us

 

[Skyhunter]

I have read a ton about it. The data was skewed to create the wanted effect.

Being found to be a fraud by Harvard Scientists is. These aren't bloggers.



continued...

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:AOjOzcvbz5gJ:www.washtimes.com/commentary/20030825-090130-5881r.htm+Willie+Soon+and+Sallie+Baliunas+hockey+stick&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us

WOW

Does PF get funding from CEI?

And as for Soon and Baloney.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa004&articleID=000829C7-70D9-1EF7-A6B8809EC588EEDF&pageNumber=1&catID=4

Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics reviewed more than 200 studies that examined climate "proxy" records--data from such phenomena as the growth of tree rings or coral, which are sensitive to climatic conditions. They concluded in the January Climate Research that "across the world, many records reveal that the 20th century is probably not the warmest nor a uniquely extreme climate period of the last millennium." They said that two extreme climate periods--the Medieval Warming Period between 800 and 1300 and the Little Ice Age of 1300 to 1900--occurred worldwide, at a time before industrial emissions of greenhouse gases became abundant. (A longer version subsequently appeared in the May Energy and Environment.)

In contrast, the consensus view among paleoclimatologists is that the Medieval Warming Period was a regional phenomenon, that the worldwide nature of the Little Ice Age is open to question and that the late 20th century saw the most extreme global average temperatures.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sallie_Baliunas

In 2003, Baliunas and Willie Soon (also an astrophysicist) published a review paper on historical climatology which concluded that "the 20th century is probably not the warmest nor a uniquely extreme climatic period of the last millennium." With Soon, Baliunas investigated the correlation between solar variation and temperatures of the Earth's atmosphere. When there are more sunspots, the total solar output increases, and when there are fewer sunspots, it decreases. Soon and Baliunas attribute the Medieval warm period to such an increase in solar output, and believe that decreases in solar output led to the Little Ice Age, a period of cooling from which the Earth has been recovering since 1890.[9]

A few months afterward, 13 of the authors of the papers Baliunas and Soon cited refuted her interpretation of their work.[10] There were three main objections: Soon and Baliunas used data reflective of changes in moisture, rather than temperature; they failed to distinguish between regional and hemispheric temperature anomalies; and they reconstructed past temperatures from proxy evidence not capable of resolving decadal trends. More recently, Osborn and Briffa repeated the Baliunas and Soon study but restricted themselves to records that were validated as temperature proxies, and came to a different result.[11]

Half of the editorial board of Climate Research, the journal that published the paper, resigned in protest against what they felt was a failure of the peer review process on the part of the journal.[12][13] Otto Kinne, managing director of the journal's parent company, stated that "CR [Climate Research] should have been more careful and insisted on solid evidence and cautious formulations before publication" and that "CR should have requested appropriate revisions of the manuscript prior to publication."[14]


[edit] Ozone depletion
Baliunas earlier adopted a skeptical position regarding the hypothesis that CFCs were damaging to the ozone layer. The originators of the hypothesis, Paul Crutzen, Mario Molina and Frank Sherwood Rowland, were awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1995. Her arguments on this issue were presented at Congressional hearings held in 1995 (but before the Nobel prize announcement).

Although Baliunas never publicly retracted her criticism of the ozone depletion hypothesis, an article by Baliunas and Soon written for the Heartland Institute in 2000 promoted the idea that ozone depletion, rather than CO2 emissions could explain atmospheric warming.[15]

What happened to citing credible sources on this forum.

I offered you the BBC, and you give me back the Moonie papers commentary.

Evo, read the NAS conclusion of the controversy.

Don't give me links to climate blogs and opinion columns in the Washington Times and expect me to take your argument seriously.

It doesn't matter who they are, if they have a legitimate scientific argument then link their published papers in a peer reviewed scientific journal.

Ban me if you want but I believe that their is a certain standard that you as a moderator should uphold!

 

[edward]

Also, in his analysis for the Northern Hemisphere prior to 1400, Mr. Mann uses data from nine locations in addition to statistical summaries derived from data for the Western United States only. Four of these additional locations are in the Southern Hemisphere, including Tasmania and Patagonia.

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:AOjOzcvbz5gJ:www.washtimes.com/commentary/20030825-090130-5881r.htm+Willie+Soon+and+Sallie+Baliunas+hockey+stick&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us

Should Mann have stayed at home and watched the Weather Channel ?

And what is wrong with using tree ring records? They have been the gold standard for climatology studies. The trees were actually there at the points in history in question.

 

[Evo]

WOW

Does PF get funding from CEI?

And as for Soon and Baloney.

What happened to citing credible sources on this forum.

I offered you the BBC, and you give me back the Moonie papers commentary.

I'm really getting tired of your immature posts. If you can't post like an intelligent adult, don't post.

Also, your juvenile and insulting comments to Kirsten will not fly here. Sad when a teenager is more adult than the adult she's speaking with.

The article I posted was by David R. Legates, Director of the Center for Climatic Research at the University of Delaware and an NCPA adjunct scholar. Want some salt with that crow you need to eat?

 

[Kirsten-B]

Ply's question:

Are you trying to discourage climate research or are you trying to discourage bad conclusions? I've seen this become a thing about the naughty climatologists want to support the fear for funding. I don't think there's any problem with researching the way petroleum products affect our environment.

I think I made it clear, stop both sides from corrupting science. You are right, there is nothing wrong with researching if petroleum products are making environmental problems.


On the discussion about Michael Mann. Michael Mann already testified to congress that his "hockey stick" study was the first of it's kind (infancy of a particular area of science). That it had a lot of uncertainty and that he would not conduct the study the same way if he were to do it over again.
Each new reconstruction shows more and more warming around the time of the medieval warm period. But in reality, MWP was probably more of a normal temperature range in the holocene.

The problem with getting temperature from tree rings is that they studied tree rings the inexpensive way, ring width and density rather than isotopes. Using width and density is a great proxy for growing season, not temperature.

As for the ice melting, it has been melting for more than 100 years, beginning at the end of the Little Ice Age. That is not limited to one or two locations, but everywhere. That is more consistent with natural cycles because GHG's were not building up in the atmosphere at that time. I provided a number of good ref's on that one in my Gore article.

 

[Skyhunter]

Evo I don't care who he is.

The piece you linked is his opinion published in the editorial section of the Washington Times.

The study he is citing was refuted by 13 scientists whose work was referenced saying that their studies were misrepresented.

So it is his opinion, based on a discredited study.

I linked you the NAS conclusion after their investigation of the whole controversy and you ignore it.

 

[Skyhunter]

Eh... why does it have to be Anthropogenic just because the ice is melting?

Why can't it just be Global Warming?

It could be. But there is no natural cause that explains it.

Originally I was sceptical. I know how everything gets hyped in the media. Then I looked into the science behind it and found the idea to be credible.

Then I started hearing doubt being expressed so I looked into that. What I found was a concerted effort through the use of political think tanks to fund and promote the views of scientists with a contrary view.

I did not let the source of their funding stop me from trying to understand their argument however. At first it was difficult because there were a lot of contradictory and conflicting arguments, and I didn't know enough about the subject to sort the wheat from the chaff, and there was a lot of chaff.

Finally I found Andre and by reading his arguments following some of his links and then reading both sides of all the arguments I found, in general that the contrarian arguments were even more political and than the AGW proponents sensationalizing the science.

What I did discover was that what I thought I knew about GW as not at all the case.

Kirsten is right that Gore and others, some of whom are scientists are misleading in the way they present the science. This hurts the scientific argument for changing policy. It doesn't help and is partly responsible for my own past misunderstanding of AGW. On the other hand, the propaganda campaign by the denialist think tanks is insidious in it's distortion of the science.

The reason I now believe that the warming is anthropogenic is because there is no credible scientific study that demonstrates otherwise. In other words, nothing else explains it. Until I see a peer reviewed study that offers a plausible alternative theory and discredits the known science I will continue to act as the IPCC recommends in its Summary for Policy Makers.

 

[Kirsten-B]

Soon and Baulinas studied over 200 climatology papers in their study involving over 700 scientists. Only 13 of the scientists refuted their work. The other 600 + did not. Let's be complete here.

 

[Evo]

Also, Mann had to admit his work was skewed although he wouldn't admit how much.

How's this?

US Senate Commitee on Environment and Public Works

Another claim the media featured prominently was that temperature increases over the last century are unprecedented, at least when considered on a time-scale of the last 1,000 years. According to the IPCC, the 1990s were the warmest decade on record, and 1998 was the warmest year since temperature records began in 1861. The basis for this claim is the so-called hockey stick graph, which has become the iconic symbol of global warming alarmism.

The graph was constructed by Dr. Michael Mann of the University of Virginia and his colleagues using a combination of proxy data and modern temperature records. The hockey stick curve showed a gradual cooling beginning around 1400 AD (which is the hockey stick handle) then a sharp warming starting about 1900 (the hockey stick blade). Its release was revolutionary, overturning widespread evidence adduced over many years confirming significant natural variability long before the advent of SUVs. The IPCC was so impressed that the hockey stick was featured prominently in its Third Assessment Report in 2001.

As Dr. Roy Spencer, the principal research scientist at the University of Alabama, noted, “This was taken as proof that the major climatic event of the last 1,000 years was the influence of humans in the 20th century.” One of its authors, Dr. Michael Mann, confidently declared in 2003 that the hockey stick “is the indisputable consensus of the community of scientists actively involved in the research of climate variability and its causes.”

The hockey stick caused quite a stir, not just in the scientific community, but also in the world of politics. It galvanized alarmists in their push for Kyoto. It is supposedly ironclad proof that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are warming the planet to an unsustainable degree.

But here again, one of the essential pillars of alarmism appears to be crumbling. Two Canadian researchers have produced the most devastating evidence to date that the hockey stick is bad science. Before I describe their work, I want to make a prediction: the alarmists will cry foul, saying this critique is part of an industry-funded conspiracy. And true to form, they will avoid discussion of substance and engage in personal attacks. That’s because one of the researchers, Stephen McIntyre, is a mineral exploration consultant. Dr. Mann already has accused them of having a conflict of interest. This is nonsense. First, Stephen McIntyre and his colleague Ross McKitrick, an economist with Canada’s University of Guelph, received no outside funding for their work. Second, they published their peer-reviewed critique in Geophysical Research Letters. This is no organ of Big Oil, but an eminent scientific journal, the same journal, in fact, which published the version of Dr. Mann’s hockey stick that appeared in the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report. Apparently the journal’s editors didn’t see much evidence of bias. The remarks of one editor are worth quoting in full: “S. McIntyre and R. McKitrick have written a remarkable paper on a subject of great importance. What makes the paper significant is that they show that one of the most widely known results of climate analysis, the ‘hockey stick’ diagram of Mann. et. al., was based on a mistake in the application of a mathematical technique known as principal component analysis.” Further, he said, “I have looked carefully at the McIntyre and McKitrick analysis, and I am convinced that their work is correct.”

What did McKitrick and McIntyre find? In essence, they discovered that Dr. Mann misused an established statistical method called principal components analysis (PCA). As they explained, Mann created a program that “effectively mines a data set for hockey stick patterns.” In other words, no matter what kind of data one uses, even if it is random and totally meaningless, the Mann method always produces a hockey stick. After conducting some 10,000 data simulations, the result was nearly always the same. “In over 99 percent of cases,” McIntyre and McKitrick wrote, “it produced a hockey stick shaped PCI series.” Statistician Francis Zwiers of Environment Canada, a government agency, says he agrees that Dr. Mann’s statistical method “preferentially produces hockey sticks when there are none in the data.” Even to a non-statistician, this looks extremely troubling. But that statistical error is just the beginning. On a public website where Dr. Mann filed data, McIntyre and McKitrick discovered an intriguing folder titled “BACKTO_1400-CENSORED.” What McIntyre and McKitrick found in the folder was disturbing: Mann’s hockey stick blade was based on a certain type of tree—a bristlecone pine—that, in effect, helped to manufacture the hockey stick.

Remember, the hockey stick shows a relatively stable climate over 900 years, and then a dramatic spike in temperature about 1900, the inference being that man-made emissions are the cause of rising temperatures. So why is the bristlecone pine important? That bristlecone experienced a growth pulse in the Western United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. However, this growth pulse, as the specialist literature has confirmed, was not attributed to temperature. So using those pines, and only those pines, as a proxy for temperature during this period is questionable at best. Even Mann’s co-author has stated that the bristlecone growth pulse is a “mystery.” Because of these obvious problems, McIntyre and McKitrick appropriately excluded the bristlecone data from their calculations. What did they find? Not the Mann hockey stick, to be sure, but a confirmation of the Medieval Warm Period, which Mann’s work had erased. As the CENSORED folder revealed, Mann and his colleagues never reported results obtained from calculations that excluded the bristlecone data. This appears to be a case of selectively using data—that is, if you don’t like the result, remove the offending data until you get the answer you want. As McIntyre and McKitrick explained, “Imagine the irony of this discovery…Mann accused us of selectively deleting North American proxy series. Now it appeared that he had results that were exactly the same as ours, stuffed away in a folder labeled CENSORED.”

McIntyre and McKitrick believe there are additional errors in the Mann hockey stick. To confirm their suspicion, they need additional data from Dr. Mann, including the computer code he used to generate the graph. But Dr. Mann refuses to supply it. As he told the Wall Street Journal, “Giving them the algorithm would be giving into the intimidation tactics that these people are engaged in.”

Just a second: Who are “these people”? And what “intimidation tactics”? Mr. McIntyre and Mr. McKitrick are trying to find the truth. What is Dr. Mann trying to hide? For many scientists, McIntyre and McKitrick’s work is earth-shattering. For example, Professor Richard Muller of the University of California at Berkeley recently wrote in the MIT Technology Review that McIntyre and McKitrick’s findings “hit me like a bombshell, and I suspect it is having the same effect on many others. Suddenly the hockey stick, the poster-child of the global warming community, turns out to be an artifact of poor mathematics.” Dr. Rob van Dorland, of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, and an IPCC lead author, said, “The IPCC made a mistake by only including Mann’s reconstruction and not those of other researchers.” He concluded that unless the error is corrected, it will “seriously damage the work of the IPCC.”

Or consider Dr. Hans von Storch, an IPCC contributing author and internationally renowned expert in climate statistics at Germany’s Center for Coastal Research, who said McIntyre and McKitrick’s work is “entirely valid.” In an interview last October with the German Newspaper Der Spiegel, Dr. von Storch said the Mann hockey stick “contains assumptions that are not permissible. Methodologically it is wrong: rubbish.” He stressed that, “it remains important for science to point out the erroneous nature of the Mann curve. In recent years it has been elevated to the status truth by the UN appointed science body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This handicapped all that research which strives to make a realistic distinction between human influences and climate and natural variability.”

If McIntyre and McKitrick’s work isn’t convincing enough, consider the recent paper published in the Feb. 10 issue of Nature. The paper, authored by a group of Swedish climate researchers, once again undercuts the scientific credibility of the Mann hockey stick. The press release for the study by the Swedish Research Council says, "A new study of climate in the Northern Hemisphere for the past 2000 years shows that natural climate change may be larger than generally thought.”

According to the paper’s authors, the Mann hockey stick does not provide an accurate picture of the last 1,000 years. “The new results,” they wrote, “show an appreciable temperature swing between the 12th and 20th centuries, with a notable cold period around AD 1600. A large part of the 20th century had approximately the same temperature as the 11th and 12th centuries.”

In other words, here’s evidence of the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, demonstrating that climate, long before the burning of fossil fuels, varied considerably over the last 2,000 years. The researchers note that changes in the sun’s output and volcanic eruptions appear to have caused considerable natural variations in the climate system. “The fact that these two climate evolutions,” they contend, “which have been obtained completely independently of each other, are very similar supports the case that climate shows an appreciable natural variability—and that changes in the sun’s output and volcanic eruptions on the Earth may be the cause.”

http://epw.senate.gov/speechitem.cfm?party=rep&id=236307

 

[edward]

If all of the AGW data is flawed and all of the studies uncreible, then I would have to presume that Exxon just wanted to waste the $16 million that they contributed to GW sceptics.

http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/ExxonMobil-GlobalWarming-tobacco.html

 

[Evo]

If all of the AGW data is flawed and all of the studies uncreible, then I would have to presume that Exxon just wanted to waste the $16 million that they contributed to GW sceptics.

http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/ExxonMobil-GlobalWarming-tobacco.html

Edward, do you really believe that environmental groups aren't lobbying and paying for research to back their cause?

There are fanatics and fraud on both sides. I dated a climate scientist and he told me that human pollution is too insignificant to change the world's climate. Pollution can cause problems in limited areas but it is not enough to change the world's climate. People just don't understand what it would take to accomplish something of that scale.

 

[Skyhunter]

Also, Mann had to admit his work was skewed although he wouldn't admit how much.

How's this?

US Senate Commitee on Environment and Public Works



http://epw.senate.gov/speechitem.cfm?party=rep&id=236307

Is that Inohofe's speech?

Now you are going to try and persuade me with a speech from Senator Inhofe.

Here is a debate between him and Barbara Boxer on Larry King live after the famous smackdown.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7u1vfnlqWVQ&mode=related&search=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA9YkEd10ZI&mode=related&search=

Once again, look at what the scientists say about the hockey stick controversey, all the scientists, not a select few or the one who writes op-eds for Sun Myung Moon.

The National Academy of Sciences, and if memory serves me it was at the request of the Senate EPW committee, looked into this and concluded that there were some mistakes made but they were minor in nature and did not change the overall results. I linked it, read it and then maybe you will realize that you are making much ado about nothing.

 

[Skyhunter]

Soon and Baulinas studied over 200 climatology papers in their study involving over 700 scientists. Only 13 of the scientists refuted their work. The other 600 + did not. Let's be complete here.

Still the study was highly discredited in many scientific journals. And is today seen as an attack job on Mann partially funded by, let me see what was that organization, oh yea the American Petroleum Institute.

 

[NileQueen]

Pythagorean

I simply entered Andre as the author and hominem as the subject. You have about two pages of using the ad hominem defense, and you tend to put fearmonger along side it (committing ad hominem while accusing someone of it)

Well there are a lot of people (including scientists whom I would expect to be more impartial) who attack the person rather than discuss the
ideas/opinions being presented

Pythagorean:

I must say though, it was interesting to learn we had horses in Alaska, and I do think the Mammoth was killed off by human hunting. We used to be able to hunt whales too and that was genocide.

Don Grayson evaluated kill sites in North America and his take on it was that there were only about 14 that were viable.

Man and mammoth were not associated in Siberia so the overkill hypothesis falls down there. My view is it is a climate change driven extinction, with massive methane hydrate releases a key factor, but there is a new hypothesis materializing that proposes an airburst by a comet over North America (see AGU conference abstracts May 2007). Conveners of session:
James Kennett, LuAnn Becker, Rick Firestone and Allen West.

We are still hunting whales, that is the Japanese have found a loophole to aggressively go after minke whales. It's reprehensible.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-05/osu-das051607.php

 

[Skyhunter]

If all of the AGW data is flawed and all of the studies uncreible, then I would have to presume that Exxon just wanted to waste the $16 million that they contributed to GW sceptics.

http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/ExxonMobil-GlobalWarming-tobacco.html

Exxon has requested a meeting with UCS to discuss their continued support and funding of junk science. I have not heard whether it happened or not or if it did what the outcome was.

The reality is, that the funding for climate skeptics is drying up, the talking head news/commentary shows don't give them much air time any more (except for maybe Glen Beck) because they have nothing new to say. And repeating old news is just not something the producers will do.

 

[NileQueen]

Still the study was highly discredited in many scientific journals. And is today seen as an attack job on Mann partially funded by, let me see what was that organization, oh yea the American Petroleum Institute.

Let ME see...Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon are Harvard-Smithsonian Center astrophysicists. They point out that "only tree growth record over a single region is used in the SPM reconstruction for the crucial period." This is a legitimate criticism. It's always best to use mutiple proxies to check, balance and strengthen your case.

See: Climate History and the Sun, by Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon, Washington Roundtable on Science and Public Policy, George C. Marshall Institute, June 5, 2001.

Using the extremely lame and tired excuse of the American Petroleum institute does demonstrate a flagrant ad hominem. I guess it is easier to make these trite comments that attack the presenters of ideas, than to discuss the merit
of their ideas.

NQ

 

[edward]

Edward, do you really believe that environmental groups aren't lobbying and paying for research to back their cause?

Environmental groups don't have anywhere near the funding capability that big energy does.

But my point was that if big energy thought there was no GW, why would they have spent that kind of money to discredit it. And yes, Exxon does have it's own environmental scientists and climatologists.

There are fanatics and fraud on both sides. I dated a climate scientist and he told me that human pollution is too insignificant to change the world's climate. Pollution can cause problems in limited areas but it is not enough to change the world's climate. People just don't understand what it would take to accomplish something of that scale.

I have looked closely at both sides and I think the jury is still out on AGW ,but not on GW. Something is melting all of that ice. The worst case AGW scenario is that we would have to switch to clean energy. Sure that would come at a tremendous cost, but it would also create a whole new industry and the jobs that go with it. It also could be done over time taking some of the sting out of the cost. And again I think that the general pollution from fossil fuels worries me the most.

Personally I was a great fan of the late Carl Sagan. He was the first person that I remember mentioning global warming.

Anyway it beats the hell out of worrying about a nuclear winter.

 

[Skyhunter]

As far as your judgments on the scientific community or judgments on AGW? Because if you're saying that you can judge AGW on a lifetime of experience (are you even half a century old?) then you're looking at too small of a sample period.

If you're saying you have more experience in the scientific field and understand the politics well enough, then extrapolate on that in the academic section of PF, tell me about the politics of my future career and academia...

I was referring to my more intimate understanding of the political atmosphere during the Carter/Reagan/Anderson election campaign. It was my first presidential election as an adult. There is no substitute for personal experience. You can ride in a car and watch someone drive a thousand times, but until you do it yourself, you don't know how.

Kirsten was implying that Carter was anti-oil because he did not get money from oil companies. I don't know for certain but I would guess that Jimmy Carter at some point in his career got campaign money from oil companies, the majority of national politicians do.

The campaign really hinged on the Iran hostage crisis.

George H. Bush, Reagans running mate, led a delegation that met with the Iranians and made a deal to have the hostages released...After the election though, not before. And the deal was for weapons, and the money was used to arm the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

Some of the key players in Iran Contra are now back, in the current administration.

 

[phoenixy]

Edward, do you really believe that environmental groups aren't lobbying and paying for research to back their cause?

And what cause would that be? Environmental groups are trying to save lives and preserved a home for our future generation. Unlike certain industry, they are not footing the bills as a mean to generate more bills. Of course, we also have to take into the quality and the quantity of research into account.

I said "trying to save lives" instead of simply "save lives" because some environmental groups can make what I considered as mistakes. As such, they could very well be counter-productive and ended up moving further away from their cause. For example, I have huge issue with Greenpeace's anti-nuclear stance.

There are fanatics and fraud on both sides.

So is evolution VS. creationism, big bang VS. 6000 year old earth, etc. These sorts of "two sides to the story" are only somewhat evenly matched in the political arena, and for the most part, only in USA. In the scientific community the match is not even closed. If we accept that fraud is inherit and cannot be avoided, then it comes down to signal to noise ratio. Perhaps I can stomach more fraud from the skeptic community if it originates more credible and scientific research.

I dated a climate scientist and he told me that human pollution is too insignificant to change the world's climate. Pollution can cause problems in limited areas but it is not enough to change the world's climate. People just don't understand what it would take to accomplish something of that scale.

I can assure you humanity has the mean, the capability, and in the last 50 years, even the desire to terminate all live form on Earth through change in world climate and pollution. Yes, I'm talking about a nuclear winter. It is not that far stretch to imagine that some other non-natural climate-changing method would also exist.


PS: show of hand. Who thinks Thank You for Smoking is an awesome movie of industrial lobbyist VS. health advocate lobbyist?

 

[Skyhunter]

Let ME see...Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon are Harvard-Smithsonian Center astrophysicists. They point out that "only tree growth record over a single region is used in the SPM reconstruction for the crucial period." This is a legitimate criticism. It's always best to use mutiple proxies to check, balance and strengthen your case.

See: Climate History and the Sun, by Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon, Washington Roundtable on Science and Public Policy, George C. Marshall Institute, June 5, 2001.

Using the extremely lame and tired excuse of the American Petroleum institute does demonstrate a flagrant ad hominem. I guess it is easier to make these trite comments that attack the presenters of ideas, than to discuss the merit
of their ideas.

NQ

Sorry, I guess do tend to get a bit hyperbolic.

Criticism is one thing, and accusations of fraud are quite another.

Mann was being accused of fraud, he has been acquitted by his peers and I just get irked when this study is thrown up as exposing Mann, Bradely, and Hughes as frauds, which they are not. The study itself has been widely criticized. That is not to say that it did not raise valid issues, just that their intent, or at least the intent of the API was to discredit Mann and the hockeystick.

Which the study failed to do.

 

[Kirsten-B]

Mann basicly retracted his own study before congress and they still use it in computer models.

 

[Pythagorean]

There are fanatics and fraud on both sides.

Mann was being accused of fraud, he has been acquitted by his peers and I just get irked when this study is thrown up as exposing Mann, Bradely, and Hughes as frauds, which they are not. The study itself has been widely criticized. That is not to say that it did not raise valid issues, just that their intent, or at least the intent of the API was to discredit Mann and the hockeystick.

This is the kind of thing that makes me not even want to bother trying to understand what's going on right now. There's way too much political interest, on both sides. I have definitely seen oil propaganda living in Alaska, without a doubt, so I know oil companies aren't as innocent as people make them out to be sometimes.

Environmental groups don't have anywhere near the funding capability that big energy does.

A general counterargument to that is that this gives environmental groups more support from the masses (voters and certain politicians). With Al Gore involved, you can't really deny that the concept of AWG has just as much political power on the other side (I mean we're here, right, debating it, it's a hot topic, only the fools and the wise people are certain about what's going on, and I'm neither)

So there's a lot of political pressure from both sides on this project, data is going to be slashed, edited, discredited and replaced, while the interpretations of data will always be geared towards political motive if you follow the line of benefits and costs involved.

Don Grayson evaluated kill sites in North America and his take on it was that there were only about 14 that were viable.

Man and mammoth were not associated in Siberia so the overkill hypothesis falls down there. My view is it is a climate change driven extinction, with massive methane hydrate releases a key factor, but there is a new hypothesis materializing that proposes an airburst by a comet over North America (see AGU conference abstracts May 2007). Conveners of session:
James Kennett, LuAnn Becker, Rick Firestone and Allen West.

To be clear, I wasn't making an argument about GW or global population of mammoths. I think that in Alaska, mammoth hunting contributed significantly (as well as harsh temperatures) to local mammoth extinction.

 

[Hurkyl]

But my point was that if big energy thought there was no GW, why would they have spent that kind of money to discredit it. And yes, Exxon does have it's own environmental scientists and climatologists.

If GW was real, why would they have spent that kind of money to discredit it? Which of those reasons fail to apply if GW is not real?

 

[Andre]

Impressive fight here. I guess it confirms that reason will never be able to overcome passion. So we probably have to wait for the moment that we all see that this cycle of natural global warming cycles has ended in 2002 and we can make up for the battle of the coming ice ages hype.

Problem is that from that moment on, there is no incentive left for the masses to have anymore belief in science, that conned them into cutting emissions to prevent global warming. So, there is no reason whatsoever to think green, they are not going to be dragged into it anymore. What left is pure survival in a dire energy crises following the folly and climate science will be dead.

 

[NileQueen]

Pythagorean


To be clear, I wasn't making an argument about GW or global population of mammoths. I think that in Alaska, mammoth hunting contributed significantly (as well as harsh temperatures) to local mammoth extinction.

Do you have a reference? What is your source for this view?

 

[Andre]

Not a strawman, a poor choice of words.

You are claiming that there is no net positive feedback evident in the ice core data. I don't believe you to be qualified to make that claim.

This has been addressed in the appropriate thread.

https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=162192