News What if AGW is Wrong? Implications & Possible Consequences

[xxChrisxx]

Somewhat true, the reason the debate over how much humans have effected it has to do mostly with what data we decide to include... I have seen some reports saying as low as 0.28% and others say 5%(from skeptics)... Here is a good article on what's occurring and it's broken down so it's quite easy to understand, even if you don't like the numbers:

The only reason I (and most scientists/engineers) am reluctant to say hard numbers without having it backed up first, is that even if you say this is really unrealiable data we are basing the numbers on. People will come back and kick you that the number is wrong, and rub it in your face. Even though you explicitly stated it's unreliable.

It's best to to say nothing, that way no one can comeback out of context and try to smear you to the uneducated.

 

[Mark44]

Of course not. Anyone can read and understand something.

But can this "anyone" read and understand the chemistry, physics, statistics, and so on that back up the study? I doubt this very much, even if limited to college graduates.

But when you want an informed opinion on something, you go to an expert.

That's true in general, but it doesn't take an expert in climatology to tell when an expert is using questionable or invalid methodologies. Climate science is such a broad field that even the experts can't be counted on. For example, the statistical methodology behind Michael Mann's "hockey stick" graph of 1998 (an adaptation of work done by Lonnie Thompson) was so flawed that it has been completely discredited in most quarters. McIntyre and McKitrick and

Basically the less you kow about the subject you are more likely to be wrong.

That 'petition' was just of general people with a degree and should not be held as evidence that there is no generally accepted view amogst climate scientists beucase of it. I'm sure you can find just as many people with a general degree that are proponents of AGW.

So should we just take a vote? That's not the way science works. If an "expert" publishes a paper and a non-expert raises a genuine concern about the validity of the result, the concern should be addressed at face value. If the criticism is valid, it should be immaterial that the critic has or doesn't have a degree in that field, or recent papers, or gets grants from a government or private enterprise, or whatever.

However! That 'petition' had less than 12% of people who's degrees are in a relevant subject and are therefore likely to be in active research of the climate (incidentally only 0.01% of the people on the list are climatologists). Other links and polls have show far more climate scientists who are proponents of global warming.

Many of the links shouw that 97% of people actively engaged in climate change research are proponents of AGW.

A possible reason is that a large share of those folks are getting grants from government entities that are anxious to show results consistent with AGW to continue getting grants...

 

[Sorry!]

Mark44, I have been requesting these reports ad naseum. No one has produced them people seem to be highly convinced they do exist however (by skeptics showing geniuine concerns which are valid.); I have read many, many skeptic papers and I have to say they either address a small portion of GW (for the 'real' skeptics) or they are just so blatantly wrong that they do not even deserve to be addressed.

However if you have a paper in mind please... enlighten.

 

[Andre]

Maybe try this thread

 

[Bystander]

Leaving aside the actual specifics of the argument pro and anti agw, i was wondering how face will be saved (by politcians and scientists) in the event that agw is falsified or shown to have been highly exagerrated?

Politicians? "We just listened to what the scientific community told us. You can't blame us if they don't know what they're doing."

Scientists? "I'm not a climatologist; how am I supposed to know they had no clue what they were talking about?" (Lot of that in the thread)

Is the public going to buy the "not my department" excuse? Depends on the nature of the hypothetical errors exposed in the hypothetical situation you're pondering; bad physics, sloppy use of the meteorological record, and excessive appeals to unknown factors that should be caught in any general check of physical consistency of the GW conjectures are probably going to reflect very poorly on the scientific community at large.

IF agw is shown to be wrong then there are going to be a lot of "told you so" and serious recriminations are going to take place across the political and scientific specturm.

Political venue? Under the rug with a minimum of fuss --- a few public disavowals from the more vocal types.

Scientific community? Management will evade the chopping block --- people in the labs who made honest efforts to report their measurements and not overstate the significance or consequence of those findings? May God have mercy on their souls. It's so damned difficult to assign responsibility for wild claims made in executive summaries.

I wonder if the more vehement agw community has thought through the implications and possible consequences of labelleing all sceptics (including many scientific colleagues) as "flat-earthers" or "denialists".

But i think the worst consequences if agw is proved without merit will be a huge luddite backlash against science in general. That would be a tragedy.

"Luddite?" Nah --- John Q. is going to react in proportion to the quantity of tax money squandered on demonstrably hopeless alternate energy schemes, cost of living increases due to cap and trade, and overall decline in standard of living by chopping off the people who are most obviously (to him in the hypothetical circumstance) lying to him --- the scientists (Them as had credibility and now don't look much worse than those who never had credibility --- the politicians).

 

[Sorry!]

Maybe try this thread

Still sticking to the wegman report huh?

 

[Andre]

as I stick to the fact that water boils at 100 degrees celsius. Just read the thread.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Global Warming
A half-act play by Jimmy Snyder
The part of science is played by xxChrisxx, the part of the Public is played by Clint Eastwood. The part of Jimmy's wife is played by Meryl Streep. Jimmy Snyder plays himself.

Scene I
Jimmy gives his wife a toe-curling kiss and heads off to work.

Scene II
Science turns the door handle of the Public's house.
Public: Don't try it till you've knocked it.
Science knocks on the door.
Public: What do you want punk? I was taking a nap but now my mood is down 3 points out of 10 and its 90% because of you.
Science: You have to turn down your thermostat.
Public: Why? I keep it at just the temperature that I like.
Science: If you don't turn it down you'll die.
Public: If I turn it down 10 degrees, there's a 30% chance I'll freeze to death.
Science: But 141 climatologists have voted on it.
Public: Voted on what?
Science: Global warming.
Public: Never heard of it. What is it?
Science: The globe has been warming since before the 1800s and it's partly your fault.
Public: How much warmer?
Science: Stop bashing science.
Public: How much warmer?
Science: Well I don't mean to insult you, but if you know this little about it then why am I even bothering to deal with you?
Public: How much warmer?
Science: You can research it yourself.
Public: How much warmer?
Science: Why should I do your legwork for you?
Public: How much warmer?
Science: .8 degree days.
Public: How much my fault?
Science: Actually, we haven't the slightest idea.
Public: Well, a man's got to know his limitations.
Science: We don't need to convince you of anything. You live in a country where the politicians do as they please with no concern for your opinion. We'll push this through somehow.
Public: Make my day.

Scene III
Jimmy returns from work and gives his wife a toe-curling kiss.

 

[xxChrisxx]

But can this "anyone" read and understand the chemistry, physics, statistics, and so on that back up the study? I doubt this very much, even if limited to college graduates.
That's true in general, but it doesn't take an expert in climatology to tell when an expert is using questionable or invalid methodologies. Climate science is such a broad field that even the experts can't be counted on. For example, the statistical methodology behind Michael Mann's "hockey stick" graph of 1998 (an adaptation of work done by Lonnie Thompson) was so flawed that it has been completely discredited in most quarters. McIntyre and McKitrick and

So should we just take a vote? That's not the way science works. If an "expert" publishes a paper and a non-expert raises a genuine concern about the validity of the result, the concern should be addressed at face value. If the criticism is valid, it should be immaterial that the critic has or doesn't have a degree in that field, or recent papers, or gets grants from a government or private enterprise, or whatever.

You raise valid points. If you've read all my posts I've said you should not blindly eccept what people tell you. Checks and balances should be done, anyone found to be dishonest should be strung up by their nutsack.

However two scientists from different backgrounds both look at the same data, and come to different conclusions, (after checks that nothing malicious or unintentional errors have been makde on both sides) Who's conclusion do you trust?

It's most sensible to trust the conclusion of the person who is the most expert in the field.

At some point along the line, you have to just accept something and trust someone. Otherwise it becomes impractical to do anything new. This is what the process of peer review is for, to make sure people aren't getting dishonest/poor material through. It also allows a forum that corrections can be made for erroneous data. There was a correction paper to Michael Mann et al's work.

A possible reason is that a large share of those folks are getting grants from government entities that are anxious to show results consistent with AGW to continue getting grants...

You are making it sound like a conspiricy. That they are out do be on the gravy train and nothing else. Some may be, but 97% of climate scientists are unlikely to be ALL dishonest and trying to dupe the ENTIRE world. It's a massive amount of people to keep hushed up purely to get some research money.

 

[xxChrisxx]

Global Warming
A half-act play by Jimmy Snyder
The part of science is played by xxChrisxx, the part of the Public is played by Clint Eastwood. The part of Jimmy's wife is played by Meryl Streep. Jimmy Snyder plays himself.

Scene I
Jimmy gives his wife a toe-curling kiss and heads off to work.

Scene II
Science turns the door handle of the Public's house.
Public: Don't try it till you've knocked it.
Science knocks on the door.
Public: What do you want punk? I was taking a nap but now my mood is down 3 points out of 10 and its 90% because of you.
Science: You have to turn down your thermostat.
Public: Why? I keep it at just the temperature that I like.
Science: If you don't turn it down you'll die.
Public: If I turn it down 10 degrees, there's a 30% chance I'll freeze to death.
Science: But 141 climatologists have voted on it.
Public: Voted on what?
Science: Global warming.
Public: Never heard of it. What is it?
Science: The globe has been warming since before the 1800s and it's partly your fault.
Public: How much warmer?
Science: Stop bashing science.
Public: How much warmer?
Science: Well I don't mean to insult you, but if you know this little about it then why am I even bothering to deal with you?
Public: How much warmer?
Science: You can research it yourself.
Public: How much warmer?
Science: Why should I do your legwork for you?
Public: How much warmer?
Science: .8 degree days.
Public: How much my fault?
Science: Actually, we haven't the slightest idea.
Public: Well, a man's got to know his limitations.
Science: We don't need to convince you of anything. You live in a country where the politicians do as they please with no concern for your opinion. We'll push this through somehow.
Public: Make my day.

Scene III
Jimmy returns from work and gives his wife a toe-curling kiss.

Very creative. Well done.

 

[xxChrisxx]

as I stick to the fact that water boils at 100 degrees celsius. Just read the thread.

Not always :P

I've not read a paper relating this to GW (i assume its that report you linked in the thread, not read that yet), but I can think of 2 conditions where water won't boil at 100c.

They probably won't be related to the link, but just as a note that water doesn't always boil at 100c.

 

[Sorry!]

Would it be bad if I called people on the forum 'idiots'?

 

[Andre]

Not always :P

Anyway, if you read the thread you will notice that the AGW mindguards go to a great length to discredit Wegman with the most impossible insinuations whereas North, the chair of the NAS panel actually admitted in the congress hearing to have found the same 'misgivings' as Wegman. Yet Sorry! tried again.

 

[xxChrisxx]

Anyway, if you read the thread you will notice that the AGW mindguards go to a great length to discredit Wegman with the most impossible insinuations whereas North, the chair of the NAS panel actually admitted in the congress hearing to have found the same 'misgivings' as Wegman. Yet Sorry! tried again.

So are you saying that water always boils at 100c? Yes or no?

EDIT: removed needless insults to some posts in other thread.

 

[Andre]

Why always the strawman attempts, but if that's the best you can do.

 

[Sorry!]

Anyway, if you read the thread you will notice that the AGW mindguards go to a great length to discredit Wegman with the most impossible insinuations whereas North, the chair of the NAS panel actually admitted in the congress hearing to have found the same 'misgivings' as Wegman. Yet Sorry! tried again.

How come when you or other 'skeptics' request information on here I give direct data results and when I request information the only person to post anything is you and it's to the wegman report?

Like look at jimmys post... what value do they have? He completely skipped over my posts addressed to him and went off on his own making random jokes, which I personally didn't even find remotely funny... The reason I didn't post results to you jimmy was because I asked you multiple times to go to the Earth sciences forum, are you too arrogant to comply like really, threads have already been locked because of posting of science in the politics forum. Just live with it, there are answers out there, you're not the slightest bit interested in getting them, you just want to come on here and needlessly make jokes and bash... Here I thought this was an academic forum.

 

[xxChrisxx]

Why always the strawman attempts, but if that's the best you can do.

It's not a strawman as I am not making about point about this thread or global warming with the question, simply interested (on an unrelated note) if you believe that water always boils at 100c?You are quick to try and point out fallicies (falsely in this case), yet are massively guity of them yourself. The worst being constantly moving the goalposts. Also you still haven't responded to the pact we acutally posted names of real and proper scientists who are proponents of global warming.

You constuct pathetically feeble arguments backed up with dubious and/or non scientific links, based on stubborness and possibly even ignorance, then ignore any credible and evidence backed responce. But immediately repond with a 'clever' (or so you think) retort to stuff that is benign or easy to dispute.

When you are confornted with a well reasoned responce, you repond with insults, and sweeping generalisations that make you guilty of the very 'groupthink' you seem to hold so dear.

 

[Mark44]

You raise valid points. If you've read all my posts I've said you should not blindly eccept what people tell you. Checks and balances should be done, anyone found to be dishonest should be strung up by their nutsack.

However two scientists from different backgrounds both look at the same data, and come to different conclusions, (after checks that nothing malicious or unintentional errors have been makde on both sides) Who's conclusion do you trust?

Whose conclusion do I trust? Maybe neither. If both are looking at the same data, and yet reach different conclusions, then at least one of them is wrong.

It's most sensible to trust the conclusion of the person who is the most expert in the field.

This is generally true, but not always. Galileo comes to mind as someone who wasn't willing to accept on blind faith the experts in the field of astronomy.

At some point along the line, you have to just accept something and trust someone. Otherwise it becomes impractical to do anything new. This is what the process of peer review is for, to make sure people aren't getting dishonest/poor material through. It also allows a forum that corrections can be made for erroneous data. There was a correction paper to Michael Mann et al's work.

I'm aware of the correction to Mann's work, which likely wouldn't have happened without the interloping by McKitrick and McIntyre, who you would probably call non-experts, being merely a mathematician and economist.

I agree on the purpose of peer review, but with a field so heavily politicized as climate studies, we are starting to see some evidence of pressuring journals to not publish papers that don't go along with the current received wisdom - I'm referring to comments by Phil Jones, erstwhile director of CRU East Anglia. And no, I don't believe his comments were "taken out of context."

You are making it sound like a conspiricy. That they are out do be on the gravy train and nothing else. Some may be, but 97% of climate scientists are unlikely to be ALL dishonest and trying to dupe the ENTIRE world. It's a massive amount of people to keep hushed up purely to get some research money.

First off, I don't believe your figure of 97%. Can you justify it for me? Second, if your livelihood comes from getting grant money to keep working, there are a lot of people whose (BTW who's is a contraction of who is) moral scruples might be strong, but not quite strong enough to take the place of a steady paycheck. It has happened before - Trofim Lysenko, director of Soviet biology under Stalin. Lysenko rejected Mendelian genetics. How many Soviet biologists were willing to call BS?

When the director of what is probably the dominant climate research facility for IPCC reports talks about exerting pressure on journals to freeze out researchers with contrary opinions, and marginalizing "nonbelievers" by calling them "deniers" in a not-so-subtle attempt to equate them with Holocaust deniers, that does start to sound like a conspiracy to me. Add to that the destruction of data underlying papers, the refusal to release data three years after FoI requests, and fudging the data, including a case where James Hansen at NASA GISS replaced an entire set of October temp data with the data from September to show how hot it was getting.

 

[xxChrisxx]

First off, I don't believe your figure of 97%. Can you justify it for me?

Read the thread.
Check the links.
It's[STRIKE] like spoonfeeding a bloody baby [/STRIKE] a tad annoying having to constantly repost links and evidence becuase people won't do the above.

PLEASE NOTE THAT ALL THAT IS BEING CLAIMED BY THE 97% IS THAT THE WORLD IS WARMING. THERE IS DEBATE AND THEREFORE ALTERING NUMBERS ON THE EFFECT THAT HUMANS HAVE. This is typically 75%+ among climate scientist.

http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf
http://stats.org/stories/2008/global_warming_survey_apr23_08.html
http://www.usnews.com/articles/news...racks-scientists-growing-climate-concern.htmlOf course you can just say that they are saying it to get funding, but that is merely conjecture, and there is no responce to it.

 

[sylas]

When the director of what is probably the dominant climate research facility for IPCC reports talks about exerting pressure on journals to freeze out researchers with contrary opinions, and marginalizing "nonbelievers" by calling them "deniers" in a not-so-subtle attempt to equate them with Holocaust deniers, that does start to sound like a conspiracy to me. Add to that the destruction of data underlying papers, the refusal to release data three years after FoI requests, and fudging the data, including a case where James Hansen at NASA GISS replaced an entire set of October temp data with the data from September to show how hot it was getting.

Each of these points would be worth an entire thread in itself, but for what it is worth here's what I think you are referring to.

• The journals issue was not about freezing out contrary views as such; but addressing problems with the peer review process. The issue is real; and acknowledged by editors of the journal in question -- depending on which case you mean. The emails mention one journal that some of the scientists thought was subverted, and they spoke of encouraging their colleagues not to publish there. There's good reason for that. The seed of the email discussion blew up shortly afterwards with about half the editorial board resigning over the way review was being managed and the chief editor recognized the need to fix shoddy review practice. So another way to look at it is a small journal being subverted to get papers published that would not pass a legitimate review on their own merits. Working through all the ins and outs would take a while, and such discussions in web forums often generate more heat than light as everyone piles on with an opinion based not so much on the specifics of the journal and its editorial practice as preconceived ideas about what you think of climate science in general.
• Data was not destroyed. Some of the records provided to the CRU were discarded after being incorporated into a large master database of underlying data; they were not originals. The original date remains as always curated by the various international meteorological bodies who own it, and made data available to the CRU. This is not actually unusual, and in fact it is sometimes required. See, for example, http://badc.nerc.ac.uk/data/surface/met-nerc_agreement.html. The literature record shows that the CRU has done a number of repeats of the calculations from the underlying data, and a number of other groups have replicated and confirmed their results in the conventional scientific sense of the work, by obtaining raw data for themselves and repeating an independent analysis.
• The data that was refused under FOI requests was not legally ABLE to be given under FOI or anything else. It remains not released today. This is basically a small proportion of the underlying data from weather stations that is owned by other bodies and subject to binding non disclosure agreements. You don't need FOI to get enough raw data to replicate the basic result independently; it is freely available and has been for years.
• The claims that anyone replaced October data by September in order to show how hot is was getting is ridiculous. What actually happened is that there was an error in data given to NASA by NOAA. The errors occurred in the generation of the raw data files used by NASA, not in the analysis by the NASA group. The incorrect results were up less than 24 hours; and the correction required was for NOAA to generate a new file of raw data. Hansen's group at NASA didn't introduce the error and didn't fix it either. All their stuff worked; they just had to wait a bit while NOAA corrected a snafu in how data was accumulated from all the national meteorological bodies. More detail at Mountains and molehills by Gavin Schmidt.

 

[Count Iblis]

AGW is true. So, what if it is wrong? The statement A implies B is always true, regardless of what B says, if A is false. So, the statement that says that: "AGW is wrong implies that the Moon is made out of green cheese" would be a correct statement.

 

[Mark44]

The claims that anyone replaced October data by September in order to show how hot is was getting is ridiculous. What actually happened is that there was an error in data given to NASA by NOAA. The errors occurred in the generation of the raw data files used by NASA, not in the analysis by the NASA group. The incorrect results were up less than 24 hours; and the correction required was for NOAA to generate a new file of raw data. Hansen's group at NASA didn't introduce the error and didn't fix it either. All their stuff worked; they just had to wait a bit while NOAA corrected a snafu in how data was accumulated from all the national meteorological bodies. More detail at Mountains and molehills by Gavin Schmidt.

Here's another take, from the Daily Telegraph, Nov. 16, 2008, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/...-world-has-never-seen-such-freezing-heat.html.
The world has never seen such freezing heat
A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.

This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.

So what explained the anomaly? GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.

The error was so glaring that when it was reported on the two blogs - run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, the Canadian computer analyst who won fame for his expert debunking of the notorious "hockey stick" graph - GISS began hastily revising its figures. This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS claimed to have discovered a new "hotspot" in the Arctic - in a month when satellite images were showing Arctic sea-ice recovering so fast from its summer melt that three weeks ago it was 30 per cent more extensive than at the same time last year.

A GISS spokesman lamely explained that the reason for the error in the Russian figures was that they were obtained from another body, and that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over the data it was supplied with. This is an astonishing admission: the figures published by Dr Hansen's institute are not only one of the four data sets that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) relies on to promote its case for global warming, but they are the most widely quoted, since they consistently show higher temperatures than the others.

If there is one scientist more responsible than any other for the alarm over global warming it is Dr Hansen, who set the whole scare in train back in 1988 with his testimony to a US Senate committee chaired by Al Gore. Again and again, Dr Hansen has been to the fore in making extreme claims over the dangers of climate change. (He was recently in the news here for supporting the Greenpeace activists acquitted of criminally damaging a coal-fired power station in Kent, on the grounds that the harm done to the planet by a new power station would far outweigh any damage they had done themselves.)

Yet last week's latest episode is far from the first time Dr Hansen's methodology has been called in question. In 2007 he was forced by Mr Watts and Mr McIntyre to revise his published figures for US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s, as he had claimed, but the 1930s.

Another of his close allies is Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, who recently startled a university audience in Australia by claiming that global temperatures have recently been rising "very much faster" than ever, in front of a graph showing them rising sharply in the past decade. In fact, as many of his audience were aware, they have not been rising in recent years and since 2007 have dropped.

Dr Pachauri, a former railway engineer with no qualifications in climate science, may believe what Dr Hansen tells him. But whether, on the basis of such evidence, it is wise for the world's governments to embark on some of the most costly economic measures ever proposed, to remedy a problem which may actually not exist, is a question which should give us all pause for thought.

 

[xxChrisxx]

Here's another take, from the Daily Telegraph, Nov. 16, 2008, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/...-world-has-never-seen-such-freezing-heat.html.

The above is ever so funny when you realize that the Telegraph is the crappest broadsheet there is. Run by old, ultra conservative people who should very well be dead, but are staying alive just so they can be outraged.

The author (Christopher Booker) of that atricle wouldn't know science if it hit him in the face. Let's face it you are talking about a man who said asbestos is identical to talcum power and poses no human health risk..

or as the old joke form yes prime minister goes:

"Don't tell me about the press, i know exactly who reads the papers!
The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country; The Guardian is read by people who think they OUGHT to run the country; The Times is read by people who actuall DO run the country; the Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country: the Financial Times is read by people who own the country; the Morning Star is read by people who think the country should be run by another country and the Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it IS"

"Prime Minister, what about the poeple who read the Sun?"
"Sun readers don't care who runs the country as long as she's got big t*ts" (reference to the page 3 girl)

Seriously the gaurdian or independent is probably the best paper in the uk, for acutal content and good factual reporting.

someone should make a paper that just lists the days facts. then the reader can make what they will.

 

[Al68]

AGW is true. So, what if it is wrong? The statement A implies B is always true, regardless of what B says, if A is false. So, the statement that says that: "AGW is wrong implies that the Moon is made out of green cheese" would be a correct statement.

Huh? Seriously? So my being the best lover on Earth implies that the Taliban is awesome? Correct?

 

[sylas]

Here's another take, from the Daily Telegraph, Nov. 16, 2008, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/...-world-has-never-seen-such-freezing-heat.html.

Yes, you can see this being spun in all kinds of ways. How are you going to decide what to believe about it? That's a serious question, and it may be worth talking about it further. I'm not sure. I'm not interested in just trading opinions, but I may be able to provide some relevant background information. I think this newspaper article is pretty dreadful even given the low quality of science reporting often found in newspapers.

In the following, the indented text is taken from this article.

"A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming."​

No, it didn't. The blunder wasn't "scientific" so much as data management, and it is not actually all that unusual to have problems like this show up in large data collection projects. It's a bug quickly found and quickly fixed. The various groups involved release preliminary data which is plainly indicated as preliminary and not final. This frequently helps in locating glitches like this one.

"This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years."​

Oops. The article is mixing up regional and global numbers. It's quite usual for any given month to have some parts of the world below average and others above average; not surprising at all. October 2008 was a bit below average in the USA, and well above average for the global anomaly. (Using revised figures, 2008 was globally the sixth hottest October ever, beaten only by 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2009. 2007 was very close behind.)

The error was so glaring that when it was reported on the two blogs - run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, the Canadian computer analyst who won fame for his expert debunking of the notorious "hockey stick" graph - GISS began hastily revising its figures.​

Actually, multiple reports came in from various people. GISS quickly identified the reason for the error, and could not revise their figures because the error was not in their numbers. They waited until NOAA fixed the data files, and then recalculated.

This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS claimed to have discovered a new "hotspot" in the Arctic ...​

I have no idea what this is talking about. There is indeed a hotspot in the Arctic; it is not new and it is real.

Cheers -- sylas

 

[yuiop]

Does anyone else think it is odd that despite increasing atmospheric CO2 over the last ten years and the resultant runaway greenhouse effect, that the globally hottest year ever (recorded) was 1998?

 

[sylas]

Does anyone else think it is odd that despite increasing atmospheric CO2 over the last ten years and the resultant runaway greenhouse effect, that the globally hottest year ever (recorded) was 1998?

It is not actually a "runaway" effect. It's just a regular ongoing warming effect, and the rate of warming in recent decades is something 0.15 to 0.2 C per decade. On top of this there are all kinds of other effects on surface temperature from year to year. In 1998 there was an exceptionally strong El Nino which tends to raise temperatures above the main trend. So no; it isn't actually particularly surprising at all. If you look at the warming trend since 1975 you can see that you get a certain amount of variation up and down, and so it is usually the case that the hottest year on record is a few years into the past.

If you use the HadCRUT dataset, for example, records were set on 1941, 1944, 1980, 1981, 1983, 1990, 1995, 1997, 1998. The Met Office has noted that unless the current El Nino wanes or we get a large volcanic eruption, then 2010 is reasonably likely to be a new record as well.

Since the hottest years are all fairly close, to less than the measurement accuracy, you can get years ranked differently with different datasets. In HadCRUT, the hottest ten years on record are 1997, 1998, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2009 (anticipated).

Using the GISS dataset, 2005 and 2007 were both hotter than 1998. This is primarily because of how the two algorithms handle areas with limited data. HadCRUT just ignores it; GISS applies some extrapolation from the limited data. This mainly affects the Arctic, where warming is particularly strong, so the GISS dataset gives slightly warmer values in recent times; enough to give new records. The correlation of the two sets is very high; the graphs look very similar.

With the GISS data, the ten hottest years are the same, except that 2008 replaces 1997.

Or you could use data from NCDC, which is roughly in between. In this case, 2005 is the hottest, followed by 1998. The ten hottest years are as for the GISS dataset.

Cheers -- sylas

 

[Mark44]

I replied earlier to this post, but what I posted didn't get into this thread for some reason, so I am going to give it another shot.

Yes, you can see this being spun in all kinds of ways. How are you going to decide what to believe about it? That's a serious question, and it may be worth talking about it further. I'm not sure. I'm not interested in just trading opinions, but I may be able to provide some relevant background information. I think this newspaper article is pretty dreadful even given the low quality of science reporting often found in newspapers.

In the following, the indented text is taken from this article.

"A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming."​

No, it didn't. The blunder wasn't "scientific" so much as data management, and it is not actually all that unusual to have problems like this show up in large data collection projects. It's a bug quickly found and quickly fixed. The various groups involved release preliminary data which is plainly indicated as preliminary and not final. This frequently helps in locating glitches like this one.

Do you know for a fact that what events transpired as you describe? It seems to me that NASA got caught with their pants down. If this were not NASA and James Hansen, I would be more likely to give them the benefit of the doubt, but Hansen has been so vociferous in his opinions that I am less likely to do so.

"This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years."​

Oops. The article is mixing up regional and global numbers. It's quite usual for any given month to have some parts of the world below average and others above average; not surprising at all. October 2008 was a bit below average in the USA, and well above average for the global anomaly. (Using revised figures, 2008 was globally the sixth hottest October ever, beaten only by 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2009. 2007 was very close behind.)

The article wasn't discussing just a single region, but rather a number of regions that make up a broad swath of the globe - the Great Plains in the US, China, the Alps, and New Zealand.

As to your statement that "2008 was globally the sixth hottest October ever...," there's a long time in "ever." Without some qualification your statement is patently untrue. If "ever" means in the last 200 years, then maybe I buy it, but there seems to be some controversy about whether it was warmer in the 1930s than in the decade including 1998. There is also some evidence to show that the Medieval Warming Period was at least as warm as this decade or the past one.

The error was so glaring that when it was reported on the two blogs - run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, the Canadian computer analyst who won fame for his expert debunking of the notorious "hockey stick" graph - GISS began hastily revising its figures.​

Actually, multiple reports came in from various people. GISS quickly identified the reason for the error, and could not revise their figures because the error was not in their numbers. They waited until NOAA fixed the data files, and then recalculated.

This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS claimed to have discovered a new "hotspot" in the Arctic ...​

I have no idea what this is talking about. There is indeed a hotspot in the Arctic; it is not new and it is real.

I agree with you about the Arctic hotspot being real and not new. I found a document by Madhav L Khandekar titled Questioning the Global Warming Science:
An Annotated bibliography of recent peer-reviewed papers. Chapter 4 deals with Arctic and Antarctic temperatures from the Holocene to the present. It starts off as follows:

"The climate of the Arctic and the Antarctic is complex and not fully
understood at this time. The Arctic basin is especially more complex due to
the presence of Arctic ocean and the Arctic pack ice which has varied in its
extent and thickness considerably during the entire Holocene period, from
about 11000 cal yr BP to the present time. It is now widely accepted that the
Arctic Ocean was almost free of ice where there is permanent pack ice at
present and that sailing activity was reported in that region during or about
1000 AD."

Khandekar lists some of the key papers that focus on this area.
a. “First survey of Antarctic sub-ice shelf sediment reveals mid-
Holocene ice shelf retreat” C J Pudsey & J Evans Geology 29
(2001) p.787-790
b. “Antarctic climate cooling and terrestrial ecosystem response”
P Doran et al Nature online 13 January 2002
(DOI:10.1038/nature 710)
c. “Variability and trends of air temperature and pressure in the
maritime Arctic, 1875-2000” I V Polyakov et al J ournal of
Climate 16 (2003) p. 2067-2077
d. “Holocene climate variability” P A Mayewski et al Quaternary
Research 62 (2004) p. 243-255
e. Global warming & the Greenland ice sheets” P Chylek J E Box
& G Lesins Climatic Change (2004) 63 p. 201-221
f. “A multi-proxy lacustrine record of Holocene climate change
on northeast Baffin Island, Arctic Canada” Quaternary
Research (2006) 65 p. 431-442
g. “Greenland warming of 1920-1930 and 1990-2005” P Chylek
M K Dubey & G Lesins Geophysical Research Letters 33
(2006) L11707
h. “Extending Greenland temperature records into the late
eighteenth century” B M Winter et al J of Geophysical
Research 111 (2006) D11105
i. “Ice shelf history from petrographic and foraminiferal evidence,
Northeast Antarctic Peninsula” C J Pudsey et al Quaternary
Science Reviews 25 (2006) p. 2357-2379

Cheers -- sylas

 

[sylas]

Do you know for a fact that what events transpired as you describe? It seems to me that NASA got caught with their pants down. If this were not NASA and James Hansen, I would be more likely to give them the benefit of the doubt, but Hansen has been so vociferous in his opinions that I am less likely to do so.

Yes, I do. The facts are certainly as I have stated them. It is not in any doubt; even your description of what was wrong (duplicated figures for Sept appearing in Oct) are enough to show it was an input to the NASA processing. The file that was wrong is one of the standard GHCN files I've used myself from in the past. It was v2.mean (and v2.mean_adj) available at this ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/v2/. This is a GHCN file maintained by the NCDC based on raw data from all over the world; NASA uses this as input. It may have been NCDC processing of data from the stations in Siberia; or possibly some defect in what was sent to NCDC. I haven't checked that at length. But it was definitely at the NCDC end.

Whether someone is "vociferous" or not has no bearing whatsoever on who made the error; that would certainly be letting prejudice override sober judgment.

As to your statement that "2008 was globally the sixth hottest October ever...," there's a long time in "ever." Without some qualification your statement is patently untrue. If "ever" means in the last 200 years, then maybe I buy it, but there seems to be some controversy about whether it was warmer in the 1930s than in the decade including 1998. There is also some evidence to show that the Medieval Warming Period was at least as warm as this decade or the past one.

I do indeed mean sixth hottest October ever measured directly; my apologies for the lack of clarity. There were almost certainly hotter Octobers in the most recent interglacial, around 120 thousand years ago; evidence indicates pretty reliably that global temperatures have not yet reached that level.

There's no controversy about 1930s; I suspect you may be mixing up measurements for the USA and the global measurements. 1934 and 1998 are almost a dead heat for hottest year in the continental USA; but that is strictly a regional measure. There's no such ambiguity in global measurements; the 1930s were globally well below the present.

Temperatures for the MWP were warm in Europe; but data suggests that it was not as strong in other parts of the globe. We can't look at individual years back then, and I was indeed only speaking of the times for which we have direct measurements. But as it turns out, it is most unlikely that global values in the MWP were that high; though it is not impossible given the uncertainties of proxy temperature measurements for the past.

Cheers -- sylas

 

[mugaliens]

You missed the point: 1998 was the hottest year on record, yet despite continued CO2 increases over the last decade we haven't had one that's been hotter.

 

[NeoDevin]

 

[drankin]

LOL, that isn't the point. We should aspire to just that but without the false premise. Contrived fear is not a good motivator. It hurts the cause.

 

[sylas]

You missed the point: 1998 was the hottest year on record, yet despite continued CO2 increases over the last decade we haven't had one that's been hotter.

Not sure if this was a response to my post just above. With respect... that is not "the" point; and I noted anyway in [post=2489341]msg #127[/post] that actually 2005 was hotter than 1998.

You only get 1998 as the hottest year if you use the HadCRUT3 dataset, which is very close to what you get from other datasets but has a small bias because it omits temperatures from the Arctic, where warming is strongest. If you use data from GISS, or the NCDC, which do a more complete global estimate, 2005 comes out hotter.

It is also statistically invalid to focus on individual outlier years. 1998 was very hot because of a strong El Nino effect; the strongest ever seen. 2008 was cooler because of a La Nina effect. It was the coolest year of the 21st century; but still hotter than every year on record prior to 1997. These are all local short term variations. 2009 is already back up again, as the fifth hottest year on record, beaten only by 1998, 2002, 2003 and 2005... all of which are El Nino years.

There's a new El Nino just starting up now; that's the major reason for the recovery in temperature in 2009 from 2008, and it means that 2010 is very good odds to be the new hottest year on record, quite handily; unless the El Nino stalls for some reason, or there's a big volcanic eruption. We'll have to wait and see.

The major issue is that temperature time series include both trend, and local short term variations. The more variation you have the less confidence you have in inferring the trend. The longer the time span you consider, the more confidence you have in inferring the trend.

It turns out that 11 or 12 years of data is just not enough for confidence limits on trend to tell you whether the underlying trend has slowed down, or even accelerated.

If you actually calculate a trend from 1998 up to now, or even up to the 2008 low point, you really do still get a positive value, for increasing temperatures. HadCRUT3 gives the lowest trend, other sets give a larger trend, but they all show an increase.

The real problem is not the trend value, but that only 11 or 12 years is not enough to actually tell if the trend is real. You cannot say whether the trend is slowing down or even speeding up. The short term variations over that time span are too great to identify a clear trend.

15 years is about what you need for the confidence limits to be sufficient to even tell that there is a warming trend at all; and 30 years is about what you need to figure out whether the trend is speeding up or slowing down.

Cheers -- sylas

 

[Sorry!]

You missed the point: 1998 was the hottest year on record, yet despite continued CO2 increases over the last decade we haven't had one that's been hotter.

I don't see the problem. In fact I remember sylas going over this in detail, not sure if it's this thread or another. So in that case I don't see any need to go into depth.

We are predicting future years which may reach higher temperatures than 1998 in the not so distant future. Aside from that, I'm quite sure we have had years with higher temperatures. Most important thing to note is the other variables which impacted the 1998 temperatures. Don't be fooled into thinking that since CO2 is a variable that it's the leading and only variable.

EDIT: noticed sylas posted before I did, I was typing and trying to play poker same time

 

[Nebula815]

IMO, what the argument really should be is, "What if AGW is wrong and we waste all this money on things that are pointless when we could have spent it on other very important issues where we could have effected real change."

AGW, right or wrong, right now is nothing more than an excuse for the Third World to enact a huge transfer of wealth from the West to itself and for governments to enact strict controls over their economies.

Things like energy independence, clean water, healthy children, save the rainforests, etc...are priorities regardless (one way to help save the rainforests is to allow economic development in those regions so that they can stop cutting down the rainforest to make a living, but that would require electrical power and the environmentalists don't like it).

 

[denverdoc]

IMO, what the argument really should be is, "What if AGW is wrong and we waste all this money on things that are pointless when we could have spent it on other very important issues where we could have effected real change."

AGW, right or wrong, right now is nothing more than an excuse for the Third World to enact a huge transfer of wealth from the West to itself and for governments to enact strict controls over their economies.

Things like energy independence, clean water, healthy children, save the rainforests, etc...are priorities regardless (one way to help save the rainforests is to allow economic development in those regions so that they can stop cutting down the rainforest to make a living, but that would require electrical power and the environmentalists don't like it).

No, just cleaner ways of producing it and more efficient ways of using it, but most of all, an awareness of its use. In other words, just develop an internally consistent set of goals.

No doubt there is potential blackmail. As effrontive and transparent a maneuver this is, this is a pittance in overall considerations of economic impact.

My own experience and viewpoint in such matters is that very little would be done w/o a siren. Folks tend to be inert when it comes to behavior. Maybe elitist, certainly paternalistic, or just as basic as people need rewards for any sacrifice, however small.

 

[mugaliens]

Good: Doing the right things for the right reasons.

Not so good: Doing the right things for the wrong reasons.

Worse: Doing bad things for whatever reason.

Many of the aforementioned things are "right things." I believe it is a very bad thing to divert hundreds of billions of dollars (now it looks like it'll be trillions) of taxpayer dollars towards an issue about which there exists no direct proof of manmade cause, much less any proof of mankind's ability to effect its outcome.

IMO, what the argument really should be is, "What if AGW is wrong and we waste all this money on things that are pointless when we could have spent it on other very important issues where we could have effected real change."

As for "cleaning up the environment," the environment will take care of itself just fine once we've stopped polluting it.

It doesn't taking massive funding to enforce anti-pollution laws.

AGW, right or wrong, right now is nothing more than an excuse for the Third World to enact a huge transfer of wealth from the West to itself and for governments to enact strict controls over their economies.

Again - it doesn't take massive funding to create or enforce legislation. That's a smoke screen to get their hands on the money.

OUR money.

 

[Al68]

Good: Doing the right things for the right reasons.

Not so good: Doing the right things for the wrong reasons.

Worse: Doing bad things for whatever reason.

I would combine the first two, since the motives of others is always an unknown, and it's a well known logical fallacy (ad hominem) to consider them relevant to whether or not to agree with their actions:

Good: Doing the right things for whatever reason.

Bad: Doing bad things for whatever reason.

Arguing against a politician's motives is not only flawed logic, it is used as a bad substitute for judging one by his/her actions. But how often, even on this forum, do we see arguments dedicated exclusively to this type of faulty logic?

 

[Andre]

Good: Doing the right things for whatever reason.

So the USA works on reducing carbon emissions to fight global warming. Then it's officially announced that global warming is over. Result: end of reduction attemps, science never to be believed again.

So the USA works on reducing carbon emissions to preserve energy sources and transform to a sustainable economy. Then nothing can be announced and there is no reason for ending anything. Science never in trouble.