If you're going to try to come here and gloat, or whatever it is that you're doing, at least get the facts right.  Jones had nothing to do with the so-called 'hockey stick', nor was there any 'conspiring' to create it.  Nor was there any forged data included in it.  So you're oh-for-three.

Yes, Monbiot called for Jones to resign.  He's entitled to his opinion.  Personally I disagree with it and don't think Jones' emails warrant his termination.

I certainly don't see where your 'eating crow' comment is coming from.  Probably from the same place your three other false statements are coming from.

~ FOIA\documents\osborn-tree6\summer_modes\data4sweden.pro

Please don't quote stolen documents on this website.  I won't edit your post this time, but consider this your warning.

For an explanation of what this code is referring to, see Myth #14.  Coincidentally, it has nothing to do with why Monbiot thinks Jones should resign, so I don't know why you're bringing this up, but I already explained it in that link.

Anyone who has been involved with process engineering in a complex chemical plant is well aware how confusing data sets can be. Especially different data sets taken by different people with different objectives, methods, over different time periods etc.

Data for any refinery, steel melt shop, reforming process is not totally understood by anyone involved. There is a lot of guess work and reading between the lines. If someone claims otherwise they are either uninformed, overly convinced of their own brilliance or out of field.

Reforming of CH4 with CO2 & H2O on a nickel catalyst is only partially understood and it has been around forever.

I have heard nothing to even begin to convince me a little bit that crooked things were happening. Some people acting a little dumb at times but that is one definition of mankind.



 

Quote:
Do you mean that the evidence obtained without court warrant is not admissible here? You can edit whatever you wish, it will not make you right.

Regarding your lame excuses in "Myth#14",

"The "decline" which Jones it trying to "hide" is a well-known divergence problem in which certain tree ring data seems to show that global temperatures have cooled over recent decades, when in reality we know they've warmed based on surface station and satellite data.  Thus to "hide the decline" is to show the accurate instrumental temperature record instead of showing the inaccurate tree ring data over the past several decades. "

Do you realize that your argument essentially demolishes the entire tree-ring "methodology"? Your argument means that if the decline in tree ring data cannot be trusted and has to be "corrected" in accord with [equally goofy IMO] surface station data, then none of the tree ring information can be trusted or associated with temperatures? And therefore no conclusion whatsoever can be drawn from the Hockey Stick "reconstructions"? This is really lame, as your entire text.

And pardon me for my ignorance, which "satellite data" do you refer to regarding "correction" of "well-known divergence" for 1960-70, if satellite MSUs were not launched before 1978?

No I mean you're not allowed to post stolen personal emails or files on this site.  This isn't some right-wing blog where we're willing to throw legalities and morals by the wayside for the sake of convenience.


If you want to view it that way, feel free.  It's well-known that tree ring data is extremely difficult to analyze because so many factors influence tree ring width.  There are entire papers and books on dendrochronology.  Nevertheless, the data matches the instrumental temperature record quite well for about 75% of the record.


No that's simply wrong.  Mann et al. 2008 (the revised, updated "hockey stick", if you prefer) concluded



Where do you get 1960-70?  The main divergence is after 1980, for example Figure 3 here.

Quote:
Yes, this is exactly the problem. Annual grows of a tree is affected by rainfall, temperature, nutrient availability, CO2 concentration, who knows what else. Every tree resides in its own local micro environment, soil topology, underground water profile, the growth depend on which side of mountain valley the tree is, etc. For each individual tree and each particular year, all these factors are mathematically convoluted into a single number, ring thickness. More, the growth is likely dependent on individual shape of a season, was it slow spring and hot summer, or early spring and mild summer, and whatever winter. All possible combination would likely result in different ring size, yet the average season temperature could be exactly the same. Alternatively, temperatures might be changing, but so might be a change in water supply, so the ring would have the same thickness. All these parameters are convoluted, and without exact data about all other factors it is IMPOSSIBLE to invert tree ring data into temperatures. For any normal scientist who made an effort to look into this mess, it is obvious that the dendroclimatology is a pseudoscience, junk science. It is not just "extremely difficult to analyze", it is utter nonsense. It is obvious that the result 200% depends on selection of samples, and anyone can get any result out of this NOISE depending on their agenda, as it was demonstrated by materials from ClimateGate.

My interpretation of your 75/25% number is that even after careful targeted selection of data, 25% still do not fit into preconceived AGW theory.

Quote:
I got my number from the CRU code, posted above. It says 1960. Are you saying that your "divergence" explanation is bogus as well?

Quote:
Why would anyone refer to "conclusions" of this guy after all this ClimateGate exposure is above any comprehension. Is this a mockery, or what?

You need to realize that entire paleoclimatology is a completely speculative field, from which no quantitative projection or "policy making" conclusion on any changes is possible, especially when a comparision with instrumental records is attempted.

See you're just behaving like a typical denier.  First you start off making claims about fraud.  Then it's pointed out that your "evidence" doesn't show any such thing.  So then you backtrack and start attacking dendrochronology.  Then when shown that the 'hockey stick' is valid with or without tree ring data, you switch to an ad hominem attack on Mann.

If you want to make a convincing argument, pick one and make it.  And I mean a real scientific argument - not an ad hominem attack or a misrepresentation of a sentence in a stolen email.  Stop bobbing and weaving and ducking and dodging.

Dana Nuccitelli said:
It looks like it is you who dodging and squirming - your references to conclusions of a con artists, to "known divergence" supported by satellite observations that were launched 20 years later, accusation in "denialism".

I thought I just made one scientific argument in my above post. I will repeat it: A particular tree ring width (a scalar) is a mathematical convolution of several time-dependent functions - local soil moisture, particular seasonal change in temperature, sunshine pattern across the season, CO2 concentration, nutrient content of soil (which is likely dependent on biomass decay from previous years) , etc. The inversion of this function with regard to temperature is mathematically impossible without knowing exactly all other convoluted parameters. Therefore, all "climatological signals" have no clear interpretation and attribution, and are entirely subjective and inconclusive. In rude words, patterns in a noise are products of human imagination. No matter how long do you stare at data and try to make the best sense out of it, non-subjective reconstruction is not possible, mathematically. Is this argument real enough for you?

Before you go into nitpicking mode, replacement of scalar "width" with 1-D "density function" does not make any fundamentals difference, and the question of undersampling will also arise.

And please don't tell me that since many dozens of dendroclimatologists are writing articles and books, they mist be right. But in some sense you are right - yes, I deny junk science.

That's fine - feel free to reject the tree ring data.  I don't really care.  The fact is the 'hockey stick' still remains without it.  Not to mention the fact that the 'hockey stick' isn't even critical to AGW anyway.

I think this person will argue with anything that does not exactly fit their notion of how things should be.

The plague of the net are the 'fixed point' types - either for or against anything  that does not fit their criteria exactly is wrong as far as they are concerned.

A person should always keep an open mind - looking for additional information even if it disagrees with what they believe. I spent a lifetime convincing people to collect the data in plants even if it disagrees with their theory. You can't make progress with blinders on!

He's making the old argument that we are not sure and therefore shouldn't act until we are. Like a stuck record they're always demanding more and better evidence without constructing any convincing argument for why the extra evidence is absolutely necessary; their argument is just 'if more evidence could be gathered then it should be gathered.' The obvious problem there being that evidence can always improve, certainty can always increase. Most people understand why it's unreasonable to sit around, refusing to act until the 50th decimal place. Skeptics don't seem to--or at least they never seem to say what degree of certainty they are specifically waiting for.

That's exactly why I said he's behaving like a typical denier, or perhaps a better term in this case would be contrarian or delayer.  Basically just make any argument against AGW you can find in order to justify delaying action because "we just don't know".

To me, uncertainty is no reason not to act - quite the opposite.  If you've got a strong probability of a globally catastrophic scenario, even if there is significant uncertatinty, you'd better do something about it.  Deniers should be trying to reduce the uncertainty and make a case that we don't need to do anything based on that, not arguing that we don't know enough to try and avoid a potentially catastrophic scenario.

Dana wtote:
The probability of globally catastrophic scenario is zero even if your ilk would decide to paint entire Earth in black or disperse millions of tons of some aerosols in ignorant insane attempt of geo-engineering. Even then I think clouds would prevent complete disaster, as they did for millions and millions of years. And have you two ever heard about Kombayashi-Ingersol limit after all?

The argument is not that the reconstructions have uncertainty, and certainly not about 50th decimal place. This is a classic straw dog of AGW shill. The entire purpose of hockey stick was and is to find a shred of material evidence that today's barely-distinguishable warming is "unprecedented",  and link it with the only suspect (or, better, target), recent increase of CO2 (whatever the reason of increase is). Tree ring reconstructions are not ony "accurate" to any decimal place, they are COMPLETELY subjective and uncertain to multiple degrees C in both directions. I am sure the other proxies are of the same quality. This is entirely ridiculous to extract fractions of degree of C back 1500 years from now using rotten wood when even modern instrumental records, with sophisticated modern sensors, can barely differentiate 0.5C and are completely uncertain about which year is "hottest" in the US without "re-anlyzing" station's data, simply ridiculous.

You want actions to curb CO2 without a single shred of evidence that CO2 causes any measurable warming. Deniers do not deny that actions are needed to prevent polution from overpopulation. We just are saying that your fight against CO2 is the stupidiest thing to spend money on. That's it.

So then why do they correlate with other proxies? If all they do is spew a bunch of random noise that is independent of tempearture, then what do you think the odds would be that they should correlate with other unrelated proxies?

 

So you're denying even the natural greenhouse effect then? 

Again behaving like a typical denier, making completely bogus claims without a shred of supporting evidence


Very nice, you fit 7 disgustingly wrong statements into one post.  James Inhofe would be proud.

Quote:
No.  Read the editorial in the latest issue of Nature for a better take on the e-mails. 

Monbiot is allowed to be wrong. 

Dana wrote, Quote:
Ok, let's start with the first one, about catastrophic scenario.
Behaving as a typical AGW catastrophist and general ignoramus, you failed to respond to my question:
Not much of a shred, but supporting anyway. And you dodged it, as expected.
And yes, I share very much the Inhofe position.

No, but I've heard of the Kombayashi-Ingersoll limit.


I can tell.  You're a regular one man truth squad.

Look at the bright side Dana - while he is ranting at you he forgets all about CFL lamps! 

Dawei asks, Quote:
Probably because they were selected so? By the same group of people? Dana says that even after the selection, 25% of tree ring proxies still do not correlate, right? As the ClimateGate shows, climatology seems to have a very specific concept of dealing with inconvenient data, data "corrections", "re-analysis", "hide the decline" ...

Dana replies:
Ok, the best you can do is correcting my spelling. It is a very strong argument indeed. Therefore, you concede that my first "disgustingly wrong statement" is correct - no catastrophic runaway in the next 700 million years.

So, which one "disgustingly wrong statement" is next, clouds?

I do no such thing.  Now you're putting words in my mouth.  Your argument is basically 'bananas are yellow therefore there is zero chance of catastrophic warming'.  No, I don't agree with that.

Also my 75% comment was referring to the 20th century data (turns out it's more like 60% though).  Tree ring data is accurate with respect to other proxy data for much more than just the 20th century, so your 75% claim is wrong.

Of course, essentially everything you've said on this site is wrong, so I'm not exactly surprised.

You have yet to make your own argument. What does a limit for runaway warming have to do with the potential for a significant climate change? You didn't answer my previous question: are you trying to imply that only 100+ C of warming would be catastrophic, but something on the order of 5-6 C would be nothing to worry about? 

We don't need to turn into Venus in order for serious negative effects to be observed. The problem with global warming is not the warming itself. We're not worried about our skin frying and the oceans boiling away. The concern among scientists is that the warming will effect a climate shift. This has happened hundreds of times in earth's history and so obviously is not restricted by any physical limits.

Quote from Dawei:
Ok, now you are re-defining "catastrophic" (which is usually associated with "tipping points" and therefore with at least some run-away conditions) with "climate shift". This is better than Dana is doing, who is afraid to specify anything. Good.

Skipping over your obvious nonsense that "shift ... so obviously is not restricted by any physical limits", I would ask you: do you continue to maintain that CO2 concentrations in atmosphere were/are the major driving force of all prehistorical (and contemporary) warmings?

 

I'm not redefining anything. One of the main definitions of "catastrophe" is "a violent and sudden change in a feature of the earth". If catastrophe were impossible, then it wouldn't make much sense for that entry to be there. Also note that there is no accompanying picture of Venus next to the definition.

"Runaway" doesn't mean we will be running forever, "tipping point" doesn't mean tipping into a bottomless pit. It means that's the point at which positive feedbacks start to become the dominant force. That's bad, because it would imply that we would no longer be able to control it by reducing emissions.

The cause for alarm is not that we are going to exterminate all life as we know it. Obviously this is not going to happen. The cause for alarm is that we may end up bringing about a lot of unnecessary hardship to human society.

 

Depends on what you mean by major. Rising CO2 concentrations rarely ever triggered a global warming event, but they acted as a feedback. Of course they didn't act alone, they acted along with water vapor feedback, ice albedo feedback, and the orbital tilts that triggered the warming in the first place, among possibly other things. I do continue to maintain that it is the largest driving force of the current global warming, yes. There is no other cause that I've seen stronger evidence for.

Edited by dawei - 12/3/09 at 9:57pm

Dawei says:
Ok, fine. Then let's consider available global data over recent period, obtained instrumentally. Would you agree that this compilation has valid global data for CO2 and T?

If so, the question for you: what other non-man-made forces could possibly change this dependence? According to AGW theory, change in CO2 concentration drives global ground tempertures up, and in logarithmic way. If CO2 is the strongest force, and all other forcings cancel each other on average, as per IPCC data, would you use this data set to estimate climate sensitivity to CO2?

Please remember that Milankovitch forcing is weak (it is actually near zero when globally averaged), and it is accepted in climatology that it is not sufficient to drive climate into any significant warming by itself.

I'm not sure I understand what you're asking. I would not just extend the line of that graph out 100 years, no. Many various feedbacks have not yet reached their maximum strengths, and may end up doing so at unpredictable rates. I suppose you could do a quick and dirty estimate of sensitivity that way, but you're guaranteeing that you're leaving most of the factors out. Obviously we wouldn't be using the world's fastest computers to run climate models if the answer could be solved in 5 minutes with a mechanical pencil.

I think the source of confusion is in this statement.



Currently the non-CO2 forcings all roughly cancel eachother out, purely coincidentally.  This has not been the case in the past, nor will it be the case in the future.  No, you don't estimate climate sensitivity just based on current forcings.  You have to account for future feedbacks.

Dawei writes:
Dana echoes:
Could you both please be a little more specific about which other "various feedbacks" you are talking about, the ones that have not reached their strength yet?

From what climatology teaches us, water wapor is the biggest amplifier, up to a factor of 6, yet the characteristic time of this feedback is of the order of ordinary weather event, which is few days at most, right? So this feedback must be fully kicked off in the course of the 120 years...

What else? Ice albedo feedback? Is not it true that climatology is overly concerned with current arctic ice melting, thinning, whatever, which happens every season? Again, 120 years of insrtumental records must be quite enough to engage this feedback.

Oceans, yes. But is not is also true that most models (like climateprediction.net project) use a fixed thermal slab model for 100-200 year projections? So it should not be a factor if we try to compare 120 years of instrumentally-measured climate sensitivity with short-term model prediction for warming. And if some feedbacks cancel each other, it must be even better to compare current things with models, because the very same feedbacks must cancel in models as well, and only the most essential CO2 influence should show up. Current forcings create current warming, don't they? So, what is your objection here? I am asking exactly about climate sensitivity to CO2, not to some other unspecified forcings that currently cancel each other and therefore do not contibute much to the equation.

What else, specifically? What else must be so different in feedbacks of today's climate and models of it, and in climates of recent deglaciations?