Global Warming Skepticism 101
Informative summary From Dr. Roy Spenser 12/9/09
A few excerpts from Spenser with [my notes]:
1. [AGW]Skeptics deny global warming.
No, we deny that warming has been mostly human-caused. [Scientists should be skeptical, even of skeptics. Science is not pitch a view, it is to advance understanding].
2. Skeptics are paid by big oil.
The vast majority of skeptics have never been paid anything by Big Oil (me included). [It's not as easy to get a grant as an AGW skeptic. Note: several recent revelations show big oil is pandering to AGW folks.]
3. Skeptics don’t publish in the peer reviewed literature.
Wrong…but it is true we do not have nearly as many publications as the other side does. But it only takes one scientific study to destroy a scientific hypothesis, which is what anthropogenic global warming theory is.
4. Skeptics are not unified with an alternative explanation for global warming. Well, that’s the way science works in a field as immature as climate change science. The biggest problem is that we really don’t understand what causes natural climate variability.........
5. But the glaciers are melting!
Many glaciers which have been monitored around the world for a long time have been retreating since the 1800’s, before humans could have been responsible. A few retreating glaciers are even revealing old tree stumps…how did those get there? Planted by skeptics?
6. But the sea ice is melting!
Well, the same thing happened back in the 1920’s and 1930’s, with the Northwest Passage opening up in 1940. It was just as warm, or nearly as warm, in the Arctic in the 1930’s. Again, this is before humans could be blamed. There were very low water levels in the Great Lakes in the 1920’s too, just as has happened recently. We have accurate measurements of sea ice cover from satellites only since 1979, so there is no way to really know whether sea ice cover is less than it was before.
7. But we just had the warmest decade in recorded history!
Well, if thermometer measurements had started in, say 200, AD (rather than in the 1800’s), and it was now 850 AD, the same thing might well have been said back then. The climate system is always warming or cooling, and the Industrial Revolution (and thus our carbon dioxide emissions) just happened to occur while we were still emerging from the Little Ice Age…a warming period.
8. But the Antarctic ice shelves are collapsing!
Well, sea ice around Antarctica has been expanding since we started monitoring by satellite in 1979….so which do we use as evidence? There is no convincing evidence of warming in Antarctica, except in the relatively small Antarctic Peninsula, which juts out into the ocean. Just as glaciers naturally flow to the sea, ice shelves must eventually break off. It is very uncertain how often this happens through the centuries, and what has been observed in recent years might be entirely normal. Similarly, it was warmer in Greenland in the 1930’s than it has been more recently.
9. But the sea levels are rising!
Yes, and from what we can tell, they have been rising since the end of the last Ice Age. Again, the more recent rise might be just a consequence of our emergence from the Little Ice Age, which bottomed out in the 1600’s.
10. But we keep emitting carbon dioxide, which we know is a greenhouse gas!
But the direct warming effect of moré CO2 is agreed by all to be small…and I predict that when we better understand how clouds change in response to that small warming influence, the net warming in response to more CO2 will be smaller still. This is the “feedback” issue, which determines “climate sensitivity”, the area of research I spend most of my time on. I and a minority of other scientists believe the net feedbacks in the climate system are negative, probably driven by negative cloud feedback. In contrast, all twenty-something IPCC climate models now exhibit positive cloud feedback.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Monday, December 7, 2009
AGW Skeptic Video Summaries
Summaries from 4 skeptics for consideration of alternative views
D'Aleo http://www.kusi.com/home/78477122.html?video=pop&t=a
Coleman http://www.kusi.com/home/78477082.html?video=pop&t=a
Lindzen http://www.kusi.com/home/78477177.html?video=pop&t=a
Soon http://www.kusi.com/home/78477312.html?video=pop&t=a
D'Aleo http://www.kusi.com/home/78477122.html?video=pop&t=a
Coleman http://www.kusi.com/home/78477082.html?video=pop&t=a
Lindzen http://www.kusi.com/home/78477177.html?video=pop&t=a
Soon http://www.kusi.com/home/78477312.html?video=pop&t=a
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Climate catastrophe canceled
Finish TV discussion on problems with the Mann hockey stick temperature graphs
Climate catastrophe canceled
A couple excerpts:
Korhola: "Especially now with the Copenhagen conference approaching, one gets the impression that also among scientists, many have lost control. Especially when you compare original studies to how they are presented to the public, in the mass media, there is a huge gap in what comes out. We get a lot of material with terms like dramatic, catastrophic, unprecedented, and among some researchers there is even talk of planetary doom and saving the planet."
Lindzen: "The real question is, why the last few years have seen this huge boost with all these crazy movies - “Inconvenient truth” - nonsense spewed out, hysteria? We are all going to die, if we don't change our light bulbs immediately. I can only say, somebody must have noticed that the temperature has stopped increasing and they had all these agendas by now to make billions of dollars, and do this and do that, get people to pay taxes and feel happy about it, because they are saving the earth and so on. So you have the politicians, the bureaucrats, the scientists and so on, and all felt you know that if the temperature continues this way, this is finished if we don't get it through immediately so the volume has increased.”
This ten-year-old figure, dubbed as the hockey stick, was meant to revolutionize the dominant view of global climate history.
But in the hockey stick graph, the Medieval Warm Period and the little ice age after it have disappeared.
McIntyre: ” It turned out that he had modified a principal components method incorrectly and the modified method produced hockey stick-shaped graphs ninety-nine percent of the time. It also emphasized a class of proxies, strip-bark bristlecone pines that previous authors had said were not actually a temperature proxy”.
In the mid 1990's the American geologist David Deming received an astonishing e-mail, in which one prominent climate researcher announced to his colleagues: "We have to get rid of the medieval warm period."
Kari Mielikäinen, professor of forest research (Metla, Finland): "We have this long series going back over 7,000 years, and there's no hockey stick there."
VO: Briffa's Yamal hockey stick was published in the prestigious journal Science. McIntyre asked for a copy of the raw data from Yamal.
McIntyre: ”Briffa refused. The editors of Science refused to require Briffa to provide the measurement data…”
VO: It took McIntyre three years to get hold of the data, although one of the most important rules in science is that, raw data should be made available to anybody who is interested in checking and replicating a study.
Finally Briffa made a "mistake". He published yet another article based on the Yamal data in a journal of the British Royal Society. The prestigious scientific society held on to the principle of data transparency and forced Briffa to make his raw data public. In September this year, the Canadian climate auditor had his forebodings confirmed.
McIntyre: ”So after, after sort of, three years of frustration and trying to examine the data that Briffa had used and probably four years of people saying that this data supported the Michael Mann -work on other grounds, it was really quite frustrating to find that it was built up on ten trees that had been not randomly selected”.
McIntyre: "An Australian named Warwick Hughes had asked for the data and Warwick Hughes had published some articles that had been critical of how the temperature histories had been prepared, and Jones said 'Why should I send - we have twenty-five years invested in this, why should I send the data to you when your only objective is to find anything wrong with it?”, which is a very unscientific statement."
VO: The CRU database is the most important scientific justification for the demands that the most ambitious treaty in mankind's history should be finalized in Copenhagen in December. In spite of this, there is no way to replicate its' validity.
Recently the CRU director Phil Jones has announced that the original measurement data does not exist anymore because of data storage difficulties. A dog ate the world's most important scientific measurement homework.
Ojala: "Based on these studies it seems that this claim is not quite true, at least for the Northern hemisphere, at least for Scandinavia. We've clearly had much warmer winters here in the Nautajärvi and Korttajärvi area, than what we are experiencing now."
VO: At least two research teams close to the IPCC added the sediment data collected by Finnish researchers as part of their own paleoclimatic model reconstructions. This was done with agreement, but the Finns were surprised to see that in a study published this September, their data and interpretation of its' meaning had been turned upside down.
Atte Korhola: "Some curves and data have been used upside down, and this is not a compliment to climate science. And in this context it is relevant to note that the same people who are behind this are running what may be the world's most influential climate website, RealClimate. With this they are contributing to the credibility of science - or reducing it. And in my opinion this is alarming because it bears on the credibility of the field, and if these kinds of things emerge often - that data have been used insufficiently or even falsely, or if data series have been truncated or they have not been appropriately published (for replication), it obviously erodes the credibility, and this is a serious problem."
Richard Lindzen: "This field is completely sick in that way, I mean, you have models you know that they don't work, you know they don't reproduce a - phenomenon, but you bend data to fit the model. I don’t think this can go on for long without being embarrassing".
VO: It turned out that, cloud cover changes as the surface warms, but it was not getting thicker; it was thinning. In this way, nature prevents the atmosphere from excessive heating. The cloud cover reacts to temperature changes like an eye's iris to changes in light, by contracting or expanding. Lindzen calls this thermostatic behavior the Iris-effect.
Climate catastrophe canceled
A couple excerpts:
Korhola: "Especially now with the Copenhagen conference approaching, one gets the impression that also among scientists, many have lost control. Especially when you compare original studies to how they are presented to the public, in the mass media, there is a huge gap in what comes out. We get a lot of material with terms like dramatic, catastrophic, unprecedented, and among some researchers there is even talk of planetary doom and saving the planet."
Lindzen: "The real question is, why the last few years have seen this huge boost with all these crazy movies - “Inconvenient truth” - nonsense spewed out, hysteria? We are all going to die, if we don't change our light bulbs immediately. I can only say, somebody must have noticed that the temperature has stopped increasing and they had all these agendas by now to make billions of dollars, and do this and do that, get people to pay taxes and feel happy about it, because they are saving the earth and so on. So you have the politicians, the bureaucrats, the scientists and so on, and all felt you know that if the temperature continues this way, this is finished if we don't get it through immediately so the volume has increased.”
This ten-year-old figure, dubbed as the hockey stick, was meant to revolutionize the dominant view of global climate history.
But in the hockey stick graph, the Medieval Warm Period and the little ice age after it have disappeared.
McIntyre: ” It turned out that he had modified a principal components method incorrectly and the modified method produced hockey stick-shaped graphs ninety-nine percent of the time. It also emphasized a class of proxies, strip-bark bristlecone pines that previous authors had said were not actually a temperature proxy”.
In the mid 1990's the American geologist David Deming received an astonishing e-mail, in which one prominent climate researcher announced to his colleagues: "We have to get rid of the medieval warm period."
Kari Mielikäinen, professor of forest research (Metla, Finland): "We have this long series going back over 7,000 years, and there's no hockey stick there."
VO: Briffa's Yamal hockey stick was published in the prestigious journal Science. McIntyre asked for a copy of the raw data from Yamal.
McIntyre: ”Briffa refused. The editors of Science refused to require Briffa to provide the measurement data…”
VO: It took McIntyre three years to get hold of the data, although one of the most important rules in science is that, raw data should be made available to anybody who is interested in checking and replicating a study.
Finally Briffa made a "mistake". He published yet another article based on the Yamal data in a journal of the British Royal Society. The prestigious scientific society held on to the principle of data transparency and forced Briffa to make his raw data public. In September this year, the Canadian climate auditor had his forebodings confirmed.
McIntyre: ”So after, after sort of, three years of frustration and trying to examine the data that Briffa had used and probably four years of people saying that this data supported the Michael Mann -work on other grounds, it was really quite frustrating to find that it was built up on ten trees that had been not randomly selected”.
McIntyre: "An Australian named Warwick Hughes had asked for the data and Warwick Hughes had published some articles that had been critical of how the temperature histories had been prepared, and Jones said 'Why should I send - we have twenty-five years invested in this, why should I send the data to you when your only objective is to find anything wrong with it?”, which is a very unscientific statement."
VO: The CRU database is the most important scientific justification for the demands that the most ambitious treaty in mankind's history should be finalized in Copenhagen in December. In spite of this, there is no way to replicate its' validity.
Recently the CRU director Phil Jones has announced that the original measurement data does not exist anymore because of data storage difficulties. A dog ate the world's most important scientific measurement homework.
Ojala: "Based on these studies it seems that this claim is not quite true, at least for the Northern hemisphere, at least for Scandinavia. We've clearly had much warmer winters here in the Nautajärvi and Korttajärvi area, than what we are experiencing now."
VO: At least two research teams close to the IPCC added the sediment data collected by Finnish researchers as part of their own paleoclimatic model reconstructions. This was done with agreement, but the Finns were surprised to see that in a study published this September, their data and interpretation of its' meaning had been turned upside down.
Atte Korhola: "Some curves and data have been used upside down, and this is not a compliment to climate science. And in this context it is relevant to note that the same people who are behind this are running what may be the world's most influential climate website, RealClimate. With this they are contributing to the credibility of science - or reducing it. And in my opinion this is alarming because it bears on the credibility of the field, and if these kinds of things emerge often - that data have been used insufficiently or even falsely, or if data series have been truncated or they have not been appropriately published (for replication), it obviously erodes the credibility, and this is a serious problem."
Richard Lindzen: "This field is completely sick in that way, I mean, you have models you know that they don't work, you know they don't reproduce a - phenomenon, but you bend data to fit the model. I don’t think this can go on for long without being embarrassing".
VO: It turned out that, cloud cover changes as the surface warms, but it was not getting thicker; it was thinning. In this way, nature prevents the atmosphere from excessive heating. The cloud cover reacts to temperature changes like an eye's iris to changes in light, by contracting or expanding. Lindzen calls this thermostatic behavior the Iris-effect.
3rd Coldest October
From NOAA
Temperature Highlights - October
* The average October temperature of 50.8°F was 4.0°F below the 20th Century average and ranked as the 3rd coolest based on preliminary data.
* For the nation as a whole, it was the third coolest October on record. The month was marked by an active weather pattern that reinforced unseasonably cold air behind a series of cold fronts. Temperatures were below normal in eight of the nation's nine climate regions, and of the nine, five were much below normal. Only the Southeast climate region had near normal temperatures for October.
Precipitation Highlights - October
* The U.S. recorded its wettest October in the 115-year period of record. The nationwide precipitation of 4.15 inches was nearly double the long-term average of 2.11 inches.
* Unusually cold and wet conditions across the middle of the country led to several snowfall records.
Temperature Highlights - October
* The average October temperature of 50.8°F was 4.0°F below the 20th Century average and ranked as the 3rd coolest based on preliminary data.
* For the nation as a whole, it was the third coolest October on record. The month was marked by an active weather pattern that reinforced unseasonably cold air behind a series of cold fronts. Temperatures were below normal in eight of the nation's nine climate regions, and of the nine, five were much below normal. Only the Southeast climate region had near normal temperatures for October.
Precipitation Highlights - October
* The U.S. recorded its wettest October in the 115-year period of record. The nationwide precipitation of 4.15 inches was nearly double the long-term average of 2.11 inches.
* Unusually cold and wet conditions across the middle of the country led to several snowfall records.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Global tropical cyclone energy remains near 30-year lows !
Global tropical cyclone energy remains near 30-year lows !
Florida State University - Ryan N. Maue's Seasonal Tropical Cyclone Activity Update
Global and Northern Hemisphere Tropical Cyclone Activity remains near 30-year historical lows -- three years in a row now of considerably below-average activity globally
Friday, October 30, 2009
Upside Down Mann Hockey Stick
From Climate Audit Oct 29, 2009
Upside Down Mann
The issue with Mann's use of the Tiljander proxies isn't just that he used them upside down (which he did). The problem is worse than that. The Tiljander sediments are the combination of two unrelated processes: a presumably climatically driven process in which narrow sediments are interpreted by the authors as "warm" and thick sediments as "cold" and a nonclimatic process in which sediments are produced by ditches, bridges and farming.
It is definitely and incontrovertibly upside down.
The reason why it is upside down is the spurious correlation between the nonclimatic sediments from bridges and farming and temperature, which confuses the Mannian meatgrinder algorithm.
Perhaps Connolley is gradually realizing that the problem is not just the upside down proxy, but a package of issues including modern contamination and spurious regression.
Upside Down Mann
The issue with Mann's use of the Tiljander proxies isn't just that he used them upside down (which he did). The problem is worse than that. The Tiljander sediments are the combination of two unrelated processes: a presumably climatically driven process in which narrow sediments are interpreted by the authors as "warm" and thick sediments as "cold" and a nonclimatic process in which sediments are produced by ditches, bridges and farming.
It is definitely and incontrovertibly upside down.
The reason why it is upside down is the spurious correlation between the nonclimatic sediments from bridges and farming and temperature, which confuses the Mannian meatgrinder algorithm.
Perhaps Connolley is gradually realizing that the problem is not just the upside down proxy, but a package of issues including modern contamination and spurious regression.
Dr. Pielke Oct 31, 2009
Excerpts include:
There is an informative post titled Biofuel woes by Katharine Sanderson on the Nature.com/climatefeedback website.
Biofuels derived from the cellulosic, woody parts of plants are not having their greenhouse gas emissions properly accounted
those biofuels would be shown to actually cause more greenhouse gases to be released than fossil fuels.
Timothy Searchinger from Princeton University
They say that the assertion that fuels made from biomass can be counted as carbon neutral is wrong. “
Excerpts include:
There is an informative post titled Biofuel woes by Katharine Sanderson on the Nature.com/climatefeedback website.
Biofuels derived from the cellulosic, woody parts of plants are not having their greenhouse gas emissions properly accounted
those biofuels would be shown to actually cause more greenhouse gases to be released than fossil fuels.
Timothy Searchinger from Princeton University
They say that the assertion that fuels made from biomass can be counted as carbon neutral is wrong. “
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)