This is an open page for reader suggestions about this blog, following a couple of reader requests for such a page. I’m primarily interested in your suggestions for new topics, or else for follow up of aspects of previous topics discussed. I’m especially interested in hearing from Canadians and others who have ideas with a Canadian connection, but all positive suggestions (and even general comments or constructive criticism) are welcome.
Suggestions that are really a rehash of contrarian talking points or otherwise problematic will be considered off-topic and may be edited, deleted and/or moved elsewhere at my sole discretion.
I appreciate the interest many of you have shown and I look forward to your ideas.
Deep Climate 
As a fellow Canadian I really appreciate the effort that you are putting into this blog and in the comments on other blogs. I think that the CSPG is really embarrassing themselves in 2009 with their 8 part (so far) series on Climate Change by Dr. Hutton. Countering all of his trash would take a life time but hopefully you will have time to address a few.
Even more embarrassing is that APEGGA announced in March that they would be running Dr. Hutton’s series on their website. Their website showed parts I and II in June and July of this year but then they mysteriously disappeared. Could it be that APEGGA came to their senses? Probably not – just read the introduction to their site called “CLIMATE CHANGE – AN INVITATION FOR DEBATE”.
Best Regards
LEM
DC,
Have you read Roy Spencer’s diatribe made on his blog on 24 October. It is shameful. Until now I respected his work and his constructive skeptisism of AGW– in the past he has made some valid points. But he has apparently now decided to enter the shady world of opinion, inflammatory and unsubstantiated accusations and rhetoric; the science has been left in the dust.
Time to do an expose on a formerly good scientists gone bad? Could add Pielke Snr. to that list too.
ML,
I have been thinking about blogging about Roy Spencer – in his new role as chairperson of the Climate Science Coalition of America, as of last March. Of course, this is only the latest in the “Climate Science Coalition” brand, brought to you by ex-APCO, ex-NRSP PR operative Tom Harris.
http://www.heartland.org/publications/environment%20climate/article/25066/International_Climate_Science_Coalition_Expands_in_US.html
DC,
I would say that you should write what works best for you. I will say that what made this blog a go-to site was your willingness to dig a little deeper into the EPA and Briffa controversies, so maybe being willing to head to sites that science-minded people avoid like the plague would be helpful.
How much of this is of global or parochial interest is up to you. (It’s been a while since I lived in the land where we would head west, not north, to cross the border and where we our destination was the Brewer’s Retail.)
DC,
Many thanks for indulging me and others here! Please tell me I’m wrong, but Spencer now has ties with the Heartalnd Institute?! Also, is this Climate Science Coalition of America a misnomer, along the lines of “Friends of Science”?
DC,
Thanks for the link. I did some digging. I am almost “speechless”. So this all explains Spencer’s increasing levels of rhetoric and opinion of late. Have you read the CSCA “core principles” on their web site (climatescienceamerica.org)?
What I want to know is who is paying him for his role as chair. Where are those funds coming from?
Regards,
ML
PS: When are you, deltoid, RC, and other going to form a coalition?
PPS: Would it be lame to start a petition to pressure McKitrick to apologize to Briffa?
DC,
Have you been following this?
http://www.desmogblog.com/friends-science-ads-are-wrong-and-should-be-pulled
The folks at FOS know no shame.
[DC: Yes, I did see that. I did a post on FoS back in July that mentioned this upcoming radio ad. More to come – also see response to your other comment.]
DC,
Thanks.
Time to recap the CRU emails? No?
Maybe you can explain why honest researchers would delete emails related to AR4?
[DC: I will comment on various aspects of the CRU hacked emails at some point. Meanwhile, they are being discussed a lot elsewhere. Meanwhile, I haven’t decided whether quoting from the emails is appropriate so am not displaying those for now.]
DC,
I am probably hopelessly out of touch here, because this posting (#104) by someone on Deltoid (http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/steve_mcintyre_down_in_the_quo.php) was revelation to me:
http://www.heartland.org/publications/environment%20climate/article/16812/Climate_Alarmists_Playing_Shell_Game_with_Data.html
http://www.heartland.org/events/NewYork09/speakers.html
What gives? Have you covered this? Seems Macleans and Foote from (The Journal) and Ottawa Citizen were somehow ‘oblivious’ to this.
[DC: I just pulled this out of the spam box, along with a couple of others. Note that the Heartland article is a reprint of a February, 2005 National Post article. As I’ve mentioned before, I am working on an “In the Beginning Post” for McIntyre (and McKitrick) that will go up to about mid-2005. Coverage in the Post was definitely a milestone along the way. ]
Hmmmm.
Kudos from a fellow Canadian for putting in your 2 cents worth – but why are all your efforts directed at, or about people and personalities?
I’d prefer to see analysis of data and discussion of research techniques, than to read somewhat snarky gossip.
[DC: I have done occasional analysis on issues that interest me. And I’d like to return to that some day. But the vicious ongoing assault on climate science and scientists offends me greatly and preoccupies me right now.
Of course, I strenuously object to your characterization of investigative posts as “snarky gossip”. The public is being grossly misled by pseudo-science promoted by industry flacks. I make no apology for exposing the faulty science, or those who are behind the deception.]
Steve Smith, come on, you know damn well that what DC on this page does not even remotely constitute “snarky gossip”. If you honestly think that, then you clearly have no understanding of the problem or science at hand.
DC is undertaking some incredibly important, valuable and scientifically-based work and critique here. DC is doing what many people and organizations in Canada should be doing.
If you want to be taken seriously, might I suggest speaking to the gross misconduct of the folks at CA. Specifically, how they are distorting and misrepresenting the science, and attacking not only climate science but the climate scientists.
A good argument from David Keith about scientists’ self-interest:
http://www.calgaryherald.com/technology/denial+climate+science/2381409/story.html
Also a U of C biology professor writing to the Herald:
http://www.calgaryherald.com/technology/Inbox+Your+Space+Your+Time/2297636/story.html
http://www.calgaryherald.com/technology/Climategate+impressive+political+coup/2346857/story.html
and a stupid response by Kenneth Green
http://www.calgaryherald.com/technology/denial/2385380/story.html
Holly, these articles are also being discussed at Michael Tobis’ “In it for the gold ” blog.
Unfortunately he is over moderating and is making KG look like a white knight of the denier movement.
I have had two comments moderated out (and they were very mild compared to my usual attack on these slime balls). He seems to think that any negative comment is an ad hominem attack.
I gave him both links to the Calgary Herald articles but he did not acknowledge the source of the one one from Reid.
Ian, I just read the post by Tobis that you mentioned and Green managed to shoot himself in the foot in the comments. I don’t understand much of the science but can recognize weaselling around when it is pointed out.
http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2009/12/thin-kool-ade.html
I’m not familiar with Tobis’ blog, but I think it was useful that he pinned a denialist down to making a specific statement that could be deconstructed to show his lack of understanding.
[DC: Yes, indeed.]
Dear friend:
As you are undoubtedly aware, the journalist Alexander Cockburn has authored a recent syndicated column in which he charges that Global Warming is a big hoax. He is a good writer and expresses himself forcefully. His column will be influential.
I want to draw your attention to an article that I wrote rebutting Cockburn’s arguments.
http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/farley040110.html
If you like the article, please circulate widely. Thank you very much in advance.
Sincerely,
John W. Farley
Spencer has started posting month-over-month tealeaf readings of UAH data. You might want to go fight the good fight over there to make them either figure out and fix the annual instrument signal, or else stop posting the b.s.:
[DC: I don’t comment at WUWT any more. An update on the annual cycle is on my to do list, but I’m not sure I’ll get to it any time soon. But it will be interesting to have all the 2009 temp data sets in, completing the decade 2000-09.]
You may be completely unsurprised to learn that Mojib Latif is being quoted out of context in a way designed to lie to people, in the daily Mail.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1242011/DAVID-ROSE-The-mini-ice-age-starts-here.html
Also it quotes Tsonis in a way which makes it look like he’s a denialist.
How about an update on the continuing quotes of Professor Mojib Latif.
Icecap had this:
Last night he told The Mail on Sunday: ‘A significant share of the warming we saw from 1980 to 2000 and at earlier periods in the 20th Century was due to these cycles – perhaps as much as 50 per cent. They have now gone into reverse, so winters like this one will become much more likely. Summers will also probably be cooler, and all this may well last two decades or longer. The extreme retreats that we have seen in glaciers and sea ice will come to a halt. For the time being, global warming has paused, and there may well be some cooling.’
This would make a good followup on your October articles.
[DC: These statements, as quoted in the Mail on Sunday, seem completely at odds with the published projections of Keenlyside et al, especially the “two decades or longer” part. I’m not sure what’s going on here, but I imagine a few science journalists are trying to get in touch with him to clarify exactly what he said. He did respond to me before, so I might try again on this one.]
Latif seems ok to me, having done a bit more reading. The question is what is Tsonis up to, anyone got any idea?
(We know Gray is deluded anyway)
Here’s Latif on NPR (Nov. 22):
Dr. LATIF: Exactly. So – and this is the reason, because we have the short-term climate fluctuation, therefore, it doesn’t make sense to look at short periods to assess the human impact on climate. So you have to consider several decades. Only then you see basically the long-term warming trend, and therefore, we can’t really draw any inferences from this hold in the last 10 years or so, you know, with regard to global warming.
RAZ: So when do you expect the Earth to start warming again at an accelerated rate, what year?
Dr. LATIF: Well, we did only forecasts for the time until 2015. However, if we look further, then we have some indications that there are after, say after 2015 or 2020, you know, global warming will accelerate again.
RAZ: And how much warmer do you estimate it will become over the next sort of two or three decades?
Dr. LATIF: I think maybe .2 or .3 degrees, but it may accelerate thereafter. So it basically depends on, you know, how we behave during the next decades, right? So if we emit – or if we continue to emit these greenhouse gases at the present rate, you know, then the warming trend will be faster.
Oh no, not this Latif mess again. Why does he not take issue with people who misrepresent his research.
DC is right, having read the Keenlyside paper, the spin in the media is bizarre. Here is a quote from the Keenlyside paper :
“Thus, in the near future, natural decadal variability in the Atlantic and Pacific may not only override the regional effects of global warming, but temporarily weaken it”.
Thus, it is not accurate to state that “WORLD will cool for the next decade” as some will be saying, because Keenlyside et al. (2008) simply do not state that. An appropriate title, when discussing the the Keenlyside et al. (2008) paper (not Dr. Latif’s speech at the WCC3), would be “Global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade”, and then to clarify that internal climate modes may temporarily halt further global warming because of regional cooling over portions of N. America, N. Atlantic and Europe, and caution that decadal forecasts are in their infancy. If Keenlyside et al are correct, a negative phase of the NAO could make winters colder than average for a while over portions of N. America, and Europe. This cooling is offset by warming elsewhere though, as evidenced by this recent cold snap, with global mid-trop temperatures almost +0.3 C above average in December 2009 when the AO and NAO were strongly negative.
It also needs to be mentioned that decadal temperature projections have also been made by Smith et al. (2007) and Pohlmann et al. (2009) using more sophisticated treatment of the oceanic heat content and their projections do still call for continued warming.
DC, I am happy to share my correspondence with New Scientist with you if it helps.
[DC: You make excellent points, but I don’t know if we should turn this page into a Latif thread. I think you are onto something – it may well be that Latif was talking about regional effects, and was quoted out of context. I think it’s also worth pointing out that Keenlyside global projections appear to be under observations so far.]
“DC: These statements, as quoted in the Mail on Sunday, seem completely at odds with the published projections of Keenlyside et al, especially the “two decades or longer” part.”
Thats shocking enough, what really floored me was Latif as an IPCC lead author saying: “A significant share of the warming we saw from 1980 to 2000 and at earlier periods in the 20th Century was due to these cycles – perhaps as much as 50 per cent.”
Now I realize that comment still clearly takes us inside of the range of IPCC projections for temperature increase during the 21st century but it definitely seems to be favoring the lower half of the range of IPCC projections as the centerline was an extension of the 1980-2000 warming trendline.
If you were to follow up and find out if he was misquoted or taken out of context would make for interesting reading.
[DC: The above statement as rendered is quite imprecise. Was the fifty percent upper bound figure really supposed to apply specifically to the 1980-2000 period? Somehow I doubt it.]
Did you see Lawrence Solomon’s column yesterday; it seems that CFCs, not CO2, caused warming, so we can all relax now. He cites Qin-Bin Lu (sp?) of Waterloo U. Rabett Run has done some recent posts about Lu.
[DC: Sigh. I really do have to get around to Solomon and his fake enviro organization some time. I’m thinking about a series called “The Liars” with roman numerals and all. ]
Oops, the link:
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2010/01/09/the-ozone-hole-did-it.aspx
I apologize if I was imprecise. I am pretty new to this stuff. You asked an excellent question. Learning the answer to that question might be another good objective either as part of or separate from dissecting the Latif issue.
As you have suggested these current statements being attributed to him are inconsistent with what he published in 2008. Thus I am sure there is great interest in whether he is being misquoted and taken out of context, or if it is just his viewpoint has changed since 2008. Icecap is certainly running with it.
[DC: I didn’t mean *you* were imprecise. I meant that Latif’s statement as rendered by the Mail was imprecise, which suggests that they garbled it. Sorry for any confusion.
I do think that Latif has tended to go a little beyond what the paper actually says, if you compare his statements to Keenlyside’s, but that’s not the major part of the problem here.]
Mojib Latif strikes back, in the Guardian.
Money quote:
Pingback: Mojib Latif slams Daily Mail’s « Deep Climate
“This cooling is offset by warming elsewhere though,”
I’m not very familiar with the NAO, PDO etc. – but would it be fair to say that these oscillatory mechanisms imply a redistribution of heat – as opposed to the heat that is trapped as a result of the greenhouse effect? In other words, the global mean temperature is not affected by changes in, say, the Northern Hemisphere? And would that imply no significant impact on CO2 sensitivity used in the climate models? Any pointers to understand better would be appreciated.
[DC: As I understand it there is some disagreement among climate scientists on the impact of decadal or multi-decadal natural “oscillations” on global temperature. Latif would certainly be among those (the minority at this point) who argue for a greater role for, say, the NAO. Yes, such processes involve redistribution of heat, but heat redistributed from or to ocean depths to the surface would affect global temperatures at these time scales, whereas (as you imply) geographical redistribution at the surface would not (or at least much less). But either way in the long run, there is no implication for climate sensitivity as I see it.
A related issue would be attribution of the 1940-1970 “flat” period, i.e. the relative role of aerosol forcing versus ocean influences. I believe RC had a good post on all this issues which I will try and dig out.]
DC: please feel free not to post this if you deem it inappropriate or off-topic for this section of your blog. If you want to suggest an alternative approach to my post, I would be more than happy to discuss this further by private email.
————————–
I am a Canadian oil industry geoscientist who has for a long time been dismayed at the amount of bad science and disinformation on climate change produced by groups such as the FOS and published by the CSPG . Not only is this bad for the public understanding of climate science but it makes the whole profession of applied geoscience appear biased and self-interested.
If there are any like-minded individuals out there who would be interested in forming a group to counter this disinformation please let me know here.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/02/08/china.hackers/index.html
A Chinese business, now shut down, has been promoting hacking. Is this a possible link to the East Anglia email posting/
[DC: That’s an interesting story, but I doubt that there’s much connection.]
I think you’re doing a great job and thanks for all the in depth writing. I go along with the proven man-made global warming but a really old friend of mine doesn’t. Piers Corbyn of weatheraction.com. He sells long-term weather forecasts based on solar wind effects. If you have time it would be great to have your analysis on this method of forecasting, but don’t let it take your eye of the ball, of course.
Thanks
Climate science is also being hobbled by US/UN drug policy, that has banned a known “strategic resource” as a “Schedule One” drug. An irrational bias against the world’s most environmentally significant agricultural resource keeps discussion of biogenic radiative forcing on the back burner. Solutions that could make a difference are not even being considered, let alone discussed.
“Global broiling” by increasing UV-B radiation is being all but ignored as people and the media are swamped with confusion about the veracity of “global warming” science.
Google ‘global broiling’ to learn more.
How bad do things have to get before all solutions are considered?
DC,
You have probably addressed this. But, just in case.
Are there not copyright issues associated with lifting text from a book without written permission from the publisher? In this case, Academic Press. The copyright statement in the beginning of Bradley (1999) is very clear that no part of the publication may be reproduced without their written permission. So maybe they need to be notified about what has been going on.
[DC:I have not done anything to alert aggrieved parties. I’ve assumed that since these posts got a lot of attention, that everyone who needs to know about these matters, does by now. ]
Hi, I hope you don’t mind but I’ve added your site to the ‘climate facebook’ website I volunteer for = see http://oneclimate.net/group/deep-climate, so your posts will appear in the news section.
PS. The ‘Questions’ section is often swamped by skeptics, I do my best but it gets a bit lonely in there, and I’m no expert. If anyone here would care to wade in from time to time I would be very grateful! I plan to do more articles, eg http://www.oneclimate.net/2010/01/08/note-for-sceptics-the-petition/ and anyone can contribute their thoughts on there, or suggest actions for people to take.
Have you seen this?
I’m highly sceptical that it’s being presented accurately, but I don’t spreche the Deutsch.
[DC: I’m aware of it, but haven’t had a chance to look into the details. Obviously the translation of the word in question (Richard Tol has suggested that it might be less strong than “fraud”) is important, but also the full context of the remarks should be analyzed. ]
I didn’t want to clutter up your threads with off-topic posts, but you are likely aware that Christy and Spencer revised and adjusted the UAH anomaly today. They gave credit to Anthony Watts for bringing it to their attention.
I thought for fun, I would collect the comments from WUWT where AW “discovered” this seasonal trend. They include a comment by you.
I will post a comment on WUWT, asking that Christy and Spencer credit the correct people who discovered this trend, as you listed the sources in your WUWT post.
Paul K (10:07:24) :
Mike D. (22:28:33) :
Paul K (20:18:03) : Man oh man, that is off the wall rude. All the ad homs and buffoon comments. Is that your best shot?
Mike, look carefully at the original post by Anthony Watts, and see who set the stage to use buffoons to illustrate and belittle real climate scientists.
I get it that you folks at CP have a vested interest in raising the paranoia level. You all suck off the public teat and need mass hysteria to keep your milk and honey flowing. Alarmism butters your bread. I get that. The whoowhoo scare rants are your stock in trade. They keep the gravy flowing.
Now Mike D, read the first 120 comments, most by WUWT regulars, and see who worked themselves into a tizzy with conspiracy and fraud charges.
But the sophomoric insults are not helping your cause. Spewing venom is not the same as spewing horror stories. It diminishes you when resort to juvenile snottiness. We see you for what you are: a fouled mouthed brat. Your hysterical Alarmist pronouncements thus have no basis in empathy or concern for your fellow man. You can’t act with compassion because you have none for those who disagree with you. That lack of compassion and courtesy makes your whole fear mongering drivel suspect. There are no ethics behind it; it must be false compassion.
I came over here to respond to very sophomoric and ridiculous comments made by others. This is stock and trade for WUWT. Your charges above describe the WUWT comments posted on this thread extremely well.
Do you get that, PK? If you despise your fellow man, then your alleged concern about global warming is a fraud. Warming or no, the concern is a fraud. Do you get that?
Warmer is better. If it gets warmer, we will have more rain, longer growing seasons, less drought, more biodiversity, etc. Any real concern or compassion for humanity and “the planet” necessarily leads to the realization that warmer is better.
If you want to be taken seriously; that is, if you want your concerns to be taken seriously, then you have to exhibit some respect and compassion for others. Lacking that, we must assume you are posturing for selfish reasons and your message is tainted by your own social and interpersonal disabilities and failings.
What a charge! I am posting for selfish reasons? I will answer this charge in my next comment.
17
07
2009
Paul K (10:20:43) :
Mike D., you attacked my motivation in posting here:
As you can see from my posts above, the UAH monthly global anomalies fall below 0.10 in May and June in most recent years, and rise to about 0.35 in January and February each year. I noticed Anthony Watts loves to focus on UAH monthly data showing low anomalies, so I saw this train wreck coming back in early June when he first posted the May data. I knew eventually he would put out some kind of silly post, comparing UAH to GISS monthly global anomalies (which really shouldn’t be directly comparable).
But I could hardly believe my eyes when he put up the post three days ago with the Laurel and Hardy comedy theme, and went after the GISS scientists virtually claiming they were intentionally fabricating the results.
He augmented that mistake, by mixing in US temperature record data in a standalone analysis, when the subject really was the global anomaly. He put up an off-subject “blinking graph” that showed the impact of revisions to the US record made by GISS some time ago, and known far and wide, and implied those revisions impacted the global record. In fact, the impact of the US data revisions on the global record is negligible, and most real scientists, and really anyone who has followed the recent global temperature records, know that.
Mr. Watts was completely unaware of the seasonal shift in the UAH data, which should be surprising since he touts that temperature record, and pushes the work of Dr. Spencer. But he doesn’t seem to understand the data very well.
The whole affair reflects extremely negatively on Mr. Watts, and if you read the ‘kill the messenger’ mentality of the WUWT comments above, it makes many of the skeptics look like idiots. They quickly jumped on some kind of mass conspiracy bandwagon.
I didn’t write the belittling original post, I didn’t attack reputable scientists (except for a sarcastic tongue and cheek comment about investigating all possible miscreants, when the comments above alleged fraud), and I have tried to keep the focus on the data itself, and off attacks on scientists.
But this post and the comments by WUWT regulars are fair game; if they cross the line into conspiracy and allegations of fraud, then someone has to stand up and show the hypocrisy.
17
07
2009
Mike D. (13:06:34) :
Point by point:
Paul K (10:20:43) : As you can see from my posts above, the UAH monthly global anomalies fall below 0.10 in May and June in most recent years, and rise to about 0.35 in January and February each year.
Contention not supported by the data, as was pointed out above.
I noticed Anthony Watts loves to focus on UAH monthly data showing low anomalies, so I saw this train wreck coming back in early June when he first posted the May data.
A canard. WUWT posts monthly anomalies from all major sources every month. Obviously you are not a regular reader.
I knew eventually he would put out some kind of silly post, comparing UAH to GISS monthly global anomalies (which really shouldn’t be directly comparable).
More insults. It is you who are silly, sir. All major global anomaly sets are comparable; they purport to measure the same thing. If they differ, that is of interest. You have contended that they don’t differ. I submit: that is a comparison. You protest yourself.
But I could hardly believe my eyes when he put up the post three days ago with the Laurel and Hardy comedy theme, and went after the GISS scientists virtually claiming they were intentionally fabricating the results.
Fraud charges were discouraged by AW, as they always have been. Obviously you are not a regular reader. The problems with the GISS sets are well-known to include faulty data (UHI) and questionable “adjustments,” all well-documented at WUWT. If you are offended by “virtual” charges, then I suggest you look in a real mirror.
He augmented that mistake, by mixing in US temperature record data in a standalone analysis, when the subject really was the global anomaly. He put up an off-subject “blinking graph” that showed the impact of revisions to the US record made by GISS some time ago, and known far and wide, and implied those revisions impacted the global record. In fact, the impact of the US data revisions on the global record is negligible, and most real scientists, and really anyone who has followed the recent global temperature records, know that.
Your contentions of “consensus” are weak and unsupported. It is a typical tactic of Alarmists to claim consensus when there is none. Your charges of “fake” against anyone who disagrees with you are illogical and insipid.
Mr. Watts was completely unaware of the seasonal shift in the UAH data, which should be surprising since he touts that temperature record, and pushes the work of Dr. Spencer. But he doesn’t seem to understand the data very well.
More ad hominem attacks. Perhaps it is you who do not understand the data nor the abilities of others.
The whole affair reflects extremely negatively on Mr. Watts, and if you read the ‘kill the messenger’ mentality of the WUWT comments above, it makes many of the skeptics look like idiots. They quickly jumped on some kind of mass conspiracy bandwagon.
More ad hominem and broad brush insults. It is Alarmists like you who look like fascist conspirators, in my judgment. To claim there is no Alarmist conspiracy is what is idiotic and puerile. J’accuse. Please reveal your funding levels and sources. Be honest, how is your bread buttered? How do you profit by the Alarmist conspiracy?
I didn’t write the belittling original post, I didn’t attack reputable scientists (except for a sarcastic tongue and cheek comment about investigating all possible miscreants, when the comments above alleged fraud), and I have tried to keep the focus on the data itself, and off attacks on scientists.
Your defense is empty. Your words in the thread above are testament to your tone, focus, and casting of personal aspersions. You cannot erase them by claiming you never said them.
But this post and the comments by WUWT regulars are fair game; if they cross the line into conspiracy and allegations of fraud, then someone has to stand up and show the hypocrisy.
You sir have claimed conspiracy and fraud. Your own words convict you. If you had something of value to add to the conversation, you could have done so in a polite and considerate manner. But you chose to be snide and belittling from the beginning. WUWT moderators posted your remarks, unlike other sites which censor all contrary views. Wisely, I might add, since your remarks brand you as an Alarmist lacking cooth. “Fair game” is your phrase; it does not excuse your insulting tone and attacks on specific persons and the readership of WUWT in general. It is a troll’s excuse, and not acceptable in polite company.
I hope that if you choose to participate in future threads here that you can adopt a gentlemanly tone and engage in polite discourse. Otherwise, you brand yourself for all to see as a cad and a bounder.
Oops, I only sent the last couple of comments, here is first of the thread of comments.
Paul K (09:00:14) :
Good grief… Could you make this any more confusing Anthony Watts?
You talk about global anomalies, and the difference between GISS and UAH for June, then you show a blinking graph of the GISS for the US only, instead of the global anomaly.
Wasn’t there an error admitted about a year or so ago for the GISS temperature record for the US, which in turn was corrected downward? The impact on the global record was insignificant. Isn’t this what your blinking graph of the US data shows? That most of the change is due to the before and after of that correction? And isn’t it true that a similar blinking graph of the global anomaly wouldn’t show any significant change?
Why didn’t you show the global anomaly in your blinking graph? Maybe it didn’t give the impression that you wanted to project to your readers?
REPLY:Good grief Paul K could you be any more transparent? Instead of deflecting with things not relevant, why not take the issue head on – do you think it is OK to adjust past data? That is the issue presented. Get upset about the fact that the blink comparator is for US data all you want. The real issue is data adjustment post facto
Here is another post on the issue.
– Anthony
15
07
2009
John Finn (09:02:56) :
Dear All
Why doesn’t someone (not you, Flanagan) check the trends for all 4 data sets since 1992. We know there was some disagreement before then, but since the early 1990s I think the trends have matched up quite well.
I’d prefer this to be someone who is sceptical of the GISS record but who actually knows what they are doing. If the trends are similar I’d suggest there’s nothing dodgy going on.
15
07
2009
Indiana Bones (09:05:56) :
TO: Doc. James Hansen GISS, Columbia University New York, NY
FROM: Robert H. Goddard (dec’d)
Dear Doc. Hansen,
In light of your fast and loose play with meteorological data, I request that you immediately remove my name from your Institute. Harping on this “global warming” business has nothing to do with rocketry or good science. You might consider replacing my name with, “Piltdown Institute for Space Studies.”
Thank you. RHG
NOTE: Which makes for an unfortunate but apt acronym.
15
07
2009
Paul K (09:07:50) :
Next point, I applaud you for headlining the difference between UAH and GISS for June, as you did in May. Every year you trumpet the UAH data for May and June. Why?
Every year the UAH data show a substantial drop in May and June. There is a serious seasonal variability in the UAH data, and it seems to be getting worse. For some reason UAH shows a seasonal rise in the anomaly in February, and seasonal decline in the anomaly for May and June. This has been discussed at several blog sites, such as https://deepclimate.org/2009/06/05/uah-annual-cycle-continues-in-2009/
Interestingly, the UAH data seems to show a much higher seasonal impact than RSS, which only shows a minor seasonal change. Something looks very fishy in the UAH reported data.
REPLY: “Every year you trumpet the UAH data for May and June. Why?”
Paul K lets see how well your argument holds up.
WUWT in May 2007 http://wattsupwiththat.com/2007/05/ – no mention of UAH WUWT in June 2007 http://wattsupwiththat.com/2007/06/ – no mention of UAH
WUWT in May 2008 http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/05/ – UAH mentioned because of 4 to .5 degrees C cooler than May 2007 “seasonal anomaly”? Not likely since 2007 didn’t have the same issue.
WUWT in June 2008 http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/06/ – 1 mention of UAH, due to it being cooler than Hansens 20th anniversary, plus the largest 4 month drop in UAH since 1998
WUWT in May 2009 http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/ – 1 mention of UAH comparing it to RSS at the same time
WUWT in June 2009 http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/ – 1 mention of UAH pointing out the low anomaly near zero
But wait, let’s look at all the other months…if you’ll go through the archives, you’ll see that I mention UAH almost every month since early 2008. I also mention RSS. Trumpeting? Your reporting trend is non-existent, and you’d be the first to jump on me if I made such assumptions on something else without looking at all the data. You don’t like UAH, you don’t like what I report about it, we get it.
Christy offers some insight as to why UAH and RSS don’t always coincide:
Once again there is a rather large discrepancy between our monthly anomaly (+0.09 deg. C.) and that produced by Remote Sensing Systems (RSS, +0.20 deg. C). We (John Christy and I) believe the difference is due to some combination of three factors:
1) we calculate the anomalies from a wider latitude band, 84S to 84N whereas RSS stops at 70S, and Antarctica was cooler than average in April (so UAH picks it up).
2) The monthly anomaly is relative to the 1979-1998 base period, which for RSS had a colder mean period relative to April 2009 (i.e. their early Aprils in the 1979-1998 period were colder than ours.)
3) RSS is still using a NOAA satellite whose orbit continues to decay, leading to a sizeable diurnal drift adjustment. We are using AMSU data from only NASA’s Aqua satellite, whose orbit is maintained, and so no diurnal drift adjustment is needed. The largest diurnal effects occur during Northern Hemisphere spring, and I personally believe this is the largest contributor to the discrepancy between UAH and RSS.
So the real question is, does UAH do a better job than RSS due to platform differences? Does UAH do a better job of representing the planetary temperature than GISS? From my perspective, seeing the issue with weather stations worldwide and the data they produce, and the high number of airports in GISTEMP, I think UAH is free of those biases. Is the “serious seasonal variability” real or an artifact? I don’t know, but I’ll put the question to Dr. Christy.
– Anthony
Later in the thread:
Paul K (09:30:59) :
Mr. Watts: Good grief Paul K could you be any more transparent? Instead of deflecting with things not relevant, why not take the issue head on – do you think it is OK to adjust past data? That is the issue presented.
My response: I am happy I am transparent and therefore clear in what I posted. To answer your question: Yes, I think it is very important to adjust the data when an error is discovered. The GISS record for the US was adjusted for the period before 2001, as bluegrue discussed the post immediately preceding my post. In fact, even UAH data has been significantly corrected in the past. If I recall, the UAH data corrected even more substantially.
My point, is that the US is only about 2% of the global surface area, and the data you began the post with, was a comparison of the global temperature anomalies. The UAH global anomalies seems out of whack with other global trends, as shown in the link I posted to above. Check out the graph of anomaly trends by month at the link:
REPLY:” Yes, I think it is very important to adjust the data when an error is discovered.”
So it is OK to say, adjust temperature data from 1945 or 1960 or and number of points in previous years where the GISS data has been changed? Please explain then how GISS determines that data is in error? I’ve heard the 2% area argument a zillion times, still not impressed. The issue remains is it OK to adjust past measured data, and how is it justified that it is in “error”?
As for the UAH issue, I’ll put the question to Dr. Christy – A
Later on the thread:
Paul K (10:47:20) :
Wow, the posters on this self-rated “top” science site are accusing the scientists generating either the UAH or the GISS anomaly reports (whichever is ‘wrong’) with intentionally doctoring the data? ( I will not use the F word, as Mr. Watts so correctly asks us to refrain from that… I won’t even repeat it, even as poster after poster copies the F word into their posts.)
Lets see now… from the data and links I have posted, the UAH monthly anomalies for May and June over the last 20 years, have significantly shown results much lower than other temperature records (and January and February results that are seasonally much higher). I would guess that the UAH scientists seem to be using a seasonal correction that might be introducing a seasonal swing in the data.
But the WUWT posters seem to be concluding that the scientists are likely guilty of intentionally doctoring the data. Wow. What a claim!!! If the UAH data is wrong, do you guys really think the UAH scientists are guilty of your charges? Who are the scientists behind the UAH data? We need to investigate the backgrounds of these possible miscreants!
15
07
2009
Deep Climate (10:48:39) :
I see that my most recent blog post on UAH annual cycle has been cited above by Paul K.
I previously had a more complete discussion of this phenomenon in two parts:
Also see posts by Tamino (Open Mind) and atmoz (Google search UAH annual cycle).
An interesting footnote: I see that Eric Swanson had already detected an annual cycle in the UAH antarctic temperature record back in 2003 (GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 30, NO. 20, 2040, doi:10.1029/2003GL017938, 2003).
Later on the thread:
Smokey (11:41:15) :
Paul K (10:47:20) says:
Wow, the posters on this self-rated “top” science site are accusing the scientists generating either the UAH or the GISS anomaly reports (whichever is ‘wrong’) with intentionally doctoring the data?
First off, this is not a “self-rated” site. Voting took place across the internet over an extended time period, and voting was open to everyone. There were numerous categories, “Best Science” being only one of many.
When all was said and done, WUWT soundly thrashed RC by 10 – 1 [and the year before another skeptic site, ClimateAudit, also trounced the censorship-prone RealClimate].
Paul K says he can’t believe the alarmist contingent is ‘intentionally doctoring the data.’:
We need to investigate the backgrounds of these possible miscreants!
Such sarcasm! I think Paul is just a bit naive. There is big money, and there are big egos involved in pushing AGW. Not all scientists are immune from the temptations of money and status — and it appears that those on the alarmist side are more susceptible to temptation than most. Why else would they run and hide out from neutral, moderated debates if they really believed what they’re trying to sell?
Paul K should read this account of the shenanigans that go on in the warmist camp. And Prof. Richard Lindzen’s account of the back room politics in the climate grant industry is well worth reading, too. Dr. Lindzen states:
Data that challenges the hypothesis are simply changed. In some instances, data that was thought to support the hypothesis is found not to, and is then changed. The changes are sometimes quite blatant, but more often are somewhat more subtle. The crucial point is that geophysical data is almost always at least somewhat uncertain, and methodological errors are constantly being discovered. Bias can be introduced by simply considering only those errors that change answers in the desired direction. The desired direction in the case of climate is to bring the data into agreement with models, even though the models have displayed minimal skill in explaining or predicting climate. Model projections, it should be recalled, are the basis for our greenhouse concerns… that such corrections should always be in the ‘needed’ direction is exceedingly unlikely. Although the situation suggests overt dishonesty… many scientists feel that it is the role of science to vindicate the greenhouse paradigm for climate change as well as the credibility of models. Comparisons of models with data are, for example, referred to as model validation studies rather than model tests.
Those revealing accounts might help Paul shed some of his charming naiveté.
15
07
2009
Paul K (11:47:53) :
Over 142 comments, and I still don’t understand your post Mr. Watts. The title says “GISS for June – way out there” with a poster for a Laurel and Hardy movie Way Out West. You begin the post with a discussion of the GLOBAL anomalies for GISS, UAH, and RSS. From this, I surmised the subject was the discrepancies in the monthly reports for global temperature anomalies.
But then there is a blinking graph of US temperature record for GISS. The intent of the graph seems to be that GISS adjusted the temperature record for the US. This is true, and a previous poster bluecrue provided links showing the really major adjustment occurred impacting data for the US. I simply wanted to point out that the global anomaly is very different than the US anomaly. You posted this back in reply:
“So it is OK to say, adjust temperature data from 1945 or 1960 or and number of points in previous years where the GISS data has been changed? Please explain then how GISS determines that data is in error? I’ve heard the 2% area argument a zillion times, still not impressed. The issue remains is it OK to adjust past measured data, and how is it justified that it is in “error”?
You lost me here. The 2% number simply points out the difference between the ‘US record’ and the ‘Global record’ that seemed to be the point of the post… i.e. The GISS reported global anomaly is WAY OUT THERE, and can be safely compared to joke like a Laurel and Hardy movie. I think putting the US record graph in the post, introduced an apple to orange comparison.
I can’t see how the previously disclosed adjustments in the GISS US temperature has much impact on the global anomaly. The data I have seen, doesn’t show much impact of the change in the US record on the global record, and you haven’t shown anything that indicates that the US changes significantly impacted the global record.
I came back, and posted links to analysis that shows the UAH monthly anomalies in May and June seem out of whack, and just possibly may be WAY OUT THERE.
Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy may in fact, be working at University of Alabama at Huntsville, and not at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
Later in the thread:
Paul K (15:33:35) :
Jeff Shifrin wrote: “Living in Canada where the winter temperatures often hover around the freezing point, I often laugh when I hear a clueless radio or television reporter say “Yesterday, the high was only 1 degree Celsius. Today, the the high will be 2 degrees Celsius. So, it will be twice as warm today as it was yesterday.” (It doesn’t have the same effect if you use Fahrenheit.) In the case of Paul K., I can’t tell if he is mathematically and scientifically challenged like the clueless reporters, or whether he is just being intellectually dishonest when he attempts to demonstrate that the differences in the June anomalies are not so unusual by saying..”
Jeff, the one day temperature comparison is a joke, I agree. Your analogy to my statement is also a joke. I am linking to data showing the twenty year averages for both the UAH and GISS monthly mean anomalies. It is an average of averages, and to see this much discrepancy in the twenty year averages is statistically meaningful. Either the UAH or the other records are wrong (Mr. Watts jumped to the assumption that the GISS record is WAY OUT THERE) or there is something unusual about the UAH data, but I am simply asking ‘what’s up with that’?
I found Flanagan’s post (at 6:57 on July 15) linking to the AMSU graphs very interesting. There may be a change in the shape of the annual cycle of warming and cooling measured by the satellites.
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/execute.csh?amsutemps
Select the years from 2003 to 2008 plus 2009 so far, and click ‘redraw graph’. We can see the recent warming all across the seasons, but there does seem to be a delay in the global heating in May and June, with a prolonged and delayed seasonal cooldown compared to the 20 year average.
Also, clearly the July UAH anomaly is going to be scary, if the trend so far stays up.
In any case, I don’t find the UAH data persuasive in showing the GISS June anomaly data wrong, unlike Mr. Watts and many of the commenters here. I think that resolving the discrepancy will involve more in evaluation of the UAH data, and understanding what the unusual seasonal trend in the UAH data is telling us.
Later in the thread:
aul K (16:32:45) :
I saw the NOAA June data is out, and so I rushed over here to read the WUWT regulars take on the data… But NADA, not a single mention. My God, gentlemen, you lampooned GISS for being way out there and caricatured the GISS scientists by comparing them with a couple of buffoonish movie characters. Now the NOAA data comes in and confirms the GISS data, and shows the
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2009/jun/global.html
Global Highlights:
Based on preliminary data, the globally averaged combined land and sea surface temperature was the second warmest on record for June and the January-June year-to-date tied with 2004 as the fifth warmest on record.
El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) transitioned from ENSO-neutral to El Niño conditions across the equatorial Pacific Ocean during June 2009. If El Niño conditions continue to mature as projected by NOAA, global temperatures are likely to continue to threaten previous record highs.
[later in the report:] Sea surface temperatures during June 2009 were warmer than average across much of the world’s oceans, with the exception of cooler-than-average conditions across the southern oceans. The global ocean SST for June 2009 was the warmest on record, 0.59°C (1.06°F) above the 20th century average of 16.4°C (61.5°F). This broke the previous June record set in 2005. Sea surface temperature anomalies in all Niño regions continued to warm during June 2009, where the monthly temperatures were more than 0.5°C (0.9°F) above average. If El Niño conditions continue to mature as projected by NOAA, global temperatures are likely to continue to threaten previous record highs. Please see the June 2009 ENSO discussion for additional information.
My question: What happened to all the flat ocean temperature information that has been trumpeted on this site? (My guess… we had a La Nina last year, and an emerging El Nino this year.)
Why do WUWT posts and regular commenters push out conspiracy theories (in this post and comments) regarding real climate scientists, and the guys here who claim to know more about the “real” temperature records, are demonstrably naive and ill-informed about the important temperature records?
REPLY: Paul – Gosh, I didn’t react fast enough for you. Time for smackdown then. Perhaps it might be possible that an article is in the works but not ready for publcation yet? It might be possible that I’m collaborating with some people about the NOAA data and that we maybe want to check out something first? Perhaps there is an interesting puzzle in the NOAA data?
You were quick to complain about my “trumpeting” of UAH data…but you didn’t look to see how often I report on NOAA data. If I had reported on NOAA data every month and then suddenly this one was late, you might have a point.
I don’t sit at this screen all day. I can’t. I’ll also point out, that during the day, I don’t do much blogging or research because I have a business to run. For example I’m running this comment at quitting time, 5PM PST. Moderators handle the site from early morning to late afternoon. Occasionally I’ll add a story like I did today (on NCAR’s solar announcement) because I got a direct tip from Leif Svalgaard on my business email.
So daytime blog updates are the exception, not the rule. Most are done evening and early mornings. So next time you want to beat me up for not reacting fast enough for you but instead choosing to run my business and keep my family fed and clothed, remember that.
Warmist, chill thyself. – Anthony
rbateman (16:46:06) :
I’ll give it a go. It means my Y-axis scale will be fractional, as Penumbra outnumber Umbra by a large multiple when area measurements are concerned.
16
07
2009
wattsupwiththat (17:12:17) :
Paul K see inline comment above
Your second comment with link to the Climate Progress website run by Joe Romm was deleted. By me.
Why you ask?
Well it is because Romm has a policy of deleting any links to WUWT. Even when he attacks the issues we present here he hasn’t the integrity to allow the reader to follow a link to WUWT and judge for themselves.
Romm is so inflammatory, even people on his side of the debate are starting to ridicule him. For example Stoat/Connelley
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2009/06/foaming_at_the_mouth_with_joe.php
So he gets no favors here until he changes his policy of linkage and tones it down a bit. – Anthony
Paul K (20:18:03) :
Here is the post I put up on Climate Progress today, submitted roughly the same time I posted a rather innocuous post here, simply giving a link to Joe Romm’s post covering the June global anomaly. My post here was censored, but Climate Progress let my post there, stand. It includes the link to WUWT.
Paul K says: July 16, 2009 at 7:26 pm
Well, the WUWT guys have been having a good ole time, lampooning the June GISS report, comparing the NASA scientists to Laurel and Hardy. They are convinced there is a massive conspiracy to manipulate the temperature records. If you guys want a good laugh, then read the ridiculous comments there. (But make sure to come back here to post about it. Lets move the discussion over to Climate Progress.)
http://wattsupwiththat.com/ 2009/ 07/ 14/ giss-for-june-way-out-there/
There are a couple of reasonable posters over there, so look for their posts (bluegrue and Flanagan) and I have some tongue and cheek posts over there suggesting we chase down the miscreants at UAH as well.
Now the NOAA data comes out, and the entire post and comments make Anthony Watts look ridiculous. He seems to be the real buffoon character, similar to Laurel and Hardy’s movie personnas.
REPLY: Well of course it would stick in this case. You have negative things to say about me, Romm loves that. Perhaps Romm read my previous message to you, so I’m not at all surprised that in this case he’d leave a link just to prove me wrong. Either way, I’m not concerned. Romm is becoming irrelevant and my advice to commenters here is to simply ignore him and the whole angry rabble there. Anger and derision combined has limited appeal. Romm and the crowd you run with don’t like WUWT or anyone who frequents here, we get it. – Anthony
Later on the thread:
16
07
2009
Paul K (10:07:24) :
Mike D. (22:28:33) : Paul K (20:18:03) : Man oh man, that is off the wall rude. All the ad homs and buffoon comments. Is that your best shot?
Mike, look carefully at the original post by Anthony Watts, and see who set the stage to use buffoons to illustrate and belittle real climate scientists.
I get it that you folks at CP have a vested interest in raising the paranoia level. You all suck off the public teat and need mass hysteria to keep your milk and honey flowing. Alarmism butters your bread. I get that. The whoowhoo scare rants are your stock in trade. They keep the gravy flowing.
Now Mike D, read the first 120 comments, most by WUWT regulars, and see who worked themselves into a tizzy with conspiracy and fraud charges.
But the sophomoric insults are not helping your cause. Spewing venom is not the same as spewing horror stories. It diminishes you when resort to juvenile snottiness. We see you for what you are: a fouled mouthed brat. Your hysterical Alarmist pronouncements thus have no basis in empathy or concern for your fellow man. You can’t act with compassion because you have none for those who disagree with you. That lack of compassion and courtesy makes your whole fear mongering drivel suspect. There are no ethics behind it; it must be false compassion.
I came over here to respond to very sophomoric and ridiculous comments made by others. This is stock and trade for WUWT. Your charges above describe the WUWT comments posted on this thread extremely well.
Do you get that, PK? If you despise your fellow man, then your alleged concern about global warming is a fraud. Warming or no, the concern is a fraud. Do you get that?
Warmer is better. If it gets warmer, we will have more rain, longer growing seasons, less drought, more biodiversity, etc. Any real concern or compassion for humanity and “the planet” necessarily leads to the realization that warmer is better.
If you want to be taken seriously; that is, if you want your concerns to be taken seriously, then you have to exhibit some respect and compassion for others. Lacking that, we must assume you are posturing for selfish reasons and your message is tainted by your own social and interpersonal disabilities and failings.
What a charge! I am posting for selfish reasons? I will answer this charge in my next comment.
17
07
2009
Paul K (10:20:43) :
Mike D., you attacked my motivation in posting here:
As you can see from my posts above, the UAH monthly global anomalies fall below 0.10 in May and June in most recent years, and rise to about 0.35 in January and February each year. I noticed Anthony Watts loves to focus on UAH monthly data showing low anomalies, so I saw this train wreck coming back in early June when he first posted the May data. I knew eventually he would put out some kind of silly post, comparing UAH to GISS monthly global anomalies (which really shouldn’t be directly comparable).
But I could hardly believe my eyes when he put up the post three days ago with the Laurel and Hardy comedy theme, and went after the GISS scientists virtually claiming they were intentionally fabricating the results.
He augmented that mistake, by mixing in US temperature record data in a standalone analysis, when the subject really was the global anomaly. He put up an off-subject “blinking graph” that showed the impact of revisions to the US record made by GISS some time ago, and known far and wide, and implied those revisions impacted the global record. In fact, the impact of the US data revisions on the global record is negligible, and most real scientists, and really anyone who has followed the recent global temperature records, know that.
Mr. Watts was completely unaware of the seasonal shift in the UAH data, which should be surprising since he touts that temperature record, and pushes the work of Dr. Spencer. But he doesn’t seem to understand the data very well.
The whole affair reflects extremely negatively on Mr. Watts, and if you read the ‘kill the messenger’ mentality of the WUWT comments above, it makes many of the skeptics look like idiots. They quickly jumped on some kind of mass conspiracy bandwagon.
I didn’t write the belittling original post, I didn’t attack reputable scientists (except for a sarcastic tongue and cheek comment about investigating all possible miscreants, when the comments above alleged fraud), and I have tried to keep the focus on the data itself, and off attacks on scientists.
But this post and the comments by WUWT regulars are fair game; if they cross the line into conspiracy and allegations of fraud, then someone has to stand up and show the hypocrisy.
Hi DC,
You (well your moniker at least) made it onto Peter Sinclair’s latest video 🙂
This seems to be a developing story:
http://desmogblog.com/canadian-government-muzzling-messengers
http://stephenleahy.net/
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Scientists+muzzled+Ottawa+documents/2682990/story.html
This story needs to get some legs!
One suggestion: look more at the science and less at the people denying it.
I just happened on this today while looking up something related to japanese longline fishing (the old method from before the big nets came on).
It’s one of the more powerful speeches I’ve heard in my life. This can’t be the only one we’ve missed.
I’ve mentioned it elsewhere. Here are pointers to the video and to a transcript of a somewhat overlapping speech. There’s probably more we ought to be pulling together and getting together web pages of citations to present.
We don’t need to reinvent a lot of this.
http://symposia.cbc.amnh.org/archives/expandingthearc/speakers/transcripts/jackson-text.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=qX9uvyF58U0
DC: How about a post looking at the NSERC board (Essex and Mullins, as you pointed out in a recent thread)? How are these guys appointed? Mullins isn’t even a scientist – he’s a Fraser Institute-ite. Does their presence have any impact on the actual funding decisions?
Combined with the recent move by the Conservative Reform Alliance Party (CRAP) to drop CFCAS (the main funding agency for climate science in Canada), something smells a bit rotten in the state of the great white north.
McIntyre- the beginning. I’m going to limit my post to just one, since this could be a huge time drain. A lot of what you write about Steve McIntyre differs from what I remember when I interacted with him in 2003. He deserves more credit than you give him. As a disclaimer, I am not a climate skeptic, I am not paid by any energy company or lobby, I do have a Ph.D. in Geology from UC Berkeley, and I have published many articles pertaining to climate change in peer-refereed scientific journals. I was a post-doc with Richard Muller in the Physics Department at Berkeley when Steve McIntyre came to visit. My desk was in Muller’s outer office for six years (Muller works with, and shares space with, his grad students and post-docs). No one had a one-on-one audience with Muller. If they came to visit him, then visited us, too. McIntyre wasn’t interested in climate change all that much. With his background in finance, he was interested in company prospectuses that claimed to have fantastic earnings leading up to the present time. The shape of the earnings for such companies were generally flat, followed by a quick upturn leading up to the present (i.e. a hockey-stick shape). When he happened across the Mann et al. curve, it triggered the same red flag that he got from those company prospectuses- if it looks to good to be true, it probably is. McIntyre had been in finance long enough to learn that the hockey-stick earnings curves meant that some one on the inside was probably cooking the books. When he learned of the significance of the Mann et al. report on the IPCC outcomes, he felt it was important enough to dedicate some of his time to review that paper thoroughly and see whether the data had been treated objectively in order to construct the hockey-stick curve. As Muller reported in his Technology Review article, there were math errors made by Mann et al. that would have caused randomized data input to the program to have an output that had the hockey stick shape. I was there when Muller wrote the Technology Review article about the hockey stick controversy. It was a jaw-dropping moment for all of us when McIntyre explained to us, and then showed us in Mann et al.’s code, that this was true. Muller’s commentary in Technology Review was not sympathetic, as you state in your Part 1 report. His commentary was polite, because there was no need to get personal about it.
What was clear to us was that McIntyre got the cold shoulder when he requested the data and the computer code used by Mann et al. to create the hockey stick. The replies that he got (which I paraphrase here) made little sense to any one who does computer modeling and data analysis. In essence, he was told that it would not be easy to give him the data, because it wasn’t all kept in one place. The response that we all had to hearing that was, “So, how’d you run the model if you didn’t have all the data on a single computer?” Mann should have been able to provide what was requested very quickly, and it should have amounted to nothing more than dragging folders onto a CD and burning a disk.
A couple of other things. McIntyre hadn’t published before this time because that wasn’t his job. He was a finance guy who happened to have enough time (he was semi-retired at that time) and knowledge about math to be able to reproduce Mann et al.’s work. McIntyre’s beef with Mann was not about climate; it was about data analysis. I don’t think that McIntyre entered this field as a climate “skeptic”. I think he entered it as a scientist who was skeptical of the climate scientists’ handling of their data. That was a valid concern, and one that McIntyre was well qualified to investigate.
The big question that McIntyre wanted to ask when he met with us was why hadn’t any one in the climate change field noticed the mistake in Mann et al.’s calculations. The answer we gave him was revealing to him and to us- to truly check the calculations that Mann et al. had made would take a reviewer several months, and the research science business isn’t set up to do that. If you peer review some one’s paper in Science, Nature, or any journal, you rely on the authors’ reputations first. You ask yourself whether they do good work, and are they careful. If you find out that yes, they do and the are, then you check a few calculations to see if they are accurate, and then you review the paper for readability and typos. That’s about it. A couple of hours at most. After all, it’s not your paper, and you get no credit or compensation for doing a sensational review of it. In fact, the more time you spend reviewing others’ work means the less time you have to do your own. It’s a flawed system, but it works pretty well. When flaws surface, they should be dealt with quickly to set the record straight. If they are brushed off or dismissed, then the record remains tainted, and scientists head off in unproductive directions.
So to summarize, not a climate skeptic. Believe in global warming. Believe humans the chief cause. Believe that even big-name scientists make mistakes. Believe they more often than not don’t like their mistakes exposed in a very public way, and by people who are not their “peers”. Believe that if every one was a bit more humble, this blog would not have become necessary. Believe it’ okay to be skeptical of climate change scientists AND at the same time believe that global warming is real.
I hope this helps. I fear it’ll just lead to my name being added to the wall of “skeptics”. If that turns out to be the inevitable, then I would sure like some kind soul from the energy lobby to put me on their payroll as a consultant! D. Karner
Andrew Weaver is suing the National Post for libel.
http://www.desmogblog.com/climate-scientist-sues-national-post
Check out lastcamels.blogspot.com
Climate change complexity compendium
I am pleased to announce a new Calgary climate denial skeptics group:
http://friendsofginandtonic.org/
I would appreciate if you helped our (=your cause) and spread the word around to colleagues and friends.
Thanks,
FoGT Climate Blog: http://friendsofginandtonic.org/page1/page1.html
RSS Feed: feed://friendsofginandtonic.org/page1/files/blog.xml
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Friends-of-Gin-Tonic-Climate-Change-Denial-Skepticism/111612652207175?ref=ts
It would be a good thing to see someone analyze/reply to Alexander Cockburn, who has just published yet another “debunking” of climate science on the pages of Counterpunch:
http://counterpunch.org/cockburn04302010.html
I did see a recent debunking of this latest meme, but I can’t recall where.
Cockburn says that the overzealous shutdown of international air traffic was a result of erroneous modelling of the volcanic ash plume.
But as I understand it, models correctly and accurately predicted the movements of the plume. The decision to shut down the air space was based on the assessed (apparently inflated) risk of flying through the volcanic ash plume. The decision may have been an overreaction, but I fail to see any connection with modelling per se, at least on the evidence presented.
If anyone can point to a substantive detailed discussion of this, I’d appreciate a comment on the current open thread.
This what you’re after?
[DC: That’s a good take (although not the one I had seen) – thanks very much! Also see the Open Thread.]
Actually, decent tracking and modeling of the ash plume is exactly why they’re now allowing normal flights except in areas where they plume is actually ending up. For instance, in the UK right now they’re saying airports will reopen on Tuesday, obviously based on modeled weather forecast and plume dispersal based on that.
I’d say that during the time of closure, the first reaction, confidence in the ability to predict the plume’s behavior *grew*.
My main wish is that there were a full rss feed, rather than the current teaser feed. I do a lot of blog reading on my iPhone, and teaser feeds are not very useful there. Thanks.
Hi DC,
Did you hear about Solomon’s latest nonsense in the NP on the weekend?
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/06/13/the-ipcc-consensus-on-climate-change-was-phoney-says-ipcc-insider/
[DC: Sigh … ]
That’s being touted everywhere.
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=5864
You can also expect to see a lot of nonsense about ancient Rome to suddenly crop up.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/may/19/nero-was-hotter-than-al-gore/
When short tunics crop up in conversation (it always does), ask them how come your average legionary in 3rd Century Syria looked like this:
http://www.le.ac.uk/ar/stj/dura.htm#late
[DC: I’ve been looking into Bill Patterson, and have found some very interesting information. Not to mention that his research says very little about the actual temperature (too sparse, not precisely dated and very localized), although he developed some interesting proxy data on seasonality.
Stay tuned … ]
Patterson rebuts the WT editorial here:
http://scienceblogs.com/classm/2010/05/editorial_misconduct_on_the_cl.php
J Bowers,
Yep. Actually, I commented there.
http://scienceblogs.com/classm/2010/05/editorial_misconduct_on_the_cl.php#comment-2554548
Maybe it’s just me, but William Patterson’s support for AGW sounds decidedly half-hearted.
If I were you, I’d run the IPCC “headline” finding past him (i.e. “very likely” that more than half the warming since 1950 is human caused).
As I say, more to come.
MapleLeaf,
You’ve earned yourself a well deserved hat tip.
https://deepclimate.org/2010/06/15/mike-hulme-sets-solomon-and-morano-straight/
They might also notice that Romans (at least rich ones, and the public baths) had hypocausts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypocaust
For that matter, there was the toga: 20 feet long, made of wool, and wrapped around the body on top of a tunic; not unlike a sweater.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toga
I’m going to echo Chris’s comment. Would you consider setting your blog’s RSS feed to “full posts” instead of just the first couple of sentences? I really like your blog, and want to read it — but I simply don’t have enough time to follow blogs I can’t read in my RSS feeder.
And statistics show, it’s not just me and Chris – a full text RSS feed will increase your readership.
It seems that by default WordPress truncates the RSS feed at the “more” tag.
Now that I understand that, I’ll look up how to change that default behaviour.
Hmmm … maybe that’s not the right answer. Still working on it.
Here’s how it typically works in WordPress:
If that doesn’t help, then there’s something else wrong…
[DC: Posts crossing … I did figure it out (see below). ]
Fixed. The feed is “summary” by default, and needed to be changed to “full”. My apologies for not fixing this sooner.
Thanks very much for fixing this! 😀
DC,
This is my first time posting here and I have a suggestion about keeping track of the Arctic Ice Cap.
I have been fascinated by the issue of the ice cap disintegrating before our very eyes and have delved into all sorts of charts and images like the Arctic Extent and others.
There is one particular type of image that I find very difficult to track down no matter how much I try. It is one particular type of Ice Thickness image.
This particular image is high resolution and tricolored. Purple=1 year ice; Blue=2 year ice and Green=3-10 year ice. (Sample below)
I have found that these are the best images to show the public in trying to explain to them how the Arctic is thinning considerably and what that portends.
They are easy on the eye because of its color contrast and minimal number of colors.
I thus suggest that you present a monthly picture of this particular Ice Thickness image, perhaps side by side with the equivalent month in 1980 when it was substantially thicker.
This will help the Newbies to better understand the situation. Below is a link to the type of image I’m referring to.
I wouldn’t mind someone doing a little research and media analysis looking at what seems to be a dwindling and demoralized cabal of deniers. Is it me or is the last vestige of serious opposition to accepting AGW broken. The National Post has gone eerily quiescent on the subject… It’s been a while since Lawrence Solomon embarrassed himself, and Corcoran uttered not a word after co-worker Jonathan Kay butchered the denier camp (a must-read!!! http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/07/15/bad-science-global-warming-deniers-are-a-liability-to-the-conservative-cause/). Subsequent pieces ridicule a few proposed solutions AGW, but never say it’s nonsense. It’s like the paper has gone temporarily sane. And much the same can be seen in the Calgary Herald. The few nutters left in Calgary are all keeping quiet (that would be you Licia Corbella). At the Globe and Mail, Margaret Wente natters on in her odd mixture of strangely aggressive AGW agnosticism, and vehement denial of actually doing something. But then again, does anyone on either side think her tightrope act convinces?
anyhow, my thesis is the rhetorical mass media underpinnings of resistance to AGW are basically smashed (in Canada at least). Thoughts?
I was wondering where in Canada you are based. We, FoGT, are based in Calgary and will have our first annual meeting at the end of the month.
Derek
But I LOVE G&T’s! And as a Calgarian, I have a passing interest in AGW stuff. I would very much like to participate. Is there a link I can follow?
KPMG review finds IPCC chief Pachauri innocent of financial misdealings or conflict of interest, UK Telegraph apologizes for smearing him
http://climateprogress.org/2010/08/26/ipcc-chief-pachauri-kpmg-review-telegraph-apologizes/
KPMG review of personal financial records of Dr Rajendra Pachauri
KPMG review of personal financial records of Dr Rajendra K Pachauri and other records of TERI for the period 1 April 2008 to 31 December 2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/interactive/2010/aug/26/kpmg-review-pachauri-accounts
Regarding climate change and in particular “global broiling” by increasing UV-B radiation, how hot do things have to get before all solutions are considered?
If Cannabis agriculture is the most available and effective way to protect this planet from synergistic collapse of environment, economics and mankind’s social order, then why do precious planting seasons pass without recognizing the essential value of hemp agriculture, manufacture and trade?
Hi DC,
I wonder is Gunter is responsible?
http://www.calgaryherald.com/technology/nigh/3655723/story.html
Sigh.
Desmogblog has an overview of how the Herald has misrepresented the Royal Society’s report on AGW.
Hey there, I may need a new set of specs, but I believe the Friends of Science “the Earth is Cooling”page is now self-contradictory. The text says we are cooling, but even with the mauling of statistics, the graph seems to actually be going up.
ohhh…. and about that crazy Herald editorial, oddly enough it wasn’t written by Licia.
Somebody needs to respond to J Curry’s new Detection and Attribution post, maybe after part 2 is posted. Seems like this blog (or Tamino) would be the most logical places for that, unless RC decides to take it up (but after her experience there, I would not blame them for passing on it).
Liam and DC,
Do you know who wrote that awful Herald editorial….I didn’t see a name?
Woohoo, here come the good guys! The union of federal gov’t scientists has started a new website:
http://www.pipsc.ca/portal/page/portal/science
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/10/18/federal-union-government-science.html
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/federal-scientists-go-public-in-face-of-restrictive-media-rules/article1761624/
http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/10/18/federal-scientists-launch-website-as-government-tightens-its-media-controls/
Fantastic news Holly Stick…thanks for sharing. If the CBC forum is anything to go by they have the overwhelming support of the public.
The liberals and NDP should make this an election issue.
Looks like parts of ‘Roadmap for optimization’
1. Yasmin H. Said1,2,*,
2. Edward J. Wegman1
Article first published online: 13 JUL 2009
DOI: 10.1002/wics.16
might have striking similarities to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimization_%28mathematics%29!
Note: I only looked at parts.
Oops!
What do you reckon?
[DC: I don’t see it myself. If you want to find more examples of Said’s signature scholarship, you may have to go further back. (Yes, there’s at least one more, in addition to the dissertation, Wegman report and Said et al 2008). ]
Hi DC,
Have you seen this?
Curious what your thoughts are on what McI’s claims.
Hi!
I think you should do write about the project i link to in the end of this text! You probably have many readers that would like to give climate scientists a helping hand. This is a fun and easy way to do so.
http://climateprediction.net/
Cheers
Sorry for the typos…
The new Climate Science Rapid Response Team website for media questions: http://www.climaterapidresponse.org/
http://www.desmogblog.com/climate-science-rapid-response-team-launched
Well, well, look who has opportunistically appeared again:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1335798/Global-warming-halted-Thats-happened-warmest-year-record.html
“We are no longer accepting comments on this article.”
I guess they didn’t get the type of response they were looking for. Yesterday they were taking comments (allegedly), so I wrote one, but they have not posted anything, by anybody. The “no longer accepting” bit should be changed to “never had any intention of letting people tell Rose what a piece of garbage he wrote”.
Speaking of unwanted appearances:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/dec/07/cancun-monckton-crashes-business-lunch
Yet, from another story in the same outlet, “Kent swimmers beware: three toe-splitter shrimps netted off Dungeness coast”:
“With global warming making the usually chilly waters more hospitable, they were able to survive to adulthood.” The Mail Online’s Science & Tech section seems to have a difficult time keeping straight whether or not global warming is occurring. But they allowed several comments, mostly snarky and ignorant, questioning the warming.
Hmmm,
http://climateprogress.org/2010/12/20/wikileaks-hackers-tried-to-infiltrate-u-s-climate-negotiators/
On a lighter note, Merry Christmas DC and John Mashey! Thanks for all your sleuthing and number crunching.
MapleLeaf, interesting find. I wouldn’t be surprised if the computer system at the DoS is more secure than that at the UEA. USG (US Government, as they say in the biz ;-)) employees have cybersecurity drummed into them – mandatory training is done annually, and software is updated frequently. The USG is expected to be a target of hackers, spies, etc.
Oh, and USG employees are forbidden from accessing WikiLeaks, even from their home computers, but I think reading articles about the leaks is allowed (I hope).
Hi DC,
may I suggest that you also join the bandwagon and create your own “Bore Hole” to minimize the impact of trolls?
Seconded. I’m sick and tired of the ignorant sonsabitches.
There, I said it and I’m glad.
Or perhaps the Very Deep Hole.
Bore Hole, Rabett Hole, Deep Hole. Brilliant.
I’m waiting until a couple more take this up. Then watch the wriggling and squirming at other places that accuse RC in particular of suppressing points of view – those other places =not= displaying comments that failed to make it onto a comment thread.
Harris and NP at it again…
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/urban+legend+climate+change/4256271/story.html
Oh yes, and here’s a quote from Harris:
“…Or, it could be because the peer-review process itself has been “corrupted,” as Mr. Harris believes, and that top scientific journals, as revealed in the emails exposed in the 2009 Climategate scandal, actively suppress the work of dissenting researchers…”
Now that we’re back on the campaign trail again here in Canada, it might be worth asking your loyal readers to keep an eye/ear out for Friends of Science campaign advertising. You never know what sort of fish you might catch…Barry Cooper, John Baird, who knows?
http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/story.html?id=14eee10f-30a7-45b3-9c2b-81e2dfa1d597&p=2
One year after Horizon, BP President Carl-Henric Svanberg says:
“Most would agree that the world can withstand a few degrees of warming”
Source: http://www.svd.se/naringsliv/bp-laker-saren_6101009.svd
Needs Google translation.
OFFS.
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/06/16/lorne-gunter-global-warming-try-global-cooling/
Hialrious…not. Deep please cover this if you can….
What a stupid man Gunter is. That column may be part of the National Post’s “Junk Science Week”; The Sixth Estate excoriates Terence Corcoran for another stupid column, pointing out what Corcoran did not mention: http://sixthestate.net/?p=2320
I guess Junk Science Week was in the Financial Post: here’s the lineup:
http://opinion.financialpost.com/tag/junk-science-week-2011/
Another suggestion:
In which little Stevie is so wrong it is not even funny. It is pathetic. Much more fun can be had at Judith’s place:
This one needs some serious debunking.
McIntyre also got into the Financial Post:
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/06/16/junk-science-week-greenpeace-karaoke/
Holly , Rattus…thanks. They only have FB, so I cannot post…anonymity and all that.
FP really will accept anything that supports their cause won’t they? I would like to know how McI managed to get that into the FP. He is probably chummy with Terrance.
Yes, a thorough debunking is required. Deep?
Policy Lass is taking it on… and the morons are invading.
McI plays competitive racquetball I wonder who the other members of his “club” are 🙂
They’re all on the local adult league hockey team, of course!
Deep Climate:
I hope you can write about the CRU data dump, but for different reasons from Hapy Jack (obviously).
Specifically, besides the e-mails, there’s also a directory tree FOIA/documents/ of data files (and one of the subtrees, FOIA/documents/yamal/, seem to be put together specially by the cyber-attacker). Do you any interesting insights to share on the documents/ contents?
Alternatively, if you’ve heard anything which may be useful in determining the identities of the attackers, I’d like to hear about those too.
— frank
I think the parallels with this story are quite interesting
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-14744240
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/exclusive-smoked-out-tobacco-giants-war-on-science-2347254.html
Deep Climate: I’m not a climate scientist but a historian of Latin America, teaching at a small liberal arts college in South-Central PA, USA, where climate deniers are thick on the ground. I stumbled into this website and find it enormously helpful and engaging. I wholeheartedly agree that rational public discourse on this supremely important global issue requires an authoritative, lie-exposing, truth-telling website authored by an informed & credible & articulate climate scientist. And this website beautifully fits the bill. None of what I see here constitutes “snarky gossip”. Instead what I see is a sustained & impassioned & strategic effort to expose the lies systematically propagated by the fossil fuel industry & their ideological allies. We confront a vast & powerful lie-making machine, and this website does a really admirable job of confronting that evil monster head-on. Your creative energies & efforts are much appreciated.