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dana1981 at 08:23 AM on 1 August 2012Newcomers, Start Here
koyaanisqatsi - yes, the emails were discontinued when there was a glitch that resulted in several emails being sent out each day. I guess the issue hasn't been resolved yet. -
PT_Goodman at 08:15 AM on 1 August 2012Newcomers, Start Here
To anyone, Have emails for new blog post been discontinued? The last one I have received was back on July 8, 2012. According to SkS, I'm still set up to receive emails from SkS. I have no filter set up for email. Nothing for some time, though. TIA, koyaanisqatsi -
John Hartz at 06:53 AM on 1 August 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #30
To the surprise of no one, Muller’s Op-ed and Watts’s press release have generated a goodly number of blog articles over the past few days. One that merits a careful read is: “More evidence attention-grabbing climate studies prematurely rushed and potentially flawed” by Jason Samenow of the Capital Weather Gang, Washington Post, July 31, 2012 To access this blog post, click here. -
Composer99 at 06:50 AM on 1 August 2012Unprecedented Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Melt
With reference to muttkat's inquiry: (1) The melt is ice sheet surface melt (i.e. the formation of meltwater on the surface of the ice), which is certainly a concern. The impression I get from the USA Today article is one of greater melting than is the case. (2) (-Snip-)Moderator Response: [DB] Reply to ideology snipped. Thank you for your efforts and for your forbearance. -
zinfan94 at 06:43 AM on 1 August 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #30
Eric (skeptic): Wrong Menne paper. Try this one: JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 115, D11108, doi:10.1029/2009JD013094, 2010 On the reliability of the U.S. surface temperature record Matthew J. Menne,1 Claude N. Williams Jr.,1 and Michael A. Palecki1 Received 27 August 2009; revised 24 December 2009; accepted 7 January 2010; published 8 June 2010. In this paper Menne et. al. compared USHCN stations of different siting quality with the USCRN stations. -
Composer99 at 06:38 AM on 1 August 2012Medieval Warm Period was warmer
muttkat: Your inquiry is off-topic on this thread; fortunately there is a post here on the subject of ice sheet surface melt. -
muttkat at 06:13 AM on 1 August 2012Medieval Warm Period was warmer
I had read a comment that this month that some form of warm air swept over Greenland and the ice melted temporarily from 55% to 97%. http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/story/2012-07-25/greenland-ice-sheet-melt-climate-change/56479518/1 (-Snip-)Moderator Response: [DB] Your initial statement is off-topic for this thread; please follow the sage direction given you by Composer99. Your subsequent statement was snipped due to ideology. -
dana1981 at 04:58 AM on 1 August 2012Lindzen's Sandia Talk Contains his Usual Errors
Thanks Martin. Do you have information that Lindzen is retiring? -
Martin Lack at 04:07 AM on 1 August 2012Lindzen's Sandia Talk Contains his Usual Errors
Excellent summary. Having been apalled by witnessing first-hand his apparently deliberate attempt to peddle misinformation in London in February this year, I tried and failed to get him to explain his "scepticism". I then tried and failed to get either the MIT or the AGU to extract the same from him. I am therefore very disappointed to see that, just months away from retirement to the south of France, he is apparently still peddling exactly the same misinformation. Clearly, my inability to get anyone to call him to account and/or reign-in waht appears to be deeply-prejudiced and unprofessional behaviour has merely served to convince him that he can do just as he pleases without fear of any adverse consequences). -
dana1981 at 03:53 AM on 1 August 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #30
Thanks warm, that's a useful reference. I've used it in our response post to the Watts paper, which we'll probably publish on Friday. -
vrooomie at 03:46 AM on 1 August 2012Climate Change Cluedo: Anthropogenic CO2
By searching on "RealOldOne2's" nick, the GoobleBox turns up a devoid-of-any-videos video feed. Hmmmm..... RealOldOne2's UT account Now, this *could* be a different RealOldOne2, but given the other ~10K denier/contrarian refs Google turns up, I highly doubt it. Golly, to know the real reason why all those videos are now gone...;) -
Ari Jokimäki at 03:34 AM on 1 August 2012New research special - paleoclimate papers 2010-2011
The figure is from Martín-Chivelet et al. (2011) and here's the full text for that one. -
Tony Noerpel at 01:56 AM on 1 August 2012New research special - paleoclimate papers 2010-2011
Ari thanks for this list. Can you provide a reference for the figure? thak you Tony -
KR at 23:41 PM on 31 July 2012New research special - paleoclimate papers 2010-2011
I found the Leclercq & Oerlemans (2011) paper on glacier lengths for decadal scale temperature reconstruction to 1600 very interesting: the decadal length averaging removes many variations (ENSO, for example) and gives a clear picture of the overall trends. And a nice confirmation from a proxy not included in most other reconstructions - once again, consilience of data greatly increases our confidence in the results. -
warm at 21:14 PM on 31 July 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #30
"Their conclusion also doesn't pass the 'sniff test'. Over land, surface and satellite warming trends should be roughly equal, yet they find a factor of 1.6 greater warming trend in the UAH TLT data than in their raw class 1 and 2 surface temp data. So basically if their analysis is right, it means UAH is biased high, which is simply an implausible result. More likely the Watts results are low because they haven't corrected for various other biases like time of day." I have the "definitive" answer to that issue: Temperature Trends at the Surface and in the Troposphere http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/TrendsJGRrevised3InPress.pdf This study used GFDL model to simulate surface and TLT (such as UAH) temperature trends. At the extra-tropical northern lattitude, a more rapid warming of surface as compared to lower troposphere is expected, in line with the results of "official" trends (0.22 in the lower troposphere, 0.3 at the surface...). The amplification factor used by Watts to match TLT and surface is a pure "fudge factor" that have no scientific basis... -
Ari Jokimäki at 20:17 PM on 31 July 2012New research special - paleoclimate papers 2010-2011
There will be another surprise batch for you in few days. Then, in next week we continue the normal New research from last week series with edition 31. There are few papers in that already. Those who cannot wait whole week can get notified of new papers in real time in Twitter or in Facebook. I also have my Twitter feed in the left column in my blog. These summer specials only covered 4 subjects but there has of course been papers from other subjects. You can browse old posts of New research from last week series here. -
Eric (skeptic) at 19:37 PM on 31 July 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #30
zinfan94, your question and an answer to it were posted at WUWT. To briefly follow up here, I would not expect a USCRN comparison as part of a reanalysis of 1979-2008 trends for the same reasons that one was not done here: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2012/2012GL051387.shtml (I don't have that full paper however). -
warm at 19:26 PM on 31 July 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #30
I suggest a complementary approach to contradict Watts' paper: provide other evidences of recent warming in USA that are not compatible with low warming trends. For instance this study: http://passthrough.fw-notify.net/download/112635/http://www.wwww.aslo.org/lo/toc/vol_52/issue_5/2013.pdf Spatial analysis of ice phenology trends across the Laurentian Great Lakes region during a recent warming period The results clearly show ice retreat in the great lake area. The Watts results show that this region experienced low trend (0.135C/decade vs 0.37 "official" trend): how ice could melt without significant warming ? I found another article river temperature trend (unfortunately, paywalled ) http://www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/090037?journalCode=fron Also a recent article on forest phenology (end of growing season) (paywalled) Trends in fall phenology across the deciduous forests of the Eastern USA http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168192312000500 This article use USHCN data Other approach, glacier change, such as this study: http://www.glaciers.pdx.edu/fountain/MyPapers/SittsEtAl2010_GlaciersMt.Adams.pdf Twentieth Century Glacier Change on Mount Adams, Washington, USA "The main driver of glacier recession appears to be summer air temperature, as little change in precipitation has occurred over the past century. All three temperature data sets show a significant increase in summer temperature beginning around the 1980s (e.g., Nylen 2004, Lilliquist and Walker 2006) corresponding to the rapid retreat in glacier area during the latter part of the 20th" In the northeast US, Watts' result shows very little warming (0.078) as compared to "official" trend (0.247). Glaciers are melting without warming ?? -
haquanghong at 12:43 PM on 31 July 2012Lindzen's Sandia Talk Contains his Usual Errors
thanks -
Tristan at 12:26 PM on 31 July 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #30
From REP "When you read what Anthony posts, take the time to actually read it, think about it, and the implications will become obvious. We will be moderating strictly. Snark, outrage, disappointment, and instant-analysis of how that stupid Watts got it all wrong will, of course, be snipped." Instant analysis of how that amazing Watts got it all right will, of course, be scooped up and bathed in. -
KR at 09:19 AM on 31 July 2012New research special - paleoclimate papers 2010-2011
Daniel J. Andrews - (Way off-topic) Surprisingly enough, flying cars are beginning to be available: Terrafugia - Complex, a bit marginal as a car, good flyer. Maverick LSA - Hot off-road car, slow flyer (paramotor). PAL-V - Trike/gyrocopter, nice compromise. No, I don't have a holiday gift list once I win the lottery - none whatsoever... --- Regarding the papers (back on topic): don't feel bad, I'm limiting my reading list to the subset of hemispheric/global reconstructions, which cuts it down quite a bit... -
Daniel J. Andrews at 07:53 AM on 31 July 2012New research special - paleoclimate papers 2010-2011
Weekend?! Wish I had that level of knowledge. It'll take me longer than that. Feels like things leak out more ears faster than it goes in. Think my brain is full. Still waiting for those brain implant chips (and flying cars too). -
dana1981 at 07:45 AM on 31 July 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #30
Good luck zinfan. I asked a pretty straighforward question in the WUWT comments regarding a discrepancy in the paper and got some rather rude responses from the moderator REP. They're not very open to criticism (or skepticism) over there. -
heb0 at 07:38 AM on 31 July 2012Of Averages and Anomalies - Part 1A. A Primer on how to measure surface temperature change
Tom Curtis @14, thanks, the large anomaly in Greg House's example (as well as the small number temperatures) was what prompted me to try this with a larger number of stations and a more realistic anomaly. I feel like it makes sense (in a sort of intuitive manner) that the average of anomalies method would provide a more realistic approximation for stations with regional correlations, but I took the wording of the article to mean that the reason for this was something other than a physical cause. Now that I read that section again, it does say "Bearing in mind that Teleconnection means that adjacent stations will have similar changes in anomaly anyway, this ‘Average of Anomalies’ method is much less sensitive to variations in station availability." (emphasis mine), so I suppose it was a failure in reading on my part. Thanks for helping me sort that out. -
zinfan94 at 07:17 AM on 31 July 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #30
dana: OK. Got that. I am trying the same approach. I did put this comment up on the WUWT thread, suggesting that they should use the USCRN to identify siting issues. Currently the comment is caught in moderation, and its been awhile, so I copied and pasted the comment before it "disappeared". At the very least, the Watts et.al. team should be asked to do similar work to that done by Menne et.al. 2010, that correlated USHCN data with USCRN data. But they could move a long way to actually demonstrating and quantifying siting biases, if they just used the USCRN as the standard for comparison. Paul K2 says: Your comment is awaiting moderation. July 30, 2012 at 1:10 pm I read the paper, and it has some obvious problems. The most obvious is the lack of comparison between the USCRN and the different classes of stations in this paper. The USCRN should be the “gold standard” for station temperature measurements. If there are siting issues, you don’t need decades of data to spot the problem. The siting issues should be detectable, even with only 4-5 years of daily data. Since almost all of the USCRN stations now have over five years of data, correlating the Tmax and Tmin against the data from the various classes of “selected” stations in this report should be the obvious first step in identifying siting issues. Menne et.al. (2010) did this with the homogenized data from different subsets of stations, and found very strong correlations with the entire USHCN dataset (r2 = 0.98 for Tmax, and r2 = 0.96 for Tmin). The failure of Watts et. al. (2012) to complete the same exercise, should be rectified prior to publication. If the findings regarding siting in this paper are accurate, then the Class 1 and Class 2 sites should correlate strongly with the USCRN station data, and Class 3, Class 4, and Class 5 stations should have significantly lower correlations with the USCRN stations. If the correlations for the different station Classes identified in this paper are not substantially different enough to explain the large differences in decadal trends, then some of the other adjustments are likely responsible for the differences. For example, changes in time of observation, adjustment for a move of a station that was previously sited next to a heat source to a better location (that now allows the station to be classed as Class 1 or 2), switch to a different temperature measurement device or system, etcetera, could explain why smaller classes of raw data don’t track well with the overall trend calculated from homogenized station trend data. Not addressing the USCRN data is a serious shortcoming for this paper. -
KR at 06:10 AM on 31 July 2012New research special - paleoclimate papers 2010-2011
Ari - An excellent collection of papers; I believe you have just filled my weekend... -
dana1981 at 04:43 AM on 31 July 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #30
zinfan - I don't know, Watts seems to be claiming that their new classification approach is a significant change from previous approaches, so I don't know if they would consider the USCRN stations class 1 or 2. We're working on a blog post that outlines the various issues with the paper though. Eevn though it hasn't been submitted, we're viewing it as an opportunity for Watts et al. to correct these problems before they submit the paper. Not that I expect them to do so, but at least we're giving them the opportunity. -
LarryM at 04:16 AM on 31 July 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #30
I haven't read the Watts paper, and probably won't at this time because it hasn't even been submitted to a reputable peer-reviewed journal yet, so at present it has little more scientific credibility than a blog post or an editorial opinion. I suppose SkS will need to comment on it because the paper's advocates will attempt to make a mountain out of an unpublished molehill, but let's not forget that it's not a real paper until it has been revised to address the comments of expert reviewers and an editor, and accepted for publication. -
zinfan94 at 02:01 AM on 31 July 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #30
Dana, I have a suggestion that you might keep in mind as you read Watts et. al. draft paper (copied from my comments at Stoat): One thing that really puzzles me about the Watts et. al. draft paper. Isn’t it important in scientific papers to address any prior work that clearly contradicts the current findings? Menne et. al. (2010) did a comparison of the best quality CONUS temperature measurement stations (USCRN) with the USHCNv2 stations. ( Menne paper Figure 7). The USCRN stations have been engineered to provide much more robust and error-free temperature recording and monitoring (three duplicate temperature sensors, isolated sites, consistent designs at every station, additional monitor supervision). Menne et. al. found that the USCRN temperature anomalies correlated extremely well with the USHCNv2 anomalies (r2=0.998 for Tmax and r2=0.996 for Tmin). Now Watts et. al. comes along, and claims that the USHCN is significantly in error against the station subset of only 48 Class 1 sites, and 112 Class 2 sites that he personally selected. The USCRN has 107 locations with 114 monitoring stations (seven stations are duplicated nearby). All of the USCRN stations would likely be considered Class 1 or better using the methodology in Watts et. al. And they were sited across the country to capture the CONUS anomalies accurately. So why didn’t Watts et. al. correlate their USHCN subset results (using the methodology applied in their paper) against the USCRN stations? Essentially the USCRN is the “gold standard” for siting, so the lack of the comparison in Watts et. al. sticks out like a sore thumb. If nothing else, this is an extremely important quality control exercise to ensure that obvious mistakes weren’t made processing the data from the USHCN subset stations. (next comment) To say what I meant in the last comment, a bit more succinctly: Isn’t Watts et. al. claiming (indirectly, given the Menne et. al. 2010 results that show excellent correlation between the USCRN and USHCNv2) that the US Climate Reference Networks stations are substantially in error? If so, this is an extraordinary result. NOAA needs to find out what is wrong with their state-of-the-art network ASAP. -
cynicus at 21:11 PM on 30 July 2012Peter Hadfield takes on the MWP
@14 See first hit in Google Scholar after searching for "cenozoic himalaya ruddiman". -
chriskoz at 21:00 PM on 30 July 2012Peter Hadfield takes on the MWP
JohnMashey@10, I'm not interested in MWP hypothesis by Ruddiman. I'm interested in another one Ruddiman's famous for: Tibet and Himalayan uplift speeding up igneous rock weathering and creating the late Cenozoic cooling. I canot find the original article (perhaps still hidden behind paywall), nor the comprehensive review of the state of the art here. Do you have a ready pointer or a suggestion where to search? -
heijdensejan at 17:21 PM on 30 July 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #30
Victor Venema also has his first review of the new Watts paper http://variable-variability.blogspot.in/2012/07/blog-review-of-watts-et-al-2012.html -
Steve Bloom at 16:39 PM on 30 July 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #30
Don't forget to have a look at Leroy's paper (peer-reviewed? and where is the data supporting the standards?). Consider the Class 3 temp standard, a key break-point for Watts: "Class 3 (additional estimated uncertainty added by siting up to 1 °C) • Ground covered with natural and low vegetation (< 25 cm) representative of the region. • Measurement point situated: o at more than 10 m from artificial heat sources and reflective surfaces (buildings, concrete surfaces, car parks etc.) o at more than 10 m from an expanse of water (unless significant of the region) o away from all projected shade when the Sun is higher than 7°. A source of heat (or expanse of water) is considered to have an impact if it occupies more than 10 % of the surface within a circular area of 10 m surrounding the screen or makes up 5% of an annulus of 5m." So if you have, e.g., a station that meets all Class 1 requirements except for having a ~1.5m shrub at a distance of 10m such that the aforementioned 7 degree standard (which note is relative not to the sensor itself but to the point on the ground directly below) is exceeded for even a few days each year, that's enough for a demotion all the way to Class 4. I'm tempted to blame Leroy for facilitating this stupidity, but of course his expectation is that the standards will be used by scientists, not propagandists. -
Rob Painting at 16:21 PM on 30 July 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #30
The cartoon is spot-on..........sadly. -
Sceptical Wombat at 16:08 PM on 30 July 2012Peter Hadfield takes on the MWP
Mercpl @3 I admire your optimism -
skywatcher at 14:31 PM on 30 July 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #30
To paraphrase Darwin, "A house burned down by fire did not tell its story more plainly than did this atmosphere (or planet!). On Watts, he seems to have forgotten some sentiments of his about press releases before peer review -
skywatcher at 14:12 PM on 30 July 2012Peter Hadfield takes on the MWP
#11: Muller's plying catch-up with the science. According to Mann, he's reached about the 1990s in his understanding of the science:"Some additional thoughts about Muller and 'BEST': Muller's announcement last year that the Earth is indeed warming brought him up to date w/ where the scientific community was in the the 1980s. His announcement this week that the warming can only be explained by human influences, brings him up to date with where the science was in the mid 1990s. At this rate, Muller should be caught up to the current state of climate science within a matter of a few years!" (source)
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Sceptical Wombat at 13:32 PM on 30 July 2012Peter Hadfield takes on the MWP
Bill @ 1 Muller now accepts that global warming has been happening, is continuing and is almost entirely CO2 induced. He appears to be saying that there is no evidence that it is a particularly big problem. -
John Brookes at 13:32 PM on 30 July 2012Climate Change Cluedo: Anthropogenic CO2
Ahh. You could have started off asserting that water is wet, and you would never have got past that argument. Nice post though. Very thorough. -
Tristan at 12:50 PM on 30 July 2012Of Averages and Anomalies - Part 1A. A Primer on how to measure surface temperature change
How are daily averages for the raw data calculated? Is it as simple as min+max/2? -
Tristan at 12:32 PM on 30 July 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #29
Thank you very much Tom! -
dana1981 at 11:28 AM on 30 July 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #30
I presume people are going to be asking us what we think about Watts' new preliminary paper on the accuracy of the surface temp record. After a first read of the paper, I think it has some serious problems. First off I don't think the conclusion ("that reported 1979-2008 U.S. temperature trends are spuriously doubled") is supported by the analysis in the paper. I think the methodology was rather poorly chosen. They compared raw data to fully adjusted data, for example not first correcting for time of day of the observations, so there's no way for us to know how much of any discrepancy they find is due to urban heat effects and how much is due to time of day and other biases that are corrected for in the final product. They found a factor of 2 difference between raw class 1 and class 2 station trends and the final adjusted data set, then they simply assume that whole factor of 2 difference is due to urban heat effects without actually checking to see how much is due to other factors. It's an apples and oranges comparison, so they conclusion is not supported. Their conclusion also doesn't pass the 'sniff test'. Over land, surface and satellite warming trends should be roughly equal, yet they find a factor of 1.6 greater warming trend in the UAH TLT data than in their raw class 1 and 2 surface temp data. So basically if their analysis is right, it means UAH is biased high, which is simply an implausible result. More likely the Watts results are low because they haven't corrected for various other biases like time of day. Note that these are just my first impressions after reading over their paper and it's possible I've missed something, but it appears to me like they have some major problems there. -
Rob Honeycutt at 10:09 AM on 30 July 2012Climate Change Cluedo: Anthropogenic CO2
The reason I ended up on this post was because RealOldOne2 was claiming that there is no empirical evidence that humans are causing catastrophic warming. I wanted to start with this post as evidence, first, that humans are causing the dramatic rise in CO2 concentrations. From there I was going to go through radiative forcing and then climate sensitivity. But of course, the whole track, which I think he knows would lead to the answer he doesn't want to hear, ends up derailed on one small point while ignoring all the rest. -
Tom Curtis at 09:39 AM on 30 July 2012Climate Change Cluedo: Anthropogenic CO2
Rob Honeycutt @46, a typical response for a fake "skeptic". If you recall the story of the blind men and the elephant, the better informed fake "skeptics" are like a blindfolded man, who having felt a trunk insist that elephants are snakes - refusing to either listen to others, or to take of their blindfold and look lest they see any fact that might disturb their opinion. In RealOldOne2's case, he has seized on the C13/C12 ratio and refused to even admit or discuss other relevant evidence. In particular he refuses to consider the prediction with regard to other evidence that would result from accepting his favourite theory. Specifically: a) As previously discussed, if biomass was the source of just half of the atmospheric increase, the total biomass of the planet (including bacteria) must have halved over the last 150 or so years; b) If biomass was the net source of even a significant fraction of the CO2 increase, O2 would have declined by more than the amount required to provide for combustion of known fossil fuel usage, not less; c) If biomass was the net source of a significant fraction of the CO2 increase, it would massively dilute the impact of adding fossil carbon to the system, thereby massively reducing the reduction in the C14/C12 ratio; d) If non-anthropogenic biomass emissions were the source of a significant fraction of the CO2 increase, the 0.997 correlation between anthropogenic emissions and increases in atmospheric concentration would be almost inexplicable; e) If non-anthropogenic biomass emissions were the source of a significant fraction of the CO2 increase, anthropogenic emissions would not have exceeded the increase in mass of atmospheric CO2 by 25% or more in all but nine years since 1850, and every year since 1886; and let's not forget that a biomass origin of the CO2 increase does not explain: f) The extraordinary coincidence in timing between the start of the rapid increases in atmospheric CO2 and the ramp up in anthropogenic emissions. Concentrating on the one line of evidence which is compatible with a biomass origin of the increase in atmospheric CO2 while ignoring the six lines that absolutely rule it out represents a massive cognitive dissonance. It sort of gives a new meaning to the old saw: In the land of the (willfully) blind, the one-eyed (ie, biased) man is king. -
Rob Honeycutt at 09:33 AM on 30 July 2012Climate Change Cluedo: Anthropogenic CO2
Done. -
Rob Honeycutt at 09:17 AM on 30 July 2012Climate Change Cluedo: Anthropogenic CO2
Absolutely Tom. I'm impressed with your mastery of the subject matter here, then. -
Tom Curtis at 09:04 AM on 30 July 2012Climate Change Cluedo: Anthropogenic CO2
Rob Honeycutt @48, I was just looking through part of your debate with RealOldOne2, and noticed that you claimed I am a scientist. While flattered by the number of people who have made that assumption, it is not true. By training I am a philosopher, although my studies (both tertiary and private) have branched all over the place. Could I ask you to correct the record on Peter Sinclair's channel. -
JohnMashey at 06:30 AM on 30 July 2012Mann Fights Back Against Denialist Abuse
Climate litigation is fairly recent. For a domain with some useful parallels, study of tobacco litigation can be quite instructive, especially given the wonderful tobacco archives. My favorite book on this, highly recommended, is Robert Proctor's Golden Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition, see reviews. -
JohnMashey at 06:18 AM on 30 July 2012Peter Hadfield takes on the MWP
Daniel: See Ruddiman. But also, go to Real Climate and search for Ruddiman, as there are a few guest posts and commentaries. All this is a dandy example of real science in action, as hypotheses are proposed, challenged, modified, are disproved or (in this case) gain interest and evidence. I'd summarize all this as: 1) Bill has proposed that the CO2 and CH4 behaviors of this interglacial have departed fairly far from those seen in past interglacials, synchronized with the start of agriculture (CO2) and rice (+cows, etc) (CH4). Some of the arguments get complex in analyzing and properly aligning interglacials. Also, there has been a long set of arguments about land-use, i.e., during different eras, how much land had to be cleared per capita? Evidence is accumulating that early farmers needed more land, increasing their CO2 impact. If so, the numbers work pretty well. 2) Bill has proposed that some of the big CO2 jiggles over last 2,000 years came from human plagues, with the 1600AD even being the most obvious. See abstract of the 2008 paper by Nevele, Bird. ' Published reconstructions of Pre-Columbian demography indicate that during European conquest, pandemics killed ~90% of the indigenous American population (~60 million), estimated to represent ~20% of the 16th century global population. Our predictive calculations suggest that fire reduction in the tropical Americas is associated with massive forest regeneration on ~5 x 105 km2 of land and sequestration of 5-10 Gt C into the terrestrial biosphere, which can account for 13- 50% of the ~2% global reduction in atmospheric CO2 levels and the 0.1‰ increase in δ13C of atmospheric CO2 from 1500 to 1700 CE recorded in Antarctic ice cores and tropical sponges. New archeological discoveries revealing extensive networks of geoglyphs and urban polities in Pre-Columbian Amazonia suggest that our estimates of reforestation, and consequent effects on atmospheric CO2, may be conservative.' Or see the News release from Stanfrod. (Basically, in last few decades, researchers have found evidence of a much larger pre-Columbus population, most of whom died, and most were in areas that could regenerate especially large biomass, i.e., like Central America, Brazil.) See also the August 2011 issue of THe Holocene, whose abstracts you can read, including newer one by Nevle, Bird, Ruddiman, Dull. All this is highly interdisciplinary, combining multiple lines of evidence, with researchers and references spread all over the place, like Chinese archaelogists studying the spread of rice farming. Of course, the anti-science crowd, if they understand this, will utterly hate Bill's conclusions, even more than the hockey stick, perhaps, since they mean that humans inadvertently created a thermostat that kept Holocene temperatures within a fairly narrow range ... about to be departed on the high side via the Industrial Revolution. -
CBDunkerson at 05:10 AM on 30 July 2012Mann Fights Back Against Denialist Abuse
Andrew, while admissibility is always determined by the judge, my understanding is that the 'Daubert standard' which applies in most US jurisdictions requires that scientific testimony be demonstrably 'valid' through factors such as having gone through peer-reviewed publication, being generally accepted by scientists in the field, having known uncertainty bounds, et cetera. Nearly all of the objections raised by 'skeptics' fail on every requirement. The example you raise would have been decades ago and thus was probably under a rather slapdash congressional standard that allowed just about anything or the older Frye standard, which was similar to Daubert, but less strict. Indeed, I believe the Daubert Supreme Court case was about Bendectin and thus your example is part of the very reason the rules changed. Also note that once a Daubert ruling has been made it is usually followed by other courts in subsequent cases... and there has already been some litigation on climate change. Those cases included several attempts to bar testimony by climate scientists (e.g. James Hansen in Green Mountain Chrysler Plymouth Dodge Jeep v. Crombie). In every case I'm aware of these attempts have failed... mainstream climate science has been upheld as passing Daubert. However, I haven't been able to find any attempts to bring in climate change 'skepticism' in any of those trials. My best guess is that this is because the parties involved were corporations (rather than 'true believers') who knew that such nonsense would fail a Daubert challenge and didn't want to get the judge annoyed at them by trying.
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