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Comments 67251 to 67300:

  1. 2011 Year in Review (part 1)
    ydijkstra, Are you saying that warming temps don't cause thermal expansion and melting Greenland and Glacier ice do not add to sea level? Or are you suggesting that these things are not happening? I do not know the relative volumes for all that flooding compared to how it should effect sea level, but it seems at least plausible to me that it could cause a short term decrease in global sea level. I assume that it would impact the areas around the flooding the most but I wonder if anyone here has more info.
    Moderator Response: [JH] Contrary to popular opnion, sea level rise is not spread uniformly throughout the world's ocean system. See SkS post, “Thinning on top and bulging at the waist: symptoms of an ailing planet.”
  2. Michael Mann, hounded researcher
    The Wikipedia entry on the Hockey Stick controversy is worth reading. Hockey Stick There were TWO congressional investigations, one at the request of Congressman Sherwood Boehlert(R) of the Science Committee. It was chaired by Professor Gerald North of Texas A&M. The report was critical of some of the methods used by Mann and his colleagues, but in the main supported the conclusions. However, this report seems to have been deemed insufficiently critical in some quarters. A second Congressman, Joe Barton (R) of the Energy Committee requested another report, chaired by a group under Professor Edwward Wegman of George Mason University. The subsequent history of the Wegman Report is well known - the part of it published in Computational Statistics was subsequently withdrawn for plagiarism. Opinion is that it is a thinly-disguised rehash of McIntyre and McKittrick's earlier papers, leavened with material taken from Wikipedia (among other sources). The Wegman Report went ahead over the objections of Congressman Boehlert who wrote to Barton that the second investigation was "misguided and illegitimate". Subsequently, Boehlert retired - after the Republican victory in 2010, the Science Committee of Congress was amalmagated with the Energy Committee under Congressman Barton. Joe Barton is notorious for apologising to BP for the obloquy the company received over the Gulf Oil spill. How Congressional staffers, the Wall Street Journal, and Wegman collaborated to disseminate MacIntyre's ideas and morph him into a "science superstar" (to whom?) can be found on several blogs. Here is a good start: Climate Science Watch
  3. 2011 Year in Review (part 1)
    @ fydijkstra #13: Context is everything. Here's the entire paragraph about sea level rise. "Satellite measurements of sea level show a rise of +3.2 mm/year, an acceleration of about 90% from last century's average (Church & White, 2006). Last year NASA reported a 'pothole on the road to higher seas', where it rained so hard that the seas fell. This couldn't continue forever (Australia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Colombia surely didn't want it to last any longer), and as the oceans have warmed, floodwater has filtered back to the oceans and ice has continued to melt in 2011, sea levels rose once again." Nice try, but no cigar!
  4. 2011 Year in Review (part 1)
    Your link "suggest moving the capital" second paragraph repeats the link"record-breaking snowmelt" in the 1st paragraph. You may have wanted this one: suggest moving the capital" Noel
  5. 2011 Year in Review (part 1)
    Church and White ar very outdated as far as the supposed acceleration of the sea level rise is considered. Unbiased examination of the Colorado data shows, that - contrary to popular belief - the rate of rise of the sea level has decreased. Of course it is possible to draw a straight line with a positive slope for the period 1992-2011. But with a more sophisticated analysis it can be shown, that - despite the high noise in the data - there has been a significant decrease in the rate of rise: 2001-2005: average rise 4.22 mm/year, standard deviation 4.87, 179 data points, 2006-2010: average rise 1.84 mm/year, standard deviation 5.522, 179 data points. A simple statistic test shows that this difference is significant. This is still a very elementary approach. Non-linear trend analysis (for instance with help of the LOESS-function) confirms this conclusion, and shows that there is a continuous decrease of the rate of sea level rise, having reached a complete standstill in the last 2 years. There is no accelaration of the sea level rise at all. Denying this fact is the real climate change denial!
    Moderator Response: [Rob P] Check out:Sea level fell in 2010. This is your problem:

    Given that 2011 was still in the grip of La Nina, and therefore a lot more rainfall occurring over the major land basins, the "pothole"is hardly surprising.

    And note the latest from AVISO:

    Since the huge El Nino of 1997-98 saw a massive surge in sea level rise of 20mm, it's not unreasonable to expect things will be back on track with the next El Nino. So please no more ironic comments about denial.
  6. 2011 Year in Review (part 1)
    Rob, (#4) Glad to hear that. I've seen some critiques of that communication that struck me as an abuse of statistics. Yeah, there was the dust bowl in the US in the time period prior to the baseline chosen by Hansen, but I don't know how extreme the actual heat wave was or how many other events around the world happened in close proximity chronologically. I'm guessing some of these are being addressed already, but just in case, and if there is time for it, I'd be eager to see something succinct on them. A bit of laziness or my part perhaps, but I don't see any need to reinvent the wheel, and as I've gotten older, I've learned that carpenters are generally better at carpentry than I am.
  7. Medieval Warm Period was warmer
    If the MWP is thought to be regional then I assume the data must just be specific to certain regions and therefore not truly representative of global temperature. Is this the case only with The MWP or does this apply throughout the temperature record as regards the proxy data? Just wondering.
  8. Is Greenland losing ice? (psst, the answer is yes, at an accelerating rate)
    OK, I've posted a response on Real Climate. In looking at the 'Box et al 2009' paper I notice that the Western side of Greenland (which, surprise, surprise, is where Nuuk is situated) has experienced regular volcanic-related cooling episodes; which appears to be the attraction for Mr Goddard. I also came across this recent 'ice update' which I guess people will probably have already seen.
  9. A thoughtful conservative perspective on climate
    Rather than speculate on what motivates many Christian Fundamentalists in the US to reject what the scientific community is telling us about manmade climate change, why not read what they have to say in their own words. The best place to start this learning process is the website of the Cornwall Alliance In their own words: “The Cornwell Alliance is a coalition of clergy, theologians, religious leaders, scientists, academics, and policy experts committed to bringing a balanced Biblical view of stewardship to the critical issues of environment and development. The Cornwall Alliance fully supports the principles espoused in the Cornwall Declaration on Environmental Stewardship, and is seeking to promote those principles in the discussion of various public policy issues including population and poverty, food, energy, water, endangered species, habitat, and other related topics.” The Cornwell Alliance’s “Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming” is particularly telling. Do organizations like the Cornwell Alliance exist in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, elsewhere?
  10. Is Greenland losing ice? (psst, the answer is yes, at an accelerating rate)
    John Russell: see this prior Greenland thread, where the very same cherrypick was made by the very same cherrypicker.
  11. Is Greenland losing ice? (psst, the answer is yes, at an accelerating rate)
    Thanks, Tom. Actually the cherry-picking of just Nuuk was one of the points I was originally going to make but then decided, for the sake of simplicity, to concentrate on the fact he started his cherry pick in 1930 when there was already 50 years of (warming) data by that date. Anyway now to compose a response while you have a well-earned rest.
  12. Is Greenland losing ice? (psst, the answer is yes, at an accelerating rate)
    ("access" should be "axis". Sorry, these things happen at 3:40 AM.)
  13. Is Greenland losing ice? (psst, the answer is yes, at an accelerating rate)
    John Russel @35, I refer you to my previous discussion of this topic. A key point is why is Goddard using a purely local temperature as representative of the whole island of Greenland. He knows that there have been two peer reviewed reconstructions of Greenland average temperatures (of which the most recent is Box et (2009), and knows also that if he used a different station it would show a different pattern: Indeed, of the stations in Greenland with long records, Nuuk shows one of the lowest overall trends, and I'm sure he knows that too. Even more telling, why is he using just one station to represent global temperatures in a comparison of the effects of CO2 on global warming. One station is not a global average, and it is global average temperatures that rise with increasing CO2. Individual stations can be dominated by local or regional factors and show all sorts of trends. Indeed, according to the BEST project, one third of all stations show a negative trend, in a data set for which the global land area average shows as strong a trend as GISS. Frankly I am getting sick of the smoke and mirrors game of the fake skeptics. I am told by a wise person never to attribute to dishonesty what can be attributed to stupidity, but frankly, the fake skeptics are not that stupid. Anyway, for more station data, go to this page and click on the map of Greenland to bring up a list of the nearest geographical sites (not all in Greenland). If you click on a particular site, in the lower left corner you have the option of text data which is where Goddard gets his station data. The CO2 data is probably Mauna Loa plus an Antarctic Ice Core. The real question is again, not where he got that data, but why won't he show the equivalent plot for global data: (Note, the vertical access shows CO2 increase above the preindustrial average) Oh, that's right. Because he's not that stupid.
  14. 2011 Year in Review (part 1)
    Longer term trend in UK, at least, seems flat to getting cooler, however, but remains above long term average. http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/actualmonthly/
  15. A thoughtful conservative perspective on climate
    "rdr95 @47 as absurd as some trends in post modernism are, they are not the root of the problem. The root of the problem is a fundamentalist brand of Christianity that is very common in the United States.." Perhaps, but I suspect that the increase in such fundamentalist beliefs would correlate with the rise in postmodernist philosphy. The ability to dismiss facts underpins fundamentalism; postmodernism supplies that. It also underpins the beliefs of many of the Republican elites, who are not religious fundamentalists at all (but have no problem using fundamentalists for their own ends). Postmodernism is the foundation upon which modern 'conservatism' is based. Fundamentalism is just a handy tool used by these 'conservatives'.
  16. Is Greenland losing ice? (psst, the answer is yes, at an accelerating rate)
    Having read a post about Greenland temperatures on the 'Real Science' website, I responded, based on graphs from the NASA GISS website. Steve Goddard has now made a post out of my response called 'A Glimpse Inside the Alarmist Mind' with a graph that appears to show that Nuuk temperatures have been steadily going down while CO2 has been rising. I have no idea where he gets his data (he doesn't say) which seem to contradict data from other websites. I'd be interested in any thoughts which might help my response.
  17. Michael Mann, hounded researcher
    John Hartz @31, he may well have, but I have no evidence of it. Further, it would not justify the sort of accusation that dawsonjg wrongly thinks Mann is making.
  18. Michael Mann, hounded researcher
    Tom Curtis & dasownjg: McIntyre may very well have received stipends and travel expenses for speaking at climate denial conferences.
  19. Michael Mann, hounded researcher
    dawsonjg @29 McIntyre's work was part of an intensive campaign, and that campaign has been funded by industry, but Mann does not say that McIntyre himself, or his website have been funded by industry. The fact is that McIntyre has cooperated with scientists who are both active in the campaign against climate science, and are known to have been funded by fossil fuel companies for activities undertaken in that regard. He has also attended and spoken at conferences organized by think tanks again known to be funded by fossil fuel interests. That makes him part of the industry funded campaign even though he is not paid by industry in that capacity. (He was paid by a fossil fuel company in a professional capacity up until 2003, but I know of no evidence to suggest he has been paid for his "work" at Climate Audit.) What is more, McIntyre's claims have certainly been taken up and echoed around by industry funded individuals and organizations. That is all that is needed for Mann's specific claim to be true. His claim is, ergo, not defamatory for it is true. If you think it reflects poorly on McIntyre, well you are certainly welcome to that opinion.
  20. Michael Mann, hounded researcher
    Thank you Barry for taking the time to adress my question, but I can't have made it clear. Mann and the above article imply that McIntyre's work that discredited the hockey stick was part of “an intense campaign of defamation, essentially financed by industry”, i.e. that McIntyre was being funded to come up with a way of defaming Mann et al. That is quite a (defaming) accusation. I just want to know what it is based on. We know who was paying Mann to do his work, can anyone tell me which industry vested interest was paying McIntyre to do his?
  21. 2011 Year in Review (part 1)
    UK experiences 2nd warmest year on record:- http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/archive/2011/december-and-annual-statistics
  22. 2011 Year in Review (part 1)
    tonyabalone@7 The article from "The Australian" newspaper titled "Cherry-picking contrarian geologists tend to obscure scientific truth" is online.
    Moderator Response: [Rob P] No more comments about Plimer here thanks. Try the Plimer vs Plimer thread.
  23. 2011 Year in Review (part 1)
    tonyabalone @7 no such luck. The Australian published a similarly devastating review of "Heaven and Earth", but that has not stopped them from publishing his articles in opinion pages, and citing him as an expert in their news articles. Therefore I expect no change in their editorial policy or practice.
  24. 2011 Year in Review (part 1)
    Here in Australia the only national newspaper,"The Australian" has published a devastating article in today's edition (31 December)titled "Cherry-picking contrarian geologists tend to obscure scientific truth". The article by Mike Sanford, professor of geology at University of Melbourne takes Ian Plimmer apart and shows Plimmer's errors and misinformation such as Plimmer claiming that volcanoes contribute much more carbon dioxide than human activity or his recent declaration that Antarctic ice cores show that carbon dioxide levels were higher in 1900 (330 ppm) than Mauna Lau Hawaiian measurements in 1960 (260 ppm). The Australian is a Murdoch paper that,in the main, has run a global warming skepticism/denial campaign and it has given far too much paper space to deniers such as Monckton, Carter and Plimmer. Hopefully the publishing of today's article is an indication that the editorial staff are starting to get the message that misinformation by the likes of Plimmer will not be tolerated.
  25. A thoughtful conservative perspective on climate
    it seems that there are some things overlooked at the US-Rep's homepage (to put it clear: I am NOT a Republican, I am from Europe and quite in opposition to the standpoint of the US-Reps, however: Justice must be!) therefore: another piece of evidence ... :) http://www.rep.org/opinions/weblog.html here they analyse the World War II start of infrared investigation - very interesting - politically...
  26. A thoughtful conservative perspective on climate
    Communicating Climate change: http://vimeo.com/33298236 at this years AGU-Fallmeeting Susan Hassol showed a way of doing ... quite interesting... and with BEST it seems there are things crumbling ...
  27. Michael Mann, hounded researcher
    @25, that's a fair question. For me it's largely interesting because I want to understand why AGW-deniers find it so compelling. Why are they putting so many of their eggs into this basket? In addition, because of their focus on it, it's always topical. Whether it's Cuccinelli or AFP, the media plays as though some kind of trump card over the science could be found by someone digging through email. People who know anything about science know there is no such card. But when I talk to someone skeptical of science, and they refer vaguely to any number of supposed scandals involving Mann, I would like to know better than they do the history of the complaints they're trying to echo. I would go look at McIntyre's website for a history, but there's a lot of chaff to separate and, besides,as @8 suggests, McIntyre's story has changed and he might not be reliable even at summarizing his own claims against Mann et al (both personal and statistical).
  28. Michael Mann, hounded researcher
    #26 would you then agree that M&M did make a consequential error by only including two principle components in their reanalysis of the MBH data? Absolutely. M&M failed to apply Mann's singular-value selection algorithm properly to the full-centered data. The fact that they blindly stuck with two principal components with the full-centered approach indicates that they didn't know what they were doing. Even a quick "eyball analysis" of the "full-centered" singular values would tell you (actually *scream* at you) to include more principal components. There are lots of people out there who may be whizzes at crunching data with mathematical tools like matlab/scilab/R/etc., but that doesn't mean that they know how to interpret the results they get.
  29. Michael Mann, hounded researcher
    caerbannog @25, given that the red crosses show the full centered SVD, as used by M&M, and given that there is significant information out to at least the fifth Principle Component as shown on your graph, would you then agree that M&M did make a consequential error by only including two principle components in their reanalysis of the MBH data?
  30. Michael Mann, hounded researcher
    I do not understand why we continue to discuss the details of Mann 98 and 99 anyway. These papers have been superceded by many other papers that have corrected any supposed mistakes and shown that Mann 98 was correct. The main conclusion is Mann 98 is an example of great work that advanced the science.
  31. A thoughtful conservative perspective on climate
    Regarding religion ... I think the most relevant bit is the problem of acceptance of Evolution. When we find the recipe for allowing Evolution to be taught in science classes without inclusion of religious apologetics and pseudo-scientific 'balance', that will be very informative for getting climate science accepted in the religious right worldview. Both are resisted not because of their facts, but because of the implications linked to those facts. Climate science may have an advantage relative to Evolution in that regard, since the challenge of the implications is a bit less direct. But I fear there are some who are working hellish hours trying to forge those links very strongly in the mindset of the religious right population. A less relevant but maybe more interesting observation about religion is the success of evangelical protestantism. I've never studied this stuff with any rigour, but a friend explained to me that it's quite 'capitalistic'. Nobody has been granted superior access to God (there's no Pope). Instead there are multiple interpretations (competitive market), and the interpretation that sells best (superior product for price) should be the one that receives more investment (belief). That is, the market of ideas is controlled by consumer choice. A belief in this system must be associated with a distrust of marketing, or at least a belief that marketing is a poor determinant of which ideas succeed. Most important is the match of a product with what feels right in the heart. Think about what this means for climate science! How we market science (facts, education, expert knowledge [high priests in ivory towers], abstraction from implications) is not going to work. What works for these people is gut-feeling, participatory empowerment, and .... I'm not sure what else. What else?! In any case, every time we hear the twin complaints: "there is no consensus; science isn't about consensus" lines, I suspect they have deeper meaning than a scientist at first would sense. Both are losing arguments in communication of the science with the evangelical right; what's needed is an appeal to something that satisfies them spiritually or brings them some form of happiness. Otherwise they ain't buyin'.
  32. UAH Misrepresentation Anniversary, Part 2 - Of Cherries and Volcanoes
    “Wow – Christy’s Global Warming Skepticism is Evolving,” by Ove Hoegh-Guldberg contains a graph by John Abraham showing an upward trend in John Christy‘s published conclusions about the rate of climate change in the troposphere.
  33. Michael Mann, hounded researcher
    Clarification: Out of a bit of sloppiness, I used "singular values" and "eigenvalues" interchangeably in my above post. As far as Mann's application of the SVD procedure is concerned, they represent basically the same thing (eigenvalues are just singular-values squared).
  34. Michael Mann, hounded researcher
    caerbannog, are the red crosses the singular values for McIntyre and McKittrik's own principle component analysis of the data from MBH 98 and 99? The red crosses represent singular values when the data time-series are fully centered to zero-mean. The blue circles are the singular values generated via Mann's "short-centered" SVD implementation. Mann's "short centering" (as opposed to full centering) prior to the SVD calculation was indeed a mistake -- but an inconsequential one. The singular-value thresholding procedure (i.e. the algorithm that Mann used to decide which principal components to retain) ensures that the final results will be the same no matter which centering convention is used. See Mann et al. (or realclimate.org) for details. Apply Mann's thresholding procedure to "short-centered" SVD outputs and it will give you the proper answer as to how many principal components to retain. Apply the same thresholding procedure to "full-centered" SVD outputs, and it will still give you the proper answer as to how many principal components to retain. The bottom line is, no matter which centering convention you use, there is a *huge* (as in night vs. day) difference in the singular-value patterns for tree-ring data vs. random-noise data. Anyone who claims otherwise simply does not know what he/she is talking about. But folks don't need to take my word for it -- there's lots of free software out there that allows you to "roll your own" random-noise hockey-sticks. Do that, compare your full-centered and short-centered random-noise singular values with Mann's tree-ring eigenvalues (both full- and short-centered), and you will see that it is slam-dunk easy to tell the difference between tree-ring data and random-noise data *simply by looking at the singular values*. An excellent software package that has everything you need to do this is SciLab (www.scilab.org). It runs on Linux, OS-X, and Windows platforms. Easy to install, easy to run, not that hard to learn how to write your own script files.
  35. A thoughtful conservative perspective on climate
    @52 -- awesome! I hadn't looked there before. That webpage, with the Reagan quote in the top corner, needs to be slipped in to many more blog discussions.
  36. Plimer vs Plimer: a one man contradiction
    There is a new review of Plimer's latest in The Australian by geologist Mike Sandiford. He also has picked up on the many contradictions in Plimer's works, and a few fundamental errors. Well worth the read.
  37. Michael Mann, hounded researcher
    dawsonjg, Many of the think tanks that publish anti-climate change screed are financed by big oil and are staffed by people also on the boards of oil companies. Exxon-Mobil is a clear example. You can follow the trail from the think tanks E/M funds/has funded to blog sites like Junkscience.com (via the Cato Institute). Steve Milloy at that blog site and in his column in The Weekly Standardhas smeared plenty of climate scientists, including Michael Mann. ...Just checked in there, and there is a picture of a hockey stick right at the top with some a bumper sticker blurb on the parlous state of intellectual integrity in climate science. A quick search finds such gems as http://junkscience.com/2011/12/06/steven-hayward-responds-to-mann/
    ....I refer to Michael “hockey stick” Mann as the Fredo of the climate mafia, because of his endless bluster and the obvious embarrassment he brings to his fellow scientists.... At this point it is difficult to tell if Mann is simply delusional, or a deliberate liar.
    But it's very easy to find links/details/evidence to this and many other examples with some ordinary search terms on google. So I wonder dawsonjg if your question was argumentative rather than genuine?
  38. A thoughtful conservative perspective on climate
    “The importance of the ultra-conservative vote, championed by a religious, anti-evolution electorate, is not lost on the contenders seeking their party's nod to face Obama.” Source: “How Science Has Become Taboo for Republicans Seeking the White House,” AFP/Alternet, Dec 30, 2011
  39. A thoughtful conservative perspective on climate
    triggered by this article, I looked at the US-Rep-page and found something very surprising (at least for me here in old Europe) - namely within the FAQ's on climate change: here we go: http://www.rep.org/climate_faq.html I discovered: they just do not deny! I am wondering if the T-party knows about this part of their homepage - and I am wondering whether this - mine - entry here might change the content of the climate FAQ's :)
  40. Michael Mann, hounded researcher
    caerbannog, are the red crosses the singular values for McIntyre and McKittrik's own principle component analysis of the data from MBH 98 and 99?
  41. Michael Mann, hounded researcher
    caerbannog @12, would you please write that comment up as an article that can be posted on SkS. Ideally you should have two versions. A basic version which would essentially reproduce your comment, and an advanced version which includes discussion of the maths, and references to basic textbooks so that people not familiar with the maths can check the veracity of what you say themselves.
  42. 2011 Expected to be Second Warmest Year on Record for the UK
    I like your tables - measuring actual as a percentage of a 30 year norm. Very clear.
  43. A thoughtful conservative perspective on climate
    "needed themselves" should be "needed to teach themselves" (sorry)
  44. A thoughtful conservative perspective on climate
    rdr95 @47 as absurd as some trends in post modernism are, they are not the root of the problem. The root of the problem is a fundamentalist brand of Christianity that is very common in the United States and which teaches that the Earth is very young (< 10,000 years), that evolution never happened and that biological and geological scientists have been indulging in a massive century long fraud to teach a "lie". To sustain these beliefs these Christians have needed themselves how to avoid clear thinking on science, and how to allow ideology to trump rational thought. Having so taught themselves, it becomes second nature when it comes to discussion of climate science. It is not coincidence that the Republican Party cultivated just those Christians as a constituency over the last two decades of the 20th century, and that now the Republican Party is the bastion of anti-science sentiment in the US. Nor is it a coincidence that Europe in which that (strictly heretical) brand of Christianity was never strong is largely immune to the anti-science rhetoric of deniers. Indeed, Europe provides an interesting test case on this point, for Europe was the bastion of post-modernism as the US was the bastion of Christian Fundamentalism. Please note that my comments are not an attack on Christianity per se, but only a comment on a branch of Christianity that has departed far from the teachings of Jesus.
  45. Michael Mann, hounded researcher
    “an intense campaign of defamation, essentially financed by industry” Can anyone elaborate on the industry finance? supply evidence? details? links?
  46. A thoughtful conservative perspective on climate
    Philippe Chantreau, ideology didn't kill all those people, other people did. The followers were just following, not acting out of ideology. And the only true ideology of the leaders was power- and blood-lust.
  47. 2011 Year in Review (part 1)
    Apocalypse 2011: The year of climate alarms, ” is another excellent year-in-review-article posted on RTCC.
  48. 2011 Year in Review (part 1)
    newcrusader - please tell me CT is planning on burying its power lines now?
  49. Michael Mann, hounded researcher
    @5, I watched the video and was annoyed. Dana Rohrabacher wanted to attack Alley with specific questions and wanted to limit Alley's ablity to answer ("15 seconds"); then he gets confused and he turns to Michaels with just an open mic. These guys are pretty frustrating -- they want to apply parsimony when it comes to Mars (and ignore natural variability due to cyclicity and dust), but for the Earth they'll imagine undetectable cycles in the sun causing unspecified cloud changes that nobody has noticed. On the constructive (but unfortunately off-topic) side, I decided to learn a bit about Mars. I was hoping to find a sort of cryosphere today for martian polar ice cap area or extent, and then look at trends over time to see how well they match up with Earth's. Or to see at some point in the future when the trends diverge. No luck. Also there's a huge fluctuation in the CO2 content of the martian atmosphere (a bunch of the ice is frozen CO2) such that atmospheric pressure fluctuates by 25% over the year. I haven't yet found much written on the climatological impact of greenhouse gases there. But I think that would be interesting.
  50. Michael Mann, hounded researcher
    @12 -- thanks. I'm not too scared of stats but I have never wanted to waste much time on trying to see what all the fuss was about wrt the hockey stick. The closest I got was reading the discovery of Wegman's sloppy copy-catting of McIntyre's cherry-picking. Some day, someone will produce a good basic, intermediate, and advanced page regarding the entire hockey stick story at SkS ... and I'll read it! (The link to the Alex Lockwood overview from the most relevant SkS page is broken -- that SkS page is pretty good, but I'm not sure that it's comprehensive of the false skeptics' complaints including withholding data, upside down proxies[?], and whatever else they yammer on about.)

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