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John Russell at 06:00 AM on 1 January 2012Is 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. -
John Hartz at 05:04 AM on 1 January 2012A 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? -
muoncounter at 04:54 AM on 1 January 2012Is 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. -
John Russell at 04:52 AM on 1 January 2012Is 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. -
Tom Curtis at 04:43 AM on 1 January 2012Is Greenland losing ice? (psst, the answer is yes, at an accelerating rate)
("access" should be "axis". Sorry, these things happen at 3:40 AM.) -
Tom Curtis at 04:41 AM on 1 January 2012Is 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.
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mace at 04:39 AM on 1 January 20122011 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/ -
rdr95 at 04:27 AM on 1 January 2012A 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'. -
John Russell at 03:33 AM on 1 January 2012Is 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. -
Tom Curtis at 02:47 AM on 1 January 2012Michael 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. -
John Hartz at 02:30 AM on 1 January 2012Michael Mann, hounded researcher
Tom Curtis & dasownjg: McIntyre may very well have received stipends and travel expenses for speaking at climate denial conferences. -
Tom Curtis at 00:47 AM on 1 January 2012Michael 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. -
dawsonjg at 00:25 AM on 1 January 2012Michael 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? -
mace at 22:41 PM on 31 December 20112011 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 -
Sapient Fridge at 22:32 PM on 31 December 20112011 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. -
Tom Curtis at 21:38 PM on 31 December 20112011 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. -
tonyabalone at 20:42 PM on 31 December 20112011 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. -
kampmannpeine at 20:10 PM on 31 December 2011A 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... -
kampmannpeine at 20:01 PM on 31 December 2011A 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 ... -
Steve L at 15:29 PM on 31 December 2011Michael 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). -
caerbannog at 14:46 PM on 31 December 2011Michael 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. -
Tom Curtis at 14:06 PM on 31 December 2011Michael 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? -
michael sweet at 13:53 PM on 31 December 2011Michael 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. -
Steve L at 13:24 PM on 31 December 2011A 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'. -
John Hartz at 13:20 PM on 31 December 2011UAH 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. -
caerbannog at 13:10 PM on 31 December 2011Michael 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). -
caerbannog at 13:07 PM on 31 December 2011Michael 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. -
Steve L at 12:36 PM on 31 December 2011A 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. -
Tom Curtis at 12:28 PM on 31 December 2011Plimer 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. -
barry1487 at 12:02 PM on 31 December 2011Michael 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? -
John Hartz at 11:44 AM on 31 December 2011A 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 -
kampmannpeine at 11:41 AM on 31 December 2011A 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 :) -
Tom Curtis at 11:36 AM on 31 December 2011Michael 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? -
Tom Curtis at 11:34 AM on 31 December 2011Michael 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. -
Riduna at 11:32 AM on 31 December 20112011 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. -
Tom Curtis at 11:27 AM on 31 December 2011A thoughtful conservative perspective on climate
"needed themselves" should be "needed to teach themselves" (sorry) -
Tom Curtis at 11:26 AM on 31 December 2011A 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. -
dawsonjg at 10:59 AM on 31 December 2011Michael Mann, hounded researcher
“an intense campaign of defamation, essentially financed by industry” Can anyone elaborate on the industry finance? supply evidence? details? links? -
John Bruno at 10:37 AM on 31 December 2011A 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. -
John Hartz at 10:20 AM on 31 December 20112011 Year in Review (part 1)
Apocalypse 2011: The year of climate alarms, ” is another excellent year-in-review-article posted on RTCC. -
angliss at 09:35 AM on 31 December 20112011 Year in Review (part 1)
newcrusader - please tell me CT is planning on burying its power lines now? -
Steve L at 09:27 AM on 31 December 2011Michael 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. -
Steve L at 09:14 AM on 31 December 2011Michael 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.) -
Rob Painting at 09:06 AM on 31 December 20112011 Year in Review (part 1)
Chris G - there's an upcoming post about the Hansen paper. Shouldn't be too far away. -
Chris G at 08:31 AM on 31 December 20112011 Year in Review (part 1)
It's been mentioned previously at this site, but worth mentioning again. Dr Hansen has written a brief on heat waves, which shows pretty clearly that the incidence of heat waves has steadily increased over the last 30 years and is now 10 times what it was in the previous 30 years. "...there is no need to equivocate..." There is some fuzziness because there are better data available in the 1950-1980 period than prior to that time, but by that time the global heat content was already on the move. Nevertheless, the rising trend is unmistakable. -
Bboucher at 08:22 AM on 31 December 20112011 Year in Review (part 1)
Great work in this 2011 review. When will the climate deniers realize that their repudiation of scientific data in substantiation of man's contribution to global warming is counterproductive and putting everyone in jeopardy? Unfortunately, history has proven that nothing is done until circumstances become so dire that the impact is catastrophic. Thank you for providing informative, interesting content. I particularly enjoy the graphs and stastical analyses. Since discovering your website, I have spent hours poring over the articles, clicking on every embedded link (which I greatly appreciate). Keep up the good work. -
newcrusader at 08:02 AM on 31 December 20112011 Year in Review (part 1)
I live in Connecticut, a small New England state under 5300 square miles. The southwestern part of the state is a suburb of NYC- yet the eastern part of the state known as the 'Quiet corner' is known for its pastoral bucolic beauty. We ranked as the 8th worse state for climate/weather disasters in 2011. Snowstorms aren’t usually news in here — but 2011 was hardly usual. Hartford was buried under a record-setting 57 inches of snow in January, making it the all-time snowiest month in state history. Then, nearly two months before the next winter began, Connecticut was blasted by the worst October snowstorm in 200 years. The heavy wet snow, which cost the state more than $500 million, sent trees and tree limbs falling onto power lines, leaving more than 700,000 people without heat or lights. In the worst power failure in state history, many didn’t get their electricity back for more than a week. In August, tropical storm Irene pummeled the state with heavy rains and gale-force winds that caused devastating floods and turned the lights out on more than 650,000 people. Some areas were pounded with as much as eight inches of rain in just 24 hours. -
funglestrumpet at 07:58 AM on 31 December 2011Michael Mann, hounded researcher
Bernard J at 6 & 7 I could not agree more. Bernard J’s “Denialati”, are winning the war whilst losing every battle. This side of the fence has to decide whether their welfare and that of their descendants is going to be best served by continuing to play 'Mr Nice Guy' and sticking rigidly to the science, or if the time has arrived for more direct action. Though the last thing I am suggesting is that sks should sink to the level one finds elsewhere on the climate issue. Perhaps a ‘direct action’ thread could suffice as a nucleus around which some form of organisation for direct action could grow. The Occupy Wall St. Movement has gained a lot of publicity and not a small amount of public support for their unclear cause(s), yet Climate Change is about the possible deaths of countless numbers of our descendants, if not those of us still alive, and is surely a more deserving and clearer cause. I have suggested before that there is soon to be an excellent opportunity to show the ‘retarded right’ how we feel about their contempt for the rest of us and our descendants. I make no apology for the repetition. The opening ceremony of the London Olympics next year will be performed mainly by the younger generation, who will be the ones most likely to suffer the privations that climate change will heap upon the planet. If those taking part could be encouraged to carry a placard demanding action on the topic, then at least we can be sure that they will be seen by countless millions. Any national committee that bans the action could be named and shamed. Perhaps even more dramatic action could be considered, such as a refusal to take part in the opening, which the national committees would be hard pressed to ban. I honestly don’t think that the debate can keep plodding on while The Denialati keep managing to postpone action that is now so urgently needed (re the sudden release of methane in the Arctic as noted recently by Russian scientists, which, if it proves to be the long feared methane ‘burp’, then I guess it’s game over). The debate has now been going on for so long that all with an open mind will have made their mind up on the issue. By all means continue with the excellent scientific analysis, it is still important, if only to provide evidence in any future criminal proceedings regarding the actions of The Denialati. But the debate has to go up a gear if meaningful change is to happen and our descendants are not to be destined to a bleak and overheated future. -
muoncounter at 06:39 AM on 31 December 2011Michael Mann, hounded researcher
caerbannog#12: "how stunningly incompetent the "Mann method generates hockey sticks from random noise" argument really is." Especially incompetent in the face of all the other hockey sticks that are not from SVDs: atmospheric CO2, Arctic ice (blade is down), sea level (see the SkS graphics page for North Carolina), etc. It's one thing to incompetently say 'the hockey stick is generated from noise' -- its quite another to have to stick with that position over and over again. But thanks for that lucid explanation of the Singular Value Decomposition (SVD). I've described it to my Linear Algebra classes as 'the best thing since sliced bread.' Should anyone want to try to see what they obtain from random noise, try this applet on an appropriately randomly seeded matrix. -
Philippe Chantreau at 06:26 AM on 31 December 2011A thoughtful conservative perspective on climate
I think R Gates' post reveals a big problem. Wehner does not say much more than scientific facts can not be disagreed upon because they don't fit in ideology. But the very fact of aggreeing with that is perceived as leaning "left." That's very alarming. This is truly a behavior that was normally reserved to religious dogma. I wish I could say that the left is not guilty of comparable errors in different areas, but these can be found. The biggest enemy of mankind in the 21st century may very well be ideology. In the 20th century, ideologies, possibly for the 1st time, killed more people than micro-organisms. Tens of millions of people, between the 2 world wars battlefields, Staline, Franco, etc, etc. Now we've balked a little at the savagery of these manifestations, but others are creeping up on us. If we don't stop being so enamored of our beautiful ideological constructs that we have to force-fit reality in them by all sorts of self-fooling methods, we don't stand a chance as a species in the long term.
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