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Comments 8951 to 9000:

  1. Here Are 3 Climategate Myths That Have Not Aged Well

    Hi Eclectic,

    how do I justify this "bias"? (don´t know if "bias" is the right word here). Physics is purely based on descriptive models, which means if you ask why is something happening the answer will always be because instrumental data from perfectly designed and controlled experiments made us develop a model which discribes experiment inside a certain framework and not we have developed a statisitcal relevant model where we can draw conclusion, opinion or facts, which have never been proven in a controlled experiemts with every influencing parameter is either observable or identified as an unobservable.

    You mention: Likewise, the classical Newtonian mechanics provide a pragmatically correct usage for almost all human activities.

    You are probably familiar with the development of quantum mechanics. One of the first experiments indicating the newton mechanics is not pragmatic but just plain incorrect in a lot of cases are experiemts on black body radiation. According to newton mechanics the radiativ spectrum from black body radiation should show a UV catastrophy, which just never happened, but could be resolved by a much more sophisticated model namely quantum mechanics. Ironically the EM radiation of our sun is described by quantum mechanical black body radiation. Apply newton mechanics and you would need a lot of sun screen here on earth ;) I just want to highlight how data and models are applied in physics and can be missleading if generalised or too complex or not well understood or error prone. In science if somebody claims something as fact or undisputable good scientists usally start to question, do experiments and very seldomly judge and not the other way around... as history has shown this process can take hundreds of years depending on technology,  experiment and data available.

  2. Here Are 3 Climategate Myths That Have Not Aged Well

    MA Rodger @25

    You try to relativise the harsh critic by Wigley with the concluding sentence:

    "Wigley's response is robust because that is how academics fire off at each other."

     

    To me, you attempt to downplay the criticism here and putting the email in a larger context like you did with your post, does not change its explanatory power whatsoever.

    The message of Wigley is crystal clear, alarmed and referring to general scientific principles and ethics and exactly the high responsibility we are talking about. Therefore, other users already tried to discredit Wigley himself as obsolete and dangerous, standing in the way of the 11; skipping your attempt of just downplaying the message of Wigley.

    What Wigley foresees here is the onset of political thinking and acting, documented by numerous emails of the coming years. Wigleys apprehensions will be confirmed and peak with Mann´s Hockeystick.

    This is another example from 2009 where uncertainty is expressed, but must never be admitted in public:

    M.Mann to K.Trenberth:

    "Thanks Kevin, yes, it’s a matter of what question one is asking. To argue that the observed global average temperatures of the past decade falsifythe model projections ..., as the contrarians have been fond of claiming, is clearly wrong. But that doesn’t mean we can explain exactly what’s going on."

    T.Wigley continues:

    "Kevin,I didn’t mean to offend you. But what you said was “we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment”. Now you say “we are nowhere close to knowing where energy is going”. In my eyes these are two different things—the second relates to our level of understanding, and I agree that this is still lacking."

  3. There is no consensus

    For a follow up to my post at 851 on being fooled by lies:

    While I do not know all the data and can be fooled by deliberate lies, I find that between my friends Eclectic, DB, Bob Loblaw and the other posters here at SkS, someone recognizes the lie and links to the actual data.   All of us have different interests and are knowledgable about different facets of climate change.  We have strength in numbers to fight deliberate propaganda.

  4. Welcome to Skeptical Science

    Markovnikov, if you enter the name "Wrightstone" in the search box [top left], you get a couple of entries for April 2019.

    The second one ( 27th April) takes you to a recent lengthy piece by Willard MacDonald, discussing the extensive disinformational propaganda by Wrightstone.

    It sounds like Wrightstone is someone who can't even lie straight in bed.  So I think you will be completely wasting your time if you are trying to understand whatever mathematics he is proposing.  It is the same case with Monckton ~ who generates specious (and ultimately wrong) grand calculations "showing how the world's scientists are all wrong".   Every year or two, it's a new doozy.

  5. Here Are 3 Climategate Myths That Have Not Aged Well

    Nyood at 23:"

    Most of your post is simply repeating the arguments used when the climate gate emails first came out.  These were all shown to be false many years ago.  Your posts are just sloganeering old denier points.

    You claim additionally

    "This is wrong to me, ten years ago we were estimating with a warming of 3°C, now we have come to the lowest threshold of 1,5°C. To me the explanoray power of the IPCC declines towards none."

    This claim is simply false and uninformed.  The 1.5C threshold in the SR5 report was based solely on analysis of the "pause" data.  The past 5 years of data have demonstrated conclusively that that analysis was incorrect.  Getting all worked up and angry about false claims does not help to solve any problems.  You are reading too many denier web sites who deliberately lie to you.

    Currently the world temperature is 1.2C above pre-industrial.  We are only at 410 ppm CO2 and doubling is 540 ppm.  There is at least 0.5C warming in the pipeline.  We are already far over 1.0C heating you suggest for doubling and are nowhere near doubling carbon.  

    The claim of low sensitivity was never very strong and it has been proven incorrect by the increase in temperature.  Very unfortunately, recent modeling studies have found that the best fit is from models with sensitivities over 4.5C.  Pray that those studies are incorrect since if they pan out we are already far past any reasonable threshold for disaster.

  6. There is no consensus

    Michael, the claims of Klmartinson are in the category of "amusing".

    I am reasonably sure that even he himself doesn't believe them.

  7. There is no consensus

    To all posters:

    Moderator DB posted data that shows klmartinson's claim that

    "last winter in continental USA was the coldest in 110 years. I don't understand how we can have "record heat" and yet have "record cold seasons"

    was simply made up.  I note that several informed posters replied to this claim as if it were actually correct.  This shows how difficult it is to argue with deniers: they simply lie about data to support their wild claims.  No-one can know all the data so all of us can be fooled.  data that is numerical and very specific ("coldest in 110 years") is genrally aclcepted as from a reliable source.

    My questions to klmartinson: who told you this deliberate lie?  Why do you believe them?

  8. Here Are 3 Climategate Myths That Have Not Aged Well

    Blub @24 ,

    You are giving the message that your own bias is to not draw any conclusions from data and models.  But how do you justify that bias?

    Many thousands of climate scientists (with hardly any exceptions) have a bias in the direction of understanding and using the climate data from pyrometers and proxies.  The information they produce is internally logically consistent, and (so far) has been pragmatically correct.

    Likewise, the classical Newtonian mechanics provide a pragmatically correct usage for almost all human activities, and the Einsteinian and Quantum Mechanics corrections are not usually required.  Are you proposing that we stop using Newtonian concepts?  I suspect you are not really proposing that action.

    Blub, we have to be practical.

  9. Welcome to Skeptical Science

    Sorry if this has been discussed above.  I scanned the earlier posts but may have missed it.

    A commenter in our local newspaper cited a posting by Wrightstone in which he (Wrightstone) claims to have used a program called MAGICC Climate Simulator to show that even if CO2 emissions were cut to zero, the change in global temperature increase would be negligible.  Does anyone have a link regarding this?

    My gut feeling is that Wrightstone has set the input into the program to produce the results he wants and then uses the fact that the program was produced by a government lab to give credibility to his calculations.

    The link to Wrightstone's calculations is https://inconvenientfacts.xyz/magicc-simulator?fbclid=IwAR0VEQ6B_g5UoYv5SzXH4bXLyJt3nMF3D8LFd3aMWOSkzy_AO8GoC_UYQyw

    Thanks for any help you can give.

  10. Here Are 3 Climategate Myths That Have Not Aged Well

    This 'deep understanding' by Tom Wigley being protrayed in this thread based on his 1997 e-mail is pure fantasy. The e-mail is presented upthread @12 with passages missing. A full presentation of the e-mail exposes a situation where Wigley's grand work is potentially being rendered obsolete by the call for 'immediate control' of emissions. Wigley's response is robust because that is how academics fire off at each other.

    And to put this ancient interchange into context, the argument was how to time the reduction of emissions when the target is 550ppm(v) and the limit to global AGW was seen as +2.0ºC; thus whether it made much difference if BAU was allowed to run until 2000, 2010, or 2020 before emissions reigned them in. Today, we are marginally ahead of the BAU secnario set out by Wigley while 2020 is upon us with stricter limits to AGW now in play. As for Wigley's grand work, it rather fell from grace although Wigley did revive oit following COP15 at Paris - note that there is no longer any delay to emissions control mentioned in Wigley (2017) but that the scenarios show cuts immediate to 2015 and also only consider FF emissions.

  11. CO2 lags temperature

    Looking at figure 2 the global temperature shows an increase of 3.5C and a CO2 increase of about 1.5. This would indicate a higher climate sensitivity that the 3.0C per the IPCC. Is this just one of the calculations that shows a higher climate sensitivity?

    Also the global temperature change is 3.5C while the Antarctic temperature change is 2.0C. Doesn’t temperature change increase as the area included decreases (global vs more local)?

  12. Here Are 3 Climategate Myths That Have Not Aged Well

    Hi Eclectic,

    I am confused of the two responses to my post so far. In the first post I opened a discussion about this article showing Fig.1 of a reconstruction study on global temp variation of the last 2000 years for confirmation of the robustness of proxy studies on temp variation. I highlighted the basis of this study (proxies) and the authors own awareness of bias and proxy problems. In my point of view care has to be taken to use this study and proxy studies in general as an example for confirmation, evidence or "fact" on human induced global warming and I tried to explain difficulties of statistical based data interpretation in the scope of too few and error prone data and error prone modeling because of the physical complexity of climate.

    You mention: "but the major ones are alterations of insolation / greenhouse gasses / aerosols. That is well known."

    That is well known is actually an opinion of people. Newton mechanics was well known, statistically robust and widely accepted before instrumental experiemtation and data collection advanced leading to clarification and advancement into quantum mechanics. This is how physics works. Now, climate from a physical point of view is one of the most complex and abstract experiments ever made with an uncounteable number of physical processes influencing temperature over a time frame from pico seconds to thousands of years.

    I personally would not draw any conclusions, facts, predictions or recomendations from the data and models present... This is why for me it seems that bias is present.

  13. Video: Is CO2 actually dangerous?

    I agree with Billy Joe about this presenter being annoying. But more importantly it seems to me he is trying to use comedy to discuss climate change. I can’t find any humor in what we are doing to the planet.

    Eclectic is right about Potholer54. It has great videos. In addition to debunking Monckton Bunkum, the 4 back and forth interchanges with Tony Heller who operates realclimatescience is just a pleasure to watch. One by one he demolishes Tony’s erroneous climate change statements until Tony refuses to continue the debate. And he does this all without making the audience feel like he is in an attack mode.

  14. Here Are 3 Climategate Myths That Have Not Aged Well

    nigelj @16

    T.Wigley was not proven incorrect, quite the opposite for two reasons:

    1: His concern was confirmed with hundreds of emails of the following decade. Here are two more examples: M.Mann to E.Cook:

    "I don’t in any way doubt yours and Jan’s integrity here.I’m just a bit concerned that the result is getting used publicly, by some, before it has gone through the gauntlet of peer review. Especially because it is, whether you condone it or not, being used as we speak to discredit the work of us, and Phil and his co-workers; this is dangerous. I think there are some legitimate issues that need to be sorted out ....I’d be interested to be kept posted on what the status of the manuscript is."

    E.Cooks reply:

    "Unfortunately, this global change stuff is so politicized by both sides of the issue that it is difficult to do the science in a dispassionate environment. I ran into the same problem in the acid rain/forest decline debate that raged in the 1980s. At one point, I was simultaneous accused of being a raving tree hugger and in the pocket of the coal industry. I have always said that I don’t care what answer is found as long as it is the truth or at least blood close to it."

    And E.Cook to K.Biffa:

    "Also, there is no evidence for a decline or loss of temperature response in your data in the post-1950s (I assume that you didn’t apply a bodge here)"

     

    2. You state that Wrigley was wrong since it turned out he was hindering the 11 on their path to prove warming is manmade and a threat.

    This is wrong to me, ten years ago we were estimating with a warming of 3°C, now we have come to the lowest threshold of 1,5°C. To me the explanoray power of the IPCC declines towards none.

    I want to remind here that in my original post i was saying that climategate reveals the extent in which the thinking is political and strategical within the IPCC. Wrigley seems to realize this early on.

    I do not want the IPCC to fight an information war for us. The emails show countless concerns, predominantly expressed by M.Mann towards skeptics publishing stuff in Natur, Science and alike.

    The public and  media perception of the global warming issue seems to be the dominant task for M.Mann.

    The science itself is not in focus anymore, focus shifted towards: "What is the public thinking" and "How can we make our enemies look bad or hinder them from publishing".

    This is evidenced by numerous emails where certain media is considered "on our side" while others are considered "lost" to the skeptics:

    P.Jones to M.Mann:

    "Writing this I am becoming more convinced we should do something ...I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor. A ClimaticResearch Unit person is on the editorial board, but papers get dealt with by the editor assigned by Hans von Storch."

    M.Mann replies:

    "The Soon and Baliunas paper couldn’t have cleared a “legitimate” peer review process anywhere. That leaves only one possibility—that the peer-review process at Climate Research has been hijacked by a few skeptics on the editorial board. And it isn’t just De Freitas; unfortunately, I think this group also includes a member of my own department... The skeptics appear to have staged a “coup” at Climate Research (it was a mediocre journal to begin with, but now it’s a mediocre journal with a definite “purpose”)."

    I do not want such peolpe to advise our gouverments, can you understand that?

    According to you and pretty much all alarmists, skeptics should be clowns, it should be easy to crush them in debates. There should be no reason to fear them this much. Ironically the fierce fight against skeptics makes them stronger, giving them meaning.

    This happened over and over in history.

  15. Here Are 3 Climategate Myths That Have Not Aged Well

    Nyood @20 ,

    you are missing the point: that both the scientist group and the anti-scientist group are wishing it would get colder.

    Clearly you are having trouble understanding the scientists' emails.

  16. Here Are 3 Climategate Myths That Have Not Aged Well

    Blub , 

    in reading your posts #13 and #19 , it is not at all clear what point you are wishing to make.  Please clarify !

    Average readers here (such as me) are aware of data and correlations and causalities.

    Basically, the climate changes when something causes it to change.  And yes, there are many factors or drivers affecting climate ~ but the major ones are alterations of insolation / greenhouse gasses / aerosols.  That is well known.

    Are you saying that some confirmation bias is affecting your own views on climate?

    So far, you have (in a general way) touched on abstract concepts and the difficulties of achieving valid scientific knowledge (such as the well-researched PAGES 2K studies) . . . but you have not actually given any empirical or logical disproof of the extensive PAGES 2K information.

    Please be clear about the message you are trying to convey.  

  17. Here Are 3 Climategate Myths That Have Not Aged Well

    One Planet Only Forever @18

    You are missing the point. My concern was that the hiatus is considered to be something bad by some authors of the emails. It does not need any skeptic here, it is the authors themselfs, hence the terms pschology and political thinking.

    So it is not about skeptics abusing the hiatus.

    It is not about reasoning why the haitus happened.

    It is about considering good news (less warming) as bad news.

    Despite of all poralization one would hope that these scientists still want the best for humanity and not see cooling as a problem.

    If skeptics wish that it will be colder, just because they are "more" right is demasking, almost childish.

    If the IPCC wishes it will get warmer or stay hot, just because they will be right is demasking and reduces integrity.

  18. There is no consensus

    “Abstract
    The consensus among research scientists on anthropogenic global warming has grown to 100%, based on a review of 11,602 peer-reviewed articles on “climate change” and “global warming” published in the first 7 months of 2019.”

    journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0270467619886266?journalCode=bsta#articleShareContainer

  19. Here Are 3 Climategate Myths That Have Not Aged Well

    Hi Philippe Chantreau,

    i used "mainly" for meaning more then 50% of proxy data is based on tree ring data, which you can look up in the supplementary data of this study. Sup.Figure 1 also depicts a world map locating the proxy data used and a graph showing the amount and type of proxy data used during a certain time period. You are entirely right by highlighting all other proxies used and I shoud have done this in the first place, but my arguementation was actually not that tree rings in particular are bad proxis, but that proxy studies in general are not confirmed or evident by statistical correlation or robustness and that the thought chain of doing so is unlogic. The practical scientifc method of this study is perfectly fine, but correlation is not causality or evidence at all. Therefore, there shouldn´t be any conclusion drawn from this study.

    One fictional example may be a proxy study on a historical link betweeen vitamin c amount of apples and and apple tree ring information. Lets say there is instrumental data for the last 100 years on vitamin c amount of a couple of apple species and robust statistical correlation to tree ring size and color between species. Tree ring data of the last 2000 years is available so the authors develop a model which correlates statistically robust with this data. Does this mean that they have discovered the actual variation of vitamin c amount of apples for the last 2000 years and based on their statistically robust model may even project the development of vitamin c amount into the future? Statistically yes but causally no. Nobody has ever measured the actual vitamin c amount older than 100 years without error and could then find meaningfull error sources for proxies because there is not enough and no real data available. Further no change and influences of environmental factors can be causally linked to the past without instrumental data.

    There are a lot of problems in science with this type of data, for example a couple of physicists published  a breathtaking discovery that the speed of light is exceeded by neutrino particles just to refute their own study because they found a broken cable which was generating false data in their experiment. Data itself but even more data interpretation is extremly tricky even in controlled studies and it does not get better with proxy studies...

    This is why causality always beats correlation and data and model quality always beats quantity.

     

    Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that affirms one's prior beliefs or hypotheses. (Wikipedia)

    You may have done this by highlighting several studies to me. Weight of evidence does not matter, but the question of quality and causality of evidence

  20. Sea level rise is exaggerated

    daniel! I have read all the comments and find on the internet something that I can't reconcile.  The Australian Bureau of Meteorology page on

    Pacific Sea Level and Geodetic Monitoring Project

    http://www.bom.gov.au/oceanography/projects/spslcmp/data/monthly.shtml

    studies a number of pacific islands from 1993 to 2019. Islands are:Cook Islands; Fiji; Kiribate; Marshall Islands; Nauru; Papua New Guinea; Solomon Islands; Samoa; Tonga; Tuvalu; Vanuatu; Federated States of Micronesia; Niue.

    When I look at the graphs and tables for each island/islands, I find that the ghttp://www.bom.gov.au/oceanography/projects/spslcmp/data/monthly.shtmlraphs are uniformly even and NOT showing increases in sea level.

    Could you please enlighten me

  21. Video: Is CO2 actually dangerous?

    BillyJoe , you might care to look at the Youtube video series by Potholer54  (science journalist Peter Hadfield).

    I'm not sure if it's the ideal Climate Change explainer for the general public . . . who might rather prefer an Attenborough-ish 25 minute program of hi-rez superbo photography and rich voice-overs.  Though perhaps with Yankee drawl?

    However, the Potholer54 videos (from low-rez 2009 to higher-rez 2019) are very good value for a video-watcher who has already started to develop an interest in climate topics.  All the videos are reasonably up-to-date in their science.  They range from mostly short ( five to ten minutes) through to a few long'uns (twentyish minutes).

    They are very informative, and they have the slant  of debunking the myths & lies put about by the denialist propaganda industry.

    There's a lot of them (48) ~ but they are easy-going to digest, because of their brevity and their entertainingly humorous style.  Especially amusing, are the 5 Monckton Bunkum videos, regarding the "error-prone Viscount".

  22. One Planet Only Forever at 12:29 PM on 30 November 2019
    Here Are 3 Climategate Myths That Have Not Aged Well

    nyood @10,

    It is very polarizing indeed to still see people still make claims like: "And other sentences make you wonder why a cooling or hiatus is considered to be a problem, instead of a relief when it comes towards warming as a threat."

    The trend of the temperature record is undeniable. The existence of variations in the short-term rate of warming is abundantly clear. The skeptics harmfully abusing any period of slower temperature change to reduce popular support for the required Responsible Leadership Actions are definitely deserving of derision (not praise for relieving concern).

    Refer to the SkS Escalator.

  23. There is no consensus

    Also klmartinson @ 846:  I don't understand how we can have "record heat" and yet have "record cold seasons".

    An argument from incredulity is a pretty weak argument. But to take a bite of the apple...

    • The first year measurements are taken will set both a new high and a new low record.
    • The second year will set either a record high, or a record low - except in the rare case of a tie.
    • In subsequent years,the probabilty of setting a new record high or low decreases.
    • In a non-warming world, the probability of seeing a high record set will be the same as the probability of seeing a low record set.
    • What we see is far more high records being set than low records.
    • We still see the occasional low record, and this is not evidence against against the conclusion that things are warming overall.
  24. There is no consensus

    klmartinson @ 846: "...seems to indicate that there is a correlation between a scientist's opinion and their ability to publish."

    And a strong correlation it is.

    The opinions that are little more than an opinion, use faulty methodology, are internally self-inconsistent, rely on cherry picking, ignore vast swaths of well-established physics, and are largely unsupported by evidence usually find it difficult to make their way into the published literature.

    On the other hand, good science usually manages to overcome the hurdles involved in the publishing process. Not easily though - the review process can be pretty tough, and I"ve seen reviews that can get to be pretty nasty. The papers end up being better as a result.

  25. One Planet Only Forever at 09:35 AM on 30 November 2019
    Here Are 3 Climategate Myths That Have Not Aged Well

    nyood,

    To me, your context for Climategate is incomplete and incorrect.

    Prior to Climategate it had been fairly robustly established that the developed ways of living that relied on using fossil fuels needed to be curtailed far sooner than the natural response of the marketplace would do it (especially with misleading marketing failing to be effectively penalized).

    The making of the "misleading claims regarding the illegally obtained emails" happened just before a major global leadership meeting. The timing reduced popular support for the required corrections and gave some Leaders a poor excuse to resist being Responsible Leaders on this very important issue.

    After that tragic impact on global leadership, and the delayed corrections of how people lived, it was discovered and established that:

    • The theft of the emails had happened well in advance of the release of the claims.
    • Some people scoured through the stolen emails to find nuggets they could abuse out of context in their disinformation campaign released just before the global leadership meeting.
    • Media reported the claims without any investigation into the legitimacy of the claims being made.
    • To this day there continues to be a degree of totally unjustified reduced credibility of climate science.
    • To date there is little effort to determine all the players in the damaging disinformation campaign and penalize them. Climategate damaged the future of humanity. And yet there are people who still try to defend the people who continue to repeat unjustified scepticism of climate science.

    And that Context for Climategate does not completely present how damaging the initial cuplrits of Climategate and their parade of fans have been to the future of humanity.

    As nigelj suggested some people deserve to be severely punished. I would include serious penalties for anyone today who still tries to play the Climategate card to dismiss or discredit climate science and the corrections of developed human activity that it has exposed are required. Climategate and actions like it reduced the required correction and produced the current and growing need for more rapid correction.

  26. Video: Is CO2 actually dangerous?

    Each to his own, I guess, but I find this presenter particularly annoying. But I couldn't stand Jerry Lewis either. Is there someone else who explains climate change to the general public in short bites like this without all the intolerable cornyness. Sorry, I just had to get that off my chest. Delete the comment if you must. 

  27. Video: Is CO2 actually dangerous?

    Regarding the question "people ask whether carbon dioxide is actually bad?" They want people to say its not bad, so that they can dismiss climate change problem. They know perfectly well that CO2 is not bad at stable levels. Its not a genuine question unless its coming from a young child.

    They mostly hear Climate Adam saying CO2 is not bad. It's better to reply that some CO2 is necessary for plant growth and photosynthesis works like this, but excessive levels of CO2 are bad for the planet because they cause climate change. Add that photosynthesis works fine without requiring more CO2, which only provides a limited boost for plant growth and this is is offset by more heatwaves and droughts etc.

    The science in the video is well explained and made interesting, but stop letting these denialist guys set the agenda with their endless strawan statements and questions, because thats all they are.

  28. Here Are 3 Climategate Myths That Have Not Aged Well

    nyood @12, you are worried about the level of antagonism in the email? I have worked for several organisations and companies, and disagreements are common enough. The one you quote is polite so nothing to be concerned about. In this case someone is being picked up for letting personal views allegedly intrude, and shows the organisation is self correcting and thus avoiding group think. However like MS says Elven was ultimately proven correct, ironically. Your email is not a smoking gun, its not even a damp fire cracker, its a nothingburger.

  29. Philippe Chantreau at 04:55 AM on 30 November 2019
    Here Are 3 Climategate Myths That Have Not Aged Well

    blub at 13 " manly tree rings"

    That is at best a misrepresentation. I looked through the 47 pages of data listed by PAGES 2K here. I think you should do the same, count how many data series come from trees vs the total number of series, and give a percentage that will subtantiate the word "mainly", which is rather vague. In addition to trees, it includes lake sediments, marine sediments, boreholes, gacier ice, coral, bivalve, sclerosponge, speleothem and documents. The specific proxies for these sources vary. They are compared and correlated to verify validity. The publications explain calibration and validation methods. There are papers exclusively devoted to calibration and validation.

    Following the link in the OP to the PAGES 2k paper leads to these other papers:

    No evidence for globally coherent warm and cold periods over the preindustrial Common Era

    The aberrant global synchrony of present-day warming

    As always, the overall weight of the evidence is what matters. 

  30. There is no consensus

    Klmartinson @846 , 

    thank you for your "less wordy" reply  ;-)

    Brevity is truly the soul of wit ~ but not always the soul of precision !

    #0.  My comment of "low quality" applies to the AMS survey as a whole, not just to the 30% reply rate.   Indeed, 30% is poor in itself, because of the dangers of self-selection and unrepresentativeness [oh, what a wordy word! ] . . . as I am sure you are very well aware yourself.   As you have scrutinised the report, you will have noticed that the authors were slightly uncomfortable with the over-representation of student members and elderly/retired members (among other selection criticisms).

    Best if the survey were repeated nowadays, and done more carefully, so that the survey could be of high enough quality to achieve a worthy comparison to other surveys of Consensus.

    I agree the 30% is still rather poor, for the widely cited Doran survey ~ but Doran gains in strength because it closely fits with other surveys.   And "your" AMS survey also loses points, because of the lamentable extent of incompletion of those forms actually returned.

    And the fact that your quoted  52% was such an outlier , should have raised your suspicion that you had misinterpreted the figure or its context (or that the survey itself was faulty).

    #1.  Yes, there is such a thing as a "mandatory" survey.

        They are far and away the best sort of survey, in assessing the Consensus accurately.   [see part A of the Cook et al., 2013 survey]

    #2.  50 years vs 150 years in the questions, should have produced the same answers.   That it didn't do so, reflects rather poorly on the AMS members themselves (rather than on the survey itself!)

    #3.  Now you are adducing one winter in CONUS ?!   And you "don't understand how we can have record heat and yet have record cold seasons" ?!

    Hmmm ~ move another tenth of an inch in that direction . . . and some of the readers here will begin  to feel you are being a tad disingenuous   ;-)

    #4.  As I pointed out above, the survey was by definition limited to Americans.   Is that a bias?   It is only a bias, if the survey is falsely represented as worldwide (misrepresenting through omission).

    Though I hear that a percentage of AMS members are "furriners" . . . but only a small percentage.

    No, I am not shocked  at such (11%) a proportion of "Flat-Earther-type" opinions in some alleged scientists.   I myself know a PhD (in biological sciences) who is a proud member of his local Flat Earth Society . . . indeed, it's even worse , because he was born outside the USA !

    Klmartinson, the historic record is so clear on the fact  of modern global warming ~ that it takes an absolute willful blindness for any meteorologist to deny it, even back in 2012 or 2002.

    #5.  (which really deserves to be #6.)   Klmartinson, if you read a dozen or two of the upthread comments, and if you truly think it through, then you will come to see that a survey of published scientific articles is the far superior method of determining the real consensus.

    The analogy might be political surveys (examples: the Dewey/Truman 1948 election and the Clinton/Trump 2016 election) ~ inadequate survey size plus the tendency for "coyness" of replies to the vox-pop microphone or other polling method . . . results in an invalid "figure".   In reality, the accurate figure is the totality of the "on-paper" survey.  ;-)

  31. Here Are 3 Climategate Myths That Have Not Aged Well

    Nyood,

    You have chosen an interesting email to post.

    Scientists always challenge each others findings.  Your email is a clear demonstration of the fact that scientists challenge each other.  In private communitcations these arguments are heated.  After they are privately discussed the scientists with the best arguments publish them.  After they are published they are challenged again.  Only the very best proposed answers survive this constant challenge.  Even then they can be later challenged if new information turns up.

    It is also interesting that you pick an email where Tom Wigley is challenging Eleven and says Eleven is being too alarmist!!  Are you arguing that scientists are exaggerating warming by telling other scientists to dial back their assertions??

    Further, today in 2019, the scientific consensus is clearly that Eleven was correct and that the problem is critical and must be immediately addressed.  So are you arguing that someone who was correctly arguing that we needed to take inmediate steps to avoid catastrophie, perhaps before it was a clear consensus, needs to be silenced??

    My read of your email is that Tom Wigley was clearly completely incorrect.  His approach has threatened civilization because it has led to delay in implementing required pollution control.  The denier argument that somehow this email shows that scientists are exaggerating warming and the dangers it presents is the opposite of what this email clearly shows.

  32. Here Are 3 Climategate Myths That Have Not Aged Well

    I have a couple of comments to add regarding the part: The most recent and robust such reconstruction was completed by a team of over 5,000...which produced the following chart of global temperatures over the past 2,000 years. It shows temperatures today rapidly rising above the historical record like the blade of a hockey stick.

    This study is based on proxy and some real measurements, manly tree rings. Proxy measurements are not significant due to meassurment errors. Nobody has actually measured the temperature on earth with sufficient little error before about 200 years ago, therefore causality of a proxy and a model is just impossible. A statistically based study based on proxy is unsuitable because every single conclusion is insignificant by definition.

    Nobody is questioning global warming, but the methods and conclusions drawn are highly questionable. Way to less data and physical understanding. Apart from high energy physics, about every physical and chemical processes possible (probably billions) are happening on earth, which may influence climate. It is just that simple, no conclusions have to be made without sound understanding. This field of study is extremly complex and statistically averaging data will only add confusion.

    The authors of this study mention:"Our inferences on the multidecadal GMST variability for the Common Era are robust to all these permutations (Supplementary Figs. 17–20). Nevertheless, we cannot rule out biases due to errors in the individual proxy records and the unequal spatiotemporal distribution of proxy data (Supplementary Fig. 1). Warm-season-sensitive records from the Northern Hemisphere high and mid latitudes dominate the collection of proxy records21 , thus our results may be biased towards this region and season,..."

    In science or in humans in general there is something as confirmation bias, which seems to be advancing due to the internet and social media...

  33. Here Are 3 Climategate Myths That Have Not Aged Well

    Thank you for your view nigelj, it is confirming how polarized the debate is.

     

    However, with the leaked emails that you quote in advance, you mention those which I agree on to be unproblematic with my sentence: "Climategate is not about scientific fraud to me, I am aware of the quotes taken out of context as a cheap trick on the far skeptical side.."

    This email here by Tom Wigley might be a good quote that shows that there is concern about the antagonism amongst themselves:

    "Dear Eleven,I was very disturbed by your recent letter, and your attempt to get others to endorse it. Not only do I disagree with the content of this letter, but I also believe that you have severely distorted the IPCC “view” when you
    9say that “the latest IPCC assessment makes a convincing economic case for immediate control of emissions.” ...This is a complex issue, and your misrepresentation of it does you a disservice. To someone like me, who knows the science, it is apparent that you are presenting a personal view, not an informed, balanced scientific assessment. What is unfortunate is that this will not be apparent to the vast majority of scientists you have contacted. In issues like this, scientists have an added responsibility to keep their personal views separate from the science, and to make it clear to others when they diverge from the objectivity they (hopefully) adhere to in their scientific research. I think you have failed to do this.Your approach of trying to gain scientific credibility for your personal views by asking people to endorse your letter is reprehensible. No scientist who wishes to maintain respect in the community should ever endorse any statement unless they have examined the issue fully themselves. You are asking people to prostitute themselves by doing just this! I fear that some will endorse your letter, in the mistaken belief that you are making a balanced and knowledgeable assessment of the science—when, in fact, you are presenting a flawed view that neither accords with the IPCC nor with the bulk of the scientific and economic literature on the subject....When scientists color the science with their own personal views or make categorical statements without presenting the evidence for such statements, they have a clear responsibility to state that that is what they are doing. You have failed to do so. Indeed, what you are doing is, in my view, a form of dishonesty more subtle but no less egregious than the statements made by the greenhouse skeptics .... I find this extremely disturbing"

  34. Search For 'Missing Heat' Confirms More Global Warming 'In The Pipeline'

    Ritchie,

    Good luck pinning down warming in the pipeline.  This is a much discussed topic.  

    One problem is different scientists use different definitions of the term. Make sure you are comparing apples and apples.

     Hansen has estimated a long term Whole Earth Equilibrium.  That used to be double other estimates but it may have been changed.  As the ice sheets melt (over hundreds of years) albedo goes down, causing more warming. Sea ice melt has started this change already.  Do you care about the pipeline for the next 50 years or the final temperature in 1000 years? 

    Sea level rise is the same.  Recent estimates of 600 million refugees by 2100 (for a moderate rise estimate) do not discuss equilibrium sea level rise (the last time CO2 was over 400 ppm sea level was 23 meters higher!!!).  

    You did not mention the delay caused by deep ocean warming.  The ocean is a gigantic heat sink that will take hundreds of years to come to equilibrium.  Sometimes 40 years is used for just the upper layers to warm.

  35. Search For 'Missing Heat' Confirms More Global Warming 'In The Pipeline'

    Rob Painting

    "Warming in the pipeline"

    As a newcomer to the AGW, I realize that global warming "in the pipeline" is an important topic.  Your post of February, 2012 is an excellent reference.  The debate that ensued among commenters was interesting to read, with many interesting points annd counterpoints.  In the final analysis, I felt that the bottom line on this topic was still up in the air.

    One confusing aspect of the debate was whether the warming in the pipeline was purely from reemergence of carbon sequestered in the ocean, or did one have to include the effect of future reductions in particulates to see the effect.

    Have you continued to work on this topic over the past 8 years?  Do we now have more complete data and better analyses?  Have the objections of "Neil" and other commenters been resolved?  I would very much appreciate learning where this issue stands today.  Could you point me to a source?

    Thank you in advance.  --richieb1234

  36. There is no consensus

    Eclectic,  Well, thanks for your wordy reply.

    0. re: "low quality". At 30% reply rate, I don't think that it is valid to just dismiss it as "low quality". Read the paper and you will know where I get the 52% from. I did read it.

    1. Is there such a thing as a mandatory survey?

    2. 50 years vs 150 years. A fair point. The questions could have been better.

    3. I'm sure there have been some record high temperatures in the last few years. And last winter in continental USA was the coldest in 110 years. I don't understand how we can have "record heat" and yet have "record cold seasons".

    4. Yes, limited to Americans. You seem to show your bias here. Yes, it seems a shock to some that 11% of climate scientists (=200 people) in the USA do not accept or don't know that there is any warming at all. Maybe they should explain those opinions in detail, and inform us better. Maybe it has to do with the global cooling period from 1940s to 1979, or something else. I would call it anti-science to call these Science professionals Flat Earthers.

    5. I don't think it is fair to equally compare a direct survey of scientists and a survey of published articles that seem to indicate an opinion.  A comparison of the surveys seems to indicate that there is a correlation between a scientist's opinion and their ability to publish.

    Moderator Response:

    [DB]  "And last winter in continental USA was the coldest in 110 years"

    Making things up is unhelpful.  Temperatures last winter in the continental US were well-above the long-term average for winters in the continental US.  These things are easily looked up.

    US Winters - Graph

    US Winters - Map

    Please comport future response to more fully comply with this site's Comments Policy (making things up falls under the category of sloganeering).

  37. Here Are 3 Climategate Myths That Have Not Aged Well

    nyood @10

    "However, as an every man lay when you come in contact with these leaked emails for the first time, it makes you really wonder why there is such a severe hostility towards skeptics"

    The reasons for the hostility towards sceptics include the following:

    1) the sceptics relentlessly mislead and cherry pick. Dont ask me for examples - read this website regularly.

    2) the sceptics tie up working scientists with endless pointless information requests.

    3) the sceptics verbally abuse scientists and have made death threats, particularly with M Mann, and naturally this in turn makes all climate scientists hostile towards sceptics. Why wouldn't it?

    4) the sceptics relentless junk science.

    This is more than enough to explain the scientists hostility towards sceptics, and if anything scientists have been very restrained and patient. As far as I'm concerned some of the sceptics should be in jail.

    "The language used in these emails is concerning, they are very political and extremely polarized to a point where it makes one wonder if it is still possible for the authors to keep a scientific neutrality. As I am not sure if quoting emails is allowed here..."

    Oh I'm happy to post a few from an article in Forbes, and that will be enough. We don't need too many silly lists distracting us all. I don't know if they are genuine. They are indicative of normal people dealing appropriately with difficult issues as anyone does. If they are political, its no more than any other organisation on this fine planet. There is nothing criminal, unethical or sinister, and numerous official investigations found no corruption of science.

    You denialists make me laugh. You are the people with obvious political motives, mostly right wing, and with lashings of paranoia. But people with nasty suspicious minds and bad motives assume everyone is the same. News flash - we aren't all the same.

    The emails:

    “The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guid[e] what’s included and what is left out” of IPCC reports, writes Jonathan Overpeck, coordinating lead author for the IPCC’s most recent climate assessment."

    This is meaningless without background context. Its a selective quote. And professional people decide content all the time, theres no indication of wrong doing.

    “I gave up on [Georgia Institute of Technology climate professor] Judith Curry a while ago. I don’t know what she thinks she’s doing, but its not helping the cause,” wrote Mann in another newly released email."

    It helps to actually know something about Judith Curry then you would understand and commiserate with the scientists in question.

    “I have been talking w/ folks in the states about finding an investigative journalist to investigate and expose” skeptical scientist Steve McIntyre, Mann writes in another newly released email."

    Oh dear oh dear. Given M Mann has received death threats and packets of white powder in the mail, and endless abusive emails. I'm going to "cut him some slack".

  38. Here Are 3 Climategate Myths That Have Not Aged Well

    To me Climategate is about the psychology and about the casual conversation within East Anglia, nothing more but nothing less.


    Climategate is not about scientific fraud to me, I am aware of the quotes taken out of context as a cheap trick on the far skeptical side and I am aware that there is in general, some ferocity in the operating language of such an institute. I  can also  follow the antagonistic attitude to an extent, since the attacks by skeptics are not always fair and go on for decades now.

     

    However, as an every man lay when you come in contact with these leaked emails for the first time, it makes you really wonder why there is such a severe hostility towards skeptics. And other sentences make you wonder why a cooling or hiatus is considered to be a problem, instead of a relief when it comes towards warming as a threat.

    The language used in these emails is concerning, they are very political and extremely polarized to a point where it makes one wonder if it is still possible for the authors to keep a scientific neutrality.

    As I am not sure if quoting emails is allowed here,  I will not risk to quote any, if it is within the policy of SkepticalScience please tell me, then we could talk about some examples which highlight  political thinking and involuntary confessions.

     

  39. Harnessing gamification to defeat climate misinformation

    Jeff T @11

    Thanks! The crowdfunding campaign starts next week on Dec. 3. If you‘d like to get immediately notified once the website goes live, please subscribe at crankyuncle.com

  40. Harnessing gamification to defeat climate misinformation

    I would like to donate to cranky uncle, but can't find a way at crankyuncle.com.

  41. Harnessing gamification to defeat climate misinformation

    nigelj I think so, there is very little in the way of emotional intelligence being applied to climate denial. Ironically it depends on a hostile emotional reaction on the part of the target audience of the denial campaign. They have to be motivated to oppose any policies that may impact the financial interests of the people and companies central to this.

    There's no question that this decades long campaign of denial of basic reality itself has been highly effective and understands the weaknesses in the scientific method. Which would follow because it was designed by some fairly well versed scientists like Fred Seitz and Fred Singer with others like Richard Lindzen picking up the ball later.

    With virtually no concern at all for the catastrophic impacts that with business as usual will likely include mass extinction on Earth that could include us humans. Sociopathic behavior of a fundamental nature I'd say.

  42. Harnessing gamification to defeat climate misinformation

    Doug_C, yes, and your description suggests the sociopathic personality type. Perhaps not every denier, but plenty of the hard core professional ones.

  43. Antarctica is gaining ice

    How can land ice be decreasing, while sea ice is increasing at the same time?

    Moderator Response:

    [PS] Several commentators have already answered. See above.

  44. Ice age predicted in the 70s

    If you are in disagreement with Sweet and articles here, it would be best if you clearly stated what your disagreement is rather than have others try to guess.

  45. Harnessing gamification to defeat climate misinformation

    nigelj @7

    I look at it as a them playing a zero sum game where any issue is simply just one more gambit for a total win. Wealth disparity really isn't a concern for people in that position, it is simply one more gambit to achieve greater control in the game.

    It's clear this is a game for the people behind this, just as it was a game for the people behind the disinformation camapign to protect the tobacco industry for decades. It's the same methods and in some early cases like Fred Seitz and Fred Singer the same people formulating this.

    It's just happening on a far greater scale because the fossil fuel sector reaches into far more aspects of our economies and our lives than the tobacco lobby ever did.

  46. Ice age predicted in the 70s

    "S Could you please point out that I have stated it?"

    It is entirely possible that we are misunderstanding each other. Michael Sweet was pointing out what was wrong with the idea that an ozone hole was going to lead to global cooling.

    You replied:

    Mr sweet,

    This may enlighten you

    Cooling of the Arctic and Antarctic Polar Stratospheres due to Ozone Depletion

    Which correctly shows that loss of ozone leads to stratigraphic cooling (but not to climatic cooling). Your manner of comment suggested that you were trying to contradict Michael Sweet. If you were trying to support his argument, then indeed, we are cross-purposes. You seemed somewhat confused between tropospheric and stratospheric ozone and so I thought it might clarify matters if you explained how you thought it worked.

    My understanding is this:

    In the stratosphere, O3 reduces the energy reaching the surface because it traps incoming UV. (ie unlike N2, O2, and for that matter CO2, it is NOT transparent to incoming solar radiation). This warms the stratosphere but it is a cooling effect on surface climate. On the other hand, O3 is also a greenhouse gas so traps outgoing IR causing some warming. I believe the balance is towards a very small warming effect.

    In the troposphere by comparison, UV is mostly absent and so the greenhouse effect is more important (but O3 levels are very low).

    Reducing the O3 cools the stratosphere alright but it means there is more energy (UV) warming the surface and so no, the O3 hole is not a climate cooling mechanism.

  47. Ice age predicted in the 70s

    Again the ozone hole is about lose of stratospheric ozone around poles, especially Antarctica, and no, it still doesnt let the heat out and cool climate.

    I never stated that.

    please locate the phrase that you purport to this comes from

    you cannot because  it is your invention.

    but I do suggest that you think about what you are posting

  48. Ice age predicted in the 70s

    "Everyone except you knows that ozone is a greenhouse gas. " sweet #76

    Moderator 

    this is an absolute falsehood, please could you ensure that it is removed.

    Sweet has no knowledge of my thoughts but he may think he does!  and if everybody knows that ozone is a greenhouse gas why are there so many climate deniers?

    Please could sweet supply citations for both of his postulates?

  49. Ice age predicted in the 70s

    "It might also help discussions if you explained why you think ozone depletion reduces stratospheric temperature (or perhaps more to point, why ozone warms the stratosphere)." scaddemp #75

    S Could you please point out that I have stated it?  No you cannot because it is an invention of your imagination!

  50. Ice age predicted in the 70s

    "At middle altitudes between the ground and the stratosphere,"

    ie the troposphere. You appear to continue to get confused about difference between O3 in stratosphere versus effect in troposphere. Again the ozone hole is about lose of stratospheric ozone around poles, especially Antarctica, and no, it still doesnt let the heat out and cool climate.

    In the stratosphere, ozone causes warming of the surrounding air through its interaction with incoming UV.

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