Arguments
Recent Comments
Prev 2075 2076 2077 2078 2079 2080 2081 2082 2083 2084 2085 2086 2087 2088 2089 2090 Next
Comments 104101 to 104150:
-
cjshaker at 18:01 PM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
What justification would they have had for withholding station identifiers? I assume that is just the ICAO name of the weather reporting facility? http://www.cce-review.org/pdf/FINAL%20REPORT.pdf "18. On the allegation of withholding station identifiers we find that CRU should have made available an unambiguous list of the stations used in each of the versions of the Climatic Research Unit Land Temperature Record (CRUTEM) at the time of publication. We find that CRU‟s responses to reasonable requests for information were unhelpful and defensive." Chris Shaker -
cjshaker at 17:57 PM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
Philippe: Your post seems to be saying that the FOI laws need to be updated to add a 'rate limiting' feature, and or some way of preventing them from being used for harassment? A friend of mine who is currently working on modeling fire fighting systems told me about how distracting some of the scientists find the FOI requests. I'm currently reading the report that Daniel pointed me at: http://www.cce-review.org/pdf/FINAL%20REPORT.pdf I like the fact that the panel of reviewers were not climate scientists. Seems like a diverse group of well educated people did the review. They also say "15. But we do find that there has been a consistent pattern of failing to display the proper degree of openness, both on the part of the CRU scientists and on the part of the UEA, who failed to recognise not only the significance of statutory CHAPTER 1: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 12 requirements but also the risk to the reputation of the University and, indeed, to the credibility of UK climate science. ". Continuing to read. Thank you for the pointers, Chris Shaker -
adelady at 17:38 PM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
chris@88 You didn't look very hard. If you go to Mann's CV you'll find a list of publications when you scroll down (a fair way, he's a busy man). You can count for yourself the number of _listed_ publications since the date you seem to be worried about. Many commentators, including your good self, behave like literature critics getting stuck into a writer because characters or plot seem a bit underdeveloped in the first chapter of a book. The fact is that everyone who's read the rest of the book says that none of this matters because the whole book is well written. Dr Mann's done what all scientists do. He's kept on working and produced better and better work. Is the reason that people harp on about this early piece that they've found nothing to criticise in the many, many papers he's since written? So they have to stick with nagging about the one and only thing they have any argument at all with. -
Philippe Chantreau at 17:30 PM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
CJ, Mann et al 2008 has similar findings to the paper you allude to, using different methods and data. The data and code are available. Have McIntyre and McKitrick attempted to publish anything about it? How about the multiple other reconstructions that show similar results? In fact, exactly how many papers have M&M attempted to publish in the many years of casting suspicion and spreading rumors about fraud, conspiracy and what not? How many have they actually published? Do they even bother with trying E&E, where skeptics can have their say to the exclusion of all others? If papers as poor as Soon&Baliunas or McLean et al made it to peer-review, surely the serious work of M&M should pass, shouldn't it? So why is there none to be read? -
Daniel Bailey at 17:29 PM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
Re: cjshaker (88-90) 1. RealClimate is not Michael Mann's website. Mann's site is here. 2. The McIntyre and McKitrick paper is overblown. They had a minor point, it was adopted, the reconstructions were re-done. The result? Hockey sticks. With or without PCA. With or without tree ring data. Read it for yourself, here. If you have any questions after reading this post, come back here and ask. (slow typist I am, I see Tom Dayton already linked this for you) 3. Read the Muir Russell report for context on the stolen emails. The true hallmark of intellect is to rise above what one is taught, to see the merits and weaknesses of the teachings, and to surpass the teacher. You have the intelligence, Chris. I have pointed the way to you. But it's a looonnngggg road to the truth. And few walk it. And fewer still reach the destination. Will you? The Yooper -
Ari Jokimäki at 17:29 PM on 20 November 2010The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
This is just my own thinking here without looking into the scientific literature on the matter: I think the reason for DTR decrease has something to do with the differences in the ratios of the forcings during the day and during the night. During the day the sun contributes to the temperature strongly and GHG forcing is not so large player during the day. During the night the solar forcing gets very small and GHG forcing dominates. If GHG forcing increases, it has larger effect during the night because its fraction of the whole forcing is bigger then. -
Tom Dayton at 17:18 PM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
Chris, type "hockey stick" into the Search field at the top left of this page. Do the same in the Search field at the top right of any page on RealClimate. In particular, read the article by the statistician Tamino, titled The Montford Delusion. I have studied statistics, and used it as a scientist, and taught it to PhD students, and peer-reviewed the statistical aspects of submissions to scientific journals. I am not anywhere close to having Tamino's expertise, but I am expert enough to judge his opinion is well grounded.Moderator Response: In particular, see "Hockey stick is broken." -
Philippe Chantreau at 17:17 PM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
Cjshaker, you did not fully read. They do things with the data: cherry-picking, misrepresentations, distortions, innuendo, gratuitous attacks on people's integrity, all summed in blog posts with shocking titles. The FOI requests thing is so abusive that anyone who really cares about conserving the FOI process should be concerned. One of McIntyre's blogposts generated 48 FOI requests in a week-end. That qualifies as harassment. Not suprisingly, that's when bloggers have more time on their hands. A disproportionate share of these requests were for private communications instead of material useful for research. As for your confession that you need pointers and clues to look into the reality of this, it unfortunately indicates that your investigation has so far been superficial. Real Climate has a good search engine. However, if you really care, forget about news reports. Look at peer-reviewed litterature. If the research was really flawed, everyone looking to make a name in science (that's a lot of sharp young people) would have latched on, gone over the "bad stuff" and published rebuttals. New findings or comments on existing papers would have flourished. Has that happened? Of course not. Climategate is a mountain out of a molehill, a non-story not worthy of any attention if one cares to actually try to understand the state of scientific knowledge in the field. -
cjshaker at 17:08 PM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
Daniel: I think the quotes that I've mined from the articles reflect poorly on the scientists involved, and do not make climate science look very credible to the general public. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to ask questions about Climategate, or respond to questions without using sources and quoting from them... Chris Shaker -
cjshaker at 17:04 PM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
Daniel: I have not seen any claims that these quotes from scientists who appear to be behaving poorly were fabricated. Have I missed such? Thank you, Chris Shaker -
cjshaker at 17:02 PM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
RealClimate seems to be Dr. Mann's webpage. I have looked at it before, attempting to see any acknowledgement of the problems with statistics supposedly identified in his work. Professor Muller at Berkeley claims to have also verified problems with his statistics work. Search for 'Global Warming Bombshell' at http://muller.lbl.gov/ "But now a shock: Canadian scientists Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick have uncovered a fundamental mathematical flaw in the computer program that was used to produce the hockey stick. In his original publications of the stick, Mann purported to use a standard method known as principal component analysis, or PCA, to find the dominant features in a set of more than 70 different climate records. But it wasn't so. McIntyre and McKitrick obtained part of the program that Mann used, and they found serious problems. Not only does the program not do conventional PCA, but it handles data normalization in a way that can only be described as mistaken. Now comes the real shocker. This improper normalization procedure tends to emphasize any data that do have the hockey stick shape, and to suppress all data that do not. To demonstrate this effect, McIntyre and McKitrick created some meaningless test data that had, on average, no trends. This method of generating random data is called "Monte Carlo" analysis, after the famous casino, and it is widely used in statistical analysis to test procedures. When McIntyre and McKitrick fed these random data into the Mann procedure, out popped a hockey stick shape! That discovery hit me like a bombshell, and I suspect it is having the same effect on many others. Suddenly the hockey stick, the poster-child of the global warming community, turns out to be an artifact of poor mathematics. How could it happen? What is going on? Let me digress into a short technical discussion of how this incredible error took place. In PCA and similar techniques, each of the (in this case, typically 70) different data sets have their averages subtracted (so they have a mean of zero), and then are multiplied by a number to make their average variation around that mean to be equal to one; in technical jargon, we say that each data set is normalized to zero mean and unit variance. In standard PCA, each data set is normalized over its complete data period; for key climate data sets that Mann used to create his hockey stick graph, this was the interval 1400-1980. But the computer program Mann used did not do that. Instead, it forced each data set to have zero mean for the time period 1902-1980, and to match the historical records for this interval. This is the time when the historical temperature is well known, so this procedure does guarantee the most accurate temperature scale. But it completely screws up PCA. PCA is mostly concerned with the data sets that have high variance, and the Mann normalization procedure tends to give very high variance to any data set with a hockey stick shape. (Such data sets have zero mean only over the 1902-1980 period, not over the longer 1400-1980 period.) The net result: the "principal component" will have a hockey stick shape even if most of the data do not. McIntyre and McKitrick sent their detailed analysis to Nature magazine for publication, and it was extensively refereed. But their paper was finally rejected. In frustration, McIntyre and McKitrick put the entire record of their submission and the referee reports on a Web page for all to see. If you look, you'll see that McIntyre and McKitrick have found numerous other problems with the Mann analysis. I emphasize the bug in their PCA program simply because it is so blatant and so easy to understand. Apparently, Mann and his colleagues never tested their program with the standard Monte Carlo approach, or they would have discovered the error themselves. Other and different criticisms of the hockey stick are emerging (see, for example, the paper by Hans von Storch and colleagues in the September 30 issue of Science). Some people may complain that McIntyre and McKitrick did not publish their results in a refereed journal. That is true--but not for lack of trying. Moreover, the paper was refereed--and even better, the referee reports are there for us to read. McIntyre and McKitrick's only failure was in not convincing Nature that the paper was important enough to publish. " I looked for this to be addressed at RealClimate.org, and found this condescendingly named article, which should be addressing the claims: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/02/dummies-guide-to-the-latest-hockey-stick-controversy/ I don't actually see Professor Muller's claims about the supposedly easy to understand mistake being addressed. I have NOT studied statistics. It appears that Professor Muller is well respected in the scientific community, as far as I can tell. Did Dr. Mann screw up? If so, did he ever admit his mistake? Thank you, Chris ShakerModerator Response: Please do not post such long quotes. Instead link to the source, and direct readers to the most relevant portions, and perhaps provide a few highlights. -
Daniel Bailey at 16:44 PM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
Re: cjshaker (81) Here's a link to the Muir Russell report. The relevant section is Pp 45-48. Links to the openly available datasets are therein, as well as the methodology used by the investigative team. In light of the multiple investigations (and exonerations in every instance) into this matter, your quote-mining of the WSJ piece you link (and others) reflects poorly on you. Here's the latest Skeptical Science post on this matter. Consider it a must-read for anyone maintaining to have an open mind. (-edit: fixed, thanks! -end edit-) The YooperModerator Response: The second link is broken. -
cjshaker at 16:40 PM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
As a member of the public, Climategate is what got me interested in reading about the whole issue of AGW, and the controversies surrounding it. I was reading articles like this one, which talks about suppression of opposing views from scientific journals, and subverting the peer review process: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/02/hacked-climate-emails-flaws-peer-review ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- "In another email exchange CRU scientist Dr Keith Briffa initiates what looks like an attempt to have a paper rejected. In June 2003, as an editor of an unnamed journal, Briffa emailed fellow tree-ring researcher Edward Cook, a researcher at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York, saying: "Confidentially I now need a hard and if required extensive case for rejecting [an unnamed paper] – to support Dave Stahle's and really as soon as you can. Please." Stahle is a tree-ring professor from the University of Arkansas. This request appears to subvert the convention that reviewers should be both independent and anonymous. Cook replied later that day: "OK, today. Promise. Now, something to ask from you." The favour was to provide some data to help Cook review a paper that attacked his own tree-ring work. "If published as is, this paper could really do some damage," he said. "It won't be easy to dismiss out of hand as the math appears to be correct theoretically, but it suffers from the classic problem of pointing out theoretical deficiencies, without showing that their improved [inverse regression] method is actually better in a practical sense."" Chris Shaker -
Tom Dayton at 16:35 PM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
Better than that, Chris, is RealClimate's page of links to data and code. -
cjshaker at 16:31 PM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
Tom, DeVille, etc: I'm happy to read news reports that should have told me that the data they were seeking was actually available, if you'd like to point me at them. Or, give me a clue about what to search for with Google, and I'll take a crack at it. Chris Shaker -
Tom Dayton at 16:31 PM on 20 November 2010The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
Jeff T, I don't know why DTR should decrease due to GHG increase. But I do know that increased radiance from the Sun should increase DTR by increasing day temperatures more than night temperatures. DTR's failure to increase is yet more evidence that the Sun is not to blame for overall warming. -
Tom Dayton at 16:25 PM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
cjshaker, the few agencies that withhold some of their data from free distribution do so in order to charge for the data, to fund the data's collection and archiving. Many of the agencies that distribute their data for free insist that the distribution come from them alone rather than second hand, to help ensure that anyone thinking they have the data really do have the real data rather than a version that might be incomplete or erroneous. -
cjshaker at 16:09 PM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
Philippe: Your post seems to be a good justification for always releasing the data and software. If they never do anything with the data anyway, why not disarm them with total disclosure? Full disclosure increases credibility with other scientists, and with the general public. Chris Shaker -
actually thoughtful at 16:05 PM on 20 November 2010Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
Batsvensson - you continue to claim it cannot be solved. And yet. And yet people all over the world are solving it - house by house, business by business. With current technology. Without the necessary price signal via a carbon tax. If we address the political/economic issue by imposing a carbon tax, things get significantly easier. The work is vast, but we have a few decades (so long as we START now). While you might wish that Skeptical Science stay restricted to only stating the obvious (that global climate disruption is happening now); I applaud John for taking this respected site to the next level - dealing with the known problem Denier class skeptics would prefer that this site just continue to trumpet the obscenely obvious facts that climate change is well underway. Progress calls for turning up the heat and getting real about solutions. -
Tom Dayton at 16:05 PM on 20 November 2010The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
Karamanski, without much of an atmosphere, the Moon lacks the Earth's 26% reflected and scattered by atmosphere and clouds. So during the day, the Sun has little impediment to heating the surface. -
Jeff T at 16:04 PM on 20 November 2010The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
Why should greenhouse gases (GHGs) reduce diurnal temperature range (DTR)? Yes, the sun warms the earth's surface during the day, but some of the heat is radiated into space. GHGs reduce that radiation loss both day and night. It's not obvious to me that the effect of GHGs should be greater at night. None of the three papers cited presents an argument that greenhouse gases should reduce DTR. Braganza's simulations predict a much smaller change in DTR than has actually been observed. See his Figure 2. The same claim is made here: http://www.skepticalscience.com/Empirically-observed-fingerprints-of-anthropogenic-global-warming.html, "Climate models predict that as a consequence of anthropogenic global warming, the planet should warm more at night than during the day." This argument needs more support and a reference or two. -
cjshaker at 16:02 PM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
Daniel: I would be happy to read URLs from reputable sites saying that the data they were seeking was available to them from the source countries. I have not yet read that, but would be interested in doing so. Those of us in the general public don't get a very good picture of climate scientists. We read about things like this: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125883405294859215.html "Phil Jones, the director of the East Anglia climate center, suggested to climate scientist Michael Mann of Penn State University that skeptics' research was unwelcome: We "will keep them out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!" Chris Shaker -
Philippe Chantreau at 16:01 PM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
cjshaker, letting "hostile" (strange terminology really) researchers use data and code is not the problem. The problem is hostile bloggers and a crowd without the qualifications or even the desire to do real research with the data and code. That crowd's only intentions is to distort, cherry-pick, misrepresent and twist the data to reach predetermined conclusions, without the burden of peer-review. This has now been going on for years. I note that the likes of McIntyre or Watts are the only ones compaining about data availablility, whereas real researchers do not seem to have that problem. How come? Watts has had for a long time the data to verify if the basic premise of his web site's existence is valid. Still no data analysis to date. McIntyre is notorious for having complained about Briffa not releasing data to him, while he had already had access to these data before. He simply forgot that at the time he was making his rethorical complaint, whose only purpose was to fire up his crowd. Many were all fired up about GISS code and foaming at the mouth about how Fortran didn't phase them. They were all over it the moment GISS code was made public, and what happened? Nothing, zilch. Having learned his lesson, Michael Mann had both data and code available with his latest reconstruction. How many publications were submitted by skeptics following that? The truth is that skeptics quickly loose interest when there is real work to do. The most they produce with data and code will amount to a little cherry picking here and there with a blog post about it. It's more productive for them because they get more public attention anyway, especially considering that what they put out there would never pass review, except perhaps at E&E. Climate researchers are in a "damned if you, damned if you don't" situation. If they do release, all sorts of unqualified ill-intentioned characters try to use it in the public media to undermine their results, and their reputation. If they don't, the same characters accuse them of all the world's evil. After watching skeptics complain about this for years, it is obvious to me that the skeptics' complaints about data and code are made for the sake of rethoric and amount mostly to hot air. In fact, in the majority of instances, the data is available, they just don't bother looking carefully. -
actually thoughtful at 15:51 PM on 20 November 2010Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
Gestur - re-analysis is always useful. I don't think Waxman would be front loaded, as they were trying to pass it, which inevitably means put the pain off. However, when we had $4 gas in Bush's last year - it sure seemed like there was a tipping point achieved and the gas guzzlers were seen as a HUGE liability. I doubt this can be modeled, but somewhere between $4 and $5 gas this country will start to pay attention to fuel economy, and switch from marketing for excess (SUV) to marketing for usefulness (this vehicle converts a set amount of fuel to a further distance traveled/weight hauled). One could look at Europe - they have figured out how to tax energy (and grow their economies. Also, are those figures restricted to transportation? Anytime you reduce coal your numbers look pretty good because coal is so CO2 rich. So the big documented savings may be in the electricity side. -
Rob Painting at 15:50 PM on 20 November 2010Antarctica is gaining ice
Chris Shaker @ 53 It claims that we reached temperatures 4.5C warmer than today during the previous warm phase. If that is true, why would we not reach similar temperatures during this warm phase, with or without man's CO2? Because the orbital and rotational parameters of this interglacial are different from the last, the Eemian. Changes in the Earth's orbit (less eccentricity, greater perihelion distance) and rotation (lower obliquity & precession) mean the Earth won't heat up as much during this interglacial from solar radiation. Relying only on Milankovitch cycle forcing, the Earth should be cooling: Variations in the Earth's Orbit: Pacemaker of the Ice Ages "A model of future climate based on the observed orbital-climate relationships, but ignoring anthropogenic effects, predicts that the long-term trend over the next several thousand years is toward extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation." -
cjshaker at 15:46 PM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
Regarding the post from whomever 'The Ville' is, I provided the link to an article which talked about the reported failure to follow FOI laws, and the deleting of emails. I'll provide it again for you: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/27/uea-hacked-climate-emails-foi "The University of East Anglia flouted Freedom of Information regulations in its handling of requests for data from climate sceptics, according to the government body that administers the act. In a statement, the deputy information commissioner Graham Smith said emails between scientists at the university's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) that were hacked and placed on the internet in November revealed that FOI requests were "not dealt with as they should have been under the legislation". Some of the hacked emails reveal scientists encouraging their colleagues to delete emails, apparently to prevent them from being revealed to people making FOI requests. Such a breach of the act could carry an unlimited fine, but Smith said no action could be taken against the university because the specific request they had looked at happened in May 2008, well outside the six-month limit for such prosecutions under the act." As for your claims that their breaking FOI laws is none of my business, I disagree, and I don't know why I should care that you think it is none of my business. Chris Shaker -
Tom Dayton at 15:38 PM on 20 November 2010The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
Karamanski, see the post How Much Did Aerosols Contribute to Mid-20th Century Cooling?. -
Tom Dayton at 15:28 PM on 20 November 2010The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
Karamanski, daytime temperatures on Earth are not decreasing, they are increasing. They just aren't increasing as fast as nighttime temperatures are. The cooling of daytime temperatures from the 1950s to the early 1980s was not due to increasing greenhouse gases, but to reflective aerosol pollution. -
Kooiti Masuda at 15:12 PM on 20 November 2010The Climate Show #2: Merchants of Doubt and Twitterbots
It is very regrettable that Poptech conflated two very different things. I think that Singer misrepresented Revelle and Lancaster and Oreskes and Conway correctly describes the affair. On the other hand, the interpretation by Oreskes and Conway about actions of William Nierenberg before he joined G.C. Marshall Institute seems prejudiced based on his action after that, and in this aspect the account by Nicholas Nierenberg (his son) seems relatively more reliable. The latter issue is discussed by William Connolley of Stoat several times the most recently in August 2010, and a little by myself as comment to Brian Angliss's review of the book. I do not want to discuss it here against the will of the moderator, so I just show pointers. -
Henry justice at 15:12 PM on 20 November 2010CO2 effect is saturated
I see the skeptics argument differently. What I see they are preaching is not that GHGs are saturated with energy, but are at or near peak absorption for the energy available. This is quite different from saying the molecules themselves are saturated. They are not. Why increases in GHGs do little to add to atmospheric warming is due to the fact that there is no additional energy available, it has already been used up. With this argument, the skeptics say any increase in any or all GHGs will cause little meaningful warming by citing the example when the Earth had 10x to 15x the amount of CO2. No runaway warming! Since CO2 is a GHG, increases in any GHG will not increase global warming. Humph! Because the GHG are at maximum warmth already. Finally, they state that the energy in the GHGs are in a sort of equilibrium with the atmospheric humidity. So, if more CO2 is added, the atmosphere rains out the moisture and re-equilibrates by noting an observed drop in upper atmospheric humidity. -
Karamanski at 14:34 PM on 20 November 2010The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
It does make sense that the stronger the greenhouse effect, the smaller the difference between daytime and nightime temperatures. But it doesn't make much sense why the moon, which doesn't have a greenhouse effect, has daytime temperatures of 118 degrees celsius. Why is it very different on Earth when it experiences global warming? Why aren't daytime temperatures decreasing as the greenhouse effect strengthens, like on the moon? -
Daniel Bailey at 12:48 PM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
Re: cjshaker (77) You miss the point: the data that the Hadley CRU people used to produce their products was publicly available - from the originating countries. Something the "hostile parties" were well aware of, long before their endless FOI onslaught. If you have an issue with the originating countries withholding the datasets, then take up your beef with them. CRU was legally bound to not release data subject to the nondisclosure agreements. Several independent parties have replicated CRU's work, including the investigating Muir Russell Commission (which they accomplished in a mere 2 days, saying it wasn't hard to do and was something that any competent researcher could have done similarly). So ask yourself, if it's true that replication of the work can be done in 2 days and wasn't hard to do, as the Muir Russell Commission did and said, why haven't any of the "independent" or "hostile" parties clamoring for glasnost/openness done so? So the science CRU was accomplishing was only controversial in the sense that certain parties exist with a vested interest in making it so. Anyway, I think AGW would be a lot easier for the public to accept if it wasn't constantly obstructed by an active disinformation campaign. The Yooper -
cjshaker at 12:10 PM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
One can question the wisdom of using data that isn't available to hostile parties for science research. If you're doing science, don't you usually expect your work to be examined and questioned? If it is based on proprietary data, say from researchers in China or in France, who don't want to give their data out to hostile parties, how can that verification happen? I'd expect people to think about that, especially if your science is at all controversial. I'm a retired computer scientist. My work was peer reviewed, by other computer scientists. In spite of our best efforts, our code always has some undetected flaw in it, either by design, because we didn't fully understand the problem before we started out trying to solve it, or by accident, because of some interaction with other code that we didn't know about, or by simple coding error. I don't know why these computer models of the climate would be any different. I would find the AGW premise a lot easier to buy if it wasn't accompanied by a political machine that tries to ram it down our throat by any means possible. That political machine, and the religious frenzy of the true believers make the science look bad. Chris Shaker -
Daniel Bailey at 11:55 AM on 20 November 2010Antarctica is gaining ice
For interested parties, a recovered copy of Tamino's post Sea Ice, North and South, Then and Now (from the Further Reading section at the end of the post above) is available here. The Yooper -
Rob Honeycutt at 11:52 AM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
cjshaker... If you read a little further as well, you discover that not all the data was theirs to hand over. The data was provided to the CRU by other organization under license. It was NOT their data to just give out. McIntyre and his minions knew that, had ample access to the actual data they were filing FOI requests for, but continued to barrage the CRU to release the data. This is a time honored legal trick. You bury your opponent in paperwork so they can't get their job done. -
cjshaker at 11:48 AM on 20 November 2010Antarctica is gaining ice
It was interesting to learn about the GRACE satellite, the shrinking land ice mass, and the growing sea ice mass. Thank you, Chris Shaker -
Rob Honeycutt at 11:47 AM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
cjshaker... I hope you not missing these parts: The Science and Technology Select Committee inquiry reported on 31 March 2010 that it had found that "the scientific reputation of Professor Jones and CRU remains intact". The emails and claims raised in the controversy did not challenge the scientific consensus that "global warming is happening and that it is induced by human activity". The MPs had seen no evidence to support claims that Jones had tampered with data or interfered with the peer-review process. and The report of the independent Science Assessment Panel was published on 14 April 2010 and concluded that the panel had seen "no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit." It found that the CRU's work had been "carried out with integrity" and had used "fair and satisfactory" methods. and In July 2010, the British investigation comissioned by the UEA, chaired by Sir Muir Russell, and announced in December 2009, published its final report saying it had exonerated the scientists of manipulating their research to support preconceived ideas about global warming. The "rigour and honesty" of the scientists at the Climatic Research Unit were found not to be in doubt. -
cjshaker at 11:40 AM on 20 November 2010Antarctica is gaining ice
Oh, sorry, I already asked that question... Chris Shaker -
cjshaker at 11:39 AM on 20 November 2010Antarctica is gaining ice
During a glacial warming phase, like we're still in now, shouldn't it be getting warmer everywhere? It seems to be hard to find accurate information about the ice age cycle, but I assume that this National Geographic article should be fairly accurate. It claims that we reached temperatures 4.5C warmer than today during the previous warm phase. If that is true, why would we not reach similar temperatures during this warm phase, with or without man's CO2? http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/07/070705-antarctica-ice.html Chris Shaker -
Antarctica is gaining ice
cjshaker - Sorry, missed replying to part of your post. You asked: "If the ice cores were taken from ice on water, the inverse temperature relationship should still hold?" See Figure 3a at the top of this page. The inverse temperature relationship does not currently hold. -
Antarctica is gaining ice
cjshaker - I'm referring to this article by John Cook, listing a number of peer-reviewed papers indicating overall mass loss in Antarctica. The increasing sea ice is a bit more complex - it appears to be due to changes in Antarctic winds and ocean circulation, most likely caused by (wait for it) global warming. -
cjshaker at 11:11 AM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
Yes, I did read the 'reports' section "The committee criticised a "culture of non-disclosure at CRU" and a general lack of transparency in climate science where scientific papers had usually not included all the data and code used in reconstructions. It said that "even if the data that CRU used were not publicly available—which they mostly are—or the methods not published—which they have been—its published results would still be credible: the results from CRU agree with those drawn from other international data sets; in other words, the analyses have been repeated and the conclusions have been verified." The report added that "scientists could have saved themselves a lot of trouble by aggressively publishing all their data instead of worrying about how to stonewall their critics." The committee criticised the university for the way that freedom of information requests were handled, and for failing to give adequate support to the scientists to deal with such requests.[101]" "The committee chairman Phil Willis said that the "standard practice" in climate science generally of not routinely releasing all raw data and computer codes "needs to change and it needs to change quickly". Jones had admitted sending "awful emails"; Willis commented that "[Jones] probably wishes that emails were never invented," but "apart from that we do believe that Prof. Jones has in many ways been scapegoated as a result of what really was a frustration on his part that people were asking for information purely to undermine his research."[8] In Willis' view this did not excuse any failure to deal properly with FOI Act requests, but the committee accepted that Jones had released all the data that he could.[8] It stated: "There is no reason why Professor Jones should not resume his post. He was certainly not co-operative with those seeking to get data, but that was true of all the climate scientists".[82]" I've got a big problem with people claiming to do science, then not making their data or methods available to other researchers for verification. If it can't stand up to a hostile researcher, it is not science. And it also talks about their efforts to avoid providing data according to the Freedom of Information laws. Chris Shaker -
cjshaker at 11:05 AM on 20 November 2010It's the sun
Regarding claims that CO2 is the dominant driver of the current global temperature, I don't even see the IPCC making that claim. I haven't seen them claim over 1 C temperature rise from man's CO2. The glacial cycle would seem to have made a much bigger difference than that over the past 14,000 years. Chris Shaker -
Gestur at 11:01 AM on 20 November 2010Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
I found this blog post very interesting, well presented and valuable. It doubtless took a ton of work as well. Thank you, Dana! I guess I’m having a hard time believing that these large reductions in CO2 emissions by 2050 from Lieberman-Warner and Waxman-Markey (70% and 83% below 2005 levels) are capable of being achieved with such small increases in gasoline prices. The gasoline price increase by 2030 (not the 2050 end-point of the emissions reductions estimates) given is just 42¢/gallon from Lieberman-Warner (MIT model estimate); and only 22¢ - 35¢/gallon from Waxman-Markey (EIA model estimate), again by 2030. Of course, these should be considered more or less equilibrium gasoline price level increases (i.e. one can assume many long-term adjustments have been made by consumers). And another part of the problem is that we don’t have estimated CO2 emission reductions for either bill by 2030, but rather for 2020 and 2050. Assuming a simple linear trend between 2020 and 2050 would give a 33% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2030 from Lieberman-Warner; and a 39% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2030 from Lieberman-Markey. Clearly these aren’t up there at those high 2050 endpoint reductions, but neither are they trivial in size. A couple of meta-analyses of the price elasticity of demand for gasoline in the US give estimates around -.58 to -.64, meaning that a 10% increase in the price of gasoline would lead in the long run to a decline in the demand for gasoline of around 6%. As we are given that these 2030 estimated increases in the price of gas are in the neighborhood of 9% -12% (relative to BAU), with our elasticity of demand (long run) estimates we would expect a 6% to 8% reduction in demand for gas (Markey and Warner respectively). The only way I can reconcile the difference between 22-42¢/gallon price increases in gas and reductions in CO2 emissions by 2030 of 33% to 39% is if there were some very large short-term price increases in gasoline between 2012 and 2030 that induce some very significant changes in efficiency of cars (especially, since they would persist) and/or driving habits. And then these changes in efficiency (especially) and driving habits reduce demand and dampen down the rise in gas prices by 2030. [Of course, the percentage reductions in CO2 emissions across different sectors like automobile transportation, housing and manufacturing may vary substantially from proportional as I’ve assumed here.] Finally, I guess it’s possible that some psychological factors like heightened concern for the impacts of ACC could come into play to induce people to reduce their demand for gasoline from a given price increase by more than standard estimates suggest. But those are the kinds of things I would not want to bet too much of my lunch money on. More to the point, I would think that modelers would find these too hard to quantify to take these into account, but I may be wrong here. Anyone have any other thoughts on this? BTW, I’m about as far away from being a skeptic as concerns ACC as one can get in this world. I’m just puzzled by the relative size of the estimates of the impacts of these proposed CT bills on CO2 emissions compared to intermediate outcomes like gas prices. -
Riccardo at 10:49 AM on 20 November 2010Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
If confirmed, Carbon Capture and Storage is not going to be part of the solution: The end of cheap coal -
cjshaker at 10:47 AM on 20 November 2010Antarctica is gaining ice
I'm fully aware that the climate appears to still be warming. I'd still like to know how that warming is incompatible with the natural glacial cycle. According to this National Geographic source, we reached temperatures of 4.5 C warmer than today during the previous glacial warming phase http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/07/070705-antarctica-ice.html Why would we not expect to reach similar temperatures during this warming phase? Thank you, Chris Shaker -
cjshaker at 10:44 AM on 20 November 2010Antarctica is gaining ice
I assume that you are talking about the article about mass measurements from the Grace satellite? If so, yes, I read the article. Are the ice cores taken from ice on land, or taken from ice on water? I don't know the answer to that, but it would seem to be important if sea ice is growing, but land ice is melting? If the ice cores were taken from ice on water, the inverse temperature relationship should still hold? Chris Shaker -
Rob Honeycutt at 10:27 AM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
cjshaker... I hope you read the "reports" section on wiki as well. -
Riccardo at 10:26 AM on 20 November 2010It's the sun
cjshaker "CO2 believers" do not "squash consideration of solar forcing". Unfortunately, it's bad news for our friends living Down Under: "As a result, the effects of possible synergies occurring between global warming and solar maxima on atmospheric circulation over extra‐tropical regions could result in severe drought becoming the typical climate state in regions such as southeast Australia." -
Antarctica is gaining ice
cjshaker - Have you actually read the article at the top of this topic? The one with the seven (7) article references, by my count? You might also want to look at Is Greenland gaining or losing ice. Both Antarctica and Greenland are currently losing ice due to warming.
Prev 2075 2076 2077 2078 2079 2080 2081 2082 2083 2084 2085 2086 2087 2088 2089 2090 Next
