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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

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Comments 117151 to 117200:

  1. Andrew Bolt distorts again
    Why do so-called skeptics find it so easy to believe in and trust (totally, without scepticism) one or two sources or scientists, against thousands of scientists and scientific reports ?
  2. Astronomical cycles
    Arkadiusz Semczyszak, you should have noticed that, although criticizing the analisys shown in the paper I ended the post open to other possibilities and welcoming further studies on decadal variability, which anyone may admit is a bit in its infancy. I can't see where you criticism of underestimation is based on.
  3. Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 22:09 PM on 17 June 2010
    Andrew Bolt distorts again
    Hans von Storch - exactly
  4. Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 22:08 PM on 17 June 2010
    Andrew Bolt distorts again
    "The AR4 report was indeed written, edited and reviewed by many thousands of expert scientists including the lead and contributing authors and the expert reviewers." professor Hans von "hot" supporter of AGW theory, the author III raport ICC: "Der eigentliche Sündenfall dabei war, dass sich der Rat entgegen seiner Regeln in seinen Aussagen nicht mehr allein auf wissenschaftlich legitime Quellen verlassen hat. Stattdessen hat er bei manchen Themen auf Zeitungsartikel und Berichte von Interessenverbänden zurückgegriffen. Schlimmer noch: Es ist der Eindruck entstanden, dass Umwelt- und Naturschutzverbände, aber auch wirtschaftliche Interessen direkten Einfluss auf Aussagen des IPCC nehmen konnten." - "The real sin is that the Council [IPCC] in support of their case has benefited not only from reliable sources, peer-reviewed research. Instead, the use of certain newspaper articles and reports of interest groups. Worse, there is a presumption that environmental organizations, but perhaps also economic interests have a direct impact on the IPCC reports. " "... normal scientific procedures are not only rejected by the IPCC, but… this practice is endemic, and was part of the organization from the very beginning. The IPCC is fundamentally corrupt. The only ‘reform’ I could envisage would be its abolition." (Gray, 2007).
  5. Peer review vs commercials and spam
    chriscanaris wrote : However, science has its share of powerful personalities who dominate the scene by their presence (and not always by their integrity). This applies to the sceptical side as much as (in some cases more)to the AWG side. Could you give some names of those on the "AWG side" who are "more" likely (according to you) to "dominate" by their lack of integrity - "not always by their integrity" ?
  6. Peer review vs commercials and spam
    Funny, Arkadiusz, but many US scientists complained that the Bush Administration was cutting off Federal Funding to institutions pushing the pro-AGW line. Here in Australia, the former Howard Government did much the same thing. However, wheras politicians, & the press, are happy to act in a partisan fashion-I doubt that Reviewers could long get away with similar behaviour.
  7. Peer review vs commercials and spam
    Arkadiusz Semczyszak, could you give links for those quotes, please ? I don't think anyone should be able to quote others without a link, but maybe that's just me.
  8. Astronomical cycles
    Arkadiusz, if planetary alignments were truly having such a strong impact on the sun, then we'd see some kind of outward sign-such as a large increase in solar activity-yet if anything the sun's activity is *declining*. Also, your talk about the supposedly asynchronous nature of the MWP is a complete red herring-because whatever the northern & southern hemispheres were doing during the MWP, we *know* that sunspots were increasing throughout that entire time-the same is *not* true at the moment. Also, the last time sunspot numbers peaked (the 60 years from 1890-to 1949) temperatures rose at a rate of +0.06 degrees per decade. By contrast, the warming of the last 60 years (1950-2009) has been at +0.11 degrees per decade-in *spite* of being dominated by a decline in solar activity. Still, at the end of the day, this article is more about Scaffetta's attempt to squeeze the trend to fit his hypothesis, on extremely flimsy pretexts, as Riccardo eludes to. Still, Arkadiusz, I've got to admire your talent for rejecting perfectly rational explanations of warming-even when based on strong empirical evidence-yet happily cling to the most outlandish explanations the Denialist Club can come up with!
  9. Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 21:05 PM on 17 June 2010
    Astronomical cycles
    In part, I feel guilty about working Scafetta. In a discussion of his earlier work: Is climate sensitive to solar variability? (2008), pointed out that it may be important not only: "Modeling the TSI variability Earth's atmosphere, landmasses, and oceans absorb and redistribute the total solar irradiance (TSI) ..." The discussion (also) was attended by Richard Mackey ... Agreed. Scafetta papers much simplifies the problem and is "fraught" with considerable range of possible deviations. But I hope that the problem resulting from the fact that: "Schwabe and Hale solar cycles are also visible in the temperature records. A 9.1-year cycle is synchronized to the Moon's orbital cycles."; will be appreciated - clearly explained and "priced". Ricardo: problem can not be underestimated.
  10. Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 20:19 PM on 17 June 2010
    Peer review vs commercials and spam
    Svensmark: "But for some unknown reason I never could publish our work. We sent it to 4 different letters, but each time met with refusal. No one accused is not anything - do not reproached errors[...]. They said: We are not interested, either: the text is too long. There was no substantive criticism of our work - it gave rise to even greater disappointment. [...]" Eugene Parker, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Chicago, commented on this: "Publishers tend to be very naive [!?]. A negative opinion of the reviewer, if you did not put it in her compelling reasons against the publication, should lead to reflection. In such a situation should appoint another reviewer. [...]" "Global warming has become a "hot" and political topic. I have evidence that, for example in the United States, blocked the publication of serious scientific research on warming. People who are convinced that they know the truth, deny others the right to vote. It harms science, the United States and globally. [...] Tying the discussion does not help in solving the problem."
  11. Astronomical cycles
    Arkadiusz Semczyszak, the problem at hand is the validity of Scafetta approach. What I tried to show is that it's weak, at best.
  12. How climate skeptics mislead
    BP: And some firm evidence is better than lots of shaky one. That's fine, but we've established there was no evidence for your hypothesis that led us down this fascinating road. So I guess that leaves us with lots of 'shaky' evidence, although I'd hardly call the multiple independent lines of evidence terribly shaky as they've not been successfully challenged. Each line of evidence is pretty sound, many together is very strong. One line on it's own, perhaps could be questioned... but when several lines, with different measurement strategies converge on one answer, that answer is, ah, robust. From what I can guess you're a software engineer? I think kdkd @177 may have it right that it is your training that is blinding you to the concepts required in environmental science, be they the right kind of inductive reasoning, or the dealing with multiple lines of evidence, none of which may show you exactly what you want to know, but all of which point strongly to some overall conclusion.
  13. Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 19:08 PM on 17 June 2010
    Astronomical cycles
    sorry "[60 lat]" - 60 years
  14. Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 18:53 PM on 17 June 2010
    Astronomical cycles
    Note the facts: 1st Maximum solar activity in recent times (1957-1958 - XIX solar cycle) very closely coincide with the maximum: "mass moments of the 4 largest planets" (The cyclic fluctuations of air temperature in Europe in the 19th-21st centuries and their causes, Boryczka, Stopa-Boryczka, 2007). Perhaps this is the impact of increased "gravitational activity," the Sun? Okay, Marcus says: that in 30 years solar activity is falling ..., but our recent discussion about the MWP shows that (asynchrony: NH - SH), Earth's climate system can respond to changes are with considerable delay. 3rd The cycle average of 60 years in long periods of time Millennium fits perfectly such as AMO, CTH ..., but also in a cycles of Millennium. In the latter - only the LNC. (Ledu, Rochon de Vernal, Labrie, 2007. Holocene climate oscillations in the Eastern part of the Northwest Passage: A possible influence of the Lunar nodal cycle: Preliminary results.). The importance of lunar cycles is undeniable. I recommend: - Lunar nodal tide effects on variability of sea level, temperature, and salinity in the Faroe-Shetland Channel and the Barents Sea (Yndestad at al., 2008); - The 18.6-year lunar nodal cycle and surface temperature variability in the northeast Pacific (McKinnell , and Crawford; 2007 ), - The impacts of the Luni-Solar oscillation on the Arctic oscillation (Ramos da Silva and Avissar; 2005), - Trends and anomalies in sea-surface temperature, observed over the last 60 years, within the southeastern Bay of Biscay (Goikoetxea, 2009), - Solar Forcing of Changes in Atmospheric Circulation, Earth's Rotation Solar (Mazzarella, 2008). 2. Effect of LNO-LNC on the extent of THC is proven, to be only measured how big the impact is and how "to translate" the retention of solar energy by the global climate system. I hope that someone will do it, I do not have the appropriate team of "human" and financial resources. 4. And (once again) I recall a diagram: http://www.rni.helsinki.fi/research/info/sizer/fig2big.jpg (unfortunately, my computer software is not able to paste this chart - here - and we would show it off.) The climate of Fennoscandia is a "terminal" for at least two climate circulations, also applies to the polar latitudes; and is therefore highly sensitive climate change. The main noticeable change in the climate of Fennoscandia may thus be important also for the Earth ... In the diagram Finnish scientists, it is clear that we are now at the stage of warming (after rapid cooling) - in a very similar period to circa 4.2 and 8.4 thousand years ago ... There are multiple Millennium cycles. This "same" Rahmstorf says that: "the Millennium cycle is dependent on the cycles of the sun [60 lat ?] - but not directly. So far, created a few theories to explain this relationship." Rahmstorf, Ganopolski, 2005: "We attribute the robust 1,470-year response time to the superposition of the two shorter cycles, together with strongly NONLINEAR DYNAMICS and the long characteristic timescale of the thermohaline circulation." PS Sorry for the big shortcuts (for: gravity Sun) - I hope that this is not from my lack of knowledge, but the lack of "place" on a precise explanation.
  15. Websites to monitor the Arctic Sea Ice
    I have written and updated a blog post on my Arctic Sea Ice blog that collects more than 25 graphs and maps (satellite images, extent, area, volume, concentration, air and SST temperatures, weather maps, arctic oscillation, buoys, ice displacement) for monitoring the Arctic Sea Ice on a daily basis: Interesting websites for watching the ice
  16. Astronomical cycles
    Apparently this is a pattern with Scafetta. http://www.physorg.com/news189845962.html "The first thing we do when we approach a time series with a strong random component is to perform standard statistical analyses like plotting of probability density distributions on different time scales,” Martin Rypdal told PhysOrg.com. “We look at the shape of these rescaled distributions. If the signal is statistically self-similar, it looks almost the same on all time scales. [Here, we’ve shown] that the solar flare signal and the global temperature signal are both self-similar, but their distributions are very different, and so are the exponents used for rescaling. We were very surprised that Scafetta and- West never show such results in their papers. It seems that they have designed all their tests with the purpose of proving a wanted result, and deliberately avoided analysis that points in other directions." "The theory of anthropogenic global warming consists of a set of logically interconnected and consistent hypotheses,” Martin Rypdal said. “This means that if a cornerstone hypothesis is proven to be false, the entire theory fails. A corresponding theory of global warming of solar origin does not exist. What does exist is a set of disconnected, mutually inconsistent, ad hoc hypotheses. If one of these is proven to be false, the typical proponent of solar warming will pull another ad hoc hypothesis out of the hat. This has been the strategy of Scafetta and West over the years, and we have no illusion that our paper will put them to silence. "
  17. How climate skeptics mislead
    BP > And some firm evidence is better than lots of shaky one. Agreed.
  18. How climate skeptics mislead
    BP #186 You're now verging into solipsism which is yet another technique that so called climate sceptics use to mislead. This is especially true in that you are demanding reductionist deductive proof in a field of knowledge where such things are not possible.
  19. Berényi Péter at 16:23 PM on 17 June 2010
    How climate skeptics mislead
    #185 e at 15:04 PM on 17 June, 2010 lots of evidence is better than a little evidence And some firm evidence is better than lots of shaky one.
  20. Philippe Chantreau at 16:22 PM on 17 June 2010
    Astronomical cycles
    Lies, damn lies and...
  21. Doug Bostrom at 16:17 PM on 17 June 2010
    Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
    It may well be that the appropriate moment for a graceful climbdown passed unnoticed while Lon was issuing jibes about "freshman calculus." History analogizes itself again?
  22. Astronomical cycles
    Donald Lewis - well, yeah, that's the thought I had. The author "detrends" the data, and then goes to great lengths to show there may be a cyclical influence on the Earth's climate by the orbits of the gas giants. Ignoring the issues of choice of underlying trend that Riccardo has pointed out, it might explain some of the ups'n'downs over the years, but the fact that he gets such a neat correlation surely means that it *cannot* explain the underlying trend. I.e. doesn't this paper, when accepted at face value, 'prove' that orbital variations cannot be causing global warming?
  23. Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
    Lon, I don't think what Ned is saying to you is sinking in. Ned has pointed out that the reason your model is able to recreate the modern CO2 trend from temperature data, is that the background trend of CO2 release has been hard coded into your model as a constant multiplier. You cannot draw any conclusion whatsoever from this as to where that background trend comes from, your model just assumes it exists as a static value. When you are "reconstructing" the CO2 trend from temperature using your model, all you are doing is taking that background trend and combining it with the temperature signal. Basically all this exercise accomplishes is to restate the conlusion that the rate of CO2 accumulation is correlated to temperature. This is the only conclusion you can come to. Attempting to extrapolate this to suggest that the level of CO2 is correlated to temperature to the same degree is logically invalid. I have a counter-challenge for you: try applying your model to some out of sample data, specifically a time period where the rate of CO2 release was significantly different from that of the last 30 years. If Ned is right, your model will fall apart rather quickly.
  24. Donald Lewis at 15:29 PM on 17 June 2010
    Astronomical cycles
    Bravo NewYorkJ! I am now adjusting my position in the market based on correlations with temp projections (or NOT!). Thanks. On the one hand, correlations point to possible connections, so it is valuable to explore them. On the other hand... explain the cause to me before I endorse a correlation as a cause. I viewed the paper at arxiv. The most striking thing to me is that the author superimposes a periodic temperature variation upon a QUADRATICALLY growing base, and doesn't address (did I miss it) why the base temp at any moment is accelerating in time. Argh! His correlations may "explain" some periodic variability, but only if the base temp is accelerating over time. Good grief! Is the author offering an "astrological" explanation of why the temp of the earth is accelerating, or not? I didn't catch it if the author did. The acceleration is the "trend" that concerns me. Is the author suggesting the quadratic base curve is statistically significant? If not, the whole analysis is suspect. If it is, then the problem is to explain it. I offer a wacky idea... something to involving CO2 emissions.
  25. How climate skeptics mislead
    BP >You seem to believe truth was something to be constructed while I think it is given, it simply is irrespective of our state of ignorance. I pursue discovery, your business seems to be invention. The underlying "truth" of reality and our imperfect knowledge of reality are two very distinct entities. I believe truth may be absolute, but our knowledge of that truth certainly is not. We are not born with this knowledge implanted in our minds, we have no choice but to construct that knowledge from our senses and our ability to apply logic. When that application of logic is used to derive general principles from given observations, that logic is by its very nature inductive, and thus can never give us a truly binary answer. Asking whether these conlusions should be fuzzy is irrelevant, we have no choice in the matter. I won't disagree that your proposition has a binary truth value in the underlying fabric of reality (though that point is philosophically debatable); the problem is that, as we lack omniscience, humans are never privy to the "true" nature of reality. The best we can possibly do is weigh inductive conclusions against one another based on our current limited knowledge of the world, and that's exactly what I was doing when I pointed out the improbability of your specific claim. And yes I do understand you cannot assign hard probabilities to inductive conclusions, that wasn't what I was doing. I was qualitatively judging the likelihood of your claim relative to the competing claim. KR's post above gives a great explanation of the types of probabilistic statements we are making. As for your talk of "modules", this a general post discussing the relevance of the sum of all current evidence on climate change. In the spirit of this post and the theme of this entire blog, I ask a very relevant question, why should this very speculative hypothesis cast doubt on the current state of climate science and its evidence taken as a whole? Your obsession with trying to steer the conversation back to a "narrow piece of the puzzle" does a great job of proving John's point, and highlights your stubborn refusal to admit the simple point that lots of evidence is better than a little evidence.
  26. Stephen Baines at 14:19 PM on 17 June 2010
    Astronomical cycles
    Warming is good for the economy!
  27. Astronomical cycles
    Ok, folks. Global warming theory has been debunked once and for all. I've found a strong correlation between S&P 500 stock index growth and global mean temperature (NCDC) since 1950, using a linear trend with the proper scaling and a 36 month running average. As is obvious, there's very little room left for greenhouse gases. Ok maybe not the perfect analogy to Scafetta, but you get the idea.
  28. Astronomical cycles
    We're human - and we're really really good at seeing patterns. There are tons of papers in this; seeing patterns in woodland undercover (nasty critters!), environmental noise (there's somebody behind me!), and even in tea leaves (I have no idea here, I never see anything but leftover tea!). In unmitigated nature this is a huge advantage. The cost of a false positive is a short period of panting and high blood pressure, while the cost of a false negative is much higher - being eaten by something, or clubbed by a competing caveman. However, as a result of a false positive pattern bias, we also see gnomes in Zurich manipulating currency, UFO's in clouds, conspiracies among the neighborhood pets, on and on and on. If you go looking for a pattern, you're likely to find one somewhere. I'm much more impressed (charitable?) when someone finds that a pattern falls out of their data, and then search for and find a corresponding pattern in a reasonably forcing influence.
  29. How climate skeptics mislead
    Berényi - your post on probability is excellent. it is, however, not the same definition as the probabilistic statements I discussed with regard to inductive proofs. An inductive argument cannot, by it's nature, be assigned distinct probabilities. You are generalizing from the specific to the general case, from some set of observations to the 'universe' of possibilities. Since you have not observed all cases in all situations over the entire universe, you don't know the solution space, and can't assign a specific and numeric probability. This is a different domain from an inductive argument. In scientific induction, what you can do is to take multiple inductive arguments, evaluate the deductive and probabilistic premises, and decide based on those which of the inductive arguments carries more weight. This is often a deferred judgement - awaiting the predictions of the various inductive arguments to see which has the most predictive or widely applied generalizations. But it is a judgement call. Initial reviewers of the General Theory of Relativity didn't assign a numeric probability to it's correctness - they looked at its consistency with multiple sets of observed data, parsimony of explanation (no complex system of crystal spheres, no backbending of the theory to explain certain observations), and predictive power in ways that differed from competing hypotheses. Even then, when a few unique predictions were confirmed, it took multiple avenues of independent evidence to raise the General Theory to the state of an accepted consensus. Inductive arguments cannot be assigned hard probabilities - that would be a deductive argument based upon complete knowledge, another creature entirely. An inductive argument can indeed be more probable than alternatives - in the definition of supported by evidence strong enough to establish presumption but not proof (a probable hypothesis)" - Merriam Webster, 1st definition, as opposed to the 2nd definition, "establishing a probability (probable evidence)". It's important not to confuse those, which I feel you have in your most recent post. The 10 numeric alternatives you noted for agreement in the Fourth report are indeed judgement calls, not deterministic probabilities based upon complete knowledge. Perhaps you would be more satisfied with a range of "wholeheartedly agree" to "ambivalent" to "You must be kidding"? A numeric range at least gives readers some weighting on how strong the agreement is! Inductive arguments cannot be proven; they can be better supported than the alternatives, or, eventually, they can be disproven by contradictory evidence. You have to accept some uncertainty in science, or you will never be able to add to your knowledge by generalizing to cases and combinatorics you haven't yet seen.
  30. Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
    Sigh - the McLean maths issue. Try doing same trick tamino did your data. Add an arbitrary linear trend to the raw data, repeat your analysis. Aside from that. "Make a model that makes sense physically". Yes indeed. In real world oceans are still absorbing CO2 where deep water is created. Sure there is outgassing of CO2 where deepwater rises to surface - that detrended signal you are seeing - but net effect is that oceans are still net sink. Your model is not physically reasonable in this light. It is contradicted by CO2 accounting, by ocean acidification and by isotope measurements.
  31. Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
    Doug, all that was in my original posting, though not in as much detail, as I figured most folks could follow what I had written. I guess you didn't read the original posting, or if you did, you certainly didn't understand it. What maths error?
  32. Astronomical cycles
    This doesn't look fundamentally different from the curve-fitting "it's mostly PDO" argument. Ignore physics entirely and try to find a correlation somewhere (this time with a more obscure unexplained physical mechanism), using a variety of selected data. It reminds me of a friend of mine who asked me about a Superbowl prediction system that claimed to be 90% successful. It had all sorts of obscure metrics such as "number of 4-point victories this season" and "number of extra points blocked". When about 20 metrics were combined, it accurately predicted winners of about 90% of past Superbowls. I advised him that given the sheer number of data metrics to choose from, one will always be able to combine any obscure metrics together for an accurate hindcast. There's no rhyme or reason to it, and such a system is likely to be no better than 50/50 going forward. Well...it's been 3 years and it correctly predicted 2 out of 3 Superbowls. So my friend thinks it's been vindicated. (Sigh...) Anyone can find a correlation. http://www.skepticalscience.com/The-CO2-Temperature-correlation-over-the-20th-Century.html If the CO2 / global temperature link was based simply on a correlation, it would be rightfully attacked. I suspect "skeptics" won't meet Scafetta's study with appropriate skepticism. That's what this site is for.
  33. Doug Bostrom at 11:40 AM on 17 June 2010
    How climate skeptics mislead
    BP I forgot to mention that I found your post #176 very thought-provoking, though I slighted it as a "side issue." It seems to me that overzealous application of Kolmogorov's axiom system could lead us to effective paralysis in a host of different fields beyond climate research, including for instance medicine and my decision over whether to add earthquake insurance to my homeowners' policy.
  34. Berényi Péter at 11:33 AM on 17 June 2010
    Peer review vs commercials and spam
    Brain, Volume 123, Number 9, Pp. 1964-1969 September 2000 Reproducibility of peer review in clinical neuroscience Is agreement between reviewers any greater than would be expected by chance alone? Peter M. Rothwell and Christopher N. Martyn Agreement between the reviewers as to whether manuscripts should be accepted, revised or rejected was not significantly greater than that expected by chance
  35. Doug Bostrom at 11:19 AM on 17 June 2010
    Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
    My model is similar to this, except that it claims... Not so simple after all, it seems. Natch, the first claim generates more exceptions, more claims. I don't think Lon intends this to be taken seriously, as a substitute for research, but I presume to say that. Anyway, what about the maths error?
  36. Peer review vs commercials and spam
    Philippe @ 36 Can you cite precisely climate scientists who try to pretend that uncertainties do not exist? None would be so naive or silly. I don't even suggest it in my post @ 4 or anywhere else.
  37. Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
    Wonderful work, Ned. I really appreciate your input. Now let me add another challenge. Make a model that makes sense physically and fits the data, including the kinks. Use an anthropogenic term, but add a term allowing for the CO2 sink that you know exists, and makes sense physically. I would imagine that this term should be proportional amount of CO2 in the air, and to the temperature anomaly plus some value related to the temperature at which the ocean is saturated with CO2 at that temperature (the bigger this difference,the more it will be able to absorb). If and when you find a fit, you will have coefficients that mean something! My model is similar to this, except that it claims that the very top surface (averaged over the ocean) is in equilibrium with the atmosphere, but it there is a huge time constant associated with the mixing of the surface and the whole ocean, so the system is in an approach to equilibrium state where the CO2 rate of change is proportional to the difference between the current ocean CO2 level and the level it would reach if the mixing had occurred. You could put a time constant in your absorption equation too. Albatross: The temperature anomaly is a temperature referenced to an arbitrarily assigned starting temperature. As I remember, in this case it's the average of temperatures between 1980 and 1990. The .58 in my equation moves this reference back to temperatures that are generally accepted as being seen in about 1850, when they were considered relatively constant, and coincidentally when anthropogenic contributions were relatively small.
  38. Berényi Péter at 10:47 AM on 17 June 2010
    How climate skeptics mislead
    #179 doug_bostrom at 09:43 AM on 17 June, 2010 here we are, once again scrutinizing some very fascinating side issues visible only with a vanishingly small field of view I would not call it a side issue. Quantifying uncertainty in an absolutely bogus way is a key issue with the Uncertainty Guidance Note for the Fourth Assessment Report.
    Likelihood Terminology Likelihood of the occurrence / outcome  
    Virtually certain > 99% probability 
    Extremely likely > 95% probability  
    Very likely > 90% probability 
    Likely > 66% probability 
    More likely than not > 50% probability 
    About as likely as not 33 to 66% probability 
    Unlikely < 33% probability 
    Very unlikely < 10% probability 
    Extremely unlikely < 5% probability 
    Exceptionally unlikely < 1% probability 
  39. Peer review vs commercials and spam
    Richard.hockey - I'm intrigued. On the internet we have all these complete rubbish "papers" being put out by the clueless and the mendacious in a vast no. of fields. Peer review is a starting point for sorting the chaff. If the internet was around 90 years ago, what process do you would have replaced peer review for providing some basic gate-keeping?
  40. How climate skeptics mislead
    BP #180 Again there's a problem here. Reductionism will only get you so far, and can not explain much of the variability of complex natural systems. My own field of research (in the social sciences) suffers from these same problems, and a reductionist approach simply won't work. Same for ecologists. With a single dependent variable, mathematical chaos can result from a three (yes, 3) parameter model, without including stochasticity. In this kind of situation, a reductionist approach will not help.
  41. richard.hockey at 10:32 AM on 17 June 2010
    Peer review vs commercials and spam
    Interesting article in The Scientist: "Is Peer Review Broken?" http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/23061/ I would also contend that if the internet existed 50 years ago peer review wouldn't exist. However seeing that it does exist, although I think its days are numbered, I support the idea of full disclosure. see: http://www.nature.com/emboj/about/emboj_review_process.html
  42. Andrew Bolt distorts again
    "Moderator Response: Nice try Canbanjo, but the IPCC authors/editors/reviews are not " government officials/bureaucrats" they are overwhelmingly if not entirely scientists. You can grin, but it is a fact. (JB)" It was me, joe, not Canbanjo saying that, and i wasnt clear by what i said, how many of the 2500 are in social sciences, political sciences etc... Is what i mean by non hard sciences.(a bit disingenuous o me to claim non scientist/politician ) If i come up with a new idea for a compressor/expander, i dont think how well its going to work... i think hard about what can go wrong. And i think in a public debate the 2500 claim has so many ways you could attack it... i mean merely pointing out John Christy for example is included in the 2500. Or how many reviewed the attribution chapter etc... it really dosnt take long to find all sorts o ways you could attack this argument. It is an appeal to authority... with holes in it.
  43. Berényi Péter at 10:11 AM on 17 June 2010
    How climate skeptics mislead
    #177 kdkd at 08:59 AM on 17 June, 2010 Fields where issues around complexity are substantial (such as climate science), the sheer number of variables, and problematic measurement models preclude the further development of scientific laws, and we have to rely on induction driven theory instead The same problem arises in software engineering. When complexity is skyrocketing, people simply get lost. However, there is a solution to this problem, and an old one for that matter. Modularization. You should break down the problem to its constituent parts, treat sub-problems separately, verify, define standard interfaces, re-assemble. Do it in a recursive manner if necessary. The tricky part of course is to find proper module boundaries. BTW, I am still not sure climate is not governed by laws (I mean high level ones). It is an energetically open system with many internal degrees of freedom. Systems like this tend to be self-organizing and develop minimax properties.
  44. David Horton at 10:10 AM on 17 June 2010
    Astronomical cycles
    Stephen "Is there any way physically to link gravity variations driven by orbital cycles to variations in solar output?" - I don't know either and while it seems very unlikely to me I guess anything is possible. But there is the more general point that I think arises from this (and many other denier hypotheses) and that is that you can't do this stuff post hoc. Let us imagine that some cosmologist had done a careful analysis of the orbital variations of the planets and that the changes in gravity effects contributed by these (especially Jupiter and Saturn) could be calculated and those effects in turn could be shown by some well known physical/chemical mechanism to affect the output of heat from the Sun. You could then turn around and say "oh, I wonder if that changing output has affected the temperature on Earth". You would then do the calculations of the amount of heat variation, the pattern of global warming, and connect the two in a graph and show that this then also matched the orbital variations of the planets. If you do the reverse, the search for some apparent patterns in the past which just happen to match something else, then you are looking at correlation not causation. Ironic, is it not?
  45. Doug Bostrom at 09:43 AM on 17 June 2010
    How climate skeptics mislead
    BP's here stripped to essentials: If land surface temperature trend is reduced... A big if. I'm not going to say Berényi Péter's misleading but here we are, once again scrutinizing some very fascinating side issues visible only with a vanishingly small field of view. What a great example of rotating the microscope turret, turning up our magnification until we're effectively blind.
  46. Andrew Bolt distorts again
    canbanjo Well the basic radiative properties of co2 is totally robust(measured LW in various wave lengths at surface and TOA IS empirical proof of the various effect of the different GHG) And the instrumental record further backs this... but you still need to be able to differentiate and quantify the anthropogenic effects to rule out natural factors, negative feedbacks etc... at the moment there simply isnt enough high resolution climate data to do it that way.(a bit over 30 years really) But how this added radiative forcing will effect climate IS complex. How will it effect oceanic/atmospheric circulation/ which will effect evaporation/ which is effected by radiative forcing which effect radiative forcing, which could effect cloud, which effect planetary albedo etc. You could go on for ever. The way to figure this stuff out is to run high resolution line by line climate models. And try different scenarios. Which is not something yah can do with a calculator. And id be assuming the people he is referring to would be the likes of Gavin Schmidt, Hansen etc, that do run these models... But you would need to ask Mike Hulme;-)
  47. Astronomical cycles
    Not such a stupid proposition. Gravity affects the sun, the sun affects us. But the sun is still very quiet, and we are at record (globally averaged)Jan to May temperatures. Is there any data about the tilt of the sun compared to the planetary planes. If there is anything in Scafetta, it will probably end up showing we should be freezing right now.
  48. Berényi Péter at 09:26 AM on 17 June 2010
    How climate skeptics mislead
    #172 Stephen Baines at 01:45 AM on 17 June, 2010 That [i.e. starting the falsification job] is what others have been doing previously No, they have not. Everyone started to talk about something else. Perfect example of preoccupation with robustness, when merit of a claim is not considered in itself, but in its external connections (networking properties). This same approach, as applied to persons, is a post-modern phenomenon in cultures with European roots, and a sad one. Never ask who the guy actually is, ask about his supporters (this way you don't have to take responsibility for him). It is a moral failure on a mass scale. The quest for all of you in this specific case is to find the error inside the module, not outside of it. A rather simple line of reasoning is presented here as a response to #128 skywatcher at 01:21 AM on 16 June, 2010.
  49. Astronomical cycles
    Fitting 2.5 "cycles" with some arbitrary post-hoc function: isn't this a lovely example of the sort of spam that peer review is supposed to catch?
  50. Andrew Bolt distorts again
    Joe the key point here which Hulme has confused - is that on the one hand we are told that AGW theory is completely robust, which I take that to mean that one does not need to be expert in all details of AGW to come to the same conclusion that the theory is fundamentally robust. Hulme has cast doubt on that. WHO ARE THE EXPERTS HE REFERS TO? jo

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