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Comments 122151 to 122200:

  1. Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
    Peter Hogarth: It has also now become possible to attempt to “close” the sea level budget, which has components of reported thermal expansion of the volume of water due to increase in accumulated heat energy, and also an increased component from melting ice from land based sources. Again refinements and corrections of recent datasets from GRACE (with GPS) and ARGO resolve previous and relatively recent difficulties, so that the sum of these climate-related contributions (2.85 ± 0.35 mm per year) is now comparable with the altimetry-based sea level rise (3.3 ± 0.4 mm per year) over the 1993 to 2007 period (Cazenave 2010, reporting a consensus of the Ocean Observing Community). Using these datasets it is estimated that around 30% of the observed rate of rise over the satellite altimeter time period is due to ocean thermal expansion and 55% results from accumulated melting land ice. There is evidence that the land ice melt contribution has increased significantly over the past five years. For about five years, the skeptics have argued both that the ice sheets aren't melting quickly, or even melting at all (in the case of Antarctica), while at the same time using Argo data to argue that the OHC has leveled off. I always found this a weird combination of claims, since the data is clear that SLR continues. If the ocean isn't heating, then the ice sheets and glacier would have to melting at an unbelievable rate. Or conversely, if the ice sheets weren't melting, then the ocean heating is just as unbelievably high. The only way to explain SLR is to use a both ice fairly high sheet melt and fairly high ocean heating. No other combination works. Your quote of 30% of SLR due to ocean heating and 55% due to melting land ice, while at the same time claiming these rates are consistent with SLR, is the first I have seen these numbers. But that still leaves us with a couple of problems... Assuming the planet's net energy imbalance isn't changing dramatically (without volcanic or solar changes), and SLR over the last 12 years is roughly the same rate as the last 30 years, then the ocean heating must be relatively constant. If land based melt is increasing dramatically, then the ocean heating rate must be falling dramatically; otherwise the rate of SLR would be increasing. So I am having a bit of a hard time understanding the statement of how land based ice melt is increasing is consistent with the rest of the analysis. It would help if I knew what the likely error band is for the 30% and 55% figures. Is it possible that long term ocean heating would be responsible for 50% instead of 30%, and more recently this has dropped to only 35-40% instead of 30% as this report suggests. I am just having a difficult time figuring out how the rate of ocean heating could swing as much as you seem to be suggesting. To look at it in slightly different way: If land based melt is increasing, then this is bad because we should begin to see even higher rates of SLR as the ice sheets become more and more unstable. But if land based melt is less than 55% as suggested here, then the ocean heating is much higher, which means the planet is heating much faster. As bad as increased ice sheet melt, the idea that the ocean heating is heating fast enough to explain 50% or more of SLR is even scarier. Attributing SLR and proportioning SLR to these two causes is very important. I think Trenberth is right with oft misquoted and misunderstood comment " Its a travesty ..."
  2. Skeptical Science housekeeping: Contradictions, URLs and getting hacked
    #33 & 34: Let them define themselves then. And they do -- they define themselves by who/what they war against (and who/what they do not!). When I see AGW-deniers attacking the wrong statements of other AGW-deniers, then I'll start thinking that maybe they're interested in truth.
  3. Skeptical Science housekeeping: Contradictions, URLs and getting hacked
    article states "...how the hacker got in, where they came from..." No details... bummer.
  4. Southern sea ice is increasing
    "Goddard commits this error on several occasions." Sorry to nitpick, but your quote at the top was from James Taylor, not Steve Goddard.
    Response: Please, nitpick away. I've removed the Goddard reference which was a hangover from the original post responding to several Goddard posts at Watts Up With That.
  5. The 5 characteristics of scientific denialism
    PS Both of the trends in the link above (for UAH and GISS) show a rising trend for the last decade, as seen by looking at the data here. And I've just noticed, gallopingcamel, that your link to Watts is for July 2009. Why don't you use something more recent ?
  6. The 5 characteristics of scientific denialism
    gallopingcamel wrote : The second graph (Global Land-Ocean) shows a rising trend over the last decade. The UAH one (Lower Troposphere) shows a falling trend over the same period. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/03/uah-global-temperature-anomaly-for-june-09-zero/ Am I comparing apples and oranges? You are comparing an insignificant trend to an insignificant trend, because you are only using 10 years, so it is a waste of your and my time. Try it for 30 years, which will be far more significant. However, if you insist that you want to use an insignificant trend over the last decade, have a look at this and see how similar those insignificant trends are : Insignificant 10 yeart trends
  7. Every skeptic argument ever used
    I don’t want to create more work for you, but maybe I can suggest some low-hanging fruit that you could tackle. There are several arguments on the full list which you have already discussed in some form on Skeptical Science, but do not have a page of their own. Perhaps you might like to look at adding separate pages for some of the following: • Antarctica is cooling (in a recent post on sea ice) • Southern sea ice is increasing (also in sea ice post) • Mike’s Nature trick to ‘hide the decline’ (on Climategate page) • IPCC overestimate the danger (on IPCC page) • 500 scientists refute the consensus (in an old 2007 post) • Outgoing longwave radiation hasn’t changed (on CO2 effect page) • It’s part of a 1500 year cycle (on natural cycle page) • Mauna Loa is a volcano (on CO2 measurements page) • CO2 emissions do not correlate with CO2 concentration (in a 2009 post) • Models exaggerate projected temperature rise (on models page) • Hansen’s 1988 prediction was wrong (also on models page) The following have been at least briefly mentioned: • Institute of Physics doesn’t support AGW (listed on consensus page) • Springs aren’t advancing (mentioned on evidence for global warming page) • Greenhouse effect does not exist (partially explained on CO2 effect page) • Temperature has fallen while CO2 was rising (discussed in several contexts) • Triton is warming (briefly discussed on other planets page) • Ocean acidification isn’t going to happen (mentioned on positives vs negatives page) • Earth hasn’t warmed as much as expected (alluded to on models page) Again, my suggestion is not intended to create unnecessary work, but is more about gathering together info already on the site into a more obvious location.
    Response: This is a great idea, many thanks for the suggestion. Think Homer Simpson muttering "mmm... low lying fruit". I've plucked the lowest of the low lying fruit by posting responses to the following skeptic arguments which all will zip into iPhone apps across the world over the next few days (the app updates its own content on a regular basis): The only downside is this takes the number of skeptic arguments with a response to exactly 100. I had been aware that we were fast approaching the 100th skeptic argument and had a doozy of a post planned to commemorate the event. Now we've already gone over the #100 mark, that potential landmark has been missed (can you tell I'm a glass-half-empty kind of person).
  8. Skeptical Science housekeeping: Contradictions, URLs and getting hacked
    On the topic of stolen passwords, would it not be advisable to store a one way hash of passwords rather than the cleartext? Even if the site is compromised, the passwords would still be unrecoverable.
    Response: I may just do that - thanks for the suggestion. Back when life was simpler and climate websites didn't get hacked, clear text passwords didn't seem like such a big deal :-(
  9. Skeptical Science housekeeping: Contradictions, URLs and getting hacked
    Can I issue a retraction of a contradiction? I thought I read somewhere that the first picture for the Mars climate change was taken in 1998, but then I read your site and found it was 1977.
    Response: The contradiction is still valid but I've updated your comment, changing the date to 1977.
  10. Skeptical Science housekeeping: Contradictions, URLs and getting hacked
    John Cook: Let me think... well, for one thing I'd like to know which IP address(es) the cyber-attacks came from. Also, what were the exploits being used, and did the cracker(s) try to create any hidden backdoors for future incursions? Thanks for your time! -- frankbi
    Response: The IP address of the hacker came from Spain (whether that is the hacker's actual location is another matter, I have had experience before with people spoofing their IP address to hide their location). If you don't mind, I won't go into too much detail into how they did it - don't want to create a roadmap for other hackers (although the security hole they exploited has been secured).
  11. Skeptical Science housekeeping: Contradictions, URLs and getting hacked
    Shorter HumanityRules: The cyber-attack hasn't been linked to denialists, and even if it has, it's OK anyway for them to attack, because I don't like the label "denialist". -- frankbi
  12. HumanityRules at 16:47 PM on 21 March 2010
    Skeptical Science housekeeping: Contradictions, URLs and getting hacked
    31.birdbrainscan at 14:12 PM on 21 March, 2010 I agree the unwelcome attention is more evidence of the ethical as well as logical bankruptcy of the denialists. ?Has the hack been linked to denialists? I thought of an analogy for the unscientific denier/alarmist imposed split. Think of this approach applied to politics in general. We have the 'centre ground' represented by the moderates in the main political parties. Pro-market liberals and social conservatives. Outside this 'concensus' we have what might be described as the extremists. Some examples might be religious conservatives, green environmentalist, free market libertarians, leftists and many more. What can we say about an extremists position on issues like taxes, immigration, healthcare and so on. Very little because they all disagree. Does this disagreement say anything about the validity of their position? No, just that we should never have grouped them in the first place.
  13. Skeptical Science housekeeping: Contradictions, URLs and getting hacked
    Cook, can you (and/or Bostrom) tell us more about the cyber-attacks? -- frankbi
    Response: What do you want to know?
  14. birdbrainscan at 14:12 PM on 21 March 2010
    Skeptical Science housekeeping: Contradictions, URLs and getting hacked
    I agree the unwelcome attention is more evidence of the ethical as well as logical bankruptcy of the denialists. However, how will you rebuff their next obvious move: to claim that you must have hacked yourself, to make them look bad?
  15. Skeptical Science housekeeping: Contradictions, URLs and getting hacked
    Following hank's advice at #12 I checked my Typepad account, and found that I couldn't access it with my password, which was unfortunately the same as the one for I used for Skeptical Science. Whomever changed the password hadn't changed the email address though, so I was able to send a message to my email and get in to change my password again that way - to a unique one this time. Hopefully nothing was put up anywhere using my name... As others have said, I hope that you track down the low-life who hacked the site. A public naming and shaming at the least is deserved... On a happier note, I too love the extras. Skeptical Science is mandatory reading for anyone remotely interested in climate science!
  16. gallopingcamel at 13:30 PM on 21 March 2010
    The 5 characteristics of scientific denialism
    J Murphy (#136) My apologies for sending the Japan link in my (#125) post. Here is the one I meant to send: http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20100121/ The second graph (Global Land-Ocean) shows a rising trend over the last decade. The UAH one (Lower Troposphere) shows a falling trend over the same period. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/03/uah-global-temperature-anomaly-for-june-09-zero/ Am I comparing apples and oranges?
  17. The 5 characteristics of scientific denialism
    Thanks, Doug. I should have added that despite the trailer office and missing ceiling tiles, I have got my dream job that I never, ever want to leave.
  18. The 5 characteristics of scientific denialism
    Tom Dayton at 04:58 AM on 21 March, 2010 What a terrific post. Thank you.
  19. Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas
    John, The link to Soden 2005 doesn't work. At least for me, it redirects to a search page. Is this the article? One thing would make this web page even more excellent is if you'd list the full references, so that if a link doesn't work, you can try to find it yourself (if not on the web than maybe at a library); at least the abstract. Regards, Simon
    Response: No, that wasn't the article I was linking to although it does look like an interesting paper. The paper I'm refering to is An Assessment of Climate Feedbacks in Coupled Ocean–Atmosphere Models (Soden et al 2005). Thanks for letting me know about the bad link.
  20. littlerobbergirl at 08:58 AM on 21 March 2010
    Skeptical Science housekeeping: Contradictions, URLs and getting hacked
    Nooo! Not the 'sea level rise' article, i was only halfway through and havnt bookmarked the references! I looked all over t'net for that timescale graph with no luck. Phew! Still there. Was it another post, or did you get him to put it back up? Anyway thank you all so much for all your hard work. This is a regular visit for me now, and i share the link frequently, as the format is so user friendly for less sciency friends to use. And a lot of the comments are very useful to me too, unlike a lot of sites where you have to wade through reams of hobbyist denial rubbish. I had to sign on to give my thanks and support, but i have made sure to use a super duper different password that will be stored in my brain only :-) I suppose you could take the hack as a complement, it shows you got the denyers worried.
  21. The 5 characteristics of scientific denialism
    Gallopingcamel wrote : Satellite data has only been available for ~37 years but over that time scale there has been a warming trend. In short, I agree that warming has occurred . My point is that there has been a cooling trend since 1998, contrary to what Hansen et al. claim, based on surface station records. What 'cooling trend' ? Instead of just stating what you believe, can you link to a graph (or something) that shows this 'cooling trend' ? And you can you show how it relates to what 'Hansen et al. claim' ? Gallopingcamel wrote : Here is NASA's view based on surface station records: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/ These graphs appear to be diverging over the last 12 years. Am I wrong? Hard to tell when it is unclear what you are actually trying to prove from that link. The only graphs I can see there are a global temperature one, and one for Japan with no detail as to axis labels. What do you claim is diverging, and from what ? Gallopingcamel wrote : Ned (#115), the SSTs were very high into January 2010. I found a link at UAH that showed the February 2010 SST sharply lower but it has disappeared. Can anybody help me out? Forgive me for intruding but this shows that there was no UAH SST reading for the 2nd to the 5th of February this year, and the 6th to the 7th reading were only in 3rd highest place since 2003. Since that date, however, and before, the readings have all been higher : UAH SST Gallopingcamel wrote : To get back to the main subject of this thread, this discussion has clearly demonstrated all five of the "characteristics of scientific denialism". Unfortunately, the vast majority of the posts demonstrating these traits are from AGW Alarmists. The Alarmists display additional failings owing to their unwarranted certainty that has no place in science. Until Climategate they were often inclined to go as far as to claim "the science is settled" while personally attacking anyone who disagreed with them. And that is just bizarre, wrong and totally divorced from reality, I'm afraid. Either you can't see that or you don't want to. Shame, either way, but anyone reading all these posts can see where the truth lies. Gallopingcamel wrote : Real scientists disagree over scientific hypotheses and then start looking for ways to test those hypotheses. Which particular hypothesis did you have in mind ?
  22. CO2 was higher in the past
    Sorry, but you need to keep in mind the timescales involved. Total solar irradiance has been slowly increasing for a very long time. So it has a large effect on the overall long-term temperature trend of the planet, meaning hundreds of millions of years. That's not really relevant to the timescale of the 21st century. Likewise, the glacial/interglacial cycle plays out on a 26000 - 100000 year timescale. In contrast, we're doubling CO2 on a timescale of a century or so. We're also pumping out CH4, N2O, halocarbons, and other greenhouse gases. Thus, if you look at the actual magnitude of the radiative forcings, over the course of the 21st century the increase in greenhouse gases has a much larger forcing than any changes in TSI, Milankovich, etc.
  23. Understanding Trenberth's travesty
    A question for Berényi Péter, or anyone else on the thread: I have seen the comments in skeptical forums over and over regarding lack of recent ocean heating as measured by Argo data. The problem is that I never see anyone try to reconcile the data with the 2009 paper cited above, or with SLR as Trenberth tried to do. Taking a reasonable time horizon, and realizing SLR measurements by satellites show some cyclical nature due to El Nino (fast SLR) and La Nina (slow SLR), I see that sea level from the 1998 El Nino to the current El Nino is about 30 mm, quite consistent with the long term trend in SLR. The question remains how much of the SLR is coming from ocean heating and how much from ice sheet melt? If you are correct, and ocean heating has stopped, then that would mean ice sheet melt has accelerated to an almost impossibly high rate to account for the 30 mm in SLR over the last ten years. But we have some indications of ice sheet melt from GRACE data, and the high ice sheet melts required under the hypothesis of level OHC are not confirmed! Clearly there is still significant heat buildup in the ocean, as Trenberth reports. Why is it that the skeptics claim both low ice sheet melts and level OHC. These two extremes taken together contradict observed SLR, and contradict GRACE data. All the information points to a problem with extrapolating the first Argo data reports to the entire ocean. I think that the estimates of ocean heat buildup must be consistent with SLR and GRACE, and be particularly wary of using OHC or SLR data that ends in a La Nina year (2008), like the skeptics do, when they quote 2004 to 2008. At least use three or four ENSO cycles to reduce the impact of ENSO on these data sets.
  24. CO2 was higher in the past
    This article seems to acknowledge that the skeptics are completely right. Skeptics do not say that CO2 has no effect, but that it is not the driving force. It is acknowledged in this article that there have been other driving forces in the past that far outweighed the influence of CO2, and it is not a large leap to conclude that there are driving forces today that outweigh CO2.
    Response: The best way to determine whether other driving forces outweigh CO2 forcing is to actually examine all the forcings that drive climate today. This analysis has been done and it's found that CO2 is the greatest forcing and also the fastest rising.
  25. Skeptical Science housekeeping: Contradictions, URLs and getting hacked
    #26, JR -- That's what I was asking for! Notice the scare quotes around 'pro-warmer camp'. Anyway, as HR @23 points out, there are likely to be some contradictions in the science and these contradictions focus sincere scientific effort on issues for which solutions are equivocal (rather than on the central question of AGW which is well worked-out). That would be a major difference between the two lists of contradictions -- the AGW-denier contradictions that have any scientific basis are likely to focus on issues that have been resolved long ago.
  26. The 5 characteristics of scientific denialism
    A factor that feeds scientific denialism characteristic "1. Conspiracy Theories," is misunderstanding of the day to day practicalities of scientific work. Most people who are not working scientists get their impression of the scientific enterprise from movies and TV, where scientific organizations are monolithic, uniformly high-tech, and incredibly well organized. One case of this problem is the CSI effect. The reality is far messier and more mundane, and not just for climate science. Every morning while I'm packing my lunch, I listen to my housemate using his beat-up cell phone at the kitchen table while he is eating his oatmeal, in a conference call to plan the Mars rovers' next few days of activities. My office was a cubicle right next to the chronically malfunctioning restroom with missing ceiling tiles, in a trailer; after three years I got an office with a door, but it's still in the trailer and the restroom is unchanged, right down to the missing ceiling tiles. James Hansen is not the boss of everybody at NASA. Goddard runs no temperature stations. It is not true that all the world's temperature stations are obliged to report their temperatures to Goddard. Gentle cajoling and personal contacts often are needed for Goddard to acquire temperature data from people who have stations' data, and even to discover that stations' data exist. Even the national weather services that are supposed to get stations' data, often must resort to cajoling and personal contacts. Only a tiny minority of temperature stations have automatic satellite or phone line delivery of their data to anywhere, let alone Goddard. Raw data frequently, even usually, are not useful until they have been processed, sometimes drastically. That includes ground station temperature measurements. Nor do satellites directly measure temperature, any more than real criminologists' lab equipment spits out instant DNA matches from blood samples. Temperature must be inferred by manipulating the satellites' raw data, and also must be inferred by manipulating the ground stations' raw data. When the LCROSS spacecraft sent its data about the moon impact on October 9, many members of the public were disappointed because the images were not spectacular, and because the LCROSS team made only vague statements about the presence of water. Not until a month later was the announcement of strong evidence for lots of water. Conspiracy theorists could assume that the raw data indicated lack of water, or that the raw data after CSI-like processing in minutes indicated lack of water. So conspiracy theorists could take the one-month lag in the report of water's discovery, and especially the difference between the low-key, equivocal initial announcements and the subsequent elated, strong announcements, as evidence that the LCROSS scientists spent the month manipulating the original data into supporting their desired conclusion. But the reality is that spectral analysis is very tricky. There are sub-sub-specialties in spectral analysis, so there aren't many people in the world who are capable of doing the particular kind of analysis that was appropriate to LCROSS. Even those people had to do lots of different analyses, each time reflecting on the results before designing the next kind of analysis. And the spectral analyses' results had to be interpreted by specialists in other fields. A month of much longer than 40-hour work weeks by a whole bunch of smart, dedicated, experienced, underpaid people was necessary to finally produce the conclusion that in a movie would have appeared on Clint Howard's computer screen as a red flashing "Water Present!" message after a tense 15 seconds of waiting after the LCROSS impact. Genuine working scientists know that's how all fields of science really work. Unfortunately, people who took a few science classes, and even some people who got undergraduate degrees in science (alas, even some people who got Masters degrees) do not know that. That's an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
  27. Skeptical Science housekeeping: Contradictions, URLs and getting hacked
    John Cook: Also, it's time to also check the Skeptical Science iPhone app for bugs. -- frankbi
  28. Skeptical Science housekeeping: Contradictions, URLs and getting hacked
    Steve L: Perhaps you'd be so kind as to highlight any "'pro-warmer camp' contradictions" so that the scientists who frequent this site can discuss them for our benefit? The only 'contradiction' that I can think of at the moment is that of the Antarctic sea ice increasing at the same time as the temperature of the Southern Ocean rises -- an anomaly that has been discussed in some detail (see 'No 10' in the 'Most Used Skeptic Arguments' list).
  29. The 5 characteristics of scientific denialism
    gallopingcamel writes: In most cases there will be local files that could be used to rebuild the files at NASA, NOAA & CRU. For example you can be sure that Canada's Weather Office keeps copies of all the data it sends to NOAA. Rebuilding the raw data files is likely to require a large effort so would it be worthwhile? Neither NOAA nor NASA have "lost" any data, and there are no files that need to be "rebuilt." Canada (and other countries) have been slow in updating their own data in the international GHCN database. NOAA and NASA properly use all the data in GHCN. They cannot use data that other countries have not yet provided.
  30. Skeptical Science housekeeping: Contradictions, URLs and getting hacked
    #23 HR -- why not post 'pro-warmer camp' contradictions in the comments here?
  31. The 5 characteristics of scientific denialism
    gallopingcamel, you are incorrect (again) in assuming the raw station data have been "lost" and so are in need of "rebuilding" the files at NASA, NOAA, and CRU. As many people have explained to you repeatedly, and as the scientists themselves have explained in their publications repeatedly, temperature data dribble in from weather stations around the world, over the course of years and even decades. Even "dribble in" is a misleading phrase, because it implies a single, central authority to whom all the stations must report. In reality, temperature data often languish in notebooks in offices or homes for years until somebody discovers and sends the notebooks to somebody in that nation's or state's meteorological organization, who in turn might have them under a pile of papers in their office for years, until they get around to typing them up in, say, a paper printed report that nobody outside that office sees, until somebody from the outside inquires for the eighth time and finally gets ahold of the printed report, then months later finds time to transcribe the numbers from the report into a database. Consequently, the big databases get updated every month not just with new data that are the newest to be gathered at the stations, but also with data that were gathered long ago but are "new" in this database. Those data never were "lost" from the big database. They never were "lost" from anywhere. They simply took a long time to make their way into the database.
  32. The 5 characteristics of scientific denialism
    Perhaps some people are confused by the term "dropped," as in "dropped stations." That term does not always mean a person took the action of dropping a station's data, as in "those stations' data were dropped by Goldmember." That term also is used to mean the passive new absence of data, as in "The video stream had dropouts" and "That station was in the first ten years of data but then dropped out." That latter sentence does not mean that ten years of that station's data initially were there but then vanished. In the context of a series of data from that station, that sentence means that the station as a data provider dropped out of the series. It does not mean that the data the station already had provided have dropped out. In other words, it means "Data were gotten from that station for every year of the ten years up through 1994, but no data were gotten from that station from 1995 on." Perhaps some commenters whose first language is not English are especially susceptible to misunderstanding that term's use here, since the differences are subtle. Maybe some of them could provide explanations of that term in other languages?
  33. gallopingcamel at 02:47 AM on 21 March 2010
    The 5 characteristics of scientific denialism
    Marcel (#127), Your remarks seem entirely reasonable. In my opinion it is not likely that much of the raw station data is irretrievably lost. In most cases there will be local files that could be used to rebuild the files at NASA, NOAA & CRU. For example you can be sure that Canada's Weather Office keeps copies of all the data it sends to NOAA. Rebuilding the raw data files is likely to require a large effort so would it be worthwhile? Most of the people on this blog seem to be arguing that the outcome would be the same with 6,000 stations as it is with 950. However, that assumes "facts not in evidence". To get back to the main subject of this thread, this discussion has clearly demonstrated all five of the "characteristics of scientific denialism". Unfortunately, the vast majority of the posts demonstrating these traits are from AGW Alarmists. The Alarmists display additional failings owing to their unwarranted certainty that has no place in science. Until Climategate they were often inclined to go as far as to claim "the science is settled" while personally attacking anyone who disagreed with them. Real scientists disagree over scientific hypotheses and then start looking for ways to test those hypotheses.
  34. The 5 characteristics of scientific denialism
    One final point (I've already contributed way too many words to this topic!) Watts has a rather problematic history with this kind of thing. He got his start with the "Surface Stations" project, in which he and others made a lot of strong accusations that various problems with the fine-scale siting of met stations were artificially inflating the temperature trend. He's posted lots of photographs of stations, and lots of blog posts suggesting that these have "contaminated" the temperature record. But he still hasn't done a single quantitative analysis of the actual impact on the trend of these siting issues. There have been at least one early non-peer-reviewed analysis of Watts's data (by John V. with OpenTemp) and one new peer-reviewed paper (Menne 2010) on this topic. As discussed in John's post here (On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record), Menne 2010 seems to show that there is no significant impact on the temperature trend from the kinds of site classification issues that Watts had raised. Now, Watts has criticized JohnV and Menne et al. for publishing their analyses using incomplete data (not all the Surface Station site classifications were completed). But Watts certainly didn't wait before making the claims that the record was "contaminated"! Ethically speaking, he should have had convincing evidence first before making these claims. Instead, he blames others for trying to clean up the mess he created by his premature assumption that the surface station trend is inflated. Watts responded to Menne 2010 by publishing the "Policy Driven Deception" paper about station dropouts. Once again, he was making very strong and potentially libelous accusations against people based on a leap of reasoning (fewer cold stations must mean an artificial warming trend). Once again, he didn't do the quantitative analysis before making the accusations. And once again, when people started looking into this, they found that the evidence seems to contradict Watts's claims. So this isn't just a one-time thing. Twice now, Watts has unleashed serious allegations against NOAA and NASA without having the evidence to back up his claims. Both times, it's fallen to other people to do that analysis and prove Watts wrong.
  35. The 5 characteristics of scientific denialism
    Marcel Bökstedt writes: One could think of weak points in TC. For instance, it is not peer reviewed. Yes, I agree. Apparently Tamino has submitted or will be submitting a paper based on his analysis for publication. I believe Zeke Hausfather has also speculated about doing that. In the past on this site I've tried to only cite peer-reviewed works, but on this topic we have some rather nasty allegations that people are "conspiring" to increase the temperature trend, and there aren't yet any peer reviewed studies. It is also not entirely clear to me that the method is valid - what the statistical analysis can show is that the difference between A and B is small in the periods when the data from B is available. That suggests, but does not completely prove that they don't differ after that time. I feel that there is a need for a method discussion here. Well, people have tried different ways of looking at this. For example, Zeke Hausfather and Ron Broberg both looked at different kinds of comparisons (e.g., high latitude vs low latitude stations, high altitude vs low altitude, rural vs non-rural, etc.) I think those comparisons do a good job of addressing the argument that the dropout stations and non-dropout stations were drawn from different populations with different trends. There does not in fact seem to be a significant difference in the trend among any of those populations (rural, high lat, high alt, etc.) Anyway, Marcel, thanks for your long and thoughtful comments, which I generally agree with.
  36. The 5 characteristics of scientific denialism
    gallopingcamel writes: Ned (#112), you denigrate the IEA and anyone else with evidence that conflicts with your unshakable faith. I didn't "denigrate" the IEA, I simply stated the facts. You said that CRU "gets data from" the IEA. That's wrong. IEA is not a meteorological organization and they don't have any weather stations. They're a right-wing economic "think tank" that issues press releases and position papers. In similar fashion you have completely missed the point about Tamino. If he has the full and truncated surface station data sets from NOAA, NASA or UEA he needs to prove it. [...] You seem to believe that dropping stations makes no difference to the results of the analysis. You may be right but how you can prove it without comparing the full data to the truncated data? I provided links to not just one but three different people who each did these comparisons. Since you seem to have missed it, I'll provide the links again: Here is Tamino's analysis of trends associated with pre- and post-dropout GHCN data: link. It shows no effect. Here is Zeke Hausfather's analysis of trends associated with pre- and post-dropout GHCN data: link. It also shows no effect. Here is Ron Broberg's analysis of trends associated with pre- and post-dropout GHCN data: link. It also shows no effect. Each of those links has a graph showing a comparison of stations that dropped out before some particular date with those that did not drop out. I don't know why you say Tamino needs to "prove" anything. All the data he used are publicly available, and he described his methods in more than sufficient detail for them to be replicated. And thus at least two other people have now managed to show the same thing using their own analyses. Again, however, when Watts and D'Aleo publish a report claiming that NOAA and NASA have been conspiring to inflate the temperature trend by selectively dropping cooler stations, it's not up to Tamino or someone else to prove them wrong. It's up to them to provide evidence to support their claims. And since those are very serious allegations, they should have had ironclad evidence in hand before publishing. Unfortunately, they have no evidence at all of any actual effect on the trend. They didn't have that evidence before they published, and they still haven't been able to provide any evidence or to refute any of the above-linked studies showing that they're wrong. The behavior of Watts and D'Aleo in this instance was the height of irresponsibility. If they had any sense of shame they'd apologize to the people at NOAA and NASA, and to the readers whom they misled. I collect energetic photons for a living and the idea of discarding 80% of them before starting my analysis is beyond absurd. Did you miss the explanation that NASA and NOAA do not delete stations? As I said in my earlier comment: "And neither NASA nor NOAA are 'eliminating' weather stations -- they use the data that are provided to GHCN by participating national meteorological programs in other countries, and in some cases those stations are dropped by their home countries or there are delays in reporting. For example, with Canada, there are many more stations with data currently through 2008 which presumably will be providing updated data at some point. If you have a problem with this, complain to Canada, not to NASA or NOAA." The only thing that's "beyond absurd" here is that you persist in attacking the honest, hardworking scientists of NOAA and NASA for a situation (declining station numbers) that is (a) not their fault, and (b) does not actually bias the temperature trend. From my perspective, this whole "station drop-out" argument perfectly illustrates the five characteristics of denialism that John refers to in this post: 1. Conspiracy Theories: The report by D'Aleo and Watts is actually titled "Policy Driven Deception" and includes allegations like "NOAA and NASA conspired in the manipulation of global temperature records" and "there has been a coordinated effort to manipulate instrumental data. This manipulation has produced an exaggerated warming that is blamed on man’s influence." 2. Fake Experts: You cited Watts, D'Aleo, and the Moscow-based economic think-tank IEA. Geo Guy cited SPPI and EM Smith. All of these are perfect examples of "fake experts." 3. Cherry Picking: Geo Guy originally claimed NOAA uses "just one thermometer [for measuring] everything north of latitude 65 degrees." I pointed out that there are in fact many, many stations north of latitude 65. Berényi Péter then said that, well, the claim actually just refers to stations in Canada north of 65 that have contributed data to GHCN since 2008. 4. Impossible Expectations: You have complained repeatedly about NOAA and NASA "discarding" data when other countries have failed to keep stations running or to update their data in GHCN. This is like blaming the post office for not delivering a letter that the sender left sitting on their own desk. 5. Misrepresentation and Logical Fallacies: This is perhaps the most important point in this thread. Watts and D'Aleo make the assumption that when high-latitude stations drop out it makes the global trend warmer. That is on its face illogical, since on average those stations have been warming faster than the globe as a whole, so dropping them should introduce a cooling bias (if the gridding process weren't able to compensate for station dropout, which it is). Several people have now empirically demonstrated that Watts and D'Aleo's illogical claims are false, by analysis of actual dropped vs non-dropped stations (and by other methods as well). So ... I'd say that this thread hit all the major points of the Diethelm & McKee 2009 paper. Back to gallopingcamel: If it will help this discussion get out of a rut, I don't know whether the station drop out causes a warming bias or a cooling bias. Or no statistically significant bias at all? In any case, glad to hear that you're finally willing to say this. Perhaps we can move on now, and let NASA and NOAA get back to their work without further harassment.
  37. Marcel Bökstedt at 21:58 PM on 20 March 2010
    The 5 characteristics of scientific denialism
    gallopingcamel> Indeed, there does seem to be some kind of serious break down of communications here. I don't know much about the actual facts behind this, I'm just trying to figure out the various positions on the question. There seem to be several points at stake, but discussing them all at once will probably just increase the confusion, so lets concentrate on the meaning and importance of the missing (Canadian and other) stations. There has been a very emotional debate about this on other sites, so we have to be very very careful here and try to behave like detached scientists. Or if thats not possible, at least try to behave. No one seems to deny that there are many stations that reported earlier, which are not reporting today. It's not entirely clear to me if the data from them is has been recorded, but not in digital form, or if the data was never collected. In any case, for our purpose, it does not exist. It's always better to have more data, so from that point of view it is sad that the stations are not there, but we can't do much about that. To make this worse, it seems possible that there is a bias in the sample, that stations in high and cold places dropped out first. On the other hand, our record will never be totally complete, because there will always be a point on Earth where there is no thermometer. So how do we handle this. We can't recreate the missing data. We can still compute a global temperature from the data we have, but we don't know if it is exactly the same as what we would have obtained from a more complete record. This is actually a very common situation in science: How do we use the data we have as well as possible, and how sure can we be that our incomplete data set (data sets are ALWAYS incomplete) tells us the true story? I think that what I have said so far is more or less acceptable to all involved, yes? But we are getting into deeper water. The point where it seems to be a total break down of communications is about Tamino's comments. The way I understand this (correct me if I'm wrong), he analyses data which I understand to be publically available? He divides the available data into two piles: A is the pile of data from stations that have been available for all time, B is the pile of data from the other stations, those that we lost on the way. We would all be happy if we could compute the global average temperature at all times from A+B. We can't do that, since B is only partially available. However, we can compute the average over A at all times, and compare with the average of A+B (as available).Tamino claims that they essentially agree, but that A+B(as available) shows more warming than A. The deatails of this would depend on exactly how we conpute the average etc... I haven't checked on it. If he is correct, it strongly suggests that the hypothetically computed average of B would show stronger warming than the computed average of A, and thus the hypothetically computed average of A+B(complete) would show stronger warming than the computed average of A+B(as available). So the missing stations would underestimate the warming. I think that the math is clear - if we believe Taminos result, A+B(as available) is underestimating global warming. This implication should be uncontroversial, yes? The controversial point is whether or not we believe Tamino's claim, TC. Since communication is difficult around that nexus, I expect that I have misunderstood, so please bear over with me and correct me if I'm using strawman tactics here. I don't intend to. I think that gallopingcamel says : (1) I only belive TC if you can produce the total data set B (2) If Tamino has FULL access to the total data set B, he has to prove it. (3) We are discarding 80% of the data BEFORE the analysis. My answers would be (1) is clearly an impossible condition to fulfil, and gallopingcamel is aware of it. (2) Tamino does not claim to have access to B, only to publically available data. (3) It seems to me that we are not discarding any data - some data is simply not available to us. But this only stands for me, and it's probably not concensus. Maybe gallopingcamel could comment on it anyhow - whether I have misrepresented him, what he really wants to say, and if and why he does not agree with my answers? Still, one can have doubts about TC. If it is wrong, we are troubles, because than we know less than we thought about what is coming our way. One could think of weak points in TC. For instance, it is not peer reviewed. Incidently, neither are the claims to the contrary. It is also not entirely clear to me that the method is valid - what the statistical analysis can show is that the difference between A and B is small in the periods when the data from B is available. That suggests, but does not completely prove that they don't differ after that time. I feel that there is a need for a method discussion here. But we are getting into difficult territory. The paper of Peterson and Vose does not seem to approach this particular problem. There are others who have been doing the analysis (Ned links to them), and they seem to get results similar to Tamino. For what it is worth, there is also supporting evidence that the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the globe, which would suggest that if we are missing data points in the North, we would underestimate global warming, not overestimate it.
  38. Skeptical Science housekeeping: Contradictions, URLs and getting hacked
    sorry to hear that john. this has become my favorite site to visit daily to get the real science debated. as most will know i'm not in total agreement with all that is posted here but i love the website and am glad you take the time to keep it up. and i'm a fan of doug bostom too! glad you were able to catch the hack and hopefully you've fixed all issues. keep up the good work.
    Response: Thanks Gary, I hope I'm able to speak to those I disagree with as much respect as you do - it's a credit to you.
  39. gallopingcamel at 16:31 PM on 20 March 2010
    The 5 characteristics of scientific denialism
    Ned (#115), the SSTs were very high into January 2010. I found a link at UAH that showed the February 2010 SST sharply lower but it has disappeared. Can anybody help me out?
  40. gallopingcamel at 16:05 PM on 20 March 2010
    The 5 characteristics of scientific denialism
    JMurphy (#113), this may be a "Failure to Communicate" (cf. Cool Hand Luke). I believe that the world has been warming for the last ~10,000 years and that there has been significant warming since 1850, probably in the range 0.7 and 0.9 degrees Celsius. Satellite data has only been available for ~37 years but over that time scale there has been a warming trend. In short, I agree that warming has occurred . My point is that there has been a cooling trend since 1998, contrary to what Hansen et al. claim, based on surface station records. Here is the UAH data converted into a graph: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/03/uah-global-temperature-anomaly-for-june-09-zero/ Here is NASA's view based on surface station records: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/ These graphs appear to be diverging over the last 12 years. Am I wrong?
  41. gallopingcamel at 14:56 PM on 20 March 2010
    The 5 characteristics of scientific denialism
    Ned (#112), you denigrate the IEA and anyone else with evidence that conflicts with your unshakable faith. If the IEA is wrong, their allegations will evaporate as soon as the UEA/CRU demonstrates they used and published the full data sets from Russia. Until the CRU does that you are "Whistling Dixie". Enjoy "Russia Today" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElPunkm1zYQ In similar fashion you have completely missed the point about Tamino. If he has the full and truncated surface station data sets from NOAA, NASA or UEA he needs to prove it. Only folks who have not heard of Climategate accept the word of climate scientists or their statisticians "Ex Cathedra". I collect energetic photons for a living and the idea of discarding 80% of them before starting my analysis is beyond absurd. When "Climate Scientists" at NASA, NOAA, the UEA or the denizens of this blog fail to understand such a simple point, it is hard for me to take them seriously. You seem to believe that dropping stations makes no difference to the results of the analysis. You may be right but how you can prove it without comparing the full data to the truncated data? OK, so I am repeating myself but you keep refuting allegations I am not making. If it will help this discussion get out of a rut, I don't know whether the station drop out causes a warming bias or a cooling bias. There is some work (not peer reviewed) suggesting that the records have been biased in both directions: http://diggingintheclay.blogspot.com/2009/12/physically-unjustifiable-noaa-ghcn.html What I like about the above link is that it is specific enough to allow fact checking. Rather like post (#102) in this thread.
  42. HumanityRules at 13:24 PM on 20 March 2010
    Skeptical Science housekeeping: Contradictions, URLs and getting hacked
    21.John Russell at 10:02 AM on 20 March, 2010 I'm not sure of the absolute logic of poster #12 on Richard Black's blog but it does highlight something I'd started to notice about that blog. Last year the blog focussed almost completely on climate change. This year it's shifted to a mix of biodiversity/enviroment and climate. The climate posts get maybe 10x more posts than the biodiversity posts. This suggests a far greater interest in climate than environment at least among his readers. Although it's hard to identify cause and effect. On the contradiction list. The last paragraph stole my thunder. It's is completely unscientific to set up the two oppositional camps (deniers and warmers) and then highlight the contradictions within one camp. Science is a dynamic ever changing process. Contradiction is the norm, seeking to use all powers to remove it (apart from empirical evidence) srikes me as dogma. It's the political and moral imperative that seeks to setup this strong delineation of ideas. Having said that there's no opportunity to show contradictions in the pro-warmer camp.
  43. It's cosmic rays
    I'm brand new to this forum and a bit intimidated by some very good-looking and well-researched science in these posts. I've been involved in cosmic ray research for several years and have followed the recent cosmic rays-cause-climate-change brouhaha with some skepticism. Perhaps I can clear up a few subtleties of the argument that seem important to this thread. First of all, its best to define terms: nearly all cosmic rays (CRs) detected at the surface of the earth are of solar origin, the result of collisions between primary particles (mostly protons in the solar wind) and nuclei in the upper atmosphere. The energy of these collisions throw off a chain of secondary particle interactions; what we routinely see are the muons and neutrons. On the other hand, the primary particles of Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCRs) are protons and heavier nuclei (up to Fe) from distant stars. Now then: At #3, there's a mention of CR energies and that only CRs of 10GeV or more produce secondary particles. Here is the standard chart of the CR energy spectrum, presented as measured particle flux vs. energy. Note that there are lots of 10 GeV CRs; what excites CR researchers these days are events around the "knee" -- 10^6 GeV or more. But it is well known that secondary particles (mostly muons) are generated by lower energy primary particles. We can even stop these muons with appropriate detectors. At #6, alpha particles don't get that far. As the decay scheme suggests, if any of these secondary particles are potential cloud-formers, betas (aka e- and e+) are the most likely culprits. At #12 there's a mention of GCR flux and the statement that GCR flux is now constant. This is where it gets complicated: during low periods in the solar cycle, we observe more GCRs. GCR flux is hardly constant. NASA recently found the GCR level to be 19% higher than previous records. This article proposes several mechanisms for this apparent paradox, not the least of which is the weakened solar magnetic field. The 10Be ice core data is mentioned in #15: for the last 500 years shown here, there seems to be about a 100 year cycle to 10Be peaks. Some of these peaks are coincident with low sunspot numbers (which is true of the 2009 GCR high-sunspot low). Problem is those peaks aren't very wide, so it seems that concluding much about causality or a 6 month lag or lead at this scale is a bit chicken and egg. Here's another science thread on this topic from last year. Finally, CERN's CLOUD project would be a controlled study of cloud formation by ionizing particles. No data yet.
  44. Skeptical Science housekeeping: Contradictions, URLs and getting hacked
    This Richard Black guy sounds hilarious John Russell. An intelligent person would have recognized that failure to limit the fishing of blue-fin tuna was driven by the same combination of RealPolitik & economic fundamentalism that drives the refusal to act on Global Warming.
  45. The 5 characteristics of scientific denialism
    Ned, lovely comment here. Repetition is indeed one characteristic of a poor argument. This is also a frequent tactic in psychology - repeating a question over and over, forcing the patient to explain in greater and greater detail, until they have eventually said much more than they intended. In the case of bad arguments, it seems to be used to draw out some overstatements, rather than actually trying to discuss what has been said.
  46. Skeptical Science housekeeping: Contradictions, URLs and getting hacked
    When they've run out of 'scientific' sceptic arguments, some deniers turn to emotional blackmail. This is comment 12 from Richard Black's latest blog post on the BBC regarding the failure to limit the fishing of the endangered blue fin tuna: "By concentrating on the just the single dodgy issue of AGW, ad nauseum, we’ve basically killed off the blue fin tuna. ..I hope that you’re very happy with yourselves - Pats on the back all round.......... "
  47. Skeptical Science housekeeping: Contradictions, URLs and getting hacked
    Um, I did not read where John said that it was skeptics that hacked his site. In reality, it was more then likely an organized trawling group. They look for popular sites/blogs. that maybe are not hard to crack, then try to get personnal info, to create ID theft. A lot of times they will vandalize the site they crack if the "goodies" are not very useful. No need for secrecy then you see. Anyway John, glad to hear that you got this nipped in the bud. Have had a small brush with ID theft before and it is very scary!
  48. A peer-reviewed response to McLean's El Nino paper
    Oh, sorry. I was just agreeing with how Tony had summarized the problems with the McLean 2009 paper. But thanks for the reminder about the authorship of Foster et al. I also have great respect for Tamino, though I think he sometimes lets his temper get the better of his judgment. I do read Tamino's site every day, and find it immensely valuable. But as I get older and maybe or maybe not wiser I find that I prefer the calm, insult-free environment that John Cook and many of the commenters have managed to create over here (at least in the more non-political threads).
  49. Skeptical Science housekeeping: Contradictions, URLs and getting hacked
    After the hacking, could someone have stolen my e-mail address? I don't want to see denialist propaganda in my e-mail. (last time I commented in WUWT I was equated to a maoist terrorist. These deniers have no idea of minimum decency)
  50. Skeptical Science housekeeping: Contradictions, URLs and getting hacked
    There are some contradictions that doesn't seem so contradictory (actually a lot of pairs seem unrelated pairs of arguments). I guess it is so because the contradiction section is still in construction phase. I am right?

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