Anybody want to argue global warming?

[BlackCat]

That piece is even more controversial than the hockey stick.

http://www.reportingclimatescience.com/news-stories/article/statisticians-slam-random-global-warming-hockey-stick-graph.html

But the important thing is that it doesn't really matter if the hockey stick paper was perfect or not. It's only one of thousands of bits of evidence.

And I think their concerns were covered by the 2007 New Scientist:

I think that Ogie has in a very gentlemanlike way expressed what are to say about MM & al.'s statistical knowledge, so I won't comment that.

Though, I can't resist to comment this from the "ROBUST RESPONSE" part - "the absence of both proper data quality control and appropriate “pseudoproxy” tests" could easily be translated into "they weren't able to cherrypick" by a suspicious mind. I look forward to McShane and Wyner's response.

http://www.grist.org/article/the-hockey-stick-is-broken

From grist 2006:



Science will always move on. To continually hammer on one old study out of thousands, that most agree isn't great, and ignore the volume of evidence is a classic denier technique.

It's the same thing as seizing on a paper saying "we don't know how this organism evolved this trait" and claiming it means Evolution isn't real, because it can't explain anything, even if there are hundreds of papers explaining how similar traits evolved.

This is a nice collection of garbage.

Science will always move on. To continually hammer on one old study out of thousands, that most agree isn't great

Why do you mind that - it's the scientific method at work.

and ignore the volume of evidence is a classic denier technique.

Wich volume ? If you are talking about all the massive well documented evidence of GW, then you are wrong. All that evidence isn't supporting the hockey stick.

It's the same thing as seizing on a paper saying "we don't know how this organism evolved this trait" and claiming it means Evolution isn't real, because it can't explain anything, even if there are hundreds of papers explaining how similar traits evolved.

It's actually quite opposite - The hockey stick "proves" that current climate is unprecedented so therefore GW must be AGW.

Honestly, Michael Mann is the worst thing that has hit science in the last 20 years because we no longer research in natural causes of climate change and those that dares are miscredited, loose their fundings etc.

Mike, let me guess a little - you are an ardent reader of realclimate.com - maybe even a busy commenter - your argumentation in this thread certainly indicates that.

I really only visit that site when I for some obscure reason want to revive discussions with Ben Kenobi, I certainly don't go there for a scientific discussuion since that is impossible if you doesn't agree.

[BlackCat]

That piece is even more controversial than the hockey stick.

Just curious - did you read it and tried to understand it, or did you just google for opponents ?

[MikeH]

I've never heard of realclimate.com.

I used to live with a group of Hadley Centre Climate Scientists.

[MikeH]

Just curious - did you read it and tried to understand it, or did you just google for opponents ?

Actually, both.

Wich volume ? If you are talking about all the massive well documented evidence of GW, then you are wrong. All that evidence isn't supporting the hockey stick.

It's actually quite opposite - The hockey stick "proves" that current climate is unprecedented so therefore GW must be AGW.

Science hammering away at any theory, hockey stick or otherwise, is excellent. Climate change deniers 'hammering away' by focusing on one 20 year old paper, and ignoring the other thousands of pieces of evidence of AGW is retarded.

I should have kept my point clear. Focusing on the hockey stick, suggesting it is the only thing that ever suggested there was global warming, and suggesting that if that study is crap it proves global warming is wrong is misguided, deliberately misleading, ignores the other evidence, but is a good tool to make people appear like they are wrong.

[MikeH]

I didn't realise the hadley centre had this site, brilliant stuff.

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/indicators/11keyindicators.html

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

I should have kept my point clear. Focusing on the hockey stick, suggesting it is the only thing that ever suggested there was global warming, and suggesting that if that study is crap it proves global warming is wrong is misguided, deliberately misleading, ignores the other evidence, but is a good tool to make people appear like they are wrong.

But thats the point, skeptics fall into a miriad of camps, from the extreme who put their fingers in their ears and say "lal lal la, your making it all up" to those who acknowledge warming (albeit with skepticism to the integrity of the 3 main world data records). The proof of global warming is rather secondary to the claims that the warming is unprecented in both magnitude and rate of change. Both of these particular charges rely on some form of historical record that precedes the instrument record of the last 150 years. Thus some proxy must fit the bill in order to establish the global temperature record. To date each of the reconstruction has been shown to have serious statsitical flaws regardless of the underlying "science".


In summary it still remains the lynchpin of the claim of unprecedented magnitude of temperature and rate of change (within a 'reasonable' length of time) and thus implies an external forcing of temperature from means other than natural variation (manmade).

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

I think that Ogie has in a very gentlemanlike way

It is never my intention to be gentlemenly, accidents happen.

Honestly, Michael Mann is the worst thing that has hit science in the last 20 years because we no longer research in natural causes of climate change and those that dares are miscredited, loose their fundings etc.

After the Penn State inquiry/white wash on his misconduct, I have foresworn any further alumni contributions until such time as he is no longer a PSU employee.

[MikeH]

In summary it still remains the lynchpin of the claim of unprecedented magnitude of temperature and rate of change (within a 'reasonable' length of time) and thus implies an external forcing of temperature from means other than natural variation (manmade).

Whether or not the magnitude of the rate of change of temperature is unprecedented or not is only a part of the story. We have relatively weak (although not as weak as you think) evidence for historical change.

The other part of the story is understanding how the atmosphere works, modelling what we expect to happen with increasing CO2 levels and measuring those levels and observing the effects. The incoming data keeps backing up the predictions of AGW.

This is how science works, you take past observations (however weak the data is) make predictions from them, test the predictions and see if they fit your theory. Some of the detail of the theory is

And if you think the data for historical temperature record is bad, you should see some of the data they have in other areas of science. When I looked at the best available data on Quasars (in 1997, my final year research project) I was shocked by just how few data points there were and how huge the error margins were. The data was weak, but people had modelled from what they knew about various different things and the observations, made some predictions and tested them and improved the models and are continuing to do that and generally finding that their theories are generally good (if not perfect in every detail). But you don't hear people in the media regularly banging on about weaknesses in initial observations of Quasar theory, or arguing that the science is all bad. Because people don't have vested interests in 'disproving' how Quasars work.

That's what's happening with AGW. And people are tweaking and improving the theories all the time, but so far the theory is standing up to thousands of scientists testing it. We have a deluge of data. Millions and millions of data points from thousands of research projects and thousands of climate scientists concur about what the data is showing.

But still, that's not enough for people. It's insanity.

[MikeH]

And in my view someone who denies human activity is driving climate change is just as much of a delusional nut-job as someone who denies things are warming at all.

It's just got so obvious things are warming people have realised that they just sound moronic if they try and pretend it isn't happening.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

And in my view someone who denies human activity is driving climate change is just as much of a delusional nut-job as someone who denies things are warming at all.

It's just got so obvious things are warming people have realised that they just sound moronic if they try and pretend it isn't happening.

You continue to miss the point. The historical record holds value not so much as to whether or not man has had impact to AGW but more how great an impact could he have as a function of historical rates of change.

Much of the controversy is not that AGW exists but what are the weights of the various forcings. CO2 forcing in of itself is a rather weak contributor to overall global temps, the associated postive feedbacks to other proposed feedbacks (methane release from siberian tundra, retained heat from lower albedo effects from less snow cover, etc.) is where the models start the point of no return-doomsday scenarios.

The weighting of these factors is important because it ultimately determines magnitude of impact and thus what if any resources need be considered.

[MOBIUS]

And in my view someone who denies human activity is driving climate change is just as much of a delusional nut-job as someone who denies things are warming at all.

It's just got so obvious things are warming people have realised that they just sound moronic if they try and pretend it isn't happening.

Exactly. Climate change deniers = creationists by another name...

[Berzerker]

You continue to miss the point. The historical record holds value not so much as to whether or not man has had impact to AGW but more how great an impact could he have as a function of historical rates of change.

Much of the controversy is not that AGW exists but what are the weights of the various forcings. CO2 forcing in of itself is a rather weak contributor to overall global temps, the associated postive feedbacks to other proposed feedbacks (methane release from siberian tundra, retained heat from lower albedo effects from less snow cover, etc.) is where the models start the point of no return-doomsday scenarios.

The weighting of these factors is important because it ultimately determines magnitude of impact and thus what if any resources need be considered.

[BlackCat]

Exactly. Climate change deniers = creationists by another name...

Dammit, I hate when you post something that I agree with - please stop

[BlackCat]

Actually, both.

I was just curious if you were a citation arguer or actually bothered to check the details It of course also made me sad that you, without knowing anything about their arguments, flatly accepted MM's response as it was stated in that you linked to.

Science hammering away at any theory, hockey stick or otherwise, is excellent. Climate change deniers 'hammering away' by focusing on one 20 year old paper, and ignoring the other thousands of pieces of evidence of AGW is retarded.

I fully agree that climate change deniers are stupid, but they are actually rare. What you see are scientists checking the scientific validity of the AGW theory. Strangely that seems to offend you.

I should have kept my point clear. Focusing on the hockey stick, suggesting it is the only thing that ever suggested there was global warming, and suggesting that if that study is crap it proves global warming is wrong is misguided, deliberately misleading, ignores the other evidence, but is a good tool to make people appear like they are wrong.

Again, Ogie has expressed it clearly, so no comment from here.

[giblets]

Exactly. Climate change deniers = creationists by another name...

It's surprising how strongly climate change denying seems to correlate with young earth creationism. And how they both seem to correlate with lack of education.