Catholicism and Climate Change: The Sequel

[Monte_RCMS]

I don’t know. Did they measure in inches?
I have been googling for days and have yet to find anything indicating how these measurements were taken.
I have found the proponents of AGW to be dishonest in the past, I see no reason to trust the measurements now.
It is NOT enough to simply claim a given sea level in 1870.
They need to show how it was obtained.
We use satellite data now, and it is still a tricky process. Yet they want me to believe that in 1870 the tech was available to measure global sea levels.
I do not buy it.

The web page you are referencing does not indicate this.

Cubits are a unit of measure that was used in the past and we have no measure for today.
But more to the point, what if they are measuring in feet?
You see, at that time the main need for measuring depth was to make certain a ship would not scrape the bottom. They had no need for mm accuracy. They likely had no need for accuracy beyond a foot.
So it is very important to know what and how and where these measurements were made.

Tide is not the same as sea level. Tide varies based on time of day and is constantly changing. One cannot take a tide level measurement without also noting time of day and location of the moon in order to use it for much.
Tide at midnight with the moon overhead is going to be redically different from a tide measurement taken the next day at the same time.

Indeed it does.
Is not the default of science skepticism?

I am asking you, now. And it appears you do not have answers.
How are we to accept the science behind any of your claims if you cannot answer for how the results were acheived?
Every chart you bring out suffers this same problem.

Yet another measurement issue goes to the use of scientific standards of measurement. Meaning that there had to be formally accepted lengths for various units of measure.

Probably by 1870 everybody had already agreed on what was an inch and what was a meter.

 

[JasonSB]

The sun is no longer warming the earth?

I will keep that in mind the next time I get in my car on a hot day and find the steering wheel to be too hot to touch…the sun did not do it.

Wow. Okay…

When people talk about “global warming”, vz71, as I did in my comment that you replied to, they are not talking about what happens to your car’s steering wheel.

They are talking about an increase of the average temperature of the entire globe. That’s why the word “globe” is in there rather than the words “steering wheel”. Individual points on the globe may be warming up and cooling down over a 24-hour cycle because of the sun, but not all at the same time.

Now, electromagnetic radiation from the sun obviously warms the globe, and if that electromagnetic radiation was to increase — as it did during the early part of the 20th Century, for example — then it would contribute to global warming (exactly as it did during the early part of the 20th Century). However, since the electromagnetic radiation from the sun hasn’t increased for the last 50 years or so, then we know it isn’t responsible for the current warming. (In fact, if you followed my discussion with Ender, you would have known that the radiation from the sun actually declined over the past decade and so if it wasn’t for the enhanced greenhouse effect during that time the change in the sun’s output would have caused global cooling even while it still caused your steering wheel to get hot during the day.)

(There are other potential mechanisms for the sun to affect the global average temperature rather than simply radiation — such as the sun’s magnetic field affecting the number of galactic cosmic rays striking the earth’s amosphere and thereby possibly affecting cloud nucleation — but these has been no measurable correlation between these other effects and global warming so if they do play a role, it must be small. See skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming-advanced.htm for details.)

I hope that clears up some of your confusion.

 

[JasonSB]

There HAVE been previous warmings.

Lots of them.

Like when the North American glaciers melted.

So, if it wasn’t the sun that did it, what was it?

Who said it wasn’t?

Look, this is not that complicated to understand:

If an arsonist causes a bush fire, it does not mean that previous bush fires therefore could not possibly have been caused by lightening.

Similarly, just because lightening can cause bush fires, it does not mean that an arsonist must be innocent of causing another bush fire.

What we have right now is a theory that predicted that a person lighting a fire in a forest was likely to cause a bush fire before it ever happened. We also have witnesses and photographic evidence of a person lighting a fire in a forest that subsequently engulfed the forest together with observations that there were no clouds, storms, or lightening during the 24 hours prior to the person lighting the fire.

We also have a team of defence lawyers who are simultaneously arguing:

1. Lightning must be responsible because lightning has started bush fires before.
2. There is no scientific proof that lighting a fire in a forest can lead to a bush fire and models are completely useless until they can accurately predict exactly which trees will burn and which will be spared.
3. The witnesses are all corrupt and “tainted” and the photographs have been tampered with (but they expect everybody else to somehow prove they have not).
4. There was no bush fire.
5. There was a bush fire, but nobody has proved that not being in a state of conflagration is in any way “optimal” for the forest.
6. Bush fires are good and we should start more of them.

Have I missed any?

 

[JasonSB]

I don’t know. Did they measure in inches?

You do know that it is possible to convert between mm and inches, don’t you?

I have been googling for days and have yet to find anything indicating how these measurements were taken.

They were taken using tide gauges. If you want to know what design they were, how accurate they were, etc., then I’m afraid you’re going to have to start digging, just like all those scientific researchers have to.

This is a cool resource - you can retrieve scanned in copies of the original logs: bodc.ac.uk/data/online_delivery/historical_uk_tide_gauge_data/search/

Try “Sheerness” for the “Fixed station” and select the period of interest from 1870. Move the mouse around on the image for a zoomed-in view. High and low tides were recorded to the minute and heights were recorded in feet and inches.

If you look at Belfast in 1901 you can see it was automatically recording sea level continuously using a pen on a graph. The graph itself is marked in 1/4 inch graduations.

I have found the proponents of AGW to be dishonest in the past, I see no reason to trust the measurements now.

Who? What were they dishonest about?

It is NOT enough to simply claim a given sea level in 1870.
They need to show how it was obtained.

The last paper I pointed you to (Church et al 2011) shows you where to download the data they used, the list of stations they used, and the results.

You need to look at their earlier papers (which they cite) for details on the algorithms.

We use satellite data now, and it is still a tricky process. Yet they want me to believe that in 1870 the tech was available to measure global sea levels.
I do not buy it.

The “tech” was tide gauges. Tide gauges measure the local sea level at the site they are located. Global sea level is reconstructed by combining the local sea levels, and accuracy is determined taking into account the accuracy of the individual gauge records and the number and distribution of them.

The web page you are referencing does not indicate this.

“Over the past decade, continuous GPS has been used to measure crustal deformation rates and tectonic plate velocities to better than 1 mm/yr.” 1 mm is about 10,000 times more accurate than an individual GPS measurement because GPS accuracy is 10-20 m.

Cubits are a unit of measure that was used in the past and we have no measure for today.

Well, luckily they weren’t measing in cubits then, eh? We’re talking 1870 AD, not BC.

But more to the point, what if they are measuring in feet?

We know how to convert feet into mm as well, and just because a ruler is in feet it doesn’t mean it can’t possibly have any markings on it corresponding to less than a foot.

You see, at that time the main need for measuring depth was to make certain a ship would not scrape the bottom. They had no need for mm accuracy. They likely had no need for accuracy beyond a foot.

Is that so? Strange, then, that the Amsterdam annual mean sea levels from 1700 to 1925 were reported in millimetres and the monthly mean sea levels for Stockholm were reported to the nearest cm from 1774 to 1888 and the nearest mm from 1889 to 2000.

So it is very important to know what and how and where these measurements were made.

Sure. In some cases (e.g. the Port Arthur record from 1840-1842) “details of the tide gauge have not survived” and even the precise location is not known, which means it would be very difficult to use this data, especially since the time period is so short.

Tide is not the same as sea level.

No, but tide is cyclic, so if you average ~24 hours’ worth of sea level readings (or simply the high and low tide readings) you filter out most of the effect of the tide, correct? Average a month’s worth, or a year’s worth, or a decade’s worth, and what do you have?

Tide varies based on time of day and is constantly changing. One cannot take a tide level measurement without also noting time of day and location of the moon in order to use it for much.

Which is precisely why tide gauge data records not only the actual sea level but also the time.

Indeed it does.
Is not the default of science skepticism?

Claiming the work is “bogus” is not skepticism because “bogus” indicates a certainty that it is wrong. Being unconvinced until you see more evidence is different to being convinced that the evidence cannot be correct.

I am asking you, now.

Then why not start with that instead of jumping in and calling stuff “bogus” when you clearly have no idea?

And it appears you do not have answers.

Again assuming facts not in evidence, especially since I’ve tried multiple times to explain why your concerns about units of measurement and “mm levels of accuracy” are wrong.

How are we to accept the science behind any of your claims if you cannot answer for how the results were acheived?
Every chart you bring out suffers this same problem.

If I failed to cite the papers where the graphs came from then you might have a point.

If you correctly understood the meaning of error calculations (as distinct from the units chosen for a graph) and why the accuracy of an average is higher than the accuracy of each individual measurement, you might have a point.

Unfortunately you fail on both of those.

 

[vz71]

They were taken using tide gauges. If you want to know what design they were, how accurate they were, etc., then I’m afraid you’re going to have to start digging, just like all those scientific researchers have to.

You do realize tide is not the same as global sea level…right?

If you look at Belfast in 1901 you can see it was automatically recording sea level continuously using a pen on a graph. The graph itself is marked in 1/4 inch graduations.

No, it didn’t.
As you state above. It recorded tide.

The last paper I pointed you to (Church et al 2011) shows you where to download the data they used, the list of stations they used, and the results.

The results of measuring tide levels, not global sea levels.

The “tech” was tide gauges. Tide gauges measure the local sea level at the site they are located. Global sea level is reconstructed by combining the local sea levels, and accuracy is determined taking into account the accuracy of the individual gauge records and the number and distribution of them.

Do you believe that a measure of small pieces of an outside rim of a body of water really indicate the level of the water as a whole? Have you ever stopped to ask yourself if the tide level really reflects the sea level and why it may or may not?
I do not believe these researchers have checked that either. I believe that these little details were likely left out in the rush to print out whatever dire predictions would support their funding.
Earlier in this thread you took me to task concerning how statistics worked.
So let’s use your advanced knowledge here…can these select square miles of tidal measure really indicate with any accuracy sea level (a very different measurement) of a body of water over 3 million square miles in size?
I submit that the polling sample is too small and it is polling the wrong items to be any use at all in determining sea level of the time.

We know how to convert feet into mm as well, and just because a ruler is in feet it doesn’t mean it can’t possibly have any markings on it corresponding to less than a foot.

Can we afford to assume anything at all more accurate then the foot the measure was taken with?
I guess that would depend on what you want the data to say…

Is that so? Strange, then, that the Amsterdam annual mean sea levels from 1700 to 1925 were reported in millimetres and the monthly mean sea levels for Stockholm were reported to the nearest cm from 1774 to 1888 and the nearest mm from 1889 to 2000.

You are saying sea levels, but thus far have been discussing tide levels.

Sure. In some cases (e.g. the Port Arthur record from 1840-1842) “details of the tide gauge have not survived” and even the precise location is not known, which means it would be very difficult to use this data, especially since the time period is so short.

It means they should not be using the compromised data at all.
But I bet they used it anyway…would I be correct in collecting on that bet?

No, but tide is cyclic, so if you average ~24 hours’ worth of sea level readings (or simply the high and low tide readings) you filter out most of the effect of the tide, correct? Average a month’s worth, or a year’s worth, or a decade’s worth, and what do you have?

You have a bunch of calculations that have failed to take into account tectonic movement.
And even worse, they cannot account for such since they have no readings on it from the time period.
Oops.

Which is precisely why tide gauge data records not only the actual sea level but also the time.

Tide data is useless without knowing the exact time and the exact location.
And its relationship to sea level itself may not be at all what we all expect.

Claiming the work is “bogus” is not skepticism because “bogus” indicates a certainty that it is wrong. Being unconvinced until you see more evidence is different to being convinced that the evidence cannot be correct.

Apologies.
I could not come up with a more accurate word.
They are using measurements of one thing and claiming they are measures of something else.
They are using data of questionable accuracy (and unknown error) without any explanation at all.
They are averaging all of these measures (and all of the varying degree of error which still remain unaccounted for) and claiming it to be a sea level knowing the sample size measured is vastly too small to accurately portray what they claim.
And they are failing to account for the movement of the land itself.
I could say mistaken, but I cannot ignore the alarming result of the work and the funding that inevitably follows.

Again assuming facts not in evidence, especially since I’ve tried multiple times to explain why your concerns about units of measurement and “mm levels of accuracy” are wrong.

You have done an admirable job of trying to explain why I should not be concerned about the unit of measure.
Unfortunately the unit of measure indicates a much deeper problem with the data.

If I failed to cite the papers where the graphs came from then you might have a point.

Agreed, you did properly cite sources behind each of your graphs.
I am not questioning you. I am questioning the accuracy of the papers themselves and simply asking some common sense questions that they should have answers for.
The abscence of the answers to my questions tells a great deal.

 

[Ender]

No, there hadn’t. Why is this so hard to grasp?

Well, I guess because they said: “The trend after removing ENSO (the “ENSO-adjusted” trend) is 0.00°±0.05°C decade–1, implying much greater disagreement with anticipated global temperature rise.” I stopped at the point where they got to 0.00; you continued on to explain why that didn’t actually mean 0 … which strikes me as one of those strange assertions only someone overly educated could believe.

There quite clearly was warming during that decade, whether you use HadCRUT (0.067 °C/decade), GISS (0.197 °C/decade), UAH (0.123 °C/decade), or RSS (0.034 °C/decade).

No one cares about “warming”; people care about whether the warming we experience is naturally explainable or not. HadCRUT showed a warming of 0.067 °C/decade … and NOAA said that amount was the ENSO contribution.

What you want to use to support your claim that there “had been a decade without warming” was a set of ENSO-adjusted temperatures that NOAA themselves qualified as an apparent lack of warming, which they then went on to explain.

They considered it a bit more than an apparent lack of warming:

Near-zero and even negative trends are common for intervals of a decade or less in the simulations, due to the model’s internal climate variability. The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate.

This is the point: all of the models* rule out zero trends for intervals of 15 years*. They show that a 10 year period without warming is within the models parameters, but a 15 period would break all of the models. I think it is pretty clear they recognize we have experienced an “absence of warming” over the past decade. Whether you choose to recognize this or not is immaterial.

What you continually fail to acknowledge is that if you want to calculate ENSO-adjusted temperatures on the basis that ENSO is a cyclic phenomenon, then there is no reason not to go further and take into account other effects, like changes in solar insolation, which declined during that decade.

What I recognize is what NOAA did, and they apparently did not feel the need to “go further.”

…even if temperatures had been flat or gone down for a decade it wouldn’t mean “global warming had ceased” because it can do that purely due to internal climate variability.

True, we need to wait 5 more years (now down to three?) since temperatures were flat (according to NOAA) from 1999-2008.

I see you still haven’t figured out how trends work. Here’s a hint: a trend of 0.0 from 1999 to 2008 does not mean that 2008 was the same temperature as 1999.

If your insults were credible you wouldn’t need to invent situations on which to base them. Keep your hints for someone who needs them.

Ender

 

[Monte_RCMS]

Jason,

As a scientist you have an OBLIGATION to prove your sea level rise/fall measurements are true and accurate.

AND that includes looking at all places where the measurements are being taken AND at all places where the claims of sea level rise are being made … and prove that the land is not subsiding.

 

[kimmielittle]

So what, you believe they really did keep copies of the original data and lied when they said they threw them out?

I’m saying there is evidence that this core cluster group has “integrity” issues - personal and ethical.

Why would they keep the raw data? They already processed it to create the quality-controlled

Can you prove the data is quality controlled? - By who?

Mr Jones says No one has peer reviewed his methodology IN ANY of his papers.

When he was asked how often scientists reviewing his papers for probity before publication asked to see details of his raw data, methodology and computer codes. “They’ve never asked,” he said.

http://forums.catholic-questions.org/picture.php?albumid=1281&pictureid=9397

For the first time he did concede publicly that when he tried to repeat the 1990 study in 2008, he came up with radically different findings. Or, as he put it, “a slightly different conclusion”. Fully 40% of warming there in the past 60 years was due to urban influences. “It’s something we need to consider,” he said.

theregister.co.uk/2010/03/02/parliament_climategate/print.html

http://forums.catholic-questions.org/picture.php?albumid=1281&pictureid=9396
cartoonsbyjosh.com/
Harry Says:

Programmer Ian “Harry” Harris, in the Harry_Read_Me.txt file, commented about:
“[The] hopeless state of their (CRU) data base. No uniform data integrity, it’s just a catalogue of issues that continues to grow as they’re found…I am very sorry to report that the rest of the databases seem to be in nearly as poor a state as Australia was. There are hundreds if not thousands of pairs of dummy stations, one with no WMO and one with, usually overlapping and with the same station name and very similar coordinates. I know it could be old and new stations, but why such large overlaps if that’s the case? Aarrggghhh! There truly is no end in sight.
This whole project is SUCH A MESS. No wonder I needed therapy!!

and homogenised data that they wanted to use. They never set themselves up as being the world’s repository of raw data (some of which they were not allowed to pass on anyway), they asked for the raw data so they could use it in their particular research project.

Just what were they not allowed to pass on? WMO data? Their adjustments to WMO data? Mr Jones, when pressed hard, admitted to only 4 confidential agreements. UK MET A government subsidized identity - taxpayer funded ] .
The list of 4 is here By CRU

cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/availability/agreements.pdf

UK Met Office, Spain, Norway, Bahrain

ALL these identities belong to WMO and IPCC.
ALL Use this data / methodology through IPCC as / in an “Authoritarian” to promote public policy world wide.
ALL promote taxes / laws upon world Citizens.

When “Science / Scientist” become “Authoritarian / Political” to the Worlds Citizens using so called “confidential” …Methods / data / computer codes etc even if at one time a confidential clause was in place ]…TO try to sway public policy UPON EVERY Citizen…IT BELONGS TO EVERY CITIZEN

Jones initially stated that the methods were published in the scientific papers, “there’s no rocket science in them”.

Yet he, himself, admits he can’t reproduce his 1990 study.

On to Model Peer review:

The abstract, however, contains a remarkable admission that the model exaggerates the global warming from 1850 to 2005 by 0.4°C more than observations. The observed global warming from 1850 to 2005 was only 0.6°C, thus the computer model predicted ~ 67% more global warming than actually occurred. This exaggeration alone could account for all of the claimed “heat trapping” from the increase in man-made carbon dioxide over that same 155 year period. IPCC projections for future global warming based upon this model may be similarly greatly exaggerated.

c3headlines.com/2011/06/newest-peer-reviewed-study-experts-find-that-ipcc-climate-models-are-basically-worthless.html

hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2011/05/most-widely-used-climate-computer-model.html

journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2011JCLI4083.1

How stupid is this statement? He has provided all of the source code and all of the RAW data. What more can he do to prove he is not doing anything wrong?

You seem to be having trouble following the debate again. If you are going to claim a statement “stupid” at least try to follow along.

 

[kimmielittle]

1. How can you possibly infer that I was proud of the fact that you have to pay a fee??? I mentioned it as a piece of information in case you then complained that it wasn’t free. Your ability to avoid the topic at hand seems boundless.

Your inabilities to follow debate seems boundless

1. The data is available for free. If you want certified copies then they’ll charge you, presumably because then someone has to be paid to certify the copies — i.e. it has not already been paid for.

Why is NASA - GISS holding UNCERTIFIED copies - in the first place?

Certification
2 confirmation that some fact or statement is true through the use of documentary evidence
3. certification - a document attesting to the truth of certain stated facts

thefreedictionary.com/certification

Soooo…just what does GISS NASA need to “certify”?

That some records held by them are truthful and others don’t hold up?

I do expect that ALL GISS - NASA - GHCN - USHCN - SCAR etc data has some form of IDENTIFIERS on them stating where they originated from?

Such as

sources: GHCN 1880-04/2011 + SST: 1880-11/1981 HadISST1
12/1981-04/2011 Reynolds v2

Soooo…If they stamp their name / organization on it - it’s not enough.

 

[kimmielittle]

As the report released by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences said, anthropogenic changes in the composition of the air and air quality are resulting in 2 million premature deaths worldwide every year and we should reduce worldwide carbon dioxide emissions without delay, using all means possible to meet ambitious international global warming targets, as well as reduce the concentrations of warming air pollutants by as much as 50%.

Hmmmm often quoted…rarely investigated.

Can you document **ANY ** Peer review?
Can you document ANY sources used ?
Can you document ANY claims made?

Are you really a “Scientist”?
Do you do give ALL your “evidences” offered, the same amount of research as you did this , above?

Or do you just throw objectivity out the window and throw garbage to promote your causes?

Hmmmm often quoted…rarely investigated.

ASK me REALLY REALLY NICE and I’ll tell you why you can’t investigate it now.

HINT: Here was the URL for it vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_academies/acdscien/2011/PAS_Glacier_050511_final.pdf

http://forums.catholic-questions.org/picture.php?albumid=1281&pictureid=9398

You won’t find it with :Glacier_050511_final.pdf

Or 050511_final.pdf

Or 050511.pdf

Hmmmm often quoted…rarely investigated.
.
I wonder why The Holy See pulled it???

So you really don’t believe anything counter to your preconceived notions regardless of how patently obvious and well documented it is.

Actually, if I go by your documentation such as above ]…I don’t consider it very useful - I understand that you seem to put a lot of value on such

 

[kimmielittle]

WORTH THE READ: ilovecarbondioxide.com/2009/01/ipcc-exposed.html

It’s an assertion repeated by politicians and climate campaigners the world over – ‘2,500 scientists of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) agree that humans are causing a climate crisis’.

But it’s not true. And, for the first time ever, the public can now see the extent to which they have been misled. As far as lies go, it’s a whopper. Here’s the real situation:

Like the three IPCC ‘assessment reports’ before it, the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) released during 2007 (upon which the UN climate conference in Bali was based) includes the reports of the IPCC’s three working groups. Working Group I (WG I) is assigned to report on the extent and possible causes of past climate change as well as future ‘projections’. Its report is titled “The Physical Science Basis”. The reports from working groups II and II are titled “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability” and “Mitigation of Climate Change” respectively, and since these are based on the results of WG I, it is crucially important that the WG I report stands up to close scrutiny.

There is, of course serious debate among scientists about the actual technical content of the roughly 1,000-page WG I report, especially its politically motivated Summary for Policymakers which is often the only part read by politicians and non-scientists. The technical content can be difficult for non-scientists to follow and so most people simply assume that if that large numbers of scientists agree, they must be right.

Consensus never proves the truth of a scientific claim, but is somehow widely believed to do so for the IPCC reports, so we need to ask how many scientists really did agree with the most important IPCC conclusion, namely that humans are causing significant climate change–in other words the key parts of WG I?

The numbers of scientist reviewers involved in WG I is actually less than a quarter of the whole, a little over 600 in total. The other 1,900 reviewers assessed the other working group reports. They had nothing to say about the causes of climate change or its future trajectory. And many have spoken out against the notion of humans causing any climate changes. Some have even resigned over it, and insist the IPCC does not listen to their opinions. Still, 600 “scientific expert reviewers” sounds pretty impressive. After all, they submitted their comments to the IPCC editors who assure us that “all substantive government and expert review comments received appropriate consideration.” And since these experts reviewers are all listed in Annex III of the report, they must have endorsed it, right?

Wrong.

For the first time ever, the UN had released on the Web the comments of reviewers who assessed the drafts of the WG I report and the IPCC editors’ responses. This release was almost certainly a result of intense pressure applied by “hockey-stick” co-debunker Steve McIntyre of Toronto and his allies. Unlike the other IPCC working groups, WG I is based in the U.S. and McIntyre had used the robust Freedom of Information legislation to request certain details when the full comments were released.

An examination of reviewers’ comments on the last draft of the WG I report before final report assembly (i.e. the ‘Second Order Revision’ or SOR) completely debunks the illusion of hundreds of experts diligently poring over all the chapters of the report and providing extensive feedback to the editing teams. Here’s the reality.

A total of 308 reviewers commented on the SOR, but only 32 reviewers commented on more than three chapters and only five reviewers commented on all 11 chapters of the report. Only about half the reviewers commented more than one chapter. It is logical that reviewers would generally limit their comments to their areas of expertise but it’s a far cry from the idea of thousands of scientists agreeing to anything.

Compounding this is the fact that IPCC editors could, and often did, ignore reviewers’ comments. Some editor responses were banal and others showed inconsistencies with other comments. Reviewers had to justify their requested changes but the responding editors appear to have been under no such obligation. Reviewers were sometimes flatly told they were wrong but no reasons or reliable references were provided. In other cases reviewers tried to dilute the certainty being expressed and they often provided supporting evidence, but their comments were often flatly rejected. Some comments were rejected on the basis of a lack of space – an incredible assertion in such an important document. The attitude of the editors seemed to be that simple corrections were accepted, requests for improved clarity tolerated but the assertions and interpretations that appear in the text were to be defended against any challenge.

An example of rampant misrepresentation of IPCC reports is the frequent assertion that ‘hundreds of IPCC scientists’ are known to support the following statement, arguably the most important of the WG I report, namely “Greenhouse gas forcing has very likely caused most of the observed global warming over the last 50 years.”

In total, only 62 scientists reviewed the chapter in which this statement appears, the critical chapter 9, “Understanding and Attributing Climate Change”. Of the comments received from the 62 reviewers of this critical chapter, almost 60% of them were rejected by IPCC editors. And of the 62 expert reviewers of this chapter, 55 had serious vested interest, leaving only seven expert reviewers who appear impartial.

CONTINUED

 

[kimmielittle]

Continued

two of these seven were contacted by nrsp for the purposes of this article - dr. Vincent gray of new zealand and dr. Ross mckitrick of the university of guelph, canada. Concerning the “greenhouse gas forcing …” statement above, professor mckitrick explained “a categorical summary statement like this is not supported by the evidence in the ipcc wg i report. Evidence shown in the report suggests that other factors play a major role in climate change, and the specific effects expected from greenhouse gases have not been observed.”

dr. Gray labeled the wg i statement as “typical ipcc doubletalk” asserting “the text of the ipcc report shows that this is decided by a guess from persons with a conflict of interest, not from a tested model.”

determining the level of support expressed by reviewers’ comments is subjective but a slightly generous evaluation indicates that just five reviewers endorsed the crucial ninth chapter. Four had vested interests and the other made only a single comment for the entire 11-chapter report. The claim that 2,500 independent scientist reviewers agreed with this, the most important statement of the un climate reports released this year, or any other statement in the un climate reports, is nonsense.
“the ipcc owe it to the world to explain who among their expert reviewers actually agree with their conclusions and who don’t,” says natural resources stewardship project chair climatologist dr. Timothy ball. “otherwise, their credibility, and the public’s trust of science in general, will be even further eroded.”
that the ipcc have let this deception continue for so long is a disgrace. Secretary general ban kai-moon must instruct the un climate body to either completely revise their operating procedures, welcoming dissenting (name removed by moderator)ut from scientist reviewers and indicating if reviewers have vested interests, or close the agency down completely. Until then, their conclusions, and any reached at the bali conference based on ipcc conclusions, should be ignored entirely as politically skewed and dishonest.

 

[Monte_RCMS]

WORTH THE READ: ilovecarbondioxide.com/2009/01/ipcc-exposed.html

CONTINUED

An example of rampant misrepresentation of IPCC reports is the frequent assertion that ‘hundreds of IPCC scientists’ are known to support the following statement, arguably the most important of the WG I report, namely “Greenhouse gas forcing has very likely caused most of the observed global warming over the last 50 years.”

In total, only 62 scientists reviewed the chapter in which this statement appears, the critical chapter 9, “Understanding and Attributing Climate Change”. Of the comments received from the 62 reviewers of this critical chapter, almost 60% of them were rejected by IPCC editors. And of the 62 expert reviewers of this chapter, 55 had serious vested interest, leaving only seven expert reviewers who appear impartial.

Well done!, Kimmie!!

Great find; great post!!!

P.S. the idea that it’s ok to throw out the original data is gross malfeasance. YOU ALWAYS KEEP THE ORIGINAL DATA. The original data is the HOLY GRAIL of science.

[sigh]

 

[Monte_RCMS]

More reading material:

lucianne.com/thread/?artnum=620568

Original article:

telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/8570158/Industry-begins-to-count-the-true-cost-of-climate-change.html

 

[kimmielittle]

An example of rampant misrepresentation of IPCC reports is the frequent assertion that ‘hundreds of IPCC scientists’ are known to support the following statement, arguably the most important of the WG I report, namely “Greenhouse gas forcing has very likely caused most of the observed global warming over the last 50 years.”

In total, only 62 scientists reviewed the chapter in which this statement appears, the critical chapter 9, “Understanding and Attributing Climate Change”. Of the comments received from the 62 reviewers of this critical chapter, almost 60% of them were rejected by IPCC editors. And of the 62 expert reviewers of this chapter, 55 had serious vested interest, leaving only seven expert reviewers who appear impartial.

Well done!, Kimmie!!

Great find; great post!!!

P.S. the idea that it’s ok to throw out the original data is gross malfeasance. YOU ALWAYS KEEP THE ORIGINAL DATA. The original data is the HOLY GRAIL of science.

[sigh]

Thank you

You need to thank FOI for getting to the truth about the IPCC.:clapping::clapping:

BUT I can take credit for finding out the much quoted **Pontifical Academy of Sciences study / report of May 05 2011 050511 ]PAS_Glacier_050511_final.pdf ** was pulled from the Vatican Holy See site within 2 weeks.

I checked it last on June 10th 2011 and it remains gone,

Maybe, you can slip this as a Hattip :tiphat::tiphat: to some webpages??

Here is the original URL vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_academies/acdscien/2011/PAS_Glacier_050511_final.pdf

It redirects to the HOME page of Vatican See Website now.

As you can see from my below post - It has not been found on searches of The Holy See website, either.

 

[Monte_RCMS]

Thank you

You need to thank FOI for getting to the truth about the IPCC.:clapping::clapping:

BUT I can take credit for finding out the much quoted **Pontifical Academy of Sciences study / report of May 05 2011 050511 ]PAS_Glacier_050511_final.pdf ** was pulled from the Vatican Holy See site within 2 weeks.

I checked it last on June 10th 2011 and it remains gone,

Maybe, you can slip this as a Hattip :tiphat::tiphat: to some webpages??

Here is the original URL vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_academies/acdscien/2011/PAS_Glacier_050511_final.pdf

It redirects to the HOME page of Vatican See Website now.

As you can see from my below post - It has not been found on searches of The Holy See website, either.

I was just amusing myself by visualizing the behind-the-scenes yelling and hollaring …

"you posted WHAT to the Vatican Web site!!! Are you out of your ())_+*^%% mind!! Get it off there NOW!!! "

All in Latin, of course. Sotto voce. or whatever.

There was a scene in Mel Gibson’s movie, “The Passion of the Christ” in which a Roman soldier is yelled at for being too “enthusiastic” in his flogging of Jesus. I would have loved to have seen the out takes of that scene, with all the unprintable Latin or Greek or Hebrew.

 

[kimmielittle]

I was just amusing myself by visualizing the behind-the-scenes yelling and hollaring …

"you posted WHAT to the Vatican Web site!!! Are you out of your ())_+*^%% mind!! Get it off there NOW!!! "

All in Latin, of course. Sotto voce. or whatever.

The Holy Father might have even invited their 8th grade Science Teacher in to…hmmm have them document their sources and data?

http://forums.catholic-questions.org/picture.php?albumid=1281&pictureid=9404

Wondering how she would grade for losing Raw Data? ]

 

[JasonSB]

You do realize tide is not the same as global sea level…right?

You do realise that tide is cyclic, right? What happens to high-frequency cycles when you take an average over a long period of time? (If you really have no idea, Google “low pass filter”.) Given that the tide has a frequency of one or two cycles per day (depending on location) and each point on the trend graph I showed before was an average over 20 years, the tide is a very high-frequency signal that is easily attenuated.

What do you think mean sea level actually means? By definition it’s the average sea level over a period of time. It’s not something you directly measure, because the tides and waves are always happening. It’s something you calculate by measuring the sea level at many points in time. Because tides and waves go up and down, they cancel out when you take the average.

(BTW, tide gauges already have a low-pass filter built-in to filter out the effects of high-frequency waves. They consist of a tall tube with a tiny hole at the bottom that restricts the rate of flow of water in and out of the tube, so that only a sustained change in pressure — such as that caused by the tide coming in or going out — actually changes the level of water inside the tube.)

Suppose you have a fish tank half-full with water. If you place rulers on the side of the fish tank and use a video camera to record water levels at each ruler over a period of time, the average of those measurements will converge onto a consistent value even if the water is sloshing around inside the tank. If you then add water to the tank, the average of the ruler measurements will converge onto a new, higher consistent value even if the water continues to slosh around inside the tank.

If the rulers themselves are slowly moving up (or down) at the same time then obviously you need to measure that and take it into account as well, as they do — the actual rate of vertical movement for each location is reported in the data file associated with the paper I linked to before.

And that’s all that they’re measuring. A change in the average reading at each tide gauge (after accounting for tide gauge movement) because the mean sea level is rising.

Do you believe that a measure of small pieces of an outside rim of a body of water really indicate the level of the water as a whole?

I think it is self-evident that a change in the mean sea level at each recording station surrounding a body of water after taking into account changes in topography really indicates a change in the mean level of that body of water, yes.

The fact that the mean sea level obtained from satellite measurements has proven to be statistically indistinguishable from the mean sea level obtained from tide gauge measurements confirms the validity of the technique, don’t you think?

Have you ever stopped to ask yourself if the tide level really reflects the sea level and why it may or may not?

I would be very interested to know how you could explain a tide level that could undergo long-term excursions away from the mean sea level using any effect that hasn’t already been accounted for. What you’re suggesting is that when you slosh water about in the fish tank, it is possible for the volume calculated from the mean height at each location to be different to the volume calculated from the still water level — that somehow the waves themselves can increase the volume of the water.

I do not believe these researchers have checked that either. I believe that these little details were likely left out in the rush to print out whatever dire predictions would support their funding.

Why believe something that is easily dispelled simply by reading the papers I gave you?

If you did, you’ll discover that these guys have not only taken into account all the things you might think of that could go wrong, but even things I suspect you didn’t — such as the fact that the barometric air pressure also affects the sea level reading and must be taken into account (which is why that was also recorded, even way back in the 1870s), and the fact that auto-correlation of the time series as well as uncertainties in the rate of glacial isostatic adjustment must be accounted for when calculating confidence intervals.

Earlier in this thread you took me to task concerning how statistics worked.
So let’s use your advanced knowledge here…can these select square miles of tidal measure really indicate with any accuracy sea level (a very different measurement) of a body of water over 3 million square miles in size?

If by “any accuracy” you mean “at all” then the answer is “Of course”. Have you noticed what happens when you try to pile up the water at one end of a bathtub or fish tank? As soon as you give up, it automatically tries to become level again and, given enough time, will do so.

Now, thanks to the fact that the earth is not perfectly flat, the sea is constantly in motion, and there are continents in the way, the sea isn’t able to become perfectly level, even when averaged over long periods of time:



But that doesn’t mean that you can’t detect even minute changes to the overall volume of the sea over long periods of time even using relatively few data collection points.

 

[JasonSB]

I submit that the polling sample is too small and it is polling the wrong items to be any use at all in determining sea level of the time.

Submit all you want but you certainly haven’t demonstrated anything of the sort. The fact that the high-resolution satellite measurements were able to show the same thing as the tide gauges had been showing for years is proof that the technique is valid.

Can we afford to assume anything at all more accurate then the foot the measure was taken with?

Actually the measurements were taken in inches in those countries using Imperial measurement systems at the time, but as the Central Limit Theorem proves, if you average enough measurements you increase the accuracy of the average. 20 years of averaging four-times-per-day measurements is enough to increase the accuracy of the average by 170 times compared to the accuracy of the individual measurements. If the original measurements were in inches then the impact that fact has on a 20 year average is less than ± 0.15 mm — small enough that it is of no consequence as a source of error.

This is why I’ve been saying all along that it is completely irrelevant. There are much bigger errors to worry about (e.g. ± 0.09 mm per year for the GIA vs ± 0.15 mm over 20 years).

I guess that would depend on what you want the data to say…

What everyone wants the data to say is what really happened.

The raw measurements are publicly available. (For example, you can download the hourly data for Newlyn from 1915-2007 if you like. Or, indeed, any other station that takes your fancy. Information about the station is recorded there — for example, Newlyn was a “Cary Porter float gauge operated by Ordernance Survey” from 1915-1983, then a DATARING system with full tide pressure point and Munro float gauge backup from 1983, and finally with a mid-tide pressure point from 1996 onwards.)

Church used processed monthly data from the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level, from which you can also download montly average data. So if you want to compare the monthly average data with the hourly data to make sure no errors slipped in, you can.

Then you can use that monthly data to reconstruct global mean sea level, using your own techniques for station selection, data QA, and global sea level reconstruction. Just like Church did. Just like many other researchers have.

And you can compare your results to theirs, and publish a paper on your results in a scientific journal.

If Church (and the others) made a fundamental error then anybody can do the above work and prove that they were wrong.

Nobody has.

Not even those scientists funded by the most profitable company in the world who is otherwise quite happy to fund PR firms to promote the message that AGW is a scam. Not by doing science, like the above, but by misrepresenting what the science actually says.

Just like those exact same PR firms used to do about cigarette smoke for the tobacco industry.

Where’s your “skepticism”?

It means they should not be using the compromised data at all.
But I bet they used it anyway…would I be correct in collecting on that bet?

What a foolish bet! I even told you how to obtain the exact list of stations they actually used and yet you were still willing to make a bet that you should have known you couldn’t possibly win!

Furthermore, that record would have failed the QA checks outlined in Church et al 2004, which were the same QA checks Church used in his later publications, as he clearly stated.

Finally, the reconstruction starts in 1870, but that record only exists from 1840-1842. Why on earth would you want to make a bet like that?

You have a bunch of calculations that have failed to take into account tectonic movement.

Again claiming things directly refuted by the links I already gave you.

And even worse, they cannot account for such since they have no readings on it from the time period.

And yet the paper clearly describes how they did.

Oops.

Oops, indeed. Perhaps becoming informed is worth the effort after all?

Tide data is useless without knowing the exact time and the exact location.

Which is why both are recorded.

And its relationship to sea level itself may not be at all what we all expect.

There is substantial evidence that it is.

Apologies.
I could not come up with a more accurate word.

That’s not what I would classify as an apology.

You are clearly accusing Church and other scientists of fraud yet it is obvious you have absolutely no idea what work they have done, how they have done it, or even basic mathematical laws like the Central Limit Theorem or low-pass filtering.

They are using measurements of one thing and claiming they are measures of something else.

That’s like saying that contents of a CD are not “music” because each individual sample is simply a measure of air pressure at an instant in time.

They are using data of questionable accuracy (and unknown error) without any explanation at all.

Well, there is no explanation at all if you refuse to read the explanation they gave, I suppose. Refusing to read what they wrote and then complaining that they didn’t explain it to you is disingenuous, don’t you think?

 

[JasonSB]

They are averaging all of these measures (and all of the varying degree of error which still remain unaccounted for) and claiming it to be a sea level knowing the sample size measured is vastly too small to accurately portray what they claim.

So now not only are you claiming that the sample size is too small (in ignorance of their science and basic mathematical principles), but you are now even claiming that they know this.

I don’t understand why so many posters here are so cavalier about accusations of fraud, especially when it’s obvious that they cannot be qualified to make such judgements because they are completely ignorant of the science and theory involved.

If Church et al had committed fraud, don’t you think that those scientists working for Big Oil would have demonstrated that already? Why insinuate that Church et al are lying in return for funding while ignoring the obvious fact that there are several scientists who promote themselves to the fossil fuel industry as spokespeople who would be qualified to uncover the fraud, and there are several extremely profitable companies that would be more than happy to fund anyone who was able to demonstrate that?

And they are failing to account for the movement of the land itself.

I am going to choose to believe you are ignorant (and didn’t read the papers in question) rather than lying (after having read the papers in question), but I can’t help wondering: Why make baseless accusations that are readily refuted? Don’t you feel any qualms about accusing people of dishonesty without making any effort to check if they are or not first?

I could say mistaken, but I cannot ignore the alarming result of the work and the funding that inevitably follows.

Ah, yes, the funding. All those government scientists driving Ferraris. Who would want to work for Big Oil when you can be a public servant!

BTW, you do know that when a researcher at a university or government department wins funding for a research project, they don’t actually get to keep the money themselves, right?

You also know that the sure-fire death blow to a career in science is proof that you published fraudulent information, right?

And, finally, you realise that everything Church has published can be investigated and checked for manipulation by anybody, right?

Just wondering.

You have done an admirable job of trying to explain why I should not be concerned about the unit of measure.
Unfortunately the unit of measure indicates a much deeper problem with the data.

You have done an admirable job of showing how important it is to actually read the papers you are trying to criticise.

Agreed, you did properly cite sources behind each of your graphs.
I am not questioning you. I am questioning the accuracy of the papers themselves and simply asking some common sense questions that they should have answers for.
The abscence of the answers to my questions tells a great deal.

The trouble is that the answers to your questions (and others you hadn’t even thought of) were there all along. You just chose to pretend they weren’t.