Is Manmade Global Warming Real?

[kama3]

I’m sure that at some point Newtonian Physics was considered to be true by the majority of scientists.

There is no physicist in the world today that considers Newtonian physics to be untrue.

Relativity does not falsify Newtonian physics. There is a realm where both Newtonian physics and relativity give the same results. Yes, outside that realm Newtonian physics breaks down, but inside that realm – and this is a pretty large realm – the Newtonian description of the world is completely correct.

 

[kama3]

That, by itself, should be enough to consign the Hockey Stick to the dustbin.

NOAA paleo database lists 92 climate reconstructions in total. Throw Mann’s work out. You still have 91 other independent reconstructions to go. ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/recons.html

PS - I agree that Mann’s work was fatally flawed.

 

[kch86]

In 1970s in Poland, winter temperatures around -30C were common. Nowadays, if it drops to -20C, people call it a disaster.

No. While it’s typically mild and around 0C in Central and Eastern Europe, the regions do occasionally get incursions of cold, continental air from the east and it gets to -20C or below in Central and Easter Europe on a few mornings almost every single year. Even though it’s far below average, it’s not considered particularly cold, uncomfortable or unusual because it happens with such regularity.

It got down below -30C recently in 2006 and 2012. The trend is that cold below -30C usually reaches the eastern fringes of Poland once every 5 years, although recently, in the last two severe cold snaps of 2006 and 2012, it has been reaching much further south and west than usual. And 1987 was a particularly severe winter, where it got down below -35C and -40C over much of Central and Eastern Europe, and most of the Baltic Sea froze for the first time in decades.

Don’t confuse the media hyping it up and calling it a disaster with regular people just getting on with their lives and generally just seeing it as “very cold” but as nothing particularly dangerous or unusual. I was in Eastern Poland this year, during the very worst of the cold snap, and there was no panic, people didn’t even stay indoors (and neither did I), and the most significant complaint was about heating bills going up. While it’s typically quite mild, they’re very used to it getting cold from time to time.

Big negative numbers are a great story to run because most people have never experienced them. But for the most part, -30C feels pretty similar to -15C and you would do well not to get drunk and fall asleep on a park bench, but besides that, it’s just your heating bill that goes up.

 

[kch86]

"kama3:

In 1970s in Poland, winter temperatures around -30C were common. Nowadays, if it drops to -20C, people call it a disaster.

While it’s typically quite mild, they’re very used to it getting cold from time to time.

And might I add, I was surprised how many people said they enjoyed the weather because it was “sunny and fresh”. People also said that the cold weather was “healthy” and that they need a good freeze to kill all the germs. They have a completely different attitude to it than that portrayed by the media. But my point is that it’s normal for them. Some winters there are rainy and wet, some winters are extremely cold, and it’s always been that way.

Here in London, it used to snow here a little bit once every 5 or 10 years when I was a kid growing up. Now I’m an adult, it’s snowed here for the last 4 consecutive years.

Yes, climate changes. But to take individual events or a short term change and to say it proves anthropogenic global warming is ridiculous. It might not snow here for the next 20 years for all I know. It would be ridiculous for me to suggest, for example, that the recent below-average winters in Europe are a sign of a coming ice age.

 

[kama3]

Go here: doskonaleszare.blox.pl/2012/03/Zima-20112012.html

and click on the first image. The temperatures are shown as anomaly against the 1981-2001 mean. Dictionary: grudzień = January, luty = February, zima = Winter

The last February was indeed the coldest in 25 years, but, as you can see, such winter would be completely typical in 1950s or 1960s.

Last winter did cause some disruptions in Poland (closed schools etc.), which was unthinkable back in 1960s. People were simply used to such cold back then and everything operated normally.

 

[Kilbourne]

NOAA paleo database lists 92 climate reconstructions in total. Throw Mann’s work out. You still have 91 other independent reconstructions to go. ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/recons.html

PS - I agree that Mann’s work was fatally flawed.

Hey Kama,

I wonder how many of the 91 are truly independent. For example, all the reconstructions done by Jones, Rutherford, Hegerl, Briffa, Overpeck… (all Mann buddies) could not be considered independent. Dr. Wegman, the statistical expert from George Mason who definitively debunked Mann’s study, also was heavily critical of the paleo community, not only for their abuse of statistics, but also for their being a tight, inbred group. Not much independent work being done.

Also–and this was Steve McIntyre’s complaint–there is a limited number of data sets for everyone to use, and if everyone uses the same data (often demonstrably corrupt or inappropriate for reconstructions), one has to question really how these studies can be on that score.

Kil

 

[kimmielittle]

Hey Kama,

I wonder how many of the 91 are truly independent. For example, all the reconstructions done by Jones, Rutherford, Hegerl, Briffa, Overpeck… (all Mann buddies) could not be considered independent. Dr. Wegman, the statistical expert from George Mason who definitively debunked Mann’s study, also was heavily critical of the paleo community, not only for their abuse of statistics, but also for their being a tight, inbred group. Not much independent work being done.

Also–and this was Steve McIntyre’s complaint–there is a limited number of data sets for everyone to use, and if everyone uses the same data (often demonstrably corrupt or inappropriate for reconstructions), one has to question really how these studies can be on that score.

Kil

Hiyas

Please also note, WMO allows every Country to “adjust” land temperatures before publishing.

EXAMPLE
http://forums.catholic-questions.org/picture.php?albumid=1691&pictureid=12169

 

[Kilbourne]

Hi Kim,

Yes, the surface temp records worldwide are highly suspect. With guys like Hansen, Jones and Karl in charge of the data, one can’t take them at face value. And they’ve been caught too many times adjusting, fudging, and just making up the data. Just another example of how the climate science establishment is corrupt and can’t be trusted.

Kil

 

[kimmielittle]

Can any AGW’er quantify the CO2 feedback?

Donja think you should be able to?

 

[kama3]

Hiyas
Please also note, WMO allows every Country to “adjust” land temperatures before publishing.

Paleoclimatic data has nothing to do with station data.

 

[kama3]

I wonder how many of the 91 are truly independent. For example, all the reconstructions done by Jones, Rutherford, Hegerl, Briffa, Overpeck… (all Mann buddies) could not be considered independent.

The database lists authorship, you are welcome to see for yourself.

Also, the database does not even include MacIntyre’s favorite paper, MBH98

 

[kimmielittle]

Paleoclimatic data has nothing to do with station data.

Did I say it did?

Follow the pea…

 

[Kilbourne]

The database lists authorship, you are welcome to see for yourself.

Also, the database does not even include MacIntyre’s favorite paper, MBH98

Hi Kama,

Just looking the first batch:

Global and Hemispheric
Global Temperature, RSL, Ice Volume (δ18O), 1,000,000 Years, Bintanja et al. 2005, Text or Excel
Global Temperature, RSL, Ice Volume (δ18O), 3,000,000 Years, Bintanja and van de Wal 2008, Text or Excel
Global Surface Temperature (Geothermal Heat Flow: Boreholes), 20,000 Years, Huang et al. 2008, Text or Excel
Global & Hemispheric Temperature, NAO, and SOI (Review), 2000 Years, Jones and Mann 2004.
Global Temperature (PCA: Tree-rings, Ice Cores, Corals, Sediments, Historical), 1000 Years, Jones et al. 1998
Global & Hemispheric Temperature (Review), Multiproxy, 2,000 Years, Ljungqvist 2009.
Global Temperature (PCA: Tree-rings, Ice Cores, Corals) and Spatial Distribution, 600 Years, Mann et al. 2000.
Global Gridded Temperature (Climate Field Reconstruction, Multiproxy), 1,500 Years, Mann et al. 2009 σ
Global & Hemispheric Temperature (CPS & EIV: Tree Rings, Multiproxy), 2,000 Years, Mann et al. 2008 σ
Global Temperature (PCA: Tree-rings, Ice Cores, Corals, Historical), 600 Years, Mann et al. 1998 σ
Global Temperature (Review), Last Glacial Maximum (19-23 KYrBP), Schmittner et al. 2011
Global Temperature (Glacier Length), 400 Years, Oerlemans 2005
Global Temperature (Geothermal Heat Flow Analysis: Boreholes), 500 Years, Pollack et al. 1998.
Antarctic Temperature, EPICA Dome C, (Isotopes: Ice Core) 800,000 Years, Jouzel et al. 2007.
Antarctic Temperature, Vostok, (Isotopes: Ice Core) 414,000 Years, Petit et al. 1999.
Northern Hemisphere Temperature (Tree-ring, Ice Cores, Corals), 1000 Years, Ammann and Wahl 2007.
Northern Hemisphere & Regional Temperature (Age Band Decomp.: Tree-rings), 600 Years, Briffa et al. 2001.
Northern Hemisphere Temperature (Regression: Tree-rings), 600 Years, Briffa et al. 1998.
Northern Hemisphere Temperature (Tree-rings, Ice Cores, Historical), 1000 Years, Crowley & Lowery 2000.
Northern Hemisphere Temperature (RCS and STD: Tree-rings), 1300 Years, D’Arrigo et al. 2006.
Northern Hemisphere Temperature (RCS: Tree-rings), 1000 Years, Esper et al. 2002.
Northern Hemisphere Temperature (Ensemble, Carbon Cycle Sensitivity), 1000 Years, Frank et al. 2010.
Northern Hemisphere Temperature (Least Squares: Tree-rings), 1,500 Years, Hegerl et al. 2007, Text or Excel σ
Northern Hemisphere Temperature (Boreholes, Tree-ring, Ice Cores, Corals), 500 Years, Huang 2004.
Northern Hemisphere Temperature (Review), 1000 Years, IPCC Fourth Assessment, Working Group 1, 2007.
Hemispheric Temperature, NAO, and SOI (Review), 1000 Years, Jones et al. 2001.
Northern Hemisphere 30°-90° Temperature, (LOC), Multiproxy, 1,000 Years, Christiansen and Ljungqvist 2011 σ
Northern Hemisphere 30°-90° Temperature, (Composite-plus-scale), Multiproxy, 2,000 Years, Ljungqvist 2010 σ
Northern Hemisphere Temperature (PCA: Tree-rings, Ice Cores, Corals), 1000 Years, Mann et al. 1999 σ
Hemispheric Temperature (Historical, Tree-rings, Ice Cores, Sediment), 2000 Years, Mann and Jones 2003 σ
Northern Hemisphere Temperature (Wavelet: Sediments, Tree-rings), 2000 Years, Moberg et al. 2005 σ
Northern Hemisphere Temperature, Warm/Cold Spatial Extent, 1,200 Years, Osborn and Briffa 2006.
Northern Hemisphere Temperature (Review/Comparison), 600 Years, Rutherford et al. 2005.
Northern Hemisphere Temperature (Speleothem Layer Thickness), 500 Years, Smith et al. 2006.
Northern Hemisphere Temperature (Tree-rings), 250 Years, Wilson et al. 2007.

I’ve highlighted in red the authors including Mann himself or his known supporters.

 

[Kilbourne]

I remember Richard Muller, who on balance is a believer in man-made global warming, commenting on Mann et al. He said, given their gross violations of trust, he simply doesn’t read them any more. In fact, all the paleo climate reconstructions should be undergo thorough review. They are all suspect.

Kil

 

[kimmielittle]

Hi Kama,

Just looking the first batch:

Global and Hemispheric
Global Temperature, RSL, Ice Volume (δ18O), 1,000,000 Years, Bintanja et al. 2005, Text or Excel
Global Temperature, RSL, Ice Volume (δ18O), 3,000,000 Years, Bintanja and van de Wal 2008, Text or Excel
Global Surface Temperature (Geothermal Heat Flow: Boreholes), 20,000 Years, Huang et al. 2008, Text or Excel
Global & Hemispheric Temperature, NAO, and SOI (Review), 2000 Years, Jones and Mann 2004.
Global Temperature (PCA: Tree-rings, Ice Cores, Corals, Sediments, Historical), 1000 Years, Jones et al. 1998
Global & Hemispheric Temperature (Review), Multiproxy, 2,000 Years, Ljungqvist 2009.
Global Temperature (PCA: Tree-rings, Ice Cores, Corals) and Spatial Distribution, 600 Years, Mann et al. 2000.
Global Gridded Temperature (Climate Field Reconstruction, Multiproxy), 1,500 Years, Mann et al. 2009 σ
Global & Hemispheric Temperature (CPS & EIV: Tree Rings, Multiproxy), 2,000 Years, Mann et al. 2008 σ
Global Temperature (PCA: Tree-rings, Ice Cores, Corals, Historical), 600 Years, Mann et al. 1998 σ
Global Temperature (Review), Last Glacial Maximum (19-23 KYrBP), Schmittner et al. 2011
Global Temperature (Glacier Length), 400 Years, Oerlemans 2005
Global Temperature (Geothermal Heat Flow Analysis: Boreholes), 500 Years, Pollack et al. 1998.
Antarctic Temperature, EPICA Dome C, (Isotopes: Ice Core) 800,000 Years, Jouzel et al. 2007.
Antarctic Temperature, Vostok, (Isotopes: Ice Core) 414,000 Years, Petit et al. 1999.
Northern Hemisphere Temperature (Tree-ring, Ice Cores, Corals), 1000 Years, Ammann and Wahl 2007.
Northern Hemisphere & Regional Temperature (Age Band Decomp.: Tree-rings), 600 Years, Briffa et al. 2001.
Northern Hemisphere Temperature (Regression: Tree-rings), 600 Years,** Briffa et al**. 1998.
Northern Hemisphere Temperature (Tree-rings, Ice Cores, Historical), 1000 Years, Crowley & Lowery 2000.
Northern Hemisphere Temperature (RCS and STD: Tree-rings), 1300 Years, D’Arrigo et al. 2006.
Northern Hemisphere Temperature (RCS: Tree-rings), 1000 Years, Esper et al. 2002.
Northern Hemisphere Temperature (Ensemble, Carbon Cycle Sensitivity), 1000 Years, Frank et al. 2010.
Northern Hemisphere Temperature (Least Squares: Tree-rings), 1,500 Years, Hegerl et al. 2007, Text or Excel σ
Northern Hemisphere Temperature (Boreholes, Tree-ring, Ice Cores, Corals), 500 Years, Huang 2004.
Northern Hemisphere Temperature (Review), 1000 Years, IPCC Fourth Assessment, Working Group 1, 2007.
Hemispheric Temperature, NAO, and SOI (Review), 1000 Years,** Jones et al.** 2001.
Northern Hemisphere 30°-90° Temperature, (LOC), Multiproxy, 1,000 Years, Christiansen and Ljungqvist 2011 σ
Northern Hemisphere 30°-90° Temperature, (Composite-plus-scale), Multiproxy, 2,000 Years, Ljungqvist 2010 σ
Northern Hemisphere Temperature (PCA: Tree-rings, Ice Cores, Corals), 1000 Years, Mann et al. 1999 σ
Hemispheric Temperature (Historical, Tree-rings, Ice Cores, Sediment), 2000 Years, Mann and Jones 2003 σ
Northern Hemisphere Temperature (Wavelet: Sediments, Tree-rings), 2000 Years, Moberg et al. 2005 σ
Northern Hemisphere Temperature, Warm/Cold Spatial Extent, 1,200 Years,** Osborn and Briffa** 2006.
Northern Hemisphere Temperature (Review/Comparison), 600 Years, Rutherford et al. 2005.
Northern Hemisphere Temperature (Speleothem Layer Thickness), 500 Years, Smith et al. 2006.
Northern Hemisphere Temperature (Tree-rings), 250 Years, Wilson et al. 2007.

I’ve highlighted in red the authors including Mann himself or his known supporters.

I caught a few more.

 

[Kilbourne]

Thanks Kim,

One of the great services rendered by McIntyre and McKittrick was that they exposed the general poor quality of peer review in paleo climate community. It seems no reviewers take the time to check the data and methods and run the numbers themselves. And then they impede efforts for others trying to replicate their findings to access their data and they play hide the ball with their methods. This is an on-going problem involving many researchers. Even the much-revered Lonnie Thompson hasn’t publicly archived all his data. I repeat, all these studies need a thorough going over.

As an aside, Al Gore made famous use of his graph on the big screen , the one where global temperature is relatively flat until the late 20th century and then goes screaming off into infinity. He attributed the graph to Lonnie Thompson, when in fact it was the Hockey Stick. Thompson, who consulted with Gore in the making of AIT, refused to publicly correct the record and acknowledge Gore’s misrepresentation.

 

[pnewton]

Thanks Kim,

One of the great services rendered by McIntyre and McKittrick was that they exposed the general poor quality of peer review in paleo climate community.

Global warming, and the environment in general, is one area that science has done a very poor job of being science, so much that I am to the point I do not trust any of it any longer. Climatologist and environmentalist can either work for industry, which will alway want low impact studies, or government, which will alway desire high impact studies. Environmental activist groups will not fund science that does not support their existence any more than oil companies will.

I am struck by the way volcanic eruptions have been reported both in scientific journals and reinterated here, as an example. The output of Mt. St. Helens, for example is reported at 0.2 metric tons of CO2. Yet this is an obvious attempt at using statistics to prove a presupposition. This figure is a yearly average, not an eruption event, and it neglects the more significant SO2 environmental issue which is the real concern with such events.

I guess the classic example of environmental disaster is the Siberan Traps which caused the Permian Extinction. This was something the likes of which the world had never seen and will never see again. Even here, the event took place of thousands of years as the climate changed. I simply can not believe that the Gore-ish timelines are anything but smoke and mirrors.

In the end, however, I do not see how either of the two facts can be denied:

1. Mankind pollutes the environmnent and to some extent can alter the climate
2. Nature is a far more significant force in altering climate than man is capable of being.

 

[lynnvinc]

NOAA paleo database lists 92 climate reconstructions in total. Throw Mann’s work out. You still have 91 other independent reconstructions to go. ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/recons.html

PS - I agree that Mann’s work was fatally flawed.

I’m just wondering if Mann’s work is so fatally flawed why it matches up fairly well with these other 91 proxies. Perhaps it is flawed (we shouldn’t expect climate scientists to be all-knowing God), but I’m thinking it is not fatally flawed. Proxies are just proxies, but since we don’t have two or more earths on which to conduct our experiment, and accurate past data from accurately calibrated thermometers is hard to come by, esp 500 years ago, we can use proxies – to the extent that they reflect the temperatures.

I think the critique of Mann’s work is that the tree ring data do not well reflect the temps after ? 1980, when AGW started rapidly (in geological terms) changing the climate, and the tree ring proxies showed a lower temperature than the thermometers. I’m thinking this is because the warming (which ordinarily is good for plants) is in a non-linear relationship to tree growth; when warming gets above a certain point the grow slows rather than increases. I’m thinking that it might be due to the more greatly increasing nighttime temps caused by the increasing greenhouse effect, whereas previous (non-GH effect) warmings did not entail such greatly increasing night temps. Plants and humans get stressed out more by high night (minimal diurnal) temps than high day temps – they need to recoup during the night from the high day temps. It is thought that the high level of deaths during the 2003 heatwave in Europe were due to these higher night temps; also a study has shown that rice is experiencing a positive effect (greater productivity) from higher day temps but a negative effect (lower productivity) from higher night temps, cancelling out each other at this point, but expected to be experiencing neg effects from both day and night temps once the day temps reach a certain point.*

So what Mann did was to splice the proxy tree ring data with the more accurate thermometer data for recent decades – and to smooth the curve he had to “hide the decline” in the tree ring data, and show that the more accurate thermometer data revealed a bigger increase in temps. I see nothing wrong in that, except that in the chart (but not in the article) he apparently did not mention what he was doing. That seems like a very minor flaw, not a fatal one, in my books, since adding the more accurate data made the hockey stick more, not less accurate.

I believe this was the issue that caused so much problem for and harassment of Mann, and maybe also some less powerful stats used in earlier studies, which I believe he has rectified in the present.

I think it is wrong to expect every scientists to be superman and total geniuses. They are doing the best they can on a scientifically complex and difficult problem. We should honor them for their work and efforts.

---

*Welch, J., J. R. Vincent, M. Auffhammer, P. F. Moya, A. Dobermann, and D. Dawe. “Rice Yields in Tropical/Subtropical Asia Exhibit Large but Opposing Sensitivities to Minimum and Maximum Temperatures.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107(33): 14562-14567.

 

[kama3]

I’m just wondering if Mann’s work is so fatally flawed why it matches up fairly well with these other 91 proxies. Perhaps it is flawed (we shouldn’t expect climate scientists to be all-knowing God), but I’m thinking it is not fatally flawed.

Mann’s original (1998) algorithm for extracting temperature from tree ring data would produce a hockey stick graph when fed with random data. Since a correct algorithm should produce a flat graph in such case, that makes his algorithm invalid.

But the twist is that there indeed was a hockey stick in the underlying data (as demonstrated by independent work). Hence, Mann obtained a result which was both correct and invalid. A rare situation, but one which happens.

Hide the decline refers to a different problem with the tree ring proxy, i.e. the fact that it diverges from instrumental record after 1960.

 

[Inego_de_Loyola]

Mann’s original (1998) algorithm for extracting temperature from tree ring data would produce a hockey stick graph when fed with random data. Since a correct algorithm should produce a flat graph in such case, that makes his algorithm invalid.

But the twist is that there indeed was a hockey stick in the underlying data (as demonstrated by independent work). Hence, Mann obtained a result which was both correct and invalid. A rare situation, but one which happens.

Hide the decline refers to a different problem with the tree ring proxy, i.e. the fact that it diverges from instrumental record after 1960.

I believe that it was proven a few years back that they were cherry picking data. I don’t have any sources; I just heard something to that effect on the news regarding the Hockey stick model. Perhaps someone here knows specifically what the anchor was referring to?

It was something to the tune that three fourths of the trees gave a different story than the researchers wanted and rather than use that data they pretended it didn’t exist. I don’t know if that is the researcher in question on this thread or someone else.