The “hockey stick” theory is now discredited: How fanaticism substitutes for science

Uh-huh, right. Hey, Windigo, I hear the supermarket is having a sale on rolls of tinfoil - buy one, get one free. You might want to go stock up, I wouldn't want those evil warmer mind control rays to get you.

You do realize that your wonderfully vague and non specific vid could be taken as applying to the people pushing the climate change denial line far more then the scientists providing hard data to support the existence of climate change, right?

And I'm sorry, but the notion that the science behind global warming is the product of one small cadre who are making them all up is just plain silly. I mean, seriously, even a cursory inquiry into the matter would show you that has about as much relationship with reality as a Dan Brown novel. First off, the science that all of the IPCC's conclusions are based on is all published in scientific journal freely available to anyone who wants to look at them. Your local public library probably has a subscription to Science and Nature at the very least. Any university library is going to have an extensive archive of journals. Anyone can go double check any of the research. Anyone who finds any problems with it can submit their objects to the journals. The Mann - McKitrick affair is proof of that. How could anyone possibly pull off a hoax when they have to show their work, in detail, in a very public forum? If the research is all fake, why haven't more people found it out? Why aren't there more McKitrick's poking holes in this supposed fraud?

And if climate change is nothing but a con, how do you explain the fact that every professional scientific organization in the world agrees that anthropogenic climate change is real and a serious concern? There's not a single group anywhere dissenting. Let's take the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) as a case in point. Founded in 1848, the AAAS is an international non profit with a membership of 125,000. Their mission statement is,

http://www.aaas.org/aboutaaas/

AAAS is the largest general scientific society in the world, and probably the most respected and prestigious. This isn't your local save the stream organization. AAAS very rarely takes official positions on any sort of controversial issue, because when they do, they not only put the organization's quite considerable reputation on the line, but they put the reputations of the membership on the line. If they issued any statement that the membership considered unfounded, there would be a revolt in the ranks. If AAAS endorsed something the membership thought was any sort of fraud or con, there would be mass resignations, angry press statements, and enough general chaos to keep the 24 hr news channels happy for months. None of that has happened.

How then do you explain the fact that AAAS issued an official statement on climate change in 2006 that reads in part,

http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2007/0218am_statement.shtml

And how about the NAS? The national academies of most of the advanced nations in the world? The Pentagon? all the corporations participating in US-CAP, including Alcoa, Dow, DuPont, Ford, GE, and Shell Oil? How do you explain all these organizations, all these people unequivocally saying that climate change is real? Are they part of the con, or just being taken in by it? If they're a part of it, what do they have to gain? If they're being taken in by it, how did this conspiracy manage to fool all these very smart, very competent, very well informed people at the top of their professions?

Well, can you explain it? Any of it?

Nice graph. Where does it come from? References, references, Windigo...

 

"Uh-huh, right. Hey, Windigo, I hear the supermarket is having a sale on rolls of tinfoil - buy one, get one free. You might want to go stock up, I wouldn't want those evil warmer mind control rays to get you."

Kessy_Athena,

When you make sily comments like this, no one takes you seriously.

JC

 

I can condense your arguments down to two things.

#1 How can all these people be corrupt.

They don’t have to be. How do you know they aren't just engaging in the same logical fallacy as you are, argumentum ad potentiam. The IPCC is the potentiam so they follow the lead of the IPCC. Argumentum ad argumentum ad potentiam is fundamental to the success of the big con. Its what moves the middle.

#2 The they would loose all credibility.

Really, so the IPCC wouldn't rely on advocate publications like the world wild life fund and Greenpeace? Or they wouldn’t over rule centuries of scientific evidence with one guy fresh out of grad school analysis' of a few dozen trees from Colorado?

It seems to me that those who want to support the IPCC still support the IPCC no matter what they do. The big con runs on statistics. I can come up with any bull(*)(*)(*)(*) problem I want. If I say that the cause is mans greed and the solution is large government control of the economy and wealth redistribution I know for a fact that the left will follow me and the middle will break depending on how authoritative I can make the argument sound. The middle always breaks to argumentum ad potentiam. The substance of my argument is immaterial.

In that same line of reasoning I can come up with any bull(*)(*)(*)(*) problem I want. If I say that the cause is mans moral morass and the solution is a return to our Christian ethithis I know that the Christian right will break to me and the middle will once again be swayed by argumentum ad potentiam. The substance of my argument is immaterial.

The big con is just statistics. Its very hard to anticipate how a group of 6 people will react to any situation. Its very easy to predict how 6 billion will.

 

Kessy_Athena,

What evidence do you have that, "The oceans absorb about 92.4 GtC/yr, and emit about 90.8, so the ocean is net carbon sink to the tune of about 1.6 GtC/yr."

I would appreciate it very much if you would cite your reliable source.

It is my understanding that the net carbon sink of the ocean is much larger than that.

JC

 

And I'm supposed to take seriously this giant worldwide conspiracy to push climate change on an unsuspecting world for what reason, exactly? I mean, seriously, look at the kind of arguments you're keeping company with in the denier camp, James. Do you really honestly believe this stuff? That Prof Mann has personally intimidated the most powerful people in the world into doing his bidding? That millions of people around the world are in on this so called con? Is that really a reasonable position?

Answer the questions or admit you can't Windigo.

- How can such a con be perpetrated when the research behind it is freely available to the public at large? If the research is made up, why aren't there more McKitricks out there?

- Explain the involvement of the AAAS, NAS, the corporations belonging to US-CAP, the Pentagon, the national academies of Brazil, China, Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Russia, and the UK, and every other professional scientific organization in the world in this grand conspiracy. If they're complicit, what do they have to gain, if they're being duped, how? We're talking about very smart, very experienced people here. You really think the executives of Ford, DuPont, and Shell Oil and all the others are just going to fall in line because a few people at the IPCC tell them to? You think that every other scientist and professional person on the planet is just going to take the IPCC on faith?

- And if there really is some grand conspiracy to push climate change, what exactly are its motivations? How is it going to profit from this? Why would they even bother? Pulling off something like this would be a massive investment, with considerable risk, for what return, exactly?

Incidentally, the IPCC is not the all powerful voice of authority you seem to think it is. They don't do research. All they do is summarize the overall state of the research for politicians and other non technical people. They're the Reader's Digest of climatology.

Sorry, James, I guess I was unclear in my previous post. I got those particular numbers from here:
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/pns/graphics/c_cycle.htm
Which is part of this site:
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/

There's some uncertainty in the numbers, so they will vary a bit depending on what source you look at. for example, this site lists the ocean's net uptake of carbon as 2.4±0.5 Pg of carbon each year in the 1990s (a petagram is the same as a gigaton)
http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/Bi-Ca/Carbon-Dioxide-in-the-Ocean-and-Atmosphere.html

This site says the ocean's uptake of carbon is 90 GtC/yr and the emissions are 88 GtC/yr
http://www.ghgonline.org/co2sinkocean.htm

This DOE report lists the ocean's net uptake of carbon as 2.0 GtC/yr during the 1980's.
http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/proceedings/01/carbon_seq/p25.pdf

This site at Berkeley National Lab also lists the net uptake as 2 GtC/yr
http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/sea-carb-bish.html

This paper from MIT says, "The ocean-atmosphere flux is
about 90 GtC per year, with a net ocean uptake of 2 ± 0.8 GtC"
http://web.mit.edu/energylab/www/pubs/overview.PDF

If you want more references, I'm sure you can find them without too much trouble with a little googling.

 

Thanks for the references.

You will agree, a net ocean uptake of 2 ± 0.8 GtC combined with the fact all terrestrial plant life absorb copious amounts of CO2 worldwide means the residual amount of CO2 produced by man’s combustion of fossil fuels is very small when these sources and sinks are compared?

Here is the basis for my statement.

 

This part was very good.

This recent MIT study confirms anthropogenic global warming is not the problem the IPCC (United Nations) was made it our to be!

"Worldwide anthropogenic emissions of carbon to the atmosphere are about 7 GtC. The ocean-atmosphere flux is about 90 GtC per year, with a net ocean uptake of 2 ± 0.8 GtC (IPCC, 1996). On a time scale of a thousand years, over 90% of today’s anthropogenic emissions of CO2 will be transferred to the ocean. Discharging CO2 directly to the ocean would accelerate this ongoing, but slow, natural process and would reduce both peak atmospheric CO2 concentrations and their rate of increase."

http://web.mit.edu/energylab/www/pubs/overview.PDF

And from Windigo, there are even more facts to consider!

 

You are very correct, Dan40.

Water vapor is indeed the most powerful natural greenhouse gas. As its density increases in the atmosphere, it traps additional heat and brings average surface air temperatures up.

When it comes to much earlier periods of global climate change, this excellent report is also most interesting and very revealing.

 

Kessy_Athena,

Do you support the conclusions in this MIT report?

If you do not, why do you consider these conclusions to be incorrect?

It seems as if the world's vast oceans will keep our mad-made CO2 levels down to acceptable values for centuries to come!

Thanks,

JC

 

So it will take oceans 1000 years to absorb the excess CO2 that we have put into the atmosphere in just the past few decades? Not terribly reassuring. And given that CO2 emissions are projected to accelerate over the next few decades, the oceans will have a lot of work to do (work that will take thousands of years).

Do we really want to wait 1,000 years or more to have the climate stabilize?

Furthermore, if the oceans can be counted on to keep CO2 levels from disrupting the climate, then why didn't they do so during the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum?

And additional note: The current CO2 concentration is *already* above acceptable levels -- in fact, CO2 levels are now higher than they have been for at least 3 million years; you have to go back to the Pliocene to find CO2 levels as high as they are now. Back then sea-levels were over 50-75 feet higher than they are now. So if we were to keep the atmospheric CO2 level where it is now, future generations could expect to see many feet of sea-level rise per century for many centuries to come. Linky here: http://atripati.bol.ucla.edu/30.pdf

And finally, continued CO2 absorption by the oceans will bring about another huge problem -- ocean acidification, which opens a whole new environmental can of worms.

The world-renowned Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) has a bunch of information about ocean acidification on its website -- linky here: http://sio.ucsd.edu/Ocean_Acidification/

For those who are inclined to dismiss what the scientists at the SIO have been saying, here's a bit of background info about that organization: It was established as an oceanographic research institute over a century ago, and is now part of the University of California. Scripps' oceanography/metorology PhD program was recently rated by the National Academy of Sciences as being the best in the nation: http://scrippsnews.ucsd.edu/Releases/?releaseID=1114

So when the folks at Scripps speak, it pays to listen.

 

Some quick notes about this graph that has been kicked around here..


This is *not* a global temperature reconstruction -- it is nothing more than a crude representation of the temperature record from one part of England. Folks, even though the Y-axis represents degrees C, note the lack of Y-axis scale numbers. What is the actual temperature range? There's no way to know, because the plot was not the product of any rigorous data analysis.

Mann's reconstruction (as well as at least a dozen other reconstructions that have largely confirmed Mann's original work) are *global* temperature reconstructions; they incorporate proxy data from all over the world (i.e. not just from one part of England). Even if the above plot *were* the product of rigorous analysis of temperature data, it would only represent temperatures for one part of England -- it still could not be used as a check on *global* temperature reconstructions.

Comparing the above plot to Mann's global reconstruction is like comparing a grape to a watermelon. It just doesn't wash as a legitimate criticism of Mann's reconstruction (or the dozen+ others that have produced results similar to Mann's).

 

You are very mistaken, caerbannog.

This graph directly came from "Climate Change", IPCC 1990, page 202.

Please do your research before you make unsupported statements like this.

For a more detailed explanation of the graph, see "Where did IPCC 1990 Figure 7c Come From?"

http://climateaudit.org/2008/05/09/...-from-httpwwwclimateauditorgp3072previewtrue/

In addition, here is an excellent rebuttle to your many incorrect statements.

 

No, *you* are mistaken.

True, it *did* come from the IPCC 1990 report, but it was mislabeled. It was *not* a record of global temperatures, but only a crude representation of temperatures from central England, all of the misleading climateaudit spin nothwithstanding.

That plot *predated* any attempts to generate global-scale temperature reconstructions. Mann's 1998 reconstruction was the first such attempt, and this plot predated Mann's initial work by nearly a decade.

Here is more information about that figure (minus the misleading climateaudit spin and innuendo): http://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?n=576

If that plot really does represent a global temperature reconstruction, then where are the data on which it is based? All of the data used by Michael Mann and other climate-scientists for their temperature reconstructions are freely available on-line. Where are the data that form the basis of this plot?

Here are links that lead to *all* of the raw paleoclimate data (and code) that Michael Mann and his colleagues used to compute the Mann et al. temperature reconstructions:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/mann2008/mann2008.html
http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/supplements/MultiproxySpatial09/
http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/shared/research/MANNETAL98/

Now, if that 1990 IPCC plot really shows the results of a global temperature reconstruction (and is not a mislabeled schematic of central England temperatures as I have asserted) how about you reciprocating and providing a link to the raw paleoclimate data and code used to produce that plot?

Climate scientists and the IPCC have taken great pains to make public all of the data and code that forms the basis of their work; if the plot above really is a global- temperature reconstruction, then the data (and code) are available on-line somewhere. Where are they?

 

Correction of a grammatical boo-boo in my previous post:

 

If its a global temperature reconstruction why is its shape 100% dependent on a few dozen trees from one location in Colorado. The same holds true of all those other *global* temperature reconstructions. They all get their shape from just a few select proxies, be they bristlecone from Colorado, an out of date tree ring chronology from the Yamal pinisilua, or a damaged and upside lake sediment from Finland.

When dealing with proxy analysis global doesn't really mean global. Sure you may pull proxies from all over the global but the process itself dictates that the shape of the graph will be dictated by a few select proxies that are assumed to be the most representative of temperature given how well they correlate to the 20th century temperature, even if that correlation is 100% spurious as is the case with bristlecone pines or the upside down lake sediment in Finland. That is why in standard PC analysis you try and multiple correlation periods with differing trends, when you have only one with one trend the chance of spurious correlation is very high.

 

You are correct, Windigo.

The Global Alarmists are incapable of accepting or analyzing any data that may prove them wrong!

Sad, very sad!

This political statement days it all!

 

You are very correct, Windigo!

This analysis was also very correct and noteworthy!

 

I see that you have abandoned your claim that the 1990 IPCC figure represented a global temperature reconstruction. So I guess we can put that one to bed...

Regarding further claims about the problems with Mann's reconstructions, I'm certain that those claims come from the same unreliable source(s) that have been feeding people misinformation about that IPCC figure.

In particular, there has been a lot of huffing and puffing about "upside-down" lake-sediment proxies, and how their inclusion completely invalidated Mann's latest reconstruction.

But a simple and obvious test for that is to re-do the reconstruction minus the problematic proxies that some have been howling about. And when that is done, it is seen that the reconstruction results change very little -- so even if the inclusion of the problematic lake-sediment proxies was an error (and I'm not going to argue that it couldn't have been), it basically didn't amount to any more than an insignificant "roundoff error". It is rather interesting that none of the people who were howling about those proxies ever bothered to investigate the issue further and find this out for themselves. But then, that involves real work, something that global-warming "skeptics" seem to be allergic to.


Here is a "before and after" plot (with and without the problematic proxies):


Original source here: http://www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2008/09/02/0805721105.DCSupplemental/0805721105SI.pdf

This is pretty much along the lines of the "short-centered PCA creates hockey-sticks from random noise" kerfuffle. Even though you can get a hockey-stick-shaped leading PC from red noise via short-centered PCA, all you have to do is look at the eigenvalues and you will know that the "noise hockey-stick" is just a noise artifact and doesn't represent a real temperature signal. The very small eigenvalues associated with "noise" hockey-stick leading PC's make them very easy to distinguish from Mann's "tree-ring" hockey-stick leading PC (which has a much larger associated eigenvalue).

And yes, I've experimented with short-centered PCA and red noise -- here is my conclusion regarding that controversy. Give me the full output of Mann's "short centered" SVD algorithm applied to red noise vs. real tree ring data (without telling me which is which), and I'll be able to determine which "hockey-stick" PC is real and which one is just a "noise artifact" in about two seconds. The SVD algorithm makes it slam-dunk easy to tell uncorrelated noise from data that contains a real signal (if you know what to look for, that is).

 

One final note:

If you replace Mann's "short-centered" PCA implementation with a proper "full-centered" PCA implementation (and threshold the eigenvalues properly), you get virtually the exact same hockey-stick that the "short-centered" PCA approach produces. So this "error" that skeptics had been claiming invalidated Mann's original hockey-stick turned out to be completely inconsequential, something that none of the skeptics ever bothered to figure out for themselves...

 

Figured everyone will have seen this, but haven't seen any mention, so I thought I'd post the link -

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...-status-among-environmental-groups-to-enrich/

They got Al Capone on tax evasion... Hansen "playin' ball", lol...

"Savin' the planet" is good bidness, huh???

 

You are very mistaken, caerbannog.

"The saga of the “hockey stick” will be remembered as a remarkable lesson in how fanaticism can temporarily blind a large part of the scientific community and allow unproven results to become “mainstream” thought overnight."

The “hockey stick” theory is now discredited: How it quickly became the poster child for anthropogenic global warming.

Here is an excellent summary of the princple reasons for its well-deserved demise.

 

All you are doing is regurgitating BS put out by people who wouldn't know a singular value from a Cingular cellphone.

Here's a question for you: If you apply the singular value decomposition algorithm to a data matrix with columns that consist of random noise, what will the singular values look like?

Don't expect the "american-thinker" to throw you a lifeline here...

And yes, this question gets right to the heart of the primary criticism of Dr. Mann's "hockey stick". It is an entirely relevant technical question that deserves a technical, not a political, response.

If you don't understand the question, don't bother replying to my post here...

 

you are correct, Ethereal.

By the way, Michael Mann is more of a charlatan than a "villain".

Please check this out.

 

No, you are mistaken.

Please check out the discussion before this one.