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332 responses so far ↓
Anna Haynes // June 26, 2009 at 9:22 pm
(this is a dupe of the comment I left on the previous post)
I’m probably going to regret this, but it _could_ be a smoking gun. If you could take a look and give me your interpretation, I’d be most grateful.
I’ve been digging behind one delayer-friendly meme that Tierney spread in his NYTimes blog last year, right before the Heartland conference – namely, “the more informed you are about climate change, the less you worry”. Last month I documented what I’d found in this Daily Kos post.
As part of that investigation, I made a public info request to Texas A&M for email correspondence involving the post-publication publicity for the paper whose soundbite meme Tierney was spreading; and they gave it to me, albeit slightly (family members’ names/relationships) redacted.
One particular email exchange between the paper’s Author#1 and Tierney made no sense to me whatsoever – but now I see there’s at least one explanation, which, if correct, would appear to be a smoking gun.
But I could be wrong – it’s more than likely that there’s another interpretation that I haven’t thought of. So please, please help keep me from making a mistake that’d make me look extremely foolish – tell me, what do you think is being said here?
Context:
From content and tone of the emails, Tierney and Author ostensibly don’t know each other.
The paper gets published. Tierney emails Author expressing interest and asking a few Qs about it. Author answers. Tierney does his blog post about the paper. We commenters who went and read it proceed to pile on, pointing out the paper’s glaring flaw (namely, the self-reported nature of the climate “informedness” metric).
Then:
Author emails Tierney saying, “i think the post reads just great”, then adds:
———
“I notice that it’s racking up the comments, too.
One of my [redacted] promised (hopefully facetiously) to post something about how the study is flawed due to a childhood nickname. The risk of telling one’s [redacted] about these things, I suppose.”
Tierney responds “I try to keep ad hominem attacks out of the comments, so he probably wouldn’t succeed anyway.”
———
Question for Open Mind readers: how can you interpret the “childhood nickname” comment, and Tierney’s response, in a way that makes sense?
Anna Haynes // June 26, 2009 at 9:24 pm
oops – link didn’t come through, in my comment above – I meant this Daily Kos post -
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/5/20/730706/-Behind-climate-inactivismthe-informedness-causes-apathy-meme
Anna Haynes // June 26, 2009 at 10:06 pm
re the Tierney exchange – if you’ve tried but you can’t make sense of it, that’s useful info too.
(since it would indicate that I’m not missing anything obvious)
Deep Climate // June 26, 2009 at 10:30 pm
Anna,
Can you repost here about Tierney and Joe Walker and give a clear chronological sequence of events? For example, it’s not clear to me when the email exchange between the Tierney and the author started. Was it after publication and before Tierney’s post?
Thanks!
Anna Haynes // June 26, 2009 at 11:45 pm
Never mind, never mind, never mind; there was an obvious (thus overlooked, by me) interpretation of a couple of words that does cast the whole thing in a much more innocent light.
Carry on (with discussion of something else, please)
Rick Brown // June 27, 2009 at 7:56 pm
Hank Roberts, If you want to contact me at dense98067 [AT] mypacks.net (a junk address but I’ll use a legitimate one when I reply), I can send you the article from Public Relations Review that you posted about on RC at 12:38 on 6/27. Thanks.
(Apologies, but this was the best way I could think of to get in touch.)
Hank Roberts // June 27, 2009 at 8:33 pm
Here’s a new statistical method mentioned:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL038617.shtml
“A newly developed method, the Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition, was applied to adaptively determine the timing of climatic spring onset from the daily temperature records at Stockholm during 1756–2000….”
Looking it up: Results … about 20,500:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Ensemble+Empirical+Mode+Decomposition
Recent article:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevE.79.066705
(2009) [6 pages]
“Data analysis using a combination of independent component analysis and empirical mode decomposition
…
12 June 2009
A combination of independent component analysis and empirical mode decomposition (ICA-EMD) is proposed in this paper to analyze low signal-to-noise ratio data. The advantages of ICA-EMD combination are these: ICA needs few sensory clues to separate the original source from unwanted noise and EMD can effectively separate the data into its constituting parts. The case studies reported here involve original sources contaminated by white Gaussian noise. The simulation results show that the ICA-EMD combination is an effective data analysis tool.”
————
I make no pretense at competence in statistics; just noticing this show up, thinking of the now-closed RC thread on advancing springtime:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/04/breaking-the-silence-about-spring/
Deep Climate // June 28, 2009 at 3:10 am
I don’t know if any one is following the kerfuffle about the supposed EPA “suppression” of climate “research”.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/06/bubkes/langswitch_lang
Since the Friends of Science apparently provided a lot of the material for Carlin’s report, I had to post on the matter.
http://deepclimate.org/2009/06/28/epas-alan-carlin-channels-pat-michaels-and-the-friends-of-science/
It turns out that the whole section on van de Wal’s Greenland ice study was lifted directly from World Climate Report (run by Pat Michaels). Nearly word for word, without attribution (hence the title “EPA’s Alan Carlin channels Pat Michaels and the Friends of Science”).
Anyone interested in the searchable version of Carlin’s paper can get it here (it’s very large, though):
http://deepclimate.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/epa-doc062509-004-ocr1.pdf
Deep Climate // June 28, 2009 at 3:14 am
Oops, the wrong link for RC on the EPA suppression. Here’s the right one:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/06/bubkes/
dhogaza // June 28, 2009 at 1:50 pm
Oh, it’s become obvious that this one’s going to stick around as one of the icons of persecution of pseudoscience, like Dembski’s firing from Baylor.
Carlin will become canonized as a martyr in whatever hall of the afflicted these people maintain.
TCO // June 28, 2009 at 2:08 pm
That supressed report is really a mess. I warned my fellow denialists not to hitch up too much with Carlin because I could tell the guy was not a physical scientist and also cited blogs too much (vice literature). Just skimming that thing and seeing that he cites “Copeland and Watts”, the solar stupidity that Tammy (and I and many others) eviserated, which Watts has even sorta half-retracted… Well, I told my fellow skeptics to stay away from it. They will protest process over content, but the contents of that study are embaressing.
Deep Climate: I would not get too exercised over the citations. It’s minor compared to the bad content itself. There are enough citations so that you can generally tell where the guy is pulling stuff (skepticsphere, not literature). I don’t get the impression from the report that he seems to be laying claim to doing fundamental analysis–he says at the beginning that he is writing a review. Finally, it is a “draft” and given the misnumbered figures and the like, that’s evidently true.
The bigger question is did we miss anything but not having this report included: answer no.
dhogaza // June 28, 2009 at 2:32 pm
DeepClimate, apparently now the spin is no longer that Carlin was suppressed, but rather that the internal comment time was too short for him to properly debunk mainstream climate science. Apparently this is why he was forced to simply cut-and-paste from blogs, mostly.
It would be hilariously pathetic if it weren’t gaining so much traction in the denialsphere.
Deech56 // June 28, 2009 at 5:31 pm
Deep Climate blogger – very nice analysis.
new // June 28, 2009 at 5:51 pm
I’m new here. Can someone tell me more about Tamino? Is s/he a climate scientist? With what training and current work situation?
(btw, I am not a denialist. I believe, in line with overwhelming scientific consensus, that AGW is real and poses an urgent threat.)
[Response: I'm a mathematician, my specialty is the statistical analysis of time series. If you want actual cliimate scientists, go to the best climate blog on the net: RealClimate.]
new // June 28, 2009 at 6:07 pm
thank you!
Deep Climate // June 28, 2009 at 9:38 pm
TCO,
I think you’re missing the point. Cutting-and-pasting huge swathes from a blog, editing it slightly and presenting it as one’s own own work is plagiarism, pure and simple. Carlin did that in at least two sections, and counting, so far.
That’s different from what he did with the Bill Gray paper. There he cut and paste the whole thing (all 10 pages or so), but he did attribute it. A paper-within-a-paper. What a concept.
Yes, it’s all garbage, but it’s not all his garbage.
Some of it is Pat Michaels’.
Still, I’m planning to change my focus to some interesting differences between the two documents and some other issues.
So far I’m not seeing too much traction beyond the blogosphere. We’ll see if some of the Rebulican dinoasaurs or right-wing press take up Carlin’s cause.
TCO // June 28, 2009 at 10:08 pm
I think when they realize how crappy the content is, there will be no energy for trumpeting the “stifled” meme. Would be different if this guy had something really stunning.
dhogaza // June 28, 2009 at 10:44 pm
Oh, but they’ve already changed spin.
Now it’s the EPAs fault that Carlin’s paper is garbage, because the internal comment time was too short. If he’d had more time, it would not have been garbage.
If you think that’s twisted logic … so do I.
TCO // June 28, 2009 at 11:23 pm
Well, he should have burned the midnight oil then. Screw him. He makes skeptics look stupid. Like the get rich quick ads on talk radio. Gives all you NPR listeners something to feel superior with.
dhogaza // June 29, 2009 at 12:08 am
Ummm … think hard, TCO. They looked stupd before this episode. Certainly you haven’t forgotten that silly CO2-snow-in-antarctica episode this quickly, even if you’ve forgotten dozens of others, have you?
(in regard to that, it’s interesting that Stephen Goddard hasn’t posted a single thing at WUWT since. Is he pissed because Watts finally told him he didn’t know WTF he was talking about, convinced that he’s still right, embarrased, or …?)
Now I’m curious as to how the CEI found out about Carlin. Did he approach them? Was it the “mole” that Watts has used as his independent source?
Deep Climate // June 29, 2009 at 12:49 am
Now I’m curious as to how the CEI found out about Carlin. Did he approach them? Was it the “mole” that Watts has used as his independent source?
Good questions. Another one:
When did they find out? How long were they sitting on the draft and emails?
Carlin claims that he did not give CEI anything directly. So it may have been a colleague, possibly Watts’ mystery correspondent.
But someone distributed those emails beyond the four or five original EPA NCEE correspondents and then eventually they got to CEI, perhaps with deniability on the way.
It must have been Carlin or Davidson who made the initial move; the others had no motive to spread it out. (And I’m not sure Davidson did either).
So another question is: Did Carlin or Davidson distribute the emails and draft beyond the original correspondent list?
If CBS or NYTimes Greenwire wanted to report this, fine. But they should have asked those questions of CEI and Carlin.
Gary Strand // June 29, 2009 at 1:43 am
Well, I’ve spent some time on WUWT and despite my apprehensions about going there, I wasn’t impressed. Anthony spent a lot of effort trying to get me to reveal my age (no state secret, but completely irrelevant to the topic at hand) and nicely deleted some comments I had made, to leave him with the “upper hand”. He definitely played the man, not the ball. Overall, WUWT was about at the level of civility, maturity, and intellectual honesty I was expecting.
Also, I wonder if Watts, McIntyre, etc. realize that they do their credibility no favors when they allow anonymous smears, slurs, and attacks. Perhaps they like to sit back and let the ignorant pit bulls go after folks, but I find such tactics silly and juvenile.
dhogaza // June 29, 2009 at 4:12 am
Obvious, yes, and it occurred to me. Given the date on which it was released, I think it’s obvious, not even worth raising (i.e. trying to influence the House vote a couple of days ago).
Still, I guess you’re right to raise the Q explicitly.
dhogaza // June 29, 2009 at 4:15 am
I think one can assume this, with Carlin’s OK.
The mystery correspondent popped up immediately, e-mailing Watts. He says he works with or knows Carlin very well.
It’s orchestrated, no doubt.
dhogaza // June 29, 2009 at 4:17 am
TCO, I think I speak for many as to how you think this encourages you to continue thinking that mainstream science is a left-wing commie plot.
Some day, you’re going to grow up, acknowledge reality, and start thinking about solutions that match your political ideology.
Or not. Your choice.
TCO // June 29, 2009 at 8:07 am
RC and this site get complaints (some justified) all the time for comment deletions and for allowing aggressive silliness by the greenie side but not the reverse. At least at CA, you can post and its up for a while, without having to be pre-moderated.
[Response: The complaints about RC are unjustified; they're as open and tolerant a site as would could ask for. Criticism based on their censorship is nothing but dishonest character assassination.
I'm no longer so tolerant. I wanted to be when I started, but a pattern has emerged: people say things that are so stupid it hurts, they're corrected, they repeat (same stupidity from the same people), they're proved wrong without a doubt, they still repeat it. There's a "stupid threshold" beyond which I'm not willing to host comments.
Those who want to argue endlessly over idiocy have plenty of places to go. This isn't one of them.]
Deech56 // June 29, 2009 at 9:16 am
Paul Krugman comes out swinging.
Ray Ladbury // June 29, 2009 at 12:11 pm
dhogaza says “If you think that’s twisted logic … so do I.”
Well, don’t forget that these guys are the same ones who’ve been doing whatever they can to stall action and now are telling us it’s too late.
Think about it: Anthony “Micro-” Watts has one of the easiest jobs around. He can churn out utter crap to be devoured by his minions as the flavor of the day. When it is pointed out that what he is serving up is crap, all he has to do is change the spin of change the subject and serve up a new flavor of the month. And the minions dutifully lap it up. Think about it. Where else can the hardcore denialists go? There is no scientific literature that supports their position. There’s a couple of websites and the editorial pages of a few papers (not the news sections, as these still have to maintain some contact with reality to maintain any credibility whatsoever).
The “honest” denialists are the ones who only lie to themselves.
TCO // June 29, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Steve McI is getting more and more lawyerly and less and less scientistly. He’s got a bunch of kerfuffle about an internal document at EPA not citing Watts (it does cite him textually, but does not have an endnote, Steve of course is ignorant of the distinction).
He’s also got a butt-ass long document that he submitted to EPA for their public comment period. The whole thing reads like some sort of JAG Manual Investigation with numbered findings of fact. Pretty boring as he lists a whole bunch of “everyone agrees on it” predicates. Then has some thin gruel of content at the end. But I admit, I only skimmed the damn atrocity since it was making me go to sleep (they guy refuses to make a statement up front and then support, instead he is always mystery story style…something he should have gotten torched for in the business world, but then again all he was dealing with was shady mining stocks anyhow.)
People like Burger, Zorita, McCullough have asked him for years to define terms like “bad apple”, to disaggregate and estimate the impact of different issues with full factorials. But he just blows it all off. He seems WAY more interested in PR or childish lawyerly “bites” than in really understanding the interesting issues he raises.
The whole thing is sorta sad since he does do a nice job of digging into papers, of reading a lot of literature and of doing a lot of trial calculations. But the whole thing ends up being a 4 (or is it 5 now) year tease. He touts himself as having peer-reviewed published. But only has one significant paper (GRL05). And no EnE doesn’t count. And comment replies neither.
The whole thing is strange given that the guy has been working at it all full time. It’s actually EASIER for an experienced professional to do grad student work since has work experience to draw on and is more emotionally mature and confident. Then when you add in that the guy makes remarks like he was equivalent to Fields medalists and the like. I donno. The guy is obviously as bright (often brighter) than most of the climate scientists (and don’t get mad, climate scientists are ok, but we are not talking theoretical physics here).
But he just seems to lack a real curiousity. He only has curiousity to find things that help his initial POV. But never curiosity to take things whereever they go. Feynman was much better. He would hunt after “rats” at NASA, no problem. But he was able to differentiate from programs and modules that had real issues (engine) with those that came up rather well after penetrating scrutiny (avionics and computers). And Feynman realized the benefit of understanding and noting each.
dhogaza // June 29, 2009 at 4:08 pm
MicroWatts – I like that. Maybe it can gain some traction. It’s certainly accurate.
Deech56: I saw that Krugman editorial in the print version of the Time this morning. Well-said and right-on.
Gavin's Pussycat // June 29, 2009 at 7:05 pm
new: Tamino is his usual modest self. Yes, he is a mathematical statistician, but also a climatology autodidact who has published at least one comment together with the ‘big guys’ on a climatology paper in GRL that was statistically flawed.
Sure, he’s no match for the amazingly broad erudition of a Michael Mann or a Gavin Schmidt; but on the level of debate in these comments, you won’t notice the difference. Tamino knows his climate stuff.
[Response: It's not really modesty; my contribution was only mathematical. When it comes to the climate science I only consider myself a well-informed layman (with the added bonus of knowing how to digest the scientific literature).]
TCO // June 29, 2009 at 8:40 pm
Lazar and Tammy:
Could you please look at this thread and give me:
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/tired-and-wrong-again/#comment-6726
1. Your general opinion on the issue of negative weightings?
2. Your impression of the discussion (honesty, efficacy, etc.) to include criticism of me?
————————
These threads are also useful background:
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/06/07/antarctic-warming-the-final-straw/#comment-6727
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/10/quote-of-the-week-9-negative-thermometers/#more-8362
http://www.climate-skeptic.com/2009/06/forgetting-about-physical-reality.html
Deep Climate // June 30, 2009 at 2:13 am
It’s even worse than I thought: The “suppressed” Carlin report was mainly inspired by a Pat Michaels blog attack on the EPA. The central premise and four key sections were all lifted from that one source (and its links to other WCR posts).
http://deepclimate.org/2009/06/30/suppressed-carlin-report-based-on-pat-michaels-attack-on-epa/
In other words, it’s plagiarized disinformation. Meanwhile, Senator Inhofe and other Republicans plan to investigate the “suppression.” Unbelievable.
Jeff Id // June 30, 2009 at 2:35 am
Lazar and Tammy:
Saw a bunch of links coming over, I would enjoy a few comments. ;)
Nathan // June 30, 2009 at 3:24 am
Jeff Id
Still fighting the communists? Keep up the fight, someone’s gotta do it…
Remember machismo trumps science every time.
dhogaza // June 30, 2009 at 4:23 am
How about … without RyanO you couldn’t find your dick in your pants …
And even with RyanO, you guys face an uphill battle proving essentially all of physical science wrong.
Lazar // June 30, 2009 at 8:38 am
tco… ‘fraid don’t have much to say… the negative correlation is interesting… someone could correlate with wind or pressure fields to see if there is some real atmospheric phenomenon… could be linear or oscillatory… or it could be a mathematical artefact as romanm and yourself suggest… no reason to say a priori that it is unphysical…
T Massingham // June 30, 2009 at 4:11 pm
I think Tamino will be interested in this challenge:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/30/tropical-tropospheric-amplification-an-invitation-to-review-this-new-paper/#more-9005
Jeff Id // June 30, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Lazar,
There is the point that it’s a thermometer.
TCO // June 30, 2009 at 8:18 pm
Jeff: that was your initial point! I thought you had learned by now. I liked your fessing up to JHeald (Ryan on the other hand was a maggot for trying to slime away and not admit wrong.)
If not, perhaps think about the idea that if two weightings differ by factors of 2 or such, that it does not mean that in one place the temp is twice as high as another! Once you grock that, it shouldn’t be hard to realize that a negative weighting does not mean that negative temps are occuring. It just means that the reconstruction occurs best with negative weighting. This could occur for simple reasons like degeneracy or like anti-correlation with the average or for more refined reasons, such as lower level PCs being composed of differences. Or it could even be an artifact of the methodology. But it’s NOT a priori wrong. Look, even NicL has a parenthetical point schooling you on this (wrt the islands).
I know it sucks that I am BOTH annoying and right. But facts are facts. It doesn’t matter if I’m a troll. Or talk too much. Or don’t do math. The only thing that really matters is driving your own understanding.
Seriously, man, let it settle in. It’s not about me rubbing salt into a wound or about touting a victory. It’s about you learning something. The issues you bring up are fascinating. Just don’t be so quick to jump to “final straw” postings. Cool?
michel lecar // June 30, 2009 at 8:29 pm
I came on the following from the World Health Organization, which is quite amazing actually:
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2009/road_safety_report_20090615/en/index.html
The number of people killed annually in traffic accidents is said to be 1.27 million annually. This is forecast to rise to 2.4 million by 2030. In addition we find the following:
This is an extraordinary and appalling toll. If you think about it in terms of one of the greatest atrocities of the last century, between 1939 and 1945 the Nazis killed about the same number as this over 6 years. In another of them, the Communists in Soviet Russia between around 1930 and 1970 probably killed somewhere between 20 and 40 million. Well, this is about the same rate as we are killing people at with cars. Maybe less severe, actually.
Now in addition to this, if you guys are all correct, then the CO2 they are emitting is a principal contributor to the ongoing global warming disaster.
And yet, all you think its reasonable to do is to carry on the same way, but with different power plants in them gradually over time.
It makes no kind of sense. If you could simultaneously save all those lives and also dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions by moving away from cars precipitately, why would you not advocate doing that? Its a win-win situation, why do you find the idea so absurd and objectionable?
Well, doubtless you will be able to come up with some creative tirade of insults which does not address the point. Committed to hating anyone who does not agree with you all the way down the line, Heaven help you.
TCO // June 30, 2009 at 8:34 pm
T Mass:
I’m not allowed to comment on that Willis paper since I’m not named. I will say that many of the same flaws (“amplification” not well defined, lack of citations and lit review, reasons for choice of series not well explained (and implications of alternate choices), not written like a science paper (and I’m not talking about the personalization, but just basic stuff like a good abstract and the like). He was told all those same issues months ago on Climate Audit. And he still hasn’t fixed them.
Jeff Id // June 30, 2009 at 9:28 pm
TCO, you misinterpret with intent. Tamino doesn’t like that around here.
The fact is that upside down thermometers do not make a single bit of sense in this reconstruction. It’s nothing but non-physical spurious covariance created by too few pc’s.
David B. Benson // June 30, 2009 at 9:58 pm
michel lecar // June 30, 2009 at 8:29 pm — I am all in favor of increased use of mass transit. Unfortunately, that requires more cooperation than most can muster in this century.
A form of Garrett Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons.
michel lecar // July 2, 2009 at 6:39 am
David B. Benson.
The situation in which the UK finds itself on this issue reached even greater heights of absurdity today. We already had a government that claims to think that Global Warming is the greatest threat to the world and country since…you name it. And whose response to this threat is to propose dramatic reductions to CO2 emissions on a scale no other country has ever acheived. Which, even were it successful in doing this, they would in absolute terms be too small to affect Global Warming.
The means it has chosen to implement these reductions, to which transport is a major contributor, appear to include the building of extra runways at the airports and the subsidizing of car purchases.
Now we have added to this combination of absurdities that one of the main railway operators in the country is going out of business because it has been charged an absurd amount for the privilege of running its chunk of the railway. The predictable result has been a combination of high and rising fares for passengers and losses for the company. So, the government will take back the franchise, and run this chunk itself, doubtless keeping the fare structure as is. Amazingly enough, despite the fares, there is lots of demand for rail service. The trains are overcrowded much of the time. If only there were more, and more reasonably priced ones, moving at least some passenger travel to rail would be like falling off a log. But if your aim is to subsidize car manufacture and extract the maximum revenues from rail transport, you are never going to do it. Nor for that matter are you going to lower emissions.
The problem with our government in terms of environmental policy is not that it is left or right, politically, but that it lacks any conception of consistency. If they really believed what they say about warming, they would be doing everything in their power to move us to mass rail transit, instead of which, they seem to be doing everything in their power to stop us moviing ourselves.
The East Coast flooding situation is more of the same. You might think that a government which is convinced of catastrophic coastal flooding would devote its efforts to improving condition and strength of sea defenses. Not this one, its conclusion appears to be that it should immediately give up the idea of coastal defense at all. And then, in some notorious cases in Suffolk, it has actually taken local people to court when they proposed to do the defenses themselves.
Perhaps they were afraid that they would turn out to be effective?
What is clear, whatever you think of the Global Warming likelihood, is that governments have real problems arriving at a consistent workable set of policies on this issue. I don’t know what we do other than to seek to make the inconsistencies public and obvious.
Even if they are wrong about the threat, it would be better to have a set of policies consistent with what they say they believe than the present set, which seem set to deliver the worst of all possible worlds no matter if warming happens or not.
TCO // June 30, 2009 at 10:04 pm
too few PCs is an argument, you could (and would and should) make even if all the weightings were negative. Instead you all made flat statements that weightings can never be negative…and you got schooled. No problem. Man up and take it and move on. Maybe this will teach you not to be so “final straw” and instead keep digging and thinking.
TCO // June 30, 2009 at 10:05 pm
all were positive, I mean.
TCO // June 30, 2009 at 10:43 pm
NicL is busy schooling Ryan now for not taking sign into account for regional impact numbers. You guys are like Keystone cops, Jeff. Get it together. You raise interesting issues, but are way way way from ready to call anything a final straw. You’re still coming to grips with basic concepts in the analysis.
Lazar // June 30, 2009 at 11:43 pm
A Cautionary Note on the Interpretation of EOFs
D. Dommenget and M. Latif
Journal of Climate, 15, 2, pp. 216-225 (2002)
doi:10.1175/1520-0442(2002)0152.0.CO;2
Lazar // July 1, 2009 at 12:04 am
… applying a negative weight to a temperature series as a predictor… or plonking that negative temperature series down on the map and saying this is the [delta] temperature at this point… are two different things… not sure how the two are related… on the other hand, reading the comment thread latest and the wiki, this issue seems to have resolved and the dust settled…
Deech56 // July 1, 2009 at 1:44 am
RE: T Massingham // June 30, 2009 at 4:11 pm
OK, so I clicked the link and found saw the “blog-reviewed” article, complete with shoulder chip. The best comment was :
Can’t argue with that. And this is the new way of scientific publication? Puleeze.
TCO // July 1, 2009 at 2:34 am
Deech: The really sad thing is that he had the article in about the same condition months ago on Climate Audit and got told all the same issues, even by fellow skeptics. I have a big problem with skeptics who combine a contrarian message with inability to show their argument in normal formats. It reeks of Cold Fusion (the mindset at least, even if the content is not as outrageous). And then you have Steve McIntyre giving himself airs for “having published peer-reviewed papers” when his only significant contribution was GRL05! And he just totally blows off finishing anything off, just jerks around on the net with his fellow old fart skeptics. What a waste. I expect better from my fellow baby-killer conservatives.
Jeff Id // July 1, 2009 at 3:52 am
Lazar,
You are confusing the issues. Thermometers cannot be used in an upside down fashion. The only reasonable examples are highly simplified where locked in anti-covariance results in a negative thermometer. While in very controlled cicumstances this can result in a correct answer, this is obviously a non-physical result in the Antarctic.
The concept of anti-covariance is not difficult and not unreasonable. The concept that it will give a better fit in a multivariate regression is not unreasonable. However, the use of a negative thermometer to match that anti-covariance is non-physical to an extreme. In this case it is nothing but a spurious correlation match.
I need to mention that in the thread discussed the more complex weights of RegEM are not considered. This doesn’t change the basic premise of the discussion but there is a B matrix which relates weightings all available data to all missing data on an annualized basis. Weights are not fixed in time.
Now an additional problem is the use of 3 pc’s. The first pc takes most of the trend out. The second and third represent anti-covariance signals between weighted halves of the data. These PC halves guarantee a strong anti-covariance and can create spurious correlations quite easily.
Therefore the result in this case is non-physical matching to reduced information PC data. Inverted thermometers make no sense in this case. By fixing the situation the result of the Antarctic trend can be corrected.
Every attempt we’ve made to increase PC’s to a reasonable level has resulted in a better match to the station average trend. Spatial weightings improve and correlation tests improve. We’re very close to correcting the problems with this paper to the best of the math’s ability.
Thanks for the link BTW.
dhogaza // July 1, 2009 at 4:36 am
In other words, TCO, is you’re confirming everything we know about you:
You deny science because of your political beliefs.
I’ll give you credit for pointing out how stupid those who are arguing “your cause” are.
I’ll even acknowledge your angst over how there’s no science to support your political beliefs.
I’ll even lead a virtual group hug (c’mon, Tamino, Ray, DeepClimate, BPL, etc, let’s give TCO a big group hug because he has no science on his side!)
But, I’m never going to forgive you for refusing to admit that your political beliefs are undermined by serious science.
Or, equally, you refusing to respond by proposing serious paths to counterbalance what physics tell us that are also acceptable or congruent to your political beliefs.
That’s the problem with you RWingnuts. You’re not clever enough to tell us how your belief system will yield solutions to obvious problems like AGW. Therefore you whine.
Quit whining, and tell us how to solve the problem.
Deep Climate // July 1, 2009 at 6:54 am
Regarding Willis E that TCO brought up:
It’s interesting that ended up at WUWT instead of CA. Perhaps Steve McI was not interested in round 2.
I did see at least one change. Willis now understands that the MSU satellite records cover a wide swathe (especially “mid-trop” series) and so one can not ascribe these series to a specific height in the atmosphere.
Still, the “amplification” metric makes little sense to me. Anyway, I’m not welcome to comment either, although maybe I could if I promised to be my usual civil self. But it’s easier to give it a pass.
TCO, I don’t want to fan the flames but Steve McI is a … liberal! Would have voted for Obama if he could.
TCO // July 1, 2009 at 2:35 pm
DC: You are a shmart little liberal. Yes, that’s a great insight about Willis going to Wazzup rather than CA for round 2. Also, that SM never said anything about the stuff in the first place. I really note that the guy tends to avoid calling out his side when wrong (but tries not to get tagged with the silliness either). It’s really a very passive aggressive type behavior.
Ian Jolliffe // July 1, 2009 at 8:30 am
The following note has been quoted from:
A Cautionary Note on the Interpretation of EOFs
D. Dommenget and M. Latif
Journal of Climate, 15, 2, pp. 216-225 (2002)
Anyone checking it out should also look at:
Jolliffe, I.T. (2003): A cautionary note on artificial examples of EOFs, J. Clim., 16, pp 1084-1086
It may confuse you even more, but EOFs are not as simple as they look at first sight.
Ray Ladbury // July 1, 2009 at 12:36 pm
Dr. Jolliffe, many thanks. I’m glad you’re checking in occasionally–your input is valuable.
TCO // July 1, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Professor Jolliffe:
I’ve been trying to contact you, to get your ruling on the issue of “negative thermometers” as in here:
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/tired-and-wrong-again/#comment-6726
Note: I’m not just asking if there are issues with Steig et al, but instead pressing back on the very general claims that “negative weightings are wrong because negative thermometers don’t exist”.
Oh…and remember me? I’m the guy that you gave “love” to for asking the right questions with the centering/double-centering/short-centering kerfuffle.
george // July 1, 2009 at 1:34 pm
TCO says: “At least at CA, you can post and its up for a while, without having to be pre-moderated.”
Yeah, and if a comment happens to call Michael Mann a fraud (or insinuate as much: “Piltdown Mann”), it stays up indefinitely, or at least until someone here or on some other blog (but, curiously, rarely at CA) points it out and makes McIntyre look remiss (or worse) if he does not take down the offending comment.
It looks like a fairly effective system to me, since even if McIntyre is eventually forced to take such comments down, it usually takes some time and meanwhile the comments (libels) serve their purpose. So, why fix it if it ain’t broke?
TCO // July 1, 2009 at 2:15 pm
Georgie: Yup. Good for that too.
All: Willis seems to have a tendancy to throw out new statistical metrics but not to really grind down and define or characterize them well versus comparables. See here:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=4428
george // July 1, 2009 at 2:38 pm
New asks
New:
I think all you really need to know about Tamino is that he can spot GBS (Graph BS) from 23,000 miles away.
dhogaza // July 1, 2009 at 4:09 pm
Speaking about graph BS:
Check this one out
Anthony believes this graph supports the claim that observed warming is driven by changes in GCM intensity.
He apparently has entirely missed the fact that the correlation that’s presented falls apart at just about the same time industrial CO2 output was rising dramatically.
Own goal!
C’mon, TCO, you need to switch sides at some point. How do you keep your head from exploding?
TCO // July 1, 2009 at 5:20 pm
dhog: It’s not about sides with me. I WANT Steve and the like to be right, so I pick at them to make sure, to sharpen them, to make sure I don’t fall for a false prophet. You should do the same. Instead of looking for confirmation, try picking at your own side. If it comes up stranger, great. If not, it wasn’t so great. In any case, you will get more truth that way, than just following what you want to beleive.
dhogaza // July 1, 2009 at 6:35 pm
As I’ve said more than once, until about ten years ago I pretty much rejected the notion that global warming would be a significant environmental threat in my lifetime.
The “confirmation” – or, if you will, “affirmation” – I was looking for was that the couple of decades I spent on traditional conservation efforts to preserver our biological heritage had not been in vain.
So, see, I already *did* “pick at” the “be happy, don’t worry” crowd who I hoped would legitimately confirm my unconcern.
Of course, having done a fair amount of field work over the years, it kinda becomes obvious that things are warming and kinda makes it harder to believe the denialist crowd ….
michel lecar // July 1, 2009 at 8:49 pm
People asked my source for being sceptical about the North Sea rising. It was KNMI, and the article I recalled was:
http://www.nrc.nl/binnenland/article2089560.ece/KNMI_nuance_ontbreekt_in_plan_Deltacommissie
The particular phrasing that struck me at the time was this:
The last sentence, in my Englishing, reads:
In the last century the sea level rose by 20 cm, and there is no sign of any significant acceleration.
A projected rise of 1.3 meters by the end of the 21st century is said to be not probable.
I have great faith in KNMI. They are professionals when it comes to water and the sea.
The East Coast of the UK is of course slowly sinking into the sea, and the sea level itself is slowly rising as it has been for a very very long time. I probably overstated the case. But I don’t think that there is any evidence for unadaptable or catastrophic North Sea rises. And having inspected the East Coast of England with some care in recent years, I believe that the largest contributor to coastal erosion and future catastrophic flooding is really simple: the wilful neglect of the sea defenses, which can be seen all up and down this coast, and which, were they to be adequately maintained to the standards of the last generation, would well last out this one, and the next too.
Hank Roberts // July 1, 2009 at 8:56 pm
Tamino, if you have time to take a look at this George Mason site (I think I mentioned them once before) I’m very curious what you think:
http://stats.org/
as mentioned here:
http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/30/flaws-in-the-case-against-bpa/?ref=health
Hank Roberts // July 1, 2009 at 11:59 pm
Uh, oh
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/011389.html#011389
The language banning the orbital mind control lasers was gutted from a bill; link in the first post at the above topic.
That’s PROOF …..
dhogaza // July 2, 2009 at 1:02 am
So, does Roger Pielke, Jr truly not understand that court rulings regarding what agencies must reveal in federal court don’t in any way determine what agencies make public when they publish findings or decisions, etc?
He gives court case cites that are clearly discussing what must be revealed when an agency is sued, and claims it applies to the Carlin case.
It’s sort of the legal equivalent of Wattsonian Statistics.
Lazar // July 2, 2009 at 11:36 am
jeff id,
… it isn’t obvious to me… without finding an artificial cause, how can you be a priori certain there isn’t a real atmospheric effect…
Lazar // July 2, 2009 at 11:53 am
ian joliffe…
thanks for the reference…
dr. joliffe’s paper is here… also worth reading is behera et al.’s comment on dommenget and latif…
Comments on ‘‘A Cautionary Note on the Interpretation of EOFs’’
S. K. Behera et al.
Journal of Climate, 16, 7, pp. 1087-1093 (2003)
doi:10.1175/1520-0442(2003)0162.0.CO;2
Ray Ladbury // July 2, 2009 at 12:16 pm
Michel,
Great. Can’t help you though, as I am not in government. Maybe you should talk to them.
As to the effectiveness of government policies on climate change, I will observe:
1)Humans do a piss poor job at assessing and mitigating lont-term risk. This is why we have to use rigorous analysis to guide us.
2)If our leaders were not all scoundrels, liars and thieves, it wouldn’t be representativie democracy. (RIP Molly Ivins!)
3)Because it is a democracy, you have nobody but yourself and your fellow citizens to blame.
4)Remember the example of Robespierre in the French Revolution who said, “There goes the mob. I am their leader. I must get in front of them.” If the people lead, governments will follow.
Jeff Id // July 2, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Lazar,
Thermometers measure positive temperature. Flipping them upside down has no physical meaning in reality. There was one example given in the thread on tAV where a negative weight didn’t actually mean a negative thermometer, however this was a very fixed defined relationship.
If you have a situation where you believe gaia has ordained an inverse relationship it better be well explained. This was just one more detail in the math of a very cleverly written paper. It has been entertaining to look at the detail – like a good crossword.
For these several inverted thermometers to be correctly weighted, the satellite data would have to have either a positive greater than two times a negative weighted surface station covariance on both long and short term scales with no other greater magnitude thermometers present, or a strong ‘perfect’ inverse covariance with a match to long and short term trends (not true), it’s complicated to say it that way but I can’t explain it any better than that.
The likely reality IMO is the 3 EOF math has limited information and the density of the peninsula stations means a lot of the same information is used. The result is spurious flipping to better match the wiggles of the 3 pcs which I now believe is compensated by other similar information stations. The trends are a small enough effect to be basically ignored.
If I was a climatologist, I would have looked into the flipping in more detail already– but no time yet. I haven’t even looked at Ryan’s results closely enough to know if his high EOF method corrects the problem.
Another point of interest is we have now gotten to the point where all PC’s can be included in the recon without overfitting. After about 15, there doesn’t seem to be much difference but the increased detail exposed is interesting.
TCO // July 2, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Jeff:
It’s good that you are grapsing and thinking, but very bad if you are still overestimating your level of understanding. You’ve already been schooled once with the whole “negative weighting is like a thermometer is measuting negative temps, it can NEVER occur”. It took me hundreds of posts and bringing by experts, but you finally manned up and took back some of your over the top expostulation (and don’t backslide now).
Doesn’t this drive home to you that you don’t really understand everything so readily? That you are not ready for “final straws” or for getting all spun up?
Who knows what else you’re wrong on? Area weighting primacy? Little more grasshopper son. Heck, I think there are issues with Steig. I think it’s good that you are picking at it. But very bad if you go running off and muff it like Carlin writing a messed up report with solar silliness. Just hang in there and keep pushing for understanding…and a little more curioisity and humility and a little less exasperation and emotion.
Hank Roberts // July 2, 2009 at 3:42 pm
> graph BS at WTF
That’s hysterically funny, but stupid.
See
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL038004.shtml
Hank Roberts // July 2, 2009 at 3:46 pm
http://www.nukees.com/comics/nukees20090701.gif
Jeff Id // July 2, 2009 at 4:21 pm
TCO — Blah!
Lazar // July 2, 2009 at 4:26 pm
jeff id,
caveat i haven’t read steig et al. …the negative weight describes a correlation between temperatures right?… i don’t think a priori the proposed relationship is unphysical… how do you *know* a rising temperature in one location isn’t physically related to a declining temperature in another… unless you have
a) searched for a physical connection and come up empty or contrary found a positive correlation
b) looking at the maths shows it’s an artifact
… i personally would bet against it being real… then there’s the question… is it important?…
Lazar // July 2, 2009 at 4:46 pm
ps… i’m glad when tco picks holes in ‘my’ side’s arguments, pours water on our enthusiasms, and asks questions which we should be asking… he’s trying to help… it ain’t bad intent…
Ian Jolliffe // July 2, 2009 at 4:55 pm
TCO: negative thermometers.
I did reply to an email on June 17 on this subject, which I guess came from you under one of your pseudonyms, or possibly even your real name.
As is my nature, there’s some ducking and diving in there, but here it is in its original form:
I haven’t been following this discussion, and it’s far from clear to
me exactly what the argument is about. It appears that I’d need
to wade through large amounts of blog and other material to find
out.
In particular, there is a link to the abstract of the Steig et al. paper,
but the only way I can see the actual paper is on my next visit to
Exeter, currently planned for early July.
One or two general comments, which have to be taken along with
the strong statement that I don’t know the details of the particular
analysis or data being discussed. The abstract of the paper doesn’t
even mention PCA but gives the impression of doing something more
complex than a straightforward PCA.
PCA simply produces uncorrelated derived variables that succcesively
have maximum variance, no more no less. If some of the pairs of
variables analysed have negative correlations, the first PC is likely to
have negative weights for some of the variables. Hence there is
absolutely nothing ‘wrong’ with negative weights – they are expected
in the first PC when some of the correlations are negative, and will be
present in all (apart from exceptional circumstances) subsequent PCs.
Perhaps the ‘error’ here is in trying to interpret a PC as an ‘index of
warming’ (if that’s what is being done) rather than just a measure of
‘maximal temperature variation’.
If you can point me to more specific questions (your current links send
me to blogs with no indication of where to look) with sufficient information
readily accessible and understandable, I may be able to say more, but
it may not be a rapid response.
TCO // July 2, 2009 at 5:01 pm
Jeff: notice that NicL had a nice little post in passing about the islands actually having negative correlations. And his little (kind) note in passing about not being as anti-negative as the rest of you…you kinda just let that one go by grasshopper. If its cause you’re thinking, kudos. If passive aggressive, than *whack with rolled up newspaper* “bad engineer!”
P.s. I still lubs youse.
TCO // July 2, 2009 at 5:25 pm
Ian:
1. You da man! I appreciate your responding.
2. The issue has more to do with negative weighting of stations in the OVERALL RECONSTRUCTION than PCA per se. (Although there is an intermediate PCA step in making the recon.) IOW, is it just WRONG to ever have a recon that has some stations negative weighted for the average. Like having a “negative temperature”.
3. My understanding* is that what Steig wanted to do was to figure out the trend in Antarctic temp from 1957-2002. For the last half of the period, he had sattelite coverage that covered all of the continent at a very fine scale (thousands of points). But, he also had manned stations that were in distinct areas (about 40 of them, with some big gaps in coverage) that gave temp information for the ENTIRE period. So what he did (kinda cool) was to create a function that showed how the manned stations compared with sattelite temps (on the thousands ofgrid points) DURING THE PERIOD of overlap. Then he extended that function back in time.
(Now this is a separate issue from the point-blank anti-negative statements) The way that he compared the two data streams during the period of overlap used a PCA (and only 3 PCs). I’ve always worried about this, since the coverage is very sparse in the middle of the continent and it seems like you would really want to use every bit of data (maybe even INTERACTIONS) to give you the best “guess” for a matching function, rather than using PCA as a “filter”, but…well…they did.
4. Next post, will contain more specific qoutes and such for you to respond to rather than reading entire threads.
5. AGAIN, to start with, what I would like is your opining on the extremely strong ‘no negative weighting, it’s aphysical like having a negative thermometer, should NEVER happen anywhere anyhow’ style of comments by Ryan and Jeff. I think once we put that to bed as purely theoretical math issue, than we can get into the details of did Mann muff it again.
6. And of course, if my asking you about a very precise theoretical issue, draws you into thinking about the paper overall, all the better for my evil plans.
*may be wrong in details and Jeff feel free to correct, although I don’t think it affects the basic point of Jeff/Ryan making overstrong anti-negative thermometer comments.
Jeff Id // July 2, 2009 at 5:35 pm
Lazar,
I appreciate the candid response. My opinion is that I can see no reason why anyone would flip a thermomters reading upside down to better understand the temperature of an area. It doesn’t make any sense. Without going into the detail though the discussion is more complex than simply that and requires knowledge of the paper.
Dr. Jolliffe,
The point TCO is arguing is actually unrelated to PCA except that a reduced PC information field is probably part of the cause of what amounts to a non-physical result in a multivariate regression. I was wondering why he was asking you.
The weights of PC’s are not in question, it is the weights of thermometer data in what amounts to a weighted average which in this case is completely unrelated to PCA.
TCO // July 2, 2009 at 5:45 pm
Ian:
I’m sorry that a rock-star statistician like you lacks paid library access to all the journals. You might check with Exeter and see if there is some password or program or something were you can look at them online with your academic credentials (lots of places have that, just requiring that you log in remotely).
Anyhow, I sent the authors an email asking them for a pdf of the paper and permission to send that pdf to you. I also re-iterated a request for the PC data itself. I think at a minimum will be able to get you the pdf. Although I am a skeptic and they are “the other side” and busy guys, have found them to be very collegial about sharing pdfs with those of us not having subscriptions.
TCO // July 2, 2009 at 5:52 pm
Jeff:
Are you continuing to argue for the broad statements that you have made from the start or do you stand by your more recent (manly) retraction after the JHeald comments?
If it’s the former, I will just persist in driving this to conclusion by bringing in more and more experts (and really Jon Baxter already was one) to school you. If it’s the latter, then that’s fine and I won’t shame you.
If you are trying to go to some sort of “I never said that” position, than I will just keep hammering home the Carrick, Baxter, TCO, NicL, JHeald counterpoints by bringing in bigger and bigger experts and showing them your initial statements.
Jeff Id // July 2, 2009 at 7:04 pm
TCO,
The ‘experts’ on your list have all agreed with us as far as I can tell, only JH never came back to finish. You have good perseverance though, keep looking for that doc. BTW, you would do better if you asked the right question.
TCO // July 2, 2009 at 7:51 pm
Ian:
READ THIS FOR A SIMPLER TAKE ON THE ISSUE
The issue at hand is not Steig per se, but GENERAL comments by Jeff Id and by Ryan that any recon that contains inverted stations MUST be wrong since that is ‘like a negative thermometer’. Note that this is a different sitatuation from saying “was Steig right or wrong” or even “did problems in the Steig work create negative weightings”. The issue is a VERY GENERAL one of “can you ever have negative weightings”? If not, of course, then just having the negative weightings ALONE is a smoking gun against Steig. If it’s at least conceivable to have situations where the negative weigthings can occur, that’s different and means that Steig needs to be evaluated on its own.
—————————
We have been arguing this for a while, but to try to make it simpler for you
1. General statement by Jeff Id:
The pie chart wasn’t the aha of the last post, although it was the best visual evidence. Ryan, some commentors and others picked up on this right away. The big deal of the last post was that 5 of 34 – 15% of the manned temperature stations were inverted. Completely flipped upside down. What’s more is that they came with heavy weights and trends. This is the #1 problem discovered this weekend. Even if the peninsula weighting was zero it didn’t matter, the real issue is the mystery of the upside down thermometers.
Claims that it is somehow ok to flip thermometers and average them together because the paper get’s the desired result are advocacy – not science.
2. Other GENERAL statements (only a subset of all of them):
“It is of course nonsensical to flip temperature data upside down when averaging but that is exactly what Steig et al does. This ALONE [emphasis added] should call into question the paper’s result.”
“At the moment, I don’t like negative weights. Negative weight*trend is okay, though . . . but if something ends up with a negative weight, my initial thought is that it shouldn’t be included in the first place. Have to think about that one.”
“Anti-thermometers (negative weight) don’t make sense. If the values are small enough it might not matter. In this case they are large.”
“The pie chart wasn’t the aha of the last post, although it was the best visual evidence. Ryan, some commentors and others picked up on this right away. The big deal of the last post was that 5 of 34 – 15% of the manned temperature stations were inverted. Completely flipped upside down. What’s more is that they came with heavy weights and trends. This is the #1 problem discovered this weekend. Even if the peninsula weighting was zero it didn’t matter, the real issue is the mystery of the upside down thermometers.
Claims that it is somehow ok to flip thermometers and average them together because the paper get’s the desired result are advocacy – not science.”
“It cannot under any form of reality be acceptable to invert a temperature anomaly, the only response is for them to say – it didn’t have a noticeable effect. ”
” a thermometer is a thermometer and it measures thermo not anti-thermo.”
“A negative thermometer makes no physical sense. None. Period.”
“There is absolutely unequivocally no possible rational by which measured thermal variance can be flipped upside down under any circumstances. The temperature is the temperature as measured by thermometers.”
” you are thick-headedly missing the single biggest problem with the reconstruction – upside down temperature data are nonsensical.”
“This does NOT mean that you cannot have a negative weight in a regression, it means you cannot have a strong negative weight in a weighted average of thermometer data”
“inverting any thermometer makes zero sense in a physical world.”
3. Here are several of the places where I and others have tried to show Jeff/Ryan that their general statement does not nescessarily hold (and Jeff and Ryan resisted):
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/tired-and-wrong-again/#comment-6388
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/tired-and-wrong-again/#comment-6394
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/tired-and-wrong-again/#comment-6427
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/tired-and-wrong-again/#comment-6459
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/tired-and-wrong-again/#comment-6474
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/tired-and-wrong-again/#comment-6479
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/tired-and-wrong-again/#comment-6502
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/tired-and-wrong-again/#comment-6573
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/tired-and-wrong-again/#comment-6601
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/tired-and-wrong-again/#comment-6620
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/tired-and-wrong-again/#comment-6636
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/tired-and-wrong-again/#comment-6641
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/tired-and-wrong-again/#comment-6663
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/tired-and-wrong-again/#comment-7383
Jeff Id // July 2, 2009 at 8:56 pm
The only one I saw TCO that I would take back happened when I got grumpy with you.
” you are thick-headedly missing the single biggest problem with the reconstruction – upside down temperature data are nonsensical.”
It’s not the biggest problem. However, it is a problem. It’s quite a hobby you’ve made.
Gavin's Pussycat // July 2, 2009 at 9:40 pm
Dr. Jolliffe, the Steig et al. paper appears to be readable here:
http://www.mitosyfraudes.org/Calen/Steig_et_al_Nature_Antarctica_Temps_1-22-09.pdf
Dave A // July 2, 2009 at 9:59 pm
TCO,
I’m sorry to see that you can’t accept Dr Joliffe’s response in a generous way.
You seem to go out of your way to denigrate people no matter their backgrounds. Meanwhile, proclaiming that you are sort of neutral but more pro sceptic, most of your comments attack sceptics.
Perhaps you are just ‘playing games’, as after a couple of years of observation I don’t think you are really trying to achieve anything.
Gavin's Pussycat // July 2, 2009 at 9:59 pm
…and the RegEM technique used is described in
http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~tapio/imputation/
TCO // July 2, 2009 at 10:48 pm
NicL is my new skeptic hero. Good to see him correcting Jeff and Ryan and driving to more rigor. I want the best for Jeff and Ryan, but think they need some of this schooling or else they will run amok like Carlin.
TCO // July 2, 2009 at 11:12 pm
Pamela Gray is also a hero. Need to have her join my “on the side of the skeptics but will not let them get away with bad stuff and will actively call it out in contravention to the “socializers” like DaveA, Steve McI, etc. who want to eschew open correction of bad work by fellow skeptics”.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/30/tropical-tropospheric-amplification-an-invitation-to-review-this-new-paper/
David B. Benson // July 2, 2009 at 11:49 pm
michel lecar // July 2, 2009 at 6:39 am — Pubicly request that the queen dissolve the govenment?
Hank Roberts // July 3, 2009 at 12:06 am
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/environmental_law/
(consistently well worth reading)
reports (did you hear about this anywhere else?):
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Report on Climate Change Impacts in the US
On June 16, the U.S. Global Change Research Program released the NOAA-led study, “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States” – which it describes as a “state of knowledge” report about current and project impacts of global warming on the US.
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/files/climate-impacts-report.pdf
The report is based on the accumulated body of scientific information from 21 US synthesis and assessment reports as well as the IPCC assessments.
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/files/executive-summary-climate-impacts-report.pdf
The report includes separate assessments of various US regions
http://www.globalchange.gov/publications/reports/scientific-assessments/us-impacts/regional-climate-change-impacts
as well as various aspects of society such as human health, transportation, energy supply and use, water resources, agriculture and ecosystems
http://www.globalchange.gov/publications/reports/scientific-assessments/us-impacts/climate-change-impacts-by-sector
TCO // July 3, 2009 at 2:23 am
Jeff Id is being a complete blockhead over here:
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/06/30/antarctic-sea-ice-complete-video/#comment-7708
It’s not the end of the world to be ignorant. But at least KNOW your ignorance. And recognize when you are corrected. Sheesh. The guy makes us skeptics look bad.
dhogaza // July 3, 2009 at 4:01 am
Sadly for your politically-driven movement, they *all* do.
Churchill was brilliant when drunk (pretty much 24/7). So, why don’t you admit that science is true, it’s real, it’s happening, and cobble up a realistic course to counter it that fits with your political beliefs?
If you could do so, I’d sign on. Why wouldn’t I? Oh yeah, my side wants to give me my personal black helicopter and teach me to fly it so I can douch the United States.
Feh.
John Mashey // July 3, 2009 at 6:33 am
Hank:
re STATS.
I’m not tamino, but regarding STATS, you’d certainly want to read:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Statistical_Assessment_Service
You will recognize some of the funders.
Philippe Chantreau // July 3, 2009 at 8:21 am
How many times have you had that same comment about on “skeptic” or another TCO?
Gavin's Pussycat // July 3, 2009 at 8:46 am
Hilarious from your mouth Dave. Playing games? Projection. Think what you want of TCO, but at least he tries to be on the side of truth, within the limits of his emotional make-up, with occasional small successes. A slow learner, but a learner. Learn from him.
Ray Ladbury // July 3, 2009 at 12:26 pm
TCO, Hmm. The Dunning-Kruger Effect is strong in this one.
TCO // July 3, 2009 at 12:45 pm
Here’s Jeff Id running amok again: http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/07/03/unprecidented-again/
He hasn’t read the paper yet, but he knows it has to be wrong and publishes a post on it. And with a pretty juvenile quip (no sattletes 800 years ago) rather than truly examining the papers arguments. Oh…and the guy doesn’t seem to realize that even Freeman Dyson says GW is extreme in Greenland, thus it would not be a surprise if sea ice declined there. Really the guy seems to even lack self-awareness. Lord save us from these over-enthusiastic sketpcis that make us look bad.
TCO // July 3, 2009 at 1:02 pm
sheesh: little bit of googling runs down a pdf of what Id couldn’t bother to read, but HAD to get a post up on:
http://www.ulapland.fi/home/hkunta/jmoore/pdfs/Macias-Fauria_2009_ClimDyn.pdf
I’m really getting sick of the emotive style of the hoi polloi skeptics. They’re as bad as a bunch of female liberals.
TCO // July 3, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Here’s some low grade solar silliness:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/01/another-paper-showing-evidence-of-a-solar-signature-in-temperature-records/#more-9044
It’s just amazing to watch how unthinkingly the skeptic hoi polloi will eat up the worst (e.g. Carlin) crap that fits in with their world view.
And then you have those that should know better like McI who put up with their idiot siblings to avoid rancor within the movement. What a mess.
dhogaza // July 3, 2009 at 5:39 pm
I know I’m taking a risk of causing TCO’s head to explode by posting this, but I can’t resist…
From WUWT’s thread on JeffID’s video that “proves” that the Wilkins Ice Shelf probably collapses every few years …
TCO … still with us? :)
(When I read something like that I do wonder how many posters over there are just sockpuppets with too much time on their hands)
t_p_hamilton // July 3, 2009 at 6:43 pm
TCO:”It’s just amazing to watch how unthinkingly the skeptic hoi polloi will eat up the worst (e.g. Carlin) crap that fits in with their world view.”
TCO, what is the BEST skeptic crap, in your opinion?
Jeff Id // July 3, 2009 at 7:00 pm
Nobody said that Dhog.
TCO // July 3, 2009 at 7:22 pm
tp hamilton: I think they raise interesting querstions in general, failing to settle things. But some good stuff: Burger05 full factorial showing that the Mann result was highly influenced by choice of method.
rustneversleeps // July 3, 2009 at 7:27 pm
good interview with extensive video excerpt by Gavin Schmidt on skill and constraints of climate models at edge.org yesterdy: http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge292.html#tc
dhogaza // July 3, 2009 at 7:55 pm
Quoting Jeff ID from his web site:
OK, he said “melting” not “collapse”. Pardon me.
Gavin's Pussycat // July 3, 2009 at 7:59 pm
> Burger05 full factorial
Many of the combinations of input parameters were quite unrealistic, and they were producing most of the variability seen. This is well known and has been pointed out to you. OK?
(But as ‘best crap’ it may qualify… yes I’ve seen worse :-)
dhogaza // July 3, 2009 at 8:00 pm
However, he also says …
not as extreme as my “every few years” comment, however absolutely contradictory to the mainstream scientific view.
Yet he also says …
If it melts, I guess it can’t collapse, because it just ain’t there no more.
Ray Ladbury // July 3, 2009 at 8:39 pm
dhogaza,
Cough, cough, sputter….
Wait, didn’t we just have 8 years of Presidency of someone with very like his intelligence…?
Jeff Id // July 3, 2009 at 8:52 pm
Out of conext. It was said sarcastically in relation to the endless news articles.
dhogaza // July 3, 2009 at 9:11 pm
Full context:
video … then
TCO // July 3, 2009 at 9:28 pm
I don’t think that intelligence nescessarily correlates with best policies or leader. For instance Carter was much smarter than Reagan, but as a conservative, I much preferred Reagan to ole Killer Rabbit boy. all that said, the last 8 years of Bush have been an atrocity. The paleocons and libertarian Republicans are sick of him too. He’s such a rich kid moron. Wasted billions of dollars of treasure and thousands of lives on silly actions. Add in the bailout and harriet Meiers. What a waste.
‘bama is a bit too much of a Chicago politician for me. And way too effective at moving very liberal policiies forward, while keeping a smooth calm apperance about him of normalcy. (I guess he migh be great for a liberal though in that vein). Still…it is nice to not have a buffoon in there any more. And to have a VP who is a harmless buffoon instead of a harmful buffoon.
dhogaza // July 3, 2009 at 10:35 pm
Like putting a special forces general in charge in Afghanistan rather than an guy trained in the artillery, pointing to the Taliban, and saying “sic ‘em, dude!” :)
I respect the fact that you’re not a member of the rabid Obama haters that characterizes so much of the right. Just saw my fundy xtian sister today (Four Square Church) and she seems very favorably impressed with Obama, too, in contrast with the eight years of W who she came to despise (despite voting for him).
TCO // July 4, 2009 at 1:18 am
As a person, I think ‘bama is definitely smarter and mildly more likeable than Bush (I really hate all the politicians…so only mildly). In terms of policies, ‘bama is bad for me. Bush was even worse in a way, because he became the picture of conservatives while opening the vault doors as well as getting in two bad wars. He’s basically screwed the natural advantages Republicans have so that we don’t even have a good anti-liberal platform any more.
Terry // July 4, 2009 at 1:18 am
Tamino I see I got snipped – sorry if I was off topic or too forward. In an open thread on open mind. You and I are both math guys. You more than me, I’m sure. In your opinion, does Grinsted’s method use padding? Rahmstorf said it doesn’t. Is it just a steeper version of a triangle filter? Again, according to him, it isn’t. Looking forward to hearing your response. Or… delete away. Have a great weekend either way!
Terry // July 4, 2009 at 1:45 am
Tamino – since math is (apparently) off topic on open threads – are these just supposed to be about politics? Is talk about the Bartlett filter not to be mentioned? I realize it isn’t nearly as interesting as dhogaza’s and TCO’s political discussion, but frankly I’m more interested in the math. Thanks.
[Response: Math is not off topic on open threads. But I'm not interested in investigating non-issues.]
dhogaza // July 4, 2009 at 4:45 am
Uh, much of the “natural advantages Republicans have” was abandoned by Nixon’s Southern Strategy (“we won’t use the word ‘nigger’, but vote for us because you know what we mean”).
Big sell-out, since in many ways, Nixon’s administration was reasonable, i.e. science-based conservation law, a rational view towards the USSR (Détente), opening China, etc.
But, of course, unlike me, maybe you aren’t a real Republican (though I can’t think of any Republican I’d vote for today).
Oh, no, I didn’t vote for Nixon due to his lack of personal integrity, but the stuff I listed above – I approved of then, and do so now.
TCO // July 4, 2009 at 1:01 pm
Looks like Ryan is finally being clued in by some stuff from RomanM and NicL.
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6071#comment-347945
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/06/26/regem-weight-calculation-a-different-approach/#comment-7749
Good that the guy can recognize errors. Bad that he was so adamant before.
Neven // July 4, 2009 at 1:37 pm
I read that article on the Air Vent called “Unprecidented Again”. Is that title an insieder joke or is it a Bushism? Bad spelling always makes me suspicious.
Neven // July 4, 2009 at 1:39 pm
I meant: insider joke. ;-)
Lab Lemming // July 4, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Anyone wishing to guess at this year’s minimum arctic sea ice extent may do so here:
http://lablemminglounge.blogspot.com/2009/06/minimum-arctic-sea-ice-extent-betting_21.html
Minimal stats knowledge required.
Hank Roberts // July 4, 2009 at 4:03 pm
Please.
Our previous VP was an _armed_ buffoon.
Terry // July 4, 2009 at 6:33 pm
Response: Math is not off topic on open threads. But I’m not interested in investigating non-issues.
I see three issues, but I suppose we can agree to disagree on a holiday weekend. Have a great 4th!
Hank Roberts // July 4, 2009 at 8:42 pm
Interesting:
compare this:
Concerns over bisphenol A continue to grow
New studies of plastics chemical measure effects, exposures
By Janet Raloff, July 18th, 2009; Vol.176 #2
http://sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/45214/title/Concerns_over_bisphenol_A_continue_to_grow#comment_editor
to this:
http://www.stats.org/stories
/2009/science_suppressed_BPA_intro_jun12_09.html
Science suppressed: How America became obsessed with BPA, Trevor Butterworth , June 15, 2009
(the latter is from stats.org (the new George Mason U. site — “We Help Journalists think quantitatively through education, workshops and direct assistance with data analysis” — GMU where Wegman is a statistician, for whatever that’s worth)
Hank Roberts // July 4, 2009 at 8:45 pm
PS, this from “stats.org”
“ARE YOU A JOURNALIST
Since its launch STATS has helped journalists and news organizations with reporting on statistics, either by serving as a direct source in a story or by helping a reporter understand how to interpret and frame statistical data. In some cases, we have stat checked the quantitative material in major investigations before they went to print.
If you need assistance with a story, whether its in understanding how to interpret the numbers in a particular study or advice on how to think quantitatively about a topic, we can help. Use the form below to send us some brief details and your time frame for publication or broadcast. Just bear in mind that complex data can’t always be analyzed an hour before deadline (and that we’re not walking almanacs for random statistics)! “
TCO // July 5, 2009 at 12:41 am
Zorita posted a comment on Rahmstorf at CA. Be still my beating heart. Has a similar take to a few others that R (and I guess G by implication) is using very fancy words for what ends up being a rather simple smooth. (And thus not really showing true knowledge of what they are doing.) I think perhaps Tammy with his emphasis on understanding different smoothers might have some sympathy for this critique of a Team member. Even for just such a minor thing.
pdm // July 5, 2009 at 3:01 am
Tammy, replace “Pielke” with “Rhamstorf” below in your comment on RC. Does it read accurately?
[edit]
[Response: NO IT DOES NOT. There's no parallel, and your suggesting so is exactly the kind of disgusting lie that make denialists not just mistaken, but loathesome. That means you.]
dhogaza // July 5, 2009 at 3:14 am
Cool that you recognize how minor it is.
Not so cool that you suggest Tamino fuel the fire by emphasizing this.
I think by now you realize that the CA people latch on with pitbull vigor to issues that are really not material to the big picture.
While real scientists concentrate on how to advance the big picture.
TCO // July 5, 2009 at 3:37 am
My side accuses me of latching on to things that distract from the key issues. Or of “joining your side”. You seem very like them, dhog, in thinking that I have to choose your side eventually or in never being interested in flaws of your own side. Only the meta debate. Only the end result. I think good thinking and good science is aided by being able to parse things.
dhogaza // July 5, 2009 at 4:43 am
Do you understand what you’re saying here?
That this defines the very best of the denialist attack on mainstream science. That, at best, they’ve found “minor things” that don’t impact the reality that CO2-forced warming is real, and amplified by a variety of feedbacks?
And that working scientists are far more concerned with getting the right answer, than whether or not they make little boo-boos on the way that are, as you say …
“minor things”?
You ridicule your side by the very way in which you praise their most significant accomplishment in the last few years.
dhogaza // July 5, 2009 at 4:45 am
Just like 99% of engineers.
Which of course is why all airplanes crash and every bridge ever built falls down, surprising all …
TCO // July 5, 2009 at 5:59 am
Nice little girl-spat going on at CA.
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6473#comment-348025
TCO // July 5, 2009 at 3:17 pm
Dhog:
You couldn’t know that I would have that meta-criticism in there, but it is dead-on to your subsequent post. If Tammy is interested in methods, in tutorials of how things work, in smoothing, in weather noise and improper observations, etc.; then the Rahmstorf kerfuffle would be right up his ally.
Nothing wrong with going after your own side. It’s all science, anyhow. And the point about it helping to understand what you are doing, fits right in with Tammy’s emphasis on tutorials and the like.
Ray Ladbury // July 5, 2009 at 5:22 pm
TCO, did it ever occur to you that Tamino might want to concentrate on issues that actually matter?
No, it is not all science anyhow. To be science it has to advance the understanding of the phenomena being studied. Yes, it’s fine delving into methodology, but ultimately it’s what you do with the methods that matters.
Hank Roberts // July 5, 2009 at 5:25 pm
> your own side
Ya know, most of the world now has moved from the old black-and-white to at least 8-bit grayscale.
Aside from a few fanatics who insist everything not with them is against them and see everything in black and white.
Richard C // July 5, 2009 at 8:11 pm
This is what is wrong with the “debate”. It isn’t a debate. You can’t support a side as if it was a football team, you cannot be ideologically opposed to the mechanisms of climate change. Hundreds (thousands?) of people have made observations, measurements and derived equations over more than a hundred years. By all means, question individual conclusions, but don’t choose a side unless you wish to dismiss a huge interconnected body of work spanning more than a century. And if you do, on what grounds? Philosophical antipathy?
To paraphrase somebody elsewhere, (I think it was a comment on a RealClimate post), it’s no longer if, it’s when and how much.
Hank Roberts // July 5, 2009 at 9:06 pm
Hmmm. Ok, I looked.
TCO, you left out a hyphen.
It’s a little-girl-spat.
Ray Ladbury // July 6, 2009 at 1:15 am
Richard C. says, “You can’t support a side as if it was a football team, you cannot be ideologically opposed to the mechanisms of climate change.” Well, that and the fact that last I saw science wasn’t a sport where cheerleaders made a whole helluva lot of difference.
The science is being done by the folks that publish. The rest of us are just study groups.
george // July 6, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Ray says
A study group implies some honest attempt at understanding, albeit by amateurs.
I’d say most of what we see on the web is “Conspiracy theory of the month Club” stuff (about Michael Mann, Stefan Rahmsdorf, IPCC, Jim Hansen, etc.)
The recurrent theme is “They’re trying to make warming look worse than it is and hide the data (code, smoothing algorithm, etc.) ”
I’d bet you could actually generate the vast majority of their “arguments” with a computer “story-telling algorithm” that was fed the same story line and a different main character each time (Michael Mann, Stefan Rahmsdorf, Jim Hansen, etc)
It’s tiresome and more than a little pathetic.
Ryan O // July 6, 2009 at 7:31 pm
TCO, you still don’t understand the weighting issues. I had said multiple times in the threads you so cavalierly reference that negative weights are not a problem during the calibration period – which is what all of your examples relate to. The one time I gave you an example of a problem with using these for extrapolation, you agreed that the negatively weighted predictors give the wrong result – which is response #329 here:
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/tired-and-wrong-again
Rather than demonstrating an understanding of the issue, you demonstrate a complete lack of understanding about the difference between calibration and reconstruction periods. This is exacerbated by the fact that you do not understand the math, you have refused to even look at the station data (which would show you that the ground station predictors are only about 40% complete on average) which contradicts your OWN requirement that negative weights can be valid as long as it is counteracted by a positively weighted component – which, by the way, is only true when computing an average, not when determining geographic location, you conflate the AVHRR PCs with the eigenvectors/eigenvalues from the SVD of the correlation matrix in RegEM, and you do not understand the difference between PCA and EOF analysis.
I find it rather amusing that you have mentioned Nic L and Roman’s comments as supporting your position, when they have absolutely nothing to do with the issue above.
Nic L’s analysis is different from Jeff/Steve’s in that Nic L discounts any imputed data. This is certainly fine – as long as it is recognized that Nic L is doing something different.
Roman’s comment has nothing to do with station weights. His comment is related to iterative regression of successive PCs and whether the temperature contribution of prior regression results needs to be removed in order to optimize the accuracy of the regression. And Roman was right; it does not need to be removed.
For always imploring others to disaggregate, you show a marked inability to do the same. You also seem to continue to say that people support your position – like RomanM – even after RomanM tells you explicitly that he does NOT support your position.
I won’t clutter up Tamino’s blog by responding to anything else you post here. Rather, I would implore anyone who is remotely interested in this to visit the Air Vent and comment or ask questions. I also encourage anyone who wishes to critique the mathematics to do so, as the end goal is to gather the most information possible out of the available data – regardless of whether that information fits your or my preconceived notion of what might be happening in Antarctica.
Ryan O // July 6, 2009 at 7:47 pm
Also, TCO, if you can figure out how my latest post at tAV shows that my assertion that strongly negatively weighted predictors result in degraded reconstruction performance, I’ll be happy to kiss and make up. ;)
Hank Roberts // July 6, 2009 at 8:03 pm
This appears to be the last word from Moore:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6473#comment-348236
“… If you strongly think its actually 21 years then please do go ahead and contact the editors. I have not followed this argument at all, so if if I wrote I would be simply quoting your own findings anyway.”
TCO // July 6, 2009 at 8:33 pm
Ryan: That is a long post, with a lot of different thought strands. I will break my response into a few separate posts.
dhogaza // July 6, 2009 at 9:45 pm
And reading further, the reason why Aslak Grinsted didn’t release his code into the public domain, and why people beating up Rahmstorf over his refusal to violate the distribution agreement are really scum:
So Mr. Grinsted didn’t release his code into the public domain because he thought people would apply it blindly, i.e. without understanding limitations, the proper domain of application, etc. Forcing people to ask him directly for the code gave him the opportunity to communicate with those intending to use it.
Wow, Rahmstorf’s really Dr. Evil for following the terms of distribution laid down by Grinsted, isn’t he?
TCO // July 6, 2009 at 9:48 pm
Ryan (1):
It’s disappointing that you are devolving to an “I never said that” argument, when I finally pin you down on your overstatements.
You say:
“I had said multiple times in the threads you so cavalierly reference that negative weights are not a problem during the calibration period – which is what all of your examples relate to. ”
Two quotes from you that say the opposite in the Tired thread:
“Anyway, negative thermometers indicate a big problem during the “calibration” phase of their reconstruction. It’s the same problem that the hockey stick has with inverting proxies. A negative thermometer makes no physical sense. None. Period. TCO aside.”
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/tired-and-wrong-again/#comment-6466
“The negative weight means that during the calibration period, the surface station shows an INVERSE relationship to the satellite temperature (as approximated by the PCs). However, this is physically impossible. ”
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/tired-and-wrong-again/#comment-6504
In addition, I could point to many other comments you’ve made Ryan, including befor that thread, where you don’t talk about calibration period at all but just say point blank that negative weighting is wrong, is ‘like a negative thermometer’ and “aphysical” and “shit”‘.
Interstingly after significant example pushing from myself, Carrick and Baxter, you do seem to slip in a modifier, here:
“#114 Please read my example. What you are saying has validity only in the calibration period because in the calibration period you have complete data and you can compensate for that error. It does not have validity in the reconstruction period, because there is no data with which to compensate.”
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/tired-and-wrong-again/#comment-6605
(further posts will dig into the logic gap you are STILL showing and the problem with your “thereom-like” statement that you can never have negative weightings (in whatever period).
TCO // July 6, 2009 at 10:01 pm
Ryan (2):
You say:
“The one time I gave you an example of a problem with using these for extrapolation, you agreed that the negatively weighted predictors give the wrong result – which is response #329 here:
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/tired-and-wrong-again”
My reply:
1. Ryan, when you make a general statement that it is ALWAYS wrong to have negative weighting in a recon, then showing an example where a positive coefficient should be used does not prove your case. Similarly, I can point out a non-trivial zero to the zeta function (or several), but that does not prove the Reimann conjecture.
2. In contrast, a single counter-example (and Carrick, baxter, JHeald and myself have all given some) would invalidate your theorem-like generalization.
TCO // July 6, 2009 at 10:14 pm
Ryan (3):
You still seem stuck on a fundamental logical issue as well.
1. The examples that Carick, Baxter, JHeald and myself have given all apply in the recon period as well as in the calibration period.
2. (New example): Imagine you wish to PREDICT the overall stock market index and you have a calibration period of complete information (the index, all stocks, and a special type of stock index representing bankruptcy law firms). For the sake of logical argument, allow me the hypothesis that bankruptcy law firm stocks go UP when the overall index goes down. This DESPITE the fact that the index is a summation that includes those law firms within it.) Now imagine, we have a recon period. In that period, you have very limited information. All you have is the bankruptcy law firm stock prices. And you need to predict the overall index? How do you weight the law firm stock prices? Capisce?
And don’t tell me I have to find a similar rationale for the negative weighted stations in Steig. You made a GENERAL statement that it MUST be wrong. To have those negative weightings.
3. Now, I think I know where you’re coming from, so let me meander. I think your worry is that any negative weighting must be “luck” (for instance if we got some stocks with negative versus index correlation in a short run of time) and that therefore they are untrustworthy during the recon time. That’s possible of course. However, it’s also possible that you could have the opposite problem occurring. There’s no reason to make anything of the negative weighting as some awful kerfuffle. Especially if you have a lot of stocks or stations.
lucia // July 6, 2009 at 10:15 pm
dhogaza–
It appears that the code did, indeed, fall into the hands of people who may not have requested it directly from Grinsted or Moore. One possible person has been named by the authors of the code:
Ryan O // July 6, 2009 at 10:35 pm
No, TCO. You take my quotes out of context. A negative weight in the calibration period is still unphysical – it is still wrong when you are attempting to discern the trends spatially. But it does not mean that the resulting average is incorrect, which is where the debate focused. In the calibration period, the negative weight will be offset by a positive weight. I clarified what I meant for Carrick in my post immediately after the two you quote:
#90
Negative weights in the calibration period do not mean the resulting average during calibration is wrong – but it will lead to errors during the reconstruction period.
And if you wish to continue to quote Carrick as support for your position, I will remind you of what Carrick said in #93:
And in #113, I further clarify this for you with a stock market example:
And as I thought about this, I further clarified it by saying that this is only true of non-divergent systems. A divergent system can legitimately have negative weights. But as we are not discussing divergent systems, that exception is not apropos.
When you talk about the arguments that you, Carrick, and Baxter presented, I immediately made this comment about them:
TCO // July 6, 2009 at 10:36 pm
Ryan (4):
You say:
“Rather than demonstrating an understanding of the issue, you [TCO] demonstrate a complete lack of understanding about the difference between calibration and reconstruction periods. This is exacerbated by the fact that you do not understand the math, you have refused to even look at the station data…you conflate the AVHRR PCs with the eigenvectors/eigenvalues from the SVD of the correlation matrix in RegEM, and you do not understand the difference between PCA and EOF analysis.”
I agree with the following criticisms of me:
1. I don’t keep good track of the different terms in the Steig paper.
2. I don’t completely understand the algorithm.
3. I am weak on the math in PCA, linear algebra, stats, etc.
Of course none of this changes the fact that you were wrong in your general thereom-like statements. Nor does it dissuade me from going after you on those areas where you have a logic gap. Since, I can clearly see that the issue at stake does not hinge on any of those concerns.
You really ought to avoid this sort of misdirection (ad hominem is trite, but it applies) style of invective. I know it bothers you that I can fasten in on a point (and be right and you be wrong) when I am so lacking on the hard core matrix theory and all that. But it happens, dude. However, since you (and Jeff) seemed to have a block caused by this, that’s why I went expert shopping. I just think that they can make the exact same points (really Carrick, Baxter and I were giving you the same examples) and you will listen to them. Looking forward to hearing from Professor Jolliffe. I don’t want your general mis-statements to remain up on the skepto-sphere.
“Negative thermometers ARE sh**. 100% sh**. I shouldn’t even need to say it to make it so. If the math results in negative thermometers, then something is wrong with the math.”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/10/quote-of-the-week-9-negative-thermometers/
(And it’s not the pro or anti AGW that bothers me…it’s your spreading of bad logic and math.)
Ryan O // July 6, 2009 at 10:37 pm
Messed up the closed blockquote above. That last paragraph is not meant to be a quote.
And all of your objections are immaterial besides, TCO, as the latest post shows that I was correct. I still challenge you to figure out why.
With that, I will actually adhere to my earlier promise not to clutter up Tamino’s blog. If you wish to discuss this further, TCO, you can post at tAV.
TCO // July 6, 2009 at 10:43 pm
Addendum to Ryan (4):
Let me be more blunt. I am ABYSMALLY weak on the terminology, concepts and math. I AGREE that I use terms like correlation, covariance, variability, etc. VERY loosely…and not just from laziness, but from not even knowing the definitions well (I sorta have the sense of some of them, but not gnat’s ass…nowhere close.) And I have never done a single PCA in my life! Just firing up Excel or Minitab to do an ANOVA would require me to ask a colleague to do it for me, a bunch of help menu looking at, or even book reading, and I still might mess it up.
But it doesn’t matter, here, Ryan! I mean I didn’t know SHIT about PCA when we were discussing the Jolliffe ppt. :)
[Response: Is there some other blog on which to continue this (apparently neverending) discussion?]
TCO // July 6, 2009 at 11:00 pm
Ryan (5):
You say:
This is exacerbated by the fact that …you have refused to even look at the station data (which would show you that the ground station predictors are only about 40% complete on average) which contradicts your OWN requirement that negative weights can be valid as long as it is counteracted by a positively weighted component – which, by the way, is only true when computing an average, not when determining geographic location.”
—————
I reply:
A. The specifics of the Antarctic station record continuity are irrelevant in a discussion of your generalization (your “thereom”): the INHERENT shiteness of negative thermometers.
B. “OWN requirement that negative weights can be valid as long as it is counteracted by a positively weighted component”:
1. You’re juxtaposing a “requirement” with a “can”. That’s a logical fallacy. Just because I show you a “can” example, does create a restriction. (There might be one, but it does not follow nesc.)
2. For instance, think about the TCO 10% Downity land example or Baxter’s 1/3, 2/3 example. Think about if you have to construct the overall trend and only have data from the small anti-correlated region.
C. “which, by the way, is only true when computing an average, not when determining geographic location” I’m losing you, Challenger:
1. The discussion has been pertaining to Id’s graphic of weighting in the trend. So that is the average. N’est pas?
2. Feel free to expand on your comment. I think you may have a point in here, but your communication is too clipped.
TCO // July 6, 2009 at 11:13 pm
Ryan (6):
You say:
“Nic L’s analysis is different from Jeff/Steve’s in that Nic L discounts any imputed data. This is certainly fine – as long as it is recognized that Nic L is doing something different.
Roman’s comment has nothing to do with station weights. His comment is related to iterative regression of successive PCs and whether the temperature contribution of prior regression results needs to be removed in order to optimize the accuracy of the regression. And Roman was right; it does not need to be removed.
For always imploring others to disaggregate, you show a marked inability to do the same. You also seem to continue to say that people support your position – like RomanM – even after RomanM tells you explicitly that he does NOT support your position.”
—————————-
I reply:
1. My comments about NicL and Roman just recently DO NOT pertain to the negative thermometer kerfuffle. I AGREE with you. I never meant them to. I was just bringing up a new interesting kerfuffle. There is only a very mild connection, in that it shows you learning something and those guys helping you and some evolution in earlier more anti-Steig comments (peninsula wieghting) to a more moderate position.
The following comments are not on the recent posting, but general NicL and Roman stuff that DOES apply to our negative thermometer kerfuffle.
2. I stopped citing Roman as a supporter of mine, quite a while ago, Ryan. I know what you’re talking about. Where he said that he was not endorsing my crusade against your thereom (I do think if you pin him down, he’s still a bit different point than you, as I posted to to him, but in any case, I took him off the JHeald/Carrick/Baxter/TCO/soon to be Jolliffe list. ;)
3. NicL, however, has made a very intersting recent comment here. And I take it on MY side and as a shot accross the Jeff Id/Ryan bow:
“6. The only stations with a non-negligible negative weight are the three western island stations: Grytviken, Orcadas and Signy. I know negative weights worry people, but there do appear to be negative correlations between temperatures changes on these islands and temperature changes on the Antarctic continent implied by the satellite PCs. Accordingly, negative weights are the logical outcome of applying a procedure that gives more weight to short term fluctuations than to long term trends.”
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/06/26/regem-weight-calculation-a-different-approach/#more-4334
TCO // July 6, 2009 at 11:23 pm
Ryan (7, final):
“I won’t clutter up Tamino’s blog by responding to anything else you post here. ”
Make your statement and run, eh? Plus, I bet you can’t resist to re-rebut. MWAHAHA! ;)
“Rather, I would implore anyone who is remotely interested in this to visit the Air Vent and comment or ask questions. I also encourage anyone who wishes to critique the mathematics to do so, as the end goal is to gather the most information possible out of the available data – regardless of whether that information fits your or my preconceived notion of what might be happening in Antarctica.”
1. That’s co0l and I hope they do, too. Might harness JHeald and Baxter while at it. And of course, I brought in Jolliffe and another (who is running at periscope depth). ;)
2. You continue to conflate the “war” of Steig rebuttal with the “battle” of your “negative thermometer prohibition thereom”.
TCO // July 6, 2009 at 11:30 pm
Ryan:
“No, TCO. You take my quotes out of context. A negative weight in the calibration period is still unphysical – it is still wrong when you are attempting to discern the trends spatially… ”
1. Haha! You couldn’t help yourself and you re-rebutted.
2. Your statements of caveats have evolved over time. Please go back (now you seem to have two, the time period and divergence). Please go back to all your old previous posts (inlcuding the shit remark on Watts) and add the caveats. No Washington Post rowbacks for conservatives, son.
3. You’re actually STILL wrong on the logic behind your “thereom”. See post Ryan(3). And I’m gonna get Jolliffe or someone like that to tack it on your hide.
TCO // July 6, 2009 at 11:33 pm
Tammy:
“[Response: Is there some other blog on which to continue this (apparently neverending) discussion?]”
I’m basically stuck here unless Jeff Id will agree to allow me to post on TAV with the same rights as others. If you want me not to post here, I will honor that, Tammy. I’ll just have to go lift legs instead of messing around on the gomputer.
[Response: If there's noplace else, then go ahead ... but seriously, if at all possible find another venue.]
TCO // July 6, 2009 at 11:46 pm
Tammy:
This is the last one on Ryan stuff, unless you BEG ME to keep posting…or Jolliffe shows up. But I can’t leave Ryan hanging:
“Also, TCO, if you can figure out how my latest post at tAV shows that my assertion that strongly negatively weighted predictors result in degraded reconstruction performance, I’ll be happy to kiss and make up. ;)”
Ryan, just make the case explicitly. I’m not going to jump through hoops to decode things. Besides perhaps I’m not capable.
If you’ve truly proved your broadly stated (sans recent caveating and rowbacking), I’ll slip you some tongue. But I think it would be more interesting to engage on the main thrust of the work.
BTW, your recent post there looks interesting but muddled. For me to engage with it would take the kind of laborious parsing that you despise. and I think the reasons would be some combination of my lack of stats knowledge, poor explanation (opaquenss, non-sequiters, gaps), and actual mislogic/mis-statements. And even within all that there is probably still some good work.
dhogaza // July 7, 2009 at 12:17 am
Uh-huh, or he may’ve just lost the e-mails, or it could’ve been one of the other six authors on the paper, etc.
Regardless, even if Rahmstorf got it from someone who distributed it in violation of the author’s distribution agreement …
it would STILL be a copyright and/or contract (distribution agreement) violation for Rahmstorf to do so.
Thus I conclude:
The point of your post is character asssassination of Rahmstorf.
Deech56 // July 7, 2009 at 12:52 am
RE: [Response: Is there some other blog on which to continue this (apparently neverending) discussion?]
I feel like I’ve walked into the finale scene in Blazing Saddles.
Hank Roberts // July 7, 2009 at 1:06 am
Moore’s website has this paper:
http://www.clim-atic.org/documents/2009%20docs/Climate%20change%20and%20sea-level%20rise%20-%20Professor%20John%20Moore%20Arctic%20Centre.pdf
Terry // July 7, 2009 at 3:40 am
dhogaza – you’ve missed the point by a mile, +/- 700 feet, sorry.
You can check with Grinsted, but I’ll bet you $1,000 that he didn’t have a “distribution agreement” and nobody really cares at this point that Rahmstorf wouldn’t forward a copy of the filter.
Reread the applicable material again and see if you can pick up a few clues about the salient issues.
dhogaza // July 7, 2009 at 4:06 am
Good. If there’s no distribution agreement, then copyright law holds, because only contract law and fair use can contradict it.
If you don’t understand why the lack of a distribution agreement UNDERMINES your beliefs, then you don’t understand why (for instance) the GPL exists (anyone who submits work under the GPL *gives up* their copyright rights).
In my country – and that’s the US of A – one’s creative work is one’s property, and unless one EXPLICITLY gives up that property right (copyright), it holds. Thus the GPL, etc.
That’s the law. I speak as someone who sells and gives away (my choice, not yours) photography, writing, and software.
dhogaza // July 7, 2009 at 4:11 am
And, actually, this is countered by Grinsted’s posting that “now that this is in the public domain” – clearly, this was not his wish.
His “distribution agreement” may’ve been nothing other than an aggressive assertion of copyright, but it’s a distribution agreement, nonetheless.
And they never should have. So, you’re saying that this smear attempt is now not considered important, therefore the smear attempt should be forgiven?
No. Fuck you (even if Tamino edits it – but I do think it’s warranted).
dhogaza // July 7, 2009 at 4:13 am
So, Lucia’s character assassination attempt is allowed to skate, and, damage done, these “honest” people say … “oh, go on, shut up”.
You people are scum.
Ryan O // July 7, 2009 at 4:56 am
Okay, TCO. I’ll break my promise to Tamino because you’re playing nice. Long-winded, but nice.
The comments about your mathematical knowledge were not ad homs, TCO. They are the reason why you continue not to understand my argument, nor do you fully understand your own. Unless you understand the difference between PCA and EOF analysis you will not be able to understand why your examples do not prove what you think they do. Unless you understand what calibration and reconstruction mean, you will not be able to understand why you cannot flip signs on the predictors when some of them are no longer available. I have encouraged you to obtain a working understanding of the math, and you have refused.
These are not ad homs, TCO. They are fundamentally the reason why you do not see the flaws in your arguments. It is also the reason you do not understand why the questions you ask of your experts are not apropos, and it is the reason you do not understand that their answers provide no support for your position because they are not answering the question you thought you asked.
Yes, my argument about the negative thermometers has evolved over time (albeit very quickly). You are correct. So did Carrick’s arguments, and Baxter’s, and yours. The initial comments were made with the intent that they apply to this case of extrapolation using predictors and predictands of like instruments. Did I specify that initially? No. But it should not take a rocket scientist to figure out that it was not an axiomatic statement for any and all arbitrary reconstructions/extrapolations – and I very quickly clarified that . . . in the post immediately following your quotes of mine above.
You chose to ignore this clarification and continue quoting me out of context. As the argument progressed, my position did evolve as I thought more about it. I added two additional caveats: non-stationary means of the predictors and a non-divergent system. You also chose to ignore these and quote me out of context. If you wish to hold me to those initial, flippant remarks in spite of the fact that I quickly qualified them – so be it. There’s no point in continuing. I am not interested in defending something that I did not mean.
I stand by the statement that a calibration of predictor/predictand instruments measuring the same quantity that results in significantly negative weights for the predictors is unphysical and should not be used for extrapolation because it will yield incorrect results if the means are nonstationary. I doubt you will find that Joliffe disagrees with that, TCO. That is elementary.
As far as why the latest post on tAV validates my statement, no, you don’t get a free pass. I’m sorry. It is not that hard to figure out. But to do so, you must learn the difference (in qualitative terms, mind you) between PCA and EOF analysis.
I’m not doing this to torture you or belittle you. I’m doing this because I am not interested in another round-robin on this issue. It is clear that you are not swayed by the math – because you admit you do not understand the math. So the only way to convince you is for you to convince yourself.
Ryan O // July 7, 2009 at 4:57 am
And now I really am finished, Tamino. Double promise.
;)
James Lane // July 7, 2009 at 7:00 am
TCO:
“Let me be more blunt. I am ABYSMALLY weak on the terminology, concepts and math. I AGREE that I use terms like correlation, covariance, variability, etc. VERY loosely…and not just from laziness, but from not even knowing the definitions well (I sorta have the sense of some of them, but not gnat’s ass…nowhere close.) And I have never done a single PCA in my life! Just firing up Excel or Minitab to do an ANOVA would require me to ask a colleague to do it for me, a bunch of help menu looking at, or even book reading, and I still might mess it up.”
Yeah, I remember urging you a couple of years ago to try some dummy PCA analysis so you’d understand what you were trying to talk about, obviously to no avail. Really.
Gavin's Pussycat // July 7, 2009 at 9:06 am
Terry, copyright applies with or without an agreement. Without, only the author may distribute. Simple.
lucia // July 7, 2009 at 1:05 pm
dhogaza,
I don’t know why you think my contributions are character assinations.
You brought up the subject that Aslak said he tried to avoid his code being distributed by third parties who might not understand its use and who might, consequently, misuse it. You intimated that Rahmstorf was helping Aslak prevent circulation to people who didn’t understand how to properly use the code.
However, in the exact conversation where Aslak expressed his concerned about third parties misusing the code, Aslak himself happened to name a third party who used Aslak’s code, and to his recollection a) did not get it from Aslak and b) did not discuss its use with Aslak or More.
The person Aslak to mentioned during this conversation is Stefan Rahmstorf.
Of course we still can’t be sure that Stefan was precisely the sort of person whose mis-use of the code concerned Aslak. It’s likely that Aslak’s concerned are broader than the issues surrounding Stefan’s use of the code.
Regardless of how Rahmstorf obtained the code, I’ve never criticized Rahmstorf for refusing to pass on the code he received. I think it was very wise of him not to do so, particularly as it appears he is not a person who can provide advise about how smoothing should be interpreted. Once people knew it was Aslak’s code, they were able to get it. This permitted people to explain the problem with Rahmstorf’s application of the smoothing in general.
george // July 7, 2009 at 1:50 pm
TCO says: “I’m basically stuck here unless Jeff Id will agree to allow me to post on TAV with the same rights as others.”
Not true. You can start your own blog (and for free) just like anyone else and then post to your heart’s content.
The nice thing about having your own blog, of course is that you can never get censored and never get banned — and even censor and ban OTHERs if you want.
Hell, Tamino might even allow the occasional link to your own blog from this one if he thought it was applicable to the topic under discussion.
So, my suggestion: go for it!
dhogaza // July 7, 2009 at 2:01 pm
And poor, misunderstood McIntyre doesn’t understand why people think he accuses leading climate scientists of scientific fraud, because he avoids saying so directly but relies on coy innuendo to get his point across.
No, I said that Rahmstorf had declined requests that he break copyright law by providing a copy, and that those who smeared him for it are scum.
I never said that Rahmstorf had any motive beyond understanding that he didn’t have permission to distribute the code.
Yes, I understood what was being implied in your post, why do you think I labelled it “character assassination”?
dhogaza // July 7, 2009 at 2:04 pm
TCO, RyanO, Lucia – really, y’all ought to take this somewhere else, as Tamino requested. noconsensus seems the right place – it’s clear you denialists will never agree on much of anything other than “The Team is guilty of fraud”.
tamino // July 7, 2009 at 3:16 pm
It’s time for the neverending argument over the smoothing method to go somewhere else.
pough // July 7, 2009 at 3:17 pm
lucia, maybe it wasn’t intentional, but your comment on Rahmstorf’s obtaining of the code read like you were suggesting that he had done something either illegal or unethical. I’d guess that’s why dhogaza described it as character assassination.
[Response: Seriously: it's time to take this discussion elsewhere.]
george // July 7, 2009 at 4:17 pm
Tamino :
Perhaps there is a smoothing filter for smoothing arguments? (all zeroes might be good)
MikeN // July 7, 2009 at 5:10 pm
[edit]
[Response: As I said, this discussion should move elsewhere.]
dhogaza // July 7, 2009 at 6:33 pm
For lurkers here interested in the general level of quibbling that characterizes the “disproof of climate science”, read This comment by Steve McIntyre, and Stefan Rahmstorf’s response.
Then read This response by another professional scientist Martin Vermeer.
Quibbling over the proper caption for a graph … that’s the best they can do.
Read it, but add your comments over there (RC) if you have any rather than risk rekindling any endless debate here.
Deep Climate // July 7, 2009 at 7:48 pm
Here’s a welcome change of subject: the third installment in the Alan Carlin EPA saga.
The post has been updated to show a comparison between Carlin’s “updated” version of IPCC AR4 TS 26 (observations/projections comparison). The “updated” chart, which apparently came from John Christy via Icecap/PlanetGore, has a number of misleading changes, including the complete removal of decadally smoothed curve of observations (sorry). Naturally, this is the chart that was shown on FoxNews when Carlin was interviewed there.
Also discussed is an ironic twist: National Review columnist Mark Steyn quoted a passage from Carlin that turned out to be lifted in whole from another National Review columnist, Marlo Lewis (PlanetGore).
http://deepclimate.org/2009/07/03/more-heavy-lifting-from-the-suppressed-alan-carlin/
MikeN // July 7, 2009 at 8:15 pm
I was discussing copyright law, but OK.
Hank Roberts // July 7, 2009 at 9:05 pm
Oops:
“… because of the impact of greenhouse gas warming, the ozone layer over the tropics and mid-southern latitudes may not recover for more than a century, and perhaps not ever.”
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WorldOfChange/ozone.php
Look at the left sidebar there for a variety of picture-over-time articles. Each of them is astonishing. Click through the years.
dhogaza // July 8, 2009 at 12:14 am
Recursive plagiarism? While probably not a first, it’s gotta be rare and regardless, is without doubt hilarious!
Nothing to discuss anyway since copyright law’s simple other than discussions of fair use.
Lazar // July 8, 2009 at 11:33 am
Talking Points related to concerns about whether the U.S. temperature is reliable
NOAA Climate Services
h/t Joe Romm
Zeke Hausfather // July 8, 2009 at 6:13 pm
Re: the whole Watts surface station thing,
I was always amused by the fact that satellite records (which Watts et al seem to think are unimpeachable compared to surface records) show considerably higher warming over the continental U.S. over the past 30 years.
This would suggest that poor surface station siting introduced a spurious cooling trend, if you put as much faith as them in MSU data. Given the difficulty in separating lower troposphere and surface temperatures, coupled with the long history of large revisions in MSU data interpretation, I tend take satellites with as big a grain of salt as surface measurements.
Horatio Algeranon // July 8, 2009 at 6:16 pm
The gift that keeps on giving…
NOAA:” the two time series [ using all USHCN stations and just the 70 classified as "good" or "best" by surfacestations.org] are remarkably similar.”
Sauditors: (“station auditors” — alternate spelling: soditors):
“The result’s the same,
How very lame,
Now, what ever shall we blame?”
from A Tale of Two Surface Stations
If you liked that one, you might also get a kick out of Grassy Knolls and Rabett Holes”
and/or Stalking the Wild Air Conditioner
MikeN // July 8, 2009 at 7:00 pm
Lazar, Steve McIntyre has pointed out that GISS US temp adjustments are claimed by proponents to result in a match to the good stations, and that GISS has a substantial difference from NOAA’s average, so how can both of these match up well?
Indeed how can they get that good of a match from just 70 stations, which are not well distributed?
He suspects that they likely are comparing NOAA adjusted values with 70 station adjusted values. That is, not the raw temperature data, but the data after the 70 stations have been averaged with their neighboring bad stations.
Petro // July 8, 2009 at 7:35 pm
MikeN, who cares what Mr. McInture suspects? The change in the climate is reality all over the World as seen by changing fauna and flora distributions.
Only a paranoid can hold an opinion that there is worldwide conspiracy in manipulating climate data for decades. You would do a great service to yourself to have a second check from a doctor, preferably a mental one.
t_p_hamilton // July 8, 2009 at 9:31 pm
MikeN asks:”Lazar, Steve McIntyre has pointed out that GISS US temp adjustments are claimed by proponents to result in a match to the good stations, and that GISS has a substantial difference from NOAA’s average, so how can both of these match up well?”
GISS has nothing to do with this. You are confused, which is inevitable when you read propaganda sites.
This is a comparison between 70 stations and all stations. “Two national time series were made using the same homogeneity adjusted data set and the same gridding and area averaging technique used by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center for its annual climate monitoring. ”
Same treatment. Same results.
Same reaction – denial.
MikeN asks further:”Indeed how can they get that good of a match from just 70 stations, which are not well distributed?”
Through the magic of sampling. The average climate of Kansas is not that different from Missouri. The average climate change is even less different.
Lazar // July 8, 2009 at 11:38 pm
MikeN,
There is really no “substantial difference” between GISTEMP (adjusted) vs CRN12R (unadjusted), GISTEMP (adjusted) vs NOAA (adjusted), NOAA (adjusted) vs CRN12 (adjusted), and NOAA (adjusted) vs NOAA (unadjusted)… the ’surface records are unreliable’ crowd got nothing.
MikeN // July 8, 2009 at 11:59 pm
>GISS has nothing to do with this. You are confused, which is inevitable when you read propaganda sites.
Try rereading what I said. GISS has nothing to do with this paper. However, previously GISS was touted as matching the good stations. GISS does not match NOAA overall. So there is a contradiction in claiming that both match the good stations.
freemike // July 9, 2009 at 12:44 am
A skeptic in my corner of the blogosphere posed these questions. I could give answers but I’d like to give really good answers. Any knowledge would be appreciated and passed along.
If CO2 causes global warming (just going to assume some warming is going on here), what amount of CO2 do we have to remove to reach equilibrium? Or, if it is not a matter of removing it, but rather a matter of reducing its emission, how much do we have to reduce by in order to reach equilibrium?
Has anyone attempted this calculation?
It seems like we should not try to remove or reduce a naturally occurring gas without first ascertaining how much we need to reduce/remove. I mean it is supposed to be there, in some amount, and we shouldn’t just go reducing/removing it willy nilly without some goal in mind. I assume it would be bad to remove/reduce too much or not enough.
If this number exists, why haven’t I seen it? Other than my ignorance. I am a pretty well informed guy and I think I would have come across it. If the number is out there, someone needs a new publicist.
[Response: "Natural" levels of CO2 are those that existed before the industrial revolution: about 280 ppmv (parts per million by volume). It has been argued that 350 ppmv is an upper limit in order to avoid dangerous climate change (which would require reduction, because present levels are about 390 ppmv).]
Is it a reduction/removal that we (U.S.A.) can achieve on our own, or do we need other countries to help?
If we need other countries to help, where/when is the summit where everybody talks about it?
[Response: The technology doesn't yet exist for large-scale removal of CO2 from the atmosphere. In order to limit global warming, we need to stop emissions of further CO2 (and other greenhouse gases). This should be a worldwide effort.
The G8 nations just concluded a meeting in which they set targets for emissions reduction, with the goal of limiting 21st century warming to 2 deg.C. I think there's a worldwide conference on the topic coming up in Copenhagen.]
One last question- What causes global cooling also known as an ice age (when it cools enough) and when will the next one occur? Seems like we should figure that out before we go trying to influnce the global thermometer reading, as we may need all that CO2 to prevent/slowdown/reverse the next ice age.
[Response: Read this.]
Hank Roberts // July 9, 2009 at 2:59 am
And, Freemike, read this
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/the-greenhouse-effect-and-the-bathtub-effect/
and look at the links; it may be your friend will be willing to look at the simple “flight simulator”:
http://scripts.mit.edu/~jsterman/climate/master/
“… Basically, the atmosphere is like a bathtub with a partially opened drain. Carbon dioxide from burning fuels and forests is flowing in twice as fast as it is being absorbed by plants and the ocean, and some of those “sinks” are in fact getting saturated, it appears, meaning that the “drain” is clogging a bit. …”
(This 2nd version of the Simulator has gotten much more interesting since I last looked at it. Recommended.)
t_p_hamilton // July 9, 2009 at 3:16 am
MikeN said”Try rereading what I said. GISS has nothing to do with this paper. However, previously GISS was touted as matching the good stations. GISS does not match NOAA overall. So there is a contradiction in claiming that both match the good stations.”
The person who told you GISS does not match NOAA overall has made a chump out of you. I wouldn’t trust that source again.
So, where did you get that idea?
dhogaza // July 9, 2009 at 4:52 am
To add to Tamino’s inline answers, what’s being said is to *stablize* CO2 concentration at the current level or reduce it a bit to pre-industrial levels.
The way you’re presenting the question doesn’t peg-hole your friend as a skeptic, but actually someone reasonable.
Well, yes, in the sense that we have solid scientific evidence what certain target levels of CO2 concentration mean for climate.
And the consequences.
Something to understand is that much of the scientific literature has been focused for years on “what’s happening now, and what are the future consequences”.
Well, removing to the levels of the pre-industrial age would just move us back to where civilization rose and flourished.
Probably not terribly harmful to do so…
Lab Lemming // July 9, 2009 at 5:18 am
Can y’all stop arguing long enough to help get some researchers out of jail?
Without data, nothing will ever be resolved. And it’s hard to get drill core if you’re locked up:
http://scienceblogs.com/stressrelated/2009/07/us_brazilian_students_arrested.php
David Gould // July 9, 2009 at 5:48 am
I have a question on what is meant by limiting temperature rise to a 2 degree rise in temperature.
Given the earth has already warmed .8 of a degree, and there is .4 of a degree coming that cannot be avoided, does it mean that we need to avoid a further warming of .8 degrees?
Or does it mean that we need to avoid a further warming of 2 degrees on top of the warming that we have already experienced?
David Cassatt // July 9, 2009 at 9:52 am
Freemike, the UN Climate Change Congress will be held in Copenhagen this December. To prepare for this conference, scientists held a meeting in Copenhagen to examine the most recent literature in light of the 2007 IPCC Report.
For equilibrium, do you mean to reach a given temperature? Any time that a stable level of CO2 is reached, temperatures will reach equilibrium at some point, depending on what warming is in the pipeline (about 0.5 C?).
Deech56 // July 9, 2009 at 10:03 am
(Quietly putting mask back on ;-)) Freemike, regarding temperature goal, you might also want to check the latest from RealClimate.
Ray Ladbury // July 9, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Freemike,
Your skeptic’s question betrays a rather deep ignorance. The system will eventually reach equilibrium no matter how much we increase ghgs–it’s just a question of what temperature it will have when it does so. In effect, what he probably means is what equilibrium temperature should we aim for. To look at this question, we need to understand that our entire infrastructure–agriculture, industry, transport, health and so on–was all developed in the last 10000 years, a time of exceptional climatic stability. It is probably risky if the temperature moves more than a couple of degrees outside of historical levels.
Of course, this requires every nation to commit to reducing greenhouse gasses dramatically, and that represents a significant sacrifice. However, what the so-called skeptics fail to appreciate is that it also represents considerable opportunity. Basically, we know where every nation on Earth has to be headed–a sustainable, near-zero-carbon energy system. Whoever gets there first is going to make out like a bandit selling technology to the laggards.
Lazar // July 9, 2009 at 1:59 pm
MikeN,
The point that some USHCN v2 adjustments to raw station data (homogenization, FILNET, and urbanization) can potentially obscure differences between ‘good’ (CRN12R) stations and the NOAA product by adjusting ‘good’ stations to equal ‘less good’ surrounding stations is a valid point. But by comparing the ‘good’ unadjusted stations with the ‘worst’ unadjusted stations and assuming that the ‘good’ are then adjusted to equal the ‘worst’, you can see that the conservative upper bound on this effect is small. At most it is enough to change the ‘warmest year on record’ which has zero relevance to climate, but for the important stuff; we are at or near record temperatures and are warming fast; it makes no difference.
freemike // July 9, 2009 at 7:52 pm
Thanks, I appreciate the info. even though sometimes I feel like I’m talking to a brick wall. There are a few without ideology that are willing to learn.
Also,They are throwing Tim Ball friends of science piece about pre-industrial co2 being higher than 290ppm. I realize he hasn’t had peer reviewed papers in a decade or so. Any other helpful debunking is appreciated.
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/FoS%20Pre-industrial%20CO2.pdf
[Response: Tim Ball's conclusion, based largely on the work of Beck, is dumber than a bag of hammers.
Take a look at this.]
MikeN // July 9, 2009 at 9:48 pm
>The person who told you GISS does not match NOAA overall has made a chump out of you. I wouldn’t trust that source again.
So, where did you get that idea?
That was Steve McIntyre. He calculates .7F per century difference in trend.
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6370
David B. Benson // July 9, 2009 at 10:35 pm
freemike // July 9, 2009 at 12:44 am — From some reading about glaciers and ice sheets, I am of the fairly firm opinion that nothing above 300 ppm CO2e is safe in the long term. Some technologies to stabilize CO2 in the atmosphere and begin returning the concentration down towards the 300 ppm figure exists; it is rather expenxive and so far nobody is willing to do so; an example of Garret Hardin’s “Tragedy of ther Commons”.
Horatio Algeranon // July 10, 2009 at 3:52 pm
Counterfeit Bills and Climate Change
– A letter from NASA climate scientist James Hansen
(versified by Horatio Algeranon)
t_p_hamilton // July 10, 2009 at 5:26 pm
MikeN,
That graph does not show a disagreement, it shows that there is a slight trend in the difference between raw data for individual points in the US, and an analysis which has had biases removed and represents the US as a systematic grid.
I would not call this graph “not matching overall” : http://www.opentemp.org/_results/20070919_CRN12Rural_Revised/CRN12RuralRevised_GISTEMP.GIF
Compare these plots to satellite data (which also has the local station biases removed since there is no local station data :) You will see that the GISTEMP trend is correct. The lesson to be learned is that raw data with known biases (and how they affect the data) should not be taken at face value.
Hank Roberts // July 10, 2009 at 7:15 pm
Quick quiz: whose voice is this?
“… purported … negligent … purported [again] … arm-waving … coercing … bait-and-switch … adjustments which appear to me to be no more than random permutations of the data … arguably … I’ll bet … probably … adjustments are little more than random …”
dhogaza // July 10, 2009 at 8:16 pm
Steve McIntyre. Too many big words to be Watts. Plus, I looked :)
Jon P // July 10, 2009 at 8:32 pm
Hank Roberts // July 10, 2009 at 7:15 pm | Reply
Quick quiz: whose voice is this?
Yours, ’cause you speak as you type.
MikeN // July 12, 2009 at 3:56 am
t_p, you’ve just repeated what McIntyre said.
Gistemp doesn’t match NOAA, Gistemp matches NOAA good stations.
Deep Climate // July 12, 2009 at 6:03 pm
David Gould asked about the target to limit global warming to 2 deg C. I’ve always understood this as relative to pre-industrial temperatures, or at least beginning of the 20th century.
The G8 agreement was widely reported that way:
‘The formal commitment by G8 leaders to limit the rise in global temperatures to 2 degrees above pre-industrial averages was lauded by environmentalists”
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/663221
I don’t have the final text, but the draft read:
“We recognize the broad scientific view that the increase in global average temperature above pre-industrial levels ought not to exceed 2 degrees.”
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-07/09/content_11676289.htm
As far as I know, the highest estimate of the corresponding necessary limit on the atmospheric level of GHGs is 450 ppm CO2 equivalent.
But there are those, like David Benson above, believe even that is unsafe and that actual reduction from the current level is necessary.
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/06/26/open-thread-14/#comment-32862
But even limiting CO2 to 450 ppm will be a huge challenge. That’s why it is so discouraging to see that the pernicious efforts of the climate contrarians appear to be paying off in growing support for the anti-AGW position in U.S. and Canadian public opinion.
Anna // July 12, 2009 at 8:38 pm
Does anyone know if (& if so, how) John M. Broder of the NYTimes “Environmental S.W.A.T. team” is related to David Broder of the Washington Post?
t_p_hamilton // July 12, 2009 at 9:09 pm
MikeN continues miscomprehension:”t_p, you’ve just repeated what McIntyre said.
Gistemp doesn’t match NOAA, Gistemp matches NOAA good stations.”
GISTEMP doesn’t match the raw data, neither “NOAA good stations” or “NOAA” or satellite or what have you. Because GISTEMP is not raw data.
I now see that what you mean by “not matching” is meaningless.
Deep Climate // July 12, 2009 at 10:44 pm
Anna,
There’s no relation between John M. Broder and David Broder, according to Slate:
http://www.slate.com/id/1001980/
MikeN // July 12, 2009 at 11:37 pm
TP, You linked the graph of GISTEMP vs NOAA rural stations, which I think was what Steve was saying. Plus you stated that GISTEMP doesn’t match up with the raw NOAA data, again what Steve was saying.
dhogaza // July 13, 2009 at 4:14 am
Why would it?
McIntyre and Watts tells us the raw data is crap, and then go on to say the the GISTEMP algorithmic approaches to mine gold from crap are all wrong.
Because they don’t match the raw data, which they also believe is crap.
You see this kind of circular reasoning on WUWT all the time. Not so much on CA, I think, though I no longer read it.
TCO // July 13, 2009 at 7:08 pm
McI has an abortion of a post up here:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6586#comments
It’s not even that it’s wrong or unfair…it doesn’t even read clearly. I can’t make head nor tail of the intro para:
“NOAA is first of the three main indices to be off the mark with June 2009 at 0.617 deg C, bouncing off the relatively low values of 2008. Given that the data is essentially common to HadISST, this is unsurprising. ”
*does first off the mark, mean first reported? That the temp was up? First to be reported AND be up? Huh?
*And WHAT is unsurprising (quick reporting)? Being up?
*Why is the source of the data making the “whatever it is” unsurprising? Nothing later in the post explains or backs up that comment.
*And who cares about one month?
*and then it turns out that the whole intro para has nothing to do with the post which is about a long trend!
The rest of the post is not too good either. Sloppy graphs, changing terminology, snarkiness. What a fucking mess.
I’m not even saying it’s an invalid hypothesis…it’s not even a clearly explained hypothesis! It’s “not even wrong”!
And then the little hoi polloi complain that peer review is too tough on them…or that blogs are as good as papers. Jeezuz Christ, the guy is a bad writer.
I don’t think scientists should bother with his stuff. He can’t even express himself. What a mess.
dhogaza // July 13, 2009 at 7:45 pm
I think so – as the starter of a sprint says … “On your mark! Get set! Bang!”
Deep Climate // July 13, 2009 at 9:04 pm
TCO,
I think McI means that the SST (surface sea temperature), already reported by Hadley (and probably discussed in a previous CA post), comes from the same source and was also high.
To know for sure, you’d have to read every word in every blog. Can’t do it, myself.
TCO // July 13, 2009 at 9:11 pm
The graphs are messed up too. The dude needs to go to Amazon, do a search for a book on “how to write a science publication” (they exist). Read it. Follow it. Sheesh. For all I know, there could even be some decent insights in all the blather. But it sure is work to try to extract it.
Gavin's Pussycat // July 13, 2009 at 9:36 pm
TCO, why don’t you start a blog http://www.climateauditaudit.org? I”m sure it would be of interest to some folks, especially if it provided what you find lacking.
Seriously.
David B. Benson // July 13, 2009 at 10:22 pm
Deep Climate // July 12, 2009 at 6:03 pm — Yes. Even if current levels could be maintained, much of GIS and some of WAIS will melt, raising sea levels about 5 meters. Consider just how much of the world population live at that and loweer elevations.
Not to mention increasing desertification in southern Australia, southern US, southern Europe and more frequent monsoon failures in South Asia and …
TCO // July 13, 2009 at 10:51 pm
Where’s it goiung to get better? Want to buy some land.
JCH // July 13, 2009 at 11:07 pm
To me “off the mark” connotes an error of some sort has been made. Any other usage is off the mark.
Hank Roberts // July 14, 2009 at 12:19 am
> Where
Depends on what you worry about.
Look up the last time sea level was really high and pick above that if you plan to found a dynasty or live forever.
Weather’s going to be okay in Seattle; map’s available.
http://www.horsesass.org/downloads/rt34×44.pdf
But they have subduction fault earthquakes….
Hank Roberts // July 14, 2009 at 3:38 am
A smart comment from author John Shirley, copied from here:
http://www.johnshirley.net/DesktopDefault.aspx
—— Quote follows —–
Politicizing Global Warming
John Tierney, a conservative who writes about science without being a scientist, has written in the new york times denouncing people who criticized the recent Heartland conference of global warming doubters for being supported by big oil. Tierney’s column says:
___
‘Here’s a response from Joseph Bast, Heartland’s president: “Donations from energy companies have never amounted to more than 5 percent of our budget in any year, and there is no corporate sponsor underwriting any of this conference. These criticisms are just a standard left-swing smear.”’
——-
That was from Tierney, this is from Shirley: Actually, Bast is ignoring the money that the speakers at the event are getting themselves, personally, directly from the oil companies (500K a year) but never mind. What’s really interesting in this story is that he is talking about a “left-swing smear”,. He’s talking about the Left as if that equates with global warming believers and vice versa. There’s no evidence it does. But the question is, what made him say that? Is it because, while global warming proponents are scientists who are citing data, the opponents of the climate change scenario are people who are concerned with the economic effects they imagine will come from forcing industry to stop polluting? I believe that’s the case: *They* are about the politics of it; the economics *is* the politics of it. And they assume that scientists who advocate less pollution have a political motivation for doing so. Which just shows how far they are from actual scientific thinking–which is apolitical.
Ian Jolliffe // July 14, 2009 at 1:28 pm
I was out of circulation last week and have just caught up with the last few days of comments. Before that I had been in email contact with TCO who has been encouraging me to comment on the negative weights issue. I won’t do that here, partly because I have not yet worked out the context in which they appear, but also because the TCO/Ryan O conversation already seems to have taken up enough space on this blog.
However I can’t resist a possibly provocative question to Ryan O, who talks about understanding the difference between PCA and EOF analysis. I wonder what difference he has in mind? The only difference I’ve seen used by some authors is a pretty trivial one in which EOF analysis is distinguished as PCA with one particular normalisation of its weights.
Hank Roberts // July 14, 2009 at 2:07 pm
Exercise for the student (also noted at RC if the hiccups over there let it show up):
Compare these explanations for this image, note the red line, always above zero on its scale:
http://www.stevefielding.com.au/images/uploads/The_global_temperature_chart_thumb.jpg
“Air Temperature Anomaly [deg] C”
(red caption, right side of chart)
-OR-
“Global surface temperature since 1995 (in red, steady and falling” (black text at bottom)
Extra credit question — figure out where he got this mishmash. WTF?
george // July 14, 2009 at 3:24 pm
If anyone has not seenGavin Schmidt on “The Edge”, it’s excellent.
It’s kind of funny (in a pathetic sort of way).
From comments made about him on blogs like CA, one might easily conclude that Schmidt was some sort of alarmist global warming crackpot.
But (surprise), he comes across as very reasonable.
His comments about what the models can and can not do at this point are very good — and some of those comments actually seem to be directed at those who claim that it is meaningful to test model projections over the near term.
Timothy Chase // July 14, 2009 at 5:18 pm
David Benson wrote:
For the first few meters a good rule of thumb is 1% of the world’s population for every additional meter of sea level. Shouldn’t be that much of a problem moving the people as the sea will rise only gradually — if you discount those capricious hurricanes.
But infrastructure is an entirely different matter. Not like you can easily pick a city up (sewers, subways, aquifers and all) and set it down somewhere else. But even if you could, you would have to do this repeatedly as the seas continue to rise over the coming decades and centuries.
Jeff Id // July 14, 2009 at 7:03 pm
Dr. Jolliffe,
I’m sure Ryan will take the time to answer your comment which you have of course correctly identified the answer to.
We have been working diligently on improving a reconstruction of Antarctic temperatures using a truncated PCA infilling. It’s been quite entertaining and revealing as each improvement has been made. Ryan has actually ended up re-inventing an algorithm by Dr. Jean-Marie Beckers for the infilling process. Which uses covariance weighted surface stations to infill PC’s (I can’t spell EOF ;) ) of a high density, low quality sat data matrix.
Any insights on the algorithm and the methods we’re working on would be of course tremendously appreciated.
Here is Ryan’s latest post for your reference.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/07/14/covariance-vs-correlation/
Ryan O // July 14, 2009 at 10:02 pm
Dr. Joliffe, the distinction I have always used between EOF analysis and PCA is that PCA specifically refers to the temporal analysis, while EOF analysis includes both temporal and spatial analysis. I understand that in the geophysical sciences that distinction is not normally drawn. I was specific in that point to TCO because several of his examples were only applicable if the spatial EOFs were ignored.
David B. Benson // July 14, 2009 at 11:48 pm
> Where?
Before this summer I would hve said the prairie provinces would be a good bet.
I lose.
Hank Roberts // July 15, 2009 at 1:29 am
In other news: Yeek!
http://blogs.nature.com/climatefeedback/2009/07/unknown_climate_culprit_for_pa_1.html
David B. Benson // July 15, 2009 at 3:21 am
Hank Roberts // July 15, 2009 at 1:29 am — Yipes!
By the way, it is known that bogs released lots of methane during PETM.
Deech56 // July 15, 2009 at 9:39 am
RE: Hank Roberts // July 15, 2009 at 1:29 am
But, but…isn’t the earth self-regulating? What about the iris effect?
Stupid question: I wonder if there are different feedbacks when there is a 1,000 to 1,700 ppm increase compared to a 280 to 550 ppm increase. IOW, does the temperature baseline make a difference. If not, I’m going to have to go back and re-read Peter Ward.
Ray Ladbury // July 15, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Deech56, most of the feedbacks are themally activated, so yes, you can be in quite a different regime depending on where you start.
Ian Jolliffe // July 15, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Ryan O:
I’ve always thought of the results of a PCA having three parts – the new variables (PCs), the loadings/weights that are used to construct the PCs from the original variables, and the variances of the PCs. In the most usual atmospheric science context, the PCs give temporal evolution and the loadings/weights form a spatial pattern, but I would consider both to be essential parts of PCA. The EOFs are in fact the spatial patterns so it could be argued that EOF analysis concentrates on the spatial part of PCA.
A distinction drawn by some authors that I alluded to my earlier post is that in PCA the sum of squared loadings equals unity, whereas in EOF analysis the sum of squares equals the variance of the PCA. However, I’ve never thought that having different normalisations is sufficient reason to have different names and have treated PCA and EOF analysis as synonymous.
Jeff Id:
Coincidentally I’ve recently become aware of Beckers’s DINEOF work and have one of his papers in my ‘to read’ pile. I’ve bookmarked the page you noted and will have a look at it in detail, once I’ve read the Beckers paper. However, this won’t be any time soon as I’m ‘on holiday’ next week and the week after with absolutely no internet access in the first week.
When I do get round to it, comments on your work might be more appropriate on a 1-1 basis than in this public forum. You can easily find an email address for me at the University of Exeter website.
Deep Climate // July 16, 2009 at 9:21 pm
A few days ago, freemike mentioned the Friends of Science.
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/06/26/open-thread-14/#comment-32859
It turns out the Friends of Science are back. They intend to co-sponsor a Canadian speaking tour by Lord Christopher Monckton, as well as a new radio blitz, apparently all in time for the next Canadian election, which is widely expected this fall.
http://deepclimate.org/2009/07/16/friends-of-science-theyre-back/
Ryan O // July 17, 2009 at 10:39 pm
Now – even though I am skeptic (lukewarmer, actually) – I would never hire Monckton to speak.
cce // July 18, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Over at WUWT and elsewhere, they are championing the dissent of one “Jon Tripp”, an IPCC “Lead Author.” After some Googling, one discovers that Tripp is not a lead author of any Working Group, but instead authored the guidelines for estimating the GHG emissions of magnesium production.
2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories
http://www.ipcc-nggip.iges.or.jp/public/2006gl/pdf/3_Volume3/V3_4_Ch4_Metal_Industry.pdf
Chapter 4.5, pages 4.59-4.70
Deep Climate // July 18, 2009 at 4:11 pm
Ryan O // July 17, 2009 at 10:39 pm | Reply
“I am skeptic (lukewarmer, actually)”
Apparently, so is Senator Inhofe, according to Tom Fuller of Examiner.com:
In my view, it’s pretty much a meaningless distinction, except perhaps to separate the most cretinous contrarians (e.g. Tim Ball or Lord Monckton) from the rest.
Ryan O, I’d be interested to know your estimate of equilibrium climate sensitivity to CO2 doubling. Somewhere between 0 and 1 deg C, perhaps? Or 1 +-0.5?
Also, perhaps you can point us to what you think are the most compelling peer-reviewed “lukewarmer” scientific publications, so the rest of us can figure out what the heck the term is supposed to mean.
Thanks!
Deep Climate // July 18, 2009 at 4:14 pm
One last question for Ryan O:
Who would you hire instead of Monckton? Who really has it together in your view? McIntyre? Lucia? Christy? All of the above?
Gavin's Pussycat // July 18, 2009 at 8:15 pm
More interesting question — or exercise — for Ryan O:
> – I would never hire Monckton to speak
Explain, in some detail, in a consistent way, in language that the rest of us would understand and find reasonable, why not.
dhogaza // July 19, 2009 at 12:12 am
I might hire him to speak … but I wouldn’t let him speak his own words, that’s for sure.
Gavin's Pussycat // July 19, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Friends,
a somewhat amusing but mostly sad story:
http://www.inderscience.com/filter.php?aid=27100
h/t to “ray” at deltoid.
Sad, because this appears to be a serious article by serious scientists (though not climatologists!) in a serious journal. The work of many honest, hardworking people.
I looked through the calculations and they seem correct. References legit, figures and tables neatly laid out — so sad.
Why am I sad? Because this is wrong. Utterly and completely. As wrong as it gets when people forget that the climate system is a system.
An exercise for the reader.
I’d love to know how John Mashey classifies this one. And I’d love to meet the peer who reviewed it ;-)
Lamont // July 19, 2009 at 7:26 pm
Tamino, any updates to the annual cyclical pattern in UAH data?
dhogaza // July 19, 2009 at 7:39 pm
Huh, it seems that climate science is (ahem) a sideline for these two:
“Nordell, Bo; , Bruno Gervet; Sustainable H/C systems for chicken farms in Syria ”
OK I only took a moment to look at their Appendix A, but in their heat accumulation calculations it appears that in their eyes none of the energy/heat we add directly to the system doesn’t radiate through the atmosphere to space.
It can’t be that dumb, can it?
Oh, shit, maybe it is that dumb.
Hank Roberts // July 19, 2009 at 9:12 pm
Sokaled? Note that article is attributed to:
Int. J. Global Warming, Vol. 1, Nos. 1/2/3, 2009
Deep Climate // July 20, 2009 at 6:43 am
Lamont // July 19, 2009 at 7:26 pm
Tamino, any updates to the annual cyclical pattern in UAH data?
Funny, you should ask that …
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/19/christy-on-questions-about-uah-seasonal-signals/
John Christy provides his explanation for the UAH annual cycle (and resulting large divergence in seasonal trends), and some indication of a proposed fix to come.
A key quote:
“I think the magnitude of the annual cycle in the monthly trends is a legitimate problem to address. The range in the current v5.2 LT looks too large (about 0.12 C/decade).”
But first there was a message from Watts, where he slags me for being anonymous. (Background: Someone had posted a link to my posts on the subject on a previous thread, leading to Watts’ query of Christy, and thus Christy’s response).
For some reason, Watts posted a chart of recent anomalies, averaged by month, rather than the actual trends by month.
Here is a key chart Watts should/could have posted:
http://deepclimate.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/global-month-trends1.gif
This shows that UAH trends calculated for each month range from a trough of about 0.07 deg/decade in May up to a peak of 0.19 deg/decade. I presume that Christy has verified this independently (hence his reference to a 0.12 deg decade variation in month trends).
Tamino’s two posts on UAH annual cycle are here:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/10/21/rss-and-uah/
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/10/30/annual-cycle-in-uah-tlt/
My previous posts (with calculated trends by month etc.):
http://deepclimate.org/2009/03/05/seasonal-divergence-in-tropospheric-temperature-trends/
http://deepclimate.org/2009/03/26/seasonal-divergence-in-tropospheric-temperature-trends-part-2/
http://deepclimate.org/2009/06/05/uah-annual-cycle-continues-in-2009/
Gavin's Pussycat // July 20, 2009 at 3:07 pm
Dhogaza: you bet.
Hank: don’t think so… none of the Sokal giveaways. These are Serious Scientists…
The journal looks OK though lightweight. The other papers feel like conference presentations.
Deep Climate // July 20, 2009 at 3:14 pm
Regarding the Christy statement referred to above, this paragraph is also relevant:
So at least part of the annual cycle results from intersatellite calibration from the older MSU to newer AMSU satellites. This jibes with previous observations that the annual cycle starts after 1998.
By definition, Christy’s proposed adjustment will not affect overall trends. But it only removes a part of the annual cycle.
[Comment crossposted from:
http://deepclimate.org/2009/06/05/uah-annual-cycle-continues-in-2009/ ]
dhogaza // July 20, 2009 at 3:21 pm
Yeah, nothing like starting off with a two-paragraph ad hom attack on you, because you choose to use a nom de web rather than your real name.
Christy also says that he doesn’t think a fix will significantly change the trend. We’ll see.
Deep Climate // July 20, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Also note that Christy’s statement on annual cycle is also in the UAH readme file (which appears to change names whenever it is updated):
http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/readme.18Jul2009
tamino // July 20, 2009 at 4:36 pm
This link bears repeating, because there are other issues besides just the existence of the annual cycle. In particular, the facts that it’s stronger over ocean than over land, that it’s strong in the tropics, and that it shows the same phase in both hemispheres, requires explanation.
Deep Climate // July 20, 2009 at 6:10 pm
Tamino,
Obviously, I agree with your general point, concerning the curious strength and consistent phase of the UAH annual cycle in all zones.
Of course, I’ve looked mainly at the *effect* of the recent annual cycle, which results in widely divergent seasonal tends that can’t be realistic. In particular, the consistent phase of the annual cycle in all zones results in much higher trends early in the year than at mid year , both globally and every zone examined.
A concrete example for the tropics (UAH and RSS):
http://deepclimate.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/uah-rss-lt-trpc-trends.gif
Obviously,such a strong seasonal divergence of trends in the tropics makes little sense. The UAH land trend is 0.16 deg/dec. in February and slightly negative in May!
But the RSS divergence is also higher than expected in this zone (as I explained in one of my previous posts, the NOAA surface data set shows negligible divergence in the tropics). Indeed, RSS monthly trends show considerably more seasonal divergence in the tropics than globally, so maybe it has a stronger recent annual cycle in that zone .
In general, I tend to think there may be some inherent annual cycle in the recent satellite data set, which is somehow greatly exaggerated in UAH.
[Response: Indeed there's a lot to explain. GISS data shows an annual cycle recently but that's almost certainly real, a consequence of greater winter warming than summer. As such it shows all the expected signs: stronger over land than ocean and of opposite phase in the two hemispheres.
Just for laughs I looked at the mid-troposphere data, and again UAH shows a strong annual cycle recently, compared to RSS. Perhaps it's related to the way in which the diurnal cycle is compensated when reducing raw data? I know this has been a point of contention in the past.
One avenue of analysis would be to isolate the GISS data since about 2000 and remove from it all trace of annual cycle. This would enable comparison between satellite data sets and a "reference" which has no annual cycle. But it still leaves the issue that GISS is surface while satellite data are lower-troposphere (and in fact aren't directly measured, but estimated from other channels).
Perhaps the overriding conclusion is that satellite temperature estimates are nowhere near the ultra-reliable estimates the denialosphere often wants them to be. I think it's a pity that very few pay any attention at all to the rivals of RSS and UAH, which show stronger warming than either of those two reductions.]
Deep Climate // July 20, 2009 at 6:47 pm
“Perhaps it’s related to the way in which the diurnal cycle is compensated when reducing raw data? “
UAH uses the “stable” AQUA satellite since 2003. So there is no orbital decay/diurnal drift compensation in recent years in UAH (there still is in RSS, until they switch over). So that’s not it – unless AQUA isn’t as stable as advertised … hmmm. Anyway, I looked at UAH pre- and post-AQUA and there was not much difference. But if anything the annual cycle got worse, so that points to intersatellite calibration issues (which are surely at least part of the problem, IMHO).
http://deepclimate.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/uah-global-cmp.gif
http://deepclimate.org/2009/03/26/seasonal-divergence-in-tropospheric-temperature-trends-part-2/
On other data sets , yes, AR4 covered Vinnikov and Grody, as well as Fu et al analysis, but they have been little discussed in the blogosphere. Rechecking your handy links, it seems V+G is only updated to 2005 (at least in the summary trend file). The Fu et al “mid-troposphere” analysis, which combines MT and stratosphere to produce a mid-troposphere estimate (IIRC), is up to date. Probably worth a look and charting some time.
Deep Climate // July 20, 2009 at 6:57 pm
Tamino, you said:
Perhaps the overriding conclusion is that satellite temperature estimates are nowhere near the ultra-reliable estimates the denialosphere often wants them to be.
That’s where I’m going too. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that the satellite analysts need to explore ways to incorporate surface data for more effective calibration.
dhogaza // July 20, 2009 at 7:43 pm
Oh, Lord. Unbelievable.
If you look at the editorial board it’s almost entirely water types, energy types, etc etc. So serious but … nothing to do with the climate science side of AGW, more the effects side.
When you first posted on this, and I read that piece of garbage, I did some googling to see if it was just another E&E type thing. Seems like no, it’s OK, as you say.
But, I did run across a conference notification and the site mentioned that most of the presentations were being published in journal.
That’s why you’re seeing so many conference presentations. Apparently it’s serving as some sort of conference proceedings venue.
dhogaza // July 20, 2009 at 7:45 pm
So what’s my prize? An all-expense paid weekend to go photograph weather stations with anthony watts? A free ticket to a Monckton speech? A trip to view arctic ice with Stephen Goddard? A bible-study session with Roy Spencer?
Gavin's Pussycat // July 20, 2009 at 8:11 pm
Eh, a ticket to “Anger Management”? :-)
Hank Roberts // July 21, 2009 at 5:51 am
*ding*
http://www.dilbert.com/dyn/str_strip/000000000/00000000/0000000/000000/60000/1000/700/61741/61741.strip.gif
george // July 21, 2009 at 4:39 pm
dhogaza: “So what’s my prize?”
How about a gift certificate for this?
Kevin McKinney // July 22, 2009 at 12:14 pm
“It’s a fair cop!”
george // July 22, 2009 at 2:43 pm
Tamino says:
If only Anthony Watts and his Surfacestationeers had a rocket, we could sort all this out in no time.
If I had to guess, I’d say it’s orbiting barbecue grills from space shuttle fourth of July parties.
Kevin McKinney // July 22, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Or maybe the satellites aren’t properly shielded from the solar wind. . .
Deep Climate // July 22, 2009 at 6:11 pm
george said:
If I had to guess, I’d say it’s orbiting barbecue grills from space shuttle fourth of July parties.
An alternative point of view here:
http://denialdepot.blogspot.com/2009/04/how-not-to-measure-temperature-part-1.html
I left a comment there, but didn’t use my usual pseudonym. I hope Watts doesn’t find out.
Paul Tonita // July 22, 2009 at 10:14 pm
Anybody know of comments on the NCAR study linking the solar cycle to ENSO-like events in the tropical pacific?
A lagged warm event-like response to peaks in solar forcing in the Pacific region
t_p_hamilton // July 22, 2009 at 10:21 pm
If the global warming signal is dominated by airport thermometers, why don’t skeptics address this question: what is warming our airports?
Possible answers:
a) Its the sunshine (and moonshine)
b) Its natural for airports to be much hotter on geologic time scales
c) Its El Nino (but not La Nina for cooling!)
d) Heating lags airports
e) Planes like it hot – stop your complaining!
f) it is volcanoes under the tarmac
g) antarctic ice is growing, therefore the thermometers at airports are wrong
h) they predicted airport glaciers in the 1970’s
i) The airport was cold last winter
David B. Benson // July 22, 2009 at 11:28 pm
Paul Tonita // July 22, 2009 at 10:14 pm — I have some on the Warming, Interrupted thread. Rather amateurish, I fear.
Kevin McKinney // July 23, 2009 at 2:27 am
t_p, you forgot the statistically anomalous concentrations of heat at ticket & baggage counters.
Hank Roberts // July 23, 2009 at 9:39 pm
Another paywalled item, if anyone has access:
Global warming: a review of this mostly settled issue
CF Keller – Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk …, 2009
http://www.springerlink.com/index/6801631U70NG0432.pdf
“… advances that seem to explain why satellites do not see as much warming as surface instruments, how we are getting a good idea of recent paleo-climates, and why the twentieth century temperature record was so complex. ….”
David B. Benson // July 24, 2009 at 12:39 am
Hank Roberts // July 23, 2009 at 9:39 pm — I happen to have access.
(1) Satellite record — Even RSS has or has problems. See Gillet NP et al. Nature online, 2 Dec 2004 for a confirmation that the modern satellite corrections of Fu and Johanson (Univ. Wash. correction) works properly. Karl et al. 2006 summarize all the corrective work.
(2) Too many studies to summarize easily. Best evidence is glaciers melting now which certainly did not at any time in the last 5000 years.
(3) Didn’t find a section adreessing why the twentieth century temperature record was so complex. The inference I make is that the discussions of (large) anthropogenic influences is supposed to cover that.
Ryan O // July 25, 2009 at 9:18 pm
Deep:
Christy, Pielke Sr., and Lindzen are the first 3 that come to mind. ;)
David B. Benson // July 25, 2009 at 10:15 pm
Dr. Charles F Keller is a Fellow at LANL. One might be able to obtain a copy of his review paper via a polite e-mail.
Igor Samoylenko // July 27, 2009 at 8:52 am
Some light entertainment for you (from the Funny Old World section in the Private Eye satirical magazine in the latest issue 1241):
“WOULD A PERSON WITH A 1KW LINEAR AMPLIFIER please contact me? I want to use the output to test to see if I can initiate a thermonuclear fusion reaction. The experiment is to put a tube of low pressure hydrogen in the inductor of a tuned circuit and see if it will start a fusion reaction. If it does, the tuned circuit will be able to maintain oscillations by the energy of the fusion reactions. I will provide the tube of hydrogen and an outline design of a circuit matched into 50 Ohm. This is intended as a new source of power.
The experiment is a bit dangerous as I understand it may be difficult to stop the nuclear reactions once they start. There is a danger from radiation and a possible nuclear explosion if the power runs away. Contact Christopher (London).
(Source: Radio Society of Great Britain magazine, February 2009)”
A new source of power? A solution to all our energy problems…? :-)
Richard C // July 27, 2009 at 11:41 pm
Watts can’t take the heat, (sorry about the pun). He invoked copyright law to take down a You Tube video that criticised him. I saw the video and didn’t notice any copyright infringement, how do you get a video reinstated?
Hank Roberts // July 28, 2009 at 12:05 am
> video reinstated
http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/faq.cgi#QID132
Event to watch for:
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/07/worldcon_schedule_1.html
Thursday August 6th, 9:00pm (Location: PENDING)
Title: In Conversation: Paul Krugman and Charles Stross
Description: 90 minutes of Charles Stross discussing SF, economics, and other topics with Paul Krugman.
NOTE: This item was previously scheduled for 5pm. Now updated. (I’m also trying to arrange for it to be recorded for subsequent podcasting/YouTube hosting.)
Lee // July 28, 2009 at 12:44 am
What’s really funny about the Watts takedown notice, is his only comment on it over at WattSoup.
Watts has a blog post about an article Lindzen has in Quadrant Online. Watt’s post consists entirely of 7 paragraphs cut and paste from the Lindzen article, followed by a link to the Quadrant article and an attribution to Lindzen. No commentary, no ‘by permission of,’ just the cut and paste.
Buried down in the comments is this:
” Anil Patrim (21:14:29) :
Sorry to post off topic (although the comments are all backslapping anyway) but is there a reason you (Anthony) filed a DMCA complaint against Greenman3610’s youtube video “Watts up with Watts”?
From Youtube:
“This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Anthony Watts Surfacestations.org”
Surely his video falls under fair use. Relying on the nanny state to attack critics or am I missing something?
REPLY: I don’t care to discuss my reasons here as they are private and unrelated to this discussion. Google agreed that complaint was valid and removed the video. – Anthony”
Anthony is a little unclear on the concept, it seems.
Hank Roberts // July 28, 2009 at 2:59 am
Covered:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/7/27/758211/-Global-warming-denier-uses-the-DMCA-to-silence-a-critic
How-To:
http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2009/7/27/02135/8460/26#c26
Layman Lurker // July 28, 2009 at 4:48 am
Barton Paul Levenson, in response to your quote on the “Old News” thread:
“As to CO2, I can tell you for sure that it’s not having a ferrtilization effect because I’ve done that analysis. I took time series data for 1961-2002 on cereal production, CO2, temperature anomaly, and fertilizer consumption. All seemed to be correlated, but CO2 and temperature turned out to be spurious correlations. Only fertilizer mattered.”
Was your data from controlled experiments or commercial yield data? You mentioned CO2, temp, and fertilizer – were other yield variables (water, genetics, weeds, insects, disease, etc.) accounted for?
Were you exploring the potential benefits (or lack of) of increased CO2 on agrictulture? Carbon sequestration?
Sorry for playing 20 questions.
bluegrue // July 28, 2009 at 9:17 am
From the EFF site:
A tough call for Peter Sinclair. I’m not sure the report by Watts has gained enough traction to be considered newsworthy (if only e.g. Senator Inhofe had picked it up). If he contests the take-down notice Watts may sue; legal fees are high and Sinclair may have to pay them on his own even if he wins. It may be a good pro bono case at it covers free speech.
What’s worrying, if the denialists add two more strikes on frivolous charges that Sinclair can’t defend against because of lack of money he’ll be off youtube for good. I hope this is not a new tactic.
Barton Paul Levenson // July 29, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Layman Lurker asks:
Global agricultural cereal production and fertilizer consumption. Industry totals.
No. If you can find time series data for any of them covering 1961-2002, maybe I can use them in another analysis.
Layman Lurker // July 30, 2009 at 12:39 am
BPL, for precipitation time series data, you might want to try the Global Precipitation Climatology Center for starters. I’m not sure specifically what products they have and whether they fit with your analysis, but here is a link to try: http://www.agrometeorology.org/topics/agromet-market-place/new-gpcc-monthly-precipitation-climatology-and-global-monthly-precipitation-analyses-1901-2007-available
Exploring data from controlled experiments might be a better way to properly answer your question. I’m not sure that aggregate data would enable you to do a fair analysis of the effect of co2 enrichment on cereal crops or make broader inferences about co2 fertilization in general.
Gavin's Pussycat // July 29, 2009 at 5:07 pm
I wonder if the Watts Crock of the Week video is up again… I have no problem viewing it on my Nokia 810 using Canola or kmplayer. Or is that a cached copy?
BTW time for next Open Thread?
Hank Roberts // July 29, 2009 at 6:34 pm
” Climate Crock of the Week: What’s Up with Anthony Watts [take 2]
“The video has since been reviewed by a number of US copyright experts and (big surprise) there appears to be nothing that could be construed as anything but fair use.”
Hank Roberts // July 29, 2009 at 6:40 pm
PS, Watts has accomplished breaking all the links out there pointing to the original video — that still comes up as bad.
Looks like YouTube created a new entry (and the video is a few seconds longer, so perhaps Take 2 is a revision, I don’t know).
http://greenfyre.wordpress.com/denier-vs-skeptic/denier-myths-debunked/climate-denial-crock-of-the-week/#watts
Hank Roberts // July 29, 2009 at 7:45 pm
oh, wait; that’s DeSmogBlog putting up a copy.
From across that nasty international border.
“We is invade Canada next?”
Mark // July 29, 2009 at 9:15 pm
Hank, remember what happened last time the US invaded Canada: Saddam was released to cast darkness o’er the land…
greenfyre // July 30, 2009 at 12:33 am
“Hank, remember what happened last time the US invaded Canada: ”
War of 1812 – Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7jlFZhprU4
[Response: Funny... but seriously, I love Canada.]
Deech56 // July 30, 2009 at 2:02 am
RE: greenfyre // July 30, 2009 at 12:33 am
Living across the river from Fort Erie, we used to invade Canada regularly to buy Molson’s.
Love your blog, greenfyre.
Mark // July 30, 2009 at 9:58 am
“War of 1812 – Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie”
I think THIS invasion was later than that:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0158983/
!
greenfyre // July 30, 2009 at 2:31 pm
“I love Canada.”
Of course … we are now the climate troll that everyone can point to and say “at least we’re better than them”; what’s not to love? ;-)
Thanks Deech56, appreciated.
What I like about the video is that while it attempts to be an orgy of gloating and nationalism it still includes the line “they ran so fast they forgot to take their culture”, acknowledging that for all the bravado we’re still the ones dominated … how very Canadian.
tailor // July 30, 2009 at 2:48 pm
http://www.ciw.edu/news/hydrocarbons_deep_earth
freemike // July 30, 2009 at 9:10 pm
I’m fighting some bad science on the web and got this from a poster, it says.
“71% of the Earth is covered by the ocean. Somebody please explain IN DETAIL as to what causes ocean temperatures to rise and fall. For example, how do global temp measurements account for such variables as underwater volcanoes? Also, we know that the oceans have 1,000 more times heat capacity than the atmosphere. How is then that the atmosphere can heat oceans given the relative heat capacities of the two? To give an example, co2 alarmists say that the earth is causing ice melt. However, simply physics tells me that heat rises. 90’s of arctic ice is submerged below water. Therefore, if ice is melting then it must be ocean temperatures causing it, not the atmosphere temperatures.
Also, if there is a positive correlation between global warming and ocean levels, why is that the mean rise of sea levels was 4 feet per century for most of the last 10,000 years, but they are now rising at 1 foot per century. Why has over the last 50 years sea level rise dropped by .5mm in the 20th century? Why have sea levels all but stopped rising since 2006? ”
I’m sure his numbers are fiction but I’m an amateur and can’t spend hours looking up the relevant articles. Can anyone here point me in the right direction? I appreciate the help.
luminous beauty // July 30, 2009 at 10:06 pm
freemike,
Short answer: The Sun heats the oceans. The greenhouse effect slows the rate at which the oceans release their heat.
Sea level
Ryan O // July 30, 2009 at 11:43 pm
Also, freemike, heat capacity has nothing whatsoever to do with which directly the energy will flow. If the atmosphere is warmer than the oceans, then energy will flow from the atmosphere to the oceans. If the atmosphere is cooler, then it is the reverse. You’re not fighting bad science; you’re fighting ignorance.
t_p_hamilton // July 30, 2009 at 11:49 pm
This person with their “simple physics” seems to think that the only way to move heat is by convection (heat rises). That misses the greenhouse effect ENTIRELY, since that is because of IR radiation, which is in all directions.
If the water is melting the polar ice, then it should melt year round, shouldn’t it?
David B. Benson // July 31, 2009 at 12:01 am
freemike // July 30, 2009 at 9:10 pm — Shine a heat lamp on an ice cube in a glass of water. As the top of the ice melts and runs off, the bottom of the ice cube rises as there is now less ice.
The global average sea level (notice I stress global and average) has risen at an ever slowing rate for many millennia now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Post-Glacial_Sea_Level.png
from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level
but also see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Holocene_Sea_Level.png
from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_sea_level_rise
Hank Roberts // July 31, 2009 at 12:13 am
Freemike:
28, 42, 43, and several under “Latest Posts” in the sidebar:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php
freemike // July 31, 2009 at 12:55 am
You guys rule. Thanks for the teachable moment. I’ll try to pass it along.
Mark // July 31, 2009 at 8:28 am
And then try the same trick with the ice cube on a lollypop stick bridge over the glass of water.
Mark // July 31, 2009 at 8:31 am
“That misses the greenhouse effect ENTIRELY, since that is because of IR radiation, which is in all directions.”
Well, that’s their point. AGW is wrong because IR isn’t how temperature gets out: it convects out.
They don’t consider the consequence of convection though: it requires a medium to move to carry the heat.
If the only way to lose heat is through convection, we are losing atmosphere all the time.
This planet should have been a vacuum billions of years ago.
That it isn’t shows this WAG wrong.
Which is why they don’t consider it.
David B. Benson // July 31, 2009 at 11:26 pm
Wind energy powers the ocean oscillations and currents; tides help out. Tides are twice a day (most places) so the power spectrum is easy, a lump around 0.000023 Hz.
I looked up some formulas for wind power spectral density. A good fitting form for winds on oceans is
S(f) = af/[(b+cf^2)^(5/6)]
for some constants a, b, and c chosen to obtain maximum power between 0.01 Hz and 0.001 Hz.
TrueSceptic // August 1, 2009 at 1:47 pm
Tamino,
You are probably aware that the crucial point of the Climate Crock video about Watts is that the Surface Stations project won’t change anything important because the match between the 70 “good” stations and the corrected entire set of 1220+ is negligible.
Watts claims in his thread about the video that,
“As referenced in the text of the NCDC Talking Points Memo, the Figure1 graph compares two homogenized data sets, and demonstrates an uncanny correlation. Here is what they say:
Two national time series were made using the same homogeneity adjusted data set and the same gridding and area averaging technique used by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center for its annual climate monitoring.
Seems reasonable, until you understand what “homgenization” really is.
What’s “homogenization” you say? Some kind of dairy product treatment?
Well no, not quite. It is data that has been put through a series of processes that render it so the end result is like comparing the temperature between several bowls of water that have been mixed together, then poured back into the original bowls and the temperature measured of each. What you get is an end temperature for each bowl that is a mixture of the other nearby bowl temperatures.”
If you’ve already covered this (the validity of the US station data), can you point me to where; if not, can I suggest it would make an excellent subject for one of your stats “tutorials”?
Thanks.
TrueSceptic // August 1, 2009 at 4:20 pm
“…match between the 70 “good” stations and the corrected entire set of 1220+ is negligible.”
Doh! The *discrepancy*, not the match!
raimondo // August 1, 2009 at 8:18 pm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/jul/31/wind-farm-technology-green-environmentalists
profoundly true, and unfashionable with it.
t_p_hamilton // August 1, 2009 at 10:22 pm
More info for Ian:
The ACS has an official statement on global warming, consistent with ALL other scientific organizations. This makes the idea of firing Rudy Baum for an anti-denier editorial ludicrous.
What you noticed is a PR campaign that misled you into thinking a large section of the ACS objects to global warming. An equal number deny evolution, and write letters to the C&E News about that as well.
Such is the consequence of an editor presenting a “balanced” view. That is itself a bias against rationality. Eric Heller’s letter states it extremely well.
Eric Heller and Susan Solomon are worth 100 ordinary scientists.
TCO // August 1, 2009 at 10:42 pm
Steve McIntyre is blathering on with a bunch of half-assed amatuer pseudo-lawyer comments about CRU confidentiality practices.
Really the guy is such a tease. 4.5 years after GRL05 and he has NO follow-on papers. He has STILL not done basic math explications like defining a “bad appler” or doing full factorials of his touted mulptiple issues…or showing the EXTENT of issues he brings up (rather than just PR “yuck yucks” in blogoland.) Just blogging for his little nitwits.
It’s like mental masturbation. Like they are just stroking each other. Makes me sick. Disgusts me. Skeptic cause needs better than this shit.
And his wife should kick his ass. A grad student would have a significant contribution of work now. Would have a whole set of publications. This guy has all the advantages of 40 years of work experience (and that should make it easier to do solid work). And all he has is a bunch of half-finished crap. Innuendos and cheap wisecracks. Didn’t he learn anything in the course of peddling shady mining penny stocks to help him write clearly? Can’t he apply his self-touted good brain to actually doing some science? What a [edit] joke.
There’s guys dying in Iraq and Afghanistan and this [edit] can’t be arsed to just be clear and straightforward like your high school chem class teaches you. I mean, I LOOOVE the idea of contrarians finding things wrong and fixing them. But this guy is ALL TEASE. What a Canadian [edit].
David B. Benson // August 2, 2009 at 9:45 pm
Some regular readers here will want to look through
http://climateprogress.org/2009/08/01/dc-lobbying-firm-bonner-forged-minority-letters-perriello-climate-bill/
Hank Roberts // August 2, 2009 at 10:54 pm
TrueS, have a look here:
http://www.google.com/search?q=%2Bvalidity+“US+station”+data+weather+watts+tamino
Hank Roberts // August 2, 2009 at 10:55 pm
Dang, WordPress … just paste into the search box:
+validity+”US+station”+data+weather+watts+tamino
Hank Roberts // August 2, 2009 at 11:07 pm
Arrrrgh. Cut and paste _this_, with the spaces.
+validity +”US+station” +data +weather +watts +tamino
David B. Benson // August 2, 2009 at 11:28 pm
Regarding the Fermi paradox, I’ll hold that Ward & Brownlee
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis
did not go far enough. They state that unicellular life might be fairly common. On the contrary, I take the position that conditions favoring abiogenesis are extraordinailly unusual, everywhere.
Gavin's Pussycat // August 3, 2009 at 7:55 am
Lazar, TrueSceptic, Tamino:
The paper about USHCN v2 that the NOAA talking point memo is based on appears to be here:
http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/141108.pdf
This might be worth careful analysis. While they seem to have done a careful job, I am left with some doubts. Especially the homogenization procedure. I accept that the pairwise comparison method used will find and eliminate any (large enough) skip discontinuities in the station record. They are using the full set of COOP stations for this (to maximize the number of near neighbours). See page 5. They say “trend inhomogeneities … are not actually removed wih a trend adjustment”. But later, they explain that they use a “simple difference in means test”. If this means what I suspect it does — i.e., those means are taken over the intervals to the previous and next change points –, then this means that trend adjustment is brought in again through the back door; an argument also Pielke Sr. makes. Does this have merit?
If it does, it means that the trends in the HCN stations are simply “inherited” from the locally surrounding COOP stations — and this would hold for the subset of 70 Watts stations as well. In this case the comparison in the memo is meaningless. What they should have done then, is use the “non-production” version mentioned on page 5 too, which doesn’t do this “back door” trend adjustment.
More seriously, if this is true, then the trends in the HCN v2 product derive from the COOP network, including any UHI effects that were not caught and removed as large enough (over 0.5C) step changes.
I may be out of my depth on this. Comments?
Barton Paul Levenson // August 3, 2009 at 8:52 am
David B. Benson writes:
I have to disagree:
http://BartonPaulLevenson.com/Combo.html
Hank Roberts // August 3, 2009 at 8:13 pm
Another externalized cost of fossil fuel use surfaces; epigenetic effects:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=silencing-genes-chemical-contaminants-cancer-diabetes&page=2
“… children in New York City exposed in the womb to high levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), common air pollutants from traffic, were much more likely to have asthma than those who were not exposed. By studying cord blood, she found that a particular gene (ACSL3) was methylated in the asthmatic children and unmethylated in the unexposed children, and concluded that the abnormal methylation patterns probably caused the asthma.
The finding could in part explain why worldwide asthma rates have skyrocketed in much of the world, reaching epidemic proportions among children. In the boroughs of New York City with the worst air pollution, about 25 percent of children are asthmatic….”
David B. Benson // August 3, 2009 at 10:05 pm
Barton Paul Levenson // August 3, 2009 at 8:52 am — From your link: “… that given liquid water, organic chemicals, shock waves from micrometeorite impacts and time, life will always arise on a planet.”
Possibly so, but Venus lacks both liquid water and organic chemicals. I suspect this is the overwhelmingly most common state of otherwise suitable planets; no proto-moon strike of just the right size to produce suitable geochemistry and nice tides.
But the visable universe is vast and the cosmos in which it is embedded is unknowably vaster. Somewhere in this vastness abiogenesis does occur, intelligent life develops and the near surround becomes the visable universe for that species. Nothing in this requires any high probability events; simple vastness overcomes any (non-zero) probability.
Mark // August 4, 2009 at 10:28 am
“Possibly so, but Venus lacks both liquid water and organic chemicals.”
Only because of the runaway greenhouse effect makes water unviable.
Which is partly caused by CO2.
Which includes carbon, required to make organics…
TrueSceptic // August 4, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Hank Roberts,
Thanks. I was looking for something specifically about the homogenization of data sets, so that we can examine Watts’s claims.
David B. Benson // August 5, 2009 at 12:38 am
Mark // August 4, 2009 at 10:28 am — I was attempting to emphasize the different chemical composition of Terra due to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_impact_hypothesis
and also the possibility that the early giant tides might be implicated in abiogenesis. In any case, the different chemical composition has led to a vastly different
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology_of_Venus
which lacks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tectonics
which has been also suggested as having a role in abiogenesis.
Mark // August 5, 2009 at 8:32 am
David, Terra doesn’t have a sulfur-heavy atmosphere.
So when you said:
“Possibly so, but Venus lacks both liquid water and organic chemicals.”
You weren’t discussing Terra, were you.
And all that’s needed for plate tectonics and abiogenesis if they ARE linked is a molten core for several billion years.
Mars had one of those, ergo no problem for Mars. I don’t *know* about Venus, but its early history could easily have had billions of years with plate tectonics.
They lack it NOW, but then 1 billion years ago, there may have been life on those planets whilst ours had had its reset button pushed by the creation of the Moon and so was 1 billion years behind.
And water from cometary impacts is how the moon has any water at all. Pity there’s no atmosphere to stop the daylight evaporating it out into space.
Nathan // August 5, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Mark
Plate tectonics requires water, it helps to alter oceanic crust to produce serpentine, a phyllosilicate that ‘lubricates’ subduction.
Venus stopped having earth-like plate tectonics, but still has (apparently) sufficient internal heat to support it.
Mark // August 5, 2009 at 2:24 pm
“Plate tectonics requires water,”
Uh, lubrication makes it easier. Doesn’t mean it won’t happen without it: push a door hard enough and it WILL close, even when it’s rusted and unlubricated.
And your last point indicates that Venus had plate tectonics in the past.
Hank Roberts // August 5, 2009 at 3:33 pm
Trueskep, look for “homogeneity adjustment” in the older threads here
Gavin's Pussycat // August 5, 2009 at 4:00 pm
TrueSceptic, another reference:
http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/102322.pdf
Note that the method apparently tested here differs from the Menne et al. “difference of means”, and corresponds to the “non-production” method of pairwise comparison.
Gavin's Pussycat // August 5, 2009 at 4:03 pm
TrueSceptic, another reference:
http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/102322.pdf
Seems to show that homogenization by bias skip elimination works great.
Note that the method apparently tested here differs from the Menne et al. “difference of means” as used for HCN v2, and corresponds to their “non-production” method. If I understand this correctly, that is.
Gavin's Pussycat // August 5, 2009 at 4:47 pm
…and here Pielke’s paper, in part a response to Peterson.
http://ccc.atmos.colostate.edu/pdfs/Pielke-etal_BAMS_Jun07.pdf
Look especially at Figure 4 and the section it is in.
tamino // August 5, 2009 at 4:55 pm
There’s a new open thread (for faster loading), so please move discussion there.
Like gas stations in rural Texas after 10 pm, comments are closed.