"In a statement the authors of the paper said: 'Since publication of our paper we have become aware of two mistakes which impact the detailed estimation of future sea level rise. This means that we can no longer draw firm conclusions regarding 21st century sea level rise from this study without further work. One mistake was a miscalculation; the other was not to allow fully for temperature change over the past 2,000 years. Because of these issues we have retracted the paper and will now invest in the further work needed to correct these mistakes.'"
Amusingly, the authors aren't disclosing whether they overestimated or underestimated the rise of seas. They'd said 0.75 to 1.9 meters by 2100. The IPCC had said 18 to 59 centimeters. So, let's stay terrified.
And I love the phrase "we can no longer draw firm conclusions." Somehow, they once had firm conclusions. But they were wrong.
February 22, 2010
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A little environmental Viagra[TM] should firm up their conclusions.
WV tromic the brand name of Environmental Viagra.
He inadvertantly included three of his wife's grocery store bills in the data, and so doesn't know whether it overestimates or underestimates the sea rise.
Any estimate of anything is improved by including baseball scores in the data, however. Scientific American had an article on it
Texas, Virginia, and Alabama have filed papers challenging the EPA. IIRC recently one state has introduced legislation that will opt it out of federal EPA control.
Climate scientists now believe that the earth is flat!
The phrase that caught my eye:
Because of these issues we have retracted the paper and will now invest in the further work needed to correct these mistakes.
Whatever you do: Don't kill the job!
For a minute there, I thought a US paper had finally reported the news!
I guess the story is still passing through the fabled four levels of editors.
Since they withdrew the papers, I think we can be pretty sure that they overestimated. An underestimation would have been triumphally announced - See, we're even worse off than we thought! Must have global action now!
Now that the alarmists understand that people are checking their homework, I wonder how many more "mistakes" will be voluntarily disclosed.
Didn't Obama say that the oceans would stop rising now that he was President. Looks like he finally kept one of his campaign promises.
Our mainstream press should be ashamed of itself. Phrases like "there is consensus" and "the science is settled" were readily quoted and pretty much never challenged in news accounts about global warming. What a bunch of baloney.
It would nice if the coldist alarmists had peer reviewed work we could look at. Guess we'll just have to settle for links to British tabloids.
One mistake was a miscalculation
I'm reminded of Randolph Churchill's struggles as British Treasury Secretary dealing with "those damn dots" as he called decimal points.
Now a sea level rise of 7.5 to 19 meters would be something to write home about.
The critics the authors thank for bringing the "mistakes" to their attention have argued strenuously that the study underestimated the amount of sea level rise likely to happen.
Any assumption that they will conclude that they overestimated is not warranted.
Nor is any assumption that their revised projection will be any more accurate or useful than the first one.
It's interesting that a science that purports to predict the future has difficulty accurately describing the past. Therein lies the foolishness in the entire exercise.
Please join us for refreshments at the conclusion of our show.
When is the conclusion!?
"It would nice if the coldist alarmists had peer reviewed work we could look at. Guess we'll just have to settle for links to British tabloids."
Peer review doesn't work if your peers are as corrupt as you are.
I am now going to buy that beach front property!
It's interesting that a science that purports to predict the future has difficulty accurately describing the past.
Reminds me of the joke about the definition of a Soviet historian: someone skilled at predicting the past.
I Googled "coldist alarmists" and got no hits. What's up with that?
WV: apest
Any estimate of anything is improved by including baseball scores in the data..
For those of you not following the game, rh is alluding to a disgraceful period in baseball known as the steroid era, when records of biblical proportions crumbled with the ease of an Oreo cookie in a glass of milk.
Garage, given how bad the peer reviewed alarmist studies have been, peer review in climate "science" seems to be useless.
AGW is settled into the sea never to be seen again. The next WORLD CRISIS "Narrative"could be shotting in Hollywood as we speak with Noble prize winners already selected. My guess is it will be disappearance of sea life caused by Fat Cats who are so uncaring that they produce crops for bad humans to eat.
For a minute there, I thought a US paper had finally reported the news!
We've always been at war with Eurasia!
So the only space a skeptical scientist can publish his or her work is in British tabloids? Right along side UFO abductions and Victoria Beckham stories?
Scoff all you like, but it takes integrity to withdraw a paper in a leading journal just because you found an error. Not only is it hugely embarrassing, it also erases a paper that might be a career highlight and represent several years of work.
People should police their own papers for errors. Save your scoffing for the ones who try to brazen it out.
People should police their own papers for errors. Save your scoffing for the ones who try to brazen it out.
Fuck off, they never would have done it if not for the political pressure.
Where is Ritmo, FLS, Jeremy to lecture us about deniers?
So the only space a skeptical scientist can publish his or her work is in British tabloids? Right along side UFO abductions and Victoria Beckham stories?
You don't get to define what is a reputable scientist.
Scoff all you like, but it takes integrity to withdraw a paper in a leading journal just because you found an error.
To the contrary.. Integrity is double checking to make sure is right before rushing to print.
Note that the article doesn't actually make predictions about global warming. It just relates prior global warming events to sea levels. That's good science on an important topic, and it's important to get it right.
Hey, garage, did you click on the link? It's not a "skeptical scientist" publishing his work, it's a story about the authors of a peer-reviewed study renouncing their own work.
And The Guardian is kind of the NYT of the UK, with all that implies. It's hardly a skeptic-friendly rag.
Well, garage, alarmists had their work in the IPCC, alongside a student thesis, WWF claims, and an article from a hiking magazine. You are in poor position to criticize.
As in many endeavors designed to get people excited, the firmness of your conclusions is directly related to your desire for those conclusions.
To the contrary.. Integrity is double checking to make sure is right before rushing to print.
Look, everybody double checks to make sure it's right before you publish. And triple checks, and quadruple checks. That's why it's so embarrassing when you're wrong.
Integrity isn't the same thing as being careful.
To the contrary.. Integrity is double checking to make sure is right before rushing to print.
Look, everybody double checks to make sure it's right before you publish. And triple checks, and quadruple checks. That's why it's so embarrassing when you're wrong.
Integrity isn't the same thing as being careful.
Turtledove beat me to it. Another (or is it a "singular"?) item checked off the Obama to-do list! Great job, Mr. Prez!
And see, the best things in life (fresh air, sex, AGW retractions) ARE free. No stimulus money required.
wv: trildiv. What's apparently happening to this trial.
...just because you found an error...
just because?
I have never heard of Nature Geoscience. (Goes to look). Ah. Started in 2008.
I wonder who was the peer reviewer for the now-withdrawn article. Ooops.
Note that the article doesn't actually make predictions about global warming. It just relates prior global warming events to sea levels.
Good catch.. if they cant get the easy part (albeit based on nebulous AGW "data") right, what level of confidence are we supposed to sustain on the hard part? the AGW models?
Zach
Integrity isn't the same thing as being careful.
Um, make that
Integrity isn't the same thing as being careless.
And remind me again about the difference between gross negligence & willful misconduct.
Interesting that lefties do not hold climate scientists to the same standard of truthiness as George Bush on WMDs.
Hey, garage, did you click on the link? It's not a "skeptical scientist" publishing his work, it's a story about the authors of a peer-reviewed study renouncing their own work.
Right! Renounced probably because it's peer reviewed.
Now, I want to see scientists that are skeptics put the goddamn pads and go out on the field where we can hit them instead of sitting on the sidelines. I know I know. Ain't happening. Virtually none of these skeptics getting all the headlines are actual scientists.
just because?
What point are you even trying to make? These guys agree with you that finding an error is enough -- they withdrew the paper!
Maybe everybody here is so honest that they routinely admit to hugely embarrassing mistakes and give back the benefits of years of work. But some people out in the wide world find that hard to do. I'm just saying that these guys should get a golf clap for integrity amidst the booing.
garage does not get to define what is a real scientist.
The only way to get to 1.9 meters now is to have the rise measured by someone who thinks the Guardian is a tabloid.
Virtually none of these skeptics getting all the headlines are actual scientists.
Dr. Venkman: Are you, Alice, menstrauting right now?
Librarian: What has that got to do with anything?
Dr. Venkman: Back off man, I'm a scientist.
Virtually none of these skeptics getting all the headlines are actual scientists.
Yawn! Untrue. Too bored with the topic to cite them, though. Garage wouldn't buy it anyway. Skepticism gets no oxygen in his world.
Zach, I honor your defense of the scientists. They have acted with integrity. My point is that calculation mistakes are not like a grammatical error, something that can be brushed off as unimportant in favor of the big conclusion.
Unfortunately for honest climate scientists, some of their peers have not made that call. The bar is higher and it should be higher.
Michaele @ 9:33 AM
The MSM is still lost in "Global Weirding".
AllenS
I always thought that Tom Friedman didn't know anything & now we find that he was prescient when he wrote his book about the world being flat!
Yawn! Untrue. Too bored with the topic to cite them, though. Garage wouldn't buy it anyway. Skepticism gets no oxygen in his world.
C'mon! I'd love to see their work.
Obviously none of these scientists are taking into account the sea level rise that will occur when the 3 feet of snow in DC melts.
String up every last "climate scientist" should be a GOP platform point.
C'mon! I'd love to see their work.
Have at it. Let me know when you're done.
Maguro said...
And The Guardian is kind of the NYT of the UK, with all that implies. It's hardly a skeptic-friendly rag.
while I agree about your basic point, this was more than a bit inflated.
I'd say Times of London = NYT
Guardian? not exactly the Nation, but clearly left of center
"C'mon! I'd love to see their work."
Skeptics don't need to show their "work." They need not disprove anything. It is up to the people making claims about rising sea levels to prove those claims. That is how science works.
I wonder how the desire to publish a new journal affected how the paper was received -- and how the Editors of the new journal decided who should review the submitted article.
Would make an interesting article :)
A science professor once told me that practically the only time you hear a scientist telling the truth is when he says, "I don't know". These guys are intentionally selling their image to manipulate the people's common sense from the 1930's and 1940's of scientists being our only hope for survival: The antibiotics, the atomic fission device, the Jets and the ICBMs, the nuclear subs...and we are like Pavlov's dog wanting to follow the next leading scientific break through we are told about. The only actual science involved in Global Warming has been mind control science perfected by Russians, Nazis, and Madison Avenue.
I'm of the opinion that garage has put his entire life savings into carbon trading because I don't think I have seen such knee jerk defense of a topic so thoroughly discredited as AGW.
Garage, skeptics are ending up being far more correct than the alarmisrs.
And you missed that whole email scandal, where the "scientists" discussed rigging peer review,eh?
Have we gotten to the point yet where people pushing the AGW scare can be regarded as liars rather than just lousy scientists?
In this story and all the "Climategate" stuff I've seen, the problem isn't "mistakes" being made, the problem is that deliberate efforts to mislead and conceal information are being made.
The "I didn't know the data was fake" excuse has just about expired.
Have at it. Let me know when you're done.
Lindzen co-authored the 2001 National Academy of Science's report on climate change:
Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise.
Source
Unfortunately, Ann gets the facts wrong also. If you read through the original article you will nowhere find that the paper in question stated that sea levels might rise 0.75 to 1.9 meters. That was the paper of the critics. May I call this sloppy research?
The mistake that was made was abandoning the idea that skeptics are correct to start with and have to be proven wrong...PROVEN - not just provided an interesting story that hooks in nicely with preconceived ideas and narratives. In other words the mistake was abandoning science for story telling. A very old mistake that leftists and totalitarians are especially vulnerable to because they imagine they are smarter than the masses. This belief is the source of all their failures and the terrible results they have brought over the last 100 years. This was simply the latest attempt at global extension of their ideas, narrowly avoided...this time.
Martian Invasion Alarmist: "There are martians and they're going to invade earth! We need to spend 200 trillion dollars right away to stop them! Here's my evidence...."
M.I. Skeptic: "But the evidence you cite is flawed."
M.I. Alarmist: "Where's your peer-reviewed studies showing there's no threat of a martian invasion? Stop sitting on the sidelines! Come on, I'd love to see their work, you denialist, you!"
M.I. Skeptic: (Eye roll)
garage - Funny you should mention the NAS report. Lindzen specifically mentioned that report as an example of science being misused for political purposes in his WSJ artilce of 11 Jun 2001:
Science, in the public arena, is commonly used as a source of authority with which to bludgeon political opponents and propagandize uninformed citizens. This is what has been done with both the reports of the IPCC and the NAS. It is a reprehensible practice that corrodes our ability to make rational decisions.
A perfect description of the entire global warming phenomenon. You can read the entire article in .pdf format by going to Lindzen's Wikipedia page and scrolling down to footnote 12. Well worth reading in full.
Worth pointing out that they withdrew the claim sea levels might rise 0.75 to 1.9 meters based on data there is now some doubt in.
The act of withdrawing the claim does not mean that the ocean absolutely will not rise 0.75 meters sink 0.3 meters or exceed the upper prediction of 1.9 meters with a 2.0 meter rise.
If you were a skeptic before, a skeptic you remain because no one has assembled a good case either way. Now the people that claim unlimited generation of CO2 and human overpopulation is Jesus's or Allah's blessing and neither will have any adverse effect on the planet or it's ecology whatsoever are likely wrong. But the doubt should be equally high with the AGW alarmists that demand the Green-Lefty version of hairshirts and government in charge of everything like the good little post-communist tools they are also need to be regarded skeptically.
Especially since they wish us all to destroy our standards of living, impose "rations" on us of energy, tax everything, and replace reliable power with very dubious "blessed solar! and wondrous wind!". Frankly, the burden of proof is on them.
I don't want a carbon tax on everything except what China dumps on us. I doubt higher taxes will create "new exciting green jobs that pay better and are more of" than the jobs the Greenies seek to destroy.
The burden of proof is on them, not the people the Green POlice seek to punish for having incandescent vs. PC Algore bulbs installed..
Worth pointing out that they withdrew the claim sea levels might rise 0.75 to 1.9 meters based on data there is now some doubt in.
Wrong again. Astonishing how many of those holding scientists to such a high standard take third hand information on the subject for granted.
By the way, other papers predict much higher sea level rises and the paper in question has been criticized by other climate scientists. So much for the great conspiracy...
@PS67
Groupthink doesn't necessarily equate to a conspiracy, but can be fatal nonetheless.
Even if the science were 99.9999% correct, the damage done to the AGW side of the "debate" (such that it's been) is possibly mortally wounded.
Look at it this way. By all appearances, the social conservatives are taking a back seat to the fiscal conservatives on the right. Maybe, just maybe, the enviros and greens can take a back seat on the left for the next couple of election cycles.
Turtledove,
"Didn't Obama say that the oceans would stop rising now that he was President. Looks like he finally kept one of his campaign promises."
You don't read my blog, do you?
Garage - stop your lying
From Lindzen himself:
CNN's Michelle Mitchell was typical of the coverage
when she declared that the report represented "a unanimous decision
that global warming is real, is getting worse, and is due to man. There is no wiggle room."
As one of 11 scientists who prepared the report, I can state that this is simply untrue. For starters, the NAS never asks that all participants agree to all elements of a report, but rather that the report represent the
span of views. This the full report did, making clear that there is no consensus, unanimous or otherwise, about long-term climate trends and what causes them.
...
For example, the full text
noted that 20 years was too short a period for estimating long-term
trends, but the summary forgot to mention this.
---
It must hurt to see your religious idols destroyed. Wait until we find out that Al Gore and his ilk are worse crooks than Bernie Madoff could ever have hoped to be.
Garage - stop your lying
Lindzen co-authored that report, I even cited it. In what universe is that lying? If he doesn't like what the text days, he shouldn't have co-authored it.
"Virtually none of these skeptics getting all the headlines are actual scientists."
Hey, Garage, I ain't no scientist either, but even I could see through this hooey. It's been a classic scam - pay me now for a result you won't discover 'till I'm gone - from the start. That may strike you as too simple but, as I've mentioned before, it's the desire to be clever where smart folks get hooked up all the time.
Don't be the one.
The fact that the people pointing out the fraud are not scientists is a point in their favor. It's the scientists who have lied, hidden data, broken the law, mis-educated countless people around the world, and generally tried to extort the globe for their own personal and political gain.
Being a "climate scientist" is a mark of shame, not a proud distinction.
@Scott M
Even if the science were 99.9999% correct, the damage done to the AGW side of the "debate" (such that it's been) is possibly mortally wounded.
Nobody has 99.9999% accuracy in their work, which I am sure you are well aware of. So do you basically state that there is no way to convince you?
By the way I agree with you to the extent that there is no (scientific) "debate" on the topic, since there is no science on the side of the sceptics.
Nobody has 99.9999% accuracy in their work, which I am sure you are well aware of.
It was an exaggeration to make a point, which I'm sure you are well aware of, but still somehow felt it needed pointing out.
So do you basically state that there is no way to convince you?
I have no idea how you would draw that conclusion from the comment I made. I was basically making an observation of state of play.
By the way I agree with you to the extent that there is no (scientific) "debate" on the topic, since there is no science on the side of the sceptics.
So the papers signed by thousands of accredited scientists, researchers, and academics mean nothing? So an argument based on the AGW's own data by non-accredited scientists, people like statisticians like the one that debunked the "hockey stick" have no worth in your view?
Patent clerks should also stay out of science too, I suppose?
Actually Ann you are wrong. Again.
But doubtful that you'll publish a correction.
The study, by Mark Siddall and colleagues, predicted that sea levels would rise "between 7cm and 82cm by the end of the century" according to your link. That is the one that has been withdrawn.
It was ANOTHER, by Vermeer and Rahmstorf, study that "projected a rise of 0.75m to 1.9m by 2100." And that study is still perfectly valid. And the authors of this still very valid study were the ones who pointed out the errors.
"In the Nature Geoscience retraction, in which Siddall and his colleagues explain their errors, Vermeer and Rahmstorf are thanked for "bringing these issues to our attention."
And according to Althouse and the denialists this somehow disproves global warming.
Huh?
Again, it would be nice to see a correction by Ann, but I doubt it.
Meanwhile, in my local newspaper today (front page, above the fold) is an AP article with the headline "Warming to bring stronger storms," subheaded "Not enough proof yet to tell if effect started."
The article claims that "top researchers now agree that the world is likely to get stronger but fewer hurricanes in the future because of global warming."
I wonder if those "top researchers" were using the tainted data from now debunked sources? Garbage in, garbage out...
Crack MC 12:23 PM
That may strike you as too simple but, as I've mentioned before, it's the desire to be clever where smart folks get hooked up all the time.
Make that "the desire to be clever & to appear clever to others".
Denis Dutton in response to why some who listen or read educated gobbledygook are afraid to say that the speaker/writer has no clothes on:
"To ask what this means is to miss the point. This sentence beats readers into submission and instructs them that they are in the presence of a great and deep mind. Actual communication has nothing to do with it."
The study that predicted a slight rise in sea levels has now been withdrawn.
The study that predicts a much larger sea level rise still stands
Therefore, according to the wingnuts, there is zero threat of rising sea levels.
Man - all of you are a bunch of morons.
I have no idea how you would draw that conclusion from the comment I made. I was basically making an observation of state of play. I get your point, which is (sadly) valid, thank you for clarification.
So the papers signed by thousands of accredited scientists, researchers, and academics mean nothing? As far as I remember, these are petitions signed by many people with scientific degrees but few, if any climate scientists. I would not call this scientific work.
...people like statisticians like the one that debunked the "hockey stick" have no worth in your view?
These works have a lot of worth in my view. In this case it lead to more thorough testing of the hockey stick hypothesis, which is a good point indeed. But in the same way it lead to the debunking of the debunking of the hockey stick; something sceptics seem to like to omit.
Man - all of you are a bunch of morons.
If that's true, that makes you an elitist. You don't care if someone comes around to your point of view and never have. You seem to only like trying to one-up people online and lob insults.
Doesn't it strike you as odd that not one major finding or conclusion had been withdrawn prior to the CRU data being leaked and since that happened, there's been almost weekly revelations.
Scott M
A MnMark shows by his spot-on example, 99.9999% of the time it's difficult to argue with people who claim that the person who disbelieves a theory has to prove his disbelief. Actually, 100% of the time, the person who posits a theory has the burden of proof, & perhaps 99.9999% of the time skeptics can't disprove, say, a Martian invasion.
And that .0001% of the time when one can disprove a theory, the proponents will not accept such disproof. Like now.
“Follow the money” is a good theory which I can't say works even 99.9999% of the time, but which really works most of the time & worked here & is a good way to bet.
dtl is a negative bellwhether; if he calls you a moron, your chance of being correct approaches 100%.
If he agrees, you are probably a moron.
> Any estimate of anything is improved by including baseball scores in the data..
Not if Duke is involved.
Zach
> Scoff all you like, but it takes integrity to withdraw a paper in a leading journal just because you found an error.
If I believed this was at all voluntary and spontaneous I would agree.
Downtown
> And according to Althouse and the denialists this somehow disproves global warming.
> Huh?
See, let’s start with that term “denialists.” You act as though skepticism is a bad thing. Because of course this is faith to the global warmists, not science.
As for whether it disproves of it, it is becoming exceedingly clear that this entire exercise is riddled with errors, so that we can’t be sure any more who is telling the truth. Its like imagine you hear a boy cry wolf… and you come running… and there is nothing there. And then a different boy cries wolf… and you come running… and against there is nothing there. Imagine that being repeated with 100 different boys. By the 101st boy, are you still going to keep running. Or are you going to say, “f--- it, I am not bothering anymore?”
All of my life scientists have told me that I was going to die due to one environmental calamity or another. First it was global cooling, then acid rain, holes in the ozone layer, global warming and when it turned out that there wasn’t always very much warming or cooling, “climate change.” What a load of ignorant crud; of course the environment is changing. It is always changing. And it always has been changing, since before there were even creatures on dry land. Maybe you still come running like a trained dog when they whistle, but I’ve stopped letting them control me.
Before we ruin our economy, shouldn’t we have better proof than scientists who routinely “hide the decline?”
The other day Ann compared this to the WMD issue. I see another comparison. Is it any coincidence that Al Gore claimed that Bush betrayed us, that he played to our fears, that he misled us, just before it is shown that Gore betrayed us, that he played to our fears, that he misled us about the environment. The left is convinced bush is a big liar on iraq, because enough of them know that they are liars on AGW.
DTL...The reason we have Final Judgements in court cases is to spoil the fun of insane folks that want to relitigate again and again after they have lost. The AGW scam has had a great fall and is res judicata in the public's mind. No amount regurgitated fake science can put Fat Al Gore's schemes back together again. The CO2 is a harmless and beneficial gas. It does not trap heat in the earth's atmosphere. You are now sounding like a Truther about 9/11 by your continuing to croak the empty alarmist talking pointa.
I may have posted something like this before. If it is too redundant, I apologize. A scientific hypothesis has to be falsifiable. That means that some possible set of data can prove the hypothesis false. Anthropogenic Warming or climate change (AGW) is not a scientific hypothesis because any possible outcome is attributable to it. If it is hot it’s because of AGW. If it’s cold, it’s because of AGW. If there is a drought, it’s because of AGW. If there is a flood, it’s because of AGW. If the seas rise, it is AGW. If they stay the same, it’s not important enough to notice. If there is no objective data that can prove it wrong, it’s not science.
Also, if other scientists cannot see your data and use it to reproduce your results, it is not science.
There is a satirical scientific journal called The Journal of Irreproducible Results. Man made Climate Change belongs in that journal. Perhaps some of AGW’s adherents did not know the phrase ‘Irreproducible Results’ was satirical.
Here's something the AGW cultists never address...
We know that the "hockey stick graph" is a hoax, and we know that the Himalayan glacier claims were entirely fictitious, and we know that Mann and Jones, etc. lied and hid data. If global warming is real, why all the fraud?
There is no answer except that all of the millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours devoted to finding AGW came up empty.
It's been established that they (scientists, pols, UN, etc.)will lie to get whatever result they want, no matter what the science says. And now we're supposed to trust their "new" reports and predictions? Give me a break.
But in the same way it lead to the debunking of the debunking of the hockey stick; something sceptics seem to like to omit.
Someone will have to help me here because I wasn't aware of a debunking of the debunking of the hockey stick. My understanding was that the original criticisms were born out after it was admitted that they had not included relevant data like the Medieval Warm Period. Removing that data led to the "blade" of the stick.
Exactly right, Scott. The hockey stick is/was completely made up. WUWT and a bunch of other sites have dissected it a lot better than I can, but there is no mistaking the fraud. You can see the actual "re-jiggering" that the scientists had to do to force the result. Scientific malpractice in it's purest form.
@From Inwood
“Follow the money” is a good theory which I can't say works even 99.9999% of the time, but which really works most of the time & worked here & is a good way to bet.
Have you applied this theory to both sides of the debate? I personally think that there is much more money at risk on the sceptics side. Compare some research grants to profits of energy providers. The research grants come out as peanuts. By the way, I think that most climate scientists could make a lot more money in the private industry, given their skills in mathematics and data analysis; so they really don't have to fear for their existence.
Another point: Don't you think the post should be corrected (sea level rises) - just for the sake of integrity?
", given their skills in mathematics and data analysis;"
Ummmm, we're looking at their "skills" right now. I wouldn't hire any one of them to run a lemonade stand.
Have you applied this theory to both sides of the debate?
So Exxon might sponsor studies and pay for voices that are beneficial to Exxon? Interesting. Never seen this question uttered on this blog.
@Lincolntf
Ummmm, we're looking at their "skills" right now. I wouldn't hire any one of them to run a lemonade stand.
Good luck if you require high mathematical skills to run a lemonade stand; sounds like a business plan headed for success. Honestly, do you think climate scientists are a bunch of morons? Isn't that elitist?
Exactly right, Scott. The hockey stick is/was completely made up. WUWT and a bunch of other sites have dissected it a lot better than I can, but there is no mistaking the fraud. You can see the actual "re-jiggering" that the scientists had to do to force the result. Scientific malpractice in it's purest form.
I am not so sure that it was originally made up. Rather, I think that there is a possibility that it was accidental originally, but that Mann, et al. became so wedded to it, that they pushed it well past the time when they should have known (and probably did know) that it was a statistical fluke.
BTW - one of the ways that you can tell that a web site, etc. is fraudulent when it comes to the latest in AGW science is if it shows this Hockey Stick. Someone here recently pointed at an explanation of AGW that included it.
Funny takedown of Ann's incompetent article readin'...courtesy of Thers:
http://whiskeyfire.typepad.com/whiskey_fire/2010/02/now-thats-a-hit-1.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+WhiskeyFire+(Whiskey+Fire)
I prefer the richly-deserved ad hominum put-downs, but the post concludes w a bit of substance that's nice too, "For the important context about why the retraction of the article matters see Brad Johnson, who reminds us that 'Over the past twenty years, actual sea level rise has been at the top of estimated limits since the first IPCC report in 1990.'"
I personally think that there is much more money at risk on the sceptics side.
Mmmmmhmmmmm. Yes and Al Gore's little arrangement with Kleiner Perkins has a few trillion reasons why a carbon trading scheme needs to be passed to 'save the planet'.
Honestly, do you think climate scientists are a bunch of morons?
I don't think you can judge anyone in a group by the whole of the group. I worked on campus when I was going to school, so I got to know quite a few tenured types, both scientist and not. As a rule, they all avoided holding down a "real job" whenever they could. There were a handful that had never, ever been outside the university system since entering decades before as a college freshman.
Being good at statical analysis and math doesn't mean you can hold down a 9-5 (or whatever) job. It certainly doesn't make you wise. It makes you good at statistical analysis and math and that's it.
PS67 said...
High mathematical skills shouldn't be required to determine that Earth's weather patterns fluctuate, and have done so for billions of years.
Guess it doesn't matter because all the academic degrees in the world weren't enough to save these fraudsters from exposure.
Thought that popped into my head recently: How long before Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" is in the same category as "Reefer Madness"?
Or is it already?
Someone will have to help me here because I wasn't aware of a debunking of the debunking of the hockey stick. My understanding was that the original criticisms were born out after it was admitted that they had not included relevant data like the Medieval Warm Period. Removing that data led to the "blade" of the stick.
They are somewhat related, but distinct. My memory is that Mann from Penn. was behind the Hockey Stick, while Jones, et al. were more involved with the MWP.
Actually, the MWP is more closely tied to the proxy tree ring data and the infamous "trick". The problem is that they eliminated the MWP using proxy tree ring data, but then threw out proxy tree ring data since 1980 (or 1960 in one case) because they didn't show as much warming as they would have liked. So, instead, they substituted the heavily massaged 1980 to present temperature data for the proxy tree ring data (and, at times, the end of Mann's Hockey Stick). The problem with that is that if the models and the proxy tree ring data diverge for the last 30 or so years, then the assumptions of linearity of temperature with CO2 levels are suspect for earlier times too (i.e. the MWP). Or, to phrase it maybe a bit differently, they can't eliminate the MWP using the tree ring proxy data, and then ignore the same sort of record over the last 30 years.
Of course, there are other questions about proxy tree ring data too, besides the linearity problem mentioned above. For one thing, the trees from which the rings were evaluated were heavily, heavily cherry picked. And the Russians are now claiming that the cherry picking was pretty blatant. They have picked their own trees, and come up with much different results.
Being good at statical analysis and math doesn't mean you can hold down a 9-5 (or whatever) job. It certainly doesn't make you wise.
It makes you good at statistical analysis and math and that's it.
Yes, and that's what is needed in certain positions in the private sector. I know some people that do statistical analysis for a living - and these are much less qualified than most of the climate scientists.
Concerning the 9-5 job: In my experience, research at the university is often rather 10-5+X, with X being significantly larger than 1...
Honestly, do you think climate scientists are a bunch of morons?
No. I think that the early researchers were probably fairly unbiased. But then, they started to get certain results, and those results resulted in positive approval from the environmental community, money started to flow in, and then a lot of money and power did, and scientific ethics were stretched as a result. And the resulting "science" was compromised. I put the "science" in quotes because part of what was done by those on the inside was to corrupt the peer review process, integral to science as we know it.
My thoughts are that the Constitution was required to replace the Articles of confederation for the reason that every state was running Pay Me To Trade when crossing the borders among the then sovreign republics/states. That was destroying America's prosperity worse than the King's rule had done to them.Now 223 years later the same Pay Me to Trade in Energy comes along DESIGNED to destroy the USA's prosperity, and all the progressives can say is "how much loot do we get". Romae redux.
No. I think that the early researchers were probably fairly unbiased. But then, they started to get certain results, and those results resulted in positive approval from the environmental community, money started to flow in, and then a lot of money and power did, and scientific ethics were stretched as a result. And the resulting "science" was compromised. I put the "science" in quotes because part of what was done by those on the inside was to corrupt the peer review process, integral to science as we know it.
Ok, one might believe this theory, but look at the other side: ..they started to get certain results, and those results resulted in negative approval from he carbon industry. These fellows first tried to debunk the results scientifically, but got no valid results. So they resorted to cherry-pick data, small technical or rhetorical errors made by the scientists and blew them out of proportion. Scientific ethics were never a concern...
For one thing, the trees from which the rings were evaluated were heavily, heavily cherry picked.
Did they pick heavy cherry trees?
Can anyone give a rational explanation for why Mann, Jones, etc. would violate every norm of science, circumvent legitimate peer-review and even break the law to hide data that proved them RIGHT?
Good luck if you require high mathematical skills to run a lemonade stand; sounds like a business plan headed for success
You need mathematical skills to run ANY business.
How else are you going to know how many lemons to purchase, factor in the cost of sugar and advertising, cost of cups, ice etc and calculate the cost of your product and then factor in the profit per glass?
You need to use algebra and time value of money calculations.
Good luck to you if you think you can just run a lemonade stand on a wish and a prayer
**reposted to correct terrible spelling errors :-(
I am continually amazed at the amount of math, tax, and finance knowledge needed to run a a business, let alone to manage even a small division of one.
The data are opaque, estimated, of dubious accuracy, and often incomplete, and yet the CEOs and CFOs have to act on this information.
I don't know how they can sleep sometimes, when their decisions can end up losing jobs for hundreds or thousands.
It ain't easy, is all I'm saying. And I am grateful and puzzled there are people who want to do this for businesses large and small.
How else are you going to know how many lemons to purchase, factor in the cost of sugar and advertising, cost of cups, ice etc and calculate the cost of your product and then factor in the profit per glass?How else are you going to know how many lemons to purchase, factor in the cost of sugar and advertising, cost of cups, ice etc and calculate the cost of your product and then factor in the profit per glass?
I totally agree with you that these skills are needed to run a business, but I would consider that rather calculational skills. But what I was talking about was real, hard working mathematics, which is not required for the lemon stand. There, other qualities are required.
Curious fact: scientists make their reputation by corroborating components of the existing science or by proposing new means or causes of the phenomena under observation. The system places a huge premium on new ideas and bold refutations of existing wisdom.
This is the ideal situation for climate change skeptics. The situation is ripe for their theories and ideas to be validated in a hundred ways. If it is false, AGW science should evaporate and collapse (for real, not in your twitchy alternate Althousian universe). A scientist who offered good proof that AGW theories were wrong would make a huge splash, get lots of attention, lots of grant money--basically make his career. Journals want those articles--circulation, attention, ditto. Smoking gun disproof of AGW would be gold, and should be everywhere.
Denialists shouldn't have to pore over the e-mails and poke through the footnotes in studies. They should not have to blow retractions out of proportion or discover a Bermuda Triangle or a Piltdown Man in a casual stretch of undergraduate math. They shouldn't have to have whackheads like Monckton as their fronts. They should not have to argue by starting a chant of Hockey Stick Wrong while grownups point out that, no, Hockey stick right. They should not have to attack smart and effective scientists like Mann with poison-pen complaints, then repeat them even after they've been debunked with extreme prejudice.
No, if AGW is wrong and Fat Al is wrong and the IPCC is a scam and so on, good scientific refutation should be easy, simple, quick, clean, and very, very profitable. If you have won, why do you keep declaring victory? Why do you have to do PR? Why march around shouting over people?
Science takes patience and a little brains--that's it. It should be dead easy to destroy AGW with its own medicine. But you can't.
where's that science? nowhere. It does not exist. The demand for it is high; the incentive to produce it is enormous...but nothing doing. Instead we have a theory of conspiracy that suggests that a huge number of hungry scientists are kept in check by mysterious Darth Vaders, fear for piddling grants, weird international conspiracies, and other murky motives; that peer review is corrupt and can silence thousands of young people who want to make a name for themselves; that vast numbers of scientists are complicit in a campaign to silence critics and themselves for no profit and to no purpose. That people would spend decades developing academic credentials and slogging through research to get tenure, then not use the tenure protections to publish the smoking gun truth. That raggedy tabs in Great Britain and yapping neophytes on Althouse have magical scientific insight while real scientists are dupes and fools and crooks. That quote-mined stolen e-mails are the passage to Narnia. That we should disregard the coincidence that the giddy triumph of denialism fits my adolescent worldview about Obambi and Fat Al Gore.
Nope. Science win.
ice9
david.motes
Why you think scientists are somehow spared the usual human foibles of greed, jealousy, deceit, corruption, and the search for power over others is unclear.
The behaviors are easy to explain: Scientists are full of shit sometimes because they are merely human.
And it's hard to debunk science that was as much of a bubble as the world credit/lending debacle. Not easy at all.
PS67, "I think that most climate scientists could make a lot more money in the private industry, given their skills in mathematics and data analysis; so they really don't have to fear for their existence. It's clear that skills in math and data analysis is not the strong point of these soi-distant climate scientists.
I'm still waiting to see a citation tree for all the East Anglia papers with their crappy data. Let's add a citation tree for this latest paper.
As a nuke I'm shocked by the lack of documentation and review demonstrated in the leaked East Anglia files. I've done modeling of nuclear power stations. The levels of review and documentation we did make the climate science work look like child's efforts.
For the record I've decades of computer programming and data analysis under my belt, some of it for an environmental monitoring program. Published and reviewed by federal regulators. I don't hold climate scientists in high regard, and resent very much that they have tarnished the reputations of all scientists.
How can an unlawful entry onto a computer server be described as a "leak".
David.motes...There you go again. The AGW has been disproved. CO2 as a culprit in heat retention in the Atmosphere has been disproved. Where have you been? You write like Ichabod Crane who awoke after falling asleep in 2006 during an Al Gore Science Fiction Movie.
@david.motes
For a description of how the hockey stick graph was debunked go to this excellent, readable description in the MIT Technology Review. Yeah, it's that MIT.
It should be dead easy to destroy AGW with its own medicine. But you can't.
Oh, but we can. And we have. Sometimes it's because the IPCC publishes information that can be checked, for instance the notion that the Himalayan glaciers are melting due to AGW. In fact, parts of the glaciers are growing and the parts that are receding have been doing so for centuries. Sometimes it's because the predictions of the AGW model have been shown to be wrong. The actuals do not fit the model, the model is broken, the theory has been falsified.
Why do we keep declaring victory? Maybe because folks like you refuse to accept that AGW is junk science. Almost like you're part of a conspiracy of silence, or something.
"Science takes patience and a little brains--that's it. It should be dead easy to destroy AGW with its own medicine. But you can't."
Look where it has gone. I'll make a totally unfounded claim and expect you to prove it wrong. Sorry, I'm busy with a life. Besides all you need to do is compile the measurements honestly. The truth is there. Either their is unnatural warming or not.
Regardless, that's only a small part of the hurdle AGW proponents face. They then must prove:
1) We can do something about it,
2) We will,
3) That it will work,
4) That it's worth it.
5) There is not a better way.
Get to work.
Unfortunately for you, # 2 is the killer, no matter what the science says.
Rising/falling sea-levels are especially hard to analyze historically as in many parts of the world, such as around the Med/Black seas, historical littoral lines vary between (+)(-) 400-600' due mainly to tectonic shift, NOT rising volumes of water--so it's very hard to establish a base-line from whence to measure.
@doorwalker I glanced at the link, but I'm not doing more than skimming. I challenge you to state in your own words, what in my post represents misreading by me. Don't rely on a website that you think does this. Say it in your own words, using my quotes to prove your point. If you cannot do it, perhaps you owe me an apology.
"I prefer the richly-deserved ad hominum put-downs..."
And I prefer commenters who do something more than LOL at something somebody else said...
... and decent spelling.
Can anyone tell us where Al Gore has been since his Revelations have started to unrvel? Does Al Gore exist or was he just a hologram created by the Democrat Party and the GW propagandists?
Garage,
GFY! I, like the vast majority of real Americans only care about being able to get gas to drive my car where I have to go, keep my own home warm or cool for my personal comfort, be able to afford the things I need and want without hidden AGW taxes, and be able to go to work without fear my company will disappear because of AGW alarmists, propagandists, charlatans, and frauds.
If you want to bow down to the goddess Gaia, be my guest. But do not tell me how to live.
garage mahal said...
It would nice if the coldist alarmists had peer reviewed work we could look at. Guess we'll just have to settle for links to British tabloids.
Do you enjoy being laughed at? Because you are not only the joke, but you keep making them. Needlessly.
Callimachus beautifully fisks Tom Friedman on climate change at Ambiance.
Amba, I only glanced at the fisking, but to say that no one knows why Earth has Ice Ages after 10s of millions of years without them is completely false.
I'm not sure how you are defining a beautiful fisking. I restrict beautiful fisking to factually accurate fisking.
ARS is on now, from Madison! Woo Hoo!
PS 67 Don’t know if that means you’re from NYC, either the PS 67 south of Bronx Park or the one in Bklyn in Ft Greene.
In any event, you want me to take Prof A to the woodshed. I’ve waited for her reply, which she has made. I would add, ‘cause I see it presented once a year on PBS (Army-McCarthy hearings): have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?
And you want to raise a lot of minor things that have been, as lawyers are won to say “asked & answered”, on this Blog. Many times. Good trick, but borrrrrrrrrrrrrrring.
MacBeth Science
Is this a hockey stick which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee!
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? or art thou but
A hockey stick of the mind, a false creation
Proceeding from the heat-oppressèd brain?
Translation from MacBeth Science: OK, the process was poor, the data is hasty-pudding, the adjustments are ad hoc, the models don’t quite work in a scientific sense, & it was basically humbug by credentialed fakers justifying their grants & bribes from industry, but other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, we’re still 100% sure of the results. And all the fraud, “lost” data, hiding the decline, trying to put a hockey stick up our a**es, & punishment of dissenters doesn’t prove that there’s no AGW, OOPS Climate Change. And there’s some truth in the web of lies, so stop calling it a pack of lies & apologize Prof A, gurgle, gurgle.
Many of us skeptics were really p***ed when we were dismissed as "deniers" or (worse?) "fundamentalists" by our friends & co-workers who wrapped themselves in the mantle of Phil Jones & his “corpse” of cranks with their “splendid samples of sham science with spurious specificity”, a/k/a, "settled science".
As someone has noted: “It’s the non-skeptics who look bad. It’s not science to be a true believer who wants to ignore new evidence. It’s not science to support a man who has the job of being a scientist but doesn’t adhere to the methods of science.”
I’ve taken issue with the fact that many on the Left took the AGW theory to mean that there was an urgent need to repeal the Industrial Revolution & that anyone who objected should be marginalized.
One commenter, meiosis-impaired, hastened to admonish me by pointing out that he was only saying that our lifestyles would have to be diminished somewhat. Or something like that.
Prof A has no reason to apologize to these AGW/ back-to-the-stone-age nut jobs & you guys who are still defending them are in the category of Birthers & Truthers.
And, you argue against the follow the money theory when there's obviously just too much invested in keeping the Global Cooling/Warming/Climate Change scam going to let reality get in the way. This AGW scam affected major U.S. corporations, none of whom wanted to appear to be opposed to it & QED, un-PC & retrograde. Recently (don’t make me Google it), a group of corporations announced they were dropping out of something called the Climate Action Partnership, which advocated energy-rationing (death panels!). Good show!
Peter V Bella
I, fearlessly, predict, based on my computer models on the scientific study of human nature & my writings on the meaning of meaning, that Al Gore, Tom Friedman, & assorted AGW hypocritical fakers will now go on Dancing With The Stars. And that some folks will crash planes into the More Stately Mansions of these worthies.
And, you can't disprove me. So there.
Well this is interesting:
INTERVIEW: DR. NILS-AXEL MÖRNER -- Sea-level Expert: It’s Not Rising!
Let me quote a good long chunk:
Question: What is the real state of the sea-level?
You have to look at that in a lot of different ways. That is
what I have done in a lot of different papers, so we can
confine ourselves to the short story here. One way is to look at
the global picture, to try to find the essence of what is going
on. And then we can see that the sea level was indeed rising,
from, let us say, 1850 to 1930-1940. And that rise had a rate
in the order of 1 millimeter per year; 1.1 is the exact figure.
Not more. And we can check that, because Holland is a
subsiding area; it has been subsiding for many millions of
years; and Sweden, after the last Ice Age, was uplifted. So if
you balance those, there is only one solution, and it will be
this figure....
There’s another way of checking it, because if the radius of
the Earth increases as a result of sea level rise, then
immediately the Earth’s rate of rotation would slow down. That
is a physical law, right? You have it in figure-skating: when
skaters rotate very fast, the arms are close to the body; and then
when they increase the radius, by putting out their arms, they
stop by themselves. So you can look at the rotation and you see
the same thing: Yes, it might be 1.1 mm per year, but absolutely
not more. It could be less, because there could be other factors affecting the Earth, but it certainly could not be more.
Absolutely not! Again, it’s a matter of physics.
So, we have this 1 mm per year up to 1930, by observation,
and we have it by rotation recording. So we go with those two.
They go up and down, but there’s no trend in it; it was up until
1930, and then down again. There’s no trend, absolutely no
trend.
Another way of looking at what is going on is the tide gauge.
Tide gauging is very complicated, because it gives different
answers for wherever you are in the world. We have to rely on
geology when we interpret it. So, for example, those people in
the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change], choose Hong Kong, which has six tide gauges, and they choose the record of one, which gives a 2.3 mm per year rise
of sea level. Every geologist knows that that is a subsiding area.
It’s the compaction of sediment; it is the only record which you
should not use.
You mean the IPCC went for the most dramatic number in ignorance of science? I'm shocked!
@Inwood, clever, but just send them to the link in my 4:39 post.
Basically, McIntyre and McKitrick obtained Mann's program, and discovered that they could use random perturbations to trend-free data and Mann's program still produced a hockey stick.
To quote from the article: "Suddenly the hockey stick, the poster-child of the global warming community, turns out to be an artifact of poor mathematics."
How many times does it have to be stated before members of the AGW conspiracy accept that they're wrong, wrong, WRONG?
The hockey stick is wrong -- at best bad mathematics, at worst deliberately misleading.
The CO2-based model of global warming is wrong. Even in a global warming scenario there will be warmer years and colder years, but it turns out that, according to the strongest proponent of the model, for the past fifteen years there has been "no statistically significant global warming." If AGW was correct, then there should be a statistically significant warming trend and it simply isn't there -- all you can find is one, clearly anomalous year, 1998, but ignore that outlier (which a good mathematician would do) and the predicted trend isn't there.
Glaciers are shrinking? In some places, yes, and in other places they are growing.
The oceans are rising? Only by single digit centimeters, at most.
It's all bogus.
My own belief is that many of the legitimate scientists who bought into AGW did so, not because they thought that the science was impeccable -- at least some of them should have known better -- but because they (rightly!) understood that the world cannot go on burning oil forever, that we had to get serious about renewable energy because if we wait until the last drop of oil has been pumped out of the ground (or squeezed out of Nevada's oil shale and Canada's tar sands) then it will be too late. But enter the politicians and charlatans (the former a subclass of the latter) and suddenly we have schemes to arrange carbon credits -- credits that research has demonstrated do nothing to alleviate CO2 -- and to further impoverish Appalachia to enrich Wall Street traders, not to mention incandescently blue states like New York and California.
So let's take a deep breath. Let's by all means invest in research into solar power and wind power and absolutely build more nuclear power plants using technology from the 21st century instead of the 1960's technology used in Three Mile Island. But if any of you limousine liberals were planning to sell your beach front retirement home for fear of rising oceans, I'm perfectly prepared to take it off your hands for pennies on the dollar.
You have to read the whole thing. One more piece, then I'll quit.
Here's another section that cuts to the heart of the IPCC's junk science:
Now back to satellite altimetry, which shows the water, not
just the coasts, but in the whole of the ocean, as measured by
satellite. From 1992 to 2002, [the graph of the sea level] was a
straight line, variability along a straight line, but absolutely no
trend whatsoever. We could see spikes: a very rapid rise, but
then in half a year, they fall back again. But absolutely no
trend, and to have a sea-level rise, you need a trend.
Then, in 2003, the same data set, which in their [IPCC’s]
publications, in their website, was a straight line—suddenly it
changed, and showed a very strong line of uplift, 2.3 mm per
year, the same as from the tide gauge. And that didn’t look so
nice. It looked as though they had recorded something, but
they hadn’t recorded anything. It was the original data which
they suddenly twisted up, because they entered a “correction
factor,” which they took from the tide gauge.
So it was not a measured thing, but a figure introduced from
outside. I accused them of this at the Academy of Sciences
meeting in Moscow—I said you have introduced factors from
outside; it’s not a measurement. It looks like it is measured from
the satellite, but you don’t say what really happened. And they
answered, that we had to do it, because otherwise we would
not have gotten any trend!
That is terrible! As a matter of fact, it is a falsification of the
data set. Why? Because they know the answer. And there you
come to the point: They “know” the answer; the rest of us, we
are searching for the answer. Because we are field geologists;
they are computer scientists. So all this talk that sea level is
rising, this stems from the computer modelling, not from
observations. The observations don’t find it!
Again, here's the link:
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles%202007/MornerInterview.pdf
MadisonMan --
"Amba, I only glanced at the fisking, but to say that no one knows why Earth has Ice Ages after 10s of millions of years without them is completely false."
And you display your ignorance by the 10s of millions.
20K, dipshit.
Ann has still not corrected her post.
We can now assume that she is a liar, not just mistaken.
Ann has still not corrected her post.
After 131 comments. Talk about junk science.
If it is actually a valid theory, they won't mind taking the time to organize the data, have the code examined and rewritten as necessary, by programmers working with scientists rather than by scientists trying to be programmers. Then let everyone see what they have found and the logic (i.e. code) that got them to that point. If, in fact, it is a valid theory. On the other hand, if the Global Warming crowd now suspects that it is not a valid theory, they will not make the effort to do this.
amba said...
Callimachus beautifully fisks Tom Friedman on climate change at Ambiance.
Freidman, et al. are the reason why the zealots on the left because of AGW are getting their due. They've lied their way into public policy as a redistributionist economic model on a global scale with the cast of characters like the UN being their cheer-leading squad. Is global warming/climate change real? Who gives two shits. It's called weather and we can no longer control it than we can tell the sun to stop shining. Does this sentiment make me anti-science or anti-intellectual? No, because I believe in both science and being intellectual by using that intellectualism honestly. These guys see a way to control people, their money, line their own pockets, and get to be on camera or in the movies weeping for some poor island nation that thinks sea levels rising is devouring their land, when if they've ever seen a storm front on a beach head literally sweep away millions of cubic yards of sand away back into the ocean in a matter of days, you would wonder what they are going on about.
The veneer of this sham is off for everyone to see and this movement is dead as a doornail. The fact that governments still sanction billions of dollars for funding and research into ideas and theories that will amount to nothing is just symptomatic of the patronage of government research welfare. No one can make a buck doing honest research anymore can they?
I challenge you to state in your own words, what in my post represents misreading by me.
Oh, what the hell, for old time's sake.
Althouse, you imbecile, you misquote the article.
You say: "Amusingly, the authors aren't disclosing whether they overestimated or underestimated the rise of seas. They'd said 0.75 to 1.9 meters by 2100."
But they didn't! Second para of the article: "The study, published in 2009 in Nature Geoscience, one of the top journals in its field, confirmed the conclusions of the 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It used data over the last 22,000 years to predict that sea level would rise by between 7cm and 82cm by the end of the century." My emphasis.
There's no ambiguity here -- you're just wrong. As usual.
You still owe an apology to GWPDA especially for slandering her. Ready to grow up yet?
*blink* *blink* *blink*
So predictable.
1) Ann finds soothing link - liebruls so stupid!!!!11!!!! *hee* *hee* *hee*
3)Mad rush to link it!
4)Frist!
5)Waits to see if Glenn R "heh indeeds" it.
6)Dozens of approving comments ensue.
7) Refresh Instapundit 3000 times. Where's my "heh indeed". Is my google alert broken?
8)A couple of critical comments.
9)A few more critical comments.
10)Wait a second! The soothing link, it is not so soothing any more!
10) MAN BATTLESTATIONS
11) FIRE "YOUR READING COMPREHENSION IS TEH SUXOR TORPEDO"
12) FIRE "YOU OWE ME AN APOLOGY MISSILE"
Heh, indeed.
*blink* *blink* *blink*
Big Mike
Of course I'm clever! And of course I read your 2:39.
But its for a deep intellectual reason! You can’t reach these guys on any intellectual level.
I’m laughing at these self-inflated know nothings who just want to control our lives because They Know Better. What, they were those wonderful folks who brought us Global Cooling in the ‘70s? Nevermind. What, they scoffed at me & called me a ‘denier” as if I was disputing some basic principle of HS physics. I gotta get over that. It was nothing personal; it was all business; they want to control me! OK.
It's not just mere cleverness or a superficial reaction to a really deep scientific scam, or just about the Hockey Stick up our a**es. It's like one of those Sci Fi movies. Good guy kills the blob & some of the ooze forms a new blob.
You kill the hockey stick, & scuttle the sham science & they still say the "science is settled", the consensus stands, & you made a minor mistake (nynna, nynna, nynna) in your debunking or a misattribution & so AGW, OOPS, Climate Change, is still not disproven & you must disprove it or it's back to the Pre-Industrial Revolution status & we control your life & your toilet habits. What, China & India are ignoring us & the Europeans have never met their Kyoto goals? Nevermind.
You beat them with your Hockey stick explanation linked to MIT, MIT, for goodness sake, & they’re still saying, shamelessly, “Repent, Althouse”.
You can’t reason with these Earther nutters anymore than you can with Birthers or Truthers.
Finally I repeat some more of my “cleverness”
Scientists of every rank,
For shame, all in the tank.
Their claim of manmade CO2, then
Was really manmade C9H9N.
Big Mike
Shorter answer:
These Earthers are desperate & all emotion & grasping at straws.
They are former AGW students.
Ps67
> So they resorted to cherry-pick data, small technical or rhetorical errors made by the scientists and blew them out of proportion.
They are not small, technical errors. Time and again the warm-ongers’ models have predicted that certain things would happen and they didn’t. not to mention stuff that makes them just look sloppy, like not knowing how much of the netherlands is below sea level. I mean that is not even prediction, that is just observation and they can’t get that right, either.
And then you add the hide the decline email and the harryreadme.txt file, and you realize that this is all lies.
And more damning that just the fact that some scientists engaged in bull was that no one else called them on it—oh, except for “skeptics” that were claimed to be just tools of big business. except they were right and the so-called respectable scientists were wrong.
If you are going to take away my freedom or f--- up the economy, the burden of proof is on you.
Lincoln
> Can anyone give a rational explanation for why Mann, Jones, etc. would violate every norm of science, circumvent legitimate peer-review and even break the law to hide data that proved them RIGHT?
Because the data didn’t prove them right?
David
> The system places a huge premium on new ideas and bold refutations of existing wisdom.
Um, not as far as I can tell. That seems more like the ideal than the reality shown throughout this scandal.
> A scientist who offered good proof that AGW theories were wrong would make a huge splash, get lots of attention, lots of grant money--basically make his career.
Notice the not-so-subtle shift of the burden of proof. Its up to us to show that AGW is fake, not the burden of its proponents to prove it is real. Of course the only way to truly and completely do that is to explain the whole of why our weather is a certain way, and why our climate changes as it does. As any student of chaos theory knows, it is not only unknowable with our present capabilities, it might very well be impossible to know. So David would take the uncertainty here and use it as a shield for AGW.
Orrrrr, you could say that before you take away my freedom and f--- up my economy, you better have some good proof, bub, which isn’t there yet.
> Journals want those articles--circulation, attention, ditto.
And if they print it, they will be blackballed. I mean there is that.
> Denialists shouldn't have to pore over the e-mails and poke through the footnotes in studies.
How dare you check their work!
> They should not have to argue by starting a chant of Hockey Stick Wrong while grownups point out that, no, Hockey stick right.
Actually, the whole climategate thing proved the Hockey Stick was wrong. But don’t let the facts impede your logic.
> They should not have to attack smart and effective scientists like Mann
I just figured you out. You are a parody of a clueless lefty. I mean you couldn’t actually be this clueless.
> No, if AGW is wrong and Fat Al is wrong and the IPCC is a scam and so on, good scientific refutation should be easy, simple, quick, clean, and very, very profitable.
And the refutation has been provided repeatedly. Hell about a month ago, about 3 1/2 feet of refutation fell on my town.
And on and on you go, clearly failing to understand what science is about.
Here try this. Hey, there is a bunch of scientists who claim that there is a creature in the wild called manbearpig. Sure, they haven’t shown us the body, or any clear photos of it, but now prove he doesn’t exist. Go on. Show me smoking gun evidence that he doesn’t exist. Oh? You can’t? Then I guess Manbearpig must exist, right?
> Science takes patience and a little brains
These climategate scientists apparently had neither.
Christy
> resent very much that they have tarnished the reputations of all scientists.
I don’t hold their behavior against all scientists. Just the ones making massive, hard to verify claims, holding their attitudes beyond debate, and awash in money as a result.
Garage
> How can an unlawful entry onto a computer server be described as a "leak".
We actually don’t know how the data came out. Might be hacking, might be a whistleblower. And personally I don’t care.
In a court of criminal law, evidence obtained by certain kinds of illegality might be excluded. But that doesn’t apply in the court of public opinion or often even in civil court, so long as there is no question as to the authenticity—which has never seriously been questioned in 3 months of climategate.
@Inwood, if you're still around, introducing skatole into the discussion is both clever and aromatic. Very well done, sir. Very well done.
Big Mike
Thank you.
AW @8:20
The Earthers here are so desperate that they are sidebarring:
Your attempt at debunking comes from a "leak" & that's somehow unfair. boo, hoo!
Implicit in this cry is "we'd never leak". Right.
Further implicit is "QED, we don't have to discuss the content of these 'leaked' e-mails or even their existence (the MSM agrees here) so there".
And you nailed this hypocrisy when you pointed out:
We actually don’t know how the data came out. Might be hacking, might be a whistleblower... But that doesn’t apply in the court of public opinion....
Of course, they'll just answer about the profanum vulgus, who have now been confused when the science was settled.
My thoughts: How many scientists formerly known as certain have to recant, resign, or fail to "re-up" (happening daily before our eyes) before the consensus is declared over & the settled scam science is declared scuttled scam science? IMHO, we've reached that point in the court of public opinion.
@Big Mike
If AGW was correct, then there should be a statistically significant warming trend and it simply isn't there...
Wrong for the period considered. The shorter the period of time considered, the less likely you will find statistical significance for a trend. That's statistics 101. Furthermore, with better logic: If there was a statistically significant warming, AGW would be correct. Necessary vs. sufficient anyone?
...all you can find is one, clearly anomalous year, 1998, but ignore that outlier (which a good mathematician would do) and the predicted trend isn't there.
Wrong again, and badly. What Jones referred to was the period 1995 to present, and he stated that the trend was close to being statistically significant. Yes, he included 1998, an exceptionally warm year. But what would happen if he ignored it? The significance level for warming would rise, since 1998 is closer to the beginning of the time series than to the end! Again, statistics 101.
@Inwood
I'm not from NYC, although I like it.
What, they were those wonderful folks who brought us Global Cooling in the ‘70s? Nevermind. What, they scoffed at me & called me a ‘denier”...
Who was them in the seventies? Who are they now? Michael Mann was born in 1965.. So it seems they were different from them? Just asking.
...they’re still saying, shamelessly, “Repent, Althouse”.
It's not shamelessly, it's just funny, because Ann just got the facts wrong in a blog post denouncing people that got their facts wrong and admitted it. Should the scientists follow her example? I hope they won't, because that would undermine the scientific process.
@Big Mike
If AGW was correct, then there should be a statistically significant warming trend and it simply isn't there...
Wrong for the period considered. The shorter the period of time considered, the less likely you will find statistical significance for a trend. That's statistics 101. Furthermore, with better logic: If there was a statistically significant warming, AGW would be correct. Necessary vs. sufficient anyone?
...all you can find is one, clearly anomalous year, 1998, but ignore that outlier (which a good mathematician would do) and the predicted trend isn't there.
Wrong again, and badly. What Jones referred to was the period 1995 to present, and he stated that the trend was close to being statistically significant. Yes, he included 1998, an exceptionally warm year. But what would happen if he ignored it? The significance level for warming would rise, since 1998 is closer to the beginning of the time series than to the end! Again, statistics 101.
@Inwood
I'm not from NYC, although I like it.
What, they were those wonderful folks who brought us Global Cooling in the ‘70s? Nevermind. What, they scoffed at me & called me a ‘denier”...
Who was them in the seventies? Who are they now? Michael Mann was born in 1965.. So it seems they were different from them? Just asking.
...they’re still saying, shamelessly, “Repent, Althouse”.
It's not shamelessly, it's just funny, because Ann just got the facts wrong in a blog post denouncing people that got their facts wrong and admitted it. Should the scientists follow her example? I hope they won't, because that would undermine the scientific process.
@ps67, saying things twice doesn't make them any more true.
Given the measurement precision available today, fifteen years -- a decade and a half -- is plenty long enough to see a statistically significant trend, if one exists.
As regards your second point, it's you who are wrong again, and badly. Let's think about this for a second. Suppose we are looking for a trend -- let's pick women's skirt length so as to separate this discussion from climate, which you seem to be emotionally invested in. Let's suppose our hypothesis is that women's skirt lengths are, on average, getting longer. We choose to include a year when every woman, no matter how serious her problem with varicose veins, wore her skirts at mid-thigh. Then, after analyzing the data we conclude that there is no statistically significant trend. Point number one, our hypothesis is false. Not just "unproved" but outright false. Secondly, if we threw out the outlier, then isn't it fair to conclude that the contrary hypothesis, that skirt lengths are getting shorter, may very well be true?
BTW, please don't try to lecture me on probability theory or statistics until you can explain Mahalanobis distance in plain English and without resorting to any mathematical notion (i.e., you have to understand it and not merely copy a formula from a web site or a book).
@Big Mike
...saying things twice doesn't make them any more true. Agreed.
...let's pick women's skirt length so as to separate this discussion from climate... Nice example, but let's combine both: Assume we have global cooling, which might perfectly fit to our hypothesis that skirts are getting longer over time. Assume further that, in a certain year, a female superstar, role model for many girls, wears extremely short skirts. In that year (or the next), the average skirt length will be significantly shorter than the overall trend would predict. This outlier could destroy the significance of our trend (if it's late in the time series) or reinforce it, depending on it's position in the time series. If the time series is long enough, the position of the outlier would matter less than in a shorter span; but that's my point again.
@ps67, you are reminding me of the annoying little pre-meds who kept fighting for points long after it was clear that they flat didn't get it and I had, if anything, given them too many points on their homework assignment.
Yo aren't a medical doctor are you? Meaning one of the dippy little pre-meds, only a couple years older and still very full of himself?
[sighs deeply]
For the last time (because I'm not coming back to this thread). It may seem counterintuitive, but where in the sequence the anomalous data falls does not impact whether or not there is a statistically significant trend. To a decent first approximation, when we say a hypothesis is confirmed at the 95% confidence level we are saying that the odds we would see the observed data, given the contrary hypothesis, is 5% or less. (This is missing some statistical nuances, but it is more correct than not.) So when the climate scientists say there is no statistically significant warming, they are saying that the probability they would see the observed data given the hypothesis that there is no warming trend is too large to be confident of saying the opposite. And that will be true whether the anomalous data point comes early or comes late in the sequence.
Lots of things in probability theory and statistics are counterintuitive. That's why people who understand these topics get exasperated when we see them misused.
And you still don't know what the Mahalanobis distance is, do you?
PS67
Keep sidebarring.
What, they were those wonderful folks who brought us Global Cooling in the ‘70s? Nevermind. What, they scoffed at me & called me a ‘denier”...
Who was them in the seventies? Who are they now? Michael Mann was born in 1965.. So it seems they were different from them? Just asking.
Good try. You know well what I mean. You are unaware of the Newsweek cover story on how we were gonna freeze to death if we didn’t follow their advice?
BTW, some of the Congressmen & Senators who are there now were there then!
And in another 40 years “their” philosophical descendants will be trying to run the lives of others.
[saying] “Repent, Althouse” is not [done] shamelessly, it's just funny, because Ann just got the facts wrong in a blog post denouncing people that got their facts wrong and admitted it.
Asked & answered.
The scuttled sham, spurious, science was materially deficient & you want to sidebar on what you see as Prof A’s minor mistake when she pointed out the fundamentally flawed figures used to make a material point? Get real.
How about avoiding the issue of the scientists's flaws because I said that Algore was wrong in predicting that Manhattan Island would be submerged in a few years whereas the scientists had actually exempted Washington Heights & I overlooked this important fact?
Keep trying.
PS 67 & Klingons (OOPS Clinger ons)
Speaking of "They" & "Them", you, avoiding material problems, ignored my question as to how many scientists formerly known as certain have to recant, resign, or fail to "re-up" (happening daily before our eyes) before the consensus is declared over & the settled scam science is declared scuttled scam science?
IMHO, we've reached that point in the court of public opinion.
fifteen years -- a decade and a half -- is plenty long enough to see a statistically significant trend, if one exists."
Actually 30 years is better, but at any rate warming is continuing nicely. Question: does a 94.9 level of significance count? Of course it does. Where else would the .2C of heat go? It's real. So are nutbags but nothing they say is real.
"A 95 percent significance level simply means there is actually a 5 percent chance of a particular finding occurring purely by chance. So here’s what Jones is saying, in essence: There is a very slightly greater than 5 percent chance that the measured warming of 0.12 degrees C per decade between 1995 and 2009 was a statistical fluke — in other words, not real.
Or flop it around: There is a slightly less than 95 percent chance that the observed warming actually happened."
Too bad there Big Mike. Looks like your version isn't real. What a surprise.
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