Madame Q-
I am interested in fossils and dinos and stuff like that too -I think that it's like a whole new world of understanding opened up to me after I actually got the REAL truth, you know. Everything is in a much better perspective because you can accept ALL of science, not just what agrees with what the dubs say that the bible says.
Are you interested in anthropology and paleontology? I have just started reading more on human origins and evolution- that stuff just blows my mind! I have also benefited from all the info and research folks on JWD have done on evolution because that is something I am interested in but do not know a whole lot about.
I have been reading some of RIchard Dawkins books -right now I am working on the Ancestor's Tale. Fascinating stuff.
I think if I had to go back and do it over again, I would study the history of science. It appeals to me cause my own "journey in science" sort of parallels how society as a whole has progressed in its understanding of the natural world.
Neat stuff. I wish I knew more!
-K
OH, THE IRONY OF IT ALL.............Global Warming
by Warlock 84 Replies latest social current
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Kudra
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Kudra
Jeffro-
Yes, I saw it! A few times... :)
There is a bunch of stuff that's not accurate but it is such a cool movie! I should buy it.
That mechanism you described has played a huge part in rapidly changing climate in the past though. It's soo cool how that all works.
-K -
Warlock
O.K. just for Madame Q. this will definitely be MY LAST WORD. At the risk of "outing" myself, here is what I will tell you, and excuse me if I'm a bit vulgar. I deal in the f**king financial markets, everyday. If you go buy a copy of the Wall St. Journal or Investor's Business Daily, you will see, in their classified ads, trading software like Options Express, Trade Station or whatever. If you find or observe a particular pattern in a stock or an option, you can enter the parameters into the software and "back test it". For example, you find a pattern in T (ATT). You go back in the software because you want to see how many times this particular pattern has occurred in the past to see if it could be a viable pattern to trade. You can only go back as far as ATT has existed. You cannot test the pattern farther back than that, because, otherwise you would have to make up the numbers.
You can only "test" global warming back as far as there are temp records, about 1850. YOU CANNOT BACK TEST FARTHER BECAUSE YOU DON'T HAVE THE NUMBERS. ANYTHING BEYOND THE NUMBERS IS SPECULATION. PLAIN AND SIMPLE...........SPECULATION. IF YOU DON'T GET IT, YOU DON'T GET IT. COMMON SENSE. PLAIN AND SIMPLE.
YOU CANNOT DISMISS OTHER EXPLANATIONS FOR GLOBAL WARMING, EITHER THOSE KNOWN, OR UNKNOWN.
I KNOW THIS FLYS IN THE FACE OF POPULAR THINKING, BUT YOU CANNOT DISMISS WHAT I HAVE SAID.
TO DO SO, WOULD BE DISHONEST.
I suggest my detractors read a book entitled " Fooled by Randomness" by Nassim Taleb.
Notice, I didn't call you all names.
Warlock
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Qcmbr
Warlock - I'm with you on this. There's far too much 'the sky is falling' mentality here. If this planet's temperature cycle is hugely affected simply by the minute addition of a few gases by people then I'm stunned. Now if you suggest that changes to the huge reactor we have in the sky might be heating or cooling us then I might be persuaded. There is more myths being thrown around as fact than at any biblical book club. Let's look at it:
1 - We have concrete GROUND based temperatures from 1850 nothing further back - nothing just best guesses - this is very, very different to hard facts. We are having 'faith' that the scientists stories are correct before that point. One hard fact I know about is that if you head up north in the UK you'll see glacial features from a time when the temperature was extremelly cold - a mere 11000 odd years ago - there is something very powerful causing cycles in temperature and it isn't man.
2 - Deriving global temperatures from ice cores is a very inexact science since by its definition it relies upon guessing what the data means. The chicken little brigade ignore that data anyway which suggests that the interglacial perods (15-20 000 years according to our theories) happen fairly frequently and temperature fluctuations (not man made) move enough to freeze most of this planet's northen landmass and then warm to our current temperature. Following this pattern we should realise that our society is on a very short tenure since we are 'due' another period of freezing. Global warming if manmade and sustainable is going to save us! Try imagine feeding and housing 10 billion people when swathes of Europe and North America is frozen solid.
3 - Up until the 1970's our data was telling us that global temperatures where falling - what short memories we have - after that time the temperatures rose and yet all our graphs magically start to prove a steady increase in warming. If all the supporters of man made global warming want to explian the mistake that enamoured the scientific community and caused them to cry that we were all due a freeze and then explain how they could all have been so wrong then please do so. In the meantime let's all start suggesting they are infallible again even though they have flipped there position. Getting sucked once into a cult that flips doctrines just isn't enough for some people! I may sound harsh here but I'm just illustrating that the same thing is happening here. Scientific community preaches one thing - flips doctrine and preaches another using the same data to prove both with some new light to justify the flip go figure. Me - I don't care how many people say that the earth is flat - I'll wait and see what happens when someone goes off and tries to sail off the edge.
4 - There is a great desire to believe we are highly effective at controlling our environment and on a micro level we are masters but when it comes to global effects we just don't figure and we like to think we do. If global warming has some swith that we as humans can flip by simply increasing gas levels by a tiny fraction then it's already too late and all this talk about stopping global warming is just repentant waffle, you can't put the horse back in the stable unless anyone can think of a way to convince us all to live without power and can find a way to remove the gas that somehow is causing the issue. How stupid are we. Clean up pollution by all means, reduce emissions by being more efficient fine but stop pretending that we can play with the global thermostat by paying twice as much for products and taxing car usage - its not going to happen.
5 - Models of climate change are models not facts, they crunch the data and burn vast amounts of cpu time and yet the very nature of modelling chaos systems is that your results show one of an uncountable possible outcomes. Over a long enough time order does arrive from chaos (the 'little ice age' cycle is the counterpart to our warm cycle we are in now - sample your majoity data at the peak of a warm cycle by all means but stop extrapolating forward as though temperatures will keep rising.) There is nothing so stupid as the hockey stick graph of temperature that we see trotted out by global warming reports - we are all aware that every system has checks and balances that stop things running away into mathematical progressions (e.g. sure there is a flu season but that flu season is matched by a decline in flu) so it is with temperature, if it rises sharply that induces negative feedbacks at some point that reverese the trend and generate the cycle.
6 - I'll happily bet that we are reaching the end of a mini warm cycle (40 odd years since the last cooling mini cycle that ended in the 70's) and from 2010 onwards temperatures will drop and we'll find another story from the scientists to believe.
I may be wrong we may all be doomed to frazzle but if that's the case its the same as a Titanic passenger looking out for icebergs after the ship has already been holed. Personally, though I think this planet is fairly bulletproof. -
Abaddon
Warlock
YOU CANNOT BACK TEST FARTHER BECAUSE YOU DON'T HAVE THE NUMBERS. ANYTHING BEYOND THE NUMBERS IS SPECULATION. PLAIN AND SIMPLE...........SPECULATION.
No it isn't. Now, why do you ignore being told how temperatures prior to the 19th C are determined? Rather than research it you call it speculation, and that really isn't fair. The ratio of various isotopes of oxygen varies according to air temperature.Ice contains air bubbles. Therefore old ice allows you to determine the air temperature at the time it froze. Those isotopic ratios (for a givien temperature) are the same today as they were then. It is so NOT speculation.
Your example re. ATT; you can only get their records as long as ATT existed, just like you can only get temperture recors from weather stations as long as they existed. But just as weather existed before weather stations, and can be measured using things other than thermometer reading at weather stations, so to did communication 'stocks' exist before ATT, and the value of the commodities available in the past can be neasured by things other than the share price of ATT.
The ice cores come mostly from Antarctica and Greenland, but are backed up by ice cores from mountain glaciers... in the space of a few decades many of these mountain glaciers have become unviable for taking ice cores from... as they are melting...
http://www.chem.hope.edu/~polik/warming/IceCore/IceCore2.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_core
How come you are assuming we are all so stupid that we believe made-up stories? And yourself so smart that STILL without investigating the facts you consider yourself capable of having an informed opinion?
It's like me holding forth about the stock market (about which I know next-to-nothing) and telling YOU you are wrong by saying things you know (being knowledgable about the stock market) simply are not true.
I think you'd find me doing that silly and unreasonable.
Qcmbr
We have concrete GROUND based temperatures from 1850 nothing further back - nothing just best guesses - this is very, very different to hard facts. We are having 'faith' that the scientists stories are correct before that point. One hard fact I know about is that if you head up north in the UK you'll see glacial features from a time when the temperature was extremelly cold - a mere 11000 odd years ago - there is something very powerful causing cycles in temperature and it isn't man.
And the accurate air temperature records we have from both hemispheres mean nothing? Are you saying that ground temperature and air temperature are unlinked? That the Earth has under-floor heating prehaps? Why do you say "there is something very powerful causing cycles in temperature and it isn't man" when no one is saying that man is the ONLY influence on temperature?
Rather than producing simplistic responses that either imply you believe stuff I don't think you can prove (air and ground temperatures are unlinked), or which ignore the claims being made (man is NOW altering temperature) to make fallacious implications?
2 - Deriving global temperatures from ice cores is a very inexact science since by its definition it relies upon guessing what the data means. The chicken little brigade ignore that data anyway which suggests that the interglacial perods (15-20 000 years according to our theories) happen fairly frequently and temperature fluctuations (not man made) move enough to freeze most of this planet's northen landmass and then warm to our current temperature. Following this pattern we should realise that our society is on a very short tenure since we are 'due' another period of freezing. Global warming if manmade and sustainable is going to save us! Try imagine feeding and housing 10 billion people when swathes of Europe and North America is frozen solid.
Please show how isotopic detemination of air temperature using ice cores is 'guessing what the data means'. You saying it doesn't mean it is true, and unles you have good evidence I'd rather believe experts. And again, misrepresentation. Please show me an example of interglacial cycles being ignored in the work of climate researchers working on current temperature trends.
3 - Up until the 1970's our data was telling us that global temperatures where falling - what short memories we have - after that time the temperatures rose and yet all our graphs magically start to prove a steady increase in warming. If all the supporters of man made global warming want to explian the mistake that enamoured the scientific community and caused them to cry that we were all due a freeze and then explain how they could all have been so wrong then please do so. In the meantime let's all start suggesting they are infallible again even though they have flipped there position. Getting sucked once into a cult that flips doctrines just isn't enough for some people! I may sound harsh here but I'm just illustrating that the same thing is happening here. Scientific community preaches one thing - flips doctrine and preaches another using the same data to prove both with some new light to justify the flip go figure. Me - I don't care how many people say that the earth is flat - I'll wait and see what happens when someone goes off and tries to sail off the edge.
If you had actually read up on the subject you'd know why what you refer to was thought by some and why temerature were a they were then. Of coure, you will now be indignant that when you show by your statements that you don't know something, rather thn being embaressed you are acting authoratative on a subject you've not researched adequately. Why the arrogance Qc?
4 - There is a great desire to believe we are highly effective at controlling our environment and on a micro level we are masters but when it comes to global effects we just don't figure and we like to think we do. If global warming has some swith that we as humans can flip by simply increasing gas levels by a tiny fraction then it's already too late and all this talk about stopping global warming is just repentant waffle, you can't put the horse back in the stable unless anyone can think of a way to convince us all to live without power and can find a way to remove the gas that somehow is causing the issue. How stupid are we. Clean up pollution by all means, reduce emissions by being more efficient fine but stop pretending that we can play with the global thermostat by paying twice as much for products and taxing car usage - its not going to happen.
Half right and half wrong. WE have already screwed things up and probably have upto fifty years of upward trends even with realsitic controls. The UK could close down tomorrow, and the growth of China would equal the emmissions saved by the UK closing in TWO YEARS. But acting like financial incentives can't help control car use et.al. is like pretending the rise in cigarette cost doen't help ontrol useage.
5 - Models of climate change are models not facts, they crunch the data and burn vast amounts of cpu time and yet the very nature of modelling chaos systems is that your results show one of an uncountable possible outcomes. Over a long enough time order does arrive from chaos (the 'little ice age' cycle is the counterpart to our warm cycle we are in now - sample your majoity data at the peak of a warm cycle by all means but stop extrapolating forward as though temperatures will keep rising.) There is nothing so stupid as the hockey stick graph of temperature that we see trotted out by global warming reports - we are all aware that every system has checks and balances that stop things running away into mathematical progressions (e.g. sure there is a flu season but that flu season is matched by a decline in flu) so it is with temperature, if it rises sharply that induces negative feedbacks at some point that reverese the trend and generate the cycle.
"sample your majoity data at the peak of a warm cycle by all means but stop extrapolating forward as though temperatures will keep rising" - This is such a blatent misrepresentation I'd almost call it lying. Please show me the forcings that are causing climate change at this time. Come on, you think you know enough, show it.
There is nothing so stupid as the hockey stick graph of temperature that we see trotted out by global warming reports -
Just as when in a discussion with an ID supporter they say 'irreducable complexity" you know they don't have direct knowledge but are parrotting arguments they believe to be valid, but which have since been rebutted, so to in discussions of climate change you know someone is way behind on the facts.
6 - I'll happily bet that we are reaching the end of a mini warm cycle (40 odd years since the last cooling mini cycle that ended in the 70's) and from 2010 onwards temperatures will drop and we'll find another story from the scientists to believe.
What you bet is irrelevent unless you can show the forcings that are making what you claim is happening happen.
Now this is the bit where you get angry, and refuse to how any facts...
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Kudra
Frustration!
I have addressed and rebutted the points that Qcmbr and Warlock talk about many times (even in this very thread!). They never look any information up about proxy records, reconstruction or past climate that ANY of us refer to.
I have no idea why they keep trotting out these same media-sound-bite arguments that have been completely refuted by actual scientists and also by us here on the board.
And Qcmbr- what are these other forcings you talk of? Please make specific points or ask specific questions about things you do not understand, don't just parrot sound bites you hear commentators spew out in opinion pieces.
ALSO, I'd be interested in questions you have on the "stupid hockey stick" if you would care to make any specific points, as I have been part of a discussion group at skool on the science behind the hockey stick diagram led by one of the authors of that paper. I honestly believe there is no way on earth that you understand the statistics behind that paper. It's probably one of the more complicated things I have ever read.
FYI if anyone cares, the statistics on the "hockey stick" data were redone by a group at NOAA using completely different statistical techniques than the original authors and the same trend emerged (this is what the controversy was about). I think I talked about that in the last climate thread here, not that anyone might have seen it and have looked it up if they wanted to refute it...
-K -
Madame Quixote
Thanks so much, Kudra.
Check this out. There is a discussion of what the recent discovery of great lakes means for this climatology research:
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Madame Quixote
This looks really good. And it has NUMBERS, Warlock. Let me know what you think about this discussion on the topic "Deniers Vs. (Climate Change) Believers:
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=22003a0d-37cc-4399-8bcc-39cd20bed2f6&k=0
Unfortunately, as I read, I find few actual numbers, but I do notice that the people herein who are the heaviest deniers of global climate change are financial analysts, including the author of the articles on deniers v. believers.
I can't help but question how financial analysis relates or applies to scientific statistical analysis of geophysical trends over millions of years.
Also, I do not see the numbers/statistics I expected to see.
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Kudra
Hi guys, Here is the scoop on what happened at those Wegman hearings- this article has a little statistics in it (numbers!) but they are sort of basic and will explain pretty well what the Wegman Report found and it is actually a little different than the piece that you posted, Madame Q... If you look up that author, Lawrence Solomon, you will see that his is a total anti climate science dude, he has a very poor understanding of the role of CO2 in climate warming (i.e. in one article said it is too small an effect for policy makers to take seriously.... sheesh! BASIC physics he does not understand...) Anyway, he is indeed a financial writer, but seeems to be extremely vocal on climate change for some reason, so that makes me highly suspect of the bias of his writing... anyway, please read this! -K
RealClimate.org
19 Jul 2006
The missing piece at the Wegman hearing
Filed under:
— group @ 8:37 pmIt's not often that blogs come up in congressional hearings, but RealClimate was mentioned yesterday in the Energy and Commerce hearings on the 'Hockey Stick' affair. Of course, it was only to accuse us of being part of tight-knit social network of climate scientists, but still, the public recognition is nice.
There is much that could be said about the hearings (and no doubt will be) and many of the participants (Tom Karl, Tom Crowley, Hans von Storch, Gerry North) did a good job in articulating the big picture on climate change independently of the 'hockey stick' study as we've highlighted before. But it seems to us that there was a missing element in the discussions. That element was the direct implication of the critique that was the principal focus of Wegman's testimony and that was mentioned periodically throughout the day.
Wegman had been tasked solely to evaluate whether the McIntyre and McKitrick (2005) (MM05) criticism of Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) (MBH) had statistical merit. That is, was their narrow point on the impacts of centering on the first principal component (PC) correct? He was pointedly not asked whether it made any difference to the final MBH reconstruction and so he did not attempt to evaluate that. Since no one has ever disputed MM05's arithmetic (only their inferences), he along with the everyone else found that, yes, centering conventions make a difference to the first PC. This was acknowledged way back when and so should not come as a surprise. From this, Wegman concluded that more statisticians should be consulted in paleo-climate work. Actually, on this point most people would agree - both fields benefit from examining the different kinds of problems that arise in climate data than in standard statistical problems and coming up with novel solutions, and like most good ideas it has already been thought of. For instance, NCAR has run a program on statistical climatology for years and the head of that program (Doug Nychka) was directly consulted for the Wahl and Ammann (2006) paper for instance.
But, and this is where the missing piece comes in, no-one (with sole and impressive exception of Hans von Storch during the Q&A) went on to mention what the effect of the PC centering changes would have had on the final reconstruction - that is, after all the N. American PCs had been put in with the other data and used to make the hemispheric mean temperature estimate. Beacuse, let's face it, it was the final reconstruction that got everyone's attention.Von Storch got it absolutely right - it would make no practical difference at all.
This is what MBH would have looked like using centered PC analysis:
Red is the original MBH emulation and green is the calculation using centered PC analysis (and additionally removing one of the less well replicated tree ring series). (Calculations are from Wahl and Amman (2006), after their fig. 5d). Pretty much the same variability and the same 'hockey stick'. We'd be very surprised if anyone thought that this would have made any difference to either the conclusions or the subsequent use of the MBH results.In fact, it's even more simple, Throw out that PC analysis step completely, what do you get?
Again, red is the original MBH98 multiproxy+PC analysis, green is if the raw data are used directly (with no PC analysis at all). (This comes from Rutherford et al (2005) and uses a different methodology - RegEM - to calibrate paleoclimate proxy data against the modern instrumental record, but that doesn't make any difference for this point).Why doesn't it make any difference? It's because the PC analysis was used to encapsulate all of the statistically relevant information in the N. American tree ring network and so whatever patterns are in there they will always influence the final reconstruction.
So what would have happened to the MBH results if Wegman and his colleagues had been consulted on PC centering conventions at the time? Absolutely nothing.
Can we all get on with something more interesting now?
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Spectre
Bill O'Reilly said he debunked the myth of global warming and that's good enough for me!
