Florida Tech Climate Change Lecture

[Mike Smith]

--
Factually incorrect = factually incorrect. It doesn't matter whether it is peer-reviewed.
---
Yes, it does matter, how else do we know it's factually correct unless the results have been reviewed by experts. Otherwise you end up with COLD FUSION. You wouldn't want to take a medicine that hadn't gone through peer review would you? Wouldn't you want the results carefully scrutinized? Where's this surface data? If there's any question it should even now be going through a lot of discussion, debate, and review.

Jason,

I'm going to ask one more time: Did you read all of the links I provided? If so, you wouldn't be asking "Where's this surface data?" I provided the links.

However, if you want the direct link to the raw data, here it is from the paper's lead author's web site: http://faculty.washington.edu/steig/nature09data/data/awsreconcorrected.txt

Note the word corrected in the URL. That should be your tip that no one now believes the original data was correct. And, the bad data was not detected by the "prestigious" (your word) journal. It was detected by Steve McIntyre of climateaudit.com .

Until you do read background data I have provided, you aren't in a position to accept or reject my contentions. I say this because I believe you will come back and withdraw your criticism regarding my contention that the data was inaccurate.

I often don't believe what is on Wikipedia, either. If you will closely read what I wrote, I used Wiki to provide a lead in to and a direct link to the Wegman Report. I strongly encouraged anyone interested to read the Wegman Report as the authoritative source, not Wikipedia.

Let me please suggest you read what I have posted in its entirety, including the links, before you reply (and I hope you will).

As more food for thought: Here is more evidence to my contention the oceans are not warming as predicted. Of course, since they can hold much more heat, the oceans are a more important metric when determining "global warming" than air temperatures.

http://climatesci.org/2009/02/09/up...tent-changes-with-the-giss-model-predictions/

Mike

 

[Jason Harris]

Ok, we're at an impasse I see. I believe that peer-reviewed scholarly studies matter, and you don't. You base your science--or it seems a good portion of it--on data that hasn't been corroborated by the larger community of scholars. So, if there's a discrepancy with the GISS model that your last link sites, great, explore that, test and retest, and let's see what the results are through corroboration among climatologists not paid to get certain results by industry.

But you're right that to argue based on authority alone is a fallacy, sure. But the legitimate research groups also have the convergence of evidence on their side as well, which helps to produce the larger credibility. And we don't need to get trapped in the either/or fallacy either. There are natural cycles combined with human-influences, such as seems to be the case with hurricanes.

Here's some of what a hurricane scientist had to say on this subject today since I did take your responses seriously enough to get further information from a direct source:
--

The near end of the hockey stick -- is accurate as per the NRC comments:
"It can be said with a high level of confidence that global mean surface temperature was higher
during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period during the
preceding four centuries."

Also note the following NRC comments:

"Similarly, according to Roger A. Pielke, Jr., the National Research Council publication constituted
a "near-complete vindication for the work of Mann et al.";[31] Nature (journal) reported it as "Academy
affirms hockey-stick graph."

This is followed up on the Wikipedia link with the following. I am turned off immediately
to this because it is posted on a blog - sorry.

"According to Hans von Storch, Eduardo Zorita[33] and Jesus Rouco,[34] reviewing the NAS report
on McIntyre's blog Climate Audit.


Note that the work of Mann et al. is known to have uncertainty (hence the figure has some nice error
bars on it already - the gray shaded bars that jump in size prior to 1600). In fact, they themselves
point this out in their 2006 Nature article..as they state "more widespread high-resolution data are needed
before more confident conclusions can be reached and that the uncertainties were the point of the article."


The National Research Council report summary is a good one. Your friend below seems to prefer the
Wegman report. THE WEGMAN REPORT IS NOT PEER REVIEWED -- SORRY! IT APPEARS TO
BE POLITICALLY MOTIVATED AND IS AN OSTENSIBLY FLAWED MANIFESTO...Why do I think
this? There is no way that a well-respected science based response would include the following type of
conclusions * below (these are the highlights listed in bullet form from the Wegman report on Wikipedia!!!).
Forget the science for a moment - these conclusions are not substantial and in fact are violating some very
fundamental rules of science -- and they are irrelevant!!!! I am attaching a copy of a good BAMS article on
the science of hypothesis testing -- have some fun and match up which types of fallacies apply to the Wegman
bullets listed below!!! All that matters is whether the data and stats are legit -- not who they hang out with! [. . . ]
*It is noted that there is no evidence that Mann or any of the other authors in paleoclimatology studies have had significant interactions with mainstream statisticians.

*A social network of authorships in temperature reconstruction of at least 43 authors having direct ties to Mann by virtue of coauthored papers with him is described. The findings from this analysis suggest that authors in the area of paleoclimate studies are closely connected and thus ‘independent studies’ may not be as independent as they might appear on the surface. Dr. Wegman stated this was a "hypothesis", and "should be taken with a grain of salt".

*It is important to note the isolation of the paleoclimate community; even though they rely heavily on statistical methods they do not seem to interact with the statistical community. Additionally, the Wegman team judged that the sharing of research materials, data and results was haphazardly and grudgingly done.

--
I'm also including the link to the BAMS article I was just provided since that's good reading for anyone wanting to avoid logical fallacies that are running rampant in climate change media discussions, and again, it just seems like we have separate philosophies here that don't allow for much meaningful advancement, but if and when there is verified proof of any of these challenges that aren't averaged out, ok, good to know. If an ice age starts showing its glacial head, keep an eye out for sure.

http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?doi=10.1175%2FBAMS-87-8-1025&request=get-abstract&ct=1
Anyone can download the pdf there
Mixing Politics and Science in Testing
the Hypothesis That Greenhouse
Warming Is Causing a Global
Increase in Hurricane Intensity

BY J. A. CURRY, P. J. WEBSTER, AND G. J. HOLLAND

 

[joel ewing]

Hi Jason, back at 'ya here.
The question that roughly stated "was I also as vigilant with what the Bush adm. did" the answer is yes. Your question seems to want to jump to the conclusion that I was a Bush guy. I've never stated that.
I don't trust govt. on any side of the aisle currently. I fear where we are headed when we have people pounding the table screaming that we're all doomed and that we're all to blame. You state as a chaser, how nice it would be if we had better mpgs....I fear the day will become reality when one cannot chase at all...too much "carbon footprint" for something so whimsical. Or perhaps one can only chase on odd days or even days. You think it can't happen here? Don't bet against it my friend.

 

[Mike Smith]

Ok, we're at an impasse I see. I believe that peer-reviewed scholarly studies matter, and you don't.

Jason,

When did I ever say that?

In your original post (#7 in this thread) you cited the Steig study. I said the data underlying part of the study had been discredited.

You disputed that contention because the discrediting didn't come from a "peer-reviewed journal." I said it didn't matter in this case because incorrect data = incorrect data. It doesn't matter who or what found the data was incorrect.

Secondly I mentioned the Wegman Report (which I have read) as the authoritative source, not Wikipedia. I don't care what Wikipedia says except to give someone a general framework of the issues before they click on the Wegman link. UPDATE: I recommend reading the Wegman Report. Here is an analysis of Report should one wish to read it: www.climateaudit.org/?p=2322

Respectfully, I would prefer to withdraw from this debate. I don't care about your perceptions of the politics. The politics don't matter, at least in this case. I do care that the data behind the peer-reviewed Steig study you cited was incorrect, something you still have not acknowledged -- even though Steig has posted corrected data on his own web site.

Respectfully,

Mike

 

[Jason Harris]

Seems like at least 50% of disagreements here are based on misunderstanding each other.

Joel:
-----
Hi Jason, back at 'ya here.
The question that roughly stated "was I also as vigilant with what the Bush adm. did" the answer is yes. Your question seems to want to jump to the conclusion that I was a Bush guy. I've never stated that.
I don't trust govt. on any side of the aisle currently. I fear where we are headed when we have people pounding the table screaming that we're all doomed and that we're all to blame. You state as a chaser, how nice it would be if we had better mpgs....I fear the day will become reality when one cannot chase at all...too much "carbon footprint" for something so whimsical. Or perhaps one can only chase on odd days or even days. You think it can't happen here? Don't bet against it my friend.
---
I wasn't sure what the political leaning was on the issue there, but the sound of my reply did have that implication, so good that you're an even-handed govt. distruster. We should all be the best watchdogs we can be, definitely.
I don't think the "carbon footprint" would be the end of chasing since the vehicles will change over time, and it's obviously going to take a long time no matter what. I wonder though based on some of the Sheriffnadoes out there and some high media exposure to chasing that some incidents lead to a "reckless driving" or just "reckless" charge against chasers where chasers will find the road blocked more often where they want to go.
Also, your earlier comment about the clone-like attitude of grad students does have some merit since sure there are programs where the ideology of the profs. can have a chilling effect in a class (might be more of an issue in the Humanities/liberal arts though)--I don't know about MET or climatology programs specifically though. Also, once somebody gets out and gets the degree there's plenty of attention to be had to demonstrate results that run counter to the established thinking, so there's that angle to work against the groupthink.

Mike: I think part of what we were debating about might have been semantic or at least you thought I was saying one thing and I thought you were saying another thing, but ok, here's the gist of it:

--
You disputed that contention because the discrediting didn't come from a "peer-reviewed journal." I said it didn't matter in this case because incorrect data = incorrect data. It doesn't matter who or what found the data was incorrect.
--
Right, I agree in principle that truth is truth, but unless there's the rigorous peer-review process to PROVE by VERIFYING through other tests and experiments that certain data exists, then the truth claim is in question. So, as a matter of further principle I'm not going to trust material not found in peer-reviewed scholarly journals any more than I'd want to take a medical treatment that hasn't been thoroughly vetted in medical labs and thought through by physicians the world round. And yes, even then it's good to be skeptical about the authorities, to test and retest I agree with all of that and don't accept blindly the judgments of higher authorities but also to just live life we defer to people who are experts in various fields and it seems oddly selective to arbitrarily deny the validity of one field but not another.

I didn't provide that link called "Mixing Politics and Science in Testing
the Hypothesis That Greenhouse
Warming Is Causing a Global
Increase in Hurricane Intensity" because of my "perception about the politics"--I passed that on because the hurricane researcher that I was corresponding with gave it to me, as part of his message indicated, because it goes through some common logical fallacies that are found in the writings claiming to debunk climate change science. Since most of us aren't in this field--I'm not--using logic and trying to stay informed about recent data is about all we can do. And since I've gotten to know of a few people doing work that includes diving under the Antarctic ice to observe changes with sea life and researching patterns with hurricane intensity I'm going to consult their advice. So when the hurricane scientist pointed out that the Wegman report wasn't peer-reviewed, that makes an impact.

You might have thought some of his words were my words in that previous post because of the hasty formatting. Anyhow, I just quoted part of his email since he said I could.

And if Steig has corrected his data, excellent, the science moves forward, slip-ups will happen, better measurements will get made, errors will get noticed, but we still have to look at the big emergent picture, and for now I'm going with consensus of the 97% of climate scientists referred to by Jeff Masters, just like flossing, gotta go where the data suggests.

I don't even have a horse in this race frankly. On one level, it would be fascinating to see things get extreme and see if there will be as some have predicted a non-linear jump and enough of a huge ice sheet breaking off to cause a tsunami that floods coastlines 3 meters within hours. That was also mentioned by one of the folks at the lecture, chatting afterwards. He didn't think that would happen before 2050 at the earliest, so plenty of time to chill at the beach.

I don't know Calculus, so someone who does might want to explain what I heard: why the prediction of the event occuring is easier--first order derivative, but to find the exact time is a derivative of a derivative--much harder.

And then there's the 21 foot rise suggested recently (Feb. 5th in news. . article coming out in Science, or maybe already did). . so the trend does seem to be towards data indicating the earlier predictions were too conservative.

--
If global warming some day causes the West Antarctic Ice Sheet to collapse, as many experts believe it could, the resulting sea level rise in much of the United States and other parts of the world would be significantly higher than is currently projected, a new study concludes. The catastrophic increase in sea level, already projected to average between 16 and 17 feet around the world, would be almost 21 feet in such places as Washington, D.C., scientists say, putting it largely underwater. Many coastal areas would be devastated. Much of Southern Florida would disappear.

The report will be published Friday in the journal Science, by researchers from Oregon State University and the University of Toronto. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation and other agencies from the U.S. and Canada.

"We aren't suggesting that a collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is imminent," said Peter Clark, a professor of geosciences at Oregon State University. "But these findings do suggest that if you are planning for sea level rise, you had better plan a little higher."
---
from longer article here:
http://esciencenews.com/articles/2009/02/05/sea.level.rise.could.be.worse.anticipated

 

[Rob Sermon]

This good ol' country boy is gonna take a stab at this. Maybe someone can "correct" my errant thinkin'.

What industry of man caused the Artic ice cap to retreat from Indiana to the Artic Ocean in only 5,000 years? A blink of an eye, geologically speaking. Left in its' retreat are thousands of fantastic fishin' ponds from Ft. Wayne, to all points north.

Again, geologically speaking, Mt. Saint Helens was a popcorn fart. She spewed more "greenhouse" gasses, and particulate matter into the atmosphere than mankind has ever, or will ever be able produce.

Livestock flatulence???? How 'bout brotosaurus farts? Maybe that's what did 'em in.

It is called climate for a reason. It has always, and forever will be changing. Man has no more power to "change" the climate, than he does to put out the sun.

Simplistic, yes. This homie rolls with Bill of Ockham. GWers use circular logic to get government grants to produce more circular logic, which in turn gets more government grants to produce....... WAIT!! That's MY money!!

Don't get me wrong. We should all be good stewards, and the United States leads the way.

Consensus is not science. The two words are contradictory. Science is either fact, or theory.

 

[David Wolfson]

Most of these discussions of AGW seem to end up as debates over the methods of science versus belief. The methods of science, unlike methods of belief, never provide certainty and only provide objective means to evaluate the weight of evidence. Science is always theory.

Not-AGW is as much a hypothesis as AGW. What is true as I understand it is that the best scientific consensus is AGW with a two-sigma or better likelihood. This means that AFAWK it's very likely (but not certain) that some warming is caused by human activity. Also, there's no reputable science I'm aware of with respect to the data that can demonstrate anything like that causality for any other non-anthropogenic modality, like volcanic activity, increased solar radiation, etc.

The rapid, natural retreats of continental ice sheets in the past are above all a warning that we're dealing with potentially unstable, non-linear processes. The record does indeed show that the world's climate has at times resulted in conditions very different from those which have maintained over the last ten thousand years or so when human civilization has flourished. It's another reason to worry -- not take comfort.

Few nowadays doubt that a nuclear war would result in very significant global climate change, and that is entirely an act of humankind. Why is it so hard to accept that turning a significant fraction of hydrocarbons that have been sequestered for millions of years to CO2 in an eye-blink geologically speaking might have a very significant effect as well?.... Especially when the most sophisticated environmental models indicate that to be the case.

 

[Mike Smith]

Also, there's no reputable science I'm aware of with respect to the data that can demonstrate anything like that causality for any other non-anthropogenic modality, like volcanic activity, increased solar radiation, etc.

David, please clarify this sentence. I'm not sure what you mean.

Mike

 

[David Wolfson]

Fair enough! More clearly... Show me science that uses the same data and better correlates with another cause. They aren't finding it. Saying 'X' is occuring now with 'Y', and 'X' occured in the past without 'Y' isn't a good argument for refuting a 'Y' effect on 'X'. You should be able to show that 'X' occured in the past with 'Z', and 'Z' is occuring now.

 

[Rob Sermon]

The rapid, natural retreats of continental ice sheets in the past are above all a warning that we're dealing with potentially unstable, non-linear processes. The record does indeed show that the world's climate has at times resulted in conditions very different from those which have maintained over the last ten thousand years or so when human civilization has flourished. It's another reason to worry -- not take comfort.
QUOTE]

David, H2O can be a solid, liquid, or gas; science fact; The "Big Bang"; science theory. Consensus is hype.

The climate has maintained only in the fact that Indiana's glaciers are still gone. The records show that the earths climate is what it is. It will forever be changing, David. Humans are nothing but pissants. Stop a tornado, and I'll believe that humans can have an impact.

Until then, I will help the cause by driving my 1993 GMC, 351C.I., 12 MPG pick-up, burning my sizable amount of leafs after the fall, and warming myself by the fireplace.

I'm not going to worry. We will all go the way of the dinosaur, eventually; science fact.

 

[Mike Smith]

Fair enough! More clearly... Show me science that uses the same data and better correlates with another cause. They aren't finding it. Saying 'X' is occuring now with 'Y', and 'X' occured in the past without 'Y' isn't a good argument for refuting a 'Y' effect on 'X'. You should be able to show that 'X' occured in the past with 'Z', and 'Z' is occuring now.

David, thanks for clarifying.

It appears you are equating "science" with "models." Models are certainly helpful for increasing our understanding of the atmosphere and its processes. However, they have greatly overforecast both the atmospheric warming and, more importantly, overforecast the oceanic heat content:

http://climatesci.org/2009/02/09/up...tent-changes-with-the-giss-model-predictions/

Using the 2001 IPCC's 95% confidence intervals, the non-warming of the last ten years would tend to falsify the IPCC's global warming hypothesis.

Svensmark's theory is not accounted for by the models. The ice melt in the Arctic Ocean is better explained by soot than temperatures.

Given the models have done a poor job forecasting the early part of the 21st Century, it seems to be quite a stretch that their 30-90 year forecasts have skill.

The thing that most concerns me is that we may be be starting or heading for a Dalton-type solar minima. While we do not understand the processes involved, given past climate history we should be concerned about cooling. Who knows, we might want all the CO2 we can get to mitigate future cooling. We just don't know.

Respectfully,

Mike

 

[David Wolfson]

There're fundamentally different questions on the table here. The first is, is there in fact global temperature change? The second is, is humankind responsible in a significant way for climate change? The third question is, given our understanding of all causes for climate change, what do we think is going to happen? The fourth is, what can we do about it? The fifth question -- what should be done? -- is the realm of political economics, not science.

Rob, temperature or a physical state of matter are properties derived from measurement and observation, not products of science. There is a science of measurement, and the totally legitimate discussion of how much the global climate has changed is a good example of that important and complicated discipline.

Mike, what I said has nothing to do with models. It was mostly pointed at the second question. Given global temperature change, 'X', what's causing it? The doubters (no value judge -- doubt is a good thing) tend to argue that because 'X' occurred in the past without human influence, 'Y', then 'Y' doesn't explain 'X' without showing how 'X' does correlate with some other 'Z' that occurs both now and in the past. It's a weak argument IMHO.