The point YOU are missing is that I’m talking about a press release for a specific scientific paper reporting on the results of that specific research inaccurately.
I know you want to make everything about the larger global warming debate, but I’m not actually talking about whether 2014 was in fact the hottest year or not. I’m talking about spinning a specific paper to give an inaccurate representation of what the paper says.
To be clear, the paper itself takes pains to say that there’s no way of knowing if 2014 was in fact the hottest year, and points out that the results for this year are a statistical tie with the years 2005 and 2010, and ten other years in the last 14 are also statistical ties. Then the summary put out for the press says, “NASA research shows that 2014 was the hottest year ever!”. It’s a complete misrepresentation of the actual contents of the paper.
Now, there are plenty of other models and some other data sets that may or may not corroborate the notion of 2014 being the hottest year. That is irrelevant to this issue.
The problem is that in the public debate this is now a ‘fact’. I’ve already heard it repeated numerous time in the media and in other internet debates. Everyone now ‘knows’ that NASA proved that 2014 was the hottest year. The science is settled. And yet, it did no such thing. In fact, it would be more accurate to state the opposite conclusion that there has been very little measurable warming found in the NASA/NOAA data over the past 15 years. The paper specifically says that this was the case, and spends a fair bit of time speculating on the possible causes.
If a ‘denier’ site had used this type of misleading summary to claim, “NASA research shows that there has been no warming in the past 15 years”, you’d be jumping all over it, and probably calling the authors names and claiming they must be shills of big oil to lie so dramatically about the results of a paper. But because the fakery advances the narrative you already believe to be correct, you switch gears and try to defend it to the death.
This was the point I was making about motivated reasoning. If someone makes a technically-accurate but misleading argument that goes against what you believe, then they are lying fools and they must be destroyed. If someone does the same and advances your narrative, then suddenly you are doing flips and twists such as bringing in irrelevant Japanese data in order to defend them.
On a side note, I tend to trust the satellite record a lot. There have been few adjustments to the data and the adjustmentsthat have been made are laid out for every one to see. Additionally, the satellite and the surface temperatures diverge quite a bit. That is worrying and the reason for the divergence needs to be understood.
On the uncertainty, it is not a friend of contrarian. It is also not a friend of the warmist. It is no ones friend but it is something that needs to be fully understood. Curryhas a good article on it.
In any case, NASA in their press release, doesn’t go there. And that is dishonest. NASA also doesn’t discuss the uncertainty of the historical record in any press release. The claim is that 2014 is the hottest since 1880. That is also deceptive in that we really don’t know what the temperatures in 1880 were. We have some readings but we don’t know the accuracy of the readings*, which adds to the margin of error that NASA doesn’t discuss in press releases. Claiming that 2014 is THEHOTTESTEVER without discussing the issues with the temperature record, the adjustments, the assumptions that went into making those adjustments and the fact that EVER is actually 134 years is a political move, not a scientific one.
And the facts are being intentionally obscured, as far as I can tell, to push an agenda. Whether or not one agrees with the agenda, one ought to be concerned about that.
Slee
Interesting thing about the past temperatures. They change! According to Nasa GISS in 1999 the average temperature in 1880 was -.47 off the annual mean. According to Nasa GISS in 2013 the average temperature in 1880 was -0.5125 off the annual mean. So between 1999 and 2013 the year 1880 cooled by .0425 of a degree.
BTW as this is related to what is going on with the politicization of the evidence the point of many contrarian sources out there is to misrepresent and continue to create misleading charts. It is way past the time to realize that the uncertainty they claim to be omnipotent is in reality more uncertain for the contrarians.
The fact remains that all the other years mentioned as candidates for being warmest are less likely to be that than 2014 (and looking at history it is not very likely that this will be changed in the future, and it could get actually warmer as IIRC, and then there is still the fact that other groups are concluding the same using other methodologies.
As NPR reported even taking into consideration the probabilities the data escentially ties 2005, 2010 and 2014 as the three hottest years on record. Even within the margin of error and the occasional yearly fluctuation, our planet is getting steadily warmer. “Ignoring this fact is like stepping in front of a train and hoping that, if we close our eyes, the train won’t hit us.”
Exactly. It actually makes it difficult for my humble self when looking at all this, to be objective, since for most of my life I was completely convinced catastrophic climate change was getting ready to happen, and it was all due to human pollution. (disclosure, I still believe human factors are involved).
My own bias makes it impossible to be objective, I know this. I also know I can’t be sure if I have countered my own bias. It’s why science has to be reviewed and replicated, and results have to stand up to scrutiny, especially from those who don’t buy your results.
We know the magnitude of CO2 radiative forcing because it’s been empirically established – don’t confuse modeling of climate sensitivity with radiative forcing. And we know the anthropogenic origins of the post-industrial spike through multiple lines of evidence. Not the least of which is that we know we’re emitting it and we know how much, we understand quite well how the carbon cycle works and how much is being absorbed into the oceans, we know the detailed chronology of atmospheric CO2 going back almost a million years (and in less precision hundreds of milliions of years further) and we know that spikes like this don’t happen by magic, we know its remarkable stability over the past several millennia until industrialization, and moreover we can identify anthropogenic CO2 from its isotopic fingerprint, because CO2 emitted from burning fossil fuels has a lower [sup]13[/sup]C/[sup]12[/sup]C ratio than the ambient atmospheric CO2. Just exactly what is it that you think there is reasonable doubt about?
Please don’t lecture me about how the IPCC works. The use of carefully calibrated language tied to quantifed confidence levels began with the AR4 and it was mostly in response to criticisms from denialist attackers making just the kinds of claims that you are now, that the assertions made in IPCC reports aren’t 100% certain. Correct. Nothing is. I might say that it is “almost certain” that the sun will rise tomorrow, “very likely” that it will be trending warmer three months from now, and “more likely than not” that it will be warmer at this time in April, but that doesn’t mean I’m mired in clueless uncertainty about the nature of days and nights and winter and spring. The question is whether there is sufficient certainty about the fundamental risks of AGW to be actionable. The overwhelming consensus from all of the world’s major science bodies – and not just from the IPCC – is that the certainty is more than sufficient to justify urgent action. So again I ask, just exactly what is it that you think there is reasonable doubt about?
I flatly deny it because it isn’t true. I can only assume that you’re getting your IPCC report information filtered through your oil company newsletter.
What the IPCC has been saying for a long time, and re-emphasized in the recent AR5, is that warming temperatures may, at best, have a temporary beneficial impact in very limited specific regions in northerly latitudes. They provide a very clear discussion, with associated citations and graphic illustrations, showing that in no scenario do overall increased yields exceed decreases at any time, now or in the future, and in ***all ***of them overall crop production rapidly declines over time and increasing temperatures.
In fact it’s even worse than that, because in all scenarios the poorer lower latitudes are disproportionately affected. And worse still, quoting directly from the AR5 WG2 SPM, "All aspects of food security are potentially affected by climate change, including food access, utilization, and price stability (high confidence). " From the same source, Africa, for instance, is projected to be at risk of “reduced crop productivity associated with heat and drought stress, with strong adverse effects on regional, national, and household livelihood and food security, also given increased pest and disease damage and flood impacts on food system infrastructure (high confidence).” The potential of large-scale famines and mass migration is a serious risk to global security, as a recent Pentagon report notes. And the IPCC WG2 additionally notes that “extensive biodiversity loss with associated loss of ecosystem goods and services results in high risks around 3°C additional warming (high confidence).”
That’s about all I have the time and patience for right now. But let me also ask you another question, since you’re the one who brought up motivated reasoning. All else being equal, who do you think is more susceptible to motivated reasoning on this subject – someone who lives in a region strongly dominated by an oil economy and works for an oil company, or somebody who has no dog in this race? I believe you’ve been forthright enough to acknowledge that you’re in the former category. I don’t work for anyone, and I’m not invested either in fossil fuels or in green technology. I do however have a professional background in science and I think I have a balanced interest in both a sustainable economy and a healthy environment for my descendants and relations. Your “motivated reasoning” spiel is doing you no favors here.
sleestak, Judith curry is following the same footsteps as Dr Seitz that supported the denial of tobacco causing cancer and then also denying that the current climate change was being caused by humans.
One of her former supporters Professor Muller found that climate scientist were doing a good job with the data and models, it is important to realize that while virtually all the members of the team that worked at Berkeley Earth with Muller ended agreeing with the consensus Judith Miller that did some support at BEST was the one that rejected the once again confirmed results.
As for trusting the satellite record, I trust it too, but it is not measuring surface and ocean temperatures, it measures the troposphere. This layer is typically a few hundred meters to 2 km (1.2 mi) deep depending on the landform and time of day. Even the people that get the data reported that and what it is clear is that that measurement does not match exactly with actual surface temperatures because of what the satellites are measuring.
Still, as I found in a previous discussion it was clear that when looking at anomalies the trend observed in the satellites is a warming one.
Again, regarding biases the point stands: it is also the experts the ones to consult to get away from the bias. (as pointed before virtually all conservative scientists that were skeptical and worked on the issue concluded that this is a problem), and even NPR did point that the media gets a lot of the blame here, as the scientists did report properly about the probabilities.
And still the Japanese found already in favor of declaring 2014 the warmest year in the instrumental record. With the MET office likely to follow soon.
This is why I started a debate about the idea of “facts won’t matter”, rather than a debate about the undefined global warming debate. Of course some are going to try and make it a global warming debate.
But if facts won’t sway anyone, and opinions, expert or not, won’t matter, discussing what will matter, is more likely to be enlightening than any arguments over a specific issue.
More likely in this case means, probably not at all.
Far be it from me to claim that I know your motivations in starting this thread, nor does it matter. But based on your extensive prior posting history on this topic and the way this thread has evolved, it seems to have turned into a vehicle for expounding on your amazing epiphany as stated in #105, that you have seen The Truth, which is basically that all of the world’s climate scientists are full of shit and that the IPCC is “woo woo science”.
I can appreciate how difficult it must be for you to try to convince the rest of us that you – and you alone – are in possession of the True Facts, especially those of us with scientific backgrounds who understand, let us say, the difference between a climate forcing and a feedback, or the limited influence of solar variability on modern climate, or in general have the science background to see past the bullshit you try to peddle every time you post on this topic. No one is buying your bullshit, not because facts “don’t matter”, but because they do.
Before we go any further, I have to ask: Do you know what a ‘fact’ is? Because the quote above indicates that you don’t. The value of radiative forcing is not a ‘fact’.
That’s just the tip of a very large iceberg. One that somehow keeps making past temperatures colder, and the more recent ones warmer. That issue is certainly one that facts will not even make the tiniest dent in the belief of the global warmer. No matter how much the “facts” are changed by GISS or the NCDC, they will always still believe in the new facts.
The difference in this case, is that somebody who hasn’t already made up their mind, might become suspicious when they find out how the facts keep getting changed.
Will you ever learn? Skeptic Muller and the denier funded BEST did look at the past records already and Anthony Watts promised that he was going to accept the results.
Can you guess what WUWT did?
They rejected what an independent view of the data and models found.
