How many people take Global Warming totally on faith?

[brazil84]

@Eyer8

How?

I’m willing to outline how it could be done, but let me ask you a question first: Are you denying that it’s possible to set up a stock market simulation?

[brazil84]

@Sage Rat

Then obviously you’ve not taken the five minutes it takes to find out what the “infamous” issue was, nor how science works.

Wrong.

The issue was that one guy had one problem with his math that got a false result. This was quickly spotted (remember, all this stuff is public for checking.)

Wrong. Apparently, the “one guy” refused to provide his source code; and initially claimed to be unable to remember where the data was located, then provided inaccurate data, then provided a new version of the data which was inconsistent with previously published material, etc.

cite:

http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=16812

When corrections were made, everyone still got a hockey puck even the people who were the most vociferously against AGW.

Cite?

So there were several other graphs that didn’t have the error and had the same result–and as said, even when corrected, the one graph was still a hockeypuck.

Cite?

[Quartz]

@Lamar Mundane

What were the motivations of the scientists in the mid 1980’s when they were first drawing these conclusions?

If The Great Global Warming Swindle is to be believed, it was politics: Mrs Thatcher wanted to put coal-fired power stations and thus the miners in a bad light, and promote nuclear power.

[begbert2]

@kanicbird

I like this breakdown though I’m not sure I agree with it, but note your definition of faith can mean complete trust, so they can be used interchangable.

I would contend for one that believes in a living God that interacts with us, not a dead ‘god’ that is written about, they would have complete trust in whatever God tells them.

The terms ‘trust’ and ‘complete trust’ don’t mean the same thing, so neither they nor any synonymous terms to either are interchangeable with one another.

For example, I trust that my apartment won’t be burglarized or burned down. However, I still bought renter’s insurance, which I wouldn’t have done if I had complete trust that the badness would never occur.

And wouldn’t you also have to believe that the God was both honest and benevolent, before putting trust in it’s statements? (And of course most or all reasons to think God is honest are circular.)

[Sage_Rat]

@brazil84

Wrong. Apparently, the “one guy” refused to provide his source code; and initially claimed to be unable to remember where the data was located, then provided inaccurate data, then provided a new version of the data which was inconsistent with previously published material, etc.

And? A) His source code didn’t matter since the issue was with his math–which was published and is how people found the flaw, and B) so the guy’s an asshole. I’ll guarantee you that a good percentage of the world is assholes, and they’re spread evenly on every side of every issue ever pondered by man. If you start disbelieving things because there’s one asshole among the other 90 people who all did everything nice and proper and came to the same exact result as the asshole, then you’re going to have to become a nihilist as there won’t be anything left to believe.

Cite?

Cite?

RealClimate: Dummies guide to the latest “Hockey Stick” controversy

[GIGObuster]

@brazil84

Wrong.

Wrong. Apparently, the “one guy” refused to provide his source code; and initially claimed to be unable to remember where the data was located, then provided inaccurate data, then provided a new version of the data which was inconsistent with previously published material, etc.

cite:

http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=16812

Cite?

Cite?

RealClimate: The missing piece at the Wegman hearing

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?

[brazil84]

@Sage Rat

And? A) His source code didn’t matter since the issue was with his math–which was published and is how people found the flaw, and B) so the guy’s an asshole.

So much for your claim that “remember, all this stuff is public for checking.”

[brazil84]

@Sage Rat

RealClimate: Dummies guide to the latest “Hockey Stick” controversy

At a minimum, your claim must assume that those who are “vociferously against AGW” accept Mann’s tree ring data. Which I doubt that they do.

[GIGObuster]

@Quartz

If The Great Global Warming Swindle is to be believed, it was politics: Mrs Thatcher wanted to put coal-fired power stations and thus the miners in a bad light, and promote nuclear power.

A great response to that “Great” Swindle:
http://www.climal.com/previous-story-5.php

And the fallout the Maker had when confronted on his errors:

The Great Global Warming Swindle

The Times reported that Durkin had seriously fallen out with a scientist who had been considering working with him. Armand Leroi was concerned that Durkin had used data about a correlation between solar activity and global temperatures which had subsequently been found to be flawed. Leroi sent Durkin an e-mail saying, “To put this bluntly: the data that you showed in your programme were wrong – and may have been deliberately faked . . . what abundant experience has already taught me – that, left to their own devices, TV producers simply cannot be trusted to tell the truth. I am very disappointed. I am copying this to Lou Bolch. And to Simon Singh, Ben Goldacre, and Olivia Judson – fellow connoisseurs of this sort of thing.”[48]

He copied the e-mail to scientific author Simon Singh. Durkin responded to Leroi saying “You’re a big daft cock”. Singh sent an email to Durkin urging him to engage in serious debate. Durkin responded stating, “Since 1940 we have had four decades of cooling, three of warming, and the last decade when temperature has been doing nothing”, and concluded with, “Go and fuck yourself”.[48] Durkin later apologised for his language, saying that he had sent the e-mails when tired and had just finished making the programme, and that he was “eager to have all the science properly debated with scientists qualified in the right areas”.[33]

Following Eigil Friis-Christensen’s criticism of inaccuracies in the film, Durkin said in an email to Friis-Christensen that the error with the graph labelled “Temp & Solar Activity 400 Years” was “an annoying mistake”, and that it didn’t alter the programme’s argument. [49]

As for Mrs Thatcher: “This may or may not be true, but either way it does not change the science.” Margaret Thatcher was too conservative to be considered to be in the same league as Al Gore, so I do think she came concerned with the chemicals in the air simply because that was original calling:

The Times & The Sunday Times

Margaret Thatcher was a formidable force when it came to campaigning against CFC emissions precisely because she was a trained chemist.

[GIGObuster]

@brazil84

So much for your claim that “remember, all this stuff is public for checking.”

It is.

One of the simplest logic flaws in all this is the already demonstrated fact that others can ignore the modeling code and use the available data to find mistakes, and they did.

So far I hear only complaints that it can not be done, and yet one critic already did so, and the bottom line is that it did not change the overall results much.

Logic tells me that if the critic’s data was not the one used before in the early models, that then it would had been impossible to enter it and use it in the latest recreations and corrections. However his data was, and it was used in the models. I will also infer that the new models confirmed the change the latest critic made (the models work mostly by simulating the physics of the materials and energy), so I conclude that what the critic did has made the results to be more accurate, it is ridiculous to me the spectacle of critics that do not get this.

[brazil84]

@GIGObuster

It is.

Do you deny that Mann held back data and source code?

[GIGObuster]

@brazil84

Do you deny that Mann held back data and source code?

You must confuse me with someone else, I only did say that what the latest “oh boy, NASA was faking data!” bit on the right wing news lately actually showed that the excuse of the critics that “not having access to the code stops critics or it is a justification to doubt on the mountain of evidence, or that modeling is bad M’ kay” to be just that.

An excuse.

[brazil84]

@GIGObuster

You must confuse me with someone else,

Nope. Sage rat said this:

The issue was that one guy had one problem with his math that got a false result. This was quickly spotted (remember, all this stuff is public for checking.)

This was not true, which Sage rat has essentially admitted.

[GIGObuster]

@brazil84

Nope. Sage rat said this:

This was not true, which Sage rat has essentially admitted.

:rolleyes:

So I did say that?

Please pay attention, I am not defending someone not releasing his code, (although even the article you posted has the author admitting this is standard procedure among researchers.) only saying that others can ignore the missing modeling code and use the available data to find mistakes, and they did.

So far I hear only complaints that it can not be done, and yet the latest critic already did so, and the bottom line is that it did not change the overall results much.
Also there is this from your biased cite:

@Steve McIntyre

Through my own checking, I found that the calculations behind the most famous IPCC graph–the 1,000-year climate hockey stick–contained a serious calculation error that invalidates the results. In this case, the methodology had been inaccurately described in the journal publication.

I also found an influential but unreported alteration to a key data series, where the alteration had been disguised by a (perhaps unintentional) misrepresentation of the start date of the underlying data.

(Needs to be added here that the critics were making an error, as the Real Climate cite showed)

When he had implied before that the data was not available.

I only can conclude that indeed even the point that they “held back data” is suspect.

[brazil84]

@GIGObuster

:rolleyes:

So I did say that?

Yes.

I said the following to Sage rat:

So much for your claim that “remember, all this stuff is public for checking.”

And here was your response:

It is.

In the case I was discussing, “it” certainly was NOT.

Please pay attention, I am not defending someone not releasing his code, (although even the article you posted has the author admitting this is standard procedure among researchers.) only saying that others can ignore the missing modeling code and use the available data to find mistakes, and they did.

Do you or do you not deny that Mann held back data?

I also found an influential but unreported alteration to a key data series, where the alteration had been disguised by a (perhaps unintentional) misrepresentation of the start date of the underlying data.

That does not imply that Mann released all his data. But any way, apparently, Mann eventually released his data . . . years after the fact, and only after he was asked to by Congress.

Cite: Hockey stick graph - Wikipedia

One point of contention relates to McIntyre’s requests for Mann to provide him with the data, methods and source code McIntyre needed to “audit” MBH98.[19] Mann provided some data and then stopped. After a long process - in which the National Science Foundation supported Mann - the code was made publicly available [20]. It happened because Congress investigated after an article in the Wall Street Journal [21] detailed criticisms raised by McIntyre.[22] Congress was especially concerned about Mann’s reported refusal to provide data. In June 2005, Congress asked Mann to testify before a special subcommittee. The chairman of the committee (Joe Barton, a prominent global warming skeptic) wrote a letter to Mann requesting he provide his data, including his source code, archives of all data for all of Mann’s scientific publications, identities of his present and past scientific collaborators, and details of all funding for any of Mann’s ongoing or prior research, including all of the supporting forms and agreements. [23] The American Association for the Advancement of Science viewed this as “a search for some basis on which to discredit these particular scientists and findings, rather than a search for understanding.”[24] When Mann complied, all of the data was available for McIntyre.

[GIGObuster]

@brazil84

Yes.

I said the following to Sage rat:

And here was your response:

In the case I was discussing, “it” certainly was NOT.

:rolleyes:

I did clarify already that I was concentrating with the data not the coding,

Do you or do you not deny that Mann held back data?

I already said that for my point that is irrelevant.

That does not imply that Mann released all his data. But any way, apparently, Mann eventually released his data . . . years after the fact, and only after he was asked to by Congress.

Cite: Hockey stick graph - Wikipedia

And sould I be worried? I’m now more confident that then bigger mistakes would have been found if the contrarians were correct.

[brazil84]

@GIGObuster

:rolleyes:

I did clarify already that I was concentrating with the data not the coding,

I already said that for my point that is irrelevant.

:rolleyes:

Then there was no need for you to state that all was disclosed.

I’m now more confident that then bigger mistakes would have been found if the contrarians were correct.

And I’m more skeptical than ever about AGW. If its proponents aren’t releasing the source code for their models, that’s just ridiculous.

If they are asking the world to spend billions of dollars as a result of their research, there should be 100% disclosure. Everything, including source code, failed models – everything.

[GIGObuster]

Incidentally, I have to say that I only had deduced from all the ongoing discussions that McIntyre and the latest critic had access to the data. Now you bring confirmation that my hunch was correct.

With your latest cite it seems to me now that this last effort was just to get someone to admit not only a point that I was not defending, but also a moot point on top of it.

This has only showed to me what deniers are passing as “strong” points nowadays: just rhetoric and the twisting of evidence.

McIntyre was critical of this Nature blog entry because von Storch did not acknowledge the role of McIntyre and McKitrick;[57] however von Storch replied[58] that:

This was on purpose, as we do not think that McIntyre has substantially contributed in the published peer-reviewed literature to the debate about the statistical merits of the MBH and related method. They have published one peer-reviewed article on a statistical aspect, and we have published a response – acknowledging that they would have a valid point in principle, but the critique would not matter in the case of the hockey-stick … we see in principle two scientific inputs of McIntyre into the general debate – one valid point, which is however probably not relevant in this context, and another which has not been properly documented.

[brazil84]

@GIGObuster

Incidentally, I have to say that I only had deduced from all the ongoing discussions that McIntyre and the latest critic had access to the data. Now you bring confirmation that my hunch was correct.

So it’s irrelevant that Mann refused to release his data for 5 years? That it had to be dragged out of him by Congress?

Here’s what Sage rat claimed:

This was quickly spotted (remember, all this stuff is public for checking.)

Clearly this claim was false.

[GIGObuster]

@brazil84

:rolleyes:

Then there was no need for you to state that all was disclosed.

I will let anyone else to conclude if I did not clarify it before you continued with this silly effort.

And I’m more skeptical than ever about AGW. If its proponents aren’t releasing the source code for their models, that’s just ridiculous.

Your rhetoric only, the main critic you brought a cite from had access to the data and I see that he did just fall on his face.

If they are asking the world to spend billions of dollars as a result of their research, there should be 100% disclosure. Everything, including source code, failed models – everything.

And the critics do have it, but as your last example showed, I’m not shaking in my boots, I’m more confident now the science will be confirmed.