jshore, thanks for the reply. It has become all too painfully obvious that the National Science Foundation, as well as both Science and Nature magazines, all routinely allow certain authors to flout their own policies on archiving.
I have corresponded with both the NSF and Science in a vain effort to get them to enforce their own guidelines, without success and without any explanation for their failure to enforce what is the simplest of policies – that all the data for published papers be placed in a public archive, so that the study can be replicated.
As I said before, without access to the data, without the ability to check the calculations and the result, it’s not science. Without access to the data, if Mann had had his way, no one would have ever known of the errors in his analysis. Why should it take a Congressional committee to get that?
The only “deceptive” actions in this are the actions of the NSF and Science and Nature. My actions have not been deceptive, and your accusation is unprofessional, unpleasant, and untrue.
In these two steps you have already made your mistake. Note that the way Rahmstorf et al. plot their data for some reason, the value for a given year is offset by half a year to the right so the 1990 values that you refer to as being +0.254 deg is the one slightly to the right of the 1990 line. (This is clear from the fact that in the table of values 1990 is a local maximum, with the value not being exceeded again until 1997…and also from the fact that the last data point plotted is 2006.) So, your estimate that the bottom of the shaded area is 0.25 deg above the 1990 anomaly level isn’t even close to correct. It is actually below the 1990 anomaly level…and in fact, the 1990 anomaly level is almost equal to the central trend (blue dashed line) in the year 2000. From this one error, everything else you say is wrong. (As, of course, is also obvious just from looking at the graph.)
In other words, “Everybody is out of step but my Johnny”. I think that one of the important personal characteristics that makes a climate change skeptic a skeptic is an ability to believe that everyone else is wrong and he is right. This the skeptic community seems to think that they (despite most not being trained scientists) have a monopoly on understanding how science does and should work, the nature of replication in science, and so forth. I think a good step to start on the road out of the wilderness is to begin to recognize that maybe sometimes when you disagree with respected authorities about science, it is because they are right and you are wrong.
At any rate, I still believe you were leaving out a lot of information when you quoted NSF policy without discussing how they had interpreted their policy, so call that what you will. You may think you are the one who gets to decide how to interpret NSF policy and that they have no say in the matter…but they probably think otherwise. And, the idea that scientists’ codes are not their own intellectual property would be a gigantic shift in the way that NSF policy is actually carried out…and I wouldn’t be surprised if it led to many scientists deciding simply to do without NSF funding if such a policy was enforced. It would also open up a huge can-of-warms when someone publishes results using a third party’s commercial propriety code, in which case they don’t have the ability, let alone the right, to release this code.
Mind you, I am not saying that there could not be improvements made in the way data is archived in many fields of science…and I am not opposed with efforts to do so. I think they can be quite useful. However, to decree what you think the solution should be and demand everyone else conform to your ideas (which are, frankly, pretty different [to use a euphimistic word] than how things are done now) is not the way progress is going to be made in this direction.
As the NSF clearly stated, there was sufficient access to data to allow other scientists to check the work…And, indeed other scientists were able to check the results of Mann et al. without having access to his code. And, even the big complainers about all of this seem to arrived at most of their conclusions before Mann ever released the code. If anything, this whole episode shows that not releasing the code sooner was a tactical error on Mann’s part in that it probably would have shut these people up sooner.
“Clearly”? Where’s the “clearly hostile” in that? Sounds completely factual to me.
So, possibly not so hostile after all, is it?
No, but they won’t pay for the article or for you to come and speak, which amounts to the same thing.
No, it’s an interpretation
We must be reading different letters then. Sure, they didn’t come out and say “write an article debunking global warming”. Not even they are that stupid. But it’s pretty clear what they were asking for.
You neglect to mention that they also link to the full text of one letter, which would make any selective quoting pretty moot, no?
“independent review and policy critique”, to be exact. And please, the way they put scare quotes around “consensus”, the mischaracterisation of the summaries as “Poorly supported”, the emphasis on the desired paper exploring the “limitations” of modelling, the general tone of the whole thing is clearly biased in terms of one expected outcome.
Nope, I was directing it at the blogosphere in general. I don’t know what your training is so I wouldn’t presume. I gather intention has some, and brazil84 has none from things they’ve said, but those are the only two regular denialists around here I’m familiar with, and I wasn’t counting you in with them since you seem more on the fence than either of them.
jshore, your response is appreciated. I’m not asking anyone to conform to my ideas. I’m asking NSF and Science Magazine to follow their own policies in regard to a very simple matter – archiving all the data used in a study, so that it can be replicated. Not part of the data, not just the data the scientist wants to release, all of the data.
Once again, you seem to avoid doing the obvious - read the policies, and decide for yourself. The Science Magazine policy says:
I leave it up to the reader to decide what “must be deposited in an approved database” means.
Asking for the archiving of data is neither “out of step”, nor is it asking anyone to conform to anything other than standard scientific practice. Your gyrations to justify Mann not revealing his data, while amusing and amazing, are like watching the performance of a circus contortionist. It makes for good light entertainment, but I wouldn’t recommend that anyone try it at home, you’ll get your ethics all twisted into a knot.
Is everyone out of step but me? By no means. Some climate scientists, like Rob Wilson and Judith Lean, archive their data promptly and completely.
Others, like Lonnie Thompson, have done some very important data gathering (ice cores in his case) but have consistently refused to archive the data. Tragically, the practice is widespread in the climate field. Mann said that asking for his data was “intimidation”, and Phil Jones refused to reveal his data saying “Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?”.
Well, d’oh, Phil, that’s called “science”, one scientist makes a claim, others try to find something wrong with it. Phil clearly doesn’t understand this arcane process … do you?
You have consistently refused to condemn these practices, hiding your opinion under a rubric of “I am not saying that there could not be improvements made” and the like … when will you ever come out and take a stand on these questions, instead of pussyfooting around? What Thompson and his ilk have done is a disgrace to science, and by not speaking out against it, you are encouraging scientific misconduct.
I’m still unclear why you are so unwilling to take a stand supporting full disclosure and transparency in science, and condemning those who don’t follow standard scientific practice … but like my previous inquiry about whether you support trials for scientists who disagree with the “revealed wisdom”, I may not get an answer to this question either.
But it is an enduring mystery to me why time after time, in case after case, you want to defend climate scientists who hide their data … you keep trying to divert the discussion to things like the exact wording and interpretation of the policies, which is not the point.
The point is that science requires transparency and openness, and you are refusing to take a stand against people who don’t do that, “scientists” who to hide their data and refuse to disclose it.
Why?
w.
PS - there is further discussion of this issue here and here.
I have no idea at this point what graph you are actually referring to. But, do you really think it is likely that the IPCC made its prediction based on what the actual temperature is in that one particular year? That would be incredibly silly. If they started in 1989 instead, they would be shifted down by 0.15 C. Clearly, they were talking about the trendline in 1990.
The reason I don’t condemn it is that these are he said / she said cases where every reputable body that I know of that has actually looked into them (e.g., like the NSF in the case of Mann) has found the charges to be without basis.
Your original statement was “The next logical step, which James Hansen has now taken, is to call for people who don’t toe the party line to be tried and imprisoned”. It appears that your statement was a significant exaggeration. It is not people who are not toeing the party line…It is the CEOs of a few large fossil fuel companies (in his written testimony, he named Exxon and Peabody Coal) who have explicitly funded the work of organizations whose purpose is to confuse the issue…under the presumption that there is evidence that they knew what they were saying and funding others to say was false. It is rather analogous to the suits that have been brought against tobacco companies for doing a similar thing in regards to the dangers of tobacco. I do think that the rhetoric of talking about trying the actual people is over the top although I can understand the frustration that has led him to make such over-the-top statements. I think that if it eventually comes to legal action, the reasonable precedent is what was done against the tobacco companies, i.e., suits against the companies themselves if is sufficient basis that they knowingly deceived in order to sell more of their product.
See, here is where we can see your biases at work. You won’t even believe the words of a Republican, head of the House Science Committee in castigating his Republican colleague as being way over the line…nor will you believe the NSF itself interpretting its own policies. But, you expect us to believe completely Richard Lindzen talking about this. Can you find some actual reference to outrage by someone who one might not actually expect to express outrage whether something outrageous has occurred or not?
(1) The point that corresponds to “1990” on the horizontal axis and “0.0” on the vertical axis;
(2) The point that corresponds to “2007” on the horizontal axis and “0.25” on the vertical axis.
Clear enough?
It seems that for whatever reason, they used 1990 temps as the reference point.
Do you deny that the legend of the IPCC graph says the following:
I don’t think it’s clear, but let’s assume you are right and they are talking about “trendlines”
I re-did the calculation. Instead of the anomaly for 1990, I averaged the 10 years from 1986 to 1995. Compared to the average from 1998 to 2007, the difference is about 0.26.
Which puts us right at the edge of the shaded area. (It’s too close to say whether it’s in or out. My guess is that if you averaged the monthly figures for the last 120 months, we’d be out.)
Well, if you mean the top edge then you are probably correct about being right on the edge of the shaded area. If you mean the bottom edge, then you are woefully off. As this graph clearly shows, a difference of 0.2 C between 1990 and 2002 would put you pretty much right smack in the middle of the shaded area. So, a change of 0.26 C would be above the middle…in fact, probably up near the top edge, just as the plotted trendlines for the actual data show. To be at the bottom edge, you would need the trend to be about half that…i.e., about 0.13 C as near as I can read it off the graph.
(So, in other words, I agree that your estimate of 0.26 C for the change is probably pretty much right on, but you are dead wrong in regards to where this puts you on the graph! You are actually demonstrating that your own independent calculations for the change in the average temperature agree with the results of Rahmstorf et al.)
Oh, and by the way, if you go to the section of the 2001 IPCC report where they talk about these predictions (see in particular Figs. 9.13 and 9.14), it is clear that when they zero their graph for 1990, they are zeroing a smooth fit to the temperature data…not zeroing relative to the temperature value of that one year. In fact, they are only dealing with these smooth fits to the temperature data in that whole section.
jshore, if at this point in the discussion you haven’t even read Mann’s statement about intimidation, why are you even opening your mouth? Go out and do your homework. You haven’t got a clue what Mann said, you obviously don’t know the history of the situation, you haven’t corresponded (as I have) with Science Magazine about their policies in regards to the Mann fiasco, you are under the stunning illusion that he had already released his data, but despite your lack of knowledge, you are quite willing to favor us with your brilliant analysis of the situation and educate us about how Science Magazine must be right? You seem to think that the NSF and Science Magazine couldn’t possibly be wrong … do you believe that policemen never lie on the stand?
You are a physicist, and I don’t see this kind of thing going on in physics. Suppose someone said “I have developed room temperature fusion”, and you asked them for their data and methods so you could find out if they were just blowing smoke. If their reply was " “Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?”, would you believe their tales of room temperature fusion? Of course not, you’d laugh them out of the room for that kind of answer. That’s not science, that’s evasion.
But in climate science, you give Phil Jones a free pass. He said it, and you don’t have the balls to stand up and call bullshit. Instead, you claim it’s “he said, she said” … sorry, that doesn’t wash. We’re not talking about a man and a woman saying something in private with no one around, as you imply. This stuff is a matter of public record, Phil Jones has confirmed that he said it, Michael Mann’s quote is there for you to read, you can’t blow it off by some trite phrase. Do your homework and take a stand.
I’m tired of leading you by the hand. Find the Mann quote yourself, if you care. OK, it might be tough for you because it was in such an obscure publication, so here’s a clue. It was in his Wall Street Journal interview, February 14 2005. I read it when it came out … you still haven’t heard of it. You keep talking like you know what’s going on, but it is obvious you don’t. If you can’t be bothered to investigate the question before handing out your opinions as if they were reasoned, researched, and valid, why should I be bothered? Your mind is made up, why should I disturb that with inconvenient facts?
Lots of stuff added since the last time I posted - I fear I won’t be able to catch up on it all right now.
intention - it’s good to see you back, I hope you enjoyed your trip.
I do think you’re not giving anyone the benefit of the doubt re: Mann & data release. Interestingly, this is one of the unfortunate confluences between the creation-evolution “controversy” and the global warming controversy. Here’s an excerpt from when Andrew Schafly (of conservapedia infame) tries to insist he has the right to Richard Lenski’s E. coli data:
It’s one thing to ask a scientist to share data for some collaboration, and another to ask one to give the fruits of their labor to a person who will not be convinced by any data and will mangle it to get whatever accusation of fraud they want out of it.
If someone wants help from a scientist, it’s probably more constructive to engage that scientist in a discussion of what sort of work will be done with the data. After all, the recipient is getting thousands (sometimes millions) of person-hours of work for very little cost (there should be some compensation for whatever effort is expended in compiling and sending the data, no?).
Making it clear that the use of the data will be to prop up accusations of falsification and fraud is probably not constructive, and it’s hard to fault anyone who wouldn’t give their data up for that purpose.
(Note that the recipient is unlikely to think the purpose is accusations of falsification or fraud regardless of their own intent. Everyone thinks they’re the good guy (even me! :eek: . It’s not unreasonable to think that in the interest of cooperation and getting something for virtually nothing, the recipient should find a way to make sure the scientist with the desired data can trust that it is a good faith effort.)
I’m sorry that I will be away in Monterey Bay until the 1st - have a great time, everyone, and be wary of SIWOTI syndrome. Happy debating!
You’d have to have eagle eyes to read the exact value off of that plot, which is why Rahmstorf et al. have replotted the IPCC prediction on a reasonable scale. Are you claiming that they have committed scientific fraud? The bottom of the shaded region on their graph is clearly still below 0.2 in 2007. (In fact, as I note below, the IPCC TAR projection in words for the next few decades is that the warming would likely lie in the range of 0.1 C to 0.2 C per decade.)
Besides, which your difference of 0.26 C was determining by comparing an average of 1986 to 1995 with 1998 to 2007. That’s an offset of 12 years, not 17 years as your comparison of 1990 to 2007 would assume. A difference of 0.26 C over 12 years corresponds to ~0.22 C per decade. This is actually a bit higher than the prediction in the IPCC TAR report published in 2001 that the warming would likely be in the range of 0.1 to 0.2 C over the next few decades (and thus quite consistent with what we see in Rahmstorf et al.):
The zoom feature on any pdf viewer will yield a reasonable approximation. If any lurkers are still reading this, please look at the last page of the IPCC 2001 Summary for Policymakers. The main features of the graph are obvious if you look with a slightly open mind.
I am claiming that the 2007 Rahmstorf graph is not a faithful reproduction of the 2001 IPCC graph. I have no idea what Rahmstorf et al.'s intentions were.
I realize that you reallly really wish we could talk about the IPCC’s 2001 predictions by looking at a graph produced in 2007. And ignoring the actual graph from 2001.
Sorry, but my points are focused on the 2001 graph. You know, the actual prediction.
Lol. Try looking at the prediction that was actually made. As opposed to the prediction you wish had been made.
