Climate Gate Scandal Debated
I really wish that they had a scientist debating the scientist from the University of East Anglia. My answers to the questions poised on this show are shown below.
Here are my answers to the questions raised in this series:
Was any data manipulated or suppressed?
Why has the UEA refused to open up all data to scrutiny?
What about the two other datasets that reach the same conclusions with independent observations?
What about the physical evidence of global warming?
Here are my answers to the questions raised in this series:
Was any data manipulated or suppressed?
On the issue of suppression
Think 'Climate-Gate' Is Nonevent? Think Again
Climate Change E-Mails Cry Out for a National Conversation
On the issue of manipulation, see the links below.
Why has the UEA refused to open up all data to scrutiny?
What about the two other datasets that reach the same conclusions with independent observations?
Why won't global warming advocates release their data?
What Are Global Warming Supporters Trying to Hide?
Other questions -- The British MET, the third most relied on data in the IPCC report
Climate Gate Scandal spreads to New Zealand
What about the physical evidence of global warming?
This list is too long, but the first one here is the most important.
"Antarctic Ice Growing, Not Shrinking." -- Antarctica has 90 percent of the Earth's ice and 80 percent of its fresh water
"the extent of arctic sea ice has been increasing for the last two years."
See also the New Zealand discussion above.
Labels: climategate, Environment, GlobalWarming
posted by John Lott at 1:15 PM
2 Comments:
I have worked to better the environment through education and research at SF State University’s Sierra Nevada Field Campus. I think our most important issue is fixing wetlands. However I have become increasingly skeptical of CO2 induced warming. I tried to engage Mann’s RealClimate website in debate but often had posts deleted, or have a post attacked and then denied posting any replies. So I know first hand some of these scientists are willing to manipulate the appearance of science.
I am a skeptic who sees a recent warming trend which CO2 probably has some small impact. But I do not think natural variability has been well modeled. And the current warming may be no different than the Mideival warm period. What AGW proponents push is a perception of the hockey stick where past temperatures were stable and slightly cooling and only recently rapidly increase. It creates an illusion that the Medieval Warm period and Little Ice Age never happened. However their proxies used to create the hockey stick graph of temperatures did not withstood the test of time. Their proxies showed a decline these past 50 years when observation said it has increased. This called into question the hockey stick and is why they felt they “must hide the decline”. The clearest article showing how Jones and Mann tried to misrepresent the past climate and mislead the public by "hiding the decline" has been written by Marc Sheppard. A must read that is well documented! Go to http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/12/understanding_climategates_hid.html
And this isn’t the first time Trenberth objectivity and political motivation has been called into question. Dr. Chris Landsea’s resignation letter to the IPCC is illustrative http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/science_policy_general/000318chris_landsea_leaves.html
Excerpt: “It is beyond me why my colleagues would utilize the media to push an unsupported agenda that recent hurricane activity has been due to global warming. Given Dr. Trenberth’s role as the IPCC’s Lead Author responsible for preparing the text on hurricanes, his public statements so far outside of current scientific understanding led me to concern that it would be very difficult for the IPCC process to proceed objectively with regards to the assessment on hurricane activity. …”
And observations from Florida show Trenberth was wrong. http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/tropical/global_running_ace.jpg
Actually, Watson has a point. When I see a so-called scientist who has an economic interest in reaching a certain conclusion write that he used a 'trick' to hide a trend in measured data that contradicts that conclusion, my puny little mind is incapable of comprehending that what I'm seeing is a valid use of a technique to reach a legitimate, objective scientific conclusion and not just another example of humans behaving badly.
And what exactly is this 'trick'? Normally, global temperatures are reported as 'anomalies', i.e., deviations of temperature from some reference temperature. The scale of a graph of these anomalies is several tenths of a degree. When actual temperatures are added in, and the results are plotted with the temperatures near the middle of the graph, the scale factor of the graph is changed by a couple of orders of magnitude. What was a very 'spikey' graph, showing a definite declining trend, is now a smooth horizontal line.
And why use this trick? Watson alluded to it when he discussed the diversion of tree ring data from the temperature data starting around 1960. Essentially, they were trying to defend Michael Mann's 'hockey stick curve' methodology. The good professor used tree ring data as a proxy for temperature, in order to show a correlation between temperature and CO2 concentration. But tree growth is only weakly correlated to temperature, but strongly correlated to CO2 concentration (because CO2 acts as a plant fertilizer). So all that Mann actually accomplished was to show that CO2 concentration as measured by tree growth is strongly correlated with CO2 concentration measured directly. Duh.
Nevertheless, these 'scientists' are still using and defending this approach, because it makes the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age disappear. And since, for the most of the last 1,000 years we haven't measured temperature directly, they can get away with it. Unfortunately, we began measuring global temperature and CO2 concentration directly at the beginning of the 20th century. The CO2 concentration increased monotonically throughout the 20th century. As long as the temperature was also increasing, there appeared to be a correlation between it and CO2. But then, around 1940, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation went into its cooling phase, and we had 28 years of global cooling, which shows as a negative correlation to CO2 concentration -- not good for the anthropogenic theory. This negative correlation (i.e., the 'decline' referred to in the email) needed to be hidden. Thus, the 'trick'.
Of course, mere correlation does not imply cause-and-effect. But without correlation, there is no cause-and-effect. Unfortunately, all of the 20-some global circulation models 'assume' a cause-and-effect relationship between CO2 and temperature. So the absense of correlation for 25 percent of the time when actual measurements were being made, and 50 percent of the time when such observations could be attributed to anthropogenic sources, suggests that said models are worthless.
I'm with Dr. Lott -- it would be nice to see a scientist debating a scientist on this issue. It would also be nice to see the skeptic actually being allowed to complete a thought before he is interrupted.
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