Global Warming. Fact or Fiction?

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I've not seen credible theory against plate tectonics, not so with AGW. This consensus thing is boring. I can think for myself, thank you. Just put the arguments on the table please.

And this attitude declaring all non-believers as non-scientist is ridiculous. Have a look at the Open Letter to the Community from Chris Landsea written after he withdrawn from IPCC AR4. It looks more like these "scientists" are the one who like to take words out of context and put words in other scientists' mouths.


Just a few snippets from the leaked emails:

Redefine peer-review:


Refuse to disclose and conspire to destroy raw data and computer code:


You probably have heard about "tricks" already, so what's the newspeak meaning of "dirty laundry"?


What to do before FOI, delete the emails! Did he forget his own?


Steal documents to gain advantages in getting research funding?



MBH98 was published in Nature in the first place, so it's natural to submit a rebuttal to the same journal. Of no interest to its readers is not a good excuse to me. Besides, Man et al. end up having to publish a corrigendum. So Nature is clearly biased in their assessment.


Not sure what you are point is. Tree growth also correlates to humidity and smoke means less sun shine, so are you hinting that the growth is minimum? If that's your point then it only highlights how unreliable tree ring data is.


Again, it means using tree ring as proxy to temperature is unreliable.


That depends if that picture is in the data or in their mind only. Dropping some raw data, adjusting it for variables is necessary some times. Because it can have profound impact, the process must be justified and documented. In case of tree rings, the data clearly diverged from reality after 1960. Until that mysterious hidden factor(s) is identified, there's no reason to believe the pre-1960 reconstructions are reliable.


Unfortunately this branch of science is very politicized. You have on one side fierce defenders and the other equally fierce skeptics. You don't see them "smacked down very harshly by their peers", because you refuse to listen to the other side.


Hmm, I can't even remember how many church scandals I've heard. And you believe scientists are holier than priests? It's your choice, but I'll decide by the arguments of both sides.



The advantage of tree ring data is that they are well preserved and it's easy to obtain for a lot of locations. Other proxy data like ice tends to be much more local. Others like pollen shows much more variation. Most have much lower resolution (both time and temperature). Coral may be the next best, but they too have more problems than trees. They are less well studied and less available and a look at the Tarawa coral core seems to indicate better correlations to rainfall than temperature. There's also the uncertain relation between sea and atmosphere temperature. And then there's always the problem of calibration. Since tree ring data provides the most continuous data, most study depends on it. That's also why critics focused on it.

When the best data one have is questionable, then the conclusions arrived from it is also questionable.


Here: Do Cosmic Rays Accelerate Growth of Life? New Discovery Says "Yes"


The author found out the amount of "homogenization" applied to the raw data. It's -2°C for pre-1930 vs +2.4°C for post-1980 and there's not even a single footnote explaining why these values are chosen.


Sorry, I'm at lost. In my post you're responding to, I already put a direct link to the respond from NIWA:

Which is a respond to this accusation, again from my previous post:

Which I already voiced my dissatisfaction in the same post:

The accusation is again the amount of homogenization applied. Your link simply points to the same adjusted records. So what is your point?


The problem is you are missing the real question: Whether human activity is responsible for the climate change? And if so, what portion of the change are we responsible?


It's boring quoting myself. I guess it's better than re-typing, so here:



It's pretty pointless arguing about this. On one hand, you obviously won't even consider the possibility of a low positive total feedback. On the other hand, I obviously don't believe in anthropogenic global warming, so this "2-6°C in 100 years" is complete nonsense to me. (btw it's 1.1-6.4°C for the 21st century in the IPCC report)


Solar minimum is just the short term cycle, the sun has a long term cycle too. For example, the Maunder Minimum correspond to the Little Ice Age. And the recent peak around 2000 also correspond to the peak of global temperatures in recent time.


Thanks for the links, but you still missed my point. If you measure it on Earth, that will only yields the distribution after the effect of the atmosphere.

And quoting from the Glory link you provided:

Perhaps you should read the articles first before you post. Especially when you snort and call something bull.

Funny if they have the distribution, why are they always publishing the total figure. And my argument still stands, they just deduced the 1/4 figure from the ultraviolet wave length, we need the whole spectrum to see the whole picture.

Did you read the link? Plate tectonics has played a large part in climate change in the past; it is not playing a large part in the current climate change. Duh.

It's not quite that simple. Different types of clouds have different effects; high altitude clouds have net cooling effects, and low altitude clouds have net warming effects (just for a start).

Funny, you dare to speak.
Quote from the same article:

The start is more like what our understanding of the cloud feedback is. It has even more uncertainties than the CO2 theory. And more importantly no one knows how temperature change affect the type of cloud being formed.

[

That's partly because there isn't significant financial interest in denying plate tectonics, and partly because you haven't been paying attention. There are right-wing fundies who claim that current geological theory is all wrong and that oil is actually produced deep inside the planet on a rapid, ongoing basis because god put it there and set it up for humans to use.



scientific consensus is a really good place to start when you don't know squat about the field of interest to start with. Starting with the denialists only gives you a skewed picture, which will twist everything else you learn on the topic and, in the end, require more education on the topic that you would have initially needed, before you finally understand it.



I have to wonder if you even read that letter. Landsea is not saying that global warming is not happening, nor is he disavowing any of his own prior scientific conclusions or the prior IPCC reports. He is saying that IPCC4, and in particular its head, Dr. Trenberth, have political motivations and, in a press conference, distorted his conclusions about climate change's effect on hurricanes and tropical storms.



Eeyyeahhhh. Honestly, do you think those guys are going to be able to impact the peer review process of Science or any other credible journal?



That's got squat to do with peer review. It has to do with a single group of people trying to protect their data from scrutiny. If these guys were trying to prohibit peer reviewers from seeing the data for an article they were submitting, as opposed to trying to prevent a bunch of politically motivated hacks from distorting things, you might have a point.



Yeah. I can see why he might be worried about raw data falling into the hands of those who would try to distort things.



'Cause, you know, there's never any rivalry between different research orgs...



Ummm....
getting a leaked document is not the same as 'stealing.' Was the NYT guilty of 'theft' when it broke Watergate?

(bolding mine)

Do you have any idea of the volume of submissions, both in original papers and rebuttals, that are submitted to a journal like Nature on a regular basis? Especially rebuttals on politically hot topics? Show that Nature refused to consider any criticism at all, as opposed to Nature refusing to publish that particular criticism, and you might have a point. It might not be a good 'excuse' to you, but it's a polite way of saying 'we have better things to print, okthxby.'



Yeah. That was my point. Tree ring data is a PROXY for climate change, and it SHOULD be swapped for real data asap. Unfortunately, for some eras it's the best that we have, meaning that multiple sources from multiple regions should be pooled to minimize the impact of local perturbances (like fire) and that corrections for known factors that would confuse the correlation should be added in.
Good thing we now have MULTIPLE SOURCES OF DATA which generally tend to agree with corrected tree ring data, eh?



Like I said, good thing we now have other sources (which agree with prior climate models, tree-rings included), eh?



BS. You haven't been reading any journals if you can claim that. Scientific integrity does not fly out the window just because those outside of the scientific community begin to have an agenda.



'scuse, but did I say that scientists are holy? Did I claim that data falsification does not happen? No. I said that, if it is discovered - and there is a hell of a lot more scrutiny on a publishing scientist than there is on the average priest - that scientist's career will be over and he will be mocked and sneered at if he or she so much as writes a letter to the editor for the rest of his or her life.



Only if that 'best' data is the only source with which one is drawing the conclusion. That is not the case in this instance.



That's actually quite interesting. It's not enough to throw out the entire climate change picture, but I will be curious to see if this correlation shows up in other stands of trees besides the one in Scotland that the researchers examined. Thanks for the link.



the link you posted wasn't directly to the NIWA page that explained the temperature adjustments, only to a page that restated their conclusion.



From a sub-link of the link I posted, quote:

Dr Jim Salinger has identified from the NIWA climate archive a set of 11 stations with long records where there have been no significant site changes. When the annual temperatures from all of these sites are averaged to form a temperature series for New Zealand, the best-fit linear trend is a warming of 1°C from 1931 to 2008. More information: "Temperature trends from raw data".



Raw data trends, again from a sublink of the one I previously posted:
http://www.niwa.co.nz/our-science/clima ... m-raw-data

The problem is you are missing the real question: Whether human activity is responsible for the climate change? And if so, what portion of the change are we responsible?

Ok, make up your mind. Either you are arguing that the climate isn't changing (which explains all of the previous hash regarding the supposed falsification of climate change data), or you agree that it is warming but disagree that it is due to anthropogenic greenhouse gasses. Right now you look like you're saying, 'well, the climate isn't changing, but if I'm presented with enough evidence to the contrary I'll just fall back on the claim that humans don't have anything to do with it.'

The question of whether humans are responsible is indeed a much more subtle one than whether or not the climate is actually changing, but again an examination of the actual data leads to a pretty much inevitable conclusion that we are having at least some impact. To quote a well-known engineer (albeit outside of his field of expertise): "Ya canna' change the laws of physics, Jim!"


Because publishing the distribution takes up a hell of a lot more space and time, and afaIk has not been shown to be significant to anything. I'm sure you can find the raw data if you're curious, but you might have to correlate and crunch it yourself. Also, TSI? That stands for "Total Solar Irradiance," not for "UV solar irradiance."

Uh, yeah. That supports the claim that heat from the crust is causing the current global warming ...how, exactly?

The fact that there's a lot of uncertainty and chaos theory in cloud formation is not the same as saying 'no one knows squat.' It's also a far cry from demonstrating that there's anything there that should be accounted for in climate change models that isn't currently being accounted for.

To deny plate motion would require that one virtually deny all of physics developed since Newton. Not so with deny or casting doubt on AGW. Plate motion is as real as rain or atoms.

ruveyn

What's the problem with you?

Fuzzy asked a valid question and you posted a link. I then commented that the article is interesting and there's still a lot to learn in that aspect. I never said that research in that area would disprove AGW or not.

When you somehow put words into the authors' mouths and said that their research is concluded. I responded by quoting directly from the article of the authors saying that there are still uncertainties about the contributions to surface temperature and there are problems in existing theories.

You seem dead set to twist every sentence I wrote to mean I used that against AGW. Have I ever written anything about clouds in my post except when responding to ruveyn?

Although it's a major player and recent satellite data do seem to indicate it is a negative feedback, I haven't mentioned it because there's still a lot of unknowns.

OK, if those fit your definition of credible theory.


I thought it's pretty clear I was talking about this consensus atmosphere. Those consenting scientists are as devoted as you are. They are willing to misinterpret the result of research paper to sell AGW. That means competing views are suppressed and one must be very careful reading IPCC's papers.


Seeing that until recently Phil Jones and Michael Mann are very respected in their field and
both held important position of large research institutions, yes. They may not be able to simply ask the journals to turn down the paper. But they can pressure their colleges to give negative opinions when they are asked to review a paper.


Not really unrelated. CRU's reconstructed temperature record is one of the major set of data used by many other papers. When this set can only be taken with faith, then all papers dependent on it can't be properly reviewed.


If their method is concrete, why are they afraid to disclose it? They are the good priests who will never distort things? Besides, CRU received millions of dollars of public fundings, under FOI they are required by law to disclose those data. By withholding such vital info, they effectively silenced all opposing voices. Science progresses through debates, their attitude is no different to religion any more.


Pardon me? CA = Climate Audit, a web site by Steve McIntyre. It's not a research organization. I quoted this email to show their lack of integrity, the black text just happen to be the last line of the email. I didn't cut off mid-paragraph unless it's too long so people can see if it's really taken out of context as some claimed.


Even if it's a hack the media should be safe. The hacker(s) though, can obviously be prosecuted. I think the police in UK is really pursuing this path. However if this article is true then it can actually be whistle blowing. In that case I think the UK have laws to protect the whistle blowers.


No proxy data will agree with the post-1960 tree rings if they are dependable. Until the factor(s) affecting the divergence is identified, tree rings are of no use. Other proxies should be checked against the instrumental data, not the tree rings.


Ha ha, lack of scientific integrity and full of political agenda is exactly what I claimed. I've given enough examples already, of course you are free to interpret it your way.


Totally disagreed. Bad data - the tree rings - should be dropped.


I think I need to clarify myself. I never said that climate has not changed, I only said that human activities have not added catastrophic portion to it. I quoted the article to show tree rings are really showing something other than temperature and thus any analysis based on it is bogus.



Thanks for pointing out about the sublinks. But you mean it really doesn't smell fishy to you when they don't simply use without adjuments those stations that are used to construct the national average?
What they did is finding the differences between the local and the national trend and call it "drift". They then apply adjustments to compensate for this "drifts". What exactly is the theory that states local stations have to follow a national trend? How interesting that all stations selected drifted and 6 out of 7 needed to be marked up? Seeing it's compared against the national average, how representative they are if they are so disconnected with the other 5 stations used to calculate the national figure?


I've absolutely no idea where you get that. I've said it time and again, and even you have quoted me multiple times on this:

More importantly, my position on AGW has no bearing on whether the data is falsified. Even if the data is faulted, there could still be AGW. The only certain thing is that since the data is questionable, their model is questionable too.


Not to be nitpicking. But that's a 80% difference on the lower bound.


Oh, really? Well, I guess you can spin it that way if you ignore the temperatures of this decade.


Right, it may not be a cycle but it still is a low solar output period.


Funny you don't seem to be so picky when it's tree ring or the hockey stick.

Sunspot is the proxy data for solar irradiance. This reconstructed irradiance chart told a different story.


OK, I misunderstood you.


Yet different highlight gives different image:



The data only show that temperature has raised in the last century until it stabilize this decade. CO2 still raised after that and became disconnected with the temperature trend. What it means is there are huge uncertainties in the current CO2 model. Solar output on the other hand at least correspond to the trend without divergence.


That's the problem. Because while TSI on average varied only 0.1%, the variation can be up to 100% in the UV range. And if the theory that some wavelengths are more readily absorbed and have more positive feedbacks, then it can potentially accounted for most of the temperature change.

I put no words into the author's mouths, nor did I say that their research was concluded. I wrote, in fact, one word with that link: "No."
Fuzzy was 'asking' whether or not plate tectonics were affecting global warming, not asking for general information about plate tectonics for curiosity's sake. Please try to be less disingenuous.

"...dead set to twist..." ?! !

Sorry, the this thread is about global warming. Had that escaped your notice? Or are you just trolling at random?

You were pretty strongly implying that Landsea was a scientist who did not support climate change theory. That is not the case; Landsea had a problem with IPCC4's head, not with climate change theory.



good luck to them with that. Scientists are a pretty contrarian bunch.



Even if one accepts that the temperature record is incorrct, that has to do with dogma and not the peer review process.



Because of industry-paid hack 'scientists' and industry-funded think tanks who deliberately take complex data and twist simple, but false, doubts out of it.



That is the one place where they have legitimately committed something that should be criticized.



Somewhat to my shock, Climate Audit isn't quite the hack site that I expected and its reviewers in online science communities are even complimentary of his techniques (one even suggested that it would be a good technique for creationists to take up). That said, McIntyre isn't above personal attacks (he claims, for instance, that any time his supporters are banned from commenting anywhere else it's because of content, not abusive tone) and hyperbole. While the data should have been released, I can sympathize with those researchers being leery of McIntyre whether their data was good or not.

I will have to respond to the rest later; I'm off to work.

I forget which site had it, but the whole research into this topic was flubbed and biased. I forget who dug up the information, but it said that the facility used for testing global warming was positioned right behind some kind of heating plant, or some place that pumped out a lot of heat. At this point, global warming (assuming it isnt fiction) is likely an age-old process. Humans survived it a few times, dinos didnt . . . and now, we have the tech to both record and study what's happening. If it is fiction (with the exception of the big hole), then apparently someone is trying to rouse humanity and send society into chaos (which is a very old tactic to the people who started it can usurp "power" and become leaders). My signature sums it up . . .