Slashdot Mirror

http://climateaudit.org/2007/08/03/hansens-y2k-whopper/
and
http://climateaudit.org/2010/01/23/nasa-hide-this-after-jim-checks-it/

FWIW I don't think it's fair to characterise the NASA guys as 'faking' the data - they just stuffed up. It doesn't reflect particularly well on them that they attempted to quietly & retrospectively correct it though. Note that it also only affected US temperature readings.

NB: I'm sure Steve McIntyre doesn't count as a 'reputable' source as he's a heathen denialist who clearly doesn't understand climate science (despite being the one to find & report the anomoly). There would be other references, I'm just too lazy to look.

How about this tidbit where the UK Met denies the FOIA request to access CRUTEM3 data and claims that "records were not kept" of where the data came from. Where is the convincing rebuttal for the years of runaround from the CRU, UK Met, and associated parties?

Please note that I asked for a peer-reviewed paper, which would contain some kind of physics-based argument. Conspiracy theories bore me; science is really much more interesting!

How about this tidbit where the UK Met denies the FOIA request to access CRUTEM3 data and claims that "records were not kept" of where the data came from. Where is the convincing rebuttal for the years of runaround from the CRU, UK Met, and associated parties?

FOIA in UK laws do not give you permissions to request any data at any time. There are valid and lawful ways to deny them.

And as I noted, the most common way is to not be a party required by law to comply with the FOIA. Moving on, just because something is legal to do, which incidentally doesn't appear to be the case with the CRU FOIA requests, doesn't mean you should do it. Hiding important data and computer models is unscientific as noted by the original poster.

CRU surely is important, but there are other independent aggregated datasetes: http://dss.ucar.edu/datasets/ - just look here.

Ok, I looked. Not sure what your point was supposed to be. As I understand it, there are three prime aggregators of paleoclimate data, the CRU, a NASA unit headed by James Hansen, and something similar in the NOAA (the last being the only one that isn't running some obvious unscientific agenda). If there are other aggregators, then maybe you could just mention them by name rather than throwing links at me?

Most important data from CRU is in HadCRUT3 dataset, and I don't think its validity was questioned. CRU's analysis of this data (the famous 'hockey stick') was called into a question, but not the data itself.

Well, there's a pile of articles from Dr. McIntyre. Many of these criticize HadCRUT3 or its components. So yes, the data itself has been called into question repeatedly.

Yeah the 1970's global cooling connection is out of line, but seriously, the climateaudit.org site is weird. It's like some guy has a reasonable hypothesis that the tree-ring data can be mapped to the experimental record differently. This is Steve McIntyre right? He's got no Ph.D, he's founded and worked for mineral exploration companies, and CGX Energy, doing exploration for oil and gas.

He's a mathemetician and economist by training. His paper about hockeysticks seems to be a paper about slightly different hockeysticks. From the paper (you can find the whole thing on Google http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005/2004GL021750.shtml:

...Their method, when tested on persistent red noise, nearly always produces a hockey stick shaped first principal component (PC1) and overstates the first eigenvalue. In the controversial 15th century period, the MBH98 method effectively selects only one species (bristlecone pine) into the critical North American PC1, making it implausible to describe it as the "dominant pattern of variance". Through Monte Carlo analysis, we show that MBH98 benchmarks for significance of the Reduction of Error (RE) statistic are substantially under-stated and, using a range of cross-validation statistics, we show that the MBH98 15th century reconstruction lacks statistical significance.

That's all fine. That's all good science. Thing is that in the paper, he's talking about monte carlo simulations and the production of hockey-sticks in overweighing the significance of tree ring data. The only hockey-stick in that data is when it dives in the modern period.

The stupid part is that his site overstates the hockey stick continually. Recent popularity seems to try to lead you to believe that the hockey stick paper is about the same hockey stick which everyone got into an uproar about in the Al Gore video. They're not the same. The Al Gore hockey stick, the one with the rising platform thing? that's CO2 levels. He DOES talk about temperature change though... but the hockey stick there is about INSTRUMENTAL temperature changes. It should be around minute 23:50 on the Inconvenient Truth.

Gore: http://user.cloudfront.goodinc.com/community/zach/inconvenient_truth.jpg

Steve McIntyre: http://climateaudit.org/2009/12/10/calibrating-dr-thompsons-z-mometer/

Sure if you talk about TEMPERATURE alone, then McIntyre can make a reasonable statement that the combined temperature graph is dodgy, but the hockey stick people remember is the one with Gore on the platform, with current and projected CO2 levels.

The argument that Steve McIntyre seems to be trying to make is *really* that the tree ring data is good, the stats are bad, and that if you use good stats (which he's qualifed to talk about as a mathetician and economist), then the 15h century does a bit of a woomp downwards before you get into the instrumental data which explodes... he just ignores the recent explosion in instrumental temperatures (aside from his climategate escapades, which are totally political).... and the CO2 data.

Seems there are all kinds of hockey sticks... the dendro one, the instrumental one and the CO2 one. McIntyre has a point about the dendro one, he's got a lot of politics over the CRU thing and the instrumental one, but no science (understandably), does he talk about CO2?

Let me know if I got something wrong, please.

The problem is that gullible idiots like you make unwarranted assumptions about the quality of the scientific evidence based on no more than faith. And every piece of evidence to the contrary is summarily ignored.

No-one is ignoring the problems with this piece of evidence. The problem with this piece of evidence is that it can't be called that; it doesn't meet the necessary standards of scientific evidence. It wasn't peer-reviewed, and it wasn't from a primary source. It shouldn't have been in there. No similar problems have been found in the peer-reviewed portions of the IPCC report, so we're not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

And, yes, I know you're going to mention articles that challenge the conclusions in those areas, but challenge is not the same as succeed. Unless you're going to mention an article that has been peer-reviewed, or one that has not been rebutted, or has a counter-rebuttal that has not been answered, then I'd ask you not to bother, please.

The problem isn't with the "deniers" who are pointing all of these problems out. The "deniers" don't deny climate change or even global warming.

You must talk to different opponents of AGW than myself. I meet lots of people online who even go so far as to dispute a warming trend.

They just deny the right of censorious assholes like you to claim that climate change is a) unprecedented and b) caused by man-made fossil fuels without actual engineering-quality reports showing either of these things to be true or even likely. They aren't the ones in denial - it's you.

I'm assuming don't know this person, so I feel your insults are hasty and based on scant evidence. What were you saying about evidence again?

The smell from underneath the IPCC bandages is pretty bad. The proxy reconstructions of past climate have been shown to be heavily cherry-picked and badly done statistics

Sorry, you appear to have posted a link to Climate Audit's front page. Seeing as they've made lots of claims in the past for which rebuttals exist, it's a little hard to know where to start answering this.

the measurement of surface temperatures by NOAA and NASA appears been heavily manipulated to show warming

No. Data is not being deleted by NOAA or NASA. It is not being supplied to them. The suggested reading is Peterson and Vose 1997 which explains where the data comes from. As for the interpolation claim, if coastal temperatures were being used to estimate mountain temperature anomalies, the anomalies would be larger than reported. You don't believe it? Get the data and work it out for yourself.

as has the temperature records from the Climate Research Unit relied upon for the calibration of climate models - and is the subject of several independent investigations for possible scientific fraud in the US and the UK.

There is no evidence in the emails from CRU for data fraud. If there were data fraud, this could be determined by cross-checking it against the GISS dataset. Unless you believe that everyone's "in on the conspiracy", and are collaborating to fake data. I find such a conspiracy (which, of necessity, would include not only CRU and NASA, but everyone who supplies them with data) highly unlikely.

But you'll ignore it all because it comes from "deniers" and you'll invoke preposterous conspiracy theories involving fossil fuel companies while ignoring the cosying up of nearly entire fossil fuel industry with the alarmists.

I'm hoping

But in reality:

Well, I have cited the link to www.climateaudit.org, where anyone

can browse to and should read the history of what they did.

Your claim that Steve McIntyre went on to say:

"You are suppressing the free thought! CO2 doesn't cause warming, it's the Sun! You have predicted Global Cooling in 70-s! The science is all wrong!"

.. is an outright lie - one which can be disproven by reading up on the site - where

you will see that McIntyre insists that replies to his posts about the science, be

kept to the subject at hand. On such posts, anything off-topic, or which goes into

the realm of politics gets snipped, and the reason given.

However, nice try - it'll only work on those who don't bother to see for themselves if what you or I are saying is true or not.

The problem is, the deniers believe that even one error in a summary report means that the science is wrong, while the scientists are all aware that, yes, it's a bitch, but indeed, sometimes typos creep through.

The problem is that gullible idiots like you make unwarranted assumptions about the quality of the scientific evidence based on no more than faith. And every piece of evidence to the contrary is summarily ignored.

The problem isn't with the "deniers" who are pointing all of these problems out. The "deniers" don't deny climate change or even global warming. They just deny the right of censorious assholes like you to claim that climate change is a) unprecedented and b) caused by man-made fossil fuels without actual engineering-quality reports showing either of these things to be true or even likely. They aren't the ones in denial - it's you.

The smell from underneath the IPCC bandages is pretty bad. The proxy reconstructions of past climate have been shown to be heavily cherry-picked and badly done statistics, the measurement of surface temperatures by NOAA and NASA appears been heavily manipulated to show warming, as has the temperature records from the Climate Research Unit relied upon for the calibration of climate models - and is the subject of several independent investigations for possible scientific fraud in the US and the UK.

But you'll ignore it all because it comes from "deniers" and you'll invoke preposterous conspiracy theories involving fossil fuel companies while ignoring the cosying up of nearly entire fossil fuel industry with the alarmists.You'll ignore the clear conflict of interest of the scientist who made the original bad claim on Himalayan Glaciers claiming millions from the European Union to investigate the problem that he knows doesn't exist. You'll ignore the clear conflict of interest of Rajendra Pachauri and his willingness to fill his pockets with cash all the while exhorting everyone else to embrace the New Poverty of enforced energy rationing to Save the Earth from Global Warming that no-one knows is even happening to any great extent nor even a serious problem that can be "fixed".

Those aren't typos. The entire climate science story is falling apart as scientists investigate clear evidence of fraud, conscious manipulation of evidence in order to deceive and junk science.

The "deniers" are not the problem - its the neo-creationists like you who keep waving away that "there's nothing to be seen here - move along" while the Global Warming Hysteria explodes behind you.

And yes, I'm a liberal. A very angry liberal.

JoshuaZ, I agree with much of what you write, but while the science may be good, the evidence points to the IPCC and Pachauri being bad.

The IPCC and Pachauri stated for a long time there were no errors made and the 2035 number was accurate. Even now I've seen apologies that state this simple shift of 300+ years is meaningless and ignorable.

But the kicker is here at climate audit:

http://climateaudit.org/2010/01/23/pachauri-and-high-noon/

This error was used for fundraising the same as Microsoft uses FUD to keep people from looking into linux. And worse, the funds were funneled into what many are saying seems to be a Rajendra Pachauri laundering scheme. That is, the head of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri seems to have a terrible conflict of interest. Scare people about glaciers and global warming. Contract out TERI to look into them and fix them. Pachauri collects directly from TERI.

This is not a good background for good science to be proliferating.

Conspiracy theories? Those are from the left mostly. With Ozone, I know the NASA scientists very well that tried to measure the hole and found it wasn't there. It was supposed to be a crises until at least 2020. It was a hoax to the point that almost nobody even remembers it now. I remember the plans for blimps and such to "fix the problem." It was all scrapped when the hoax was exposed. Just type in cfc hoax. Some interesting stuff comes up that may be right. I remember having these discussions/arguments over how 1999 there would be no ozone up there and we would all be dead (this was in 1992). I remember a woman in particular that was fighting as if her life depended on it and really believed it strongly. All BS I said. History showed I was totally right. Last I knew she is a housewife.

As for this topic, read the news today? The Russians found that they deleted the data from them that they didn't agree with as well. What other revelation will there be? Complete admission this is all a hoax? Let me focus this for you, read this - http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=34896 if you dare. Tough to dispute that. It's measurable and verifiable (and undeniable for most people). The question is are you going to continue to believe the con job or not. As for the scientists, they will simply say that they were lied to and salvage their own careers. Others will say it was someone insignificant that changed or deleted the data they were using and throw them under the bus. I've seen that before. I've even seen history rewritten to save certain people. Then there is Hansen at Goddard that said it was a year 2000 bug that made his findings wrong for the hottest decade/year for example. Don't know if I sent this to you or not - http://climateaudit.org/2007/08/08/a-new-leaderboard-at-the-us-open/ Interesting, eh?

As for these posts, yea, it's stale. You would be surprised at how they are read, however. I sometimes get responses from stuff I wrote even 6 months or more out. As if I would be the least bit interested by then. I shouldn't have responded in the first place and probably shouldn't have responded here. I know better and I didn't mean to pick on you, it was just right there to hit reply and you were the lucky guy. It was there mocking me! Just kidding. It is hard sometimes to not say anything. Especially when I see a con job going on. Some may later say how come nobody said something? We did. Scientists from around the world have raised very serious questions about this topic. They (people like you) were too busy telling us we are stupid or don't understand or had an agenda or pick some other distraction aimed to discredit. I've even been brutally persecuted before for being right. It's no fun. Sometimes they admit it and pay for their error. I've also been wrong before, however I'm very careful to make sure I don't trash them. Consider what they are saying. They may be right. However a sign that they are wrong is when you find data is missing. Especially data contrary to their point. Ignore it perhaps at the risk of your reputation. If you have something that is very compelling to show me that I'm wrong, please forward it. I'm still willing to consider it, even against my better judgement.

Yes, admitting the entirety of data into calculations of this scale would be foolish.

However, that is NOT what the Russian IEA is claiming Hadley Center did.

The 21-page PDF (http://www.iea.ru/article/kioto_order/15.12.2009.pdf) specifically explains how the English "scientists" discarded more-complete datasets in favor of less complete, used data from stations that were moved around (less reliable) and ignored stations that were, ahem, stationary, etc, etc.

So it's not a question of admitting all data & risking contamination - it's a question of intentionally choosing worse data when better data was available.

There's a translation of the "Conclusions" section of the PDF (can't blame the guy for not translating the entire document, it's a linguistic bitch). Not posting it here - too long - follow the link http://climateaudit.org/2009/12/16/iearussia-hadley-center-probably-tampered-with-russian-climate-data/ and search for "Posted Dec 17, 2009 at 2:44 AM".

investigations on http://climateaudit.org/ and http://wattsupwiththat.com/

They weren't preventing dissenting opinions from being accepting into peer reviewed journals - they expressed disappointment in the fact that the peer review process wasn't doing its job: weeding out bad science.

I don't think you've captured the true flavor of their hijinks.

Rigging a Climate 'Consensus' - About those emails and 'peer review.'

This September, Mr. Mann told a New York Times reporter in one of the leaked emails that: "Those such as [Stephen] McIntyre who operate almost entirely outside of this system are not to be trusted." Mr. McIntyre is a retired Canadian businessman who checks the findings of climate scientists and often publishes the mistakes he finds on his Web site, Climateaudit.org. He holds the rare distinction of having forced Mr. Mann to publish a correction to one of his more famous papers.

As anonymous reviewers of choice for certain journals, Mr. Mann & Co. had considerable power to enforce the consensus, but it was not absolute, as they discovered in 2003. Mr. Mann noted in a March 2003 email, after the journal "Climate Research" published a paper not to Mr. Mann's liking, that "This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the 'peer-reviewed literature'. Obviously, they found a solution to that--take over a journal!"

Mr. Mann went on to suggest that the journal itself be blackballed: "Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board." In other words, keep dissent out of the respected journals. When that fails, redefine what constitutes a respected journal to exclude any that publish inconvenient views.

Scientists actually are pretty skeptical people by nature,...... Most "skeptics" are nothing more than contrarians; skepticism to me implies a willingness to investigate the issue for one's self, but most of the denial movement shows such a poor grasp of the science that they clearly haven't done so.

When it comes to climate, there seems to be two groups - skeptics, and believers. It is amazingly difficult to get believers to reevaluate new data (and perhaps endanger millions in grants?).

Climate of Fear - Global-warming alarmists intimidate dissenting scientists into silence.
Physics Group Splinters Over Global Warming Review
Climate change: this is the worst scientific scandal of our generation

Can most scientists afford to be skeptics?

To which Paul Vaughan responded as follows:

Personal anecdote:
Last spring when I was shopping around for a new source of funding, after having my funding slashed to zero 15 days after going public with a finding about natural climate variations, I kept running into funding application instructions of the following variety:

Successful candidates will:
1) Demonstrate AGW.
2) Demonstrate the catastrophic consequences of AGW.
3) Explore policy implications stemming from 1 & 2.

Follow the money -- perhaps a conspiracy is unnecessary where a carrot will suffice.

Opposing toxic pollution is not synonymous with supporting AGW.

After all, there is huge money to be made and transferred due to "Climate change", even if it all turns out to b

At that point, what would a claimant do? They would follow up on the FOI claim.

Well, at a glance, McIntyre's gang attempted to follow up by submitting FOIA requests (to both the Climate Research Unit and the Met) that bypass previous excuses. For example, McIntyre quotes one rejection that claims they don't release information to non-academics. He apparently followed up by having an academic resubmit the particular FOIA request. Sure, I don't think it's nice, but I really can't get worked up on a UK agency squandering funds and resources stonewalling this guy.

The intelligent questions are at http://climateaudit.org/ . Most of the trouble that came about from climategate has come from them not being answered.

If you don't provide enough detail for someone to be able to reproduce your result, your paper will (well, should) be rejected.

Peer review and the journal acceptance procedures do not check this. Peer review is merely a sanity check. Papers in climatology journals are not rejected because you don't provide enough detail to reproduce the result - referees don't check this. Furthermore, some climatological journals do not believe it is their job to require data archiving either before or after the fact of publication. See here, here, and here.

The policies for journals should be as good as they are at the American Economic Association: Data Availability Policy. Anything less is inadequate.

If you don't provide enough detail for someone to be able to reproduce your result, your paper will (well, should) be rejected.

Peer review and the journal acceptance procedures do not check this. Peer review is merely a sanity check. Papers in climatology journals are not rejected because you don't provide enough detail to reproduce the result - referees don't check this. Furthermore, some climatological journals do not believe it is their job to require data archiving either before or after the fact of publication. See here, here, and here.

The policies for journals should be as good as they are at the American Economic Association: Data Availability Policy. Anything less is inadequate.

If you don't provide enough detail for someone to be able to reproduce your result, your paper will (well, should) be rejected.

Peer review and the journal acceptance procedures do not check this. Peer review is merely a sanity check. Papers in climatology journals are not rejected because you don't provide enough detail to reproduce the result - referees don't check this. Furthermore, some climatological journals do not believe it is their job to require data archiving either before or after the fact of publication. See here, here, and here.

The policies for journals should be as good as they are at the American Economic Association: Data Availability Policy. Anything less is inadequate.

... and yet they continued to publish a dataset which they knew didn't hold up to scrutiny.

Either the proxy isn't a good proxy, or the temperature record isn't a good record. You can have either, but not both.

No researchers in this field have ever, to our knowledge, "grafted the thermometer record onto" any reconstrution. It is somewhat disappointing to find this specious claim (which we usually find originating from industry-funded climate disinformation websites) appearing in this forum. - Michael Mann

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7810

Sure. Let's take the case of AGW currently resting on a single dead tree in Siberia as an example. Faulty research is used as the base for other papers, and thus overthrowing the original research casts doubt on everything that has been built upon it later.

You see, while it's a common misconception that there are "numerous independent data sources" that "prove" anthropogenic global warming, it's simply not true.

Now I'll try to come up with a comprehensive single link to convey this picture. Maybe this works:

http://joannenova.com.au/2009/12/fraudulent-hockey-sticks-and-hidden-data/ ... and in detail:

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7168

As someone pointed out back when the emails were leaked, it's a 61 MB "random" sample of the emails they stole. The fact that it's only a subset, with threads, that all paint the researchers in a negative light implies that this isn't truly a random sample, but rather a hand picked subset. And conveniently just before the big climate change summit. How "random"!

Of course the code is a mess and "not professional", it's written by climatologist grad students instead of some software engineer. Why was it written in Fortran? Easy. It's what they know, and it's a perfectly valid tool. Do you know what all the software that analyzes all the big physics experiments are in? Yup. Fortran. Why? It's what they know. Honestly, this is by far the weakest of all your complaints.

Most damning for the conspiracy folks is the fact that the code, simply doesn't show any evidence of fraud. "Hide the decline"? Well there are two graphs labeled "Northern Hemisphere MXD" and "Northern Hemisphere MXD corrected for decline."

Apparently they slept through "Fraud 101" in grad school huh?

Why would they call their estimation of temperature a "travesty" for when it showed an reduction in temperature for the last 10 years? Well, because temperature, as measured by thermometers, actually increased during that time. So ether the Earth is wrong, or the code is wrong. Which is it?

Climate proxies have been used for years. Do you really think that that they don't know that tree growth can be effected by something other than temperature? Anyone that knows someone that forgot to water a plant know s that. That's why in Dendroclimatology, you control for various effects by comparing trees from one region with those from another region that would be less likely to have been effected by whatever it is you're controlling for. I am shocked. SHOCKED! I say! That there are known methods for doing this correctly. Next you'll be telling me that the air bubbles in ice core data don't actually contain samples of the atmosphere at that time they were formed.

Only four datasets? Really? Well you better tell Steve McIntyre! His list of datasets goes on for for pages!

So the physics of CO2 that you can test in jar is wrong, and there's no correlation, even when measured directly. Wow. You are quite insightful. What is your expertise again?

The site is a blog of Michael Mann, the man behind Mann-made global warming. For a contrasting viewpoint from real scientists you can read climateaudit.org.

Me, I'm not a scientist and I apparently don't have the reverence for a title that's self-ordained that you have. I am rather particular though that people employ symbols in appropriate ways. I don't think that "scientist" is synonymous with "entertaining storyteller". In my world the generous term for such a person is "bard".

When you modify your raw data to create the desired result, and then delete it, what you're doing isn't science. It's science fiction. Have a nice pdf.

Correction: There are plenty of citations and links now to raw data. It wasn't too long ago that Mann was claiming that releasing data and source code was "giving in to intimidation" as Steve McIntyre recorded in 2005.

. But by far the most important data set, HADCRU3 cannot be recreated from its source because Jones admitted weeks ago that the original data had been lost. I think we've discovered the motherlode of "faith-based science" if you think that's even remotely credible.

Our hopelessly compromised scientific establishment cannot be allowed to get away with the Climategate whitewash, says Christopher Booker.

By Christopher Booker
Published: 6:10PM GMT 28 Nov 2009

Comments 870 | Comment on this article

CO2 emissions will be on top of the agenda at the Copenhagen summit in December Photo: Getty

A week after my colleague James Delingpole , on his Telegraph blog, coined the term "Climategate" to describe the scandal revealed by the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, Google was showing that the word now appears across the internet more than nine million times. But in all these acres of electronic coverage, one hugely relevant point about these thousands of documents has largely been missed.

The reason why even the Guardian's George Monbiot has expressed total shock and dismay at the picture revealed by the documents is that their authors are not just any old bunch of academics. Their importance cannot be overestimated, What we are looking at here is the small group of scientists who have for years been more influential in driving the worldwide alarm over global warming than any others, not least through the role they play at the heart of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Professor Philip Jones, the CRU's director, is in charge of the two key sets of data used by the IPCC to draw up its reports. Through its link to the Hadley Centre, part of the UK Met Office, which selects most of the IPCC's key scientific contributors, his global temperature record is the most important of the four sets of temperature data on which the IPCC and governments rely – not least for their predictions that the world will warm to catastrophic levels unless trillions of dollars are spent to avert it.

Dr Jones is also a key part of the closely knit group of American and British scientists responsible for promoting that picture of world temperatures conveyed by Michael Mann's "hockey stick" graph which 10 years ago turned climate history on its head by showing that, after 1,000 years of decline, global temperatures have recently shot up to their highest level in recorded history.

Given star billing by the IPCC, not least for the way it appeared to eliminate the long-accepted Mediaeval Warm Period when temperatures were higher they are today, the graph became the central icon of the entire man-made global warming movement.

Since 2003, however, when the statistical methods used to create the "hockey stick" were first exposed as fundamentally flawed by an expert Canadian statistician Steve McIntyre , an increasingly heated battle has been raging between Mann's supporters, calling themselves "the Hockey Team", and McIntyre and his own allies, as they have ever more devastatingly called into question the entire statistical basis on which the IPCC and CRU construct their case.

The senders and recipients of the leaked CRU emails constitute a cast list of the IPCC's scientific elite, including not just the "Hockey Team", such as Dr Mann himself, Dr Jones and his CRU colleague Keith Briffa, but Ben Santer, responsible for a highly controversial rewriting of key passages in the IPCC's 1995 report; Kevin Trenberth, who similarly controversially pushed the IPCC into scaremongering over hurricane activity; and Gavin Schmidt, right-hand man to Al Gore's ally Dr James Hansen, whose own GISS

a) the Yamal tree-ring data [telegraph.co.uk] - data from 10 trees is extrpolated into a 'trend' and finds its way into a number of papers

Well according to Steve McIntyre, "It is not my belief that Briffa crudely cherry picked. My guess is that the Russians selected a limited number of 200-400 year trees - that's what they say - a number that might well have been appropriate for their purpose and that Briffa inherited their selection".

If you want to have a reasoned opinion on climate change and the data it is best not to use James Delingpole as your source. Simply put, Steve McIntyre did not like 12 trees used for the 1990 temperature so used 34 other trees from nearby. Can you do that? Simply take the growth from one area and directly compare to another?

b) CRU emails - won't say much more, too much said about this already.

Agree :)

c) New Zealand average temperature graphs [telegraph.co.uk] - high-school style 'cooking the graph' to match expectations

Maybe or maybe not. I agree that the temperature corrections look rather dodgy. If the data did show that New Zealand was not warming while the rest of the globe is warming, would that invalidate AGW? There is a lot of data out there, most of it considered good science. A few blips here and there do seem to be taken too mean more than they should.

Next time try reading whole sentences. Then you might actually understand what you're being told.

I see that you ask: Might I suggest to you that when you find something someone quotes from them to be demonstrably wrong, you demonstrate that it is in fact wrong. Here is one vein:

Back in December 2004 John Finn asked about the divergence in "Myth vs. Fact Regarding the Hockey Stick"--a thread on realclimate.

Whatever the reason for the divergence, it would seem to suggest that the practice of grafting the thermometer record onto a proxy temperature record - as I believe was done in the case of the 'hockey stick' - is dubious to say the least.

This drove a response from realclimate team (M. Mann):

No researchers in this field have ever, to our knowledge, "grafted the thermometer record onto" any reconstrution. It is somewhat disappointing to find this specious claim (which we usually find originating from industry-funded climate disinformation websites) appearing in this forum.

With some effort, the methodologies were reproduced and it became clear that MM was not be entirely truthful.

But RC has stuck its party line--even now after some of the leaked emails from CRU show us that this particular fudging technique was quite common and applied to manipulate data more than once.

McIntyre's paper (23 pages)

It comes down to that the thought that Mann in 1998 got his math wrong when performing principle component analysis over the data, particularly while using Bristlecone Pine cores. (Which I have to say is an amazing organism. They live at least 5,000 years. Wow. Just wow.) The 2008 Mann paper does two different analyses, one with tree cores, and without. The hockey stick remains in both.

Mann should have given McIntyre the data, which he started to do, but then stopped for some reason. Why, I don't know. I suspect there was some personality clash, but that's just speculation on my part. Just release the data. Who cares? If someone wants to examine the samples directly, then let them if they real credentials (i.e. a PhD in climatetology or some other related field). It's just impractical to give access to every Joe down at the bar, samples can be damaged. It's a scientific resource worth millions, not an exhibit at a hands-on museum.

The conclusions of all the investigations was that Mann didn't do PCA right, like how McIntyre said, but McIntyre didn't do it right either.

Perhaps the most interesting for you would be this link than contains links to the Mann's data, and statistics source code to analyze the data correctly. You just have to download R.

Allegations of misconduct have appeared regarding key IPCC dendrochronological 'evidence.' Several widely publicized papers may be based on a single flawed survey of cherry picked samples. Steve McIntyre of climateaudit.org has been analyzing long withheld data and has draw some disturbing conclusions.

The story involves, in part, the exposure of raw data left unprotected on a file server by jealous researchers. One would think it might be of interest here on Slashdot given that the NYT is talking about it.

he problem is that mathematical rigor is absent from most environmental studies. This is kinda surprising. For a good overview see this site: http://www.climateaudit.org/

And to counter that site see this one: Climate change: A guide for the perplexed. Who should I believe those I can check the qualifications, if they are qualified, or those I don't know the qualification of? All I could find out about Steve McIntyre was that he was a Canadian computer analyst not a climatologists, meteorologist, or had another degree that qualified him to label scientists with the qualifications they are wrong. It says he "won fame for his expert debunking of the notorious "hockey stick" graph" however one of the myth "New Scientist" debunks is the The 'hockey stick' graph has been proven wrong. And notice how that article was updated at "18:03 04 September 2009".

Quite a few highly regarded studies uses statistically dubious methods.

What is dubious is that Steve McIntyre has greater qualifications over the climate than climatologists.

Falcon

Briffa's "hockey stick" turned out to have been generated from a whole 12 tree cores

Climate myths: The 'hockey stick' graph has been proven wrong.

follow the money. Who's going to benefit from Cap and Trade? Who's already benefiting from Carbon Offsetting?

Yea, who's going to benefit by denying Climate Change is real. Coal, National Gas, Petroleum, and other fossil fuels. Ending on 30 June 2009 Exxon had 3 month profits of 21,019.00 billion, BP had 12,457.00 billion and Chevron had 11,583.00 billion. Do any scientists come close to making that much? If all scientists care about is money why aren't they working for oil companies?

Falcon

The New Scientist article on potential cooling that you referred to is here. The question is, after having attempted to discredit these scientists time and again, if it now turns out that the effect of North Atlantic Oscillation is greater than previously thought, would the climateaudit/wattsupwiththat etc. community believe them, and suddenly start championing what they say?

Isn't that a little weird, to rage against the Met Office again and again when it predicts warming, but then to rally around it when one of their scientists comes up with a possible alternative?

Under what mathematical law does the fact that two graphs don't look the same mean that they are not related? This is really sad: Experts spend years analyzing the data, come to an extremely complicated conclusion based on mountains of evidence, and then someone who has not the slightest fucking clue about science or mathematics walks in and says "But those graphs look different!" and decides those experts are all wrong. And worse, other people who share this guy's lack of clue believe his argument because it's the only one simple enough for them to understand.

You mean the kind of experts who do extremely complicated things like this, or this, or maybe even this?

Under what mathematical law does the fact that two graphs don't look the same mean that they are not related? This is really sad: Experts spend years analyzing the data, come to an extremely complicated conclusion based on mountains of evidence, and then someone who has not the slightest fucking clue about science or mathematics walks in and says "But those graphs look different!" and decides those experts are all wrong. And worse, other people who share this guy's lack of clue believe his argument because it's the only one simple enough for them to understand.

You mean the kind of experts who do extremely complicated things like this, or this, or maybe even this?

The parent made a bunch of strong claims, without any data reference or argument to back them up. He contradicts the findings of EPOCA, BIOACID and the Royal Society in the UK, the NERC and various other organisations directly tasked with evaluating the situation. Moreover he claims these organisations essentially lie in order to get research money, without as much as a shred of evidence to back up his claims, and this is moderated insightful?

Sure, the appeal to authority is one route you can take; indeed people like you always do that when you want to close down any debate. I don't know if you're aware of Professor Wegman's criticism of the Peer Review process in Climate Science? If not, I think you should read it. Or perhaps you'd prefer an expert opinion on the predictive capabilities of Computer Models? I don't know about you, but I raised an eyebrow when I found out Briffa's "hockey stick" turned out to have been generated from a whole 12 tree cores, or that the recent UN report stating that 300,000 people have died already due to "Climate Change" was a complete load of bollocks? Perhaps the American Chemical Society recently in uproar over it's Chairman's uncritical endorsement of "Global Warming" doesn't make you think twice? Or what about the EPA in the US suppressing a report from one of its own scientists? Does that make you feel uneasy at all?

So, follow the money. Who's going to benefit from Cap and Trade? Who's already benefiting from Carbon Offsetting? Hmmmmmmm.

Call me a heretic, if you like. I'm in good company.

The parent made a bunch of strong claims, without any data reference or argument to back them up. He contradicts the findings of EPOCA, BIOACID and the Royal Society in the UK, the NERC and various other organisations directly tasked with evaluating the situation. Moreover he claims these organisations essentially lie in order to get research money, without as much as a shred of evidence to back up his claims, and this is moderated insightful?

Sure, the appeal to authority is one route you can take; indeed people like you always do that when you want to close down any debate. I don't know if you're aware of Professor Wegman's criticism of the Peer Review process in Climate Science? If not, I think you should read it. Or perhaps you'd prefer an expert opinion on the predictive capabilities of Computer Models? I don't know about you, but I raised an eyebrow when I found out Briffa's "hockey stick" turned out to have been generated from a whole 12 tree cores, or that the recent UN report stating that 300,000 people have died already due to "Climate Change" was a complete load of bollocks? Perhaps the American Chemical Society recently in uproar over it's Chairman's uncritical endorsement of "Global Warming" doesn't make you think twice? Or what about the EPA in the US suppressing a report from one of its own scientists? Does that make you feel uneasy at all?

So, follow the money. Who's going to benefit from Cap and Trade? Who's already benefiting from Carbon Offsetting? Hmmmmmmm.

Call me a heretic, if you like. I'm in good company.

This is really sad: Experts spend years analyzing the data, come to an extremely complicated conclusion based on mountains of evidence, and then someone who has not the slightest fucking clue about science or mathematics walks in and says "

The problem is that mathematical rigor is absent from most environmental studies. This is kinda surprising. For a good overview see this site: http://www.climateaudit.org/.

Quite a few highly regarded studies uses statistically dubious methods.

While I think that AGW is true, a lot more research needs to be done in a proper fashion.

As evidence mounts that catastrophic anthropogenic global warming isn't the disaster the chicken littles have been preaching for the last 2 decades, the more dramatic, outlandish, and shrill the commentary will become. Expect to see more of these stunts from both countries and entities expecting to receive a big pay day from the industrialized nations, while the evidence points to a theory that needs serious revising and models that aren't very accurate at the most basic of predictions.

To date a lot of the proxy data used to bolster the claim that the observed warming trend was "unprecedented" turns out to be extremely poorly put together. The recent Briffa revelations are so bad and Briffa so resistant to releasing his data (which is contrary to scientific methodology) that one has to wonder if there was deliberate fraud. In climate research this has happened before. The original, discredited Mann hockey stick was another example where a researcher refused to release both data and methodology, and when forced to told the world that data was lost (until it was found by accident on his FTP server). Both examples are indications that peer review in some fields is nothing more than a cliquish acceptance of a forgone conclusion.

Perhaps this stunt will bring attention to the matter that current understanding of AGW is poor at best and that current climate models are woafully inadequate (and perhaps a tad overly dramatic). More research is needed and more importantly the people conducting that research need to strictly adhere to scientific method if we are to have a clear view of the mechanisms that shape our climate and what the human population effect on it.

Final Thought : Having researchers act like a group of 14 year old girls that decide who is "in" and who is "out" isn't science - it's dogma. It does little to advance the course of science - but it makes great reading. Better drama than day time TV.

As evidence mounts that catastrophic anthropogenic global warming isn't the disaster the chicken littles have been preaching for the last 2 decades, the more dramatic, outlandish, and shrill the commentary will become. Expect to see more of these stunts from both countries and entities expecting to receive a big pay day from the industrialized nations, while the evidence points to a theory that needs serious revising and models that aren't very accurate at the most basic of predictions.

To date a lot of the proxy data used to bolster the claim that the observed warming trend was "unprecedented" turns out to be extremely poorly put together. The recent Briffa revelations are so bad and Briffa so resistant to releasing his data (which is contrary to scientific methodology) that one has to wonder if there was deliberate fraud. In climate research this has happened before. The original, discredited Mann hockey stick was another example where a researcher refused to release both data and methodology, and when forced to told the world that data was lost (until it was found by accident on his FTP server). Both examples are indications that peer review in some fields is nothing more than a cliquish acceptance of a forgone conclusion.

Perhaps this stunt will bring attention to the matter that current understanding of AGW is poor at best and that current climate models are woafully inadequate (and perhaps a tad overly dramatic). More research is needed and more importantly the people conducting that research need to strictly adhere to scientific method if we are to have a clear view of the mechanisms that shape our climate and what the human population effect on it.

Final Thought : Having researchers act like a group of 14 year old girls that decide who is "in" and who is "out" isn't science - it's dogma. It does little to advance the course of science - but it makes great reading. Better drama than day time TV.

Our results show global-scale evidence of conspicuous influences of solar variability on cloudiness and aerosols. Irrespective of the detailed mechanism, the loss of ions from the air during FDs reduces the cloud liquid water content over the oceans. So marked is the response to relatively small variations in the total ionization, we suspect that a large fraction of Earth's clouds could be controlled by ionization. Future work should estimate how large a volume of the Earth's atmosphere is involved in the ion process that leads to the changes seen in CCN and its importance for the Earth's radiation budget. From solar activity to cosmic ray ionization to aerosols and liquid-water clouds, a causal chain appears to operate on a global scale.

In fact, the effect is noticed around 7 days after the event. It is not yet understood why this is the case. Further research is needed and is planned but if they took your attitude, it wouldn't get funding or take place at all. As I keep saying in these types of discussion, the "team" warmists have all the funding, even though much of their research is bollocks. This is hardly surprising; they peer review each others papers, use each others data (without archiving it for replication) and cite each other all the time, as Wegman discoverd when he did a statistical network analysis of their inter-relationships. If you've read and understood the criticisms of Steig et al (for example), you'll see how far you can get in climate science with a Principle Component algorithm, some data cherry picking and a few friends either too stupid or too corrupt to challenge your assertions.

Our results show global-scale evidence of conspicuous influences of solar variability on cloudiness and aerosols. Irrespective of the detailed mechanism, the loss of ions from the air during FDs reduces the cloud liquid water content over the oceans. So marked is the response to relatively small variations in the total ionization, we suspect that a large fraction of Earth's clouds could be controlled by ionization. Future work should estimate how large a volume of the Earth's atmosphere is involved in the ion process that leads to the changes seen in CCN and its importance for the Earth's radiation budget. From solar activity to cosmic ray ionization to aerosols and liquid-water clouds, a causal chain appears to operate on a global scale.

In fact, the effect is noticed around 7 days after the event. It is not yet understood why this is the case. Further research is needed and is planned but if they took your attitude, it wouldn't get funding or take place at all. As I keep saying in these types of discussion, the "team" warmists have all the funding, even though much of their research is bollocks. This is hardly surprising; they peer review each others papers, use each others data (without archiving it for replication) and cite each other all the time, as Wegman discoverd when he did a statistical network analysis of their inter-relationships. If you've read and understood the criticisms of Steig et al (for example), you'll see how far you can get in climate science with a Principle Component algorithm, some data cherry picking and a few friends either too stupid or too corrupt to challenge your assertions.

Your research is a little old. try finding some newer research to back up your arguments. Of course not many people are working on this hypothesis. Scientists are very busy cherry picking dendro-proxies to make it look like recent warming is unprecidented. They don't have much time for solar variance.

more than a little disingenuous

Disingenuousness in Global Warming research (sorry I mean Global Warming agitprop)?

I'm shocked.

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1511/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7037671.stm/
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2898/
http://www.skepticalscience.com/broken-hockey-stick.htm/

Gore showed me a scary graph in a film and I believe him and that's all that matters.

more than a little disingenuous

Disingenuousness in Global Warming research (sorry I mean Global Warming agitprop)?

I'm shocked.

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1511/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7037671.stm/
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2898/
http://www.skepticalscience.com/broken-hockey-stick.htm/

Gore showed me a scary graph in a film and I believe him and that's all that matters.

I urge people to read what McKitrick actually said (e.g., comment 7) rather than just taking the word of fanboy here.

Unlike several cases involving high profile climate scientists, McKitrick immediately issued a correction to his work when the degrees/radians error was pointed out - an unfortunate, but entirely understandable mistake (any suggestion that McKitrick does not know the difference is pure ad hominem). Of course, NASA itself, Hansen's employer, has lost at least one mission because of confusion between feet and metres. Apparently even rocket scientists can forget simple details.

When the peers that are doing the reviewing are friends and colleagues of the authors and/or hold the same views and opinions then we cannot expect and do not see rigorous critiques. See for example "Social Network Analysis of Authorships in Temperature Reconstructions" on page 38 of http://www.climateaudit.org/pdf/others/07142006_Wegman_Report.pdf

As to the second point, the failure of a scientific theory (as expressed in a published paper) falls only on the shoulders of the author(s). The failure of a large engineering project is costly in big money and many careers so the investigational and planning phases are far more detailed and rigorous than what goes into a scientific paper.

• M&M used the wrong version of Mann et al. (1998). (that should be enough right there.)
• M&M eliminated 70% of Mann's data due to some methodological misunderstanding. (I will not summerize, you must read. It's on page 13-14.)
• Mann et al.s reconstruction is reproducible, and within close approximation (2 standard deviations) of other methods. M&M's is not.
• Interestingly, the hockey stick does appear in a reconstruction using M&M's method and subset of data. This fact is left out of their report.

Good enough? If not, I don't care - honestly. There's a whole page on McIntyre and McKitrick myths. I think James Annan said it best on google-groups: Steve McIntyre has found a molehill and is doing his best to make a mountain out of it.


"I want to know what the observed experimental data is, from a ~10 meter tube, or the observed atmosphere, or such, not computer models" - the absorption spectrum of CO2 is measured by a spectrometer over ~1cm, I think it's important to have done the (simple) experiment that would verify we know how CO2 behaves over longer distances, if it's a fundamental part of our models.

Here is a derivation. Here is an article on observations of CO2 absorption. Also, the linked diagram was observational data.

I did some googling, and I think I found the argument your putting forward - that CO2 absorption saturates after 10m. See here

My specific claim about standard deviation is that no one has taken the observed temperature readings, and calculated the standard deviation from that, for 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, and 1 year. If you've read a paper which has this value, please provide a quote, and link.

Is this some oblique way to assert that prediction models don't have standard deviations built into them? Here is a model from 2002, that includes variance of estimates

Anyway, you wanted to know what's wrong with the equation you specified, *I don't care about the rest*. Please upload a well-formated copy somewhere, with the numbers and working for Earth and Venus. I'll figure it out and get back to you.

It's rather disingenuous to expect me to provide a simpler derivation

If you say so, however, I'm not after a simpler derivation. I'd like to see your working with your numbers, and formatted so I can read it without having to write is out from scratch. I don't want to do the leg work only to have you tell me I didn't do it right. I want to see you do it, and be happy with the equation, and then I'll do the leg work.

I keep hearing accusations of dishonesty Re:McIntyre and conspiracy theories, but can't find any concrete claims. The shear amount of vitriol on, say realclimate, leads me to believe that they aren't based on evidence, along with climatologists playing the martyrs, and more along the lines of "who the hell does this guy think he is, questioning *our* science when he's a journalist."

Yes, it holds on Earth (I dunno the max height, prob ~10km), and sufficiently dry. The equations for Venus and Earth are the same, just plug in g, M, gamma, you understand what a differential equation describes, right? It's from meteorology, and is why IPCC models with hydrostatic equilibrium can't simulate clouds. "The varying environmental lapse rates throughout the earth's atmosphere are of critical importance in meteorology, particularly within the troposphere." What this equation says, for both Venus and Earth, is that Pressure is sufficient to create a "livable" Earth.

Assuming Claugh & Iacono (1995) is anything like (2000), I want to know what the observed experimental data is, from a ~10 meter tube, or the observed atmosphere, or such, not computer models. From physics classes, I know how easy it is to screw up a derivation, and that's just undergrad not research. Computer modeling is something, that to regard with anywhere near the same certainty as a derivation, I'd need to at least see the data it predicts implicitly or explicitly.

Standard deviation of temperature, let's say global average. I'm lead to believe (thermometer) temperature records go back at least ~100 years, and are recorded daily. Why isn't the Sqrt(1/N Sum (x_i-mew) ) value used to show the natural variability, and provide hard, experimental evidence for weather->average->climate. This is just basic science, and by not doing it, and absolutely refusing to share data, they end up coming off like jerks that haven't done their due diligence, at best.

I'm not interested in the IPCC models for 3 reasons (1) somewhat vague predictions (at least no one's given a variable that will be statistically outside the observed average), (2) poor documentation and poor "numeric/physical rigor" (see lapse rate and clouds, among others), and (3) I need to check into Douglass et al, and what Santer et al says, but the general level of vitriol, ad homiems, and basic lack of understanding of simple scientific principles, like making it easy to duplicate your work, does not fill me with hope; see absurdity comparing quotes below.

"We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it. There is IPR to consider. - Phil Jones"

"Professor Eddington's analysis of photographs of a solar eclipse confirmed the correctness of Einstein's equations. When asked by colleagues at the November 19th Royal Society Meeting to produce the data to support his claims regarding Einstein's theory Eddington replied, "Giving them the equations and source code would be giving in to the intimidation tactics that these people are engaged in," he added " We have 1000's of hours of time invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?"

I keep hearing accusations of dishonesty Re:McIntyre and conspiracy theories, but can't find any concrete claims. The shear amount of vitriol on, say realclimate, leads me to believe that they aren't based on evidence, along with climatologists playing the martyrs, and more along the lines of "who the hell does this guy think he is, questioning *our* science when he's a journalist."

Yes, it holds on Earth (I dunno the max height, prob ~10km), and sufficiently dry. The equations for Venus and Earth are the same, just plug in g, M, gamma, you understand what a differential equation describes, right? It's from meteorology, and is why IPCC models with hydrostatic equilibrium can't simulate clouds. "The varying environmental lapse rates throughout the earth's atmosphere are of critical importance in meteorology, particularly within the troposphere." What this equation says, for both Venus and Earth, is that Pressure is sufficient to create a "livable" Earth.

Assuming Claugh & Iacono (1995) is anything like (2000), I want to know what the observed experimental data is, from a ~10 meter tube, or the observed atmosphere, or such, not computer models. From physics classes, I know how easy it is to screw up a derivation, and that's just undergrad not research. Computer modeling is something, that to regard with anywhere near the same certainty as a derivation, I'd need to at least see the data it predicts implicitly or explicitly.

Standard deviation of temperature, let's say global average. I'm lead to believe (thermometer) temperature records go back at least ~100 years, and are recorded daily. Why isn't the Sqrt(1/N Sum (x_i-mew) ) value used to show the natural variability, and provide hard, experimental evidence for weather->average->climate. This is just basic science, and by not doing it, and absolutely refusing to share data, they end up coming off like jerks that haven't done their due diligence, at best.

I'm not interested in the IPCC models for 3 reasons (1) somewhat vague predictions (at least no one's given a variable that will be statistically outside the observed average), (2) poor documentation and poor "numeric/physical rigor" (see lapse rate and clouds, among others), and (3) I need to check into Douglass et al, and what Santer et al says, but the general level of vitriol, ad homiems, and basic lack of understanding of simple scientific principles, like making it easy to duplicate your work, does not fill me with hope; see absurdity comparing quotes below.

"We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it. There is IPR to consider. - Phil Jones"

"Professor Eddington's analysis of photographs of a solar eclipse confirmed the correctness of Einstein's equations. When asked by colleagues at the November 19th Royal Society Meeting to produce the data to support his claims regarding Einstein's theory Eddington replied, "Giving them the equations and source code would be giving in to the intimidation tactics that these people are engaged in," he added " We have 1000's of hours of time invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?"

I keep hearing accusations of dishonesty Re:McIntyre and conspiracy theories, but can't find any concrete claims. The shear amount of vitriol on, say realclimate, leads me to believe that they aren't based on evidence, along with climatologists playing the martyrs, and more along the lines of "who the hell does this guy think he is, questioning *our* science when he's a journalist."

Yes, it holds on Earth (I dunno the max height, prob ~10km), and sufficiently dry. The equations for Venus and Earth are the same, just plug in g, M, gamma, you understand what a differential equation describes, right? It's from meteorology, and is why IPCC models with hydrostatic equilibrium can't simulate clouds. "The varying environmental lapse rates throughout the earth's atmosphere are of critical importance in meteorology, particularly within the troposphere." What this equation says, for both Venus and Earth, is that Pressure is sufficient to create a "livable" Earth.

Assuming Claugh & Iacono (1995) is anything like (2000), I want to know what the observed experimental data is, from a ~10 meter tube, or the observed atmosphere, or such, not computer models. From physics classes, I know how easy it is to screw up a derivation, and that's just undergrad not research. Computer modeling is something, that to regard with anywhere near the same certainty as a derivation, I'd need to at least see the data it predicts implicitly or explicitly.

Standard deviation of temperature, let's say global average. I'm lead to believe (thermometer) temperature records go back at least ~100 years, and are recorded daily. Why isn't the Sqrt(1/N Sum (x_i-mew) ) value used to show the natural variability, and provide hard, experimental evidence for weather->average->climate. This is just basic science, and by not doing it, and absolutely refusing to share data, they end up coming off like jerks that haven't done their due diligence, at best.

I'm not interested in the IPCC models for 3 reasons (1) somewhat vague predictions (at least no one's given a variable that will be statistically outside the observed average), (2) poor documentation and poor "numeric/physical rigor" (see lapse rate and clouds, among others), and (3) I need to check into Douglass et al, and what Santer et al says, but the general level of vitriol, ad homiems, and basic lack of understanding of simple scientific principles, like making it easy to duplicate your work, does not fill me with hope; see absurdity comparing quotes below.

"We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it. There is IPR to consider. - Phil Jones"

"Professor Eddington's analysis of photographs of a solar eclipse confirmed the correctness of Einstein's equations. When asked by colleagues at the November 19th Royal Society Meeting to produce the data to support his claims regarding Einstein's theory Eddington replied, "Giving them the equations and source code would be giving in to the intimidation tactics that these people are engaged in," he added " We have 1000's of hours of time invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?"