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Climate Data Re-examined (updated)
An anonymous reader writes "An important paper that re-examines historical climate data was published on 28 October in the respected journal Energy & Environment. (The paper is also available here.) According to an article in Canada's National Post, the paper shows that a "pillar of the Kyoto Accord is based on false calculations, incorrect data and an overtly biased selection of climate records." (USA Today also has a story.) This paper will undoubtedly be controversial and should stir a vigourous data review." Update: 11/05 14:54 GMT by T : newyhouse points out a similarly contrarian 2001 Economist article by Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist .
Nooooooo!
Now I don't want to respond to the article's claims, since that'll only spark a flame war I don't want to fight but:
Only in Canada does one see a graph with a flat line then sharp spike and instantly think "Oooo, a hockey stick!"
This just cracks me up because it is absolutely true of most of my Canadian relities, they are just nuts over hockey and I'm sure this doesn't strike any of them as the least bit odd comparison.
It however doesn't mean that we should not pollute.
A friend of mine is prepairing a PHD in geology.
He often climbs on top of the Mont Blanc (4807m) where he analyzes the ice cap.
He found out that ther chemicals that impregnated the ice are similar only to the ones which emanates from the General Motors factories, in Detroit, US.
There is a serious issue, there.
It is not because it won't make rain more that it is not a bad thing.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
We shouldn't stop protecting the environment just because some analysis was wrong. Its funny that we even need justification in the first place to preserve the planet.
Moderation Totals: Flamebait=2, Troll=1, Redundant=1, Insightful=6, Overrated=1, Underrated=1, Total=12. (not mine)
Questions:
1. Who are these guys. There are no affiliations listed and the research sponsor is not listed.
2. MBH98 is not the only paper. It was one of the first ones. After that more detailed research was done and it did not refute any of the claims.
3. Is the ice melt in the arctic a figment of my imagination?
4. Is the retreat of South American Glaciers a figment of my imagination?
5. Why doesn't NOAA put all the data for public consumption so that anyone can see who is right and who is wrong?
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
About twenty years ago, there was a conference on global warming held at Caltech. The gist of the results presented was that adding energy to the atmosphere seemed to make it more chaotic. That doesn't imply local warming must occur, but rather that the weather becomes more unpredictable. I think we're seeing that now in the data.
The "hockey stick" graph has been roundly criticized for years -- and yes, legitimate scientists criticize it, not just "neo-cons" or whatever.
Unfortunately there is immense political pressure placed upon anyone who says something that could be seen as weakening the Kyoto protocol or the "global climate consensus." I expect the authors of this paper will see quite a lot of heat about this.
This is a shame, because the fact that the "hockey stick" graph is flawed absolutely does not imply that human-influenced global warming isn't a problem! Sure, people may misuse these results to argue that global warming is somehow disproven, but the potential misuse of a result is no reason to suppress it. On the contrary, pressuring people to keep quiet about their findings will only hurt the credibility of the entire field in the long run. So it is very good to see that this is published.
And remember -- there is no "final word" in science. The most vital element of science is results can be tested and disproven. Nothing is above criticism, including the hockey stick graph, this paper, and any other paper written about climate change or any other scientific subject. That is what science is all about.
I wonder if the results are skewed because of mistakes, or if the numbers have been wilfully embellished. Neither would surprise me: almost every lobby group for every side of every issue, from Greenpeace to the car industry lobby, have been known to juggle the books a little in order to support their own beliefs. In some cases, outright fraud has taken place.
What scared me about Kyoto is not so much the conclusion that was drawn, nor the way scientists had arrived at that conclusion, but the zealous belief of many governments in these conclusions. In Europe, scientists or governments (the US) who were sceptical about the Kyoto paper became the brunt of scorn and vilification in the media. It again showed how deeply environmentalists have become entrenched in the decision-making bodies of government... it reminds me of the case where two scientists were fired from the Dutch government environmental agency, for publishing reports that proved the official line on acid rain was wrong.
The reactions to this article will tell us if the political climate has changed... if the policy-makers are still only accepting opinions that fit their own world view, or if we have a more open climate where scientific discussion rather than dogma holds sway.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Taking this referenced paper as being on the mark, do look at their corrected temperature graph. One can't say that the recent warming has been unprecedented based on that graph, but you could claim that there's been nothing like it in 500 years.
...) as a good reason to dispute the need for CO2 emission controls. Yet they would still (IMO) be misguided. As evidenced by the hole in the ozone layer, human industrial activity can have significant long-term effects on the global environment. Given that we only have the one planet, it seems only good sense that we should be cautious when it comes to activity that has the potential to seriously change the environment.
It seems almost certain that this news will be welcomed by certain governments (US, Australia,
The warming trend in the last 100 years may have very little to do with industrial emissions - but as yet we can't tell. That there is a correlation indicates we should err on the side of caution: if it is indeed a matter of causation, then we're essential pissing on our own future.
Regardless of quality of life issues, it makes sense as an economic one, when viewed in global terms. We will have to deal with the effects of climate change whether it be due to human activity or not, but if there is a significant component that we're responsible for, continuing in this behaviour is going to make a very large problem a great deal worse, with attendant very high costs to amerliorate it. It is risk management. Putting heads in the sand and saying that there's doubt about the link, does not make the risk of that link magically disappear. Even a 5% chance of the link being actual may be sufficient for a purely economic assessment to indicate that emissions should be sharply curbed.
If there were alternative policies being adopted by those governments against the Kyoto accords, then that would be an indication that their objections were based on more than short-term economic growth (or worse, given the somewhat incestuous relationships between governments and industry.) Yet Australia for example has not even managed to reduce its rate of growth of emissions (not the emission levels themselves!) to targets that had been set earlier.
If the Kyoto accords are not a step in the right direction, then the continuing increase of CO2 emissions is certainly not a preferable alternative.
A recent study by Arctic researchers showed that the polar ice cap isn't just shrinking in terms of land mass, it's shrinking in terms of depth too, by 4cm a year.
All that water's going somewhere, and that somewhere is the oceans. Global sea levels are rising, and you only have to look at the situation in Tuvalu in the Pacific or Venice, Italy to see that the threat of rising tides isn't a myth.
People can harp on about "not enough data" or "inconclusive evidence" all they want but if entire nations vanishing beneath the waves or historic cities sinking isn't a wake-up call then I don't know what is.
Frankly, there are some people who will bury their heads in the sand over this issue just as long as they can make a profit by ignoring it. Oil companies and big business are never going to recognise that they are part of the problem until the last possible moment, at which time they'll just shrug their shoulders and say "Who knew?", just like the tobacco industry before them.
But, unlike tobacco, this isn't a problem that will affect just a handful of people, or a problem that will be easily settled by the courts - billions in punitive damages are useless when your country is underwater. The last time I checked there wasn't a court on the planet that could push back the tides.
I'm sure there are dozens of readers out there that will right off this comment as yet more half-baked environmental doom-mongering but I find it funny that these same people will demand more money to scan the heavens for deadly meteors - it seems that extinction Armageddon-style is trendy but the possibility of extinction because of our own actions just isn't sexy enough.
If you really want to be objective about these issues try to look beyond the smoke and mirrors. Ask yourself how objective the research is - there are far more people out there funded by big business than you'd imagine. Ask yourself who stands to profit by presenting a negative picture of climate change? Who stands to lose if the problem is tackled head-on? And who stands to profit if it's ignored and the situation is allowed to continue unchecked?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I visited a Glacier in Norway once (at Olden) and they have actually signposted the glacier boundary at various previous times for the tourists - ie. "Glacier boundary 1850" etc.
I can tell you its a long climb from those points until you get to where the glacier is today..
Just because you can spot the odd anomoly in a bunch of data does not render the whole thing untrue..
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
In case it isn't obvious, the National Post is a very right wing paper, at least in Canadian terms. That doesn't mean they are wrong, but they have a history of taking any opportunity to attack the Kyoto Accord.
As a case in point, I offer the title, subtitle and byline for the article:
I would say, for instance, that a more cautious interpretation would be that an important new paper suggests flaws in the research, not that it reveals it. Particularly if I were a writer for a business & economics paper, not a climate change researcher. And then there is the title itself...
To give credit where it is due, he does tend to use the phrase 'climate change' rather than the older 'global warming', which is a more accurate description of what the body of research underpinning Kyoto actually suggests. Usually you can spot biased participants in debates like this by their choice of language.
Personally, I have never taken sides over whether climate change is likely to be a reality or not. I don't need it as a justification for my environmental leanings. I think there are many national security and economic justifications for taking such actions as improving energy efficiency throughout society without relying on theories such as climate change that are far beyond my ability to competently analyze. So go ahead and tear Kyoto apart if you care to, but don't use that as an excuse to increase dependence on Middle East oil, for example.
And I haven't seen a big appetite for new nuclear or coal power plants in the US as of late either.
If you say, "now I'll be modded down because of X", I'll happily oblige.
You seem, however, to have left out your scientific criticism of their methodology and results.
The original 1998 paper by Mann, Bradley, and Hughes was not in error. McIntyre and McKitrick screwed up their data when they published this paper. Somebody exported the raw data in the original paper to Excel but somehow exported 159 columns of data into a 112 column spreadsheet. M&M did not compare the spreadsheet and produced a "correction" to the original paper that was based on nothing but errors, since the full paleoclimatic data series of 159 columns is required to properly audit the analysis done in the 1998 paper. More information here and here. The world really is melting.
The authors of the original paper have already published a rebuttal to this M&M paper with further details about how M&M faithfully replicated neither the data nor the procedures in their audit.
It is a pity that the original MBH paper you link to states (page 1 top right) "112 indicators back to 1820" and (page 3 middle right) "the reconstructions from 1820 onwards based on the full multiproxy network of 112 indicators". 159 does not appear in the paper except in the date 1599.
Nooooooooo....
I believe we're still waiting for the documents relating to the oil companies' 'consultations' with Archduke Cheney over energy policy, aren't we?
Why do people think environmentalists would be biased, anyway? What are they biased towards? Not dying? Is there some secret Globex-EnviroCorporation Inc in which all tree hugging hippies have undisclosed shares? Or is it possible that they simply understand the value of erring on the side of caution when the stakes are so high?
I love it that people think that they are able to be so 'skeptical' about the environment. Can't you see that the logical way to be skeptical about it is to assume that the warning signs mean something significant until you can be sure they don't? Otherwise you're acting like someone with half the symptoms of cancer who wants to wait until they have them all before getting it checked out. After all, you can never be sure so better to do nothing, eh?
Don't worry, go ahead and doubt environmentalists. I'm sure businessmen whose entire job is making profits for their own companies are *much* more reliable at telling you what the state of the environment is.
Read Pynchon.
If you follow the links provided in the parent post, you will find the rebuttal by the authros where they state:
We did not ask for an Excel spreadsheet nor did we receive one.
If you read the rest of their rebuttal, it becomes clear that Mann just made the excel error up! No really! Go read!
It's counter-intuitive, but warmer temperatures can cause increased snowfall - the warmer air can carry more water, you see.
Clear, Dark Skies
Because the same thing could be applied to anything that lacks proof, but would have a consequence if true. The oldest example I know of this kind of thing is Pascal's wager. It's an argument for the belief in god that goes like this:
There is a 2x2 matrix, where you either believe or don't believe in god and he does or doesn't exist. You then fill in the boxes with values for benefit or penalty for the situations. Now what Pascal argued is that in the "does exist" column the values are infinite, positive for belief, negative for disbelief since teh reward and punishment are infinetly greater than anything in this world. So it doesn't matter what is in the "does not exist" column since it will be finite. Well, you don't want to risk it, so you should jsut believe in god.
This is, of course, hugely problematic and easy to poke holes in. There are tons of other cases we could argue including that it ISN'T infinite in the "does exist" column, that god can tell between real and faked belief, that there is a different god, etc.
Now the problem is applying that kind of "you can't risk it" logic to everything lets psuedo science get teh same creedence as real science, and in that, swindlers. Like suppose I come to you with a bunch of graphs n' numbers n' daigrams and stuff. I tell you that this is data on my new drug that can cure all forms of cancer. All I need is $10 million to develop it. You look over my data and realise that it in no way justifies my claim. My response? "Yes, but can you really risk it? I mean what if my data IS right and I CAN make the drug? Can you risk on missing out on that oppertunity, not to mention depriving society of that benifit?" If you find that compelling, well then I have some graphs n' numbers n' daigrams to show you...
Basically, before comitting to something as a fact, and making large changes becaues of it, it needs to pass scientific (strong inference) muster. Otherwise, we get into a really bad situation.
In assuming that a correlation implies a causation. It doesn't. There is no argument that temperatures have been rising in recorded history (a short period actually) nor is there an argument that human output of CO2 has risen since the IR. However that those two happened together does not mean that one caused the other, that is a seperate issue.
Finding causation is much harder than finding a correlation since all sorts of things are correlated (and it's simply to measure) but the causal link can be much more complex.
For example:
You can get the causal link the wrong way. There is a positive correlation between weight and height. There's aslo a causal link. However if you say that increasing weight will increase height, you've got teh direction of the link wrong.
There can be an outside factor. There is a positive correlation in the United States between being white and scoring well on standardised tests. However if you say that being white CAUSES you to score well on tests, you'd be wrong. The real cause is much more complex and has to do with general trends in educational and economic background.
Then there are just things that are incidental. For awhile, there was a positive correlation between one of my friends attending football games and the team winning. Every game he attended, they won, the couple he missed, they lost. Well of course he didn't cause them to win, nor did their loosing cause him not to attend, it was just random luck.
So, just because we have found a positive correlation between an increase in temperature and an increase in CO2 does NOT mean we've found a causal link.
Is that by bottling up the sub industrial nations with environmental regulations, and thereby slowing their advance through the industrial stages, we may be making the problem worse in the long run.
The best way to get people to care about the environment is to get them beyond the point of having to worry about food, clothing and shelter. People worried about their next meal really could care less about pollution.
Kyoto and similar measures threaten to force sub-industrial nations to submit to burdensome restrictions that will make it harder for them to blossom into a wealthier economy.
Furthermore, it's grossly unfair to prolong the poverty of such nations by dictating how they can and can't develop so that we can sleep easier at night.
Remember, we didn't have any such restrictions when we went through this stage.
Please note that the editor of "E&E" is one of the few environmental scientists who agreed with Bjorn Lomborg "Skeptical Environmentalist", and a self-confessed environmental sceptic. As stated there, the journal itself has a "stance [that] is critical of conventional wisdom".
Now, I don't read E&E (I tend to read the mainstream geophysics journals: GAFD, JGR(Oceans) and GRL -- "E&E" is not a mainstream geophysics journal), but I am slightly concerned about work published in a journal with an agenda. One may also be concerned about the suitability of referees selected by an editor out to prove a point, rather than to publicise good science.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Cut the Crap! This stuff about 3rd world countries not being able to affort to clean up their act belies the reality that they are selling themselves as an "Out" to the restrictions of the US and others. In reality much of the "Prosperity" of China at this moment is as a result of their attracting poluting industries from the west.
While the Environmentalist nuts have been hornswoggling the press and the politicos here in the west they have been quitely blinking at the massive pollution increases in the east. China and India have increased their Carbon Dioxide emissions a total exceeding total US Output by some 5 times(Each)! The south east asians have polluted the Pacific Ocean to the point where about 10% of it is DEAD and I have seen it flying over it!
These Eco-nuts go on saying that the only country to actually be cleaning up is the problem. The USA has stabilized its output of pollution and in some areas reduced it. This while increasing its population by almost 25% in the period!
If we continue to listen to such crap about 3rd world problems nothing is going to get cleaned up and we are all going to die in the mess. There are no limits on the pollution from India, China and much of the world under Koyoto. The industrialists will simply scoot out to the 3rd world and build their smoky dirty plants and ignore pollution controls unless we wake up. The problem is not the USA. The problem is elsewhere. But that is the whole problem with the Koyoto Treaty in the first place. It attempts to blame the USA and shut it down rather than deal with problems. This is of course justified by doctoring numbers and generally lying. Lies are so deep in Koyoto Treaty work that nobody is even looking at the real problems.
I have worked to get pollution cleaned up and in fact I worked for over 20 years to get the 2nd worst (Per EPA List at the time) pollution site in North America cleaned up. Not once in the period did I get the Sierra Club or Friends of the Earth or any of the other "Green" organizations to even turn their ear to the problem. This site had Nuclear and Chemical Weapons Contamination to the limit. Could the "Greens" even look? Not on your life! Have they turned and looked since the EPA listed the site... NO!
I think that people aught to look at what is going on. The Eco-nuts are not Eco at all. They are powered by Political Aims and internationally they are unified by "Anti-American" sentiments. They view the solution to be that of destruction of the USA rather than looking at their own areas. The China Coal burning as of now is approaching 5 Billion Tons a year and US consumption of coal has dropped to 0.7 Billion Tons from a high of 1.2 Billion Tons. The USA has rivers and streams recovering with new fish and much good going on. The Indians and Chinese are in grave danger of having their rivers and streams killed. The "Asian Brown Cloud" did not happen over Toledo Ohio and it didn't happen over Birmingham Alabama. Yes I can remember when these sites had such but the "Asian Brown Cloud" was this summer. America is the example for what to do to clean up not what is wrong.
Does anyone remember the "Acid Rain" issue. It turns out much of the evidence was of natural causes and not related to mankind. Worse yet the scrubbers actually caused Acid rain by bringing out the alkali ash and letting the acid gas go. The issue of "Acid Rain" was caused in most part (95% or more) due to the Terminal State of the Forrest in the East USA after its regrowth from low levels in the 1930's. The fully grown trees emit much acid. This is why the "Smoky Mountains" and the "Blue Ridge" were named and they were named before the industrial era.
The greatest CO2 emission in north America in 2003 was the fires in California and these owe to the Eco-Nuts who would not even let a DEAD tree be cut. They would not allow disease control or even controlled burns. The ecosystem of the forrest there is "Fire Dependent" and frankly needs regular burns. So 3400 homes burn
Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
"Except that China and India are the big polluters of the day."
0 1/Gree nhouse/Fig1P19.gif
s f/cont ent/emissionsindividual.html. gov/oar/globalwarming.nsf/cont ent/EmissionsInternational.html
Check out:
http://www.ioe.ucla.edu/publications/report
Compare the population one with the energy use one, and the per capita one. The US is EASILY the biggest per capita AND net user of energy.
If you prefer a measure of straight pollution to energy use, try:
http://yosemite.epa.gov/oar/globalwarming.n
http://yosemite.epa
USA totally dominates others in pretty much all respects. Try basing your posts on actual math next time.
Read Pynchon.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Comparing the agendas on both sides may well be valid, but what about comparing the consequences if either side is wrong ??
If the tree huggers have got it wrong we see smaller profits, disgruntled share holders and short term job losses. Boo-hoo.
If the Megacorps have got it wrong (or more likely are simply covering up) then we've screwed up the planet.
The stakes are a little bigger.
... the rebuttals from the authors of the original paper are here.
That there can be so much controversy highlights the fragility of the "models" that have been developed to support the varying points of view. It seems we really don't understand the climate process yet so maybe, just maybe, we shouldn't leap at any proposed solutions (like Kyoto) because maybe there isn't a problem.
How come not jumping to solutions based on scanty knowledge of the problem makes sense on the small scale (e.g. advice from a sysadmin to a user) but gets lost on the large scale issues (global warming)?
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.