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Scientists Reconstruct Millennium's Coldest Winter
Ponca City, We love you writes "In England they called it the Great Frost, while in France it entered legend as Le Grand Hiver, three months of deadly cold that fell over Europe in 1709 ushering in a year of famine and food riots. Livestock died from cold in their barns, chicken's combs froze and fell off, trees exploded and travelers froze to death on the roads. It was the coldest winter in 500 years with temperatures as much as 7 degrees C below the average for 20th-century Europe. Now as part of the European Union's Millennium Project, Scientists are aiming to reconstruct the past 1000 years of Europe's climate using a combination of direct measurements, proxy indicators of temperature such as tree rings and ice cores, and data gleaned from historical documents."
What next, Elvis sightings?
They get called deniers because that is exactly what they are: in the face of overwhelming evidence, they continue to deny, using logic that is identical to 9/11 wonks, moon hoax nutters and, yes, even Holocaust deniers.
The classic approach is to take one *apparent* anomaly and present is as if it is Popperian falsification - when the truth is more often that the supposed anomaly is itself explained by the theory
Yup, the GW deniers got it wrong again. Big surprise...
Apparently, winter of 2009 will be one of the coldest in the last 30 or 40 years.
So after the entire industrial sector goes bankrupt this year and stops emitting heat, cars are no longer being made (especially crap american ones), air fares become unaffordable, and the cost of energy takes a hike (assisted by environmental taxes), you think next winter might be cooler?
N.S.S.!
Just look at the weather-changes after a bank-holiday (3-day) weekend to see how we affect the local climate.
1. It wasn't just MM disputing the "hockey stick" - a independent panel of statistics experts reporting to Congress examined it, Mann's work, and found that MM were the ones in the right.
Uhh, if you're talking about the National Research Council panel, the BBC seems to take the exact opposite stance on the results. Are you saying the BBC is lying? Or are you talking about a different panel?
2. The "hockey stick" was found to be the result of faulty mathematics...by people who specialize in mathematics. That makes them experts in their fields.
If that's true, great. But the validity of those results seems to be in question. Some claim the math is bad. Others don't.
3. If Mann is so right, why doesn't his model stand up to scrutiny?
Way to beg the question. You assume the model doesn't stand up to scrutiny, yet I've already provided an article that claims it does. Are you right, or am I?
Let me put it this way - Mann and company are hiding and misrepresenting data and methodologies
According to you. Citations, please?
MM are pointing out there is a problem, making all of their work publicly available, and have received independent verification that their math is correct from experts in statistics and statistical analysis.
I've already provided at least one citation that indicates otherwise, a citation not produced by Mann, et al. I'm sure I could dig up others.
So, who's right?
Who do you find more trustworthy?
Well, the denialists:
a) make the false assumption that the entire scientific community is a monolithic, closed clique that can't possibly be trusted,
b) are blinded by the romantic notion that the loan maverick is more trustworthy than the community (what I like to call Galileo syndrome)
c) are populated by those with a clear vested interest in finding AGW false (eg, the fossil fuel industry)
d) like to trot out old and dead arguments that have been long refuted, a tendency that's disturbingly mirrored in the Intelligent Design community.
Given this, I tend toward siding with the scientists, flawed as they may be. But, of course, that's a bias in an of itself (and one I will happily admit to).
Those are some pretty big accusations. Care to back them up with actual references?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Seriously? You cite a weblog written by a mathematician without an advanced degree, who is a self proclaimed global warming denier? And where on that blog does it back up Rockoon's claims that the raw climate data is unavailable?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
As someone pointed out before, climate scientists have, amazingly enough, thought about solar cycles, (and volcanic activity, and a few other factors) and concluded that no, solar cycles cannot account for the warming observed.
You're not coming up with anything new by mentioning solar cycles, it's been thought about, and you're not smarter than the sum total of all the world's climate researchers.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".