IF the MWP (and the other warm periods that we can see in ice core data) was global then that pretty much falsifies the current climate models. Thus, there's no "added" problem you describe we should be afraid of.
Did you even read the paper you're citing here? Did you even read the abstract?
Sure. Did you read the conclusion?;)
When reconstructing past climate from tree-rings (e.g. the amplitude of the Little Ice Age or Medieval Warm Period), it is important to appreciate that these reconstructions are conservative as they only contain a part of the true climate signal.
If you actually take the time to read the whole paper, you will understand why oaks specifically are discouraged as temperature proxies.
Feel free to skip the strawmans and actually read what I post instead:) (hint: In my original post the word "good" is there on purpose)
(Oh I do science pretty much full time - would knowing that had changed how you read my post?)
1) I wrote "new science" - not "evolution of". Example of the latter, refining tools for measurements of redshift. Examples of the former [would be], finding out that the ozone hole is a result of changes in the amount of cosmic rays that penetrate the heliosphere.
2) My source was not the New York Times. My source was dendrologists, as quoted by the New York Times. That is not a small difference. If you want to read more of their work, I'd direct you to a paper. Would Climate signal in tree-ring chronologies in a temperate climate: A multi-species approach (Suarez, Butler, Baillie, 2009) do?
But hey, what do I know. I'm apparently "wilfully ignorant":)
(Also includes NEVER grafting temperature measurements onto proxies - you simply do not know it's valid)
Do you understand why this is a big no-no? Even Mann himself does;)
"No researchers in this field have ever, to our knowledge, 'grafted the thermometer record onto' any reconstruction. It is somewhat disappointing to find this specious claim (which we usually find originating from industry-funded climate disinformation Web sites) appearing in this forum." - Mann
Unfortunately, not only have researchers done so - including Mann himself - it's still being done.
Great post. If only you had left out the last sentence.
(I live in a country where scientists aren't as afraid to voice their opinions on the science behind AGW as in the US, for example. Comparing them to creationists - something almost unheard of here - falls quite flat to the ground)
You see, I agree with you. My point was simply that the mantra "scientific consensus" is invalid and worn out. If it's 80-20, 70-30 or even 60-40 isn't of interest - scientific "truth" is not a democracy.
(I hope you realise that most of your post consists of the well known strawman fallacy)
Baillie, and many other dendrologists, are very wary about using tree rings as temperature proxies. I.e, your claim that Baillie's comment is about Keenan specifically is not correct, it's about oaks - no matter who uses them. (Climate signal in tree-ring chronologies in a temperate climate: A multi-species approach. Suarez, Butler, Baillie, 2009)
As to Mann specifically, the Wegman report is quite damning when it comes to his use of bristlecones. Mann's "tree ring credibility" is thus quite low.
Because thermometers were not widespread and the measurements from those thermometers were not recorded.
Please see the last link of the post you replied to.
I always turn to youtube for the best analysis instead of journal papers
Please read the comment I wrote with regards to that link. The comment about the sources being listed at the end. The sources, of course, which _are_ journal papers.
I'm not sure if you're trying to defend showing two different data sources as one (grafting direct measurements onto proxies) - but if so - do you understand the problem with it?
(I specifically dislike tree ring proxies, since there are numerous well documented problems with them. I fail to see why they're still used at all, and why people defend them in the light of the well-exposed problems)
When the overwhelming majority of scientists in a given field agree on something, it's probably true. It does require a considerable amount of evidence for me to disbelieve that, and I haven't seen nearly enough such evidence.
Most new findings in science breaks with established tradition, and meets resistance from a majority of the scientists in related fields. If we practiced "science by consensus" (we DON'T) we'd never get anywhere.
Example, plate tectonics (stems from the continental drift hypothesis):
Some truly revolutionary scientific theories may take years or decades to win general acceptance among scientists. This is certainly true of plate tectonics, one of the most important and far-ranging geological theories of all time; when first proposed, it was ridiculed, but steadily accumulating evidence finally prompted its acceptance, with immense consequences for geology, geophysics, oceanography, and paleontology.
[---]
Reaction to Wegener's theory was almost uniformly hostile, and often exceptionally harsh and scathing; Dr. Rollin T. Chamberlin of the University of Chicago said, "Wegener's hypothesis in general is of the footloose type, in that it takes considerable liberty with our globe, and is less bound by restrictions or tied down by awkward, ugly facts than most of its rival theories."
Ah, the stopped clock argument:) You're correct in that from 1200 different tree ring proxies you might find a few that fit with other data. If you'd go ahead and claim that you can then use them for other time periods would however be a statistically problematic conclusion.
As to the rest of your post - are you trying to claim that Baillie didn't mean what he was saying? If so, please support that claim with more than your own guesswork:)
Why start at 1800? We can try to verify tree rings a lot further back than that, using ice cores as well as other proxies. It turns out the tree rings show a completely different pictures compared to the other proxies - a very flat picture. No MMW, no LIA.
To be frank, tree ring proxies (especially merging a lot of them together to hide how wildly different they are even from each other) are the only ones that can be used to show the handle of a hockey stick.
To get the blade, you need to switch away from the proxies again and graft direct temperature measurements to the end.
(... and to be REALLY frank, you also need to modify the temperature measurements so you can minimize the warmth of the 30s and the cooling in the 60/70s.)
Here's the shocker: We HAVE earlier temperature data. That data does not agree with the tree proxies, and it gives the concept of AGW dubious support if any.
I love the US. At least the parts of it I've visited (San Francisco, San Diego, Las Vegas and New York). I still don't get you though. Where's the porn?
Please try reading my post before assuming you can send off any standard link and be done with it. Tree ring proxies are out. The other proxies do not support the hockey stick (they have a warm MWP and a pronounced LIA) - your own link contains that very info. Without the (statistically big no-no) grafting of direct temperatures onto proxies we're not even in the warmest period of the last 1000 years.
Please at least _try_ to do science. I promise it's worth it.
(Your link above seems to be very one sided, trying to pass off "warmest over the last 4/500 years" as supporting the 1000-year hockeystick)
Oh cheap energy solves a lot of the problems you bring up, like how to create easily accessible energy for transportation and desalination of sea water.
When it comes to coastal regions, guess why I chose the Netherlands;)
I'm the GP that said "hundreds of billions" and I stand by that statement. What you fail to do is to realise how much change our everyday tech development brings the world. The best way to realise the fallacy of thinking of today's problems tomorrow is to go back in history.
Mann hockeystick #1: falsified (severe errors, this is the one Al Gore and IPCC referenced so happily)
Mann hockeystick #2: falsified (spaghetti cherry picking - although those without statistical knowledge still claim it's valid)
Briffa hockeystick: One tree in Siberia no science makes.
I know of no other tree ring hockeysticks. Basically, tree rings aren't good temperature proxies and most dendrologists know this.
However, the lead scientist involved, Michael Bailee, said that the oak ring data requested was not relevant to temperature reconstruction records.
Although ancient oaks could give an indication of one-off dramatic climatic events, such as droughts, they were not useful as a temperature proxy because they were highly sensitive to water availability as well as past temperatures, he added.
“It’s been dressed up as though we are suppressing climate data, but we have never produced climate records from our tree rings,” Professor Bailee said.
“In my view it would be dangerous to try and make interpretations about the temperature from this data.”
Guess who used lots and lots of oaks to make a spaghetti hockeystick.
If we disregard the falsified tree ring hockeysticks, science is suddenly back in the game - and with that comes the Medieval Warm Period (global as it was), the Roman warm period and a lot of other warm periods _warmer than today_.... and all that, while we at the same time have huge UHI problems with our temperature record and never, ever, should graft those temperatures onto proxies (and guess who made THAT... ).
Mann should never be allowed to publish anywhere again. He doesn't do science.
We're already producing more food worldwide than needed. Our problem is the allocation of those resources, and that's a question of politics - nothing else.
As to power: Solar is currently doubling in efficiency every second year. In 20 years we're thus able to supply the (known) energy requirements of Earth with solar alone.
As to space: Urbanization has been going on for quite some time. Let's look at some popular population densities and project that crudely over available land mass:
While Swedish myself (and we have a LOT of unpopulated land available - welcome over!) I like the Netherlands. Wonderful country. Pop. density 400/km2. Pop. density on the available landmass (excluding Antarctica) today, 50/km2. That is, without changing anything else, and with everyone living the good life of people in the Netherlands, we'd already be able to support comfortable living space for 72 billion people (and please remember that millions of people are happy to live a lot more urbanized than the average of the Netherlands).
So, the question is simple. Why do you claim things that simply aren't true? What's your agenda - and why? Is it important for you to claim that the world is overpopulated for some other reasons than you've posted so far?
In the case of AGW, the effects of warming will cost many trillions of dollars to deal with. Wouldn't you think it would be wise to spend at least a trillion dollars to avoid those effects?
Bjorn Lomborg did the economics of this in "Cool It" and found, by an incredible margin, that mitigating possible effects is a lot cheaper than trying to curb any possible AGW due to CO2.
Only if you assume there will be NO FURTHER TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT.
Which, of course, would be quite stupid to assume.
In reality, we can easily support hundreds of billions of people all living at what we would call "western standards", whatever that means in 20-80 years time.
I'm not sure that's what science tells us. CO2 ppm in the atmosphere is a somewhat hotly debated issue - today - but in reality we have both older direct measurements than what's normally reported, as well as a problem where we graft direct measurements onto proxies (i.e, the same problem as with tree ring proxies for temperature) without discussing what that means.
There are proper papers discussing diffusion of CO2 levels in ice cores available, but as a primer this writeup should do: http://www.john-daly.com/zjiceco2.htm
(disregard the site, the information is valid and sourced)
We also need to remember that for modelling reasons we claim CO2 to be well mixed in the atmosphere, even though we know from satellite measurements that it isn't (AIRS) - of special interest, of course, is that it's lower at the poles.
If we switch from the dubious ice core proxies for historical CO2 levels, things become much more interesting. It seems we're currently in a very CO2 starved atmosphere where most plant life (and animals) evolved when CO2 levels were much higher. On the order of ten magnitudes higher even: http://gcmd.nasa.gov/records/GCMD_NOAA_NCDC_PALEO_2002-051.html
As to the issue of volcanoes, you're correct, but thinking of single eruptions. If we instead talk about "volcanic activity" the issue becomes clearer. There are always eruptions happening at someplace on earth, but the level of activity waxes and wanes. Here are some telling quotes from a book on the effects just the volcanoes on Iceland have on the (european) climate: http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/6387
(again, disregard the site - it's not the source)
There's no such thing as a "scientific consensus" (Popper spins wildly in his grave) with regards to our climate. Usually those words are uttered by the same people who claimed acid rain would kill all plant life, that we would all die from exposure to UV radiation through the ozone hole (and no, we didn't "fix" it - it has a completely natural sun influenced cycle) or any one of the other scares from the "humans are a pest and the earth would do a lot better without us"-movement.
Slashdot Mirror
IF the MWP (and the other warm periods that we can see in ice core data) was global then that pretty much falsifies the current climate models. Thus, there's no "added" problem you describe we should be afraid of.
:)
The source for the quote, no matter how it's reported or by whom, is still the original source.
putting journalist's words into scientist's mouths [---] he [Baillie] was certainly not the source you cited
If you want to claim that Baillie is misrepresented, and didn't say the things attributed to him, feel free to do so.
Until you do, sorry, but your posts contain nothing of interest to our readers.
In fact the paper says nearly the opposite
Not really. If you want to claim you've read it I would presume you managed to reach the conclusion as well.
(And feel free to define "nearly" whenever you want to - with the same scrutiny as you seem to place upon my use of the word "good"!)
Did you even read the paper you're citing here? Did you even read the abstract?
Sure. Did you read the conclusion? ;)
When reconstructing past climate from tree-rings (e.g. the amplitude of the Little Ice Age or Medieval Warm Period), it is important to appreciate that these reconstructions are conservative as they only contain a part of the true climate signal.
If you actually take the time to read the whole paper, you will understand why oaks specifically are discouraged as temperature proxies.
Feel free to skip the strawmans and actually read what I post instead :) (hint: In my original post the word "good" is there on purpose)
(Oh I do science pretty much full time - would knowing that had changed how you read my post?)
1) I wrote "new science" - not "evolution of". Example of the latter, refining tools for measurements of redshift. Examples of the former [would be], finding out that the ozone hole is a result of changes in the amount of cosmic rays that penetrate the heliosphere.
2) My source was not the New York Times. My source was dendrologists, as quoted by the New York Times. That is not a small difference. If you want to read more of their work, I'd direct you to a paper. Would Climate signal in tree-ring chronologies in a temperate climate: A multi-species approach (Suarez, Butler, Baillie, 2009) do?
But hey, what do I know. I'm apparently "wilfully ignorant" :)
From the post you replied to:
(Also includes NEVER grafting temperature measurements onto proxies - you simply do not know it's valid)
Do you understand why this is a big no-no? Even Mann himself does ;)
"No researchers in this field have ever, to our knowledge, 'grafted the thermometer record onto' any reconstruction. It is somewhat disappointing to find this specious claim (which we usually find originating from industry-funded climate disinformation Web sites) appearing in this forum." - Mann
Unfortunately, not only have researchers done so - including Mann himself - it's still being done.
Great post. If only you had left out the last sentence.
(I live in a country where scientists aren't as afraid to voice their opinions on the science behind AGW as in the US, for example. Comparing them to creationists - something almost unheard of here - falls quite flat to the ground)
You see, I agree with you. My point was simply that the mantra "scientific consensus" is invalid and worn out. If it's 80-20, 70-30 or even 60-40 isn't of interest - scientific "truth" is not a democracy.
(I hope you realise that most of your post consists of the well known strawman fallacy)
Baillie, and many other dendrologists, are very wary about using tree rings as temperature proxies. I.e, your claim that Baillie's comment is about Keenan specifically is not correct, it's about oaks - no matter who uses them. (Climate signal in tree-ring chronologies in a temperate climate: A multi-species approach. Suarez, Butler, Baillie, 2009)
As to Mann specifically, the Wegman report is quite damning when it comes to his use of bristlecones. Mann's "tree ring credibility" is thus quite low.
Because thermometers were not widespread and the measurements from those thermometers were not recorded.
Please see the last link of the post you replied to.
I always turn to youtube for the best analysis instead of journal papers
Please read the comment I wrote with regards to that link. The comment about the sources being listed at the end. The sources, of course, which _are_ journal papers.
I'm not sure if you're trying to defend showing two different data sources as one (grafting direct measurements onto proxies) - but if so - do you understand the problem with it?
(I specifically dislike tree ring proxies, since there are numerous well documented problems with them. I fail to see why they're still used at all, and why people defend them in the light of the well-exposed problems)
When the overwhelming majority of scientists in a given field agree on something, it's probably true. It does require a considerable amount of evidence for me to disbelieve that, and I haven't seen nearly enough such evidence.
Most new findings in science breaks with established tradition, and meets resistance from a majority of the scientists in related fields. If we practiced "science by consensus" (we DON'T) we'd never get anywhere.
Example, plate tectonics (stems from the continental drift hypothesis):
Some truly revolutionary scientific theories may take years or decades to win general acceptance among scientists. This is certainly true of plate tectonics, one of the most important and far-ranging geological theories of all time; when first proposed, it was ridiculed, but steadily accumulating evidence finally prompted its acceptance, with immense consequences for geology, geophysics, oceanography, and paleontology.
[---]
Reaction to Wegener's theory was almost uniformly hostile, and often exceptionally harsh and scathing; Dr. Rollin T. Chamberlin of the University of Chicago said, "Wegener's hypothesis in general is of the footloose type, in that it takes considerable liberty with our globe, and is less bound by restrictions or tied down by awkward, ugly facts than most of its rival theories."
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/wegener.html
Ah, the stopped clock argument :) You're correct in that from 1200 different tree ring proxies you might find a few that fit with other data. If you'd go ahead and claim that you can then use them for other time periods would however be a statistically problematic conclusion.
As to the rest of your post - are you trying to claim that Baillie didn't mean what he was saying? If so, please support that claim with more than your own guesswork :)
Why start at 1800? We can try to verify tree rings a lot further back than that, using ice cores as well as other proxies. It turns out the tree rings show a completely different pictures compared to the other proxies - a very flat picture. No MMW, no LIA.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFbUVBYIPlI (see the very end for sources)
To be frank, tree ring proxies (especially merging a lot of them together to hide how wildly different they are even from each other) are the only ones that can be used to show the handle of a hockey stick.
To get the blade, you need to switch away from the proxies again and graft direct temperature measurements to the end.
( ... and to be REALLY frank, you also need to modify the temperature measurements so you can minimize the warmth of the 30s and the cooling in the 60/70s.)
Here's the shocker: We HAVE earlier temperature data. That data does not agree with the tree proxies, and it gives the concept of AGW dubious support if any.
http://i45.tinypic.com/kqbd4.jpg
The tree ring data from after 1961 is not used because it doesn't match the temperature Simple enough for you?
Yes. To a scientist it means "tree rings aren't good temperature proxies". You know, what the dendrologists have been saying the whole time.
http://climateresearchnews.com/2010/04/119-useless-oak-tree-ring-chronologies-used-by-mann-et-al-2008/
(disregard the site, linked since it contains the relevant quote from the tree ring specialists themselves)
1) Do you believe science works through consensus?
2) Do you think I can falsify that belief, if so? ;)
While it's still possible they had something around their chests, I don't know what would be holding up so little material.
http://www.google.com/search?q=strapless+bikini
I love the US. At least the parts of it I've visited (San Francisco, San Diego, Las Vegas and New York). I still don't get you though. Where's the porn?
(Maybe it's because I'm Swedish ... )
Please try reading my post before assuming you can send off any standard link and be done with it. Tree ring proxies are out. The other proxies do not support the hockey stick (they have a warm MWP and a pronounced LIA) - your own link contains that very info. Without the (statistically big no-no) grafting of direct temperatures onto proxies we're not even in the warmest period of the last 1000 years.
Please at least _try_ to do science. I promise it's worth it.
(Your link above seems to be very one sided, trying to pass off "warmest over the last 4/500 years" as supporting the 1000-year hockeystick)
Yes, see my earlier message. Throw out the tree ring proxies and suddenly we're not in "unprecedented warming" any longer.
(Also includes NEVER grafting temperature measurements onto proxies - you simply do not know it's valid)
With regards to Mann specifically, he doesn't do science. It's as simple as that. Incompetence or malice, pick one.
Oh cheap energy solves a lot of the problems you bring up, like how to create easily accessible energy for transportation and desalination of sea water.
When it comes to coastal regions, guess why I chose the Netherlands ;)
I'm the GP that said "hundreds of billions" and I stand by that statement. What you fail to do is to realise how much change our everyday tech development brings the world. The best way to realise the fallacy of thinking of today's problems tomorrow is to go back in history.
After all, London wasn't drowned in manure.
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/our-economic-past-the-great-horse-manure-crisis-of-1894/
I don't know - can you point me to one of them?
Mann hockeystick #1: falsified (severe errors, this is the one Al Gore and IPCC referenced so happily)
Mann hockeystick #2: falsified (spaghetti cherry picking - although those without statistical knowledge still claim it's valid)
Briffa hockeystick: One tree in Siberia no science makes.
I know of no other tree ring hockeysticks. Basically, tree rings aren't good temperature proxies and most dendrologists know this.
However, the lead scientist involved, Michael Bailee, said that the oak ring data requested was not relevant to temperature reconstruction records.
Although ancient oaks could give an indication of one-off dramatic climatic events, such as droughts, they were not useful as a temperature proxy because they were highly sensitive to water availability as well as past temperatures, he added.
“It’s been dressed up as though we are suppressing climate data, but we have never produced climate records from our tree rings,” Professor Bailee said.
“In my view it would be dangerous to try and make interpretations about the temperature from this data.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7102743.ece
Guess who used lots and lots of oaks to make a spaghetti hockeystick.
If we disregard the falsified tree ring hockeysticks, science is suddenly back in the game - and with that comes the Medieval Warm Period (global as it was), the Roman warm period and a lot of other warm periods _warmer than today_. ... and all that, while we at the same time have huge UHI problems with our temperature record and never, ever, should graft those temperatures onto proxies (and guess who made THAT ... ).
Mann should never be allowed to publish anywhere again. He doesn't do science.
We're already producing more food worldwide than needed. Our problem is the allocation of those resources, and that's a question of politics - nothing else.
http://www.nytimes.com/1986/09/09/science/scientific-advances-lead-to-era-of-food-surplus-around-world.html
As to power: Solar is currently doubling in efficiency every second year. In 20 years we're thus able to supply the (known) energy requirements of Earth with solar alone.
http://www.livescience.com/environment/080219-kurzweil-solar.html
As to space: Urbanization has been going on for quite some time. Let's look at some popular population densities and project that crudely over available land mass:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population_density
While Swedish myself (and we have a LOT of unpopulated land available - welcome over!) I like the Netherlands. Wonderful country. Pop. density 400/km2. Pop. density on the available landmass (excluding Antarctica) today, 50/km2. That is, without changing anything else, and with everyone living the good life of people in the Netherlands, we'd already be able to support comfortable living space for 72 billion people (and please remember that millions of people are happy to live a lot more urbanized than the average of the Netherlands).
So, the question is simple. Why do you claim things that simply aren't true? What's your agenda - and why? Is it important for you to claim that the world is overpopulated for some other reasons than you've posted so far?
In the case of AGW, the effects of warming will cost many trillions of dollars to deal with. Wouldn't you think it would be wise to spend at least a trillion dollars to avoid those effects?
Bjorn Lomborg did the economics of this in "Cool It" and found, by an incredible margin, that mitigating possible effects is a lot cheaper than trying to curb any possible AGW due to CO2.
I'll bite:
Cherry picking is how Mann created his second try at the hockey stick (the spaghetti version), after the first was falsified.
http://climateaudit.org/2005/02/25/a-red-noise-spaghetti-diagram/
Karl Popper wants to discuss this "consensus" thing you're talking about with you. You do know it has absolutely nothing to do with science ... ?
(For laughter, check up the decades of non-consensus around plate tectonics)
there are TOO MANY PEOPLE on Earth already
Only if you assume there will be NO FURTHER TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT.
Which, of course, would be quite stupid to assume.
In reality, we can easily support hundreds of billions of people all living at what we would call "western standards", whatever that means in 20-80 years time.
You're probably having it quite often without even knowing it. Latency to low-earth isn't the same as geostationary.
I'm not sure that's what science tells us. CO2 ppm in the atmosphere is a somewhat hotly debated issue - today - but in reality we have both older direct measurements than what's normally reported, as well as a problem where we graft direct measurements onto proxies (i.e, the same problem as with tree ring proxies for temperature) without discussing what that means.
There are proper papers discussing diffusion of CO2 levels in ice cores available, but as a primer this writeup should do: http://www.john-daly.com/zjiceco2.htm
(disregard the site, the information is valid and sourced)
We also need to remember that for modelling reasons we claim CO2 to be well mixed in the atmosphere, even though we know from satellite measurements that it isn't (AIRS) - of special interest, of course, is that it's lower at the poles.
If we switch from the dubious ice core proxies for historical CO2 levels, things become much more interesting. It seems we're currently in a very CO2 starved atmosphere where most plant life (and animals) evolved when CO2 levels were much higher. On the order of ten magnitudes higher even: http://gcmd.nasa.gov/records/GCMD_NOAA_NCDC_PALEO_2002-051.html
As to the issue of volcanoes, you're correct, but thinking of single eruptions. If we instead talk about "volcanic activity" the issue becomes clearer. There are always eruptions happening at someplace on earth, but the level of activity waxes and wanes. Here are some telling quotes from a book on the effects just the volcanoes on Iceland have on the (european) climate: http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/6387
(again, disregard the site - it's not the source)
There's no such thing as a "scientific consensus" (Popper spins wildly in his grave) with regards to our climate. Usually those words are uttered by the same people who claimed acid rain would kill all plant life, that we would all die from exposure to UV radiation through the ozone hole (and no, we didn't "fix" it - it has a completely natural sun influenced cycle) or any one of the other scares from the "humans are a pest and the earth would do a lot better without us"-movement.
I'd rather do science.