The numbers are a bit off but here is a direct quote from an editorial by James Hansen in the Washington Post:
Such events used to be exceedingly rare. Extremely hot temperatures covered about 0.1 percent to 0.2 percent of the globe in the base period of our study, from 1951 to 1980. In the last three decades, while the average temperature has slowly risen, the extremes have soared and now cover about 10percent of the globe.
Note, he is only talking about extreme hot temperatures but it wouldn't surprise me if there was a similar effect for other weather events.
I doubt that water in the basements of a skyscraper would require it to be torn down. They are basically huge frameworks of concrete and steel anchored to bedrock or to pilings driven well below any possible flood damage. A bit of water isn't going to cause much damage to that. You certainly will have major damage to the human amenities in the basements but the basic framework that supports the building will be fine.
I presume where you live is not subject to serious flooding from storm surge or waterway flooding. If not then it may be foolish to stay in place no matter how well prepared you are.
The post 1960 data that disagrees with "CAGW" also disagrees with actual temperature measurements made with thermometers. You wouldn't choose to use proxy data that disagrees with actual measurements unless you have some sort of unscientific agenda.
Mann's Hockey Stick work in no way makes any predictions. It's merely a presentation of the data up until the time of cut off for publication. Mann is a paleoclimatologist and predictions are the realm of the climate modelers.
Sorry, there isn't enough ice to give you oceanfront property in Colorado. If all of the ice on the planet were to melt sea level would rise at most around 250 feet, not enough for the sea to reach Colorado. OTOH, my place on a hill in the middle of the Willamette Valley would be on an island in Willamette Sound. Boy, the property value would skyrocket if that happened.
Most crimes can be thought of as form of theft: Murder,theft of life, larceny, theft of valuables; tresspass, theft of privacy; copyright infringement; theft of the worst kind imaginable; rape; theft of services...
What an incredibly transactional libertarian view of the world viewing everything in terms of property that can be stolen from you.
Perhaps the better way is to slowly transform our existing infrastructure over the next 30 or 40 years to something that is sustainable rather than just being subject to the vagaries of global warming. In other words make a proactive controlled transition instead of just reacting after the fact.
If you're rejecting something scientific just because you don't like the politics of someone who supports it you're doing it wrong. Sorta like how the Republicans have been rejecting anything Obama has proposed in hopes of limiting him to one term as President. We'll find out if it worked or not in a couple of weeks.
It sounds like you have a binary view of this. If it isn't completely, provably correct then it must be completely wrong and must be completely rejected. In science generally you work with what you have until something better comes along. The statement you quoted is just a statement that says the uncertainty of the reconstructions is high. It doesn't mean they are wrong.
That sounds to me like a standard scientific disclaimer. It doesn't mean they are wrong. I don't think anyone has anything better to offer so you go with what you have.
Actually McIntyre and McKitrick (and Wegman) cherry picked the top 100 out of 10,000 runs of the code to show that it always produces a hockey stick. There's a good discussion of it here.
The proxy records they were using go back more than 1000 years. Since 1850 or so they have actual temperature measurements to compare the proxy data to. Up until 1960 the proxy data closely matched the actual temperature data that was available to compare to. After 1960 the proxy data showed a drop that wasn't reflected in the actual temperature data. There are other tree ring data series from other locations that do not show the same decline. So obviously something besides temperature caused the decline after 1960 in that particular proxy series. The speculation is that it had to do with industrial pollution.
So, the graph is just a pretty picture and it's the underlying data that matters. The full data series is available so nobody is hiding anything, just reducing the noise level.
BTW, it wasn't Phil Jones but Michael Mann who decided not to use the proxy after 1960. That you got such a straightforward point wrong doesn't give me confidence in the rest of what you say.
Slashdot Mirror
Global warming is a bigger threat to us than terrorism is.
From what I heard tonight the storm surge at The Battery in NYC was 14 feet, 3 feet higher than the previous record.
The numbers are a bit off but here is a direct quote from an editorial by James Hansen in the Washington Post:
Such events used to be exceedingly rare. Extremely hot temperatures covered about 0.1 percent to 0.2 percent of the globe in the base period of our study, from 1951 to 1980. In the last three decades, while the average temperature has slowly risen, the extremes have soared and now cover about 10percent of the globe.
Note, he is only talking about extreme hot temperatures but it wouldn't surprise me if there was a similar effect for other weather events.
I doubt that water in the basements of a skyscraper would require it to be torn down. They are basically huge frameworks of concrete and steel anchored to bedrock or to pilings driven well below any possible flood damage. A bit of water isn't going to cause much damage to that. You certainly will have major damage to the human amenities in the basements but the basic framework that supports the building will be fine.
If your wife it 9 months pregnant then you'd better have some plans about how you're going to get to the hospital if it becomes necessary.
Tides are generally highest when there's a full moon or new moon because that's when the Sun and Moon are in alignment and augment each other.
I presume where you live is not subject to serious flooding from storm surge or waterway flooding. If not then it may be foolish to stay in place no matter how well prepared you are.
I have a feeling Mann's pugnaciousness will match Steyn's.
The post 1960 data that disagrees with "CAGW" also disagrees with actual temperature measurements made with thermometers. You wouldn't choose to use proxy data that disagrees with actual measurements unless you have some sort of unscientific agenda.
It already has turned out wrong since we did not have an enormous exponential increase in temperature up to 2004 as Mann et al "forecasted".
Citation needed.
Mann's Hockey Stick work in no way makes any predictions. It's merely a presentation of the data up until the time of cut off for publication. Mann is a paleoclimatologist and predictions are the realm of the climate modelers.
Sorry, there isn't enough ice to give you oceanfront property in Colorado. If all of the ice on the planet were to melt sea level would rise at most around 250 feet, not enough for the sea to reach Colorado. OTOH, my place on a hill in the middle of the Willamette Valley would be on an island in Willamette Sound. Boy, the property value would skyrocket if that happened.
Most crimes can be thought of as form of theft: Murder,theft of life, larceny, theft of valuables; tresspass, theft of privacy; copyright infringement; theft of the worst kind imaginable; rape; theft of services...
What an incredibly transactional libertarian view of the world viewing everything in terms of property that can be stolen from you.
Perhaps the better way is to slowly transform our existing infrastructure over the next 30 or 40 years to something that is sustainable rather than just being subject to the vagaries of global warming. In other words make a proactive controlled transition instead of just reacting after the fact.
Good point. Mann is only so famous because a bunch of global warming deniers tried to make an example of him.
If you're rejecting something scientific just because you don't like the politics of someone who supports it you're doing it wrong. Sorta like how the Republicans have been rejecting anything Obama has proposed in hopes of limiting him to one term as President. We'll find out if it worked or not in a couple of weeks.
It sounds like you have a binary view of this. If it isn't completely, provably correct then it must be completely wrong and must be completely rejected. In science generally you work with what you have until something better comes along. The statement you quoted is just a statement that says the uncertainty of the reconstructions is high. It doesn't mean they are wrong.
That sounds to me like a standard scientific disclaimer. It doesn't mean they are wrong. I don't think anyone has anything better to offer so you go with what you have.
Actually McIntyre and McKitrick (and Wegman) cherry picked the top 100 out of 10,000 runs of the code to show that it always produces a hockey stick. There's a good discussion of it here.
The proxy records they were using go back more than 1000 years. Since 1850 or so they have actual temperature measurements to compare the proxy data to. Up until 1960 the proxy data closely matched the actual temperature data that was available to compare to. After 1960 the proxy data showed a drop that wasn't reflected in the actual temperature data. There are other tree ring data series from other locations that do not show the same decline. So obviously something besides temperature caused the decline after 1960 in that particular proxy series. The speculation is that it had to do with industrial pollution.
So, the graph is just a pretty picture and it's the underlying data that matters. The full data series is available so nobody is hiding anything, just reducing the noise level.
BTW, it wasn't Phil Jones but Michael Mann who decided not to use the proxy after 1960. That you got such a straightforward point wrong doesn't give me confidence in the rest of what you say.
The standards for what is hospitable for agriculture are different now than they were 1000 years ago.
Now you're defaming the people at Penn State who did the investigation of Mann. None of them had anything to do with a coverup of Sandusky's crimes.
ROTFLMAO
For the amount of data they can collect they'd probably need a 25 zettabyte storage array.
Thanks, I was gearing up to reply to the guy but you did it for me.