Anyone who thinks the CO2 you exhale is part of the problem is an idiot. Any carbon in the CO2 you exhale is from carbon that was already in the active carbon cycle and is just being recycled. The net effect on the level of CO2 in the atmosphere is zero.
The vilification of Michael Mann and others like Phil Jones has come to be called the Serengeti strategy. In the Serengeti lions will try to separate one individual from the herd in order to make them easier to take down. Climate science deniers think that taking down one individual like Michael Mann will destroy the entire edifice of climate science but like in the Serengeti the herd still exists. The strategy won't work until they can take out the whole herd.
Given that the Mann, et. al. hockey stick paper was really the first of its kind it's not surprising that they didn't always use the best statistical techniques in their work. But when you do apply the better statistical methods to his data is doesn't change the results enough that you could detect it just eyeballing the graph. Also since the paper had techniques that Mann, et. al. invented what do you expect out of the peer reviewers? How do you judge new things like that that no one's ever seen before?
Within the limitations of the data we have from 1000 years ago I don't think you can say that climate models don't produce reasonable results for the period. Scientists use hindcasting all the time to test their models and where they find them not working well it points to areas that need improvement.
Yes, spent fuel should be reprocessed because well less than half of the uranium in it is used up when it comes out of the reactor. It's stupid that we haven't got a repository for the spent fuel and byproducts yet. As far as your optimism regarding micro reactors, I'll believe it when I see it.
If Michael Mann actual had done all of those things you accuse him of then yes, he should be in prison. But despite trying for over 15 years no one has been able to make a case that he has done any of those things.
Side remark #1: When i say climate science i dont mean the IPCC (which is political in nature). As a scientist i find it pretty disturbing that they write a report in which the claims of interest groups are packed in without peer review, and declare this to be a result of science.
The IPCC Working Group 1 reports are produced exclusively by scientists with references to peer reviewed research. The summary gets some political input as to the wording but even that has to be approved by the scientists who produced the WG1 report before it is released.
Mann did not produce a climate model, he produce a statistical reconstruction of temperatures based on proxies. And it turns out that McKitrick and McIntyre cherry picked the best 100 runs of red noise out of over 1000 examples to try and make their point that it always produced a hockey stick. Some of the runs they didn't use produced a negative hockey stick or no "stick" at all.
Well, there is about a 100 year period up to 1960 where they can compare the dendrochronology to actual measurements and they compare well. It's not surprising that the intense industrialization and pollution in the 1960's may have had an effect.
So, I should be able to feel climate data from 30 years ago into your climate model and predict ROUGHLY what we've got today. No?
No, that's not how it works. Right now we can only produce a 30 year average of observations up to about 2000 because it takes 15 years on either side of the midpoint to derive the 30 year average. So we would compare the 30 year average of the year 2000 to the climate model projections for the year 2000 and see how close they are.
I doubt Mann has any fear that having his papers gone through will prove he's done anything fraudulent. He and the universities he was a part of have defended not releasing his private correspondence as a matter of principle for academic freedom. A scientist should be primarily judged on their published work.
I think Mann's problem with Steyn is that he said Mann "molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science," in an obvious allusion to the Jerry Sandusky case and that his science was fraudulent. Those are serious accusations against a scientist that could affect his future career if taken seriously.
Mann has gained wealth and fame from climate science.
Well he certainly has gained fame but I doubt he's gained much wealth. As a PhD and prominent researcher at a major university he is probably paid in $100,000-$150,000 range which is a nice income but I wouldn't call that wealth. He's received some support to help defray the cost of his legal bills but I don't know of anything else that's earning him money.
Regarding temperatures climate models are mostly trying to predict 30 year averages for rather large grids of the Earth's surface. Of course to verify how accurate they are for the present you have to wait until 15 years the present before you can calculate the average.
When the good doctor and his associates release all this data that was used to create their model, he is guilty of cherry picking data points and data manipulation. All the secrecy and denial of data release makes his conclusions suspect, regardless of their accuracy.
Michael Mann has not created a climate model. The 1998 hockey stick graph he produced is a reconstruction of temperatures going back about 1000 years based on paleoclimate proxies (primarily tree rings). The data and methods he and his coauthors used to produce it is available here.
Climate models don't even attempt to project 3 months into the future. That's not what they're built to do. They project climate which is by definition of the World Meteorological Organization requires a 30 year period. Within the envelope of climate the weather will have chaotic variability.
Perhaps you should show us one invalidated climate model (that scientists continue to use). Perhaps you should also check your expectations of what climate models should be capable of against the expectations of those who build them. Observations are still within the range of projections by GCM's.
With respect, neither wind nor solar are credible additions to the traditional power grid.
Maybe not at the moment but they may well be in the future.
I'm not against nuclear power but it seems to be one of the more costly ways to produce power. That's the biggest reason more nukes weren't built since the 1970's. It was cheaper and quicker to build a coal plant. We'll see how those plants they're building in Georgia work out.
In the first place 18 years is not long enough to invalidate a climate model. In the second place observations are still within the ranges projected by models. Most of the graphs you see on climate model output are from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) that takes the results hundreds of individual runs from about 30 different coupled* models and produces a weighted average and spread** of them. That smooths out the effects of natural variability so it's expected that observations will be under model projections part of the time and over them part of the time.
*Coupled means they have an atmospheric model and an ocean model coupled together.
**By spread I mean how big the range is when individual model runs differ from each other.
Yes, there are other factors at play and they are the subject of much study. To the extent possible they are included in climate models. A number of those factors such as ENSO, other oceanic cycles and volcanic activity are not predictable ahead of time so models have to simulate realistic scenarios for them. A recent paper "Well-estimated global surface warming in climate projections selected for ENSO phase" by Risbey, et. al. found that when you selected the model runs that were largely in phase with with the real world ENSO they matched observations pretty well.
Considering that CO2 increase has been constant, but temperatures have not significantly risen in the last 18 years.
Yet the oceans where more than 90% of the energy goes have continued to warm and major ice sheets have continued to melt. It doesn't take much of a shift in the amount of heat absorbed by the oceans to significantly affect the atmosphere.
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Anyone who thinks the CO2 you exhale is part of the problem is an idiot. Any carbon in the CO2 you exhale is from carbon that was already in the active carbon cycle and is just being recycled. The net effect on the level of CO2 in the atmosphere is zero.
Like I said, "Show me!" How many of them had GE sold? Has one even been built as a demonstration unit yet or is it still vaporware?
Here are two peer reviewed papers that dispute M&M:
"Comment on "Hockey sticks, principal components, and spurious significance" by S. McIntyre and R. McKitrick", Huybers, P. (21 October 2005)
"Robustness of the Mann, Bradley, Hughes reconstruction of Northern Hemisphere surface temperatures: Examination of criticisms based on the nature and processing of proxy climate evidence", Wahl, Eugene R.; Ammann, Caspar M. (31 August 2007)
The vilification of Michael Mann and others like Phil Jones has come to be called the Serengeti strategy. In the Serengeti lions will try to separate one individual from the herd in order to make them easier to take down. Climate science deniers think that taking down one individual like Michael Mann will destroy the entire edifice of climate science but like in the Serengeti the herd still exists. The strategy won't work until they can take out the whole herd.
Given that the Mann, et. al. hockey stick paper was really the first of its kind it's not surprising that they didn't always use the best statistical techniques in their work. But when you do apply the better statistical methods to his data is doesn't change the results enough that you could detect it just eyeballing the graph. Also since the paper had techniques that Mann, et. al. invented what do you expect out of the peer reviewers? How do you judge new things like that that no one's ever seen before?
Within the limitations of the data we have from 1000 years ago I don't think you can say that climate models don't produce reasonable results for the period. Scientists use hindcasting all the time to test their models and where they find them not working well it points to areas that need improvement.
Yes, spent fuel should be reprocessed because well less than half of the uranium in it is used up when it comes out of the reactor. It's stupid that we haven't got a repository for the spent fuel and byproducts yet. As far as your optimism regarding micro reactors, I'll believe it when I see it.
If Michael Mann actual had done all of those things you accuse him of then yes, he should be in prison. But despite trying for over 15 years no one has been able to make a case that he has done any of those things.
Side remark #1: When i say climate science i dont mean the IPCC (which is political in nature). As a scientist i find it pretty disturbing that they write a report in which the claims of interest groups are packed in without peer review, and declare this to be a result of science.
The IPCC Working Group 1 reports are produced exclusively by scientists with references to peer reviewed research. The summary gets some political input as to the wording but even that has to be approved by the scientists who produced the WG1 report before it is released.
I don't think Mann has any concern that having his papers exposed will show him to have produced fraudulent science.
Mann did not produce a climate model, he produce a statistical reconstruction of temperatures based on proxies. And it turns out that McKitrick and McIntyre cherry picked the best 100 runs of red noise out of over 1000 examples to try and make their point that it always produced a hockey stick. Some of the runs they didn't use produced a negative hockey stick or no "stick" at all.
Well, there is about a 100 year period up to 1960 where they can compare the dendrochronology to actual measurements and they compare well. It's not surprising that the intense industrialization and pollution in the 1960's may have had an effect.
So, I should be able to feel climate data from 30 years ago into your climate model and predict ROUGHLY what we've got today. No?
No, that's not how it works. Right now we can only produce a 30 year average of observations up to about 2000 because it takes 15 years on either side of the midpoint to derive the 30 year average. So we would compare the 30 year average of the year 2000 to the climate model projections for the year 2000 and see how close they are.
I doubt Mann has any fear that having his papers gone through will prove he's done anything fraudulent. He and the universities he was a part of have defended not releasing his private correspondence as a matter of principle for academic freedom. A scientist should be primarily judged on their published work.
I think Mann's problem with Steyn is that he said Mann "molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science," in an obvious allusion to the Jerry Sandusky case and that his science was fraudulent. Those are serious accusations against a scientist that could affect his future career if taken seriously.
Mann has gained wealth and fame from climate science.
Well he certainly has gained fame but I doubt he's gained much wealth. As a PhD and prominent researcher at a major university he is probably paid in $100,000-$150,000 range which is a nice income but I wouldn't call that wealth. He's received some support to help defray the cost of his legal bills but I don't know of anything else that's earning him money.
Regarding temperatures climate models are mostly trying to predict 30 year averages for rather large grids of the Earth's surface. Of course to verify how accurate they are for the present you have to wait until 15 years the present before you can calculate the average.
When the good doctor and his associates release all this data that was used to create their model, he is guilty of cherry picking data points and data manipulation. All the secrecy and denial of data release makes his conclusions suspect, regardless of their accuracy.
Michael Mann has not created a climate model. The 1998 hockey stick graph he produced is a reconstruction of temperatures going back about 1000 years based on paleoclimate proxies (primarily tree rings). The data and methods he and his coauthors used to produce it is available here.
I think it would be better to call them "climate science deniers." Most of them will admit that the climate has changed.
Climate models don't even attempt to project 3 months into the future. That's not what they're built to do. They project climate which is by definition of the World Meteorological Organization requires a 30 year period. Within the envelope of climate the weather will have chaotic variability.
Climate is not chaotic, at least not in the same way weather is. It's more of an energy balance problem.
Perhaps you should show us one invalidated climate model (that scientists continue to use). Perhaps you should also check your expectations of what climate models should be capable of against the expectations of those who build them. Observations are still within the range of projections by GCM's.
With respect, neither wind nor solar are credible additions to the traditional power grid.
Maybe not at the moment but they may well be in the future.
I'm not against nuclear power but it seems to be one of the more costly ways to produce power. That's the biggest reason more nukes weren't built since the 1970's. It was cheaper and quicker to build a coal plant. We'll see how those plants they're building in Georgia work out.
In the first place 18 years is not long enough to invalidate a climate model. In the second place observations are still within the ranges projected by models. Most of the graphs you see on climate model output are from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) that takes the results hundreds of individual runs from about 30 different coupled* models and produces a weighted average and spread** of them. That smooths out the effects of natural variability so it's expected that observations will be under model projections part of the time and over them part of the time.
*Coupled means they have an atmospheric model and an ocean model coupled together.
**By spread I mean how big the range is when individual model runs differ from each other.
Yes, there are other factors at play and they are the subject of much study. To the extent possible they are included in climate models. A number of those factors such as ENSO, other oceanic cycles and volcanic activity are not predictable ahead of time so models have to simulate realistic scenarios for them. A recent paper "Well-estimated global surface warming in climate projections selected for ENSO phase" by Risbey, et. al. found that when you selected the model runs that were largely in phase with with the real world ENSO they matched observations pretty well.
Considering that CO2 increase has been constant, but temperatures have not significantly risen in the last 18 years.
Yet the oceans where more than 90% of the energy goes have continued to warm and major ice sheets have continued to melt. It doesn't take much of a shift in the amount of heat absorbed by the oceans to significantly affect the atmosphere.
The obvious first response is to cut back on our CO2 emissions as fast as possible.