A lowess smooth filter can help analyze trends at various points in the Church and White global sea level dataset. The trend from 1930-1950 is significantly slower than the post-2000 trend: the error bars don't overlap.
When they analyze all the data that exists, that's the opposite of cherry picking. [Geoffrey Landis]
Indeed. I made this same point after Jane/Lonny baselessly accused Layzej of "cherry-picking" when Layzej loaded all the UAH data. Jane/Lonny then suggested cherry-picking at 1998, and keepsinsisting that this somehow isn't "cherry-picking".
Ironically, I even gave Jane/Lonny R code which calculates trends and accelerations of global mean sea level (GMSL) data. That graph accounts for autocorrelation- the red lines are 2 sigma uncertainties. The trends and accelerations are calculated over periods which all end at 2009.5. The new significance.zip (backupcopies) contains my R statistics folder, including many data sets.
Again, note that this approach avoids cherry-picking by using the entire dataset. Also note that all the best-fit accelerations are positive.
"Sea level is rising at an increasing rate... There is strong evidence that global sea level is now rising at an increased rate and will continue to rise during this century. While studies show that sea levels changed little from AD 0 until 1900, sea levels began to climb in the 20th century. The two major causes of global sea-level rise are thermal expansion caused by the warming of the oceans (since water expands as it warms) and the loss of land-based ice (such as glaciers and polar ice caps) due to increased melting. Records and research show that sea level has been steadily rising at a rate of 1 to 2.5 millimeters (0.04 to 0.1 inches) per year since 1900. This rate may be increasing. Since 1992, new methods of satellite altimetry (the measurement of elevation or altitude) indicate a rate of rise of 3 millimeters (0.12 inches) per year. This is a significantly larger rate than the sea-level rise averaged over the last several thousand years."
"Proxy and instrumental sea level data indicate a transition in the late 19th to the early 20th century from relatively low mean rates of rise over the previous two millennia to higher rates of rise (high confidence). It is likely that the rate of global mean sea level rise has continued to increase since the early 20th century."
That's also consistent with the US NAS's statement that "Sea level is rising faster in recent decades".
There is no way to trace what they did, no way to confirm their methods. Sadly the masses are not equipped to scrutinize the nonsense. [Steve A Morris, 2017-01-11]
You can trace what Hausfather et al. 2017 did by downloading the code they made freely available at bit.ly/2jXSy7G. You can confirm their methods by reading the full paper and following the links at the end which lead to all the data they used. Interested members of the public can read or watch the background they shared.
... they simply don't use 1/3 of the ARGO datasets because its data is "more ambiguous". Translation: "It doesn't fit our needs." [Lonny Eachus, 2017-01-11]
Read the paper to see if Lonny's "translation" is reasonable: "... Two of the three Argo near-SST records assessed, APDRC and H2008, agree well with the buoy-only and satellite-based records and suggest a cool bias in ERSSTv3b during the 2005-2015 period, when sufficient Argo data are available (Fig. 3). The RG2009 series is more ambiguous, with trends that are not significantly different (P > 0.05) from either ERSSTv3b or ERSSTv4...."
Lonny Eachus is wrong to claim that Hausfather et al. "simply don't use 1/3 of the ARGO datasets" (presumably a reference to RG2009). They used 3 independent Argo near-SST (near sea surface temperature) datasets, and reported the results from all 3 datasets. Anyone who reads the full paper will see that they mention RG2009 a total of 17 times while reporting the results of using that dataset.
... the study's argument is rather weak. ARGO data has best coverage, best instruments. Yet they arbitrarily throw out 1/3 of the ARGO data sets because they don't agree with their preconceptions.... In sum, it appears that this paper committed the same likely error as Karl et al. That is to say: ignoring arguably better data because it doesn't fit their preconceptions. [Lonny Eachus, 2017-01-11]
Wrong. Hausfather et al. didn't "throw out" or "ignore" 1/3 of the Argo datasets. Look at figure 3 (backup). They show the results of all three Argo datasets, including four instances using the RG2009 dataset which Lonny baselessly accuses them of "arbitrarily throwing out" and "ignoring".
Paper: (1) "We constructed our own data set from other data sets." (2) Oops. But we left some out. "(3) "We find MOST of the data we used does not match our new contrived data set. So we will ignore it." [Lonny Eachus, 2017-01-11]
Again, Hausfather et al. didn't "leave out" or "ignore" the RG2009 dataset. Look at figure 4 (backup). They show the results of all 3 Argo datasets, including the RG2009 dataset which Lonny baselessly accuses them of "ignoring".
Figure 4 examines four composite SST records: ERSSTv4, ERSSTv3b, HadSST3, and COBE-SST. These composite SST records are compared to instrumentally homogenous datasets (which just means "from a single type of instrument"): b
Regarding recent Hausfather et al. paper, which is the source of the latest hype about "no pause": As Anthony Watts points out, the study only goes to 2015, and the middle of its strong El Nino. If it had gone to the present, after record cooling, it would show less or no overall warming. Quote Watts: "Personally, it looks like ignoring the most current data available for 2016, which has been cooling compared to 2015, invalidates the claim right out of the gate" Here's the quote and some other criticisms of Hausfather et al. dailycaller.com/2017/01/05/new-study...[Lonny Eachus, 2017-01-11]
No. When Hausfather et al. 2017 was published (long after it was submitted) the most current available NOAA data ended in November 2016. Nick Stokes showed that even if Hausfather et al. had used a time machine to include those data when submitting their paper, it would have showed more warming. Even the silly opinion piece Lonny linked notes that "climate models will more closely match observations once 2016 data is included".
... its conclusions might have been different after the record cooling we've seen, post- El Nino. [Lonny Eachus, 2017-01-11]
Ironically, Zeke Hausfather showed that including all the 2016 data available at publication actually increases the observed warming trends compared to their paper's conclusions using data through 2015. This is still true using the full 2016 NOAA data which just became available on January 18. Lonny could verify this by repeating these least squares trend estimates with the monthly data, or just noticing that the annual ocean average was even higher in 2016 than in 2015. Zeke Hausfather challenged Anthony Watts to find an ocean temperature record that was cooler on average in 2016 than in 2015. Watts couldn't name one or bring himself to retract his claim. Can Lonny?
... Personally, it looks like ignoring the most current data available for 2016, which has been cooling compared to 2015, invalidates the claim right out of the gate.... the data only goes to December 2015. They've missed an ENTIRE YEAR's worth of data... Looks like a clear case of cherry picking to me, by not using all the available data.... [Anthony Watts, 2017-01-04]
Watts accuses Hausfather et al. of ignoring the most current data and missing an ENTIRE YEAR's worth of data. Since Hausfather et al. 2017 was submitted in early 2016, they'd have needed a time machine to include the ENTIRE YEAR's worth of data that Watts accused them of ignoring and missing. In contrast, Sou notes that Anthony Watts presented an AGU poster in 2015 without data from 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, or 2009.
Why did Lonny Eachus link to a graph showing a 3.1 mm/year global sea level trend? Since that's higher than Lonny'sclaimed "1.1 mm/year", doesn't that simple comparison show the rate of sea level rise is increasing (i.e. accelerating) over the long term? And since Lonny's accused scientists of being "liars" if they acknowledge the global sea level rise of ~3 mm/year, why did Lonny cite a graph containing what he called a lie from a scientist he's previously called a "liar"?
Furthermore, that's not a peer-reviewed paper. It's a slide from a 2011 presentation which hasn't been turned into a peer-reviewed paper. A real skeptic might wonder why it hasn't. Hint: in 2011 Jane/Lonny briefly stopped denying satellite measurements of sea level because they showed a short term drop. Of course, scientists told Jane that this was because the 2011 La Nina caused such massive flooding that global sea level fell temporarily. See Boening et al. 2012 (PDF).
So is it really surprising that calculating sea level acceleration from 1993-2011 gave an unrepresentative answer? Especially because that's a short timespan, and detecting acceleration requires a longer timespan than just detecting a trend. Maybe we could learn why that 2011 presentation hasn't become a peer-reviewed paper by looking at that same data up to 2016.
Let's analyze that raw data (backup) from sealevel.colorado.edu (backup). Here are accelerations and uncertainties for timespans that all end at 2016.1 but start at 1993, 1994, etc. Notice the similarities between the satellite acceleration graph and the older global tide gauge acceleration graph I've shown Jane/Lonny. All the black best-fit accelerations are positive. More recent accelerations tend to be larger. (The most recent accelerations and even their red lower 95% confidence intervals are off the scale even though the upper vertical limit is twice as high as in the older graph.) This tends to suggest that not only is global sea level accelerating, it's even "jerking" up.
(Technical note: those 95% confidence intervals were calculated using a ARMA(1,1) noise model. I also tested AR(1), MA(1), ARMA(1,2), and ARMA(2,1), but ARMA(1,1) minimized both the AIC and BIC.)
Perhaps you would like to rebut the Royal Society paper, that shows a DECREASE in wildfires last decades/centuries [Les Johnson, 2016-06-13]
Wow. One of Lonny Eachus's fellow travellers completely ignores everything I wrote. What a complete surprise!
Again, as I pointed out, land clearing fires decreased (among other factors involving direct human intervention). From that Royal Society paper:
"... During the first half century, the global average area burned decreased somewhat by about 7% [41]. This was largely attributed to human factors, such as increased fire prevention, detection and fire-fighting efficiency, abandonment of slash-and-burn cultivation in some areas and permanent agricultural practice in others...."
So that paper explicitly includes "slash-and-burn cultivation" in the decreasing total area burned. Which is exactly what I told you earlier. That paper is examining all fires, both wildfires and intentional burns. Notice that they're examining charcoal records and isotope-ratio records in ice cores? Those records necessarily include intentional burns, like the "staggering amounts" of land clearing fires that occurred just in the USA over the last century. Ice core and charcoal records can't distinguish wildfires from intentional burns, but when Doerr and Santin use statistics that can tell the difference, the results aren't quite what Les Johnson is implying:
"... the widely reported increase in area burned for the USA [42] and particularly the western USA in recent decades [43–46].... according to national statistics for the USA, while area burned by prescribed fire has changed little overall since reporting began in 1998 (10 year average: 8853 km2), area burned by wildfires has seen an overall strong trend of increase by over 5%/yr over the period 1991–2015, with 2015 exceeding 40 000 km2 burned for the first time during the past 25 years (figure 3). This increase has been accompanied by an overall decline in the number of fires (figure 3). This suggests a general trend of fewer, but larger wildfires, which is also highlighted for forests in the western USA by Westerling for the period 1983–2012 [46]...."
So Doerr and Santin are actually saying that wildfires are burning more area in the western USA in recent decades. That's exactly what I said in 2012. And note that Doerr and Santin say "These statistics need to be viewed with some caution when examining trends as annual reporting methods and biases have undergone changes over time [47]."
Doerr and Santin reference 47 is Short 2015, which says:
"... Intentional ('controlled') burning was used extensively for vegetation management on nonfederal lands, especially in the south-eastern US during the early 20th century. Although now used to a lesser extent (but on both federal and non-federal lands) in the US, intentional burning is not classified in the current reporting systems as 'wildfire' unless the controlled burn escapes and requires a suppression response. However, the early USFS wildfire activity summaries do include millions of hectares of intentional burning on 'unprotected' lands, which, until approximately the mid-20th century was viewed by the USFS as akin to wildfire, as something that should be prevented and ultimately eradicated (Pyne 1982). Controlled burning was accepted as a viable landmanagement practice over time and persists to this day (Melvin 2012); however, statistics regarding its use have not been included in summaries of 'wildfire' activity for several decades...."
I found the creationist tack amusing. From everything I've read about evolution you would think the 'random genetic variation' thing would be a slam dunk. Now here's Spencer saying that's not the case. Is it true? I don't know since I've never looked into it. (It's not high up on my list of interests...) But simply being open to Spencer's claim, being willing to listen and hear it out, makes me a creationist. Apparently because of the threat to science there is no room for debate. Sound familiar?
Nobody said you were a creationist. I asked if you agreed with Spencer's creationist claims. Once again, you still haven't been able to say "no". If you can eventually figure out why Spencer's creationism is anti-scientific and wrong, maybe you'll eventually be able to figure out why his similar arguments about AGW are also wrong.
The bit of video I saw showed Dr Spencer arguing against genetic randomness. Maybe he believes the only other possibility is Intelligent Design? I don't know. I haven't looked into it. [GiordyS]
Ironically, GiordyS says this in response to my pointing out that Dr. Spencer has been making his "intelligent design" views public for years... and in that bit of video Dr. Spencer was repeating classic "intelligent design" arguments. "Maybe?" You still "don't know"? Seriously?
But I know nothing about competing genetic randomness theories, so my lack of surprise has nothing to do with the actual science, in case you misunderstood. (I haven't looked into it.) [GiordyS]
They're not "competing genetic randomness theories. That's the entire point. "Intelligent Design" is a supernatural "explanation" which violates methodological naturalism and therefore would destroy science if it were confused with a scientific hypothesis. If the scientific process included a "supernatural" option, it would be used on a daily basis because people (including scientists) are lazy. As I've said before, I believe that science absolutely requires naturalism for two reasons. First, supernatural explanations are compatible with any and all eventualities, therefore they are not falsifiable and do not provide unique predictions.
Second, if science allowed supernatural explanations as a legitimate recourse, they would be used far too often because we can't distinguish poorly understood natural phenomena from genuinely supernatural phenomena:
Laplace never would've studied the stability of the solar system, so NASA wouldn't know to put the SOHO and WMAP satellites in their respective Lagrange points.
The question of why atoms are stable despite the predictions of classical electrodynamics would've been answered in the same way Newton explained the solar system's stability, so quantum mechanics (along with much of modern technology) wouldn't have been discovered.
The precession of Mercury's orbit would've been dismissed as "Allah pushing the planet around," so we never would have discovered Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, without which GPS devices can't function accurately.
The missing 2/3 of solar neutrinos would've been explained as "Ra's chariot soaking up the neutrinos on their way to earth," so neutrino oscillation would never have been proposed and proven, which would cause our cosmological models (if 'science' of this kind could even lead to such models) to be inaccurate because we wouldn't know that neutrinos have a non-zero rest mass.
Cosmic rays with energies above the GZK limit are currently unexplained. Should we bother looking for a naturalistic explanation, or just say they're "Jesus particles"?
Should we continue to try to quantize gravity, or announce that the obvious impossibility of such a feat is proof that the universe contains a message from its Intelligent Designer?
If you think that any of these examples are silly, exactly how are they differen
More to the point, you also said (after listening to Dr. Roy Spencer endorse the "theory of creation" over evolution) "I wouldn't be surprised if there is contradictory evidence that is simply ignored or dismissed because it challenges orthodox views. Scientists are human beings after all."
You were responding to a video where Senator Whitehouse asked Roy Spencer "And do you still believe that the Theory of Creation actually has a much better scientific basis than the Theory of Evolution, to be specific?"
Dr. Spencer replied: "I think, I think I could be put into a debate with someone on the other side and I think I could give more science supporting that life is created than they could support, with evidence, that life evolved through natural random processes, so yes."
Dr. Spencer has been making his "intelligent design" views public for years before GiordyS cited him for his climate contrarian views.
And once GiordyS finds out about Dr. Spencer's creationist views, he says "I wouldn't be surprised if there is contradictory evidence that is simply ignored or dismissed because it challenges orthodox views. Scientists are human beings after all."
As I've explained, intelligent design is certainly not scientific. But to return to my original point with this analogy, should I ignore all that evidence just because GiordyS's source Dr. Spencer is a creationist?
Interesting that you are so quick to dismiss contradictory evidence. The AMS survey is evidence that does not support the notion of a vast scientific consensus. And it is better than Cooks work since it does not depend on activist raters who break anonymity and blindness. [GiordyS]
Again, that's complete nonsense. 57% of those AMS survey respondents don't consider themselves experts in climate science. Again, if you had a question about heart surgery, would you actually ignore a survey of 77 actively practicing heart surgeons in favor of a survey where 57% of the respondents say they're not heart surgery experts?
What part of "the authors rated their own full papers" are you not understanding? How would all your supposed problems with "activist raters" affect the authors' self-ratings? And didn't you notice that your bizarre accusations were already addressed in error 5 here?
T14 uses as a basis for this argument an excerpt from stolen private forum discussions (Lacatena, 2014) which is quoted out of context. Discussion of the methodology of categorising abstract text formed part of the training period in the initial stages of the rating period. When presented to raters, abstracts were selected at random from a sample size of 12,464. Hence for all practical purposes, each rating session was independent from other rating sessions. While a few example abstracts were discussed for the purposes of rater training and clarification of category parameters, the ratings and raters were otherwise independent. This was discussed in C13;
"While criteria for determining ratings were defined prior to the rating period, some clarifications and amendments were required as specific situations presented themselves."
Independence of the raters was important to identify uncertainties based on interpretation of the rating criteria, but had little bearing on the final conclusion. Indeed, the conclusion is strengthened by the fact that the vast majority of rater disagreements were between no position and endorsement categories; very few affected the rejection bin.
In Cooks paper, social sciences papers such as a public survey looking at "Informed and uninformed public opinions on CO2 capture and storage" were considered climate science literature that endorsed consensus. [GiordyS]
Again, so you disagree with ratings given to some of the 11,944 abstracts. Given the large sample, that's almost inevitable. Here are all 11,944 abstract ratings. Change the ratings on whichever ones you think are wrong, then recalculate the consensus. If the new number is sufficiently different, and your re-ratings are reasonable, you might actually be able to publish your re-analysis. But I suspect that reasonable changes would only have minor effects on the consensus, because any of these supposed problems with the raters wouldn't affect the authors' ratings of their full papers. When you change the ratings, you should also email the authors to see if they agree with your new ratings, like Cook et al. 2013 did.
Knowing the above I'm not sure how anyone can defend that paper. Maybe they are so happy with the results they don't care how they got them? Is that how science is supposed to work? [GiordyS]
Again, it's astonishing that you keep baselessly accusing NASA and other scientists of being "so happy with the results they don't care how they got them" while at the same time citing Tol 2014, a paper which fails to list even a single example o
No, Dr. Spencer was endorsing "intelligent design" which is neo-creationism. It's not surprising that you've joined the many climate contrarians who also agree with the similar arguments put forth by creationists against "orthodox" evolutionary theory.
A poster above (arguing for the consensus position btw) posted a recent survey that indicates only 67% of AMS members believe that a majority of warming since 1950 is anthropogenic. That's not a consensus. https://gmuchss.az1.qualtrics....[GiordyS]
Hey, point me to a good study that shows that "published papers that seek to test what caused the climate change over the last century and half, almost unanimously find that humans played a dominant role". I'll read it and get back to you. [GiordyS]
You failed to answer yes or no, but your response seems to suggest that you actually are arguing with the results of John Cook's paper. Despite the fact that you insisted you weren't. So let's try again. Do you agree with Richard Tol when he says this?
"The consensus is of course in the high nineties. No one ever said it was not."[Richard Tol]
Note that Richard Tol explicitly states this is "something everyone knows." Do you agree with Richard Tol's statement? Yes or No?
Are you referring to the same AMS survey where 57% of the respondents say on page 24 that they don't consider themselves experts in climate science?
A poster above (arguing for the consensus position btw) posted a recent survey that indicates only 67% of AMS members believe that a majority of warming since 1950 is anthropogenic. That's not a consensus. https://gmuchss.az1.qualtrics....[GiordyS]
That was me. Why do you seem to think that survey is a good way to estimate the scientific consensus on AGW among experts in the subject?
Estimating the scientific consensus on AGW can be performed repeatedly and independently by surveying peer-reviewed scientific abstracts which state a position about whether humans caused most of the global warming since 1950. Cook et al. 2013 (C13) did this.
Another method of estimating the scientific consensus is to email the scientists who write those peer-reviewed papers and ask if their paper(s) endorse AGW. C13 did this, but it can't be repeatedly indefinitely because the authors would eventually stop answering. One might also search for statements by those authors, to avoid self-selection bias caused by some authors not responding to emails. Anderegg et al. 2010 did this.
Why do you keep ignoring those estimates in favor of a survey where 57% of the respondents explicitly don't consider themselves experts in climate science? If you had a question about heart surgery, would you actually ignore a survey of 77 actively practicing heart surgeons in favor of a survey where 57% of the respondents say they're not heart surgery experts?
However, the evidence I've seen regarding consensus is mixed. I've seen some worthless studies - one "97%" survey only surveying~75 scientists and asking a near worthless question... [GiordyS]
Good grief. I've already explained that Doran and Zimmerman 2009 surveyed 3146 scientists, and reported all those results in their figure 1. I also already explained that their question wasn't "worthless". I also already explained that Doran and Zimmerman examined the most expert subset: 79 scientists "who listed climate science as their area of expertise and who also have published more than 50% of their recent peer-reviewed papers on the subject of climate change".
Again, if you surveyed doctors about a topic involving heart surgery and only 77 out of 3145 of those doctors were actively practicing heart surgeons, wouldn't you be more interested in what those experts have to say?
But it's interesting that GiordyS doubles down on his objection to Doran and Zimmerman using an expert subset of their sample. Keep that in mind.
... I've recently seen a paper that only shows ~65% agreement among AMS members for example. [GiordyS]
Since only 37% of those AMS survey respondents consider themselves experts in climate science, that's consistent with figure 1 in Cook et al. 2016 which shows the AGW consensus is lower among samples having less expertise in climate scie
In other words: I picked the numbers that most strongly weaken my argument, and still came out with a strong argument.
No, I already told you that your "strong argument" simply doesn't make sense. For instance:
No mention of how many rejected, how many expressed uncertainty, and how many expressed that their paper was not about AGW. There's also the fact that 34.9% of RESPONDENTS claimed no position themselves on AGW, which is really hard to do if you're a climate scientist unless you're uncertain.
Your argument isn't "strong". It's based on a fundamental misconception. The "RESPONDENTS" didn't claim "no position themselves on AGW". They rated the position stated by their paper, not their own position. Your supposedly "strong arguments" are filled with simplistic "mistakes" like this.
You're trying to use a fallacy of equivocation: I said "bias" to indicate that one method of analysis favors a position more than another, and you're repeating "bias" to say "lies and damned lies to support a pre-conceived outcome." Maybe learn not to be a deceptive, dishonest asshole?
Charming. It's fascinating that you baselessly accuse me of saying "lies and damned lies to support a pre-conceived outcome" when I never said that, then baselessly call me a deceptive, dishonest asshole. You're almost as charming as Jane/Lonny Eachus.
You completely ignored my rebuttal, and simply flung a new set of accusations.
Your rebuttle was to claim those papers weren't relevant. I responded by pointing out that Cooke excluded them because they didn't take a direct position, even though they were relevant. In other words: you said, "They weren't about that!", and I said, "Yes they were; they just didn't have a yes/no conclusion." Again: you're lying to try to dodge the argument, and you're trying to poison the well by making false claims about the context of the debate.
Once again, you're baselessly accusing me of lying. How charming. You've also failed once again to quote anything I actually said, while putting quotation marks around words I never said. Here's what I actually said:
Really? Are you absolutely sure that those peer-reviewed papers didn't just have "global climate change" or "global warming" as keywords? Because that's how C13 actually selected their sample.
You seem to be incorrectly saying that every single paper which includes those keywords is an attribution study. If you were correct, you'd be able to provide 7,930 abstract quotes saying "we don't know whether global warming is caused primarily by human activities". Is it even remotely possible that those 7,930 papers just weren't attribution studies?
Try to use your approach to estimate the consensus on plate tectonics or evolution. Are abstracts which don't explicitly state that they agree with those theories actually saying "we don't know"? If that's really your position, you must also not think there's a scientific consensus about plate tectonics or evolution.
Note that I actually asked if it was even remotely possible that those 7,930 papers just weren't attribution studies. Perhaps you can't quote my actual words because you'd have to explain why you can't provide 7,930 abstract quotes saying "we don't know whether global warming is caused primarily by human activities".
Maybe if you spent a little less time complaining about women, you'd have more time to provide those 7,930 abstract quotes.
As an analogy, should I disagree with a US government agency (and most of the scientific community) just because some guy somewhere with a PhD claims that "evolutionary theory is mostly religion"?
So former cartoonist, activist blogger John Cook's paper is akin to "evolutionary theory" in your analogy...??
No, I was quoting the same climate contrarian GiordyS has cited, Dr. Roy Spencer, addressing the U.S. Congress at 3:23:10. Should I disagree with most of the scientific community just because Dr. Spencer told the U.S. Congress that "evolutionary theory is mostly religion"?
Since when are ordinary people supposed to ignore mountains of evidence right in front of our noses simply because NASA pretends it doesn't exist?
It's hilarious that you're implying that's what I was suggesting. Instead, I'm actually saying that the "mountains of evidence" right in front of your nose are a mirage. It's libelous nonsense that's being repeated by blog commenters without subject expertise, probably because they're just "having fun" baselessly accusing scientists of dishonesty.
You sure give the government a lot of power if you are not willing to think for yourself. Do you EVER disagree with a US government agency?
I've repeatedly thought for myself and shared the open source code behind my analyses. It's just that the results of my research broadly agree with statements from NASA, the National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Society, the American Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society, etc.
As an analogy, should I disagree with a US government agency (and most of the scientific community) just because some guy somewhere with a PhD claims that "evolutionary theory is mostly religion"?
Many blog commenters go on Gish Gallops for dozens if not hundreds of pages, instantly dropping each apparently earnest point and just flinging another instead of answering or even just acknowledging the rebuttal.
Sadly, that's what you seem to be doing. You completely ignored my rebuttal, and simply flung a new set of accusations. Most of which didn't make sense. Here's the only part that made enough sense to rebut. Please note that I'm quoting your words and responding directly to you, but only as an example so you can do that with my last comment. Otherwise I'll let you have the last word; I'm tired of these endless and libelous Gish Gallops.
Of the papers which received self-rating, 36.9% had abstracts expressing a position of consensus for AGW. When they phoned up the authors and asked them, 62.7% of those authors self-rated their position and the position of their paper as in consensus. In other words: the self-rating system is biased *toward* AGW.
When they emailed the authors, more of the authors said their paper as a whole endorsed the consensus than the abstract ratings alone did. That doesn't show that the self-rating system is somehow biased *toward* AGW. It probably shows that an abstract contains less information than the paper as a whole. Surprise!
Even more bizarrely, bluefoxlucid even seems to grasp this point:
The whole thing also takes implicit endorsements of AGW as endorsements--which is fair, and notable. If you write a paper that strongly supports AGW and you try to conclude AGW is not a thing, you're just delusional. There's a large difference between being wrong and being delusional: wrong just means your facts are incorrect; delusional means the facts are right in front of you and you refuse to believe them. Evidence for the fairness of this methodology includes that more papers self-rate in support for AGW than do papers whose abstracts declare support: scientists who produce evidence for AGW and don't come out to declare it as such likely expect you to recognize the obvious.
Yeah. Most scientists don't see the need to include obvious information in the abstract, but many try to include background information in their papers' introductory sections. Don't you see how this supports the idea that an abstract contains less information than the paper as a whole, rather than supporting the accusation that "the self-rating system is biased *toward* AGW"?
Catching somebody lie about the methodology of their "science" paper is indeed ripping it to shreds.
Lots of blogs claim lots of things. Like your claims, for instance. But that doesn't make them true. Isn't it bothersome to you that NASA doesn't agree with your accusations?
So you agree that published papers that seek to test what caused the climate change over the last century and half, almost unanimously find that humans played a dominant role? Yes or no?
Or maybe GiordyS is just as confused as Jane Q. Public, and all of your hysterical and libelous accusations are baseless? Remember the stages of grief. You should find it bothersome that NASA contradicts you first, then second you should eventually start moving past that first stage of grief and start considering the possibility that NASA understands science better than web developers do.
Problem #1: 11,944 research papers which were all specifically about climate change and human influence; they removed the 7,930 "We don't know" from the numbers... (Often, deluded opponents will claim the rejected papers had "climate" as a keyword but were not about climatology; that is false: all 11,944 papers were selected from a larger such set, and were selected because they explored human-caused climate change.)
Really? Are you absolutely sure that those peer-reviewed papers didn't just have "global climate change" or "global warming" as keywords? Because that's how C13 actually selected their sample.
You seem to be incorrectly saying that every single paper which includes those keywords is an attribution study. If you were correct, you'd be able to provide 7,930 abstract quotes saying "we don't know whether global warming is caused primarily by human activities". Is it even remotely possible that those 7,930 papers just weren't attribution studies?
Try to use your approach to estimate the consensus on plate tectonics or evolution. Are abstracts which don't explicitly state that they agree with those theories actually saying "we don't know"? If that's really your position, you must also not think there's a scientific consensus about plate tectonics or evolution.
... took count of the papers which were *definitely* certain, determined that 97% of *those* support human-caused global warming, and labeled that as 97% of *all*.
No, they labeled that as 97% of papers stating a position on the primary cause of global warming. Which is true.
Problem #2: False equivocation. They took count of the number of published papers, and claimed the ratio of published papers agreeing with a position as the ratio of *scientists*....
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A lowess smooth filter can help analyze trends at various points in the Church and White global sea level dataset. The trend from 1930-1950 is significantly slower than the post-2000 trend: the error bars don't overlap.
Indeed. I made this same point after Jane/Lonny baselessly accused Layzej of "cherry-picking" when Layzej loaded all the UAH data. Jane/Lonny then suggested cherry-picking at 1998, and keeps insisting that this somehow isn't "cherry-picking".
Ironically, I even gave Jane/Lonny R code which calculates trends and accelerations of global mean sea level (GMSL) data. That graph accounts for autocorrelation- the red lines are 2 sigma uncertainties. The trends and accelerations are calculated over periods which all end at 2009.5. The new significance.zip (backup copies) contains my R statistics folder, including many data sets.
Again, note that this approach avoids cherry-picking by using the entire dataset. Also note that all the best-fit accelerations are positive.
Once again, that's consistent with this NOAA article:
"Sea level is rising at an increasing rate ... There is strong evidence that global sea level is now rising at an increased rate and will continue to rise during this century. While studies show that sea levels changed little from AD 0 until 1900, sea levels began to climb in the 20th century. The two major causes of global sea-level rise are thermal expansion caused by the warming of the oceans (since water expands as it warms) and the loss of land-based ice (such as glaciers and polar ice caps) due to increased melting. Records and research show that sea level has been steadily rising at a rate of 1 to 2.5 millimeters (0.04 to 0.1 inches) per year since 1900. This rate may be increasing. Since 1992, new methods of satellite altimetry (the measurement of elevation or altitude) indicate a rate of rise of 3 millimeters (0.12 inches) per year. This is a significantly larger rate than the sea-level rise averaged over the last several thousand years."
And once again, that's consistent with the 2013 IPCC AR5 SPM:
"Proxy and instrumental sea level data indicate a transition in the late 19th to the early 20th century from relatively low mean rates of rise over the previous two millennia to higher rates of rise (high confidence). It is likely that the rate of global mean sea level rise has continued to increase since the early 20th century."
That's also consistent with the US NAS's statement that "Sea level is rising faster in recent decades".
You can trace what Hausfather et al. 2017 did by downloading the code they made freely available at bit.ly/2jXSy7G. You can confirm their methods by reading the full paper and following the links at the end which lead to all the data they used. Interested members of the public can read or watch the background they shared.
Read the paper to see if Lonny's "translation" is reasonable: "... Two of the three Argo near-SST records assessed, APDRC and H2008, agree well with the buoy-only and satellite-based records and suggest a cool bias in ERSSTv3b during the 2005-2015 period, when sufficient Argo data are available (Fig. 3). The RG2009 series is more ambiguous, with trends that are not significantly different (P > 0.05) from either ERSSTv3b or ERSSTv4. ..."
Lonny Eachus is wrong to claim that Hausfather et al. "simply don't use 1/3 of the ARGO datasets" (presumably a reference to RG2009). They used 3 independent Argo near-SST (near sea surface temperature) datasets, and reported the results from all 3 datasets. Anyone who reads the full paper will see that they mention RG2009 a total of 17 times while reporting the results of using that dataset.
Wrong. Hausfather et al. didn't "throw out" or "ignore" 1/3 of the Argo datasets. Look at figure 3 (backup). They show the results of all three Argo datasets, including four instances using the RG2009 dataset which Lonny baselessly accuses them of "arbitrarily throwing out" and "ignoring".
Again, Hausfather et al. didn't "leave out" or "ignore" the RG2009 dataset. Look at figure 4 (backup). They show the results of all 3 Argo datasets, including the RG2009 dataset which Lonny baselessly accuses them of "ignoring".
Figure 4 examines four composite SST records: ERSSTv4, ERSSTv3b, HadSST3, and COBE-SST. These composite SST records are compared to instrumentally homogenous datasets (which just means "from a single type of instrument"): b
No. When Hausfather et al. 2017 was published (long after it was submitted) the most current available NOAA data ended in November 2016. Nick Stokes showed that even if Hausfather et al. had used a time machine to include those data when submitting their paper, it would have showed more warming. Even the silly opinion piece Lonny linked notes that "climate models will more closely match observations once 2016 data is included".
Ironically, Zeke Hausfather showed that including all the 2016 data available at publication actually increases the observed warming trends compared to their paper's conclusions using data through 2015. This is still true using the full 2016 NOAA data which just became available on January 18. Lonny could verify this by repeating these least squares trend estimates with the monthly data, or just noticing that the annual ocean average was even higher in 2016 than in 2015. Zeke Hausfather challenged Anthony Watts to find an ocean temperature record that was cooler on average in 2016 than in 2015. Watts couldn't name one or bring himself to retract his claim. Can Lonny?
Watts accuses Hausfather et al. of ignoring the most current data and missing an ENTIRE YEAR's worth of data. Since Hausfather et al. 2017 was submitted in early 2016, they'd have needed a time machine to include the ENTIRE YEAR's worth of data that Watts accused them of ignoring and missing. In contrast, Sou notes that Anthony Watts presented an AGU poster in 2015 without data from 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, or 2009.
Why did Lonny Eachus link to a graph showing a 3.1 mm/year global sea level trend? Since that's higher than Lonny's claimed "1.1 mm/year", doesn't that simple comparison show the rate of sea level rise is increasing (i.e. accelerating) over the long term? And since Lonny's accused scientists of being "liars" if they acknowledge the global sea level rise of ~3 mm/year, why did Lonny cite a graph containing what he called a lie from a scientist he's previously called a "liar"?
Furthermore, that's not a peer-reviewed paper. It's a slide from a 2011 presentation which hasn't been turned into a peer-reviewed paper. A real skeptic might wonder why it hasn't. Hint: in 2011 Jane/Lonny briefly stopped denying satellite measurements of sea level because they showed a short term drop. Of course, scientists told Jane that this was because the 2011 La Nina caused such massive flooding that global sea level fell temporarily. See Boening et al. 2012 (PDF).
So is it really surprising that calculating sea level acceleration from 1993-2011 gave an unrepresentative answer? Especially because that's a short timespan, and detecting acceleration requires a longer timespan than just detecting a trend. Maybe we could learn why that 2011 presentation hasn't become a peer-reviewed paper by looking at that same data up to 2016.
Let's analyze that raw data (backup) from sealevel.colorado.edu (backup). Here are accelerations and uncertainties for timespans that all end at 2016.1 but start at 1993, 1994, etc. Notice the similarities between the satellite acceleration graph and the older global tide gauge acceleration graph I've shown Jane/Lonny. All the black best-fit accelerations are positive. More recent accelerations tend to be larger. (The most recent accelerations and even their red lower 95% confidence intervals are off the scale even though the upper vertical limit is twice as high as in the older graph.) This tends to suggest that not only is global sea level accelerating, it's even "jerking" up.
(Technical note: those 95% confidence intervals were calculated using a ARMA(1,1) noise model. I also tested AR(1), MA(1), ARMA(1,2), and ARMA(2,1), but ARMA(1,1) minimized both the AIC and BIC.)
Wow. One of Lonny Eachus's fellow travellers completely ignores everything I wrote. What a complete surprise!
Again, as I pointed out, land clearing fires decreased (among other factors involving direct human intervention). From that Royal Society paper:
"... During the first half century, the global average area burned decreased somewhat by about 7% [41]. This was largely attributed to human factors, such as increased fire prevention, detection and fire-fighting efficiency, abandonment of slash-and-burn cultivation in some areas and permanent agricultural practice in others. ..."
So that paper explicitly includes "slash-and-burn cultivation" in the decreasing total area burned. Which is exactly what I told you earlier. That paper is examining all fires, both wildfires and intentional burns. Notice that they're examining charcoal records and isotope-ratio records in ice cores? Those records necessarily include intentional burns, like the "staggering amounts" of land clearing fires that occurred just in the USA over the last century. Ice core and charcoal records can't distinguish wildfires from intentional burns, but when Doerr and Santin use statistics that can tell the difference, the results aren't quite what Les Johnson is implying:
"... the widely reported increase in area burned for the USA [42] and particularly the western USA in recent decades [43–46]. ... according to national statistics for the USA, while area burned by prescribed fire has changed little overall since reporting began in 1998 (10 year average: 8853 km2), area burned by wildfires has seen an overall strong trend of increase by over 5%/yr over the period 1991–2015, with 2015 exceeding 40 000 km2 burned for the first time during the past 25 years (figure 3). This increase has been accompanied by an overall decline in the number of fires (figure 3). This suggests a general trend of fewer, but larger wildfires, which is also highlighted for forests in the western USA by Westerling for the period 1983–2012 [46]. ..."
So Doerr and Santin are actually saying that wildfires are burning more area in the western USA in recent decades. That's exactly what I said in 2012. And note that Doerr and Santin say "These statistics need to be viewed with some caution when examining trends as annual reporting methods and biases have undergone changes over time [47]."
Doerr and Santin reference 47 is Short 2015, which says:
"... Intentional ('controlled') burning was used extensively for vegetation management on nonfederal lands, especially in the south-eastern US during the early 20th century. Although now used to a lesser extent (but on both federal and non-federal lands) in the US, intentional burning is not classified in the current reporting systems as 'wildfire' unless the controlled burn escapes and requires a suppression response. However, the early USFS wildfire activity summaries do include millions of hectares of intentional burning on 'unprotected' lands, which, until approximately the mid-20th century was viewed by the USFS as akin to wildfire, as something that should be prevented and ultimately eradicated (Pyne 1982). Controlled burning was accepted as a viable landmanagement practice over time and persists to this day (Melvin 2012); however, statistics regarding its use have not been included in summaries of 'wildfire' activity for several decades. ..."
That's why I objected when Tom Nelson and Lonny Eachus and
Every minute Jane/Lonny spends cussing and screaming at me is one minute he can't spend accusing scientists of fraud and worse.
Nobody said you were a creationist. I asked if you agreed with Spencer's creationist claims. Once again, you still haven't been able to say "no". If you can eventually figure out why Spencer's creationism is anti-scientific and wrong, maybe you'll eventually be able to figure out why his similar arguments about AGW are also wrong.
Why are you stalking and libeling scientists? As soon as Jane/Lonny stops, I won't have to debunk his baseless accusations any more.
It's interesting to see how far Jane will go to push his views, including these baseless and libelous attacks on me and other scientists.
Ironically, GiordyS says this in response to my pointing out that Dr. Spencer has been making his "intelligent design" views public for years... and in that bit of video Dr. Spencer was repeating classic "intelligent design" arguments. "Maybe?" You still "don't know"? Seriously?
They're not "competing genetic randomness theories. That's the entire point. "Intelligent Design" is a supernatural "explanation" which violates methodological naturalism and therefore would destroy science if it were confused with a scientific hypothesis. If the scientific process included a "supernatural" option, it would be used on a daily basis because people (including scientists) are lazy. As I've said before, I believe that science absolutely requires naturalism for two reasons. First, supernatural explanations are compatible with any and all eventualities, therefore they are not falsifiable and do not provide unique predictions.
Second, if science allowed supernatural explanations as a legitimate recourse, they would be used far too often because we can't distinguish poorly understood natural phenomena from genuinely supernatural phenomena:
If you think that any of these examples are silly, exactly how are they differen
More to the point, you also said (after listening to Dr. Roy Spencer endorse the "theory of creation" over evolution) "I wouldn't be surprised if there is contradictory evidence that is simply ignored or dismissed because it challenges orthodox views. Scientists are human beings after all."
You were responding to a video where Senator Whitehouse asked Roy Spencer "And do you still believe that the Theory of Creation actually has a much better scientific basis than the Theory of Evolution, to be specific?"
Dr. Spencer replied: "I think, I think I could be put into a debate with someone on the other side and I think I could give more science supporting that life is created than they could support, with evidence, that life evolved through natural random processes, so yes."
Dr. Spencer has been making his "intelligent design" views public for years before GiordyS cited him for his climate contrarian views.
And once GiordyS finds out about Dr. Spencer's creationist views, he says "I wouldn't be surprised if there is contradictory evidence that is simply ignored or dismissed because it challenges orthodox views. Scientists are human beings after all."
As I've explained, intelligent design is certainly not scientific. But to return to my original point with this analogy, should I ignore all that evidence just because GiordyS's source Dr. Spencer is a creationist?
Again, that's complete nonsense. 57% of those AMS survey respondents don't consider themselves experts in climate science. Again, if you had a question about heart surgery, would you actually ignore a survey of 77 actively practicing heart surgeons in favor of a survey where 57% of the respondents say they're not heart surgery experts?
What part of "the authors rated their own full papers" are you not understanding? How would all your supposed problems with "activist raters" affect the authors' self-ratings? And didn't you notice that your bizarre accusations were already addressed in error 5 here?
Again, so you disagree with ratings given to some of the 11,944 abstracts. Given the large sample, that's almost inevitable. Here are all 11,944 abstract ratings. Change the ratings on whichever ones you think are wrong, then recalculate the consensus. If the new number is sufficiently different, and your re-ratings are reasonable, you might actually be able to publish your re-analysis. But I suspect that reasonable changes would only have minor effects on the consensus, because any of these supposed problems with the raters wouldn't affect the authors' ratings of their full papers. When you change the ratings, you should also email the authors to see if they agree with your new ratings, like Cook et al. 2013 did.
Again, it's astonishing that you keep baselessly accusing NASA and other scientists of being "so happy with the results they don't care how they got them" while at the same time citing Tol 2014, a paper which fails to list even a single example o
No, Dr. Spencer was endorsing "intelligent design" which is neo-creationism. It's not surprising that you've joined the many climate contrarians who also agree with the similar arguments put forth by creationists against "orthodox" evolutionary theory.
Sorry for the broken link: Here are all 11,944 abstract ratings.
Answered here.
You failed to answer yes or no, but your response seems to suggest that you actually are arguing with the results of John Cook's paper. Despite the fact that you insisted you weren't. So let's try again. Do you agree with Richard Tol when he says this?
"The consensus is of course in the high nineties. No one ever said it was not." [Richard Tol]
Note that Richard Tol explicitly states this is "something everyone knows." Do you agree with Richard Tol's statement? Yes or No?
Are you referring to the same AMS survey where 57% of the respondents say on page 24 that they don't consider themselves experts in climate science?
That was me. Why do you seem to think that survey is a good way to estimate the scientific consensus on AGW among experts in the subject?
Estimating the scientific consensus on AGW can be performed repeatedly and independently by surveying peer-reviewed scientific abstracts which state a position about whether humans caused most of the global warming since 1950. Cook et al. 2013 (C13) did this.
Another method of estimating the scientific consensus is to email the scientists who write those peer-reviewed papers and ask if their paper(s) endorse AGW. C13 did this, but it can't be repeatedly indefinitely because the authors would eventually stop answering. One might also search for statements by those authors, to avoid self-selection bias caused by some authors not responding to emails. Anderegg et al. 2010 did this.
Why do you keep ignoring those estimates in favor of a survey where 57% of the respondents explicitly don't consider themselves experts in climate science? If you had a question about heart surgery, would you actually ignore a survey of 77 actively practicing heart surgeons in favor of a survey where 57% of the respondents say they're not heart surgery experts?
Good grief. I've already explained that Doran and Zimmerman 2009 surveyed 3146 scientists, and reported all those results in their figure 1. I also already explained that their question wasn't "worthless". I also already explained that Doran and Zimmerman examined the most expert subset: 79 scientists "who listed climate science as their area of expertise and who also have published more than 50% of their recent peer-reviewed papers on the subject of climate change".
Again, if you surveyed doctors about a topic involving heart surgery and only 77 out of 3145 of those doctors were actively practicing heart surgeons, wouldn't you be more interested in what those experts have to say?
But it's interesting that GiordyS doubles down on his objection to Doran and Zimmerman using an expert subset of their sample. Keep that in mind.
Since only 37% of those AMS survey respondents consider themselves experts in climate science, that's consistent with figure 1 in Cook et al. 2016 which shows the AGW consensus is lower among samples having less expertise in climate scie
No, I already told you that your "strong argument" simply doesn't make sense. For instance:
Your argument isn't "strong". It's based on a fundamental misconception. The "RESPONDENTS" didn't claim "no position themselves on AGW". They rated the position stated by their paper, not their own position. Your supposedly "strong arguments" are filled with simplistic "mistakes" like this.
Charming. It's fascinating that you baselessly accuse me of saying "lies and damned lies to support a pre-conceived outcome" when I never said that, then baselessly call me a deceptive, dishonest asshole. You're almost as charming as Jane/Lonny Eachus.
Once again, you're baselessly accusing me of lying. How charming. You've also failed once again to quote anything I actually said, while putting quotation marks around words I never said. Here's what I actually said:
Note that I actually asked if it was even remotely possible that those 7,930 papers just weren't attribution studies. Perhaps you can't quote my actual words because you'd have to explain why you can't provide 7,930 abstract quotes saying "we don't know whether global warming is caused primarily by human activities".
Maybe if you spent a little less time complaining about women, you'd have more time to provide those 7,930 abstract quotes.
No, I was quoting the same climate contrarian GiordyS has cited, Dr. Roy Spencer, addressing the U.S. Congress at 3:23:10. Should I disagree with most of the scientific community just because Dr. Spencer told the U.S. Congress that "evolutionary theory is mostly religion"?
It's hilarious that you're implying that's what I was suggesting. Instead, I'm actually saying that the "mountains of evidence" right in front of your nose are a mirage. It's libelous nonsense that's being repeated by blog commenters without subject expertise, probably because they're just "having fun" baselessly accusing scientists of dishonesty.
I've repeatedly thought for myself and shared the open source code behind my analyses. It's just that the results of my research broadly agree with statements from NASA, the National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Society, the American Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society, etc.
As an analogy, should I disagree with a US government agency (and most of the scientific community) just because some guy somewhere with a PhD claims that "evolutionary theory is mostly religion"?
Many blog commenters go on Gish Gallops for dozens if not hundreds of pages, instantly dropping each apparently earnest point and just flinging another instead of answering or even just acknowledging the rebuttal.
Sadly, that's what you seem to be doing. You completely ignored my rebuttal, and simply flung a new set of accusations. Most of which didn't make sense. Here's the only part that made enough sense to rebut. Please note that I'm quoting your words and responding directly to you, but only as an example so you can do that with my last comment. Otherwise I'll let you have the last word; I'm tired of these endless and libelous Gish Gallops.
When they emailed the authors, more of the authors said their paper as a whole endorsed the consensus than the abstract ratings alone did. That doesn't show that the self-rating system is somehow biased *toward* AGW. It probably shows that an abstract contains less information than the paper as a whole. Surprise!
Even more bizarrely, bluefoxlucid even seems to grasp this point:
Yeah. Most scientists don't see the need to include obvious information in the abstract, but many try to include background information in their papers' introductory sections. Don't you see how this supports the idea that an abstract contains less information than the paper as a whole, rather than supporting the accusation that "the self-rating system is biased *toward* AGW"?
Lots of blogs claim lots of things. Like your claims, for instance. But that doesn't make them true. Isn't it bothersome to you that NASA doesn't agree with your accusations?
So you agree that published papers that seek to test what caused the climate change over the last century and half, almost unanimously find that humans played a dominant role? Yes or no?
Or maybe GiordyS is just as confused as Jane Q. Public, and all of your hysterical and libelous accusations are baseless? Remember the stages of grief. You should find it bothersome that NASA contradicts you first, then second you should eventually start moving past that first stage of grief and start considering the possibility that NASA understands science better than web developers do.
Really? Are you absolutely sure that those peer-reviewed papers didn't just have "global climate change" or "global warming" as keywords? Because that's how C13 actually selected their sample.
You seem to be incorrectly saying that every single paper which includes those keywords is an attribution study. If you were correct, you'd be able to provide 7,930 abstract quotes saying "we don't know whether global warming is caused primarily by human activities". Is it even remotely possible that those 7,930 papers just weren't attribution studies?
Try to use your approach to estimate the consensus on plate tectonics or evolution. Are abstracts which don't explicitly state that they agree with those theories actually saying "we don't know"? If that's really your position, you must also not think there's a scientific consensus about plate tectonics or evolution.
No, they labeled that as 97% of papers stating a position on the primary cause of global warming. Which is true.
Wrong. They cited Doran and Zimmerman 2009 and Anderegg et al. 2010 and Verheggen 2014 which really are surveys of scientists.