Moderated Global Warming Discussion

[lomiller]

Nor has Matt Ridley or Freeman Dyson. Malcolm, why do you give so much weight to OPINIONS from people who aren't publishing research?

It's confirmation bias. He believes in them because they are the ones saying what he wants to hear.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

McIntyre has yet to do anything of note in the field of climate science.

I thought you respected peer reviewed publications.

If you like his arguments bring those here in your own voice with accompanied support and we have something worth addressing, otherwise you simply asking us to "correct the internet".

I'm not going to repeat his FOI requests. His posts about the obstruction are my source for the assertion that proponents of the AGW theory continue to withhold data.

 

[bit_pattern]

I thought you respected peer reviewed publications.

A. Energy & Environment is not an ISI peer review journal
B. His paper in AGU doesn't support any of the contentions you've made in this thread, it made minor adjustments to a paper from nearly 15 years ago - a paper whose results have been confirmed by dozens of independent proxy reconstructions.

To reiterate lomiller's original point, how do these two papers demonstrate McIntyre doing anything notable in the field he's chosen to "audit" from the blogosphere?

I'm not going to repeat his FOI requests. His posts about the obstruction are my source for the assertion that proponents of the AGW theory continue to withhold data.

How very sceptical of you.

 

[aleCcowaN]

It's confirmation bias. He believes in them because they are the ones saying what he wants to hear.

Confirmation bias is one of the techniques used to "keep it running". Epistemological hedonism is the cause: if it pleases or amazes you or goes along with your mindset, believe it to be true, then turn confirmation bias (and more) on, mark your enemies if your theme of choice moves to constant debate -many choose their themes just because they can do this- and, shazaam! alakazam! the world is cooling because of the increasing number of snow jobs going on.

By the way, the last few dozen of posts show the striking different approach of people involved in this social stage of the debate. On one hand, the eulogy of McIntyre -the "statistically fluent" one- and the discussion of the implications of his wobbly work; on the other hand, the distracted mention -and misspelling- of Stephen Schneider, who not long time ago resigned to die in the date Wikipedia had assigned to him. Nobody raised to praise Schneider and his deeds, as no soundness of climate science depends on doing such a personality cult. On the side of popular epistemology, anyone with just an inch height forehead would grasp conclusions from that without knowing a shred of science.

 

[metzomagic]

Sounds like you don't read him. He's far more statistically fluent that Mann or Jones.

McIntyre is the one who started this Mann's-PCA-method-finds-hockey-sticks-in-random-noise meme that just won't die, and you seem to be one of its adherents. So let's take a critical look at McIntyre's input to the Wegman Report, and see how well the Climate Auditor holds up to a bit of auditing himself. You know, like what would happen if he submitted his work for actual peer review:

Replication and due diligence, Wegman style

To recap:

McIntyre took a data set that Mann used from MBH98, that had climate signal in it. He ran 10,000 'red noise' simulations based on this data as a starting point. Only he way over-cooked the noise by using ARFIMA, which has a de-correlation period of about 19 years, instead of a more realistic algorithm like AR1(.2), which has a de-correlation period of about 1.5 years.

You see, the whole idea of running noise simulations like this is to emulate non-climatic effects on trees like insect infestations that randomly happen in nature. Then with the random noise applied, you see if your PCA algorithm can still pick out the climate signal from the noise. But McIntyre knows nothing about the science. So the simulation runs he did completely degraded the climate signal, and they also tend to 'run away' in one direction or the other towards the end of the series, thus artificially producing hockey sticks. Wegman just assumed McIntyre used AR1(.2), so he didn't check McIntyre's work at all!

Finally, McIntyre cherry-picked the top 100 most hockey stick-shaped PC1s out of his 10,000 simulation runs so that Wegman could play them back in his report. That seems to me like the kind of fraud the AGW deniers so often accuse Mann of. What do you think, Malcolm?

Further reading about the dangers of over-cooking the noise:

How Red are my Proxies?

Take-away quote from that article:

A given analysis procedure is validated if it successfully recovers the original AOGCM noise free results and could be rejected if it fails to recover the original results. Of course such testing only makes sense if the simulated test world has characteristics similar to the real-world.

 

[CapelDodger]

By the way, the last few dozen of posts show the striking different approach of people involved in this social stage of the debate. On one hand, the eulogy of McIntyre -the "statistically fluent" one- and the discussion of the implications of his wobbly work; on the other hand, the distracted mention -and misspelling- of Stephen Schneider, who not long time ago resigned to die in the date Wikipedia had assigned to him. Nobody raised to praise Schneider and his deeds, as no soundness of climate science depends on doing such a personality cult. On the side of popular epistemology, anyone with just an inch height forehead would grasp conclusions from that without knowing a shred of science.

My thoughts exactly. For deniers the argument is all about personalities. In the same vein, evolution is all about Darwin and can be refuted by a fantasy "deathbed conversion". These people swim in shallow waters.

I've been struck by how often Al Gore is invoked in this debate (not so much recently but still from time to time) as the source of the "AGW hypothesis", but only by deniers. We rarely if ever mention him and certainly not as a source, although some people may have been made aware of the issue by his efforts to publicise it.

As far as individuals go I have great respect for Dr Mann who has not only weathered the vile campaign waged against him by the likes of McIntyre, and has emerged stronger (and newly combative) for it. McIntyre, in contrast, whines like a toddler whenever his shoddy mendacity is revealed for what it is. In fact the roll-call of denier heroes - McIntyre, Watts, Monckton, Inhofe, Morano, Lindzen, Christy - does in fact say a great deal about the deniers' mentality, but nothing about AGW itself.

Meanwhile the world warms, ice melts, wildfires rage, crops wither, and deniers continue to believe that these are still just predictions.

 

[W.D.Clinger]

Sounds like you don't read him. He's far more statistically fluent that Mann or Jones.

McIntyre is the one who started this Mann's-PCA-method-finds-hockey-sticks-in-random-noise meme that just won't die, and you seem to be one of its adherents.

So far as I can tell, only one of McIntyre's papers has been published in a statistical journal:

Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick. Discussion of multiple temperature proxies: Are reconstructions of surface temperatures over the last 1000 years reliable? The Annals of Applied Statistics, 2011, volume 5, number 1, pages 56-60.
​

That five-page paper basically presents McIntyre's and McKitrick's spin on a much more interesting paper by McShane and Wyner:

Blakeley B McShane and Abraham J Wyner. A statistical analysis of multiple temperature proxies: Are reconstructions of surface temperature over the last 1000 years reliable? The Annals of Applied Statistics, 2011, volume 5, number 1, pages 5-44.
​

McIntyre and McKitrick would like for us to believe that McShane and Wyner have confirmed the claims made by McIntyre and McKitrick in their 2005 paper on "Hockey sticks, principal components, and spurious significance."

On my reading of McShane and Wyner, their conclusions are subtler, more interesting, and less controversial than McIntyre and McKitrick would have us believe:

While our results agree with the climate scientists findings in some respects, our methods of estimating model uncertainty and accuracy are in sharp disagreement.

On the one hand, we conclude unequivocally that the evidence for a ”long-handled” hockey stick (where the shaft of the hockey stick extends to the year 1000 AD) is lacking in the data....the long flat handle of the hockey stick is best understood to be a feature of regression and less a reflection of our knowledge of the truth. Nevertheless, the temperatures of the last few decades have been relatively warm compared to many of the thousand year temperature curves sampled from the posterior distribution of our model.

Our main contribution is our efforts to seriously grapple with the uncertainty involved in paleoclimatological reconstructions....

Climate scientists have greatly underestimated the uncertainty of proxy-based reconstructions and hence have been overconfident in their models....

Note that McShane and Wyner took care to limit their conclusions to the "long-handled hockey stick" constructed from proxy data. They do not question the part of the "hockey stick" that can be seen in the instrumental record. Although they highlight the uncertainty of proxy-based reconstructions, they were able to provide quantitative estimates of that uncertainty:

Using our model, we calculate that there is a 36% posterior probability that 1998 was the warmest year over the past thousand. If we consider rolling decades, 1997-2006 is the warmest on record; our model gives an 80% chance that it was the warmest in the past thousand years.

(They were using data supplied by Mann et al, for which I believe 1997-2006 would have been the most recent decade available.)

ETA: I should mention that the five-page discussion paper by McIntyre and McKitrick was one of thirteen discussion papers published in the same issue of the journal. That issue also contained a 25-page rejoinder by McShane and Wyner, which acknowledged McIntyre and McKitrick on at least these four occasions:

The proxies seem to have some statistical significance when compared to white noise and weak AR1 null benchmarks...but not against more sophisticated AR1(Empirical) and Brownian motion null benchmarks. McIntyre and McKitrick (MM) seem to most clearly understand the purpose of this section, and we again recognize their contribution for first pointing out these facts [McIntyre and McKitrick (2005a, 2005b)].

Thus, based on predictive ability, one has no reason to prefer “hockey sticks” to “inverted check marks” or other shapes and MM are correct to label this “a phenomenon that very much complicates the uncertainty analysis”.

While the “infinite confidence intervals” of the Brown and Sundberg (1987) test reported by MM are unrealistically large due to physical constraints, we agree with their central point that this matter warrants closer examination since it is absolutely critical to assessing statistical significance and predictive accuracy.

We also thank Steve McIntyre for several very helpful discussions about data and code.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Nor has Matt Ridley or Freeman Dyson. Malcolm, why do you give so much weight to OPINIONS from people who aren't publishing research?

Because proponents of the AGW theory insist that the basic physics is "rock solid", as though that basic physics implies warming, irrespective of biosphere/atmosphere interactions, geochemical/atmospheric interactions, ocean/amosphere interactions, or solar variability. I suspect that Dyson understands "basic physics". Don't you?

 

[Mikemcc]

It's not 'irrespctive'. These factors are applied to the models.

Source

They can also be accounted for when reviewing observational data:

Foster and Rahmsdorf 2011

 

[uke2se]

Because proponents of the AGW theory insist that the basic physics is "rock solid", as though that basic physics implies warming, irrespective of biosphere/atmosphere interactions, geochemical/atmospheric interactions, ocean/amosphere interactions, or solar variability. I suspect that Dyson understands "basic physics". Don't you?

Please provide a source where Dyson demonstrates how the physics behind AGW is wrong.

 

[lomiller]

Because proponents of the AGW theory insist that the basic physics is "rock solid", as though that basic physics implies warming, irrespective of biosphere/atmosphere interactions, geochemical/atmospheric interactions, ocean/amosphere interactions, or solar variability. I suspect that Dyson understands "basic physics". Don't you?

Dyson doesn’t challenge the basic physics, rather he thinks that geo-engineering will solve the problem. He’s no expert in this field and his proposals on this front are farfetched to say the very least.

BTW, of the things you mentioned only one, solar variation, actually factors into global temperature over the long term and this IS taken into account. Over the long term global temperature depends on energy entering the atmosphere vs energy leaving the atmosphere and the point at which these two reach a balance.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Dyson doesn’t challenge the basic physics, rather he thinks that geo-engineering will solve the problem.¹ He’s no expert in this field and his proposals on this front are farfetched to say the very least.²
BTW, of the things you mentioned only one, solar variation, actually factors into global temperature over the long term and this IS taken into account. Over the long term global temperature depends on energy entering the atmosphere vs energy leaving the atmosphere and the point at which these two reach a balance.³

1. This is not my understanding of Dyson's position. He wrote that he told his wife after they saw Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth": "The polar bears will be just fine". I'll accept a correction, here, but Dyson seems to consider C0₂ a minor factor, not worth much worry. If the basic physics is rock solid and implies warming, did Stephen Scneider not know any physics back in the 1970s?
2. Dyson certainly is expert in basic physics. Either that basic physics does not imply what AGW theorists suggest or that basic physics is not so basic and is over the heads of Dyson, Lubos Motl, and other physicists (and chemists, who will have taken basic physics) who dispute the AGW theory.

I freely admit it's over my head.

3. We agree. I'm still trying to understand how the surface temperature can depend on anything other than solar output and the radius of the Earth's orbit. Obviously it does, since there's a fairly regular 24-hour cycle in surface temperature where I live and the 8000 mile variation in the distance between me and the sun seems to small, compared to the 90 million+ mile total, to have the daily 10^o F. or so effect that I observe.

Suppose some friendly space aliens told us tommorow that, starting 200 years ago, they had surrounded 200 sunlike-stars with spherical shells of various diameter, thickness, and material composition. They selected these stars and the time of construction such that next week Tuesday at 1200 GMT we would see all of these stars wink out at once and then, over time, begin to glow at a frequency determined by the diameter of the shell and the material of its composition. Eventually, the total energy flux h would depend only on the energy output of the star, and the flux per square meter of shell surface would then depend on h and the diameter of the shell. Right?

Let's construct hollow stainless steel spheres 2 feet in diameter, with a sight glass that lets us look inside. Let's then suspend thermometers on cotton string (non-condicting) inside the spheres, evacuate them as much as possible and bury them underground at depths (to center) of 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, and 64 feet. Cameras mounted outside periodically photograph the thermometers. What will we see? A daily fluctuation that depends on depth, right? An annual mean temperature that depends on latitude and altitude and nothing else (barring geothermal sources or nearby ocean currents), right?

Let's fill these spheres with various gasses to various pressure and rebury them. What will we see? Because we are basically measuring soil temperature the type of gas and the pressure may influence how rapidly the thermometers reflect outside variation, but the total energy input to the thermometer cannot depend on the pressure or type of gas, right?

Let's dig them up and send them into orbit around the sun. Won't the temperature reported depend only on the radius at which they orbit?

Baby steps in the argument. Please expand.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

...For deniers the argument is all about personalities.

Ummm...

...As far as individuals go...Dr Mann...has not only weathered the vile campaign waged against him by the likes of McIntyre, and has emerged stronger (and newly combative) for it. McIntyre...whines like a toddler whenever his shoddy mendacity is revealed for what it is. In fact the roll-call of denier heroes - McIntyre, Watts, Monckton, Inhofe, Morano, Lindzen, Christy - does in fact say a great deal about the deniers' mentality, but nothing about AGW itself.

You were saying?

 

[Dancing David]

Because proponents of the AGW theory insist that the basic physics is "rock solid", as though that basic physics implies warming, irrespective of biosphere/atmosphere interactions, geochemical/atmospheric interactions, ocean/amosphere interactions, or solar variability.

That is not true, if you actually read the papers you would know that. They use terms like 'highly likely', and if you think that CO2 and methane are not green house gases plase point us that way. Climate models are not perfect, but that is no reason to be contrary, addeses the actual models, not your shiboleth versions of them. What geochemical interactions do you want to discuss, what eveidence of solar variability dop you want to present, which specific atmosphere/bioshere, etcc..

I suspect that Dyson understands "basic physics". Don't you?

I suspect you can't show an analysis of a specific paper, now can you?

 

[metzomagic]

So Malcolm... did you get a chance to read that detailed analysis of McIntyre's archived code and data that was used to produce the Wegman Report? I linked to it in my previous post. If so, what's your opinion of his intentional, incompetent hatchet job on Mann? Yeah, that's the *real* McIntyre shining through. He will do anything he can, *anything*, to get rid of the dreaded hockey stick.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

...proponents of the AGW theory insist that the basic physics is "rock solid", as though that basic physics implies warming, irrespective of biosphere/atmosphere interactions, geochemical/atmospheric interactions, ocean/amosphere interactions, or solar variability....

That is not true

Ummmm...

...The Global Warming idea, however, is still with us thirty years later, the world is warming, the ice is shrinking, the fundamental physics is rock solid. The only question is, how warm is it going to get.

We heve here effect, effect, cause. Not "causes". No feedbacks. A cause.

 

[lomiller]

1. This is not my understanding of Dyson's position. He wrote that he told his wife after they saw Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth": "The polar bears will be just fine". I'll accept a correction, here, but Dyson seems to consider C0₂ a minor factor, not worth much worry.

How do you get from “the polar bears will be fine” to CO2 is a minor consideration?

BTW he’s not a biologist so his assessment that “the polar bears will be fine” doesn’t carry any weight.

If the basic physics is rock solid and implies warming, did Stephen Scneider not know any physics back in the 1970s?

Yes and the particular area he was studying remains important, it just turns out to be a smaller factor than CO2.

1
2. Dyson certainly is expert in basic physics. Either that basic physics does not imply what AGW theorists suggest or that basic physics is not so basic and is over the heads of Dyson, Lubos Motl, and other physicists (and chemists, who will have taken basic physics) who dispute the AGW theory.

Or the correct answer, C) he has no issue with the physics and does not dispute it.

3. We agree. I'm still trying to understand how the surface temperature can depend on anything other than solar output and the radius of the Earth's orbit.

You do not seem to know the distinction between power and energy. Power is the rate of change of energy. Solar output, the Earths radius and the Earths albedo determine the RATE at which the Earth receives energy from the Sun. Greenhouse gasses determine the RATE at which energy leaves the atmosphere.
Increase the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere reduces the rate at which energy leaves the atmosphere, and law of conservation of energy demands that when this happen the earth must warm up.

Suppose some friendly space aliens told us tommorow that, starting 200 years ago, they had surrounded 200 sunlike-stars with spherical shells of various diameter, thickness, and material composition. They selected these stars and the time of construction such that next week Tuesday at 1200 GMT we would see all of these stars wink out at once and then, over time, begin to glow at a frequency determined by the diameter of the shell and the material of its composition. Eventually, the total energy flux h would depend only on the energy output of the star, and the flux per square meter of shell surface would then depend on h and the diameter of the shell. Right?

Let's construct hollow stainless steel spheres 2 feet in diameter, with a sight glass that lets us look inside. Let's then suspend thermometers on cotton string (non-condicting) inside the spheres, evacuate them as much as possible and bury them underground at depths (to center) of 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, and 64 feet. Cameras mounted outside periodically photograph the thermometers. What will we see? A daily fluctuation that depends on depth, right? An annual mean temperature that depends on latitude and altitude and nothing else (barring geothermal sources or nearby ocean currents), right?

Let's fill these spheres with various gasses to various pressure and rebury them. What will we see? Because we are basically measuring soil temperature the type of gas and the pressure may influence how rapidly the thermometers reflect outside variation, but the total energy input to the thermometer cannot depend on the pressure or type of gas, right?

Let's dig them up and send them into orbit around the sun. Won't the temperature reported depend only on the radius at which they orbit?

Baby steps in the argument. Please expand.

You make no sense whatsoever. CO2 warms the plant because it allows visible light to enter the atmosphere but blocks infrared from leaving it. When energy entering an otherwise closed system is greater than the energy leaving it, it warms up.

 

[lomiller]

Ummmm...We heve here effect, effect, cause. Not "causes". No feedbacks. A cause.

There is have a cause. CO2 blocks energy from leaving the atmosphere with the result that the energy entering the atmosphere exceeds the energy leaving the atmosphere. Conservation of energy says this will cause the earth to warm up.

The physics says the earth will warm up, the observations show it is warming up.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

...You make no sense whatsoever.

"Crushing".

... CO2 warms the plant because it allows visible light to enter the atmosphere but blocks infrared from leaving it. When energy entering an otherwise closed system is greater than the energy leaving it, it warms up.

I expect one problem I have in thinking clearly about the all this is the difference between "heat" and "energy". For example, this:..."When energy entering an otherwise closed system is greater than the energy leaving it, it warms up" is not inevitably the case. Entering energy can exceed energy leaving "an otherwise closed system" and not generate warming of the system if it gets stored as chemical energy (e.g., biomass) or potential energy (e.g., alpine lakes store the energy that evaporated the water from the oceans). You can put coal in the freezer and it will feel cold, for all the energy it contains.

 

[lomiller]

Stored energy is still energy. In any case the notion that you could store the amount of energy being talked about here is ridiculous. The energy accumulating in the atmosphere each year exceeds the combined energy of the worlds fossil fuel reserves combined.