NOAA Temperature Fraud Expands (Part 1)

Aaron Huertas, a spokesman for the Union of Concerned Scientists, argued that the debate over the adjustments misses the bigger picture.

“Since we broke the [temperature] record by a full degree Fahrenheit [relative to 1998] this year, the adjustments are relatively minor in comparison,”

“I think climate contrarians are doing what Johnny Cochran did for O.J. Simpson — finding anything to object to, even if it obscures the big picture. It’s like they keep finding new ways to say the ‘glove doesn’t fit’ while ignoring the DNA evidence.”

Hottest year ever? Skeptics question revisions to climate data | Fox News

Nothing could be further from the truth. As of 1999, NASA showed that 1934 was more than one degree (Fahrenheit) warmer than 1998, and that 1921, 1931 and 1953 were all warmer than 1998.

ScreenHunter_391 Jan. 10 18.18

NASA GISS: Science Briefs: Whither U.S. Climate?

(The GISS website is dead – use the link below for an archived version)

NASA GISS: Science Briefs: Whither U.S. Climate?

They now show that 1934 is about 0.1C or 0.2F cooler than 1998. In other words, the total downwards adjustment of 1934 is almost 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit relative to 1998.

ScreenHunter_392 Jan. 10 18.27

NASA Fig D.gif (513×438)

The current NOAA claim is that 2012 is 1.0 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than 1998, but 1934 used to be 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than 1998. This means that prior to adjustment, 1934 was hotter than 2012.

The blink comparator below shows the huge changes which have been made to the US temperature record since 1999. The past has been massively cooled, and the present has been massively warmed. A cooling trend has been turned into a warming trend, by adjusting the data.

NOAA makes bold press releases based on hugely altered data, and makes no mention that the data is altered. Then when called out, they claim that the adjustments are small, when in fact the adjustments are larger than the trend. The 1930s used to be by far the hottest decade, before the data was adjusted.

In engineering, this would be known as a signal to noise ratio of less than 1.0, which would be considered by any legitimate scientist to be almost useless data.

James Hansen of NASA wrote this in 1999.

Empirical evidence does not lend much support to the notion that climate is headed precipitately toward more extreme heat and drought. The drought of 1999 covered a smaller area than the 1988 drought, when the Mississippi almost dried up. And 1988 was a temporary inconvenience as compared with repeated droughts during the 1930s “Dust Bowl” that caused an exodus from the prairies, as chronicled in Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath.

in the U.S. there has been little temperature change in the past 50 years, the time of rapidly increasing greenhouse gases — in fact, there was a slight cooling throughout much of the country

NASA GISS: Science Briefs: Whither U.S. Climate?

The EPA has also published data showing that the 1930s was by far the hottest decade.

www.epa.gov/climate/climatechange/pdfs/print_heat-waves.pdf

Why are NOAA and NASA trying to change the story now? Why don’t they tell us that they are altering the data? Why don’t they tell us that prior to altering the data, thermometers show that 1934 was just as warm as 2012?

Even if they believe that their adjustments are legitimate, it is extremely unethical for them to publish press releases which don’t acknowledge that the thermometer data shows no warming in the US.

More later.

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256 Responses to NOAA Temperature Fraud Expands (Part 1)

  1. stephen says:

    the so and so,s should be in jail and hopefully one day they will be,it,s the same here in Australia,Australia is one of hottest,dryest places on earth at the moment there screaming heat wave! when it,s just a normal summers day unbelievable

  2. Another sceptic has spotted a fiddle made by the UK MET office.

    On their revised forecast they transposed their previous forecast with a white line. Yet in the original forecast the trend is shooting up rapidly after 2005. Using the trusty eyeball method, it looks like 0.4C of warming was predicted to have occurred by now. Yet in their revised forecast, the original trend is now shown to be heading in the opposite direction. It’s as if they are claiming that they *predicted* cooling after 2005. Cheating doesn’t get any more blatant than that.

    http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2013/01/10/spot-the-difference/

  3. R. de Haan says:

    It’s a crime against science.

  4. Science is like Kryptonite to the Union of Concerned Scientists.

    • They are just another wacky activist group. I’m not offended by progressive butt heads or conservative jerks. What is repulsive however, is their nonsense claim that science informs their politics.

      • Gail Combs says:

        “…I’m not offended by progressive butt heads or conservative jerks….”

        Well, I am VERY OFFENDED when they gain political office enmasse and pass idiotic laws that affect me and my country.

        The loonies are truly in charge of the asylum actually the world these days.

      • Bob Young says:

        The most idiotic speech of all time will surely be Obama’s “this is the moment” speech, where he proclaimed because of his election, “the seas ceased to rise, and the earth began to heal.” Doesn’t get dumber than that.

  5. tckev says:

    …”the adjustments are relatively minor in comparison” Since when has such a justification been part of the scientific method?

    The scientific method –

  6. gregole says:

    These liars and their media useful idiots are simply trying to soften up the public to a carbon tax. Here it comes – don’t expect the con and bullsh#t to stop anytime soon.

    • Gail Combs says:

      If they follow what was done with the Food UNsafety Modernization Act, they will wait until AFTER mid-term elections and pass it during the lame-duck session.

      Once passed legislation is carved in stone and a brand new bureaucracy that will never die blooms to life.

      • Gail Combs says:

        DARN forgot to close the strike. That was supposed to be Food UNsafety Modernization Act.

        What is interesting is no matter how terrible the legislation is, it is never repealed once passed except in a very few cases.

        For those in North Carolina, Senator Burr (NC-R) was co-sponsor of the UNsafety Modernization Act that handed control of US farming over to the United Nations and the WTO. Worse when I asked whether he supported the bill just before elections I was assured he DID NOT. When I called to express my outrage after the elections I was handed a bunch of excuses about how he changed his mind because the rewritten bill “protected’ small farmers – another lie that people are going to figure out when the USDA gestopo shows up to regulate their patio tomatoe plant…
        link

  7. Bill Illis says:

    We normally look at the anomalies each month only.

    But did we notice that the new version also adjusted the average US temperatures down in all months by -0.7F average which changes by the season by between -1.0F to -0.4F. Those kind of changes don’t show up so much in the anomalies by themselves.

    Generally, much more change must have occurred in this move to version 2.5. (Stations used, weighted average location, identified breakpoints increased etc.).

    http://s9.postimage.org/juyx0pjzz/NCDC_Changes_in_US_Conus_Augto_Dec2012.png

  8. gator69 says:

    I always enjoy these posts, and share them with the masses. Another skeptic just got her wings! 😉

  9. kirkmyers says:

    The climate activists at NCDS and GISS posing as scientists are guilty of scientific fraud. They have continually manipulated the temperature data to deliver a warming signal that fits the politically correct version of human-caused planetary warming. And, of course, NOAA’s just-released news release focuses solely on heavily altered U.S. temperatures while ignoring the rest of the planet, which has not warmed to any statistically significant degree for more than 16 years.

    NOAA NCDS and NASA GISS have given science a bad name. Both agencies should be abolished. And the scientists responsible for perpetrating the AGW fraud should be prosecuted.

  10. Billy Liar says:

    Surely, OJ was innocent.

  11. Billy Liar says:

    With regard to your mention on Fox:

    http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/01/10/hottest-year-ever-skeptics-question-revisions-to-climate-data/

    I think you, like Fox, should call these ‘adjustments’ ‘revisions’.

    I believe ‘revisions’ is a more appropriate word:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_revisionism_(negationism)

    • Ben says:

      I believe ‘corruption’ is a more appropriate word. Recall that in some cases they have lost the original data, so they are adjusting already adjusted data.

      When we are unable to recover the original data, we call it data corruption.

  12. Terri Jackson says:

    These temperature measurements only cover the 130 years of the instrument era. However the earth is at least 4 to 5 billion years old. Why are the ice core data stretching back tens of thousands of years always omitted from global temperature discussions?. Could it be that ice core temperature data reveals that the earth temperature during most of the last tens of thousands of years has been much higher than today?

  13. tallbloke says:

    Reblogged this on Tallbloke's Talkshop and commented:
    Ah, tthe shifting sands of NASA and MET climate records

  14. ralph t says:

    is it true that most scientists believe that the earth was much warmer eons ago??

    if it is true that the earth has been much warmer eons ago what would be an accurate way to determine if the earth is in an overall all warming trend…if so much temp data is skewed, altered, lied about, or nearly impossible to measure anyway?

  15. Hal44 says:

    Government agencies SHOULD be responsible for presenting data as accurately and truthfully as possible. There should be well-documented standards in place for making adjustments to current and past data sets. These agencies should welcome input from independent, outside entities prior to making these presentations. If this were the case, then there wouldn’t be the need for articles with the word “Fraud” in the headline.

    • Fred Fighter says:

      There is indeed no such need in the instant case.

    • Gail Combs says:

      NO DATA SHOULD BE ADJUSTED!!!!!

      Either the data is good as is or the scientist notes the errors bars and the reasons for the error.

      If a scientist in a drug company or any other regulated industry (or an accountant) did what these Psychentists have been doing they would be serving time in jail.

      • Shazaam says:

        Erm…. Maybe the BLS has set the pattern here.

        No one has gone to jail for the massive inflation numbers or unemployment numbers games / fraud….. So why should NOAA worry? Anything that keeps the budgets growing and grants rolling in goes it seems.

        In the Obamanation with the laughingstock-in-chief as the “dear leader”, it seems the ends always justify the means.

        If you like your computer-generated, fantasy global warming models, you can keep your computer-generated, fantasy global warming models.

      • Fred Fighter says:

        Nonsense.

        Data are adjusted to remove biases. In the instant case, If I recall correctly, the adjustment was for time of recording bias. Data are adjusted in all the Geophysical research with which I am familiar.

        Data from drug testing most certainly are adjusted as appropriate. One common adjustment is to remove smokers from the experiments and controls.

  16. ralph t says:

    NOAA Temperature Fraud Expands….

    headlines are often opinions.

  17. Norman says:

    This is no laughing matter the persons responsible for this blatant fraud need to be prosecuted where are the lawyers urgent!

  18. Fred Fighter says:

    Rich Dimasco suggested I copy my comments here:

    I note an obvious attempt at deception when the author here:

    http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/01/11/noaa-temperature-fraud-expands-part-1/

    compares temperature in the lower 48 states to the world temperature, as if the two were the same.

    Also

    I would not assume that the absence of explanation by Steve Goddard to be evidence of an absence for a valid explanation on the part of NOAA.

    I’ll bet that IF the statement that the historical temperature estimation has changed is true, the explanation is probably something like this:

    Few if any temperature records from individual stations (I think these are commonly called ‘scribal records’) are complete. If one were to compute a mean value while simply leaving out the missing data that would almost certainly introduce a bias into the calculate. If one day is missing from one winter, that would probably bias the mean value upwards and vice-versa for summer data.

    So it is necessary it interpolate to fill the data gaps. That process will rely not only on the data nearest the gap, but typically also on data for the same day(s) of year as the missing data, but for other years. Thus as new data become available, the calculated global means for past temperatures will change. This is obviously true if scribal records are found that can be used to fill the gaps, but also the case for newly found data from other years.

    In addition to new data, old data many be discarded when there are valid reasons for discarding them, or they may be recalibrated if new information about them is discovered.

    For example, we know that temperatures at any give location will change gradually over the course of a day. If the scribal records show a day with hour temperatures in the range of 20 to 30 degrees F, but one hour shows a temperature of 80 or -20, that one measurement should be presumed to be wrong and discarded, with an interpolated value substituted.

    In addition via personal correspondence with the folks at Real Climate I have been told that other factors that motivate a re-calibration of past data include changes in practice (such as time of day at which temperatures were recorded, called Time of Observation Bias) and changes in equipment.

    They indicated that the recent changes were affected by Time of Observation Bias (TOB). I know that re-calibration of past data is a common practice in other Earth Sciences. It does not surprise me at all to see it being done with Climate data. Indeed, refusal to update temperature estimate in the light of new data, simply for the purpose of avoiding criticism from Steve Goddard, would be inappropriate.

    I am not affiliated with NOAA, the Real Science website, the Real Climate Website, or others referenced in the article or my comments.

    • Are you an idiot? This is a discussion of NOAA alterations to the US temperature record. The adjustments are more than three times larger than what NOAA docs say they are.

    • Me says:

      But you are not affiliated with NOAA, the Real Science website, the Real Climate Website, or others referenced in the article or my comments. So what is this kool aid statement about then. BWAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHA!
      In addition via personal correspondence with the folks at Real Climate I have been told that other factors that motivate a re-calibration of past data include changes in practice (such as time of day at which temperatures were recorded, called Time of Observation Bias) and changes in equipment.

  19. Fred Fighter says:

    “Are you an idiot?”

    No. Are you an ill-mannered out? I would hope not.

    “…The adjustments are more than three times larger than what NOAA docs say they are.”

    Which docs?

    • “Which docs?”

      The reason why everyone is assuming you’re an idiot is that you’re not even aware of the NOAA documentation on their adjustment regime, much less read it. Yet you feel intelligent enough to educate others on the topic. (sigh)

      • Fred Fighter says:

        “The reason why everyone is assuming you’re an idiot is that you’re not even aware of the NOAA documentation on their adjustment regime, much less read it”

        Indeed. Aside from the reply received from my reply to a question to the the folks at real Climate, all I know about this webpage is what I have read on this webpage itself. Therefor I do have a deficit in information of an objective scientific nature on this specific topic.

        Should you wish to refer me to something helpful, such are there docs to which you refer, I would be most appreciative.

      • Me says:

        Post something critical @ real climate under a different name and on some computer not addressed to you and you will see. 😆 but I doubt that will work. BWAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

      • Fred,

        If you start off by asking fair and reasonable questions then it’s been my experience that Steve will point you in the right direction with the necessary links. But if you kick off the discussion by providing a ‘lecture’ on why us dumb sceptics don’t know what we are talking about, then it’s assumed you’re an advocate for a cause, and as such, a lost cause, so to speak.

  20. Fred Fighter says:

    Has the article been edited? I no longer see text ‘lower 48’.

  21. Fred Fighter says:

    I also don’t see any world temperature plots. Perhaps errors in the graphics have been corrected?

  22. Fred Fighter says:

    Oh, I see. I thought your ‘blink comparator’ was blinking the two graphs on the referenced GISS webpage. I see now that it is not. I apologize for referring to the comparison as a deliberate deception, on the condition that you provide a reference that shows GISS reported the data being blinked.

  23. Fred Fighter says:

    Mr Nitschke,

    You have had ample opportunity to direct me to the information you suggest I read. Yet you have thus far declined to do so. This leaves me wondering if you have read it yourself, or if it even exists.

    This exercise does serve as a reminder of why I generally avoid reading blogs.

  24. Fred Fighter says:

    Ah, it appears that the GISS discussion is here:

    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/

    Some of the specifics are reported here:

    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/updates_v3/

    Hope that helps.

    Why you deep-linked to a single figure and did not refer your readers to GISS’ own discussion of recent changes to their temperature estimates is left as an exercise for your readers.

  25. I worked at NOAA in the 1990’s as a Radiosonde Telemetry engineer responsible for deploying a new RRS (Radiosonde Replacement System). Radiosonde are electronic sensor packages carried aloft by Weather Balloons. They gather PTU (Pressure, Temp, humidity) and wind data, at 92 locations across the USA (over 800 worldwide) and are THE main source for measuring our Upper Atmosphere.
    NOAA meteorologists stopped our deployment of the new RRS systems, which replaced the older equipment. The newer electronics and sensors were improvements over the old, more accurate and precise. There was a 1.0-1.5 degree discrepancy between the new RRS data and their old, “smoothed” (fudge-factored) data, which they couldn’t account for…
    The RRS system is now 99% deployed but the arguments on this same 1.0-1.5 degree debate still remain. That was the beginning of ClimateGate.
    Gore spoke out (..same guy who claimed he invented the Internet…), people listened, scientists fell in line to get published or perish.
    It’s a fact that polar ice is melting. It’s NOT a fact that humans are the cause, or that a trace element (CO2) is the cause or that humans are responsible for this rise in the trace element level.
    I believe that a Carbon-Tax is just another attempt at large gov’t to extract money from us, control us. I believe that NOAA’s $3B+ budget is 75% waste and that a large, uncontrolled gov’t is more danger to us all than all the temp data talk. I am Awake. John Galt – WDC

  26. Fred Fighter says:

    It is a fact that Carbon Dioxide is a greenhouse gas while the three most common constituents of the Earth’s atmosphere, Nitrogen, Oxygen, and Argon are not. It is a fact that without greenhouse gases the temperature of the Earth would be much colder, freezing most of the Earth’s water.
    It is a fact that the observed increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide is due to human action. This is proven both by simple closure and by the Suess effect.
    It is also a fact that there are several other factors that affect the Earth’s temperature. The importance of carbon dioxide in determining the Earth’s temperature, compared to other factors is an area where there is some uncertainty. That uncertainty does not disprove the facts above.

    • gator69 says:

      It is FACT that natural variability has never been disproven as the cause of recent climate change. In FACT the IPCC has received much recent criticism for not looking into NV seriously.

      FACT is Ockham’s razor is still very, very sharp. 😉

      • Fred Fighter says:

        The Suess effect is the change in the isotopic ratio carbon-13 and 14 to carbon-12 in the atmosphere due to the burning of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels have no carbon-14 and very little carbon 13. Thus, when they are burned carbon-12 is added to teh atmosphere without an additional carbon-14 being added. The Suess effect shows that the rate at which carbon dioxide is produced by the burning of fossil fuels is greater than the rate at which the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is rising. That proves that without that human action, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would be decreasing, not increasing.

        Of course some people reject proof of anything based on isotope ratios. Those are the same people who think the Earth is 6000 years old.

        Everyone is entitled to their own opinions. No one is entitled to their own facts.

        • With 17 years of no warming, you just proved that there is no correlation between temperature and man-made CO2. Good job!

        • gator69 says:

          Hey Fred! Your hand waving has not changed my FACTS. 😆

        • Latitude says:

          That proves that without that human action, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would be decreasing, not increasing.
          ====
          and poor Fred has no clue what that means…………….

        • Ben says:

          Fred Fighter:

          Your facts neglected to mention the nuclear bomb test affect on atmospheric C-14, rendering your previous facts impotent.

          Keep trying.

        • Fred Fighter says:

          Obviously if atmospheric nuclear weapons testing were not taken into consideration the Seuss effect would underestimate the human contribution. Happily, that source of carbon-14 can readily be factored into the analysis.

        • David says:

          Yes Fred, and if so, so what? The benefits of CO2 are well known, documented in hundreds of studies and thousands of experiments, the projected and predicted harms, have thus far failed to materialize or any schedule.

          Hell, even the warming is not happening for the past decade and 1/2. And the warming that was predicted to occur at various locations and altitudes, has simply not happened. The models, ALL of them, predict more warming then is or has occured. When all the models are wrong, wrong wrong, in ONE direction (to warm), then it is likely that the one “forcing” they all make dominate (CO2) is not nearly as dominate as they (the warmist so called scientist) think. And they, the IPCC warmist, ignore over a 1/2 dozen peer reviewed scintific articles that estimate, through observations and scientific reasoning, that the models senstivity to CO2 is way to high.
          So FRANK, in simple summary, the “C” is missing in CAGW, and so is the “W”. Would you agree that there is not much left to the theory?

        • Fred Fighter says:

          I’ll agree that it is certainly possible that some models are too sensitive to Carbon Dioxide. That is the crucial issue regarding AGW, and it is an issue about which there is genuine valid room for controversy.

          Would you agree that it is also possible that some models are not sensitive enough to sulfite particulates or variation in the solar constant?

    • BTW Fred. Why did you forget to mention that H2O is far and away the dominant greenhouse gas?

      • Fred Fighter says:

        As you know, water condenses at a much higher temperature than the other common greenhouse gases and so its ‘residence time u=in the atmosphere is a couple of weeks. Thus the water vapor concentration in the atmosphere is driven by temperature change, not vice versa, Water vapor can also reaches saturation in the atmosphere at normal terrestrial temperatures. Not so for the other common greenhouse gases.

        This is why without any other greenhouse gases the Earth would be frozen. Water alone will not maintain a greenhouse effect at our distance from the Sun.

    • David A says:

      It is a fact that you forgot about water vapor. The increase in CO2 is likely human caused, imv, but it is reasonably debated.

      Several other factors?? Try hundreds, on time scales ranging from minutes to billions of years, some cyclic, some not, My God man, it is an immensely complicated poorly understood chaotic system, of which CO2 is, by all observations, a small player following major influences, but CO2 is vital for our survival.
      Your facts are poorly expressed, and minor and irrelevant to observations that show no warming, no increase in hurricanes, droughts floods etc, and the fact that the planet grows 12 to 15 % more food on the same amount of water due to the increase in CO2.

      • Fred Fighter says:

        That is incorrect. I did not forget about water vapor. I remembered that water has a much higher melting and boiling point than do most other gases in the atmosphere. A consequence of those properties is that atmospheric water vapor is driven by temperature changes not a driver of them. Of course I explained this clearly above. You should have read it.

        “The increase in CO2 is likely human caused, imv, but it is reasonably debated.”

        The Seuss effect and simple closure both demonstrate quite convincingly that the observed increase is anthropogenic.

        • Gail Combs says:

          “…both demonstrate quite convincingly that the observed increase is anthropogenic.”
          >>>>>>
          And we ALL better hope and pray that CO2 is the Magic Gas that causing warming because other wise we are S.O.L.

          As I said above the 20th century was “the Modern Grand maximum (Usoskin et al., 2003c; Solanki et al., 2004)”

          So what does that mean?
          William McClenney, a california certified geologist who has spent years working in the industrial clean up field, has been tracking papers in Quaternary science for years and is very well read on the subject. He makes several unsettling points one of which is he has seen no papers on an extended Holocene interglacial since the Lisiecki and Raymo’s 2005 rebuttal soundly trounced the Loutre and Berger’s 2003 astronomical model.

          In his words:
          1. Is the Holocene interglacial, our interglacial, just about kaput? Well, that’s the trillion dollar question, isn’t it? The present consensus seems to be that we will not have an extended interglacial this time.

          2. So, tipping points. Based on the end of the Younger Dryas, the Holocene this year is 11,715 years old. We are at the long end of the precession cycle at 23,000 years, so, eerily close to half a precession cycle old right now. Onset of the Little Ice Age after the Medieval Warm Period, right when the Holocene reached about half a precession cycle old, was harrowing enough. The Modern Warm Period, reportedly less warm then the MWP, marks the second thermal pulse, a few centuries older than half a precession cycle, and still within the Holocene. (…there were two [thermal pulses] in MIS-11 [before glaciation]…)

          3. Aside from Loutre and Berger’s 2003 astronomical model, which was soundly trounced by Lisiecki and Raymo’s 2005 rebuttal, there has only been one well-accepted means of preventing glacial inception discussed in the literature: greenhouse gases. This, of course, is not how it is meant to be discussed in the “new science.” Can anyone suggest another means of delaying or preventing glacial inception except GHGs?

          4. Five of the 6 interglacials dating back to the Mid Pleistocene Transition have each lasted just half of a precessional cycle. If you warmists are right, you just plunked-down on MIS-1 repeating the extended interglacial MIS-11, for however long you fancy. Please do note, however, that MIS-11 was not all that stable a climate ride………:

          http://www.clim-past.net/6/131/2010/cp-6-131-2010.pdf

          http://www.clim-past.net/6/31/2010/cp-6-31-2010.pdf

          Even during the only post-MPT interglacial to make it past about half a precession cycle it got awfully cold between MIS-11′s two insolation peaks.
          …..
          And lastly Williams says:
          Let’s try getting there from an entirely different perspective. Lisiecki and Raymo (Paleooceanography, 2005) produced an exhaustive analysis of 57 globally distributed deep ocean cores reaching back about 5 million years. The widely referenced LR05 stack in the literature since suggests that this is a landmark paper in paleoclimate science. One passage from this thorough analysis will suffice:

          “Recent research has focused on MIS 11 as a possible analog for the present interglacial [e.g., Loutre and Berger, 2003; EPICA community members, 2004] because both occur during times of low eccentricity. The LR04 age model establishes that MIS 11 spans two precession cycles, with 18O values below 3.6o/oo for 20 kyr, from 398-418 ka. In comparison, stages 9 and 5 remained below 3.6o/oo for 13 and 12 kyr, respectively, and the Holocene interglacial has lasted 11 kyr so far. In the LR04 age model, the average LSR of 29 sites is the same from 398-418 ka as from 250-650 ka; consequently, stage 11 is unlikely to be artificially stretched. However, the June 21 insolation minimum at 65N during MIS 11 is only 489 W/m2, much less pronounced than the present minimum of 474 W/m2. In addition, current insolation values are not predicted to return to the high values of late MIS 11 for another 65 kyr. We propose that this effectively precludes a ‘double precession-cycle’ interglacial [e.g., Raymo, 1997] in the Holocene without human influence.”

          This is the perspective. The summer solstice insulation minimum during MIS-11 at 65N was 489 Watt/m2 and it was 474 Watt/m2 in ~2005 (Lisiecki and Raymo, 2005). You need 15 Watt/m2 to get to the insolation minimum in MIS-11. I am not familiar with any CO2 estimates which correlate with a 15 Watt/m2 rise in atmospheric forcing.

          …The vast research I have done attempting to ferret out whatever is available on the last several ice ages and interglacials, especially the transitions, suggests that the single greatest mystery in all of climate science is what causes abrupt climate change in the absence of hominid emissions. Evidence for D-O oscillations extends as far back as 680 million years in varves found in lacustrine sedimentary rocks. Which neatly extends this out of the tectonic regime.

          So in response to your first point, the above suggests that it might not be all that simple to assess the causation of D-O events, in fact this science is not at all settled. In fact, if I had the time I could reference/quote many papers which suggest the recognition of D-O oscillations within both the Eemian and the Holocene. And they might be right. There do appear to be upper limits on earth’s warm state in the ride down from the PETM. So the D-O signal would be anticipated to be muted at the upper end of the scale and most observable in contrast to the cold state limits. …”

          MY CONCLUSION
          The only ‘Tipping Point’ available is towards glaciation and the timing is anytime now. Even if we
          do not go into glaciation it is going to be cold not warm. In other words the Warmists are just blowing smoke and the IPCC has completely ignored what geology is saying on the subject.

        • Gail Combs says:

          A paper from 2007 Lesson from the past: present insolation minimum holds potential for glacial inception says
          “Because the intensities of the 397 ka BP and present insolation minima are very similar, we conclude that under natural boundary conditions the present insolation minimum holds the potential to terminate the Holocene interglacial. Our findings support the Ruddiman hypothesis [Ruddiman, W., 2003.]…”

          The Ruddiman hypothesis contends that Anthropogenic Climate Change (CO2) is what has kept the earth out of glaciation that would have otherwise occurred.

          A fall 2012 paper Can we predict the duration of an interglacial? says…
          “…although it has been unclear whether the subdued current summer insolation minimum (479 W m−2 ), the lowest of the last 800 kyr, would be sufficient to lead to glaciation (e.g. Crucifix, 2011). Comparison with MIS 19c, a close astronomical analogue characterized by an equally weak summer insolation minimum (474 W m−2 ) and a smaller overall decrease from maximum summer solstice insolation values, suggests that glacial inception is possible despite the subdued insolation forcing, if CO2 concentrations were 240 ± 5 ppmv (Tzedakis et al., 2012). …..”

          The paper goes on to say
          ” … thus, the first major reactivation of the bipolar seesaw would probably constitute an indication that the transition to a glacial state had already taken place. …”

          This paper, gives the solar insolation (the 21 June insolation 65◦ N) for the termination of several interglacials. Current values are insolation = 479 W m−2

          MIS 7e – insolation = 463 W m−2,
          MIS 11c – insolation = 466 W m−2,
          MIS 13a – insolation = 500 W m−2,
          MIS 15a – insolation = 480 W m−2,
          MIS 17 – insolation = 477 W m−2,

          This is why a drop into glaciation has not been ruled out. Are we headed into glaciation? Who the heck knows but even if we just cool to the same temps as the 1970s we are in trouble as far as crops go. MAP: Southward movement of Koppen plant boundries in 1970s If we cool to Little Ice Age temps we are in even worse shape ESPECIALLY since each Bond cycle has been cooler than the last. GRAPH The drop into the “Big One” is the real Oh S…T of course and can occur much faster than originally thought. Dr Alley found the transition from the Wisconsin Ice Age to the Holocene occured in THREE YEARS!

          Since “…Solar energy reached a summer maximum (9% higher than at present) ~11 ka ago and has been decreasing since then, primarily in response to the precession of the equinoxes…” ** I would think long and hard about curbing CO2 with its many benefits for the plant kingdom. and crops. Especially since more than one paper indicates high CO2 levels are all that is keeping the earth out of full glaciation.
          ** Temperature and precipitation history of the Arctic (2010)

    • Gail Combs says:

      It is a FACT that water is a green house gas that is at 4% vs 400ppm (CO2)

      It is a FACT that the oceans cover over 70% of the earth’s surface.

      It is a FACT that the CO2 active IR wavelengths penetrate the ocean a Few molecules deep while UV and EUV penetrate to 300 meters.

      It is a FACT that while Total Solar Insolation varies ~0.1% or less UV and EUV vary ~7%
      It is a FACT the sun has been more active during the 20th century.

      SEE:
      A History of Solar Activity over Millennia
      Ilya G. Usoskin
      Sodankyl ̈ Geophysical Observatory (Oulu unit)
      FIN-90014 University of Oulu, Finland
      http://arxiv.org/pdf/0810.3972.pdf

      …Note that several “predictions” of the general decline of the coming solar activity have been made recently (Solanki et al., 2004; Abreu et al., 2008; Lockwood et al., 2011), however, these are not really true predictions but rather the acknowledge of the fact that the Modern Grand maximum (Usoskin et al., 2003c; Solanki et al., 2004) must cease. Similar caution can be made about predictions of a Grand minimum (e.g., Lockwood et al., 2011; Miyahara et al., 2010) – a grand minimum should appear soon or later, but presently we are hardly able to predict its occurrence. ….

  27. gator69 says:

    And once again the isotope rope a dope argument rears its mythological head…

    “Since CO2 produced by fossil fuel burning is depleted in C13 (so the argument goes) this also suggests a manmade source.
    But when we start examining the details, an anthropogenic explanation for increasing atmospheric CO2 becomes less obvious.
    For example, a decrease in the relative amount of C13 in the atmosphere is also consistent with other biological sources. And since most of the cycling of CO2 between the ocean, land, and atmosphere is due to biological processes, this alone does not make a decreasing C13/C12 ratio a unique marker of an anthropogenic source.
    This is shown in the following figure, which I put together based upon my analysis of C13 data from a variety of monitoring stations from the Arctic to the Antarctic. I isolated the seasonal cycle, interannual (year-to-year) variability, and trend signals in the C13 data.”
    -Dr Roy Spencer

    • Fred Fighter says:

      “For example, a decrease in the relative amount of C13 in the atmosphere is also consistent with other biological sources. ”

      Please explain how that is so.

      • gator69 says:

        Why not read the material by Dr Spencer and learn for yourself. You obviously are waaaaay behind in you reading, and frankly I have better things to do than catch you up on years of research.

        BTW – I’m Gator. 😉

        • Fred Fighter says:

          The other proof that the observed increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide is from human action is simple closure. We know how much fossil fuel is burned each year and therefor how much carbon dioxide is produced. That is about twice the amount of carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere each year. Thus, again, were there no anthropogenic carbon dioxide being produced, the atmospheric concentration would be going down, not up.

        • Fred Fighter says:

          It would seem that Dr Spencer agrees with me:

          “I’ve usually accepted the premise that increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations are due to the burning of fossil fuels by humans. After all, human emissions average around twice that which is needed to explain the observed rate of increase in the atmosphere. In other words, mankind emits more than enough CO2 to explain the observed increase in the atmosphere.

          Furthermore, the ratio of the C13 isotope of carbon to the normal C12 form in atmospheric CO2 has been observed to be decreasing at the same time CO2 has been increasing. Since CO2 produced by fossil fuel burning is depleted in C13 (so the argument goes) this also suggests a manmade source”

          http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/01/increasing-atmospheric-co2-manmade%E2%80%A6or-natural/

          He does go on to speculate as to a biological explanation based on certain short scale time correlations but does not present any biological mechanism that would account for it.

          Also I think his statement that “most of the cycling of CO2 between the ocean, land, and atmosphere is due to biological processes” is quite wrong. Most of the exchange of CO2 between atmosphere and ocean is a physical and chemical process while the other two are primarily biological.

          I am not familiar with the abbreviations on the abscissa label on Figure 1, and therefor cannot interpret the graph. All I can say is that the long term measure of whatever is being plotted is relatively insensitive to latitude, which is what one would expect with good long term mixing, while the short term variations are quite different between the Northern Hemisphere where land masses and therefor humans and other terrestrial organisms are concentrated is different from the Southern Hemisphere.

          Given the certainty of the measurements Dr Spencer describes in his first two paragraphs it would seem to be foolish to suggest an alternate explanation, especially without any theoretical model to support it.

          E.g. there is no question that humans activity produces more CO2 per year than the net annual increase in the atmosphere. Dr Spencer most certainly does NOT dispute that. Indeed, he clearly states it himself.

        • Gail Combs says:

          “…The other proof that the observed increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide is from human action is simple closure….”
          >>>>>>>>>>>
          That proof relies on the ASSumption of a steady state equilibrium. That is a false premise given the amount of CO2 disolved in the world’s oceans and lakes and the fact water absorbs or emits CO2 depending on its temperature.

          Also you are ASSUming that CO2 is evenly distributed in the atmosphere – the most idiotic of all the CAGW ASSumptions.

          Why CO2 is Known not to Have Accumulated in the Atmosphere
          From the Wayback Machine:
          http://web.archive.org/web/20140412220309/http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com/2007/06/on_why_co2_is_known_not_to_hav.html

          Also see : CO2 Acquittal
          http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com/2006/10/co2_acquittal.html

          If that doesn’t work try:
          http://www.globalwarmingskeptics.info/attachment.php?aid=125
          although that is missing the comments and rebuttals.

          There is no real evidence that CO2 has significantly increased. The CO2 records are just as “Adjusted” as the temperature records.

          A quicky by Dr. Tim Ball: http://doctorbulldog.wordpress.com/2008/12/10/exposing-the-global-warming-myth-co2-levels/

          More in depth by Dr Jaworowski: http://www.warwickhughes.com/icecore/

        • Gail Combs says:

          I should also mention that I think we really need to boost the CO2 levels up to around 1000 to 1500 PPM MINIMUM!

          Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2005 Jan 18;102(3):690-4. Epub 2005 Jan 10.
          Carbon starvation in glacial trees recovered from the La Brea tar pits, southern California.
          Ward JK1, Harris JM, Cerling TE, Wiedenhoeft A, Lott MJ, Dearing MD, Coltrain JB, Ehleringer JR.
          …Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Kansas

          Philos Trans Royal Society
          Carbon dioxide starvation, the development of C4 ecosystems, and mammalian evolution.

  28. Fred Fighter says:

    WordPress is not allowing me to post this as a reply, even though it is. So I will quote the preceding comment to establish context:

    “stevengoddard says:
    July 13, 2013 at 4:52 pm

    With 17 years of no warming, you just proved that there is no correlation between temperature and man-made CO2. Good job!”

    As you know, the claim of 17 years with no warming relies heavily on the inclusion of the 1998-99 el Nino with it’s abnormally high atmospheric temperatures in the data. If one were to fit a straight line to the temperature data shortly after the el Nino event, that line would show warming. Either of these plots would be what is commonly called ‘cherry picking’ and both would be deceptive.

    The Sun is observed to be less active in the present ten-year solar cycle than in the last one, yet global temperatures have not gone down. Does that prove that there is no correlation between solar activity and temperature? No, it does not. Another is particulate matter such as that emitted by burning coal without good environmental safeguards, which has a cooling effect. That was the situation world-wide for about 30 years following WWII and until pollution abatement took effect in most of the industrialized world. That has also been the situation in China over the last decade during which coal burning has doubled or more than doubled.

    As you will recall, I noted earlier that many factors affect global temperature. I suggest that you consider the same.

    • The trend from 2002 is cooling! Even worse!

    • Latitude says:

      Either of these plots would be what is commonly called ‘cherry picking’ and both would be deceptive.
      ========
      Fred, what do you think about this…..

      http://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/screenhunter_707-apr-25-06-06.jpg?w=640&h=491&h=491

    • Chewer says:

      The mechanisms, sources, transferring & mixing of that terrible noxious gas over the past climate changes (glacial-inter-glacial & back again) are not mentioned, nor have they been measured, why? Because we are incapable of the measurements now or in the future. For instance Mauna Loa shows us C02 from 36′-360 MSL, but we have intermittent measurements through the spheres above and very close to zero within sub-surface land masses and very little measurement within the ever moving oceans.
      Your ability to present anthropogenic C02 as the only means for changes that haven’t happened, are absorbed nicely by the average media followers, but seem to be quite close to a witch burner spewing the word of the day.
      The working hypothesis of AGW has zero chance of ever becoming scientific theory, but you already knew that…
      Atmospheric chemistry is quite obviously not your strong suit!

    • Chewer says:

      The 82-83 El Nino is irrelevant?

  29. gator69 says:

    “As you know, the claim of global warming relies heavily on the inclusion of 1979 with it’s abnormally low atmospheric temperatures in the data. If one were to fit a straight line to the temperature data shortly before the global cooling scare, that line would show cooling. Either of these plots would be what is commonly called ‘cherry picking’ and both would be deceptive.”

    There, fixed it for you. 😉

      • gator69 says:

        And this disproves NV how? 😆

      • miked1947 says:

        Fred:
        As you brought up GISS as an example of temperature series, I will present you with this from GISS:
        Q. If SATs cannot be measured, how are SAT maps created ?
        A. This can only be done with the help of computer models, the same models that are used to create the daily weather forecasts. We may start out the model with the few observed data that are available and fill in the rest with guesses (also called extrapolations) and then let the model run long enough so that the initial guesses no longer matter, but not too long in order to avoid that the inaccuracies of the model become relevant. This may be done starting from conditions from many years, so that the average (called a ‘climatology’) hopefully represents a typical map for the particular month or day of the year.
        http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/abs_temp.html
        GISS admits their temperature reports are model outputs loosely based on worthless temperature records and “Guesses”.

        • Fred Fighter says:

          No, GISS does not state, much less ‘admit’, that ‘their temperature reports are model outputs loosely based on worthless temperature records and “Guesses”.’

          That is simply not an honest, to say nothing of accurate, paraphrasal of the statement.

        • miked1947 says:

          You may well want to reread that link I provided. They admit there is no valid surface temperature data and they produce something using some data and EXTRAPOLATIONS ( Guesses) as inputs to their model that is run just enough to get the DESIRED results. To little and the results are Meaningless and to much and the results are meaningless. They may as well be reading Tarot Cards or Astrological Charts. As a matter of fact they might get better results from either of those two methods, rather than the one they use.

        • Fred Fighter says:

          “They admit there is no valid surface temperature data and they produce something using some data and EXTRAPOLATIONS ( Guesses)”

          GISS makes no statement, much less an ‘admission’ that there are no valid surface temperature data. Extrapolations are not guesses, the page should not make that statement and I understand how that can be confusing to the mathematical layman. In fact, calculated values used to fill gaps are interpolations, not extrapolations. Neither are guesses.

          What they appear to be trying to state is that the a-priori used in a numerical analysis does not affect the answer. I would say that part of the page is written poorly, and I understand your confusion.

          As pointed out on the page you reference, if the interest is change, then anomalies not only are sufficient, they are necessary. To determine change, precision, not accuracy, is needed. This is a terribly important concept that is often poorly understood.

        • miked1947 says:

          They have “Adjusted” and Homogenized their reports past a state of being useful.
          I am not in any way confused about what they are doing and have been investigating and discussing this fraud for a number of years. It has got to the point that they do not even know what the global temperatures are doing. They could be holding steady, going down, or even rising. They make many unsupported claims about variable long term weather patterns and claim Climate is changing. Sorry! Climate is Change and the study of that change. There is nothing happening today that is outside historic natural variations that are recorded in historic records. Unadjusted records for a specific site may give us a sample of temperature changes but the reports provided by NOAA and GISS only let us know how proficient they are with data manipulation. Maybe a couple hundred years of satellite records will give them a clue about changes in global temperatures. I just do not believe in fairy tales, such as those written by GISS and NOAA.

        • Fred Fighter says:

          I am not familiar in detail with the data processing used by GISS. I am only familiar with the process in general. The manner in which you expressed yourself earlier suggested that you were unfamiliar with the practical aspects of geophysical science. Accusations of fraud require evidence of malice. I do not see that you have presented anything beyond an accusation of incompetence.

          If as you say, the GISS data is too heavily processed to yield valid anomalies, then what is your basis for saying that “There is nothing happening today that is outside historic natural variations that are recorded in historic records.” Do you have access to a database that you consider to be more precise?

          It is one thing to say that there is insufficient, or even _no_ evidence to support a conclusion that we are in the midst of historically unprecedented climate change. That should be the default position and simple expresses a lack of confidence in the GISS methodology. But the affirmative assertion of a definitive counter-claim can only be justified if there is definitive evidence to that effect. Do you have such evidence? One cannot justify _completely_ ruling out the alternative absent data supporting the default conclusion. Otherwise you would be overreaching the data.

          And again, an accusation of fraud, in the absence of clear evidence of fraud, reflects poorly on the accuser. That would be like accusing a scientist of bias in favor of the interests of the party funding their research. The recently released results from the largely Koch-fundind Berkeley study show that such biases must not be presumed.

        • miked1947 says:

          I would imagine from your response you have not really taken the time to investigate historical climate records for your self but have followed the rest of the “Believers”. My evidence is written in stone and some of it is millions of years old. Being activists and finding answers that support their position, when the opposite can also be said of the data they are using, tends to point to deliberate fraud rather than incompetence. The e-mails between the researchers that were revealed by the release of their communications rules out the incompetence, as it shows they knew what they were doing and they were doing it deliberately. The so called scientists are showing “Bias” in favor of the government agencies that are funding CAGW research. The BEST study is little better than biased and the Koch group was defrauded into financing the study by a CAGW promoter. They thought they were getting an “Independent review”, and they were not.

        • Fred Fighter says:

          You are quite correct that I have not examined historical climate records myself. Have you, and if so, what calibrations have you applied to them?

          Although I have a great deal of respect for paleoclimate researchers I do not share your confidence in evidence “that is written in stone and millions of years old”. There are many factors that affect climate, and unless I am very much mistaken they do not all leave behind evidence sufficiently specific to evaluate them all to the same degree of precision as we can evaluate those factors in the present day. I am similarly skeptical of ice core data, in particular regarding the ability to determine the date of a measurement with a resolution as small as a few years. I understand that on its face that is a simple matter of counting, but wonder about the possibility of events such as a midsummer snowfall, or a removal of some of the deposited layers by some natural action.

          This does not bother me a great deal as although I am not familiar with the workings of the assorted climate models but as far as I can tell, paleoclimate data is not used to develop or calibrate them.

          I have read the purloined emails to which you referred myself. Therefore I know that they do not contain any evidence of deception. They do contain evidence of a desire to suppress contrary viewpoints, though I saw no evidence of action to that effect.

          I ask you now for evidence in support of your accusation of fraud that you have made against BEST, and therefore by implication against Dr. Richard Muller and the other scientists on his team.

        • miked1947 says:

          Fred:
          Come back after you learn something about the true state of global climate and after you remove your head from the dark place you have stuck it!

        • Fred Fighter says:

          I gather then that you have not done any relevant work yourself, nor do you have any evidence to support your accusation of fraud against Dr. Richard Muller and the other scientists on his team.

        • miked1947 says:

          Fred:
          You guessed wrong!

        • Muller committed fraud when he claimed he was a skeptic, after repeated comments to the press that he was not a skeptic.

        • miked1947 says:

          Fred:
          That is old news, dig a little deeper. I did and found answers that I am comfortable with.

        • miked1947 says:

          Mueller never denied CAGW, he just disagreed with the Hockey Stick and Mann Made Climate Catastrophe.
          There were many time he stated that he was NEVER a Sceptic about CAGW!

        • Fred Fighter says:

          Please feel free to share what you found about Dr Muller.

        • miked1947 says:

          You are late to the game, do your own research!

        • Fred Fighter says:

          I am familiar with the acronym AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming). I am not familiar with the acronym CAGW. What is it?

        • miked1947 says:

          Fred:
          WOW! Unbelievable!
          Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming
          CACC= Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change
          CACA= Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Alarmism
          CHIA= Cronic Head In A$$
          CLB = Chicken Little Brigade / People that promote CAGW/CACC& CACA. Usually caused by CHIA.

        • Fred Fighter says:

          “You are late to the game, do your own research!”

          In my experience, that’s what people who know they can’t back up their claims generally say when asked to provide evidence banking up their claims.

        • miked1947 says:

          ROFLMFAO! Go to Climate Auditand read every one of Steve’s posts, along with all the responses you will find there,
          http://climateaudit.org/
          That is a good neutral location to start reading.
          You could add this site also:
          http://theresilientearth.com/?q=blogs/doug-l-hoffman
          Those two will get you started.
          BTW, You have to find the answers your self. I had to and a lot of other contributors on this site did also. Each of us has our own position on Climate Change, that years of study has provided us. Dig a little deeper!

        • T.O.O. says:

          Fred,
          The most common phrase uttered on Real Science is “You are an idiot/dense/moron/dipshit” followed closely by “Do your own research.”

        • miked1947 says:

          TOO:
          You forgot, Get your head out of your A$$! Things become a bit clearer after that.
          BTW, did you once go by the handle Questioner?

        • Ben says:

          Fred Fighter: You need to challenge your confirmation bias that NOAA/NASA/GISS do not use extrapolation.

          Search google for
          extrapolation temperature site:noaa.gov
          and start reading.

          Example:
          http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/pacdir/NFORdir/tuto1dir/exp1.html.cp

          Both interpolation and extrapolation use assumptions to guess. Interpolation is bound on two sides, extrapolation is often only bounded on one side, and so produces greater error.

        • T.O.O. says:

          Fred,
          As if on cue, miked was so kind in providing yet another example of Real Science’s most common phrase.

          To elaborate a bit further, the most common phrase (You are an idiot/dense/moron/dipshit) is generally a response to an referenced observation and the 2nd most common phrase (Do your own research) generally follows a question on the authenticity of an unsubstantiated observation.

          A word of advice, if you are looking to get evidence and bona fide references to substantiate the comments from most of the posters on this forum, be prepared to follow Alice down the rabbit hole.

        • Fred Fighter says:

          “Both interpolation and extrapolation use assumptions to guess.”

          That is incorrect.

          ” Interpolation is bound on two sides”

          That is correct

          “, extrapolation is often only bounded on one side,..”

          That is incorrect. Extrapolation is always an extension beyond the data, else it would be interpolation.

        • Fred Fighter says:

          “A word of advice, if you are looking to get evidence and bona fide references to substantiate the comments from most of the posters on this forum, be prepared to follow Alice down the rabbit hole.”

          Clearly.

      • miked1947 says:

        Fred:
        That entire graph is based on model outputs and proved the computer basic theory GIGO!

    • Fred Fighter says:

      Indeed there were some people who observed that if the data were plotted from 1979 to 1999 the curve was especially steep. Using that to claim an acceleration in the rate of temperature increase was certainly dishonest. To establish trends, one should generally use the longest database possible.

      • miked1947 says:

        Fred:
        Go back about 5,000 years, that will give you a better starting point. Ignore Surface temperature records and review the anecdotal evidence. Throw out the Hockey Stick and most of the other reports that have been presented by the IPCC. The IPCC had a primary goal of providing evidence that humans were causing Global Warming/ Catastrophic Climate Change. They ignored evidence of natural variations in weather patterns that have been experienced as long as humans have walked this earth. They ignored evidence that showed similar patterns even before humans had the technology to contribute to climate change. The question to be answered is How much do humans contribute to climate change. They do not even know enough about natural variability in weather patterns, yet they claim to know that humans are the primary cause. They don’t know Diddley Squat. It is not science they are practicing. Science provides a theory that can be tested. There is no valid test for CAGW. Models are only “What if Scenarios” and do not prove anything. The so called temperature records they provide are models that are also “What if Scenarios”. They were designed to fool the suckers into believing the BS they are spreading.

        • Fred Fighter says:

          I don’t have a lot of confidence in 5000 year old temperature proxy data, much less 5000 year old anecdotal ‘evidence’. I have more confidence in the information about atmospheric gases gleaned from ice core data. However, as I often note, climate is affected by many factors. I doubt that we have the ability to accurately quantify enough of those in the distant past to use data prior to the advent of modern instrumentation to derive and calibrate casual models of the climate in the distant past.

        • miked1947 says:

          Fred:
          They have proven we do not have the ability to model climate with any degree of accuracy even today with all the advances they have made.
          Models are considered What if scenarios, not predictions and they want to act on the output of models as if they were predictions. The money quote is” There are to many unknown factors affecting climate to be able to predict what the climate will do ten days from now let alone 100 years from now or any time in between. That statement is proven true by the comparison of model outputs and observations.

        • Fred Fighter says:

          “The money quote is” There are to many unknown factors affecting climate to be able to predict what the climate will do ten days from now”

          I don’t know who you are quoting but they are plainly at least half wrong. Predicting what climate will do in ten days from now is trivial. Climate will do in ten days what it does today. Climate does not change significantly in ten days. For that matter, ten years is a very short period of time in regards to climate change.

          Models are used to make predictions, with varying degrees of success, in many fields. Modeling of the ionosphere, for example, works quite well for satellite altimetry measurements

        • miked1947 says:

          Models cannot even accurately back cast weather patterns experienced during the last 50 years.
          I used the term Climate rather than “Weather” and models can not accurately predict weather 10 days from today. They do as well reading tea leaves or Tarot Cards. If they were that good at predicting only one model would be needed to predict weather events next year or even next week. I observe weather forecasts from four different groups and they seldom agree with each other regarding likely rainfall, expected temperature or speed of a cold front entering my region.
          You can believe their fairy tales, but you are in for a big let down when they finally admit their errors.

        • Fred Fighter says:

          miked1947 wrote: “I used the term Climate rather than Weather”

          Which is why the statement was not only wrong, but ludicrously wrong.

  30. gator69 says:

    “Also I think his statement that “most of the cycling of CO2 between the ocean, land, and atmosphere is due to biological processes” is quite wrong. Most of the exchange of CO2 between atmosphere and ocean is a physical and chemical process while the other two are primarily biological.

    I am not familiar with the abbreviations on the abscissa label on Figure 1, and therefor cannot interpret the graph. All I can say is…”

    😆 😆 😆

    Dr Spencer IS A CLIMATOLOGIST! 😆

    His data is used by VIRTUALLY EVERY CLIMATE SCIENTIST IN THE WORLD!

    And yet you know better. 😆

    You would trust a false ‘consensus’ that abandons natural variability over the work of one of the world’s top experts. What do you do for a living again? 😆

    Fred, you make a great parrot, but a lousy researcher.

  31. Fred Fighter says:

    Please explain the biological processes by which the oceans exchange carbon dioxide with the atmosphere.

    • Latitude says:

      plants, plankton, corals (zoox), bacteria (it’s a big biologial filter) etc….it’s primarily a biological process
      biological processes are described as chemical formulas…
      …chemistry is easy….bio-chemisty is hard

      no different than land………

      • Latitude says:

        and biological processes speed up with an increase in temps…………..

        • Fred Fighter says:

          That is an excellent point. The observation that we are living in a Venusian climate pretty well demonstrates that there are some negative feedback processes that prevent runaway global warming in the long run. The increase in biological activity you suggest would seem to be a candidate contributor to such a negative feedback mechanism. Would it offset the loss of solubility due to warmer water temperatures? This is an interesting problem.

  32. Fred Fighter says:

    Plants, plankton, corals, bacteria etc in the oceans do not absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. They absorb carbon dioxide that is dissolved in the oceans. Hence the carbon dioxide has to get into the oceans first. That process is physical/chemical.

    Like all gases, the solubility of carbon dioxide in water varies inversely proportionate with temperature.

    In my opinion, the absorption of carbon dioxide dissolved in the ocean water by those organisms should more properly considered to be part of the process whereby the oceans exchange carbon with the lithosphere as the bodies of those creatures settle into the ocean sediments.

    • Latitude says:

      more carbon is sequestered than released…you’re going at it the wrong way

      • Fred Fighter says:

        Since more carbon is sequestered that is released, does that not mean that the ‘carbon pump’ moves carbon from the oceans to the lithosphere through biological action?

        That is what I wrote, albeit using different words.

        • Latitude says:

          nope…didn’t see that
          “more properly considered to be part of the process whereby the oceans exchange carbon with the lithosphere as the bodies of those creatures settle into the ocean sediments.”

          there’s a reason CO2 levels dropped low enough to be limiting….and would continue to drop

        • Fred Fighter says:

          Sorry, I don;t follow the context — dropped when and where?

    • David says:

      Fred, besides the municia being irrelevant to the fact that the “C” and the “W” is missing from CAGW, your question was…”Please explain the biological processes by which the oceans exchange carbon dioxide with the atmosphere” You recieved a short but to the point answer. The fact that you then talked about the chemical process of the mutual exchange, does not negate the bio chemical process. Both function, and you have not refuted Dr Spencer’s point at all. (Which as mentioned several times, this aspect of academic discussion is irrelevant to the CAGW doom argument)

      • Fred Fighter says:

        To the contrary I clearly pointed out that the carbon dioxide had to enter the oceans BEFORE being available to the biological processes. Bio-absorption of carbon dioxide in the oceans is more properly part of the exchange between the oceans and the lithosphere. But of course, I already wrote that too. Perhaps these pages will help you understand:

        http://www.learner.org/courses/envsci/unit/text.php?unit=2&secNum=8

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solubility_pump

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_pump

        Dr Spencer refutes his own work at the top of the article. Humans produce more than twice the Carbon Dioxide needed to account for the observed rise in atmospheric concentration. AFAIK, no one disputes that.

        Regarding the Seuss effect, he does not describe any biological mechanism that would mimic it. None.

        So there really doesn’t appear to be anything to repute. I can only speculate as to what he thinks is indicative of biological action.

        His plot shows a latitude dependency in the annual ratio C13/C12 in atmospheric carbon dioxide and he notes that there is a seasonal variation that is similar to the seasonal variation of total atmospheric carbon dioxide. The seasonal variation in total atmospheric carbon dioxide is due to there being more green plants in the Northern Hemisphere than in the Summer so that carbon dioxide rises in winter reaching a peak in the spring and drops in summer reaching a low in the Fall. Dr Spencer also notes that the ratio C13/C12 is similar for green plants as for fossil fuels.

        Since there are also more humans in the Northern Hemisphere than the Southern and humans burn more fossil fuel in the winter and less in the summer I don’t see how he can attribute that combination of seasonal and latitude variation to non-human activity only.

        Further the Seuss effect is no only not confined to the ratio C13/C12 but is in fact primarily a matter of the ration C14/C12, which Dr Spencer does not address at all.

        As noted before, the people who don’t accept isotopic ratios as evidence of anything are the same people who think the Earth is 6,000 years old.

        “I finally became convinced that the theory of creation actually had a much better scientific basis than the theory of evolution, for the creation model was actually better able to explain the physical and biological complexity in the world. ” — Dr Roy Spencer in the book “The Evolution Crisis”.

  33. Fred Fighter says:

    I took it on myself to inquire as to the rationale for the adjustments referred to at the top of this page, and included a statement that I would pass the information on. So, while I am not posting the reply verbatim, I feel that nettiquette is not violated by quoting from it thus:

    “No changes are made to the historical record. Numbers recorded in the past
    don’t change in the raw data. However, there are many breaks in the
    records, changes in practice, equipment etc. So if you want to understand
    what has changed just due to climate you need to take those non-climate
    things into account. The big differences in the US record are related to
    the ‘time of observation bias’ (TOB) since when observers wrote down the
    max and min temperatures has changed over the years. Everyone who has
    looked at this seriously – even Watts and McIntyre – have acknowledged
    that this is a real effect, and as you can read in Hansen et al (2001)
    this makes a big difference. “

    • TOBS can go either way, assumes that all past observers were complete morons, and the TOBS adjustment described in the literature accounts for about 1/10th of the actual USHCN data tampering.

      • Andy Oz says:

        Hey Steve,
        All these guys look to be the same person with different profiles. David Appell, Lazarus, too, Fred, Michael, and a few others. The language and arguments are almost identical. You have a serial stalker in your blog! Reminds me of the movie “The Fan” with Bob De Niro.

        Reggie was very different, but then he’s a dopey PR guy for the Rowing Team and sponsored by Braindough!

        • miked1947 says:

          Andy:
          I have had discussions with Laz, and Appell over a period of time. Fred is probably a plant from SS as is Michael. I agree that TOO may well be LAZ or even PHD. The Serial stalker is their puppet master. I can imagine these guys being on the payroll of a group like the Progressives. They remind me a lot of the fan boys at Deltoid, RC, Openmind, SS, Bad Astronomy and the rest of of the groups in the denialsphere.
          I agree about Reggie, He is a newbee to the game. Fred might be also!

  34. The idea that you can take temperature stations each with their own unique microclimate, and smear their results over hundreds, perhaps thousands, of miles, is an absurd idea. Just tell me what the stations used to read, and now what they read, for the same locations over time.

    • Gail Combs says:

      “The idea that you can take temperature stations each with their own unique microclimate, and smear their results over hundreds, perhaps thousands, of miles, is an absurd idea…”
      >>>>>>>>>>>>>
      Ain’t that the truth!

      All you have to do is look at WUNDERGOUND and the nearby stations.
      Today right now in my area – mid NC

      Nearby Airports
      City: …….. Temp.:
      Siler City 68 °F
      Chapel Hill 68 °F
      Sanford 72 °F
      Raleigh-Durham Airport 72 °F
      ……
      Jordan Lake, Pittsboro, NC 67.3 °F
      Sortova Farm, Pittsboro, NC 67.7 °F
      Chapel Hill, NC 66.8 °F
      Carrboro Elementary, NC 67.5 °F
      Overlook, Cary, NC 72.4 °F
      >>>>>>>>>>>
      So you are seeing a 5 °F temperature difference in an area of about 50 miles and they ‘krig’ using 200 kilometers…

      They are lucky if the error is +/- 5 °F!!!

  35. David says:

    Hell Fred, make it simple, just explain the adjustments in Iceland. ( He will likely say, what adjustments?) Also Fred, I never heard you acknowlge that this post, at the top, is a quote of a FALSE statement about US adjustments. So Steve’s blink graphs were right on target, and they do show large adjustment that the questionable TOBS adjustments do not support, even by the authors of those adjustments.

    BTW, many of the educated posters here have no patience for polite condecension, which your posts are FULL of. The fact that they blatantly speak what you phrase with subtelty, is an indication of straightforward honesty, and also, impatience with rule the world blackbeards who are doing great economic harm with their power quest.

  36. Russ Browne says:

    I have been doing battle with an AGW advocate in a Green Party of Canada website… elizabethmaymp.ca/news/publications/island-tides/2013/06/20/the-latest-attempt-to-deny-climate-science

    This video from the American Geophysicists Union has been posted, the presenter is very confident that AGW is cut and dried.He says if you take out the el Nina data then the temperature rise has been progressing steadily and their model shows that after 2050 things are going to hell in hand-basket, that sea levels can rise 60 meters when all the ice melts.

    I would like the experts on this site to critique this presentation.

    Thanks
    Russ Browne

  37. Russ Browne says:

    please add this link to my previous post… http://www.youtube.com/v/Z_-8u86R3Yc&hl=en_US&fs=1&

    • Fred Fighter says:

      Well, I am no expert but I have a lot more confidence in a prediction by a geophysicist regarding what plate tectonics will do in 50 million years vs what a climatologist predicts about climate in 50 million years. Not the least reason for that being that climate is affected by plate tectonics.

      And as for a short term prediction, say a thousand years or so, the comparison is plainly no contest at all.

      • shazaam says:

        And I have as much faith in a climatologist’s predictions for 1 year as I do in the 10 day forecast.

        Climatologists, meteorologists with a fancy new titles and dodgy computer models to back it up. Their forecasts are just as much a joke as ever.

  38. Fred Fighter says:

    I am extremely confident in a climatologist’s prediction for one year since climate does not change significantly in one year. All they have to do is say the climate in one year will be about what it is now and they are guaranteed success. Same goes for plate tectonics in a thousand years, but not climate.

    • Good example. It took almost 80 years for the consensus to accept plate tectonics.

      • Fred Fighter says:

        There was a long standing debate over whether tectonics was still an ongoing process or had stopped sometime in the past so that the present day seismic and (some) volcanic activity was due to relaxation of residual stresses.

        That was answered with the development 40 years or so ago of techniques that could measure plate motions as small as a few cm over periods of time of less than a decade. Of course a great deal of modeling is needed to calibrate the data including both ocean and solid Earth tides.

        The answer is that plate motion is going on today at about the same rates as the geological evidence suggests it has for hundreds of millions of years.

        Not that any of that is relevant, just thought it would be fun to share.

        • Given that people could see four metre displacements along the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake rupture,.it is pretty astonishing that anyone could believe that the continents were not moving.

    • shazaam says:

      Yeah, well, how’s that ice-free Arctic working out for the climatologists and their dodgy models? Ice-free by 2013 my backside. A climate forcast with results remarkably similar to the permanent drought and permanent heatwave forecasts. The climatologists and their fear mongering have only themselves to blame for what they are doing to the public trust in anything the climatologists have to say.

      Just becasue a “climatologist” can adjust the historical data (i.e. GISS) to match their premises and forecasts, does not make those forecasts magically come true. Altering the past data to force it to “fit” their climate model de jour is not a valid method of validating any model. (my opinion from an engineering standpoint)

      Now if a climate model could chew unaltered historical data, say 1900-1960 and fairly accurately predict 1970-2000, I’d be very interested in what it has to say prediction-wise. Alas, such a climate model is as common as a truthful politician or truthful climatologist.

    • shazaam says:

      Just to be clear, when I speak of a model making predictions based on past data I am allowing for a sliding window. i.e. to predict 1970, use all data 1900-1969. For 1971 use 1901-1970 (real, not predicted). For 1972, use 1902-1971, etc. etc. etc.

      That would validate a climate model to my satisfaction.

      No such model exists, since it’s ever so much easier to alter the historical data to make the current dodgy models kinda work. The current crop of climatologists’ models just have to be scarey enough to get that next grant application funded.

      I write software for a living, so I know that generating such a model will be very difficult. However, I would insist on accuracy like that before allocating any tax dollars to “fix” a climate problem. The climatologists are fortunate that politicians have no such scruples when it comes to spending other peoples’ money.

      • Fred Fighter says:

        “when I speak of a model making predictions based on past data I am allowing for a sliding window. i.e. to predict 1970, use all data 1900-1969. For 1971 use 1901-1970 (real, not predicted). For 1972, use 1902-1971, etc. etc. etc.”

        Can you present some examples of models that have been validated that way?

        The usual way a model is validated is by examining the statistics that tell us how well the data fit the model, and (informally stated) how well the uncertainties in the data fit the uncertainties predicted by the model.

        For example, not too long ago a statistician calculated reduced chi squares for some of Gregor Mendel’s work on pea plants and found they were too small, meaning that his data fit his model better than they should have. This raised a suspicion that Mendel had fudged his data, probably discarding some observations that did not fit his theory. However when the analysis was examined by a geneticist familiar with pea plants he discovered that the statistician had overestimated the degrees of freedom. That was because Mendel’s theory assumed more independence between the inherited traits he was studying that what actually exists. Using the correct value for degrees of freedom the reduced chi squares came out near unity as they should have. Mendel was exonerated, because his theory was a little bit wrong.

        One interesting aspect of this is that if Mendel had done the chi square analysis himself he would have known there was a problem and may even have deduced that his assumption of independence of certain inherited traits was wrong, thus discovering linked genetic traits.

        Back to temperatures:

        The historical data have not been altered.

        I am not aware of any geophysical phenomenon that can be accurately studied without calibrating (or adjusting) the data to remove confounding factors and other biases. I do not see why temperature data should be uniquely different.

        I can respect a logical, fact-based, well-articulated criticism of a specific adjustment or process.

        If however a person suggests that the practice of calibration of adjustment itself is fundamentally wrong, then that person deserves no such respect. If that person includes pejoratives in their commentary, then of course they deserve less than no respect.

      • shazaam says:

        Heavens, any model worth using, will have a reasonably close match to the physical phenomena you wish to model. Circuit analysis comes to mind. Yes real-world components don’t match the modeled components exactly (Capacitors and their Equivalent Series Resistance comes to mind) However the results of running an arbitrary input signal through such a model results in an output signal that is very close to the results achieved when the real physical circuit is built.

        When I speak of running a climate model with a multi-year window of climate data, consider that multi-year window of historical data to be your input climate signal. If the model is accurate and can truly predict results based on the input “signal”, then the output data will have at least some resemblance to the actual historical data.

        Now about those “calibration” claims… I was not aware that the melting point of water or the boiling point of water experienced much drift over the last 100 years. Because historically those were the calibration points used for thermometers. Thus, I state that any alteration of the historical temperature measurement data sets is fraudulent. Because the most common historical temperature calibration standard, water, has not altered it’s physical properties in any way that I am aware of. (please correct me if I missed the notice of the change to melting points and boiling points of water)

        Climatologists can bloviate all they want about urban heat islands. Urban heat islands are a case for adjusting the current temperature measurements in urban measurement stations down to account for the heat island effects. NOT a case for adjusting the historical temperature data down in data sets (like GISS). Additionally, the historical data contained many more rural stations which would greatly dilute any effects of urban heat islands in the historical data.

        Current climate model results have very little resemblance to actual climate data. — Like saying someone’s words have little resemblance to the truth. A very polite way of saying that individual is a liar. — I tend to prefer to call a fraud a fraud, and be done with it.

        • Fred Fighter says:

          Clearly you haven’t thought this through. Let’s consider a very simple case of two stations., Station A records the temperature every hour on the hour. Station B records the temperature every two hours on the half hour. How do you calculate the average temperature?

          The adjustment ‘addressed’ at the top of this page was to correct for ‘time of observation bias’. Again, if you you have a logical, fact-based and well-articulated argument that it was done wrong I am sure that would be respected. If instead, you argue that it was wrong to do the adjustment at all, then no, that is not a position deserving of respect.

          The urban heat island effect was one of the first phenomena addressed in the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study. They found the effect to real and large but confined to a very small number of stations such that the contributed bias was quite small.

        • Shazaam says:

          As to the issue of different recording times, it’s not terribly significant long term. The data sets are looking for peak daytime temperatures and minimum nighttime temperatures. And regardless of actual sample time, those data points will come from the measured data. (I’ve written vibration analysis software that pinpoints gear defects utilizing massive data re-sampling, and NO new high or low values are EVER generated via resampling, the recorded values are never adjusted on the fly)

          Sure, if you want to make every station look the same, then you’d re-sample on the shortest common interval.

          i.e. Station A records 75 @ 2PM — 78 @ 3PM — 77 @ 4PM — 76 @5 PM — 75 @ 6PM — 73 @ 7PM
          Station B Records 74 @ 2:30PM — 77 @ 4:30PM — 75 @ 6:30PM

          Normalizing the data and in this short example tossing the end points as it’s a simple and SHORT example, we end-up with:
          Station A (“normalized/interpolated) 76.5* @ 2:30PM — 78 @ 3PM — 77.5* @ 3:30PM — 77 @ 4PM — 76.5* @ 4:30PM — 76 @ 5PM — 75.5* @ 5:30PM — 75 @6PM — 74* @ 6:30PM
          Station B (“normalized/interpolated) 74 @ 2:30PM — 74.75* @ 3PM — 75.5* @ 3:30 — 76.25@ 4PM — 77 @ 4:30PM — 76.5* @ 5PM — 76* @ 5:30PM — 75.5* @ 6PM — 75 @ 6:30

          Interpolated samples marked with *. Note that NONE of the interpolated samples “invent” new highs or lows as they MUST reside between the measured values. The “interpolated data” will be picked from the straight line connecting 2 of the actual samples. Inventing new highs or lows would be fraudulent.

          So any claims that new high temperatures or low temperatures are called for due to re-sampling / normalization of the recorded data are pure and unadulterated FRAUD. It is a very simple thing to re-sample/normalize the data in software. The above sequence I did in my head, so any math errors are my fault.

          The point is, there is ABSOLUTELY NO JUSTIFICATION FOR ADJUSTING the historical temperature record up or down. Especially the massively fraudulent GISS adjustments that have been made to date.

          Calibration is performed periodically, and adjustments are noted, however the raw data is sacred and necessary adjustments NEVER displace the raw data.

          In the case of temperature measurements, water melting & boiling points and the effects of altitude and barometric pressure were well quantified in the late 1700’s so outside of some abysmal carelessness, I seriously doubt there is much calibration error to be found or corrected in the historical temperature records.

          Thus the only reasonable explanation I can offer for the massive shifts in the historical temperature measurements found in the GISS data set are massive and intentional fraud.

          It’s either fraud or criminal incompetence. Take your pick.

        • Fred Fighter says:

          “The “interpolated data” will be picked from the straight line connecting 2 of the actual samples. Inventing new highs or lows would be fraudulent..”

          Is it not an understatement to say that it is highly probable that some of the actual highs and lows really were higher and lower than some of the actual recorded data? Thus if you could accurately model diurnal temperature variation could you not more accurately estimate the highs and lows?

          That is only one issue. I don’t claim to know much about them, but again, if you can’t point to specifics issues in the adjustments then a blanket accusation of fraud or criminal incompetence stands without specific evidence.

          I used the term ‘calibration’ in a broader sense, meaning the removal of biases from the data, as it is often used in practice. I agree that is not the popular usage.

        • Shazaam says:

          Is it possible that there were higher highs and lower lows than measured? It is possible and that value will not be terribly far away from the recorded historical data.

          Is it valid to “reconstruct the past” to fit the models? In a word, no. The point is, you cannot know or predict for certain that there was any value outside the recorded data set, so you must use the data you have. Not the data you wish to have.

          Your loose definition of calibration is the basis of modern climatology. And I translate “removing biases in the historical data” as “forcing the historical data to fit a theory”.

          Unless you have a fact based error to correct for, i.e. measurement station way out of calibration with records to back it up, then there is no valid reason to alter the historical data.

          Thus I stand by my declaration that the massive alterations to the historical data in the GISS data set is both fraudulent and an act of nearly criminal incompetence.

          I offered you the choice of picking one.

          I say it’s both.

        • Fred Fighter says:

          I think we can agree that in fact it would be rare for the day’s high or low temperature to occur at exactly the time at which a temperature is routinely recorded.

          So using linear interpolation is guaranteed to underestimate the diurnal temperature variation. Now suppose that typically the rate of change of temperature near a daily high is greater or less than the rate of change near a daily low. Then linear interpolation not only underestimates the diurnal variation but it also introduces a secular bias into the estimation.

          I am by no means expert in such matters as how to most reliably determine temperatures and their averages. None-the-less, I do think the objections I have raised to simple linear interpolation are valid.

          I have little doubt that people who are expert in the field are familiar with many more biases that have to be removed from the data before a signal may be reliably detected. Or more succinctly stated, I am trying to not fall victim to the Dunning–Kruger effect. If and how you chose to do the same is up to you.

          And of course it remains the case that the historical data themselves have not been altered. The published values referred to on this page were always estimates made from the historical data.

          Were I inclined to make rash accusations I could readily accuse you of choosing to declare any analytical technique necessary to detect a trend to be invalid simply because you don’t want any trends to be found. I prefer to think of you as sincere, but naive.

        • J Calvert N says:

          Parameterization has nothing like the physics ‘purity’ of (say) Navier-Stokes Equations which form the key component of the CFD parts of the model. Parameterized subs that assume simple causality risk being contaminated by unsuspected multiple causality.

          You state “the parameters are selected *based on* physics”. Huh? Cherry-pie? These have not been established to the level of physical laws (see Feynman clip at top of page) and they’re very wishy-washy and unproven compared with (say) Navier-Stokes.

          As Muller acknowledges here at 3:40 (and elsewhere – watch the whole thing!) in this presentation http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_916464&feature=iv&src_vid=8BQpciw8suk&v=VbR0EPWgkEI
          Cloud-cover is a problem for the models. Cloud cover in the models is parameterized and they could be completely wrong.

          Then consider that your ‘selection’ is probably done by ‘climate scientists’ (or worse, modellers) – who are not proper physicists – they’re bound to get it wrong,

        • gator69 says:

          The 800 pound gorilla on the modeling runway…

          “2.9.1 Uncertainties in Radiative Forcing”

          When it comes to understanding climate drivers, 13 out of 16 forcings are listed as ‘low’ to ‘very low’ in 2.9.1 Uncertainties in Radiative Forcing of AR4.

          That’s right, over 80% of KNOWN forcings are understood at a ‘low’ to ‘very low’ level.

          Model that. 😆

        • shazaam says:

          I think we can agree that in fact it would be rare for the day’s high or low temperature to occur at exactly the time at which a temperature is routinely recorded.

          I have never denied that it is possible to miss a high or low occasionally. My issue with this lamentably false justification for altering the historical GISS data set is a tiny little factor known as thermal inertia. Look it up. Temperatures do not normally change quickly due to the dampening effect of thermal inertia (absent a nearby forest fire or storm front moving through).

          Thus the raw, unaltered data will be VERY close to any potentially missed high or low extremes. And the extremes are only of interest for setting new records anyway.

          So using linear interpolation is guaranteed to underestimate the diurnal temperature variation. Now suppose that typically the rate of change of temperature near a daily high is greater or less than the rate of change near a daily low. Then linear interpolation not only underestimates the diurnal variation but it also introduces a secular bias into the estimation.

          It cannot introduce any significant bias unless there is some abysmal carelessness on the part of the station operator. In which case, the few outlier stations can be omitted without issue or left in without harm. Given that the vast majority of stations were not operated by blithering idiots (though with government employees, there might be a higher percentage of incompetents), the the effects of a very few would be drowned out by the majority.

          I am by no means expert in such matters as how to most reliably determine temperatures and their averages. None-the-less, I do think the objections I have raised to simple linear interpolation are valid.

          Again, there is no justifiable reason to create new values out of fear of missing an occasional high or low. Re-sampling to homogenize values for a model is valid. Creating new estimated values that lie outside of the recorded historical data is just fantasy. And I have labeled such fantasy as fraud because newly created values and thus GISS adjustments always seems to conveniently fit the “consensus” theory. If the “climatologists” / “data alchemists” weren’t altering the data to fit their preconceptions, I might feel differently.

          I have little doubt that people who are expert in the field are familiar with many more biases that have to be removed from the data before a signal may be reliably detected. Or more succinctly stated, I am trying to not fall victim to the Dunning–Kruger effect. If and how you chose to do the same is up to you.

          I’ve been doing test data analysis since computer bits were black and white stones, While I don’t pretend to know everything about it, I do know that altering the raw data to make it fit a theory, cannot in any way be considered a normal and reasonable approach. Thus I still consider the alterations made to the GISS historical data to be fraudulent.

          Dunning–Kruger? Now that’s a laugh. Ah how did that quote go? Something about how quickly folks see their own flaws in others?? Just food for thought there.

          And of course it remains the case that the historical data themselves have not been altered. The published values referred to on this page were always estimates made from the historical data.

          Were I inclined to make rash accusations I could readily accuse you of choosing to declare any analytical technique necessary to detect a trend to be invalid simply because you don’t want any trends to be found. I prefer to think of you as sincere, but naive.

          Obviously you observe the plot comparisons of the current GISS data with the 1999 data set with your eyes closed.

          The “estimates” and resulting alterations being made to the historical GISS data set are not the results of any legitimate analytical techniques. The alterations made to the historical data due to the fraudulent rationalizations used by the “climatologists” / “data alchemists” are being used to force the data to match their predetermined premises.

          And forcing the data to fit your theories is something I call fraudulent. If the alterations are due to misapplication of analytical techniques by “climatologists” / “data alchemists” to get a desired result then I could consider it criminal incompetence as well.

          In any case, one does not alter the raw data to better fit the theories or fantasy models. On works with the measured data one has. Period. If the data does not match the theory, then it’s time to examine the theory. Altering data to make the theory work means that you cross the line from science to fantasy.

          If that makes me naive, then so be it. I’m naive to think that it’s wrong / fraudulent to alter the historical data to fit the desired results.

        • Fred Fighter says:

          “Cloud-cover is a problem for the models. Cloud cover in the models is parameterized and they could be completely wrong. ”

          Yep clouds are very complex and their role poorly understood. I don’t think we even have a good handle on historical variability in cloudiness.

        • Fred Fighter says:

          “I do know that altering the raw data to make it fit a theory, cannot in any way be considered a normal and reasonable approach. Thus I still consider the alterations made to the GISS historical data to be fraudulent.”

          Again, Giss has not altered the historical data.

        • shazaam says:

          Again, Giss has not altered the historical data.

          Okay then. If you would do me a huge favor and scroll back to the top of the page and read the 2 paragraphs under the 2nd chart. Take your time. Sound-out the big words if you have to.

          Now take a good look at the GISS plots in the 3rd chart, the one that is blinking between the 1999 GISS data series and the present.

          Can you honestly say that the historical data in the GISS data set has not been altered? Or is it that you see no problem with making massive adjustments to the historical data to make the theories work?

          I am curious.

        • Fred Fighter says:

          “Okay then. If you would do me a huge favor and scroll back to the top of the page and read the 2 paragraphs under the 2nd chart. ”

          GISS did not write those two paragraphs. The charts do not show the historical (scribal?) data.

        • shazaam says:

          GISS did not write those two paragraphs. The charts do not show the historical (scribal?) data.

          Well that explains everything!!!

          Enjoy trusting the press releases from the “climatologists” then.

          And I’m sure you believe everything the politicians tell you too. How’s that “change you can believe in” working out for ya? Oh wait!! They scrubbed the Change.org website of all the broken promises so that the faithful could go on believin’ (Kinda like changing the GISS data sets so that the faithful can go on believin’)

          Have a nice life.

      • shazaam says:

        As an aside. Mendel’s work did not take in to account the effects of partial dominance and multiple genes on a single locus. I’ve written software to calculate the results of multiple mutations, some expressing partial dominance, on a single gene locus. The combinations of multiple mutations across several loci quickly rise to ridiculous numbers of possible phenotypes.

        Mendel’s work was pioneering for theorizing and expressing the recessive and dominant characteristics. And the fact that he did know about and thus could not account for all the partial dominance factors we now understand somewhat better, does not mean he in any way “adjusted” his results.

        On the other hand, climatologists seem to have no compunctions about altering the historical data sets such as GISS. Mendel had no government grant gravy train to influence, so he reported his data exactly as he recorded it. Climatologists do not seem to quite so honorable when there is grant money at stake.

      • shazaam says:

        Meh, wish I had ability to edit what I didn’t catch proofreading…. That should be multiple mutations on a single locus. Not multiple genes….. Sloppy of me.

      • Fred Fighter says:

        “Just to be clear, when I speak of a model making predictions based on past data I am allowing for a sliding window. i.e. to predict 1970, use all data 1900-1969. For 1971 use 1901-1970 (real, not predicted). For 1972, use 1902-1971, etc. etc. etc.

        That would validate a climate model to my satisfaction. ”

        Up to now I have been arguing over the trees so much I missed the forest.

        The inter-annual variability of global temperature is much larger than the long-term secular trend, even for the largest suggested long term trend. Thus the test described above could not validate a valid model that predicts a rate of say, 2 degrees/century.

        • Shazaam says:

          Ah, so the result is first postulated and then a model built to generate the postulated result?

          And if the model needs the historical data “adjusted” to help get the predicted-in-advance results, well then, we get atrocities like the massive adjustments to historical climate data in the GISS data set.

          That sir, is out and out fraud. And it’s the kind of “research” we’ve come to expect of the “climatologists”/”aka meteorologists” in the climate “research” field.

          Test with known inputs and validate against known data. Otherwise, you might as well be throwing darts at a distant target. If the model cannot utilize unadulterated past data to generate an output that reasonably matches (unadulterated) known historical data, then how can anyone trust the results when projected into the future?

          Your initial premise (2 deg/century) could be faulty, and building a model to generate the desired result runs contrary to the idea of actually testing and researching the the premise. Building a model that generates the desired result from the start is an exercise in fantasy, and has no relationship to reality.

          Climate “science” operating with the postulate-generate-hype-hype-hype methodology does indeed explain the abysmal track record of the climate “science” model results to the measured climate data over the last 15 years.

        • Fred Fighter says:

          “Ah, so the result is first postulated and then a model built to generate the postulated result?”

          No.

          “Your initial premise (2 deg/century) could be faulty,”

          I stated no initial presumption. Your reading is faulty, perhaps deliberately so. Or maybe I was unclear. Your proposed method of validation presumes an implausibly large secular trend as compared to the inter-annual variability.

          I assumed you didn’t realize that, but now it looks like you did and so are trying to obfuscate by making a naked accusation.

        • Shazaam says:

          implausibly large secular trend as compared to the inter-annual variability.

          If a climate model is incapable of using historical input to generate a reasonable approximation of known historical output, then how can you possibly contend that said model is accurate enough to predict the future? The short answer is that you cannot.

          And that is indeed the fallacy of the climate models in use today. The results of the current crop of climate models are great for generating alarming headlines. And of course those same sensational, fraudulent results are excellent for ensuring more government funding to continue studying the “problem”.

          The real problem is that the climate models are incapable of processing historical data to re-create historical results. Thus those models cannot and should not be considered trustworthy to direct public policy, i.e. the models and their creators are frauds and charlatans

          So, is it deliberate fraud or criminal incompetence.?

          Given the massive adjustments that have been made to the historical data in the GISS data set, I still say it is both.

        • Fred Fighter says:

          Here’s a climate that will do a great job of using historical input to generate a reasonable approximation of known historical output:

          Take the global average of the last five years’ temperature data, using linear interpolation to fill gaps just as you suggested. Let that be the prediction for the next year’s average global temperature.

          That ‘model’ passes your ‘test’ with flying colors.

          It’s also completely worthless as it does not use any inputs that drive climate change.

          So maybe there is a better test that could be used, like the statistical tests that real scientists use to test how well their models fit the data.

        • shazaam says:

          It’s also completely worthless as it does not use any inputs that drive climate change.

          So maybe there is a better test that could be used, like the statistical tests that real scientists use to test how well their models fit the data.

          I see, you want to use some of those “statistical tests” that work so well. (sarc)

          http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/CMIP5-73-models-vs-obs-20N-20S-MT-5-yr-means1.png

          It seems to me that using “statistical test” to guesstimate the “inputs that drive climate change” hasn’t worked out so well for the climate change “scientists”/buffoons.

          As far as I know, not a single one of those “statistical guesses” used to model climate has been able to come close to reality. Now that says to me that those “statistical tests/analysis” are just being used to generate a modeled result that matches a pre-determined premise. And that isn’t real science. It’s propaganda generation or play acting.

          It would appear that those “statistically generated climate change drivers” are fatally flawed. Now, the question is, were the flaws known in advance and intentionaly used to generate a desired result? (fraud)? Or were the flaws the product of bad-to-no science? i.e. Were the climate change “driver factors” assumed, and not tested against reality? (criminal incompetence)

          I still say it’s both. (fraud & criminal incompetence)

        • Fred Fighter says:

          “It seems to me that using “statistical test” to guesstimate the “inputs that drive climate change” hasn’t worked out so well ..”

          Do you really object to parameter estimation theory?

          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimation_theory

          “It would appear that those “statistically generated climate change drivers” are fatally flawed.”

          Wouldn’t know since I never heard of any climate changer drivers being statistically generated. The ones I was thinking of are based on physics. Those would be things like variation in the solar constant, greenhouse gases, and particulates.

        • J Calvert N says:

          RE: “The ones I was thinking of are based on physics. Those would be things like variation in the solar constant, greenhouse gases, and particulates.” Which ones were you thinking of? NCAR? GISS? How do you think they model clouds? Rivers? Lakes? Trees? Are you aware of ‘parameterization’? No? Then you need to wade through this. http://climateaudit.org/2009/07/15/boundary-layer-clouds-ipcc-bowdlerizes-bony/ (Just one example) Also try http://climateaudit.org/?s=parameterization

        • Fred Fighter says:

          “Are you aware of ‘parameterization’? ”

          Of course. It is not ‘guestimation.’

          But back to the matter at hand, Do you see how easily a worthless model would pass the supposed test suggested by Shazaam?

          Also, since you have brought Steve McIntyre into the discussion I will note that he also recognizes Time of Observation Bias to be a real effect.

        • Shazaam says:

          Wouldn’t know since I never heard of any climate changer drivers being statistically generated. The ones I was thinking of are based on physics. Those would be things like variation in the solar constant, greenhouse gases, and particulates.

          Well now, based on the results of all the fantasy climate modeling done to date by your esteemed fraudsters/”climatologists”, it would appear that all of their climate models have a strong bias for some reason. I would speculate that they are postulating levels of climate drivers that either match their pet theories or just happen to be whatever generates the most grant funding. So the massive prediction failures of all those climate models is either due to forcing the output to look as alarming as possible for funding (fraud) or due to criminal incompetence on the part of the folks generating the models.

          Doesn’t look like any of the above models match any reality that I’m aware of. It sure scares the public and politicians into opening wallets though. Those wildly inaccurate and “alarming” climate model results scream fraud to me.

          But back to the matter at hand, Do you see how easily a worthless model would pass the supposed test suggested by Shazaam?

          Indeed such a “worthless” model might just accurately predict the future based upon the past. If the climate change drivers are accurately modeled, then it could be mighty accurate. Of course it would also be “worthless” in that if it were accurate (as opposed to a scarey fraud), since it might not be much good for alarming politicians and the public into spending billions on climate research.

          Also, since you have brought Steve McIntyre into the discussion I will note that he also recognizes Time of Observation Bias to be a real effect.

          That is his opinion and he is entitled to it. I still maintain that the recorded values will be very close to any possible missed highs or lows. And the likelihood of any misses should be spread equally between highs and lows. Thus, there is still no valid reason to alter the historical records in the manner in which the GISS data set has been butchered.

          Making the past look cooler and the recent past look warmer is great for generating research funding. And that my friend, is fraud.

          So, I stand by my opinion that the climate researchers responsible for the alterations to the GISS data set are both complete frauds and criminally incompetent.

          And I would like to see their taxpayer funded grants zeroed out and cut off. They can work from private donations. The public should not be supporting their fraudulent “research”.

        • Shazaam says:

          Meh, I guess I miffed the image tag.

          Referenced image in above post is here: http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/CMIP5-73-models-vs-obs-20N-20S-MT-5-yr-means1.png

        • J Calvert N says:

          A model that uses parameterisation (and the big ones all do) it cannot be said to be based entirely on laws of physics.

        • Fred Fighter says:

          “A model that uses parameterisation (and the big ones all do) it cannot be said to be based entirely on laws of physics.”

          Of course. The parameters are selected based on physics. The coefficients are estimated statistically.

          OP’s statement could have been construed as implying that the models using parameter estimation ignored causality. I was addressing that.

        • Fred Fighter says:

          “Indeed such a “worthless” model might just accurately predict the future based upon the past. If the climate change drivers are accurately modeled, then it could be mighty accurate. ”

          As you know, the worthless model in the example models no drivers. But it passes your proposed ‘test’ spectacularly well. So I suggest you think about producing a better test.

          “Thus, there is still no valid reason to alter the historical records in the manner in which the GISS data set has been butchered.”

          Happily, GISS does not alter the historical records. (Would those be what are called

  39. Fred Fighter says:

    As I am sure you know, that displacment (1906 San Franscisco Earthwuake) did not represent a sudden four meter movement of the entire North American Plate relative to the Pacific Plate. It represented a relaxation of strain that had accumulated over the previous hundred years or so. The question was whether that strain had just recently accumulated over the last century, or if it had accumulated millions of years ago and then sat there unchanging like a loaded mousetrap waiting to be sprung.

    The position of the ‘tectonics skeptics’ was that the frequency and strength of earthquakes should be slowly dropping off over a geologically long period of time.

    A big unknow for a large part of the early 20th century was the properties of the solid Earth at signiifcant depths below the surface. That made theoretical work addressing questions like stress and strain highly speculative. But of course I’m sure you knew that too.

    I don’t know how large the ‘skeptic’ school of thought was as late as the 1960s, only that it (or perhaps better stated, its proponents) had not yet completely died off.

    Heck there are still tectonic skeptics today, but by and large they are of the creationist ilk, not scientists.

    • Geologists had a far greater understanding of the earth 100 years ago than you give them credit for.

      My professor at ASU was the father of modern plate tectonics (Bob Dietz) and he was still catching grief from the consensus in the late 1970s.

      • Fred Fighter says:

        Hmm, doesn’t that grief indicate that at least some geologists lacked that greater understanding of the Earth as little as 40 years ago?

        How did they explain the four meter displacement of the 1906 San Fransisco Earthquake?

  40. Ben says:

    Ben: ““Both interpolation and extrapolation use assumptions to guess.”
    RE: Fred Fighter – “That is incorrect.”

    No sir, its correct. Pick up any treatise on numerical analysis.

    Or go here :
    http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/58318.html

    “interpolate means to guess at what happens between two values you already know.”
    ——————————————————–

    Ben : “, extrapolation is often only bounded on one side,..”
    RE: Fred Fighter – “That is incorrect. Extrapolation is always an extension beyond the data, else it would be interpolation.”

    No sir, extrapolation is bounded on one side, that is why it extends beyond the data. But it can only do so one one side, the unknown side. This is the reason you read of “one sided confidence intervals”. See example below.

    http://aws.state.ak.us/officeofadminhearings/Documents/DHS/DHS110015.pdf
    “Largely by means of sampling and extrapolation, the audit …. Myers and Stauffer used the lower bound of the one-sided 90% confidence interval”

    You need education sir.

    • Fred Fighter says:

      Nonsense. At the top of the first webpage you referenced we read:

      ——————————————————————————————

      “Definition of Interpolate

      Could you please define interpolate and give me an example?

      I have looked in “The Book of Answers” and it defines interpolate:

      Determination of an intermediary value of a function by means of a
      sequence of known values of the function.”

      (This is followed farther down the page by:)

      “Hi Mark,

      In more informal language, interpolate means to guess at what happens
      between two values you already know….”

      —————————————————————————————

      Omitting the preface, “In more informal language” speaks volumes as to your honesty.

      There are many techniques for interpolation and extrapolation. All of them rely on a mathematical formula. Had you studied algebra in high school (or should I say studied and understood) then you would at least understand linear interpolation and extrapolation.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpolation

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extrapolation

      No interpolation of extrapolation process involves ‘guessing’. The usefulness of any interpolation or extrapolation technique does rest upon a presumption that the data in the unknown interval does not behave in an outlandishly different way than it does where it has been measured. I would not call that presumption a guess.

      I also wrote: “Extrapolation is always an extension beyond the data, else it would be interpolation.”

      You replied: “extrapolation is bounded on one side, that is why it extends beyond the data.”

      Which is a restatement of what I wrote. I appreciate that you added additional information to the discussion, but that additional information does not conflict with what I wrote. Perhaps you are confused as to what is was that I disagreed with. I disagreed with the word ‘often’, pointing out that it would be correct to use the word ‘always’ instead.

  41. Russ Browne says:

    “Utter damned rot!”

    wrote the president of the prestigious American Philosophical Society regarding Alfred Wegener’s continental drift theory.

  42. gator69 says:

    Fred Dumbass says:

    “Wouldn’t know since I never heard of any climate changer drivers being statistically generated. The ones I was thinking of are based on physics. Those would be things like variation in the solar constant, greenhouse gases, and particulates.”

    Funny, the IPCC admitted in AR4 that they had a ‘low’ to ‘very low’ understanding of about 80% of climate KNOWN drivers. But Fred KNOWS how to quantify these and is light years ahead of the best and brightest.

    I’m so tired of idiots, that you need not respond.

  43. slimething says:

    How’d I miss out on this discussion? Fred Fighter said:
    “Wouldn’t know since I never heard of any climate changer drivers being statistically generated. The ones I was thinking of are based on physics. Those would be things like variation in the solar constant, greenhouse gases, and particulates.”

    Obviously Fred, you are talking out of your posterior, with due respect I should add.

    Climate model parametrization is not based on pure physics. Please see:
    http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2009/01/20/comments-on-real-climates-post-faq-on-climate-models-part-ii/
    “The only basic physics in the models are the pressure gradient force, advection and the acceleration due to gravity. These are the only physics in which there are no tunable coefficients. Climate models are engineering codes and not fundamental physics. If Gavin concludes otherwise, he should provide examples of any parametrization that does not use tunable empirically derived coefficients. Also, he should provide examples of where the “functional form” is reasonably well known. This is true for a few types of processes, such as turbulence very near the surface, and for clear sky long- and short-wave radiative fluxes, but is not true for most other parametrizations.”

    I highly doubt Fred has read one paper on climate models.

    • Fred Fighter says:

      I didn’t say the coefficients were not statistically generated, I said the parameters were based on physics. The evident intent of the earlier statement was to imply that climate models ignored causality with their parameters selected, rather than fitted, based on statistics.

  44. Pete says:

    As a relative novice this discussion I have honestly enjoyed the civil an sometimes not so civil discourse above.
    As a practicing physician, I am looking at this from a general perspective without the intimate knowledge many posters have, or claim to have, about the actual and imagined workings of the IPCC, salaried and grant seeking scientists, each other and others referenced above. I have my biases and to ignore the biases of all concerned is unrealistic. Bias both unintentional and otherwise is a given.
    Einstein said “you don’t vote on the laws of physics”…consensus in the scientific community is often wrong and ultimately meaningless.98% off his contemporaries signed a letter stating he was wrong about his theory of relativity. When asked about that he simply smiled and said it only takes one of them to prove him wrong. Point…. the current consensus, if present, is meaningless. Climate change/theory based on projection mathematical models, are to date, clearly incomplete and showing failure in real world observation. (despite what must be honestly regarded a forced attempt to make the data fit the theory/models,,.. in my biased opinion).
    The data is almost always corrected/changed/extrapolated/manipulated//fudged to make the case for significant AGW.( The” cloud factor “what is that about…..The Argos data was withheld until” corrections “were made with similar alterations to GISS as reviewed ad nauseam above. .Are the publicly funded (grants of any sort) climate models available for open examination or are they “proprietary” :)…….. When I see that,or the FDA sees that in medicine, red flags fly high.
    Much, if not most, of peer reviewed medical literature derived from work in the lab or the ward is false.The reasons for this vary but it’s a fact. Its a fact of which all researchers, physicians and journal editors out to be ashamed but it remains a fact. Some research fails honestly(think Hubble) ,some is simply bad do to methodology failures, some due to lack of understanding of statistics by researchers and reviewers and some due to intentional fraud(Autism/Lancet).The persistence of bad research in our literature is supported by the fear that a young researcher, looking at an academic career would think twice about repeating and potentially refuting the “big dogs ” who wrote the breakout paper and might hire them in the future. Similarly journals want the most interesting(read outlandish/startling new breakout idea and resulting circulation/ money). Do you think any of these same forces could be at play in climate journals? Fred, do you honestly believe there was no intentional submersion of the debate as exposed in the CRU debacle?
    Do you really think the current models of climate change, without detailed knowledge of all the drivers and there relative contribution to climate change play will fare any better than medical research? There is a lot of arrogance and cognitive dissonance from where I sit on the margin of this debate. No doubt Co2 is a greenhouse gas but the significance of that gas as a driver relative other drivers and forces of correction are not known as yet.
    It’s that often expressed idea ” the debate is over.. we voted and we won ( the vote) …so shut up you Neanderthal/flat earther” expressed by politicians,talking heads and far too many scientists that I find so abhorrent.Scientists should be skeptics above all else. Are
    we not trained to try to resist the human desire to find association and causation in our observation without proof. Anecdotal medicine and ” logic” were the tools of charlatans through time.
    We are going to spend 30 Trillion dollars plus worldwide, of a limited resource (money ) do to changes in policy including ,atmospheric carbon abatement/capture/expensive renewables, without a true honest open dialogue, free of media spin and cognitive dissonance among the proponents.
    The diversion of capital without, that open debate, from basic health research (failing antibiotics), housing ,dangers posed by solar flare induced massive grid failure and many other potential threats…… is in my biased opinion a travesty.
    Full disclosure:
    I receive no grant money and own no energy stocks but I am pitting a 30 KWH SV system in my backyard, not because I believe in AGW, but rather because our society is subsidizing it to the tune of $30,000 with additional $4,000/year in SRECs (or at least as long as Maryland keeps forcing the utilities to pony up)…go figure Ladies and gentleman have a nice day …..Keep the debate alive … Pete .

    • Fred Fighter says:

      “98% off his contemporaries signed a letter stating he was wrong about his theory of relativity.”

      I have never read that before and quite frankly don’t believe it is true. It sounds like a distortion of the Nazi criticisms of modern Physics which they ostensibly called ‘Jewish Physics”. However Nazis were hardly a majority of Einstein’s contemporaries.

      “The data is almost always corrected/changed/extrapolated/manipulated//fudged to make the case for significant AGW.”

      In most of science, especially the Earth Sciences, data are adjusted to remove known biases, not to add them. I have seen no evidence that this is any different in climatology than it is in other fields such as seismology or plate tectonics. Before the decision was made to use the speed of light to define the basic unit of distance, rather than vice versa, Physicists were continuously revising the speed of light too, and so on. In your own field, surely you have seen studies of such phenomenon as the incidence of new HIV infection among circumcised and uncircumcised males where the data were adjusted to take into account different frequencies of sexual intercourse between the two groups..

      “Are the publicly funded (grants of any sort) climate models available for open examination or are they ‘proprietary’ ”

      In general they are not. Competition among working scientist drastically set back scientific progress in the 20th century. Not only are the models not published but often, if not usually the data themselves are kept proprietary and often deliberately destroyed after publication to prevent other scientists from using it, lest they be able to do better job and thus be a better candidate for grant money. IMHO, this a terrible situation. Consider that if each generation of observers had destroyed their data we would not have this 700 year record of the depth of the Nile river: http://www.waterhistory.org/histories/cairo/ .

      “No doubt Co2 is a greenhouse gas but the significance of that gas as a driver relative other drivers and forces of correction are not known as yet.”

      Yet many play on the public ignorance by promoting false claims that there is doubt that Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas while others play on the public confidence to make false claims of certainty about the sensitivity of climate change to it. As you correctly imply, neither position is honest.

      • Pete says:

        Einstein’s connection with the politics of the nuclear bomb is well known: he signed the famous letter to President Franklin Roosevelt that persuaded the United States to take the idea seriously, and he engaged in postwar efforts to prevent nuclear war. But these were not just the isolated actions of a scientist dragged into the world of politics. Einstein’s life was, in fact, to use his own words, “divided between politics and equations.”

        Einstein’s earliest political activity came during the First World War, when he was a professor in Berlin. Sickened by what he saw as the waste of human lives, he became involved in antiwar demonstrations. His advocacy of civil disobedience and public encouragement of people to refuse conscription did little to endear him to his colleagues. Then, following the war, he directed his efforts toward reconciliation and improving international relations. This, too, did not make him popular, and soon his politics were making it difficult for him to visit the United States, even to give lectures.

        Einstein’s second great cause was Zionism. Although he was Jewish by descent, Einstein rejected the biblical idea of God. However, a growing awareness of anti-Semitism, both before and during the First World War, led him gradually to identify with the Jewish community , and later to become an outspoken supporter of Zionism. Once more unpopularity did not stop him from speaking his mind. His theories came under attack; an anti-Einstein organization was even set up. One man was convicted of inciting others to murder Einstein (and fined a mere six dollars). But Einstein was phlegmatic: when a book was published entitled 100 Authors Against Einstein, he retorted, “If I were wrong, then one would have been enough!”

        In 1933, Hitler came to power. Einstein was in America, and declared he would not return to Germany. Then, while Nazi militia raided his house and confiscated his bank account, a Berlin newspaper displayed the headline “Good News from Einstein – He’s Not Coming Back.” In the face of the Nazi threat, Einstein renounced pacifism, and eventually, fearing that German scientists would build a nuclear bomb, proposed that the United States should develop its own. But even before the first atomic bomb had been detonated, he was publicly warning of the dangers of nuclear war and proposing international control of nuclear weaponry.

        Throughout his life, Einstein’s efforts toward peace probably achieved little that would last-and certainly won him few friends. His vocal support of the Zionist cause, however, was duly recognized in 1952, when he was offered the presidency of Israel. He declined, saying he thought he was too naive in politics. But perhaps his real reason was different: to quote him again, “Equations are more important to me, because politics is for the present, but an equation is something for eternity.”

        [Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time: From The Big Bang to Black Holes, Bantam Books, 1990; pp. 177-178]
        Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time: From The Big Bang to Black Holes, Bantam Books, 1990; pp. 177-178]
        “if I were wrong one of them would have been enough” …in defending his theory of relativity

        my point is not that science can not go back and correct the record…. its simply that when all the corrections help your theory its suspicious : “when the theory doesn’t fit the facts…change the facts ” …Alert once again

  45. Pete says:

    Against Einstein, he retorted, “If I were wrong, then one would have been enough!”

    Yes to the later point. Co2 is a greenhouse gas but, in the large picture, its significance is correctly debated …to state unequivocally , based on current knowledge,it’s the prime driver of a runaway train is simply dishonest.

    Also what are the potential benefits of a warmer planet and higher CO2 …increased .crop yields come to my mind?
    Who has decided on the optimum temperature of the planet …and how did they derive that number?

    Again do you really think there was no intentional desire to shut down the debate as exposed by the CRU email train ?
    Fred says :
    In general they are not. Competition among working scientist drastically set back scientific progress in the 20th century. Not only are the models not published but often, if not usually the data themselves are kept proprietary and often deliberately destroyed after publication to prevent other scientists from using it, lest they be able to do better job and thus be a better candidate for grant money. IMHO, this a terrible situation. Consider that if each generation of observers had destroyed their data we would not have this 700 year record of the depth of the Nile river:
    Pete
    OK…. so like the alchemists who guarded their formulas for the philosophers stone we are to spend massive amounts of money on public policy adjustments in response to magic formulas which we as a society, in great part financed, to protect the proprietary rights and fortunes of the holder of those magic formulas(mathematical models) without any ability or wright to validate the assumptions and construct of those models. Hmmm doesn’t seem rational of reasonable to me.

  46. Fred fighter says:

    ” its simply that when all the corrections help your theory its suspicious ”

    If the theory is correct, and the corrections are correct, then one expects the overwhelming majority of corrections to result in a better fit of the data to the theory, right? I don’t personally know if this is the case for the data and model that are the subject of this thread.

    I do agree that the purloined emails revealed a desire to find a way to shut up the critics, though I also think the authors were of the opinion that the critics they wished to silence were dishonest in their criticism.

    ” Co2 is a greenhouse gas but, in the large picture, its significance is correctly debated …to state unequivocally , based on current knowledge,it’s the prime driver of a runaway train is simply dishonest.”

    OTOH one could honestly say that within the limits of present scientific knowledge increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide is evidently responsible for around 2/3 of the temperature rise observed in the 20th century.

    Thank you for your stories about Einstein, some of which I was unfamiliar with. I still do not believe that “98% off his contemporaries signed a letter stating he was wrong about his theory of relativity.” That the theory per se was correct was a matter of math. Nor was there much doubt about the first postulate. The only real question was if the postulate of invariance was true.

    • Pete says:

      It is not a scientist prerogative to decide who is” worthy or honest enough to criticize them “…that is more than a slippery slope to muzzling dissent .. scientific debate must always remain open to all regardless of their stature or other scientist feelings about their motives…should we ignore all scientists who draw a salary or grant in this debate as there motives are corrupted…scientific theory is always one experiment away from failure. Correct hypothesis stand the test of time, observation and all manner of insult.
      My point about Einstein is that to Einstein it mattered not if one, or one hundred, felt he was wrong. His comment was a repudiation of the idea that a vote or consensus against his work was relevant …he was challenging anyone of them to prove him wrong with fact. That is my point in the climate debate. Consensus is irrelevant. Many physicians, by consensus, rejected Lister’s antiseptic surgical teachings taking pride in the caked blood on their aprons as testament to their popularity. By consensus,the public supported, to the tune of millions of dollars, the absurd rejuvenating transplant of goat testicles into the human scrotum as practiced by Dr. Brinkley and many other quacks.it took 1200 years to unmask Galen’s teachings out of fear of bucking the consensus. …..I could go on forever with similar examples.

      its impossible to put a number on co2 contribution if you don’t know all the drivers.. that is like saying you have half the pie without knowing how big the pie is…illogical

      • Fred fighter says:

        “its impossible to put a number on co2 contribution if you don’t know all the drivers.. that is like saying you have half the pie without knowing how big the pie is…illogical”

        That would only be the case if one were determining the contribution of Carbon dioxide via closure. And THAT would require an independent understanding of the contributions of all the other drivers, right?

        • Pete says:

          A Hundred Authors Against Einstein[edit]

          A collection of various criticisms can be found in the book Hundert Autoren gegen Einstein (A Hundred Authors Against Einstein), published in 1931. It contains very short texts from 28 authors, and excerpts from the publications of another 19 authors. The rest consists of a list that also includes people who only for some time were opposed to relativity. Besides philosophic objections (mostly based on Kantianism), also some alleged elementary failures of the theory were included, however, as some commented, those failures were due to the authors’ misunderstanding of relativity. For example, Hans Reichenbach described the book as an “accumulation of naive errors”, and as “unintentionally funny”. Albert von Brunn interpreted the book as a backward step to the 16th and 17th century, and Einstein is reported to have said, in response to the book, that, if he were wrong, one author alone would have been sufficient to refute him:[1]
          If I were wrong, then one would have been enough![2]
          According to Goenner, the contributions to the book are a mixture of mathematical–physical incompetence, hubris, and the feelings of the critics of being suppressed by modern physicists. The compilation of the authors show, Goenner continues, that this was not a reaction within the physics community—only one physicist (Karl Strehl) and three mathematicians (Jean-Marie Le Roux, Emanuel Lasker and Hjalmar Mellin) were present—but an inadequate reaction of the academic educated citizenship, which didn’t know what to do with relativity. As regards the average age of the authors: 57% were substantially older than Einstein, one third was around the same age, and only two persons were substantially younger.[A 55] Two authors (Reuterdahl, von Mitis) were antisemitic and four others were possibly connected to the Nazi movement. On the other hand, no antisemitic expression can be found in the book, and it also included contributions of some authors of Jewish ancestry (Salomo Friedländer, Ludwig Goldschmidt, Hans Israel, Emanuel ]

      • Fred fighter says:

        “My point about Einstein is that to Einstein it mattered not if one, or one hundred, felt he was wrong. …”

        And my point is that the story about 98% of his colleagues signing a letter appears to be a fabrication. Ironic, eh?

  47. Pete says:

    That would only be the case if one were determining the contribution of Carbon dioxide via closure. And THAT would require an independent understanding of the contributions of all the other drivers, right?
    Pete responds
    illogical

    • Fred fighter says:

      Einstein had more than 102 colleagues. Many more, in fact.

    • Fred fighter says:

      No.

      Consider that if it were necessary to know the effect of all other contributors, a_priiori, in order to determine the effect of carbon dioxide then would the same not be true for each of the other contributors? Then you would have know the effects of carbon dioxide, a_priori, in order to determine the effects of any other and thus could never determine the effects of any.

      When the casual relationship is time-variant there are statistical methods than can be used to estimate the magnitude of different variables so long as they do not all vary in unison. This is pretty routine in such fields as orbit determination.

      Earlier you wrote, “It is not a scientist prerogative to decide who is” worthy or honest enough to criticize them “. I though it non-sequitor but now suppose you were referring to my suggestion that the persons seeking to suppress dissent were referring to those whom they sincerely believed to be dishonest. Inasmuch as you and I have already agreed that there are such dishonest people, wouldn’t scientists working in the field be the best qualified people to determine which dissents are honest and competent? I daresay it is not only their prerogative to make that judgement but also their responsibility to speak out against false, misleading, or disingenuous statements such as claims that 95% of the greenhouse effect is due to water vapor (a disingenuous claim since atmospheric water vapor concentration is driven BY temperature on a very short time scale) or that NOAA has altered the _historical_ data (a false claim).

  48. Andyj says:

    Fred your overly complex assertions make you look like a twister to me.
    Do you work for NOAA?
    There is nothing complicated about this. The data is adjusted without the basis of clear facts or empirical reasons why. The fact of the matter is the old data has been Orwellised to deny others the ability to scrutinise their handiwork.

    This is not science. It’s politics.

  49. Fred Fighter says:

    “Fred your overly complex assertions”

    Such as what, exactly?

  50. Gail Combs says:

    Steve, I tripped the WordPress censors again with too many links. (Reply to Fred.)

  51. Gail Combs says:

    “…I certainly would respect a well-thought fact-based constructive criticism of the specifics of any of those models, including temperature data. I have no respect for a blanket declaration that modeling to geophysical phenomena is inherently without merit….”

    See critisim of The KRIGGING Game This website has to do with krigging and mining but the statistical method is the same one used for temperature. (That is just one of the articles at the website.)

  52. Gail Combs says:

    “Seems pretty skeptical to me… [Muller]…”
    >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

    Muller was never a “Climate Skeptic” as his 2003 published comments show.

    December 17, 2003

    “Let me be clear. My own reading of the literature and study of paleoclimate suggests strongly that carbon dioxide from burning of fossil fuels will prove to be the greatest pollutant of human history.” from http://www.technologyreview.com/news/402357/medieval-global-warming/2/

    Perhaps having a Shell Oil President, Marlan Downey, “Former President of the international subsidiary of Shell Oil” might have something to do with all of Muller’s publicity shenanigans. – A puppet attached to Shell Oil with money strings comes to mind. Privately held consulting firms are so nice for hiding money trails aren’t they?

    Some Major dailies have “disappeared” the Muller conversion article by the way. I guess too many people had the brains to figure out Muller’s scam.

    Shell Oil’s finger prints are all over the CAGW scam
    David Hone is not only SHELL OIL’S Senior Climate Change Adviser he is also Chairman of the International Emissions Trading Association His mentor James Smith. SHELL OIL’S previous UK Chairman took SHELL very deeply into Carbon Trading.

    Starting with Royal Dutch Shell follow the trail:
    The Dutch royal family (The House of Orange) is still reportedly the biggest shareholder in the Dutch part of the group, although the size of its stake has long been a source of debate. The Queen of England is also a major stockholder link and Scuttlebutt and more Scuttlebutt.

    Prince Bernhard of the Dutch Royal Family is the Founding President of World Wildlife Fund (WWF)

    HRH The Duke of Edinburgh served as International President of WWF for 16 years until his retirement at the end of 1996…

    John H. Loudon, Better known as “the Grand Old Man of Shell”, John H. Loudon, a Dutchman, headed Royal Dutch Shell from 1951 to 1965…. He was President of WWF from 1976 to 1981, and also a member of The 1001.

    Ruud Lubbers served three terms as Prime Minister of the Netherlands between 1982 and 1994, thus becoming the longest serving Dutch Prime Minister…. He continued in Parliament as Senior Deputy Leader, and later Parliamentary Leader of the Christian Democratic Alliance. He became President of WWF International on 1 January 2000, but only served for one year as he was appointed United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees from 2001-2005.

    World Wildlife Fund Presidents – past and present

    Another major stockholder is the Rothschilds. The Rothschild Investment Trust was formed in 1988 => RIT Capital Partners. Rockefellers and Rothschilds Unite

    Then we look at the Shell Board of Directors.

    Peter Voser
    Chief Executive Officer
    … a member of the Swiss Federal Auditor Oversight Authority from 2006 to December 2010. In 2011…

    Josef Ackermann
    Non-executive Director
    … He is Chairman of the Board of Directors of Zurich Insurance Group Limited and of Zurich Insurance Company Limited, positions he has held since March 2012.

    … he held a variety of positions in corporate banking, foreign exchange/money markets, treasury and investment banking. In 1990, he was appointed to SKA’s Executive Board, on which he served as President between 1993 and 1996. He joined Deutsche Bank’s Management Board in 1996 with responsibility for the investment banking division and, from 2006 and 2002 respectively until May 2012, he was Chairman of the Management Board and of the Group Executive Committee of Deutsche Bank AG. He is a member of the Supervisory Board of Siemens AG, the Board of Directors of Investor AB and a number of advisory boards. He also has various roles in several foundations and academic institutions….

    Charles O. Holliday
    Non-executive Director
    … He served as Chief Executive Officer of DuPont from 1998 to January 2009, and as Chairman from 1999 to December 2009…. He previously served as Chairman of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, Chairman of The Business Council, Chairman of Catalyst, Chairman of the Society of Chemical Industry – American Section, and is a founding member of the International Business Council. He is Chairman of the Board of Directors of Bank of America Corporation and a Director of Deere & Company.

    Gerard Kleisterlee
    Non-executive Director
    …He is Chairman of Vodafone Group plc, a member of the Supervisory Board of Daimler AG, and a Director of Dell Inc.

    Christine Morin-Postel
    Non-executive Director
    …. she was Chief Executive of Société Générale de Belgique, Executive Vice-President and a member of the Executive Committee of Suez S.A., Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Crédisuez S.A. and a Non-executive Director of Pilkington plc, Alcan Inc. and EXOR S.p.A. She is a Non-executive Director of British American Tobacco plc.

    Sir Nigel Sheinwald GCMG
    Non-executive Director
    He was a senior British diplomat who served as British Ambassador to the USA from 2007 to 2012. He joined the Diplomatic Service in 1976 and served in Brussels (twice), Washington and Moscow and in a wide range of policy roles in London. He served as British Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the European Union in Brussels from 2000 to 2003. Prior to his appointment as British Ambassador to the USA, he served as Foreign Policy and Defence Adviser to the Prime Minister and Head of the Cabinet Office Defence and Overseas Secretariat. He retired from the Diplomatic Service in March 2012….

    Linda G. Stuntz
    Non-executive Director
    She is a founding partner of the law firm of Stuntz, Davis & Staffier, P.C., based in Washington, D.C. Her law practice includes energy and environmental regulation as well as matters relating to government support of technology development and transfer. From 1989 to 1993, she held senior policy positions at the U.S. Department of Energy, including Deputy Secretary. She played a principal role in the development and enactment of the Energy Policy Act of 1992.

    From 1981 to 1987, she was an Associate Minority Counsel and Minority Counsel to the Energy and Commerce Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives. She chaired the Electricity Advisory Committee to the U.S. Department of Energy from 2008 to 2009, and was a member of the Board of Directors of Schlumberger Limited from 1993 to 2010. She is a member of the Board of Directors of Raytheon Company. [Raytheon does mostly government contracts G.C.]

    Jeroen van der Veer
    Non-executive Director
    ….He was Vice-Chairman and Senior Independent Director of Unilever (which includes Unilever N.V. and Unilever plc) until May 2011 and is Chairman of the Supervisory Boards of Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. and of ING Group. He also has various roles in several foundations and charities.

    Gerrit Zalm
    Non-executive Director
    He is Chairman of the Board of Management of ABN AMRO Bank N.V., a position he has held since February 2009. Before joining ABN AMRO, he was the Minister of Finance of the Netherlands from 1994 until 2002, Chairman of the VVD Liberal Party in the Lower House (2002) and Minister of Finance from 2003 until 2007. During 2007 until 2009 he was an adviser to PricewaterhouseCoopers (2007), Chairman of the trustees of the International Accounting Standards Board (2007-2010), an adviser to Permira (private equity fund) (2007-2008) and Chief Financial Officer of DSB Bank (2008). Prior to 1994, he was head of the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis, a professor at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and held various positions at the Ministry of Finance and at the Ministry of Economic Affairs. ….

    Rather well connected to governments, NGOs and various banks are they not?

    Then you have Shell Oil funding the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia. WIKI A Shell Oil President, Marlan Downey, “Former President of the international subsidiary of Shell Oil, founder of Roxanna Oil; former President of Arco International” on the Advisory Board of Richard The Liar* Muller’s consulting firm, Muller & Assoc.

    Finally we come to Ged Davis a Shell Oil VP with IPCC connections who was in the Climategate E-mails. See: ClimateGate (1) email 0889554019 The e-mail attachment includes his Sustainable Development (B1) scenario aka UN Agenda 21.
    Ged Davis, the Shell Oil VP who wrote the Sustainability Scenarios for the IPCC shows this in the “Sustainable Development (B1)” part of the February, 1998 Climategate e-mail which asks for comments on the attachment: “Draft Paper for the IPCC Special Report on Emissions Scenarios” by Ged Davis

    To quote from the Sustainable Development (B1) section:

    …The impact of environmental concerns is a significant factor in the planning for new energy systems. Two alternative energy systems, leading to two sub-scenarios, are considered to provide this energy:

    1. Widespread expansion of natural gas, with a growing role for renewable energy (scenario B1N). Oil and coal are of lesser importance, especially post-2050. This transition is faster in the developed than in the developing countries…”

    No wonder Shell Oil (and BP) have been pushing global warming since day one when they provided the initial funding for the Climate Research Unit of East Anglia. It will be a real money maker. tear out the old infrastructure and replace with Natural gas, Solar and Wind. A new twist on ‘the broken window fallacy’ where the entire country has to shell out to pay for replacing the ‘window’ the energy sector is so busy breaking.

    Scenarios Come to Davos
    A GBN Conversation with Ged Davis

    As one of the masterminds behind the World Economic Forum’s annual Davos gathering, this seasoned Shell scenarist is once again poised to help global business tackle the world’s problems.

    …Ged Davis is one of those rare people who has a mastery of both craft and content. His craft is scenario planning, which he has been practicing nearly since its inception. In 1972, Ged joined Royal Dutch/Shell, where he worked alongside Pierre Wack, the godfather of scenarios, as well as GBN’s own Napier Collyns and Peter Schwartz. He later became the head of scenario planning at Shell, and over the course of his career spearheaded many innovations in the form. At the same time, he developed deep knowledge about energy, climate change, sustainability, and global social problems like the spread of HIV/AIDS. In many ways, Ged epitomizes the wise, socially responsible European business perspective—which is one reason he was recently chosen to head the World Economic Forum’s new Centre for Strategic Insight, the entity now responsible for setting the agenda for the Forum’s prestigious annual gathering in Davos….

    …then I headed a new unit working on new scenario processes and applications. I had started to develop something different from what Shell was doing—namely, techniques that would allow groups of 60 or so people to develop scenarios. I tried these methods out with a project for the World Business Council for Sustainable Development on the future of sustainable development, which turned out to be a surprisingly successful project. The scenarios had considerable impact, largely, I think, because the techniques we developed almost forced ownership. So I got very much involved with the question of how you build scenarios that are owned by larger groups of people with a capacity to act. For me, that was an important step in my own thinking.….
    http://www.weforum.org/pdf/CSI/GBN_Davis_interview.pdf‎

  53. Gail Combs says:

    “…Sorry, I don;t follow the context — dropped when and where?…”
    >>>>>>>>>>>
    Quick and dirty.

    The CO2 levels were above 7000ppm due to biological activity and chemical sequestering they have been dropping like a rock since life evolved on this planet. That is why C3 plants (Trees and most crops) are indanger of starvation and C4 plants (grasses) evolved. This is one of the key pieces of evidence that we’re living on a planet with CO2 levels currently at the very bottom of the normal range. A whole new group of plants evolved several million years ago specifically to cope with it. They developed a new method of photosynthesis called C4 which permits greater water efficiency and the ability to photosynthesise at greatly reduced CO2 levels. Just do a Wiki on ‘C4 photosynthesis’. An even more robust adaption called CAM was evolved by plants like cacti.

    http://www.pnas.org/content/99/19/12011.full.pdf
    In general the stomata research totally destroys the ice core data and thereby the entire IPCC assessment reports. The correlation between CO2 and leaf stomata from 1950 to 2000 was studied and the proxy is found to be very robust. Unlike the ice core samples which are 1000 year averages in a single sample the leaf stomata are very date specific.

    Again:
    Carbon starvation in glacial trees recovered from the La Brea tar pits, southern California.

    Second paper
    Carbon dioxide starvation, the development of C4 ecosystems, and mammalian evolution.

    More to the point this illustrates the problem “in the Field”
    Remember although a plant can stay alive at 200 to 250 ppm it can not grow and produce viable seed especially in the temperate zone where growing days are limited.

    WHEAT (C3):

    Carbon dioxide measurements above a wheat crop, 1. Observations of vertical gradients and concentrations

    The CO2 concentration at 2 m above the crop was found to be fairly constant during the daylight hours on single days or from day-to-day throughout the growing season ranging from about 310 to 320 p.p.m. Nocturnal values were more variable and were between 10 and 200 p.p.m. higher than the daytime values.

    Plant photosynthetic activity can reduce the Co2 within the plant canopy to between 200 and 250 ppm… I observed a 50 ppm drop in within a tomato plant canopy just a few minutes after direct sunlight at dawn entered a green house (Harper et al 1979) … photosynthesis can be halted when CO2 concentration aproaches 200 ppm… (Morgan 2003) Carbon dioxide is heavier than air and does not easily mix into the greenhouse atmosphere by diffusion… Source

    Successful indoor growers implement methods to increase CO2 concentrations in their enclosure. The typical outdoor air we breathe contains 0.03 – 0.045% (300 – 450 ppm) CO2. Research demonstrates that optimum growth and production for most plants occur between 1200 – 1500 ppm CO2. These optimum CO2 levels can boost plant metabolism, growth and yield by 25 – 60%. http://www.planetnatural.com/site/xdpy/kb/implementing-co2.html

    Hydroponic Shop

    …Plants use all of the CO2 around their leaves within a few minutes leaving the air around them CO2 deficient, so air circulation is important. As CO2 is a critical component of growth, plants in environments with inadequate CO2 levels of below 200 ppm will generally cease to grow or produce… http://www.thehydroponicsshop.com.au/article_info.php?articles_id=27

  54. Gail Combs says:

    Fred Fighter says:
    I think we can agree that in fact it would be rare for the day’s high or low temperature to occur at exactly the time at which a temperature is routinely recorded….
    >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

    GOOD GRIEF!

    Are you not aware that the Six Min -Max thermometer was invented by the Englishman James Six in 1782 and the same basic design is still in use today?

    That is why we here at this site have a hard time swallowing the Tobs ‘Adjustments’ You take ONE reading after dinner, reset the thermometer and you are done for the day.

  55. Gail Combs says:

    Shazaam says:
    …..If a climate model is incapable of using historical input to generate a reasonable approximation of known historical output, then how can you possibly contend that said model is accurate enough to predict the future? The short answer is that you cannot…..”
    >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
    What is interesting is the IPCC ACKNOWLEDGED the fact that they CANNOT model future climate!!!

    The IPCC actually said in the Science Report in TAR (Third Assesment Report, the fifth just came out.)

    …in climate research and modeling we should recognise that we are dealing with a complex non linear chaotic signature and therefore that long-term prediction of future climatic states is not possible..
    IPCC 2001 section 4.2.2.2 page 774

    
    Or to put it more bluntly
    “Anybody who forecasts a chaotic system with more than one forcing more than 5 days ahead is either a fool or very courageous.” [Or paid well to lie] ~ Climatologist

    So what does a complex non linear chaotic signature mean?

    Dr Brown of Duke University (Physicist) said:

    I did research on nonlinear dynamics, aka, chaos theory, for nearly twenty years and from my experience, these guys are pikers. I’m amazed that they couldn’t get four, a dozen, or even hundreds of distinct climates out of just a single model by simply twiddling the initial conditions a bit. Even simple iterated maps with three or four dimensions can give you multiple distinct strange attractors. They should be able to do much better with Navier-Stokes and an effectively infinite dimensional system….

    …How about acknowledging that the General Circulation Models are unproven, almost impossibly difficult computations solving coupled Navier-Stokes equations known to have highly nonlinear, chaotic, multivariate solutions on an absurdly coarse spatiotemporal grid with incomplete descriptions of critical physics and an appalling lack of predictive treatment of named climate structures empirically known to have a profound effect on the evolution of the climate? How about letting the leaders of the world known that when four GCMs were applied to a toy problem vastly simpler than the actual Earth (a simple water world) all four converged to completely different climates, climates that had completely distinct temperatures, circulatory structure, and heat flow? How about not first linearizing CO_2-driven expected gain, then introducing a completely unproven nonlinear feedback from water vapor to amplify the un-alarming warming expected by a factor of two to five, in the teeth of a functioning climate that has enormous negative feedback stability and utterly lacks runaway self-amplifying warming solutions from fluctuations in water vapor alone?

    Of course, if they did all of these things and then avoided the problem associated with delivering a message instead of honestly done and presented science, then 90% of the world’s climate science would be working in some other field, Europe would be economically stable instead of on the edge of financial collapse, millions of people who have died in both the first world and third world in the meantime because of energy poverty perpetuated and exacerbated by the entirely artificial inflation of the prices of energy and the imposition of ludicrous restrictions on the emission of carbon dioxide in energy generation processes while simultaneously continuing to oppose the only energy source (nuclear) that is even approximately capable of providing the energy the world needs without generating carbon dioxide, and millions more would not have died of mere starvation caused by the diversion of basic foodstock into inefficient “biofuel” production, raising world food prices beyond the means of the world’s poorest citizens.

    So yeah, they have some explaining to do. But don’t worry guys, I helped you out up above. You could still make it right, maybe even in time to avoid the pitchforks and torches
    rgb March 7, 2014

    In other words they are lying through their teeth and they know it and have known it for YEARS.

  56. Gail Combs says:

    Steve my comment: May 15, 2014 at 5:43 pm

    “Seems pretty skeptical to me… [Muller]…”
    got hung up.

  57. Sinvanor says:

    I can’t fathom why ANYONE here (climate change naysayers or otherwise) takes ANY data or information from anyone who has monetary incentive to show or not show proof of global warming. Which I think I’m seeing a LOT of people use here to prove points. If the climate change and IPCC data is faulty, then why isn’t the other one that says the opposite as well? I feel like you’d have to have personal friends who work in all needed areas to actually know what’s going on. Despite that though I wanted to point out a few things.

    Climate change is an over all thing, meaning the best graphs are ones that show the last 100 years or more because it’s a big picture, not small detail.
    Weather can be colder in areas instead of become hotter. An example being polars get warmer, other places get colder.

    I thought strange weather patterns were part of Global warming, the weather doing things or being record highs (or lows) in areas where that temp hadn’t been reached for over 70 years.

    I get that the carbon tax thing is a reason many debate one side or the other, As I’ve said, I don’t trust any paid for or political info because it’s almost always bullshit and scientists from either side should be ashamed for changing or fabricating data to show one cause or the other.

    What I’m really worried about is that so many details are missing from all of this. I’ve seen so many arguments about CO2 levels being higher is better as it warms places up that couldn’t be used before for extra food production (which we wouldn’t need if we didn’t produce like rabbits, not to mention the levels of starvation in the world today are at an all time high in proportion to population)

    This one bugged me the most. That predictions didn’t come true so everything must be wrong. A prediction is a guessing measure as to when something might happen. Just because something didn’t happen yet doesn’t mean it won’t at all when it comes to science. This is a weak argument to me and proves nothing.

    If I got any of my facts or anything else wrong, and you can prove it through scientific data that is not politically or monetarily charged, I’m very open to listen.

    I don’t care about being right, I just want to know the truth. And if something really is happening and humans are the cause, I find it more worth it to take that precaution rather then take a chance. Oh and don’t be rude, call me stupid or anything else. That’s not an argument, it’s the weak mans attempt in debate to be right. I looked at everyone’s comments and there were very few of you who were civil and discussed facts and not bias opinions and insults with each other.
    Calling someone dumb doesn’t mean they’re wrong.

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