Rick Perry, Peter Wood and the blogosphere: Guest post from John Mashey

If Peter Wood has seen further that Rick Perry, its because the evangelical college he presided over is located in the basement of the Empire State Building.

An even grimmer, dimmer, and more science averse Dominionist now runs the place.

"Anti-science echo-chamber blogs amplify anger"

I would suggest that political echo-chamber blogs also amplify anger, and I wonder if it is the political aspect of the anti-science blogs which contributes most to the anger.

While most Canadians are genuinely sad at the untimely death of Jack Layton, Leader of the Opposition, a few rightwing columnists and quite a few rightwing blog commenters are spewing out the most vile poison. My opinion is that the same people are probably the most virulent AGW deniers.

They have learned to always demonize their opponents and the lessons carries over from politics (and/or extremist religious beliefs) into other aspects of life. Leftwingers also may demonize their opponents, it's a human reaction, though not one to encourage. In either case, I think the internet has made it worse, as many people can express vile sentiments and be rewarded with attention and praise instead of public disapproval.

The Dustbowl Duo: Denier Inhofe Backs Denier Perry as Romney Is âa Little Mushy on Environmental Issuesâ

Tangentially related blog post from a couple of days ago: [Despite Rick Perry, Consensus On Climate Change Keeps Strengthening](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/despite-rick-perry-…).

Also discusses stronger evidence and the NSF investigation (which Fox touted as "the final word" on the matter) comprehensively clearing Mann).

Of course, things get out of date quickly:
comments on my/Rob's piece are now up to 294.

Talk about not having a clue

at the climate kleptics blog

http://theclimatescepticsparty.blogspot.com/2011/08/peer-review-paper-p…

It is funny, the only support Mashey is getting there is from one Eric Adler, who obviously doesn't master one single topic of the many things he tries. Who randomly brings upp various buzz-words from activist sites. Without knowing if/how they pertain to the question. And needs to lie about it too.

There is an even dumber 'Michael' obsessing over att Bishop Hill.

In Mashey's world that probably seems like confirmation of the 'righteous cause' ..

.. but only there!

I have seen quite a few in these debates who think bringing upp Dunning Kruger somehow strengthens the argument they cannot make arguing its strengths ...

Possibly they really believe it too!

;-)

Fortunately, here at Deltoid, Firefox+Greasemonkey+Killfile work, unlike at CHE, sad to say.

Glad to see you here, Jonas N, so I can tell you what a contemptible, smearing liar you are. Every post you write exposes your ignorance and spite.

Eric Adler is to be commended for his patience and his intelligent posts.

Thanks for the compliment, Holly Stick.

But you got the facts wrong. I'm not the one who needs to tell lies in any debate or about anything. I mean what I post, and can stand for what I posted months/years later. And have no problem with correcting my stance if I was wrong.

But it's true: I don't change my opinion to adhere to a (claimed/perceived) majority, or because someone tries to bully me. I listen to the best arguments people can muster, and evaluate them. And I have lite patience or respect for people who willfully must lie when arguing their position.

Your signature, by the way, is a good one. And if you think you can fault me, why don't you give it a shot. Especially if you (not only pretend, but actually) do know what you are talking about. Ie not only copy-paste statments from various links.

And I am certain Eric A appreciates your support, and that you think he sounds intelligent. He really wants to ...

;-)

I always wondered, John Mashey, if the PWB was some sort of ancestor to the Macintosh Programmer's Workbench. Neil Stephenson made a big deal of the MPW proving that Macs should have always been commandline with the GUI as an app all along.

7 Jonas,

"att Bishop Hill."

"bringing upp Dunning Kruger". Love it.

@#7
Biased Byatt is a riot - NOT!

Jonas N, you've so far unimpressed us with your lack of fact and predominance of opinion.

Jonas N.

As jakerman notes, your spiel is conspicuous for its absence of anything remotely resembling a valid point.

If you have an issue with anything that John Mashey has meticulously documented, why do you not document your own counter to it, with a similar bulk of supportable material and primary references?

I'll tell you why. You can't. You simply hope that your baseless crap is swallowed by some unsuspecting sucker and is thus promulgated through the Ignoranti.

That doesn't make you right. Only a reasoned and substantiated argument can possible do that, and you have demonstrated a singular incapacity for such an approach.

Troll.

Jonas N:

I'm not the one who needs to tell lies in any debate or about anything.

You should be a real estate agent.

Wow, here are five 'signatures' I have never argued with before, giving the impression that they all are very familiar with what I say and have said in the past.

Heavily projecting their own wishful thinking.

The one coming closes to making a detectable statement is Bernard J, saying that Mashey has 'meticously documented' something. Well, indeed, he has. But nothing that has any relevance in the real world.

Does anyone here even know what the Mashey-mash is supposed to amount to? What relevance and conclusions should be drawn about something beyond the person Wegman?

Is it as simple that you all hop that this somehow resurrects the hockeystick and eradicates the IPCCs embarrassment for having plastered its TAR with it, promoting it as 'best science' available?

Because I really can't see that this would be a viable method ...

Oh, just ignore the idiot. Or ban. He's not worth your energy.

Sure he will take it as proof that you can't match his superior intellect. Oh well.

Anders, consider it done.

>Wow, here are five 'signatures' I have never argued with before, giving the impression that they all are very familiar with what I say and have said in the past.

Jonas has evidently confused himself, he seems to think people need to have prior familiarity with him before they assess the content of his current posts.

Perhaps he's leared that self-confusion is a defense strategy that keeps him comfortable.

> Jonas has evidently confused himself, he seems to think people need to have prior familiarity with him before they assess the content of his current posts.

Oh, it's even worse than that.

He appears to have assumed that "signatures" used by any given person must be the same on different forums, and that people cannot be familiar with "what he says and has said in the past" without *him* knowing their "signature". Apparently it hasn't occurred to him that one could read content on a forum without commenting.

What an odd little display of "logic".

Yes I agree there. Anders E (whom I actually kinda know) is more level with you guys. He (too?) has spent years arguing with him self and fellow believers that no objections to his/their belief can be valid. And that those expressing criticism must be 'idiots' or bought shills for oil/tobacco/crationists/flat earth etc.

anon - It is quite common among many followers of the Climate scare to think that they can establish facts or information about the real world by 'just knowing it already' (but maybe you should have read what people actually wrote)

Q.E.D.

>Blah blah blah...

>Is it as simple that you all hop [sic] that this somehow resurrects the hockeystick and eradicates the IPCCs embarrassment for having plastered its TAR with it, promoting it as 'best science' available?

>Because I really can't see that this would be a viable method ...

>Blah blah blah...

But no case.

Not even a clever troll.

> He (too?) has spent years arguing with him self and fellow believers that no objections to his/their belief can be valid.

Assertion not supported by the facts.

That no valid objection has been raised in recent decades DOES NOT mean that there can be no valid objections made.

See how this works IN REALITY in the history of Climate science documented here:

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm

> followers of the Climate scare

Hmm. So people saying "Don't eat poison, it can kill you" are following a toxicity scare?

Lotharsson

You too make projections you really want to be true, don't you?

But I have a more serious question for you guys, all of you. I asked before, and I repeat:

Now that Mashey has aired his complaints (and a lot more) about quotation marks missing (in his view) ...

... what does it all amount to in the real world?

What is the conclusion, vis-à-vis reality that we are supposed to draw from that? What does it mean in the real world, wrt to AGW, climate science, historic temperatures or whatever else?

The whole kerfuffle sounds like it is supposed to amount to some giant, extremly important implications or conclusions. That after all the 'plagiarism' dust is settled there follows a firm and unecivocal:

Ergo ...... !! (*)

And if so, I'd really like to hear what it is.

(*) Beyond opinions about the person Wegman

Wow

I distinguish between

1) AGW, the hypothesis that CO2 contributes and the serious science carried out to investigate that ypothesis, and

2)The more wild claims made about large positive feedbacks, and projections fortelling all kind of disasters in the future, ie the alarmism, and

3) The politics purported to adress (mostly) pt 2), inluding all the many varieties of activists, NGOs, political agendas etc

And yes, the two latter points are quite well described as 'scares'. And almost all people commenting and opining about the climate fall solidly among those two. Rarely have I met anybody who can argues pt 1) in a balanced and polite way!

Where are the Billy Goats Gruff when you need them? Thank goodness we have killfile.

Jonas N said: "Now that Mashey has aired his complaints (and a lot more) about quotation marks missing (in his view) ... what does it all amount to in the real world"?

The short answer is that DC & John Mashey have shown that Barton used junior undergrad science degree McIntyre's "work" via Wegman to scam Congress into believing McIntyre rather than a roomful of PhD's with hundreds of collective years of actual, real-world experience of their work.

For sponsors who will doubtless be identified in the fullness of time.

And as McI is the intellectual underpinning of the "skeptic's" case, your house has been washed away.

... what does it all amount to in the real world?

In terms of serious science, not a lot. To serious scientists Wegman never amounted to anything much. But a report not properly researched and cobbled together using a combination of plagirism and fabrication and presented to US legislators as serious science is deceit and a corruption of the political process.

> I distinguish between

> 1) AGW, the hypothesis that CO2 contributes and the serious science carried out to investigate that ypothesis, and

It's a theory, and one that's stood over 150 years of scientific testing.

You distinguish what you want to believe and in doing so indicate that your desires are running your show, not your reason.

> 2)The more wild claims made about large positive feedbacks,

The CURRENT TEMPERATURE shows that we're ALREADY over 2C per doubling. YOU assert they are "wild claims" because YOU DON'T LIKE THEM. Not for any reasoning, but for ideology.

> and projections fortelling all kind of disasters in the future, ie the alarmism, and

Sorry? The last time we had CO2 levels this high (and the sun was a little less active in those days too), the sea levels were 20m higher.

Pointing out that 20m higher sea levels are a consequence of staying at this level and that this would flood cities that also are demonstrably below the 20m ASL level is, to you, "alarmism"?

Again you DECIDE it is alarmism because YOUR ideology requires it.

Your reason is not in control, your greed is.

> 3) The politics purported to adress (mostly) pt 2), inluding all the many varieties of activists, NGOs, political agendas etc

Except that you IGNORE for ideology reasons the biggest lobbying force in power: the Oil Industry. You ignore the Heartland Institute (among lots of other NGO's with activists and political agendas, etc). Rather, you PREFER to believe what THESE activists say because it accords with your IDEOLOGY.

> And yes, the two latter points are quite well described as 'scares'.

Really? Please tell me how it is WRONG to tell people the facts if they are not comforting?

You, el trollo, are a denialist.

My name is Jonamandias, troll of trolls:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair

Each time you say "yes", I can say "no" in a thousands ways, each of which signifies nothing.

Behold me waving my arms in the thin air. Behold me dancing with my shadow!

Behold my moral superiority, declared by myself! Everything I do myself, I will accuse you of!

Look at me how I waste your time! I make you waste your time!

Behold my sharp eye for psychology, behold my intellectual superiority! All declared and estasblished by myself!

Each reply is a great victory, for I am wasting your time. I make you waste your time!

The only thing I fear is to be ignored! I will press your buttons, try to get under your skin. Behold me, behold me!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away!

Jonas writes:
>but maybe you should have read what people actually wrote

Jonas you can move from inane posturing to reasoned argument in one simple step, all you need do is demonstrate [how you hope I'm wrong](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/08/rick_perry_peter_wood_and_the.p…).

Chek, sidecup

An attempted answer, but you are still talking about persons, even me!?

Personally, I am not impressed by all that talk about 'plagiarism' or even 'fabrication'. That sounds more like whining ...

I grant you all to be unhappy about the form of the report. I expected nothing less.

But the NRC-report essentially agreed with the contents, phrased somewhat differently, and also addressed other topics.

And I have not seen neither Mashey or others engaged in this kerfuffle really making any substantial other points wrt the the statistics.

I still wonder what is supposed to follow that big 'Ergo ...' in the real world?

(without namnes, persons and their personalities)

Politics is of course politics, and that is hadrly an argument for anything outside that realm.

Rarely have I met anybody who can argues pt 1) in a balanced and polite way!

You don't get around much.

But the NRC-report essentially agreed with the contents..

The NRC agreed that there were shortcomings in MBH 1998, 1999 but concluded they were small in effect. They also stated:

The basic conclusion of Mann et al. (1998, 1999) was that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1,000 years. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence that includes

That all from me. I'm not wasting any more time on this troll.

> You too make projections you really want to be true, don't you?

Content-free non-specific intimations that don't address my logic?

Sheesh, most schoolkid trolls can do better than that ...

Amazing.

There are still people around who think this is about 'the science' and, by extension, 'saving the planet'.

It would be a joke, except the AGW movement is helping to kill people in the Third World in large numbers, but hey, being Left/Green means never having to say you're sorry.

"Because we know best and we did it for your own good."

Bradford, projecting his own useless, pointless existence onto everybody else, will be back with more unsupported fantasy born of his fear of the future soon.
Unfortunately.

>Content-free non-specific intimations that don't address my logic?

>Sheesh, most schoolkid trolls can do better than that ...

Cue Rick Bradford to demonstrate the former and do worse than the later.

> is helping to kill people in the Third World in large numbers

If by "helping" you mean "not killing greedy bastards who don't care if the third world dies as long as they get to drive their SUV and get a 15% ROI on their pension plan", then yes, we're helping.

Does this mean you're exhorting us to off you, you greedy bastard who doesn't care if the third world dies as long as you get to drive your SUV and get a 15% ROI on your pension plan?

> Personally, I am not impressed by all that talk about 'plagiarism' or even 'fabrication'. That sounds more like whining ...

So how are you getting all this angst about fabricated data showing AGW as a problem? Surely your complaints by you are more like whining...

For insight regarding the views of Jonas N, activity continues at the Bishop Hill thread, now up to 279 comments. (One might call this "Mudsling at a D-K corral," not productive of insight on climate, but of interest to social scientists who study such things.)

As noted elsewhere, BH, aka Andrew Montford relies on quotes from my favorite dog astrology journal
but then takes untrue comments by Lindzen and falsifies them further. But sadly, Montford is not an academic.

Lotharsson

I was referring to your:

"He appears to have assumed that "signatures" used by any given person must be the same on different forums, and that people cannot be familiar with "what he says and has said in the past" without him knowing their "signature". Apparently it hasn't occurred to him that one could read content on a forum without commenting"

That does describe your projections, doesn't it?

I am of course fully aware of some 'debaters' using different signatures (when they feel it suits them). It was kinda my point ... at least a part of it.

> It was kinda my point ... at least a part of it.

The point of that being what, exactly?

And you haven't explained why YOUR whining about fabrication isn't actually whining (despite having no evidence for it) whereas others evidence of fabrication is.

#33 Impressive, Jonamandias, you portray the desolate wasteland of the intellect very well!

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/08/rick_perry_peter_wood_and_the.p…

Sidecup

The NRC correctly reported what MBH98&99 presented as their condlusions. It also reports the problematic part of those ascertions. You (and NRC)also mention that similar shapes have been proffered by subsequentstudies. That is also correct. Those studies suffer from similar shortcomings as the original ones (but without the statistical bias, I assume). Those are still:

Some problematic proxies, very few of them going back to medeival times, and extreme uncertaintys (actual ones, about the past real world) when it comes to making statements about global mean temperatures back then.

Point in case:

They cannot be used to make definitive statments about what global temperatures were back then. Errorbars are just far too wide and data far to scanty ...

Additionally (as you gentlemen are aware of, I'm certain) treerings and other such proxies are not the only 'documents' telling us about temperatures then.

> The NRC correctly reported what MBH98&99 presented as their condlusions.

No, the NRC DID NOT report the conclusions of the MBH9 paper. The MBH98 paper did that all itself quite sufficiently.

The NRC did what NONE of you deniers did: actually work with the information available and

a) find out if the answers could be attained

b) whether a better method would have changed the conclusions

> It also reports the problematic part of those ascertions.

Specifically, reported that the problems didn't exist. That is, the method they used WAS SUFFICIENT to draw the conclusions that the data supports.

> Those studies suffer from similar shortcomings as the original ones

No they don't. They too conclude the conclusions the data supports. You just don't like the conclusions. THAT is the "shortcoming" you see. YOUR ideology being disrupted.

> Some problematic proxies

And those problems dealt with. This is what makes a conclusion valid. It's called in the real world "Quality Control".

Try it some time.

> very few of them going back to medeival times

Nope, most of the proxies going back to medieval times. The only one that doesn't being a thermometer reading, basically.

> and extreme uncertaintys

Nope, the only uncertainty being where the hell do you get this from?

> when it comes to making statements about global mean temperatures back then.

Doesn't stop any deniers saying that the MWP was hotter or that the current warming is not unprecedented.

And we've never heard you complaining about those posts...

> They cannot be used to make definitive statments about what global temperatures were back then.

If this were true, then you would not be able to draw error bars.

> Errorbars are just far too wide

Because you decided so? Or who did? What width is too wide and what width narrow enough and how is the demarcation decided?

> treerings and other such proxies are not the only 'documents' telling us about temperatures then.

Yup.

And those proxies tell us that the treerings before 1978 were acceptably accurate.

Chris O'Neil

Most of that RC-post is not very controversial. (I have of course seen it before). The problem is pt 5 where they hope that one very precise part of the temp-recovery when leaving a glaciation, is explained by CO2, and CO2 alone. There are several and quite grave problems with that approach.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to discuss such criticism at RC, and quite some of the commenters there are about as civil and polite as parts of the crowd here (if you catch my drift).

I'd say that the claims af threefold (or even higher) amplification factor (due to positive feedbacks) are highly speculative. And that observations do not generally support such claims. The temperature record isn't playing along that well either ..

And one more thing: The fact that when one utters that he is not convinced about those large amplifications, the reactions are often similar to the ones above. And such behaviour doesn't improve the argument, or give the impression of somebody secure in his positions.

> There are several and quite grave problems with that approach.

> Unfortunately, it is not possible to discuss such criticism at RC

Or here, apparently. In fact it seems impossible for you to discuss what the "problems" might be anywhere.

This would be because they don't exist.

> I'd say that the claims af threefold (or even higher) amplification factor (due to positive feedbacks) are highly speculative.

Nope, they're pretty solid.

Without at least 1.5C per doubling we don't get out of an ice age. With less than 2C per doubling, the CO2 causing the PETM is of venusian proportions. With less than 3C per doubling, the Cretaceous period becomes hard to reconcile with the biosphere evidence left behind.

The only problem with them is that you don't want the conclusions.

Therefore either you're wrong (IMPOSSIBLE!) or the science is wrong.

Oddly enough, you aren't considering that maybe you could be wrong.

> The fact that when one utters that he is not convinced about those large amplifications, the reactions are often similar to the ones above.

What? Scorn, derision and pointing out that you have absolutely no idea of why ~3C is the feedback response?

Maybe, and just consider it for a second, will you, just MAYBE you're wrong and there's no problem with the IPCC results for sensitivity.

Because otherwise millions of people are wrong and you are the sole one who is right.

And how likely is that?

> The problem is pt 5 where they hope that one very precise part of the temp-recovery when leaving a glaciation, is explained by CO2, and CO2 alone.

Lets go see if this idiot can read or not. From the site, point 5:

> As we have discussed previously, the last glacial period is a good example of a large forcing (~7 W/m2 from ice sheets, greenhouse gases, dust and vegetation) giving a large temperature response (~5 ºC) and implying a sensitivity of about 3ºC (with substantial error bars).

Hmmm. Looking for "CO2 and CO2 alone" or even just looking for a single entity being called into effect in point 5 and that entity being "CO2".

Nope.

I CAN see

ice sheets

greenhouse gases

dust

vegetation

Since greenhouse gasses include CO2 but ALSO other IR-active gasses, this seems to be proof positive that idiot here can't read.

His chip on the shoulder is getting in the way, obviously.

Signature 'Wow'

There are a wide range of assumtions necessary to use various proxies to reconstruct historic data of one particular kind (temperature), and to filter out everything else that also influences (or just might) the metric studied.

Every single one of those adds to the uncertainty of historic reconstructions. You might be aware of errorbars getting wider and wider, the further back you go. (The eones presented in the papers refer only to the data scatter, not to most the methodological ones)

And when errorbars are of the same magnitude as the differences you want to study, that means that you are essentially guessing.

Essentially, in this discussion: It has warmed since ~1600, we can be pretty certain of that (it is now warmer than it has been during that period). And the reconstructions also confirmed that. Prior to that, it becomes far more difficult to make statments about GMT.

And yes, there is plenty of data supporting the view that the MWP was warmer than now. We know for certain that it was for several hundred years in many places, but are less certain that it was of similar level worldwide.

There are many more problems with the statments you made about and around the NRC-report, and its contents. And I suggest you refrain from shouting (capitals) and the d-word if you think you are arguing your case.

There are a wide range of assumtions necessary to use various proxies to reconstruct historic data of one particular kind (temperature), and to filter out everything else that also influences (or just might) the metric studied.

Every single one of those adds to the uncertainty of historic reconstructions. You might be aware of errorbars getting wider and wider, the further back you go. (The eones presented in the papers refer only to the data scatter, not to most the methodological ones)

{citations required}

What is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

you know 'Wow'

People who think that 'idiot' is a convincing argument are just not very convincing (and you can add an array of other frequent terms here, many can be found above)

My experience is exactly as I wrote in #49 (and what also Peter Wood wrote, before Mashe demonstratively demonstrated it again)

Another funny detail is that people (like yourself) almost immediately start making statements about the person, describing in detail how he (really!) is, what he thinks etc.

Generally people who 'just know' because 'they just do' and then start shouting about it are very immature, and not very capable of assessing and evaluating facts and arguments. They tend to be mostly emotionally motivated. Not the best prerequisite for objective and unbiasad analysis ...

Composer99

You are of course free to believe the opposite. But an alternative would be to open a book about the topic ..

Jonas N:
>People who think that 'idiot' is a convincing argument

That wasn't his argument, idiot.

His argument was that you claimed "they hope that [it] is explained by CO2, and CO2 alone", when anyone can see by [checking the cited article](http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/08/the-co2-problem-i…) that they do not.

That makes you an idiot and/or a liar. The evidence from the rest of your comments strongly suggests both.

"It would be a joke, except the AGW movement is helping to kill people in the Third World in large numbers..."

This spurious allegation comes up enough to ask where is your proof?
Show us your irrefutable evidence that this is remotely the case?

Jonas N said: "People who think that 'idiot' is a convincing argument are just not very convincing"

Jonas me ol' troll, nobody thinks for a nanosecond that you and your D-K afflicted ilk, who parade through here one after the other, can ever be convinced. You're too full of your own sophistry and ignorance to even take a first minute step towards comprehension of the subject under discussion.

You probably fantasise that your opinion 'matters', but be assured nobody is ever going to ask your advice on climate or the politics of climate. Nobody cares. Not now, not ever. Watts et al provide havens of sorts where you and your fellow deniers can go rub up against each other to keep out the existential chill of their collective idiocy, but that's hardly a worthwhile or seemly passtime for adults.

The point of these threads is to provide information and links to that info from those who work and publish in the field and actually do know.

All you've offered so far is a balding old washed up conspiracy blogger hiding out in Scotland.

What a hoot. Or should that be hoots?

Jonas N.: of the picador/rodeo clown/herring brigade.
Here to draw attention away from the main event as needed.

Notice how well people are focusing on him?

Notice discussion of him instead of Peter Woods?

Focus, people.

Dave R

Have you for a second thought about all thouse outrageous claims you and many more here make about people who don't agree with you. Claims which none of you have any real basis for? Which only are sprung out of your imagination, your projections about how people 'just must be' on the other side, because you 'just know'!?

Does every wrongful statement, every misreading of what I said, every (wishful) projections etc, does that make you all idiots?

Or is your 'logic' only applicable in one direction?

Look at chek for example, he concocts up a whole story, a narrative about lots of people, from my (still valid) point. Would you say he must be an idiot too?

I can restate my claim:

"People who think that 'idiot' is a convincing argument are just not very convincing (and you can add an array of other frequent terms here, many can be found above)"

Feel free to disagree, but calling me idiot kinda confirms what I said ...

By the way: Do you actually know how the climate sensitivity is backed out of the observations from temperatures and CO2-levels when exiting glaciations? Or are you just blustering?

Are you aware of that the high purported sensitivity (positive feedbacks) precisely claim that lots of other variables are controlled by CO2 through various mechanisms, that that is the very definition of a 'positive feedback'?

Hank R

Good point. People have shown extreme interest in my persona. I have 'learnt' loads of things about who i (really) am, from numerous people I never knew I knew, and never heard of before. Things that I never would have 'learnt' from grown up people with real names, qualifications and skills in my everyday life ..

Quite fascinating, I must say.

My question above was about: What is the take-home-conclusion from what Mashey and a few others call 'plagiarism' after the dust has settled?

I can see two attempts to actually answer that.

1) Wegman, Barton, McIntyre, politics are just not very nice (#30), and

2) Not that much regarding serious science (#31)

I tend to agree with point 2) although I haven't seen any serious rebuttals of the content of the Wegman report. As I said, the NRC-version said pretty much the same things, only in nicer words (regardless of 'Wow' thinking the opposite)

re: #60
Hank: yes, that was the same over at CHE, where few wanted to address the issues Rob and I raised ... and Peter Wood didn't even show up.

Jonas
You are so important that you obviously deserve your own thread, or maybe you could share one with Rick Bradford

Still bringing up the "problem" with Mann's proxies, eh? It's amazing how the deniers were able to find the instrument record from the Middle Ages.

>What is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

Efficient and to the point, well said. Now back to the peer reviewed literature.

>Peter Wood didn't even show up.

Was there any response from other NAS members after [your request to them](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/08/john_mashey_replies_to_peter_w…)?

Questions for troll/s: could I get a job as a DenierTroll too? Is the pay good? I'm guessing it is, with coal barons, Big Oil, power companies and more providing support.

I need the money. You can contact me via SourceWatch. For a large fee, I may consider contesting the wild hypothesis that CO2 traps radiation. Act quickly, while I'm feeling bribable.

Questions for troll/s: could I get a job as a DenierTroll too? Is the pay good?

He might be just an unpaid useful fool. There are plenty of those in Australia and no doubt elsewhere. I found it interesting that three of the four poorest electorates in Australia voted conservative (a.k.a National Party).

#67
Jay Bergman responded with a comment, given in the Climate Thuggery thread and I haven't seen any others identified as NAS affiliate heads. CHE's use of DISQUS does not allow easy linking and for anyone who wants to analyze these threads, I suggest loading all the comments, Copying the whole thing and making a PDF. But, as a help, here was his comment (note the awkward dating: I'm afraid the relative dating obscures sequences.)

" jaybergman 1 week ago
â¢I share Dr. Woodâs skepticism about anthropogenic global warming. And I reject not infrequent insinuations from proponents of it, such as Al Gore, that critics are not only incorrect but morally deficient, even evil.

Moreover, I find in some of the arguments for AGW the logical fallacy pervasive in Freudian psychoanalysis. At times when the weather is exceedingly warm, we hear that this is proof of AGW. But when the weather is similarly cold, we hear that this, too, is proof of AGW (for example, from Robert Kennedy jr.) AGW, in other words, is beyond proof or disproof -- and is therefore no longer science but unsubstantiated dogma, a kind of secular religion.

Jay Bergman
Professor of History
Central Connecticut State University
New Britain CT &
Member, Board of Directors,
National Association of Scholars

P.S. Dr. Wood did not ask me to comment on his article. Nor did he see my comments above before I posted them."

This received some comments, I thanked him there for at least responding. One other person emailed me to say he wasn't interested.

[Jonas,](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/08/rick_perry_peter_wood_and_the.p…)

>You are of course free to believe the opposite. But an alternative would be to open a book about the topic ..

[A book.](http://www.amazon.com/Tree-Rings-Climate-H-Fritts/dp/1930665393)

Read it and weep.

#71 LB (Fritts, Bradley, etc)
Thanks for reminding me. Although this is somewhat into the topic of the commenters at CHE, some applies to Peter Wood's articles as well.

1) If Peter Wood actually read my 250-page Strange Scholarship in the Wegman Report, there is no evidence that he understood it. Plagiarism was involved in about 25%, but primarily as the simplest visible tip of an iceberg of errors, biases, distortions, awful bibliography. Very few pages of the WR lacked problems, but plagiarism was the easiest for most people to see. I had to save some of the falsification/fabrication discussion for SFWR, later. Needless to say, well before I wrote all this, I'd consulted with various experts, and of course, it stood up fine with the experts consulted by Dan Vergano and others. [Again, Rob Coleman chairs the OSU Academic Misconduct Committee and has by now handled hundreds of cases. He was so helpful in commenting on the draft that I asked him to coauthor and he took time from a busy schedule to do that. ]

2) Still, various people invented fanciful theories of non-plagiarism by Wegman or his students, ignoring the experts. This is classic D-K affliction: people are simply inexpert, write ill-informed things, and cannot recognize real expertise.

3) So, let me review the chronology.

10/08/10 1st Dan Vergano article on Wegman.
===== now, tu quoque nonsense
10/18/10 Steve McIntyre: Bradley Copies Fritts.

10/18/10 Anthony Watts: Bradley Copies Fritts."

10/20/10 McIntyre: Bradley Copies Fritts #2.

McIntyre ignored the citations by Bradley, and the entire section listing the meticulous acknowledgements. I would guess that few of his readers actually own a copy (or have ever seen one) of Bradley(1999), which perfectly well followed the rules. This is what textbooks look like in this area, with illustrations BY PERMISSION of the copyright owners (who are usually happy to see the work recognized.)

McIntyre's 2nd piece says:
"as Iâm not familiar with conventions of textbook publishing and do not plan to offer an opinion without examining such conventions."

Actually, he wrote his whole first post apparently without bothering to know even the *slightest* things about textbooks or plagiarism.

All this looked like ill-informed "tu quoque" nonsense designed to damage Bradley's reputation ... but of course, knowledgeable people ignored it as nonsense.

I mentioned contacting Fritts, who respected Bradley highly, thought he had done nothing wrong and was *incensed* at people for this nonsense.

Knowledgeable experts, including Fritts himself, think this is total nonsense. Non-experts repeat the nonsense anyway and somehow imagine people should pay attention to their opinions.

I've been involved in on-line forums since 1985.
My experience says: I have never seen a recovery from demonstrated deep D-K, as they are invincible in their lack of expertise. Paying any attention to them is a waste of time. Hence, KILLFILE (or equivalent) *forever*.

Jonas "...although I haven't seen any serious rebuttals of the content of the Wegman report..."

There are really 2 issues. The big one is the plagiarism. The other one is the material contending that Mann's statistical analysis is wrong - by 'doing' independent statistical analysis.

Anyone doing their own analysis could never come up with the result Wegman claims he got - unless they followed the McIntyre routine of doubly selecting and 'refining' certain processes and results. I know it's possible, in the technical sense that extremely improbable things are possible, but noone sensible believes that Wegman really came up with these results by accidentally duplicating the very strange process used by McIntyre.

Read [this item](http://deepclimate.org/2010/11/16/replication-and-due-diligence-wegman-…) very, very carefully. Pay close attention to the words following 'astonishing fact'. (I had to reread it a couple of times before I really got the point. Partly general comprehension, partly disbelief when I had actually understood.)

I have seen quite a few in these debates who think bringing upp Dunning Kruger somehow strengthens the argument

No, they don't think that, moron.

they cannot make arguing its strengths ...

They can and they do, lying asshole. And how could someone think that D-K strengthens an argument they cannot make? What argument is it that cannot be made yet can be strengthened? Don't bother to answer, dumbfuck.

Possibly they really believe it too!

You asserted that they think it; that implies that they believe it, cretin. But D-K isn't an argument about climate, it's an observation about denialist idiots like yourself who are demonstrably too stupid to grasp how stupid you are.

although I haven't seen any serious rebuttals of the content of the Wegman report

So what? You are mindbogglingly stupid, blind and ignorant, and utterly dishonest ... you would say that even if the rebuttal were tattoed on the inside of your eyelids. For you, a "serious" rebuttal is one you're willing to believe ... which is none at all.

Adelady

The 'plagiarism' is a detraction, and I've seen the DeepClimate 'analysis' (but just reread it again)

The criticism there is that of the hockeystick rendered from red noise, the one displayed in the article Figure were not randomly chosen from the 10.000 runs, but instead from a subset having the higher than average HS-indexes.

At Deep Climate you can also see that less than 0.7% had a negative index, that <75% had an index exceeding up to 1.5, that 21% where in the interval 1.5-1.75 and some very few even above 2.

The HS displayed illustrating the spurious effect in Figure 1 was picked among the higer ones.

That's all! more than 99% exhibited the spurious Hockey-stickiness, mostly with index ~1.5. The one shown to illustrate this had a higher index (1.92) than the 10.000 run average.

M&M picked an example that clearer (than average) showed the effect, the main reslut of the study, to illustrate it. Nowhere did they purport it was chosen entirely at random, or represent the mean HS-index. It is really hard to get upset over people showing what they want to show with an example where this is easily visible.

The criticism agains Wegman seems to be that he showed the same sample? OK!

But that still leaves my orignal question open! So what?
If we forget the persons invold (who some seem to dislike on a very deep and personal basis), what does all this mean in the real world. For climate science, historical temperatures, proxy quality or whatever?

M&M critique is aimed at a very specific part of MBH, the statistical algorithms. It leaves all the other issues 'as is' and make no claimes about those. McShane and Wyner redid a similar analysis, using the same MBH data (also 'accepting' all other issues with that data 'as is')

Their shape also looks like a hockey stick. And quite a few here(?) are happy to use the word 'confirmed' pointing at various such later reconstructions.

But surely that cannot be the point, can it? That would mean that they missed the core of the matter.

PS Thank you for actually responding to my question. Every word of yours was readable, and I think I got your points. But my question pertained to what, if anything, it all means after the dust has settled

Jonas, why do you care so much about MBH98/99? Seriously, what do you think would happen to modern climate science if it was retracted or something? You seem to think that without MBH98/99, the entire edifice of modern climate science would collapse into the basement.

Jonas N:

Most of that RC-post is not very controversial. (I have of course seen it before).

So you weren't telling the truth when you said:

Rarely have I met anybody who can argues pt 1) in a balanced and polite way!

Moving on:

The problem is pt 5 where they hope that one very precise part of the temp-recovery when leaving a glaciation,

You have completely misunderstood the empirical estimate from the last glacial maximum. "very precise part of the temp-recovery when leaving a glaciation" has nothing to do with it. The glacial maximum estimate is based on conditions that were stable for thousands of years (during the maximum). There was nothing precise in timing at all.

is explained by CO2, and CO2 alone.

Absolute garbage. If you knew anything about this subject, you would know that the CO2 change since the LGM to pre-industrial is only enough to produce 2 deg C of warming and would make a thoughtful mind wonder what produced the rest of the warming which indeed realclimate pointed out:

"ice sheets, greenhouse gases, dust and vegetation"

Perhaps your ideological blinkers only allowed you to see the term "greenhouse gases".

I'd say that the claims af threefold (or even higher) amplification factor (due to positive feedbacks) are highly speculative.

The central estimate of amplification factor is 2.5 (i.e. sensitivity is 2.5 times CO2 only). Perhaps you can explain how most of the greenhouse effect comes from water vapor (which is a feedback gas) yet somehow feedback does not cause most of the greenhouse effect.

And that observations do not generally support such claims.

Again, realclimate contradicted your claim. It cited Annan and Hargreaves who list several sets of observations that do support 3 deg C/CO2 doubling.

The temperature record isn't playing along that well either ..

What are you talking about? The CO2 rise in the last 110 years was enough to produce a warming of 1.2 deg C IF there were no other forcings. Of course, there are some quite big negative forcings around now that weren't around 110 years ago so the actual temperature rise of 0.8 deg C is within the range that would be expected.

Some corrections to comment 76:
Actually, Wegman had 12 red-noise "hockey stick" graphs in his report, all taken from the top 1% (not just higher than average). 0.7% of the total set of simulation runs had a hockey stick index with an absolute value less than 1 - this does not imply that only 0.7% were negative.

JonasN, McShane and Wyner did NOT do the same with the MBH data. Eduardo Zorita, no friend of Mike Mann, had this to say:
http://klimazwiebel.blogspot.com/2010/08/mcshane-and-wyner-on-climate.h…

some choice quotes:
"It seems that their knowledge of the papers by Mann et al is only indirect - from what they may have read in blogs - and that they actually did not read the papers themselves."

"The authors, again, are probably confused by what they may have read in blogs."

"This point is so clear in the MBH paper that it really shows that McShane and Wyner actually did not read MBH98."

"Again, wrong. Correctly or incorrectly, this is not what MBH did."

"So I am surprised that McShane and Wyner just test and analyze a method that it is not actually used."

"In summary, admittedly climate scientist have produced in the past bad papers for not consulting professional statisticians. The McShane and Wyner paper is an example of the reverse situation."

Now, ask yourself why the main critic of MBH98, McIntyre, did not point out these very obvious errors. It's not like McIntyre did not discuss McShane and Wyner on his blog. It's not like McIntyre has no clue what MBH98 really did.

Mashey observes:

>I've been involved in on-line forums since 1985. My experience says: I have never seen a recovery from demonstrated deep D-K, as they are invincible in their lack of expertise. Paying any attention to them is a waste of time.

Jonas confirms:

>*The HS displayed illustrating the spurious effect in Figure 1 was picked among the higer ones. That's all!*

And in a display unbalanced generosity:

>*M&M picked an example that clearer (than average) showed the effect, the main reslut of the study, to illustrate it. Nowhere did they purport it was chosen entirely at random, or represent the mean HS-index.*

And after insisting:

>I haven't seen any serious rebuttals of the content of the Wegman report..."

Jonas closes his eyes to the plagiarism, and the further implications of that plagiarism (e.g, but not limited to the competence or willingness of the Wegman et al team to deal with the material).

Jonas similarly closes his eyes to Wegman's uncritical swallowing of the M&M claims, which distinctly contrast with Wegman's failure to substantively consider the peer-reviewed scientific critiques of M&M.

>The criticism agains [sic] Wegman seems to be that he showed the same sample? OK!

Jonas gives more credibility to Mashey by demonstrating the accuracy of Mashey's judgement.

JonasN: regarding Wegman.

Let's make a few things clear:
1. Wegman was asked to verify the criticism of M&M.
2. Verification does not mean "rerun the same code without even checking what it does". It is however obvious that he did not.
3. It is not mentioned anywhere that the algorithm of M&M cherrypicks the top 1% of hockeystick shapes.
4. Although mentioned in the reference list, the Wegman report does not take into account the criticism of Huybers on the algorithm M&M used. Most importantly, he pointed out M&M changed TWO parameters, but essentially only discussed the impact of one of these. Nowhere in the report is this even mentioned or referenced, the paper is only in the reference list. This is downright odd and poor scholarship by itself. Even worse is that Huybers showed that using MBH's method, the influence of the poor choice of PCA centering was much more limited than M&M made believe. Yes, poor choice, but impact limited. You'd expect a verification to at least discuss these aspects. It did not.
5. the Wegman report incorrectly identified one method M&M used (AR(1,0) vs ARFIMA). This makes one wonder whether Wegman et al really and truly understood what was going on.
6. The section on co-author relationships was not part of the official assignment of Wegman. The heavily plagiarised sections indicate poor familiarity with that field. This also explains why experts in the field have pointed out that the conclusions drawn in the retracted paper do not follow from the data.
7. The "defense" of Wegman is even worse. He essentially admits to NOT acknowledging the contribution of a student. That *she* plagiarised becomes irrelevant: Wegman stole something a student produced and presented it as his own! Few seem to have noted that blatant admission of unethical behaviour.
8. The heavily plagiarised sections on tree rings etc indicates they also lacked familiarity there. More important, however, the changes that were made in some places indicate a deliberate attempt to conceal that plagiarism. That is, not just poor ethics, but prima facie fraudulous behaviour.

John M,

I disagree with you when you say people here are displaying D-K. Its the other way around, they do understand what you have written and their reponse is to try and slow down your material from reaching the sort of people they don't want it to reach.

You must have noticed that by now you are on the deniers world wide hate list and I do not wish to stroke your ego by listing this achievement. The thing is, you actually represent a greater danger to the denialists than say, Michael Mann, Phil Jones or even James Hansen. Let me explain. Most of the people on the hate list are scientists and non science decision makers are very unlikely to wrestle with scientific papers so its relatively easy for the deniers to obscure, as they do in sooooo many imaginative and deliberate ways, the work of climate scientists. However your work, e.g your Wegman take down is much more accessible to decison makers et al. That makes it much harder for the deniers to keep your stuff away from those who matter. You will notice they deploy a different form of language with you i.e. they don't use a diverting explanation (Cohenite/Monckton/Dellingpole come to mind) that at a non scientist will find hard to get around. Instead they deny your stuff in as few words as possible with no explanation as shown on here and the finality of this language is designed to head off people from accessing your stuff.

You gotta give the deniers credit, they know exactly what they are doing and they go about it with unpaid zeal, unpaid enthusiasm and the zealotry of ideologues everywhere. We must never, never underestimate them.

Good point, Jeremy C. I suspect that "Jonas N" is laughing out aloud each time somebody reacts to his provocations and calls him a moron, an asshole or similar. While insults (no matter how well deserved they may appear from one side) is no way to win a discussion, it might be a way to lose it. Some people here should learn to stay cool.

Guh

I don't care that much about MBH98, I think it was a crappy paper, widely overstating several things, flawed wrt methodology and proxyselection (and some more issues).

Even that it passed peer review doesn't surprise me that much. However it gives the suspicion of more like a Pal-review. But it is hard to speculate about motives.

No, the real beef is the IPCC who plastered its TAR with it, and all the 'thousands of experts' (aka 'the consensus') who purportedly stood behind and supported that description. That is the real embarrassment. And I also believe that this is the reason why som many now so bitterly try to defend, resurrect it, 'confirm' as they say. Sometimes with the most peculiar methods.

I agree that the modern climate science edifice does not (should not) rest on MBH. But there is one UN-sanctioned organization purporting to represent (and present) modern climate science (I dont share that view), and its credibility is what is/was at stake in my view.

> That does describe your projections, doesn't it?

No, that describes my analysis of your statement based on ... the evidence presented in your statement. My analysis may be wrong due to evidence not present for the analysis; it might even be wrong based purely on the evidence it analysed. But neither of those occurrences would necessarily constitute "projection".

You do know what "projecting" is, right? Or are you throwing around terms you don't quite understand in the hope that someone will think you have a point?

Back to the regularly scheduled discussion on Perry, Woods, and various connections...

Chris O'Neill

(and to a lesser extent 'Wow', and even lesser 'Dave R')

Apart from som unnecessary snide remarks, your comment was quite legible, and useful. For no, I wasn't untruthful about anything (I don't need to, as I already stated in #10)

I said that that I've rarly met anyone who can argue pt 1) in a balanced polite way. (I am sure they exist, but I also know that they rather not participate in these debates publicly). Further, I mean and meant that RC is not arguing pt 1), rather both 2) and 3). And polite they are not!

But lets get back to the (my) issue with that RC post. It contains some uncontroversial statements, but claims that the sensitivity is 3 °C/CO2-dubbling.

As already stated, i question that. And I also find it disturbing that theypretend to be so very certain about that number. (Absolute claims, about what must happen in a distant future, in a complex world ... have a ring to it that sounds more like something else than science)

And no, my comment was not "absolute garbage" and I do know what it is about. Possibly I could have phrased it better, but you do actually confirm (and explain) exatcly what I meant:

As I said, it is the large positive feedbacks (factor ~3) that I question. Precisely as you said, CO2 alone accounts for only ~2°C during such a transition. The remainder is that factor of 3 (or 2.5 if you prefer it), the claimed feedback! What I meant (and mean) is that difference is attributed to CO2 as the main driver, and the (be necessity) following feedbacks from it, which amplyfy the response, and explain the whole temp-range.

And that this mechanism is what drives it during those (few thousand) years. As you certainly know, there is a lag both at the beginning and the end of that transition. And by 'precise timing' when making that 'estimation' I referred to that they must use exatly that span when T and CO2 trend together, and exclude those periods when they dont.

Because, you do need to remember: What is proposed is a very strong and general mechanism supposed to control the entire climate to a substantial degree. If it is indeed true, one cannot simply disregard periods when 'something else' of equal strength appearantly happens, and just say 'No forget that, look here instead' ..

At the end you try to counter my point about the later temperature record. But I think you are confusing things here. The IPCC ascribes about half of temp-increase in the second half of 20th century to manmade causes, that is about 0.2 °C. And from the start of CO2-emissions it is not much more than that. The 0.8 °C figure, is the warming since ~1850. You cannot take all of that and try to fit it to CO2 with a feedback. (And I know that there exist hypotheses that sulphur is negative forcing. And no, neither those numbers are are that well established)

Well, hopefully (some of) you now better understand what I meant by those brief sentences in #49

Toby S - valid pointers!

Toby S - By 'valid pointers' I was referring to #79 (You made one more comment, and I might get back to that one too)

Jonas N claims "The IPCC ascribes about half of temp-increase in the second half of 20th century to manmade causes"

Let's see what the IPCC really says:
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter9.pdf
"Greenhouse gas forcing has very likely caused most of the
observed global warming over the last 50 years."

I guess Jonas N gets away with falsehoods elsewhere, but here there are just too many who know the actual FACTS.

Jonas N:
>As I said, it is the large positive feedbacks (factor ~3) that I question. Precisely as you said, CO2 alone accounts for only ~2°C during such a transition. The remainder is that factor of 3 (or 2.5 if you prefer it), the claimed feedback!

No it isn't, you moron. About 1/3 of the 5K increase is attributed to the CO2 increase of 180ppm to 280ppm, plus the fast feedback (H2O) on that. That gives a sensitivity of 3K per doubling: (5/3) / ((280-180) / 180) = 3.

The other 2/3 is attributed to the albedo change, plus the fast feedback on that.

The direct forcing from the CO2 change without the fast feedback would have only given about 0.7K temperature change: ((280-180) / 180) * 1.2 = 0.67

If they had attributed the whole 5K to the CO2 change, as you claimed, that would give 9K per doubling: 5 / ((280-180) / 180) = 9

>I also find it disturbing that theypretend to be so very certain about that number.

They do not, you liar. The expected range for sensitivity is between 2K and 4.5K per doubling, with a best estimate of 3K.

I recommend everybody to read 85 by Jonas N - it is an excellent summary of what is the issue. The Mann hockey stick, the number one issue for "skeptics" for nearly a decade. Blogs have been dedicated to it, books have been written, emails have been stolen. And all because it was featured in the SPM of WGI in IPCC TAR in 2001. It really doesn't matter much for the science any more, but it still is their number one issue. The holy grail of "climate skepticism".

Ooh, tag-team trolling now.
Is anyone comparing IP numbers?

"_Anything_ except what John Mashey has to say ..."

Dave R

You are right about the numbers contruct. As you say, including both fast and slow feedbacks gives you the sensitivity of 9 (and I should have noticed too, since 180 ppm to 280 ppm isn't even a doubling)

But the fast ones, the factor of ~3 are still determined during that short interval when the trends coincide. And it is still claimed that the albedo is a slow feedback. And that that one also gets an additional 'benifit' of its own fast feedback (trough water vapor once again)

And no, I find that explaination not at all convincing.

Marco - nitpicking at the IPCC-lingo. Perhaps you'd care to explain to me how one arives at that 90% proability (= very likely)?

Andy S

Yes, you are right. Without the 'unprecedented' and the 'nothing else can has caused the modern warming' and 'explained by the high feedbacks' ..

.. without those, there is not so much left of any climate scare. And with the MWP properly reinstated, those tremendeous certainties, the settled science, the forthcoming climate armageddon .. once again more resemble a movie by Roland Emmerich, than the best science available.

Jonas N:

>I find that explaination not at all convincing.

An appeal to personal incredulity isn't considered a very good argument around these parts. If you have any peer-reviewed publications on this subject, cite them. Otherwise explain why you have not.

...

@Hank, I think you're misinterpreting the comment by Andy S.

Folks,

Jeremy C has a valid point here. Let me expand upon it. There are deniers and deniers. The Shriekers who descend en-masse to various discussion threads are just white noise, given that they contradict one another most of the time in any case. I think many folks understand that, given some of the utter gibberish they post. But there are others that argue with the skill of good lawyers: these are the leading merchants of doubt and it is important to acknowledge that they are good at what they do - just as a good lawyer will play someone he or she is up against like a good angler plays a fish. And herein lies the problem. It may have nothing to do with good science and everything to do with wordplay - indeed this is the case - but it needs to be countered effectively. Calling them names may be satisfying on a temporary basis but it doesn't win the argument. Instead, it is necessary to show other readers why they are wrong (they invariably are once you check out their claims in depth - witness John Abrahams' excellent work WRT to Monckton). Cleverly-worded rhetoric that fails to stand up to scrutiny is a big Fail, and needs flagging up as that, rather than calling the guy a moron. Save that for the Shriekers! To use analogy, a wider portfolio of techniques is required for the Graboids!

Cheers - John

Jeremy C

I think you can discard that conspiracy theory (at least wrt to me). This is the age of the internt, and making noise in order for one piece of information (bad labelling, I know) as the 250p Mashey piece not reaching certain others attention is just simply impossible.

And I really must wonder why som many of you are so infatuated with the d-word!? It is an utterly stupid construct without any meaning at all! Not even an implied one, since the discussions mostly are about if the claimed climate sensitivity really is as high. Meaning: Not even the existence of a climate sensitivity is 'denied'.

To me, using that word just sound stupid. Nothing else.

And you are prefectly well aware of that politics and spending motivated by 'climate' is as contested as the 'certainty' of the pro-AGW science.

The question:

'If politicians just were given sufficiently much money and power, could they then control the climate?' (In any measurable way)

.. is really a no-brainer!

But much of the debate sounds like people profoundly believe that the answer is 'Yes, yes!'

Curioser and curiouser, Alice ...

>Calling them names may be satisfying on a temporary basis but it doesn't win the argument. Instead, it is necessary to show other readers why they are wrong

False dilemma.

I presume that Jonas N wants us to return to use the schematic figure from IPCC FAR 1990 based on Hubert Lamb's uncalibrated reconstruction of Central England temperatures.

Nuff said.

Dave, are you somehow implying that 'very good arguments' is in any way descriptive of 'around those parts' (meaning here)?

Could have fooled me ...

But your last question is strange. Do you ask me why I dont have(?) any peer reviewed publications on the topic? Or publications about what convinces me and what doesn't?

You are aware of publishing is the way that scientists try to convince others of their findings, of the strength of their hypotheses, measurements, validity of arguments, expermiments etc. The publishing is identlical to the 'try to convince' others with the best you can muster.

Real science, that is (of course)

Jonas N, you say:

"And I really must wonder why som many of you [sic] are so infatuated with the d-word!?"

Denial is of course a well-understood psychological phenomenon, first explored in detail by Freud who died in 1939, thereby missing out on a chance to study holocaust-denial which I am sure he would have found as fascinating as climate change denial and other similar examples.

Your post above is a classic case of lawyer-style wordplay, though: you may not even personally deny that AGW is occurring (in your spare time, of course) but you are using wordplay to attempt to spread doubt, for whatever motive you may have. You don't hoodwink me for a moment, of course, but your post is a shining example of what I was describing in my previous post: Gentlemen of the Jury, I give you Exhibit A. A Merchant of Doubt.

Cheers - John

In comment 94, Jonas N really sounded like the "Shriekers" John Mason so aptly described in comment 96.

Can we please ignore Jonas N from now on? Please?

Andy S,

I don't know if you are familiar with the Birmingham, UK comedian Jasper Carrot, one of whose funny sketches involved reading out daft things written in motor insurance claim-forms?

Well, I started collecting the funniest things posted by "Shriekers" around 2009, which as it turned out was a good time to start. I have hundreds of them now, all genuine. The first one I ever collected gives you a fine example of the genre:

"Don't the climate alarmists know that proxies are only any good at proving that the MWP was a really really warm global phenomenon when the world warmed up for no reason at all which PROVES that the world can warm up for no reason at all at any time and it's nothing to do with us. Except that the world isn't even warming up. And if it is warming up it's for no reason at all."

But I have hundreds equally as "good" as that! One day there'll be a book!

Cheers - John

John Mason

You are perfectly correct in realizing that the d-word is intended to be derogatory. As you say, even implying some psychological affliction, apart from the holocaust connotation.

But you are (as so many others here also seem to be) wrong about my motives. Or that I want to hoodwink anybody. Why should I, why need I?

I was told that I use the term 'projecting' a bit carlessly, and in a strict sense that is true. But the very noticable and strong urge to ascribe motives and ideas to other people (for expressing dissenting views) is really extremely strong here. It sounds almost like many cannot fathom that one can arrive at another than their belief. And if somebody still argues something else, he must be dishonest, corrupted, or bought, a shill for somehting, a 'merchant' as you said.

And I would respond that that too is not a very good argument (although I believe that (som of) you hold such beliefs)

But I don't know which post you refer to as lawyerly. I would rather say that all of Oreskes and Conway is just lawyerly doubt casting. I'd give them no merit at all wrt how the climate works. Even less than Mashey (although there are plenty of similarities)

Jonas N says:

"You are perfectly correct in realizing that the d-word is intended to be derogatory. As you say, even implying some psychological affliction, apart from the holocaust connotation."

Classic! - and you played right into my hands. You disappoint me. WRT the intention of the term "denier" to be derogatory, I didn't say anything of the sort, as my posts will show on careful examination. It is merely descriptive. Wordplay, that's all you are doing. I rest my case. Now it's dinner-time. Ciao.....

John

Cheers - John

Andy S and John Mason ..

May I suggest that both of you keep in mind that a your descriptive labels and implied explainations based thereupon apply in more than one direction?

Mason

No you didn't need to say that explicitly. You just referred to a psychological condition and the holocaust.

And the whole point is that the term is not descriptive of anything. Wordplay ... as you said.

Yeah, yeah, Jonas N it's all been heard before. Poor, poor picked on dishonest deniers. Bad warmists!

Now how about the shocking state of American academia as evidenced for example by an ignoramus like Peter Wood who has somehow come to believe - through Scaife dollars or otherwise or both - that blogscience is the place to go to acquire an informed opinion on a complex subject like climate change?

And the even more bankrupt state of U.S. politics that the support team for a religion-spouting, public-prayin' chancer like Rick Perry believes that a scientific illiterate like Peter Wood is the go-to man on climate science.

You can agree that there is something horribly wrong with this picture, I take it? Or will you 'plausibly deny' that too?

Jonas N:

that RC post. It contains some uncontroversial statements, but claims that the sensitivity is 3 °C/CO2-dubbling.
As already stated, i question that. And I also find it disturbing that theypretend to be so very certain about that number.

It's not their claim. I pointed out their citation. You appear to be deliberately ignoring that fact. And they are not "very certain". The cited research arrived at a 90% confidence interval (IIRC) of 2 deg C to 4.5 deg C. This is hardly "very certain".

(Absolute claims, about what must happen in a distant future, in a complex world ... have a ring to it that sounds more like something else than science)

Spare us the strawmen please. No-one is making absolute claims.

And no, my comment was not "absolute garbage"

Yes it was absolute garbage.

and I do know what it is about. Possibly I could have phrased it better, but you do actually confirm (and explain) exatcly what I meant:

We shall see.

As I said, it is the large positive feedbacks (factor ~3) that I question. Precisely as you said, CO2 alone accounts for only ~2°C during such a transition.

Oh dear. What was that saying about a little bit of information?

The CO2 increase, _along with its short term feedbacks_, only accounted for 2 deg C of the temperature rise from the LGM to the Holocene. If you were ever interested in the technical detail you would have done this calculation yourself but obviously technical detail is not your strength.

The remainder is that factor of 3 (or 2.5 if you prefer it), the claimed feedback!

Oh dear, you just can't take a hint. There was a _huge_ change in Earth's albedo from the LGM to the Holocene caused by the shrinkage in "ice sheets, .. , dust and vegetation" that realclimate pointed out and you studiously ignore. That change in albedo (and, for your benefit, the consequent short-term feedbacks) was the main cause of the other 3-4 deg C of warming.

What I meant (and mean) is that difference is attributed to CO2 as the main driver, and the (be necessity) following feedbacks from it, which amplyfy the response, and explain the whole temp-range. And that this mechanism is what drives it during those (few thousand) years. As you certainly know, there is a lag both at the beginning and the end of that transition.

That lag is completely irrelevant to the issue of calculating the difference between the LGM and the Holocene optimum. In fact, the data points need to be from times with as stable a temperature as possible to avoid effects of transitions. Basically, the sensitivity is estimated using the total difference in CO2 between the LGM and Holocene and total difference in global temperature at the same pair of times. I can't find where exactly realclimate mentioned this but this article says a few things about using the LGM to constrain sensitivity (and of course mentions the effect of ice-sheets on albedo).

And by 'precise timing' when making that 'estimation' I referred to that they must use exatly that span when T and CO2 trend together, and exclude those periods when they dont.

Precise timing is completely unnecessary as I pointed out above. Your statement is rubbish.

At the end you try to counter my point about the later temperature record. But I think you are confusing things here. The IPCC ascribes about half of temp-increase in the second half of 20th century to manmade causes

No they don't. They conservatively claim at least half is due to manmade causes and it is actually all of it and more (thank heaven for the oceans and luckily we're throwing up sulphate aerosols as well).

The 0.8 °C figure, is the warming since ~1850.

It's the warming since 1900-1910. No warming before then but that's another issue.

You cannot take all of that and try to fit it to CO2 with a feedback. (And I know that there exist hypotheses that sulphur is negative forcing.

There's a difference between the words "cannot" and "allowed" and I know there are measurements of reflection by sulphate aerosols.

And no, neither those numbers are are that well established)

Measurements of the earths radiation imbalance (which goes into the oceans) is very well established and not much is left over to be reflected by aerosols.

Jonas N.

>And I really must wonder why som many of you are so infatuated with the d-word!? It is an utterly stupid construct without any meaning at all! Not even an implied one, since the discussions mostly are about if the claimed climate sensitivity really is as high. Meaning: Not even the existence of a climate sensitivity is 'denied'.

> To me, using that word just sound stupid. Nothing else.

I can't speak for anyone else but I use the noun/adjective *denier* because it describes exactly what people do to the science setting out AGW. If it hurts someone's feeling then thats just tough biccies.

BTW An very funny post above.

Cris O'Neill

I already acknowledged my mistake with the numbers, that only the fast feedbacks amount to 3°C, and that slow feedbacks essentially triple that (#93). And I do question the certainty with which they state those feedback, even with their confidence intervals.

And yes, these claims (about feedback magnitude) carry with them prophecies about the future.

But you are wrong about the lag being irrelevant. It is only irrelevant if you already know that the hypothesis you want to establish is the only expanation, and that the mechanisms when it doesn't fit are irrelevant and need not be understood. But then you would have left the realm of science.

The same goes for the instrumental temp-record. What you are saying is that the IPCCknows the precise levels of two strong (hypothesized, opposing) mechanisms, so well that it can make claims about their difference at the 90% certainty level. At the same time it tries to establish that the main hypothesis actually holds.

And if you were aware of that your figure 0.8°C (rather 0.7°C) referred to times well before any substantial CO2-level rise, I really must wonder why you still tried that one.

Moreover, the tmep-record the last decade or more, hasn't played along either with those large claimed positive feedbacks. The discrepancy growing by every year, and making those (earlier) claims about 90% certainty etc looking mor and more outlandish ..

But as I'v understood it. Now those 'natural fluctuations earlier denied/neglected suddenly become the main explanation' ..

Sorry Chris, but that is not convincing. Neither regarding the facts, nor the people who were claimed to be the only admissible 'experts'

And no, the missing heat cannot be found going into the oceans either. Some call that a 'travesty' ..

Jonas N, you seem to be avoiding the issue that your prospective presidential candidate Rick Perry (tee hee) is importing his policy ideas regarding the global climate situation from the worst kind of ill-informed ignoramus, as exemplified by anthropologist Peter Wood who has shown himself to be not only out of his field bit also well out of his depth.

This thread is not about addressing and correcting your massive and self-proclaimed ignorance.

Jeremy C

I sould say that 'the science' settin out AGW is far more dispersed and contains many more nuances than that it gives that term any meaning. And I don't even think that your answer is the complete explanation. Meaning that you too know it to be, and use it as derogatory.

Well, that may be fine from one perspective. There are categories of people I don't like either. Whom i label with terms indicating my (lack of) sympathy. At least among likeminded people. Less so in any public capacity.

The difference here being that this practice is widespread and not only openly but officially so. From people who demand to be respected for their integrity and skills. From one who once hoped to be the president of the US.

But no, it doesn't hurt my feelings. Toby S is closer there. I don't laugh at all the insults hurled at me, but I find that 'necessity' from many rather more reaffirming today.

You know, around 2007, when IPCC presented its TAR, I was more pessimistic and irritated about the labelling. But lots has happened since, and I view the spewed bile and vitriol quite differently today.

More wordiness from Jonas N. It is all a game to him (listen to Jethro Tull's song "Solitaire" for an analogy in the music critic business). The lyrics go thus:

Brain storming, habit forming, battle warning
Weary winsome actor spewing spineless chilling lines
The critics falling over to tell themselves he's boring
And really not an awful lot of fun
Well, who the hell can he be when he's never had V.D.
And he doesn't even sit on toilet seats?
Court jesting, never resting, he must be very cunning
To assume an air of dignity and bless us all with his oratory prowess
His lame brained antics and his jumping in the air
And every night his act's the same
And so it must be all a game of chess he's playing
But you're wrong, Steve [Jonas - JM], you see, it's only solitaire....

Byeee!

John

Wow @ 52:

>The problem is pt 5 where they hope that one very precise part of the temp-recovery when leaving a glaciation, is explained by CO2, and CO2 alone.

Lets go see if this idiot can read or not. From the site, point 5:

>As we have discussed previously, the last glacial period is a good example of a large forcing (~7 W/m2 from ice sheets, greenhouse gases, dust and vegetation) giving a large temperature response (~5 ºC) and implying a sensitivity of about 3ºC (with substantial error bars).

Hmmm. Looking for "CO2 and CO2 alone" or even just looking for a single entity being called into effect in point 5 and that entity being "CO2".

Nope.

I CAN see

ice sheets

greenhouse gases

dust

vegetation

Since greenhouse gasses include CO2 but ALSO other IR-active gasses, this seems to be proof positive that idiot here can't read.

(end quotes)

DaveR @ 57:

Jonas N:

>People who think that 'idiot' is a convincing argument

That wasn't his argument, idiot.

His argument was that you claimed "they hope that [it] is explained by CO2, and CO2 alone", when anyone can see by checking the cited article that they do not.

That makes you an idiot and/or a liar. The evidence from the rest of your comments strongly suggests both.

(end quotes)

Jonas @ 104: "But you are (as so many others here also seem to be) wrong about my motives. Or that I want to hoodwink anybody. Why should I, why need I?"

(end quotes)

52 + 57 â  104...

Jonas N has made the basic mistake of thinking we give a shit about his anxieties or obsessions. It's just another half-smart adolescent narcissist in it's mother's basement playing Designated Deltoid Troll at the behest of it's Koch-sucking brethren, 'cause John Mashey's relentlessly reliable documentation of their hypocrisy really, really gets in their grill. Just like the IPCC. Another Republicant sophist desperately denying what they fear is true. The irony for Jonas N is that he knows that he's spinning bullshit, but he can't stop, 'cause that would mean that he was wrong all along - again.

John Mason said:

But I have hundreds equally as "good" as that! One day there'll be a book!

Oh please, please, please! Or at least a website dedicated to the topic. Your example was hilarious, thanks!

> Moreover, the tmep-record the last decade or more, hasn't played along either with those large claimed positive feedbacks.

Good grief! That apparently implies at least a couple of very basic misunderstandings of climate science which you have leveraged into an opinion that the strawman science you have developed is dodgy. I'll leave the explanation as an exercise for the reader. However...

...it is clear that your confidence in your own opinion of the science is not supported by the evidence, and pretty clear that you're not interested in finding out where and why - because if you *cared* you certainly could.

So, as chek said:

> ...you seem to be avoiding the issue that your prospective presidential candidate Rick Perry (tee hee) is importing his policy ideas regarding the global climate situation from the worst kind of ill-informed ignoramus, as exemplified by anthropologist Peter Wood who has shown himself to be not only out of his field bit also well out of his depth.

Any thoughts on that?

After Marco shows Jonas N to be wrong, Jonas N starts to move the goalposts and asks a question that is answered in the chapter I linked to...

It's sad to see so much obfuscation.

[John Mason read my mind](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/08/rick_perry_peter_wood_and_the.p…) - to quote the Bard from [the Scottish play](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h--HR7PWfp0), Jonas M's is "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing".

After all, reading all of his verbiage on this thread, all one garners is a string of claims that human-caused global warming Is Dead, but never any actual evidence of such, nor any reference to tested work. And before he squawks, M&M does not constitute tested work - when tested, it failed.

From Jonas N we get a lot of this sort of stuff:

>And I do question the certainty with which they state those feedback [sic], even with their confidence intervals.

but no substantiation. No case, no actual counter to the prosecution. Just a lot of word soup of the sort that undergrads, who haven't studied their material, regurgitate in exams in the forlorn hope that the examiners won't notice that the candidate has no clue at all.

Jonas N, are you a climate scientist? If not, how is it that you know that they are wrong in their work?

Are you a scientist at all? If not, why do you think that you can even begin to construct a case against the profession? Are you just dirty at John Mashey because he called you out in his guest piece? If you disagree with Mashey's meticulously detailed material, where's your own as-detailed counter-analysis? If you disagree with the significance of the implications of Mashey's and Deep Climate's work, where is your detailed rebuttal of such?

Merry-go-round repetition of vague wrist-flapping claims contradicting Mashey are meaningless if you don't support them, and nothing you've said actually has any meat. If you think that a heavily plagiarised report given to Congress is insignificant, detail to us why this is so. If you think that McIntyre and McKitrick conclusively rebutted Mann et al, give us the numbers and the procedures that made it so. If you think that climate sensitivity has been over-estimated by the climatology profession, provide your own detailed analyses, with working and sources shown. If you believe that the confidence intervals attached to analyses are too large, or otherwise inappropriate, break out the statistical justification so that we can test your claims in their turn.

If, as I have noted above, you are simply irked because you were unflatteringly referenced by Mashey in the piece at the top of this thread, then lose the glass jaw and cop it like a big boy.

[John Mason, I hope that you'rearchiving all of [those sites that you are documenting](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/08/rick_perry_peter_wood_and_the.p…). It would be a shame for them to be lost to posterity...]

> The irony for Jonas N is that he knows that he's spinning bullshit, but he can't stop, 'cause that would mean that he was wrong all along - again.

It's interesting (in a "we've seen this done a thousand times before" way and he's not the exception he thinks he is) that he asserts *very easily tested* bullshit claims with (apparently) great conviction. For example:

> It contains some uncontroversial statements, but claims that the sensitivity **is** 3 °C/CO2-dubbling. ... And I also find it disturbing that theypretend to be so very certain about that number.

He states with no limitation on his own certainty that the RC article claimed to be "very certain" about that number, and how he uses that to imply that the science is dodgy - a case propped up by the additional claim that RC is just "pretending" to certainty on the sensitivity.

Now any school kid could go to the article and read [my emphasis]:

> Climate sensitivity is **around** 3ºC for a doubling of CO2. ... and implying a sensitivity of **about** 3ºC (**with substantial error bars**)

and conclude that they were clearly *not* claiming to be "very certain".

One can speculate whether:

• a) he's trying to bullshit others - and thinks so little of readers' intellects that he hopes such transparent bullshit might pass muster, and either:

  i) doesn't care that practically every reader can see that he's a frequent bullshitter, or

  ii) hopes each time that he is caught out that spinning even more bullshit will work this time to convince himself/others that he wasn't wrong all along (remember the colloquial "definition" of insanity)

or

• b) he dazzles himself with his own brilliance, rejects any evidence to the contrary, and is deeply disappointed that such exceptional luminosity is not recognised here.

I don't particularly care either way. I think it far more noteworthy that he doesn't want to discuss the appropriateness of Rick Perry's sources of viewpoints on climate change, and seems quite happy if no-one else discusses it either.

Jonas N:

I already acknowledged my mistake with the numbers, that only the fast feedbacks amount to 3°C, and that slow feedbacks essentially triple that (#93).

OK so you acknowledge that your claim:

they hope that one very precise part of the temp-recovery when leaving a glaciation, is explained by CO2, and CO2 alone

was based on a fundamental misunderstanding.

And I do question the certainty with which they state those feedback, even with their confidence intervals.

They are not stating feedback per se. They are just stating the empirically determined net sensitivity. Why don't you read the literature on the subject which I previously referred to through the realclimate cite?

But you are wrong about the lag being irrelevant.

No, you are wrong about the lag being relevant in determining sensitivity from the LGM and Holocene. Obviously you didn't bother carefully reading what realclimate had to say on the subject. Stop wasting everyone's time and don't post anything more until after you've read what they have to say about using the LGM to determine sensitivity. (Search for LGM if it makes it any easier for you).

The same goes for the instrumental temp-record. What you are saying is that the IPCCknows the precise levels of two strong (hypothesized, opposing) mechanisms,

The opposition makes the claim about the effect of CO2 stronger by the way. Your grasp of the logic is not very good.

so well that it can make claims about their difference at the 90% certainty level.

The increased forcing from GHGs is far greater than any other forcing increase in the last 50 years. The two other most significant forcing changes (oceanic heat absorption and sulphate aerosol reflection) have been negative so they are masking some of the effect of human-caused increased GHG forcing. Thus the forcing increase of increasing GHGs is more than 100% of the increase in total forcing increase. Humans are thus responsible for more than 100% of total net forcing increase in the last 50 years.

And if you were aware of that your figure 0.8°C (rather 0.7°C) referred to times well before any substantial CO2-level rise,

What are you talking about?

I really must wonder why you still tried that one.

I wonder what you're talking about.

Moreover, the tmep-record the last decade or more, hasn't played along either with those large claimed positive feedbacks.

Thank you for the decadal cherry-pick. You don't seem to be aware that 10 years, even 15, is not even long enough to measure climate, let alone a trend in climate.

But as I'v understood it. Now those 'natural fluctuations earlier denied/neglected

What "natural fluctuations earlier denied/neglected"?

but that is not convincing

I wouldn't expect someone who completely misunderstands how sensitivity can be calculated using the LGM to be convinced by any scientific explanation.

And no, the missing heat cannot be found going into the oceans either.

Since you're so sure it's not going into the oceans, where, pray tell, is it going?

BTW, you still haven't explained how water vapor (a feedback gas) provides most of the greenhouse effect but at the same time you think it won't provide most of the increase in greenhouse effect.

Fascinating.

Assuming the killfile allows you to hide the off-topic comments *and* the equally-off-topic replies to them, could someone who's set up to use it please paste the on-topic comments into a blogpost somewhere, and then provide the URL to Tim Lambert, so he can append it to this Mashey blogpost?

Anna.

As painful as Jonas N's denialist trolling is, and as much as I agree with Hank's advice to ignore the troll, it remains a fact that John Mashey refers to Jonas N in "1) Chronology at CHE and NAS" of his guest post.

Frustratingly, that rather makes engagings with Jonas N slightly less off-topic than they might usually be.

> Frustratingly, that rather makes engagings with Jonas N slightly less off-topic than they might usually be.

Or to reframe it, it was very good of Jonas N to turn up here and demonstrate his tenuous grasp of climate science and his utter conviction in his superior understanding thereof for the benefit of us who haven't spent much time at CHE lately. Truly such work is dedication above and beyond the call of duty ;-)

John Mason - Lots of words & play
Zibethicus - Indeed: 57 + 57 = 104
rhwombat - Wow, so much 'knowledge' from your(?) basement
Lotharsson - The heating is in the pipleine, sure ...
Marco - "Most of" = ~½ , "Very likely" = 90%
Bernard J - Who is irked? Who is wristflapping?
Lotharsson - Remote sensing motives and beliefs again?
Anna Hayes - Another climate heavyweight?
Bernard J - Frustrating, name calling, Yup!

Chris O'Neill - I'll respond seperately

All - If you really have valid points to make, and expect me to read them. Please try to phrase them so they don't come across as riddled with or only insults.

OK, Jonas N, some valid points:

1. 57 + 57 = 114, not 104
2. "Most" does not mean "about half"
3. "very likely" in IPCC definition is not "90%"

But I guess pointing this out is an insult to your intelligence...

Sorry, Anna, 'killfile' for the web works on userid, so can't hide the troll-feeding followups.

I sure miss my Usenet newsreader's killfile; "nn" rocked.

Marco, the 104 was in response to #115

Furhter:
IPCC lingo defines 'very likely' as 90% (See footnote 6 p3 here

Now, the phrase "most of" in your citation means 'not less than half', colloquially people might interpret it differently, but this is supposedly presenting science.

Further, that quote was the catchphrase of the AR4 sent to every newsoutlet (together with the SPM) in 2007, months before the assessment report AR4 was released. To get that message across. And dutifully forwarded worldwide to viewers/listeners/readers as the main IPCC take-home message.

You can be pretty damn certain that there is nothing accidantal or unpurposely vague about that phrase and how it is formuletad.

If you claim that it means something else than (and barely) 'at least half' and thus should be interpreted as 'much more than half', feel free to show me. I've searched WG1 chapter 9 and have found nothing which can support any 'more generous' interpretation.

Also, in WG1 ch 9, there was absolutely nothing about how that certainty 90% was determined (ie your claim in #119 is wrong, which I of course knew, and why I asked)

Instead there was a lot (a lot!) of handwaiving of how certain people felt (lead authors and editors, I presume) about that number.

No, the claim 90% certainty is bogus, especially obvious if the accompanying statment is not even quantitafied (as you seem to mean regarding 'most of')

But for the sake of argument, I went with their numbers and pointed out that even the IPCC as their best effort the claimed temperature rises (due to GHG:s) are modest

Jonas N
1. 57+57 is still not 104, regardless of being a response to someone else.

2. The IPCC defines "very likely" as >90% probability.

3. Chapter 9, which you claim to have read, contains the answer. I'd say, start with figure 9.5. Not easy to miss, but you apparently managed. In fact, taking that figure at face value, the *complete* temperature rise since 1950 is due to anthropogenic forcing. Natural forcings should have *cooled*.
Of course, figure 9.9 goes further with that analysis, and discusses the attribution by showing the contributions of various forcings. Notice anything? I can't see how you ever missed that. And if that is not enough, appendix 9A discusses several of the papers that contain attribution studies. Those studies tell you all.

If anything, they have actually DOWNgraded the certainty, to allow for "possible amplification of the solar influence by processes not represented in climate models".

Oh dear. Jonas N doesn't understand the concept of a lower bound. "Most" and "at least half" designate a quantity that can be anywhere between "half" and "all". Or to express it in mathematical notation, x > C means that x has some value larger than C. It is not the same thing as x = C.

Marco,

Forget the stupid addition, it was in respons to someone else's stupid addition (I thought that was pretty clear)

1) When dealing with statistics, presenting likelihoods, stating confidence intervalls etc, you give the boundaries of your interval, together with the stated (calculated/measured/observed) likelihoods. If you claim 90% confidence within a certain intervall, that is how you present it. This really is entry level textbook elementary class statistics, and I didn't expect to need to explaing such things.

Anyway, that 90% number (in AR4) is just made up, there is no basis for that claim.

2) You refer to a Figure 9.5, with run simulations by models which are built on the hypothesis you want to ascertain. One may of course be very certain that one's model is spot on (some within IPCC certainly were, at least then). But, and this is important: You cannot take a simulation and from it claim: It represents reality (with very likely certainty).

And the IPCC didn't eiher. They felt, based on those simulations (which mutually scattered quite a lot) that they could estimate (based on 'best understanding') that at least half their simulated could be attributed to human GHG emissions.

You need to distinguish between several things here: A proposed hypothesis, models built on that, with all the built-in simplifications and uncertainties, how the various contributing mechanisms were described, included or omitted, unkown etc, and how the real world behaves, and (most of all) how certain statements you can make about the real world based on the tools and assumptions you've used.

The IPCC felt(!) that it could state 'at least half' together with that 90% certainty.

And as far as I can see, this certainty is not even calculated, rather 'reasoned' among those who believe that the models got it right. It's quite a circular argument.

And no, they didn't downgrade that certainty. You have this confused. And by 'natural forcings' I think you mean aerosols (human) which are said to cool quite a lot. But that (esp ascribing magnitudes to the effect) is yet another hypothesis with huge uncertainties, and again with numbers fitted to match those (now two!) hypotheses to observations.

You are confusing certainty (confidence and conf.intervals) with model runs, and averaged results from many such. You can fit a hypotesis (eg a sensitivity parameter) to a set of observations. You cannot use that fit to thereafter validate your hypothesis! Those ar two very different things.

PS I have not read the references, and you claimed that the 90% figure came from the WG2 ch 9. That was untrue. If you now claim that that number is properly calculated in a specific paper, giving all the descriptions/assumptions and premisses necessary for determining such, and you actually have read and understood that paper. Please point me to it. But if you haven't, please refrain from unsupported claims (that's kinda the issue in these discussions, isn't it? ;-)

Andy S

I understand the concept perfectly well.

Maybe you want to claim that the IPCC was even more certain than what they (litteraly) claimed to be? I then extend to you the same proposition as to Marco, just above:

If you now claim that that number is properly calculated in a specific paper, giving all the descriptions/assumptions and premisses necessary for determining such, and you actually have read and understood that paper. Please point me to it.

I could tell you a lot more about how extremely difficult it is to make as certain statments about a reality, that is extremly complex, and at best partly understood. And maybe that would be talking over your head.

So please, lets stop with the playground mathematics posturing, OK?

Jonas N,

If you make claims like '"Most of" = ~½', you are hardly in a position to complain when people point out your playground mathematics errors.

JonasN -- attention whore. JonasN, you are mixing and matching terms to meet your purpose of obfuscation. That can go on indefinitely. Since you're such a whiz, do some science and get it published. 1 actual scientific paper is worth a boatload of blog complaining.

Andy S

I am quite used to how statistics are presented. And those words have a meaning. I presented them as i understand and interpret them, as such should be read!

And subsequently explained in detail why. Since the SPM is a PR-piece, and since everyone is aware of that people trying to sell their 'product' present things in the best possible light, I read exactly what they do actually claim. And expected nothing more.

Perfectly aware of that the sales pitch was intended to (at least superficially) give a more shiny and grandiose impression.

But that's me. If you want to hold the IPCC statements to even higher standards, go ahead! But that would then be even more difficult to argue adhering to strict scientific methods.

But it seems you aren't really arguing that case, are you!?

PS My #126 was meant as a bunch of one-liners (line feed messed up)

126: Zibethicus - Indeed: 57 + 57 = 104

(end quotes)

No, it doesn't. Were you (mis)using an abacus, or your fingers and toes?

*

In any case, I was making a point by analogy - one which you have chosen to evade yet again - that being that you claimed that climate scientists needed an effect to be explicable "by CO2, and CO2 alone" when the cited source clearly shows otherwise.

Let's see. You've been shown to get /that/ wrong, hopelessly, then in 'response' to my analogy, you get a basic equation (basic meaning primary school) hopelessly wrong into the bargain.

I'm calling POE.../nobody/ is /that/ dumb, not even deniers...

*

Admit it! You've been sent here from Moscow (or wherever the representatives of The Great Invisible International Communist Climate Change Conspiracy get their orders from these days), /just to make deniers look even worse than they really do/!

Congratulations, Comrade Poe - you are one of the elite of the elite, a superbeing who can achieve the impossible...

...and, by way of tribute, I shall now quit feeding you...

Calling them names may be satisfying on a temporary basis but it doesn't win the argument. Instead, it is necessary to show other readers why they are wrong

This is utter nonsense, an autistic's fantasy. Everyone who isn't a denialist troll is already well aware that Jonas N is wrong. The appropriate response is contempt for his dishonesty and general vileness. In the public arena, as opposed to in science, it is emotion, not fact and logic, that rules ... and there are objective studies that establish this.

> Lotharsson - Remote sensing motives and beliefs again?

Jonas N - **wrong again**.

> Jonas N doesn't understand the concept of a lower bound.

To be fair to Jonas, he is severely handicapped when attempting to understand that concept because he claims that "about C" or "C (with substantial error bars)" means "exactly C".

Marco, the 104 was in response to #115

#115 stated that "52 + 57 â  104", which is true. Your response that 57 + 57 = 104 is false. Your response and your excuses for it establish (yes, by remote sensing ... there is no other kind, moron) that you are both stupid and dishonest. Also establishing that you are stupid and dishonest are your two claims that "most of" is equivalent to about ½ and that it means "not less than half" -- claims that are incompatible and both wrong.

These are just two of many indications that Jonas N is stupid and dishonest ... too stupid and dishonest for any rational person to care about any of his claims.

Well, it seems that my comments now disappear.
I am certain that this feels better for many of you ...

Well, it seems that my comments now disappear.

Wrong, cretin.

I am certain that this feels better for many of you ...

Why shouldn't it? Who are you and what do you have to offer that anyone should think that the absence of comments from you isn't better than their presence?

> Well, it seems that my comments now disappear.

Algorithmic moderation holds up certain comments for review by a human moderator. Your comments *most* likely triggered the algorithm and will appear in chronological posting sequence in due course.

Strange (some comments disappeard, the last one seemed to get through)

Lotharsson - You are now definitely in the realm of attempted clearvoyance. (The dissappeard comment was to Andy S, essentially repeating #133)

Marcel Kincaid - Your comments here #74, 75, 140 & 142: I assume that you present the best arguments you have. For what? I wouldn't know, and couldn't care less.

Zibethicus - If you had a point (three citations? The Moscow?) I missed it

Andy S - When you make statements of statistical nature, you have to be concise. Otherwise you aren't making any statements (Quite a few people here seem unaware of that fact)

Jeffrey Davis - You are the first to address me as 'whore'

Chris O'Neill - I still owe you a comment. Too bad that such started to dissapear.

All - it seems that my wording now is the main topic (among those who aren't freely fantasizing)

> Lotharsson - You are now definitely in the realm of attempted clearvoyance.

I believe not. I rather suspect you have a comprehension failure again.

If you care to back up your claim and think it will fare better than your charge that I was "projecting", feel free to specify which words of mine are you referring to, and why do you think they were "attempted clearvoyance [sic]".

> Strange (some comments disappeard, the last one seemed to get through)

Strange ONLY when you deny or ignore the information people have given you about how the blog is moderated.

(Now where have I seen that process performed recently?)

> When you make statements of statistical nature, you have to be concise. Otherwise you aren't making any statements...

What an odd (and false) pair of claims.

"Precise" I could assent to; "concise" has nothing to do with correctness of claims or whether one is making a statement or not. Jonas, is your native language something other than English? That might fit with the hypothesis that you sometimes employ - shall we say - deeply idiosyncratic uses of certain words, which leads to certain communication difficulties when they are commonly understood to mean something other than your intended meaning.

Did you actually mean "concise" or were you aiming for a different concept?

Yah - Jonas missed the science debate and shouts from the back of the room how he has heard no convincing arguments therefore the losers should be awarded the prize money. And the high priest of climate science disbelief are indeed the losers. Sore losers at that. But they remain useful to the vested interests determined to avoid responsibility and accountability for the long term consequences and costs of widespread use of their products by their remarkable ability to mislead, confuse and bamboozle people like Jonas.

As the ships line up for their trip through the Northwest Passage, as the loss Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets accelerate, as extremes of weather reach new levels of extreme we have idiots like this one wasting our time.

I assume that you present the best arguments you have

You assume that because you're STUPID. As I have pointed out to everyone here, you aren't worth the effort.

What an odd (and false) pair of claims.

Not odd coming from that source of wrongness and stupidity.

"Precise" I could assent to

Please don't. Statistical statements do not need to be precise, or somehow become non statements if they aren't ... that's a complete lack of understanding -- even an anti-understanding -- of Bayesian reasoning.

145: Zibethicus - If you had a point (three citations? The Moscow?) I missed it

(end quotes)

Indeed you did. Strenuously, and repeatedly. I wonder how much effort it cost you.

'Bye, now, troll...

> Statistical statements do not need to be precise, or somehow become non statements if they aren't...

I should clarify: I wasn't intending to imply they become non-statements if they're not precise, although I can see how it was easy to interpret it that way. That argument would make no more sense than the claim that they become non-statements once they become insufficiently or unnecessarily brief.

To clarify the other half of my comment, it seems to me as a non-statistician that there's a sense in which the definitional part of a statistical statement needs to be specified well enough for the intended purpose (which I expect would often mean "fairly precisely"), even when employing Bayesian reasoning. (That's distinct from arguing that any probabilities assigned must be precise which I did not intend to imply.) Are you asserting this also is misguided?

1) I've just returned from SHS Symposium in Boulder, an absolutely wonderful event with a great bunch of people, including some of the world's best climate scientists. This was recorded and will be put up on the website sometime, I'm not sure when yet.

2) Meanwhile, over at CHE, while I was away, "Bottling Nonsense" has achieved 301 comments, although I haven't looked at the most recent ones.

3) PLEASE everybody, stop wasting time on those seriously afflicted with D-K.

Good grief, when Jonas N is wrong and in a corner, he just doesn't even notice it.

WG2? WTF?
Aerosols natural forcing? WTF*2?

I'm giving up, this isn't even funny anymore. Jonas N is the type that stands on a sinking ship and says "what water? Where? I don't see none!"

136 - Good grief. But it is hardly surprising that somebody so fond of playground sophistry should accuse IPCC of the same.

Tim, maybe you could start a new discussion thread about the Mashey piece?

Jonas N.

All you can come up with is:

>Bernard J - Who is irked? Who is wristflapping?... Frustrating, name calling...

after I [put some very specific questions and challenges to you at #120](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/08/rick_perry_peter_wood_and_the.p…):

>Jonas N, are you a climate scientist? If not, how is it that you know that they are wrong in their work?

>Are you a scientist at all? If not, why do you think that you can even begin to construct a case against the profession? Are you just dirty at John Mashey because he called you out in his guest piece? If you disagree with Mashey's meticulously detailed material, where's your own as-detailed counter-analysis? If you disagree with the significance of the implications of Mashey's and Deep Climate's work, where is your detailed rebuttal of such?

So you can't or you won't address those questions, eh...? You're obviously too stupid, too ignorant, too desperate to avoid real science, and/or just too bloody piss-weak to actually demonstrate even an iota of serious discussion that includes even a hint of substantive science.

Really, as so many others have observed, there's no further point engaging you.

You're just a full-of-shit pissant.

That's a terrible slur on pissants.

145. "first ... attention whore"

Ah, the beginning of a career. Break out the champagne.

Were it a stressful occupation, you could quit, but you seem to enjoy the work, the people, the déclassé social standing. It appears to be your métier.

And, at a certain level of skill, the pay improves. Then who'll have the last laugh? You will. Crazy like a fox, they say.

> Tim, maybe you could start a new discussion
> thread about the Mashey piece?

John Mashey mentioned "Jonas N" in the original post as one of the people who filled up three topics.

"Jonas N" showed the same ability to fill up this topic.

People may want to actually talk about the topic without responding to the filleruper guy.

What about it? One thread for "Jonas M" and one for conversation? His fans can follow him.

What Hank said.

And zoot FTW while we're at it.

This comment thread shows rather nicely why the implementation of "shadow threads" is needed. (Scienceblogs webmaster, kindly hie thee to work...)

BTW, expect no participation from the National Academy of Scholars folk on this; the fellow answering the phone said "we are currently paralyzed by the hurricane" - including no internet access.

(I'd called to solicit a comment from founder Stephen Balch on Peter Wood's efforts.)

A good column by Paul Krugman about anti-science Republicans, including remarks about Rick Perry's recent statements:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/29/opinion/republicans-against-science.h…

Lotharsson - Regarding the statistics, and as I've stated before: I read the IPCC words in the (for them) most favourable way. Meaning the lowest claims (actually made) at the lowest formal confidence level. That is exactly at the boundaries of their claim (as I see it). And I note that there is no support, no calculation for making it in WG1 ch 9. If any of you have read that this is established (not only claimed) elsewhere, please point me towards it.

And as I said, claiming even more certainty, for even higher levels is extremely difficult statistically. (Bayesian statistics is something different, it includes 'guessing how well you can guess')

My comment #136 finally appeared where I try to sort out the terms. Basically, when making a claim about some uncertain facts, you state two things: The interval or boundaries, and the associated confidence interval. In proper statistics, the two go together: widening the brackets (ie lowering the claimed precision) should infrease your confidence, when you have a description of the underlying statistics (which usually is the trickiest part)

And the IPCC made the claim that (not less than) half is due to GHGs, with 90% confidence.

And Andy S - No it is not a lower bound. Theoretically the true value can be negative, less than ½ or three times the observed or something else. You need to remember that we are talking about statistics. And here presented in a quite awkward (I'd say misleading) way. And additionally, presenting numbers (confidence, and intervals) not based on any science/calculations.

That is what I'm pointing out: There is no basis for the most cited and repeated IPCC AR4 quote.

(There are other, and some quite more severe problems with their 'statistics' but this is the simplest one to spot)

Marco - WG1? Picking at a typo? In the text they are a bit unclear where the aerosols are included or not. That's why I was wondering.

Bernard J - After some very dismissing and insulting comments about me, you asked a me bunch of (rather retorical) questions. Do I understand it correctly, that you now think I don't treat and respond to you politely enough?

Mashey - You may write "D-K afflicted" 10 or even 100 more times, and throw in as many 'anti-science' if you please. I am certain that it would please Kincaid, Bernard, chek, zoot, Zibethicus, Ken Fabos, Michael, Holly Stick and Emretsson. And me too! But for different reasons.

"no support, no calculation"

The IPCC is a series of reports intended for decision makers. Not a scientific paper. There are extensive footnotes for those sincerely interested. Your complaint is that it isn't everything for everyone. With a heavy heart, it must be admitted that the IPCC reports aren't everything for everyone.

More on Perry and other US governors who deny AGW while their states suffer its effects:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-linden-climate-201…

Hat tip to John at http://rabett.blogspot.com/2011/08/winds-of-change.html

Jeffrey D

You are right and you are wrong.

The IPCC purports to assess the best available science and summarize it in its reports. It does not carry out any science on its own. (Although it sometimes fiddles with the data).

So no, there is no support offered for it's foremost take-home message from the AR4. (Marco was the one claiming that). Although IPCC is quite wordy about how convinced they are that they are pretty certain, and the footnotes give more clues to that.

My complaint is that there does not exist any science that supports that specific claim. Or where it is even attempted to calculate such a confidence about the stated attribution. No such paper exists, noone has put his/her name to any such claim, and hence noone can read och check how it is arrived at or its premisses.

Ergo: The IPCC, which pretends to present the best science available, is in this case making that 'science' up.

Both the LA and NY Times articles linked to make for chilling reading. What is it with the U.S. Republican party that it's even flirting with the calibre of idiot religious proscriptive zealots that Rick Perry and Michelle Bachman are? Why is Perry's recent no effect prayer meeting calling upon divine drought ending help not being ridiculed as possibly the worst example of do-nothing Republicanism in action since Dubya's days?

That Romney is not willing to stand up and call out such nonsense says all that needs to be said about him. I'm sure there are tactical excuses that can be made for him, but cowardice is what cowards do. It's almost as if the U.S. desires dropping to third world status. And at that point it may well be filled with worthless pharisees such as Jonas here.

What I don't get is that while I understand that special interests (in this case oil) are running the show and may even believe that some inconvenient parts of science can be somehow decoupled from the rest of it, there are many other special interests who must be horrified at what one sector of the economy is planning to impose on the rest.

Obama may be a disappointment in terms of wider progressive expectations, but at least he represents a rational approach to majority governance. Dishonest fruitcakes such as Perry and Bachman can't even guarantee that minimum requirement.

I'll return the floor to Jonas 'two planks' N now, as I'm sure he's itching to regale us with one of his famous hilarity inducing tales about the second law of thermodynamics.

Jonas N consistently fails to make a distinction between there being scientific support for "Greenhouse gas forcing caused most of the observed global warming over the last 50 years" (which e.g Marco showed there is), and the question about how much confidence (e.g. "very likely") that scientific support motivates. It appears to me that he thinks that if he can cast doubt on the latter, then the former would also magically disappear. But there is a huge gulf between being skeptical about "very likely" and claiming that IPCC is "making that 'science' up".

JonasN,

You're just playing games. (As has been pointed out many times.) You're trying to stretch "no support offered" to cover a multitude of meanings. It's possible through the literature referenced in the IPCC to find the support you claim to require.

But, in fact, you're playing "sounds like" games throughout. It's a Limbaugh special. Take this shading of a word and that shading of another word and *hey presto* it sounds like you've made an argument. For example, your defense of the M&M special culling of their dataset to print their famous graphs.

"M&M picked an example that clearer (than average) showed the effect, the main reslut of the study, to illustrate it. Nowhere did they purport it was chosen entirely at random, or represent the mean HS-index. It is really hard to get upset over people showing what they want to show with an example where this is easily visible. "

Which is patent nonsense. Had they shown a graph of all of their data sets you would have had to get a jewelers loupe to see what they were talking about. They printed the graph they did to sell the idea that they weren't talking about a trivial disagreement over statistical methods. So, take a shade of this word and a shade of that word and *hey presto* it sounds like you're making an argument.

Andy S

I don't fail to make that distinction at all!
As I've already pointed out to both you and Marco, that phrase is very carefully worded, to give an impression which is not supported.

Everybody knows that the IPCC makes that claim. And figure 9.5 show it too. But if you actually read what they say, almost every argument in favour of the propsosition is based somehow directly or indirectly on simulations based on the very hypothesis they want to ascertain with those model-runs.

Nobody questions that IPCC puts forward the AGW-case. But a substantial part of report (and SPM) argue elaborately about how certain they are (stating confidences about all kinds of things).

And the presented numbers are made up, guessed at best. As I've pointed out. The other claims, less prominently flourished throgh the media, are probably (!) as arm-waived.

Jeffrey D

No, I am not playing games. And those who (repeatedly) made such claims are just wrong. If you claim there is solid support for that 90% certainty, and you've read it and understood, then please show me.

You are further wrong about the M&M curves. But that's a clompletely different issue. M&M criticized only one particluar aspect of the method. Rightfully so. Taken alone, the resulting difference was not that big.

I would rather argue that there is a lot of shades of words from the AGW-camp. Both in the science, the 'science' and the IPCC reports. And of course among the supporters (of all shades)

And I would expect so from activists, on both sides. But here, I am arguing only one particular claim: the 90% confidence. And that claim is either worldplay, colloquial talk about one's own beliefs. Or it is science.

I'd say the former!

Jonas N, yes you mix them up - otherwise your 168 would be inexplicable. By all means, continue your games of obfuscation and innuendo, but you can rest assured that people will see you for what you are.

Jonas N, as I've said before, nobody is that interested in your untrained misconceptions of how climate or indeed the IPCC works. We can already get the real deal from some of the finest professionals on the planet.

What we are interested in on this thread is why a prospective presidential candidate such as Rick 'maniac' Perry is listening to half-comprehended, blog-based drivel from the likes of Peter Wood, when he could have access to Santer, Hansen, Mann or any number of leaders in the field.

You know, the topic of the thread that you are studiously avoiding.

Peter Wood continues to crank out articles, but guess what he has yet to comment on?

08/26 http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/too-much-for-too-little/30220

08/24 http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/unnumbered/30196

08/23 http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/higher-sex-ed/30174

08/18 http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/do-college-administrators-misapp…

08/17 http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/subway-ride/30107

08/05 http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/investing-in-debt/30004

Andy S

No, you are the one not making the distinction between the two statments 'support for' and 'established with 90% confidence'

Sorry to need to repeat elementary concepts of statistics.

The hypothesis put forward 'supports' the claim, indeed is the claimed explanation. But when you want to go from there, and also make certain that it is (and nothing else can be) the true explanation, you have to walk a many (scientific) miles further.

The stated 90% confidence implies that this has been done. But it hasn't. However, it seems that this has sunk in, at least partly among some. And that the countering argument now instead is that I'm being shady with the words.

Well, with respect to that issue, I'm not. If I had been, you'd be tearing me to pieces (verbally)

Hey Guys

This is OT in our off topic discussion about the IPCCs certainty claims. Instead it deals with 'confirmation' of the almost absolute straight handle of Mann's original hockey stick. Look at this research paper (by Caspar Ammann and others) and marvel at what statistics can do to scanty treering- and other proxy data:

Look especially at Figure 4, p6 (596 in the journal)

Wow, just wow! ;-)

Shorter Jonas N.:
Hey everybody!
Look at me!!

Here's another thing I don't understand!

I've got a whole notebook full'of'em here!

I can drag this out for months!

Or years!!

And never once mention Perry or Wood!

I'm good, huh?

"Or it is science."

Not when you use "Wow" as an argument, son.

I think Jonas N would be happier if he was in a thread of his own, and I KNOW I would be.

Ah, jeffers, ever read up what ad hom means?

Or did your momma tell you never to do no learnin'?

re: 182

My mom taught me lots of things. One of which was to use my own name and to take responsibility for what I say.

Obviously, I didn't notice that a "clever" nom de net was being used.

So feel like doing so?

> Not when you use "Wow" as an argument, son.

Is not an argument, except in the trivial sense.

"What claims of an absolutely straight handle exist, Jonas?" would be one.

"Did you know that more than just tree ring proxies were used?" would be another.

The point is, kid, that when some blithering idiot turns up without a clue but an overwhelming programming to denial, there are so many ways they're wrong that "not if you're using wow" is bloody useless.

E.g. from the paper jonas here wants us to wow over:

> For example, the increase of CO2 may accelerate the growth of trees (e.g. MBH99), so that makes the recent relationship between tree rings and temperature differ from the past.

Would this be "hiding the decline" validation?

You betcha!

Now I was rather pissed off this morning so I shouldn't have jumped, but I didn't withdraw my post even though I made a big mistake because the barnpot here is so badly wrong the comment made was still pretty pointless.

Nail jonas down to what he's trying to say then nail his idiotic rereading of the facts to support his conspiracy theory.

THEN when he fails to get it, we can rip the piss out of him.

I suppose, though, it would still be a good idea to point out I made a mistake and jumped to an incorrect conclusion, Jeffers.

Better, KILLFILE him and actually discuss the original topic.

At this point, I'm entering 2nd-stage KILLFILE mode.

Wow

So are now you arguing that increased CO2 diminishes growth and treering widths? Or are you claiming that Li, Nyshka and Ammann made this argument?

And are bringing this up as a tentative explaination for the observed divergence, or for the fact that it needed to be hidden?

Curiouser and curiouser .... ;-)

But I rather wanted to point you at the extremely straight handle of the new stick. And if you had looked, you would have seen that the proxies are truncated sharply at ~1845 (end of the handle) from whereon the blade is only instrumental. Ie completely avoiding that oh so irritating subject you mentioned.

And if you really want to nail me, then all you had to do would be pointing me to that reserach paper, with named authors, where that purported 90% confidence is established using methods at least vaguely resembling science.

But as I've said before: I do require that you (or anyone else who points me there) to actually have read and understood it too.

Jonas N appears to be arguing that statements about likelihoods or about the strength of evidence for a theory or conclusion must be based on a formal statistical analysis, and nothing else. Otherwise, it doesn't matter how much evidence there is or how well-informed and experienced the people doing this very approximate estimate are. It's apparently completely useless. No, they shouldn't even try!

And of course Jonas N still haven't said anything about Wood and Perry. Complete silence. Nothing about Wood and Perry which kind of is the topic of the post. Nothing.

Andy S - What I'm saying is that the 'strength of the evidence' are identical or eqivalent to the likelihood or confidence' with which you can establish your proposed hypothesis, which you (erroneously) call 'evidence'.

And did you notice that you now are the one playng the shades of the words and their values!?

For example when you now say, that we should rely on the 'experience' and 'expertise' of those some call 'well informed, experienced people' and what they have to say.

But then we are actually fully aligned. You argue that we should trust them (because they are the experts), and I say I don't buy that, I want to actually see your arguments, calculations, what you base your claims on. The latter version is called (part of) the 'scientific method'

I can and will not hinder you in believing him/them anyway. But I will point out that you are telling me about your beliefs, and the IPCC about theirs. And we are not talking about science.

You are correct in that I didn't touch upon Perry or Wood. I can't see that those who'd prefer that are either. Perry is a non-topic (for me). Wood noted what has been extremely visible in this post and at CHE. Mashey and his tirades are tiresome, not much more. People wouldn't even attempt to summarize what it all amounted to, when I asked. Not many at least ..

Jonas, the observations, calculations, and conclusions are all out there.

If you wish to gainsay the result of the formal scientific process, you can participate in it by providing your counter-observations, counter-calculations and counter-conclusions.

If you wish to snipe at that process from the sidelines without providing anything concrete, your contribution remains worthless.

Jonas N:

Chris O'Neill - I still owe you a comment. Too bad that such started to dissapear.

How convenient.

Jonas N,
The evidence is there for everyone to see. If you want to do a different assessement of its strength, you are welcome to do so, but I couldn't care less.
If you want the protocols of their assessements, you should ask the IPCC.

Vince

The calculations are not out there. If they had been, at least some people would have found/provided them by now, more than four years later, so that methed, numbers and claims could have been checked. They can't!

The IPCC AR4 and SPM makes lots of claims how certain their statements are. Lots! But not based on a "formal scientific process" (Maschey likes to use the term 'anti-science').

And yes, I can participate, I already have:

You/IPCC/science cannot make statements about how confident one is about attributing an observation to a specific cause, when neither the observed process, or all other contributing cases are known, their statistics are too, and very well understood.

There you have it! Elementary statistics. Summarized in one sentence.

Vince

The calculations are not out there. If they had been, at least some people would have found/provided them by now, more than four years later, so that methed, numbers and claims could have been checked. They can't!

The IPCC AR4 and SPM makes lots of claims how certain their statements are. Lots! But not based on a "formal scientific process" (Maschey likes to use the term 'anti-science').

And yes, I can participate, I already have:

You/IPCC/science cannot make statements about how confident one is about attributing an observation to a specific cause, when neither the observed process, or all other contributing cases are known, their statistics are too, and very well understood.

There you have it! Elementary statistics. Summarized in one sentence.

"You/IPCC/science cannot make statements about how confident one is about attributing an observation to a specific cause, when neither the observed process, or all other contributing cases are known, their statistics are too, and very well understood. " - Jonas.

There you have it. Elementary gibberish. Summarized in one sentance.

Jonas N plays the "unknown unknowns" game. I assume he's sitting at home constantly being afraid of everything around him, 'cause there are all them unknown unknowns which may mean the atmosphere suddenly comes crashing down. And how he even dares to start his computer every day, I don't know. I mean, with all those electrons moving about and neutrinos coming in (do they exist even?), a black hole might just form right next to him, sucking him up!

Chris O'Neill - I'll respond seperately

Promises, promises.

Marco, I se that you too now have switched to just guessing a lot about things you cannot possibly know. With the expected result ...

Michael is in total denial (expected nothing else)

Rather like you're guessing about things you cannot possibly know.

Isn't that interesting?

> The calculations are not out there. If they had been, at least some people would have found/provided them by now

The papers with the calculations are available in the journals.

That you're too lazy and, since the only possible outcome is proof you're wrong, need to avoid looking, you state what you can't possibly know.

> The IPCC AR4 and SPM makes lots of claims how certain their statements are. Lots! But not based on a "formal scientific process"

Again a statement about something you cannot possibly know.

> You/IPCC/science cannot make statements about how confident one is about attributing an observation to a specific cause

And another.

If I note that you have in your hand a gun with one recently fired round, powder burns on your hand, and a dead body with one bullet having killed them, I can be pretty confident about what the cause of death was.

But again, you're talking of things you cannot possibly know about (in this case because your entire ego depends on not knowing).

> You argue that we should trust them (because they are the experts), and I say I don't buy that, I want to actually see your arguments, calculations, what you base your claims on.

That you don't want to look is a religious method, not scientific.

> So are now you arguing that increased CO2 diminishes growth and treering widths?

I never argued that it would. All I said is that the very paper you have indicate a vindication of the "hide the decline". Why are you unable to agree with this?

And are you saying that pollution and acid rain causes growth? Because you know that industrialisation had more than one effect (PS: ever considered that you haven't got all the information and effects, therefore your conclusions are incorrect?) on the atmosphere?

And are you saying that the miniscule increase of CO2 (an already trace gas) has significant effect on the planet?

Curious and yet more curious.

> But I rather wanted to point you at the extremely straight handle of the new stick.

But you haven't.

You merely made a claim that it was extremely straight.

> And if you had looked, you would have seen that the proxies are truncated sharply at ~1845 (end of the handle) from whereon the blade is only instrumental.

Not in the MBH98 paper, the source of your hockey stick "controversy".

> And if you really want to nail me, then all you had to do would be pointing me to that reserach paper, with named authors, where that purported 90% confidence is established using methods at least vaguely resembling science.

[Here](http://www.ipcc.ch)

Chris O'Neill (Below, the post I wrote several days ago, some parts now are repetition and/or sorted out)

I already explained what I meant, and still mean: The CO2 sensitivity, and the supposed feedbacks resulting from varying that one parameter.

Maybe you are bringing two things together here, because they usually are both denoted 'the climate sensitivity'. But it refers to 1) The response to a radiative forcing (regardless its origins), and 2) the response (usually the fast = decades) to a doubling in CO2.

It is quite reasonable to use the equilibrium states LGM/Holocene optimum to determine the (effects of the) first, and especially the ECS. But you still need to know what the forcings are and the feedbacks, and how they interact. You cannot determine the CO2 forcing this way (and it isnât done either), but more importantly you cannot quantify specific feedbacks.

You cannot(!) use it to determine what is cause and effect, meaning you cannot verify the nature of any feedback mechanisms by comparing those states.
The only thing you can do reasonably well is to assume that all transient effects and various feedbacks etc have played and leveled out.

By the way, that RC-post was about mice and bricks, the Queen and museums, springs in molasses, opinon pieces etc. You can hardly expect me to accept that as 'science literature'! And even less require that I should have read all RC posts the for six years before I post here to "stop wasting everyones time".

I might stop at some time (here, not generally), but I find the attitude 'Read what our PR-outlet bloggs have to say, and accept it. Or shut up!' a bit disturbing (=poor arguments)

Regarding the lag:

No it is definitively and very relevant if you want to establish cause and effect (an absolutely central part of real science). And it is another issue I have with the quite rudimentary description of the matter as determining one number (climate sensitivity). I understand that it is a convenient description, and useful for some simpler estimations too. But regarding it as the ultimate explanation and metric ruling how climate reacts to different inputs will inevitably lead to erroneous conclusions.

Essentially, the 'climate sensitivity' is a scalar, linearized description of how âthe climateâ is supposed to react to an incremental change in one parameter. Further, it assumes that those parameter changes can be translated to a corresponding 'forcing' and that then such forcings cause a response proportional to that forcing.
(I know, I'm simplifying a bit, but not a lot)

As I said, such a description might be useful to characterize certain aspects, primarly ascribing a number (=sensitivity) to small changes. But extrapolating those (even if you'd have the correct values) will once again mislead you in non-linear systems. As the climate most certainly is. And evidenced by the glaciations and warmer interludes. Formally, I'd say that 'sensitivity to a doubling' is a misnomer.

I could go on and be more detailed here, about why I am not convinced, but will wait for the moment.

Instead I point out that much of the that what you (and the IPCC actually are saying, that there exist two hypotheses with quite strong effects, but of opposing signs, and that empirically one only can observed them combined. And that this observation is substantially smaller than each of them (claimed!) separately.

What I am saying is that it is even more difficult to make claims about the magnitude of each two (assumed) large numbers if you only have their difference to judge them by. I am pointing out a measuring and precision difficulty to you. About how uncertain your resulting estimates will be.

And remember, you are still only trying to estimate magnitude levels to your different parts of a hypothesis.

Also, please donât attribute temp-increases to CO2 before CO2 levels increased by such numbers that they actually could have an effect (if the hypothesis were true. That would almost be the definition of anti science, reversing cause and effect)

Regarding cherrypicking:

No, I was talking about temperatures. Not 'a climate'. Temperatures are measure daily and reported monthly. They have not been playing along. As you say, for one individual month or even year, that may not be so problematic. But after a decade, the difference between observations and projections only increase, it becomes problematic. And you seem to be aware of that, judging from you prepared response ('cherry picking' and deflecting to âclimateâ)

Speaking of climate, and as you certainly know. It takes 30 years of weather observations to define a 'climate' for that period. And we can now say that we've observed the weather the last 30 years, so we can say something about the climate (for that period). And we can do the same for the preceding 30 years. And compare. And possibly note that there actually has been (quite little) climate change. Possibly due to humans, that's the hypothesis.

Bu now we are back to 1950. The GHG emissions started picking up ~in the 40:s so they at best influenced the final part of the previous 'climate observation' data point.
And it would be worthwhile comparing 'climate change' between those three data points where we actually have reasonably good observations. And see how (possibly) anthropogenic climate change compares to what most likely was natural.

Because you are right: It is quite difficult to make other than vague statements about climate, and climate change. That's why so much revolves around temperature records. And as you say, 15 years is not a lot. The 23 years from 1975 to 1998 (when CO2 and T actually correlated) are a little bit more. But then again, that is some 12 years ago now.

>Bernard J - After some very dismissing and insulting comments about me, you asked a me bunch of (rather retorical) [sic] questions.

[My questions](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/08/rick_perry_peter_wood_and_the.p…) are not rhetorical. They are extremely pertinent, and the fact that you are shit-scared to go anywhere near them clearly demonstrates that you have no substance at all behind your poorly spelled and badly contructed blather.

You want a rhetorical question? Here's another - what was God thinking when He made you so ignorantly stupid?

>Do I understand it correctly, that you now think I don't treat and respond to you politely enough?

No, you do not understand correctly.

Unsurprisingly.

I don't "think" anything about how you "treat" me, or whether you "respond to [me] politely enough", and I have never raised on this thread (or anywhere else) either issue. You are erecting a strawman, and then setting fire to it in order to create a smokescreen.

That is very juvenile of you. To put it politely.

> Regarding the lag:

> No it is definitively and very relevant if you want to establish cause and effect (an absolutely central part of real science).

So where is the 2-3C temperature rise 800 years ago for this previous causation of CO2 rises?

We have CO2 rising and THEN temperatures rising. This is the correct lag for the causation.

> But regarding it as the ultimate explanation and metric ruling how climate reacts to different inputs will inevitably lead to erroneous conclusions.

Really? How? Or is this another thing you don't understand, but feel the need to pontificate on?

> Regarding cherrypicking:

> No, I was talking about temperatures. Not 'a climate'.

Then you're Off Topic and irrelevant. This is about climate, idiot.

> Temperatures are measure daily and reported monthly. They have not been playing along.

Really? So you've taken into consideration ALL the factors and found that the climate science is wrong?

WHICH effects did you take into account to produce this assertion?

Or did you, as we all suspect, take the CO2 as the only factor, like so many denialists do?

> And possibly note that there actually has been (quite little) climate change. Possibly due to humans, that's the hypothesis.

And the hypothesis works better than any other.

Which hypothesis do YOU propose, and how does it stack up to the record?

> And it would be worthwhile comparing 'climate change' between those three data points where we actually have reasonably good observations.

1950's to 1940's is ten or twenty years at most. You've already stated that you need 30 years. Already you're making shit up you know is wrong.

> And see how (possibly) anthropogenic climate change compares to what most likely was natural.

This has been done.

Natural effects are not the cause of the majority of the temperature change, 78% of which is explained by CO2's effect.

> The 23 years from 1975 to 1998 (when CO2 and T actually correlated) are a little bit more. But then again, that is some 12 years ago now.

The 23 years extends another 13 years and CO2 and T actually still correlate.

PS two more points for barnpot here:

1) 12 years isn't enough to proclaim CO2 and T don't correlate

2) 1998 temperature doesn't correlate with CO2, so including it is incorrect. Try again without 1998. If you dare.

Jonas N, you read like an open book. You proclaim loudly that there are unknown unknowns, and thus that the certainty proclaimed cannot be such, because of these unknown unknowns.

And yet, I am certain you do not apply this same thinking to most of the many, many other aspects of your life. My sarcastic examples I do not doubt you have not even considered. You consider them "unimaginable" in terms of likelihood. And yet (yet again), there are so many unknown unknowns! So, how can you ever put a high confidence in these matters? If you follow through with your thinking, you either have to admit you apply your likelhood-principles very skewed, or just admit this has nothing to do with likelihood, and everything with your ideology not allowing for greenhouse gases to be the main responsible for warming in the last 50 years.

Of course, the fun thing is that people who argue the latter, essentially admit that if it *were* true, something *has* to be done. Why else the desire to not want to blame CO2 emissions for the recent warming?

Wow - Yes, I make a faslifiable claim:

The calcuations do not exist. My claims have not been falsified in the four+ years since AR4.

If they do exist (did exist in 2007) one simply has to show them to me. And my claim is falsified.

The rest of you post is very confused .. about 'vidication' about 'not possibly knowing', 'my entire ego', 'religious methods' why I showed you that paper, about 'guns, deaths and gunpowder' etc .. It's nonsens and I'll leave it at that.

But I'll make a more pointed claim:

You (and others) tell me repeatedly, that those calculations exist, that they are available in the journals, that the levels of confidence indeed are based on proper science. You (plural) make that claim!

How do you know? Have you seen them, read them, understood them? Do you actually know which ones they (supposedly) are?

Because if you don't, you are just guesssing! Well, 'Lying!' some people would say here. But definitely making things up on pure faith. And thats what I am actually accusing you of: Of not knowing! Of merely guessing'

You could prove me wrong (falsify at least part of this) in one instant! But instead everybody is beating around the bush .. complaing about other things!

Because you are completely (and stupidly) wrong:

I am the on wanting to look at the science. That's why I'm asking about where it is!

Got it?

> The calcuations do not exist. My claims have not been falsified in the four+ years since AR4.

The calculations exist in the IPCC papers. Your inadequacy in reading the report is not my problem.

> If they do exist (did exist in 2007) one simply has to show them to me.

One simply did. It's in the IPCC report. There are many places that make statements about the confidence limits so there is no single place to point you to. The answers you insist you want are in the IPCC.

The plain fact is you don't want to look.

> How do you know? Have you seen them, read them, understood them?

Yes. Since I, unlike YOU, have read the IPCC reports.

> And thats what I am actually accusing you of: Of not knowing! Of merely guessing'

Yet you guess (and provably incorrectly) about many things.

All of which you ignored as if they were unimportant.

Except they're not.

When you're complaining that we can't know X, your assertions that YOU know X are proven lies.

> I am the on wanting to look at the science.

If you had, you would have not made claims you cannot support. Like, for example, the lack of concordance between CO2 and T.

> That's why I'm asking about where it is!

Except you aren't just doing that, are you. You're making claims, and ignoring any request to back up your claims by the "Look! Flying Monkeys!" gambit.

>No it is definitively and very relevant if you want to establish cause and effect (an absolutely central part of real science).

Real science? This is what real science shows:

[Cause](http://www.greenpeace.org/international/ReSizes/ImageGalleryLarge/Globa…).

[Effect](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeYfl45X1wo&feature=player_embedded).

[Result](http://www.scar.org/images/news/Global_Temp_2007.png).

>I could go on and be more detailed here, about why I am not convinced, but will wait for the moment.

You don't need to wait - I'll tell you now.

You are scientifically illiterate, and ideologically blinkered.

Oo, and you're a bandwidth-consuming troll. To make this at least partially relevant to the thread, I dare you to select what you think is the most significant weakness in John Mashey's work, and expand in detail on it. Then we'll see what you're really made of - as if we didn't already know.

Marco - You claimed that AR4 contained the calculations. Please show me! (And #205 is about you too!)

Bernard J - You were and are complaining about me not taking you seriously. But you got that one right, I aint't! Your esteem of how "extremely pertinent" your questions are, is somewhat misguided. Your fantasies are generally and totally wrong.

Wow - In your case, stick to one issue #205 (and start behaving as if you were grown up, please) Apart from being rude, you stack up so many logical fallacies making it very hard to take you seriously.

If we are realy lucky Jonas will tell us all about "errorbars".

That's possible too obscure.

Here's our friend Jonas over at Bishop Dill;

"Michael, and you are still unaware of what can be said with any certainties about previous temperatures ... you seem to believe that because there is a curve somwhere within those errorbars, ...
It is quite obvious that you don't have the slightest clue about statistics ...As if you had no clue about what an errorbar is"

> If we are realy lucky Jonas will tell us all about "errorbars".

It's where Jonas picks up errorwomens.

> Marco - You claimed that AR4 contained the calculations. Please show me!

I gave you the links. The calculations are in the IPCC report. Try reading it.

> Wow - In your case, stick to one issue #205

So everyone must obey YOUR commandments, yet you are free of any restriction?

You made proclamations about things you have never yet substantiated.

E.g. your assertion that CO2 and temperature rises no longer accord.

I can't believe anyone honest can be as thick as ol' two planks here, but is Jonas really saying he hasn't noticed the meticulous referencing to the actual scientific papers in the IPCC reports?

That same lack of real inquisitiveness would explain the reliance on rubbishy blogs for his information on climate that Peter Wood is channeling to Rick Perry, the Texan moron. No wonder Wood bleats about thuggery when he parades as primary information tired, second hand, tainted, made up think tank talking points instead of real science.

National Association of Scholars?

I don't think so.

National Distributors of Corporate Supplied Rubbish, I would believe.

Jonas N, I already pointed you to the section which points out the papers in which attribution studies are reported.

You are looking for the science, you say. Well, it's right there.

Jonas, you whine:

> And if you had looked, you would have seen that the proxies are truncated sharply at ~1845 (end of the handle) from whereon the blade is only instrumental.

But looking at the paper you claim to have read and understood:

+++
2. Data and methods
2.1. Instrumental and proxy data
Motivated by the recent discussion of uncertainty in the MBH99
reconstruction (North et al., 2006), we illustrate our statistical
procedures for the purpose of this article by restricting our network of proxy records to the 14 series originally used in MBH99
for the period back to the year 1000
+++

So you picked out a paper that said it was purely looking at proxy data, not instrumental, and then complain that it's purely looking at proxy data, not instrumental...

Moreover, you pick a paper that isn't looking at or for any hockey stick, but is looking to see how well proxies measure temperature and how wide your uncertainties have to be to reflect the data correctly, and complain that it doesn't include the blade of the hockey stick which it isn't looking at...

Tim, "Karl" at 216 is a spamming fraud.

Marco - No, there are no calculations, there is no science carried out in the AR4. The A stands for assessment.

If you claim that the 90% figure comes from one or two specific papers, do tell me! But make sure that you have read and checked it before. Your initial claim was false.

Wow - No, there are no calculations, there is no science carried out in the AR4. The A stands for assessment.

Wow - I wasn't complaining. I was showing you guys a paper totally on your side, 'confirming' what you believe to be true.

I bet (many, if any at all of) you hadn't seen it before . It's true, my recommendation was slightly tounge-in-cheek, and maybe you missed that or why. So why don't you read it so you can tell for yourself.

Your last paragraph is priceless: You say about that paper creating pseudo proxies everywhere but for the instrumental record period that it is "a paper that .. is looking to see how well proxies measure temperature".

Wow again! ;-)

And as expected, Jonas N refuses to read the relevant papers. We need to show him. But when we do, Jonas N starts complaining about the next thing. The Gish Gallop exemplified in all its gory idiocy.

> No, there are no calculations, there is no science carried out in the AR4. The A stands for assessment.

There is science IN the AR4.

It's an Assessment of the Science.

And any papers in WG1 that were used in the assessment, they are referred to in the reference section of WG1.

> Wow - I wasn't complaining.

Yes you were:

> And if you had looked, you would have seen that the proxies are truncated sharply at ~1845 (end of the handle) from whereon the blade is only instrumental.

Is a complaint.

You're complaining that the proxies end in 1845.

> I bet (many, if any at all of) you hadn't seen it before .

And?

> It's true, my recommendation was slightly tounge-in-cheek, and maybe you missed that or why.

Nope, your recommendation is ridiculous.

> You say about that paper creating pseudo proxies everywhere

No I don't.

> but for the instrumental record period that it is "a paper that .. is looking to see how well proxies measure temperature".

No I don't.

Marco - No! On the contrary! I am asking which one(s) are the relevant papers! But it seems you have no clue! I liked 'Gory idiocy', though!

Wow - I take it you don't have a clue either. You are just guessing desperately, and hoping that it is in some of them. And you sound like you are only reflexively talking back .. It is getting a bit tiresome.

I have been asking the same question about a dozen times, for several days now. I've asked others at other sites for years.

So, it seems quite obvious that none of you here knows where to that 90% confidence (of the main AR4 claim) supposedly is calculated properly.

Because, as I said, if you had known, you would have torn me to pieces .. and had a good laugh too!

Well, I think you really need a good laugh, some of you desperatly judging from the comments ... Only not this time.

> On the contrary! I am asking which one(s) are the relevant papers

You're stating that you know they don't exist, but you haven't read Chapter 9. The papers are in there.

> And you sound like you are only reflexively talking back .. It is getting a bit tiresome.

Yes, we know you are, but what are we?

> I have been asking the same question about a dozen times, for several days now.

And you've still not read chapter 9.

This proves you don't want an answer, you want to proclaim that the answer doesn't exist.

Marco,

Didn't you know that it is your responsibility to spoon-feed Jonas?

> Better, KILLFILE him and actually discuss the original topic.
> At this point, I'm entering 2nd-stage KILLFILE mode.
> Posted by: John Mashey | August 30

That would be killfiling all the people hooked by the trolling, as well as the original troller?

Yeah! Then those who've done that can continue to talk about the topic. Pity it works on a blog-wide basis. But it's temporary. (Hoping Tim gives the irresistable attraction his own topic)

Michael, I know. But I won't. But I do have a challenge for Jonas N:

Calculate it yourself. There. Can't? Then you would not even be capable of evaluating whether it WAS calculated correctly, and hence no use pointing you to the relevant papers.

Can? Well, show your calculation! Relevant data is provided in the IPCC chapter, with additional data in the references if needed.

It is extremely like (>95% probability) that Jonas N will not be able to rise to this challenge.

Figure 9.9 in WGI, AR4: Estimated contribution from greenhouse gas (red), other anthropogenic (green) and natural (blue) components to observed global mean surface temperature changes, based on âoptimalâ detection analyses (Appendix 9.A).

re: 222
Yes.

Ok, held up in moderation. Let's give it another shot.

Fig 9.9 c in WGI, as already pointed out by Marco a long time ago.

"Estimated contribution from greenhouse gas (red), other anthropogenic green) and natural (blue) components to observed global mean surface temperature changes, based on âoptimalâ detection analyses (Appendix 9.A)."

http://www.ipcc.ch/publications\_and\_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-9-9.html

Andy S, yep, Figure 9.9, the rightmost column marked 'EIV'.

The same story told in a different way (which I like more) is Figure 9.10, the column for the decade starting in 1990, where the confidence interval lower bound of 5% lies well above half the observed anomaly, for all models save one and for the AR4 ensemble... but, as it says in the caption to Table 9.4:

"Note that our likelihood assessments are reduced compared to individual detection studies in order to take into account remaining uncertainties (see Section 9.1.2), such as forcing and model uncertainty not directly accounted for in the studies"

...which is why they only say 90%.

Figure 9.10 is from Lee et al. 2006. So, there are multiple sources for the claim, but you have to understand them and how they back the claim. I'm sure there's a moral lesson in there somewhere, but I'll leave the guilty to draw their own conclusions :-)

Back to the original topic:
for some reason, peter Wood has yet to reply @ CHE regarding Bottling Nonsense, although he is still holding forth at:

http://www.nas.org/polArticles.cfm?doc_id=2121#Comments

John Mashey,

Again thanks for all you do-- for shining the bright light of truth on lies and misinformation put forth by charlatans like Wood et al..

Sad to see that so many have been taken in here by the trolling of a troll, who IMO has some similarities with Nigel Persaud.

Is it true that GMUâs accreditation renewal is currently under review by SACS (H/T to TaylorB at DC's place)? If not, it should be after this fiasco.

re:228

Wood's response seems designed to drive reasonable people into a frenzy. He says things like "I have made a determined effort not to rise to the often silly provocations that Mashey and his coterie of like-minded champions of Professor Michael Mann have posted." Which is, if you're completely misanthropic, comic in its contradiction.

I am, btw, almost completely misanthropic. One reads Wood and thinks, "What is Man that Thou art mindful of him?" That I can still get angry, I hope, indicates that I haven't completely lost it.

Wood's method remains proof by assertion. And, trying to sound as prissy as William F. Buckley.

Re 288:

So Wood's source for one of his "thuggery" stories was Rush Limbaugh? Holy cow!

re: 229
Thanks.
re: accreditation:
Read Nature, carefully.

"Perhaps it should fall to accreditation agencies to push for speedy investigations. Tom Benberg, vice-president of the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools â the agency that accredits George Mason University â says that his agency might investigate if the university repeatedly ignored its own policies on the timing of misconduct inquiries. To get the ball rolling, he says, someone would have to file a well-documented complaint."

In general, when people file academic misconduct complaints, neither the complainants nor the receivers generally talk about them, at least for a good while. Had one or more people filed complaint(s) on this one, it would not be public.

This suggests that a decision will occur December 2011.

OK, Wood claims that his source wasn't Rush Limbaugh.

Andy, Woods has appeared in comments claiming his source was not Limbaugh - but declining to name one.

He also charges ad hom on the part of the critics of his claims, for example asserting:

> Note that Adler's attack on Carlin is also ad hominem.

That seems blatantly dishonest, at least if it is meant to refer to Adler's comments on the same post because Adler says:

> He claims falsely, that Greenland ice melt is not accelerating, that global temperatures have been decreasing for the last 11 years, and that changes in solar radiation are the dominant effect causing global warming. All of these ideas are untrue; and the EPA correctly refused to propagate them by publishing them as part of the report.

These are clearly NOT ad hom, even if other comments might be considered so.

This seems to be part of a pattern of Wood preferring to ignore or deny of all of the legitimate non-ad hom criticism. It doesn't help his credibility that he approvingly cites "The Hockey Stick Illusion" in support of some of his claims.

He also asserts that it is an "extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary proof" to claim that:

> ... the well-attested Medieval Warming Period didn't exist (or was merely local to northern Euope); that the warming in the 20th century is historically unprecedented; and that the current warming is rising at a precipitous rate.

That's a rather interesting set of claims for someone who says he doesn't know whether science supports ... well, mainstream climate science on AGW - especially the MWP assertion, which indicates that he's bought into MWP denialism in opposition to his own stated principles.

And he dodges the issue of scientific support (or otherwise) for these claims, instead preferring to go for:

> In the case of Michael Mann's assertions, however, many of his supporters seem to think his extraordinary claims require only extraordinary non-disclosure and a whole lot of vehemence.

So he seems to have basically bought into almost the entire standard "The hockey stick is broken" denialism position too - and completely disregarding any research that has taken place in the dozen+ years since.

And of course his schtick is predicated on a "my word, what an uncivilised tone they use" tactic - which seems to me to be basically used by him as a form of ad hom fallacy.

In fact, he sounds a heck of a lot like Joanne Nova to me in her use of ad hom and promotion of unsupported scientific claims, whilst loudly proclaiming that ad hom is only used by those with no support for their argument and that we should only respect the quality science.

The Cullen "thuggery" story originates from Marc Morano.

http://rabett.blogspot.com/2007/01/mighty-wurlitzer.html

Jonas N:

require that I should have read all RC posts the for six years before I post here

Where did I say "all RC posts for six years"? You're just a shameless liar.

Chris O'Neill - Quit whining!

You didn't write "all RC posts for six years" but I told you what your demand would have required:

You told me not to 'waste people' time', even not to post any more(*), before I had read what you thought to be relevant, linking to some leightweight RC-explanation/analogy directed at laymen.

(*) "Obviously you didn't bother carefully reading what realclimate had to say on the subject. Stop wasting everyone's time and don't post anything more until after you've read what they have to say"

Martin Vermeer is the first one to actually point to a reference. Good! It deserves and answer, and I have read it once. Will again. I'd say it doesn't attempt to justify the IPCC-claim, but as Martin V puts it: It gives support to .. As does of course every model-simulation run (which is not the issue).

But the beef still is: How can one (the IPCC) acertain that the models actually do capture everything relevant, and thereby explain what is observed with such high certainty?

> You didn't write "all RC posts for six years" but I told you what your demand would have required

Only because you're an idiot

AND STOP WHINING.

> But the beef still is: How can one (the IPCC) acertain that the models actually do capture everything relevant, and thereby explain what is observed with such high certainty?

[By being accurate](http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/hansens-1988-proj…)

Wow - Usually I asume that people use the best arguments they have (left)

Seems like you can't read, then.

The Hansen model predicted correctly.

Therefore the model is reliable.

Or *was* that your best argument, Jonas?

Jonas,

As a senior scientist watching from the sideline, your ducking and weaving strategy is clearly obvious, as is your singular obsession with the Nature article by Mann et al. (1998). Given that AGW was recognized as a serious potential future threat to the environment for at least 10 yeare before that paper came out, what aspect of climate change science were you obsessing on during that time frame?

More importantly, Bernard posed a straight question to you that you have repeatedly ducked. That is, what exactly are your qualifications in the field of climate science, or, if that is lacking, in any field of science? This is an important question. I am very cautious when venturing well outside of my own field of research (population and evolutionary ecology of plant-insect interactions) and if you are indeed doing so in this discussion, then it is little wonder that your screeds are ignored. I am not saying that you cannot, or should not have an opinion in the field, but instead that your views should be ignored completely, as they clearly are outside of web logs. Most importantly, if you think that you have something of value to say in debunking papers like Mann's or those by others, put up or shut up and try to get something published in a peer-reviewed journal. I have had several to-and-fro's with denialists over the years (one good example was the Thomas et al. Nature paper projecting extinction rates caused by climate change) and they typically make a lot of big noise about papers they hate but when I suggest that they write rebuttals, they are never heard from again.

This is hardly new - it's the standard denialist refrain. My guess is that most of the 'rebutters' don't even try and write up their rebuttals for scientific journals, but instead use the argument that 'peer-review is biased' as an excuse not to do so. So, Jonas, have you written up your arguments as an article and submitted them to a journal yet? If not, why not?

Jeff H

If you want to point me to any real science supporting the IPCC AR4 claim (90% confidence), feel free to join in.

And regarding MBH98, you must have been missing what is being discussed here. Singlar obsession? Is this a copy-pasted comment (you've used earlier)?

I already stated what the issue is/was with Mann in #85. And as Mashey et consortes so clearly demonstrate, the obsession with defending, or covering for, or diverting, or attacking critics is quite noticable on the CAGW-side. That's what Wood noted, and that's why I asked what they hoped to accomplish by that.

I am not taking Bernad J angry emotional rantings seriously one second. If you are a level headed guy, I'm sure you understand. But even you seem to bolster a narrative with the d-word. Why is this so central to many of you?

But if you forgive me for changing the subject, and since you talk about the extinction rates (due to global warming?). I could ask you a few questions out of pure curiosity:

1) What is the assumed rate of species extinction at present?
2) What would be the natural ((w/o humans) extionction rate, to be compared with?
3) What is the natural rate of new species evovling, and
4) What is that rate in the presence of humans?
5) And if known, what combination(s) of the above would be
good metric(s) to compare different scenarios by?
6) How does one establish any of these numbers confidently (especially the onse for the 'pure natural alternative world')?
7) How many documented species have gone extinct since man started categorizing and keeping track of species.

I have no answerto almost any of those questions, very much a sideline bystander. And if you have no interest in talking about climate, the politics and activism around it, checking up on the science and purported scientific claims ..

.. maybe you want to talk about something closer to your field?

> If you want to point me to any real science supporting the IPCC AR4 claim (90% confidence), feel free to join in.

Model accuracy.

> I already stated what the issue is/was with Mann in #85.

Which was:

> I don't care that much about MBH98, I think it was a crappy paper, widely overstating several things, flawed wrt methodology and proxyselection (and some more issues).

However, you've not managed to actually explain what it overstated, what the flaws were and what the "some more issues" were.

This is because you're clueless.

> is quite noticable on the CAGW-side.

Since you're the only one rabbiting on about CAGW, that would be your side.

> 1) What is the assumed rate of species extinction at present

Gish

It's irrelevant.

It's warming. We're the cause. There are consequences of warming. E.g. melting icepack. That causes extinction of animals who use the ice pack to breed or feed.

> I have no answerto almost any of those questions

This is because you have no clue, as I've pointed out earlier.

They also don't need questions.

If someone is murdered, we don't ask what the average age of the caucasian male is when we see someone with the murder weapon in their hand.

Folks,

Re the latest troll here at deltoid. You are mud wrestling with a pig and the pig is absolutely loving it. S/he is clearly here to provoke, antagonize and it probably doing so to solicit comments so that they can claim "look how mean and nasty those warmistas are"-- well yes we too are human and get annoyed with trolls, especially when provoked. There is no point arguing science with someone who repeatedly fails to back up their assertions and opinions with science, someone who is bogged down in ideology, someone who is clearly stuck in 1998, and someone who seems to think that they are omniscient.

Please focus on Perry and Wood. So, please try and ignore the troll and have a rational, informed and factual discussion about Wood and Perry. Anyhow, my two cents worth.

Jonas,

Before I address your queries re: extinction rates, I would like to say your response to my simple query (earlier posted by Bernard) is instructive. We asked what your qualifications are in (1) climate science, or, (2) any field of science. Your inability to answer these questions reveals that you clearly possess no scientific qualifications whatsoever. Many thanks for this information. To the rest of the readers here this supports MapleLeaf's latest post: JonasN has to wade into blogs with his utter drivel because he clearly has made not even the slightest dent into the scientific community with his zero publications. Now to answer your vacuous questions, with an afterthought:

What is the assumed rate of species extinction at present? BETWEEN ONE HUNDRED AND ONE THOUSAND TIMES THE NORMAL 'BACKGROUND' RATE OF EXTINCTIONS, WHICH WOULD BE ONE SPECIES/MILLION SPECIES/YEAR. INDEED THIS IS CONSERVATIVE: AREA-EXTINCTION MODELS OF EXPONENTIAL DECAY (E.G. SEE STUDIES BY McCARTHUR & WILSON, SOULE, TERBORGH ET AL) ARE BASED ON HABITAT LOSS ALONE AND THUS IGNORE OTHER ANTHROPOGENIC STRESSES (E.G. INVASIVE SPECIES, VARIOUS FORMS OF POLLUTION AND CLIMATE CHANGE) THAT CERTAINLY HAVE A NEGATIVE IMPACT ON BIODIVERSITY

2) What would be the natural ((w/o humans) extionction rate, to be compared with? THE NATURAL RATE IS BASED ON THE AVERAGE 'SHELF LIFE' OF A SPECIES. IN INSECTS THIS MIGHT BE SEVERAL MILLION YEARS, IN MAMMALS GENERALLY LESS, ALTHOUGH IT VARIES FROM TAXON TO TAXON. NATURAL RATES WOULD CLEARLY BE LOWER IN THE ABSENCE OF HUMAN SIMPLIFICATION OF ECOSYSTEMS ACROSS THE BIOSPHERE.

3) What is the natural rate of new species evovling, and 4) What is that rate in the presence of humans? 5) THE NATURAL RATE IS HARD TO CALCULATE BUT WOULD PROBABLY BE ON THE ORDER OF SEVERAL TO SEVERAL HUNDREDS OF SPECIES A YEAR, DEPENDING ON A WIDE ARRAY OF FACTORS INCLUDING THE GENETIC CONSTITUTION OF POPULATIONS WITHIN A SPECIES, THE SPATIAL STRUCTURE OF HABITATS/ECOSYSTEMS IN WHICH THEY OCCUR, COMPETITION (BOTH INTRA-AND INTER-SPECIFIC), A SUITE OF ABIOTIC FACTORS, AND OTHER LANDSCAPE-LEVEL PROCESSES COVERING DIFFERENT SCALES OF SPACE AND TIME.

And if known, what combination(s) of the above would be good metric(s) to compare different scenarios by? FACTORS AFFECTING LEVELS OF SPECIATION ARE STILL THE SUBJECT OF INTENSE DEBATE. STABILITY APPEARS TO BE IMPORTANT IN TROPICAL BIOMES, WHEREAS CHANGE IS IMPORTANT IN HIGHER LATITUDES. NO DOUBT THERE ARE MANY FACTORS INVOLVED. HOWEVER, AN IMPORTANT METRIC IS GENETIC DIVERSITY WHICH IS CERTAINLY BEING ERODED AS A RESULT OF COMBINED HUMAN-INDUCED STRESSES. IN OTHER WORDS, AS POPULATIONS DWINDLE, THEIR ABILITY TO RESPOND TO CHANGE IS ERODED BECAUSE THEY LOSE GENETIC VARIABILITY THAT IS A PRE-REQUSITE TO ADAPTATION. SMALL POPULATIONS ARE LESS WELL-ADAPTED TO A CHANGING WORLD THAN LARGER POPULATIONS.

6) How does one establish any of these numbers confidently (especially the onse for the 'pure natural alternative world')? NO ONE I KNOW OF IS CALLING FOR A 'PURE NATURAL ALTERNATIVE WORLD'. THE STATEMENT IS UTTERLY FATUOUS; WHAT CONCERNS SCIENTISTS SUCH AS MYSELF IS THAT THE HUMAN ASSAULT ACROSS THE BIOSPHERE IS REDUCING THE CAPACITY OF NATURE TO SUSTAIN ITSELF IN A MANNER THAT WE HAVE HABITUALLY TAKEN FOR GRANTED, AND, ULTIMATELY TO SUSTAIN HUMAN CIVILIZATION. WE ALREADY KNBOIW THAT HUMAN EXISTENCE HINGES ON A RANGE OF FREELY-PROVIDED ECOLOGICAL SERVICES THAT EMERGE OVER VARIOUS SCALES OF SPACE AND TIME AND FUNCTION ON THE BASIS OF A STUPENDOUS ARRAY OF BIOTIC INTERACTIONS IN NATURE. THESE SERVICES - WATER PURIFICATION, NUTRIENT CYCLING, POLLINATION, SEED DISPERSAL, PEST CONTROL, CLIMATE REGULATION, MAINTENANCE OF SOIL FERTILITY AND MANY OTHERS - WOULD BE WORTH TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS IF THEY WERE CAPTURED IN MARKETS. BUT SO FAR THEY HAVE BEEN EXTERNALIZED IN ECONOMIC PRICING. WE HAVE DATA AVAILABLE FOR SEVERAL SERVICES SHOWING THAT THERE ARE NO TECHNOLOGICAL SUBSTITUTES FOR THEM OR ELSE THEY ARE PROHIBITIVELY EXPENSIVE OR MUCH LESS EFFECTIVE THAN THOSE EMERGING FROM THE INTERPLAY OF BILLIONS OF ORGANISMS IN NATURE. WE ALSO HAVE LOTS OF EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE SHOWING THAT THE FUNCTIONALITY OF CRITICAL SERVICES - FOR EXAMPLE POLLINATION AND WATER PURIFICATION - IS BEING RAPIDLY REDUCED DUE TO HUMAN ACTIONS.

7) How many documented species have gone extinct since man started categorizing and keeping track of species. THIS QUESTION IS POSED IN A FEEBLE ATTEMPT TO SUGGEST THAT EXTINCTION RATES ARE LOW. THE ACTUAL NUMBER IS SVERAL HUNDRED, ALTHOUGH IF WE FACTOR IN CERTAIN EXTINCTIONS OF ISLAND BIOTA - SUCH AS ISLAND ENDEMIC RAILS IN THE PACIFIC THAT DISAPPEARED AS THE ISLANDS WERE COLONIZED BY POLYNESIANS 500-1000 YEARS AGO - THEN THE NUMBER WOULD GO WAY UP. THEY KEY POINT HERE IS THE VAST NUMBER OF 'UNKNOWNS'. FOR INSTANCE, THE NUMBER OF WELL-KNOWN SPECIES THREATENED WITH EXTINCTION (E,G, BIRDS, MAMMALS, VASCULAR PLANTS) NUMBERS IN THE MANY THOUSANDS (10-40% OF SPECIES IN THESE GROUPS ARE ENDANGERED OR THREATENED). BUT A SPECIES IS NOT FORMALLY CLASSIFIED AS 'EXTINCT' UNTIL IT HAS NOT BEEN RECORDED IN THE WILD FOR AT LEAST 50 YEARS. CERTAINLY MANY SPECIES IN THE MATA ATLANTICA FORESTS OF BRAZIL ARE ALREADY EXTINCT SINCE THE FORESTS WERE LARGELY FELLED IN THE 1950S AND ONWARDS. BUT IN THE LITERATURE THEY ARE STILL TECHNICALLY 'EXTANT'. THE UNKNOWNS I REFER TO IS BASED ON THE HUGE NUMBER OF SPECIES THAT HAVE DISAPPEARED FROM TROPICAL FORESTS WITHOUT EVER BEING FORMALLY CLASSIFIED. MOST OF THESE ARE ARTHR0PODS FOR SURE, BUT THE POINT IS THAT WHEN HABITAT IS DESTROYED, SPECIES AND GENETICALLY DISTINCT POPULATIONS DISAPPEAR WITH IT. THE AREA-EXTINCTION MODELS I REFER TO ABOVE HAVE GENERALLY UNDER-ESTIMATED EXTINCTION RATES. NOW EXTRAPOLATE THE LOSS OF MORE THAN 50% OF THE WORLD'S WET TROPICAL FORESTS, AND THE CONCLUSIONS ARE OBVIOUS.

JONAS, LIKE MOST CONTRARIANS I HAVED 'DEBATED', IS USING THE OLD TRIED-AND-TRUSTED TACTIC OF SUGGESTING WITH HIS QUESTIONS ABOVE THAT WITHOUT 100% UNEQUIVOCAL EVIDENCE, THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN-GENERATED EXTINCTIONS DOES NOT EXIST OR ELSE IS VASTLY EXAGGERATED. AM I CORRECT JONAS? I HAVE SEEN THIS STRATEGY USED TO DOWNPLAY A RANGE OF ENVIRONMENTAL THREATS OVER THE YEARS: ACID RAIN, OTHER FORMS OF POLLUTION, LOSS OF BIODIVERSITY AND CLIMATE CHANGE. DEBATING WITH PEOPLE LIKE THIS IS LIKE TRYING TO WIN A PISSING MATCH WITH A SKUNK.

So Maple Leaf is indeed correct. The debate, as it were, should be about Perry and Wood, and about how the corporate msm and its scientifically illiterate pundits are mangling science in pursuit of a brazenly political agenda.

Jeffrey

I would say that my qualifications i climate science rival most of the commenters here. I doubt that more than a very few have actively published anything coming close to climate science. I'd say that I'm more qualified reading the literature than many, and level with those few who actually do (and can keep their temper).

Heck, most of the guys here are incapable of having a polite civil discussion about things were we see them differently.

Most of you are even uncapable of correctly reading a statement, and must project a lot of wishful fantasies about almost anything else (not ever mentioned) instead, to somehow create, or reinforce some narrative about persons you don't know. You too, appearantly. Although you presented your self as 'senior'

It is utterly amazing: People who make a lot of loud noise about 'what the science says' are incapable of understanding simple statements in a blog comment of a few sentences, and instead must make up all kinds of 'explanations' to convince themselves of utter deslusions. I'll tell you: Such people cannot read a scientific paper and understand what it says. You need to keep your head cool and level for that ..

And yes, I'd agree that there is a lot of mudslinging and piggish behaviour here. Compulsory by quite a few who cannot refrain from insults, profanities and name calling. MapleLeaf syas this need is 'being only human' .. Indeed!

But you think that is acceptable, maybe? Well, to me it indicates immaturity and emotional instability.

...............

Thank you though for your answers to my questions. They were measured (apart from CAPITALS) until the end, when again some 'evil motives' needed to be implied, and the restraint of holding back all the insults once again became overwhelming and couldn't be kept in check ...

Unnecessary I'd say.

And I'd say one more thing, Jeffrey: Your way of interpreting the facts and statements you have in front of you, to try to construct a description of reality and how the world really is, how persons are or what they think, is not very scientific. Rather the contrary ..

I hope you do better in your professional life.

The pig is oinking arrogantly to tempt you to come and continue the wrestle. Please don't fall for it.

Jonas,

As any trained scientist, I tend to be very cautious when straying outside of my own field of expertise. In other words I defer to the opinions of the vast majority of my peers in climate science, who agree that humans are a major force in driving the current changes in global and regional temperature regimes that have been observed since the early 1980s.

Like many layman with an opinion, you apparently do not hold such reservations and instead write as if you were a sage of wisdom in fields in which, it is clear to me and others here, that you have little actual pedigree. If that gives you a 'buzz', so be it. But I have to admit I am always bemused when layman like yourself feel as if they have the necessary acumen to criticize the work of others with many years of experience in their fields. Hence the (correct) reference of you to the Dunning-Kruger study. Or, as Charles Darwin once said, "Ignorance begets confidence more often than knowledge". That sums you up to a tee.

You've shown that time and time again here with respect to Michael Mann and his co-authors (MBH, 98) in their article that was published in perhaps the top science journal, Nature. As a former Associate Editor there, I can say with assurance that the paper was almost certainly sent out to at least 4 referees and went through several rounds of external and internal peer-review before it was accepted. Yet you wade in here with your basic understanding of the field, ignore many other proxies that support their findings, and try to give the impression that you possess the wisdom that has somehow escaped many others with actual expertise and training. As I said in my last posting, if you are so convinced as to the authenticity of your arguments put up or shut up and send your enlightened comments to a rigidly peer-reviewed journal where it will be sent to actual experts in the field. Only then will we see if your ideas stand up to professional scrutiny. My guess is that your article will be rejected. Prove me wrong.

Until then you can huff and puff and pontificate all you want, but your ideas will only appeal to those who stick their fingers to the wind, or else those who see action to mitigate climate warming as a perceived threat to their way of life (in other words, they care little about the science and only about the effects of policy mitigation in terms of their own political beliefs - generally to the far right end of the spectrum). You claim to want a civil discussion in your first post here was anything but civil. What goes around comes around, pal.

Essentially, my advice to you is to go away. You aren't scoring any points by persisting here with your nonsense, and you are diverting the topic away from the thread's topic (Peter Wood's silly article in CHE).

Jeffrey H

You are most likely very aware of that 'climate science' relies on a very large number of various disciplines and skills, and general physics and understanding of statistics are central in many of those.

If you claim that 'climate scientists' play in a completely different league when it comes to such, or the scientific methodology in general, you would be wrong.

And then you once more make the same mistake: I am not impressed by MBH98, but that is not the central issue here, nor is it what I have discussed. And I am not ignoring anything. Instead I am doing what any real scientist should do: Check what the claims and the data add up to!

And in case you still haven't noticed: It is the IPCCs claim of certainty that I am challenging.

Quite a few have claimed that my challange is baseless. But none of them could provide any substance. One commenter (Martin V) actually provided a reference. Unfortunately, that one neither provides that certainty. (It deals with other things)

But maybe you've completely missed what I've been asking for the last week (or so)!? Definitely nothing about MBH98. Instead, I provided 'support' for it none of you had seen before!

Let me just make one more (quite pertinent) point: Here you come, present yourself as a senior scientist, former associate editor of Nature, and you need in the three first posts here to a colleauge you've never met:

1) Label him as 'denialists' and condone the worst kind of insults (Bernard J)

2) Constructing 'conclusions' from lack of evidence (no-reply to Bernard J), branding him as a 'pissing skunk' and 'drivel from a mudslinging pig' (by condoning MapleLeaf)

3) Again fantasizing what he actually claims, and try the Dunning-Kruger-afflicted meme to get him on the defensive. And throw in a lite 'right-wing-nut' too!?

Is that what you can come up with? Some people'd say that 'Nature' no longer is what it used to be. And if you indeed were indicative of what goes on there, I most certainly would agree. You couldn't even answer questions about your own field without throwing a fit (at the end).

Sorry Jeffrey, but impressed I am not. And you do condone the climate scare, didn't you!?

One final point: All those people who keep on posturing about rather wanting to talk about about Wood and Perry. They seem awefully eager to want to describe me instead. And hardly have a word to spare about Perry and Wood. Not even among themselves.

Maple Leaf has it about right.

I had a long interaction with Jonas over at his spiritual home â Bishop Dill. Heâd much rather waffle on about Mann, than discuss why Wood is critical of people who expose plagiarism, but not the plagiarist.

Not that you should expect much sense on that score either. His take on plagiarism is that itâs just âmissing quotation marksâ.

Dear Jeff,
How are you doing? I hope all that all-capitals stretches of text did not do their bit to raise your blood pressure! :)

Many of your assertions are wrong. Your assertion that the Mann 98 paper is good because you worked there as an assistant editor (and therefore have knowledge of its process quality) is feeble. Mistakes can occur anywhere.

Where is the non-bristlecone, non-contaminated sediment influenced, global proxy network that shows no significant medieval warming and shows no 'divergence' in the modern period?

*None* of the IPCC sphagetti graph curves have the same characteristics as the Mann stick. The IPCC either hides the decline, thereby invalidating the said proxy's ability to capture and reflect higher temperatures, or, the curve clearly shows a warm MWP - i.e., a non- hockey stick shape.

What is more, there is no clarity as to whether all the different reconstructions in the IPCC 6.10 graph - go hand in hand with each other, in terms of tracking temperature. Is one going up while the other is going down?

Look at Burger 2010.

From the discussion.,

By avoiding the (calibrating) instrumental period, and by using a fairly robust spectral measure for low-frequency performance, the above coherence analysis has uncovered several inconsistencies among the group of millennial reconstructions that figured prominently in the latest IPCC report and elsewhere. An immediate lesson from this is that simple visual inspection of smoothed time series, grouped and overlaid into a single graph, can be very misleading. For example, the two reconstructions Ma99 and Ma08L, which have previously been described to be in Âstriking agreement (cf. Mann et al., 2008), turned out to be the most incoherent of all in our analysis.

Then, further down,

Using inconsistent reconstructions to approximate the temperature curve has one particular visual consequence. Whether overlaying them in one figure or forming an average, the result tends to be a cancellation of larger amplitudes, because inconsistency here means to be indistinguishable from random covariations. Together with the mentioned synchronization through the instrumental calibration period, such Âsynthesis figures automatically resemble a hockeystick.

The kappa values from the paper make it abundantly clear, as does the hierarchical clustering analysis (which I hope, given your background, you are able to read) - the Mann, Bradley and Hughes' 1998 hockey stick curve is the least-related, and least-coherent graph compared to the others in the IPCC 2007 fig 6.10 set. Look at Fig 1 from the paper - Mann's curves are off to one side, all by themselves. MBH-98 has kappa scores of 0.37, 0.34, 0.38, 0.38, 0.31, 0.34, 0.44, 0.26, and 0.3, when compared to its fellow curves in the IPCC sphagetti graph.

Put in quantative terms, the Mann graph shows, not a single significantly coherent agreement, with any of its fellow curves. It is the least-related to its brethren.

Again,for your benefit, the kappa used, is not the same as the somewhat conceptually related k used in the medical, psychology and social sciences literature, usually to measure interobserver agreement.

It is not very difficult to find what is wrong with the sphagetti approach, even if you use your own judgement. Instead of a clear presentation of the various reconstructions, the IPCC plasters all of the curves on top of each other, virtually making it impossible to visually inter-compare the differences between the curves and instead creates a false impression of "agreement" - as pointed out skillfully by Burger above. The whole point of doing a high-resolution reconstruction is defeated by pasting over other reconstructions, that may vary in both magnitude of change, and direction of change, on top of each other.

Which reconstruction is the 'truest' representation of past climate - one can always argue about that.

But do the various reconstructions agree with each other with the Mann hockey stick? No.

Shub are you talking about MBH(98) or this paper??

At any rate, there is an Open Thread for this.

Back on topic - tell us about how plagiarism doesn't matter, or that the real issue is the exposure of plagiarism rather than its commission.

Jonas N:

You didn't write "all RC posts for six years"

I'm glad you admitted you lied. And take your own advice about whining.

Chris O'Neill

No, I didn't lie, and more than only a few have a real problem with using that word properly. And quite a few more words. Michael, for instance, with almost every one ...

Shub - Talking of reconstructions: Have you seen the one in #178, it is the best hockey stick handle (from MWP-denialism perspective) I've ever seen. I think it is so 'good' that even the AGW-crowd is not made aware of it.

*the AGW-crowd*

..meaning >95% of the scientific community...

Note how the non-scientific brigade (e.g. bloggers like Jonas) leave out this salient little fact.

Jonas: For the millionth time, why do you and other climate change *contrarians* (feel better?) rely on blogs to spread your gospel of doubt? Why is the peer-reviewed literature not filled with articles supporting your point of view? And I could care less what you think of rigid scientific journals like Nature et al. because of what they have published. Given that you are not a scientist (you have more-or-less made that little point abundantly clear) I can tell you that Nature has immense respect amongst the scientific community consisting of my peers. I am sure that many climate change contrarians (e.g. few of whom are actual scientists) don't like the large number of journals that publish articles supporting the already huge and growing evidence that the current warming event has a human fingerprint all over it. But, to reiterate, publishing articles in Nature or Science is regarded as a major achievement for any scientist. Your problem is clearly that you don't know many scientists, except those (like myself) you occasionally 'bump' into on blogs. Bernard is also a scientist as are several other posters on Deltoid. Methinks if you want to learn the 'state-of-the-art' in science you ought to go to a few conferences and workshops where these issues are debated and discussed. You've been hanging around the wrong crowd, Jonas.,

Shub: As I said to Jonas, where the heck is your published rebuttal to Mann et al. (1998)? Why is it that the denial brigade makes a lot of noise over the blogosphere but when push comes to shove there's a big, vast empty space in the empirical and theoretical literature?
To be honest, in hindsight its almost a shame that Mann and the others whose work supports his proxies ever published their work... like the creation/intelligent design lobby, its given the climate change denial brigade a huge handle to use as a metaphorical beating stick. The fact is that the tactics of the creation and climate change denial lobbies are alarmingly similar: Both publish little, if anything, in the peer-reviewed literature; both rely on finding holes in the published work of scientists as 'evidence' in support of their own views.

Jeffrey

Again, you are being quite careless with with the truth, with describing facts as they are, and also again you are trying to create statements about reality from thin air (ie with no factual base at all = Guessing blindly).

The figures circulating 97% (or 95%) usually refer to so called 'climate scientits' after having being asked som quite benign (=not very discriminating) questions about if its getting warmer and if mankind has anything to do with that.

You are creating a false dichotomy.

And no, definitiely not 95% of 'the scientific comunity' behave or sound like people here, instantly needing to switch to shouting down, ad homs and worse!

Among the 'hard sciences' I would be very surprised if even 5% take that stance. Also, among those the percentage thinking that climate change (or a possible anthropogenic part there of) thinking this is a real problem, requiring massive policy changes to be adressed is far lower.

Further, you asked Shub where the published rebuttals are? Well, as he said: The IPCC RA4 presents a spahetti-graph, wherein each of the presented curves constitutes a 'rebuttal'.

Because the thing is: They all purport to respresent the same metric, a global (or NH) mean temperature. And they don't coincide. Not even their error bars overlap.

There is one scientific conclusion to be made here: The methods used cannot establish true(!) historic temperatures with any confidence or relevance. Not yet, maybe never.
That at best, they should be seen as attempts to obtain such, but from far too insufficient data points, and relying on quite a few post hoc assumptions about proxy response and resulting signals, their ability to correctly pick up and represent spatial patterns etc.

You frequent referals to deniers, D-K, denial lobbies, creation/intelligent design lobby etc, indicate to me that:

1) You are not talking about the science, and

2) It is not the facts, reality, the science to establish knowledge about those, that is your primary motiviation. Definitely not here, and possibly it taints you even professionally (You do represent yourself as 'professional' here, and even Bernard J - just amazing!)

Jeff Harvey (not Jeffrey, sorry)

RE Reconstructions (contd)

Paleoclimatology and the methodologies used are nowhere near to beceoming established and reliable acertions of historical temperatures. Not globally, and not even locally.

And once more: Things having being puplished, words, sentences having appeard on paper, tentative 'conclusions' and words like 'unprecedented' or 'skill' having been found in the Discussion-section (or Abstract) don't thereby make them established facts. At best (if the underlying science) is sound and rigorous, and if it indeeds supports them) they should be interpreted as hypotheses, arguments put -forward to a wider audience. And evaluated on their own merits

The 'but it is published'-meme is one more false dichotomy. This is as true for prestigeous journals like Nature and Science as for all other science proffered ...

And what makes you the authority to make that proclamation, Jonas? Overwhelming arrogance? DK-effects? Brain defect?

Jonas,

You are finally making some reasonable points. But until you get off of your butt and attend some of the meetings I alluded to where these issues are the centerpiece of the discussion, you are way, way out to sea.

As a matter of fact, as part of my job, I do attend workshops, symposiums, conferences and the like, and frequently go to global change sessions where climate change and its effects on the environment are discussed. And one thing I can assure you as an 'insider' is that an infintisimally small percentage of the people with expertise in the Earth sciences are climate change sceptics. Certainly many of them have various quibbles with the way the data are interpreted and in predicting the outcome of this one-off 'experiment', but very, very few of them doubt the bmajor human influence on the current warming. These scientists are the silent majority; you would not know any of them, even though I do. By contrast, the very fact that the same names crop up over and over and over again in the contrarian circles should speak volumes, given the huge amounts of money and support given to this 'lobby' by the fossil-fuel, autmobile and other 'business-as-usual' corporate lobbies. A leaked memo from the American Petroleum Institute in 1997 (before Mann et al. was published, I may add) had argued that the climate-change denial lobby (for that is what we are dealing with here) was concerned that they had to rely on the same few scientists - meaning people like Lindzen, Soon, Baliunas, Michaels, Balling, the Idso's etc - the promulgate their 'point of view' in the climate change debate. Yet here we are, a decade and a half later, and the same band of sceptics are still the most prominent in the climate change 'debate', with a few new names for good measure. Note that their 'point of view'- referring to the API - was clearly not based on scientific 'truth', as hard as that is to find in such a complex field as climate science, but clearly on the concern that any measures to deal with climate change would affect the way that they do business.

And for some reason, although its well over 10 years old, here we have the sceptical punditocracy still harping on about Mann and the 'proxies' he used to estimate climatic patterns over the past 1,000+ years. Whatever the outcome of this debate, the bottom line is that the climate-change denial lobby are using this as a beating stick for the simple reason that if it is somehow proven to be 'flawed', then the other immense evidence in support of AGW will also crumble. This, IMHO, explains the singular obsession with Mann and the proxies. Why are the sceptics always an 'after the fact' brigade who do little of their own research but instead are constantly nit-picking over published studies in support of AGW?

Finally, the MWP has little relevance over what is happening today. The planet is the year 1400 was not nearly so dominated by a rapacious bipedal tribal primate that had slashed and burned its way across much of the biopshere. Many of the planet's natural systems had not been so profoundly simplified by humanity at that time; the per capita impact on nature by humans was a tiny fraction of what it is today. So the current warming is occurring against a suite of other human-mediated changes that are reducing the ability of natural systems to sustain themselves and, ultimately, us.

This is why I hold the climate change procrastinators in such contempt: they are willing to gamble on the future by trying to creat doubt over what we know or don't know about the current warming, and, more importantly, the rate of warming. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide are higher now than in millions of years; carbon dioxide is a potent greenhouse gas; largely deterministic processes are changing far faster than they shouold be without some kind of external forcing. Jonas and his acolytes may ne content to wait until 'all the data are in' before suggesting that we ought to do something, but given the lags in such large scale processes, by then it will be far too late to do anything about it. I prfer to take the stance that, even if there is only a 10-20% chance that the current warming is primarily due to human forcing, then we ought to do everything we can to mitigate it, given the profoundly serious consequences of inaction. I am well aware of the effects that collapsing ecosystems will have on humanity, even if people like Jonas are not.

"And what makes you the authority to make that proclamation, Jonas"?

A degree in cake decoration and membership of the junior debating society, perhaps?
All bald assertion and no actual data, that much is perfectly plain.

"A degree in cake decoration ... . All bald assertion and no actual data, that much is perfectly plain."

But with delicious butter icing!

Jeff H

I have been making sense the entire time. (I don't think you have been reading

And I believe you that there may be a 95% 'consensus' at certain meetings. But you said something very differently: "95% of the scientific community..." That's somethong very different.

I'm also quite convinced that among certains disciplines (outside atmospheric physics) the belief in the consensus is overwhelming, yours for instance. And in other relevant disciplines it is the reverse ..

However, that 'support' (by numbers) does not constitute any stronger argument the academics signing the Oregon petition. Belief is not an argument, not even when often echoed by the many.

Fossil funding, a leaked memo, huge amounts of money, corporate bussines, automobile, denial lobby etc .. ar all non arguments (but indicate where your 'conviction' comes from)

It is amazing how much (large fraction) of your posts read like CAGW-punditry. Maybe you truly don't understand why the the terms MWP (as warm as today) and 'unprecedented' have some difficulty coexisting intellectually.

And as I said, the MWP (and Mann's attempt to get rid of it) are far more problemativ for the alarmist side, than for the realists.

But thank you for expressing your 'contempt for the procrastinators' and their 'gambling with our future'.

I had already touched upon that implication in #97:

"The question:

'If politicians just were given sufficiently much money and power, could they then control the climate?' (In any measurable way)

.. is really a no-brainer!

But much of the debate sounds like people profoundly believe that the answer is 'Yes, yes!' "

Your last paragraph is a good example, and again it is only about utopic politics. And to conclude: Of the possible threats to biodiversity, climate change due to human CO2 emissions is almost last on that list ..

Jeff,
How is presenting the same weak arguments going to help your case? Going by your logic, nobody in the world can say anything about anything and everybody should be 'publishing' in a peer-reviewed journal as soon as they have something to say.

I don't have to publish a rebuttal to MBH 98. Others have. MM2005 directly addressed flaws in the paper. So did McShane and Wyner 2010. So does Burger 2010 (which I helpfully quoted). In fact, as Jonas points out, the entire set of published IPCC AR4 curves disagree with MBH 98. Moberg et al 2005 disagrees with MBH98 w.r.t extent of the medieval warmth. Ljunqvist 2010 shows a substantial medieval warm period, unlike MBH98.

I could indulge in rhetoric as well. I look at the climate consensus with contempt because they are willing to throw away everything based on the flimsiest of evidence.

See Jonas the quibbler - 'you said community not concensus'. The game anti-science fools love to play....all day.

But doesn't like to talk about Woods' whining that some people expose plagiarism...and even appear to think it's not a good thing!

Michael,

I was talking about the 95% figure, and comparing

1) Attendants at a meeting, a conference, and
2) The scientific community

Pointing out that these two are different, and that 95% of one set does not translate to 95% of the other. I' sorry that wasn't clear enough

> I don't have to publish a rebuttal to MBH 98.

SOMEONE does.

> Others have.

And have been shown wrong. Or is your argument that only the first rebuttal is allowed?

> MM2005 directly addressed flaws in the paper.

Sorry, it got it completely wrong. They used EVEN FEWER proxies and a method that reduced the accuracy even more. MM2005 has been rebutted as being EVEN WORSE than MBH98.

> So did McShane and Wyner 2010.

Who also got it wrong.

> So does Burger 2010 (which I helpfully quoted).

But they got it wrong too (though the rebuttal for that is only on blogs, since it takes time for a paper to go through acceptance).

Your quote was repetition of their paper. Not confirmation of the conclusions.

> In fact, as Jonas points out, the entire set of published IPCC AR4 curves disagree with MBH 98.

But didn't disagree with the CONCLUSIONS. Just got a slightly different issue.

You see, over here in science, we change according to evidence. Over there with you in denial, you don't. When once you have a paper that "debunks" a science paper, it is forever DEBUNKED.

No progression at all.

> Moberg et al 2005 disagrees with MBH98 w.r.t extent of the medieval warmth.

But agrees that the conclusions were correct: the recent (at that time) period was warmer than the MWP. And it's only gotten warmer.

> I could indulge in rhetoric as well.

You just did.

> Ljunqvist 2010 shows a substantial medieval warm period, unlike MBH98.

And Lundquist is right whilst ALL THE OTHER PAPERS are wrong for what reason?

Wishful thinking?

"MM2005 directly addressed flaws in the paper. So did McShane and Wyner 2010".

Well MM2005 only succeeded in getting published in E&E and basically pleased McIntyres fans. It made zero impact in scientific circles. And M&S2010 showed how out of their depth statisticians were who hadn't a clue about the science. Again, zero impact on the science. Life must be one long disappointment after another for your ilk.

I admit I've never heard of Burger2010, I presume that's the latest great white hope of the denialist cause. In which case I'm not holding my breath.

As for yout not understanding what the 'spaghetti graph' as you call it depicts, words fail me.

> 1) Attendants at a meeting, a conference, and

> 2) The scientific community

Yup, they're different all right.

95 (actually 97%) of scientists who could be expected to know agree AGW is correct and the IPCC conclusions broadly in accord with reality.

YOU want to be in the 1% that disagree.

Apparently, in your world, you ask your plumber about the computer on the fritz and the hairdresser about surgery on your heart...

I get the impression that the lives of some people would be very much emptier and less fulfilling if they had to let go of MBH98 AND move into the 21st Century...

This is not a global reconstruction, but ice core from centra Greenland (Grrenland Ice Core roject GRIP) and shows temperatures (there) for 50.000 years. Look especially at Figure 3.

These are actual temperatures measured down through a 3000 m borehole, to determine historic temperatures. Other similar recontructions exist. And the MWP-skeptics have somewhat feebly argued that Greenland is very local. And that the warm spells there most likely only heated an additional group of trees in England (H.Lamb) and som more local Eurpean and NH places/proxies.

Well, that's a hypothesis isn't it? And it is consistent with MBH98. Applying som Bayesian statistics, callibrating it whith TAR-data, it can probably be elevated to science (even nature?)

PS There was some irony in the above, but not all of it, I shoud add in case that was too subtle.

> This is not a global reconstruction, but ice core from centra Greenland

1) It's "central". Please try to show SOME level of actual intelligence.

2) It has nothing to do with Rick Perry or Peter Wood.

Thank you for your time, but take it to someone who cares.

Wow - I would expect that about 100% of those by the climate-orthodoxy acceptad as climate scientists agree, especially with their softball defintion of AGW. That some actually did not was a bit surprising.

Now, there are more scientific disciplines around climate science than defined by that narrow selection mentioned above.

But appeals to authority or consensus are still not science. And only a small fraction of the 'approved' climate scientist actually work with understanding the physics of how or climate works, and what controls and infuences it.

Still nothing about Rick Perry and Peter Wood?

Take it to somewhere that cares.

As to the:

> consensus are still not science.

The experiments people took of, for example, the photoelectric effect CAUSED A CONSENSUS that light was of particulate nature.

As with so much bollocks you're spouting, it's pointless dribble from an incontinent imbecile. Take it to some place that cares.

JMurphy, perhaps you would enjoy this comment

The IPCC RA4 presents a spahetti-graph, wherein each of the presented curves constitutes a 'rebuttal'.
Because the thing is: They all purport to respresent the same metric, a global (or NH) mean temperature. And they don't coincide. Not even their error bars overlap.

This is just garbage. The error bars in MBH99 at 1000 AD are nearly ±0.5 deg C. I don't know off-hand but I wouldn't expect the other reconstructions to be much better. So as long as the reconstructions are all within a 1 deg C band (and they are) then their error bands overlap. But what would we expect from a liar other than garbage.

Chris O'Neill All error bars do not overlap everywhere.

Further, those errorbars do not pertain to the real temperatures back then, mor tho the data noise and the method treating them. Otherwise, one could take all these reconstructions and see where they (and their error bars) actually overlap and create a much narrower reconstructs, that would be (!) more certain in its accuacy (that is, if each one of them truly were a solid, and correctly constructed attempt at the GMT.

PS You sound like you're losing it, a bit like Wow, Bernard, chek and the others.

Jonas: "You sound like you're losing it"

What is it with deniers and projection?

chek

MM2005 is published in Geophysical Review Letters. It is a publication of the American Geophysical Union.

> Further, those errorbars do not pertain to the real temperatures back then

Still nothing to do with Rick Perry and Peter Wood.

Try asking someone that cares.

> MM2005 is published in Geophysical Review Letters

And MBH was printed in Nature.

If where a paper is published is proof of veracity, you lose.

Wow,

Usually, when I post quoting someone's name, I am trying to respond to that person.

chek, above, claimed that MM2005 is published in Energy and Environment. That was, obviously, wrong.

*And only a small fraction of the 'approved' climate scientist [sic] actually work with understanding the physics of how or climate works, and what controls and infuences [sic] it*

So what Jonas is saying is that humans should keep messing with the atmosphere, clear-cutting forests, draining wetlands, polluting waterways et al. until "all the data are in".

By then our species will be virtually extinct. Only an accredited moron could make such a fatuous remark as our resident troll.

Re: Mann et al. (1998): 747 citations. Mann et al. (1999): 708 citations. McMcK 2005: 35 citations (WoS). This should explain to all and sundry whose study is more respected in the peer-reviewed literature. Heck, I have a paper on parasitoid development in 2005 with 47 citations on WoS; in such an important field as climate science it shows that the proxies of the denialists are being largely ignored. Why is this? Its because the vast majority of the scientific community support the work of Mann and disparage that of the right wing think tank twins. It is that simple.

I have repeatedly asked Jonas how many conferences and workshops he's attended where he could meet scientists and discuss climate change. There are lots of them held every year in academic institutions all over the world. I ditto the question for Shub. Hmm, now lemme guess the answer to this for the both of them... Nil? Nix? Zilch? Am I correct? So how the hell does Jonas have any idea what the ratio is of scientists in relevant fields who support the broad consensus of AGW against those who don't? A: he doesn't. He's guessing on the basis of comments on blogs where he gleans most of his 'ideas'.

Shub can scrape up three studies that question the proxies of Mann et al and many others. Three dammit! Oh my. Against the vast support for Mann and his work we have three studies! And I'll bet, aside from the think tank twins that the others do not necessarily dispute the human fingerprint over the current warming. You see, the denialati are experts at cherry picking quotes and results to suit their agenda, whilst, as John Abraham showed quite elegantly in his devastating rebutal of Monckton last year, they rarely ask the scientists doing the research *what they actually think*.

And to repeat, why all the attention on Mann's proxies? They constitute a small fraction of the evidence in favor of human-mediated warming.

Shub: "MM2005 is published in Geophysical Review Letters. It is a publication of the American Geophysical Union".

Indeed it was, my mistake.
Though the point still stands that it made zero scientific impact.

Perhaps one day in the far, far distant future, Steve'n'Ross might realise that science is done by conceiving and achieving, not carping from the sidelines, handicapped by misconceptions about a science that's misunderstood because it wasn't studied, and thinking that clueless number crunching makes up for it.

You are however edging ever so slightly closer to being on topic about Peter Wood and his elastic opinion, unencumbered by trifles like academic or personal integrity, regarding the Wegman scandal.

> Usually, when I post quoting someone's name, I am trying to respond to that person.

And?

So what?

Now, as to your "evidence", the MBH98 paper is more accurate than your MM2005 paper.

Neither of which have anything to do with the topic.

You can post over at the open thread 31.

You know, obeying YOUR "principle" of only responding to the topic. In your case, the person you were addressing, in this case, the topic of Perry and Wood.

If you cannot find yourself able to stay on topic, please refrain from the hypocritical stance you have put yourself in for dogmatic reasons of self-deception and denial.

Jeff,
Did you even read the passages I quoted from Burger 2010?

You cannot say that you don't have to deal with the critique that is presented in that paper, by stating that Mann's 1998 paper has been cited many times.

Don't you think that weakens your argument further?

Shrub, take it to where we care.

There's an Open Thread where you can wibble your insanities as long as anyone can be bothered to read them.

Go use the facilities provided and stop throwing your trash in the public spaces set aside for other purposes.

Shub,

Did you? Burger isn't an analyis of MBH 98.

More to the point - Why does Wood attack the exposurer of plagiarism and not those who commit it?

All error bars do not overlap everywhere.

I don't take a liar's word for it.

There's a lot of chatter already on WTFUWT. They can't accept that their beloved 'paper' is actually fit only to wipe an arse.

I'm curious to see if I will be permitted past moderation:

>Bernard J. says:
>Your comment is awaiting moderation.
>[September 2, 2011 at 10:08 am](http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/02/breaking-editor-in-chief-of-remot…)

>Here's an idea - Spencer & Braswell 2011 was and remains crap, and Wagner is calling it.

>Ockahms razor gentleman. It just happens to cut you the wrong way.

[Oops](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/08/rick_perry_peter_wood_and_the.p…), [wrong thread](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/09/editor_of_remote_sensing_agree…).

Jeff H

More name calling? Making up more nonsense-projections? Citation counting? And how exactly do citations eradicate the MWP? And that your consensus-yelling crowd is ignoring M&M or non-dendro reconstructions? What exactly is that supposed to prove?

And once more you try to equate 'the scientific comunity' to an IPCC-adhering self-defined subset of folks, many of which with poor background in physics and other hard sciences. Unfamiliar with how the scientific method works.

Sorry, Jeff H, you presented yourself as senior, and Bernard J as a scientis. But you sound more and more just like Chek and the other shouters.

And I see very little arguments on the topic here, but a lot of armwaiving about that everyone should accept the same things your appointed experts tell. Or more precisely what you think they are telling.

But the beef still is: How can one (the IPCC) acertain that the models actually do capture everything relevant, and thereby explain what is observed with such high certainty?

Moving the goal posts, Jonas? You asked how that figure of 90% was obtained in the IPCC report Ch.9 and its references. We (Marco and I) pointed you to information that answers that question. Even if you refuse to believe what we pointed you to, you should acknowledge that it exists, and that your original question was answered.

Martin V

I am definitely not moving any goalposts. You are right that the paper mentions 90%, but not in respect to what I have been looking for. As I said, I've read it once. As far as I can see it adresses a different question: If the models can reproduce the record. But it uses the very models it tries to evaluate for that purpose, and additionaly needs Bayesian statistics to arrive at the high levels of 90% (wrt to the hindsights).

Both are departures from the proper way to acertain that the modeled hypothesis indeed also has captured the true explanation, the actual mechanisms that control climate and its fluctuations.

Because I don't have a problem with what they are actually stating: That running the models in hindcast and adding your own a priori estimate what the answers should really be, that they this way can formally present a calculation that recreates the history, and maybe asigne those confidence levels if one adds one's own conviction (Bayesian bolstering) to it.

But the IPCC AR4 certainly is much bolder than that.

No, the beef is that it not even addresses the possibilty that other factors than the modeled ones may have significance.

Because if the models really had got it right, they could redo that affirmation for every period, not only the presented few decades in the 1900:s.

I'll say this, Martin V, if that reference were all that IPCC based their promonent claim on, I feel pretty safe in my original assessment. And no, Marco didn't point anything out. He had never seen that or read it (there I am quite 'confident' ;-)

I will get back with a better, more thorough answer, as I said. And it might take a few days, since this is not funded by fossil mega bucks ;-) But I'll expect a little more mature behavior than from Chris O'Neill, who also had to wait a few days, but then only could retort with 'liar, liar' (Which makes him one, if one would take his definition seriously)

Oh yeah, we have goal posts moving.

It was that there was no overlap in error bars, now it's just they don't overlap everywhere.

FFS.

As has been pointed out repeatedly and each time been meticulously avoided by Jonas N: Figure 9.9.
"Estimated contribution from greenhouse gas (red), other anthropogenic green) and natural (blue) components to observed global mean surface temperature changes, based on âoptimalâ detection analyses (Appendix 9.A)."

PS! Michael: the error bars don't even have to overlap all the time, as they don't represent a 100% confidence.

But Jonas N is just playing games and wasting your time.

Dear wow,

The blogospheric discussion of Wegman, Wood, and Mashey, is the topic of this thread. The discussants bring all relevant points connected.

Our friend Michael, and lately Jeff Harvey, repeatedly asserted that Mann's MBH98 has been reconfirmed/reaffirmed by other studies. It is clear from the above that they are wrong. See the Bishop Hill thread - Michael goes on and on about it.

Trash-talking fail.

"from the above" - Shub.

What above exactly?

Shub,

Why your singular obsession with MBH 98? Its a very small component of the large and growing evidence for AGW. And if you so strongly believe its wrong, why don't you and the skeptical punditocracy not publish your results in a peer-reviewed journal? I find it amusing - to say the least - that the denialosphere is mostly restricted to a bunch of assorted misfits - retired weathermen and those from other nonscientific walks of life - who have set up web blogs in which to rant and scream their objections. Whereas I believe that the internet on the whole is a good thing, it still is unable to filter out a veritable sea of gibberish and nonsense such as flat Earth theories and the like. In my view, many of the climate change denialists fit snungly into this category.

And why climate change? I have challenged many of those peddling climate change denial to explain why exactly they have decided to focus their wrath on climate science and the current warming, in an attempt to weed out the real underlying social and political factors that motivate them but almost all of them never bite and try to conceal it. In my field of research there are many serious debates underlying opposing theories to explain ecological processes: for instance relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning (e.g the rivet popper versus the redundancy hypotheses), the relevance of Steve Hubbell's neutral model versus the McCarthur/Wilson models for explaining patterns of global biodiversity, the function of herbivore-induced plant volatiles on community structure and function, the fitness of hybrid zones, etc.

Yet you'll never find non-scientists setting up blogs to argue these debates in ecology. So why climate science? The fact is that it is politically motivated. I do not see any other reason. In other words, the vast majority of layman pundits are driven by their political ideologies - generally far to the right or libertarian - in which they see any effort to mitigate climate change as a threat to the political system of which they see themselves as a beneficiary (in other words, we've all done well in the north on the basis of a 'business-as-usual' political ethic and any threat to that invoked through regulations attempting to wean ourselves off of our addiction to fossil fuels must be countered). The fact that right wing think tanks and pay-for-hire public relations firms have taken up the baton is further evidence. The bottom line is that, for all of their bluster, the vast majority of web sites run by non-scientists or people associated with think tanks are not interested in the 'science' of climate change one little bit; the aim has never been to win a debate they know that they are losing. The aim is solely to sow doubt amongst policymakers and the public. As FOTE call it , "lobbying for lethargy".

This is why the scientific community by-and-large holds the 'skeptics' in so much contempt: because the cloak their real agendas with a fake interest in science.

> I will get back with a better, more thorough answer, as I said

Don't bother for me Jonas... I'll take correct over thorough any day

Andy S - I'm not avoiding anything!

For the umpteenth time: IPCC (and Fig 9.9) presents the claimed contributions, not how that certainty is arrieved at!

But formally you have a point about errorbars not representing 100% certainty.

Because there is a faint possibilty that two (or any set of) reconstructions are (formally) correct, even when the true metric (GMT here) falls somewhere in the gap between stated confidence intervals: Ie that one estimation (with its uncertainty) falls far on the low side, while the other fails equally bad, but on the high side (of the truth).

If you have an assumption of the underlying statistical pdf (usually Gaussian), you could calculate that miniscule likelihood.

And you can go on and do the same for every point in time (ie even when the errorbars overlap), integrating over time, to calculate the aggregated probability that two reconstructions (or sets of such) actually still can respresent (statistically) correct reconstructions of the true GMT (over their entire common time period).

Well, maybe not you, but everyone with the least bit of skill handling statistics. And then you would arrive at a minsicule probability for both sets still being correct, at least formally, even if error bars don't overlap. That was your point, Andy S! Wasn't it?

Well, another way of putting the same observation would be to say that any of the IPCC-presented reconstructions falsifies any other, or set of other reconstructions with considerable statistical significance.

And with 100% certainty, you can claim that the entire ensamble of reconstrations cannot be correct simultaneously. (Only formally is there a remainder probability-straw p â  0 to still cling onto)

PS This must not mean that all are reconstructions are statistically flawed. But it certainly means two things: Firstly that the paleoclimatology methods (presently, with available proxy data) cannot reconstruct historic temperatures with any useful certainty, and secondly that the stated confidence intervals are not wrt a true GMT, they more reflect how well (ie poorly) the data fits the underlying assumptions about what produces a proxy signal.

Martin V, if you claim Lee et al is the scientific confirmation of the prominent IPCC AR4 claim, then you're wrong. Simple as that.

But thanks for saving me the time ...

I see Jonas N has ignored my challenge. How surprising.

C'mon, Jonas, I know you can do it. Or you'd have admitted you can't, right? You ARE that honest, yes?

Jeff H

You make quite an astounding number of unfounded statements about how things are (both the science, the methods, the debate, and the debaters). Astounding since they are based on pure fantasies and/or just plian wrong.

This is on the very entry level of hard science, knowing what your data can tell, and what it can't:

MBH98 (and all other reconstructions) are about reconstructing historic temperatures. If they succeeded and you had the true temperatures, it still would be only a time series of recorded (reconstructed) temperatures. There is absolutely no 'evidence' whatsoever therein about what may have caused variations or changes.

I'm amazed that so many (not only you) who claim scientific literacy and even credentials, who purport to talk about 'the science' making the most elementary logical fallacies like that.

And again you pretend to speak for 'the scientific community' at large! But you don't! Scientist don't hate, they don't loathe, or are unable to control their urge to air their antipathies and spew insults.

And Jeff, in the scientific community I know, people most certainly do not make as elementary mistakes not to distinuish between cause and effect. Instead their arguments are measured and logically sound, the hypotheses presented are clearly stated, the premisses, preconditions, and assumed relations used are presented correctly. The conclusions are offered based on the precondition of the underlying and used assumtions (all of them) being valid. Rarely ever are absolute claims made. Thus, proper science following the scientific method.

And most certainly they don't sound like ranting political fanatics and their diatribe. As do most of your comments ..

I am fully aware that in soft sciences and arts, such sloppy thinking and behaviour is more frequent and even acceptable (among some). Not to talk about in activist quarters ...

But if you want to convince anybody who knows the least about the topic, you'd have to do much better.

Marco - I have already answered that question, several times actually. But maybe you weren't reading ...

On and on goes gish galloping Jonas.

Who ever said paleoclimate temp reconstructions themselves contain 'evidence' about the cause of temperature variation?

Moronic.

And I predcit with 95% certainty that Jonas will continue to give a free pass to proven academic misconduct by Wegman, but will remain obsessed in trying to make a mountain out of a molehill re: Mann.

Oh no, Jeff,
I don't argue/discuss only climate change/global warming. I discuss biodiversity-related science, evolution and tropical ecology aspects as well.

Who is obsessed with MBH98? From my perspective, the paleoclimate scientific landscape has changed much since TAR2001 where the Mann hockey stick was given prominence. This change however is not reflected in the AR4, and now, there are even more papers that paint an increasingly different picture. The consensus on the other hand, continues to cling to an imagined situation where all literature agrees with the now-a-decade-old view that temperatures are rising far too rapidly than anytime ever before.

"Temperatures are rising far too rapidly than ever before, and this will produce a cascade of harmful effects" - this belief precisely, comes from belief in the hockey-stick. And this belief is an important component of numerous biodiversity studies. Just yesterday, I read Corlett and LaFrankel's 1998 paper on the train back home, for example, that presents a an essentially different perspective - that the abundant Asian tropical biodiversity would be a resilience factor and only some species-monotonous entities may be adversely affected in the coming global warming.

Yet, one would be hard-pressed to find any such statements in the tropical forest literature today, I think. Indeed it is the opposite that is presented as dogma - "global warming is going to kill off all tropical biodiversity!". How? The switch lies in the belief in catastrophism inherited from the hockey-stick worldview, even as the paleoclimate evidence base for such a view, appears damaged beyond repair.

If anyone's pointing out repeatedly to MBH98, it is only to disabuse the consensus supporters (like you) that things have changed.

"Yet, one would be hard-pressed to find any such statements in the tropical forest literature today" - Shub.

Well, it would help if you took your blinkers off.....

Shub said: "The switch lies in the belief in catastrophism inherited from the hockey-stick worldview, even as the paleoclimate evidence base for such a view, appears damaged beyond repair".

You read way too many rubbish blogs and believe too much of their rubbishy blogscience. Staying away from second rate accountants who somehow imagine that disappearance of summer ice in the arctic somehow means a year round ice-free arctic would be a start. As would avoiding paranoid ex-mining consultants who can only maintain the sense of their worldview by ever-increasing rings of conspiracy, where the investigators are part of the conspiracy ad infinitum and ad nauseam. But then that's the bit that really appeals to you, eh Shub?

"By the most conservative measure - based on the last century's recorded extinctions - [the current rate of extinction is 100 times the background rate."](http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/animal-extinction--the-greates…)

Not all directly due to AGW granted, but largely to that and other human assuklts on the natural world's support system.

Perhaps Rick Perry would recommend one of his oh-so effective prayer meetings to correct the situation.
No doubt Peter Wood could only applaud such direct action that didn't hit the pockets of his fossil fuel funders.

In case we have other visitors from that repository of delusion, Bishop Dill, I'll spell out Shub's idiocy.

Firstly, why on earth is Shub trying to make assertations about the current state of the literature based on what a 13 yr old paper says?

Secondly, why not just look at the current literature?
Let me. We'll even stick with Shub's authors of choice.

By happy coincidence, Corlett has a new paper on this very subject - a review of the literature looking at the threat of AGW to tropical forests.

Let's just remind outselves of Shub's self-serving and evidence free conclusion -
"abundant Asian tropical biodiversity would be a resilience factor and only some species-monotonous entities may be adversely affected in the coming global warming.
Yet, one would be hard-pressed to find any such statements in the tropical forest literature today, I think. Indeed it is the opposite that is presented as dogma"

Here's Corlett's summary -
"However, the recent literature shows a striking range of views on the vulnerability of tropical rainforests, from least to most concern among major ecosystems..."

Isn't it amazing how reality is so often (ie. always) at odds with what the denialists claim?

But, yes indeedy, there is dogma isn't there!

Denialist dogma.

Shub,

IMO you are truly a thicko. No wonder you aren't able to publish anything in a scientific journal and rely on support from a few other deluded acolyte deniers with weblogs. Geez.

Given your paucity of knowledge in any of the fields you superficially taint, I was explicitly referring to scientific discussions that *have nothing to do with climate change* Repeat that will you? NOTHING TO DO WITH CLIMATE CHANGE. I thought that my post had made that abundantly clear, but I forgot to add a disclaimer that people with a high school education or college degree in unrelated fields (what is yours - snorkeling? basket weaving? Perhaps in media marketing? Certainly not in the Earth sciences) might not understand. To reiterate: there are many intense debates in my field that have nothing to do with climate change, yet there are very few (if any) weblogs devoted to these discussions. Why is this? Because they are apparently much less integrated with public policy, especially where short-term corporate profits are concerned. As I said, the motivation for non-scientists to become activist bloggers has nix to do with science and everything to do with political ideology. And I doubt that you are any different in this regard. In other words, science becomes a football for those who are anxious to promote a pre-determined worldview.

Where you dug up the link between climate change and the loss of tropical biodiversity is beyond me. But one thing is clear: the more you people open your mouths, the more you look like a bunch of simpletons.

As for Jonas, he's even more deluded than you are. In an earlier post he actually stated that he'd read scientific papers supporting the evidence for AGW and intimated that he, of all people, somehow possessed the wisdom to 'know' that they are 'bad studies'. This from someone who has all-but admitted that he does not possess a degree in any relevant area of the life or Earth sciences. I don't know whether to laugh or cry. And yet this clown dismisses any link he may have to D-K or Charles Darwin's famous ' Ignorance begets confidence more often than knowledge' quote.

Both of you are obsessed with MBH 98. Heaven knows why. Michael has nailed it above. By making a mountain out of this molehill, your aim is apparently to taint all of climate science with the same brush. What else could it be? But the truth is this: neither of you two (Shub or Jonas) attends the relevant conferences and workshops. Neither of you publishes in the peer-reviewed literature. Neither of you therefore figures in the AGW debate. Most importantly, nobody of importance in the field of climate science knows either of you exist. Ouch. The truth hurts, eh?

>Because if the models really had got it right, they could redo that affirmation for every period, not only the presented few decades in the 1900:s.

>MBH98 (and all other reconstructions) are about reconstructing historic temperatures. If they succeeded and you had the true temperatures, it still would be only a time series of recorded (reconstructed) temperatures. There is absolutely no 'evidence' whatsoever therein about what may have caused variations or changes.

[Wrong and wronger.](http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/ipcc2007/fig614.html)

No, Jonas N, you did not answer the question. I cannot find anywhere where you used the data provided in Chapter 9 to calculate the likelihood that the warming in the last half of the 20th century is mostly due to greenhouse gases. The data is there for you.

I also have not seen you admit you are unable to do that calculation.

> nobody of importance in the field of climate science
> knows either of you exist.

But, Jeff, they've impressed the people who like people like them, http://www.plognark.com/sites/default/files/images/keyboardcommando.jpg and got the T-shirt to prove it

Jeff H

One more long post about anything else, only backwards arguing. You bring up the fact that there are many other fields were people have different opinions, controversies over this and that particular question and heated debates.

And that the absence of wider coverage by the media, by blogs, pundits and political debate there, should signify anything wrt to the climate debate.

Well it does: It indicates that the debate there isn't as heated. The observation itself is the selfevident conlusion.

But you, repeatedly, attempt to thereupon construe wider implications and notably wrt to only one side of the debate. You argue that because of the attention it gets, one side must be corrupt, riddled with amateurs, bloggers, interest groups, self appointed experts, corporate profits and so forth ..

... and that therefore the other side must be the righteous one!

That is in essence what you try to establish.

Appearantly completely unaware the extrem abundance of the exact same on the pro-CAGW side.

You, yourself are a perfect example of a complete amateur particitpating by making rattling noise on amateur blogs, populated by loud, schreeching, immature activist who hardly can formulate their own arguments in a comprehensive manner, who cannot present .

I cannot even start to count how many of the signatures here perfectly fit the description:

"science becomes a football for those who are anxious to promote a pre-determined worldview"

More than 50% of your post's content are devoted to describing "a pre-determined worldview", ie 'the other and evil side'

Your acertion: 'At the workshops I attend, we are so many agreeing on [a pre-determined worldview =] CAGW that it simply has to be true' is nonsense. As is your equating that crowd with [the scientific community]

As for what is actually discussed here, you are not participating, not even attempting to. Only holding a monologue trying to convince yourself (and supporters) that nobody else could possibly have any valid points. You don't even know what those points are, it seems.

Marco - Have you read the paper that Martin V said you pointed to? Martin V is not prepared to discuss it contents or defend it as being the science behind that prominent IPCC claim (you were so certain was i WG1 ch9). Do you even know what Bayesian statistics are? (And yes, I've answerd that question, more than once. The answer is acutally my central claim here)

lumunous beauty - You linked to a picture (preciously a book). Do you know what your possible points could possibly have been? Wrt to what is being discussed?

Michael - this is really the perfect place for you, so many on your own level, and oh so certain about oh som many things .. because you just know, don't you?

You know, this thread is again reminding me why I prefer science to the advocacy of the courtroom. I rested my case many posts above, and I see no evidence for needing to change that stance....

Wordplay and waffle, Jonas N. You excel at it, fair play - not that it changes things one iota.

Cheers - John

Joanas troll said: "As for what is actually discussed here..."

Thay would be Peter Wood and his misinformed, blogscience input to Rick Perry's presidential campaign. For which I see zero input but infinite (as in unending) distraction from you.

John M

Not many of the points I made are even adressed properly. Some are, even one reference. And so far, I cannot see that much has changed. That is true ..

I still have not seen any real science behind the most prominent IPCC AR4 claim.

But a heck of a lot of world play (to put it politely)

Jonas,

Since when on this thread have you posted anything remotely relevant to it? You waded in here with a swipe at John Mashey, and ever since you've gone on and on about MBH 98.

Then you write, *Well it does: It indicates that the debate there isn't as heated. The observation itself is the selfevident conlusion [sic]* (with your usual spelling and grade-school level grammatical gaffes). But to be specific, you stupid twerp: the debate is EVERY bit as heated as the AGW debate within the relevant fields of endeavor. If you had even an ounce of knowledge about the way that science works, you'd realize how utterly absurd your comments are. All they do is increasingly reflect your desperate attempt at attention whilst nakedly expose your ignorance. And with respect to your vapid remark, the reason *you think* that these fields are not as heated is because they don't impinge upon the profit-making capacities of a powerful corporate lobby that includes the fossil fuel and automobile industries. If they did, then the media would be flooded with articles about them and dopes like you would take up the baton and abuse the science in the many ways that you do.

But you really had me in stitches with this remark: *You, yourself are a perfect example of a complete amateur particitpating by making rattling noise on amateur blogs, populated by loud, schreeching, immature activist who hardly can formulate their own arguments in a comprehensive manner, who cannot present* (another piece of gibberish with poor sentence formulation).

Listen up sonny boy and listen well: I got my PhD in population ecology almost 20 years ago, I have 107 publications in the peer-reviewed literature with more than 2,100 citations of my work. Moreover, this exceeds by quite some amount many of the people who have waded in as contrarians in the climate-change debate. I did three post docs before assuming position of Associate Editor at Nature; in 2000 I became a senior scientist at the Institute where I now work. Furthermore, many of those waving the denial banner have no more expertise in climate science than I do, but then most scientists with training in a particular field are very cautious when wading blindly into fields outside of their own. Because you are clearly NOT a scientist, you have no hesitation in doing so and appear to proclaim yourself as something of an 'expert' when you have no pedigree at all. Some of my research involves the biological effects of climate warming on plant and insect invasions, as well as on community-level effects, and there is no doubt whatsoever that the warming of the past 30 years has resulted in profound biotic shifts in the ranges and elevational gradients of a large range of biota, as well as in a wide array of phenological effects. Many of these effects are simplifying and potentially unraveling food webs, and changes in atmospheric concentrations of C02 are altering the stoichiometry and thus quality of primary producers (plants) leading to imbalances in nutrient cycles with worrying losses of P and N. These effects are also being manifested at larger spatial and temporal scales, and given that humans have already greatly simplified great swathes of the biosphere.

What's your story Jonas? Given that you see yourself as a bit of a legend in your own mind, I'd like to know what your professional qualifications are that give you some acumen in this debate. As a trained scientist, I am very wary about stepping beyond the boundaries of my own field of research; the reason I contribute to Deltoid is to ensure that readers who visit for the first time know how science works and that the views of bloggers or pundits who wade in here with views counter to the prevailing scientific consensus - and that consensus is that humans are the primary forcing agent behind the current warming episode - should be treated with utmost skepticism. I also contribute here as an ecologist who knows something about the effects of global change on communities and ecosystems.

I have to give credit where credit is due, though. You've repeatedly made yourself out to be some kind of idiot (just read everyone comment's on this thread but Shub's) and yet you persist. Either you have a very thick skin or else you're a sucker for punishment. But I appreciate your constant ripostes, because you are giving skepticism a very bad name, that cannot help but be picked up by first-time visitors to this blog. For this service I do thank you.

Jonas N,

You have been shown it but you continue to pretend you don't see it. This is just pure nonsense: "IPCC (and Fig 9.9) presents the claimed contributions, not how that certainty is arrieved at!" (305)

Why don't you pop over to Climate Etc instead? I'm sure Judith Curry would be delighted to partake of your pearls of wisdom.

Jeff H

Maybe you didn't notice, but Masheys post is in part about me. And I've been trying to get an answer to the relevance of his (and other's) efforts, beyond the silly namecalling and tribal shouting. Relevance for anything wrt to the climate. Nobody really was able to formulate a stance.

Further, MBH98 has been the least of my concerns here. Rather others who wanted to make it the topic, and I have stated my view (repeatedly). Instead I required to be shown the scientific basis for the most prominent IPCC AR4 claim. Result so far: 1 reference to something different (but vaguely related and in 'support' of). That's it.

(And no: Repetions of the claim in figures, graphs are not the basis for it)

And what have you contributed to any of this, or to the main post contents? Absolutely nothing! Zip! Zilch!(*) Only spewing insults and wild projections about how evil the other side must be.

You are incapable of reading and understanding even simpler logical statements. Eg now you tell me that you have studied the effects of climate change!?

So frikking what? Nobody is denying climate change. Mann tried to, the IPCC TAR hyped it. And both got trashed for it, righfully so.

Then you tell me your CV, and again it makes my point. In absolutely no way are you better suited to judge the value of science about the physical world, about the atmosphere, the causes of climate to change, how a hypothesis may be supported by empircal observations, or falsifed, the statistical interpretation of such efforts, what is required for measuring soemthing with accuracy, how to deal with noisy data etc ..

.. than anybody else working professionally or scientifically in such fields! Your CV doesn't even pretend to bring some relevant competence on what controls the climate and its variations/fluctuations to the table. (And all you posts confirm that)

Here, you are just a non-expert airing his opinion, and almost without any bearing on the topic discussed. In the worst and embarrassing way, obviously motivated by anything but answers to scientific questions.

Wrt to the topic: Mostly only about what 'authority' not only you, but everybody shoud accept and listen to. Not read carefully, not study if the claims are actually supported by the work reported. If the statisical claims chek out.

No! Simply: 'Accept it and believe it. And shut up!' That's your message, your demand. And you get very very angry if it is not obeyed. Tough luck, kiddo. I don't do science that way.

But your real problem is something else. That's quite clear. You are incapable of keeping a level head. Your shouting and insulting and fantasies about your opponents are not the result of logical reasoning. More likely, emotional uncontrolled anger, strongly held 8almost religeous) beliefs, and immature coping with criticism, doubt, uncertainty, opposing vews and fact etc.

You are not even reading what is claimed. You just make things up. What is my story, you ask!? Well hade you read above, you'd already know. Here I ask relevant questions:

1) What is the relevance of Mashey's fit? In the real world?

2) Where/how does the IPCC come up with its main claim

And I got no real answers. And I made som relevant pointers regarding the many reconstructions (and MBH98)

3) They do falsify each other, ie cannot all be correct. Meaning: Very immature field of science

And I explained why. Nowhere do I declare 'legend-status' or expertise, answers I do not posses, definite claims I cannot make. (Such behaviour though is abundant on your side)

And I think it is kinda cute that you want to believe that all those here who spew insults somehow confirm yours .. that comments by chek, Kincade, Bernard, Marco, Michael, Chris etc .. make me the 'idiot' .. Wow!

This is indicative of your 'scientific' reasoning, I take it!?

;-)

No seriously, I don't mind all the insults, the projections, the fantasies, the wild armwaving, the appeal to perceived authority, the bureaucratic rubberstamping ... none of these are arguments. And most definitely, none of these replace real transparent science, honestly reported, which can be examined by everyone who is interested.

(*) To be fair: You did reply, almost measured (all in capitals) to some questions of mine. And you responded once to Shub wrt to your field

Andy S - It's been quite some time since you last had a valid point. Have you read the paper Martin V linked? Marco hadn't either.

Or are you of the belief that 'If it's printed on paper, it must be the truth'?

Quite a lot of you guys seem to reason this way.

Jonas said:" What is the relevance of Mashey's fit? In the real world"?

Come now 'Jonas', for all your long, drawn-out and meaningless sound and fury, even you aren't that stupid, not after all your tireless efforts...

Jeff,
You have lots of papers and citations. but what is the use? You can't even understand a simple thing that is pointed out to you.

You are a real scholar in the ecology world. But your online behaviour is worse than a petulant middle-school child. I think you should just go and cool off somewhere before interacting with other humans. I also think you should hold off from online interaction - you are prone to flaming away and let me tell you, it is your reputation that you are burning for fuel.

You asked - why this obsession with MBH98 - on a thread which is discussing the Wegman report - written specifically about MBH98.

All your ecological claptrap is, well, just that - claptrap. The unravelling of food webs? What does that have to do with Peter Wood and John Mashey? At least I tried to provide you with the connection with the climate, for your ridiculous ecological claims. Unraveling for food webs? Disturbance in the balance? It is a joke.

Let me tell you something that should calm your nerves, given that ecologists always seem prone to exaggeration. Please listen carefully...

-Nothing- is unraveling.

Michael, dear buddy
What's up with you? I quoted from Corlett and Lafrankel's 1998 paper some statements and said that you wont find similar statements today. You quote some statement from some Corlett paper that proves my point. What gives? Get a hold of yourself.

Some of us may recall that monsters from Cthulhu-fantasy-land sometimes invaded science-fiction, but rarely lasted long.

Consider the worldview of anyone choosing as a moniker shub niggurath, whose exact appearance is unknown, but some of the ideas are here. Any of these could put one in a bad mood. KILLFILE works here.

[Bishop Moron's](http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2011/9/1/breaking-the-ice.html) flock of wordy, middle-management fanboys aren't taken seiously John, even by Those Who Must Not Be Named Lest They Themselves Be Audited And Found Wanting.

Ooops - the above should have read: blah de bla ... Audited And Found [Wanting.](http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/strange%20tal…)

As for the first URL, did you mean HWQDAJ, He Who Quotes Dog Astrology Journal as seen in a Wikipedia discussion, which HWQDAJ's followers repeatedly tried to remove? (Repelled by WMC, the history is amusing.)

That's always a good one John, but I considered the Bish's more recent unprompted drivelling about arctic ice nicely highlighted how his readily apparent deficient comprehension is never enough to prevent him wibbling away as if he knew what he was talking about.

Chek:
But there is a difference. If HWQDAJ were an academic, there would be plausible grounds for a charge of academic misconduct, i.e., falsification.

If anyone cares, they might send that to HWQDAJ's publisher, just to put it on record. I have too many higher-priority items.

See SFWR for discussions of FFP, for example. Not that many people understand FFP, as can be seen in the various silly comments.

@ shrub:

given that ecologists always seem prone to exaggeration. Please listen carefully...-Nothing- is unraveling

Horseshit

I'd hand the rest of your arse to you but can't find a plate big enough.

"3) They do falsify each other, ie cannot all be correct. Meaning: Very immature field of science" - Jonas

This from the guy posturing that he knows about stats.

What momumental stupidity.

"Michael, dear buddy What's up with you? I quoted from Corlett and Lafrankel's 1998 paper some statements and said that you wont find similar statements today. You quote some statement from some Corlett paper that proves my point. What gives? Get a hold of yourself." - Shub.

Shub, you dim bulb.

It says exactly the opposite of what you claimned.

The flurry of denialist drivel on this gives you an idea how worried they are that one of the their favourite political tools, the Wegman Report, has been shown to be a piece of very very shoddy work.

Their allegation of questionable techniques in MBH 98 is thrown into sharp relief by their defence and/or excuse making in relation to the proven failure of Wegman to abide by even the most basic of academic standards.

Real concern over the quality of the science - ZERO.

This is what Jonas' voluminous waffle is really all about.

[Michael's nailed it](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/08/rick_perry_peter_wood_and_the.p…).

The blubbering plural whale bezoar and the stinky goat are shit-scared that their sacred cows are being minced. They can't afford to lose Wegman - nor can they afford to lose Spencer and Braswell, and hence their apoplexy at Wagner deciding that he needed to right the record.

Note that neither of the trolls have yet provided a coherent paragraph of refutation of Mashey (or of any other climatological science) that could be defended. And this after well over three hundred comments of commenting being posted. Given their pathetic bogus attempt at rebuttal, I declare John Mashey the winner, and King of the Internet for the month.

The trolls can continue to crap in their nappies and spit their dummies.

...three hundred postings of comments...

Sheesh. Preview already.

Good, Jonas N admits he can't do the calculation, because he lacks the required knowledge.

(Yes, I know what Bayesian statistics are; it is irrelevant to my requests. It's even irrelevant what the papers say, I challenged YOU to do the calculation. By evading that request you have just admitted you can't. All you can do is move the goalposts)

Jonas N,

Martin V referred to Fig 9.10. I'm talking about Fig 9.9. And you know that, and no doubt you have given your best possible answer to Fig 9.9 which is to avoid the subject. No doubt you will go on repeating your lies about the claim in AR4. Because that's the kind of things you do Jonas N. We both know that.

Bye!

Andy S - What is it with you? You point me to a figure, with a bunch of (different) 90% errorbars for various contributions and GCMs. It doens't even contain the main IPCC claim. There is no science basis in the caption which instead reads: "Estimated .. based on 'optimal' detection analysis". Have you even read Appendix 9.A? (Martin V is the only one to actually point to some carried out science. He declined to discussing it in detail)

Marco - You come with nonsensical challenges (completely missing the point), and that makes me(!) moving the goalposts!? Eh ..??

Michael - Using your best remaining arguments, as usual :-)

Jonas,

Apparently information can't get through your Pachycephalosaurus-imitation skull. You are the best example I have encountered so far - and that's saying a helluva lot - of the Dunning-Kruger phenomenon. My posts have been aimed at saying that as a scientist in another field of endeavor, I would be very wary of treading into another field - in this instance climate science - where I am not trained. We might just as well be discussing nuclear physics, or metabolomics, or transcriptomics, in which I also have no specialist training. On that basis, my views of that field defer to the large majority of opinion which argues that humans are forcing climate (as the IPCC documents reveal). I am, essentially, defending these scientists and their work. You, Shub and others, on the other hand, are like cars without brakes going downhill. You exhibit no such deference when it comes to the work of climate scientists, and instead come into here parading your ignorance while trying to suggest that you possess innate wisdom in the field. You aren't fooling anybody here, as one can see from the comments. I can only guess that you are a sucker for punishment.

Shub's comment regarding fraying and unraveling food webs can be dismissed. There's abundant evidence that the combined assault of human actions is reducing genetic and species diversity, leading to changes in the strength and persistence of food webs and tropic linkages. Martin Scheffer and others have detailed the effects of human-induced changes in ecosystems on food web structure and have been projecting tipping points whereby systems that are simplified beyond a certain point exceed critical 'tipping points' and become alternate systems that exhibit unstable dynamics. This is an area of ecology in which I have been involved in lengthy discussions, and Shub's views on this can be excluded in their entirety - he is way out of his depth on this (another example of the D-K phenomenon).

> then you're wrong. Simple as that

That was quick ;-)

Jeff H

More attempted insults, repetition of your beliefs, no even trying any substance. As usual! I've already noted that this is your best argument. Why (not) repeat it again?

But you have "as a scientist in another field" tried to conjure up facts about a reality which you know absolutely nothing about. And been wrong of course, because blindly guessing things is a lousy method. But very frequently practiced here. You are not even capable of reading what I actually say in the matter. Only strawmen upon strawmen.

Shorter Jonas N:

"John Mashey is wrong, the overwhelming majority of professional climatologists are wrong, all ecologists are wrong, and I - an unqualified internet troll - am right. But don't ask me to tell you why, because I have absolutely and completely nothing to offer by way of substantiation."

Jonas N, have you stopped bashing your wife?

This is getting exasperating. I will give up soon, given that our resident troll is thicker that a sequioa tree.

Bernard summs it up well @348. I am wrong, the bulk of the scientific community is wrong, most climate scientists are all wrong, but neophytes like JonasN without any scientific pedigree in the field of climate science - in any field of science for that matter - are correct. He disparages papers by climate scientists in peer-previewed journals that produce conclusions he doesn't like, yet he himself has never published a paper anywhere in any journal. He doesn't go to conferences where these issues are debated and discussed, but instead floats around the blogosphere imparting his 'wisdom' to those who read them. He even doesn't understand what the term 'strawman' means; I am merely pointing out the obvious with respect to his arrogance that has no intellectual base. Good scientists are always cautious; Jonas is not a scientist in any way, shape of form, as he has made obvious, and so exhibits no such restraint.

Jeff H

Can you show me one single comment only in this thread where you actually practice that cautious wary restraint you are boasting about? Please!

Because every one of those I read and remember, were full of wild speculations, outrageous claims and fantasies, ad homs and insults. Utter nonsense!

Jeff,

You'll have to forgive Jonas, he thinks this threads is about him.

[Jonas N](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/08/rick_perry_peter_wood_and_the.p…).

>Can you show me one single comment only [sic] in this thread where you actually [substantiate that vaunted scientific understanding of yours that] you are boasting about? Please!

>Because every one of those [posts of yours that] I read and remember, were full of wild speculations, outrageous claims and fantasies, ad homs and insults. [They are u]tter nonsense!

See what a good editor can do for a scientifically ignorant climate change denialist?

Oh, and I note that you are avoiding answering the question about whether you are still beating your wife.

John Mashey.

I apologise for adding to the current noise that is rising in response to the troll. I have resisted posting here for quite a while, but as he has so spammed the thread it now seems that the damage is done, and one might as well now simply show the intellectual depauperacy of the ignoramus - it might serve as a handy link for future reference warning against engaging him on other Deltoid threads...

One thing is obvious however - he was unable to inflict even a slight dent in your very solid case. Anyone with half a brain will know this, and it is patently apparent that Wegman's et al fates will not be altered in the slightest by this goose's honking.

Jeff,

You say

Some of my research involves the biological effects of climate warming ...
Many of these effects are simplifying and potentially unraveling food webs ...

And now you say,

There's abundant evidence that the combined assault of human actions is reducing genetic and species diversity, leading to changes in the strength and persistence of food webs and tropic linkages ...

Which one is it?

Climate warming, or the combined assault of human actions?

If 'climate warming' and 'human actions' are all one muddled, swaddled-up bundle in your head, can you blame readers for not distinguishing between the two when you say one, and mean the other.

The issue is simple: If the globe has warmed, has such warming caused the unraveling of food webs?

If you cannot answer that question without bringing in 'human actions' and/or other factors, then perhaps, you shouldn't have dragged in the unraveling of food webs to support Michael Mann-driven IPCC catastrophism.

Hello John Mashey,
You must be aware, that I and many others, have asked many, many times over by now, a simple question, for which you have failed to provide a simple, direct answer. You've wriggled away like a greased pig, so to speak and the problem starts there.

The question, to repeat it once more, is this: how do the allegations of plagiarism affect the statistical analysis, and the conclusion derived thereof, in the Wegman report?

Don't give me links to your 'SWSR' or whatever. I'd have to infer my answer from there - I want you state it in own words - and specifically to that question I ask above, please.

Why is this important?

Plagiarism is an punishable sin, and understandably so, inside academia. The components of the act of plagiarism, in part or in whole, are viewed differently in the world outside academia. For example, you keep repeating and reusing the same ideas in your blog comments. You linked to the Wikipedia Shub Niggurath in the post above, and again in the comment above. I've seen you copy-paste entire comments across multiple forums, sometimes tweaking small words, sometimes even without.

Even so, I wouldn't go so far as to call this 'plagiarism'. Nor would you, I am sure. You would expect people to look past that and expect them to respond to the substance of what you wrote, isn't it?

Well, how can plagiarism matter then?
a) if the central claim of a report/paper depends on the plagiarized material, without which it would not sustain itself
b) If an author copies material without citation, and claims it as his/her own
c) If an author copies material, that makes him/her appear more knowledgeable that what he/she is.

I have gone through your 'report' It is filled with junk. People have pandered to your ego and bootstrapped truckloads of hockeystick stuff in there. And that idea of 'memes' - it is childish - it just demonstrates that you lack the intellectual shorthand to analyse the issue. Hundreds of pages, however, are taken up by all that crap.

In the portions relevant to plagiarism, the only, convincing examples pertain to the social network analysis. The rest of your cited instances of plagiarism, come from awowed summaries of various studies which Wegman presents. In these instances, the citations are there right at the top of each page. It becomes very difficult to swallow Wegman's paraphrasing as plagiarism. At places these sections in your report border on the ridiculous: the software you must have used has tagged words like 'to', as plagiarised.

The only convincing instances, therefore satisfy (c), and not (a) or (b) from above.

I will support you on that.

But, as an interested outsider, I am more interested in learning whether what you uncovered completely invalidates the Wegman report - which would have been the case if (a) the plagiarism pertains to the central conclusion, or, (b) if he claimed credit for what was not his. Your report does not make the case for either.

But what is sought to be achieved is something else. To repeat what I wrote earlier on the matter: charges which are plausibly true, are sought to be employed to destroy the reputation of Wegman, in order to obtain the incidental fallout of rejecting the content and implications of the report for the US Congress he penned in 2006. The sin of plagiarism which is not tolerated in any form inside academia, is sought to be transplanted with its consequences to outside, in order to obtain the desired political ends. It is the same strategy with von Storch, it is the same strategy with Wagner - "look, someone important has resigned/has been dismissed. That means you don't have to take the concerned paper seriously'.

In other words, a smaller issue is highlighted, and the larger question which Wegman addressed in his report - that of the veracity of the evidence Mann marshalled in support of his claim in his paper - is thus sought to be suppressed or stricken off the Congressional record.

This is my take on your report, and the larger issue in general.

Now it is your turn, Mashey. Answer my question, in simple direct words without obfuscation.

Jonas,

Methinks you are deluded idiot. Enough said. Your last post was an abomination. Go away.

Shub,

Both. The effects of different environmental stressors are, in many cases, additive. For instance, rapid regional warming is forcing species to adjust their distributions, breeding cycles etc. and is affecting interactions with mutualists and antagonists. At the same time, humans have greatly eliminated large expanses of natural habitat, meaning that organisms must cover broad areas of non-habitat in reponse to warming that was probably once suitable for their reproduction and survival. There's little doubt that climate change will excerbate local extinctions in already fragmented landscapes. We are already seeing changes in the phenology of migratory and breeding cycles in some passerines that overwinter in tropical realms and the accessibility of their primary caterpillar prey in their northern breeding grounds. Losses in per capita fitness per brood are a sign that things are going wrong. Given the paucity of studies in this area, there's little doubt that its likely to be a widespread phenomenon, given that the populations of many once common songbirds are in freefall. Changes in habitat quality as a result of more extreme forms of weather, probably brought about by more intense La Nina and El Nino events, is also being observed. Several well-known North American songbirds are declining at the hearts of their range where conditions should be optimal, but these seem to be correlated with frequent changes in extreme weather events correlated with the NAO.

The other problem with warming, and one that the deniers seem to have trouble grasping, is that of time lags between cause-and-effect relationships to be mainfested. Species do not exhibit instantaneous crashes due to a perceived stress, but instead this can take decades to be demonstrated empirically. In this scenario, the loss of species 'x' due to a concomitant loss of habitat 'y' may take amny years to unfold. Its alsmost certain that the visible loss of many tropical biota occurred more than a century after the initial disturbance. Tilman & May (1994) have already discussed the extinction debt in detail; there is no further need for me to go into it here except to say that the current warming began only about 30 years ago; processes are being played out in an ecological arena right now that we are not aware of. But there is little doubt that, as some studies have already shown, they will become pandemic.

Shub, you really should get an adult to read it to you, and not rely on septic blogs and their laughable mischaracterisations such as 'copygate' etc.

Such puerile and blatant attempts to diminish Deep Climate's and John Mashey's exhaustive and referenced debunking after all take pains to omit the fabrication, falsification and distortions introduced by the Wegman effort, not to mention the hokey and selective M&M approach to statistical analysis that Wegman also rubber stamped.

Which isn't such a surprise on this side of the fence.
You're not considered part of the anti-science brigade for nothing.

Shub shows his complete lack of knowledge of the science:

Jeff,

You say

Some of my research involves the biological effects of climate warming ... Many of these effects are simplifying and potentially unraveling food webs ...

And now you say,

There's abundant evidence that the combined assault of human actions is reducing genetic and species diversity, leading to changes in the strength and persistence of food webs and tropic linkages ...

Which one is it?

Climate warming, or the combined assault of human actions?

If 'climate warming' and 'human actions' are all one muddled, swaddled-up bundle in your head, can you blame readers for not distinguishing between the two when you say one, and mean the other.

If shub had informed himself as to what the science and scientists have to say he would know that the scientists are 90 to 95% sure that the majority of the warming over the past 50 years is caused by man's emissions of CO2.

Since you appear to also be lacking in basic English comprehension the "A" in "AGW" stands for "anthropogenic" i.e human caused, which shows that Jeff's two statements are not in conflict as you are trying to assert.

Good grief, such ignorance but I guess it is only to be expected from AGW deniers.

Jeff H - If you'd had any objections of substance, to what I actually discussed wrt climate, I'm certain you would have stated them.

Abomination? Yes, I guess that's an accurate description of quite a lot of comments from those who think insults are valid arguments. Personally, I think people use the best arguments they have (left) when debating. You started with "put up or shut up" and it never got better.

Watch Jonas N imitate deer in headlights:
"You point me to a figure, with a bunch of (different) 90% errorbars for various contributions and GCMs. It doens't even contain the main IPCC claim."

It's just a game.

Ian Forrester

If you had followed this thread, you would know that this had been discussed thoroughly.

The IPCC AR4 claim is that at least half of the warming during the last 50 years could be attributed to man made GHG-emissions, and with 90% certainty.

I questioned that certainty and asked on what scientific basis such a claim was made (as best as I know, that 90% certainty claim, is only guesswork)

Lots of commenters made claims that it indeed was based on proper and solid science, but none had seen such personally, or could point me to those references where the basis for this claim actually was presented.

Martin Vermeer #227 was the only one to actually give a reference. And indeed 90% was mentioned in there, but unfortunately wrt to something else, definitely not the main AR4 claim.

You know, such claims are quite abundant, as are those about how much of 'the scientific community' stand behind this or that. But once you start checking what actually is supported by facts and proper science, the picture changes quite substatially.

As I stated aboive, I have been asking AGW-proponents where this 90% certainty comes from. And even level headed intelligent AGW-proponents cannot answer. But mostly the crowd only bursts out: 'It's in there somewhere, go look for yourself!'

I have not met one single person who actually has seen that purported science him/herself. Only that the are certain someone else has ...

Quite astonishing regarding the most prominent IPCC AR4 claim.

(The most prominent take-home message from the previous IPCC TAR was a graph resempling a hockey stick, you may have heard of it too ;-)

Andy S presages Jonas N's comment...

FYI, folks. We are 1/6th along the way for this thread becoming Girma redux on Deltoid.

Andy S - You are not the only one not knowing where that claim came from. Nobody before you has managed either.

Let me be a little more specific:

Running a model, or several models, with slightly different inital conditions, or other uncertaing factors, and getting similar but slighlty scattered resluts does not constitute validation of those models. Not even when the models agree quite well with what they try to simulate.

Further, that scatter cannot be taken as the 'uncertainty' still left. This is an even stronger restriction than the above. Doing so is actually nonsense.

Moreover, models runs based on the assumption that the GHG forcings are known, will only give you answers as if these were indeed the actual forcings (and the model got the rest of the climate right too). They cannot establish with what certainty, or how correctly they were assumed.

Using Bayesian statistics for this is (almost certainly) bunk! Bayesian statistics basically is 'adding expert opinion' to data insufficient for making proper statistical assessments. (It must not always be bunk, it is appropriate under certain restricted cirumstances. But not when guessing how good you were at the guessing in the first place)

So, if anybody has actually found, read and understood the proper scientific source for that extraoridnary 90% certainty IPCC AR4 claim ..

.. I would like to know (But I'm not holding my breath)

Jonas,

Why are you asking people here where the IPCC AR4 claim from? Have you written to the scientific body itself or to any of the lead authors? Or is blogging your limit? The IPCC reports are among the most peer-reviewed documents in scientific history; they went through 12 rounds of internal and 3 rounds of external peer-review. The final draft was certainly no extreme in its assessment, because it was based on the views of a large section of the climate science community; I am sure that many of those contributing to it feels that it actually *under*estimates the potential consequences of warming.

Like most of the lay-denialati who do not understand one iota of the scientific process, you appear to want absolute answers to questions that are admittedly, given the complexity, somewhat ambiguous. But there is little ambiguity in the main conclusion that humans are the primary forcing agent for the current warming. Amongst the rank-and-file of the scientific community, there is little controversy at all in this point; the real difficulty is in projecting the extent to which it will warm in the coming years, given all of the positive and negative feedbacks built into the system, and the consequences that this warming will have on natural and managed ecosystems, given our dependence on them.

For their part, the denialati, many of whom are driven not by scientific curiosity but by political expediency, are doing everything in their power to muddy the waters with respect to the public's understanding of climate change. They know that they cannot and never will win with respect to the science, where the already large body of evidence supporting AGW is growing every year. Their aim is ensure that nothing is done about the problem, so they will distort, mangle and twist the science they hate as long as they can to ensure that nothing is done, at least in the short term that interferes with their 'business-as-usual' agenda.

You apparently said earlier that 'nobody says its not warming', which is a bit of an embarrassment considering that only 10-15 years ago warming was claimed to be a ' doomsday myth' by most of the deniers, a position which was hastily abandoned as evidence accumulated showing that indeed, the mean average surface temperature of the Earth was increasing. For the past several years, the denialati have switched tactics from their initial ' it ain't happening' stance to one of two alternatives: 1) the warming is due to natural forcings, or 2) it is not exceptional within the recent geological record (hence your singular obsession with MBH 98). But in either case their aim has been the same: don't do anything about it. Ultimately as science vanquishes the few remaining dinosaurs, we will ultimately pay the price for our procrastination.

Most importantly, however, virtually everyone on this thread thinks that you are a wing-nut. You must think in your own deluded way that every time you post here that you are gaining points amongst the readership, but as we approach 400 postings on this thread it must be dawning on you that this is not the case. I have asked you repeatedly whazt scientific qualifications you possess that have inculcated you with wisdom of climate science that the people with the degrees and who are doing the research have somehow missed. Your response is to snort and bluster that you are as qualified as anyone else here to comment on climate science (meaning that you do not have any relevant degrees) but fair enough, I then ask how you, with your non-education in climate science appears to have figured things out that have someone eluded thousands of independent scientists working around the world. That one you haven't answered, except to lash out by accusing me of making strawman arguments etc. I think its a fair question and we all deserve a straight answer.

Jeff H

I am asking because of two reasons:

1) I haven't seen any basis for that claim myself, and
2) I am pointing out to AGW-proponents that the holy scripture they worship, is neither that holy nor watertight as they seem to believe.

I have asked almost every AGW-proponent I've ran across, and definitely the more level headed ones, if they know the basis for that claim.

If as you say, the IPCC assessment reports are the most peer reviewed documents in the history of science, then almost everybody would know where to find that 'science'

Obviously you do not know, nobody else here knew, and none I've asked before knew.

So, either this is a very well kept secret nobody is allowed to share. Or it doesn't exist.

As I've said before: Almost all of you would like to hammer me, rip me to shreads literatly, by providing that 'science'. And nobody managed.

That speaks much more than all your descriptions of your wishful thinking about me. I am absolutely certain that most of the people here hate me for pointing that out, calling me a wing nut, a lying asshole, a skunk, an idiot, stupid twerp etc.

As I said, I beleive people use the best arguments they have. And usually, that is not very much. In your case that's exceedinly obvuious! Most of you post is once more about your fantasies about what you're up against.

If you have any valid arguments, why not make them? Or be laughed at while you try to prentend to be somehow superior .. Your call!

Jonas has been pointed in the right direction, but prefers to endlessly whine 'I can't see it'.

Jonas thinks this is all about him, hence, his long-winded and rambling posts.

Why do you guys persevere with the troll?

He was called for what he is as early as [comment number 15](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/08/rick_perry_peter_wood_and_the.p…).

Jonas,

For heaven's sake!!!!! How many times do I have to repeat it: go to the primary literature and WRITE TO SOME OF THE SCIENTISTS WHO DID THE RESEARCH!!!!!!!!!!!! The 'AGW proponents' you've been hounding are, let me guess, not climate scientists. So why don't you go to a conference and speak with some climate scientists, instead of acting out your idiotic behavior here?

That's not too hard, is it? Next thing you'll tell me is that you've been asking folks over at RC about microfilarial tissue in Leontopithecus rosalia and when they do not respond to your satisifaction you will lash out, claiming that their ideas on the evolution of pentaradial symmetry and cuticular pigmentation are flawed...

My interest in warming is based on the ecological effects of a phenomenon where there is broad consensus that humans are the primary forcing agent... not on the factors underlying it, which, as I said, are pretty well established. Like you, I do not possess the Now you can huff and puff all

Moreover, the only person who is being laughed hysterically at on this thread is you, in case you hadn't noticed.

OOPS... I will finish my sentence... Like you (Jonas), I do not possess the expertise in climate science that is necessary to make bold strides into the field. Therefore, I defer to the expertise of the people who are doing the actual research. Unlike you, however, I do not wade into here trying to give the impression that I am some kind of 'expert' in the field. Hence why you are the epitome of the Dunning-Kruger effect - the less someone knows about a field the more they think they know. You are a text book case of the phenomenon. Now go and huff and puff and rant elsewhere. I have better things to do.

Jeff H

And how many times do I have to repeat that it is the primary literature I have been asking for!?

I am fully aware of that you have no clue about the actual research wrt how the climate varies and what causes that etc. And I' don't blame you for that. But quite a few here have made statements in no uncertain terms that this AR4 claim is solidly based on proper science. But all of them seem only to have second or third hand information. None has actually seen it (neither have I).

How many times do you need to repeat?

I have no clue why you endlessly feel that you have to reiterate your nonsensical drivel about your CV, DK and BS. Nobody asked you. And you're not adressing any climate topic discussed either.

PS You don't give the impression of somebody laughing (but maybe hysterical). Rather you seem to have difficulties with rational reasoning, keeping a level head and controling your emotions and anger.

Jonas,

Write to the scientists doing the research...Write to the scientists doing the research...Write to the scientists doing the research...Write to the scientists doing the research...Write to the scientists doing the research...Write to the scientists doing the research...Write to the scientists doing the research...

...and finally, when you write, "I am fully aware of that you have no clue about the actual research wrt how the climate varies and what causes that etc" you are really saying "I am fully aware of that *I* have no clue about the actual research wrt how the climate varies and what causes that etc... And my description of you as being a model subject for D-K fits; you think you know a lot about a field in which you have absolutely no training whatsoever. Or am I missing something; if so please link me to your lengthy publication list on the Web of Science. You haven't actually told anyone here what exactly your professional background is either. I have been honest about mine; let's hear your story Mr. Dunning-Kruger. I wait with baited breath.

Jonas troll, you've been pointed to the primary literature many times, but I suspect that given your apparent extreme difficulties in locating them, what with them being incredibly well hidden under the screaming heading 'References' within each [chapter](http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/contents.html), anything more complex such as reading them will be meaningless to you anyway.

Dunning-Kruger didn't know the half of it.

Jeff Harvey

You aren't making much sense here. As I just stated:

"Is the primary literature I have been asking for!"

Because I haven't seen or found any such. Neither seems anyone else I've been asking. And since I don't know of it, neither do I know the authors of such supposed (but well hidden) work. So I can't write to them!

Get it!?

And when I know who made those claims, I can read the papers for myself and check their claims (before possibly write to or contradict them)

Got it!?

Yes, you are missing quite a lot. For instance have you missed completely that I am asking for references. Not 'wading in pretending to be a legendary expert'!

Got it!?

Additionally, I made some very simple pointers about what you can assess statistically based on presented data (reconstructions, and their error bars). It was most certainly over your head, but mere elementary level statistics for others. And nobody really challenged that either (*).

Got it!?

(*) I don't count the stupid hollering from the know-nothing croud here. Got it?

Jeff Harvey

What are you saying, man? That the influence of the climate on the ecologies is unequivocal, but there is not a single paper you can provide in reference for it. Then similarly, that the climate is causing all kinds of unravelling, which when pressed a bit further becomes...'the climate and the humans' are causing all kinds of changes.

The reality is, that any attribution of dramatic changes in ecosystems, solely or in large part, to anthropogenic global climate change, is not possible. This is simply because the evidence base for the said 'dramatic change' is the IPCC 2007 statement that Jonas mentions, and the hockey stick. Both are broken. Unfortunately again, attribution is not so easy in the real world.

Just seeing a cockroach run at 10cm/sec instead of 9cm/sec is not evidence of *anthropogenic* *global* warming. We don't need cockroaches to measure temperature, we have thermometers in weather stations and satellites to do that.

Therefore your citation of thousands of papers which study the effect of a warming world on cockroaches, flies, worms and bedbugs etc, do *not* constitute proof for anthropogenic global warming.

More whistling-in-the-dark faith talk from the ignorati.
"This is simply because the evidence base for the said 'dramatic change' is the IPCC 2007 statement that Jonas mentions, and the hockey stick. Both are broken".

The only thing 'broken' shub is the thing between your ears.

Jonas,

For the billionth time you dickwad, why don't you vent your frustrations out to a bonafide climate scientist? Go to a conference or a workshop! Get off your lazy butt and become pro-active! Instead of wading in here - what is your point? I am sure there are people with the relevant expertise that would put your arguments to rest, once and for all, but instead you come in here trying to score brownie points and then pounding your chest claiming some kind of pyrrhic victory when you don't get your own way. And, as I have said, if you aren't satisified, why don't you write your own wonderful commentary and send it to Climate Science or a related journal? The you could claim to be a real expert! Instead you think thyat by preaching in here, it gives you some kind of intellectual victory. And again, you have not answered my simple question: WHAT EXACTLY IS YOUR PROFESSION? ARE YOU RETIRED? A LIBRARIAN? AN AUTO MECHANIC? A CARDBOARD BOX ASSEMBLER?

Get this: anthropogenic climate change is very real. The scientific community by-and-large agrees on this point. Science has left you clowns behind. The challenge now is to better understand its extent and consequences for terrestrial and aquatic systems across the biosphere.

"Jonas troll, you've been pointed to the primary literature many times.."

But it's sooo confusing.

Chapter 9 is 80 odd pages and 200-300 references...all freely available.

It's like the IPCC is trying to hide something.

Jeff H

Some people here have actually touched upon pertinent points, made valid and intelligible comments and objections. Many have claimed to know of such science, and others have attemted to point out relevant passages, literature, even one reference. Noticably, they also could phrase their comments better, and usually refrained from insults and the stupid shouting exhibited by so many others ...

As for you, you were not among those ..

You instead, are an abrasive bystander at the sideline here, with no relevant competence at all, waving his CV as cheering-flag, while rooting for the 'home team' shouting: 'I so much believe in you, we are so many that do!'.

Who gives a f*ck?

You are not even aware of what part of the field is played, what is played there, what rules apply, who the umpire is. Just angrily shouting that nobody else should be allowed to comment the game! And here, among the no-nothing ranting crowd!? What a farce ..

Well to be fair Michael, the reference papers are hidden from those who are unable to read, click the links or comprehend a combination thereof.

Contd. Jeff H - You ask:

"what is your point?"

I made it very clear in #205, and repeat will repeat it here:

"I make a faslifiable claim:

Those calcuations do not exist. My claim has not been falsified in the four+ years since AR4.

If they do exist (did exist in 2007) one simply has to show them to me. And my claim is falsified.

...

But I'll make a more pointed claim:

You (and others) tell me repeatedly, that those calculations exist, that they are available in the journals, that the levels of confidence indeed are based on proper science. You (plural) make that claim!

How do you know? Have you seen them, read them, understood them? Do you actually know which ones they (supposedly) are?

Because if you don't, you are just guesssing! Well, 'Lying!' some people would say here. But definitely making things up on pure faith. And thats what I am actually accusing you of: 'Of not knowing! Of merely guessing'

You could prove me wrong (falsify at least part of this) in one instant! But instead everybody is beating around the bush .. complaing about other things!

Because you are completely (and stupidly) wrong:

I am the on wanting to look at the science. That's why I'm asking about where it is!

Got it?"

Jeff, you also say:

"I am sure there are people with the relevant expertise that would put your arguments to rest"

so you are included among those I adressed in #205.

Because, let me make one thing prefectly and and very pointedly clear to you, Jeff Harvey, you irrelevant pompous insolent windbag:

What we are talking about is the absolute centerpiece claim of the entire IPCC AR4 report, their most prominent posterchild take-home message! Echoed by every news outlet in the entire world, and endlessly repeated by journalists, churnolists, activists, bloggers, even scientists and folks who should know better.

And nobody knows where it comes from! Nobody! Nobody has seen it, read it, checked it. Everybody just says on faith: It is in there somewhere! And someone else knows ...

The most prominent AR4 claim! About how certain they are!

On pure faith!(*) Still, four+ years later! And although it is said to be the best referenced and reviewed science assessment in the history.

If you'd know anything about real science, Jeff, it is that nothing is taken and accepted on faith! That's why things are publshed! So everybody can see them ..

Because science is not promulgated by UN-sanctioned decrees!

So (in your own words): "put up, or shut up!"

Nota bene:

The previous IPCC TAR-report posterchild was a graph resembling a hockey stick, but that one at least had a name to it. Maybe they've learnt ...

(*) I know how that figure came about, but that's of course not official knowledge

"Texas wildfires continue burning out of control Tuesday, and one official says the fire is a "monster" and "it's zero percent contained." The wildfires, which have caused billions in damage to Texas' agricultural industry, claimed two lives and destroyed more than 1,000 homes, show no signs of yielding anytime soon. The months-long drought is feeding wildfires spurred by winds from Tropical Storm Lee over the weekend. Texas Forest Service spokeswoman Jan Amen said the fire is a "monster" and that "it's zero percent contained." More than 3.6 million acres, or 1.5 million hectares, in Texas have been blackened by wildfires since November. About $5 billion in damages have been done to the state's agricultural industry, according to reports.

Well apart from sympathising with the ordinary folk there, it looks like the oaf brigade are finding out what putting their trust in the prayers of fools like would-be presidential candidate Rick Perry and his lo-rent igmoramus-for-hire Peter Wood will lead to.

Jonas troll, don't expect anyone here - especially not an actual distinguished scientist like Jeff Harvey - to volunteer to plumb the depths of stupid that you choose to reside in to make the effort to educate you. Your social skills would shame a bad-tempered scorpion whose crack supply ran out a week ago.

Go away and read AR4.
Then read the references.
Then read the supplementary materials.
Then try to understand them.

But above all and most importantly, don't make any more of your inane posts until you've done all that.

Good old Jonas. Refuses to answer my simple question about his occupation and its relevance to climate change science. He's becoming more and more belligerent as he does so, as well. I also ask him why he expects contributors to a blog site to answer his facile questions whilst he refuses to say if he has written to actual climate scientists asking the same questions. The answer is clearly no, because he realizes they'd wipe the floor with his ignoramus posturing. And then he prattles on about me waving my CV in front of him which I did only once as a means of drawing out his own illustrious qualifications. In reality, this guy is a self-righteous moron. Michael and other have told this clown repeatedly to read chapter 9 of the latest IPCC report, and the 200-300 references therein. But our resident troll refuses to do so. Idiot.

I can see why Bernard, Martin Vermeer, MFS, Andy S, Chris O'Neill, Holly Stick, John Mashey, Lotharsson, Wow and the other sensible contributors on Deltoid have given up with him. Michael and Chek: thanks also for the support. But we are wasting our breath with this guy.

Ahh, another useful post appears at NAS.
http://www.nas.org/polArticles.cfm?Doc_Id=2162

"Russell K. Nieli is a Senior Preceptor in Princeton University's James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, and a Lecturer in Princeton's Politics Department.

This article is cross-posted from Minding the Campus."

I guess Wood needed some help.

Madison = http://web.princeton.edu/sites/jmadison/index.html
and people might recall from http://www.desmogblog.com/nas-president-peter-wood-wrong-dishonest-or-h… (p.29) that it gets funding from folks like L&H Bradley, overlap with NAS.

Jonas, Shub, Chek, Jeff,

Is this a private disagreement or can anyone join in ;)

I think it says something about the state of the scientific field that many 'bloggers' actualy have more credibility with the public than the 'mainstream' climate scientists do.

Numerous reasons for this; climategate, Gores ridiculous movie, IPCC errors, grey literature references, lack of recent warming (travesty), NH cold winters etc...

Most of all though I think it is an apparent lack of honesty and self critical analysis in the climate community. These have been discarded in favour activism & advocacy.

So don't go round blaming everyone that has a different point of view and expresses it on a website. If they put together a more convincing case than you can, then that's just tough!

;)

GSW,

Fair enough. But don't expect the scientific community to take most of the bloggers seriously; I have enough on my plate without engaging in pedantics. I am happy for people to have their own views, but for heaven's sake it should be based on sound science and not on political expediency and personal bias.

Also, I disagree with some of your points: NH winters have not been colder (check out Canada's in 2010), and there has not been a 'recent lack of warming'. 1998 was exceptional by any standard - more than 0.20 C above the previous warmest year. But one decade is certainly not long enough to elucidate a temporal trend for a system that is so deterministic. The 'it stopped warming in 1998' meme has been recurrent in denial circles. If one compares warm and cold weather records over the past century the trend is, however, perfectly clear. As are the wealth of biotic indicators.

As for the IPCC errors, they are miniscule. Given the size of the document, and the amount of scrutiny given to it by the denialati, its remarkable that more errors have not been found. Creationists and intelligent design exponents have similarly poured through evolutionary textbooks in a desperate attempt to poke as many holes as they can in evolutionary theory. Of course there are knowledge gaps; this does not make the concept of evolution by natural selection false. I also disagree that there has been a lack of honesty in the climate community. I challenge you to compare the honesty and integrity of the rank-and-file of the climate science community with the honesty and integrity of most of the the contrarians. Its not even close. The fact that many of them are paid up 'fellows' or 'scholars' of right wing think tanks shows how transparent they are. And of course this matters. If I am paid by a lawyer, he/she is working for me. Bought-and-paid for science is something we have to deal with. There's a lot of money sloshing around in the corporate anti-environmetnal fund; this is why it is hardly surprising that many of the most prominent names in the climate change denial industry are also to be found downplaying a range of other human-mediated threats to the environment.

As for Shub, he's full of you-know-what. There are plenty of studies reporting a reduction in ecosystem services as a result of human actions; these include the provisioning of clean water, pollination, pest control, water purification, nutrient cycling and soil fertility. These services are the by-product of a stupendous array of biotic interactions occurring at local scales, and their loss is clear evidence that the food webs in which they are embedded are unraveling. We also have clear evidence of phenological shifts in trophic interactions as a result of warmer springs in the northern hemisphere. The strategy employed by the likes of Shub, Jonas and others is that, because they read little of the empirical literature (or do not understand it) it does not exist. I do not have the time to read every scientific journal in my own field of research every month; there are dozens of them and they are monthly or bi-monthly! Each one may contain 20-30 articles, each up to 15 pages long. And this excludes review journals etc. I wonder how many issues of Ecology, Functional Ecology, Molecular Ecology, Ecology Letters, Global Change Biology, Journal of Applied Ecology, Journal of Ecology, Journal of Animal Ecology, Biological Conservation, Conservation Biology, Oikos, Oecologia, Canadian Journal of Zoology, Trends in Ecology and Evolution, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, Basic and Applied Ecology, Ecosystems, Advances in Ecosystem Research, Annual Review of Evolution, Ecology and Systematics, Ecological Monographs, Ardea, Nature, Science, and all of the more specialized journals Shub reads each month. All of these require a subscription. In every issue of these journals are articles dealing with climate-change related effects on communities and ecosystems. My research is in different areas. Its not my job to spend hours pouring through these journals to debate non-scientists like Shub. I am simply not paid to do so. Perhaps when I retire - but right now its up to interested parties to go to their public library and look for the articles themselves. Just because they are not aware of them does not mean that they don't exist. Yet this seems to be the game people like Shub play - its up to me the pour through tens of thousands of peer-reviewed articles while he sits on his butt waiting for me to respond. Until I do, 'there is no evidence', even if the above journals are filled with pages of it. And I have been to enough conferences and workshops where I have heard plenty of talks outlining climate-change related effects on biotic interactions c overing a wide range of scales.

I am afraid, GSW, if this is the way that the denailati think they can 'win' debates, then you are sadly mistaken.

@Jeff

As usual a lengthy post.

"I am afraid, GSW, if this is the way that the denailati think they can 'win' debates, then you are sadly mistaken."

I think you are in denial Jeff, we are winning the debate. So called 'green' tax policies get pretty short shrift I'm afraid, a substantive case has just not been made.

The "in the pay of big oil" rhetoric is very tired as is "trust me I'm a scientist" - the majority of climate scientists are just not credible - more "Seekers for the advocacy hotspot" than "Seekers for truth".

The only thing left to ponder is AR5 - What new calamities are to be visited upon the world? yeah, right.

GSW has a severe case of denial - carbon taxes have been and are being implemented across the world, starting with Finland 20 years ago. It was inevitable that the world's national economies would eventually catch up with, and place a price on, the previously externalised cost of polluting the atmosphere with CO2.

Why the likes of GSW find the idea of economic progress is anybody's guess.

His opinions on who is "credible" are completely incredible.

Thanks Vince,

You mentioned Finland, do you have any uptodate figures on their CO2 emissions? it would be interesting to see if these Carbon Tax policies have any measurable emissions benefit, or whether they are just soft revenue generating schemes for government.

Thanks In Advance.

;)

GSW said: "the majority of climate scientists are just not credible" and also "we [the demiers] are winning the debate".

Such are the dangers of getting suckered by the mythology that many denier sites equals more truth. If you had any historical perspective GSW you might have some appreciation of the marvellously fluid and contradictory nature of the echo chamber that's been constructed for the benefit of those like you. Nearly all with ties to right wing and corporate (i.e. private) interests.

Sadly for you, you can't win against the real world. The people that observe, study and report on that are called scientists, not accountants, weathermen and political operatives.

Jonas,

>"Is the primary literature I have been asking for!"

>Because I haven't seen or found any such. Neither seems anyone else I've been asking. And since I don't know of it, neither do I know the authors of such supposed (but well hidden) work. So I can't write to them!

>Get it!?

>And when I know who made those claims, I can read the papers for myself and check their claims (before possibly write to or contradict them)

>Got it!?

>Yes, you are missing quite a lot. For instance have you missed completely that I am asking for references. Not 'wading in pretending to be a legendary expert'!

>Got it!?

[References.](http://lmgtfy.com/?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ipcc.ch%2Fpublications_and_data%2…)

One might observe that you are as dumb as dirt, but that would be an insult to dirt.

Get it?

the majority of climate scientists are just not credible

or more precisely:

The 3% of climate scientists that GSW agrees with are credible.

Sure they are.

The 3% of climate scientists that GSW agrees with are credible.

There's one of GSW's credible climate scientists going down the toilet right now.

Do you mean GSW was counting among his (rather short) list of "credible scientists" a Creationist with a history of publishing nonsense papers?

As for Finland - I have no idea. Perhaps you could do your own research. Perhaps you could start with the English Tory Party - they've obviously done the research, as they have decided to implement a proper carbon tax forthwith.

Come to think of it - which part of David Cameron's government's adoption of a carbon tax fits with your assertion that
> So called 'green' tax policies get pretty short shrift

...unless you were just spouting nonsense, in which case you need not explain the divergence between your statements and reality.

luminous beauty - A google search? How lame!

Possibly you too are unaware of that everybody saying 'but look, there are lots of references, so many of them' is just confirming my point further! You (plural) have no clue, are just guessing, repeating things amongst you on pure faith.

That's why you'd rather talk about dirt, fantatsizing about 'climate scientists' wiping the floor etc.

Jeff H is trying to hide behinde their skirts, even boasts that he meets sometimes them. But his yapping along with the other signatures nowhere reinforces that AR4 claim. Just shows how little substance they can come up with.

You've been given direct links and guidance already, moron jonas.

Although the ongoing display of your yappy, petulant, persona helps foster an impression of denier cluelessness I for one am perfectly happy for readers to continue to witness.

Jonas,

Still waiting for you published rebuttal to AR4. And you haven't yet said one thing about any of the references in that chapter except to belittle them without making any explitic criticisms.

I think we're gonna be waiting a long, long time. You'll never write one cos' you can't. And we still don't know your profession. It must be something really embarrassing...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhm4SMlGnbk

Otherwise you'd tell us how intellectually gifted you were to be able to take on the climate science community.

Reality is, JN, you are a dolt.

Jeff H

The thing is that neither you, nor any of the other know-nothing loudmouths here, have the slightest clue. And neither does any of those many revered bonafide 'climate scientists' you talk som much about.

Because that science does not exist! Period!

Is that still not explicit enough!?

Which part of 'Does not exist!' is too complicated for you to comprehend?

It's a falsifyable statement! And you know perfectly well that so many here would so much like to prove me wrong. But can't!

QED

Did someone accidentally drop a link to this blog outside the day care centre for delusionals?

Jeff (contd.) - You say:

"you haven't yet said one thing about any of the references"

I have been pointed to one reference, and briefly pointed out why (for several reasons) it is not the scientific basis for that AR4 claim (see #238, 298, 344, 360 and 363).

Closing your eyes and making things upp!? Is that how 'science' is done in your part of the 'community'?

An aweful lot seems to indicate such sloppiness, I'm afraid.

Oh for Chrissake, are people still arguing with this troll? Section 9.4.1.4 and in particular Fig 9.9, and if the troll has any objections, he should have stated them in the context of what they actually are doing there! In precise terms!

Everybody, don't waste your time on this individual anymore. Let him shout and rave as much as it pleases him, but leave him alone.

I think that this might be the first documented example of an 'hypothesis' (and I use that term generously) the proof of which has been established entirely by not providing any data, any evidence, or any analysis.

My further conjecture is that a person who disproves in a single pass a whole discipline, involving of hundreds of years of science and thousands of scientists' work, on the basis soley of a vague and unsubstantiated speculation in ideological opposition to the fundamental tenets of the scientific discipline in question, is either a profound genius or a profound fool.

Applying Joans N's technique myself (with the slight benefit of actually having some evidence) I delare that Jonas N is a profound fool.

Quod erat demonstrandum

Just did a quick review of Jonas' contributions in just the last few days - almost 2500 words. Within which he manages to say absolutely nothing.

It's really quite impressive, that kind of waffling.

Bernard J - Owngoal!

Actually, that 90% confidence of a specified attribution is the claim, and is the one that is made without providing any data and analysis.

"who disproves in a single pass a whole discipline, involving of hundreds of years of science and thousands of scientists' work" Sloppy strawman nonsense!

Andy S - IPCC claims to assess the science. That it states the above claim is obvious. However, that is not at all the issue. The issue is that the statement is has no basis in real published science.

In IPCC AR4, it is only supported by armwaiving, footnotes, circular arguing, Appendix 'reasoning' and proclamations. (And no! Your Figure 9.9 is still not science)

I am suprised that so many here, some claiming to be 'scientists', still pretend that the issue is a completely different one.

>Bernard J - Owngoal!

Um, quite the opposite, if one deigns to carefully parse my post.

It seems that mild subtlety escapes you as much as does basic scientific discourse. Oh, and after you've finished trolling for phantasms go learn when to properly call on claims of strawman usage. You're not very good at it.

My original conclusion is reinforced.

Jonas,

Yawn. Read Bernard's last two posts over and over and let them sink in. And you still haven't told us here what you do for a living. Scared to be honest?

That it is warming well outside of normal boundaries is beyond doubt. There are huge numbers of biotic indicators as proof of that. There is also broad consensus among the scientific community that humans are primarily responsible. What part of this simple English escapes your muddled brain? Now go back to your right wing sand box and play with your toys, will you?

SKEPTIC = An expert in a particular field questioning conclusions or methodologies in studies that are within their field of expertise.

SCEPTIC = So Called Expert Perpetually Talking In Circles. Example: See Jonas N

Jeff H and Bernard J

You are merely trying to escape the fact that none of you (and none I've asked previously) has the slightest clue about where any scientific basis for the main AR4 claim is to be found.

I believe you, you don't. And let me tell you, neither does any of the 'climate scientists' I've asked.

I understand that this hurts your sensitive feelings and egos. But sorry guys, I can't help you with that.

I repeat ( for the umpteeth time):

If anyone of you actually has seen, read and understood proper science establishing that main AR4 claim, just show it to me!

Until then, you are just nagging and whining, like schoolboys who had their candy taken away.

You are merely trying to escape the fact that none of you (and none I've asked previously) has the slightest clue about where any scientific basis for the main AR4 claim is to be found.

I just casually counted six separate instances of people pointing you to the references for that claim. No, don't bother with the "nah-ah, show me" baloney your utter disfunction is undoubtedly compelling you to reply with. If the first half dozen times did not penetrate your reality avoidance field, you're going to believe what you believe anyway.

I'm actually genuinely curious about something else: do you truly think you're fooling anyone? You do realize that these wonderful computermachines have advanced features such as "scrolling up", right? Do you consider yourself rational?

Stu, don't waste your time. He will just repeat the same thing over and over again. It's an act. Street theater.

Andy: I know... still curious to know if he thinks he's fooling anyone though. The mind absolutely boggles at the irony of

Until then, you are just nagging and whining, like schoolboys who had their candy taken away.

Never did a triple spit-take before that nugget.

Apologies Chaps,

Have to agree with Jonas here. Someone referenced the IPCC report (Section 9.4.1.4) as proof of attribution, this is quite simply bogus.

Modelling past climate to get a pre determined result is unimpressive - a bit like telling people you predicted last weeks lottery results - extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof and there is none here.

"Magic ing" (there is no analysis to support the claim) this into a 90% confidence level is pure unsubstantiated advocacy, nothing more.

To the extent that any of you have any scientific training, I can only assume that these were in the non empirical sciences, hand-waving and unjustified conclusions the order of the day it would appear.

Seriously Stu!?

Do you really think that I cannot find the list of references in AR4 Wg1 ch9 myself?

I am not going to read 2-300 references searching for something that none of the guys who pretend to know has never seen. Believe me, I have asked AGW-beleivers this for a long time. And even serious scientists, who I can respect for believing in the AGW-hypothesis and being able to have level headed discussions about it without flying of the handle. And no, nobody knows where it comes from. Obviously you don't either. And this is kinda my point. As you said:

"you're going to believe what you believe anyway"

which you will of course do. But be reminded now, that this particlular claim none of you can claim is based on proper science hereafter. You'd be knowlingly taking it on faith only.

Andy S - Reality is a sour grape if you have been avoiding or denying it for too long. You made some intelligible comments before, which I responded to (and you never came back). Now, you really just sound like you want that disturbing information just to go away so you can forget it again.

Stu - I don't need to fool anybody. I can be perfectly open with what I am saying: I found that AR4 claim quite remarkable, and have been trying to find out how one can make such strong assurances about a field still in its infancy, and with so many unanswered questions and holes in it. The more I've been looking, the more convinced I have become that that number nowhere has anything to do with proper science. And nobody has so far even attempted to convince me of the opposite. Only handwaving, like you above, 'there are so many references ... go and look'

Well, I am not making that claim (rather the opposite: I'm very sure it is bogus). But if there actually were any real science behind it, I'd have to scrutinize it before repeating that. And the thing is, some of you above (certainly not all) are not stupid people, some do actually possess som skill (albeit in other fields), and those are sufficiently mature to realize that they the brouhaha is not enough. That claims need to be backed up. And my guess is that this is the reason they are so eager to talk about something else, and irrelevant .. I don't know if this includes you.

Because you know, science which nobody has seen is not science. It is religion ..

I am not going to read 2-300 references searching for something that none of the guys who pretend to know has never seen.

Thank you for admitting that you don't WANT to know, sweetheart. Was that so hard?

I think we're done here.

Stu - I want to know, that's why I've been asking for those references. Only thing I require, that the person has actually read and understood them.

All those pointing to references they haven't read and understood themselves are irrelevant, they are just posturing here.

And since you are one of those, you were 'done here' even before you entered. As was essentially everybody else. (Martin V had read/seen one reference though. Better than every single one of all the others. To bad that ref didn't cut it either)

A) Why do I have to have read a reference in order to point it out to you?

B) What specifically are you missing that is not in one of the references provided?

C) Have YOU read these references?

Trolls who think they have a point are rather like hippos who think they've successfully emulated Nijinsky.

By my reckoning lads, refuting eight papers ought to do it, although YMMV.

Off you go.

Don't let the door smack those big hippo butts on the way out.

Stu, stay away from that troll!

*And let me tell you, neither does [sic] any of the 'climate scientists' I've asked*

Who exactly have you 'asked'? I'd like to know. But I don't expect and answer because my guess is that you haven't asked anyone. You want answers from people here but you always fail to answer our own queries. What is your professional background to be able to disparage AR4 and its ~ 300 references? Your response: silence. Silence that is worth a thousand words.

As for GSW, you have about as much credibility in this discussion as our Dunning-Kruger model, Jonas. Which is to say NONE. Moreover, I'd also like to ask you waht your professional background is in any scientific endeavor? Let me guess: none, like your twin. Buh-bye.

Andy: the party was over back at #414. At this point I'm just seeing how big of a fool Jonas wants to make of himself. He seems quite the persistent little muppet, rather than the drive-by handwaver types like GSW (holy handgrenade, #412 is epically vapid -- am I the only one hearing it in my head in the Charlie Brown teacher voice?)

Stu

A) Because I'm not interested in listening to any of the know-nothing hangarounds. And believe me, they are the absolute majority here and elsewere.

B) I've stated that at least a dozen times. Only the really stupid may have missed what I am looking for.

C) I already answered that! I have read those where I thought they'd possibly could contain some substance.

Andy S - You have no clue, and you know it. That's why you so desperately don't want to be reminded. Look at Fig 9.9 for consolation (but not affirmation)!

Jeff H

All you have is your own twisted version about what should be regarded as 'credibility'. You:

1) Have not seen any science justifying that AR4 claim, and

2) You would not know the first thing of what would be required to do so.

I don't blame you for your impotence, but you have been absolutely immaterial here wrt that question.

The claim I make here is that I know what I am talking about. Nobody has so far even tried to seriously challange any of my statements. (Only the stupid-beyond-belief talkbacks from the gutter here). You have not come up with one piece of substance either. And that's why you'd rather talk about 'credibilty', ie your own belief system.

But we already knew about that. It was a given from the start, and carries no relevent information at all. As you said: "put up, or shut up!"

And since you cannot put up anyting ... what we hear from you is the miserable whining from those who whished but couldn't. And it is immensely boring. Even if there are many of you ..

Jonas 'Nijinsky' here firmly believes of course that he's far too smart for everyone else here and firmly believes he's blown AR4 atttribution apart, although the evidence for that is often alluded to, but as usual conspicuously lacking. Support hippo GSW buys this proposition, being the pliant pawn of Bishop Moron that he is and 'firmly believes it too.

'Firmly believes' is of course religion or delusion, or religious delusion, not science.

Oh look! We're back on topic talking about Rick Perry at last.

I have read those where I thought they'd possibly could contain some substance.

Name one, cupcake.

Denialist and delusional comments by Rick Perry, Michelle Bachmann and other Republicans are widely commented on, but never are the opinions of all the candidates compared, or even listed, in one place. The same exact thing on creationism/evolution - another area where they seem to climb all over each other to deny basic reality most strongly. For instance, do you know what Ron Paul or Newt Gingrich think about evolution?

Accordingly, I have compiled a list of ALL the Republican candidates and what each of them thinks about climate and evolution. Along with sources, videos, quotes:

http://www.lukesci.com/2011/09/06/all-of-the-2012-republican-candidates…

The point Jonas makes is valid.

Come on guys where's the beef? 400 odd comments and none of you can think of a single substantive piece of evidence for attribution.

Bizarrely when the BBC asked Phil Jones he answered "It must be man, cos it wasn't the Sun or a volcano" Jesus.H.C you've got to joking haven't you?

Labelling this as an argument from ignorance would be giving too much credit to the man.

Any of you non-empirical types do any better?

Stu - The point is that you haven't read any! Obviously, you don't even know what's being discussed. Now, go and play with the other morons here. There are plenty, and they need the company. They were done the same instant they opende their mouths. Even before that ..

Never mind your dumb arguments from incredulity GSW - get refuting those 8 (or more) papers before drivelling away as your support act act is wont to do.

Stu - The point is that you haven't read any!

Really, sweetheart? Do you know me? Do you know what I have and have not read?

Obviously, you don't even know what's being discussed.

I'm confused. Me asking you what your problems are with the references that were provided means that I do not know what is being discussed?

Or was it me asking you to name ONE of the referenced papers that you have read that lead you to this deep, stupendous jump of banana-cake guano-infused leap?

Back to square one, Jonas. It's a very simple question. Name ONE of the papers referenced that you have read.

Stu - At any point, you are (and have been) totally free to present anything of substance you can come up with!

I'm the one sticking my neck out. Nobody even dares to take a swing at it. Only talk about how unneccesary that would be. ..

Pathetic!

I'm the one sticking my neck out.

By not naming any of the references that you have read?

You are a hero indeed. A young loner on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless, the powerless, in a world of criminals who operate above the law.

Either that, or you're a complete blowhard who rolls in, pees on the carpet, demands the credentials of everyone present and when asked for a single, concrete thing wilts like a bag of acrid flatulence in the void of his staggering ignorance.

But go ahead, prove me wrong. Point out a paper in the AR4 references that you have read, and point out what is wrong with it. Surely that would not be too much to ask of an intrepid crusader such as yourself? Surely that would not be sticking your neck out too far?

GSW said: "Bizarrely when the BBC asked Phil Jones he answered "It must be man, cos it wasn't the Sun or a volcano" Jesus.H.C you've got to joking haven't you?
Labelling this as an argument from ignorance would be giving too much credit to the man.

This statement bears a couple of seconds consideration, because it exemplifies the average, follow-my-leader denier mindset. The sort of mundane word-parser attracted by Bishop "ignoramus" Montford, for example.

Because climate scientists generally pitch their responses to their expected audience's ability to comprehend, the information gets simplified, for the benefit of that audience and particularly so when that audience is reached via the mass media.

Then along comes one of Bishop Moron's eager-beaver flock to pretend that some hastily googled, two-sentence press statement supercedes the 60 page paper the statement was summarised from. From that point onwards, in GSW et al's minds, the IPCC bases it's case on just thoae two sentences. That's exactly how stupid GSW's case is. And then he and his herd of ilk wonder why they're dismissed for comedy value.

Thanks for providing such a clear and straightforward case study GSW.

When you get your "knowledge" of climate science from idiot-blogs like Nova's or McIntyre's then you probably know to not read any of the primary literature in order to prevent it from puncturing your preconceived ideologically-based position.

Jonas, to us normal people, AR4 was a round-up of all established climate science up to that time. If you have made some stunning new discoveries, you will no doubt be able to have these discoveries published, in which case your discoveries will be included in AR5.

Or, you can carry on waving your hands here.

Obviously, if you're nothing but a blowhard ignoramus, only one of the above options is available to you.

Jonas really does deserve some kind of prize.

Stupidest âgotchaâ maybe? â âyou canât prove X, cause I ainât gonna to look at literature about X, ha!â

[Jonas,](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/08/rick_perry_peter_wood_and_the.p…)

You asked for references. __[These](http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch9s9-references.ht…) are the references you asked for.__ They are the particular papers that are the basis of the general review of the science (yes, it __is__ science) from which AR4 is abstracted.

You are dismissing it all with the unsubstantiated claim, without even the feeblest argumentation, that it is __not science__). This is __not__ presenting an actual argument. You can't be refuted, because there is nothing to refute. Just a bottomless pit of stupid.

Luke @ 425 "I have compiled a list of ALL the Republican candidates and what each of them thinks about climate and evolution"

It's a good read Luke. For Republican-leaners with any respect for science it would help make clear to them their few possible choices of candidate.

LB,

I think Jonas is just trying to rack up some Frequent Denier points.

If you get enough you can trade them for a Nobel Prize Pin.

"Any of you non-empirical types do any better?"

Apparently not.

;)

Stu, luminous b, Vince ...

I am and have been asking for a quite particular thing. Something others claim exists. Somthing the IPCC implicitly claims is to be found there (but only with off-hand remarks, footnotes, armwaving, apendix reasoning, but nowhere pinpointed). But something I very much doubt exists.

You guys can't pinpoint it either.

I am claiming a negative. Racking up references that don't contain what i say isn't in any om them won't prove my point. Showing one singular reference that does, disproves it. And all you guys (well maybe not all) know it!

That's why you so desperately want to talk about something else.
____________________________________________________________

Many of the cringing backwards arguments are quite hilarious, some outright false or nonsense:

Stu - I've discussed the one reference presented to me here. Still you repeatedly claim the opposite. Amazing!

luminous b - Nowehere do I say that those refs aren't science. But a general view isn't, and I am not asking for a general view, I'm asking about one very specific and quantified AR4 claim. One ref refutes my statment. Yet you state the opposite. Remarkable!

Vince - If you claim that the AR4 was a round-up of established climate science, then there should be science for the most prominent AR4 claim, shouldn't it? You talk about the "primary literature" and when asked to see it, it's not there. And nobody has ever seen it. Immedeately, everybody starts running with their foalposts and strawmen. Fascinating!

I see you've gone with the hand-waving option, Jonas. Quelle enorme surprise!

Found an error in the science? Refute it. Publish. Accept Nobel Prize.

I assume you aren't because you can't because you haven't.

Stu - To find an error in the science, I must first be able to see it. Finding errors in non-existing science? .. This is getting ridiculous ... Still living the pretence? Or has it progressed to denial?

As Jonas troll increases his legendary status (in his own head) it's worth returning to the point of the thread and reminding ourselves of his less than legendary comprehension skills.
"Now that Mashey has aired his complaints (and a lot more) about quotation marks missing (in his view) what does it all amount to in the real world?"

Presumably those are the self-same skills he has used to overturn AR4 and vanquished those vaporous scientists he's talked to, and of the same calibre as used by Peter Wood to excuse the Wegman scandal.

Jonas isn't just the lone genius who's seen through the entire scientific community's errors, he's the lone genius who can understand what the hell it is that Jonas is on about. And all without any scientific qualifications of his own!

Two Nobel prizes, surely.

Jonas,

Take Vince's advice: *Found an error in the science? Refute it. Publish*

In other words, put your money where your mouth is for once, instead of crowing on and on and on and on in a blog as if this somehow vindicates you and gives you intellectual superiority. None of us here are cotributors to IPCC AR4; so why the hell aren't you writing to the authors of said 300 papers and writing up your own rebuttal (your first and last article ever - and certainly no publishable?)

The you write, "I'm the one sticking my neck out".

What - on a general web site? You really are an ignoramus. If you were truly sticking your turkey-gobbler neck out you'd have written your own article already (with all of the verbiage you've already spewed out here) and submitted it somewhere. Or else signed up to attend a conference where you could present your grievances in person. You have about as much courage as a hermit crab.

Jeff _ I believe you when you (indirectly) say that you have no clue where that claim is to be found. You are in an absolutem majority here and in the entire world. Because I cannot find it either.

My take is that it doesn't exist. The backwards arguing and cringing among many here, that it still somheow may or should exist, although nobody has seen it, nobody can find it, nobody can name it, nobody can name the claimats is quite ... erhm .. amusing.

I think it is quite indicative of how you guys 'understand' science.

"I must first be able to see it. Finding errors in non-existing science?" - Jonas

Shorter Jonas: I refuse to look, therefore it doesn't exist.

To find an error in the science, I must first be able to see it.

So you are saying you have been physically unable to read any of the references presented to you? I'm sorry I've been making fun of you Jonas; it was uncouth of me to make light of your disabilities.

Stu - No, that's not what I'm saying, and you know it.

Okay Jonas, we've finally established that the reason you cannot find science in the references is because you have not read them, and that the reason you have not read them is that you don't feel like it.

The reason we're starting from the basis that the AR4 is sound is not only that the IPCC report represents the overwhelming consensus amongst climate scientists, but also that an entire cottage industry of corporate sponsored denialist flacks has been diligently trying to discredit it for over a decade and has come up with nothing more than a fake controversy by quote-mining some e-mails.

You're the one disputing mountains of scientific material, Jonas. Material that you are refusing to read. The burden of proof is completely, fully, totally and squarely on you.

Do you have anything concrete? "I don't believe 90% is scientific and I don't wanna read up on where they got it from" seems to be all you've come up with so far, and if you want to flaunt your pathetic, childish obstinacy by sticking with just that, please just let us know so we can get back to things more productive than indulging your trollish contrarianism. If you have anything concrete, such as a specific paper that you have a specific problem with, do tell.

No, that's not what I'm saying, and you know it.

The entire problem is that you're not saying much of anything.

Stu - The entire problem is that nobody has seen the claimed science. You haven't, I haven't, Jeff hasn't, nobody I've asked has, and of course none of the shouting crowd here who have no clue about anything.

And no, it is the IPCC AR4 who is making that claim and who trumpeted all over the world. I am not the one who has to prove it wrong. It is those who say that the IPCC is based on science who have to show that science. Before that happens there isn't even a contest.

What I am disputing here is not mountains, it is one very specific claim (and you know that, so why are you all the time pretending something else?)

Are you as afraid of reality as so many other here? So that you constantly must redefine what the issue is. Making things up? I am asking if anybody has seen and read such science. And you say I am "refusing to read"!?

Do you at all know what published science is? Why they index it in databses, with the searchable abstratcs and keywords, why it is called a reference, why proper referencing is so important, why they keep track of who cites who etc.

If you didn't know: This done for the reason so that somebody later (years, decades) easily can find what has been done by others. And equally, so that people relying on results by others, experiments, calculations etc can quote that work for the same reason, and not have to repeat every detail.

Published articles, ie references, are explicitly there
not to put you guys in the spot you are in, not having any clue where to find the science.

And still you (many) keep repeating that a specific result supposedly is contained in some nebulous way, not in the specific reference where the analysis actually is presented, but as lingering cloud of insight hovering somewhere around and above among 2-300 references as a combined "overwhelming consensus amongst climate scientists"?

It is obvious that nobody here has the slightest clue were to find it. I don't blame you for that. But you all trying to point somewhere else, your affirmations that it may be found in there somewhere, or if you ask the right persons, only reveals that you have no clue about how science is presented ... and that all you now desperatly hope to accomplish is to reaffirm to yourselvs that the blind belief in perceived authority was not entirely unwaranted.

And what is really pathetic is that what we are talking about is the most prominent message from the enitre AR4, promulgated as the best science in the world. Everybody has heard it. Many times. And taken it on pure faith.

And when this is pointed out, all the selfrighteous pretence here, about being on the side of the science, the talk about 'the primary literature' the 'peer reviewed articles' ... is instantly exposed as being nothing but empty posturing.

And the funniest thing is that so many of you want to make me, my person, responsible for that fact. There is 'denial' for you if you ever seen such ... ;-)

And the funniest thing is that so many of you want to make me, my person, responsible for that fact.

Ah yes, playing the victim. The last one I needed on my denialist Bingo card.

So, cupcake, I assume you've contacted the scientists who compiled the report with your astonishing findings, right?

Right?

If not, why are you still here? What are you trying to accomplish?

Stu - Really, is making things up all you have left?

Nobody has a clue, that's why they/you want to talk about me instead? It's so obvious. All they'd have to do is to study up a little (if they'd believe in what they say), read one or a few ref:s and then hit me over the head with them.

But it ain't happening, Stu. Although they have all the worlds publications at their fingertips.

So no, I'm not feeling sorry for my self. And you didn't really believe that either. It was just one more diversion. As was the 'write to the compling scientists'. And you know that too ...

Don't know how to put this in any other way:

But it sucks to be a sucker ...

Jonas troll said: "The entire problem is that nobody has seen the claimed science".

Time to give the crank his own thread where he can witter away about whatever his fevered brain is telling him.

Like a dogwhistle, whatever it is seems to be is beyond ordinary human perception and can only be comprehended by the likes of GSW and sunspot. Neither of which recommendations score very highly.

Humanity may just have to struggle along without Jonas' bizarre revelations. I think we'll manage just fine.

Oh, I think I get it now - Jonas wants someone here to come around to his place and read it all to him as a bed time story.

Random aside first: telling people what they do or do not believe is monumentally stupid and arrogant. Doing so repeatedly is psychotic. Just a thought.

Anyway.

If you can't make a more specific point than "tell me which of these 300 references contains this one claim", you don't want to know.

If you haven't read these resources to find out, you don't want to know.

If you haven't written to the scientists, you don't want to know.

Every comment you post here is time not spent in finding these things out and proving 97% of climate scientists wrong. But yet you persist, and whine, and blatantly fail to address anything substantive, like for instance naming one of the papers you have read and your issues with it. As a very random for-instance.

You are completely uninterested in finding out the details about claims you profess to care greatly about. Why is that, Jonas?

Stu - It is very obvious that:

1) Neither you, nor any of the other kids here, have seen any such science, and
2) That you have no way of finding it either.

The retort: 'But start reading at random, somewhere, over there' is only an admission of the above. And you know it. (Regrettably, it seems that some of the others don't even know that)

Really, what an absolute load of rubbish, Stu: "If you haven't read these resources to find out, you don't want to know. If you haven't written to the scientists, you don't want to know."

As if you had no clue what a reference is!

None of you has seen it, none of you claims to have seen it either. And still, all of you yap: 'it's in there, we know, but you go and find it yourself'

If there ever was delusion, there it is right in your face!

I liked: "telling people what they do or do not believe is monumentally stupid and arrogant"

:-)

You're essentially kicking everybody who ever addressed me (including yourself) in the shin. Good boy!

And no, I don't whine, I don't complain. I know exactly what to expect here. And am seeing it.

Really:

The absolute, most prominent centerpiece claim of the IPCC AR4, and all af you guys are to scared to look if it exists!?

Me? I don't believe in that claim (on purely scientific reasons), and I don't believe there is any basis for it either. (For good reasons, since nobody honest would put his name to it). And that's why you can't find it. And are stalling for time, hoping to save face, by focusing on me instead!

Does anybody of you think that the authors of IPCC AR4 even knew of me back then? Answer is simply: No!

So go and find that science for the claim, or accept what I am telling you! (Grudgingly if you need to) That it doesn't exist.

Arguments like 'It has to be there' because:
1) We haven't checked yet
2) we're so many, and so convinced, so dedicated
3) Jonas is arrogant
4) 97% of them believe in something else
5) I'm proud of my CV
6) At meetings I attend, we talk about global warming
7) Republicans ars so stupid
8) I speak for 'the scientific community'
9) IPCC comprises the finest, etc
Are all bunk! Completely irrelevant!
Either it is in there, or not! And all the pathetic cringing definitely points to the latter. And let me remind you: It's been 4+ year now!

Yes really, it sucks to be a sucker!

>luminous b - Nowehere do I say that those refs aren't science. But a general view isn't, and I am not asking for a general view, I'm asking about one very specific and quantified AR4 claim. One ref refutes my statment. Yet you state the opposite. Remarkable!

What we have here is a failure to communicate, Jonas. The AR4 claim is not a very specific scientific finding, but a generalized conclusion. The claim you question is backed by Chapter 9 of the WGI. Though you claim the WGI isn't science you are utterly wrong. WGI is a review of the scientific literature, supported by all those many references you reject as not giving a specific answer to your very general question.

This indicates you really don't know how science works. A specific paper is usually devoted to one particular aspect of a single line of evidence. This reductionism is a necessary aspect of dealing with a complex issue such as climate. It is only by combining multiple lines of evidence in a general review, like WGI, Chap. 9, that such general conclusions, like the one you are questioning can be inferred. This is known as consilience of evidence, or, informally, scientific consensus.

The phrase, 'not seeing the forest for the trees' comes to mind.

"The absolute, most prominent centerpiece claim of the IPCC AR4, and all af you guys are to scared to look if it exists!? " - Jonas

Jonas has been rambling so long I can't quite remember which 'centrepiece claim' he's been pretending to be interested in.

The absolute, most prominent centerpiece claim of the IPCC AR4, and all af you guys are to scared to look if it exists!?

Scared? Are you serious? No Jonas, sorry, it's just that I don't have time to hunt any of it down. I prefer spending my free time online exploring denialist psychosis.

I don't believe in that claim (on purely scientific reasons)

Really? What would those be? I'm dead serious. Do you actually have a scientific reason? You know "I can't find proof and neither can you and no I'm not gonna look neener neener neener" is not a scientific reason, right?

And that's why you can't find it.

Actually, I won't find it for you, if only for the continued entertainment value of watching your delusion of knowing better than everyone else (pro-tip, Jonas: no-one is laughing with you).

Also, det är onödigt krusa för alepinnar.

And are stalling for time

Pure projection. It is AGW denialism that is purely about stalling for time, in order to maximize short-term profit.

Which leads me to yet another teensy problem with your attempts at logic.

Bear with me.

Let's for the moment assume that you, Jonas, intrepid crusader, have found a gaping hole in the AR4. Let's assume that the IPCC is full of it and you, Jonas, intrepid crusader, are the first and only person to have found out.

Still with me?

Companies such as Exxon spend millions upon millions of dollars funding think tanks writing ridiculous denialist claptrap.

Still with me?

You, Jonas, have their Holy Grail! Ready-made! A massive, undeniable hole in the IPCC's argument! AGW is bullpuckey! This means billions and billions of extra profit for them! They should show up to your door with a large briefcase full of cash and plaster your dagger in the AR4's heart all over the world! Game over man, game over!

Except they have not, have they Jonas?

Why do you think that is?

The AR4 claim is not a very specific scientific finding, but a generalized conclusion.

Oh damn you... why did you have to go and give it all away like that? I was just starting to have fun.

Jonas proudly boasts:

At meetings I attend, we talk about global warming

Glad to see that you have admitted to yourself that you have a problem and are attending meetings of "idiots anonymous". How often do you attend? Are you and the others who are attending making progress in ridding yourself of your Dunning Kruger affliction?

Anyway, it is good to see someone addressing their problems and taking the first steps in overcoming them.

Jonas whines: *Does anybody of you think that the authors of IPCC AR4 even knew of me back then? Answer is simply: No*

And they still don't.

News just in: ["Rick Perry: Modern-Day Galileo of Climate Science"?](http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/211023/20110909/rick-perry-republica-pr…)

Leaving aside that the inclusion of a query at the end of a press headline invariably means the correct response is 'no', you can see where they're coming from.

What with the famous, plucky little 16th Century Italian 'D' grade gun-nut student and religious maniac taking on the science establishment armed with nothing but a swagger and a dad haircut. The parallels are uncanny.

Er... wait, that can't be right...

All Rick Perry needs to add now, with gravelly Nixonian gravitas is, "People have got to know whether or not their President candidate is a moron. Well, I'm not a moron".

463 Chek

No hint of self-doubt from Perry despite his home state of Texas recording its hottest August ever, and hottest and driest Summer ever. In fact, the hottest summer ever recorded in any US state:

[State of the Climate National Overview August 2011](http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/2011/8)

Yes lord_s, Michael Tobin's been [blogging about the wildfires in his area around Bastrop](http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/) for the past few days over at his site. I think their was also a linked video (there or perhaps Joe Romm's) demonstrating the speed that the firefront advances at - quite terrifying to watch, especially if you consider families trying to herd kids and/or old folks etc. out of the path.

I guess to a presidential candidate of Rick Perry's calibre, [cutting public spending]( http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2011/09/another-anthropogenic-forcin…) (including firefighters) during a historic drought and diverting attention and resources into organising public prayer meeting rallies makes perfect sense.

Jonas is a zombie deniatroll. It retains rudimentary linguistic processes capable of generating high word volumes superficially resembling language, but all cognitive function is absent. It cannot be reasoned with: any attempts to engage will result in it eating brains, its only reason to exist. If it is ignored for long enough it will go elsewhere. It might return home but not for long: all residents' brains there were eaten long ago and its appetite is insatiable.

Please don't let it eat yours!

luminous b - You say that the AR4 attribution statement should be seen more as handwaiving. I certainly agree. It is not a scientific statement (see further my #380)

But you are wrong. it is definitely not a 'general question': That AR4 statement (albeit awkwardly phrased) is a very precise and quantified statement.

Stu - It is pretty obvious that you, and many others hanging here, rather cultivate your fantasies about how 'the others' are, their motives, ineptness etc than deal with the substance. It is cute in one way (if one disregards that many are adaults, even professionals of some kind)

But you essentially confirm my observations: You have no interest in finding out, knowing for your self. Your goal is reaffirmation of held prejudices. Same is true for Jeff H, and quite some more. That you won't call it that doesn't change what you are practicing here. And I can tell you (wrt to that 'stated goal') you are doing as lousy a job as wrt the science. Blindly guessing just isn't the method, Sorry.

Thereafter, you suddenly pretend to be interested in scientific arguments after all. Well, I'm afraid those would be slightly over your head. I'd suggest you start understanding what a reference is first, and why scientists try to be specific about what their work actually does show, and present their best case supporting their conclusions. So far, that's where the big disconnect is in this matter.

The "I won't find it for you" is empty posturing, as is the pretence reason you give. I actually wonder if you could have found it even if it actually existed.

And yes, in this 'debate' you (plural) are stalling for time. Everybody is making up 'reasons' (excuses) to talk about anything else but the core issue.

The rants about Exxon, profits, denies and their claptrap etc is pure conspiracy nonsense, regurgitated at places like this by their hang arounds. I could of course speculate why this need is so extremely predominant among many there, but that would more resemble the prevailing psycho-babble there, so I'll leave it at 'noted'!

Really, all paragraphs after 'stalling for time'
I think are much closer to the target, dscribing what motivates you. Not that unexpected ...

Ian F - Too bad you can't correct once you posted, isn't it? ;-)

Jeff H - Correct! So I am not the reason they've hid it so well that not even the proponents can find it!

Good call there Truesceptic!

I wish Jonas would amuse us with some more of his 'plagiarism is just missing quotation marks' schtick.

I think Stu had it right at #459.
"Companies such as Exxon spend millions upon millions of dollars funding think tanks writing ridiculous denialist claptrap. Still with me?

You, Jonas, have their Holy Grail! Ready-made! A massive, undeniable hole in the IPCC's argument! AGW is bullpuckey! This means billions and billions of extra profit for them! They should show up to your door with a large briefcase full of cash and plaster your dagger in the AR4's heart all over the world! Game over man, game over!

Except they have not, have they Jonas?

Why do you think that is"?

Quite so. But instead for consolation, Jonas haunts the usual pseudo-science and political blogs with his posturing nonsense.
Unfortunately for him, as we have seen here with his would-be superior troll act, real scientists won't even give him the time of day.

As Stu so eloquently put it: why do you think that is?

FFS people, stop playing cat-like with the troll - it stopped being funny days ago, and he's not going to show any progress no matter how hard you swat him or poke him.

Troll, if you're seriously unable to comprehend the origin of the 90% CIs, you obviously have not read for example SM9.6 of [Appendix C](http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter9-supp-…). And if you really do want to see the actual algorithms used to generate the material, you should be chasing the appropriate authors through the references for Chapter 9, as so many have already told you to do.

I have three pre-school age kids. They all love the "why" game, and it can go on for hours. You are showing yourself to be of exactly the same intellectual age as my children, or more likely, somewhat younger... and with the difference that my kids are quite pleasingly showing a strong capacity for speedy progress in learning beyond their current chronological ages, which you are patently unable to achieve yourself - even using my children's chronological ages as the guide.

The information that you claim to be seeking exists. Yes, it really does. That you also claim that said information does not exist simply shows what a piss-weak capacity you have for scientific review, and for self-directed research and data-tracking. Your misplaced imagining of a 'gotchya' discredits no-one else on this thread except yourself.

Why are you such a fuckwit?

Why?

...'Ranges' is probably a better term than 'CIs', btw.

BACK TO THE ACTUAL TOPIC

1) NAS published:
http://www.nas.org/polArticles.cfm?doc_id=2162

(A political philosopher in The James Madison Center @ Princeton, funded by some of the same folks who fund NAS).
http://www.desmogblog.com/nas-president-peter-wood-wrong-dishonest-or-h…

That didn't get enough comments, so:

2) http://nasblog.org/2011/09/06/the-global-warming-debate-on-campus/ Leef is at the Pope Center, which seems akin.

John Mashey, did you notice that another blogger at the NAS blog referred to the "shrieking at Wood's blog post:

http://nasblog.org/2011/09/03/thomas-jefferson-and-sally-hemings-of-cou…

But you essentially confirm my observations: You have no interest in finding out

Wait, what? Are you now down to "I know you are, but what am I" level? Cupcake, are you even aware that people can scroll up and read the entire conversation?

Maybe not. To recap: the AR4 says their predictions are "very likely". They quote hundreds of papers in support of this. You have either not read, not understood or refuse to acknowledge those papers because you damned well know that they are sound. So instead of addressing them, you flail about demanding a direct quote for "very likely".

Did I miss anything?

The rants about Exxon, profits, denies and their claptrap etc is pure conspiracy nonsense

Yes, I totally made that up. It's not a matter of debate, you illiterate jackwagon. Exxon has admitted they funded "denies".
So Jonas, answer my question: why aren't you rich yet, sweetheart?

To those getting bored with me playing with the troll: when pushed enough, it's always possible to tease forth a new data point, such as

The rants about Exxon, profits, denies and their claptrap etc is pure conspiracy nonsense

Personally, I think that one is priceless, both for entertainment value and for future reference. Someone with a rectal-cranial insertion sufficiently severe to be in denial about even that is truly a sight to behold.

A song for our special little guy.

Bernard J

I know that you don't master the field, and I don't consider any of your many rants and insults relevant at all.

But since you actually made the claim that the science is to be found in the 'Supplementary information', and the effort name a page and to link to it, I'll make an exception and respond briefly:

1) No, Appendix 9.C is not the scientific basis. It only explains some background to some ch9 Figures. It doesn't either make that claim. It mentions 90% but wrt to something very different.

2) Page SM9.6 describes the background to Fig 1 in FAQ 9.2 with the model runs. It says explicityly (in pt 12) that it choses the 90% center span of all 58 simulations.

3) And then plots in FAQ 9.2 Fig 1, the observed temperature within that span (averaged over time and space, for the various regions) when the agreement was at least 50%.

(I am simplyfying the description a bit, for the sake of brevity, but that's the gist of it)

That is what's stated in sm 9.6. It is not a attribution, or validation of the hypothesis of the models. It describes how well the models can be fit to the observation when simulating the propsed hypothesis, and compares it to when no hypothesis (at all) is applied. Nowehere does it confirm that the chosen hypothesis indeed is the true one, and even less that is explains it with 90% certainty!

Sorry Bernard, but this only talks about how well they were able to fit the curves. The underlying physics are not even addressed, other than that they already are assumed to be the explanation (in the simulations).

That is what I've been saying all along (see eg #363):

It's circular arguing: 'If it is true, then we are 90% certain that is indeed is (at least to some extent)!'

__________________________

But I want to add another point here. Related to the 'attribution', and found on the previous pages, Appendix 9.B. Because it is rather enlightening. It deals with how to estimate the 'climate sensitivity' and the use of Bayesian statistics to arrive at the high values, required for the models, and the attribution, and the certainty! Also this, I have already addressed in #363. It explicitly states that:

"This function, together with a prior distribution on the parameters, can be combined by means of Bayes theorem to obtain a posterior distribution"

Meaning that the previously assumed pdf:s can be padded by expert's a priori assumtions , to be 'refined' to give a better certainty! It is expalined further down. This a priori assumed knowledge comes from:

"The prior distribution p(q) that is used in this calculation is chosen to reflect prior knowledge and uncertainty (either subjective or objective) about plausible parameter values"

Ie. explicitly stating that is the 'expert's guesses' that are applied. And shortly after it says, that these opinions are:

"often simply a wide uniform distribution. Such a prior indicates that little is known, a priori, about the parameters of interest except that they are bounded below and above. Even so, the choice of prior bounds can be subjective. In the case of climate sensitivity, a uniform prior with a lower bound of 0°C and an upper bound between 10°C and 20°C has often been used"

Reading this superficially, it sounds modest, they declare that they don't know (completely contradicting that 90% certainty). But what it actually says, that the observational (scanty) data to assess the climate sensitivity is padded with 'expert opinions' of a value of 5-10°C/doubling (the mean value of that uniform distribution between 0 and 10 or 20 °C)

Well, Bernard J (and others), I already pointed this out in #363, and now you provided the link to the material explicitly explaining how things are done. I guess I should say 'tank you', but I'm afraid the details might be a little over your head. And totally in line with what I've already said.

PS I'm sure your kids are adorable. But they have nothing to do with the above.

Bernard J (contd) - 'Ranges' (of simulation runs) is certainly a better term than 'confidence intervals'. I totally agree, and this has been my point for quite a while.

Stu

I am close to deferring you to the cheks, Michaels, Marcels Kincades, Holly Shticks, Emretssons, True Sceptics etc of this site. But will respond reasonably one mote time:

Once you stated that you "prefer spending [your] free time online exploring denialist psychosis.", you pretty much gave it away, looking for prejudice confirmation, ie keeping your belief system intact. And a system at odds with almost anything existing in the real world.

People who pursue such needs, quite often come up with various conspiracy theories, often involving Exxon, flat earth, creationist, tobacco lobby, republicans, think tanks etc. All of which exist, and none of which bear any explanatory value on how the climate works. For the same reason that taxation, left wing or green loonies, Greenpeace, Al Gore, communists, CCX, Enron, Waxman etc do not disprove the AGW-hypothesis.

People who believe that such things somehow carry any value, can be dismissed without any loss. (And I know there are plenty believing that the existance of oil and oil companies somehow would explain why the climate scare is constantly losing traction. But they are just the same old looines they've always been)

Tell me you are one of them, and I'll leave you alone.

OK, back to the AR4

Yes, they quote 100 of refs. 'In support' you say, but that's questionable. Repeating a belief doesn't make it more true. Armwaving and really really wanting it to be true doesn't either. And all the papers that don't properly (and formally) address that issue are irrelevant to giving it any scientific value. You are still beating around the bush, bringing up other issues of no consequence ...

I'm afraid the details might be a little over your head.

Jonas, you are absolutely adorable.

So you've taken the time to put down your laser-sharp insights in #477. I see you're still missing the point and pathetically harping on that one particular windmill, but hey, you've put it all down.

So you've forwarded this to all IPCC scientists, all scientists on the referenced papers and the PR department at Exxon, right?

If not, why?

Stu - By now I am absolutely certain that it is way over your head. I refer you to Hallelujah lecture of:

http://www.exxonsecrets.org/maps.php

And it is really funny to see at what level people here are capable of arguing ...

For some "explanatory value on how the climate works" perhaps we should just look at some recent evidence.

Arctic sea ice has now hit the trifecta - lowest ever volume, extent and area.

And that's **before** the remnants of Katia blow through the feeble ragtag ice still out there next week.

Breaking news: Jonas continues to display his cluelessness on science and stats.....and dog bites man.

OT.

John, interesting links.

The denial machine grinds on.

Jonas, you just linked to a site that proved you wrong. I'll leave you be now, since I hate arguing with the clinically insane.

Guys, [I've tried again to drag Jonas N away from this thread](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/09/september_2011_open_thread.php#…), where he is simply off-topic troll-shit.

All: please ignore the Jonas zombie. Can't you see that it's eating your brains?

Bernard J - Your long post contains nothing other than repitition of the (many) wishful beliefs that the attribtution claim is to be found even further in, but nobody has put a namne or reference(s) to it.

The general gist of what is presented in Appendix 9, I had already addressed in #363. And:

"If you want to determine how a particular "90% certainty" was derived, why don't you select an example from AR4 and show us how you have attempted to validate the value"

As I said, there is still no reference. Only armwaiving in an appendix, showing pretty much the opposite of proper attribution. I even explained (a bit simplified) what it presented instead to give the impression of that certainty.

Apropos of nothing.......anyone who thinks that a confidence interval of 90% means "near certainty" is so clueless that it's probably pointless to try and explain anything to them.

ahem...level.

Preview is your friend.