Scientists repeat climate warnings 01 February 05

“Indeed, at least five other independent groups of researchers have published critiques of Mann’s work in peer reviewed climate journals.”

“For instance, in 2004, scientists in the journal Geophysical Research Letters concluded that Mann and Jones’ methods were “just bad science” and that they had undertaken a “selective and inappropriate presentation” of results.”

“In June, of 2004, the accumulated weight of criticisms led to a retraction by Mann (and Scott Rutherford) in the Journal of Geophysical Research.”

Moreover, as if the author anticipated the argument, “So what if the Hockey Stick is wrong, we still need to deal with anthropogenic global warming?”

“If even one component of Mann and Jones’ - and, consequently, the IPCC’s - temperature reconstruction is in error, then we can’t say with any confidence that the 1990s were the warmest decade of the last two millennia, or that 1998 was the warmest year, much less that the last century’s rise in temperature is unprecedented.

And if we don’t know with any certainty whether the earth’s present temperature trend is truly unique, or whether it simply represents the normal state of flux of the global climate system, it would seem premature at best to embark on the costly energy diet demanded by those who claim that only by reducing energy use can we stop the rise in greenhouse gases responsible for the past century and a half’s dangerous global warming.”

The answer is that if the Hockey Stick is wrong, we cannot eliminate natural forcings as the main cause of the recent warming. If natural forcings are the cause, reduction of carbon dioxide emissions will have no effect. We will have wasted our money and caused serious economic harm for no reason at all.

http://www.canada.com/national/nationalpost/financialpost/story.html?id=db3b26e9-edb9-417c-ab92-fa78432433bf

by running multiple errands; keeping tires inflated, engines tuned; turning off motors in drive-thrus; turning off water while brushing teeth; running full loads in the dish/clothes washers; moving closer to work/school on our next move (really cuts down on stress & car pollution, and the medical & psychiatric bills resulting from stress); buying a more efficient vehicle (checking with DOT to make sure it is also safer, as is the Honda Civic); off-set driving by walking & cycling more (thus improving health & reducing crime & road wear & taxes); using low-flow toilets, showerheads (we have one that uses 1/2 the hot water; but you can’t even tell the difference); using reusables rather than throwaways; planting trees (improves property value); using both sides of paper; getting used paper from the library for writing projects (I get some with just “Page Separator” on the other side); buying cost-effective, energy-saving appliances (SunFrost frig uses 1/10 the electricity & pays for its huge upfront cost over time, and goes on to save); patronizing businesses that are likewise reducing their greenhouse gases (& can thus charge customers less); eating low on the food chain (also good for health); stopping to smell the roses in our backyards, rather than rushing by air or freeway to some hectic, expensive vacation; recycling (esp. aluminum, which would help save rainforests & reduce enegery by 95% over raw material alumium); buy recycled goods; let your lawn go brown in summer – grass is drought resistant (maybe even start an award program in your community for the brownest lawn in summer); xeriscape – plant drought resistant plants, reduce your lawn & lawn mowing (more plants improves property value); use your tremendous intellect & a bit of heart to think up a few more things.

Now, once you’re saving $hunreds per year on these, maybe have the heart to spend about one cent more per KWH on wind-generated electricity (if available), and it won’t be much after reducing electricity consumption by 1/3 or 1/2.

I guarantee you will feel much better. And the side benefit is that we’ll destroy all whatever GW evidence there is (whether meager by your account or significant by my account) and send all those scientists home for a rest. Skeptics & environmentalists alike can rejoice.

I think that most of us prefer to spend our time doing other things.

I don’t know what you’d rather be doing but personally I think that the small expenditure in time and energy required to devise alterations in my daily routine that will save me money, increase my fitness and health, and generally contribute to a healthier environment is a fabulous investment.

A very good list. Too bad we do not spend more time discussing these ideas.

I bet you could use some time walking and cycling more! I once rode a hundred miles in one day on a cheap bike just a few years ago.

I bet you cannot even get on one!

No wonder you NEED to deny GW!

I thought you had done the research on this subject, n.

“For instance, in 2004, scientists in the journal Geophysical Research Letters concluded that Mann and Jones’ methods were “just bad science” and that they had undertaken a “selective and inappropriate presentation” of results.”<<

This is BS. What scientists? What paper? Not naming it is mendacity.

“In June, of 2004, the accumulated weight of criticisms led to a retraction by Mann (and Scott Rutherford) in the Journal of Geophysical Research.”<<

There was no retraction.

Those who have done the research know this is a crock.

“If even one component of Mann and Jones’ - and, consequently, the IPCC’s - temperature reconstruction is in error, then we can’t say with any confidence that the 1990s were the warmest decade of the last two millennia, or that 1998 was the warmest year, much less that the last century’s rise in temperature is unprecedented.<<

Speculation. The author gives no evidence.

The answer is that if the Hockey Stick is wrong, we cannot eliminate natural forcings as the main cause of the recent warming.<<

It would help the author’s argument if he gave an example…wait…the author isn’t a climate scientist, so he can’t. He’s a paid shill for a foundation that takes money from ExxonMobil and El Paso Energy.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/wiki.phtml?title=National_Center_for_Policy_Analysishttp://www.sourcewatch.org/wiki.phtml?title=National_Center_for_Policy_Analysis

Ah, well.

HTH,

D

Global Climate change, I am sure he is paid well to deny it. To come on here and follow every article up by trying to change the subject or put it off onto another track is a time tested way to prevent knowledge from getting out. I never read a word he says any longer, just skip over it like it isn’t even there. When I read his scientific studies in the journals where he should be teaching the world his perfect knowledge of world climate , then I will read what he has to say. Here it is simple trolling to prevent people from learning anything.

Then how about replacing a couple of incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescents? They’re pretty easy to install. Even that showerhead was easy. It cost me $10, but I figure in the 14 years since I installed it, it has already saved me close to $1000 in water & electricity to heat the water. Not bad for $10 & 5 minutes of work.

Oh, please let me correct my mendacity. You could have done the research yourself if you wanted to know that Burnett was correct.

April 2004 of Geophysical Research Letters contains the Chapman article. I do not subscribe, so I cannot verify the newspaper article characterization of the content of this article. The same issue contains a response from Mann; I do not know what it says.

Jan Esper, David Frank, and Robert Wilson in the March 23, 2004, edition of Eos-Transactions of the American Geophysical Union. This article disputes Mann’s temperature reconstruction. It also provides an analysis of Mann’s technique for handling the tree ring data and suggests an alternate and superior technique. You can see a summary of parts of this article at http://www.greeningearthsociety.org/wca/2004/wca_15e.html.

Esper, Cook and Schweingruber published another article (abstract at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/295/5563/2250, article at, http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/295/5563/2250) that is critical of the Mann, Bradley and Hughes temperature reconstruction.

Wallace S. Broecker published a criticism of Mann, Bradley and Hughes failure to show the existence of a Medieval Warm Period at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/291/5508/1497?ijkey=834e07e15304ff66363c6274521403ab06e4349f&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha

You can read an abstract of the Henry Pollack and Jason Smerdon (Journal of Geophysical Research, 2004) article at http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2004…/2004JD005056.shtml. The June 2004 issue of the same journal contains an article with the title “Correction to ‘Optimal surface temperature reconstructions using terrestrial borehole data” by Rutherford and Mann. I have no subscription so I cannot verify that the article qualifies as a retraction by Mann.

Mann published what he called corrigenda in 1998. He admitted that his original paper contained some of the errors that McIntyre and McKitrick identified in their original paper. He denied that any of the corrections affected his conclusions. Find it at, http://holocene.evsc.virginia.edu/shared/articles/MBH98-corrigendum04.pdf.

We also have the Soon and Baliunas article, Soon, W., and S. Baliunas, 2003. Proxy climatic and environmental changes of the past 1,000 years. Climate Research, 23, 89–110.

The comment about Burnett being a paid shill for ExxonMobil is gratuitous. Let us look at the entire picture.

Some of Mann’s funding comes from the IPCC. The IPCC consists of bureaucrats whose sole source of income comes from contributions from developed nations to the UN. If the citizens of those nations cease to buy the IPCC story, the funding will end. IPCC has the same kind of monetary motivation to hire shills as ExxonMobil does.

Now compare Mann to Michaels. Both are professors at the University of Virginia. Both receive some outside income, Mann from IPCC and Michaels from ExxonMobil. In both cases, that outside income is a small portion of total income. (I know that to be true of Michaels and assume it is true of Mann.)

If everyone took your suggestion and assessed the quality and verity of papers on the basis of the sources of the ancillary income of the authors, there would be no need to read any of the papers. We all would decide to believe or disbelieve the article’s content based on our personal opinions of those who provided funding. Yet, you do not really know what ExxonMobil’s motives are; you assume that they care only about a perceived threat to one of their business units. It is possible that those in charge at ExxonMobil believe that a precipitous response to an unproven threat from carbon dioxide emissions would cause more harm than no response at all. Perhaps, they really do not believe that the carbon dioxide-induced warming hypothesis is correct.

I am 6”2” (188 cm), weigh about 190 pounds (17 stone or 86 kg) and wear pants with a 32” (81 cm) waist. I don’t think I am fat.

I don’t own a cheap bike. I do have a rather nice 10-speed.

I hope all of this ends the complaints about how little you folks know about me.

Ahhh…it’s clear now. You trust that GES doesn’t cherry-pick data to make their IndyFunded point. It’s a real purty new article they got there.

And they are still using Soon et al. – what a big clue – only the rubes forget that paper is worthless; so much so we had editors resign over its being published (more below).

And they trust their rubes have never read MBH98, which NEVER WENT BACK AS FAR AS THE MWP and never claimed to do so. MBH98 is the Hockey Stick™ paper – the GES piece uses MBH99 which shows the MWP.

I’ve pointed out countless times, with evidentiary passages, where GES cherry-picks [BTW, your GES linky is dead. Huh.].

In particular, the Science 295 pg 2250 – as I can’t compare to GES, I’ll point out that where GES hangs their hat on Wally Broecker’s criticism, and presumably (since you include it here) use Esper et al. to back their claim, stating Esper et al. say the same thing; well, in a word, no:

[ ” ]

The MBH reconstruction has been criticized (5) [Broecker’s letter you include -D] for its lack of a clear MWP. Critics argue that tree-ring records, the substantial basis of the MBH reconstruction before the 17th century, cannot preserve long-term, multicentennial temperature trends. This contention is of fundamental importance because if tree-ring reconstructions are limited in this way, then including such records in hemispheric estimates of past temperatures would bias the results as argued (5). To illustrate that this need not be the case, we present the analysis of centuries-long ring-width trends in 1205 radial tree-ring series from 14 high-elevation and middle-to-high latitude sites distributed over a large part of the NH extratropics (Fig. 1). [emphases added if comments take HTML tags]

[ ” ]

The Esper et al. paper is not as GES characterizes it, and further, the disagreement is addressed

[ ” ]

The good agreement between the RCS and MBH records at all time scales except multicentennial is remarkable, given that the mean RCS chronology is simply a large-scale average of uncalibrated tree-ring data. MBH has two data sets in common with RCS (Tornetraesk and Polar Urals) that are largely restricted to the nonlinear group (8). Yet the linear and nonlinear RCS chronologies are extremely similar (Fig. 2A). Thus, the noted similarities between RCS and MBH are unlikely to be due to the small amount of data overlap between the series.

Where the two series disagree is on multicentennial time scales, which relates to the criticism noted earlier (5). The MBH reconstruction includes temperature estimates from the tropical and subtropical NH (2), which is not represented in the RCS record. This may explain some of the observed differences. Much of the multicentennial variability in MBH has also been replicated by an energy balance model that includes solar, volcanic aerosol, anthropogenic aerosol, and greenhouse gas forcing (26). Therefore, the large multicentennial differences between RCS and MBH are real and would seem to require a NH extratropical forcing to explain them, one that attenuates toward the equator. One candidate is the 1000- to 2000-year climate rhythm (1470 ± 500 years) in the North Atlantic, which may be related to solar-forced changes in thermohaline circulation (27, 28). The degree to which this mode of climate forcing is responsible for the multicentennial variations in RCS requires further investigation.

[ ” ]

But, of course, including that in the GES article would eliminate the contrived controversy, wouldn’t it?

Ah, well.

==========================

Oh, and the Mann correction you like to include (which you incorrectly spelled and dated) contains a statement that their corrections are minor and do not affect the results. That’s glossed over at M&M’s site. Your phraseology doesn’t explain both sides, BTW.

Again, your Soon et. al. reference has been completely shredded. 5 editors resigned from Clim Res over the paper. And besides, the authors glossed over the fact that the majority of the multiproxy studies they looked at (incl, IIRC, the Esper et al. you like) showed something different than what the authors tout. Check ‘em out. I guess GES plumb ‘fergot’ to include it.

Your Chapman reference in GRL is about Mann and Schmidt’s borehole paper – from 1500 on, no MWP. What was your point again?

Anyway, this is how science is done. Chapman and colleagues are saying that their ground-based measurements differ from Mann’s model-based assumptions.

Your job isn’t to point out there’s controversy, but to integrate and show how this affects the original paper. To my knowledge, no skeptic has done this. Cough up an article that shows this, show how the article is robust, and we can talk.

And thanks for the hand-wave about funding. Your boy at the Post isn’t a climate scientist, which is the point.

Best,

D

The Esper, Frank and Wilson paper compares commonly accepted temperature reconstructions to the reconstructions in both of the Mann et al. papers. The authors say, “For example, the temperature amplitude reconstructed by Esper et al. [2002] is about 1°C, approximately twice that of Mann et al. [1999] and Jones et al. [1998]. Additionally, Briffa [2000] and Esper et al. [2002] display a pronounced MWP followed by a significant 200-300-year-long cooling trend associated with the Little Ice Age. Such a trend is broadly absent in Mann et al. [1999] and Jones et al. [1998].” The article in GES characterized that accurately. To claim otherwise is foolishness.

BTW, my GES linky is just fine. I tried it just this morning. Another of your exaggerations?

The journal “Climate Research” appears to have recovered nicely from the resignation of a few of its more radical editors. The journal continues to receive and publish papers from renowned scientists from everywhere on earth.

Your claim that Broecker’s paper, Science, Vol 291, Issue 5508, 1497-1499 , 23 February 2001, faults the Mann reconstruction on the basis of the inaccuracy of tree-ring data is misleading and incorrect. Broecker discusses temperature records compiled by several methods, all of which agree that the earth experienced a MWP. Broecker acknowledges that the evidence that the event was global is “suggestive” but not conclusive.

I see the statement, “Much of the multicentennial variability in MBH has also been replicated by an energy balance model that includes solar, volcanic aerosol, anthropogenic aerosol, and greenhouse gas forcing” as quintessential of the entire support for the global warming hypothesis. Now, it seems that we use an energy balance model models to validate the output from our general circulation models. Why don’t we just regulate reality out of existence and live completely inside of our computer models?

You are correct; I said that Mann published his corrigenda in 1998; it actually was 2004. The address is correct however. Mann used the singular form, “corrigendum”, but my spelling is correct. Use of the plural form is more accurate; the list contained more than 1 item.

If you cannot see how any of this, including the M&M paper affects the Mann papers, you are either blind or choose to not see.

The comments about funding were more than hand waving. They speak to the intellectual corruption of those who believe that they can compromise the technical content of an article by slandering part of the source of the author’s funding.

That constitutes an ad hominem attack and as I have told you many times, ad hominem attacks are always a sign of the attacker’s lack of a sound technical basis to support his contrary opinion.

If you cannot see how any of this, including the M&M paper affects the Mann papers, you are either blind or choose to not see.

I wonder if you do this on purpose.

The topic of this thread, implicit but clear nonetheless, is:

an incomplete suite of information leads to incorrect analysis.

I have, in front of me, all the papers in the GES article [I pasted the . at the end of your link, hence the failure, your characterization of the issue is yet another clue].

I know what Esper at al. say.

You don’t, because you can’t read the paper.

You only know what GES chooses to use in their tout. The very first thing in your post (to which I’m replying here) tells me you don’t know the topic of the Esper et al. Don’t lecture me on foolishness, laddie.

The journal “Climate Research” appears to have recovered nicely from the resignation of a few of its more radical editors.

Ah, I get it: you’re a PR hack. If not, you write like one. Few. Haw.

Let us not, however, get distracted by the hand-wave: your parrotting the use of the Soon et al. is a big clue.

The Soon et al. paper has not withstood peer review, yet it is still touted. That’s because the vestedinterests.com don’t have much in their toolbox, so they have to keep recycling.

Your claim that Broecker’s paper, Science, Vol 291, Issue 5508, 1497-1499 , 23 February 2001, faults the Mann reconstruction on the basis of the inaccuracy of tree-ring data is misleading and incorrect.

I said no such thing.

First, you’ll notice those lil’ punctuation marks. What are they called? What is their purpose?

Second, there’s this thing that’s really important, called context. Please try to find the context of the paragraph that contains Broecker’s name. Thank you.

I see the statement, “Much of the multicentennial variability in MBH has also been replicated by an energy balance model that includes solar, volcanic aerosol, anthropogenic aerosol, and greenhouse gas forcing” as quintessential of the entire support for the global warming hypothesis.

That’s merely your mischaracterization. You do that a lot. I think I’ll start enumerating them if you continue.

But it’s true: there are multiple causes for climate change. As you know.

Oh, BTW, you’re tipping your hand, repeating the denialist boilerplate “global warming hypothesis”.

The IndyFundeds don’t use that anymore. It’s a theory, and they threw that out there for a while to see if it would stick. It hasn’t. You may want to update your rhetoric. Or not, either way.

The comments about funding were more than hand waving. They speak to the intellectual corruption of those…etc etc

Do show, then, how the intellectual has been corrupted by money. You have no evidence, so I guess I could use your ideologies’ tactic and fling ad hom everywhere, all the while with a look of shock and horror on my face. I’m practicing that look now, while I see GES’ funding.

Since you’re so keen on funding, you must be in shock, SHOCK I say as you’ve found out about the funding for your sources.

We must have consistent standards for our horror about funding, after all. Or does funding only corrupt in certain circumstances and not others? Say, private funding doesn’t lead to corruption, but public funding is a huge teat and therefore does?

D

I did not get my characterization of the Esper paper from the GES website. The words that I quoted came from the abstract of Esper’s paper, which is available on the web. The words that I quoted are clear. Your interpretation differs from the meaning of the words in the abstract. Before anyone will believe that your interpretation of the whole article is correct, you will have to provide proof that Esper took the highly unusual course of putting words into the abstract that the paper does not support. I have never seen such an instance in over 50 years of reading scientific papers. Could you point me to an example.

I do agree that the main point of this discourse is the sufficiency of the evidence that supports curtailment of carbon dioxide emissions, a course that would produce serious economic harm worldwide. I believe that the evidence is not sufficient.

At this point, it is not a theory. Theories are consistent with observed data and make reasonable projections of other events; hypothesis is correct.

You do not understand what I write any better than you understand the technical papers that you read.

I did not say that I believe that IPCC money corrupts those scientists who support the IPCC position. In fact, I do not believe that I merely think that they are wrong.

The point of the parable is that if you are going to believe that money has corrupted the scientists who do not agree with the IPCC position, then you have to believe that IPCC money corrupts those scientists who do. To believe otherwise would be inconsistent.

I suppose you could believe that those scientists who support IPCC somehow come from a different gene pool, and that their moral compass needles are far superior to those other money-grubbing whores. Do you believe in eugenics? How about phlogiston? Ether? Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny? Carbon dioxide-induced global warming?

Ok…let’s see if I can keep all this straight:

1. norbert used an opinion piece by a non-climate scientist – the claims of which were not backed – to assert the Hockey Stick™ is incorrect.

I pointed out some flaws in the argument.

We then got:

2. norbie parrotting an opinion piece by GES to claim a number of scientists disagree with Mann as well.

To wit:

a. Jan Esper, David Frank, and Robert Wilson in the March 23, 2004, edition of Eos-Transactions of the American Geophysical Union. This article disputes Mann’s temperature reconstruction…

Funny, that’s not really what the article found, as there were similar plots. And Esper at al have similar plots and rises, but differ markedly from other reconstructions, seen in a separate paper (seen here)

This is about science and looking at methods. There is no conclusiveness in the paper.

But norbert has been reading papers for 50 years and knows this already.

The differences can be found in this abstract for Googlers:

...Despite these differences, a high degree of similarity is found to exist when the multi-decadal variations are considered. Understanding and resolution of these issues are critical as modeling studies are increasingly using these reconstructions for calibrations and determining the climatic sensitivity to solar, volcanic and anthropogenic (CO2 and tropospheric aerosols) forcings. Here we present analyses, based on two papers(2), of which factors are likely responsible for these differences and similarities, and how much these factors might account for in degrees Celsius.

and talks about the variablity eating up the difference.

b. Esper, Cook and Schweingruber published another article that is critical of the Mann, Bradley and Hughes temperature reconstruction.

uh, no.

[ ” ]

Where the two series disagree is on multicentennial time scales, which relates to the criticism noted earlier (5). The MBH reconstruction includes temperature estimates from the tropical and subtropical NH (2), which is not represented in the RCS record. This may explain some of the observed differences. Much of the multicentennial variability in MBH has also been replicated by an energy balance model that includes solar, volcanic aerosol, anthropogenic aerosol, and greenhouse gas forcing (26).

[ an aside: this negates norbert’s assertion of an AGW hypothesis and not theory -D]

Therefore, the large multicentennial differences between RCS and MBH are real and would seem to require a NH extratropical forcing to explain them, one that attenuates toward the equator. One candidate is the 1000- to 2000-year climate rhythm (1470 ± 500 years) in the North Atlantic, which may be related to solar-forced changes in thermohaline circulation (27, 28). The degree to which this mode of climate forcing is responsible for the multicentennial variations in RCS requires further investigation.

[ ” ]

So it doesn’t negate MBH. This is typical science. That’s how it works.

c. Wallace S. Broecker published a criticism of Mann, Bradley and Hughes failure to show the existence of a Medieval Warm Period…

Is an opinion piece, not backed by any evidence, BTW. Funny, that. Good thoughts, tho…

d. presumably this passage is supposed to mean something, but we’re not told what: You can read an abstract of the Henry Pollack and Jason Smerdon

I can read it, and it concludes with:

The principal outcome of the analyses we have presented is that the five-century reconstruction of the ground surface temperature from boreholes located in the Northern Hemisphere shows warming of about 1 K, and is essentially independent of the aggregation and weighting scheme employed to determine the hemispheric mean. Significant spatial correlation between GST reconstructions and 20th century SAT trends emerges after careful pruning of low occupancy grid elements, or by gridding at a larger scale so that grid elements generally have higher occupancy. Accordingly, the hemispheric reconstruction derived from borehole temperatures continues to stand as an independent and robust estimate of changes in continental temperatures over the past five centuries.

Now, I know norbert has been reading papers for 50 years, but that looks to me like a statement saying boreholes are a robust proxy.

e. norbert had to trot out the Soon et al. article, then defend Clim Res. Haw.

f. norbert claimed recently that

I did not say that I believe that IPCC money corrupts those scientists who support the IPCC position. In fact, I do not believe that I merely think that they are wrong.

Oh, good! That passage negates the one you wrote earlier: The IPCC consists of bureaucrats whose sole source of income comes from contributions from developed nations to the UN. If the citizens of those nations cease to buy the IPCC story, the funding will end. IPCC has the same kind of monetary motivation to hire shills as ExxonMobil does. .

I know norbert has been reading papers for 50 years, so that looks to me like an implication about money corrupting output.

g. and we got a claim Both receive some outside income, Mann from IPCC

Saaaay…that IPCC pays people is a new one on me. Perhaps I never heard of it. Can you show me where that is so?

Then, we got:

3. I do agree that the main point of this discourse is the sufficiency of the evidence that supports curtailment of carbon dioxide emissions, a course that would produce serious economic harm worldwide.

I never said this. There is nothing to agree to. I said: “an incomplete suite of information leads to incorrect analysis.”

In context, it means your reliance on IndyFundeds makes your arguments incomplete, as my excerpts from the papers you haven’t read show. Even though you claim to have read papers for 50 years, you haven’t read these. Nor has your experience taught you that science is an ongoing check.

Nor has it taught you that there are a handful of other reconstructions that show generally the same thing as MBH (including the Esper you like).

At this point, [AGW] is not a theory. Theories are consistent with observed data and make reasonable projections of other events; hypothesis is correct.

I think we know what kind of papers you’ve been reading for 50 years – anything but climate papers.

Whew! that’s a lot. I’m done. Hope I haven’t missed anything.

Best,

&#208an&#216

I should start by saying that I welcome Norbert’s contributions to this site. Alternatively I am fascinated, annoyed, entertained and stimulated. He certainly makes me think; and kept me up to 3 one morning responding to some of the points he raised.

But it does strike me that Norbert had made up his mind that there is nothing to worry about with how humans are changing the biosphere. At the recent conference in Exeter, it seems there was new evidence about how the increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, caused by the burning of fossil fuels, is not only spurring climate change, but is also making the oceans more acidic. I would be amazed if Norbert did not dismiss this concern.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1405647,00.html

Actually, I think that this is something we all do, to a greater or lesser extent, and I am not sure why.

Is it to do with the way that science develops through paradigms, as Kuhn thought? http://www.sal.wisc.edu/~sobolpg/kuhn.htm

Or is more to with human psychology, and the way that we make up our mind on something, and then looking for evidence and arguments to support our position? I feel that Norbert is like a military tactician, using a range of arguments in his battles with the enemy. I am reminded of the military of campaigns of Napoleon!

Here is an example of what I mean.

I met David Bellamy in 1992 whilst working on a project about The Rio Earth Summit. I remember he told me at the time that there was no danger of Global Warming. We were more likely to enter another Ice Age. He seemed quite convinced about this. At the time, I had no opinion on the subject – there was very little talk about Global Warming back then.

But since that time, there had been a massive increase in our knowledge about Global Warming with information provided by The Hadley Centre (started in 1990), The Tyndall Centre (started in 2000) amongst others; see “Understanding and managing climate change: the UK experience” Hume & Turnpenny, Geographical Journal, 2004. Yet at last week’s Scientific Alliance meeting, David Bellamy was a major sceptic about Global Warming. I can’t help thinking that Bellamy made up his mind about all this 15 years ago, and has closed his mind to the possibility that he has been wrong.

(Incidentally, David Bellamy is also strongly against the development of wind power. I have been passed a document which he uses to brief people against wind power called “Wind Factories Bellamy”. It seems to be based on work by a person called Etherington. To my mind, it is of very poor quality – just a rant really. I could probably post it on this site – along with my comments on it.)

Yet, I am sure David Bellamy is a very knowledgeable botanist, and have a high respect for a lot of what he has done. I have a book by him called “Wilderness Britain?” which I have enjoyed reading.

But I think science does not to be like this.

I like the story of Robert Millikan who “set out to prove that Einstein’s interpretation of the photoelectric effect was wrong. In a long series of difficult experiments he succeeded only in proving that Einstein was right, along the way derived a very accurate measurement of Planck’s constant. In the best traditions of science, it was this experimental confirmation of Einstein’s hypothesis (all the more impressive since it was obtained by a sceptic trying to prove the idea wrong) that established clearly, by about 1915, that there was something in the idea of light quanta.” John Gribbin, Science (2002)

For myself, I am very concerned about the risk of Global Warming, although I am not a natural scientist and do not follow the arguments of for and against. It would be great if it did not turn out to be a threat after all – but I am not hopeful of that. I think we need to take action to avert it.

And I am more interested in social policy issues. I could write at length about how we could move to a post-fossil fuel society, and genuinely believe we could do it. Indeed, it is something we would need to do during the 21st century as our stocks of oil dwindle, and our energy demand would tend to increase.

It is not necessarily going to be easy – there will be some tough decisions – but with the right social approaches, it will be possible to switch from fossil fuels. I fundamentally disagree with the assertion, reproduced below, made by Norbert on 27 January 2005.

“I believe that it is fair to say that those who are calling for a 60% to 70% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions are requesting that we alter our entire civilization. Perhaps, you could shed some light on how to make those reductions in carbon dioxide emissions without altering our civilization. If we were to generate all electricity with nuclear or other non-emitting sources of electricity, the reduction would be just 35%. How can we cut the remainder in half without making serious changes in the ways that we live and work?” (Quote, Norbert, 27 January 2005.)

But, it is getting late. I’ll have to write something about that another time.

One thing we know for sure is that Norbert can’t count – 17 stone (at 14 pounds each) is 238 pounds or 108 kgs.

Fat? Maybe Norbert is just big boned!

Yours,

Peter

PS. “Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossible before they were done.”

-Louis D. Brandeis

Yes, I agree with you totally.

What is more revealing is the concept of the Paradigm Shift whereby most everyone changes their mind about a particular held world-view and that this can occur very quickly once acceptance of irrefutable evidence is completely unavoidable.

There are many examples of this. Once the earth was thought to be flat and most everyone agreed. Once, the earth was thought to be the center of the universe and the universe revolved around it. Once we had a Berlin wall that would never come down. At one time, the majority in America may have thought the Vietnam War was the correct course of action. The list continues.

When I read Dr. Weart’s historical essays on the discovery of global warming, I found that climate science has had many paradigm shifts along the way. One main shift occurred when scientists discovered that geological events, and in particular climate events, could take place in relatively short periods of geological time. The prevailing view for centuries was that nearly all geological forces operate on a vast time scale and that changes occur very gradually. We know that this is not always true with the climate now.

Another example is where skeptics from the past believed the oceans would absorb any carbon we humans could ever produce since so much CO2 is already absorbed in the oceans already that our mere addition was of no consequence. This view was proven false since the oceans cannot absorb carbon fast enough and the buildup in the atmosphere is well documented now.

So, what about future paradigm shifts? Obviously, our society cannot continue without some major changes along the way. When the need arises and it is unavoidable, then the prevailing world view will change with it.

The 911 event and the War on Terror is a recent example of a changed world view. Another may be the recent tsunami. More attention is being paid now to develop detection ability in oceans other than the Pacific.

What about future climate change? To be fair to our resident skeptic, if nothing happens on a grand scale in the next 2 decades, then we may have to change and agree with them that maybe we have overblown it.

The Y2K problem is an example of this. After the year 2000, everyone who had any fears or doubts had an instant paradigm shift and immediately we had nothing more to worry about.

However, was it because there was not a problem or that industry took measures to correct it sufficiently in time? I think it was 50/50 on that. So, I would contend that if no measures were taken to prevent Y2K problems, then I think some would have occurred and have had some impact.

With respect to actual climate change happening on a grand scale, what will the paradigm shift look like? I do not know exactly. What, I can be certain of is that there will be a paradigm shift in awareness on everyone and this includes the skeptics.

If it is widely believed that we are to blame then everyone will take notice and want to know what to do. I believe there would be a more cooperative spirit and what many skeptics would have thought unlikely, would occur so fast that it may make their head spin.

With 911, all planes were grounded. That action occurred quickly because of the perceived threat. Before 911, would anyone conceive of every pilot in the USA and elsewhere be told to land their plane and not fly for many days to come?

If this same action were thought to help mitigate a climate shift occurrence, then I could conceive that we would take unprecedented action immediately and then start focusing hard on solutions. I think we would even ground all planes again if we really thought that would help. If that is possible, then let your imagination run wild as to the extreme focus we may all have.

With that said, all ideas that no one would think of doing would then be put on the table of discussion. CO2 emissions would only be a small part of that process. Some of the crazy ideas I even mentioned in previous posts may even be put on the table because no idea at that tine would be considered crazy.

The attention would be equivalent to our military focus and with our military focus like our star war schemes shooting down missiles become believable even though the likelihood of success is small. We spent billions on that crap!

If we had the same focus on the prevention of climate change as we do to have a mighty military, then I guess I would say that this gives me hope that we will find a way to win the end game. I can see us declaring martial law on energy use and we may be forced to walk instead of drive. Who really knows exactly what will happen?

The thermal inertia I have been talking about is hopefully a double edge sword. On one hand, we know that whatever could happen, it was already in the works from decades past. This is not good news since it means a possible irreversible situation.

However, what is to occur, when positive feedback loops kick in, will (hopefully) move slowly enough for us to work out some options to restore equilibrium. It may be only a mitigating effect but this same thermal inertia may still help buy us time to use the vastly increased human ingenuity and attention after this inevitable paradigm shift occurs.

Now, my current world view is that people like our friend Norbertzangox have had a nullifying effect on the science. I do not believe it is necessarily overly politicized to the extent for us not to be concerned to take some “prudent” steps and at least we can take steps that are not painful but beneficial instead. And pain to me does not mean giving up driving your SUV alone in rush hour traffic. That is NOT pain!

With that said, I agree with you Peter that we should start diversifying into other energy sources other than fossil fuels.

And with that said, I have already written enough. I would love to hear comments from others.

I am glad you are here on Mark’s site.

You remind me of an very old TV police series here in the states with a famous line: “Book em Dano”. This refers to where a criminal is caught in the act and the term “book em” means “book him” or throw the weight of the “book” of law on him. In other words slang for writing him up of the charges, etc. The lead police officer had an assistant with nickname “Dano” so he would say to him “Book em Dano”. So in reference to Norbert, you are doing that so I think of that line when I read your posts!

Like my earlier explanation for those who may not know what “Book em Dano” means, it may be helpful for other readers for you to define some of the terms you use in your post that may be unfamiliar to others. You use too many abbreviations and honestly I do not know or may not catch them all.

For example, in your previous post I read TM, GES, MBH, AGW, RCS, NH, BTW, GTS, SAT, AGW, IPCC, etc. Now, I think we all know IPCC, CO2, GW, AGW but I was not sure of the rest. TM means trade mark to me. Was that what you meant? SAT is used in the USA but would the UK know of it? Maybe they do. I am not sure.

My point here is that what you write is important to me and to others to read and to understand at some level. I have difficulty following it and I suggest that you take a few extra minutes and define some terms for our benefit so what you write can be of more benefit for the people who read these posts who simply may not be as familiar with the abbreviations.

Even with that said, I have followed your case concerning Norbert’s biased representation of data. I do appreciate you pointing this out for us. This helps confirm what I have experienced in how he cherry picks data to make a point.

If you followed any of my posts on Alaska, it may be helpful not only to me but to others to make a few comments about my debate with Norbert concerning his statements on Alaska. Call it a blog Peer Review! LOL

I suggest this because I am making the same case that you are with Norbert on his overly selective use of information to make a case using the same reference.

So, I ask for your peer review, Dano to Dan, LOL My case is much more basic in that I feel Norbert cannot read a simple line graph in the proper context in what is relevant to the information that is most important when looking at the graph.

My main point was his statement that Alaska has not warmed since 1977 is misleading about Alaska’s warming trend based on a graph by Bowling.

My post and points below in response to Norbert:

My reference post below:

http://www.marklynas.org/wind/message/615.html

My reference Graph below:

http://climate.gi.alaska.edu/Bowling/FANB.html

Thank-you in advance for your time and consideration and as always: “Book em Dano”

Best, Dan

Thanks, Dan. Hawaii Five-o is where I got that handle, as it was my favorite show as a young’un.

My point here is that what you write is important to me and to others to read and to understand at some level. I have difficulty following it and I suggest that you take a few extra minutes and define some terms for our benefit so what you write can be of more benefit for the people who read these posts who simply may not be as familiar with the abbreviations.

Will do.

BTW = by the way. GES = Greening Earth Society. MBH = Mann, Bradley, Hughes (authors of the paper the vestedinterests.com are trying to take down in order to have a propaganda victory). NH = Northern hemisphere. RCS/GTS = authors of other papers. SAT = Surface air temp. TM = trademark (no HTML tag here for superscript).

If you followed any of my posts on Alaska, it may be helpful not only to me but to others to make a few comments about my debate with Norbert concerning his statements on Alaska. Call it a blog Peer Review! LOL

I’ll look at it. I’ve got a number of deadlines in the next week, so it may not be tomorrow.

My main point was his statement that Alaska has not warmed since 1977 is misleading about Alaska’s warming trend based on a graph by Bowling.

Anyone who says that is reading old IndyFunded stuff that has been left up on a site for some reason. Maybe to get recycled, like the Soon et al. norbert didn’t know enough not to use.

Best,

&#208an&#216

Very quickly, re your argument about the climate shift,

the 1976 climate shift has a period, but it appears the AK temps haven’t flipped back although the waters look like they may have turned over.

Ref:

Chavez et al. 2003: From Anchovies to Sardines and Back: Multidecadal Change in the Pacific Ocean. Science Vol 299, Issue 5604, 217-221 , 10 January 2003 [DOI: 10.1126/science.1075880].

Fascinating read.

You don’t see the IndyFundeds using the “great climate shift” any more, because they’d have to explain why AK temps are still warm if the catch has shifted.

BTW, I’m working on a project in AK, which is one of my deadlines…

Best,

&#208an&#216

BTW, picked-up this book at the weekend. At first sight, looks a good read & well balanced …

End of Oil – Paul Roberts (2004)

Read your post and linkies Dan.

Those are good’uns to give folks who have read the old arguments at vestedinterests.com (those arguments, of course, should come down but they never do, as all IndyFunded arguments get recycled).

The extent of the spruce dieoff is a good indicator for your argument. If climate had fluctuated similarly in the past, there’d be evidence of vast tracts of spruce dying from climate shifts. Funny there’s not (there’s lots of spruce dead north of Anchorage, but that’s from subsidence after the ‘64 quake).

Oh, BTW, it appears I have driven off norbert. Sorry if he was your entertainment. His capitulation can be found here [ >ctrl+f< the subject heading: “Re: Re: Re: Someone please Hold his hand and stop the mischaracterization.”] I’m quite sure he’ll turn up somewhere else, as he appears to need an outlet for his anger.

Best, sir,

&#208an&#216

Hi Dano,

Thanks for the feedback. So, the Indy Funded material gets recycled so it will always be outdated. No wonder you had a field day with Norbert!

Oh I wish I could take credit for chasing Norbert away! Lucky Guy! Almost everyone was arguing with Norbert about something.

I do concede that your expert qualifications did help so I guess we all can give you that honorary distinction of chasing him away! LOL Congrats!

However, there may be one another reason for his absence. His Eagles lost the Super Bowl and since he is always so sure of his views, maybe he lost money in the process!

Nevertheless, he was here before and debated everyone on Mark’s site and then he disappeared to reappear again.

I credit Peter Winters as the last person who engaged Norbert when he ran away many months prior to this recent reappearance. Peter caught Norbert in many misstatements of fact as I recall.

My bet is that Norbert will return again so hopefully you will still be around to defend us from his tactical misinformation campaign.

You seem to have a comparable knowledge base to work from to be able to immediately answer anything he says.

Best, Dan