back to article Antarctic ice shelves not melting at all, new field data show

Twenty-year-old models which have suggested serious ice loss in the eastern Antarctic have been compared with reality for the first time - and found to be wrong, so much so that it now appears that no ice is being lost at all. "Previous ocean models ... have predicted temperatures and melt rates that are too high, suggesting a …

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  1. imanidiot Silver badge
    FAIL

    Interestingly...

    Satellite imagery shows something entirely different. So maybe that particular shelf is not melting or melting much slower, the surface area of Antarctic ice has been diminishing.

    1. Uncle Slacky Silver badge
      Boffin

      Re: Interestingly...

      I think Lewis omitted the word "Some" from the beginning of his title.

      1. Martin
        Happy

        Interestingly^U Unsurprisingly

        Lewis omitted the word "Some" from the beginning of his title.

        FTFY

    2. Dr Stephen Jones

      Re: Interestingly...

      Satellite imagery shows Antarctic ice increasing.

      The trend is consistent:

      http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/s_plot_hires.png

      Keep lying, though. Eventually you'll find somebody gullible enough to believe you.

      1. imanidiot Silver badge
        Facepalm

        Re: Interestingly...

        Holy selective evidence use, Batman!

        You might want to read the WHOLE story. From you own source: http://nsidc.org/icelights/2012/01/11/sea-ice-down-under-antarctic-ice-and-climate/

        Yes the EXTENT of sea ice in the Antarctic has increased. However! The ice shelf has lost a lot of stability and IS changing in where it grows, how thick it gets and when it falls apart again.

        Ignoring the current changes in global climate is not a good thing. Being ignorant is a bad excuse, wilfully using data out of context to support your own goal is downright stupid.

        1. Mad Mike

          Re: Interestingly...

          Not sure that he is being selective. The comment was simply that the extent of Antarctic ice has increased. He hasn't denied that there are still changes in where etc. It's only selective when you quote part of a report to support your comment and neglect to mention another part that does not support you. This is not the case here. The fact the report says other things as well, was not relevant to the point being discussed.

      2. NomNomNom

        Re: Interestingly...

        "Satellite imagery shows Antarctic ice increasing."

        That's sea ice (ice that floats on the sea), not land ice (ie ice sheets, shelves)

        1. NomNomNom

          Re: Interestingly...

          here's Antarctic ice loss measured from satellites:

          http://ess.uci.edu/researchgrp/velicogna/files/slide2.jpg

  2. Doug Bostrom

    Better to read the complete press release. Fimbul is one of many ice shelves;

    Release:

    http://www.agu.org/news/press/pr_archives/2012/2012-31.shtml

    Other ice shelves:

    http://ess.uci.edu/researchgrp/velicogna/files/increasing_rates_of_ice_mass_loss_from_the_greenland__and_antarctic_ice_sheets_revealed_by_grace.pdf

    Lewis knows this and now hopefully some other people do.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Yet another set of lies, that I will not read, from Lewis.

    Maybe The Register could give us a Ignore Troll option for his posts?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Yet another set of lies, that I will not read, from Lewis.

      Tricky, as he's the editor. At least he also allows stories that contradict him.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Yet another set of lies, that I will not read, from Lewis.

      Or, if he bothers you so much, you could just, I don't know, NOT READ HIS ARTICLES. Let alone take the time to post comments too.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Yet another set of lies, that I will not read, from Lewis.

        I didn't read the article, just the comments as they are usually far more accurate.

  4. DrXym

    In two words

    Cherry picking.

    1. g e

      Exactly

      Something the UEA's CRU is famous for

    2. Tom 7

      Re: In two words

      two years!!!!

  5. General Pance

    So if the planet is warming why would "some" melt and not others? Still doesn't support the hypothesis that we need to exterminate 80% of the human race in order to get CO2 levels just right.

    1. DrXym

      That isn't a hypothesis, it's a straw man.

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
        Coat

        Straw men are carbon neutral.

    2. Mickey Finn
      Thumb Up

      Excellent point sir...

      That's like the one about the NHS…

      Which would fuction perfectly, if there were no damned patients (customers).

    3. Spanners Silver badge
      Flame

      Because

      The **AVERAGE** temperature of the planet is rising. Some areas will rise more than this, some the same, some less and some may even fall. If the average temperature in Little Widdlington in Essex and Cowfart Nebraska go up, this will not disprove what the vast majority of scientists are currently agreed on.

      Despite idiots saying mockingly "the science is in", it isn't. The final results are never in. Scientific opinion changes with time. These changes are based on information. Huge amounts of money from rich people and large polluting companies they own does not provide any information that will make any difference. This money does, however, show what lengths sompe people are prepared to go to to shaft future generations so they can maintain their current profits.

      1. GitMeMyShootinIrons
        Unhappy

        Re: Because

        "Despite idiots saying mockingly "the science is in", it isn't. The final results are never in. Scientific opinion changes with time. These changes are based on information. Huge amounts of money from rich people and large polluting companies they own does not provide any information that will make any difference. This money does, however, show what lengths sompe people are prepared to go to to shaft future generations so they can maintain their current profits."

        Agreed. And this works both ways, with, as you say, 'large polluting companies' on one side, while there are also interested parties milking lots of (usually) state/charitable funding on biased mis-quoting reports for the sake of opposing vested interests trying to peddle the latest (expensive) snake-oil solution to global warming.

        The Global Warming argument has been so muddied by loud voices on BOTH sides that nothing moves forward either way, only those exploiting the argument for financial (or personal reputation) gain actually win. Rome burns (in a carbon neutral fashion), while Nero fiddles (with his publicist).

        The 'truth' is usually written by the one with the loudest voice, regardless of how accurate the 'truth' actually is. To terribly misquote an evil dictator of German origin - 'Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it'.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Because

          Do you mean the German dictator of Austrian origin? Though I think it was actually, Goebbels, one of his ministers who said that.

      2. Charles Manning
        Boffin

        To be scientific, warming and temperature rises are not the same

        Warming, in the context of a body with ice, liquid and gaseous forms of water around, means the increase in energy. It does not directly mean increasing temperature.

        Start with a pot of ice + water on a stove. You are adding heat, but the temperature change is marginal. Stop adding heat and it soon returns to melting point of water. What is happening is that the melting of ice soaks up heat. Temperature changes only happen on the fringes.

        Average temperatures mean nothing. particularly when only very few measurements are being taken around ice and many are being taken around heat bubbles like cities.

        That is one reason why the CRU models just don't stack up. Their code directly attempts to model temperature changes. If they modelled heat instead then they would be a lot more scientific.

  6. Pete 2 Silver badge

    There's the problem - right there

    > Twenty-year-old models which have suggested serious ice loss in the eastern Antarctic

    Now if they'd used proper scientists instead of people who wander around on catwalks, maybe they'd have got some better data.

    And to say that an Elephant Seal is better at doing climate surveys makes you wonder why we're spending so much money on obviously under-qualified scientists, too.

    1. Great Bu

      Seal Data

      But what if the seal data is skewed by the nice clubbing man ?

      1. TeeCee Gold badge
        WTF?

        Re: Seal Data

        Have you ever seen an Elephant seal?

        It's more likely to be nice clubbing man[1] who gets skewed.....

        [1] Not sure that blowing a whistle and shouting: "ACIIIIIIIIIIIIIID" while dancing like a loon is an effective seal-hunting method.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Is this more proof we do not understand our climate enough to actually make predictions?

    I personally do not believe a word out of the mouths of climate experts, on either side of the argument!

    And while I personally think we must be affecting the climate, I suspect the sun has more to do with it than we do....

    Anyway if its too hot, lets launch a sun shade, if its too cold, lets launch a sun reflector, its not like its beyond our technological know how, its just funding (which will be 10x the real cost if NASA do it of course!)

    1. Michael 31
      FAIL

      Personally...

      I believe all kinds of things, but they don't matter because as a scientist I have to cope with reality of things.

      1. Antarctica is warming, but warming from -60 °C to -57°C (for instance) doesn't have much visible effect.

      2. You are right to be sceptical, but the data is available for you to examine yourself.

      3. Solar out has not changed significantly in the roughly 40 years for which we have half decent records. However we are putting 30 billion tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. This is around 5% of the amount which is already there. The observed effect on the climate is broadly in line with what we would expect.

      4. Sunshades and and reflectors are fantasy. Dead crops, and dead people are the frightening possibility.

      5. The world has many problems. Life is hard. Climate change is one of those problems and we should address it.

      Get real

      1. iansn
        WTF?

        Re: Personally...

        So can we please have a list of things that we must do? Not to include taxing people. If you do X (like build a million windmills) what is the effect on the CO2 in the atmosphere. Producing them makes CO2 and the power they produce generates CO2 in the consumption phase. What will the overall effect be? It will slow down the production of CO2 but it wont reduce the amount of atmospheric CO2 by one 0.00000000000001 of a %. As long as we are here on earth it will continue to rise as our population continues to rise and the third world want the same life as we have.

        How about you start to look for the things that will improve life and plan for 'change' as I have never seen a plan for change from 'greens' that is positive, ie lets make plans to farm y where we used to farm b. The plan for change only ever involves taxing and foisting windmills on us.

        here's something to think about - let everyone generate their own electricity via solar power, as soon as we do the government will invent a tax for that, as they will lose revenue, they encourage it first then tax it when the take up is critical. Nothing is done for the environment, its all about tax.

        So if we get real, can we have a proper balanced 'manifesto' that says how we can manage change, not just shouting that we're all gonna die.

      2. Charles Manning

        Believe?

        "I believe..." Leave the Bible at home. Show me.

        1) Antarctica is warming. Perhaps, but show me. And one or two sensors is not enough.

        2) "the data is available". No it is not. Here in NZ I tried to get raw data, but it was not available. All public data had been "normalised" or "corrected" by the same people that employed Jim Salinger, an IPCC author. Other data sets available world wide have also been filtered.

        2') The available data span is too short to be usable.

        3) While we put 5% CO2 into the atmophere, nature puts even more in. Our CO2 output is only a fraction of the carbon cycle.

        4) Even if warming is happening, this does not necessarily mean dead crops. Many areas of the world would benefit from a few extra degrees.

        5. "Life is hard". Not as hard as it was 100, 50, or even 10 years ago. Perhaps that is the real problem. As life gets easier we start to stir up problems where they don't exist.

  8. The Axe
    Alien

    Dont' trust any scientists

    When scientists in a national organisation (National Academy of Sciences in the US) says that the sea level on the western cost of the US will rise by a foot in 20 years when over the last 160 years it's risen by 8" then you know that there is some seriously dodgy science going on. You want a hockey stick, go look at the graphic that shows what the 1' rise would look like over at WattsUpWithThat. The NAS say that the sea level could rise by 1m when you take into account a drop in ground level due to a major earthquake. A quake that hasn't done that mcuh change to ground levels in any history.

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/23/the-national-academy-of-sciences-loses-the-plot/

    1. Joe Gurman

      Re: Dont' trust any scientists

      Another post by a bright bulb who'd rather only read what he already beeves instead of the original report, which predicted rises in the range of 4 to 30 cm, not 30 cm as the most probably value. Does the most probable value represent an acceleration? Yes. That much of an acceleration? No.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Dont' trust any scientists

      'A quake that hasn't done that mcuh change to ground levels in any history.'

      You're quite right - apart from (OTTOMH) the Chile 'quake of 1961 (2m), the Cascadia 'quake of 1700 (1.5m), Owens Valley in 1872 (4.5m), Hebgen Lake, Montana in 1956 (6.7m) - an intraplate earthquake at that....

  9. g e

    Whaddya expect

    When their mortages are reliant on grants for saying the world's ending.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Whaddya expect

      Cool. I'll start writing another one right now, shall I "The worlds ending", " The world's not ending", it's all the same, and requires absolutely minimal qualifications and/or skill.

      I'm a bit worried though. Won't all those other academics in the pay of the Fossil Industry give my "world's end propaganda" proposal bad reviews? And all the rest on the same Doooooom! bandwagon as me will want also to reject it because they want theirs funded instead.

      Hmm. Maybe I should try to get the funding council to fund me on the basis of a sound scientific proposal instead? That probably won't annoy either camp of extremists, and, well, after all I _am_ a scientist, and not some sort of webforum troll.

      Wait! Wait! What's the payscale for a webtroll?

    2. Oolons
      FAIL

      Re: Whaddya expect

      All those pesky scientists bigging it up in their Ferraris are obviously getting up your nose

  10. Michael 31
    FAIL

    Epic Fail

    Lewis

    You are at it >again<!

    1. You are correct, the Antaractic Ice Sheet looks pretty stable. And that is really good news., thank you for passing it on. That is because the Antarctic - by virtue of being surrounded by sea and circumpolar atmospheric and oceanic currents - is massively isolated from the weather and climate systems that transport heat from the equator to the poles.

    2. But even there there are signs of warming on the Antarctic peninsula - the bit that reaches northward towards South America. There two gigantic ice shelves disintegrated in a matter of >hours<. Curiously they were also the size of New Jersey. You didn't mention that.

    3. But you are looking in the wrong place. The ARCTIC has seen astonishing ice loss and depending on what one believes we can expect the North Pole to be ice free in summer either by the end of the century - worrying - or the end of the decade - terrifying - but hopefully not true.

    4. Your contrarian articles about this stuff are as barmy as the articles you mock about 'saving the planet by slimming'. You are like a man standing with your back to your own burning home and commenting 'Well the houses across the street look excellent in this eerie yellow glow.

    Get rational: We really do have something to be concerned about.

    Sincerely

    Michael

    1. vandenbudenmayer
      WTF?

      Re: Epic Fail

      You want rational? CO2 is a harmless trace gas in our atmosphere currently at a level of around 0.04% by volume. You think it's rational that the earth's radiated heat absorbed by this minute amount of gas would lead to 'something to be concerned about'? The only thing to be concerned about here is your sanity, sir. You can spew all the massaged and abused 'data' you want, but facts are facts. Just look at satellite based measurements of sea level rise, which is about the only thing that says anything meaningful in this entire farce: 3mm per year. So yeah, seems the earth is warming a bit. No idea why. Perhaps CO2 has a little to do with it. Perhaps it's just the earth coming out of the little ice age. Who cares? You think that 3mm per year is a problem? Get rid of your car(s) then, abandon your heated home, stop shopping at Tesco's, sell your computer(s), and go live off the grid. Ciao. Nice to have met you, you lunatic.

      1. Michael 31

        Re: Epic Fail

        Water vapour is only a trace gas (~1%) but it warms the Earth by 31 °C!

        CO2 is indeed a trace gas in the atmosphere and its effect is less strong than water. But its effect on radiative transfer is very clear. It warms the Earth. It is responsible for around 2 °C of greenhouse warming. This was well understood a century ago, and in fact was the subject of classroom songs for primary children in the 1050s.

        Regarding indicators of Climate Change, you are right to be sceptical of sea level data. It is very very difficult to detect. Similarly with the air temperature above the land surface of the Earth, but there the signal is much clearer. If you would like signs of dramatic changes - look at the arctic - at the places where a small warming causes a phase change from ice/water.

        Sincerely

        Michael

        1. vandenbudenmayer
          Devil

          Re: Epic Fail

          Water vapour content of the atmosphere can be as much as 4%. That's 100 times the amount of CO2 dear Michael.

          And neither water vapour nor CO2 warm the earth at all. The earth is warmed by the sun, which in turn warms the atmosphere, so your triumphant statement '...it warms the Earth by 31 °C!' is blatant nonsense.

          And no one disputes that CO2 contributes to the temperature of the lower parts of the atmosphere. It's the size of the increase in temperature caused by additional CO2 that we disagree on. We both know that it's not a linear relationship, but a logarithmic one. Perhaps it causes a degree centigrade of warming for each doubling, but probably less due to negative feedbacks if you ask me. You will disagree, and that's fine. The proof will be in the pudding!

          I wasn't around in 1050, so I can't comment on your classroom songs. Surprised you can remember that far back.

          Perhaps you have a slab of concrete in front of your Neanderthal-shaped head, but how you could think I was sceptical of sea level data is beyond me. And regarding your dramatical changing arctic, perhaps you should go live there? Should be nice and warm there soon if your 'signals' are correct.

          Keep using those divining rods Michael. There must be water here!!

          1. Michael 31
            Happy

            Re: Epic Fail

            It is the water the vapour that warms the Earth by the additional 31 °C. Without the water vapour, this warming would not take place. Without water vapour the radiative transfer that stabilises the surface temperature would equilibrate at around -18°C. So although the Sun provides the flow of energy, it is fair to say that it is the water vapour which warms the surface of the Earth.

            Water vapour can indeed be even more than 4%. But on average it isn't.

            The venerable Lewis Page on these pages reported only recently research that estimated that doubling CO2 would 'only' cause warming of 2-ish °C. It could be that low, or it coudl be bigger. If we are lucky, it might be less. But 2 °C per doubling is a big change, because it looks like we will more than double CO2.

            I meant 1950 , not 1050. Sorry.

            You seem very angry about something. I know the Global Warming situation is alarming but you should consider seeking help for your anger problem

            M

            1. vandenbudenmayer
              Facepalm

              Re: Epic Fail

              Michael 31: It is the water the vapour that warms the Earth by the additional 31 °C. Without the water vapour, this warming would not take place.

              No dear Michael. The water vapour does NOT warm the earth. The earth warms the water vapour. Do you not see that? Why don't you go to the Sahara and find out what an environment without much water vapour is like?? Hint: it's very warm during the day! Another hint: it can be very cold during the night!

              Is the dawn of understanding upon you yet? Or do I need to break it down further?

              1. imanidiot Silver badge

                Re: Epic Fail

                @vandenbudenmayer

                PLEASE, PLEASE read up on how the earth atmosphere works and what is claimed water vapour does before you start spouting crap from other "climate ""scientists"" ".

                Water vapour DOES warm the earth. Not the lower atmospheric boundry layer, but slightly further up. Even in the sahara. Because there might not be much vapour IN THE SOIL, there's quite a bit of vapour in the air over there. (Thus why mist-catchers and the likes can get water from the mist that hangs there every morning).

                The heat absorbed by the water in the atmosphere is only a fraction of what is absorbed by the earth directly. The water vapour however traps heat that would otherwise be radiated out into space as black body radiation inside the atmosphere, bouncing it around more and causing more of the energy to be absorbed in the atmosphere and the earth. (Infra-red).

                @Can't remember who. 2 degrees Celsius temp rise ISN'T unusual in the history of the earth. Even the rate of change isn't unusual. The CIRCUMSTANCES however are. In the past they were easily explained by atmospheric conditions and gas-concentrations caused by natural processes. This is currently not entirely the case. There's an " unknown factor" causing temp rise and climate change that can't currently be explained by any natural process. Thus the conclusion HAS to be that it's something caused by mankind.

                1. Oolons
                  Coat

                  Re: Epic Fail

                  I think iamanidiot you are wasting your time, vandenbudenmayer and bthrower are more likely to spend their two brain cells working out a good way of taking the piss out of your handle than reading your post. They are in a dogmatic entrenched position which is why the comparison to creationists was a good one - no amount of reasoning will get through. The difference between them and the scientists they deride (cf vandenbudenmayer telling post in response to discovering the person he is arguing with is probably an order of magnitude more qualified than himself) is that if in 20 years time the ice sheets are still there the scientists will be busy working out why the models and predictions were wrong and fielding nutters who say its all a fake. Of course if things go as we suspect and the ice sheets are gone our two trolls will be hanging onto their beliefs as being *right* and never changing your mind is the primary goal of their existence.

                  1. vandenbudenmayer
                    Facepalm

                    Re: Epic Fail

                    Ooions: ...if in 20 years time the ice sheets are still there the scientists will be busy working out why the models and predictions were wrong and fielding nutters who say its all a fake.

                    Are you seriously saying that there might be a chance that 'the ice sheets' will be gone in 20 years?? Oh noes!

                    Do you even have a clue about how long it would take for the Greenland ice sheet to completely vanish for instance? Even if temperatures there would spike by another 3 degrees? 20 years, you reckon? Really? Try 1,000 years.

                2. vandenbudenmayer
                  Flame

                  Re: Epic Fail

                  imanidiot: Water vapour DOES warm the earth. Not the lower atmospheric boundry layer, but slightly further up. Even in the sahara.

                  I'm talking about the earth. The EARTH. You know, that solid sphere under your feet? Are you being deliberately obtuse? The solid sphere warms the atmosphere above it. Not the other way round. Jesus Christ. Can you not read?

                  1. Anonymous Coward
                    Anonymous Coward

                    Re: Epic Fail

                    @vandenbudenmayer - Everyone else is talking about the climate, do it's not particularly off to presume that when you say the earth, you actually mean the climate around the ball of rock.

                    Do try to at least keep what remains of a discussion at least polite.

                3. btrower

                  Re: Epic Fail

                  Re: There's an " unknown factor" causing temp rise and climate change that can't currently be explained by any natural process. Thus the conclusion HAS to be that it's something caused by mankind.

                  Whew! You sum up the Climate Alarm argument very nicely there. I invite people to examine the above and think it through. The argument is wrong on its face. That is, as my old Biology Professor would say, a matter of knowledge, not opinion.

                  Here's the math:

                  X[What I Don't Know] + Y[What I Do Know] = Z[Something Else I Know]

                  X = Z-Y

                  [What I Don't Know] = [Something Else I Know] - [What I Do Know]

                  X = MAN

                  [What I Don't Know] = [Something I Believe]

                  That is how a climate scientist solves for X. It is essentially, I cannot know what I don't know, therefore, I know CO2 is bad.

                  Everyone is welcome to their beliefs. I just object when they 'believe' that I have to give them money to pursue those beliefs.

        2. btrower

          Re: Epic Fail

          Re:Water vapour is only a trace gas (~1%) but it warms the Earth by 31 °C!

          Your fervent belief in this will not cause it to become true. This is just another climate howler that makes anyone with an undergrad math/science degree wonder how those guys ever got a degree.

          I disagree with the people who told you that, but more importantly, so does the physical universe, which we can inspect using ... 'science'. Either I am wrong or they are wrong. If you *really* care to know, you will have to do more digging than to accept the word of someone whose living depends upon 'Climate Change' being important.

          Try this: Look up the provenance of the argument. Then, look up the facts that have actually been demonstrated. Then, do the math. Uh, ... Never mind.

          Here's the punchline from the text below:

          "The modelers then ‘correct’ their error by botching a “33 degrees Centigrade whatchamacallit” they term the greenhouse gas effect.""

          From: http://www.slayingtheskydragon.com/en/blog/202-two-top-climate-professors-openly-trash-greenhouse-gas-theory

          "No Peer-reviewed Science to Prove Greenhouse ‘Blanket Effect’

          But it gets worse - just scratch that surface a little more and you’ll find that there is also not a single peer-reviewed paper substantiating the existence of so-called GHE 'back radiation' heating (a term absent from textbooks on thermodynamics).

          One of the endless disagreements is about the incoming solar radiation and whether it can be 'trapped' by carbon dioxide (CO2) to form a gaseous atmospheric 'blanket effect.’

          But as Mexico’s Professor Nasif Nahle has experimentally demonstrated, “the warming effect in a real greenhouse is not due to longwave infrared radiation trapped inside the greenhouse, but to the blockage of convective heat transfer with the surroundings…”

          Postma and Nahle rigorously applied the science from the book, Slaying the Sky Dragon. They were then able to further expose the critical flaw whereby reliance is placed on a plane-parallel model in which the ground and atmosphere are treated as “planes” that are “parallel” to each other.

          Postma shows that the incoming solar flux is wrongly divided by a factor of “4” so as to average the Solar energy over the entire planet as a chilly twilight. In effect, climate science turns our watery revolving globe into a flat, ice covered disk by utterly discarding the warming and cooling process of day and night. So which side in this debate are now the real “flat earthers?”

          In other words, climatologists model Earth as a desolate flat disk planet where Sunshine is perpetually freezing cold and liquid water and vapor are impossible. The modelers then ‘correct’ their error by botching a “33 degrees Centigrade whatchamacallit” they term the greenhouse gas effect."

          1. NomNomNom

            Re: Epic Fail

            So our two climate "skeptics" completely disagree with each other.

            btrower denies the greenhouse effect.

            vandenbudenmayer accepts it.

            It's like young earth and old earth creationists. They are both wrong, but to different extents.

          2. Michael 31

            Re: Epic Fail

            Btrower

            Hi. I have done the maths and the physics. I was actually at the top of my Maths and Physics classes in fact. That's how I got my first class degree in Physics and PhD and how I have earned a living for the last 30 years. In fact I did so well the Queen gave me a medal! And your qualification would be...?

            I have looked at this area very hard, and the 'botched' 33 degrees Celsius is the very real figure by which the Earth's surface is warmed by our atmosphere

            FWIW My field is ultra-precision measurements. I take great care in what I believe and don't believe.

            Friend: the times they are a changing. get with it.

            M

            1. vandenbudenmayer
              Trollface

              Re: Epic Fail

              Michael 31: I was actually at the top of my Maths and Physics classes in fact. That's how I got my first class degree in Physics and PhD and how I have earned a living for the last 30 years. In fact I did so well the Queen gave me a medal!

              I guess you've never come across argumentum ad verecundiam? Well done on getting a medal though Michael. At first I thought you were just an ordinary lunatic, now I realise my mistake. You're a certified one.

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: Epic Fail

                @vandenbudenmayer

                Just wondering what you do when you get ill? Do you go to a GP, or do you choose who you think may be able to heal you best on what most conveniently chimes with your mindset? Personally I'd love the no side effects homeopathy option, but all the GPs I know tell me it's rubbish. Actually I tell a lie, I do know a GP who thinks homeopathy is ok, but as all the rest I know say it's rubbish, I side with them.

                1. vandenbudenmayer
                  Facepalm

                  Re: Epic Fail

                  AC: Just wondering what you do when you get ill? Do you go to a GP, or do you choose who you think may be able to heal you best on what most conveniently chimes with your mindset?

                  Are you saying that because certain 'scientists' say it is so, therefore it must be so? Is that the crux of your brilliant argument? You go to your GP with a headache and he subscribes amputation of your leg, and you would go along with that, because, well, he is the GP, he knows his stuff.

                  1. Anonymous Coward
                    Anonymous Coward

                    Re: Epic Fail

                    @vandenbudenmayer

                    If you re-read my comment, you'll find that what I actually said was along the lines of: If a group of professionals in an area say something is the case and one person in that area says it's not, I'll go with the professionals. So, no, I would have a leg removed if I had a headache, unless I had a second opinion and they said something along the lines of "you know what, we realise it's not an obvious cure, but here's why it works."

                    Anyway, you don't seem to be able to discuss something, without taking the piss and deliberately mis-understanding people's arguments for effect, so I don't know why I bothered.

                    1. vandenbudenmayer
                      Thumb Up

                      Re: Epic Fail

                      AC: ...so I don't know why I bothered.

                      Well... don't bother then, and just have your leg amputated. Good luck.

            2. btrower

              Re: Epic Fail

              Re: Hi. I have done the maths and the physics. I was actually at the top of my Maths and Physics classes in fact. That's how I got my first class degree in Physics and PhD and how I have earned a living for the last 30 years. In fact I did so well the Queen gave me a medal!

              It costs me nothing to accept your assertion above, so I will. However, whether you have said doctorate and medal or even whether you are a Nobel Laureate cannot help your argument. It must stand on its own. Thus far, I see no real argument. I see assertions unvarnished by reference to facts.

              Re: And your qualification would be...?

              My qualifications (or lack thereof) does no more to help my argument than it does yours. Mercifully for me, my argument is relatively simple: I do not believe that we should get excited and spend any more money attempting to deal with 'Climate Change'. I think that nothing really unusual is happening, not even the ongoing rare, but not unprecedented fact that 'Alarming Climate Change' has become a popular delusion. The burden of proof is necessarily upon you to refute the Null Hypothesis. Thus far, you have not even tried.

              I will accept that you have some scientific literacy because of your educational background. However, that does not excuse the fact that, as usual in these 'discussions', your response simply does not address the issue. The issue was *NOT* that purveyors of 'Catastrophic Global Warming' (or whatever they are calling it these days) lack doctorates. In fact, I specifically addressed the notion that clearly they lacked the actual understanding it would require to pass the course, they must have been promoted otherwise. The issue is that they are scientifically, for these purposes, illiterate. They don't know what they are talking about. They don't understand graphing. They don't understand statistics. They don't understand logical argument. They don't understand notions of scientific method.

              You cannot investigate 'the hockey stick' and come away believing the hockey stick is real unless you fundamentally lack the ability to bring literacy to bear on the topic. It is a disaster that, I am not exaggerating, would not have been accepted in my old high school.

              Re: I have looked at this area very hard, and the 'botched' 33 degrees Celsius is the very real figure by which the Earth's surface is warmed by our atmosphere

              How can you say something like this, with the entirety of the Global Internet at your disposal, your already agreed upon education and presumptive giant brain? It is an astounding pronouncement that cries out for credible proof from replicated experiments by reputable investigators. I provided a reference to a number of independent challenges to this 'fact' that is in dispute. You provided your promise that, even in the absence of proof or even a logical argument, it is still true somehow. It may be true. However, you have not demonstrated this and it is entirely in dispute. The burden rests upon you to prove it and if you do not understand this now, get reading so you do understand it. Your big brain belongs on the right side of the argument.

              Re: FWIW My field is ultra-precision measurements.

              Ummmm. There is some argument that narrow specialists are not so good at predictions *especially* in their own area of expertise (http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/04/why-experts-get-it-wrong/73322/). There is, if I might interpret the facts a bit, some argument to be had that your focus on 'ultra-precision' may be a handicap, not a virtue.

              Re: I take great care in what I believe and don't believe.

              Either it is still not enough or you are very much a victim of a combination of trusting the wrong people and being led by a powerful confirmation bias. Sadly, just as the illiterate can be prodded into believing stuff for no reason, very literate people can be led to believe complete nonsense if it is pitched to their beliefs.

              Re: Friend: the times they are a changing. get with it

              Friend: The fundamental basics of understanding aren't a changing. My views (generally) square with Logic, Math, Physics, Chemistry and Biology and Statistics. Climate Scientists' views only square with an increasingly shaky scientific orthodoxy.

              Presuming you are what you say and you are sincere, do some investigating back to 'bare metal' (am a computer guy, for me that's basic) and you will certainly agree with me. It is not that the 'Climate Scare' orthodoxy is wrong, it is that it is so laughably stupid. If you can stand aside from your confirmation bias, understand what does and does not constitute evidence and logic, broaden your knowledge of other scientific areas (like Biological Evolution and Botany) and you inspect the nonsense purveyed by the IPCC, you cannot arrive at any conclusion but that Alarmism is essentially fraud and dangerous fraud at that.

              Let me say this, for anyone who is sincerely on the 'Climate Alarm' side of the debate: I appreciate that people on my side of the fence can be harsh and 'over the top' in their criticisms sometimes. I am no exception, though I hope I am less unkind than many. Try to put aside hurt feelings and a desire to be 'correct' (whats' that). The bottom line is that most people both sides want to do what is 'best'. I submit that you can very clearly see extreme need for food, water, shelter, basic health care and education in the world. I would submit that even if you believe that the current warming (is it even still happening?) is a problem, that you can see that a much more immediate threat to the very lives of people in the Third World exists. We know what the problems are and we know how to make much of it better. We have the resources, even. All we need is the will.

              Our inability to do the right thing with respect to this 'Climate Alarm' nonsense stems from a breakdown in broad literacy and common sense, even and maybe even especially, among the nominally educated. Even if we *will* have a sea level rise of a meter a century hence, this is in dispute NOW and NOW people are dying for other reasons and that are NOT in dispute. This puts me in mind of a poem:

              Her strong enchantments failing,

              Her towers of fear in wreck,

              Her limbecks dried of poisons

              And the knife at her neck,

              The Queen of air and darkness

              Begins to shrill and cry,

              'O young man, O my slayer,

              To-morrow you shall die.'

              O Queen of air and darkness,

              I think 'tis truth you say,

              And I shall die to-morrow;

              But you will die to-day.

              That puts me in mind of a more elegant joke to the same effect:

              A man, not known for his smarts, walks in on his wife making love to another man. He immediately flies into a rage and puts a gun to his head. His wife and lover just start laughing to which he responds: What are you laughing at? You're next.

              Let's not be coy about it. Even the Climate Alarmists don't claim anybody will die tomorrow. We know for kids in the third world will be dead by morning unless we intervene NOW. Let's stop spending *so much money* on 'Climate Alarm' and start getting water and mosquito nets where they are needed.

              1. Michael 31

                Re: Epic Fail

                Your post is too long to reply to in detail.

                1. You are right to assert that we have many problems and that looking after ourselves, creating a decent society is plenty for all our economic resources. We don't want to waste money. I agree with you absolutely.

                2. But the evidence that Climate Change is real is stronger than you are acknowledging. I recommend looking at the pages for the BErkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project. Run by Climate Sceptics who openly mocked the first three reconstructions on Earth;s Climate over the last 100 years, they went to town on the problem. They used more data, new averaging algorithms and came up with almost exactly the same result. The person who did this survey (Richard Muller) was not a Climatologist, but a physicist who just wanted to know the answer. Now we do: we have 4 independent analyses that substantially agree. The Earth really does appear to be warming by around 2.9 Celsius a century.

                3. Does that mean we have to stop everything else? No. But we should acknowledge reality and make choices in the light of that knowledge.

                Best wishes

                M

                1. btrower

                  Re: Epic Fail

                  Re: Your post is too long to reply to in detail.

                  It occurs to me that I may have written more at this site than I have read today. Your thoughtful reply was appreciated, but not expected.

                  Re: the evidence that Climate Change is real is stronger than you are acknowledging

                  I have not 'denied' that the Climate is changing. The reality of 'Climate Change' qua 'Climate Change' is not in dispute, at least not very seriously and not by me. It has always changed and it always will. Who would expect it to suddenly settle out and stop in the 21st century? Not me.

                  Evidence is poor all around, but the notion that temperature at least *was* increasing is convincing to me. We are still coming out of the 'Little Ice Age'. To the extent this stuff is predictable, it is to be expected that the rising curve would continue to rise as it has. It is consistent with what else we know. It is not the least bit remarkable. There is no reasonable evidence that our current climate is unusual and I do not believe it is. Even if it were, the best evidence we have is that a rise in temperature is entirely net beneficial. So, by the way, is a rise in CO2.

                  Re: I recommend looking at ... [BEST] project. Run by Climate Sceptics who openly mocked ... The Earth really does appear to be warming by around 2.9 Celsius a century.

                  Here is one of the graphs from BerkelyEarth.org:

                  http://berkeleyearth.org/images/Updated_Comparison_10.jpg

                  As you can see, the entire spread from the lowest point (not the earliest, BTW) to the highest point over two centuries is *less* than 1 degree per century.

                  I think that you may be mixing up the 'worst case' 'Urban Heat Island' effect of the city of Tokyo that Muller mentions by way of saying that even if all the urban sites had that deficiency their net contribution is small enough that it makes a negligible difference to the *global* change in heat.

                  The BEST study used a clever (to me anyway) technique to demonstrate that the UHI did not affect the trend and if anything, counter-intuitively, the slope was shallower from the urban sites. The study also showed that independent analyses of the NOAA, HadCRU and Berkeley data were concordant. That is hardly surprising since apparently 90% or more of the three data sets use the same data.

                  BEST showed that the UHI, though not treated properly by the other studies, did not, despite the improper treatment, affect the *trend* of the change in temperature. It also showed that despite the criticisms (in my opinion entirely warranted) the researchers did not mess up the basic analysis of the data from weather stations.

                  BEST confirmed relatively unsurprising results and did not find any deliberate wrongdoing. That is some vote of confidence, but not anything to get excited about.

                  Re: we have 4 independent analyses that substantially agree.

                  Is that really all that surprising given that they are all using substantially (90%?) the same data?

                  Re: The Earth really does appear to be warming by around 2.9 Celsius a century.

                  I find this surprising, counter-intuitive and not believable as-is. I was not able to find any credible reference for this. As noted above, it is not what was reported in the graph above. However, in the unlikely event they found some indication of this, it would not merit any action beyond further research. Will the earth be molten in a million years? Not unless we get struck by a gigantic fireball or fall into the sun. Will this accelerate out of control? No, I think not.

                  For Global Warming Climate Alarm to be sensible, we need to convincingly demonstrate *all* of: The rate of warming is large PLUS it is unusual/unprecedented, PLUS it is man-made PLUS it is dangerous PLUS reversing it is better rather than just adapting.

                  Since we all agree that it is warming, that is off the table as an argument. We are just left with the above and none of the above is even likely to ever be convincingly demonstrated. They don't make any sense. Remember, the warmist argument is that ALL of the above are undeniably true to the point that inaction is riskier than action and even dangerous. You cannot demonstrate or even irrefutably prove one or two of them and claim any kind of victory. 'Climate Science' is dreadful 'science' or not even science. However, as shoddy as it is, the real debate is one of public policy. Should we condemn our brethren in the third world to death so that we can build hybrid cars and windmills? A thousand times, no.

                  My own personal costs have actually risen to support the ridiculous global warming industry and that money, that they have misappropriated from me, is going to lobby for placing an even greater burden on me and my family. Somebody, it seems is pursuing the ability to create a new endless supply of fiat currency called 'carbon credits'.

                  Re: But we should acknowledge reality and make choices in the light of that knowledge.

                  Agree. Let's fire up our fancy educations and big brains, narrow down that reality and take appropriate action. Appropriate action, in my opinion is for those who have the education and mental horsepower to first educate themselves about this travesty and then to do their best to raise the real alarm. Bad science is being used to disenfranchise a generation so they are poorer and have lower life expectancies than their elders. Yuck.

                  The climate is not going to give us any more problems than it ever has. It does give us problems, but warming is hardly the worst of them: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2100232/Frozen-death-fuel-bills-soar-Hypothermia-cases-elderly-double-years.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

                  "The number of pensioners dying from hypothermia has nearly doubled in five years, a period when a succession of cold winters has been coupled with drastic rises in energy bills."

                  While we have been buying into the notion that somehow nuclear power or coal power or anything efficient by way of power is 'bad' and subsidizing the fake (sub-optimal, subsidized) energy industry (like windmills and solar) with money from pensioners is good, some of those pensioners are paying for this folly with their lives.

                  Re: Best wishes

                  Same. We may not agree, but at least you have reasonable manners, some clue, and appear to be genuinely interested in doing what is actually the right thing if you can identify it. People like you may be among the worst victims of this enormous and elaborate swindle. I would say this: Don't trust me, but don't trust them either. Look into it carefully for yourself. It is a nasty little shell game and it is very hard to keep your eye on the pea, but if try real hard, you can probably do it. The cabal is practiced at swindles, but they are not really that good even at that.

                  The 'skeptics', by and large are the literate ones. The 'skeptics', by and large, are the honest ones. The 'skeptics' are the ones donating their time. The 'skeptics' are the ones providing data, references, figures, logical argumentation and genuine evidence (even though, as often mentioned, the burden of proof lies on the other side).

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Epic Fail

        Where the hell has this "there's negligible effect form CO2 because there isn't very much of it by %age" meme come from? The greenhouse effect has been understood for something like 75 years, probably longer and people claiming to know more about science than people who do it for a job deny that it's there. What do you think that does to your credibility?

        Also, I've got a few grammes of cyanide, want to eat it? There isn't very much in terms of how much you weigh, what could possibly go wrong?

        1. vandenbudenmayer
          Facepalm

          Re: Epic Fail

          Where the hell does the I'm-calling-everything-I-see-more-than-once-a-meme meme come from? Of course the greenhouse effect has been 'understood' for a long time as you say. This is not in dispute. Did I deny there is a greenhouse effect?

          Are you claiming the effect of cyanide on the human body is similar to adding a bit of CO2 to the atmosphere? Great analogy. Did you have to think really hard to come up with that one? Poor diddums.

          1. NomNomNom

            Re: Epic Fail

            Okay lets analyze your trainwreck of an argument.

            First you appealed to the small concentration = small effect fallacy. Others set you straight by pointing out a case where small concentration can have a big effect, but rather than admit you are wrong you try to pretend they've done something wrong by picking the wrong analogy. Therefore showing you don't understand falsifiability. It only takes one contradiction to your argument to falsify it. ANYTHING in small concentrations that has a big effect (and a LOT of things do) proves your argument that small concentration = small effect is wrong.

            Even better though you even contradicted your own fallacy without knowing it when later you claimed: "no one disputes that CO2 contributes to the temperature of the lower parts of the atmosphere....Perhaps it causes a degree centigrade of warming for each doubling..."

            Perhaps you just don't realize how much energy it takes to raise global average temperature by 1 degree C. It flies in the face of your "small effect" argument. If you really believed small concentration = small effect then 1C shouldn't be possible from a mere 0.04% CO2. Even 0.1C would be far too much according to the fallacy.

            Now you go and throw in another load of nonsense with your: "neither water vapour nor CO2 warm the earth at all. The earth is warmed by the sun, which in turn warms the atmosphere, so your triumphant statement '...it warms the Earth by 31 °C!' is blatant nonsense."

            But but you contradict yourself AGAIN. When you claimed "Perhaps it [CO2] causes a degree centigrade of warming for each doubling" that contradicts your new claim that CO2 cannot be said to warm the Earth.

            Besides by your reasoning a coat can't be said to warm a person. So anyone who claims "this coat is warming me" is guilty of talking "blatant nonsense" are they? Pedantic isn't the word is it? It's like you are trying to put up obstacles and create confusion. Almost troll-like, but no I've seen this pattern from creationists. It's what happens when someone is trying too hard to contest (deny?) some science they oppose.

            1. vandenbudenmayer
              Facepalm

              Re: Epic Fail

              A coat does not warm a person dear NomNuts. If you don't even realise that, what are you doing discussing climatology with grown ups?

      3. NomNomNom

        Re: Epic Fail

        vandenbudenmayer: "You want IRrational? ...<mindless diatribe follows>"

        Fixed That For You

        1. This post has been deleted by its author

      4. btrower

        Re: Epic Fail

        It was ever thus:

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

        The earth has been, ironically, in an unusually constant and beneficent stretch of climate. If global temperatures rise a degree or two:

        1) It will not be unusual even a tiny bit.

        2) It will be net positive.

        The earth has been veddy, veddy good to us and this recent stretch of warming, naturally to be expected as we come out of the LIA (which the warmistas have been trying to erase from history), is particularly salutary.

        There is a mountain of money in the 'climate change' industry. That is why all their nonsense reports keep coming our way. I expect that we will see the *same* weasels promoting 'climate change' hysteria rush in to grab the dollars to prove that we need to spend money dismantling our cooling agenda and, on an expensive and emergency basis, prepare to fight the coming ice age.

        Ironically, though it is doubtful we can invent more energy into the planet to heat things up, we *may* actually be able to precipitate *cooling* by all this nonsense. Cooling == bad.

        You would think that the entire scientific establishment would rise up and crush the moronic and badly schooled 'global warming hysterics', but you would be wrong.

        Hopefully, when ordinary people can see how much this hysteria has cost them and how many lives have been destroyed by eco-terrorists and how entirely pointless it is, they will finally put an end to it. Meantime, I cannot always bite my tongue, since I make my living with logic, have a background in science, and have taken a very long hard look at 'Climate Change'. The 'Climate Change' orthodoxy is egregiously stupid. They can't even *read* a graph, let alone produce one that makes any sense. Here is what the last 100 years looks like when graphed with error bars against the actual scale (Kelvin) that measures *quantity* of heat starting at zero == zero (Y axis is temperature, X axis is time):

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

        .

        .

        [To get error bars narrow enough, X axis has to be too far away to graph here]

        What, you say it hasn't changed and is not accelerating? Yes. For their purposes, it has not left the range of the error. It is all entirely nonsense. We deal in 'temperature', when we want to see where it is and where it is going. They deal in 'anamolies', because any graph of actual temperature, especially when the Y-axis starts at zero, shows nothing interesting is happening.

        Q:What about CO2?

        A:It is *very* good for plants and may account for our unusual abundance of crops in recent years. It has a negligible effect on its own and by itself, a doubling or trebling of CO2 concentration is almost certainly net-positive (Garden of Eden-ically speaking), even in the unlikely event it even has a measurable effect on temperature.

        Q: But the [QuasiCriminalGlobalWarmingClimateChangeCharlatans] have 'proven' [whatever]'. A:No, no they have not. Sadly, they don't know enough math, chemistry, physics, statistics, etc to know that they are in the bottom quartile. They can't even understand a proof, let alone construct one. They are a hilarious study in illiteracy-driven logical fallacy. Sometimes, their arguments are so stupid, they are hard to disprove because they are 'not even wrong'. Idiots. If we could even just get them to understand the concept of 'burden of proof', they would at least shut up while they went about finally gathering some proof. If you are a 'climate scientist' (an oxymoron these days), for heavens sake study up on stuff like 'null hypothesis' and undergrad statistics. My high-school turned out better scientists.

        There is one consolation for the irritation of the IPCC. Not all of them will be caught, but that house of cards will fall and at least a few will have to face the music. It is not consolation for all the grief they have caused, and as usual the real culprits will escape justice, but it will be entertaining. Everybody will say 'who knew?'. A few of us will say: 'me'.

        In this story you have a history of this entire movement. First we ignored them. Then we laughed at them ... the end.

        1. NomNomNom

          Re: Epic Fail

          btrower, another climate "skeptic" is full of contradictions too.

          First he (wrongly) accuses the scientific community of trying to erase the little ice age (LIA) from history.

          But then he proposes we graph temperature on a kelvin scale starting from 0K. The result of doing that would be that the last 1000 years of temperature would appear flat. No wiggles, nothing. No LIA, no medieval warm period (MWP).

          So he is guilty *himself* of trying to erase the little ice age. Of course not intentionally. He didn't realize the implications of what he advocated. He just wanted to hide the 20th century warming because that's a convenient way of denying man-made climate change. He didn't realize that the same method he used to do that would also hide the LIA he promotes so much.

          Another contradiction born of climate "skepticism".

          He's also wrong on a number of points, I'll point out one particularly important mistakes: He's wrong to claim that 2C global warming isn't unusual.

          1. vandenbudenmayer
            Happy

            Re: Epic Fail

            NomNuts: I'll point out one particularly important mistakes: He's wrong to claim that 2C global warming isn't unusual.

            Thanks for pointing that one mistakes [sic] out and descending from your mount Olympus of knowledge and wisdom to hand us peasants the olive branch of enlightenment. We're not worthy.

          2. btrower

            Re: Epic Fail

            Re: First he (wrongly) accuses the scientific community of trying to erase the little ice age (LIA) from history.

            Not at all. I hardly think of 'climate scientists' as being part of the 'scientific community'. Still, even if I had included them, you can read their Emails yourself and make up your own mind. The erasure of the LIA and MWP are fundamentals of alarmist science. Note that you absolutely cannot trust Wikipedia in anything that touches upon climate science. Here is a favorite of mine:

            Four Legs Good:

            http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Scientific_consensus&oldid=2684109

            "I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had."

            Two Legs Better:

            "People of various backgrounds (political, scientific, media, action groups, and so on) have argued that there is a scientific consensus on the causes of global warming. The historian of science Naomi Oreskes published an article in Science reporting that a survey of the abstracts of 928 science articles published between 1993 and 2003 showed none which disagreed explicitly with the notion of anthropogenic global warming.[9] In an editorial published in the Washington Post, Oreskes stated that those who opposed these scientific findings are amplifying the normal range of scientific uncertainty about any facts into an appearance that there is a great scientific disagreement, or a lack of scientific consensus.

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

            All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. "

            ----

            Re: But then he proposes we graph temperature on a kelvin scale starting from 0K. The result of doing that would be that the last 1000 years of temperature would appear flat. No wiggles, nothing. No LIA, no medieval warm period (MWP).

            Yeppers. There really is not that much happening 'climate-wise' to get excited about. You can see that if you graph the actual *change in heat* against the *amount of heat*. It is trivially small in some respects (the respect being temperatures through evolutionary/geologic time).

            Re: So he is guilty *himself* of trying to erase the little ice age. Of course not intentionally. He didn't realize the implications of what he advocated. He just wanted to hide the 20th century warming because that's a convenient way of denying man-made climate change. He didn't realize that the same method he used to do that would also hide the LIA he promotes so much.

            The above is delicious to anyone who has studied science and a little of the history of logic. It is a fanciful flight of sophistry meant to astound and confuse the unwary. I am hardly *guilty* of showing that *even* the LIA and MWP disappear if we 'get real' and look at the actual percentage change in heat content. I hardly am attempting to 'hide' man made global warming. It has managed to evade literally *billions* of dollars of research time and a near hysterical need on the part of the alarm industry to prove it true.

            For those with the background, the above takes the hammer and pounds it squarely on the head of 'burden of proof' and then drives home my point about 'null hypothesis' rather nicely.

            Re: Another contradiction born of climate "skepticism".

            Skepticism is the very heart and soul of scientific inquiry. If climate alarmists possessed the tiniest shred of a clue, they would not be so quick to call their opponents 'skeptics'. We are *supposed* to be skeptics. So are they. We are not the ones in the wrong here, not by a long shot. I invite anyone reading this to be entirely skeptical of both of us and do your own research. Beware: the 'Climate Science' community has precious little other skills, but they are very, very accomplished prevaricators. (the picture of Michael Mann is missing here, but you get the idea http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Prevaricators). Only a 'Climate Alarmist' could somehow think that calling someone a 'skeptic' should be insulting. Yes, I am entirely a skeptic and yes, the burden of proof that something unusual PLUS alarming PLUS dangerous PLUS effectively-actionable rests entirely upon the Alarmista. Since they do not even understand what the burden is or why they bear it, I am not holding my breath.

            Re: He's also wrong on a number of points, I'll point out one particularly important mistakes: He's wrong to claim that 2C global warming isn't unusual.

            My friend here is 'Not Even Wrong'. What does this really mean? Every one of us covers a range of at least 10 degrees in a single day, sometimes in the span of a few minutes. Look at the vast array of pelage in the living world. Many animals, especially birds and mammals can survive a range of nearly 100 degrees. They *thrive* across a range of at least 20 and to the extent that we know anything about the current temperature and the living world, we know this:

            Warmer is better.

            Most people are not nearly conversant with Evolutionary theory, but some might appreciate this: we would not be able to survive that range of temperatures, that is we would not *have* the pelage unless we had been selected for it. Otherwise, it is a waste of resources to grow a big bush of hair and then waste precious calories lugging it around. We *need* those calories to provide the *heat* we need to bring our enzymes into the optimal range (~~37C) from the average ambient temperature (very roughly 15C).

            One of the beauties of *real* science is that it *explains* and *predicts* so many things and it all beautifully hangs together. The more you learn it, the more sense it all makes. In that respect, 'Climate Science' is not 'science' at all. Nearly everything else in science supports and is supported by the rest of science. Climate Science contradicts everything, including common sense.

            There is, not to put too fine a point on it, huge gaps in understanding in the 'climate alarmism' community.

            Do your own research and ask yourself, if you look at what we spend on perverting market forces to support 'green' energy, tamper with our atmosphere and researching a non-event and match it against what we *could* do in terms of providing water, food and medicine to people in the third world, is the 'Climate' really where that money should go? It is, after all, making a decision to literally sacrifice the lives of people NOW in order to save IMAGINARY LIVES in an IMAGINARY FUTURE.

            If we have any left over, we should spend a little on teaching 'Climate Scientists' and 'Climate Alarmists' some genuine SCIENCE. They will *never* be real scientists worth anything, because "You Can't Fix Stupid". However, they might at least have the decency to shut up and do something useful, like maybe clean up the horrendous mess they made on WIkipedia.

            Summary: The sky is not falling (TM).

            1. NomNomNom

              Re: Epic Fail

              "If climate alarmists possessed the tiniest shred of a clue, they would not be so quick to call their opponents 'skeptics'"

              Perhaps I should call you deniers instead?

              "I am hardly *guilty* of showing that *even* the LIA and MWP disappear if we 'get real' and look at the actual percentage change in heat content"

              You advocate a method that hides climate changes that even you admit have significant impact. You claimed that the warming since the LIA had been beneficial, yet according to your graph it had zero impact because we can't see it.

              How about graphing temperature changes so we can see them? Why on Earth would you want to graph global temperature in a way that compresses it into a single flat line where you can't see any changes (I bet even glaciations aren't visible on a 0K-300K graph)

              "Every one of us covers a range of at least 10 degrees in a single day, sometimes in the span of a few minutes. Look at the vast array of pelage in the living world. Many animals, especially birds and mammals can survive a range of nearly 100 degrees. They *thrive* across a range of at least 20 and to the extent that we know anything about the current temperature and the living world, we know this:"

              So what are you claiming? That the Earth must warm or cool by over 10 degrees before it has any impact? 100 degrees?

              You claim the 1 degree C warming from the little ice age had a noticeably beneficial impact.

              See it's really hard to tell exactly what you believe and what you are arguing. You seem to just be throwing out any contrariwise argument against global warming irrespective of whether it makes sense or is consistent with your other arguments.

              Do you realize that global temperature has stuck within a tight range of about 10 degrees for millions of years?

              1. btrower

                Re: Epic Fail

                Re: Perhaps I should call you deniers instead?

                As it happens, somebody has addressed why that term may (or at least should) be falling into extreme disrepute:

                http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/22/a-response-to-dr-paul-bains-use-of-denier-in-scientific-literature/

                Shame indeed.

                The link above addresses one of my points well: "there is absolutely nothing remarkable about today’s temperatures ... It isn’t doing anything that can be resolved from the natural statistical variation of the data. Indeed, now that Mann’s utterly fallacious hockey stick reconstruction has been re-reconstructed with the LIA and MWP restored, it isn’t even remarkable in the last thousand years!"

                See this graph of atmospheric C02 ppm and Temperature over 660 million years: http://www.clearlight.com/~mhieb/WVFossils/PageMill_Images/image277.gif Don't worry. It will take more than a million years to change very much. You and I will be old by then and this thread will be nearly closed.

                Things to note from the above graph:

                * We are in a *cold* time, not a warm one.

                * Climate varies a fair amount over time.

                * CO2 does not correlate with Temperature

                * CO2 levels much higher than we worry about now (7000 vs 700 ppm) do nothing

                * Higher CO2 levels do not, empirically, cause any kind of climate problem.

                * I present at least something to support what I am saying

                1. Oolons
                  Happy

                  Re: Epic Fail

                  I think the creationist comparison is getting even more relevant - btrower seems to think flying off massive posts with large numbers of different poor arguments from multiple sources somehow helps him win the argument. Gish Gallop much? http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gish_Gallop

                  And the AC who said that vanderbudenmayer is more interesting in misunderstanding posts to take the piss is right on the mark. At least btrower is arguing, vanderb lost a long while back and has insulted his way into a big fail.

                  1. btrower

                    Re: Epic Fail

                    Maybe if alarmist apologists read a bit more it would not be so taxing for them. It is one of the delightful miracles of 'Climate Scientists' and their apologists that they not only do not have to understand any of the arguments (including their own), they don't, in their universe, even have to know what they are. In fact, they can be entirely ignorant of them, but still feel compelled to register a strong opinion. Here's where I'm going with that: For those of you that do read, look at the 1 star and 5 star reviews and related comments for this book:

                    http://www.amazon.com/Delinquent-Teenager-Mistaken-Climate-ebook/dp/B005UEVB8Q/ref=cm_cr-mr-title

                    The Climate Alarm apologists did not read even a portion of the book. They just dove in with their review. Half of them speak to things the book is not about.

                    One of the first reviews is by the by now better known Peter Gleick. Read the comments on his review here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R3DB7LHRMJ14G5/ref=cm_aya_cmt?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B005UEVB8Q#wasThisHelpful

                    Foxgoose says:

                    Lots of hysterical, defensive rhetoric with no reference to the book's content - has he even read it?

                    R. Maguire says:

                    Looks like Mr Gleick must be a climate scientist - he's ignored the details and gone straight to the required conclusions - a lot of blah blah blah but no hard facts or alternative arguments.

                    It is a thing of beauty. Solid gold. Mr. Gleick is, as a psychologist friend was fond of saying about his child patients: "not strongly wedded to the truth".

                    The invocation of 'creationism' keeps happening in the alarmist camp and it is is reminiscent of the phenomenon of emergent subjects like sociology posturing with elaborate terminology to wrap themselves in a bogus mantle of respectability.

                    In the words of Ashley Montagu, Evolution is "the most thoroughly authenticated fact in the whole history of science." So called 'Climate Scientists' love to dupe the unwary into thinking there is some concordance between the majestic and beautiful binding paradigm of Biology and the illiterate religious postulate that mankind is somehow killing the planet with heat and CO2 is the murder weapon.

                    No person who understands the Theory of Evolution could seriously equate this bedrock fact of science with the ridiculous flight of fancy that is 'Climate Science'. It is deeply ironic that 'Climate Science' attempts to taint skeptics with the 'Creation Science' moniker.

                    Separate these into two equal groups (1) Most Scientific and (2) Least Scientific:

                    [Creation Science][Climate Science][Library Science][Scientology]

                    [Physics][Chemistry][Biology][Astronomy]

                    Cheat: If they feel a need to squeeze 'science' into the title, it ain't likely that scientific. It is not the name that makes a discipline 'sciencey'.

                    So called 'Climate Science' and 'Creation Science' are kissing cousins that both spring from the fertile ground of religious belief. They use similarly flawed arguments and are both equally shy of reading books. They both start with conclusions and go looking for evidence and they both think that is a swell way to 'do science'. Both like to concentrate on the (alleged) weakness and/or moral turpitude of their opponents rather than the arguments those opponents present. Both like to over-simplify and make caricatures of the subject matter while at the same time dressing up their confused notions in the most florid terms. Neither wish to dwell overmuch on evidence. Both are constantly attempting to misdirect so the debate does not stray away from their talking points. Neither has clue one about the proper use of statistics. Both act as if their (allegedly) noble ends justify any means, no matter how shameful or injurious.

                    Skeptics are saying, as they should, that there is a necessary burden of proof and that burden of proof has not been met. The 'Climate Science' apologists are unable to even understand the burden, let alone equipped to provide the proof it demands. Skeptics would like to see *all* the data, not just the cherry-picked items. 'Climate Scientists' don't understand what cherry picking is or why it is bad even though they do it by default [*]. Skeptics insist on logical arguments and tie-ins to the rest of the vast corpus of legitimate science. Skeptics rightly point out that the evidence and reasoning of 'Climate Science' are shoddy. Skeptics quibble with the presentation of invalid and illiterate statistics. Even after being repeatedly schooled, 'Climate Scientists' continue to present ridiculous 'hockey stick' graphs. Even after changing their graphs to remove the most ridiculous errors, they insist the original graph and the new one are 'the same' and that the 'hockey stick' has been 'vindicated'.

                    The late Hal Lewis had this to say about "the global warming scam" in his letter of resignation from the APS:

                    "It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist."

                    The Theory of Evolution is notoriously difficult for people to understand. I am increasingly bemused by the observation that the most vocal adherents *either side* of the (alleged) 'debate' do not really understand the thing they are arguing about. It is deliciously ironic that Alarmists keep trotting out the 'creationist' slur. If they actually understood Evolution and Biology they would release that, like the rest of Science, Statistics and Logic, it provides compelling evidence that 'catastrophic global warming' is nonsense.

                    [*] No kidding. "D’Arrigo put up a slide about "cherry picking" and then she explained to the panel that that’s what you have to do if you want to make cherry pie." http://climateaudit.org/2006/03/07/darrigo-making-cherry-pie/. Her mentor provides a hilarious elaboration at that link. You can't make this stuff up.

                    1. imanidiot Silver badge

                      Re: Epic Fail

                      Okay, the wording in that post of: " it HAS to be" etc was very bad. What I meant was, there's an unknown factor we can't explain. Taking into account all likely explanations and taking into account occam' s razor, an influence due to human CO2 (and other gasses) output is the most likely.

                      @btrower, your posts are seriously TL;DR. They are incoherent and I'm not even sure what you are trying to argue right now.

                      @vandenbuddenmeyer

                      "I'm talking about the earth. The EARTH. You know, that solid sphere under your feet? Are you being deliberately obtuse? The solid sphere warms the atmosphere above it. Not the other way round. Jesus Christ. Can you not read?"

                      I'm seriously wondering the same thing about you. Let me put this in dumb people sentences.

                      Sun warms earth (That solid sphere under your feet). Earth warms atmosphere through radiative and convective process. Excess heat radiation is radiated from surface of earth into space, passing through atmosphere.

                      Watervapour in atmosphere forms reflective layer and increases heat absorption as heat radiation passes through atmosphere. Less heat is radiated into space. Part of heat is reflected back to earth where it warms surface some more. Surface warms air some more. Air is hotter than if there is no water vapour.

                      As a final point of notice, I'm not a climate alarmist. But I think it's very dangerous to let people walk around with an incomplete or even wrong understanding of the issue. Because it either leads to very vocal people who deny the existence of a changing global climate or the alarmist Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming type who can't stop spewing crap about how we're damaging the habitat of the northern slime jumper in the far foothills of the Himalayas by driving a car.

                      1. btrower

                        Re: Epic Fail

                        Re: @btrower, your posts are seriously TL;DR. They are incoherent and I'm not even sure what you are trying to argue right now.

                        Truly. Perhaps, if I may be so bold, you do not understand what you are reading because you do not understand what you are reading and/or you don't actually read it. Are you, perhaps, an aficionado of the Peter Gleick school of scholarly commentary? This is not /b/, you know.

                        I will own up to an extravagant style and vocabulary, complex structure and long notes. I am too lazy to go back and revise into simpler prose. Sue me. It is, after all, extemporaneous prose dumped on to an Internet forum, en passant, while I do database work and wait on compilers.

                        I was 'skeptical' as to the readability, so just to be sure, I did a quick 'reading ease' score on one of my long posts. The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level was 8.9 and reading ease was 60.4. That is a bit higher than I shoot for after revision, but it should be easily readable by a high-school graduate. You can read about these measures here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch%E2%80%93Kincaid_readability_test. Flesch's 1949 book, btw is a favorite of mine. [http://www.amazon.com/The-Readable-Writing-Rudolf-Flesch/dp/B00005VG0Y]. It is one of the few 'dead tree' books I still keep.

                        For what it is worth, the post I checked was (technically) more readable than time magazine. Just so you know where I am coming from, I am pitching to literate science graduates with good reading comprehension. No matter who you pitch to, you are always going to leave somebody behind. Long posts, admittedly, leave a majority behind. However, it is not that majority that will make a difference in the world. The minority of thoughtful readers who *can* read my posts may be a little amused. Ones who are still bamboozled by the Global Warming Panic might be moved to investigate for themselves.

                        At least I provided some links to pictures! I also provided a famous poem and an old joke!

                        If you think about it, reading is sort of the thing going on at this site. It is a site that presents stuff for people to read. Is it that big a stretch to think that *some* of the people coming here read the articles? Can they follow a bit of science, read a whole article or make it to the end of a long post? I cannot prove this, but I conjecture that some of the people reading at this site have made it to the end of a whole book on their own initiative for zero credit. That might stretch to hundreds or even *thousands* of pages. This is only mind-boggling to people who are essentially non-readers. I was not writing for them, because, they don't read -- duh.

                        Maybe the whole breakdown between the 'climateers', and the 'skeptics' they provoke, results from a weltanschauung rendered incommensurate because one half never finished the books they are debating about. The entire cure to this affair might be simply to hire tutors to bring the 'Climate Scientists' up to grade level in their reading.

                        I spoke to a variety of the ills that plague 'Climate Science' and poison public debate. I am not sure which thing you did not read or follow. Since you are likely not reading now, there is not much point in either of us worrying.

                        Re: As a final point of notice ...

                        There. We agree. Was that so hard?

                        Extremists either side of any of these debates generate more heat than light. It is clear enough the world has been warming. It is plausible that mankind's activities have had an impact. CO2 is pretty much a dead horse to the scientifically literate (sorry about that), but we do lots of other stuff and you can see our handiwork from very high up in the sky. We definitely affect the world around us. Being older, I have seen urbanization swallow up the wild places and I am not a fan of radical urbanization.

                        The majority of 'alarmists' appear genuinely alarmed and sincere in their beliefs. Many of the high-profile 'skeptics' like Anthony Watts and M&M are unduly harsh and sometimes appear to take a little too much joy in skewering their opponents. Odious Sophist practices -- 'Fallacies of Diversion' such as Ad Hominem attacks and 'Guilt By Association' and 'Fallacies of Intimidation', such as 'Improper Appeals to Authority' and Argumentum Ad populum are seen on both sides, but it seems more prevalent on the 'alarmist' side.

                        The 'climate cabal' and near hangers on are demonstrably dishonest to the point that they appear not to understand what I think of as ordinary social norms of morality. The ClimateGate Emails are appalling and they do not get prettier as you look closer and follow up on things. The 'Climate Scientists' take pride in pointing out how they have been 'vindicated' in all investigations. This is not even technically true in some cases. Phil Jones was caught dead to rights, it is on the public record and he only escaped prosecution because of a statute of limitations.

                        "On the same day that Nature published yet another editorial repudiating public examination of the conduct of academic institutions, Penn State President Graham Spanier was fired from his $813,000/year job for failing to ensure that a proper investigation was carried out in respect to pedophilia allegations in Penn State’s hugely profitable football program." http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/10/mcintyre-on-the-penn-state-fiasco/

                        The same Penn State that gave Michael Mann a clean bill of health "exonerated" the infamous Jerry Sandusky. How much faith can we have in their investigation of Mann' misconduct? Climate Science, like Football is a cash cow. Neither are really fussy about academics or ethics. [I may be too hard on football here]

                        The smell of corruption from 'Climate Science' is so powerful it is tainting the entire House of Science. Organizations like the AAAS, the PSA, NAS, Royal Society, by climbing aboard the 'Catastrophic Global Warming' bandwagon have not lent respectability to 'Climate Science'. 'Climate Science' has brought the House of Science into disrepute.

                        http://www.scribd.com/doc/90654743/More-than-1-000-International-Scientists-Dissent-Over-Man-Made-Global-Warming-Claims

                        Plenty of people who have the will and ability to properly inform themselves on this subject have spoken out very strongly against the 'Climate Science' industry. The 'Climate Scientists' are dead wrong and at some level they know it. It is apparent that some realized this in the ClimateGate Emails.

                        I predict, as I did with SCO, that 'Climate Science' will die an ugly death. Just like SCO, I expect it to take many years and I expect the 'perps' to fight tooth and claw and stonewall to the end. Just like SCO, they will fall, because they must. They are on the wrong side of this and no amount of argument will change that.

              2. Bob. Hitchen
                Thumb Down

                School's never out with Academics

                So you want to equate anyone who disagrees with you as a holocaust denier. How typical of the brood of unsavoury people that now call themselves scientists. Academics have always been like little kids must be because they never left school. if you want to talk to people in the real world grow the f*** up. The public just don't believe you especially after climategate. Oh and that bigwig tosser in the IPCC who predicted the Himalayan glaciers gone in 10 minutes. If anything is happening in reality then it will happen until it gets bad enough to notice not because of some model. This scam is great for taxation and companies charging more for less but crap for the old and infirm who can no longer afford to heat their homes which oddly don't seem to be any warmer. Perhaps the "audio impaired" should invite some of the climate junkies round and let them spout more 'hot air' to warm the place up.

                1. imanidiot Silver badge
                  Facepalm

                  Re: School's never out with Academics

                  Point of Order, only climate change denying media such as FOX ever said there is such a thing as climategate. There IS no climategate and there never WAS a climategate.

                  The e-mails don't discuss fudging the date, they are not about making it look like temperatures are climbing when they are not. Just bloody read the ENTIRE conversation of that particular mail exchange. It's about correcting for a KNOW anomaly in a scientifically accepted way. All reports by that particular scientist based on that data neatly note that the data was corrected to make dataset X (tree ring data iirc) correlate to datasets y, z, b, s, g and r. It's about correcting a single dataset that seems at odds with ALL THE OTHER DATA available.

                  NOTHING about the whole "climategate" debacle actually indicates any intentional fudging of data to suit a goal.

                  1. btrower

                    Re: School's never out with Academics

                    Oh yeah, baby! That stuff is purely on the up and up ... unless you read them and understand what they are saying.

                    Re: "bloody read the ENTIRE conversation of that particular mail exchange"

                    As you clearly demonstrate, *reading* is necessary but not sufficient. You also have to understand a bit of what they are on about. Your inability (and perhaps theirs) to understand why it is improper does not render it proper. They are discussing an entirely improper 'spin' (I am being charitable, its academic misconduct) on the presentation of the data. A graph, whose liney direction thing is the whole point had two lines one up, one down. They did not like the 'down' story, so they snipped out that part (only) of that data set. Just because you do not understand how doing what you suggest is 'cherry picking' does not fix that problem. Scientists are not supposed to tell their data what story to tell and ignore stories they don't like. They are supposed to listen to and understand the story. You don't turn down the volume so you can't hear it and then write your music critique unless you are a 'Climate Scientist'.

                    Seeing as how this forum might be more heavily weighted to 'techies', here is a bit of the ClimateGate drop you might find easier to critique:

                    http://www.devilskitchen.me.uk/2009/11/data-horribilis-harryreadmetxt-file.html

                    From the above "they are, by all accounts, a total bloody mess"

                    Maybe the OP is right and there is nothing to see. Maybe I am right and there is *plenty* to see. Why speculate? Go find those bad boys and have a look for yourself. It is bracing to look right into the very heart of the 'Climateer' heart of darkness.

                    Look for one of my favorites where Phil Jones confesses he does not know how to use a spreadsheet program. Or another where he finds the death of a colleague cheering news. Its fun for the whole family.

                    Irony alert: They keep arguing that critics are taking those notes out of context when *in context* they are much worse.

                    1. imanidiot Silver badge

                      Re: School's never out with Academics

                      btrower, the art in writing long posts is making it clear at the start of said post what you are going to say or the point you are going to make. That is what I miss in your posts. I'll readily agree there is far FAR worse out there in terms of unreadability or rambling, but your posts seem a bit "spur of the moment, ohh, I better add this too".

                      Also, I'm not sure where the: "Was that so hard?" comment comes from. I've always had that position and I'm pretty sure all my posts show that standpoint.

                      The "correcting" of a dataset is not really neat when it comes to science. HOWEVER, it wasn't done nilly willy to get a certain result. It was done because the tree-ring data set being corrected was and is proven false for the last 50 years or so. So is doing it cherry-picking? Well yes, I can't deny that. Does it invalidate the research? Not entirely. Would the results have been valid if the whole data set was used? Entirely NOT as the input data was provably incorrect. (And shit in=shit out) Which is the impasse Mann found himself in.

                      1. btrower

                        Re: School's never out with Academics

                        Re: "spur of the moment, ohh, I better add this too"

                        Uh ... extemporaneous. I do look over before I post, but these are conversational bits and hence have no particular expository structure. It's more 'immediate', n'est pas?

                        Re: "Was that so hard?"

                        Well, it did seem that there was disagreement, but I feel I was entirely agreeable once you said something I agreed with. Was that so hard?

                        Re: The "correcting" of a dataset is not really neat when it comes to science. HOWEVER, it wasn't done nilly willy to get a certain result. It was done because the tree-ring data set being corrected was and is proven false for the last 50 years or so. So is doing it cherry-picking? Well yes, I can't deny that. Does it invalidate the research? Not entirely. Would the results have been valid if the whole data set was used? Entirely NOT as the input data was provably incorrect. (And shit in=shit out) Which is the impasse Mann found himself in.

                        Sorry for quoting so much. It kind of has its problems tangled up. Mann and Co. are not complete idiots and their mistake is understandable. It is, as you demonstrate, seemingly innocent and seductively simple to 'correct' data. This is the road to hell.

                        Re: It was done because the tree-ring data set being corrected was and is proven false for the last 50 years or so.

                        How can an empirical fact be wrong? This is at the root of the problem with Climate Science. That is the data. It goes down when they think it should go up. They are, as can be clearly seen from the data, wrong. It goes down despite their conviction it should not. The reasons are clear enough: It is an unreliable proxy for temperature. To the extent we have hard evidence for change in temperature and hard evidence for change in proxy, they don't correlate. It is understandable that they would *prefer* the exciting narrative they faked rather than the more valid narrative that falls out of having to incorporate that empirical data into their theories. Making such corrections is the stuff of religion, not science and that might even be unfair to religion.

                        When your theory and the facts disagree, you do not just ignore those facts, elide the data and carry on -- not and carry on with valid science. This is one of the deep flaws in the Climateers case for legitimacy. They are *all* incompetent with this and hence all their pal-reviewed papers are shot through with this nonsense.

                        Re: Would the results have been valid if the whole data set was used? Entirely NOT as the input data was provably incorrect.

                        Uh ... again ... empirical data. It *can't* be wrong. Even if you actually literally measured all the items in the set wrong you have to include them and explain them. In the case of measuring a whole set of data incorrectly, clearly something has gone badly wrong with your methods. They measured correctly, they just did not like what they found ... so they ignored it and hid it from view.

                        The problem that they 'corrected' out of the data was a crucial signal that demonstrated one of their underlying premises (that the proxies actually proxied temperature) was false. The data demonstrated that the proxy was not reliable. They did not find that fact agreeable, so they removed the data. That is not science.

                        There seems to be a disjoint between the way *I* was taught to do science in the 1970s and 1980s in Canada (home of the skeptic!) and how others were being taught (say Penn State and UEA?).

                        Empirical data is sacrosanct. We had our lab notebooks signed when leaving the lab. If we wrote something down wrong or had a systemic error we had to explain it 'as is'. If we were measuring two things that just did not correlate, it showed up in the data. If we were measuring two things that did, it would also show up in the data. No correlation, weak correlation and strong correlation usually show up neatly in the data without a lot of bother.

                        I don't know how well I can articulate this point, but: You do not mess with the raw results of an experiment. Each experiment needs to be *replicable* by *independent* investigators. Like Mann and Co., you may not see that there is a vital bit of information in the 'evil proxy set'. However, I might. I can neither replicate nor review properly without the raw data. This not a loose guideline. It is an absolutely firm directive born of logical necessity. A data set is a set. If you want to do empirical science you must, as best you can, impartially collect and *randomly* select your data both from the population and from the resulting data set.

                        The hockey team's treatment of data is *grotesque* if you understand what is happening. The very fact that they even allow themselves a *role* in *choosing* amongst the data sets brings their results into question. The fact that they *actively* choose them invalidates their results. Bias is an *enemy* in science which you must vigorously oppose with things like 'double-blinding', truly random sampling, etc. The hockey team think of bias as their friend and perhaps it is, but it is no friend to an honest scientific investigator.

                        Re: So is doing it cherry-picking? Well yes, I can't deny that. Does it invalidate the research? Not entirely.

                        To the extent that you cherry pick, your sample is dead, dead, dead. Any signal you get out of it may be *coincidentally* 'correct' in the sense that it will measure like that in a *real* experiment. However, you can assign no veracity to it from your biased experiment.

                        One big part of this whole drama comes from Steve McIntyre going back to review the work and finding all sorts of statistical skullduggery. Why did he do this? Because he had an immediate and visceral reaction to the hockey stick. I am not sure what it was or why it did, but I understand something about it put him in mind of the Bre-X stock fraud. He felt compelled to investigate.

                        The work from the proxy data sets just does not pass a 'smell' test. It does not look or feel right. Those of us who have spent time working with data look at the 'hockey stick' and we are rightly alarmed. Something is amiss. Either the hockey stick is the result of a faulty investigation or it looks like we are about to fall into the Sun. As soon as Mann and Co. started stonewalling about the raw data, it was clear we were safe, from the Sun at least.

                        Apologists for the 'hockey team' like to say stuff like this [from New Scientist]:

                        "In fact, later studies support the key conclusion: the world is warmer now than it has been for at least 1000 years"

                        The sentence above is false. The key conclusion of the 'hockey stick' and the reason it was a poster child for the IPCC is that it was a truly alarming graph with a clearly sharp rising line at the end that indicated, if it were true, something very bad was happening. The hockey stick was and is entirely wrong in its most salient point.

                        http://a-sceptical-mind.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Comparison-charts.jpg

                        Above is the legitimate graph published by the IPCC in 1990 beside the 'hockey stick' published in 2001. The statistical treatment of the data in 2001 has destroyed the real signal and replaced it with statistical artifacts that Stephen McIntyre has demonstrated can be gotten from red noise using Mann's bogus statistical treatment (that Steve dubbed 'the Mannomatic' in one of his presentations). The truly alarming bit is the thermometer data improperly grafted on to the end.

                        Most people, scientists included, don't have a good gut feel for this sort of thing. I cannot expect that people who cannot really follow the argument can believe me on this little forum. However, although this level of 'numeracy' is a little unusual, it is not that rare. Some people will easily take one look at that aberrant graph and 'call bullshit'. There are a variety of things wrong with it and visual systems are good at 'grokking' on to stuff that does not look right. Don't trust me. Find someone you do trust to tell you what is the plain truth here: it is nonsense.

                        You seem sincere in your belief that a little enlightened and benign evidence tampering does not invalidate your chain of evidence and the judgements based upon them are sound. However, your sincerity is not going to make evidence tampering OK. We have to throw out the case and go all the way back to the original evidence. Sadly, as you will find if you dig, crucial raw evidence is not available. Imagine that.

                        None of this would be that important if these wankers were just involved in a smallish circle-jerk with one another. They are not. They are poisoning the House of Science, sullying the good names of honest researchers and providing ammunition for social climbers and ghoulish rent-seekers who wish to find some way to make us pay for 'the right to produce CO2'. Breathing produces CO2. Heavens.

                        </soapbox>

                        1. imanidiot Silver badge

                          Re: School's never out with Academics

                          I´m not all that convinced or sincere in believing that the data manipulation that happened by mann&co is correct. But I don't know enough of the entire story to truly say it's evil. My training/education is in mechanical engineering, with very little in the way of data gathering/analyses and statistics. I'm not a scientist as such.

                          evidence tampering is not OK. From the basic info I had, what Mann&co did wasn't evidence tampering. Digging deeper now (And I have to dig quite deep to get through the shit and bullshit spouted in a lot of places to find actual data and "this is what happened, this is what they used, this is what it should look like, etc")

                          I will say that the first time I saw the hockey-stick graph was in Al (freaking) Gore's piece of crap sensationalism "an inconvenient truth". And it immediately made me say "that's bullshit". Evidence to actually prove it was bullshit is however not as easy to find as "evidence" that it is not.

                          My opinion about climategate still is that the news-media misquoted and misrepresented the emails in a way that was sensationalist and completely over the top. Meaning it was never really understood for what it was by joe public and further widened the gap between "Deniers" and "Alarmists". And calling it climategate is not going to help in actually getting the issue understood.

                          PS: I don't mind the quoting, it keeps the story straight.

                  2. Bob. Hitchen
                    Thumb Down

                    Re: School's never out with Academics

                    There's a lot of mails which have been discussed at length you brought up datasets not me. The original problem came with ignored FOI requests and deleted data. The emails only confirmed what was already suspected.

      5. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Epic Fail

        It's easy to understand your point of view - but things are seldom what they seem.

        Try reading the following - https://sites.google.com/site/climateandco2/

      6. Nanki Poo
        Boffin

        Re: Epic Fail @vandenbudenmayer

        "Who cares? You think that 3mm per year is a problem?"

        Do the math... 100 <years> of those is a foot... and all the increments in between... how much of the world would be 'flooded' if the seas rose a foot...

        Go on, tell me all about "you don't know how deep the sea is, you don't know nuffin, a foot is a tiny percentage of the depth . . . "

        nK

        1. vandenbudenmayer
          Happy

          Re: Epic Fail @vandenbudenmayer

          Well, we've had two thirds of a foot rise in the last 130 years or so. If your great grand dad had known about that a century ago, you reckon he would have done something different back then? Tell Henry Ford to not build his cars, cause he'd contribute to 20 cm of sea level rise? Lol.

      7. This post has been deleted by its author

      8. Blitterbug
        Facepalm

        Re: Nice to have met you, you lunatic

        Jesus-monkey-balls-christ.

        And you call yourself an objective scientist.

  11. kryptonaut

    New Jersey?

    "Hatterman and his colleagues, using 12 tons of hot-water drilling equipment, bored three holes more than 200m deep through the Fimbul Shelf, which spans an area roughly twice the size of New Jersey."

    'Twice the size of New Jersey' means as much to me as 'the area of Clavius' would mean to anyone who isn't a selenographer. Please don't use comparisons like this in an article that's dealing with technical matters, it makes it look as though you unthinkingly paraphrased someone else's text. I know I can google for the value, but you're not doing yourself any favours using units like this if you're trying to give the appearance of a scientific and reasoned argument.

    For anyone who needs/wants to know, twice the size of New Jersey is (according to Google) 45,216 square km.

    1. Katie Saucey
      Coat

      Re: New Jersey?

      An honest mistake. Personally, when I see a unit in Jerseys, 1.092x10^-9 nanoWales pops right into my head.

      1. Katie Saucey

        Re: New Jersey?

        oops make that exponent '+', f'ing Monday mornings.

    2. Ole Juul

      Re: New Jersey?

      Using obscure units only known locally to the writer is code for saying it has no international relevance. However, I happen to know what he's talking about because I just got a new jersey and it's about a foot and a half across.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Lewis Page Anagrams

    We Gap Lies

    We Lie Gaps

    We Lie Gasp

    1. philbo
      WTF?

      Re: Lewis Page Anagrams

      or..

      Agile spew

      Please wig

  13. taxman
    Coat

    Perhaps

    if people stopped drilling holes all over the place and sending down tons of hot water there'd be less ice loss?

    Personally, I'm glad that the ice sheet that covered the vast majority of the UK has retreated. Although something will occur in the future that will probably put it back there again.

    Now, explain how there were people living on the floor of what is now the North Sea when there was not an "Ice Age". In fact it was quite warm really. So where did all the water that covers the North Sea plains come from?

    Pah! Monday mornings!

  14. Ole Juul

    Anybody want to talk about computers?

    What is this kind of article doing here? Wrong subject. Wrong crowd. Wrong headed.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Anybody want to talk about computers?

      Maybe the fact the models this paper shows as wrong were produced on computers might be what you were looking for.

    2. btrower

      Re: Anybody want to talk about computers?

      Here's the tie-in. Where I live, they tack on a 10% surcharge due to this climate nonsense and eco-terrorism. It now costs 10% more to run a computer in my neck of the woods because a bunch of morons were socially promoted through classes in Math, Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Statistics. I can't remember if it was obligatory, but I also took a course on logic while I was in University. It is clear they either did not or as with at least some of those subjects were socially promoted or whatever.

  15. GreyWolf
    Alert

    Elephant seals, a vital asset

    We need to move on from the TV view of nature ("aaaawww, isn't the baby seal cute?") to the "web of species relationships" view. Every species we share this world with has a hand in keeping the world livable for us. Until we understand what's going on, and which species are keystones, we are playing Russian Roulette with bullets in 5 of the 6 chambers.

    If we don't get it right, our children will end up living on a planet-sized garbage dump, fighting the seagulls and cockroaches for scraps of rotten food.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Elephant seals, a vital asset

      you mean like India, Ethiopia, Uganda.....

      They already have families that live like that

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Antarctica is not melting

    http://a-sceptical-mind.com/the-polar-ice-caps-are-not-melting

    1. Martin
      Happy

      Re: Antarctica is not melting

      In other news, the Earth is only 6000 years old.

      http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2005/06/01/evidence-for-young-world

      (Well, it's from as unbiassed a source as yours was.)

      1. vandenbudenmayer
        Trollface

        Re: Antarctica is not melting

        In yet more news, man discovers spell checker on his computer

    2. Majid
      Joke

      Re: Antarctica is not melting

      Antartica will not melt very easy.. Because its a continent.. So temperatures need to be a LOT higher (about a 1500 degrees, which is about the melting point of stone). So I wouldn't worry...

  17. This post has been deleted by its author

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Antarctica is not melting Al gore is an idiot!

    http://a-sceptical-mind.com/the-polar-ice-caps-are-not-melting

    1. NomNomNom

      Re: Antarctica is not melting Al gore is an idiot!

      "Skeptic arguments that Antarctica is gaining ice frequently hinge on an error of omission, namely ignoring the difference between land ice and sea ice."

      http://www.skepticalscience.com/antarctica-gaining-ice.htm

  19. Valerion

    But but but...

    I saw a picture of a polar bear trapped on a tiny little bit of ice, drifting alone in the sea!

    So it MUST all be melting!

  20. Neil 34
    Happy

    Green drivel exposed

    "The godfather of global warming lowers the boom on climate change hysteria."

    James Lovelock would agree with you Lewis. He now thinks the environmentalists with degrees in political science need a new religion. (And I'll add degrees in computer science.)

    http://www.torontosun.com/2012/06/22/green-drivel

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      James Lovelock would agree with you

      Yes, but JL's remarkable insight was that you could consider the earth climate/ecosystem as analagous to a cybernetic system. That insight, for all its value, doesn't guarantee that JL understood how that fantastically complicated system would work. It didn't then, it doesn't now.

  21. Britt Johnston
    Holmes

    Looking in the wrong place

    All the melted ice from Antartica is in the Maldives.

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    IT angle on our weekly climate change denial editorial selective-data article?

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    OOOPs

    So all of the panic about melting Antarctica is based on a model without any baseline data. Wow!!!

    I wish I could get away with making a wild-ass guess at the data, building a model predicting doom, and then asking for billions of dollars.

    Maybe the next edict from IPCC will be that we must burn oil in Antarctica to get the melt rate up to the models.

  24. John A Blackley

    I wonder

    How much ice was lost because of a bunch of scientists and their fossil-fuel-powered generators, drilling holes using hot water and living and habitats that were heated.

  25. Vanir
    Devil

    Will belief save us from extinction?

    There seems to be a lot of 'believing' in the comments.

    I now know that the human race is fucked. It will not survive the mass extinction event now going on.

    Or may be this 'belief' will comfort you all!

    http://www.olivet-discourse-revelation.com/sequential_order_of_events_in_the_book_of_revelation.html

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Will belief save us from extinction?

      I don't know if it will save us from extinction, but it might save your life. You see, if you believe you will survive the deadly global warming that will melt our mothers and toast our toenails, there is higher chance of you survivng than someone who doesn't believe they will. In fact, it's possible someone fearing climate change will die of stress related body malfunctions.

      I'm glad so called scientists are having a look at these things. However, as another comentard has said, no one is proposing any solutions other than taxes. So, how am I supposed to believe the climatards? It all seems a bit too suspect. I'm all for solar and tidal electric farms. However, it's really the creation of all the new shinny shinnys that you must buy every other year or so that is using all this electricity. That right there any time would be a good idea to consider. Do I need the new shinny shinny? Does the TV (and other propaganda machines) affect my life and am I a rat on a consumerist treadmill? You can think about that whether the earth's atmosphere is heating or cooling. Pollution is a bad idea regardless of the climate.

      So in short, I don't think climate change should be the stimulus for curbing waste and pollution. We should be thinking of those things regardless. Which then shows the climatards for what they really are. Take Al Gore for example.

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Tick tock

    This planet is a bit older than us. In that time we have had hot periods some with massively more CO2 than today; and cold periods - at least four major ice ages - based on the reading of the Milankivitch cycles of Earth axis movement. Right now we are 10,000 years post ice age and approximately 40,000 – 50,000 from the next ice age. So yes, things will get warmer for a little while.... and yes we are helping that along quite nicley thank you very much (although penguin farts have their part to play too). Then guess what? The earth will wobble and tilt a little the wrong way and it will be time to wrap up nice and warm folks... the funny thing about inevitability... it keeps on chugging along right for you...

    Geologically speaking we humans have been around for the last 30 seconds of this planet's 12 hour clock of history. It matters not one whit what we do in the scheme of things. Personally I give us as a species another 2 minutes on the clock. Don't worrk though, something else will come along and fill the gap.

    ... only three more billion years to go!

  27. Shannon Jacobs
    Terminator

    Didn't read it

    Only clicked to see if Lewis the one-eyed narrow-minded moron was the author. That was all I needed to know about it.

    No risk of learning anything useful or interesting in the actual article. After all, we know that those morons have taken a mighty oath not to reveal who is paying them.

  28. heyrick Silver badge

    When you're done arguing this...

    ...any ideas why we're having such a crap summer, and what can be done about it? Weather patterns don't change 'cos they are bored...

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    so...

    Computer models show the world is going to end

    and

    Real world tests show that the people using the computer models are f**king idiots

    Sweet.

  30. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    In the past 10 years

    In the last 10 years, we have had 3 or 4 of the hottest summers ever registered (in over 100 years) in France. I remember ice-skating on the "canals" in northern Germany every year when I was young, that was early 80's. Today, they never freeze enough and have not done so for over 20 years, according to locals. Locals claim that they had been able to skate for centuries, paintings and photos seem to back that up.

    I do not understand computer climate modeling and don't want to, I just believe what I see ...

    I do not think we should stop driving cars. I do not think we should stop anything, except nuclear power. Solar power or wind power is not the solution, I believe in hydraulic power, geothermal energy and lunar power. Something that can pull the oceans up by a few meters - oceans which cover 70% of our planet's surface - should power our needs. I also think we waste a lot of methane and other flammable gases in green waste (for example organic house waste, hedge trimmings, wastewater etc etc).

    Oh, and by the way, those backing nuclear power are failures - nothing can compensate for the need to stock highly toxic waste for millions (billions?) of years, nothing can and never will - besides, we barely have 50 years of Uranium left in the quarries. ITER is a complete failure - should we not first try a build the box where we want to put the sun on a small scale? Also, ITER is way too little, too late.

    Don't get me wrong, I drive a Porsche, eat mostly organic local stuff (because I care for taste) and enjoy life, preserving the planet without letting it interfere too much with my life - don't think I am a greentard.

    I just think that PHD's, university degrees, modeled "facts and figures" cannot beat experience.

    1. btrower

      Re: In the past 10 years

      http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/global/global-land-ocean-mntp-anom/201001-201012.gif

      If you look at the graph above you will see that the curve is flattening, so to the extent that you think the world getting warmer is a bad thing, it is not getting 'worse'.

      Having a cluster of the 'hottest' years sounds ominous, but if you muse upon the drawing above, you will realize that even on the downward side of the peak you would *expect* years to still be among the locally 'hottest'. The fact that the world has been warming is neither unusual nor alarming.

      Taking the long view (http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/PageMill_Images/image277.gif), modern temperatures are lower than average. Modern climate is nothing to get excited about, unless your grant money depends upon alarm.

      Re: I just think that PHD's, university degrees, modeled "facts and figures" cannot beat experience.

      It is sad that science and education have been brought into such disrepute. Hopefully, scientists will be able to earn back your trust.

  31. Ascylto

    23456

    It WAS Mr Hitler and he did come from Linz in Austria.

  32. lord_farquaad

    Once again a partial lecture and analysis from Lewis Page only taking a few fact into account, only facts that goes in his direction.

    Why this guy is allowed to write those articles here ?

  33. Mark Scorah
    FAIL

    what a surprise

    when it come to reporting climate stuff the reg gets it wrong http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2012/06/fimbul-ice-shelf-not-melting-as-fast-as-thought-and-why-this-does-not-mean-the-antarctic-is-not-losing-ice and http://www.open-ocean.org/gallery/show/107

    "A few days after our article was published, a piece profiling our work appeared at the Register of the UK written by Lewis Page entitled, "Antarctic ice shelves not melting at all, new field data show." This is the equivalent of turning the statement "the cancer is not as bad as we thought" into "you don't have cancer." The severely distorted version of our study's conclusions then spread rapidly across the internet. It is a pattern that climate researchers have unfortunately observed many times, part of a widening gulf of misinformation between scientists and society. As one of the authors of this study, I can only repeat: this is not what we said. We have been misrepresented, and you, the reader, have been misled by some of those who claim---as scientists and journalists both surely should---to provide you with facts"

  34. SmokingReb

    Actually, in 2004 NASA used some new technology to scan the Sahara, found previously unknown underground lakes and rivers along with surface dried lakes and rivers. Upon follow up during the past 8 years evidence was found humans lived in the area during the last fertile cycle of the Sahara. The results of the ongoing investigations suggest a new evolving theory that the earth rocks as we go along, as she rocks the angle of her orbital tilt towards the sun shifts, resulting in regular cycles of desert, fertility, desert. These shifts would of course affect the climate, world wide. Ocean core samples suggest the cycles have been consistent for at least 3 million years.

    Suspect that as the evidence is building this may be the reason so many scientists are quietly distancing themselves from the man made global warming hysteria. Do we effect the environment? Of course. Can we fix it with massive hysterical movements, based on false models, designed to make a few very rich while there are ridiculous rules regulations and ridicule heaped on the rest of us? I think not. Windmills come to mind.

    The History Channel shown on US cable providers has a series called How the Earth is Made. A episode from the series named "Sahara Info" is available through the History Store for 20.00 US which presents a well referenced presentation on the subject . They also have another informational show named Sahara that covers some of the anthropological evidence they're building. I think if you Google Sahara climate changes you should be able to find the papers being published on the subject. Since the discovery is less than 10 years old the History Channel may be the best resource.

    BTW I thought using the seals to gather data was brilliant.IMHO

    1. Robert Murphy

      Old news.

      Congrats, you discovered Milankovitch cycles, which have been known and studied for decades. This would be covered in a first year course surveying climate change. There was a section on it in the last IPCC report:

      http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-6-1.html

      Here's a 36 year old paper on the subject:

      http://www.mantleplumes.org/WebDocuments/Hays1976.pdf

      Not exactly hidden or hushed. Or new.

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