Am I still allowed to question climate change?

[JIbbo]

Global Warming is FACT. Whether you believe it now or in the future, it will happen but we can change its IMPACT.

 

Some recent statistical analysis would indicate that our current decade and the 1990 were not unusual

 

The 'Hockey Stick Graph'

 

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/mcshane-wyner-fig1.png

 

How it should look.

 

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/mcshane-wyner-fig16.png

 

Using exactly the same data.

 

The graph below has been produced in a recent paper.

 

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/mcshane-wyner-fig16.png

 

Some of the papers conclusions.

 

Research on multi-proxy temperature reconstructions of the earth’s temperature is now entering its second decade. While the literature is large, there has been very little collaboration with university level, professional statisticians (Wegman et al., 2006; Wegman, 2006). Our paper is an effort to apply some modern statistical methods to these problems. While our results agree with the climate scientists findings in some

respects, our methods of estimating model uncertainty and accuracy are in sharp disagreement.

 

On the one hand, we conclude unequivocally that the evidence for a ”long-handled” hockey stick (where the shaft of the hockey stick extends to the year 1000 AD) is lacking in the data.

 

 

The fundamental problem is that there is a limited amount of proxy data which dates back to 1000 AD; what is available is weakly predictive of global annual temperature.

 

Our backcasting methods, which track quite closely the methods applied most recently in Mann (2008) to the same data, are unable to catch the sharp run up in temperatures recorded in the 1990s, even in-sample.

 

We can't replicate what Mann was doing.

 

In othe words.

Get professional statisticians to look at and investigate climate science data and it all falls apart, and the degrees of certainty and absoluteness go out of the window.

[JIbbo]

A bit sensitive about the non-expert "label" aren't we?

 

I'm a non-expert,

So I'd say it's a priority to engage with the sceptics and the climate change deniers until we reach a point where there's a concensus that there is actually a huge problem looming ahead.

Good quote Wildcat.

 

the problem is is that there ISN'T a huge problem lying ahead.

 

Interms of past climate and the history of the earth the 1990,2000's arn't any warmer or colder than it has been in the past.

 

There is utterly nothing to worry about in-terms of man-made excessive 'global warming'.

[JIbbo]

the problem is is that there ISN'T a huge problem lying ahead.

 

Interms of past climate and the history of the earth the 1990,2000's arn't any warmer or colder than it has been in the past.

 

There is utterly nothing to worry about in-terms of man-made excessive 'global warming'.

 

Also the methods used to illustrate Global warming, Using Tree rings to proxy for climate temperature have no statistical foundation.

 

More quantitatively, we observe that the sample first order autocorrelation

of the CRU Northern Hemisphere annual mean land temperature series is

nearly .6 (with significant partial autocorrelations out to lag four). Among

the proxy sequences, a full one-third have empirical lag one autocorrelations

of at least .5 (see Figure 7). Thus, standard correlation coefficient

test statistics are not reliable measures of significance for screening proxies

against local or global temperatures series.

 

A final more subtle and salient concern is that, if the screening process involves the entire instrumental temperature record, it corrupts the model validation process: no subsequence of the temperature series can be truly considered out-of-sample.

[Obelix]

Interestingly, they carbon dated Ice in the Arctic Circle several years ago and as well as roughly estimating down to the Ice Age, they found that there appeared to be 3 times as much CO2 in the atmosphere then, than there is now. The Earth has a natural temperature cycle, half a degree average increase over the last 50 years is not unheard of or even vastly surpassed in the Earth's history.

 

Citation and ice core name?

 

Carbon dating ice is not something that they would do - there is little carbon in it to be dated after all. It's also a pointless technique as the method cannot go back very far - the last ice age is about really as far back as you would go with any degree of certainty.

 

The artic ice is also sea ice - it's ephemeral and tends to change. That's why most cores are taken from the Antartic where you can drill very deep into undisturbed ice, like in the Vostock core. I therefore would consider the claim for ice from the atric circle to be somewhat specious.

 

The Vostock core shows, far from there being three times the present 385ppm there was no period in the last 400,000 years when the concentration rose above 300ppm... and for the last interglacial 20,000 years ago it was just 180ppm - the lowest it ever was in the entire Vostock core...

[truman]

That's not something that fits with what I've read/seen/heard. Just on a very quick google to find something to verify your assertion, I came up with exactly the opposite ...

 

"Ancient air bubbles trapped in Antarctica's ice have revealed that levels of carbon dioxide and methane in the Earth's atmosphere are at their highest in 800,000 years, two studies in the journal Nature said."

 

"More than 90 percent of [these changes] are driven directly through the emission of so-called new carbon dioxide that has not been in the climate system for the last 60 million years."

 

There are many natural cycles the earth goes through which are indeed of no concern. The evidence from respected scientists and journals nearly all report that what we are undergoing now is anything but a natural cycle.

 

... unless there is indeed some new groundbreaking conclusive evidence ... ????

 

The Late Ordovician Period was also an Ice Age while at the same time CO2 concentrations then were nearly 12 times higher than today-- 4400 ppm....

 

 

Given the above how can you show that CO2 is to blame for any increase in global temp,if indeed it exists...?

[Obelix]

The Late Ordovician Period was also an Ice Age while at the same time CO2 concentrations then were nearly 12 times higher than today-- 4400 ppm....

 

 

Given the above how can you show that CO2 is to blame for any increase in global temp,if indeed it exists...?

 

You may want to take a look at an article published in Geology in 2005 - the Late Ordovician ice age started about 15 Ma before the CO2 peaked, when CO2 levels were low.

[JIbbo]

You may want to take a look at an article published in Geology in 2005 - the Late Ordovician ice age started about 15 Ma before the CO2 peaked, when CO2 levels were low.

 

 

Forget 15 million years ago, try just 1500 or 500 years ago, we don't have a clue what temperatures in the past were.

 

Some professional mathematicians have just published the following paper.

 

http://www.e-publications.org/ims/submission/index.php/AOAS/user/submissionFile/6695?confirm=63ebfddf

 

Submitted to a professional peer-review journal.

 

The quotes in it relating to climate science are devastating with regard to how historical temperatures are arrived at.

 

Research on multi-proxy temperature reconstructions

of the earth’s temperature is now entering its second decade. While the

literature is large, there has been very little collaboration with universitylevel,

professional statisticians (Wegman et al., 2006; Wegman, 2006). Our

paper is an effort to apply some modern statistical methods to these problems.

While our results agree with the climate scientists findings in some

respects, our methods of estimating model uncertainty and accuracy are in

sharp disagreement.

 

 

Considering climataology involves large amount of stats........

For example, 1998 is generally considered to be the

warmest year on record in the Northern Hemisphere. Using our model, we

calculate that there is a 36% posterior probability that 1998 was the warmest

year over the past thousand.

[Obelix]

Forget 15 million years ago, try just 1500 or 500 years ago, we don't have a clue what temperatures in the past were.

 

Where did I say anything about temperture? It's not necessary to look at the exact temperature - the correlation between CO2 and the formation of ice sheets is what is determined. No geologist or paeloclimatologist will say that the temperature at the end of the Ordovician is xxx degrees - what they will give is an estimate for the CO2 concetration, which will be quite broad and the levels of ice and sea level drop associated with it. These don't depend at all on an estimation of the specific temperature.

[convert]

Looks like there should be plenty of dead, boiled fish in lake Michigan according to NOAA 'data'

 

http://www.examiner.com/x-50809-Boston-Environmental-Policy-Examiner~y2010m8d9-US-Government-in-Massive-New-Global-Warming-Scandal--NOAA-Disgraced

 

some summary headlines include:

 

"Global warming data apparently cooked by U.S. government-funded body shows astounding temperature fraud with increases averaging 10 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit.

 

The tax-payer funded National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has become mired in fresh global warming data scandal involving numbers for the Great Lakes region that substantially ramp up averages.

 

 

Together the two institutions show temperature maps for northern Lake Michigan registering an absurd 430 degrees Fahrenheit -yes, you read it right –that’s four hundred and thirty degrees-and this is by no means the highest temperature recorded on the charts."

[Worjackie]

Looks like there should be plenty of dead, boiled fish in lake Michigan according to NOAA 'data'

 

http://www.examiner.com/x-50809-Boston-Environmental-Policy-Examiner~y2010m8d9-US-Government-in-Massive-New-Global-Warming-Scandal--NOAA-Disgraced

 

some summary headlines include:

 

"Global warming data apparently cooked by U.S. government-funded body shows astounding temperature fraud with increases averaging 10 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit.

 

The tax-payer funded National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has become mired in fresh global warming data scandal involving numbers for the Great Lakes region that substantially ramp up averages.

 

 

Together the two institutions show temperature maps for northern Lake Michigan registering an absurd 430 degrees Fahrenheit -yes, you read it right –that’s four hundred and thirty degrees-and this is by no means the highest temperature recorded on the charts."

 

Looks like global warming evangelists fiddling the figures doesn't just happen in the UK. And we thought Climategate was bad!