Friday
Aug032012
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Potholer54 - laugh a minute stuff
Aug 3, 2012 Climate: MWP Ex-Guardian journalist Peter Hadfield, who sometimes works pseudonymously as potholer54, has prepared a YouTube video on millennial temperature reconstructions.
Without mentioning bristlecone pines.
And extolling the virtues of Mann et al's ditch digging "proxy".
Enjoy.
Reader Comments (51)
Peter might want to expand his research to include the "hide the decline" problem and explain how you can splice the modern instrument temperature record onto proxy paleo-temperature records.
A little less Monkton and snark would also be appreciated.
Peter Hadfield thinks that plotting one quantity against time is doctoring a graph...is he a UEA graduate?
Didn't we just learn that according to the IPCC summary of the literature (at least an early version...) the western US was getting less arid?
Is Peter Hadfield really saying, as I heard in his vid, that the CET was just the temperature record from ONE thermometer? By that logic, surely we are able to say that MBH was based on just a few trees in NA. (and that's not to mention Yamal).
Just looked in on the Youtube version. Don't advise going there. The worst of both extremes, no logic would ever get noticed.
Didn't realise that the loony Icke was a denier, just thought he was a friend of the lizards. Now, he really is a denier - I'm just a sceptic.
This is a dog of a presentation. So much hand waving, internal contradiction, and "see, look at that, I told you so" - (eh, yes, just what exactly is the point you're making? - that sloppy IPCC graphs therefore prove the IPCC was right all along? - just to pick out one out of a multitude).
Well, we see now that high level sophistry certainly isn't dead. Trying to make sense of this is like trying to fight fog.
Ex Guardian what a surprise! Hogwash. Lets take Monckton as the voice of the Skeptics - yeah that's right.
Lets ignore the dodgy methods and data that Mann and the Team used.
Lets forget about the "Hide the Decline".
Lets mix controversal proxiy data withh instrumental data.
Lets ignore the lack of prediction ability of the CO2 based climate models.
Lets forget about the current non-warming.
A laugh a minute
Err, so it is not CO2 anymore, and the MWP primarily happened in Greenland, the rest of the World was too hot to call it warm so they had mega-droughts instead of Vikings, just as predicted. My head spins ....
Nice condescending voice though; I have to practice that for my next encounter with, well, that sort of person.
It was interesting seeing how he distorted things. While admitting, for instance, that Wegman's statistical analysis wasn't obviated by the fact that the journal paper derived from the Congressional Testimony didn't state where the background info on some material came from, he implies that we don't have to look at the MWH papers, which Wegman excoriates, because there's been so many papers since then which find the same thing. But, of course, he doesn't examine what proxies were being used and how they were selected. Nor did he point out the tricks used to make it look like the results were resistant to removing Bristlecones and the like. He knows very damned well that the skeptics who are in the top tier shouldn't be compared to some of the flashier and sloppier bloggers. But then he might actually have to address the facts about the paleoproxies. In fact there's no way he can't realize that he's engaging primarily in propaganda. That being the case, his production is worthless. Regulars here can indeed laugh at his lies (in essence) but those who don't know the tricks he's using could be deluded or at least deflected from looking at the best skeptic analysis. I don't know, however, what can be done about it except to keep this sort of material stored up until it can be used to illustrate the moral depravity of the CAGW crowd.
He's also ex BBC.
You can tell from the languid, patronising, minor public school, arts-grad voice.
I was alarmed to hear about the accelerating warming of the last 30 years though.
He couldn't possibly have "chopped off" the last 15 could he - surely not, a man of his integrity?
Honestly, I was not familiar with some of the skeptics he was castigating.
I thought I was the only skeptical person who felt that way about Monkton.
North's conclusion about Mann's thesis being plausible, never struck me as a strong endorsement.
It is very amusing that Hadfield approves of wacking the instrument record onto a proxy recreation and calling it a day. IIRC someone said that that would be the wrong thing to do.
"He's also ex BBC."
That explains it - the sort of shoddy misrepresentations we've now come to expect from that organization on anything AGW related.
Credit where credit's due. He's good, damned good!
I could only stomach watching 12 minutes (out of 20). That smarmy know-all voice, the grating in-crowd assumptions, and worst of all the blatant and sickening ad hom prolonged stillframe of Monckton's thyrotoxicosis damaged eye. The video contributes nothing useful to the climate change debate, but tells us plenty about Hadfield.
Did anyone watch it all the way through?
The first few minutes of that droning, patronising voice put me off.
I did have a look at odd parts of the remainder, only to see that he is 'on message' for 'the team' which makes me think this is a message for the choir only, not a wider audience.
ChrisM
Snap. Unctious ingratiating and oleaginous. And the Monckton freeze frame seemed intentional and offensively spiteful .
I wonder what "Big Oil" consortium is funding him to make these videos?
The MWP really sticks in the warmists craw, doesn't it? And the renaissance and prosperity it brought.
'We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period' - 64,500,000 yahoo search hits.
Pharos wrote: "64,500,000 yahoo search hits."
This one is particularly insightful :)
http://frankodwyer.com/blog/2012/02/23/review-of-the-hockey-stick-illusion-part-1/
Hide the Decline. You hid that well. What a patronising git.
A condescending, nasal, .. and dishonest ... defense of the indefensible.
Initially he caught my attention and I was thinking of sending this to friends and fellow skeptics (including a "climate scientist" from Ashville) as "the other side of the story"; but when he devolved into ad hominums (the one against Jo Nova without evidence comes to mind) I realized I was watching another PR piece for the warmists. Sad.
Like so many things in politics (and this was not science) it is unfortunate that the low road is effective.
Not getting a good feeling from the Good Bishop's denizens here. Love this site, it's my first port of call every day but it's becoming an echo chamber of RC. 180 degrees out, for sure, but as determined not to give any credit to the 'opposition' as the dog-gazers that inhabit that site!
As much as I hate to admit it, the moshpit on JC's blog re PNS was spot on. Tribalism has overtaken cold objective thinking to such an extent that belief now supercedes rational reaction and it's now clear that it's as prevalent with 'sceptics' as it is with the 'opposition'
This guy was good. Forget the intellectual comfort that comes from knowing more details about the 'hockey stick', the 'independent' nature of the 'official' investigations and the overwhelming stacking of the financial odds for the consensus as opposed to the 'sceptic' case.
This guy was good. For someone, ie the majority, who is not as au fait as perhaps we are about the details, he played it beautifully.
If that ability can be swept aside as sneering, patronising and infra-dig then Gawd help us.
if the MWP was local than the present Arctic warming is also local.
Note that when he addresses Loehle's corrected graph, he doesn't point out that Loehle's results are the pink line, and that the pink line does not make a hockeystick. The red hockeystick line from the usual suspects obscures the pink line.
"Let's forget about the "Hide the Decline". "
==================================
Check out 6:30. He omits to say that the warming does not show in the proxy record itself. Yet another version of "hide the decline"
Agree RoyFOMR, quite a sophisticated presentation, a good putdown of Monckton's showmanship. Sellers comes to mind "And you thought it was the sun Christopher, you stupid twisted boy"
Don't know how correct he is but like Monckton this matter of fact presentation can sway the undecided more than a hundred doom stories.
Nice condescending voice though; I have to practice that for my next encounter with, well, that sort of person.
Aug 3, 2012 at 8:31 PM CommenterNiels
"Sneering" was the word that came into my mind, particularly toward the end of the presentation.
I have been patronised by a master.
My explanation is simple. Proxies are in general pretty worthless, Poxy's is a better term (see those error bars on the long-term reconstructions). Data that have gone through a bias introducing machine are pretty worthless, the machine does it's job. Man, wishing to get his genes into the pool, will not highlight the inadequacies of his research, he is an advocate of Rev Tom Bayes as required. The unthinking man will attempt to make something over very little, afterall a stab in the dark might come off.
Re: Aug 4, 2012 at 2:42 AM | RoyFOMR
"This guy was good. For someone, ie the majority, who is not as au fait as perhaps we are about the details, he played it beautifully.
If that ability can be swept aside as sneering, patronising and infra-dig then Gawd help us."
So you expect us to praise him for being 'good' at blatant propaganda?
Just as David Cameron (Conservative) gave Tony Blair (Labour) a standing ovation in Parliament for 'playing it beautifully' after he had taken this country to war on a lie.
Some of us prefer the truth and do not seek to praise liars!
Apparently Peter Hadfield has a voice which is "nice (naice?) , condescending, languid, patronising, minor public school, arts-grad, smarmy, know-all, droning, unctious ingratiating, oleaginous, nasal AND EX-BBC!".
MINOR PUBLIC SCHOOL! ARTS-GRAD! . . . .enough! No point in kicking a man when he's down.
Aug 4, 2012 at 2:42 AM RoyFOMR
Disagree.
1. The video was propaganda, not science, so the comments are appropriate.
2. On RC a comment like yours would not have seen the light of day.
3. On RC even factual comments on science are suppressed if they don't support the party line.
Aug 4, 2012 at 8:19 AM Alleagra
You left out "sneering".
Having expressed some concern at the venom with which Tom Chivers was attacked here, may I say I would have no compunction at any attack on this chap. Yes, I did watch it right through to the end. It's all very reasonable, I liked the way Peter was careful to shield the flame of his mighty intellect so that we weren't all dazzled, the quiet voice of reason, a little exasperated that he has to keep repeating things he had already explained in his videos, but still, when you're dealing with simpletons, you have to be patient, and I was particularly impressed with the way he kept showing snatches of text, carefully highlighted, but not displayed long enough to read them or their context, but which he assured us, oh so sincerely, proved his point beyond argument. I felt like I was watching a magician.
Let's take his contention that the papers don't show the MWP was warmer than today. There are
There is a quantitive analysis of some 108 papers of which 90 show the MWP warmer than today, that's a 5:1 ratio. These are referred to as level 1 studies because they give a temperature over the period
There is a qualitive analysis of 118 papers which shows that 8 believed the MWP was cooler than today, 20 thought it the same as today and 90 thought the temperature was higher than today. These are call level 2 studies.
There is a third category of study, level 3, which shows that there was a MWP but makes no comparison between temperatures in the MWP.
Clearly where there is evidence, either directly or inferred, the preponderance of studies 180 out of 226, saying it was warmer than today, with just 26 saying it was cooler than today. That's a ration of 7:1 studies showing the MWP was warmer than today. So how this chap can say it says no such thing is baffling, he must know that's not true.
Unfortunately, as RoyFmr says it's simply propoganda and he's betting, correctly, that anyone watching the video will take him at his word and not bother to check. In fact he discourages checking by asking his viewers to plough through the papers when there are simple charts provided on the web site at:
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php
[snip - o/t]
The feeble minded will find that video convincing.
Why do the Skeptics not realize the true battle is for the minds of the feeble minded?
orkneygal: I think they've already got the feeble minded on their side, I think he's just getting stuff off his own chest, testing to see if his ideas are correct. The swipe at Wegman who was found to have plagiarised, Hughes was it? a man he mentioned 18 times in the 90 page document and 13 times in the citations shows his state of mind, nasty. There is so much presdigititation in the video I'm inclined to agree that he is more like a magician than a serious contender for understanding climate science.
It's not a video promo for scientists. It's not a promo for the uninterested, and it's certainly not a broadcast production. The market is youtube. I imagine the demographic is politically interested and perhaps motivated and active 20 somethings. It's NGO presentation fodder. Not a convincing tool to persuade even those who are interested, not active but unsure. I didn't watch all the way as it was very dull and irritating as it wasn't aimed at me, but is it the case that the only video clips w/audio were the 2 Monckton clips? All the rest of the imagery was generated from stills and pans. So extremely cheap to produce and it looked it. Two days graft, maybe a day or two to script.
I think the primary focus group and objective of this promo is to keep the NGO activist onside, to maintain their advocacy and activism, not to change minds. In this respect, it's a pretty uneventful, inconsequential promo, and not worth all the fuss.
I think that citing David Icke was a cheap shot. Until he did I was unaware that Icke was a CAGW sceptic, I was, however, aware that Icke was a complete loon. Finding the most mentally deranged advocate of your opponents position and drawing attention to him sails really close to being an Ad Hominem without, technically, being one.
The video seemed to be implying that some kind of productive farming goes on in Greenland at the present time. My understanding is that there are areas of Greenland that used to be fertile but are now frozen solid. If this is the case then the video is deliberately misleading.
To sum it all up after watching the video, here's a bit of advice.
Keep it to yourselves, its to much of a good thing.
Buy up large parts of Greenland at rock bottom prices.
As CO2 increases these frozen areas are certain to become lush farmland.
Cant lose, far better than Carbon trading or windmills.
Mums the word remember!
Greenland's agricultural stats:
http://www.nationmaster.com/country/gl-greenland/agr-agriculture
The time series for tractors could be taken as resembling an inferior hockey stick but must be a proxy for something.
I did watch it all. I think RayFOMR has a point because this is a better popular presentation than I've seen before from someone from this background. Hadfield shows respect for the work of McIntyre, McKitrick and Wegman, rightly side-stepping the plagiarism red herring in the latter case. He's quite right to ask questions about the times that the earth was much warmer than the MWP. His point about the MWP not being as much of a jaunt for North Americans as for Europeans because of mega-drought is also very fair. On the other hand, as others have pointed out, he wrongly buys the claim from the Team that subsequent reconstructions were independent of MBH98 and 99, because he hasn't delved into which proxies were used and how they were chosen. He accepts presentation of recent temperature data at the end of such proxy-derived graphs without showing the importance of Hide the Decline. He doesn't show the weaknesses of the Yamal and the world's most influential larch. And on the North American mega-drought during the MWP he cuts from important history to software models of the middle of the the current century, which we have every reason to consider highly problematic for all forms of regional forecasting at that kind of timescale. (Just look at how little of the Sahel's greening was predicted by models. And a myriad of other examples.)
So, a mixed bag. I'm not spooked by David Icke being a sceptic or by Hadfield using him. What he presented was pretty consistent with the output of many other sceptics. The general point is that we have to raise our game. The Hockey Stick being shown to be an illusion, though important as a window into the corruption that exists in IPCC-dominated climate science, isn't anything like a knockout blow for CAGW logically, as Steve McIntyre has said, in effect, many times. The real scandal lies elsewhere, such as pretending that extreme events have got worse as the earth has warmed since the Little Ice Age, where Roger Pielke Jr's Bullshit Button is essential equipment, in playing down real-world observations in deciding whether to trust climate models, as Nic Lewis has been shedding light on from AR4, and in the chronic lack of openness of climate science, including the highest levels of the IPCC.
We have no clear evidence of present danger in our current very limited understanding of the climate system. The recent warming has been small in terms of wider history even if it did take us higher than the MWP. (I don't care either way.) The IPCC argues from high climate sensitivity to CO2 to a dangerous future of extreme events, unless we cut emissions, but in both parts there is much evidence that they either have not been looking dispassionately or that those that present the activist case have not been presenting what the IPCC says dispassionately (such as the disgraceful example of Field in front of Congress the other day).
The Hockey Stick was considered a useful propaganda tool in 2001 but was in reality another red herring. We have a way to go. But we should be thankful that Peter Hadfield has learned a thing or two along the way, just as we all have.
Hadfield used a standard trick employed by propagandists ( cultists and myth makers also), in that he gives some small amount of credit to the opposition at the beginning of his presentation, thereby giving the impression that he is fair, even handed and unbiased. With that established, he then proceeds to lead those astray who will not check him out on the rest of his cherry picking of facts, exagerations and dismissals, and just plain lies. Our little group here, that have taken the time to study the issues in question, need to also take the time (as the Bish has done) to point out to those that are new to the debate and are only trying to get an honest picture, just what a deliberate attempt to mislead this video is.
I had a very hard time not lapsing into thinking that I was listening/watching an episode of Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe (TV version decades ago).
Those who described this slipslideshow as propaganda nailed it. Yes, the narrator was smarmy, condescending and obnoxious. I want the time I wasted watching this shill job back. yeah, I know, it's gone down the same hole as all that AGW funding.
Speaking of funding, how much chump change was spent on this flim flammery?
Everything presented as 'proof' in the above powerpoint shell game has already been dissected extensively elsewhere, so there's no need to redo the technical arguments. Just pick the topic of your choice and search the archives here or any of the real science blog links above in the right hand column. (Hint, RC is NOT a real science blog. real science at RC mostly goes down the borehole).
Now as a presentation, using slides the above show is bunkum. Slides for use in real presentations need to be simple, clear, to the point and minimalistic. The more info one tries to cram on a page the harder it is to present it properly so as to educate the audience. Erudite and qualified speakers have a hard time going over 20-30 slides in an hour. Think about it, 30 slides in an hour gives the speaker two minutes a slide to get their point across effectively. If a slide is skimmed over, then why was the slide needed? Does confusing come to mind? How many slides were used in the twenty minute slide spoof above? Too many!
Whenever someone uses slides packed with tiny script and pictures it really means that they're baffling with BS as they are unable to distill their presentation's essence sufficiently to make it simple and clear for their intended audiences. Slides packed with graphics, tiny numbers and script are there to make the presenter feel safe from challenge, not to convey information.
When presenters generate a lot of slides and ram multiple slides through per minute they're usually trying to gloss over things hoping that errors and problems are not noticed, or if they are noticed then the rat-a-tat slide progress overwhelms the thought process of audience members. If you're going to slam through a lot of slides, then make a movie/video. Of course, graphical movies are generally known colloquially as cartoons. Nuff said?
To me, this is the most telling perspective.
I've found people use this "reasonable" approach particularly strongly towards Christopher Monckton. I turned off the video the moment when Monckton's eye disorder was painfully visible and the camera was cruelly frozen, when Hatfield said that Monckton had, in effect, made a false claim, and started using the Idsos' site to debunk Monckton.
Years ago when I was a warmist, I was persuaded by people like Hatfield that Monckton was too untrustworthy to even bother to listen to... ... until I started checking, and found that Monckton had actually replied to the significant challenges, to point out that all the accusations were false, with evidence as to why... Always, Monckton had the last, the truest, and the most compassionate word - IF one investigated.
Monckton is hated because he uses the tricks of politics against itself, and because he is a very good amateur mathematician which gets up the noses of science-degreed idiots. Having said which, I still challenge his maths - but only in one detail where even the majority of climate skeptics would agree with him. All other details pass muster.
Lucy: I went in my partial defence of Hadfield to his use of Icke, who I think all on all sides would agree is a more extreme case than Monckton. But even this was in some sense fair, as he wanted to establish how Lamb's old IPCC schematic is still being used by sceptics of many stripes. Hadfield uses a selected group of sceptics leading with Monckton. I didn't find myself even noticing the freeze frame of the bad eye - but then I'm notoriously resistant to such things making any difference to the substance of what is being said. Only God can see inside the film-maker's heart but if this was done deliberately, because he felt it would influence the immature to laugh at the man's ideas, then he will have to give an account of that choice when the secrets of all our hearts are revealed. The number of hits he achieves on YouTube will be of less concern by then.
What's more noteworthy to me is that Hadfield doesn't choose Steve McIntyre as his sparring partner on the MWP, presumably because he wanted to avoid a knockout in the first round, which would certainly have rendered the video shorter and, to many of us, sweeter. Reading Steve in any depth at all would have put him right on the independence of the subsequent reconstructions, Mannian intransigence and pretty much everything else. There again, he didn't choose to use only the most extreme and least clued-up advocates for the MWP either - because I agree with you that Monckton tends to be pretty well clued up. But Steve and Climate Audit are the go-to places on this particular subject on the web. That for me is the most telling criticism one can make.
It's cool to hear of your personal history vis-a-vis Monckton. His introduction of Lindzen at the House of Commons earlier in the year hit profound and prescient themes for me. And I think you're right that compassion lies at the heart of a great deal of his efforts. Onwards and upwards.
Richard, Monckton quoted the papers on CO2 science saying they showed there had been a MWP and it was warmer. Hatfield said the papers said no such thing, so I checked as he'd advised. In all there are 226 papers that make tempertature comparisons between the MWP and the Current Warm Period, (CWP) as they describe it. Of the 226, 180 claim that the MWP was warmer than the CWP, 20 say it was the same and 26 say it was warmer, a ratio of 7:1 in favour of a warmer MWP, yet Hatfield said they said no such thing. He's either daft, or a liar, and, moreover, although he's not a particular favourite of mine, he could be slandering Monckton by putting out a video suggesting Monckton wasn't telling the truth.
Aug 4, 2012 at 7:44 PM | Dr K.A. Rodgers
The time series for tractors could be taken as resembling an inferior hockey stick but must be a proxy for something.
Interesting that agricultural tractor use in Greenland (since 1961) peaked in 1988, fell back to a lower level in 1992 and has since remained constant. It is notable that recent agricultural raw materials exports form a tiny percentage (<0.5%) of merchandise exports from Greenland but that in the late 70's agricultural raw materials export percentage was 5 times higher.
I wonder whether the tractors are procured primarily for agriculture or snow clearance?