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Discussion > The end of the Great Delusion is at hand

Martin A, I hope that some good bits of climate science are found, so some benefit of the massive cost can be realised.

Dec 11, 2016 at 10:01 AM | Unregistered Commentergolf charlie

so some benefit of the massive cost can be realised.

It should be written off entirely and redone from scratch. Like with buggy software, you can't retrieve something of quality by simply throwing the buggy bits away.

Dec 11, 2016 at 11:10 AM | Registered CommenterMartin A

Martin A, that is what concerns me!

Phil Jones wrote to Steve McIntyre some years ago stating that he saw no reason to show his methodology to other people, so that they could find something wrong with it. 97% of Climate Scientists failed to criticise that response.

It should be chiselled into Climate Science's gravestone.

Dec 11, 2016 at 4:13 PM | Unregistered Commentergolf charlie

"Another evidence-light rant. 'Caspar and the Jesus Paper' is one of the most unintentionally hilarious articles on the internet. I mean r2, really?" PHIL CLARKE, it is deadly serious. Do tell us more about r2, is it one of your specialist subjects?"

- GC

My stats is good, also, I can read. Let us run CAJP through a modest fact-check :-

For a while, the hockey stick was everywhere - unimpeachable evidence that mankind was  damaging the planet - an impact that would require drastic measures to reverse.  The stick's most famous outing however was just a couple of years ago when it made a headlining appearance in Al Gore's drama-documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. The revelation of the long, thin graph with its dramatic temperature rise in the last few decades, and the audience gasps that accompanied it, is something of a key moment for many environmentalists.

Wrong. The graph shown in AIT is Dr Thompson's ice core record, not MBH.

In a series of scientific papers and later on his blog, Climate Audit, McIntyre took issue with the novel statistical procedures used by the hockey stick's authors. He was able to demonstrate that the way they had extracted the temperature signal from the tree ring records was biased so as to choose hockey-stick shaped graphs in preference to other shapes [Wrong], and criticised Mann for not publishing the cross validation R2, a statistical measure of how well the temperature reconstruction correlated with actual temperature records. He also showed that the appearance of the graph was due solely to the use of an estimate of historic temperatures based on tree rings from bristlecone pines [Wrong], a species that was known to be problematic for this kind of reconstruction.[Half-truth].

The piece then goes on at length about the r-squared statistics, which were never actually published for MBH. Let us see what the NAS Panel that reviewed paleo-reconstructions say about R2…

 However, r2 measures how well some linear function of the predictions matches the data, not how well the predictions themselves perform. The coefficients in that linear function cannot be calculated without knowing the values being predicted, so it is not in itself a useful indication of merit.
(Page 93).

So CATJP casts paranoid assertions about the non-publication (even hiding) of a statistic with no useful merit. Ho Ho. Take this away and not much remains. Incidentally the panel found no issue with MBH's data choices or statistics, other than to note on the study's use of PCA that 'while the issues are real, they had a very minimal effect, not a material effect on the final reconstruction'. They also concluded that :-

The basic conclusion of Mann et al. (1998, 1999) was that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1,000 years. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence that includes both additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions and pronounced changes in a variety of local proxy indicators"

Also

Surface temperature reconstructions for periods prior to the industrial era are only one of multiple lines of evidence supporting the conclusion that climatic warming is occurring in response to human activities, and they are not the primary evidence.

Which makes this paragraph from CATJP even more chucklesome

With the replication of the hockey stick in tatters, reasonable people might have expected some sort of pause in the political momentum

Reasonable people realised the HS was just fine and the 'political momentum' had little or nothing to do with one, vindicated, reconstruction. Hilarious.

Dec 11, 2016 at 6:20 PM | Unregistered CommenterPhil Clarke

It's dead, Phil; it was a lie.
=======

Dec 11, 2016 at 7:12 PM | Unregistered Commenterkim

You're entitled to your opinion, if not your own facts. Gerald North and the NAS panel said different. Indeed Roger Pielke Jr described the report as 'a near-complete vindication for the work of Mann et al.'

I, and one suspects most people, find them slightly more credible than an accountant blogger.

Is the book equally funny?

http://davidappell.blogspot.co.uk/2006/06/near-complete-vindication.html

Dec 11, 2016 at 7:50 PM | Unregistered CommenterPhil Clarke

Those cardiac shock pads were applied years ago Phil; the patient displays flatter-lining since.
=========

Dec 11, 2016 at 8:06 PM | Unregistered Commenterkim

Phil Clarke:

"Gerald North and the NAS panel said different"

Please can you paste the exact words you are referring to with a specific source reference? Thanks.

Dec 11, 2016 at 8:07 PM | Unregistered Commenternot banned yet

The stick's most famous outing however was just a couple of years ago when it made a headlining appearance in Al Gore's drama-documentary, An Inconvenient Truth.

Wrong. The graph shown in AIT is Dr Thompson's ice core record, not MBH.

Was that graph a “hockey stick” or was it not? Was that graph similar to MBH’s or not? Methinks you are dissembling, here, Mr Clarke.

Whatever the source of the graph, it eradicates the Mediæval Warm Period; the irony, here, is that the same people who deny the MWP are happy to admit the Little Ice Age. How long was this Little Ice Age? Well, perhaps a few thousand years, if much of the cockwaffle being spouted by those such as yourself, Mr Clarke, is to be believed. However, as this totally ignores the contemporaneous records (that is, records left by the people who lived during that time), which all agree that there WAS a MWP, and it was such that the arable areas extended to greater latitudes and altitudes than they do, even today – indeed, Greenland was colonised, and the Vikings lived there for long enough to farm, grow, and die, to be buried in the ground – ground which, today, cannot be dug manually as it remains permafrost. Of course, all this can be comfortably ignored, as it is in contradiction with the much-revered papers from such as Mann, Gergis, et al; they are, it would appear, such saints that to question them is to be apostate, and any who do be ostracised, criminalised, imprisoned, or even executed. Quite why you support such philosophies, which the omissions by you and your team of researchers loudly imply, does need some explaining.

Dec 11, 2016 at 8:09 PM | Registered CommenterRadical Rodent

For Phil:

https://climateaudit.org/2007/11/06/the-wegman-and-north-reports-for-newbies/

Richard L. Smith's comments here - ASA url link at CA is outdated:

http://lv-twk.oekosys.tu-berlin.de/project/lv-twk/images/pdfs/ENVR_9_1.pdf

Dec 11, 2016 at 9:10 PM | Unregistered Commenternot banned yet

For Phil:

https://climateaudit.org/2007/11/06/the-wegman-and-north-reports-for-newbies/

Ha. Classic self-serving McIntyre Selective quotation.

He completely omits to mention the North group's dismissal of r2, such a big part of Montford's 'Jesus paper' comedy essay. And he quotes Peter Bloomfield as saying

Our committee reviewed the methodology used by Dr. Mann and his coworkers and we felt that some of the choices they made were inappropriate. We had much the same misgivings about his work that was documented at much greater length by Dr. Wegman.

but somehow fails to share with his readers that it was the same Bloomfield who asserted that 'while the issues are real, they had a very minimal effect, not a material effect on the final reconstruction'.

Slippery customer, Mr M. I guess you can spin any old yarn if you're prepared to be so selective.

Here's a link for you

https://deepclimate.org/2010/11/16/replication-and-due-diligence-wegman-style/

Dec 11, 2016 at 10:39 PM | Unregistered CommenterPhil Clarke

For Phil:

https://climateaudit.org/2007/11/06/the-wegman-and-north-reports-for-newbies/

Ha. Classic self-serving McIntyre Selective quotation.

He completely omits to mention the North group's dismissal of r2, such a big part of Montford's 'Jesus paper' comedy essay. And he quotes Peter Bloomfield as saying

Our committee reviewed the methodology used by Dr. Mann and his coworkers and we felt that some of the choices they made were inappropriate. We had much the same misgivings about his work that was documented at much greater length by Dr. Wegman.

but somehow fails to share with his readers that it was the same Bloomfield who asserted that 'while the issues are real, they had a very minimal effect, not a material effect on the final reconstruction'.

Slippery customer, Mr M. I guess you can spin any old yarn if you're prepared to be so selective.


Here's a link for you

Dec 11, 2016 at 10:40 PM | Unregistered CommenterPhil Clarke

Richard L. Smith's comments here

That would appear just to be a report on a talk given by Wegman, lacking any analysis of his clams and conclusions.Though one agrees with the last paragraph.

In the end, it's important not to lose sight of the forest
for the trees, where the “forest” refers to the totality of scientific
evidence for global warming.

Smith, of course, went on to coauthor with Ammann, amongst others a study that concluded

Although the “hockey stick” shape is less clear cut than in the
original analysis of Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998, 1999), there is still substantial evidence
that recent decades are among the warmest of the past 600 years.

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.176.3465&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Dec 11, 2016 at 10:54 PM | Unregistered CommenterPhil Clarke

Was that graph a “hockey stick” or was it not? Was that graph similar to MBH’s or not? Methinks you are dissembling, here, Mr Clarke.

It was a hockey stick. However Montford is clear that by Hockey stick he means MBH

The stick's most famous outing however was just a couple of years ago when it made a headlining appearance in Al Gore's drama-documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. [...] Shortly after its publication, the hockey stick and its main author, Michael Mann, came under attack

If he can't even get that right, it does not bode well for the accuracy of the rest of the essay.

Besides, I thought one of the critiques of MBH was that there was no independent verification. You're saying that there exists another reconstruction, based on ice cores, with the same shape....!

Dec 11, 2016 at 11:01 PM | Unregistered CommenterPhil Clarke

Yes… it is amazing how data can be manipulated to get the results you want.

Dec 12, 2016 at 12:22 AM | Registered CommenterRadical Rodent

Phil Clarke, the Hockey Stick is dead. So is Climate Science.

The Gergis paper proved that only data tampering and shoddy maths can replicate the Hockey Stick. You confirmed it, as did Victor Venema.

You and 97% of Climate Climate Scientists can not retract each others lies without further compromising other lies that you then depend on.

If only Climate Science had listened to McIntyre. 97% of climate science supports Mann, so it all has to go. You have made the case very well.

Dec 12, 2016 at 3:35 AM | Unregistered Commentergolf charlie

The Gergis paper proved that only data tampering and shoddy maths can replicate the Hockey Stick.

Gergis=Australasia. Hockey Stick=Northern Hemisphere.

Please explain.

Dec 12, 2016 at 10:18 AM | Unregistered CommenterPhil Clarke

… there is still substantial evidence that recent decades are among the warmest of the past 600 years.
Well… duuuh! We have just come out of the Little Ice Age; naturally, the temperature at the end of this rise will be higher than much of what it was before – when we were in the Little Ice Age! Who knows – perhaps the temperatures may increase such that the forests found under the ice in Alaska may start to grow again.

1,000 years ago, the evidence is that the temperatures were higher than they are, now; 1,600 years ago, they were cooler than now; 2,000 years ago, temperature were higher than they are now. Get the picture? What is happening now is just part of a natural cycle, of which we have little or no understanding – and never will, if we continue to insist that it is all the fault of nasty, little, man-made CO2.

What will you say, should temperatures irrefutably fall?

Dec 12, 2016 at 10:24 AM | Registered CommenterRadical Rodent

Phil Clarke 10:18, you stated that Gergis confirmed the Hockey Stick, and you have never bothered to explain, or apologise. Nor has Victor Venema, whose opinions you value.

You are now proving why people do not trust Climate Science, and confirming that it is 100% Unreliable

Dec 12, 2016 at 11:53 AM | Unregistered Commentergolf charlie

What will you say, should temperatures irrefutably fall?

Dec 12, 2016 at 10:24 AM | Radical Rodent

I think excuses are now being thought up. This will be the new growth area in climate science following all those abysmal failures to replicate the Hockey Stick.

The ExcuseGate opening gambit is probably going to be along the lines of a lack of correct adjustments and homogenising, following NASA's loss of control of temperature recording. People untrained in the art of climate science just won't know how to hold thermometers properly, with the bulb securely gripped in the palm of the hand.

Dec 12, 2016 at 1:07 PM | Unregistered Commentergolf charlie

Last seen about to insert a Global Climate Model into the hind end of a wooly mammoth.
=============

Dec 12, 2016 at 4:29 PM | Unregistered Commenterkim

kim, eating the grasses on tundra generates a lot of methane. Anyone interfering with it's progressive release, may encounter blow back.

Dec 16, 2016 at 1:02 AM | Unregistered Commentergolf charlie

On the original theme of this thread (The end of the Great Delusion is at hand):
The Impending Collapse Of The Global Warming Scare

(pointed out by Dave Salt on a different thread)

Already, there are suggestions that applicants for research grants are being advised to eliminate the phrase "climate change" from their applications.

Dec 16, 2016 at 4:37 PM | Registered CommenterMartin A

Radical rodent, golf Charlie

What will you say, should temperatures irrefutably fall?

The "GISS 5-year average anomaly ceentred on 2013 is 0.70C.

A statistically significant cooling trend would be a drop of 0.2C in the 5-year average.

When can we expect the 5-year average to reach 0.5C?

(NB. This is not a rhetorical question. I would like a forecast and your reasoning.)

Dec 16, 2016 at 4:49 PM | Unregistered CommenterEntropic man

Entropic Man, I haven't a clue when a cooling trend will match your requirements. I am not a Climate Scientist and I don't adjust temperatures for a living.

Obviously Climate Scientists have been consistently wrong about their forecasts ever since Mann's Hockey Stick, and all the Peer Reviewed Climate Science ever since. If Climate Science had made it clear that Mann's Hockey Stick was only a projection, at the time, the world would not have wasted so much money.

I can only repeat what I have stated before, winters are not as cold, summers are no warmer. The Climate is more benign now than it has been in my lifetime.

Dec 16, 2016 at 5:44 PM | Unregistered Commentergolf charlie