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New York, 9:10 AM
Fri Dec 11
62 posts in the last 24 hours
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11/30/09
I believe that massive climate change may or may not be occurring. If it indeed is, man may or may not be making a big contribution to it. It may or may not be a normal cyclic change that occurs every so often in the planet's history. I don't take these beliefs for any religious reasons (I am an atheist). The fact is that I don't know these things because scientists themselves do not know them. Scientists in this area are often misquoted and their findings are too often pumped up to a massive degree. The fact of the matter is that the planet's climate is so complex and unpredictable, and the records until recently are so spotty, that it becomes impossible to predict with any degree of accuracy what will happen in the decades to come. With that being said, I am also all for "going green" and taking care of the environment (as well as dependency from oil), because there are many many reasons to do these things other than global warming. But the scare tactics and false urgency about a problem we yet know little about is not the way to do it.
11/30/09
Looking for a longer rebuttal article link to send to some fam, if anyone has one.
11/30/09
I couldn't believe my family was pro-Palin, or any of the other crazy stuff I heard. I haven't bitten my tongue so hard in months.
11/30/09
As much as I hate those stupid Crossfire type shows, at least they let us all see what the other side had to say now and then (theoretically at least).
11/30/09
[www.realclimate.org]
and the comments starting at the top here:
[www.reddit.com]
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11/30/09
Not exactly - you know how people say this is the warmest the planet has been in 1,000 years, or 2,000 years? That's based on tree-ring temperature reconstructions. If tree-rings don't in fact reflect temperature, as more recent data seems to show, then they provide exactly zero evidence that this is a particularly warm period over the last 1,000 years.
And the small group of people related to these emails has been virtually the only source of tree-ring data used by the IPCC in their reports. So they are highly incented to "hide the decline" as it puts a key meme at risk.
Certainly global warming, climate change, etc is a much larger issue, but this particular group of scientists sure look like some bad apples.
11/30/09
Believe it or not, scientists like to address issues like this since it often leads to interesting new questions. No one gets grants for asking questions that have already been answered.
11/30/09
Fact is, if you look at that group's output, their choices as to sample size and statistical methods, and some of the responses in peer-reviewed literature (see D'Arrigo 2008) they just look dodgy. Biffra's walking back the robustness of his findings in "papers" he's just posting to the website...
11/30/09
What grates me the most about these guys is their utter, conscious, willful lack of understanding of the Scientific Method, and how peer review (and careers in academia/science) function.
I can understand them not knowing more than experts in a specialized, dynamic field. What I can't is their willful ignorance of the most basic aspects of how thinking people approach problems.
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11/30/09
'During the second half of the twentieth century, the decadal-scale trends in wood density and summer temperatures have increasingly diverged as wood density has progressively fallen. The cause of this increasing insensitivity of wood density to temperature changes is not known, but if it is not taken into account in dendroclimatic reconstructions, past temperatures could be overestimated. Moreover, the recent reduction in the response of trees to air-temperature changes would mean that estimates of future atmospheric CO2 concentrations, based on carbon-cycle models that are uniformly sensitive to high-latitude warming, could be too low.'
11/30/09
That's where the "hide the decline" comes in: "look at the data for the last 1,500 years, it's hotter now than it's ever been" - using tree-ring reconstructions. Without hiding the decline, the tree-ring reconstructions look much less compelling, wouldn't you agree?
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11/30/09
[www.wmo.ch]
Take a look at the graph on the first page, purporting to show that recent temperatures are higher than they've been in 2k years. These are solid, single lines running back hundreds of years. This is where they "hid the decline". Where in this report does it explain that this graph is really a mix of sources?
Look at the very last graph on this page to see what it looks like when you don't "hide the decline":
[www.uea.ac.uk]
I just find this behavior by scientists profoundly offensive - it's purposefully misleading.
11/30/09
I've never had reviewer comments make me cry, but that's because my hide is as tough as a rhino's and because I've only been a co-author (M.S., not PhD).
Now I'm not saying that peer-review is infallible, but it certainly isn't a cakewalk. And when crappy papers get through, other scientists aren't exactly reticent about ripping them apart.
11/30/09
You seem to be going all over the place in search of something that will validate whatever your viewpoint is, but I'm having a hard time following your logic.
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You originally (and incorrectly) asserted that no one knew about the divergence problem in 1999. If that was true, I could see your point. It isn't true, however, so I'm unsure why you would cling to that argument.
Gah, it feels like you just really want a reason to write off this research, regardless of the facts.
11/30/09
Re the validity of tree-ring data as temperature proxies - they adjusted tree-ring data to match the amplitude and std dev of the temperature records for 1900-1960 or something similar, which is a valid technique. Then, all of a sudden, the data stopped matching after 1960. One explanation is that for 1,000s of years, the width and density of tree-rings reflected the local temperature, and all of a sudden in the last 40 years they "diverged".
Another explanation is that tree-rings are an entirely unreliable temperature proxy.
There is no definitive evidence either way - other proxies are not detailed enough in this time scale, or have their own confounding issues, and obviously we don't have temperature records back that far.
Given all that, yes, I think any thinking person might wonder about the use of tree-ring width to show the temperature 1,200 years ago, when they can't even show the temperature today.
11/30/09
Not sure what you mean by "there isn't a problem with tree-ring data generally". That's just not true. There's significant literature on this. There's multiple decades of divergence. The hypothesis that tree-ring widths and density reflect ambient temperature is in no way supported by recent data. Just proclaiming tree-rings good temperature proxies, then saying that "wow, we really need to figure out why they're diverging" doesn't actually provide evidence or support for them being good proxies.
11/30/09
Again, it isn't unethical or wrong to not include data that you know is incorrect. It also doesn't make sense to throw out data because of a recent outlier that may have many causes.
11/30/09
As far as sea sediment, that's really tracking ocean temperatures, and here's an interesting graph showing that the ocean was almost a degree warmer 1,000 years ago than it is today (see page 4):
[home.badc.rl.ac.uk]
That sea sediment data looks entirely unrelated to surface temperature reconstructions from tree rings.
Re tree rings - they were able to match a portion of the curve from tree-ring data to a portion of the curve from temperature data. But nothing before or after matches. It's not "throwing out the entire dataset", it's suggesting that there is no reliable association between the tree-ring dataset and the temperature dataset. There is just no statistically significant association betweet tree-rings and temperature that supports using tree-rings to report on temperatures going back 1,500 years. Have you seen a peer-reviewed paper that suggests otherwise?
There's a lot of hand-waving, sure - but we're looking for robust, statistically supportable associations.
D'Arrigo 2008 in Nature I think has a good survey of the current state of the issue.
11/30/09
Here's the thing: we have fairly decent non-tree ring temperature records dating back to around 1900. The DP crops up around 1960. Prior to that, there is evidence that the tree-ring data correlates well with known climate events like droughts/floods/heat waves, etc. Because we've known about the DP since the mid-nineties, people have been looking at ways to evaluate tree-ring data. Lake sediments, wood isotope ratios, lots of other stuff way outside of my experience (I'm a lowly entomologist). So yes, scientists are actively working on these questions. And yes, there are other lines of evidence for climate change.
Do I think there's something wrong with asking questions about tree-ring data? Absolutely not! Do I assume that the scientists who support the DP hypothesis are duplicitous scam artists intent on deceiving the public? Absolutely not! And that's where I seem to diverge (har har) from you. This sort of disagreement/kerfuffle/ what have you happens all the time in science. There is the DP = all tree-ring data is questionable camp and the DP = a recent phenomenon that doesn't affect older records camp. My belief is that the truth will out, but I'm not in favor of discounting all of the tree-ring data yet.
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12/01/09
I was trying to keep the discussion focussed on the "decline" in question, the hiding of which has been publicly discussed for over a decade.
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I still think we should stop polluting the earth; clean up our water; become more fuel efficient; be smarter about pesticides and petrochemical-based fertilizers in our food supply; look at biofuels and renewable sources of energy.
However, to say that climate change is man-made without acknowledging other factors is foolish.
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Naturally occurring changes in temp and climate happen extremely gradually, whereas, in the past 30 years, alone, it has changed drastically. This isn't because nature decided to increase its rate of production, but rather due to the laissez-faire attitudes of modern industry and the indifference emoted by large-scale populations like ours.
Naturally occurring changes aren't insignificant, but in comparison, they sure do seem that way.
11/30/09
I don't remember ANY scientist in favor of global warming / climate change saying it's exclusively man made.
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Momof3wildkids is a green mom. We are installing solar panels on the roof this spring; when I am not carpooling w/the 3 kids, I toodle around in a Prius; I removed nasty oil-based heating system and put in a very high efficiency natural gas one; we put in a well for all of our outdoor water needs; I practice integrated pest management in my organic garden; I buy local food; I hang my laundry out to dry in the summer, etc... I do all those things because they are smart to do for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with global warming, per se. I want a clean food and water supply and I want to be less dependent on fossil fuels that are in short supply.
Am I helping stem global warming? I haven't the foggiest since I am not sure what the true impact of my carbon footprint is on global warming... not sure anyone really does.
@m4ximusprim3: Spot on.
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11/30/09
And these are the same folks who have created journals for the sole purpose of bypassing the peer-review process and then they get upset when someone calls them on it? What a bunch of crybabies.
This stuff wouldn't piss me off so much if these science-illiterate schmendricks had no influence on policy. But they do, and it really is sad.
11/30/09
Or something like that.
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11/30/09
1) "These people are invested in global warming being true because it could give weight to legislation that will socialize our entire planet and possibly create a new dark ages"
2) "It has been shown to be a hoax and a fraud perpetrated by science, academia and politicians to take away (y)our liberties and lower (y)our standard of living".
In other words, the deniers can't even ascribe rational motives like profit or career advancement to this "conspiracy" of global warming advocates. Instead, they have to paint anyone who disagrees with them as essentially moustache-twirling, black-robed disciples of Sauron, opposed to all light, freedom, joy, and prosperity. It tells you the level of the debate they're working on, and it's not a level based on hard evidence and considered response.
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/sarcasm
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The mind wobbles.
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