317 thoughts on “Time Line of L’affaire “Gleick/Ursus Bogus””

1. sorry lucia, but your storyline is simply false.
   .
   the denialist blogosphere (and sorry, but for once you are part of it) did focus on the picture.
   “quietly” taking it down, would have lead to the usual conspiracy theories about “hiding the photo”. outrage would have been exactly the same.
   .
   point to take home is this: the sceptic side is lacking substance. they will always focus on completely irrelevant aspects, like this photo. and what you wrote above, is just the usual hyperbole defence of that lack of substance.
   .
   and the media, as all too often, will let the denialists get away with it. sad story.

2. I’m sure the the story will be linked and re-linked for years.

   This has become a story that will not die.
   .
   ouch. IF this will really happen (and i doubt it), then it is the most dire testament to the sceptics inability to make a real point EVER..
   .
   PS: unless there is a dramatic negative turn of events, people wont talk about the gulf oil spill for years. think about it.

3. Tempest in a teapot

   The warmistas have to keep their mantra of the “denial machine” alive, even though it doesn’t have a chance of traction, except among the choir

   I see that sod is at work.

   Here is a link to Burt Rutan’s April 2010 updated presentation for him to read. ha ha.

   http://rps3.com/Files/AGW/EngrCritique.AGW.Science.3.pdf

4. Re: sod (May 14 13:12),

   sorry lucia, but your storyline is simply false

   Could you clarify? I wrote a timeline. If you are aware of other articles focusing on the ice bear that appeared before Gleick wrote his post, I would love to learn of them. I’m sure others would too.

   ouch. IF this will really happen (and i doubt it),

   Of course it will. Notice that some of the ice-bear posts refer back to previous AGW photo-shop blunders.

   PS: unless there is a dramatic negative turn of events, people wont talk about the gulf oil spill for years. think about it.

   Of course they will talk about it for years. This two hour old story mentions The exxon valdez incident which happened in 1989.

5. Well, the replacement image is certainly much less dramatic 😛

   http://www.woottonwebdevclass.com/webdevlcass/Lim_Ketnita_MP3Project/Global%20Warming/images/polar%20bear.jpg
   

   This still seems like a lot of time spent discussing something fairly trivial.

6. The first clue that Gleick might be a leftist firebrand chose to make his opinion on the matter heard at Huff Puff Po, which is at or near the center of the leftosphere, orbiting around the massive gravitational pull that is the President’s ego.

7. If Gleick had just shown any embarrassment or humility about the altered photo, I’d have sympathized with him. As I pointed out in my post, it was Science’s blunder, not his. The message should have been to double- and triple-check everything on such an important issue. The AGW crowd have been repeatedly caught using altered graphics, such as the “hide the decline” chart, without telling anyone except in the fine print few read.

   And Science is not just any media outlet, it’s one of the most respected scientific journals in the world. If my newspaper used a Photoshopped picture without telling readers, we’d all be mortified and apologize. I would hope Science, and Gleick, have the same concern for facts. After all, if the photo wasn’t that important, why was it used in the first place?

   And Gleick should just own up to his political ideology. If Gleick isn’t a leftist, I’m Lady Gaga.

8. Zeke–
   I think if the only issue was the photo itself, there would be little discussion. The issue that won’t go away is Gleick’s reaction. It gets discussed — then people who disagree go back and forth.

   Oddly, some who would like the story to go away want to also have the last word. This may have worked pre-internet. It doesn’t now. If you want a story to go away, let someone else have the last word.

9. Zeke-
   This is the image at the on the web page (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/328/5979/689):
   
   I think the replacement is less dramatic than the original because it doesn’t show vast stretches of water around the ice, the ice area is larger, and the bears don’t look lonely. They look like they might have just stopped by and are getting ready to hunt for fish.

10. “If you want a story to go away, let someone else have the last word.”

    “This still seems like a lot of time spent discussing something fairly trivial.”

    Agreed and agreed. As an hardcore-denialist, this is just another brick in an already massive wall of stupidity. But keep up the talkin ‘ about it and there goes another layer of cement…(beep beep beep) here comes the truck with more building supplies (oh, there’s a convoy behind it)… 😉

    Andrew

11. Bradley–

    After all, if the photo wasn’t that important, why was it used in the first place?

    This is an obvious question.

    I suspect one reason most newspapers do not insert images in letters to the editor is the recognition that if they don’t matter, there is no reason to assign staff the task of locating and inserting a ‘good’ photo. Periodicals have budgets, why waste operating funds on something that doesn’t matter.

    Conversely, if images matter, inserting an image into someone else’s letter risks changing the message. (“Risks” is only the correct word if the image isn’t selected for its message. )

12. So Lucia’s thesis is now that the topic never flares up, had Gleick not responded at Huffington to whatever was linked at Morano?

    I don’t know; to an extent this requires Lucia’s timeline to be correct in that there was very little internet chatter about the photo before Gleick responded. It also requires quite some faith that the skeptics wouldn’t have gone off on something trivial.

    Just so nobody gets me wrong, I think it’s inappropriate to use a photoshopped picture. I also think it’s trivial if the picture is removed/replaced in short order after somebody notices and tells the journal.

13. After all, if the photo wasn’t that important, why was it used in the first place?

    Science puts pictures into page for letters to the editor. Why? To make it look nice. Is that so bad? I don’t think so. In hindsight, we can say that they should at least clear the picture with the authors of the letter, because a reader will probably think the author had something to do with the picture. But everything is obvious after the first time it goes wrong.

    Of course, if Science had gone to Gleick and said that they were going to use this stock photo of a polar bear, there’s no guarantee Gleick would have gone to the original photo site and read the description. So in this case, even running the picture by the authors may not have caught the error.

14. “If you want a story to go away, let someone else have the last word.”

    Lucia, if you keep making posts about it, that’s not a failure of somebody else to stop talking about it. That’s you stringing it along.

15. “Lucia, if you keep making posts about it, that’s not a failure of somebody else to stop talking about it. That’s you stringing it along.”

    CE,

    And you keep commenting.

    Andrew

16. Could you clarify? I wrote a timeline. If you are aware of other articles focusing on the ice bear that appeared before Gleick wrote his post, I would love to learn of them. I’m sure others would too.
    .
    well, you didn t stick to the timeline facts. you did a lot of interpretation, the majority of which is simply false.
    .
    for example you start with this nonsense:
    .
    arose as a result of Gleick’s reaction to the photo and that the PR fiasco might have been avoided had Gleick acted differently.
    .
    what is happening (even apart from the “storm in teapot” aspect) is NOT a PR fiasco. PR fiasco happens, when your followers or neutral people are turned away from you. that the other side doesn t like it, is NOT a PR fiasco!
    .
    “Manchester City fans not happy with new Manchester United shirts” NOT a PR fiasco.
    .
    basically you are trying to reconstruct a timeline, even though the major denialist garbage distribution point had already spread the news.
    .
    Of course it will. Notice that some of the ice-bear posts refer back to previous AGW photo-shop blunders.
    .
    referencing back, when something similar happens, is NOT the same as a story being linked and relinked for years. with the way the internet (TM) and google (TM) search works, one can simply barely avoid that similar events from the past will show up, if something same happens again.
    .
    Of course they will talk about it for years. This two hour old story mentions The exxon valdez incident which happened in 1989.
    .
    as i described above, it is retold because the new story is similar. the exxon valdez story was NOT “linked and relinked for years” (whatever the equivalent thing was in pre-internet days). it popped up again a little, when news developted, on annual days and now with a similar event.
    .
    so what you were trying to say, when you wrote “linked and re-linked for years.”, was actually ” this story will be added to the irrelevant list of photoshop events kept by the denialists blogosphere”.
    that is something very very different.

17. “Lucia, if you keep making posts about it, that’s not a failure of somebody else to stop talking about it. That’s you stringing it along.”

    CE,

    And you keep commenting on it.

    Andrew

18. Carrot

    I don’t know; to an extent this requires Lucia’s timeline to be correct in that there was very little internet chatter about the photo before Gleick responded.

    Have I missed anything during the few hours between Morano’s post and Gleick’s post?

    It also requires quite some faith that the skeptics wouldn’t have gone off on something trivial.

    Gleick could have quietly contacted SCIENCE, and shut up while they corrected. If nothing else, that would have provided tremendous rhetorical advantage. “Gleick agrees it was a blunder and fixed that as soon at it was found.” is the best possible answer to any rhetorical questions.

19. Re: sod (May 14 13:12),

    > and the media, as all too often, will let the denialists get away with it.

    I remarked in a comment to the Roger Pielke Jr blog post Peter Gleick Fires Back that the moniker “denier” echoes the well-known term “Holocaust denier”.

    “Denialist” is another term with a clear pejorative connotation, implying that dissent from the AGW Consensus position is based on ignorant denial of foundational scientific theories, such as evolution, or an Earth that is many billions of years old.

    I think I could come up with insulting terms for those who agree with the major conclusions of IPCC AR4. Likewise for women, Mormons, academics, atheists, people of Italian descent…

    But I’d hesitate to call people names while discussing issues with them. I’d worry that it might trigger an emotional response, making it harder for them to appreciate the excellence of my reasoning–the first step towards getting them to change their minds. I’d also wonder whether “undecideds” would take my use of these arguments to mean that I don’t have any better ones.

    Sod, can you shed any light on this?

20. Have I missed anything during the few hours between Morano’s post and Gleick’s post?

    I’m not interested in going through the blogosphere to look for other mentions. The first I heard of it was here. Did you first hear of it from the Gleick response?

    Gleick could have quietly contacted SCIENCE, and shut up while they corrected.

    If internet chatter about the photo was as sparse at the time as you’re making it out to be, then I agree that Gleick’s public response was unnecessary. He clearly thought the chatter was more voluminous, though.

    So either Gleick misread the prominence of a link on climate depot, or Lucia is missing something from the timeline.

    And there’s always the possibility that the sceptic blogs would have gone off on it anyway, no matter how Gleick handled it. Though barring a time machine, this is untestable.

21. Carrot

    Science puts pictures into page for letters to the editor. Why? To make it look nice. Is that so bad?

    How’s this:

    To achieve the unimportant goal of making the page nicer, SCIENCE risks changing the message and spends operating revenue assigning staff to locate and insert pictures– a practice avoided by other magazines. Is that so bad?

    As for this:

    “Lucia, if you keep making posts about it, that’s not a failure of somebody else to stop talking about it. That’s you stringing it along.”

    I can identify four groups for any story:
    a) Those who actively want the topic to be amplified.
    b) Those who actively want the topic to squelched.
    c) Those who don’t the care topic amplified or squelched, but think something about the story is interesting.
    d) Those who don’t the care topic amplified or squelched, but think the story is boring.

    Those in (d) merely skip the blog post. They may be reading People magazine right now.

    Those in (c) will continue to discuss the story as long as it’s interesting. Often, it’s interesting as long as both (a) and (b) keep arguing.

    Those in (a) will do anything to encourage the story, period. The encourage all talk.

    It is in the interest of those in (b) to say very little, but they often subvert their interests by complaining. They often try to guilt those in (c) into shutting up suggesting that if they continue to talk, that will make people think they fall in category (a).

    Those in (c) will often continue discussing the topic until either (a) shuts up or another diverting story comes along or they get hit by a bus. The reason (a) shutting up works is that the story is much less interesting when it becomes one sided.

    But here’s the good news Carrot: The ICCC conference starts Sunday. That will kill the ice-bear story.

22. Carrot

    Did you first hear of it from the Gleick response?

    Pielke’s post. I rarely read dotEarth, and Gleick’s response is at a Huffington sub-blog with two entries. His response to Morano (?) doesn’t name or link anyone who has supposedly been focusing on the photomontage. It just tells us “they” are.

    Update– I first heard the story at Pielke’s post commenting on Gleik’s response and Revkin’s article.

23. Re: sod (May 14 14:06),

    > major denialist garbage distribution point
    > events kept by the denialists blogosphere

    Andrew_Ky refers to himself as a “hardcore-denialist”. But most of us with doubts about the AGW Consensus see use of the moniker “denialist” as offensive. It echoes the term “Holocaust denier.” Along with “denialist”, it suggests that dissent from the Consensus must be based on the rejection of scientific concepts equivalent to evolution, or an Earth that’s billions of years old.

    I could think up derogatory terms for women, Mormons, academics, people of Polish descent, and academics. But I’d worry that insulting them might make it harder for them to appreciate the excellence of my reasoning (the first step towards getting them to change their minds). And “undecideds” might think that I used these tactics for lack of better ones.

    Sod, can you offer any insight into this?

24. One of the great predictions of the 20th century was by Alven Toffler,that the illiterate of the future,will be not an inability to read and write but an inability to learn.

    The Gleick debacle is a good example,what however is worse is a blatant mistruth this week by Pachauri at the so called interacademy enquiry.

    In a hearing at the InterAcademy Council, an organisation of the world’s science academies which is conducting an independent review of the processes and procedures of the IPCC, Dr Pachauri described the inclusion of the glacier claim as “human failure” which should not have happened. …

    He said the mistake about the glaciers should have been picked up by the authors of the section of the Fourth Assessment report in which it was included, or by its reviewers.

    He said there had been comments, which can be made about the assessment by contributors or governments before the report is published, but “they were not very specific in this regard”.

    He told the hearing in Amsterdam: “Somehow it just missed everybody’s attention.

    That it is still on the IPCC website speaks volumes eg Von Storch,

    •receding and thinning of Himalayan glaciers can be attributed primarily to the global warming; in addition, high population density near these glaciers and consequent deforestation and land-use changeshave adversely affected these glaciers

    •the total glacial area will likely shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 km2(or disappear entirely) by the year 2035

    •the 15,000 Himalayan glaciers form a unique reservoir of water which in turn, is the lifeline of millions of people in South Asian countries

    •it is likely that glacial melt will turn the big Asian river systems into seasonal rivers and affect economies in the region

    The reason for having this desinformation still on the web may be an attempt for keeping the documents historically in order – the talk has seemingly given in this way, and the original, unchanged material is provided on the IPCC web-site. This reason would have to be applauded. However, it shows that the false claim of a consensus view in this matter was not just somewhere hidden in a technical document, but used prominently by leading IPCC persons, namely a vice chair of AR4, and – as it seems – the new chair of WG 2.

    I have asked Chris Field for an explanation.

25. To achieve the unimportant goal of making the page nicer, SCIENCE risks changing the message and spends operating revenue assigning staff to locate and insert pictures– a practice avoided by other magazines. Is that so bad?

    Had you previously noticed the pictures and thought it was a bad idea?

    My guess is that they’ll keep running pictures in that section; they’ll just be more careful about it. Running it by the author, with respect to your message changing concern; also making sure the picture is what it purports to be.

26. And there’s always the possibility that the sceptic blogs would have gone off on it anyway, no matter how Gleick handled it. Though barring a time machine, this is untestable.
    .
    i would actually bet a small fortune, that a silent change of the picture would have ended in a “hide the photoshop” story on WuWt.
    with basically the same content, that the real WuWt story had.
    .
    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/12/new-bear-species-discovered-ursus-bogus/
    .
    and that story doesn t mention the Gleick’s post at all. (massive hole in lucia’s theory…)

27. Amac

    I could think up derogatory terms for women, Mormons, academics, people of Polish descent, and academics. But I’d worry that insulting them might make it harder for them to appreciate the excellence of my reasoning…

    Likewise, when I read someone refer to ‘warmers’ as “warmistas” I’m pretty sure they aren’t trying to persuade warmers. When William Connelley calls people “septics”, I don’t think he’s trying to persuade anyone. Some people really are trying to be polarizing.

28. Pingback: Ursus Bogus, Peter Gleick, And A Der Spiegel Global Warming Report « NCTimes.com Blogs

29. Andrew_Ky refers to himself as a “hardcore-denialist”. But most of us with doubts about the AGW Consensus see use of the moniker “denialist” as offensive.
    .
    i was specifically talking about Morano. he had the story BEFORE (what part of that does lucia not understand?) Gleick’s post.
    .
    and he is a major denialist garbage distribution point.
    .
    current lead story:
    .
    http://www.climatedepot.com/
    .
    Protestors face off against Gore as he receives honorary doctorate: ‘Global warming is a fraud. Gore knows it’s a fraud’
    .
    and it is downhill from there…

30. Carrot–

    Had you previously noticed the pictures and thought it was a bad idea?

    No. But here’s why:

    My impression is most letters to the editor at SCIENCE are behind a pay wall. I can surf using my work account when surfing but personal use is strongly discouraged. (There are some long rules) I don’t connect to the ANL VPN unless I am working, (which is very part time.)

    Ordinarily, I can’t imagine being interested in reading letters to the editor at SCIENCE, I have would never pay to read letters to the editor at SCIENCE, don’t pay, and so have never noticed the pictures.

    The newspapers I read don’t insert pictures into letters to the editor; I think their policy is sound.

31. Re: sod (May 14 14:36),

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/201…..sus-bogus/
    .
    and that story doesn t mention the Gleick’s post at all. (massive hole in lucia’s theory…)

    Ehrm.. Notice I say the last three blogs posts don’t mention Gleick? This is not a massive hole. I was going to write two more paragraphs discussing the three posts a that don’t mention Gleick’s reaction: Delingpole, Tim Blair and Watts.

    I’m not saying nothing would have been written. But how do you think the comments threads would have read if the answer had been
    “Yes. It was a blunder. No one approves of deceptive graphics. Luckily, Gleick discovered the error, wrote Science and it was corrected.”

    Even better, what if no one could pull Gleick’s quotes about the triviality of the error from his blog, or from his comments at various other blogs? I think Gleick’s supporters would have been happy with their talking point.

    That’s my theory. It is not blow out of the water by the fact that some people did post.

32. Re: sod (May 14 14:43),

    Sod,

    In response to my comment, “But most of us with doubts about the AGW Consensus see use of the moniker “denialist denier” as offensive,” you wrote,

    “i was specifically talking about Morano.”

    My impression (I could be wrong) was that you used “denier” and “denialist” more freely than that. If not, then thanks for the answer. Morano (who was unknown to me until recently) would likely be delighted by your word choice. Certainly he does what he can to polarize the debate. “With Us or Against Us” should be his motto.

33. Lucia,

    I’m going to call faulty-premise on your framing of this as a “PR disaster” or a “firestorm.” You haven’t shown that anyone outside the fairly narrow warmist-vs-skeptic blogosphere even noticed.

    Another faulty premise could be that Gleick wanted the story to go away, but was merely baited by Morano into posting a response out of pique. I can’t read the man’s mind, but my own read of Gleick’s statement was that he saw Morano’s reaction as a golden opportunity to prove his point:

    This is exactly what the scientists are talking about in the letter. Instead of challenging the science with better science, the vocal deniers are grasping at any straw to muddy the waters and confuse the public about the real climate threats we face.

    The letter was about science, the reaction was about Photoshop. You’re certainly well within your rights to see this as an own-goal by the warmist crowd, but I’d hope you can at least understand that – whether you agree or not – many see this as a pretty weak ploy by some to muddy the waters in lieu of a real argument.

34. Re: sod (May 14 14:43),

    i was specifically talking about Morano. he had the story BEFORE (what part of that does lucia not understand?) Gleick’s post.

    I said Morano posted before Gleick. This seems to be what Morano wrote:

    

    Are you aware of more?

35. Lucia,

    Likewise, when I read someone refer to ‘warmers’ as “warmistas” I’m pretty sure they aren’t trying to persuade warmers.

    “Warmer” is itself weird.

    As for ‘septic’: If you’ve got somebody going around talking about world government, saying that the greenhouse effect violates the second Law, that the increase in atmospheric CO2 has nothing to do with man, and so on, they don’t deserve the ‘c’. Is it provocative? Sure. But there are sceptical approaches, and then there is crankery.

36. Paul Daniel Acciavatti

    Gleick’s statement was that he saw Morano’s reaction as a golden opportunity to prove his point:

    You may be right that I am giving Gleick credit for more sense than he actually has. If Gleick thought engaging Morano was a good idea, he was even more foolish than I suggested. In future, he might be wise to read Randy Olson’s blog post #21) MARC MORANO SUMMARY: DO NOT DEBATE (unless you are a professional comedian) which is decorated with this image:
    

    The letter was about science, the reaction was about Photoshop.

    As far as I can see what you call “the” reaction is a post consisting of the image, one sentence and one question at Morano’s blog, linking to a nearly unread blog. Do you think, Gleick wants us to believe “the” (definite article) reaction of the skeptic community involves one known person and one virtual unknown? Really? If “they” number only two, why was the NAS letter was even required?

    As far as I can tell, Gleick make claims about “the” reaction of the skeptic community before the skeptic community had reacted. (Alternatively, most of the community was about to react by ignoring the letter.)

    In any case, I disagree with your notion “the letter” is “about science”. A portion of the letter is about science. Much of the letter seems to be about politics. Whether you support calls to end McCarthy-like actions, discussing those calls is not “about science” it’s “about politics”.

37. Re: carrot eater (May 14 15:20),
    Maybe. But I also use “lukewarmers” and “coolers”. Can you suggest a set of balanced terms? I haven’t been able to think of any.

38. Even Jeff Id thinks some people deserve the denier moniker. John Kerry calls himself a true believer, so I guess he will not be upset by the name-calling.

39. Fake photo or real photo, using polar bears to advance the global warming argument is questionable itself. Argumentum ad Misericordiam as our friend Monckton would put it, or an appeal to pity as the rest of us might say.
    For me it calls to mind the “bears falling from sky” video. Polar bears are marvelous creatures, but I don’t think it’s the place where the serious arguments lie. Does Science magazine think the strongest arguments start with polar bears? I guess it works better than using a picture of the MBH graph.

40. The letter was about science, the reaction was about Photoshop.

    When I asked Gleick how many of his 255 signers had scientific expertise in climate issues, he gave the same dodge.

    “This is a classic, weak strawman argument, and you carefully left out my more important point. This letter was about more than climate: it was about the integrity of science, and about political attacks on scientists. You don’t have to be an atmospheric chemist or climate modeler to object to those, and your “hints” and innuendo that some of these world-class scientists had no right to sign is crap.

    Moreover, I have also clearly explained elsewhere that not all NAS members were ASKED to sign, so pretending, as you do, that “the vast majority” didn’t sign is important is a disturbing misrepresentation, but typical of the kind of arguments made against anthropogenic climate change. The “vast majority” of those asked to sign, signed.”

    So asking how many of the 255 scientists on a letter that makes scientific claims such as that AGW is as firmly established as evolution is a “weak strawman” in Gleick’s world. The Gleickian MO is to duck the question and fling in something irrelevant — exactly what he accuses critics of doing.

    Gleick just went to a subset of the NAS members and associates he thought would sign the petition, barely 10 percent of the total. Even then, not all had climate-related expertise. That isn’t a consensus. It’s a faction.

41. Re: lucia (May 14 15:21),

    That image of Morano’s passport was PHOTOSHOPPED by Randy Olsen!

42. Lucia,
    I think I’ve managed to get through life without ever needing a label for what you call ‘warmers’.

43. I suggest (AGW) “redistributionists” and (non-AGW) “freedom fighters.” At least one of my labels has to stick one of these days.

44. if you want to discuss the names (sceptic vs denialist), you should take a look at the latest new scientist issue. (hadtip to WuWt)
    .
    http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627606.000-living-in-denial-when-a-sceptic-isnt-a-sceptic.html
    .
    but i think that this is derailing this discussion.
    .
    main points:
    .
    1) was the story running before Gleick posted? (yes, it was)
    .
    2) would the story have ran, if Gleick never posted? (highly speculative, but looking at “sceptic” comments from the past, i think the answer is a definitive yes.)
    .
    3) were later post significantly influenced by the Gleick post? (i don t think so. especially WuWt, who is another major spreading point rather obviously was NOT.)
    .
    4) were neutrals or pro-AGW people turned around by this story? (haven t seen any evidence, seriously doubt this)

45. ‘warmers’

    Yes, this is a short and accurate description of people who profess to believe in Global Warming, whether they be lukewarmers, true unscientific believers, climate science establishment devotees, internet propagandists, rich manipulators or whatever.

    Andrew

46. Sod,

    In response to my comment, “But most of us with doubts about the AGW Consensus see use of the moniker “denialist denier” as offensive,” you wrote,

    “i was specifically talking about Morano.”

    My impression (I could be wrong) was that you used “denier” and “denialist” more freely than that. If not, then thanks for the answer. Morano (who was unknown to me until recently) would likely be delighted by your word choice. Certainly he does what he can to polarize the debate. “With Us or Against Us” should be his motto.
    .
    i am using the term in the original sense of the word. in this case, i was really just and only referring to Morano, who obviously is a denialist.
    .
    but yes, in the very first reply to this post, i accuse lucia of being part of the denialist side here. she is in deep denial of the denialist tendency to focus on irrelevant aspects, like this picture.

47. ‘warmers’

    Yes, this is a short and accurate description of people who profess to believe in Global Warming, whether they be lukewarmers, true unscientific believers, climate science establishment devotees, internet propagandists, rich manipulators or whatever.

    Andrew
    .
    the globe is warming. chair-sitter and sun-riser spring to mind as other useful terms, if we follow your moronic advice!

48. My smarter-than-me kids keep telling me DNFTT.

    But this is so funny I can’t help it.

    The key to the whole thing is Morono’s strawman argument, made early Saturday. He asks (rhetorically) “What does the use of a faked photo say about the scientific credibility of the journal in question?”

    As I address in my Huffington Post piece, the real answer (not his answer, or perhaps yours, but the real answer) is “absolutely nothing” at all. Does it say something about how they choose art? Sure.

    But you also are also completely ignorant of the true timeline. You don’t know when I found out about the photo, or how. You don’t know when I call Science about it, or what I said. You don’t know who told me they were going to write about it, or what they said they were going to say, or when they said they were going to post it, and what I did about that. You don’t know when Science found out about the artwork. You don’t know what they thought about it, or did about it, or when. You don’t know how many blogs, or comments, addressed the photo, or what they all said.

    And in the end, the Science essay stands for itself. The reaction about art is a classic subterfuge of the climate-change denial community, a slight-of-hand used by a magician to distract the audience.

    Oh, and count the number of climate books (pro OR con) that use photoshopped images on the cover as art.

49. “the globe is warming. chair-sitter and sun-riser spring to mind as other useful terms, if we follow your moronic advice!”

    sod,

    You forgot sun-setter, ice-melter, graph-gazer, photoshopper, and record-reviser.

    Andrew

50. Bradley J. Fikes

    So asking how many of the 255 scientists on a letter that makes scientific claims such as that AGW is as firmly established as evolution is a “weak strawman” in Gleick’s world.

    Weak-strawman? I noticed Gleick mis-used the word strawman in a response to me at Pielke. I see he’s misussing it in his response to you.

    Someone needs to tell Gleick that a strawman is not a weak or a diversionary argument.

    A strawman consists of misrepresenting your opponents position, which is typically done by either
    a) claiming someone made an argument they did not make (and possibly no one made) or
    b) leaving out elements of their argument to weaken it or
    c) selecting the weakest of the arguments advanced by a field of opponents

    This mis-representation is the “strawman argument”. For more detail see wikipedia

    Generally, after mis-represent a position ( or just make one up out of thin air), those resorting to strawman rebut the misrepresentation (i.e. strawman). This is easy, because the mis-representation is as flimsy as a “strawman”.

    Mind you, like Peter, lots of people use strawman incorrectly. Language evolves; some day, strawman might mean what Peter Gleick thinks it means. Meanwhile, if he’s going to use it in snappy come backs at blogs, it might be wise if he learned how the word is used in courses on rhetoric and logic.

51. Lucia,
    Gleick is nothing if not consistent in accusing those he disagrees with of what he engages in.

    And Gleick has evidently been ego-surfing Google News. Whenever my posts show up there, he’s replied to them. And just now, I made a post and linked to yours.

53. Dr. Gleick’s made the effort to comment here. Thanks! It’s appreciated.

    Comments here are mostly unmoderated, thus do have a tendency to get “hot.” But in reference to DNFTT, they are usually civil and substantive.

    Perhaps you could correct Lucia’s time line, where you think it’s wrong?

54. Bradley Fikes, one could just set “google alerts.”

55. Lucia welcome to the real world. see if you can cope with it LOL re
    mad warmers….

56. c) selecting the weakest of the arguments advanced by a field of opponents
    .
    sorry lucia, but this looks like a perfect example.
    .
    ———————————
    .
    Oh, and count the number of climate books (pro OR con) that use photoshopped images on the cover as art.
    .
    i had this discussion with lucia already. she thinks that there is a massive difference between the cover of a book and a picture in the letter section.
    .
    basically she says that the same picture on the cover would not have caused a outcry among “sceptics” and denialists.
    .
    in the same way the picture wouldn t have caused an outcry, if you hadn t written your post.
    .
    oh well.
    .
    —————————–
    .
    sod,

    You forgot sun-setter, ice-melter, graph-gazer, photoshopper, and record-reviser.

    Andrew
    .
    Andrew, your reply, like always, demonstrates that you do not understand what i said.
    .
    so here for dummys: do not label people for stuff, that everyone does. it is useless. the label “person A believes in fact X” is useless.
    .
    the term “warmist” (aka person who believes that the globe has warmed over the last ~30 years) will include every person on the earth, with some rudimentary climate knowledge and a IQ over 50.

57. “the term “warmist” (aka person who believes that the globe has warmed over the last ~30 years) will include every person on the earth, with some rudimentary climate knowledge and a IQ over 50.”

    ‘cept me, sod. I’m a denialist. 😉

    Andrew

58. If Gleick thought engaging Morano was a good idea, he was even more foolish than I suggested.
    I didn’t say “engaging Morano,” I said (again, in English) “he saw Morano’s reaction as a golden opportunity to prove his point.” But he’s here, you can ask him. Just a guess on my part. However, I’d rather you react to my guess rather than something else.

    As far as I can see what you call “the” reaction is a post consisting of the image, one sentence and one question at Morano’s blog,

    I meant “the reaction” as in “the reaction:” to wit, the words written from Saturday May 8th forward on your timeline.

59. Bradley Fikes, one could just set “google alerts.”

    Point taken, but that’s just automating the process.

60. Re: Peter Gleick (May 14 16:05),

    The key to the whole thing is Morono’s strawman argument, made early Saturday. He asks (rhetorically) “What does the use of a faked photo say about the scientific credibility of the journal in question?”

    I’m sorry, we cross posted. My discussion of your use of strawman was written before I saw your comment. Could you do us all a favor and read the definition of strawman at strawman? When lecturing the great unwashed in blog land, you’re being aware of traditional definition will help you communicate your points more clearly.

    But you also are also completely ignorant of the true timeline. You don’t know when I found out about the photo, or how. You don’t know when I call Science about it, or what I said.

    At Roger Jr’s blog, someone going by the initials “PG” and who people addressed as being you, you wrote this

    And of course, it was stupid of Science to miss the fact that the photo was photoshopped. I emailed them on Saturday to replace it

    Are you not PG? Did you misinform people?

    You don’t know who told me they were going to write about it, or what they said they were going to say, or when they said they were going to post it, and what I did about that.

    I never claimed to know what people might have said to you privately, in person by phone or email.

    I will say it appears that whoever wrote you and whatever they told you they planned to do or say, you posted before they did. Or, am I mistaken? Did someone post something? If yes, I’d be interested in a link to their article. Then we can all learn what they actually did do or said. Thanks in advance.

    You don’t know when Science found out about the artwork. You don’t know what they thought about it, or did about it, or when. You don’t know how many blogs, or comments, addressed the photo, or what they all said.

    In my post, I admitted I did not have all the information. If you would like to fill in the timeline, that would help those of us in the peanut gallery better understand the timeline. Maybe you could fill us in?
    I see indications the image had been fixed appear in updates appearing Roger’s 2nd May 10 post and Randy Olson’s May 10 post. Did they both miss the correction before they posted?

    If they’d already corrected the image by Saturday May 9, it was pretty stupid of you to was a pity you closed your saturday evening post with a sentence that suggested they had not yet found a replacement photo:

    I’m sure the editors at Science can find a real photo that illustrates the same thing.

    Yes. I know you keep repeating this:

    And in the end, the Science essay stands for itself.

    Of course, even if SCIENCE thinks letters of the editor need to be sexed up with images, some readers will ignore these images and the essay can stand for itself. I agree with Andy Revkin when he observed “The letter has a defensive tone that hasn’t served scientists particularly well in the past,…” As many have others noted, as a stand-alone document, the letter is unpersuasive. If you get out a bit you’ll find the content of your letter has been discussed at more than two blogs — and by people who happen to not be Marc Morano. Quite a few negative things have been said.

    Absent your post complaining about all that tons of discussion of the Ursus Bogus image, I suspect few would be discussing the letter. Better luck next time.

    Oh, and count the number of climate books (pro OR con) that use photoshopped images on the cover as art.

    Yet another point not in your favor. It is traditional for cover art on books to mis-represent reality. Cartoons? Photo-shopped images of people? Fairies holding magic wands? A footprint larger than smog spewing smoke stakes? We expect this on book covers.

    It is not traditional for images that are bound to specific factual content — like an individual letter to the editor– to mis-represent reality.

    BTW: The cover photo talking point also underwhelmed Revkin. I leave it to you to hunt down the discussion in his comment thread.

    But this is so funny I can’t help it.

    If you think keeping it up is in your interest, be my guest.

    If you could take a few moments to fill in the time line instead that would be a kindness. I’d especially like you to clarify whether I was mistaken when I jumped to the conclusion that you wrote Science on saturday because you told people that when you posted at Roger’s.

61. Lucia,
    When I became aware of this stupid soap opera (through you), I went to Science and the original picture was still there, but with a correction appended, saying sorry, it’s a bad picture.

    Later on, the picture was replaced with a new one.

    So based on my observation, there was a gap in time between a correction being issued, and a new picture being put in.

    Might also be a function of which version I was looking at – the html or pdf.

62. Re: Paul Daniel Acciavatti (May 14 16:49),

    I didn’t say “engaging Morano,” I said (again, in English) “he saw Morano’s reaction as a golden opportunity to prove his point.

    I don’t see much difference between
    a) trying to use Morano’s reaction as a golden opportunity to get one of your own balls into the basket (i.e score your own point against Morano) and
    c) engaging Morano.

    But you you see a difference, that’s fine. Gleick clearly failed to score his own point. Repeating his talking point isn’t going to help.

    (In fact, I just reread it. Isn’t this a mixed metaphor, grasping at any straw to muddy the waters? At least 20% of academics are anal retentive about this sort of stuff. Did none of them catch that? )

63. Carrot–
    I went to Science and the original picture was still there, but with a correction appended, saying sorry, it’s a bad picture.
    Thanks Carrot.

    That’s consistent with fixing actions occurring on May 10 when I posted. It would also explain why neither Roger nor Randy knew of the correction when they posted on May 10.

    I also recall the message seemed to change. I think at one point, the message said the image was changed in the html but had not yet been changed in the pdf.

    May 10 was Monday. Assuming Peter emailed them Saturday, they may not have been able to fixed until Monday. Science may be lightly staffed on Sat&Sun, and I doubt anyone was going to send out an APB for staff to work overtime on Saturday. (Of course, I will admit I don’t know for sure Science did not learn of the issue on Friday.)

64. Zeke Hausfather (Comment#42873) May 14th, 2010 at 1:26 pm

    This still seems like a lot of time spent discussing something fairly trivial.

    Quite, two topics on it already. Lucia must have nothing of substance to offer.

65. Since most of the old leaders have been too tainted by Climategate, I think Peter Gleick is just the new leader of the AGW advocates / alarmists / science photoshoppers / 10,000 dollar toilet seat science promoters (okay let’s settle for fakes… or fake victims) I also think that the editor or editors of Science were just marching in step after being threatened into cherry picking studies for publication as was so clearly exposed by so many Climategate emails.
    So how does it feel Pete? All those well laid plans and tireless hours spent creating that list. Peter’s great coup of the Climate Science community was inadvertently shot down by a fake picture.
    Oh, and I wonder just how authentic that list of scientists is too… how many of those folks are practicing climate scientists, how many are practicing scientists, how many think they’re practicing scientists from their dream like state there at the old folks home, how many read the letter, how many are really students, or former students who went to rehab… or are dead?

66. “Quite, two topics on it already. Lucia must have nothing of substance to offer.”

    bugs,

    But you keep comin’ round. Huh. You must be a Blackboard addict.

    I suppose either Lucia has cast a spell on you or like any addict, the payoff ain’t what it used to be… but you still can’t say no.

    Andrew

67. > This still seems like a lot of time spent discussing something fairly trivial.
    > Lucia must have nothing of substance to offer.

    Commenters noting that the post they’re repeatedly commenting on is on a topic not worth thinking about. Much less commenting on.

68. Commenters noting that the post they’re repeatedly commenting on is on a topic not worth thinking about. Much less commenting on.

    I think it’s the climate-blog equivalent of celebrity gossip. It’s completely pointless, but people will talk about it until the next pointless thing comes up.

69. At least 20% of academics are anal retentive about this sort of stuff.

    “At least 20%?” Why “20%?” Are you referring to a survey of some sort, or did you just mean “Many..” and used an integer ’cause it sounds better? What if only 19% of academics know how to write something that doesn’t suck?

    I don’t see much difference between
    a) trying to use Morano’s reaction as a golden opportunity to get one of your own balls into the basket (i.e score your own point against Morano) and
    c) engaging Morano.

    Really? Without mentioning him by name, when there was already a number of other people pointing to the image as an issue, with Morano coming after ABC… just because Morano mentioned it, responding to it is “engaging Morano?” Getting “one of your own balls in the basket” is “scoring your own point against Morano?” Are you saying that Morano is now proxy for the entire skeptic blogosphere? Imagine if Gleick or Gavin Schmidt asserted that. It’s as if you’re saying it’s a “machine.”

    also, what is option (b)? At least 67% of people who make lists use sequential lettering. 😉

    But you you see a difference, that’s fine. Gleick clearly failed to score his own point. Repeating his talking point isn’t going to help.

    Why? Why exactly do you assert that “Gleick clearly failed?” Because you’re not convinced? That’s not especially evidence of anything, and repeating the same assertion hardly makes your point…

70. Folks who usually have a lot to say don’t wanna say much on this topic of Science Magazine publishing a FAKED photo of a stranded Polar Bear which accompanied a letter of 250 (yet unconfirmed) scientists on global warming.

71. MikeC,
    Their affiliations are given in the SI. It would not take much effort at all to check that they’re all alive, and members of the NAS. No, they aren’t all climate scientists; probably most of them aren’t. I don’t know how many of them are retired/emeritus, but that can be checked pretty easily. You don’t have to like their opinion if you don’t want to, but if you’re going to repeatedly doubt who they even are, you may as well put in half an hour and see for yourself.

72. Carrot eater, if you have been by to take their pulse then I’ll take your word for it… whew… inagine that… they couldn’t find 250 climate scientists to sign that letter? Does that mean that there’s no more consensus? Or are they intimidated by the possibility of being viewed kinda like lawyers, used car salesmen and politicians?

73. wait, when I read the letter all I saw was initials and last names… please link the SI with their affiliations.

74. … and where are all these guys, why aren’t they about defending Peter Gleick… or perhaps they signed just to get him off their backs… every time I think about it things get more and more fishy…

75. Lucia suggests an alternative approach that could have been taken by Gleick and/or Science described as:
    “Whoops! The lead author discovered the polar bear image was photo-shopped and informed SCIENCE. We all consider this a serious blunder, it’s been fixed!”

    I have had much this thought about a number of other missteps in published pro-AGW statements/papers/emails/comments.
    It seems this approach is never taken by pro-AGW folks. I can’t think of a single example. I happen to agree with Lucia that the follow-on had this approach been taken in this case would have been different, not zero, but better for that side.

    Can anyone think of a single example where this approach has been tried? I regard is as an untested hypothetical, and I think the pro-AGW side would win over a lot of people who are somewhere in the middle and open to rational discussions and arguments, if they would give it a try. The 2035 glacier melting date would be a perfect example, but even though this date was a manifest blunder, I can’t remember anyone who is strongly pro-AGW saying it was just a blunder. Instead, Pachauri ridiculed the real glacier guys who said it was wrong, it’s still up on the IPCC web site as noted above, and it’s usually called by a pro-AGW writer a minor, insignificant typo, if it is acknowledged at all.

    It’s a blunder, it’s serious, we fixed it. Why is that so hard?

76. MikeC (Comment#42949) May 14th, 2010 at 6:05 pm

    Folks who usually have a lot to say don’t wanna say much on this topic of Science Magazine publishing a FAKED photo of a stranded Polar Bear which accompanied a letter of 250 (yet unconfirmed) scientists on global warming.

    LOL.

77. Re: Paul Daniel Acciavatti (May 14 18:05),

    At least 20% of academics are anal retentive about this sort of stuff.

    “At least 20%?” Why “20%?” Are you referring to a survey of some sort, or did you just mean “Many..”

    No Paul; it’s not a survey. It’s a S.W.A.G based on my experience. Have you ever sat in a faculty meeting discussing writing a joint document? I base my estimate on that. Also, I would not call 20% many; I would call it ” a small fraction”. But 0.2* 255 = 51. Even if the number is as low as 5%, and even if the 5% are only “detailed oriented” rather than “anal retentive” with respect to writing. I’m surprised the mixed metaphor made it into the document.

    with Morano coming after ABC… just because Morano mentioned it, responding to it is “engaging Morano?”

    Yes. I doubt Peter was engaging ABCNewsWatch a nearly unread blogspot blog who has an Alexa rank of nearly 2 millions. I could be wrong. But it’s a very low traffic rank. If Peter would have to be a moron to respond to them.

    Why? Why exactly do you assert that “Gleick clearly failed?” Because you’re not convinced?

    No. Because I’m sure Gleick provided not one scrap of evidence for the point you suggested he wished to prove, is that the focus on the ice-bear photo proved:

    “… vocal deniers are grasping at any straw to muddy the waters and confuse the public about the real climate threats we face. ”

    He provided no evidence the focus even existed (and though I searched it seems none existed). So, only those who already assumed vocal deniers are doing this would believe the statement on reading it. No one could be converted to the idea — that is, he would have failed to convince anyone. (See definition. )

78. Re: Tom Wiita (May 14 18:32),

    I have had much this thought about a number of other missteps in published pro-AGW statements/papers/emails/comments.
    It seems this approach is never taken by pro-AGW folks.

    I think you are mistaken. GISS has begun to do it with GISSTemp and NOAA does it. I think GISS learned roughly a year and a half ago Russian temperature data for October had not been updated from September and the October anomaly was ridiculous.

79. Re: MikeC (May 14 18:29),

    Carrot eater, if you have been by to take their pulse then I’ll take your word for it…

    I’d be stunned if even one of the 255 scientists was fictional or if even one listed did not sign.

80. MikeC:

    The affiliations:
    http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/data/328/5979/689/DC1/1
    (I’m hoping it’s not paywalled)

    they couldn’t find 250 climate scientists to sign that letter?

    It wasn’t represented as a collection of climate scientists. It’s a collection of NAS members.

    Quickly looking through the names, signers who work on climate-related matters:

    Wallace Broecker (who in other contexts might be somebody the sceptics might hold up, as he thinks the MWP was global, and we all know the fascination sceptics have with the MWP)

    Anny Cazenave
    Paul Crutzen
    Kerry Emanuel
    Kurt Lambeck maybe
    Syukuro Manabe, grandfather and father of the models, and still working, I think
    John Schnellnhuber
    Carl Wunsch

    I probably missed a few, and I think there are biologists in there, so there might be WG2 types in there.

    and where are all these guys, why aren’t they about defending Peter Gleick…

    They probably have better things to do with their time than argue on the internet about stupid things like the photo that Science grabbed off the internet. Again, they put their opinion out there. You don’t have to like it, but to start reading in conspiracies into the letter itself, you’re headed into crank territory.

81. Re: MikeC (May 14 18:32),

    Commenter ‘Baco’ at Roger Pielke Jr.’s blog has already addressed your questions about the signers. A labor of love.

    So far, by my count, and with the kindest criteria, at least 72.9% of the signatories (PDF) cannot possibly be involved professionally in climate science

    As far as the photoshopped picture: interpretations as expected, all around, given how polarized AGW issues are. But we knew that. This comment at Pielke’s by Stephen Pruett is the sort of argument that I’d prefer that the authors of the NAS letter engage with.

82. MikeC

    “Scientists” resorting to signing whiny letters, when they could be presenting evidence, means there’s no evidence to present.

    Andrew

83. GISS has begun to do it with GISSTemp

    Admitting and fixing errors found by sceptics? When the errors are real, they get fixed. McIntyre has found a couple real ones; the y2k one in GISTEMP probably being most prominent (though in typical fashion, judging from blog comments, many lay sceptics have been confused into thinking the correction is much more significant than it actually is).

    And for whoever was ranting about the WG2 glacier date thing: it was admitted by everybody and their mother that this was wrong, soon after the story broke. I’m just not sure why it took so long for it to break (note it wasn’t sceptic bloggers who noticed it). Graham Cogley got the ball going, but a reviewer way back when also noticed errors, but nothing came of it.

    The report from India that Pachauri mocked didn’t reference the mistake in the IPCC report, so you can’t say the mistake was pointed out there and ignored by Pachauri.

84. Lucia
    “I’d be stunned if even one of the 255 scientists was fictional or if even one listed did not sign.”

    Not me… after what I read in those emails (and that’s just icing on the cake) I’m almost expecting to wake up to learn that they passed the petition around some ACORN drug rehab center somewhere.

85. Carrot

    McIntyre has found a couple real ones; the y2k one in GISTEMP probably being most prominent (though in typical fashion, judging from blog comments, many lay sceptics have been confused into thinking the correction is much more significant than it actually is).

    This admission grudging, so it’s not really an example where GISS admitted the issue with grace. I don’t think there is any evidence McIntyre thought the change is more significant that it is, though GISS communications kept emphasizing the errors insignificance, providing counter arguments to things SteveM never claimed. But in any event, that error and fix was also longer ago than I suggested.

    I was thinking more along the lines of last month when the Finland data was a bit messed up. That got changed rather quietly with no big stink about people finding the error before the change being jesters etc. GISS just changed GISSTemp and explained why at their site. It was a small glitch which lead to a slight revision in April 2010’s compute anomaly. It was handled with much more grace that some previous errors.

    The calmness on GISS and NOAA’s part prevented the sorts of escalation where we go from 1 blog noticing the problem, to 2 blogs, to RC posting an excuse, then 4 blogs posting to tell RC the are wrong then…..

86. Carrot, that was a very informative link, congratulations, you actually impressed me. I am now convinced that the signatures were not collected at an ACORN drug rehab center.

87. MikeC–
    Ok, if you are going to be a total cynic and assume Gleick is sufficiently dishonest to just make names, consider this:

    Membership in the NAS isn’t super secret. If any of those names are not members of the NAS, we’d probably have already read about it on climatedepot. If Gleick listed a member of the NAS who didn’t sign, he’d risk angering a member of the NAS. He’d risk having them step forward to say they hadn’t signed.

88. Amac, Clowning aside, I understood the letter and who signed it. It was an attempt to get some scientists to sign something and represent it as something else. As for addressing Pruett, The AGW supporters will get too much peer pressure to not have the debate or explore questions raised by skeptics.

89. I’m sorry Lucia, I was certain that a schollar of your … your…. your…. uh…. brains, yes that’s it, would understand the context

90. … on the other hand, the way things have been going for AGW lately… it was almost a given

91. Re: “Lucia must have nothing of substance to offer.”

    Clearly the writer meant to type “bugs” instead of Lucia!

92. Say Andrew,

    We “Deniers” need to take some control of the spin.

    How about……Deniers – We’re the people who want a genuine scientific debate.

93. Robert, Andrew–
    Do we now have 2 self proclaimed deniers? Wow!

94. I don’t think there is any evidence McIntyre thought the change is more significant that it is, though GISS communications kept emphasizing the errors insignificance, providing counter arguments to things SteveM never claimed.

    I don’t know what Mc claimed, but I do know that to this day, a lot of blog commenters think the bug was global, not just US, or that global temps in 1934 were as warm as 1998, not just US. Why they get confused in this way, I don’t know. I’ve noticed Watts playing a little loose with US/global, but I don’t know if McI does.

    As for grace in that one: can you document lack of grace? GISS tracked down the error, fixed it, and gave credit.

    I was thinking more along the lines of last month when the Finland data was a bit messed up. That got changed rather quietly with no big stink about people finding the error before the change being jesters etc.

    Whatever came of that? I wasn’t really following it.

    In any case, the GISS web page is becoming better. They are explaining/documenting more stuff.

95. Re: carrot eater (May 14 20:01),

    I don’t know what Mc claimed, but I do know that to this day, a lot of blog commenters think the bug was global, not just US, or that global temps in 1934 were as warm as 1998, not just US.

    Some people may be confused– yes. I think GISS’s failure to actually echo what Mc said made things worse.

    One of the dangers of rebutting an argument about the “bug” that was not alleged by the person who found the “bug” (i.e. SteveM) , is some readers will come to believe the argument GISS rebutted was advanced by SteveM and that the claims in that argument are true. During that period, GISS & Hansen frequently wrote posts explaining that the effect on the global temperatures was small, while SteveM was discussing US temps, the code and quite a few arcane details.

    Of course, then everyone conceded SteveM was right, so a few who read the GISS/Hansen rebuttals may have concluded that the strawman GISS/Hansen rebutted was proven right: That is the bug affected global temperatures a lot!

    Mind you, some people can get confused all on their own. But still, I think in that instance, GISS may have contributed to the confusion, which, may well persist to this day.

    Whatever came of that? I wasn’t really following it.

    GISS reloaded the numbers and recomputed. It made a tiny difference in the anomaly. (I can’t remember the magnitude. 0.01 C?) After the recomputed, their numbers matched Clear Climate Codes. The reason for the initial discrepancy is that GISS had loaded data before the Finland error had been found and fixed; Nick loaded it after. Evidently, the error was discovered independently at blogs and.. NCDC(?) somewhere else. (Zeke knows.)

    I think in this instance, no one posting explanations of how the error “didn’t matter”, really worked for GISS and NOAA.

    After all, if someone had posted to ‘explain’ that they can’t be expected to check, that no one died blah, blah, blah, that post will necessarily trigger responses like: Look, you post on day N. Can’t you add the step of checking? Can’t you… &etc. None of this benefits GISS. Fix, post the errata, wait to see if a firestorm ensues. If no firestorm ensues, pat yourself on the back. If a firestorm ensues, then you can complain. But fanning your own flames? Not a good idea.

96. Lucia, I’m frankly stunned that you defended the “20%.” I was lightly ribbing you: you don’t know if it’s 20%, or 5%, or 80%. I can’t imagine that you’d disagree that using a solid number when you mean “a small fraction” is absolutely misleading. I’d assert that it’s far more misleading to say something like “20% of x believe y” as a firm assertion in the text of a document than it would be to place some silly picture along with a letter to a journal.

    If you don’t agree, kindly explain why.

97. But still, I think in that instance, GISS may have contributed to the confusion, which, may well persist to this day.

    Even if McI wasn’t confusing his flock about US/global, I think people were confused, so GISS needed to make that clear.

    GISS reloaded the numbers and recomputed.

    Meaning, the error was in the v2.mean file. What I’m curious about is how the error got there. Are the Finns writing their CLIMATs by hand?

    I think in this instance, no one posting explanations of how the error “didn’t matter”, really worked for GISS and NOAA.

    Or… CLIMATs have errors in them sometimes. That’s why the NCDC does QC. So they’re used to fixing this sort of error, I think; no big deal, nothing to be pre-emptively defensive about. Just this time, some bloggers noticed it as well.

98. Membership in the NAS isn’t super secret. If any of those names are not members of the NAS, we’d probably have already read about it on climatedepot. If Gleick listed a member of the NAS who didn’t sign, he’d risk angering a member of the NAS. He’d risk having them step forward to say they hadn’t signed.

    Of course Gleick wasn’t so stupid as to falsify names. He went to a small subset of the NAS he knew agreed with his agenda. That way, Gleick could accurately, but misleadingly, say the vast majority of those he asked signed.

    I’ve challenged Gleick to discuss his personal political views on several occasions. He has always declined, which is a sign of deception and cowardice. I’m willing to admit to my Libertarian views, and discuss how I try to make sure I’m not misleading people in my reporting.

    Gleick won’t discuss his own left-wing views, because he wants to pretend he’s just an objective scientist. (Yes, that’s “ad hominem”, according to Gleick, while he has no shame in likening global warming “denialists” to Nazis and Stalin.)

    Everyone has personal biases that need to be taken into account in judging whether they are being fair and balanced. Gleick’s left-wing political biases are screamingly obvious, but he refuses to discuss them.

    Gleick is either ashamed of his political views, or is trying to pull a fast one on the public. I report, you decide.

99. Supporting Lucia’s analysis, Google news lists:

    146 articles following the original Nature article/blog:
    ‘Stop McCarthy-like attacks on climate science’
    Nature.com (blog) – ‎May 7, 2010‎
    Climate science, say the signatories, now falls into this category. Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute and corresponding author of the letter, …

    It reports 119 articles tracking Gleick
    “Scientists Unite Against Climate Skeptics
    New York Times (blog) – Sindya N. Bhanoo – ‎May 10, 2010‎
    “It’s a witch hunt,” Dr. Gleick said in an interview. “Let’s have a debate about the science; these attacks on climate science are not based on science, …

100. so at the risk of boring readers

     Yawn. The only thing that is interesting about this whole discussion is that it confirms what I already know: Lucia is a lukewarmer when it comes to the science, but a denialist when it comes to the rest.

     How about reporting GISTEMP’s April 2010 anomaly? Last 12 months have an average of 0.657. Would that be the highest ever? Good thing a La Niña is developing.

101. Lucia-

     Interesting post. One addition to your timeline: I had posted on the letter discussing its substance on May 7th, 9:37AM here:

     http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/05/how-many-choices-do-we-have.html

     ABCNewswatch showed up in the comments later that day with a link to the short blog post on the image. I did not post on the image at that time thinking that it was a non-issue.

     The next day when I saw Revkin’s post, Olson’s reaction and Gleick’s reaction, I put up the discussion of the gang who couldn’t shoot straight. You are correct to say that my focus was on the response to the image, not the image.

     But contrary to Gleick’s assertion, I had focused on the letter’s substance in an earlier post.

102. I linked to the ABC News Watch posting on the fake photo on Friday, May 7, 9:08pm Central Time.

     http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2010/05/abc-news-watch-fake-photo-used-in.html

103. Some people may be confused– yes. I think GISS’s failure to actually echo what Mc said made things worse.
     .
     sorry lucia, but your opinion on all this stuff is completely biased and has zero merit.
     .
     i have yet to see a single piece of evidence, taht agreement with what sceptics say, will swing either “sceptcis”, denialists or neutrals.
     .
     you have provided absolutely ZERO evidence of your two main claims:
     .
     would the “sceptic” reaction have been different without the Gleick post? (the WuWt post clearly says NO.
     .
     was any neutral (pro-AGW) position changed by the Gleick post? (NO again)
     .

104. Lucia

     This is the proper way to ‘attack’ climate science

     http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2009JD012960.shtml

     This is also proof that climate scientists are perfectly capable of communicating. What they’re not so good at, it’s the political game.

     Perhaps you could attempt the same, rather than these stupid ‘oh the climate scientists are stupid’ style attacks. They’re cheap and nasty.

105. ‘is’, not ‘ it’s ‘ sorry

106. See, everyone is doing it

     http://rabett.blogspot.com/2010/05/unto-us-paper-is-given-unto-us.html

     Couldn’t be too hard, given the inability they have to communicate. Perhaps you could show them the proper way to communicate?

107. Neven

     “Good thing a La Niña is developing.”

     Hmmm… That means this is probably going to be a particularly active Atlantic Hurricane season (well, according to Weather Underground). Sea temps are far higher than 2005 and 1998 in the Atlantic… Bad signs.

108. Daniel

     Lucia, I’m frankly stunned that you defended the “20%.” I was lightly ribbing you: you don’t know if it’s 20%, or 5%, or 80%.

     Defended? I said it’s a SWAG. Do you know what that is? (Scientific, Wild Ass Guess.) Anyway, your a bit fuzzy about the difference between “At least 20%?”” and “is 20%”. Since you want to interpret statements about the fraction of groups “x” who is anal retentive, if it turns out to be anywhere from 20%- 80%, “at least 20%” is true.

     I’d assert that it’s far more misleading to say something like “20% of x believe y” as a firm assertion in the text of a document than it would be to place some silly picture along with a letter to a journal.

     No. I think the fact my sentence doesn’t end with “believe y” but “are anal retentive”. This matters because the diagnosis of “anal retentive” is an opinion.

     But, with respect to deceptiveness, any mistatement in a scholarly journal is more likely than a mistake in a comment in a blog post. The context where something is said affects whether people can be mislead for many reasons. Three are: 1) The journal is seen as more authoritive than a blog comment, 2) The journal is more widely read than any comment at a blog and 3) Blog comments have give and take.

     We can all immediately discuss whether or not we think my opinion about the fraction of academics who are anal retentive about copy-editing is correct. Similarly, a mistatement by “author X” appearing in journal is more misleading than a mistatement by the author “X” when he is having a beer with his buddies in the local bar.

     Now: To prove my point about “anal retentive” and the effect of discussing things in blog comments, we can also debate the threshold above which one becomes ‘anal retentive’. So, you’ve probably been to college and mixed with academics in other settings. You may have sat in faculty meeting trying to write 1-2 paragraph course descriptions, craft ad for a new faculty member &etc. In my experience, if the group consists of approximately 6 faculty members, at least two will get in a stubborn debate over whether we should use “he”, “they” or “s/he”. (Oddly, the effect vanishes with much larger groups because they generally aren’t writing. ) I consider this behavior anal retentive. So, based on my experience, my Scientific Wild Ass Guess (SWAG) is “at least 20%”.
     What’s yours?

109. Re: carrot eater (May 14 20:32),

     Or… CLIMATs have errors in them sometimes.

     Yes. But what I’m trying to say is that if a visible science blogger had written a long defense immediately after other bloggers found the error in tone that made it sound like people were wrong to notice the error or discuss it, then the situation would escalate in a way that would not make the scientist look good. The Finnish error– wherever it occurred (and I do think it was the CLIMAT data)– was handled well. In the past, some others have not.

     The key difference is that no-one prominent wrote self-serving sounding posts about the Finnish CLIMAT glitch.

110. Neven–

     How about reporting GISTEMP’s April 2010 anomaly? Last 12 months have an average of 0.657. Would that be the highest ever? Good thing a La Niña is developing.

     Oh. The Robo-alert has triggered yet. Did GISSTemp report yesterday?

111. Re: Nathan (May 15 03:57),

     Your link to “Rabbet Run” goes to a description of how Eil Rabbet assembled a group of collaborators online, and their rebuttal to “Gerlich and Tscheuschner 2009” has just appeared in the peer-reviewed “International Journal of Modern Physics B.”

     Neat!

     The article itself is behind a paywall, but the abstract seems very good.

     As a non-physicist, non-climatologist, I it is only by chance that I recognize “Gerlich and Tscheuschner.” The pseudonymous blogger at scienceofdoom has been very critical of their work, suggesting that for G&T’s arguments to be correct, revisions to the workings of thermodynamic processes would be required.

     Positing implicit violations of the Second Law of Thermodynamics in order to get a climate model to work: it’s an outlandish approach.

     Some arguments against the AGW Consensus are put forth by people who disbelieve in scientific concepts that can fairly be described as “settled” (the laws of thermodynamics would fall in this category).

     A different set of people make a different class of objections. Their position is that aspects of the Consensus understanding of Global Warming should not be seen as “settled.” The pastiche of Consensus claims should be subjected to the contentious, processes of scientific discussion. In normal science, validation comes–may come–at the end of that process. Never at the beginning.

     As a blogger, Mr. Rabbet is often vitriolic towards the second set of dissenters from Consensus dogma. If he has been under the mistaken assumption that most scientifically-literate skeptics have positions akin to G&T’s, his publication may have the added benefit of clarifying his thinking on this point.

112. Everyone knows a picture is worth a thousand words. In this case the authors tried to use a phony picture as irrefutable eye witness evidence that Polar Bears are facing extinction.

     Their reason? There is no other good evidence that Arctic sea ice levels, or Polar Bear populations are declining.

     The Science authors were trying to perpetuate a fraud. Equally all the bloggers who weighed in to minimise the damage to the Warmer cause are shown by their actions to be part of the great global warming conspiracy.

     And isn’t it wrong to say it wouldn’t matter that Science was caught in a lie as long as it quickly covered up? A lie is very revealing.

113. Re: Roger Pielke Jr. (May 15 01:45),

     You are correct to say that my focus was on the response to the image, not the image.

     But contrary to Gleick’s assertion, I had focused on the letter’s substance in an earlier post.

     Thanks for confirming my suspicion that you would were responding to Gleick and Revkin’s reaction to the image and not the image itself and remining readers that you had discussed the letter itself.

114. Lucia

     Yes. But what I’m trying to say is that if a visible science blogger had written a long defense immediately after other bloggers found the error in tone that made it sound like people were wrong to notice the error or discuss it,

     Noticing an error is fine. Noticing a minor error and extrapolating to “therefore the surface record is completely unreliable, and it’s all fraud, and we should fire everybody everywhere, and start over from scratch” is not fine. Taking something that isn’t even an error, and extrapolating to there is worse yet.

     It’s the sense of proportion that is objectionable, not the noticing of real errors (however rarely the sceptic bloggers actually find real errors).

115. Re: AMac #42995 (May 15 05:39),

     Nathan,

     This is a follow-up to your highlighting of blogger Eli Rabbet’s rebuttal of the fundamentally-flawed “Gerlich and Tscheuschner 2009” paper.

     At recent thread at Pielke Jr.’s blog, the first 31 comments offer spirited challenges to Roger’s support of the AGW Consensus presentation of the “Divergence Problem” to the public.

     As a reminder, the Divergence Problem is about the way that a select subset of tree-rings serve as a rough proxy of temperature, from the late 19th century until about 1960. From 1960 to the present, the tree ring record diverges from the temperature record.

     Read through those 31 comments. There is no hint that their authors seek ad hoc revisions of the Second Law–or of evolutionary theory, or of estimates of the age of the Earth.

     Are Eli Rabbet, Peter Gleick, and other prominent pro-Consensus scientist-bloggers able to distinguish between the criticisms of G&T’s on the one hand, and the criticisms of Roger’s correspondents on the other?

     My own SWAG is that the answer is, “No.”

     This tendency of Consensus scientists to dismiss potentially-valid criticisms by scientifically-literate people is a major problem, in my opinion.

     The particulars of climate researchers’ predictions are advertised as “settled science” by the Consensus, but they are not. This failure to follow the established procedures of normal science marks the Consensus position as “not trustworthy,” in my opinion.

     This opinion has been reinforced by the text of the last week’s letter, and the exchanges that have followed.

116. I have to agree that this PG Ursa Bogus affair is a tempest in a teacup. However, I would state that that is because the letter was a “fluff” piece. As Lucia and others pointed out, a whiny, sympathy begging non-statement. If this is the best NAS has to offer to end the political debate, it is hard to imagine a limit to the scorn that they deserve. It is interesting that the comments, on both sides of the issue, written in blog comments, are better reading than that of 255 distinguished colleagues in a letter in SCIENCE.

117. AMac,
     While not every sceptic out there is prone to G&T type nonsense, there are enough of them that it is worth rebutting.

     Just because you didn’t see that nonsense on a comment thread about paleo proxies doesn’t tell you that it isn’t prevalent. I’d say it shows up fairly often.

     It seems like the sceptics around here don’t like it when scientists or bloggers address points raised by the crazier sceptics. But yet they exist, and are quite very common. Maybe in Amac’s or Lucia’s dream world, scientists would only discuss the issues particularly interesting to them, the self-styled reasonable or nuanced sceptics. But that’s ignorant of the reality of the blogosphere. That said, Amac’s main interest seems to be Tiljander, which has been discussed to death already anyway. And beyond doing model-data comparisons, I can’t figure out what Lucia’s actual substantive interest is.

118. Carrot–

     Noticing a minor error and extrapolating to “therefore the surface record is completely unreliable, and it’s all fraud,

     Of course that’s reaction doesn’t make sense. But even though it doesn’t, sometimes, it’s wise for someone like Gavin to respond quickly and sometimes,it’s wise to wait. When errors are found, the best response is “(Swallow hard), Thanks for letting us know. We take these things seriously. Let me check.” Or if you already know “(Swallow hard), Thanks for letting us know. We take these things seriously. We’d already found it and people have been assigned to check, I’ll let you know what happened when I know what happened. ”

     Then wait. Then, after it’s fixed give one explanation.

     I’m not saying I always manage to do it when I make errors. But when I don’t, I know I responded sub-optimally.

     Science magazine actually did this during the photo-montage kerfuffle. Gleick did not. (Gleick’s response could probably be used as an example of how to do everything wrong.)

119. Carrot

     It seems like the sceptics around here don’t like it when scientists or bloggers address points raised by the crazier sceptics. But yet they exist, and are quite very common.

     Why do you say I don’t like it when scientists or bloggers address those points? I have no objection to Eli writing a rebuttal to G&T or similar things. I only object when people suggest I’m required to do it. I don’t think it’s particularly important to rebut that, and I’m not interested in bothering. That said, I’m perfectly content to see that Eli is doing it and let him have at it.

     I do mind when scientists or bloggers insinuate that addressing something like G&T means they have addressed the all skeptic arguments and done so “over and over again”, sometimes even adding a “sigh” into the prose.

120. Re: carrot eater #43004 (May 15 07:29),

     These remarks aren’t up to your usual standards, in my opinion.

     While not every sceptic out there is few scientifically-literate skeptics are prone to G&T type nonsense, there are enough of them that it is worth rebutting.

     Agreed–with the modest modification I added. That explains my response to reading the abstract of Halpern et al., “Neat!”

     It seems like the sceptics around here don’t like it when scientists or bloggers address points raised by the crazier sceptics… Maybe in Amac’s or Lucia’s dream world, scientists would only discuss the issues particularly interesting to them, the self-styled reasonable or nuanced sceptics. But that’s ignorant of the reality of the blogosphere.

     I think this is a reading-comprehension issue. Can you offer any substance to back up your impression of what I “don’t like” or what constitutes my “dream world”? (I won’t speak for Lucia or other people “around here.”)

     The implication of your turn of phrase “self-styled reasonable or nuanced sceptics” is that, in reality, there are no reasonable or nuanced skeptics. If that’s not what you meant: what, then? Can you express yourself more plainly?

     That said, Amac’s main interest seems to be Tiljander, which has been discussed to death already anyway.

     Your comment contains the first use of “Tiljander” on this thread. I’m not sure why you bring it up here; can you explain? If you believe your arguments on prior threads offer a compelling defense of Mann08’s use of those proxies, why not organize your thoughts and write a guest post on the subject? The offer is open.

121. Lucia,
     Your assumption is that the screaming children will stop screaming if you pretty much ignore them for a while. While this may eventually work with children, I don’t think it works with large chunks of the sceptic crowd.

     This also doesn’t help you with cases where there isn’t actually any error.

122. “Maybe in Amac’s or Lucia’s dream world, scientists would only discuss the issues particularly interesting to them, the self-styled reasonable or nuanced sceptics.”

     CE,

     People are allowed to have their own opinions and interests, FYI. I know in your totalitarian groupthink AGW world, such independence is forbidden, but out here we still have some freedom to ask our own questions. If you don’t like it, go watch PBS.

     Andrew

123. Carrot–

     Your assumption is that the screaming children will stop screaming if you pretty much ignore them for a while. While this may eventually work with children,

     No. My assumption is if people are not yet screaming and you start slapping them because you anticipate they will scream, the people who have been slapped will start screaming. Others who merely witness the slapping will start telling you to stop.

     If you interpret people telling you to stop as “screaming”, and tell them they are wrong to tell you to stop slapping people around, even louder screaming will ensue.

     Some people “out there” have a tendency to view any report of any error as “screaming” even when all that has been done so far is to report that an error was detected. Look at this Gleick incident. At most any “screaming” he inferred were very bland posts noting the error and attaching a rhetorical question. But Gleick inflated this with his strident post about conspiracy theories.

124. Amac

     Agreed–with the modest modification I added.

     With that modification, are you saying the non-scientifically literate sceptics are not worth rebutting?

     I think this is a reading-comprehension issue.

     Actually, it is, to an extent. I misread your previous post. But I think the point still stands with Lucia, who has complained about scientists spending time refuting straw men, when in fact the internet is crawling with people repeating the things being refuted.

     The implication of your turn of phrase “self-styled reasonable or nuanced sceptics” is that, in reality, there are no reasonable or nuanced skeptics. If that’s not what you meant: what, then? Can you express yourself more plainly?

     I’m just reflecting the distinction you are drawing. You talk about scientifically literate sceptics, and place yourself in that group. So there you go.

     And yes, I very much do agree that there is a gradient of reasonable scepticism. When you get to the one end, you actually get back to the scientists doing the work. Believe it or not, they do re-examine, second-guess, and strive to improve their understanding.

     Your comment contains the first use of “Tiljander” on this thread. I’m not sure why you bring it up here; can you explain?

     You brought up a discussion about divergence, as possibly an example of things you’d like to see discussed. From there to Tiljander is but a small step. I was looking for examples of what the scientifically-literate sceptics would like to see discussed.

125. Lucia,

     The problem is, they scream whether you slap them or not.

     Take, for example, our old friend EM Smith, and the resulting SPPI publication. All sorts of screaming, and there wasn’t even an error there to scream about. What do you do, not slap them, and hope it doesn’t get bigger? Heck, you even hosted some of that slapping yourself, though Zeke was careful to not be insulting in his tone (which I wouldn’t have bothered with). Maybe that made Zeke more effective than I would have been. I’m unsure if the overall effort has been successful; I guess I don’t see the exact issue of station-drop coming up in comments very often. On the other hand, you still do see the Lizas saying the whole thing is corrupted, when in fact it’s been shown that anyman can reproduce it for himself.

126. Carrot

     The problem is, they scream whether you slap them or not.

     Even if this is so, it’s wise post-pone any slapping until after the scream. Of course Zeke is wise to to be insulting.

127. Lucia

     I only object when people suggest I’m required to do it.

     And I object to the resulting lack of proportion. You spend a good many words worrying about how people might be subliminally misled by a picture of a polar bear. I take a look around the internet, and see rather more egregious misleading going on.

128. I think that comparing skeptics to screaming children illustrates nicely the attitude of Warmers.

     Warmers are The Parental Authority.

     Skeptics are ignorant children who are too loud and need to be slapped when they cry.

     Guess who gets to do the slapping?

     Scary.

     Andrew

129. Even if this is so, it’s wise post-pone any slapping until after the scream.

     Your whole point here comes to your timeline of the Gleick thing, and not counting a Morano post as a scream (or at least, something that anybody should just ignore, on the face of it).

     Since I’m not going to take time to re-examine your timeline, I can’t comment on whether Gleick was fast on the trigger. But I’d say in most any other case, the screaming had already commenced before the slapping, and was filtering back in the form of commenters.

     If anything, scientists have been criticised for being too *slow* to respond to such fires. This is actually where the second generation amateur bloggers come in handy (second generation in blog-age, not real age) – Zeke, Nick Stokes, the ccc guys, etc. Now that they’ve gotten fairly versatile code written, they can quickly respond to points about the surface record. They’re actually advantaged over GISS in this respect, since GISS is for now stuck using legacy code. And since Nick actually participates at WUWT, he is able to put out responses much more quickly.

130. Carrot

     And I object to the resulting lack of proportion. You spend a good many words worrying about how people might be subliminally misled by a picture of a polar bear.

     I wrote a post discussing Peter Gleicks reaction to the image.

     There was discussion in comments. In comments several people specifically asked in what way the image could mislead. I answered those questions. Some insisted on repeating question, rewording and asking me to elaborate.

     I do not think it was disproportionate to comment on Gleick response. Revkin commented on Gleicks response at his blog; Roger commented on that response.

     I also do not think it is disproportionate to answer someone’s question posed in comments at my blog nor to provide additional detail when various people in comments request I elaborate. If you think that either is disproportionate, I disagree.

131. Re: carrot eater #43014 (May 15 08:02),

     With that modification, are you saying the non-scientifically literate sceptics are not worth rebutting?

     I wrote plainly, in Comments #43009 and #42995. My words mean what they seem to mean.

     I very much do agree that there is a gradient of reasonable scepticism.

     Then we are in accord on that point.

     Believe it or not, [scientists doing the climate work] do re-examine, second-guess, and strive to improve their understanding.

     Re-examining, second-guessing, striving to improve understanding: this is normal science. Yes, to some extent the leading scientists of the AGW Consensus indeed engage in these practices. No reasonable, scientifically-literate critic is demanding that they do less in this regard. If you disagree, please cite one.

     Instead, the question is whether leading Consensus scientists do this enough, or with a sufficiently open mind, or with the proper “let the cards fall where they will” mindset. And–whether they adequate communicators, as with the Divergence Problem.

     You brought up a discussion about divergence, as possibly an example of things you’d like to see discussed. From there to Tiljander is but a small step. I was looking for examples of what the scientifically-literate sceptics would like to see discussed.

     I linked to the Divergence Problem discussion for the reasons I stated in Comment #43002, e.g. “This tendency of Consensus scientists to dismiss potentially-valid criticisms by scientifically-literate people is a major problem, in my opinion.” This is directly relevant to the Gleick Letter.

     “From there to Tiljander is but a small step.” As far as I know, the two issues are unrelated.

132. Re: carrot eater (May 15 08:24),

     Your whole point here comes to your timeline of the Gleick thing, and not counting a Morano post as a scream (or at least, something that anybody should just ignore, on the face of it).

     Yes. My post entitled, ‘Time Line of L’affaire “Gleick/Ursus Bogus” ‘ is about the timeline. I don’t count Morano’s post as a “scream”.

     My main point is not that Gleick should necessarily ignored it. My point is that his specific response was counter-productive. I’ve given suggestions of productive responses– he didn’t chose those.

133. I do not think it was disproportionate to comment on Gleick response. Revkin commented on Gleicks response at his blog; Roger commented on that response.
     .
     again lucia, your look at this is extremely biased.
     .
     for a start, look at the first Pielke jr post:
     .
     http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/05/how-many-choices-do-we-have.html
     .
     instead of the picture, it does focus on McCarthy:
     .
     In Science today 255 members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences sign on to a letter objecting to the “McCarthy-like” accusations and behavior of climate change deniers and use the occasion to advocate for action on climate change:
     .
     another point, that we shouldn t push against, following your advice?

134. “From there to Tiljander is but a small step.” As far as I know, the two issues are unrelated.

     ?

     Divergence is about proxies that, for some reason or another, don’t always track temperature.

     Tiljander is a proxy(ies) that doesn’t always track temperature, as they’re contaminated by some other activities.

     That’s pretty related to me.

135. Sod

     Roger and I note that his first post focuses on the letter. Roger’s post discusses the letter, and the portion of his post you quote tell us the letter objects to “McCarthy-like” accusations. That’s the truth: The letter does object to “McCarthy-like” accusations.

     As you correctly note, Roger’s first post does not discuss the photo. That’s also the truth.

     How is observing that Roger’s first post did discussed the letter it discussed the photo “extremely biased”? To say the opposite is to lie. To insist we can’t observed a fact is… just… weird.

     So far, you have not found any inaccuracies in the time line. Peter Gleick didn’t note any inaccuracies. (He just insinuated that I didn’t know everything– a fact I admitted in my post and still admit. Oddly, he told me I didn’t know when he wrote Science. Oddly because he’s posted that information at Roger’s blog.)

     Tom Nelson added a third blog post to the “Pre-Gleick” time line. I added that information in the update.

136. Lucia,

     Yes. My post entitled, ‘Time Line of L’affaire “Gleick/Ursus Bogus” ‘ is about the timeline. I don’t count Morano’s post as a “scream”.

     As we were starting to speak in more general times, I was moving away from this particular thing. According to your timeline, and working with the assumption that Morano is such a wailing baby that he should simply be ignored, Gleick over/pre-reacted. Which is a little fuzzy anyway, given that later commenters were not reacting to the reaction, but regardless.

     But moving away from this particular instance, I don’t think you can say there are many pre-emptive slappings. The kid’s usually already screaming.

     [Does the metaphor really have to go to slapping? Can’t we have some less violent form of discipline?]

137. Sod

     another point, that we shouldn t push against, following your advice?

     I’m not sure what you mean by this last bit.

     I think people should push back against Cucinnelli. I’ve said so. So have SteveM, Chip Knappenberger and a bunch of other people. Nothing in my advise says you shouldn’t push against highly placed politicians when they actually do use the power of their office to do something.

     I think Gleick would have been a lot wiser to ignore Morano’s rhetorical question and write a blog post discussing Coochie in elaborate detail and explaining why he thought that was a bad thing. Whether the NAS letter was good bad or indifferent, lots of people would have agreed with him. Some bloggers might have picked it up and it would assume “meme” status. (Or not. Though Gleick has been blogging a long time, he has only two posts at Huffington. I’m not sure how visible the “Gleick-Huffington” blog is to the more prolific climate bloggers. It might easily have been ignored.)

138. Skeptics are children?
     http://rabett.blogspot.com/2010/04/carrot-eater-wants-pony.html

139. Carrot,
     It appears you are trying to force your metaphor on this. I did not say Morano is a wailing baby, nor that he should be utterly ignored.

     I have said that all Morano did was post a rhetorical question that was getting almost no play in the blogosphere. Gleick could easily have done what as most other climate bloggers did: ignore the photo issue at least until something “interesting” happened.

     In any case, I never suggested Gleick had to ignore Morano. There are many “not ignoring” options. Gleick could have read Morano, learned of the problem he overlooked, contacted Science and encouraged them to fix it and then not written that catastrophe of a blog post. I can think of other options. But Gleick throwing the blog-equivalent of a temper-tantrum because someone posted a rhetorical question at his blog was not wise.

140. Re: liza (May 15 09:37),
     I own a horse like that!!!!

141. lucia (Comment#43031) May 15th, 2010 at 9:42 am
     🙂 I had a real horse!

142. Lucia,
     Speaking approvingly of a post that said not to ever engage with Morano, because it’s impossible to have a proper conversation with him – that to me is the equivalent of saying he is the irresponsible child, disrupting the conversation of adults.

     You can say not to engage with somebody, and say it’s a poor choice to engage with that somebody, but that reflects most poorly on that somebody.

143. Re: carrot eater #43025 (May 15 09:03),

     Tiljander is a proxy(ies) that doesn’t always track temperature, as they’re contaminated by some other activities.

     That’s pretty related to me.

     ?

     OK, that’s your belief. But not mine.

     Mann08’s authors used the Lake Korttajarvi varve data in the honest but erroneous belief that they could be calibrated to the instrumental record. As it happened, that mistake led to the use of two of the series (lightsum and XRD) in an orientation that was upside-down with respect to Tiljander’s interpretation (Boreas, 2003).

     A precis of the Divergence Problem is offered by “Simon” in comment 24 of the Pielke thread I referenced earlier–in Comment #43002, the remark that got you revved up about dream worlds and the like.

     Simon says,

     Data is data. This [post-1960 tree-ring] data is not erroneous, it is data. It is not erroneous because it contradicts observed temperature, it is divergent data. The divergence is not erroneous, it is anomalous.

     Deleting, removing or somehow concealing anomalous segments of data – specifically, as in this case, purposefully; intentionally – is malfeasance. Grafting replacement data in place of data which is anomalous is malfeasance. This case of “hiding the decline”, in all its manifestations, is scientific malfeasance.

     Your suggest that the Tiljander/Mann08 saga and the Divergence Problem are related. Beyond the notion that they are both concerned with paleotemperature reconstructions, your reasoning remains opaque to me.

     Again, if you’d like to draw your various thoughts on Mann08’s use of the Tiljander proxies into an essay, the guest-post offer remains open.

144. WRT finding and fixing errors.. and how the warmist machine operates. Its instructive for people to read the mails surrounding..

     1. the mistaken lamb chart that made it into IPCC documents.
     very interesting backstory there, covered in our book.

     2. The UAH mistake

     Both are instructive.

     To Morano’s question:

     What does this photo say about the journal?

     “What does the use of a faked photo say about the scientific credibility of the journal in question?”
     As I address in my Huffington Post piece, the real answer (not his answer, or perhaps yours, but the real answer) is “absolutely nothing” at all. Does it say something about how they choose art? Sure.”

     This is rather shallow analysis by a scientist out of his area of expertise. What this says about Science? well it says the people checking things dont

     1. follow things down to the original source
     2. understand that EVERY picture of polar bears will receive
     a detailed examination by their opponents.
     3. understand that the polar bear meme is tired, worn out,
     and doesnt work with the audience that needs to be
     convinced.
     4. Understand that ONE of the central complaints of the other
     side is that some scientists are making EMOTIONAL appeals
     THIS undermines their credibility.

     This is all a piece of the observation that some scientists have felt forced into a role of SELLING A MESSAGE. They believe that skeptics are selling doubt, and so naturally they have to sell something else. When scientists move out of the realm of reporting the science, when they move into roles of selling the science, the routinely make stupid marketing mistakes. They hide declines. they use photoshopped pictures. They make a wide variety of marketing mistakes. They say utterly stupid things about people bring criminal cases in a McCarthy like fashion.

     What does the selection of the photo say about Science Mag?
     They are careless and do not follow things to the source. they dont check things completely. They find something that matches the message they want to send and they go with it. Does THIS behavior tell us anything about the “science”. I dunno, its an interesting hypothesis. Did the editorial also make factual errors?
     I think so. Are there also errors in the science? Well, the editorial concedes that as well. Are the errors substantial? Hmm, I dunno, we asked for code, we asked for data, we asked for records of how official documents were created. They violated our rights to have that information. I’d say, that track record doesnt look so hot. It doesnt make the science wrong, but if peter thinks he is a good spokeperson, I’d suggest that he knows nothing whatsoever about PR. I dont want him speaking for a science that I believe in. I’d rather have Tiger woods as spokesperson.

145. Mann08’s authors used the Lake Korttajarvi varve data in the honest but erroneous belief that they could be calibrated to the instrumental record.

     We’re getting there… Why do you think they couldn’t be calibrated, Amac? Because the proxies were not tracking temperature (at least not well) during the period available for calibration.

     Which is the same basic issue with general problem with divergence – proxies that don’t track temperature (at least, not well) for part of the time. The only difference is that those other proxies were successfully calibrated and validated in other time periods. You just can’t validate the calibration after 1960, or whenever. And if that’s all you knew, then that would make you wonder if there had ever been divergence before, back when you couldn’t check against direct measurements.

     As for Simon, one wonders whether he does much experimental work, if he’s making such broadly simplistic statements. If my sample is contaminated, and I get funky readings, do I have to retain those data and publish them, just because they’re ‘anomalous’ and not ‘erroneous’? No, in the case I know why it’s contaminated, I just toss it out and repeat it more carefully.

     Likewise with proxies that I know are tracking moisture, not temperature: I know they’re not tracking temperature. Do I have to pretend that they are, just because they are data?

     The divergence issue is tricky because you’ve got proxies that you think report temperature sometimes, but not always. So you are obliged to discuss the issue, and how you think you can tell when it’s faithful to temperature, and when it isn’t. I would sometimes show the divergence graphically to illustrate that point, but I wouldn’t feel the need to always include it in every graph.

146. Mosher

     You’re so overthinking this.

     1. follow things down to the original source

     Yes, their art person was sloppy on this one, in that respect.

     2. understand that EVERY picture of polar bears will receive a detailed examination by their opponents.

     I had no idea of this myself. I guess I do now.

     3. understand that the polar bear meme is tired, worn out,
     and doesnt work with the audience that needs to be
     convinced.
     4. Understand that ONE of the central complaints of the other
     side is that some scientists are making EMOTIONAL appeals
     THIS undermines their credibility.

     Here is the overthinking. They put pretty colorful pictures with letters. So somebody decided to get a polar bear. I bet you that whatever went through that person’s mind in deciding that, was much less thought out than what you’re putting into it. There’s not some super-thought out plan to convince people via a photo; rather somebody just wanted a picture that illustrated possible adverse impacts. It’s not as if the picture last week (with the bugs) is trying to convince anybody of anything. It’s just a picture that goes with the topic.

147. I agree that this polar bear picture will be discussed for years. It is a wonderful illustration of how unserious most of the people who call themselves “skeptics” actually are.

148. Oh bologna Boris.

     Al Gore threw a questioner out of his auditorium when he was asked about polar bears and how they were doing. And all the “defenders of the science” and their followers looked the other way. I’d like to talk about that to this day!

     Everyone knows a Polar bear is the poster child of AGW. Selecting that picture was as natural as breathing.

     BTW speaking of children; Al Gore telling kids not to listen to their parents was ANOTHER reason and and heads up that we saw; and we are not alone; that indicates this climate science and the agenda that goes with it is sinister and FLAWED.

149. Boris,
     And another thing!
     If you pay attention; or if you have any friends to talk to at all, perhaps located all over the world like I do you might find people are talking about how COLD IT IS right now. That’s ANOTHER reason using a picture of a polar bear on thin ice is just silly.

150. Re: carrot eater#43037 (May 15 10:33),

     We’re getting there…

     Where we’re getting is called irony, carrot eater.

     Recall, our exchange started with your snark,

     Maybe in Amac’s or Lucia’s dream world, scientists would only discuss the issues particularly interesting to them, the self-styled reasonable or nuanced sceptics. But that’s ignorant of the reality of the blogosphere. That said, Amac’s main interest seems to be Tiljander, which has been discussed to death already anyway.

     This has been followed by a series of comments in which you repeatedly float proposals as to how the discussed-to-death topic that you first raised is somehow relevant to the topic of the thread.

     Why do you think [the Tiljander proxies] couldn’t be calibrated, Amac? Because the proxies were not tracking temperature (at least not well) during the period available for calibration.

     Your statement is true as far as it goes, but that is not the central problem with Mann08’s use of them.

     I don’t intend to go over that ground again, in this thread. If you want to have that discussion, organize your thoughts and write a guest-post. That offer is still open. Or, blog about it somewhere else, and submit the link here.

     Which is the same basic issue with general problem with divergence – proxies that don’t track temperature (at least, not well) for part of the time. The only difference is that those other proxies were successfully calibrated and validated in other time periods. You just can’t validate the calibration after 1960, or whenever. And if that’s all you knew, then that would make you wonder if there had ever been divergence before, back when you couldn’t check against direct measurements.

     Again, your statements are true as far as they go, but they do not illuminate the central issues in the Divergence Problem. If you want to explore this further, why not post your defense of the leading Consensus scientists’ conduct on the relevant Pielke Jr. thread? You’ll get lots of spirited discussion from scientifically-literate skeptics.

     As for Simon, one wonders whether he does much experimental work, if he’s making such broadly simplistic statements.

     Before claiming that Simon’s views must be simplistic and naive, I’d suggest that you learn about the philosophy behind how clinical trials are run: he might well be speaking from the perspective of somebody working in that area. Of particular relevance is how regulatory agencies evaluate the protocols and results of double-blind, placebo-controlled pivotal Phase III randomized clinical trials. If you’re already familiar with this topic: I’d suggest you consider the ways in which the public-policy implications of pivotal RCT findings are similar to the public-policy implications of climate-change science findings.

     Which public-policy implications? Why, the ones that the Gleick Letter alludes to, of course.

151. Recall, our exchange started with your snark

     I was just trying to list what I thought you guys were interested in. That is all.

     This has been followed by a series of comments in which you repeatedly float proposals as to how the discussed-to-death topic that you first raised is somehow relevant to the topic of the thread.

     No, it has nothing to do with the thread. I’m just specifically responding to your point that Tiljander and divergence are unrelated. Yet they are related: at the heart of the issue is the exact same problem: proxies that reflect things that aren’t temperature.

     Your statement is true as far as it goes, but that is not the central problem with Mann08’s use of them.

     It is directly and exactly the central problem, Amac. If there was divergence during your calibration period, then you’ll get wrong results during other time periods, because your calibration was necessarily incorrect. So either you use it, or you don’t.

     Before claiming that Simon’s views must be simplistic and naive, I’d suggest that you learn about the philosophy behind how clinical trials are run

     Well, great, maybe he has some other background where they do things some certain way. That’s wonderful. I’m looking at what you quoted, and how it applies generally, or to the topic at hand (paleo). And I found it unhelpful.

152. Much easier to let Keith Kloor point the way. He is quite fond of cutting to the heart of the matter.

     http://www.collide-a-scape.com/2010/05/14/eco-inventor-angst/

153. Carrot, I read your response in Comment #43044. Thanks. As far as I can see, you raise no points that haven’t already been discussed on this thread, since you brought up the issue of Tiljander in Comment #43004.

     If you want to expand on your views with respect to the use of the Tiljander proxies by Mann08’s authors, the offer of a guest post remains open.

154. Carrot

     Speaking approvingly of a post that said not to ever engage with Morano, because it’s impossible to have a proper conversation with him – that to me is the equivalent of saying he is the irresponsible child, disrupting the conversation of adults.

     I don’t think Olsen said it’s impossible to have a proper conversation with Morano. My impression of Olsens’ post is that climate scientists shouldn’t engage with Morano because the climate scientists will ‘lose’.

155. Re: carrot eater (May 15 10:39),

     2. understand that EVERY picture of polar bears will receive a detailed examination by their opponents.

     I had no idea of this myself. I guess I do now.

     There is quite a bit of empirical evidence that polar bear pictures will be scrutinized. It may be that some are missed, but stories of ‘fake’ polar bear pictures abound. The ‘fake’ aspect might mean polar bear is ‘struggling’ to swim in wavey water– with the waves created by a helicopter. The polar bears appear to be on a small icefloe, including the full picture shows they are perfectly happy on a nice large icefloe etc. The reason these stories about is that people check them.

     It’s excusable for you to not know this. It might be excusable for “Prof X” acting as editor to not know it. It’s not so easy to excuse lack of awareness by staff at publications like Science, particularly any staff involved in deciding to tart up letters to the editor by adding polar bear pictures.

156. Stevin Mosher
     “What this says about Science? well it says the people checking things dont”
     Naw, it says that they are biased and trying to use that faked photo for persuasive reasons. Look at their target audiences
     1) Members of the NAS
     2) The general public through the press
     The comments about the McCarthy attacks on scientists and prosecutions would get some sympathy from the members of the NAS who do not forget the many instances of scientists being hanged, burned, drawn and quartered etc throughout history by religious fanatics when in power. Even today, some still get a fair number of unruly comments on their answering machines by wobbly church-folk.
     But the message for the general public through the press was the insertion of the “255 scientists.” That has been a useful PR tool for the AGW believers in recent years… of course Climategate put quite a dent in that armor.
     In the current big picture, we should expect to see this sort of political PR as part of a strategy to get the cap and trade legislation passed… watch for those press releases to start flying… however, even the press is much more hesitant now that Climategate has been an embarrassment to even them and their poor reporting on AGW in recent years.

157. … RIFL!… I don’t bother with the 10 minute edit thingy so I guess Stevin has to be renamed

158. I don’t think Olsen said it’s impossible to have a proper conversation with Morano. My impression of Olsens’ post is that climate scientists shouldn’t engage with Morano because the climate scientists will ‘lose’.

     Go back and read what was written there. Why will you ‘lose’? Because you aren’t dealing with a responsible person with whom you can have a conversation.

     Because when one person is not constrained by the truth in a debate, the discourse becomes irrational.

     Somebody you don’t let sit at the table with the adults.

159. Carrot–
     Well, in the case if Gleick,it seems there would be two people not constrained by the truth. Gleick would still lose.

160. carrot
     “Go back and read what was written there. Why will you ‘lose’? Because you aren’t dealing with a responsible person with whom you can have a conversation.”

     I didn’t read it but I wouldn’t wanna go up against Morano in this debate. He comes from the political world and has command of spin tactics and understands persuasive rhetoric as well as a good understanding of this debate. He pulls no punches… right or wrong, he’ll throw you a beating in a debate.

161. Carrot–
     Well, in the case if Gleick,it seems there would be two people not constrained by the truth.

     Wow.

162. As far as Morano and Olsen-on-Morano, my view is close to carrot eater’s.

     From the little I’ve read, Morano strikes me as an entertainer with a cause. To him, the truth is nice but not essential. Context, fuggedaboutit. I wouldn’t trust anything he says.

     In his letter and in blog comments, Gleick comes across as a person concerned with the truth and concerned with context. He doesn’t seem to see his left-wing ideology and his public-policy passions as influencing his judgment. Others, myself included, do.

     Morano, as seen by Olsen, is cheerful and agreeable when discussing AGW. Olsen’s point is that this unflappable, sincere, pleasant, informed demeanor has proven to be kryptonite to science-focused defenders of the AGW Consensus.

     Judging from his appearance upthread, Gleick is the sort of humorless AGW advocate to whom Olsen was directing his advice.

163. Look Carrot.

     I’m not overthinking this. I’m stating the very first thoughts that come to my mind as a person who has a few years of experience in putting images in front of the public to get them to BUY STUFF.

     These guys are clowns. They dont know what they are doing. If you read the mails you will see whole PR campiagns laid out in the documents folders. I havent even begun to discuss the horrible advice these guys are listening to.

     The game has changed. The tables are turned. The script has been flipped by copenhagen and climategate. But they are STILL IN DENIAL. They need new people with fresh ideas.

     A whole raft of meme’s from the old campaign have been destroyed. There is no going back to them. These guys have tin ears. They dont get it. They dont understand how these wars are waged and won.

     Memo to climate science. The polar bear as spokesperson is officially EXTINCT. you killed it. Learn a lesson and move on.

     EVEN IF you do a correct picture, IT DOESNT MATTER. because people will say “remember when they used a fake pic?” That is WHY credibility is so important to keep. When you lose credibility on any basis you have to reestablish it on all basis.
     Unfair? sure. that’s the FACT of public affairs and when the scientists come out of the lab into the public eye, then they have to learn that the public space operates differently than the lab or university or conference. Dont like that? tough.

     And the stupidest thing of all was to try to turn this into a discussion of the “denial machine.” going on the attack when you havent accepted responsibility is foolish. They have extended this crisis and continue to extend it or allow it to be extended because they do not understand crisis management and damage control from a PR perspective. Flat dont understand. Clueless.

164. Carrot–

     Wow.

     Did you read Gleick’s post? That claim of “focus” on the photo and other things are rather distant from “truth”. I don’t think the reason he would lose is due to his feeling any more constrained by the truth than Morano does.

165. I agree that this polar bear picture will be discussed for years. It is a wonderful illustration of how unserious most of the people who call themselves “skeptics” actually are.

     Like the “radian’ versus “degree” error that McKittrick made, that was corrected, with no substantial change in final results.

     Both sides try to turn the mistakes of others into icons. That’s normal in these kinds of battles. or one could say that Hansen refusing to say Mcintyre’s name shows how unserious he is.

     I love these types of arguments because everyone of them is flippable.

166. MikeC, dont worry, I dont bother with the 10 minute edit thingy much either. unless its to undo an entire rant.

167. Steven Mosher and Randy Olson, singing from the same hymn sheet.

168. Did you read Gleick’s post? That claim of “focus” on the photo and other things are rather distant from “truth”. I don’t think the reason he would lose due to his feeling constrained by the truth.

     Let’s see. In your first post, the main body was mostly about the photo. Morano had whatever he had, about the photo. Delingpole, focused on the photo. Watts, focused on the photo (though he said he’d been avoiding the issue, until he was amused by the ursus joke). So yes, despite whatever conversation is going on at Pielke’s, or further down in the comments here, I think it’s fair to say there has been a lot of focus on the photo. At the very least, it’s his perception, and not something you can really call untrue. If you really want to compare that to what led Olson to make his conclusions about the mendacity of Morano, go ahead, but I for one won’t think highly of your judgment.

     Amac

     Gleick is the sort of humorless

     Agreed on that one, in this case at least (I don’t know what he’s like). Gleick didn’t accomplish or communicate anything useful with that angry comment here. Beyond communicating the fact that he’s angry/bemused, I guess.

169. Mosher,
     No, you’re overthinking it.

     Look, there’s another issue of Science out. There’s a letter about Chinese people doing environmental protests. With it is a picture of… Chinese people protesting some incinerator.

     They take a letter, and they add a picture that goes with it. There’s no campaign, there’s no marketing, there’s no PR, there’s no conscious effort to convince people who may not like the letter.

     They (an editor? a summer intern doing graphics stuff? who knows?) just put a f’ing picture there, that would seem to go with the article. In the case of global warming, there is no obvious choice of picture, but lots of things you could plausibly put there. Polar bear is what that person chose; maybe it was personal word association – the first thing that came to mind. I rather doubt that person was thinking about his/her picture choice as part of a concerted PR campaign.

170. The real question is: why use an illustration at all? The point of any picture is to convey ideas on a different level than the accompanying text. Unless it was a group photo of the 255 signatories, any image was likely to be an attempt to subliminally influence opinion. This one obviously was meant to invoke the drowning polar bears meme. The editors were propagandizing, plain and simple. It’s also apparent that “journalism” is half of the problem in preventing any kind of fruitful discussions between the warring tribes.

171. Carrot–

     Delingpole, focused on the photo. Watts, focused on the photo (though he said he’d been avoiding the issue, until he was amused by the ursus joke). …. At the very least, it’s his perception, and not something you can really call untrue.

     This is ridiculous.

     Even if you think Gleick has a psychic ability to see into the future, you can’t say that his perception of what Anthony, Delingpole or anyone else did days later to make his claims on Saturday true. If Gleick had this psychic ablity, he should have said he foresaw that they would and wanted to give his opinions in advance oftheir actions.

     Morano runs an aggregator that linked an article that asked a rhetorical question about the photo. This is on a page with huge number of other things linked. This is not Morano “focusing” on Gleiks paper or photo. Focusing requires …. well… focusing.

     There was certainly no “focus” on the photo in the blogosphere, in skeptic outlets or anything else. Seen in the most favorable light, the relationship between Gleik’s characterization of the skeptic response to his photo, and the truth would be called “shading” it. I’d suggest the truth and Gleicks characterization were separated by a stream. One might be able to see the truth from the opposite side of the stream, but Gleick’s characterization of skeptic response was not the truth.

     Plus look at what you are doing? If you want to start saying Gleick is telling the truth because that’s his perception of things then, Morano probably jolly well also tells the truth based on his perception. In fact, look at Olsen’s example of Morano’s lie. Based on Morano’s perception, he probably thinks the ocean is not, literally, dead. So, if you are going to go by perception, Morano is telling the truth. And it’s not even that unusual of a perception. To the extent that an ocean (as opposed to a fish or squirrel) can be alive or dead, it’s fair to insist that the ocean is not literally dead. In fact, even if you used “dead” as a metaphor, some would point out that you can still find fish and other living creatures in the water, and in their estimation, insist that the metaphor dead is an exaggeration, or even hyperbole.

172. Lucia,
     Didn’t know the time frame you were talking about. So you’re talking about the time at which Gleick made his response.

     OK, then I would write the comment differently. We don’t know what all he saw, what all he reacted to, but say all it was is Morano. He sees the thing at Morano, sees it’s talking about the photo and it’s trying to make some wider point extrapolating from the photo, and then goes off into a rage, and writes the angry reply.

     If that’s what happened, and you’re calling his statement a lie, that’s some extremely petty word parsing.

     This is what was said

     The small but vocal part of the infosphere dominated by the climate deniers seized on this “fake” photo to try to paint the entire climate science community as fake.
     Here is the logic of the climate deniers: the photo is manipulated, therefore we can claim the science of climate change to be manipulated and we won’t have to challenge the actual content of the letter.
     Nice try, but no.This focus on the art the editors chose to accompany the letter is an attempt by climate deniers to divert public attention once again from the facts of climate change.

     If what he saw was the Morano thing, well, that was indeed focused on the photo. The point isn’t that there were other things on Morano’s webpage at the time; the point is that the blip about the letter was focused on the photo. My complaint about the wording would be singular/plural – it makes it sound like more than one blog was doing it. As it was, that turned out to be the case (and given that it was on an aggregator, it wouldn’t have been a bad bet to make), but not yet at that point. So if you think this choice of singular/plural makes Gleick mendacious on any level coming anywhere close to what Olson is describing with Morano, again, go ahead, but I won’t think much of your judgment.

173. The only answer that makes sense of the question, “Why can’t climate scientists communicate effectively?” is that they keep refusing to tell the truth and that the people they are seeking to fool are not cooperating in the effort.

174. Carrot

     Didn’t know the time frame you were talking about. So you’re talking about the time at which Gleick made his response.

     Here’s putting it generically: If, at the time X said “A”, “A” was not true, then what “X” said was not the truth. The first part is both necessary and sufficient condition for what “X” said to be “not the truth”.

     I don’t need to know whether “A” became true sometime in the future to know that what “X” said was not true when he said it. What happened many days after “X” spoke, is irrelevant diagnosing “X” tendency to bend, distort, shade or simply ignore the truth. (We can consider other factors, like being mistaken etc. But what happens days later is irrelevant.

175. It is rather pitiful that Gleick is getting away with the assertion that the only thing wrong with his letter is the photo selection it was published under.
     The letter’s untruths, unlike the photo accompaniment, is a deliberate and cynical mis-statement on every level.
     It is not signed primarily by climate scientists. It makes the false claim that the science of catastrophic global warming is settled. The letter insults the integrity of skeptics who question CGW. The letter falsely claims that there is clear evidence of a climate catastrophe. The letter was cynically timed to reap publicity for Gleick’s new book.
     To start with.
     Why give a hoot about the props of a scam? Focus on the scam itself.

176. hunter (Comment#43081) May 15th, 2010 at 3:40 pm

     The only answer that makes sense of the question, “Why can’t climate scientists communicate effectively?” is that they keep refusing to tell the truth and that the people they are seeking to fool are not cooperating in the effort.

     No. I asked a climate scientist once if he had tried convincing ‘deniers’ on the internet of the case for AGW. He said he had tried on Yahoo chat once, but quickly realised that *nothing* he said, no evidence he provided, would ever convince them, that AGW was real, and so logically it was a complete waste of time trying to convince them otherwise. I thought he was wrong at the time, (this would be about eight years ago), but looking back now he was right. He is an excellent communicator, but it doesn’t matter how good or bad you are, *nothing* will convince these peope.

177. The small but vocal part of the infosphere dominated by the climate deniers seized on this “fake” photo to try to paint the entire climate science community as fake.

     This first statement contains a blend of shading the truth and untruth.
     a) Small but vocal dominated by one climate deniers plural is a very, very weird way to refer to “one individual”.
     b) the rhetorical question did not attempt paint the entire climate science community as fake. It asked a question about the standards at one Magazine.

     Here is the logic of the climate deniers: the photo is manipulated, therefore we can claim the science of climate change to be manipulated and we won’t have to challenge the actual content of the letter.

     This is entirely made up.

     Nice try, but no.

     This is just his reply and cannot be assessed for

     This focus on the art the editors chose to accompany the letter is an attempt by climate deniers to divert public attention once again from the facts of climate change.

     What’s with the notion there was any “focus”. Look at Morano’s page. There simply was no “focus” on the photo by “climate deniers”. An image, a sentence and a link appeared on a very crowded busy page. Morano didn’t “focus” on the image any more than one of the blades of grass is the “focal point” of my lawn.

     As for the rest: Peters speculations about the “motives” of the “climate” deniers is interpretation and is neither a lie nor the truth. It’s his guess about what a focus would have meant had there been any such focus. ( That said, I’m pretty sure that Marc would like to distract people from the message Gleick considers to be the truth. So other than all the malarkey suggesting there was a focus on the photo, I agree with Gleick about Morano’s goal. )

     Overall, the intersection between the “truth” and the Gleick paragraph you quote is smaller than the intersection between the “truth” Morano saying the ocean is not dead. Literally speaking, the ocean is neither alive nor dead. If you want to use the metaphor, we can all argue until the cows come home. You can, for example, find prose reporting that oceans are “teaming with life”

     by Jill Burke
     Monday, April 27, 2009

     KODIAK, Alaska — Our oceans, teaming with life and a rich source of food, are changing.

     Absorbing half of the world’s carbon emissions — in excess of hundreds of millions of tons — is enough to potentially change marine life as we know it.

     The oceans may be at risk, the may some day die. But there are certainly people who, in 2009, still described them as “teaming with life.”

     So, if you and Randy think Morano saying the oceans are dead doesn’t feel constrained by the truth, then I say, applying the same standard, Gleick doesn’t feel constrained either.

     What Morano does is assemble statements that are either literally true or at least not false in tendentious ways. You’ll very rarely catch him with an actual, honest to goodness lie. That’s why he’s so good at what he does.

178. bugs–
     You are focusing on communicating two deniers. I think hunter is talking about the public at large.

179. Let’s see:

     “You said …”
     “I said …”
     “He said …”
     “They said …”
     “____ said …”
     “Kids scream …”
     “He screamed …”
     “They scream …”
     “ICECREAM!!”

     I guess I’ll check back in a few days to see if you all have come to any agreement on the ursus bogus matter,

180. It is rather pitiful that Gleick is getting away with the assertion that the only thing wrong with his letter is the photo selection it was published under.
     The letter’s untruths, unlike the photo accompaniment, is a deliberate and cynical mis-statement on every level.

     Most of the criticism is about the picture. This is because the five statements made in the letter about climate science are sound and backed by reams of evidence. This is why you denialists are pathetically making up little names to give all the phony scandals. Ursus Bogus? Amazon-gate? Hockey Stick Illusion? All you sell is doubt, 100% science free doubt.

     The reason people aren’t talking about those five statements is because once you do, you lose. You have to keep hammering the idea that scientists are corrupt because they are against you about 30 to 1. If people ever realize that every scientific body on the planet supports the basics of AGW, it’s over for you guys.

     BTW, that should be a required statement for every advocate of action on AGW: “Hi, Larry. Thanks for having me. Firstly I’d like to point out that every scientific body on the planet agrees that AGW is real and will be a threat in the future.” So, yeah, you guys are lucky I’m not in charge of the PR for this scam, because I would totally pwn you.

181. Hunter is right.
     All other scientific theories or publications are back to the drawing boards or are totally done with when just ONE question isn’t answered or just ONE bit of evidence that contradicts the theory is discovered (or even just ONE fudged picture or data set is found in a publication!!); and it only needs ONE person or scientist to point those things out.

     Look how many people they need to “defend” “the science” of AGW with the same data being used over and over again. Edit : As Boris says “Every Scientific Body” on the planet. And the IPCC just got an “F” for Fail Boris!

     Look how many blogs.

     Disingenuous; cling to it like a religion, indoctrinate children, skirt FOI requests; call people names, bigotry, insults; black ball, manipulated and utilize the main stream media; hire PR Firms; and on top of it have some crazy idea that the Earth and its climate is all figured out; they just can’t wait to adjust our lifestyles (but not theirs) and tax us for it. We will stop the rising seas! they chant.

     Sheesh.

182. a) Small but vocal dominated by one climate deniers plural is a very, very weird way to refer to “one individual”.

     As I said, if all he saw was Morano, then it would have been better to use singular, instead of speaking of a community as a whole.

     b) the rhetorical question did not attempt paint the entire climate science community as fake. It asked a question about the standards at one Magazine.

     Yes, he overreacted and exaggerated a bit there.

     An image, a sentence and a link appeared on a very crowded busy page. Morano didn’t “focus” on the image any more than one of the blades of grass is the “focal point” of my lawn.

     Here, you’re being silly. If the only mention on the Morano page was about the photo, then it’s fair to say that the coverage there focused on the picture. If the New York Times ran a short article on the corner of page 1 about Lucia’s.. I don’t know, hair, then I’d be fair to say the NYT focused on your hair instead of your work; I wouldn’t require the NYT to stop reporting about everything else and devote the whole frontpage to you before I said that.

     If I were going to parse everything you wrote this carefully, and accused you of lying on the basis of how you phrased things, it would be a very long, boring summer.

     IN any case, we’re really going off into the weeds of BS on this topic.

183. Boris,
     And another thing!
     If you pay attention; or if you have any friends to talk to at all, perhaps located all over the world like I do you might find people are talking about how COLD IT IS right now. That’s ANOTHER reason using a picture of a polar bear on thin ice is just silly.

     Just like a denialist to substitute her own personal experience for the scientific method. The Discovery Institute is this way.

184. Boris (Comment#43093) May 15th, 2010 at 4:47 pm
     You mean like you buddy bugs up there?

     LOL

185. ” Science retracts highly cited paper
     [17 June 2005]
     Study on the causes of childhood illness retracted after author found guilty of falsifying data
     A highly cited 1997 paper on transcription-coupled repair was retracted by Science this week, after coauthor Steven Leadon, formerly of the University of North Carolina, was found guilty by a university committee of fabricating and falsifying data.”

     You want me to find more?

186. The letter insults the integrity of skeptics who question CGW.

     The letter says this:

     Many recent assaults on climate science and, more disturbingly, on climate scientists by climate change deniers are typically driven by special interests or dogma, not by an honest effort to provide an alternative theory that credibly satisfies the evidence.

     I’d say a great proportion of the sceptics out there (at least the ones writing stuff on the internet) aren’t providing any alternative hypotheses that credibly satisfy the evidence. And some good fraction do seem to be motivated by politics or dogma; comments are often dripping with politics.

187. “You want me to find more?”

     Why would you want to? By your own logic you’ve just proven childhood disease doesn’t exist. That’s quite an accomplishment.

188. Boris-

     The reason people aren’t talking about those five statements is because once you do, you lose.

     then whined about the focus on the picture. This focus did not exist.
     If what you say is true, Gleick should have discussed the five points at his blog instead of focusing everyones attention on the photo that had received only a teensie-beensie amount of covarage before he blogged? Only very poor communicators do things to focus coverage on their week points and away from their strong points.

     As I’ve said before, the five bullet points were unremarkable apple pie statements. They didn’t get coverage because repeating those things is not news.

     Anyway, the letter was discussed. It was criticized by Pielke for advancing the false premise of only two choices. Revkin criticised its tone. Many in comments at my blog have criticized the content of the letter, as have people at other blogs.

     Those defending the letter don’t seem to want to engage people’s criticism about the letter. They only seem to want to explain why it’s ok to run pictures of ursus bogus. They can keep repeating that– but it’s really not a winning point.

189. You want me to find more?

     Find more what? Papers that have been retracted due to fabrication or other serious concerns? You’ll find a handful. The Korean guy doing cloning research, and the infamous vaccine-autism paper.

     Your point?

190. Carrot

     Papers that have been retracted due to fabrication or other serious concerns?

     Ohhh…. I used to have a book on famous fabrications in evidence. I lost it in a move. One of the best is the Cyril Burt IQ fraud. Get this:

     Things started to unravel soon after Burt’s death, when it was shown by respected US psychologist Leon Kamin that Burt’s figures constituted a statistical impossibility. ‘A liar and a fraud,’ was Kamin’s verdict. This charge was borne out when it was found that Burt’s two female ‘collaborators’, who supposedly collected and processed his data, had never worked with him and probably never existed! Eventually even Burt’s friend and official biographer, Leslie Hearnshaw, was forced to accept that the charges of fraud were justified.

191. If what you say is true, Gleick should have discussed the five points at his blog instead of focusing everyones attention on the photo that had received only a teensie-beensie amount of covarage before he blogged?

     He thought it was apt illustration of something that bothers him – that sceptics seize on any bit of pointless trivia, and go on and on about it, and miss the big picture.

     And here we are.

     I agree the five statements were pretty vanilla, and for the most part weren’t going to generate any discussion. Which is also perhaps part of the point.

192. Re: lucia (May 14 14:38),

     Likewise, when I read someone refer to ‘warmers’ as “warmistas” I’m pretty sure they aren’t trying to persuade warmers.

     And just what’s wrong with “warmers”? You have to have some short term for people who think the earth is getting warmer from human activity, in particular the release of CO2. There’s no insult attached to the term. There might be some terms they’d prefer, say “realists” or “pro-science” but only because it attacks their opponents by contrast.

193. carrot eater (Comment#43099) May 15th, 2010 at 4:58 pm
     “”Find more what? Papers that have been retracted due to fabrication or other serious concerns? You’ll find a handful. The Korean guy doing cloning research, and the infamous vaccine-autism paper.
     Your point?””

     How about Science magazine is run by a bunch of hypocrites.
     (If you can’t figure out my point STATED CLEARLY up there you I can’t help you. You are a believer.)

194. “aren’t providing any alternative hypotheses that credibly satisfy the evidence.”

     The evidence? You are still arguing about a fraction of one degree which has been questioned over and over. You don’t know for a fact that C02 is driving that <1° degree of temperature at this point at all and I don't even think it's a real number because of the surface stations; and other reasons!

     The original Global Warming graphs used tree rings. Those papers should be retracted. Then there is "hide the decline". (Gee there must be a new definition of retract/fabricate/ falsify for the climate scientists. Falsify = "get rid of" like the MWP…)

195. Carrot

     He thought it was apt illustration of something that bothers him – that sceptics seize on any bit of pointless trivia,

     Do you think this experience taught him not test his notion? After all, sceptics did not seize on a bit of pointless trivia. He then blogged to “prove” they did and succeeded in showing that he is reacting to his own misconceptions.

     With some luck he will eventually learn. Based on what he wrote in comments here, it seems he hasn’t yet.

196. I think the better move might have been to have a cartoon of a lonely polar bear on an ice floe waving the white flag.

197. Do you think this experience taught him not test his notion?

     Beats me. I’m guessing he’s as frustrated as he ever was. If you’re looking for somebody who can get sceptics to change their ways, he probably isn’t it. He appears to be prone to just getting angry. Seems to me that the only people sceptics respond to much are Zeke, or the scienceofdoom person, whoever that is. And even they have a rather limited impact.

     Anything formally published that they don’t like, is just dismissed on the face of it (judging from WUWT comments).

     After all, sceptics did not seize on a bit of pointless trivia.

     If it showed up at Morano’s, then it was appearing at a very visible place, and thus was in play.

     And again, your point here requires a bit of faith that the sceptic blogosphere wouldn’t have taken the thing from Morano and amplified it, if Gleick hadn’t drawn attention to it. Based on past form, I don’t have that faith, but one never knows, when it wasn’t allowed to play out.

198. AGW’s are still arguing over less then one degree of “global temperature” and still FUDGING things to get “the point across” and skeptics have to change their ways? LOL

199. While we are discussing statistical errors, even the Mendel fabrication controversy doesn’t seem to have come to any satisfactory conclusion yet. .

200. Lucia, the claim that Burt’s assistants were invented came from a “crack team” of newspaper investigators.

     From Wikipedia:

     In 1976, the London Sunday Times claimed that two of Burt’s supposed collaborators, Margaret Howard and J. Conway, were invented by Burt himself. They based this on the lack of independent articles published by them in scientific journals, and the fact that they allegedly only appeared in the historical record as reviewers of Burt’s books in the Journal of Statistical Psychology when the journal was redacted by Burt. However, Miss Howard was also mentioned in the membership list of the British Psychological Society, Prof. John Cohen remembered her well during the 1930s and Prof. Donald MacRae had personally received an article from her in 1949 and 1950. According to Ronald Fletcher there is also full documentary evidence of the existence of Miss Conway.[11][21][22] William H. Tucker argued in a 1997 article that: “A comparison of his twin sample with that from other well documented studies, however, leaves little doubt that he committed fraud.”[23]

     Rule #1: The only thing you can trust newspapers for, is to be absorbent in the bottom of a cat litter pan.

201. AMac

     My point was that Lucia’s characterization of climate scientists as being poor communicators is wrong. They’re perfectly good at communicating.

     Mosher takes it further by claiming they’re no good at selling suff. It’s true, they’re not salespeople. I know I would trust a scientist over a salesperson.

     I am also pointing out that scientists here who complain and moan about how other scientists won’t take their crticism serisouly are simply lazy when they won’t publish the criticism. This blog has returned to simply heckling from the sidelines.

202. carrot eater (Comment#43096)

     I’d say a great proportion of the sceptics out there (at least the ones writing stuff on the internet) aren’t providing any alternative hypotheses that credibly satisfy the evidence. And some good fraction do seem to be motivated by politics or dogma; comments are often dripping with politics.

     Firstly labels are for Jam jars,the inappropriate use of labeling of dissent as it is some form of secular heresy,shows us that the inability to learn is the centralist dogma of the letter ie an antagnostic game.

     The St Petersburg school of game theory showed ( Why the Kyoto protocol will fail ) that this would be the outcome in the late 1990’s ,ie solutions would only be possible if outcomes were predictable (a priori) and that there would be an absence of hidden surprises.

     The limiting qualities were the coefficients of change and the defensive stategies of the politicans ie The Coefficients of Egoism or how Altruism is important until it affects my Political majority ( with regard to Climate change mitigation)

     Eg

     One of the primary reasons for the failure of the Kyoto protocol was the inadequacy in the beginning for the countries (actors) agreeing upon “fair play” principles, (a priori) in accordance to an equilibrium strategy. Quantative and qualitative attributes for the Kp were not ascertained prior but after the initial agreement ,meaning ratification of the KP was politically untenable for the US and others and as was seen in the 95-0 in the US Senate for emission and energy reforms under the Clinton/gore administration.

     The late Yuri. M. Svirezhev, W. von Bloh, and H.-J. Schellnhuber showed the application of the “emission game” to Co2 perturbations that agreement and cooperation was a priori to an ESS(evolutionary stable strategy) in a NON-ANTAGONISTIC game.

     If there are no doubts that we must reduce the total emission of carbon dioxide then the problem of how much different countries should be allowed to contribute to this amount remains a serious one. We suggest this problem to be considered as a non-antagonistic game (in Germeier’s sense). A game of this kind is called an “emission” game. Suppose that there are n independent actors (countries or regions), each of them releasing a certain amount of CO per year (in carbon units)into the atmosphere, and that the emission would be reduced by each actor. Each actor has his own aim: to minimise the loss in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) caused by the reduction of emissions. On the other hand, taking into account that it is impossible to estimate more or less precisely the impact of the climate change on GDP for each country today, a common strategy will be to reduce the climate change. Since one of the main leading factors in global warming is the greenhouse effect, then the common aim will be to reduce the sum of emissions. This is a typical conflict situation. How to resolve it? We can weigh the “egoistic” and “altruistic” criteria for each actor introducing so-called “coefficients of egoism”. This coefficient is very large, if the actor uses a very egoistic strategy, and conversely, if the actor is a “super-altruist”, then the corresponding coefficient is very small. Using these coefficients we get the general solution of the game in a form of some Pareto’s equilibrium. The solution is stable and efficient.

     Now returning to the twaddle that you wrote eg

     an alternative hypotheses that credibly satisfy the evidence

     An alternative conjecture is not required,questions arising in uncertainties are legitimate lines of enquiry,especially say in paleoclimate when constraints on so called “measurements” do change when other more robust theory is applied eg Darwin 1856.

     The implications of evolution, as a constraint on say 13c in biological proxies is well known eg Laws 2002,and that incorrect measurements in the pliocene by Raymo et al are still used as a metric for sensitivity today eg Lunt Schmidt et al 2010 raise legitimate questions on Knowledge ( awareness) skill and competence.

203. I hopped across the river today to play golf with some buddies in Kentucky. Gorgeous day for a round. I played pretty good too. Anyway, I don’t know what they been feedin’ those Kentucky girls, but the one that was driving around in the beer cart had a temperature anomaly that was smokin’ hot. Do you guys remember Tiffany Amber Thiessen? Shazam! That’s who she reminded me of. Oh…and her smile was as sweet as a peach. Woo! Somebody get me a glass of iced tea or turn the hose on me. 😉

     Wait… what were we talking about?

     Andrew

204. Re: Nathan (May 15 18:31),

     My point was that Lucia’s characterization of climate scientists as being poor communicators is wrong. They’re perfectly good at communicating.

     Um.

     You picked a particularly apt thread for exercising that particular talking point. (Think timing.)

     I am also pointing out that scientists here who complain and moan about how other scientists won’t take their crticism serisouly are simply lazy when they won’t publish the criticism.

     Yes, you’ve expressed that opinion before.

     My own view is that people who go into Athletics or Acting or Aerospace Engineering (etc.) are to be restricted to three choices: (1) Agree with the AGW Consensus in all particulars: these folks may say and write what they will. (2) Disagree with aspects of the AGW Consensus, and keep quiet. (3) Disagree with aspects of the AGW Consensus, and publish peer-reviewed papers in the climatology literature.

     I believe that anyone who would otherwise fit into category (3) but who hasn’t authored a climate-science paper is a complainer and a moaner, and lazy to boot.

     This blog has returned to simply heckling from the sidelines.

     Sorry, I lost the link to Nathan’s Mission Statement for Lucia’s Blackboard. Could you repost it?

205. So lucia,
     if you’re going to heartland, perhaps could you ask d’Aleo and Watts how their follow-up on the EM Smith thing is going? It is eagerly awaited.

206. Roger Pielke’s thread on Hide The Decline has gotten hot. Judith Curry weighs in at #38. Steve McIntyre at #45. Bradley J. Fikes at #53. Many other substantive remarks from scientifically-literate commenters. Plus a thread at Bishop Hill’s blog.

     Still plenty of opportunity for defenders of the AGW Consensus Team’s conduct to weigh in. And unlike RealClimate.org and similar Consensus organs, Pielke Jr. consistently passes critical comments through his moderation queue.

207. Amac,
     That whole thread seems to be people talking about philosophy; very little directly about paleoclimate.

208. Andrew, I would gladly offer you some iced tea.

     People like Bitter Boris though, they would give you the hose all right!

     (…I think we’re talking about how Lucia made her points on the original topic very clear and then other folks just had to blah, blah, blah at her…..)

209. Re: carrot eater (May 15 20:02),

     > That whole thread seems to be people talking about philosophy; very little directly about paleoclimate.

     I agree.

     Per Gleick, a lot of scientists and scientifically-literate people are lining up with the Consensus.

     But then, per that thread, other scientists and scientifically-literate people are dissenting from the Consensus. Those dissents have nothing to do with denialism, as Gleick and the leadership of the Team imagine it.

     It’s too bad it’s worked out this way. The problems are probably solvable. Eventually, that’s what happened with the design and public-policy aspects of pivotal Phase III RCTs, for the most part.

     It’ll take time.

210. Robert in Calgary, if I ever escape from “Kentucky” and find myself in Calgary, I’m going to hold you to that iced tea offer. So make sure you keep plenty made. 😉

     Yes, the idea of AGW is so important to some people that they will descend into various forms of non-entertaining incoherence trying to defend it. Which has been happening for a while but seems to have gotten a little bit out of control recently.

     Andrew

211. Amac

     Where are the category (3) people?

     Lucia? No
     Judith Curry? No (she’s certainly published, but not against the consensus)
     McIntyre? No
     Ian Plimer? No
     Lord Monckton? No

     all you have is people like Spencer, Christy, Singer, Loehle, Gerlich etc… The cupboard looks pretty bare.

     What I’d really like to see is ‘Lukewarmer’ literature, the case has been made repeatedly on this blog and the ‘theory’ seems tio have followers… But there’s no published material. Well, none that I am aware of.

     “Still plenty of opportunity for defenders of the AGW Consensus Team’s conduct to weigh in. And unlike RealClimate.org and similar Consensus organs, Pielke Jr. consistently passes critical comments through his moderation queue.”
     But what’s the point? It’s not like anyone will change their mind! And this myth about moderation policy is really tiresome.

     If you note my earlier posts.

     It seems that the skeptics have lost the scientific argument so all they have now is the policy argument (with Pielke leading the way).

     BTW Tiljander proxy… Just thought I’d say that to give you an ‘in’.
     Ever considered publishing the work you did?

212. Amac

     BTW ” (2) Disagree with aspects of the AGW Consensus, and keep quiet. ”

     I am not saying people need to keep quiet. I am just saying that people who have serious issues and who want to be taken seriously need to front up and publish the work. Otherwise, as I said it’s just heckling… Heckling can be fun too.

213. Lucia asks:

     But consider what would have happened if Gleick had could have answered the rhetorical question at Morano’s with, “Gleick, the lead author, noticed the image soon after the article appeared and wrote a letter requesting Science remove the image”? What if the answer had been, “Opps! That was a blunder. I noticed yesterday, and wrote a letter asking it to be fixed?”

     What Gleick wrote:

     To the embarrassment of the journal, this photo is “photoshopped” — combining polar bear, ice floes, clouds, and other elements into a perfectly lovely, albeit made-up piece of art. Oops. The journal, of course, when they realized their mistake, agreed to swap out the photo and post a sheepish correction.

     So the answer to Lucia’s question is what would have happened is what did happened. Furthermore her own timeline contradicts her suggestion that nothing would be made of the issue if Gleick hadn’t posted at all – Delingpole, Blair and Watts (and Instapundit, too) all posted without any reference to Gleick’s post and after the image had been corrected.

     And the previous photoshop flap didn’t seem to need anything like a post by Gleick to drive it.

214. Re:”It seems that the skeptics have lost the scientific argument so all they have now is the policy argument.”

     Oh Nathan, you should join Boris on “Fantasy Island”, where above reproach scientists chase after skeptics demanding debates on the science and thrashing us whenever a debate takes place. I can understand how that sort of fantasy thinking is all the warming fanatics have left.

     I see one of the patron saints of “Save the planet NOW!” has bought yet another luxury home……….

     http://newsbusters.org/node/38375

215. liza (Comment#43108) May 15th, 2010 at 5:47 pm

     AGW’s are still arguing over less then one degree of “global temperature” and still FUDGING things to get “the point across” and skeptics have to change their ways? LOL

     It’s not the less than one degree that’s the problem, it’s the rest of this century and the ones that come after it.

216. “It seems that the skeptics have lost the scientific argument so all they have now is the policy argument.”

     Yes, and I’d also like to ask Nathan where, how and when “the skeptics” “lost” the “scientific argument” and if he has any record of, or documentation concerning said event or…

     Is this just another case of another AGW propagandist making another unsupported/meaningless assertion?

     Andrew

217. boris,
     Show us the calamity or stfu.
     Not one manifestation of climate is outside the range of normal variation. Not temperature, not ice, not storm rain or drought.
     Sea levels, Ocean pH, tropical cyclones, snow sleet and hail: normal.
     Your alleged conversation with a ‘climate scientist’ never happened, and you are simply full of it, to be perfectly blunt.
     You just make up crap and hope that if you sound sanctimonious enough, you can make your faith come true.
     Climate trends are well within normal range and require lying by fear mongers to make it show any different. And those lies require constant repetition by true believers like you to sustain them.
     If the world was experiencing a climate crisis, Mann, Briffa, Jones, Hansen, Schmidt & pals would not have spent the last 20 years being so wrong and playing with the data so much.
     Cya.

218. bugs,
     You say,

     “It’s not the less than one degree that’s the problem, it’s the rest of this century and the ones that come after it.”

     Bunk. There is no science that is accurately predicting climate next decade, much less next century. Now you are just punting and hoping to you guilt to close your sale.
     Those days are over.

219. Nathan,
     Your consensus argument is no longer valid given the overwhelming evidence in numerous Climategate emails showing how scientists and journal editors were threatened and bullied into not publishing views and research that disagreed with the AGW believers.

220. Re: Andrew_KY (May 15 22:12),
     where, how and when “the skeptics” “lost” the “scientific argument”
     I think they certainly “lost” it, in the sense of “losing” data, say – it just can’t be found. Most notably CA since November just has endless boring stuff about minutes of committee meetings etc. And now Lucia is filling the blog with who said what when about a low level subediting slip at Science. Or Mann spoofs, or what Judy said. Well, it’s more entertaining.

     It’s true that WUWT soldiers on with a local dialect of science. And Jeff Id has some good posts. But otherwise, I suppose we’ll just have to await revelations from Chicago. Or look in NIPCC.

221. MikeC

     “Nathan,
     Your consensus argument is no longer valid given the overwhelming evidence in numerous Climategate emails showing how scientists and journal editors were threatened and bullied into not publishing views and research that disagreed with the AGW believers.”

     It’s simply not true MikeC. The emails don’t show the science is wrong. Heck, even Mosher agrees on that.

     What single part of AGW theory has been falsified?

     CO2 is a greenhouse gas… true
     Humans are adding CO2 to the atmosphere… true
     The global temp is rising… true

     The only question that remains is ‘how much’ – studies show the how much is about 3C per doubling. Lukewarmers (for some reason) think it is around 1.5C – now I have seen no paper on this. It is simply asserted. The preponderance of evidence remains at sensitivity being 3C.

222. Nathan,

     Why do you keep pushing the ‘nothing has been shown to be false’ strawnman? It is quite irrelevant because the AGW claims have not been shown to be correct either. This entire argument comes down to a question of whether one trusts that the scientists involved have fairly assessed the evidence without letting their politics/ideology/egos colour their judgement.

     The climategate emails makes it painfully clear that scientists are not objective and that we cannot trust them to fairly assess the evidence. This does not mean that they are wrong but it does support the argument that AGW has been systematically exaggerated by activist scientists.

223. Raven

     You can’t ‘prove’ something true, so it’s not a strawman. The scientific method revolves around people proposing hypothesis and then attempting to disprove them. ‘Proof’ only exists in mathematics and courtrooms.

     “The climategate emails makes it painfully clear that scientists are not objective and that we cannot trust them to fairly assess the evidence. This does not mean that they are wrong but it does support the argument that AGW has been systematically exaggerated by activist scientists.”

     No, Raven they just demonstrate your pre-existing personal bias.

224. It is quite irrelevant because the AGW claims have not been shown to be correct either. This entire argument comes down to a question of whether one trusts that the scientists involved have fairly assessed the evidence without letting their politics/ideology/egos colour their judgement.
     .
     look Raven, you have just ignored those 250 NAS scientists, who put their names on that list.
     .
     we have pretty respected people on the record, supporting the trust into the climate scientists.
     .
     but i am not surprised that you missed the essence of the event. “sceptics” were focused on the bear picture, so where should you have gotten any real information from?

225. AMac,

     But then, per that thread, other scientists and scientifically-literate people are dissenting from the Consensus. Those dissents have nothing to do with denialism, as Gleick and the leadership of the Team imagine it.

     From the link you sent me to read, it’s hard to figure out what they’re dissenting about. They’re arguing about the difference between fudge and fraud, or somesuch. But in what context? WTF are they talking about? Some WMO report? Some Briffa paper? TAR? AR4? They’re just talking.

226. MikeC,

     Your consensus argument is no longer valid given the overwhelming evidence in numerous Climategate emails showing how scientists and journal editors were threatened and bullied into not publishing views and research that disagreed with the AGW believers.

     With ever more lazy confirmation bias. You think the emails say this, so you don’t need to ever consider what the literature actually says anymore – is that how it works?

     Crap papers aren’t supposed to be published. That’s the whole point of peer review. (and yet some get through..) You see in the emails a discussion of a crap paper that got through. One that was so bad that the journal’s other editors agreed it was horrible.

     Put up or shut up. Everybody who’s gotten rejected thinks they got shafted, though if they make revisions and improve it, they might admit the revisions were helpful. But who is it, that’s getting shut out? Huh? I look around, I see Lindzen, Spencer, Svensmark publishing regularly, even though many might not think some of those papers were any good.

227. Even Lindzen’s paper on his “Iris Effect” was published, and the conclusion was that he couldn’t draw any conclusion from the data. You have to wonder why he bothered.

228. Nathen,

     Give me some reasons why I should believe that climate scientists have honestly assessed the evidence available.

     I bet that every one of your reasons is a variation of ‘trust the scientists and the system’.

     climategate and the reaction to climategate shows I can’t ‘trust the scientists and the system’.

     Many people feel the same way. That is why your argument that ‘nothing has been shown to be wrong’ is irrelevant. If we can’t trust the system then we cannot treat the claims produced by the system as reliable. The onus is now on the scientists to prove their claims beyond all reasonable doubt – something they cannot do.

     If they don’t like being forced to meet that standard they could work to rebuild trust. But that will require that they condemn the actions of jones/mann et. al. As long as scientists justify or excuse it they tell the world that they are just as a untrustworthy.

229. The climategate emails makes it painfully clear that scientists are not objective and that we cannot trust them to fairly assess the evidence.

     Even if this were true, what, we should allow those non-biased blog owners and commenters to arbitrate the science?

230. Raven (Comment#43155) May 16th, 2010 at 6:55 am

     Nathen,

     Give me some reasons why I should believe that climate scientists have honestly assessed the evidence available.

     I bet that every one of your reasons is a variation of ‘trust the scientists and the system’.

     climategate and the reaction to climategate shows I can’t ‘trust the scientists and the system’.

     No, modern scientific process is built on the assumption you can’t trust or rely on individuals.

231. Raven (Comment#43155) May 16th, 2010 at 6:55 am

     Nathen,

     Give me some reasons why I should believe that climate scientists have honestly assessed the evidence available.

     I bet that every one of your reasons is a variation of ‘trust the scientists and the system’.

     climategate and the reaction to climategate shows I can’t ‘trust the scientists and the system’.

     Many people feel the same way. That is why your argument that ‘nothing has been shown to be wrong’ is irrelevant. If we can’t trust the system then we cannot treat the claims produced by the system as reliable. The onus is now on the scientists to prove their claims beyond all reasonable doubt – something they cannot do.

     You clearly don’t understand science, most research can’t be proven beyond reasonable doubt. It’s a matter of finding supporting evidence most of the time.

232. Give me some reasons why I should believe that climate scientists have honestly assessed the evidence available.

     Raven, give me some reasons why I should believe that [insert any field here] scientists have honestly assessed the evidence available.

     See where that goes? Nowhere.

     You didn’t like the results of climate science to begin with, and with the emails, you seize upon something on which to set your confirmation bias.

     So, really, put up or shut up. What is it, that hasn’t been assessed, and isn’t the subject of ongoing work? Where are these paradigm-shifting papers that just can’t get published?

     Let’s put some substance to the whining.

     Raven, the system works. If somebody has improvements to make to the current understanding, and they are supported by data, then these improvements will eventually be adopted. Even if they aren’t supported by the data and aren’t publishable, we’ll hear about them non-stop through blogs, arxiv and E&E anyway.

233. Roger Pielke’s thread on Hide The Decline has gotten hot. Judith Curry weighs in at #38. Steve McIntyre at #45. Bradley J. Fikes at #53. Many other substantive remarks from scientifically-literate commenters. Plus a thread at Bishop Hill’s blog.

     Still plenty of opportunity for defenders of the AGW Consensus Team’s conduct to weigh in. And unlike RealClimate.org and similar Consensus organs, Pielke Jr. consistently passes critical comments through his moderation queue.

     I saw nothing of substance in that thread. Steve McIntyre’s comment was the most reasoned.

     Judith Curry’s response is nonsensical. First she claimed that the papers were “bad science,” but doesn’t mention which papers she means or what was “bad.” Then she calls the IPCC out for obfuscation and bare assertions for reporting what the papers say, but it is unclear what she would have the IPCC do given that they are supposed to review the literature and not do any original research.

     I didn’t see anyone who wanted to talk specifically about the science in that thread at all. It was more: “Hey guys, we all agree these jerks did something wrong. Now, what should we call it?”

     (As for RC “censorship,” have you been censored? Was your post on topic and polite and not a retread of a previous post? Just because they have criteria for posting does not mean that they are not consistently publishing critical comments, especially given the fact that you can look at any thread on RC and see…well, critical comments.)

234. It seems the true believers are stuck making the false claim that since CO2 is a ghg, then we are facing a climate apocalypse.
     And then of course the deliberately obtuse are still pretending that RC does not censor.
     I wonder if they are at least convincing themselves?

235. The People v. The Hockey Stick Felony? http://greenhellblog.com/2010/05/12/the-people-v-the-hockey-stick-felony/

236. I didn’t see anyone who wanted to talk specifically about the science in that thread at all. It was more: “Hey guys, we all agree these jerks did something wrong. Now, what should we call it?”

     Exactly.

     If that’s what Amac thinks is sceptics actually talking about the science, that’s pretty bad.

237. The People v. The Hockey Stick Felony? http://greenhellblog.com/2010/…..ck-felony/

     The misinformation in that post is worth about a thousand polar bear pictures. It’s not even consistent:

     “Mann’s computer model always produces hockey sticks”

     “Mann created the hockey stick by cherry picking data.”

     A+ for these arguments appearing back to back.

     This proves that climate skeptics are dishonest and we can’t trust them any more.

238. It’s not the less than one degree that’s the problem, it’s the rest of this century and the ones that come after it.

     That’s an assumption based on computer model predictions that can’t be falsified, except after the fact. And the models’ predictive power to date has not been great. Even while the CAGW crowd is searching for the “missing heat”, they’re still warning of dire consequences. Absolutely no admission that they might have got it wrong. This is what I referred to over at Pielke Jr.’s blog regarding how to avoid cargo cult science.

     “It’s a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty–a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid–not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you’ve eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked–to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.”

239. Re: Boris (May 16 07:59) & carrot eater (May 16 08:33),

     I saw nothing of substance in that thread. Steve McIntyre’s comment was the most reasoned. Judith Curry’s response is nonsensical…

     Thanks for checking that thread and offering your take on it.

     In general, it’s often quite difficult to understand what another person’s perspective is. Part of this difficulty is that it seems easy and straightforward. I listen (or read), then paraphrase, then rebut.

     But consider how often the “paraphrasing” step fails — when we are on the receiving end.

     That should suggest the possibility that we aren’t reliably excellent in understanding the concerns and arguments of our sparring partners.

     The AGW debate is contentious. It attracts its share of people with perspectives that are very distant from my own. There are regularly-floated ideas that I think are clearly incorrect; others that are “not even wrong.” A recurrent issue is that some people don’t have the background that (I think) is required for a particular technical discussion, i.e. adequate scientific literacy. However, they aren’t sufficiently self-aware to grapple with this issue. This holds true for subsets of both the pro-Consensus side and the Skeptic side. These gulfs are probably too wide to be meaningfully addressed in blog-comment exchanges.

     There are other perspectives that are worth spending some time to learn about. The easy question is, “What are the ways in which the people I disagree with are wrong?” The harder question is, “What are the points they raise that merit serious consideration?”

     (Parenthetically, that’s one reason why I nudge you to organize your thoughts on why Mann08’s conduct with respect to the use of the T. proxies is defensible. It might lead me to change my mind.)

240. And the models’ predictive power to date has not been great.

     Eyes of the beholder, apparently. I think Hansen’s old run is just fine. And the models handled Pinatubo pretty well. Though of course that model has been since far surpassed in sophistication, and I think its sensitivity was probably a bit high. But it’s much more than just the trends in global mean temp anomaly that you can assess the models for; the models do more or less well on various other things you can look at.

     But on some level, the details of the GCMs are besides the point. They are always going to be a work in progress. The basic question is this: given the basic physics of greenhouse gases, water vapour and ice-albedo, and insights into sensitivity/feedbacks we have from the past, how likely is it that there is some big and unexpected negative feedback that’s going to arise down the road and substantially mitigate the warming?

241. AMac,
     “A recurrent issue is that some people don’t have the background that (I think) is required a particular technical discussion, i.e. sufficient scientific literacy. However, they aren’t sufficiently self-aware to grapple with this issue. This holds true for subsets of both the pro-Consensus side and the Skeptic side.”

     Spot on, and one of the reasons that I seldom comment any more on obvious factual errors in posts or comments at WUWT or at any of the extreme CAGW blogs. If you tell someone that the ocean can’t possibly be responsible for the majority of increase in CO2 over the last 50 years you are met with non-sense comments from many, none of whom have a clue about the physical chemistry involved. If you comment about the recent lack of rapid heat accumulation in the ocean at a CAGW site, you are shouted down as a “denialist”… if your comment even gets through moderation, and it almost never does. I find it all a bit discouraging.

242. carrot eater says:

     Raven, the system works. If somebody has improvements to make to the current understanding, and they are supported by data, then these improvements will eventually be adopted.

     What you are missing is climate science is not an experimental science where a break through can occur because someone can conclusively demonstrate that their hypothesis better predicts outcomes. This means the only science that gets accepted is science which supports the science of the established players.

     This means that the biases within the climate science community have a very strong influence on which hypothesis are deemed to have merit. For example, Roy Spencer’s cloud hypothesis has as much supporting evidence as the CO2 hypothesis (which is to say there is nothing conclusive). The only difference is it undermines the AGW-is-a-catatrophe narrative so it is dismissed quickly whereas climate scientists turn a blind eye to the carefully tuned aerosol forcings which are needed to make the data fit the CO2 hypothesis.

     Bottom line, you have no evidence that the system “works” and it is quite rediculous to expect people to believe that given the climategate denial in the climate science community.

243. AMac,
     That’s great and all, but it doesn’t help the basic shortage, which is that it isn’t apparent what papers, graphs, reports they’re actually talking about. They’ve just agreed ahead of time that something is bad, and are wondering what to call it.

     Which is fine so far as it goes, I guess; I don’t expect to drop into the middle of your dinner conversation and know what you’re talking about. But it’s not going to help me understand what their scientific objections are.

     I took another look at the relevant section in AR4 again. I don’t see what the complaint would be. The divergence issue is laid out quite clearly. It even makes the point that if certain proxies diverge because they switch from being thermometers to being moisture-meters when it gets warmer, than those proxies could not be expected to reflect warmer temperatures in the past. So AR4 doesn’t at all brush divergence under the rug.

     This is why it’s important to understand why certain proxies have diverged..and it’s always been important to look for signs of divergence in the past..but it’s also why you look at a wide array of proxy types.

     In the end, paleo will always be a little messy. If there were not ambiguities and difficulties, then the spaghetti graph wouldn’t look like spaghetti in the first place.

244. What you are missing is climate science is not an experimental science where a break through can occur because someone can conclusively demonstrate that their hypothesis better predicts outcomes. This means the only science that gets accepted is science which supports the science of the established players.

     That doesn’t even make any sense.

     For example, Roy Spencer’s cloud hypothesis has as much supporting evidence as the CO2 hypothesis

     Let’s see it, then.

245. Re: carrot eater (May 16 09:03),

     it isn’t apparent what papers, graphs, reports they’re actually talking about. They’ve just agreed ahead of time that something is bad, and are wondering what to call it.

     1. See my earlier general remarks at #43177.

     2. You are among the scientifically-literate clientele here. These days, that includes skillful use of search engines. I shouldn’t have to supply you with the following background.

     3. I take it that the following is meant as gratuitous snark.

     Which is fine so far as it goes, I guess; I don’t expect to drop into the middle of your dinner conversation and know what you’re talking about.

     If not: can you rephrase it in a way that is not as prone to misinterpretation?

     4. You write, “I took another look at the relevant section in AR4 again.” It would be nice if you would specify and link to what you are referring to. Google suggests that the only appearance of the words “divergence” and “Briffa” at the IPCC wbsite are in the sixth-to-last paragraph of AR4 WG1 Chapter 6.6. Google didn’t seem to find any such pages in the Third Assessment Report.

     The discussion about “Hide the Decline” mainly concerns graphical representations, though it deals with text, as well. Steve McIntyre has compiled the relevant images in his Climate Audit post IPCC and the “Trick”.

     Contrast Figure 1, Figure 3 and IPCC Third Assessment Report Figure 2.21.

     McIntyre, on the text in the TAR:

     Contrary to claims by various climate scientists, the IPCC Third Assessment Report did not disclose the deletion of the post-1960 values. Nor did it discuss the “divergence problem”. Yes, there had been previous discussion of the problem in the peer-reviewed literature (Briffa et al 1998) – a point made over and over by Gavin Schmidt and others. But not in the IPCC Third Assessment Report. Nor was the deletion of the declining values reported or disclosed in the IPCC Third Assessment Report. [Dec 11.- IPCC TAR does contain a sly allusion to the problem; it mentions “evidence” that tree ring density variations had “changed in their response in recent decades”. Contrary to claims of realclimate commenters, this does not constitute disclosure of the deletion of the post-1960 values in the controversial figure or even of the decline itself.]

     So you may safely assume that the linked thread at Pielke Jr.’s is a discussion about that interpretation, in the context of multiproxy reconstructions.

     AR4 is better, but hardly a model of transparency. At that link (above), contrast 1960-on in Figure 6.10 with that period as represented in Box 6.4, Figure 1. Here’s the relevant excerpt from that sixth-to-last paragraph of AR4 WG1 Ch. 6.6:

     …Several analyses of ring width and ring density chronologies, with otherwise well-established sensitivity to temperature, have shown that they do not emulate the general warming trend evident in instrumental temperature records over recent decades, although they do track the warming that occurred during the early part of the 20th century and they continue to maintain a good correlation with observed temperatures over the full instrumental period at the interannual time scale (Briffa et al., 2004; D’Arrigo, 2006). This ‘divergence’ is apparently restricted to some northern, high-latitude regions, but it is certainly not ubiquitous even there. In their large-scale reconstructions based on tree ring density data, Briffa et al. (2001) specifically excluded the post-1960 data in their calibration against instrumental records, to avoid biasing the estimation of the earlier reconstructions (hence they are not shown in Figure 6.10), implicitly assuming that the ‘divergence’ was a uniquely recent phenomenon, as has also been argued by Cook et al. (2004a). Others, however, argue for a breakdown in the assumed linear tree growth response to continued warming, invoking a possible threshold exceedance beyond which moisture stress now limits further growth (D’Arrigo et al., 2004)…

     BTW, I’ll be offline for the rest of the day. Kid + baseball + window = trip to hardware store.

246. carrot eater (Comment#43190),
     “That doesn’t even make any sense.”
     Actually I think it does make some sense. Climate science does not allow controlled experiments like most science does. You can’t come up with a nice replicated 2^5 factorial design that maps out responses with associated uncertainties for key variables. All you can do is develop theories/models which “are consistent with” historical observations. Since fit to historical data (be it temperature or other) is not a controlled experiment, you are left with considerable uncertainty, and no simple way to reduce that uncertainty. The documented “tuning” of the various models with different assumed historical aerosol dimming, so that each model fits the historical temperatures reasonably well, shows that the feed-backs in these models are extremely uncertain. A broad range of more-or-less speculative feed-backs remain consistent with the available data. I do not know why you are so certain about the accuracy of the feed-backs, or so certain that significant negative forcings have been ignored or badly estimated.
     .
     Based on your apparent certainty, please tell us which one of the models is the correct one, so that nobody will have to waste any more time looking at the results from the other models.

247. At that link (above), contrast 1960-on in Figure 6.10 with that period as represented in Box 6.4, Figure 1

     I don’t get your complaint here. Box 6.4 shows regional variations. For example, light blue is Western Greenland–obviously not a tree ring proxy–and it shows more divergence than any other proxy. I do think some of the divergence is more clearly shown in box 6.4 (because divergence is a regional problem), but it is still consistent with figure 6.10.

     I think the text you quote on the divergence problem is a fair summary of the issues. It is not complete. Note, for instance, that it does not mention possible anthropogenic explanations for the DP: local pollution and global dimming.

248. I was thinking when I got out of mass today, that Boris, bugs, sod and I could go golfing together sometime. (I’d invite Carrot too, but I’m afraid he might start slapping me.) After flirting with the Beer Cart Cutie we could discuss how playing the game of golf on a sunny spring afternoon is more important than propagandizing about AGW on the internet. I think it would be a very fruitful discussion.

     Andrew

249. If I get to drive a cart, I’ll be the caddy for the four of you.

     I spent $$$ on plants Saturday and I’m about to do some more plant shopping and take advantage of all that increased CO2!

250. I actually wouldn’t mind playing golf with you, Andrew, though I suck pretty bad. And if you are a Kentucky basketball fan, we’d have plenty else to argue about since my team is Memphis 🙂

251. Boris,

     Cool, dude. I am **NOT** a Kentucky basketball fan, for the record. 😉

     I wonder what the other guys would say?

     Andrew

252. Boris, Andrew_KY,

     Is there any correlation between golf handicap and skepticism in CAGW? I’m pretty skeptical and carry about a 10 handicap.

253. “Is there any correlation between golf handicap and skepticism in CAGW? I’m pretty skeptical and carry about a 10 handicap.”

     SteveF,

     My skepticism/golf scores must be an outlier. My handicap is way higher than that. 🙁

     Actually, we could get 4 skeptics and 4 warmers and have a friendly little match. 😉

     Andrew

254. Eyes of the beholder, apparently. I think Hansen’s old run is just fine. And the models handled Pinatubo pretty well.

     So what happened in the last decade to the accelerated warming Mann told us would happen? Did Hansen predict the warming would flatten out? In the Climategate emails, Phil Jones worried about (PDF) the Nature paper suggesting that warming would cease until 2020. That would be two decades of no warming.

     It would seem the models are not quite ready for prime time — certainly not enough to restructure the global economy.

255. Carrot:

     “I took another look at the relevant section in AR4 again. I don’t see what the complaint would be. The divergence issue is laid out quite clearly. It even makes the point that if certain proxies diverge because they switch from being thermometers to being moisture-meters when it gets warmer, than those proxies could not be expected to reflect warmer temperatures in the past. So AR4 doesn’t at all brush divergence under the rug.”

     The problem with hide the decline in AR4 is two fold.

     First some history. McIntyre asked Briffa in the reviewer comments to SHOW the divergence and explain it in the text.
     Briffa choose to HIDE the divergence and explain the truncation in the text.

     The question is this. why? In all of the source literature Briffa SHOWED the decline and then explained it. This gives one the full impact of seeing HOW LARGE the decline is. BUT, in this summary of literature briffa HIDES the decline ( doesnt show the picture) and uses 264 words to explain it. To understand WHY we have one and only one text to refer to. And that is the text that explains the scientists REASONING when they faced the same issue in the TAR. The rationale was they didnt want to dilute the message. THAT is the marketing point. Briffa had a choice:

     1. Show the graphical depiction of the decline and explain it in the text. AS HE HAD DONE IN THE SOURCE LITERATURE

     2. Lop off the decline and explain this in the text.

     he chose #2. There are a few explainations WHY, only one is supported by documentary evidence. Dont dilute the message.
     That evidence is no slam dunk, of course, but absent any other evidence its the best explanation.

     THE SECOND PROBLEM is how Briffa 2000 gets draw out to 1990.
     The series ends at 1960. A thirty year filter.. lets see. to draw the years from 1945-1960.. they have several options ( they extended the mean) BUT to draw 1960 and beyond. They graft on a temperature series. Thats a no no. because the tree ring series is only correlated with the temp series ( at best at .4-.6)

256. Is there any correlation between golf handicap and skepticism in CAGW? I’m pretty skeptical and carry about a 10 handicap.

     All I know is that my score looks like a hockey stick. Whether or not the number of beers I’ve consumed affects the result is unclear at the moment–but there is a correlation. Then there is the College Drunk Period to consider…

257. Boris,
     The beer/score correlation sounds plausible… I almost never drink beer on the course unless my score is already higher than I like and it’s the last few holes.

258. Boris.

     ““Mann’s computer model always produces hockey sticks”
     “Mann created the hockey stick by cherry picking data.”
     A+ for these arguments appearing back to back.”

     F for mispresentation. The two arguments are not inconsistent when you supply the full context.

     The full argument is this. When you cherry pick the data and feed the model a series with a distinctive hockey stick shape, then none of the other data matters. You can feed it stock prices. So the two arguments GO TOGETHER. cherry pick a britslecone pine which SHOULD BE AVOIDED, cherry pick a sediment series which contaminated data, feed those too Mann’s meat grinder and it you can add anything else you want, you’ll get a hockey stick out.

     “Eventually, it was discovered that the computer model that produced the hockey stick would produce a hockey stick graph regardless of what data was input. But it gets worse.”

     This is NOT exactly true. You have to put in a hockey stick to start, thats the cherry picked part..

     “Mann apparently created the hockey stick by cherry-picking data he liked and deleting data he didn’t like. While the vast majority of the hockey stick is based on temperature data extrapolated from tree rings going back hundreds of years, the tip of the blade (representing the late 20th century) was temperature data taken from thermometers. Past the obvious apples-and-oranges problem, as it turns out, Mann appended the thermometer data to the hockey stick at a point at which the tree ring data actually shows cooling. This cooling trend data was then deleted. This is what is referred to by the now-famous Climate-gate phrase “Mike’s Nature trick to … hide the decline.”

     Poor explantation written for effect rather than accuracy. grade: D.

     Note to author: revise this to put the cherry picking first. First you cherry pick, then you add a novel statistical approach that generates Hockey sticks from the cherry picked signal and white noise. THEN, when you present results to complete the spin, you splice on temperature series as needed.

259. Plos One.

     Open access.

     http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0009972

     nice

260. The artcle on Plos one, noted above is a nice example of supplying clear explantions:

     “The fact that some series are poorly reconstructed means either that they do not contain
     any climatic signal or that they the climatic signal recorded is more complex. It is impossible
     to choose between both alternatives. If the second one prevails, there is an important loss to
     eliminate these series. If the first one prevails, it is not certain that they will have a strong
     effect on the whole reconstructions. We decided to keep them.”

261. or this: very clear:

     “The other PC’s are more variable and cannot be identified
     easily with clearly known climatic events. We exclude the fourth one (7% of the variance),
     because it emphasizes a warm medieval period at the same level than the end of the 20th
     century, but also a warm 17-18th century which does not correspond to our knowledge of this
     period. We know that the unequal resolution of the various pollen cores used by (Davis et al.
     2003) may be responsible of artefacts. Retained components 1, 2, 3 and 5 explain together
     84% of the variance. ”

     Nice. a PC that explains 7% of the variance and shows a MWP is eliminated because.. it shows a divergence. nice.

262. Lucia, That darn photo shows up everywhere!

     http://abcnewswatch.blogspot.com/2010/05/more-fake-polar-bears-at-met-office.html

263. Lucia – a small add to the story was the discovery of the (very large) penguin on the same ice floe. Appears in the comments to Tim Blair’s post.

     http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-3726704-the-last-emperor.php

     This I think added to the fun and fury with the Arctic/Antarctic ice floe teleportation, plus the whole ‘did the poley bear eat the penguin, its a very well fed looking poley bear’ line of Pythonism. Ridicule is a common response to self importance so I think Science and the 255 scientists got tarred with the latter even more than they might usually have done.

264. SteveF

     Actually I think it does make some sense. Climate science does not allow controlled experiments like most science does. You can’t come up with a nice replicated 2^5 factorial design that maps out responses with associated uncertainties for key variables. All you can do is develop theories/models which “are consistent with” historical observations.

     I’ll agree with all of that. There are other fields where this is often the case – biology, astrophysics, etc. But you can still gauge how consistent a hypothesis is with observations (as well as the laws of physics), which is rather more than what Raven was allowing.

     Based on your apparent certainty, please tell us which one of the models is the correct one, so that nobody will have to waste any more time looking at the results from the other models.

     Nothing I wrote would suggest such an attitude, so I’d appreciate you not making stuff up. I made clear that the models are works in progress, with some features that aren’t well reproduced.

265. Mosher, Re AR4:

     Your second complaint, I know nothing about.

     Your first complaint: I think the text of AR4 is totally adequate on this topic. Nothing is hidden. Tells you that divergence can be quite important in terms of how trustworthy the pre-instrumental period is, depending on what caused it. p472-473.

     So do you graphically need to show it? If you’re introducing the series, I’d say yes. If you’re writing a paper in Nature about the divergence, definitely; that’s the whole point of the paper. In a literature review where you’re overlaying it with several other reconstructions? You could, you could not. Either way, you mention it in the text, and give the cites so the interested person could follow up.

     I probably would have left the post-1960 in there; the spaghetti graph is a visual mess already anyway. It isn’t going to be tidy no matter what you do, with the current state of paleoclimate. What’s a bit more mess? But I see no great harm in not showing it. It really doesn’t add any information, in the context there. I mean, just from the mess of the spaghetti, any reader can immediately see that there’s a good bit of uncertainty here. It certainly isn’t some huge scandal.

266. Bradley J. Fikes (Comment#43235) May 16th, 2010 at 12:17 pm

     The “global warming stopped in year X” meme isn’t going to get far with me. Nobody expects ENSO and the like to stop, so don’t pretend that they do. Call me back in 10 years, and we’ll see.

267. Andrew

     (I’d invite Carrot too, but I’m afraid he might start slapping me.)

     Why the heck would I waste my time slapping you, when I had a golf club handy?

     (joking aside – I’m not much for golf, but I’d buy you a drink afterwards)

268. “I’d buy you a drink afterwards”

     CE,

     You’re on, sailor. 😉

     BTW, I got in trouble once when I was dating this girl and we went to visit her family and I was jokin’ around with her step father (who was a retired marine) and used ‘sailor’ on him.

     Didn’t go over very well. :/

     Andrew

269. Andrew,
     If I can give any advice, it is perhaps to never annoy a marine. Serving or otherwise.

270. carrot eater,
     .

     But I see no great harm in not showing it. It really doesn’t add any information, in the context there.

     .
     SteveMc specifically asked that it be shown in AR4 but his request ws rejected. Such a response makes no sense if they really believed the divergance ‘didn’t add anything’.
     .
     The fact is it does matter and it was left out because the IPCC authors wanted to mislead the many readers who would never read or understand the text.
     .
     You can spin as much as you want but it change the fact people who caught once in a deception really have no right to complain when everything they say is now presumed to be a deception unless they can prove otherwise.

271. Mosher’s comments (about the changed meme post-Climategate) and the one explaining the hockey stick are very true.

     I was at the library (it is a very large collection) for about a week now. I’ve checked on all the books on environmental science and policy relating to climate science.

     Climategate completely wipes the reams and reams of wisdom printed in those books. All of them stand invalidated. I feel like an idiot reading any of those books – they all regurgitate the same old ‘manufactured doubt, second hand smoke, etc’ crap over and over again. And to think they wrote all these books during the same period the paleoclimatology debate surrounding the hockey stick was evolving right in front of their own eyes!!

     The tobacco/doubt story is good for the period of the mid-late 90s perhaps. Not beyond that at all.

     carot eater:
     Thanks for letting us all know that we cannot do experiments in biology.

272. SteveMc specifically asked that it be shown in AR4 but his request ws rejected. Such a response makes no sense if they really believed the divergance ‘didn’t add anything’.

     Huh? How does that work? If I think that showing bad data doesn’t add anything, then I would turn down somebody’s request to put it in there. Seems perfectly consistent to me.

     This is a multi-faceted decision. What does showing the divergence tell the reader? It shows the reader that the proxies sometimes fail to report temperature, sometimes quite badly. Which the text admits quite clearly.

     On the other hand, if you do show the divergence, you get the problem with the idiot sort of ‘sceptics’, who’ll decide to ignore the thermometers and take that series of tree-rings as proof that it actually hasn’t warmed since 1960. And nothing you put in the text will keep them from abusing that chart in that way.

     If you’re worried about the idiots getting confused in that way, then you’ll be wary of graphically showing the divergence. It seems a much bigger confusion than anything you’d get by not showing it. I don’t know if this is quite how the authors weighed it, but it’s possible.

     Or, maybe the decision was as simple as saying that they wouldn’t muss up the plot with data that aren’t usable- so just describe in the text that there is data that aren’t used, and why.

     Anyway, now that everybody is talking about divergence, I suspect it might end up getting its own graph in AR5, zoomed in on the recent past. Accompanied with more of a discussion of how you might detect any episodes of divergence in the pre-instrumental record.

273. Thanks for letting us all know that we cannot do experiments in biology.

     I didn’t say you can’t do experiments in biology. But there are certainly aspects of biology that don’t lend themselves to perfectly controlled experiments in real time. For example, tracing out the evolutionary development of any given life form. You can sequence different species’ DNA, you can dig up and compare fossils, you can do all sorts of things – but you can’t actually recreate the events in your lab.

274. carrot eater,

     The *opinion* that the diveragance can be explained by some unique to the 20th century factory is but an *opinion*. It is not a fact. Sceptics are right to jump on it because it is evidence that the tree ring reconstructions are largely junk.

     They hid the decline because they wished to deceive people. It is really that simple. They may have convinced themselves that they were deceiving people for their own good but that does not make it any less odious.

     As for AR5 – what it says is largely irrelevant as long as the people involved continue to deny the serious issues of bias which have been exposed over and over again.

275. The *opinion* that the diveragance can be explained by some unique to the 20th century factory is but an *opinion*. It is not a fact.

     Raven, when did I say it was a well-established fact? Go through my comments, and you will not see it. Please do not make up stuff that I did not say. I allow for the possibility that divergence has happened in the past.

     That said, there are things you can do to look for signs of divergence in the past; fidelity-testing. Among the things that help in this regard is using a wide assortment of proxy types. These days, reconstructions use all manner of things, not just tree rings.

     They hid the decline because they wished to deceive people.

     It was in the text, clear as day. It was its own paper in Nature. If they were trying to hide the issue, they certainly didn’t try very hard.

     Even if there wasn’t a modern divergence, fidelity is an issue you’d have to be careful with. You carefully look for trees that might be temperature sensitive, instead of moisture-sensitive or something else. But as you’re doing that, you have to be mindful that the tree had to be that way for hundreds of years.

276. Re: carrot eater #43293 (May 16 20:06),

     CE, you offered a synopsis of why the Divergence Problem wasn’t emphasized graphically and was discussed only minimally in the text, in Chapter 6 of WG1 for the AR4. Many parts about the explanation sound about right to me.

     This is a multi-faceted decision. What does showing the divergence tell the reader? It shows the reader that the proxies sometimes fail to report temperature, sometimes quite badly. Which the text admits quite clearly.

     Agree. “The authors realize that proxies sometimes fail to report temperature, sometimes badly. This is discussed in the peer-reviewed literature, thus mentioned in the text.”

     On the other hand, if you do show the divergence, you get the problem with the idiot sort of ’sceptics’, who’ll decide to ignore the thermometers and take that series of tree-rings as proof that it actually hasn’t warmed since 1960. And nothing you put in the text will keep them from abusing that chart in that way. If you’re worried about the idiots getting confused in that way, then you’ll be wary of graphically showing the divergence. It seems a much bigger confusion than anything you’d get by not showing it. I don’t know if this is quite how the authors weighed it, but it’s possible.

     Hmmm. “Showing the divergence graphically will lead idiot-skeptics to prefer the post-1960 tree-ring proxies to the post-1960 instrumental record, allowing them to baselessly claim that the Earth hasn’t warmed since then.”

     An alternative take. “Showing the divergence graphically will give skeptics an offical IPCC visual aid to drive home the extent of the problem with tree-ring proxies post-1960, compared with the instrumental record, allowing them to sow doubt about the validity of the proxy-based reconstructions prior to 1850.”

     Or, maybe the decision was as simple as saying that they wouldn’t muss up the plot with data that aren’t usable- so just describe in the text that there is data that aren’t used, and why.

     Agree. “The Chapter 6 authors wished to avoid biasing the calibration by including the post-1960 decline.”

     On the latter point, Chapter 6.6’s text (see #43195) confirms CE’s interpretation: “In their large-scale reconstructions based on tree ring density data, Briffa et al. (2001) specifically excluded the post-1960 data in their calibration against instrumental records, to avoid biasing the estimation of the earlier reconstructions (hence they are not shown in Figure 6.10), implicitly assuming that the ‘divergence’ was a uniquely recent phenomenon, as has also been argued by Cook et al. (2004a).”

     To my mind, that passage brings up these points:

     * Did the authors see this as a post-hoc alteration? As a case of special pleading?

     * Did the authors use an accepted statistical procedure to determine the 1960 split?

     * Were the authors concerned about how such a modification to the calibration procedure would affect the uncertainty ranges in the pre-instrumental record?

     To my knowledge, the authors didn’t raise these questions in AR4 itself, in the peer-reviewed literature, or in another “on the record” venue (but I could be wrong).

     It would be interesting to get Gavin Schmidt’s take on this view of “Hide the Decline” (would it pass moderation at the new RealClimate?). Steve McIntyre’s, too.

     And the climategate emails might provide valuable context to the principals’ contemporaneous views of these issues.

277. Amac,
     Thank you for the careful reading.

     Skipping around:

     On the latter point, Chapter 6.6’s text (see #43195) confirms CE’s interpretation:

     Yes, maybe I should have quoted it myself. Thank you for filling that in.

     * Did the authors see this as a post-hoc alteration? As a case of special pleading?

     Can you expand? I do not understand.

     * Did the authors use an accepted statistical procedure to determine the 1960 split?

     Let’s see. The 2001 Briffa paper refers back to the 1998 Nature paper. Looks like they simply chose 1960 by visual inspection of when the divergence gets bad. By my eyeball, it’s a fair choice. They do calculate the correlation between proxy and temperature, upto 1960 and through 1960, but I don’t think they repeated that with the cut-off date as a variable.

     * Were the authors concerned about how such a modification to the calibration procedure would affect the uncertainty ranges in the pre-instrumental record?

     Eh? I don’t follow. Forget the uncertainty ranges; if you used post-1960 data in the calibration period, you’d just get bad results in the pre-instrumental period. The same reasoning why some people don’t think you can use the Tiljander proxies…

     An alternative take. “Showing the divergence graphically will give skeptics an offical IPCC visual aid to drive home the extent of the problem with tree-ring proxies post-1960, compared with the instrumental record, allowing them to sow doubt about the validity of the proxy-based reconstructions prior to 1850.”

     But the sceptics didn’t need any such thing. The divergence is staring you in the face in the previous Briffa publications. If the sceptics wanted to emphasize that divergence to cast doubt on the reconstruction prior to 1850, they already had it in a perfectly good form.

     was discussed only minimally in the text

     I don’t think it was minimal at all. It’s pretty explicit and obvious, and takes up a few sentences. Remember it’s a lit review of an awful lot of material, Amac – maybe read some other sections to calibrate your expectations on discussion length. It doesn’t have time to dwell on things; it gives an overview and provides the citations where you are meant to find out more.

278. Andrew,
     “BTW, I got in trouble once when I was dating this girl and we went to visit her family and I was jokin’ around with her step father (who was a retired marine) and used ’sailor’ on him.

     Didn’t go over very well. :/”

     Andrew, being a former Marine, I’d say that was worth at least a good pimp slap… from here on you must remember the famous Alongapo chant… Sailors on payday, Marines everyday

279. Re: carrot eater (May 16 22:06),

     CE, it comes down to the contrast between:

     * statistical parameters as something you can calculate from a set of numbers, and

     * statistical parameters as metrics that only have meaning when the input data meets the necessary criteria.

     This criteria is often very restrictive.

     In the present case, suppose that it’s 1970, and you and I are gathering tree-ring information. Looks good as a temperature proxy, but we don’t have any data from the past decade compiled, yet. We set out to set out a procedure for analysis, i.e. to establish a correlation between a tree-ring feature and temperature.

     This would be a prospective statistical analysis, with respect to whether the post-1960 part of the time-series is to be removed from consideration.

     Do we have any reason to say, “uh-oh, we’d better exclude post-1960 data”? In the day, were people worried about “CO2 fertilization” or other possible confounding influences?

     Not that I can see. To my knowledge, this only gained attention in the late 1990s, and only because divergence of tree-rings from the instrumental record was coming to dendrologists’ attention.

     So this is a retrospective alteration to the conditions of the analysis.

     Consider these two scenarios. In each case, we have a pair of variables and a correlation that varies between them. (Could be a time series, or something else.) We’ll take r^2 as the measure of significance.

     Scenario A: You must calculate r^2 for the entire series of data.

     Scenario B: Before calculating r^2, you can inspect subgroups of the data. If there are some you don’t like the looks of (i.e. appear to correlate poorly), pull them out. Then calculate r^2 for the remaining part of the data series.

     (1) Will B’s r^2 be lower than, the same as, or higher than A’s r^2?

     (2) Should the circumstances of Scenario B alter the way we think about the r^2 number that it produces? If so, how?

     (3) How should the changed circumstances of Scenario B affect “downstream” calculations, such as figuring out confidence intervals for the things we are trying to estimate?

     As I mentioned on a prior thread, retrospective analysis is considered invalid in pivotal clinical trials, on a prima facie basis (to my knowledge). Subgroup analyses have to be specified ahead of time, and their power estimated by methods such as the Bonferroni correction. The reasoning is as I’ve described here: with retrospective analysis, one can calculate the relevant parameters, but they are difficult or impossible to evaluate.

     Note that I am not a statistician, this is meant as a lay explanation. Corrections welcome (for tommorow: for now, g’night, CE).

280. AMac:
     I follow what you’re saying, but I’m not going where you’re going at the end. Whatever practices are used in drug trials may not translate elsewhere; those are fairly unique circumstances, I think. In other contexts, you’re allowed to identify and toss out outliers after the fact (of course, you can’t just do that willy-nilly, but I’ll leave out the generic guidelines for now).

     Here we have a case where we study trees. Tree growth rates can be a function of different things – temperature, moisture, disease, insects, CO2, sunlight, nutrients, pollution, acid rain, fire, people carving their initials, who knows. We carefully choose trees in locations such that their growth is likely to be mainly limited by temperature. If we hadn’t examined this type of tree in this area before, we might not be able to predict exactly what times in history that tree wasn’t a good thermometer. But if we can pick out those times after the fact, then we may as well use that information. Of course it’s stronger if we can identify the physical reason why the thing diverged over those time periods.

     If we were examining these trees in 1970, when we pulled up the results we’d see the beginning of the divergence (well, assuming we had access to historical climate records in our region), but since it was only 10 years long, it wouldn’t be obvious yet whether it was just a blip, or something that would continue.

     (1) Will B’s r^2 be lower than, the same as, or higher than A’s r^2?

     This is just the comparison you see in Briffa 1998, Nature.

281. Re: carrot eater (May 16 23:05),

     This is just the comparison you see in Briffa 1998, Nature.

     That Letter seems to be available only behind Nature’s paywall, here. Certainly, we can stipulate that statistical parameters for tree-ring/temperature correlations can be calculated, both ending in 1960 and up through the present.

     The question would be: In proxy-based reconstructions after 1998, what time-series boundaries are used?

     If the decision is made to truncate at 1960 on the basis of a retrospective (1998) analysis, a significant widening in the uncertainty bounds of the reconstructed temperatures seems to be an inevitable consequence. Can such uncertainties be calculated? Assuming that the answer is “yes,” were they calculated correctly by Briffa et al. and subsequent users of their data?

     If the mathematical treatment for the 1960 truncation was avoided (e.g. on the grounds I’ve outlined), there would be no justification for failing to show the series for the entire calibration period, e.g. in IPCC reports. But this seems quite unlikely.

     Whatever practices are used in drug trials may not translate elsewhere; those are fairly unique circumstances, I think.

     What would those circumstances be, do you think? My own supposition is that clinical trials are unusual in having attracted a great deal of thought by statisticians, on the basis that the public-policy stakes are very high.

     If my guess is correct, proxy-based paleoclimate reconstructions share this key feature of clinical trials. That would mean that they are long overdue for receiving a similar degree* of scrutiny.

     .

     * inadvertent pun

282. I can’t comment on how the uncertainty bounds are calculated; I’ve not read about that carefully, nor do I plan to.

     What would those circumstances be, do you think?

     I think you’re just off on this one. In normal experiments in the physical world, I can toss out outliers or bad data points if I can justify it on some physical or statistical basis. In clinical trials, if the patient dies or has some adverse reaction, I have to deal with that. I can’t just call it an outlier patient; it might well have been an unusual patient, but there could be others like him.

     That some data is policy-relevant adds to the importance of analysing the data well, not the importance of retaining all the data into the analysis regardless of how bad it is.

     Now, keep in mind that while the post-1960 data is being tossed, it’s not without being mindful of trying to understand why it diverged, or looking for past instances of it.

283. Bradley J. Fikes (Comment#43235) May 16th, 2010 at 12:17 pm

     Eyes of the beholder, apparently. I think Hansen’s old run is just fine. And the models handled Pinatubo pretty well.

     So what happened in the last decade to the accelerated warming Mann told us would happen? Did Hansen predict the warming would flatten out? In the Climategate emails, Phil Jones worried about (PDF) the Nature paper suggesting that warming would cease until 2020. That would be two decades of no warming.

     It would seem the models are not quite ready for prime time — certainly not enough to restructure the global econom

     You are confusing the generations of models. The old never claim to be able to get a decadal resolution, only that they can say where will likely be over a longer period of time. The decadal models are new and attempting a much tougher task, because they are having to incorporate the decadal scale cycles. Jones is worried that they will lull people into a false sense of security about the short scale, ( short being a decadal scale), when he is thinking of the long term.

284. Bugs,
     If you look at it that way, there’s three generations. The old Hansen model was never going to have realistic ocean variability. Nor were the old radiative-convective models of the 1970s.

     The middle generation, mainly in use now, has ocean variability that sort of looks like ENSO, etc, though it won’t be in sync with the actual world (and Carrick can complain that the amplitude isn’t quite high enough, or whatever). These models can spit out a wide range of short-term apparent trends, amidst the long term warming trend. But they won’t tell you what short term trend you’ll have over the next 10 years, in particular.

     The next generation actually tries to initialise the runs with real conditions, and make a decadal scale prediction. Keenlyside is an example of the last, and it doesn’t seem very good yet. I thought I heard somebody’s worked out a better initialisation strategy than those guys used though.

285. “Andrew, being a former Marine, I’d say that was worth at least a good pimp slap… from here on you must remember the famous Alongapo chant… Sailors on payday, Marines everyday”

     MikeC,

     Understood. Lesson learned!

     Andrew

286. True, CE.

287. Re: carrot eater #43337 (May 17 05:19),

     In normal experiments in the physical world, I can toss out outliers or bad data points if I can justify it on some physical or statistical basis.

     That’s a striking statement. May I ask, in what field of physical science did/do you practice?

     I’ll offer two illustrations from early in my own career in cell/molecular biology.

     1. “Back in the day,” I did Sanger sequencing of clones of a cDNA by hand, then assembled them into a “contig” of the entire cDNA for submission to GenBank. The process involved pouring acrylamide gels, setting up and running four sequencing reactions, running them out, drying the gel, exposing it to X-ray film, then–with a Sharpie–reading down the sequence and calling bases. (Yes, that really was state-of-the-art not so terribly long ago.) Very often, say a third of the time, something would go wrong, and the reads would be short, or poor-quality, or even nonexistent.

     I simply discarded this data. Reading the published paper or scanning GenBank, you would have no idea that this is the way the contigs were built (although everybody else did substantially the same thing).

     So this supports your notion, at least on its face. But: in the day, there were no statistical or quality claims for cDNA sequences such as these. They were taken as best–albeit excellent–approximations of physical reality. When errors in DNA records from that era are discovered, the records are corrected and annotated. It wouldn’t matter to anyone, what the clones and reads were (though they’re all there, in my lab records).

     2. The protein product of this cDNA strongly influenced the process of cell division, observable in cultured human cells. So I made an “expression construct”–a piece of DNA that allowed a cell to produce the protein in question, once the expression construct was introduced into the cell’s nucleus.

     That was the rub. To do so, I had to grow cells on a glass slide, and use a freshly-made glass micro-needle to inject just the right volume of DNA-containing fluid into a cell’s nucleus. Then repeat dozens of times, keeping tabs on every injected cell. Then spend the next 24 to 72 hours observing all of these cells, monitoring and recording their fates.

     The results at first were very confusing, because I didn’t know what to expect–maybe nothing, maybe one spectacular cell fate, maybe a complex variety of cell fates. In the event, it was the latter.

     When this work was published in the peer-reviewed literature, for each experiment that I included, the tables included the outcome of every cell I followed. Every one.

     There were huge temptations to develop a simpler, easier-to-understand story than what we ended up publishing. And I could have done so–If I had been willing to “toss out outliers or bad data points. Could I have “justified it on some physical or statistical basis“? Absolutely.

     But I didn’t.

     It would not have been the right thing to do. If I had succumbed to this temptation, it would have later developed that the story was more complex than I had presented it as being. And my reputation and that of my mentor would have suffered, accordingly.

     .

     So, that is the sort of experience I draw on, when looking at Briffa’s and the AGW Consensus Team’s decision to truncate the tree-ring series in 1960, retrospectively, based on the post-1960 data not conforming with their preconceived notions.

     The more I reflect upon it, the less defensible it appears to me.

288. Amac

     May I ask, in what field of physical science did/do you practice?

     Certainly not biology. Call it physical chemistry.

     Amac, you are drawing hard rules that don’t make any sense in other contexts. If I have a sample, and somebody contaminates it by urinating in it, there’s no reason for me to publish the results; it’d be a waste of everybody’s time. It isn’t a matter of the story being more complex than I’m letting on; it’s just a useless data point. Or I suppose, I could show people the urine-soaked results if that somehow demonstrates something interesting, but I’ll exclude it from any further calculations.

     In the case of Briffa et al, they show the divergence clearly in their papers. They discuss it in their papers. Nothing is more complex than they’re letting on; it’s all there. But they are justified in not using the post-1960 period in the calibration; otherwise they’d have a useless calibration. And you can’t disagree on this, or else you’ll be talking out of both sides of your mouth with regards to Tiljander. Be consistent.

     The question is what to do in the spaghetti graph, when you display different people’s reconstructions together. In the discussion that goes with the spaghetti graph in AR4, the divergence is again clearly discussed, with the resulting possible shortcomings of the proxy method being clearly admitted, with references to further discusion. Nothing is being hidden. They just decided to not graphically show the data they didn’t use, in the spaghetti plot itself. If you wanted to see it, you could follow the reference back to the original paper.

     not conforming with their preconceived notions.

     That’s a pretty bad way of phrasing it. They’re on pretty solid footing when looking at that data and saying the proxy isn’t reporting temperature anymore.

289. Gosh darn this website, and the way it loses longer comments into thin air. Amac, I’ll re-type a response later. I got work to do.

290. Yeah, I sympathize. It’s better than some, but still. Command-A, Command-C, only then “Submit.” (Like you wanted to hear that shut-barn-door advice.)

291. The problem is that it doesn’t mess up enough for me to remember to copy my response.

292. I’ve just read the Briffa et al. 1998 Letter to Nature that CE referred to in #43316. “Reduced sensitivity of recent tree-growth to temperature at high northern latitudes;” abstract at Nature; text behind paywall, no SI.

     Wow. Carrot Eater, this is your cite for justifying the retrospective truncation of tree-ring data series in 1960, once the Divergence Problem was spotted by Briffa?

     The letter doesn’t attempt a justification… it doesn’t even put forth a clear explanation… It’s a set of observations.

     It contains no mention of how one might go about deciding to truncate tree-ring data series in 1960 for the purpose of constructing calibration curves for paleotemperature reconstructions.

     There is no reasoning on this point… no statistical approach that might address this point… no conclusion on this point… no relevant references.

     Here’s a flavor of the “what” (fair-use extract):

     On the interannual timescale, averaged across all regions, about 50% of the variance (r2) of each temperature series is common to the density series, with the individual regional variances ranging from 80% (NEUR) to ,30% (CSIB and ESIB). Consistently similar correlations are achieved, either calculated over the shorter (1881–1960) or extended (to 1981) periods, or when larger regional density chronologies made up of the NORTH (incorporating the NWNA, ENA, NEUR, WSI, CSIB and ESIB) and SOUTH (SWNA and SEUR) data are compared with the equivalent regionally averaged temperatures.

     Here’s a flavor of the “why”:

     The reason for this increasingly apparent and widespread phenomenon is not known but any one, or a combination, of several factors might be involved.

     The factors that Briffa et al. list are: lower soil moisture [perhaps caused by] subtle changes in precipitation or temperature seasonality; increasing competition with other plants; increasing insect herbivory; higher UV-B levels; decreased solar radiation receipts; increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations; increasing amounts of acidic deposition; [increasing] tropospheric ozone.

     The second-to-last paragraph discusses why the Divergence Problem matters:

     The common use of least-squares regression for developing
     dendroclimatic transfer function equations to estimate past climates, imposes an equality of means in both the predictand and predictor time series over the fitting or ‘calibration’ period. Any bias in mean tree growth will, therefore, be ‘corrected’ during calibration, with the consequence that the derived regression coefficients will be biased. Our results imply that this might increasingly result in systematic overestimation of past temperatures, particularly in regions where the loss of low-frequency temperature sensitivity in tree growth is greatest…, where tree-ring ‘standardization’ is designed to preserve maximum long-timescale chronology variability, and where transfer functions are calibrated over the most recent decades.

     In simpler words: Since the calibration curve that we have established over the 1881-1960 period has the correct slope and correlation coefficient for paleo studies, therefore extending the calibration curve beyond 1960 will systematically overestimate past temperatures (and, necessarily, systematically overbroaden their confidence intervals).

     Wild stuff.

     Carrot eater, is my PDF lacking some pages? Am I missing something? Did you cite the wrong reference by mistake?

293. AMac,
     You might read what I wrote.

     Looks like they simply chose 1960 by visual inspection of when the divergence gets bad. By my eyeball, it’s a fair choice. They do calculate the correlation between proxy and temperature, upto 1960 and through 1960, but I don’t think they repeated that with the cut-off date as a variable.

     Maybe you don’t like visual inspection, but look at the plots. I think it’s a fair choice.

294. CE.

     “I think you’re just off on this one. In normal experiments in the physical world, I can toss out outliers or bad data points if I can justify it on some physical or statistical basis. In clinical trials, if the patient dies or has some adverse reaction, I have to deal with that. I can’t just call it an outlier patient; it might well have been an unusual patient, but there could be others like him.”

     As I stated before

     ALL data is in tension with theory.

     The data NEVER fit the theory. Now, sometimes this “ill fit” is
     tiny. We call this uncertainty. we ascribe it to measurement
     error or sampling error or just “uncertainty”

     when the error gets bigger we bring out other tools be can

     1. Reject the data as, false, outliers, non repeatable…
     2. reject the theory ( this is almost never done in normal science)
     3. Modify the theory.

     The choice we make is not epistemologically driven. It is driven by practical considerations. It is driven by tradition ( we need 95% confidence ) it is driven by the “weight” of the theory. ” this theory is central to our understanding, we cant let it go without doing a huge amount of work, patch it! its driven by a lot of things where “truth” is not a governing predicate, uselfulness, simplicity, coherence, etc

     Theory predicts that Y= f(x,z,d,g)
     data shows that Y.e =f(x,z,d,g)

     LOGICAL OPTIONS.

     Y.e is nothing more than Y plus some uncertainty
     Y.e is a bad data point
     Y=f(x,z,d,g) is false
     Y=f(x,z,d,g,p).. theory modified.

295. Wild stuff?

     It’s pretty simple, Amac. If you calibrate over a bad section of data, then your calibration will be off, and your whole reconstruction will be off.

     Same thing as in Tiljander.

     After getting all in a froth at Mann for trying to use Tiljander (alongside not using it), you’re going to get into a froth at Briffa for *not* using bad data in a calibration? Seriously?

     Either Briffa can use these proxies, while not using data post some cut-off date in the calibration, or he doesn’t use them at all. Those are your two choices. Using them while retaining 1960-1980 in the calibration is simply not a choice, unless you really want GIGO.

296. Mosh,
     That’s a load of stuff that’s absolutely meaningless here.

     What you have is some trees that are somewhat sensitive to temperature over 1880-1960, and then rather insensitive to temperature over 1960+.

     There isn’t any theory to modify. We already know that trees can be more or less sensitive to all sorts of things, and if you aren’t watching out for it, a tree might switch things up on you.

     It’s merely a question of how you best to handle these issues.

297. Amac,

     The “explanations” for divergence are not really explanations.
     WORST, the divergence data was deleted. Not just from the graph.
     but from the database. So if anybody else did come up with a mechanism to explain it, they could not. The data was deleted FROM THE ARCHIVE, from the open archive! The only reason we know this is because the mails have the deleted data in them.

     Its worse than just deleting data in a graph.

     I think if Boris and CE would study the whole history of this and see what was done to Briffa by Mann and Jones, they would understand why I view him as a somewhat tragic figure in all of this. Steve’s presentation at the conference gets at some of this.
     I didnt call it crutape for nothing.

298. The “explanations” for divergence are not really explanations.

     Work in progress. There are hypotheses.

     WORST, the divergence data was deleted. Not just from the graph.
     but from the database.

     I don’t know what’s the in archive or SI, but the divergence is clearly shown in the Briffa papers. Not deleted. So Amac’s previous point about underlying complexity being lost is moot; it’s all there in the papers, including one specifically highlighting the issue. That part of the data series is only removed from the spaghetti graphs when multiple reconstructions are collated; that’s been discussed above already.

     Steve’s presentation at the conference gets at some of this.

     He doesn’t exactly have a good history at providing a good interpretation.

299. Mosh,
     That’s a load of stuff that’s absolutely meaningless here.
     What you have is some trees that are somewhat sensitive to temperature over 1880-1960, and then rather insensitive to temperature over 1960+.
     There isn’t any theory to modify. We already know that trees can be more or less sensitive to all sorts of things, and if you aren’t watching out for it, a tree might switch things up on you.
     It’s merely a question of how you best to handle these issues.”

     Carrot,

     Well I disagree. And so do some of the scientists who write on it.
     For example, there is a fundamental underlying theory of uniformity. That is, once a treemometer ALWAYS a treemometer. This is key. In fact in the literature the scientists say as much. They say, we have to figure this out because otherwise the whole science goes out the window. this is the reaction of “normal science” Also, some argue that the diverence is a breakdown of the whole linear response model. didnt you read Ch06. There are a few basic theory questions on the table. I’m saying these get taken off the table. ( this is NORMAL ) You just have to read to see that people make this choice. They choose to not question the theory. Why they choose this path is pragmatically dtermined

     As to what to do with data like this. Easy.

     1. Calculate your result without ANY of the data. You have no firm evidence that this tree did NOT expereince something simlilar prior to 1850!
     2. Calculate with all of the data, you will get an elevated MWP
     BRIFFA SAYS THIS EXPLITICLY
     3. Truncate and calculate.

     Its just computer time and words to show and explain the differences. This is an uncertainty in the data and the science. there is no “decision” to make. There are observations, there are limited choices. Show all the approaches. discuss.

     NOW, when science is pushed into a role of making clear inputs to policy makers, these complications get buried. I have no “issue” with people deleting bad data. Just show ALL the work and the various ways of handling the data.

300. For example, there is a fundamental underlying theory of uniformity. That is, once a treemometer ALWAYS a treemometer. This is key. In fact in the literature the scientists say as much.

     You are misrepresenting. For paleo to work at all, the relationship of any proxy to temperature has to be relatively stable over time. Yes, that is key. Which in some sense is your fundamental theory.

     Yet it is not assumed to be true, no matter what. You know it might not be true, so you look for signs of divergence in the past. This is part of the value of getting other kinds of proxies in the mix.

301. You can start your reading here

     http://climateaudit.org/2007/12/15/divergence-the-young-dendros-rebel/

     Or just click on the category divergence at CA.

     You do know that the divergence problem is one of the principle reasons Mc got interested?

302. OK… I started this in response to Carrot Eater’s #43365, but the discussion has heated up while I’ve been writing.

     CE, you wrote “AMac, You might read what I wrote.” Of course I’ve been reading what you’ve written. I’ve responded to each of your points, with care.

     If that and remarks interspersed in the following comments are meant as snark: what do you want me to say? Would a response help you teach, or learn? I’ll disregard them. But, if you meant to say something serious, try phrasing it differently.

     Anyway, I think visual inspection is a very useful technique. It isn’t always sufficient: it depends what the issue is.

     .

     Following from what I wrote in #43363, Ten Points:

     1. Briffa, the IPCC TAR, the IPCC AR4, and others in the AGW Consensus have decided that the solution to the Divergence Problem involves truncating tree-ring data at 1960.

     2. This truncation is based on an assumption, implicit in the text of the Letter that I quoted in #43663. Specifically, that the calibration curve that these workers had established over the 1881-1960 period has a more correct slope and correlation coefficient for use with paleo studies, than do calibration curves that extend further towards the present (to 1981, in Briffa’s Letter).

     3. Briffa et al. (1998) offer no justification for the assumption in #2. They just state it.

     4. Somebody else, somewhere else, may have offered a qualitatively plausible argument for truncating the calibration curve. I don’t know that reference.

     5. Somebody else, somewhere else, may have offered a plausible statistical argument for truncating the calibration curve. I don’t know that reference, either.

     6. Truncation very likely goes against Best Practices in statistics, judging from Best Practices in biostatistics, discussed earlier in the thread. It is therefore incumbent upon the truncators to cite peer-reviewed expert articles that support their seemingly-aphysical stance.

     7. As discussed earlier, such a retrospective adjustment to a data analysis requires the use of different statistical parameters than does the typical prospective analysis. (While familiar terms like r^2 can still be calculated, those calculations will be wrong, and thus misleading.) I cited the Bonferroni Correction as one example of how subgroup analyses are handled.

     8. Such retrospective adjustments as the 1960-Truncation require that confidence intervals for the derived paleotemperature anomalies be recalculated. Since this is a type of subgroup analysis, they will certainly be broader than would otherwise be the case.

     9. I expect these calculations are arcane and difficult to perform. Do the author lists of papers that incorporate the 1960-Truncation include statisticians who know how to do them? I don’t know.

     10. These recalculations of confidence intervals would be essential for interpreting paleotemperature anomaly results. Were they performed? I don’t know.

     .

     Checking on how the thread has developed while I’ve been writing:

     Carrot eater, the point is to get away from handwaving, and post-hoc justifications, and wild-guess theories. This is a question of Statistics.

     So: what are the Statistical Issues?

     I’m offering my informed, scientifically-literate, layperson’s view. Those ten points are what I see as worth figuring out. Plus whatever Steve Mosher has added (I won’t be able to check till tonight).

     You said earlier, “Well, they simply chose 1960 by visual inspection of when the divergence gets bad. By my eyeball, it’s a fair choice.” If that’s the limits of what you can say: let’s stop there.

     Perhaps a more statistically-savvy advocate of this AGW Consensus position can suggest a better set of references, and a more knowledgably-argued perspective.

     I apologize for the way this comes across. Like you, I have to get to work.

303. carrot, Why not just retire Mann to the hair club for men or something. Regardless of all of the spinning and jockeying from both sides, he did try to be deceptive even though it wasnt a huge issue… he was involved in violating FOI laws… he was involved in causing the literature to be a bowl of cherries by threatening individual scientists and journals… he was playing politics instead of playing science… and on and on…
     So it seems to me that the science would be in a much better position if yaal just get rid of him. Once he is gone the science can proceede and we can have more confidence in what the truth is and finally answer the important questions and get to useful policies.

304. Steve, I can see that McI is obsessed with divergence, and as a result has misinterpreted and selectively omitted context from the emails to shoehorn everything into his pet narrative.

     http://deepclimate.org/2010/05/14/how-to-be-a-climate-science-auditor-part-2-the-forgotten-climategate-emails/

     Got to be careful what McI leaves out, when he uses ellipsis.

     As for starting my reading.. what did I say wrong, Mosh? Are you going to pretend that paleo people haven’t at all thought about fidelity in the pre-instrumental period?

305. Carrot eater, after a quick read of the end of the thread [I couldn’t resist 🙂 ] —

     Your brief comments #43368 and #43371 are Declarations Against Interest.

     I am assuming that you are still intending to support the AGW Consensus position on the legitimacy of the 1960-Truncation Solution to the Divergence Problem.

     More and more, this looks the way it was described by a commenter on the Pielke Jr. thread I referenced earlier — “Defending the indefensible.”

     In that regard, I finally come to agree with you: The Divergence Problem does bear a resemblance to Mann08’s use of the Tiljander proxies.

     These episodes become extremely damaging to the AGW Consensus position, when scientifically-literate people pay attention and follow the arguments through.

     This looks like Bad Behavior, and Bad Behavior is a fairly reliable proxy for Not Trustworthy.

     I hope, though doubt, that Peter Gleick has read through to this point on the thread. He would benefit from reflecting on these lessons.

306. Amac

     CE, you wrote “AMac, You might read what I wrote.” Of course I’ve been reading what you’ve written. I’ve responded to each of your points, with care.

     And yet you responded as if I had mis-advertised what was in Briffa 1998. What you found there is exactly what I told you you’d find there. I did not tell you it had some careful statistical analysis to determine exactly when the cutoff date should be.

     Anyway, I think visual inspection is a very useful technique. It isn’t always sufficient: it depends what the issue is.

     OK, then. It’s what they’ve apparently done here. Is it good enough? You seem to think not.

     1. Briffa, the IPCC TAR, the IPCC AR4, and others in the AGW Consensus have decided that the solution to the Divergence Problem involves truncating tree-ring data at 1960.

     The real solution would be to identify the exact physical mechanism causing the divergence. Until then, this is stopgap. You do what you can; you state what you did.

     2. This truncation is based on an assumption, implicit in the text of the Letter that I quoted in #43663. Specifically, that the calibration curve that these workers had established over the 1881-1960 period has a more correct slope and correlation coefficient for use with paleo studies, than do calibration curves that extend further towards the present (to 1981, in Briffa’s Letter).

     3. Briffa et al. (1998) offer no justification for the assumption in #2. They just state it.

     Amac, you might say they know what is right side up, and what is upside down, physically, when it comes to this proxy. You think about why and how trees respond to temperature, and you’ll get the sign of the correlation. You back it up with observation. You compare with other proxies, which may not diverge in the same way. Of course, you really clinch the deal when you can identify the physical reasons for the divergence.

     5. Somebody else, somewhere else, may have offered a plausible statistical argument for truncating the calibration curve. I don’t know that reference, either.

     How much statistical argument do you need? If it’s a slight change in temperature-proxy relationship, then sure. When the relationship goes completely haywire, then it really isn’t so subtle anymore.

     6. Truncation very likely goes against Best Practices in statistics, judging from Best Practices in biostatistics, discussed earlier in the thread. It is therefore incumbent upon the truncators to cite peer-reviewed expert articles that support their seemingly-aphysical stance.

     Give me a break. You have something that used to be something of a thermometer, and then it became pretty much nothing of a thermometer. You can look for analogues in clinical drugs all you want, but that’s what you have here.

     Again, I’ve not paid attention to how they actually calculate the uncertainty intervals. As far as I care, a glance at the spaghetti graph tells me it’s a bit of a mess.

     You said earlier, “Well, they simply chose 1960 by visual inspection of when the divergence gets bad. By my eyeball, it’s a fair choice.” If that’s the limits of what you can say: let’s stop there.

     Perhaps a more statistically-savvy advocate of this AGW Consensus position can suggest a better set of references, and a more knowledgably-argued perspective.

     So far as I know, they pretty much just eyeballed 1960. That’s all I can tell you. If you want to read through every Briffa paper to see if there’s anything else, go ahead.

     Seriously, if Briffa had used the entire period for calibration, you’d be making the same complaints as you do for Tiljander. Same thing.

307. AMac,
     I think you’ve struck out on your own here.

     I know sceptics think divergence is a sign that tree-thermometers just aren’t reliable in the first place. Most sceptics take it as a reason to not use trees at all. Their complaint is in whether the divergence is actually shown in every single graph.

     Your complaint is different. You want Briffa et al to include data in the calibration period that everybody else, including the sceptics, agrees is bad.

     And I really cannot fathom how you still don’t see how this is pretty much directly related to Tiljander in a substantive way, not your made up behavior way. You need your proxy to act the same way with respect to temperature during the calibration period, as it does in the reconstructed period. That’s why you think using Tiljander is a bad idea, and it’s also why Briffa cuts off data at 1960. You don’t seem to realise it, but you’re arguing on opposite sides here in the two different issues.

308. Were these studies cited by Esper/Frank “Divergence pitfalls in tree-ring research” ever scrutinized – apparently making the divergence problem not show up in some locations, if I understand right.
     http://www.skepticalscience.com/Every-skeptic-argument-ever-used.html#9777

309. carrot eater. See http://climateaudit.org/2006/11/30/the-juckes-proxies/ for graphic illustration of how useless the climat proxies are.

     The proxies don’t correlate with temperature in the 20th Century, and they don’t correlate with each other prior to that. They are a pathetic hopeless shambles.

     There is no proper temperature proxy evidence of temperatures prior to 20th Centiry.

310. Question 1a. Is there a common-sense way to look at tree-ring/temperature correlations 1881-1960, and then to justify excluding 1961-2010 from the calibration period?

     Answer: Yes, there is. If one assumes that the shape of the 1881-1960 curve is the correct one, and that the correlation coefficient r^2 of that relationship is correct, then the 1961-on trace is aberrant. For some reason, there is deviation from the true curve. That obseration is sufficient reason to remove 1961-on from the calibration period, and, trivially, from Assessment Report graphs.

     However, this action moves the “characteristics of the tree-ring vs. temperature calibration curve” beyond the realm of the testable hypothesis. It has been elevated to an article of faith.

     Question 1b. Is there a statistically-valid way to look at tree-ring-temperature correlations 1881-1960, and then to justify excluding 1961-2010 from the calibration period — such that the calibration curve remains a part of testable science?

     Answer: I don’t know–possibly not. Briffa (1998) doesn’t consider it, nor does TAR or AR4. The references at the useful “Skeptical Science” site’s page on The Divergence Problem also don’t seem to address the issue: Jacoby 1995, Cook 2004, Briffa 2004, D’Arrigo 2008, or Wilmking 2008. But I scanned; with luck, an AGW Consensus advocate will offer a citation that considers this issue in a scientifically- and statistically-literate manner.

     .

     Question 2a: Is there a common-sense way to accept the use of the four Tiljander proxies in Mann08’s paleoclimate reconstruction?

     Answer: No. The proxies are uncalibratable to the instrumental temperature record over the entire calibration period, due to land-use contamination. Mann08’s authors made the honest mistake of using them without exercising sufficient diligence. As a result, two of the four were oriented upside-down with respect to the orientation that Tiljander gave them (Boreas, 2003).

     Question 2b: Is there a Is statistically-valid way to justify the use of the four Tiljander proxies in Mann08’s reconstructions?

     Answer: No–the question makes no sense. The proper intersection of “statistics” and “enabling incorrect use of data sets (even in good faith)” is the null set.

311. Fear not, ye faithful! I have been told by the Nature News twitter “editors” that the esteemed magazine will keep using “prediction” in place of “projection” when talking about climate, thereby misleading the readers as these apparently don’t know better and shouldn’t be told about it.

     In more than one sense, that is a bigger disservice to science than any Ursus Bogus…

312. Maurizio

     the Nature News twitter “editors” that the esteemed magazine will keep using “prediction” in place of “projection” when talking about climate,

     Have they cleared this with RC? I’d like the link so we can note it.

313. AMac,
     So basically, instead of everybody just looking at it and saying the temperature-proxy relationship changes dramatically sometime around 1960, you want an objective test for whether and when divergence occurs?

     In general, I’m fine with that. I think this is a clear enough example that you don’t really need to do that, but one can imagine somebody going crazy and randomly snipping out bits of calibration period to get a really strong correlation that may not have any physical meaning whatsoever.

     As it is, they started down that path with the correlations they found over the different time periods, but they’d have to go a bit further.

314. Re: carrot eater #43468 (May 18 05:40),

     > In general, I’m fine with that. I think this is a clear enough example that you don’t really need to do that

     CE, we seem to be operating from different assumptions.

     In the latter part of this thread, we’ve been having a dialog about two issues:

     * How could one establish the bounds for a calibration period for paleoclimate reconstructions?

     * How would one establish confidence intervals to accompany the temperatures deduced for the pre-calibration period?

     Whereas I’ve tried to describe the way that decisions and calculations ought to be grounded in mathematical and statistical practice, you’ve repeatedly presented versions of what I’ll call “common-sense narratives.”

     I think that’s a great jumping-off place; common sense is where I try to start, too. This is the perspective that can give us the general outlines of the issues under consideration.

     With matters as arcane as paleoclimate reconstruction, a discussion typically comes up against questions that are quite complex–much more difficult to sort through than they appear, at first glance.

     The example here is the Divergence Problem. In particular, the difference in slope and r^2 of the “Tree-ring vs. Temperature” relationship between 1881-1960 and 1961-1981 (using Briffa 1998’s dates).

     Common sense tells us to rely on Mark I Eyeball pattern-recognition; Briffa, you, and I can all discern the 1960 breakpoint.

     However, as I pointed out in the Ten Points comment, there are important implications to the decision to exclude certain stretches of time from the calibration period.

     In particular, if we wish to end the exercise with meaningful confidence intervals for the temperatures deduced for the past, we must carefully consider the statistical underpinnings of the methods we are using. While still necessary, a qualitative “common sense” has ceased to be sufficient.

     I’m no statistician, but I have outlined a major concern with resetting the calibration window from “all years with available data” to “1881-1960.” As this involves decision-making based on prior analysis of the data to be analyzed, the calibration window reset is an example of a “retrospective subgroup analysis.” These involve particularly thorny questions.

     I’ve warned that in such situations, investigators are often tempted to proceed with calculations of r^2 and similar parameters. After all, the numbers are still there; StatLab still calculates values and draws graphs. Alas, such results are wrong.

     Somewhere in the last couple of paragraphs, we’ve left the “Common Sense Narrative” behind. It now fails to serve as a trustworthy guide.

     In my opinion, if climatology is to be a science, there is no alternative to the rigorous application of the appropriate statistical procedures to this and similar problems. The maths may be unpleasant, but they are not optional.

     CE, the qualitative nature and breezy tone of your writing strongly suggests that you disagree with my perspective. Further, your position seems to be shared by many scientists in the AGW Consensus, and likely by most of its boosters.

     So we’ve probably taken this conversation about as far as it can go.

     I expect that at some point, paleoclimatology will have to follow the lead of more forward-looking disciplines, and embrace the notion of mathematical and logical rigor. The development of awareness and the reform of practices can be slow and painful. Hopefully, scientists with competence in statistics will begin to speak out from within the AGW Consensus establishment. More than anything else, that would probably facilitate the hoped-for change.

315. good lord, Amac. I agreed with you that developing an objective standard would be useful. and you go off like that?

     How could one establish the bounds for a calibration period for paleoclimate reconstructions?

     In general, you take the entire period of overlap (proxy and instrument), and use maybe half for calibration, and half for validation. Best is to then flip-flop the two and see if it makes any difference. That isn’t that interesting; it only gets interesting IF you have time periods which you want to exclude from either calibration or validation. Especially when you don’t know for sure, physically, what’s happened.

     It’d be nice if the overlap period was long enough that you could reasonably split it into multiple calibration periods. Someday.

     if we wish to end the exercise with meaningful confidence intervals for the temperatures deduced for the past,

     Note that this part has been a one-way conversation: I have repeatedly said that I haven’t been interested enough to look into how they calculate the uncertainty intervals. So don’t feel like I’m disagreeing with you on that point; I’m just silent on that point. For what it’s worth, it’s worth remembering that you haven’t actually judged how the uncertainty is done either; you’re just wondering about it.

     In my opinion, if climatology is to be a science,

     That’s a somewhat high-falutin statement to make, based on a criticism of a partially ad-hoc judgment made in one case. Partially – at least they did some correlation calcs to show.

316. Thanks for the read, CE.

     #43484 isn’t “going off like that”, it’s me summing up what I’ve learned in the conversation. I think you and I are talking past one another to an extent, and I thought that subject was worth a couple of remarks, too. I won’t be convincing you to adopt my point of view any time soon, or vice versa. And that’s fine. 🙂

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