Ext User(B0NZ0)
10-12-2007, 04:53 PM
Marketing global warming
David Holland
10 December 2007
http://onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=6745
One disputed issue remains fundamental to concerns over global warming.
It is whether 20th century warming is so exceptional that it can only be
explained by changes to the atmosphere caused by burning fossil fuels.
It, and with it the theory of human causation, is incapable of absolute
proof and is at best a matter of judgment, or if the arguments are not
fully considered, simply a matter of belief.
How the IPCC has dealt with this issue exposes poor process, bias and
concealment that make the IPCC assessments unreliable as the monopoly
authority on the science.
The IPCC had been set up in 1988 with the Governing Principle stating
its role as "to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and
transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic
information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of
human-induced climate change". It was to review published papers, record
differing scientific views and ensure that reviewers of its draft
reports had access to any materials referenced in the papers it cited.
In its First Assessment Report (FAR) in 1991 the IPCC reported the
alarming forecasts from the climate models that had led to its formation
but said of 20th century warming, "A global warming of larger size has
almost certainly occurred at least once since the end of the last
glaciation without any appreciable increase in greenhouse gases. Because
we do not understand the reasons for these past warming events, it is
not yet possible to attribute a specific proportion of the recent,
smaller warming to an increase of greenhouse gases."
At the time the consensus view of scientists was that it had been much
warmer in earlier interglacial periods as well as in the Medieval, Roman
and Minoan times. The FAR showed this in three panels the third of which
is reproduced below, showing the Medieval Warm period still warmer than
now and the more recent Little Ice Age from which some argue we may
still be recovering. If the 1991 view of historic temperature were true
it places limits on the possible role of greenhouse gases.
Average global temperatures from 1000 AD as shown in the First IPCC
Assessment
Despite the uncertainty of the FAR the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change was signed in 1992, which implicitly
accepted human causation. This seemed to mark a turning point and no
subsequent IPCC report details differing scientific views as to human
causality.
The Second Assessment Report of 1995 noted growing confidence in climate
models and hinted at research that might prove late 20th century warming
to be unique in 10,000 years, reversing the earlier consensus view.
Some, however, had managed to prevail upon the authors to include in the
final draft differing expert views on the reliability of models but
these were unceremoniously deleted from the published text. Few
dissenting scientists now take part in the IPCC process.
Looked at from the point of view of "marketing" global warming to a
sceptical audience the FAR view of historic temperatures was a major
hurdle. In 1996 one IPCC lead author is reported to have said, "We must
get rid of the Medieval Warm Period". His wish was soon granted. In 1988
the first of the two "hockey stick" papers was published. Its lead
author was a 32-year-old Michael Mann who received his PhD the same
year.
In 1999 the study was extended to suggest that from 1000 AD average
global temperatures fell gradually at about 0.02C per century until the
middle of the 19th century. Dr Mann became a lead author of WGI Chapter
2 that featured his studies in the IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR) of
2001.
Average N.H. temperatures from 1000 AD as shown in the Third IPCC
Assessment
On first seeing the "hockey stick", shown above, veteran climate
researcher Gerald North said "The planet had been cooling slowly until
120 years ago, when, bam!, it jumps up," ... "We've been breaking our
backs on [greenhouse] detection, but I found the 1000-year records more
convincing than any of our detection studies."
As well as in Chapter 2 it appeared in the Summary for Policymakers and
the "Synthesis Report" of the TAR. Environmentalists and the media
relentlessly promoted it, as proof of human causation of global warming.
However it had never been independently verified and was fatally flawed.
As we do not have thermometer readings for long ago, historic
temperatures are estimated using "proxies" that have some feature that
is considered a good indicator of temperature and can be dated. For
example, the age of trees can be dated by counting rings on living trees
and matching patterns on dead trees. In some places evidence is found of
ancient tree lines at higher altitudes than trees presently grow,
suggesting it was once warmer. The variation in tree ring width and
density can in some circumstances follow local temperatures quite
closely but in others less well and even inversely. In this and other
areas climate scientists "cherry pick" data series, and techniques that
tell the story they want.
At a recent CIRES meeting, Gerald North stated that "cherry picking" is
a legitimate method in palaeoclimatology. He said because one is looking
for a certain, elusive "signal" from the noise, that's the only way to
find the data.
This is an appropriate juncture to consider the "consensus of thousands
of scientists" so often mentioned in the media. The chairman of the IPCC
said the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) was the work, rather than
consensus, of 2500+ scientific expert reviewers, 800 contributing
authors and 450 lead authors drawn from 130 countries.
The evidence from AR4 is that the expert reviewers have little effect on
the controversial issues. WGI Chapter 2 of the TAR lists just ten
authors. They also list 136 "contributing" authors but it is difficult
to see how the crucial section on the "hockey stick" could have been
written by anyone other than the young Dr Mann with the possible
assistance of Dr Briffa and Dr Jones.
The "divergence" problem as shown by Briffa and Jones in 1998
In the same year as Dr Mann published his "hockey stick" two UK
scientists Keith Briffa and Philip Jones with others published a paper
entitled "Trees tell of past climates: but are they speaking less
clearly today?" with a graph shown above. This paper shows a
"divergence" problem after 1960 with many tree ring proxies but was not
cited in the TAR although other work by Jones and Briffa was used as
corroboration of the "hockey stick" in the graph shown below.
Studies by Mann, Jones and Briffa as shown in the IPCC Third Assessment
Report
A fundamental duty of scientists, and advocates of any sort in a
civilised society, is that they do not deliberately conceal matters that
might weaken their case. If you look carefully at the graph above you
can see that Briffa's curve ends at 1960. However, in the paper it is
taken from, it continues much further but falls away from the
instrumental (thermometer) curve, which the authors wish to suggest
their historic estimates are consistent with.
You should also note that instrumental curve used by Dr Mann was from a
1992 paper of Jones and Briffa. It is only plotted from 1902 both here
and in his original papers, whereas the original Jones and Briffa paper
shows data back to 1854. When the full data is plotted as shown below,
copied from ClimateAudit.org, it is very clear that none of the
reconstructions compare well with the known instrumental record and
cannot therefore be reliable indicators of historic temperatures.
Missing data added to Figure 2.21 in IPCC, 2001 WGI Chapter 2
The "hockey stick" came under immediate attack, but for most it was
impenetrable. The determination of Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick
finally unravelled it. The chronology of correspondence seeking to
obtain full details includes more than one occasion of the removal from
the Internet of previously available data. It demonstrated the lengths
Dr Mann went to in order to avoid his study being scrutinised.
The papers published by McIntyre and McKitrick in 2003 and 2005 show
that the hockey stick studies - among the most influential in history -
were sloppy and plain wrong. Dr Mann was obliged to issue a corrigendum
(PDF 44KB) in July 2004 acknowledging at least that his key IPCC study
was documented in a careless way and was effectively unverifiable. Dr
Mann was able to maintain a defence only because he refused to disclose
all his data and code and argue that his critics were not correctly
replicating his method.
Eventually the US House of Representatives became involved and two
separate, independent expert groups were commissioned to provide peer
reviewed reports on the matter. These reported (PDF 151MB) - under
oath - to the House of Representatives six months before the IPCC began
the release of AR4. They separately confirmed the work of McIntyre and
McKitrick, which had shown that the "hockey stick" study contained three
fatal flaws:
a.. it used inappropriate "strip bark" proxies that were responsible
for the "hockey stick" shape;
b.. it used an incorrect statistical process that could find hockey
stick shapes where none really existed; and
c.. it failed rigorous statistical validation.
The Wegman Report (PDF 1.41MB) demonstrated that the various historic
reconstructions alleged to corroborate the "hockey stick" were not as
independent as claimed, sharing both authors and data.
The second report was from the National Research Council (PDF 3.27MB)
few of whom who could be described as climate sceptics. The views of its
panel chairman Gerald North have already been mentioned, but he told the
House of Representatives that he did not disagree with the methods or
conclusions of Wegman and added, "In fact, pretty much the same thing is
said in our report." The NRC Report concluded, "Largescale temperature
reconstructions should always be viewed as having a "murky" early period
and a later period of relative clarity. The boundary between murkiness
and clarity is not precise but is nominally around A.D. 1600." Because
of this they said it was only "plausible" that late 20th century warming
is exceptional.
Wegman also said:
Based on the literature we have reviewed, there is no overarching
consensus on MBH98/99. As analyzed in our social network, there is a
tightly knit group of individuals who passionately believe in their
thesis. However, our perception is that this group has a
self-reinforcing feedback mechanism and, moreover, the work has been
sufficiently politicized that they can hardly reassess their public
positions without losing credibility.
But in the AR4 process under way it was close associates of Dr Mann and
others equally committed to the "consensus" view that were charged with
updating the assessment of historic global temperatures. The AR4 WGI
Chapter 6 authors ignored the unequivocal invalidation of Dr Mann's
studies. Instead they extended and reinforced the earlier views based on
other studies many of which were shown by Wegman not to be independent.
The IPCC tried to prevent the AR4 drafts and reviewers' comments from
seeing the light of day but gave in to Freedom of Information Requests.
From them we can see that the review process was a sham and that the 16
lead authors of Chapter 6 were not willing to be deflected from their
purpose. Two papers co-authored by a student of Dr Mann had been
specifically commissioned - at the US tax payers' expense - in an effort
to undermine the work of McIntyre and McKitrick. One was rejected by the
journal GRL but the other, which still referenced the first, was
"provisionally accepted" by another journal but has never appeared in
print.
Nevertheless it is relied upon in AR4 to suggest wrongly that the
McIntyre and McKitrick papers do not invalidate the hockey stick. In my
Energy and Environment paper (PDF 855KB), I review some of the AR4
drafting and review comments in detail but here I will conclude with the
comment from the reviewer for the Government of the United States of
America and the chapter authors' reply:
Reviewers Comment 6-750: The use of Wahl and Ammann (accepted) does not
comply with WG1's deadlines and all text based on this reference should
be deleted. WG1's rules require that all references be "published or in
print" by December 16, 2005. Wahl and Ammann was "provisionally
accepted" on that date, and not fully accepted until February 28, 2006,
at which time no final preprint was available. Substantial changes were
made in the paper between December 16, 2005 and February 28, 2006,
including insertion of tables showing that the MBH98 ["hockey stick"]
reconstruction failed verification with r-squared statistics, as had
been reported by McIntyre and McKitrick in 2003. These tables were not
available in the draft considered by WG1 when developing the
second-order draft.
[Govt. of United States of America (Reviewer's comment ID #: 2023-415)]
Response: Rejected - the citation is allowed under current rules
--
Get The TRUE Facts At
http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/index.html
Excellent Links At
http://www.warwickhughes.com/
Regards
Bonzo
"If the atmosphere was a 100 story building, our annual anthropogenic
CO2
contribution today would be equivalent to the linoleum on the first
floor"
D'Aleo
"...and I think future generations are not going to blame us for
anything except for being silly, for letting a few tenths of a degree
panic us"
Dr. Richard Lindzen, Professor of Meteorology MIT and Member of the
National Academy of Sciences
"What most commentators-and many scientists-seem to miss is that the
only thing we can say with certainly about climate is that it changes"
Dr. Richard Lindzen
[most of the current alarm over climate change is based on] "inherently
untrustworthy climate models, similar to those that cannot accurately
forecast the weather a week from now." Dr. Richard Lindzen
David Holland
10 December 2007
http://onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=6745
One disputed issue remains fundamental to concerns over global warming.
It is whether 20th century warming is so exceptional that it can only be
explained by changes to the atmosphere caused by burning fossil fuels.
It, and with it the theory of human causation, is incapable of absolute
proof and is at best a matter of judgment, or if the arguments are not
fully considered, simply a matter of belief.
How the IPCC has dealt with this issue exposes poor process, bias and
concealment that make the IPCC assessments unreliable as the monopoly
authority on the science.
The IPCC had been set up in 1988 with the Governing Principle stating
its role as "to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and
transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic
information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of
human-induced climate change". It was to review published papers, record
differing scientific views and ensure that reviewers of its draft
reports had access to any materials referenced in the papers it cited.
In its First Assessment Report (FAR) in 1991 the IPCC reported the
alarming forecasts from the climate models that had led to its formation
but said of 20th century warming, "A global warming of larger size has
almost certainly occurred at least once since the end of the last
glaciation without any appreciable increase in greenhouse gases. Because
we do not understand the reasons for these past warming events, it is
not yet possible to attribute a specific proportion of the recent,
smaller warming to an increase of greenhouse gases."
At the time the consensus view of scientists was that it had been much
warmer in earlier interglacial periods as well as in the Medieval, Roman
and Minoan times. The FAR showed this in three panels the third of which
is reproduced below, showing the Medieval Warm period still warmer than
now and the more recent Little Ice Age from which some argue we may
still be recovering. If the 1991 view of historic temperature were true
it places limits on the possible role of greenhouse gases.
Average global temperatures from 1000 AD as shown in the First IPCC
Assessment
Despite the uncertainty of the FAR the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change was signed in 1992, which implicitly
accepted human causation. This seemed to mark a turning point and no
subsequent IPCC report details differing scientific views as to human
causality.
The Second Assessment Report of 1995 noted growing confidence in climate
models and hinted at research that might prove late 20th century warming
to be unique in 10,000 years, reversing the earlier consensus view.
Some, however, had managed to prevail upon the authors to include in the
final draft differing expert views on the reliability of models but
these were unceremoniously deleted from the published text. Few
dissenting scientists now take part in the IPCC process.
Looked at from the point of view of "marketing" global warming to a
sceptical audience the FAR view of historic temperatures was a major
hurdle. In 1996 one IPCC lead author is reported to have said, "We must
get rid of the Medieval Warm Period". His wish was soon granted. In 1988
the first of the two "hockey stick" papers was published. Its lead
author was a 32-year-old Michael Mann who received his PhD the same
year.
In 1999 the study was extended to suggest that from 1000 AD average
global temperatures fell gradually at about 0.02C per century until the
middle of the 19th century. Dr Mann became a lead author of WGI Chapter
2 that featured his studies in the IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR) of
2001.
Average N.H. temperatures from 1000 AD as shown in the Third IPCC
Assessment
On first seeing the "hockey stick", shown above, veteran climate
researcher Gerald North said "The planet had been cooling slowly until
120 years ago, when, bam!, it jumps up," ... "We've been breaking our
backs on [greenhouse] detection, but I found the 1000-year records more
convincing than any of our detection studies."
As well as in Chapter 2 it appeared in the Summary for Policymakers and
the "Synthesis Report" of the TAR. Environmentalists and the media
relentlessly promoted it, as proof of human causation of global warming.
However it had never been independently verified and was fatally flawed.
As we do not have thermometer readings for long ago, historic
temperatures are estimated using "proxies" that have some feature that
is considered a good indicator of temperature and can be dated. For
example, the age of trees can be dated by counting rings on living trees
and matching patterns on dead trees. In some places evidence is found of
ancient tree lines at higher altitudes than trees presently grow,
suggesting it was once warmer. The variation in tree ring width and
density can in some circumstances follow local temperatures quite
closely but in others less well and even inversely. In this and other
areas climate scientists "cherry pick" data series, and techniques that
tell the story they want.
At a recent CIRES meeting, Gerald North stated that "cherry picking" is
a legitimate method in palaeoclimatology. He said because one is looking
for a certain, elusive "signal" from the noise, that's the only way to
find the data.
This is an appropriate juncture to consider the "consensus of thousands
of scientists" so often mentioned in the media. The chairman of the IPCC
said the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) was the work, rather than
consensus, of 2500+ scientific expert reviewers, 800 contributing
authors and 450 lead authors drawn from 130 countries.
The evidence from AR4 is that the expert reviewers have little effect on
the controversial issues. WGI Chapter 2 of the TAR lists just ten
authors. They also list 136 "contributing" authors but it is difficult
to see how the crucial section on the "hockey stick" could have been
written by anyone other than the young Dr Mann with the possible
assistance of Dr Briffa and Dr Jones.
The "divergence" problem as shown by Briffa and Jones in 1998
In the same year as Dr Mann published his "hockey stick" two UK
scientists Keith Briffa and Philip Jones with others published a paper
entitled "Trees tell of past climates: but are they speaking less
clearly today?" with a graph shown above. This paper shows a
"divergence" problem after 1960 with many tree ring proxies but was not
cited in the TAR although other work by Jones and Briffa was used as
corroboration of the "hockey stick" in the graph shown below.
Studies by Mann, Jones and Briffa as shown in the IPCC Third Assessment
Report
A fundamental duty of scientists, and advocates of any sort in a
civilised society, is that they do not deliberately conceal matters that
might weaken their case. If you look carefully at the graph above you
can see that Briffa's curve ends at 1960. However, in the paper it is
taken from, it continues much further but falls away from the
instrumental (thermometer) curve, which the authors wish to suggest
their historic estimates are consistent with.
You should also note that instrumental curve used by Dr Mann was from a
1992 paper of Jones and Briffa. It is only plotted from 1902 both here
and in his original papers, whereas the original Jones and Briffa paper
shows data back to 1854. When the full data is plotted as shown below,
copied from ClimateAudit.org, it is very clear that none of the
reconstructions compare well with the known instrumental record and
cannot therefore be reliable indicators of historic temperatures.
Missing data added to Figure 2.21 in IPCC, 2001 WGI Chapter 2
The "hockey stick" came under immediate attack, but for most it was
impenetrable. The determination of Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick
finally unravelled it. The chronology of correspondence seeking to
obtain full details includes more than one occasion of the removal from
the Internet of previously available data. It demonstrated the lengths
Dr Mann went to in order to avoid his study being scrutinised.
The papers published by McIntyre and McKitrick in 2003 and 2005 show
that the hockey stick studies - among the most influential in history -
were sloppy and plain wrong. Dr Mann was obliged to issue a corrigendum
(PDF 44KB) in July 2004 acknowledging at least that his key IPCC study
was documented in a careless way and was effectively unverifiable. Dr
Mann was able to maintain a defence only because he refused to disclose
all his data and code and argue that his critics were not correctly
replicating his method.
Eventually the US House of Representatives became involved and two
separate, independent expert groups were commissioned to provide peer
reviewed reports on the matter. These reported (PDF 151MB) - under
oath - to the House of Representatives six months before the IPCC began
the release of AR4. They separately confirmed the work of McIntyre and
McKitrick, which had shown that the "hockey stick" study contained three
fatal flaws:
a.. it used inappropriate "strip bark" proxies that were responsible
for the "hockey stick" shape;
b.. it used an incorrect statistical process that could find hockey
stick shapes where none really existed; and
c.. it failed rigorous statistical validation.
The Wegman Report (PDF 1.41MB) demonstrated that the various historic
reconstructions alleged to corroborate the "hockey stick" were not as
independent as claimed, sharing both authors and data.
The second report was from the National Research Council (PDF 3.27MB)
few of whom who could be described as climate sceptics. The views of its
panel chairman Gerald North have already been mentioned, but he told the
House of Representatives that he did not disagree with the methods or
conclusions of Wegman and added, "In fact, pretty much the same thing is
said in our report." The NRC Report concluded, "Largescale temperature
reconstructions should always be viewed as having a "murky" early period
and a later period of relative clarity. The boundary between murkiness
and clarity is not precise but is nominally around A.D. 1600." Because
of this they said it was only "plausible" that late 20th century warming
is exceptional.
Wegman also said:
Based on the literature we have reviewed, there is no overarching
consensus on MBH98/99. As analyzed in our social network, there is a
tightly knit group of individuals who passionately believe in their
thesis. However, our perception is that this group has a
self-reinforcing feedback mechanism and, moreover, the work has been
sufficiently politicized that they can hardly reassess their public
positions without losing credibility.
But in the AR4 process under way it was close associates of Dr Mann and
others equally committed to the "consensus" view that were charged with
updating the assessment of historic global temperatures. The AR4 WGI
Chapter 6 authors ignored the unequivocal invalidation of Dr Mann's
studies. Instead they extended and reinforced the earlier views based on
other studies many of which were shown by Wegman not to be independent.
The IPCC tried to prevent the AR4 drafts and reviewers' comments from
seeing the light of day but gave in to Freedom of Information Requests.
From them we can see that the review process was a sham and that the 16
lead authors of Chapter 6 were not willing to be deflected from their
purpose. Two papers co-authored by a student of Dr Mann had been
specifically commissioned - at the US tax payers' expense - in an effort
to undermine the work of McIntyre and McKitrick. One was rejected by the
journal GRL but the other, which still referenced the first, was
"provisionally accepted" by another journal but has never appeared in
print.
Nevertheless it is relied upon in AR4 to suggest wrongly that the
McIntyre and McKitrick papers do not invalidate the hockey stick. In my
Energy and Environment paper (PDF 855KB), I review some of the AR4
drafting and review comments in detail but here I will conclude with the
comment from the reviewer for the Government of the United States of
America and the chapter authors' reply:
Reviewers Comment 6-750: The use of Wahl and Ammann (accepted) does not
comply with WG1's deadlines and all text based on this reference should
be deleted. WG1's rules require that all references be "published or in
print" by December 16, 2005. Wahl and Ammann was "provisionally
accepted" on that date, and not fully accepted until February 28, 2006,
at which time no final preprint was available. Substantial changes were
made in the paper between December 16, 2005 and February 28, 2006,
including insertion of tables showing that the MBH98 ["hockey stick"]
reconstruction failed verification with r-squared statistics, as had
been reported by McIntyre and McKitrick in 2003. These tables were not
available in the draft considered by WG1 when developing the
second-order draft.
[Govt. of United States of America (Reviewer's comment ID #: 2023-415)]
Response: Rejected - the citation is allowed under current rules
--
Get The TRUE Facts At
http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/index.html
Excellent Links At
http://www.warwickhughes.com/
Regards
Bonzo
"If the atmosphere was a 100 story building, our annual anthropogenic
CO2
contribution today would be equivalent to the linoleum on the first
floor"
D'Aleo
"...and I think future generations are not going to blame us for
anything except for being silly, for letting a few tenths of a degree
panic us"
Dr. Richard Lindzen, Professor of Meteorology MIT and Member of the
National Academy of Sciences
"What most commentators-and many scientists-seem to miss is that the
only thing we can say with certainly about climate is that it changes"
Dr. Richard Lindzen
[most of the current alarm over climate change is based on] "inherently
untrustworthy climate models, similar to those that cannot accurately
forecast the weather a week from now." Dr. Richard Lindzen