Key Global Warming Study May Have Bad Mathematics 77
An anonymous reader writes "Berkeley physics professor Richard A. Muller writes that a key study showing a sudden 'hockey stick shape' increase in global temperature may be flawed from bad mathematics. Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick say that Michael Mann's computer program handled data normalization incorrectly and exaggerated data with a hockey stick shape." Update: 10/18 18:26 GMT by J : Alas for the environment, it looks like McKitrick and McIntyre have been refuted. "In previous rounds of the debate, Lambert has shown that McKitrick messed up an analysis of the number of weather stations, showed he knew almost nothing about climate, flunked basic thermodynamics, couldn't handle missing values correctly and invented his own temperature scale. But Tim's latest discovery really takes the cake."
The 'Little Ice Age' (Score:2, Insightful)
Sunspots cause the sun to give off alot more heat/energy than a nicely uniformed surface sun does.
Conversely, a couple hundred years of above average sunspots would seem to cause global temps to increase. Too bad we only have about 1,000 years of data on sunspots.
We have no idea what the average is. What if we are coming off of a 5,000 year low cycle?
It's amazing what humans don't always cause, isn't it.
Re:Junk science? Corporate cover-up? (Score:2, Insightful)
"19,000 independent scientists and engineers came forward two years ago to show that the evidence being presented for global warming was not science, but rather pseudoscience and rhetoric".
Yes, it is difficult to prove anything. But the rhetoric involved is enlightening. Do you think the study they do is a waste of corporate dollars? Everything learnt and SHARED in rhetoric helps us to decifier the truth in situations. To silence any opinion would be to hinder the search for 'truth'. This is what John Stuart Mill makes clear in his book "On Liberty". Here's the link if you're not familiar: <http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/jsmill-lib.ht
The problem is that you seem to be adopting someone elses opinion rather than formulating your own. Just because science can't prove it does not necessarily mean it does not exist - God is a typical example but the christian form that pops to mind is definately flawed, however the concept remains the same!
I am confident that as a result of all the debate being undertaken we have become aware that our behaviour as the behavior of Man is adversely affecting our one, and only, planet. To deny this implies ignorance on your part. Your argument seems to be that planetary degradation happens over time with natural fluctuations, so we don't need to bother because we are all going to suffer and die eventually. With your attitude i am sure someone will and it will probably be your childeren. My argument lies here: An asteroid hitting earth doesn't mean we can't do our best to stop the asteroid doing as much damage as possible. So in the case of the preservation of our planet: sure we only live for 100 years, but what gives us the right to add to the further degradation of the biosphere? and the resultant reduction in quality of life for the generations to come?
Essentially it translates into people like you valuing apathy and your own materialistic egoisms.
Gaia forgive us!
America seems to receive much blame that it does not deserve, the world will not immediately follow suit if America cleans up its act, this is unfortunate. Other countries will abuse the economic opportunity that will result if America, or any country, begins to look after its portion of the world. What needs to happen is unity, but i am afraid that unity is not something the human species is good at.
As an individual the only option i have is to practice dialogue and to continue to learn. This is my primordial duty to Gaia, I search for the medicene that is much needed. And i don't even know if death is cheating.
Aha! THIS CONFIRMS MY SUSPICIONS! (Score:3, Insightful)
This is how science works. You make your best arguments, they look unimpeachable to you or your reviewers, then somebody comes up with a way to impeach them.
It doesn't mean that your conclusions are wrong or that the challenger is right. It means that we have to look more closely.
Currently the scientific consensus seems to be for anthropogenic climate change, but it is not beyond scientific apporach. The attitude of "GOTCHA" is not appropriate for skeptics here, nor will that attitude be appropriate when the original authors of the study rebut the criticism.
It takes time to establish consensus, and time to change it. Latching on to an individual argument in this process is like latching onto a minute by minute trend in the stock market. Smart investors look at longer term trends, and we should evaluate scientific evidence this way.
Re:Junk science strikes again (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody complains about a country that is the most kind, most efficient, least belligerent, most enlightened, etc. They complain when a country rides high atop the shoulders of the poor and pretends its success is due entirely to its morally superior system of Capitalism.
It's not success, progress, or technology that riles the world, it's the subjugation of the morality of the human to the morality of the dollar. You and your philosophical brethren like to claim that the concerned citizens of the world want to throw the world back to the stone-age, but in fact they want to make sure that human progress is both fairly distributed, and that it doesn't consume the resources of the world at an unsustainable rate.
Right now, the US is the worst offender. In a few decades it will likely be China. How would you like it if China polluted the air (imagine smog warnings in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and LA being subject to the whim of China's industrial sector) and claimed anyone who complains is an "anti-Chinese", anti-technology fanatic?
Progress is good, we all love it, but it must be sustainable, rational, and equitable.
Re:Junk science strikes again (Score:2, Insightful)
humans do pollute atmosphere, and quite heavily at that. this is a fact and it doesn't need to be proven again and again. acid rains are also there, again a fact. lots of forests are dying because of acid rains.
now explain how these facts are antiamerican? is trying to preserve nature somehow antiamerican? or trying keep air we and our children will breathe more or less clean antiamerican?
so what is pro american then? consume and pollute like there is no tomorrow and thus there won't be a tomorrow?
in this case i'd rather tend to be antiamerican, yes.
and how is using a cleaner industry anti technology? cleaner industry means more modern and advanced technology has to be developed. in europe, the factories filter their pollution and generally produce less pollution because of the pro-enviroment laws. in japan the technology is the most advanced in the world because the raw materials there are scarce. this is absolutely pro technology, not against it.
sure, pro-environment laws can destroy some factories which are too cheap to upgrade and prefer to pollute. because making money is the only thing the corporations care about they have to be forced to care about environment.
so, why us-american corporations cannot upgrade and stay competitive while europe and japan have managed it without any problem?
in the rest of your post you sound like a spoiled child trying to relativate your faults "because the other are also bad"
india and china are developing countries. usa, europe and so on are already developed. they have polluted the air since 1850 and now, instead of ranting about developing countries they should rather shut up and help them to finish the development faster and rather cleaner.
by the way, do you know what a state is? a state is a community contract where everyone gives a part of his liberty to the abstract institutuon called state for the price of being secure. either that or you live in an anarchy.
Re:Study rejected by the science magazine Nature (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone who has done real science for any length of time knows that the perr-review process is not without flaws. In this particular case, though, McIntyre and McKittrick have identified flaws in the original hockey-stick paper that have already been the subject of a major correction in Nature and have published several peer-reviewed papers on the errors in the original Mann et al paper.
Note also that Mann et al. don't seem to be able to settle on which data series they used, and refuse to make their source data and codes available to other researchers.
It's also interesting that the models of Mann et al. deny the Little Climatic Optimum, which is otherwise awfully well supported, eg, by the historical records of the Vikings in the New World and the rather clear records of conditions in Europe.
As with most things of this sort, you should read the actual sources and draw your own conclusions.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Junk science strikes again (Score:3, Insightful)
With great power comes great responsibility... that should be obvious.
So? (Score:4, Insightful)
Mathematics aside, it's a bit late to be asking whether global warming is happening or not. The question for us now is whether we can stop the ongoing meltdown. The arctic, Antartica, the Greenland ice sheet, Glacier National Park, the Alps - all melting before our eyes.
This is funny... (Score:1, Insightful)
Look, there is no proof of global warming. If you think there is, you don't know what you are talking about. We just don't have the data yet.
And there is even LESS proof that man is causing the climate to change. All of you trying to say otherwise are either just playing politics with the science for your own political agenda, or you are totally uneducated in science.
Science is not based on consensus! It's based on FACTS. And when it goes to global warming, there are NONE.
It's nice to see however that the models (which have been known to have been bad for ages) are finally being shown to be bad to everyone else. People forget that a lot of the lame scientists out there will massage their data to get the results (And fame) that they want.
-Posted anonmously because non-PC posts always get marked as flames or trolls by the
Re:Junk science strikes again (Score:2, Insightful)
The amount of CO2 we release is measureable, but fairly insignificant compared to the total amount that exchanged between the atmostphere and carbon sinks naturally. It's kind of like worrying that you might cause a flood by running your garden hose during a heavy thunderstorm.
Actually, we have a pretty good idea of the dynamics: increased temperatures and CO2 lead to more vigourous plant growth, which leads to more plant-eating animals, which leads to more animal-eating animals. Biodiversity increases, and the ecosystem improves. Even humans will do better; there will be more food for us, and less hardship during winters (which will reduce our need for fuel, btw.)
As far as the ocean levels rising, it isn't happening, at least not for as long as satellites have been measuring ocean levels. Apparently, although the ocean level varies over time, its average level has been the same for many years, as measured by satellite. But when measured from the shorelines, it seems to be rising. What actually must be happening is that the shorelines are sinking (at least around the measurement points.)
Is the whole continent sinking? Maybe, from the weight of the new plants... Or maybe continents just tend to heave up in the middle and dip their shorelines down. Perhaps something is pushing up from underneath, and this is what causes the continents to move around.
Hurricanes haven't been getting worse either; we had a busy year this year, but it was just on the high side of average. Both the number of hurricanes, and their top wind speeds, have been pretty much constant for as long as these things have been measured.
Re:Junk science strikes again (Score:3, Insightful)
Which is more than enough reason for concern in itself. Spewing out extra CO2 that might accellerate it (even if the chance was slight, which it is not) just because it is not proven to be harmful is basically playing russian roulette.
It just so happens that the very small, agenda driven, socialized, government-paid scientific community is the only one that buys into the extremist theories.
First of all, you try to make it sound like there are others that are not agenda-driven, which is obvious bullshit.
The rest of your argument is basically "only the people who know anything about the climate believe in it, and they are few." Uh, yeah? You think truth is some kind of democracy where every vote is equal whether you are informed or not?
As for your supposed "independent scientists": if you're a scientist your'e almost always either paid by a governement or by industry. Do the math.
And no, the laissez-faires are not in the majority among climatologists; not by a long shot.
Even many liberals are leaving the ranks of the extremist environmentalist groups. Largely because the groups have shown themselves to be fraudulent.
What the groups do or do not do has no bearing on whether there is a link between emissions and climate.
And why is it that it's always the US that gets the blame?
You don't get the blame. You get slammed because you are in a position to do something your future emissions (unlike India and China), yet refuse to do so.
You are right that americans should be very worried indeed about their disappearing freedoms, but the important ones are being taken away under the guise of protection against terrorism, not climate change.
And whoever modded that incoherent, unsubstatiated knee-jerk drivel as insightful clearly has no idea what an insight is.
Re: So? (Score:3, Insightful)
First off, seeing as we're arguably at the end of an ice age (one of the interpretations of the warming data), the result may well be that we start growing wine grapes in Canada and England -- they didn't call the last stretch like that the "Little Climatic Optimum" for nothing. So we could be heading toward a "garden paradise".
(More like, we're heading for a time in which things Will Be Different From Today. This sort of thing happens, and we'll have to find a way to cope, or die, just like the dinosaurs.)
More to the point though, you didn't read what I said very well: If it's not anthropogenic, its not clear we can do anything about it. The whole Kyoto argument is that we're causing the problem and what we do can fix it. If we're not causing the problem -- it it is, for example, the result of a long term cyclical change in solar output -- then doing things to reduce CO2 output might be very expensive but have no effect.