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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

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The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews

Nick Palmer at 09:33 AM on 23 June, 2021

Just in case you lot are still resisting the idea that the politics relating to climate science have become extremely polarised - in my view to the point where ideologues of both the left and right think it justified to exaggerate/minimise the scientific truths/uncertainties to sway the democratically voting public one way or the other - here's a video blog by alt-right hero and part of the original Climategate team who publicised the emails, James Delingpole basically saying that 'the left' have infiltrated and corrupted the science for the purpose of using political deception to seize power for themselves.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=866yHuh1RYM

Deconstruct or follow up Delingpoles' rhetoric elsewhere and you will find a helluva lot of intelligent articulate people who believe that the public's environmental consciences are being exploited by closet socialist forces to deceive them, using 'fear porn', into voting for policies which they otherwise wouldn't consider voting for, in a dark strategy to bring in some form of latter day Marxism. They insinuate this has got its tentacles into climate science which they assert has led to the reality of the science, as presented to the public, being twisted by them for political ends. It's absolutely not just Greenpeace, as I already said, who've 'gone red' to the point where it has 'noble cause' corrupted their presentations of environmental matters and, crucially, the narrow choice of solutions they favour - those which would enable and bring on that 'great reset' of civilisation that they want to see. It's much, much bigger than that.

I think we are seeing a resurgence and a recrystallisation of those who got convinced by Utopianist politics of the left and free market thinkers of the right taught at University - Marxist-Leninism, Ayn Rand, Adam Smith etc. Most of those students eventually 'grew up' and mellowed in time, leaving only a small cadre of incorrigible extremists but who are now, as the situation is becoming increasingly polarised politically, revisiting their former ideologies. In essence 'woking' up. I submit that the real battle we are seeing played out in the arena of climate matters is not between science and denialism of science - those are only the proxies used to manipulate the public. The true battle is between the increasingly polarised and increasingly extreme and deceitful proponents of the various far left and right ideologies and their re-energised followers.

It is now almost an article of faith, so accepted has it become, amongst many top climate scientists and commentators, that 'denialism' is really NOT motivated by stupidity or a greedy desire to keep on making as much money as possible but is rather a strong resistance to the solutions that they fear are just 'chess moves' to bring about the great Red 'reset' they think the 'opposition' are secretly motivated by.

Here's an excellent article by famous climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe identifying those who are 'solutions averse' as being a major factor in denialism. It touches on the 'watermelon' aspect. You can turn a blind eye to what I am saying if you want, but in that case you should also attack Hayhoe too - but don't expect many to applaud you...

https://theecologist.org/2019/may/20/moving-past-climate-denial

Also try this: https://www.thecut.com/2014/11/solution-aversion-can-explain-climate-skeptics.html

https://today.duke.edu/2014/11/solutionaversion

I think some people who fight climate science denialism still have the naive idea that just enlessly quoting the science to them, and Skepticalscience's F.L.I.C.C logical fallacies, will make denialists fall apart. I too used to think that if one would just keep hammering away, eventually they would give up. Anyone who tries this will find that it actually does not work well at all. Take on some of the smarter ones and you will rapidly find that you are, at least in the eyes of the watching/reading/listening public, who are the only audience it's worthwhile spending any time trying to correct, outgunned scientifically and rhetorically. That's why I don't these days much use the actual nitty-gritty science as a club with which to demolish them because the smarter ones will always have a superficially plausible, to the audience at least, comeback which looks convincing TO THE AUDIENCE. Arguing the science accurately can often lose the argument, as many scientists found when they attempted to debate such notorious, yet rhetorically brilliant sceptic/deniers such as Lord Monckton.

I haven't finished trying to clarify things for you all but right back at the beginning, in post#18, I fairly covered what I was trying to suggest is a more realistic interpretation of the truth than the activist's simplistic 'Evil Exxon Knew' propaganda one. In short, most of you seem to believe, and are arguing as if, the science was rock solid back then and that it said any global warming would certainly lead to bad things. This is utterly wrong, and to argue as if it was true is just deceitful. As I have said, and many significant figures in the field will confirm, I've been fighting denialism for a very long time so when denialists present some paper or piece of text extracted from a longer document as 'proof' of something, I always try and read the original, usually finding out that they have twisted the meaning, cherry picked inappropriate sentences or failed to understand it and thereby jumped to fallacious conclusions - similarly I read the letters and extracts that Greenpeace used and, frankly, either they were trying deliberately to mislead or they didn't understand the language properly and jumped to their prejudiced conclusions and then made all the insinuations that we are familiar with and that nobody else seems be questioning much, if at all. The idea that Exxon always knew that anthropogenic climate change was real (which they, of course, did) AND that they always knew that the results of that would be really bad and so they conspired to cover that bad future up is false and is the basis of the wilful misreading and deceitful interpretation of the cherry picked phrases, excerpts and documents that has created a vastly worse than deserved public perception of how the fossil fuel corporations acted. Always remember that, at least ideally, people (and corporations) should be presumed innocent until proven beyond reasonable doubt to be guilty. Greenpeace/Oreskes polemics are not such proof. Their insinuations of the guilt of Big Oil is just a mirror image of how the Climategate hackers insinuated guilt into the words of the top climate scientists.

Here's a clip from my post#18

NAP: "When activists try to bad mouth Exxon et al they speak from a 'post facto' appreciation of the science, as if today's relatively strong climate science existed back when the documents highlighted in 'Exxon knew' were created. Let me explain what I think is another interpretation other than Greenpeace/Oreskes'/Supran's narratives suggesting 'Exxon knew' that climate change was going to be bad because their scientists told them so as far back as the 70s and 80s. Let me first present Stephen Schneider's famous quote from 1988 (the whole quote, not the edited one used by denialists).

S.S. "On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but – which means that we must include all doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change. To do that we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, means getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This “double ethical bind” we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.""

Stephen Schneider, as a climate scientist, was about 'as good as it gets' and he said that in 1988. Bear in mind that a lot of the initial framing to prejudice readers that 'Exxon knew' used was based on documents from considerably longer ago, so what are the activists who eagerly allowed themselves to be swept up in it until no-one questioned it turning a blind eye to? It's that the computer models of the time were extremely crude because computer technology back then was just not powerful enough to divide Earth up into enough finite element 'blocks' of small enough size to make model projections of much validity, in particular projections of how much, how fast and how bad or how good... Our ideas of the feedback effects of clouds and aerosols back then was extremely rudimentary and there were widely differing scientific opinions as to the magnitude or even the direction of the feedback. The scientific voices we see in Exxon Knew tend to be those who were suggesting there was lot more certainty of outcome than there actually was. That their version has been eventually shown to be mostly correct by a further 40 years of science in no way means they were right to espouse such certainty back then - just lucky. As I pointed out before, even as late as the very recent CMIP6 models, we are still refining this aspect - and still finding surprises. To insinuate that the science has always been as fairly rock solid as it today is just a wilful rewriting of history. Try reading Spencer Weart's comprehensive history of the development of climate science for a more objective view of the way things developed...

ExxonMobil spokesperson Allan Jeffers told Scientific American in 2015. “The thing that shocks me the most is that we’ve been saying this for years, that we have been involved in climate research. These guys (Inside Climate News) go down and pull some documents that we made available publicly in the archives and portray them as some kind of bombshell whistle-blower exposé because of the loaded language and the selective use of materials.”

Look at the phrases and excerpts that were used in both Greenpeace's 'Exxon Knew' and 'Inside Climate News's' exposés. You will find they actually are very cherry picked and relatively few in number considering the huge volumes of company documents that were analysed. Does that remind you of anything else? Because it should. The Climategate hackers trawled through mountains of emails - over ten years worth - to cherry pick apparently juicy phrases and ended up with just a few headline phrases, a sample of which follow. Now, like most of us now know, there are almost certainly innocent and valid explanations of each of these phrases, and independent investigations in due course vindicated the scientists. Reading them, and some of the other somewhat less apparently salacious extracts that got less publicity, and comparing them with the 'presented as a smoking gun' extracts from Greenpeace/Oreskes/Supran etc I have to say, on the face of it, the Climategate cherry picks look more evidential of serious misdeeds than the 'Exxon Knew' excerpts. Except we are confident that the Climategate hackers badly misrepresented the emails by insinuating shady motives where none were. Why should we not consider that those nominally on the side of the science did not do the same? Surely readers here are not so naive aas to believe that everyone on 'our side' is pure as the driven snow and all those on the 'other side' are evil black hats?

Here's a 'top eight'

1) Phil Jones "“I’ve just completed Mike’s [Mann] Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e. from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s [Briffa] to hide the decline.”

2) “Well, I have my own article on where the heck is global warming…. The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” [Kevin Trenberth, 2009]

3) “I know there is pressure to present a nice tidy story as regards ‘apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the proxy data’ but in reality the situation is not quite so simple." Keth Briffa

4) Mike [Mann], can you delete any e-mails you may have had with Keith [Trenberth] re AR4? Keith will do likewise…. Can you also e-mail Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his e-mail address…. We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.” [Phil Jones, May 29, 2008]

5) “Also we have applied a completely artificial adjustment to the data after 1960, so they look closer to observed temperatures than the tree-ring data actually were….” [Tim Osborn, Climatic Research Unit, December 20, 2006]

6) “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin [Trenberth] and I will keep them out somehow, even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!” [Phil Jones, July 8, 2004]

7) “You might want to check with the IPCC Bureau. I’ve been told that IPCC is above national FOI Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 [the upcoming IPCC Fifth Assessment Report] would be to delete all e-mails at the end of the process. Hard to do, as not everybody will remember it.” [Phil Jones, May 12, 2009]

8) “If you look at the attached plot you will see that the land also shows the 1940s warming blip (as I’m sure you know). So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say 0.15 deg C, then this would be significant for the global mean—but we’d still have to explain the land blip….” [Tom Wigley, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, to Phil Jones, September 28, 2008]

Please at least consider the possibility that Greenpeace, who have been deceiving the public about the toxicity and carcinogenicity of this, that and the other for decades (ask me how if you want to see how blatant their deceit or delusion is... showing this is actually very quick and easy to do) were, in a very similar way, and motivated by their underlying ideology, deliberately (or delusionally) misrepresenting innocent phrases to blacken names excessively too.

Climategate CRU emails suggest conspiracy

ScienceFre4k at 05:08 AM on 18 February, 2020

Hi,

in your article above you portray Climategate as follows: "Focusing on a few suggestive emails, taken out of context ..."

After some minutes of googling I came across this article from the renowned british newspaper "The Telegraph" (in case someone doesn't know: the weekly version of "The Daily Telegraph"): LINK

Citation: "There are three threads in particular in the leaked documents which have sent a shock wave through informed observers across the world. Perhaps the most obvious is the highly disturbing series of emails which show how Dr Jones and his colleagues have for years been discussing the devious tactics whereby they could avoid releasing their data to outsiders under freedom of information laws."

The article also says that this scandal goes right to the heart of the IPCC: "Professor Philip Jones, the CRU's director, is in charge of the two key sets of data used by the IPCC to draw up its reports."

The problem is that these pictures given differ so geatly that there is only one explanation: One side must be lying like a trooper.

If the author of the article, columnist Christopher Booker, and the colleagues he is referring to, are all lying, he and them must have made up their accusations, that means the emails and the years of deceit do not exist, it is all invented. Or he misread the emails, he and his colleagues are just stupid. Or, on the other hand, climate alarmists are defending their cause by playing down a terrible scandal. Everyone shall decide for their own, which is more probable.

The start page I read here was quite good and you made some interesting points I eventually will investigate on further. But here, talking about Climategate I once more come to the conclusion that Skeptics sometimes aren't quite that skeptic at all but love to trust in what authorities proclaim, without checking the facts.

Here Are 3 Climategate Myths That Have Not Aged Well

nyood at 22:47 PM on 30 November, 2019

nigelj @16

T.Wigley was not proven incorrect, quite the opposite for two reasons:

1: His concern was confirmed with hundreds of emails of the following decade. Here are two more examples: M.Mann to E.Cook:

"I don’t in any way doubt yours and Jan’s integrity here.I’m just a bit concerned that the result is getting used publicly, by some, before it has gone through the gauntlet of peer review. Especially because it is, whether you condone it or not, being used as we speak to discredit the work of us, and Phil and his co-workers; this is dangerous. I think there are some legitimate issues that need to be sorted out ....I’d be interested to be kept posted on what the status of the manuscript is."

E.Cooks reply:

"Unfortunately, this global change stuff is so politicized by both sides of the issue that it is difficult to do the science in a dispassionate environment. I ran into the same problem in the acid rain/forest decline debate that raged in the 1980s. At one point, I was simultaneous accused of being a raving tree hugger and in the pocket of the coal industry. I have always said that I don’t care what answer is found as long as it is the truth or at least blood close to it."

And E.Cook to K.Biffa:

"Also, there is no evidence for a decline or loss of temperature response in your data in the post-1950s (I assume that you didn’t apply a bodge here)"

2. You state that Wrigley was wrong since it turned out he was hindering the 11 on their path to prove warming is manmade and a threat.

This is wrong to me, ten years ago we were estimating with a warming of 3°C, now we have come to the lowest threshold of 1,5°C. To me the explanoray power of the IPCC declines towards none.

I want to remind here that in my original post i was saying that climategate reveals the extent in which the thinking is political and strategical within the IPCC. Wrigley seems to realize this early on.

I do not want the IPCC to fight an information war for us. The emails show countless concerns, predominantly expressed by M.Mann towards skeptics publishing stuff in Natur, Science and alike.

The public and media perception of the global warming issue seems to be the dominant task for M.Mann.

The science itself is not in focus anymore, focus shifted towards: "What is the public thinking" and "How can we make our enemies look bad or hinder them from publishing".

This is evidenced by numerous emails where certain media is considered "on our side" while others are considered "lost" to the skeptics:

P.Jones to M.Mann:

"Writing this I am becoming more convinced we should do something ...I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor. A ClimaticResearch Unit person is on the editorial board, but papers get dealt with by the editor assigned by Hans von Storch."

M.Mann replies:

"The Soon and Baliunas paper couldn’t have cleared a “legitimate” peer review process anywhere. That leaves only one possibility—that the peer-review process at Climate Research has been hijacked by a few skeptics on the editorial board. And it isn’t just De Freitas; unfortunately, I think this group also includes a member of my own department... The skeptics appear to have staged a “coup” at Climate Research (it was a mediocre journal to begin with, but now it’s a mediocre journal with a definite “purpose”)."

I do not want such peolpe to advise our gouverments, can you understand that?

According to you and pretty much all alarmists, skeptics should be clowns, it should be easy to crush them in debates. There should be no reason to fear them this much. Ironically the fierce fight against skeptics makes them stronger, giving them meaning.

This happened over and over in history.

State of the climate: Heat across Earth’s surface and oceans mark early 2019

RedBaron at 06:44 AM on 10 June, 2019

@swampfoxh,

You asked, "I don't get the points about c3 and c4 grasses nor the subordination of trees-to-grass as a less carbon effective sequesterer"

Most trees and some grasses are C3. but warm season grasses are C4. Since the C4 pathway is at least 5-10 times more efficient at photosynthesis, those plants primary productivity of products of photosynthesis start out many times greater baring other limiting factors. One of the main limiting factors in temporate grasslands is winter. So the solution that evolution came up with is a biodiverse mix of C4 and C3 grasses and forbs that each have a season they are dormant and a season they become dominant or co-dominant. This extracts by far the most solar energy and converts the most CO2 to sugars and proteins as compared to the more primitive forest ecosystems. (temperate forests produce almost no photosynthesis from fall all the way through winter and early spring while grasslands do produce photosynthesis with C3 cool season grasses and forbs) So the grasslands start out by fixing much more CO2 to begin with.

Then we consider where the bulk of that fixed carbon is stored. In a forest it is mostly stored above ground in woody biomass and leaves. A large amount is also stored in the top O-horizon of the soil. Almost all this stored carbon will ultimately be returned to the atmosphere as CO2 and methane by fire and/or the processes of decay though. A climate scientist would call this short cycle carbon. A soil scientist calls it labile organic matter. It really isn't sequestered long term in any geological timeframe. (or at least most of it isn't)

In a grassland we have much more primary productivity, but much less biomass storage as compared to forests. So the century's old question became what happened to all the rest? We sort of knew somehow it ended up as soil, because grasslands soils, particularly the Mollic epipedon, are many many times thicker and hold hundreds of times more carbon than most forest soils per acre on average. (there are some notable exceptions) But even that didn't quite add up. This is where the new research is beginning to reveal these questions.

What we term the LCP is actually a biochemical pathway whereby CO2 first becomes fixed by photosynthesis, then becomes stored in the plants as sugar rich compounds and basic proteins forming sap, then flows downward through root exudates to feed symbiotic mycorrhizal fungi in trade for weathered and scavenged nutrients otherwise not bioavailable to the plant, metabolised into soil glues called "glomalin" to form a network of structured tunnels and pore spaces in the soil, which ultimately forms humic polymers tightly bound to the soil mineral substrate that creates new fertile soil.

Climate scientists call this sequestered long cycle carbon to differentiate it from short cycle stored carbon in woody biomass. According to Dr Christine Jones in total approximately 40% of the total products of photosynthesis can follow this pathway under appropriate conditions and as it decays into soil about ~79% +/- of that carbon stays put rather than returning to the atmosphere as CO2. (again under appropriate conditions) Soil scientists call this stable carbon. However, the products of photosynthesis that are used by the grass to make above ground biomass also decay right back into CO2 much like the forests' above ground biomass. That's the labile carbon again. Well over 90% of labile carbon returns to the atmosphere as CO2 and methane on average. (with a few notable exceptions)

So it is critical to understand that difference between what soil scientists call labile carbon and stable carbon or what climate scientists call short cycle and long cycle carbon. Grasslands take hundreds of times more short cycle carbon and divert it to long cycle carbon as compared to most forests. (with a few notable exceptions)

You then asked, "Also, what is the proportional value of phytoplankton in this "sequestration" activity? And what is the impact of the recent news that some 40% of phytoplankton have disappeared from the world's oceans since 1952?"

Frankly this does actually scare me. As a retired marine engineer I know that anyone who fails to respect the power of the ocean risks death. ANYONE and EVERYONE. As a metaphor, you seriously do not want to be around when Poseidon releases the Kraken. As you can probably tell, this causes my normally rational brain to short circuit into irrational fear. And I seriously do love the ocean! But it is ingrained in me that much through many trials and tribulations that we are absolute fools to mess with the ocean ecosystems as we are currently. It's the one thing actually powerful enough to cause human extinction.

Back to rationality for a second though. I am not a marine researcher. Once years ago as a marine engineer on a research vessel I rubbed elbows with marine researchers occasionally, but I am not nor ever have been a marine scientist of any sort, not even amateur. Given that, I'll tell you what I have read over the years. One of the key things to remember is that most the ocean sequestration is focused around shallow seas and coastal areas with saltwater marshes and mangrove forests sequestering from 50-90% of biomass into stable forms. This is indeed one of those notable exceptions mentioned above. Also it is 2 to 35 times more carbon sequestration than even deep ocean phytoplankton!

Understanding Coastal Carbon Cycling by Linking Top-Down and Bottom-Up Approaches

Some of that carbon came from the upland grasslands too though. Because those humic polymers that are tightly bound to the soil mineral substrate will generally stay bound when the soil erodes and floods coastal areas then settle out as silts.

You asked, "are you taking the position that animals grazing the Great Plains helped create the soil there ?"

Yes. A resounding unequivocal yes! They co-evolved and the animals are every bit as important as the microbiome and the plants.

Now for agriculture we can mimic this relationship if we understand how it functions. A cow is not a bison nor an antelope, but if we manage it correctly we can mimic that ecosystem function and use it to create soil too. But in order to do that you must first understand the function of the vast herds in a grassland/savanna/open woodland biome.

"Permaculture is a philosophy of working with, rather than against nature; of protracted & thoughtful observation rather than protracted & thoughtless labor; & of looking at plants & animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single-product system." Bill Mollison

Global warming hiatus claims prebunked in 1980s and 1990s

jzk at 05:46 AM on 29 April, 2019

@Art Vandelay,

What was Phil Jones "worried" about? If global warming were to stop, why would that cause someone to "worry?" Why wouldn't they "celebrate?"

New research, February 4-10, 2019

RedBaron at 01:19 AM on 26 February, 2019

@8 MA Rodger

Here is evidence from the past of this ecosystem function:

Cenozoic Expansion of Grasslands and Climatic Cooling

Gregory J. Retallack DOI: 10.1086/320791

And here is a review of how we can apply the paleo record of this ecosystem function to modern times and near future AGW mitigation.

Global Cooling by Grassland Soils of the Geological Past and Near Future

Gregory J. Retallack doi:10.1146/annurev-earth-050212-124001

And here is empirical evidence of carbon sequestration rates in the field under various agricultural techniques and systems. A careful examination of the evidence with an understanding of how the LCP functions makes it very clear which systems use the LCP and why the difference in rates seen. It also confirms that the average sequestration rate of ~5-20 tonnes CO2e/ha/yr holds true in environments tested around the world.

Conservation practices to mitigate and adapt to climate change

Jorge A. Delgado, Peter M. Groffman, Mark A. Nearing, Tom Goddard, Don Reicosky, Rattan Lal, Newell R. Kitchen, Charles W. Rice, Dan Towery, and Paul Salon doi:10.2489/jswc.66.4.118A

Managing soil carbon for climate change mitigation and adaptation in Mediterranean cropping systems: A meta-analysis

Eduardo Aguilera, Luis Lassaletta, Andreas Gattinger, Benjamín S.Gimeno
doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2013.02.003

Enhanced top soil carbon stocks under organic farming

Andreas Gattinger, Adrian Muller, Matthias Haeni, Colin Skinner, Andreas Fliessbach, Nina Buchmann, Paul Mäder, Matthias Stolze, Pete Smith, Nadia El-Hage Scialabba, and Urs Niggli doi/10.1073/pnas.1209429109

Managing Soils and Ecosystems for Mitigating Anthropogenic Carbon Emissions and Advancing Global Food Security

Rattan Lal doi.org/10.1525/bio.2010.60.9.8

The role of ruminants in reducing agriculture’s carbon footprint in North America

W.R. Teague, S. Apfelbaum, R. Lal, U.P. Kreuter, J. Rowntree, C.A. Davies, R. Conser, M. Rasmussen, J. Hatfield, T. Wang, F. Wang, and P. Byc doi:10.2489/jswc.71.2.156

Grazing management impacts on vegetation, soil biota and soil chemical, physical and hydrological properties in tall grass prairie

W.R.Teague, S.L.Dowhower, S.A.Baker, N.Haile, P.B.DeLaune, D.M.Conover doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2011.03.009

Some of these have paywalls, so if you have difficulty getting past them, message me for a private copy for personal use only.

@9 Philippe Chantreau The best I have for Dr Christine Jones is a short CV I posted here a while back: Christine Jones - short CV

Temp record is unreliable

randman at 02:19 AM on 26 September, 2017

" If there were no greenhouse effect, the Earth’s average surface temperature would be a very chilly -18°C (0°F) instead of the comfortable 15°C (59°F) that it is today."

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GlobalWarming/page2.php

This was put out in 2010. There is an accompanying graph showing a significant rise from 1980 and the the period of 1950-1980 along with this comment:

"By the beginning of the 21st century, Earth’s temperature was roughly 0.5 degrees Celsius above the long-term (1951–1980) average. (NASA figure adapted from Goddard Institute for Space Studies"

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GlobalWarming/page2.php

So we see a mean mentioned in 2010 of "15°C (59°F) that it is today."

This is said to be roughly .5 Celsius above the 1950-1980 mean, which would make the 1950-1980 mean be 58.1 degrees F. As I have shown in other posts, the mean was reported to be 59 degrees in 1988. Obviously, it was adjusted downward.

"One of the scientists, Dr. James E. Hansen of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan, said he used the 30-year period 1950-1980, when the average global temperature was 59 degrees Fahrenheit, as a base to determine temperature variations."

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/03/29/science/temperature-for-world-rises-sharply-in-the-1980-s.html

"Dr. Hansen informed the lawmakers that the first five months of 1988 were the hottest five-month period on record, averaging four-tenths of a degree above a 30-year (1950-1980) norm of 59 degrees Fahrenheit."

LINK

"The British readings showed that the average global temperature in 1988 was 0.612 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the long-term average for the period 1950 through 1979, which is a base for comparing global temperatures. The average worldwide temperature for that 30-year period is roughly 59 degrees Fahrenheit, the British researchers said."

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/02/04/us/global-warmth-in-88-is-found-to-set-a-record.html

And from 1991:

"The Goddard group found that the record average surface temperature for the globe was eight-tenths of a degree Fahrenheit above the 1951-1980 average of 59 degrees. The British group found it seventh-tenths of a degree higher than the 1951-80 average."

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/01/10/us/separate-studies-rank-90-as-world-s-warmest-year.html

Also note from the same article:

"The British groups, headed by Phil Jones at East Anglia and David Parker of the meteorological office, reported 1990 to be the warmest year since comparable records were first kept in 1850.....

The Goddard group found that the record average surface temperature for the globe was eight-tenths of a degree Fahrenheit above the 1951-1980 average of 59 degrees. The British group found it seventh-tenths of a degree higher than the 1951-80 average."

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/01/10/us/separate-studies-rank-90-as-world-s-warmest-year.html

Looks like 59 degrees was considered the 1950-1980 mean in 1991, and in 2010 that was revised downward to 58 degrees.

So what is considered the 1950-1980 mean more recently? Here is an estimate and claim of 2015 being the hottest year.

"The NASA team found that globally averaged temperatures from January through December 2015 were 0.87 degrees Celsius (1.57° Fahrenheit) above the norm (defined as a 1951–1980 base period)."

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=87359

If the mean was still 58 degrees, then 2015 would then have averaged nearly 60 degrees. 2016, however, is now considered the hottest year ever at less than 59 degrees.

"NOAA reported an average temperature for the year of 14.83 degrees C (58.69 degrees F) in 2016 – 1 degree C (1.69 degrees F) warmer than the average for the 20th century."

https://news.mongabay.com/2017/01/nasa-and-noaa-2016-hottest-recorded-year-ever/

Temp record is unreliable

randman at 02:39 AM on 24 September, 2017

Eclectic, still learning to use this forum. Phil Jones (English pioneer of some note for global warming scenarious, etc,...) is the Jones I referred to, as someone else stated.

In an effort to simplify, will repeat myself a little. The consensus was that the mean from 1950-1980 was 15 degrees celsius. The prediction and warning had to do with rapid increases ABOVE 15 degrees celsius. That never happened and so no, I can't agree the planet has warmed.

No matter how many graphs, claims, adjustments, etc,.....that purport to show increases in mean global temps, unless there is a good, peer-reviewed series of papars, or at least published and discussed widely with skeptics not shouted down, it's unreasonable to accept as necessarily valid claims of warming.

Where's the beef here? I am open to why the mean from 1950-1980 was lowered retroactively from 15 degrees celsius to 14 degrees celsius but hope you can understand my skepticism. You have a group who forcefully argues a near doomsday scenario requiring massive global regulatory changes with very specific and bold predictions, and they don't happen. No years above the mean, and then the mean is lowered?

What is the basis for lowering the mean? The science behind it? Are there published papers dealing with that? Were skeptics allowed to offer pubished rebuttals? Or is this more a matter of faith?

Temp record is unreliable

MA Rodger at 19:18 PM on 23 September, 2017

Eclectic @452,

Indeed, the missing Randman reference @451 would not be Tom but Phil Jones (no relation) who's phone interview became part of a 1989 NYT article titled "Global Warmth In '88 Is Found To Set a Record".

30 Climate Lessons I Learned in 30 Years

RedBaron at 21:19 PM on 8 September, 2017

Overpopulation occurs when a species' population exceeds the carrying capacity of its ecological niche. It can result from an increase in births (fertility rate), a decline in the mortality rate, an increase in immigration, or an unsustainable biome and depletion of resources.[1]

So we have two choices for a solution of overpopulation:

Reduce our population. We can do that like China did with 1 child per family laws, or like India did with forced sterilizations, or unfortunately the more typical strategy is like the NAZIs, Soviets, Turks, Mongols and Aztecs etc… did with mass murder of entire populations. War is another way. Almost universally these are all considered unethical, even downright evil. Or we can ignore it and let nature take its course with plagues, famines etc… in a sort of Malthusian catastrophe which most people agree is almost as bad.
Improve the carrying capacity of the planet. In the past we did that to avoid a Malthusian catastrophe by simply breeding better crops and increasing agricultural ground. Early on we figured how to rotate land to reduce the inevitable soil degradation caused by agriculture. Every major cradle of civilization developed higher yielding domesticated crops.

The problem is this:

The carrying capacity of a biological species in an environment is the maximum population size of the species that the environment can sustain indefinitely, given the food, habitat, water, and other necessities available in the environment.

And there is the rub. Once Industrial ag became the dominant new improved “green revolution” production model it did increase yields, but actually at the same time increased soil degradation and habitat loss. In short it was a temporary fix that is unsustainable. Thus it really didn’t increase carrying capacity, but did allow population growth.

Farming Claims Almost Half Earth's Land, New Maps Show

Land Degradation: An overview

Only 60 Years of Farming Left If Soil Degradation Continues

We will soon reach a crisis where we once again must chose between the unethical population reductions of the past involving mass destruction, war, mass murder, forced sterilizations etc…. Or a new way to do agriculture that retains the higher yields similar to the green revolution, but without degrading habitat.

Meet regenerative organic agriculture or permaculture:

"Organic agriculture is an ecological production management system that promotes and enhances biodiversity, biological cycles and soil biological activity. It is based on minimal use of off-farm inputs and on management practices that restore, maintain and enhance ecological harmony." USDA
"Permaculture is a philosophy of working with, rather than against nature; of protracted & thoughtful observation rather than protracted & thoughtless labor; & of looking at plants & animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single-product system." Bill Mollison
“Yes, agriculture done improperly can definitely be a problem, but agriculture done in a proper way is an important solution to environmental issues including climate change, water issues, and biodiversity.”-Rattan Lal

In short using biomimicry to make agricultural systems sustainable and even regenerative.

Is organic farming more sustainable than regular farming?

More importantly, this solution instead of creating more problems actually solves more.

"If all farmland was a net sink rather than a net source for CO2, atmospheric CO2 levels would fall at the same time as farm productivity and watershed function improved. This would solve the vast majority of our food production, environmental and human health ‘problems’." Dr. Christine Jones

Overpopulation is here now, however, that need not necessarily be true. Humans are a clever tool making species. What matters for human populations is how we use those tools. We actually have the technology to support a far larger population almost indefinitely. But we simply must convert our energy systems to renewable energy like solar, wind, geothermal and hydro etc…, and we must change our agricultural systems to regenerative organic systems.

So will your child help accomplish these goals? If so then have 10 children if you want. We desperately need them and soon. Will your child instead be a drain on resources and/or destructive to the land? Then please, don’t even bother having children. It’s suicidal.

Bottom line is teach your children well and raise them to understand the seriousness of the situation and we can live in paradise on Earth.

The Trump administration wants to bail out failed contrarian climate scientists

NorrisM at 16:47 PM on 3 September, 2017

JW Rebel @ 19

I do not want to make a big deal of this but there is an underlying assumption you make. You assume that because one group may citicize the explanation of some theory that it is not acceptable to criticize that theory without coming up with an alternative theory. You are 100% wrong in that assumption.

It is perfectly acceptable to criticize a theory without coming up with an alternative. One may question the existence of God (for lack of evidence) without coming up with an alternative explanation of why we are here.

In the area of climate change, it is perfectly acceptable to criticize the existing theories without coming up with an alternative explanation. In science, it perfectly acceptable to simply say, this theory is wrong but we just do not know what the answer is. You do not have to come up with a viable alternative.

At this point in my personal deliberations, I am convinced that man has caused the temperature to increase because of CO2 emissions but I am not convinced that the models can accurately predict what the effects will be over the next 70 years or beyond. What troubles me is that these computer models have to make massive assumptions about the impact of clouds because they simply do not have the computer power to properly build them into the models. I think the term they use is "parameterizations". Another issue is how sensitive the climate is to the massive increases in CO2, namely, how much in "positive feedbacks" are created by water vapour, etc.. I would like to hear from both sides on this issue. I would also like to hear from both sides how successful the models have been in predicting temperatures since the models have been developed. I read Michael Mann's support for the James Hansen predictions in an recent article in Foreign Affairs but it seems to me that he "cherry picked" his predictions. Many of Hansen's predictions as to temperature increased in the last 20 yeas were quite far off which were not referenced.

I would also like to hear whether the experts agree on whether there really was a Medieval Warming Period and a Little Ice Age. According to Michael Mann there was no such thing in the promotion of this "hockey stick" which was to show that the temperature increase today is unprecedented in the last 2000 years. A recent Chinese study has shown that certainly in China there have been periods of warming corresponding to the MWP and periods of cooling corresponding to the Little Ice Age. This corresponds to the information we have both about Greenland and Europe.

I am not saying that proving there was a MWP or a Little Ice Age means that we do not have a problem today but I would just like to get the facts and I am not convinced Michael Mann et al have delivered same. I have to admit that Climategate seriously impacted my trust of Michael Mann and Phil Jones. I do not care that their respective universities "cleared" them of any wrongdoing. You have to have massive blinders on you not to read these emails and wince. Are they scientists or are they going beyond the science to promote what they think is the "right thing to do"?

Returning to your main point, it may very well be that there are so many factors involved that it is impossible to predict what the climate will do in 30, 70 or more years. And it may be impossible to predict what portion of today's temperature increase is attributable to anthropogenic influences. This does not end the argument. We clearly have polar ice caps and glaciers melting. Oceans are rising (although they have been for 150 years).

So it behooves us to consider what we should do.

I just had to comment on your premise that the "other side" has to come up with a viable explanation otherwise you just accept the present premise and predictions of future temperature increases and the concomitant effects.

So I am hoping that a red team blue team can deal with some of these issues. I do not have any preconceived views on what would be achieved but I would enjoy seeing each side go at each other.

For those who say that it is too complicated, I say "fooey". If you cannot hit the main points and come to a conclusion then we should not be going down the road of massive changes to our society because it is undemocratic. If you cannot distil these issues for the public and you therefore have to rely on arguments of "trust me" or "trust the IPCC" then I do not think you have a chance at all of convincing the majority of the US public to go along with the massive changes proposed. Gradually switching to RE, yes, but not massive changes which impact their economic well being. It is like asking the Oracle of Delphi to tell the ruler whether he should go to battle. I think we have got beyond that stage.

Lord Krebs: scientists must challenge poor media reporting on climate change

barry at 07:59 AM on 21 May, 2016

Zoli, you can get the raw data and do the graph yourself. Skeptics have done it and come up with the same result as the Met Office, GISS, NOAA and the Japanese Meteorological Association.

BEST is a project run by critics of AGW. Same results. Here's a link to the work done by other skeptics. They get more warming than the Met Office. Read the commentary.

First the obvious, a skeptic, denialist, anti-science blog published a greater trend than Phil Climategate Jones. What IS up with that?

https://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/03/24/thermal-hammer/

Multiple groups have done the analysis using raw and adjusted temperatures. This part of the debate is over. The raw data is available for anyone to try and do it better.

Lots of global warming since 1998

Ian Forrester at 15:08 PM on 18 March, 2016

The problem is that people who have no knowledge of statistics believe that "not statistically significant" means "no warming". That was shown with the interview with Phil Jones a few years ago. Just use a p value, knowledegable peope know what it means and others can ask. Let's get rid of the term "statistical significance" since it allows deniers to mislead.

It hasn't warmed since 1998

DSL at 00:41 AM on 7 April, 2015

Peter, you're also letting others lead you on. Read the full discussion surrounding those quotes:

1. Trenberth, when using the word "travesty," was engaged in discussing his recent paper "An Imperative for Climate Change Planning: Tracking Earth's Global Energy" (Trenberth 2009). Here's the abstract:

"Planned adaptation to climate change requires information about what is happening and why. While a long-term trend is for global warming, short-term periods of cooling can occur and have physical causes associated with natural variability. However, such natural variability means that energy is rearranged or
changed within the climate system, and should be traceable. An assessment is given of our ability to track changes in reservoirs and flows of energy within the climate system. Arguments are given that developing the ability to do this is important, as it affects interpretations of global and especially regional climate change, and prospects for the future."

In other words, Trenberth was calling our ability to track energy in the climate system a "travesty." We need better measures of deep ocean heat content, for example. If you just read the quote from some "skeptic" site, then shame on you for not digging for context.

2. Phil Jones. He was answering honestly. The trend was not statistically different from zero. It was also not statistically different from the expected trend. Guess how it was portrayed by those who wish to turn doubt into profit? Again, if you took it hook, line, and sinker, without checking out what "statistically significant" means, and without taking Jones at his word in response to the flabber that followed, then shame on you.

3. Hansen. Be careful: "slowdown in the growth rate of net climate forcing" is not equal to "global warming has stopped/slowed." It may mean that forcing from greenhouse enhancement remains steady but aerosol forcing has increased. What does it mean to you, after having read Hansen's full statement? Or have you read it . . .

4. Von Storch has already been addressed.

It hasn't warmed since 1998

Tristan at 23:48 PM on 6 April, 2015

Peter, there is no 'pause' in any meaningful sense. CO2 hasn't magically stopped re-radiating thermal radiation.

Tom's graph demonstrates the illusory nature of the pause. Things can look like 'pauses' when you have an oscillation (weather) overlaid on a gradient (climate). Just because you can draw flat or negative lines starting from certain peaks to certain troughs doesn't mean that the underlying gradient has changed.

You will note that if you asked that exact question of Phil Jones today, he would be able to answer "since 1995 there has been statistically significant warming in the Surface Temperature Records". At some point within the next 5 years, you'll be able to say the same thing about 1998, and then the so-called skeptics will have to completely reject the surface temperature records, as they will no longer be convenient. Is that the team you want to be on, Peter?

It hasn't warmed since 1998

Peter99 at 21:59 PM on 6 April, 2015

Global temperatures seem to have plateaud. It is not only skeptics saying this, but many prominent warmists such as…

Dr. Kevin Trenberth – CRU emails – 12 Oct. 2009
“Well, I have my own article on where the heck is global warming…..The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.”

Dr. Phil Jones – BBC – 13th February 2010
[Q] “Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming”
[A] “Yes, but only just

Dr. James Hansen – NASA GISS – 15 January 2013
“The 5-year mean global temperature has been flat for a decade, which we interpret as a combination of natural variability and a slowdown in the growth rate of the net climate forcing.”

Notice they all acknowledge the pause and Hansen gives his “pause” interpretation. But apart from Hansen’s theory, there have been over 60 other different theories/reasons trying to explain where the “missing heat” has gone. But which one is correct? If the science is settled why are there so many and varied theories?

Hans von Storch is no AGW lightweight and to dismiss his quote above as “careless” is a bit presumptuous. Let me repeat the quote…

Dr. Hans von Storch – IPCC lead author - Spiegel – 20 June 2013
“…the increase over the last 15 years was just 0.06 degrees Celsius (0.11 degrees Fahrenheit) — a value very close to zero….If things continue as they have been, in five years, at the latest, we will need to acknowledge that something is fundamentally wrong with our climate models….”“So far, no one has been able to provide a compelling answer to why climate change seems to be taking a break

Did a very senior IPCC author get it wrong? If the pause continues for another 5 years will it be acknowledged that climate models have a fundamental problem as he claims? He obviously doesn’t think any of the 60 or so “missing heat” theories are “compelling”.

So my question is, if the pause continues, how many years must pass before it’s conceded that “something is fundamentally wrong with our climate models”? In other words, if the pause continues for n years then can that then be classed as a falsifiable criterion for AGW?

Dinner with global warming contrarians, disaster for dessert

DSL at 06:22 AM on 18 October, 2014

Ashton: "I'm not sure what the peer review process really is in Climate Science, although some disquieting emails on peer review in Climate Science were brought to light a few years ago."

Yes, that's true Ashton. The Soon & Baliunas (2003) affair was fairly disquieting. The Wegman affair was as well. But perhaps it's these emails that you're referring to, addressed to the Met Office's Phil Jones.

2014 SkS Weekly Digest #36

MA Rodger at 19:21 PM on 11 September, 2014

Philip Shehan @24.

This may or may not help but...

I always see four different flavours of "hiatus" being discussed. The first is the David Rose of the Daily Rail version. This version simply shows that the present global temperature is still below the temperature of some cherry-picked temperature of time gone-by. Thus the 'hiatus' is, to be as silly as possible, using HadCRUT4 24 years and 4 months long. The silliness becomes plain when average temperatures over a year or a half decade are compared, rather than single months.

The second flavour is courtesy of Dickie Lindzen who fed the question to Prof Jones via the BBC's Roger Harrabin. Has gobal temperature rise been statistically insignificant over the last X years? The answer given was "Yes, but only just," which I consider to be correct but the wrong answer. The answer should be 'Yes, just like the period of Y years previous to that, and the previous period of Z years before that again. No statistically-significant rise does not mean no significant rise.'' The actual value of X is a function of the rise as well as the size of the wobbles. (Stat significance is not proportional to X but to X^1.5 (or is it X^2.5?) which is why X and Y and Z don't change much.). For the same rate of rise, bigger wobbles means X will be larger. X is usually ~16 years for the likes of HadCRUT (although HadCRUT(T&W) would perhaps be more appropriate to use). Using satellite data UAH or RSS gives you bigger wobbles and so gives you larger X.

The third flavour is the answer to the question "When did the 'hiatus' in global temperature begin?" and I would suggest that happened in 2007. Doing what Ross the Mac did but forwards not backwards so you've got more data and significance is maintained. This method shows that the global temperature record modelled as a linear trend was accelerating (the slope getting steeper) up to that point. See graph of GISStemp regressions two clicks down here. The slope peaks so the rise stops accelerating only in 2007. To say an accelerating linear trend is subject to a 'hiatus' would be an difficult statement to substantiate (although that will not stop fools saying it).

The fourth flavour leads to a more grown-up discussion and it is about when the symptoms that lie behind the 'hiatus' first appear, which is during the half-decade prior to the impact on global temperatures.

2014 Arctic Sea Ice Extent Prediction

Dikran Marsupial at 04:23 AM on 23 August, 2014

@billthefrog, cheers, hopefully the blog post is better for the editing.

SIPC could use the minimum as the criterion, as I understand that there is daily resolution extent data available, and I did consider modelling the actual minimum instead, but it would have been too time consuming to do it in a statistically interesting way! The model I used was actually just an excuse to play with the GPML toolbox for MATLAB, rather than as a serious exercise; it is interesting that it hasn't done that badly. I was thinking of going back and seeing what the model would have forecast in the earlier rounds of the exercise that I didn't take part in.

I completely agree about the loaded question put to Phil Jones (with whom I have worked on a couple of projects - he is a thoroughly good egg IMHO). The last part of the quote suggests he has a good intuitive understanding of statistical power that is sadly lacking in most of the discussion of the significance of recent trends!

I tend to keep "outliers" in the model, unless I know there is something wrong with the measurements (or there is some other known issue in the data generating process, e.g. a large asteroid hitting the Earth ;o). If you get rid of points that are a long way from the (conditional) mean, then it reduces the apparent variance of the system, and often getting the predicted variance right is very important (one of my research interests).

2014 Arctic Sea Ice Extent Prediction

billthefrog at 03:27 AM on 23 August, 2014

@ Gavin,

Absolutely no need for a mea culpa. I've been looking at the SEARCH (and now SIPN) stuff for about 5 years, and for the first 12-18 months I thought the same as you - and for exactly the same reason. It was only as I became more familiar with the data, that I realised it had to be the monthly mean which was being used. Largely as a consequence of this confusion, I've tried to drill myself to always explicitly state the time period of a min (or max).

I totally agree with your comments regarding the fact that, whatever the confidence interval selected, there is a gradual transition in the "confidence" of the result. A classic example of this being twisted to nefarious purpose was the loaded question that Phil Jones was presented with in 2010. The case was eloquently described by Dana on the SkS site, with the crux of the matter being the following question and answer...

Q: "Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming?"

A: "Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods."

When I tried to work out the actual confidence level using the HadCRUT3 dataset, I think it came out at around 93% or 94%, but that's not how it was reported by the usual suspects.

For what it's worth, I tend to omit outliers such as 2007 (and latterly 2012) when trying to "outguess" the Arctic. This strategy wasn't bad in 2010 and 2011, but failed spectacularly in 2012, 2013 and 2014. (No prizes for guessing in which direction I was wrong about each of those years.)

Cheers Bill F

Why trust climate models? It’s a matter of simple science

Tom Curtis at 10:15 AM on 26 October, 2013

Ironbark writes @13:

"My point is that if it takes a decade for that to come out from the original papers, after the graph was used by the IPCC and Al Gore, what hope now do ordinary people have to take any study that's not older than 10 years on face value?"

S/he continues @15:

"People objectively seeking the truth (which we're all keen to know) would have encouraged people trawling over their work. It would have been far more relevant and less damaging to the AGW hypothesis if the hockey stick had been displayed what the proxy data actually showed. Then others could have built on that."

I am not going to discuss these comments in detail here, as they are off topic. If Ironbark wants a serious discussion on this issue, s/he should post on the topic here.

I will, however, point out that Michael Mann's graph as featured in the IPCC TAR, and in Al Gore's lecture series, movie and book does not hide the decline. Nor does it substitute real temperatures for proxy temperatures in any case. The suggestion that he did so comes from a blatant misinterpretation of something that Phil Jones says he (Phil Jones) did with another graph that has never appeared in any IPCC publication, nor been used by Al Gore (or anybody else so far as I know). Nor, for that matter, did Phil Jones do what Michael Mann actually did in his paper that produced the graph used by the IPCC and Gore.

This is typical of the whole "climategate" farce. Almost the entire basis of attack against the authors of the CRU emails has been on the misinterpretation of a few lines of text taken out of context. I strongly recommend that Ironbark not keep on spreading that misinformation until they have investigated the issue in detail here on an appropriate thread where more knowledgable people can point out, point by point, the nature of the misinterpretation involved. Alternatively, they can consider the possibility that many independent inquiries that have exonerated the authors of the emails of wrongdoing have all simply conspired to hide the truth. Absent such a conspiracy theory, it is absurd to keep on pushing the misinformation about the emails in the face of those multiple, independent exonerations.

Why trust climate models? It’s a matter of simple science

Dikran Marsupial at 03:51 AM on 26 October, 2013

Ironbark, it doesn't actually matter whether the science is objective, what matters is whether it is correct. This applies to both sides of the argument. John Christy, for example, is far more of a lobbyist that Phil Jones - count up the number of times each has volunteered to speak before government hearings. Does that mean I can dismiss Prof. Christy's work because he is not "objective"? No, his arguments have to be evaluated on their own merits.

Now if you are not in a position to do that, a sensible approach would be to determine what the climate science research community think about this. Fortunately the IPCC WG1 report is intended to be a survey of the mainstream scientific position on this. There also have been surveys of the litterature, for instance The Climate Project (but there have been several others), which show that the skeptic position has very little support amongst the real experts.

So please, no more ad-hominems, that form of argument adds nothing to the discussion.

BTW, the comment "All the reviews that exonerated the people involved have made that perception worse." is a classic symptom ("incorrigibility") of delusional behaviour (intepreting evidence that contradicts a strongly held belief as support for that belief).

P.S. you might want to check my entry in the "Team" descriptions under the "About" tab on the blue bar immediately under the logo.

What scientists SHOULD talk about: their personal stories

DSL at 01:22 AM on 24 September, 2013

Lei, I read your deleted comments. They were not geared toward engaging in conversation. Setting that aside, though, I appreciate your re-engagement.

Also, you provide evidence for some of the stereotypes when you say, "You move them further to the right." Are these people so easily moved by irrelevant information? Is that not one of the points that is being made by people who argue that "conservatives" are not equipped or are unwilling to accept relevant evidence?

Terms like "denier," "liberal," "conservative," and "catastrophic" should be rarely used, because they immediately require explanation. Witness Michael Fumento needing a long essay to define "conservative." Richard Alley identifies as conservative, as do many other prominent scientists working in climate-related areas. Identity and practice, as you know, are often quite different.

And while I agree with you on the name-calling bit, there is a target audience for the term "denier." The term, for me, is meant to be provocative. My use is intended to make the claim that the person with whom I'm interacting is well-aware of the evidence but is intentionally disregarding it and is not willing to discuss that choice.

Here's some of what scientists have to put up with (pjones is Phil Jones of the UK Met Office). I wouldn't call these people "deniers," though. They are, however, the people who are led by the nose by deniers.

Global warming games - playing the man not the ball

Micawber at 20:15 PM on 20 July, 2013

CSLDF is a significant source of help to beleaguered scientists who in my experience have a strong belief if data-based truth and expect legal or justice systems to work on this basis. The Anglo-American adversarial legal system works by arguing polarised views with the winner being the best arguer. That is not necessarily or even usually the truth. Indeed a Harvard law prof stated that in his experience the verdict in legal cases rarely reflected the evidence. He said it was fortunate that accused were usually guilty of something so a guilty verdict could be justified.
It is a total shock to hardworking scientists to be exposed to such an unjust system. Clever wordsmiths can twist a narrative into a very persuasive argument that can easily sway non-scientist judge and jury. So CSLDF is welcome, though it will only make the lawyers even richer.
I note CSLDF is US-based. Science is international. One only has to think of Climategate and Phil Jones of UEA to realised that an international branch of CSLDF is sorely needed. Indeed Monckton is UK based for his international fund-raising attacks against climate science. He is thoroughly imbued with Catholic belief system so the parallels to Galileo were appropriately drawn in your article. Thus the deniers have an international fund raising association (hence the request for the Knights of Malta). Is there an international arm to CSLDF?

Patrick Michaels: Cato's Climate Expert Has History Of Getting It Wrong

Glenn Tamblyn at 13:29 PM on 15 July, 2013

Ray

You are missing the point of Tom's comment. If we are talking about the 'statistical significance' of something, we are discussing how likely that something was to have occurred due to random chance or not. Not whether that 'something' happened at all. Tom is referring to the fact that the concept from statistics - 'statistically significant' - is misleadingly equated with the colloquial English word 'significant' when actually the two terms have very different meanings.

However, if one seeks to mislead people, not pointing out the distinction is all that is needed to con a reader who is unfamiliar with the meaning of the term from statistics.

Lets take Phil Jones' oft mis-represented comment about there hasn't been a statistically significant warming since x (I can't remember the year) He actually said that it wasn't statistically significant at the 95% confidence interval which is the usual standard measure. He also said that it was statistically significant at the 90% confidence interval.

His meaning, in plain English - 'There has been warming; the chances that this observed warming is not random are not greater than 95%; but they chances that the observed warming is not random are greater than 90%'

CO2 effect is saturated

DSL at 13:45 PM on 18 June, 2013

Stealth, Tony Watts et al. have ridden Phil Jones for years in his honest statement about the significance of a surface temp trend, knowing full well that the short-term surface trend is meaningless without extremely careful analysis. I'm not giving Watts one angstrom of wiggle room. Watts is in the game for rhetoric, not for science. He's paid to cast doubt, not to advance science. He wants to be able to say "all plants die at 200ppm CO2" rather than get it right. If he could squeak 250ppm and get away with it, he'd do it. How many errors does a guy get before we find him not worth the trouble? Pointing out Watts', Eschenbach's, and Goddard's absurdities is a cottage industry.

UK Secretary of State for the Environment reveals his depth of knowledge of climate change (not!)

DSL at 05:37 AM on 13 June, 2013

HJones, I think misunderstand me. I'm saying that his claim that his claim is not exaggerated. It is quite relevant. However, he left it at that. He put a simple piece of evidence out there without providing any context for understanding, other than the general bent of his other comments. You erased his claim as exaggerated. Why? You provided no reasons for doing so, probably because you were thinking of his statements in terms of their rhetorical value. When read in the scientific context, Funder et al. 2013 is quite important, because it gives us further secondary evidence that we're warming the climate system with extreme rapidity. What Marcott et al. 2013 found makes sense alongside Funder et al., and the news ain't pretty.

Others have commented on your clinging to "individually correct" statements. As the main post points out, there are several of Patterson's claims that are so bizarre I have to question the man's training: "the climate has not changed - the temperature has not changed in the last seventeen years."

Eh? The climate has changed quite significantly. A poleward shift of the Hadley circulation by 5 degrees in two decades is not climate change? An 80% reduction in Arctic sea ice volume at summer minimum (-33% at winter max) in just 35 years is not climate change?

And if there's anything that gets my goat more than representing the system with the surface/lower troposphere, I don't know what it is. Phil Jones was careless with this point, and he hasn't heard the end of it. Now you're giving Patterson a free pass on it. No. Patterson deserves to be ripped for that claim. The system is warming as expected. The surface/lower troposphere (all of how much of the thermal capacity of the system?) has gone through a longish positive excursion (97-07 roughly) followed by a multi-year negative excursion. Would you say that .172C per decade over 40 years is significant? That's the trend up to present, including this alleged "hiatus."

NODC OHC during the alleged "hiatus". Positive trend? Yah. Significant? Yah. Last value? Ouch. It's all good. It'll drop down to 0 next year. Snort.

A Rough Guide to the Jet Stream: what it is, how it works and how it is responding to enhanced Arctic warming

Chris at 18:24 PM on 23 May, 2013

NAO

Timeseries of the winter (December to March average) of the Jones et al. NAO index, updated to the winter of 2011/12. Note the upward trend from the 1960s to the early 1990s, but also that the trend has not been sustained and has significant year-to-year variability superimposed on it. Note also that the winter 2009/10 had the most negative NAO index measured during the almost 190-year record.

Another pathway for temperature chaneg in the northern polar region is freshwater flux from increased thaw in the siberian region, which changed the Arctic curretn setup NASA video arctic ocean current Though freshwater can isolate sea ice

A new wind regime is another change in the nothern hemispheric aquatic environment, which is ratehr chaotic i guess. The new winds will cause coastel erosion and there seems to be an uptake in more intense storms in the arctic, which happen to break up sea ice chunks of the size 1300 km length (happened a few days ago and in Februar similar).

Jet Stream GFS 1 hour after Sandy made landfall. the blocking pattern caused Sandy to turn 90 degree

"As we lose all the summer ice, the response in the fall may plateau somewhat (although Arctic Amplification will continue via the other factors), but as ice in the other seasons declines, we should see the response become stronger all year long"

Maybe we get kind of permanent blocking pattern, without the ice.

The Scientific Method

Ray at 21:01 PM on 1 April, 2013

Thanks for the comments although it appears that you are all focussing on some remarks I made about climate science rather than on the scientific method. Many of the comments I made on the scientific method including the "blinkered" comment were first enunciated by Kuhn whose work, incidentally, formed the basis of the subsequent work by Lakatos referred to by others But to revert to the areas that appear to have ignited passions. (-snip-). And fiinally there are very few scientists including me, that don't believe in climate change. That said however, so far as I am aware there has been no direct observational or experimental studies that conclusively that global warming is primarily due to human production of CO2. If there are such studies I would be very grateful for links to them as it is apparent such studies will be very relevant to this discussion of the scientific method

The Scientific Method

Ray at 17:32 PM on 1 April, 2013

I'm sorry scaddenp but having re-read the topic posted I can't quite follow the points you are making. The article under dicusssion is on the scientific method and the comments I make on the scientific method are, as far as I can see, entirely relevant. I presume therefore you are referring to my comment "However in the field of climate science this discussion is severely hampered by the entrenched positions on both sides of the debate." Is this inaccurate? There are discussions on climate science between Dr Pielke Snr, Dr Pielke Jnr, Dr Roy Spencer, Dr John Christie and Dr Judith Curry who have some reservations about CAGW and Dr Gavin Schmidt, Dr Phil Jones, Dr Michael Mann, Dr Kevin Trenberth and Dr Eric Steig who have few reservations about of CAGW. All of these are clmate scientists and it his hard to see how Drs. Christy, Spencer, Curry et al fall into your category "However, the "discussion" is between non-climate scientists, (ideologically-driven for most part), trying to fool the public with misinformation;. Similarly I wonder if Drs. Schmidt, Jones, Mann et all would be flattered by your comment "real scientists who on the whole are inept in public communication." All of these scientists publish and comment on the publications of others which seems to cover your point that " If there was real debate, then it would be reflected in the exchange in scientific papers." It is my opinion that there are entrenched positions but I accept that you don't consider this to be the case. I respect yoiur opinion. (-snip-).

New Study, Same Result - Greenhouse Gases Dominate Global Warming

SoundOff at 14:44 PM on 20 March, 2013

The root cause behind Klapper's Komplaint may be another case of the models being correct and the observations being wrong.

SST Instrumental Biases in 1945

“A large discontinuity in the mid-twentieth century in observed global-mean surface temperature”

David W. J. Thompson, John J. Kennedy, John M. Wallace & Phil D. Jones

Nature, 29 May 2008

Data sets used to monitor the Earth’s climate indicate that the surface of the Earth warmed from ~1910 to 1940, cooled slightly from ~1940 to 1970, and then warmed markedly from 1970 onward.
The weak cooling apparent in the middle part of the century has been interpreted in the context of a variety of physical factors, such as atmosphere–ocean interactions and anthropogenic emissions of sulphate aerosols. Here we call attention to a previously overlooked discontinuity in the record at 1945, which is a prominent feature of the cooling trend in the mid-twentieth century. The discontinuity is evident in published versions of the global-mean temperature time series, but stands out more clearly after the data are filtered for the effects of internal climate variability.
We argue that the abrupt temperature drop of ~0.3 °C in 1945 is the apparent result of uncorrected instrumental biases in the sea surface temperature record [since it is only apparent in SSTs].
Corrections for the discontinuity are expected to alter the character of mid-twentieth century temperature variability but not [alter] estimates of the century-long trend in global-mean temperatures.

Apply this correction and the observed 1910 to 1945 warming rate will decrease to what models understand should have happened according to known forcings.

Link

Did Murdoch's The Australian Misrepresent IPCC Chair Pachauri on Global Warming?

MA Rodger at 00:05 AM on 27 February, 2013

(A re-write of the comment 3 up-thread hopefully in a form that is readable by wysiwygs & humans all.)

This "17 year" strapline in Murdoch's Australian that denilaists love so much they cannot help telling each other about - it may be no more than 'cheeky chappy' journalism but accounts of the type 'AGW cannot happen without GW' do have a long history. They doubtless began decades ago before GW even started let alone 'paused' and certainly took on added potency with the famous Roger Harrabin/Phil Jones interview of 2010.
So 15 years became 16 years and is now 17 years without the slightest care as to what "statistical significance" actually means or what the data actually shows.

What has been missing in all this is a robust reply to these silly right-wing press stories.

Up until mid-2007 there was no 'pause' in the global surface temperature rise. Up until mid-2007 the global surface temperature rise was actually accelerating.
This is evident from the monthly global surface temperature data. Calculating a straightline regression (from Jan 1980) shows that the slope, the rate of warming, increases as newer data is included in the regression and does so up to mid-2007 as illustrated here.

Thus anyone suggesting a 'pause' in warming longer than 5½ years is seriously overstepping the mark into a fictitious La-La-Land.

16 years - Update and Frequently Asked Questions

Bob Loblaw at 12:01 PM on 11 February, 2013

What was Phil Jones up to "back in the seventies"? Not sure. The first major paper of his looking at the temperature record that I'm aware is the 1982 paper that looked at northern hemisphere record:

Variations in Surface Air Temperatures: Part 1. Northern Hemisphere, 1881–1980

I've linked the abstract, and the pdf link for the full paper on that page is not paywalled.

Note that to maximize the "drop" in that record, you have to pick 1940 as the start year, just as fake skeptics keep picking 1998 these days. Spikes in the record - the gift that keeps on giving...

Methinks that Habilus is mixing up a whole bunch of fake skeptic memes:

- They predicted an ice age in the 1970s

- Hansen was wrong

- Jones said no warming

- UK Met Office is bad (aka Climategate and the CRU hack)

Just what were you paying attention to in the '70s, Habilus?

16 years - Update and Frequently Asked Questions

Rob Honeycutt at 11:11 AM on 11 February, 2013

Habilus... You're going to have to provide a reference to the statement that Met office claimed -0.5C from 1940-1970, otherwise your statement has no credibility.

And it was not Hansen that made the statement about statistically significant warming, it was Phil Jones of the CRU. And he stated that there was warming of 0.12C/decade but the time frame that was in question fell just short of statistically significant. The transcript from the interview can be viewed here.

Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)

Sapient Fridge at 19:46 PM on 31 December, 2012

Punksta, are you now claiming that back radiation doesn't exist? Wow. Got anything to back that up?

Here's an explanation of back radiation and details of how to see it for yourself by one of the "skeptics" favourite scientists, Roy Spencer. A more in-depth explanation is provided by The Science of Doom.

Regarding your misunderstanding that that fact that warming has not reached statistical significance in the last 16 years means that there has been no warming in that time, have a look at the graphs in this post by Tamino. The trend from 1980 to 1997 is lower than the trend from 1997 to 2012. It just hasn't reached the point where we can say we are 95% sure that it isn't by chance.

When we are over that 95% confidence level the deniers will simply pick a shorter period after that time. Previously the date chosen by AGW deniers was 1995, but when warming since then reached statistical significance (95% confidence) they moved the date to 1998. In a few years the meme will be that there has been no warming since 2004, or some such date.

Climategate 2.0: Denialists Serve Up Two-Year-Old Turkey

ramiram at 07:14 AM on 1 December, 2012

Can anyone please put all this in context, please?

(only the third e-mail is from climategate 1.0, the others are from climatgate 2.0).
I know I'm asking for a lot but I really need your help in order to get rid of an annoying friend...

(stolen correspondence snipped)

Thank you.

Rose and Curry Double Down on Global Warming Denial

Albatross at 01:11 AM on 25 October, 2012

The following post by John Brookes at Tamino's nicely exposes (from a slightly different angle) the game being played by the disingenuous likes of Curry and Rose et al. (my bolding):

"My suggestion is that we insist that “No significant warming since xxxx” should always have to use 1995 as the starting date, as I’m sure we all recall when Phil Jones was forced to concede that there had not been statistically significant since 1995. It was good enough for the “skeptics” then. It should be good enough for them now."

So the fake skeptics have again shifted the goal posts and 1997 becomes the new cherry-pick. They can play this disingenuous game indefinitely.....but not if we hold them to 1995, for example. Has anyone asked Curry why she supports the use of 1997 as a start date versus 1995 when using the HadCRUT data?

Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)

Bernard J. at 00:21 AM on 18 October, 2012

Lionel at #44.

I remember wincing when I hear Phil Jones say that. My immediate response was to wonder why he didn't say something to the effect of:

"There is a 94% chance that the observed planetary trajectory toward warming is not due to random fluctuation: that it is in fact reflecting genuine global warming. With another year's worth of data to discern long-term signal from short-term noise that figure will increase to greater a than 95% chance that the planet is warming."

Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)

Lionel A at 21:51 PM on 17 October, 2012

John Brookes @41

This is the exchange between Phil Jones and Roger Harrabin of the BBC which you have in mind:

B - Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming

Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.

Found here: Q&A: Professor Phil Jones .

The fake skeptics (and I recognise Hank_'s handle and MO from posts at DesmogBlog) never mention that 95% significance level or its significance. If the plane they were about to board had a just less than 95% significant probability of crashing would they continue?

Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)

John Brookes at 20:25 PM on 17 October, 2012

The first thing I noted when I tried to produce the articles graph was that while they spoke of "since the start of 1997", the graph started late in 1997. I presume this was to avoid a cold start to the graph, but there may have been other reasons (I just can't think of any though).

A couple of years ago, someone forced Phil Jones to concede that there had been no significant warming since 1995, and the "skeptics" made a song and dance about it. I suggest that from now on we just insist that any "no warming since" statement must start in 1995.

A fake skeptic is anyone who thinks Christopher Monckton is a member of the house of lords.

Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)

Lionel A at 06:08 AM on 17 October, 2012

Good to see you in the UK Guardian .

Poor 'ShuffledCarrot'is still confused about what Phil Jones said about temperatures it would seem.

I don't think Judith will be much pleased with that picture either.

SkS: testimony to the potential of social media and the passion of volunteers

chriskoz at 15:09 PM on 20 September, 2012

Andy@4,

That's a standard practice of most "skeptic"-criminals, including those who stole the East Anglia emails and later distorted Phil Jones' correspondence. All of that described with details in Mike Mann's book "Hockey Stick and Climate Wars": arguably one of the best documentary books on this subject.

Solar cycles cause global warming

DSL at 07:08 AM on 13 September, 2012

Now if Phil Jones had said something like that . . .

Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline

Brandon Shollenberger at 00:48 AM on 28 July, 2012

Tom Curtis @173, yes, that's correct. And as Steve McIntyre (as well as many others) has pointed out, Phil Jones did not truncate the series as Michael Mann did. This means what he did is not actually the same as what Mann did.

But that has no bearing on the fact Michael Mann appended instrumental temperature data to his reconstructed historical record, smoothed the resulting series then published that (truncated at 1980) as a reconstructed historical series. It also has no bearing on the fact this Skeptical Science article contains a factual error.

Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline

Brandon Shollenberger at 00:43 AM on 28 July, 2012

Tom Curtis @169, there is no contradiction in saying results generated by a particular methodology are different than the results generated by the same methodology applied to a different data series.

@171, McIntyre shows what was done in Mann's work that appeared in Nature. The e-mail in question is discussing a figure with three lines. One is Mann's work being referred to in my discussion. Another is from Keith Briff's work. Phil Jones says, "I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline." It is obvious what work he is referring to.

Phil Jones referred to a trick in Michael Mann's work "of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years." Steve McIntyre discusses Mann having appended 18 years of instrumental temperature data to his reconstructed temperatures. "Mike's Nature trick" is exactly what Steve McIntyre says it is.

Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline

Tom Curtis at 23:18 PM on 27 July, 2012

Brandon Shollenberger @159 and @161, given the nature of your concluding comments, it would be helpful if you were careful with the facts. Let's actually start with those facts:

1) The only person who knows what was meant by Jones when he wrote of "Mann's Nature trick" was Jones himself. Comments by any other person, including most especially Steve McIntyre consist of conjecture only.

2) The person next best placed to know what was meant was Michael Mann himself, who has said:

"The paper in question is the Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) Nature paper on the original multiproxy temperature reconstruction, and the ‘trick’ is just to plot the instrumental records along with reconstruction so that the context of the recent warming is clear."

I am unaware of any specific statement by Phil Jones on the issue. Consequently this statement is the only available statement by a principle and should be taken as definitive unless substantial evidence to the contrary exists.

Neither you, nor so far as I am aware, anyone else has provided that substantial evidence. Rather, you have insisted that McIntyre's conjecture should trump Mann's word on, apparently little other basis than the desire that Mann should be wrong.

3) Mann did use a technique similar to that described by you in generating the smoothed curve for MBH 98 and MBH 99. Specifically, he appended the mean of the instrumental data from 1981-1997 (MBH 98) and from 1981-1998 (MBH 1999) and use that to pad the proxy data for generating the smoothed curve. Note that contrary to McIntyre, he did not use the instrumental values themselves, but the mean of the values over a given period. Further, and again contrary to McIntyre, he ended the smooth in 1973 (MBH 98) and 1979 (MBH 99), ie, the period determined by necessity when using a 50 year (MBH 98) or 40 year (MBH 99) smooth.

Clearly McIntyre has not even got the reconstruction of Mann's smoothing method correct. His supposition that he can deduce from his flawed reconstruction of Mann's smoothing method the nature of the "Nature trick" is absurd. Specifically, McIntyre gives no evidence that the trick relates to the smoothing function as opposed to appending of the full instrumental record as claimed by Mann.

4) Assuming Jones was referring to his graph for the WMO report, he did not do anything like what Mann did in his Nature article (MBH 98). Consequently the name of "Mike's Nature trick" is a complete misnomer. Fake climate-auditors, however, insist on using it, and in trying to suggest that Mann did something similar. Clearly the purpose is not to criticize Jones' techniques, which stand or fall on their own merits. Rather it is an attempt to try and tarnish as many reputations as possible on no substantive basis.

5) As always, the holy grail for so-called climate auditors is to detract from Michael Mann's work. In this case, the absurdity of their attack is shown by the fact that:
a) As Michael Mann says:

"[The scientific results] were based on comparisons of the individual reconstructed annual values (individual years and decadal averages over 10 consecutive years) from AD 1000-1980, with those from the recent instrumental record (1981-1998), and centered on the fact that the recent instrumental values were outside the error range of the reconstructed values over the past 1000 years and were not related to the smoothed curve."

and
b) The smoothing technique used by Mann in MBH 98 and MBH 99 do not significantly effect the visual appearance. (Original text snipped to correct error) Original smooth shown in blue, amended technique shown in green. :

Shollenberger says he wants people to stop saying untrue things about simple facts. We will be able to determine the strength of his desire by whether he in fact stops doing just that.

What is the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund?

Tom Curtis at 12:09 PM on 17 July, 2012

doug_bostrom @158, most of the data withheld by national weather services was withheld because it was commercial information, normally sold at a profit to fund the operations of the weather services. It was only supplied to the CRU free on condition that it not be distributed thereby undercutting their market.

This illustrates the hypocrisy of those calling for free access to scientific data. Almost without exception such people make exceptions for commercial and military data. But if free access to the data is a requirement for good science, it follows that when a exception is made for commercial and military applications, what they do should not be considered science, and should not be permitted to be published in scientific journals.

What is more, what is considered commercial is fairly arbitrary. As the examples of those national weather services shows, there is a commercial demand for climatological data. Indeed, the fact that Steve McIntyre want the data so much shows the existence of demand for that data, and there would be nothing wrong in principle with UEA "monetizing" that demand by charging McIntyre for the data he wished to access; thereby decreasing the cost of the research to UK tax payers.

If Phil Jones first response to McIntyre had been, we would be delighted to provide you with the data over which we have intellectual property rights, and the price will be 10,000 pounds, McIntyre would in theory have no come back. By his own standards it is appropriate to withhold scientific data when commercial interests are in play.

This is why the purported standard of free access to data is a con. The sin qua non of science is replicability, not auditability; and as Caerbannog notes, replication is not McIntyre's stock in trade.

I personally like it when scientists freely share data. Science is enriched by the practice. But I always recognize it for what it is - a courtesy, not a right. Once you begin filing FOI requests you are abusing courtesy, and being rational, other scientists should simply freeze you out as a person not fit to be associated with.

What is the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund?

caerbannog at 11:19 AM on 17 July, 2012

dubious at 23:08 PM on 16 July, 2012

Phil Jones's 2005 email (not to McIntyre) is notorious on this topic:

"I should warn you that some data we have we are not supposed to pass on to others. We can pass on the gridded data – which we do. Even if WMO agrees, I will still not pass on the data. We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it. There is IPR to consider."

Alternatively, google McIntyre Crowley and take the first result. You'll see McIntyre spending about a year and a half of his time trying to get data, starting with very polite emails which were generally ignored and maintaining a much greater level of civility throughout - and persistence - than many people would have managed. Crowley then (2005) wrote an article making a number of allegations about McIntyre, which McIntyre said were untrue.

dubious,

The data-set in question was released to the public by the CRU *nearly a year ago*. You can get it all here.

Now, the big question is, what have McIntyre and Co. done with it in the 11+ months since it was released? Can you point me to any results they've published on-line? Can you tell me whether their results contradict or confirm the CRU's published results?

If not, why not? You guys seem to be *very concerned* about Phil Jones and others not releasing their data quickly enough, but you don't seem to be very interested in doing anything with it once you've gotten it in your hot little hands.

If McIntyre was so interested in getting that data that he invested a year and a half of effort to get it, then why hasn't he (or any of the rest of you skeptics) done anything with it in the 11+ months since it was all released?

What is the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund?

Kevin C at 23:26 PM on 16 July, 2012

dubious: Interesting. It seems Phil Jones was already suspicious of the motives of the requester in that correspondence. I wonder why?

What is the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund?

dubious at 23:08 PM on 16 July, 2012

Kevin C: "A polite note saying what you are trying to do is probably much quicker and more effective than a FOI request - it certainly wastes less taxpayers money. Maybe this is where McIntyre is going wrong?"

Phil Jones's 2005 email (not to McIntyre) is notorious on this topic:

"I should warn you that some data we have we are not supposed to pass on to others. We can pass on the gridded data – which we do. Even if WMO agrees, I will still not pass on the data. We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it. There is IPR to consider."

Alternatively, google McIntyre Crowley and take the first result. You'll see McIntyre spending about a year and a half of his time trying to get data, starting with very polite emails which were generally ignored and maintaining a much greater level of civility throughout - and persistence - than many people would have managed. Crowley then (2005) wrote an article making a number of allegations about McIntyre, which McIntyre said were untrue.

In 2011, Crowley wrote to McIntyre, saying that he had found original correspondence and realised that what he had said about McIntyre had been untrue:

"I was shocked when the mails did not reveal what I had totally come to believe Steve had written...

"...Whatever, for the record I now apologize to Stephen for that matter and request him to post it on his climateaudit site. I know some people will not believe my (proposed) explanation, but that’s life – I for one know I did not lie (intentionally tell a falsehood) because I try quite hard to say what I think is the truth, by all means to not lie, and teach my children likewise."

What is the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund?

JBowers at 21:19 PM on 16 July, 2012

BBC News, May 2010 - Climate sceptics rally to expose 'myth'

Professor Roy Spencer, for instance, is a climate sceptic scientist from the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

But when I asked him about the future of Professor Phil Jones, the man of the heart of the UEA e-mail affair, he said he had some sympathy.

"He says he's not very organised. I'm not very organised myself," said Professor Spencer. "If you asked me to find original data from 20 years ago I'd have great difficulty too.

"We just didn't realise in those days how important and controversial this would all become - now it would just all be stored on computer. Phil Jones has been looking at climate records for a very long time. Frankly our data set agrees with his, so unless we are all making the same mistake we're not likely to find out anything new from the data anyway."

What is the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund?

RandomUK at 07:51 AM on 15 July, 2012

doug

"But then neither is it the case that McIntyre's extended examination of sexual molestation of minors at Penn State in connection with star academics at Penn State has anything to do with the Penn State researcher with whom McIntyre is most interested."

The person who was supposed to investigate Mann at Penn State failed to investigate a paedophile at the university. McIntyre's point is that if someone can allow a man to rape children so as to have a winning sports team, the same man might whitewash Mann to keep the rapid flow of research funding. Since the investigation looked very much to any objective observer like a whitewash, this was a relevant point.

As for Ellen Thompson, correcting a small error in the very next post is hardly misinformation, is it? Let alone misinformation on the scale indulged by Mann, Jones, Briffa and so on, is it? [accusation of dishonesty snipped]

Nil Illegitimi Carborundum

mike@planet-hydrogen.org at 02:19 AM on 7 July, 2012

Having visited UEA several times from my base in Manchester, and talked with the excellent folk at the CRU, I'd like to add my voice to this letter of support for Phil Jones, the best of scientists traduced by the worst of our fellow men. My hat is doffed too to Michael mann and all the others who have had to endure these threats and insults.Mike Koefman, hydrogen advocate, Manchester UK

Nil Illegitimi Carborundum

Asteroid Miner at 03:09 AM on 4 July, 2012

Phil Jones: Keep up the good work.

Nil Illegitimi Carborundum

Treesong2 at 10:26 AM on 2 July, 2012

Philip Cohen, USA

I registered just so I could show my support for Dr. Jones against the {snip} among the deniers.

I also donated $AU50 to Skeptical Science while I was at it. This is the best climate sanity site on the Net.

Nil Illegitimi Carborundum

skywatcher at 09:56 AM on 2 July, 2012

Andy C, Melbourne, Australia. History will show that great people such as Prof Jones stood for truth, and will thrust his detractors into a very harsh spotlight as their lies are exposed.

Just a quick note about titles - Phil Jones is Prof Jones, not Dr Jones, and a better-earned professorship I doubt you will find anywhere!

Nil Illegitimi Carborundum

Susan Anderson at 06:40 AM on 2 July, 2012

Philip W. Anderson, Princeton, USA is delighted to support Dr. Phil Jones.

Nil Illegitimi Carborundum

Dibble at 16:41 PM on 1 July, 2012

Thank you Phil Jones for having the courage to continue with your valuable work.

Tim Wilcox. UK

Nil Illegitimi Carborundum

Tristan at 15:24 PM on 1 July, 2012

We should all endeavour to keep up with the Phil Joneses of this world.

Tristan Gall
Brisbane, AU

Nil Illegitimi Carborundum

KeenOn350 at 13:24 PM on 1 July, 2012

I recently sent a personal email to Mike Mann to thank him for all his efforts, both in climate studies, and in combating the "denialist" crowd. Just did the same for Phil Jones.

Pleased to add my name to this list also.

Thanks for the good work, Phil!

Dave Willis, Quebec, Canada

Nil Illegitimi Carborundum

sunoba at 10:04 AM on 1 July, 2012

Thanks to Skeptical Science for this initiative, and every good wish to Phil Jones and colleagues.
Noel Barton
Australia

Nil Illegitimi Carborundum

Steve L at 09:38 AM on 1 July, 2012

In support of science in public policy, and those like Phil Jones who (in spite of those who dislike the implications) make that science accessible to the public and to policymakers. Steve Latham, Canada

Nil Illegitimi Carborundum

Andrew Mclaren at 07:34 AM on 1 July, 2012

Thanks to Phil Jones and other climate scientists for all their many years of dedicated hard work, and for having the courage to stand up to all the abusive denialists out there!

Andrew McLaren Canada

Nil Illegitimi Carborundum

JonnyT at 03:49 AM on 1 July, 2012

P.S. By FOI request, I meant to Phil Jones, not to Skeptical Science - the 'anonymous' names would therefore be exposed indirectly.

Nil Illegitimi Carborundum

Lionel A at 22:25 PM on 30 June, 2012

Backing these brave messengers, Phil Jones, Mike Mann, James Hanson et. al. all I can, as well as the memory of Steve Schneider courageous to the last.

Why Are We Sure We're Right? #2

davesouza at 03:55 AM on 12 May, 2012

Hi Rob, don't want to go too much offtopic here, but I think you're wrong about one thing. In commenting on an Amazon review of Mann's "The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars" you said that "'Mike's Nature trick' was merely adding on the modern temperature record to the proxy reconstruction. Mann just happened to be the first researcher to do that. The results were published in the journal Nature."

As discussed on pages 39-40 of the book, in 1993 Raymond S. Bradley and Phil Jones published a Northern Hemisphere reconstruction, using a "composite-plus-scale" method to combine the proxies and relate them to the modern instrumental record, and this featured in the IPCC SAR.

It's worth looking at the SAR, the graph shows this decadal summer temperature reconstruction together with a separate curve plotting instrumental thermometer data from the 1850s onwards.

As far as I can tell, Mike's "Nature Trick" was different in that he used a different methodology to relate the proxies to the instrumental record. Unfortunate phrasing by Jones, and this specific point doesn't seem to be covered by explanations as far as I can recall.

Two Centuries of Climate Science: part one - Fourier to Arrhenius, 1820-1930

Daniel Bailey at 00:58 AM on 1 May, 2012

"That you need a citation for Phil Jones most influential work is unexpected, but here you go."

Phil Jones has many influential works; you made a vague and subjective referent more laden with snark than fact. Indeed, your "citation" lacks substance as well. Here is a proper citation:

Surface air temperature and its changes over the past 150 years
Jones et al 1999
REVIEWS OF GEOPHYSICS, VOL. 37, NO. 2, PP. 173-199, 1999
doi:10.1029/1999RG900002
http://seaice.apl.washington.edu/Papers/JonesEtal99-SAT150.pdf

Note, for convenience, I included a link to an openly-available copy.

"So Daniel still has not answered the question of why the stratosphere's temperature cycle is de-coupled from the troposphere on the seasonal scale which is the point that I have been making the entire time."

Your "point" is specious (a straw-man argument) and off-topic. Please constrain your comments to the topic of the OP or I'm sure the moderators will constrain them for you.

It is noted that you meticulously avoid answering the questions most inconvenient to your cause.

Two Centuries of Climate Science: part one - Fourier to Arrhenius, 1820-1930

The Inconvenient Skeptic at 20:39 PM on 30 April, 2012

Daniel,

That you need a citation for Phil Jones most influential work is unexpected, but here you go.

SURFACE AIR TEMPERATURE AND ITS CHANGES OVER
THE PAST 150 YEARS
P. D. Jones, M. New, D. E. Parker,
S. Martin, and I. G. Rigor

Two Centuries of Climate Science: part one - Fourier to Arrhenius, 1820-1930

Daniel Bailey at 14:03 PM on 30 April, 2012

TIS, the topic of this thread is Two Centuries of Climate Science: part one - Fourier to Arrhenius, 1820-1930. Thus, your objections are not on-topic on this thread.

If it is your intent to contest Stratospheric Cooling and Tropospheric Warming, then take it there.

Or is it perhaps more straightforward, like contesting the Enhanced Greenhouse Effect, then take it there.

For the lay reader, a good overview of the whole thang can be found on the How we know we're causing global warming in a single graphic thread.

Again, all fundamental stuff. Not contested or in "debate".

Your Phil Jones reference lacks a citation...and an explanation as to why it should be considered to be anything other than an off-topic, inconvenient diversion.

Two Centuries of Climate Science: part one - Fourier to Arrhenius, 1820-1930

The Inconvenient Skeptic at 13:43 PM on 30 April, 2012

You are correct that I mis-typed that the Sun (meant Earth) receives the least energy in July. Thanks for noticing that.

Jumping to the point then. If it isn't the solar energy that is causing the phasing of the stratospheric temperatures, then what is?

I welcome an explanation of how GHG's manage to cool the stratosphere while the Earth is warmest and vice versa. Unless of course you are discounting all the work of Phil Jones that shows the Earth's maximum temperature is ~16C in July while it is ~12C in January.

First Look at HadCRUT4

skywatcher at 19:53 PM on 21 April, 2012

barry - indeed, I was responding to fydijkstra's claim in #8 that the trend was "zero". That claim was made in direct reference to three single years - 1998, 2005 and 2010, and claimed for a specific 15 year period. It's a strong claim, which is contradicted by the best evidence in the data itself, and I thought a plot for the specific time period in question would straightforwardly show that. It showed that the trend was greater than zero for these 15 years, irrespective of significance. Actually, to paraphrase the great Phil Jones, it's very nearly significant, and adding just a single year makes it significant at the 2-sigma level! The 15 year trend is significant at >= ~90%, but then you're into questions of what level you should apply significance and what the significance actually means, much more nuanced questions. I could, however, argue that the 15-year trend I plotted is statistically significant, but only if I choose a 90% level of significance or lower. 90% is still quite high, and I didn't want to over-complicate the argument! I hope that clears up my position.

More importantly, we also have an understanding of the nature and magnitude of the noise inherent in the system (F&R 2011, Santer et al 2011), mostly due to ENSO, and so we do not expect significant warming trends due to AGW for periods less than about 15 years - Santer et al went for 17 years on that one IIRC. So indeed the recent 15-year trend, whether significant or not, does not invalidate anything, as short trends are often measuring the noise rather than the underlying signal. That point shows just how specious the 'global warming has stopped' arguments are, when they look at short segments of data. Pielke Sr came a cropper on this very point here at SkS, when he tried to claim that the trend had changed, based on short recent segments of temperature data ... segments of data which were decidedly noise rather than signal!

Global Surface Warming Since 1995

Bob Lacatena at 00:12 AM on 21 April, 2012

7, Slioch,

No.

Santer is only discussing whether or not it has warmed, but from the frame of reference that if there were anthropogenic warming then you would have to have 17 years to see any warming (natural or anthropogenic).

Santer is not discussing attribution of that warming, and neither is Phil Jones with his "statistically significant" response, and neither is this post.

If you wish to discuss it, please do so on the "It's not us" thread here.

Your inclusion of Phil Jones' answer to a later question about attribution and your (mis)interpretation of Foster and Rahmstorf (2011) inappropriately steer the discussion in that direction.

No one is saying that it's not an interesting or important question. Only that this isn't the place to discuss it.

This thread is about Santer and whether or not the earth has warmed in the past X years.

Global Surface Warming Since 1995

Slioch at 18:05 PM on 20 April, 2012

#4 dana1981
"the question here is whether it's warming, not the causes of that warming."

Hmmm, no I don't think that is correct, but would welcome views on this issue.

There are two questions, when examining a segment of a temperatures/time series of global surface temperatures such as HADCRUT or GISS (or lower troposphere UAH or RSS).

The first is whether, taking into account the errors in the measurements, one is justified in saying that there has been a warming trend in the data over a particular period. For example, any period of a few years leading up to the great El Nino of 1998 would show warming, and that warming would be statistically significant in the terms that you have used: ie even taking into account the errors of measurement, a statistical analysis of the segment of a few years running up to 1998 would surely (say I, not having done the analysis!) conclude that there is a greater than 95% probability that warming, however caused, was occurring during that segment. Is that not the case?

The second is whether any such warming is human induced.

It seems to me that the sense in which you are interpreting the term 'statistical significance' is in answer to the first question, but that is not the issue, as far as I understand it it, that Santer was addressing. He was making a similar statement to that of Phil Jones in his famous BBC interview in February 2010, here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8511670.stm

BBC - "Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming"

Phil Jones "Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods."

As far as I understand it, Santer and Jones were addressing the issue of whether the observed warming was due to human actions or not. After all, that is the interesting question, that is what people want to know: would the observed warming have occurred anyway, in the absence of human influences? Or can we state that there is a 95% probability that the warming is due to human actions and would not have occurred naturally? This the issue that Jones addresses explicitly later in the interview:

BBC "How confident are you that warming has taken place and that humans are mainly responsible?"

Phil Jones "I'm 100% confident that the climate has warmed. As to the second question, I would go along with IPCC Chapter 9 - there's evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity."

That is also the issue that Foster and Rahmstorf (2011) address: if the main natural factors influencing surface or lower troposphere temperatures (solar, ENSO and volcanic) are (more or less) removed from the temperature series, is there a remaining warming trend that can be attributed to human influence? That is the question that they elegantly answer in the affirmative. They were not addressing the question of whether there had been any warming at all, but the causes of it.

First Look at HadCRUT4

Robert Murphy at 07:39 AM on 19 April, 2012

@8
"This means that there is no significant difference between 1998, 2007 and 2010. The only conclusion can be, that the warming trend in the last 15 years is zero. One does not need to be a climate sceptic to see this."

It means no such thing. One does not need to be a statistician to see that taking 3 data points and ignoring all the rest of the data is rubbish. Hadcrut4 and GISS both show a warming over .11C since the beginning of 1998. Since the end of 1998 (after the huge El Nino), they show over .16C of warming. Your warming trend of "zero" is nonsense.

"Some years ago, Phil Jones said, that 15 years without warming were the maximum that could be expected from the present climate models (do not ask me for links, this is common knowledge)"

Please provide links anyway; you don't get out of substantiating your claims by hand-waving away the need to do so.

The Skeptical Science temperature trend calculator

Dikran Marsupial at 02:55 AM on 28 March, 2012

Barry, following on from what Daniel says, the "normal circumstances" for statistical significance tests include the period you are looking at being randomly chosen. In this case the period is not randomly chosen, the question that Phil Jones was asked was loaded by having a cherry picked start/end date, which biases the test towards the desired result. "Warmists" could similarly bias the test by starting the period in say 2000, and the fact that they don't (other than to show why cherry picking is a bad thing) shows who is seeking the truth and who isn't! ;o)

IIRC Phil Jones actually gave a very straight answer to the question (no it isn't significant, but it is very close to being significant and that you need more data to be able to expect to reach significance).

I suspect that much of the misunderstanding is due to some sceptics having only a rather limited understanding of what significance tests actually mean. Unfortunately they are not straightforward and are widely misunderstood in the science, and even amongst statisticians! ISTR reading a paper where the authors had performed a survey of statistics students understanding of the p-value, and compared that with the answers given by their professors. A substantial majority of the professors failed to get all five/six questions right (I would have got one of them wrong as well). So if you struggle with statistical significance, take heart from the fact that we all do, including statisticians! ;o)

The Skeptical Science temperature trend calculator

barry at 01:05 AM on 28 March, 2012

Kevin - thanks for a straight answer. It seems I can make use of the tool in a limited way after all. I'll keep plodding.

It seems that one were best to avoid making bold statements on trends that border on being statistically/not statistically significant. A bit more data, a few more months in this case, can undo your assertion.

I liked Robert Grumbine's Jan 2009 post (one of a series) on minimum periods to usefully determine global temp trends (20 - 30 years). Santer et al (17 year minimum) and Tamino (and I think Rahmstorf in a 2007/8 paper on the most recent 17-year temp trend) have indicated that less than a couple of decades is sufficient to get a statistically significant trend, but it appears that these are unfortunate suggestions to have advanced in the popular debate. At 17 years to present, NOAA, HadCRUt, RSS and UAH all fail statistical significance (using the SkS tool - I think!).

A theme that keeps popping up for me as a reader is the problem of balancing completeness with making things accessible to a lay audience. The 17-year thing (which is now cited in the skeptiverse), and Jones' latter comment on statistical significance in the HadCRUt record being achieved, which was made into a post here, are good examples. It seems to me that the message can be pushed harder than the facts when they are oversimplifed.

Bookmarked this page and look forward to making use of the great new gadget. Thanks be to the creators.

The Skeptical Science temperature trend calculator

Dikran Marsupial at 21:43 PM on 27 March, 2012

@barry, essentially if you can draw an horizontal line within the "error bars" covering the whole period of the trend, then it isn't statistically significant (as a flat trend is consistent with the data).

Regarding Phil Jones' comment, the trend under discussion was hovering about the boundary between "significant" and "not significant", so small changes in the way the calculation is performed is likely to change the result.

I want to congratulate Kevin C on an excellent job, the trend calculator gives a very good indication of the uncertainties, and is definitely more accessible to a non-statistical audience than explaining what statistical significance actually means (and more importantly, what it doesn't mean).

The Skeptical Science temperature trend calculator

Nick Stokes at 20:29 PM on 27 March, 2012

I did a study of Phil Jones observation here (near the end). I think he's right.

Significance goes down as you take account of autocorrelation. I found that if you don't allow for it, the trend of Hadcrut3 since 1995 is highly significant (t-stat of 5). But if you allow for AR(1) dependence, it comes down to 2.1, just marginally significant. As noted in Foster and Rahmstorf, AR(1) isn't quite good enough. I tried AR(2), which brought it down to just below significance. But most people think AR(1) is reasonable, and I think that's probably what he used. And I think that measure did cross the line somewhere during 2010/11.

The Skeptical Science temperature trend calculator

Kevin C at 20:08 PM on 27 March, 2012

Barry: I agree, the uncertainties calculated by this method do not support Phil Jones' claim that HadCRUT3v snuck into statistical significance from 1995 part way through 2011.

If I remember correctly, Lucia performed a very critical analysis of Jones' claim over at the blackboard. I think she deduced that his claim was based on calculating annual means, and then calculating the simple OLS trend and uncertainty on the annual means. That is a rather more crude way of dealing with autocorrelation, and while much better than using OLS on the monthly data, it still tends to underestimate the uncertainty a bit. Therefore, to my best understanding Jones' claim was wrong.

(Caveats: estimating the autocorrelation is also noisy, and Tamino's method may not be optimal. I'm interested to see where Nick Stokes goes with this - he is certainly in Tamino's league when it comes to statistics.)

As to what is going on with HadCRUT3 - there will be another post along shortly!

The Skeptical Science temperature trend calculator

barry at 18:29 PM on 27 March, 2012

Thanks, Tom. I know you meant to say Phil Jones. :-)

Still don't know if or how I can use the SkS temp trend calculator to determine if a trend is statistically significant or not. Your reply only confused me more.

I didn't mean to make hay out of the Jones/1995 thing, but while we're here...

Laypeople like myself rely primarily on a coherent narrative. The skeptical camp don't offer a whole bunch of that, so it is particularly striking when mainstream commentary seems to deviate.

Prima facie evidence is that 17 years is a good minimum time period to establish a robust climatc trend. (If that is too simple-minded, then mainstream commenters may have contributed to that understanding by heralding the result as a way of dismissing the memes about shorter-term trends)

Being a failry avid follower of the debate, I've long been aware of the lack of polar coverage in the HadCRUt set (currently being replaced with version 4), the perils of cherry-picking, and the noisier satellite data. IIRC, Santer determined the 17 year minimum using the noisier TLT satellite data, so your concern about avoiding RSS and UAH may not apply?

On the one hand I've got the 17-year minimum for statistical significance that should apply comfortably to surface temperature data, and on the other an uncertainty interval that is larger than the trend estimate, suggesting (to my stats-starved brain) the null hypothesis (of a flat trend) is not rejected for the HadCRUt3 data. This has implications for the Phil Jones/1995 trend narrative as exposited by the mainstream camp.

If I have to refer to a longer-term trend to get the picture, as you say, how do I now read the recommendation of Santer et al that 17 years is a standard minimum to get a robust climatic trend?

Somewhere along the road here I have failed to learn (most likely), or the description on how to read the significance values is not quite clear enough in the top post. In any event, I'm all eyes for a better education.

The Skeptical Science temperature trend calculator

barry at 13:42 PM on 27 March, 2012

I'm sure I'm not the only know-little in the climate debates who has been looking for a way to glean statistical significance of a trend without taking a stats course. But I'm still not sure how or if I can use this tool to do that.

As I was fiddling about trying to understand the variables, I ran the tool for HadCRUt global temp data from 1995 to 2012 - 17 years minimum, and with interest in the 1995 trend per the 'controversy' following phil Jones' comments of a few years ago.

Trend: 0.081 ±0.129 °C/decade (2σ)

β=0.0081091 σw=0.0016822 ν=14.770 σc=σw√ν=0.0064651

As far as I can read it - just looking at the first line - no trend is evident due to the uncertainty being larger than the estimate. I'm probably wrong in several ways, I'm sure - but if not then HadCRUt shows no trend for a period that skeptics are latching onto as the 'alarmist approved', gold-standard minimum time period for statistical significance in the global temp records. Whatever the case, this is a bit confusing (to me) considering Phil Jones more recent comment on the trend, with more data available, being both positive statistically significant.

If an expert has time and interest in educating the maths idiots out here, a post of examples using some of the popular time frames and showing how statistical significance is gleaned from the tool, would be great.

For example; showing how the HadCRUt trend from 1995 shifted from 'just barely' statistically signficant to statistical significance a la Phil Jones' comments; showing why the trend from 1998 is not statistically significant but the trend from 1988 is. And maybe showing what happens to the significance variables around the 17-year mark.

Do I need to take a course, or can a complete noob use this tool to declare a trend is or isn't statistically signficant?

Phil Jones - Warming Since 1995 is now Statistically Significant

Trent1492 at 08:54 AM on 21 March, 2012

I think it might be a good idea to update the Did Phil Jones really say global warming ended in 1995? article with the 2010 story.

Roy Spencer's Bad Economics

Paul D at 22:25 PM on 14 March, 2012

Chris it is Graham Stringer. In fact he was the only one that gave Phil Jones a hard time when he was interviewed by the committee.

The Year After McLean - A Review of 2011 Global Temperatures

Bernard J. at 17:15 PM on 12 February, 2012

Doug H.

There are simple ways and there are more complicated ways to derive answers to those questions.

KR has already directed you to Santer's et al work, and Foster and Rahmstorf consider the problem too.

There's an abridged version of the latter at Open Mind, but remember that this analysis removed the influence of exogenous factors such as ENSO, where Santer et al didn't. Thus, Santer's minimum-required time period for statistical significance is a little longer.

Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate

MangoChutney at 20:07 PM on 4 February, 2012

@Elsa @ 14

As others have said, I don't think Phil Jones qualifications are in doubt and I'm not even sure, relevant. His publication record alone illustrates his background.

You can question his methods, data and results, but you can't question his qualifications

Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate

Paul D at 07:17 AM on 3 February, 2012

Elsa@14 A quick look around the interweb reveals the following:

Phil Jones -

BA Environmental Sciences - Lancaster
MSc --- Newcastle (UK)
PhD Hydrology - Newcastle (UK)

Sounds science like to me. What do you believe someone needs to create a temperature series? And has not Muller recently produced a very similar series?

Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate

Phila at 03:32 AM on 3 February, 2012

Elsa,

It's odd that despite your complaints about the lack of hard scientific evidence in this letter, your comments here rely heavily on opinion, "gut instinct," hand-waving, innuendo and slander. In short, you present plenty of "views." But facts? Not so much.

It's also odd that despite your complaints about the civility of individual commenters, you seem to have no problem accusing scientists you disagree with of incompetence or worse. That doesn't seem very civil to me.

If you don't want to be seen as a tone-tolling hypocrite, perhaps you should try living up to your own high standards.

Also, demanding "real data" on the Internet's best self-service portal for exactly that makes you seem kind of...well, lazy. The literature supporting AGW is voluminous and goes back more than a century. Ultimately, the only person who can get you to understand this literature is you. But to do this, you'll need to put aside a few pet assumptions and develop some humility.

Unfortunately, it seems you'd prefer to spend your time searching Phil Jones' background for reasons to dismiss him. Again, that's not scientific. It's also not particularly civil. Or ethical.

Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate

Rob Honeycutt at 03:30 AM on 3 February, 2012

elsa... "Phil Jones is one I have looked at in particular and it seems to me he has very little in the way of a proper scientific background..."

Really? Is that so? Well a quick google scholar search tells me that Dr Jones has something in the neighborhood of 150 published peer-reviewed papers on various topics on climate change. How many do you have?

Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate

DSL at 01:29 AM on 3 February, 2012

elsa: "The facts that seem under debate here are whether or not there has been warming in the last 10 years or so. That is something on which it would be interesting to see some real data"

Ok, elsa, look at the simple linear temperature trend since 1997, 1998, and 1999 in GISS, HadCru, RSS, and UAH. These are generated from the data.

As far as Phil Jones goes, data is withheld all the time in many areas of science. I seriously doubt if most of those who have been critical of Jones would be any less critical--or believe what he has to say any more--if the data had been wide open from day one. Some folks have entrenched but evidence-free beliefs about the way things are. It's very difficult to loosen up this entrenchment (and that's my professional opinion as an educator). It's even worse when someone invests themselves publicly in a belief.

"I would completely agree with your comment about evidence, unfortunately there is none in this letter. That is one of the reasons that I am critical of it."

And are you just as critical of the letter that preceded it? If not, I'd have to question your motivations. You point to Watson as well and tell us that we learn nothing from his signature. Not true. Watson, you claim, has been critical of the IPCC in the past, but here he signs Trenberth's letter that, in part, claims, "It would be an act of recklessness for any political leader to disregard the weight of evidence and ignore the enormous risks that climate change clearly poses." Is Watson an idiot for not reading what he signs his name to, or does he now agree with Trenberth that the situation is serious? We actually learn quite a bit from Watson's signature (if signatures are a meaningful way of determining truth for you).

Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate

folke_kelm at 01:27 AM on 3 February, 2012

@Elsa #14
"Phil Jones is one I have looked at in particular and it seems to me he has very little in the way of a proper scientific background"

This and the rest of your post is ....what shall i say....a little bit ridiculous?

Please have a look at this and take your time to read and understand the publications where Phil Jones has participated.
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/pubs/byauthor/jones_pd.htm

Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate

elsa at 23:18 PM on 2 February, 2012

I don't want to split hairs but what I criticised was repetition of views, not facts. The facts that seem under debate here are whether or not there has been warming in the last 10 years or so. That is something on which it would be interesting to see some real data (and I have put together some comments set out in the earlier section of this website that deals with this debate) rather than repetition of two points of view.

The qualifications point I accept, although it seems to me that many of the supposed "climate scientists" do not have anything like as much in the way of qualifications as they claim. Phil Jones is one I have looked at in particular and it seems to me he has very little in the way of a proper scientific background and certainly his approach to science with regard to data sharing (the withholding of underlying data without which his work cannot be meaningfully reviewed) is most unscientific.

Motives are interesting and possibly helpful but I am afraid that quite often these days it is motives, rather than the underlying arguments, that get criticised in many debates, not just ones about global warming. Whatever one's opponents motivations one needs to answer their points rather than question their motives.

I would completely agree with your comment about evidence, unfortunately there is none in this letter. That is one of the reasons that I am critical of it.

I am not sure why you think the IPCC may underestimate the situation. Clearly one of the signatories to this letter - whom you presumably think is properly qualified - thinks quite the opposite.

It hasn't warmed since 1998

Dikran Marsupial at 03:32 AM on 31 January, 2012

SirNubwub You are making a common error in interpretiing a statistical statement. "no [statistically] significant warming in the last 15 years" does not mean that "that temps have remained level for the last 15 years".

If a trend is not statistically significant, this means that there isn't enough evidence to be able to confidently reject the possibility that the actual trend is flat. However, evidence requires data and if the timespan over which you estimate the trend is sufficiently short, the test for statistical significance will fail to reject this "null hypothesis" even when it is incorrect.

Essentially if the trend is not significant, then there are two explanations (i) the trend actually is flat or (ii) there isn't enough data. This is why climatologists use 30 year trends, as these are long enough for the test to be statistcally meaningful.

I suspect the paper is referring to a BBC interview with Prof. Phil Jones, where he agreed that the 15 year trend was not statisticlly significant (I think that is no longer true), and also had a go at explaining why this is not surprising.

Temp record is unreliable

Daniel Bailey at 17:32 PM on 4 December, 2011

Santer et al 2011 (discussed here) show that 10 year flat periods can occur in overall warming periods caused by human influence and that at least 17 years is needed to establish a human influence on tropospheric temps.

It takes a world-class time series analyst to properly control for exogenous factors to establish significance in time series of less than 17 years, as Tamino does here.

If your counterpart doesn't understand significance testing then ask him how he can believe anything at all that anyone tells him, one way or another, about climate science. Or the stock market.

Peter Hadfield addresses the recent email release

Bob Lacatena at 09:45 AM on 1 December, 2011

7, Karl,

How many deniers does it take to change a lightbulb?

None. It's not dark. If it is dark, it's not because the light bulb went out. And if it did go out, its all due to natural cycles. And anyway, the darkening trend is not statistically significant (Phil Jones said so!) and we are now in a period of ongoing brightening (Pielke said so!).

The Debunking Handbook: now freely available for download

Tom Curtis at 13:03 PM on 29 November, 2011

skept.fr @14, the following from DeepClimate (also quoted at Real Climate) is exactly why do not consider a comparison between Tamino and McIntyre is appropriate:

"... it is very clear that a new round of out-of-context quote mining and error-filled “analysis” is already unfolding. And the leader out of the gate, so to speak, appears to be Ross McKitrick, whose recent National Post piece on the IPCC and the latest batch of stolen emails is now being spread far and wide.

In one particularly outrageous and error-filled passage, McKitrick accuses IPCC AR4 co-ordinating lead authors Phil Jones and Kevin Trenberth of selecting their team of contributing authors solely on the basis of whether they agree with the pair’s scientific views. He even goes so far as to accuse Jones of “dismissing” (i.e. rejecting as a contributing author) one qualified expert who, supposedly in Jones’s own words, “has done a lot, but I don’t trust him.”

But the record clearly shows that it was Trenberth who made that last comment, and that he was expressing misgivings about the quality of the researcher’s work, not whether he was on the “right side” of scientific issues. And the expert in question, climatologist Joel Norris, was in fact selected by Trenberth as a contributing author. Even worse, McKitrick has reversed the order of the Jones quotes, taken them out of context, and then juxtaposed them to make it appear as if they were part of the same exchange. Meanwhile, an examination of the two separate email discussions show chapter co-ordinators trying to fill out their team with authors who will be able to contribute effectively, in complete contradiction to McKitrick’s central thesis."

So, McIntyre has misattributed quotes, taken them out of context, and stitched them together out of chronological order to aid misinterpretation. Further, he ignores the fact that the person discussed was in fact accepted as a contributing author, thus invalidating his thesis. It has long been my firm belief that out of context quotations are simply a form of lying. So while Tamino gives us clear analysis of statistical issues relating to climate science, McIntyre gives use data (in this case quotations) deliberately out presented out of context with intent to deceive. That is why it is inappropriate to use McIntyre as a source, but appropriate to use Tamino.

Climategate 2.0: Denialists Serve Up Two-Year-Old Turkey

Tom Curtis at 20:42 PM on 27 November, 2011

With regard to Gary Thompson's efforts to start a fake controversy over whether Phil Jones uses Excel, Fortran, or Matlab for his statistical analyses; clearly that is no more grounds for controversy than whether he uses an IBM, HP or Acorn computer in his office. Frankly, who cares.

But he is correct that email 1885 is evidence of a genuinely controversial act which reflects very poorly on the person involved.

I refer, of course, to David Whitehouse's attempt to argue that global warming has stopped because over a six year period with a warming trend, that trend was not statistically significant. In Phil Jones' words,

"Quickly re-reading this it sounds as though I'm getting at you. I'm not - just at the idiots who continue to spout this nonsense. ...
I would have thought that this writer would have know better! I keep on seeing people saying this same stupid thing."

Indeed, stupid nonsense is right. Arguing that evidence of continued warming is evidence of a cessation of warming because the evidence of warming is not statistically significant (Whitehouse's argument) is beyond absurd.

You would think denier's would be more wary about drawing attention to such examples of ... stupidity(?), dishonesty(?) ... I'm not sure how to categorize it. Perhaps the deniers are to used to people staring fixedly at the Great and Powerful Oz, rather than looking at the small man behind the curtain.

Climategate 2.0: Denialists Serve Up Two-Year-Old Turkey

garythompson at 12:03 PM on 27 November, 2011

Does anyone else find it odd that Phil Jones doesn't know how to plot data in Excel? Or more importantly, how he makes claimes about trends without doing the plotting and while knowingly stating that the data is statistically insignificant? Sounds odd. It's in email #1885 and here is a link.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100119495/climategate-2-0-the-not-nice-and-clueless-phil-jones/#disqus_thread

Climategate 2.0: Denialists Serve Up Two-Year-Old Turkey

J Bowers at 10:45 AM on 24 November, 2011

lurgee -- "Thus far, the most 'exploitable' line seem to be Phil Jones's comment about the IPCC being above national FOI requests, which seems a reasonable enough statement when referring to an international body"

I'm sure that's covered in the first set of emails and jumped on by denialists last time (Caspar Amman, IPCC?), but probably just an email that wasn't cherrypicked for the first release.

Zombiegate/Sloppy-seconds-gate/Whatevergate. Same crap, different conference.

Climategate 2.0: Denialists Serve Up Two-Year-Old Turkey

Tom Curtis at 00:16 AM on 24 November, 2011

MarkR @14, that is a very astute comment. Indeed, as most of the FOI requests came from McIntyre, or people closely associated with him, Phil Jones knew that no matter how good his methodology, the released information would be distorted into an attack on his integrity. No wonder he was non-cooperative.

Climategate 2.0: Denialists Serve Up Two-Year-Old Turkey

lurgee at 20:44 PM on 23 November, 2011

Thus far, the most 'exploitable' line seem to be Phil Jones's comment about the IPCC being above national FOI requests, which seems a reasonable enough statement when referring to an international body (isn't this international sharing what prevented him releasing data previously?). He might need to clarify what he said about deleting emails to 'cover yourself'. Again, it's obviously an innocent suggestion of a way to prevent data being released or requisitioned inappropriately (Oh! The irony that we're now talking about it!) but I can see it being spun eternally ...

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