NASA Study: Mass Gains of Antarctic Ice Sheet Greater than Losses

This is simply a cherry picked data point that makes the climate change discussion more difficult.

You have hit on the trouble with your statement. It seems everyone starts with a view point, and takes cherry picked data to reinforce it. Meanwhile cherry picked data that contradicts is dismissed, and anyone that may have a contrary view is also dissed and given a label such as Fool or Denier. At that point it is no discussion at all, am I right?

If you have just now arrived here, the many pages of comments, plus the many, many links, could take you a while to go through.

But if you were somebody determined to think for yourself, with no bias, you would have to take the considerable evidence in this thread and admit that there is lots of data that leaves the current popular conclusions suspect.

That is where discussion takes place. There has been lots of good back and forth here.

When it devolves into “97% of the world knows that...”, it ceases to be a rational discussion.

Meanwhile, did you see my tagline?

I have not been following this discussion, post by post, but I have been on the climate change bandwagon since before it was a bandwagon. And I learned long ago that "conventional wisdom" is not always correct.

I'm not sure exactly where I read this (probably a Scout manual), but as a child "everyone knew" that a stream would purify itself in a mile. Because of this I was yawning at the idea that there was a sewer treatment plant emergency because "everyone knew" that the problem would be gone in a mile. In my early teens I was on a low level "puddle hopper" flight. As we crossed over a river I noticed a gray slick entering the river, probably from a sewer discharge. I thought this was a wonderful opportunity for me to see that "mile" in action. I moved to the other side of the plane and observed ... er ... that the gray slick continued to the horizon! That was a turning point for me and blindly accepting "conventional wisdom".

Many people over the years have told me that "its impossible for humans to affect the planet". They back the statement up with facts like how the globe could easily handle more humans and that we are an insignificant "flea on the backside".

First thing is that a flea can actually cause you to die but thats neither here nor there.

Second thing is i always wonder how many of the naysayers have ever lived in a large city. In the suburbs or rural areas i can see how one might assume that the planet could clean itself up. In the city you learn very quickly how filthy things can get.

My current metric is my back yard. When i had one dog i could walk around the yard without worrying about stepping in dog poop. The lawn mower the rain the sun the snow handled the mess for me. Then we got a second dog. The yard could no longer handle the mess by itself. After a third dog the back yard is basically a toilet now that required biweekly cleaning.

I am not a climate scientist so i cant go into specifics. I am not a lawyer either. But...when i have to go to court i hire a lawyer because i know that they made it their business to learn the law. Same with climate scientists. If a climate scientist says (and most/99% of them are) "humans are doing things that are making it impossible for earth to sustain a livable condition for humanity" i am going to believe them until someone with similar scientific credentials tells me different. Politician or employee of a fossil fuel company or some guy like me who watched a YouTube video are not good sources for information about climate science.

At the end of the day...whats the worst thing that could happen if we cleaned up the planet? People would live longer healthier lives. The only people arguing against the clean up effort are those who stand to gain financially by continuing to pollute and those who just want to argue against the "other team".

Finally...my favorite argument is "who is going to pay for it?". The answer is quite simple...the same people who pay for bombs. The people who pay for roads and teachers. The people who enjoy using things like the 911 emergency service. Our tax dollars will be used to clean up the planet instead of paying for lung cancer treatment for our children because the air is poison.

Oh, why are you bothering? The facts are in: It's all a hoax started by China.

The deniers on here just cut & paste nonsense that they come across - most of which has been discredited long ago, or is meaningless to the subject at hand. There's a great article in the current Skeptical Inquirer magazine which puts a lot of these issues to rest and basically says we're all going to die really soon.

Now, I could cut & paste, or quote the article (which is filled with references) but, as Trevor Noah says: "Ain't no-one got time for that". Plus, I really don't care to waste my time trying to persuade somebody that their nonsense is just that.

unless really necessary I won't bother quoting you (I am guessing this post will be too long to begin with) and will just used your numeration if someone wants to go back to check


1 & 2

according to the oxford dictionary

your link says for the first one


and for the second


the first one does not sound cataclysmic and if the second part of the second one is right neither does it. Both of those sound like slow gradual changes over a long time that made them destructive.

I also find it funny that even though you brought up the article and he is saying we are a lot less sure of what happens in those two periods you find it easier to dismiss the third one because the first two kind of fit your argument while the third one does not.

As for the last two yes it would be cooler in the shadow of the asteroids before they hit the earth but I am guessing that getting crushed by the asteroid would have had more to do with the death of the animals and plants at the impact site than the cool of the shadow. If the asteroid slap the earth so hard that molten core smashed against the crust and came spewing out the other side ( aka volcanos) and all together they sent crud in the air so thick that it cooled the planet because it blocked the sun don't you think having that crud fall back to earth would have been destructive? don't you think that darkness (enough to cool the planet) would have reeked havoc on plant life ( that means issue with food for herbivores...)

as for your ccc fear can't you see the irony in that? you don't fear the CO₂ being let loose now but you fear that if we trap it and make it harmless now in the future it might escape and cause an issue.


3) missing the point , there is a difference between global issue and local issue.
CO₂ was having an effect on the UK (and other industrial nations) environment before that, that is why I brought up the peppered moth example.
But let's face it according to you it is still not an issue (locally or globally) and will never be.

4 & 5
Let me try this differently.
a)
I don't know how things work in the UK but here (& now) if you build a new place you need to pay for the infrastructure to connect to the existing network. Two summers ago I was working on clients cottage and I saw he had put solar cells on the roof, so I asked him about it, he said HQ told him it would be over 70k (if I remember correctly) to connect him to the grid and he crunched the numbers and decided to go solar and batteries instead. How much do you think that he paid the sun last year so he can produce his own electricity? At my sisters cottage she installed a propane generator as a backup (like I said before, in a few days or hours with out heat water in the pipes will freeze and cause major damage) I was there at Christmas time when the electricity went out for a few hours and so the generator (connected to the furnace and fridge) went on for that time. I don't know if she lost electricity some other time but who do you think paid more to produce electricity (my client for a full year 24/7 or my sister for the few hours when the power went out during the year.)

b) you posted previously





the last one dealing with prices ranging from £39.65 to £41.61 per megawatt/hour (MWh)

can't you see the obvious? Let me spell it out

first (starting from the end) the reason they can all bid at roughly the same price and one near "market price" is that they can. If the market in the UK is willing to pay £45 per MWh why should they go a lot below that? the simple fact that there was no shortage of submissions should show you that they believe that they can make a lot of profit at that amount.


second £40 per MWh= £0.04 per KWh~ at todays exchange=0.066 CAD KWH that is very close to what I am paying and very far from the two first statements I quoted.

Now don't get me wrong. I am not doubting those two statements, just trying to make you realize, what someone pays for electricity includes amortization, includes profit, includes distribution.....

When I install gear I don't ask my client to pay what I paid for the TV and I don't ask for what I am paying my employees per hour either (in both cases the prices I charge are more). Profitability is needed (though sometimes it can be exaggerated) so I am not bad mouthing it. Just realize that none pof the numbers you post are cost of production.


6) I get it you hate carbonbrief (can't be spinned to help your cause) but according to gridwatch

[Link: gridwatch.co.uk]

Renewables :This is the percent of the energy produced from renewable (wind + solar + hydroelectric + biomass)

also if you look at last month there were several times when wind was bigger than any other form and well over 40%. '

If their numbers are wrong tell me where they went wrong, can't you calculate it yourself if they are that off? Also the client I mentioned earlier 100% of his energy comes from solar. Why is that? because that is the only form of electricity production he installed. No matter what the % you like most a large part of it will be because of what is installed.

7) Until you start and take a good look and realize that the difference between Quebec and UK (or EU) is that we decided a long time ago to put a ceiling on the profits people involved with electricity can do while you guys decided to put a floor on the gouging and instead of blaming that idiocy you decided to blame the wind.

I don't see how it makes it more difficult. Isn't a complete misunderstanding from the casual observer the reason that it was name changed from "global warming" to "climate change"

let me put it this way (simple experiment)
take two glasses with equal amount of room temperature water, add an ice cube (of the same size) to each of the glasses. Now take a hot soldering iron and put it on the side of the ice of one of the glasses (we will call this glass B and the other glass A). wait a minute.

what happens?

the water in glass b will feal colder because the added heat means that more of the ice melted and added more cold water to the room temperature water.

global warming will mean some places might get more "wet" others more "dry" some places at some time will get colder other places at other times will get warmer.

The term global warming describes what is happening planet wise, the term climate change describes what happens locally.






.

As previously reported, your former President Dwight D. Eisenhower, was astute enough to appreciate the inherent danger of governments paying for research when, in his farewell address, he said the following:

"Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
 
"In this revolution, research has become central, it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
 
"Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
 
"The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.
 
"Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
 
"It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system – ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society."

Much has been made of the recent claim from 11,000 'scientists' (published in the journal BioScience) that the planet is facing a climate emergency.  Is one aware, though, that ten years ago more than 30,000 American Scientists (including over 9,000 with PhD's) signed the Global Warming Petition Project ^[1] - which warns of there being no convincing scientific evidence that man-made CO₂ will cause catastrophic heating, and that agreements like the Paris Accord are harmful, and hinder science?
 
Therein lies the first problems with your assertions:
 
"If a climate scientist says (and most/99% of them are) 'humans are doing things that are making it impossible for earth to sustain a liveable condition for humanity' I am going to believe them until someone with similar scientific credentials tells me different. Politician or employee of a fossil fuel company or some guy like me who watched a YouTube video are not good sources for information about climate science."
 
i). There is no 99% consensus claiming "humans are doing things that are making it impossible for earth to sustain a liveable condition for humanity".
 
ii). There is many a climate scientist willing to offer an alternative view to that of doom and gloom merchants (I've previously linked to some of their work), but one rarely hears from them because of the concerted efforts of the left-wing dominated media (and to some extent academe) to supress this information.
 
iii). One can discern the increasingly political nature of the argument when climate activists begin to throw the likes of Michael Mann under a bus. ^[2]
 
iv). Blogs and YouTube can be extremely helpful in providing and understanding of the issues involved, disseminating new research and highlighting the dubious practices being employed to maintain the myth of their being a climate/environmental emergency. 

The BioScience article is good example of the latter, ^[3] or as John Daly once pithily commented (in response to Ben Santer's claim of there being a discernible human influence on global climate), there’s "a discernible human influence on global climate change science". ^[4]

In essence therefore, assuming one heeds the advice of President Eisenhower, one can choose to believe those being handsomely rewarded for providing support for policy, or the independent thinkers seeking to further human understanding.
 
*

"At the end of the day...what’s the worst thing that could happen if we cleaned up the planet? People would live longer healthier lives. The only people arguing against the clean-up effort are those who stand to gain financially by continuing to pollute and those who just want to argue against the 'other team'".
 
I cannot speak for the USA, but in the UK air quality and life expectancy have improved tremendously since the 1960's.  That’s not to say we should be complacent, but as with most issues it's a trade-off.  What of, for example, the ethical implications and pollution created by the mining of rare earth materials for 'clean' renewables and EV's?





*
 
"Finally...my favourite argument is 'who is going to pay for it?'. The answer is quite simple...the same people who pay for bombs. The people who pay for roads and teachers. The people who enjoy using things like the 911 emergency service. Our tax dollars will be used to clean up the planet instead of paying for lung cancer treatment for our children because the air is poison."
 
A simplistic notion which offers no regard to the true cost: that more are likely to die from the 'cure' than the 'disease'.
 
[1] ‪[Link: petitionproject.org];
[2] ‪[Link: twitter.com];
[3] ‪[Link: joannenova.com.au];
[4] ‪[Link: remotecentral.com];

One has the time to tell us one doesn't have the time to argue? Well, just give me the title of the article and I'll take it from there.

In what universe does telling you I don't have the time to argue take the same amount of time as arguing?

Skeptical Inquirer Magazine
November/December 2019
Volume 43 No. 6
Special Reports
"Hot Month, Hot Year, Hot Planet: Absorbing the Latest Climate News"

Also this:

[Link: nytimes.com]

Re. Glaciations.
Nitpick all you like; one has still failed to provide any substantive evidence to support your original assertion.

*

Re. The CCC and CCS.
Surely even you can determine the distinct difference between an atmospheric CO₂ content of 410ppm and one of 500,000 (whatever) ppm, or has one not read any of my links?

*

Re. Missing the point.
My point was deliberately glib. It is you trying to conflate issues.

I'm fully appreciative of the fact that UK Government's "local" net-zero plans will have no discernible "global" effect. I'm also well of the fact that CO₂ is an essential global life-giving element. It has, thus, always had "an effect", regardless of industrialisation.

You talk of a supposed irony, so how ironic would it be if in "man's" hubris the industrialised process of storing vast quantities of CO₂ went awry?’

*

Re. Let me try this differently.
Apples and oranges again. Private investment is not the issue and market price for electricity is what the generators receive from the domestic suppliers not what consumers pay. I pay £0.18 per unit.

*

Re. The Carbon Brief and GridWatch.
I’ve already explained that renewables enjoy a guaranteed market, so it’s not unusual, when weather patterns align, for renewables to outperform fossil fuels.

At the time of writing, demand is 40GW with renewables supplying 38%, Gas 30%, Coal 5% and Nuclear 16%. If, however, demand were to rise, the wind was to drop, clouds were to cover the sun or any combination thereof, one cannot merely turn on more renewables - any change would need to be taken up by non-renewable sources. Furthermore:

i). One cannot compare a domestic solar/battery installation to a national grid.
ii). I’ve no reason to doubt GridWatch data. A few good days of renewables production does not mitigate the many times it fails to perform when most required.
iii). One has, once again, totally ignored wind and solar's inherent inefficiency and intermittency. Of the aforementioned 38%, wind and solar's contribution is a typical one-third of total installed capacity.
iii). One has, once again, totally ignored expert opinion on wind and solar's unsuitability as a primary source of power (also their respective environmental impacts).
iv). One has completely ignored my analysis of third-quarter power generation.
v). One has completely ignored my explanation of why I cannot confirm, or otherwise, The Carbon Brief's analysis.
vi). In light of the above, it appears to be the only person attempting to "spin" anything, is you.

*

Re. Profiteering.
And once again, even though I’ve provided expert testimony, one has still completely failed to understand the difference between a grid dominated by baseload/dispatchable hydro generation and one dominated by inefficient/intermittent renewables; the latter being imposed upon consumers, as a result of Government legislation, and not by choice.

In a free market, no one in their right mind would ever build a wind or solar farm, as they are, quite simply, not viable. Once the UK Government passed the Climate Change act, however, and the need for carbon-free sources of energy became more of an imperative, solar and wind, in the minds of three of our lesser abled Government ministers (Messrs Miliband, Huhne and Davey), became something of a sellers’ market. They firmly believed oil prices would continue to rise, making renewables appear more affordable, but what they hadn't accounted for was the fracking revolution in the USA completely undermining their plans.

It is not energy supply companies’ price gouging, it is wind and solar farm developers, with the assistance of Government largesse. Only now, some eleven years later, has the present Government acted to stem the unsustainable flow. The prices agreed for that new tranche of wind farms will, though, still be index-linked with constraint payments also remaining available during the inevitable periods of overproduction. In short, energy policy in the UK is a complete mess, as the following article aptly illustrates.

[Link: notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com]

It may also of interest to note that the wind industry in Germany is beginning to suffer the effects of recession.

[Link: notrickszone.com]

"In what universe does telling you I don't have the time to argue take the same amount of time as arguing?"

Steady on, old chap. 'Twas merely a jest.

And thank you for the information; comments will be forthcoming.

Skeptical Inquirer Article



Special Report

Hot Month, Hot Year, Hot Planet: Absorbing the Latest Climate News

Kendrick Frazier

From: Volume 43, No. 6
November / December 2019

"After this past summer's sizzling heat, many people will undoubtedly welcome the coming of winter in the northern hemisphere. Colder weather, though seasonally temporary, will be refreshing. Australians, though, and others in the southern hemisphere, may not be looking forward to their coming summer…"

*

I don't mean to tease, but I'm not sure it would be politic to fully copy and paste what is, effectively, a pay-walled article. In essence, though, it's merely a review NOAA's State of the Climate: Global Climate Report for July 2019 ^[1], and the claim of it being the warmest month on record for the globe; a story previously covered by numerous MSM outlets - e.g. the BBC. ^[2]

To begin with, the article's overview is one of planetary heating now effecting millions, heat records "piling up", and the Arctic melting away - with, apparently, the Greenland ice cap melting at such an alarming rate that "over two days, enough ice melted to cover Denmark with two meters of water". Yep, journalists really do like their florid analogies - "Statista" had it flooding Florida to a depth of 5" ^[3] and Seth Borenstein, Pennsylvania by about 12". ^[4]

The article also comments on three new scientific papers which, needless to say, spell doom and gloom. And there's also a section on how science journalists can best get the message across - particularly to stubborn Americans.

"They have found that understanding readers' emotional responses to unwelcome news and drawing on psychologists' findings about human behaviour are as important as the gathering and presenting of the facts".

(Perhaps using the Florida or Pennsylvania analogies, rather than the Denmark one, would be better options for Americans?)

Unfortunately, particularly for a purportedly sceptical blog site, what Mr Frazier fails to comment on is the accuracy of scientific journalism: the "facts" used, the "facts" omitted and the "facts" massaged to support a particular narrative or politics of the individual writer and reader. The "scary" melting of the Greenland icecap is an excellent example of this.

It's estimated to contain some 2,600,000,000,000,000 tonnes of ice and snow, thus daily melts of 12 billion tonnes is not at all unusual. Indeed, such is the present melt rate, if it were to continue it would take 25,000 years for it to disappear, by which time, of course, the next ice age would likely have started – a climate change worthy of the worry. To paraphrase Mark Twain somewhat, the reports of Greenland's imminent icecap "death" is an exaggeration. ^{[5 - 11]}

And while in the Arctic, let’s also not forget the dubious goings-on with Iceland's temperature record. ^[12]

*

Turning our attention to European heatwaves. On the 25th of July the UK 'Independent' ran a story warning of the new normal. ^[13] However, when one compares this summer in the UK to that of 1976 (unlike St. Greta and the climate strikers, I’ve actually experienced a little climate change) one can see that the 'new normal' isn’t exactly new, and that other than for a handful of days, this year’s UK summer was, at best, distinctly average. ^[14]



Furthermore, the record temperatures were nothing to do with climate, but the result of an unusual weather pattern drawing hot air up from the Sahara. ^{[15 and 16]} Indeed, the UK 'record' set in Cambridge this year, tells us little of climate change, but a lot about the Urban Heat Island Effect. ^[17]

*

Having now determined the Arctic isn't going to melt away any time soon, ^{[18 and 19]} that European heatwaves are not unprecedented (contrary to what dear old Michael 'Hokey Stick' Mann would have one believe) and that the record heat this summer was the result of an unusual weather system driving hot air up from North Africa (and thus not climate-related), was NOAA justified in claiming July 2019 the hottest global month ever? Well, according to Dr Roy Spencer, the answer is an unequivocal no. ^[20]

Citing concerns over the quality of the data upon which the claim was based (an issue expanded upon by Anthony Watts ^[21] and Kip Hansen ^[22]), Dr Spencer says the following:

"One would think that the very best data would be used to make this assessment. After all, it comes from official government sources (such as NOAA, and the World Meteorological Organization [WMO]).

"But current official pronouncements of global temperature records come from a fairly limited and error-prone array of thermometers which were never intended to measure global temperature trends. The global surface thermometer network has three major problems when it comes to getting global-average temperatures:

"(1) The urban heat island (UHI) effect has caused a gradual warming of most land thermometer sites due to encroachment of buildings, parking lots, air conditioning units, vehicles, etc. These effects are localized, not indicative of most of the global land surface (which remains most rural), and not caused by increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Because UHI warming “looks like” global warming, it is difficult to remove from the data. In fact, NOAA’s efforts to make UHI-contaminated data look like rural data seems to have had the opposite effect. The best strategy would be to simply use only the best (most rural) sited thermometers. This is currently not done.

"(2) Ocean temperatures are notoriously uncertain due to changing temperature measurement technologies (canvas buckets thrown overboard to get a sea surface temperature sample long ago, ship engine water intake temperatures more recently, buoys, satellite measurements only since about 1983, etc.)

"(3) Both land and ocean temperatures are notoriously incomplete geographically. How does one estimate temperatures in a 1 million square mile area where no measurements exist?"

To overcome some of the problems, Dr Spencer advocates the use of data reanalysis, such as that used by WeatherBell.com. Based on NOAA’s own Climate Forecast System Version 2 (CFSv2), WeatherBell’s reanalysis of July this year suggests a global average warmth (against July's 1981-2010 mean) of just over 0.3 deg. C (0.5 deg. F) above normal. This places July this year fourth behind the Julys of 2002, 2016 and 2017. (Note that Dr Spencer's own Our UAH lower tropospheric temperature measurements had July 2019 as the third warmest, behind 1998 and 2016, at +0.38 C above normal. ^[23])

Visually, the WeatherBell reanalysis looks like this:



Whereas NOAA's analysis looks like this:



It's interesting to note that while the MSM focussed on the record hot weather in Western European, there was minimal mention of the record cold weather in Eastern Europe. What is also interesting is that the Skeptical Inquirer used the graphic below in its article, rather than the NOAA graphic above.



There's no explanation for this, as it's not referred to in the text. For someone with a sceptical mind, though, this may well lead to a degree of speculation. Surely Mr Frazier didn't merely select it because of its being covered with significantly more red than blue?

Finally, further to the concern raised by Dr Spencer about the lack of surface-based temperature sensors, Tony Heller has his own views on the July claim ^[24] and also offers an opinion on the practice of temperature homogenisation ^[25].

*

And so to the three new scientific papers, Mr Frazier mentions:

i). Brönnimann, S. et al. (2019). Last phase of the Little Ice Age forced by volcanic eruptions. Nature Geoscience.
ii). Neukom, R. et al. (2019). No evidence for globally coherent warm and cold periods over the preindustrial Common Era. Nature.
iii). PAGES 2k Consortium. 2019. Consistent multidecadal variability in global temperature reconstructions and simulations over the Common Era. Nature Geoscience.

Brönnimann et al. (2019) speculate that the Little Ice Age was extended by major volcanic eruptions in the early/mid-19th century.

Speculation about the effects of volcanism on climate is not new – see McGregor et al. (2015) ^[26] and Bragato and Holzhauser (2019) ^[27]. The cooling effect of atmospheric aerosols was also the central theme of Rasool and Schneider (1971) ^[28] – the paper suggesting concern about the possible onset of global cooling. Note that this latter paper also acknowledged the minor role played by CO₂ in global warming and its diminishing effect as atmospheric CO₂ content increases; i.e. that CO₂ has a low climate sensitivity.

With this in mind, the conclusion of Brönnimann et al. (2019) that the early/mid-19th-century volcanic activity kept temperatures cool until anthropogenic warming from the industrial revolution took over, appears a little fanciful. At the time atmospheric CO₂ content was too low to be a factor and would, in any case, if Rasool and Schneider is to be believed, be more than countered by the unregulated release of atmospheric aerosols. Sigl et al. 2018 ^{[29 and 30]} also shows that alpine glacier melt was not caused by industrial soot and surmise it more likely to be from natural warming caused by the AMO.

Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it, as the old adage goes. And so it would seem with Neukom and PAGES2K.

Hockey Stick Groundhog Day ^[31]

Paul Matthews

Some ancient history

"Fifteen to twenty years ago, Michael Mann and colleagues wrote a few papers claiming that current warming was unprecedented over the last 600 to 2000 years. Other climate scientists described Mann's work variously as crap, pathetic, sloppy, and crap. These papers caught the interest of Stephen McIntyre, and this led to the creation of his Climate Audit blog and the publication of papers ^[32] pointing out the flaws in these hockey stick reconstructions. In particular, Mcintyre and his co-author Ross McKitrick showed that the method used by Mann and colleagues shifted the data in such a way that any data sets that showed an upward trend in the 20th century would receive a stronger weighting in the final reconstruction. With this method, generation of a hockey-stick shape in the temperature reconstruction was virtually guaranteed, which M&M demonstrated by feeding in random numbers to the method.

"As climate scientist, Rob Wilson put it in an email:

'The whole Macintyre [sic] issue got me thinking about over-fitting and the potential bias of screening against the target climate parameter… I first generated 1000 random time-series in Excel… The reconstructions clearly show a 'hockey-stick' trend. I guess this is precisely the phenomenon that Macintyre has been going on about.'

"But the climate science community admitted nothing in public. One climate scientist wrote one of the most revealing emails:

'-How should we deal with flaws inside the climate community? I think that 'our' reaction on the errors found in Mike Mann’s work were not especially honest.'

"Ouch.

"This is all ancient history, and the issue is discussed in detail in Andrew Montford's book, The Hockey Stick Illusion.


Two new papers

"So, I felt a strange sense of deja vu or Groundhog Day when I heard from the BBC that 'new' research had found that current warming was unparalleled in 2,000 years. The two papers are written by the PAGES2k team, headed by Raphael Neukom. They are Consistent multidecadal variability in global temperature reconstructions and simulations over the Common Era and No evidence for globally coherent warm and cold periods over the preindustrial Common Era (both paywalled). They use data from a 2017 paper by themselves, A global multiproxy database for temperature reconstructions of the Common Era.

"The PAGES2k data has come in for a lot of criticism at Climate Audit. ^[33] There are numerous problems, such as inconvenient data being deleted or used upside-down, or the use of 'stripbark' data, against the recommendation of a NAS panel.

"The new papers are quite open about screening for 'temperature-sensitive' proxies. From the 'Consistent' paper:

'For the reconstructions presented in the main text, we use the subset of records selected on the basis of regional temperature screening and to account for false discovery rates (R-FDR subset). This screening reduces the total number of records from 692 to 257, but increases the GMST reconstruction skill for most methods and skill metrics.'

"(GMST is global mean surface temperature). That's a fairly drastic reduction in the number of proxy records. Tucked away in Fig 17 of the Supplementary Information are graphs using the 'full unscreened PAGES 2k proxy matrix', which have a less sticky shape than those in the main paper.

"But as is often the case in climate science, it's worse than we thought. The so-called 'unscreened' PAGES2k proxies were in fact already screened, with a substantial culling of tree-ring data! This is from the 2017 'Global multiproxy' paper:

'…superseded by higher-quality from the same site. Of the 641 records that together compromise the previously published PAGES2K datasets, 177 are now excluded, of which 124 are tree-ring-width series that are inversely related to temperature. To be included in the current database, tree-ring data were required to correlate positively (P<0.05) with local or regional temperature (averaged over the entire year or over the growing season). Trees whose grown increases with temperature…'

"So two rounds of proxy screening have been carried out. Furthermore, in one of the methods they use, the proxies are 'weighted by their non-detrended correlation with the GMST reconstruction target over the calibration period', a further technique that helps to ensure that a hockey-stick will be produced.

"Steve McIntyre is on the case, see this twitter thread. ^[34] The first tweet refers to this weighting issue, and number 4 in the sequence mentions the 'superscreening' point. The last (at time of writing), number 23, shows how drastic the screening out of North American tree-ring proxies is in the latest papers.

"There is also some decline-hiding going on: in one of the Canadian datasets used, when the time series showed the 'divergence problem' (heading downwards when temperature goes upwards), the divergent parts of the series were just deleted. See this blog post by Shub ^[35] with the relevant parts of the paper highlighted. Again, if you do this, when you combine all the data to get an overall picture, you will get a stronger hockey stick effect.

The screening fallacy

"The problems with proxy screening were very widely discussed a few years ago at several climate blogs, including Lucia's Blackboard, ^[36] Jeff's Air Vent, ^[37] and Climate Audit. But some of you may have forgotten, and some of you may be too new to the game, so here's a refresher. I’ll try to explain it as simply as possible, so that even a BBC environment correspondent could understand it.

"Suppose that you have a number of time series, covering the last 2000 years, coming from annual tree ring measurements or anything else. You think that they might be related to temperature, that is, be a 'proxy' for temperature. Or at least some of them might be. How can you check? Well, you have a reasonable idea of the temperature rise over the last 100 years from thermometer measurements, so you can compare each series against that, to check if it matches. Then you might discard those that don't fit well (screening) or assign a weighting to each one according to how good the match is.

"This sounds at first glance like a good idea. But there's a problem. It's actually a lousy idea. With this method, your data sets could be just random noise, and you'd still get a hockey stick result! A picture is worth a thousand words here. This one was posted ^[38] by commenter 'Jeez' at Climate Audit in 2012 (in the case discussed there, the paper, Gergis et al., was withdrawn ^[39] after claims that they had avoided the screening fallacy were shown to be false).



"Suppose that you have six time series, as shown in the first six diagrams. The first four go down-up, up-down, down-down, up-up, and the next two are flat. You carry out your screening test, and you find two of them that match fairly well with the 20th-century temperature record – that's the two with the red circles. Then you average those two, and you get the bottom picture – the hockey stick that you wanted! The two oppositely directed parts at the left-hand end (grey lines) average out to the flat (dotted) line. You can add in the two flat ones as well if you like, they won't make any difference to the picture. In climate-science-speak, your reconstruction is 'robust'!" ^{[See also 40 - 42]}.

After being thoroughly trashed many years ago, it appears to be a sign of desperation that alarmists still cling to a belief in the integrity of proxy climate reconstructions. It could be argued that Michael (I'm not a statistician) Mann had an excuse in that he didn't know what he was doing ^{[43 and 44]} others, though, such as Rosanne "you had to pick cherries if you want to make cherry pie" D'Arrigo, not so.

The ease with which results can be manipulated to produce a desired outcome has become almost legendary. Indeed, such is the nature of stripbark bristlecones to provide spurious correlations; the 2006 NAS panel ruled they should be avoided. They have not. As Steve McIntyre once wryly observed:

"In the past, I charged Mannian paleoclimatologists as being addicted to Graybill stripbark bristlecone chronologies – which I labelled as “heroin for paleoclimatologists” (also describing Briffa’s former Yamal chronology as “cocaine for paleoclimatologists”. Unfortunately, rather than confronting their addiction, Gavin Schmidt and others responded with haughty pearl-clutching indignation, while, behind the scenes, the PAGES consortium doubled down by perpetuating use of these problematic proxies into PAGES 2013 and PAGES 2017." ^[45]

I've previously commented on the lack of due diligence undertaken by the IPCC when accepting Mann's original work. Whatever happened to Sagan's principle of extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence? One would have thought the whole sorry affair (Climategate included - though it would appear revisionists are, once again, trying to rewrite history in this regard) would have sensitised the IPCC to the dangers they pose; particularly as in the interim further research has strengthened our understanding of both the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. ^{[46 and 47]} And yet it would seem the IPCC have accepted both of these works for AR6 - even before they were published. If this is not an indication of the IPCC being an inherently political rather than scientific organisation, then I don't know what is.

These papers should be treated with the respect they deserve...



Though purporting to be a serious review of present understanding, any article giving the vacuous Mann airtime (if you’ll forgive the mixing of metaphors) becomes immediately suspect in the minds of real sceptics. Like the Skeptical Science blog, however, it seems the Skeptical Inquirer is anything but sceptical, or at least on the issue of climate change (I’ve not troubled myself with other articles).

In short, the article is little more than a rehash of typical MSM alarmism. Nothing untoward is happening in the Arctic, this year's European heatwave (as to the UK's record temperature) was a weather-related event and little, if anything, to do with climate, July was not the hottest month, and those three scientific papers offer nothing new. I do, however, agree with Heather Goldstone when she said:

"…that if a story evokes certain emotions, it can actually impede a person's ability to absorb the facts, the information.”

Even when confronted with clear evidence of collusion and data tampering, climate alarmists appear incapable of comprehending the scale of the fraud being perpetrated in the name of 'saving the planet'. And they certainly have no understanding of the real cost.

Sometimes doing nothing really is the right thing to do.


[1] [Link: ncei.noaa.gov]
[2] [Link: bbc.co.uk]
[3] [Link: statista.com]
[4] [Link: latimes.com]
[5] [Link: notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com]
[6] [Link: notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com]
[7] [Link: notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com]
[8] [Link: notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com]
[9] [Link: realclimatescience.com]
[10] [Link: realclimatescience.com]


[11]


[12]


[13] [Link: independent.co.uk]
[14] [Link: notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com]
[15] [Link: drroyspencer.com]
[16] [Link: wattsupwiththat.com]
[17] [Link: notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com]
[18] [Link: realclimatescience.com]
[19] [Link: realclimatescience.com]
[20] [Link: drroyspencer.com]
[21] [Link: wattsupwiththat.com]
[22] [Link: wattsupwiththat.com]
[23] [Link: drroyspencer.com]


[24]


[25]


[26] [Link: nature.com]
[27] [Link: journals.sagepub.com]
[28] [Link: science.sciencemag.org]
[29] [Link: psi.ch]
[30] [Link: the-cryosphere.net]
[31] [Link: cliscep.com]
[32] [Link: agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com]
[33] [Link: climateaudit.org]
[34] [Link: twitter.com]
[35] [Link: shubclimate.wordpress.com]
[36] [Link: rankexploits.com]
[37] [Link: noconsensus.wordpress.com]
[38] [Link: climateaudit.org]
[39] [Link: climateaudit.org]
[40] [Link: notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com]
[41] [Link: notrickszone.com]
[42] [Link: notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com]


[43]


[44]


[45] [Link: climateaudit.org]
[46] [Link: notrickszone.com]
[47] [Link: notrickszone.com]

no you just don't want to accept the overwhelming evidence, but if it makes you feel better believe want you want, the reality is since both of us agree that it is not happening any time soon let's just move on.

there are several issues

most of your links are garbadge, so no I don't spend too much time on them.
but let me ask you this

1) why does it need to be 500,000 (whatever) ppm before you agree it is an issue, if not who cares about your whatever number? In my opinion the damage I have seen being caused now makes the number we have now as way too high

2) isn't this all about a balancing act? if we produce more CO₂ then is being eliminated that first number will keep on growing and getting closer to what ever number even you see as an issue. The only logical thing is to make sure that the number falls in balance.


Back in 78 we went to Greece and part of the time was spent in my dads village where with the other kids we would go get an ice cream and walk with it. One day one of the kids looks at me and asked "why do you put the wrapper in your pocket", and so I pointed at the pile of garbage in the corner (blown there by the wind). In life you can acknowledge your part and make the world a better place or you can pretend it is always other people's fault and live in garbage. None of us individually can make a difference, but there are 7,5B of us and if we all do our very small and insignificant part we can do wonders.




isn't this the equivalent of thinking throwing a bunch of knifes in the air is smart and then talking about the irony of getting cut while chopping vegetables to anyone that thinks it is dumb.

1) CO₂ captured by CCS can be useful (but not in the amounts we are producing it right now, but in the future who knows)

2) CO₂ captured by CCS can be stored in an inert form so "went awry" sounds a bit odd if it is saved that way

3) the math does not work in your favour. If the stock pile of one plant " went awry" and got released it will still be the CO₂ of one plant. If it is the stock pile of one country that " went awry" and got released it will still be the CO₂ of one country. Unless all the CO₂ of all the world are stored together the reality is any such scenario will become a "small" local issue. Possibly a real tragedy for the area like Chernobyl but it can't become an extinction level event.

I get that and I feel bad it is so high. The question you should be asking yourself is why.

If your utility is buying the wind electricity for .04 what is that other .14 going to?

but that in itself is not fair, not all your electricity comes in at .04 that article that you did not like had the price for a nuclear plant at ~0.10 (if I remember correctly) and so when you use that power 0.10 goes to electricity and 0.08 to the utility. In reality they don't differentiate between the two and send wind to Joe and Nuclear to Tim, it gets averaged out and if (using those numbers) it is 50-50 then it comes out to 0.07 and if it is 2/3 atomic it becomes 0.08 and if it is 2/3 wind it is 0.06.... the more of the cheap 0.04 electricity the better it is for the utility, now if those savings are passed on to you that is a different story.

But even though you don't want to face it wind is your friend not your foe.


electricity is electricity, the price of propane or Natural gaz or coal might change depending on quantity but not the price to "buy" natural wind, light or running water. They are either there or not and when they are they are free.


is it that it fails to perform or that there is not enough capacity?


not sure what's your point the way to fix installed capacity is to install more. Like I said before there was a time when a lot more of my electricity came from Nuclear and thermal. In the very late 80's HQ they decided to change plans and focus on hydro.


NO I reject bozos opinions how many of your "experts" are electrical engineers that have installed wind farms/solar farms?


then why do so many exist, why, like you said very wise investors like Warren Buffet put their money in it? why are there over 20 windfarms in Quebec with HQ buying electricity from most of them (I don't know if they buy from all, but they do buy the power from the one near my home)


maybe they are gouging with the 0.04 but that does not explain the other 0.14 if that 0.14 gets halved that would bring you to 0.11, if the 0.4 gets halved that only brings you to 0.16 even if that 0.04 goes down to 0 you are still at 0.14 which is still a lot.

I knew it!! It was Greece who caused all of this environmental damage!

First they invented homosexuality and now this!