Global Warming w/o Tiggy

[grmorton]

[QUOTE=shadowmaster;3142797]We disagree, Sylas.
You cite melting glaciers when they suit your argument but ignore ones which go against it.

This is always the game with AGW. Just like YEC, they have a serious case of confirmational bias.


[quoteI took a cruise that went into Glacier bay. On that cruise they had a map showing the extent of the glacier over the centuries (well before the rise of CO2).

When I was in Glacier bay, the scientists who came on board to lecture us were quite specific to say that the glaciers there were being melted from BENEATH, by warm water, not warm atmosphere. It seems that the currrents changed over the centuries.

That is real data and as pertinent as the melting of other glaciers.
Also pertinent is data when humans were not (and could not be) contributing to the environment.
To discard that data is simply not the scientific method.
IMHO


SM

It is the AGW methodology. Why do you think all their scare charts start around 1880? Why do you think all measurements of CO2 start in 1958, as if no one had ever measured CO2 in the atmosphere prior to 1958? Problem is prior measurements don't fit their preconceived reality One of the really interesting things to me about the keeling curve of CO2 is that it is so geometrically synthetic that it appears made up. It is too good to be true, especially given where it is measured, on top of a CO2 belching volcano. And it doesn't match the measurements of atmospheric CO2 made in other parts of the Pacific or the South Pole. Note that the other stations have really bad CO2 days, but never, ever the oh-so-too-perfect Keeling Curve

[grmorton]

Tiggy’s Lament

The glaciers are melting. It’s happening now!
Oh mercy me! Oh holy cow!
What is that about Glacier Bay?
It melted long ago so you say
Well glaciers come and glaciers go.
It is that way with glaciers you know.
And what’s that about Greenland you say?
There was no ice in the Vikings day?
Well glaciers come and glaciers go.
It is that way with glaciers you know.
But the glaciers are melting. The seas will rise.
Wars will come and everyone dies
Water abounds. There is no sand.
Where can one find a dry piece of land?
The time has come to sound the alarm
The only safe place is Glenn Morton’s farm

Always room at the ranch for SM! What a great poem

[grmorton]

I know that climate is affected by more than human activity only. I know that climate has changed in the past with no human involvement at all. The pages I cited previously suggest that many glaciers in Glacier Bay have been retreating since the "little ice age"; and I suspect that solar activity has the major role there. How is this any kind of evidence against my position?

Ok, This is something worth responding to. Please explain in exquisite detail how you determine what percentage of modern warming is due to humans and what part is due to nature? Methodology and chain of logic would be much appreciated. One of the problems in this debate is that no one clearly outlines how they determine what part is natural and what is anthropogenic.

I don't see that finding glaciers which have been in retreat for hundreds of years (or longer) is evidence against anything I have argued here. What specific proposition would this be evidence against?
I am not aware of any credible scientific work or evidence conflicting with this point. But I'd be genuinely interested to see it, if it exists.

Cheers -- sylas

This claim of wanting 'credible scientific work' sounds exactly like David Tyler who always demanded credible evidence, claimed he would accept it but then, never did. One is always the judge of what is and isn't credible. But there is a confirmational bias issue with such a demand. Too often people, when faced with data that goes against what they like, claim the data source is not reliable. That is the easy way out of any problematic issue.

Another way out is that perverse claim for peer-review, as if peer review guarantees truth. I can cite numerous Nobel Laureates whose works were rejected by peer review, some for quite a while. AAPG memoir #1 was the infamous skinning of Wegener over Continental drift. Peers thought he was nuts for about 50 years. So, to demand, 'credible' evidence you need a careful definition, one that will force you to face up to data that goes against your position.

Before you try to turn this around and aim this double-edged sword at me, I did change. I used to blindly believe AGW up until about 2006 when I saw where the hell they were putting the thermometers. I did face up to data that didn't support my belief in AGW at the time. I admit it wasn't a very informed belief because I trusted the 'experts', who, we have since learned engaged in organized activity to keep people out of print so that their criticisms would not be published in 'peer-reviewed' literature and thus they could tell the world that their critics can't even pass peer review.

[oxmixmudd]

But Glenn, each of the plots you post that have wild points (bad co2 days as you call them) show the same monotonic increase in co2 over time that the Mauna Loa shows. Does this really help your case? Those wild points just look like spurious noise on the data to me. The general trend is all the same.

Jim

[grmorton]

But Glenn, each of the plots you post that have wild points (bad co2 days as you call them) show the same monotonic increase in co2 over time that the Mauna Loa shows. Does this really help your case? Those wild points just look like spurious noise on the data to me. The general trend is all the same.

Jim

Jim, I have never said that CO2 wasn't increasing in the atmosphere. The question is, is what part is due to man, what part due to outgassing from the oceans as they warm in the post Little Ice Age presentation.

Secondly, the Keeling Curve flat out is simply too artificial to be believed. Are we really to believe that those guys on Mauna Loa are so much better than anywhere else on the planet, or are so incredibly prescient that they know precisely how to edit their data to rule out bad values? Come on, Jim, surely you don't believe that?

My point with the artificiality of the Keeling Curve is to point out that possibly there is confirmational bias going on in the minds of the Mauna Loa crew. They know that CO2 should go up and down in the Northern Hemisphere so they make it wiggle, with almost precise yearly wiggles. This is part of the problem with global warming. Everyone KNOWS it is true and they look ONLY for evidence that it is happening according to theory.

So, Jim, if the lack of spurious points on the Keeling Curve is not to be ascribed to the reasons I do, what precisely accounts for the lack of bad data on the Keeling Curve?

I can only think of the things I have listed

Much better equipment than anyone else on the planet

An almost preternatural ability to sniff out when the CO2 belching volcano is belching their way, with an equal preternatural ability to know precisely what and how much it is belching

These guys are rigging the deck so that no one sees the bad quality of CO2 measured on a volcano.

Yes, it boils down to trust. Climatologists put thermometers next to heat sources and come up with geometrically perfect rises and falls of CO2 in the atmosphere. I don't trust either. I trust the South Pole, Aleut and NZ data. It looks real.

[Augustine2004]

It is the AGW methodology. Why do you think all their scare charts start around 1880? Why do you think all measurements of CO2 start in 1958, as if no one had ever measured CO2 in the atmosphere prior to 1958? Problem is prior measurements don't fit their preconceived reality One of the really interesting things to me about the keeling curve of CO2 is that it is so geometrically synthetic that it appears made up. It is too good to be true, especially given where it is measured, on top of a CO2 belching volcano. And it doesn't match the measurements of atmospheric CO2 made in other parts of the Pacific or the South Pole. Note that the other stations have really bad CO2 days, but never, ever the oh-so-too-perfect Keeling Curve

The comments that you put on the curves, 'Note the uncertainty . . .'--unless you're referring to the enormous spikes, I don't see any error bars.

[grmorton]

The comments that you put on the curves, 'Note the uncertainty . . .'--unless you're referring to the enormous spikes, I don't see any error bars.

Precisely! Isn't it interesting that science is supposed to require error bars on all measurements, yet, everything these guys put out in public have no error bars. I just spent a couple of hours running numbers using the following stations:


Mauna Loa,Christmas Island, Kumukahi, Barrow AK, Kermadec
La Jolla CA, South Pole, Baringhead NZ, Alert NWT, Samoa

I compiled all the measurements into chronological order, then I calculated average and standard deviation for all the measurements over 6 month time spans. The picture below shows the results.

As I pointed out to Jim, I am not denying that CO2 has risen. A warming ocean will do that by thermodynamic necessity. One can see that the 95% confidence interval is much larger than all the AGW folks ever publish. Indeed, their lack of publishing standard deviation is one of the hallmarks of their propagandistic nature.

The reason they don't publish error bars is that they are often quite large but they don't want us poor unwashed to notice that.

[Augustine2004]

I believe 95% confidence means we can be at least 95% confident the measurements are inside the error bars.

[roadwalker]

When glaciers melt it is true that there is water on the bottom. However that is because any water that appears on top if it is melted by the sun flows just as it would on earth and finds cracks in the ice and crevasses so that the liquid water ends up on the bottom.

The idea that currents are melting icecaps like that in Greenland is ludicrous since the ice caps are on land. Even though in some cases their weight has depressed the land under their CENTERS below sea level, they all are above sea level around the EDGES leading down to the sea. Greenland in particular sits behind a ring of mountains and hills that goes around most of the island. So, there is no physical way that an ocean current could be undermining the Greenland ice cap.

[oxmixmudd]

Precisely! Isn't it interesting that science is supposed to require error bars on all measurements, yet, everything these guys put out in public have no error bars. I just spent a couple of hours running numbers using the following stations:


Mauna Loa,Christmas Island, Kumukahi, Barrow AK, Kermadec
La Jolla CA, South Pole, Baringhead NZ, Alert NWT, Samoa

I compiled all the measurements into chronological order, then I calculated average and standard deviation for all the measurements over 6 month time spans. The picture below shows the results.

As I pointed out to Jim, I am not denying that CO2 has risen. A warming ocean will do that by thermodynamic necessity. One can see that the 95% confidence interval is much larger than all the AGW folks ever publish. Indeed, their lack of publishing standard deviation is one of the hallmarks of their propagandistic nature.

The reason they don't publish error bars is that they are often quite large but they don't want us poor unwashed to notice that.

Glenn, it is my understanding and experience that when using raw data it is important to understand what data represents potential 'wild point' data. Wild points can drastically skew the results and have to be edited to generate a realistic result. An example would be some of the work I did at NASA. We had real-time tracking data used to make life and death descisions about when to blow up an errant missile. noise spikes, electrical glitches would randomly (and more frequently than you would think) introduce fantastic and completely impossible data into the solution that could have a long term and incorrect impact on the running solution. If we didn't edit out in real time obviously bogus data, many tests would have been unnecessarily terminated - with in some cases lethal consequences.

The raw data you use is flagged with an asterisk when the result is questionable. And many of the samples actually use two flasks checked at the same time - clearly to help identify such wild points. While they don't explicitly list their criteria for 'good data', I think it unfair that you've plotted and evaluated the validity of the data using all the data points, including those data points deemed questionable. I think it reasonable to assume they know when the measuring conditions or the state of the flask itself is likely to have skewed the data erroneously. Further, all the major excursions in the data in your plot that I checked are flagged 'questionable'.

As for the questions you ask about how do we determine the anthropogenic component of the CO2 rise, your issues with thermometer placement etc, I agree they represent problems. I too am skeptical of the almost religious fervor with which the AGW community pushes its concepts, and the apparent use of climate data by political pundits to push what amounts to in many cases the removal of constitutionally provided freedoms. But I'm not sure this data supports that skepticism. It does show a rise in CO2. And these curves as best I can tell match the Mauna Loa data. My guess is the smoothed Mauna Loa data represents the best data with apparent wild points removed. Clearly I don't really know what the difference is between the Mauna Loa plot you have and the other plots. But clearly the other data is not so edited, yet even without the editing the general trend matches, and the spiky nature of the data outside the trend points to random excursions, not noise on the data that would seriously call into question the trend itself.


Jim

(I know - I am a pain in the posterier)

[shadowmaster]

Glenn, it is my understanding and experience that when using raw data it is important to understand what data represents potential 'wild point' data. Wild points can drastically skew the results and have to be edited to generate a realistic result. An example would be some of the work I did at NASA. We had real-time tracking data used to make life and death descisions about when to blow up an errant missile. noise spikes, electrical glitches would randomly (and more frequently than you would think) introduce fantastic and completely impossible data into the solution that could have a long term and incorrect impact on the running solution. If we didn't edit out in real time obviously bogus data, many tests would have been unnecessarily terminated - with in some cases lethal consequences.

The raw data you use is flagged with an asterisk when the result is questionable. And many of the samples actually use two flasks checked at the same time - clearly to help identify such wild points. While they don't explicitly list their criteria for 'good data', I think it unfair that you've plotted and evaluated the validity of the data using all the data points, including those data points deemed questionable. I think it reasonable to assume they know when the measuring conditions or the state of the flask itself is likely to have skewed the data erroneously. Further, all the major excursions in the data in your plot that I checked are flagged 'questionable'.

As for the questions you ask about how do we determine the anthropogenic component of the CO2 rise, your issues with thermometer placement etc, I agree they represent problems. I too am skeptical of the almost religious fervor with which the AGW community pushes its concepts, and the apparent use of climate data by political pundits to push what amounts to in many cases the removal of constitutionally provided freedoms. But I'm not sure this data supports that skepticism. It does show a rise in CO2. And these curves as best I can tell match the Mauna Loa data. My guess is the smoothed Mauna Loa data represents the best data with apparent wild points removed. Clearly I don't really know what the difference is between the Mauna Loa plot you have and the other plots. But clearly the other data is not so edited, yet even without the editing the general trend matches, and the spiky nature of the data outside the trend points to random excursions, not noise on the data that would seriously call into question the trend itself.


Jim

(I know - I am a pain in the posterier)

Nevertheless, the rise in CO2 is mostly in the last 50 years.
However, the rising temperatures have been going on for at least 100 years.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globa...trumental.html
Is it honest to keep harping on only the least 50 to support the CO2 story?

SM

[grmorton]

I believe 95% confidence means we can be at least 95% confident the measurements are inside the error bars.

Yep

[grmorton]

Glenn, it is my understanding and experience that when using raw data it is important to understand what data represents potential 'wild point' data. Wild points can drastically skew the results and have to be edited to generate a realistic result. An example would be some of the work I did at NASA. We had real-time tracking data used to make life and death descisions about when to blow up an errant missile. noise spikes, electrical glitches would randomly (and more frequently than you would think) introduce fantastic and completely impossible data into the solution that could have a long term and incorrect impact on the running solution. If we didn't edit out in real time obviously bogus data, many tests would have been unnecessarily terminated - with in some cases lethal consequences.

The raw data you use is flagged with an asterisk when the result is questionable. And many of the samples actually use two flasks checked at the same time - clearly to help identify such wild points. While they don't explicitly list their criteria for 'good data', I think it unfair that you've plotted and evaluated the validity of the data using all the data points, including those data points deemed questionable. I think it reasonable to assume they know when the measuring conditions or the state of the flask itself is likely to have skewed the data erroneously. Further, all the major excursions in the data in your plot that I checked are flagged 'questionable'.

As for the questions you ask about how do we determine the anthropogenic component of the CO2 rise, your issues with thermometer placement etc, I agree they represent problems. I too am skeptical of the almost religious fervor with which the AGW community pushes its concepts, and the apparent use of climate data by political pundits to push what amounts to in many cases the removal of constitutionally provided freedoms. But I'm not sure this data supports that skepticism. It does show a rise in CO2. And these curves as best I can tell match the Mauna Loa data. My guess is the smoothed Mauna Loa data represents the best data with apparent wild points removed. Clearly I don't really know what the difference is between the Mauna Loa plot you have and the other plots. But clearly the other data is not so edited, yet even without the editing the general trend matches, and the spiky nature of the data outside the trend points to random excursions, not noise on the data that would seriously call into question the trend itself.


Jim

(I know - I am a pain in the posterier)

Sure it is flagged questionable. It is still a measurement. But why is it flagged questionable? Because it violates their expectations, not because they know what they did wrong during the measurement. I point this out to simply note that when expectations of what one should measure become the measure of what should be ignored, one has left science and gone into religion. One dare not make one's expectations become what data one will accept.

Below is the picture of Christmas Island. Note that the 'bad values' come along in clusters. They are NOT randomly distributed.

Also, what is one to do with 1990.66667? Both flasks measure the same BAD value? Why should that be thrown out Jim--mere expectations? 1990.654472 has two flasks showing different values, but both are far from the average and both are high values. Indeed, every asterisked measurement in the list below is more than 2 sd away from the 1990 2nd half average. Those with additional arrows are more than 3 sd away. yet they were repeatable on day 1990.666667

Reality 1. Their measurements include very different values. Some of those 'bad' values come in clusters and recur during several successive measurements. When you look at the numbers below, remember that the 1990 averages of measurements were 356 ppm for the first part of the year and 354 for the 2nd half of 1990. Note how far off that mark most these values are.

1990.576423 355.75
1990.576423 368.25
1990.593496 368.27
1990.593496 385.52*
1990.654472 447.61 * <---
1990.654472 375
1990.660163 447.61*<---
1990.660163 354.23
1990.666667 447.63*<--
1990.666667 447.63*<--
1990.672358 377.47*
1990.672358 369.77

Are they ALL bad values?

Should these values be thrown out because they don't fit the concept in the mind of the researchers? Is that what science is to become? I fear that is precisely what happens with AGW.

edited to add: Jim, why do you think the AGW crowd only publishes in the press the oh-too-perfect-to-be-believed Keeling Curve from Mauna Loa? Why do you never see in their propaganda, touted as a danger, the data from Christmas Island ? Do you think people might think that the data is far too noisy? They don't publish Christmas Is. or other data sets just like it because they want to give a false sense of accuracy to the public. AGW is politics, not science.

[oxmixmudd]

Nevertheless, the rise in CO2 is mostly in the last 50 years.
However, the rising temperatures have been going on for at least 100 years.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globa...trumental.html
Is it honest to keep harping on only the least 50 to support the CO2 story?

SM

If there is a reason the last 50 years is significant - yes. Is not the point they make that the amount of CO2 humans have contributed to the environment has been rising at an almost exponential rate, where the last 50 years become the time frame in which that contribution becomes significant relative to (recent) historical norms?

Is the issue not that we know based on how many cars and factories there are in the world and how much fossil fuel is being consumed how much CO2 we are contributing, and that the majority of the rise we are measuring is defined by that value?

(This is, of course, independent of how much that rise in CO2 is contributing to the measured warming, or if the measured warming fully or only partially represents a real temperature trend)


Jim

[shadowmaster]

If there is a reason the last 50 years is significant - yes. Is not the point they make that the amount of CO2 humans have contributed to the environment has been rising at an almost exponential rate, where the last 50 years become the time frame in which that contribution becomes significant relative to (recent) historical norms?

Is the issue not that we know based on how many cars and factories there are in the world and how much fossil fuel is being consumed how much CO2 we are contributing, and that the majority of the rise we are measuring is defined by that value?

(This is, of course, independent of how much that rise in CO2 is contributing to the measured warming, or if the measured warming fully or only partially represents a real temperature trend)


Jim

I do not understand your point.
The AGW is supposedly caused by the rise in CO2.
Just having a rise in CO2 is not significant in itself.
If it is not causing global warming, then I can see nothing but good coming from increased CO2 levels.
It is peanuts to begin with and the plants really love what little there is.

What is your point?

sm