Global Warming Critics Made Calculation Errors

poor patrick michaels... maybe he can hang out with lee raymond, they can sit on the proch and relish the glory days... while we can finally get things in gear. wouldn't that be nice?

Calculation errors? I'm frankly shocked...just shocked. Was there no peer review? New Reality Show coming: Climate Eye for the Non-Peer Guy. You already know the actors and the parts.

All of this assumes that 20 years' worth of data can be a predictor of complex atmospheric behavioral with cycles that span millennia, not decades.

The concluding remark by paper author Steven Sherwood ("Nobody is debating any more that significant climate changes are coming") is misleading at best. Plenty of people debate the fact of climate change; still more grant the fact, but debate the cause of that change.

From the 10th to the 14th centuries, temperatures were 1 to 3 degrees higher than they are now (whether or not that was a global phenomneon is still open to debate.)..followed up by the "Little Ice Age" from about 1300-1900. All of that happened in the absence of significant human impact on the atmosphere.

It is prudence that should inform the technological and economic changes required to live more lightly on the planet, not "science." I use quotes because what passes for science on either side of this debate at the policy-making level is alarmist at best, and fraudulent at worst.

We are seeking answers to questions for which we simply so not have sufficient data. Trying to then claim a political imperative based on conclusions drawn from this flawed and incomplete data and then presented as fact is actually counterproductive to any green goal, because it provides opponents to change with so much ammunition against change that inaction is inevitable.

This is, at its core, a philosophical issue. Science has become a schismatic religion, which issues regular pronouncements with near-clerical authority. Using the authority of science in this way will never sway the electorate, which instinctively recognizes the authoritarian nature hiding beneath the "scientific" trappings. It's why Bill Clinton--consummate politican that he is--never submitted the Kyoto treaty to Congress for ratification, and why the Byrd-Hagel Resolution passed.

What is needed is, I think, exactly what is often found on this blog: incremental technological improvements that introduce the ideas of environmental stewardship to the populace by harnessing the forces of the marketplace and making them work to the Earth's advantage.

Prepare the way.

Great closing statement Ian. Who would disagree with such a pragmatic idea? Separately, while I look for no debate, I do wish to point out something for your consideration. CLimate is the average of all weather at one time, not just all around the globe at the earth's surface, but also including the upper atmosphere. The Little Ice Age referred to was a regional to continental weather pattern, and should not be supposed to reflect global climate on its own. Much work has been done to explain the Little Ice Age anomaly. Citing a single exception to disprove the long term trend does not fly with "plenty of people".

Saying, as you seem to (correct me if I misread the comment), that published scientists "at worst" used 'fraudulent' tactics to push their points of view sounds like a "framing" technique. Can you cite any legal charges brought thus far against IPCC scientists or letters to scientific journals which corroborate that inference?

Here's hoping that the debate stays lively while progress continues.

Well, I wasn't really trying to disprove the long term trend all by my lonesome...I was just pointing out that the "trend" is far from established.

In terms of fraud, I was thinking of Michael Mann's "hockey stick" temperature graph, where Mr. Mann claimed to be using principal component analysis to find the dominant features in a set climate records, but turned out to be using an anlysis program that didn't do proper PCA and which produced results that were highly questionable...or should have been. [McKittrick & McIntyre, Energy and Environment 2003, who cited "collation errors, unjustified truncation or extrapolation of source data, obsolete data, geographical location errors, incorrect calculation of principal components and other quality control defects"]. Nothing "legal" mind you...

I was also thinking of any one of a number of dubious counter-warming studies produced by oil-company funded research projects.

At the moment, I'm reading They Shall Have Stars, a sci-fi novella written by James Blish in 1957. A character in it has a bit of dialogue that was so appropriate it gave me the synchronicity heebie-jeebies. Check it out:

"Remember, Bliss, that scientific method is not natural law. It doesn't exist in nature, but only in our heads; in short, it's a way of thinking about things--a way of sifting evidence. It was bound to become obsolescent sooner or later, just as sorites and syllogisms became obsolete before it. Scientific method works fine while there are thousands of obvious facts lying about for the taking--facts as obvious and measureable as how a stone falls, or what the order of colors is in a rainbow. But the more subtle the facts to be discovered become--the more they retreat into the realms of the invisble, the intangible, the unweighable, the submicroscopic, the abstract--the more expensive and timeconsuming it is to investigate them by the scientific method."

His point was that when science reaches a point where the only research worth doing costs millions of dollars per experiment then the experiments can only be paid for by the government, which results in inefficiency, substandard science, and stagnation. And I would add "foundations," "think-tanks," and "scientific consortiums" to that list...anywhere money concentrates with for sole purpose of producing "scientific research," results get tainted, truth flees, and politics intrude.

Man, that was long-winded...

..lomg winded but worth it! i remeber the head of noaa once telling me that he can't be trusted because he has an agenda as well-- wouldn't say what it was, but it seemed pretty clear it was to get next years funding for even faster GCMs.

...but you can't really say we don't have suffcient data.. if climate modelers incorporated the data from geochronologists, paleoclimatologist.. as well as incorporating other system models (like oceans) they have an abundance of information ...its just that, if that info goes against one's present ideas (or ideals) or can threaten one's subventions or peer standing.. no one wants to lean over the ledge (even those scientists who truley are seeking the "truth").

I also do disagree with you Ian, that we have all the time in the world for incremental change... that may be the case, but may not, and when it comes to climate change and adaptation, the experts say that it usualy takes 50 years to adapt.. which is fine if all the global warming camps agreed that we're in a slow heat-up but they dont ...and we don't wanna be chicken littles, but the cooling camp's problem (which even the latests GCMs support, and has more empirical proof these days than any other warming hypothesis)is that those changes take place in human time, a decade, less than a decade... and no one want to bring that up, but face it, if that happens, we have to have adapted at a much faster pace faster than comfy incremental change will allow.