General Climate Discussion

[MORAY37]

FOR LASZ

BBC contrarian top 10
Filed under: Reporting on climate Climate Science¡ª gavin @ 2:07 PM
There is an interesting, if predictable, piece up on the BBC website devoted to investigating whether there is any 'consensus' among the various contrarians on why climate change isn't happening (or if it is, it isn't caused by human activity or if it is why it won't be important, or if it is important, why nothing can be done etc.). Bottom line? The only thing they appear to agree about is that nothing should be done, but they have a multitude of conflicting reasons why. Hmm¡_

The journalist, Richard Black, put together a top 10 list of sceptic arguments he gathered from emailing the 61 signers of a Canadian letter. While these aren't any different in substance to the ones routinely debunked here (and here and here), this list comes with the imprimatur of Fred Singer - the godfather to the sceptic movement, and recent convert from the view that it's been cooling since 1940 to the idea that global warming is now unstoppable. Thus these are the arguments (supposedly) that are the best that the contrarians have to put forward.

Alongside each of these talking points, is a counter-point from the mainstream (full disclosure, I helped Richard edit some of those). In truth though, I was a little disappointed at how lame their 'top 10¡ä arguments were. In order, they are: false, a cherry pick, a red herring, false, false, false, a red herring, a red herring, false and a strawman. They even used the 'grapes grew in medieval England' meme that you'd think they'd have abandoned already given that more grapes are grown in England now than ever before (see here). Another commonplace untruth is the claim that water vapour is '98% of the greenhouse effect' - it's just not.

So why do the contrarians still use arguments that are blatantly false? I think the most obvious reason is that they are simply not interested (as a whole) in providing a coherent counter story. If science has one overriding principle, it is that you should adjust your thinking in the light of new information and discoveries - the contrarians continued use of old, tired and discredited arguments demonstrates their divorce from the scientific process more clearly than any densely argued rebuttal.

[AKH]

You beat me to it Moray

I'll just post the link then My model used for deception

[Holden McGroin]

Originally posted by MORAY37
So why do the contrarians still use arguments that are blatantly false?

Probably why GW supporters continue to site the discredited Mann Hockeystick graph as gospel.

[MORAY37]

Link to debunking

[AKH]

Originally posted by Holden McGroin
Probably why GW supporters continue to site the discredited Mann Hockeystick graph as gospel.

The claims of McIntyre and McKitrick, which hold that the "Hockey-Stick" shape of the MBH98 reconstruction is an artifact of the use of series with infilled data and the convention by which certain networks of proxy data were represented in a Principal Components Analysis ("PCA"), are readily seen to be false , as detailed in a response by Mann and colleagues to their rejected Nature criticism demonstrating that (1) the Mann et al (1998) reconstruction is robust with respect to the elimination of any data that were infilled in the original analysis, (2) the main features of the Mann et al (1998) reconstruction are entirely insensitive to whether or not proxy data networks are represented by PCA, (3) the putative ‘correction’ by McIntyre and McKitrick, which argues for anomalous 15th century warmth (in contradiction to all other known reconstructions), is an artifact of the censoring by the authors of key proxy data in the original Mann et al (1998) dataset, and finally, (4) Unlike the original Mann et al (1998) reconstruction, the so-called ‘correction’ by McIntyre and McKitrick fails statistical verification exercises, rendering it statistically meaningless and unworthy of discussion in the legitimate scientific literature.

False Claims by McIntyre and McKitrick regarding the Mann et al. (1998) reconstruction

[MORAY37]

LAZS..spend a day or more on this site... it's just a bit more unbiased than yours... though some of the perceived bias you'll talk about comes from real scientists that back their OWN WORK.

Real Climate

[MORAY37]

Solar Surface Rad VS Global Surface Temp


I find it telling to watch solar RAD fall away from the Global Temp....Sure is the sun, stupid.

These are GISS numbers...doesn't get any better than that

[Angus]

Moray, PLEASE STOP POSTING SO MANY LINKS; I've got some catching up to do before I have enough learning speed

Just kidding. Thank you so very much for your links. And this:

" If science has one overriding principle, it is that you should adjust your thinking in the light of new information and discoveries "

ESPECIALLY !

[AKIron]

Originally posted by MORAY37
Solar Surface Rad VS Global Surface Temp


I find it telling to watch solar RAD fall away from the Global Temp....Sure is the sun, stupid.

These are GISS numbers...doesn't get any better than that

You should realize that the article you just referenced does not imply there is less solar radiation, only that less is received at the surface as explained by the "dimming". If anything this would seem to contradict the concept of the greenhouse effect being the cause for warming.

[MORAY37]

Originally posted by AKIron
You should realize that the article you just referenced does not imply there is less solar radiation, only that less is received at the surface as explained by the "dimming". If anything this would seem to contradict the concept of the greenhouse effect being the cause for warming.

LOL  you should realize that that dimming occurs in the higher levels of the atmosphere..specifically the stratosphere, and that CO2 concentrations are firmly rooted in the troposphere...and this graph proves it spectacularly.

If the sun is getting dimmed... (solar RADS down)  and the Temp is GOING UP...  Do the math AK and listen to your squadmate(?)

[AKIron]

Originally posted by MORAY37
LOL  you should realize that that dimming occurs in the higher levels of the atmosphere..specifically the stratosphere, and that CO2 concentrations are firmly rooted in the troposphere...and this graph proves it spectacularly.

If the sun is getting dimmed... (solar RADS down)  and the Temp is GOING UP...  Do the math AK and listen to your squadmate(?)

Are you a proponent of the greenhouse effect being the cause of global warming? You do understand what the greenhouse effect is right?

Just in case, here's a quick refresher:http://epa.gov/climatechange/kids/greenhouse.html

[AKIron]

A dimmer sun in this case does not mean it's output is lessened, only that less makes it to the surface. An increased output of the sun with a corresponding increase in the earth's temperature with warmer air holding more moisture could easily explain both dimming and the increase in temp. "It's the sun stupid" is not so easily explained away.

[Holden McGroin]

Here ya go AKH

National Academy of Sciences, June 22, 2006, Based on the analyses presented in the original papers by Mann et al. and this newer supporting evidence, the committee finds it plausible that the Northern Hemisphere was warmer during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period over the preceding millennium. The substantial uncertainties currently present in the quantitative assessment of large-scale surface temperature changes prior to about A.D. 1600 lower our confidence in this conclusion compared to the high level of confidence we place in the Little Ice Age cooling and 20th century warming. Even less confidence can be placed in the original conclusions by Mann et al. (1999) that "the 1990s are likely the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, in at least a millennium" because the uncertainties inherent in temperature reconstructions for individual years and decades are larger than those for longer time periods, and because not all of the available proxies record temperature information on such short timescales."    

So there is some backup against holding the Mann Hockeystick as gospel.

[MORAY37]

Originally posted by AKIron
A dimmer sun in this case does not mean it's output is lessened, only that less makes it to the surface. An increased output of the sun with a corresponding increase in the earth's temperature with warmer air holding more moisture could easily explain both dimming and the increase in temp. "It's the sun stupid" is not so easily explained away.

AK... let me explain this to you in another way...

LESS RADS making it to the surface layers.  Troposphere.  
Sun is being dimmed in the stratosphere.
Troposphere temp.. going UP with LESS ENERGY GETTING TO IT.

My god man... try and keep up.

[AKIron]

Moray, your graph is hardly the final authority and conclusions based upon it perhaps even less so. I do like this from that article:

"The cautionary note global dimming and
brightening sounds for climate change scientists
is not a new one; rather it strikingly vindicates
the two rules of climate change set out
by Peter Wright 30 years ago [Wright, 1971].
The first rule states that some feature of the
atmosphere can always be found that will
oscillate in accordance with your hypothesis;
the second states that shortly after its discovery,
the oscillation will disappear."