.

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

How Professor Michael Mann started a climate movement - by email...if only we could find it...

Sou | 10:28 PM Go to the first of 36 comments. Add a comment

Anthony Watts has just discovered something that happened more than four months ago (archived here). There was an amicus brief filed by the Reporters' Committee in the Virginia emails case.  The Reporters' Committee want the court to narrow a definition.  A quick scan suggests they aren't necessarily wanting access to Michael Mann's personal emails, they are just concerned that the decision was worded in a way that may have implications for future FOIA requests and their "freedom" to delve into other people's emails.


The secret email winging its way to the climate movement!



The edifice of science crumbles under an email...eh what?


Anyway, no point in my speculating about that case.  It'll run its course soon enough. What got me was the fact that deniers at WUWT still seem to think that two hundred years of climate science is going to come undone because of one person's emails stored on a server somewhere between nine and fifteen years ago.  Do they honestly think that there is only one climate scientist in the world?  Do they seriously think that the whole edifice of earth, ocean and atmospheric science - paleoclimatology, geology, atmospheric physics, ocean chemistry, ecology, biology, cloud microphysics and the multitude of knowledge accumulated since the early nineteenth century is going to be turned on its head by some right wing lobby group getting access to a bunch of old emails?

Let's see.  Here are some comments.


The climate "movement" ...eh what?


First a ponderous pronouncement from Anthony Watts:
IMHO, the Mann’s days are numbered as a hero of the climate movement.

In those few words, Anthony Watts has both created a "hero" and tried to cut him down. He's also created a "movement".  I don't know what sort of weird lies between those ears - but really - now a study of earth sciences is a "movement"?  WTF!

Thing is, it's deniers who made Michael Mann a "hero" or perhaps their anti-hero.   They protested the temperature of the past and the present.  They couldn't accept that humans have changed the climate and we're still doing it, with a vengeance.  Oddly, most of them don't realise that there is more and more evidence by lots of quite independent teams of scientists that have refined and supported the findings of that early reconstruction.

In fact greenhouse effect denier and Anthony fanboi, dbstealey, takes all the credit on behalf of Anthony and WUWT and says:
March 17, 2014 at 8:21 pm
Anthony and WUWT have a lot to do with this.
If relentless pressure was not kept up, Mann might have skated…
Kudos to Anthony and all the contributors who helped bring this about.
Everyone deserves credit. With sunshine, the truth will emerge.

Nick Adams lives a very boring dull life and can't comprehend anyone standing up for a principle. He trots out "a trojan horse" like all those despicable people who try to justify an unjustifiable invasion of privacy and says:
March 17, 2014 at 8:01 pm
A man with nothing to hide never tries this hard to hide it.


myrightpenguin is one who has woken up to the fact that Professor Mann isn't the only climate scientist in the world and says he's already fingered the next target for deniers.  What he doesn't seem to realise is just how much science is lined up.  You can guess who that is, most probably, because it was the Number One most protested paper last year.  myrightpenguin is nevertheless deluded:
March 18, 2014 at 12:09 am
Mann may be disposable because of a series of papers inc. Marcott et al., so even if he is thrown under the bus the alarmists and MSM may still say there is a hockey stick regardless. There needs to be readiness for this, including education regarding the issue of splicing datasets with completely different resolutions, something that wouldn’t stand a chance of getting past peer review in scientific fields uncorrupted by special interests.


When deniers have nothing else to offer they unimaginatively call on Nazis. True to form, nicholas tesdorf says:
March 17, 2014 at 9:52 pm
Could this trial turn out to be the Warmistas’ Stalingrad. Before Stalingrad, the Nazis never had a defeat: after Stalingrad, they never had a victory.


Oh, and you'll enjoy this one.  Out of 220,000 stolen emails the deniers found.....nothing!  Anthony loses his cool with dp when he says:
March 17, 2014 at 11:30 pm
Climategate III is mute because nobody with the password has a pair, to draw a phrase from the current post. Too bad it wasn’t given to me as if that had happened the world would have it now. That is an advantage granted those of us who have no expectation of seeing another birthday. Never misunderestimate the fearlessness of motivated senior citizens. There are some jobs nobody else can get done.
REPLY: Hey, “dp” you can have the right to complain about “nobody with the password has a pair” here when you put your own name to your words. Otherwise kindly STFU. Basically there’s nothing new in CG III that hadn’t already been covered in CGI/II. Megabytes of mundane stuff, much like NSA flypaper. The important stuff has been extracted. Dumping the whole file on the net won’t help anybody. Tough noogies if you don’t like the situation but that’s the reality. – Anthony


I'll leave you with the unholy reverend from the Cornwall Alliance, as richardscourtney makes a now-rare appearance at WUWT.  Just some excerpts, you can read the godless mess here:

the ‘war’ to stop the AGW-scare ... WW2...H1tler never had a defeat before the battle of El Alamein...Montgomery won the Second Battle of El Alamein...defend against the AGW scare...Battle of Stalingrad...advance of H1tler’s forces...military might of the Naz1s...AGW-scare...the ‘Kursk’ of the AGW-scare: the ‘bunker’ of the CRU at UEA...etc etc

It's time to visit Alice's Restaurant again, isn't it :)


I mean, if three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. They may think it's an organization. ... And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. And friends they may think it's a 



...wait for it....



they may think it's a movement.




.

36 comments:

  1. I hate Cornwall Nazi analagists! Their only use is for confirmation of Godwin's Law. Thankfully, WUWT commenters seem to have moved beyond the "another nail in the AGW coffin" cliche. Now if only they could mature and move on from the Nazi cliche. Small steps!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Irreverent Richard is such a squib, too. He's scared his comment will go into moderation at WUWT (of all places) if he wrote the words "hitler" and "nazi" with their proper spelling. Goodness knows why.

      Delete
  2. I do like Anthony's response to dp, who indicates he has less than a year to live. He comes across as such a thoroughly nice chap.

    Is there a Bloggie category for the most ranting, swearing at a termannaly ill poster category?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Don't feel sorry for dp. He's a very nasty piece of work if he's the same dp who posted a series of ugly racist, sexist vitriolic comments here at HW (deleted and banned).

      Delete
  3. Are these the same mails Michael Mann may have to show in the court case for defamation Mann started again climate ostrich Steyn? Then it looks like Michael Mann does no fear showing these mails and was standing up for the freedom of research when he objected to the FOIA case.

    And then it looks as if Steyn does not believe there is anything in these mails because Steyn tried to stop be court case with procedural objections. If he were interested in the mails, he would have been happy with a court case.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Victor this is a different matter. The perennial email chasers and time and money wasters, the ATI, who've changed their name but not their nature, are trying to get emails from the University of Virginia. Actually, I think they just want to shut down scientific research in the USA.

      There's a link above. Below is a link to some commentary on the matter:

      http://www.cjr.org/the_observatory/michael_mann_versus_the_press.php?page=all

      Delete
    2. Strange in every way.

      The case for mitigation is complete. Shutting down research will only make it harder to fill in the details, to improve the ability to make regional projections and to study changes in extreme weather. This is important for adaptation, which even climate ostriches are typically not against. I guess we should forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.

      It is about time that the USA puts the freedom of research in the constitution.

      Delete
  4. "Climategate III is mute because nobody with the password has a pair".

    Well hang on Anthony. Doesn't that indicate you have insider knowledge of criminal activity?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Deniers can't even get their history right:
    "Could this trial turn out to be the Warmistas’ Stalingrad. Before Stalingrad, the Nazis never had a defeat: after Stalingrad, they never had a victory."

    Wasn't the Battle Of Britain a defeat for the Nazis?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. To be nitpicking : judging the outcome of a battle can be tricky when one side is not crushed. Luftwaffe did not win the battle of Britain - and that's all what the British wanted to stay alive ; but it was not broken during this battle, and was able to crush Soviet resistance one year later. The real defeat of Luftwaffe would come later, in early 1944, when Brits and Americans deliberatly targeted the german fighters and destroyed them.

      But I concede this is quite OT to the main Godwin point :]

      Bratisla

      Delete
    2. Actually the Nazis did lose one of the most important battles of the war shortly before Stalingrad - it was the Second Battle of El Alamein.

      It can be argued the Nazis lost on the north and centre of the Russian front by late autumn 1941, too, though centre front advanced again mightily by 1942.

      Although El Alamein II (effectively losing the Mediterranean) and Stalingrad were decisors, the Nazis did win lesser battles after the latter. E.g. Kharkviv (east of Ukraine) was temporarily retaken in Feb/March 1943.

      Delete
  6. In VA, far more relevant data would be emails, memos, etc among Ken Cuccinelli, Wesley Russell, and whoever fed them the paleoclimate info and nonsense for their claims against U VA and Mann, which wasted $100Ks of public money and got repeatedly squashed by judge ... after great chortlings by the usuals about what would happen. One cannot know, but that may well have helped Cuccinelli loose the VA Gov election.

    BTW, his former law partner was Ed Wegman's lawyer :-)

    ReplyDelete
  7. "Do they seriously think that the whole edifice of earth, ocean and atmospheric science - paleoclimatology, geology, atmospheric physics, ocean chemistry, ecology, biology, cloud microphysics and the multitude of knowledge accumulated since the early nineteenth century is going to be turned on its head by some right wing lobby group getting access to a bunch of old emails?"

    Yes. Because if they can prove some tiny part wrong that's vindfication of their assumption that it's all a lie. Fundy brains work like that. :)

    ReplyDelete
  8. Deniers are an obsessive lot. The hockey stick now consists of a hockey team, yet they are still trying to bring Mann down. Time to move on to a new obsession. But most deniers don't even get the real significance of the hockey stick. It's not that the MWP is cooler than the current current climate, which is always the main focus for deniers, it's the rate of rise over the 20th and 21st centuries (the blade), which is unprecedented over the last 10,000 years, and beyond any normal natural variation that is important. Also it's not even the main evidence for AGW. Even if the hockey stick didn't exist, there is still plenty of other evidence that supports AGW. It's through the process of 'fingerprinting' that AGW is shown to exist, but for some reason deniers never seem to get this. They instead spend all their time attacking a small and insignificant piece of the puzzle. Strange really!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Dave

      it's the rate of rise over the 20th and 21st centuries (the blade), which is unprecedented over the last 10,000 years, and beyond any normal natural variation that is important.

      One has to be careful with strong claims like this. While I find it hard to imagine what forcing change during the Holocene could cause a global and synchronous warming equivalent to the C20th, there are no high resolution paleoclimate reconstructions that provide robust support for the claim that modern warming is "unprecedented over the last 10ka". So if you make such a claim arguing with a "sceptic" they might actually behave like a sceptic and challenge it.

      I know Tamino showed that the methodology in Marcott et al. (2013) actually does capture transient warming spikes, but the authors state in the paper that it does not, so you are on tricky ground with a denier over this too. I know because I've been there.

      Since deniers refuse to accept all the rest of physical climatology they won't bow to the logic that there's no obvious physical mechanism that could have caused a modern-equivalent warming during the Holocene and you just end up going round in circles.

      Delete
    2. One thing, BBD, this is not a spike, it is not transient.
      At present it is not even a step. It is just up.

      If arguments are to be tailored for revisionists they should be ad hominem. Logic and facts mean nothing there.
      If Tamino showed a climate detonation like the present would show up in Marcott et al's reconstruction then the author's doubt has no relevance for us.

      Delete
    3. cRR

      One thing, BBD, this is not a spike, it is not transient.

      Of course. But the example Tamino provides is hypothetical: a 0.9C spike and return to baseline conditions over 200y.

      the author's [Marcott et al.] doubt has no relevance for us.

      Try convincing a denier that when they can go to M13 and quote directly:

      The results suggest that at longer periods, more variability is preserved, with essentially no variability preserved at periods shorter than 300 years, ~50% preserved at 1000-year periods, and nearly all of the variability preserved for periods longer than 2000 years (figs. S17 and
      S18).


      That same denier will then dismiss Tamino as dishonest and refuse to explain the flaws in Tamino's analysis despite being reminded that argument from assertion is a logical fallacy. These are deniers, remember ;-)

      All I was saying to Dave is we have to be careful about strong claims.

      Delete
    4. There is no convincing of deniers or revisionists. Conversely they have no arguments for us.
      Climate revisionists will dismiss those who state facts about AGW no matter what, no matter how they are presented, no matter how corroborated they are by evidence - actually revisionism gets worse as evidence piles up. So why care a sh*t about what deniers think at all?

      As to strong claims, too careful puts us smack in the climate revisionist's street. This is happening right now, as the stupid dogma that no singular weather event can be related to climate change is unfortunately tattood in many a professional's brain.

      Delete
    5. This is happening right now, as the stupid dogma that no singular weather event can be related to climate change is unfortunately tattood in many a professional's brain.

      The deniers and contrarians have a field day with strong claims of this sort because there is no current data permitting detailed fractional attribution of particular events to AGW.

      All we can say is that **all** weather events are now influenced by the increasing amount of energy in the climate system and that an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events is considered very likely by climate science. Any pseudosceptic arguing otherwise will have to prove that the weather event in question occurred in isolation from the rest of the Earth's climate system.

      Delete
    6. Some weather phenomena could not have happened without AGW. So we can say more than Trenberth's modification of the law of conservation of energy.

      Whether climate revisionists enjoy field days or none should be no concern of ours. And if it were a concern of mine, I'd deride you for giving them yet again some by actually stating that :)

      Pseudosceptics don't do proofs, at least as we know them. "... will have to prove that the weather event in question occurred in isolation from the rest of the Earth's climate system." - believe me, he will come up with nonsense corroborating that idea.

      There is presently rather a lot of 'warmist's alarmist talk', from Cowtan/Way to Mann with +2K by the year 2036. What it does is feed climate revisionism by the well known Dunning-Kruger effect: more evidence is taken as more evidence to the contrary.

      Did any of those revisionists on Deltoid ever change their mind?

      Delete
    7. And more... http://ecowatch.com/2014/03/18/nasa-earth-warm-20-percent/ .

      Delete
    8. Did any of those revisionists on Deltoid ever change their mind?

      What "mind"?

      ;-)

      Delete
    9. Pseudosceptics don't do proofs

      I do and would appreciate it if we do not also start making random unfounded claims.

      Maybe the European heat wave of 2003 and the Russian heat wave of 2010 are exceptions, but in general single events simply cannot provide enough information in isolation to claim that they are due to climate change. What is wrong with saying that they become more likely due to climate change (if we have proof for that)?

      Attribution studies for the global mean temperature were important and I have no problem with continuing them for other variables and smaller regions. However, I do not think we need formal attribution studies for every phenomenon. For complicated matters such as floods which do not only depend on climate changes such attribution studies are nearly impossible and for very rare events we will have too little observations by definition.

      Because we already know from attribution studies that global warming is man made, I would argue that it is sufficient to be able to show that there is a physical relationship between climate change and the phenomenon of interest. For example in the case of floods, that we know that precipitation and especially strong precipitation is increasing and will continue to do so. It is something of a no-brainer that all other things being equal, more precip means more floods.

      Delete
    10. Pseudosceptics don't do proofs - dare say that is founded quite well. Actually it is almost a definition.

      "What is wrong with saying that they become more likely due to climate change (if we have proof for that)?"
      Nothing. This is what I call 'Trenberth's Law'.
      But the reverse must also be true - a number of phenomena ARE due to climate change. And some phenomena simply could not have happened without it (e.g. Sandy, both track and intensity). Debating this is like debating my saying 'one swallow makes no summer so a billion swallows CERTAINLY make no summer'.

      "I would argue that it is sufficient to be able to show that there is a physical relationship between climate change and the phenomenon of interest."

      No, that is not sufficient. You are suggesting climate change introduces exactly the same phenomena as already happened, except more of them. That is not true - the phenomena themselves, individually, become more extreme. And these extravagant events, whose number increase too, are simply the most important events to watch for. We do not care too much about 30 tropical systems in one west Pacific season 2013; we care for only one or two - Haiyan, and the system that delivered Cambodia the worst floods in its history. What made these two events remarkable, and 100% so, is AGW.

      To summarize, more precip means more floods, true, but it should be emphasized that more precip also means WORSE floods.

      Delete
    11. cRR

      You say in your response to Victor:

      No, that is not sufficient. You are suggesting climate change introduces exactly the same phenomena as already happened, except more of them. That is not true - the phenomena themselves, individually, become more extreme.

      Now I don't think that is what Victor said. I read his comment as endorsing the scientific position that extreme weather events are very likely to become more frequent and more intense as energy continues to accumulate in the climate system, which is, I believe, exactly what you are saying too.

      There's a danger of us all slipping into violent agreement ;-)

      Hopefully Victor will respond too and clarify what may only be misunderstandings rather than fundamental disagreements.

      That said, both Victor and I appear to agree that there is no current means of providing robust fractional attribution to AGW for extreme weather events, so we should be very careful how we talk about this, especially in debate with "sceptics".

      Delete
    12. "... there is no current means of providing robust fractional attribution to AGW for extreme weather events"

      Do you realize that if you believe this, you will have to believe it forever no matter how far out AGW goes? Effectively you are saying that no weather event can be robustly attributed even fractionally to climate (let alone to climate change).
      This is so obviously wrong!

      More frequent, more intense and lesser realized is the occurence of novel events. What we disagree on is the emphasis on what is the most important aspect of climate change. It is not the change of any average, it is not even the increase in extreme events; the important thing of AGW is that more intense (read: extremes never seen even remotely before e.g. Moscow Summer 2010) and novel events e.g. Sandy's track (a direct result of Arctic sea ice decline like an ECMWF model rerun for normal Arctic conditions has shown - that took Sandy on the normal track off to Greenland).

      Delete
    13. Do you realize that if you believe this, you will have to believe it forever no matter how far out AGW goes?

      No, of course I won't. That is a very strange assertion. When the observational data and computational fidelity are sufficient, robust fractional attribution of the influence of AGW on individual weather events will become possible. And scientifically defensible arguments about it will become possible at that point. Not before.

      Effectively you are saying that no weather event can be robustly attributed even fractionally to climate (let alone to climate change).
      This is so obviously wrong!


      No. I am not saying this at all. You have misunderstood all my comments and must re-read them more carefully.

      Your use of novel is problematic - you would need to prove that these events are unprecedented within the entire Holocene and you simply cannot do this.

      Of course I see where you are coming from and of course I agree that the apparent increase in highly unusual weather events is very likely caused by the accumulation of energy within the climate system.

      But I repeat: we have to be very careful how we discuss these things, especially in the presence of "sceptics". Or we will lose arguments.



      Delete
    14. Please, I do not misunderstand your or Venema's comments at all.

      "When the observational data and computational fidelity are sufficient, robust fractional attribution of the influence of AGW on individual weather events will become possible."

      When? Or: how many swallows, BBD?
      What could be the criterium?
      That is the question here!
      Then, you actually answer it: "you would need to prove that these events are unprecedented within the entire Holocene and you simply cannot do this."
      Then when can we do this? Even six hurricanes landfalling as category '6' on Miami in one August month will not be attributable to climate change in this way, because 'we don't know it's unprecedented'.

      If Darwin, Australia saw a foot of snow for a week starting tomorrow I'd conclude 'climate change and caused by it 100%' and I'd be right 100% because we'd KNOW that is unprecedented during the entire holocene. It would be an event that could not have happened without climate climate change.

      "Or we will lose arguments." - we always do, no matter what. Not relevant: we've got reality on our sides.
      "... especially in the presence of "sceptics"" - such presence should be eradicated by snipeverballing and moderation. Arguments play no role whatsoever.

      Delete
    15. No, that is not sufficient. You are suggesting climate change introduces exactly the same phenomena as already happened, except more of them. That is not true - the phenomena themselves, individually, become more extreme.

      One event we have under climate change cannot be compared to the same event without climate change. The weather is completely different. Thus saying the the same event is now more intense is not meaningful.

      One should think in terms of a probability distribution (histogram with the number of events for a certain event size) and how this changes. Then the probability of the "more extreme" events simply increases and we are not talking about something different.

      If there would be an event that is impossible without climate change, than a single event would be sufficient to relate it to climate change. I do not know of such events. If not we unfortunately have to talk a little more abstract about changes in the distribution or an increase in the likelihood of extreme events.

      "Or we will lose arguments." - we always do, no matter what.

      Exactly, whatever we do, they will pervert the truth and make ridiculous claims. Given that, it does not hurt to tell it the way it is and not exaggerate. All you have is your soul. And the consequences of unmitigated climate change is more than scary enough.

      Delete
    16. I always thought in terms of probability distributions and learnt it off, because ordinary statistics have no meaning for forced systems.
      We have to anticipate black swans instead (they are and remain rare, but they are the most important events).

      "If there would be an event that is impossible without climate change, than a single event would be sufficient to relate it to climate change."

      Correct, which is why I mentioned Sandy's unique track.

      Now, I have a hopefully enlightening paradox for you.
      If you believe in distributions on the forced climate system you will have to conclude any parameter going over the normal with 4 standard deviations twice in several years as 100% climate change (like average temp of April 2007 and 2011 in Holland, or like a 'flood of the millenium' every dozen years in Central-Europe) because at least from an assumption of an underlying normal distribution such an event cannot happen otherwise than by forcing.
      Or you will have to dump your statistics, that is your distributions wholesale and are left with events that are ALL 100% climate change.

      The latter is a strictly logical, though indeed very strong statement. Unfortunately we have to look at the hypothesis for it: existing stats have become meaningless. Here's why: http://lindseynicholson.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/temp_shift.jpg . (from Hansen/Sato/Ruedy 2012).
      The thing is the distribution is not moving simply to the right with increase of temp; it is also fattening its hot head. It is a sign of a system starting to act 'funny'.
      Temperatures will not work strongly for my case. But whiplash weather and certain precip events (like Colorado, September last year!!) definitely do.



      Delete
    17. "Given that, it does not hurt to tell it the way it is and not exaggerate."

      The fact is we are too careful, we are uncarefully and imo even dishonestly careful, and that is the real revisionists' succes.
      All they hear from you is that no weather event can be related to AGW. It is NOT what you are saying, but that IS the suggestion.

      The absurd carefulness of us was kind of a discovery for me. Did it last year when I found that none of 'us' was able to parse the Munich RE graph. It has shown me that even for those in the know of AGW, it is still mere theory.

      Delete
    18. I am not quite sure what is being argued here. Perhaps you could clarify.

      @Victor "If there would be an event that is **impossible** without climate change"

      @BBD "both Victor and I appear to agree that there is no current means of providing **robust** fractional attribution to AGW for extreme weather events"

      Surely the test is that the event would be "unlikely", "very unlikely", "extremely unlikely" (choose your significance level) without climate change.

      In any event, there are attribution studies that have been done particularly on heat waves.

      Here for example.

      This is a long quote but it spells it out
      "Using the climate models, the Fraction of Attributable Risk (FAR) shows how much the risk of extreme temperatures increases thanks to human influences.

      In our earlier study of our record hot Australian summer of 2012-13, we found that it was very likely (with 90% confidence) that human influences increased the odds of extreme summers such as 2012-13 by at least five times.

      In August 2013, Australia broke the record for the hottest 12-month period. The odds of this occurring increased again from the hottest summer. We found that human influence increased the odds of setting this new record by at least 100 times.

      Recent extreme temperatures are exceeding previous records by increasingly large margins. The chance of reaching these extreme temperatures from natural climate variations alone is becoming increasingly unlikely. When we considered the 12-month record at the end of August, it was nearly impossible for this temperature extreme to occur from natural climate variations alone in these model experiments.

      We have just completed a preliminary investigation of contributing factors for the record Australian temperature in the 2013 calendar year.

      In the model experiments, it is impossible to reach such a temperature record due to natural climate variations alone. In climate model simulations with only natural factors, none of the nearly 13,000 model years analysed exceed the previous hottest year recorded back in 2005."









      Delete
    19. Sorry Victor. Rereading from the top, it is obvious I took your quote about "impossible" out of context. Nevertheless I would be interested in a comment on the study that I linked to.

      Delete
    20. A fraction of attributable risk or a statement about how much more likely an extreme event has become is exactly the way I would prefer to formulate the estimates. Together with error bars this allows one to make statements that are clear and correct.

      The climate ostriches would still attack us for making such claims as they would with any claim that does not suite their agenda, but at least we would know that we did the right thing and can defend ourselves against such accusations.

      Work on heatwaves is tricky. You compute the length and depth of heatwaves on daily data, which is often not homogenized (Australia has a well homogenized daily dataset, but that is not yet the rule). It is expected that non-climatic changes for extreme events are a larger problem as the for the average temperatures, according to the climate sceptics of the IPCC (AR4). We also do not know yet, how well homogenization removes biases in the trend of extremes.

      We have much too little data yet, but what we have suggests that the real changes in temperature extremes are larger than those in the raw data (the non-climatic changes mask part of the climatic change). But given the small amount of evidence, I would personally prefer to talk about a large uncertainty in estimates of trends in extremes for the moment.

      Delete
  9. Clearly the effort against Prof. Mann is a witch hunt, an effort to single out and scapegoat a single scientist in order to discredit climate sciences and the possible implications for the future.

    The arguments make no sense. They have singled out one temperature reconstruction from a 1998 paper and are nitpicking details even though it has been repeatedly reproduced by many other studies. They ignore the underlying physics.

    To some extent (a la Girard) the anti-climate-science community defines itself solely in terms of its opposition to modern climate science. Rather than have a coherent point of view of their own, they organize around resistance to the implications of today's climate science – that we are changing our ecosystem (for the worse) and have a responsibility to change our ways. Scapegoating then is a way of bolstering their community self-identification.

    ReplyDelete

Instead of commenting as "Anonymous", please comment using "Name/URL" and your name, initials or pseudonym or whatever. You can leave the "URL" box blank. This isn't mandatory. You can also sign in using your Google ID, Wordpress ID etc as indicated. NOTE: Some Wordpress users are having trouble signing in. If that's you, try signing in using Name/URL. Details here.

Click here to read the HotWhopper comment policy.