The paper has now been taken off hold and has been published in the latest issue of the journal. About the paper, Joelle Gergis has said:
In the paper the authors describe research looking at proxy reconstructions of temperatures in the warm season in the Australasian region between 1000 and 2001 AD (see Figure 1 below). Since then Australia has got even hotter. The paper is very detailed and interesting, including discussion of the temperature changes over time. For example, the authors point out that in medieval times, warming occurred in the Australasian region later than in parts of the northern hemisphere. However the timing of the minimum temperatures in the Little Ice Age was similar to that in the northern hemisphere.
I'll let Joëlle Gergis tell the rest of the story, from her article at The Conversation. It's not just a story about the research, it's also about sexism, FOI harassment, and general misbehaviour of the sort the world has come to expect from "climate hoax" conspiracy theorists.
Joelle Gergis, University of Melbourne
In May 2012, my colleagues and I had a paper accepted for publication in the Journal of Climate, showing that temperatures recorded in Australasia since 1950 were warmer than at any time in the past 1,000 years.
Following the early online release of the paper, as the manuscript was being prepared for the journal’s print edition, one of our team spotted a typo in the methods section of the manuscript.
While the paper said the study had used “detrended” data – temperature data from which the longer-term trends had been removed – the study had in fact used raw data. When we checked the computer code, the DETREND command said “FALSE” when it should have said “TRUE”.
Both raw and detrended data have been used in similar studies, and both are scientifically justifiable approaches. The issue for our team was the fact that what was written in the paper did not match what was actually done in the analysis – an innocent mistake, but a mistake nonetheless.
Instead of taking the easy way out and just correcting the single word in the page proof, we asked the publisher to put our paper on hold and remove the online version while we assessed the influence that the different method had on the results.
It turned out that someone else had spotted the typo too. Two days after we identified the issue, a commenter on the Climate Audit blog also pointed it out.
The website’s author, Stephen McIntyre, proceeded to claim (incorrectly) that there were “fundamental issues” with the study. It was the start of a concerted smear campaign aimed at discrediting our science.
As well as being discussed by bloggers (sometimes with a deeply offensive and sexist tone), the “flaw” was seized upon by sections of the mainstream media.
Meanwhile, our team received a flurry of hate mail and an onslaught of time-consuming Freedom of Information requests for access to our raw data and years of our emails, in search of ammunition to undermine and discredit our team and results. This is part of a range of tactics used in Australia and overseas in an attempt to intimidate scientists and derail our efforts to do our job.
Bloggers began to accuse us of conspiring to reverse-engineer our results to dramatise the warming in our region. Former geologist and prominent climate change sceptic Bob Carter published an opinion piece in The Australian claiming that the peer-review process is faulty and climate science cannot be trusted.
Meanwhile, we set about rigorously checking and rechecking every step of our study in a bid to dispel any doubts about its accuracy. This included extensive reprocessing of the data using independently generated computer code, three additional statistical methods, detrended and non-detrended approaches, and climate model data to further verify the results.
The mammoth process involved three extra rounds of peer-review and four new peer-reviewers. From the original submission on 3 November, 2011, to the paper’s re-acceptance on 26 April, 2016, the manuscript was reviewed by seven reviewers and two editors, underwent nine rounds of revisions, and was assessed a total of 21 times – not to mention the countless rounds of internal revisions made by our research team and data contributors. One reviewer even commented that we had done “a commendable, perhaps bordering on an insane, amount of work”.
Finally, today, we publish our study again with virtually the same conclusion: the recent temperatures experienced over the past three decades in Australia, New Zealand and surrounding oceans are warmer than any other 30-year period over the past 1,000 years.
Our updated analysis also gives extra confidence in our results. For example, as the graph below shows, there were some 30-year periods in our palaeoclimate reconstructions during the 12th century that may have been fractionally (0.03–0.04℃) warmer than the 1961–1990 average. But these results are more uncertain as they are based on sparse network of only two records – and in any event, they are still about 0.3℃ cooler than the most recent 1985–2014 average recorded by our most accurate instrumental climate network available for the region.
Overall, we are confident that observed temperatures in Australasia have been warmer in the past 30 years than every other 30-year period over the entire millennium (90% confidence based on 12,000 reconstructions, developed using four independent statistical methods and three different data subsets). Importantly, the climate modelling component of our study also shows that only human-caused greenhouse emissions can explain the recent warming recorded in our region.
Our study now joins the vast body of evidence showing that our region, in line with the rest of the planet, has warmed rapidly since 1950, with all the impacts that climate change brings. So far in 2016 we have seen bushfires ravage Tasmania’s ancient World Heritage rainforests, while 93% of the Great Barrier Reef has suffered bleaching amid Australia’s hottest ever sea temperatures – an event made 175 times more likely by climate change. Worldwide, it has never been hotter in our recorded history.
There are a couple of lessons we can take away from this ordeal. The first is that it takes far more time and effort to do rigorous science than it does to attack it.
In contrast to the instant gratification of publishing a blog post, the scientific process often takes years of meticulous evaluation and independent expert assessment.
Yes, we made a mistake – a single word in a 74-page document. We used the word “detrended” instead of “non-detrended”. Atoning for this error involved spending four extra years on the study, while withstanding a withering barrage of brutal criticism.
This brings us to the second take-home message. Viciously attacking a researcher at one of Australia’s leading universities as a “bimbo” and a “brain-dead retard” doesn’t do much to encourage professional climate scientists to engage with the scores of online amateur enthusiasts. Worse still, gender-based attacks may discourage women from engaging in public debate or pursuing careers in male-dominated careers like science at all.
Although climate change deniers are desperate to be taken seriously by the scientific community, it’s extremely difficult to engage with people who do not display the basic principles of common courtesy, let alone comply with the standard scientific practice of submitting your work to be scrutinised by the world’s leading experts in the field.
Despite the smears, a rummage through hundreds of our emails revealed nothing but a group of colleagues doing their best to resolve an honest mistake under duress. It wasn’t the guilty retreat from a flawed study produced by radical climate activists that the bloggers would have people believe. Instead, it showed the self-correcting nature of science and the steadfast dedication of researchers to work painstakingly around the clock to produce the best science humanly possible.
Rather than take the easy way out, we chose to withdraw our paper and spent years triple-checking every step of our work. After the exhaustive checking, the paper has been published with essentially the same conclusions as before, but now with more confidence in our results.
Like it or not, our story simply highlights the slow and unglamorous process of real science in action. In the end, this saga will be remembered as a footnote in climate science, a storm in a teacup, all played out against the backdrop of a planet that has never been hotter in human history.
Joelle Gergis, ARC DECRA Climate Research Fellow, School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
Gergis, Joëlle, Raphael Neukom, Ailie JE Gallant, and David J. Karoly. "Australasian temperature reconstructions spanning the last millennium." Journal of Climate 2016 (2016). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-13-00781.1
From the HotWhopper archives
We found that the nature of warming experienced in Australasia since 1985-2014 is unusual in the context of the last thousand years...Analysis of climate model simulations shows that the warming experienced since 1950 cannot be explained by natural factors alone, highlighting the role of human caused greenhouse gases in the recent warming of the region.
In the paper the authors describe research looking at proxy reconstructions of temperatures in the warm season in the Australasian region between 1000 and 2001 AD (see Figure 1 below). Since then Australia has got even hotter. The paper is very detailed and interesting, including discussion of the temperature changes over time. For example, the authors point out that in medieval times, warming occurred in the Australasian region later than in parts of the northern hemisphere. However the timing of the minimum temperatures in the Little Ice Age was similar to that in the northern hemisphere.
I'll let Joëlle Gergis tell the rest of the story, from her article at The Conversation. It's not just a story about the research, it's also about sexism, FOI harassment, and general misbehaviour of the sort the world has come to expect from "climate hoax" conspiracy theorists.
How a single word sparked a four-year saga of climate fact-checking and blog backlash
Joelle Gergis, University of Melbourne
In May 2012, my colleagues and I had a paper accepted for publication in the Journal of Climate, showing that temperatures recorded in Australasia since 1950 were warmer than at any time in the past 1,000 years.
Following the early online release of the paper, as the manuscript was being prepared for the journal’s print edition, one of our team spotted a typo in the methods section of the manuscript.
While the paper said the study had used “detrended” data – temperature data from which the longer-term trends had been removed – the study had in fact used raw data. When we checked the computer code, the DETREND command said “FALSE” when it should have said “TRUE”.
Both raw and detrended data have been used in similar studies, and both are scientifically justifiable approaches. The issue for our team was the fact that what was written in the paper did not match what was actually done in the analysis – an innocent mistake, but a mistake nonetheless.
Instead of taking the easy way out and just correcting the single word in the page proof, we asked the publisher to put our paper on hold and remove the online version while we assessed the influence that the different method had on the results.
Enter the bloggers with a concerted smear campaign
It turned out that someone else had spotted the typo too. Two days after we identified the issue, a commenter on the Climate Audit blog also pointed it out.
The website’s author, Stephen McIntyre, proceeded to claim (incorrectly) that there were “fundamental issues” with the study. It was the start of a concerted smear campaign aimed at discrediting our science.
As well as being discussed by bloggers (sometimes with a deeply offensive and sexist tone), the “flaw” was seized upon by sections of the mainstream media.
Meanwhile, our team received a flurry of hate mail and an onslaught of time-consuming Freedom of Information requests for access to our raw data and years of our emails, in search of ammunition to undermine and discredit our team and results. This is part of a range of tactics used in Australia and overseas in an attempt to intimidate scientists and derail our efforts to do our job.
Bloggers began to accuse us of conspiring to reverse-engineer our results to dramatise the warming in our region. Former geologist and prominent climate change sceptic Bob Carter published an opinion piece in The Australian claiming that the peer-review process is faulty and climate science cannot be trusted.
Checking the facts
Meanwhile, we set about rigorously checking and rechecking every step of our study in a bid to dispel any doubts about its accuracy. This included extensive reprocessing of the data using independently generated computer code, three additional statistical methods, detrended and non-detrended approaches, and climate model data to further verify the results.
The mammoth process involved three extra rounds of peer-review and four new peer-reviewers. From the original submission on 3 November, 2011, to the paper’s re-acceptance on 26 April, 2016, the manuscript was reviewed by seven reviewers and two editors, underwent nine rounds of revisions, and was assessed a total of 21 times – not to mention the countless rounds of internal revisions made by our research team and data contributors. One reviewer even commented that we had done “a commendable, perhaps bordering on an insane, amount of work”.
Finally, today, we publish our study again with virtually the same conclusion: the recent temperatures experienced over the past three decades in Australia, New Zealand and surrounding oceans are warmer than any other 30-year period over the past 1,000 years.
Our updated analysis also gives extra confidence in our results. For example, as the graph below shows, there were some 30-year periods in our palaeoclimate reconstructions during the 12th century that may have been fractionally (0.03–0.04℃) warmer than the 1961–1990 average. But these results are more uncertain as they are based on sparse network of only two records – and in any event, they are still about 0.3℃ cooler than the most recent 1985–2014 average recorded by our most accurate instrumental climate network available for the region.
 |
| Figure 1 | Comparison of Australasian temperature reconstructions. Red: original temperature reconstruction published in the May 2012 version of the study; green: more recent reconstruction published in Nature Geoscience in April 2013; black: newly published reconstruction; orange: observed instrumental temperatures. Grey shading shows 90% uncertainty estimates of the original 2012 reconstruction; purple shading shows considerably expanded uncertainty estimates of the revised 2016 version based on four statistical methods. The recent 30-year warming (orange line) lies outside the range of temperature variability reconstruction (black line) over the past 1,000 years. Source: Gergis - The Conversation |
Temperatures now higher than in the last 1,000 years
Overall, we are confident that observed temperatures in Australasia have been warmer in the past 30 years than every other 30-year period over the entire millennium (90% confidence based on 12,000 reconstructions, developed using four independent statistical methods and three different data subsets). Importantly, the climate modelling component of our study also shows that only human-caused greenhouse emissions can explain the recent warming recorded in our region.
Our study now joins the vast body of evidence showing that our region, in line with the rest of the planet, has warmed rapidly since 1950, with all the impacts that climate change brings. So far in 2016 we have seen bushfires ravage Tasmania’s ancient World Heritage rainforests, while 93% of the Great Barrier Reef has suffered bleaching amid Australia’s hottest ever sea temperatures – an event made 175 times more likely by climate change. Worldwide, it has never been hotter in our recorded history.
Years of meticulous evaluation and independent expert assessment
There are a couple of lessons we can take away from this ordeal. The first is that it takes far more time and effort to do rigorous science than it does to attack it.
In contrast to the instant gratification of publishing a blog post, the scientific process often takes years of meticulous evaluation and independent expert assessment.
Yes, we made a mistake – a single word in a 74-page document. We used the word “detrended” instead of “non-detrended”. Atoning for this error involved spending four extra years on the study, while withstanding a withering barrage of brutal criticism.
Calling a scientist "bimbo" and "brain-dead retard" doesn't encourage engagement
This brings us to the second take-home message. Viciously attacking a researcher at one of Australia’s leading universities as a “bimbo” and a “brain-dead retard” doesn’t do much to encourage professional climate scientists to engage with the scores of online amateur enthusiasts. Worse still, gender-based attacks may discourage women from engaging in public debate or pursuing careers in male-dominated careers like science at all.
Although climate change deniers are desperate to be taken seriously by the scientific community, it’s extremely difficult to engage with people who do not display the basic principles of common courtesy, let alone comply with the standard scientific practice of submitting your work to be scrutinised by the world’s leading experts in the field.
Despite the smears, a rummage through hundreds of our emails revealed nothing but a group of colleagues doing their best to resolve an honest mistake under duress. It wasn’t the guilty retreat from a flawed study produced by radical climate activists that the bloggers would have people believe. Instead, it showed the self-correcting nature of science and the steadfast dedication of researchers to work painstakingly around the clock to produce the best science humanly possible.
Rather than take the easy way out, we chose to withdraw our paper and spent years triple-checking every step of our work. After the exhaustive checking, the paper has been published with essentially the same conclusions as before, but now with more confidence in our results.
A planet that has never been hotter in human history
Like it or not, our story simply highlights the slow and unglamorous process of real science in action. In the end, this saga will be remembered as a footnote in climate science, a storm in a teacup, all played out against the backdrop of a planet that has never been hotter in human history.
Joelle Gergis, ARC DECRA Climate Research Fellow, School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
References and further reading
Gergis, Joëlle, Raphael Neukom, Ailie JE Gallant, and David J. Karoly. "Australasian temperature reconstructions spanning the last millennium." Journal of Climate 2016 (2016). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-13-00781.1
- Thousand-year study reconfirms recent warming in the Australian region - press release from The University of Melbourne
From the HotWhopper archives
- Steve McIntyre's big blooper - mistaking water mass movement for water temperature! - April 2015
- Denier weirdness: Is Steve McIntyre calling the instrumental record an "artifact"? - June 2014
- No, Mr McIntyre, you can't take any credit for scientific research on tree rings - June 2013
- Australia's Angry Summer - March 2013, and how deniers protested it.
I expect another of McIntyre's dog whistles in 3...2...1...
ReplyDeleteI checked. He's been off playing football these past few months from the look of things. Deflated :)
DeleteHah ha! Just read McI's article about his paper concerning 'Deflategate' over at Climate Audit. Had to read the page on Wikipedia first for context. This Yank has been out of the States for 38 yrs now, and American football is not the kind I now follow. Mind you, I was a pretty decent quarterback in the day, and used to be able to throw one of those things 70 yards. However...
DeleteGood to see that McI tears into scientists of any strip with equal fervour, and it's not just climate scientists who are singled out for The Auditor's special attention :-)
I do recall one paper which claimed to have used detrended data, but the method used had not, in fact, detrended the data. Anybody want to guess whose paper that was?
ReplyDeleteMcIntyre and McKitrick 05, of course. The irony, it burns. Deep Climate has a very good write-up of the multiple things McIntyre did wrong here:
Deletehttps://deepclimate.org/2010/10/25/the-wegman-report-sees-red-noise/
The takeaway comment to what Millicent refers to above is provided by the contents of an e-mail from David Ritson to Stephen McIntyre:
Surely you realized that the proxies combine the signal components on which is superimposed the noise? I find it hard to believe that you would take data with obvious trends, would then directly evaluate ACFs without removing the trends, and then finally assume you had obtained results for the proxy specific noise!
Dear Stephen,
ReplyDeleteI am contacting you on behalf of all the authors of the Gergis et al (2012) study ‘Evidence of unusual late 20th century warming from an Australasian temperature reconstruction spanning the last millennium’
An issue has been identified in the processing of the data used in the study, which may affect the results. While the paper states that “both proxy climate and instrumental data were linearly detrended over the 1921–1990 period”, we discovered on Tuesday 5 June that the records used in the final analysis were not detrended for proxy selection, making this statement incorrect. Although this is an unfortunate data processing issue, it is likely to have implications for the results reported in the study. The journal has been contacted and the publication of the study has been put on hold.
This is a normal part of science. The testing of scientific studies through independent analysis of data and methods strengthens the conclusions. In this study, an issue has been identified and the results are being re-checked.
We would be grateful if you would post the notice below on your ClimateAudit web site.
We would like to thank you and the participants at the ClimateAudit blog for your scrutiny of our study, which also identified this data processing issue.
Thanks, David Karoly"
Scientists are much more polite than denier bloggers aren't they :(
DeleteI propose a new SI unit, the Gergis. A measure of contribution to understanding. 1 Gergis = 1,000,000 McIntyres.
Delete
DeleteI propose a new SI unit, the Gergis. A measure of contribution to understanding. 1 Gergis = 1,000,000 McIntyres.
Of course, that presumes that a Gergis and a McIntyre are of the same sign... ;)
"Scientists are much more polite than denier bloggers aren't they :( "
DeleteNo only that, they willing look for mistakes in their own work.
Hey and they'll "own" their mistakes,
and even learn from those mistakes!
What a concept. :)
"Of course, that presumes that a Gergis and a McIntyre are of the same sign... ;)"
DeleteWhat Caerbannog said.
Really, McIntyre and his uneducated yappers make pond mulm look like advanced life.
Two thoughts come to mind here:
ReplyDelete"Revenge is a dish best served cold".
--and--
"The best revenge is doing great science."
The first allows a sly follow-up when dealing with deniers: "Would you like me to warm that up for you?"
DeleteOi. Thanks, Magma!!
DeleteI'll be damned if it doesn't look like a hockey stick.
ReplyDeleteSomehow they all do....
DeleteMust be our global climate system doing all the conspiring.
Delete... as the manuscript was being prepared for the journal’s print edition, one of our team spotted a typo in the methods section of the manuscript....
ReplyDelete...we made a mistake – a single word in a 74-page document. We used the word “detrended” instead of “non-detrended”. Atoning for this error involved spending four extra years on the study....
...From the original submission on 3 November, 2011, to the paper’s re-acceptance on 26 April, 2016, the manuscript was reviewed by seven reviewers and two editors, underwent nine rounds of revisions, and was assessed a total of 21 times – not to mention the countless rounds of internal revisions made by our research team and data contributors. ...
It is nice to see serious scientists go to such extreme lengths to correct such a minor issue.
Would it have saved a bit of time if they'd just whacked a yellow highlight through the changed word before they sent it back for rechecking? ;-)
No.
DeleteSo a simple unimportant "typo" caused her to do an expensive 4 year rewrite?
ReplyDeleteBut she even admits the "typo" was a programming error where a variable was incorrectly assigned a "FALSE" value.
Her original paper tried to assert that tree rings from 1000 years ago could be measured to one hundredth of a degree is absurd and you don't have to be a scientist to understand that. The error level(+-0.19C) totally swamped her alleged precision.
She says that warming since 1950 "cannot be explained be explained by natural factors alone" which is bizarre. Global temperatures from 1950 to about 1975 actually dropped and then rose until about 2001 and stayed pretty much the same until the current el nino caused the "pause" to disappear. So computer models are supposed to have predicted all this? I can imagine the code....temperature dropping from 1945 to 1975 - ignore, temperature rising from 1975 to 2000 - correlates with rising CO2 therefore AGW is TRUE!
Her latest press release even admits she cannot be sure that present temperatures are higher than in the last 1000 years.
“Analysis based on the smallest subset of the palaeoclimate data network suggests that single 30-year and 10-year periods of comparable temperatures to late 20th century levels may have occurred during the first half of the millennium"
So a simple "typo" cause 4 years of expensive rewriting and the findings no longer assert record current temperatures.
You might want to look at the pretty chart up above.
DeleteIt won't make any difference, Rattus... Peter won't be able to learn anything he doesn't think he knows already. Peter's version of 'thinking' involves some shuffling of his collection of prejudices.
Delete>>Global temperatures from 1950 to about 1975
DeleteThe paper is about the Australasian region, not a global analysis. Here is a link just for Australia:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/index.shtml#tabs=Tracker&tracker=timeseries
>>the findings no longer assert record current temperatures...
Actually, they do - from the paper:
...the most recent instrumental temperatures (1985–2014) are above the 90th percentile for all 30-yr periods in all 12 reconstruction ensembles.
BTW This year is 2016, not 2000. Present temperatures are almost certainly higher than any in the past 1000 years (at least). AGW is indeed true. The greenhouse effect is real. Climate science isn't a hoax no matter what you've read on conspiracy blogs.
Sou,
DeleteIf you put a 5 year running average on the trend you supplied above, you will find a negative trend from about 1955 to 1975, so you must be agreeing with my assertion.
Her quote “Analysis based on the smallest subset of the palaeoclimate data network suggests that single 30-year and 10-year periods of comparable temperatures to late 20th century levels may have occurred during the first half of the millennium" is pretty unambiguous, it means that current temps are not at record highs.
Her other quote "...the most recent instrumental temperatures (1985–2014) are above the 90th percentile for all 30-yr periods in all 12 reconstruction ensembles." is talking about a different timeframe.
Until about midway through last year, virtually every scientific organization on the planet,(UK MET, NASA, BOM etc etc etc) agreed that there was no statistical meaningful increase in global temperature since about 2000.
The large global temperature spike caused by El Nino is rapidly spiking downwards now and many scientific organisations are predicting the subsequent La Nina could enable the pause since 2000 to resume.
Global warming between about 1985 and 2000 is a reality, but AGW is pretty much based on those 15 years and computer modelling.
I repeat, if the original paper only had a "typo", then why was the paper extensively rehashed and it's conclusions changed?
Peter, there's a typo in your comment. It's "El Nino" not "el nino".
DeletePeter, the "precision" comes from the statistical/ mathematical analysis of the data and not the actual data. The "error level" does not come from the data, it comes from the statistical analysis of the data. The "error level" is large because of the small number of data for that period. You don’t have to be a scientist to know that.
Peter, there's a typo(?) in your comment "cannot be sure that present temperatures are higher than in the last 1000 years." It should read "based on only two records, cannot be sure that some 30 year periods in the 12th century were higher than the 1961-1990 average" ("and in any event, they are still about 0.3℃ cooler than the most recent 1985–2014 average").
And yet, Peter, … both the detrended and raw data provide essentially the same conclusion. The general result stands. All in all, there are 'fundamental issues' with your comment.
"there was no statistical meaningful increase in global temperature since about 2000."
DeleteToo bad for denialists that heat content in the oceans kept increasing over the same time period.
Also, you will enjoy the following if you are into statistics and trend lines:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1980/to/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2000/to/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1980/to:2000/trend
Note how the trend from 1980 to 2000 is virtually identical (definitely statistically speaking) to the trend 1980-today, despite the fact that the trend from 2000-today is so clearly different. What does this tell you, Peter?
<<so you must be agreeing with my assertion
DeleteNo. If you don't understand what I wrote, ask someone for help.
<<"it means that current temps are not at record highs"
DeleteOnce again Peter - this year is 2016. The twentieth century ended on 31 December 2000.
BTW whether statistical or not, the world has got a lot hotter. There's no ice age coming. The planet is heating up because of our actions, and more quickly than it has in probably millions of years. You should be concerned.
DeleteDo you think an ice age is coming, Peter, or are you just acting out your denialism here at HW for the thrill of it?
"... and you don't have to be a scientist to understand that.
DeleteNo, but it helps. Saves you from showing yourself up as a Dunning-Kruger candidate as well.
billJuly 12, 2016 at 1:33 PM
DeleteIt won't make any difference, Rattus...
Peter won't be able to learn anything he doesn't think he knows already.
Peter's version of 'thinking' involves some shuffling (and reshuffling) of his collection of prejudices.
_________________________
Damned, that's downright insightful. Well said!
"Until about midway through last year, virtually every scientific organization on the planet,(UK MET, NASA, BOM etc etc etc) agreed that there was no statistical meaningful increase in global temperature since about 2000."
DeletePeter, are you able to outline in your own words how short-term variability (or 'noise') affects the minimum number of years required in order to detect a statistically significant trend? And if you are, can you then explain why your comment is logically and numerically fallacious?
Correction to above "typo". Global warming between about 1985 and 2000 is a reality" should be Global warming between about 1980 and 2000 is a reality
ReplyDeleteSo we can expect you to catch up with our current understanding of climate change by 2032.
DeleteGeorge,
ReplyDeleteYou said "both the detrended and raw data provide essentially the same conclusion." but this is not true as it was pointed out that in their original report correlations failed with detrended data. Gergis herself admitted the software Detrend command(variable?) was incorrectly labelled "FALSE" instead of true.
Despite what you say "0.09°C (±0.19°C)" shows that the error margin was larger than the result. You say "error level is large because of the small number of data for that period." So what, just reinforces the fact that the data is liable to be inaccurate.
And Millicent...precisely what have I said you disagree with? I never revert to ad hominem attacks, it always shows you are unsure of your facts.
Marco,
I prefer to use John Cook's "Sceptical science" trender and using Hadcrut4(Land/ocean) it showed the following....
1980 - 2000 0.169/Decade(+-0.1)
2000 - 2015 0.069/Decade(+-0.127)
which pretty much confirms what I said.
WRT to increasing heat in the oceans, last time I looked argobuoys had measured temperature increase at about 0.2 DegC/century. This increase didn't magically start in 1950, but probably about 1800 at the end of the little ice age. This was when glaciers started retreating again after advancing considerably during the previous 500 years or so.
Peter, if you prefer the Skeptical Science trend calculator, why did you not add the 1980-2015 trend?
DeleteWell, here it is:
0.160 +- 0.041
In other words, while the trend calculated for 200-2015 is much smaller than for 1980-2000, the trend for the whole period is remarkably close to that calculated for the period 1980-2000. What does this tell you, Peter?
Regarding ocean heat content your response it completely irrelevant to the point I made. No surprise there.
Peter, uncertainty and accuracy are not the same thing.
DeleteMillicent...precisely what have I said you disagree with..
DeleteYou think that cherry picking gives you a meaningful insight, I think it gives you a cherry.
WRT to increasing heat in the oceans, last time I looked argobuoys had measured temperature increase at about 0.2 DegC/century. This increase didn't magically start in 1950, but probably about 1800 at the end of the little ice age. This was when glaciers started retreating again after advancing considerably during the previous 500 years or so.
DeleteMisrepresentations are damaging to any argument, Peter. See Levitus et al. (2012) World ocean heat content and thermosteric sea level change (0–2000 m), 1955–2010, (emphasis mine):
We have estimated an increase of 24 _ 10^22 J representing a volume mean warming of 0.09C of the 0–2000 m layer of the World Ocean. If this heat were instantly transferred to the lower 10 km of the global atmosphere it would result in a volume mean warming of this atmospheric layer by approximately 36C (65F). This transfer of course will not happen; earth’s climate system simply does not work like this. But this computation does provide a perspective on the amount of heating that the earth system has undergone since 1955
* * *
The LIA ended after 1850, not in 1800, and is evidence of just how sensitive the climate system is to relatively minor perturbations in radiative forcing. It's not something I would talk about if I were peddling 'sceptical' views.
Peter.
ReplyDelete"She says that warming since 1950 "cannot be explained be explained by natural factors alone" which is bizarre. Global temperatures from 1950 to about 1975 actually dropped and then rose until about 2001 and stayed pretty much the same until the current el nino caused the "pause" to disappear"
Are you seriously saying that?
You are not justified into breaking up the temperature series since 1950 and cherry-picking several start and end points then claiming no warming since 1950.
If her claim is there has been warming since 1950, and this cannot be explained by natural factor then she is correct. There is nothing bizarre about that statement it agrees with what the IPCC says as well.
I think you are trying to promote the fallacy that, for AGW to be correct, then the temps have to rise continuously in that period. This fallacy is bizarre because it ignores natural variations.
I was going to point out some of the other things Peter said that are wrong. But on second reading, I have decided Peter does not have a clue what he is talking about.
DeleteHe has attempted to nitpick things that he thinks are wrong, but actually are not wrong. I suspect he is copying the nitpicks from elsewhere - it would explain why he is posting incorrect nitpicks without realizing they are silly.
Proxy for Monckton.
DeleteAs the Gergis team sadly discovered, and as is being borne out by the inane attacks from Marke and Peter here... the attacks never stop. Even when you go way beyond the call of duty and take 4 years to meticulously redo the paper.
ReplyDeleteAnd the attacks will *never stop*, because the conclusion of the paper conflicts with Marke and Peter's ideology. It's as simple as that. People of their ilk cannot ever admit that they are wrong, for to do so would destroy their entire little fragile worldview.
Quite a good little BBC article examines this phenomena
Deletehttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-36744911
We had to do a subject called The History of Science to show us how easy it was to do the experiments and write down all the observations and yet be totally wrong! This was 1968!
DeleteIt was designed for us to develop an open mind.
Modern science is just as restricted as the ancients were due to the current technology and paradigms.
This does not excuse deniers for their rejection of evidence and their downright stupidity. The leaders of these very stupid people should know better and I am sure they do.
When ignorant nasty morally torpid people spend an inordinate amount of time nit picking the work of real scientists, when they have no publications at all that come close to the standard of the target of their critique. I am reminded of all the venomous theatre critics of the past. Bert
'Insane attack' ???!
DeleteHey, I appreciate the lengths they went to.
I'm just trying to help out, as according to her wording it was a very, very minor issue.
Denier proof-reading skills up to the usual standard. But, since 'marke' obviously didn't copy/paste, this begs the question: is this a deliberate 'misunderstanding'?
DeleteAs bill notes, reading for comprehension was never a denier strong point:
Deleteinane <> insane
It's all about projection.
Simpler: "reading was never a denier strong point"
DeleteDang it...
DeleteIt was just one letter which was wrong!
Am I going to have to rewrite the whole thing?
No, most of us are intelligent enough to work it out
DeleteBut thanks for your concern
when you repeat a lie often enough it becomes truth
ReplyDeleteWUWT must have been trying that one out for years, but their stuff still looks like lies to me.
Delete