Global Warming... a hoax?

[Maple]

Look mate even Adolf knew when he was beaten, just marry Eva, have a few moments alone in the bunker, bite on the capsule and - well, you know the rest

[bobthedog]

Funny its the first time I heard of "Mann". Still makes no difference to my view that Global Warming is cyclic, and influenced by many other things. Yes man is obviously having an effect on the climate, but there is nothing that taxing us to death is going to achieve apart from raising even more revenue for governments to p*ss up against the wall.

If this government was serious about climate change why is it only this year considering the nuclear power option? Having watched our existing plants become obsolete to the point that they are becoming unsafe to operate, and in some cases decades beyond their lifespan.

Surely a government with a genuine concern for climate change wouild have taken the decision to build new plants 10 years ago or more.

[LISpace]

Mann said the “trick� Jones referred to was placing a chart of proxy temperature records, which ended in 1980, next to a line showing the temperature record collected by instruments from that time onward. “It’s hardly anything you would call a trick,� Mann said, adding that both charts were differentiated and clearly marked.

and that

"The “decline� refers to the “divergence problem�. This is where tree ring proxies diverge from modern instrumental temperature records after 1960. The divergence problem is discussed as early as 1998, suggesting a change in the sensitivity of tree growth to temperature in recent decades (Briffa 199. It is also examined more recently in Wilmking 2008 which explores techniques in eliminating the divergence problem. So when you look at Phil Jone’s email in the context of the science discussed, it is not the schemings of a climate conspiracy but technical discussions of data handling techniques available in the peer reviewed literature".

Ashie, I'm not going to pretend to understand climate science (and who does?) but I do have some experience of other scientific disciplines and I know that scientists are precise in their language, even in internal e mails; I've seen enough of them. 'Trick' is not scientific language; it strongly implies that something very unscientific is going on. But according to Mann, Jones didn't mean 'trick' at all. So why did he use that word? And why write 'hide the decline' when he meant 'eliminating the divergence problem'?

This was not a technical discussion, as is claimed. If it were, the language would be precise and would not require alternative terms to be inserted along the lines of 'well, that's what he really meant'.

[spunkymonkey]

Slight apologies, guys, reading more of poor Harry's scribblings the datafile in my above post appears to be a precipitation file rather than temperature.

That makes more sense of the actual numbers in it, but doesn't alter the coding problems or the fact that the same code was used to anomalise temp series. the only difference being that this bit of the code determines whether the anomalies are expressed as a percentage (for precipitation) or as an absolute value for others:

print*, " > Enter the suffix of the variable required:"
do
read (*,*,iostat=ReadStatus), LoadSuffix
if (ReadStatus.LE.0) then
call CheckVariSuffix (LoadSuffix,Variable,Factor)
if (Variable.EQ."") then
print*, " > Variable unrecognised."
else
if (LoadSuffix.EQ.".pre".OR.LoadSuffix.EQ.".wet") then
print*, " > Will calculate percentage anomalies." ; QAnomPercent=1
else
QAnomPercent=0
end if
end if
end if
if (ReadStatus.LE.0.AND.Variable.NE."") exit
end do

So the problems still stand (including the observer apparently taking holidays in later years - anyone know if the Syrian employment laws changed around then?)

Unfortunately, we don't have any of the temp files to check because they lost them sometime before they refused to release them under FOI then found them again. But exactly the same issues exist with no error checking for obviously faulty values, missing values, etc.

The program also gives the user free reign to specify how much data can be missing:

print*, " > Specify the missing percentage permitted: "
do
read (*,*,iostat=ReadStatus), MissThresh
if (ReadStatus.LE.0.AND.MissThresh.GE.0.AND.MissThres h.LE.100) exit
end do

so the station could take a lot of holidays if it was too cold to work ( ) and the dataset would simply carry on as usual.

Or something like that.


edit to add: At least I put my hand up when I spot an error in my work. Could be why I haven't got a job at, oh, I don't know, the CRU ? :D


edited again to add: As an aside, these world class scientists do seem to have a small problem with the difference between suffixes and prefixes:

tmp.0311051552.dtb
pre.0312031600.dtb

But let's not quibble - there are Americans involved :P

[fraudstar]

Please can we seperate this into at least three different topic and debate them each in turn?

1. Is the climate different now to what it was 100 years ago?

2. If the climate has changed, is this something that is within the realms of natural variability and if not, why not?

3. If it isn't due to natural variability, what can we do to halt the (if any) change?

I'm fed up of the straw mans of, even if the climate is chagning man is arrogant toi think it's him, cannot halt it, why should it be halted etc. Let's shake out exaclt what people are skeptical to and aruge over specifics and science and not belief systems

[bobthedog]

Fraudstar, in a word no. This thread is entitled Global Warming.... A Hoax? Why does it need to be changed. Feel free to create your own (if you can type in english it may help).

[spunkymonkey]

That would be too sensible, fraudstar. But just in case ARRSE leads the way in sensible climate debate, put me down for:

1) Yes

2) Yes, though we may well be having a minor effect. Discussion would have to go elsewhere

3) Bugger all, but moving away from fossil fuels in an orderly fashion makes a lot of sense for other reasons.

[fraudstar]

Simply because bobthedog, I don't want to start another multitude of threads on essentially the same subject.

The title - "A Hoax" leaves the thread open to a wide variety of interpretations. One that I'm not happy with and seek to clarify. If at least to improve the standard of debate.

It pisses me off that even if there was an agreement that the climate is changing then there would instantly be people disputing why. Then if the cause was confirmed people would argue what could be done about it. It makes for a simple internet bitchfest.

Let's first discuss whether the climate is changing or whether there is a global conspiracy by scientists and politicians to make us believe that the weather now is exacltly the same as it has been for the last 100 years and go from there?

[ashie]

Mann said the “trick� Jones referred to was placing a chart of proxy temperature records, which ended in 1980, next to a line showing the temperature record collected by instruments from that time onward. “It’s hardly anything you would call a trick,� Mann said, adding that both charts were differentiated and clearly marked.

and that

"The “decline� refers to the “divergence problem�. This is where tree ring proxies diverge from modern instrumental temperature records after 1960. The divergence problem is discussed as early as 1998, suggesting a change in the sensitivity of tree growth to temperature in recent decades (Briffa 199. It is also examined more recently in Wilmking 2008 which explores techniques in eliminating the divergence problem. So when you look at Phil Jone’s email in the context of the science discussed, it is not the schemings of a climate conspiracy but technical discussions of data handling techniques available in the peer reviewed literature".

Ashie, I'm not going to pretend to understand climate science (and who does?) but I do have some experience of other scientific disciplines and I know that scientists are precise in their language, even in internal e mails; I've seen enough of them. 'Trick' is not scientific language; it strongly implies that something very unscientific is going on. But according to Mann, Jones didn't mean 'trick' at all. So why did he use that word? And why write 'hide the decline' when he meant 'eliminating the divergence problem'?

This was not a technical discussion, as is claimed. If it were, the language would be precise and would not require alternative terms to be inserted along the lines of 'well, that's what he really meant'.

As I understand it, "trick" is in common use to mean "clever technique" and is even used in some of the peer reviewed literature itself.

See this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nnVQ...layer_embedded

[bobthedog]

The term "trick" is hardly a word you would wish to see in a scientific discussion of something as important as this. If the scientists are to prove the links necessary to gain international agreement to deal with "man made climate change" they had better come up with better words to use, whether used in emails between scientists or the final draft of their documents.

The only "trick" being used here is scientists being asked to come up with conclusions that our political masters desire, in order to raise taxation in a charade that we can "tax our way out" of this problem. The plain fact is that taxing us for climate change hasn't worked and wont work.