Michael Duffy has run a second climate change show on Counterpoint, responding to critics of his SMH column and earlier show. His guest was Bob Carter, whom he described in his SMH column as an “environmental scientist”. The ABC site description is “Research Professor of Geology … geologist and environmental scientist, an adjunct research professor at James Cook University, and he specialises in climate change.” which is still an inaccurate description, as you can see here[1]. It would be more accurate to describe Carter as a prominent research geologist with a personal interest in the issue of climate change, and a strongly-held view that Kyoto is a bad idea.
As regards the major issues, I see little evidence to suggest that Carter is any better informed than I am. He claims, presumably relying on the increasingly absurd McKitrick and McIntyre, that “the hockey stick [showing rapidly rising temperatures over the last 100 years] is broken”, and then goes on to recycle long-exploded claims about urban heat islands and satellite data, all of which have been addressed in detail on this blog .
Duffy’s performance on this issue has been disgraceful. If he did the same thing pushing creationism[2] he would surely have been sacked, or at least pressured to put on some real experts.
fn1. A few of the papers listed for Carter are relevant to paleo-climate issues, and he’s well qualified to make the point, as he does in the show, that climate has varied over time. But since that’s not in dispute, it can only be used (as it is by Duffy) as a straw man to attack unnamed critics of his previous shows.
fn2. Fun Factoid: As I’ll argue in a bit more detail later on, the great majority of climate change sceptics, globally speaking, are also creationists – why doesn’t Duffy give them a go on his program?. Feel free to supply your own examples, counterexamples and statistical arguments in the meantime.
John Quiggin 
Brian Bahnisch, climate science is new, and yes, peripheral to geology but only to the extent that geology as a discipline can contribute to our knowledge of the earth’s climate in the past.
Both Bob Carter and Ian Plimer are geologists and their descipline already has well established truths regarding the climate: that it swings wildly over time and has done so many, many times.
So it is not that geologists are invading another discipline’s territory, but rather climate scientists are invading geologists’ field. They want the geologists to disregard a textbook fact in the field of earth sciences. Of course they’ll come out fighting, as Ian Plimer did with the creationists, and Bob Carter is now doing with Global Warming.
I dearly hope even more geologists will come out and defend their science against this intrusion.
John H, my point, amplified in the previous post is that Duffy uses the same arguments as creationists, and is guilty of the same kinds of misrepresentation. Would you like to respond to the substantive points rather than taking umbrage at the footnotes?
EM, the way I see it is that sure we rely on geologists to tell us what the climate was like in the last billion years or so. Indeed, I recall Ian Plimer saying that the first rain fell 3.8 billion years ago, when the atmosphere fell below 100 degrees for the first time.
What they sometimes find hard to accept is that from the beginnings of the industrial age homo sapiens has been a new factor, to the extent, as James Hansen says (I hope he’s right) that further ice ages have been cancelled.
Following up Brian, there’s a big difference between climate change over 100 years or so and the time scales geologists typically deal with. You see the same kind of fallacious reasoning in relation to timescales for species extinction. Of course, the vast majority of species that have ever existed have gone extinct, but the rate of extinction today is matched only by a handful of mass extinctions spread over the past three billion years.
JH, in the pot-kettle department, would you like to distinguish your comparison of me with Tim Blair from my comparison of GW sceptics with evolution sceptics? I don’t think this kind of comparison is invalid as a rhetorical advice, though I’d challenge you to find any thread on Tim’s site which has the level of coherent and generally civilised debate found on this thread or most others here.
Iain, in reply to my criticism of left extremism you state that ‘Like the right has never held an extreme view?’. I don’t recall ever suggesting that they don’t. In fact, my main reason for criticising the left so much is that the stupidity of many of the views expressed makes it so easy for the right to dominate. And, if you think that Suzuki is not a flaky extremist you have problems.
JQ, you accuse me of overgeneralising about the failures of the left. Firstly, I am surprised that you, in particular, take this line. You were after all one of the very few people on the left in the Hawke/Keating years who offered up a rigorous criticism (in your impressive book on microeconomic reform, etc) of free market fundamentalism. That is, unlike the majority of people on the left (at least those not in economic departments) who seemed to think opposing change and calling someone an economic rationalist was all that was needed. Elsewhere, the majority of the left and not just Chomsky spent more time criticising the US than they did the Soviet Union in the Cold War years. More recently, most people on the left would rather criticise Bush, Howard and Blair and Israel than oppressive Islamic leaders or Islamic fascism. The fact that Chomsky, Moore etc books sell so well also suggests that these are not isolated views. Try finding Andre Glucksmann in a bookshop or, for that matter, George Orwell or Arthur Koestler all who have far more to offer left wing thinking than the odious and self-serving Moore.
Michael,
There’s a reason the left spent more tiem criticising America than the Soviet Union and today spends more tiem criticising Israel than, say, Syria.
In both cases, the chosen target for criticism is more likely to respond in the way the critics seek.
John H wrote:
Lomborg doesn’t deny a detrimental effect from global warming. I guess nobody on the left cares about facts (intentional overstatement as parody of continues anti-right wing confirmation bias).
Read it again John the statement about Lomborg, follows directly after the preceding statement, that these types of individuals deny any adverse effect by humans on the environment going against the work of a whole swath of qualified scientists. Sorry if that wasn’t clear enough for you
SimonJM: “Is the left guilty of intellectual fraud? On occasions probably…�
oh—you think? lol
Not like others I’ll call a spade a spade. When Greenpeace lied about the toxic danger of the North Sea oil rigs I condemned it as I did the climatologist that said he had to overemphasize the dangers to get media and public attention. BTW while it does happen on the left, people like Duffy, Bolt and Lomborg show it happens more frequently on the right. Bet you don’t call your spades a spade.
“most people on the left would rather criticise Bush, Howard and Blair and Israel than oppressive Islamic leaders or Islamic fascism”
Taking up Ian Gould’s response to this point from another angle, leftists who live in Australia or the United States will more frequently criticise Howard or Bush because of (a) the effects of their policies on the societies in which we live and (b) the possibility that such criticism will bring about a change in government policy or (better still) a change in government. It’s not a matter of preference but of context.
Would anyone seriously criticise leftists in South Africa for spending more time in the 1980s condemning the apartheid regime than condemning the Jaruzelski regime in Poland? And would anyone condemn leftists in Solidarnosc in the same period for concentrating on Jaruzelski rather than Botha?
Ian Gould and Paul Norton raise interesting points.
On the other hand – what about intellectual consistency ?
Also a lot of people used this argument regarding Indonesia and East Timor. I myself never thought that Indonesia would budge. But all of the people who (I thought) were futilely protesting should now take a bow.
On the subject of East timor, I was studying Asian Studies at Griffith University in the late 1980’s.
The general view amongst the faculty about East Timor could probably be summarised along these lines:
1. The invasion and occupation of East Timor was immoral and involved criems agaisnt humanity and war crimes.
2. The Australian and American governments probably could have done more in 1975 to prevent the invasion. Both the Whitlam and Fraser governments in Australia were at fault in this regard.
3. Absent military action by the west, there was no realistic way in the short temr to end the occupation.
4. The only realistic course of action was to maintain political pressure over the issue whilst hoping for democratic reform inside Indonesia.
5. Engagement with Indonesia, including economic and military ties and encouraging non-governmental contact such as Indonesians study in Australia was more likely to be effective in promoting change inside Indonesia than sanctions.
I beliwve that the subsequent course of events in East Timor has largely vindicated that view.
A fair point Simon.
I would argue that oppressive regimes of all ideological and religious stripes should be criticised, and that solidarity should be extended to their democratic opponents.
The form in which this principle can be translated effectively into practice depends, amongst other things, on (a) constraints on one’s time and energy and (b) the concrete political situation in different countries and regions, what the possibilities for positive change are, and whether a proposed action or policy which would weaken or remove an oppressive regime is likely to lead to improvements in the situation or to make matters worse.
It is at least refreshing to actually hear this argument put(and I think there is some validity to it).A lot of left wingers refuse to say this and instead tie themselves in knots trying to justify how the US is worse than say Iran.
Of course the same obligations for consistency should be demanded of right wingers as well.
Simon, also relevant to this point is a matter which is seldom mentioned in discussions of the significance of the Vietnam War. The fact that the anti-war movement in Australia and the US was able to change the policies of both countries can be seen as vindication of the substantially democratic nature of the political institutions of both societies, and of the fundamental decency of the citizens which those societies produced. For different reasons neither the Left nor the Right seem keen to acknowledge this.
Likewise, when critics of Israel quote extensively from Israeli newspapers they seldom acknowledge that a country which allows the publication of such material about its government and its policies can’t be all bad. Similarly many supporters of Israel refuse to acknowledge that the newspaper reports (mostly written by Jewish journalists) might have a basis in fact and might not be motivated by anti-semitism.
Paul Norton comment # 63 15/4/2005 @ 12:41 pm gives a rather flattering and amplified role to the anti VN war protest movement:
…………………
I would be careful about overplaying the role of the anti-VN war movement in ending the VN war, at least in the folk history of that era. The most effective constraint on the policies of the US and AUS govts was the nationalist populism of the NLF in the South and the statist power of the NVA in the North. The combination of these two political forces was the most effective constraint on the US’s attempt to maintain a pro-US, non-communist regime in South Vietnam.
Even so, US forces were pretty effective in pursuing the objective of a non-communist regime in the South, so long as they were in the field in force and given a more or less free hand. The NLF were substantially destroyed by Phoenix Program and the Tet Offensive. Arc Light, Rolling Thunder and Line Backer were able to constrain the NVA’s attempt to regain the strategic initiative.
The ARVN were able to resist the communist Easter offensive in 1972, when they repelled the.
If the ARVN had as much US support as the NVA has USSR support it would probably have resisted the communist attack in 1975. This was the largest armoured assault since the battle of Kursk.
The anti-VN War movements greatest poltical success occurred precisely at this moment, in the US Congress. Edward Kennedy, who was essentially the leader of the legislative branch, brought the war to an end by denying ARVN much needed US air support. The ARVN military resistance crumbled and the war ended ignominously for the anti-communist side.
I think the the US should not have got involved in the VN war. It should not have been there in the first place and it waged the war with unnecessary brutality.
I am not trying to defend or attck the decision to get into the VN war, just set the record straight. The VN anti-war movement had its most potent effect during the climactic moments of the ground war, rather than the heady days of protests.
FWIW, IMHO, the VN was a geo-political mistake analogous to the IRAQ war in that the US in both cases mistook essentially regional ethnological conflicts (VN: Northern nationalists v Southern Catholics; IRAQ: Suunis v Shiites) for global ethico-logical conflicts (VN ideological: communist v non-communists; IRAQ theological: sectarian militants v secular moderates) that the US was simultaneously waging on other fronts. Blood is thicker than ideology.
Michael, how do you categorise people like John who mount a ‘rigorous critique’ of ‘free market fundamentalism’ but also opposed the Iraq war? Good left or bad left? (Perhaps opposing the war OK as long as you take care to disavow Chomsky.)
James, very good economists but poor political scientists.
Michael,what if the end of the world were nigh? Why is that automatically, self-evidently absurd?
And separately, I’ll bet creationists are over-represented among denialists, if not a majority; also smokers, big meat-eaters, low exercisers. Isn’t it all about capacity to assess evidence, in this case about risks?
JQ: “Would you like to respond to the substantive points rather than taking umbrage at the footnotes?”
No — I’m not interested in defending Duffy. My complaint is with your inappropriate footnote.
JQ: “JH, in the pot-kettle department, would you like to distinguish your comparison of me with Tim Blair from my comparison of GW sceptics with evolution sceptics?
Again, I’ll have to decline your offer (to distinguish between the comparisons). Instead, I’ll admit that my comment* was similar to yours. You recognise that my comment was unhelpful and just a piece of rhetoric. Therefore… (apology accepted)
(I note that I didn’t liken you to Blair, but instead likened the growing culture of group-think — but that’s not the point to the above discussion.)
JH, I’m surprised by your groupthink assertion. I’d say that about half the participants in this thread are critics of the original post for one reason or another, and none has been howled down by a claque of loyalists in the manner you imply by your comparison.
Simon JM
John Humphries is quite correct to take you to task about your misrepresentation of Lomborg. In fact he did not go far enough, because he allowed you scope to change your misrepresentation. Contrary to your response at 57, Lomborg does NOT deny the existence of man made global warming. For example, at page 317 in his book he says: “There is no doubt that mankind has influenced and is still increasing atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and that this will influence temperature.” He then goes on to discuss the IPCC estimates of the likely increase in temperature, which are in the range 1.5 degrees C to 4.5 degress C (I think the top of the range may have moved out to 5.8 degrees C since he wrote the book).
What is truly frustrating about reading these 70 comments is that public discourse about climate change is still stuck in a grooove that ignores all the other related but distinct environmental issues. Michael Burgess and his ilk can put their head in the sand about the economic consequences of this impending doomsday. The current rash of conservatism and right wing governments is as much a psychological response to this impending disaster.
It is a disaster because we are still caught in a race to secure the remaining renewable resources in the world before the wells runs dry.
It’s boring to have to repeat all the damning statistics about water and soil and air pollution and the collapse of wild stocks of animals and plants etc etc etc.
At the moment we are like putty in the hands of our government because we hope desperately that the collapse will not happen here. Meanwhile the barons busily secure their agri-business monopolies gobbling up the last of the small fry.
Greenhouse gases will have the most serious effect on the variabilty of the climate – as in more storms/droughts etc. But as the resource base collapses the global economy will collapse as well . This economic collapse will achieve as much as any greenhouse laws do in terms of reducing the rate of emissions.
The real problem though is not the US or it’s christian zeal but the growth of nationalism in Asia, which threatens to unleash a serious war.
Both China and India have significant imbalances in their populations sex ratios. And IMHO the real issue is the counterproductive nature of patriarchal values, including the need to defend our turf in argument or in war.
…they turn around and deny the same scientific method and evidence when it comes to humans having an adverse impart on the environment…………………………………BUT ITS NOT JUST ABOUT GW, the same people like Duffy or Lomborg deny that there is any such detrimental effect -‘by humans on the general environment’.
Mark U the only thing you have me for is rushing the text in between my work and not being clear enough. So pull your head in.
A number of scientists point out that Lomborg misrepresents and picks and chooses the data on the environment, to show that things aren’t as bad as the scientists make out when the reverse is clearly the case. (Just like Bolt on the Murray River.)
Lomborg would have made a good tobacco funded scientist,-no smoking doesn’t cause cancer- just as qualified as he is on the environment and just as dishonest.
kyangadac
Well said. You have summed up the major and usually ignored issues very well.
Not quite with you on the main problem being Asian Nationlism as this is narrowing the blame to one group. Fanatics and extremists of any persuasion are major problems. Greenie extremists are no better that right wing christian extremists whatever.
To Paul Norton at 63 (and to a lesser extent, similar remarks apply to JQ at 69).
You don’t measure a country’s merit by its willingness to allow futile free speech, as opposed to take direction and formulate an agenda from it (to be fairly accepted or rejected – begging the question of what fairly is). That’s no more than Frederick the Great’s enlightened despotism in stating “my people and I have an agreement; they can say what they like and I can do what I like”.
That free speech makes the speakers a saving remnant, to use biblical language, and shows that you can’t make an anti-Irael position turn into antisemitism unless you mistake Israel for all Jews. But it doesn’t do one damned thing to make Israel any better. There’s a middle eastern folk tale about two birds watching a trapper lay out his nets. “See what a kind man he is”, said one bird, “he weeps to lay his traps”. “Never mind his eyes”, said the other bird, “watch his hands”.
the majority of climate change sceptics are creationists……..
Absolute and utter balderdash, without merit.
“Absolute and utter balderdash, without merit.”
A stunning refutation! Well done! Do you think a couple more adjectives would have made your argument even stronger?
Well I’m a “climate sceptic”, but my politics are centrist and I have no truck with creationism.
To be more specific, I have doubts that human activities have much to do with the observed warming, and I’m also sceptical about the degree and rate of warming promoted by GW advocates.
I’m not a climate scientist, but I am a professional statistician. John refers to “the increasingly absurd McKitrick and McIntyre” in their criticism of Mann’s “hockey stick”. On this matter I’m well qualified to comment, and I’m satisfied that M&M 05 have completely demolished the hockey stick.
For those unfamiliar with the debate, it’s worth pointing out that M&M are not so much concerned with refuting 20th century warming as restoring the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age in the historical record.
The point is that recent warming is not unusual. The earth is always warming or cooling – there is a high degree of natural variability.
James, I’d be interested in your defence of M&M. I note in particular, that you refer to M&M 05, and not to the quite different case put forward by M&M 03, which now seems to have been abandoned (M&M 03 relied on alleged errors in the data series, while M&M 05 are talking about the normalisation used in the principal components analysis).
As for ‘increasingly absurd’, search this site for McKitrick and you’ll see what I mean.
James Lane
To discredit the Hockey Stick is not to discredit the idea of Global Warming.
Have a look at these this link for an explanation of the hockey stick and its importance in the debate from one of the authors.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=114
And you are right the Earth has warmed and cooled in the past however this one is caused by human activity pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. Past ones were caused by solar variation or super volcanoes or metorites. This one is ours.
John, I’m happy to take you on regarding M&M vs Mann, as the statistical arguments are within my area of expertise.
M&M 05 is a better statement of their case than M&M 03, so I prefer to talk about the former. It (05) is also peer-reviewed and in a prestigous journal.
M&M’s case basically resolves into two issues:
1) The de-centred Principal Components Analysis (PCA) employed in MBH98 is an innappropriate method for the data involved, and effectivly “mines the data” for hockey-shape results.
My take: I would consider myself an expert in PCA, and I agree that the de-centered method is inappropriate for the data. This view has been backed up by von Storch and others.
2) The “hockey stick” is entirely dependant on the inclusion of a series of North American bristle-cone pine (BCP) tree-rings. Take them out of the analysis, and there is no hockey-stick. Everyone (including Hughes of MBH) agrees that the anomolous growth in the NA bristle-cones in the 20th century is not due to temperature.
MBH99 attempts to correct for the BCPs, but strangely corrects in the 19th century, but not in the 20th.
Point (2) is to me the much more cogent – unfortunatly much of the M&M v Mann debate has focussed on the former.
Ender:
I’m well aware of real.climate. It’s true that the “hockey stick” is not the “be all or end all” of climate science. However, the “hockey stick” is something of a “poster child” of the GW movement and as such deserves scrutiny.
A few points
1. The hockey stick isn’t just MBH. Other studies have found the same result – not all as dramatic, but nearly all showing much more rapid warming in the late 20th century than elsewhere in the record.
2. It’s my impression that the bristlecone pines criticism has been largely abandoned because Hughes is one of the top experts on this stuff and has accounted for the issues you raise.
3. I don’t know enough about PCA to argue on this point. But I know enough about the track record of M&M not to trust anything that they put out – in particular what appear to be selected runs showing hockey sticks. Have you actually shown that the decentring method mines the data in the way described ?
John, regarding your “few points”:
1 The “other reconstructions” are basically from a mix of the same crew, and all rely on the controversial BCP series.
2. Your impression notwithstanding, I’m not aware that anyone has abandoned the BCP criticism. Hughes himself concedes that the 20th century growth spurt is “a mystery”. The BCP data were collected by Graybill & Idso (1993), and while Graybill has passed on, Idso is in M&M’s camp.
3. I haven’t personally replicated M&M’s runs, but I don’t need to to find them credible. In any case, the PCA argument is subordinate to the one about the BCPs. No BCPs, no hockeystick. Do you really believe that the world’s climate history should be dependant on a few disputed high altitude North American tree rings, that everyone agrees are anomalous in the 20th century?
“I haven’t personally replicated M&M’s runs, but I don’t need to to find them credible.”
Again, given McKitrick’s track record (e.g mixing up degrees and radians to produce an obviously implausible result that happened to suit his case) I don’t think this is wise. Can you point to a source that backs up their claim?
Can you clarify what you mean by “basically the same crew”?
You can see the various reconstructions here. Also listed are the various authors so you can see that James Lanes’ claim that they are all by the “same crew” is untrue. Nor is it true that they all depend on the BCP data. James’ claim that their algorithm mines for hockey sticks is also untrue. It actually doesn’t matter whether you do centred or uncentred PCA – it only makes a difference if you do uncentred and screw up like McI and McK did.
““Absolute and utter balderdash, without merit.â€?
A stunning refutation! Well done! Do you think a couple more adjectives would have made your argument even stronger? ”
Ha, Ha, Ha. And Now Benno says: “What is the psychological basis of religion?”
Any antroes in the house?
James Lane –
“I’m well aware of real.climate. It’s true that the “hockey stickâ€? is not the “be all or end allâ€? of climate science. However, the “hockey stickâ€? is something of a “poster childâ€? of the GW movement and as such deserves scrutiny.”
I am sure that you are aware of Real Climate however there are clear explanations of the PCA data there.
Also you are quite mistaken the Hockey Stick is not a ‘poster child’ for the GW movement at all. It is more a poster child of the Global Skepic movement that seize on any uncertainty in the GW data as ‘proof’ that GW is a myth. Remember that the skeptics are running a fear, uncertainity, and doubt campaign so any perceived or otherwise faults in the global warming data are seized on. This is despite the fact that climate science is an uncertain discipline that does not have all the answers.
What we do have is ample evidence that anthropogenic CO2 is causing some changes the global climate. The simple answer is to reduce CO2 emissions and see what happens. However it is unlikely that such a simple answer will ever be implemented.
Hmm, Bob Carter’s getting a run on the Victorian Country Hour at the mo’…
Kyangada, I have just read your comment that ‘Michael Burgess and his ilk can put their head in the sand about the economic consequences of this impending doomsday.’ You then go on to state, among other doom laden comments that ‘It is a disaster because we are still caught in a race to secure the remaining renewable resources in the world before the wells runs dry’. This is a perfect example of the nonsense I am talking about which has alienated so many people and rightly brought the environmental movement into disrepute. Have you ever heard of technological change? One does not need to be a naïve technological optimist to recognise that over the next 50 years or so many of the problems we now have will disappear with the advent of new technologies or the sensible use of old technologies, inlcuding nuclear power. We have not even scratched the surface, for example, of utilising a greater proportion of Sydney’s rainfall for our water use.
Ender: “The simple answer is to reduce CO2 emissions and see what happens. However it is unlikely that such a simple answer will ever be implemented.”
As I have pointed out, Kytoto will do nothing to change global temps even if you believe the models. (For the record, I do not accept JQ’s argument that Kyoto will be close to economically neutral).
The (original 98) hockey stick was rapidly and uncritically accepted by the IPCC and greens and hence WAS a “poster child” of the GW movement.
JQ: I agree your comments section is far better than most. I note that you chose only to respond to the footnote of my most recent post. Touche.
Ender: “The simple answer is to reduce CO2 emissions and see what happens. However it is unlikely that such a simple answer will ever be implemented.�
That is a very simple answer… too simple. It is not sufficient to enact public policy on the basis of possible benefits without consideration of possible costs. Especially when the possible benefits are estimated to be near zero.
AN Smith
I am under no illusions that Kyoto will reduce global temps as we and the US made sure of that. However it is the only game in town and might with real political will lead to a agreement with real teeth that would produce the required CO2 emission reductions of 60%.
John Humphries
Have you estimated the costs of Climate Change?
As I have pointed out, Kytoto will do nothing to change global temps even if you believe the models.
Wrong.
However, the real benefit in Kyoto has to do with encouraging technological developments in low emission technologies.
(For the record, I do not accept JQ’s argument that Kyoto will be close to economically neutral).
That’s nice. Got any evidence to back it up?
The (original 98) hockey stick was rapidly and uncritically accepted by the IPCC and greens and hence WAS a “poster child� of the GW movement.
The main hockey stick in the IPCC report was the 1999 version. The 98 version is included simply for completeness.
Contary to being accepted uncritically, underwent peer review.
Tim Lambert: If you really believe there is no difference between uncentred PCA and orthodox PCA, I can only conclude that you don’t know much about Principal Components Analysis. And to assert that McIntyre “screwed up” his non-centrered analysis is simply a lie. I have been working with PCA for more than 20 years, and I know what I’m talking about.
John Quiggan: There are a coterie of paleoclimatic researchers that are strongly represented in the alleged “replications” of MBH98 and illustrated in the “spaghetti chart” on the realclimate site. To save time, I’ll simply quote from M&M’s 05 E&E paper:
-begin quote-
Mann et al. [2003, 2004a, 2004b] argued that their results are similar to those of “independent� studies, such as Jones, Briffa et al. [1998], Crowley and Lowery [2000], Briffa, Jones et al [2001], Mann and Jones [2003] and Jones and Mann [2004], calculated with different proxies and different methods. This “similarity� is typically shown by “spaghetti� diagrams supposedly illustrating the similarity, rather than through detailed analysis. These studies are hardly “independent�. If all the authors in the multiproxy articles are listed, one sees much overlapping. Mann himself was a co-author of two supposedly “independent� studies; his sometime co-author (as well as Bradley’s sometime co-author) Jones was co-author of two of the others. Even Crowley and Lowery [2000],where there is no apparent overlap, stated that they used data supplied by Jones. This hardly amounts to “independence� in any conventional use of the term.
-end quote-
Ender: Although I don’t think M&M have made this point very clear, their concern is not so much with the “blade” of the HS, as with the shaft. The MBH98 representation depicts a long period of low climate variability contrasted with a rapid increase in the 20th century, denying the MWP and the Little Ice Age as being local phenomena.
I believe that M&M have effectively debunked this position. The issue is not so much recent waming as the historical variability, which is something everyone in the debate should pause to consider.
Finally, for JQ, if MciItrick screwed up on radians/degrees, it has nothing to do with McIntyre who has done all the statistical heavy lifting for M&M 05.
I did not say that there was no difference between centred and uncentred I said that it made no difference. Look here. I gave you a link to 10 different reconstructions. Even generously using your definition of the “same crew” only five have Jones or Mann as an author. It is not true to say that all are by the same crew.
James Lane – “Ender: Although I don’t think M&M have made this point very clear, their concern is not so much with the “bladeâ€? of the HS, as with the shaft. The MBH98 representation depicts a long period of low climate variability contrasted with a rapid increase in the 20th century, denying the MWP and the Little Ice Age as being local phenomena.”
I have no problem with this. As I have said over and over climate science is not exact and does not have all the answers. However the blade is the bit that worries me.
After reading the comments above on the Naumann conference I went back to my source, who has checked and found the survey was reported at the conference but not conducted there. It seems he was misled by an ambiguous English translation of a German report of the conference. He apologises for the error and so do I. It doesn’t alter the fact that a survey of scientists (held in 2003, not 1996 as some have claimed above) shows about a quarter of those polled were dubious that global warming is caused by human activity. The surveyor was Dr Dennis Bray, a sociologist at the Institute for Coastal Research at GKSS Forschungszentrum, Geesthacht, Germany. The survey has just been put on the web at: http://w3g.gkss.de/G/Mitarbeiter/bray.html/BrayGKSSsite/BrayGKSS/surveyframe.html.
Tim Lambert: “I did not say that there was no difference between centred and uncentred I said that it made no difference”
Excuse me for failing to distinguish between “no difference” and “no difference”. Do you know the difference between PC1 and PC4?
Michael the link you have put up is broken. Even with help from German-speaking reader Brian Bahnisch, I couldn’t determine whether the claimed results came from the 1996 or 2003 survey, but I’ll put a correction on the relevant post.
There is an extra . at the end of the link to the survey. Here is a working link. The 2003 survey was an online one, so I would be suprised if the sample was representative.