[Vision2020] Some reasons I'm skeptical about anthropogenic globalwarming
Sunil Ramalingam
sunilramalingam at hotmail.com
Thu Dec 10 12:11:04 PST 2009
Wow Gary,
I really agree with your sentiment. Right on! What a great post. Me too. I couldn't agree more.
Yours in brotherhood and agreement,
Sunil
From: lockshop at pull.twcbc.com
To: godshatter at yahoo.com
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2009 11:52:59 -0800
CC: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Some reasons I'm skeptical about anthropogenic globalwarming
Thanks for a well reasoned and well presented post.
I, for one, appreciate it.
As to the whole pariah thing, while I'm sure you
need no reassurance from me, I wouldn't
give it a second thought. Any post that breaks away
from the usual chorus of "me too"
and "I couldn't agree more" comes as an
extremely welcome change.
g
----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Rumelhart" <godshatter at yahoo.com>
To: "Vision2020" <vision2020 at moscow.com>
Sent: Thursday, December 10, 2009 10:41
AM
Subject: [Vision2020] Some reasons I'm skeptical
about anthropogenic globalwarming
> Since I feel I've basically made myself into a pariah on this list
> because of my skepticism towards anthropogenic global warming, I
thought
> I'd go whole hog and totally alienate myself from all
free-thinking
> people by expanding upon my opinion by giving more detail
and examples
> of why I'm skeptical.
>
> A Note About
Skepticism
>
> Someone who is skeptical about a subject is not the
same thing as a
> "denier" or a "contrarian". A "denier" would be
someone who is
> unequivocally stating that the subject is
incorrect. A "contrarian"
> would automatically be stating the
opposite conclusion is true, no
> matter what was said. A skeptic,
on the other hand, is merely
> expressing doubt about the topic.
>
> Thus, I will explain some of my doubts.
>
>
Climate vs. Weather
>
> Weather and climate are different, yet
related, topics. In effect,
> climate is an aggregation of weather
data over a large period of time.
> How warm is the Earth,
today? Right here, it's very cold. There are
> blizzards in
the mid-west. In Tokyo, it's 52F. In Sydney it's 77F.
>
These temperatures change quickly over time. If you took an average
> temperature right now at every weather station on the globe, how good a
> representation of the Earth's temperature would it be? There are
large
> parts of the globe that are a large distance away from a weather
> station. In some places, you may be a short drive from
several. Factor
> in the temperature of the water in the oceans in
various spots and at
> various depths and the temperature of other bodies
of water such as
> lakes and rivers and the temperature at various
altitudes in our
> atmosphere, and you have a confusing jumble of data
that you're trying
> to coalesce into one number.
>
> How
useful is that number? It's presumably useful for long-term trends,
> but may not tell you much on it's own. How long-term? A few
days? A
> few months? A few years? A few decades?
Longer? How chaotic is the
> system? Does that number change
fractionally from hour-to-hour,
> day-to-day, or month-to-month?
Does it jump all over the place? If you
> had a thermometer that
was connected to all of these data sources and
> more that could show you
the exact averaged temperature at any moment,
> what would it look
like? Would the needle be rock-solid or would it be
> vibrating
like mad?
>
> I've learned from playing around with the NCDC global
temperature
> datasets that more information does not automatically lead
to clearer
> conclusions.
>
> The State of the Data Past
1850 or So
>
> Unfortunately, we don't have data going back before
about 1850 that is
> global in scope. That's about 160 years, which
is a small fraction of
> the amount of time we should be looking
back.
>
> The current global temperature data that we do
have available comes from
> three places and covers data from around 1850
onward. Some of it comes
> from NASA's Goddarad Institute for Space
Studies, some of it from the
> NOAA's National Climatic Data Center, and
some of it from the CRU at the
> University of East Anglia, which is the
victim of that data hack (or
> whistle-blowing event) that hasn't been
all over the mainstream media.
> The CRU and NCDC datasets are
averaged data for the month for each
> station. I haven't looked at
the GISS data yet, so I don't know if it's
> averaged by month or
not.
>
> I won't belabor the point about my current mistrust of the
CRU dataset
> too much, suffice it to say that since they have "lost" the
original raw
> data and don't have methodologies posted that I can find
about how they
> made it into their current "value-added" set of data, so
I'm pretty much
> discounting it completely.
>
> I am
somewhat familiar with the NCDC's dataset, since that's the one
> I've
been playing around with plotting. There are stark differences
> between
the raw dataset and the adjusted dataset. Sometime in the
> future
I'll have some nice plots that will show these adjustments.
>
However, at least we have access to the raw data. I did dig around on
> the net a little, and came across this:
> http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/ushcn/ts.ushcn_anom25_diffs_urb-raw_pg.gif
> Take a look at that graph, and think what
would happen if you took any
> old mp3 file and plotted it's waveform as
if it's global temperature
> data, then applied that adjustment to
it. What would it show? Yep, you
> guessed it, global
warming.
>
> I'm not familiar with the GISS dataset, so I can offer
no conclusions
> about it's trustworthiness.
>
> Another
problem is that the stations that provide this data move around
> or
change in some other way over time. What used to be an isolated
>
station perfect for measuring weather gets a parking lot put in next to
>
it, raising the temperature by 1C. A station gets moved behind a
>
building, too close to an exhaust fan for the air conditioning. You
> name it, it's happened. Look at http://surfacestations.org for an idea
> of the quality of data we're getting from these stations. Take a
good
> look at the pie chart labeled "USHCN - Station Site by Quality
Rating".
> Notice that with 82% of the sites surveyed, 69% of them
are categorized
> as having an error bar of >= 2C, 61% of them as
having an error bar of
> >= 5C. That's in the US, I don't
know how other countries stack up.
>
> The State of the Data Before
1850 or So
>
> Well, there isn't much. Not that I've
seen, anyway. There are probably
> temperature records that go back
farther than that, but they are
> sparse. Before that, it's
anecdotal. Descriptions of storms, bad
> winters or good summers,
etc. Go far enough back, and there is no data
> whatsoever produced
by man.
>
> This only gets you back a short amount time compared to
the time frame
> of the Earth. It's just a blink of an eye,
geographically speaking.
>
> Temperature Proxies
>
>
So how do we graph temperature going back before 1850? Using
>
temperature proxies. These are measurements that are only indirectly
> related to temperature. These are things like tree ring growth,
coral
> growth, composition of snow, and others. You basically take
some
> natural process that can be measured currently that has a history
of
> growth fluctuations over time and try to determine based on what
causes
> those fluctuations what the past was like.
>
> The
simple example, which is central to some of the debates about the
> CRU
email hack, is tree rings. Trees grow better in certain temperature
> ranges, and they grow a new ring every year. So you can go back
and
> measure the size of the rings to get a basic determination of how
well
> the tree grew that year. That, presumably, gives you some
idea of what
> the temperature record was like in the past.
>
> The problem with this is that temperature is not the only variable that
> affects tree growth. There are other factors which affect this,
such as
> moisture, tree placement (how much competition it has for
sunlight),
> disease, soil composition, and who knows how many
others. You can
> measure tree rings on a lot of trees to try to
average some of these
> factors out that affect individual trees, but you
are still stuck with a
> few that should be taken into consideration,
such as moisture or
> rainfall. How much each of these factors
affects trees varies by the
> kind of tree that is being sampled.
>
> You take your tree ring growth chart and your reconstructed
temperatures
> and you run them against known temperatures for that
region (1850 to
> present, if the temperature record there goes back that
far), and
> compare the data points. If there is a good fit, then
you have some
> validation that the proxy you are using might be
correlated with
> temperature. This is still doubtful to some
degree, because we only
> have a temperature record that covers about 160
years, which may or may
> not be really accurate. These proxies are
being used, by looking at
> fossils of trees, to go back one or two
thousand years.
>
> The controversy about "hide the decline" that
you may have heard about
> has to do with tree rings for pine trees in
Yamal in Siberia.
> Apparently, if you compare the reconstruction
with current temperature
> records, you get a pretty good fit until about
1960 or so. After that
> point, the reconstructed temperature falls
off while the temperature
> record goes up. The trick to hide the
decline had to do with splicing
> the temperature record onto the
reconstructed temperature record at 1960
> and smooth the curve, then cut
it at 1960 in order to make the curve
> that ends at 1960 appear to be
curving up instead of down. There is a
> good explanation of this
here:
> http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/20/mikes-nature-trick/ In my
> opinion, that discrepency (50 years over
at most 160 years don't fit)
> should have signaled to them that that
proxy was not a good proxy for
> temperature. Instead, they tried
to make it appear that it fit better
> than it did, so that they could
show that the remainder of the
> reconstruction record before 1850 was
more valid than it would otherwise
> appear to be. Another
criticism I've seen about this study is that they
> used a small number
of trees to get their data points. Twelve trees, I
> think.
That's obviously not enough to get an accurate reconstruction,
> even if
tree rings are a good proxy for temperature.
>
> The Medieval Warm
Period and the Little Ice Age
>
> Why did they try so hard to make
their reconstruction look better than
> it did? Because they wanted
to minimize the "Medieval Warm Period" and
> the "Little Ice Age".
This came out in the hacked emails. Here is an
> explanation of
this from a blog post:
> http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/06/american-thinker-understanding-climategates-hidden-decline/
>
>
> The MWP was a period of time
(about 800 - 1300 AD) during which the
> temperature of the Earth
appeared from historical writings to be at
> least as high as the current
temperature or even higher. The LIA was a
> period of time from
about 1500 or so to 1850 during which temperatures
> were low and slowly
climbing, with minimal temperatures at various
> points interspersed with
periods of slight warming.
>
> There is evidence that both of these
phenomena were global in scale,
> although the exact periods of time
change a bit in different areas of
> the Earth. You have the
Vikings colonizing Greenland and farming there
> for 400 years, and you
have various other measurements that coincide
> with this. The
Wikipedia article on MWP has a handful of them:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_warm_period For example, here is
> a link to a description
of an article that was published in Nature that
> describes how the
Indo-Pacific Warm Pool may have been as warm during
> the MWP as it is
today: http://www.physorg.com/news170598165.html
>
> So why try to minimize the MWP and the
LIA? Look at how it frames the
> debate. If it was naturally
warmer one thousand years ago than it is
> now, and we're recovering from
a severe cold bout that has lasted 600
> years, then global warming can
be seen as a natural correction to the
> LIA. Furthermore, life
during the MWP was prosperous, not some sort of
> hell on earth that
killed billions. It's much more profitable and much
> more
ego-building to show that you are trying to save the world from a
>
mistake that we as a species has made, since we can presumably do
>
something about it. That's why I am skeptical of these tree ring
>
proxies and our ability to state with any confidence exactly what the
>
temperatures were like.
>
> Conclusions
>
>
Well, I was going to write about Climate Model accuracy, Milankovich
>
Cycles, the Maunder Minimum, the Earth's history of Ice Ages and a few
>
other topics, but this has already turned into a book. Look them up if
> you're curious.
>
> So, basically, I'm doubtful of
the following things, to one degree or
> another:
>
> Our
ability to accurately graph global temperature with accuracy over
>
extended periods of time and have it mean much.
>
> The
"adjustments" made to the three basic datasets that we use for
> plotting
temperature.
>
> The accuracy of our current temperature
measurements used in these datasets.
>
> Our ability to accurately
reconstruct temperature before 1850 based on
> various temperature
proxies.
>
> The predictive ability of tree-ring proxies in
particular and their
> explanatory ability for past temperatures.
>
> The removal of the Medieval Warm Period from the temperature record,
and
> indeed our general idea of what temperature has been like over the
last
> 2000 years.
>
> Now, on to what I'm not saying.
I'm not saying that the Earth is not
> warming. It seems pretty
clear that it is warming, or has been since
> 1850, generally
speaking. I'm not saying that carbon dioxide does not
> have an
affect on temperature, or that man is not having an affect in
> other
ways as well. I'm not saying that massive amounts of CO2 aren't
>
harming our oceans.
>
> But I am skeptical about the science being
"settled", and I'm skeptical
> that we have enough of an understanding of
the problem to warrant the
> massive media campaign that is currently
going on and the massive
> expenditures that could come out of
Copenhagen. There is room for doubt
> here about a lot of
things. Let's do more science.
>
> In twenty years, when it's
all been proven and it turns out that the AGW
> hypotheses were correct,
will I feel like an idiot for being skeptical
> of it now?
No. In my opinion, the question is still up in the air and
> I
won't feel even a little bit chagrined then for doubting some of their
>
conclusions now. How would some of these scientists handle the opposite
> answer 20 years from now, I wonder?
>
> Paul
>
> My apologies for the long post.
>
>
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