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