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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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