<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" ><tr><td valign="top" style="font: inherit;"><DIV>Boy, do I second that!</DIV>
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<DIV>It seems if you don't agree with the majority you are a worthless human being on list.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Your Friend,</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Donovan Arnold<BR><BR>--- On <B>Thu, 12/10/09, the lockshop <I><lockshop@pull.twcbc.com></I></B> wrote:<BR></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE style="BORDER-LEFT: rgb(16,16,255) 2px solid; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px"><BR>From: the <SPAN><SPAN>lockshop</SPAN></SPAN> <lockshop@pull.twcbc.com><BR>Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Some reasons I'm skeptical about anthropogenic globalwarming<BR>To: "Paul Rumelhart" <godshatter@yahoo.com><BR>Cc: vision2020@moscow.com<BR>Date: Thursday, December 10, 2009, 7:52 PM<BR><BR>
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<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>Thanks for a well reasoned and well presented post. I, for one, appreciate it.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>As to the whole pariah thing, while I'm sure you need no reassurance from me, I wouldn't </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>give it a second thought. Any post that breaks away from the usual chorus of "me too" </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>and "I couldn't agree more" comes as an extremely welcome change.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>g</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>----- Original Message ----- </FONT>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>From: "Paul Rumelhart" <</FONT><A href="http://us.mc447.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=godshatter@yahoo.com" rel=nofollow target=_blank ymailto="mailto:godshatter@yahoo.com"><FONT size=2 face=Arial>godshatter@yahoo.com</FONT></A><FONT size=2 face=Arial>></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>To: "Vision2020" <</FONT><A href="http://us.mc447.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=vision2020@moscow.com" rel=nofollow target=_blank ymailto="mailto:vision2020@moscow.com"><FONT size=2 face=Arial>vision2020@moscow.com</FONT></A><FONT size=2 face=Arial>></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>Sent: Thursday, December 10, 2009 10:41 AM</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>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 size=2 face=Arial>> 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" rel=nofollow target=_blank><FONT size=2 face=Arial>http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/ushcn/ts.ushcn_anom25_diffs_urb-raw_pg.gif</FONT></A><FONT size=2 face=Arial> <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/" rel=nofollow target=_blank><FONT size=2 face=Arial>http://surfacestations.org</FONT></A><FONT size=2 face=Arial> 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/" rel=nofollow
target=_blank><FONT size=2 face=Arial>http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/20/mikes-nature-trick/</FONT></A><FONT size=2 face=Arial> 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/" rel=nofollow target=_blank><FONT size=2 face=Arial>http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/06/american-thinker-understanding-climategates-hidden-decline/</FONT></A><FONT size=2 face=Arial> <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" rel=nofollow target=_blank><FONT size=2 face=Arial>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_warm_period</FONT></A><FONT size=2 face=Arial> 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" rel=nofollow target=_blank><FONT size=2 face=Arial>http://www.physorg.com/news170598165.html</FONT></A><BR><FONT size=2 face=Arial>> <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>> =======================================================<BR>> List services made available by First Step Internet, <BR>> serving the communities of the Palouse
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