Do you understand what the difference is between an absolute value and a trend?
Climate-gate
- Thread starter Photizo
- Start date
Do you understand what the difference is between an absolute value and a trend?
So you wont click the link. You brought up smoothing over (possibly) 400km. Show me how you do that with the wide variety of temps in small distances. If you join that site, you can drill down and see the station locations via google maps. I've done that. They are current stations with good site.
And there it is in real time, variations in temp.
Go ahead and pick (via the drop down) highs and lows.
I clicked the link, which is how I know it displays absolute values rather than trends.
You bought up smoothing, not me. You claimed it was an assumption that it could be done, I pointed out that it was an observation.
Do you understand the absurdity of your request? In order to preform the analysis in the first place, the temperature data must be presented as a time series.
Maybe you should do some research into the methodology you're cirticising instead of making assumptions about it.
Hi Trippy :wave:
What a crazy few weeks it has been here in the US with all the fundies coming out of the closet in hopes of shutting Obama down. Obviously milkweed and photizo are rowing with that team, and of course the anti-science cranks are becoming more agile at posting blogs that are decorated in a sham patina of journalism . . . until we get to the actual content
It's good that you mention how many disparate kinds of knowledge all rooted in physical science will all dovetail to arrive at the same conclusions, whether we are talking about metal fatigue or glacial melt. It's what we mean about being rigorous, something the naysayers like to attack as group think. Yes, folks: the laws work in groups!
My hope was to give milkweed one thread of the cloth you're referring to, by showing how solution to one older mystery (the ultraviolet catastrophe) leads to the understanding of a new law (blackbody radiation) which, along with the important laws you mention -- all arrived at by countless trials by independent observers -- form complexes of definitions by which we can truly say we "know" what the the skeptics say we merely "believe". Once we know there is a greenhouse effect (and merely as a consequence of finding the Earth warmer than it should be using a few of those laws -- before anyone was aware that human activity adds to it), then common sense (for a true conservative, that is,
) dictates that we stop compounding the problem. I suppose they have a valid point in asking quantitative details (how much is bad) but unfortunately that's not easily beaten into pap and spoon fed. It takes some actual familiarity with basic science just to deal with nature quantitatively. That leads us to the question: why don't skeptics ever try to learn science themselves? Of course we know this is a political game, and they have no intention of learning science -- all the while the perpetrators have funded some of the largest technology initiatives (geophysical sciences of petroleum exploration, plus all of the chemical engineering of production, plus all of the mechanical and electrical engineering that accompanies this). And all of that science relies on the exact same laws you listed in one way or another. So in other words many a designer of turbines has applied Stefan-Boltzmann to convert heat into mechanical energy -- short of melting or fracturing the blades, just as the folks who designed the grid have employed the principles of reflection in order to match transmission lines to their sources and loads. And so on. But here, when these laws align themselves in a particular constellation that describes climate science . . . suddenly we are into "group think", as if the laws simply don't work in that combination. Which I would say does not amount to the value of the samples you test if you know what I mean. The really ridiculous propaganda put forth by the dingbats who left academia to join the fundie parade is foolishly trying to convince the sheeple that science doesn't dovetail as perfectly as we know it does. It's an excellent point you're making -- the first thing any college student quickly discovers is the way these laws are fully portable across all technologies. So if we were to dismiss the laws of reflection that govern climate science, then we would have to dismiss the way those laws govern the transmission of electromagnetic waves and hence the way components in high speed digital networks behave, from which we would have to deduce that the internet simply can't work, and all claims that it does work are founded on Group Think. I suppose milkweed is rebelling against whatever conspiracy is pretending to have an actual internet available for him to post here. And the same analysis applies to the rest of the laws and principles you listed. The entire universe would come to a standstill if just about any one of them was somehow spontaneously (somehow) made inviolate.
Bottom line, your point is well taken. In science, it's all or nothing. All the laws have to be obeyed, otherwise they're not laws. And claiming they're not, just to suit one's profit goals and/or religion, is quintessential meanness (greed) and stupidity.
The easiest way to know man induced global warming was a scam was when it was called consensus science. Consensus is how you do politics, not science. Science is not determined by the consensus of opinion, but by irrefutable evidence that anyone can reproduced.
One way to settle this is let look at the predictions make by the best models over the past three decades to see how good they were. This was where the faith began, so let us see if the models of the consensus were any good, now we have historical data. We have the hard data up to 2013. What did the models predict in comparison? Weren't the poles all melted by now by the earliest models?
The consensus tactic has been political and has been to discredit anyone who speaks up with an alternate POV. Attack the messenger to discredit the message. The gullible who bought in will think both mean the same. So let the models speak for themselves and we will let the consensus presents the predictions for us. How hot was it supposed to be? I am sorry the polar bears went extinct.
One way to settle this is let look at the predictions make by the best models over the past three decades to see how good they were. This was where the faith began, so let us see if the models of the consensus were any good, now we have historical data. We have the hard data up to 2013. What did the models predict in comparison? Weren't the poles all melted by now by the earliest models?
The consensus tactic has been political and has been to discredit anyone who speaks up with an alternate POV. Attack the messenger to discredit the message. The gullible who bought in will think both mean the same. So let the models speak for themselves and we will let the consensus presents the predictions for us. How hot was it supposed to be? I am sorry the polar bears went extinct.
As far as I have run across, nobody is speaking up with an "alternate" point of view - another theory that handles the data, a different but equivalently supported explanation for the observed facts, is nowhere to be found.wellwisher said:
I've seen nothing but piecemeal, narrowly focused, and invalid "criticism" (usually, just denial) of small aspects of the ordinary point of view as established by compiling mainstream scientific efforts, not supported well in data but very lavishly backed by politically interested money, and often reinforced by personal slander.
Now you've confused yourself more than Steele has. Let's return to what Dr Parmesan actually wrote in the paper we have been discussing.
Exhibit A. Dr Parmesan's survey of vast evidence of the damage of climate change on species, citing dozens of relevant research and empirical studies. §§3 and 4 contain the text Steele and you are trying to dismantle.
http://www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.2307/1942596
No it was Dr Parmesan who referenced the turtle study in the dozens of salient papers she cited in Exhibit A. To wit:
Exhibit B. JJ Bull's 1980 study Sex Determination in Reptiles. Or perhaps you think citing actual work sitting in the public domain as a matter of settled science for some 33 years now is an indicator of bias.? :shrug:
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2826077?uid=2&uid=4&sid=21102787905081
Compare what you just wrote with Ex. B and see if you explain why folks with little or no science training are left giving you that I don't know, what does actual science teach :shrug: ?
Compare what you just wrote with her comments in Ex. A §4 ¶2.
Also note what she says in ¶3 of Ex. A concerning the variability of mating behaviors on rainfall and drought and the subtle counter-intuitive way it can act as a gate for introducing genetic variety into a population.
I have no idea what you mean and why you are hounding Dr Parmesan. You want to challenge the science that relates to seasonal melanism in butterflies? All she said was: "butterflies absorb radiant heat faster if they are darker colored" and she cites "seasonal changes in melanism from spring to summer in Pontia occidentalis". What's wrong with that? My earlier remark was that Steele seems to be telling us these are all Dr Parmesan's ideas, which is dishonest. Steele needs to take his complaints to the authors she cited, who have also had their work sitting in the public domain long enough to be considered settled science. Go back to his claim that they (or Parmesan?) recklessly ignored the "fact" that "rabbits eat the grass" and compare it with the actual content of their findings which she merely reported and correlated with other salient facts:
Exhibit C. Effects of heat on melanism in butterflies, Kingsolver et al, 1990.
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2462402?uid=2&uid=4&sid=21102785963201
Warming was linked by Dr. Parmesan to the Bull's findings in Exhibit B. If you have a problem with that (you or Steele) then attack Bull, not Parmesan. You see the hole Steele is digging?
That's patently false. She has fully documented the authorities she uses, just like any other author would do . Nothing has been missed or ignored, other than the stuff you and Steele are missing and ignoring. Further, I have merely given you back what each of the authors concluded from their studies. So I did post actual authoritative science after all, didn't I.
It's the other way around. Steele is attacking (in his mind, not really) long-settled science, except all he has is rant with no substance. I returned the serve by slamming him with a few remarks about what Parmesan's source material teaches, and in the smallest mention (what I've said immediately above) Steele just withers into nothingness.
The rest of my posts concern data homogenization, which Steele attacks in the most pathological way. It's his deliberate disingenuous statements that equate raw data with what you mistakenly believe is homogeneous data. It's not, and I gave you the following links to unlock the chains Steele has put on your brain. These sources can correct your perception of the following questions, which for some reason you've gone out on a limb with Steele to answer from blind faith in him rather than to try to understand what science teaches (what nature tells us).
(Ex D) What does "data homogenization mean", why is it necessary, and how did it surface in the Culture Wars?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homogenization_(climate)#Inhomogeneities_in_climate_data
(Ex E) What are some of the specifics? How does an actual scientist describe the issues and solution?
http://iridl.ldeo.columbia.edu/dochelp/StatTutorial/Homogeneity/
(Ex F) What is metadata, and what guidelines are in place to ensure its quality?
http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/wcp/wcdmp/wcdmp_series/documents/WCDMP-53.pdf
(Ex G) How does it improve quality, and what benchmarks are in place to corroborate this? (Follow the links if you really want to comprehend this subject.)
http://www2.meteo.uni-bonn.de/mitarbeiter/venema/themes/homogenisation/index.html
So? You say that as though you think it means "ambient temperatures". That's the huge hole between what scientists know and what you haven't yet learned. It's the gap between what Steele probably knows, or which he has a responsibility to learn, but which is deliberately lying about in order to gain some advantage (such as selling his junk science book).
The question is: can you articulate what science teaches about homogenization or not? Short of that, your outlook is entirely cynical and downright paranoid. If these are your sincere beliefs, that's one thing. If you're posing as "rational skeptic" that's another.
You are leaving out the substantial fact which completely kills Steele's rant: we are talking about data that contains anomalies - jumps - which introduce a bias (offset) from the trend. And remember this trend is rising at approx. a constant rate. The data sets that had to be corrected (homogenized) contain a jump, and then the rest of the trend line is either elevated or depressed from its standard position. It's CLEARLY an anomaly, and CLEARLY not due to actual conditions of the ambient. First, the atmosphere doesn't just magically gain or lose energy and continue rising in energy at the same rate along an elevated shelf or a depressed trough. That's the essential fact you are either completely unaware of (or else warily pretending to be unaware of). You have yet to address this; Steele completely ignores it and manufactures his little controversy as per the right wing modus operandi. It's trash. Worse, it's deliberate lies used to corral the right wing flock, to throw them some artificial hay and promote it as brain food. Tripe is better than this.
You're wrong in thinking that the stations haven't "moved". Think again. They used to keep paper records, remember? There have been changes at these sites contrary to your belief, but regardless of the causes, when data contains bias it must be removed. The link I gave (presumably you mean the guidelines) does encourage logging obvious factors that can introduce bias such as relocating stations. But that's not to the exclusion of correcting very old data (e.g. 1936) that contains detectable bias regardless of cause. But the purpose of steering you to that paper was to help you understand the universality of data homogenization, and that this is not remotely connected to Al Gore but entirely a matter of measurement science. Or perhaps you (Steele) want us to believe Gore went to Spain in 2003 (I think that was the date) to hire a bunch of European conspirators to write this paper to sell his own book. In any case, the hope was that you would learn what homogenization is about and why it's done. So far you are still responding as if you don't understand it.
I was using the term calibration to include all issues of this category as they apply to measurement science. The first thing you do in a Science 101 lab is to learn to calibrate instruments. My intent was to try to keep this as simple as possible, and not to follow Steele over the cliff arguing against his junk science. You kept insisting, so I am now differentiating between the specific meaning of the terms calibration and homogenization. There is no need for sarcasm, since my remarks are all sincere and founded in the bedrock of settled matters of science. The fact that the atmosphere does not instantaneously jump in energy, esp. locally, is a settled matter. It does no good to try to argue otherwise. You'd be better off arguing that water running downhill can stop dead in its tracks, reverse course, and run uphill. Presumably you don't equate knowledge of physical science as basic as this as "group think".
Yeah, everyone who has the skills to understand there’s a serious defect in such a claim (water runs uphill) is in a group - a group of people who are correct. Steele is in that other group who are seriously wrong in believing water runs uphill; but his strident use of this argument claiming that science is broken and good folks like Dr Parmesan (and her sources) are corrupt is just idiotic. So yeah there's a huge group of people who are right - only they stand to the left of the Right. That's your "group think". It's millions of people - experts or at least qualified to say - all saying the same thing in unison. Water simply doesn't run uphill. The atmosphere doesn’t jump like this. Therefore we have to throw all of Steele's remarks in the trash. They're all worthless garbage.They're not my foundations, they're the foundations of nature. Surface ambient doesn't just rise of fall and then resume along the same trend (slope of the running mean) on a shelf or in a trench. The local ambient doesn't magically absorb or shed substantial energy and then store the new state while the heating continues. To claim this is egregiously incorrect, tantamount to superstition, and is completely smashed under the mountains of concrete this kind of science (knowledge of first principles) is based on.
I'm a user of the NOAA data archives. There is no question about the data authenticity. There is usually enough evidence in the data itself to tell if it contains a substantial anomaly. So far we are talking only about a few cases where a substantial anomaly occurred (for any of many reasons. My analogy about the effect of addition or loss of shade as a tree grows (or falls) is one of many causes. Not all causes are known since we're talking about trends going back to ca. 1936 . . . at a station monitored by local Park Rangers (Shasta is one set of logs I've read). The Ranger either saw nothing unusual, or else saw something and wrote it down (an ouila, it corresponds to the shelf or trough in question). I suppose it's possible they saw something and wondered if it might affect the data, and decided not to react to their gut feeling. Possibly some of them felt they were following standard procedure, and it wasn't their job to inject their opinions into the logs. But none of this matters, if you understood any of the science I have been explaining to you.
Who are you referring to--Steele? So far he's the only one proposing that bad data be labeled as good data. All of the cites I have given and all of the lengthy explaining has been done to establish that need to remove bias from the data before it can properly be called ambient temperature. You seem to keep missing this.
Wrong. Data that reflects a shift in statistics requires special treatment, and yes, it definitely says something happened at the station.
Au contraire, this directly applies to Steele, and it is absolutely necessary to fully understand the extent of his lies.
The data has not been changed. It has been processed to separate ambient temperature from artificial bias which manifests as a sloped shelf or trough. The cause is immaterial. And yes some of the sites he's bitching about did move. They all changed. Or do you really think Park Rangers are still driving out to these stations and updating handwritten logs? At some point it should become abundantly obvious that Steele is lying. I've provided more than enough information to get started. If you're sincerely pursuing the truth of the matter, that is, which remains to be seen.
Steele is saying just what I said. He's pretending that any jumps in the data occurred because the ambient actually jumped (and then resumed rising at the same slope, situated from a trough or shelf relative to the trend line). That's the lie. We've nailed it, plain and simple. You can either go on defending the lie, or can work through some of the materials I've given you. If you want to learn more about measurement science, feel free to ask. Origin and Trippy have worked from the practical side, and Grumpy has worked as an educator. There are plenty of other folks here with formal training, and all of them know what I'm talking about. Whether they work in chemistry or physics, teaching, studying or working in the field, or whether theoreticians or practicing scientists and engineers, they all have taken those first lab classes that teach how to calibrate instruments. All of them understand immediately what bias is, how to detect it, what causes it, and how to remove it, and all of them know their careers would have been over long ago if they had developed the habit of doing nothing about it, whether by ignorance, incompetence of something as bizarre as Steele's claim that Al Gore invented bias removal as a precursor to a conspiracy to commit fraud, or that any of his hired experts would have done it, or that they could have gotten away with it. This is of course how Steele put his foot in his mouth even before his gets around to the stunts with the plots.
I've fabricated nothing here, milkweed. You either still don't understand what I've explained, or I suppose it's possible you're playing games. But all of my statements about the facts of Steele's fraud are on the straight and level, based on the solid "right thinking group" understanding that water does not run uphill. Measured air does not jump in energy content and retain that bias while the ambient continues to acquire more and more energy from the source (Sun and other causes). You're simply wrong. It's that simple, as hard as it is for you to understand (or to accept that I've seen through a facade).
You gave a link to blog claiming to care about eagles. But the intent was to trash windmills without seeking a cure. That makes them pro-energy, which probably explains why they choose to remain anonymous. My guess is that some pro-oil source posted it. I gave you a pro-bird news site (actual newsletter format) which proposes to deter the birds from the windmills and described some hopeful technology to do that. So yes I opened with this line of reasoning in my initial reply.
Hah hah. Either that or you're just pretending not to notice that I have the speech of an old fogey. No, your introduction of this topic into a thread dealing with Climate Gate does speak volumes, though, about your hopes for taking all of the carbon out of the ground and putting it back in the atmosphere. Sorry to disappoint you, but this is a proposition that is no better than getting in a barrel with Steele and going over Niagara Falls. Some things are just lost causes, and the ones that you're bringing up are rehashes of Right Wing myths already answered.
But I'm surprised you mention transmission lines. You mean birds gravitate toward the windmill transmission lines and completely skirt around the lines from fossil fuel generating plants? Because unless that's the case, maybe it's better to dismantle the public grid altogether and force people to generate their own. It's less efficient, extremely expensive in the short run but it would enable us to take down most of lines you are worried about, and might someday pay for itself.
There must be two if you're suggesting that the whooping crane roosts in Altamont. Even if that were a waypoint on their arduous trek from Texas to Alberta and back, the predators in Altamont (kestrels, eagles) would be a natural deterrent for them. Presumably you're fixating on the possibility that they may want to roost at a wind farm anywhere between these two points. The solution here is (in part) to treat endangered species as National Assets, to fully fund their protection with taxes on the wealthy corporations that are funding the likes of Steele and Singer (and the clown sites Photizo sends us to). Part of this funding should include teams to track the birds, to help lead them to their old migration routes when they stray, and even to escort them. In locations where pet cats threaten endangered birds, people should be encouraged to spay and neuter and they should be educated on the harm cats portend to threatened species. And yes, any other deterrents known to keep cranes away from hazards of all kinds (including aircraft engines) should be funded as well.
No, but way to say everything except what I actually said, and then make out that I said it. You ought to be a campaign advisor for the future Republican candidates (maybe you are
). No, that's a familiar tactic for disparaging what began as the environmental movement (conservation, remember? What do conservatives actually conserve, we might ask . . . ) -- and later went through the various stripes and stages of activism that called itself Greenpeace until ca. 9/11 when the case against oil peaked. No, taking down windmills is obviously the worst possible solution to killing wildlife. The purpose of a deterrent is to keep them out of the immediate area. The challenge is for an inventive mind to actually solve the problem, not to pretend that coal and petroleum are safer for birds. That's preposterous. The Osprey comes to mind as one species nearly wiped out by DDT. (You may be too young to remember DDT.) We could dedicate another thread to this I guess. It just makes no sense that you intend to connect this to the thread topic. Evidently you hope to disparage all the work done in conservation sciences just to keep your oil tycoons afloat. You're sounding more and more like a purveyor of the Koch doctrine.It's no rant, just plainspeak about the corporate sponsors and religious fanatics who are so fixated on perverting selected fields of science (biology, geology, climate science and any physics that touches on Big Bang Theory). Until you come out of the closet (your true motivations for advocating junk science) the statements I made fairly characterize at least the faction you are supporting. There simply is no other game other than the End Game. Every tactic the Right Wing uses to try and put nature in check will be opposed by the knights (scholars and professionals), castles (all the infrastructure of science: all the campuses, research and lab facilities and field sites [such as the elaborate network of stations worldwide for recording data] ) and Queens (Parmesan and the more appropriately named Kingsolver and thousands more, all of the organization and agencies that advocate for Nature) will continue to match the Kingpins of Climate Gate, move for move, always countering bullshit and lies with best evidence and hard work. That will be the ultimate downfall of the Kingpins; they simply have no intention of doing any actual work. Not toward the advancements that bring renewable energy online, to phase out fossil fuels, and to do their utmost to save cranes, eagles and the rest of all species from the harm of global warming, regardless of how much of it is anthropogenic. We owe it to them for all the other reasons we are driving them into extinction. Carbon sequestration and renewable energy are just part of a larger war on many fronts to reduce human impact on Earth and its ecosystems, and to try once and for all to leave the place cleaner than it was when we found it. It's as simple as that; the rest is just tedious science.
Your link claims that the atmospheric warming so far is below the low end of the range given in the standard predictions, and that the trend in sea ice cover and volume in the Arctic is now positive.
Both those claims are false.
First of all, the New York Post? You couldn't find something in the Weekly World News?
Secondly, it's a strawman argument. Climate scientists never point to storms and say they are proof of global warming. They only say that more severe storms are likely, although they can't point to any specific one or season and say that counts as evidence.
Was I commenting on empiricism? No. I was addressing his approach/attitude which essentially cuts him off from recognizing and therefore knowing what constitutes "the best quality data". You've demonstrated a similar bent. Good day, sir.
Lame.
I see Photizo came out of the closet as a bona fide fundie with that statement, which corroborates the religious motivation for attacking science, and the relentless links to non-authoritative cites.
What air? What water? The air on which side of an air conditioner?