Comments for Climate Etc.

You are right, I stand corrected – I should have simply said the most complete set of raw data. Going in I would agree that if the data are bad then there is little that can be done to clean them up. However, it might be possible to find a sub-sample of good sites that would allow for some assessment of what has happened in the last 50 to 100 years.

Graeme – sounds like BEST is not fighting about anything.

To Muller’s credit, there were a lot of negative things said about him over things he has said and done in the past, but sounds to me like he did okay by science today.

Re: erlhapp ,
Important observations. Thanks.

The rainforests are manipulating the planet!

I am reminded of Wittgenstein’s line about buying multiple copies of the same newspaper, to verify the facts.

That is a great line.

I think “shooting from the hip” implies stating conclusions before the data are in, making rash statements about the implications of preliminary findings, etc.

Stating that you have preliminary results, and describing what they are, doesn’t meet the bar, IMO.

Honestly, the whole notion of interpreting “signs” seems pretty unscientific, to me. He stated what their preliminary findings are, and cautioned that they are preliminary. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

These are not elected officials, they are scientific program officers in the research agencies, such as NSF, NOAA, NASA, etc. The recent slew of USGCRP reports are even more extremely pro AGW than the IPCC reports. These folks are deeply embedded. Elections do not touch them. They are the ones with two billion dollars a year to spend. They are extremely powerful and no one even knows their names. Think about it.

How so? I have a pretty good idea what the IPCC will say already.

I also agree with your impression that there has been a tendency by some to use complex terminology as a form of intimidation rather than edification.

Not quite. It’s isn’t that the concept of natural variability integrating out to zero is hard to get intuitively, it’s that it’s not clear that it has to be that way. That assumes some sort of periodic behavior centered around some band of frequencies, i.e. pink noise. But what if the noise is white? Then that isn’t true. If the noise were white (at least out to the scale of ice age cycles), then nothing would ever average out to zero. It would just wander aimlessly.

Ron, your example assumes a very specific type of temperature change, that it follows a random walk. If that is the case, the uncertainty does increase indefinitely (proportional to the square root of time, in fact). But there are many other types of random process where the cumulative noise eventually becomes less than the trend.
What kind of process describes the various parts of the climate system is not something that I have seen discussed. The issues are well-known to economists, who have to deal all the time with data generated by processes with various forcings and feedbacks. They know how easily these processes can generate persistent fluctuations that appear to be trends until they fade away, and how to analyze data series to distinguish real trends from fluctuations. I have not seen much evidence that these techniques are understood, much less that they are a regular part of the toolkit, in the climate science community.

Paul – You may be interested in this paper on Trends and Time Series, which addresses some of these issues. The only thing I would add is that climate dynamics must conform to the laws of thermodynamics, which ultimately places constraints on what might otherwise be mathematically plausible. Admittedly, those constraints might allow for considerable latitude in the short run.

Please show your work on widening CO2 notches.

I hope you know Erl Happ. If not, please do.

& thanks.
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I have yet to see any internal variability that is more than a few tenths of a degree, though I will concede to Fred that the periods near Ice Ages were bi-stable and could oscillate between widely separated albedo states. We are not currently in such as state, and moving away from it due to the diminished ice albedo effect, though some effects would be noticed as Greenland greens up after melting a few centuries from now, and later Antarctica (if we get to 1000 ppm). Yes, there are tipping points, but these are responses to forcing changes, not to internal variability in the current semi-warm climate, and CO2 forcing is going to push us through some of these step-like changes.

The constraint is the energy budget, and the drivers are solar and albedo changes along with GHGs. If these change, the mean can change, if not, it can’t.

Actually, “uniform agreement” is stronger than “consensus” Teh bunny moved teh goalposts down teh bunny hole.

General observation on this topic:

I don’t think this blog has the statistsl heavy hitters that Climateaudit does, and we seem to be stumbling in the dark on this issue compared to them. Those guys could probably do this topic a lot more justice, because it really does come down to statistics and data analysis. I know just enough about analysis to be dangerous, and have learned to keep my mouth shut and ears open over there.

You have to be kidding. Extrapolation is guaranteed to get you into trouble.

You can’t go wrong buying real estate. Right?

And since ALL of them change constantly………?

“I am also puzzled by the implicit assumption that homo sapiens and its’ activities are un-natural. We are just as much a product of opportunistic evolutionary trajectories as any other species, so it follows that if we think we can terraform (and perhaps we may be able to eventually), this is not un-natural. This is a bridge too far for the moralists, however.”

It’s a bridge too far me, I know that. Am I a moralist? If that means someone concerned with man’s impact on the environment, then I suppose I am. Murder’s “natural.” Rape is “natural.” Obviously this does not excuse those who commit these crimes, just as it would not excuse someone from dumping toxic waste into the sea.

In addition to being an environmentalist, I’m an AGW skeptic. The two things are in no way mutually exclusive.

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