Man Based Global Warming....

The US is not the world...

 

You wish.

 

I explicitly stated that that post was for Fibber. Shall I add you to the list? (Of persons who believe short-term anomalies and anecdotes substitute for the meat of the debate.)

Oh, wait! You're already on it.

 

New research published in Nature shows that hurricane intensity is at its highest since the medieval period:

Atlantic hurricanes and climate over the past 1,500 years

Michael E. Mann1, Jonathan D. Woodruff2, Jeffrey P. Donnelly3 & Zhihua Zhang1

Department of Meteorology and Earth and Environmental Systems Institute, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802, USA
Department of Geosciences, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts 01003, USA
Department of Geology and Geophysics, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, Massachusetts 02543, USA
Correspondence to: Michael E. Mann1 Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to M.E.M. (Email: [email protected]).

Top of pageAbstract
Atlantic tropical cyclone activity, as measured by annual storm counts, reached anomalous levels over the past decade1. The short nature of the historical record and potential issues with its reliability in earlier decades, however, has prompted an ongoing debate regarding the reality and significance of the recent rise2, 3, 4, 5. Here we place recent activity in a longer-term context by comparing two independent estimates of tropical cyclone activity over the past 1,500 years. The first estimate is based on a composite of regional sedimentary evidence of landfalling hurricanes, while the second estimate uses a previously published statistical model of Atlantic tropical cyclone activity driven by proxy reconstructions of past climate changes. Both approaches yield consistent evidence of a peak in Atlantic tropical cyclone activity during medieval times (around ad 1000) followed by a subsequent lull in activity. The statistical model indicates that the medieval peak, which rivals or even exceeds (within uncertainties) recent levels of activity, results from the reinforcing effects of La-Niña-like climate conditions and relative tropical Atlantic warmth.

Access : Atlantic hurricanes and climate over the past 1,500 years : Nature

 

As usual, another paper by Mann and associaltes gets 'peer-reviewed' and published by a 'prestigious' journal. As usual, it doesn't pass the test of scientific rigor. Please note some of the references reference Mann's own work. This is like saying, " What follows is true because I say it's true." Wow. Someone has to watch the Hockey Team, and McIntyre does not disappoint:

IPSE DIXIT

More Check Kiting at Nature

by Steve McIntyre on August 12th, 2009

Nature has published another remarkable example of academic check kiting by Michael Mann et al, this time "Atlantic hurricanes and climate over the past 1,500 years". (Prior examples of academic check kiting discussed at CA are Ammann and Wahl, the story of which is well told by Bishop Hill's Caspar and the Jesus Paper and "Mann, Bradley and Hughes 2004", cited in Jones and Mann 2004.)

Mann et al 2009 reconstructs Atlantic tropical cyclone counts resulting in a curve that looks pretty much like every other Mannian curve. Atlantic tropical cyclone counts as a linear combination of reconstructed Atlantic SST in the east tropical Atlantic "main development region" (MDR), reconstructed El Nino and reconstructed North Atlantic Oscillation, using a formula developed in (3,16) - which surprisingly enough turn out to be articles by Mann himself (Mann and Sabatelli, 2007; Sabatelli and Mann 2007) previously discussed at CA here. This is summarized in the article as follows:

An independent estimate of past tropical cyclone activity was obtained using a statistical model for Atlantic tropical cyclone counts. This previously developed and validated 3,16 statistical model conditions annual Atlantic tropical cyclone counts on three key large-scale climate state variables tied to historical variations in Atlantic tropical cyclone counts: (1) the SST over the main development region (MDR) for tropical Atlantic tropical cyclones, which reflects the favourability of the local thermodynamic environment; (2) the El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which influences theamount of (unfavourable) vertical wind shear; and (3) the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), which affects the tracking of storms, determining how favourable an environment they encounter. The statistical model was driven by proxy-based reconstructions17,18 of these three state variables (Fig. 2), yielding a predicted history of Atlantic tropical cyclone counts for past centuries.
​

One doesn't necessarily expect much clarification from Mannian methodology and this time Mann surpasses himself. Remarkably the Methodology is almost word-for-word the same as the article. It's actually a little less. Mann explains once again that they reconstructed hurricane counts by using reconstructions of the SST in the Atlantic Main Development Region, El Nino and the North Atlantic Oscillation, with the only new information being that they only used the North Atlantic Oscillation reconstruction over the past 500 years from Luterbacher (18), but it didn't matter. Mann again cites (3,16) Mann and Sabatelli; Sabatelli and Mann.

Methodology: We used a statistical model of tropical cyclone counts as conditioned on3,16: the MDR SST, the ENSO (measured by the boreal winter Nino3 SST index), and the boreal winter NAO index The statistical model, which is trained on the modern historical record, has been shown in independent statistical validation experiments3,16 to resolve roughly 50% of the interannual and longer-term variations in Atlantic tropical cyclone counts. The model, in this study, was driven by decadally smoothed proxy reconstructions of the three required climate indices to yield predictions of tropical cyclone activity over past centuries. The MDR SST and Nino3 reconstructions were derived from proxy-based surface temperature patterns spanning the past 1,500 years17. Though an NAO reconstruction was available only for the past 500 years18, the NAO influence was found to be very minor (Supplementary Information).
​

Surely a "Methodology" should describe the Methodology, rather than just say the same thing over again. The Supplementary Information sheds no light on the methodology or the proxies.
The Supplementary Information contained no data sets. The proxies used for the Mann et al submission are not even listed.
The edifice is built on the SST and Nino3 reconstructions, both of which are references to the enigmatic reference 17, which turns out to be an unpublished submission of Mann et al.

17. Mann, M. E. et al. Global signatures of the Little Ice Age and the medieval climate anomaly and plausible dynamical origins. Science (submitted).
​

At the time that Nature published this article, there was precisely NO information available on what proxies were used in the reconstruction of Atlantic SST or El Nino or how these reconstructions were done. Did any of the Nature reviewers ask to see the other Mann submission? I doubt it. I wonder if it uses Graybill bristlecone pines.

References:
Mann, M.E. , Jonathan Woodruff, Jeffrey P. Donnelly & Zhihua Zhang. NAture 2007. Vol 460| 13 August 2009| doi:10.1038/nature08219
3. Mann, M. E., Sabbatelli, T. A. & Neu, U. Evidence for a modest undercount bias in early historical Atlantic tropical cyclone counts. Geophys. Res. Lett. 34, doi:10.1029/2007GL031781 (2007)
16. Sabbatelli, T. A. & Mann, M. E. The influence of climate state variables on Atlantic Tropical Cyclone Occurrence Rates. J. Geophys. Res. 112, doi:10.1029/2007JD008385 (2007).
17. Mann, M. E. et al. Global signatures of the Little Ice Age and the medieval climate anomaly and plausible dynamical origins. Science (submitted).
18. Luterbacher, J. et al. Extending North Atlantic Oscillation reconstructions back to 1500. Atmos. Sci. Lett. 2, 114–124 (2002)

 

This is an excellent example. We need to make policy and personal decisions regarding greenhouse gas emissions. Should I go with the peer-reviewed research article or one guy's blog post? I think if McIntyre wants to voice his scientific opinion he needs:

1) Get his own data.
2) Write a paper.
3) Get it published in a respected scientific journal.

Otherwise he should get all the attention a guy in a blog post deserves.

 

If you can't attack the facts, attack the man, right?

It should be obvious to even the dullest layman that using your own references to bolster your work invites sloppy conclusions and, indeed, should invite criticism from the scientific community rather than praise and uncritical acceptance.

McIntyre has done all the things you mention, and independent panels noticed:
McIntyre and McKitrick’s most devastating criticisms of the analyses by Mann et al—invalidating the latter’s work—were upheld without equivocation (or deference to Mann et al) in a subsequent 2006 report chaired by the eminent statistician Edward Wegman (chairman of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences committee on theoretical and applied statistics), and submitted to the US House of Representatives. Here are key excerpts (a few extended) from the report by Wegman et al:


Overall, our committee believes that Mann’s assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade of the millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year of the millennium cannot be supported by his analysis.

Everyone has a right to criticize papers put forth by others, especially if they are deficient.

It was McIntyrre and a colleague who demonstrated that the Hockey Team's first hockey stick used bad methodology and was incorrect. He got enough attention that the 'real' climate scientists had to admit their mistakes.

As he continues, AS HE SHOULD, to point out seriously flawed science, the 'real' climate scientists have become LESS transparent and hide their data and methodology so that only their friends and colleagues on 'the team' can 'academically' review their work. Yet, McIntyre continues to expose them despite the fact that government agencies blatantly and illegally ignore his Freedom of Information requests for data funded by taxpayers.

It makes absolutely no difference if the entire world accepts Mann's propaganda (in scientific terms) when it is demonstrably feeble or even false. In societal terms, it makes a HUGE difference. We should not be wating untold sums of capital and endangering the welfare of millions of citizens of emerging societies to stem problems that are imaginary and based on completely unproven science.

We expect governments to operate this way. But, friend, this is not the way scientists are supposed to behave. Thank God there are scientists such as McIntyre who are capable of pointing the way toward how the scientiists should be open with their research, especially when they make the claim that it has earth-shattering ramifications.

I have repeatedly pointed these things out, linked to vald arguments - and will continue.

 

U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works
Hearing Statements Date: 12/06/2006 Statement of Dr. David Deming
University of Oklahoma
College of Earth and Energy
Climate Change and the Media Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, and distinguished guests, thank you for inviting me to testify today. I am a geologist and geophysicist. I have a bachelor's degree in geology from Indiana University, and a Ph.D in geophysics from the University of Utah. My field of specialization in geophysics is temperature and heat flow. In recent years, I have turned my studies to the history and philosophy of science. In 1995, I published a short paper in the academic journal Science. In that study, I reviewed how borehole temperature data recorded a warming of about one degree Celsius in North America over the last 100 to 150 years. The week the article appeared, I was contacted by a reporter for National Public Radio. He offered to interview me, but only if I would state that the warming was due to human activity. When I refused to do so, he hung up on me.
I had another interesting experience around the time my paper in Science was published. I received an astonishing email from a major researcher in the area of climate change. He said, "We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period." GEE, I WONDER WHO THIS COULD HAVE BEEN?
The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was a time of unusually warm weather that began around 1000 AD and persisted until a cold period known as the "Little Ice Age" took hold in the 14th century. Warmer climate brought a remarkable flowering of prosperity, knowledge, and art to Europe during the High Middle Ages.
The existence of the MWP had been recognized in the scientific literature for decades. But now it was a major embarrassment to those maintaining that the 20th century warming was truly anomalous. It had to be "gotten rid of."
In 1769, Joseph Priestley warned that scientists overly attached to a favorite hypothesis would not hesitate to "warp the whole course of nature." In 1999, Michael Mann and his colleagues published a reconstruction of past temperature in which the MWP simply vanished. This unique estimate became known as the "hockey stick," because of the shape of the temperature graph.
Normally in science, when you have a novel result that appears to overturn previous work, you have to demonstrate why the earlier work was wrong. But the work of Mann and his colleagues was initially accepted uncritically, even though it contradicted the results of more than 100 previous studies. Other researchers have since reaffirmed that the Medieval Warm Period was both warm and global in its extent.
There is an overwhelming bias today in the media regarding the issue of global warming. In the past two years, this bias has bloomed into an irrational hysteria. Every natural disaster that occurs is now linked with global warming, no matter how tenuous or impossible the connection. As a result, the public has become vastly misinformed on this and other environmental issues.
Earth's climate system is complex and poorly understood. But we do know that throughout human history, warmer temperatures have been associated with more stable climates and increased human health and prosperity. Colder temperatures have been correlated with climatic instability, famine, and increased human mortality. The amount of climatic warming that has taken place in the past 150 years is poorly constrained, and its cause--human or natural--is unknown. There is no sound scientific basis for predicting future climate change with any degree of certainty. If the climate does warm, it is likely to be beneficial to humanity rather than harmful. In my opinion, it would be foolish to establish national energy policy on the basis of misinformation and irrational hysteria.

 

Further criticism of the new Mann Hockey Stick Hurricane paper:

http://www.icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog

The paper comes to very erroneous conclusions because of using improper data and illogical techniques,” said Chris Landsea, science and operations officer at the National Hurricane Center.
In his criticism, Landsea notes that the paper begins by saying that Atlantic tropical activity has “reached anomalous levels over the past decade.”
This ignores recent work by Landsea and a number of other hurricane scientists who found that storm counts in the early 1900s — in an era without satellites and fewer seaborne observers — likely missed three or four storms a year. The addition of these storms to the historical record, he said, causes the long-term trend over the last century to disappear.
“This isn't a small quibble,” he said. “It's the difference between a massive trend with doubling in the last 100 years, versus no trend.”

 

I look forward to the paper disputing Mann's new results. In the meanwhile an opinion doesn't count.

 

One doesn't have to look forward, rather back just a bit:

AMS Online Journals - Impact of Duration Thresholds on Atlantic Tropical Cyclone Counts

While it is possible that the recorded increase in short duration TCs represents a real climate signal, we consider it is more plausible that the increase arises primarily from improvements in the quantity and quality of observations, along with enhanced interpretation techniques, which have allowed National Hurricane Center forecasters to better monitor and detect initial TC formation, and thus incorporate increasing numbers of very short-lived systems into the TC database

So, before Mann and his buddies fashioned their 'new' hurricane data into a scary hockey stick, some had already drawn different conclusions - AND THEY are the hurricane experts, not Mann and his alarmist 'Hockey Team'.

 

Except Mann's paper addresses precisely this problem by using calibrated proxies and measuring hurricane intensity back to the middle ages.

The paper you cite uses only modern observations as far back as the 19th century. Mann's paper is more significant because it encompasses pre- and industrial measurements of hurricane intensity.

This is exactly how science works. Theories change as new data and publications become available. At this point the pendulum has swung in favor of an industrial increase in Atlantic storm intensity which correlates with higher global temperature and increased anthropogenic greenhouse gases.

 

The disaster will start at Pine Island Glacier, in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet:
BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Antarctic glacier 'thinning fast'

 

Warming ocean contributes to global warming

Positive feedback hell..

 

Sorry, but this is not how science works.

The AGW 'climate scientists' have seized on ONE theory - that man's burining of fossil fuels is resposible for the bulk of the rise in global temperature. They ignore any other natural possibility. Their models do not adequately mirror reality-baed observations.

They do not offer data and methodology in a transparent manner, in fact they are increasingly intent on HIDING data and making it more difficult for scientists wishing to check their conclusions. This is not science, rather propaganda. These machinations by the 'Hockey Team' are regularly chronicled at ClimateAudit.org, an honest broker of climate news. (And other places as well):
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/08/14/another-uk-climate-data-scandal-is-emerging/

In fact, the posters and commenters at Climate Audit regularly point out mistakes in the Hockey Team's 'work' forcing them to just as regularly publish corrections (and pretending to have 'discovered' the mistakes themselves.) But, keep those blinders in place and cleave only to the promulgations of Hansen, Mann, Schmidt, Steig and the rest of the alarmist Hockey Team. You'll be well rewarded when their chicanery finally becomes obvious to even the dullest lock-step drones.

If you consider 'proxies' to be more reliable than actual measurement, you need to think again.

On a positive note for the alarmist side, a couple of named TSs have finally appeared this year. So, take heart, you may get that devastating hurricane you crave after all.

 

OMG, we're all gonna die!

 

OMG, we're all gonna die!

 

Eventually. Immortals are imaginary.

 

OH, NO, Not another 'denier'!!! HE put a vehicle in space as a private enterprise, despite government interference. An engineer's engineer. One of the planet's truly great men - and a 'greenie' as well.

READ THE POWERPOINT PRESENTATION LINKED BELOW


[FONT=ＭＳ Ｐゴシック]...(I)do not hide the fact that I have a clear bias on AGW. My bias is based on fear of Government [/FONT][FONT=ＭＳ Ｐゴシック]expansion and the observation of AGW data presentation fraud - not based on financial or any [/FONT][FONT=ＭＳ Ｐゴシック]other personal benefit. I merely have found that the closer you look at the data and alarmists’ [/FONT][FONT=ＭＳ Ｐゴシック]presentations, the more fraud you find and the less you think there is an AGW problem. [/FONT]



Burt Rutan: engineer, aviation/space pioneer, and now, active climate skeptic

16 08 2009
Burt Rutan - aviation pioneer, engineer, test pilot, climate skeptic. Note the car.

"Recently after some conversations with a former chemical engineer who provided me with some insight, I’ve come to the conclusion that many engineers have difficulty with many of the premises of AGW theory because in their “this has to work or people die” world of exacting standards, the AGW argument doesn’t hold up well by their standards of performance."

...one of the foremost and world famous engineers on the planet, Burt Rutan, has become an active climate skeptic. You may be familiar with some of Rutan’s work through his company, Scaled Composites:




...his home:


In his PowerPoint notes he says about his green interests:

My house was Nov 89 Pop Science Cover story; “World’s Most Efficient House”. Its big advantage is in the desert summer. It is all-electric and it uses more energy in the relatively mild winters than in the harsh summers – just the opposite of my neighbors.
The property has provisions for converting to self-sustaining (house and plug-in hybrid car) via adding wind generator and solar panels when it becomes cost effective to do so.
Testing Solar Water Heat in the 70s at RAF; the Rutan Aircraft Factory was converted to solar-heated water in the 70s, when others were only focused on gasoline costs.
My all electric EV-1 was best car I ever owned. Primary car for 7 years, all-electric with an 85 mile range. I was very sad (just like the guy shown) when the leased cars were recalled and crushed by General Motors. I will buy a real hybrid when one becomes available (plug-in with elect-range>60 miles). The Prius “hybrid” is not a hybrid, since it is fueled only by gasoline. A Plug-in Hybrid can be fueled with both gas and electricity. You might even see a ‘plug-in hybrid airplane’ in my future.

Power point presentation:
Burt Rutan on Climate Change

pdf download:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/rutanagwdataanalysis.pdf
​

 

Please try to limit the conversation to peer-reviewed research articles. Ex cathedra opinions only add to the confusion.