Climategate: "Hide the Decline"

[BrownOut]

I reacted? Not so, you had the word "hide" in the title and I mearly expalined that there are other meanings to the word. YOu have yet to explain how published data is "hidden" and I see you're never going to address that. No amount of prevarication changes these simple facts.

 

[tcmtech]

The skeptics have only name-calling, personal insults and unsubstituted claims that the the science of global warming is in decline. That's the problem.

What I have read and understood is that the science of 'Global Warming' became much of the science of 'Climate Change' when the evidence for global warming became too inconclusive to accurately support itself in the eyes of the general public.

I believe in climate change and will never say that is is not happening. However I will never say that we are the sole cause of it and that it is a overall bad change.
Unfortunately just as the Global warming data started to fall apart likely so will the climate change data as well. Right now the overall information is just to inconclusive and thats what I am seeing as to be a problem for the groups that have much to gain from false information and the blind followings of their inconclusive or doctored data they use.

My issue is that some data says we have some negative effects and I fully agree with that data and that those areas of our societies actions do need to change and soon. Yet still there is other data that says we have many positive effects and much much more that has no provable correlation or evidence to fit either way.

Right now what I have read and listened to and do understand is that too much of it is simply inconclusive. There is no complete yes or now as of yet. There is some of each and a whole lot more thats just not yet known and should not be reasoned that it will show all future things to be bad or good. Its likely to show more of what has been proven now. And that is simply that some of our collective actions are bad and some are beneficial.

I think we do need to be more ecologically responsible and I have never said that we shouldn't be. What I have said is that unfortunately many of our supposed Eco friendly approaches are nothing but smoke and mirrors put up by governments and big business just for profits and control over people.
Those are also the Eco friendly actions that are not hard to scientifically prove are more often just useless and in some cases can be proven to be worse for the environment than if we do nothing at all. Thats the things I have an issue with and chose to not follow or believe.


Yes the climate is changing. Just as it always has done.
Yes some things we do are bad for the environment and we do need to change those areas.
Yes some things we do are also good for the environment and should be further encouraged.
Yes crooked and corrupt groups will take advantage of others who are easily persuaded to follow and believe without actually confirming that what they are being told is true.
Yes too much present data is just too inconclusive or incomplete to be valid in any decision making on many levels.
Yes people Will run scared over nothing and yet not question or react when they should.

 

[ke5frf]

OK, let me ATTEMPT to spell out to you the implications of the e-mails. Lets forget the hide thing as it relates to yours, mine, or Webster's definition.
Lets look at what Phil Jones was saying. Let's look at the CONTEXT.

Read here: Context for 'hide the decline' discovered

As Steve McIntyre has uncovered, and has been documenting for at least 5 years now, Bristle cone tree data (A major proxy that is used, one of FOUR I believe) has a divergence that has NEVER been explained scientifically or statistically. Yes, the data was published. It was known and discussed in the IPCC conferences. Yet, because it detracted from the data that neatly fit with Mann's infamous Hockey Stick graph, he worked to persuade the others that it should be ignored.

Mann...."everyone in the room at IPCC was in agreement that this was a problem and a potential distraction/detraction from the reasonably concensus viewpoint we'd like to show w/ the Jones et al and Mann et al series."

This was not a published comment, it was an EMAIL exchange (context).

They didn't want the data in the IPCC report (You know, the big one, the one governments are using to socialize economies and formulate policies).

Politicians don't care about Nature articles or university scholarly works. They want committee reports. So, the committee decided to "hide" things.

No, not hide things from each other. HIDE THINGS FROM US.
It isn't the average layperson, or even the average busy scientist outside of the field, who takes the time to pour over peer-reviewed publications looking for problematic data. Well, lucky for us we DID have some whistle blowers, like McIntyre, who were on this trail years ago. But he wasn't getting much play in the media, because the media was too busy writing editorials on hurricanes and tsunamis and world disaster (which has played out to have no falsifiable link to AGW, btw, and admittedly so by the scientists, reluctantly).

But see, it was already too late, because once the seeds were planted (hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, oh MY!) in the lay publics mind, it didn't matter. Mission accomplished, get them scared. They will start voting as we wish now. The average Joe Q Public still thinks Katrina was caused by AGW, when it has been documented that intensity and frequency is actually at a low for the past 25 years or so. Just a few big ones have made landfall in bad places. As far as I know, carbon dioxide doesn't care if a hurricane hits New Orleans or Podunk City, Mississippi. It isn't a guidance system.

Bottom line, they wanted the big story, the IPCC report, NOT to reflect data that didn't keep Hockey Stick graphs nice and scarey. So they discussed ways to "hide" it in future publications and reports, betting the bank that nobody would put the pieces together. Well, it worked, for a while. But now we know...yet some will defend the indefensible.

This is how things can be hidden. Hidden in plain site. The "elephant" in the room.

 

[ke5frf]

East Anglia Confirmed Emails from the Climate Research Unit - Searchable

OK, I did a dirty thing and linked to a hacked e-mail, for sake of context.
The damning words are there, though, no longer "hidden" in an e-mail archive.

To summarize ,"We have to figure out how to make this Hockey Stick graph look just as I want it to. The only way to resolve this is to rid ourselves of the pesky divergence, all agree?"

"Yes Professor Mann, do the deed".

 

[BrownOut]

Imagine the horror! Using temperature to graph temperature! What charlitans! And how on Earth were they hiding something form us that they published! Hidden in palin sight illustrated how absurd the whold idea is. It just doesn't make any sense. It's not true that intensity and frequency is low, quite the opposite actually. And it's a fact that in some places the storms cause more damage because of rising sea levels, a product of melting ice caps and warming temperatures. The big news are massive ice bergs floating across the oceans. Other incidators abound, like the bleaching of the world's coral reefs. Thinking people do not ignore the story that Earth is telling. And no matter how many times someone writes that the case for GW is falling apart, the scientific community knows otherwise.

 

[tcmtech]

Thank You!
That was basically what I got from what I read as well. The data showed a problematical trend of just not being scary enough.
It was either simply inconclusive like much too much of the global warming and climate change data is or was possibly even showing a favorable trend and not a bad one like they wanted!

My opinion is that far too much of what the present and real unbiased information and data I have read and believed to understand says is just to inconclusive or shows and in some cases shows positive trends on some key aspects. And that what I base my personal beliefs on. We need more understanding and unbiased research before we do anything in the areas we just dont have enough information on presently.

What we do know and have reliably proven to be bad should be changed and I fully agree with that and always have. Unfortunately there are some things that the scare mongering and uneducated panic based decision making has managed put into effect so far and that unfortunately does need to be reevaluated and corrected before it really does make things worse.

There is also the positive aspects that never get talked about where we dirty little parasitic humans are in many ways symbiotic beneficial to the planet! But thats a whole other topic to scream and swear about some other time!

 

[ke5frf]

An Open Letter to the Community from Chris Landsea (Resignation Letter)

Really, read the resignation letter from the NOAA hurricane expert Chris Landsea, who was an IPCC contributor, when trumped up links between climate change and hurricanes were tossed into media reports.

Katrina was almost literally a "perfect storm", the timing must have made some of these people wet their pants.

 

[BrownOut]

Nothing in his letter supports your claim that the strom activity is in a low for the last 25 years. It's just the opposite, and again, in many places, the rising sea levels have cause the damage from the storms to be more severe. The letter doesn not address that either, but of course, some of the stroms happened post 2005. As well, I remember the scientific community being very careful to link the storms to GW in 2005, and since have become more accepting of the links. Science works like that, as more data is consumed, the theory and accepted conclusions are refined.

 

[ke5frf]

I had to come back one last time for the night (I promise) on the "Using temperature to graph temperature! What charlitans!" comment

You do realize that the Hockey Stick graph only uses "temperature" as a data set from somewhere around the mid-1800's, don't you? The other "multiple millenia" of data is....drum roll....tree ring proxies and ice cores!

So lets analyze this logically.

An unexplained divergence in tree ring data occurred somewhere in the 1960s and is maintained up till now. That is roughly 50 years of data.

Temperature, by which those proxies are calibrated, has only about 150 years of calibrated data, historically starting when the British Navy started taking measurements at sea. (Betchya didn't know that).

So, tree ring data assumed a role in pre-recorded temperature correlations somewhere in that timeframe. Someone found strong enough evidence, so it seemed, to establish a belief that tree rings are a nifty way to correlate historic temperature data.

But in statistics (a field I am strongly familiar with), as well as electronics There is a term called "signal to noise". In statistics a ratio of 3:1 has to be there to have significant data (or correlation). Otherwise you just have noise.

Well, if 1/3 of 150 years demonstrated divergent data, 1960 onward, then we are teetering pretty darn close to the noise threshold level.

So the correlation between tree ring data and temperature from the mid 1800s to today is at best weak.

Yet, it is a primary proxy involved in establishing the Hockey Stick trend, because pre-1800s data has to be correlated. But we are correlating to a calibration "standard" that is barely even significant. And being that the divergence is recent, where higher standards and more accurate equipment have been developed, I tend to weight THAT data a little higher than a bunch of drunk British sailors in the 19th century (teasing our British friends a bit).

Tree ring proxy data might be relatively good for some "idea" of "generally" how hot or cool an "era" of time was, but it isn't good enough, as is being demonstrated, to nail down annual temperature trends 1000 years ago. Or even decadal. At best, we can get a feel for how hot or cool a particular century was, and then with some doubts. This is because we don't know what caused the 1960s divergence, and have no way of knowing if or when divergences occurred in the historical proxies.

I am sure you can understand this, and now understand how the Hockey Stick graph was a piecemeal of data to make a pretty picture..."a convenient blur" of the truth so to speak.

Listen, I'm not trying to say that the INTENTION was to LIE. What I am saying is that these scientists really believe that AGW has merit. And the reality is, it likely DOES have a measure of truth. However, I am convinced that they felt so strongly that the decided to take it upon themselves to present the data in a less than honest way to preempt debate or discussion. This isn't SCIENCE my friend, it is POLITICS, and casts doubt on just how much they have skewed.

 

[BrownOut]

You would lose your sucker bet about what I know and don't know. Too bad you can't have a disagreement without just "tossing" some baloney specilations about the scope and limits of my knowledge. And all along, you've make the arguments that there was a deliberate intent to "hide" data, while in fact, the data was well know. Now, the tree rings is not the only proxy data used in constructing the history of world temperatures. there are other's, some which you've mentioned. And so, the tree ring proxy became an outlyer after the 1960's but other data still correlated and supported the temperatuere measurements. And so one of the masuers was left out of the graph until it could be further studied, and the information was published seperately. Not everyone was in agreement, but that was the consensus of how it should be. I'm quite sure there is active research being conducted on why the data diverged. But what science does is to try to best draw conclusions from the data available. It's not so much different than other statistical science, sometimes outliers are ignored, until such a time that they are deemded significant, or otherwise expalined. It would be much worse to throw out all of the correlation data over a single outlier. The evidence adds up, and we can see for ourselves the effects cause by climate change/global warmig (no, climate change has not "replaced" global warming, they mean the same thing)

 

[ke5frf]

Nothing in his letter supports your claim that the strom activity is in a low for the last 25 years. It's just the opposite, and again, in many places, the rising sea levels have cause the damage from the storms to be more severe. The letter doesn not address that either, but of course, some of the stroms happened post 2005. As well, I remember the scientific community being very careful to link the storms to GW in 2005, and since have become more accepting of the links. Science works like that, as more data is consumed, the theory and accepted conclusions are refined.

His letter demonstrates that there has been no causation linked between hurricane activity and AGW. That he was concerned with the media hype as it was being played up by the IPCC.

I admit that I misspoke about the nature of the activity. I am not a meteorologist but I KNEW I had read about the dismissal of any link to AGW, and my reading tonight indicates that OVERALL activity has not changed and isn't forecast to by models. Some evidence points to a increase in windspeeds and rainfall but again, this is all based on MODELING.

The consensus, as admitted to even HERE:
Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory - Global Warming and Hurricanes

"1. Though there is evidence both for and against the existence of a detectable anthropogenic signal in the tropical cyclone climate record to date, no firm conclusion can be made on this point.

2. No individual tropical cyclone can be directly attributed to climate change.

3. The recent increase in societal impact from tropical cyclones has been largely caused by rising concentrations of population and infrastructure in coastal regions.

4. Tropical cyclone wind-speed monitoring has changed dramatically over the last few decades leading to difficulties in determining accurate trends.

5. There is an observed multi-decadal variability of tropical cyclones in some regions whose causes, whether natural, anthropogenic or a combination, are currently being debated. This variability makes detecting any long-term trends in tropical cyclone activity difficult.

6. It is likely that some increase in tropical cyclone peak wind-speed and rainfall will occur if the climate continues to warm. Model studies and theory project a 3-5% increase in wind-speed per degree Celsius increase of tropical sea surface temperatures.

7. There is an inconsistency between the small changes in wind-speed projected by theory and modeling versus large changes reported by some observational studies.

8. Although recent climate model simulations project a decrease or no change in global tropical cyclone numbers in a warmer climate there is low confidence in this projection. In addition, it is unknown how tropical cyclone tracks or areas of impact will change in the future.

9. Large regional variations exist in methods used to monitor tropical cyclones. Also, most regions have no measurements by instrumented aircraft. These significant limitations will continue to make detection of trends difficult.

10. If the projected rise in sea level due to global warming occurs, then the vulnerability to tropical cyclone storm surge flooding would increase."

The full texts of the summary statement and comprehensive statement should be consulted for more details and context.



.....So, hurricane scientists are saying, "we aren't sure and don't have enough data".

At least they are honest.

 

[ke5frf]

You would lose your sucker bet about what I know and don't know. Too bad you can't have a disagreement without just "tossing" some baloney specilations about the scope and limits of my knowledge. And all along, you've make the arguments that there was a deliberate intent to "hide" data, while in fact, the data was well know. Now, the tree rings is not the only proxy data used in constructing the history of world temperatures. there are other's, some which you've mentioned. And so, the tree ring proxy became an outlyer after the 1960's but other data still correlated and supported the temperatuere measurements. And so one of the masuers was left out of the graph until it could be further studied, and the information was published seperately. Not everyone was in agreement, but that was the consensus of how it should be. I'm quite sure there is active research being conducted on why the data diverged. But what science does is to try to best draw conclusions from the data available. It's not so much different than other statistical science, sometimes outliers are ignored, until such a time that they are deemded significant, or otherwise expalined. It would be much worse to throw out all of the correlation data over a single outlier. The evidence adds up, and we can see for ourselves the effects cause by climate change/global warmig (no, climate change has not "replaced" global warming, they mean the same thing)

You do realize that you have yet to offer a reference or a link to augment your position and have only demonstrated LACK of information. OTOH, I have made countless references to bolster my argument.

Again, I'm not here to debate the evidence based belief that climate change is occurring and that man has a role that needs to be held in check. It is the degree to which this is certain vs the misrepresentation that EMAIL EVIDENCE points to that I am concerned with.

 

[ke5frf]

Dude, its isn't a single outliar, it is 50 YEARS OF DATA

50 years of data, among 150, that is used to calibrate 2 milleniums!

That ISN'T SIGNIFICANCE it is downright IRRESPONSIBLE.

 

[ke5frf]

The evidence adds up, and we can see for ourselves the effects cause by climate change/global warmig (no, climate change has not "replaced" global warming, they mean the same thing)

You just lost all credibility my friend. End of discussion. Even a climateologist would take issue with this last statement.

No, global warming does NOT mean climate change Global Warming is a FORM of climate change, for which GLOBAL COOLING would be the opposite.

And which both have been going on since the Earth had just cooled off from being a swirling ball of gas around the sun.

Climate change is natural. Anthropogenic Global Warming is the subject of discussion here, and it isn't the same thing.

 

[Sceadwian]

Ke5 This post has only just begun...
I produced warning in red and white, and there has been NO positive exchange of information so far. Give it 1 more day, this thread will be so far off topic your head will spin.

Any point anyone makes will IMMEDIATELY be taken out of context. All data is at best just a single set in a system that we don't even have enough of a clue about to predict local weather patterns over a few day or hour long period in some locals, what moron thinks they got the whole global pattern thing down to a solid science?

 

[Sceadwian]

50 years of data?
The earth is near 5 BILLION years old.
50 years isn't even enough to establish a glitch in short term data... The last thousand years are hardly conclusive espeially considerign the data points.... Modern science can at BEST guess at the weather.

 

[ke5frf]

50 years of data?
The earth is near 5 BILLION years old.
50 years isn't even enough to establish a glitch in short term data... The last thousand years are hardly conclusive espeially considerign the data points.... Modern science can at BEST guess at the weather.

Scaedwian, I believe you have the same beliefs I have, but maybe you do not understand the significance of the 50 years.

Yes, 50 years IS enough to establish a glitch in the short term data. For the reason I pointed out. Tree ring proxies became an "accepted" way of estimating past temperatures somewhere around the turn of the last century.

The global data collected by sailors in the few decades leading up the the turn of the century, when held against the tree ring data, seemed to indicate a correlation. Before then, there wasn't a reference standard for measuring temperature that could be trusted. BAsically, people made their own thermometers and the error margins were way to vast. British Navy created a standard that we have continued to use.

But a 50 year divergence, among the 150 or so years of real data, pretty much wipes clean any confidence we can have in tree rings. Brownout is underplaying this. There are scant few sites in the world where ancient forests stand with millenium old trees. The Bristlecones have stood as a primary standard because of their location and age.

But 1/3 of reliable data being divergent makes your data little more than noise when the time frame is in context. Tree rings as an indicator have been called into doubt, because we don't know what divergent influence caused it.

And the reason this is important and Brownout fails to understand....Since we don't know the cause, GOOD SCIENCE has to assume that it has happened before in the past, and ANY tree ring proxy ANYWHERE is suspect.

Yet, CONVENIENTLY, the Mann, IPCC report permitted other tree ring proxies, the ones that fit their "desired outcome", to be integrated into the report.



Oh, and BTW. I really am not concerned with the state of the discussion. Other people are reading this. Some will not comment or have no opinion. Some may read something I say or link to and have an aha moment.

Changes in contemporary thought take the time and action of PEOPLE. The internet is just one way to get the message out. It is my time that I am wasting here, if you want to call it that, and your choice as well as the choice of others to waste your own time.

Get this. If this thread ended at this very moment, dozens more threads across the web will continue on. I respect that you feel it is pointless, but I do not feel that way and that is my right.

 

[bryan1]

Sceadwian I deleted all those unsightly stop signs in your 3 threads and deleted the thread where you openly attacked a member of this forum. Just because you don't see any point in this thread where do you think you have the right to act like god. Basically if a thread doesnt interest you don't post in it......

 

[Mikebits]

Dont worry Mike I am happy to get opinions from the guys like you!
I take it in well meaning and I understand how things get around here. Have fun with the wife and take care!
Plus yes it does keep my ego in check which is needed from time to time.
Just dont make too much of a habit of it then it just starts to seem your rather mean spirited towards me.


HEY Sceadwian, How do you get the giant stop signs to show up like that? I can never get my stuff to be any bigger than a tag.

Mean spirited towards you? never, but we do not always see poop the same color. I don't know if you recall, but I told you at one time that I thought you would make a good writer. I still feel this way as you have a passion of a writer and what a tale you might tell. At any rate, I do not always agree with you and might call you on it from time to time But I hope to keep it polite in the future.

P.S. Rockband parties are silly and for the young.

 

[HarveyH42]

Tree rings, indicate annual growth, nothing more. There are many factors that influence growth, other than climate temperature. There can even be huge differences, depending on which side of the mountain a tree stands. I don't see how any sort of reliable temperature reading could be obtain from them. I grew up on the side of Mount Hood, in Oregon. The teach a little forestry all through your school years, but that was almost 30 years ago, perhaps they've made a few advancements. All they could tell was a tree's age, by counting the number of rings. Thick rings indicated good growing conditions, thin rings not so much, the cause is only speculation.