tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53450567909324945872024-03-18T06:03:25.213+00:00LAZARUS: Reason from a dead man walkingEveryone is entitled to their own opinions but not their own factsLazarushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14139033650731770470noreply@blogger.comBlogger184125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5345056790932494587.post-9298100835053790422012-08-14T18:58:00.000+01:002012-08-16T17:53:39.982+01:00Turning the other cheekThe Pope's ex-butler Paolo Gabriele to <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19242439" target="_blank">stand trial for stealing confidential papers</a> and leaking them to the press. Mr. Gabriele has admitted the theft and faces jail if convicted, facing up to six years in prison.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip213wPyGIlQKoksD2hYiOFfIJH0lOVruh5-PQTS_B8WR04cM_oTfUGNlYYyfK7P30fjCcXgwgK26zkz_yz28T_JX24E4ib0uIInIvVaSk8y-5xONqUP5f7v-gP_-2yYMuhUb9PSuf6lxX/s1600/ALeqM5hVR3T7q143ULYPP-j3R3v3gqZxjw.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="281" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip213wPyGIlQKoksD2hYiOFfIJH0lOVruh5-PQTS_B8WR04cM_oTfUGNlYYyfK7P30fjCcXgwgK26zkz_yz28T_JX24E4ib0uIInIvVaSk8y-5xONqUP5f7v-gP_-2yYMuhUb9PSuf6lxX/s400/ALeqM5hVR3T7q143ULYPP-j3R3v3gqZxjw.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Now my question is this;<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<h4>
What would Jesus do?</h4>
</blockquote>
The Pope is supposed to be Gods Vicar on earth and an example of Christian piety and forgiveness. Gabriele has admitted his guilt and is unlikely to do it again, so shouldn't the Pope forgive him, turn the other cheek and be an example to the world of the power of his faith in<span class="st"> cessation of resentment</span>?<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Colossians 3:13<br /><i>Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.</i> </b></blockquote>
<br />
Failing that, does the guy really have to go to jail? Can't he just be sent to another parish? Lazarushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14139033650731770470noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5345056790932494587.post-60141251143651389462012-08-08T11:42:00.002+01:002012-08-08T11:42:27.105+01:00He Could Have Been Born YesterdayI may have mentioned on here before that Steve Goddard is a 'Birther' in
that he believes Americas first non-white president wasn't born in the
US so can't really be the President.<br />
<br />
In a<a href="http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/08/06/kenyan-newspaper-said-obama-was-born-in-kenya-in-2004/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> recent post </a>he
provides 'evidence' from a paper that Barack Obama was born in Kenya.
Straight away a commenter pointed out that was was an old hoax and
documented in <a href="http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/birthers/ap.asp" target="_blank">snopes,</a>
other facts were added including evidence that his father was in Hawaii
at the time he was born and unlikely to send his pregnant wife to a
third world country to give birth. No record of any such journey exists
for there and back in any case. There does exist a birth certificate
form a Hospital in Honolulu and confirmed as authentic. We also have
Kenyan official denying that Obama was born there. This is in comments
by people who are normally very supportive of Goddard's climate denial
posts but obviously are unwilling to stoop to this whole new level of
crazy.<br />
<br />
Steve Goddard is having none of it. The link he has is all the proof that is needed.<br />
<br />
So we have multiple lines of evidence all pointing to one conclusion and
a single piece of discredited evidence pointing to another. Which does
Goddard support? The one that tells him what he want to hear of course.<br />
<br />
<b>Remind you of anything? </b>Lazarushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14139033650731770470noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5345056790932494587.post-86026482951903734712012-05-16T09:36:00.000+01:002012-05-16T09:36:26.739+01:00Prize for most misleading headline...... goes to the Daily fail for:<b> <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2144609/Drivers-face-50-cent-rise-fuel-duty-make-tax-shortfall-green-cars.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Drivers face a 50 per cent rise in fuel duty to make up tax shortfall from 'green' cars</a>. </b>Is it just me or does this headline look at first glance to mean that those nasty 'green' cars being pushed by the government are actually going to make motoring much more expensive?<b><br /></b><br />
<div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">
<br />Clearly I'm not the only one as some of the Fail's readers show. Ollie from Ashford says;</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="comment-body">
<b>"Let the Green Party stump up the monies"</b></div>
</blockquote>
And a very bright Bev for Dorset cries;</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="comment-body">
<b>"Green! Green! The government use it to rob,
steal and lie. The next tax will be exhaling tax hold your breath to
reduce carbon emissions." </b></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="comment-body">
</div>
<div class="comment-body">
So what is it really all about? Well a read of the actual article reveals that an RAC report calculated that as people, (and these people can be Daily Fail readers too), swap to hybrid and electric cars there will be a loss of government tax revenue through drivers taking advantage of current tax breaks, paying less road licence and purchasing less petrol, leaving the Treasury with a shortfall by 2029. <span style="font-size: 1.2em;"></span></div>
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">
But isn't that the same as blaming <b>people who give up smoking for increasing our tax burden by not buying cigarettes?</b><br /><br />No one who spends half a moment to think about it would believe that the current tax breaks on buying 'green' cars will still be in place if they become the vehicle of choice, and it would seem likely that government policy will alter over time as motorists pay less tax to address the the balance in some way to cover any shortfall if it is needed. </div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">
So there is no real indication that motorists per se will be paying any more tax in real terms as they do today, just that the tax may be on other things. In fact in the article Paul Johnson from the Institute of Fiscal Studies suggests replacing the current system of fuel taxation with, <b>'A national system of charging related to mileage and congestion'</b>. Sound like a idea worth looking at to me, and perhaps should have formed part of the headline used rather than one that appears to some as anti green.</div>Lazarushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14139033650731770470noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5345056790932494587.post-14092557125878500272012-05-08T16:54:00.001+01:002012-05-08T16:54:41.864+01:00Hitler Liked Dogs. Do You?I have been following the news of Heartland's ill judged<a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/unabomber-global-warming-billboard-heartland-institute-article-1.1073052" target="_blank"> ad campaign</a>.
I'd say ill judged only if you consider shooting yourself in the foot
while it is in your mouth, ill judged. Didn't they learn anything from
the not funny satirical 10:10 ads?<br />
<br />
By pretty much suggesting that those who accept the science of global
warming are like serial killers and terrorists they have managed to
alienate supporters and funders alike. Drink giant <a href="http://www.environmentalleader.com/2012/05/07/diageo-stops-heartland-donations-after-unabomber-billboards/" target="_blank">Diageo</a>
who owns brands like Guinness, Smirnoff, Johnnie Walker and Moët &
Chandon and gave Heartland $10,000 over the past two years say they have
no plans to work with the Heartland Institute in the future. State Farm
an insurance company has also announced that they were<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shawn-lawrence-otto/an-open-letter-to-state-f_b_1489265.html" target="_blank"> severing all ties</a>
with the Heartland Institute.This company gave $114,000 in 2010,
$230,000 last year and $95,000 this year according to Heartland's leaked
<a href="http://www.shawnotto.com/downloads/heartland/%281-15-2012%29%202012%20Fundraising%20Plan.pdf" target="_blank">fund-raising plan</a>. <b>Ouch!</b><br />
<br />
<span class="post-labels">Donna Laframboise, author, climate skeptic and
blogger had planned on attending Heartlands latest anti-climate change
conference but stated<a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_1738703840"> </a></span><a href="http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2012/05/05/why-i-wont-be-speaking-at-the-heartland-conference/" target="_blank">'my participation in the upcoming Heartland conference has now become untenable.'</a> With her book being advertised on the same Heartland web page she believes her ' reputation has been <i>harmed'. </i>She also reports<i>;</i><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>'Ross McKitrick said in an a <a href="http://climateaudit.org/2012/05/04/mckitrick-letter-to-heartland/">strongly-worded letter</a> to Heartland yesterday: <br />You cannot simultaneously say that you want to promote a debate while equating the other side to terrorists and mass murderers.'</b></blockquote>
Perhaps more can be learned about the ethics and morals of those who
appear to see nothing wrong with this sort of campaign. Enter stage left
my Member of the European Parliament, Roger Helmer. He became an MEP on
a Conservative ticket before defecting to the more extreme right UKIP
party who has for a<a href="http://www.ukip.org/content/latest-news/1675-christopher-a-man-of-many-talents" target="_blank"> deputy leader Mad Monckton</a>. Helmer has been mentioned on my blog before;<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b><a href="http://lazarus-on.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/who-voted-for-this-idiot.html" target="_blank">Who voted for this idiot? </a></b><br />
<b><a href="http://lazarus-on.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/rape-victims-shared-responsibility-for.html" target="_blank">Rape victims share responsibility for the crime! </a></b><br />
<b><a href="http://lazarus-on.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/winds-of-change.html" target="_blank">Winds of Change? </a></b></blockquote>
<br />
Helmer is still <a href="http://heartland.org/events/seventh-international-conference-climate-change">down to attend this Heartland conference</a> as a breakfast speaker;<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>"Breakfast - May 23, 2012: SPEAKER, Roger Helmer, European Parliament, Great Britain - $39.00 "</b></blockquote>
By all accounts this insidious Ad campaign is no barrier to him giving his speech. <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/may/04/heartland-institute-global-warming-murder?newsfeed=true" target="_blank">According to Leo Hickman</a>;<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>'He confirmed he was still attending, adding:</b><br />
<b>I am
delighted that the Heartland campaign for the Chicago climate conference
has succeeded in its purpose and attracted the attention of the
Guardian.'</b></blockquote>
So with Helmer and his conservative opinions in mind I thought I'd give
Heartland a few suggestions for alternatives to their posters. This ones
for Rog;<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-cDMYYkoBK1BDTZ43y-1awyvExjK0vm48Oieh6TgQvcK3BiuJHNy7ZhOYdSgrge-mmvyrK8pKk6-Mgffi3z0bvWflUWH1Tb4uZ3Xt1taRU0NRztHnJuuZaktqJi4PfKONjYQTpAe0I05E/s1600/heartThatcherr.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-cDMYYkoBK1BDTZ43y-1awyvExjK0vm48Oieh6TgQvcK3BiuJHNy7ZhOYdSgrge-mmvyrK8pKk6-Mgffi3z0bvWflUWH1Tb4uZ3Xt1taRU0NRztHnJuuZaktqJi4PfKONjYQTpAe0I05E/s1600/heartThatcherr.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
But Heartland's ads are really a reverse version of the<a class="l vst" href="http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-authority.html"> Appeal to Authority.</a>
Choose someone who is noteworthy in some respect and use them to
promote something unrelated. I can't see dairy farmers being too pleased
to see this around the country;<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTqMnuTQubUyQAQogYKT4D8UdaKG5vXtq7Ih_uzfspKU4MoHwaIXdKErdh32Y3Mu7hSKWdlQ6i4dSS8tg9JgGhjw4vHJeICRBqbp9LUef_cyAIj79fTw2gyzxXbI9RFErSgXEL8PyQ_xn-/s1600/hearmilk.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTqMnuTQubUyQAQogYKT4D8UdaKG5vXtq7Ih_uzfspKU4MoHwaIXdKErdh32Y3Mu7hSKWdlQ6i4dSS8tg9JgGhjw4vHJeICRBqbp9LUef_cyAIj79fTw2gyzxXbI9RFErSgXEL8PyQ_xn-/s1600/hearmilk.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
Or, as the title of this post suggests, dog breeders liking this;<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6XJXBqUkKym-qv3VmCkZu6ZRbFQORKXCozNfd7A2qTXJt5D4BzWGzqHvtVUT_Q3hmG_0ZXsXf4d23zKIp6VYwuMzyirVidRlVKvb514zumYMvqXP0yNlCP8Dl7vmL56E-cluySioftx38/s1600/heartHitler.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6XJXBqUkKym-qv3VmCkZu6ZRbFQORKXCozNfd7A2qTXJt5D4BzWGzqHvtVUT_Q3hmG_0ZXsXf4d23zKIp6VYwuMzyirVidRlVKvb514zumYMvqXP0yNlCP8Dl7vmL56E-cluySioftx38/s1600/heartHitler.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<b>But to really show the absurdity and irrationality of this add campaign, suppose an environmental group had commissioned this;</b><br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr3-pkxABjgaS1ShAuKJqWYXQ3btXhG0B-cTvRXZsPlXj1K8TzexMyAaP8J6yCGf0ZwAJeG9n0F6afoN5cLjhWTgbE3Ms2UVoVhRTK4qxQ-ck7-CqubXnkQQQE6ZRgi68AjhvMDbmylENW/s1600/hearAnders.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr3-pkxABjgaS1ShAuKJqWYXQ3btXhG0B-cTvRXZsPlXj1K8TzexMyAaP8J6yCGf0ZwAJeG9n0F6afoN5cLjhWTgbE3Ms2UVoVhRTK4qxQ-ck7-CqubXnkQQQE6ZRgi68AjhvMDbmylENW/s1600/hearAnders.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />Lazarushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14139033650731770470noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5345056790932494587.post-44210411044859946052012-05-02T01:44:00.001+01:002012-05-02T01:44:20.272+01:00Catholic Church Still Abusing ChildrenIn what I consider to be a hugely immoral act, the Catholic Church in Britain has<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-17883093" target="_blank"> written to nearly 400 state-funded Catholic schools</a> asking them to get pupils, some as young as 11, to back a petition against gay marriage. <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/25/catholic-church-schools-gay-marriage" target="_blank">Students in at least one school</a> were shown a presentation on religious opposition to government plans to let gay couples marry in civil ceremonies. <br />
<br />
This is wrong for several reason;<br />
<ul>
<li>First it amounts to teaching children that gay relationships are wrong because the creator of the universe says it is so.</li>
<li>Second it puts immense peer pressure on to kids who see gay relationships as a personal choice and acceptable between consenting people, and would not normally support such a homophobic position. It will put these children in line for bullying and name calling if they have to courage to openly not to support this vile petition.</li>
<li>Thirdly, after stigmatising homosexuality, and a time when children are discovering their own sexuality, it will likely make the inevitable few who are naturally gay deny their own sexual nature and as something condemned in the eyes of others. </li>
</ul>
<br />
Do children really need to be used as pawns for the Catholic Church in this way?<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimBSnJs5cPWNss-Pr6S0K9mf2M2TlDbw3qR3ONHLnqkhb4SQR1sqzE9ynIf6CDXA3om3bgX32fgQeS-CmBzzy6TE7G8ckNEusDG6TNjyp_-qockFNr_AWuEB5ILc1W1mOIUNBnvG0XvEED/s1600/images.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimBSnJs5cPWNss-Pr6S0K9mf2M2TlDbw3qR3ONHLnqkhb4SQR1sqzE9ynIf6CDXA3om3bgX32fgQeS-CmBzzy6TE7G8ckNEusDG6TNjyp_-qockFNr_AWuEB5ILc1W1mOIUNBnvG0XvEED/s320/images.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
The Catholic Church - no church, invented marriage. People were jumping the broom long before Christ or even Abraham. One wonders at the priorities of such people that they appear much more
concerned about allowing certain types of adults to call themselves
married and receive the benefits of such an arrangement as soon as possible legislation allowing it is discussed, but are painfully slow in reacting to claims of abuse of children levelled at their own people.Where is the petition for school children to sign against their own grooming by church authority figures?<br />
<br />
As the title of this posts states, I do not think it is an over reaction to state that this is the abuse of children. It is an abuse of the authority that the parents have given, it encourages discrimination against others based on their sexuality, and it indoctrinates them to believe that inequality is not just justified but an requirement. This mental abuse can be as psychologically damaging as that inflicted by physical abuse.<br />
<br />
<br />
I personally have a child still in Catholic education. They were unaware of this in-equality petition in their school and I hope that their school has the courage to overrule the Catholic Education Service on this matter and no child gets put into a position of being asked to sign it. My own child already says, unbidden by me, that they would not sign such a thing. This makes me proud but I would not criticise them if they did sign it out of pressure, but I will criticise the Catholic and School authorities if they put my child - any child, under this pressure. It is child abuse, pure and simple.Lazarushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14139033650731770470noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5345056790932494587.post-65588058426624400342012-04-10T11:34:00.002+01:002012-04-10T11:34:57.905+01:00Real Science Isn't A Very Smart PlaceA piece of very interesting climate research was published recently in Nature; '<a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v484/n7392/full/nature10915.html" target="_blank"><b>Global warming preceded by increasing carbon dioxide concentrations during the last deglaciation</b></a>' by Shakun et al.<br />
<br />
It is interesting because previous research looking at historical carbon
dioxide examined ice cores from the Antarctic and found that
temperature lagged CO2 by about 800 years. This is an often used by
climate contrarians to suggest proof that Co2 can't cause warming, but
all it really does is show that it doesn't have to be responsible for
initial warming.<br />
<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCy2je_K0d7Kl-LjhBjTurnI3C6hyphenhyphentlv-D0OTeGCeIjCGF4W9bLs8kCH1hTLAygg6OowroloxckyExe-IjOAFNKBCxxhvJB5riSCSg13Fiyk7w3Jq8ddBtZ_xO_kpcS_0yfh840V-5AGIv/s1600/dn11659-2_738.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCy2je_K0d7Kl-LjhBjTurnI3C6hyphenhyphentlv-D0OTeGCeIjCGF4W9bLs8kCH1hTLAygg6OowroloxckyExe-IjOAFNKBCxxhvJB5riSCSg13Fiyk7w3Jq8ddBtZ_xO_kpcS_0yfh840V-5AGIv/s640/dn11659-2_738.jpg" width="627" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From <a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11659-climate-myths-ice-cores-show-co2-increases-lag-behind-temperature-rises-disproving-the-link-to-global-warming.html" target="_blank">New Scientist</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
So the generally accepted scientific mechanism for past climate warming
was that another forcing, and not CO2, was the initial trigger. That
initial warming released enough GHGs, from permafrost, oceans etc.,
which then led to more warming. There is absolutely no doubt with the
basic physics that CO2 causes warming. These other trigger forcings have
usually been down to orbital variations known as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles" target="ns">Milankovitch cycles</a>. This is still the accepted scientific cause for switches between Ice Ages and warmer inter glacier periods.<br />
<br />
But this new research looked at 80 global proxy records of temperature,
not just Antarctic ice cores, which can only reveal local conditions,
for the last deglaciation and found that <b>"temperature is correlated with and generally lags CO<sub>2</sub> during the last (that is, the most recent) deglaciation." </b><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkRRlFbbhkTnLfl1TeUAK6c0kS2ioe393HbfaLjT5sOf_TAAUhEno0BcVwJ4msGwX2BbjAQfQkCBvI5x3p0IU8xz-KWDNh3etkEvgL_Lp2d492gt0sY8yMPwzAkl7EvoP58372VtgVvEt2/s1600/ShakunFig1.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="310" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkRRlFbbhkTnLfl1TeUAK6c0kS2ioe393HbfaLjT5sOf_TAAUhEno0BcVwJ4msGwX2BbjAQfQkCBvI5x3p0IU8xz-KWDNh3etkEvgL_Lp2d492gt0sY8yMPwzAkl7EvoP58372VtgVvEt2/s640/ShakunFig1.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sites of the 80 temperatures proxies used in Shakun et al's paper</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
So while the basic premise for the cause of de-glaciations remains,
this research indicates that CO2 can be an early, even initial forcing
of warming, which further undermines the contrarian argument of
temperature causing increased CO2 and not the other way around.<br />
<br />
So how was this interesting research reported on Steven Goddard's Real Science?<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>"<a href="http://www.real-science.com/antarctica-is-a-very-smart-place" target="_blank">Antarctica Is A Very Smart Place</a><br /><br />According
to the latest research from top Ivy League expert Dr. Shakun,
Antarctica is able to anticipate changes in CO2 several hundred years in
advance, and preemptively adjust its thermostat long before the CO2
decides to spontaneously increase or decrease. <br /><br />CO2 found it
frustrating at first that Antarctica always anticipated his moves, until
Dr. Shakun explained to him that this mysterious teleconnection proves
that CO2 controls the universe. "</b></blockquote>
I understand that this is what passes for humour among those in denial,
but rather than acting the idiot, shouldn't someone making a case
against AGW, and who wants to be considered seriously, actually try to
understand the scientific research that the conclusions are based on,
and counter that? Well clearly of course they should, but in this case
they obviously can't, so instead they act like a kid making faces and
stupid remarks behind the teachers back.<br />Lazarushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14139033650731770470noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5345056790932494587.post-28405329688083173232012-04-10T11:33:00.002+01:002012-04-10T11:33:33.244+01:00Goddard’s Great Arctic Conspiracy<div class="MsoNormal">
Steve Goddard has a conspiracy theory, <a href="http://www.real-science.com/arctic-fraud-worse" target="_blank"><b>Arctic Fraud</b></a>, that he
posted on the 9th of March 2012. I think I do remember scanning this at the time but ignored it
as the usual worthless scaremongering that occurs with great frequency on his
blog.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But then on of his<a href="http://www.real-science.com/meltdown-2012-earth-has-more-sea-ice-than-it-did-in-1980#comment-83980" target="_blank"> commentators referenced it</a> in reply to me
to suggest this was a great discovery and I though that I’d have another look at it. If some
of his readership took it seriously, regardless of how confused they may seem,
others might as well.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Goddard claims that the whole ‘<b>fraud</b>’ was uncovered when "<b>Thanks to the work of skeptics, two key government documents have been dug up </b>". Hidden documents revealing a global fraud that
were dug up due the fearless dedication of climate 'skeptics' -this is scary stuff.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The first of these hidden documents is a graph of Arctic sea
ice extent and was uncovered in <a href="http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/wg_I/ipcc_far_wg_I_full_report.pdf" target="_blank">'<b>Climate Change the IPCC Assessment</b>'</a>
from 1990 ... Hang on a moment
– a 1990 IPCC report? How much digging up did that take? It’s probably
been on the IPCC web site for, like decades now. They can't be very good
at hiding their
fraud if they just let anyone with an internet connection access to it –
but
then these ‘skeptics’ must be pretty useless at spotting it since it’s
been
right under their noses for about 22 years, don’t they read science? Oh I
forgot, of course they don’t.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Actually this IPCC report is well referenced by ‘skeptics’
who often post this graph from it on page 202;</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuQISTCLzlv8cU8Ro-XrNmvFrgo38Jeksgoq0bGGFD5tbBDcMpurWYhMicick7-Ym5TSm0ZUmiq7LM9NCqSS0RiFdqnjDrGSWNbjyqJYe1qR1tHvDRuUwzHB1T850Jfe3jIB6r2oQE5Jw_/s1600/ipcc+1990.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="205" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuQISTCLzlv8cU8Ro-XrNmvFrgo38Jeksgoq0bGGFD5tbBDcMpurWYhMicick7-Ym5TSm0ZUmiq7LM9NCqSS0RiFdqnjDrGSWNbjyqJYe1qR1tHvDRuUwzHB1T850Jfe3jIB6r2oQE5Jw_/s400/ipcc+1990.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It seems to appear every time a Prof. Michael Mann’s ‘Hockey
Stick’ graph of global temperatures is referred to as ‘proof’ that the Medieval
Warm Period has been fraudulently erased from history – but that is another
level of bunk I won’t go into here.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The first piece of evidence for Goddard’s fraud is a graph
of sea ice extent anomaly, and can be ‘dug up’ on page 224. This is Goddard’s version of
it;</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFRi18OQNbVUCu6V9W4lilZAo_UXJs7I9KA7ZAtisqHEC_elsQEgGjiDO83TfZ4IqJZxez85Fki7QZvNDpvrVDpvL-Kcr28_L18w0aA2kJpJdQq7Q7OS_Xnu9yo1jHmPbnx4fDhwcEhS1p/s1600/ScreenHunter_102-Mar.-03-07.04.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="408" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFRi18OQNbVUCu6V9W4lilZAo_UXJs7I9KA7ZAtisqHEC_elsQEgGjiDO83TfZ4IqJZxez85Fki7QZvNDpvrVDpvL-Kcr28_L18w0aA2kJpJdQq7Q7OS_Xnu9yo1jHmPbnx4fDhwcEhS1p/s640/ScreenHunter_102-Mar.-03-07.04.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For some reason that I can’t entirely understand, (perhaps
someone in the know can help me out), he adds red bits and shows where proper
satellite monitoring starts and where the value of ice is high. Is he trying to
suggest that the US government at the time, (Carter was president),
spent billions of dollars putting, keeping and monitoring satellites in orbit,
to fraudulently inflate sea ice area then gradually bring it down over decades,
(about 40years and counting), so that sometime in the future, when goodness knows who would be in government, it can be used as
evidence for global warming and an excuse for increases in taxation, a new
world order or something sinister based on a long perpetrated fraud? Perhaps Goddard’s red markings are there for
some credible reason but it escapes me. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Anyway I think Goddard’s ‘smoking gun’ from this graph is
that sea ice was low back in the day and it is low now. But that graph is only
part of a series;</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJQe7_kui0t78kSb00gwyoIw0LhwycPPhH-FytSsY9-v0omo1xQ7QCUN9hc8VgPIMT7zjmnqKEpfiVopMKRhmGu6fiAhc2PDj6oIh_rmxsq72LCVIyejQ487i6Tqx5FRQPUNPG_TySkG0B/s1600/ipcc2+1990.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="417" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJQe7_kui0t78kSb00gwyoIw0LhwycPPhH-FytSsY9-v0omo1xQ7QCUN9hc8VgPIMT7zjmnqKEpfiVopMKRhmGu6fiAhc2PDj6oIh_rmxsq72LCVIyejQ487i6Tqx5FRQPUNPG_TySkG0B/s640/ipcc2+1990.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We can see that while the Arctic starts fairly low and
rises, the graph below for the Antarctic shows the ice high and falls.
So global sea ice can't be considered anomalously low. How lame
a fraud is that? Surely if you want to suggest that the ice is
decreasing globally
you keep both poles high at the start? Don’t these conspirators know
nothing?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Seriously, it can be seen from considering both these
graphs, pre satellite, that global sea ice was not low. But it also
suggests
that pre satellite measurements had much higher levels of uncertainty.
That is
way satellites were launched with a mission to measure ice area – not to
inflate the figure but to get a more accurate measure. The first graph
in the series shows a gradual decline in snow extent during the same
period.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
During the research of this post I came across another blog, ‘<a href="http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/tempest-in-ice-pot.html" target="_blank">More GrumbineScience</a>’,
that does a far more rigorous examination of exactly what is in the
1990 IPCC report regarding sea ice extent. It explains exactly how the
ice was
measured at the time compared to more recent measurements. I'd recommend
it for anyone interested in the facts - clearly Goddard has never read
it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So Goddard’s ‘Arctic Fraud’ isn’t of to a great start.
The first key piece of evidence uncovered was freely available for decades and
just shows the state of knowledge at the time.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But what of Goddard’s second key piece of evidence for a
fraud. It is much more scary – a document from the CIA! This is a 1974 report by the CIA called "<b>A study of climatological research as it pertains to intelligence problems</b>". It was apparently dug up by
<a href="http://climateresearchnews.com/2009/12/1974-cia-document-on-the-global-cooling-scare/" target="_blank"> in 2009</a>. Was it uncovered by a whistle blower? Was there a hack of the CIA servers? Is any body's life in jeopardy?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Well no. It was got from the British Library, where
no doubt it has been for decades and open to the public for scrutiny. In fact it is
available from several places on-line - it can be purchased from <a href="http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/2239753" target="_blank">here </a>for
example. This document isn’t entirely unknown either. It is often cited as
evidence every time the ‘Scientists thought there would be global cooling in
the 70’s’ meme is brought up. So I can’t help wonder if this document was dug
up and revealed in ‘skeptic’ circles in 2009, and the first document has been
freely availably for decades, why it has taken Steve Goddard about 3 years to
reveal his great Arctic conspiracy fraud? Perhaps he was fact checking? – Sorry, I
must try to tone down the sarcasm.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Goddard’s ‘smoking gun’ from the CIA report is the line;<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b> Early in the 1970s a series of adverse climatic anomalies occurred;</b><br />
<ul>
<li><b>The worlds snow and ice cover had increased by at least 10 to 15 percent.</b></li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
That is further used by him to suggest that sea ice was also low back
in our recent past. But this isn’t a scientific report. In fact the science in
it is<a href="http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2011/07/a_study_of_climatological_rese.php" target="_blank"> dodgy at best</a>.
It was commissioned and written during the cold
war and at a time when the media were hyping the idea of global cooling,
and when Arctic sea ice had been increasing. This is clearly part of
the series of events that occurred in the 1970s, unusual enough at the
time for the somewhat paranoid CIA to worry about possible 'intelligence
problems'.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If the CIA had taken time to ask the scientific community
the general direction the near future climate was expect to take was <a href="http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2008BAMS2370.1" target="_blank">one of warming, not cooling</a>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So looking at all the evidence that has been ‘dug up’, can
any one rationally say there is any credible evidence for a fraud? Isn’t it
more like another case of doubting the research based on ignorance and bias by a fantasist?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>Lazarushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14139033650731770470noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5345056790932494587.post-75473539703303828402012-03-13T15:58:00.000+00:002012-03-13T15:58:57.623+00:00Goddard: Tampering With Data All Over The PlanetOf course that's Steve Goddard, from the Orwellian named <a href="http://www.real-science.com/hansen-tampering-data-planet">Real Science</a>, and nothing to do with NASA’s Goddard space centre.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately Mr. Goddard doesn’t do very well with graphs. We have seen it on <a href="http://reallysciency.blogspot.com/2012/02/understanding-climate-change-denial.html">Really Sciency </a>before, (still waiting for the correction), and his latest howlers were when he posted the animated .gif below;<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaDVE9qlWuKkwnfRAAHmkFhHGWZCHdGDhYvDVW-xVDskTgkankk7SYesIoS6R9wRuVTSqVMp5UBZ8s15au3jgXQfVZXe2Hg49GBCasKQ31_og-8bWc-DA25yWL0h4JHTtUR8RwPyFUhGtE/s1600/GISSTampering3.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="379" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaDVE9qlWuKkwnfRAAHmkFhHGWZCHdGDhYvDVW-xVDskTgkankk7SYesIoS6R9wRuVTSqVMp5UBZ8s15au3jgXQfVZXe2Hg49GBCasKQ31_og-8bWc-DA25yWL0h4JHTtUR8RwPyFUhGtE/s640/GISSTampering3.gif" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
Goddard uses this to make the claim;<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b> “Hansen
has been deleting cooling trends all over the planet.”, “He has erased
historical cooling trends (blue) in North America, South America,
Africa, the Arctic, Antarctica, and elsewhere.”</b></blockquote>
And
very helpfully draws little red rings around the areas he mentions.
What he has discovered is shocking! The chilly light blue areas have
suddenly become a less chilly looking white. Oh the humanity! Surely
this is proof of tampering, proof of erasing cooling trends?<br />
<br />
Hang
on a moment, what about those very angry looking dark red areas on the
same image as the blue (the ones he rather conveniently doesn't draw little red rings around), – haven’t those become a less warm orange? Drat
those pesky scientists, (Hansen specifically), they have gone and erased
the hot, hot, hot areas, clearly they are erasing warming trends as
well! Drat and double drat.<br />
<br />
Below I have included the maps as separate images for easy comparison;<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK0kn0S0VIK05Zt7plN7WfdWQ5P6uc60OUIw0GU5manSNIq1qhTQVNzKYBV60_6JWn6M8DVzp3hEaD9m_XMXTJlSmTX2Fr4axdXNZ6WUzHCOAfmVnkdtAFWBKeChjvlXR52eDegaQWyq7I/s1600/mapImage1.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="398" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK0kn0S0VIK05Zt7plN7WfdWQ5P6uc60OUIw0GU5manSNIq1qhTQVNzKYBV60_6JWn6M8DVzp3hEaD9m_XMXTJlSmTX2Fr4axdXNZ6WUzHCOAfmVnkdtAFWBKeChjvlXR52eDegaQWyq7I/s640/mapImage1.jpg" width="640" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz5U3vEAipUGt52hZkOom3-rLn0n-xILu8Hm9D21j3EPgZP_gkXhQujPqR3R9T5-di9JqYmK4es3_XyJQDiZ8D__BIVoX0RmyEw7CFTLeK4WB-W2PaziLTbQykbpKGw-5CtJRuSZ0bjFw8/s1600/GISSTampering3.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="379" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz5U3vEAipUGt52hZkOom3-rLn0n-xILu8Hm9D21j3EPgZP_gkXhQujPqR3R9T5-di9JqYmK4es3_XyJQDiZ8D__BIVoX0RmyEw7CFTLeK4WB-W2PaziLTbQykbpKGw-5CtJRuSZ0bjFw8/s640/GISSTampering3.gif" width="640" /></a></div>
<a href="http://www.real-science.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/GISSTampering3.gif"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><br />
</span></a><br />
But wait – the maps use the same colours but at the
bottom they use different scales - Actually Goddard knows this because
almost as a foot note he does say;<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“<b>The color scales are shifted, but the legends are located below the maps – and you can see that the values have changed</b>.”</blockquote>
<br />
The
first thing that should ring alarm bells with any true sceptic is that
Goddard thinks comparing two maps with different scales is a perfectly
reasonable thing to do. Who with any inkling of science and an idea to
communicate would even let such a notion cross their mind and publish
such shoddy work as a credible evaluation? Well Steven Goddard
obviously.<br />
<br />
The second thing is his preoccupation with
his own bias. If he is right to be concerned, and cooling trends are
really being ‘erased’, then why does this concern not extend to warming
trends being erased as well?<br />
<br />
Well the truth is obvious,
Goddard has his answer and is trying to get ‘facts’ to convince himself
and others it is right, instead of looking at all the facts and drawing
a rational conclusion from them. If he was an honest man, even believing he's right, he would be as concerned for
the changes at both ends of the scale, not just the bits he thought made an anti-AGW case. That is why he will always be prone to cherry picking and
making howlers such as the ones I will show below.<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">So the only question that remains; Is Goddard correct about trends (at either end) being erased?</span></b><br />
<br />
Goddard actually gives a specific example to reinforce his case;<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>“The circle over Africa has changed from a -0.5C to -0.3C cooling trend, into a warming trend.”</b></blockquote>
I
can’t see exactly where he got these figures from. The cool area
circled over Africa in the first map ranges from around -0.5 to +0.1. In
the second map the cool area ranges from around -0.2 to +0.5, so the
values are slightly different even if they are not the values Goddard
works it out at.<br />
<br />
An easier area to work out is the
circled U.S. area. It goes from -0.5 to -0.1 in the first map to -0.2 to
+0.2 in the second map. <br />
<br />
But doesn’t that make Goddard
correct about erasing trends? They are different in each map after all.
Well all that really depends on if these maps are really showing the
same data.<br />
<br />
Goddard gives links to where he got the maps from. The second is straight forward; it is the<a href="http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2012&month_last=1&sat=4&sst=1&type=trends&mean_gen=0112&year1=1950&year2=1998&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=1200&pol=reg" target="_blank"> GISS Surface Temperature Analysis using GHCN v3</a>.<br />
<br />
The first map however is over 12 years old. Goddard gets if from a brief piece on the NASA, <span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;">Goddard Institute for Space Studies</span>, web site from <a href="http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2012&month_last=1&sat=4&sst=1&type=trends&mean_gen=0112&year1=1950&year2=1998&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=1200&pol=reg" target="_blank">August 1999 about the US climate at that time</a>.
It is worth a read if only to understand how real scientists view data,
not as Steve Goddard has done above, but with guarded statements, based
only on what the data, and all the data, supports. Of the drought that
occurred in the Eastern U.S. in 1999, Hansen and his team have this to
say;<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>“Was the heat wave and drought in the Eastern United States in 1999 a sign of global warming?</b><br />
<b>Empirical
evidence does not lend much support to the notion that climate is
headed precipitately toward more extreme heat and drought. The drought
of 1999 covered a smaller area than the 1988 drought, when the
Mississippi almost dried up. And 1988 was a temporary inconvenience as
compared with repeated droughts during the 1930s "Dust Bowl" that caused
an exodus from the prairies, as chronicled in Steinbeck's <cite>Grapes of Wrath.</cite><cite><span style="font-style: normal;">”</span></cite></b></blockquote>
<br />
Does
this sound like a scientist prepared to ‘erase’ trends or one that
admits the data does not support anthropogenic warming in the U.S. at
that time?<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
Anyway
I digress. The map Goddard uses for his ‘before’ has been taken from
the article mentioned, but it is actually from a 1999 paper; '<a href="http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1999/1999_Hansen_etal.pdf" target="_blank">GISS analysis of surface temperature change</a>'; by J. Hansen, R. Ruedy, J. Glascoe, and M. Sato.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
There
is a lot of mapped data in this 1999 paper but you will find the one
used by Hansen in the US climate article, and subsequently used by
Goddard, as the first map on <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Plate 4</b>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
This map is GISS Surface Temperature Analysis using GHCN v2.<br />
<br />
Any one spot the difference? <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Yes, the maps are not even displaying the same data!</b> What a silly boy Steve Goddard is. The first shows GHCN v2 and the second GHCN v3.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb5xE_mw743YRuLbkUzeTxxb7gpP6kmm52kqM13_A1YjEIxePjhjKRjSL6y-D6lkhKFRsXHxM6LylS3eFVdGd7btp85-BeH9gf6FRTud6E4mZ9uCY8kEkkpID0HnGRQjHqmXAXcGnvXhI5/s1600/Homer-Face-palm.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="312" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb5xE_mw743YRuLbkUzeTxxb7gpP6kmm52kqM13_A1YjEIxePjhjKRjSL6y-D6lkhKFRsXHxM6LylS3eFVdGd7btp85-BeH9gf6FRTud6E4mZ9uCY8kEkkpID0HnGRQjHqmXAXcGnvXhI5/s320/Homer-Face-palm.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
In
November 2011 NASA switched from GHCN v2 to GHCN v3, since GHCN v2 was
no longer updated. I expect that Goddard and his minions may now try and
claim that the change to the new data set is proof that they altered
the data. But it is clear Steve Goddard had no idea that this was the
case, and certainly never thought to check where the discrepancy was - a
real sceptic would.<br />
<br />
So before they make any such
claims of data alteration, they should note that this was a well
documented change. There is a whole page at NASA, comparing the
differences between version 2 and version 3.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWBdpOMY9NPDgfTERvcnxfWf7Nx4tY6TTf1ckcajnDMr9XGrFCW5hjS8tK82uNDfKabbXzwMt4PVKAzroWQ-LFGlglrwDGBqMzp-a2xEpsVD1ukOxIAIiS9Ro1HCooDFGwt-Srac4ym8K_/s1600/v2v3.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWBdpOMY9NPDgfTERvcnxfWf7Nx4tY6TTf1ckcajnDMr9XGrFCW5hjS8tK82uNDfKabbXzwMt4PVKAzroWQ-LFGlglrwDGBqMzp-a2xEpsVD1ukOxIAIiS9Ro1HCooDFGwt-Srac4ym8K_/s640/v2v3.jpg" width="560" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/updates_v3/V3vsV2/">http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/updates_v3/V3vsV2/</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
And you will recognize the same kind of differences
that Steve Goddard has only just managed to figure out, but without the
innuendo of conspiracy or malpractice – it is there for anyone who is
truly interested in finding the truth to see.<br />
<br />
One
important thing to notice is that the actual global trends are not
affected in any way. The global mean change is listed as 0.43 degrees
Celsius in both GHCN v2 and the modern GHCN
v3.<br />
<br />
Reto Ruedy, co author of the 1999 paper has described the advantages of GHCN v3 thus;<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>“For
GHCN v3, NCDC developed a homogenization that is used to combine
different station records for the same location as well as deal with
discontinuities created by station moves, changes in instrumentation,
the urban heat island effect etc. which eliminates many known and
documented discontinuities still present in the unadjusted data and
caused us to no longer use their unadjusted data.”</b></blockquote>
<b><span style="font-size: large;">A grey area</span></b><br />
<br />
Since Goddard's 'analysis' has been nothing but shoddy up to now we should not hold up much hope for any great revelation when he says;<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>"He
(Hansen) also has created data in the southern hemisphere which
didn’t previously exist. Note how the area of grey has shrunk."</b></blockquote>
Should
we really expect that data has been 'created' or just that Mr. Goddard
doesn't understand the difference in the data and would rather
insinuate a grand conspiracy instead of actually finding out the truth of
the matter? Sorry, but there are no prizes for picking such an obvious
answer. <br />
<br />
The change in grey area is a separate issue from not knowing the difference between GHCN v2 and GHCN
v3. In 1999 NASA used the Reynolds and Smith ocean data which
started in 1950,
later they switched to the Hadley data since it went back to 1880 and
covered a larger area. This explains the shrinking of the grey area.
Again, this is not a secret only known by Hansen and a shadowy cabal of
climate scientists. In Hansen's paper mentioned above, the one that the 1999 map
came from, it clearly states in the Introduction;<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>"we
also illustrate results for a global surface temperature index formed
by combining our land analysis with sea surface temperature data of
Reynolds and Smith [1994] and Smith et al. [1996]" </b></blockquote>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFhW4siY29kOut-dHykZ-ygHaNoCfEOhptwJztgiHHKmP9SZ-pmla6At5bTKyTpj1EXnKYe36Us0SZ-NoZ9_fPUUWuX7ftdvEVMN_gJApXGJ1P-dW8JXhtk7qgBL2_i-8J_ZbIISeKvdpN/s1600/homer-doh-square.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFhW4siY29kOut-dHykZ-ygHaNoCfEOhptwJztgiHHKmP9SZ-pmla6At5bTKyTpj1EXnKYe36Us0SZ-NoZ9_fPUUWuX7ftdvEVMN_gJApXGJ1P-dW8JXhtk7qgBL2_i-8J_ZbIISeKvdpN/s1600/homer-doh-square.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
In Steve Goddard eyes, challenging him on any of this apparently makes you a “<b>complete idiot</b>” and “<a href="http://www.real-science.com/mentally-challenged-lazarus-part-2" target="_blank"><b>MentallyChallenged</b></a>”. I wonder what, not knowing that you are comparing
different data sets and then making ludicrous conspiracy type claims of
malpractice, makes you? Other than someone misleading themselves and
gullible others with shoddily researched pseudo-scientific nonsense that
is.<br />
<br />
Based on what I have found here, I strongly suspect that all of the posts Mr Goddard does about data being 'erased', 'created', inappropriately manipulated etc. are simply down to his ignorance about what data sets are used and the fact that he doesn't really care to find out because the truth might get in the way of his theories of conspiracy where he can make scientists like Dr. Hansen out to be some sort of bogey man.<br />
<br />
I also strongly suspect that even if Goddard admits he didn't know that the maps were displaying different data, his published ignorance will go uncorrected, because we have seen that even his admitted errors are nor corrected at source.<br />
<br />
There is some good news in all this. I
noticed the problem with the scales immediately but when I went to
comment, some others already had pointed out the same thing. Even one
commenter who regularly posts supporting Goddard’s’ nonsense and often
flames me stated “<b>Actually the warmists are correct, the graphs show the same thing</b>”,
even if he went on to imply that the underlying data was garbage. But
it is really heartening to see some others being truly sceptical about
Goddard’s unqualified posts. I do not claim to have influenced this but
there is hope that his readership is attracting more truly sceptical
people, which can only be a good thing.Lazarushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14139033650731770470noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5345056790932494587.post-47878109191571764832012-03-10T15:31:00.001+00:002012-03-10T15:56:40.341+00:00What Hansen et al got right decades ago.<div class="MsoNormal">Dr James Hansen gave a recent TED talk; ‘<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Why I must speak out about climate change</b>’. Hansen like many scientists is not a natural orator. He comes across as quiet, dry and even shy and nervous, hiding under a hat and referring to his notes constantly.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/fWInyaMWBY8?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><div class="storyreadable"><br />
</div><div class="storyreadable"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Having said that, his talk is worth every minute it took to watch, he gives an overview of how he went from studying planets for NASA to Earth's climate, and why he has become an environmental activist. None of that however detracts from a good overview of his work, the science, and his concerns.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Early on in his talk he mentions a research paper published in <b>Science </b>from 1981; ‘<a href="http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1981/1981_Hansen_etal.pdf" target="_blank"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Climate Impact of Increasing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide</b></a>’, J. Hansen, D. Johnson, A. Lacis, S. Lebedeff, P. Lee, D. Rind, G. Russell.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>He says of the paper that he and his colleagues found that; “<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">observed warming of 0.4 C in the prior century was consistent with the greenhouse effect of increasing CO2</b>", and they also found, “<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">that Earth would likely warm in the 1980s, and warming would exceed the noise level of random weather by the end of the century</b>.”<br />
<br />
I thought I’d take a closer look at the paper because it seems almost forgotten, with most deniers concentrating on Hansen in 1988, the year of his well-known Senate testimony, which included the three scenarios that deniers try to claim were hopelessly wrong predictions. They don't seem to know or want to know the difference between a scenario and a scientific prediction.<br />
<br />
But having looked at this 1981 paper you realise that it must have formed a core part of his work that led him to being chosen to give testimony in front of the Senate. The whole paper seems uncanny in what it suggested the climate in the next few decades and into the 21<sup>st</sup> century would look like.<br />
<br />
The first thing to notice is that there are a lot of caveats and even some statements that some could claim are contradictory. This isn’t fudge or hedge betting but an honest summary of the uncertainties that existed in the science over thirty years ago.<br />
<br />
The paper states some beneficial effects of increased warming; “<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Beneficial effects of CO2 warming will include increased length of the growing season</b>.” But with the caveats; “<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">It is not obvious whether the world will be more or less able to feed its population. Major modifications of regional climate patterns will require efforts to readjust land use and crop characteristics and may cause large-scale human dislocations.</b>”<br />
<br />
<div class="storyreadable">All of which is either occurring or seems certain to. For example, “<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">According to the <a href="http://www.adn.com/2010/08/01/1391100/warmer-temperatures-prolong-alaska.html" target="_blank">Alaska ClimateResearch Center</a>, Fairbanks is 2 1/2 degrees Fahrenheit warmer and 11 percent drier than it was 100 years ago. The changes have stretched the growing season from 85 days in the early 20th century to 123 days.</b>”</div><div class="storyreadable"><br />
</div><div class="storyreadable"> <span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;"></span>And on <a href="http://en.scientificcommons.org/51836489" target="_blank">human dislocation</a>; “<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Temporary migration as an adaptive response to climate stress is already apparent in many areas. But the picture is nuanced; the ability to migrate is a function of mobility and resources (both financial and social). In other words, the people most vulnerable to climate change are not necessarily the ones most likely to migrate.</b>”</div><div class="storyreadable"><br />
</div><div class="storyreadable"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;"></span></div><div class="storyreadable">However in 1981 the net impact is still not determined and needed further study; “<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Improved global climate models, reconstructions of past climate, and detailed analyses are needed before one can predict whether the net long-term impact will be beneficial or detrimental.</b>”</div><div class="storyreadable"><br />
</div><div class="storyreadable">The papers states, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">“It is shown that the anthropogenic carbon dioxide warming should emerge from the noise level of natural climate variability by the end of the century, and there is a high probability of warming in the 1980’s</b>.”</div><div class="storyreadable"><br />
</div><div class="storyreadable">The IPCC, established in 1998, confirmed in its third assessment report in 2001 that ‘<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities</b>’, and by the fourth, "<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">warming of the climate system is unequivocal</b>", and "<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.</b>"</div><div class="storyreadable"><br />
</div><div class="storyreadable">The team was also spot on about warming in the 80s and beyond. This was only a few years after the media frenzy in the 70s about a coming Ice Age and most people probably thought that was more likely even if the scientists knew better. For any climate deniers this must seem like a very lucky guess, but there is a reason why these people were picked to do research for NASA.</div><div class="storyreadable"><br />
</div><div class="storyreadable">The paper also states; “<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Potential effects on climate in the 21st century include the creation of drought-prone regions in North America and central Asia as part of a shifting of climatic zones</b>”. </div><div class="storyreadable"><br />
</div><div class="storyreadable">It still seems that these climatic zones are still in flux, but According to the <a href="http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2004/3062/" target="_blank">U.S. Geological Survey</a>, the current drought in the West of North America is the worst that has occurred in the last 500 years, with water flow levels at close to half those of the drought in the dirty thirties of the previous century, and in Asia, the <a href="http://europeandcis.undp.org/senioreconomist/show/2D476888-F203-1EE9-BBD365AF8DD66410" target="_blank">United Nations Development Programme</a> has concerns about “<b>The return of drought conditions to Central Asia" </b>and <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">"possible impact on food security</b>” </div><div class="storyreadable"><br />
</div><div class="storyreadable">The paper states; <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">“erosion of the West Antarctic ice sheet with a consequent worldwide rise in sea level,</b>” confirmed in<a href="http://geo-w2.austin.utexas.edu/courses/387H/Lectures/Shepard_04.pdf" target="_blank"> this paper</a> from 2004; <a href="http://geo-w2.austin.utexas.edu/courses/387H/Lectures/Shepard_04.pdf"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;"></span></a></div><div class="storyreadable"><br />
</div><div class="storyreadable">And sea level is on a rising trend;</div><div class="storyreadable"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDH0UsUJAZhyphenhyphenRnCBOhr4ubZg3OagmTFWGY7RA4n12Hlr18GBmP_ZM51txQj2aanOqjPL89-479VpzhdaJC_7b2Pbvp_I_iHO1ygtv8rtwswuGyDAlk5TXw6dHyTqXiZ1lmLv6sTQLw-T6u/s1600/sea+level+rise.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="482" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDH0UsUJAZhyphenhyphenRnCBOhr4ubZg3OagmTFWGY7RA4n12Hlr18GBmP_ZM51txQj2aanOqjPL89-479VpzhdaJC_7b2Pbvp_I_iHO1ygtv8rtwswuGyDAlk5TXw6dHyTqXiZ1lmLv6sTQLw-T6u/s640/sea+level+rise.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="storyreadable"><br />
</div><div class="storyreadable">Hansen et al, predicted the “<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">opening of the fabled Northwest Passage</b>.” This was a hell of a call at the time. “<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Floating polar sea ice responds rapidly to climate change. The 5° to 10°C warming expected at high northern latitudes for doubled CO2 should open the Northwest and Northeast passages along the borders of the American and Eurasian continents. Preliminary experiments with sea ice models suggest that all the sea ice may melt in summer, but part of it would refreeze in winter”</b>.</div><div class="storyreadable"><br />
</div><div class="storyreadable">To most people at the time this must have been seen as alarmist. Hansen states in his recent book <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">'<a href="http://www.stormsofmygrandchildren.com/" target="_blank">Storms of My Grandchildren</a></b>', (Which the video talk seems mostly lifted from), he believes he lost some funding in 1981 from the US Energy Department because this paper was considered too alarmist. Which flies in the face of 'skeptic' claims that scientists are being deliberately alarmist just to garner funding.</div><div class="storyreadable"><br />
But the papers prediction is exactly what has happened, with that passage and it Eastern sister are now open at least part of the time in recent summers. At least one scheduled cruise liner (the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Bremen">MS Bremen</a> in 2006) has successfully run the Northwest Passage.</div><div class="storyreadable"><br />
</div><div class="storyreadable">Even more interesting due to recent research is the claim that “<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Even a partially ice-free Arctic will modify neighboring continental climates.</b>”</div><div class="storyreadable"><br />
</div><div class="storyreadable">If the <a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21521-melting-sea-ice-could-trigger-colder-winters.html" target="_blank">most recent research</a> about lack of ice causing a shift to the jet stream, and making colder winters is accepted – this is another accurate prediction.</div><div class="storyreadable"><br />
</div><div class="storyreadable">This papers also states that “<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Climate models predict the larger sensitivity at high latitudes and trace it to snow/ice albedo feedback and greater atmospheric stability, which magnifies the warming of near-surface layers. Since these mechanisms will operate even with the expected rapidity of CO2 warming, it can be anticipated that average high-latitude warming will be a few times greater than the global mean effect</b>”.</div><div class="storyreadable"><br />
</div><div class="storyreadable">This is exactly <a href="http://psc.apl.washington.edu/zhang/Pubs/2005GL024216.pdf" target="_blank">what has been detected </a>with the Arctic warming several times faster than average. <a href="http://psc.apl.washington.edu/zhang/Pubs/2005GL024216.pdf"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;"></span></a></div><div class="storyreadable"><br />
</div><div class="storyreadable">And it has this to say on the worlds ice sheets; </div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="storyreadable">“<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Melting of the world’s ice sheets is another possible effect of CO2 warming. </b></div><div class="storyreadable"><br />
</div><div class="storyreadable"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">If they melted entirely, sea level would rise ~ 70 m. However, their natural response time is thousands of years, and it is not certain whether CO2 warming will cause the ice sheets to shrink or grow. </b></div><div class="storyreadable"><br />
</div><div class="storyreadable"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">For example, if the ocean warms but the air above the ice sheets remains below freezing, the effect could be increased snowfall, net ice sheet growth, and thus lowering of sea level.</b>”</div></blockquote><div class="storyreadable"><br />
</div><div class="storyreadable">This is another good call because recent <a href="http://www.skepticalscience.com/GRACE-and-glaciers.html" target="_blank">research and data from the Grace Satellites</a> do show that over all ice sheets and glaciers are melting but in a few areas, such as the internal of Antarctica and the Himalayas there is increased snowfall and ice build up. </div><div class="storyreadable"><br />
</div><div class="storyreadable">But what of possible lowering of sea level? The paper gets it spot on again; “<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">If the West Antarctic ice sheet melts on such a time scale, it will temporarily overwhelm any sea level change due to growth or decay of land-based ice sheets.</b>”</div><div class="storyreadable"><br />
</div><div class="storyreadable">Stunningly Hansen’s team states; “<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">A 2°C global warming is exceeded in the 21st century in all the CO2 scenarios we considered, except no growth and coal phaseout</b>.”</div><div class="storyreadable"><br />
</div><div class="storyreadable">Over thirty years later, <a href="http://cop17insouthafrica.wordpress.com/2011/12/10/ny-times-climate-change-too-big-for-current-architecture/" target="_blank">UN COPs</a> discuss actions needed to try and keep temperature rise to under 2C, a temperature the paper suggests will cause 5C warming in Antarctica, but without much success so far and it seems that keeping future warming down to such a limit is becoming all but impossible and not without the end to massive coal burning.</div><div class="storyreadable"><br />
</div><div class="storyreadable">In summary, Hansen et al;</div><ul><li><span style="font-family: Symbol;"><span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Was right about the 1980s warming, even though this was just after the media frenzy about a coming ice age.</b></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol;"><span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"></span></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Was right about erosion of ice sheets, rising sea levels and opening of the fabled Northwest Passage – a pretty good call.</b></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol;"><span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"></span></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Was right about warming at higher latitudes being greater than the global mean.</b></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol;"><span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"></span></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Was right about the increased growing season.</b></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol;"><span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"></span></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Was right about increased snow fall and net ice sheet growth – yet 'skeptics' today still use this as an argument against global warming.</b></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol;"><span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Was right about a partly ice free Arctic modifying neighbouring continental climates – if the most recent research about lack of ice causing a shift to the jet stream, and making colder winters is accepted – another good call.</b></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol;"><span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"></span></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Appears to be right about 2C warming being reached within a century and that temperature being the accepted limit before irreversible and detrimental effects occur.</b></li>
</ul><div class="storyreadable"><br />
There is nothing obviously incorrect in this paper. All this was predicted using models that according to 'skeptics', are not supposed to work, over 30 years ago in 1981, the year IBM released it’s first PC with Microsoft MS DOS.</div><div class="storyreadable"><br />
</div><div class="storyreadable">You have got to give this man and his team some credit for saying all this when most people thought we were still expecting an ice age. This is either good science or, if you reject AGW, they must have been very, very lucky. Personally I think I know why they were employed by NASA. </div><div class="storyreadable"><br />
</div>Lazarushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14139033650731770470noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5345056790932494587.post-37679465922146858302012-03-07T11:31:00.000+00:002012-03-07T11:31:15.249+00:00Goddard Statisically Proves Hansen CorrectGoddard, if I understand his comments correctly, has a theory using using school boy statistics that in his mind proves the recent record climate extremes are nothing to be concerned about, in fact they are to be expected. His theory also proves that unqualified bloggers should be ignored by rational people when it comes to thier pseudo-scientific analysis.<br />
<br />
He<a href="http://www.real-science.com/heidi-channel-hyperbole" target="_blank"> blogs</a>;<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><b>"If you have 3,000 weather stations and a 100 year long temperature record, you would expect about 30 of them to break their all-time record in the current year. The math is a bit tricky for climate scientists : 3,000 / 100 = 30."</b></blockquote>He is right when he says;<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><b>"It is very basic statistics. If you have 100 random numbers, each number has one chance out of one hundred of being the largest."</b></blockquote>So far so good for the school boy Math. But weather and therefore the data from weather stations isn't a simple case of random number generation. Only a portion of any result can be down to unknowns and uncertainty. The results ultimately depend on the laws of physics and chemistry; meteorological cycles, input conditions, natural forcing, changes in local environmental over both short and long times scales etc. If this was not true then weather could not be predicted even in the short term. All these factors and of course any anthropogenic forcing there may be ensures that any result is far from random.<br />
<br />
But suppose Goddard is correct or he is just using an analogy - Totally randomly any weather station can be expected to break their long time record according to basic statistics - a roll of a many sided dice if you like. Then we would expect that as many record high temperatures as low temperatures. Goddard's 'very basic statistics' where each number has a chance of being the largest also means it has the same chance of being the smallest. Is that what we see?<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivVEku1RuKzl4cIByhPdF5vrLh1FKLMSZAab9idwiUOFcvt5FpF9pQ3__oCjFVaRg-1rLDiHXRsFqJwo9DF4OhsPlh4XdowYl1si4LzQR0_KN0Q_BeM6sBjmnwbXsv-uqh9_5EIj_GLEcK/s1600/met+temp+extreme.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivVEku1RuKzl4cIByhPdF5vrLh1FKLMSZAab9idwiUOFcvt5FpF9pQ3__oCjFVaRg-1rLDiHXRsFqJwo9DF4OhsPlh4XdowYl1si4LzQR0_KN0Q_BeM6sBjmnwbXsv-uqh9_5EIj_GLEcK/s640/met+temp+extreme.jpg" width="548" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgba8cvLmjQCAJpf7qCjRSVKeln8vd8IBejijrtpBrlgypOLjbEvUbQuuuN2ZRotHegdqkpPtUnY4TrILb0Q60zPMTs8sECceqN3gEobqzl0kLwazhV8SvAgH-K5-dr8OSMy9fJpuRFKo84/s1600/temps_2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="420" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgba8cvLmjQCAJpf7qCjRSVKeln8vd8IBejijrtpBrlgypOLjbEvUbQuuuN2ZRotHegdqkpPtUnY4TrILb0Q60zPMTs8sECceqN3gEobqzl0kLwazhV8SvAgH-K5-dr8OSMy9fJpuRFKo84/s640/temps_2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b>The loaded Dice </b></span><br />
<br />
So it looks like something has been biasing the random numbers in favour of warm records - I wonder what that could be? Something has been loading Goddard's climate dice - where have I heard that analogy before? Oh yes I remember, a paper by James Hansen et. al. "<a href="http://www.columbia.edu/%7Ejeh1/mailings/2011/20111110_NewClimateDice.pdf" target="_blank">Climate Variability and Climate Change: The New Climate Dice</a>", 10 November 2011;<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq"><b>"The "climate dice" describing the chance of an unusually warm or cool season, relative to the climatology of 1951-1980, have progressively become more "loaded" during the past 30 years, coincident with increased global warming. The most dramatic and important change of the climate dice is the appearance of a new category of extreme climate outliers. These extremes were practically absent in the period of climatology, covering much less than 1% of Earth's surface. Now summertime extremely hot outliers, more than three standard deviations (σ) warmer than climatology, typically cover about 10% of the land area."</b></blockquote>Hansen has used the analogy before of a climate dice. From 1951 to 1980 the climate could be represented as a dice with two sides hotter than average, two cooler, and two around average. Currently Hansen's climate dice are loaded; four sides hot, and one side each for cool and average.<br />
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So as Goddard's 'very basic statistics' shows, what should be random has a warm bias, adding proof to Hansen's loaded climate dice analogy - <b>Good Job</b>!Lazarushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14139033650731770470noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5345056790932494587.post-85615693428502686552012-03-06T12:53:00.000+00:002012-03-06T12:53:26.944+00:00More means Less!<div class="post-header"></div><div class="post-body entry-content" id="post-body-596910688864868344"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsAmo3jVUzlEpK4g0wQZLRWHLvBHTflfbN9yJd8GsXKyK-8yUMNc8lGrYf0JnxdD73dwrjz79C-xLTWvnn0BzylCyeEXudJ9wCtdxDHoKNEhZzq-JJq9PCdIg-0_cjrjZODglPq1Hpx2l5/s1600/febtemps.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="390" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsAmo3jVUzlEpK4g0wQZLRWHLvBHTflfbN9yJd8GsXKyK-8yUMNc8lGrYf0JnxdD73dwrjz79C-xLTWvnn0BzylCyeEXudJ9wCtdxDHoKNEhZzq-JJq9PCdIg-0_cjrjZODglPq1Hpx2l5/s640/febtemps.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>There is no doubt that globally February was cooler than what is becoming the new norm, but Goddard <a href="http://www.real-science.com/coldest-february-1993" target="_blank">claims</a> that not only was it the coolest since 1993, 'most' of the other cool years were 'due to either Pinatubo or El Chichon' volcanic eruptions. It is well know that Volcanic eruptions, if large enough, can cool the planet for a year or so, so if 'most' of the other cool or colder years were due to volcanoes then this February without a volcanic forcing must be exceptionally cool - which appears to be the point Goddard is making. <br />
<br />
As evidence for his claims he posts the graph above that has a suspiciously smooth sine type curve. Did he draw this on himself to suggest a natural fluctuation and that everything is just peachy? So far he isn't saying.<br />
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But a sceptical eye cast over the graph and Goddard's volcanic claims show that he isn't being honest with his readers. Looking at the years that are cooler or about as cool as Feb 2012, we have 1979, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1989, 1990, 1992 and 1993. That is 8 years that might be included in Goddard's 'most'.<br />
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El Chichon erupted March 1982, so we can forget about 1997. 1984 was two years after El Chichon so may have been affected a little but it is doubtful as 1983 was actually warmer than the average. We can then drop 1985, 1986, 1989, and 1990.<br />
<br />
Pinatubo erupted April 1991 so it is fairly certain that temperatures in 1992 and even to some extent 1993 were affected.<br />
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Even being generous, is that 'most' years or less? Perhaps in Goddardland more means less.</div><div class="post-body entry-content" id="post-body-596910688864868344"><br />
</div>Lazarushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14139033650731770470noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5345056790932494587.post-9697126888094336882012-03-02T18:23:00.000+00:002012-03-02T18:23:00.035+00:00Strong And Growing Evidence Of Stupidity And DishonestySteve Goddard claims <b>"<a href="http://www.real-science.com/strong-growing-evidence-stupidity-dishonesty" target="_blank">Temperatures haven’t risen for at least 15 years</a>"</b>. Fifteen years of temperature records would be 1996 - 2011.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfZmpaRTGJBwZhS5frTyZAdWAS6KdTkMF1s4PlNkqwGSWU7ORwDr5ByY1GLtJN9RwzAGLU6Q6F9bigUeRzeGhXXJI1QMuuvNe7s_GJXlOrcMJLykCXBz4ZujKEwGTUytP7EXdOqD1uqPil/s1600/Hardcut.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="484" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfZmpaRTGJBwZhS5frTyZAdWAS6KdTkMF1s4PlNkqwGSWU7ORwDr5ByY1GLtJN9RwzAGLU6Q6F9bigUeRzeGhXXJI1QMuuvNe7s_GJXlOrcMJLykCXBz4ZujKEwGTUytP7EXdOqD1uqPil/s640/Hardcut.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEWVC6nISCxwtl-nxZ6ZgH4RPpPRYSKN9W1qas8aCCYVJqIlp7kdKqmEKtBJG5_0cFR1li4raxt1wWta32c_DO1z9RmonOvnrceSuzHFcyTY_uuNAqA8L7yzUC7EC6Ixk884aaUIO29Sfh/s1600/rss.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="484" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEWVC6nISCxwtl-nxZ6ZgH4RPpPRYSKN9W1qas8aCCYVJqIlp7kdKqmEKtBJG5_0cFR1li4raxt1wWta32c_DO1z9RmonOvnrceSuzHFcyTY_uuNAqA8L7yzUC7EC6Ixk884aaUIO29Sfh/s640/rss.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOCAAtv0dxOatOtNd29Ej-in51oz7__9bm7JrG7vHVFInSH4cj_efYogRW6fM2Kf3J_asJ2uk0TXnNrE8XpPEJdGCzlaQS-7Q60yM9GEa1n0TcN_woKw6QKhW1Xq0jz4d0wGLLA2ihkRvd/s1600/uha.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="484" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOCAAtv0dxOatOtNd29Ej-in51oz7__9bm7JrG7vHVFInSH4cj_efYogRW6fM2Kf3J_asJ2uk0TXnNrE8XpPEJdGCzlaQS-7Q60yM9GEa1n0TcN_woKw6QKhW1Xq0jz4d0wGLLA2ihkRvd/s640/uha.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />
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Yes I'd have to agree with Mr. Goddard on this, there is <a href="http://www.real-science.com/strong-growing-evidence-stupidity-dishonesty" target="_blank">Strong And Growing Evidence Of Stupidity And Dishonesty.</a>Lazarushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14139033650731770470noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5345056790932494587.post-15552706612358396472012-03-02T15:07:00.002+00:002012-03-02T15:07:17.834+00:00Snowiest four year period on record in North America ?<div class="MsoNormal">On Mr Goddard's blog he<a href="http://www.real-science.com/desperate-climate-liars-theifs-death-throes#comment-77058" target="_blank"> presented this graph</a> and said;“<b>This winter, global snow cover has been far above normal.</b>”</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyuVraFKg8iZYr49iwJN3BZ6NaPwgrOI5RMlaG4xKCujg3HX7plUbE5Q6mD9c_zQveuUcWdG9ipNmM-bAx2R5gQNzKCSnq6M15kPbl_R2I519vWEGQn9FyGXuvb03-1UEL3Xq7DqKwslGf/s1600/namgnld_season1-4.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyuVraFKg8iZYr49iwJN3BZ6NaPwgrOI5RMlaG4xKCujg3HX7plUbE5Q6mD9c_zQveuUcWdG9ipNmM-bAx2R5gQNzKCSnq6M15kPbl_R2I519vWEGQn9FyGXuvb03-1UEL3Xq7DqKwslGf/s400/namgnld_season1-4.gif" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The most notable things here is that Goddard's statement may - be true but so what?, I think it needs challenged on three accounts. First; because of his myopic views that the USA, representing a few percent at most of the entire worlds surface, can in this case be used to justify anything meaningful about global warming.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Second; the apparent cherry pick of just the winter values. The amount of snow in winter is far from the only consideration. Snow extent in the spring, which may partly determine the amount of snow melt through the year is also important. That snow will feed into rivers to be used for irrigation, drinking water etc in the coming year. A more meaningful question to ask might be; <b>How is snow and ice holding up over all?</b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Third; can the amount of snow actually be used as a measure against the early stages of climate change? A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, which will eventually lead to more precipitation. If cold enough, this will actually mean more snow. A concept climate deniers refuse to get in their quest to confuse and misinform themselves and others.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In answer to the first two points a look at the other graphs <a href="http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_seasonal.php?ui_set=namgnld&ui_season=1" target="_blank">from the very site</a> Goddard got his from reveals much.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">For Autumn (Fall) and Winter, there is a mix of slight increases, decreases or essentially no change in the record. Springs shows a far more dramatic decrease across all areas. Why would Goddard only pick the graph that shows the largest increase and ignore all others?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">A selection of the graphed data can be seen on an animated gif at Skeptical Science;</div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="snow extent" height="337" src="http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/SnowExtent.gif" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="500" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Graphic from <a href="http://www.skepticalscience.com/record-snow-cover.htm" target="_blank">Skeptical Science</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.skepticalscience.com/record-snow-cover.htm" target="_blank">And as the science says…</a></div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="MsoNormal">“<b>the long-term trend in spring, summer, and annual snow cover is one of rapid decline. As a result, the planet as a whole is becoming less reflective and absorbing more sunlight, which is accelerating global warming.</b>”</div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal">For point 3, I have already suggested that one of the climate changes that global warming has predicted is heavier snow falls. This isn’t just something scientists made up on the spot to try and account for recent heavier snow falls across parts of the world. It is a long standing prediction, using models that, if you belief the ‘skeptics’, don’t work.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">A quick search on '<b>snow and global warming</b>' with <b>google Scholar</b> finds a paper; <b><a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/%28SICI%291097-0088%28199702%2917:2%3C155::AID-JOC111%3E3.0.CO;2-6/abstract" target="_blank">POLAR SNOW COVER CHANGES AND GLOBAL WARMING</a></b>, from way back in 1998. From the Abstract;</div><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><b>“Many general circulation models suggest that current precipitation amounts in polar latitudes will increase under double CO2 scenarios. Even though temperatures in such high-latitude regions should also increase under a doubling of CO2, as long as those temperatures remain below freezing, the increased precipitation should accumulate as snow.”</b></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But very recent research also confirm this effect. Even while the world has been calculated to be loosing 150 cubic miles of ice every year, Himalayan Glaciers were found to have lost little ice because the increased melting at the lower altitudes were mostly matched by increased snow fall at higher altitudes where it was too cold to melt.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And just this week <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=recent-snowy-winters-rapid-melting-arctic" target="_blank">new research</a> suggests that Arctic sea ice loss could be weakening the Jet Stream allowing colder Arctic air lower over Europe and America actually causing colder winters, including heavier snow, even while the Arctic itself is warmer than normal.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So as much as Goddard would like to claim that increased winter snow extent is evidence against global warming and cry foul when the science suggests it is actually evidence for it, it was predicted by models around a generation ago and is being confirmed by empirical evidence today. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Snowiest four year period</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">If you have managed to read this far and are starting to wonder what the title has to do with all this, all will now be revealed. When I challenged Goddard about his cherry picking he replied with his usual eloquence and what might just be his standard greeting to anyone actually sceptical enough to query his claims;<cite> </cite></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="MsoNormal"><b><cite><a href="http://www.real-science.com/">Steven Goddard</a></cite> <span class="says">says:</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><a href="http://www.real-science.com/desperate-climate-liars-theifs-death-throes#comment-77059">February 24, 2012 at 1:07 pm</a></b></div><b>The last four years was the snowiest four year period on record in North America. Cut the crap, please.</b></blockquote>Snowiest? The obvious problem here is that this is a very specific pronouncement using a very unspecific term. I asked him “<b>How are you defining ‘snowiest’ and what data set are you using for evidence?</b>” Clearly from the graph he supplied he was not referring to snow extent. At least ten previous years had higher records than some in the last four. He has yet to reply.<br />
<br />
Snow is such a transient phenomena. Would he be referring to depth? It is relatively easy to measure precipitation but the depth of snow depends largely on how wet it is. Sleet, a mixture of rain and snow, will have little depth, the fluffy stuff many times more depth than the equivalent amount of water. Perhaps he was referring to the number of days it snowed? How long the snow lasted? <br />
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So there is the problem. 'Snowiest' isn’t really a scientific term that can be used in a specific claim as Goddard has done. It doesn’t mean it can’t be used as long as it is defined. In my attempts to collaborated the ‘snowiest’ years I found that <a href="http://www.erh.noaa.gov/phi/snowiest.htm" target="_blank">NOAA do use it</a> to refer to depth in specified cities. However I can’t find any where all these figures are collated in a way that would indicate the depth of snow that fell over the whole area of the USA, but judging form the years that are in the top ten for the cities I’d be very surprised if the 'snowiest' added up to be 2007 through 2011.<br />
<br />
So claiming that the<b> 'last four years was the snowiest four year period on record in North America’</b> appears to be an unsubstantiated and unsubstantiable claim from Goddard.<br />
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<div class="MsoNormal"><b>I invite him to clarify, otherwise perhaps it is he that should cut the crap.</b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b> </b></div>Lazarushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14139033650731770470noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5345056790932494587.post-75909186215185501602012-02-25T16:27:00.000+00:002012-02-25T16:27:28.431+00:00Heartland Department of Education<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/9DjPo0ewuCw?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>Lazarushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14139033650731770470noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5345056790932494587.post-54028747062149649332012-02-22T11:39:00.002+00:002012-02-22T11:39:47.620+00:00Legal issuesI would say that making predictions about future events is the last thing an unqualified person like me should do but now that Heartland have <a href="http://reallysciency.blogspot.com/2012/02/heartland-get-their-man.html" target="_blank">got their man</a>, in this post I'm making an exception and will use my crystal ball.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkLIUspNeslMq-bqtFojeBvtBbzhwLHY7pqllp_oV8vXHhagkqYfGiMoPTJ4AoFTOJ2EyFhTh3D4Jcq2zrAfaRC9QSdwCMjdcLTuvma7qXSsfh1eEw6zfOxyamd76JTWbHo_IZyvpJrJVv/s1600/united+states+courthouse.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkLIUspNeslMq-bqtFojeBvtBbzhwLHY7pqllp_oV8vXHhagkqYfGiMoPTJ4AoFTOJ2EyFhTh3D4Jcq2zrAfaRC9QSdwCMjdcLTuvma7qXSsfh1eEw6zfOxyamd76JTWbHo_IZyvpJrJVv/s320/united+states+courthouse.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br />
When the Heartland Institutes documents hit the Internet Heartland immediately went into a very heavy handed, legally threatening mode. They<a href="http://junkscience.com/2012/02/15/heartland-institute-responds-to-stolen-and-fake-documents/" target="_blank"> issued a statement</a> saying that they intended to pursue all possible actionable civil remedies to the fullest extent of the law, and called on all activists, bloggers, and other journalists to immediately remove all of these documents and any quotations taken from them, from their blogs, Web sites, and publications, and to publish retractions.<br />
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In a witty and ironic parody the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund, issued an almost word for word identical <a href="http://www.peer.org/docs/doc/2_21_12_Heartland_Institute_turnabout_ltr.pdf" target="_blank">statement</a> but with the 'Climategate' emails as the subject and asked that;<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"> <b>"the Heartland Institute, all activists, bloggers, and other journalists to immediately remove all of these documents and any quotations taken from them, from their blogs, Web sites, and publications, and to publish retractions". </b></blockquote>Though it is sobering to think that climate researchers could require the services of a defence fund.<br />
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But now Heartland have a target to aim all the legal backed ire at in the form of whistle blower Peter Gleick. I have already seen many posts on blogs from 'Skeptics' calling for the man to be sued. So here is my prediction for the future;<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><b>I predict that legally the Heartland Institute will do nothing that could end up with Peter Gleick in a public courtroom. They wont dare.</b></blockquote>I feel a psychic certainty that this will be the case. But it is a prediction that <i>I hope I am really, really wrong about.</i> Any defence that Gleick makes will rely heavily on motive and that in turn will bring more public scrutiny upon the documents and who their Mr Anonymous might be. The documents themselves have already revealed that they have set aside;<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><b>"An estimated $36,000 to pay lawyers for litigation over whether Heartland can be forced to hand</b><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt;">over records of conversations with a donor of some five years ago."</span></b></div></blockquote>A public court case could be very damaging for Heartland if public sympathy turned to favour a scientist who felt the need to go to such extremes in his fight with Heartland. Heartland's other donors, now publicly unmasked within these documents, will not like further media attention on their actions and motives. <br />
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As example of similar previous situations, James Hansen has now been arrested <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hansen#Arrests" target="_blank">three times</a> in protests but has yet to see the inside of a courtroom. On the matter of his first arrest in 2009, the 71 year old has stated in his book, <a href="http://www.stormsofmygrandchildren.com/" target="_blank"><b>Storms of my Grandchildren</b></a>, in a published interview with Bill McKibben;<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><b>"Still no trial date has been set. According to the law, I could get as much as one year in prison. I am beginning to think that the authorities do not want a trial."</b></blockquote>In the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/28/tim-dechristopher-trial-b_n_829361.html" target="_blank">Tim DeChristopher trail</a> the activist was found guilty of fraud after bidding on oil-and-gas drilling leases, and winning to keep them out of the hands of Oil and Gas companies. Before the arrest he was hardly known. But when on trail hundreds of activists marched to the federal courthouse in his support, including film stars and other celebrities. <br />
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This is the sort of media attention that I can predict with certainty that Heartland will want to avoid, and a possibility they might get by pursuing Gleick.Lazarushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14139033650731770470noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5345056790932494587.post-6771756744574710892012-02-19T01:37:00.000+00:002012-02-19T01:37:09.295+00:00Biography of a Liar?<div class="tr_bq">The release of funding information for the Heartland Institute has revealed some interesting things about scientists who oppose the scientific consensus on Anthropogenic Change.</div><br />
One Such scientist is Robert (Bob) M. Carter a<a href="http://members.iinet.net.au/%7Eglrmc/" target="_blank"> research professor at James Cook University</a>, Queensland, Australia. He is a geologist more than a climate scientist who has as published newspaper articles<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-12"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Carter#cite_note-12"> </a></sup><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-13"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Carter#cite_note-13"></a></sup>which conflict with the mainstream <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change" title="Scientific opinion on climate change">scientific opinion on climate change.</a><br />
<br />
But currently <a href="http://members.iinet.net.au/%7Eglrmc/" target="_blank">on the web</a> he specifically states;<br />
<blockquote><b>"He receives no research funding from special interest organisations such as environmental groups, energy companies or government departments."</b></blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju9g_o85c4dtw85Jj5xef4YQAVP2Ez8rNmN-tdeJ_9PenDDkZjuT5pbw0gO3idpLqfxKZL2eb7J6sVlK7YxSXwieL-7eI4f3MnLBa43lCs1frEZimp9A3OB5yhuhxJMOOHWedroEREeGSE/s1600/bobcarterhighlight.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="362" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju9g_o85c4dtw85Jj5xef4YQAVP2Ez8rNmN-tdeJ_9PenDDkZjuT5pbw0gO3idpLqfxKZL2eb7J6sVlK7YxSXwieL-7eI4f3MnLBa43lCs1frEZimp9A3OB5yhuhxJMOOHWedroEREeGSE/s640/bobcarterhighlight.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />
He may want to edit this information because the Heartland documents reveal that he will receive <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/%281-15-2012%29%202012%20Heartland%20Budget%20%282%29.pdf" target="_blank">$1,667 per month</a> for his work on the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) an opposing document to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports.<br />
<br />
It is worth remembering that the thousands of scientists and other experts contribute to the IPCC reports by writing and reviewing reports<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergovernmental_Panel_on_Climate_Change" target="_blank"> do so on a voluntary basis, without payment from the IPCC</a>.<br />
<br />
So the question is this man a liar or has he found a coping strategy to allow him so believe that he receives no funding from special interest organisations, while receiving over $20,000 a year from the Heartland Institute whose mission is to "<a href="http://heartland.org/mission" target="_blank">discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems</a>"? Perhaps the 'research' clause will be enough while he just pockets the money?<br />
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. Lazarushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14139033650731770470noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5345056790932494587.post-24166940918827201722012-02-18T19:11:00.000+00:002012-02-18T19:11:20.784+00:00Cold reduces snowfall<div class="post-header"> </div>Yep, that's right in the world according to Goddard.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfafOpHdmwASiN5ikUIB7NdpI-J5P1kdGfn66FFtBp9GKp0b7qENARXi4sNjHy1NG2H7iSKaxRXeHdZnM9ZRUIxLN3nQVq7R9SpHPPRYxMDhge-uqzlz4qfBDex7kBSuRqRgt56oNYIqSB/s1600/polar+bear.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="285" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfafOpHdmwASiN5ikUIB7NdpI-J5P1kdGfn66FFtBp9GKp0b7qENARXi4sNjHy1NG2H7iSKaxRXeHdZnM9ZRUIxLN3nQVq7R9SpHPPRYxMDhge-uqzlz4qfBDex7kBSuRqRgt56oNYIqSB/s400/polar+bear.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<br />
In one of the dumbest things I have seen on his site - it its had plenty of competition. Commenting about current snow fall in the US he states with authority that <a href="http://www.real-science.com/massive-co2-bubble-western-colorado" target="_blank">"the cold areas have also had record snowfall. Climate experts tell us that cold reduces snowfall, because there is less water vapour in the air."</a><br />
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I suppose that the concept of warmer wetter air cooling and the moisture falling out as snow is beyond his comprehension.<br />
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I await the flaming comments over there about how stupid and uneducated I am.Lazarushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14139033650731770470noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5345056790932494587.post-24036431626414147722012-02-15T18:24:00.003+00:002012-02-17T13:44:00.250+00:00Heartland-gateBreaking news in the climate denial front. The 'Think Tank', <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Heartland_Institute" target="_blank">The Heartland Institute </a>who has always been very secretive about both it's funding and who it in turns funds has had an Insider release the Heartland Institutes budget, and fund-raising plan. Already some quite interesting revelations are coming to light across this interweb thingy;<br />
<ul><li><h2 style="font-weight: normal;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=1294" target="_blank">Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network</a></span></b></h2></li>
</ul><h2 style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: small;">Links to the released documents are available there "<b>so that others can also scrutinize the documents and bring their expertise to the task</b>".</span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></h2><h2><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Should be interesting and may be a blow for the <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=522784499045867811" target="_blank"><b>Denial Machine</b></a>.</span></span></h2><h2><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> UPDATE </span></span></span></h2>Reviews of the documents in this leak are coming in thick and fast and some from very credible sources like Scientific American:<br />
<br />
<ul><li><a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=leaked-conservative-group"><b>Leaked: Conservative Group Plans Anti-Climate Education Program:</b> The Heartland Institute funds climate skeptics, including Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change founder Craig Idso, physicist Fred Singer and geologist Robert Carter.</a></li>
<li><b><a href="http://wottsupwiththat.com/2012/02/15/some-notes-on-the-heartland-leak/">Some notes on the Heartland Leak</a></b></li>
<li><a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2012/0215/Documents-reveal-Koch-funded-group-s-plot-to-undermine-climate-science"><b>Documents reveal Koch-funded group's plot to undermine climate science:</b> Documents leaked from the 'free-market' Heartland Institute reveal payments to prominent climate-change deniers, a plan to create a fossil-fuel-friendly curriculum for Kindergartners, and efforts to 'keep opposing voices' out of the media. </a></li>
<li><b><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/02/14/425649/heartland-documents-denial-group-koch-money-dupe-children-cultivate-revkin/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+climateprogress%2FlCrX+%28Climate+Progress%29&utm_content=Google+Reader">Heartland Documents Reveal Fringe Denial Group Plans to Pursue Koch Money, Dupe Children and Ruin Their Future</a></b></li>
<li><b><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/green/2012/02/14/425354/internal-documents-climate-denier-heartland-institute-plans-global-warming-curriculum-for-k-12-schools/" target="_blank">INTERNAL DOCUMENTS: The Secret, Corporate-Funded Plan To Teach Children That Climate Change Is A Hoax </a></b> </li>
<li><b><a href="http://news.discovery.com/earth/documents-highlight-plans-to-spread-warming-denial-120217.html#mkcpgn=rssnws1" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Climate Warming Denial: Big Business</span></a></b></li>
<li><a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2012/0216/Explainer-What-is-the-Heartland-Institute" target="_blank"> Explainer: What is the Heartland Institute? Leaked documents from the Heartland Institute, which seeks to promote global warming skepticism, show an array of unlikely donors.</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2012/0216/Heartland-s-leaked-documents-show-how-climate-skepticism-spreads" target="_blank"><b>Heartland's leaked documents show how climate skepticism spreads:</b> Leaked internal documents from The Heartland Institute show how one organization is working to promote global warming denial.</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/feb/15/leaked-heartland-institute-documents-climate-scepticism" target="_blank"> <b>Leaked Heartland Institute documents pull back curtain on climate scepticism: </b>Leaked internal documents from US thinktank expose funding and policy strategies against climate science</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://heartland.org/press-releases/2012/02/15/heartland-institute-responds-stolen-and-fake-documents" target="_blank">Heartland Institute Responds to Stolen and Fake Documents</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21486-leaked-files-expose-heartland-institutes-secrets.html?full=true" target="_blank"><b>Leaked files expose Heartland Institute's secrets </b></a></li>
</ul><h2><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span> </span></span></span></h2>Lazarushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14139033650731770470noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5345056790932494587.post-34135900756673147202012-02-15T18:01:00.000+00:002012-02-15T18:01:18.403+00:00Aggressive Militant SecularismWhat exactly is going on when we first we had the head of the Roman Catholic church in Scotland, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, criticising what he calls <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13186582" target="_blank">'aggressive secularism' </a>in Britain and this has now been followed this week by the Muslim peer <span style="width: 304px;">Baroness Warsi warning that </span>Britain is under threat from a rising tide of "<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17021831" target="_blank">militant secularisation</a>".<br />
<br />
What exactly is 'aggressive secularism'? When was the last time aggressive secularists picketed <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8457885.stm" target="_blank">funeral processions</a> or <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2011/oct/25/romeo-castelluci-christian-protesters-play" target="_blank">protested at theatres</a>?<br />
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What exactly is "militant secularisation"? When was the last time <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2017851/Norway-attacks-gunman-Anders-Behring-Breivik-right-wing-extremist-hated-Muslims.html" target="_blank">militant secularists attacked</a> people or where last did you see a secularist <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-16560042" target="_blank">suicide bomber</a>.<br />
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I'm sure if we look hard enough or wait long enough there could be some examples of outright carnage that could be levelled at the non religious but all this who-ha seems to be aimed at making 'Secularism' a dirty word. Have they forgot that secularism is not only about freedom from religion but freedom of religion?<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAItzZnEUaz-iqmKT6Jtl5-fgoqT0uYs87LPDGMuj5BqlTJ1ahF-LBXepNwrM3qTSCABKf46sHglkThVGt63hceX1shu7TvFUG4tQSw0oXt9gE3S5ria3-1ffhUSRVqvqoHl6pglxS46Z_/s1600/images.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="154" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAItzZnEUaz-iqmKT6Jtl5-fgoqT0uYs87LPDGMuj5BqlTJ1ahF-LBXepNwrM3qTSCABKf46sHglkThVGt63hceX1shu7TvFUG4tQSw0oXt9gE3S5ria3-1ffhUSRVqvqoHl6pglxS46Z_/s320/images.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
All this has came about when "<a href="http://www.blogger.com/">Mr Justice Ouseley ruled the prayers were not lawful under section 111 of the Local Government Act 1972. However, he said prayers could be said as long as councillors were not formally summoned to attend</a>". This has been blown out of proportion by the media in to some sort of attack on Christianity. Lets consider that ruling. Prayers can be said but it means that non-Christian councillors do not have to endure a religious rite that they have no belief in, how intolerant, aggressive or militant is that?<br />
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All this been compounded when a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-12214368" target="_blank">Christian couple lost their case to discriminate against unmarried couples</a>, well they said they did not believe unmarried couples should share a room, and it may have been just a coincidence but the particular unmarried couple were Gay.<br />
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The right wing press like the <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1348207/Christian-hotel-owners-Peter-Hazelmary-Bull-penalised-turning-away-gays.html" target="_blank">Daily Fail have been true to form</a> but it was heartening to see that many of the comments favoured the judgement. But one of the more telling comments stated;<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="comment-body">I am absolutely appalled at this decision. First and foremost it is the couple's home and it is up to them who they invite to stay in their home. They are Christian and it is against their belief for a gay couple to share a bed. Another nail in the coffin of Crhistianity.</div><div class="user-info bold">- Liz M, London, 18/1/2011 10:42</div></blockquote>I wonder what Liz M, London would suggest to stop this unfortunate thing from occurring again? Perhaps a clear sign in the window and in all advertising; <br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">NO GAYS ALLOWED</span></div></blockquote><div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">But why limit this to just sexual preference, why not;</div><div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><div style="text-align: center;"><blockquote class="tr_bq"><a href="http://lazarus-on.blogspot.com/2010/12/disfigured-are-barred-from-gods.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: large;">NO DISFIGURED ALLOWED</span></a></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">Or using <a href="http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/tit/1.html#10" target="_blank">Titus 1:10 - 12</a> as a good Christian example, why not;</div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">NO JEWS ALLOWED </span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">So here we have two legal rulings that actually promote tolerance and diversity but Christianity has a history where being a martyr is almost a necessity. How can anyone really think that allowing people to discriminate and marginalise people who do not have their same beliefs is ever going to be good for society?</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div></div></div>Lazarushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14139033650731770470noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5345056790932494587.post-87443182601243588752012-02-10T12:19:00.000+00:002012-02-10T12:19:41.036+00:00Sea level has been declining for several years, and is lower now than it was in 2003<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">That is one of the claims Goddard makes in his <a href="http://www.real-science.com/2012-global-warming-report-card" target="_blank">2012 Global Warming Report Card.</a> I have already looked at <a href="http://reallysciency.blogspot.com/2012/01/2012-global-warming-report-card.html" target="_blank">all his 19 points </a>but some are worth examining in more detail, if only because he has emailed me in an accusery tone saying how I ‘</span>compulsively focused on two of them’.<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">As stated I did a whole post on all of them and found them all to be lacking, but the ‘two’ are his cherry picked claims about cooling in Greenland, that were taken apart by </span><span class="meta-prepmeta-prep-author">Kevin O'Neill, see <a href="http://reallysciency.blogspot.com/2012/01/2012-global-warming-report-card.html" target="_blank">Update for Metric 5</a>, and <a href="http://reallysciency.blogspot.com/2012/01/doctored-goddard.html" target="_blank">mypost </a>on why he would go to such lengths to doctor a chart. He later had to <a href="http://www.real-science.com/enough-is-enough" target="_blank">admit he made a silly error</a> in that attempt – though at this point he has yet to correct the</span><span> error in the <a href="http://www.real-science.com/2012-global-warming-report-card" target="_blank">original post. </a></span>But worse, this ‘report card’ without correct of an error Goddard admits to, is now being made widely available through that great scientific bastion of truth the ‘<a href="http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/reprint/2012_global_warming_report_card.html" target="_blank">Science & Public Policy Institute</a>’, (SPPI), in downloadable <a href="http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/reprint/2012_globalwarming_report_card.pdf" target="_blank">PDF</a> form claiming;<br />
</div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11.5pt;">“The massive bulk of evidence indicates that nothing is wrong, and that Hansen, Mann and the rest of the hockey team are not being honest with us.”</span></b></blockquote>I have emailed ‘<a href="mailto:bferguson@sppinstitute.org" target="_blank">bferguson</a>’ from the 'Contact' information at SPPI, and asked if it will be corrected. Several days and no reply. So who is <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">‘not <span style="font-size: 11.5pt;">being honest with us’?</span></b><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: medium;"><span>So now it is time to compulsively focus on a third</span></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">The claim that ‘<b>Sea level has been declining for several years, and is lower now than it was in 2003</b>’ is supported by a graph of unadjusted sea level data from Envisat and a link to <a href="ftp://ftp.aviso.oceanobs.com/pub/oceano/AVISO/indicators/msl/MSL_Serie_EN_Global_NoIB_RWT_GIA_NoAdjust.txt" target="_blank">that data</a>.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2u3hudtOTuu-nz9zhS9C1ggmIgFnO8flsm5z-baeIVTulRnBkvUAWVGJXNYDwJzegyEM3X9ZzbqH-DXakorNcvSZqAgm08nvxS1YWKlgwCggQah60J9JiPewNYf9ESYZ_IukrDzkW4C_x/s1600/unadjusted+sea+level.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2u3hudtOTuu-nz9zhS9C1ggmIgFnO8flsm5z-baeIVTulRnBkvUAWVGJXNYDwJzegyEM3X9ZzbqH-DXakorNcvSZqAgm08nvxS1YWKlgwCggQah60J9JiPewNYf9ESYZ_IukrDzkW4C_x/s1600/unadjusted+sea+level.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">I have used Excel to reconstruct Goddard’s graph so that I can look more sceptically at his claims. A trend line clearly shows that even over such a short time period the trend is definitely up. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-gUHuQ9ELh4NiSFJuoao56RCBKRpHVc8YKRrKKn9wYeQ2hJGuFOZyH-RGQ0_qMC5lLMvodKLvvm96SFe9rtx7tru8GmLRAxwiZJ6AAFmvzOUetRg9ujlsncwZM-Yb8ECX-9bvlpq8hm_U/s1600/Envisat+trend.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="392" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-gUHuQ9ELh4NiSFJuoao56RCBKRpHVc8YKRrKKn9wYeQ2hJGuFOZyH-RGQ0_qMC5lLMvodKLvvm96SFe9rtx7tru8GmLRAxwiZJ6AAFmvzOUetRg9ujlsncwZM-Yb8ECX-9bvlpq8hm_U/s640/Envisat+trend.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Goddard’s first claim, that sea level has been declining for several years, looks like <b>a straight forward lie</b> even using his own graph. I cannot not figure out anyway a mind, even Goddard’s, can come to this conclusion, even by another mistake. The max sea level every year, from 2003 to 2010 has been higher than 2003. <b>Which are the several years he believes have declined? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It can only be deliberate misrepresentation. </b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span><b> </b></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span>The Envisat data set is currently so short it is difficult to tease out any really significant conclusions. But I’m sure that is precisely why Goddard favours it. The real story of sea level rise can be<a href="ftp://ftp.aviso.oceanobs.com/pub/oceano/AVISO/indicators/msl/MSL_Serie_EN_Global_NoIB_RWT_GIA_NoAdjust.txt" target="_blank"> obtained for the same web site</a> this data comes from, which Goddard ignores, and the overall and continuing trend is obvious for all but the closed minded to see.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> </span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz3vwpiiD2K-B-U8lCh3lTOUPEygb6GpTUeDEOEBcLOQnZ0uMchnHZ8TRGGPXeoP0WpPPMti3Nh5VvK9erDjz52O23qgQAN9zeGOd6bhG69TMGRl7AKzQcMU7tcXdTTqX5eADC20tp6ERP/s1600/MSL_Serie_MERGED_Global_IB_RWT_GIA_Adjust.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz3vwpiiD2K-B-U8lCh3lTOUPEygb6GpTUeDEOEBcLOQnZ0uMchnHZ8TRGGPXeoP0WpPPMti3Nh5VvK9erDjz52O23qgQAN9zeGOd6bhG69TMGRl7AKzQcMU7tcXdTTqX5eADC20tp6ERP/s640/MSL_Serie_MERGED_Global_IB_RWT_GIA_Adjust.png" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">As a side note, I was told with great authority on another blog that attracts 'skeptics' that sea level was now below the trend line as if this evidence was of great significance. I had to point out that it was an average trend line - it will be below it about 50% of the time!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span> <b>A Cherry Picking Moment</b></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Goddard’s claim the sea level is now lower than 2003 is the classic cherry pick. We actually know almost nothing about the sea level in 2003 as the data only represents the immediate end of that year. But I will give him some leeway and assume he means the start of 2004. It is such a classic because for the first time since the start of 2004, the peak sea level was lower in 2011, so he sort of can claim to be right - or at least right enough for most of the un-sceptical 'Skeptics' who frequent his blog.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">But he isn’t actually correct, because cherry picking a single point within a noisy data set like this is a meaningless thing to do. Consider that the unadjusted data when graphed almost resembles a sine wave. It is clear that sea level fluctuates annually with highs at the start and end of the year and lows around the half year point. I wondered what the average sea level each year would be. The average of each annual fluctuation would be more meaningful than just cherry picking a high point to make an assertion and ignoring almost all of the relevant data in the process.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Using Excel I averaged all the annual measurements and plotted them;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW6HQihGCr8yq1lwpsJHv2apZAl_2S4RoADuTWcH-S1ikqKDlL9riir3gbn39HypxPCsuiRSnkHn4Gkm6lZXszM_v5dCYmsTBg6gPo1cC2m2y5yhZeXC7YeuUG3zF7beIDAoOLsTRs-Rs9/s1600/Envisat+Average.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="348" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW6HQihGCr8yq1lwpsJHv2apZAl_2S4RoADuTWcH-S1ikqKDlL9riir3gbn39HypxPCsuiRSnkHn4Gkm6lZXszM_v5dCYmsTBg6gPo1cC2m2y5yhZeXC7YeuUG3zF7beIDAoOLsTRs-Rs9/s640/Envisat+Average.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">So Goddard wasn’t even correct about sea level being lower than the end of 2003/start of 2004. It is clear that the average sea level for all years, including 2011 was greater than 2004, and as the trend line shows, sea level is still rising.</span></div>Lazarushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14139033650731770470noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5345056790932494587.post-35010661212938021672012-02-08T13:03:00.000+00:002012-02-08T13:03:35.698+00:00Understanding Climate Change Denial<div class="MsoNormal">A recent post, <a href="http://reallysciency.blogspot.com/2012/01/doctored-goddard.html" target="_blank"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Doctored Goddard</b></a>, where I theorised why Steven Goddard would misrepresent a piece of research and doctor a chart from it to support that misrepresentation, has created quite a stir with him and amongst his posse. It concluded with him admitting an error, and even giving a plausible reason for it, though that reason highlighted exactly why amateur pseudo-science skeptics should not be taken credibly when doing their ‘analysis’ of the science. It also gave a insight into the way Goddard thinks.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>But first a blow by blow that led to that admission</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Within about 10 minutes of Goddard being aware of my post he <a href="http://www.real-science.com/2012-global-warming-report-card" target="_blank">replied</a>;</div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="MsoNormal"> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">"Hey Lazarus. You are scum</b>. The chart accurately shows regions of increasing and decreasing temperatures from the NOAA map. If you disagree find a region where my map is incorrect. Otherwise, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">just admit that you are liar</b>". </div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"> I also receive the dubious honour of a post on his blog dedicated solely to me, <a href="http://www.real-science.com/enough-is-enough" target="_blank"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Enough is Enough</b></a> ;</div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="MsoNormal"> “Reader Lazarus has written thousands and thousands of lines all over the Internet accusing me of producing a bogus map below. As usual<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">, Lazarus is hysterical and completely FOS.”</b></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal">Somehow I don’t think FOS = <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Factual and Obviously Scientific</b>. But ‘thousands and thousands of lines all over the Internet’? I’ve told him a million times not to exaggerate!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I also started getting personal emails directly from Goddard himself;</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="MsoNormal"><b>“</b>From: </div><table border="0" cellpadding="0" class="MsoNormalTable" style="mso-cellspacing: 1.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 0cm 0cm 0cm 0cm;"><tbody>
<tr style="mso-yfti-firstrow: yes; mso-yfti-irow: 0; mso-yfti-lastrow: yes;"> <td style="padding: 0cm 0cm 0cm 0cm;"><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="gd">Steve Goddard</span><span class="go"></span> </div></td> </tr>
</tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="g3">25 Jan</span><span class="hb"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="hb">to </span><span class="g2">lazarus</span><span class="hb"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Stop spreading misinformation. My maps are quite accurate.”</b></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Oh the irony! This was a different definition of misinformation and<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>accurate than I understood. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Goddard explained his actions some more; </div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">“Lazarus, you are an idiot. Flattened means that that all regions of increasing temperature are shown in a single shade of red, and all regions of decreasing temperature are shown in a uniform shade of blue.”</b></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal">This admission of digitally doctoring the chart seemed justified to Goddard. Why it didn’t occur to him that if he had to do that the point he was trying to make might not actually exist, can only be due to the narrowed mind of the science denier.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I replied;</div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">“If that is the case then you will have no objection to replacing your digitally flattened map with the real one, except that the real one and the paper it is from undermines your claim about it.”</b></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Which started an email exchange in which Goddard said;</div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">“Print a retraction.”</b></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>I stuck to my guns. In his comments section he included such eloquence as;</div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">“Lazarus, you are an idiot.”</b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">“You are scientifically incompetent.”</b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">“Print a retraction.”</b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">“Lazarus, you are scum.”</b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">“Admit you are wrong and print a retraction.”</b></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And of course his usual commenter’s started as well;</div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="MsoNormal"><cite><span style="font-style: normal;">Mike Davis</span></cite> <span class="says">said; <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">“</b></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Trolls will be Trolls!”</b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><cite>Stark Dickflüssig</cite> <span class="says">said <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">“</b></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">I’ll be(t) this “Lazarus” dimwit thinks that translating Mein Kampf into English is “lying” as well.”</b></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><b> </b>Isn’t that an example of<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law" target="_blank"> Godwin’s Law</a>?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">All this is quite nasty, but ultimately childish behaviour.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Then the unexpected happened</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Someone called ‘mt’ made the comment;</div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">“The gray regions in the original images correspond to trends of -0.05 to +0.05C, your flattened graph uses blue for those regions. You cannot say that “all regions of increasing temperature are shown in a single shade of red”</b></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal">I have no idea if ‘mt’ is a regular commentator there, or what his position on climate change is but apparently having an epiphany, Goddard took on board what he was saying. It was like he had a revelation that a chart would have a neutral zone with no significant warming or cooling. He claims that he thought the grey, no change region, was a shade of light blue so that when he digitally altered the image it turned bright blue.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I see no reason to not believe this was a genuine error because then the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">‘<a href="http://www.real-science.com/enough-is-enough" target="_blank">Enough is Enough</a>’</b> post appeared with a correction restating what ‘mt’ said, though still calling grey blue;</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="MsoNormal"><b>“Correction : reader MT points out that in the USHCN map they used various shades of blue for -0.50 all the way up to +0.05. This means that some of the blue area may actually be a slightly positive trend. Given that there is a large area of just barely blue (-0.05 to +0.05) on their map, there is no way to distinguish whether most of the country was warming or cooling.”</b></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-weight: normal;">And the portion of the post aimed directly at me, including calling me hysterical and FOS, was retracted! To give Goddard credit, he did not simply remove it but added a strike through so it remains for all to see.</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Science isn’t done this way</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-weight: normal;">This incident shows exactly why people without credible knowledge should not be taken seriously on scientific matters. I include myself in that group but I try to reflect the published science not re-analyse or reinterpret it.</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">That last point is where Goddard and his ilk come undone. He has already decided what he believes about climate change. He just needs to know science can back up and justify his beliefs. So he looks only for the evidence to support the answer that he already reverently believes. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Science and rational inquiry is not done this way</b>.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">This I am certain is what drives science deniers to misrepresent and distort data. They may not even realise they are doing this intentionally, so convinced in the delusion that they are right and the evidence should support that.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsdMK_AgiMN7HoEhG0-q0nAOuUI_1M1sjGtnxKhZm3pSsTF7l989acG6UUKeffV0C4lI5nm2EBS2lu5fHS5LDY3vKhX4WK9CC57b_IArYIRl2aA0SuaX1OPoPxypV4H74_Z5KNS98Dzhfo/s1600/arrow2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsdMK_AgiMN7HoEhG0-q0nAOuUI_1M1sjGtnxKhZm3pSsTF7l989acG6UUKeffV0C4lI5nm2EBS2lu5fHS5LDY3vKhX4WK9CC57b_IArYIRl2aA0SuaX1OPoPxypV4H74_Z5KNS98Dzhfo/s1600/arrow2.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I can say this because I am fairly sure Steve Goddard isn’t an unintelligent person, but anyone with a basic comprehension and the intention to understand who looked at the paper he used as evidence would not have made such a silly error. The full chart has a clear legend showing grey in the middle and spanning zero. No one seeking to understand an issue would simply look at a chart and draw a conclusion. They would read the accompanying text and that text contradicts what Goddard assumed the chart was saying;</div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">“Geographically, maximum temperature (Fig. 13a) has increased in most areas except in parts of the east central and southern regions. Minimum temperature (Fig. 13c) exhibits the same pattern of change, though the pockets of decreasing temperature are displaced slightly to the south and west relative to maximum temperature.”</b></blockquote>Which implies the opposite of what Goddard was claiming.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Normal service is resumed</b></span><br />
<br />
Things change but people seldom do. Being wrong for all to see Goddard and his cronies reacted fairly typically. The commentator ‘suyts’ of ‘it’s only some light shading’ fame decided that I could not have known why the chart was wrong;<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">“Laz, it would be better to know what you’re talking about when you attempt to gloat.”</b><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">"And, while you correctly called Steve’s map in error, you have no idea why or how this is shown".</b></blockquote>Me gloat? Well maybe a little in this case after all the flaming. And just to add to the comedy value that ‘suyts’ is fast gaining he suggests the researchers were deliberately trying to mislead poor Steve;<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">“your lack of understanding of what Steve did is just as much the cause as is NCDC’s intentional deception.”</b></blockquote>How did my alleged lack of understanding contribute to the cause of Goddard error? Does this joker truly believe that the NCDC tried to intentionally deceive people so that they would think the country is cooling? Not much of a conspiracy tactic when trying to make people believe in Global Warming! <br />
<br />
‘suyts’ continues with his paranoid logic in another comment;<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><b>“Here's the kicker, you still can't show that Steve's rendering is incorrect. Given that each pale blue spot has a 50/50 chance of being cooling or warming and that they smooth each spot. You don't know that what he was trying to show is incorrect. Odds are at least 50% that each smoothed area shown from the pale blue to the bright blue in Steve's map to be blue would remain blue.</b><br />
<b> </b><br />
<b> Ain't that a bitch? You haven't shown jack. You questioned a map, but you didn't know why it could be wrong. But, now that you know it could be, you can't show that it is.”</b></blockquote><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b><br />
Hilarious! Apparently I’m wrong because all the neutral stuff that Goddard had coloured bright blue had a 50% chance of being blue so he could be right and me wrong! FAIL! The intent was to show that Goddard’s ‘evidence’ for a cooling US was flawed; That the doctored graph misrepresented the data and could not be used to support Goddard’s claims of US cooling. Clearly this Muppet understands that much. I don’t need the research to show the opposite, even though it clearly suggests it, and I don’t need to show anything other that the chart is inappropriate to support Goddard’s claims. So I don’t have to show jack.<br />
<br />
Goddard also returned to form with his own comments; <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">“Do you enjoy behaving like a flaming ahole?”</b></blockquote>And he too thought I just had a lucky guess, in a personal email he said;<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">“Your comments were and are idiotic. MT pointed out something simple in plain English, which you didn't see either.”</b></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal">I replied by quoting my original post from about a fortnight previous; I said that he "doctored it (or got it from someone else without checking) <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">by colouring everything not showing a temperature increase bright blue</b>"?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It is crystal clear from the legend and I didn't realise he needed it spelling out. But Goddard was in no mood to retire gracefully; </div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">“Maybe you should learn how to communicate in English?”</b></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal">I have never claimed to be a literary great but what I posted seemed plain enough to me. However being inarticulate is hardly a crime. Nor I would say does it deserve being called an idiot, liar, scum etc. - not the greatest expression of meaningful dialogue in the English language.<br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But there is the real problem with Goddard expressed here again. The Paper was quite clear that grey was neutral and that cooling hadn't occurred. If he had read the paper with understanding rather than searching for ‘evidence’ to support his beliefs and biases he would not have made the error he did. He would not have tried to 'enhance' it. If he had taken time to look at my posts and links instead of resorting to nasty yet ultimately childish name calling he would have seen exactly why I had an issue with doctoring charts. <br />
</div>But as ‘syts’ puts it, here’s the kicker – Goddard says he has admitted he was wrong and corrected his error, but all he had done is admit that the doctored chart was in error. He has not managed to admit that his claim it was used to support, that the US has cooled since 1895’, is wrong. Nor has he corrected his admitted error where it appears. It still exists in the original <a href="http://www.real-science.com/2012-global-warming-report-card" target="_blank">Global Warming Report Card</a> post without any reference to the error. There’s no note or correction to let visitors know that it is erroneous.<br />
<br />
But worse, this ‘report card’ is now being made widely available through that great scientific bastion of truth the ‘<a href="http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/reprint/2012_global_warming_report_card.html" target="_blank">Science & Public Policy Institute</a>’, (SPPI), in downloadable <a href="http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/reprint/2012_globalwarming_report_card.pdf" target="_blank">PDF</a> form claiming;<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11.5pt;">“The massive bulk of evidence indicates that nothing is wrong, and that Hansen, Mann and the rest of the hockey team are not being honest with us.”</span></b></blockquote>Again without this misinformation and error corrected. I have emailed ‘<a href="mailto:bferguson@sppinstitute.org" target="_blank">bferguson</a>’ from the 'Contact' information at SPPI, and asked if it will be. So who is <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">‘not <span style="font-size: 11.5pt;">being honest with us’?</span></b><br />
<br />
Visitors to either of these sites, and no doubt others where this information is available from, are still going to be misled by it, but that does seem Goddard’s intention by his fervent promoting of his ideological beliefs.Lazarushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14139033650731770470noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5345056790932494587.post-76397217311733629892012-01-31T17:31:00.000+00:002012-01-31T17:31:00.688+00:00Arctic Sea Ice Extent Highest Since At Least 2006Well it was the day this appeared on Goddard's <a href="http://www.real-science.com/arctic-sea-ice-extent-highest-2006#comment-72900" target="_blank">Blog</a>;<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrBRHXPv_6LmCMmcYazNtNRWtTxxTD7NQd1ZIgy0pb82K8k7eMFQSRg_r7BwHc-LVQ3mdUYJ-DGAEzzY8oXfOz5U5o96sDKyr01iEL_BgI5wC3cH3V8kiQbv4nPa23kKKktvcXvPG_I70c/s1600/ssmi_ice_ext-4.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrBRHXPv_6LmCMmcYazNtNRWtTxxTD7NQd1ZIgy0pb82K8k7eMFQSRg_r7BwHc-LVQ3mdUYJ-DGAEzzY8oXfOz5U5o96sDKyr01iEL_BgI5wC3cH3V8kiQbv4nPa23kKKktvcXvPG_I70c/s640/ssmi_ice_ext-4.png" width="640" /></a></div><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Then just a few days later it isn't even as high as 2009;</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGoXpV5KfBilerJTrqSvthoY3iszeuQFPvwPmpPmKYBCRVGXxvj91J1gzmUjn1ZZoXsT1zDOHvepZSB5bMNl627zB2izbZT6GJPusCBC1YolqrzMZXU2jBARUNUQmAYUh4yKMKLrCSa-fo/s1600/sie.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="458" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGoXpV5KfBilerJTrqSvthoY3iszeuQFPvwPmpPmKYBCRVGXxvj91J1gzmUjn1ZZoXsT1zDOHvepZSB5bMNl627zB2izbZT6GJPusCBC1YolqrzMZXU2jBARUNUQmAYUh4yKMKLrCSa-fo/s640/sie.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjImEg3obiClqUWa3jI7zvlFnYqmRdw5K3GsmGBQSrwlFkoiIRiHyZZhwLIsI6PLLNMuK4v3BZITvEk6QVdSXAh4jSScxcDu7KD5r5FUNWJ6cuATJoKYOdkmvl-s-sZJE7KXCKL-qTogkO4/s1600/sie.closejpg.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjImEg3obiClqUWa3jI7zvlFnYqmRdw5K3GsmGBQSrwlFkoiIRiHyZZhwLIsI6PLLNMuK4v3BZITvEk6QVdSXAh4jSScxcDu7KD5r5FUNWJ6cuATJoKYOdkmvl-s-sZJE7KXCKL-qTogkO4/s400/sie.closejpg.jpg" width="338" /></a></div><br />
<br />
So who's cherry pick is the best? Well 2006 is not significant, nor is 2009. There is too much natural noise. <br />
<br />
One of the best ways to judge the state of the Arctic Ice Extent is to look at longer trends, they tell the real story;<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJBDAm2cZwccifyqItogTowNppdtdemhYzWdVAPFI4fohXaEOMqQH7B5QH4B58I2u1VvOjZ1cj0qZK46Ko46zPBKWxacNVSXMXMTQEUyUv_b1FsNHX849rg_KDxt6WN2pTAsrdRXxXcfFf/s1600/20110105_Figure3.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="452" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJBDAm2cZwccifyqItogTowNppdtdemhYzWdVAPFI4fohXaEOMqQH7B5QH4B58I2u1VvOjZ1cj0qZK46Ko46zPBKWxacNVSXMXMTQEUyUv_b1FsNHX849rg_KDxt6WN2pTAsrdRXxXcfFf/s640/20110105_Figure3.png" width="640" /></a></div>Lazarushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14139033650731770470noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5345056790932494587.post-27784408296923991662012-01-27T12:49:00.000+00:002012-01-27T12:49:09.604+00:00Five whole days!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.real-science.com/enough-is-enough#comments" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwQZEXD8UkEvJMCikj9wBlqgHJ505qfQLiPRhtKaWCw4mRlcqQdmRvr3Lz9OlA18V-c_s6aEFWa-3MjF8OqQTIwD6guomPgk8bn3cx-WDopfDFiWSE2bu3jTlw_ofNYazAf1wDlNT9jN0M/s1600/five+days.jpg" /></a></div>Five whole days! I'm not even going to check if he is correct or not.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEsxOYCt8v2QTxip7cRskWWAsKi2B5SxblV17BB29_6hyphenhyphenA64aI7yUF2GjlnYtVOp-_mAE91DTMQon4wn_YKiVjQqwa2Rgsol34cnKdTbTOvigwy56q_pLBqLD1FpW10XB8lAHiWj1SZEr6/s1600/polls_polar_bear_face_palm_thumbnail1_0320_104637_poll_xlarge.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEsxOYCt8v2QTxip7cRskWWAsKi2B5SxblV17BB29_6hyphenhyphenA64aI7yUF2GjlnYtVOp-_mAE91DTMQon4wn_YKiVjQqwa2Rgsol34cnKdTbTOvigwy56q_pLBqLD1FpW10XB8lAHiWj1SZEr6/s1600/polls_polar_bear_face_palm_thumbnail1_0320_104637_poll_xlarge.jpeg" /></a></div>Lazarushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14139033650731770470noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5345056790932494587.post-85150400611986635232012-01-27T10:21:00.001+00:002012-01-27T10:39:45.139+00:00Imaginary Friends<b>I'm sure Mr George won't mind me mirroring his excellent piece on Met Office rivals, Positive Weather Solutions, the company of choice when it comes to weather forecasts in the more 'skeptical' newspapers such as my favourite Daily Fail.</b><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><b>The weather forecasters used by the Daily Mail and other papers don’t appear to exist. </b><br />
<b><span id="more-2034"></span></b><br />
<b>By George Monbiot, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2012/jan/26/weather-forecasters-daily-mail">published on the Guardian’s website</a>, 26th January 2012</b><br />
<b>Earlier this month, <a href="http://www.monbiot.com/2012/01/02/polar-opposites/">I questioned the credentials</a> of the alternative weather forecasters being used by the Daily Mail, the Express, the Telegraph and the Sun. I suggested that their qualifications were inadequate, their methods inscrutable and their results unreliable. I highlighted the work of two of these companies: Exacta Weather and Positive Weather Solutions (PWS).</b><br />
<br />
<b>Now the story has become more interesting: do the people from Positive Weather Solutions, making its forecasts and quoted in news articles, exist? </b><br />
<br />
<b>A sharp-eyed reader has sent me a screenshot he took from the PWS website at the end of last year. As you can see, it shows eight people whom the company lists as its forecasters and experts. (Well, seven and a cup of tea, currently standing in for its chief assistant forecaster). Some of these pictures are of striking young women with, er, prominent credentials. They have, the website claims, been producing PWS’s forecasts and writing its blog posts. They have also been quoted in the Daily Mail. </b><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><b><a href="http://www.monbiot.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/pws-screenshot1.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-2036" height="223" src="http://www.monbiot.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/pws-screenshot1-300x223.jpg" title="pws screenshot" width="300" /></a></b></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Screen Shot from PWS website</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table><b>So who are they? A picture search suggests an impressive range of talents. Take “Serena Skye”, for example, listed by PWS as a “contributing weather forecaster”. <a href="http://bit.ly/x8HYiH">She also turns out to be</a> a mail order bride, a hot Russian date and a hot Ukrainean date. How she finds time for it all we can only guess. </b><br />
<b>“Emma Pearson”, as well as working as PWS’s assistant weather forecaster, also <a href="http://bit.ly/xNRkkk">features on 49,800 hairdressing sites</a>, modelling the emo hairstyle. (Emo, m’lud, is said to be a form of music, popular with certain members of the younger generation). </b><br />
<br />
<b>“Kelly Smart” has <a href="http://bit.ly/zQyzHs">a remarkably busy life</a>: as an egg donor, a hot date, a sublet property broker in Sweden, a lawyer, an expert on snoring, eyebrow threading, safe sex, green cleaning products, spanking and air purification. Perhaps more pertinently, she’s also a model <a href="http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-9735939-pretty-portrait.php">whose picture is available</a> via a company called istockphoto.</b><br />
<br />
<b>“Charlotte Haines”, another assistant weather forecaster, has achieved rather less in life. She is listed only as a <a href="http://bit.ly/wBzJRM">“pretty blonde woman”</a>. But she does have a qualification that might have appealed to Positive Weather Solutions: her photo is labelled “royalty free”. </b><br />
<br />
<b>As well as their pictures, I have looked up the names of these people, alongside search terms such as “weather” and “forecasting”. Beyond the material generated by Positive Weather Solutions, I have so far found no further evidence of their existence. Yet PWS uses them to make its forecasts and write its blog posts. Charlotte Haines PBW, RF* writes a blog for the company called Charlotte’s Web. In it she predicts the weather, <a href="http://www.positiveweathersolutions.co.uk/Charlotte-Haine%27s-Blog---Charlotte%27s-Web.php">talks about her children</a> and <a href="http://www.positiveweathersolutions.co.uk/Charlotte%27s-Web---CH%27s-Blog.php">discusses her golfing skills</a>. At the bottom of these posts is this disclaimer: “the opinions expressed by Charlotte Haines are not necessarily those of Positive Weather Solutions.” So whose are they? </b><br />
<br />
<b>(*Pretty Blonde Woman, Royalty Free) </b><br />
<br />
<b>Emma Pearson EMO <a href="http://www.positiveweathersolutions.co.uk/Europe-West-Russia---7-Day-Forecast.php">also writes forecasts</a>, using <a href="http://positiveweathersolutions.co.uk/Oxford--and--Cambridge-Boat-Race---Saturday-March-26th.php">a similar style</a>. Intriguingly, in August last year she claimed that she would be <a href="http://www.positiveweathersolutions.co.uk/National-Eisteddfod-of-Wales---Saturday-July-30th-to-Saturday-August-6th.php">appearing at the Eisteddfod</a> in Wrexham. “Come and say hello! Look for the young lady, that’s me, with a Positive Weather Solutions white t-shirt on!” But look for whom, exactly? The girl with the emo haircut? </b><br />
<br />
<b>Both Charlotte and Emma have been quoted in the Daily Mail and their forecasts have formed the basis of some prominent stories. In April last year, for example, their claims were all that justified <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1373079/Sunshine-way-forecasters-predict-21C-weekend-ahead-Grand-National.html#ixzz1kTDtzduG">an article titled</a> “It’s sunshine all the way as forecasters predict 21c by Grand National weekend”. Citing both women as sources at different points in the report appeared to lend it weight. But are either of them real?</b><br />
<br />
<b>The Mail also <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/article-1373991/Heatwave-Today-expected-warmest-day-year-far.html#ixzz1kTE2Pga2">used Emma Pearson to predict</a> “a 20 per cent chance of rain for Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding at the end of the month.”</b><br />
<br />
<b>I phoned Jonathan Powell, who runs PWS, and asked him who these people are. He told me that a lot of contributors had been assisting his service. The photos </b><br />
<b>“were put up there just for holding or were avatars of people who were contributing. Or people who wanted to contribute. They came and went.” </b><br />
<br />
<b>He said he removed them from the site in mid-December. </b><br />
<b>“There was no intention of being misleading. We’re sorry if that was the case. But we’re trying to clean our act up.”</b><br />
<br />
<b>“But using other people’s pictures is a deception isn’t it?”, I asked. </b><br />
<b>“OK, you’ve got me on that.”</b><br />
<br />
<b>“Does Charlotte Haines exist?”</b><br />
<br />
<b>“Charlotte did.” </b><br />
<br />
<b>“Can I have her contact number?”</b><br />
<br />
<b>“I can fish that out for you no trouble at all. I’ll have to go back to the office to get it.” </b><br />
<b>“Could I have the other people’s numbers too?” </b><br />
<br />
<b>“OK I’ll get you all the details. No problem.” </b><br />
<br />
<b>Two hours later he sent me an email. </b><br />
<br />
<b>“Quite frankly, the filing system I have is a mess and I cannot put my hands of the information you require. … Your column which was understandably critical of us at Christmas made me face a few things about the company and where it was going, and now as I can’t find anything to back anyone up then quite frankly PWS is now more trouble than its worth and in debt. Therefore, I have taken the decision after 6 years to close the business forthwith.”</b><br />
<br />
<b>I wrote back: </b><br />
<br />
<b>“Thanks for letting me know. You never did use people with those names though, did you? And I’m guessing you wrote Charlotte’s blog and Emma’s forecasts yourself?”</b><br />
<b>I have not yet heard back from him. </b><br />
<br />
<b>Twenty minutes after Jonathan Powell sent me his email, <a href="http://www.positiveweathersolutions.co.uk/">the following statement</a> appeared on its website: </b><br />
<br />
<b>“It is with regret that because of illness and the current economic climate, PWS has ceased trading.”</b><br />
<b>Will this make the Daily Mail, the Daily Express and other papers less inclined to use poorly qualified forecasters in the future? If I were Charlotte Haines or Emma Pearson, I might be able to make a firm prediction. But the most I can say is that I doubt it. </b><br />
<br />
<b><a href="http://www.monbiot.com/">www.monbiot.com</a></b></blockquote><br />
And it appears to be true. The PWS site now has a short note on it's home page stating;<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><b>Statement - 2.26 p.m. - Wednesday January 22nd 2012 <br />
It is with regret that because of illness and the current economic climate, PWS has ceased trading. <br />
All outstanding winter contracts will be fulfilled with refunds given to our Wedding Bells clients. <br />
Thank you. <br />
Kind Regards, <br />
PWS Team</b></blockquote>Who are the 'Wedding Bells clients? In the light of the obvious dodgy nature and it's confessed mess of an organisation it is Shockingly a <a href="http://www.positiveweathersolutions.co.uk/Wedding-Bells.php" target="_blank">weather prediction service</a> for the couples 'Big Day';<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><div><b><span style="font-size: small;">Upon telling us when you're planning to wed, we will provide you with a specially tailored, personal forecast, up to and of course including, the big day itself. </span></b></div><div><b> </b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: small;">Months in advance, our long range forecast will give you an idea of the pattern of weather expected around during the month of your wedding.</span></b></div></blockquote>I can't quite find their Horoscope service for the happy couple but surely it must be on their somewhere?<br />
<br />
PWS has quite a history of climate denial. In a<a href="http://www.positiveweathersolutions.co.uk/UN-Climate-Change-Conference,-Copenhagen---Statement-.php" target="_blank"> statement</a> on the UN Climate Change Conference, Copenhagen in 2009 it said;<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><div><b><span style="font-size: small;">Positive Weather Solutions has never believed that climate change in its current presented state, actually exists.</span></b></div><div></div><div><b><span style="font-size: small;">By 'current presented state', we mean, how the actuality of climate change has been presented to the world. It has been sold by means of scare mongering, evoking an almost panic like state amongst ordinary people, who have not been allowed to reach their own conclusions when presented with the facts. However, there lies the problem, what facts?</span></b></div><div></div><div><b><span style="font-size: small;">The 'facts' simply don't add up, and are riddled with mere speculative conjecture. They are also open to interpretation, which in simple terms, makes for a jumbled mass of statistics, with the hurried conclusion, that if we don't act now, our planet is doomed to succumb to the miseries of a runaway climate.</span></b></div></blockquote> Well I can't say I will miss seeing any more of that nonsense in the future.Lazarushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14139033650731770470noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5345056790932494587.post-15923164758049575642012-01-25T11:48:00.000+00:002012-01-25T11:48:34.428+00:00Doctored Goddard<div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I have shown how <a href="http://reallysciency.blogspot.com/p/who-is-steven-goddard.html" target="_blank">poorly qualified</a> Steven Goddard is to analyse climate related data but I’d like to give him the honorific of Doctored Goddard, because doctoring the data to suit his bias is what he does. Unfortunately he isn’t very good at it and much of it becomes embarrassingly obvious with just a little sceptical research. Maybe he should be Struck Off?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I have already briefly covered one of his claims and his doctored evidence in<a href="http://reallysciency.blogspot.com/2012/01/2012-global-warming-report-card.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> another post </a>but it is worth a post of it’s own to examine these claims and evidence in more detail.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">One of the items he listed in his<a href="http://www.real-science.com/2012-global-warming-report-card" target="_blank"> 2011 Global Warming Report Card</a> stated;</div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="MsoNormal"><b>USHCN raw thermometer data shows that the US has been cooling since 1895</b></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal">And he gives a link to a paper and a figure No; “<a href="ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ushcn/v2/monthly/menne-etal2009.pdf" target="_blank">The United States Historical Climatology Network Monthly Temperature Data. Version 2</a>” by Matthew J. Menne, Claude N. Williams Jr., and Russell S. Vose</div><div class="MsoNormal"><blockquote class="tr_bq"><b>Fig. 13. Geographic distribution of linear trends in HCN version 2 temperatures for the period 1895–2007. (b) unadjusted maximum temperatures</b></blockquote><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_20IHS6gMR2DNhgQO5akNjTd3FvV1wxTt0yYTSX1uw-YqTQGGkZ7FRcIF8tDHKoK5I8lJEBCkdMPxtWvZQ7HebQNhiaVFnRBUWjP5f4jq1hmHBVoeU57_U55ZrJe3bZk9P6gMiVqPp44S/s1600/Doctored+comparsion.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="318" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_20IHS6gMR2DNhgQO5akNjTd3FvV1wxTt0yYTSX1uw-YqTQGGkZ7FRcIF8tDHKoK5I8lJEBCkdMPxtWvZQ7HebQNhiaVFnRBUWjP5f4jq1hmHBVoeU57_U55ZrJe3bZk9P6gMiVqPp44S/s640/Doctored+comparsion.jpg" width="640" /></a></div> <b>What appeared on his blog is the figure on the left. Figure 13 (b) from the actual report in on the right.</b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">The United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) is used to monitor and report on surface air temperature trends in the United States. The paper acknowledges climate skeptic “<b>Anthony Watts for his considerable efforts in documenting the current site characteristics of U.S. HCN stations</b>”. The paper itself considered the possibility of data from these stations being biased due to changes in the stations and their environments over the years. This is an important consideration as many of these stations have had updates to measuring systems and surrounding land use changes over the years that may have affected readings. (This is a different problem from the <a href="http://www.skepticalscience.com/urban-heat-island-effect.htm" target="_blank">Urban Heat Island</a>, the phenomenon where a metropolitan area in general is warmer than surrounding rural areas). After all the original intention for these measuring stations was for local weather recording and not as part of a global climate measuring system.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">Mr. Watts got involved with his <a href="http://surfacestations.org/" target="_blank">surfacestations.org</a> project by collecting pictures highlighting poorly sited stations and listing the ones in his opinion he considered good quality.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">Being a denier, Watts, without any supporting evidence, assumed that any change must have given a warming bias, which he used to assert that warming wasn’t happening at the scale indicated. This ignored that other countries data and satellites showed a similar amount of warming. Watts also over looked efforts made to compensate for changes and that temperature trends were more relevant than absolute values from each station.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">The paper linked by Goddard addressed all these concerns and concluded that overall there was a slight <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">cooling bias</b>, not a warming one, and that corrections made to the data did improve accuracy.</div><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Now things get interesting</b></span><br />
<br />
If we assume that Goddard isn’t intentionally trying to mislead, genuinely thinks that the US has cooled and his chart as evidence is valid, one must wonder why he chose research that is about possible bias of recording stations, NOT about temperature trends in the US. This research makes no statement about the US cooling since 1895 but indicates the opposite. I can only think of one possible series of events that led him to his erroneous conclusion.<br />
<br />
First he incorrectly assumed that because the paper considered claims made by Watts and acknowledged him, it must be a paper sceptical of anthropogenic climate change.<br />
<br />
But why did Goddard think that the paper even suggested the US had cooled? Clearly he totally misunderstood it. I suspect that he noticed reference to a cooling bias and though his ignorance thought this mean cooling.<br />
<br />
He must have then reasoned he now had a paper that contradicted anthropogenic warming and showed that the US had cooled and ought to have a graph, chart, table, figure or something within it that clearly showed this. The one with the bluest, for cooling, was <b>Fig. 13. (b).</b><br />
<br />
Clearly that figure doesn’t look very impressive, there is a lot of red on it as well, so to emphasise his false conclusion he took the equivalent of a colouring pencil and shaded everything that wasn’t red bright blue! But one of the problems of cherry picking such a chart is that<b> Figure 13 (b) only indicates Maximum temperature trends NOT average temperatures, so it is totally inappropriate to use it as evidence of overall temperature change. </b>The actual paper states;<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><b>"Geographically, <u>maximum temperature (Fig. 13a) has increased in most areas</u> except in parts of the east central and southern regions. <u>Minimum temperature (Fig. 13c) exhibits the same pattern of change</u>, though the pockets of decreasing temperature are displaced slightly to the south and west relative to maximum temperature."</b></blockquote><br />
His error has been pointed out to him in the comments of the blog and he has been asked several times, now that he is aware of the misleading chart, why has he not removed it or at the very least replaced it with the chart he claims it to be? It could be that he is just too embarrassed to change anything and be seen to have made such an obvious childish and misleading error. However I’d have thought that to leave it up for all to see is far more of an embarrassment.<br />
<br />
Perhaps I’m wrong, that is not the reason why Goddard made his cooling claim and felt justified in doctoring a graph, unrelated to temperature trends, to prove it. He knows of the <a href="http://reallysciency.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"><b>Really Sciency</b></a> blog and I would encourage him to explain it. Perhaps he isn’t as misinformed and so narrow minded and hell bent on fooling himself that he would leap to misrepresenting this research as I have made out. There may be another explanation but the only one I can think off is that he was aware of exactly what he was doing and deliberately doctored evidence to mislead those that follow his blog, and judging from most comments it worked as they seem as committed to denial as he. Not one ‘skeptical’ voice has been mature enough to comment that perhaps showing the chart as it appears in the research and without alterations is the very least to expect when presenting supporting evidence. One calling themselves 'suyts' even called the doctoring ‘some pale shading ’! I wonder what any climate change ‘skeptic’ would think if that ‘some pale shading’ looked like this;<br />
<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlDNAv1BBZfBK4O6xOdYKzVmw4fXxne8naRLF0EjMOmtvBe43VxCGLCMb5r6XL1Np4eatusPvRYZKe6V3PslWi-2UWQdeznX4c-hnPoY-cMOfWL7uLcES6eVsUAERhfRAEjIPgm-epnZxM/s1600/coloured+doctored+chart.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="464" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlDNAv1BBZfBK4O6xOdYKzVmw4fXxne8naRLF0EjMOmtvBe43VxCGLCMb5r6XL1Np4eatusPvRYZKe6V3PslWi-2UWQdeznX4c-hnPoY-cMOfWL7uLcES6eVsUAERhfRAEjIPgm-epnZxM/s640/coloured+doctored+chart.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Imagine the uproar if this was done by a climatologist, Mann or Hansen perhaps, claiming that the US has warmed since 1885, which in fact is true.</b></td></tr>
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It now looks to me more like Goddard has deliberately, and with full knowledge tried to mislead. When faced with being asked why he hasn’t changed the chart he now claims that the data is <b>‘straight off the GISS web site’ </b>which, since he originally linked to a paper and quoted a figure number is clearly a lie.<br />
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If there are any real sceptics over at Goddard's site then this blatant misrepresentation shown here, whether through ignorance or not, would be enough to doubt even his most basic claims and send them elsewhere for real science. I wouldn't like to say what that means for those that stay and lap these lies up.Lazarushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14139033650731770470noreply@blogger.com0