Global Warming: A Challenge, & Scare Tactics/Bad Science From The Left!

Not long ago, one Mark A York infested this neighborhood, this spot on the web that I call my blog. I banned said York following some rather vulger comments, and I deleted the most offensive of his verbage. I'm amazed at how trolls feel they have the right to come into your home (so to speak) and crap on your couch. At any rate, this isn't about York as much as it is about the assertion by York that Global Warming (GW) is readily accepted by the "vast majority" of scientists, and so well documented as to be incontrovertable. York "challenged" thusly:

That will a screaming good laugh at the expense of two blockhead amateurs who couldn't find their ass with both hands in this subject arena. Try me. I dare you.

"Try me. I dare you" Oh, the horror, the fear that this engenders. But, since I like a challenge, especially from a deranged lefty who imagines himself both a brain and a "scientist" ought to be fun.

The essense of many of York's arguments are 1). That GW is a proven fact without a doubt and 2.) The ice is melting and the lower laying areas of the world are about to be innundated.

Here at GM's Corner, both Woody and I have enjoyed posting on GW from a humorous point of view (here, and here). The "challenge was issued on that last post as apparantly York was incapable of understanding that the post itself was obviously a humorous post and not meant to be taken seriously by anyone, including York, but apparantly the humor was lost on York. In fact, humor is often lost on these types of people because they fall in the class of "True Believers." That is, those without a sense of whimsy, without in internal mechanism that allows them to appreciate humor or whimsy tend to take everything so seriously. But, I digress. York wants a therapist and an accountant to humor him in his challenge... Will do!

Let's take a couple of Yorks shiboleths and see if they can be looked at one at a time. First, aside from the two assertions above is that the vast majority, almost all, a heck of a big bunch, a terrific lot of and more than five (but less than 30 billion for sure) "scientists" (and here I would assume that he includes himself) agree that GW is fact. Let us look at that in it's historical context. While it is true that most scientists were wrong when they derided Pasteur and his theory of germs, they could not long overlook the evidence. It is equally true that most scientists derided Galileo for his solar centric assertions as well. Too, Hippocrates hypothesized that we (our personality and other traits) were essentially a combination of four humours: "SANGUINE, (blood);" "CHOLERIC (yellow bile);" "PHLEGMATIC (phlegm);" and "MELANCHOLIC (black bile)." This from the "Father of "MODERN" medicine. Interestingly enough, Hippocrates also is famous for what he didn't write (the Hippocratic Oath) and for being a Greek physician who laid the foundations of scientific medicine by freeing medical study from the constraints of philosophical speculation and superstition. And for close to a couple of thousand years, "the vast majority of scientists supported his assertions."

Well, that worked real well didn't it? But, the point of course is that wide acceptance is not the same as proof, any more than a high (positive or negative) correlation involves causality. If correlation was in fact the same as causality, my humorous assertion that the increasing temperature is a direct result of the decrease in the number of pirates in the world would be a major factor in the GW controversy (it is an example of a high negative correlation, as one data bit declines, the corresponding data bit rises). It's not, and correlation is not the same as causality. Anyone making even a D in elementary statistics should understand that, except perhaps for Mr. York.

So, let us look at the two issues, one at a time.

1). THAT GW IS A PROVEN FACT WITHOUT A DOUBT.

You know what? Just to make this a little more "fair" for York I will concede that GW is in fact, a fact. I also demand that he accept that Global Cooling (GC) is equally a fact and has accounted for numerous Ice Ages. But that of course begs the question. Are we in fact in a slight warming trend, a catastrophic warming trend where we will all turn into roasted homo sapiens (except those living in Alaska of course, they will become Baked Alaskans), or is this possibly a statistical anomaly? There seems to be a disagreement between these folk and these folk. At issue is a statistical interpretation of data that takes on the appearance of a Hockey Stick. Mann and his researchers first published their data in Nature in 1998. Essentially, Mann argued that because of human intervention temperatures gradually rose in a slight but not necessarily significant warming trend until the advent of the 20^th Century. Then a sharply upward trend of increasing temperature produced a form called, the hockey stick because it has the shape of said stick.

This is the shape we are talking about. Following Mann, two "non-climatologists," one a Professor of Economics Ross McKitrickand another a mining exploration consultant Stephen McIntyre, began looking at the formulas/models and methodology of Mann for what was purely personal reasons. McIntyre because he said the hockey stick reminded him too much of the kind of graphic used to "sell" investors a stake in a mining operation. McIntyre also noted that the graphic was very much like the Dot.Com graphs and we all know where that one went.

In a lengthy article, note above and here, Marcel Crok, Natuurwetenschap & Techniek (Nature, Science & Technology) (Antwerp) Crok states (translation from the Dutch by Angela den Tex):

Few people dispute that the earth is getting warmer, but there are people – so-called “climate skeptics� – who question whether the change is historically unique and whether it is the result of human activity.These skeptics are generally outsiders, reviled by �true� climate researchers.

On the one hand, Michael Mann, the first author of the two noted hockey stick papers (in Nature in 1998 and in Geophysical Research Letters in 1999), is the unofficial king of climate research. In 2002, Scientific American included him as one of the top 50 visionaries in science.On the other hand, the two Canadian skeptics are outsiders: Ross McKitrick is a Professor of Economics and Stephen McIntyre is a mineral exploration consultant – which Mann likes to call a conflict of interest.

Climate skeptics are most prolific on the internet, a platform for novices, the scatterbrained and the experienced alike. Not surprisingly, the climate researchers who we consulted (predominantly Dutch) presumed the work of the two Canadians to be unconvincing. Natuurwetenschap & Techniek was initially skeptical about these skeptics as well. However, McIntyre and McKitrick have recently had an article accepted by Geophysical Research Letters - the same journal that published Mann’s 1999 article.This, together with the positive responses of the referees to this article, quickly brought us around.

Full Disclosure: I'm one of those folk in the blogosphere, I'm not a climate scientist, but I can read, I can reason and I can put two and two together and consistently come up with four (we are of course, assuming a base 10 model). There is absolutely nothing inherent about being in any profession and being right all the time. Perhaps Mann hasn't learned that yet. Too bad.

Crok goes on to state:

The criticism by the Canadians is mostly technical in nature: they claim that Mann and his colleagues have misused an established statistical method – principal component analysis (PCA) – so that their calculations simply mined data for hockey stick shaped series and that Mann’s results are statistically meaningless.They have traced the problem to a simple error in a few lines of computer code.

The scientists that we consulted did not immediately recognize the implications of Mann’s eccentric method, suggesting the possibility he himself may not have been aware of the apparent mistake.However, in response to our inquiries, Mann denies any errors and rejects any criticism in strident terms.

The conclusion of McKitrick and McIntyre, after being engaged in nearly two years of heated discussions with Mann and other scientists, is alarming: there is something amiss in climate research.Have Mann and his fellow researchers committed fraud? McIntyre:“That is too strong a legal term.What we can say is that the IPCC and many paleoclimatologists have not provided their readers with ‘full, true and plain disclosure’ (to use another legal term), especially if it involves reporting results adverse to their claims.There is no excuse for anything less than complete disclosure of all data and methods and it is shocking that the authors of the major studies refuse to do so.We have found that peer review of paleoclimate journals is a very limited form of due diligence. If scientific studies are going to be used to justify policy decisions costing billions of dollars, a much more rigorous form of review is needed.�

The article referenced above is some 10 pages long and includes a mind numbing number of graphs and not a little technical jargon. But it is worth reading in it's entirety for a grasp of what McIntyre and McKitrick state are the problems inherent in Mann's methodolgy. Make the effort, the read is worthwhile!

Of course, I'm not about to predicate my arguments on single source material, no matter how complete that argument seems to be, there is also this, & this. These last two are by John Daly, a self professed climate sceptic who states that he is not a climitologist but that:

Originally from Britain, I came to live in Tasmania in 1980, settling near Launceston, and for the last 9 years have been one of the numerous `skeptics' speaking out publicly against the Global Warming scare, which makes exaggerated claims that the earth will warm by +1.5 to +6 deg. C. due to an enhanced Greenhouse Effect.

Climate and climate change has been a lifelong study of mine since my early days as a ship's officer in the British Merchant Navy. I have lived through and traced the progress of the `ice age' scare of the 1970's, the `nuclear winter' scare of the 1980s, and now the `global warming' scare of the present. All these scares have advanced the interests of what was a small academic discipline 30 years ago to become a mammoth global industry today. It is my view that this industry has, through the `politics of fear' which it has promoted, acted against the interests of the public.

Daly may not be a climatologist, but he is familiar enough with enquiry to gather materials and document his findings. But, I'm sure the climitologists will deride this saying "but he is an amateur." That's OK, it was amateurs that busted Dan Rather too.

No controversy would be worth it's salt unless the detractors had detractors. Here is the site that York has recommended, and I admit it's a good read. But, I'm not about to attempt to refute it "line by line" as York has asked, any more than he would attempt to refute Crok line by line. In Real Climate the author goes into little detail, but gives a couple of links, in particular this one in which the graph given certainly shows a hocky stick like increase. On the other hand, the compression of the graph right to left exaggerates this effect and doesn't give any real meaning as presented. The data may be correct, but the presentation seems lacking. See an example of this below:

This is chart one graphing temperature rise between 1900 and 1980 (This is false data, used for illustration purposes only)

This is chart two. The data is identical, the only difference is the compression/expansion of the size of the grid. I'm not saying the data referred to in the above link (this one) is wrong, I'm saying that it may not be presented in it's most accurate light.

Moving on to the second issue

2.) The ice is melting (because of GW one presumes - and depending on one's political philosophy and the degree of paranoia that could stand for Global Warming or George W.) and the lower laying areas of the world are about to be innundated.

This one was a little harder to research, but, being fairly decent at finding things on google and other sites, I perservered and came up with a couple. The first reports on the average thickness of the ice at the artic (north pole for some of you (insert very big grin). Now, if in fact we are in a significant warming trend with a concurrent melting of ice, it would seem then that the polar ice cap in the arctic regions would get thinner, and so it was reported:

Arctic sea ice has a complex structure, consisting of different kinds of ice and different thicknesses, ranging from very thin new ice to pressure ridges up to 50 m thick. Observations of ice thickness on a basin-wide scale have been obtained from submarine-based upward looking sonars that measure sea ice draft which is a measure of the subsurface ice thickness (the total thickness also includes the above-surface freeboard). McLaren [1989] presented draft data from two cruises (1958 and 1970) showing more severe ice conditions with thicker ice in 1958. Wadhams [1990] calculated a decrease of about 15 % of the total ice volume when analyzing draft data from two years (1976 and 1987) north of Greenland.

McLaren et al. [1992] investigated six cruises from 1977 to 1990 and found a large interannual variability but little evidence of a thinning ice cover. Recently, Rothrock et al. [1999] analyzed the presently available Scientific Ice Expeditions (SCICEX) submarine cruises ('93, '96 and '97) and found that the mean ice thickness had decreased by 1.3 m when compared to similar data acquired during the 1958-1976 period. They further stated that the thinning has continued during the 1990s and estimated an overall mean decline of 0.1 m yr−1. The latter conclusion, which has been cited widely, is carefully analyzed here using the most comprehensive data set presently available to the research community.

The conclusion?

Draft data from the North Pole, the Beaufort Sea, and transects between the two areas over a 7-year period from 1991 to 1997 show no evidence of a thinning ice cover. The Beaufort Sea area shows larger variability, being closer to the marginal ice zone and sensitive to circulation type and the location of the Beaufort high. Using a more extensive data set (6 years compared to 3), the negative trend in ice thickness found by Rothrock et al. [1999] during the 1990s is not supported by the present investigation. Combining the mean drafts derived by McLaren et al. [1992] from 1986 to 1990 with those from the present study, I conclude that the thickness of the sea ice cover has remained on a nearconstant level at the North Pole during the 12-year period from 1986 to 1997. This result is also supported by Wadhams and Davis [2000] who concluded that a substantial part of the thinning between 1976 and 1996 probably took place during the
rst of those two decades.

And finally, a little logical deductioning (though it may be logical, it is not necessarily true). If in fact, there is a degree of global warming and the polar ices melts as well as the ice in mountains and glaciers, than a significant amount will be taken up in water vapor. Warm air holds more moisture than cold air does. That will also result in increased precipitation in lots of areas that currently don't get a lot of rain (the Gobi? Sahara?) and that could be a good thing. Unfortunately, the data from the Artic don't support a massive melt off, now, or in the forseeable future.

Case closed, challenge met, but the greater question is unanswered. Is there a global warming trend as a result of green house gasses, is it an artifact of man or is it a natural cyclic phenomina? I can't answer that question and neither can anyone else, I don't care what initials there are behind their names. We can make some guesses, we can find data to support both sides of the equation, but until we know, going off half cocked, spending billions and billions of dollars with the resulting economic disruption based on a guess is not good enough. The predicted improvement in greenhouse gasses is all but insignificant. Let's get some real answers first.

Update: go HERE and read it all, then come back and comment!

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Posted by GM Roper at October 30, 2005 07:00 PM | TrackBack