Over on the history of CO2 thread, that old chestnut of an issue has been raised, namely that there’s this one paper in one journal, notorious for publishing anti-science papers on climate (a field well outside its focus), that has shown wild flucuations in CO2 to levels well above today’s in times as recent as 60 years ago. Therefore….Not the IPCC.
The paper is by Ernst G Beck and the journal is Energy and Environment, 2009 (sorry, all my primary links are stale…anyone?)
Here is the graph, supposedly showing global CO2 levels:
This picture is at-a-glance completely implausible.
To believe this is accurate is to believe that there is some utterly undetected source of CO2 that switches on and off for no reason that can produce so much so fast that atmospheric levels jump from 320ppm to over 470ppm in just over a decade! All of today’s level of human emissions combined cause around one tenth of that in the same period. And that anthropogenic rate of emission is on the order of 100 times faster than that of all volcanic activity on the planet. The geologic record does sometimes show rises of that magnitude or greater, sometimes from uncertain but known sources, but the timescales involved are millenial. So to believe the other Beck, we need to believe in a previously unknown and unobserve source 1000x greater than any that is known today.
What’s more, we need another balancing magic carbon sink that cain suck down that same magnitude burst on similar time scales. This is even less plausible, carbon sequestration is a very long and gradual process, it is pretty much inconceivable that the entire atmosphere can be cleansed of that amount of CO2 in that amount of time. There is no process that, like a volcano beltching on the source side, can suddenly start and stop sucking down relatively massive quantities of CO2. The scale of that timeframe is off by an order of magnitude 10K times too large.
The next blindingly and obviously suspicious feature of that picture is that the magic source, or sources, completely dominating the record from the beginning, cease completely and suddenly at exactly the same time that more careful and accurate measurements are developed. Umm…okay, if the “Energy and Environment” journal says so, pigs do have wings!
You do not need to be even the most lame of a skeptic to immediately question Beck’s conclusion that global CO2 levels can be that volatile and were very recently much higher than today.
What’s more what’s more, the actual measurements are explainable. CO2 levels do vary dramatically on very localized levels. Forests, cities, marshes anywhere in the vicinity have the potential to cause large rises in concentrations that can then be blown away at the next change of wind. Measuring the atmospheric background level takes some care and thought.
On this one, there really is no respectable argument in Beck’s favour. Anyone on this blog, or anywhere, that credulously cites this material instantly loses all credibility as a skeptic, or even as a thinking person.
More details here.
A Few Things Illconsidered 
No, no, no Adelaidy you cant simply magic this away with “well everyone knows AGW wont cause the SL to rise for 100 years”.
Essentially KRudd has bought a house that will be built on swamp land in just a few decades from now which in effect means it is useless property now as we speak and yet he paid over 3 mil for it. Not to mention it will be blown over by all the extra and extreme cyclones.
Adelaidy if you had that kind of cash (and for all i know you do) would you buy that house? Would YOU Adelaidy buy that house knowing what you know about Sl rise?
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Allow me to try to provide some assistance, Coby:
[Mills] did the very stat tests you claim I havn’t done and concluded that there is no AGW signal in the temperature data, it can all be attributed to random variation. –Richard W.
Richard then listed the “sciency” part of the paper: ” . . . random walk component . . . .stationary fluctuations around a linear trend . . . . ADF test . . . . stochastic process . . . .”
Not that he has any clue what any of this means:
Then when you have all that data, then you can SHOW ME what should be done with that data. –Richard W.
Setting aside for a moment the fundamental methodological problems with Mills’ argument, he at least looked at mean temperatures, not Tmax.
But when Richard lifted this off Watts, it looked sciency (well spotted JerryG) so he thought it was a vindication of his own silly analysis. Stung by the humiliation over the t-test blunder spotted by R. Simons, Richard W. went fishing for something sciency as a retaliatory strike. Its consistency with his earlier claims/analyses was immaterial.
(This, Coby, is the honest answer to your question, whether Richard elects to give you one or not.)
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crakar, I don’t have that kind of money so I can’t be certain. What I _have_ said to my (adult) children is that it’s perfectly OK to buy seafront or riverfront property if you want to have a holiday house for 20 years or so.
But! Do not expect it to retain or to improve its value as an investment. If you can’t afford to write off the costs as 15-20 years of holiday accommodation paid in advance (plus all those issues of convenience and so on) then buy property elsewhere and rent riverside or seaside holiday accommodation.
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“Since feezing happens in the winter, this shows that winters are getting less cold, as I have said it was. But this tells us nothing about summers.”
It DOES tell us about temperatures.
They’re rising.
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“I did a test using a lot of stations, then took out stations that were in rural areas, and there appeared to be a difference on the warm side.”
So you did the OPPOSITE of what Anthony Watts insists needs to be done?
Wowser!
“”Average global temperature is one that gives a good all-round indication of the energy being gained by Earth while being relatively easy to determine.”
During which times of the year?”
During the times of the year that is within that year.
Duh.
“”I call a paper junk when it shows obvious faults in its scientific accuracy and/or honesty”
And that is ANYTHING that does not sport the Faith.”
No, that’s ANYTHING that supports the FAITH that AGW is bunkum, PLUS anything that has scientific factually incorrect evidence within it.
You know, faults.
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“Since that work shows CO2 and temperature ARE linked, the null hypothesis is shown false.
Nope:
…some long winded BS about a structural model…”
GIGO, isn’t it?
Go on, if it’s not possible to determine a signal, then you should be able to show that by getting the GISS temperature data and doing the work yourself.
You haven’t, he hasn’t and neither of you can, so you both faff about with random phrases to hide the incline in temperatures.
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“Please explain how measured daily temperature data from Environment Canada is “bad data”?”
What Quality Control have you made?
What siting criteria did you use to select the 19?
Is Canada in summer indicative of the temperature of the whole globe?
Of course, the last is the killer for you, since Canada isn’t the world, and you won’t answer the second since your cherry picking algorithm has already been shown to be unavoidable:
http://canadatemps.blogspot.com/2010/12/blog-post.html
When you’re trying to find the average income of the Canadian, do you go around and ask all the CEO’s of the top 100 companies on the Candadian Stock exchange?
Unfortunately, you probably do.
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“Essentially KRudd has bought a house that will be built on swamp land in just a few decades from now which in effect means it is useless property now as we speak and yet he paid over 3 mil for it.”
This is proof AGW is false?!?!?!?!
Please show me how the physics is affected by the property KRudd purchases.
Is KRudd your God?!?!
and in 843, we have an E&E (political research organisation) printing an SPPI (political libertatrian QUANGO) paper on how station numbers can affect results.
And one reason why the number of stations and the temperature are correlated is that as we industrialised, we increased CO2 output and added MORE weather stations (keeping the old ones).
Therefore this correlation has a clear causation: CO2 output increased with time, weather stations increase with time.
The alternate hypothesis that weather stations affect the temperature is seriously magic-woo-land.
What makes it even worse is that after Dick throws out the records from some stations, the temperature should decrease worldwide!
Truly that paper displays everything that is wrong with the anti-science of the denialist mind.
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“Heat creates temperature and temperature is an element of climate and since the Sun is the only source of heat then the sun drives the climate.”
Here is another classic denier myth in action.
Problem #1: The sun is cooler now than it’s been for more than 80 years, yet we are warmer than we have ever been since thermometers were created. If The Sun Did It were true, then we should be about 1C cooler than we are.
Problem #2: heat has to transport from warmer to colder object. Therefore what is stopping the earth cooling to the temperature balance at 1AU from our sun, about 250K? Greenhouse gasses impede the flow of energy from the earth system into space, keeping the earth insulated and keeping it warmer than it otherwise would be. Increase the greenhouse gasses, we increase the insulation. And, just like putting a higher TOG duvet on the bed, it keeps the earth even warmer.
Problem 3: If the sun being the source of heat is the ONLY thing that matters, the earth would heat up to approximately 6000K.
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“Hint: In no other science is the default position we cause the observed events. Only in climate science is the null hypothesis that all events have natural mechanisms rejected.”
Hint, that null hypothesis WAS tested and refuted by the data.
hint: only in climate denial is the null hypothesis never defeated, in all other branches of science, once you’ve excluded the null hypothesis, you accept the positive one.
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Coby, do you agree that he has shown that AGW is not in the numbers?
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Wow, do you agree with the analysis in that paper that showed there was no AGW signal in the temperature data? He is the ‘right maths’.
Oh, and flooding the thread with many long posts does not make AGW correct. You have not provided anything to support AGW.
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What Quality Control have you made?
EC does their own quality control.
What siting criteria did you use to select the 19?
You have a hard time reading don’t you. I already explained that.
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“Since feezing happens in the winter, this shows that winters are getting less cold, as I have said it was. But this tells us nothing about summers.”
It DOES tell us about temperatures.
They’re rising.
Only in the winter. It’s getting less cold, a good thing.
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What siting criteria did you use to select the 19?
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Wakefield obviously missed my post #833:
That is why I called the Mills paper junk. And since you claim to have used the same method, ADF (though I think this is another of your lies) your results are junk too.
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“Only in the winter. It’s getting less cold, a good thing.”
No, it’s getting hotter overall.
See here:
Peak temperature depends more strongly on unimpeded sunlight and a lack of moisture to hide the energy.
And, no, getting warmer in winter is NOT a good thing.
Because without cold winters, the ice shelves melt (20m flooding ring a bell, dick?) and people reliant on meltwater flow (e.g. China) will have massive drought.
Maybe YOU don’t care about other people, though.
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“Wow, do you agree with the analysis in that paper that showed there was no AGW signal in the temperature data? He is the ‘right maths’.”
As well as Ian’s comment repeat (since Dick don’t read so good), that paper you didn’t write also was merely curve fitting.
We have a causation AND a correlation (and, happily enough for science, in the right order) whereas this bozo you love has no causation.
So yes, it IS bad maths.
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Is Canada in summer indicative of the temperature of the whole globe?
I notice you didn’t answer that, Dick.
“You have not provided anything to support AGW.
Posted by: Richard Wakefield | February 15, 2011 6:15 AM”
Uh, again:
temperature graph:
correlation with CO2:
http://bartonpaullevenson.com/Correlation.html
Causation:
http://www.ipcc.ch
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Setting aside for a moment the fundamental methodological problems with Mills’ argument,
Explain the problems.
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What siting criteria did you use to select the 19?
THEY WERE THE ONLY STAIONS WITH COMPLETE RECORDS GOING BACK BEFORE 1920!
Got it now for the forth time?
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So go somewhere where they have records before 1920.
You know, like somewhere NOT Canada.
Why, before 1920? So that you could exclude data from other stations like Chris used where a trend is upward?
“”Setting aside for a moment the fundamental methodological problems with Mills’ argument,”
Explain the problems.”
He’s curve fitting. You can get any answer you like from curve fitting. See how he gets no trend from a line that is obviously trending upwards, for example.
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Skip, I just spotted another one for your hall of shame.
“Oh, and flooding the thread with many long posts does not make AGW correct.” #862
Richard W.,
“What were the mean square values, degrees of freedom and F values?
Then when you have all that data, then you can SHOW ME what should be done with that data. I’m not jumping through hoops for you just so you can put up more hoops. PROVE ME WRONG!”
Well you claimed to have done the Analysis of Variance. If you really had done an ANOVA then you would have all of this already. Of course you had no idea what you were saying when you claimed to have done the analysis of variance because you treat terminology like a game of Mad Libs.
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“Why, before 1920? So that you could exclude data from other stations like Chris used where a trend is upward?”
I used one of Wakefield’s 19 sites, he gave me a choice of a few as I recall & I chose Meunster.
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Oh, OK.
Seems like Dick may be doing a time period cherry pick, then, in much the same way as the minefield question to Dr Jones re statistically significant warming trend.
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Oh, and flooding the thread with many long posts does not make AGW correct.
Yes, blue, I did see that and got an equally good laugh.
Setting aside for a moment the fundamental methodological problems with Mills’ argument . . .
Explain the problems –Richard
Wow and Ian already hit part of it, but how could I respond in Wakefield fashion? How about:
“Mills is an economist, who are heartless capitalists by ideology and training, I won’t listen to anything from them.”
Here’s another possibility:
“You obviously haven’t read enough about this. Google it.”
Here’s a tried and true:
“If you have a problem with the article, why don’t you email the author?”
Let’s throw a few ultra non-sequiters in for good measure:
“You just can’t face the fact that you’re wrong because you’re one of the Watts-believing, denialist faithful.”
“My mother-in-law talks a lot about statistics. She said the analysis is no good. Case closed.”
And thus I win the argument, Wakefield style!
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RW: “Coby, do you agree that he has shown that AGW is not in the numbers?”
No. He is also not addressing any question of attribution (the A in AGW).
Now answer my questions BEFORE I let you change the subject: this new paper you are touting is directly at odds with your proffessed findings. He finds NO signal in the data. You find warming overall, rising winter temps, falling summer temps. You can’t both be right. What do you believe?
This latest straw you have grasped finds NO SIGNAL in the temperature data. You have gone on over three threads spanning over 2000 comments about how you have identified three signals in the data: warming overall (or as you prefer to put it, less colding overall), rising winter temperatures and falling summer temperature. How does a paper that says that *nothing* is happening help your position??
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I have not come across it before, but my reading of it is that the adf test looks at the degree of autocorrelation in time series data, which can be independent of the trend.
RW – is this correct? Presumably you know as you claim to have used this test! Anyone else?
Skip: “. . . how could I respond in Wakefield fashion?
You forgot ‘ARE YOU BLIND?’
What entertains me is that, as far as I can recall, he has never admitted to any doubt on any matter at all. It must be nice to have so much self-confidence, even if it makes life difficult for those around you.
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I have watched RW run rings around you lot now for a while and have found it to be quite entertaining.
Click to access surface_temp.pdf
This link is for RW, thankfully Mandas and co wont read this because SPPI is devils territory and not even holy water could protect them.
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Well I see that Watts and D’Aleo still have not figured out the difference between actual temperatures and anomalies despite being shown over and over again their mistakes.
I guess some people just don’t want to learn. Maybe they were also “self taught”?
For one of the rigorous debunkings see here:
http://rhinohide.wordpress.com/2010/02/01/ghcn-high-alt-high-lat-rural/
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I like your style IPF, you dismiss Watts and Daleo as amateurs and link to “rhinohide” as proof of your position.
In fact i dont care what rhinoass thinks why dont you explain to me in your own words why the temp data is adjusted so much? especially the temps pre 1950 and why they are adjusted DOWNWARD 50 years after the measurement was taken.
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crakar if you want to understand science why don’t you do what every other intelligent person has done and go and get an education?
You uneducated deniers are a waste of everyone’s time. Get lost.
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I have watched RW run rings to avoid looking at his idiocies and I’ve found it highly informative of the denialist screed.
But crackers will see what he likes to see.
Apparently both think that choosing
a) 19 stations
b) only in Canada
c) only in summer
d) only Tmax
will be able to disprove GLOBAL warming.
Meanwhile, RS still remains puzzled why Dick has run a test that proves that years increase monotonically whilst the limited dataset picked doesn’t monotonically increase in line with the years and thinks that this is somehow important or novel.
crackers also doesn’t like the GISS temperature dataset because it’s sparse since it selects stations
a) in the tens of thousands
b) across the globe
c) for all seasons
d) for the daily average temperature rather than the noisier maximum
which to crackers is obviously much sparser than Dick’s selection.
Another highly informative look at the denialist screed.
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“why dont you explain to me in your own words why the temp data is adjusted so much?”
Here is someone you might be interested in listening to about why you need to adjust your data:
http://www.surfacestations.org/
Yes, that’s right, Anthony Watts thinks that you have to perform quality control and adjust for known effects when you take weather measurements and use them for climate trend determination.
“especially the temps pre 1950 and why they are adjusted DOWNWARD 50 years after the measurement was taken.”
The only adjustment I know of was to a US only dataset that reduced the figure of the 1938 temperature by less than 0.02C in a downward direction.
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http://www.skepticalscience.com/Arctic_Temperature_Change.html
has some data trends from EC.
Looks like it’s a warming trend to me…
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Just thought I would pop back in here to drop this link from Realclimate (yes – I do read the posts there!):
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/02/from-blog-to-science/#more-5257
All of those who were critical of my stance on evidence vs opinion on weblogs may wish to read what Realclimate has to say on the issue.
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Thanks Mandas.
I don’t read RC enough precisely because I spend so much time tracking down the bullshit posted by the likes of Richard W.
it also reminds me of something a denier once told me in reference to the McLean, De Freitas, & Carter, (2009) article that allegedly disproved any significant anthropogenic effect in tropospheric temperature:
He didn’t understand the article or its critiques, but declared that (a) because its peer reviewed, it should be regarded as a disproof of the AGW hypothesis. If, however, (b) it was shown to be flawed, that only proved the peer review process was unreliable, and thus not to be trusted vis-a-vis any consensus regarding AGW.
The essential moral of his story was that even if AGW denial was wrong it was right.
This is what we’re dealing with . . . . speaking of which, what happened to Richard?
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Dick’s probably gone to get some ego stroking from CA or WTF. His failures have been pointed out to him so often that he’s beginning to see them and so he needs some polly-wanna-cracker-filler from the other egos in the echo chamber to hide his decline.
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It *might* be that Dick has shown that a region of Canada hasn’t seen any warming trend and his REAL problem is that he WANTS to use that to prove that the globe isn’t warming either, or that this disproves AGW.
But more likely he’s proven that his test cannot prove anything about the climate, just like three years temperature data can’t prove anything about the climate.
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<Why, before 1920? So that you could exclude data from other stations like Chris used where a trend is upward?
The AGW claim is that summers are hotter today than in history. To test that one has to use records as long as possible to capture what summers were like in the early 1900s which had hotter summers than today. I shouldn’t need to explain that one cannot use stations who’s data is too short to capture those years.
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Apparently both think that choosing
a) 19 stations
b) only in Canada
c) only in summer
d) only Tmax
will be able to disprove GLOBAL warming.
Not just 19 stations. Not just in Canada, but I now have global data (though it is short). Not just summers (though the AGW claim is summer heat waves should be increasning, this shows it’s not. And not just TMax. Number of hot days too is dropping. But you are clear, you are not interested in this data, only what you can deliberately misepresent.
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Coby, I’ll be emailing Miller tomorrow. Then we will get clarification.
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IS 2010 THE HOTTEST YEAR EVER?
“Dr. James Hansen of NASAâÂÂs Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) has announced that
2010 was the âÂÂhottest year on recordâ â by 0.01 degrees. His claim has been widely touted in
the press as strong evidence that the climate is rapidly heating â due to human generated CO2
emissions. Dr. Hansen has also stated :
“I would not be surprised if most or all groups found that 2010 was tied for the
warmest year.”
But most groups do not support his claim. The other independent source of surface
temperatures HadCRUT, shows 2010 cooler than 1998.”
Click to access the_hottest_year_ever.pdf
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Yawn.
Richard repeats his same mantras (AGW predicts more heatwaves; they haven’t been found in some locations, therefore AGW is wrong; 2010 was not the hottest year . . .
Richard, you are being completely dishonest and evasive. You linked us to the Mills paper because you were embarrassed about your utterly incompetent t-test bungle identified by R. Simons. You tried to fight science with something that looked “sciency”.
Coby spotted the utter contradiction between his work and yours. Emailing him isn’t going to save your ass now.
By the way, how’d the conversation with Judith go? Remember, I said any email from her you would *never* publicizes. I’m correct, aren’t I?
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“IS 2010 THE HOTTEST YEAR EVER?”
Given it’s a severely cooler sun, why isn’t it the coolest year ever, dick?
“Not just 19 stations. Not just in Canada, but I now have global data”
Hmmm. Why then did you scream “THE ONLY ONES WITH A RECORD BEFORE 1920”?
And you still haven’t shown what you get, just stated you see fewer hot days. Despite AGW being increasing global average temperatures.
How very sad and limited of you.
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“The AGW claim is that summers are hotter today than in history.”
No, Dick, YOU claim AGW claims that.
AGW claims that average global temperatures will rise.
And the number of record hot days in the USA, for example, is up:
So you still prattle on about a falsity (AGW does NOT claim summers hotter today than in history, it claims global average temperatures will rise), but even that false proposition is itself contra-indicated by the data.
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Maybe Dick would like to show where he gets his claims of what AGW claims from.
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So go somewhere where they have records before 1920.
You know, like somewhere NOT Canada.
Boy, you are dense arn’t you. I have already explained that I DID use stations from around that world, and that FEW of them have data before 1970. Go read my station posts from around the world.
Why, before 1920? So that you could exclude data from other stations like Chris used where a trend is upward?
Dense is an understatement. Have you looked at ANYTHING from my blog? You couldn’t have. The stations which Chris chose one were where there is data prior to 1920.
Wow, you are way out of your league here. You are making accusations, which if you cared to read my blog would know have already been answered long ago. Get with the program.
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“The AGW claim is that summers are hotter today than in history.”
No, Dick, YOU claim AGW claims that.
Wow, I’m surprised. I’m surprised that you are so ignorant about your own belief’s claims. I’m also surprised that you cannot read. I explained where the claim of more heatwaves comes from
http://cdnsurfacetemps.wordpress.com/2011/01/09/more-heat-waves-expected/
Read up before you make more of a fool of yourself.
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“Boy, you are dense arn’t you. I have already explained that I DID use stations from around that world”
Then why did you say you used only 19 stations from Canada in this thread?
“and that FEW of them have data before 1970.”
Odd. You can get a LOT more data than that from http://www.hadobs.org/
Plenty of data before 2970 there.
“Wow, you are way out of your league here.”
Well if it’s the “league of making stuff up and changing my mind part way through, then back again, then off in a tangent”, yes, you are far in advance of me in that respect.
However, you fail you state why you continue to use the wrong measure to disprove something that AGW doesn’t say in a way that cannot prove it happening.
As RS said, you’ve managed to prove that each year goes up whilst temperatures will go up and down. Hardly proof of anything.
If you think it’s all wrong and that the entire globe is cooling, then show why this graph:
is wrong.
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