On Biffra's Cherry-Picking.

I seem to keep coming back to climate studies, why?

They are second to none right now in the misuse of science and agenda driven “science meant to be used to change our lifestyles in way most still can’t comprehend.  And in spite of the growing evidence contradicting  the  climate change “science”  scientific, media and political forces are still acting like there’s nothing to see here and that critics are off their gourd.   Since this involves what is supposed to be a “hard” science instead of my usually field, the “social” sciences   it make it especially egregious when this sort of thing goes on.

Today Anthony Watts  has  an interesting analysis of the issues involving tree-ring studies in general, and the studies if Keith Biffra,  which get cited over and over again as authoritative, in particular.  I’ll link it at the end of this post.

Here is the problem.   Conservationism has been taken over by folks who want to use conservation as a means to concentrate the population in urban centers that they may be more easily controlled by a powerful government.  Some of these folks actually believe we are a cancer on the earth.  In the warming of the eighties they saw a possible way to achieve their agenda, the globe warmed up a little.  So, the plan was advanced to convince people that we are the cause of the warming and that it is unprecedented in history.  Then people would be inclined to give up technology freedoms and rights in the name of restoring the climate before disaster strikes.

Unfortunately the historical record doesn’t cooperate with the thesis they were advancing.  We know from records kept world-wide in certain civilizations that there have been warm periods and cold periods throughout human history.  We even have names for them such as the Medieval Warming Period (MWP ) and the Maunder Minimum (MM).  But global warming theory doesn’t allow for that.

So they started looking at so called proxies, natural evidence which could possibly be used to infer temperatures such as sediment cores, etc.    But those didn’t cooperate very well either, until two men enter the arena Dr. Michael Mann and Keith Biffra.   Both men purported to use tree-ring ring dendrology to measure earth’s past temperatures.  Dr. Mann came first and produced the sensational “hockey-stick” graph which purportedly proved that temperature was stable through the millennia until modern man started spewing carbon dioxide gas into the atmosphere.   Biffra next appeared to duplicate Mann’s result using  trees from another area of the earth.  Mr. Watts gives an excellent summary on the problem with tree-ring dendrology for measuring temperatures:

For many years, scientists have used tree-ring data to try to measure temperatures from the distant past, but the idea is problematic in and of itself. Why? Because tree-ring data reflect many variables besides temperature. Russian tree growth, like that of trees around the world, also reflects changes in humidity, precipitation, soil nutrients, competition for resources from other trees and plants, animal behavior, erosion, cloudiness, and on and on.

Watts is examining Biffra’s study in his article which is why he   mentions Russia in particular.  Mann ‘s study was debunked pretty quickly after he published it.  First he used a species of tree which is notorious for its unreliability for documenting seasonal variations because of its growth range among other reasons.  There were other problems with his methodologies and Mann wasn’t forthcoming in reporting all the statistical tests used or           sharing his data.  And one could go on. 

Biffra, on the other hand, used trees in the Yamal region of Russia for his study, a seemingly more stable choice with a better chance of yielding reliable results.   So his study was hailed for “confirming” Mann’s and is cited to this day as authoritative proof that the historical record is wrong and that we are driving our planet over the edge.

What Watts then concentrates on is the sampling of the trees, that is how many trees are included and why.  That is the point of his article.  The general rule in statistics is the larger and inclusive the sampling, the better the picture and the more accurate with reality.   Now it’s impossible to sample and analyze the rings of every tree of the species chosen in the Yamal region for a study.  But that’s alright as every statistician knows.   Methodologies have been developed and the appropriate statistical analysis developed over the years which yield amazingly accurate results.  That was why Ford could crash just a few Pintos and predict almost to the person how many would die in rear-ending crashes of that defective car.   Biffra claims to have done that.

What Watts explains is that, no, he didn’t.  At least not in the case of the trees used in the study he released.  Oh, Biffra did sample many more trees, but the results weren’t acceptable to him, so he cherry-picked the trees he finally used for his final product to inflate the temperature record in favor of the climate science party line.  That is one very big scientific no-no!   And Watts goes on to lay the case out quite convincingly along with some of the other known misleading steps Biffra worked into the final product.

So we get a rather sordid picture of just how far true-believers in   catastrophic global warming are willing to go to achieve their ends.

My dear friends and readers, these sorts of tactics aren’t limited to the climate science community. They are far more widespread than most people realize.  Dishonesty is now endemic in academia.  Science is being turned into a political tool right before our eyes to advance agendas and smear those who aren’t onboard.   Outside science academia is being harnessed to re-write history in a way which   conforms to a certain worldview, a dangerous one.  That is the point of this blog, to highlight what is going on and warn those who come across it to the dangers posed for us.   

Question, always question what is presented to you as “truth.”   Check the facts before deciding what you do.  But most of all do your own research and be informed.   

The Sum of Yamal Is Greater than Its Parts.                                                            

Flat Ocean Tmeperatures For 55 Years!

Here’s an interesting piece of new out of Anthony Watt’s site:

Trenberth's Missing Heat Still missing.

It seems the ocean temperatures aren’t rising as expected, or even touted, just a mere 0.09C rise in the last 55 years!  And this isn’t denier whooie, its authoritative research published in Geophysical Research Letters!  Now that is interesting!

If You Don't Believe In Climate Change You Must Be Sick

Here we go:

If you Don't Believe In Climate Change You Must Be Sick.

This is what happens when the facts aren't really on the environmentalists’ side.  Attack the messengers.  Skeptics MUST be mentally diseased and need treatment.  Sorry Ms Norgaard, your PhD is wasted.  Skepticism isn't a disease, it is founded in fact.

For many years the premise that it is solely man’s contribution to the CO2 in the atmosphere was up for question on several points.  It is now demonstrated scientifically that man’s contribution is so minimal it might as well be considered miniscule.  Although man does contribute to the rise, it’s mainly on natural sources, including massive amounts of CO2 released as the earth warms from sources locked up in the tundra.

The feedback loops assumed to increase warming exponentially as more CO2 enters the atmosphere are now shown by satellite observation not to be in play.  The current “rising” of the seas is now known to be from sinking land masses not melting ice which is strangely enough binding up more water again.

The current slight dip in global temperatures experienced during the last decade wasn’t predicted by the global warming models and defies the theory as to what should be happening.  We’ve seen major rivers freeze over which haven’t in decades, watched massive casualties from cold winters like we used to have and many other anecdotal things which defy global warming theory.

Yet WE are the ones who are crazy?

With things not going your way and scandal on every side in the Global warming community all you are left with is good old attack the messenger arguments.  Don’t look too close at the evidence, we’re the experts and you can trust us.  They are mentally defective and need to be treated for not believing us.  Those are the tactics of people who’ve lost the debate because the evidence just doesn’t fit and have no recourse left but to ridicule those who do have the facts behind them.  And the really sad part of all this is that WE are paying your salary and for whatever bogus studies you and your colleagues may dream up to “prove” your point.  How despicable!

Look, the earth has been warming since the late nineteenth century.  Before that there was a little ice age Dr. Mann and his cronies tried to rewrite out of existence.  The earth warms and cools.  It is an irregular cycle which is not well understood by scientists, though my money is on the folks who say solar activity is the main driver.  I don’t think the warm has completely stopped and we are headed into another ice age of some sort as some do.  My worldview calls for some more warming before all is said and done.

However, warming on a global scale isn’t in our hands.  We aren’t the driver and the extreme proposals for dealing with it won’t change a thing.  All they’ll do is divert resources from what we should be doing, finding ways to adapt to it.  As you divert us from that important task and if you succeed in your agenda it won’t be us skeptics who’ll be despised throughout history.  It’ll be you.

So stop attacking us and look for real solutions to real problems while you still can.

Note:

This essay was accidentally posted in the wrong blog last month.  So I've moved it  here where it belongs even though it's a little out of date.  Enjoy! 

More on Muller

I blogged earlier about the Berkley study which was hyped as the final refutation of Global Warming skepticism.  Well, Anthony Watts, who has had access to the study for some time now has blogged on the much hyped paper:

Berkley Surface Temperature Project Puts PR Before Peer Review.


I am gratified to see Watts express early on some of the same concerns I had with the paper.  Watts tells the story behind the scenes so to speak about how this whole thing was turned into a planned major media event where they forged ahead in spite of warnings about the quality of the data.  Just as I thought, the data used was seriously flawed, though not in the way I thought it might be.  In this case the uncertainty of the data is so high, 70% of the stations with an uncertainty of almost five degrees, that it is useless for reaching the conclusions arrived at.

There is another article, a polemic, which puts the paper in terms easily understood by the layman.  It also addresses the straw-man argument which was advanced by the media.  Watt's touched on that.

The Death of Global Warming Skeptics, Or The Birth of Straw Men?

Berkley Study

Today an announcement was made of a new study from Berkley:

Global Warming Confirmed By Independent Study.

Before going on to the study itself I have an issue with the BBC's header.  One of the myths promoted by Global Warming activists is that skeptics are global warming deniers that we deny any warming has occurred.  That is patently untrue on its face.  Oh, I don't doubt there are a few folks who do, but most of us in the "denier" community accept that there has been warming over the long term.   Where we beg to differ is as to the extent and cause.  Those two issues go to the heart of the matter and are why a number of prominent scientists are jumping ship.  We contend that the research is sloppily or even fraudulently done and does not form a reliable foundation upon which to base policy.

First, let me point out that the study is being prematurely reported on since it hasn't been peer-reviewed and published yet, the claimed gold standard for acceptance by the establishment.  The it is being so widely trumpeted tells me that the fix is in on that score and they just can't wait to publicize what they think will be a refutation of us skeptics.  That the ending of the articles calls for an "apology" on our part to Dr. Jones and his climate change colleagues is telling as to the whole purpose of the exercise in the first place, all denials on that score not withstanding.

Since it's not been published up to this point all we really have to go on are the purported conclusions of the study, that we skeptics are now rebutted.  there is nothing on the exact methodology used to gather data and arrive at their conclusions.  Where did they get their data?  Was it Hadley CRU's data?  Did they go out and collect the raw data from the stations themselves?  We are not told in the article how the data was collected.  Since the Hadley CRU has admitted the raw data has been destroyed and only their "adjusted" data is available, use of that data on the part of the Berkley team would indicate a lack of seriousness in addressing the issue since they would only replicate CRU's conclusions by default.. Unfortunately we have to wait for the publication of the research to get our answer to that question.

CRU Data Loss Not An Accident.

For those who are new to the study of global warming CRU and NASA collect temperature data from thousands of weather stations around the world.  In theory they take that data and compute a global mean or average temperature for days, months and the year.  But that is not what happens in practice.  Instead the data is changed, or "adjusted" to conform to what the scientists think it should be.  Various justifications are used for the "adjustments," change in weather station locations, recalibration of equipment and installation of new equipment. This is done in the name of consistency of data.  Steve McIntyre has noted that more often than not the raw temperature data is revised upwards in the case of recent data.he has also noted a history of multiple revisions of temperatures before 1960 downwards.

The effect of such revision of the raw data can be noted by looking at the graph given as evidence in the BBC article.  for sake of reference an anomalous cold year in the late nineteenth century, 1880, is set as the standard for a "normal" global temperature.  That year's average is the standard against which warming and the rate of warming are judged.  When we look at the graph what sticks out is that the year 1960 appears to be the "normal" since it is the only one which firmly sits on the zero temperature deviation line.  1880 is about .3 of one degree below normal.  With 1880 being the definition of a "normal" global average temperature it should be on the zero line.  That would give us a very different picture than what global warming advocates want us to have as to the global temperatures and rate of increase.  I won't state the obvious here.

we are also informed that the new study refutes the contention of skeptics that the urban heat island effect is a significant factor in the apparent rise of temperatures in the data.  For those new to this the heat island effect is the contention on the part of those who question the data that the change in urban environments and building materials through the years has skewed the actual temperatures upwards over time.  Materials, such as asphalt absorb heat and then radiate it into the surrounding local atmosphere.  Anyone who's ever been in the middle of an asphalt parking lot on a hot day can testify anecdotally to the truth of that effect.  Global Warming activists have contended for years that such a phenomenon is minimal and irrelevant.  We'll have to wait until formal publication to see how they arrive at that conclusion in this study.  I do find it ironic, however, that the BBC places a picture in the story which proves one of us skeptics' contentions, that weather stations are often now placed in environments which artificially drive up the temperature readings.  There is no way that temperature station sitting right in an airport and within proximity of jet exhaust is recording anything other than temperatures skewed upwards.  Sadly, that weather station isn't unusual; it is far more common than it should be.

So in conclusion, what we have here is a sensationally reported on study which hasn't even been peer-reviewed and published yet.  It is more than likely based on seriously flawed data to begin with, though we are going to have to wait for publication to find out.  It is reported to come to conclusion which may not be justified by the data and methodology of the research.  Again, we are going to have to wait on its publication to find out.  Yet, it is being trumpeted by the climate science community and the media as a definitive refutation of skeptics.  Since I can't afford the expensive subscription prices for the journals it is likely to be published in, I'm going to have to wait for Steven McIntyre or Anthony Watts to review the published piece when it comes out to find out whether I'm spot on or not. 

The Al Gore and Thomas Friedman Show.

Today is Al Gore's "24 hr" broadcast meant to shame us sceptics into realizing we're wrong about Global warming.

Of course along with that is a world-wide effort on the part of Gore sycophants to bash us at the same time.  One of the most prominent is the piece over at the New York Times by ever reliable Thomas Friedman entitled Is It Weird Enough Yet?  After seeing this little missive I could ask the same question myself.

Friedman’s big example for manmade global warming is the drought in Texas.  He informs us that it is a consequence of man made global warming because:

“The weather gets weird: the hots get hotter; the wets wetter; and the dries get drier. This is not a hoax. This is high school physics, as Katharine Hayhoe, a climatologist in Texas, explained on Joe Romm’s invaluable Climateprogress.org blog: ‘As our atmosphere becomes warmer, it can hold more water vapor. Atmospheric circulation patterns shift, bringing more rain to some places and less to others. For example, when a storm comes, in many cases there is more water available in the atmosphere and rainfall is heavier. When a drought comes, often temperatures are already higher than they would have been 50 years ago, and so the effects of the drought are magnified by higher evaporation rates.’”

Really?  When I followed the link he provided it led to the home page for the blog not the article which was supposed to enlighten us.  I don’t know about my readers, but I wasn’t about to wade through the mass of AGW propaganda to get to the article in question.  Let me enlighten my readers just a little.  Rather than Global warming, that drought, along with our current Atlantic Hurricane season is caused by, cooling of the pacific waters, what is known bas the La Niña.  As Dummies.com explains:

“In places like the northeastern United States that are accustomed to cold and snowy winters, La Niña often makes for especially hard winters. In the rainy Pacific Northwest, La Niña winters seem to bring even more rain and snow than usual...

Across the desert Southwest, often the season is even drier than normal. Tornadoes seem especially numerous during springs and summers of La Niña, and the Atlantic hurricane season can be especially long and dangerous. In 1999, for example, while La Niña conditions prevailed in the tropical Pacific Ocean, 12 tropical storms grew big enough to earn names, eight of them became hurricanes, and five became intense hurricanes.”

Sound familiar?  There was a hard winter in the Northeast this year, and conditions were dryer here in the Southeast, including Texas which is suffering from a drought just like the rest of us here in the South.  We also had a record tornado year, all the result of a La Niña not global warming.

Mr. Friedman’s explanation, which he calls “high school physics” also misses the mark in another important way.  Let’s let Mr. Harris over at Pajamas Media explain:

“Consider extreme weather, the main topic of 24 Hours of Reality. Gore promotes the concept that greenhouse gas-induced global warming is leading to increasingly severe weather. But this defies logic. If the world warms due to increasing greenhouse gas emissions, temperatures at high latitudes are forecast to rise most, reducing the difference between arctic and tropical temperatures. Since this differential drives weather, we should see weaker midlatitude cyclones in a warmer world, and so less extremes in weather, not more.”

Check history and we find that to be anecdotally true.  Just about every period of known global warming in history was marked by a forward pace for humanity.  Arable land increased as Northern lands warmed up.  So mankind’s food supply increased; and along with it so did our human population.  The bounty in food made possible the advancement in crafts and the sciences.  That is true of the Roman period, the medieval warming period, several Amerindian civilizations and civilizations in the far East.  Surely that wouldn’t have been possible had the dire consequences Friedman and Gore warn us about had accompanied those warming periods, as they should’ve.  But, excuse me, Al Gore and Friedman deny such periods ever took place.  Dr. Mann and Dr. Briffa proved as much as far as they’re concerned.

But then you already know my opinion of Dr. Mann.

Introduction

Just by way of an introduction:

I’m new at this and looking forward to seeing where this takes me.  I’ve always been curious about the world around me and had many and varied interests.  Mother and father got tired of answering my questions and saved up for an encyclopedia so that they could tell me “go read about it.”  That was before I could even read.   My three biggest interests, the ones with the most passion, are the languages of the Bible and some of its earliest translations, writing, and the guitar.  The first is something I’ve pursued all my life as the resources became available to me; the other two are older passions and desires I’ve only begun to explore now, in my sixth decade of life.

The first is, of course, largely a part of my life as a committed Christian, now for some thirty-seven years.  I definitely cannot be called mainstream as far as being a Christian goes.  However, I follow the evidence where it leads me, with the Bible as the ultimate authority.  That should explain my interest in biblical related languages, I made the vow that one day no translator with his bias, no matter how honestly held, would stand between me and God’s word.  I’m amazed at the resources which God has now made available through the net, resources I could only dream of as little as ten years ago.  So I feel a bit like a kid in a candy store now as opportunities abound.  Naturally my faith informs my views in other areas, such as politics, however, do be careful trying to put me in a box there.  As I wrote, I’m not mainstream by just about any definition of the word.

I'm not too sure how much space here will be devoted to the other two.  Maybe just enough to keep friends updated as to going's on in my life where they are concerned.

Among my interests listed in my profile I mentioned one soapbox issue which will probably be written on time and again, the misuse of science in pursuit of an agenda.  I do hold a science degree in the social sciences.  So I do have a basis for examining the issue.  While in college I noticed a body of research which was being published in medical journals which had no basis for the lofty status it was being given.  The research I refer to was the research into guns and gun control published by such men as Dr. Arthur Kellerman.  That work was done using inappropriate methodologies and amounted to junk science.  More than one of the esteemed doctor’s papers have been debunked, even by other M.D.s within his own scholarly community and I find it amazing that this agenda driven work still gets cited as authoritative.

When I became aware of "Global Warming” science and checked it out, I found it to be on no better a foundation than the gun research.  So the misuse of science for political ends has become something of a soapbox issue for me. 

Before he died, Michael Crichton wrote the following in his notes on The Thirteenth Warrior:

“I mention this because the tendency to blend the boundaries of fact and fiction has become widespread in modern society.  Fiction is now inserted seamlessly in everything from scholarly histories to television news.  Of course, television is understood to be venal, its transgressions shrugged off by most of us.  But the attitude of “post-modern” scholars represents a more fundamental challenge.  Some in academic life now argue seriously there is no difference between fact and fiction, that all ways of reading text are arbitrary and personal, and that therefore pure fiction is as valid as hard research.  At best, this attitude evades traditional scholarship; at worst, it is nasty and dangerous.  But such academic views were not prevalent twenty years ago, when I sat down to write this novel in the guise of a scholarly monograph, and academic fashion may change again—particularly if scholars find themselves chasing down imaginary footnotes, as I have done.”

Unfortunately, things didn’t improve, not in the history discipline, and for sure not in the sciences, where we’ve seen the sad spectacle of scientists being outed for flagrant violations of scientific ethics.  That more than one panel found those violations to be consistent with current scientific practice is a sad commentary on the state of things in our time.

Well, that’s all for now.  I look forward to seeing folks around.

Stanley Loper