Misinformation at Forbes Magazine by Larry Bell
Letter I sent to Forbes magazine in reply to: http://www.forbes.com/2010/12/23/media-climate-change-warming-opinions-contributors-larry-bell_print.html
Dear Mr. Bell,
It is surprising that a magazine that purports to inform business readers would allow you to misinform on such an important financial issue such as manmade climate change. Most of what you wrote is either flat-out wrong or highly misleading. For example, despite your claims, more than 90% of the world’s glaciers are melting, sea levels globally are still rising, and the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season was extremely active with 19 named storms, 12 hurricanes, and 5 major hurricanes blowing away 2009 which had only 9 named storms. The 2010 numbers are double normal values.
Scientists, military and intelligence experts, and health experts all agree there is overwhelming evidence that humans are causing major climate disruption mostly caused by increasing heat-trapping gases such as carbon dioxide. It is precisely for this reason that the insurance companies are planning for the coming problems that climate disruption brings while also trying to educate their clients about the advantages of a shift to a low-carbon economy so that they may seize the economic opportunities of clean energy. I suggest you read the following statement by 268 investors – both asset owners and asset managers – that collectively represent assets of over US $15 trillion.
http://www.unepfi.org/fileadmin/documents/InvestorStatement_ClimateChange.pdf
These large financial companies certainly disagree with your opinion but they do agree on the facts.
Global Warming: Man or Myth? 
Nicely put, prof.
adelady
December 30, 2010 at 6:20 pm
Thank you, Professor Mandia!
Back in the 1960’s, I gave up on the WSJ’s editorial and opinion pages. (I have always found the business and financial reporting to be excellent; most of their special reports are outstanding.) But the mendacities they spread elsewhere are reprehensible. Your brief well-written response speaks for many of us.
Again, thank you!
David F Collins
December 31, 2010 at 4:50 pm
[…] […]
The Climate Change Debate Thread - Page 409
January 2, 2011 at 6:00 pm
Again, thanks.
Byron Smith
January 14, 2011 at 7:32 pm
[…] I send this letter to Forbes […]
Forbes Magazine: Wrong is Right « Global Warming: Man or Myth?
February 16, 2011 at 3:58 pm
Climate alarmist have a MAJOR problem . . . AND they KNOW they have a PROBLEM. The global near surface temperature (ocean AND land) of planet earth has not increased or declined for the last 12 to 13 YEARS. In fact there has probably been a SLIGHT decline! None of the GLORIOUS climate computers predicted this! The programers, the computers nor the climate change alarmist can offer an appropriate explanation. All they can do is try and keep this info off the front pages. You don’t believe me? Just do a “LITTLE BIT” of research into the government published data . . . on your own, rather than repeating the hype of the alarmist! Do you get it yet? The so called “deniers” have been correct all along and the climate alarmists have been using very faulty “science”. The “deniers have been using valid scientific methods and the alarmists have been depending upon poor scientific methods and loading this info into “computers” to predict the future. Yep . . . this has turned into the greatest scientific hoax in the history of mankind. What’s stopping you, take may challenge . . . . spend about 15 minutes on Google!
Mel Gerst
January 14, 2012 at 9:05 pm
Well I’m afraid all I found were records showing that the last decade was warmer than the previous one, and that was warmer than the one before that …. and before that.
We’re now up to 322 consecutive months where the average temperature is higher than the average for the 20th century. The last year we had _any_ month with a temperature below that average was in 1985.
You’ll need to give us some more specific clues to find this evidence of no change or of cooling. I can’t find any.
adelady
January 16, 2012 at 10:48 am
“government published data”…tells you enough. Of course, Mel Gerst also approved of Roy Spencer’s book (oi, Mel, did you know UAH has the trend upward for the last 12-13 years? It appears Roy’s destroying your narrative) in which he made various grievous mathematical mistakes:
http://bbickmore.wordpress.com/2011/02/25/roy-spencers-great-blunder-part-1/
Or, to be less nice: he cooked the data until he got what he wanted, regardless of the physical impossibility of his cooking.
That’s Roy Spencer in a nutshell.
Marco
January 19, 2012 at 3:04 pm
Marco,
From your response . . . you didn’t care to take my challenge.
My suggestion to you . . . don’t believe everything you read regarding Roy Spencer.
Since you mentioned “cooking”, it is becoming VERY obvious the climate computer models have
“cooked” a little too much response from CO2. The “alarmist” are now busy looking at their
programming of natures natural driving forces that influence climate, and they are busy
examining the work done by researchers such as Spencer to see what they have
missing from their climate programs.
adelady,
My prior response starting with “I suggest you . . . ”
was meant for you. Yes, I do error once very few years.
I apologize.
Mel Gerst
January 29, 2012 at 7:28 pm
Too funny… Cause if it’s on the internet… it must be true!
Ryan C.
January 25, 2012 at 8:00 am
Sorry Ryan C. . . . I’m not going to help you find the government published data
using Google. Seeking truth often times requires some effort, such as looking at the data.
Your response above is “on the internet, the profmandis.wordpress.com website” . . . what I’m suggesting you do is use Google to find the “link” to the the government published data on the government website.
If you find that “too funny” . . . I wish you lot’s of luck!
Mel Gerst
January 29, 2012 at 7:07 pm
I suggest you read my post again . . . and this time don’t skip over the key sentence:
“The global near surface temperature (ocean AND land) of planet earth has not increased or declined for the last 12 to 13 YEARS.”
Bottom line . . . the computer climate predictions the IPCC are depending upon are useless.
Mel Gerst
January 29, 2012 at 6:31 pm
Mel Gerst: “busy examining the work done by researchers such as Spencer”
Yes, with his long track record of mistakes and mis-statements, Spencer’s ‘work’ needs constant examination. He views his role as a lobbyist rather than a scientist, after all.
Your choice of ‘the last 12 to 13 years’ is known as a ‘cherry-pick.’ Instead of googling around for more cherries to pick, have a look at Foster and Rahmstorf 2011: “… the warming rate is steady over the whole time interval. In all adjusted series, the two hottest years are 2009 and 2010.”
muoncounter
February 1, 2012 at 9:18 pm
Thank you Mel, i don’t know how you have the patience for this. I too, noticed the discrepancy between what “experts” were saying the data said and what I saw in the data. It is refreshing to have a clear voice. My brother (a college professor) told me I was cherry picking too. I asked him if he had read the research and told him if he read the Research, not the sound bites, that he could not keep saying that CO2 was correlated to anything–but again he called me a “cherry picker”. So now I’m a cherry-picking denier because I choose to look at science and not theory.
muoncounter–you can’t claim temps have risen when the IPCC has gone back and “adjusted” the past temperatures down to make today’s temperatures look hotter. It makes me laugh that a few years ago we all knew that 1934 was the hottest year on record. Today it is claimed by some that 1998 is the hottest year–1934 “lost” some heat and 1998 gained. Doesn’t it bother you that “scientists” adjust data to support their own agenda–honestly, the so-called deniers just want facts and the GW people want allies. If CO2 is a culprit, I will be the first to jump on the bandwagon, but not when every prediction of the alarmists has failed to even remotely come true. NOT ONE has come true. the only data you can say might correlate has been “adjusted.” that is not science.
I live in a self-sufficient, solar home. Most of the alarmists I know live in inefficient energy draining homes–I wonder why the cherry picking denier such as myself walks the way they talk….just saying….
Day By Day
June 11, 2012 at 12:39 pm
“… not when every prediction of the alarmists has failed to even remotely come true. NOT ONE has come true.”
Remotely? I suppose the precipitous decline of Arctic sea ice 30ish years ahead of those ‘alarmist’ projections should be included in this category. Or shouldn’t it?
As for “adjusting” temperatures ….
Are you seriously suggesting that when scientists discover that data included in current calculations is wrong, incomplete or inadequate in some way, that they should just ignore that? There are lots of us around the world working to digitise old meteorological data. You’re suggesting here that we’re wasting our time because scientists shouldn’t update with more complete data when these old, hand written records are finally produced in a usable digital format?
And the same thing goes for professional scientists (rather than we amateurs) finally coming up with a way to make old records collected by variously unreliable methods more accurate and useful. I think it’s admirable that scientists can work out – within reasonable bounds – that Britain/Finland/Japan/USA/Germany’s Navy or Air Force or meteorological services had consistent differences in the way they collected or processed data and that it’s possible to align them better.
adelady
June 11, 2012 at 10:44 pm
Dear adelady, I am glad you answered. It is people like you that I want to reach becasue I know your interests and mine are the same, “what is the truth and what can we do about it for planet earth.?” I just think you close yourself off to the facts and that makes me sad. Yes, we are “amateurs” as far as climate science goes–but I do claim some experitese in science since I am a publsihed researcher in peer reviewed journals (albiet in the social sciences).
I am a citizen of Alaska and although I know where you are getting your information, I think you need to consider the source and follow the money. Alaska has blown away all records for sea ice this winter. Four of the five iciest years around Alaska have been since 2007.http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/recent365.anom.region.2.html
data from the south pole shows simelar readings: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.antarctic.png
What was said by Al Gore, Hansen, Mann, and others like Mark Serreze of the National Snow and Ice Data Center is that the “Arctic could be ice-free in the summer by about 2030”–which is not going to happen unless our sun blows up. So I repeat, “not even remotely.”
I have no trouble with digitizing the records–as you say, it is commendable if done accurately. But writing, ” finally coming up with a way to make old records collected by variously unreliable methods more accurate and useful” is code for –“we found a way to jusfy making the old records support our theory and discuise it by claiming it makes records more accurate.” I am saying, as many other realists are, that fruad has been committed. See what Ken Towe, who has been researching the NCDC historical temperature database, found:
***********
Here is a typical example of what Ken uncovered. Below is a copy of the national weather data summary for February 1934. If we look at, say Arizona, for the month we see that the state average temperature for that month was 52.0F. [Ed.: This is the paper version that was published at the time.]
However, if we look at the current NCDC temperature analysis (which runs from 1895-present) we see that for Arizona in February 1934 they have a state average of 48.9F, not the 52.0F that was originally published.
So the actual temperatures reported in the 1930s are being reduced, to make it appear as though global warming has been going on since then. A reduction of more than three degrees Fahrenheit is, of course, huge.
These disclosures highlight a key fact with respect to global temperature data: the data sets are utterly lacking in integrity. Global warming alarmists confidently announce that worldwide temperatures have risen by, say .1 degree over a decade. It would be extraordinarily difficult to take measurements at many locations around the globe that would actually demonstrate that proposition. But the real situation is much worse: no one tells you what temperatures were actually measured at the world’s weather stations. Rather, they report claims of global warming based on �adjusted� temperature data�adjusted by alarmists, with the systematic purpose of manufacturing a rising temperature trend. If you subtract the “adjustments,” it may well be that there has been no net warming over the last 100 years at all.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/06/is-the-united-states-actually-getting-warmer.php
*************
Yes, I am suggesting that “adjusted” data is intentially misleading. As Michael Hammer says, “It would appear that the temperature rise profile claimed by the adjusted data is largely if not entirely an artefact arising from the adjustments applied (as shown in Figure 3), not from the experimental data record. In fact, the raw data does not in any way support the AGW theory.” http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/06/is-the-united-states-actually-getting-warmer.php
I love this graph which animates the fruad–data sets put out orginally where 1934 is the hottest year on record to now where magically 1998 is. http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/1998changesannotated1.gif
and what many scientists (no dog in the fight) say is, “All up these adjustments increase the trend in the last century. We have yet to witness a new dataset release where a cooling adjustment has been applied. The likelihood that all adjustments to data need to be positive is nil” http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/crus_new_hadcrut4_hiding_the_decline_yet_again/
Day By Day
June 12, 2012 at 4:08 pm
It bothers me that people claim that data has been adjusted “to support [the scientists’] own agenda” without providing any proof. It also bothers me when people keep on referring to the data for the continguous US, and ignore the rest of the world. That would be a good example of cherrypicking.
Regarding “failed predictions”:
http://bartonpaullevenson.com/ModelsReliable.html
Marco
June 12, 2012 at 2:11 pm
I’m not American so I might have a different perspective about current and past climate data. I understand the USA, but not too many other places, was warm in the 1930s. If you look at this Aust trend map you’ll see that the whole of Australia is now warmer than it was in 1930, and 1940 and 1960. Notice I skipped ’50 and ’70 – because there’s a patch in the tropics that’s a bit cooler now compared to then. Change the various boxes at the top of the map and there’s a whole lot more about changes over various time periods, seasons and climate phenomena. Try the rainfall data for a real eye-opener.
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/change/trendmaps.cgi?map=tmean&area=aus&season=0112&period=1930
As for Arctic ice, the item of concern is the minimum extent, area and volume at the end of the melt season. The fact that maximum extent varies from time to time and place to place is unremarkable – see how the extraordinary ice pack around the Bering Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk was absolutely huge this year and is now, this early in the season, right back on its more recent ‘normal’ trajectory. I don’t know how you could think that, if things continue as they are, that the Arctic won’t be ice-free in late summer in 2030. There’s very little ice older than 4 years now. The higher the proportion of first year ice, the more easily it melts and the more variable the extent and area of ice throughout the seasons will be.
http://neven1.typepad.com/.a/6a0133f03a1e37970b015390055882970b-pi
This is from ‘Distribution and trends in Arctic sea ice age through spring 2011’ by Maslanik, Stroeve, Fowler and Emery.
A brief overview is here. http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2011/07/new-paper-from-maslanik-et-al.html
adelady
June 12, 2012 at 8:16 pm
Hi Marco, Mandia, and adelady. I may, in fact be filtering information–that is precisely why I read both sides–to attempt to off set my bias because I know it must exsist.
Science is about facts and reproducible results, not “consensus” and squelching others such as what we learned from climategate, how people like Hansen exert undue influence over the scientific literature–both in spin and repression.
You might want to call Anthony “dubious” at WUWT but I like his “ametuer” observations, and you can not honestly say that the many distingusehed contributors at ICECAP are “dubious.”It is criminal to simply disregard these experts because you disgree with them such as
D’Aleo’s areas of expertise include climatology
Robert C. Balling Jr., Professor of Climatology
Robert Carter, Researcher at the Marine Geophysical
John Coleman, Founder of The Weather Channel
William Cotton, Professor in the Department of Atmospheric Science
Chris De Freitas, climate scientist in the School of Geography
Bob Durrenberger, Retired Climatologist
Dr. Vincent Gray is an “Expert Reviewer” for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Sherwood D. Idso, President of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change
including a myrid of other physicists, Climatologis, earth and atmospheric Scientists, and others in the Environmental Sciences who contribute to them …..http://icecap.us/index.php/go/experts
There are way too many scientsts who say we can not tell at this point if CO2 is causing an unnatural global warming trend (as opposded to the natural and predictable trends). Are you totally discredeting the Vostok Ice Cores? The rise in CO2 follows a warming period, it doesn’t drive it? http://www.co2science.org/articles/V6/N26/EDIT.php
No one I know refutes that the earth has been in a warming trend for 20,000 plus years–but a lot of scientists refute the “man-made” cause insistence. Surely you do not now discount the 49 scientists and astronauts who wrote the joint letter to NASA Administrator about ignoring empirical evidence? http://houstonfreethinkers.com/all-news/88-environment/2518-49-former-nasa-scientists-write-letter-to-nasa-over-agencys-bias-over-climate-change
They are “dubious?”
They say “The unbridled advocacy of CO2 being the major cause of climate change is unbecoming of NASA’s history of making an objective assessment of all available scientific data prior to making decisions or public statements. ” and asks that they look at all the evidence–which I don’t think you are either. By you saying that “virtually every expert agrees” I know you are not reading these well respected men and women who disagree–with facts and evidence, not models and adjusted temps.
The former NASA experts resepctfully request that the current NASA reps, get additional information “regarding the science behind our concern, we recommend that you contact Harrison Schmitt or Walter Cunningham, or others they can recommend to you.”
As they say at Icepcap, I would hope you support “an objective consideration and an earnest and open discussion of all aspects of climate change.”
But I would like to ask you, who has the filter on? The whole planet has not warmed in 15 years. that doesn’t mean we not still in a global warming trend, but the predicitons of runaway global warming, excllerated raising oceans (wasn’t it 17 feet?), ice free artic summer waters (which has happened twice since the 1800s so is not that astounding) has been predicted unrelentingly since the 60’s for each following decade and it still has not happened…storms are not worse than in the earlier part of the century, neither is drought and other “extremes” of weather that folks have a very short memory of, polar bears are not drowning, we are not losing the penguins, the earth is healthy and beautiful and probably self-regulating in the upper atmospphere.
adelady–I am familiar with the ice graphs–but you can infer NOTHING since the satellite data of 1979. My brother who probably agrees with you, told me, “I have noticed the warming since I’ve been here in Alaska. The winters were longer and much coler when I got here up to 60 below and we haven’t had that for many years now.” I told him what I tell you, he got here in the 70’s during the middle of a 30 year cold spell on the planet–it has now been 30 years of warming and yes, its warmer in Alaska than 30 years ago but not warmer than 80 years ago. Now it’s cooling again–as is the normal trend. But if it down’t cool down significantly in the next 30 years, (predicitons from other scientists based on observbale–verifiable trends and not models), then I will come crawling back to you guys and admit I am seeing through a filter. Promise.
Again, I repeat–if the science does come in that man made CO2 is going to hurt us (even though not in my lifetime) I will jump on the cap and trade band wagon, but today the science does not support it.
Day By Day
June 13, 2012 at 11:00 pm
Although Scott already pointed you to a few problems in your various claims, I would like to point at your very first comment, claiming people like *Hansen* had undue influence on the peer review process.
My question is quite simple: can you cite a single e-mail which suggests Jim Hansen had some type of influence on the peer review process of anyone, anywhere? Just one single e-mail!
Now, if you cannot find it (which I am actually quite sure you cannot), ask yourself why you made this claim? How did you come to hold that view?
If you hold this view because someone said he did, my next question to you will be how you intend to handle this source of apparent misinformation and why you trusted this source. If you hold this view because you just started to conflate issues, the next question will be how you handle your own apparent inability to separate issues.
I mean this very seriously!
Furthermore, I urge you to follow Scott’s recommendation of looking up the publication list of the people you mention and compare it to some more “random” people who are climate scientists. Just deselect those who are in the climategate e-mails. You still will have no problem finding plenty climate scientists who have many, many more publications. Or rather, you will find many or your list having a very thin publication list on climate (if at all), and several with hardly any publications, period. Like Joe D’Aleo or John Coleman. Or any of those 49 former NASA employees.
Marco
June 16, 2012 at 11:36 am
Thank you for response and challenge.
Actually had to look up the word “conflate”–:)
I, in no way want to say this is a “tit” for “tat” answer to a challenge for me to think ever more clearly. I appreciate the time you take to confront my conclusions and the work I have to do to respond. I understand there are areas where we reach different conclusions. I am concerned with bias (mine and others) and yes, misrepresentation. First the discrediting of the “other” experts and then the Hansen issue.
I see the massive credentials of the 49 scientists and the others I mentioned, and I see you asking me to to discredit them on the basis of publishing? If they do not publish much, you are claiming they don’t know what they are talking about? You’re claiming they are not qualified to read research and discuss it and challenge it? Peer reviewed does not imply the peers have to be published to understand research. Remember “Albert Einstein’s famous 1905 paper on relativity was not peer-reviewed. It is therefore quite clear that peer-review is not a precondition for excellent, indeed epoch-making, scientific research.” You do not have to have a degree to be published either–you have to understand the facts and parameters and theoretically a high school drop out can be published if he or she knows how to conduct research and report on it. http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/06/14/money-corrupts-peer-review-process/
I read on one of my “amateur” sites that journalist “Donna Laframboise, who showed that an amazing 30% of the articles cited in the definitive Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC were from non-peer-reviewed sources, including such writings as student theses and environmental lobbyist reports.”
I did what you said, and I took 3 days and saturated myself with information about the climate controversy, both sides. I really need to thank you for this because I never would have read the climate gate emails (read about 65) http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/p/climategate_05.html , the ICC and Wedgeman reports (http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/WegmanReport.pdf), and found out more about the real work of Hansen.
Reading the climate gate emails has been eyeopening–where the blogespehere tended to downplay the seriousness, I found them outrageous in their attempts to manipulate data, influence the delay of publishing or rejection of papers that disagree with them, and their advice to each other on how to spin words so that they were not saying directly that there is a runaway green house effect but would be able to lead readers to believe that is what they are saying. Many emails discuss withholding data, deleting emails, admitting they can’t reproduce their own data –or at least with great difficulty, or putting it in such a form that others will have great difficulty extracting it. “Gavin Schmidt suggests putting up the data “in an as-impenetrable-as-possible form” as possible and Michael Mann agrees. They go to great detail in many many emails about how to hide and avert and withhold data all the time–it’s shameful. These are the ones we are supposed to be listening to?
Their closed nit circle was discussed in detail in the Wegeman report and casts serious down on the peer review process amongst paleo field climatologists.
The ICC report was a little more charitable to the research than the Wedgeman report but both certainly reflected a lot of what I read in the “skeptics” side of things. http://www.cce-review.org/pdf/FINAL%20REPORT.pdf
I don’t expect to change your minds–but I hope someone else reading this will see the other side–by reading all the links–its takes days–but it will show you that the science is far from settled and that the skeptic or “realist” side as I like to call it, is more often than not maligned whenever they bring up valid scientific points. Its a shame because as I did the more intense research by your challenges–formerly I was apt to give the paleo scientists more credit, now, I think they were horrible an d their research done with an unforgivable agenda–even though I know they believe in what they do.. It is in no way right or just.
I read about Hansen–you were right, other than being copied on what the close-nit group was doing, I did not see an email from him interfering in the publishing process of other scientists, although Phil Jones and many of his co-horts did. So I was unjustified in repeating what I heard without any proof and I apologize. That will not happen again.
However, it did open me up to his work and how he “adjusted” temps so that this decade is hotter than the the 30s-40s decade. Conduct despicable. Now with many folks revolting regrading the “adjustments” that make the past look colder to increase today’s temps and “prove” unprecedented warming–what is going to have to happen before I believe an iota of their research based on models and adjustments, is the temperature is going to have to rise unadjusted. And the arctic sea ice is going to have to be something other then what has happened 2 times already this last 100 years, and the ocean is going to have to rise more than it has every century –for real–not modeling real, but something I can see with my own lying eyes.
Day By Day
June 19, 2012 at 7:14 pm
Clearly three days wasn’t enough to track down the basis for these claims of “adjustments” of temperature records.
Have you found anything from meteorologists or climatologists themselves about how and why they made many of these adjustments? There are 2 main whys, one necessarily following from the other. The first is that if we want to compare things, we have to be sure that those things are comparable.
When we compare temperatures from one day to the next, it’s good to be certain that when you write down today’s temperature at 3pm, that yesterday’s temperature was also recorded at 3 pm. Had it been 3 am or 7 pm, you’d know that any comparison of ‘daily’ temperatures is totally invalidated by that simple time difference. So now you’re a climatologist and you want to compare temperatures from 10 or 20 or 60 or 100+ years ago. What do you do? You check the times when those ‘daily’ temperatures were recorded.
If you’re in America, you now find that currently temperatures are recorded at a consistent time of day across the country. When you look at the past records, you find that different states, cities, regions and organisations used other times in various periods. So you heave a big sigh and get on with it. As you discover the details of which recording sites used which time of day for which span of years, you get down to the tedious grind of working out how much difference a 2 or 4 or 8 hour difference would have made to each of those records.
You do the work, incorporate it into the aggregated data. And your reward for that is to be accused of dishonesty. Talk about a thankless task.
adelady
June 19, 2012 at 9:09 pm
Speaking of Forbes, the serial mistake artist from Heartland who blogs there just made the same incorrect assumptions as Day by Day. See:
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201206180001
Scott Mandia
June 20, 2012 at 6:34 am
Day by day, can you explain why the BEST analysis gives the same results as GISTEMP?
Scott, remember to archive this comment from Day-by-Day, and let it return every 2 years as a reminder how stupid some people can be.
Marco
June 21, 2012 at 12:46 pm
Calling someone, who honestly challenges their own beliefs, stupid– doesn’t advance the cause. Thanks for your contributions to open and respectful dialog. /snarc
Apparently your definition of “BEST” and mine diverge.
“Remember that it is the use of GHCN data in GISTEMP which is being considered here, so all references to “raw” data here, unless specifically stated otherwise, are to “raw” data for GISTEMP, which is of course GHCN adjusted data.
The “climate scientists” go out of their way to consistently state that the results of their various climate models are “projections” not predictions. Well, if they are not predictions, then they are not scientific method. By Definition.
The output of NCDC, CRU, and GISStemp change month by month. (Even inside of a single month. Mid month, GHCN has often shown ongoing changes as various countries contribute their little bits of post-normal post-processed data-food-product to the computed values that end up in GHCN.) It is simply not possible to recreate any given ‘run’ of GIStemp as the set of numbers fed into it changes day by day.”
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/01/08/cru-ncdc-and-giss-not-scientific/
see also
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/joc.3370150507/abstract
and check out the lawsuit in NZ regarding the “adjusted” data and loss of observational data (which is going on around the world)
In the quoted passage above, the play on “day by day” to conclude was intentional. I will not be commenting back here because of Marco but thanks to those who led me to challenge myself–and who knows–maybe your models and adjustments are more valid than observational and empirical evidence–not projections and theory.. i am open to it.
Day By Day
June 21, 2012 at 2:15 pm
“Apparently your definition of “BEST” and mine diverge.”
I suspect that may be true. I assume that you thought Marco was simply emphasising the analysis which he believes to be superior to all others (the “best”), but he was (and correct me if I’m wrong, Marco) referring to the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature analysis, a re-analysis of global temp data from scratch undertaken under the leadership of noted climate sceptic Richard A. Muller and funded by arch-sceptic billionaires the Koch brothers, but which so far has found that the mainstream temp data is basically spot on.
Byron Smith
June 21, 2012 at 3:25 pm
Byron, you are spot on.
Marco
June 22, 2012 at 12:07 am
PS. Noticed that my original post to Mel Grist said that C02 is not “correlated” to anything. Incorrect. Of course it is correlated. That does not prove causation. Sorry. Now I’m signing off.
Day By Day
June 21, 2012 at 2:44 pm