1 This post has me confused.

2 I'm too much of a moron. I'll go by gut instinct on this issue.

3 I question the timing.

4 That's longer than Ace's Kindle post.  No way will I be able to make it through before the C₂H₅OH kicks in.

5 Not one of Iowahawk's funniest posts.

6
in b4 AMISHDUDE rips on ACE for having a LAWYER'S brain.

7

AGW itself isn't really that complicated, which is why all this handwaving about "scientists agree!" is so spurious.

 

8 Of course, there are a lot of pictures... but those pictures have a lot of data, too, so...

9

Math, again?

10

Math, again?

Posted by: huerfano at December 11, 2009 08:22 PM (BEYNH)

Yeah, seriously.  I mean, math isn't really an exact science, anyway, right?

11 Obviously the dope smokin' and boozing are a ruse on his part .

12

I,, uh,, uh,, let me be clear, uh,, as I've said before, uh,, I,, uh,,  <can I get a prompter up here?>...........

 

OsamaHusseinIslamObama 2012Œ
(the terrorist-Ugihur-ACORN-media choice)
-Itfs never too early to campaign-

  

13 Effin sock puppet .

14 OT Wasn't Christoph banned??

15 It worked out well, Bill.

16
Iowahawk usually brings the funny, but right there he just put us some fucking knowledge.

17 We're suing you!

18 _{Math is hard.}

19 O/T FYI: Palin is going to be on Conan O'Brien tonight.

20 I'm happy to just agree that it's a shakedown by libtards.  No math required.

21 Uh,, No.............. OsamaHusseinIslamObama 2012Œ (the terrorist-Ugihur-ACORN-media choice) -Itfs never too early to campaign-

22 suck my hawk

23 I was told there would be no math.

24 Iowahawk usually brings the funny, but right there he just put us some fucking knowledge.

And it was beautiful.  *throws panties on stage*

25 O/T FYI: Palin is going to be on Conan O'Brien tonight.

Posted by: ol_dirty_/b/tard at December 11, 2009 08:28 PM (Z0bVg)

Whoa!  I hope she doesn't break me.  It's gonna be wild.

26 Are numbers involved?

27 Are numbers involved?

Posted by: Mrs. Compton at December 11, 2009 08:32 PM (NaJ/S)

Well, it depends on what the definition of numbers is.

28

I'm bringing the cap and trade, one way or another, no matter what you bitter-clinger-racist-cracker-a$$-crackers say............  I WON REMEMBER?.....

 

OsamaHusseinIslamObama 2012Œ
(the terrorist-Ugihur-ACORN-media choice)
-Itfs never too early to campaign-

  

29 He could have summed all that up with this:

AGW = SCAM

30 That's a great post.  Conclusion we all can agree with:
the reconstructions tend to be sensitive to the data selection

31 >>>5 Not one of Iowahawk's funniest posts. If I had a do-over I'd link it with that premise, me criticizing the post for not being funny and finding the jokes about extracting principle components to fall flat. I guess. Not really. I'm lazy.

32 Do you know what you won, Barry?  A one-way ticket to losing.

33
I don't know if anyone besides Purple Avenger is gonna tackle this on a Friday night.

34 One problem with iowahawk's post is one of his assumptions/premises: to grant that we accept the Medieval Warming Period and the Little Ice Age.  Unfortunately, there are loads of asshats that believe that those phenomena were limited to the North Atlantic region.

35 Prick should enable the comments this weekend , being six and all . Funny and smart ...... fucker .

36 If I had a do-over I'd link it with that premise, me criticizing the post for not being funny and finding the jokes about extracting principle components to fall flat.

I guess.

Not really. I'm lazy.

Posted by: ace at December 11, 2009 08:35 PM (jlvw3)

There's always the double post.  I mean, when was the last time you double-posted yourself?  Might as well get it out of the way.

37

Yeah, seriously.  I mean, math isn't really an exact science, anyway, right?

Posted by: Editor at December 11, 2009 08:23 PM (YX6i/)

Not so much as it used to be.  http://tinyurl.com/y886r3d

38 Actually, it was much easier to understand than Ace's posts on Wednesday and Thursday and there was no math in those.

39 Iowahawk lives in Chicago?  (from Big Hollywood):

David Burge blogs at Iowahawk, considered by many to be one of the sites on the internet. His work has appeared in the Weekly Standard, Garage Magazine, Middle East Quarterly, SpeedTV.com, PajamasTV, British satire site Anorak, and  Readings in American Government.

He is a veteran of several Hollywood bus tours and owns an exclusive map to the homes of the stars. He also has amassed over $200 in Blockbuster late fees. He lives in Chicago.

That's can't be true, can it?

40 I don't know if anyone besides Purple Avenger is gonna tackle this on a Friday night.

No time.  Now, back to Bevington's "Data Analysis and Reduction for the Physical Sciences".

Light reading, as it were...

---
Additional Blond Agent

41
One problem with iowahawk's post is one of his assumptions/premises: to grant that we accept the Medieval Warming Period and the Little Ice Age.  Unfortunately, there are loads of asshats that believe that those phenomena were limited to the North Atlantic region.

Posted by: logprof at December 11, 2009 08:36 PM (I3Udb)

Watts Up With That had  graphs up earlier this week that show the warming periods are the exceptions, not the norms. In other words extreme cold is our planets most natural state.More like, 'Little Warm Ages'.

I'd link it, but like ace I'm lazy, but mostly because I'm half lit and its a Friday.

42 First the estrogen soaked wall of text posts and now he says that math is hard.

Who are you and what have you done with Ace?

43 Well, huerfano, that was certainly creepy.

44 So basically what Mann et al. did was reconstruct the temperature data from 1400 to 1850 by finding the correlation between the instrumental data and proxy data of the last 150 years?

45 That's can't be true, can it? He had to move to Chicago because of the late fees .

46 Unfortunately, there are loads of asshats that believe that those phenomena were limited to the North Atlantic region.

Actually they probably do not believe it, they just say that as part of their scam.  There is simply too much countervailing evidence from ocean core samples that show the warm period and little ice age existed all over the earth.

47 Watts Up With That had  graphs up earlier this week that show the warming periods are the exceptions, not the norms. In other words extreme cold is our planets most natural state.More like, 'Little Warm Ages'.

I'd link it, but like ace I'm lazy, but mostly because I'm half lit and its a Friday.

Posted by: Blazer at December 11, 2009 08:42 PM (+FzLa)

--Oh, I've seen them.  I just hope my more left-loco friends on Facebook have it sink in.

48 You know, the mention of Iowahawk made me think of something:  Are there funny lefty bloggers?  Aren't they supposed to be the funny ones, while we conservatives are troglodyte religious tools who are so uptight and unfunny?  So why do we have so many more funny (yet substantiative) bloggers?

49 I think this quote is appropriate here.
"You think man can destroy the planet? What intoxicating vanity. Let me tell you about our planet. Earth is four-and-a-half-billion-years-old. There's been life on it for nearly that long, 3.8 billion years. Bacteria first; later the first multicellular life, then the first complex creatures in the sea, on the land. Then finally the great sweeping ages of animals, the amphibians, the dinosaurs, at last the mammals, each one enduring millions on millions of years, great dynasties of creatures rising, flourishing, dying away -- all this against a background of continuous and violent upheaval. Mountain ranges thrust up, eroded away, cometary impacts, volcano eruptions, oceans rising and falling, whole continents moving, an endless, constant, violent change, colliding, buckling to make mountains over millions of years. Earth has survived everything in its time. It will certainly survive us. If all the nuclear weapons in the world went off at once and all the plants, all the animals died and the earth was sizzling hot for a hundred thousand years, life would survive, somewhere: under the soil, frozen in Arctic ice. Sooner or later, when the planet was no longer inhospitable, life would spread again. The evolutionary process would begin again. It might take a few billion years for life to regain its present variety. Of course, it would be very different from what it is now, but the earth would survive our folly, only we would not. If the ozone layer gets thinner, ultraviolet radiation sears the earth, so what? Ultraviolet radiation is good for life. It's powerful energy. It promotes mutation, change. Many forms of life will thrive with more UV radiation. Many others will die out. Do you think this is the first time that's happened? Think about oxygen. Necessary for life now, but oxygen is actually a metabolic poison, a corrosive glass, like fluorine. When oxygen was first produced as a waste product by certain plant cells some three billion years ago, it created a crisis for all other life on earth. Those plants were polluting the environment, exhaling a lethal gas. Earth eventually had an atmosphere incompatible with life. Nevertheless, life on earth took care of itself. In the thinking of the human being a hundred years is a long time. A hundred years ago we didn't have cars, airplanes, computers or vaccines. It was a whole different world, but to the earth, a hundred years is nothing. A million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can't imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven't got the humility to try. We've been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we're gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us."

— Michael Crichton

50 You know, the mention of Iowahawk made me think of something:  Are there funny lefty bloggers?  Aren't they supposed to be the funny ones, while we conservatives are troglodyte religious tools who are so uptight and unfunny?  So why do we have so many more funny (yet substantiative) bloggers?

Posted by: nickless at December 11, 2009 08:48 PM (MMC8r)

Rethinking Comedy:  Teaching Social Justice by the Funny.

51 wow, i just heard mark levin saluting john mccain for working overtime to stop o's attempt for a gov't grab of H.C. mccain is fighting valiantly to put a quietus to the commie's b.s. who knew? this is good news. finally he's not reaching across the aisle. maybe he can even say his middle name now.

52 Litlle warming periods is of course the truth and the warming is adaptablle. An Ice age will "f" you up.

53 "A Brilliant Post By Iowahawk That I Cannot Read" ...not unlike Ace's Banhammer and Son of Banhammer posts.

54
Heres the article from WUWT just in case anyone else is interested. Lots of hockey stick data in this one too. In the reverse direction as far as ice core and temp data goes.


tinyurl.com/y9bpgco

55

Give it up you bunch of racist-bitter-clinger-cracker-a$$-crackers,,  I saw the tree rings myself,, that's right,, that's right,, I was camping with Al Gore and Barney Frank when I saw 'em.  My a$$ was sore the next morning,, butt I saw 'em just the same!!

 

OsamaHusseinIslamObama 2012Œ
(the terrorist-Ugihur-ACORN-media choice)
-Itfs never too early to campaign-

   

56 Posted by: Vmaximus at December 11, 2009 08:50 PM (EESSb)

--We're just here to give the earth plastic.

57 Heres the article from WUWT just in case anyone else is interested.

Posted by: Blazer at December 11, 2009 08:53 PM (+FzLa)

You haven't had enough to drink, yet, Blazer.

58 Posted by: nickless at December 11, 2009 08:48 PM (MMC8r)

Great point!  A certain radioguy pointed out this very day that lefty media cannot survive by themselves; they require subsidies in order to remain on the air...   Witness air america, etc..

59 funny lefty blogs

You mean you don't find the nazi,fascist,homophobe,racist name calling funny?

60 53" Litlle warming periods is of course the truth and the warming is adaptablle. An Ice age will "f" you up." NO SHIT!

61

You haven't had enough to drink, yet, Blazer.

Posted by: Editor at December 11, 2009 08:55 PM (YX6i/)

Or maybe I'm drinking too fast and overdoing it, because usually I'm not this serious.

62  An Ice age will "f" you up." NO SHIT!

Posted by: Tiger Woods at December 11, 2009 08:58 PM (quoy3)

But the dirty Scandis can adapt to it easy, right, Tiger?

63 Oh, Blazer is a "serious" drinker.  Greeeaaaat.

64 Anyway, I have to go to the Co. Christmas party, so I'll just leave you with happy news:

Sade has a new album coming out in Feb.  Schwing.

65 An Ice age will "f" you up." NO SHIT!

Posted by: Tiger Woods at December 11, 2009 08:58 PM (quoy3)

--Dude, is it true you can get stoned, synch Ice Age with Al Gore's poetry and . . . duuuuuude!

66
Oh, Blazer is a "serious" drinker.  Greeeaaaat.

Posted by: Editor at December 11, 2009 09:01 PM (YX6i/)

Shit, you know better than that. Blutarsky will be back out before the night is done, I can assure you.

67 54 "A Brilliant Post By Iowahawk That I Cannot Read"

...not unlike Ace's Banhammer and Son of Banhammer posts.

Has he used the Hammer??

68 Iowahawk's post was a thing of beauty.

34 Unfortunately, there are loads of asshats that believe that those phenomena were limited to the North Atlantic region.

Mann's paper showing the MWP was regional relies on evidence he says shows the Pacific was cooler during it. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has a new paper saying otherwise and says the Northern Hemisphere reconstructions "need to be looked at more closely"

Can't link to the paper, since this editor is a POS, but it's a peer reviewed paper, too.

69 Well, I can see how liberal J-school grads would have trouble with it because the answer is not pre-determined part of their dogma but for the rest of us it's really not that bad.

70 Math is hard.

71 Watts Up With That had  graphs up earlier this week that show the warming periods are the exceptions, not the norms. Posted by: Blazer

All but one of the graphs were of Greenland ice core data. IE North Atlantic. Only the last graph was from the Vostok research station in Antarctica. As scurrilous and minor as it may be, that's how the average AGW True Believer would reply.

72 18 _{Great minds...}

73 #34, I read that some of the data that's been hidden or never researched until recently indicates the MWP was not localized to Europe.

74 Nope, just reading the vague description of it made my calculus tumor go off. No way I'm gonna try to read it.

75 More stuff Tocqueville said

"When the taste for physical gratifications among them has grown more rapidly than their education . . . the time will come when men are carried away and lose all self-restraint . . . . It is not necessary to do violence to such a people in order to strip them of the rights they enjoy; they themselves willingly loosen their hold. . . . they neglect their chief business which is to remain their own masters."
— Alexis de Tocqueville (Democracy in America, Volume 2) 

76 Can you get it to draw boobs?

77 There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle."
— Alexis de Tocqueville

78 Too many weeds - better to say,

Trends should never be extrapolated from a regression analysis - the more involved the analysis, the more hairy the line at either end.


THAT being said, and as many times as the word 'model' was used, there is no 'model' here, just extrapolating a rather involved trend line.

79 I really encourage all morons to take a little bit of time and read Iowahawk's post. Oh my gosh, that was good! My initial skepticism of AGW stemmed from the fact that having worked with highly nonlinear, multivariable systems (sometimes not even completely understanding all of the variables, pretty much like climate science),  I wondered where the climate gurus got their computational and mathematical
magic - do they have access to a computer the size of the moon that the rest of us don't know about ? If so, the folks at RHIC and many other places would love to buy some computer time, I promise. Furthermore if one takes the time to understand CO2 as a greenhouse gas one sees that, to accept the possibility of CO2 as a driver of an uncontrolled climate catastrophe, one must assume that the Earth's climate is unstable under minor temperature perturbations - which is absurd, given the Earth's long history. Of course this explains the need of the climate science high priesthood to fudge data about the Earth's history.  

80 I thought it was actually very accessible.

But then, I'm almost 3/4 finished with my master's in electrical engineering...

81 You are a EE Peel?
I am a lowly CE.
With a minor in ME
I wanted to be a CE but Failed.

82 Sorry MEE
not a lowly EE
My bad

83 Interesting. I'm no expert but it seems to me after reading quickly, that the weak correlation to observed temperature is even worse (fatally so?) if the proxy divergence were included. Can someone confirm that?

84

Um, I know Iowahawk is actually trying to be generous to Mann, et al.  That is, he is trying to be careful not to say anything that is incorrect or can be interpreted in a different way.  So, I'll just go ahead & do that for him.  When correllating the proxy data to the "observed" data, Iowahawk calls his step 6 "Step 6: Evaluate how well the regression model fits the observed temperature data." 

In the end, the r^2 value is 0.50

This means that half the variation in observed temps matches (although Iowahawk says "can be accounted for by") the regression of the proxy data.  In other words, HALF DOESN"T.  

Uh, this is the "Mean" temperature of the ENTIRE GLOBE, is it not?  And the best r-squared we can get from the proxy data is 0.5?!?!?  There will be people who will tell you that any r^2 value can be significant, depending on this or that; but an r^2 of 1.0 is perfect correlation and 0.0 is absolutely NO correllation.  Go find two things (totally unrelated) that yield an r^2 of 0.0, I dare you.  Your age, or your height, or your salary, or your penis size could easily yield an r-squared of 0.50 with a limitless number of completely unrelated data.  In short, despite the technical crap that some statisticians will feed you, an r-squared value of 0.50 is SHIT.  Meaningless, useless.  The very weakest kind of correllation. And CORRELLATION IS NOT CAUSATION, as Iowahawk seems to have forgotten.

And, as Iowahawk glosses over, the "Observed" temperatures compiled by Phil Jones are totally BOGUS, anyway.  Why not do some regressions of the number of Unicorns Obama-voters have ridden in their lifetimes and see how it correllates to the Polar Bears killed by human industry - as reported by ALGORE. 

The entire endeavor is psuedo-intellectual masturbation that appears to give some minimal credence to the UTTER HORSEHIT put out by Mann, Jones, Hansen, et al.

Let me just ask 2 questions:

1. Does the width of tree-rings give you an absolute ability to say what the temperature was in a given year?

2. If polar ice sometimes melts (as were being repeatedly told that it currently is), has it ever melted in the past?  If it melted in the past, then for each year that the NET ice cover decreased, the so-called "annually striated glacial ice cores" that Iowahawk refers to would be MISSING TWO YEARS.  So that measuring the isotope level in one striation would give you, say, the temp of the year 1776; but THE VERY NEXT striation would give you the temp of the year 1773 ... NOT 1775 (because in 1775 no ice was added, and the ice from1774 was ERASED by melting).  Has anyone ever accounted for this?  HOW could they?  You'd have to first know the extent of the ice, as measured by the ice, to determine ..... the extent of the ice.  It's all shit.

I'm unimpressed by analytics of the statistics or the code or the other manipulations used by Mann, Jones, CRU, IPCC, et al, when they completely ignore common sense issues -- like that tree ring width depends more on water than temperature, and that water and temperature are neither perfectly correllated, nor can their various effects be differentiated from each other.

YOU DON"T HAVE TO LOOK THIS DEEP.  For example, for the year 1850, Phil Jones's "observed" "GLOBAL" "AVERAGE" temperature is derived from measurements (from God knows where) covering less than 16% of the planet's surface.  Do you need advanced statistics to know that this cannot be done?

85 Uriel, you get into the weeds too much.

86 Here's an idea. Run the numbers and see what the correlation is when the divergent proxy data for more recent years is included just to see how much lower it is than .50. Then, do it all again but remove the estimated urban heat island effect from the observed temperature and use that correlation on the proxy data and see what it looks like.

87 #50 

I find all left blogs pretty funny.

88 Uriel, as a math and statistics teacher, I have to say, you're absolutely right in your skepticism about low r^2 values, and you're right about the snow job a lot of statisticians will try to sell on low r^2 values (especially in the context of multiple regression). While in this instance, an r^2 of 0.5 is definitely significant, it indicates a piss-poor model for purposes of reconstruction. My only quibble with your post is this: "And CORRELLATION IS NOT CAUSATION, as Iowahawk seems to have forgotten." There's nothing in the use that either Iowahawk or Mann, et al, make of the multiple regression models for proxy data that implies any sort of causation. Temperature may or may not cause tree ring variation; for the purposes of the model, that doesn't matter at all. (In fact, the direction of the regression should, if anything, technically imply that the proxy data, being treated as the "independent variables" "cause" the temperature, which is, of course, ridiculous, but not germane to the issue.) Were there a good correlation between the proxies and temperature, there would be nothing wrong with using the multiple regression analysis to reconstruct the temperatures (again assuming the reliability of the proxy data -- which your points about ice cores makes me suspicious of), at least for extrapolations close to 1850. But there is also the huge assumption that Mann, et al, are making about homogeneity -- that even if their proxy data fit well between 1850 and 1980, that it must, necessarily, follow the same formula for 850 years or more prior to the existence of actual data; i.e., they're assuming a fairly static relationship between proxies and temperature from 1000 to 1850, which, as you point out when talking about the many contributing factors in tree ring width variation, is a completely unwarranted assumption. I am also curious as to what justification Mann and company have used for stopping the input of proxy data at 1980, when it certainly must be available right up to the present day, since it couldn't help but improve the reliability of their regression model.

89

I'm pretty sure the proxy data was stopped because it diverged from the rising temperatures. "Hide the decline"

90

Anybody need a drink?  (Not you, you dirty fucking scandi).  I think I'll have one...

91 Meh ... no need to make it so complicated. It's simple, they just tortured the data until it said what they wanted it to ...

92 There seems to be a fundamental problem (I would say "error") with the methodology (of Mann, et. al). Everything seems to make sense until about step 5. Step 6 computes the r^2, so we'll skip that. We'll also ignore (for the sake of argument) that the measured temperature data used in 5 had been "adjusted" or contains other errors. Where this methodology appears to go off the rails is taking the beta coefficients computed in 5 for the period 1855-1980 and using them to project backwards. At that point the argument becomes circular. Mann, et al. assume that the beta values computed using 1855-1980 data are the same beta values that *would* be computed if measured temperatures back to 1400 were available and were used to compute beta values using the entire period 1400-1980. But that is the same as assuming that the computed temperatures in 7 are the "real" temperatures since the computed temperature values are derived from the assumed beta values. It is true that the equation in 7 has a unique solution, but the problem is that temperature curves that *could* end with the 1855-1980 segment used to compute the beta coefficients in 5 are not unique. For example, the real temperature curve could have a strong MWP and LIA but agree with measured temperatures during the 1855-1980 overlap period. In fact, there are many temperature curves that would compute the same beta values for 1855-1980. Another way to look at this is that the epsilon (error) values computed for the period 1855-1980 do not determine the actual error values in the period 1400-1855 given the beta values computed in 5. It is an *assumption* that you can bound them, which again begs the question.

93 notropolis,

The Mann et al. 1998 paper is still "the" causation paper. After making the temperature reconstruction look like a hockeystick, he aligns, scales, and fusses with the ppm CO2 over time chart until they also have good correlation. Then claims "Tada!"

Honestly, the field said "Well, what else could it be?" at that point. There was enough hard warming in the nineties that the comments "WTH, that isn't causation" was quite muted. Additionally, everyone is focused on their own niche. The best models of 1998ish had serious issues hindcasting the warm bump of the 1930s (because they attribute too much of the blame to CO2 - which has no such hump) so they aren't any more convincing themselves. The slightly newer models have added in "estimates of aerosols" and almost kind-of manage to have a hump. And are helped by the -historical- intrumental records of the 1930s being adjusted downwards to account for Urban Heat Island effects. (Which is just too bizarre to explain in one post.)

ManeiNeko, another issue that keeps getting glossed over is the whole idea of what-in-the-hell he's actually claiming as proxies. There's a fundamentally whacked assumption about what he calls teleconnection.

If you have a tree and a co-located  instrumental record, the whole idea of the rings being proxies for temperature makes some sense. And it can even be extended to "nearby." It starts to make a whole lot of sense as to why 99% of the potential proxies are just dumped outright when one realizes he's directly looking for proxies for the global average temperature.

But even that isn't completely nuts. I could buy that a tree in Colorado is simply an excellent proxy across our recorded instrumental temperature period. No foul.

But. The fundamental axiom of Climate Science is: Climate is not Weather. That is, shit changes. Wind patterns might shift slightly as weather, but a climactic shift might disrupt them completely and bury New York in ice. Er. Or something.

The very shifts they're supposed to be detecting are also exactly the same types of shifts most likely to make some other damn tree the best proxy in the world.

94 Feynman said, and I paraphrase, "it doesn't matter how elegant your theory is or how smart you are. If your theory doesn't agree with experiment, it is wrong." At the point where CO2 continued upwards and temperatures started downwards, the theory that CO2 was the primary driver of global temperature was shown to be wrong. So correlation was not causation in this case. I've wondered for a while if the proxies even correlate very well with each other. For example, we know that tree ring width is as much related to moisture as anything. Do others? And some tree ring series, e.g., bristlecone pines, have been problematic. Which is why they started looking at MXD instead of ring width. Not to mention the problems with recent proxies, which is why the proxies stop being used and thermometer records were grafted on. Have all the proxies that were used been adjusted and cherry picked to arrive at the desired result as well? From the leaked code: "; *** NOW REMOVES MXD SERIES WITH POOR CORRELATIONS WITH LOCAL SUMMER TEMP ***" printf,1,'IMPORTANT NOTE:' printf,1,'The data after 1960 should not be used. The tree-ring density' printf,1,'records tend to show a decline after 1960 relative to the summer' printf,1,'temperature in many high-latitude locations. In this data set' printf,1,'this "decline" has been artificially removed in an ad-hoc way, and' printf,1,'this means that data after 1960 no longer represent tree-ring printf,1,'density variations, but have been modified to look more like the printf,1,'observed temperatures.'

95 Your boy Masturbatin' Pete was a biochemist before he was an attorney, so this stuff makes sense... but there's NO CHANCE I'm doing any of this myself. Not when there's pornography and liquor to be consumed. Kudos to Iowahawk, though.

96 Wow, thanks, Iowahawk, for actually digging through the methodology and cleaning up the format of the bilge data used by these 'climate scientists'.

I had no idea the models were still this simplistic, the correlations so poor, the data so questionable. It must be sweet being a big name climatologist, you can predict anything you want, and with very little effort.

We did all the same cynical things back in the 70s to promote Global Cooling: scary approaching scenarios, linear models, lousy correlations, horrible data, cherry picked results, but we didn't get as many of the raving loonies out on the streets so we weren't successful. Otherwise we'd be the ones on the gravytrain, tapdancing around ten years of warming followed by the most recent ten years of cooling.

What might have been. Fame, fortune, free hookers. Sigh.

97 @97
"I've wondered for a while if the proxies even correlate very well with each other. For example, we know that tree ring width is as much related to moisture as anything. Do others? And some tree ring series, e.g., bristlecone pines, have been problematic."

The answer to this is "Hell no."

Mann's method is fundamentally weighting an average. So he's throwing 1000 proxies in to get his hockeystick. But... The weighting is quite heavy. The first batch is the bristlecones - removing that one batch causes a dramatic reduction in the hockeystickness. But the weights are heavy enough that the top 15 or so essentially count for the whole thing. That's 985 proxies dumped.

And, they're being dumped because they don't match "reality." Even though the authors of the individual papers for each proxy found something worth publishing about.

98

My principal component could use some correlating. I mean, two working spouses, a kid, two cats and a dog - private time is a thing of the past.

Anyway, one of the main take away lessons for me, is that one does not need a supercomputer to create these reconstructions and models. It's done on a desktop.

The other pre-existing lessons stand:

1. The raw temperature data, with urban heat island effects excluded, frequently show little or no warming.

2. An honest look at the proxy temperature record does not support the assertion that the current global temperature is unprecedencted.

3. Most of the last million years have been ice ages. Maybe a much larger climate forcing function is at work than man-made carbon dioxide release.

 

 

99 Ace quotes "Magnum Force", and my weekend is complete.

100 I can't believe I learned how to do that. Iowahawk needs an award of some kind.

101 very funny headline. I've been laughing all day

102 Free shipping and top quality,comfortable fit