TAR with my notes wrote:Furthermore, the biological response to climate forcing may {i.e., we don't know for sure} change over time. There is evidence, for example, that high latitude tree-ring density variations have changed in their response to temperature in recent decades, associated with possible {i.e., we don't know for sure} non-climatic factors (Briffa et al., 1998a). By contrast, Vaganov et al. (1999) have presented evidence that such changes may {i.e., we don't know for sure} actually be climatic and result from the effects of increasing winter precipitation on the starting date of the growing season (see Section 2.7.2.2). Carbon dioxide fertilization may {i.e., we don't know for sure} also have an influence, particularly on high-elevation drought-sensitive tree species, although attempts have been made to correct for this effect where appropriate (Mann et al., 1999). Thus climate reconstructions based entirely on tree-ring data are susceptible to several sources of contamination or non-stationarity of response. {i.e., our data is not reliable enough for us to know for sure}
Bracketed comments mine. Reading the TAR, it was so politically written and so hedged that no reasonable person would be coming to its defense. Yet, its authors want it to be accepted as gospel.
Sivad wrote:One paragraph buried deep inside the report, that's hardly what you'd call an honest appraisal of the science.
That's the sort of thing I was challenged to do, and did it. I came away deeply unimpressed. I write technical manuals for a living. I've worked with lawyers too. I know the difference between "can" and "may". The reason technical writers use "may" in lieu of "can" when it's the more appropriate word is because of lawyers. I know, because I'm guilty of this practice myself from writing requirements docs and adhering to SHALL, SHALL NOT, MUST, MUST NOT, MAY, MAY NOT to please the lawyers.
Sivad wrote:There's no mention at all in the summary for policy makers.
Yes. That's what the policy makers read too. The technical summaries have omissions too--which is the nature of summaries. Yet, when you dig deeper into the report, you'd never make the outlandish claims they make with the level understanding they have given the data they have.
Sivad wrote:There's a vague reference but it doesn't say anywhere in there that the tree ring proxies from the 1960s on are running in the opposite direction of the instrument data.
That's because the reference is trying to provide justification for omitting the data that doesn't agree with their conclusions.
Sivad wrote:Not only is it buried but the findings for the multiproxy averages are given a confidence rating of "likely" which is extremely dishonest given that combining proxies in that way was a brand new methodology and really shouldn't have even been included in the assessment at all because they hadn't been around long enough for proppper scientific vetting. There's no discussion of any of that.
They also have to use squishy terms such as "likely," because they don't have a sufficient sample size for standard error and confidence interval. When they admitted to having hundreds of samples, but only using 20-30 of them, it was obvious statistically that the standard error would be far higher. What's more amazing to me is that people believe them when they are using these types of data practices. That tells you Pants-of-dog is a good bullshitter, but clearly not a great statistician.
Pants-of-dog wrote:@Sivad
You are now changing your argument.
You originally claimed it was a deliberate lie of omission.
Now you are arguing that they did not clarify the issue as well as you would have liked.
Such shifting of the goalposts is an implicit concession.
Not really. If they were being honest, the text would say something like, "We really don't know what the fuck we're talking about." Do you honestly think you could sell a missile to the Department of Defense with this kind of language and not have the DoJ looking into you for contracting fraud? Do you know what would happen to you as stock broker if you used these methods to forecast a financial future scenario to sell a financial product? That's why someone like Stephen McIntyre would pick this stuff out right away.
Sivad wrote:The fact is there's zero mention of any of those issues in the summary for policy makers which is by far the most influential part of the report and there are only a couple of vague lines buried deep in the main report that don't even begin to convey the severity of the problems with those proxies.
If you keep digging, you have to read the articles in the bibliography. I'm telling you, if you do that, you just will not believe that anyone can take this stuff seriously.
Sivad wrote:The confidence estimate is absurdly high given the limited work done on multi-proxy analyses and NAS says as much in its report.
And given the sample size alone... You don't even have to argue the science. Just argue the math.
Pants-of-dog wrote:How would a long winded discussion about the misleading tree ring data have helped formulate better policy?
Because politicians would know that the bulk of the report wasn't worth the paper it was printed on.
Sivad wrote:If you put out an assessment report on the science that doesn't fairly and honestly assess the science then you have committed fraud. If you omit inconvenient data, obfuscate the facts, downplay controversy, and grossly exaggerate the accuracy and reliability of your methods then you're a dirty deceitful fraud, aka a Mike Mann.
And if you believe them, you're an idiot--and apparently, a lot of policy makers are idiots. I remember working on an APR calculator that depended on descriptions in the FDICs interpretation of
Appendix J to Regulation Z of the Truth in Lending Act. The FDIC had transposed Appendix J into a web page and the formulas were scanned as graphics and put in the wrong order. When I went to legal counsel for explanation, they said, "We studied law, because we're no good at math." I finally figured out that the FDIC had screwed up their publication, and they fixed it. However, there were problems in the original text too. You would be amazed how sophomoric lawyers can be.
This is why they say things like "Greenhouse Gas" even though greenhouses do not retain heat, because of the CO2 content in the air; and plants would not be green without CO2-dependent photosynthesis. A scientist wouldn't come up with something like that, but a politician would.
Sivad wrote:"I don't trust people like that. A lot of the data sets he uses are shitty, you know. They are just not up to what he is trying to do.... If anyone deserves to get hit it is goddam Mann." - Wally Broecker(Grandfather of Climate Science)
The data handling in video games is better than what Mann et. al. are doing.
Pants-of-dog wrote:The data was omitted not because it was inconvenient, but because it was known to be incorrect. Are you arguing they should have knowingly put in wrong data?
They omitted trees that didn't conform to their narrative and kept in trees in the same area that did. Do you really expect us to believe that one tree says the temperature is cooling, but one right next to it says it is increasing, and we should believe the latter one but not the former one for reasons they cannot establish while their discussion is saying things like, "By contrast, Vaganov et al. (1999) have presented evidence that such changes
may actually be climatic and result from the effects of increasing winter precipitation on the starting date of the growing season (see Section 2.7.2.2)." Really? So you've got 200+ trees and use less than 30 of them, ignoring what the radically decreased sample size does to dramatically increase standard error and reduce confidence, and then hit us with "likely"? Do you think your professor would let you get away with this kind of shit in a non-political context?
Fast forward to yesterday, here's what Michael Mann had to say on the recent hurricane:
Global heating made Hurricane Dorian bigger, wetter – and more deadlyMichael Mann, and other dipshit wrote:On a basic physics level, we know that warm waters fuel hurricanes, and Dorian was strengthened by waters well above average temperatures. The fact that climate change has heated up our oceans means Dorian was stronger than it would have been had we not spent the past 150 years dumping carbon pollution into the atmosphere. Sea surface temperatures were more than 1C warmer in the region where Dorian formed and strengthened than they were before we started burning fossil fuels.
On a basic physics level, we didn't have accurate ocean surface temperature sensors with any calibrated consistency until we started launching satellites. It takes a very long time for air temperatures to heat up water temperatures. So the more likely reason for higher sea surface temperatures is solar irradiance, not increased atmospheric CO2. Dorian didn't form in some CO2 hotspot either.
Then, he cites a bunch of studies that are a lot of bullshit.
Over the rest of the tropics, however, possible trends in tropical cyclone intensity are less obvious, owing to the unreliability and incompleteness of the observational record and to a restricted focus, in previous trend analyses, on changes in average intensity. Here we overcome these two limitations by examining trends in the upper quantiles of per-cyclone maximum wind speeds (that is, the maximum intensities that cyclones achieve during their lifetimes), estimated from homogeneous data derived from an archive of satellite records. We find significant upward trends for wind speed quantiles above the 70th percentile, with trends as high as 0.3 60.09 m s21yr21(s.e.) for the strongest cyclones.
Bold and underline emphasis mine. Of course, people who "respect the scientists" will naturally just believe anything they are told. In order for wind speeds to increase, the heat has to move from a warmer place to a colder place. In order for that to happen, heating has to be localized, not generalized. What a dipshit.
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