The Holocene Deniers

[Gracchus]

(And do cut Glenn some slack on this...I did egg him on to no small extent).

Shame on you!
And I do cut him slack since he evidently keeps his thermometer under his tin-foil hat.

 

[grmorton]

I am still amazed of how accurate this initial prediction turned out to be. For those who haven't been paying attention, this was on page one.

Thistlethorn, why don't you actually talk about the data rather than moi? Or do you have nothing to actually contribute? So what if he could look at my blog and our previous discussion and AMAZINGLY predict what my arguments were going to be. That has zero to do with whether or not I am correct. Only data says that. Only physics says that.

I love the utter abysmal illogic of your argument above. It is basically this syllogism

Thaumaturgy predicted GRM would show airconditioners next to thermometers.

GRM, darn it, actually showed a picture of a thermometer next to an air conditioner.

Therefore Glenn is wrong.

How infantile. How lacking in logical abilities. How insipid.

I can construct a similar one for Wegner when he was being ridiculed by the geological community.

"Before the AAPG meeting Jeffreys predicted that Wegener would present pictures of how South America and Africa fit together.

Wegener showed that darn picture again

Therefore Wegener and continental drift are wrong."

Is this the level of thinking skills that are now being taught in the universities? How sad that is.

Let's have another example of it. Before the current economic crash Taleb warned the world that the banks were fragile. Consensus KNEW that he was an idiot. They were constructing the same syllogism as you every time Taleb showed up.

Here comes Taleb, he is going to say that the banks are fragile.

He presented a case that the banks are fragile.

Therefore he is wrong. http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/imbeciles.htm <--interesting read

For several months many of the sheeple people criticized Bob Janjuah in London. He had written in July 2007

"
Losses on housing are going to deepen, Janjuah said, with unsold inventories, mortgage delinquencies, foreclosures and falling home prices contributing to market woes.
``Be prepared for zero recovery on some bonds in this space,'' Janjuah said in the report.
A selloff in global stock markets is likely to be the catalyst for the Crossover index reaching 500,000 euros, Janjuah said."
Bond Defaults May Rise, Royal Bank of Scotland Says (Update1) - Bloomberg.com

So after that when he would appear to spread his doom and gloom one could construct the following silliness.

Janjuah is speaking and will tell us the mortgage market is in trouble.

Danged if he didn't tell us that the mortgage market is in trouble.

Therefore Janjuah is wrong. No problems are coming for the sub prime mortgages.

I will predict that you will continue to not deal with the data, and continue to call me a liar. In this way, when you again call me a liar, you will be wrong.

Just using your own illogic.


I stand by my knowledge that putting air conditioners and other heat sources next to thermometers will raise the temperature of the air and thus the temperature measured by the thermometer. If you don't, then you are really in need of some decent schooling.

I am also amazed that Glen is still going on about some poorly placed temperature stations, as that does nothing to strengthen the argument he initially tried to put forth.

I just wrote this to address your lack of understanding of experimental science.

I am always so absolutely astounded at the lack of understanding of data collection with regard to the physics of the situation. Let's illustrate the problem I see with the heat sources next to air conditioners.

Let's say you want to measure the very weak magnetic field of the earth. Now the earth's magnetic field has a strength of 0.5 Gauss. It doesn't matter for the purposes of illustration what Gauss is. Now, the first thing I am going to do is to be sure that there are no nearby magnetic fields which are of the order of 0.5 Gauss. Indeed, if I want to find the next digit in the Earth's magnetic field I need to have no spurious magnetic sources greater than 0.005 Gauss. Only by making the environment of my detector free of spurious magnetic fields enough so that I can actually detect the tiny signal I want. Only by doing this, can I hope to be successful.

That is the first thing I would do. But the AGW folks wouldn't wouldn't care if there is a 100 Gauss bar magnet near by. Hey, that can't be a problem can it? Duh-dup! They also don't care if a toaster oven with its heating coils is next to the detector. Heating coils produce strong magnetic fields, at least strong in relation to 5 Gauss. "Who cares?" to paraphrase a person this morning. It can be corrected for say others. Of course it can IF you know the magnet is there,. IF you know the placement and strength of the magnet. If the magnet is beneath the table and you don't know it, you will measure too strong of a field. YOu will also measure a field tilted oddly with respect to the earth.

Yep, the AGW folk think it is fine and dandy to have magnets next to your sensitive magnetic sensors. That is how they conduct science.

Let's say now that you want to measure the CHANGE in the strength of the earth's magnetic field. This will involve determining the direction of the field , the strength of the field and then by comparing two different times, the change in the field. Well, an AGW advocate wouldn't care if an magnetic induction coil was nearby the station at one time but not the other. It is irrelevant, as one guy said here. It is about as irrelevant as a rubber band ruler is to the measurement of the bed that must fit through your door. Now if you have 80 years of measurements of the magnetic field and some of them have induction coils near the sensor and others didn't. And you don't know when the induction coil was there and when it wasn't. Your data will be crap. But, the AGW folks don't care. It doesn't matter to them that there are induction coils changing the magnetic field.

If you want to measure gravity waves you literally need to stay away from bicycles.

" The LIGO site was chosen as the venue for this magnetometer because it provides both Internet access and a location away from traffic. The magnetometer is a sensitive metal detector if the metal object is in motion. Therefore, the magnetometer requires a radius of exclusion from bicycles, cars, trucks, trains, etc., and the larger the vehicle, the larger the radius of exclusion necessary. The heavily trafficked SLU campus was thus unsuitable for the instrument." LIGO Livingston Observatory News
But the AGW folks don't care that bicycles are nearby. Shoot, it is irrelevant that they might interfere with the sensitive measurement. Such things can be detected by statistics. But of course it isn't detection of bad data that is the point. It is the measurement of a signal that doesn't include a bicycle.

And when you want to go on a diet it really doesn't matter that their spouse tweaks that dial under the scale to make them measure lighter and lighter each day. By that I mean, she moves it towards the lighter side every day so that they THINK they are losing weight when in fact they aren't.

AGW folks don't seem to care that cities have built up and cemented up huge tracks of land over the past century. They don't care that the no station 100 years ago had an neighboring air conditioner coil but lots of them do today. It is irrelevant.
If I have to be the only kid in the crowd to proclaim the nakedness of the emperor, so be it.

Glen has, in this thread, said that he:

- accepts that the earth is warming.

- accepts that said warming will have/has an effect on our environment.

You can't read can you. I have NOT said it will have much of an impact. When the earths temperature was about 5 degrees on average higher, and the Arctic 20+ degrees hotter, during the Eocene period, nothing happened to the earth that was of a catasrophic nature. Life went on.

The only thing he doesn't accept, that the vast majority of climatologists do, is that it is us humans that are responsible for a large part of this warming. His point in this discussion should have been to try to demonstrate how this warming is all natural. He has made a few post pertaining to this, but those have been refuted. The rest of his numerous posts have been about squabbling over temperature data from a couple of poorly placed stations, which has nothing to do with what he was trying to say.

So, I take it that you don't think it is a problem to measure things with rubber band rulers.

It's a strange man we're dealing with.

Yeah, someone who isn't gullible and thinks that heat sources are bad when one wishes to measure temperature. NOAA itself says that a heat source next to a thermometer will create a 5 deg C uplift in temperature. That of course is nothing to worry your head about. You gullibly think it is ok. It isn't. And strangely, I won't every accept air conditioners next to my thermometers if I want to know the real temperature. Shoot, I have outdoor thermometers here at the house. I DON"T put them next to my BBQ grill nor my air conditioner coil. Do you do that at home? I bet you do. After all, it doesn't really matter to you. What silliness this all is.

But Thistlethorn would rather talk of my personality not the data nor the problems with it. He lacks skepticism.

Electrical transformers generate lots of heat. Thistlethorn doesn't care that they are next to his thermometers because at home Thistlethorn measures his temperature by putting the thermometer on top of the water heater. It doesn't really matter that the thermometer is there, as far as Thistlethorn is concerned.

Here is a picture of a thermometer next to a transformer. Note that the transformer has heat radiating fins, to help it get rid of the heat it is generating. But of course, the thermometer isn't bothered by that--The Church of the Warm Globe says so.

 

[grmorton]

Shame on you!
And I do cut him slack since he evidently keeps his thermometer under his tin-foil hat.

That is the best place for it. It is hot underthat tinfoil hat but it according to the AGW crowd, the heat doesn't affect the temperature at all.

 

[thaumaturgy]

That is the best place for it. It is hot underthat tinfoil hat but it according to the AGW crowd, the heat doesn't affect the temperature at all.

I owe you a big apology, Glenn. Sorry!

 

[Gracchus]

Shame on you!
And I do cut him slack since he evidently keeps his thermometer under his tin-foil hat.

That is the best place for it. It is hot underthat tinfoil hat but it according to the AGW crowd, the heat doesn't affect the temperature at all.

But if you had another thermometer in your rectum, one in your mouth, one in your armpit, and another in your ear, they might all differ in their readings. They might even have differing mechanisms, bi-metallic, mercury, infra-red, or electronic. Still, if the measured temperature of all them started to rise, you could be fairly certain you had a fever. If that fever were high enough, you would lose judgment, and perhaps start to rave. Whether that was due to infection, poisoning or heat-stroke, it would probably merit attention. (By the way, have you taken your temperature lately?)

It is not what the thermometers read, because that is obviously based on location. It is the trend. Incidentally, that trend is not just recorded by thermometers. It has been documented in tree-rings and glacial ice-cores.

It is warming up. Ranting about misplaced thermometers is mere pettifoggery, specious jactitation.

 

[grmorton]

Not necessarily. With sufficient data it is possible to narrow the confidence intervals around a mean difference that is significantly more constrained than just the standard deviation.

More data of the same variance makes it impossible to increase the confidence.

One of the problem is that we need to distinguish between the variance of the temperature throughout the year and along the entire time series and the variance away from the true temperature. One can not know if a single series actually measures the temperature correctly. You have a series of single measurements of tempeature on a single day.

Let's look at a set of numbers in a bag. Each bag has 100 tokens on it with a number. You don't know what numbers are on the tokens or what their distribution is. You draw a number out of that bag today. It is 86. Is 86 representative of the numbers in the bag for that day? Tomorrow you get a new bag with new numbers. You draw one out of that bag. This goes on and on. Now you have all these numbers and you decide to calculate the variance and standard deviation of these numbers. What do they represent? It certainly doesn't represent the numbers in each bag because you don't know what the numbers in the bag were so you don't know the distribution of the numbers in the bag.

Even if next year the bags start recycling with the proviso that the each bag still has 100 tokens in it. You ask if the bag has the same distribution as last year. You are told no. Thus, You don't get a second shot to sample the bag of last year. OVer the years you collect tokens and you keep them all in order trying to figure out what was in the bags. You are now sampling one token from several thousand bags. The exterior of the bag repeats every year but the numbers repeat occasionally.

Now the variance you calculate tells you nothing about how close your pick on a particular day was to the distribution of tokens in the bag. It only tells you the variance for the tokens you have drawn but does that relate to the distribution of numbers in an individual bag? No way to tell.

Clearly this is the problem we have with doing statistical analysis on temperatures.

Now, you find out that a friend has also been offered the chance to draw tokens from bags for years and years. You are told that his numbers should be very very similar to the ones you drew (this is analogous to the nearby town). So, now you can figure that you have at least 2 samples from bags with almost the same distribution of numbers in each bag. Analyzing those can tell you something about the distribution of numbers within each individual bag. You compare how close the numbers drawn out are. You find that they have a much lower variance than that found in the entire series. And they move somewhat in sync. The two series have a standard deviation of 21.3 and 21.5 when taken independently But you find that the SD is 4 when you take the difference between the two time series.

For the purpose of global warming the real question is "How closely are we measuring the temperature.

And until we get perfect measurement then we will always be left with statistics. The physical interpretation of the data can come only after the appreciation of error terms, which is where stats come in.

YOu are and have been the only person talking about perfect data. There is the true value but all measurments of it have error.

But the physics works only if you know how accurate the input is. Not the other way around. If the input is garbage then the physical conclusions are bad (as you've said many times now).

Ridiculous. Physics can tell you that you are collecting crap.

Statistics tells us how good that input data is rather than trying to make assumptions about the ends of the distributions.

We are going to have to disagree on this.

I am no mathematician, so the only thing I am interested in doing is understanding what is being looked at. To my understanding statistics is the only way to check the value of the data. I don't want to get too sidetracked as I would be out of my depth if it got too mathematical.

As I said, I am not going deep into math on this because I want those who are reading along to understand. I think they understand that air conditioners are incompatible with getting a good temperature. For those who want to see what happens, put your thermometer on top of your air conditioner coil. See how quickly the temperature rises.

However I will not make any judgements about the data without firmly dealing with the errors in the data and the only way I have ever heard of to do that without bias is statistics.

Bias can start LONG before statistics is applied. Lets say you read a thermometer every day. I want to mess with your mind. I do the following: say I have a secret thermometer that measures as closely to the true temperature as I can get, and then a feedback loop adjusts a heater so that the thermometer that you read reads 4 degrees higher than it should. It does that every day. You now have a wonderful time series that you can analyze. But statistics will NEVER show you that bias by merely looking at the time series you collect. The only way you will know is if I confess or you find the secret equipment. Statistical analysis won't find it.

Unfortunately I've seen in myself the ability to be mislead by pictures. I've drawn wrong conclusions by oversimplifying my observations. That's why the nitty-gritty details are often the most important.

As they say, the devil is in the details.

Yeah, and the devil is heaters on the thermometers---literally.

Actually this is a really good point and gets to the heart of the debate. If we grant that there's over 1200 temperature stations in the U.S. alone dating back in some cases over a century then we must agree that there's going to be times when people do silly things around them. Park an aluminum trailer, build an ac unit, put up a parking lot. That's why the treatment of the entire data set becomes even more important and why averaging helps. We can see gross trends with enough data, even if it is noisy.

Averaging only means that an individual error is cut down. If all of them have an increasing amount of error over time, if each one has a 3 degree rise in temperature because of the heating world we living in (cities is what I am referring to--thermal pollution), then you will still see a 3 degree rise.

I am sorry to hear that!

Don't be. I am in Gods hands and have lived an incredible life that few get to live. I have moved among government officials and common people and lived on 3 continents, been to Tibet and Antarctica. But the greatest accomplishment of my life is that I have a great relationship with my 3 sons.

I always like to think that "Statistics is what happens to other people." All the stats in the world wouldn't make me any happier if I found myself in the tail of the distribution like that. But there are tails in distributions.

I am the first to say that while I like statistics I hate to think that I could wind up being that 1 in a 100 that has something bad happen. It won't make me feel better AT ALL should I find myself in similar circumstances. You have my condolences.

The reality is that we all get a ride on this merry go round eventually and it is always too soon.

But I bet no one would have believed him without a statistically robust analysis of data.

No, they believed him when he took H. Pylori and got ulcers and then cured himself with a drug that killed H. pylori. Statistics had nothing to do with it..

I know that you have revealed yourself as Thaumaturgy. I actually wondered about that at one point--too much statistics, but I didn't have the guts to post it so one can beleive me or not. I then didn't think of that possibility again. Congrats on fooling my with your new pen name.

I will say that I really wish we had had this kind of discussion last time and am delighted that we have had it this time.

But as I said earlier, I am not leaving this time. I am tired of being bullied by people who say I MUST BELIEVE THIS because I find it as offensive scientifically (maybe more so) as I do find it when the Jehovah's witnesses come visiting. Science is not about consensus. Consensus becomes a bully and causes people not to challenge things. I found as a manager that if I expressed my opinion first, ,my people were more reluctant to challenge me. Thus, I started doing what they do in China. At the end of a meeting the least senior person gets to comment on what he thinks of the deal first. Then it moves up the ladder until after everyone else has said what they think, the leader in the room makes his decision.

Consensus is used to keep people from questioning--that isn't science.

I sent blessings to Contracelsus. I guess you will have to give them to yourself to get them to Thaumaturgy

 

[grmorton]

But if you had another thermometer in your rectum, one in your mouth, one in your armpit, and another in your ear, they might all differ in their readings. They might even have differing mechanisms, bi-metallic, mercury, infra-red, or electronic. Still, if the measured temperature of all them started to rise, you could be fairly certain you had a fever. If that fever were high enough, you would lose judgment, and perhaps start to rave. Whether that was due to infection, poisoning or heat-stroke, it would probably merit attention. (By the way, have you taken your temperature lately?)

It is not what the thermometers read, because that is obviously based on location. It is the trend. Incidentally, that trend is not just recorded by thermometers. It has been documented in tree-rings and glacial ice-cores.

It is warming up. Ranting about misplaced thermometers is mere pettifoggery, specious jactitation.

No it is not pettifoggery. it is physics. If I sit on a heating pad the butt-thermometer will rise while the others dont.

I am always amazed that people think it is OK to have heat souces on thermometers. I will never change on that one. If you wanted to measure the magnetic field of the earth would you put a time variable electric coil next to your sensor? From what you say, I can only think you would suggest that doing such and then having someone criticize you for it would be pettifoggery.

I have a suggestion. Why don't you start a campaign to fix the thermometer stations just to show how wrong I am? Why would anyone want to subject their work to this easy kind of criticism?

Below is a picture of the urban heat island effect in Atlanta. It is a temperature map. You have one thermometer with which to measure the temperature. Where do you put it so that you can be sure you are getting the true temperature. Note the temperature scale.

Asking you this is more pettifoggery on my part. Yeah, we don't have to worry about microtemperature effects which can be 15 degrees change in a few hundred yards! But again, mere pettifoggery.

Yours trully. Petty Pettifogg

 

[ArnautDaniel]

There is no global warming...there are only pandas.

 

[grmorton]

I owe you a big apology, Glenn. Sorry!

I don't think you do. If that is the only way we could have the discussion of the issues that I really truly wanted to have last time, then the idea was ingenious. A week ago when I went to my ranch as I worked I thought about how the thing had spun out of control again. I decided then and there that I would ignore a couple of people and just start posting my stuff. You would have been ignored if you hadn't left and re-incarnated at Contracelsus, so it probably worked for both of us.

I always admire out of the box thinking and that was some

And I really do appreciate your honesty about the saying that thermometers with nearly attached heat sources is a problem. I meant what I said. Few on the AGW side seem to think that it is something that even should be addressed.

 

[thaumaturgy]

More data of the same variance makes it impossible to increase the confidence.

The confidence interval around the mean is a direct function of the amount of data.

Here's the formula for confidence interval for a large population is:

CI = z*s[sub]mean[/sub]

z = 1.96 for the 95% confidence interval

s[sub]mean[/sub] is the standard deviation of the data divided by the sqrt(N)

N = number of data points

More data most assuredly improves confidence. In fact with large enough data sets the 95% confidence interval is inside one standard deviation.

 

[grmorton]

There is no global warming...there are only pandas.

Data would be better

 

[ArnautDaniel]

Data would be better

Twas brillig and the slithey toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe

 

[thaumaturgy]

I don't think you do. If that is the only way we could have the discussion of the issues that I really truly wanted to have last time, then the idea was ingenious. A week ago when I went to my ranch as I worked I thought about how the thing had spun out of control again. I decided then and there that I would ignore a couple of people and just start posting my stuff. You would have been ignored if you hadn't left and re-incarnated at Contracelsus, so it probably worked for both of us.

I always admire out of the box thinking and that was some

And I really do appreciate your honesty about the saying that thermometers with nearly attached heat sources is a problem. I meant what I said. Few on the AGW side seem to think that it is something that even should be addressed.

You are too kind. I felt I had really overstepped my bounds and got pretty snotty and I honestly did want to discuss the data.

I also feel that you are being unnecessarily taken to task for doing stuff that I actually caused to occur. And for that I actually do feel quite guilty.

(I love discussing the data. But I am afraid that I have been responsible for pulling this too far off into the hyper-mathematical weeds. And in all reality I am not a mathematician or a statistician at all. I just love learning this stuff and having a reason to learn it just whets my appetite.

I'm off for the weekend, so have a good weekend everyone. I have a second job I'm starting this weekend so I need to concentrate on getting up to speed on that.

Again, I apologize to everyone on this board for my sock-puppetry. That is a big no-no on discussion forums. It helped me moderate my tone and actually work on the data, but it was still dishonest.)

 

[Thistlethorn]

I do feel a bit like I've been made a fool of, but then again, it didn't really make any difference. The thing is, thauma, Glen was going on and on about the station data before you even jumped in, so I don't really think we can blame you for "egging him on". When I was actively discussing with him earlier, that's the only thing he would touch upon, and all his data pertained to that, so it's basically a big thing with him, although I can't see why.

I still say your post on page one was a good prediction of how the thread would turn out, and indeed, it was good even before you jumped in again.

 

[grmorton]

You are too kind. I felt I had really overstepped my bounds and got pretty snotty and I honestly did want to discuss the data.

I laughed out loud at that. NO ONE calls me 'kind'. All I care about is data and the logic connecting the data. I may be wrong but I will bury people in data.

I also feel that you are being unnecessarily taken to task for doing stuff that I actually caused to occur. And for that I actually do feel quite guilty.

Now you are too kind. I am responsible for MY reaction to anything anyone else does. Besides, I have gotten used to the idea that the political left in this country merely calls people names, like liar, tin-hat wearer etc rather than actually presenting data. Most people can't take it and are silenced by it. After years of YECs calling me names, I got immune to it. At least in your nom-de-plume you were presenting data and some interesting arguments. As I said, and as I said seriously, I only care about data and the logic that connects that data.

As I said, I may be wrong but in order to prove me wrong someone is going to have to do better than Gracchus (who effectively called me a tinhat wearer, but who seems to think that if you stick a thermometer in your butt and sit on a heating pad, the thermometer won't heat up), or Thistlethorn, who likes the word 'liar' and uses attrocious logic in claiming that if you could predict my arguments, therefore I must be wrong. (utterly ludicrous logic, but typical of people who believe and feel rather than deal with the data)

(I love discussing the data. But I am afraid that I have been responsible for pulling this too far off into the hyper-mathematical weeds. And in all reality I am not a mathematician or a statistician at all. I just love learning this stuff and having a reason to learn it just whets my appetite.

Actually I didn't let you drag us into the weeds too far. After last time I determined that when I came back I was not going into those weeds. A debate where only one or two people watching actually understand the issues being discussed is not very interesting.

I liked your alter-ego, and even when revealed I feel I now know YOU a bit better and like what I see.

I'm off for the weekend, so have a good weekend everyone. I have a second job I'm starting this weekend so I need to concentrate on getting up to speed on that.

I gotta go harvest grapes so I will be scarce

Again, I apologize to everyone on this board for my sock-puppetry. That is a big no-no on discussion forums. It helped me moderate my tone and actually work on the data, but it was still dishonest.)

It worked and I am never against what works.

 

[grmorton]

I do feel a bit like I've been made a fool of, but then again, it didn't really make any difference. The thing is, thauma, Glen was going on and on about the station data before you even jumped in, so I don't really think we can blame you for "egging him on". When I was actively discussing with him earlier, that's the only thing he would touch upon, and all his data pertained to that, so it's basically a big thing with him, although I can't see why.

I still say your post on page one was a good prediction of how the thread would turn out, and indeed, it was good even before you jumped in again.

Yes, but your logic is quite sad, Thistlethorn. If the best argument you can present against my case is that Thau predicted what lines of argumentation I would take, then you need seriously to take a course in logic. it is utterly irrelevant to the truth of an argument if someone can predict it.

Shoot, I can predict that there are only a three views for how the universe came into existence, philosophically speaking. All origins theories fall into one of 3 cases. The universe always existed; God or some being created it; it popped into existence out of nothing. Does the fact that I can predicte them make all of them wrong? I guess according to you it does.

Be careful about using bad arguments against those you oppose. If you get caught using silly logic, people will stop listening to you--kind of like the butt-thermometer which some say won't warm if you sit on a hot heating pad. Illogic destroys credibility.

 

[grmorton]

Twas brillig and the slithey toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe

Reminds me of the butt-thermometer.

 

[grmorton]

Now that we have had our group hug, back to the data.

Today the present stretch of consecutive days without a sunspot became 49 days. The importance of that is that this stretch is now the 4th longest observes period of time where the sun has no spots. In 5 days, should it continue, it becomes the third longest.

The importance of this is that the sun outputs less energy when there are no sunspots. When the sun has few sunspots, it outputs about 2-3 watts per meter squared less energy than when it is at the peak of the solar cycle. The IPCC says this about that forcing

"The TAR states that the changes in solar irradiance are not
the major cause of the temperature changes in the second half
of the 20th century unless those changes can induce unknown
large feedbacks in the climate system."
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter1.pdf
Chapter 1 p. 108

They have consistently so far denied any feedbacks. Well,, in a moment.

Now, we are about 3 years late for the start of the next solar cycle. Way way back in post 104 of this thread I documented the failed predictions of the start of this solar cycle. Such failed predictions should alert us that our models are not as good as we think they are. We should have lots of sunspots by now but we don't. As of today the current spotless streak reached 49 days in a row without a sunspot. You can see the variation in solar energy output at
http://climateprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/nasa-solar-fixed.jpg

And today comes a Science article which basically says IPCC is wrong. There are feedbacks which amplify the small temperature differences and can warm the earth far beyond what one would expect merely on energy grounds.

See. Amplifying the Pacific Climate System Response to a Small 11-Year Solar Cycle Forcing Gerald A. Meehl, Julie M. Arblaster, Katja Matthes, Fabrizio Sassi, and Harry van Loon Science 28 August 2009: 1114-1118.


and at ACRIM, a NASA satellite mission we see that since 2003 the energy output of the sun continues to decline.
http://www.acrim.com/pictures/earth_obs_fig4.jpg

Now, this lack of sunspots and lack of energy output has caused July this
year to be one of the coolest in history.

From Pennsylvania
July 2009 coldest in 33 years, weather service says
by STEVEN FARLEY, Of The Patriot-News
Tuesday August 04, 2009, 4:39 PM
If you thought July was cool, you were right: It was the coldest July since 1976 and the ninth coolest on record since 1888, according to the National Weather Service in State College.

http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2009/08/july_2009_coldest_in_33_years.html

Many states had their coldest July's ever--EVER.
http://www.examiner.com/x-219-Denver-Weather-Examiner~y2009m8d14-US-temperatures-for-July-coldest-in-15-years

From NOAA
"For the contiguous United States the average July temperature of 73.5&#176;F was 0.8&#176;F below the 20th century average and ranked as the 27th coolest July on record, based on preliminary data.
An abnormally strong and persistent upper-level pattern during the month helped produce a large number of record low temperatures east of the
Rockies, while warmth was focused west of the Rockies.
Four of the seven states that make up the Central U.S. (Ohio, Illinois,
Indiana, and West Virginia) experienced their coolest ever July in 115 years of records. The region's three remaining states of Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee recorded either their second or third coolest July in history. Pennsylvania also experienced a record cool July, while Wisconsin and Michigan each had its second coolest on record.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/

On another forum, where I was once soundly ridiculed for my beliefs but now am tolerated, a guy from New Zealand described his very very cold winter down there in June:

In support of what Glenn has said, it was been the one of the coldest June's in New Zealand this year, and it has been one of the coldest July's as well .

Newspaper articles in support for the above:
Hamilton shivers in cold snap | Stuff.co.nz
Thought June was chilly? You'd be right | Stuff.co.nz
The big chill (+pics) - news - waikato-times | Stuff.co.nz
June temperatures well below average - Niwa - National - NZ Herald News
Sunshine heralds end of winter's chill - National - NZ Herald News

And as I commute to work on my Mountain Bike, I must admit that riding at -5&#176;C plus the windchill factor (which pushes it to below -10) is not very fun

It has warmed in August but one must know that not every month will be cold.


Now, some hysteriacs are suggesting that we go block sunlight in massive geo-engineering projects. If we go put shades on the earth and reflect MORE heat, we may find that we cause another year without a summer. We almost had that this year.

It is frosty in New England this year.
http://www.breitbart.tv/august-in-new-hampshire-temperatures-dropping-into-the-30s/

And the last time that happened was 1816.

"The infamous eruption in 1815 of Tambora, on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa, seven hundred miles east of Krakatoa, ejected twice the volume of material into the atmosphere (eleven cubic miles of rock, ash, and dust, compared with Krakatoa&#8217;s six). The devastation it caused locally was profound&#8212;supposedly fifty thousand dead, an entire language (Tambora) extinguished, an entire island rendered uninhabitable for years. But its climatic effects were astounding too. For it lowered the world&#8217;s temperature by almost one Celsius degree, on average: for every day when the normal temperature might be thirty-three, just above freezing, the temperature in the year after Tambora would be thirty-one degrees Fahrenheit, and ice would have formed on every pond and, more fatally, on every newborn crop, flower and hatching egg."
"So in New England the farmers claimed that 1816 was &#8216;the year without summer.&#8217; There were frosts as far south as New Jersey in late May, in upper New England in June and July, and the growing season was slashed from the usual 160 days to seventy. Soup kitchens opened in Manhattan. Livestock had to be fed on fish carried over from the Atlantic seaports&#8212;1816 is also still remembered as &#8216;the mackerel year.&#8217; There were crop failures-"the last great subsistence crisis of the Western world&#8217;&#8212;and, as a result, there was emigration to the Western states. No small number of today&#8217;s Californians can rightly lay responsibility for their being Californians squarely at the door of the proximate cause of that year&#8217;s ruinous cold&#8212;Tambora, a volcano unknown to most of them, and ten thousand miles away. (Although there was migration into California from Europe, in Newfoundland quite the reverse took place: Migrants were sent back east across the ocean, because there was not enough for them to eat.)
"and yet back in Europe it was just as bad. The weather for 1816 is the worst recorded, with low temperatures stretching as far south as Tunisia. French grapes could not be harvested until November. The German wheat crop failed entirely, and prices for flour had doubled in a year. In some places there were reports of famine, and in others there were riots and mass migrations. The diaries and newspapers of the day present a litany of miseries. It is said that Byron composed his most miserable poem, "Darkness"&#8212;Morn came and went&#8212;and came, and brought no day&#8212;under the influence of that dismal year; and Mary Shelley may have written Frankenstein while gripped by a similarly unseasonable melancholy." Simon Winchester, Krakatoa, (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), p. 292-293

Now, even before the Tambora eruption, the lack of sunspots had already lowered the temperatures of the few stations in operation at that time.

From 1780 until 1815 the dearth of sunspots had caused the Europe to cool between 1 and 1.5 degrees. see picture below. Then came a big volcano which further caused the cooling. Some farmers called it Eighteen hundred and starve to death. It froze every month of the year in New England, the result of few sunspots and a big volcano.

The fact that we are 3 years late for sunspots and that this inter-cycle period has had 700 total spotless days (since 2004) combined with the fact that the average is about 485 should get everyone' attention. But it doesn't. Ideology prevents people from looking at the data every bit as much as my former YEC ideology prevented me from looking at the data.

 

[grmorton]

A question for those who think consensus is important. The consensus is that the economy is bottoming out and better times are coming. That may or may not be true. Only time will tell.

But I would call attention to the fact that only data, not hopes, desires and wannabe's determines what the case will be.

I have a general beleif that usually the crowd is wrong. I would ask those who think the present consensus that the economy is improving why it is that the Baltic Dry Index is declining???

Now almost 100&#37; of you are saying "The WHAT index?" This is the index that measures the cost of shipping goods across the sea. When times are grand, like in May 2008, the index was 11000 or so. During the worst of the collapse last fall it fell below 1000. In June, it rose to 4500, and that is when the global trade improved by 2.5%. That is the latest info on global trade.

But, what has happened since June? The index has been cut by 50%. How can this be? Consensus says that things are getting better!!. Everyone knows that.

So why are the ship owners getting more and more desperate and bidding DOWN the cost of shipping? Since July the index is down 32%. In the last 2 weeks it is down 15%. If the cost of shipping is dropping, it doesn't sound like a recovery. It means fewer goods are being shipped. But of course the sheeple in the economic world will continue to BELIEVE that things are getting better, even if they might not be, even if the data goes against that thesis.

Consensus will almost always lead you astray because most people don't do any research. They simply believe what it is they are told on the CBS news. You can see the Baltic Dry index at:

Bloomberg.com: Personal Finance

Am I right about a coming collapse of the market when everyone else thinks it is going up? I don't know. But I do find it oddly curious that the index for the cost of shipping shows that the shipowners are more and more willing to take less and less money to ship things. That is data. Political beliefs don't matter to the truth or falsity of what I am saying. Only reality matters.

Time will tell if I am correct or stupidly staying out of the market right now (except for oil which will rise as this country spends itself into oblivion.)

BTW, when I went to Alaska last month, I held a 100 trillion dollar note in my hand. It IS our future.

This is not off topic because it shows why consensus might be wrong. Time will tell if I am correct, but I am betting serious money on this view. And all that means is that I believe what I am saying. I am also betting serious money against global warming.

 

[grmorton]

I do feel a bit like I've been made a fool of, but then again, it didn't really make any difference.

The more I think about this statement the more puzzled and curious I become. Why should what Thau did make you out to be a fool? Didn't you say what you believed? Or do you only fight those whom Thau tells you to fight? Or do you feel betrayed by Thau? If so, why? Don't you argue what you truly believe or do you only argue that which your compatriots argue?

I say what I believe to be the case, right or wrong, but I do beleive what I say. Because of that, what Thaumaturgy did doesn't change anything at all for me. When he was Contracelsus, I told him that I respected him. That doesn't change now that he is Thaumaturgy, my old arch enemy again. We may have a blow up in the future but that is something for another day.

I know you hate my guts but I am really really curious about why you feel that way.