The Holocene Deniers

[thaumaturgy]

Now, will you finally answer my question: Do you think the modern thermometers are worse than those used in 1900 and thus in need of more 'correction' than those of 1900?

No I do not. I suspect Phileas hit the nail on the head when he said we don't really know how much these measurements need to be corrected. But I don't know that for sure.

Remember a lot of chemistry, the fundamentals, were established by people with home-made temperature measurement devices.

No one will ever have perfection, but one needs verification. If a model can't model the present, why should I believe what it says about the future?

That's why I was so happy to see the article from the University of Utah which states that modern coupled models appear to accurately model current climate:

"Coupled models are becoming increasingly reliable tools for understanding climate and climate change, and the best models are now capable of simulating present-day climate with accuracy approaching conventional atmospheric observations," said Thomas Reichler of Utah’s Department of Meteorology. "We can now place a much higher level of confidence in model-based projections of climate change than in the past."
(SOURCE)

(emphasis added).

Now, I have addressed your issues but you have not ever addressed my question about the editorial warming. Do you think it OK for editing to add 0.3 deg C to the temperature of the US? Yes or no?

Do you mean in the same way I "edit" the voltage output of a pH meter to make it read the same pH for a standardized buffer each day despite the fact that the probe may be aging and changing and "shifting" it's slope?

Yeah, I'm quite ok with that.

Here's a brief look at my morning as I blatantly correct the output of analytical instruments in the service of science:

Each day I go into the lab and I need to measure the pH of solutions. Each morning I start out by calibrating the pH meter. It is an electrochemical cell that reads out a voltage depending on how much hydrogen ion is in the solution.

No pH meter made can just look at a solution and tell you “how many moles of H[sup]+[/sup] ions are in there”, but it can tell you all about the electrical features of that solution.

Each and every day it measures a given voltage. If I were to simply measure the voltage each day I would have a measure that, depending on conditions will only stand in as a proxy for the actual pH. The voltage could drift over time but it would still measure what it measures.

When I calibrate the pH probe (which should be done very regularly) what I am doing is telling the machine that under the present conditions, however the probe itself is working, this is the correlation between the voltage and the pH scale. I am inducing a correlation. I am telling it that no matter how it is functioning that day (and it might have developed some electrical offset or other problem) that I am going to arbitrarily define whatever the voltage difference seen for the different known pH solutions is how it will correlate for that day. Even though there is an ideal theoretical correlation that would, under perfect conditions, be exactly the same every day.

In essence I am correcting the data on a daily basis for any sort of changes in the pH probe. (Maintaining and Calibrating pH Electrodes / pH Probes)

Want proof that pH probes change over time? Then keep track of the “slope” calculated each day for several months. As a probe ages the slope becomes less accurate. After a certain point the slope calculated during the calibration phase is too far off from the theoretically idea slope to allow the data to be reliable anymore. But during that time, over time, the probe can be getting worse but still be used precisely because I am calibrating it.

In addition the pH measurement is compensated for temperature of the solution. Another “correction”. pH can change slightly with temperature due to the ionization reaction itself, but also because the pH probe itself is affected by temperature. Hence a temperature measurement should be included. (Temperature and pH Measurement </head>)

[FONT=&quot] Since pH values are temperature dependent, pH applications require some form of temperature compensation to ensure standardizes pH values. Meters and controllers with automatic temperature compensation (ATC) receive a continuous signal from a temperature element and automatically correct the pH value based on the temperature of the solution.[/FONT]
(http://www.4oakton.com/TechTips/TT_ph.pdf)

To assume that each day the most reasonable activity would be to just measure the raw voltage and be done with it is to miss the point of even running the instrument. Data is processed, filtered, correlated with something and output. Without those corrections it would give me little more useful information than a random noise generator.

This has inspired me a bit. I think I'm going to go in tomorrow and run around the lab measuring the raw voltage (without any calibration) of a single buffer solution on all the different pH meters we have. If I think of it I'll post the values. It will be on the same solution so it should be a nice test. There's some old and crotchety pH probes. I rather suspect they will have different voltages, especially if they aren't calibrated. I look forward to this little experiment!

 

[thaumaturgy]

Oh yes we did. We had millions living near the shore then as we do now.

According to this source, the estimated world population in 3000BCE was about 25 million. The current population of Myanmar alone is twice that. No doubt many of those 25 million lived near the coast, but I would be hard pressed to compare the populations living in flood prone coastal areas with the orders of magnitude more people living today in coastal flood prone areas.

Ok, lets take New Orleans. I lived in southern Lousiana in the mid-1980s. Everyone knew that there would eventually be a hurricane which would take out New Orleans. Everyone knew that there will eventually be a hurricane coming up the Atchafalaya bay which will wipe out most of the towns south of Lafayette. Yet people buy property there. We have rebuilt New Orleans (in part it is now a sad shadow if its former self). But we know that another hurricane will come and wipe them out. The people who live there KNOW what is comeing yet they assume the risk. Similarly, even the poor along the coast know what is coming, yet they assume the risk that it won't happen during their life time. They are adults. they are free. They can take whatever risk they want to take.

But that's my point entirely. They assume the risk but clearly everyone in the U.S. pays. Surely it is unimaginable that the folks in the Lower 9th Ward were capable of paying for destruction (!)

Or, they could do the rational thing and start finding jobs elsewhere. I am not responsible for their choices, good or bad.

Responsible or not you and I will continue to pay for it. But in addition, New Orleans is the 3rd largest port in the Northern Hemisphere if I recall correctly. A massive amount of the U.S. trade goes through New Orleans. That means a lot of people to staff that. We'll always need a port down there. Whether it's in Baton Rouge or New Orleans. There's always going to be people there.

But if millions of people all around the perimeter of the U.S. alone move inland suddenly it isn't going to be pretty. No matter how much we would like to let everyone who lived on the coasts bear the burden of their choices we all know that isn't how it will work out in the end.

You act as if this is going to happen in 5 minutes.

No. I don't.

I am aware it will happen slowly enough for most of the people to easily move away from the danger zone. That means they will move up into my town which is only 30 miles inland and it will be really hard on the local economy (there's a giant desert just over the mountains from us, so it's not like there's a lot of available land here 'bouts).

It will happen fast enough to be a potentially major economic catastrophe.

So you think modern humans are too stupid to react? Has our species, in your mind, become less smart?

You will note I didn't say that. I know we are adaptable (that's why I used the word 'adaptable' in my sentence there), but we can't adapt beyond a certain limit and at the very least we can't all adapt. It isn't going to be pretty if the climate changes dramatically and even relatively rapidly.

I absolutely love this inconsistency. You and others have chided me for saying that some global warming advocates beleive that mankind will be doomed if we don't fix global warming. Several people have said how ridiculous it was of me to state that view. Yet, here you are saying that if we don't fix global warming mankind might not get a seat at the table.

I believe what has been said (at least by me) relatively consistently is that the earth will likely not be "destroyed" and even life will go on like it has before. Just that humans, being a single species may not be able to adapt.

As you know from your years in geology, there are any number of extinctions for less variability in any given ecosystem. I don't see us as being particularly special in that we are animals as well. We can go extinct.

My gut tells me that you jump on me because I don't believe in AGW but you won't jump on him for the same statement because he does.

Well, it would be cause for concern if we were arguing that point. But I have been relatively consistent in my statements. If you find otherwise please feel free to point out my inconsistency.

Note, I am not saying it is a fait accompli that humanity will go extinct. I'm just saying all the scenarios are grim to different levels with the worst case possibly being human extinction. But the "best case scenario" may be as "good" as mere destruction of our current society.

I don't know, I might be wrong, but my nose smells a strong odor of hypocrisy on the part of those who have claimed that I overstated the doom claims of AGW.

I think you were taken to task (at least by me) for thinking that AGW advocates assume all life will be destroyed. I don't believe I have ever made that claim, hence nothing to be considered hypocritical.

You might think so, but those who know me personally know that I doubt almost everything and those who have had to have me review their prospects know how thorough I can be.

If there was a true subterfuge on the part of people more powerful than the likes of you or I, I highly doubt you or I could find any damning evidence. (This is why conspiracy theories of any scope are usually laughable).

In the present case you are posting stuff that is all out there and in the open and has quite a few papers (often dry and dull) that explain in painful detail why the correction was done and how.

I think we can agree that there is no way to know anything with 100% certainty. So, if that is the case, why is it so awful to doubt something, anything?

It is not awful to doubt something. I concur and wholeheartedly agree with your skeptical bent on things. But in the present case I don't know if continued doubt that might keep us from taking concerted action "before it's too late" is useful. But you are free to dissent.

However dissent with highly specialized topics (climatology in the present case) must require that we deal with the data as the professionals are dealing with it; statistics, models and all.

Oh good grief, statistics isn't certainty. If that is all we have then all we have is a probability.

I don't recall saying statistics was certainty. It is certain that the most appropriate way to deal with real-world data which has noise is Statistics. Real world data has uncertainty, statistics quantifies that uncertainty and allows us to use inherently noisy data to draw meaningful conclusions.

The minute we get away from appreciating the statistics of the data is the minute we are off talking about individual anecdotal data, which is the quickest way to make anti-science out of data.

I agree that over the past 30 years the world has warmed. At least part of that is demonstrably due to man-made global warming by the editors at Goddard Institute.

Then I am even more confused about the vehemence of this debate. I cannot get a read on why this is going the way it is going.

From 1968 to the present, yes, but we are not warmer than 1934 (and even Hansen admits that, and we are not warmer than 5000 years ago when the world was 2-3 Deg C warmer than we are at present.

Here's the Pollack-Huang borehole temperature proxy reconstruction:

Goes back 500 years. The red line is the meteorological record overlain on the borehole reconstruction data.
(SOURCE)

because it is the only QUANTITATIVE evidence of warming.

Actually surface stations are not the only quantitative evidence of warming. Clearly we have other means: borehole data, satellite data, ocean temperature data, etc. In addition to various chemical and physical proxies that can extend the view backwards.

 

[grmorton]

No I do not. I suspect Phileas hit the nail on the head when he said we don't really know how much these measurements need to be corrected. But I don't know that for sure.

Then I re-iterate. If we don't know the error in the 1900 thermometers, we have no way to know if the world has warmed or not. In order to determine the warming, one must have good data 100 years ago and good data today. If we don't know how good the old data is, then we can't know if the world has really warmed from the thermometer record.

Sometimes I shake my head at this.

A secondary question comes to mind. If you think today's thermometers are better, why are they having to correct them by 0.3 deg C???? That seems to imply that the modern thermometers are bad and are reading too cold. How can you think they are good if they mis-read the temperature that badly?

Remember a lot of chemistry, the fundamentals, were established by people with home-made temperature measurement devices.

Not an analogy Thau. in 1900 the weather service used standard issue equipment. It wasn't home made.

Do you mean in the same way I "edit" the voltage output of a pH meter to make it read the same pH for a standardized buffer each day despite the fact that the probe may be aging and changing and "shifting" it's slope?

Yeah, I'm quite ok with that.

This seems utterly inconsistent with your statement above that the modern thermometers are better today. Above they were better than the 1900 thermometers which aren't corrected but here the modern ones need correcting and you are ok with that. We will have to agree to disagree on tis. When I see a systematic change of data towards a political belief, I worry that science is being forced to support that which it doesn't.

Each and every day it measures a given voltage. If I were to simply measure the voltage each day I would have a measure that, depending on conditions will only stand in as a proxy for the actual pH. The voltage could drift over time but it would still measure what it measures.

Ok, so you say that the thermometers have drift over time. Do you have a peer reviewed journal, a study which backs up this assertion?

Want proof that pH probes change over time?

No, I want proof that thermometers drift over time. I don't give a rats rear end about pH sensors. That is irrelevant to whether or not the temperature drifts. The fact is that pH can drift and temperature not, so just because you have a problem doesn't automatically prove a problem with thermometers. So, put up the proof that thermometers drift over time.

 

[grmorton]

According to this source, the estimated world population in 3000BCE was about 25 million. The current population of Myanmar alone is twice that. No doubt many of those 25 million lived near the coast, but I would be hard pressed to compare the populations living in flood prone coastal areas with the orders of magnitude more people living today in coastal flood prone areas.

YOu said we didn't have millions living near the coast. We did. They have and always were the most populous areas .

But that's my point entirely. They assume the risk but clearly everyone in the U.S. pays. Surely it is unimaginable that the folks in the Lower 9th Ward were capable of paying for destruction (!)

While I agree that it is impossible for the people of the 9th ward to pay, the reality is if they expect us to pay they are NOT assuming the risk. We are.

Responsible or not you and I will continue to pay for it. But in addition, New Orleans is the 3rd largest port in the Northern Hemisphere if I recall correctly. A massive amount of the U.S. trade goes through New Orleans. That means a lot of people to staff that. We'll always need a port down there. Whether it's in Baton Rouge or New Orleans. There's always going to be people there.

Before the 1901 Galveston storm, Galveston was the port for Texas. It was the largest city in Texas. After the storm it shrank and Houston grew. Baton Rouge or some other town ABOVE sea level needs to take over--Maybe Mobile. Reality is the delta is sinking taking New Orleans with it and that will not be able to be stopped any more than one can stop natural temperature variations.

But if millions of people all around the perimeter of the U.S. alone move inland suddenly it isn't going to be pretty. No matter how much we would like to let everyone who lived on the coasts bear the burden of their choices we all know that isn't how it will work out in the end.

SEAS! I ORDER YOU NOT TO RISE. SUN, I ORDER YOU TO COOL DOWN.

There, it is all fixed.

No. I don't.

I am aware it will happen slowly enough for most of the people to easily move away from the danger zone. That means they will move up into my town which is only 30 miles inland and it will be really hard on the local economy (there's a giant desert just over the mountains from us, so it's not like there's a lot of available land here 'bouts).

Actually it will be wonderful for the local economy if you are already there. Buy up land now. When all those people move in, you will get rich as land prices rise.

I believe what has been said (at least by me) relatively consistently is that the earth will likely not be "destroyed" and even life will go on like it has before. Just that humans, being a single species may not be able to adapt.

I love this, a catastrophe that will take out humans but not dogs, squirrels or robins. Care to actually describe how this will work?

Well, it would be cause for concern if we were arguing that point. But I have been relatively consistent in my statements. If you find otherwise please feel free to point out my inconsistency.

Well, it isn't you. But everytime I talk about AGW advocates saying that humanity or the world is doomed, people jump on me as if I have said the oddest thing. Yet, you sit here and say humanity may be doomed and no one jumps on you for saying what I am saying. I find that odd because it means that they are partisans not scientists.

I think you were taken to task (at least by me) for thinking that AGW advocates assume all life will be destroyed. I don't believe I have ever made that claim, hence nothing to be considered hypocritical.

When Hansen uses the term runaway greenhouse, which he does, that word has a particular scientific meaning. Venus is a runaway greenhouse. We couldn't live there.

If there was a true subterfuge on the part of people more powerful than the likes of you or I, I highly doubt you or I could find any damning evidence. (This is why conspiracy theories of any scope are usually laughable).

Bizarre statement.

In the present case you are posting stuff that is all out there and in the open and has quite a few papers (often dry and dull) that explain in painful detail why the correction was done and how.

Yes, and I have mentioned that they add heat via the homogeneity correction. That bothers me. Maybe it doesn't bother you. Maybe you think whatever they do is perfection boiled down to its purest essence, but I don't.

It is not awful to doubt something. I concur and wholeheartedly agree with your skeptical bent on things. But in the present case I don't know if continued doubt that might keep us from taking concerted action "before it's too late" is useful. But you are free to dissent.

Finally, someone on your side says it is ok for me to doubt and be skeptical. Mostly they think I should conform. I have never been a conformist.

However dissent with highly specialized topics (climatology in the present case) must require that we deal with the data as the professionals are dealing with it; statistics, models and all.

Here is more of the sit down and let your superiors tell you what to believe crap. I can tell you from personal experience if you don't question what your doctor is going to do to you, you are a fool. IF we should question our doctors, why are climatologists so sacred and above questioning?

The minute we get away from appreciating the statistics of the data is the minute we are off talking about individual anecdotal data, which is the quickest way to make anti-science out of data.

I appreciate statistics. I just don't think it is the only thing in the universe. I always get the feel that you do. Physics doesn't seem to matter much to you although you are one of the few AGW folks who has actually said that airconditioners and thermometers don't go together so there might be some hope for you.


Of the vehemence, the problen is that the AGW crowd has polilticized the science.

Yes, I actually happen to know something about this study below, from a guy who was involved early on.

Here's the Pollack-Huang borehole temperature proxy reconstruction:

Goes back 500 years. The red line is the meteorological record overlain on the borehole reconstruction data.
(SOURCE)

There was an earlier study by the same authors which didn't show such heating. Then they eliminated lots of points and voila, it warmed. I have to go to work right now so I don't have time to look it up.

But I would point you to http://www.kilty.com/pdfs/t-d.pdf

For a discussion of some of the difficulties. The problem with partisan advocates for any position is that they never have read the other side.

Actually surface stations are not the only quantitative evidence of warming. Clearly we have other means: borehole data, satellite data, ocean temperature data, etc. In addition to various chemical and physical proxies that can extend the view backwards.

Data is only as good as the raw data allowed in.

 

[thaumaturgy]

In order to determine the warming, one must have good data 100 years ago and good data today. If we don't know how good the old data is, then we can't know if the world has really warmed from the thermometer record.

Sometimes I shake my head at this.

You shouldn't. There's plenty of non-thermometer proof of global warming. Everything (as has been pointed out so far) from satellite to borehole to proxy data.

And therein lies the important point: thermometers may be flawed but when one flawed system aligns with another independent system to say the same thing then we have reason to believe the errors in the systems are minimal.

A secondary question comes to mind. If you think today's thermometers are better, why are they having to correct them by 0.3 deg C????

Just as you now know exactly how to process a seismic signal in ways never dreamed of 60 years ago.

When I see a systematic change of data towards a political belief, I worry that science is being forced to support that which it doesn't.

Does it occur to you that the science says what the science says and it only becomes a political belief when people start layering on their politics in the debate?

As I pointed out in our previous debate one of the pioneers of modern oceanography, Roger Revelle, was one of the first to note that we are possibly involved in a previously unimaginable human-induced experiment with regards to CO[sub]2[/sub] levels in our atmosphere. And this was long before anyone even thought about global warming. There is a very interesting history to global impact of CO[sub]2[/sub] concentration on earth systems going back to the early 1950's.

Ok, so you say that the thermometers have drift over time.

No, I did not say that. What I said was that systems have errors which can and must be corrected for. That is all. It is just what we do in science. We have raw data and we have processed data. Measuring raw data gives no insight.

Processing, calibrating and compensating for ancillary effects is simply how science is done.

No, I want proof that thermometers drift over time. I don't give a rats rear end about pH sensors.

Of course you don't care about pH sensors but the point remains the same. The fact is that any measurement system requires calibration. Many require compensation. All require rational interpretation.

That is irrelevant to whether or not the temperature drifts. The fact is that pH can drift and temperature not, so just because you have a problem doesn't automatically prove a problem with thermometers. So, put up the proof that thermometers drift over time.

You often seem to veer of into the hyper-literal in these points I raise. I rather hoped you would be able to expand outwards and see the point I am making. Don't worry that I used the phrase "pH probe". Think about the point I am making here. Any measurement system can require calibration and often compensation.

 

[thaumaturgy]

YOu said we didn't have millions living near the coast. We did. They have and always were the most populous areas .

A pedantic point, but possibly true. If we have 25 million people on earth then it is marginally possible we had "more than 1 million" living near the coastal areas or 4% of the population.

If, however, the actual point of my statement was of any import then clearly we have a very different dynamic today when 8 million people live in NYC alone and 47 million live in Myanmar, thus dwarfing the entire world's population in 3000BCE.

While I agree that it is impossible for the people of the 9th ward to pay, the reality is if they expect us to pay they are NOT assuming the risk. We are.

And we do. Unfortunately reality is what it is.

Baton Rouge or some other town ABOVE sea level needs to take over

Indeed. That would be a great start. But that's going to be a lot of money to dredge a channel up from NO to BR. I guess we end up paying one way or another.

SEAS! I ORDER YOU NOT TO RISE. SUN, I ORDER YOU TO COOL DOWN.

There, it is all fixed.

There are times in this debate when I honestly don't know what you are on about. I'm sorry if I missed something here.

Actually it will be wonderful for the local economy if you are already there. Buy up land now. When all those people move in, you will get rich as land prices rise.

Um. Yeah. A city that has infrastructural support for only a couple hundred thousand and little arable land to expand into will have a bit more problems than merely how much money they can get from refugees moving into our area.

I live in Southern California. To the east of me only about 40 miles is an enormous desert that really doesn't stop for several hundred miles. To the north is more of the semi-desert we live in and doesn't really have the ability to easily absorb lots and lots of people. Certainly without an economic impact.

I love this, a catastrophe that will take out humans but not dogs, squirrels or robins. Care to actually describe how this will work?

I am unable to debate the point if you are insistent upon building strawmen out of it. Did I say anything about dogs squirrels robins? I rather assumed you were familiar with geologic history based on your experience. There have been extinctions that did not take out all life in the earth's history. Trilobites are no longer with us, but corals are. Dinosaurs are no longer with us but crocidilians are.

Please, do not oversimplify my points to generate a ridiculous parody of them and then attack me for the parody. It would make the discussion much more fruitful.

Yet, you sit here and say humanity may be doomed and no one jumps on you for saying what I am saying.

Probably because I almost always obsess over taking a measured and rational tone to my statements. You would be hard-pressed to find my statements to this effect to be lacking the appropriate caveats that allow for some degree of error.

That is precisely how I think and work in general. I tend not to make overly definitive statements about subjects that are inherently difficult to make definitive statements about.

When Hansen uses the term runaway greenhouse, which he does, that word has a particular scientific meaning. Venus is a runaway greenhouse. We couldn't live there.

Correct. That is precisely why, if you look back at my posts I usually, when discussing this very thing, explicitly state something to the effect of "assuming the absence of a runaway greenhouse effect". Clearly a Venusian model would render almost all life on earth (with the possiblility of deeply buried extremophile chemoautotrophs) impossible. But I don't know what the likelihood of that is.

I tend to err on the side of a more measured stance. Figuring the possible destruction of American civilization is sufficient to motivate my fellow Americans to care enough to do something, especially when the science is as strong as it currently is.

Bizarre statement.

Well, that is sadly what I feel most who think that NASA, NOAA, various world-wide climatological groups, meteorological groups are lying to them are effectively doing: building a "conspiracy theory".

In order for this all to be a grand political bamboozle it has to be a giant world-wide conspiracy of the majority of climatologists all over the planet. And since yahoos like myself and others on here can easily find and post the data on Christian Forums it would indicate it is a very poor conspiracy.

Yes, and I have mentioned that they add heat via the homogeneity correction. That bothers me.

Perhaps I am missing something. Are you claiming that they intentionally raised the temperature for no other reason than to correspond to a political motive?

Because if the correction is a legitimate correction (ie scientifically robust and for rational reasons) then if the trend shows warming one cannot then claim the chicken came before the egg.

In this case it matters quite a bit when one gets to "Motive".

Thankfully, as has been pointed out numerous times now, we have a lot of data to support the idea of global warming that has nothing whatsoever to do with USHCN surface station data.

Maybe it doesn't bother you. Maybe you think whatever they do is perfection boiled down to its purest essence, but I don't.

When the temperature trends from surface station data correspond to physical events (such as plant hardiness zones moving systematically northward, increases in water vapor in the atmosphere, ocean temperature, physical proxy data, etc.) then I tend to have less problem with what the USHCN stations say. In fact, the USHCN stations become less important as more supporting (independent) data come on line.

Here is more of the sit down and let your superiors tell you what to believe crap. I can tell you from personal experience if you don't question what your doctor is going to do to you, you are a fool. IF we should question our doctors, why are climatologists so sacred and above questioning?

Well, considering some of the models require supercomputers to run them, and I know some folks at the UofI who do advanced modeling of midwestern storm systems I'm hardly in a position to question every needly detail. But, as I said before, I am a degreed earth scientist and a professional R&D chemist with years of experience, some in oceanography/gas exchange studies, so I'm hardly just parroting the information I am fed.

While I may not be a climatologist I am hardly an idiot in this debate. I am capable of reading and digesting the data (which I think I've adequately shown).

I appreciate statistics. I just don't think it is the only thing in the universe.

Sorry for harping on this, but in my years in industry and academia and government science I've seen some folks draw unwarranted conclusions because they didn't properly appreciate statistics. And I've seen extremely robust results come from those who did.

I always get the feel that you do.

Which is an irony. Because it wasn't until my boss in my postdoc with the USDA forced me to focus on statistics and a later boss in industry forced me to focus on statistics that it finally started to click as to the vital importance of statistics. It isn't for everyone, just the folks who want to make sure their proclamations can be judged for robustness and verification purposes.

It tends to take the "emotion" out of debates like this.

I can't recommend enough reading the history of statistics. There's a lot of reason why statistics has changed how humanity functions almost as much as science in general.

Physics doesn't seem to matter much to you although you are one of the few AGW folks who has actually said that airconditioners and thermometers don't go together so there might be some hope for you.

Well, again, your oversimplification of my points in my numerous posts might lead one to believe that physics doesn't matter to me. But again, such oversimplification misses the mark quite widely.

Drawing physical meaning from noise is one of the most rookie scientific errors I can think of. I've done it in my life as a scientist. Everyone does. Even good scientists confirm their biases often by resorting to noise-as-signal.

It's bad form.

Of the vehemence, the problen is that the AGW crowd has polilticized the science.

Again, interesting considering the majority of the scientists in this field don't find it to be that controversial. It is usually made controversial when economic policy comes into play.

Yes, I actually happen to know something about this study below, from a guy who was involved early on.

There was an earlier study by the same authors which didn't show such heating. Then they eliminated lots of points and voila, it warmed. I have to go to work right now so I don't have time to look it up.

I would very much like to see that. Thanks.

But I would point you to http://www.kilty.com/pdfs/t-d.pdf

I too am starting work so I will read this during lunch or this evening. Do you know what it is from?

For a discussion of some of the difficulties. The problem with partisan advocates for any position is that they never have read the other side.

Agreed.

 

[grmorton]

You shouldn't. There's plenty of non-thermometer proof of global warming. Everything (as has been pointed out so far) from satellite to borehole to proxy data.

And therein lies the important point: thermometers may be flawed but when one flawed system aligns with another independent system to say the same thing then we have reason to believe the errors in the systems are minimal.

I find this incredibly bizarre, sorry.

I am going to kind of clear the decks. Thau, I am not going to get bogged down by discussions of utter irrelevancies, like drifting pH sensors, or even into having to explain what you ought to know about statistics--that if the noise in 1900 is +/-10 degrees and today it is +/-1 then you can't know that the world has warmed. I think it is because of your defense of 1900 being OK even though you say we don't know what the error is, that I am going to clear the decks and go back to posting data.

YOu and I are not going to agree and I am not going to let arcania divert me. That was what I decided when I came back.

So, with that out of the way (I didn't even read your second post), I am going to discuss an interesting post I found today as I was doing research on Morlet wavelets. Morlet wavelets are used to extract high levels of detail from time series. Indeed that is what I was looking to do when I ran into an interesting blog by Lobos Motl Pilsen, a Czech physicist. He used Morlet wavelet power spectrums to show that the GISS data doesn't show much global warming. I was amazed as I saw his charts.

His site is The Reference Frame: Climate and Morlet wavelet transform

After doing his analysis, he says

"The figure has no color bias, proving that the variations (the second excited state of the harmonic oscillator) is equally important as the "trends" (contributing primarily to the first excited state). In particular, the real image looks nothing like the cyan "global warming" fingerprint discussed above. "Global warming" is an ill-defined term but in any sensible or moral sense, "global warming" doesn't exist.

In reality, various wiggles occur at all conceivable time scales. The picture resembles an X-ray of your teeth. And yes, the yellow spot in the right lower corner indicates that the temperatures have recently peaked."

Below are 3 pictures the first showing cooling. The second showing warming, the third showing the real GISS data. You can clearly see that the pattern is neither one of warming or cooling.


Another page on Morlet transforms showed the power spectrum of sea surface temperature. It shows that El Nino has not gotten worse during the time of the record.

 

[thaumaturgy]

I am going to kind of clear the decks. Thau, I am not going to get bogged down by discussions of utter irrelevancies, like drifting pH sensors, or even into having to explain what you ought to know about statistics--that if the noise in 1900 is +/-10 degrees and today it is +/-1 then you can't know that the world has warmed.

Glenn, let me return the favor and "clear the decks" as well. I must say it rankles me to be told what "I" must be taught about statistics.

When I responded to your point in post #254 and I explained in the first paragraph of post #256 the subtleties of confidence intervals on top of my, already the extensive, discussion of the t-test as well as the confidence interval (and how it is often narrower than just the standard deviation), I think I've shown myself to be at least reasonably well grounded in statistics. I could easily be in error on something but so far no one on here has bothered to explain that error in terms of the statistical equations).

Certainly you have shown me nothing statistically despite my repeated requests for detailed explanations as to how I was in error. It appears that I am the one here who is demonstrably capable of working with statistics since I have so far been the only one to quantify any of the stats.

I had to correct your assertion of skew in one data set by showing you the calculated SKEWNESS in Post #188

(Note: I even typed out the formula, which is reasonably important in discussion of data and things mathematical. In fact, so far I'm about the only one on here who is providing formulae. I am the kind of scientist who "shows his work".)

I demonstrated for you the importance of increasing the number of data points in establishing a narrower confidence interval in Post #200 (and how a 95&#37; confidence interval on a mean can be more narrow than a standard deviation...that's another reason I like to type out the formulae, so it is crystal clear.)

I hope you will forgive me, but I am an empirical scientist which means I have little patience with people who talk ad nauseam, which is precisely why in most of my posts I do. I am the kind of scientist that even though I have a technician I still roll my sleeves up and get in the lab and get dirty as well. I am known among the techs at my job as being one of the chemists who spend significant time in the lab, not just directing my tech.

So that is why I resort to calculated examples and "showing my work" down to the nitty gritty.

I would greatly appreciate it if you would dial back on the suggestions that I am somehow less skilled in statistics considering I am so far the only person on here who has done statistics in this thread.

(Don't worry, I have gotten the message loud and clear that statistics just isn't your thing. You have avoided it most studiously, but I too am dogged when it comes to real science. I am somewhat of a statistics zealot having come to "get the religion" rather late in my career as a scientist. Now I get irked with I see my fellow scientists drawing silly conclusions based on noise confused for signal.)

I think it is because of your defense of 1900 being OK even though you say we don't know what the error is, that I am going to clear the decks and go back to posting data.

By all means and I will counter that with a fuller understanding of the data (that means more statistics) and I'll even do some work. Rather than just post pictures of other people's data I'll go collect my own to prove my points.

YOu and I are not going to agree and I am not going to let arcania divert me. That was what I decided when I came back.

Arcana is only a problem for those who don't have a solid scientific case. Unfortunately that is how science works. I've seen it a billion times since my earliest days in grad school to my current life in industrial R&D. The devil is in the details.

So, with that out of the way (I didn't even read your second post)

I am glad you are willing to ignore some information when it suits you.

"The figure has no color bias, proving that the variations (the second excited state of the harmonic oscillator) is equally important as the "trends" (contributing primarily to the first excited state). In particular, the real image looks nothing like the cyan "global warming" fingerprint discussed above. "Global warming" is an ill-defined term but in any sensible or moral sense, "global warming" doesn't exist.

I will only respond with the words of a scientist I once read:

Now Thau seems to be under the misaprehension that I think the world has not warmed. I told him last time we debated that I KNOW the world has warmed. So I, like him, would expect plants to move north. But, he can't read clearly so he wants to constantly claim that I don't believe the world has warmed. Last night I posted a chart showing that the warming started in 1650--yes, warming Thau. but that warming which started in 1650 has nothing to do with CO2. Indeed, CO2 didn't really start rising until about 1955. All the warming prior to that was natural and it is bigger than that after 1955. Of course, you won't care about this. YOu will soon again claim that I don't believe the world is warming.

I BELIEVE THE WORLD IS WARMING. I hope your old eyes can read that Thau. (SOURCE: Glenn Morton)

Another page on Morlet transforms showed the power spectrum of sea surface temperature. It shows that El Nino has not gotten worse during the time of the record.

I actually am interested in Morlet transforms. Time series are an interesting topic I am still working on learning. I will have to take some time to look at this stuff. Thanks for posting that.

 

[thaumaturgy]

Let&#8217;s go back to the pH probe again. I know that Glenn will wish to by pass this but this is for anyone who truly cares about how science is done and how trends can be of no small importance.

I actually had a bit of fun this afternoon at work.



In the lab I work in there are at least 4 pH meters scattered about. They all are run by different folks who take differing care of their pH meters and calibrate on different schedules.

I&#8217;ll call the meters:

M
T
L
C

For each of these 4 meters I took the same pH buffer solutions and went around and measured the voltage of the output without prior calibration.

Now the three pH buffer standards I used were nominally pH 4, pH 7 and pH 10. Here&#8217;s the voltage output from each of the four meters

M-Meter
pH 4: 159mV
pH 7: -19mV
pH10: -182mV

T-Meter
pH 4: 161.8mV
pH 7: -14.1mV
pH10: -182.2mV

L-Meter
pH 4: 143.6mV
pH 7: -26.4mV
pH10: -190.6mV

C-Meter
pH 4: 167.3mV
pH 7: -6.9mV
pH10: -171.4mV

When you plot the voltage vs pH (pH on the x-axis) you get the following graph:

And the following slopes:

M-Meter: -56.8mV/pH unit
T-Meter: -57.3mV/pH unit
L-Meter: -55.7mV/pH unit
C-Meter: -56.4mV/pH unit

If you look at those four lines you see they certainly are different, the y-intercept for the L-Meter is 365.4 while the y-intercept for the C-Meter is 391. That&#8217;s 25.6mV, yet they show about the same trend. pH 7 could be anything from -7mV to -26mV!

Now to be fair the L-Meter is a piece of trash that has been abused worse than Ike treated Tina. It takes about 20 minutes to calibrate the thing on the rare occasion when I have had to use it (I avoid it because it is problematic). But note how it&#8217;s trend is very much the same as the others. There&#8217;s a drop of about 56.5 mV for every pH unit increase.

Correction is important in any data. If I were to simply come in and take the mV readings from these things I&#8217;d be left scratching my head to figure out what a neutral solution&#8217;s pH was if I had to choose from anything from -7mV to -26mV.

But if I want to find out the trend I see that trends are relatively constant.

I think this explains the importance of TREND versus absolute data and the importance of PROCESSING the data as opposed to simply reporting the raw number and then having done with it.

Statistics Fun Time!

(Just for fun, in case you&#8217;re interested in the statistics, I ran a least squares model fit with the following factors:

Factors:
Meter: F statistic = 13.0726 p-value = 0.0156 (Significant)
Voltage: F-statistic = 13444.07 p-value < 0.0001 (Significant)
MeterXVoltage: F-statistic = 0.5048 p-value = 0.6995 (Not significant)

Note that the choice of meter is statistically significant! (that means that the meters are actually different in the data they put out! It matters which meter you use to get a given pH value based on voltage!)


Why is this important to the discussion?
Because it doesn't matter if there's problems with some of the measuring devices, the absolute, untreated output data isn't as important as treated, processed, data, and in the present discussion around climate stations it's the trend that matters.


As long as the instruments can give similar trends the trend can be ascertained.

 

[grmorton]

I do want to revisite the borehole data. Here is the original article which analyzed 6000 boreholes.

Late Quaternary temperature changes seen in world&#8208;wide continental heat flow measurements
Late Quaternary temperature changes seen in world&#8208;wide continental heat flow measurements
Shaopeng Huang
Department of Geological Sciences, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109&#8208;1063
Henry N. Pollack
Department of Geological Sciences, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109&#8208;1063
Po Yu Shen
Department of Earth Sciences, University of Western Ontario, London, N6A 5B7, Canada
Analysis of more than six thousand continental heat flow measurements as a function of depth has yielded a reconstruction of a global average ground surface temperature history over the last 20,000 years. The early to mid&#8208;Holocene appears as a relatively long warm interval some 0.2&#8211;0.6 K above present&#8208;day temperatures, the culmination of the warming that followed the end of the last glaciation. Temperatures were also warmer than present 500&#8211;1,000 years ago, but then cooled to a minimum some 0.2&#8211;0.7 K below present about 200 years ago. Although temperature variations in this type of reconstruction are highly smoothed, the results clearly resemble the broad outlines of late Quaternary climate changes suggested by proxies.

Received 22 April 1997; accepted 13 June 1997; .
Citation: Huang, S., H. N. Pollack, and P. Y. Shen (1997), Late Quaternary temperature changes seen in world&#8208;wide continental heat flow measurements, Geophys. Res. Lett., 24(15), 1947&#8211;1950.

Then later, they dumped thousands of boreholes and used only about 358 of them and voila, the world warmed.
see The Reference Frame: Borehole climate reconstructions & hockey stick revolution in 1998

This information was given me by a person involved in the borehole process and he pointed me to the above site several months ago. I didn't actually read it until tonight. But it confirms what he privately told me.

pH probes are exactly the kind of irrelevancy on which I do not wish to waste time. You and I may now engage in parallel play.

 

[thaumaturgy]

Morlet Transform:

I showed the Morlet Transform you were discussing to some of the plants in the plant hardiness zones that are moving north. The plant didn't have time to respond owing to his move north due to global warming.

I'll make sure to tell him that according to the Morlet Transform (wavelets)
that:

"Global warming" is an ill-defined term but in any sensible or moral sense, "global warming" doesn't exist.(SOURCE)

I'm sure when he gets to his new home in Canada he'll be very interested. The pictures were certainly pretty.

 

[thaumaturgy]

I do want to revisite the borehole data. Here is the original article which analyzed 6000 boreholes.

Interestingly enough I took a gander at the link you posted earlier in Post #304 about borehole data. I found this bit rather interesting:

Estimates of surface warming and its timing are well resolved during the past century (SOURCE)

pH probes are exactly the kind of irrelevancy on which I do not wish to waste time. You and I may now engage in parallel play.

You are perfectly free to ignore the pH probe stuff, it is somewhat rude to spend so much time demanding everyone to address each of your points and then tell others their points have no value.

Thankfully I care about science enough to think this stuff through in detail. It's all about connections.

 

[grmorton]

I keep contending that two very nearby towns should give very similar temperatures. But I know this, I can't go back to April 23, 1950 and measure the temperature in Brookhaven City, MS 100 times so that I can get a standard deviation on the temperature measurement that day. I can only approximate doing that by comparing the temperature in Monticello, MS, 20 miles away. So, that is what I do to see if the system is giving consistent temperatures.

When I did that for Brookhaven City, MS and Monticello, MS, subtracting Monticello's temperature from that of Brookhaven City, I get the curve below which shows that a bias exists for years and years at a time. Then the bias will reverse. If the thermometers are reading correctly, we should expect winds to blow almost continuously from the hotter town to the colder town for years on end. The fact that we dont' see that happening is why we know that much of this variation is error.

This phenomenon works along the coast where the seabreeze is directly proportional to the magnitude of the temperature difference. To believe the crazy temperature differences shown below, you have to believe that the winds acted proportional to the temperature difference.

 

[grmorton]

Interestingly enough I took a gander at the link you posted earlier in Post #304 about borehole data. I found this bit rather interesting:

I am glad you did. As I said, I was told about it several months ago by another geophysicist. tonight I looked his email up again to get the details. My friend was utterly disgusted by the dropping of all those stations so that the warming would appear. I too am disgusted.

But your cherry picking of one statement needs to be counterd by posting the original temperature picture. Yes, there is recent warming, but the chart shows that the world was warmer than the present time--something you selectively didn't point out to our readers.


I would point out that it was hotter than today 5000 years ago, a claim I have made many times in this thread. It was also hotter in the Medieval Warm Epoch about 700 years ago. Today's warming is the tiniest amount of warming at the right end of that chart. I would also point out that this is the chart which used 6000 stations, and the one you showed uses only 358 stations--why didn't you tell our readers that little fact when you triumphantly posted the borehole picture this morning?

You are perfectly free to ignore the pH probe stuff, it is somewhat rude to spend so much time demanding everyone to address each of your points and then tell others their points have no value.

Thankfully I care about science enough to think this stuff through in detail. It's all about connections.

I told you early this morning that I didn't give a rats rear end about pH sensors. They are logically irrelevant to the issue. If you assert that the thermometers are drifting then spend your time proving your assertion. Whether or not pH sensors drift is irrelevant and of no consequence to global warming. You may think it is a nice science experiment but I don't and I don't think it is rude to tell you that. I didn't ask you to explain pH sensors, that was YOUR idea. I am going to stay focused on global warming, not red herrings.

 

[thaumaturgy]

I told you early this morning that I didn't give a rats rear end about pH sensors. They are logically irrelevant to the issue.

Actually Glenn, they are anything but. I shouldn't need to explain this sort of thing to you so I'll explain it to any readers who might be lurking: measurement has errors. It doesn't matter if it's a thermocouple, a thermometer or a pH probe.

My desire in life is understand science. It is also to teach science. I've spent years doing both. Right now I'm working part-time as a chemistry tutor and I can't help but bring in examples that are an attempt to expand the discussion to make sense of the issues in play.

Sure you don't give a rat's rear end about pH probes. You probably don't work with them. pH probes don't have much if anything, to do with the measurement of global temperature (other than ocean acidification, maybe). But the key point is that this is not just a discussion of how we can all misinterpret the temperature record. It's a discussion of the value of understanding the core concepts in science. Chief among those: how error is measured, how trends relate to absolute values and how data is processed.

If I had had easy access to a bunch of thermocouples and digital readout I could easily have just done a quick experiment on that. As it was, I had easy access to pH probes and several of them for a demonstration.

(Although I don't have handy a correlation chart for K or J type thermocouples with real temp, but I'm sure I could find something, I don't know if it is a linear response like the pH probe is though.)

If you assert that the thermometers are drifting then spend your time proving your assertion.

Drifting, if it happens would only be one potential error. Instrumental errors are numerous. Even corrections for placement of bad stations can be made if done correctly.

The point is data is processed. Few people use just raw signal with no understanding of potential errors or error rates.

Whether or not pH sensors drift is irrelevant and of no consequence to global warming. You may think it is a nice science experiment but I don't and I don't think it is rude to tell you that.

I understand. Not everyone cares about science at its core. Not everyone cares to teach. Not everyone cares to discuss the concepts under consideration. I've met many fine scientists who couldn't explain what they were doing or what was in their heads to save their lives. But they could do science. Or so I assume. When I see people like that presenting information and failing to actually communicate a concept I have to go on "faith" that they know what they are doing.

I didn't ask you to explain pH sensors, that was YOUR idea. I am going to stay focused on global warming, not red herrings.

Please, do not call it a red herring. A red herring is introduced to divert attention away from the topic at hand. Mine was introduced in all honesty as an honest attempt to explain a core concept with real-life data.

Again, I understand you are anything but an educator. I get that. It is not a problem. But please do not denigrate the honest efforts of those of us who endeavor to make sure our science is not only solid (hence the statistics) but understandable, hence the discussion of the underlying principles.

As an aside:
I really would be interested to know why you so studiously avoid discussing statistics in detail in a statistics-intensive debate, though. Like I said in the post you ignored: trying to interpret noise as data is a classic freshman rookie mistake. We've all made it. But why one would shun the only tool that can keep us from making such a rookie error (statisitcs) is beyond me. But again, that is somewhat hypocritical of me, I also came to statistics late in my career. I got the religion when I realized I'd seen too many people draw ridiculous conclusions from ignorance of the relative noise in the data.

Any discussion of measured data without thorough statistical treatment is no better than kids "playing" at being scientists. Real science, discussed by real scientists such as you and I, must take into account all the messy arcana of statistics.

That is just what complete science is about.

 

[Pete Harcoff]

thaumaturgy, I've been lurking in this thread and found your illustration regarding pH probes to be interesting. Just thought I'd mention that, so you know it didn't go to waste.

 

[thaumaturgy]

It was also hotter in the Medieval Warm Epoch about 700 years ago.

That does not appear to be supported by all of the science.

NOAA:

it has become apparent that "Medieval Warm Period" or "Medieval Optimum" temperatures were warmer over the Northern Hemisphere than during the subsequent "Little Ice Age", and also comparable to temperatures during the early 20th century.(SOURCE)

(emphasis added)

...but all reconstruct the same basic pattern of cool "Little Ice Age", warmer "Medieval Warm Period", and still warmer late 20th and 21st century temperatures. (ibid)

(Emphasis added)

(SOURCE)

 

[thaumaturgy]

thaumaturgy, I've been lurking in this thread and found your illustration regarding pH probes to be interesting. Just thought I'd mention that, so you know it didn't go to waste.

Thanks, Pete! (I actually had a lot of fun running around the lab this afternoon. I was ostensibly looking for some surfactant for a formulation but since the probes were just sitting there...)

 

[grmorton]

thaumaturgy, I've been lurking in this thread and found your illustration regarding pH probes to be interesting. Just thought I'd mention that, so you know it didn't go to waste.

Would you mind providing the physical causation link between pH in Thau's lab and the thermometer next to the air conditioner?

I miss that causal link. To the best of my knowledge pH isn't used in measuring temperature. So the whole thing is a red herring, a distractioin, which is, unfortunately what Thau is good at.

 

[grmorton]

That does not appear to be supported by all of the science.

NOAA:

it has become apparent that "Medieval Warm Period" or "Medieval Optimum" temperatures were warmer over the Northern Hemisphere than during the subsequent "Little Ice Age", and also comparable to temperatures during the early 20th century.(SOURCE)
​

(emphasis added)

...but all reconstruct the same basic pattern of cool "Little Ice Age", warmer "Medieval Warm Period", and still warmer late 20th and 21st century temperatures. (ibid)
​

Two things, I have already showed that GISS adds 0.3 deg C to the temperature of the US as well as having shown lots of thermometers being next to heat sources. The temperature record has so many problems that you can't seriously be asking me to beleive the guys who say that today's thermometers, next to air conditioners need to be corrected an additional 0.3 deg C warmer than the air conditioner gets them, do you?

Secondly, the implication that the medieval warm epoch was merely a northern hemisphere phenomenon isn't supported by the science eitehr.







The medieval warm period and the Little Ice Age in marine sediments from Maxwell Bay, King George Island, West Antarctic Peninsula (in , Anonymous,)
H. Christian Hass, Gerhard Kuhn, Matthias Forwick, and Tore O. Vorren
[International Geological Congress], International, [location varies]
The West Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) is a region of considerable changes in the climate system. The global warming trend is most significant in this region (>2 degrees C in 50 years) which makes it a perfect place to compare warm phases of the past with the recent trend. Maxwell Bay is a > 500 m deep fjord system between King George and Nelson islands, WAP. Here we present results of a high-resolution gravity core taken at 461 m of water depth close to the mouth of Potter Cove, one of the tributary fjords that feed Maxwell Bay. Methods applied include AMS radiocarbon age determinations, X-ray investigations of the sediment structure, investigations of the magnetic susceptibility and XRF scanning to discriminate different sediment source areas, granulometry at 1-cm intervals to characterize the depositional environment, and TOC and carbonate analyses to gain information on marine productivity and sea-ice coverage. The sediment core is 928 cm long and is basically composed of terrigeneous silty clay with only scattered IRD and some intercalated tephra layers. Five radiocarbon dates reveal that it covers the past 2000 years; a reservoir correction of 1370 years was applied. The grain-size mean values suggest coarser sediments during colder climate episodes such as the Little Ice Age (LIA, c. AD 1350-1900) and finer sediments during warmer climate phases such as the past 100 years or the Medieval Warm Period (MWP, c. AD 700-1350). The magnetic susceptibility has been relatively stable before AD 1400. Few clear minima that correspond with elevated TOC values are likely reflecting episodes of increased productivity and reduced sea-ice cover during the MWP. A significant change in the sediment source areas is suggested at the beginning of the LIA. Magnetic-susceptibility values decrease rapidly and never return to the values before the LIA. XRF data that are being measured will provide more information on that issue. Summer temperatures in the investigated area exceed 2 degrees C and thus summer discharge of meltwater is immense and forms the main sediment transport mechanism. Large plumes of suspended fine-grained sediment exiting e.g. Potter Cove can be detected on satellite images. Under cooler climate conditions the amount of fine-grained sediment decreased with the likely decrease of meltwater during summer. The reduction of fine material led to a coarsening of the sediments during the cooler phases. The opposite was the case during warmer climate phases (fining of sediments). The synopsis of the measured parameters shows clear evidence of the recent warming, the LIA, and the MWP. Conditions of the MWP appear to have started already around AD 400. The climate reconstruction presented here correlates well with EPICA-DML ice-core results and it resembles the global temperature record for the past 2000 years in great detail." H. Christian Hass, Gerhard Kuhn, Matthias Forwick, and Tore O. Vorren The medieval warm period and the Little Ice Age in marine sediments from Maxwell Bay, King George Island, West Antarctic Peninsula (in 33rd International geological congress; abstracts, Anonymous,)
International Geological Congress, Abstracts = Congres Geologique International, Resumes (2008), 33

I might also point out something that I didn't mention last night with the borehole study. After Pollack was involved with the 6000 borehole paleotemperature paper, the one that showed the medieval warm period and the little ice age, he then discarded 95% of the evidence, 95% of the boreholes and produced a paper that claimed to show warming--of course it is hard to say that one isn't cherry picking when one dumps 95% of the observations.

I say the above to remind everyone of the facts. There is one more fact. It was at this time that Pollack became an advisor to Al Gore. Think there might be a causal connection for why he dumped 95% of the data?