A prime piece of evidence linking human activity to climate change turns out to be an artifact of poor mathematics.
Progress in science is sometimes made by great discoveries. But science also advances when we learn that something we believed to be true isnt. When solving a jigsaw puzzle, the solution can sometimes be stymied by the fact that a wrong piece has been wedged in a key place.
In the scientific and political debate over global warming, the latest wrong piece may be the hockey stick, the famous plot (shown below), published by University of Massachusetts geoscientist Michael Mann and colleagues. This plot purports to show that we are now experiencing the warmest climate in a millennium, and that the earth, after remaining cool for centuries during the medieval era, suddenly began to heat up about 100 years ago--just at the time that the burning of coal and oil led to an increase in atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide.
I talked about this at length in my December 2003 column. Unfortunately, discussion of this plot has been so polluted by political and activist frenzy that it is hard to dig into it to reach the science. My earlier column was largely a plea to let science proceed unmolested. Unfortunately, the very importance of the issue has made careful science difficult to pursue.
But now a shock: Canadian scientists Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick have uncovered a fundamental mathematical flaw in the computer program that was used to produce the hockey stick. In his original publications of the stick, Mann purported to use a standard method known as principal component analysis, or PCA, to find the dominant features in a set of more than 70 different climate records.
But it wasnt so. McIntyre and McKitrick obtained part of the program that Mann used, and they found serious problems. Not only does the program not do conventional PCA, but it handles data normalization in a way that can only be described as mistaken.
Now comes the real shocker. This improper normalization procedure tends to emphasize any data that do have the hockey stick shape, and to suppress all data that do not. To demonstrate this effect, McIntyre and McKitrick created some meaningless test data that had, on average, no trends. This method of generating random data is called Monte Carlo analysis, after the famous casino, and it is widely used in statistical analysis to test procedures. When McIntyre and McKitrick fed these random data into the Mann procedure, out popped a hockey stick shape!
That discovery hit me like a bombshell, and I suspect it is having the same effect on many others. Suddenly the hockey stick, the poster-child of the global warming community, turns out to be an artifact of poor mathematics. How could it happen? What is going on? Let me digress into a short technical discussion of how this incredible error took place.
In PCA and similar techniques, each of the (in this case, typically 70) different data sets have their averages subtracted (so they have a mean of zero), and then are multiplied by a number to make their average variation around that mean to be equal to one; in technical jargon, we say that each data set is normalized to zero mean and unit variance. In standard PCA, each data set is normalized over its complete data period; for key climate data sets that Mann used to create his hockey stick graph, this was the interval 1400-1980. But the computer program Mann used did not do that. Instead, it forced each data set to have zero mean for the time period 1902-1980, and to match the historical records for this interval. This is the time when the historical temperature is well known, so this procedure does guarantee the most accurate temperature scale. But it completely screws up PCA. PCA is mostly concerned with the data sets that have high variance, and the Mann normalization procedure tends to give very high variance to any data set with a hockey stick shape. (Such data sets have zero mean only over the 1902-1980 period, not over the longer 1400-1980 period.)
The net result: the principal component will have a hockey stick shape even if most of the data do not.
Guest (John Paul Jones)
Myth vs. Fact Regarding the Hockey Stick
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=11
Guest (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=11)
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=11
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=11
Current understanding of temperature changes
Muller has written a solid piece up to a point. He accepts the findings of McKitrick and McIntyre showing the hockey-stick is not valid. In 2005, McKitrick claimed to have performed his own reconstruction and concluded that 20th century temperatures are unexceptional. I have not found any public remarks by Muller on this claim. I have to wonder if Muller is still concerned about global warming. Muller has commented on the recent work of Henrik Svensmark claiming that most 20th century warming is a result of fewer low-level cosmic rays reaching sea level and causing low-level clouds. Muller has said that all of the global warming scenarios assume low-level clouds have been constant. For Muller's exact comments, see http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/10/the_cosmic_climate_connection.php?page=2
Re: Current understanding of temperature changes
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The author wrote towards the end of this article:
"If, on the other hand, we reject the hockey stick, and recognize that natural fluctuations can be large, then we will not be misled by a few years of random cooling."
Thanks for that little editorial comment on "random cooling."
As it appears likely the earth is indeed in a cooling period and may well be for the next ten to twelve years, who says global cooling is at all random?
Climate Gate eMails and Programs.....
I found on the web the compressed files containing all the eMail of prof jones. This compressed file also contains programs. More precisely Prolog routines. I am a software developer for 20 years and had a look at the code of these programs. In the module called briffa_sep_98_d.pro, one can read these lines of code:
.....
yyy=reform(compmxd(*,2,1))
;mknormal,yyy,timey,refperiod=[1881,1940]
;
; Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!
;
yrloc=[1400,findgen(19)*5.+1904]
valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,-0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,$
2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor
if n_elements(yrloc) ne n_elements(valadj) then message,'Oooops!'
;
yearlyadj=interpol(valadj,yrloc,timey)
......
Please note the remark in the code :'Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!'
Note also:
valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,-0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,$
2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor
This lines might seem cryptic but they clearly indicate that the program used to analyse the temperatures has been modified in order to produce results showing temperature increases instead of declines. Basically a fudge factor is applied to temperatures that do not agree with the global warming religion.
It is clear that this demonstrates a total lack of ethic.
Gross!
The Truth About Climate Heating.
The simple truth about climate change is that it is due to our use of energy of all sorts, from Coal and hydrocarbons, hydro electricity, nuclear fission, solar panels for electricity or heating, wind power, hybrid cars, electric cars, battery operated devices. All forms of energy used by man , eventually put that energy into the atmosphere and heat it.
The most used energy sources are coal and hydrocarbons , about 80 percent , all the other forms make up the rest.
If one does simple calculations, as I have done , one finds that the hydrocarbon usage has heated the atmosphere by 1.68 deg K, over the past 210 years. If we divide the 1.68 by 0.8 we get a temperature rise of 2.1 deg K. (Which is the claimed rise experienced to date)
Now if one subtracts that value from the rise in temperature experienced over the same time period the result is 0 .
What this means for climate modelers and alarmists is truly devastating as it means all their modeling work is incorrect, as there is no " greenhouse " effect.; rather it is just a purely chemical effect due to the release of energy.
The earth's atmosphere can be considered a closed system to a great extent.
The atmosphere has an average temperature, which is contained in the bulk of the gases.
The only way for the earth to lose heat is by radiation from the top of the atmosphere.
Now if the top of the atmosphere consists of only 1 percent of the atmosphere and is quite cold it radiates heat based on its temperature .
Now if the bulk atmosphere temperature rises by 2. 1 degree K this does not mean that the temperature rises by 2.1 deg K everywhere.
The bulk will contain enough energy to give an average temperature which is 2.1 degrees higher, however the cold radiative surface temperature will only increase slightly.
Without doing any mass and heat transfer equations , my estimate is that the radiative surface temperature will only rise by 0.01 deg. K.
The heat loss will merely increase by 0.14 percent., which is within the error of measurement for heat loss.
This therefore means that while there is a climate warming effect, it is due simply to the combustion / energy use values and to a radiative altering "greenhouse" effect.
The current heating rate works out to be 0.8 deg. K per century. So it will take another 200 years before we get to a level of 4 deg. k higher than it was in 1800.
Sure the ice cap in the arctic is melting and polar bears are threatened in some locations, but there is very little we can do about the heating process other than to stop using any form of energy, which means going back to pre- industrial revolution activities, and which of us , especially the elite of Hollywood and Congress , is willing to do that.
There are some benefits of more CO2 in the atmosphere. Better crop yields, faster tree growth, a shorter route to Europe from Asia, therefore less energy expended shipping goods, lower heating costs offset by high cooling costs, although to feel cool we only need to lower the temp by 10 deg K in the summer, but to feel warm we need to raise the temp by 20 deg K in the winter.
Here are the numbers I have used in my calculations.
It's our lifestyle not a Greenhouse effect
Some scientists do not take the time to do the basic science related to climate heating.
I have and this is the result
I use
C = 7 Gigatonnes of Carbon/year = 7e12 kg Carbon/year burned to CO2
E = 678kJ/(0.014kg of (Carbon + H2))=56500000 J/(kg of Carbon) energy released to heat the atmosphere.
C_p = 1000 J/(K * kg of dry air)
M = 5e18 (kg of dry air) (total mass of atmosphere; you can also use (area of earth)*(surface pressure)/(gravity))
so
(dT/dt)=[(7e12 kg Carbon/year)*56500000 J/(kg carbon)]/[1000 J/(K * kg of dry air)*5e18 (kg of dry air)]=8e-2 K/year=0.008 K/year=0.8 K/century. so over 2.1 centuries this is 1.68 K
Simply put this means that for every kg of coal or oil burned we heat 56,500 kgs( about 56 tons) of air 1 degree Kelvin / centigrade or 1.8 degrees F. This and this alone can account for the rise in temperature that has occurred over the past 210 years.
Selwyn Firth
Toronto.
Dec 1, 2009.
I have not checked all of your calculations on atmospheric warming, but I note that 8e-2K/year in your dT/dt calculation comes out to 0.08K/year=8K/century, an error of one order of magnitude. Any comments?
Al Gore – Sun God Shaman?
If you actually read the science, you’ll find it to be well known that the Earth experiences 30-35 year temperature cycles. Thus any ‘climatologist’ who supposedly didn’t know this would be considered a fool amongst their colleagues.
In fact, if this is your job, you can’t NOT know about Earth’s 30-35 year temperature cycles!
Thus many scientists have been waiting for this latest warming ‘wave’ within the greater ‘tide’ to break, which is very likely what we are seeing right now with all of this record winter weather around the world. It snowed last year in Baghdad, for crying out loud – first time in 100 years!! And now England is snowed in, and the fraudsters have not-so-subtly changed their rhetoric from ‘Global Warming’ to ‘Climate Change Crisis’.
But this is only a re-branding of their fraud. Al Gore and crew attempted to use an upward fluctuation in this cycle to spread terror for power and profit, just as Inca and Mayan Priests once used their knowledge of eclipses to intimidate their populations, and pretend a direct connection to God.
The motives of this are plain : Al Gore has a Carbon Credit Exchange waiting in the wings, developed with David Blood and, early in its development, Ken Lay of Enron. These two crooks have already played key roles in collapsing our economies, in their quest for profits under the new 'Scarcity Capitalism' Lay was so fond of, and we are about to hand over our economies to their sinister, vile, greedy machinations.
If you look back at the only really solid data we have, which of course only covers the last 100 years or so – you will see the two previous cycles were a little longer than this one. If you go long range, you see that overall, we ARE in a warming cycle. It’s been warmer centuries ago, it’s hardly a bad thing, there’s nothing we can do about it anyway, so we prepare, is all. Big deal.
But this game plays out like this – it’s not ’settled science’, but it is still fairly well known that the latest upward swing would lead to a dip – and we would have a carbon tax imposed just in time for a 35 year downswing in temperatures, when our energy needs would skyrocket. The payout would go beyond bags of money. It would be Global Fascism at it’s purest and finest.
Thus they started to go into the schools in the 90’s, to indoctrinate a generation of children in their fraudulent cult – it’s easy to see that it’s been nothing less than timed, if you just do a little 'hindcasting of your own. If this natural upward fluctuation in temperature cycles were to have lasted an extra year or two – assuming we are looking at the onset of the dip we should be and would be expecting if we had honest leaders who weren’t trying to enslave us with phony science – there would be an army of self-hating eco-police coming out to do battle against evil polluting humanity over the next decade and all the laws would have been in place.
It is nothing less than FOOLISH to abandon one source of energy without first developing another. To attempt to force the issue with a blatant scientific fraud destroys any alleged value in such an effort - in case you forgot, Stalin taught us the true meaning of "The End Justifies The Means".
What Al Gore and the rest of the Climate Clown Cabal did – and are still trying to do! – is TREASON. Anybody remember what that is? Well, I’ll give you a hint – before there can be treason, you need to still have a country first.
http://beggarz.wordpress.com/2010/01/05/al-gore-sun-god-shaman/
Global warming or not, pollution produced by burning coal etc is real and has health costs and I would rather find a way to avoid it where possible.
I would also like to reduce our energy dependence on countries and regions that have a high degree of nastiness associated with them. Anyone care to debate this ?
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
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Guest (David Herweyer)
Global Warming
Would you program your articles so they could be forwarded on the net. Kunstler would be very interested, as would Michael Crighton. Thanks
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alex75
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http://www.globalwarming-awareness-may.com/
Global warming awareness 2007 - this is the year dedicated to Global waring and the fight against it!
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