LUBOS Motl on NAS hockey stick report
[CSPP
Note: Motel is an experimental
physicists, assistant professor at Harvard University.]
http://motls.blogspot.com/2006/06/nas-schizofrenic-climate-report.html
Thursday, June 22, 2006
NAS: schizophrenic climate report
The global warming, described by James Inhofe as the greatest hoax
ever
perpetrated on the American people, was essentially downgraded from
"certain" to "plausible"
A catchy subtitle was needed because much of the material that follows
is boring and confusing, and it is not my fault.
The #1 news on cnn.com right now is about the
* Climate synthesis report of the National Academy of Sciences
<http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/06/22/global.warming.ap/index.html>
that you can buy, for $42.30, here
<http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11676.html>;
the
executive summary
<http://www.nap.edu/execsumm_pdf/11676.pdf>
is for free,
much like
the
audio <http://www.nap.edu/webcast/webcast_detail.php?webcast_id=327>.
Other sources are here
<http://www.nationalacademies.org/morenews/20060622.html>.
However,
I don't recommend you to waste your money for this new audit of the
climate reconstructions. It is a document that tries to make everyone
happy which makes it schizophrenic. On one hand, they admit that there
has almost certainly been the Little Ice Age and quite plausibly also
the Medieval Warm Period - in both cases it is something that the
hardcore alarmists wanted to deny for the last 10 years.
Because of the MWP and the large uncertainties before 1600, we can only
say that the current temperatures are warmest in 400 years, not more,
the panel says. In other words, it's warmer now than in the Little Ice
Age. Well, this is why the Little Ice Age is called in this way. On the
other hand, however, they try to promote the idea that it could
"plausibly" (original report) or even "likely" (CNN's
translation or
"spin") still be warmer today than in the Middle Ages, and maybe the
current temperatures are highest in the last 1000 or 2000 years.
Well, maybe the geologists are also wrong and the temperatures are
highest in millions of years. Such "maybe" sentences are completely
meaningless. If someone cannot defend a statement at the 99% confidence
level, he should close his or her mouth because sentences without
sufficiently strong evidence required by scientific standards are
nothing else than brainwashing and manipulation.
I am happy that in different parts of the report, the panel at least
confirms that Mann's statement that the 1990s were the hottest decade in
a millennium and 1998 the hottest year - and similar statements that had
filled the media so many times in the past - are unjustifiable by
existing data (go to 47:00 of the audio or so), despite 10 years of
passionate statements that these insights are definitive, ever more
definitive, and that the debate was over.
Mann suddenly started to say that he never said that he was certain that
the current era is the warmest era in the last 1000 years and, on the contrary,
he always emphasized that their research was meant to show how uncertain these
numbers are. Well, we probably live in different Universes because in this
Universe, he said it roughly 350 times and 870,000 articles have been written
about this extraordinary statement.
This confusion - more precisely these untrue assertions - are discussed at
19:20 of this
* real audio
<http://video.nationalacademies.org/ramgen/news/isbn/0309102561.rm>
from the press conference.
You're exactly one click from verifying that various media and the RealClimate
group blog are just trying to fool you completely.
If you go to 25:30 of this audio, a distinguished NAS scientist explains
that the belief that Mann's results were definitive were not Mann's
fault but rather the climate science community's fault. I can't believe
he's serious. Is he talking about the same Mann who established his own
propagandistic blog to promote his speculations, deny all criticism, and
describe the critics as corrupt people? Of course that it was also a
fault of the climate community because it is not a terribly bright and
honest one, but indications that Mann is innocent are just crazy. At
35:00 into the audio, they discuss Mann's flawed usage of the principal
component analysis. At 37:30, they discuss why the bristlecone pines are
not good temperature proxies. At 50:00, a panel member answers "Yes"
to
the question whether he is saying that the odds than Mann is right are
around 2:1 - which means "almost completely uncertain".
At 53:40, a desperate activist / journalist tries to criticize the NAS
panel that they used the word "plausible". How could this have
happened?
The same crazy journalist even says that there is no evidence for
string theory but we can say it's "plausible". I assure this comrade
that string theory is much more plausible than a catastrophic global
warming. Around 54:30, they also agree with your humble
correspondent that quantitative estimates of "Bayesian
<http://motls.blogspot.com/2005/12/bayesian-probability.html>"
confidence levels
<http://motls.blogspot.com/2006/05/csl-1-and-confidence-levels.html>
in this
context (and similar contexts) are meaningless
<http://motls.blogspot.com/2006/01/20-years-after-challenger.html>
and the
real uncertainty can't be quantified.
Near
57:00, Myron Ebell asks about the divergence problem - the fact that the
current proxies don't show the warming measured directly by thermometers. He is
answered that the problem is there, indeed, and it might be hand-waved away by
some very vague comments about moisture. At 59:30, another passionate
eco-journalist complains against the word "plausible". How can you
say
it is less plausible if there is no evidence against [except for those
paid by the oil company, he would normally say]. He is again
explained that we just don't know, and there is a lot of natural climate
variability that increases the uncertainty. Around 1:03:00 into the
audio, it is being discussed how much money is being wasted for climate
research whose insights are ever more murky and questionable, despite
hundreds of papers. At 1:06:30, they say that the variability - and thus
also the uncertainty - is higher than thought previously.
Although the NAS members say and write a lot of wise and correct things
(and things that I've been saying for months if not years), of course,
there are many other examples of schizophrenia of their document and its
interpretation.
On one hand, they concede that virtually every single criticism of the
"hockey stick graph
http://www.google.com/search?q=+site:motls.blogspot.com+hockey+stick+graph
has been valid and the methodology of Mann, Bradley, and Hughes is
unsatisfactory because of all these reasons (besides the examples above,
also lacking statistical skill for individual years, problems with
unavailable data and secret computational software - go to 16:20 of the
audio for the transparency issues). On the other hand, they are using
graphs from papers that are criticizable because of the very same
reasons and they essentially encourage the reader to think that these
reconstructions are trustworthy even though the actual content of the
chapters 9 and 11 leads to the opposite conclusion. The most penetrating
and freely available analysis of the document was written by
* Steve McIntyre <http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=715>
who has been - together with Ross McKitrick, his collaborator - the
world's principal auditor of the climate reconstructions and some very
useful comments on that page are also offered by Eduardo Zorita and
others. I think that the whole field of "global climate science" has
become a political game where people are looking for a compromise or, as
many of them openly call it, a consensus.
The recent developments in science have shown that some statements in
the past decade are scientifically indefensible and some papers have
simply been wrong but those people just don't have enough courage and
integrity to admit this fact openly which is why they only soften their
language and generate logically inconsistent bureaucratic hybrids. It
will take a lot of time to restore the integrity of climate science but
we may hope that the NAS panel made the first steps towards this goal.
A less technical summary describing the schizophrenia in their report
was written by Iain Murray:
* The hockey stick is dead. Long live the hockey stick!
<http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ODQ5MWZlM2FhNjg4ZTQxNmE1ZWYxZGQxY2ZhNGFmM2U=>
Also, you may want to read a rather technical comment by David Stockwell
at landshape.org <http://landshape.org/enm/?p=105>.
When Millikan measured the charge of the electron for the first time, he
obtained 50% of the correct result only because of his incorrect treatment of
the air viscosity. Those who followed him have already used a correct approach
to the air viscosity but they obtained 55%, 60%, 70%, 80%, 90% of the right
result before they settled near the right value.
The reason why they did not obtain the correct result already in the second
experiment was that they were intentionally eliminating data from
their experiments that were too far from the previous ones. Virtually
all experimental physicists know that this is bad science - but in the
climate science, things seem a bit different. The authors of crappy
papers are still forming the consensus and others don't want to lose
friends so they keep on including junk science to their reports and
statistical ensembles.
The downgrading of the certainty about the "unprecedented global warming"
from "certain & debate is over" to "plausible" has made
some climate activists, such as 
our friend William Connolley
<http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2006/06/nas_report.php>,
worried. He
talks about a "step backwards". How does he define progress in
science?
It's quite obvious. The higher temperatures and disasters are predicted
and the more irrational, hysterical, and political the justifications
become, the more progressive science becomes according to this "scientist".
The science about the "catastrophic climate change" seems rather
similar
to paranormal sciences: the amount of "signal" that one obtains is
more or less directly proportional to the lack of scientific integrity of the scientist.
Not surprisingly, the signal and certainty obtained by NAS is much smaller than
what William Connolley, Al Gore, or other charlatans would obtain. But the NAS
members are still not perfect, so they still get a signal.
At least, William can fool himself into believing that the NAS panel has
not confirmed any criticism. Those who have listened to the press
conference know very well that the panel has confirmed that, as far as I
see, all the criticisms by M&M and others are valid. However, the panel
has also tried their best to be nice to people like Mann which I think
is questionable.
Meanwhile, Mann and Connolley's propagandistic blog called "RealClimate"
is trying to keep a low profile. There are only 13 comments
<
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/06/national-academies-synthesis-report/>
about the topic which is slightly less than 166 comments
<http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=715> about
the same story at the
"Climate Audit".
Liars in the newspapers
While the NAS panel has concluded that the climate before 1600 is virtually
completely uncertain, hundreds of left-wing newspapers have published
fraudulent and completely false
<http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=climate+2,000&ie=UTF-8&scoring=d>
articles claiming that according to NAS, we're the hottest in 1000 or 2000
years. Of course, the journalists remain the most important sources of the lies
and the primary authors of the fraud.
posted at 2:45 PM
<http://motls.blogspot.com/2006/06/nas-schizofrenic-climate-report.html>