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Posted on January 27th, 2010 under AGW socio-political, Global Warming Tags: AmazonGate, ClimateGate, GlacierGate, IPCC, Pachuri, PachuriGate, WWF
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Posted on January 23rd, 2010 under AGW socio-political, Global Warming
Tags: Climate Models, Penny, Penny Wong, Skeptics Handbook II, Wong.
How to create a crisis graph in 6 simple steps
One of the main arguments from the IPCC is that essentially, we cant explain temperature changes any other way than with carbon forcings. This is matched with impressive pink and blue graphs that pose as evidence that carbon is responsible for all the recent warming.
This is argumentum ad ignorantiam essentially they say: we dont know what else could have caused that warming, so it must be carbon. Its a flawed assumption.
Its easy to create impressive graphs, especially if you actively ignore other possible causes, like for example, changes in cloud cover and solar magnetic effects.
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(Addendum: Since the Skeptics Handbook came out we now know that actually they did care about that warm blip in the 1940s that the models cant explain. But instead of changing the models, they changed the data. Thanks to ClimateGate for that insight.)
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Error bars make the graph look more official. (On a graph based entirely on a logical error, what meaning does an error bar have?)
6. Add the key
Thus, using data you already had, and a stab at the unknown, you can make it appear your models are accurate AND that carbon is the cause. Sure the modellers are using real carbon levels and physical calculations, but they assume carbon is responsible for the warming.
Thus its circular reasoning: decide that carbon is a problem; see its effect in this graph; declare carbon must be a problem, and rejoice, the models create what we fed them to start with. The Marvel!
(Its too easy, and politicians fall for it. Then they give us more money to do more modelling.)
Page 12
This page is dedicated specifically to Minister Penny Wong in The Australian Government.
When Senator Fielding met Penny Wong in 2009, she waved the IPCC pink-and-blue graphs in the air and repeatedly referred to them as evidence, and saying words to the effect How do I make policy based on this evidence?
Can someone please email this page to her so that she can understand why this type of graph is most definitely not evidence?
All of the unknowns in the graphs are assumed to be carbon. The IPCC does not take solar magnetic effects into account; the models assume cloud-cover doesnt drive the climate, in their simulations, the climate drives clouds; they cant predict ENSO events, the same models that produce these graphs predict that the world would have been cooler in medieval times (which it wasnt). These models also predict the band of air 10km above the tropics will warm much faster than the ground (but it doesnt, there is no hot spot). In other words, its not just that the graphs above are wrong because they make assumptions that are unproven, these graphs are wrong because the evidence shows that they are wrong. The models that produce them are deeply flawed. The assumptions they are based on are wrong, because most of the predictions that follow from these assumptions have been empirically shown to be wrong.
Furthermore models are never evidence, they are theory. Evidence means empirical observations from the real world. Models are just a glorified version of a string of calculations that could be done by someone on their high-school calculator (though it may take a few hundred years). You may remember from high school exams, that just because you held a hot Hewlett Packard HP-25C, that didnt guarantee you always got the right answer.
The IPCC is doing a very clever PR campaign with top marketing techniques and a near infinite budget (of other peoples money). They are playing politicians for patsies.
But the politicians dont have to be played, they can choose to hear both sides of the story.
This is page 12 of The Skeptics Handbook II. A 20 page PDF