Let science debate begin

The National Post ^ | Jan 27, 2005 | Terence Corcoran

[mista science]

Let science debate begin

Terence Corcoran Financial Post

Thursday, January 27, 2005

For some time now this page has been publishing comment on The Hockey Stick, the central piece of scientific evidence for the United Nation's claim that the world is warmer now than at any time in the last 1,000 years. Today we begin a major two-part investigation that delves deeper into the foundations for what may well be the most important economic, scientific and business graphic in world history.

[snip]

It is a story filled with intrigue, conflict and amazing facts about how science is made, especially climate science. It's also a story about the inner workings of science journals and, especially, the UN panel on climate change that is at the heart of climate politics and the economics of the Kyoto Protocol. Above all, the story threatens to rock the foundations of climate science. .....

Go to the article

[mista science]

Ah. Science. My favorite topic. I hope you relish it as much as I.

Part 1. Breaking the Hockey Stick
Part 2. The lone Gaspe cedar

The Hockey Stick. john-daly.com
Long article. Scroll down about 1/5 of the way if you've never seen the Hockey Stick (Fig.4).

[gobucks]

I think some one needs to call Wayne Gretzky; we found his stick:

[Fenris6]

I'm a novice, but in laymen's terms, the Hockey Stick is the result of combining two different methodologies of data collection into one conclusion? Like determining the Superbowl winner by using "yards gained" in the 1st half and "points scored" in the 2nd?

How did that ever make it past a peer-review?

[DaveTesla]

http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/Arctic1880-2004_2.gif

[DaveTesla]

The Warmest in 1000 Years? Revisiting the Hockey Stick

[gobucks]

[gobucks]

PCA analysis of tree ring data ... wow.

[rmh47]

Some great info in those links. Thanks for posting this.

[B.Bumbleberry]

Great articles. Thanks for the posts. The first publicity I saw about the Canadians work was in MIT's Technology Review. Was this an independent report or one based on these articles, if you know?

[G.Mason]

Thanks

Very interesting.

Fertiliser Effect of CO2 shenanigans.

[elfman2]

I don’t follow this too closely, but it looks like you two do. Can I ask, are you familiar with any good studies that question if long term CO2 increases are even possible? I heard of an experiment 5 years ago that showed substantially greater plant growth with minimally raised CO2 levels.

So wouldn’t oxygen be created that brings CO2 levels back down again? Do you think that this balance is adequately addressed in global warming/climate change models?

[lighthouse]

Thank you for posting these articles. My son, a senior at the U of Colorado challenged a prof about the Kyoto Protocol last week. He asked why Pres Bush takes all the heat when 95 Senators voted against it and none voted for it. Brad also asked if the prof would would explain why so many Senators voted against signing the treaty. He was told that there were "visitors" in the classroom and the professor just didn't have time to talk to him. I'll pass these on to him.

[elfman2]

Why wouldn’t that collection of global temperature graphs include this one ?

[shubi]

Plants use CO2 in photosynthesis to produce O2 and water.

As CO2 levels rise, more foliage would grow and produce more oxygen. But the oxygen doesn't cause the CO2 to disappear. And when living things die, O2 is used in the rotting process. It is a complicated cycle, but generally there is a natural balance in nature that prevents CO2 build up.

There have been times when CO2 concentrations have been higher. Volcanoes put out more CO2 in an eruption than man does in years.

It is one thing to measure the CO2 going up and another whole problem to peg it to man's activity.

[elfman2]

Anyone able to translate into common language what this pre-processing step was or what their explanation of it is?

" McIntyre & McKitrick found that the Mann et al. methodology included a data pre-processing step, one which was not reported in the original study, that essentially guaranteed that a hockey stick curve would result from their analysis. They demonstrated this by applying the same methodology to many synthetic temperature records that were constructed with random noise. In almost every case, a hockey stick curve resulted. "

[elfman2]

" As CO2 levels rise, more foliage would grow and produce more oxygen. But the oxygen doesn't cause the CO2 to disappear. "

Not the oxygen, the “plants”. Plants cause oxygen to “disappear”.

Are you sure that plant decay depletes exactly 100% of the oxygen that they produce in their life? Otherwise, wouldn’t the plant build up excess CO2 from volcanoes and animals?

Also, wouldn’t that vary greatly between and the plant’s, species, life and environment?

[shubi]

"The claim of unprecedented warmth and the hockey stick shape appear to hinge on the treatment of one species of tree, the bristlecone pine, from North America in the 1400's. Further statistical tests showed that this critical signal in the early 15th century lacked statistical significance. This suggests that the results of Mann et al. were simply a statistical fluke, which greatly exaggerated a characteristic of the bristlecone pines, which may or may not be related to global temperatures."

In a controlled study or experiment, you must eliminate variables that are not statistically significant, or that do not vary in proportion to the factor being studied.

In this case, it is not known whether the characteristic shown to be variable in bristlecones is directly related to temperature.

There is less of a correlation to CO2, since the first variable might be independent of temperature. Thus, the whole study is flawed, because you have neither ties to CO2 or temperature.

[Drammach]

So wouldn’t oxygen be created that brings CO2 levels back down again?

I recall reading an article concerning this point..
Locale was East coast, ( Wash, Atlanta, Richmond ? ) and the complaint was "that oxygen".
It was Ozone...
Ozone created at ground level is a pollutant..
It readily combines with.. everything.. especially exhaust fumes from industry, vehicles, etc..

The people in the area wanted to cut down the forest..
You just can't win..

[shubi]

I don't know how much of the CO2 is taken up by plants nor do I know what percentage of CO2 produced by rot is used.

There are other mechanisms at work. I read somewhere that the ocean takes up CO2 and turns it into CaCO3.

I am a biologist, and have specialized in invertebrates. So I am no expert on this stuff. I just wanted to confirm your thought that there is a cycle at work that the wackos ignore.

Also, too high an O2 content in the atmosphere would kill most live on Earth.

[shubi]

Oxygen is O2. Ozone is O3. Ozone oxidizes almost everything. It does not last long in the free state.