0 comment Monday, August 25, 2014 | admin
Whenever I read about global warming and the leaked emails, invariably mention is made of a "hockey stick." So what's all the hoopla about a hockey stick? What does it have to do with global warming, I wondered.
Most of the articles on global warming and climate-gate make for dense reading. They are not especially illuminating. Yesterday, though, I found an informative article, written in words I could understand.
The graph below, taken from an article in the UK Daily Mail, shows the mysterious hockey stick.
And this excerpt from the article explains that the "hockey stick" graph: [w]as the chart displayed on the first page of the 'Summary for Policymakers� of the 2001 IPCC report - the famous 'hockey stick� graph that has been endlessly reproduced in everything from newspapers to primary-school textbooks ever since, showing centuries of level or declining temperatures until a dizzying, almost vertical rise in the late 20th Century.
There could be no simpler or more dramatic representation of global warming, and if the origin of worldwide concern over climate change could be traced to a single image, it would be the hockey stick.
Gabriel Fahrenheit did not invent the mercury thermometer until 1724, so scientists who want to reconstruct earlier climate history have to use 'proxy data� - measurements derived from records such as ice cores, tree-rings and growing season dates.
However, different proxies give very different results.
For example, some suggest that the 'medieval warm period�, the 350-year era that started around 1000, when red wine grapes flourished in southern England and the Vikings tilled now-frozen farms in Greenland, was considerably warmer than even 1998.
Of course, this is inconvenient to climate change believers because there were no cars or factories pumping out greenhouse gases in 1000AD - yet the Earth still warmed.
Some tree-ring data eliminates the medieval warmth altogether, while others reflect it. In September 1999, Jones�s IPCC colleague Michael Mann of Penn State University in America - who is now also the subject of an official investigation --was working with Jones on the hockey stick. As they debated which data to use, they discussed a long tree-ring analysis carried out by Keith Briffa.
Briffa knew exactly why they wanted it, writing in an email on September 22: 'I know there is pressure to present a nice tidy story as regards "apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more".� But his conscience was troubled. 'In reality the situation is not quite so simple - I believe that the recent warmth was probably matched about 1,000 years ago.�
* * *
* * *
Finally, Briffa changed the way he computed his data and submitted a revised version. This brought his work into line for earlier centuries, and 'cooled� them significantly. But alas, it created another, potentially even more serious, problem.
According to his tree rings, the period since 1960 had not seen a steep rise in temperature, as actual temperature readings showed - but a large and steady decline, so calling into question the accuracy of the earlier data derived from tree rings.
This is the context in which, seven weeks later, Jones presented his 'trick� - as simple as it was deceptive.
All he had to do was cut off Briffa�s inconvenient data at the point where the decline started, in 1961, and replace it with actual temperature readings, which showed an increase.
On the hockey stick graph, his line is abruptly terminated - but the end of the line is obscured by the other lines.
'Any scientist ought to know that you just can�t mix and match proxy and actual data,� said Philip Stott, emeritus professor of biogeography at London�s School of Oriental and African Studies.
'They�re apples and oranges. Yet that�s exactly what he did.�Click here for the full article.
Most of the articles on global warming and climate-gate make for dense reading. They are not especially illuminating. Yesterday, though, I found an informative article, written in words I could understand.
The graph below, taken from an article in the UK Daily Mail, shows the mysterious hockey stick.
And this excerpt from the article explains that the "hockey stick" graph: [w]as the chart displayed on the first page of the 'Summary for Policymakers� of the 2001 IPCC report - the famous 'hockey stick� graph that has been endlessly reproduced in everything from newspapers to primary-school textbooks ever since, showing centuries of level or declining temperatures until a dizzying, almost vertical rise in the late 20th Century.There could be no simpler or more dramatic representation of global warming, and if the origin of worldwide concern over climate change could be traced to a single image, it would be the hockey stick.
Gabriel Fahrenheit did not invent the mercury thermometer until 1724, so scientists who want to reconstruct earlier climate history have to use 'proxy data� - measurements derived from records such as ice cores, tree-rings and growing season dates.
However, different proxies give very different results.
For example, some suggest that the 'medieval warm period�, the 350-year era that started around 1000, when red wine grapes flourished in southern England and the Vikings tilled now-frozen farms in Greenland, was considerably warmer than even 1998.
Of course, this is inconvenient to climate change believers because there were no cars or factories pumping out greenhouse gases in 1000AD - yet the Earth still warmed.
Some tree-ring data eliminates the medieval warmth altogether, while others reflect it. In September 1999, Jones�s IPCC colleague Michael Mann of Penn State University in America - who is now also the subject of an official investigation --was working with Jones on the hockey stick. As they debated which data to use, they discussed a long tree-ring analysis carried out by Keith Briffa.
Briffa knew exactly why they wanted it, writing in an email on September 22: 'I know there is pressure to present a nice tidy story as regards "apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more".� But his conscience was troubled. 'In reality the situation is not quite so simple - I believe that the recent warmth was probably matched about 1,000 years ago.�
* * *
* * *
Finally, Briffa changed the way he computed his data and submitted a revised version. This brought his work into line for earlier centuries, and 'cooled� them significantly. But alas, it created another, potentially even more serious, problem.
According to his tree rings, the period since 1960 had not seen a steep rise in temperature, as actual temperature readings showed - but a large and steady decline, so calling into question the accuracy of the earlier data derived from tree rings.
This is the context in which, seven weeks later, Jones presented his 'trick� - as simple as it was deceptive.
All he had to do was cut off Briffa�s inconvenient data at the point where the decline started, in 1961, and replace it with actual temperature readings, which showed an increase.
On the hockey stick graph, his line is abruptly terminated - but the end of the line is obscured by the other lines.
'Any scientist ought to know that you just can�t mix and match proxy and actual data,� said Philip Stott, emeritus professor of biogeography at London�s School of Oriental and African Studies.
'They�re apples and oranges. Yet that�s exactly what he did.�Click here for the full article.
Labels: Climategate, Hockey Stick, Leaked Emails, Russia
0 comment Tuesday, August 19, 2014 | admin
Photo credit: Martin/APGreetings, fair maidens. This is a long post and I ask for your time and indulgence.
Now that the mainstream media is reporting Glenn Beck's rally a tad more neutrally, I thought I'd drink from the cup of temerity and discuss it, too.
Beck's rally, called "Restoring Honor," was held at the Lincoln Memorial on the anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech.
Despite Google Earth satellite images and what-not, no one in the mainstream media can give us a ball-park estimate of how many attended Beck's rally. Why? Because the National Parks Service long ago gave up* counting crowds. So that's that. Move along, folks. There's nothing more to see.
Oh, wait, except for Obama's inauguration. For him, they defied Congress (meh -- only experts waste their time reading statutes, anyway) and counted the folks in the crowd.**
Anyway, for some reason, Beck's free-speech, who-gives-a-rat's-a**-who's-assembling-anyway? assembly enraged many black activists and others (like Keith Olbermann, who rabidly deemed it "Beck's 'I have a scheme' rally").
Some went so far as to accuse Beck of co-opting the entire civil rights movement.
Damn. I guess no one will ever underestimate that man again.
In short, Beck was accused of "racial insensitivity" because he dared to stand where MLK stood, in front of an audience of, well, racists. Indeed, one "respected" commentator analogized Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally to a rally Al Queda might hold on September 11th at Ground Zero.
Of course, parallels to the "insensitivity" of the Ground Zero mosque supporters were never drawn, because even-handed logic rarely prevails.
And, naturally, carpy Al Sharpton had a counter-rally he called "Reclaim the Dream." Notice the strategic use of the word "reclaim." Because everyone's dream has been stolen or . . . wrongfully "claimed" by . . . I don't know . . . sinister day trippers?While you're thinking, enjoy the music and this unifying quote from one SEIU ruler:
"Shame on them. We still have a dream. We are here to let those folks on the Mall know that they don't represent the dream," said Jaime Contreras, president of SEIU-32BJ. "They sure as hell don't represent me. They represent hate-mongering and angry white people. The happy white people are here today. We will not let them stand in the way of the change we voted for!" (emph. added)
Got that? Only blacks can "represent" the dream of racial equality. And God have mercy on the single white soul who is happy (wait, is it "angry"?) and also "dreams the dream," dreamily supposing that racial parity has been attained in any measure.****
An angry Al Sharpton drew his own thunderous applause (about 3,000 people showed for his rally, a smattering next to Beck's) when he proclaimed, "this is our day and we ain't giving it away," or something close.
Ah, but you have patiently waded waited through several paragraph for me to make my point. And so I shall try to make it now.
Before the rally, Education Secretary Arne Duncan emailed his 4000 employees in the Department of Education "inviting" them to attend Sharpton's "Reclaiming" rally.
Yes, I know. It's a bit anticlimactic. After all, it's just government coercion and what's so bad about that? I mean, haven't we all been strong-armed by our own employers to "give to the United Way"? You must be wondering if there's a punch line buried in here.
Well, yeah, there is. It just wouldn't have had as much punch without the preceding lines.
So be still for a moment and transport yourself back in time. Then imagine the brouhaha if a Bush cabinet member had officially emailed government employees, using government resources, to "encourage" them to attend a Glenn Beck rally.
Subpoenas would be flying. An investigation would have been launched before Beck's rally even began. But today? The Arne Duncan/Sharpton cattle prod draws but a yawn.
So I have to ask: how much more desensitized must we get, before we fail to notice there's a camel in our tent?***
* Historical note: Congress ordered the National Parks Service to stop counting bodies after the Nation of Islam got mad (i.e., accused the agency of racism and threatened to sue it) because the NPS failed to back up the Nation of Islam's claim that a million men marched at its 1995 "Million Man March."
** One crowd management strategist explained that the size of the crowd matters, that the body counts "mean power in a political situation, or they mean money in a commercial situation. So the numbers are very important to the people who put on an event." So it was convenient and meaningful that the National Parks Service suspended their no-count rule for Obama's inauguration.
*** If you think my reference to camel is "racist" or Islamophobic (the thought just occurred to me; one can never be too careful), I can hardly wait to hear what you think of this new Geico ad:
Because really, who's to say it's not anti-Bush? Oh, those clever Geico folks. They sure know how to twist the twit wit.
**** Bonus round: who was the first U.S. president to invite an African American to stay at the White House? Hint: you won't like the answer. It sucks when things don't fit the media's narrative, doesn't it?! Because then you can't trust 'em and then you have to really think about stuff, and stuff.
Labels: Arne Duncan, Beck, Coercion, Geico, Leaked Emails, Million Man March, Nation Of Islam, National Parks Service, Racism, Reclaiming, Restoring Honor, Sharpton, Thinking