National Geographic - Chicken Little Syndrome

[Chris_]

"Six Degrees Could Change The World"

An upcoming tv special they are advertising now.   

More globalwarming alarmist tripe.  algore would be proud.   

Oh Nooooooooo!!!!!

 

[Wretched Excess]

well, no one would watch it if it was called;

Global Warming; No Big Deal.
And it's probably caused by the Sun, anyway

[Happy Fun Ball]

Global warming can't be all bad. I'm sure Greenland would love to have those vineyards back.

[Atomic Lib Smasher]

All the channels are doing this now. History Channel, Discovery, etc. The Soviets would have been proud of the Goracle.

[The Night Owl]

Global warming can't be all bad. I'm sure Greenland would love to have those vineyards back.

About those vineyards...

Climate myths: It was warmer during the Medieval period, with vineyards in England
17:00 16 May 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Michael Le Page

English wine production is once again thriving and the extent of the country's vineyards probably surpasses that in the so-called Medieval Warm Period. So if you think vineyards are an accurate indicator of temperature, this suggests it is warmer now than it was then.

The point is that historical anecdotes about the past climate, such as the claim that Greenland used to be green, or that Newfoundland (Vinland) was full of grapes, have to be treated with caution.

For starters, the accuracy of some historical claims is questionable: it is not clear that Vinland of Viking sagas refers to modern-day Newfoundland, or even that there really were grapes, for instance.

...

http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn11644

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

...

http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn11644

Silly bird,

The Hockey Stick graph has long been debunked.

several independent studies called into question the hockey stick's conclusions. A number of climate experts noted that the Earth experienced both a widely recognized Medieval Warm Period from about A.D. 800 to 1400, as well as the Little Ice Age from 1600 to 1850. The hockey stick missed both of these significant climate trends. Other researchers found methodological flaws with the hockey stick, arguing some data sources were misused, several calculations were done incorrectly and some of the data were simply obsolete.

Because the hockey stick image has been regularly used to promote and justify proposed climate legislation, Congress asked the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to examine the hockey stick controversy. Their report, released in early July, confirmed many of the criticisms of the hockey stick. Whereas the authors of the research that produced the hockey stick concluded "the 1990s are likely the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, in at least a millennium," the NAS found little confidence could be placed in those claims.

The NAS also found the original researchers used proxy data for past temperature reconstructions that were unreliable, the historic climate reconstruction failed important tests for verifiability and the methods used underestimated the uncertainty in the conclusions reached.

http://eteam.ncpa.org/commentaries/when-warmings-hockey-stick-breaks

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!

http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/13830/

Even more...

http://www.john-daly.com/hockey/hockey.htm

It's a shame you have to rely on liars to push fairy tales so a bunch of socialists with Lear jets can tell you how to live your life.

Go buy your precious little carbon credits and leave the rest of us alone.

[Chris_]

http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/13830/

Even more...

http://www.john-daly.com/hockey/hockey.htm

It's a shame you have to rely on liars to push fairy tales so a bunch of socialists with Lear jets can tell you how to live your life.

Go buy your precious little carbon credits and leave the rest of us alone.
[/quote]

I can sell you them cheap.  Or you can get them for free here: http://www.freecarbonoffsets.com

[The Night Owl]

Silly bird,

The Hockey Stick graph has long been debunked.

Not true. In 2006, the National Academy of Sciences looked at various versions of the hockey stick, including Michael Mann's version, and came to the conclusion that, despite any errors or deficiencies found in the data used to create the hockey stick, it is basically correct...

http://dels.nas.edu/dels/rpt_briefs/Surface_Temps_final.pdf

The basic conclusion of Mann et al. (1998,
1999) was that the late 20th century warmth in
the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented
during at least the last 1,000 years. This conclusion
has subsequently been supported by an
array of evidence that includes both additional
large-scale surface temperature reconstructions
and pronounced changes in a variety of local
proxy indicators, such as melting on icecaps and
the retreat of glaciers around the world, which in
many cases appear to be unprecedented during
at least the last 2,000 years. Not all individual
proxy records indicate that the recent warmth is
unprecedented, although a larger fraction of geographically
diverse sites experienced exceptional
warmth during the late 20th century than during
any other extended period from A.D. 900 onward.

As far as I know, the studies which you claim debunk the hockey stick have not been published in peer reviewed science journals and have gained little support in the scientific community.

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

This conclusion
has subsequently been supported by an
array of evidence that includes both additional
large-scale surface temperature reconstructions
and pronounced changes in a variety of local
proxy indicators, such as melting on icecaps and
the retreat of glaciers around the world

How odd.

The NAS, even though my links showed it found flaws in Mann's research, says that the corraborating evidence is melting glaciers.

Yet we learn the glaciers are melting because of volcanoes and oceans temps.

That brings us back to whether or not ocean temps are cyclical or man-made.

As Mann has been debunked you cannot list him as a cause of ocean warming.

 

[The Night Owl]

The NAS, even though my links showed it found flaws in Mann's research, says that the corraborating evidence is melting glaciers.

A lot of scientific theories have flaws. We don't throw out scientific theories just because they are flawed.

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

The NAS, even though my links showed it found flaws in Mann's research, says that the corraborating evidence is melting glaciers.

A lot of scientific theories have flaws. We don't throw out scientific theories just because they are flawed.

Your concession is duly noted.

Come back when you have more than conjecture based on flawed research and skewed statistics before asking us to hand over our laws and economy to duplicitious demagogues in Lear jets.

[Chris_]

The NAS, even though my links showed it found flaws in Mann's research, says that the corraborating evidence is melting glaciers.

A lot of scientific theories have flaws. We don't throw out scientific theories just because they are flawed.

"We" who???  

[The Night Owl]

"We" who???  

Mankind.

[The Night Owl]

Your concession is duly noted.

Come back when you have more than conjecture based on flawed research and skewed statistics before asking us to hand over our laws and economy to duplicitious demagogues in Lear jets.

Nonsense. I have not conceded anything.

As I have already pointed out, the NAS panel which studied the hockey stick determined that flaws in it were not large enough to change the overall conclusion.

[Happy Fun Ball]

The theory that the earth was the center of the universe was rather flawed. So is the theory that life can spontaneously emerge from non-living matter. Are you saying that we find these still valid even now?

[The Night Owl]

The theory that the sun was the center of the universe was rather flawed. So is the theory that life can spontaneously emerge from non-living matter. Are you saying that we find these still valid somehow?

The theory that the sun is the center of the universe was not just rather flawed but totally flawed. According to the NAS, flaws in the hockey stick are not significant enough to warrant its dismissal.

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

Nonsense. As I have already pointed out, the NAS panel which studied the hockey stick determined that flaws in it were not large enough to change the overall conclusion.

Based on phenomenon such as glacial melting; which, since we don't have reliable data on anthro-GW is more than likely cyclical plus volcanic.

BTW - those other temperature data sets were revised...downward.

Remember the revised NASA data that showed 1934--not 1998--was the hottest year?

My earlier column this week detailed the work of a volunteer team to assess problems with US temperature data used for climate modeling. One of these people is Steve McIntyre, who operates the site climateaudit.org. While inspecting historical temperature graphs, he noticed a strange discontinuity, or "jump" in many locations, all occurring around the time of January, 2000.  

These graphs were created by NASA's Reto Ruedy and James Hansen (who shot to fame when he accused the administration of trying to censor his views on climate change). Hansen refused to provide McKintyre with the algorithm used to generate graph data, so McKintyre reverse-engineered it. The result appeared to be a Y2K bug in the handling of the raw data.

McKintyre notified the pair of the bug; Ruedy replied and acknowledged the problem as an "oversight" that would be fixed in the next data refresh.

NASA has now silently released corrected figures, and the changes are truly astounding. The warmest year on record is now 1934. 1998 (long trumpeted by the media as record-breaking) moves to second place.  1921 takes third. In fact, 5 of the 10 warmest years on record now all occur before World War II.  Anthony Watts has put the new data in chart form, along with a more detailed summary of the events.  

The effect of the correction on global temperatures is minor (some 1-2% less warming than originally thought), but the effect on the U.S. global warming propaganda machine could be huge.

Then again -- maybe not. I strongly suspect this story will receive little to no attention from the mainstream media.

There's that Hansen guy again--lying.

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=8383

According to the NAS, flaws in the hockey stick are not significant enough to warrant its dismissal.

Based on:

Galciers that melting from volcanoes.

And temp readings that have been revised down.

 

[The Night Owl]

Remember the revised NASA data that showed 1934--not 1998--was the hottest year?

One year is just one year. We are talking about a trend which spans decades. The fact that 1934 was hotter than 1998 does not disprove observations of a warming trend in the past few decades.

Pointing out that the claim that 1998 was the hottest year on record is incorrect is a perfect example of the kind of insignificant corrections which some are touting as evidence that the hockey stick is wrong. So 1934 was hotter than 1998. So what?

[Chris_]

The theory that the earth was the center of the universe was rather flawed. So is the theory that life can spontaneously emerge from non-living matter. Are you saying that we find these still valid even now?

Dude -- don't make me agree with TNO.  The strawman fallacy of "life emerging from non-life" (i.e. abiogenesis) has been soundly defeated in the realm of science.  Over hundreds of years.  That is not even similar to the infant hobby (not even a full science) of Climatology.

[Rebel]

I'm a Christian, but the way Hannity debates this issue can easily be challenged. His point is that if you believe in evolution, etc., that you believe something came from nothing. So he believes God created everything...as I do. However, one could easily say, "Where'd God come from? What came before him? What was here before him?". These two issues will never be resolved. To believe in either is nothing more than faith. Sorry, evolution has never been proven. Cell specialization? Sure. Adaptation? Most definitely. .....but evolution in the terms that we came from simians has yet to be proven. Hell, even if it is proven, it doesn't disprove God. I, for one, don't spend a lot of time arguing/debating it unless I see Christians attacked as idiots, morons, and imbeciles. Someone wants to believe it, fine. Leave me alone to believe what I want to believe. The "problem" were seeing, however, is a reverse persecution going on within the liberal agenda.

[Happy Fun Ball]

Dude -- don't make me agree with TNO.  The strawman fallacy of "life emerging from non-life" (i.e. abiogenesis) has been soundly defeated in the realm of science.  Over hundreds of years.  That is not even similar to the infant hobby (not even a full science) of Climatology.

Yes, I know. My point was that despite what he said, we do dump flawed theories like that, and we're seeing the same thing with global warming. Yet people still cling to it despite the evidence to the contrary.

Now, global warming is one thing (the climate continually changing, solar cycles, etc.). It's quite another to say that we are causing the earth to heat up because of a few Hummers and SUVs, outdoor barbecues, and capitalism in general.

[Rebel]

Yes, I know. My point was that despite what he said, we do dump flawed theories like that, and we're seeing the same thing with global warming. Yet people still cling to it despite the evidence to the contrary.

Now, global warming is one thing (the climate continually changing, solar cycles, etc.). It's quite another to say that we are causing the earth to heat up because of a few Hummers and SUVs, outdoor barbecues, and capitalism in general.

True, if the Earth is warming, it's most likely due to a very active volcano season and, damn, one more thing.......oh yeah, that bigass ball of fire 93 million miles away.

[Happy Fun Ball]

What, you mean this one?

[Chris_]

"We" who???  

Mankind.

You speak for "mankind"???   

[The Night Owl]

True, if the Earth is warming, it's most likely due to a very active volcano season and, damn, one more thing.......oh yeah, that bigass ball of fire 93 million miles away.

The sun has been more or less ruled out as being the primary cause of global warming. Scientists have very accurate data from satellites which indicates that temperatures on Earth have been increasing for the past few decades despite the fact that solar activity has remained the same for the past few decades.