jryan

I am not flogging a dead horse, Swansont. My point in that second post was that I don't consider proclamations by Hansen to written in stone because of his history of questionable declarations and data management over the last three years. If I were to post what I believe to be evidence of global cooling while quoting an expert with demonstrable bias and a history of bonehead mistakes you would be well within your right to question my assertion based on the track record of my expert on similar claims. Just as I am also free to point out when Bascule claims validation of Hansen through comparison to HadCRUT3 and NOAA that HadCRUT3 disagrees with Hansen's GISTemp, especially in the time slice that this thread is dedicated to and NOAA has the same pruning issues as GISTemp (which both share a connection to a pruning of GHCN, their source data set).

I never claimed they weren't in place, Swansnot, I claimed they were ineffective and costly. You haven't provided verification that they are effective which makes them too expensive regardless of cost... and still they cost far more than alternatives. I have a few times. The decline from 1979 to 1983 was in large part due to another global recession, and the rise over the last 15 years was do to economic expansion. That expansion has halted, and retracted considerably, leading to a decline in per capita CO2 production since 2008 which will most likely take another few decades to return to 4.5ton/person again. But make no mistake, the historical trend indicates that the CO2 output will be pinned to the world economy, not a clean movement. No, I am not saying that you can quantify overall sensitivity. What you propose in an immensely more complicated process of determining the capability of the environment to absorb CO2, thereby determining a saturation point. The first is a complex processing of broad based observables, the latter is fraught with all but limitless variables from the reproduction triggers for ferns and phytoplankton to bone density in elephants and growth characteristics redwoods... and all flora and fauna in between. We are no closer to quantifying that now then we were 20 years ago and sheer number of variables dwarf those of even climate modeling. The study I posted set a range of observed sensitivity at 1.7ppm to 21.4ppm, with twice the likelihood that the actual sensitivity falls in the lowest quartile than the highest (hence the 7.7ppm average estimate). Where in that study does in state that sensitivity has increased over time? Or that the sensitivity has accelerated? No, I don't need to back it up with anything but reason, as I did above. Every animal on this planet captures CO2 and stores carbon in some form, and variability of capture and storage even varies between members of the given species (a 300 lb man contains more carbon than a 180 lb man)... finding all the averages and understanding how those averages are affected by a variable environment is a practical impossibility, and that is only a small part of the process needed to claim the global environment's saturation point with any precision. We can certainly estimate what the average change in uptake is, but that would not be able to determine what the saturation point would be because we would be unable to pinpoint the root cause of that variability without knowing all variables in the system itself. As I pointed out in another article, we just determined that some crustaceans increase shell production in response to a rise in water PH (ie. rise in dissolved CO2). It's possible for people to CLAIM they know, but those people are trying to sell you something. Now THAT is irony. Can you explain what was different in the drop from 1979 to 1983? If you don't know then how can I trust that you understand the meaning of the rise from 2002 to 2005? We also had a similar increase in CO2 usage from 1970 to 1973... but we can't draw any conclusions from that.... yet you want to draw conclusions from 2002 to 2005 like the cause and the concern should be patently obvious. They aren't. I am predicting that when the 2006-2010 numbers become available that there will be a decline similar to 1979 to 1982, and I make that prediction because the economic recessions in both periods are very similar. Yes, it did rise before... until 1971. The UK's bulk of the in per capita CO2 production predated 1960, they hit their peak in 1971 at 11.7 tons per capita never to reach that level again... hitting their lowest mark of 9.1 tons in 2005 (before cap and trade). What the UK commission stated was that current declines were cause by recession. It is more complicated than you make it out to be. What is the "carbon footprint of building a green generation from raw materials? What is the replacement rate of parts on green generators versus coal or oil or natural gas? how much of the provided energy was surplus versus demand? Does the green generator require fossil fuel generators to fill gaps (as in wind farms)? Does the generator require batteries to fill power gaps (solar)? What are the energy costs of those batteries? And so on. You toss out your statement on the assumption that "green" generators create an aggregate decrease in CO2 emission, but that isn't always the case. As an example, many environmentally conscious people purchased Toyota hybrids... but they could have caved on emissions more by buying a USED standard engine compact car (ie. recycling the vehicle) than they will save on gas with the hybrid for many years. This level of conservation may even hold true for NEW standard cars versus hybrids. Your rationale falls short for the same reason: a failure to consider the variables and a willingness to view the differences only superficially. Now quantify the cost of production and maintenance of green generators. I'll wait here. Which is actually exactly what that study WAS in was an expert in the field issuing a study that changed the findings of prior studies. But that aside, I can't wait to see you jump in an call for "wait and see" the next time someone posts an study that supposedly proves global warming.

There is still a problem with that plan.... and I believe that the "non-edible" will make the problem even worse rather than better. The problem is that in the last biofuel push there were large scale crop switches to take advantage of the biofuel market. Switching to non-edible sources doesn't guarantee that farmers the world over won't switch from wheat, rice or corn to hemp or some other non-edible biofuel source to take advantage of the demand. The reason I find this troubling is that at least with corn and rice it was possible to turn on a dime when biofuel production was put on hold. At least with the old system you had the option of EATING the crops when the biofuel push stalled.

The mechanisms aren't working in Europe, and countries like Spain are paying the price for trying to subsidize their way to green enegery. And the CO2 had to rise that 10% to retuirn to 1979 per capita levels. Which is meaningless until you can tell me what all the uptake mechanisms are, whether uptake is constant for each or varies with CO2 availablity, and what the saturation point actually is. You can speak theoretics, but you don't know, nor does anyone else know if satuartion is even practical to worry about given the fossile fuels available to burn. Like the SETI equation for chances of finding Alien life, an equation is great until you realize you can't quatify the variables. Per Capita usage in 1979: 4.5 metric tons/person, 2005per capita usage: 4.5 metric tons/person... still not seeing a rise worth worrying about there Swansont. That is a rather broad statement and worthy of some actual data. Many countries that have reduced output since kyoto were reducing emissions BEFORE Kyoto, much less cap and trade legislation. As I said before, the UK have been on a decline since the 60s, Germany since the last 70s... Japan has been increasing since the mid 90s. I find no country with a drop coinciding with Kyoto or cap and trade legislation. I'm open to evidence, though. But "think how bad it could have been" isn't a compelling argument unless you can actually quantify how bad it was going to be. You tell me "what if". The answer to your question probably isn't as simple as you seem to think, but it's an answer you need to provide, not ask me to answer for you. I was responding to your qualification that post peer-review critique needs to come from scientists in their field. I have seen that argument run in circles for years now... oh, he can't critique that paper he's not a climate scientist! He needs to be published in peer review journals! ... He can't publish in peer review journals, he's not a climate scientist! Critique should be taken at face value, or in the case of hybrid disciplines like climatology, critique should readily be accepted from specialists in the discipline critiqued. A mathematician doesn't need to be a climatologist to critique the math of a climate study, for example. And no, it isn't a red herring as I see it as the whole peer review and critique. But how long will you give the study to clear wavers before you can accept it's findings, anyway?

I provide data where it is necessary (see debate on GISTemp records), your Newsweek article and the CSM article don't count as "data". Abstract quantity claims do not equate to value. "This book is 10 pounds.. it must be 10 times better than this 1 pound book". The proof is in the actual evidence and the actual documents. You like to point out that you need to read the original emails in the CRU (and then fail to read them when provided), but you seem to have no interest in providing the documentation and interpretations of the panel of Democrats... nor did the CSM seem to care to look deeper into the allegations either. EDIT TO ADD Feel free to show me how it's done by posting the 5 most damning documents used by the panel to determine wrong doing in the Bush administration. As I said, I'm not interested in cherry picking the article I provided. Um... what? As is yours. Would you accept the findings of an internal review by the Bush Administration?

But every single link I have provided for you on Hansen's Y2K error specifically stated it was an error for the U.S. and invalidated his claim in January 2007 that 9 of the warmest years in the U.S. on record were since 1997. It turned out to be 3. And Antarctica, and Australia, and Siberia... and I would guess before long his questionable pruning of weather stations will become another big problem for him. As I said before, the U.S. may be 3% of the total Earth surface, but it has the lions share of weather stations. The bias towards US stations is as bad with GHCN.. and in this CA article you can see the drop in stations as time progresses. Those thinly spread stations around the globe must be pretty heavily weighted. Which is also interesting because as you see moving forward, those sparse stations more an more rely on estimated averages ands less on true averages. Erros in those stations are then maginified by their inordinate weight.

I don't have to disprove anything. The onus of proof is on you and all you have right now is tabloid inuendo. You aren't providing "data" dude, you're providing a Newsweek article and selling the "post hoc ergo propter hoc" fallacy given in the article as gospel. I'm not buying it. "What began in 2006 as a bipartisan investigation turned into a largely Democratic report." .... next. It was a political hatchet job. Also the revelation that Administrations control the legal and informational documents distributed by their Administartion is not news, it's standard opperating procedure. Again, I don't need to provide anything. You have a tabloid journal piece and a CSM article about a Democrat controlled report on Bush. Do YOU even have the report in hand? From the article: "The IPCC bases its work on papers that have been published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature" ... no they don't, apparently. So obviously The Economist has some rethinking to do about defense of Jones using IPCCs infalibility. I also am not making the "House of Cards" argument that The Economist is trying to disprove. I am arguing that they are more important than folks like you given them credit for. PSU internal investigations don't cut it, and even they are continuing with a professional investigation into professional misconduct. You wouldn't know that reading the New Scientist, however. From the report: "In sum, the overriding sentiment of this committee, which is composed of University administrators, is that allegation #4 revolves around the question of accepted faculty conduct surrounding scientific discourse and thus merits a review by a committee of faculty scientists. Only with such a review will the academic community and other interested parties likely feel that Penn State has discharged it responsibility on this matter.“ You then go on to finish with more tripe and ad hominem so I choose to ignore it.

And my statement was about how he screwed up the U.S. records, you keep posting the GLOBAL records. His January 2007 announcement of U.S. records is STILL WORNG. VERY wrong, actually. So still, your claim of GLOBAL records doesn't change the wrongness of his U.S. record announcement in 2007. More than once, chief: Siberia, Antarctica, Australia in a few years with others still being discussed.. but since Hansen is batting 0 versus bloggers, you can't even give him the benefit in questionable situations like UHI homogenization, plus an interesting talk of differences in NCDC and GISS SST anomaly data, and so on. So yeah, not once but repeatedly since people started checking in 2007. Interestingly, if you look at this CA article on Hansen's 1998 models his low forcings "C" is pretty close to temperatures being reported now. Unfortunately he is still chasing the "A" forcing chart. The danger of funneling science through advocacy is my guess. Which you keep claiming incorrectly. I'm not wrong, so I have nothing to admit to (at least nothing I haven't admitted to already). So will you admit that Hansen has had to admit to numerous large errors discovered by skeptics?

Point taken on the first link. His claims are backed by the Wikipedia article on the EST Scheme. Hmmm... for all of his supposed bias, he still stated the correct information. Are you saying the the recession hit all emmisions but CO2? Also, the second link wasn't everything it could have been, but maybe I've rectified that a bit. And your attempt to dismiss the third link was misplaced and his numbers were easily verified. And my second point was it's dubious to claim quatification of effective CO2 emmisions in 2008 and 2009 and industrial output was heavily dimisnished in that time frame by the deep economic recession. And if you want to play the "oh well he's.." game, I have to tell you that the director of the EST program is not the best source for verifying the efficacy of the EST program. Especially when said director is "estimating". Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Ugh.... That is one nutty twist on reality, POM. When did I say "vibe of the thing"? And what does the Newsweek article prove? How about you show where Kyoto has been effective in the countries that ratified it. Lindzen's advice to Bush looks prophetic. Kyoto has been very expensive where implimented with little or no effect. Environment economists aren't settled on the benefit of Kyoto either (see here, here for example) . So good job CEI, Bush and Lindzen. You don't either, actually. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged According to their own report shows €19,364,000 on "climate and energy" in 2007 and €17,469,000 on "media and communications". I'd guess that $51 million dedicated to propaganda and "climate and energy" there is enough to dwarf Exxon by themselves.

I am citing failures on Hansen's part that Hansen himself has since corrected. You keep wanting me to bend my evidence into countering a claim I never made or on grounds I have long since corrected. I have strong reservations on the skill of Hansen and his GISTEMP product, and I have given my reasons several times over (Y2K, Siberia, odd data consolidation and correlation to resulting rises in his temperature records). It can't be said that I haven't conceded of points in this debate, I simply won't concede to this one because you are misrepresenting my position. I stand by my assertion that I don't trust Hansen's skill in GISTemp3, and by your own evidence GISTemp and it's cousin NCDC (both managing station data in a very similar fashion) don't agree with HadCRUT3 in the decade that this thread is about. So in that sense NCDC isn't a very good control in any comparison with GISTemp3. GISTemp3 is the more divergent of the two from HadCRUT3, but I'd concede I wouldn't want to live on the difference between GISTemp and NCDC... but that isn't unexpected. HadCRUT is derived from a sufficiently different methodology... and also happens to be sufficiently different from GISTemp3 in the last decade as well.

But before I get to those, let's finish off your list of 8... We've moved on. And as I pointed out, Greenpeace, which is on the attack on the other side has a $300+ million dedicated largely to the cause of climate change. Given the difference between $300 million on one side from Greenpeace and $8 million on the other from Exxon, it's clear that in the realm of climate advocacy Exxon is a light weight. And I'm not even counting the WWF and the thousands of lesser organizations lined up on the Greenpeace side with money to spend on climate change. So yeah, I see no point in you pointing out $8million by Exxon when it is dwarfed by the other side. Links would be nice there. And as I already showed, the IPCC peer-review process was biased towards warming. Here is a list of 17 such non-scientific citations that don't even include the well known citation of Himalayan melt, and the bogus rain forest claim, or the absurd citation of Antarctic stress citing a boot cleaning brochure for Antarctic tourism and numerous unpublished college theses. And that still isn't all of it. That doesn't matter to you, as published science that doesn't meet your expectations is readily dismissed. I see no need to since whether the House committee of Hansen himself made the claim his supervisor said it wasn't so and his 1,000 appearances throughout the media in that time is a testament to how unrestrained he actually is/was. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedOk, now on to the CRU Email response... And away we go... He refrained from using the data for political reasons, not scientific reasons. As a scientist the data has value or it doesn't as truth is the ultimate goal. In this case he wasn't concerned about where the data was TRUE or not, just that it would confuse the public. Your defense of such a decision by a scientist simply ignores the fact that withholding evidence to help promote a message IS propaganda. No he didn't.. hell, it was the very next email in the chronolgy. Email #0843161829 "I really wish I could be more positive about the … material, but I swear I pulled every trick out of my sleeve trying to milk something out of that. … I don’t think it’d be productive to try and juggle the chronology statistics any more than I already have—they just are what they are … I think I’ll have to look for an option where I can let this little story go as it is." In this case he couldn't find any signal in the data set so he wouldn't use it. Nut a null result is still valid... as a matter of fact, rejecting a null result corrupts the resulting analysis. This is also the "sin of Mann" too, by the way. Mann had his code search out and accept only ring data with a "signal"... though it is more complicated and worse than that as he picked positive and negative correlations then flipped the negative correlations upside down (making them possitive signal) thereby retaining the correlation while artificially augmenting the already hand picked signal). How could the peer-review review data omitted before the paper was submitted? That would be quite a trick indeed. No, you DO know that any resulting paper didn't contain that data because he couldn't torture a signal out of it. He says so himself if you read the article and the full email. Is that a statement that is supposed to mean something? His apology to Briffa was because, for whatever value they have in climatology, they are a lot of work to create. He was apologizing for not being able to include Briffa's collection. And if someone said it was a crime to be impolite you may have a point. But as nobody said that your point is simply an outlier from rational rebuttal and will wither and die from it's own unimportance. It's actually Funkhouser, but you already knew that. And Funkhouser's original concern was the data wouldn't be understandable "by the ignorant masses"... sounds like a sales pitch to me! So wait, you ramble on about one email and call it quits? And you can't even get that one email right. Your critique of Costella's work was a review of one email that was incomplete for even that one small series of emails.. and you still did it poorly. Not a great showing on your part, POM. Geeze.. that was it? That is what you waited for me to respond to? Or was there something else you wanted me to look at? Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Which of course John Costella did hundreds of times over. Linking each review directly to the full email itself, alolowing the reader, should they expect as you do, that he was taking the statement out of context, that they could read the original email in it's entirety. But you wouldn't know that because you didn't read enough of it to know even that he had provided the full emails... or even enough to realize that you big "GOTCHA" argument was answer a few lines later in the article. And you then go on to claim now that Costella is a paranoid schizophrenic... Again, not a great outing on your part. How deep are you planning on digging that hole, anyway?

I have a hard time taking seriously any request to cherry pick the CRU emails article when it has already been argued that the CRU emails have been cherry picked and therefor are worthless. I'm sure you see how silly such a request is. But I will respond to YOUR cherry picked entries shortly if it will make you happy.

No, I'm not wrong because I have provided failures on Hansen's part that contribute to my suspicion. You can choose on your own to excuse or ignore Hansen's foul ups as you wish. But that does change the fact that I have reasons for my opinion that are completely factual. And again, I was talking about Hansen's claims on American records. Get that through your head. As I have already conceded, his faulty claim on American records reduced his claim from 9 of 10 to 3 of 10, with 4 dropping all the way out of the top 20. You can argue his claim on GLOBAL tempertures all you want, I am arguing that my view of his GLOBAL temerature claims is tainted by his past screw ups on other claims. Period. You can keep beat that global temperature drum all you want, but it doesn't erase the fact of Hansen's Siberian and Y2K screw ups that, for me, call into question his quality control. I already have, repeatedly. I even corrected my own error from 2 remaining of the original 9 to 3 (also meaning 6 of the 9 warmest years (all in the previous decade) in U.S. record dropped out of the top 10 while the majority of those 6 dropped out of the top 20). It was a serious error on Hansen's part especially in the context of the claim he made. Hell, he had fewer stations to deal with on his American claim and he still screwed it up. His North American error was also important in that North America is heavily represented in his global climate reconstructions (which he then weights).. but in that case the low signal of the Y2K error is as much the result of his choice of weighting than any other reason. Because of this you are left with even FEWER non-American stations that have a GREATER effect on his GISTEMP record. It's not entirely Hansen's fault, however, as the same cutting is happening at NOAA level as well (article on the subject) This is a disingenuous crack that could be used (just as wrongly) to dismiss CO2 correlations. Discuss it or don't, but there is an actual connection between weather stations and weather data before the correlation. First, NOAA and GISS both have been pruning weather stations (as pointed out in the link above), on similar criteria, so it wouldn't be very telling if the two agree... nor would it put an end to the question of whether selectivity could be causing a warm bias in the record. Furthermore, HadCRUT3 does indeed diverge noticeably on the colder side from both NOAA and GISS for the decade in question.

It matters because Cap-and-Trade rewards such criminality rather than ward against it. For example: The Cap-and-Trade system in Europe reward at it's outset heavy CO2 emissions.. since there was no real way of quantifying emissions pre-Cap-and-trade the start of the program was a matter of declaration by the producer. As such it rewarded CO2 producers who overstated their own CO2 emissions, awarding them more carbon credits than they actually deserved in the system, allowing them to then turn around and sell the credits to new businesses for a profit without ever actually reducing their own emissions. I'll track it down, but there is a fascinating article showing a parallel between European cap-and-trade and the international airport slotting trade market. Until then, here is one report of the rise in CO2 production in Europe. And another from the following year. In your next quote I will address your counter argument for 2008 and onward. But getting back to cap-and-trade in general, the trouble is that there is no good way of ridding the system of fraudulent offsets, so a measure of reduction by simply counting the offsets will fail to be practical until such time as actual CO2 output matches the inflated offset chits in the market at the program's inception. Even on the up and up it gets dicey internationally when you will have places like Zimbabwe and Somalia that have no designs on large building projects selling offsets they never intend to use to companies that WILL use them to increase their CO2 output. This servers to compound the already ineffective cap-and-trade system. This is going on to varying degrees already within the EU. It depends on the method used to evaluate the CO2 reductions. If they are doing so on the readily available offset market data it's problematic due to the reasons already discussed. This WSJ explains the trouble with EU-ETS estimates and the trouble inherent in the EU Cap-and-Trade moving forward. Also, it is increasingly apparent that any redution in CO2 emissions following 2008 were due largely to the global recession and not Cap-and-Trade policy. I suppose you could argue that the EU-ETS contributed to the global recession... but I'm guessing you don't want to go there.

No, as I said originally, I don't trust Hansen or his methods because Hansen's methodology has been suspect in the past (from temperature adjustments to the his choices of weather stations used) For instance: At the GISS website there is a running tally of weather stations chosen by GISS (read: Hansen) for determining yearly global temperature (link to page) From that we get this interesting chart of GISS station selection versus temperature: There is evidence there of warming artifacts introduced by the simple act of station choice. As it is explained in the source material the choice of stations introduced a warming step increase to the raw mean leaving GISS and it's code to erase the artifact from the data moving forward. I do not trust that he has done this properly. The fact that the raw mean jumps so dramatically shows a clearly that there is a warm bias in the selection process itself. Also note that there is a roughly 2/3rd discrepancy between the GISS station numbers and the report I linked. As explained in that article, the GISS station selection also removed incomplete stations and duplicates, but the drop is still pronounced around 1990. Any artifact not accounted for in this reduction would therefor effect 10 years means from about 1985 and onward. But, getting back to your point, I am conceding, for the sake of argument, that in this case he may be correct about his "warmest on record" claim because "recorded history" is meaningless to the global warming debate as well as the debate on anthropogenic contributions to global climate. Without a clear picture of non-recorded climate history any discussion of future trends is meaningless.

I never said there was anything about me. I was commenting on bascule's dismissal of the emails and the article I provided because some of them had been "cherry picked". My point was it was a worthless dismissal because that is not what the author of the article I provided was doing. Had I posted an article about "hide the decline" then his defense would have merritt. But that is not what I provided. In truth there has been a good deal of "cherry picking" on both sides of the email debate, with "hide the decline" on one end and "no big deal" on the other. The latter is particularly amusing to me because the "no big deal" people often dismiss the issue saying it was just a few scientists behaving badly (which is wring) and then a post or two later referencing RealClimate.org which is run by the very same poorly behaved climatologists. Furthermore, had you read the Costella article the latest revelation of Jones fudging, or not checking data at all in his IPCC article on UHI would come as no surprise. In the emails you can see Tom Wigley berating Jones and others for there refusal to address the quality of the China data up front (the UHI data contained no measurement coordinates for the "rural" stations making it impossible to determine potential UHI influence at all). This ties in with the daily discoveries of non-scientific references in IPCC-AR4. Today it is a claim in AR4 of the effect of climate on the poor. In the section (here) they reference "(Wilgoren and Roane, 1999)", which it turns out is a story in the New York Times. Bringing the total of non-scientific references to IPCC impact statements to about 20. So surely if reporting falsehoods is a smear then the IPCC is a good source of smears against climate science. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged The peer review process itself is a myth for the IPCC. The skeptics the closest thing to a peer review process for the IPCC according to it's own So you tell me, from what does, say, the American Physics Association draw it's conclusions from if not the IPCC? Surely they aren't conducting an IPCC scale investigation (minus the newpaper clippings, that is)? And what is your point here? James Hansen believes that oil executives should be tried in criminal court for crimes against the Earth That's two separate claims, POM. Sending money directly to African kleptocrat dictatorships to not develop (read: increase CO2 output) in a bad idea, and it DOES keep Africa from developing. The Mugabes of the African continent are perfectly happy taking money from first world countries when they are all but required not to spend it on bettering their population. They stash it in personal accounts and go merrily on with their day. You have made the error of equating money with development.. which may have a tangential relationship in the first world, but the same is not true in Africa. Especially when spending cash on constructing homes and industry ensures that they will be paid less the next time around. I find your argument to be rather naive at it's roots. I think you need to go back to the drawing board and erase all the "more money = development" rationale.. especially as it applies to the third world... or actually insofar as it doesn't apply to the third world at all. What carbon trading results in in Africa is taking money from disgustingly rich western companies and depositing that money into Swiss bank accounts of obscenely rich Arfican kleptocrats. Well, that and also carbon trading is a fraud machine in Europe that has not reduced CO2 emissions at all. (note also that European Cap&Trade created $132bn in virtual currency almost over night, making it twice the size of Exxon, and completely dependant on the existence of Global Warming. (aside: The BBC pension is also heavily invested in climate change) More later.

Le Pew. Hey cool, they are also the plateau of the current warming trend! It's amazing how that works. Also the "record" who's record global temperture is setting is completely uninformative regarding global warming. For the "warmest in 100 years" to be of any value you have to show that it is unique on longer time scales. If the current trend ends up failing to surpass the even the Medieval Warm Period then AGW or not it becomes a non-issue. Furthermore, I'm still going to take all of Hansen's predictions with a grain of salt because 1) he has shown an ability for stupid mistakes (Y2K error in US and the Siberian flub) and 2) he is a hard core advocate rather than a pure scientist, making it even harder for him to check his own work. Anyway, keep listening to Hansen, it makes no difference to me. But a few years from now these discoveries will fall into the category of "why didn't we catch these signs sooner?".

They are relevant, actually, but I was off by one in my statement of the effect of the Y2K error in the American record. Here is one of the articles from August 2007 that bothered to list the record chages due to the Y2K error: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2007/08/revised_temp_data_reduces_glob.html In which they note: 1934 is now the hottest, and 3 others from the 1930's are in the top 10. Furthermore, only 3 (not 9) took place since 1995 (1998, 1999, and 2006). The years 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004 are now below the year 1900 and no longer even in the top 20. That is a rather large error to miss for more than 5 years. You're right, McIntyre had been working on the issue since June 2007, and on 8/6/2007 McIntyre stated in his blog that his requests for code were ignored and he would file an FOI for the code. The code was then released about a month later. (by the way, in my research to locate articles I located this one in which Schmidt complains -- after another QC failure -- that NASA doesn't have enough people to manage GISTEMP.... they have a whole 0.25 Full Time possitions dedicated to managing GISTEMP.. not so comforting) Anyway, McIntyre had been working in the issue since June.

Heh, whoops. Tree year out of 10 rose as expected, and 7 of the 10 flattened or declined unexpectedly. In this case, however, note that the high stratospheric water vapor is not considered a decadal oscillation, they are stating that the change in high stratospheric water vapor effected the decadal oscillation. In my case more than once is dyslexia. It was an attempt to explain my point through demonstration. You're right, I mistakenly flipped the findings. But the paper is not about decadal oscillation, but rather a "mysterious" finding that is effecting the decadal oscillation. And blast, Nature has apparently dumped the article into premium content. Your correction prompted me to go back and read it more carefully now that I am home and can dedictae more time to it.

No it's not. The 9/12/2007 filing was for: "Copies of all records, documents, internal communications and other relevant covered material created by, provided to and/or sent by NASA GISS." Code would fall under "documents" or "relevant material" 9/20/2007 was for: "Information regarding NASA GISS citing, referencing, discussing or otherwise related to the August 2007 correction online temperature data, etc. (See request for more details)" (sorry, it wasn't August. you can find them on page 58) See above. Did you mean to link to an article admitting the term is used as a perjorative?

I'll get to the rest of your points later POM, but as for "not threatening", here is the entirety of your PM to me. I'll leave it to our fellow readers to draw their own conclusions:

I didn't comment because it didn't read like a serious claim... but now that I lknow you believe it is, I'll touch on it briefly (which is as much as it deserves): 1) "Repeating the 26 myths" - Well, you have provided a list of supposed myths, but no real evidence of "repeating them"... nor is that a "smear campaign against climatologists" - Conclusion: A gratuitous assertion that can be gratuitously refuted. 2) You claim smearing of "Every scientific academy on the planet" and then provide a wiki link to a list of scientific organizations... but no smears. There is no evidence beyond what appears to be the absurd assumption that disagreeing with a public stance by a science organization equals a "smear". Conclusion: at best an absurd assertion not worthy of response without clarification. 3) Without agreeing with Lord Monkton I can still say that your evidence refuting Monkton's claim is an article that says "Nu-uh!" while not even doing a great job of establishing that Monkton claims AGW is an attempt at world communism.. much less address his concerns directly. So if you want to find something with more meat on it's bones feel free. I am unfamiliar with Lord Monkton's work beyond cursory reference.. and none of it on his claims of world communism. 4) A illy photo of Lord Monkton... which is beyond pointless and well into the even more seedy realm of trivial character assassination via physical appearance. 5) On Exxon Funding - Well, my first question would be "So?", Greenpeace has a $360 million budget of which far more than $8 million goes to fund campaigns that counter Exxon's paltry $8 million investment. My second response would be: How would such an investment be viewed if it were found at a later date that CO2 was not a primary drive of Earth's climate? Any wrongdoing by Exxon is nothing more than a "begging the question fallacy". That is to say you must first assume that what Exxon is doing is wrong before you can conclude that what Exxon is doing is wrong... so Exxon's expenditures can not be used as evidence that AGW theory is correct, or that it is a smear, for that matter. 6) On A conservative think tank funding anti-IPCC papers: Given that this is the same IPCC report riddled with inaccuracies and publicly maligned by it's own lead authors, it would seem that that conservative think tank was on the right track. Or at the very least no as superfluous as Boxer and Sharon Begley seem to think. The IPCC apparently needed a healthy dose of dissent in the creation of AR4... but it didn't exist and the final product is shaping up to be a shabby mess. 7) On the silencing of scientists (primarily James Hansen) - This is demonstrably wrong as Hansen made that claim numerous times on Charlie Rose, Dianne Rehm, and elsewhere while caling for the imprisonment of oil execs... and he still has his job at GISS. It's amazing how often the man turns up in those 8 years talking openly about the administration and his views on Global Warming when he was being silenced.. aint it? Or, as his former supervisor put it: “In his more than 1,000 speeches, interviews, publications and public appearances since 1998, it is difficult for me to believe that Dr. Hansen has even been bothered,” Theon said" Edit: By the way, POM, if you intend to continue sending me threats via PM then you should have the decency to not block replies.

And indeed I hadn't, nor had the person who wrote the article I provided. Bascule made the wholly incorrect assumption that I had provided "cherry picked phrases" and I pointed out that the article I provided was not cherry picked phrases at all but rather a meticulous commentary on the entire set of emails in chronological order and linked back to the source data for anyone's need for secondary verification... which is the exact opposite of "cherry picking". So again, what I provided is not cherry picking and moving forward do not classify it as such. All such statements do is prove that you have made a determination of the contents without even a cursory evaluation of the material.

No, I think Bascule is saying that Keith Olbermann is America's greatest scientist.

I have to point out the irony of the fact that after Obama claimed that Health care reform would be paid in part by savings in Medicare through uncovering fraud and abuse that the Fraud and Abuse division of Medicare is the only Medicare division seeing cuts.