JohnB

Hmmmm. Fair enough, thanks. There are still some questions, but I'll post them when I can (hopefully) put them in a clear fashion.

I do see how they track. My point is that for the instrumental period 1880-2010. (We're almost there) is 130 years. The good track is only for 80 of those years and for 50 it's way out. Hence we can safely say that the rings track well for only 61% of the calibration period. I don't see how this can inspire confidence. Unless we find the cause, the correllation will only get worse. Go 50 years into the future. (assuming we haven't found the cause) and we will be in the situation where the rings will correllate to less than 50% of the calibration period. Just to make certain that there is no misunderstanding here. I'm talking specifically about the very northern series that suffer from this problem. This is not to say that all tree rings should be thrown out, just that those series that demonstrably suffer from divergence should be left out. They should not be "edited" or "truncated". They should not be used until the problem is solved. I apologise if I didn't make that clear earlier. We use them, that's what multiproxy studies are. I've never said otherwise. You are aware that there are numerous proxies that don't tell the same story though, aren't you?

POL. Fair enough comments as far as they go. The problem I see is this. We calibrate the rings to the instrumental record. Let's be generous and call it 150 years. We find that there is correllation between the rings and temps for 100 of those years. So we throw out the 1/3 that doesn't fit, commenting that there must be some unknown factor that messes things up. Then we use what's left to describe with incredible accuracy what the temps were 2,000 years ago. Does this seem like reasonable science to you? What are these unknown factors? How can we be certain that they did not come into play in the past? It is only reasonable that if you can't tell what unknown factor messes things up a mere 20 years ago you cannot in any way be certain that the same factor didn't do the same thing 1,000 years ago. See what I'm getting at? The error bars must become large, so large that reasonable conclusions regarding past temps relative to the modern period become guesswork. Put another way. If I could show a correllation between temps and the population of London for 100 out of the last 150 years, would you accept it as a valid temp proxy? I bloody wouldn't. If you consider the actual record, this isn't too hard. 1960 was before the current warming period. How many things would "track well" if they only had to show an increase from 1880-1940 odd and then level off a bit? Cars? Sea bird migrations? City populations? To write off the fact that 1/3 doesn't track well with a hand waving excuse about "unknown factors" is just poor science in my book. I'd like to see anyone try that sort of reasoning with the Tax Office. Also, nobody said that there aren't other proxies. I've said twice in this thread that I would simply prefer others be used until the divergence problem can be cleared up. (Which answers your first question.) Edit to add; This isn't about something in the tree rings changing. This is the relationship beween rings and temp reversing itself. Not a minor thing I would think. I hope that there is a secondary relationship that can be found, perhaps a chemical in wood that is more plentiful when things are (for example) warm. Such a thing would then tell us whether tree rings were getting thinner because it was getting warmer or colder. Such a discovery would, I believe, remove the divergence problem. As the problem is being actively investigated I expect something to turn up. I hope it's sooner rather than later.

Maybe so, but his is more entertaining. Aside. How do you tell sacred cows from normal ones?

Do you mean the real ones, or just the games? If you mean the games, I'm a WW II fan myself. I just don't find modern jet sims fun. "Oh look! I have a radar contact at 100 miles. I'll just send off a missile." can't compete with a "turn and burn" at zero feet. Filling your opponent with lead at 50 feet range is much more satisfying.

Sorry to take so long, but RL has a habit of getting in the way. Concerning divergence. No, actually. I perhaps should have said "roughly" linear, but the result is the same. Temperature is deduced from proxies on the basic assumption that there is a roughly linear relationship between tree ring size and temp. As Loele 2008 shows, this assumption is false. If you care to dispute the point, would you like to link to something that shows that this assumption is not used? And perhaps educate us all on the basic assumptions used in dendroclimatological calibrations? Strawman. I didn't say they were useless. I said I would prefer others with a firmer grounding were used. Tree rings are still our best bet for annual variability and as such should get more research funding to try and solve the divergence problem. Until that time, there are other, less problematical proxies. Another strawman. I used that graph for the explicit purpose of showing, as it did quite clearly the divergence problem. I said nothing about deleted data and couldn't care less. I even made the point that within the context of the Loehle article if the post 1960 odd part were reversed it would be accurate. Please read what I write. Are you impying that there is no "divergence problem"? Numerous papers would seem to disagree with you.

One of the emails contains a bit that demonstrates part of my concern regarding attribution of climate forcings. Kevin Trenberth said; email here. I see this as a problem in logic. One of the main attribution arguments is that we understand the natural forcings and systems and can account for them, therefore we know that CO2 is a major driver. However, if that were in fact the case, then wouldn't we therefore also know which forcing or part of the system has "reversed" itself and be able to account for the "lack of warming"? It seems to me that the two go hand in hand. If you know one, then you must know the other. Opposite sides of the coin, so to speak. Conversely, if we don't know what negative forcings are causing the current lack of warming, how could we say with certainty that we know all the factors that contributed to the warming in the first place? Thoughts?

Not quite. As the article iNow linked to points out, we assume that the relationship between tree ring width and temperature is linear when it is not. The widest bands appear at the "optimal" temperature for the trees growth and as the temp gets either colder or warmer the rings will get thinnner. This leads to a problem when looking at the past. If we see the rings go from thin to thick and back to thin it is interpreted as going from cool to warm and back to cool. The same tree ring pattern is also given if the temps go from cool to warm to warmer. And there is no way to tell which is correct. It is one of Keith Briffas reconstructions that shows this quite clearly with the temps apparently dropping dramatically in the late 20th C. (Which they didn't do). It is my view that the 20th century high point actually indicates the optimum temp for this tree series. After that, the rings are getting thinner and are interpreted as temps dropping. I believe this interpretation to be wrong and the rings are getting thinner because the temp is now above optimal temp for the trees concerned. Ergo, if the graph after the high point was reversed to show a continued climb, it would be roughly correct. Tree rings going from thin to thick indicate temps are approaching optimal and those going from thick to thin show temps moving away from optimal. That is the factual interpretation. Without knowing what the actual "optimal" temp for a tree is and having some way to establish the direction of the temp away from optimal, reconstructions are often "educated guesses". In essence, due to this problem, to be correct parts of some reconstructions would have to be reversed, but as I said, there is no way to tell which parts. Given this, water availability and CO2 fertilization as well as local weather patterns I think that it would be virtually impossible to show that what you have is signal rather than noise. The bottom line is that tree ring proxies can be made to agree quite closely, provided you already know what the answer is. Outside that, they diverge, quite profoundly in some cases. Personally I would be much happier if tree rings were given a miss all together and other proxies (like the O16/18 ratio) which are on a much firmer empirical footing were used in preference.

I think it is best summed up by this exchange in the comments at Media matters. I admit to being amazed at the latitude you guys give your talking heads. He'd be off the air down here.

And "interesting" when you get your lance caught in the blade.

bascule, I don't think Prof. Singer self identifies withe label, it struck me more that the label was applied by the reporter.

Engineering through the Ages? Models of the machines that constructed the Bahu Fort? Nice looking city, BTW. (And the fort looks spectacular)

npts2020, I get the "Primary" part, but how are the opposing candidates chosen? Who nominates them and how do they get to be candidates? Like I said, it comes from the grassroots down here, with the local branches nominating. In bascules case, the representative wouldn't get the branch votes and wouldn't make it to the ticket as a candidate for his party. I should add that "theoretically", candidates come from the grassroots branches. Often the party recommends and the branches rubber stamp. There is also the possibility of a potential candidate "branch stacking". Since most local party branches are small (<20 people), the potential candidate gets a number of his/her friends to enroll in their local branch to lobby and vote for his/her candidacy. It's against the rules of all parties to do this and you will be in deep dodo if caught. OTOH, all parties like to have people with a proven track record in organization. As a light digression. We use the preferential system here. If there are 4 candidates, you number the ballot in order of preference 1, 2, 3, 4. Because of this, on polling day, each party has people out handing out "How to Vote" cards, basically al illustration of how the party would like to put your preferences. Party members do a stint at the polling place for a few hours to hand out the cards. Some years ago, I was doing my stint handing out the cards for the Liberal Party (moderate right wing). Also there were the Nationals (a bit more right), Labour (Left), Democrats (moderate left) and an Independent. And we were all standing in a line, leaning on a wall with our little leaflets bothering people as they came to vote. The replacement for the Nationals didn't turn up and the guy that was there had to leave. Since we were both "Right", I offered to hand his out until the replacement came. The Independent didn't have enough people, so his cards were left under a brick on top of the wall. I didn't think that this was too good, so I started handing out his leaflets as well. So now I had 3 different "How to Vote" cards to hand out. The Democrat also had to leave, so I got his cards too. The Labour fellow thought this very funny until the dinner he had the night before decided to go "express" through his system. He very quickly asked if I minded, gave me his cards and bolted for the dunny. So for a short time there was the bizarre spectacle of a member of the Liberal Party greeting people and handing out the cards for 4 major parties and an Independent. At the time this was a Liberal held seat and the others were trying to get rid of "my" candidate. Oddly enough, he came through while I was doing this and once the situation was explained to him, he just shrugged and said "Fair enough. Coming to the party later?" The Labour candidate came through and spat the dummy. It was also at polling stations that I saw the major difference between the parties. Liberals, Nationals and Labour had the major backing funding from business, farmers and unions respectively. (Small parties and Independents operated on shoestrings.) On polling day each of the majors would send someone around with an Esky full of cold drinks for the troops with the cards. The Liberals and Nationals always offered drinks to the people from the other parties, Labour never did. Sad really.

Fair enough. It does lead to a question though. How are candidates selected? Down here if you wanted to stand for the Liberal Party, there is a "pre selection" vote and the grassroots get to vote for who they want as candidate for their electorate. The Senate ticket for a State is voted on at the State meeting. Each party branch sends a representative for their branch to cast votes in deciding who will stand for the Senate for that State. This basically means that if you p*ss off the local branches, you won't get the votes if someone runs in preselection against you. In your case this Jared Polis would be facing a battle just to keep being the representative even before it gets to the polls. In practice, sitting members don't often face challenges, but it makes sure that they don't get too much on the nose because they are aware that the threat is always there. So how do the Dems and Repubs choose their candidates? Maybe if that got changed things could improve.

Wasted effort IA. There are too many that believe that the Bermuda Triangle is the result of an Atlantean death ray and at the same time believe Platos account of Atlantis. When I ask them how a civ with flying saucers and death rays gets the snot beaten out of them by the greeks with bronze swords and chariots, they give me funny looks.

"Knights Carbonic" I love it.

I think that there are strategic moves being made on all sides. We had a "Report" released in the last week or so showing the destruction that will be caused by the 1.1m increase in sea level. Odd that an "alarmist" report should come out just before Copenhagen, don't you think? If anyone is interested, and they are worth the read, the emails can be found here, complete with wordsearch facility. From a cursory read, (I have little time ATM as I'm starting a business and preparing for throat surgery) there is a lot of interesting stuff in there. The extreme "antis" will certainly try to make out a conspiracy where there is none. There is certainly collusion, eg Mann asking Tamino to spearhead an attack on a paper, but so what? People on the same side co-ordinating their efforts, big deal. I would wager that a check of emails from the anti side would reveal similar activities. Some, like the one I linked to, show that the IPCC process (at least in the past) has not been what it should be. So at least one IPCC report had it's paleo chapter written by one person and not a team of authors. Another shows, I think, that "management" may have a larger part than many "pros" think. This email from Rxxxxx, an author at RC leads me to ask; 1: What does he mean by *true* picture? Why the emphasis? 2: What does he mean by "all but our case" is true to the science? Is his case not true to the science? I think it will take quite a while for all this to be digested, but with luck some more openness in climate science cannot be a bad thing.

You are aware that "failure to make data available" is commonplace in certain areas? That is why FOI campaigns have been launched. Since the Hadley Centre is one of the major temp centres, isn't it reasonable that they reveal what stations are used and the methodology used to produce their results? What is worrying to me is the mindset shown. People are being asked to delete data and emails in case of an FOI request. I don't know about other nations but that is a Federal offence in Australia. It is classified as corrupt activity. It is also worrying that papers would be kept out of the IPCC process even if it meant "redefining" the meaning of the peer review process. This cannot be viewed as in any way "good" for science to have major players talking this way. I note that other emails from lead authors are requested to be deleted, which is in contravention of IPCC rules. This is just not good. BTW, nice misdirection on realclimates part. The issue is not with the Hadley Centre or the University of East Anglia, the issue is with a certain Dr. Jones who is associated with both. Dr. Jones has consistently and constantly refused to provide data to back his results. Excuses ranging from "Why should I?" to "National Defence" to "Intellectual Property" to "Secrecy agreements with other nations, no, I can't tell you who because we have lost the list of who we have agreements with" to simply, "We've moved and lost the data". Leaving aside for a moment the climate debate, the question is "Is this acceptable behaviour for any scientist?" I can't help but think no, and that this is harming climate science in particular and science in general.

And as I pointed out, some Democrats are exactly the same. (But in different areas.) My point is that the other Democrats (who presumably aren't shills) aren't doing anything about them. So is the argument that the Democrats are less corrupt than the Republicans? By your arguments the Republicans are corporate shills, while the Democrats simply turn a blind eye to some of theirs being corporate shills. Still sounds like a bad set of choices to me. One party is corrupt and the other tolerates corruption. I can't see a practical difference here. That's what I've been trying to get at.

You perhaps missed my point. I contend that neither side give a tinkers damn. This is exactly what I mean when I say that partisanship is killing you. I used sugar to show that you are getting screwed to the tune of $1.9 billion per year on food basics and your response is "Well, yeah, But the other side is worse, I'm sure of it!" Until the mmbers of each party wise up and see through the bulldust, demanding that their party clean up their act, you won't have real change. I might refer more to Dems supporters when talking to you, simply because that's the side you suppoert, but all my comments are equally applicable to any Republican supporters as well. The partys can only be cleaned by the demand of their own supporters. Pointing the finger at the other side is worse than useless, as it plays into their hands.

Okay, thanks. I didn't realise that. I was under the impression that polarity = cycle. There's always something new to learn, isn't there?

I did a quick search and it appears that this hasn't been posted here. I kinda liked it. j50ZssEojtM

DH, from what I've read it would seem that the only thing we can truly say about the Suns cycles is that we don't know as much about them as we thought we did. I've read in some reports that some small sunspots are either very, very late cycle 23 or that they are very early cycle 25. It appears that cycle 24 might still be a bit of a no show. As you said, we shall see........

bascule, I've been aware of the Dems lack of caring for the American people for some time. It was Democrat Senators that scuttled discussion on sugar tariffs and subsidies some years ago. Because of this, you and every other American pay two to three times as much for the sugar on your table compared to the rest of the world. This article from Forbes magazine shows who has been getting the money from the sugar lobby. They're not Republicans. The bottom line is that while everybody has been raving for years about big business having the Republicans in their pockets, there is amazingly little about the fact that those pockets are being shared by Democrats. From what I can see, you lot are being royally screwed by both sides. And the simple fact is that the grassroots on both sides are being very easily distracted by partisan ploys by their own representatives. Many Dem supporters are so busy congratulating themselves on how smart and educated and sensible they are, that they don't notice that while they're bending over shaking their finger at those gullible Republicans, they're being slipped a length by their own Representatives. (Using different agruments, the same is done to Republican supporters.) It's not the people of the partys that are at fault here. Partisanship is encouraged by both partys because it stops people looking over their shoulder and seeing that they're being screwed. If it wasn't so tragic, it would make the basis of a great sit com.