Now I know why righties are so deluded about global warming
- Thread starter futurecurrents
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Quote from fhl:
Gods? Pure hyperbole.
Now I know the following is more reading than you have done your entire life and you right wing morons like pictures more than words but if you are really interested in the truth.....
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There are a number of misconceptions concerning Phil Jones' email. These are easily cleared up when one takes the time to read Jones' words in context.
The "decline" is about northern tree-rings, not global temperature
Phil Jones' email is often cited as evidence of an attempt to "hide the decline in global temperatures". This claim is patently false and shows ignorance of the science discussed. The decline actually refers to a decline in tree growth at certain high-latitude locations since 1960.
Tree-ring growth has been found to match well with temperature. Hence, tree-rings are used to plot temperature going back hundreds of years. However, tree-rings in some high-latitude locations diverge from modern instrumental temperature records after 1960. This is known as the "divergence problem". Consequently, tree-ring data in these high-latitude locations are not considered reliable after 1960 and should not be used to represent temperature in recent decades.
The "decline" has nothing to do with "Mike's trick".
Phil Jones talks about "Mike's Nature trick" and "hide the decline" as two separate techniques. However, people often abbreviate the email, distilling it down to "Mike's trick to hide the decline". Professor Richard Muller from Berkeley commits this error in a public lecture:
"A quote came out of the emails, these leaked emails, that said "let's use Mike's trick to hide the decline". That's the words, "let's use Mike's trick to hide the decline". Mike is Michael Mann, said "hey, trick just means mathematical trick. That's all." My response is I'm not worried about the word trick. I'm worried about the decline."
Muller quotes "Mike's nature trick to hide the decline" as if its Phil Jones's actual words. However, the original text indicates otherwise:
"Iâve just completed Mikeâs Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keithâs to hide the decline."
It's clear that "Mike's Nature trick" is quite separate to Keith Briffa's "hide the decline". "Mike's Nature trick" refers to a technique (a "trick of the trade") by Michael Mann to plot recent instrumental data along with reconstructed past temperature. This places recent global warming trends in the context of temperature changes over longer time scales.
There is nothing secret about "Mike's trick". Both the instrumental and reconstructed temperature are clearly labelled. Claiming this is some sort of secret "trick" or confusing it with "hide the decline" displays either ignorance or a willingness to mislead.
Hockey Stick
Figure 1: Northern Hemisphere mean temperature anomaly in °C (Mann et al 1999).
The "decline" has been openly and publicly discussed since 1995
Skeptics like to portray "the decline" as a phenomena that climate scientists have tried to keep secret. In reality the divergence problem has been publicly discussed in the peer-reviewed literature since 1995 (Jacoby 1995). The IPCC discuss the decline in tree-ring growth openly both in the 2001 Third Assessment Report and in even more detail in the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report.
The common misconception that scientists tried to hide a decline in global temperatures is false. The decline in tree-ring growth is plainly discussed in the publicly available scientific literature. The divergence in tree-ring growth does not change the fact that we are currently observing many lines of evidence for global warming. The obsessive focus on a misquote taken out of context, doesn't change the scientific case that human-caused climate change is real.
Quote from Tsing Tao:
More relevant to the age of the planet:
Very good. As we see from the past, the CO2 level largely controls the temperature level as NASA says. It acts as the setting on a thermostat. So what should we expect to see now?
Correlation does not imply causation. How are we to know that temperature isn't the leading indicator and that the last few hundred years isn't an outlier? That chart doesn't say anything specific except that the temperature has been just as high, if not higher, in the past. There is an alarmingly high spike in CO2, that's for sure. What happens as a result of that is largely unproven.