What global warming?
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You are welcome.
Some may question why this is in a "Politics" folder. The simple truth is that man-made global warming is a myth that is spread with a specific political goal in mind. The fact is that man doesn't cause global warming, the sun does. And the earth has always had fluctuating weather cycles. Based on current sun spot activity, global cooling is far more likely in our future. Of course, if people starting substituting August weather data with October weather data, you can make any pattern you want to appear.
Global warming is a fact. Everybody pretty much accepts it (I believe Winex probably doesn't - does that make him a deviant?). The argument is more about the cause of it. The facts are mostly pointing at the excessive burning of fossil fuels since the industrial revolution. That is, if you believe science over oil lobbyists. The guy that is being criticized in the opinion piece linked by Winex has published in Science magazine, was inducted to the National Academy of Sciences, and heads the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. The claim to fame for the author of that opinion piece is writing junk science for the Telegraph.
The ozone hole is another beast. It's there - just ask anybody out in the sun far down in the southern hemisphere. The decomposition of ozone was mainly due to the heavy use of CFCs in the 60s and 70s. It was the "ideal" propellant in spray cans.
I hope this image illustrates how burning fossil fuels adds an additional burden on the carbon cycle.
It's not surprising that you would quote data that has been debunked as if it were true.
From http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/13830/?a=f
But now a shock: 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!
That discovery hit me like a bombshell, and I suspect it is having the same effect on many others. Suddenly the hockey stick, the poster-child of the global warming community, turns out to be an artifact of poor mathematics. How could it happen? What is going on? Let me digress into a short technical discussion of how this incredible error took place.
In PCA and similar techniques, each of the (in this case, typically 70) different data sets have their averages subtracted (so they have a mean of zero), and then are multiplied by a number to make their average variation around that mean to be equal to one; in technical jargon, we say that each data set is normalized to zero mean and unit variance. In standard PCA, each data set is normalized over its complete data period; for key climate data sets that Mann used to create his hockey stick graph, this was the interval 1400-1980. But the computer program Mann used did not do that. Instead, it forced each data set to have zero mean for the time period 1902-1980, and to match the historical records for this interval. This is the time when the historical temperature is well known, so this procedure does guarantee the most accurate temperature scale. But it completely screws up PCA. PCA is mostly concerned with the data sets that have high variance, and the Mann normalization procedure tends to give very high variance to any data set with a hockey stick shape. (Such data sets have zero mean only over the 1902-1980 period, not over the longer 1400-1980 period.)
IR, I must say that I am more than a bit surprised by this post from you. You know a lot about real estate in general, and land development in particular. But that background doesn't mean much in this subject area. Had you said something like "The beliefs and opinions of land developers don't mean much in this area, we should listen to people with backgrounds in climatology, meteorology, and data analysis", then I could accept your blanket statement. But I simply can't understand how a belief in small government, capitalism, low tax rates, a strong military, and the sanctity of life can disqualify the opinions of people who work in the sciences.
To quote Gavin Newsom, "Whether you like it or not" global warming is junk science. I am being overly kind when I say that the data analysis behind global warming is sloppy. Simply put, you can not make valid inferences from a fatally flawed data set. Yet the left is willing to put control of the global economy directly in Al Gore's hands.
We as a society need to wake up before it is too late.
Debunked by who? You like to quote pseudo science. The scientific method still agrees with the initial assertions of the "hockey stick" chart.
You should read this (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).
It's funny that you chose to quote a study published in Energy & Environment (instead of something like Nature or PNAS). E&E is a platform with a loose peer-review process (and thus little credibility) where pseudo scientists can voice their opposition to facts. No wonder policy makers love to cite it.
Show me a peer-reviewed model that better predicts global temperatures and that there is no such thing as global warming. I'm waiting ...
Ever hear of Chaos Theory Mathematics? Lorenz began his work by seeing anomalies involved in weather prediction. Those these systems are deterministic, sensitive dependency to initial conditions make accurate prediction of these systems impossible.
You'd be far better off sticking to science here than you would be sticking to the secular humanistic religion of global warming.
That's great that you have an undergrad in biology. If I could go back in time 25 years and still knew what I know now, I would have picked up several biology classes at the undergrad myself. As is, I concentrated in computer science and statistics at the undergrad level, then later picked up an MBA with a concentration in finance. Of course adding biology to the skillset would have positioned me to work in bio-informatics.
Perhaps if you had funding and the appropriate data, you could explain why the Medieval Warm Period ( 800 AD to 1300 AD ) or the Little Ice Age ( 1300 AD to 1850 AD ) appear so flat in the chart that Green Cactus linked to earlier. Just doing a quick eyeball of the data, it appears to be about a .3 C difference from peak to trough in average temperature deltas from the 1990 baseline between a period that was very warm, and a period that was very cold. Perhaps if you researched the issue, you might come to the conclusion that tree rings may not be the best instrument to reconstruct historic temperatures.
Also, as someone with a background in the sciences, I'm sure you will acknowledge that despite your mentioning that "98 percent of scientists agree with global warming", the fact is that over 99 percent of scientists don't practice in the right functional areas and/or haven't done exhaustive analysis of the data out there to have a qualified opinion. Personally, my background is in data. Although I have the right skillset to go deeper in this arena, that is not the direction I have taken my career in. However, I do know enough on this topic to know that you can't make a valid inference from an invalid data set. And everything I have read on this topic leads me to the inescapable conclusion that we don't have valid data here.
I also hope that you will retract your statement that a certain set of political belief systems make someone people unqualified to have an opinion on this topic.
Sorry for the slow response.
My background isn't in climatology. But from what I have read in the past, I do believe the hole in the ozone layer was legitimate.
Global warming is another thing entirely. We simply don't have data to come to the conclusion that ANY human activity is leading to climate change.
I never made such a statement. I merely pointed out that the only people with a contrary opinion are of a particular political belief system.
If you want to stick to science, show me some peer reviewed paper that proves your stance. By the way, we are not talking about predicting if it's going to rain on Jun 15 2013. The focus is on the global trend in surface temperature.
BTW, you might want to read that paper I linked previously; it goes beyond tree-rings to show that there is a warming trend.
SoCal78_IHB
New member
Thanks for posting that and starting this thread. I personally don't know much about global warming, whether it's fact or fiction, and it would be informative to have people present important information they find.
SoCal78 said:
You are welcome.
Some may question why this is in a "Politics" folder. The simple truth is that man-made global warming is a myth that is spread with a specific political goal in mind. The fact is that man doesn't cause global warming, the sun does. And the earth has always had fluctuating weather cycles. Based on current sun spot activity, global cooling is far more likely in our future. Of course, if people starting substituting August weather data with October weather data, you can make any pattern you want to appear.
green_cactus_IHB
New member
It was baking in Irvine today. 
SoCal78_IHB
New member
I just finished reading the article linked above.
So, how do you feel about the hole in the ozone layer and do you think the emissions from combustion engines have any warming effect at all on our temperatures?
So, how do you feel about the hole in the ozone layer and do you think the emissions from combustion engines have any warming effect at all on our temperatures?
green_cactus_IHB
New member
SoCal78 said:
Global warming is a fact. Everybody pretty much accepts it (I believe Winex probably doesn't - does that make him a deviant?). The argument is more about the cause of it. The facts are mostly pointing at the excessive burning of fossil fuels since the industrial revolution. That is, if you believe science over oil lobbyists. The guy that is being criticized in the opinion piece linked by Winex has published in Science magazine, was inducted to the National Academy of Sciences, and heads the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. The claim to fame for the author of that opinion piece is writing junk science for the Telegraph.
green_cactus_IHB
New member
SoCal78 said:
The ozone hole is another beast. It's there - just ask anybody out in the sun far down in the southern hemisphere. The decomposition of ozone was mainly due to the heavy use of CFCs in the 60s and 70s. It was the "ideal" propellant in spray cans.
I hope this image illustrates how burning fossil fuels adds an additional burden on the carbon cycle.
IrvineRenter_IHB
New member
This thread is properly placed in the politics thread. Only conservative Republicans in America believe that global warming is a myth. (Please, someone who is not a conservative Republican that believes global warming is a myth, please step forward.) Realistically it is only a small portion of that group that truly believes global warming is a myth. Many conservative Republicans know they are spreading disinformation so that polluters can go on polluting, and they are doing it for their own personal gain. This group that is knowingly lying has duped the others into accepting and spreading their propaganda. The idea that global warming is a worldwide conspiracy that has managed to confuse 98% of the world's scientists and most of the rest of the world's leaders is so ridiculous that it really doesn't pass the giggle test. Now that Republicans have almost no voice in Washington, and Conservatives have even less, we will not see much of this nonsense... except for maybe in our discussion forums.
green_cactus said:
It's not surprising that you would quote data that has been debunked as if it were true.
From http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/13830/?a=f
But now a shock: 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!
That discovery hit me like a bombshell, and I suspect it is having the same effect on many others. Suddenly the hockey stick, the poster-child of the global warming community, turns out to be an artifact of poor mathematics. How could it happen? What is going on? Let me digress into a short technical discussion of how this incredible error took place.
In PCA and similar techniques, each of the (in this case, typically 70) different data sets have their averages subtracted (so they have a mean of zero), and then are multiplied by a number to make their average variation around that mean to be equal to one; in technical jargon, we say that each data set is normalized to zero mean and unit variance. In standard PCA, each data set is normalized over its complete data period; for key climate data sets that Mann used to create his hockey stick graph, this was the interval 1400-1980. But the computer program Mann used did not do that. Instead, it forced each data set to have zero mean for the time period 1902-1980, and to match the historical records for this interval. This is the time when the historical temperature is well known, so this procedure does guarantee the most accurate temperature scale. But it completely screws up PCA. PCA is mostly concerned with the data sets that have high variance, and the Mann normalization procedure tends to give very high variance to any data set with a hockey stick shape. (Such data sets have zero mean only over the 1902-1980 period, not over the longer 1400-1980 period.)
green_cactus_IHB
New member
IrvineRenter said:
IR, I must say that I am more than a bit surprised by this post from you. You know a lot about real estate in general, and land development in particular. But that background doesn't mean much in this subject area. Had you said something like "The beliefs and opinions of land developers don't mean much in this area, we should listen to people with backgrounds in climatology, meteorology, and data analysis", then I could accept your blanket statement. But I simply can't understand how a belief in small government, capitalism, low tax rates, a strong military, and the sanctity of life can disqualify the opinions of people who work in the sciences.
To quote Gavin Newsom, "Whether you like it or not" global warming is junk science. I am being overly kind when I say that the data analysis behind global warming is sloppy. Simply put, you can not make valid inferences from a fatally flawed data set. Yet the left is willing to put control of the global economy directly in Al Gore's hands.
We as a society need to wake up before it is too late.
green_cactus_IHB
New member
WINEX said:
Debunked by who? You like to quote pseudo science. The scientific method still agrees with the initial assertions of the "hockey stick" chart.
You should read this (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).
It's funny that you chose to quote a study published in Energy & Environment (instead of something like Nature or PNAS). E&E is a platform with a loose peer-review process (and thus little credibility) where pseudo scientists can voice their opposition to facts. No wonder policy makers love to cite it.
Show me a peer-reviewed model that better predicts global temperatures and that there is no such thing as global warming. I'm waiting ...
IrvineRenter_IHB
New member
My career has been in land development, and the Global Warming Solutions Act, AB32, is making land development more difficult. I have to deal with the government's efforts to curb global warming because it has become part of the EIR process through CEQA. I don't like it any more than anyone else.
My undergraduate degree is in Biology, and I have a minor in resource management. Science and the management of natural resources is part of my education and training. It doesn't make me an expert in the area of global warming, but it does enable me to evaluate scientific data and understand its implications. The scientific community has a peer review process that is very rigorous. Bad science usually doesn't survive this process. Bad science pushed by politics does particularly poorly in a peer review environment. This is also why those scientists who have sold out to the polluters do not have much respect in the scientific community.
My undergraduate degree is in Biology, and I have a minor in resource management. Science and the management of natural resources is part of my education and training. It doesn't make me an expert in the area of global warming, but it does enable me to evaluate scientific data and understand its implications. The scientific community has a peer review process that is very rigorous. Bad science usually doesn't survive this process. Bad science pushed by politics does particularly poorly in a peer review environment. This is also why those scientists who have sold out to the polluters do not have much respect in the scientific community.
green_cactus said:
Ever hear of Chaos Theory Mathematics? Lorenz began his work by seeing anomalies involved in weather prediction. Those these systems are deterministic, sensitive dependency to initial conditions make accurate prediction of these systems impossible.
You'd be far better off sticking to science here than you would be sticking to the secular humanistic religion of global warming.
IrvineRenter said:
That's great that you have an undergrad in biology. If I could go back in time 25 years and still knew what I know now, I would have picked up several biology classes at the undergrad myself. As is, I concentrated in computer science and statistics at the undergrad level, then later picked up an MBA with a concentration in finance. Of course adding biology to the skillset would have positioned me to work in bio-informatics.
Perhaps if you had funding and the appropriate data, you could explain why the Medieval Warm Period ( 800 AD to 1300 AD ) or the Little Ice Age ( 1300 AD to 1850 AD ) appear so flat in the chart that Green Cactus linked to earlier. Just doing a quick eyeball of the data, it appears to be about a .3 C difference from peak to trough in average temperature deltas from the 1990 baseline between a period that was very warm, and a period that was very cold. Perhaps if you researched the issue, you might come to the conclusion that tree rings may not be the best instrument to reconstruct historic temperatures.
Also, as someone with a background in the sciences, I'm sure you will acknowledge that despite your mentioning that "98 percent of scientists agree with global warming", the fact is that over 99 percent of scientists don't practice in the right functional areas and/or haven't done exhaustive analysis of the data out there to have a qualified opinion. Personally, my background is in data. Although I have the right skillset to go deeper in this arena, that is not the direction I have taken my career in. However, I do know enough on this topic to know that you can't make a valid inference from an invalid data set. And everything I have read on this topic leads me to the inescapable conclusion that we don't have valid data here.
I also hope that you will retract your statement that a certain set of political belief systems make someone people unqualified to have an opinion on this topic.
SoCal78 said:
Sorry for the slow response.
My background isn't in climatology. But from what I have read in the past, I do believe the hole in the ozone layer was legitimate.
Global warming is another thing entirely. We simply don't have data to come to the conclusion that ANY human activity is leading to climate change.
IrvineRenter_IHB
New member
WINEX said:
I never made such a statement. I merely pointed out that the only people with a contrary opinion are of a particular political belief system.
green_cactus_IHB
New member
WINEX said:
If you want to stick to science, show me some peer reviewed paper that proves your stance. By the way, we are not talking about predicting if it's going to rain on Jun 15 2013. The focus is on the global trend in surface temperature.
BTW, you might want to read that paper I linked previously; it goes beyond tree-rings to show that there is a warming trend.