Thursday 10 May 2007

The Hockey Stick & 'The Great Global Warming Swindle.'

Steve McIntyre has a complaint about the film 'The Great Global Warming Swindle.' His compaint: He thinks the film lets the 'Hockey Stick' temperature chart off the hook -- yeah, that Hockey Stick, the one pasted behind the IPCC's 'co-chair' Sir John Fucking Houghton on the stage at the release of the UN's Third Assessment Report (short summary: We're all going to die) -- the 'Hockey Stick' that McIntyre so soundly debunked with his colleague Ross McIttrick -- a debunking that the warmists have barely if ever acknowledged.

Yep, he thinks it lets the 'Stick' off the hook, and if director Martin Durkin refilms it, McIntyre has a proposed 'screenplay' for him that should help dig a hole for the fraudulent fluff, bury it, and then tramp down the dirt.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

While we're on the subject of graphs in that paragon of scientific merit, 'The Great Global Warming Swindle', check this out:

http://news.independent.co.uk/media/article2521677.ece

More participants in the documentary complaining of misrepresentation. The money quote:

Asked by The Independent whether the documentary was scientifically accurate, Dr Friiss-Christensen said: "No, I think several points were not explained in the way that I, as a scientist, would have explained them ... it is obvious it's not accurate."

DenMT

Peter Cresswell said...

And unlike either Al Gore or the UN or the IPCC when proved wrong, "Martin Durkin, who wrote and directed the programme [admitted in an email] that the graph was wrong. "Thank you for highlighting the error on the 400-year graph. It is an annoying mistake which all of us missed and is being fixed for all future transmissions of the film. It doesn't alter our argument," Mr Durkin said."

But you knew that, didn't you Den, since it was in the same article from which you found your self-described "money quote." And you're probably aware too that Durkin has commented similarly about the error over volcanic emissions - that the error will be removed in future transmissions.

Can either Al Bore or the UN or the UN's IPCC say as much about their errors?

I look forward with eagerness to hearing your response when you email AL Bore taking him to task for his wild exaggerations, such as his claims of "sea level" refugees flooding into New Zealand, or his predictions of sea level rises that are forty to fifty times those forecast by the UN/IPCC; or when you email the UN/IPCC and take them to task for their fraudulent hockey stick; or for their lies about malaria; or for the insistence of their Lead Author that the 'urban heat island' effect does not corrupt the surface temperature record, and that they have studies to prove it -- studies by that same lead author (Phil Jones), the firgures for which he steadfastly refuses to release.

Just a few things for which you can take those bastards to task if honesty is really a value to you, as your comment here suggests it is. You think they're gong to respond as openly as Martin Durkin has? Or at all??

As Thomas Jefferson said (quoted in the latest 'Free Radical') "It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand for itself."

And so, I strongly suspect, can Mr Durkin. More power to him.

Anonymous said...

DenMT,

I responded at Sir Humphreys to a comment by Phil U over there regarding that article at the Independent.

The original is at Sir Humphreys here:

Yup! It's The Noo Religion

My message is just repasted below:

---------------------------

Aha, Phil U, there you go again. Don't jump to criticize things that you have no clue at all about. You should perhaps seek some answers from NIWA . Here is a quote from the article you mentioned :

C4 accused of falsifying data in documentary on climate change

Dr. Eigil Friis-Christensen He said there was a gap in the historical record on solar cycles from about 1610 to 1710 but the film-makers made up this break with fabricated data that made it appear as if temperatures and solar cycles had followed one another very closely for the entire 400-year period.

Now, I suspect Dr. Eigil Friis-Christensen is only saying that because the C4 documentary is not a peer review publication. Scientists have always used interpolated data all the time. Meaning that data that were missing are substituted by using interpolated values based on the values of the collected (non-missing values). The reason why this is done because , you can't build a mathematical model out of missing data at all. Missing data is treated in the field of data analysis as undefined (from your high school maths). If you add, subtract, multiply or divide and finite number with an undefined number the answer would still be undefined. Eg, try the followings:

undefined + 2 = undefined

undefined / 4 = undefined

undefined * 3 = undefined

Suppose you have a small dataset with some missing values:

x = {1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5}

y = {3 , ? , 7 , ? , 12}

The question mark (?) depicted the missing data points. You can fill-in values for them by interpolating a value of 5 to go between "3 , ? , 7" and a value for 9.5 to go between "7 , ? , 12" if using linear method, so the doctored data then become:

x = {1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5}

y = {3 , 5 , 7 , 9.5 , 12}

Now, a model can be used on this doctored data, but not the original one with missing values. There are tons of different methods (algorithms) in use today with their accuracies do vary.

Missing data are encountered all the time in scientific measurements, perhaps for instrumentation malfunction that didn't record the values for those particular time instants, or perhaps there was never any measurement taken at all, such as the climate temperature reconstruction going back million of years, etc...

So, analysis can't be done on data where missing values do present. Missing data are substituted with interpolated values. The C4 documentary did exactly that and as I have quoted above, since it is not a peer review publication, I am not surprised that Dr. Eigil Friis-Christensen, came out to crticise the doco makers.

Do you remember the Hockey-Stick? If you read that paper, there were tons of missing data points in the whole collected dataset used by Hockey-Stick guy Michael Mann. What did he do with missing data? YEP, he used interpolated values (regression) to replace the missing data in order to make a sensible model. One important rule about treating missing data in building a mathematical model is that you don't throw them out, since some of the intrinsic properties in building the model might be lost if you do that.

But did you see Dr. Eigil Friis-Christensen having a go at Mann for doctoring his Hockey-Stick data? Of course not, because Mann published his peer review work in Nature journal rather than for a TV doco. Skeptics had a go at Mann for the wrong formulations of his model but not for doctoring the data, since skeptics themselves and all climate scientists do use doctored data (filled-in of missing data by interpolation).

There are tons of climate peer review publication that use doctored data , but I can point you out to the following one:

Analysis of incomplete climate data: Estimation of mean values and covariance matrices and imputation of missing values

Software Fills In Missing Data On Satellite Images

So, next time Phil you saw an article somewhere about warmist suckers claiming to have debunked the skeptics views, you should dig out more info about them before jumping into conclusion.

BTW, journalists lack the skills to interpret comments coming out from scientist such as Dr. Eigil Friis-Christensen . Journalists just wait to see if a scientist criticizes the doco, then the doco is not valid. So, Independent Science Editor, Steve Connor would have no idea that doctored data is the norm in science. Had he known about it, he wouldn't have raised alarm about the doctored data in the doco, since there is nothing wrong with it.

---------------------------

So, I want to ask you. Was the Independent Editor ignorant of the methodologies used in scientific analysis?

If you answer YES, then I have no further questions, but if it is NO, then perhaps, I can give you more links to those peer review climate papers that used doctored data, which might satisfy you, that it is the norm and there is no big deal at all.

Anonymous said...

This is another response from you pulling the 'Al Gore' strawman out of the closet when he wasn't even invoked. Why oppose the Durkin film with Gore's film in this instance? The issue here, as framed by yourself, is the usage of graphical information in TGGWS.

If you make a post about Al Gore's film which resonates with me, I will comment there, appropriately. If you make a post about the steaming pile of docu-drama that is TGGWS, I will comment on that!

And with respect, your contention that warmists have 'barely if ever acknowledged' McKitrick's work on the 'hockey stick' demonstrates a lack of understanding of the current state of play, or a wilful exaggeration of reality. A leisurely perusal of RealClimate, which you'll no doubt be aware Michael Mann is a contributor to, may interest you in this regard.

If I hold with mainstream climate change theory, ie that climate change is significantly driven by atmospheric CO2 forcing, I can't see how I am then compelled to comment on the veracity of Gore's hyperbole in order to be taken seriously. That is, outside of your seeming desire to tag everyone concerned with the possibility of AGW as 'warmists,' and conflate them with Gore. You'll find on reflection that several of my recent comments have covered my feelings on Gore and his hyperbole, but that has zero bearing on the discussion at hand.

The IPCC is a separate issue, and having yet to read much deeper than the SPM I can't say there are any wildly contentious claims that I feel the need to defend or attack in order to establish a right to debate the merits of TGGWS. I am feeling distinctly non-hypocritical, actually.

DenMT