BoltWatch
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24036602-25717,00.html
I really thought this one had been well and truly mythbusted. Anyone who saw the debunking of The Great Climate Swindle already knows these graphs are just the latest in an impressive attempt to play spin games with the science. It's Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics all over again, or maybe just an a cynical attempt to score some more points for the flat-earthers on a Friday, at the end of the media cycle, when the chance of a decent rebuttal is lessened.
Let's look at the first graph, the one Bolt has optimistically headed "(1) Actually, the world isn't warming". Some key things to note about this graph, aside from the header. First, ever important when dealing with potentially dodgy columnists, is the source. In this case, it's the Hadley Centre. The Hadley Centre is part of the British Meteorological Office, so it has credibility in spades (unlike our columnist friend). But wait - data only on the last 9.5 years? That's not particularly long in terms of global climate trends. If this sounds familiar, you've probably seen this debunked before. For some reason or other, this ten year period continues to be presented as evidence that the world is not warming. It's certainly a convincing representation of a downward trend - until, like most things taken out of context by people pushing an agenda - you look at where the information has come from. In this case, it's not too difficult to head to the Met Office's website and find the graph, which in its unexpurgated form extends as far back as 1850. It's extracted for you below:
If you look to the far right, you will see Mr Bolt's graph. It represents a tiny proportion of the available information, and shows an anamolous dip in what is a clear and sustained upward trend. Furthermore, it's interesting to note that the segment of the graph taken out of context represents the highest average temperature on record. In short, Mr Bolt has taken the hottest decade of the last century and a half, isolated it, and claimed that it shows that the world isn't warming.
If you want to read the rest of Bolt's column on this - which is inadvisable, since it may potentially lead to an overall increase in global ignorance levels - you'll notice he makes a series of other claims which fall somewhere on the spectrum between unsupported assertion and complete fabrication. A classic line of Bolt's is that the 'Hockey Stick' has been discredited. I think it's form of primitive religion, wherein he hopes if he repeats a false statement often enough, it will become true (I'm a real journalist, I'm a real journalist, I'm a real... now tap your heels and think of home). I'll just briefly deal with it here, so that in future the responses can be copy and pasted.
"And, please, can we drop that old fiction that the world was never warmer? It’s a false claim made popular by a 2001 report of the IPCC, the United Nations’ climate group, which ran a graph, shaped like a hockey stick, claiming there was no warming for millennia until humans last century gassed up their world.
In fact, that “hockey stick” is now discredited, and last year Dr Craig Loehle, of the US National Council for Air and Stream Improvement, argued that using tree rings to work out past temperatures was clearly unreliable. "
Ah. Sure. Except 1) No one is claiming the world was never warmer. Straw man much? There have been plenty of times the globe probably had higher mean temperatures than we're currently experiencing. It's just that the globe wasn't sustaining the kinds of life we're familiar with in those times. Does this mean climate change isn't anthropogenic? Look out your window. The buildings you'll see are probably made predominantly of minerals like stone, glass, things which naturally occur in certain geological conditions. It doesn't mean, though, that humans weren't responsible for creating them. Similarly, yes, the Earth's had periods of high volcanic activity, for example, which produced high levels of greenhouse gases and a corresponding temperature rise. Volcanoes had nothing to do with the industrial revolution, however.
2)The 2001 IPCC reports provided considerably more evidence of a global warming trend than the hockey stick. Even if Bolt were right in saying it's discredited (and he's not), there's three volumes of the most significantly peer-reviewed, co-operative scientific research by experts from across the United Nations that the 'skeptics' have not yet truly addressed.
3) The Hockey Stick formation appeared the data which produced the hockey stick was not actually based solely on tree-rings, but on a number of different sources, all of which produced a similar graph. Bolt insinuates that his lone scientist's argument that tree rings are unreliable discredits the Hockey Stick. Even if it's the case that tree-rings are not an accurate way of measuring past climate - and again - consider the source.- the Hockey Stick is not 'discredited', and anthropogenic climate change is not 'disproven'. What Bolt fails to mention here is that the US National Council for Air and Stream Improvement is a think-tank for the 'forest-products industry'.
For some more credible comment on the Hockey Stick stuff, the best place to turn is realclimate.org (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/myths-vs-fact-regarding-the-hockey-stick/) who offer a fairly substantial, scientifically credible analysis. More generally, realclimate offers fairly up to date and moderately accessible information for journalists and the general public on developments in climate research, as well as testing the theories of climate skeptics and defending substantial, peer-reviewed science against attacks by oil-company research dollars and conservative flack-jobs.
I really thought this one had been well and truly mythbusted. Anyone who saw the debunking of The Great Climate Swindle already knows these graphs are just the latest in an impressive attempt to play spin games with the science. It's Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics all over again, or maybe just an a cynical attempt to score some more points for the flat-earthers on a Friday, at the end of the media cycle, when the chance of a decent rebuttal is lessened.
Let's look at the first graph, the one Bolt has optimistically headed "(1) Actually, the world isn't warming". Some key things to note about this graph, aside from the header. First, ever important when dealing with potentially dodgy columnists, is the source. In this case, it's the Hadley Centre. The Hadley Centre is part of the British Meteorological Office, so it has credibility in spades (unlike our columnist friend). But wait - data only on the last 9.5 years? That's not particularly long in terms of global climate trends. If this sounds familiar, you've probably seen this debunked before. For some reason or other, this ten year period continues to be presented as evidence that the world is not warming. It's certainly a convincing representation of a downward trend - until, like most things taken out of context by people pushing an agenda - you look at where the information has come from. In this case, it's not too difficult to head to the Met Office's website and find the graph, which in its unexpurgated form extends as far back as 1850. It's extracted for you below:
If you look to the far right, you will see Mr Bolt's graph. It represents a tiny proportion of the available information, and shows an anamolous dip in what is a clear and sustained upward trend. Furthermore, it's interesting to note that the segment of the graph taken out of context represents the highest average temperature on record. In short, Mr Bolt has taken the hottest decade of the last century and a half, isolated it, and claimed that it shows that the world isn't warming.
If you want to read the rest of Bolt's column on this - which is inadvisable, since it may potentially lead to an overall increase in global ignorance levels - you'll notice he makes a series of other claims which fall somewhere on the spectrum between unsupported assertion and complete fabrication. A classic line of Bolt's is that the 'Hockey Stick' has been discredited. I think it's form of primitive religion, wherein he hopes if he repeats a false statement often enough, it will become true (I'm a real journalist, I'm a real journalist, I'm a real... now tap your heels and think of home). I'll just briefly deal with it here, so that in future the responses can be copy and pasted.
"And, please, can we drop that old fiction that the world was never warmer? It’s a false claim made popular by a 2001 report of the IPCC, the United Nations’ climate group, which ran a graph, shaped like a hockey stick, claiming there was no warming for millennia until humans last century gassed up their world.
In fact, that “hockey stick” is now discredited, and last year Dr Craig Loehle, of the US National Council for Air and Stream Improvement, argued that using tree rings to work out past temperatures was clearly unreliable. "
Ah. Sure. Except 1) No one is claiming the world was never warmer. Straw man much? There have been plenty of times the globe probably had higher mean temperatures than we're currently experiencing. It's just that the globe wasn't sustaining the kinds of life we're familiar with in those times. Does this mean climate change isn't anthropogenic? Look out your window. The buildings you'll see are probably made predominantly of minerals like stone, glass, things which naturally occur in certain geological conditions. It doesn't mean, though, that humans weren't responsible for creating them. Similarly, yes, the Earth's had periods of high volcanic activity, for example, which produced high levels of greenhouse gases and a corresponding temperature rise. Volcanoes had nothing to do with the industrial revolution, however.
2)The 2001 IPCC reports provided considerably more evidence of a global warming trend than the hockey stick. Even if Bolt were right in saying it's discredited (and he's not), there's three volumes of the most significantly peer-reviewed, co-operative scientific research by experts from across the United Nations that the 'skeptics' have not yet truly addressed.
3) The Hockey Stick formation appeared the data which produced the hockey stick was not actually based solely on tree-rings, but on a number of different sources, all of which produced a similar graph. Bolt insinuates that his lone scientist's argument that tree rings are unreliable discredits the Hockey Stick. Even if it's the case that tree-rings are not an accurate way of measuring past climate - and again - consider the source.- the Hockey Stick is not 'discredited', and anthropogenic climate change is not 'disproven'. What Bolt fails to mention here is that the US National Council for Air and Stream Improvement is a think-tank for the 'forest-products industry'.
For some more credible comment on the Hockey Stick stuff, the best place to turn is realclimate.org (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/myths-vs-fact-regarding-the-hockey-stick/) who offer a fairly substantial, scientifically credible analysis. More generally, realclimate offers fairly up to date and moderately accessible information for journalists and the general public on developments in climate research, as well as testing the theories of climate skeptics and defending substantial, peer-reviewed science against attacks by oil-company research dollars and conservative flack-jobs.