Activist ‘Discussion’ Paper Immediately Converted to Guardian Lurid Headline
This is a ‘get in there quick before everyone else does’ type post intended to promote further discussion over the coming days.
The Guardian has published an article today claiming that the planet is “at its hottest in 115,000 years thanks to climate change”. They base their alarming headline on a non peer reviewed ‘discussion’ paper released just this morning by Hansen et al, entitled ‘Young People’s Burden: Requirement of Negative CO2 Emissions’.
I haven’t read the paper yet but the general gist of it seems to be a ‘proof’ that it’s now as warm as the Eemian intergalcial 115,000 years ago – based on Marcott et al’s much criticised 2013 paleo temperature reconstruction – and that the only way we are going to avert a terrible climate catastrophe is to decarbonise the global economy as of yesterday and suck all the extra CO2 that we’ve already added out of the atmosphere. So, complete de-industrialisation and a massive geoengineering effort is required to stop the planet burning to a crisp via the system of ‘slow feedbacks’ (earth system feedbacks) that are inevitable if temperatures remain this high for much longer.
Climate Scepticism 
The Guardian showing its usual quality of journalistic integrity.
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Obviously, the rules are changing. Non peer-reviewed ‘discussion’ papers by activist climate scientists are now rapidly picked up by the alarmist press and promoted as climate ‘science’. The appropriate response would thus appear not to adhere to LMBF 2016’s suggestion (https://cliscep.com/2016/09/02/the-need-for-vigorous-debate/) that public criticism of such ‘science’ goes through the proper peer reviewed channels, because the ‘science’ itself is not even peer reviewed. So feel free, all you ‘non experts’, to pick up on the contradictions and leaps of faith which must inevitably form the backbone of this alarmist nonsense.
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P.S. I note Marcott himself is a co-author, so he gets to promote his own dodgy temperature reconstruction as damning ‘evidence’ that civilisation needs to be blasted straight back to the Stone Age in addition to ‘hacking the planet’ in order to remove excess CO2.
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The Guardian doesn’t publish things like this:
https://climateaudit.org/2015/01/08/ground-truthing-marcott/
Meanwhile Assistant Professor Marcott at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is currently looking for students and post docs to join him: http://proglacial.com/
He is just re-cycling his stuff from 2013,
“Earth Is Warmer Today Than During 70 to 80 Percent of the Past 11,300 Years”
https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=127133
It seems he is one of the new young climate scientists to come through the training scheme, co-author here with the stalwarts of the Industry, like Santer, Stocker, Solomon, Potsdam’s Leverman et al.: http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v6/n4/full/nclimate2923.html
When he published in 2013 he had recently graduated and needed to get on the paper trail;
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2013/03/17/warmest-temperatures-in-4000-years-not-so-fast-global-warming-alarmists/#c11a2c35a6d6
“The Marcott proxy reconstruction shares much in common with the Mann hockey stick. Marcott is a young, recently graduated Ph.D. student whose asserted temperature reconstruction has launched him out of obscurity into media fame.
As was the case with Mann’s hockey stick, objective scientists quickly pointed out serious flaws in the Marcott reconstruction. Also similar to the Mann hockey stick, the media is ignoring the devastating critiques of the Marcott reconstruction and misleading the public into believing that we finally have a study showing essentially the same thing that Mann claimed before his hockey stick was discredited.”
He is quoted frequently in this appalling nonsense from April this year.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3534589/America-s-national-icons-underwater-Experts-reveal-extent-damage-climate-change-Jamestown-Statue-Liberty.html
Unfortunately there are a whole load more Midwych Cuckoos out there, trained by Potsdam, NCAR, UEA et al, to keep the story going.
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Good comment and links Dennis. It disappeared into moderation because there was more than one link.
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Where’s the African monsoon? Why are ancient farming sites still too cold for agriculture? Why aren’t trees inhabiting areas up to ancient tree lines? In 2001 Hansen was in charge if GISS and there was 0.47 degrees C warming between 1880 and 2000. In 2016 there is 1.08 degrees over the same period. By selectively adjusting and choosing stations there has been an extra 0.61 degrees warming ‘found’. If the choice of locations and quality control can result in that much difference, it invalidates the whole science of proxies because they just aren’t widespread enough nor remotely accurate.
They’re verbally using Mann’s Trick, even if they’re not showing the graph. They won’t have put it to peer review because a lot of scientists would now back away from this jiggery pokery.
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The Marcott reconstruction comprises provable academic misconduct, which McNutt at Science refused to recognize when presented with the written evidence. Exposed in essay A High Stick Foul in ebook Blowing Smoke. Also guest posted at the time at Climate Etc.
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RIstvan, yes indeed, the Marcott et al paper is academic misconduct. See my comments here, attached to their journal article, asking the authors questions that have been there for three years, unanswered.
http://comments.sciencemag.org/content/10.1126/science.1228026
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Climate scientists do not seem happy with Hansen’s paper and its hyping in the Grauniad:
Here’s Peter Thorne commenting at the Guardian.
Even professional climate propaganda salesperson Megan Darby seems doubtful:
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Good find Paul. Oops!
I seem to remember Peter Thorne critically commenting on another very alarmist paper we’ve covered on here.
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It seems to me that “complete de-industrialisation and a massive geoengineering effort” should contain an exclusive “or” instead of an “and”. If sucking enough CO2 out of the atmosphere is necessary, it will require hyper-industrialisation.
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Any comments from the resident enforcers? I would love to know how solidly these findings sit within the monolithic consensus. They don’t fit in the undefined and undefinable world of sceptics because we simply don’t think it’s credible.
Nb I’m trying to educate Raff and Co in the meaning of scepticism. Do you think it will work?
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Does anyone else think the pattern of what Mann has been up looks like he’s not actually employed in climate science any more? Is he on the equivalent of ‘spending more time with his family?’
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TinyCO2, it looks like Mann is in the PR business. He just wrote a book with political cartoonist Tom Toles that has a layout that is similar to Mark Steyn and Josh’s, A Disgrace to the Profession. It’s pretty bad (ranty and whiney) and includes this bizarre quote:
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I wonder what they’re going to use to suck all that CO2 out of the atmosphere when they’ve banned the use of fossil fuels?
Or haven’t they managed to think it through as far as that?
Because sure as eggs is eggs they won’t be using ‘unreliables’!
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This looks like clickbait to me – the Guardian is in serious financial trouble.
I haven’t read any of the comments. Presumably it’s full of the usual apologist
nonsense from the likes who dismiss McIntyre, and others doing similar work,
because it’s not peer reviewed and published in a ‘serious’ journal.
It’s funny how it’s always ‘worse than we thought…’ – despite no physical evidence
to the contrary.
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It’s generating some discussion among climate scientists as to whether a ‘discussion’ paper should be published and/or publicly commented upon in the media. Gavin Schmidt and Doug McNeall have already tweeted. Personally, I don’t have a problem with a discussion paper being discussed in public, but I do have a problem with an activist rag using it to promote ‘new research’ as scientific ‘truth’ using a shouty headline and uncritical text.
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Here is the comment from the journal editors, link in the Mammuthus tweet:
A recommendation that the Guardian has ignored. Any opportunity to promote their agenda must be seized, no matter how misleading.
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Would you expect a reply in the comments there, Paul Matthews? Should the authors also have replied to the nutter writing above you who said that there is no greenhouse effect? There is an explanation here of the procedure (but no code) that might help you: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/03/response-by-marcott-et-al/
But where exactly was there ‘misconduct’ ?
[PM: The spike was a complete fabrication, as explained in my comment and in more detail in Rud’s article that he mentions, Playing hockey – blowing the whistle.]
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Raff, go over to Curry’s Climate Etc if you dont want my book (which also has several other clear examples in essays like Shell Games and By Land or by Sea). Look up Rud Istvan guest posts, go back to 2013. It is the second Marcott one, Blowing the Whistle, I re recall she named it. Laid out in very specific detail. There is even a smoking gun graphic comparing his thesis to his Science paper proving he did what he specifically said in the paper said he didn’t. That evidence was presented to McNutt in writing, and receipt was acknowldged. The paper was not retracted–nothing was ever done.
Will perhaps open your eyes to the rotten stuff you are being fed.
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The Guardian article states
Last year, 21 youths aged between 8 and 19 years old filed a constitutional lawsuit against the Obama administration for failing to do enough to slow climate change.
The paper is in support of these youngsters who wish to to subvert democracy. The guardian later states
What Hansen avoids stating is that the sum total of all proposed policies globally will make very little difference to global greenhouse gas emissions. The UNIPCC has produced a graph.
I say proposed policies. There is no single standard for measuring emissions, still less a means of enforcing compliance in policy. What is more, the USA in 2010 produced about 6000 MtCO2e of emissions with LULUCF, or about 12% of the global total. Without policy US emissions will continue to fall for at least a decade, whilst global emissions will rise. Even if the US cuts emissions by 100% by 2030 and all other economies fully implement their policy proposals, emissions in 2030 will be similar or higher than in 2010.
Then there are the policy costs. If the USA implements stringent emissions targets it will target the poor and disadvantage high-energy consuming industries that compete in the global marketplace against those countries with lesser or no emissions constraint policies.
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TINYCO2 (04 Oct 16 at 12:19 pm )
“In 2001 Hansen was in charge if GISS and there was 0.47 degrees C warming between 1880 and 2000. In 2016 there is 1.08 degrees over the same period. By selectively adjusting and choosing stations there has been an extra 0.61 degrees warming ‘found’…”
I knew there were “adjustments” but I had no idea they were that drastic. At that rate, by 2040 we will have already reached the 2°C danger limit in 2001, if you see what I mean.
Do you have more on that? While I’ve always thought the retro-adjustment of temperatures was one of the most unscientific features of climate science, I also felt that it wasn’t particularly useful to insist on it tactically, since it looks like nitpicking. But on that scale…
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Geoff, the claim may come from Steven Goddard. Correct me if I’m wrong Tiny.
http://realclimatescience.com/fitting-an-elephant/
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http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A.txt
http://web.archive.org/web/20010507094631/http://www.giss.nasa.gov/data/update/gistemp/graphs/FigA.txt
Unless these links aren’t legit, though they look ok to me. There should be recognised respository for previous version of the data.
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And yes, I followed the links from his site.
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Hadcrut3 only showed about 0.6C warming between 1880 and 2000.
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Credit Hansen et al with their moderation compared with Tony Blair’s Chief Scientist Sir David King;
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/why-antarctica-will-soon-be-the-only-place-to-live-literally-58574.html
Alright, taking in Geoffrey Lean was no great effort but I ask you;
“Sir David said that levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere – the main “green- house gas” causing climate change – were already 50 per cent higher than at any time in the past 420,000 years. The last time they were at this level – 379 parts per million – was 60 million years ago during a rapid period of global warming, he said. Levels soared to 1,000 parts per million, causing a massive reduction of life.
“No ice was left on Earth. Antarctica was the best place for mammals to live, and the rest of the world would not sustain human life,” he said.”
I accept that humans did not thrive during the Eocene Thermal Maximum but the rest of the mammalian group certainly did . It was Sir David’s intervention which settled for me the question as to whether the
establishment “consensus” was altruistic reason or corrupt cesspit.
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Jaime, that’s why they now have HadCRUT4 and everybody, no matter where they live wave GISS. They can’t agree between them what the global temperature is last decade but they know to the nearest tenth of a degree what it was 500 years – 65,000,000 years ago, Amazing… or c@ap. One of those.
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Has anyone thought to ask that great climate expert Leonardo di Caprio for his opinion?
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After creating a small flurry on social media and being picked up by a very few news media outlets – the Guardian, of course, being the main one – this discussion paper seems to have already lapsed into obscurity after just a few days. Climate alarmist tactics aren’t working any more. People just are not buying this pseudoscientific nonsense. Doesn’t bode well for their court case.
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“Has anyone thought to ask that great climate expert Leonardo di Caprio for his opinion?”
Not directly, although this caught my eye from someone who “walks the walk” so to speak / tap.
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>I haven’t read the paper yet but the general gist of it seems to be a ‘proof’ that it’s now as warm as the Eemian intergalcial 115,000 years ago – based on Marcott et al’s much criticised 2013 paleo temperature reconstruction – and that the only way we are going to avert a terrible climate catastrophe is to decarbonise the global economy as of yesterday and suck all the extra CO2 that we’ve already added out of the atmosphere.
You should read the paper before yourself rushing to publish, Jaime — it says nothing about any ‘proof’. If it’s any consolation, you’re not the only one who questions Hansen’s paper being promoted before it has passed peer review:
I reckon thumping a study before it’s been formally reviewed to support a lawsuit sponsored by its lead author is a meatier concern than it being picked up by an activist, libruhl rag like the Graun.
By the way, in which journal was Junior’s takedown of Marcott et al. (2013) published?
Cheers.
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Brandon, the reason I published the post quickly was made clear in my opening sentence and the reason I enclosed ‘proof’ in apostrophes is that there is no such proof in the paper, just assertions based upon conclusions drawn from previous research. I quote:
“Even though we cannot be certain that the current year is warmer than any single year earlier in the Holocene due to centennial smoothing of the Holocene stack and original resolution of the underlying proxy records (Marcott et al 2013), we conclude that the ongoing global warming trend (1.06°C over 115 years, Fig 2b) is already well above prior centennially smoothed Holocene temperature.”
So you see the basis of their assertion that it is warmer now than it has been throughout the entire Holocene is basically the much discredited Marcott et al paper
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Brandon,
“By the way, in which journal was Junior’s takedown of Marcott et al. (2013) published?”
I did not indicate that it was published in a journal, only that it was much criticised. As it happens, Roger Pielke’s beef was not with the actual paleo reconstruction, but with the modern hockey stick tacked on the end, which the authors of the paper later admitted was not statistically robust. Nonetheless, the media ran away with the idea that it was the hottest it’s ever been throughout the entire Holocene and, it seems, Marcott et al, were quite happy to let their paper be misrepresented by the media in such a manner. Pielke’s blog post was basically a chastisement of the way in which the media misrepresented the paper, so it was not a formal rebuttal of the paper’s findings as such.
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Jaime,
>the reason I published the post quickly was made clear in my opening sentence and the reason I enclosed ‘proof’ in apostrophes is that there is no such proof in the paper, just assertions based upon conclusions drawn from previous research.
If I’m gathering the particulars correctly, the reason Hansen et al. rushed to promote their latest without passing the bar of a formal review was for its utility in a lawsuit. Is it better to be timely or better to be diligent?
I personally see published science — reviewed or not — as a collection of assertions based (at least) in part on conclusions drawn from previous research. A research paper usually contains something novel or replicates previous results. A review paper, which Hansen et al. is, typically doesn’t do either. Which is ok.
Point is, lack of ‘proof’ is the norm in non-trivial physical sciences, not the exception in my view — I reserve ‘proofs’ for disciplines of maths and logics.
>So you see the basis of their assertion that it is warmer now than it has been throughout the entire Holocene is basically the much discredited Marcott et al paper
The point of contention here is whether Marcott has been ‘objectively’ discredited, not that Hansen et al. cite it.
>I did not indicate that it was published in a journal, only that it was much criticised.
I didn’t say you had. I also know it to have been widely criticized outside refereed literature. Is my point really not clear?
>Pielke’s blog post was basically a chastisement of the way in which the media misrepresented the paper, so it was not a formal rebuttal of the paper’s findings as such.
I agree, yet you use Junior’s post to substantiate your claim that Marcott et al. (by that I mean the work itself) has been discredited.
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