Online Experiment With the Latest Hockey Stick

Ok, two days ago I published a report on the data called The All Important Blade of the Stick Uses Less Than 5% of the Data This report detailed what I consider powerful evidence that Mann and his group may have intentionally manipulated data in creating this paper. I don't say this lightly.

It is very clear that the proxies, which no one is sure represent temperature, were in fact extended using questionable statistics and then correlated to demonstrate that they match measured temperature. The addition of an up slope to 90% of the data was pasted on according to less than 5% of the data. I am very suspicious that this 5% was chosen specifically because of its up slope in recent times. Think about that only 55 series determined the outcome of the majority of the 1209 series data!!

What really tipped it though was that Mann and crew made graphs like this one below. I don't care how good of a statistician you think you are, the PINK extension of this graph is obvious CRAP and has absolutely nothing to do with temperature. A four year old child can pick out that the graph below isn't quite right!



So, my suspicions are so great now that I am putting my butt on the line here. There were 148 proxies available to Mann which were discarded for unknown reasons. These were accidentally posted on an NOAA server as original data for this paper. As far as I can tell these series were not discussed in his paper. Of the 148 - 64 had data in the current years which would have been very useful for calculating the pink extension. Why didn't he like these 64 series?

It is my contention that these series will have a negative slope or more negative slope than the 55 proxies which were used. I have no way of knowing that, but looking at the piles of BS data I have previously noted and considering the pressures on Mann (internal and external) I believe they may have taken the step of intentionally eliminating data which did not support their conclusion!!!

My belief (based only on what I say are suspicious methods) is that the critical end of the latest hockey stick has been created from cherry picked data! The experiment:

PART 1

I am going to plot first the 5% which was used to put the end on the 1083 data series and I WILL POST IT FIRST. The critical portion of this 5% will be the last 50 years because this is what was used to insert (INVENT) data at the end of 1083 of the 1209 proxies. These proxies (after modification) will have an up slope at the end 50 years!! I have never seen one plotted by itself let alone an average of all of them.

PART 2

I will plot the average of the 64 series which were long enough to be used for extending (INVENTING) data and I will lay it on top of the first. It is my contention that the up slope in the last 50 years of the rejected data will be visibly less than the up slope of the used data!!

Some proxies (series) will need to be cut from the 64 series group that Mann rejected, i.e. boreholes and Luterbacher simply because he stated he wouldn't use any data with temperature or historical information for pink colored proxy extensions either way. - Just following the paper.

PART 3 - What happens if I am wrong.

If I am wrong I will take the time to actually look up and name the whole Mann group here, list all of them by name and apologize for being so suspicious of them that I even ran this online experiment. Lets do this thang........

The final data!!!!



How did I guess? This experiment could have gone horribly wrong for me. The pink line represents the average of the not used data. Of the 64 series, there were a bunch of Luterbacher datasets so the 64 turned into 46 series to generate the purple line. There will be no apology today!

Summary

Mann used a select few data sets to paste an up slope on the end of 90% of the data in his latest paper. The series used to make the pink line above could have been used in the process but were conveniently eliminated from the paper without mention. Mann accidentally posted these series on a national server and cannot eliminate them easily.

It was my guess that these series would have a reduced up slope compared to the data selected in the last 50 years, I had no idea the selected data would demonstrate such an extreme slope so I could have lost. I can't prove it yet but this now looks like deliberate manipulation of data to me!

More here






Global Warming's Boom Bust

Global warming' is sub-prime science, sub-prime economics, and sub-prime politics, and it could well go down with the sub-prime mortgage.

Despite all the undoubted political and economic gloom, the delightful thing about today's Sunday newspapers is the virtual absence of the phrase `global warming'. `Global warming' has been effectively buried, by collapsing banks and plunging markets, by rising energy costs, by internal battling within the Labour Party, by pitbulls and the American election, by real threats, like knife crime and terrorism in Islamabad, and by the fact that, on nearly every bit of current evidence, the world is likely to enter a cooling phase - the BBC please note.

Interestingly, the final part of BBC 2's dire series, `Earth - The Climate Wars', which is to be shown this evening, has also fallen out of the ratings, not even, for example, being suggested under `Choice' in The Sunday Times television listings [see: `Culture', The Sunday Times, September 21, pp. 60 - 61]. Mind you, as I have already pointed out, this seriously-unbalanced programme has been well and truly `flounced', and rightly so, by BBC 1's new four-part costume drama, `Tess of the D'Urbervilles' [see: `Tess Trumps Trumpery', September 16]. The pretty Morris dancers have pranced all over it. And tonight, thank goodness, it doesn't stand a chance, as Angel Clare carries the four milkmaids, one by one, across that famous swollen stream. Guess which programme I'll be watching? Phwoar!

Double Whammy!

The only exception to all this is a double whammy against `global warming' by Christopher Booker writing in The Sunday Telegraph [`Financial crisis: Lehman misses out on carbon credit scam', The Sunday Telegraph, September 21].

First, we should note that Booker is also scathing about `Earth - The Climate Wars' [see the Section (scroll down): `BBC series stitches up sceptics in counter-attack over climate change' - thank goodness I wasn't interviewed!]: "There was no hint that the `hockey stick' is among the most completely discredited artefacts in the history of science, not least thanks to the devastating critique by Steve McIntyre, which showed that the graph's creators had an algorithm in their programme which could produce a hockey-stick shape whatever data were fed into it.

There was scarcely a frame of this clever exercise which did not distort or obscure some vital fact. Yet the `impartial' BBC is sending out this farrago of convenient untruths to schools, ensuring that the `march of the lie' continues."

Actually, I think that the BBC has made a somewhat more fundamental miscalculation. What strikes me about this programme is how old fashioned the whole concept now seems, how out-of-date the trope and the battle. It is as if world economics and politics have not changed dramatically over the last year. The brutal truth is that the `global warming' boom is bust. Fewer and fewer people are interested. Indeed, even I am bored to distraction by it , and as for Goodwife Stott ....

"The Economics Of The Madhouse"

But secondly, and perhaps more importantly, Booker exposes the sheer economic idiocy behind `global warming', claiming: "What is the connection between the bankrupt Lehman Brothers [see left: photo by David Shankbone, reproduced under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation Licence, Version 1.2 or any later version] and the likelihood that in four years' time our electricity bills will jump another 25 per cent (on top of the rises likely from soaring coal and gas prices)?

The answer is that, before its collapse, Lehman was pitching to become the leader in the vast trade created by the new worldwide regulatory system to `fight climate change' by curbing emissions of carbon dioxide."

He goes on: "Advised by some of the world's leading global warming activists, such as Dr James Hansen and Al Gore (a close friend of the firm's erstwhile managing director Theodore Roosevelt IV), Lehman bought their message wholesale. GIM, the company set up by Gore to sell `carbon offsets' in return for planting trees, was a prized Lehman client.

The particular market that Lehman hoped to dominate is centred on the buying and selling of carbon permits, through the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) set up in 2005, the UN's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and the `cap and trade' system proposed for the US by both McCain and Obama. This may still seem abstract but it will affect all our lives, because ultimately we will all be paying for it, through the colossal costs it will impose on industry, not least electricity."

And Booker's overall conclusion is trenchant: "Everything about this grandiose scheme betokens the economics of the madhouse ... What is certain is that it will pile astronomic costs onto everyone in the EU, inevitably impacting most severely on poorer householders that will face bills they cannot afford. The only other certainty - perhaps a consolation - is that those sharing in this bonanza will not include Lehman Brothers, now excluded from cashing in on what threatens to become the maddest scam the world has ever seen."

Now, while I don't know the ins and outs of all this, of one thing I am certain. With a world likely to cool during the next decade, with a world economy set in austere mode, and with the new politics of China, India, Brazil, and the rest, Big Global Warming's boom days are surely coming to an end.

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Basic physics rediscovered!

The warmer temperatures of the late 20th century brought more rain! Whoda thunk it?

FETCH the umbrella - global warming and cleaner skies are making it rain more. Martin Wild of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and his colleagues analysed global measurements of solar radiation and rainfall taken between 1986 and 2000. On average, surface solar radiation has increased by 0.21 watts per square metre per year over land, and rainfall has increased by 3.5 millimetres per year (Geophysical Research Letters, DOI: 10.1029/2008GL034842).

In recent decades, air pollution has dropped, so more sunlight is penetrating the atmosphere, says Wild. Meanwhile, rising levels of greenhouse gases are bouncing radiation back to Earth's surface. The extra energy has fuelled an increase in evaporation. "This intensification of the water cycle means more heavy precipitation events, more flooding, and more landslides, erosion and overloading of water management systems," says Wild.

The analysis only covers land areas, so it isn't clear whether the extra rain is coming from increased evaporation over land or oceans. The effects have not been distributed evenly, says Wild. Local factors, such as winds that carry rain elsewhere, mean some places have become drier, such as the south-west US and southern Asia. Climate Change - Want to know more about global warming: the science, impacts and political debate? Visit our continually updated special report.

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Cap and Trade 'would create loopholes and opportunities for scamming on a grand scale'

Next year Congress seems likely to enact a "cap and trade" system to limit carbon dioxide emissions, to curb global warming. But Congress is considering a system that includes a provision called "offsets," which would create loopholes and opportunities for scamming on a grand scale

Cap and trade" is a plan to limit carbon dioxide emissions by selling (or giving) pollution permits (called "allowances") to big polluters. The total number of "allowances" is limited (the cap). If the polluters can reduce their emissions below their permitted amount, they can sell some of their "allowances" to other polluters (the trade) who can use them to continue polluting instead of reducing.

The plan before Congress has one more wrinkle: instead of reducing pollution at home, polluters would be able to earn "credits" by investing in supposedly-less-polluting activities in China or Africa (or anywhere) and thus "earn" the "right" to continue polluting at home because their home emissions are being "offset" by the pollution- reduction projects somewhere else in the world.

Selling these "offsets" is already a big business -- for example, people who feel guilty about flying can buy "offsets" or "credits" to (supposedly) make their flight "carbon neutral." At least that is the theory and the business hype. So what's wrong with this idea? Well, let's look at a fairly simple example: growing green plants to make ethanol (or other "biofuels" like "biodiesel") to power our transportation systems.

In the U.S., a scientific debate about biofuels has been raging for at least 5 years. In 2003, well-known agricultural researcher David Pimentel at Cornell published a paper showing that growing corn to make ethanol fuel requires more energy than it delivers in the ethanol. In other words, corn ethanol is an energy loser that will make global warming (and dependence on foreign oil) worse, not better, Pimentel concluded.

The following year Tad Patzek, an engineer at the University of California at Berkeley, published a paper showing that growing ethanol from corn was even worse than Pimentel had said it was. Because there is so much petroleum hidden in crops (in the fertilizer, the pesticides, the energy to make and run the tractors, and so on), growing ethanol requires more fossil energy than it returns in the ethanol itself, Patzek found.

Critics said, "OK, maybe corn isn't the right crop for making ethanol but what about making ethanol from soybeans or sun flowers or from a fast-growing grass like switchgrass?" In 2005 Patzek and Pimentel argued in a joint paper that growing plants for ethanol required more fossil-fuel energy than the resulting ethanol provided -- no matter whether the ethanol was made from corn or wood or soybeans or sunflowers or switchgrass. These five crops were all energy losers as sources of biofuels, Patzek and Pimental concluded.

With that, the critics of biofuels seemed to have won the debate. Nevertheless, in his state of the union address in January 2006 President Bush hyped the advantages of ethanol from switchgrass. And in 2007 Congress -- based on advice from industry experts -- passed the Energy Independence and Security Act, requiring the U.S. to produce 36 billion gallons of renewable fuels annually starting no later than 2022, with 15 billion of that required to come from corn ethanol. (It turned out this was a boon worth billions of dollars to corn farmers and to big corn processors like Archer Daniels Midland, which has entered the ethanol business in a big way.)

Then in January 2008 U.S. Department of Agriculture researchers published a paper showing that switchgrass ethanol yields a tremendous energy benefit, compared to the fossil fuels fuels required to grow it. They said they differed with Patzek and Pimental on diesel fuel usage, fertilizer requirements, electricity rates and machinery costs, among other things. Suddenly the biofuel advocates seemed to have the upper hand.

However, a month later two papers in Science magazine swung the debate the other way again: one paper showed that ethanol from switchgrass increases carbon emissions by 50% compared to gasoline; the other paper showed that clearing land to produce biofuels releases large quantities of carbon dioxide from the soil and that it takes decades or centuries for the debt to be repaid by burning ethanol instead of gasoline. In other words, in the short term -- precisely the time when we need to be reducing carbon dioxide emissions -- growing biofuels will increase carbon dioxide emissions. Advantage biofuel critics.

But wait -- not so fast!In June and August of this year, two articles were published arguing that biofuels made from algae can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than 90% compared to gasoline. Both articles say we could get roughly 5000 gallons (roughly 15 metric tonnes) of fuel per acre per year by growing specially-selected algae in a carbon-dioxide- rich atmosphere in closed containers (closed to keep out wild, unproductive strains of algae and to maintain high levels of CO2). Five thousand gallons per acre is roughly 10 times the yield of corn ethanol and 100 times the yield of soybean ethanol. Advantage biofuel enthusiasts.

But could this make a dent in U.S. petroleum use? The U.S. uses roughly 4 billion (4E9) tonnes of petroleum each year. If we could grow algae to produce 15 tonnes of fuel per acre we would need 4E9/15 = 250 million acres of land, which is more than half the 450 million acres of cropland in the U.S. This is a ballpark calculation with every number rounded. But by any measure, it's a tremendous amount of land. And it is land that must be dedicated to biofuels, unlike wind turbine or even solar panels on tall stilts, which could allow other land uses like crops or grazing beneath them.

So what is the carbon impact of biofuels? As a writer in Environmental Health Perspectives concluded in June, "The answer depends on a slew of unknowns." What can we learn from this? Calculating the energetics of growing a crop to make fuel seems simple enough -- until you get into the details. It turns out the results are dependent upon dozens or hundreds of variables, many of them specific to a particular place -- soil type, soil carbon content, soil moisture, rainfall (including rainfall intensity, not just total rainfall), local pest populations, the particular cultivar, till or no-till... and on and on.

Will consultants in Kenya or Brazil (or on Wall Street) be able measure the actual carbon emission "savings" from a project that is planting, say, genetically-engineered Eucalyptus trees on depleted soil in Brazil so that a coal-fired power plant in Ohio can purchase an "offset" and take credit for reducing global emissions overall? If the best-known agricultural scientists in U.S. universites, funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, cannot reproduce each other's results -- how will "carbon offset consultants" be able to do it? After all, consultants on both sides of the bargain have an incentive to overestimate the carbon savings gained through each "offset." Both the buyer and the seller gain if someone fudges the numbers toward the high side and claims a carbon reduction where none exists.

Ordinarily, open scientific debate can resolve issues such as these. But with tens or hundreds of billions of dollars at stake -- at a time when the Wall Street banks have lost more than a trillion dollars on bad loans and are desperate to recoup their losses -- it is difficult to remain optimistic that mere facts will carry the day. No matter what the facts may be, some consulting scientist can always be found to put his or her name on a "research" paper ghost-written by an investment bank, a chemical company, or an oil giant, the purpose being to keep doubt and confusion alive.

It has happened before. Indeed, in the field of global warming science, this is widely known to be business as usual. In sum, cap and trade with offsets has the potential to become one of the largest business scams ever conceived. Wall Street banks are expecting this to be a new source of enormous profits regardless of whether it alleviates global warming. The enormous profits may indeed materialize. But in the process the "offsets" gimmick could very well (a) cause the entire cap and trade system to lose public confidence and thus fail; (b) increase rather than decrease global warming; and (c) cost us a crucial decade or more while the consultants confuse us into thinking things are going well when, in fact, the planet is being roasted alive.

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Greenie jet unsafe

I am guessing here but I am almost certain that a major selling point for such a light plane was its low use of resources -- both in building it and in the fuel used to fly it. That would certainly explain the easy ride it got from the regulators



Federal aviation officials approved a new type of small jet despite problems with the plane's design and production, overruling safety concerns voiced by government engineers, inspectors and test pilots, according to federal and congressional investigators. Transportation Department Inspector General Calvin Scovel said in testimony prepared for a congressional hearing Wednesday that Federal Aviation Administration officials hastily certified the Eclipse 500 very light jet for flight despite "unresolved design problems" and such significant production problems that the manufacturer - Eclipse Aviation of Albuquerque, N.M. - had difficulty reproducing the jet.

The House transportation committee's staff, which also investigated FAA's approval of the Eclipse, said in a briefing paper for panel members that "there is a disturbing suggestion that there was a 'cozy relationship' and reduced level of vigilance" by the agency during the jet's approval process.

Even though the plane represented a new type of aircraft, powered by a new technology and produced by a new manufacturer, the FAA appears to have exercised much less scrutiny than when it certifies new aircraft produced by more established manufacturers, the briefing paper said. It recommended a review of FAA's entire aircraft certification program.

Very light jets are small aircraft usually seating five to 10 people with advanced technologies that cost less than other business jets. The FAA has been promoting the jets for several years as a means to bring convenient, fast air service to smaller communities. Aviation forecasters predict thousands of very light jets will start flying over the next two decades, servicing a new market for on-demand, point-to-point air taxis. The Eclipse weighs slightly less than 6,000 pounds - about the size of a fully loaded sport utility vehicle - and flies up to 425 miles per hour. About 250 of the jets are in service.

The FAA has been the target of strong criticism from Congress in recent months that it places too much emphasis on serving the needs of airlines and aircraft manufacturers and promoting commercial aviation rather than its primary mission, which is public safety. The agency and its defenders counter that modern aviation is so complex that safety is often better served by a climate in which airlines, manufacturers and others feel able to bring safety issues to the attention of regulators without fear of punitive action.

Nicholas Sabatini, FAA's associate administrator for safety, rejected investigators' findings that the agency ran roughshod over employees concerned about the Eclipse's safety. "FAA professionals would never - and in this case did not - certify an aircraft that they knew to be unsafe or one that did not meet standards," Sabatini said in prepared testimony.

Peg Billson, Eclipse's president and general manager, said in an interview with The Associated Press that the Eclipse's safety record "is comparable if not better than any other" small or business airplane "that's been certified in the last 20 years." She said the planes have been flown 32,000 hours by 375 pilots "without a death or an injury." Billson also complained that Scovel did not interview Eclipse officials during his investigation, which is still under way. She said company officials are "confident they didn't get any special consideration. Nor did the FAA usurp any of their regulations during the entire process of certifying this airplane."

However, Scovel and other witnesses cite repeated instances in their testimony in which FAA officials applied pressure and stretched rules to gain the aircraft's design and production certifications, even removing some employees who raised safety concerns from the agency's certification team. Among the inspector general's findings:

The FAA gave Eclipse Aviation the power to approve and document aircraft parts as they were manufactured - an unusual move given Eclipse was "a new manufacturer with no history of manufacturing an aircraft or shepherding a design through the design certification process." FAA inspectors later found numerous deficiencies on the plane that had been accepted and approved by Eclipse inspectors.

The agency replaced the production inspection team that found deficiencies with the Eclipse and then limited the ability of the new inspection team "to fully inspect the aircraft for airworthiness."

The FAA chose to certify the Eclipse - as well as other light jets - using certification requirements for smaller, business aircraft with older technology rather than the more stringent requirements that apply to commercial airliners that have similar technology.

More than 80 "service difficulty reports" have been filed with the FAA by aircraft operators on problems they've encountered with the Eclipse. While service difficulty reports are to be expected with any new aircraft, Scovel said it is "troubling" that many of the problems "appear to relate back to design issues." For example, on June 5 a throttle failed on an Eclipse approaching Chicago's Midway Airport, resulting in both engines getting stuck on maximum power. The pilots were able to make an emergency landing. At the behest of the National Transportation Safety Board, the FAA issued a safety directive related to the throttle.

The NTSB, which investigated the incident, expressed concern the root of the problem might be a flaw in the design of the software that controls the engines. A re-examination of the software by FAA engineers found the flaw, which the manufacturer is currently working on.

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Agricultural economists warn Australian agriculture is doomed under Emissions Trading Scheme

The current and former heads of ABARE have joined the growing chorus of Agricultural Economist who are warning that the Emissions Trading Scheme will have dire consequences for Australia's trade exposed Agricultural industry. Dr Brian Fisher, former head of ABARE for 18 years has expressed grave fears for the future of Australian Agriculture under the proposed Emissions Trading Scheme.

"Introducing a scheme ahead of other nations was not prosecuting Australia's national interest, it was prosecuting somebody else's and we are going to be damned if we do. There is absolutely nothing to be gained by going first here. We are a very, very small country. We constitute about 1.3 odd per cent of emissions on the planet. The government should focus its domestic climate change policy on adaptation because it will be "years" before there is an international agreement on emissions trading between the 190 countries involved in the ongoing negotiations."

Dr Fisher's views reinforce what Agmates said in the article: "ETS in Aust & NZ will Zero impact on global emissions" In fact if you are one of the 1,000's of informed Agmates readers you will have know for at least 2 months that the ETS in its existing form is disastrous for Australian farmers. Rural Press finally 10 weeks later have picked up on that fact. On the 5th of July we wrote:.

"What the main stream media have missed in the flood of coverage is the potential devastation to rural Australia the emission trading scheme will be."

Dr Fisher's successor at ABARE Phillip Glyde, supports his views. He points out that regardless of whether or not agriculture was included in the ETS from 2010, the impacts on farming through the use of emission intensive inputs would be significant.

"In the cropping sector, 39 per cent of the input costs to cropping came from emission-intensive inputs, while in livestock those costs were about 17 per cent. There's only one solution to all of this, particularly while the rest of the world doesn't introduce an ETS or have emissions trading schemes excluding agriculture - it is to continue down the path of productivity improvements.

The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE), located in Canberra, is the Australian government's own economic research agency and is respected for its professional independent research and analysis. It is incredible that the chief architects of the Emissions Trading Scheme Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, Agriculture Minister Tony Burke and Climate Change Minister Penny Wong are ignoring their own Economic experts advice.

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Global cooling hits Western Australia

PERTH today shivered awake to its coldest September morning on record. The overnight temperature fell to a chilly 1C just before 6am. The previous coldest September morning was 1.5C, which was recorded in 2005.

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