Posted                   

quote:

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(Passive smoking doesn't cause cancer - official)
By Victoria Macdonald, Health Correspondent

THE world's leading health organisation has withheld from publication a study which shows that not only might there be no link between passive smoking and lung cancer but that it could even have a protective effect.

The astounding results are set to throw wide open the debate on passive smoking health risks. The World Health Organisation, which commissioned the 12-centre, seven-country European study has failed to make the findings public, and has instead produced only a summary of the results in an internal report.

Despite repeated approaches, nobody at the WHO headquarters in Geneva would comment on the findings last week. At its International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, which coordinated the study, a spokesman would say only that the full report had been submitted to a science journal and no publication date had been set.

The findings are certain to be an embarrassment to the WHO, which has spent years and vast sums on anti-smoking and anti-tobacco campaigns. The study is one of the largest ever to look at the link between passive smoking - or environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) - and lung cancer, and had been eagerly awaited by medical experts and campaigning groups.

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Posted                         

quote:

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
to be honest, what I've seen of Gore's film looks much more like propoganda than hard science.

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Posted                      

quote:

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Originally posted by Noiseboy:
Gore is certainly no climate scientist - but of course they would probably make boring films. What matters surely is - is the science accurate? In the case of An Inconvenient Truth, the general opinion of climate scientists (see here for article and discussion) is that it is pretty good. There are some errors, but these are pretty minor. There are plenty of details that are skated over, such as the relationship between CO2 and temperature, but the broad thrust is correct (again, see here for article and discussion).

Given that the film has to be entertaining and appeal to old and young across the board, I thought it was a very good balance. Certainly, next to the GCCS where pretty much every utterance has been debunked, it is a masterpiece.

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(my emphasis)

Oh Noiseboy. You are so obvious! The errors in the Great Global Warming Swindle were positively heinous according to you and Ofcom must immediately be informed, but Gore's are 'pretty minor'. That the Swindle skated over some issues is positively deceitful in your eyes, but that Gore did it? Well, bless. It doesn't matter really. And because Gore's movie has to be entertaining then any discrepancies just don't matter. However, that the Swindle set out to stir and be controversial was nothing short of propoganda. Good job I have a strong enough mind to keep it open no matter what the political agendas of some!

--------------------
'When ideas fail, words come in very handy' ~ Goethe

Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by Littlelady:

quote:

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Originally posted by Hiro's Leap:
It always seems odd to me that people demand the science be proved 100%.

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It doesn't seem odd to me. Science makes some enormous claims. It's making one in this context. If science wants to claim it's virtually certain we're all going to die soon from drowning or heatstroke (depending on where we live) if we don't do this or that then it has to be held accountable to a very high standard for such a life-changing claim. If it can't stand the heat of resistence, it shouldn't make the claim in the first place. I've no sympathy for scientists here.

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quote:

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Now, this is the kind of talk that has often been lacking in this whole debate (everywhere, not just on here). According to my bro (himself a scientist of the published, peer reviewed, Phd variety) science is very often about probabilities. If only people spoke in probabilities on this particular subject then personally I could listen to them. Alas, it just doesn't seem to happen. There seems to be so much dogma about.

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Posted                      

JonahMan, I thought your post was very good!

Personally, I don't think I have at any time promoted Western style development for Africa. My point has consistently been that African nations should be allowed to make their own decisions without Western interference. I would therefore totally agree with this statement in your post:

quote:

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Of course it's vital that people in developing countries make their own decisions about the future.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Of course, scientists aren't claiming "it's virtually certain we're all going to die soon from drowning or heatstroke".

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Yes, well, I confess to using a smidgen of hyperbole there Alan.

I want to reiterate at this point that at no time have I denied the reality of climate change. A person doesn't need to be a scientist to notice certain local changes, regardless of the global situation. The issue for me has always been humankind's part in climate change and the various issues surrounding that debate as well as the consequences emanating from it. I suppose I have a broader interest than 'only' the science. While there is an ongoing process of re-examination occurring within science, on the outside the impression this process gives is that science is unreliable. That is, what is stated today does not necessarily hold for tomorrow. I accept the principle of scientific enquiry, but because in practice it often results in change of position or advice, the only option I feel I have is to adopt a 'wait and see' policy. Many non-scientists think as I do, not because they are anti-science or anti-scientists, but simply because they have become slightly skeptical.

quote:

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Perhaps you need to get the propogandists to defend those statements.

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quote:

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what I've seen of Gore's film looks much more like propoganda than hard science.

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I haven't seen the film. No way was I going to pay to listen to the same old stuff I hear on the BBC on a regular basis! (I should demand a refund on my TV licence)

Myrhh: When the Telegraph article you linked to was published, ASH (the anti-smoking lobby group) began a protest against the paper's 'irresponsible reporting' and it was ultimately forced to apologise: much the same kind of scenario Noiseboy would like to see with regard to the Swindle. As is so often the case in this country, we are all treated like children. That retraction spelled a sad day IMO because I firmly believe in the principle of allowing the opposite opinion to be aired so as to provide people with the opportunity to make up their own minds. Not only this but I think that by allowing free debate the temptation for scapegoating and social pressure is lessened. Of course, scapegoating and social pressure is precisely what lobbyists want to encourage.

I found out for myself last week how successful that approach has been here in the UK as I was assaulted for smoking a cigarette in the open air (totally minding my own business). It's open season on smokers these days. There's no countering the lynch mob mentality once it really gets a hold. I also got told off by a colleague last week for not considering my stupid carbon bloody footprint when organising my flights to Tanzania. My safety and health, it seems, was irrelevant. I should have caught the bus (a six hour journey at least) instead of booking a connecting flight from Nairobi.

quote:

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Originally posted by Noiseboy:
That was low, even by your standards.

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by Littlelady:
some scientists are also propogandists

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Posted                         

quote:

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Originally posted by Papio:
Why anyone thinks that scientists part-funded by governments are more likely to be unprofessionally biased than "scientists" funded wholly or mainly be oil companies and other polluters still beats me, frankly.

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Posted                         

quote:

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Originally posted by Littlelady:
Charmed, I'm sure. So it's ok for you to imply I should approve of slavery and canabalism just because I passionately believe in the freedom of Africans to choose their future for themselves, but it's not ok for me to point out your obvious bias when it comes to the entertainment version of the global warming debate? Purleese.

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Posted                      

quote:

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Originally posted by Hiro's Leap:
But do you apply the same attitude to other areas of your life?

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quote:

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If, after a thorough inspection of your car, the mechanic said there was a 95% chance of sudden brakes failure would you risk it because "he wasn't 100% sure"?

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I would suggest you read my post again, Hiro. Nowhere have I demanded or even requested 100% certainty. I have simply stated that if science makes big claims then it has to expect big accountability. How is that saying I am demanding 100% certainty?

quote:

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You also react with anger in defense of Durkin's claim that environmentalists are holding back Africa's development. But he didn't show any evidence of this, and neither have you. So why the strength of conviction?

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quote:

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It seems that you have very different standards according to who is making the claim.

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Posted                      

quote:

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Originally posted by Noiseboy:
It is also worth pointing out that different governments would have different biases, so one would expect to see this reflected in "government funded" research were this an issue. It is not.

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Posted                       

quote:

---

Originally posted by Littlelady:
While there is an ongoing process of re-examination occurring within science, on the outside the impression this process gives is that science is unreliable. That is, what is stated today does not necessarily hold for tomorrow. I accept the principle of scientific enquiry, but because in practice it often results in change of position or advice, the only option I feel I have is to adopt a 'wait and see' policy. Many non-scientists think as I do, not because they are anti-science or anti-scientists, but simply because they have become slightly skeptical.

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quote:

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I found out for myself last week how successful that approach has been here in the UK as I was assaulted for smoking a cigarette in the open air (totally minding my own business). It's open season on smokers these days.

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by Littlelady:
I would suggest you read my post again, Hiro. Nowhere have I demanded or even requested 100% certainty. I have simply stated that if science makes big claims then it has to expect big accountability. How is that saying I am demanding 100% certainty?

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quote:

---

Originally posted by Littlelady:

quote:

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Originally posted by Hiro's Leap:
It always seems odd to me that people demand the science be proved 100%.

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It doesn't seem odd to me.

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quote:

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I argue with anyone, depending on what they say. I'm an equal opportunities arguer. I do, however, acknowledge that Alan*, a scientist, has greater legitimacy to speak on issues of science than has Noiseboy*, who isn't a scientist, and I think my posts reflect that.

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What I meant was that you were far less critical of sources whose conclusions you agreed with, and applied a different standard of proof. Hence my comment that you wholeheartedly accepted Durkin's claims about environmentalists holding back Africa.

I certainly didn't mean to imply you let personal likes or dislikes of individuals sway you, or that you bowed to authority! Sorry that I phrased this badly.

(Edited to fix mangled quote code.)

[ 06. May 2007, 13:56: Message edited by: Hiro's Leap ]

Posted                      

quote:

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Originally posted by Hiro's Leap:
I took this to imply agreement. Was I mistaken?

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quote:

---

and what do you mean by "accountability" in this context?

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That their word is not simply taken. Scientists should be questioned, not simply deferred to. But I'm not very good at deference, so maybe I'm biased.

quote:

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What I meant was that you were far less critical of sources whose conclusions you agreed with, and applied a different standard of proof.

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quote:

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Hence my comment that you wholeheartedly accepted Durkin's claims about environmentalists holding back Africa.

---

His point was powerfully made at a time when I hadn't even considered it. He put a thought into my head, which is a good thing. My sensitivity over this subject is because of past western interference in Africa: I don't want it to happen again over this issue. I want us to leave Africa alone to decide its own issues for itself.

While thinking more about my upcoming trip to Tanzania, I visited this website. If you were to take a look at the section on Mt Kilimanjaro, you'll see reference there to global warming. I'm hoping, during my brief stay, that I'll get the chance to hear the views of Africans on such subjects, but what my chances are of having such conversations I don't know! My Lonely Planet guide advises me that Tanzanians don't mind discussing politics, but ...

quote:

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Unfortunately, the media thrives on fear. It's not their fault - fear sells newspapers.

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quote:

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Assuming "assulted" is metaphorical (hopefully), that's still crappy IMO.

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Posted                         

quote:

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Originally posted by Littlelady:
I do, however, acknowledge that Alan*, a scientist, has greater legitimacy to speak on issues of science than has Noiseboy*, who isn't a scientist, and I think my posts reflect that.

*or any other scientist/non-scientist.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by Littlelady:
If you dig into the depths of this thread, you'll find an example I cited which refutes your statement here. It is the only scientific report I have studied in depth. It was compiled by a scientist well known for his anti-smoking stance ( Jamrozik) and it was comissioned by SmokeFree London, which is a lobby group comprising a number of London Boroughs. Strangely enough, the conclusions of the report (cited widely in the press not long before the ban in England was passed) agreed with the views of SmokeFree London. It is naive (and possibly even irresponsible) to believe that because something is commissioned by the government (either on a local or national level) it is somehow beyond reproach. In fact, I would suggest, it needs even greater examination because it is the people's money providing the support.

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Posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Noiseboy:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Littlelady:
I do, however, acknowledge that Alan*, a scientist, has greater legitimacy to speak on issues of science than has Noiseboy*, who isn't a scientist, and I think my posts reflect that.

*or any other scientist/non-scientist.

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Presumably by the same logic we shouldn't listen too much to anything you say either?

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quote:

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But what has this example (interesting though it is) to do with government funded institutions? This report was comissioned by a lobby group, so you would be right to be suspicious.

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quote:

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There is no commissioning going on by lobby groups, and if there is elsewhere then it is not to be regarded with the same seriousness as the genuine neutral academic stuff.

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quote:

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(side note - I am apalled that you were assaulted. Hopefully as you say the threat is enough to stop any future behaviour, but if you get any sense that it isn't then sue the bastard).

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Posted                      

quote:

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Originally posted by Papio:
I see Littlelady is ignoring me, though, so maybe this is a waste of a post...

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quote:

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You'd tell your friend if she was about to do something that you had done and then regretted very much, wouldn't you?

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by Noiseboy:
With governemnt funding, scientists participate in the proces of peer review so there are solid checks and balances.

...

With industry funding, there is a clear motive to make data fit a pre-determined outcome - otherwise, why fund it at all?

It may be imperfect, but I'll go with non-industry every time. Since this is something that keeps coming up, however, I'd be interested to hear Alan's thoughts on it.

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by Littlelady:
PS: Whatever you feel about passive smoking, I sincerely hope you wouldn't sanction thumping someone because they lit up in the open air about 3m from your front door.

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Posted                   

quote:

---

Originally posted by Noiseboy:
OK Myrrh, I'll give you one more reply,

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quote:

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as I think I've just clicked. All the references to "Junk Science", a term coined by the smoking lobby, should have tipped me off earlier.

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quote:

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According to Wikipedia, even the tobacco industry doesn't claim anything like what you have. All studies not funded by the tobacco industry say the same thing - that it kills.

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quote:

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I can only speculate at your motives,

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quote:

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but - just to reitorate - I am only interested in discussion based on science,

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quote:

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.. not big business in the oil or tobacco lobbies.

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quote:

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Your constant use of these sources (such as Tim Ball) speaks for itself.

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Posted                      

quote:

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Research projects basically come from two routes. One is that the research staff in a university department will think up something they want to do, write up a proposal to a funding agency (almost always a research council) and wait 6 months for the funding body to have the proposal reviewed by other experts in the field to see if a) it's worth funding and b) whether the amount asked for is appropriate. If you're lucky and put in a good proposal the funding agency will give you money to do the work.

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by Myrrh:
Back tracking and excuses and er there are other things to take into consideration are not good enough to deflect the solid arguments given against ALL the so called evidence which has been generated in the last few decades to 'prove' this view. Deal with it.

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Posted                   

quote:

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Originally posted by Papio:

quote:

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Originally posted by Myrrh:
Back tracking and excuses and er there are other things to take into consideration are not good enough to deflect the solid arguments given against ALL the so called evidence which has been generated in the last few decades to 'prove' this view. Deal with it.

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You know, I rather think that Dr. Alan Cresswell might be onto something, since he is a trained and qualified scientist, and he has repeatedly informed you that your arguements are not real science and that many of your sources are not well regarded by the scientific community.

I'll go with that view, personally.

Dr. Cresswell is very rarely wrong about such matters, IME.

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Posted                      

quote:

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Originally posted by Noiseboy:
This passive smoking report - Littlady has already pointed out that the paper concerned printed a retraction on an innacurate story.

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Posted                   

quote:

---

Hockey Stick, 1998-2005, R.I.P.

The “hockey stick” representation of the temperature behavior of the past 1,000 years is broken, dead. Although already reeling from earlier analyses aimed at its midsection, the knockout punch was just delivered by Nature magazine. Thus the end of this palooka: that the climate of the past millennium was marked by about 900 years of nothing and then 100 years of dramatic temperature rise caused by people. The saga of the “hockey stick” will be remembered as a remarkable lesson in how fanaticism can temporarily blind a large part of the scientific community and allow unproven results to become “mainstream” thought overnight.


The “Hockey Stick” is dead. ......


So compelling was 1,000-yr long “hockey stick” graphic, that it quickly became the poster child for anthropogenic global warming. As such, it was prominently displayed as the first figure of the oft-read Summary for Policymakers of 2001 Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The “hockey stick” graphic gives the appearance that left to its own devices, nature displays very little in the way of temperature variation, but that during the past century, humans have come along and thrown everything out of kilter. It is thus the perfect representation of the greenhouse alarmists’ message—humans have caused the weather to be like never before (and this is bad).

However, the shape of the “hockey stick” looked strangely out of place against the existing knowledge of the climate of the past millennium. Where was the Little Ice Age (LIA)—a well-documented cold period lasting from about the 16th to the 19th century? And where was the Medieval Warm Period (MWP)—a relatively warmer period extending from about 11th to the 13th century? By containing little indication that these climate episodes existed, the “hockey stick” presents a completely new picture of the climate of the past 1,000 years. Natural variability is reduced to little more than annual-to-decadal scale fluctuations superimposed on longer-scale constancy. This is not the same story that is told in countless weather and climate textbooks used in classrooms around the world.


.....
The third dissenting voice was that of Jan Esper and colleagues in 2004. Esper is an expert in climate reconstructions based upon tree-ring records (the primary type of proxy data relied upon by Mann et al. in creating the “hockey stick”). It turns out that one must be careful when using tree rings to reconstruct long-term climate variability because as the tree itself ages, the widths of the annual rings that it produces changes—even absent any climatic variations. This growth trend needs to be taken into account when trying to interpret any climate data contained in the tree-ring records. In most cases, the tree-ring records are first detrended to remove this growth trend, and then the remaining variation in the rings is used to derive a climate signal. The problem with this technique is that by detrending the tree-ring record, long-term climate trends are lost as well. Esper et al. point out that this could be one likely reason why the handle of the “hockey stick” is so flat—it lacks the centennial-scale variations that were lost in the standardization of its primary data source. Using an alternative technique that attempted to preserve as much of the information about long-term climate variations as possible from historical tree-ring records, Esper and colleagues derived their own annual Northern Hemisphere temperature reconstruction. The result (Figure 2) is a 1,000-yr temperature history in which the LIA and the MWP are much more pronounced than the “hockey stick” reconstruction—more evidence that the “hockey stick” underestimates the true level of natural climate variation.


The chorus of dissent grew louder with the publication of a paper by Hans von Storch and colleagues in Science in late-2004. Von Storch was interested in how well the temperature reconstruction methodology used in producing the “hockey stick” actually worked. In order to investigate this, he used a climate model, run with historic changes in solar output and volcanic eruptions to produce a temperature record for the past 1,000 years. For von Storch’s purposes, it was not necessary to produce an accurate temperature record, just one that was reasonably representative of what may have happened. Next, he employed a methodology similar to Mann et al.’s, using “proxy” data derived from the climate model temperature record to see how well the Mann et al. methodology could reconstruct the actual data from which it was drawn. What von Storch’s research team found was that the techniques used to construct the “hockey stick” vastly underestimated the true level of variability in the known (modeled) temperature record (Figure 3). It is thus reasonable to conclude that the same techniques, when applied in the real world, would similarly underestimate the true level of natural variability and thus underplay the importance of the LIA and MWP. Again, the von Storch finding adds further evidence that the handle of the “hockey stick” is too flat.

...

And now, with the publication of a paper in Nature magazine in early 2005 by Anders Moberg and colleagues, it’s all over for the hockey stick. .......

Had the original reconstruction by Mann and colleagues looked like the latest reconstruction by Moberg et al., no one would have paid it much attention, because it would have fit nicely with the expectations given all of the prior research on the climate history of the past millennium. It would have been nothing remarkable.

But, the “hockey stick” was remarkable. And as such, it will be remembered as a remarkable lesson in how fanaticism can temporarily blind a large part of the scientific community and allow unproven results to become mainstream thought overnight. The embarrassment that it caused to many scientists working in the field of climatology will not be soon forgotten. Hopefully, new findings to come, as remarkable and enticing as they may first appear, will be greeted with a bit more caution and thorough investigation before they are widely accepted as representing the scientific consensus.

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by Noiseboy:
So (if you can indulge me one further follow up question) have you encountered any evidence that government policy a) dictates which projects are funded and b) can influence their outcomes?

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Posted                   

quote:

---

The problem people have with smoking is not just that it's unhealthy, but that it's immoral.

The smoker, if they are violating a moral rule, is threatening everyone who doesn't; and all the fuss about "passive smoking" is merely dramatising this intuition.

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Posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Myrrh:
I don't particularly want to drag out the passive smoking aside, but I've started looking for what else is available on it and found this comment by Andrew Brown of the Guardian to apply to global warmers against the anties:

quote:

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The problem people have with smoking is not just that it's unhealthy, but that it's immoral.

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Posted                   

quote:

---

Originally posted by Noiseboy:
I don't like people smoking next to me indoors because it is horribly unpleasant, and according to non-myrrh studies that even the industry does not deny, it causes harm. Pretty simple really.

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quote:

---

Killing the passive smoking debate
Fraudulent science does not serve the public interest – or end the debate over secondhand smoke by Michael Fumento


The studies behind calls for smoking bans and curbs on secondhand smoke – supposedly to improve human health and save lives – are really little more than smoke and mirrors, argues Michael Fumento. For example, of 48 separate studies of risks from passive or secondhand smoke, only 7 showed a statistically significant increased risk of lung cancer; 41 showed no increased risk. But by looking at the 48 studies all together, the scientists concluded that a significant risk existed. Other studies were similarly questionable or even fraudulent. And yet, the regulations continue to tighten, and headlines continue to scream that “passive smoking kills thousands.”

......

What was really needed was one study involving a huge number of participants over a long period of time using the same evaluation.

We got that in the prestigious British Medical Journal in 2003. Research professor James Enstrom of UCLA and professor Geoffrey Kabat of the State University of New York, Stony Brook presented results of a 39-year study of 35,561 Californians, which dwarfed in size everything that came before. It found no “causal relationship between exposure to [passive smoke] and tobacco-related mortality”

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quote:

---

Alan, this is all fascinating stuff. I'm trying to imagine a mechanism by which machieavellian government conspiracists skew all the research in the universities, met office etc to invent a notion like anthropogenic climate change. They can influence funding, so off everyone goes to do their research. However (because for the purposes of this fiction ACC does not exist) they discover that there is no such thing. Presumably the logic would go that they then change their findings to invent ACC, thus receive approval from the funding bodies and get more grants, keeping them in a job? OK, it wouldn't get any papers passed peer review, so that doesn't work. Except... wait a minute... all the peers are in on it too!

That seems logical to me. So if this happened in every country in the world - voila, there's your answer. Totally logical - just wildly paranoid and (like most conspiracy theories) reliant on tens or even hundreds of thousands of people to be complicit without blowing the gaffe. Oh, and the belief that all governments (including China, North Korea and the USA) have a vested interest in spreading the lie that ACC is real. Incidentally, on this last point, none of the sceptics on this forum have even speculated why this might be true, which is significant since their whole conspiracy theory relies on a motive. And before she says is... Littlelady, if this is neither a conspiracy and it is not true, then what exactly IS it?! Remember, that bastion of truth Martin Durkin told us "we are being told lies"... sounds like a conspiracy to me.

But, wow, for the first time I can see that it could be possible - merely infitessimally unlikely!

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quote:

---

The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claims that human activities are responsible for nearly all earth’s recorded warming during the past two centuries. A widely circulated image used by the IPCC dramatically depicting these temperature trends resembles a hockey stick with three distinct parts: a flat “shaft” extending from A.D. 1000 to 1900, a “blade” shooting up from A.D. 1900 to 2000, and a range of uncertainty in temperature estimates that envelops the shaft like a “sheath.” [See the figure.] This image was produced by Michael Mann, Ray Bradley and Malcolm Hughes (Nature, 1998; Geophysical Research Letters, 1999). Last year, Mann and Phil Jones claimed to have extended estimates back to A.D. 200 (Geophysical Research Letters, 2003). However, five independent research groups have uncovered problems with the underlying reconstructions by Mann and his colleagues in their 1998 and 1999 work that have persisted through his most recent collaborative efforts, calling into question all three components of the “hockey stick.”

...

The Hockey Stick is Broken. Mann wrote the part of the IPCC Third Assessment Report (2001) that proclaims that nearly all of the climate change seen during the last two millennia occurred during the 20th century and that it is due to human activities. The report contends that industrialization put carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, leading to increasing global air temperatures. Furthermore, based on Mann’s work, the IPCC claimed that the 1990s were the warmest decade of the last millennium and 1998 was the warmest year. But a review of the data shows that these claims are untenable. Mann’s research is clearly the outlier. (Breaking the “Hockey Stick” by David R. Legates
Brief Analysis No. 478 Monday, July 12, 2004

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by Myrrh:
We might never know which came first, the agenda or Mann's Hockey Stick, but it has been discredited by peer review as I showed in my previous post.

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quote:

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The ‘hockey stick’ reconstruction of Mann et al. (1999) has been the subject of several critical studies.

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quote:

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The weight of current multi-proxy evidence, therefore, suggests greater 20th-century warmth, in comparison with temperature levels of the previous 400 years, than was shown in the TAR [Third Assessment Report, the 2001 IPCC report]. On the evidence of the previous and four new reconstructions that reach back more than 1 kyr, it is likely that the 20th century was the warmest in at least the past 1.3 kyr. Considering the recent instrumental and longer proxy evidence together, it is very likely that average NH temperatures during the second half of the 20th century were higher than for any other 50-year period in the last 500 years.

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Posted                      

quote:

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Originally posted by Noiseboy:
Littlelady, if this is neither a conspiracy and it is not true, then what exactly IS it?!

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Posted                         

quote:

---

Originally posted by Littlelady:

quote:

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Originally posted by Noiseboy:
Littlelady, if this is neither a conspiracy and it is not true, then what exactly IS it?!

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Huh? I was just talking with Myrrh there about people's sense of moral superiority. Like the punch I got for smoking in the open air or the telling I got from someone at work for not watching my stupid carbon footprint.

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Posted                   

quote:

---

Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:

quote:

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Originally posted by Myrrh:
We might never know which came first, the agenda or Mann's Hockey Stick, but it has been discredited by peer review as I showed in my previous post.

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And, as I showed some time back (I can't be bothered to find the links again) Mann's data has been shown to be more-or-less correct in several other peer reviewed papers. Not to mention accepted by a wide number of scientific bodies after careful consideration of all the data. Here's another example ...

quote:

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The ‘hockey stick’ reconstruction of Mann et al. (1999) has been the subject of several critical studies.

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followed by several pages of summary of the various papers covering temperature reconstruction for the last 1000+ years. With a conclusion

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The weight of current multi-proxy evidence, therefore, suggests greater 20th-century warmth, in comparison with temperature levels of the previous 400 years, than was shown in the TAR [Third Assessment Report, the 2001 IPCC report]. On the evidence of the previous and four new reconstructions that reach back more than 1 kyr, it is likely that the 20th century was the warmest in at least the past 1.3 kyr. Considering the recent instrumental and longer proxy evidence together, it is very likely that average NH temperatures during the second half of the 20th century were higher than for any other 50-year period in the last 500 years.

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Which, summarised simply, translates to "if you look at all the data now available, Northern Hemisphere temperature reconstructions are very similar to the 'hockey stick'". And, indeed the new data suggest that the temperature increase in the last century compared to the previous few centuries is even greater than suggested by Mann's data presented in 2001.

But, you're unlikely to want to even consider that as it's from the IPCC report ( chapter 6, starting from page 466).

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20th Century Climate Not So Hot CfA Press Release Release No.: 03-10
For Release: March 31, 2003

Cambridge, MA - A review of more than 200 climate studies led by researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has determined that the 20th century is neither the warmest century nor the century with the most extreme weather of the past 1000 years. The review also confirmed that the Medieval Warm Period of 800 to 1300 A.D. and the Little Ice Age of 1300 to 1900 A.D. were worldwide phenomena not limited to the European and North American continents. While 20th century temperatures are much higher than in the Little Ice Age period, many parts of the world show the medieval warmth to be greater than that of the 20th century.

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"Many true research advances in reconstructing ancient climates have occurred over the past two decades," Soon says, "so we felt it was time to pull together a large sample of recent studies from the last 5-10 years and look for patterns of variability and change. In fact, clear patterns did emerge showing that regions worldwide experienced the highs of the Medieval Warm Period and lows of the Little Ice Age, and that 20th century temperatures are generally cooler than during the medieval warmth."

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Which, summarised simply, translates to "if you look at all the data now available, Northern Hemisphere temperature reconstructions are very similar to the 'hockey stick'".

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Originally posted by Myrrh:
"On the evidence of the previous and four new reconstructions that reach back more than 1 kyr, it is likely that the 20th century was the warmest in at least the past 1.3 kyr."

Which previous and four new reconstructions?

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:

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Originally posted by Myrrh:
"On the evidence of the previous and four new reconstructions that reach back more than 1 kyr, it is likely that the 20th century was the warmest in at least the past 1.3 kyr."

Which previous and four new reconstructions?

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I'm sorry, I thought I made it clear. I'd quoted the first sentance, and final concluding sentance of a long section of several pages of summary of studies of the climate of the northern hemisphere over the last 1000+ years. The previous reconstruction was the one published in the 2001 IPCC reports (which includes Mann's data), the four new reconstructions are studies published since then covering that time period. Oh, and those several pages also include quite a bit about the MWP and MIA.

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• Moberg A, et al (2005). Highly variable Northern Hemisphere temperatures reconstructed from low- and high-resolution proxy data. Nature, 433, 613-617.
  Gives temperature data for the period 1AD-1979.
• Mann, M.E., and P.D. Jones (2003). Global surface temperatures over the past two millennia. Geophys. Res. Lett., 30, 1820.
  Gives temperature data for the period 200-1980.
• Hegerl, G.C., T.J. Crowley, W.T. Hyde, and D.J. Frame (2006) Climate sensitivity constrained by temperature reconstructions over the past seven centuries. Nature, 440, 1029–1032.
  Gives temperature data for the period 558-1960 (the earlier data are constrained by fitting the last 7 centuries to independant temperature data).
• D’Arrigo, R., R. Wilson, and G. Jacoby (2006) On the long-term context for late twentieth century warming. J. Geophys. Res., 111.
  Gives temperature data for the period 713-1995.

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Overall, these observational data underscore the concerns about global climate change. Previous projections, as summarized by IPCC, have not exaggerated but may in some respects even have underestimated the change, in particular for sea level.

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