NASA accused of 'Climategate' stalling FOIA response long overdue

Actually I'm enjoying myself.

Exactly. You have no interest in denying ignorance - you are just here to troll for a debate, and you get off on it.

Answers the questions or you are admitting defeat.

See?


...
Every time you get pinned into a corner you do two things. You start crying "straw man!" or "ad-hominem!" (show me where any one of my points were either one of those things - just because you're too dense to understand how it all relates is frankly not my problem).

Then you quickly change the subject and demand your questions be answered OR ELSE.

As if...

How bout you stop being such a chicken**** and answer the questions yourself for once?

You claimed you were gonna address the emails which, again - you picked out for me. I already spent a good chunk of my time looking up, reading and using an entire post to thoroughly debunk them AND reinforce my original point without missing a step. And then somehow in your deluded head you rationalized that I merely cherry-picked them? I must be able to control minds then and didn't even realize it - COOL!

Yeah and 4 out of 20 huh? In that case I've got some advice for you: Next time don't hit [b ] and [ /b] seven times for no reason. I made enough of a statement with those four OUT OF SEVEN and if you think I'm gonna seriously spend half my day digging up 16 more for you while you sit here cowling to yourself about phantom question-dodging, you've honestly got mental problems.

And you know what else is mega-ironic?

Everything I've said so far about Steve McIntyre, aka one of the king denier propagandists - IE how he deliberately just inundates and harasses people with floods of requests and questions he could find the answers to himself, and then cries "stonewalling" to the masses when he gets put in his place...does any of that sound familiar?

You two could be twins.

So like I said, how about YOU answer the questions for once and then maybe we'll talk.

I've shown how a bunch of your opinions - the ones YOU came trumpeting IN BOLD FONT I once again remind you - are simply just fabrications and manipulations of the truth. Aka propaganda.

So go ahead - show me how they're not

...or, you know, "admit defeat".

reply to post by mc_squared

Besides, the actual scientific data being requested is usually already freely available to anyone. NASA GISS info for example:

'Corrected' data doesn't count. Uncorrected data, and the methods they use to 'correct' the data is.

And don't forget what the 'correction' is about: The proxies don't match up with the modern temp record, so they have to 'correct' it. THis shows clear and obvious flaws in the proxies. Of course you'll deny this, and of course denial can be an ugly thing.

1256747199
Keith succeeding in being very restrained in his response. McIntyre knew what he was doing when he replaced some of the trees with those from another site.

Because all it seems to do is confirm what I just said.

Wow. That was quite a hardcore debunking. Allow me to put several of them into context, as you keep trying to do:

Originally posted by IgnoranceIsntBlisss

thanks Phil,
Perhaps we’ll do a simple update to the Yamal post, e.g. linking Keith/s new
page–Gavin t? As to the issues of robustness, particularly w.r.t. inclusion of the Yamal series, we actually emphasized that (including the Osborn and Briffa ‘06 sensitivity test) in our original post! As we all know, this isn’t about truth at all, its about plausibly deniable accusations,
www.eastangliaemails.com...

Meanwhile, an email by Phil Jones shows that Keith Briffa manipulated tree ring data:

Keith succeeding in being very restrained in his response. McIntyre knew what he was doing when he replaced some of the trees with those from another site.
Cheers
Phil
www.eastangliaemails.com...

This confirms long held suspicions that YAD061 was phony data, and it also confirms that Jones knew all about it:

"That is tree #YAD061. Seems like an outlier, that should be discarded from the analysis, right? That's not what Bifra did. Keeping it in, the average of the group was raised a little. Just a little, but enough." borepatch.blogspot.com...

Here Gary Funkhouser admits to manipulating tree data:

I really wish I could be more positive about the Kyrgyzstan material, but I swear I pulled every trick out of my sleeve trying to milk something out of that. It was pretty funny though – I told Malcolm what you said about my possibly being too Graybill-like in evaluating the response functions – he laughed and said that’s what he thought at first also. The data’s tempting but there’s too much variation even within stands. I don’t think it’d be productive to try and juggle the chronology statistics any more than I already have – they just are what they are (that does sound Graybillian).
www.eastangliaemails.com...

Another email shows even more manipulation:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

[edit on 2-6-2010 by IgnoranceIsntBlisss]

Originally posted by mc_squared
How bout you stop being such a chicken**** and answer the questions yourself for once?

If you insist:

You're a Zeitgeist Movement fanatic, and global warming screamongering is the means to that end:

Originally posted by mc_squared
Global Warming is a scare tactic alright - it's one designed to get people to finally wake the hell up and realize THEY have the power to change the world around them. That includes dismantling this corrupt demonic oligarchy that's keeping us the way we are. How many of you current GW deniers watched Zeitgeist Addendum last year and probably sang it's praises? Do you not remember what Peter Joseph said we need to do to defeat the system? We have to move to a resource based economy, founded first and foremost on clean renewable forms of energy. Why? Because it takes the most important cash cow/control system of the NWO away from them. www.abovetopsecret.com...

You're avoiding stating your 'solutions' because you know I'll nail you to the wall, just like how you keep avoiding me on your solutions etc in several different threads now. Remember this:

Originally posted by IgnoranceIsntBlisss

Originally posted by mc_squared
What global government? Please show me this magical Orwellian Fascist nightmare you have all figured out.

Sure:
The Orwellian Fascist Global Government:
World Rulers Calling for Global NWO: 2009 In Review, and more.

The Zeitgeist PURE COMMUNISM global government:
Zeitgeist Movement = most hardcore NWO propaganda ever.
The Zeitgeist Movement is *Pure Communism*

I've linked you those before... still waiting for your response on any of that...
www.abovetopsecret.com...

You know that humans will continue to use oil even if we find a solution to the energy, because we get far too many products from it. So you avoid that issue, while promising people concerned with the oil Gusher that your Zeitgeist will save us from that (with unproven energy technology).

FACT: The modern communist movement is using Global Warming to achieve global resurgence, and Global Warmongering is even rooted in communism:
Gorbachev Exposes Global Communist Environmentalism Conspiracy.

FACT: Zeitgeist Movement is PURE communism.

FACT: You wont budge on AGW no matter what is said or happens. You have too much on the line in your agenda to let AGW fail.

FACT: You use AGW to push people towards Zeitgeist (pure communism global dictatorship).

FACT: Communists don't care about the environment, they just use environmentalism to push their agenda.

FACT: AGW diverts everyones attention from clear and present environmental dangers.

Originally posted by IgnoranceIsntBlisss
Wow. That was quite a hardcore debunking.

That one didn't need a hardcore debunking because it spoke for itself. But since you insist:

First of all, if the data wasn't entirely robust that's one thing - but any insinuations that Briffa deliberately cherry-picked it this way are completely baseless, and you're apparently being spoon-fed this information from some blog. Briffa merely inherited the raw data from a group of Russian researchers doing a different study. In fact Steve McIntyre himself explicitly states this was likely not a calculated ploy or anything so remotely dramatic:

It is not my belief that Briffa crudely cherry picked. My guess is that the Russians selected a limited number of 200-400 year trees – that’s what they say – a number that might well have been appropriate for their purpose and that Briffa inherited their selection

Source: climateaudit.org...-195642

On the flip side though, there is some documented...let's say..."curiousity" over the way McIntyre selected his own raw data. I'll elaborate on that in a minute - but the important point for now is to recognize this is what Phil Jones is clearly referring to when he claims McIntyre "knew what he was doing." Because you might also want to notice the reference to Keith's "restrained response" is actually the link at the beginning of the email. Namely this:

www.cru.uea.ac.uk...

That paper outlines McIntyre's analysis, and it's subsequent consequences on previous results.

Now like I was saying - McIntyre's personal selection criteria does not go unnoticed. From the paper:

McIntyre's analysis involved removing the measurement data for 12 trees (from 3 of these sites POR, YAD and JAH), data that make up the most recent part of our chronology, and replacing them with measurements from 18 trees growing at a different single site

Hmmm...12 trees from 3 sites replaced by 18 from 1 is apparently a more robust approach huh?

Anyway, it's pointed out in an earlier response that McIntyre offers no explanation for this methodology, but nonetheless Briffa's current "restrained" reply lets it slide:

Our current practice when selecting data to incorporate in a regional chronology, is to include data exhibiting high levels of common high-frequency variability (i.e. on the basis of high inter-site correlations, where these are calculated using high-pass filtered data). Judged according to this criterion it is entirely appropriate to include the data from the KHAD site (used in McIntyre's sensitivity test) when constructing a regional chronology for the area. However, we simply did not consider these data at the time, focussing only on the data used in the companion study by Hantemirov and Shiyatov and supplied to us by them.

So how does all the new data fit in:

A chronology using only the recent data from either POR or YAD will exhibit a greater 20th century increase in growth than one based on JAH, but one based only on KHAD, as in McIntyre's experiment, is the most anomalous and, therefore, arguably the least defensible. With no additional information with which to justify the exclusion of any of these data, we have produced a chronology using the measurements from all 4 sites

Now before we get to that new chronology - time to take a hypocrisy break. Because this is becoming a comical recurring theme already. We're supposed to dismiss all of Global Warming as a hoax because the evil tree scientists are staging results by using biased data (even though they had no other data to choose from apparently), but when Steve McIntyre (who has no background in dendrochronology) comes along and makes his case by specifically picking out the most anomalous set available - it's supposed to be vivid proof of the scam?

Yeah that makes a TON of sense. In Denier-ville. (Where everybody wears hats on their feet, and hamburgers eat people).

So instead let's meet up somewhere in Halfway-ville, and have a look at those new chronologies incorporating all 4 sites, and see how much it now deviates from the previous conclusions:




Hot dog, looook at ALL THAT divergence!


*crickets*

Sorry, but at this point it's all just getting so absurd I can't help but drift into stupid sarcasm.


Because this is basically what you should expect to get when you rely on your information from places like borehole.blogspot.bullsh**.org

A bad joke.

Like I said from the start - these people know nothing about the science, they just deliberately set out to obfuscate the "consensus" and then post about it on their blogs. It's been well-documented how many of them are in fact direct puppets for specific big business entities (albeit usually through the guise of some "libertarian" think tank or whatever). The rest I imagine just blindly jump on the bandwagon because they wanna be part of the "we beat the smart kids, we beat the smart kids!" circle jerk.

I mean look at all the hyperbole coming from that blog you linked:

We have a multi-trillion dollar proposed restructuring of society, based on tree #YAD061.

Are you ****ing kidding?? Yeah, the entire "scam" is thanks to this one tree. Go look at the individual data sets. The warmest series isn't even from the YAD set - it's from POR. What an utter dirty crap joke.

I am so so sick of listening to you guys yack on and on about how brainwashed everybody else is - and yet you're clearly just completely sucked into all the rhetoric on the other side of the fence.

And the saddest part is this whole debate doesn't need to be anywhere near this damn polarized and testy. Instead - we could all be working together to separate the wheat from the chaff on BOTH sides - you know, to actually make it about integrity and denying ignorance.

But noooo: you're so emotionally invested in all the time you spent making fun of Al Gore, or "claiming victory" - that now there's no going back. Because actually admitting some of the crap on your end is just propaganda would be "admitting defeat".

Grow Up.

Originally posted by mc_squared
So instead let's meet up somewhere in Halfway-ville, and have a look at those new chronologies incorporating all 4 sites, and see how much it now deviates from the previous conclusions:


Hot dog, looook at ALL THAT divergence!

You made some good points... and you do know a lot about this issue...

...and I'm wondering why you keep saying that I keep saying you're brainwashed when I never have...

...but since you keep mentioning your brainwashed'dom it got me thinking...

There's one slight problem with all of this: If we go by the proxies right about where your favored graphs show the temps increase, the proxies show decrease. Remember, "the decline"? You know, the "these will be artificially adjusted"?


The big story in ALL of this is how flawed temperature data is both past and present.


And tree rings? Could anyone find anything stupider to try and get historical data from? Have you ever grown a garden, or trees? And I mean several of the same exact type of something, but each in different soil and given random levels of care and nourishment? Do I really need to explain thsi in detail? Think that one over real good before responding.


And YAD061 did skew the results, did it not? Because when I look at those:

It seems that's the closest one to the Hockey Stick. There's a couple others that look similar to the HS, but if one had to guess which one in particular the HS was based on I'd bet 98.9% of people would pick that one. Are there some others not in that graphic?

And the graphs have been artificially adjusted right there, no?

[edit on 3-6-2010 by IgnoranceIsntBlisss]

reply to post by IgnoranceIsntBlisss


OK now we're getting somewhere

I don't just come here to pee on everybody's cornflakes, but it gets really infuriating sifting through all the endless streams of comments by ATS members laughing at every supposed Al Gore monkey - when meanwhile they're all just regurgitating their own brand of grade A propaganda.

So that part wasn't necessarily aimed at you - although you have tried to paint me as some hypnotized zeitgeist commie like half a dozen times now, but nevertheless besides the point right now.

Well - sort of besides the point actually - because I think A LOT of the problem is the way things are perpetually divided into these pointless dichotomies. And I'm guilty of that too, as I'm constantly pointing the finger at "right-wing propaganda". But at the same time - it is what it is...


Anyway, as for the "decline" inconsistency - you make a good point, and honestly it's something I was wondering about as I was reading through this stuff. Because that whole debacle left me with the impression that virtually all recent tree data has exhibited this phenomenon, so I was a bit surprised to find that's not the case myself.

So maybe this is one of those things we can both sort through now a bit more calmly, except without being driven by such a need to win as just the common goal of separating the facts from the bull - deal?


From what I can see about the YAD061 fiasco though - I really think it's been overhyped. On that graph it certainly stands out but I wouldn't associate it with any hockey stick conclusions just because it looks the most hockey stick-like there. For the most part it appears every one one of those graphs is exhibiting some upward linear trend, and since we don't have a proper scale before 1800 there - they could all be hockey sticks unto themselves for all we know.

And from a superficial observation it does look like YAD061 would at least skew the results, but that's one of the biggest death traps we can fall into - because the propagandists absolutely PREY on our superficial observations. We don't know what kind of possible normalizing procedures were applied to that data, so we can't just jump to conclusions based on one graph.

What we do know - as I showed in the last post is that apparently the POR data showed stronger warming anyway in the final analysis. We also know from that paper that Briffa incorporated McIntyre's methods into his secondary, more balanced version of the analysis. He even points out he removed the same trees that McIntyre did - so when Steve was picking his own data, I think it's safe to assume he removed YAD061 if it was the grand offender these people try to make it out to be.

reply to post by mc_squared


The more I look at it the less I see how the 'proper' graphs or whatever ended up with that SPIKE at the very end without YAD061:


The SPIKE at the very end is the dead give away from the little block of graphs there. That's why I was asking if there's some other graphs in the set not in that block'o'graphs I found a long time ago.

[edit on 3-6-2010 by IgnoranceIsntBlisss]

reply to post by IgnoranceIsntBlisss


Yeah but like I said you can't just take those intermediate graphs and overlay them onto the final one and assume that's all they did here as well, because we don't know that.

The professionals have an array of specific algorithms and normalization techniques they use for weeding out these sorts of anomalies and extracting meaningful signals from the rest of the noise. If you look through that paper you'll find all kinds of technical jargon explaining how this is done (regional curve standardization, high-pass filtering, etc).

I don't know how that graph projects onto the final result because I'm not a dendrochronologist, and because that blog gives no detailed information (and I suspect that's for a reason). They just want you to look at it and jump to conclusions and get outraged.

If you want to get to the bottom of it be my guest - but you're going to have to delve into the nitty-gritty of how the data is processed, weighted, etc.

I just think you can save yourself the trouble by looking at the final site by site results that I linked to before. Because if the one YAD tree really is so disproportionately responsible for changing the entire dynamic of that whole chronology - then the final YAD series should blow all the other ones out of the water as well. And in fact it's not even the most pronounced set. So if you removed the YAD series (and therefore the YAD tree) the final results would actually be even higher.

reply to post by mc_squared


Here's how I should have done it:


What I'm getting at is the 061 is basically the only one that spikes right at the end.

I went looking for the full set and noticed this first:

Climate scientists withheld Yamal data despite warnings from senior colleagues
Ancient trees dragged from frozen Siberian bogs do not undermine climate science, despite what the sceptics say
...
...
But others believe Briffa does have a duty to explain himself. In October last year, Briffa's old boss at CRU, Tom Wigley, said in an email to Briffa's current boss Phil Jones: "Keith does seem to have got himself into a mess." Wigley felt Briffa had not answered McIntyre's charges fully. "How does Keith explain the McIntyre plot that compares Yamal-12 with Yamal-all? And how does he explain the apparent 'selection' of the less well-replicated chronology rather than the later (better replicated) chronology?... The trouble is that withholding data looks like hiding something, and hiding something means (in some eyes) that it is bogus science that is being hidden."

And this:

network.nationalpost.com...

DO you disagree with that image? If not, it clearly shows that originally he clearly used a cherry picked set to push his agenda, and then after years of witholding data the truth wasn't nearly as stark as the HS. It should be obvious he was screwing around with the 'science'.

And again the 'artificial adjustments' post 1960 come into play.

Without the tinkering, I'm not sure what we're supposed to be convinced and motivated by with all of this 'AGW' noise???

[edit on 3-6-2010 by IgnoranceIsntBlisss]

Ok, these are more accurately aligned:




And here's where it gets good:

The graph you provided is hardly even the averaging of all the data. After 1950, its almost exclusively taken from YAD061!



Meaning, before 1950 it might be the average of all the proxies, but then after 1950 it almost literally matches YAD061, alone, and hardly looks like the others! Sure, some of the peaks and dips of some of the others are close, but none seem to feature all of the peaks.

Because they don't, the high points on many of them would be averaged out lower, but the graph you provided has near-maximum peaks all the way across: peaks so high that only YAD061 'matches' them.

The "science" says the temps should be rising directly with the CO2, and Briffa used the data in a way to show exactly that. Several of them totally lack peaks towards the end, but clearly that data wasn't even averaged.

Unless there's more raw graphs we should be going by in such an attempt. I figure you of anyone would know where to find them...

Your graph also totally lacks both the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warming Period.
--
More:


Temperature station records from around the area:

Note that there are some degrees of Urban Heat Island effect that would apply to teh stations, but not Yamal. How how the trees show way more heating? Oh, yeah, they 'artificially adjust' the proxy data.

You might wanna take a good hard look at this article:
wattsupwiththat.com...

Since you're a climate science expert, and surely that's propaganda, you might consider doing a nice huge new thread debunking it point by point. Your fellow alarmists could use a big boost in morale, and you'd get lots of S&F.

Oh dear, now that we're all focused on science I better get ready to "die"

Originally posted by mc_squared
But regardless, you want to talk actual science - nothing would make me happier. This is my expertise, this is where it becomes easily apparent who's really manipulating data, and this is where feable skeptic/denier arguments come to die - so please be my guest.

Or we could go back to talking about your solutions...

[edit on 3-6-2010 by IgnoranceIsntBlisss]

Oi, so much to address - so little space.

Ok first off your points about the graphs: Look, did you read my last two posts? I keep trying to tell you - you can't just try to fit the peaks and valleys of the YAD061 graph with that of the final results because most likely they are not linearly related. This is fancy math speak for "Graphing, you're doing it wrong".

Now I said "most likely" before because I didn't have much information about that YAD061 graph, but I went back and took a closer look and now I can conclusively say you're definitely doing it wrong.

The graph from borepatch.blogspot.com... is simply a graph of standard deviations. Meaning how much the growth of each tree differs from the group average at any particular time. This was hard to determine at first because the graph is not labeled. But I realized after that the author is using it to show how YAD061 varies from the group average by 8 standard deviations. Now look at the graph of YAD061 - it tops out right around 8.

But the point is this graph is unrelated to the other one. It's like you're taking one graph of the relative heights of mountains and another graph for how much their heights change over time and trying to superimpose them on one another.

The final graph in Briffa's paper shows how much the entire group's average growth changes compared to the mean value for the period 1-1600 AD. They have also been standardized like I told you they'd be. So the fact that the final graph and the one of YAD061 looks the same is just a coincidence.

Actually it's not a coincidence. Because I bet you whoever put it up this way wanted you to think this. They knew most people would look at the graph and connect hockey stick with hockey stick and be off to the races without a second thought.

That's why I'm telling you - these propagandists PREY on easy to digest, superficial observations people make when dealing with complicated stuff - so you have to be VERY careful and VERY diligent.



Now with that in mind I gotta say we need to calm down a bit here because I can sense you're getting pretty excited about finding other graphs that might confirm your suspicions - and I just have to remind you about the bullsh** parade we're both trying to sort through.


Because the author of that National Post article, Ross McKitrick, happens to be another one of these uber conservative/libertarian skeptics with a book to sell.

So I'm not saying that means your new evidence is wrong or invalid - just proceed with caution.


Look at it this way: we're both trying to meet in the middle here from opposite ends of the spectrum. But we're both convinced the other side is full of it. So if I just go running back and grab some graph put up by Michal Mann to back up the Keith Briffa one - it's not exactly gonna knock your socks off either is it?

So again, I'm not discounting anything - just saying if we don't want this to devolve into more he said/she said yaddi yadda nonsense we're both gonna have to be pretty conscious of that slippery slope.


Now I do see one of those flat graphs in the NP article is from F.H. Schweingruber. This is much more encouraging because as far as I know he is a legitimate tree scientist who's even worked on papers with Briffa before. So in light of that this evidence does become much more poignant.

But it also raises some new red flags for me.

Because here's the thing: remember first off that the tree record is hardly the go to source for modern temperature data. We've of course had thermometers for the last 200 years, satellite data for the last 30, and you said yourself trees are a pretty dumb way to measure these things because growing conditions are so highly variable anyway.

So it's not like we need tree rings to determine the "blade" of the hockey stick especially, because we have much better modern methods for that. Where proxy data does come in is going past our modern record and determining the shaft. Specifically it's been in the spotlight of the whole medieval warming period debate.

Now look at those graphs - all three methods, even McIntyre's, agree on a near perfect flat shaft. So...don't think I'm trying to move off-topic here because what I'm getting at is McKitrick's sub-headline, namely:

Only by playing with data can scientists come up with the infamous ‘hockey stick’ graph of global warming

Um...say what? First of all there are plenty of hockey stick graphs that don't even use tree data - for example those reconstructed from borehole data, or glacial retreat.

But the main thing is virtually NOBODY disputes that the climate has warmed over the past century. Thus even if Briffa was a sheister it wouldn't change anything in the quantifiable side of the debate. The only contentious part is whether or not that warming is unique and thus likely man-made. So the validity of the shaft is the key component in the stick, not the blade. And now here we have some global warming skeptic proudly showing off 3 graphs with a perfectly flat shaft to "prove" there is no hockey stick???

*facepalm*

Sorry I'm just blown away by the logic.

It would be one thing if he was using this inconsistency to suggest all tree ring data is crap and therefore useless - but no - he's using it to go after a climate scientist. If this was all a big chess game it's like he just sacrificed your queen to take out one of our pawns.

Anyway to get it back squarely on-topic it brings up the question of why Briffa would even need to lie? We touched on the "decline" thing briefly and just to let you know I've been doing some digging and found some interesting info that we can get into later - but there indeed appears to be some compelling reasons for the divergence seen since the 60's.

So if they have this excuse to begin with, and the modern tree record is mostly irrelevant anyway - why do the climate scientists need to lie? Maybe Briffa wanted some personal glory (wouldn't be the first scientist to do that). But in the scope of a grand conspiracy of all things global warming - it doesn't really add up.


Anyway, enough typing and food for thought for today. Continue next time...