LIAR DENIER TIM BALL - CHERRY PICKING IN CLIMATE CHANGE

Tim Ball is a Climate Denier with a weblog

His post CHERRY PICKING IN CLIMATE STUDIES can be found here

In this post Ball takes on Dr. Michael E. Mann's hockey stick claiming that Mann "rewrote climate history by eliminating a WARMER THAN TODAY period between 899 and 1300 AD"  As I will explain down the page, Tim Ball is treading very thin ice because Michael Mann has gone on the offensive against his attackers and is posting wins in his legal battles against those who have defamed him. 

Today as of this post is MAY 25, 2016 and May 2016 is the warmest May on record over 1 degree C above the 20th Century Average. 

2015 was the warmest year on record by a significant margin as shown in the graph above and 2016 is shaping up July as of this graph as significantly hotter still. July and August have continued the 15 consecutive "hottest ever on record" months so it seems clear that Tim Ball is not capable of adjusting his thinking as the record grows. 
CONTINUE BELOW THE FOLD

The warmest years on record above compare to the Average warmth in the 20th century. But Ball and his Liar Denier friends are all in a tizzy over the "midieval warming period" back around the year 1000. Those records are more difficult to come by since they involve:

Reconstructions have mainly used tree-ring data and other data sets of annual to decadal resolution. Lake and ocean sediments have a lower time resolution, but provide climate information at multicentennial timescales that may not be captured by tree-ring data.

There are several attempts to recreate the temperatures back around 1000 but none of them have anything like the accuracy of present day record accumulation. Some 6000 measurement  stations around the globe are added to satellite data and other sources to get a very accurate worldwide average of temperatures expressed in the graph above and graphs like this one  

As we can clearly see in the above graph rural area in Asia and Canada are warming more and some spots like the area just south of Greenland are actually cooling. When anyone attempts to use tree ring data to establish the record prior to current measurement techniques it would be most important to know how many records are involved and where on the planet they originate.

There are no trees in many of the locations where we find land based temperature measurement stations today

TEMPERATURE MEASUREMENT STATIONS DIVIDED INTO RED AND BLUE PROXIMITY GROUPS 

From

Cherry Picking in Climate Studies

by DR. TIM BALL on MAY 25, 2016 in GOVERNMENT,POLITICAL

"A revealing comment about the corruption of climate science occurred before a Joint Congressional Inquiry. They were seeking to determine the claims by Canadians Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick about the scientific inaccuracy of Michael Mann’s ‘hockey stick.’ The graph (Figure 1) appeared in the 2001 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report and became the poster child for the proof of human-caused global warming.
Figure 1 shows the graph Mann produced that rewrote climate history by eliminating a warmer than today period between 900 and 1300 AD called the Medieval Warm Period (MWP). They established an Ad Hoc committee under the chair of Edward Wegman to determine who was correct."

Figure 1

Ball claims Dr. Michael E. Mann's hockey stick "rewrote climate history by eliminating a WARMER THAN TODAY period between 899 and 1300 AD"  But the figure he uses above barely reaches the year 1000

Dr. Mann's complete chart above shows the "bump" of the Medieval Warming Period peaking in the mid 900's at just under the 20th century average 0.0 point and this chart continues to the year 2000. We know from my first chart above, the red curve continues upward off this graph to over 1 degree above the 20th century average as of May 2016. So Ball's "cherry-picking" is applicable to Ball not Mann. 

BALL goes on:

One of the first examples that confirmed my suspicions about what was going on with the corruption of global warming research by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is shown in Figure 3. The top graph was presented in Chapter 8 of the 1995 IPCC Report to support the claim that, Benjamin Santer lead author of the Chapter personally inserted the sentence to replace one that already agreed to by the other chapter authors.

“While some of the pattern-base discussed here have claimed detection of a significant climate change, no study to date has positively attributed all or part of climate change observed to man-made causes.”

The bottom graph shows the longer record, which supports that conclusion. Dennis Avery and Fred Singer noted in 2006,

“Santer single-handedly reversed the ‘climate science’ of the whole IPCC report and with it the global warming political process! The ‘discernible human influence’ supposedly revealed by the IPCC has been cited thousands of times since in media around the world, and has been the ‘stopper’ in millions of debates among nonscientists.”

Benjamin Santer has addressed this load of excrement perpetrated by Fred "the old lone denier" Singer and his buddy Fred Seitz in detail with a reply to Seitz Wall Street Journal editorial. You can read it for yourself in this pdf

The specious claim above that "no study to date has positively attributed all or part of climate change observed to man-made causes". is obviously wrong. As found in the posts above this on this weblog we know that CO2 from fossil fuel burning is increasing and significantly contributing to the 401ppm record level in our atmosphere. The signature of that CO2 from the mass of the isotopes is positive for fossil fuel burning. 

We know to a certainty that winters are warming faster than summers and nights faster than daytime. That proves the warming comes from inside the atmosphere and not from external sources. 

So knowing to an exact measurement:

• temperature is increasing globally
• CO2 is increasing in the atmosphere 
• and
• the source of that CO2 is from fossil fuels
• nights and winter are warming faster than days and summer

We prove that mankind burning fossil fuels is the cause of global warming and climate change. That is by definition positive attribution to mankind of climate change. This is so obvious and easy to understand it is difficult to see how Ball et al can continue to post nonsense and retain any self-respect. 

The two Fred's - Singer and Seitz are old cold war physicists who worked on rockets and battled Nazi's and then Communists. Seitz died shortly after this and Singer is the poster boy for Liar Deniers with impressive credentials from fields not associated with Climate Science. Singer and Seitz appear to be among the best the Liar Denier's have to offer. 

Singer's opposition is political. Based on a fear of regulation.  Anyone reading denier posts should be aware that the use of Singer is a huge red flag.  MERCHANTS OF DOUBT is an excellent tool. The film will give you great insights into Singer and Seitz from their own mouths.

But back to Ball and his bogus Cherry Picking. 

Figure 3

Recently, reports of the warmest years in the record circulate to amplify the false stories about human-caused global warming. For example, The Guardian newspaper headline for 24 March 2014 says,
13 of 14 warmest years on record occurred in 21st century – UN
Of course they have! The global temperature rose from 1680, the coldest period of the Little Ice Age (LIA) to 1998. Since then temperatures levelled and declined slightly, in what is known as the hiatus. 

Figure 4 illustrates the situation for the period of the instrumental record starting in 1880. It is not surprising that the highest temperatures occur in the most recent portion, even though they have levelled off.

Figure 4

Here is where Ball hangs himself nicely on his own petard. As the NOAA chart at the top of this page shows clearly there has been no leveling of temperatures after 1998. 1998 was certainly a record hot year for the 20th century but it has been dwarfed by the temperatures in 2010, 14, 15, and 16.

Figure 4 has nothing to do with rising temperatures since 2000. Whatever Ball thought this childish chart illustrated it is not that temperatures have leveled off since 1998 in some hiatus.  Where is Ball's data? What are his sources for this specious claim? 

Figure 5 shows the same graph as Figure 4, but now the temperature is extended back to the nadir of the LIA. The trend from 1680 was problematic for the IPCC because it showed the current warming was part of a longer natural trend.

Figure 5

We know the objective of the hockey stick to rewriting climate history was deliberate.

“During testimony before the Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works Hearing on Climate Change and the Media in 2006, University of Oklahoma geophysicist Dr. David Deming recalled “an astonishing email from a major researcher in the area of climate change” who told him that “we have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.”  WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE FOR THIS BOGUS CLAIM?
The ‘hockey stick,’ or as some prefer the ‘hokey stick,’ achieved the goal. It replaced a graph that appeared in the 1990 Report (Figure 6) showing the longer trend warming.

David Deming failed to produce the referenced email and to name the source.

His activities caused concern at the U. of Oklahoma where he came under fire for his letters to papers and a sexual harassment charge. This is the shabby 'evidence' preferred by the Liar-Deniers. 

Dr. Michael E. Mann has suffered more attacks than most of the hard working scientist trying to learn how our climate works and how to understand why it is warming. No lesser individuals than the Republican AG of Virginia and his then counterpart and once Gov of PA Tom Corbitt have attempted to destroy Mann. But Mann is still standing and destroying his attackers with lawsuits and the truth. Mann's Hockey Stick is MUCH -VINDICATED and Mann has been kicking his detractors to the curb with defamation lawsuits. You can bet I will pass this on to Dr. Mann so he can do whatever he thinks is appropriate about Ball. 

"THE HOKEY STICK" of Ball's imagining is as bogus as his cherry picking. 
The 15 consecutive months of warmest or hottest ever continues and we now exceed 1 degree above the 20th Century average. This is very dangerous territory since the IPCC and many of the qualified scientific organizations postulate that 2 degrees is as far as we dare go if we are to avoid major consequences from global warming. 

Hard to imagine what Ball is about. Is he blissfully unaware of what is happening with the world's glaciers?

 Perhaps Ball would have you believe this is not happening. But what about the data coming in from Greenland and Antarctica where the loss of ice mass continues and accelerates unabated?

WEST ANTARCTIC GLACIERS LOSING MASS AT RECORD LEVELS

LIAR DENIERS like Ball are a threat to the future of your grandchildren. They should not be allowed to go unchallenged. Go take the Denial 101x Course and learn how you can take on these charlatans. 


For a complete and detailed takedown of this type of Denier illogic this Gavin Schmidt destruction of Judith Curry is illuminating