4 ms·

Remember the hockey stick graph? The graph that the entire AGW community rallied around for years? Yeah, it was wrong: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn

Remember the hockey stick graph? The graph that the entire AGW community rallied around for years? Yeah, it was wrong: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11646-climate-myths-the-hockey-stick-graph-has-been-proven-wrong.html http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11646-climate-myths-th... I can give you more examples if you wish, but I think that alone speaks pretty strongly about how inconclusive/false some research is.

guelo 15y ago
That's pretty funny. That article is about climate myths. The article is saying the opposite of what you think it says. The hockey stick graph has not been proven wrong.
- gavanwoolery 15y ago
  Haha, that will teach me to throw in links late at night ;) Here is a better link: http://www.john-daly.com/hockey/hockey.htm http://www.john-daly.com/hockey/hockey.htm
  - lolcraft 15y ago
    That argument reduces to: * The medieval warm period was warmed than today, which is false; thus * Solar activity might be the cause of large climate changes, which is doubtful, more so because the premise is wrong. Not enough to explain ocean acidity, why climate change is global, why there's a hole in the Antarctic's atmosphere...
    - gavanwoolery 15y ago
      "the medieval warm period was warme[r] than today, which is false" Why is that false? There are many possible explanations for the latter anomalies - our CO2 output likely is part of influence, but hardly the only. Global temperatures, ocean acidity, and the ozone layer have all fluctuated dramatically over time, even long before humans existed. In fact, in the Archaean period and earlier, earth did not even have an ozone layer.
    - trevelyan 15y ago
      Not to mention the melting of the permafrost, glacial retreat and the fact that Arctic ice levels are (yet again) reaching historic lows: http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/09/12/arctic-ice-levels-hit-historic-low-researchers-say/ http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/09/12/arctic-ice-levels-hit-h... Theories of anthropogenic global warming pre-dated and predicted all of these developments.
      - gavanwoolery 15y ago
        Funny, I think it depends on what propaganda you are swallowing ;) According to many studies, polar ice is actually increasing. http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/04/18/2059204/Antarctic-Ice-Is-Growing-Not-Melting-Away-At-Davis-Station http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/04/18/2059204/Antarctic-Ic... and http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13253 http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13...
        trevelyan 15y ago
        You must have me confused with someone who doesn't know the difference between the Arctic and Antarctic. The raw data on Arctic ice thickness comes from the Canadian Ice Service, Norwegian Meteorological Service daily satellite images: Arctic Mosaic of the LANCE-MODIS System, University of Bremen archive of sea ice concentration maps, ECMWF weather forecasts and radar images of Greenland from the Danish Meteorological Institute. So satellite photos basically, and you are right that I don't consider them propaganda. http://sites.google.com/site/arcticseaicegraphs/ http://sites.google.com/site/arcticseaicegraphs/ I haven't looked at the data behind the articles you cite since they aren't available as best I can find, and even the summaries merely claim that Antarctica is at best a wash with gains in one metric in one region possibly compensating for significant losses elsewhere. Thanks for playing though.
      - vannevar 15y ago
        Antarctica is also losing ice mass (http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/20100108_Is_Antarctica_Melting.html http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/20100108_Is_Antarc...). Articles suggesting it is gaining ice use selective measurements of sea ice rather than ice mass as a whole.
lutorm 15y ago
While I've seen arguments about the robustness of the hockey stick graph under different data analysis assumptions regarding bristlecone pine core samples from California, I've also seen retorts that say that the hockey stick remains. I don't know what to think about this anymore. But I do know that it can't be called an obvious "fallacy or bad experiment", so I don't know why you named it as an example. Even if it happens to be wrong, it's not an example of a bad experiment or scientific fallacy. It's an example of a screwup that you certainly could NOT have identified at a glance.

guelo 15y ago

That's pretty funny. That article is about climate myths. The article is saying the opposite of what you think it says. The hockey stick graph has not been proven wrong.

gavanwoolery 15y ago
Haha, that will teach me to throw in links late at night ;) Here is a better link: http://www.john-daly.com/hockey/hockey.htm http://www.john-daly.com/hockey/hockey.htm
- lolcraft 15y ago
  That argument reduces to: * The medieval warm period was warmed than today, which is false; thus * Solar activity might be the cause of large climate changes, which is doubtful, more so because the premise is wrong. Not enough to explain ocean acidity, why climate change is global, why there's a hole in the Antarctic's atmosphere...
  - gavanwoolery 15y ago
    "the medieval warm period was warme[r] than today, which is false" Why is that false? There are many possible explanations for the latter anomalies - our CO2 output likely is part of influence, but hardly the only. Global temperatures, ocean acidity, and the ozone layer have all fluctuated dramatically over time, even long before humans existed. In fact, in the Archaean period and earlier, earth did not even have an ozone layer.
  - trevelyan 15y ago
    Not to mention the melting of the permafrost, glacial retreat and the fact that Arctic ice levels are (yet again) reaching historic lows: http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/09/12/arctic-ice-levels-hit-historic-low-researchers-say/ http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/09/12/arctic-ice-levels-hit-h... Theories of anthropogenic global warming pre-dated and predicted all of these developments.
    - gavanwoolery 15y ago
      Funny, I think it depends on what propaganda you are swallowing ;) According to many studies, polar ice is actually increasing. http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/04/18/2059204/Antarctic-Ice-Is-Growing-Not-Melting-Away-At-Davis-Station http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/04/18/2059204/Antarctic-Ic... and http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13253 http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13...
      - trevelyan 15y ago
        You must have me confused with someone who doesn't know the difference between the Arctic and Antarctic. The raw data on Arctic ice thickness comes from the Canadian Ice Service, Norwegian Meteorological Service daily satellite images: Arctic Mosaic of the LANCE-MODIS System, University of Bremen archive of sea ice concentration maps, ECMWF weather forecasts and radar images of Greenland from the Danish Meteorological Institute. So satellite photos basically, and you are right that I don't consider them propaganda. http://sites.google.com/site/arcticseaicegraphs/ http://sites.google.com/site/arcticseaicegraphs/ I haven't looked at the data behind the articles you cite since they aren't available as best I can find, and even the summaries merely claim that Antarctica is at best a wash with gains in one metric in one region possibly compensating for significant losses elsewhere. Thanks for playing though.
    - vannevar 15y ago
      Antarctica is also losing ice mass (http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/20100108_Is_Antarctica_Melting.html http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/20100108_Is_Antarc...). Articles suggesting it is gaining ice use selective measurements of sea ice rather than ice mass as a whole.

lutorm 15y ago

While I've seen arguments about the robustness of the hockey stick graph under different data analysis assumptions regarding bristlecone pine core samples from California, I've also seen retorts that say that the hockey stick remains. I don't know what to think about this anymore. But I do know that it can't be called an obvious "fallacy or bad experiment", so I don't know why you named it as an example. Even if it happens to be wrong, it's not an example of a bad experiment or scientific fallacy. It's an example of a screwup that you certainly could NOT have identified at a glance.