Monday, October 13, 2014

Well, what do you know.. Tallbloke and his group of cyclists are back in the fold at WUWT

Sou | 2:38 PM Go to the first of 92 comments. Add a comment

Earlier today I remarked that Anthony Watts had an article promoting some of Tallbloke's silly notions. Tallbloke (Roger Tattersall) fell out of favour with Anthony Watts somewhere along the way. In part, I think, because of his ideas about patterns.

Well, in a sign that WUWT has moved to the wackier end of denialism (and maybe a sign that Anthony Watts reads HW), Anthony has today re-elevated Tallbloke's blog.

As of yesterday - still listed (under the buxom women) as Transcendent Rant and way out there theory.

Today it's been shifted back to "Skeptical views", (under "celebrity" gossip)

A strong sign that WUWT has accepted it's target audience is the utter nutter end of denialism. That WUWT is nothing more than "transcendent rant and way out there theory". And probably that Anthony Watts has kissed and made up with "Tallbloke and his group of cyclists".

Poor old Anthony Watts needs whatever allies he can muster these days.


  1. The problem with Tallbloke's approach, and one that we are all susceptible to, is that coincidences among magic numbers is what drives their thinking. Just the fact that the period of some climate measure matches that of Saturn's orbital synodic cycle doesn't really prove much. It takes a lot more effort than that to get to the bottom of a causal chain.

    In spite of that, folks such as Tallbloke and Tisdale are always good for contributing #OwnGoals. That's a given, as science always has the last word.

    1. On a personal level, the magic number 'pi-squared' is so close to the value of 'g', less than 1 per cent variation, that it doesn't bear thinking about. Well, apparently the Indiana government thought about legislating the value of pi so that the square root of pi could be found through its Pi-Bill (1897), the one of urban legend status. The bill passed the General Assembly but fell at the final hurdle and didn't gain Senate approval. Which story has a tenuous parallel with the own goal history of Watts et al (2012).

  2. But please don't call them cyclists, which saddens those of us who ride bicycles often.

    Climastrologist fits, but seems already over-used.

    How about pseudocyclists, since most are pseudoskeptics doing pseudoscience?

    1. No disrespect intended, John. That was a direct quote from Anthony Watts. I don't know why he called Tallblokes' fans "cyclists", but I'm guessing it had something to do with pattern-watching (and cycle-ferreting). (No disrespect intended to ferrets, either.)

    2. Sou, the "cyclists" comes from their propensity to see cycles (not bicycles) everywhere.

    3. My favorite was Tamino's moniker of "cyclomaniacs". It fits their approach, plus it has the bonus of implying mental illness!

    4. Maybe it's time to call in the trick-cyclists?

  3. Oh, I know it was a quote, but it need not be propagated.
    If need be, the ferrets might be used, I think there are less ferret fanciers than real cyclists.

  4. I rather like 'pseudocyclist'! (As a regular MTB cyclist myself...)

  5. Here's the match we're getting between our 3 orbit solar-system harmonic resonance model and 4000 years of TSI reconstruction based on the 10Be proxy:

    As it happens, Mann 2008 fits the integration of the solar 10Be proxy data well too.

    When you co2 fetishists have a model which hindcasts a primary indicator of past climate this well, let me know.

    1. What's the physical basis for this 'harmonic resonance'?

    2. What gave you done? Just a graph is not very informative. I have no idea what you are referring to.

      All I could find was a rather patchy report about walruses. (Presumably being found in the Antarctic).

      So far not impressed with your orbit fetish. (Doesn't that sound childish?)

    3. Perhaps it is indeed time to compute my climate model based on variations in the relative numbers of grey and black squirrels in the Northern Hemisphere. Given sufficiently complex data, perhaps some derived relationships with respect to cicada populations, and a bit 'o tweaking in the constants I'm certain I can hindcast past climate very closely.

      Of course, like the orbital cycles, there's no established causal connection between squirrels and climate. And similarly no _predictive_ power whatsoever, as it's just curve-fitting to known data, rather than applying physics to extrapolate future events.


      Cycle-fitting to astronomical periods lacks causality, and invoking it (as above) requires ignoring the (known, demonstrated) relationships of spectroscopy and GHG influences - abandoning what we know, for something claimed without evidence. Not IMO a good methodology...

    4. And the physical link is? Keep asking yourself about the physics.

    5. I thought this was a joke. I'll just quote von Neumann:
      "With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk."

    6. You know, the art of looking at planetary positions and linking them to historical events, and then using that to predict the future goes by the name of Astrology. Astrology, as it is not a science, does not require a physical basis.

    7. Since we are talking about 'harmonic resonance', walruses, squirrels and cicadas, I might as well post this link: http://www.tylervigen.com/


    8. Some of those are laugh-out-loud priceless, Dennis. Thanks!

      Rog really, truly believes this stuff. But as to who the 'fetishist' here is, I reckon the odds are pretty damn high indeed that it's...

    9. I was intrigued at Tallbloke's graph, so I did a little investigation.

      First a little background.

      The title of the graph is "VEJ and Spin orbit coupling fitted to Steinhiber." For those who aren't familiar with this line of work, VEJ stands for Venus, Earth Jupiter. The 'model' can be found here, in the now discontinued Pattern Recognition in Physics.

      Now the Steinhilber relates to this reputable paper here.

      Now the main problem is that if you compare the yellow line in Tallbloke's graph (the alleged Steinhilber TSI data), and the actual chart (Fig3, bottom chart) of the data in the Steinhilber paper, you might immediately notice that the two DON"T FRIGGIN MATCH.

      Just to make sure I wan't just 'seeing' things, I did a rough photoshop of the two, and the result can be found here.

      So, the black line is the real data, and the yellow line is the fraudulent data. As you can see, they don't match up. Also, as you might notice, there is little correlation between the real data, and the blue line, which is the Venus-Earth-Jupitor orbital 'model'.


      So as you can now obviously see, these guys are up to their old tricks, and JUST MAKING STUFF UP.

      It may fool the likes of Billy Bob and co, but not a real skeptic.

    10. Do you see that little 'd' in front of TSI on the plot?



    11. The only idiocy here is creating an alternative universe without CO2 forcing as the dominant driver for modern warming. Actually, 'crankery' is a better description of what you are doing TB. Inventing alternative universes and then claiming that they explain the way this one works is crankery.

    12. Yes, I did see the little d. It stands for delta right? In the Steinhilber paper they use the little triangle sign, which also stands for delta, right?

      Perhaps the little d in your chart really means deceptive, because it bears no resemblence to the data that was ACTUALLY REFERENCED!!!

      Here's a little note. If in the title of the chart you say that you have used data from a particular paper, but it doesn't even remotely match the charts in said referenced paper, then it's called fraud. Another way it could be described is deceptive, misleading, or a simple lie.

    13. DJ: "it bears no resemblence to the data that was ACTUALLY REFERENCED!!! it's called fraud. Another way it could be described is deceptive, misleading, or a simple lie."

      Try averaging your Steinhilber data over the period of a Gleissberg cycle (~88yrs) and see how well it matches the blue curve then.

      We're honest researchers trying to fathom the mysteries of the solar system. We resent being falsely accused of diddling data, so an acknowledgement would be nice. Thanks.

    14. Exhibit A.

      Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, take a close look at the period around 300AD.

      You will notice that on the real data, there is a large spike. On the fraudulent data, this spike has now turned into a dip.

      The defendant claims that this is a result of averaging the data by 88ys, but the data has already been averaged by 40 years, and as we all know from our grade school math class, averaging only smooths the data, it does not actually reverse the sign. It DOES NOT turn a spike into a dip.

      What is the verdict of the jury?

      GUILTY !!

    15. "Try averaging your Steinhilber data over the period of a Gleissberg cycle (~88yrs)" - Yep, squirrels.

      With sufficient massage almost _any_ complex data record can be pounded into the box of choice. Curve-fitting a mixed bag of cycles is essentially a poor mans Fourier decomposition; any signal can be recreated to arbitrary levels of correlation with enough frequency components.

      Curve-fitting is no substitute for physical causality, and has little or no predictive power if something changes - such as, for example, our contribution to GHG concentrations. It's just physics-free numerology.

  6. Sou, the link ""Tallbloke and his group of cyclists" goes thru to an archived WUWT page and, while I applaud the fact that this directs thru to a copy, rather than WUWT itself, the right hand side of these pages still disinform that WUWT is a science blog and has won awards. Up to to you how you handle it, health warnings/block out the offending disinformation "adverts", whatever, but I don't think these claims should be promoted unchallenged and without some appropriate/measured censorship in place.

  7. KR: "Given sufficiently complex data"

    It isn't a complex model.

    Catmando: "And the physical link is?"
    Millicant: "What's the physical basis for this 'harmonic resonance'?"

    It shouldn't be expected that people fixated on atmospheric physics should know anything about astrophysics, but you'll find a lot about orbital resonance in the literature if you look. The latest discovery is that it involves not only the gravitational field, but also the interplanetary magnetic field. The Sun lies at the centre of that and is affected by changes in it, because it's surface is at a boundary, and with boundary conditions near equilibrium with huge energy fluxes crossing them, small forces can have pronounced effects. See Kelvin-Helmholtz instability.

    The Sun's full spectrum (TSI) varies around 0.1% over the ~11yr cycle, however UV varies a lot more on the decadal and centennial timescale. UV causes changes in upper atmospheric chemistry (Ozone levels amongst other things) and these changes propagate energy level changes to the surface.

    1. so you're saying the observed increase in surface, atmospheric, and ocean temperatures is caused by increased UV given off by the sun as a result of changes in planetary orbits affecting the sun's output of UV?


    2. It's so much funnier when you say it cabc. I find it especially entertaining as someone who studied particle physics, GR and astrophysics to complete my PhD. Even Leif Svalgaard finds it silly as you can see from this post at WUWT (he restated someone else's question in the opening, but the rest is his commentary. Pay particular attention to the last snarky question):
      Does Leif have an argument to make for his implicit assumption that solar forcing reached its equilibrium temperature in the late 20th century?
      I do not know when that happened [if ever] and I don’t know if anybody else does. What I do know is that solar activity in the latter half of the 20th century probably was not extraordinarily high. The basic argument is what role the ‘background’ solar magnetic field plays [the Ephemeral Regions which is supposed to mirror the 'open flux']. Many years ago I suggested that the ‘open flux had doubled during the 20th century. I have since then shown that I was wrong, but unfortunately the notion of a ‘doubling’ has made it into the literature and tainted untold numbers of papers ever since. See http://www.leif.org/research/Reply%20to%20Lockwood%20IDV%20Comment.pdffor a discussion of this. Solanki and company still subscribe to the doubling, even though Lockwood does not any more. What has happened is that the open flux is now down to where it was 108 years ago, so we expect TSI, cosmic rays, temperatures [if there is any solar connection] and all the rest to have reverted to values of a century ago. In particular: has temperatures reverted to the very cold 1900s? You can always get around such inconvenient questions by postulating a lag of such variable length to make things fit. Which lag du jour do you suggest?

    3. Why show an unsourced plot comparing your "model" tuned to Be10, instead of comparing Be10 with actual measured TSI and with actual global-averaged surface temperature?

      Also, there's a disturbing erratic phase shift in the Be10-"model" correlation.

    4. "Why show an unsourced plot"

      This is our latest research. The curve is generated by three orbital periods and their interactional harmonics. It's a surprisingly simple model. It's ongoing research and it'll be a while before we make the code public because we wish to protect our IP for now.

      "instead of comparing Be10 with actual measured TSI"

      Actual TSI has only been measured for 40 years. The Be10 record is 1000's of years long.

      "and with actual global-averaged surface temperature?"

      The relationship between changing solar output and TSI is mediated by the heat capacity of the oceans and their overturning rates. If you integrate the proxy TSI values as a cumulative total departing from the empirically determined value at which the oceans neither gain nor lose energy (SST is stable), you get a surprisingly good match with temperature reconstructions such as Mann 2008.

      "there's a disturbing erratic phase shift in the Be10-"model" correlation."

      TSI isn't the only thing causing surface temperature variation. Changes in Earth's length of day (LOD) cause the oceans to slosh against continents, causing deep water upwelling which cools SST over periods proportional to the second derivative of the LOD changes - Multidecadal changes.

    5. "Rog TallblokeOctober 14, 2014 at 9:21 AM

      ....but you'll find a lot about orbital resonance in the literature if you look."

      Yes, that much is true. Its there in astrology:


      So you are doing a horoscope for the planet?

    6. What happened to radiative forcing from GHGs? It seems to have magically vanished from TB's universe. For that to have happened, fundamental physics must be different in TB's universe. So what happens there is irrelevant to what happens here, in our universe. Further discussion is therefore pointless.

    7. Yes, BBD. Attempting a discussion with Roger Tallbloke is pointless.

      I'm just leaving his comments here to save people having to travel to his own blog, or the HotWhoppery. I cannot imagine anyone will take seriously anything he says on the subject of climate.

    8. BBD "What happened to radiative forcing from GHGs?"

      Good question. You're the experts on Greenhouse, you tell me.


      Yes, all of what you said is mostly true, but is there at least a correlation between observed temperatures over the last 60 years, and levels of measured TSI, including the UV subcomponent.

      I suggest that you look at this presentation.

      So to start, if you look at page 5, you will see that at the tropics, there is a big black hole in the atmosphere profile where the UV spectrum does NOT cause heating. So to try and pin global warming on UV is flawed as measurements suggest otherwise.

      Does UV cause heating at the surface?

      Well, if you look further in the presentation, past all the CO2 mumbo jumbo, on page 11, you will see that the effect of UV is lucky to be about 0.1K, in the stratosphere! On the surface, TSI, including UV is responsible for at most 0.1 K since 1900.

      So in essence. IT"S NOT THE SUN.

      So what else could it be? What is the underlying cause? Remember there HAS to be one, as energy does not just appear from nowhere.

    10. Tallbloke


      Obviously it is operating as expected and as it must, given the well-understood physics underpinning it. Obviously it is driving modern warming, as expected and as it must. Yet it has disappeared from your universe.

      Please explain that to me, Tallbloke. Where did the physics go?

    11. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    12. @Rog Tallbloke

      Why only Venus, Earth and Jupiter? What is so special about them? What happens to the effects of Mercury, Neptune, Saturn etc. Or even the Sun? Or the moon? Without an underlying physical theory it is just meaningless number games. I imagine you could curve fit to any number of planets. But what are you demonstrating?

    13. Rog, you (deliberately?) missed the point re "unsourced plots" and "Be10 vs measured TSI". Not everyone here is as ignorant as your standard audience.

      I have no problem with exploring something interesting even if it is likely to turn out to be irrelevant; it makes science fun. But to make sense of your plot, we need more information than you seem prepared to give. Your plot does *not* compare climate with TSI; it only compares Be10 with your optimized mathematical function. How does modern TSI look compared with modern Be10? How does modern global surface temperature compare with modern TSI?

      And saying that you think Lindzen's probably right at CO2 sensitivity of 0.4 C is just opinion, unsupported by anything.

      If you're lucky, maybe you are a step towards understanding changes in Be10, if you can get the physical connection sorted out. But there's no link to GST in a changing-CO2 world.

  8. Why is it that we've never seen Tallbloke and Konrad. in the same room at the same time?

    1. Oh, they've been in the same room at the same time. Here with Konrad trying to "prove" something or the other. I think the article is by Konrad, just going by the comments:

      And here someone else trying to disprove Konrad:

      An awful lot of time and effort goes into butting and rebutting denier "arguments", which must distract from fake sceptics' efforts to show it's "anything but CO2".

  9. I've never looked into Rog Tallblokes patterns. I'd assumed he was part of the "anything but CO2" brigade going by his history (and politics). Based on his comments here, he is focused on trying to matching wiggles in planetary orbits to changes in solar irradiance (of various wavelengths) and maybe postulating causal relationships. None of which has anything to do with modern global warming or the greenhouse effect.

    1. As I understand the greenhouse effect theory, the original papers in the 1960's by Manabe and Wethereld postulate an effect on near surface air temperature, not the surface or subsurface. Look at the assumptions they enumerate on page 2 of their 1967 paper for confirmation. This is what all subsequent atmospheric radiative models are based on.

      Longwave doesn't penetrate the ocean to a depth where it can be 'mixed down' (this occurs in the vortices beneath wave troughs), and Realclimate's post on Minnett's unpublished conference paper on 'skin' flux is speculative, and the data poorly constrained. Longwave is absorbed in the top few um and promotes evaporation, causing the overlying air to become more humid and absorb more incoming solar radiation.

      So I accept the reality of a radiative greenhouse effect on air temperature, and this will affect the rate at which the ocean conducts heat to the atmosphere, and the rate at which convection and evaporation occurs.

      However, as I understand the processes of evapo-transpiation, the troposphere's energy transport is dominated by the speed of the hydrological cycle, and additional co2 will make little difference to temperatures because the rate of the hydrological cycle will only have to adjust infinitesimally as a negative feedback to compensate for increased absorption of longwave.

      In summary, I'm with Lindzen on the sensitivity being 0.4C or less.

    2. Except, of course, that water vapour that evaporates as a consequence of warmer oceans, stays in the air a bit longer because the air itself is also warmer, so it condenses a bit later. That extra water vapour being a greenhouse gas itself, makes the planet warmer still.

      To my knowledge, there has not been any empirical support for Lindzen's IRIS hypothesis. Quite the reverse.

      Oh, and Lindzen, as far as I'm aware, talks about climate sensitivity being no greater than 1 degree C, not a mere 0.4 degrees C. And given that CO2 is 43% higher than pre-industrial, and hasn't yet doubled; and temperatures are now at least 0.8C above pre-industrial (and at least 0.6C above those of the 1950s), it does seem very silly to hang your hat on 0.4C being climate sensitivity. What do you reckon? Earth is suddenly going to do a David Archibald and have the temperatures drop sharply?

    3. In summary, I'm with Lindzen on the sensitivity being 0.4C or less.

      Then how do you account for known paleoclimate variability? Which becomes inexplicable with ECS < 2C (and even that is pushing the limits).

      The *fact* is that your universe is incompatible with this one at a fundamental level.

    4. ...(and politics)...
      I believe he is standing as a candidate for UKIP who are anti climate science. Is Monckton in that group as well? This is probably not a forum for psephology but I noticed that Tallbloke made the claim that in the recent byelection, that UKIP almost won from Labour, there was an "18% swing" from UKIP to Labour. I had never looked at the arithmetic of election swings before and on the figures he is quite correct. But it is a crazy calculation as Labour actually increased its share of the vote (of those who actually voted). The main factor for Labour was a low turnout. What is even more crazy is the Labour bigwigs have gone slightly loopy adjusting their policy messages to appeal to UKIP voters more - all on the basis of a dodgily calculated "swing".

      What next - (and here I can make my post relevant) - will they be adopting UKIP's climate denier policies?

    5. Time will tell. Perhaps an early indicator is the increasing thickness of Arctic ice and the highest October ice areas in the last decade being 2013 and 2014.

    6. Right, the "highest October in the last decade?" Only being beaten so far (as at 14 October) by more ice extent at this time of the month in 2013, 2011, 2010, 2008, 2006, 2005 and 2004 according to this chart:


      Next you'll be telling us that we're heading for an ice age because in 2012 there was the fastest recovery after the summer mininum ice extent - evah!

    7. Jammy Dodger: "UKIP who are anti climate science"

      UKIP are not anti climate science. They just think its unwise to predicate energy policy solely on a theory whose proponents have demonstrably underplayed the uncertainties. (Evidenced e.g. in the Climategate emails).

      And the chief scientist Sir Mark Walport agrees. He says we need to balance environmental concern against energy security and affordability. And he's right. Energy security might not be such a big deal in the US right now with the homegrown shalegas boom, but it is a major concern in Europe who are dependent on Russian gas and middle Eastern oil to a much greater extent.

      So what UKIP is saying is: Let's take a leaf out of the US playbook, drill for shalegas, reduce co2 emissions that way in case there is a problem, and develop better clean energy (thorium nuclear) in the mid term.

    8. @Rog Tallbloke

      There is little point in discussing/arguing this with you as you believe your anti-science is science. (Or climastrology). Most people would classify UKIP policies as a copy of climate denier fallacies and anti-science.

      However I will challenge your implied point that UKIP bases its policy on clean energy. Its policy document suggests gas and coal are good for us too. That is not clean energy in the accepted definition of clean.

      To quote from UKIP's energy pamphlet:

      "There are, however, some clear priorities: gas, nuclear and coal."

    9. I believe one of UKIP's policies is to ban the showing of An Inconvenient Truth in schools. An interesting idea for a libertarian party - more government interference.

    10. This is yet another reminder that AGW denial and a certain - rightward, always rightward - cast of ideological extremism are inextricably linked.

  10. Tallbloke is a numerologist crackpot. He doesn't understand basic physics, basic maths, or how science works, and he will support any crackpot idea as long as it is contrary to the mainstream. He's a relativity denier too. Actually he's a serial pest and crackpot across a range of fields.

    He is completely unable to tell the difference between science and nonsense (non-science) and it's not worth engaging with him - he has absolutely nothing of interest to say. Discussing science with him is like trying to arm wrestle somebody who has not arms - he is simply not equipped for the task. Monty Python's Black Knight comes to mind.

    Also, I believe he was linked to the distribution of the emails stolen from CRU years ago, (the police investigated him) which tells you all you need to know about his ethics.

    1. And that brings us back to the main subject with evidence that WUWT has decided to declare itself as not just a conspiracy nutters' haven, but a numerology crackpot blog.

    2. Oh yeah. Here's one of my favorite Tallbloke crackpot articles:

      He's a believer in aether in outer space. Yup, that's right. Even Leif S jumps in to berate him.I only just noticed that Ferd posts at the end of it. Sorry, just too funny.

      So yes, WUWT is now the home of true, undeniable crackpots.

    3. 'It is like wrestling with a column of smoke!' Paul Keating.

    4. Yeah, its like we said a while back: the ex tobacco scientists are going silent until (and unless) reelection funds are channelled their way. That leaves a vacuum in climate change denial that is being filled by the pseudo scientists: so we get crap based on numerology/astrology.

      Mind you: the pros have been silent for so long we might hope that their advancing years are at last slowing them down. Or will they reappear just like a certain North Korean chappie? Just how old does a denier have to be to become denier emeritus?

  11. One of the funniest things about the numerocyclists (hey! new word! go me!) like tallbloke is that they are basically just doing a fourier-like expansion with a non-orthogonal set of basis functions. (If you take a bunch of cycles of various shapes with a wide enough range of frequencies you can fit any set of data as close as you like. It's just curve-fitting.)

    There's no predictive power, no physics, no science at all. It's hilarious to watch these clowns "discover" fourier expansions from scratch. Anybody would think they hadn't actually studied maths or science at all... :)

    1. Anon: "If you take a bunch of cycles of various shapes"

      But this isn't what we've done. The orbital periods of VEJ are not 'free parameters' Johnny von Neumann style. They are what they are. Moreover, we've discovered relationships between the orbital periods, spin rates and solar differential rotation. The chance that these matches are coincidence is small.

      Ken McCracken (Check his credentials), Steinhilber and Jurg Beer, have co-written a paper which offers strong confirming evidence for our theory.


      They look at the four outer gas giants. We have found their orbital periods relate to the orbital periods of the inner planets. In fact they've shaped those orbits via orbital resonance (see wikipedia). That's why you can find pretty much the same results with a simple model whichever group of planets you choose to work with.

    2. Anon "There's no predictive power, no physics, no science at all"

      Please read Canadian physicist Paul Charbonneau's review of Abreu et al in Nature:

    3. First, you must explain where the RF from CO2 went in your alternative universe, Tallbloke.

    4. I must say that the planetary hypothesis is very interesting, and lets take the leap forward and say that it's been upgraded to a scientific theory.

      Ok, so let's accept that gravity of the outer planets influence solar cycles.

      Yes, it's true that the solar cycles have influenced the climate in the past, but can we now take the (giant) leap forward that it's the solar cycle and changes in TSI and cosmic rays that's causing the observed global warming.

      Well, no, we can't. First, there isn't even a simple correlation between ANY of the solar particle/photon densities. For instance, it has been suggested it might be UV, but it can't be UV, as observations and data shows it only warms the stratosphere by about 0.1C and this is overwhelmed since the current trend in the stratosphere in strongly negative. Whatever UV that hasn't already been absorbed by ozone and the atmosphere that gets to the surface, the effect is way less than 0.1C.


      Richard P. Feynman

      But the earth has warmed by about 0.8C, so at best solar variations, caused by planetary orbits, cannot explain the rest of the warming.

      Also, solar variations are not able to fully explain the observed stratospheric cooling trend. It's almost like something is blocking the heat before it makes it to the stratosphere, and that blocking action has also been increasing.

      So it's not the sun, so what else could be trapping this energy?

      Well we know that greenhouse gases have been increasing, and we know from satellite data that these greenhouse gases also trap energy in the troposphere, before it reaches the stratosphere. Sounds like a pretty good culprit.

    5. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    6. DJ: "I must say that the planetary hypothesis is very interesting"

      Well that's a good start.

      "it can't be UV, as observations and data shows it only warms the stratosphere by about 0.1C"

      I'll take your word for it. This atmospheric science is pretty tricky.

      However, I think you need to take account of the way the oceans heat capacities can damp and smooth oscillating energy inputs. The day night difference in TSI is 1360W/m^2 at zenith, but the tropical SST varies less than 0.5C.

      When you integrate solar data, you get a much better fit to temperature proxies over the longer term. e.g.

    7. ha ha ha. "integrate solar data" - yeah. How many "integrations"? I'll trade you.


      Science wins!

    8. WTF??

      Tallbloke didin't mention that he has a time machine, and was able to put into his 'model' of SST, the AMO, sunspots and CO2 all the way out to 2050.

      But really, a model that uses the AMO to match with HadSST. All you are doing, and it's bloody obvious, is that your Excel 'model' IS the AMO. (with maybe some slight pluses and minuses)

      The AMO has a very strong correlation with SST.

      see this for example.

      But really, using an index of SST to model SST which already has a very high correlation. It's like using the price of gold to 'model' the price of gold mining stocks, and then just making up the price of gold for the 40 years, and then lo and behold, the price of gold mining stocks.


    9. Except the AMO data is DETRENDED. The whole point of this plot is to find the causes of the underlying trend. I don't make any big claims for what is a curve fitting exercise, but it is a reasonable estimate of the real situation in my opinion.

      You're welcome to a copy of the spreadsheet so you can play around with the variables to try to get a better fit. (0.9 for MONTHLY data since 1870)

      You won't achieve that better fit with a high ln-co2 and low solar contribution though, I'll tell you that for free.

    10. RT

      Except the AMO data is DETRENDED.

      That's the Tung & Zhou error.

      Paging Dumb Scientist ;-)

    11. @ BBD,

      >"Except the AMO data is DETRENDED....That's the Tung & Zhou error."

      Are you saying that Tung& Zhou didn't state that the AMO is detrended? Because from Tung & Zhou I read:

      "We will use the standard AMO Index of Enfield et al. (16), which is defined as the North Atlantic mean sea-surface temperature (SST), linearly DETRENDED." [My caps]

      And my God. That SKS article is stupid. The AMO, as you now know, has been going for thousands of years! To say that you can't subtract the most recent cycle to find the underlying recent trend is moronic beyond belief. But subtracting an unproved negative forcing for aerosols to make the models "match better" is - apparently - ok!.

      To think that people actually rely on SKS! To think that people believe them! I despair for the world.

    12. RR - If you were actually read the article and the comment threads there, you would note that a linear detrending (to remove anthropogenic influence) is inappropriate in the presence of nonlinear known forcings. Those forcings have (roughly) an overall rising sinusoidal pattern over the 20th century, and identifying the AMO as a linearly detrended sea surface temperature aliases much of that sinusoid in the "AMO" - and leading to incorrect identification of the reduced remainder as the whole of anthropogenic results.

      A better method would be to first remove the _known_ influences, known forcings, and then look at the remainder as the possible AMO. As it is, Tung & Zhou have a rather circular definition of the variation, which is a poor approach when doing an attribution study.

      You can't subtract the most recent cycle if you can't identify what it's influence is, if it isn't "known" independently of the forcings you are trying to attribute.

    13. Are you saying that Tung& Zhou didn't state that the AMO is detrended?


      As KR suggested, you should read before opening your mouth.

  12. tallbloke, Arbreu et al was shown to be fatally flawed. See eg. Cameron and Schussler "No evidence for planetary influence on solar activity."

    It's amazing how crackpots can always find a published paper to support their nonsense but they never seem to stumble across the subsequent papers debunking the nonsense.

    But thanks for the demonstration that you don't in fact know how science works. I.e. one paper isn't proof of anything. Especially one paper that is shown to be erroneous.

    Keep playing with your numerology if it keeps you amused. But don't delude yourself that you're doing science.

    1. You obviously haven't read the papers which show Cameron and Schussler's to be a cackhanded methodology, or you wouldn't show yourself up (Anon!) by promoting them as a successful rebuttal.of Abreu et al.

      e.g. Scafetta:

      Proper red-noise tests are made in this paper (figure 3).

      Scafetta N., and R. C. Willson, 2013. Planetary harmonics in the historical Hungarian aurora record (1523–1960). Planetary and Space Science 78, 38-44.


      and in Figure 4

      Scafetta N., 2012. Multi-scale harmonic model for solar and climate cyclical variation throughout the Holocene based on Jupiter-Saturn tidal frequencies plus the 11-year solar dynamo cycle. Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 80, 296-311.

      Their paper is nearly as bad as Callebaut et al 2012, which they cite.

    2. Got anyone in your corner except for your pattern seeking buddy Scafetta, Rog Tallbloke?

      Not that any of this has anything remotely to do with the global warming that's been happening the last few decades in any case.

    3. Why is it pseudoskeptics can't produce a simple GCM that can produce paleo and present climates? It's all well and good to talk about magical fairies and gnomes, but put them to work in an actual working climate model.

      Your're just mathturbating Tallbloke.

      Meanwhile we keep waiting on the global cooling predicted by Scafetta. What's that you say - warmest September on record? Pshaw, just you wait.

    4. Sou: "Got anyone in your corner except for your pattern seeking buddy Scafetta?"

      N.-A. Mörner1, R. Tattersall2, J.-E. Solheim3, I. Charvatova4, N. Scafetta5, H. Jelbring6, I. R. Wilson7, R. Salvador8, R. C. Willson9, P. Hejda10, W. Soon11, V. M. Velasco Herrera12, O. Humlum13, D. Archibald14, H. Yndestad15, D. Easterbrook16, J. Casey17, G. Gregori18, and G. Henriksson19
      1Paleogeophysics & Geodynamics, Stockholm, Sweden
      2Tallbloke, Leeds, UK
      3Department of Physics & Technology, Tromsø, Norway
      4Geophysical Institute, AS CR, Praha, Czech Republic
      5Duke University, Durham, NC, USA
      6Tellus, Stockholm, Sweden
      7Gunnedah, Australia
      8Vancouver, Canada
      9ACRIM, Coronado, CA, USA
      10Institute of Geophysics of the ASCR, Praha, Czech Republic
      11Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA, USA
      12Geophysics UNAM, Cambridge, MA, Mexico
      13Department of Geosciences, Oslo, Norway
      14Summa Development Ltd, Perth, Australia
      15Aalesund University, Aalesund, Norway
      16Department of Geology, Bellingham, WA, USA
      17Space Sci. Res. Co. (SSRC), Orlando, FL, USA
      18Instituto di Acustica e Sensoristica (CNR), Rome, Italy
      19Astronomy, Uppsala, Sweden

      To which we can add Ken McCracken, Steinhilber, Beer, Abreu et al, Wolff & Patrone (NASA scientists) and others.

      Conference plans are slowly coming together.
      Thanks for the chat.

    5. ha ha - such a list of science deniers and disinformers. Seriously - is denier Don Easterbrook one of your pseudo-cyclists? His predictions started going skewiff a few years ago now. And David "funny sunny" Archibald.

      I see a few familiar names among you list of pseudo-cyclists. I didn't twig that some of the people often featured here were co-authors of the "Jupiter is causing global warming" hypothesis, as "published" in your nepotistic, dishonourably discharged Pattern Recognition in Physics journal.

      Denier Don Easterbrook's predictions fell apart a few years back.

      David "funny sunny" Archibald, who measures global temperature by five rural weather stations in the USA.

      N.-A. Mörner with his lopsided charts.

    6. And I repeat - since I have not been answered - where did the radiative forcing from CO2 go in the TB universe? And why no acknowledgement that the TB universe is fundamentally different to this one since the underpinning physics (see absent RF from CO2, above) are different?

      This is absolutely basic and must be resolved...

    7. BBD you'll never get it resolved by asking Rog Tallbloke. He's so far in denial he's resorted to distorting data to manufacture imaginary cycles.

      I put a couple of his responses ostensibly to you in the HotWhoppery - they were that bad.

    8. Thanks Sou. I'll go and have another look in the bin.

    9. ... fair call, Sou. He dodged the question, denied evidence and missed out all the sea (and the energy it contains) between 700m and 2000m. Either he's an idiot or he thinks I'm one. Either way, the bin was the only place for that lot.

    10. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    11. That Tallbloke answer was not even up to the standards for the HotWhoppery? Not surprised.

    12. I was busy. It's done now.

  13. See PDF @ Pseudoskeptics Exposed in the SalbyStorm
    PDF Search: {Tallbloke}
    The 8 hits include:

    "03{tallbloke} says:
    July 9, 2013 at 12:56 am
    This is a watershed moment in the climate debate. Salby has clearly been thwarted by the bad faith (and probably actionable) behaviour of Macquerie university.
    I think we should give Murray Salby some practical financial support to assist him in fighting Macquerie University and helping him relocate to a more suitable academic environment. Perhaps Dick Lindzen still wields some influence in MIT?
    Or will we find all academic institutions will abandon principles of scientific enquiry and run scared before the interests of those who control funding streams?
    Scientia weeps."

    "20{tallbloke} says:
    July 10, 2013 at 8:27 am
    Basically, the university has acted in bad faith from the start. Maybe it’s purpose in offering Salby his position was to thwart his research and make sure his findings were delayed suppressed and blocked from publication for as long as possible."

    Using a faculty slot to hire someone from halfway around the world in 2008 to suppress ideas that first surfaced in 2011 is not a common hiring practice, in my experience, much less requiring a time machine." Tallbloke was one of the earlier ones to come up with that conspiracy theory.

    Of course, Salby was on the run from CU, NSF and (a bit later) the State of Colorado, had a long history of purposeful deception, attempted to blame his junior associate for financial irregularities, mis-used a credit card at MQ in a way that would be an instant firing offense in many places, and mis-used his grad student Titova there about as badly as one could and then got an old associate to go out on a limb for him, although we'd chainsawed it weeks before.

    Hopefully, all the people who said they'd give Salby money did so :-)

    1. Yep. I don't want to kick someone while they are down, but if someone thinks that Murry Salby is MIT material then I'd conclude that they don't know much about MIT or about science. And if that same person thinks that any university in Australia has funds to waste on taking on a dud performer from the USA to "silence" them, then they don't know anything about universities in Australia - or probably anywhere in the world.

    2. Strangely, in mid-1990s, Salby might have been MIT material. His 1998 book is well-respected by some fine climate scientists I know, and he collaborated with some very good and senior people. I got copies of almost every paper he published since ~1989, and checked citation counts, which peaked in mid-1990s.
      Of course, Lindzen had retired from MIT in May 2013.

      Tallbloke was not the only one, At least a dozen people espoused the idea:
      MQ lured Salby with goal of sabotaging his work

      And even more went further ... offering instantly-invented conspiracy ideation that would delight Stephan L :-)

      "This whole thing smells like a fit up, right from the original offer for Professor Salby to relocate to Macquarie in the first place. I would not be surprised to learn, somewhere down the track, that there was an “international” element to all this."

      "That is an old trick. Macquarie were probably contacted by an overseas
      institution. They agreed to take Salby and set him up then leave him

      "If Salby’s research was taking him in a direction the Clique did not like,
      getting him out of his US job (Without a contract) may not have been

      "I love a good conspiracy theory. I’ll take it a step further and propose that Macquarie may have lured Salby to Australia for the express purpose of
      isolating him, and silencing him if he went off the farm. Let us not forget the
      Team and the lengths they can go to to protect their ideology"

      "On the face of it, more skullduggery by the "Team""

      "And his previous location at University of Boulder, Colorado is ground-zero for, errrm, Kevin Trenberth. Odd, that."
      (There is no University of Boulder, and Kevin works at NCAR,, not CU.)

      "Like others, I think that there are questions to be answered by both sides, but the horrible suspicion is that he has fallen foul of Mann, Jones, et al, whose climategate memos told of their determination to silence dissenters"

      "And if the Team or anyone else did scupper a dissenting voice, you can be sure we won't ever find evidence of it now, after Climategate"

      "Or, conversely, that academia seems to have a history of going after Murry."

      "Science is based on evidence, but today science is corrupted by politics. (Since Dr. Salby went from Colorado (NCAR or Univ of Colo? perhaps) to Macquarie, was he set up by the Boulder extremists?"

      "suppose someone wanted to get Murray Salby out of the way, and stop or
      hinder his work from US Maquarie might seem a distant backwater"

      "If true, it could be a diabolically clever attempt by the “consensus” to muzzle those who would investigate the science.
      Think about it. How best to shut someone up? Get a cohort (another Uni in
      crime) to hire them away,2241 then never fulfill the obligations or the terms of
      the contract, and fire them without giving them access to resources or research.
      I am not saying that was the intent with Salby. But it is very Machiavellian"

      "Dr Salby prevailed in all of his actions, according to Jo Nova. 2922 When
      someone forces an institution and state bureaucrats to back down,2923 there are hurt feelings, and some folks don’t forget. These vindictive attacks seem to have hounded Salby all the way to Australia. What else would explain what is going on here?"

  14. Oops, typo: 1996 book was very good. The 2012 edition has issues : read the reviews.

  15. I thought this was a joke. I'll just quote von Neumann:
    "With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.".........

  16. Thanks Sou. I'll go and have another look in the bin. :)



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