AGW Mistake Disclosed by Dan Pangburn - an unauthorized guest post

Dan Pangburn left a comment at my previous post 

"Has there been "Little change in global drought over the past 60 years"? - info links"

I'm familiar with Dan's work so followed his offered link, then followed that to
 http://climaterealists.com/index.php?tid=145&linkbox=true ~ then I decided to reproduce those conjectures over here, along with my commentary and links to sources of authoritiative information that underscore the bankrupt nature of Dan's assertions.


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AGW Mistake Disclosed 

Dan Pangburn - 17 October, 2012
Consensus Mistake
Paraphrasing Richard Feynman: Regardless of how many experts believe it or how many organizations concur, if it doesn’t agree with observation, it’s wrong.

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CC:  Right from the start Pangburn emotionalizes the issues.
He ignores that those many scientific organizations that have "subscribed" to the AGW "theory" have done so precisely because the observations demand it!

http://www.ucsusa.org/ssi/climate-change/scientific-consensus-on.html

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DP:  The IPCC, some politicians and many others in the ‘consensus’ stubbornly continue to proclaim that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) was the primary cause of global warming. 

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CC:  This is a pep rally not any attempt to understand what is happening.

The physical properties of these gases are known quantities,
the end result being that our planet's biosphere retains more of the sun's radiant energy.  It is that simple.  

It's ironic that Pangburn's sleight-of-hand relies on an appeal to authority.
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DP:  Measurements demonstrate that they are wrong.

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CC:  Why do you not offer a list?
All we get is a link, that doesn't work, but that goes right back to "climaterealists" as if an advocacy blog is better than peer reviewed ~ and argued over ~ studies and papers.
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DP:  Some of their mistakes were discussed more than two years ago at 

http://climaterealists.com/attachments/ftp/Mistakes%20made%20by%20the%20Consens us.pdf . The atmospheric carbon dioxide level has now increased since 2001 by an amount equal to 25.9% of the increase that took place from 1800 to 2001 (1800, 281.6 ppmv; 2001, 371.13 ppmv; Sept, 2012, 393.35 ppmv). The temperature trend, which was declining through 2009, was raised to flat through 2011 by the El Nino that peaked in March, 2010.That is the observation. The average global temperature trend since 2001 is flat. 

No amount of spin can rationalize that the temperature increase to 2001 was caused by CO2 increase but that 25.9% additional CO2 increase had no effect on the average global temperature trend after 2001.

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CC:  There is a thing called the Dunning-Kruger effect, WIKI describes it as: "a cognitive bias in which unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than average. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their mistakes..."

It is dishonest to pretend that you can look at one specific data source and make global extrapolations.  Or put another way, there is more to our warming planet than one set of measurements.  
I've noticed that ocean heat content is something denialist, including Pangburn willfully ignore, yet it's a key component to understand this global heat distribution engine.

For a little more background on the science, the geo-physical dynamics and other issues involved SkepticalScience.com has put together some information gold mines:

• http://www.skepticalscience.com/.htm Global warming has stopped so can't be causing Arctic warming
• http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-cooling-january-2007-to-january-2008.htm Global warming stopped in 1998, 1995, 2002, 2007, 2010, ????
• http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-stopped-in-1998.htm It hasn't warmed since 1998

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DP:  Without human caused global warming there can be no human caused climate change.

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CC:  There is a thing called the Dunning-Kruger effect, WIKI describes it as: "The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than average. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their mistakes"

But, facts of life are simply that.  Because you can't believe it, don't make it go away.
Or to put it another way,
What you don't know, can hurt you.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-stopped-in-1998.htm
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DP:  Melting Ice DelusionThe Warmers’ perceptions were reinforced when more artic ice than usual melted this Northern Hemisphere summer.
With all else equal, ice melts when the surrounding water becomes warmer than it was when the water froze. The observation that more arctic ice than usual melted during the 2012 Northern Hemisphere summer is evidence that warmer water temporarily got to the Arctic Ocean but says nothing about whether or not the planet is still warming. 

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CC:  What a sadly dishonest way to portray the situation.  Why not mention how nothing is equal to what it used to be even a couple decades ago?

Please notice that Pangburn makes no attempt to give any sort of overview of the various heat distribution dynamics at work both above and below the Arctic Ocean.  Nor how they have changed in recent decades.  

Pangburn claims: ~ unusual melting... says nothing about whether or not the planet is still warming. ~
Come on, can we get serious?  Warming causes melting.  
Consider Earth observations:

"Ten Signs of A Warming World"
http://climate.noaa.gov/warmingworld/

~ ~ ~

Arctic Sea Ice Decline

http://www.wunderground.com/climate/SeaIce.asp

~ ~ ~

Here's a cool video

NASA | A Tour of the Cryosphere 2009

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjAXoETeVIc
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DP:  Arctic ice area is graphed at http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and- extent-in-arcticThe planet has warmed about 8°C since the end of the last glaciation (about 16,000 years ago) when ice was over a mile thick in present day Minnesota and the continental shelf was dry land. Ice has continued to melt, off and on, and it has been warming more or less regularly since the depths of the Little Ice Age (about 400 years ago). 

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CC:  Another example of blatant misrepresentation.
Here is the record:

We were blessed with a goldilocks state of the climate for the past ten thousandish years.  But, we undertook a grand atmospheric experiment.
And we have succeeded in rattling the hell out of our biosphere 
you know the thing that enabled that wonderful period in climate... and human history.
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DP:  It stopped getting warmer in about 2001. The assertion that it is warmer at the end of a warming period is, to be charitable, not very profound.That the continental US, which occupies less than 2% of the planet surface, experienced a heat wave also does not mean that the planet is still warming.

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CC:  Pangburn never mentions the massive amounts of heat our oceans are collecting.
Nor does he acknowledge that scientists speak of a lag time between input and resulting climate dynamicss.

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DP:  Credible Source DataAverage GLOBAL temperature anomalies* are reported on the web by NOAA, GISS, Hadley, RSS and UAH. The first three all draw from the same data base of surface measurement data. The last two draw from the data base of satellite measurements. Each agency processes the data slightly differently from the others. Each believes that their way is most accurate. To avoid bias, I average all five.The averages since 2001 are listed here.

Year	Average anomaly °C
2001	0.3473
2002	0.4278
2003	0.4245
2004	0.3641
2005	0.4663
2006	0.3930
2007	0.4030
2008	0.2598
2009	0.4022
2010	0.5298
2011	0.3316

A straight line fit to these data has zero slope. That means that, for over a decade, average global temperature has not changed. If the average thru September, 2012 (0.35) is included, the slope is down.

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CC:  Look at this Pangburn has cherry picked ten years, of one data set and is attempting to make global assumptions with no reference or background.
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DP:  These data, but with noted offsets applied to approximately compensate for differences in reference temperatures, are graphed (through the month noted) in Figure 1, below.*A temperature anomaly is simply the difference between a measured temperature and a reference temperature such as the average for some previous time period.(page 2)
Figure 1: Comparison of reported temperature anomalies since 1998.

DP:  Rising Atmospheric CO2 Level and Not-Rising Temperature
Another indication of the weak connection between the atmospheric carbon dioxide level and average global temperature is revealed by Figure 2. This graph is constructed by, each month, subtracting the percent change of the temperature anomaly since 2001 from the percent change of atmospheric carbon dioxide since 2001.

Figure 2: Growing separation between rising level of atmospheric CO2 and not-rising temperature.

(page 3)
DP:  The NOAA temperature anomaly data used in this comparison are from
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/anomalies/monthly.land_ocean.90S.90N.df_1901- 2000mean.dat . The percent change of temperature anomaly is calculated by subtracting the current value from the average value for 2001 and dividing the difference by 0.74°C which is the usually accepted value for average global temperature increase during the 20th century.

Similarly, the percent change in CO2 level is obtained by subtracting the Mauna Loa season-corrected value for June, 2001 as given at ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_mm_mlo.txt from the current season- corrected value and dividing this difference by 89.2 ppmv which is the increase from 1800 to June, 2001.
The Mauna Loa data are representative of the entire planet as demonstrated by a co-plot of the atmospheric CO2 level at several places and times in a graph on page 7 of Reference 1.

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CC:  Why not spend a little time and learn about CO2 Monitoring at Mauna Loa:

http://co2now.org/Know-CO2/CO2-Monitoring/

~ ~ ~ 

Earth System Research Laboratory

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
~ ~ ~ 

Measuring CO2 levels from the volcano at Mauna Loa
Posted on 25 October 2010 by Andy S
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Measuring-CO2-levels-from-the-volcano-at-Mauna-Loa.html

"But how about gas from the volcano? It is true that volcanoes blow out CO2 from time to time and that this can interfere with the readings. Most of the time, though, the prevailing winds blow the volcanic gasses away from the observatory. But when the winds do sometimes blow from active vents towards the observatory, the influence from the volcano is obvious on the normally consistent records and any dubious readings can be easily spotted and edited out (Ryan, 1995)..."

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DP:  Variation of Temperature MeasurementsThe substantial scatter in these data primarily results from artifacts of the temperature measurement process as discussed starting on page 4 of Reference 1.
A major contributor to this scatter is demonstrated in animations of sea surface temperatures shown at
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/ml/ocean/sst/anom_anim.html
and/or
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_update/gsstanim.shtml
and/or
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ir1w3OrR4U
Recent global temperature anomalies reported monthly by the five agencies are graphed in Figure 3. This graph shows the erratic behavior (at this expanded temperature scale) of the reported values. However, the huge effective thermal capacitance of the oceans (about 30 times everything else) absolutely prohibits such rapid changes in actual average global temperature. Thus the measurements contain a substantial random component that is an artifact of the measurement process.

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CC:  It's easy to make a claim, such as "measurements contain a substantial random component" but it has no solid foundation.  The random nature of the oceans thermo properties is being honed narrower with every passing observation season.  {Oh yea I just recalled Pangburn believes Earth Observation funding is wasted money...  Shameful and an indication that willful ignorance and sawing doubt are Dan's only goals.  Or kids deserved better than that.}

~ ~ ~ 

What about deep ocean temperatures?
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010/20100920_oceanwarming.html

Scientists Find 20 Years of Deep Water Warming Leading to Sea Level Rise

September 20, 2010

"Scientists analyzing measurements taken in the deep ocean around the globe over the past two decades find a warming trend that contributes to sea level rise, especially around Antarctica..."

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DP:  An explanation of the causes of the variation in reported surface temperature data obtained via meteorological satellites is at http://www.drroyspencer.com/2012/03/what- causes-the-large-swings-in-global-satellite-temperatures/
The ’29&71’ anomalies shown in Figure 1 are simply 29% of the land temperature anomaly reported by NOAA added to 71% of the ocean temperature anomaly reported by NOAA at the stated website. The percents are simply the fraction of the surface area of the planet covered by each.

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CC:  What's the point that Earth Observations can't achieve the types of parameters that lab physics can?

What does this have to do with coming to grips with our planet as a global heat distribution engine?

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(page 4)DP:  NOAA also reports a single four-digit number for the average global temperature anomaly each month at ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/anomalies/monthly.land_ocean.90S.90N.df_1901- 2000mean.dat . The plot identified as ‘NOAA ref’ in Figure 3 displays these values.

Reporting a value with four significant figures for anomalies is mathematically possible because many separate measurements are averaged. It is a misleading indication of accuracy, however, because the reported values have an apparently random variability with a standard deviation of approximately ± 0.1°C with respect to the trend. This magnitude of variability in actual average global temperature is prohibited by the physics. The uncertainty of the trend average for the 11 years is about 1/√11 times the standard deviation of the individual measurements or only about ± 0.03°C.

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CC:  What is your point Mr. Pangburn?
You know damned well that scientists are well aware of the various influences and artifacts that influence our weather/climate and actively screen for them. 

Opposite to denialist-lore scientists strive for accuracy and I trust the process, because there are serious hungry scientists crawling all over each other's work, mistakes get found out and capitalized on.

Pangburn you on the other hand, (along with a handful of others), create this alternate universe isolated from that sort of mass scrutiny.  And now believe you are discriminated against for diabolical reasons... when it really, it comes down to plain old competence and quality of one's work... in the face of the hard-ball critique of a professional community.

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  Figure 3: Average Global Temperature Anomalies that are reported monthly contain substantial random scatter.


DP:  Long Term Assessment
Three agencies report temperature anomalies since 1880. They are Goddard Institute of Space Studies, GISS, reported at http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, reported at ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/anomalies/monthly.land_ocean.90S.90N.df_1901- 2000mean.dat and
HADcrut3 from the Met Office Hadley Centre, UK, reported at
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/hadcrut3gl.txt
(page 5)
DP:  The average of the three each year is shown in Figure 4 along with calculated and projected trends.

Figure 4: Measured average global temperature anomalies with calculated and projected trends.
DP:  Here again is seen that the reported values exhibit random and impossibly rapid fluctuation. A simple check of the random variation reveals that it is equivalent to a standard deviation of about ± 0.1°C with respect to the calculated trajectory.
Calculated Anomaly Trajectory
The calculated average global temperature anomaly trajectories and projections on Figure 4 were obtained using the equation developed previously, from the physical phenomena involved, and presented next:

Where:
anom(Y) = calculated average global temperature anomaly in year Y
N(i) = average daily Brussels International sunspot number in year i
Yt = number of years that have passed since 1700 (or any other year where the net
summation is approximately zero such as 1856, 1902, 1910, 1938, or 1943) T(i) = average global absolute temperature of year i in °K,
ESSTA(c,Y) = ESSTA (Effective Sea Surface Temperature Anomaly) in year Y
calculated using an ESSTA range (peak-to-peak magnitude) of c. ESSTA is a simple surface temperature approximation of the net effect of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and the other natural ocean oscillations. It has an amplitude of
(1)
(page 6)
about ± 1/6 °C with no net energy change between the beginning value and the end value of its estimated 64 year period. Reference 1 provides details on its development and implementation.
CO2(Y) = ppmv CO2 in year Y CO2start = ppmv CO2 in 1880
The derivation of the constant, 6.519E-9, is provided on page 3 of Reference 1 along with a detailed description of the development of this equation.
Note that the simple expedient of selecting a constant value for T(i) causes the summation containing T(i) to be a constant. Since T(i) varies very little, the end result is barely different but invites the criticism that actual yearly temperatures were not used.
a, b, c, and d are calibration coefficients which have been determined to make the best fit to measurements (maximum coefficient of determination, R2). 
Some have mistakenly interpreted these coefficients to indicate mathematical curve fitting, which is something that is entirely different. Instead, the coefficients allow the accurate quantification of the amount that each of the three major contributors has made to the total temperature change.
The calibration coefficients that produced the calculated trends in Figure 4 are provided in the following table.

Assessment	End year	Offset a	Energy devisor, b	ESSTA magnitude,c	CO2 change multiplier, d	R2
Best correlation	2011	0.3627	6510	0.3278	1.066	0.885279
No CO2 influence	2011	0.3629	3872	0.3869	0	0.879603
Estimated 2012 sunspot number = 74	2012	0.3618	6540	0.3269	1.0578	0.886929

The validity of the form of the equation is demonstrated in Figure 4 and also by a historical accuracy of at least 88% (R2=0.88 or more).

The simultaneous rise in atmospheric CO2 and temperature over the last century somewhat obscures the influence of CO2. The small increase in R2 (to 0.885) that is obtained by including the CO2 influence demonstrates that 

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CC:  This makes me think of the old joke:

"If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit." 

Who's kidding whom, 

what you presented above is beyond the ability of the public this is addressing.  

It's why we have experts and why an electrician wires your house and a dentist works on your teeth instead of the other way around.

It's presumptuous and political performance and has nothing to do with trying to explain the dynamics at work within our global heat distribution engine.

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DP:  CO2 is definitely NOT a major factor but may be a minor factor.

The flat temperature trend since 2001 indicates that CO2 may have had enough influence to compensate for the decline that would have taken place since about 2005 as a result of the two other factors. However, it cannot yet be completely ruled out that the failure of the measured temperature to show a decline simply results from the variability of the measurements.

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CC:  With one confident claim we are supposed accept that a century's worth of physics is deluded?  

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs, 
Pangburn offers nothing but fancy wordsmithing.
~ ~ ~

Notice there is no mention of the satellite observations of Earth's Radiation Budget. 

If you want to learn about it you need to spend some time reading and thinking about it, please do not rely on a few sweeping paragraphs of a partisan:

• Working out climate sensitivity from satellite measurements
  26 May 2010 by John Cook
• What is our planet's climate sensitivity?
  27 January 2010 by John Cook
• Measuring Earth's energy imbalance
• 20 September 2009 by John Cook

• Trenberth on Tracking Earth’s energy: A key to climate variability and change
  12 July 2011 by Kevin Trenberth

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DP:  The continuing increase in CO2, the flat observed temperature trend since 2001 and the decline of the trend following 2005 as predicted by equation (1) will reduce, before the (page 7) year 2020, to near zero, any residual uncertainty in the demonstrated minor influence of CO2 on average global temperature.

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CC:  Pangburn makes no sense here, 
. . .  sometimes folks get so caught up in their equations and the "map" of their own construction that they lose sight of the fact that the map is not the territory.

Pangburn makes absurd claims regarding temperature trends.

If you want to learn about temperature trends you'll need to make more of an effort than trusting a few soundbites.  Here you can find a list of authoritative explanations along with links to original sources and other information.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/search.php?Search=temperature+trends&x=17&y=16
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DP:  Future Average Global Temperature
Prediction of future average global temperature is reduced to the predictability of the sunspot time-integral. The sunspot time-integral is an accurate proxy for the influence that solar magnetism has on energy radiated from the planet. The mechanism by which sunspots influence average global temperature is described on page 13 of Reference 1.

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CC:  It's sad how Pangburn reaches for sunspots while ignoring the known quantified physics of atmospheric greenhouse gases 

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm

Worse he withholds the knowledge that climatologists are very well aware of and sensitive to sunspots and other natural variables in Earth's overall temperature trends and history.

The Earth Radiation Budget Experiment   (ERBE)
http://science.larc.nasa.gov/erbe/
~ ~ ~ 

Solar Cycle Prediction (Updated November 11, 2012)
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/predict.shtml
~ ~ ~ 

Climate Change 2007: Working Group I: The Physical Science Basis

(9.4) FAQ 9.2 - Can the Warming of the 20th Century be Explained by Natural Variability?

"Can the Warming of the 20th Century be Explained by Natural Variability?"
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-9-2.html
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DP:  Post ScriptHumanity has wasted over $100,000,000,000 in failed attempts 

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CC:  "Failed Attempts" 
Pangburn's assertions are extreme, hysterical even.  Think about it, he's advocating we do no Earth observations studies at all, it's all a waste... failed attempt.  Why would one trust this man's opinion?

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DP:  using super computers to demonstrate that added atmospheric CO2 is a primary cause of global warming and in misguided activities to try to do something about it. 

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CC:  "Misguided" ? 
What is misguided about wanting to understand how our planet's climate operates?

What is misguided about assessing humanity's impacts with an eye towards minimizing extreme ecological upheaval?

Mr. Pangburn, I'm curious why you and others who harbor such extreme convictions, not believe (understand) that our collective survival depends on a healthy "ecology" - that is nature; weather; stable growing seasons; thriving life forms; all that stuff...

Why all your contempt?

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DP:  An unfunded engineer, using only a desk top computer, applying a little science and some engineering, discovered a simple equation that unveils the mystery of global warming and describes what actually drives average global temperature.Reference: 1. http://climaterealists.com/attachments/ftp/Verification%20Dan%20P.pdf

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CC:  The touching age old story of the lonely genius, who out smarts decades worth of experts.  A bit of the deluded don't you think?

Don't most all passionate students and graduates relate to that brilliant beautiful insight...  the answer, it was so clear and complete... in the solitude of one's own room... only to see that brainchild get smashed to smithereens when brought out into the bright glare of critical scrutiny.  

It's the way of the active minds, that's why we need critical peer review to keep us honest.  Many denialists claim that this critical peer review process is damaged within the climatological community - but, notice that shrill as their claims are, their actual objective evidence is next to non-existing!

And instead what they have to offer is notions hatched in the solitude of private incubators, not strong enough to handle the rough and tumble day today out in the school yard.
~ ~ ~ 

State of the Climate - Global Analysis
October 2012
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
National Climatic Data Center

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2012/10

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