Exxon-Mobil Admits Global Warming Is Real

[M Fnord]

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I am curious about your line concerning killing astronauts. Please expand, as I am interested in what you have to say on the subject, and would like to evaluate the data before investing in tin-foil futures.

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Because I'm a nice guy, I'll expand for Nec: When STS-107 broke up on reentry, certain elements claimed that the chunks of foam insulation that caused the initial damage to Columbia did so specifically because the foam was made of an ozone-safe material. Therefore, evil hippie evirowhacko treehuggers killed our brave American astronauts, etc. This actually doesn't turn out to be true, as far as the Gehman Board was concerned - they focused on slipshod application practices, poor QC and a general inability to get communications up the chain of command. But it's a nice bumpersticker line for the handful of pro-CFC diehards, so it's trotted out every so often.---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[hmelton]

Our science isn't Peer Review it's Consensus Review.
Admittedly not a lot of difference, but it does create blind spots and lead to the consensus making some really stupid "howlers".
Their was a consensus during the period from 18?? to 1908 that powered heavier than air flight was impossible so reputable science magazines as late as 1907 were printing "learned" articles "debunking" the claims of heavier than air flight and actively ignoring the writing of other scientist that were developing modern aeronautical equations and discarding the writings of two very RIGHT brothers for years after they went to flying thier aircraft.
The consensus ignored the Wright brothers flying machines for nearly 6 years refusing to even go see the machines fly at county fairs and picnics because it was impossible and wasn't worth the trouble of checking.
Another Howler caused by Consensus Review was the Mapemba Effect.
It wasn't until the late 1960's and early 1970's that thermodynamics discovered and admitted that Hot water will freeze before cold water.
The consensus for 100's of years before the "discovery" of the mapemba effect was that *cold* water froze first so anything that showed otherwise was discounted and ignored.
Because of consensus review thermodynamics was "BLIND" to the very real problem of hot water freezing before cold.
The consensus said it wasn't possible so for hundreds of years it was missed or ignored. Never mind a few simple test would prove it and every icecream maker on the planet often proved it with the making of icecream.
Another Blindness was Ball lightning the general consensus was that ball lightning was impossible so eyewitnesses were ignored and all scientist who developed theories of it existance was ignored.
All reports were written off as being at best a "mental" problem possibly caused by the mind being altered by the intense forces involved with a nearby lightning strike.
Yet Another "BLINDSPOT" and "HOWLER" was the light show above the clouds of Thunderheads.
Because the consensus couldn't believe the reports starting in the 1940's or imagine any way it would be possible all papers, reports and research that discovered or predicted such effects were discarded by the consensus.
We have consensus review not peer review and while the difference is subtle it does on occasion lead to real problems with what we call science.

howard melton
God bless

EDITED "Changed "hot" to *cold*" somehow reversed the words when I was writing it up the Mapemba effect vs consensus sentence.

[Morganite]

Interesting article, ECSNorway.
However, I don't think I buy the concept that an overall temperature couldn't be calculated for the earth. Certainly the way I remember temperature being defined in physics classes should be theoretically calculable for any defined region.
Of course, whether our abilities are adequate to the task is a different issue. And in this case, the actual number isn't as important as trends in the number. But if the methodology used to determine the number changes, that kind of comparison becomes suspect. The question is, are there enough measuring stations that each one is accurately representing it's area?
Hydrogen powered cars... I've always been under the impression that the biggest problem with them was that pure hydrogen is really dangerous. >.>
-Morgan."I have no interest in ordinary humans. If there are any aliens, time travelers, or espers here, come sleep with me."
---From "The Ecchi of Haruhi Suzumiya"
-----(Not really)

[Valles]

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Hydrogen powered cars... I've always been under the impression that the biggest problem with them was that pure hydrogen is really dangerous. >.>

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It's not so much that it's chemically hazardous or volatile - we already use a lot of things that are worse quite heavily - as there being no good way to store it with any kind of density. Putting it under pressure, like propane, makes explosions much more likely and/or dangerous, and as a liquid it's highly cryogenic - much more so than, say, LNG. Even if you do the energy density isn't great - which is why the first stage of big rockets like the Saturn V tend to end up using kerosene as fuel rather than LOH: that deep in the gravity well, the weight of the tanks affects your overall burn time more than the efficiency of the fuel. Plus, H2 is such a small molecule that it'll filter and leak through just about anything if you give it the time.
So, overall, hydrogen is cleaner than anything and stores a lot of power for its weight, but just isn't dense enough to match the power-per-volume of more conventional fuels.
Ja, -n

===============================================
"I'm terribly sorry, but I have to kill you quite horribly now."

[Ayiekie]

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Their was a consensus during the period from 18?? to 1908 that powered heavier than air flight was impossible so reputable science magazines as late as 1907 were printing "learned" articles "debunking" the claims of heavier than air flight and actively ignoring the writing of other scientist that were developing modern aeronautical equations and discarding the writings of two very RIGHT brothers for years after they went to flying thier aircraft.

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I don't think you quite understand the meaning of the word "consensus".

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It wasn't until the late 1960's and early 1970's that thermodynamics discovered and admitted that Hot water will freeze before cold water.

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As a point of fact, this is an extremely bad example. The Mpemba effect (observed by a Tanzanian school student) was disbelieved and ridiculed by Mpemba's teachers. However, when Dr. Osbourne, a professor of physics, visited Mpemba's school and Mpemba asked himfor an explanation why he had found hot liquids to freeze before cold liquids, he said he didn't know but would conduct the experiment - which he then went on to do, found out the results he did upon repeated experimentation, and gave Mpemba full credit as they jointly released the results. The very same year, a completely unrelated scientist, Dr. Kell, also released a paper about hot water freezing faster than cold water under certain conditions, theorising that it was caused by rate of evaporation. (This particular theory was later debunked; as of yet, what causes the Mpemba effect is hotly debated - it is also worth noting that it only occurs under certain conditions, not ever time you try to freeze a liquid.)
Your "example" is an example of scientists being open-minded when laypersons ridiculed a new idea, and that even if Mpemba had never noticed anything, another reputable scientist wrote a paper about the effect the same year (and his incorrect theory about the cause was shown to be incorrect).
In other words, it's showing exactly the opposite of what you want it to.

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Another Blindness was Ball lightning the general consensus was that ball lightning was impossible so eyewitnesses were ignored and all scientist who developed theories of it existance was ignored.

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This is simply a flat-out falsehood, and shows again that you do not understand what "consensus" is. Nikola Tesla was theorising about what caused ball lightning as early as 1904, and it's well-known that ball lightning killed a Russian scientist who had been attending a meeting of the Academy of Sciences in 1753.
That some scientists may have thought the phenomena doesn't exist doesn't make that a consensus; it is the opposite of consensus, one theory amongst many. This seems self-evident. It is also worth noting that the scientific method produced an ACTUAL consensus, that of the truth (ball lightning does exist), over time. That is the same sort of actual consensus reached some time ago on global warming.
I suspect you get your information from sources which are actively hostile to the scientific community, of which there are no shortage.

[Epsilon]

Okay, Necratoid, HMelton, a question?
What will it take to get you to beleive that Global Climate Change is real. How much evidence do you need? Does Manhattan have to be under five feet of water?
It is evident that you will not accept any degree of actual evidence. No matter how much the sceintific community gives you. You won't beleive either a) vitually the entire sceintific community or b) Exxon-Mobil (you know, them admitting the existence of Global Climate Change is one of the reasons this thread started) or other major oil companies.
Does God himself have to appear and say "Hey guys, stop turning up the temperature, okay?" Cause that ain't gonna happen.
It's almost funny, watching you grasp at straws. Oh look, over here, the temperature of Mars is changing? Haha. Oh look, there is one sceintist who is questioning the methods. Never mind that the information he is dismissing is entirely secondary to the actual point. That, in fact, the change in the thermodynamic systems of the planet is part of the reason Global Climate Change is such a big issue. That the slow but steady change in systems such as the gulf stream and major ocean currents and on and on have been documented ad naeuseum. No, this brave sceintist has taken a factor that is generally considered to be secondary and bravely said its secondary! Haha!
Oh look, once upon a time sceince was wrong! Ah no! It is possible for sceintists to be wrong! Obviously we must throw out all evidence we have collected! Let us stop doing research, because things like computers and nuclear reactors and antibiotics have certainly not been useful. This blithely ignores the fact that your strawman arguments are pointless on their face. Yes, at one time heavier-than-air flight was thought imposisble. And you know what the Wright brothers did? They proved otherwise.
I don't see Necratoid doing climate research. I don't see HMelton speaheading exciting new research that will prove all us climate alarmists are left-wings hacks desiring nothing more than to destroy captalism and America.
Here is the unfortunate truth that you will have to accept:
The people who believe in Global Climate Change have made their case. The people who oppose it have made theirs. The evidence for both sides was evulated and studied by some of the most brillaint minds in human history. We won. You lost.
Hundreds of scientists from all over the world agree on this. Are you really saying you are smarter than all of them? That you understand the issue better? Really? Is that what you are saying?
Yes, it is possible they are wrong. Sure. And its possible that the I could win the lottery tomorrow. Its possible that a meteor will smash into the Earth and render this entire debate moot. Its possible that e-mail you got really WAS from a Nigerian prince and he really WILL give you millions of dollars for a small, thousand dollar deposit.
But you know what? I'm just going to keep thinking that when 99.9% of the evidence says one thing, that one thing is (if not totally, then for all instents and purposes) true. But evidently I have a smaller threshold for belief than you do. So I'll reiterate:
What will it take to convince you? Is it even possible?
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Epsilon

[Necratoid]

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it's well-known that ball lightning killed a Russian scientist who had been attending a meeting of the Academy of Sciences in 1753.

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Considering that heard of reports throughout the Wild West (I like the History Channel) that call ball lightning a legend from the 1880s, Id say it made a impression on Russia at least however not so much the US scientists.
Also, this is Tesla youre talking about here TESLA. That whole Edison/Tesla, DC/AC fight kind of kills your point a bit. That is a classic of propaganda wars for consensus in science. Its literally bribery (funding and otherwise) based consensus of scientists in action. Its a classic example.
I don't think I need to point out anything else in this post after you try to prove MANMADE Global Warming by true scientific consensus.
I'll hit other points later, but I think you just based your right to talk about consensus in science on The Tesla/Edision wars not happening.

[Epsilon]

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I'll hit other points later, but I think you just based your right to talk about consensus in science on The Tesla/Edision wars not happening.

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So... wait...
You're saying that the existence of a single man who had an ulterior agenda who was unable to convince the general sceintific community despite the use of shock tactics (hehe, I made a funny) and political influence is an example of the sceintific methodolgy of consesus and peer review failing?
Did I actually just read that?
Are you saying that because Edison was being a dick, and that the far superior, process proposed by the scientists won is evidence to support your case?
Holy shit. Do you have an understanding of history? Do you even know what the Edison/Tesla "War of the Currents" was about? You do realise that the reason Tesla won that is because his sceince was more convincing, right? That he is a quintessential proof of actual sceince being divorced from political or economic interests?
Wow.
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Epsilon

[Logan Darklighter]

Has there been any increase in the sea level at all? One of the big things that is supposed to happen assuming climate change is happening is that sea levels are supposed to rise.
There are several places around the world where land itself is sinking into the sea (Venice, New Orleans) but I haven't heard of any sea level rise yet.
-Logan
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"Wake up! Time for SCIENCE!"
-Adam Savage
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[ECSNorway]

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However, I don't think I buy the concept that an overall temperature couldn't be calculated for the earth. Certainly the way I remember temperature being defined in physics classes should be theoretically calculable for any defined region.

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Sure, you can compute it. What they're saying is that the system is so chaotic and complex that the simple statistics being used - such as the "global average" - are effectively meaningless.
What I could see as having more bearing on the question is measurements over the last century from a wide selection of rural areas, tracked for each region separately, and a detailed analysis of their variations within each region.
(Why rural areas? Because of the known and recognized phenomena of cities as 'heat islands', and with cities growing over the century temperature records from within them are inherently unreliable.)--
"I give you the beautiful... the talented... the tirelessly atomic-powered...
R!
DOROTHY!
WAYNERIGHT!
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[Jeap]

There are better examples of the consensus being wrong. Alexander Gordon's, Oliver Holmes's, and Semmelweiss's work reguarding puerperal fever. Joseph Goldberger and the "pellagra germ." Alfred Wegener and continental drift. Jenner and smallpox. Pasteur and germ theory.
On the climate side of things Mann's work is critical to quite a bit of your argument, Epsilon, being refrenced in such things as the IPCC's fourth report and its validity has been called into question. McIntyre says it's worthless. Wahl and Ammann say it's worthless without bristlecones. The NAS panel say that strip-bark sites (which include all the relevant bristlecones) should be avoided in temperature reconstructions for a variety of reasons.

[Epsilon]

There are plenty of examples of the consensus being wrong, going all the way back to the days when man beleived that giant cloud men sculpted them out of clay.
Yes, sceintists can be wrong. I know. It's fascinating.
But simply saying that is the case does nothing to disprove
the existence of global climate change.
It's like claiming that the sun doesn't rise in the East because Billy said the sun rises in the East and Billy has occasionally said stupid things like "gravity makes things float" and "Rivers feed out of, not into, the ocean". Yes, Billy was stupid a few times. This does not change the fact that he is right.
Yes, I admit it is possible that the global consensus can be wrong. Woo. I also admit that my entire memory of my life could have been programmed into me by a vast sadistic supercomputer solely for the purposes of kicks, and that none of it actually happened.
If you disagree with it, fine. If you want to say Manmade Global Climate Chaneg isn't occuring, go ahead.
Prove it.
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Epsilon

[Necratoid]

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Holy shit. Do you have an understanding of history? Do you even know what the Edison/Tesla "War of the Currents" was about? You do realise that the reason Tesla won that is because his sceince was more convincing, right?

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Yes... You know again someone manages to get my exact point and miss it entirely at the same time. Only the Manmade Global Warming crowd is Edison and quite loud. Yes, its better organized. Yes, mass media made it spread faster.... but The MGW crowd is Edison. Its doing exactly what Edison did only better.
Yes, there are great bits of tech involved and some good ideas on both sides... Yes, non-gas powered cars and industry that puts less stinky stuff in the air and such is great.
The problem is that the MGW crowd wants to hurt the western world's economy (US' most of all). It makes impossible to follow treaties that can't be followed by design like the Kyoto Protocol. It makes insane propaganda like 'Captain Planet' and insists that Hogus Greedly is a real type of mindset that is useful in business.
People that don't buy the MGW movement don't want dirty air, polluted water, and toxic soil. They don't want to to summon Captain Pollution to mangle the Earth.

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If you disagree with it, fine. If you want to say Manmade Global Climate Chaneg isn't occuring, go ahead.

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Prove it.

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Okay, that is quite impossible. Because the argument is a logical phalacy.
People don't have to disprove that MGW exists in anything like the levels suggested. I warm the Earth by breathing in the strictest sense. The problem here is that to prove its NOT happening I have to agree it is and go backwards to disprove every point the MGW lobby makes.
This is a joke argument my brother makes to annoy me. Make a wild claim... then insist that the other guy disproves it. You have to prove MGW happens not that its not happening.
If you think that way I declare you a possessed stuff wallaby. Now disprove that you are. In advances I'm warning you that all evidence to the contrary is obviously a lie.

[Logan Darklighter]

Pardon me, but could someone just take a moment aside to answer my question from my earlier post above?
-Logan
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"Wake up! Time for SCIENCE!"
-Adam Savage
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[M Fnord]

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Pardon me, but could someone just take a moment aside to answer my question from my earlier post above?

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Here ya go, hoss:

The satellite altimeter estimates ~3mm rise per year since 1992. Not very fast, but it is there.
---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[Necratoid]

Is there a location where I can find out more about that... it contains no location and no graph title to look up. Its a fact in the wind and as is could be relative a point in New Orleans or Venice or a golf course in central France.

[M Fnord]

*sigh*
Graph source---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[Epsilon]

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Yes... You know again someone manages to get my exact point and miss it entirely at the same time. Only the Manmade Global Warming crowd is Edison and quite loud. Yes, its better organized. Yes, mass media made it spread faster.... but The MGW crowd is Edison. Its doing exactly what Edison did only better.

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And once again we come down to this grand scientific conspiracy by 99.9% of the sceintific community. All for the filthy filty lucre of... government funding research. Wow! Big money!
Necratoid, do yourself a favor: Look up how much money was spent on global climate change research over the last two decades. Now look up how much money the oil industry made. Now argue with a straight face that these people are agruing this for financial gain.

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Okay, that is quite impossible. Because the argument is a logical phalacy.

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Except of course that the people who support global climate change have provided evidence out the wazoo. Tons and tons of it. Reams of data. A mountain of reports. There is an orgy of evidence supporting global climate change.
Frankly, I think we've proved our point.
And yes, I am asking you to disprove ever bit of evidence that global climate change advocates present. That the way it works, buckoo.
If you want to dismiss all the evidence, you're going to have to go through every bit of sceintific data and DISPROVE it. Merely saying we can't prove it to your satisfaction isn't enough. That's idiot talk. That's deliberate ignorance. Your like the people who claim that evolution is false.
We have the evidence. If you want to challenge the evidence, do so. PROVE US WRONG.
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Epsilon

[Jeap]

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Has there been any increase in the sea level at all? One of the big things that is supposed to happen assuming climate change is happening is that sea levels are supposed to rise.

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Jevrejeva et al. (2006) show that sea levels were rising at a rate of about 2.4mm to 2.5mm +-1mm during the Twentieth Century.
A graph illustrating their results. It pretty much parallels M Fnord's graph with the addition of mm/year being shown. Draw your own conclusions.

[hmelton]

---Epsilon---
What proof of climate change?
You don't have to supply proof, I believe the climate is changing.
That's a given from recorded history. The Earth goes through periods of warming and cooling. The last cooling period seems to have ended in the 1970's and the current warming period started.
What I don't belive is that the current warming trend is a problem created by man and that the Kyota accords is a solution.
The current temperatures aren't nearly as warm as when Greenland was colonized, most of the hype is about computer models that say it's going to continue and get worse not reversing itself as in the past.
I find it hard to believe the 30 year predictions of these computer models when these same models can't help me plan my crop 3 months in advanced.
Really weather prediction isn't even fully effective for 7 days. After planting we need roughly 7 days of no rain to successfully get a crop above the ground. We have several thousand dollars invested in the ground and the weather forecasters can't even predict a 7 day period with enough accuracy to keep me from having to replant or try and break the rain formed crust with a rotary hoe on a regular basis.
Why should I trust a forecast to the tune of billions of dollars set 30 years in the future, when it can't predict the next 7 days accurately enough to guide me in a several thousand dollar investment?
---Ayiekie---
Consensus? a general agreement or opinon of all the people consulted.
My point is that the peer review system which determines if a paper will actually be published only consults reviewers with the consensus opinion. When that consensus is currently wrong and very strongly held it can suppress information for years, decades or even centuries.
Mapemba Effect
It's a very good example do you not see how BLIND the thermodynamics engineers or scientist and for that matter all Engineers or scientist had to be.
Water is one of the most heavily used and carefully studied materials we have and you don't see anything wrong with the fact it wasn't until 1969 that it was noticed by professionals that hot water can freeze before cold water?
Over the centuries we will never know how many papers on experiments where the oddity of hot water freezing first was noted and resulted in the paper not being published because the reviewing peer's consensus opinion belived it could not be true.
In my training as an engineer both Mapemba and Dr. Osbourne were given as shining and exceedingly rare examples of what scientist or engineers should be.
BALL LIGHTNING
The early days of studying electricity such as you mention there was no consensus about it. In fact in 1753 I believe the majority of scientist were trying Benjamin Franklin's experiments with lightning to determine what it was. The incident you mention was in all likelyhood related to trying to reproduce Benjamin Franklin's 1752 experiment with a kite in a thunderstorm.
As the coming decades and centuries moved forward and research proved that lightning and the electricity generated by man were closely related a consensus was reached about both lightning and electricity.
That consensus opinion of lightning and electricity for many decades had no room for ball lightning with its eyewitness descriptions of never before seen effects.
These effects were not repeatably reproducable so all eyewitness accounts were discounted.
You mention Tesla and that proves my point Tesla like Mapemba is famous for not bowing to the consensus opinion. He is provided to engineers especially electrical engineers as an example of a brilliant scientist and engineer and also as an example of how not to present that ability to the people who pay for your research and buy your inventions. Tesla was known both for great skill and outlandish claims that cost him both in money and reputation.

I've had a few close encounters with ball lightning and that started a personal research campaign back in the mid 1980's. As a personal hobby I spent a couple of years methodically digging in the University Library's journal Archives and book collection trying to find every report and article dealing with lightning in general and ball lightning in paticular.
If I remember correctly up until the late 1920's or early 1930's the majority of the books, articles and other types of reports held the opinion that all descriptions of "ball lightning" were mental mistakes from the extreme conditions during observation. Most of the archived material I remember supported the idea that Tesla was making a mistake and he had been inspired to go up a blind alley researching something that was clearly at best a mental effect induced in the observer.
I believe most of the published books at my university had a "breakover" in the 1940's before that with very few exceptions they held to a consensus that is was a mental effect.
howard melton

[Ayiekie]

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Why should I trust a forecast to the tune of billions of dollars set 30 years in the future, when it can't predict the next 7 days accurately enough to guide me in a several thousand dollar investment?

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Because it's not the same damn science. Accurately predicting local weather two weeks from now and predicting large scale climatalogical change over years is apples and oranges, and anybody who knows diddle-squat about either subject could tell you that.
This is why people go to school for years to become scientists - so they will know of what they speak.
Your disbelieving of the opinion held by the vast majority of all qualified researchers isn't really telling, because you do not know of what you speak. That you do not understand how a consensus forms, or what it means, is similarly not of much concern.
To put it bluntly, when you can find a major, reputable, non-obviously-biased group of scientists who work in the field they're talking about that oppose global warming, I will give it due attention. But you are a Guy On The Internet, which gives you as much credibility on the topic as it does on the subject of how to build a functional moon rocket. Who would listen to you if you started saying you knew better on how to fly to the moon than NASA scientists?
Real scientists can do real research to show flaws in prevailing orthodoxy, which is the difference between the scientific method and you saying that because we can't be sure if it'll rain next week, we also can't be sure if man is causing global climate change.

[Epsilon]

Melton...
Things I can't predict with any level of accuracy:
Wether or not a given particle of uranium will decay into lead and when. However I can predict, with near absolute certainty, when about half of a certain mass of uranium will decay into lead.
Wether or not the tar and formaldyhide from any given cigarette will cause damage to my lungs. However I can predict that if I smoke cigarettes for years and years my chances of getting cancer are astronomically higher.
In other words: sceince is hard. You do not understand it. The current evidence towards the global climate crisis is based on models that were developed thirty years ago. Models that have turned out to be disturbingly accurate in every prediction they made. In fact, models that turned out to (in some cases) be too conservative.
Once again, the people with actual degrees and brains believe this. The people who believe in manmade global climate change have satisfied the burden of proof. If you want to disprove it, feel free to do so. But you won't do it by throwing up reductionist rhetoric, strawman arguments, excluded middle fallacies or god of the margins bullshit.
At this point manmade global climate change is the accepted reality. The burden of proof is on you, and those who think like you, to disprove it.
---------------
Epsilon

[Rev Dark]

Jeap, if you are going to try to baffle with bullshit, try and use good bullshit and not the after-sixteen-pints-of-the-black-stuff-and-a-turtle-curry liquid slurry. Bristlecones are a fringe of a fringe (PS. Don't try and bullshit a Canadian on the Hockey stick model.)
You missed one in your list of consensus being wrong. Consensus was that man was divinely created by an intelligent designer (The good old Watchmaker postulation). Unfortunately a better, more robust theory (Darwin's theory of Evolution through natural selection) came along, knocked down the watchmaker, gouged out its eyes and skull-fucked it. Perhaps a less poetic image than would be preferred, but it ties in so nicely with Dawkin's 'Blind Watchmaker.'
Science has a fabulous capacity to self-correct, if a better theory (proper usage) comes along. Theory. Not sky hook.

[Jeap]

Where am I bullshitting? McKitrick and McIntyre managed to deconstruct the Mann-Bradley-Hughes climate model pretty well in their papers. Wahl and Ammann, as shown in these charts (b and c specificially), declare their reconstruction (Using ring data from 1400BCE series trees, it pans out better if they use data added in with the 1450BCE series trees) of the MBH model without merit if it does not use the bristlecone/foxtail series. The National Academy of Sciences has agreed that treering samples from strip-bark sites should be avoided in temperature reconstructions.
And you are absolutely correct, evolution is a fine example of the consensus being wrong. It is also a fine example of the evolution (Ha!) seen in science around Darwin's period, where we went from looking for a god's hand in the works to a purely factual approach. Yay scientific method.

[Rev Dark]

How art thou bullshitting? Tis the starfish flexing and hyperbole is the moon.
To whit.

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On the climate side of things Mann's work is critical to quite a bit of your argument, Epsilon, being referenced in such things as the IPCC's fourth report and its validity has been called into question. McIntyre says it's worthless. Wahl and Ammann say it's worthless without bristlecones. The NAS panel say that strip-bark sites (which include all the relevant bristlecones) should be avoided in temperature reconstructions for a variety of reasons.

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That actual impact on the bristlecone calculations in very, very minor in the big picture; and the comments, especially concerning A & W are taken out of context. Say it with me. Multidisciplinary; multiple fields of science converging on a single theory, each one bringing a bevy of correlating data to the picture. It is not as you state 'critical to quite a bit of Epsilon's argument.' I like using hyperbole as much as the next billions and billions of people; but critical? Thus, for the same reasons, I call bullshit.