La science vs l'observation terrain

[Nick de Cusa]

Très bon article d'un lecteur de Watts Up With That.

…

Guest comment by Caleb:

I’ve worked outside since I was a small boy in the 1950’s, and have cut down hundreds of trees. I always check out the rings, for every tree has its own story.

I’ve seen some rather neat tricks pulled off by trees, especially concerning how far they can reach with their roots to find fertilizer or moisture. For example, sugar maple roots will reach, in some cases, well over a hundred feet, and grow a swift net of roots in the peat moss surrounding a lady’s azalea’s root ball, so that the azalea withers, for the maple steals all its water.

I’ve also seen tired old maples perk right up, when a pile of manure is heaped out in a pasture a hundred feet away, and later have seen the tree’s rings, when it was cut down, show its growth surged while that manure was available.

After fifty years you learn a thing or two, even if you don’t take any science classes or major in climatology, and I’ve had a hunch many of the tree-ring theories were bunkum, right from the start.

The bristlecone records seemed a lousy proxy, because at the altitude where they grow it is below freezing nearly every night, and daytime temperatures are only above freezing for something like 10% of the year. They live on the borderline of existence, for trees, because trees go dormant when water freezes. (As soon as it drops below freezing the sap stops dripping into the sugar maple buckets.) Therefore the bristlecone pines were dormant 90% of all days and 99% of all nights, in a sense failing to collect temperature data all that time, yet they were supposedly a very important proxy for the entire planet. To that I just muttered “bunkum.”

But there were other trees in other places. I was skeptical about the data, but until I saw so much was based on a single tree, YAD061, I couldn’t be sure I could just say “bunkum.”

YAD061 looks very much like a tree that grew up in the shade of its elders, and therefore grew slowly, until age or ice-storms or insects removed the elders and the shade. Then, with sunshine and the rotting remains of its elders to feed it, the tree could take off.

I have seen growth patterns much like YAD061 in the rings of many stumps in New Hampshire, and not once have I thought it showed a sign of global warming, or of increased levels of CO2 in the air. Rather the cause is far more simple: A childhood in the under-story, followed by a tree’s “day in the sun.”

Dr. Briffa should spend less time gazing at computer screens, and actually get out and associate with trees more. At the very least, it might be good for his health.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/02/a-ha…ore/#more-11409

Ce qui passe pour de la science est souvent bien trop éloigné des faits.

En économie, j'ai sans cesse cette impression sur des questions comme l'indice des prix à la consommation, le GDP deflator, les différences réelles de niveau de vie entre pays. Un seul exemple : la différence de prospérité entre voisins, Allemagne et France est bien plus grande que ce que racontent tous les chiffres qu'on peut trouver. Je ne saurais le prouver, mais j'ai raison néanmoins.

[p.a]

En économie, j'ai sans cesse cette impression sur des questions comme l'indice des prix à la consommation, le GDP deflator, les différences réelles de niveau de vie entre pays. Un seul exemple : la différence de prospérité entre voisins, Allemagne et France est bien plus grande que ce que racontent tous les chiffres qu'on peut trouver. Je ne saurais le prouver, mais j'ai raison néanmoins.

pourtant les chiffres le prouvent (en ce qui concerne les Länder de l'ouest)