I am toying here with some gallows humor about global warming, and invite anyone else to join in with comments and feedBack. A new way to look at climate change, via humor. My blog is called “Gallows Humor for Global Warming”……..harmless stuff.
Gavin, I assume you don’t object to applying some kind of methodology
to forecasting but only to the way the authors have applied to their methodology
to the IPCC forecasts.
Since their web site says the following:
Peer review and independent audits are welcome, and will be posted if the site guidelines are followed. In addition, all peer review must include the authors’ names, positions, emails, and any relationship that might be construed as a source of bias.
This article should be permanently enshrined in the “primary literature” required for close reading by anyone studying to become “a scientist”. It deals with common sense, which, it is said is called “common” because it is so rare!
Comment by Charles Raguse — 23 July 2007 @ 9:15 AM
The paper seemed to rely heavily on citations from the un-refereed publications and non-scientific literature. For example, several stories from the New York Times got mentioned as examples of climatologists predictions. Several non-refereed websites also found their way into the references. The “global cooling” myth got a run as an “expert”, which William Connolley might have something to say about.
Call me crazy, but in my field of meteorology, we would never head to popular literature, much less the figgin internet, in order to evaluate the state of the art in science. You head to the scientific literature first and foremost. Since meteorology and climatology are not that different, I would struggle to see why it would be any different.
The authors also seem to put a large weight on “forecasting principles” developed in different fields. While there may be some valuable advice, and cross-field cooperation is to be encouraged, one should not assume that techniques developed in say, econometrics, port directly into climate science.
The authors also make much of a wild goose chase on google for sites matching their specific phrases, such as “global warming” AND “forecast principles”. I’m not sure what a lack of web sites would prove. They also seem to have skiped most of the literature cited in AR4 ch. 8 on model validation and climatology predictions.
In short, the authors do not seem to understand the actual practice of climatology, or the physical sciences in general. A poorly thought out critque.
When I see statements like: “Based on our Google searches, those forecasting long-term climate change have no apparent knowledge of evidence-based forecasting methods, so we expect that the same conclusions would apply to the other three necessary parts of the forecasting problem” and I just cringe.
A “Google search” sounds like something I’d see on a second-rate undergraduate research paper; how about using the Science Citation Index for example and show me you’ve really done a thorough lit. review. This is just lazy.
Kesten Green and Scott Armstrong are right about one thing: the IPCC forecast is wrong, beyond any doubt. That is the nature of forecasts for chaotic systems with so much uncertainty in so many of the assumptions that must be made, and lack of complete understanding in how a myriad of factors, known and unknown, will influence outcomes. I stongly suspect that politics has had too much to do with the IPCC forecasts, and that reality will be worse: sea level rise will exceed the forecast, just as it did with the 1995 NOAA study for the “worst case” scenario. No evidence of an accelerating trend? That’s not what my analysis of the data I’ve seen tells me. When Russia, China, and the United States all put pressure on the IPCC to alter its report (to not make things seem as bad as they likely are) I knew we were not going to get a realistic assessment of what’s coming. G&A positing no change being more accurate? It’s wishful thinking, not science.
Comment by Gene Hawkridge — 23 July 2007 @ 10:18 AM
Thanks Gavin,
Some of us climate agnostics found the G&A piece underwhelming. There was a lot of heat from both sides on the differences between forecasts, simulations, and projections. ( Dr. Curry had an odd sense of the necessary and sufficient conditions for forecasthood, for example) A good portion of the discussion ( ok the messy portion) centered on the issue of forecasts versus projections, which seemed a semantical side issue that would advance nothing but engender plenty of food fights. Fun while they last, but not very nourishing.
One thing that came up was the issue of hindcast and the issue of confirming past “forecasts, projections simulations” against the contemporaneous record.
So thanks for the link to the 2007 paper. Unfortunately my subscription doesn’t allow me to get it. This is exactly the kind of paper that would make for a great discussion on the web ( and the ancilliary food fights of course) but unless everyone has access dialogue is kinda thwarted.
Oh well.
Comment by steven mosher — 23 July 2007 @ 10:39 AM
President Bush turns up number 1 in google searches for certain naughty words. That Green and Armstrong’s website turns up number 1 in google searches for “forecasting” is equally significant.
Comment by John E Pearson — 23 July 2007 @ 11:22 AM
It seems to me that much of the failure of the G&A article comes from the fact that they are economists. Economics doesn’t have anything resembling physics or thermodynamics, it only has models. For a long time, they thought the velocity of money was stable. Then it changed. For a long time, the P/E ratio of most stocks stayed in the range of 10 to 20. Then the range changed.
In this kind of world, non-linear models are simply an exercise in curve fitting. So it isn’t surprising that they don’t trust them.
It is also interesting that they use the word “forecast,” which isn’t what I think of scientific models as doing. Scientific modeling is part of the conversation Science has with Nature. Models are an executable representation of the thing being studied. They are (in the age of computers) a way to collect experimental results, and to make predictions. I doubt that G&A understand this. They live in a world where a the “quants” make forecasts of GDP, or the value of a particular secutity two weeks from now.
I find that stupidity is more often the cause of egregious behavior than malice. But in the current AGW politics, it is hard to say.
Comment by Tim McDermott — 23 July 2007 @ 11:24 AM
On principle 3. ‘Be Humble’. They sound like people who think they used to be conceited but now don’t have any faults. Their attack on climate models seems to be based on prejudged notions, and not very much research on the reliability of the models. In addition to the successes that Gavin mentions. Models run from the past have successfully reproduced present day conditions.Also the vertical distribution of the temperature of the atmosphere has been accurately reproduced, as well as the geographic distribution of precipition.
There are enough hits to put good reliance of their projections of possible future outcomes.They want perfection? Get real! Ted Williams,of the Boston Red Sox, the last player to hit 400(meaning he was out 6 times out 10) is considered one of the greatest hitters of all time.
Comment by Lawrence Brown — 23 July 2007 @ 11:44 AM
re: Principle 6. Sadly, it will undoubtedly work. Expect to see G&A’s “To Heck With The Scientific Method Tour” trumpeted and appearing in person on Fox News (?) any day now. :-P
Well, they do have the good intentions of making climate modeling every bit as accurate as economics. What I wouldn’t give to have 70 degree highs in summer in Florida…
Thanks again for some of the pointers. I found this:
Climate simulations for 1880-2003 with GISS modelE
The data page is quite nice so Kudos to Hansen et al.
One question. we can use the page to draw plots. Is there a way to access the data behind the plots?
Comment by steven mosher — 23 July 2007 @ 12:40 PM
So the paper hasn’t been submitted to a peer reviewed journal yet and they’re looking for peer review on the internet.
Seems like a good place to start. I Googled “Peer Review”, it seems pretty popular.
Comment by Dave Arthurson — 23 July 2007 @ 12:48 PM
The debunkerati thoroughly misunderstand the essence and nature of climate models. This type of ‘analysis’ is utterly typical of their efforts.
I have long ago concluded that their tactics are simple and, in the short term anyway, probably more effective than any other approach they might take:
1. Discern the uncertainties and unknowns of climate science, and exploit them.
2. Develop pop theories that might be plausibly true today and declare them “alternative” theories, and then go the next step and declare them of equal or greater weight than current MCS understandings.
3. As soon as the ink dries on one alternative theory, quickly come up with another, to keep MCS on defense. If MCS are always responding to the latest Debunkerati “theory”, they never have time to give the public (a) a thorough explanation as to why the alt theory is bogus or at least flawed, and (b) they are keeping debunkerati theories alive by giving them play.
4. Once a debunked debunkerati theory has been out of mind for several months, repackage and re-present it. Keep the cycle going.
As ad hominem as it sounds, we are certainly arriving at a point where it is quite enough to know the source of the ‘theory’ in order to know – KNOW! – that it is bunk.
“… Detecting the effects of climate change on rainfall patterns has proved much more elusive than temperature changes because of the much greater natural variability of precipitation.
“The key was to take results from 92 computer simulations, using 14 different global circulation models, and to compare the average of these with actual rainfall data over wide bands of latitude around the world.
“The results show a clear agreement with the observed trends in global rainfall data over the past century. In fact, although they agree in direction, the observed changes were much stronger than the predictions.
“‘Over the 20th century, we now detect the signal [in rainfall changes] that is predicted by climate models,’ says Francis Zwiers, one of the research team. ‘If you’re able to reproduce the past, you also have greater confidence for predictions of the future.’”
Thank you again for making Real Climate available to me.
The other day my daughter, after listening to me talk about Real Climate, asked me if I thought a worldwide transition to Wind Power would affect weather and climate. I posited a no. I suspect there are local effects but unlike the butterfly in the Amazon, I don’t see a major effect.
Of course there is a (USD) $95.00 paperback for sale on the website link included in this post. (USD $166 if you want a hard back).
A look at the list of authors and reviewers is enlightening. While a smattering are from information sciences or mathematics the majority are from business schools or business related institutions. Psychology is also represented. Unless I missed someone there is no one from the physical sciences as either an author or a reviewer.
Steve Horstmeyer
Comment by Steve Horstmeyer — 23 July 2007 @ 2:25 PM
The first “paper” cited by G & A is titled, “FIRE AND ICE Journalists have warned of climate change for 100 years, but can’t decide weather we face an ice age or warming.” Is the use of “weather” supposed to be a pun? Or is it a misspelling? If the former, it makes no sense grammatically (i.e., to use a noun as a conjunction). If it is the latter, it would be, I suppose, even worse, though consistent with the quality of the actual reference.
Hank #16
This paper seems like nonsense to me. They say in the article that the detection of 20th century rainfall changes seems (seems? Is this a scientific term?) “barely discernible from the noise right now.” They then take results from 92 computer simulations, using 14 different global circulation models, and to compare the average of these with actual rainfall data. How does it make any sense to average these results? How does this represent anything? They then say the results show a clear agreement with the observed trends in global rainfall data over the past century. Clear agreement with the same observed trends that are barely discernable? They then conclude that they demonstrate that the pattern of rainfall around the world is being changed by greenhouse-gas emissions from human activities. Really?
A pity you chose to pen a petulant, silly and smug response to their paper. Real scientists interested in putting forward a lasting scientific contribution would have reviewed this paper carefully and responded appropriately. These authors are serious heavyweights in their field. They have a legitimate role to play to improve forecasts such as used in the IPCC paper. They have opened the paper up for discussion, so why not be serious about it. One can only conclude that you haven’t got the guts or the science behind you to respond in proper scientific terms to their paper.
re: 21. For goodness sake. Assuming you are not just another drive-by poster showing up as if on cue and if you’ve read anything else on this web site, we are talking about climate *science*. Science that has been extensively peer reviewed and followed the scientific method (both are cornerstones to science). So two laymen who are not climate science modelers (G&A) magically know more than literally thousands of expert climate scientists with decades of research and knowledge from around the world. And who magically know something that every major scientific atmospheric science society in the world does not, huh? And you suddenly appear to attack a leading climate science peer-reviewed researcher for “not having the science behind” him? Please! This is the 21st century, not some anti-science Medieval period. And please let everyone know G&A’s climate science peer reviewed credentials. Or one can only conclude that you haven’t “got the guts” (now there’s a scientific phrase…not!) to stand on the hard science of global warming research.
Gavin is a reasonable fellow. As you have seen I have asked him for access to the data for a recent paper from Goddard, an institution funded by taxpayers. He will produce it, I have no doubt. As for G&A, they really didn’t do all their homework. Even bright folks make mistakes. This is why folks like Gavin will open up to people checking his work. He is bright, but I don’t think he considers himself omniscient.
So, Gavin. Can I get a data dump from the paper mentioned above? I have a big hard disk.
[Response: Data for each figure you make is available at the bottom of the page. For more extensive data, more diagnostics and in a more convenient format are available through the PCMDI data server (see also updates and corrections at http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/modelE/modelE_AR4_issues.html ). - gavin]
The point is that they are not in their field. Reading their CVs shows no expertise in climate.
It is like you looking over the plumber’s shoulder telling him what to do because you saw a show on the HG network and you work in nanotubes (what?!? They’re tubes, right?).
By “a worldwide transition to Wind Power,” do you mean, replacing the use of fossil fuels entirely with wind power? While you posit no major effect, I wonder how this could not have a significant effect on climate systems. Has this scenario been modelled?
Regarding Richard’s comment No. 21- If a marketing professor and an economics and business forcaster can critique a climatologist’s field, then turnabout is fair play. Granted Gavin’s ‘rating system’ is done with tongue in cheek and some lampooning,yet the essence of his points are clear. The science of economics and the science of climatology are two very different breeds of cat. Actually I find the assumptions of some economists to be a kind of baffling. There is or was a school of thought that considered 4% of 4.5% employment as ‘full employment’(Unless,I imagine you happen to be an employed economist).
Comment by Lawrence Brown — 23 July 2007 @ 8:27 PM
This was a good post to demonstrate how to judge the reliability of a review paper. Its also a good demonstration on how the science is done out in the field.
I think when people don’t accept climate science some of it is not because they don’t understand the details of the climate science. Its because they don’t understand how science itself works. An effort to show people not just the scientific method but how scientific research is done could be helpful.
Does anyone know anything about Kesten Green and Scott Armstrong’s work? Are they legitimately trying to improve forecasting in regulations? Or are they free-market types who are disingenuously casting doubt on regulation. This issue reminds me of the way the business community pushes cost-benefit analysis to subvert regulation, and it might be that G&A are in the second category.
Comment by Joseph O'Sullivan — 23 July 2007 @ 8:44 PM
So let me see, this ivy league guy writes books and papers and gets recognized, all in the ’80s and ’90s and having nothing to do with climate science. Then, these authors apply the established principles to IPCC forecasting, upon which we’re supposed to be willing to bet our economy in order to save our children.
Then… the authors put their own money and reputation where their mouth is by offering a bet and publicizing it.
The realclimate response is to ridicule them with a sarcastic and irrelevant parody and to pretty much neglect to defend the IPCC against the serious claims in their paper. I was keeping an open mind, but your post convinced me that you see the IPCC’s position as indefensible. If not, I think you would have defended it, or at least tried to.
Your strongest reproach seems to be that they’ve got profit motives (BTW, I think you might have forgotten
to accuse them of being funded by the oil companies ;-).
They’re selling a book you know. Well I suppose everyone’s got a profit motive. If you can’t show me how their profit motive influenced their conclusions, then why bring it up? Again, I’m surmising it’s because it’s the strongest defense that the IPCC has.
According to these authors, the IPCC violated 72 forecasting principles out of 89 which were evaluated. Another 51 couldn’t be evaluated for whatever reason. What does RealClimate say about this? Do you dispute the principles that they claim were violated? Did the authors get it wrong and the IPCC didn’t really violate the principles? I guess maybe I overlooked the informative part of your post where you discussed stuff like that.
If you’ve got something useful and on topic, I sure wish you’d say it. This Real Climate post struck me as being a whole lot of words just to say “la-la-la-la I can’t hear you”.
[Response: Maybe I was being too subtle. The critique is worthless because the authors are not in any position to be able to make fair evaluations of their criteria. They neither bothered to read the more relevant parts of IPCC, nor engage anyone who would have been able to steer them to the appropriate literature. By performing their audit in a state of blissful ignorance, they themselves demonstrate the failing they accuse IPCC of - they used their methodology to give a scientific sheen to their prior prejudices. Clear enough? If you'd like more concrete examples, take any 10 of the principles they think were violated and I'll point out why their scores were wrong. - gavin]
In fact, G&A, ask an excellent question, “Are current global climate models good enough to use as the basis for public policy decisions?” Moreover, while G&A did not frame their argument in terms that RC likes, the conclusion that current climate models are not adequate to support public policy is reasonable.
Yes, the models support the concept AGW is real and that we should do something about it. However current models do not suggest how much should invest this week, this month, this year, or this decade, given the realities of economic market places, discounting of future events, and the cost of money.
Consider my home state of California. The models say our water infrastructure will be impacted by AGW. The models say that we can expect real drought. So, we should invest, and build for drought? Maybe not. The models also say that given construction schedules and cycles, by the time we have gotten ready for real drought, our problem may be too much rain. Why spend $80 billion on drought infrastructure if by the time we get it built, we need to spend $80 billion on flood infrastructure? Why not just spend $160 billion now and build for both? Because , this year in California both rain and capital are in short supply.
Gavin’s models do not give us enough information to make these kinds of economic decisions. Sorry.
[Response: I've never suggested that the science of climate change should determine public policy exclusively. Economic decisions are rightly within the realm of politics. One could agree with every word in IPCC WG1 and still not think it worth doing anything. Personally, I would disagree, but action is not determined by the scientific understanding of the problem. However, G+A's critique has nothing to do policy actions - it is solely concerned with what climate science has to say. On that, they are woefully (and I think deliberately) ignorant. - gavin]
“Weather is very difficult to predict; climate involves weather plus all these other components of the climate system, ice, oceans, vegetation, soil etc. Why should we think we can do better with climate prediction than with weather prediction? To me it’s obvious, we can’t!”
It’s one thing for economists with little knowledge of science to make silly claims, but scientists should know better.
The response and mixing times of the atmosphere and the oceans are very different, for starters. This is also true for soils, vegetation and ice sheets. The ‘memory’ of the these components of the climate is far longer than that of the atmosphere.
As one example, look at the ability of large volcanic eruptions to inject a long-lived cooling signal into the oceans. There are a lot of primary literature discussions of this. A good news article on this topic is at Volcanic eruptions cool ocean (Krakatoa’s 50-yr cooling signal)).
At most, a large (stratospheric) volcanic eruption has a strong direct atmospheric effect for only a few years. The ocean signal lasts far longer. That’s one reason why long-term climate is far more predictable than short-term weather.
Take precipitation as another important climate issue. Warming oceans mean more evaporation and more precipitation. Warmer ocean waters also seem to lead to changes in atmospheric circulation which tend to keep moisture out of the continental interiors.
As far as the economic arguments go, there’s a discussion of the Stern report on the economic damages due to global warming in the july 13 2007 science issue (Stern and Nordhaus)
Meanwhile, we have unusually heavy rains and record flooding in Britain, while interior Europe is baking in yet another record heat wave – but both regions are experiencing severe crop losses and large economic damages.
Now you can buy the brand new GIJO computer model! “Garbage In, Jewels-of-wisdom Out”!
Famous University marketing professors G&A did it! Evaluate yourself any solution or proposal with reliable results! It only takes one hour! Beware of the “experts”! All life’s problems are about forecasting the future!
Seriously, the old snake oil peddlers are at it again. The business forecasting problem is different. Major future facts there are truly unknown or indeed unknowable. A new invention, a new competitor strategy, a new fad of customers, a new government regulation, a new war or a major natural disaster. They do not exist yet and are therefore unknowable. Some real world miracles there, revolutionary new ideas emerging from literally nothing. No model can reliably evaluate these impacts. Claims to the contrary are unfounded.
The idea of “unknowns” is being peddled in the physics as well, like the magical disappearance of human-produced carbon dioxide or its effects. In physics, forecasting is possible as the major facts are knowable and for the most part known. Miracles are extremely unlikely.
Comment by Pekka Kostamo — 23 July 2007 @ 10:25 PM
RE 31,
RCP. G&A ask a good question, but their attack on AGW science is fluff. You need to distinguish between AGW science and AGW “politics and economics”.
To be sure the AGW community has not done the best job of conducting open source science, But as Gavin pointed out G&A didnt dig very deep to understand their subject.
They didnt talk to anybody, read only one chapter of the IPCC and to my knowledge never asked for data or methods. You cannot audit without access to the data
and methods.
Now, Gavin has been kind enough to link to a some articles that address the only substantive questions G&A raise, questions about “projection skill”. Further,
I requested above that he give me a pointer to the data. Plots are nice, but data is better. G&A did a lousy audit. In my mind they didnt even look for the data. And Gavin is rightly calling them out.
So, seems only fair to actually ask for the data. His criticsim is spot on. They don’t appear to have read any of the supporting papers. I Just finished one authored by Hansen and asked for the data.
We shall see.
Comment by steven mosher — 23 July 2007 @ 10:26 PM
RE 23.
Thanks gavin. I wont bug you anymore. you can delete
my previous if you like.
Comment by steven mosher — 23 July 2007 @ 10:27 PM
I enjoyed your send-up of their methodology. I read their paper and wrote a piece about the “Climate Bet” and their paper about a month ago. Although I’m no scientist, I reached about the same conclusions that you did: the forecasting audit “instrument” operates (certainly in their application of it to the IPCC chapter) almost laughably as a device to hide their desired conclusions behind numbers; the guys are desperate for publicity; their thesis can be reduced to the assertion that no prediction is valid unless first run through their omniscient Prediction Validator(tm) software.
My piece also contains a certain amount of needlessly snotty commentary about Armstrong’s relentless self-promotion and an old paper he wrote called “Bafflegab.” I think the juvenile Climate Bet stunt just ticked me off. I mean, come on, a live counter on their website????
RE # 29: I don’t think they have a clear ideological axe to grind. I think they are mainly interested in promoting scientific principles in forecasting and – as luck would have it! – their own work along the way. If there is an underlying “bias” it might be that Armstrong has long promoted a skeptical view of expert consensus. He argues that expert consensus often is a better indication of laziness or groupthink than of accuracy. He spends several entertaining paragraphs in the paper providing examples of big embarrassing expert faux pas of the past. He has authored several papers wherein he propounds the thesis that naive predictors are equal to or superior than experts at predicting the results of complex phenomenon. Given this work, it seems likely that the frequently-cited consensus on global warming made him feel the area was ripe for his own special brand of debunking.
The egos and ignorance of the vast majority of economists knows no bounds, not content with making absurd predictions that our great grandchildren will be ten times better off than we are, so why do anything about global warming when they’ll be able to fix it before breakfast, and when the have carefully worked out that saving the planet in 2100 is not worth the present discounted cost of doing so, the same economists, about who it was said, according to one of the few economists that I ever cared a whit about, Kenneth Galbraith, “The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable”, and who seem to find no contradiction between an infinitely expanding economy and a finitely constrained planet, now they have to dabble in spheres in which they have absolutely no expertise and rubbish the conclusion of thousands of experts who have. Just contrast Gavin’s reasoned reponse to Aaron’s chiding that his models can’t help us make considered economic decisions “Economic decisions are rightly within the realm of politics. One could agree with every word in IPCC WG1 and still not think it worth doing anything. “, the scientist’s understanding of his own expertise, with the arrogance of such as Green and Armstrong and so many others of his profession. It’s bad enough that the whole world suffers under the delusional society that modern economists have helped us construct, to think that our science is going to be tainted with the same nonsense is appalling! (By the way, I have this thing about economists!)
“in a recent review of progress he notes: “the diffusion of useful forecasting methods has been disappointing”, and that “forecasting meets resistance from academics and practitioners”.”
But they were able to forecast that this would be the case, right? Or were their forecasts of how well the take-up would be a little awry?
[[A pity you chose to pen a petulant, silly and smug response to their paper. Real scientists interested in putting forward a lasting scientific contribution would have reviewed this paper carefully and responded appropriately.]]
Right, and the place to get such feedback is in a peer-reviewed science journal. But they didn’t submit their work to such a journal. Are you wondering why not?
[[ These authors are serious heavyweights in their field. ]]
They are not serious heavyweights in climatology, which is the field they need to be serious heavyweights in if they’re going to critique climate models. The fact that they are serious heavyweights in their OWN field means nothing. William Shockley was a serious heavyweight in solid state physics, but his opinion on race and IQ was still worthless because he was talking out of his field.
[[They have a legitimate role to play to improve forecasts such as used in the IPCC paper.]]
No, they do not. They have made no effort to understand what they’re critiquing, as Gavin’s review showed.
[[ They have opened the paper up for discussion, so why not be serious about it.]]
Because they themselves are not being serious about it. If they want to “open it up for discussion,” they can submit it to a peer-reviewed climatology journal like the Journal of Geophysical Research, Geophys. Res. Letters, Journal of Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, or for that matter, Science or Nature. Opening it up for discussion by random amateurs on the internet won’t result in any improvement in the paper at all, and they know it. But you’re too gullible to see through what they’re doing.
[[ One can only conclude that you haven’t got the guts or the science behind you to respond in proper scientific terms to their paper.]]
One can only conclude you haven’t got [edit] the discipline behind you to learn a little bit about the science involved yourself so you can see why the G&A paper is a load of crap.
Gore should take the bet. Easy money, that naive model is a random walk predictor, and it is easy to see that local temperatures are not random walk (closer to white, actually).
UC from “signals.auditblogs.com” — that’s bad advice. I’d guess you know better since you seem to be a self-appointed auditor?
If you do believe what you’re saying, you haven’t read James Annan, who explains what’s wrong in simple clear language. A lot of us are waiting to see if the marketing prof ever answers the challenge issued weeks ago by Annan. But so far, nothing.
I would guess the marketing principle involved here is “there’s no such thing as bad publicity.”
I see more of the “if your not a climatologist, then you cannot speak about climatology” mind set is still good and well. Though you attacked the individuals I fail to see where you attacked their work. Armstrong is one of the leading experts in forecasting and has been for years. He points out where the IPCC is not following the established guidelines for forecasting that were established well be fore the IPCC came into existence. You say he does not understand climatology and how perfect the models are, but, if I read the IPCC report correctly, all he is doing is pointing out how the IPCC is making forecasts and not following the accepted guidelines.
From what I have read, nothing has be presented to show that the forecasting guidelines are wrong. The fact that climate models are constantly changing would indicate that one the major points they raise;
Complex models (those involving nonlinearities and interactions) harm accuracy because their errors multiply. Ascher (1978), refers to the Club of Rome’s 1972 forecasts where, unaware of the research on forecasting, the developers proudly proclaimed, “in our model about 100,000 relationships are stored in the computer. Complex models also tend to fit random variations in historical data well, with the consequence that they forecast poorly and provide misleading conclusions about the uncertainty of the outcome. Finally, when complex models are developed there are many opportunities for errors and the complexity means the errors are difficult to find. Craig, Gadgil, and Koomey (2002) came to similar conclusions in their review of long-term energy forecasts for the US made between 1950 and 1980.
You have also failed to show where another major point is wrong, namely:
Agreement among experts is weakly related to accuracy. This is especially true when the experts communicate with one another and when they work together to solve problems, as is the case with the IPCC process.
I do not see them making claims about the science but about the forecasts. Please point out where the they are wrong about what they are experts in, forcasting methodology.
Is forecasting a skill that can be separated from what is being forecast? I don’t think so. Do these “established guidelines” apply to forcasting, say, eclipses of the sun? No, astronomical forecasts involve involve nonlinearities and interactions. Astronomers agree on how to forecast eclipses, so they are not to be trusted!
And Vernon, why are you willing to accept economists as authority figures but not accept climatologists?
Comment by Tim McDermott — 24 July 2007 @ 11:07 AM
re: 43. We see more of the “complete failure to understand the significance and importance of scientific peer review within the realm of climate science” anti-science mind set is alive and well. There is an excuse for not understanding the scientific method (which the science of global warming and climate modeling follows). There is, however, very little excuse for the failure to try to learn about it especially since it has been explained many times here. The idea that laymen know more than literally thousands of climate researchers throughout the world whose work has been rigorously peer-reviewed and every major atmospheric science society is the height of (purposeful?) arrogance. If the idea that laymen know more than the peer-reviewed science is truly beleived, do not go to a doctor the next time you become ill as they follow peer-reviewed science for evaluating and providing treatment as well; go to perhaps a lawyer or a baseball player. Surely the later two occupations know more about treating an illness than a trained doctor. ;-)
Re # 43 “Agreement among experts is weakly related to accuracy. This is especially true when the experts communicate with one another and when they work together to solve problems, as is the case with the IPCC process.”
And where is the evidence to support this assertion that you find so compelling?
Once again, in addition to other errors, the G&A team avoid the theoretical basis for CO2 warming. They hide behind a pure empiricism (AFAICT, not having time to read it all, frankly) typical of AGW skeptics.
BTW, where is the best place to find the actual calculation of direct CO2 effect, in calories per m^2, and then temperature change, from the CO2 and other GH gases?
Vernon, the problem is that the problems you have quoted are all potential ones, and a scan through the “paper” shows that the authors have not seriously linked any problems to the actual IPPC forecasts. Using Google scholar is not enough. Comments by non-climatologists that are wrong, such as Carter:
“the slope and magnitude of temperature trends inferred from time-series data depend upon the choice of data end points. Drawing trend lines through highly variable, cyclic temperature data or proxy data is therefore a dubious exercise. Accurate direct measurements of tropospheric global average temperature have only been available since 1979, and they show no evidence for greenhouse warming. Surface thermometer data, though flawed, also show temperature stasis since 1998.”
are given prominence. Nobody but a mathematical iiliterate would claim that temperature shows stasis since 1998, and the Troposphere is actually warming.
Thus, this “paper” is a hatchet job.
Gene Hawkridge #7: I have an intuitive sense from my own experience that you are right, but even that things have already changed more than we’re told. I remember it snowing a lot more here in SE VA in the 60s, as a boy. I hear also from others, things have changed more over the last few decades than a degrees average. What’s up with that?
PS, I hope some of you got to look at the infamous WSJ “Laffer Curve” drawn around corporate tax data, whereas the collection really went mostly up with increasing tax rates up to a point.
The very first paragraph, 2nd sentence, of the abstract of the G + A paper is by itself quite revealing:
“In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Working Group One…issued its updated, Fourth Assessment Report, forecasts. The Report was commissioned at great cost in order to provide policy recommendations to governments.”
From the IPCC’s “Principles Governing IPCC Work” website (http://www.ipcc.ch/about/princ.pdf) is the following official statement of the IPCC’s role:
“2. The role of the IPCC is to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation. IPCC reports should be neutral with respect to policy, although they may need to deal objectively with scientific, technical and socio-economic factors relevant to the application of particular policies.”
The IPCC DOES NOT MAKE POLICY. G + A don’t even understand this fundamental point. And as mentioned several times above, they’re not climate scientists, meteorologists, physicists, mathematicians, or chemists. How in the world can they expect to be taken in any way seriously?
Gavin, the supporting data for the plots is half there. The plot selection allows you to pick a time period for the ModelE runs and specify a window for the moving average. So, for example, I select 1880-2003 with a 12 month window and the data table gives me the year ( in decimal months so 1895.085 for example) and the 12 Moving average of ANOMALY ( reference 1951-1980) recorded every month.
Thats nice, but the GISS observation data comes in a yearly average form ( same reference period) I’ll sort out how to align the two data sets, but it would be nice if you guys would make absolute C available. This would allow for alternative smoothing approaches, and easier comparision with CRU, for example, who use a 1961-90 period.. is that right?
Anyway, thanks for the pointer and consider my friendly suggestion about make absolute C (in addition to anomaly) available.
Since the data table contains data in a decimal form ( like 1880.917) I’m wondering how time gets intgrated in the model ( just curious, I know there are probably varying time steps for various components) Actually there is a substantive reason for asking. When you calculate a Tmean for a period of time. lets say a day.
Do you actually calculate a TMAX and TMIN? for each day?
When you figure a Tmean for every day do your specify a Time of Observation?
[Response: In the model, Tmean is a true Tmean - i.e. the average of every temperature taken at 30 min intervals ( which is the main physics timestep). You should be able to get just the annual mean from the 12 month running mean if you want - just pick the values from the mid-point of each year. Alternatively, don't average at all (i.e. 1 month running mean), and create your own annual average. - gavin]
By the way, I recall seeing somewhere, on one of Dr. Anderson’s pages, his mention of a response he received — he’d submitted a comment on the draft IPCC report, recommending they adopt his approach. They explained to him that they were not doing weather forecasts, if I recall correctly. It’s probably in the archive of comments somewhere.
RE 54: Well, I could be wrong, but I do not think so, but there is no difference in what a weather forecasting model is doing and what a climate forecasting model is doing. If some one could cite where a GCM has not been updated, modified, etc. and the models of just a few years ago matched the ones now, I would like to see it. If anyone could show that the models done in the 80s got the global climate of today right, please point me to it. The models are huge and incorporate what the modeler believes is the correct assumptions that reflect the complex chaotic system that is climate.
I fail to see the difference, one is used to guess what the micro climate is going to be and the other is used to guess what the macro climate is going to be. No matter how you word it, forecasting is being done. Even though the IPCC said they were not doing forecasting, that is not what it says in the IPCC report.
These do not claim to experts on climate models or climate, just on forecasting. They have peer reviewed standing in the science of forecasting and they say that how it is being applied by the IPCC is wrong.
So why not quit bashing them as individuals and show why the forecasting guide lines do not apply to the IPCC in forecasting the future climate?
[Response: Weather forecasts take today's situation and calculate how it will evolve over the next few days. They are initial value problems. Climate models do not assimilate current data but instead produce changes in climate as a function of changing boundary conditions, and thus are a boundary value problem - that is not the same as a forecast (which would require an estimate of the 'weather' component as well as the climate component). If you know anything about differential equations, you know those are fundamentally different kinds of problems. If you want models from the 80's showing results for today, read about Hansen's projections. Finally, try reading what I wrote, I never said their principles didn't apply - I said they were mostly commonsensical - and my critique was based on their inadequate knowledge when applying their checklist, not the checklist itself. As I challenged a previous commenter, if you want more details, pick any 10 of the principles they marked IPCC down for and I'll show you why the got it wrong. - gavin]
Thanks Gavin, On the Tmean issue. In some of the actual observation data I have looked at there appears to be a difference ( I would not call it systematic, since I only viewed a couple of sites )
Between the TAve and Tmean. from a physics perspective I suppose one would choose Tave. From the historical reality of observation stations we have Tmean.
So, in GISSTEMP, [the observation record] you report Tmean ( (tmax+tmin)/2))
and in the Model you report Tave — with a integration step of 30 min.
Was anybody curious in the least bit about how ModelE
Tmean would compare against Historical Tmean? Not a issue.
My sense is you are primarly concerned with a trend metric, so that differences between Tmean and Tave
are immaterial since you are concerned with trend?
Correct?
#42, No I haven’t, could you please provide a link?
My suggestion was just to find a better linear predictor than the ‘naive model’ (should be easy, as local temperatures are clearly not random walk… ). Maybe they would not qualify it as “currently
available fully disclosed climate model”, but that’s when you hire
the lawyers ;)
It may be possible to affect the weather/climate by producing/controlling “vertical” winds as stated in the article “Taming Tornadoes to Power Cities, pbublishd in the Toronto Star on July 21. (article by Tyler Hamilton, Energy Reporter).
“If people accept it, the potential is unlimited. He says down the road, hundreds of vortex engines could be located in the ocean along the equator, where the warm tropical water would provide an endless source of energy.”
Why would anyone do such a thing?
“To cool the planet, Michaud says. Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are what prevent the sun’s heat from radiating back into space, he explains. A series of controlled tornados along the equator would carry that heat to the outer edges of the atmosphere, where it could more easily escape.”
In other words, Michaud believes man-made tornados could function as exhaust systems for the planet, a massive air conditioner that could help manage global warming.
“There’s simply too much at stake to ignore this potential, he says.” more at http://www.vortexengine.ca
it is clear that both you and G&A don’t really understand at all the difference between the typical forecasting methods used in economics and those of physics-based modeling as used for climate change predictions.
The type of forecasting that G&A seem to know how to do is a pure exercise in curve fitting using mathematical models that have very little connection with the underlying mechanisms that are responsible for the behavior of the system being modeled. In a pretty arrogant way, they think that because they are experts on that particular type of forecasting they know anything about how climate models are built. They probably think that climate models are just a bunch of equations that climate scientists took out of their hat in a whim and then fitted to past climate records to try to “forecast” future climates. Dead wrong!!!!
The models used to predict future climates are all physics-based, and are thus fundamentally different from forecasting models used in economics. So G&A have a lot of studying to do before they can say anything remotely intelligent about climate modeling. Most of their claims about climate modeling reveal such deep ignorance of the subject that they are pretty funny.
It’s as if a gardener, who digs small holes in a yard to plant
flowers, were to feel such an expert in Digging that he could knowledgeably criticize the way civil engineers dug the Panama Canal.
Comment by Rafael Gomez-Sjoberg — 24 July 2007 @ 6:23 PM
Is it not clear that one cannot forecast the future state of a system without knowing (at the very least) something about the system?
If the future state of an economic system is to be forecast and I know nothing about economics how am I to weigh the relative importance of the input variables? In fact how can I even reliably choose the input variables?
How do I know if a dependent variable reacts in a linear, nonlinear or chaotic fashion in response to a change in an independent variable?
If I build a linear statistical prediction model and the dependent variables respond in a highly non-linear way to a change in the predictor variables of what value is my statistical model? The situation is even more critical in physical prediction models.
Even more unsettling in the face of lack of knowledge of the system that is to be predicted is how do we know if we are merely dealing with correlations when we should be dealing with causation?
Credible forecasting requires an indepth knowledge of technique AND system dynamics.
Rafael Gomez-Sjoberg (#59) in his final paragraph touches on a point that plagues forecasting in the atmospheric sciences – SCALE.
I am assuming we have all heard of the “butterfly effect”. Can a butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon Basin really affect the weather in the mid latitudes?
Of course the answer is no because the forces operating at that scale determine that the turbulent effects of the butterfly wings will not be of global consequence.
Just like the expert gardener in Rafael Gomez-Sjoberg’s post may know what is best for the small scale garden and the civil engineer may know what is best for the large scale dig, techniques that work at the small scale may not have any influence at the large scale while large scale excavation could very well obliterate any and all efforts in the small scale garden.
How does the small scale interact with the large scale (temporal and/or spatial)? Is the interaction linear or non-linear, chaotic, random or deterministic? Is there a continuous cascade of mass and energy from the large scale through the intermediate scales to the smallest? Do the smaller scales enhance the larger through feedbacks?
No matter how good one is at forecasting methodology if knowledge of the system that is being predicted is lacking forecast skill is likely to be null. fail Why? Because the questions posed here cannot be answered reliably.
Comment by Steve Horstmeyer — 24 July 2007 @ 8:02 PM
I have never seen any of the posters here say non-climate scientists could not speak about climate. I have seen them indicate that people who completely disrespect and ignore decades to a century of work by the vast majority OF climate scientists are a priori fishy. I would say climate scientists, even the ones in the far end of the Bell Curve either way on acceptance of AGW and its dangers, have something in common – they all know the history of climate research, and have a day to day experience of reading the literature with a purpose. Of what’s been a pitfall, of what’s been fairly solid.
Comment by Marion Delgado — 24 July 2007 @ 8:26 PM
#re 29
Sarcastic? Yes. Irrelevant? Hardly!
Sure Gavin has chose a ‘cute’ way to format his response to G&A, but unwrap his comments from the “principles” and the “scores,” and you will see that each of the points made are serious (with the exception of the last which is merely cynical) and go to the heart of the errors G&A make. Of course their methodology is a soft target and so laughable that arguably it should not be dignified with a reply. But if a reply is made, surely sarcasm is the only appropriate tone to adopt.
“One can only conclude that you haven’t got the guts or the science behind you to respond in proper scientific terms to their paper.”
Paper? What paper?
Scientific terms?
Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!
Oh, geez, this is opening up unexplored heights of the ludicrous. It is unfortunate that Gavin and the good folks at RC actually had to respond to such a load of dung, because their not doing so would have been exploited by the denialists as “haha! they can’t reply to that!”
But seriously, this thread should not go much on further, it just gives legitimacy to the “paper” that wasn’t one, and the trolls feeding off of it!
Sometimes, I wish that the reality based crowd would have the same means of engaging in large scale mind manipulation as the, well, what could be the appropriate word? Other people? I’m not sure; as a non native english speaker, I’m out of words to describe nonsense and its promoters.
However, wouldn’t it be funny if a campaign of the same magnitude could be waged against all the very real flaws and failures of economic theories and “marketing” (quotations marks because I’m not sure what the word means any more), or even say, “Political “science? (oh, that would be so precious!!).
Working in health care gives me the opportunity to see how much more solid the science behind climatology is than much of what is accepted practice in medicine, and yet all those throwing stupid, lawyer-like rethoric at climate science wouldn’t think twice about taking FDA aproved drugs. All I can say to the denialists is that, every day that goes by, their “camp” (that is really what they made themselves into) looks more and more pathetic to me, regardless how much they can sway public opinion.
It is now to the point where it really undermines the process of understanding climate. Any new idea or study has to “belong” to a political side, while its only focus should be better understanding of reality. What a shame.
Comment by Philippe Chantreau — 24 July 2007 @ 9:40 PM
The models used to predict future climates are all physics-based, and are thus fundamentally different from forecasting models used in economics. So G&A have a lot of studying to do before they can say anything remotely intelligent about climate modeling. Most of their claims about climate modeling reveal such deep ignorance of the subject that they are pretty funny.
This is really part of the beauty of climate models – and at an abstract level, one of the most fundamental principles of climate modeling itself. It argues from general principles, typically fundamental principles of physics – although not strictly – as when the responses of organisms are incorporated into the models. It doesn’t allow the arbitrary element of curve-fitting. Such an approach would have little grounds for regarding its conclusions as applying to anything outside of what the curve was based on – and given the complexity of what we are dealing with, it would quickly evolve into a Rube Goldberg device which no one could understand the basis for – but which we would adopt merely like superstitious rats which are randomly rewarded – dancing about in the belief that some increasingly complex set of motions determines whether or not they get the reward.
But since climate models are based upon our scientific understanding of the world, we have every reason to believe that the more detailed the analysis, the more factors we take into account, the better the models will do at forecasting the behavior of climate systems. Since it is based upon our scientific understanding of the world, it is not some sort of black box. If we see that the predictions are not matching up, we can investigate the phenomena more closely, whether it is in terms of fluid dynamics, spectral analysis, chemistry or what have you and see what we are leaving out.
This would seem to be the only rational approach that climatologists can take, and if this general approach did not work, this would seem to imply that natural science is a failed project, that its success up until this point has simply been some sort of illusion, and that the world simply doesn’t make sense.
*
Anyway, I am as sick as a dog, a very, very sick dog. Not the kind that is feeling reasonably well. Going back to bed.
Comment by Timothy Chase — 24 July 2007 @ 10:24 PM
Modeling in the physical sciences vs forecasting in economics are as different as night and day. For example, in the physical realm, neural nets are capable in many, not all, settings of “learning” complex relationships between casually-related physical variables and “forecasting” the behavior of some derived statistic based on evolving inputs. In economics, the causally-related economic variables are unobservable – only derived statistics can be measured. When techniques like nets are applied directly to these derived measures, the results are very unsatisfactory because in economics the relations between various derived measures are in fact quite unstable. Any solution will probably be worse than a random walk could do. That is why economists have to set the bar very low and take a very dim view of what can be achieved. In fact, as an example of the inherent instability of the relations, it is true that in economics consensus can often be a bad sign, because it means that a lot of people have made their bet in the same direction – the opposite may very well occur soon. Economic systems are, at the margin, predominately mediated through human behavior, but the human actors are also standing off to the side and watching what the system is doing, which then affects their behavior, and so on adfinitum.
What seems more worrying here is the lack of understanding that some other scientists and scientific disciplines seem to have of climate change. We all know that the media will report on any contrarian stance on climate change and hence is this why some scientists are trying the contrarian viewpoint ?
OK so climate change is a political science crossing economics, politics and energy physics and energy policy and locking horns with the wealthiest companies in the world but all the same from whgat is being reported here you would suggest that its the scientific silly season.
[[BTW, where is the best place to find the actual calculation of direct CO2 effect, in calories per m^2, and then temperature change, from the CO2 and other GH gases?]]
Neil,
In the composition range from about 1 ppm to 1400 ppm, radiative forcing by CO2 in watts per square meter can be found with this equation:
RF = 5.35 ln (C / C0)
where C is concentration, C0 reference concentration (usually taken as the preindustrial 280 parts per million by volume), and ln is the natural logarithm operator. For a doubling of CO2, this yields a change in radiative forcing of 3.7 watts per square meter, and given a climate sensitivity of 0.75 degrees K. per watt per square meter, this results in about 2.8 degrees K. temperature increase at Earth’s surface. This includes all the feedbacks.
Source for the equation:
Myhre, G., E.J. Highwood, K. Shine and F. Stordal, 1998. “New estimates of radiative forcing due to well mixed greenhouse gases.” Geophysical Research Letters 25(14), 2715-2718.
[[Working in health care gives me the opportunity to see how much more solid the science behind climatology is than much of what is accepted practice in medicine, and yet all those throwing stupid, lawyer-like rethoric at climate science wouldn’t think twice about taking FDA aproved drugs. ]]
I see your point. But to some extent, I find that people who accept one pseudoscience will often accept others as well. I have run into AGW deniers who think Venus is hot because it was molten a few thousand years ago and is still cooling down (i.e., Velikovsky freaks). Others deny AGW and insist that tobacco smoke doesn’t cause cancer. The antiscience attitude often carries over into several issues.
“In practice, the GCMs failed to predict recent global average temperatures as accurately as simple curve-fitting approaches (Carter 2007, pp. 64 – 65). They also forecast greater warming at higher altitudes in the tropics when the opposite has been the case (p. 64)…”
Now, the Carter paper referenced claims that simple curve fit models, such as that in Loehle’s paper, is to be believed, writing:
“As an alternative to the deterministic GCM approach, there exist several other types of computer model of empirical nature. Such models use analysis of a portion of the climate record to establish the pattern of past temperature change and then project this pattern into the future…”
Bob Carter pointed to Loehle’s paper in his testimony before congress last year. Trouble is, Loehle’s analysis is deeply flawed, having violated a basic requirement of time series analysis called the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem.
I pointed this out in a Letter to the Editor of EM, which they published. Here’s the reference:
Comments on “Climate change: detection and attribution of trends from
long-term geologic data” by C. Loehle [Ecological Modelling 171 (4)
(2004), 433–450]
Carter also used the wrong data when claiming that the troposphere is not warming. In both his 2007 paper and his congressional testimony, he presented a plot of Christy & Spencer’s MSU analysis for channel 2, the so-called “Mid-Mroposphere” product (called TMT). It’s long been clear that this product includes some of the well known cooling trend from the stratosphere, thus the TMT has an incorrect cooling trend. The C & S “Lower Troposphere” analysis introduced in 1992 (called TLT) was intended to address this problem. That Carter has relied on these outdated and misleading data further proves that he is not interested in the truth.
That Carter has relied on these outdated and misleading data further proves that he is not interested in the truth.
I used to think it would be so refreshing to run into a prominent creationist who was still honest. I finally gave up. At this point I am finding the same to be true of the leading AGW skeptics. As far as I can see, there are none left.
Comment by Timothy Chase — 25 July 2007 @ 10:06 AM
re: 40. And sadly, yet another “drive-by” poster (21) apparently has slithered back into their abode without acknowledging that they learned anything about the science, the scientific process or being able to admit that they could possibly be wrong. It seems no apparent effort was made or intended to learn. :-(
No way, Rod, there is no peer-review study indcating any health benefit from doing so.
Plus, I don’t have time, I’m disseminating info to all the species that have shifted their ranges because they read erroneous information based on flawed temperature data from bad surface stations. Those butterflies really have no critical thinking skills. It’s going to be harder to convince the ice that it can start freezing earlier and thawing later again, but not nearly as hard as to convince the tropopause to come back to its normal level. We’re also working at elucidating who the tropopause got its communist propaganda from.
Cheers.
Comment by Philippe Chantreau — 25 July 2007 @ 12:36 PM
Re modeling vs forecasting: Maybe a concrete example of the difference would be useful. Take astronomy. If you happen to be an ancient Babylonian or Mayan, you can keep detailed records of astronomical occurences for hundreds of years, and apply forecasting techniques to predict everything from the seasons to eclipses to the apparent motion of the planets through the sky. Or if you happen to be Issac Newton, you can come up with a model of the physics.
Now you can use either the forecasting or the model to predict future events, and as long as you’re dealing with things you have a record of, you would probably get similar accuracy. But suppose something unexpected happens: say a comet appears, or you make a telescope and discover the moons of Jupiter. Forecasting tells you nothing about this, while if you have the model, you can plug in new facts and immediately get useful predictions.
Seems to me that’s why forecasting just isn’t equipped to deal with something like global warming. G&A remarked that one should avoid non-linearities in forecasting, but with GW the non-linearity is in the physics.
#72- Timothy, I’ve tried to avoid comparing global warming deniers to Creationists, but really it is the only proper comparison. However, apart from the cheerleaders, I suspect most normal peoples attitutde is like that of the majority of ID supporters- they accept it without much questioning, because it fits with their presuppositions.
Mind you, it gets so bad these days that I had to point an apparently otherwise intelligent and well educated person to talkorigins. They thought Darwinism didn’t make any predictions, and seemed to be basing their equivocation between ID and evolution on half remembered schoolboy science from 30 years ago. Fortunately they seemed interested in actually learning why they were wrong.
#72- Timothy, I’ve tried to avoid comparing global warming deniers to Creationists, but really it is the only proper comparison. However, apart from the cheerleaders, I suspect most normal peoples attitutde is like that of the majority of ID supporters- they accept it without much questioning, because it fits with their presuppositions.
Well, I think there is a real spectrum, but when it comes to prominent advocates, I believe that honesty becomes a real issue. They have to have at least some familiarity with the science – or think that it is completely irrelevant. In either case… I think the same is necessarily true of the creationists who get involved in online debate – there is probably a short period in which they could turn either way. But given the debate they have constant exposure to more and more than they must disregard.
Odd, too, as this is something which they are presumably doing in the name of morality. Nothing corrupts the foundation of an individual’s moral being like systematic dishonesty. Except perhaps an us vs. them view of the world, but I believe that is largely implicit in creationism, given our scientific knowledge. It involves a rejection of modernity and implies alienation from the modern world. And how completely unnecessary this is, but that is a topic for another time and another place.
Odd, too, as this is something which they are presumably doing in the name of morality. Nothing corrupts the foundation of an individual’s moral being like systematic dishonesty.
Thus the proliferation of websites pointing out this dishonesty. This site included and at the forefront. Other sites have proliferated that look at the rhetorical tactics used.
Interdisciplinary teams are necessary for input into models on possible future social and economic choices, such as a ‘business as usual’ scenario where we use carbon at the current rate, or a future where people switch to alternative energy sources that burn less CO2. Also economists and social scientists should be part of the team that makes conclusions and recommendations to the decision makers.
However,economists,social scientists,and political scientists have no more credentials to critique the physics and climatology of the models than climate scientists have to critique the economics of social choices and human behavior, that might ignore, mitigate or stabilize climate change. We’re all free to express ourselves in fields outside our own, but that’s all that it is, an opinion, not a scientific conclusion.
Comment by Lawrence Brown — 25 July 2007 @ 4:57 PM
I would suggest Prof Armstrong expands his (imo rather snide) seer-sucker principle to cover when marketing and economics bods decide to comment on the realm of climatology.
#79- testimony from several people who were creationists or ID friendly to begin with, was that they started turning against it all partly because or mainly bceause they realised that their leaders were feeding them lies.
So it is with this- many people will keep their heads in the sand, but we can win people over by piling on the data and arguments, such that the lies become clear.
Perhaps the problem with a lot of the economic analysis of climate change is that economists are not required to learn much basic science – such as the First Law of Thermodynamics, for example.
It does seem that an economist can use the results of real scientific analysis to judge the problem, but for any honest economist the IPCC reports should be the primary source of information.
Furthermore, very few economists have discussed the economic difference between a renewable energy-based economy and a fossil fuel-based economy.
Economic predictions that aren’t based on good science have little value. Really, economic education needs some serious changes. Some people have tried to do this with “physical economic theory”.
Economists have a notoriously poor record when it comes to forecasting future trends, so why should anyone take an economist’s unscientific critique of climate science forecasting efforts seriously? How many ‘economic forecasts’ have turned out to have any value whatsoever?
What’s funny is, economists know that if you print a whole lot of paper money and put it into circulation, the prices on everything change.
They know the change from say the steam engine to the diesel locomotive completely changed the costs and prices of the rail industry.
They know what the cotton gin or the combine did to farm prices.
They know if you make a permanent change to a highway system, or an electrical transmission system, or a shipping port, the numbers change. They would never assume things would just go on the same when something they know matters changes.
re – a bunch: Not being one to let any mine go unstepped on… This veiled guilt by association (with creationists) and declaring that one who disagrees with another’s solidly held belief, convincing without question to them, dishonest is the same gibberish as those who want to prosecute skeptics for crimes against humanity. Frankly not very becoming.
Hey! Another mine! There is considerable evidence for intelligent design of the Universe, or at least some omnipotent entity having some say and engineering of the process. I differentiate this from “creationism” as defined by fundamentalist, especially those who insist on a (silly) strict interpretation of the Bible, despite St. Augustine’s caution against doing just that. Plus I don’t accept how the Creationists have also co-opted the term “intelligent design” (or creative design), so I use the term in its pure meaning.
Timothy, you might try Francis Collins. There was an interesting article last November in, I think, Time of a discussion between Collins and Richard Dawkins. Or try Fred Hoyle. Or Einstein. Or a whole potful of, I trust, non-liars! Let’s don’t string them up quite yet….
Since I’m way off topic, Hoyle had an interesting and credible theory of the Universe that is orthogonal to the “Big Bang”.
#89: Clearly, forcasting the 2000 tech crash and far future weather are very different challenges; Economics are driven by intelligent agents enjoying information imbalance, while weather in the year 2050 is caused largely by chaotic events like the beating of butterfly wings in Brazil. We understand chaos theory much better than the stock market, the latter being mostly mob psychology punctuated by random acts of greed. So why shouldn’t we be able to predict far future weather and not so near future market movements? Butterflies are just stupid bugs, no challenge there.
Ha. That was fun. Let’s see if they quote me in the NYT.
Go to Lubos Motl’s site and ask that same exact question. See if you don’t see a pattern emerging.
Comment by Marion Delgado — 26 July 2007 @ 2:31 AM
Economics is highly problematic because most of frameworks, neoclassical being predominant, do not readily allow for modelling of systems far from equilibrium. Physics also has its problems though. For example, the basic orders implied in relativity and in quantum theory are qualitatively in complete contradiction. Relativity requires strict continuity, strict causality and strict locality in the order of the movement of the particles and fields. In esssence quantum mechanics implies the opposite. What they have in common though is actually a quality of unbroken wholeness, as has been described by Bohm, for example.
It is perhaps unbroken wholeness, familiar in ecology, that needs to be addressed by economics, particularly with respect to ‘economics’ emergent through climate change. For example, one of the areas that is worthy of attention is the nature of a world economy under conditions of sea level rise of 5 metres, a BAU scenario for say 2100. By evaluating sea level impacts on multiplicities of nodes in diverse global supply chains it is possible to identify mechanisms of breakage, and, as importantly, permanancies of breakage (or relaxation times). Physical economics can say a great deal about that, although it has to be said that the formalisms used (Hamilton-Jacobi formalisms, catastrophe theory, far-from-equilibrium systems methods, organisational ecology, etc) are challenging on account of their application in such new areas. But in many respects, there is little difference with physics, partly because many of the tools being used to evaluate these scenarios are ported directly from physics, but also because there are no text books with the answers in the back.
As far as G&A are concerned, the tools thay use do have uses and it seems that one of the areas that might be addressed is the use of neural networks to detect patterns of behaviour from paleoclimatic records of sea level rises. Would it be possible to discern potential patterns of micro meltwater pulses (constituing a 5 m sea level rise to 2100) from such historical records? That would be useful in terms of risk profile evaluation for coastal infrastructure.
#86- The ID website Uncommon descent, day to day running in the hands of one Dave Scott, had a good old bash at global warming a few months ago. Needless to say they were wrong on every count. Credulity on one thing seems to me to be loosely correlated with credulity on lots of other things, but that sounds like a good study for someone to do, if they havn’t already done it.
Re #90 [There is considerable evidence for intelligent design of the Universe, or at least some omnipotent entity having some say and engineering of the process.]
Omnipotent entity? Complete klutz, I’d say, judging by the results!
Seriously, Rod, I think you’re making Timothy’s point for him.
[Response: That's all fine, but no more ID/evolution discussions - go to PZ for that... - gavin]
Thanks for the head’s up, Gavin. I work professionally in the foresight business, and I *do* run in to climate skeptics quite often. When you go at them with evidence and some RealClimate-inspired counterarguments, they usually conclude that you know more than they do and back off. Individually, that is. They don’t usually change their slide deck for the next presentation, which makes me wonder where their head is at.
I find it rather shameful that the forecasting business is too much informed by econometrics – as dubious a “science” as I’ve ever heard – and not enough by rigorous sciences with solid predictions of the future. Astronomy and demography are quite good, really. I think that the shake-up that climate modelling is inspiring in the forecasting and foresight fields is a positive thing. We _need_ forecasting methods that work like the climate field does, modelling impacts for future events based on available evidence and science-based projection. We’ll be seeing a lot more initiatives like this in the 21th century, with varying degrees of success.
For example, take a look at G+A’s methodology tree (at http://www.forecastingprinciples.com/methodologytree.html ), the closest thing they have to “derive a model, test it, and use it predict outcomes” is “rule-based forecasting”, which appears to derive from “Univariate statistics” and “Intentions/expectations”. You might think that the “causal models” box comes closer to what we do in science, but you can see that it only applies to “linear” systems. Looking at the mouse-over box, “Causal models aided by the use of econometrics has been found to improve accuracy. The use of system dynamics has not.” Somebody better phone up the guys at Science and Nature and tell them to go find real jobs… you can’t forecast with science. You shouldn’t be able to publish in econometrics until you’ve passed a general science class. They wouldn’t write such rubbish otherwise.
Comment by Steffen Christensen — 26 July 2007 @ 7:52 AM
Re 85: Guthrie says:
“So it is with this- many people will keep their heads in the sand, but we can win people over by piling on the data and arguments, such that the lies become clear.”
I wish it were so, but some people will never be convinced. About a dozen years ago, then Pres. Bill Clinton said that the “science is in”. I believed it then and I believe it now. The debate should have been over a decade or more ago. But there will always be diehards.
The late biologist Steven Jay Gould, speaking about about another topic (the belief in the supposed ‘fallacy’ of Darwinism), said,in an interview shown on TV, that there were millions of scientists in the world and you’d never get them all to agree, at least on that particular subject. There will continue to be a minority of contrarians. The same thing is taking place on anthropenegic global warming. Trying to get some of the diehards to agree to this, is like King Kanute trying to persuade the tide to reverse direction.
Comment by Lawrence Brown — 26 July 2007 @ 9:52 AM
Thank you Real Climate for this valuable, much needed website!
Speaking of climate projections near or over the edge, James Hansen’s latest paper on “Climate change and trace gases” argues that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is very sensitive to climate forcing and is unlikely to remain intact through the century. This implies, of course, that sea level rise this century will likely be very much faster and greater than predicted in IPCC4. I hope that Real Climate will devote some time to discussing the strengths and weakenesses of this important paper. Perhaps a conversation with James Hansen and Stefan Rahmstorf could be arranged?
Hansen’s paper appeared in Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 365:1925, 2007, and is pubically available via the Royal Society website.
Comment by S. David Stoney — 26 July 2007 @ 10:04 AM
Hey! Another mine! There is considerable evidence for intelligent design of the Universe, or at least some omnipotent entity having some say and engineering of the process. I differentiate this from “creationism” as defined by fundamentalist, especially those who insist on a (silly) strict interpretation of the Bible, despite St. Augustine’s caution against doing just that.
Not wanting to get into any sort of disagreement with anyone on this topic, let me just say that I believe you misunderstood me. I like Augustine and it is the opposite view that I was criticizing.
Anyway, if you would like, write me:
“timothy chase @ g ma il. com”
(No spaces) – and I believe I might have something you would like. (Or perhaps not – but I still might like to get your reaction.)
Comment by Timothy Chase — 26 July 2007 @ 10:05 AM
Well, I fail to see the difference between weather forecasting modeling and climate forecasting modeling. Both use physics and high mathematics take current information and project future events. Now Gavin said
Weather forecasts take today’s situation and calculate how it will evolve over the next few days. They are initial value problems. Climate models do not assimilate current data but instead produce changes in climate as a function of changing boundary conditions, and thus are a boundary value problem – that is not the same as a forecast (which would require an estimate of the ‘weather’ component as well as the climate component).
However, the climate model takes the current conditions and the physics and adjusted the non-physics based assumptions on a best fit for past records. If there were no assumptions, then I would agree that this is just a model of the physical and there is no questions… put in x, get out y. The problem with your argument is that there are underlining assumptions in the GCM models which are based on the best guess of the underlying reality. Since there is less than complete understanding of all aspects of climate change, then the models have to guess how some of the aspects work, according to the IPCC. This means that the GCM models are doing forecasts. A&G specialize in forecasting, so their taking the IPCC to task for using GCMs for forecasting and not following the forecasting guidelines seems more than reasonable to me.
[Response: Wrong. The parameterisations that you allude to have nothing to do with improving the fit for past records. For instance, new physics is being added in to convection schemes to allow for lofting of ice particles by convective updrafts. The observations to evaluate this are drawn from field campaigns and satellite observations. The impact of the new physics on how well the models match up to the 20th Century trend is at the point unknown and the decision to incorporate the new physics has nothing to do with that. This is a fundamental difference between statistical modelling and physical modelling which neither you, nor A+G yet appear to grasp. - gavin]
I am curious about a critique of a document pertaining to physics and CO2. Abstract:
The atmospheric greenhouse effect, an idea that authors trace back to the traditional works of Fourier 1824, Tyndall 1861 and Arrhenius 1896 and is still supported in global climatology essentially describes a fictitious mechanism in which a planetary atmosphere acts as a heat pump driven by an environment that is radiatively interacting with but radiatively equilibrated to the atmospheric system. According to the second law of thermodynamics such a planetary machine can never exist. Nevertheless, in almost all texts of global climatology and in a widespread secondary literature it is taken for granted that such mechanism is real and stands on a firm scientific foundation. In this paper the popular conjecture is analyzed and the underlying physical principles are clarified. By showing that (a) there are no common physical laws between the warming phenomenon in glass houses and the fictitious atmospheric greenhouse effects, (b) there are no calculations to determine an average surface temperature of a planet, (c) the frequently mentioned difference of 33 C is a meaningless number calculated wrongly, (d) the formulas of cavity radiation are used inappropriately, (e) the assumption of a radiative balance is unphysical, (f) thermal conductivity and friction must not be set to zero, the atmospheric greenhouse conjecture is falsified.
Rod B wrote: “There is considerable evidence for intelligent design of the Universe, or at least some omnipotent entity having some say and engineering of the process.”
It is self-evident that “intelligence” exists in the universe, instantiated in the form of intelligent entities, the paradigmatic example being human beings, along with non-human animals whose intelligence is similar enough to our own that we are able to recognize it as “intelligence”.
I would argue that there is plenty of evidence that intelligence is pervasive in the universe. It is not at all clear what the role of intelligence in the evolution of the universe is. For example, the overall process of biological evolution might be regarded as an “intelligent” process, through which life adapts to changing conditions by “trying stuff out” (mutation), retaining the stuff that works and discarding what doesn’t work (natural selection). Of course all of this begs the question of exactly what we mean by “intelligence” anyway.
[edit for off topic]
[Response: ID is OT. Take it elsewhere. - gavin]
Comment by SecularAnimist — 26 July 2007 @ 11:39 AM
Gavin, so your saying that the models have no assumptions built into them? That they exist and when compared to past records they were correct to begin with and that none of the assumptions have been changed?
Also I want to understand you correctly..
The impact of the new physics on how well the models match up to the 20th Century trend is at the point unknown and the decision to incorporate the new physics has nothing to do with that.
So your going to change your model and whether it actually forecasts the past correctly or represents the current climate does not matter because it will give valid predictions of the future?
If your model does not predict the past correctly, does not predict the 20th century correctly, then how do you know it predicts the future correctly? Basically, your model puts assumptions in for water (clouds), sulphates, black carbon, orgianic carbon, biomass burning, mineral dust, aviation, land use, solar all which per the IPCC are at the low to the very low level of scientific understanding. If your putting swag into your model, then it is not purely based on scientific understanding and is a forecasting tool.
Both weather and climate models take what information we have and based on grid, make predictions of the future. If the understanding of all the aspects of climate were actually scientifically understood, then maybe we would not be having these discussions. Since your model is making a forecast the same way a weather model is, then A&G’s assessment of the IPCC making forecast is equally valid.
[Response: ????? Of course the models have assumptions built in to them. They are precisely a quantitative exploration of what all our assumptions amount to. But - and this is the key point - we don't alter the assumptions to improve the match to past behaviour. Instead, we alter them based on current observations of important physics and processess. It's the difference between 'in sample' calibration and 'out of sample' testing. We will change the model to better reflect known physics, and from past experience, improving the detail of the physics also improves the match to climatology and past climate change. The latter is a consequence of the former, but the former is not driven by the latter. In any case, the models already do a pretty good job for past climates, mainly because they are driven to a large extent by the forcings (which are not part of the model). Those forcing functions are the best we can find and are largely independent of the model development process.
Finally, climate model projections are only good for a portion of what might happen in the future - the portion that is driven by changes in the forcings. They cannot project the specific path the weather may take and do not take into account the current weather state. Thus they are not the same as weather models. - gavin]
Has anyone thought of using Baysian statistical forecasting methods as an adjunct for indenpendent analysis of future climate change (GW) probabailities of possible GW events and timings?
I understand that this method was used reasonably successfully in finding a lost hydrogen bomb off Spain in 1966 and the lost Scorpion submarine as well as having other successes.
There are so many GW data sets out there and long-term research, that I wonder if this method might be useful?
Comment by Richard Ordway — 26 July 2007 @ 12:18 PM
Here’s some apparently new physics that may change some climate models:
Re # 102 ICECAP website and its alleged refutation of the role of CO2 in global warming
I haven’t read the article in question, but a quick scan of the site’s mission statement (http://icecap.us/index.php/go/about-us) and its FAQ page (http://icecap.us/index.php/go/faqs-and-myths#4 ), esp. its conclusions about how global warming will affect plants and animals, leads me to be very skeptical of any conclusions drawn. I’m not overly impressed with the credentials of ICECAP’s contributors, either. On the positive side, it isn’t denying the reality of global warming.
Do you know of any weather forecasting models that factor in assumptions about sulphates, black carbon, organic carbon, biomass burning, mineral dust, aviation, land use, and insolation? I doubt it. Do you know of any weather forecasting models that can be used to predict the weather, say, ten years from now. I doubt that, too. As a number of the posts above have explained, weather and climate models are fundamentally different tools.
It appears that you are being deliberately obtuse, a condition that just reduces your credibility. Nor will it win many converts to your position.
Well, as far as I know, the models haven’t taken into account reduced co2 uptake in plants due to heat and drought stress as of yet. We know that it will occur, and recently a study came out which suggests that we may have been hitting it the past few years. But the conclusions were tentative. Then there is the twilight zone of clouds which we discovered I believe within the past year (which I believe will be easy to incorporate), the reduced co2 uptake of the Southern Ocean, the increase in poleward flow due to hurricanes, which becomes more important the more intense they become, etc. But all of this pales, I believe, in comparison with the nonlinear behavior of ice.
Incidently, I don’t about the twighlight zone, but all of these additional unaccounted for effects are effects working against us – and as such the models are being conservative in their estimates of how bad things will get and overestimating the time that it will take to get there – assuming its steady-ahead.
PS Reminds me of a time when I was in the Navy on board the USS Jason. Manuevers. We were given several warnings to adjust course by the USS Williamette – to no avail. We had fire in one of the enginerooms for five hours — and much of the crew was afraid that the front end of the ship would fall off before we made it back to port.
NOTE: Look at the sidebar for links to the supplemental online material — you can see that without a paid subscription. Often much of that is very helpful in understanding the article.
[[The atmospheric greenhouse effect, an idea that authors trace back to the traditional works of Fourier 1824, Tyndall 1861 and Arrhenius 1896 and is still supported in global climatology essentially describes a fictitious mechanism in which a planetary atmosphere acts as a heat pump driven by an environment that is radiatively interacting with but radiatively equilibrated to the atmospheric system. According to the second law of thermodynamics such a planetary machine can never exist. Nevertheless, in almost all texts of global climatology and in a widespread secondary literature it is taken for granted that such mechanism is real and stands on a firm scientific foundation. In this paper the popular conjecture is analyzed and the underlying physical principles are clarified. By showing that (a) there are no common physical laws between the warming phenomenon in glass houses and the fictitious atmospheric greenhouse effects, (b) there are no calculations to determine an average surface temperature of a planet, (c) the frequently mentioned difference of 33 C is a meaningless number calculated wrongly, (d) the formulas of cavity radiation are used inappropriately, (e) the assumption of a radiative balance is unphysical, (f) thermal conductivity and friction must not be set to zero, the atmospheric greenhouse conjecture is falsified.]]
Where to start? This guy is wrong in so many ways it’s difficult to know where to begin.
First of all, every atmosphere physicist in the world is aware that most of the atmosphere is not in radiative equilibrium. You can approximate the stratosphere that way, but of course in the troposphere conduction, convection and evaporation of seawater are important thermal transfer mechanisms. The greenhouse effect is often illustrated in introductory textbooks with a radiative equilibrium model because it shows the essentials without going into incredible complexity…
Re #102: Michael T — Down a bit on the sidebar is a link to the AIP dicovery of Global Warming pages. WHile it is all quite good, in this case I suggest you read the page entitled “The Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Effect” to counter the rubbish in the abstract you quote.
Comment by David B. Benson — 26 July 2007 @ 5:33 PM
Re # 108
The website itself (and its possible ‘inclination’) appears irrelevant as long as the article is submitted by two German physicists, Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf D. Tscheuschner.
At the end of their ‘acknowledgement’ they state (p. 94):
“The authors express their hope that in the schools around the world the fundamentals of physics will be taught correctly and not by using award-winning “Al Gore” movies shocking every straight physicist by confusing absorption/emission with reflection, by confusing the tropopause with the ionosphere, and by confusing microwaves with shortwaves.”
[Response: I agree, the website's inclination is immaterial (though indicative), but the paper falls simply because it lousy physics. The planetary albedo is apparently a mystery to the authors, as is the ratio of Earth's disc to it's surface area, and they take exception to energy balance diagrams 'because they do not fit in the Feynman diagrams in quantum field theory". This is bunkum of a high order. - gavin]
Comment by Hans Henrik Hansen — 26 July 2007 @ 5:36 PM
Okay, continuing with the nut case manifesto. I’ll requote the six points at the end and give them special attention.
[[(a) there are no common physical laws between the warming phenomenon in glass houses and the fictitious atmospheric greenhouse effects,]]
Duh. They’ve pretty much known it was a bad analogy for over a century. But because “the greenhouse effect” is a bad name for it in no way proves that the effect doesn’t exist.
[[ (b) there are no calculations to determine an average surface temperature of a planet, ]]
Wonder how they did it, then? The original poster doesn’t know much about elementary physics. A temperature can be defined for any material object, and the Earth is certainly a material object. I’d say if you take a large sample of the point temperatures all over that surface, correcting for any relative-area bias, you come as close to the average temperature as you need to come. The figures I’ve seen are 287 K for Hadley and 288 K for the US standard atmosphere.
[[(c) the frequently mentioned difference of 33 C is a meaningless number calculated wrongly, ]]
It’s the difference between the surface temperature (288 K) and the equilibrium emission temperature (255 K). The figure is derived by the mathematical technique called “subtraction.” And the figure is certainly meaningful; it’s a rough indication of the magnitude of the greenhouse effect on a given planet with minimal geothermal sources. 505 K for Venus, 33 K for Earth, 4 K for Mars. That pretty much gives the relative strengths of their respective greenhouse effects.
[[(d) the formulas of cavity radiation are used inappropriately,]]
You mean actual radiation by gases is in lines and isn’t gray? Does this guy honestly think climatologists don’t know that you can’t apply the blackbody Stefan-Boltzmann law to all objects? Again, you can apply it and be accurate enough in a demonstration of how the greenhouse effect works. Nobody is claiming that that’s the whole story. In short, this point is a straw man argument.
[[(e) the assumption of a radiative balance is unphysical, ]]
At the top of the atmosphere it damn well is physical, unless this guy knows some other source and sink of terrestrial energy which roughly match one another. N-rays, perhaps?
[[(f) thermal conductivity and friction must not be set to zero,]]
Nor are they in a serious model, but for a simple model to illustrate how the greenhouse effect works, you can ignore them. The average radiative flux received by Earth’s surface is about 170 watts per square meter from Solar energy and 324 watts per square meter from the atmosphere. Conduction and convection between them amount to about 24 watts per square meter. So you’ll get roughly the right answer even if you ignore conduction and convection.
Does this guy really think “friction” is a serious term in Earth’s thermal energy budget? Does he think the atmosphere lags the surface in rotation time or something? Didn’t Galileo figure this one out?
[[the atmospheric greenhouse conjecture is falsified.]]
Over at http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1827, Steve McIntyre says “The only policy that I’ve advocated is one of full, true and complete disclosure of all aspects of climate calculations used in policy arguments. If properly constructed data sets support AGW, so be it“. He then asks “for an article or text that provides…the best articulation of the underlying physics by which increased CO2 leads to approx 2.5 deg C warming. … I don’t want an article that merely reports GCM output.” and says “My interest is in understanding the very best expositions of AGW theory on their own merits, rather than alternative explanations.”
Gavin, can you point him to a resource that sets out the underlying physics by which increased CO2 leads to approx 2.5 deg C warming without recourse to a GCM? If you cannot then I don’t know who can. What have you got to loose?
As an interested but non-technical observer, it has long frustrated me that intelligent, well intentioned professionals on either side of the AGW “debate” snipe at each other across the front lines on the assumption that the people on the other side MUST be unintelligent or not well intentioned. The result is typically more noise but no resolution.
RE 109: Well, I am not an expert but per wikipedia:
The global climate models used for climate projections are very similar in structure to (and often share computer code with) numerical models for weather prediction but are nonetheless logically distinct[.]
The only real difference is the scale of the grids and the time period. Oh and many weather forecasting models do not model the oceans. The fact is that weather forecasting models and climate models are related. The principle difference is the grid size and the time period. Both have significant aspects that are not know and a ‘best guess’ is used and even though Gavin say not, to get the best guess, I would suspect that the both models were run against past or future data to see if the ‘guessed’ attributes are close.
If you took the climate model and reduced the grid size and ran it for a week period, I would be surprised that you would not get a result for each grid that could not be used for a weather forecast.
Re#102, 112 (ICECAP writeup about refuting the greenhouse “conjecture”)
I just took a quick look at this “refutation” for the fun of it. At least it looks like the authors know how to use LaTeX properly. The writeup reads like those wacky attempts by amateur pseudo-physicists to “prove” that Einstein’s theory of relativity is wrong by playing around with equations that they don’t fully understand. I actually heard in the radio some time ago about some random guy that, without any formal training in physics, quit his job (and asked his wife to support him) so that he can spend a year refining his anti-relativity “theory”. Suffice to say that the guy doesn’t even understand the basic concepts of momentum and energy. He says that the few physicists he has talked to (one or two very patient university professors), and who have tried to explain why he’s wrong, are just a bunch of snobs that hide behind lots of “unnecessarily complicated math.” And the rest of physicists that refuse to waste time looking at his “theory” are affraid of the truth. Sounds familiar?
In their greenhouse refutation, the german guys go so far as to have a whole section on Magnetohydrodynamics as the main “physical foundation of climate science”, including citations to some books on astrophysics!!!! Maybe they are talking about the climate on the surface of the Sun.
The german authors of this writeup should invite the relativity dude to spend his sabatical year with them. I’m sure the three compadres, their minds lubricated by copious amounts of Bavarian beer, will come up with some grand-unification theory. Beware physicists and climate scientists!!! You might end up without a job when these dudes are done with their scientific revolution.
Comment by Rafael Gomez-Sjoberg — 26 July 2007 @ 6:25 PM
… and they take exception to energy balance diagrams “because they do not fit in the Feynman diagrams in quantum field theory”. This is bunkum of a high order.
Huh.
I may have to check it out: this sounds histerical…
[Does this guy really think “friction” is a serious term in Earth’s thermal energy budget? Does he think the atmosphere lags the surface...]
No, no, no. Sheesh, don’t you guys understand basic planetary physics? Haven’t you ever seen a terrestrial globe, with the rod going through the poles for the planet to rotate on? The friction comes from the axle of the planet.
(Apologies to Terry Pratchett, for the axle idea :-))
No matter how much explaining Gavin does, there is a VERY widespread (almost universal in laymen) belief in the denialist camp that GCMs are statistical models, built from and adjusted for the observed temperatures (hence the recent assault on surface stations!). Let them believe it, it shows the quality of their effort to comprehend the big picture. As for the other German dudes rethinking the all atmospheric physics idea, let us salute the restraint of the RC team whence the qualificative of “crackpot” does not fly as liberally as in, say, Lubos’ blog.
Comment by Philippe Chantreau — 26 July 2007 @ 8:07 PM
Rd: #102, etc and #116
Take a look at the list of “experts” at icecap.us:
The list includes almost all of the people that one would label “denialists”. There’s Singer, Michaels, Balinuas, the Idsos, Spencer, Balling, Carter, Sharp, Legates, Jaworowski, Hoyt, De Freitas, both Grays, etc. And, lots of TV weathermen too. That web site might be called the “Not Real Climate” site because of it’s inclusion of many people who have received funding from corporate sources that have an interest in continued burning of fossil fuels. Some have done good science in their day but no longer seem interested in actually doing science, only spreading their own special disinformation as it suites them.
The article in question is just another in a long series of articles which can be shown to be seriously flawed. But, each one is picked up by the media as proof that there’s no Global Warming, thus, the average person is left with the impression that there is still some debate or, worse, that there’s no problem. In the court of science, they lose, but in the political world, they may win.
Gavin mention albedo, and since the Germans introduced the crackpot wacko, I’ve been curious about this for months and think of it every time I see albedo:
What would be the potential impact of requiring worldwide that all new vehicles and new structure/replacement roofing and siding be white? That would roll up to fairly large surface area. Too small to be worthwhile?
You can have any color you want, as long as it reflects infrared. The former head of California’s Air Resources Board was just fired for, among other things, having decided to call for:
“‘cool paint’ for cars. By blending in special pigments, car paint of any color can be made to reflect much of the sun’s heat energy. That will keep the vehicle’s interior cooler and reduce the demand on the air conditioner — which in turn improves fuel efficiency…” http://republican.sen.ca.gov/opeds/99/oped3944.asp http://www.ceitoday.com/ceih.shtml
It’d probably do the same thing for building temperatures. So you needn’t insist on “white” paint to accomplish this.
“…Earth and the atmosphere as a whole maintain an albedo that hovers around 29 percent.
“Ramanathan notes that if Earth’s albedo were to increase only three percent, the resulting climate change would throw the planet into an ice age. A three-percent decrease would create a severe heating effect comparable to that caused by a sixfold increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide, far greater than anything projected by today’s climate models.
“Global warming and global dimming both have the potential to alter Earth’s prevailing albedo through complex climate feedbacks. Ramanathan suggests there is evidence that they already have. ….” http://scrippsnews.ucsd.edu/Releases/?releaseID=761
[[What would be the potential impact of requiring worldwide that all new vehicles and new structure/replacement roofing and siding be white? That would roll up to fairly large surface area. Too small to be worthwhile?]]
Urban areas only cover about 2% of the Earth’s land surface, which in turn covers 29.2% of the world’s surface area. And albedo affects surface temperature in a relation dependent on the one-fourth power of the product. So while this would have noticeable effects locally, it would not alter the mean global temperature very much.
#120 The list includes almost all of the people that one would label “denialists”.
I noticed that the Rt.Hon Christopher Lord Monckton makes an appearance on icecrapdotcom too. I heard him advertising his new board game on the radio this morning. He’s offering a £2 million prize for solving it, “from my threadbare aristocratic pocket” Perhaps threadbare, but evidently not empty.
Is there any downtime on the Goddard Institute supercomputers?
Only about 20% of the albedo is a reflection from the surface. And since all the cars and horizontal roofs make up one-zillionth of the surface, you’ll never see the improvement. Reflective autos have a picayune to zero effect on gas mileage; the California guy was probably fired [edit]
There are impacts beyond global average temperature, namely the indirect climate effect of net decreases in energy consumption. Lower energy usage from light-colored roofs would mean less GHGs emitted.
Interestingly (to me anyway), is that the recent article by Ausubel (that “forgot” to mention that the land available for solar power is readily available today – roofs) raises an interesting conundrum – light-colored roofs raise urban albedo but solar panels on all roofs would lower it; we’d have to plant more trees to raise ET to offset [as I'm a green infrastructure guy, that would mean job security ;o) ].
We need a roof/pavement material that’s selective — one that reflects (or re-emits, in one of the infrared windows) whatever sunshine it can’t turn into electricity.
So it’s not just California, although it is certainly quite relevant here, given that peak electricity usage is Summer afternoons for air conditioning, for which global temperatures are far less relevant than local temperatures. We all know that handling peak electricity usage ends up using the least efficient power plants.
2) Of course, building houses sensibly in the first place helps a lot.
3) About selective materials, I’d really wish for window material that could selectively (presumably under control of wireless sensor nets):
a) be transparent
b) be reflective (or even PV, although that might be too much to ask).
We use reflective window shades on some big windows, which make it cooler in Summer, and warmer in Winter, but it would be nice if one could get the effect to be programmable and automatic.
4) re: Robert Sawyer (head of California Air Resources Board) getting fired out here: I don’t think that had anything to do with paint… although the stories are confusing. His replacement, Mary Nichols, is *highly* respected in environmental circles, has done this job before (under Democratic administration), and is by all accounts very good. This is good, given the peculiar/unique role of the CARB in setting standards in the US.
Your 2) is being addressed with new LEED-ND standards (ND = Neighborhood Design) that are being tested via pilot projects now. My major project will use these standards, once I get the plan approved.
Our new town center is being built to (at least) LEED-Gold, and we (PV Climate Protection Task Force) have recommended mandatory adoption of LEED-H (for new homes), beyond the current strong recommendations/checklists, but this will be under debate for a while, as it is in other nearby towns, to sort out the most practical ways to implement such things, and also, how to work rules into retrofits. Relatively few new houses get built here, but there are several zero-carbon ones in progress right now. http://www.portolavalley.net/building/pdf/bpe_grnbldg_pv.pdf http://www.coolpv.com
This has gotten pretty far away from Green&Armstrong forecasting, although the myriad of small actions required reminds one that there is no single silver bullet. One *can* confidently forecast that buildings last many decades, which makes that part of the infrastructure rather persistent. I.e., it’s yet another issue where one must start early and keep at it for decades.
[[There are impacts beyond global average temperature, namely the indirect climate effect of net decreases in energy consumption. Lower energy usage from light-colored roofs would mean less GHGs emitted. ]]
This general reader continues endlessly grateful for the presence of Real Climate and the heavy load of worked up contributions, as by Gavin in the present case. Alas, it is also a case of casting pearls before swine, as seen in some responses that seem to have been provoked by the shallowest of emotional hooks. I guess it can’t be helped where the system, striving to turn everything into a commodity and pressing hard to reduce the cost of production, dumbs down the population over time and produces a generation of people who think like cartoons.
Lie the Italian guy said in the 16th Century, “still, it does move.” And, you know, they are down to a pretty low class of offering now, that most of us can spot. We still need the sober analysis to be found in this blog, but we are definitely learning how to spot the clowns.
Anyone seen a 2-layer roof that would allow pulling hot air out and venting it away (after heating the hot water supply) during hot weather but also allow switching to pulling it down into or around the living space in cold weather? Seems a shame to throw it away. I could just ask the roofer to put on two roofs with an air gap and some cleanout hatches, but sure wish it were already designed and approved.
But back on topic, a bet’s been offered by Dr. Hansen:
“As an example, let us say that ice sheet melting adds 1 centimetre to sea level for the decade 2005 to 2015, and that this doubles each decade until the West Antarctic ice sheet is largely depleted. This would yield a rise in sea level of more than 5 metres by 2095.
“Of course, I cannot prove that my choice of a 10-year doubling time is accurate but I’d bet $1000 to a doughnut that it provides a far better estimate of the ice sheet’s contribution to sea level rise than a linear response.”
“Frequency Of Atlantic Hurricanes Doubled Over Last Century, Climate Change Suspected
Science Daily — About twice as many Atlantic hurricanes form each year on average than a century ago, according to a new statistical analysis of hurricanes and tropical storms in the north Atlantic. The study concludes that warmer sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and altered wind patterns associated with global climate change are fueling much of the increase.
About the bet.
Is it similar as in me having a forecasting competition vs you for daily temperatures during the year like this:
-my daily temperature model would be re-evaluated once every day. It would expect no change from the previous day (thus tracking real temp with one day lag).
-your model should forecast the daily temperatures for the full year beforehand, no tracking allowed.
If I win the contest, does that mean that the temperature doesn’t change during a year? Of course not. It only tells that there is some slowness in the changes of weather.
Why should we care about every half-wit and his brother who decides to publish his uninformed and unscientific “critique” of the IPCC? I think you folks are wasting your time and unintentionally boosting their legitimacy by responding to everything that jumps.
hello first time post been reading for about 4 months.
after reading gavins article I checked out Armstrong’s “audit”.
unfortunately they didn’t provide the reasons as to why they rated chapter 8 low. The biggest thing that I notice is that other chapters and working groups do meet the missing principle.
The best example I would have is item 1.1″ describe decisions that might be affected by the forecast.” This is discussed in working groups 2 and 3.
below is nine other items that I think should have been rated higher
and why.
1.4 Consider whether the events can be forecasted.
Climate response to volcanic and orbital forcing shows that the climate does respond to forces in a predictable way.
3.3 avoid biased sources of data.
Global temperature estimates goto various lengths to avoid the urban heat island affects and other errors. There are other lines of evidence that the earth is warming like higher sea levels and earlier spring greening.
The line spectra of co2,h20 and other gases are well tested.
4.3 Ensure that information is valid
The Supplementary material for chapter 3 covers temperatures.
There is also discussion of the U.H.I effect in chapter 3.
The radiative properties of green house gases are testable and have been for more than 50 years.
7.3 be conservative in situations of high uncertainty of instability.
The report “ar4″ didn’t include Greenland and antarctic ice flow
in sea level rise because of the lack of consensus. This should be counted as a example of being conservative, maybe overly so, but if they take the heat they should get some credit.
10.9 shrink the forecasts of change if there is high uncertainty for the predictions of the explanatory variable.
Climate sensitivity doesn’t change because it is hard to predict how much co2 will be emitted.
12.5 use trimmed means, medians, or modes.
Both chapters 10 and 11 have charts that compare models and show the mean. Figure 10.5 is a fair example of this.
12.6 use track records to very the weights on component forecasts.
palaeoclimatic data as described in chapter 6 is used for this purpose.
13.32 Conduct explicit cost-benefit analyzes.
That is not the job of wg1 should have reviewed working groups 2 and 3
most of my experience in climatology is reading this blog and most of working group1 of ar4, so there is much I don’t know but I am sure that is and most of the other points are unreasonably harsh.
some points like 13.9 “Provide full disclosure of methods” wouldn’t even be mentionable if links to the source code for model E or GFDL’s models where provided
there are two point’s I don’t get.
13.29(Revised) Tests of statistical significance should not be used.
13.30 Do not use root mean square errors(RMSE) to make comparisons among forecasting methods
thank you for time
[Response: Thanks - That's exactly the feeling I had. The two points at the end are particularly obscure. I tried to follow the references to why they are there but the source papers for these claims are not particularly clear. Having said that, climate model skill scores (Taylor diagrams and the like) are not simple RMSE and they aren't how errors in projections are assessed in any case. I'm pretty sure there are no p-values calculated anywhere for whether a model is 'correct'. - gavin]
Re 102. The linked document is just about the saddest excuse for a scientific paper that I have ever seen–well, maybe with the exception of his previous attempt to disprove the greenhouse effect:
Both papers are a series of attacks on straw men–this guy has no understanding of anything to do with climate, atmospheric physics–and most important he does not know what he doesn’t understand. I particularly like the references to the fact that energy balance diagrams are not Feynmann diagrams and the emphasis on friction. [edit]
re: #145 Ray
It’s August 1, not April 1, but this was a good for a laugh.
My German is rusty, but I knew unglaublichkeiten means something like “unbelievable things”, and when I went to the overview “Uebersicht” link, and immediately noticed:
-the words “Sieg heil”
-above a sketch of a saluting entity with a winged helmet and feet,
- with a prominent SS-lightning-bolt insignia next to it,
- and a title that included “…bevorstehende Rückkehr unseres Messias” (imminent return of our Messiah),
-and a list of topics ,of which the first was:
[UFO-Geheimbasen des Dritten Reiches. i.e., UFO secrets (?) of the Third Reich]
I decided that applying Google Translate would likely not yield productive information.
Re 130 Dano
I thought on that recently “wouldn´t the low albedo of solar install. make UHI effects worse”
it depends:
incoming sunlight = reflected sunlight (albedo) + absorbed and used sunlight + absorbed but not used sunlight
the absorbed and used sunlight causes no additional UHI as long as the Energy is consumed within the city anyway, resulting in waste heat, which causes (a low) part of UHI
the absorbed but unused sunlight may cause additional UHI, so the albedo number alone is misleading here, the interesting number is albedo + efficiency of the installation, if it´s lower than that what the surface albedo would be otherwise then indeed there would be additional UHI effect, if it´s higher it actually decreases UHI,
may be the difference 1-albedo-efficiency is something that designers of solar installs should try to reduce, so there arises no UHI related argument against solar installs within cities
Andree
Comment by Andree Henkel — 1 August 2007 @ 3:55 PM
To John Mashey,
It is often said that that the web is not a reliable source of information.
The link given in #105 is to “icecap”. The above link (”unglaublichkeiten”) looks like a pretty cranky affair (hence UFOs, third reich, etc). The nature of the site suggests that it would be illegal according to German law and it is a dot-com – so why should we believe it is even based in Germany?
The chances are the website has simply latched onto Gerlich’s work for its own reasons. It summarises his work and presents the summary like a formal document of the university. But it is probably nothing of the kind – I don’t want to give credence to anything this website has to say.
The university seems to be a respectable institution. My guess is that a German state funded institution would be unlikely to accmomodate Gerlich if he really were a campaigner for the neo Nazi fringe.
The neo Nazi stuff looks like a distraction. It would be more interesting to see answers to Gerlich’s arguments.
* 19:28 09 August 2007
* NewScientist.com news service
* Jim Giles
Temperature records will be repeatedly shattered over the next few years, say researchers behind the first rigorous look at how global climate will change during the next decade.
The prediction comes from an innovative technique that combines the approaches used by weather forecasters, who typically look a few days ahead, and climate modellers, who produce projections that run up to the end of the century. The result is a model that can project as far as 2015, filling in a long-standing gap in climate predictions….
“This is a very important paper,” says Rong Zhang, an oceanographer at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, New Jersey, who is using similar techniques to study the Atlantic Ocean. “This is just the beginning for this approach.”
Buoys network
The forecast is only possible because better figures are available on the state of the world’s oceans, says Doug Smith, a climate modeller who developed the predictions with colleagues at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Exeter, UK.
A network of automated ocean-going devices, now numbering around 3,000, has been deployed around the planet since 1999. The devices, known as Argo floats, provide updates on ocean temperature and salinity — factors that are critical in determining global climate patterns.
Armed with the Argo results, Smith was able to create a climate model that started with an accurate representation of the world’s oceans. Without access to such data, traditional models had ignored the fine details of current climate. That meant the predictions they produced were only reliable for periods decades in the future, at which point the influence of variations in factors like ocean temperature will have been swamped by more powerful forces, such as greenhouse warming.
Temperature plateau
Smith’s approach seems to be working. Some of the figures published this week come from a trial of the model that was run in 2005. Comparisons with subsequent observations show that the model captured the recent plateau in global temperatures.
Such lulls could be used by climate change sceptics to argue that the world is not warming as predicted and that plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions are unnecessary, says Smith, so it is useful to be able to spot a brief pause in what is expected to be a steady increase. “There would be pressure not to mitigate emissions if we couldn’t predict a flattening,” he says.
I am toying here with some gallows humor about global warming, and invite anyone else to join in with comments and feedBack. A new way to look at climate change, via humor. My blog is called “Gallows Humor for Global Warming”……..harmless stuff.
Comment by danny bee — 23 July 2007 @ 8:31 AM
Gavin, I assume you don’t object to applying some kind of methodology
to forecasting but only to the way the authors have applied to their methodology
to the IPCC forecasts.
Since their web site says the following:
Peer review and independent audits are welcome, and will be posted if the site guidelines are followed. In addition, all peer review must include the authors’ names, positions, emails, and any relationship that might be construed as a source of bias.
You could provide an alternate assessment.
Comment by Jim Cross — 23 July 2007 @ 8:54 AM
This article should be permanently enshrined in the “primary literature” required for close reading by anyone studying to become “a scientist”. It deals with common sense, which, it is said is called “common” because it is so rare!
Comment by Charles Raguse — 23 July 2007 @ 9:15 AM
The paper seemed to rely heavily on citations from the un-refereed publications and non-scientific literature. For example, several stories from the New York Times got mentioned as examples of climatologists predictions. Several non-refereed websites also found their way into the references. The “global cooling” myth got a run as an “expert”, which William Connolley might have something to say about.
Call me crazy, but in my field of meteorology, we would never head to popular literature, much less the figgin internet, in order to evaluate the state of the art in science. You head to the scientific literature first and foremost. Since meteorology and climatology are not that different, I would struggle to see why it would be any different.
The authors also seem to put a large weight on “forecasting principles” developed in different fields. While there may be some valuable advice, and cross-field cooperation is to be encouraged, one should not assume that techniques developed in say, econometrics, port directly into climate science.
The authors also make much of a wild goose chase on google for sites matching their specific phrases, such as “global warming” AND “forecast principles”. I’m not sure what a lack of web sites would prove. They also seem to have skiped most of the literature cited in AR4 ch. 8 on model validation and climatology predictions.
In short, the authors do not seem to understand the actual practice of climatology, or the physical sciences in general. A poorly thought out critque.
Comment by ChrisC — 23 July 2007 @ 9:34 AM
When I see statements like: “Based on our Google searches, those forecasting long-term climate change have no apparent knowledge of evidence-based forecasting methods, so we expect that the same conclusions would apply to the other three necessary parts of the forecasting problem” and I just cringe.
A “Google search” sounds like something I’d see on a second-rate undergraduate research paper; how about using the Science Citation Index for example and show me you’ve really done a thorough lit. review. This is just lazy.
Comment by AlZ — 23 July 2007 @ 10:06 AM
Kesten Green and Scott Armstrong are right about one thing: the IPCC forecast is wrong, beyond any doubt. That is the nature of forecasts for chaotic systems with so much uncertainty in so many of the assumptions that must be made, and lack of complete understanding in how a myriad of factors, known and unknown, will influence outcomes. I stongly suspect that politics has had too much to do with the IPCC forecasts, and that reality will be worse: sea level rise will exceed the forecast, just as it did with the 1995 NOAA study for the “worst case” scenario. No evidence of an accelerating trend? That’s not what my analysis of the data I’ve seen tells me. When Russia, China, and the United States all put pressure on the IPCC to alter its report (to not make things seem as bad as they likely are) I knew we were not going to get a realistic assessment of what’s coming. G&A positing no change being more accurate? It’s wishful thinking, not science.
Comment by Gene Hawkridge — 23 July 2007 @ 10:18 AM
Thanks Gavin,
Some of us climate agnostics found the G&A piece underwhelming. There was a lot of heat from both sides on the differences between forecasts, simulations, and projections. ( Dr. Curry had an odd sense of the necessary and sufficient conditions for forecasthood, for example) A good portion of the discussion ( ok the messy portion) centered on the issue of forecasts versus projections, which seemed a semantical side issue that would advance nothing but engender plenty of food fights. Fun while they last, but not very nourishing.
One thing that came up was the issue of hindcast and the issue of confirming past “forecasts, projections simulations” against the contemporaneous record.
So thanks for the link to the 2007 paper. Unfortunately my subscription doesn’t allow me to get it. This is exactly the kind of paper that would make for a great discussion on the web ( and the ancilliary food fights of course) but unless everyone has access dialogue is kinda thwarted.
Oh well.
Comment by steven mosher — 23 July 2007 @ 10:39 AM
President Bush turns up number 1 in google searches for certain naughty words. That Green and Armstrong’s website turns up number 1 in google searches for “forecasting” is equally significant.
Comment by John E Pearson — 23 July 2007 @ 11:22 AM
It seems to me that much of the failure of the G&A article comes from the fact that they are economists. Economics doesn’t have anything resembling physics or thermodynamics, it only has models. For a long time, they thought the velocity of money was stable. Then it changed. For a long time, the P/E ratio of most stocks stayed in the range of 10 to 20. Then the range changed.
In this kind of world, non-linear models are simply an exercise in curve fitting. So it isn’t surprising that they don’t trust them.
It is also interesting that they use the word “forecast,” which isn’t what I think of scientific models as doing. Scientific modeling is part of the conversation Science has with Nature. Models are an executable representation of the thing being studied. They are (in the age of computers) a way to collect experimental results, and to make predictions. I doubt that G&A understand this. They live in a world where a the “quants” make forecasts of GDP, or the value of a particular secutity two weeks from now.
I find that stupidity is more often the cause of egregious behavior than malice. But in the current AGW politics, it is hard to say.
Comment by Tim McDermott — 23 July 2007 @ 11:24 AM
On principle 3. ‘Be Humble’. They sound like people who think they used to be conceited but now don’t have any faults. Their attack on climate models seems to be based on prejudged notions, and not very much research on the reliability of the models. In addition to the successes that Gavin mentions. Models run from the past have successfully reproduced present day conditions.Also the vertical distribution of the temperature of the atmosphere has been accurately reproduced, as well as the geographic distribution of precipition.
There are enough hits to put good reliance of their projections of possible future outcomes.They want perfection? Get real! Ted Williams,of the Boston Red Sox, the last player to hit 400(meaning he was out 6 times out 10) is considered one of the greatest hitters of all time.
Comment by Lawrence Brown — 23 July 2007 @ 11:44 AM
re: Principle 6. Sadly, it will undoubtedly work. Expect to see G&A’s “To Heck With The Scientific Method Tour” trumpeted and appearing in person on Fox News (?) any day now. :-P
Comment by Dan — 23 July 2007 @ 12:09 PM
Well, they do have the good intentions of making climate modeling every bit as accurate as economics. What I wouldn’t give to have 70 degree highs in summer in Florida…
Comment by Goedel — 23 July 2007 @ 12:14 PM
Gavin,
Thanks again for some of the pointers. I found this:
Climate simulations for 1880-2003 with GISS modelE
The data page is quite nice so Kudos to Hansen et al.
One question. we can use the page to draw plots. Is there a way to access the data behind the plots?
Comment by steven mosher — 23 July 2007 @ 12:40 PM
So the paper hasn’t been submitted to a peer reviewed journal yet and they’re looking for peer review on the internet.
Seems like a good place to start. I Googled “Peer Review”, it seems pretty popular.
Comment by Dave Arthurson — 23 July 2007 @ 12:48 PM
The debunkerati thoroughly misunderstand the essence and nature of climate models. This type of ‘analysis’ is utterly typical of their efforts.
I have long ago concluded that their tactics are simple and, in the short term anyway, probably more effective than any other approach they might take:
1. Discern the uncertainties and unknowns of climate science, and exploit them.
2. Develop pop theories that might be plausibly true today and declare them “alternative” theories, and then go the next step and declare them of equal or greater weight than current MCS understandings.
3. As soon as the ink dries on one alternative theory, quickly come up with another, to keep MCS on defense. If MCS are always responding to the latest Debunkerati “theory”, they never have time to give the public (a) a thorough explanation as to why the alt theory is bogus or at least flawed, and (b) they are keeping debunkerati theories alive by giving them play.
4. Once a debunked debunkerati theory has been out of mind for several months, repackage and re-present it. Keep the cycle going.
As ad hominem as it sounds, we are certainly arriving at a point where it is quite enough to know the source of the ‘theory’ in order to know – KNOW! – that it is bunk.
Comment by Walt Bennett — 23 July 2007 @ 1:07 PM
http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn12318-influence-of-global-warming-seen-in-changing-rains.html
(For those with paid subscriptions, the article is at Nature):
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature06025.html
New Scientist wrote about this:
“… Detecting the effects of climate change on rainfall patterns has proved much more elusive than temperature changes because of the much greater natural variability of precipitation.
“The key was to take results from 92 computer simulations, using 14 different global circulation models, and to compare the average of these with actual rainfall data over wide bands of latitude around the world.
“The results show a clear agreement with the observed trends in global rainfall data over the past century. In fact, although they agree in direction, the observed changes were much stronger than the predictions.
“‘Over the 20th century, we now detect the signal [in rainfall changes] that is predicted by climate models,’ says Francis Zwiers, one of the research team. ‘If you’re able to reproduce the past, you also have greater confidence for predictions of the future.’”
Comment by Hank Roberts — 23 July 2007 @ 1:31 PM
Gavin,
Thank you again for making Real Climate available to me.
The other day my daughter, after listening to me talk about Real Climate, asked me if I thought a worldwide transition to Wind Power would affect weather and climate. I posited a no. I suspect there are local effects but unlike the butterfly in the Amazon, I don’t see a major effect.
Bob
Comment by Bob Sell — 23 July 2007 @ 1:53 PM
Of course there is a (USD) $95.00 paperback for sale on the website link included in this post. (USD $166 if you want a hard back).
A look at the list of authors and reviewers is enlightening. While a smattering are from information sciences or mathematics the majority are from business schools or business related institutions. Psychology is also represented. Unless I missed someone there is no one from the physical sciences as either an author or a reviewer.
Steve Horstmeyer
Comment by Steve Horstmeyer — 23 July 2007 @ 2:25 PM
The first “paper” cited by G & A is titled, “FIRE AND ICE Journalists have warned of climate change for 100 years, but can’t decide weather we face an ice age or warming.” Is the use of “weather” supposed to be a pun? Or is it a misspelling? If the former, it makes no sense grammatically (i.e., to use a noun as a conjunction). If it is the latter, it would be, I suppose, even worse, though consistent with the quality of the actual reference.
Comment by Chuck Booth — 23 July 2007 @ 3:02 PM
Hank #16
This paper seems like nonsense to me. They say in the article that the detection of 20th century rainfall changes seems (seems? Is this a scientific term?) “barely discernible from the noise right now.” They then take results from 92 computer simulations, using 14 different global circulation models, and to compare the average of these with actual rainfall data. How does it make any sense to average these results? How does this represent anything? They then say the results show a clear agreement with the observed trends in global rainfall data over the past century. Clear agreement with the same observed trends that are barely discernable? They then conclude that they demonstrate that the pattern of rainfall around the world is being changed by greenhouse-gas emissions from human activities. Really?
Comment by B Buckner — 23 July 2007 @ 6:36 PM
Gavin,
A pity you chose to pen a petulant, silly and smug response to their paper. Real scientists interested in putting forward a lasting scientific contribution would have reviewed this paper carefully and responded appropriately. These authors are serious heavyweights in their field. They have a legitimate role to play to improve forecasts such as used in the IPCC paper. They have opened the paper up for discussion, so why not be serious about it. One can only conclude that you haven’t got the guts or the science behind you to respond in proper scientific terms to their paper.
Comment by Richard — 23 July 2007 @ 7:03 PM
re: 21. For goodness sake. Assuming you are not just another drive-by poster showing up as if on cue and if you’ve read anything else on this web site, we are talking about climate *science*. Science that has been extensively peer reviewed and followed the scientific method (both are cornerstones to science). So two laymen who are not climate science modelers (G&A) magically know more than literally thousands of expert climate scientists with decades of research and knowledge from around the world. And who magically know something that every major scientific atmospheric science society in the world does not, huh? And you suddenly appear to attack a leading climate science peer-reviewed researcher for “not having the science behind” him? Please! This is the 21st century, not some anti-science Medieval period. And please let everyone know G&A’s climate science peer reviewed credentials. Or one can only conclude that you haven’t “got the guts” (now there’s a scientific phrase…not!) to stand on the hard science of global warming research.
Comment by Dan — 23 July 2007 @ 7:51 PM
re 21. Richard
Gavin is a reasonable fellow. As you have seen I have asked him for access to the data for a recent paper from Goddard, an institution funded by taxpayers. He will produce it, I have no doubt. As for G&A, they really didn’t do all their homework. Even bright folks make mistakes. This is why folks like Gavin will open up to people checking his work. He is bright, but I don’t think he considers himself omniscient.
So, Gavin. Can I get a data dump from the paper mentioned above? I have a big hard disk.
[Response: Data for each figure you make is available at the bottom of the page. For more extensive data, more diagnostics and in a more convenient format are available through the PCMDI data server (see also updates and corrections at http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/modelE/modelE_AR4_issues.html ). - gavin]
Comment by steven mosher — 23 July 2007 @ 7:53 PM
RE 21 (Richard):
The point is that they are not in their field. Reading their CVs shows no expertise in climate.
It is like you looking over the plumber’s shoulder telling him what to do because you saw a show on the HG network and you work in nanotubes (what?!? They’re tubes, right?).
Best,
D
Comment by Dano — 23 July 2007 @ 8:05 PM
B. Buckner wrote: “This paper seems like nonsense”
You aren’t reading the paper. You’re reading an excerpt I took from an article in an entertainment magazine, New Scientist.
You can perhaps read the paper:
(For those with paid subscriptions, the article is at Nature:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature06025.html
Comment by Hank Roberts — 23 July 2007 @ 8:15 PM
This is not the article, this much is available to nonsubscribers; it’s at least amusing to compare this by climate scientists to the marketing department’s article on how to do forecasting.
the first page
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nature06025.html
and the supplemental material
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/extref/nature06025-s1.pdf
Comment by Hank Roberts — 23 July 2007 @ 8:21 PM
Re: #17
By “a worldwide transition to Wind Power,” do you mean, replacing the use of fossil fuels entirely with wind power? While you posit no major effect, I wonder how this could not have a significant effect on climate systems. Has this scenario been modelled?
Comment by James Killen — 23 July 2007 @ 8:23 PM
Regarding Richard’s comment No. 21- If a marketing professor and an economics and business forcaster can critique a climatologist’s field, then turnabout is fair play. Granted Gavin’s ‘rating system’ is done with tongue in cheek and some lampooning,yet the essence of his points are clear. The science of economics and the science of climatology are two very different breeds of cat. Actually I find the assumptions of some economists to be a kind of baffling. There is or was a school of thought that considered 4% of 4.5% employment as ‘full employment’(Unless,I imagine you happen to be an employed economist).
Comment by Lawrence Brown — 23 July 2007 @ 8:27 PM
This was a good post to demonstrate how to judge the reliability of a review paper. Its also a good demonstration on how the science is done out in the field.
I think when people don’t accept climate science some of it is not because they don’t understand the details of the climate science. Its because they don’t understand how science itself works. An effort to show people not just the scientific method but how scientific research is done could be helpful.
Does anyone know anything about Kesten Green and Scott Armstrong’s work? Are they legitimately trying to improve forecasting in regulations? Or are they free-market types who are disingenuously casting doubt on regulation. This issue reminds me of the way the business community pushes cost-benefit analysis to subvert regulation, and it might be that G&A are in the second category.
Comment by Joseph O'Sullivan — 23 July 2007 @ 8:44 PM
So let me see, this ivy league guy writes books and papers and gets recognized, all in the ’80s and ’90s and having nothing to do with climate science. Then, these authors apply the established principles to IPCC forecasting, upon which we’re supposed to be willing to bet our economy in order to save our children.
Then… the authors put their own money and reputation where their mouth is by offering a bet and publicizing it.
The realclimate response is to ridicule them with a sarcastic and irrelevant parody and to pretty much neglect to defend the IPCC against the serious claims in their paper. I was keeping an open mind, but your post convinced me that you see the IPCC’s position as indefensible. If not, I think you would have defended it, or at least tried to.
Your strongest reproach seems to be that they’ve got profit motives (BTW, I think you might have forgotten
to accuse them of being funded by the oil companies ;-).
They’re selling a book you know. Well I suppose everyone’s got a profit motive. If you can’t show me how their profit motive influenced their conclusions, then why bring it up? Again, I’m surmising it’s because it’s the strongest defense that the IPCC has.
According to these authors, the IPCC violated 72 forecasting principles out of 89 which were evaluated. Another 51 couldn’t be evaluated for whatever reason. What does RealClimate say about this? Do you dispute the principles that they claim were violated? Did the authors get it wrong and the IPCC didn’t really violate the principles? I guess maybe I overlooked the informative part of your post where you discussed stuff like that.
If you’ve got something useful and on topic, I sure wish you’d say it. This Real Climate post struck me as being a whole lot of words just to say “la-la-la-la I can’t hear you”.
[Response: Maybe I was being too subtle. The critique is worthless because the authors are not in any position to be able to make fair evaluations of their criteria. They neither bothered to read the more relevant parts of IPCC, nor engage anyone who would have been able to steer them to the appropriate literature. By performing their audit in a state of blissful ignorance, they themselves demonstrate the failing they accuse IPCC of - they used their methodology to give a scientific sheen to their prior prejudices. Clear enough? If you'd like more concrete examples, take any 10 of the principles they think were violated and I'll point out why their scores were wrong. - gavin]
Comment by SCP — 23 July 2007 @ 8:56 PM
In fact, G&A, ask an excellent question, “Are current global climate models good enough to use as the basis for public policy decisions?” Moreover, while G&A did not frame their argument in terms that RC likes, the conclusion that current climate models are not adequate to support public policy is reasonable.
Yes, the models support the concept AGW is real and that we should do something about it. However current models do not suggest how much should invest this week, this month, this year, or this decade, given the realities of economic market places, discounting of future events, and the cost of money.
Consider my home state of California. The models say our water infrastructure will be impacted by AGW. The models say that we can expect real drought. So, we should invest, and build for drought? Maybe not. The models also say that given construction schedules and cycles, by the time we have gotten ready for real drought, our problem may be too much rain. Why spend $80 billion on drought infrastructure if by the time we get it built, we need to spend $80 billion on flood infrastructure? Why not just spend $160 billion now and build for both? Because , this year in California both rain and capital are in short supply.
Gavin’s models do not give us enough information to make these kinds of economic decisions. Sorry.
[Response: I've never suggested that the science of climate change should determine public policy exclusively. Economic decisions are rightly within the realm of politics. One could agree with every word in IPCC WG1 and still not think it worth doing anything. Personally, I would disagree, but action is not determined by the scientific understanding of the problem. However, G+A's critique has nothing to do policy actions - it is solely concerned with what climate science has to say. On that, they are woefully (and I think deliberately) ignorant. - gavin]
Comment by Aaron Lewis — 23 July 2007 @ 9:01 PM
G&A quote Roger Pielke Sr:
“Weather is very difficult to predict; climate involves weather plus all these other components of the climate system, ice, oceans, vegetation, soil etc. Why should we think we can do better with climate prediction than with weather prediction? To me it’s obvious, we can’t!”
It’s one thing for economists with little knowledge of science to make silly claims, but scientists should know better.
The response and mixing times of the atmosphere and the oceans are very different, for starters. This is also true for soils, vegetation and ice sheets. The ‘memory’ of the these components of the climate is far longer than that of the atmosphere.
As one example, look at the ability of large volcanic eruptions to inject a long-lived cooling signal into the oceans. There are a lot of primary literature discussions of this. A good news article on this topic is at Volcanic eruptions cool ocean (Krakatoa’s 50-yr cooling signal)).
At most, a large (stratospheric) volcanic eruption has a strong direct atmospheric effect for only a few years. The ocean signal lasts far longer. That’s one reason why long-term climate is far more predictable than short-term weather.
Take precipitation as another important climate issue. Warming oceans mean more evaporation and more precipitation. Warmer ocean waters also seem to lead to changes in atmospheric circulation which tend to keep moisture out of the continental interiors.
As far as the economic arguments go, there’s a discussion of the Stern report on the economic damages due to global warming in the july 13 2007 science issue (Stern and Nordhaus)
Meanwhile, we have unusually heavy rains and record flooding in Britain, while interior Europe is baking in yet another record heat wave – but both regions are experiencing severe crop losses and large economic damages.
Comment by Ike Solem — 23 July 2007 @ 9:03 PM
Hurrah! The old and obsolete GIGO is dead!
Now you can buy the brand new GIJO computer model! “Garbage In, Jewels-of-wisdom Out”!
Famous University marketing professors G&A did it! Evaluate yourself any solution or proposal with reliable results! It only takes one hour! Beware of the “experts”! All life’s problems are about forecasting the future!
Seriously, the old snake oil peddlers are at it again. The business forecasting problem is different. Major future facts there are truly unknown or indeed unknowable. A new invention, a new competitor strategy, a new fad of customers, a new government regulation, a new war or a major natural disaster. They do not exist yet and are therefore unknowable. Some real world miracles there, revolutionary new ideas emerging from literally nothing. No model can reliably evaluate these impacts. Claims to the contrary are unfounded.
The idea of “unknowns” is being peddled in the physics as well, like the magical disappearance of human-produced carbon dioxide or its effects. In physics, forecasting is possible as the major facts are knowable and for the most part known. Miracles are extremely unlikely.
Comment by Pekka Kostamo — 23 July 2007 @ 10:25 PM
RE 31,
RCP. G&A ask a good question, but their attack on AGW science is fluff. You need to distinguish between AGW science and AGW “politics and economics”.
To be sure the AGW community has not done the best job of conducting open source science, But as Gavin pointed out G&A didnt dig very deep to understand their subject.
They didnt talk to anybody, read only one chapter of the IPCC and to my knowledge never asked for data or methods. You cannot audit without access to the data
and methods.
Now, Gavin has been kind enough to link to a some articles that address the only substantive questions G&A raise, questions about “projection skill”. Further,
I requested above that he give me a pointer to the data. Plots are nice, but data is better. G&A did a lousy audit. In my mind they didnt even look for the data. And Gavin is rightly calling them out.
So, seems only fair to actually ask for the data. His criticsim is spot on. They don’t appear to have read any of the supporting papers. I Just finished one authored by Hansen and asked for the data.
We shall see.
Comment by steven mosher — 23 July 2007 @ 10:26 PM
RE 23.
Thanks gavin. I wont bug you anymore. you can delete
my previous if you like.
Comment by steven mosher — 23 July 2007 @ 10:27 PM
I enjoyed your send-up of their methodology. I read their paper and wrote a piece about the “Climate Bet” and their paper about a month ago. Although I’m no scientist, I reached about the same conclusions that you did: the forecasting audit “instrument” operates (certainly in their application of it to the IPCC chapter) almost laughably as a device to hide their desired conclusions behind numbers; the guys are desperate for publicity; their thesis can be reduced to the assertion that no prediction is valid unless first run through their omniscient Prediction Validator(tm) software.
My piece also contains a certain amount of needlessly snotty commentary about Armstrong’s relentless self-promotion and an old paper he wrote called “Bafflegab.” I think the juvenile Climate Bet stunt just ticked me off. I mean, come on, a live counter on their website????
Comment by MoZ — 23 July 2007 @ 10:33 PM
RE # 29: I don’t think they have a clear ideological axe to grind. I think they are mainly interested in promoting scientific principles in forecasting and – as luck would have it! – their own work along the way. If there is an underlying “bias” it might be that Armstrong has long promoted a skeptical view of expert consensus. He argues that expert consensus often is a better indication of laziness or groupthink than of accuracy. He spends several entertaining paragraphs in the paper providing examples of big embarrassing expert faux pas of the past. He has authored several papers wherein he propounds the thesis that naive predictors are equal to or superior than experts at predicting the results of complex phenomenon. Given this work, it seems likely that the frequently-cited consensus on global warming made him feel the area was ripe for his own special brand of debunking.
Comment by MoZ — 23 July 2007 @ 11:15 PM
The egos and ignorance of the vast majority of economists knows no bounds, not content with making absurd predictions that our great grandchildren will be ten times better off than we are, so why do anything about global warming when they’ll be able to fix it before breakfast, and when the have carefully worked out that saving the planet in 2100 is not worth the present discounted cost of doing so, the same economists, about who it was said, according to one of the few economists that I ever cared a whit about, Kenneth Galbraith, “The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable”, and who seem to find no contradiction between an infinitely expanding economy and a finitely constrained planet, now they have to dabble in spheres in which they have absolutely no expertise and rubbish the conclusion of thousands of experts who have. Just contrast Gavin’s reasoned reponse to Aaron’s chiding that his models can’t help us make considered economic decisions “Economic decisions are rightly within the realm of politics. One could agree with every word in IPCC WG1 and still not think it worth doing anything. “, the scientist’s understanding of his own expertise, with the arrogance of such as Green and Armstrong and so many others of his profession. It’s bad enough that the whole world suffers under the delusional society that modern economists have helped us construct, to think that our science is going to be tainted with the same nonsense is appalling! (By the way, I have this thing about economists!)
Comment by John Monro — 24 July 2007 @ 12:06 AM
“in a recent review of progress he notes: “the diffusion of useful forecasting methods has been disappointing”, and that “forecasting meets resistance from academics and practitioners”.”
But they were able to forecast that this would be the case, right? Or were their forecasts of how well the take-up would be a little awry?
Comment by Adam — 24 July 2007 @ 4:31 AM
[[A pity you chose to pen a petulant, silly and smug response to their paper. Real scientists interested in putting forward a lasting scientific contribution would have reviewed this paper carefully and responded appropriately.]]
Right, and the place to get such feedback is in a peer-reviewed science journal. But they didn’t submit their work to such a journal. Are you wondering why not?
[[ These authors are serious heavyweights in their field. ]]
They are not serious heavyweights in climatology, which is the field they need to be serious heavyweights in if they’re going to critique climate models. The fact that they are serious heavyweights in their OWN field means nothing. William Shockley was a serious heavyweight in solid state physics, but his opinion on race and IQ was still worthless because he was talking out of his field.
[[They have a legitimate role to play to improve forecasts such as used in the IPCC paper.]]
No, they do not. They have made no effort to understand what they’re critiquing, as Gavin’s review showed.
[[ They have opened the paper up for discussion, so why not be serious about it.]]
Because they themselves are not being serious about it. If they want to “open it up for discussion,” they can submit it to a peer-reviewed climatology journal like the Journal of Geophysical Research, Geophys. Res. Letters, Journal of Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, or for that matter, Science or Nature. Opening it up for discussion by random amateurs on the internet won’t result in any improvement in the paper at all, and they know it. But you’re too gullible to see through what they’re doing.
[[ One can only conclude that you haven’t got the guts or the science behind you to respond in proper scientific terms to their paper.]]
One can only conclude you haven’t got [edit] the discipline behind you to learn a little bit about the science involved yourself so you can see why the G&A paper is a load of crap.
Comment by Barton Paul Levenson — 24 July 2007 @ 6:49 AM
Gore should take the bet. Easy money, that naive model is a random walk predictor, and it is easy to see that local temperatures are not random walk (closer to white, actually).
Comment by UC — 24 July 2007 @ 8:40 AM
UC from “signals.auditblogs.com” — that’s bad advice. I’d guess you know better since you seem to be a self-appointed auditor?
If you do believe what you’re saying, you haven’t read James Annan, who explains what’s wrong in simple clear language. A lot of us are waiting to see if the marketing prof ever answers the challenge issued weeks ago by Annan. But so far, nothing.
I would guess the marketing principle involved here is “there’s no such thing as bad publicity.”
Comment by Hank Roberts — 24 July 2007 @ 9:38 AM
I see more of the “if your not a climatologist, then you cannot speak about climatology” mind set is still good and well. Though you attacked the individuals I fail to see where you attacked their work. Armstrong is one of the leading experts in forecasting and has been for years. He points out where the IPCC is not following the established guidelines for forecasting that were established well be fore the IPCC came into existence. You say he does not understand climatology and how perfect the models are, but, if I read the IPCC report correctly, all he is doing is pointing out how the IPCC is making forecasts and not following the accepted guidelines.
From what I have read, nothing has be presented to show that the forecasting guidelines are wrong. The fact that climate models are constantly changing would indicate that one the major points they raise;
You have also failed to show where another major point is wrong, namely:
I do not see them making claims about the science but about the forecasts. Please point out where the they are wrong about what they are experts in, forcasting methodology.
Comment by Vernon — 24 July 2007 @ 10:24 AM
Vernon (43):
Is forecasting a skill that can be separated from what is being forecast? I don’t think so. Do these “established guidelines” apply to forcasting, say, eclipses of the sun? No, astronomical forecasts involve involve nonlinearities and interactions. Astronomers agree on how to forecast eclipses, so they are not to be trusted!
And Vernon, why are you willing to accept economists as authority figures but not accept climatologists?
Comment by Tim McDermott — 24 July 2007 @ 11:07 AM
re: 43. We see more of the “complete failure to understand the significance and importance of scientific peer review within the realm of climate science” anti-science mind set is alive and well. There is an excuse for not understanding the scientific method (which the science of global warming and climate modeling follows). There is, however, very little excuse for the failure to try to learn about it especially since it has been explained many times here. The idea that laymen know more than literally thousands of climate researchers throughout the world whose work has been rigorously peer-reviewed and every major atmospheric science society is the height of (purposeful?) arrogance. If the idea that laymen know more than the peer-reviewed science is truly beleived, do not go to a doctor the next time you become ill as they follow peer-reviewed science for evaluating and providing treatment as well; go to perhaps a lawyer or a baseball player. Surely the later two occupations know more about treating an illness than a trained doctor. ;-)
Comment by Dan — 24 July 2007 @ 11:39 AM
Re # 43 “Agreement among experts is weakly related to accuracy. This is especially true when the experts communicate with one another and when they work together to solve problems, as is the case with the IPCC process.”
And where is the evidence to support this assertion that you find so compelling?
Comment by Chuck Booth — 24 July 2007 @ 12:18 PM
Once again, in addition to other errors, the G&A team avoid the theoretical basis for CO2 warming. They hide behind a pure empiricism (AFAICT, not having time to read it all, frankly) typical of AGW skeptics.
BTW, where is the best place to find the actual calculation of direct CO2 effect, in calories per m^2, and then temperature change, from the CO2 and other GH gases?
Comment by Neil B. — 24 July 2007 @ 12:25 PM
Vernon, the problem is that the problems you have quoted are all potential ones, and a scan through the “paper” shows that the authors have not seriously linked any problems to the actual IPPC forecasts. Using Google scholar is not enough. Comments by non-climatologists that are wrong, such as Carter:
“the slope and magnitude of temperature trends inferred from time-series data depend upon the choice of data end points. Drawing trend lines through highly variable, cyclic temperature data or proxy data is therefore a dubious exercise. Accurate direct measurements of tropospheric global average temperature have only been available since 1979, and they show no evidence for greenhouse warming. Surface thermometer data, though flawed, also show temperature stasis since 1998.”
are given prominence. Nobody but a mathematical iiliterate would claim that temperature shows stasis since 1998, and the Troposphere is actually warming.
Thus, this “paper” is a hatchet job.
Comment by guthrie — 24 July 2007 @ 12:27 PM
Gene Hawkridge #7: I have an intuitive sense from my own experience that you are right, but even that things have already changed more than we’re told. I remember it snowing a lot more here in SE VA in the 60s, as a boy. I hear also from others, things have changed more over the last few decades than a degrees average. What’s up with that?
PS, I hope some of you got to look at the infamous WSJ “Laffer Curve” drawn around corporate tax data, whereas the collection really went mostly up with increasing tax rates up to a point.
Comment by Neil B. — 24 July 2007 @ 12:30 PM
The very first paragraph, 2nd sentence, of the abstract of the G + A paper is by itself quite revealing:
“In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Working Group One…issued its updated, Fourth Assessment Report, forecasts. The Report was commissioned at great cost in order to provide policy recommendations to governments.”
From the IPCC’s “Principles Governing IPCC Work” website (http://www.ipcc.ch/about/princ.pdf) is the following official statement of the IPCC’s role:
“2. The role of the IPCC is to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation. IPCC reports should be neutral with respect to policy, although they may need to deal objectively with scientific, technical and socio-economic factors relevant to the application of particular policies.”
The IPCC DOES NOT MAKE POLICY. G + A don’t even understand this fundamental point. And as mentioned several times above, they’re not climate scientists, meteorologists, physicists, mathematicians, or chemists. How in the world can they expect to be taken in any way seriously?
Comment by Jim Bouldin — 24 July 2007 @ 12:34 PM
What BPL said at #40. And said well.
Best,
D
Comment by Dano — 24 July 2007 @ 1:30 PM
Sorry, Gene Hawkridge # 6.
Comment by Neil B. — 24 July 2007 @ 1:57 PM
RE 23.
Gavin, the supporting data for the plots is half there. The plot selection allows you to pick a time period for the ModelE runs and specify a window for the moving average. So, for example, I select 1880-2003 with a 12 month window and the data table gives me the year ( in decimal months so 1895.085 for example) and the 12 Moving average of ANOMALY ( reference 1951-1980) recorded every month.
Thats nice, but the GISS observation data comes in a yearly average form ( same reference period) I’ll sort out how to align the two data sets, but it would be nice if you guys would make absolute C available. This would allow for alternative smoothing approaches, and easier comparision with CRU, for example, who use a 1961-90 period.. is that right?
Anyway, thanks for the pointer and consider my friendly suggestion about make absolute C (in addition to anomaly) available.
Since the data table contains data in a decimal form ( like 1880.917) I’m wondering how time gets intgrated in the model ( just curious, I know there are probably varying time steps for various components) Actually there is a substantive reason for asking. When you calculate a Tmean for a period of time. lets say a day.
Do you actually calculate a TMAX and TMIN? for each day?
When you figure a Tmean for every day do your specify a Time of Observation?
[Response: In the model, Tmean is a true Tmean - i.e. the average of every temperature taken at 30 min intervals ( which is the main physics timestep). You should be able to get just the annual mean from the 12 month running mean if you want - just pick the values from the mid-point of each year. Alternatively, don't average at all (i.e. 1 month running mean), and create your own annual average. - gavin]
Comment by steven mosher — 24 July 2007 @ 1:58 PM
By the way, I recall seeing somewhere, on one of Dr. Anderson’s pages, his mention of a response he received — he’d submitted a comment on the draft IPCC report, recommending they adopt his approach. They explained to him that they were not doing weather forecasts, if I recall correctly. It’s probably in the archive of comments somewhere.
Comment by Hank Roberts — 24 July 2007 @ 3:00 PM
RE 54: Well, I could be wrong, but I do not think so, but there is no difference in what a weather forecasting model is doing and what a climate forecasting model is doing. If some one could cite where a GCM has not been updated, modified, etc. and the models of just a few years ago matched the ones now, I would like to see it. If anyone could show that the models done in the 80s got the global climate of today right, please point me to it. The models are huge and incorporate what the modeler believes is the correct assumptions that reflect the complex chaotic system that is climate.
I fail to see the difference, one is used to guess what the micro climate is going to be and the other is used to guess what the macro climate is going to be. No matter how you word it, forecasting is being done. Even though the IPCC said they were not doing forecasting, that is not what it says in the IPCC report.
These do not claim to experts on climate models or climate, just on forecasting. They have peer reviewed standing in the science of forecasting and they say that how it is being applied by the IPCC is wrong.
So why not quit bashing them as individuals and show why the forecasting guide lines do not apply to the IPCC in forecasting the future climate?
[Response: Weather forecasts take today's situation and calculate how it will evolve over the next few days. They are initial value problems. Climate models do not assimilate current data but instead produce changes in climate as a function of changing boundary conditions, and thus are a boundary value problem - that is not the same as a forecast (which would require an estimate of the 'weather' component as well as the climate component). If you know anything about differential equations, you know those are fundamentally different kinds of problems. If you want models from the 80's showing results for today, read about Hansen's projections. Finally, try reading what I wrote, I never said their principles didn't apply - I said they were mostly commonsensical - and my critique was based on their inadequate knowledge when applying their checklist, not the checklist itself. As I challenged a previous commenter, if you want more details, pick any 10 of the principles they marked IPCC down for and I'll show you why the got it wrong. - gavin]
Comment by Vernon — 24 July 2007 @ 4:21 PM
RE 53,
Thanks Gavin, On the Tmean issue. In some of the actual observation data I have looked at there appears to be a difference ( I would not call it systematic, since I only viewed a couple of sites )
Between the TAve and Tmean. from a physics perspective I suppose one would choose Tave. From the historical reality of observation stations we have Tmean.
So, in GISSTEMP, [the observation record] you report Tmean ( (tmax+tmin)/2))
and in the Model you report Tave — with a integration step of 30 min.
Was anybody curious in the least bit about how ModelE
Tmean would compare against Historical Tmean? Not a issue.
My sense is you are primarly concerned with a trend metric, so that differences between Tmean and Tave
are immaterial since you are concerned with trend?
Correct?
Thanks again
Comment by steven mosher — 24 July 2007 @ 5:08 PM
#42, No I haven’t, could you please provide a link?
My suggestion was just to find a better linear predictor than the ‘naive model’ (should be easy, as local temperatures are clearly not random walk… ). Maybe they would not qualify it as “currently
available fully disclosed climate model”, but that’s when you hire
the lawyers ;)
Comment by UC — 24 July 2007 @ 5:19 PM
#17 Bob,
It may be possible to affect the weather/climate by producing/controlling “vertical” winds as stated in the article “Taming Tornadoes to Power Cities, pbublishd in the Toronto Star on July 21. (article by Tyler Hamilton, Energy Reporter).
http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/238291
L. M. Michaud, P.E., Inventor of the AVE says:
“If people accept it, the potential is unlimited. He says down the road, hundreds of vortex engines could be located in the ocean along the equator, where the warm tropical water would provide an endless source of energy.”
Why would anyone do such a thing?
“To cool the planet, Michaud says. Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are what prevent the sun’s heat from radiating back into space, he explains. A series of controlled tornados along the equator would carry that heat to the outer edges of the atmosphere, where it could more easily escape.”
In other words, Michaud believes man-made tornados could function as exhaust systems for the planet, a massive air conditioner that could help manage global warming.
“There’s simply too much at stake to ignore this potential, he says.” more at http://www.vortexengine.ca
Comments?
_________
Comment by Jerry Toman — 24 July 2007 @ 5:39 PM
Re #43
Vernon,
it is clear that both you and G&A don’t really understand at all the difference between the typical forecasting methods used in economics and those of physics-based modeling as used for climate change predictions.
The type of forecasting that G&A seem to know how to do is a pure exercise in curve fitting using mathematical models that have very little connection with the underlying mechanisms that are responsible for the behavior of the system being modeled. In a pretty arrogant way, they think that because they are experts on that particular type of forecasting they know anything about how climate models are built. They probably think that climate models are just a bunch of equations that climate scientists took out of their hat in a whim and then fitted to past climate records to try to “forecast” future climates. Dead wrong!!!!
The models used to predict future climates are all physics-based, and are thus fundamentally different from forecasting models used in economics. So G&A have a lot of studying to do before they can say anything remotely intelligent about climate modeling. Most of their claims about climate modeling reveal such deep ignorance of the subject that they are pretty funny.
It’s as if a gardener, who digs small holes in a yard to plant
flowers, were to feel such an expert in Digging that he could knowledgeably criticize the way civil engineers dug the Panama Canal.
Comment by Rafael Gomez-Sjoberg — 24 July 2007 @ 6:23 PM
Is it not clear that one cannot forecast the future state of a system without knowing (at the very least) something about the system?
If the future state of an economic system is to be forecast and I know nothing about economics how am I to weigh the relative importance of the input variables? In fact how can I even reliably choose the input variables?
How do I know if a dependent variable reacts in a linear, nonlinear or chaotic fashion in response to a change in an independent variable?
If I build a linear statistical prediction model and the dependent variables respond in a highly non-linear way to a change in the predictor variables of what value is my statistical model? The situation is even more critical in physical prediction models.
Even more unsettling in the face of lack of knowledge of the system that is to be predicted is how do we know if we are merely dealing with correlations when we should be dealing with causation?
Credible forecasting requires an indepth knowledge of technique AND system dynamics.
Rafael Gomez-Sjoberg (#59) in his final paragraph touches on a point that plagues forecasting in the atmospheric sciences – SCALE.
I am assuming we have all heard of the “butterfly effect”. Can a butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon Basin really affect the weather in the mid latitudes?
Of course the answer is no because the forces operating at that scale determine that the turbulent effects of the butterfly wings will not be of global consequence.
Just like the expert gardener in Rafael Gomez-Sjoberg’s post may know what is best for the small scale garden and the civil engineer may know what is best for the large scale dig, techniques that work at the small scale may not have any influence at the large scale while large scale excavation could very well obliterate any and all efforts in the small scale garden.
How does the small scale interact with the large scale (temporal and/or spatial)? Is the interaction linear or non-linear, chaotic, random or deterministic? Is there a continuous cascade of mass and energy from the large scale through the intermediate scales to the smallest? Do the smaller scales enhance the larger through feedbacks?
No matter how good one is at forecasting methodology if knowledge of the system that is being predicted is lacking forecast skill is likely to be null. fail Why? Because the questions posed here cannot be answered reliably.
Comment by Steve Horstmeyer — 24 July 2007 @ 8:02 PM
I have never seen any of the posters here say non-climate scientists could not speak about climate. I have seen them indicate that people who completely disrespect and ignore decades to a century of work by the vast majority OF climate scientists are a priori fishy. I would say climate scientists, even the ones in the far end of the Bell Curve either way on acceptance of AGW and its dangers, have something in common – they all know the history of climate research, and have a day to day experience of reading the literature with a purpose. Of what’s been a pitfall, of what’s been fairly solid.
Comment by Marion Delgado — 24 July 2007 @ 8:26 PM
#re 29
Sarcastic? Yes. Irrelevant? Hardly!
Sure Gavin has chose a ‘cute’ way to format his response to G&A, but unwrap his comments from the “principles” and the “scores,” and you will see that each of the points made are serious (with the exception of the last which is merely cynical) and go to the heart of the errors G&A make. Of course their methodology is a soft target and so laughable that arguably it should not be dignified with a reply. But if a reply is made, surely sarcasm is the only appropriate tone to adopt.
Comment by James Killen — 24 July 2007 @ 8:40 PM
“One can only conclude that you haven’t got the guts or the science behind you to respond in proper scientific terms to their paper.”
Paper? What paper?
Scientific terms?
Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!
Oh, geez, this is opening up unexplored heights of the ludicrous. It is unfortunate that Gavin and the good folks at RC actually had to respond to such a load of dung, because their not doing so would have been exploited by the denialists as “haha! they can’t reply to that!”
But seriously, this thread should not go much on further, it just gives legitimacy to the “paper” that wasn’t one, and the trolls feeding off of it!
Sometimes, I wish that the reality based crowd would have the same means of engaging in large scale mind manipulation as the, well, what could be the appropriate word? Other people? I’m not sure; as a non native english speaker, I’m out of words to describe nonsense and its promoters.
However, wouldn’t it be funny if a campaign of the same magnitude could be waged against all the very real flaws and failures of economic theories and “marketing” (quotations marks because I’m not sure what the word means any more), or even say, “Political “science? (oh, that would be so precious!!).
Working in health care gives me the opportunity to see how much more solid the science behind climatology is than much of what is accepted practice in medicine, and yet all those throwing stupid, lawyer-like rethoric at climate science wouldn’t think twice about taking FDA aproved drugs. All I can say to the denialists is that, every day that goes by, their “camp” (that is really what they made themselves into) looks more and more pathetic to me, regardless how much they can sway public opinion.
It is now to the point where it really undermines the process of understanding climate. Any new idea or study has to “belong” to a political side, while its only focus should be better understanding of reality. What a shame.
Comment by Philippe Chantreau — 24 July 2007 @ 9:40 PM
Rafael Gomez-Sjoberg (#59)
This is really part of the beauty of climate models – and at an abstract level, one of the most fundamental principles of climate modeling itself. It argues from general principles, typically fundamental principles of physics – although not strictly – as when the responses of organisms are incorporated into the models. It doesn’t allow the arbitrary element of curve-fitting. Such an approach would have little grounds for regarding its conclusions as applying to anything outside of what the curve was based on – and given the complexity of what we are dealing with, it would quickly evolve into a Rube Goldberg device which no one could understand the basis for – but which we would adopt merely like superstitious rats which are randomly rewarded – dancing about in the belief that some increasingly complex set of motions determines whether or not they get the reward.
But since climate models are based upon our scientific understanding of the world, we have every reason to believe that the more detailed the analysis, the more factors we take into account, the better the models will do at forecasting the behavior of climate systems. Since it is based upon our scientific understanding of the world, it is not some sort of black box. If we see that the predictions are not matching up, we can investigate the phenomena more closely, whether it is in terms of fluid dynamics, spectral analysis, chemistry or what have you and see what we are leaving out.
This would seem to be the only rational approach that climatologists can take, and if this general approach did not work, this would seem to imply that natural science is a failed project, that its success up until this point has simply been some sort of illusion, and that the world simply doesn’t make sense.
*
Anyway, I am as sick as a dog, a very, very sick dog. Not the kind that is feeling reasonably well. Going back to bed.
Comment by Timothy Chase — 24 July 2007 @ 10:24 PM
Modeling in the physical sciences vs forecasting in economics are as different as night and day. For example, in the physical realm, neural nets are capable in many, not all, settings of “learning” complex relationships between casually-related physical variables and “forecasting” the behavior of some derived statistic based on evolving inputs. In economics, the causally-related economic variables are unobservable – only derived statistics can be measured. When techniques like nets are applied directly to these derived measures, the results are very unsatisfactory because in economics the relations between various derived measures are in fact quite unstable. Any solution will probably be worse than a random walk could do. That is why economists have to set the bar very low and take a very dim view of what can be achieved. In fact, as an example of the inherent instability of the relations, it is true that in economics consensus can often be a bad sign, because it means that a lot of people have made their bet in the same direction – the opposite may very well occur soon. Economic systems are, at the margin, predominately mediated through human behavior, but the human actors are also standing off to the side and watching what the system is doing, which then affects their behavior, and so on adfinitum.
Comment by James Orcutt — 24 July 2007 @ 11:16 PM
What seems more worrying here is the lack of understanding that some other scientists and scientific disciplines seem to have of climate change. We all know that the media will report on any contrarian stance on climate change and hence is this why some scientists are trying the contrarian viewpoint ?
OK so climate change is a political science crossing economics, politics and energy physics and energy policy and locking horns with the wealthiest companies in the world but all the same from whgat is being reported here you would suggest that its the scientific silly season.
Comment by pete best — 25 July 2007 @ 3:10 AM
[[BTW, where is the best place to find the actual calculation of direct CO2 effect, in calories per m^2, and then temperature change, from the CO2 and other GH gases?]]
Neil,
In the composition range from about 1 ppm to 1400 ppm, radiative forcing by CO2 in watts per square meter can be found with this equation:
RF = 5.35 ln (C / C0)
where C is concentration, C0 reference concentration (usually taken as the preindustrial 280 parts per million by volume), and ln is the natural logarithm operator. For a doubling of CO2, this yields a change in radiative forcing of 3.7 watts per square meter, and given a climate sensitivity of 0.75 degrees K. per watt per square meter, this results in about 2.8 degrees K. temperature increase at Earth’s surface. This includes all the feedbacks.
Source for the equation:
Myhre, G., E.J. Highwood, K. Shine and F. Stordal, 1998. “New estimates of radiative forcing due to well mixed greenhouse gases.” Geophysical Research Letters 25(14), 2715-2718.
Comment by Barton Paul Levenson — 25 July 2007 @ 6:15 AM
[[What BPL said at #40. And said well.]]
Hee hee! Thanks, Dano. :)
Comment by Barton Paul Levenson — 25 July 2007 @ 6:17 AM
[[Working in health care gives me the opportunity to see how much more solid the science behind climatology is than much of what is accepted practice in medicine, and yet all those throwing stupid, lawyer-like rethoric at climate science wouldn’t think twice about taking FDA aproved drugs. ]]
I see your point. But to some extent, I find that people who accept one pseudoscience will often accept others as well. I have run into AGW deniers who think Venus is hot because it was molten a few thousand years ago and is still cooling down (i.e., Velikovsky freaks). Others deny AGW and insist that tobacco smoke doesn’t cause cancer. The antiscience attitude often carries over into several issues.
Comment by Barton Paul Levenson — 25 July 2007 @ 6:23 AM
Re: Gavin, Rafael Gomez-Sjoberg (#59) and others
G & A indeed reference Bob Carter, writing:
“In practice, the GCMs failed to predict recent global average temperatures as accurately as simple curve-fitting approaches (Carter 2007, pp. 64 – 65). They also forecast greater warming at higher altitudes in the tropics when the opposite has been the case (p. 64)…”
Now, the Carter paper referenced claims that simple curve fit models, such as that in Loehle’s paper, is to be believed, writing:
“As an alternative to the deterministic GCM approach, there exist several other types of computer model of empirical nature. Such models use analysis of a portion of the climate record to establish the pattern of past temperature change and then project this pattern into the future…”
Bob Carter pointed to Loehle’s paper in his testimony before congress last year. Trouble is, Loehle’s analysis is deeply flawed, having violated a basic requirement of time series analysis called the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist%E2%80%93Shannon_sampling_theorem
I pointed this out in a Letter to the Editor of EM, which they published. Here’s the reference:
Comments on “Climate change: detection and attribution of trends from
long-term geologic data” by C. Loehle [Ecological Modelling 171 (4)
(2004), 433–450]
Carter also used the wrong data when claiming that the troposphere is not warming. In both his 2007 paper and his congressional testimony, he presented a plot of Christy & Spencer’s MSU analysis for channel 2, the so-called “Mid-Mroposphere” product (called TMT). It’s long been clear that this product includes some of the well known cooling trend from the stratosphere, thus the TMT has an incorrect cooling trend. The C & S “Lower Troposphere” analysis introduced in 1992 (called TLT) was intended to address this problem. That Carter has relied on these outdated and misleading data further proves that he is not interested in the truth.
Comment by Eric Swanson — 25 July 2007 @ 9:17 AM
Re: #70
The reference to my letter should have included this:
Ecological Modelling 192 (2006) 314–316
E. S.
Comment by Eric Swanson — 25 July 2007 @ 9:26 AM
Eric Swanson (#70) wrote:
I used to think it would be so refreshing to run into a prominent creationist who was still honest. I finally gave up. At this point I am finding the same to be true of the leading AGW skeptics. As far as I can see, there are none left.
Comment by Timothy Chase — 25 July 2007 @ 10:06 AM
re: 40. And sadly, yet another “drive-by” poster (21) apparently has slithered back into their abode without acknowledging that they learned anything about the science, the scientific process or being able to admit that they could possibly be wrong. It seems no apparent effort was made or intended to learn. :-(
Comment by Dan — 25 July 2007 @ 10:25 AM
Timothy, get well soon!
Philippe, maybe you can get some of your medicine cohorts to remove that bug from your butt…[;-)
Barton says “…Others deny AGW and insist that tobacco smoke doesn’t cause cancer….”
Now cut that out!!
Comment by Rod B — 25 July 2007 @ 11:36 AM
Barton should have written “Another denies ….” I think.
You can look this stuff up. Try Lindzen. http://tobaccodocuments.org/
Comment by Hank Roberts — 25 July 2007 @ 12:24 PM
No way, Rod, there is no peer-review study indcating any health benefit from doing so.
Plus, I don’t have time, I’m disseminating info to all the species that have shifted their ranges because they read erroneous information based on flawed temperature data from bad surface stations. Those butterflies really have no critical thinking skills. It’s going to be harder to convince the ice that it can start freezing earlier and thawing later again, but not nearly as hard as to convince the tropopause to come back to its normal level. We’re also working at elucidating who the tropopause got its communist propaganda from.
Cheers.
Comment by Philippe Chantreau — 25 July 2007 @ 12:36 PM
Re modeling vs forecasting: Maybe a concrete example of the difference would be useful. Take astronomy. If you happen to be an ancient Babylonian or Mayan, you can keep detailed records of astronomical occurences for hundreds of years, and apply forecasting techniques to predict everything from the seasons to eclipses to the apparent motion of the planets through the sky. Or if you happen to be Issac Newton, you can come up with a model of the physics.
Now you can use either the forecasting or the model to predict future events, and as long as you’re dealing with things you have a record of, you would probably get similar accuracy. But suppose something unexpected happens: say a comet appears, or you make a telescope and discover the moons of Jupiter. Forecasting tells you nothing about this, while if you have the model, you can plug in new facts and immediately get useful predictions.
Seems to me that’s why forecasting just isn’t equipped to deal with something like global warming. G&A remarked that one should avoid non-linearities in forecasting, but with GW the non-linearity is in the physics.
Comment by James — 25 July 2007 @ 12:37 PM
#72- Timothy, I’ve tried to avoid comparing global warming deniers to Creationists, but really it is the only proper comparison. However, apart from the cheerleaders, I suspect most normal peoples attitutde is like that of the majority of ID supporters- they accept it without much questioning, because it fits with their presuppositions.
Mind you, it gets so bad these days that I had to point an apparently otherwise intelligent and well educated person to talkorigins. They thought Darwinism didn’t make any predictions, and seemed to be basing their equivocation between ID and evolution on half remembered schoolboy science from 30 years ago. Fortunately they seemed interested in actually learning why they were wrong.
Comment by guthrie — 25 July 2007 @ 12:57 PM
gutherie (#78) wrote:
Well, I think there is a real spectrum, but when it comes to prominent advocates, I believe that honesty becomes a real issue. They have to have at least some familiarity with the science – or think that it is completely irrelevant. In either case… I think the same is necessarily true of the creationists who get involved in online debate – there is probably a short period in which they could turn either way. But given the debate they have constant exposure to more and more than they must disregard.
Odd, too, as this is something which they are presumably doing in the name of morality. Nothing corrupts the foundation of an individual’s moral being like systematic dishonesty. Except perhaps an us vs. them view of the world, but I believe that is largely implicit in creationism, given our scientific knowledge. It involves a rejection of modernity and implies alienation from the modern world. And how completely unnecessary this is, but that is a topic for another time and another place.
Comment by Timothy Chase — 25 July 2007 @ 2:20 PM
Eric, can you post the text of your letter somewhere, or point to it?
Google’s cache has the original Loehle article readable
http://64.233.179.104/scholar?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q=cache:aGhcZqennt4J:www.geogra.uah.es/~emilio/pdf/cambio%2520climatico%2520natural/loehle2004.pdf
but I didn’t find your comment letter (resp. 70 above) online
Comment by Hank Roberts — 25 July 2007 @ 2:49 PM
Odd, too, as this is something which they are presumably doing in the name of morality. Nothing corrupts the foundation of an individual’s moral being like systematic dishonesty.
Thus the proliferation of websites pointing out this dishonesty. This site included and at the forefront. Other sites have proliferated that look at the rhetorical tactics used.
Best,
D
Comment by Dano — 25 July 2007 @ 3:07 PM
Re: # 80 Hank,
I found a direct link thru Science Direct’s pay site:
http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0304380005002899
If you (please, not everybody) send me your e-mail address and I’ll send you a copy.
I’m at: e_swanson ( at ) skybest dot com
Of course, remove the spaces and replace dummy portions… :-)
Comment by Eric Swanson — 25 July 2007 @ 4:43 PM
Interdisciplinary teams are necessary for input into models on possible future social and economic choices, such as a ‘business as usual’ scenario where we use carbon at the current rate, or a future where people switch to alternative energy sources that burn less CO2. Also economists and social scientists should be part of the team that makes conclusions and recommendations to the decision makers.
However,economists,social scientists,and political scientists have no more credentials to critique the physics and climatology of the models than climate scientists have to critique the economics of social choices and human behavior, that might ignore, mitigate or stabilize climate change. We’re all free to express ourselves in fields outside our own, but that’s all that it is, an opinion, not a scientific conclusion.
Comment by Lawrence Brown — 25 July 2007 @ 4:57 PM
I would suggest Prof Armstrong expands his (imo rather snide) seer-sucker principle to cover when marketing and economics bods decide to comment on the realm of climatology.
Comment by Roly Gross — 25 July 2007 @ 5:24 PM
#79- testimony from several people who were creationists or ID friendly to begin with, was that they started turning against it all partly because or mainly bceause they realised that their leaders were feeding them lies.
So it is with this- many people will keep their heads in the sand, but we can win people over by piling on the data and arguments, such that the lies become clear.
Comment by guthrie — 25 July 2007 @ 5:48 PM
Re #78: [Timothy, I’ve tried to avoid comparing global warming deniers to Creationists...]
Apropos of which, I just ran across this news story:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070725/sc_nm/pope_environment_dc;_ylt=AlO.I3EZ3_iQRZyh8xjb0b5pl88F
Which, if the link doesn’t work, reports a recent statement by Pope Benedict, supporting both action against climate change, and evolution.
Comment by James — 25 July 2007 @ 6:10 PM
Perhaps the problem with a lot of the economic analysis of climate change is that economists are not required to learn much basic science – such as the First Law of Thermodynamics, for example.
It does seem that an economist can use the results of real scientific analysis to judge the problem, but for any honest economist the IPCC reports should be the primary source of information.
Furthermore, very few economists have discussed the economic difference between a renewable energy-based economy and a fossil fuel-based economy.
Economic predictions that aren’t based on good science have little value. Really, economic education needs some serious changes. Some people have tried to do this with “physical economic theory”.
Economists have a notoriously poor record when it comes to forecasting future trends, so why should anyone take an economist’s unscientific critique of climate science forecasting efforts seriously? How many ‘economic forecasts’ have turned out to have any value whatsoever?
Comment by Ike Solem — 25 July 2007 @ 8:06 PM
What’s funny is, economists know that if you print a whole lot of paper money and put it into circulation, the prices on everything change.
They know the change from say the steam engine to the diesel locomotive completely changed the costs and prices of the rail industry.
They know what the cotton gin or the combine did to farm prices.
They know if you make a permanent change to a highway system, or an electrical transmission system, or a shipping port, the numbers change. They would never assume things would just go on the same when something they know matters changes.
Comment by Hank Roberts — 25 July 2007 @ 9:48 PM
Re 87:
So why aren’t we asking why, if G&A didn’t predict the tech crash of 2000, they think they can predict the average temperature of the world in 2050?
Comment by Tim McDermott — 25 July 2007 @ 9:59 PM
re – a bunch: Not being one to let any mine go unstepped on… This veiled guilt by association (with creationists) and declaring that one who disagrees with another’s solidly held belief, convincing without question to them, dishonest is the same gibberish as those who want to prosecute skeptics for crimes against humanity. Frankly not very becoming.
Hey! Another mine! There is considerable evidence for intelligent design of the Universe, or at least some omnipotent entity having some say and engineering of the process. I differentiate this from “creationism” as defined by fundamentalist, especially those who insist on a (silly) strict interpretation of the Bible, despite St. Augustine’s caution against doing just that. Plus I don’t accept how the Creationists have also co-opted the term “intelligent design” (or creative design), so I use the term in its pure meaning.
Timothy, you might try Francis Collins. There was an interesting article last November in, I think, Time of a discussion between Collins and Richard Dawkins. Or try Fred Hoyle. Or Einstein. Or a whole potful of, I trust, non-liars! Let’s don’t string them up quite yet….
Since I’m way off topic, Hoyle had an interesting and credible theory of the Universe that is orthogonal to the “Big Bang”.
Comment by Rod B — 25 July 2007 @ 11:07 PM
#89: Clearly, forcasting the 2000 tech crash and far future weather are very different challenges; Economics are driven by intelligent agents enjoying information imbalance, while weather in the year 2050 is caused largely by chaotic events like the beating of butterfly wings in Brazil. We understand chaos theory much better than the stock market, the latter being mostly mob psychology punctuated by random acts of greed. So why shouldn’t we be able to predict far future weather and not so near future market movements? Butterflies are just stupid bugs, no challenge there.
Ha. That was fun. Let’s see if they quote me in the NYT.
Comment by cat black — 25 July 2007 @ 11:54 PM
Tim:
Go to Lubos Motl’s site and ask that same exact question. See if you don’t see a pattern emerging.
Comment by Marion Delgado — 26 July 2007 @ 2:31 AM
Economics is highly problematic because most of frameworks, neoclassical being predominant, do not readily allow for modelling of systems far from equilibrium. Physics also has its problems though. For example, the basic orders implied in relativity and in quantum theory are qualitatively in complete contradiction. Relativity requires strict continuity, strict causality and strict locality in the order of the movement of the particles and fields. In esssence quantum mechanics implies the opposite. What they have in common though is actually a quality of unbroken wholeness, as has been described by Bohm, for example.
It is perhaps unbroken wholeness, familiar in ecology, that needs to be addressed by economics, particularly with respect to ‘economics’ emergent through climate change. For example, one of the areas that is worthy of attention is the nature of a world economy under conditions of sea level rise of 5 metres, a BAU scenario for say 2100. By evaluating sea level impacts on multiplicities of nodes in diverse global supply chains it is possible to identify mechanisms of breakage, and, as importantly, permanancies of breakage (or relaxation times). Physical economics can say a great deal about that, although it has to be said that the formalisms used (Hamilton-Jacobi formalisms, catastrophe theory, far-from-equilibrium systems methods, organisational ecology, etc) are challenging on account of their application in such new areas. But in many respects, there is little difference with physics, partly because many of the tools being used to evaluate these scenarios are ported directly from physics, but also because there are no text books with the answers in the back.
As far as G&A are concerned, the tools thay use do have uses and it seems that one of the areas that might be addressed is the use of neural networks to detect patterns of behaviour from paleoclimatic records of sea level rises. Would it be possible to discern potential patterns of micro meltwater pulses (constituing a 5 m sea level rise to 2100) from such historical records? That would be useful in terms of risk profile evaluation for coastal infrastructure.
Comment by Michael — 26 July 2007 @ 3:11 AM
#86- The ID website Uncommon descent, day to day running in the hands of one Dave Scott, had a good old bash at global warming a few months ago. Needless to say they were wrong on every count. Credulity on one thing seems to me to be loosely correlated with credulity on lots of other things, but that sounds like a good study for someone to do, if they havn’t already done it.
Comment by guthrie — 26 July 2007 @ 3:24 AM
Re #90 [There is considerable evidence for intelligent design of the Universe, or at least some omnipotent entity having some say and engineering of the process.]
Omnipotent entity? Complete klutz, I’d say, judging by the results!
Seriously, Rod, I think you’re making Timothy’s point for him.
[Response: That's all fine, but no more ID/evolution discussions - go to PZ for that... - gavin]
Comment by Nick Gotts — 26 July 2007 @ 7:43 AM
Thanks for the head’s up, Gavin. I work professionally in the foresight business, and I *do* run in to climate skeptics quite often. When you go at them with evidence and some RealClimate-inspired counterarguments, they usually conclude that you know more than they do and back off. Individually, that is. They don’t usually change their slide deck for the next presentation, which makes me wonder where their head is at.
I find it rather shameful that the forecasting business is too much informed by econometrics – as dubious a “science” as I’ve ever heard – and not enough by rigorous sciences with solid predictions of the future. Astronomy and demography are quite good, really. I think that the shake-up that climate modelling is inspiring in the forecasting and foresight fields is a positive thing. We _need_ forecasting methods that work like the climate field does, modelling impacts for future events based on available evidence and science-based projection. We’ll be seeing a lot more initiatives like this in the 21th century, with varying degrees of success.
For example, take a look at G+A’s methodology tree (at http://www.forecastingprinciples.com/methodologytree.html ), the closest thing they have to “derive a model, test it, and use it predict outcomes” is “rule-based forecasting”, which appears to derive from “Univariate statistics” and “Intentions/expectations”. You might think that the “causal models” box comes closer to what we do in science, but you can see that it only applies to “linear” systems. Looking at the mouse-over box, “Causal models aided by the use of econometrics has been found to improve accuracy. The use of system dynamics has not.” Somebody better phone up the guys at Science and Nature and tell them to go find real jobs… you can’t forecast with science. You shouldn’t be able to publish in econometrics until you’ve passed a general science class. They wouldn’t write such rubbish otherwise.
Comment by Steffen Christensen — 26 July 2007 @ 7:52 AM
#90- rod B- if Gavin will permit one last suggestion on the topic- go here:
http://www.antievolution.org/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi?s=46949b03fd9b71eb;act=SF;f=14
Where you can discuss your evidence for omniscient beings and designed universes. No censorship, down and dirty scientific discussion, a bit like we get on here.
Comment by guthrie — 26 July 2007 @ 8:21 AM
Re 85: Guthrie says:
“So it is with this- many people will keep their heads in the sand, but we can win people over by piling on the data and arguments, such that the lies become clear.”
I wish it were so, but some people will never be convinced. About a dozen years ago, then Pres. Bill Clinton said that the “science is in”. I believed it then and I believe it now. The debate should have been over a decade or more ago. But there will always be diehards.
The late biologist Steven Jay Gould, speaking about about another topic (the belief in the supposed ‘fallacy’ of Darwinism), said,in an interview shown on TV, that there were millions of scientists in the world and you’d never get them all to agree, at least on that particular subject. There will continue to be a minority of contrarians. The same thing is taking place on anthropenegic global warming. Trying to get some of the diehards to agree to this, is like King Kanute trying to persuade the tide to reverse direction.
Comment by Lawrence Brown — 26 July 2007 @ 9:52 AM
Thank you Real Climate for this valuable, much needed website!
Speaking of climate projections near or over the edge, James Hansen’s latest paper on “Climate change and trace gases” argues that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is very sensitive to climate forcing and is unlikely to remain intact through the century. This implies, of course, that sea level rise this century will likely be very much faster and greater than predicted in IPCC4. I hope that Real Climate will devote some time to discussing the strengths and weakenesses of this important paper. Perhaps a conversation with James Hansen and Stefan Rahmstorf could be arranged?
Hansen’s paper appeared in Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 365:1925, 2007, and is pubically available via the Royal Society website.
Comment by S. David Stoney — 26 July 2007 @ 10:04 AM
Rod B (#90) wrote:
Not wanting to get into any sort of disagreement with anyone on this topic, let me just say that I believe you misunderstood me. I like Augustine and it is the opposite view that I was criticizing.
Anyway, if you would like, write me:
“timothy chase @ g ma il. com”
(No spaces) – and I believe I might have something you would like. (Or perhaps not – but I still might like to get your reaction.)
Comment by Timothy Chase — 26 July 2007 @ 10:05 AM
Well, I fail to see the difference between weather forecasting modeling and climate forecasting modeling. Both use physics and high mathematics take current information and project future events. Now Gavin said
However, the climate model takes the current conditions and the physics and adjusted the non-physics based assumptions on a best fit for past records. If there were no assumptions, then I would agree that this is just a model of the physical and there is no questions… put in x, get out y. The problem with your argument is that there are underlining assumptions in the GCM models which are based on the best guess of the underlying reality. Since there is less than complete understanding of all aspects of climate change, then the models have to guess how some of the aspects work, according to the IPCC. This means that the GCM models are doing forecasts. A&G specialize in forecasting, so their taking the IPCC to task for using GCMs for forecasting and not following the forecasting guidelines seems more than reasonable to me.
[Response: Wrong. The parameterisations that you allude to have nothing to do with improving the fit for past records. For instance, new physics is being added in to convection schemes to allow for lofting of ice particles by convective updrafts. The observations to evaluate this are drawn from field campaigns and satellite observations. The impact of the new physics on how well the models match up to the 20th Century trend is at the point unknown and the decision to incorporate the new physics has nothing to do with that. This is a fundamental difference between statistical modelling and physical modelling which neither you, nor A+G yet appear to grasp. - gavin]
Comment by Vernon — 26 July 2007 @ 11:03 AM
I am curious about a critique of a document pertaining to physics and CO2. Abstract:
The atmospheric greenhouse effect, an idea that authors trace back to the traditional works of Fourier 1824, Tyndall 1861 and Arrhenius 1896 and is still supported in global climatology essentially describes a fictitious mechanism in which a planetary atmosphere acts as a heat pump driven by an environment that is radiatively interacting with but radiatively equilibrated to the atmospheric system. According to the second law of thermodynamics such a planetary machine can never exist. Nevertheless, in almost all texts of global climatology and in a widespread secondary literature it is taken for granted that such mechanism is real and stands on a firm scientific foundation. In this paper the popular conjecture is analyzed and the underlying physical principles are clarified. By showing that (a) there are no common physical laws between the warming phenomenon in glass houses and the fictitious atmospheric greenhouse effects, (b) there are no calculations to determine an average surface temperature of a planet, (c) the frequently mentioned difference of 33 C is a meaningless number calculated wrongly, (d) the formulas of cavity radiation are used inappropriately, (e) the assumption of a radiative balance is unphysical, (f) thermal conductivity and friction must not be set to zero, the atmospheric greenhouse conjecture is falsified.
Link: http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Falsification_of_CO2.pdf
Thank you
Comment by Michael T — 26 July 2007 @ 11:35 AM
Rod B wrote: “There is considerable evidence for intelligent design of the Universe, or at least some omnipotent entity having some say and engineering of the process.”
It is self-evident that “intelligence” exists in the universe, instantiated in the form of intelligent entities, the paradigmatic example being human beings, along with non-human animals whose intelligence is similar enough to our own that we are able to recognize it as “intelligence”.
I would argue that there is plenty of evidence that intelligence is pervasive in the universe. It is not at all clear what the role of intelligence in the evolution of the universe is. For example, the overall process of biological evolution might be regarded as an “intelligent” process, through which life adapts to changing conditions by “trying stuff out” (mutation), retaining the stuff that works and discarding what doesn’t work (natural selection). Of course all of this begs the question of exactly what we mean by “intelligence” anyway.
[edit for off topic]
[Response: ID is OT. Take it elsewhere. - gavin]
Comment by SecularAnimist — 26 July 2007 @ 11:39 AM
Gavin, so your saying that the models have no assumptions built into them? That they exist and when compared to past records they were correct to begin with and that none of the assumptions have been changed?
Also I want to understand you correctly..
So your going to change your model and whether it actually forecasts the past correctly or represents the current climate does not matter because it will give valid predictions of the future?
If your model does not predict the past correctly, does not predict the 20th century correctly, then how do you know it predicts the future correctly? Basically, your model puts assumptions in for water (clouds), sulphates, black carbon, orgianic carbon, biomass burning, mineral dust, aviation, land use, solar all which per the IPCC are at the low to the very low level of scientific understanding. If your putting swag into your model, then it is not purely based on scientific understanding and is a forecasting tool.
Both weather and climate models take what information we have and based on grid, make predictions of the future. If the understanding of all the aspects of climate were actually scientifically understood, then maybe we would not be having these discussions. Since your model is making a forecast the same way a weather model is, then A&G’s assessment of the IPCC making forecast is equally valid.
[Response: ????? Of course the models have assumptions built in to them. They are precisely a quantitative exploration of what all our assumptions amount to. But - and this is the key point - we don't alter the assumptions to improve the match to past behaviour. Instead, we alter them based on current observations of important physics and processess. It's the difference between 'in sample' calibration and 'out of sample' testing. We will change the model to better reflect known physics, and from past experience, improving the detail of the physics also improves the match to climatology and past climate change. The latter is a consequence of the former, but the former is not driven by the latter. In any case, the models already do a pretty good job for past climates, mainly because they are driven to a large extent by the forcings (which are not part of the model). Those forcing functions are the best we can find and are largely independent of the model development process.
Finally, climate model projections are only good for a portion of what might happen in the future - the portion that is driven by changes in the forcings. They cannot project the specific path the weather may take and do not take into account the current weather state. Thus they are not the same as weather models. - gavin]
Comment by Vernon — 26 July 2007 @ 12:09 PM
Has anyone thought of using Baysian statistical forecasting methods as an adjunct for indenpendent analysis of future climate change (GW) probabailities of possible GW events and timings?
I understand that this method was used reasonably successfully in finding a lost hydrogen bomb off Spain in 1966 and the lost Scorpion submarine as well as having other successes.
There are so many GW data sets out there and long-term research, that I wonder if this method might be useful?
Comment by Richard Ordway — 26 July 2007 @ 12:18 PM
Here’s some apparently new physics that may change some climate models:
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-ozone26jul26,1,7432125.story?ctrack=2&cset=true
The original is at Nature but I have no subscription.
Comment by catman306 — 26 July 2007 @ 12:44 PM
Richard, a few people have, and written about it. Here are some:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Bayesian+climate+model
Comment by Hank Roberts — 26 July 2007 @ 12:50 PM
Re # 102 ICECAP website and its alleged refutation of the role of CO2 in global warming
I haven’t read the article in question, but a quick scan of the site’s mission statement (http://icecap.us/index.php/go/about-us) and its FAQ page (http://icecap.us/index.php/go/faqs-and-myths#4 ), esp. its conclusions about how global warming will affect plants and animals, leads me to be very skeptical of any conclusions drawn. I’m not overly impressed with the credentials of ICECAP’s contributors, either. On the positive side, it isn’t denying the reality of global warming.
Comment by Chuck Booth — 26 July 2007 @ 2:52 PM
Re #104:
Vernon,
Do you know of any weather forecasting models that factor in assumptions about sulphates, black carbon, organic carbon, biomass burning, mineral dust, aviation, land use, and insolation? I doubt it. Do you know of any weather forecasting models that can be used to predict the weather, say, ten years from now. I doubt that, too. As a number of the posts above have explained, weather and climate models are fundamentally different tools.
It appears that you are being deliberately obtuse, a condition that just reduces your credibility. Nor will it win many converts to your position.
Regards,
Phillip
Comment by Phillip Shaw — 26 July 2007 @ 2:55 PM
catman306 (#106) wrote:
Well, as far as I know, the models haven’t taken into account reduced co2 uptake in plants due to heat and drought stress as of yet. We know that it will occur, and recently a study came out which suggests that we may have been hitting it the past few years. But the conclusions were tentative. Then there is the twilight zone of clouds which we discovered I believe within the past year (which I believe will be easy to incorporate), the reduced co2 uptake of the Southern Ocean, the increase in poleward flow due to hurricanes, which becomes more important the more intense they become, etc. But all of this pales, I believe, in comparison with the nonlinear behavior of ice.
Incidently, I don’t about the twighlight zone, but all of these additional unaccounted for effects are effects working against us – and as such the models are being conservative in their estimates of how bad things will get and overestimating the time that it will take to get there – assuming its steady-ahead.
PS Reminds me of a time when I was in the Navy on board the USS Jason. Manuevers. We were given several warnings to adjust course by the USS Williamette – to no avail. We had fire in one of the enginerooms for five hours — and much of the crew was afraid that the front end of the ship would fall off before we made it back to port.
We probably should have adjusted course.
Comment by Timothy Chase — 26 July 2007 @ 3:02 PM
One model has now incorporated the effects of ground level ozone, and that’s the news story
here:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nature06059.html
This is just the first page, in their usual fashion, but it’s a good summary of what was modeled here.
NOTE: Look at the sidebar for links to the supplemental online material — you can see that without a paid subscription. Often much of that is very helpful in understanding the article.
Comment by Hank Roberts — 26 July 2007 @ 4:46 PM
[[The atmospheric greenhouse effect, an idea that authors trace back to the traditional works of Fourier 1824, Tyndall 1861 and Arrhenius 1896 and is still supported in global climatology essentially describes a fictitious mechanism in which a planetary atmosphere acts as a heat pump driven by an environment that is radiatively interacting with but radiatively equilibrated to the atmospheric system. According to the second law of thermodynamics such a planetary machine can never exist. Nevertheless, in almost all texts of global climatology and in a widespread secondary literature it is taken for granted that such mechanism is real and stands on a firm scientific foundation. In this paper the popular conjecture is analyzed and the underlying physical principles are clarified. By showing that (a) there are no common physical laws between the warming phenomenon in glass houses and the fictitious atmospheric greenhouse effects, (b) there are no calculations to determine an average surface temperature of a planet, (c) the frequently mentioned difference of 33 C is a meaningless number calculated wrongly, (d) the formulas of cavity radiation are used inappropriately, (e) the assumption of a radiative balance is unphysical, (f) thermal conductivity and friction must not be set to zero, the atmospheric greenhouse conjecture is falsified.]]
Where to start? This guy is wrong in so many ways it’s difficult to know where to begin.
First of all, every atmosphere physicist in the world is aware that most of the atmosphere is not in radiative equilibrium. You can approximate the stratosphere that way, but of course in the troposphere conduction, convection and evaporation of seawater are important thermal transfer mechanisms. The greenhouse effect is often illustrated in introductory textbooks with a radiative equilibrium model because it shows the essentials without going into incredible complexity…
have to go, more later
Comment by Barton Paul Levenson — 26 July 2007 @ 5:00 PM
Re #102: Michael T — Down a bit on the sidebar is a link to the AIP dicovery of Global Warming pages. WHile it is all quite good, in this case I suggest you read the page entitled “The Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Effect” to counter the rubbish in the abstract you quote.
Comment by David B. Benson — 26 July 2007 @ 5:33 PM
Re # 108
The website itself (and its possible ‘inclination’) appears irrelevant as long as the article is submitted by two German physicists, Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf D. Tscheuschner.
At the end of their ‘acknowledgement’ they state (p. 94):
“The authors express their hope that in the schools around the world the fundamentals of physics will be taught correctly and not by using award-winning “Al Gore” movies shocking every straight physicist by confusing absorption/emission with reflection, by confusing the tropopause with the ionosphere, and by confusing microwaves with shortwaves.”
[Response: I agree, the website's inclination is immaterial (though indicative), but the paper falls simply because it lousy physics. The planetary albedo is apparently a mystery to the authors, as is the ratio of Earth's disc to it's surface area, and they take exception to energy balance diagrams 'because they do not fit in the Feynman diagrams in quantum field theory". This is bunkum of a high order. - gavin]
Comment by Hans Henrik Hansen — 26 July 2007 @ 5:36 PM
Okay, continuing with the nut case manifesto. I’ll requote the six points at the end and give them special attention.
[[(a) there are no common physical laws between the warming phenomenon in glass houses and the fictitious atmospheric greenhouse effects,]]
Duh. They’ve pretty much known it was a bad analogy for over a century. But because “the greenhouse effect” is a bad name for it in no way proves that the effect doesn’t exist.
[[ (b) there are no calculations to determine an average surface temperature of a planet, ]]
Wonder how they did it, then? The original poster doesn’t know much about elementary physics. A temperature can be defined for any material object, and the Earth is certainly a material object. I’d say if you take a large sample of the point temperatures all over that surface, correcting for any relative-area bias, you come as close to the average temperature as you need to come. The figures I’ve seen are 287 K for Hadley and 288 K for the US standard atmosphere.
[[(c) the frequently mentioned difference of 33 C is a meaningless number calculated wrongly, ]]
It’s the difference between the surface temperature (288 K) and the equilibrium emission temperature (255 K). The figure is derived by the mathematical technique called “subtraction.” And the figure is certainly meaningful; it’s a rough indication of the magnitude of the greenhouse effect on a given planet with minimal geothermal sources. 505 K for Venus, 33 K for Earth, 4 K for Mars. That pretty much gives the relative strengths of their respective greenhouse effects.
[[(d) the formulas of cavity radiation are used inappropriately,]]
You mean actual radiation by gases is in lines and isn’t gray? Does this guy honestly think climatologists don’t know that you can’t apply the blackbody Stefan-Boltzmann law to all objects? Again, you can apply it and be accurate enough in a demonstration of how the greenhouse effect works. Nobody is claiming that that’s the whole story. In short, this point is a straw man argument.
[[(e) the assumption of a radiative balance is unphysical, ]]
At the top of the atmosphere it damn well is physical, unless this guy knows some other source and sink of terrestrial energy which roughly match one another. N-rays, perhaps?
[[(f) thermal conductivity and friction must not be set to zero,]]
Nor are they in a serious model, but for a simple model to illustrate how the greenhouse effect works, you can ignore them. The average radiative flux received by Earth’s surface is about 170 watts per square meter from Solar energy and 324 watts per square meter from the atmosphere. Conduction and convection between them amount to about 24 watts per square meter. So you’ll get roughly the right answer even if you ignore conduction and convection.
Does this guy really think “friction” is a serious term in Earth’s thermal energy budget? Does he think the atmosphere lags the surface in rotation time or something? Didn’t Galileo figure this one out?
[[the atmospheric greenhouse conjecture is falsified.]]
As long as you don’t actually learn about it.
Comment by Barton Paul Levenson — 26 July 2007 @ 6:00 PM
Over at http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1827, Steve McIntyre says “The only policy that I’ve advocated is one of full, true and complete disclosure of all aspects of climate calculations used in policy arguments. If properly constructed data sets support AGW, so be it“. He then asks “for an article or text that provides…the best articulation of the underlying physics by which increased CO2 leads to approx 2.5 deg C warming. … I don’t want an article that merely reports GCM output.” and says “My interest is in understanding the very best expositions of AGW theory on their own merits, rather than alternative explanations.”
Gavin, can you point him to a resource that sets out the underlying physics by which increased CO2 leads to approx 2.5 deg C warming without recourse to a GCM? If you cannot then I don’t know who can. What have you got to loose?
As an interested but non-technical observer, it has long frustrated me that intelligent, well intentioned professionals on either side of the AGW “debate” snipe at each other across the front lines on the assumption that the people on the other side MUST be unintelligent or not well intentioned. The result is typically more noise but no resolution.
Comment by Svet — 26 July 2007 @ 6:15 PM
RE 109: Well, I am not an expert but per wikipedia:
The only real difference is the scale of the grids and the time period. Oh and many weather forecasting models do not model the oceans. The fact is that weather forecasting models and climate models are related. The principle difference is the grid size and the time period. Both have significant aspects that are not know and a ‘best guess’ is used and even though Gavin say not, to get the best guess, I would suspect that the both models were run against past or future data to see if the ‘guessed’ attributes are close.
If you took the climate model and reduced the grid size and ran it for a week period, I would be surprised that you would not get a result for each grid that could not be used for a weather forecast.
Comment by Vernon — 26 July 2007 @ 6:24 PM
Re#102, 112 (ICECAP writeup about refuting the greenhouse “conjecture”)
I just took a quick look at this “refutation” for the fun of it. At least it looks like the authors know how to use LaTeX properly. The writeup reads like those wacky attempts by amateur pseudo-physicists to “prove” that Einstein’s theory of relativity is wrong by playing around with equations that they don’t fully understand. I actually heard in the radio some time ago about some random guy that, without any formal training in physics, quit his job (and asked his wife to support him) so that he can spend a year refining his anti-relativity “theory”. Suffice to say that the guy doesn’t even understand the basic concepts of momentum and energy. He says that the few physicists he has talked to (one or two very patient university professors), and who have tried to explain why he’s wrong, are just a bunch of snobs that hide behind lots of “unnecessarily complicated math.” And the rest of physicists that refuse to waste time looking at his “theory” are affraid of the truth. Sounds familiar?
In their greenhouse refutation, the german guys go so far as to have a whole section on Magnetohydrodynamics as the main “physical foundation of climate science”, including citations to some books on astrophysics!!!! Maybe they are talking about the climate on the surface of the Sun.
The german authors of this writeup should invite the relativity dude to spend his sabatical year with them. I’m sure the three compadres, their minds lubricated by copious amounts of Bavarian beer, will come up with some grand-unification theory. Beware physicists and climate scientists!!! You might end up without a job when these dudes are done with their scientific revolution.
Comment by Rafael Gomez-Sjoberg — 26 July 2007 @ 6:25 PM
Gavin (inset to #114) wrote:
Huh.
I may have to check it out: this sounds histerical…
Comment by Timothy Chase — 26 July 2007 @ 6:35 PM
[Does this guy really think “friction” is a serious term in Earth’s thermal energy budget? Does he think the atmosphere lags the surface...]
No, no, no. Sheesh, don’t you guys understand basic planetary physics? Haven’t you ever seen a terrestrial globe, with the rod going through the poles for the planet to rotate on? The friction comes from the axle of the planet.
(Apologies to Terry Pratchett, for the axle idea :-))
Comment by James — 26 July 2007 @ 6:47 PM
No matter how much explaining Gavin does, there is a VERY widespread (almost universal in laymen) belief in the denialist camp that GCMs are statistical models, built from and adjusted for the observed temperatures (hence the recent assault on surface stations!). Let them believe it, it shows the quality of their effort to comprehend the big picture. As for the other German dudes rethinking the all atmospheric physics idea, let us salute the restraint of the RC team whence the qualificative of “crackpot” does not fly as liberally as in, say, Lubos’ blog.
Comment by Philippe Chantreau — 26 July 2007 @ 8:07 PM
Rd: #102, etc and #116
Take a look at the list of “experts” at icecap.us:
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/experts
The list includes almost all of the people that one would label “denialists”. There’s Singer, Michaels, Balinuas, the Idsos, Spencer, Balling, Carter, Sharp, Legates, Jaworowski, Hoyt, De Freitas, both Grays, etc. And, lots of TV weathermen too. That web site might be called the “Not Real Climate” site because of it’s inclusion of many people who have received funding from corporate sources that have an interest in continued burning of fossil fuels. Some have done good science in their day but no longer seem interested in actually doing science, only spreading their own special disinformation as it suites them.
The article in question is just another in a long series of articles which can be shown to be seriously flawed. But, each one is picked up by the media as proof that there’s no Global Warming, thus, the average person is left with the impression that there is still some debate or, worse, that there’s no problem. In the court of science, they lose, but in the political world, they may win.
Comment by Eric Swanson — 26 July 2007 @ 8:41 PM
Gavin mention albedo, and since the Germans introduced the crackpot wacko, I’ve been curious about this for months and think of it every time I see albedo:
What would be the potential impact of requiring worldwide that all new vehicles and new structure/replacement roofing and siding be white? That would roll up to fairly large surface area. Too small to be worthwhile?
Comment by J.C.H — 26 July 2007 @ 10:15 PM
JCH, it would significantly cool urban areas.
Comment by Eli Rabett — 26 July 2007 @ 11:03 PM
> albedo
You can have any color you want, as long as it reflects infrared. The former head of California’s Air Resources Board was just fired for, among other things, having decided to call for:
“‘cool paint’ for cars. By blending in special pigments, car paint of any color can be made to reflect much of the sun’s heat energy. That will keep the vehicle’s interior cooler and reduce the demand on the air conditioner — which in turn improves fuel efficiency…”
http://republican.sen.ca.gov/opeds/99/oped3944.asp
http://www.ceitoday.com/ceih.shtml
It’d probably do the same thing for building temperatures. So you needn’t insist on “white” paint to accomplish this.
“…Earth and the atmosphere as a whole maintain an albedo that hovers around 29 percent.
“Ramanathan notes that if Earth’s albedo were to increase only three percent, the resulting climate change would throw the planet into an ice age. A three-percent decrease would create a severe heating effect comparable to that caused by a sixfold increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide, far greater than anything projected by today’s climate models.
“Global warming and global dimming both have the potential to alter Earth’s prevailing albedo through complex climate feedbacks. Ramanathan suggests there is evidence that they already have. ….”
http://scrippsnews.ucsd.edu/Releases/?releaseID=761
If you don’t recognize the name Ramanathan, look him up:
http://www.aip.org/servlet/SearchClimate?collection=CLIMATE&sourceQuery=vdkvgwkey+%3Ccontains%3E+%2Fweb2%2Faipcorp%2Fhistory%2Fexhibits%2Fclimate+and+%28Ramanathan%29&queryText=&SEARCH-97.x=30&SEARCH-97.y=26
Comment by Hank Roberts — 27 July 2007 @ 2:57 AM
This presentation by energy conservation founding father Art Rosenfeld talks about California’s white roof efforts, and white roofs in general.
http://webcast.ucsd.edu:8080/ramgen/UCSD_TV/11832.rm
Comment by cce — 27 July 2007 @ 5:13 AM
[[What would be the potential impact of requiring worldwide that all new vehicles and new structure/replacement roofing and siding be white? That would roll up to fairly large surface area. Too small to be worthwhile?]]
Urban areas only cover about 2% of the Earth’s land surface, which in turn covers 29.2% of the world’s surface area. And albedo affects surface temperature in a relation dependent on the one-fourth power of the product. So while this would have noticeable effects locally, it would not alter the mean global temperature very much.
Comment by Barton Paul Levenson — 27 July 2007 @ 5:48 AM
#120 The list includes almost all of the people that one would label “denialists”.
I noticed that the Rt.Hon Christopher Lord Monckton makes an appearance on icecrapdotcom too. I heard him advertising his new board game on the radio this morning. He’s offering a £2 million prize for solving it, “from my threadbare aristocratic pocket” Perhaps threadbare, but evidently not empty.
Is there any downtime on the Goddard Institute supercomputers?
Comment by Alex Nichols — 27 July 2007 @ 6:38 AM
Only about 20% of the albedo is a reflection from the surface. And since all the cars and horizontal roofs make up one-zillionth of the surface, you’ll never see the improvement. Reflective autos have a picayune to zero effect on gas mileage; the California guy was probably fired [edit]
Comment by Rod B — 27 July 2007 @ 10:40 AM
127 (BPL):
There are impacts beyond global average temperature, namely the indirect climate effect of net decreases in energy consumption. Lower energy usage from light-colored roofs would mean less GHGs emitted.
Interestingly (to me anyway), is that the recent article by Ausubel (that “forgot” to mention that the land available for solar power is readily available today – roofs) raises an interesting conundrum – light-colored roofs raise urban albedo but solar panels on all roofs would lower it; we’d have to plant more trees to raise ET to offset [as I'm a green infrastructure guy, that would mean job security ;o) ].
Best,
D
Comment by Dano — 27 July 2007 @ 11:47 AM
We need a roof/pavement material that’s selective — one that reflects (or re-emits, in one of the infrared windows) whatever sunshine it can’t turn into electricity.
I guess plants do that, more or less.
Comment by Hank Roberts — 27 July 2007 @ 12:16 PM
Aren’t we overdue for a Friday round-up? Just saying
Comment by AlZ — 27 July 2007 @ 12:42 PM
re: #130, #131
1) The US EPA says good things about cool roofs:
http://www.epa.gov/heatisld/strategies/coolroofs.html
In particular, it has maps of expected savings.
So it’s not just California, although it is certainly quite relevant here, given that peak electricity usage is Summer afternoons for air conditioning, for which global temperatures are far less relevant than local temperatures. We all know that handling peak electricity usage ends up using the least efficient power plants.
2) Of course, building houses sensibly in the first place helps a lot.
3) About selective materials, I’d really wish for window material that could selectively (presumably under control of wireless sensor nets):
a) be transparent
b) be reflective (or even PV, although that might be too much to ask).
We use reflective window shades on some big windows, which make it cooler in Summer, and warmer in Winter, but it would be nice if one could get the effect to be programmable and automatic.
4) re: Robert Sawyer (head of California Air Resources Board) getting fired out here: I don’t think that had anything to do with paint… although the stories are confusing. His replacement, Mary Nichols, is *highly* respected in environmental circles, has done this job before (under Democratic administration), and is by all accounts very good. This is good, given the peculiar/unique role of the CARB in setting standards in the US.
Comment by John Mashey — 27 July 2007 @ 5:26 PM
RE 133 (J Mashey):
Your 2) is being addressed with new LEED-ND standards (ND = Neighborhood Design) that are being tested via pilot projects now. My major project will use these standards, once I get the plan approved.
Best,
D
Comment by Dano — 27 July 2007 @ 5:36 PM
re: #134 Dano
re: LEED-ND: yes, good.
Our new town center is being built to (at least) LEED-Gold, and we (PV Climate Protection Task Force) have recommended mandatory adoption of LEED-H (for new homes), beyond the current strong recommendations/checklists, but this will be under debate for a while, as it is in other nearby towns, to sort out the most practical ways to implement such things, and also, how to work rules into retrofits. Relatively few new houses get built here, but there are several zero-carbon ones in progress right now.
http://www.portolavalley.net/building/pdf/bpe_grnbldg_pv.pdf
http://www.coolpv.com
This has gotten pretty far away from Green&Armstrong forecasting, although the myriad of small actions required reminds one that there is no single silver bullet. One *can* confidently forecast that buildings last many decades, which makes that part of the infrastructure rather persistent. I.e., it’s yet another issue where one must start early and keep at it for decades.
Comment by John Mashey — 28 July 2007 @ 1:59 PM
[[There are impacts beyond global average temperature, namely the indirect climate effect of net decreases in energy consumption. Lower energy usage from light-colored roofs would mean less GHGs emitted. ]]
Good point. I hadn’t considered that.
Comment by Barton Paul Levenson — 29 July 2007 @ 5:52 PM
This general reader continues endlessly grateful for the presence of Real Climate and the heavy load of worked up contributions, as by Gavin in the present case. Alas, it is also a case of casting pearls before swine, as seen in some responses that seem to have been provoked by the shallowest of emotional hooks. I guess it can’t be helped where the system, striving to turn everything into a commodity and pressing hard to reduce the cost of production, dumbs down the population over time and produces a generation of people who think like cartoons.
Lie the Italian guy said in the 16th Century, “still, it does move.” And, you know, they are down to a pretty low class of offering now, that most of us can spot. We still need the sober analysis to be found in this blog, but we are definitely learning how to spot the clowns.
Comment by garhane — 30 July 2007 @ 12:08 PM
Glad you guys took this one on!
Comment by Ben Kalafut — 30 July 2007 @ 2:56 PM
Anyone seen a 2-layer roof that would allow pulling hot air out and venting it away (after heating the hot water supply) during hot weather but also allow switching to pulling it down into or around the living space in cold weather? Seems a shame to throw it away. I could just ask the roofer to put on two roofs with an air gap and some cleanout hatches, but sure wish it were already designed and approved.
But back on topic, a bet’s been offered by Dr. Hansen:
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/mg19526141.600-huge-sea-level-rises-are-coming–unless-we-act-now.html
“As an example, let us say that ice sheet melting adds 1 centimetre to sea level for the decade 2005 to 2015, and that this doubles each decade until the West Antarctic ice sheet is largely depleted. This would yield a rise in sea level of more than 5 metres by 2095.
“Of course, I cannot prove that my choice of a 10-year doubling time is accurate but I’d bet $1000 to a doughnut that it provides a far better estimate of the ice sheet’s contribution to sea level rise than a linear response.”
Comment by Hank Roberts — 30 July 2007 @ 4:01 PM
> Robert Sawyer, CARB
KQED I believe has the program as a podcast online now.
Info found here: http://shirlrelo2.blogspot.com/2007/07/rworknews-on-radio-this-am.html
Comment by Hank Roberts — 30 July 2007 @ 5:31 PM
I assume you’ve all seen this:
“Frequency Of Atlantic Hurricanes Doubled Over Last Century, Climate Change Suspected
Science Daily — About twice as many Atlantic hurricanes form each year on average than a century ago, according to a new statistical analysis of hurricanes and tropical storms in the north Atlantic. The study concludes that warmer sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and altered wind patterns associated with global climate change are fueling much of the increase.
…(continued)”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070730092544.htm
The paper is here:
http://www.mmm.ucar.edu/people/holland/files/NaturalVariabilityOrClimateTrend.pdf
Comment by Stephen Berg — 30 July 2007 @ 6:03 PM
About the bet.
Is it similar as in me having a forecasting competition vs you for daily temperatures during the year like this:
-my daily temperature model would be re-evaluated once every day. It would expect no change from the previous day (thus tracking real temp with one day lag).
-your model should forecast the daily temperatures for the full year beforehand, no tracking allowed.
If I win the contest, does that mean that the temperature doesn’t change during a year? Of course not. It only tells that there is some slowness in the changes of weather.
Comment by mz — 30 July 2007 @ 7:23 PM
Why should we care about every half-wit and his brother who decides to publish his uninformed and unscientific “critique” of the IPCC? I think you folks are wasting your time and unintentionally boosting their legitimacy by responding to everything that jumps.
Comment by laservisor — 31 July 2007 @ 11:35 PM
hello first time post been reading for about 4 months.
after reading gavins article I checked out Armstrong’s “audit”.
unfortunately they didn’t provide the reasons as to why they rated chapter 8 low. The biggest thing that I notice is that other chapters and working groups do meet the missing principle.
The best example I would have is item 1.1″ describe decisions that might be affected by the forecast.” This is discussed in working groups 2 and 3.
below is nine other items that I think should have been rated higher
and why.
1.4 Consider whether the events can be forecasted.
Climate response to volcanic and orbital forcing shows that the climate does respond to forces in a predictable way.
3.3 avoid biased sources of data.
Global temperature estimates goto various lengths to avoid the urban heat island affects and other errors. There are other lines of evidence that the earth is warming like higher sea levels and earlier spring greening.
The line spectra of co2,h20 and other gases are well tested.
4.3 Ensure that information is valid
The Supplementary material for chapter 3 covers temperatures.
There is also discussion of the U.H.I effect in chapter 3.
The radiative properties of green house gases are testable and have been for more than 50 years.
7.3 be conservative in situations of high uncertainty of instability.
The report “ar4″ didn’t include Greenland and antarctic ice flow
in sea level rise because of the lack of consensus. This should be counted as a example of being conservative, maybe overly so, but if they take the heat they should get some credit.
10.9 shrink the forecasts of change if there is high uncertainty for the predictions of the explanatory variable.
Climate sensitivity doesn’t change because it is hard to predict how much co2 will be emitted.
12.5 use trimmed means, medians, or modes.
Both chapters 10 and 11 have charts that compare models and show the mean. Figure 10.5 is a fair example of this.
12.6 use track records to very the weights on component forecasts.
palaeoclimatic data as described in chapter 6 is used for this purpose.
13.32 Conduct explicit cost-benefit analyzes.
That is not the job of wg1 should have reviewed working groups 2 and 3
most of my experience in climatology is reading this blog and most of working group1 of ar4, so there is much I don’t know but I am sure that is and most of the other points are unreasonably harsh.
some points like 13.9 “Provide full disclosure of methods” wouldn’t even be mentionable if links to the source code for model E or GFDL’s models where provided
there are two point’s I don’t get.
13.29(Revised) Tests of statistical significance should not be used.
13.30 Do not use root mean square errors(RMSE) to make comparisons among forecasting methods
thank you for time
[Response: Thanks - That's exactly the feeling I had. The two points at the end are particularly obscure. I tried to follow the references to why they are there but the source papers for these claims are not particularly clear. Having said that, climate model skill scores (Taylor diagrams and the like) are not simple RMSE and they aren't how errors in projections are assessed in any case. I'm pretty sure there are no p-values calculated anywhere for whether a model is 'correct'. - gavin]
Comment by jacob l — 1 August 2007 @ 1:16 AM
Re 102. The linked document is just about the saddest excuse for a scientific paper that I have ever seen–well, maybe with the exception of his previous attempt to disprove the greenhouse effect:
http://unglaublichkeiten.com/unglaublichkeiten/htmlphp/einlg1.html
Both papers are a series of attacks on straw men–this guy has no understanding of anything to do with climate, atmospheric physics–and most important he does not know what he doesn’t understand. I particularly like the references to the fact that energy balance diagrams are not Feynmann diagrams and the emphasis on friction. [edit]
Comment by Ray Ladbury — 1 August 2007 @ 8:01 AM
re: #145 Ray
It’s August 1, not April 1, but this was a good for a laugh.
My German is rusty, but I knew unglaublichkeiten means something like “unbelievable things”, and when I went to the overview “Uebersicht” link, and immediately noticed:
-the words “Sieg heil”
-above a sketch of a saluting entity with a winged helmet and feet,
- with a prominent SS-lightning-bolt insignia next to it,
- and a title that included “…bevorstehende Rückkehr unseres Messias” (imminent return of our Messiah),
-and a list of topics ,of which the first was:
[UFO-Geheimbasen des Dritten Reiches. i.e., UFO secrets (?) of the Third Reich]
I decided that applying Google Translate would likely not yield productive information.
Comment by John Mashey — 1 August 2007 @ 12:43 PM
Re 130 Dano
I thought on that recently “wouldn´t the low albedo of solar install. make UHI effects worse”
it depends:
incoming sunlight = reflected sunlight (albedo) + absorbed and used sunlight + absorbed but not used sunlight
the absorbed and used sunlight causes no additional UHI as long as the Energy is consumed within the city anyway, resulting in waste heat, which causes (a low) part of UHI
the absorbed but unused sunlight may cause additional UHI, so the albedo number alone is misleading here, the interesting number is albedo + efficiency of the installation, if it´s lower than that what the surface albedo would be otherwise then indeed there would be additional UHI effect, if it´s higher it actually decreases UHI,
may be the difference 1-albedo-efficiency is something that designers of solar installs should try to reduce, so there arises no UHI related argument against solar installs within cities
Andree
Comment by Andree Henkel — 1 August 2007 @ 3:55 PM
To John Mashey,
It is often said that that the web is not a reliable source of information.
The link given in #105 is to “icecap”. The above link (”unglaublichkeiten”) looks like a pretty cranky affair (hence UFOs, third reich, etc). The nature of the site suggests that it would be illegal according to German law and it is a dot-com – so why should we believe it is even based in Germany?
The chances are the website has simply latched onto Gerlich’s work for its own reasons. It summarises his work and presents the summary like a formal document of the university. But it is probably nothing of the kind – I don’t want to give credence to anything this website has to say.
The university seems to be a respectable institution. My guess is that a German state funded institution would be unlikely to accmomodate Gerlich if he really were a campaigner for the neo Nazi fringe.
The neo Nazi stuff looks like a distraction. It would be more interesting to see answers to Gerlich’s arguments.
Comment by Jordan — 5 August 2007 @ 2:01 PM
http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn12453-prepare-for-another-ten-scorching-years.html
Journal reference: (Science, vol 317, p 796)
—— EXCERPT BELOW —- SEE LINK FOR FULL ARTICLE —–
Prepare for another ten scorching years
* 19:28 09 August 2007
* NewScientist.com news service
* Jim Giles
Temperature records will be repeatedly shattered over the next few years, say researchers behind the first rigorous look at how global climate will change during the next decade.
The prediction comes from an innovative technique that combines the approaches used by weather forecasters, who typically look a few days ahead, and climate modellers, who produce projections that run up to the end of the century. The result is a model that can project as far as 2015, filling in a long-standing gap in climate predictions….
“This is a very important paper,” says Rong Zhang, an oceanographer at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, New Jersey, who is using similar techniques to study the Atlantic Ocean. “This is just the beginning for this approach.”
Buoys network
The forecast is only possible because better figures are available on the state of the world’s oceans, says Doug Smith, a climate modeller who developed the predictions with colleagues at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Exeter, UK.
A network of automated ocean-going devices, now numbering around 3,000, has been deployed around the planet since 1999. The devices, known as Argo floats, provide updates on ocean temperature and salinity — factors that are critical in determining global climate patterns.
Armed with the Argo results, Smith was able to create a climate model that started with an accurate representation of the world’s oceans. Without access to such data, traditional models had ignored the fine details of current climate. That meant the predictions they produced were only reliable for periods decades in the future, at which point the influence of variations in factors like ocean temperature will have been swamped by more powerful forces, such as greenhouse warming.
Temperature plateau
Smith’s approach seems to be working. Some of the figures published this week come from a trial of the model that was run in 2005. Comparisons with subsequent observations show that the model captured the recent plateau in global temperatures.
Such lulls could be used by climate change sceptics to argue that the world is not warming as predicted and that plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions are unnecessary, says Smith, so it is useful to be able to spot a brief pause in what is expected to be a steady increase. “There would be pressure not to mitigate emissions if we couldn’t predict a flattening,” he says.
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Comment by Hank Roberts — 9 August 2007 @ 4:49 PM