Once more unto the bray
We are a little late to the party, but it is worth adding a few words now that our favourite amateur contrarian is at it again. As many already know, the Forum on Physics and Society (an un-peer-reviewed newsletter published by the otherwise quite sensible American Physical Society), rather surprisingly published a new paper by Monckton that tries again to show using rigorous arithmetic that IPCC is all wrong and that climate sensitivity is negligible. His latest sally, like his previous attempt, is full of the usual obfuscating sleight of hand, but to save people the time in working it out themselves, here are a few highlights.
As Deltoid quickly noticed the most egregious error is a completely arbitrary reduction (by 66%) of the radiative forcing due to CO2. He amusingly justifies this with reference to tropical troposphere temperatures - neglecting of course that temperatures change in response to forcing and are not the forcing itself. And of course, he ignores the evidence that the temperature changes are in fact rather uncertain, and may well be much more in accord with the models than he thinks.
But back to his main error: Forcing due to CO2 can be calculated very accurately using line-by-line radiative transfer codes (see Myhre et al 2001; Collins et al 2006). It is normally done for a few standard atmospheric profiles and those results weighted to produce a global mean estimate of 3.7 W/m2 - given the variations in atmospheric composition (clouds, water vapour etc.) uncertainties are about 10% (or 0.4 W/m2) (the spatial pattern can be seen here). There is no way that it is appropriate to arbitrarily divide it by three.
There is a good analogy to gas mileage. The gallon of gasoline is equivalent to the forcing, the miles you can go on a gallon is the response (i.e. temperature), and thus the miles per gallon is analogous to the climate sensitivity. Thinking that forcing should be changed because of your perception of the temperature change is equivalent to deciding after the fact that you only put in third of a gallon because you ran out of gas earlier than you expected. The appropriate response would be to think about the miles per gallon - but you’d need to be sure that you measured the miles travelled accurately (a very big issue for the tropical troposphere).
But Monckton is not satisfied with just a factor of three reduction in sensitivity. So he makes another dodgy claim. Note that Monckton starts off using the IPCC definition of climate sensitivity as the forcing associated with a concentration of 2xCO2 - this is the classical “Charney Sensitivity” and does not include feedbacks associated with carbon cycle, vegetation or ice-sheet change. Think of it this way - if humans raise CO2 levels to 560 ppm from 280 ppm through our emissions, and then as the climate warms the carbon cycle starts adding even more CO2 to the atmosphere, then the final CO2 will be higher and the temperature will end up higher than standard sensitivity would predict, but you are no longer dealing with the sensitivity to 2xCO2. Thus the classical climate sensitivity does not include any carbon cycle feedback term. But Monckton puts one in anyway.
You might ask why he would do this. Why add another positive feedback to the mix when he is aiming to minimise the climate sensitivity? The answer lies in the backwards calculations he makes to derive the feedbacks. At this point, I was going to do a full analysis of that particular calculation - but I was scooped. So instead of repeating the work, I’ll refer you there. The short answer is that by increasing the feedbacks incorrectly, he makes the ‘no-feedback’ temperature smaller (since he is deriving it from the reported climate sensitivities divided by the feedbacks). This reverses the causality since the ‘no-feedback’ value is actually independent of the feedbacks, and is much better constrained.
There are many more errors in his piece - for instance he accuses the IPCC of not defining radiative forcing in the Summary for Policy Makers and not fixing this despite requests. Umm… except that the definition is on the bottom of page 2. He bizarrely compares the net anthropogenic forcing to date with the value due to CO2 alone and then extrapolates that difference to come up with a meaningless ‘total anthropogenic forcings Del F_2xCO2′. His derivations and discussions of the no-feedback sensitivity and feedbacks is extremely opaque (a much better description is given on the first couple of pages of Hansen et al, 1984)). His discussion of the forcings in that paper are wrong (it’s 4.0 W/m2 for 2xCO2 (p135), not 4.8 W/m2), and the no-feedback temperature change is 1.2 (Hansen et al, 1988, p9360), giving k=0.30 C/(W/m2) (not his incorrect 0.260 C/(W/m2) value). Etc… Needless to say, the multiple errors completely undermine the conclusions regarding climate sensitivity.
Generally speaking, these are the kinds of issues that get spotted by peer-reviewers: are the citations correctly interpreted? is the mathematics correct? is the reasoning sound? do the conclusions follow? etc. In this case, there really wouldn’t have been much left, and so it is fair to conclude that Monckton’s piece only saw the light of day because it wasn’t peer-reviewed, not because it was. Claims that the suggested edits from the editor of the newsletter constitute ‘peer-review’ are belied by the editor’s obvious unfamiliarity with the key concepts of forcing and feedback - and the multitude of basic errors still remaining. The even more egregious claims that this paper provides “Mathematical proof that there is no ‘climate crisis’ ” or is “a major, peer-reviewed paper in Physics and Society, a learned journal of the 10,000-strong American Physical Society” are just bunk (though amusing in their chutzpah).
The rational for the FPS publication of this note was to ‘open up the debate’ on climate change. The obvious ineptitude of this contribution underlines quite effectively how little debate there is on the fundamentals if this is the best counter-argument that can be offered.
24 July 2008 at 2:51
According to the APS (here) it is not correct to say that Physics and Society is un-peer reviewed:
“It presents letters, commentary, book reviews, and reviewed articles on the relations of physics and the physics community to government and society.”
That doesn’t mean that the Monckton article WAS peer-reviewed, but strongly suggests it should have been if it wasn’t.
24 July 2008 at 3:45
It’s worth noting that the Science and Society page where Monckton’s abstract appears states very explicitly that the paper was NOT peer reviewed….. It may have been edited but that’s not the same thing.
And anyway, peer review is a bit of a red herring. There’s plenty of papers out there that have been peer reviewed and are full of holes. It’s whether or not you can build on the papers over time which determined their ultimate worth. So peer review, done properly, is a crucial filter, but it isn’t an ironclad guarantee.
And getting lots of citations isn’t an indication of fidelity either - just look at Jacques Benveniste’s Nature paper on the memory of water.
What I don’t understand is why the APS would publish this, together with a statement to disown it? It’s not a ploy to attract readers by being “controversial, is it?
24 July 2008 at 3:52
ooops. I’ve now realized that that the statement disowning the article was put in place AFTER they published it.
[edit]
But my question still stands. Why publish it in the first place?
24 July 2008 at 3:54
Unfortunately, even ==more== than all the submarines cruising in 1987 through balmy waters at the N. Pole with decks full of happy sailors sipping drinks w/little umbrellas in ‘em that “skeptics” are encouraged to perceive despite what’s in plain view, Monckton’s paper will provide all the superficial falsework and pancake cosmetics needed to keep “The Debate” alive. See “The Register” for how greedily Monckton’s travesty is being gobbled up.
24 July 2008 at 5:22
“Once More Unto The Bray”. Most apposite.
24 July 2008 at 6:36
We must all express our greatest appreciation for the Fourth and Final Discount Monk of the Bench at Tiffany’s for raising these important point, points too important to be censored by some “scientists” and their “peer reviewing” squelching out revolutionary views just because of “math” and “facts” and “good arguments”.
Yours, sincerely, the 5th Annual Viceroy Sir El Whoop Whoop En Buenora P’tang P’tang.
24 July 2008 at 6:52
I was pointing out that Monckton is a crackpot long before it was fashionable:
http://members.aol.com/bpl1960/Monckton.html
Note my one major error in the essay; I conflate the Wegman report with the NAS report.
24 July 2008 at 7:23
Gavin,
Thanks for the analysis of Monckton’s paper. Unfortunately, despite the errors in it being so glaring, many skeptics are asserting its veracity based on the testimony of Spencer before Congress two days ago; they claim (using logic that is stunningly flawed) that because Spencer and Monckton both claim a reduced climate sensitivity to CO2, both of them must be correct - despite one claim being patently incorrect. I can’t even think of the name this logical fallacy!
Is there any chance in the future that we may hear a comment on Spencer’s testimony?
24 July 2008 at 7:39
Articles, reviewed or not, on “the relations of physics and the physics community to government and society”, aren’t peer-reviewed articles on science, and it’ s not a journal, it’s a newsletter.
I think the APS probably has a reasonably clear view as to what their publications are, and are not.
24 July 2008 at 8:42
What is the accurate figure for the change in C per W/m2 increase?
I have now heard figures from 0.260C / W/m2 from Moncton to as high as 1.0C / W/m2.
[Response: You are confusing different numbers with the same units. What are you looking for? Overall climate sensitivity is around 0.7 C/W/m2 (range from 0.5 to 1); the no-feedback change (which is just a theoretical estimate) is around 0.3 C/W/m2. Different things. - gavin]
24 July 2008 at 8:46
Here is another vote that you you respond to Spencer’s most recent stuff…as this is a bit harder for us non-climate-scientists to spot the errors in than Monckton.
Also, I was wondering about your take on the Compo and Sardeshmukh paper ( http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/people/gilbert.p.compo/CompoSardeshmukh2007a.pdf ). My initial take on it was that I don’t really see why I should be surprised that if the historically-seen temperatures over 70% of the globe are essentially prescribed (by prescribing the ocean SSTs) then the rest of the 30%, the land areas, will largely come along for the ride…And, it doesn’t really reveal anything about the mechanism causing the warming. Is this a reasonable way to look at it?
[Response: Yes. This method of running models (AMIP-style) is very common and useful for many purposes. However, all of the trend comes from the increases in SST, which have been affected by GHGs and natural variability - thus this kind of model simulation is no good for attribution studies at the global scale (you need a coupled model for that). They are quite useful at determining tele-connections - how ENSO affects rainfall for instance, but you will see errors in, for instance, land-ocean temperature contrasts or stratospheric dynamics, which are more closely tied to the physics of GHGs rather than the overall level of warming. - gavin]
24 July 2008 at 9:11
From the Editor’s Comments:
“With this issue of Physics & Society, we kick off a debate concerning one of the main conclusions of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)…”
I look foreword to reading the debate in future issues. Since the publication is available to the public the correspondences will not be obscured behind a pay wall they will be available to those of us that take these discussions to the internet. Because the stated points of publishing the papers was to “kick off a debate”, and the newsletter is now going to a fully electronic version (pg.2), they hopefully will print more of correspondences than is customary.
So many skeptics’ blogs swallowed the hook, line and sinker.
24 July 2008 at 9:17
Re: 10 ;
Is the forcing then
- 3.7-4.0 W/m2 for CO2 alone; and then,
- roughly 9.0 W/m2 including all feedbacks?
[Response: No. The forcing is what drives the temperature changes, which drive the feedbacks. The multipliers generally apply to the temperature change. - gavin]
24 July 2008 at 10:12
Your technical debunking of Monckton is all well and good, but what are you saying by your analysis?
*Do you agree or disagree that the current climate models predict a specific AGW signature, specifically ‘hot spots’ as describe in Monckton’s junk science paper, that is different from the signatures of other/natural causes of GW?
[Response: There are signatures - particularly in the stratosphere - that distinguish CO2 effects from other causes of warming. The ‘hot spot’ is not a signature of GHGs, it is the expected signature of any warming (whether solar, or natural, or black carbon or whatever) (see the first figure here). - gavin]
*If you agree, what is your explaination for why this ’signature’ has not been observed as yet in the real world?
[Response: The stratosphere changes have very clearly been seen (which is one of the reasons why solar forcing of the trends doesn’t work), and the tropospheric hot spot is likely coming out of the noise too - note however that this is a test of the tropical surface warming (for which there is a lot of evidence), not increasing GHGs per se. - gavin]
Thank you in advance for a response.
24 July 2008 at 10:21
People will be arguing back forth for ages. And getting nowhere.
Here’s a view of the future, maybe: [location of the US Congress in year 2500]:
http://northwardho.blogspot.com/2008/07/polar-cities-relocation-of-us-congress.html
24 July 2008 at 10:37
@2 ‘What I don’t understand is why the APS would publish this, together with a statement to disown it? It’s not a ploy to attract readers by being “controversial, is it?”
The editor of the newsletter in question (Jeffrey Marque) has been publishing a number of articles on AGW in recent issues, mostly sensible but including another nutty one by a guy named Gerald E. Marsh. He probably didn’t know who Monckton was, and was I suppose you could say pranked.
John Mashey has the best detailed explanation, which I’ve wrote about and which can also be found in comments at Deltoid and elsewhere.
http://bigcitylib.blogspot.com/2008/07/how-aps-was-infiltrated-by-deniers.html#links
And on Gerald E Marsh:
http://bigcitylib.blogspot.com/2008/07/lonely-denier-meet-gerald-e-king.html#links
24 July 2008 at 10:53
14:
It should be pointed out that the tropical tropospheric hotspot as GHG fingerprint likely originates with Monckton. He has apparently misread figure 9.1 of the IPCC report as a description of fingerprints for different forcings when it actually illustartes the 20th century warming contribution of different forcings. He’s even gone so far as to give the figure a new title (”Temperature Fingerprints of Five Forcings”) based on his misconceptions.
Other skeptics have spread this wrong information, as happens so often.
[Response: I doubt it is original with him - tropospheric trends have been an ‘issue’ for at least a decade, and while they now line up easily with expectations on a global basis, the tropical changes have been more problematic (as we discussed previously). You are correct of course about the spreading of wrong information which Monckton (and Douglass, and Singer, and Evans etc.) all add to. - gavin]
24 July 2008 at 11:09
Re #14: Just to add a little more to Gavin’s response in order to address why Monckton mistakenly states that the “hot spot” only appears for GHG forcing: Basically, Monckton does not understand contour plots and their limitations. The IPCC plots that he uses to look for a “hot spot” (which can be seen in best detail by looking at the original source, which is Fig. 9.1 in Chapter 9 the IPCC 4th assessment report [Working Group 1] at http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/ar4-wg1.htm ) show the structure of the temperature change for the contributions from various different forcings over the period 1890 to 1999. Since they want to preserve the relative magnitudes, the interval between contours is the same in all the graphs. However, the downside of this choice is a lack of resolution for the forcings that contribute less. Take for example the solar forcing: It may look at a glance that there is not a significant “hot spot” in the mid troposphere as there is for GHGs but this conclusion is incorrect. In fact, if you look at the scale, what you found for the solar forcing is that the warming at the surface is in the contour range of 0 to 0.2 C while that in the mid-troposphere is in the contour range of 0.2 to 0.4 C. So, in fact, this plot is not at all incompatible with Monckton’s stated amplification factor of 2 to 3 in the case of GHGs. It is also not incompatible with an amplification of barely above 1 or an amplification of 20! Basically, the plot just doesn’t give enough resolution in the contours to tell us much. However, the figure that Gavin refers you to, where the solar forcing has been hypothetically increased in the model by an amount that produces a surface temperature change similar to that for GHGs, confirms that the structure of the warming is extremely similar throughout the troposphere for both forcings. (In the stratosphere, the predictions are very different…and the observational data of cooling there agrees with the forcing being due to GHGs not solar.)
24 July 2008 at 11:20
#14, Phil
There are various “signatures” of greenhouse changes that you do not get with other forcing mechanisms such as increased solar or cosmic rays, decreased albedo (if we can do that as its own forcing mechanism), etc. I have outlined some of these pieces of evidence here.
There is a good amount of evidence to suggest the tropical troposphere is indeed warming, but this issue has been hindered by many problems with the instruments, as well as looking for trends in a noisy record. But as gavin mentions, enhanced tropospheric warming is not unique to GHG’s, but arises from the idea that the tropics will stay close to a moist adiabat, which requires the upper atmosphere to warm more than the surface.
However, if it turns out that the tropical atmosphere warms less than predicted, this means a less negative lapse rate feedback effect, which means a more pronounced warming at the surface. This is not something we see in models, but it isn’t something I’d like…since it means feedbacks would be a bit more positive. What’s more, enhancing the temperature gradient between sea surface’s and the upper levels is also one way to get more intense hurricanes in models.
24 July 2008 at 11:36
APS: as to how this happened, I explained some of the extra background in comment #2 at Deltoid, i.e., I conjecture a Larry Gould impetus for this and you can see the documentation there. There are lessons to be learned from all this, and the FPS editors and APS have clearly learned some of them and are thinking hard about repair. Monckton was a new kind of experience for them, and certain exposed some weaknesses.
See discussion over at APS News Associate Editor Jennifer Ouellette’s Cocktail Party Physics. Anyone who is an APS FPS member might want to think about a Forum *really* ought to be doing in a Web / blog era, as opposed to a quarterly paper distribution.
24 July 2008 at 12:21
Gavin, please not too simplified explanations about solar-statosphere-troposphere coupling, instead e.g.:
Kuroda, Yuhji, M. Deushi, and K. Shibata, 2007. Role of solar activity in the troposphere-stratosphere coupling in the Southern Hemisphere winter. Geophys. Res. Lett., 34, L21704, doi:10.1029/2007GL030983, November 2, 2007
Abstract
The effect of the 11-year solar cycle on the troposphere-stratosphere (TS) coupling in the Southern Hemisphere (SH) late winter/spring is examined through the analysis of observations and simulations with a chemistry-climate model. It is found that the TS coupling in the SH late winter/spring is significantly modified according to the solar cycle; the dynamical coupling between the troposphere and stratosphere becomes stronger with the increasing solar activity. Such modulation of the strength of the TS coupling is found to be the source of the solar-cycle modulation of the annular mode in late winter/spring. A possible mechanism of the solar-cycle-TS-coupling relationship is also discussed.
Cohen, Judah, Mathew Barlow, Paul J. Kushner, and Kazuyuki Saito, 2007. Stratosphere–Troposphere Coupling and Links with Eurasian Land Surface Variability. Journal of Climate Vol. 20, No 21, pp. 5335–5343, November 2007
Abstract
A diagnostic of Northern Hemisphere winter extratropical stratosphere–troposphere interactions is presented to facilitate the study of stratosphere–troposphere coupling and to examine what might influence these interactions. The diagnostic is a multivariate EOF combining lower-stratospheric planetary wave activity flux in December with sea level pressure in January. This EOF analysis captures a strong linkage between the vertical component of lower-stratospheric wave activity over Eurasia and the subsequent development of hemisphere-wide surface circulation anomalies, which are strongly related to the Arctic Oscillation. Wintertime stratosphere–troposphere events picked out by this diagnostic often have a precursor in autumn: years with large October snow extent over Eurasia feature strong wintertime upward-propagating planetary wave pulses, a weaker wintertime polar vortex, and high geopotential heights in the wintertime polar troposphere. This provides further evidence for predictability of wintertime circulation based on autumnal snow extent over Eurasia. These results also raise the question of how the atmosphere will respond to a modified snow cover in a changing climate.
Sigmond, Michael, John F. Scinocca, and Paul J. Kushner, 2008. Impact of the stratosphere on tropospheric climate change. Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L12706, doi:10.1029/2008GL033573, June 24, 2008
Abstract
The atmospheric circulation response to CO2 doubling in various versions of an atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM) without a well-resolved stratosphere (“low-top” model), is compared to the response in a version of the same AGCM with a well-resolved stratosphere (“high-top” model). The doubled CO2 response of the “best-tuned” (i.e. operational) low-top model version is significantly different from that in the best-tuned high-top model version. Additional experiments show that this difference is not caused by the model lid height, but instead can be mainly attributed to differences in the settings of parameterized orographic gravity-wave drag which control the strength of the zonal wind in the mid- to high-latitude lower stratosphere and the mean sea-level pressure distribution. These findings suggest a link between the strength of the winds in the mid- to high-latitude lower stratosphere and tropospheric annular mode responses, and have implications for how to proceed with high-top low-top model intercomparisons.
[Response: Thanks for helping complicate a very simple issue! Stratospheric cooling is predicted from increasing CO2 (and was so predicted decades ago), this is the opposite behaviour than with solar forcing. It’s basic radiative physics - and while there is a lot of interesting research on dynamical couplings between the stratosphere and troposphere, the radiative effects are completely uncontroversial. (And, in case you hadn’t noticed, the stratosphere is indeed cooling). - gavin]
24 July 2008 at 12:47
It is good to see a thorough and comprehensible rebuttal of this piece, though I fear that the overall effect of its original emergence will be to maintain the fiction of deep scientific disagreement in the minds of many members of the public. This situation reveals, once again, how media looking for conflict and those with anti-regulation agendas are adept at conjuring the appearance of discord out of the presence of mere error.
24 July 2008 at 12:56
Deja Vu…
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/01/calculating-the-greenhouse-effect/
Monckton seems to have leaned heavily on Douglas & Knox’s “Climate forcing by the volcanic eruption of Mount Pinatubo”, which was refuted by Wigley et. al 2005 ( http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/servlets/purl/877849-e8Yv2Q/877849.PDF ) and Robock 2005 ( http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/DouglassKnoxComment2005GL023287.pdf). The same problem exists there:
That’s the same basic error with respect to forcings (for CO2, instead of for aerosols) in Monckton’s justification for the 66% reduction. He conveniently points out his sources, at least: “I am particularly grateful to Professors David Douglass and Robert Knox for having patiently answered many questions over several weeks”. Thus, this is really just regurgitation of previously refuted work, done in a non-peer reviewed journal outside the field of expertise.
For real discussions of climate sensitivity and feedbacks, which are also good examples of explanation, unlike Monckton’s obfuscations, see
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/03/climate-sensitivity-plus-a-change/
and
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/08/climate-feedbacks/
It’s unclear why the APS would publish something like this. It’s the equivalent of opening an AMA journal and finding a debate over whether or not tobacco use was associated with lung cancer, or if the HIV virus was really responsible for clinical AIDS or not - with the “dissenting viewpoint” being provided by associates of the tobacco or medical blood product industries.
In the case of Lord Christopher Monckton:
His primary reputable foundation is the “Science and Public Policy Institute”( http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Science_and_Public_Policy_Institute ):
Exxon recently made a public claim that they were defunding climate skeptic groups, but this one (currently the most “productive” from the public relations viewpoint) is not on the list: http://www.desmogblog.com/is-exxon-backing-away-from-climate-change-deniers
Craig Idso is the chairman of SPPI, and has a long record with Exxon - http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Craig_Idso
Some of the other “successes” of the SPPI group members include their promotion of the UK Channel 4’s Global Warming Swindle and the Kent Dimmock-Robert Durward lawsuit that was aimed at giving the film “equal time” in British schools, at which Monckton testified. ( http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/news/display.var.1761918.0.0.php?act=complaint&cid=679767 ) As a result, they’ve produced many “media mentions”, which is how successful PR campaigns are identified.
All that Exxon appears to have done is to have shut off funding for some think tanks, moved that funding to different think tanks, and kept their most productive denialists on the payroll - all while loudly using the opportunity to claim social responsibility and good corporate citizenship.
What other services do groups like SPPI provide for the fossil fuel lobby? One example is provided by Kentucky’s coal Rep. Jim Gooch (when not a politician, a supplier to Peabody Coal), who recently brought Monckton to be a lead speaker before their legislature on the issue of global warming: http://pageonekentucky.com/2007/11/19/jim-gooch-the-nut-that-keeps-on-giving/
Thus, if the coal industry needs experts to come speak to legislatures in order to head off regulations limiting coal use, then they turn to the SPPI, who finds a public speaker to make an appearance - but that speaker needs legitimacy, which means a publication record, scientific credentials, etc - and that’s what the APS has provided in this case.
24 July 2008 at 13:07
I’m still having difficulty with the 0.7C / W/m2 figure for the overall climate sensitivity.
The total greenhouse effect is variably stated at 33C. Are we saying the total greehouse effect is only 47 W / m2.
I understood the total greenhouse effect to be approximately 324 W/m2.
324 W/m2 * 0.7C / W/m2 = 226C (which is obviously too high)
I also assume that the total greenhouse effect includes all the forcings and all the feedbacks by definition.
[Response: You can’t linearise over the whole effect. The total greenhouse effect can be defined as the difference between the upward LW at the surface and at the top of the atmosphere and it is about 155 W/m2. If you remove all CO2 you’d get a forcing of about -28 W/m2, compared to 4 W/m2 for a doubling. This should indicate that it isn’t going to be linear. The climate sensitivity that we are talking about is only useful for ‘near’ present day conditions. - gavin]
24 July 2008 at 13:40
Beaker, there is a difference between “review” and peer review. The latter requires review by experts in the field–and the editor of the Physics and Society Forum certainly does not qualify wrt climate. While Napoleon once said, “Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity,” it absolutely strains credulity that the editor could be so mind bogglingly naive to fall for this.
24 July 2008 at 13:52
The question “Why would the APS publish this” keeps coming up.
One more time: The volunteer-staffed, non-peer-reviewed FPS newsletter is *not* isomorphic to the APS. The APS President responded very quickly when this was reported to him.
The Monckton/SPPI/blogosphere tactics are fairly similar to those used in last year’s attacks on Naomi Oreskes last year, which I documented in excruciating detail here … in anticipation of the idea that it wouldn’t be the last time. The main difference is that Naomi was already quite familiar with the people and tactics, while those are new to APS and FPS. (Of course, it’s slightly weird for this to be in APS anyway. )
Again, as to how this happened, I really suggest looking at Larry Gould, co-editor of the APS New England Section Newsletter.
24 July 2008 at 14:06
For those of you asking about Spencer’s recent testimony, it was mostly a rehashing of the arguments that RayPierre lambasted awhile back: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/05/how-to-cook-a-graph-in-three-easy-lessons/#more-567
24 July 2008 at 14:28
@26 The newsletter has also published several articles on the Darwin/Creationism debate over the years, sometimes (if I am remembering correctly) entertaining the Creationist side. I imagine the editors have been as much interested in providing a “lively read” as ironclad science. In this case, it backfired.
24 July 2008 at 15:03
Hence, the flaming response in relation to the ‘red-inking’ of what would otherwise be a very convenient resource, to which the otherwise unsuspecting could have been ‘authoritatively’ directed!
Lovely work Ike, thank you
24 July 2008 at 15:27
http://scienceblogs.com/tfk/2008/07/peer_review.php
24 July 2008 at 15:46
When did the stratosphere start cooling? Also, how far back do our stratospheric records go? And if there are problems with mid-tropospheric data, how do we know the stratospheric data is completely accurate?
I would appreciate any answers to these questions.
[Response: Signal versus noise. The trends in the stratosphere are larger and the noise smaller, so the uncertainties don’t play as much of a role. Look up ‘SSU’ data. - gavin]
24 July 2008 at 16:23
Oh my
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/07/chilinger_if_you_assume_that_c.php#more
24 July 2008 at 17:24
Re #27 (Zeke Hausfather): I agree that the particular RealClimate piece that you linked to is a good place to start. However, it only addresses one piece of what Spencer has been putting forward. So, I am looking forward to a more thorough discussion (which in the second paragraph in that piece, Ray did imply they did have on their “to do” list to undertake). Of course, I understand that the contributors here at RealClimate have other (and better!!) things to do with their time besides spending it rebutting the skeptics…But, I just wanted to let them know that we are eagerly awaiting this!
24 July 2008 at 17:36
I have to agree with bikesaddle when they say “And anyway, peer review is a bit of a red herring. There’s plenty of papers out there that have been peer reviewed and are full of holes.”
But it’s even worse than that. There are plenty of peer reviewed papers that were falsified by the authors, and were only caught after peer review had given them a hearty thumbs up.
One side says they are right, the other swears the same thing. The public has reason to be confused, don’t you agree?
[Response: No. Peer review is necessary but not sufficient - it really isn’t that complicated. - gavin]
24 July 2008 at 18:05
In a sense, peer review is itself peer-reviewed. The most egregious cases of peer review failure get a journal flagged as unreliable, unless the editors endeavor to correct their mistakes.
24 July 2008 at 18:44
Clear Thinker, Hmm, let’s see. On one side you have NEARLY ALL the researchers who regularly contribute to the field of climate science. On the other side we have a few grumblers/cranks, a couple of [edit] freaks and various professors emeriti in fields not precisely related to climate science. On one side you have models based on accepted physics that largely reproduce the observed trends (that is, CLIMATE trends). On the other side you have maybe some half-baked ideas about cosmic rays and volcanoes and space aliens with deadly heat rays. Hmm, which to choose? Which to choose?
24 July 2008 at 19:35
re: #16 BigCityLib on Marsh
I’ve researched Marsh a little more, over at BigCityLib,
Details over there, but I’d summarize:
retired nuclear physicist, for last few years has been writing anti-AGW pieces for OpEds, USA Today (?), conservative thinktank newsletters, etc.
24 July 2008 at 19:44
Chuckle. the science and medical journals clearly attract writers who do make the effort to watch the publication process, work to filter it of scum, light up scum when it slips by, and clean it out.
On point:
doi:10.1016/S1369-7021(06)71370-0
Copyright © 2006 Elsevier Ltd
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1369-7021(06)71370-0
Editorial
Referees and foul play With scientific fraud in the news, peer review is once again under attack for missing falsified data — Materials Today
______excerpt_follows_________
“… the inevitable question arises: how did the journal editors and referees miss it?
That is to confuse the purpose of peer review somewhat. Peer review cannot be expected to detect every case of fraud, particularly if it is carefully done. Its purpose is to review a paper’s originality, that an appropriate approach has been used, the conclusions are fair, and that it is worth publishing. It’s when other groups try to repeat work that fraud is more likely to become apparent.
…
In my view, peer review is under pressure from very different and less publicized sources. The burden on referees is reaching breaking point, with more papers being published and increasing pressure to speed up the review process. Instead, some method of successfully recognizing the valuable contribution of referees is needed that does not jeopardize impartiality.”
——–end_excerpt——–
Yes, you’ll also find some people blogging pay careful attention to and correct one another’s errors. Many of those bloggers are also scientists.
It’s a skill and a habit much to be applauded.
How many people do you know who give time to doing it?
Thank one today.
24 July 2008 at 20:37
OK; for the radiation-transfer-obsessed among us, that’s Myhre (not Myrhe) et al. 2001 (abstract only) and Collins et al. 2006.
[start grumble]
C’mon, Gavin — if you can’t give us links to the articles themselves, can you at least give us proper cites?
[end grumble]
[Response: My bad. Sorry. I’ll include the links (and fix the spelling) above. - gavin]
24 July 2008 at 21:42
Mr. Ladbury,
Those scientists you call names would not appreciate your irreverence. They number in the tens of thousands, so I’m sure you could find a couple of crackpots in the bunch. Interestingly enough they say the same about the alarmist scientists.
Both pro and con use science, and papers, and studies, and point fingers at the other, and on and on it goes.
Just out of curiosity, would you be willing to debate Mr. Monckton?
24 July 2008 at 22:28
Here is the most up to date series of SSU statosphere measurements that I could find. These cover altitudes most relevent to GHG cooling. Cooling has flattened since the mid ’90s when CFCs were banned. Also, the increasing concentration of CO2 in the stratosphere is beginning to affect the temperature measurements themselves, which will require a correction. For SSU47x you can see the solar cycle easily in recent years, which is more pronounced in the stratosphere.
http://cce.890m.com/attribution/images/upper-stratosphere-temp.jpg
24 July 2008 at 22:47
Gavin,
It is a very nice map of global forcings that you refer to,
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/efficacy/Fa.1.06.html
Obviously, for smaller (current level) increase in CO2 the spatial distribution should not change, only the amplitude will be smaller, right? Also, since climatic zones did not change much over the course of last century, this map pattern must be equally valid for the last 100 years, right? So, what do we have? Low forcing in central Africa, noticeable dip of forcing in Mongolia. Then, very high forcing in Middle East and India, and strong forcing in Australia and Argentina.
Wouldn’t it be very reasonable to guess that higher radiative forcing would put higher radiative pressure on local land? Then lets go you to your site again, and pull out a map of warmings, map of temperature “anomaly” for the last 100 years.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/maps/
Make it annual, from 1908 to 2007. What do we see there? Central Africa and Mongolia both show warming. Middle East, India, and Argentina have no change, and Australia has cooled. To me it looks completely opposite to what your map of radiative forcing would cause to Earth land. So, either the temperature reconstruction is wrong, or the CO2 forcing theory is wrong. Or both. What do you think?
Cheers,
Al Tekhasski
[Response: Third possibility. Local differences in forcings don’t make automatic local differences in responses once the atmosphere and ocean have done their thing. The models don’t give you any reason to think otherwise. - gavin]
24 July 2008 at 22:53
Now I know why Tamino grumbled about the spamthing. My laptop has an excellent screen, and I can’t tell what I am looking at.
But, what I wanted to say was that I just finished watching the entire 2.5 hours of the Boxer hearing, and Spencer was a strange surprise. What on earth is this Holy Grail that he was talking about?
(The surprise was that his manner exuded petulance.)
24 July 2008 at 23:29
Clear Thinker said:
The real question is, can Monckton debate? Scientific debate is not a test of rhetoric for the entertainment of an audience. Scientific debate takes place though papers published in peer reviewed journals. Monckton doesn’t seem to be able to make it into Nature or Science.
Consider the real gold standard in the scientific world is not publication, but replication. There are some two dozen GCMs in the world that all confirm that the anthropogenic greenhouse gases are heating the world, and that current warming cannot be explained without AGW.
It is telling that the fossil carbon industry is not able to produce an alternate hypothesis that can make it through to publication. Lord knows they have the money to support alternate research. For one day of ExMob’s profit (~75 million $) I could build the best climate model in the world. If there were another possible explanation of what is happening to the climate, I could demonstrate it. Since ExMob has not produced an alternative hypothesis (and doesn’t even appear to be working on one), I conclude that they know that AGW is real.
24 July 2008 at 23:38
APS should have expected to take a vicious beating for opening the debate on GW and AGW, and especially for allowing Monckton to publish his paper in “the Physics & Society” newsletter. All over the blogosphere, I’m finding GW/AGW bed-wetters declaring that the APS are hypocrites and have changed their mind on GW/AGW. They nearly had me fooled until I bothered to check the APS web site. Neither the Monckton article nor the article “A Tutorial o the Basic Physics of Climate Change” by David Hafemeister and Peter Schwarz have been peer reviewed. I have no problem with the APS opening a debate on GW and they did so at some risk to their credibility; my problem is that the GW “skeptics” are overstating (lying about) what actually happened, and many people are buying into these lies. How did the debate get so vicious?
24 July 2008 at 23:50
> Those scientists you call names would not appreciate your irreverence. They number in the tens of thousands, so I’m sure you could find a couple of crackpots in the bunch.
You must be referring to:
“In an unprecedented action, representatives for more than 10,000 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency scientists are calling on Congress to take immediate action against global warming”
http://watthead.blogspot.com/2006/11/epa-employees-file-mass-petition.html
Oops! I see you were referring to the “Oregon Petition”. For debunking of this “petition”, see:
http://www.desmogblog.com/node/1067
24 July 2008 at 23:51
What a bizarre question. Considering climate science is something pursued by thousands of nerds over decades in probably billions of lines of text, you think hashing it out in an hour with a wrinkled old crackpot using methods most often employed by such truth-seekers as lawyers and politicians is a good idea?
Anyone who is excited about debating science to arrive at some final truth that can’t be solved within the field is either a liar, a fool, or both. Why not make it a double bill with Eric Hovind versus Someone Smart?
[Response: It’s worth reading John Ziman’s “Are debatable scientific questions debatable?” on this topic. - gavin]
24 July 2008 at 23:57
Clean Thinker stated:
“Those scientists you call names would not appreciate your irreverence. They number in the tens of thousands, so I’m sure you could find a couple of crackpots in the bunch. Interestingly enough they say the same about the alarmist scientists.”
Where is this your fantasy army of tens of thousands of scientists sceptical to AGW? How come they never publish is climate science journals? Why only crackpot denialists get all the attention?
At the same time, solid studies are published in thousands each year supporting human-induced climate change.
25 July 2008 at 0:33
Tenney, the middle of the three buttons (speaker icon):
“click the audio button to hear a set of digits that can be entered instead of the visual challenge.”
A “magnifying glass” function — a way to enlarge that part of the screen temporarily — would help. Or, mmhmm, a real magnifier. Hm.
Clicking the top button usually gets a readable image eventually.
25 July 2008 at 2:23
Okay, at some point even the sincere valid scientists clinging to the phlogiston are no longer going to be respected by their colleagues. So, no, they are not 100% people who are whores, liars, cranks, crackpots, out of their disciplines, over the hill, etc. etc.
But it’s definitely approaching 99% of them, and since their numbers are approaching 1% of the relevant scientists, not sure why anyone should consider the 1% of the 1% that’s sincere, qualified, and actually doubts AGW to a strong degree. They’re a tiny and aging handful, and when they pass on, honest and skilled denialism on AGW will die with them.
Moreover, science is not settled by the three-ring-circus that is a debate with glib charlatans like Monckton or Crichton. The climate denialism faithful are too lacking in education and fundamental scientific understanding to understand climate change themselves, so they turn to authorities, but unfortunately, they don’t even have the level of competence or discernment to pick real authorities, choosing science fiction writers, bored useless british royalty, and TV weathermen over atmospheric scientists; and they have fixed, obsessive delusions, for instance that (mostly “capitalist” but to a bizarre extreme) economics should determine science, or politics actually determines science. But whenever those things happen, that’s a failure of science.
So the underlying problem is a lack of understanding of science coupled with a very bad Dunning-Kruger effect.
25 July 2008 at 5:54
Clear Thinker posts:
Those tens of thousands of “scientists” who oppose AGW theory include almost no climatologists. It’s a situation analogous to having tens of thousands of physicists sign statements against evolution. They are no more competent to critique that than biologists are competent to critique theories in physics.
25 July 2008 at 7:10
Clear Thinker,
I was intentionally glib, but the point stands: there are very few experts left who dispute anthropogenic causation of the current warming epoch. In fact these experts all admit that the CO2 we’ve been spewing into the air is causing warming. They just posit that negative feedbacks will keep it within reasonable bounds or they argue for a small value for CO2 sensitivity. Nobody has yet succeeded in constructing a climate model subject to these constraints.
As to the rest of the so-called scientists who oppose the consensus, most are not scientists at all. Some are scientists who are arguing far outside their field of expertise and who haven’t done the work of even understanding what they’re arguing against (Svensmark et al. fall into this category, as they don’t seen to comprehend that merely finding an alternative mechanism for warming does not by itself invalidate the known mechanism of CO2 greenhouse forcing.).
At least Spencer and Lindzen comprehend that the only way out of this dilemma is to posit that somehow the physics changes at around 280 ppmv–a contention that doesn’t pass the straight-face test, but is at least in the realm of physical possibility. Where Spencer and Lindzen leave the fold of scientists is where they accuse their peers of being politically motivated ex cathedra (e.g. in the Wall Street Urinal editorial pages).
25 July 2008 at 8:23
Re 52. Ray, hopefully you admit at least that new findings replace old ones, e.g.
Compo,Gilbert P., and Prashant D. Sardeshmukh, 2008. Oceanic influences on recent continental warming. Climate Dynamics, in press 2008, preprint online http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/people/gilbert.p.compo/CompoSardeshmukh2007a.pdf
“…Perhaps the most important conclusion to be drawn from our analysis is that the recent acceleration of global warming may not be occurring in quite the manner one might have imagined…”
[Response: Are you under the impression that running AGCMs with SST forcing is somehow new? (Try Gates, 1992). - gavin]
25 July 2008 at 9:29
I will attempt to say this politely and respectfully. The commenter “Clear Thinker” is very obviously a “troll”, who is repetitively posting fake, phony, scripted, long-ago and many-times-over debunked, Exxon-Mobil sponsored, global warming denialist drivel. The Oregon Petition? Debate with Monckton? Please, spare me. These silly Rush Limbaugh talking points are interspersed with transparently disingenuous pretensions that he is “asking questions” in order to “learn”, and puerile rhetorical gambits (”Those scientists you call names would not appreciate your irreverence”) that were old when USENET was young.
The patience of the moderators and knowledgeable commenters in responding politely and factually to Clear Thinker as though he were genuinely seeking to learn about the science of climate change is admirable, but there comes a time to recognize when you are being “had” by someone whose only purpose is to spread disinformation and maliciously waste your time. I call this troll “Rumplestiltskin” and wish he may disappear at the sound of his name.
25 July 2008 at 10:19
Re: #49
Dear Hank,
Thanks. I have been using these damned computers for 25 years, and yet my daughter would have picked that out in a flash, while I didn’t even notice the possibility.
25 July 2008 at 10:25
Gavin, regarding your comment to #42:
First, we are trying to be accurate here, at least in numbering of cases. Your case would be #4.
Second, your explanation does not look satisfactory. When you construct the forcing map, you use a collection of appropriate local atmospheric profiles, from MODTRAN/HITRAN database or else. One would think that the local Australia-size atmospheric profile is already defined by environment, including influence of ocean and atmospheric circulation pattern. Therefore, the factors you mention are already incorporated in the picture. Is there any better explanation of the glaring discrepancy between the theory of “radiative forcing” and experimentally observed ground effects?
Cheers,
- Alexi
[Response: Look a little deeper grasshopper. That map is calculated from the model, and the response in the model can be seen on the same set of pages. The patterns are not similar. That is in a perfectly controlled environment. So why would you expect that the real world would suddenly exhibit a similarity that is not even seen in (simpler) model? Show me one prediction made that has the spatial response pattern equal to the spatial forcing pattern. You appear to be disproving a theory that doesn’t exist. - gavin]
25 July 2008 at 10:45
Worse, even, as they’re selectively cutting-and-pasting commentary from here in an effort to make Gavin appear clueless, etc …
There’s no real reason to feed that process.
25 July 2008 at 11:00
There’s no real reason to feed that process.
I try to pitch a short and polite answer that has educational value for lurkers. Can’t be quoted out of context and might actually wring a little light from the situation.
25 July 2008 at 11:47
Mr. Clear, you could be much more skeptical of the ideas people give you to bring here.
Beware being used. There’s an old game called ‘Global Warming Bingo’ you should be aware of.
There are also from time to time blogs that try copying material out of RC and creating their own comment threads — I think as a way of trying to capture Google pagerank and get more hits from searches. This doesn’t work very long.
People learn what’s not worth paying attention to, no matter how fresh the bait trolled through the site here. Don’t let people send you in here to be bait.
Skepticism — it’s evenhanded, or it’s nothing. Ask a librarian the basic questions, look them up for yourself, don’t trust people who send you in here to be your friends. Come in with some knowledge you’ve developed on your own, ask useful questions showing that.
Seriously. It doesn’t matter what you start off believing, if you develop basic research skills and evenhanded curiosity and stay focused on asking good questions for your own benefit.
Don’t let yourself be trolled as bait. No old bait is fresh enough to hold people’s attention for long.
25 July 2008 at 11:48
I took some time to go over and read the commentary by the brain trust over at Newsbusters. Oh dear. Let me warn you, this is not for the faint of heart. If you think that humor cannot possibly progress beyond the fart joke, this is the site for you! Wanna see a whole other side to Clear Stinker or Pop Tart, go on over. It will be an education–proof that as Dave Barry says, “You’re only young once, but you can always be immature.”
25 July 2008 at 12:19
About those “thousands of scientists” on the oregon petition. This was a subsample of 60 names (though I specifically hunted down the phD’s on the list to help them out a bit), but I coudn’t find anyone in a climate-related field, or with a publication record relating to climate (change).
25 July 2008 at 12:22
While it is clear to me that SecularAnimist is correct in his/her characterization of “Clear Thinker,” and while I am sympathetic to SA’s and dhogaza’s positions re: “CT,” I think it is possible that casual/occasional lurkers gain a valuable education by seeing these disinformation campaigns presented and dismantled. I realize that it is tedious for people who have been around a while to go through it again and again. But when I began lurking here (late 2005, I think) and didn’t already know about all the strawmen, red herrings, false dichotomies, cherry-picking, etc., etc., etc. used by denialists, it was tremendously informative to me to see these arguments presented and knocked down, only to resurface as though the refutation had not taken place. As I came to learn, the refutations had usually taken place initially years before, and repeatedly ever since. Seeing this process play out taught me a lot about both the science and about anti-science propaganda.
25 July 2008 at 12:36
Gavin, thanks for the pointer to Ziman’s article.
That’s by far the best description I’ve ever seen.
I grew up as a ‘faculty brat’ and heard such hard-argued science informally and sometimes at formal seminars from the back row seats, much of my childhood. There’s no sport as exciting as a hard argument in science; as one learns it, more layers are revealed of what’s actually being argued and how it’s done.
Ziman’s article is really, really good.
“… The contest for credibility between claimants and their critics — in practise, all members of the same community, but adopting di¶erent roles according to the circumstances ….”
25 July 2008 at 14:35
Ray Ladbury: They just posit that negative feedbacks will keep it within reasonable bounds or they argue for a small value for CO2 sensitivity. Nobody has yet succeeded in constructing a climate model subject to these constraints.
Ray, you keep saying that and I keep challenging it. Where is your evidence that such a climate model does not exist?
[Response: Surely if it existed, someone would have published results from it? Or are we supposed to just have faith that it does? - gavin]
25 July 2008 at 15:35
Al Tekhasski: You seem to have skipped right past some basic climate change theory (stuff I learned in high school) in your eagerness to get to complex HITRAN/MODTRAN databases (something I hadn’t even heard of until grad school).
General knowledge: coastal areas warm more slowly than inland areas because of ocean inertia. This explains most of the warming pattern. The remainder can be explained by googling the term “polar amplification” which involves the speed of warming of the Arctic circle as ice retreats in a positive feedback loop. Of course, note that Antarctica behaves differently in the short term because of the ozone hole, the circumpolar vortex, and because the conditions are such that ice retreat won’t happen for a while.
25 July 2008 at 16:15
gavin: Surely if it existed, someone would have published results from it?
But gavin, you have published sensitivity results from your own models as low as 2.4C. I’ve seen comments by knowledgeable people (James Annan for one) that cloud feedback could be negative rather than positive. Many other parameters are very uncertain. Are you saying that you could not construct a model using parameters that do not violate _well known_ limits that has a sensitivity less than 1.5C?
You might not want to publish it, but that does not mean it could not exist.
[Response: I publish what the models give, and you’ll find most other modellers do the same. But if you want to see how much you can tweak them and what happens read Sanderson et al, 2008. You get much worse results with models with low (or high) sensitivity.
25 July 2008 at 17:48
When “The Register” reported Monckton’s, ahem, “article”, it understandably ignored his junk science entirely, but focused on the claim that some of the numbers you guys use in your models come from one paper only.
Is there any truth in that - and even if so, does it matter?
[Response: Not really. Climate sensitivity is the key number and that comes from dozens of papers. - gavin]
25 July 2008 at 19:05
re: #37 [MAYBE THIS BELONGS IN NEW THREAD FOR MARSH?]
Via Deltoid, we find Catherine Brahic at New Scientist:
“The editors put out a request for articles arguing “both sides of the debate.” They also asked Gerald Marsh to recommend authors who might contribute a piece arguing against the IPCC.
Marsh gave five names, and the editors contacted all five. Monckton was the only one to respond.”
Anyway, my conjecture that Larry Gould was the Monckton-FPS direct connection proved wrong, although he was clearly eager to help out later.
BigCityLib had noticed Marsh on July 21, and I’d added some notes.
Dr Marsh appears moderately often in FPS, often on nuclear topics.
Here’s a list of pointers to his climate-related writings that I could find. I printed some a day or two ago, but am out of bandwidth for serious study right now, so maybe others may care to look closely and post technical analyses. As far as I can tell, none of these are peer-reviewed pieces, although some may have been editorial-reviewed.
G. E. Marsh website is here.
April 2008:
1. “Climate Stability and Policy, FPS Newsletter, April 2008.
Jan 2008:
Climate Stability and Policy: A Synthesis :
2. 19-page PDF, longer version of what’s in FPS
3. “The Coming of a New Ice Age” - OpEd.
I think this appeared in Winning Green, but in any case, there are some other references:
Google: gerald marsh coming new ice age chicago
Jan 2008:
4. “Goracle Gushings on Faith-Based Science”, in USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education(?) I’m not sure what that is…
Jul 2007:
5. “Climate Change: The Sun’s Role”, arXiv:0706.3621v1 [physics.ao-ph]. [PDF.]
As per BigCityLib, this was already discussed by Atmoz.
Jan 2003:
6. Climate Change 2001: A Critique. [PDF]
June 2002:
7. “A Global Warming Primer” PDF]
Aug 2001:
8. “Climate Change Science? National Academy of Sciences Global Warming Report fails to Live up to its Billing” at National Center for Public Policy Research (whose page title says “A Conservative Think Tank”).”
There may be reviews of some of these, I just haven’t yet looked hard.
Summary: I’m reminded of certain other physicists, of whom 3 are deceased.
25 July 2008 at 20:12
The Viscount of Benchley, in his latest attempt at obfuscation states in part:
“Since the great majority of the incoming solar radiation incident upon the Earth strikes the tropics, any reduction in tropical radiative forcing has a disproportionate effect on mean global forcings. On the basis of Lindzen (2007), the anthropogenic-ear radiative forcing as established in Eqn. (3) are divided by 3 to take account of the observed failure of the tropical mid-troposphere to warm as projected by the models –
ΔF2x≈ 3.405 / 3 ≈ 1.135 W m–2. (17)”
Well then’ suppose all of the matter in a reaction, nuclear or otherwise, into energy isn’t converted into energy due to losses in the process then should the equation E=Mc^2 be divided by 3 to read E=Mc^2/3? Am I on to something here?
25 July 2008 at 21:16
Gavin at #24:
So 28/155 = 18% could be said to be the total CO2 contribution to the greenhouse effect (as defined)? That’s a fair way from the 9% (91% remaining) figure you had back in 2005. What’s the difference?
25 July 2008 at 22:17
GlenFergus #70 is merely misrepresenting what was written back in 2005. From that link:
Water vapour: feedback or forcing? “The overlaps complicate things, but it’s clear that water vapour is the single most important absorber (between 36% and 66% of the greenhouse effect), and together with clouds makes up between 66% and 85%. CO2 alone makes up between 9 and 26%, while the O3 and the other minor GHG absorbers consist of up to 7 and 8% of the effect, respectively.”
It is through same all the way through the article. A sensible reader couldn’t possibly miss the lesson: you cannot break up the effect into a simple sum of parts, or do simple linearizations. The 18% is right in the middle of the 9% to 26% range mentioned in 2005; and GlenFergus has cherry picked the lowest number for reasons it would be unkind to speculate upon.
Just to underline what should be plain as a pikestaff in the original article. This range of numbers 9% to 26% is not an indication of uncertainty. It does not mean that the real number is uncertain. It means that the notion of a simple proportionate contribution is meaningless. The various parts work together and interact in reasonably well understood nonlinear ways; and that nonlinear combination works out to CO2 having about around 9% to 26% of the total greenhouse effect; depending only on how you decide to make the linear oversimplication.
25 July 2008 at 22:18
This may be slightly off topic, but as y’all are discussing disinformation campaigns, I am unhappy to report that Big Oil is bringing the same down here to Brazil (where I have been living the past 11 years). It feeds the Brazilian sense of natural pride that they are self-sufficient in oil via the national oil company Petrobras.
To my utter dismay, the Brazilian weekly magazine, Veja (similar to Time), published a prominent three-page interview with Patrick Michaels of the University of Virginia (and also associated with the infamous Cato Institute), wherein he proclaimed global warming would not cause any catastrophes and hauled out all the usual denialist junk science arguments that sound perfectly reasonable to the uninitiate. Worse, there were no counterarguments published.
What makes this particularly egregious is that Veja magazine is just about the only Brazilian news outlet that is not owned by Globo, and as such one generally expects Veja to publish the real nitty-gritty, unlike the Globo news outlets. That is to say, readers usually believe in what Veja publishes.
This is the link to the interview, in Portuguese:
http://arquivoetc.blogspot.com/2008/06/veja-entrevista-patrick-michaels.html
If anyone would like to see an English translation, just say so. It wouldn’t be very difficult for me to translate because I have seen these same junk science “arguments” in English, over and over again.
The worst thing about the interview is Michaels’ tone of absolute confidence in what he says, as if what he says is irrefutable.
It is distressing to see that Exxon’s tactics are being bought wholesale by Petrobras, and Veja fell for it. And, here in Brazil, there has really been no denialism showing up in the media before this present instance, and the Brazilian public largely agrees with the concept of global warming.
I am sure we can expect to see more of this sort of thing down here.
The problem of CO2 emissions by Brazil is only going to get worse. At least 4 million new cars were sold here last year, and investment in public transportation infrastructure has been minimal. Daily traffic jams in São Paulo are in the hundreds of kilometers. Huge numbers of drivers spend 3 to 4 hours going to work and the same going home because of inadequate public transportation. There has been a phenomenal growth in the middle class, and they are mostly all driving to work.
This guy, Patrick Michaels, was asked about the fact that he receives funding from energy companies, and unbelievably he stated that this means that his work is even more reliable because it is so thoroughly scrutinized by the vast number of scientists who disagree with him.
Do you guys have any opinions on this?
25 July 2008 at 22:27
Actually there is a recent paper in GRL that argues for a climate sensitivity at the low end (or lower) of the IPCC projections; see http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2007GL032759.shtml . This is making use of paleoclimatic data, rather than full-blown GCM’s, where authors equate the sum of greenhouse gas forcing, aerosol forcing, and surface albedo forcing…assume a fixed climate sensitivity between the LGM and 42 KYBP…and estimate the climate sensitivity. It’s an interesting technique, though it seems very dicey to me. Dust is not a globally-mixed tracer and Antarctic dust records differ from northern ones. You also need to be careful about high-frequency vs. low-frequency changes (Vostok may correlate fairly well with global temperatures for slow things, but there is a high-frequency overprint seesawed with the north that should be filtered out), and they have picked a low temperature change globally that lowers the sensitivity. Also need to correct the dust for changing dilution by accumulation rates which are not very well known, or changing source conditions.
Perhaps someone else has further insight here.
25 July 2008 at 22:29
re: Monckton
“Did Lord Monckton fabricate a claim on his Wikipedia page?”
George Monbiot has posted his email thread with Monckton regarding this issue. Oct 2007
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/10/03/did-lord-monckton-fabricate-a-claim-on-his-wikipedia-page/
26 July 2008 at 3:24
Re 66 about climate sensitivity and models’ performance Gavin refers to
Sanderson, Benjamin M., R. Knutti, T. Aina, C. Christensen, N. Faull, D. J. Frame, W. J. Ingram, C. Piani, D. A. Stainforth, D. A. Stone, and M. R. Allen, 2008. Constraints on Model Response to Greenhouse Gas Forcing and the Role of Subgrid-Scale Processes. Journal of Climate Vol. 21, No 11, pp. 2384-2400, June 2008, online http://www.iac.ethz.ch/people/knuttir/papers/sanderson08jc.pdf
The study is about climatepredition.net which was loudly introduced but crashed. The layman readers of this blog need to know only the following extracts of this study:
“…Rougier (2007) described the difference between
models and the climate itself to be a sum of two parts:
a reducible and an irreducible part. The reducible
part may be lessened by a better choice of model
parameters, while the irreducible part is a “systematic
error”—a result of model imperfections that cannot be
removed by “tuning” parameters….
5. Conclusions
…We have found that the perfect model state may be unattainable
through parameter perturbations alone…”
The list what modellers still need is well, long…
26 July 2008 at 3:29
Let me reiterate a point I feel compelled to make a few times a year:
There was a period when the climate denialists were bad-mouthing peer review? Remember? Saying it was overrated and didn’t function as claimed, etc. etc.
Then they were saying the money climate researchers wanted for data was some sort of pork barrel and their motivation for pushing “mythical” AGW.
Throughout the process they’ve attacked the idea of a consensus on what data means - “science is not done by consensus” was their battle cry.
Throughout the process, they’ve attacked the idea of global circulation models and global climate models. “models don’t prove anything, you just tamper with parameters to make your theory look good.”
But here’s the thing. You cannot do science without data, peer review, some sort of model, or an attempt to get other scientists to agree with you. Those are the 4 pillars of anything that can be called science.
There really is no scientific stone left unturned. This is why I am so disrespectful of, e.g., Akasofu. Moreso, now, even than the ID/creationist people, the climate denialists are engaged in a full-out assault - not on climate science, not on scientists like Hansen or Mann - but on SCIENCE. All science.
This is why, in a much more repressive environment than ours in the US, Britain, Australia, etc., Soviet biologists, especially geneticists, resisted Lysenkoism, in certain peril of their careers and in some cases their lives or freedom. Not because of the ill effects of neo-Lamarckianism - I think - because historical accounts overstate the problems with agriculture, etc. But because if you say in evolutionary biology someone’s connections or ideological purity trump science, science is gone. And you won’t confine it to biology, because the same rationale - play it safe, who cares about one area of the subject, just research somewhere else, and maybe a dozen or so people are going to have to drop out academically, so what? - is going to potentially repeat itself.
26 July 2008 at 4:33
Glen, are you referring to the number at the beginning of that thread?
Where it says:
“… of the greenhouse effect … CO2 alone makes up between 9 and 26%” in the first post of that thread?
Where it says “One way to quantify this is to take a radiation model and remove each long-wave absorber …. This gives the minimum effect …. The complementary calculation, using only each particular absorber in turn, gives the maximum effect. … This isn’t a perfect calculation but it’s quick and easy and is close enough to the right answer for our purposes.”?
That’s the thread you link to — same one where in the early part of the responses, you see:
“[Response: This was intended as a very rough “back-of-envelope”…. All I wanted to say is: this quick-and-dirty estimate already shows that a 2% increase in greenhouse effect is not a negligible effect, so people who are telling the public “don’t worry, it is only 2%” are making a bogus argument. -Stefan]
Did I miss a more precise number somewhere you’re asking about?
26 July 2008 at 6:21
You lot are SO suffering from group think whatever the deficiencies of Monckton’s rather over worked article. Has the history of science taught you nothing? The ice sheet over the UK in the last ice age reached to Finchley Road, yet hippos like animal fossils were also unearthed at Trafalgar square (that’s just a few miles away). Whatever you say about ‘triggers’ the fact is that the Earth will do this periodically anyway and that is irrefutable evidence based fact, not some model based theory. I suspect the world will find, canute like, that decreasing CO2 flattens a small hill in advance of an advancing and entirely natural mountain.
26 July 2008 at 6:51
Clear Thinker,
I would be glad to debate Lord Monckton. It might be difficult to arrange physically as I have been unemployed since February and have no source of income. But if some third party will buy tickets and hall space, I’ll be there.
26 July 2008 at 7:16
Hi guys
Just a simple post (hopefully). I am fairly scientifically and technically literate, but hopelessly lost in the detail of global climate models.
I got started on this from a link in Ray Kurzweils web site. The paper by Monckton had me starting to think that maybe there was reason to doubt all the certainty on global warming (along with some brief discussions with a friend who is a prof of electrical engineering).
Now after skimming this site, I am probably more confused, but fairly confident on the status quo - mainly because there are many people here who seem to know what they are talking about who support the ‘consensus’ view on GW.
I then find another link
http://www.skeptic.com/the_magazine/featured_articles/v14n01_climate_of_belief.html
that gives me pause for thought.
I know many of you are too busy to spend too much time on this, but it seems to me it would be helpful for a clear and simple rebuttal of these kinds of ideas to be published both here (in a kind of ’sticky’ post) and elsehwhere. It really needs to be on the level of a media article rather than a tech paper (maybe I’m asking the wrong people here).
It should cover point for point some of the doubts raised, such as - ice levels decreasing?, global temp now cooling?, too many assumptions in models?, vital factors left out of models?, chaotic processes inherently upredictable? Too much uncertainty in predictions to make them useful?
There was something like this by New Scienist a while ago, but needs updating.
Could I (folornly) make a plea for calm rational debate. So many sites like this seem to attract vituperous and ranting comments, along with the honest and sensible ones.
Glad to say the weather here (Gloucestershire) is now getting warm and sunny, after a miserable summer. See - global cooling
26 July 2008 at 7:22
Gavin, many thanks for the reply to #67, greatly appreciated, but forgive me spelling it out in a bit more detail: while you understandably trash his attempt to rewrite the equation himself, and in delightful detail, could you also rebut those of Monckton’s statements where he tries to show weaknesses in *your* calculations? Like -
> It is of no little significance that the IPCC’s value for the coefficient in the CO2 forcing equation depends on only one paper in the literature
[Response: This is nonsense. All line-by-line models give the same answers, and there are dozens of descriptions of this in the literature (Collins et al, 2006 is just one (more) example). Monckton confuses citation practice (i.e. people tend to cite the first paper that described a concept) with actual practice. - gavin]
> its values for the feedbacks that it believes account for two-thirds of humankind’s effect on global temperatures are likewise taken from only one paper
[Response: Again, completely wrong. Any paper that has estimates climate sensitivity implies a value for the feedbacks and there have been tons of such papers (see our climate sensitivity section in the Index). - gavin]
> The IPCC has not drawn on thousands of published, peer-reviewed papers to support its central estimates for the variables from which climate sensitivity is calculated, but on a handful.
[Response: This demonstrates quite clearly how poor Monckton’s understanding of the process is. The IPCC does draw on thousands of papers (look at the bibliography), but in condensing down any one section to something readable, one always looks for the most typical paper to cite. This is not going to be an outlier result that no-one agrees with, but either a pioneering description or overview paper that encapsulates the concept at hand. IPCC doesn’t cite Hansen et al 1984 because that was the only paper on the subject, but because it was a defining paper, and one whose results (in this specific topic) really haven’t been superseded. An analogy would be someone citing Principia Mathematica for the derivation of Newton’s Laws, and a reader concluding that no-one has been able to duplicate his work because there is no cite from the 20th Century. - gavin]
Apologies for copying his words in here, but what does he mean by those statements (in as layman terms as possible) and why are those statements wrong or irrelevant?
I feel embarrassed to ask, since if the scientific community is indeed standing behind the IPCC’s conclusions, then clearly such claims must be wrong (or irrelevant) — but as a lay believer it’d be nice to know why.
26 July 2008 at 7:32
Hi PJ Smith. I’m always intrigued when sceptics (I’m assuming this is what you are)start spouting nonsense about Quaternary science. How do you know that the UK was once covered by an ice sheet? I’m assuming you have never done research on contemporary or past ice sheets. You know this because Quaternary scientists (like me) did the research. Well, Quaternary scientists are now pointing out that the palaeoclimate record shows that the climate can be rather unstable….and not necessarily conducive to the maintenance of stable civilisations. So, why do you accept our arguments about past ice sheets, but not our warnings about experimenting with the climate system?
By the way, hippos weren’t around in the UK at the time of the maximum of the Anglian ice sheet.
26 July 2008 at 7:49
Re #76–I’ve noticed that Roy Spencer, to take one denialist better-credentialed than the average, is also an advocate for Intelligent Design. I’ve speculated that the two ideologies may be linked, for either intrinsic or extrinsic reasons. Is there a pattern of such linkage, or is the case of Spencer a fluke?
26 July 2008 at 9:46
SecularAnimist (54) I admire the attempt. It’s pretty hard to call someone “…a “troll”, who is repetitively posting fake, phony, scripted, long-ago and many-times-over debunked, Exxon-Mobil sponsored, global warming denialist drivel. …” with respect and politeness.
26 July 2008 at 10:13
Re # 78 PJ Smith:
Every effect must have a cause- climate doesn’t just change for the sake of change,with no driving force. So, what caused the climate to change in the past? And what is causing it to change right now?
Believe it or not, many, many scientists have put a lot of time and energy into answering those questions. And they have a pretty good understanding of the major factors that influence climate currently and in the past.
26 July 2008 at 10:31
Thanks gavin, for the Sanderson link in 66.
However, I think it does support my point in challenging Ray, that it is possible to construct a model using parameters that do not violate _well known_ limits that has a sensitivity less than 1.5 K.
Sanderson: “Each parameter is perturbed discretely and may assume one of two or three possible values, which represent estimates of the extremes of the range of current uncertainty in the value of that parameter (which were established).
through expert solicitation).
Figure 4 in Sanderson shows several models produced this way with sensitivity (labeled ‘Actual Climate Sensitivity’ in the figure) less than 1.5 K.
26 July 2008 at 10:39
Re #81 Amanda Stone:
Perhaps because, as some would put it, Monckton is a ‘piece of work’?
Perhaps the one who ought to feel embarrassed is not you?
26 July 2008 at 11:27
#80 Joe Atiyah,
Re the Sceptics article by Pat Frank. I’ve not read it…
But search for “Frank” on this page that article is addressed in the comments.
To save my time I employ a simple rule: “If it’s not published in a reputable peer reviewed journal I don’t bother reading it.” If it is of worth it will persuade the professionals and eventually be accepted. That rule is also vital for an amateur like me who doesn’t always know enough to see why something is wrong.
26 July 2008 at 11:42
PJ Smith wrote: “… the Earth will do this periodically anyway and that is irrefutable evidence based fact, not some model based theory …”
It is “irrefutable evidence based fact” that (1) human activities, principally the burning of fossil fuels, are releasing large amounts of CO2 and other “greenhouse gases” into the atmosphere, that (2) the resulting increased concentration of these gases in the atmosphere is causing the Earth system to retain more of the sun’s heat, that (3) the Earth is getting hotter as a result, and that (4) this anthropogenic warming is causing rapid changes in the Earth’s climate, atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere. These statements are all based on direct empirical observation. None of them depend on any “model based theory”. They are facts.
Moreover, there is nothing that the Earth system, the sun, orbital cycles, etc. are known to do “periodically anyway”, or are observed to be doing now, that can account for the observed rapid heating of the Earth system. That idea is not even a “model based theory” — it is pure speculation unsupported by any model, theory or observation.
Really, what is it that makes you think that you have found the simple, obvious reason why anthropogenic global warming is not happening and cannot be happening — the simple and obvious reason that has somehow eluded the diligent attention of thousands of climate scientists who have studied this issue over decades?
26 July 2008 at 11:47
Steve Reynolds, reading Sanderson — did you get to the Conclusions section? You’re noticing that it’s possible to fiddle _one_ parameter and get what you’d like to see, but read on to where they describe the limits when trying to match more than one.
26 July 2008 at 12:14
Welcome to RealClimate, Joe!
One of the cool things about this site is that you can search on citations and retrieve in-depth discussions.
For example, the Patrick Frank story in Skeptic cites Baliunas (2001) up front. You can stick “Baliunas” into the search engine at the top of this page, and you’ll see several threads that thoroughly dismantle this paper. Skeptic should know better.
With this tool, you can quickly separate the wheat from the chaff. Have fun!
26 July 2008 at 14:36
Tenney Naumer (72) — Read comment #87 and apply to your instance.
26 July 2008 at 14:56
Joe #80,
Mea culpa… you see, you are in a vulnerable position if you are defending something you dearly believe in.
Sometimes denialists try do depict the awareness of the human influence on climate as a ‘religion’. That is insulting to both scientists and (presumably) religious people, but there is a grain of truth in it: we scientists do devoutly believe in some things, such as that finding out how the Universe really works is a worthwhile, even noble, endeavour that serves mankind. This belief is science, not global warming. There is a professional code of ethics, of honour, that comes with it.
Imagine yourself black, and someone shouting “you filthy [degrading refernce to dark-skinned person]”. It hurts. Everybody has these buttons, this is our button. (Remember the French soccer player who lashed out during his goodbye match? TV showed the blow but not the insult.) You have to brace yourself before formulating a lawyerly polite answer. The opposition doesn’t have this problem — they are lawyers already, and will never be scientists.
Your job will be fairly easy if you realise that there is a judgement-of-character element to it in addition to the science. Once you catch someone on a blatant lie in a readily checkable matter of fact, that will save you some further footwork where that person is concerned
BTW Welcome to RC!
26 July 2008 at 15:07
Steve Reynolds, If your goal is to construct a model that has no correspondence with Earth’s climate, I am willing to concede that one can construct a model with sensitivity less than 1.5 degrees per doubling. That, is after all, the takeaway from figure 7. What is particularly interesting to me is how much more forgiving the models are on the high end of sensitivity than they are on the low end. I really wouldn’t take this study as yielding any comfort to denialists.
Gavin, thanks for this paper.
26 July 2008 at 15:29
Secular Animist, everyobody agrees we affect our environment. The question is how much? There is still a wide range of projections within the pro-AGW community. For instance there is disagreement about feedback unknowns, some due to human behavior unknowns. Is the outlook ok, bad, or dismal? The season for skepticism is not over.
26 July 2008 at 15:31
Ray: “What is particularly interesting to me is how much more forgiving the models are on the high end of sensitivity than they are on the low end.”
That is a very selective read of the results. For observations we know most accurately (such as seasonal temperature variations), I reach the opposite conclusion.
Hank: “…it’s possible to fiddle _one_ parameter and get what you’d like to see, but read on to where they describe the limits when trying to match more than one.”
Yes, none of the models appear to be very good. I assume the NASA model is much better. I wonder how it would look with similar perturbations.
26 July 2008 at 16:24
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2008GL034071.shtml
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 35, L14703, doi:10.1029/2008GL034071, 2008
When can we expect extremely high surface temperatures?
“… values in excess of 50°C in Australia, India, the Middle East, North Africa, the Sahel and equatorial and subtropical South America at the end of the century.”
26 July 2008 at 17:06
I am so sad to continue to hear the herd mentallity of anthropogenic causes for global warming. You have so much to learn. There are so many sources that diagree, where do I start.
First look at this webiste that show no correlation between CO2 and temperature for thae last 700m years. look at chart 2
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html
For those who are interested in facts, not emotion:
Here is another fact based website that establishes man’s non-contribution to green house gases. Supporting that 95% of green house gases are from water vapor. Including CO2 (0.28%) and H2O, we contribtue no more that 5.5%. Do you know that in the other referenced website I gave that CO2 was as high as 7000ppm during the last 700M years. We are now at 380ppm or CO2. If we contribute only 0.28% of CO2 that would add only 10ppm for a total of 390, far from 8000ppm that natural forces conrtibutes. Please read.
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html
enjoy your education
Steve
[Response: Education! You know, you should try it. The paleo-climate picture is a terrible cartoon of what happened. You are much better off with the more up-to-date fig 6.1 in AR4 (p441). And the nonsense at your second link has been dealt with here. Please try to do better next time (and PS. don’t submit the same comment to multiple threads). - gavin]
26 July 2008 at 19:38
Steve,
You go to an anonymous web site that makes a bunch of claims about global warming not being real–obviously must be the truth. You iggnore the IPCC and Realclimate web sites, with documents/references from climate scientists–what would they know about this subject?
Using this reasoning, if you had cancer you would go get Laetrile instead of seeing an oncologist. Makes about as much sense.
I note that the web site you referenced quotes an articel by Dr. Fred Singer. It may be useful to educate yourself on who Dr. Singer is:
http://www.desmogblog.com/node/1478
That really tells me all I need to know.
26 July 2008 at 20:41
#75 Timo writes, from the magical world of zero-residual modeling:
Not really… infinite-power computing would do just fine for starters. Gets rid of those pesky discretization effects. And then, error free forcings. (And you wouldn’t believe zero-residual modelling results anyway… neither would I.)
Why don’t you come up with an original fallacy next time. This is the tired old (or should I say classic) “If you don’t know everything, you know nothing”.
26 July 2008 at 20:42
Re 98:
Oh gawds, not that hilarious website! Something worth noting — the page for the first link was last updated in 2006, the page for the second link was last updated in 2003. You’d think they’d at least make an effort to present some fresh nonsense.
26 July 2008 at 21:02
It is interesting to me that some here want to claim that if a researcher does not have expertise in a particular field than his or her opinion does not have worth. One thing that all scientist share is a scientific intuition. I am not a climate scientist, but I do science research for a living. This means that I would not be able to have a detailed discussion on the current research in the field, but I would be able to spot something that didn’t quite add up with my physical intuition. I attend seminars and talks on a weekly basis and the research I hear about is rarely on the topic I study, but I know what parts of the research are worth-while and what parts are rife with problems. I am expected to be able to do this. Science as a social endeavor is built on this fact.
I am skeptical of AGW, but it is because I have yet to see a true smoking gun on this issue. This does not make me a denier because I don’t think there is smoking gun either way. Someone else posted, I apologize for not citing exactly who the writer was, that skepticism should be even-handed and I think this is true. True skepticism means that you have not made your mind up on an issue, and I think that it is a bit unfortunate that so many people have made up their minds on something that is under the scrutiny of on-going research. Its troubling to me that as science becomes more and more specialize, along with basically everything else in society, that we are forgetting how similar all of our work is, maybe not in scope, but in practice and that these similarities give all scientists, independent of discipline, a better view of how to interpret what other fields are doing if these projects have some level of merit. I’m sure that I could give a talk on my research to a group of climatologists and there would be some questions as to what is feasible and what types of systematic errors can be introduced by the way I ask my research questions. Why would I not able to see theirs?
26 July 2008 at 22:17
Steve Reynolds, I agree that for annual + seasonal temperatue, the distribution is symmetric–but look where it is centered (>5)! If your goal is low sensitivity–that’s not the one you want to upweight.
26 July 2008 at 22:26
So, Maxwell, I am curious what branch of “science” you may be in that gives you such expertise in areas you’ve never cracked a book in. I myself had to devote months of study before I understood just some of the more subtle points about climate.
Just curious, how do you explain simultaneous tropospheric warming and stratospheric cooling if not by a greenhouse mechanism?
26 July 2008 at 22:30
> some here want to claim … value
> true skepticism means … an issue
For very small local values of “issue” yes.
Did you check Monckton’s math in the posting at the top of the page?
Did it add up for you?
Skepticism means being able to handle uncertainty, too.
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/global_warming.png
26 July 2008 at 23:41
As a response to maxwell (102),
I agree that people who are not experts can still be conversant in a particular area. I do find it strange that some would claim otherwise. At the same time, it does take a fair degree of arrogance to claim that the mainstream scientific community is all wrong when you yourself have not been sufficiently educated in a particular area. Asking questions or “conversing” or putting out ideas is something else entirely.
All scientists should be trained skeptics. When new ideas come out there should be sufficient evidence, scientists should examine them very closely, be able to reproduce them, etc. At the time Wegener proposed that continents were slowly drifting around the Earth, the scientific community was right in not jumping onto the idea quickly (even though Wegener turned out to be right)…it wasn’t because they were all ignorant, but there was not yet sufficient evidence or mechanisms to warrant a paradigm shift. Some like Shaviv or Svensmark would have the whole scientific community jump onto the idea that every deep-time climate problem, as well as modern day global warming, can all be explained by cosmic rays when such an effect has not yet been sufficiently quantified. Qualitatively they cannot even tell you the sign of what more cosmic rays should do since they cannot explain why high clouds should not respond just as much (or more) than low clouds (or even if cosmic rays even have a significant impacts on clouds). Most of the time such proposals are at least reasonable, but generally there are a few deviant people who put far too much confidence in their idea and claim very dogmatically that everyone else is wrong…generally they contain what Damon and Laut call “patterns of strange errors” (which was about the nicest way to put it!).
The reason the whole scientific community has not jumped on to the cosmic ray bandwagon is not because they’d lose funding, they are all liberals, they’re all “bias,” or what have you…it’s because the evidence is not yet there, and in fact there is sufficient counter-evidence to the idea cosmic rays are not causing modern warming. Similarily, the usuals like Bob Carter, Roy Spencer, Lindzen, Pat Michaels, Tim Ball, Anthony Watts, etc have all put out counter-arguments against AGW and not one of them has shown to be a real rebuttal to the idea. What’s more, most of the time the ideas are not even reasonable, but demonstrate such ignorance of the basics that motives need to be considered; and when you cry wolf too many times, then if you actually have a good idea the 100th time around, people are less likely to listen. The fact these scientists are still publishng their ideas in the primary literature and having lots of time devoted to addressing them shows me that the mainstream community is tolerent of ideas, and definitely not bias.
Here we come to skepticism vs. denialism. Skepticism does not mean that we should reject every idea out there, or even that we need 100% proof of an idea (it doesn’t exist in science). There should be explanatory and predictive power, be a consistent explanation of collected data sets, and spawn a range of tests that can be borne out. For AGW, an ideal experiment would be to have a “duplicate planet” where all conditions are held constant, and we increase CO2 on one, and hold conditions constant on the other…and see the changes after decades to centuries. Obviously this is not possible. We can use our GCM’s to simulate changes with/without anthropogenic interference (See Meehl et al 2004), we can look at the paleoclimate record, climate on other planets, examine the underlying physics, examine the observed changes in the atmosphere, among other things.
The fact is that CO2 plays as fundamental a role in planetary climate as evolution does in biology– and is probably the largest reason for climate variation over geologic timescales. From hothouses to snowballs, climate on Venus, modern change, etc there is really no plausible reason to believe that doubling CO2 in the atmosphere will not change climate. From a purely theoretical perspective, reducing the rate of energy loss to space should warm the planet. Observationally, many “fingerprints” such as stratospheric cooling, lack of trends on solar activity, decreases in the diurnal and seasonal temperature gradients, heat going on the ocean, etc allow us to say now with high confidence that humans are causing at least most of the observed rise over the 20th century.
27 July 2008 at 0:42
maxwell:
So, what have you studied so far about climate science?
START HERE? IPCC AR4’s SPM & TS?
What else? and what sources do you trust?
It is *quite* plausible for a classic skeptic to approach a new domain by saying:
“I don’t know, but I haven’t studied it yet, so I have yet to form a clear opinion. What should I study to get more informed?”
If a classic skeptic knows that there is a powerful consensus (not unanimity, since that’s rare) among the real practitioners of a field about some (not all) aspects of a problem, then they might say:
“I don’t yet understand this, but it’s a good bet that the practioners’ consensus is as good an approximation as we have, and if I care enough to express an opinion, either I’ll go with the consensus by default, or:
a) I’ll study hard.
b) I’ll keep a list of issues that worry me about the consensus, or that I know I don’t understand, study them, watch for new data, or errors, and see how the list evolves.
Any reasonable skeptic who actually studies problems should have such a list. Can you provide yours? Say, the top 5-10 issues?
[When there is a real scientific controversy, the list in b) tends to jiggle around. As a consensus evolves, the list shrinks, or the error bounds shrink, or both. For instance, it was once a rational concern to wonder why satellites and surface temperatures didn’t agree as much as expected. one could figure that 1) the ground stations were wrong, 2) the satellites were wrong, or 3) some of each. Satellite computation errors got fixed, issue came off the list.]
and
c) I’ll give a fair look at those disagreeing with the consensus, and I’ll watch them over time, and see if their arguments hold up.
BUT, if someone maintains skepticism of the consensus without seriously studying the science, another classic skeptic might just wonder why.
27 July 2008 at 1:47
Well, have at it, Maxwell. Tell us all that’s wrong with climate science, based on your “physical intuition”, rather than analysis. One thing science teaches us is, of course, that “physical intuition” is often flat-out wrong, which kinda makes me dismiss your hand-waving effort here, particular the part that states “as a scientist…”
27 July 2008 at 2:10
George Monbiot wisdom:
“…the problem is not that people aren’t hearing about climate change, but that they don’t want to know. The professional classes have the most freedom to lose and the least to gain from an attempt to restrain it. Those who are most responsible for carbon pollution are – being insulated by their money - the least likely to suffer its effects.
…we all have our self-justifying myths. We tell ourselves a story of our lives in which we almost always appear as the heroes. These myths prevent us from engaging with climate change…
…The most powerful story of all, endlessly narrated by the hired hands of the fossil fuel industry, just as it was once told by the sugar slavers, is that we are both all-important and utterly insignificant. We are too important to be denied any of the delights we crave, but too insignificant to exert any impact on planetary processes. We fill the whole frame of the story when it suits us and shrink to a dot when that scale is more convenient. We are capable of occupying both niches simultaneously.
It is not just because The Great Global Warming Swindle is at odds with the entire body of scientific knowledge on this subject that I have bothered to contest it. It is also because it is consonant with the entire body of human self-deception. We want to be misled, we crave it; and we will bend our minds into whatever shape they need to take in order not to face our brutal truths…
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/07/21/the-self-justifying-myth/
- George Monbiot 7-22-08
27 July 2008 at 2:21
Re 100. Martin, please notice that I have never argued “If you don’t know everything, you know nothing”.
Instead I have stated we don’t have an all-inclusive Theory of Climate, yet, and probably not in decades to come.
Instead of this endless and pointless ‘mainstream’ vs. denialist debates I see the real differences between real scientists as follows:
- certain scientists are (more) interested in probabilities, and
- certain scientists are (more) interested in prevailing (huge) uncertainties.
If you are interested in details please do read the over 7.000 scientific studies I have in recent years, and new ones pop up every week, e.g.
White, Jeffrey R., R. D. Shannon, J. F. Weltzin, J. Pastor, and S. D. Bridgham, 2008. Effects of soil warming and drying on methane cycling in a northern peatland mesocosm study. J. Geophys. Res. - Biogeosciences, 113, G00A06, doi:10.1029/2007JG000609, July 26, 2008
“…Our results illustrate the need for a more robust understanding of the multiple feedbacks between climate forcing and plant and microbial feedbacks in the response of northern peatlands to climate change.”
27 July 2008 at 3:41
#102 maxwell says “I am skeptical of AGW, but it is because I have yet to see a true smoking gun on this issue.”
We hear comments about this all the time - no smoking gun, no proof, no evidence, blah blah blah.
Hundreds of peer-reviewed papers, mountains of data, climate models, statistical analysis, even basic logic - none of it stacks up, apparently.
But none of the so-called skeptics ever seem to say just what standard of proof hasn’t been satisfied.
So, maxwell, now’s your opportunity. Just what would constitute a smoking gun for you?
Precisely what would appeal to your “physical intuition”?
27 July 2008 at 5:03
Re #102, What smoking gun are you needing to see. Surely the theory of GHG is good enough ti know that regardless of a warming world or melting summer Arctic sea ice levels etc that a theory is sound scientifically.
What makes you skeptical? Is it the medias take on the subject or the real science as explained here at RC?
Is the IPCC lying to you, is James Hansen, Is Gavin Schmidt ? What reason would they have to mess with science in such a manner. I am sure that they would be found out quite quickly as science has a habit of doing that. Scienctists are conservative and intelligent enough to check other peoples work post peer review. It is simply absurd to even state that a scientist would be a skeptic without having read around the evidence available before ocommenting surely ?
27 July 2008 at 5:39
#71 Duae Quartunciae:
Mate, sometimes it pays to assume good faith. Try it. The figures we’re talking here have nought to do with the 26% number from 2005, which is LWR absorption remaining if all GHGs except CO2 are removed. So saying that the 18% here (just CO2 removed) falls midway between 9% reduction (just CO2 removed!) and 26% remaining (all but CO2 removed) is to completely miss the point.
#77 Hank:
No, I mean the 91% for “Fraction LW absorbed” in Gavin’s table, against “Removed absorbers” - “CO2″. That is, of course, where the 9% you refer to comes from.
The forcing quoted in the 2005 table against “CO2 removed” is -23 W/m2, but that is at tropopause level, not top of atmosphere. 23/140 (total LWR absorption used there) would still be 16% not 9%, so it seems the level at which radiative forcing is defined makes a large difference. Or am I just missing something? I’m guessing the -28 W/m2 here must also be at tropopause level, hence the discrepancy.
[This one is a denosphere favorite. I beat up of it in the national media here only last week. It would be nice to have the story completely clear and unambiguous.]
G.
[Response: There is a confusion here. The forcing is defined as the net change in at the tropopause, while the percentage numbers discussed are the change in LW_SURF-LW_TOA - they aren’t the same, and there is no contradiction if the percentages don’t match. The differences are related to the stratospheric response and a (small) term related to LW reflection from the surface. On the original page, the 9% change in the absence of CO2 is associated with a forcing of -23 W/m2. The number I gave earlier is a more up-to-date calculation that does a better job than the blog post, but still, forcing is not simply equal to the ‘greenhouse effect % change’. I don’t have all the numbers in front of me, but I’ll take a closer look later. - gavin]
27 July 2008 at 5:57
Michael #95
How do you know how many unknowns are there? How do you KNOW that these unknowns will ALWAYS cause a mitigation to our CO2 production?
Your list of unknowns is gigantic. Reduce your list and then come back.
maxwell #102
You aren’t, however, skeptical of the anti-AGW position. And, since a gun is a complex piece of machinery, stochastic processes in the earths atmosphere will never create one spontaneously, never mind ensure smoke comes out of it. Ergo, unless you tell us what constitutes a “smoking gun” we are left without any ability to converse (this is one reason why you are feeling excluded: you really don’t know enough to know how little you know).
So why are these not smoking guns?
a) CO2 up 50% and most of this of a atomic signature irreconcilable with natural processes but easily reconciled with fossil fuel burning.
b) volume of ice reducing globally.
c) temperatures now significantly (in a rigorous statistical sense) higher than it has ever been when the earth has been in this particular state (orbital positions et al).
If these are not “smoking guns” then you really do seem to need a device of high-quality steel to be spontaneously created. Or a big Voice From The Sky saying “yup, you did it”.
Any proposition you have would have to explain AT LEAST two things and do so better than the current AGW theories:
1) how the effects of humans on the atomsphere and biosphere are not having as big effect as simple deduction would indicate
2) what new effect is causing the changes seen
At the moment all you have is “you could be wrong”. And? So? The Sun could be taken out by an interstellar construction fleet looking to run a Tau Ceti bypass superhighway through our system. Show me it’s *impossible*.
Yet we don’t argue about the possible appearance of the Vogon fleet, do we? Why’s that? Because it’s damn unlikely to be true.
Heck, we put people to death for things we can’t PROVE 100% (because we weren’t there). Why is it that we must be 100% proven on all points here?
That isn’t skepticism. That’s denial.
27 July 2008 at 8:56
Stratospheric cooling appears to be strongly correlated with significant Volcanic events rather than CO2 or global warming.
El Chichon in spring 1982 and Pinatubo in June 1991 both increased Stratospheric temperatures by 1.0C to 1.5C which then led to cooling of 1.25C to 1.75C.
Both events appear to have permanently adjusted the Stratospheric temperatures down by 0.25C but other than these two volcanic influences, Stratospheric temperatures show almost no trend at all.
http://www.remss.com/msu/msu_data_description.html#msu_amsu_time_series
[Response: This is the lower stratosphere and trends there are due principally to ozone depletion (with only a small contribution from CO2). The upper stratosphere trends (even the mesosphere trends) are both larger and more tied to CO2. - gavin]
27 July 2008 at 8:57
Ray Ladbury: “I agree that for annual + seasonal temperatue, the distribution is symmetric–but look where it is centered (>5)! If your goal is low sensitivity–that’s not the one you want to upweight.”
Yes, and the seasonal only is centered at about 2K.
This appears to me to be a fairly poor model (it is rather old).
The NASA model has sensitivity numbers from 2.4 to 2.8K.
27 July 2008 at 9:36
It’s too bad that TVMOB’s denialist opinions weight so heavily on Catholic TV here in the U.S. and in the Vatican. Last Oct he was interviewed as an expert “climate scientist” on EWTN’s “Rome Reports” program. Here’s part of the transcript:
I had recently started getting cable TV a couple of months earlier, partly so I could see EWTN, and thought about cancelling cable. I’m still thinking about cancelling. The program and by extention the network which aired it is quite demoralizing. We might expect the Exxon folks and those with vested interests to deny AGW and sow seeds of doubt, thereby jeopardizing human and non-human life sustainability into the far future, but why would those responsible for teaching us morals and ethics do so?
27 July 2008 at 10:32
GlenFergus #113 — my sincere apologies.
27 July 2008 at 10:48
Steve Reynolds, Sensitivity as determined by seasonal temperature does indeed favor a lower “best-fit”, but the errors at about 2 degrees become a brick wall. I’ve seen a lot of behavior like that in doing maximum likelihood fits–when you start seeing the errors pick up like that, you know you’ve pretty much reached a bound.
Regardless of whether the models used are the best, the exercise illustrates what happens if you try to force sensitivity too low–the model becomes unphysical. A model with low sensitivity, but otherwise physically reasonable would be quite an interesting beast scientifically, not to mention its importance politically. As such, you know modellers are trying continually. The fact that nothing has been published speaks volumes about how difficult such a model would be to develop.
27 July 2008 at 11:55
maxwell wrote: “I am not a climate scientist, but I do science research for a living. This means that I would not be able to have a detailed discussion on the current research in the field, but I would be able to spot something that didn’t quite add up with my physical intuition.”
I have observed that some people who have genuine expertise in a particular field of knowledge imagine that this somehow bestows upon them expertise and insight regarding other fields of knowledge of which they actually know little. In some cases they imagine that they are somehow endowed with expertise and insight superior to that of others who have studied these other fields of knowledge diligently and in-depth. They seem to think a so highly of their own intelligence as to believe that they can discern the truth about other fields of knowledge simply by applying their formidable and superior powers of pure reason and intuition, unconstrained by actual knowledge of the facts. Oddly enough, more often than not, their ill-informed yet confident pronouncements regarding these other fields of knowledge are spectacularly wrong.
27 July 2008 at 12:26
Re: #117
This stuff about warming on Mars and Jupiter has been circulating, of course, and I haven’t, as a complete amateur, given it much credence or concern, because:
a) It is very tough to measure climate trends on Earth (as denialists always stress) despite many thousands of land- and sea-borne data collections annually, plus the sondes & satellites, yet we are supposed to believe that we know to comparable precision what Mars (with a couple of devices on the ground and one orbiter) and Jupiter (with only telesensing) are doing climatically.
b) TSI measurements reveal no solar signal helpful to the Monckton case.
But it does make me wonder: what is the state of actual data on extra-Terrestrial planetary temps? Anybody?
27 July 2008 at 13:00
Ray: “Sensitivity as determined by seasonal temperature does indeed favor a lower “best-fit”, but the errors at about 2 degrees become a brick wall. I’ve seen a lot of behavior like that in doing maximum likelihood fits–when you start seeing the errors pick up like that, you know you’ve pretty much reached a bound.”
But you can only draw conclusions like that if you know the model is accurate. That model seems to ‘like’ a 5K sensitivity. With the NASA model that seems to ‘like’ a 2.5K sensitivity, maybe your brick wall would occur at 1K.
27 July 2008 at 13:04
On “scientific intuition”: Consistently good scientific intuition is rarer than one might suppose. In those that I think have it, it consists more in knowing what is the right question, rather than in knowing what is the right answer. A belief in one’s own intuition might be responsible for more dogged adherence to wrong ideas than for new, useful ideas. (My own “scientific intuition” has been buffeted sufficiently that I’ve learned when to suspend it!)
27 July 2008 at 13:10
Kevin, try these (search limited to 2008 articles):
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?num=20&hl=en&lr=&newwindow=1&scoring=r&q=temperature+Venus+Mars+Jupiter+Saturn+Uranus&as_ylo=2008
Several of those will lead to answers to date.
From those hits, this is one to watch for new data:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/j7l1637kj6151652/
27 July 2008 at 13:13
SecularAnimist: “I have observed that some people who have genuine expertise in a particular field of knowledge imagine that this somehow bestows upon them expertise and insight regarding other fields of knowledge of which they actually know little…”
Kind of like some climate experts imagine they understand all the economic consequences of the mitigation requirements they propose?
[Response: Who might they be? You should surely have noticed that RC does not stray very often into the economics or policy making arena precisely because we are not economists or policy wonks. Therefore your insinuation falls completely flat here. - gavin]
27 July 2008 at 13:17
Glen, Duae, Gavin, thanks — picking up on areas where confusion is widely spread is a good thing, albeit exhausting.
Locating the sources from which confusing numbers are being picked and pulled — citing them when summing up (so people find the new summary when searching on the confused claims) is as always very helpful.
27 July 2008 at 13:53
@110 Timo Hämeräntä:
Actually you did implicitly, not having the belly to flat-out say so.
The article referred attempts to put meaningful constraints on S in the acknowledged presence of modelling imperfections, i.e., in spite of them… and it’s not good enough for you. What else were we to think?
…and no, 7000 cherry picked articles ripped out of context like you do with this one do not an argument make. We know about the uncertainties… science isn’t science without them.
27 July 2008 at 14:55
gavin: “Who might they be? You should surely have noticed that RC does not stray very often into the economics or policy making arena…”
Just because I made the comment on RC does not mean it was intended to apply to the RC professionals (although some commenters here…).
One professional it might apply to would be James Hansen.
27 July 2008 at 14:57
maxwell #102:
If you really are a practicing research scientist, reserving judgment on the matter of anhropogenic climate change is simply not good enough. Not doing your homework is acceptable for general citizens not properly backgrounded in physical science — and comes with a moral duty to keep the glove compartment shut in the presence of the innocent mistaking you for knowledgable — but for someone like you, having all the background needed to get up to snuff in half a year max… that’s downright irresponsible!
…and consider: this is great physics, is one of the great issues affecting mankind this century, and science and scientific understanding is central in it. Science is more than just a job, it’s a calling. Folks look up to us, value our insights (ah well, some people do. Or did, once. Don’t shatter my illusions). Noblesse oblige.
And, if you really are a scientist, where is your curiosity man! Don’t you want to know?
27 July 2008 at 16:00
re 117 & 124:
Thank you, Hank, for the references. Helpful, if at times heavy going (for me.) Also, I seem as a non-subscriber to be limited to abstracts only. However, the main source seems to be Hammel and Lockwood 2007–I’m sure this will be familiar to many here!
For those who have missed it, it’s a breathtaking example of how brazen the denialist camp can often be. This summary:
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2007/05/08/neptune-news/
would certainly convince the unwary layman. Yet their TSI graph bears no resemblance to that given here:
http://publishing.royalsociety.org/media/proceedings_a/rspa20071880.pdf
(It also seems suspiciously weak in that famous 11-year cycle.)
Without access to the body of HL200, I was stumped by the discrepancy, till I found a blog comment explaining that HL2007 had, strangely, chosen a reconstruction 15 years old as of their publication date.
27 July 2008 at 16:07
Steve Reynolds–You have to compare apples to apples (or seasonal temperature fit to seasonal temperature fit). You know as well as I do how these things typically go. An initial estimate will have a certain mean or best-fit and a rather large range of errors. Adding more data typically narrows the errors, but doesn’t shift the best fit all that much. This is due to the fact that errors on parameter estimates tend to converge pretty well (Central Limit Theorem), while the extremes of the confidence limits are more sensitive to new data.
So, yes, you’d get a different value with another model, but you’d likely see the same behavior. Moreover, the fact that we haven’t seen such a low sensitivity despite the intense interest such a model would generate tends to make me think it’s hard to make a model work with such a low sensitivity.
27 July 2008 at 17:30
Ray Ladbury (130) — SOmewhere I picked up the supposition that the Maunder Minimum makes a good test of GCMs with low (1.9 K) sensitivity; such don’t make the temperature go down enough. Ones with high sensitivity (6.1 K?) make the temperature go down too much.
27 July 2008 at 19:52
Gavin - the report you wonderfully pick to bits was also being cited by one of Australia’s most popular bloggers and eco-skeptics as another reason why we’re all fine and there’s no need to worry.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/column_seven_graphs_to_end_the_warming_hype/
I had a bit of a go back on my blog too but if there were cigars on offer, you’d get them.
http://blogs.news.com.au/couriermail/greenblog/
Cheers
27 July 2008 at 21:46
Ray: “… it’s hard to make a model work with such a low sensitivity.”
I can agree that is probably true.
The IPCC lower limit of 1.5K seems reasonable enough, I just do not yet see it proven by models.
28 July 2008 at 1:49
Re 127. Martin, I’m a bit disappointed with you when you had not the belly to flat-out say that Climatology today is still about probabilities.
Well, not unusual in these contexts…
I have stated that everyone, whether neutral, ‘mainstream’, alternative, critical, sceptical or denialist, who proclaims certainty only proves limited knowledge and false confidence on models, especially when you try to foresee near or far future climates.
28 July 2008 at 5:39
Steve #125, that’s a hilarious argument you’re developing there… “Sensitivity must be as low as 1.5 degs because we cannot afford anything higher…” I’m sure you didn’t mean that
Seriously, this intentionally cultivated misconception that mitigation is unaffordable is behind much denial in circles that never got the difference between ‘is’ and ‘oughtta’ clearly laid out in sunday school. There are affordable solutions by knowledgable people, and there is nothing wrong in pointing this out.
28 July 2008 at 6:34
Steve writes:
There are two fallacies here.
1) Water vapor is not “95% of greenhouse gases,” even going by mass (1.27 x 1016 kg for water vapor versus e.g. 3.01 x 1015 kg for carbon dioxide). The clear-sky greenhouse effect can be attributed about 60% to water vapor and 26% to carbon dioxide.
2) The amount humans are adding each year is small compared to the total, but it isn’t just one year we have to worry about — it’s been going on since the industrial revolution started. 27% of the carbon dioxide now in the air is artificial.
28 July 2008 at 6:39
mzxwell posts:
That’s because if a researcher does not have expertise in a particular field, th[e]n his or her opinion does not have worth.
The opinion of a physicist or a biologist on climatology is worth no more than the opinion of a plumber or a career armed robber. If you haven’t studied a field, you can’t speak authoritatively about it.
On the other hand, if the physicist, biologist, plumber, or robber has taken the time and effort to study and try to understand climatology, then their opinion about that field does have worth.
But merely being a researcher gives you no authority at all.
28 July 2008 at 7:22
In #73, Chris Colose writes: “Actually there is a recent paper in GRL that argues for a climate sensitivity at the low end (or lower) of the IPCC projections; see http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2007GL032759.shtml . […] It’s an interesting technique, though it seems very dicey to me. […] Perhaps someone else has further insight here.”
You’re right to be skeptical (ha!) about the Chylek & Lohmann paper, Chris. See this commentary by James Annan:
http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2008/03/more-chylek-on-sensitivity.html
Basically, it’s the most extreme example of cherry-picking I’ve seen in years. They basically looked at noisy paleoclimate data and picked the single points in each time period that would yield the lowest estimate of climate sensitivity. Annan points out that if you do the honest thing and look at longer-term averages, “the need for a strong dust forcing simply melts away, and the resulting climate sensitivity estimate of 2-3.9C is entirely unremarkable (and completely consistent with what we already know).”
Cheers,
J.
28 July 2008 at 8:51
Clear Thinker: I’m sure there are many people who could debate Monckton though I am not sure about the fairness of engaging in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent. This is the same Monckton who would have us believe that forcings are expressed in “watts per square metre per second”. In his detailed paper (now off the Telegraph’s site, even they are capable of embarrassment?) we read “E is radiant energy in watts per square metre per second (wm-2.s-1: hereafter “wm-2”). Yikes. This is like saying we are measuring acceleration, hereafter called speed. If you are going to challenge physics PhDs, you should at least get the high-school level stuff right.
The anti-AGW astroturfing exercise is an outgrowth of the similar movement to discredit medical science that was uncomfortable to organized tobacco. See Monbiot’s book, Heat. I have links to some of his references on my blog.
Then there’s a thing put on 5 August by Engineers Australia as part of Australian Engineering week billed as a “Climate Change Seminar” featuring one William Kininmonth who is barely more credible than Monckton and has some loopy theories. It seems that not only the APS is willing to run trolls to get public attention. When I pointed this out to EA via the organizers (sydelecseminar@engineersaustralia.org.au) their response was to try to encourage me to get involved with their future events. No thanks, not until they operate on a professional basis. The invitation to the talk says, “Attendance may be credited towards Engineers Australia’s Continuing Professional Development (CPD) points”, which is a bit sad for an event that is unlikely to contain anything scientifically valid. And if EA is going to venture into politics, perhaps they should be up front about it.
Here are the abstracts to save you the bother of downloading the PDF:
28 July 2008 at 9:05
Martin, your quotes do not represent anything I wrote.
Martin: “Seriously, this intentionally cultivated misconception that mitigation is unaffordable is behind much denial…”
That is the kind of economic denial I was talking about in 125. Solar energy may be the solution eventually, but good luck getting China, India, and Brazil to stop building coal plants now.
28 July 2008 at 9:33
Steve Reynolds wrote: “… some climate experts imagine they understand all the economic consequences of the mitigation requirements they propose … One professional it might apply to would be James Hansen.”
I suggest a better example would be James Lovelock, with regard to his view that nuclear power is “the answer” to global warming. Dr. Lovelock is, in my opinion, one of the great geniuses of our time, and his deep insight into the holistic nature of the Earth’s biosphere makes his views on the consequences of unmitigated anthropogenic global warming and climate change very compelling. However, he is not an expert on energy technologies, and his views on the potential of nuclear power relative to other non-fossil-fuel energy sources such as wind and solar energy, not to mention conservation and efficiency improvements, are ill-informed and misguided. Yet, because he is perceived as an authority on climate change and has spoken out so strongly about the danger it presents, his views on nuclear power — a field where he lacks any expertise — are often cited by proponents of nuclear power as a means to combat climate change.
28 July 2008 at 9:37
Steve Reynolds wrote: “That is the kind of economic denial I was talking about in 125. Solar energy may be the solution eventually, but good luck getting China, India, and Brazil to stop building coal plants now.”
You are confused. The people who are building coal-fired power plants are the ones in economic denial, not the people who oppose building such plants. The most egregious form of economic denial is to imagine or pretend that the destructive effects of burning coal have no costs. The entire argument for continuing to burn fossil fuels for even one more day is based on economic denial.
28 July 2008 at 10:56
Re #143, that may well be true but without a political or economic framework to work to in regard to carbon emissions on a global scale the people who are financing and constructing these power plants will continue to build them. Each plant last around 50 years and hence that guarantees 50 more years of signiifcant and continues carbon emissions. Whatever we build today resonates into the future hence James Hansens comment to not build any more coal fired power stations until CCS is tested and deployed in one working plant.
28 July 2008 at 12:15
BPL (138), et al; First a clarification: Steve states that questioning from science researchers outside the field has worth, which is different from authority — a subtle but significant distinction. “Authority” implies a different and more precise, though still highly subjective, criteria. By the accepted definition, e.g., you can (and do) claim some within the field have little authority. While questioning from inside the field is probably more credible, at least on the surface, your total rejection of worth coming from outside the field of study completely ignores scientific history and sounds more like a defensive protection of an exclusive fraternity than a scientific process. Also, some outsider fields you say can’t help is just incorrect. Are you claiming for example that a trained physicist can not question or offer help in, say, how, why and how much, and which molecules absorb, store, transfer energy, heat up, or cool down, etc?
28 July 2008 at 12:49
#145 [Rod B].
Rod, can you give examples, preferably from the last century or so, of criticism from outside a specific field overthrowing a scientific consensus in that field, or even making an important difference to a technical argument within it? I’m not saying there aren’t such examples, but for me none spring to mind.
So far as the contribution of the “trained physicist” is concerned, well “physicist” is a pretty wide term; but as I understand it the physics of the greenhouse effect itself is fairly elementary, and at least a large proportion of climate scientists would know what is necessary well. The difficult science lies in areas such as calculating feedback effects, assessing the effect of complicating factors such as aerosols, and finding and integrating sources of information about past climates - and this is all fairly specific to climate science.
28 July 2008 at 12:49
Re # 110 Timo Hämeranta:
27 July 2008 at 2:21 AM
What exactly is your point here? It appears to me the authors are acknowledging the reality of global warming and noting that its effects on a specific ecosystem are not yet clear (and probably very complex). Highlighting some important unanswered questions is a pretty standard (and heuristically valuable) way to conclude a research paper.
Are you suggesting this statement about boglands somehow raises uncertainties about the existence of global warming?
28 July 2008 at 12:53
> value
> authority
I think it’s a nitpick.
The definition of the words won’t affect whether someone can write up work that will go through peer review, be published in a science journal, and be found useful by other researchers.
Remember a paper need not be _right_ to be productive of useful research. But as long as it doesn’t suggest anything anyone wants to look into, it hasn’t been valued.
Value = leads to useful and interesting research.
Spencer Weart comments about how many papers there are that don’t lead to anything — but that scientists look back at older work when they have a new notion to see if anything previously published has value for them going forward.
28 July 2008 at 14:17
#138 BPL
I think it is the other way around. In a complex field like climatology no single person alone can cover the necessary physics or chemistry. This can be clearly seen in the fallacies you often find in the basic textbooks. Moreover, many experienced researchers like Maxwell are needed with their expertise in their respective field. A experienced researcher in one field might not see the big picture, but is able to point out where a complex model explains the data, but violates the underlying physics or even the “consensus” in physics.
28 July 2008 at 15:49
#135 Timo:
No, I didn’t use the word ‘probability’, and that is for a reason. Not all uncertainty can be described probabilistically — of some things we just plain don’t know the odds. Think nonlinear ice sheet behaviour.
Then there are few things again that are simply not uncertain. You have two essentially different kinds of uncertainty: (1) uncertainty that antropogenic climate change is real, and (2) uncertainty on how serious it is. You endlessly go on about the second kind of uncertainty (which is very real, and works both ways), speculating readers will take away the first kind, on which in reality, as you well know, the train left the station long ago. This is a common denialist deceit, and you seem to have the ‘belly’ for it too.
28 July 2008 at 16:01
Steve Reynolds (134) — IPCC AR4 states, in effect, that the concensus view is that the climate sensitivity is at least 2 K with 95% confidence.
28 July 2008 at 16:27
#146 [Nick Gotts]
Otto Hahn as a chemist discovering nuclear fission made a significant contribution outside his field because he was very proficient in his area of expertise.
28 July 2008 at 19:00
SecularAnimist: “The entire argument for continuing to burn fossil fuels for even one more day is based on economic denial.”
You are entitled to your opinion, but if we define climate denial as refusing to accept the overwhelming consensus of climate experts, and economic denial as refusing to accept the overwhelming consensus of economic experts, then your statement above clearly shows economic denial.
[Response: Either talk specifics or don’t bother. Just calling people names is pointless. If you want a start, try discussing the tragedy of the commons and Stern’s statement about the current economic framework for fossil fuels being a “colossal market failure”. Given that climate change has an impact on the global economy, how should those costs be allocated to produce a equitable outcome? - gavin]
28 July 2008 at 19:27
David B. Benson: “IPCC AR4 states, in effect, that the concensus view is that the climate sensitivity is at least 2 K with 95% confidence.”
I remember that being 1.5K. Do you have a page number?
28 July 2008 at 19:48
Rod B., On the subject of outsiders contributing to a field. Certainly outsiders can bring fresh insight to a field. Several physicists contributed to biology after becoming disillusioned with physics in the post-Trinity world. The key is that they did so after an extended effort to educate themselves to understand the current state of the science. Climate science has been examined repeatedly by panels of outside experts–physicists, mathematicians, etc. from the National Academies, from professional societies and so on. Without exception, these exercises have been beneficial, and increased confidence in the state of the research.
Unfortunately, there are some outsiders who assume that everything should make sense to them without their ever having cracked a book on their new field of endeavor. And for some reason, climate science tends to attract its share of these arrogant nutjobs.
In the dark and distant past, I used to write for a popularized physics trade publication of the American Institute for Physics. About once a month, I’d get called to the front lobby or get a phone call from somebody who was absolutely convinced they’d disproved Einstein’s relativity. I guess they’d call on me because I’ve got a quiet, soothing voice and I can usually hide the fact that I think I’m dealing with a crazy person.
Usually, the effort was rather sad–lots of simple math errors if there were any equations at all, clumsy, ill-informed arguments, or simple assertions that it must be wrong because “it didn’t make sense”. Sometimes it would take me awhile to spot the error, and sometimes when I spotted it, the guy (and it was always a guy) would nearly get violent.
I never understood this phenomenon. I’ve brought it up multiple times to psychologists, because it really is a type of delusion. I never saw it in conjunction with any other physicist or subject in physics , though I think a lot of opposition to Darwin has similar roots. One theory I’ve had is that people hold in their mind the equation Einstein=genius, so if they’re smarter than Einstein, they must really be smart.
I’ve seen the same sort of mania in the opposition of many laymen to climate science–perhaps because of its prominence in the news these days. I really think this sort of delusion–and many scientists/engineers from outside fields share it–may be as important for understanding opposition to climate science as the political aspects are.
28 July 2008 at 20:07
Re: Steve, #153:
“The equilibrium climate sensitivity is a measure of the
climate system response to sustained radiative forcing.
It is not a projection but is defi ned as the global average
surface warming following a doubling of carbon
dioxide concentrations. It is likely to be in the range
2°C to 4.5°C with a best estimate of about 3°C, and is
very unlikely to be less than 1.5°C.”
Link: http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-spm.pdf
Page 12.
PS It took all of 2 minutes to find this information. Please check
facts before you post.
28 July 2008 at 20:35
Steve, you want to talk “overwhelming consensus of economic experts”? Let’s hear what the global re-insurance industry has to say:
Tell me again, Steve: who’s in economic denial?
28 July 2008 at 20:46
SecularAnimist: “The entire argument for continuing to burn fossil fuels for even one more day is based on economic denial.”
Specific point for discussion: What fraction of the human race would die of starvation if the above advice was followed?
28 July 2008 at 20:53
John Hollenberg: “It is likely to be in the range 2°C to 4.5°C…”
Does the IPCC define ‘likely’ as 95% confidence?
28 July 2008 at 21:03
Steve #159:
“Does the IPCC define ‘likely’ as 95% confidence?”
You can read the report for yourself to see the definitions. I have already pointed you to the proper link.
28 July 2008 at 23:08
Re Steve Reynolds @158: “What fraction of the human race would die of starvation if the above advice was followed?”
Fair enough. What fraction of the human race would die of starvation if the above advice was not followed?
You folks need new talking points, the ones you keep using are long past worn out.
28 July 2008 at 23:25
RE: #117, 124, 130, Mars, Jupiter, etc.:
Kevin, the paper about Jupiter’s climate change that started the recent hubbub is available on the author’s web site: http://www.me.berkeley.edu/cfd/
Note that it’s not about global Jupiter warming, it’s about changes in the distribution of cold and warm. Also note that it’s 70 year cycles, not any time change in synchrony with Earth’s warming.
More on Mars is here on RealClimate, but a bit as well in the reference list of cce’s site.
29 July 2008 at 1:14
Ray 155: you also get nutters who’ve overturned the laws of thermodynamics or conservation of energy (water4gas, overunity power). These people will not listen if you just explain laws of physics, you sometimes have to let them do the “experiment” and have it fail. Another classic: the assertion that someone has discovered a perfect compression algorithm, that will reduce the size of any file. Including one it has compressed itself. Spot the experiment to test that theory.
But the problem in climate science is hard-core self delusion. Consider someone like Bob Carter who unless he has gone prematurely senile should have the scientific nous to know that talk of warming ending in 1998 (or 2002, the date shifts as new data comes in) is nonsense. This is not hard-core climate science, it’s elementary data analysis. Even I can do this with only a PhD in computer science, no climate science, very little data analysis background. I saw the same thing with the HIV doesn’t cause AIDS thing: people with the research credentials to know what they were talking about who nonetheless made claims that I as a nonspecial[stupid spam check]ist could easily debunk.
Maybe the right strategy here rather than focusing on these people’s lack of appropriate credentials is to take apart the things they get wrong despite their credentials.
29 July 2008 at 4:34
On carbon emissions: As far as I can tell everyone is waiting the for the market to come up with the solutions in the form of technology as no one seems willing to change their lifestyles accordingly in order to mitigate their so called carbon footprints.
On the one hand the powers that be talk biofuel, CCS, and renewables etc whilst the market (which everyone seems to believe in as some kind of God) is postulating digging up the Arctic, deep water, GTL/CTL, and everywhere else to keep the oil flowing.
I see not global strategy on AGW mitigation, I see not less planes in the air, no less airports or runways, more nuclear power which is not going to reduce CO2 emissions significantly enough and the clean up costs might even stop renewables from taking hold. Ok we have some talk of CSP technology in the new mexico and sahara deserts and shipping it around the first world via HVDC cables. Nice idea and it might work but on the car front we have competing technologies rather than working on one and we await the outcome of that come 10 years time.
Can we really leave it to the market to resolve AGW, after all, wasn’t it the market that is causing the problem?
29 July 2008 at 7:01
Guenter Hess writes:
Guenter, my innocent and trusting friend, what makes you think “maxwell” has any expertise at all? Because he says he does? He doesn’t say what field he has expertise in, and he doesn’t even give his full name. A lot of people come onto climate blogs or message boards and say “as a scientist, I feel…” or “as a physicist, I know…” and their messages show they are very unlikely to be any kind of scientist or physicist at all. Let maxwell state his full name, his field, and where he is employed, and I might take him seriously as a “researcher.”
29 July 2008 at 7:26
Ray, climate science and Einstein are big attractions for cranks, but there are plenty of them in lots of other areas. In past few years I have seen
(1) someone who was certain that if we just separated the electrons from the protons, nuclear fusion reactors would work
(2) someone who thought that by arranging the coils in an electric motor slightly differently, the efficiency of the motor could be doubled
(3) a proposal for a spinning disc which will convert amb-ient heat into electrical energy in violation of the second law.
All these people have been absolutely convinced that they are right, in spite of obviously being entirely ignorant of the huge bodies of knowledge in their chosen field.
29 July 2008 at 7:54
perhaps this is a bit late for you Ray, but one way of dealing with Einstein cranks is to politely take down their details. When the next person comes in, say “Actually, I know an expert in that field that would love to discuss this with you…”. I have heard of someone actually doing this.
Unfortunately, this is unlikely to work in climate science because the cranks have a common agenda.
29 July 2008 at 8:28
More… one Vincent Gray (from memory — I didn’t have anything to write with at the time, but definitely someone from New Zealand) has appeared on talk radio in South Africa with some of the usual claims (as discussed elsewhere on this site) like that he’s an “expert reviewer for IPCC” and that it stopped warming 10 years ago. But here are some that are new on me: climate models all assume a flat earth, and that there is no difference between night and day.
I mailed the presenter, Chris Gibbons Chrisgib@capetalk.co.za — but if anyone else who is a real climate scientist would be willing to mail him and demand right of reply, that would be interesting.
Unfortunately I did not catch the whole thing but heard enough to wonder how they screen their interviewees (Talk Radio 702 is actually one of the better radio stations in South Africa so this was rather disappointing).
29 July 2008 at 8:57
Regarding #78 and #98 suggesting that there is group think or a herd mentality shows a lack of understanding
of why proponents of global warming believe the way they do.
There has been a fairly steep rise in average temperature in the last 3 to 4 decades. The heat content of the ocean’s upper
layers has increased over this same time period. Mountain glaciers, nearly everywhere have been shrinking at increasing rates,and arctic sea ice is melting, also at an accelerating pace. Greenland’s ice cap is doing the same. The diurnal temperature range is decreasing due to a quicker increase in night time over day time temperatures. Hurricane intensity is increasing( see http:wind.mit.edu/~emanuel/papers_data_graphics.htm). Flora and fauna have been migrating to higher latitudes and to higher elevations. The average temperature of the globe has increased about 0.7C over the last century or so. These phenomena are based on observations.
A well established principle of physics states that climate results in a balance between incoming solar energy and the amountof heat that planet radiates away to space. An atmosphere can absorb some of that outgoing energy, altering the energy balance which would keep that planet warmer than it would otherwise be- the greenhouse effect. These gases, primarily H2Oand CO2 makes Earth about 33C warmer than if these gases weren’t present. Changes in the amounts of these gases will change this number, and carefully measured values of CO2 show that this gas has increased significantly since the dawnof
the industrial age.
For the last 250 years or so we’ve been burning fossil fuels which releases carbon into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide,
CO2. About half of that carbon remains in the atmosphere resulting in an increase of about 115 ppmv of C02 since the
start of the industrial revolution(from 270 to 385). From an examination of ice core data, this number is higher than it has
been in at least the last half million years.Deforestation and land use practices also affect climate. These factors have to
be taken into account to explain the recent changes in climate, described above.
29 July 2008 at 9:30
Philip M.–you got the name right.
Vincent Gray
more on Vincent Gray
29 July 2008 at 9:40
Jim Eager: “What fraction of the human race would die of starvation if the above advice [ending all fossil fuel use in one day] was not followed?”
I think I am in agreement with economic experts that a moderate mitigation (and adaptation) policy will minimize economic disruption from AGW. Things like a small carbon tax now (that increases with time if temperatures continue to increase rapidly) will reduce the least efficient uses of carbon and encourage investment in alternative energy. Assistance to poor people will help them adapt to higher sea levels or changing rainfall patterns.
There is likely no need for anyone to starve.
29 July 2008 at 10:10
> flat Earth
That’s flat as in billiard ball, not flat as in Discworld.
Careful not to exaggerate what’s already a misleading statement.
Yes, early work didn’t take terrain into account.
No, that’s not true any longer. Models describe how the Rocky Mountains affect European climate, how the Himalayas affect the planetary circulation, how closing the Panama and Gibraltar gaps changed ocean circulation.
In other devastating critiques of science, it’s been reported that Benjamin Franklin didn’t know all that much about lightning, and George Washington’s dentists were not all that competent at crafting false teeth.
Captcha oracle says: as elegance
29 July 2008 at 10:33
David and Philip, good points. I had always thought of the anti-thermo types as just scam artists. Still, when I was in the Peace Corps, one of the first conversations I had in French with a local was explaining to him why his perpetual motion machine wouldn’t work. He accepted it with some grace, though.
Maybe the thing relativity, thermo and climate science all have in common is they are all telling people that there are some things they just can’t do (e.g. faster than light travel, energy from nothing and endlessly spew CO2 into the air with no consequence). And I guess evolution is telling creationists: Give it up–you’re always going to be as stupid as your father.
Wow, the CAPTCHA code on this was MARKETS Jr. Maybe Hank’s on to something with his attribution of oracular powers.
29 July 2008 at 11:46
Steve Reynolds wrote: “What fraction of the human race would die of starvation if the above advice was followed?”
The excess CO2 that we have already put into the atmosphere has already ensured that hundreds of millions of people will die from starvation and/or dehydration during this century, as a direct result of the warming that has already occurred and the additional warming that is now unavoidable. The Himalayan glaciers will melt, and hundreds of millions of people in Asia will lose their supplies of fresh water for drinking and irrigation. Major agricultural regions of the world will become permanently arid. Ocean acidification will destroy the oceanic food web and with it a primary source of protein for millions of people. Many millions of people will be forced to evacuate densely populated coastal regions and will become starving, homeless refugees with nowhere to go. Every day that we continue burning fossil fuels increases this inevitable global warming death toll, and pushes the planet towards global ecological collapse and the extinction of the rich, diverse, robust biosphere of the Holocene.
Failure to recognize these realities is what I refer to as “economic denial”. (Of course, there are those who think it a small price to pay for the trillion dollar profits of the fossil fuel industry.)
On another level, “economic denial” means the failure to recognize that within a few years, wind and solar generated electricity will be cheaper than coal generated electricity, and much cheaper than the dwindling supplies of high-quality oil or prodigiously expensive, low-grade fossil fuels like tar sands and oil shale. Those who advocate continued investment in coal or nuclear generated electricity, or who advocate expanded drilling and mining for more fossil fuels to burn, are in a state of denial about the New Industrial Revolution of the 21st century, and the transition that is already underway to an energy economy that is no longer based on limited supplies of expensive fuels, but on an unlimited supply of free, abundant solar and wind energy.
29 July 2008 at 12:10
“This American Life” on NPR had a show (July 22) devoted to people with a little bit of knowlege. One segment featured an electrician who disproved Einstein and Newton. The persistance of his delusions reminded me of some of the climate cranks. You can listen to the episode here. It’s the segment titiled “Sucker MC-squared”.
http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1251
29 July 2008 at 12:22
Just a thought. Secular and Steve, you two could go back and forth endlessly, tag-team style, with worst-case speculation about what-if-this and what-if-that.
I really wish you wouldn’t do that here. There are plenty of places where it’s encouraged — even organized, by people who do it as partners for fun.
Doing that here doesn’t help us amateurs understand the science. All we understand is your ping-pong matchup.
Elsewhere, please? Pick a spot and invite everyone …
29 July 2008 at 12:28
Gavin (in 153), I was taken aback by what sounds like a blatantly one-sided and biased response to Steve. It seems the criteria for anyone who deviates a tad from the accepted word is more stringent by magnitudes (I would not be troubled by “some” — I accept (and agree with) that you’re not in this business simply to be fair and balanced.) from what is applied to the supporters. […though perhaps I somehow misread your response, in which case: never mind…]
29 July 2008 at 12:35
I am increasingly of the opinion, based on repeated observations, that a lot of denialists are shadow scientists occupying a realm of expertise that works for the common man in bar room conversations, but one that does not require the effort of having to actually study the universe or have your observations reviewed by your peers. That is, they sound like they know something (rumor) and can present their facts (opinions) with enough authority (ego) to fool those who don’t know any real scientists enough to have a benchmark for comparison or validation. Further, while they are passing themselves off as “smart guys” with their buddies, they probably envy anyone who is actually doing real science and as we can all attest envy can easily become hatred, and I suppose it often does in this case. This is compounded when real scientists come up with observations and theories about the universe that don’t suit the masses nor the media, and the “smart guys” who have nothing invested in the scientific process anyway are happy to take on those “egg-headed, near-sighted girly-men who read too much and who just want to sound important” and who are the ones really stirring the pot here, because everyone knows that all it takes is a little horse sense to see how the world works, you know, and all those degrees just cloud one’s reasoning and lead one to embrace communism.
Maybe some University should offer a degree in Bar Room Physical Sciences to get these jarheads back into the system, as it were. Perhaps they’d be a little less confrontational if they felt they had a degree and a reputation on the line.
cb
29 July 2008 at 13:25
Can we really leave it to the market to resolve AGW, after all, wasn’t it the market that is causing the problem?
Comment by pete best
Of course the market will work. At least until the second last human dies from the advanced effects of global climate change.
29 July 2008 at 13:35
Ray (155), I tend to agree with all you say here. I’ve never claimed that either all of the outsider’s suggestions will be valid, or that there are not crackpots out there. I’m just saying the allowing (if not welcoming) scientists from outside the climatology field is probably beneficial to the study, and that building up a mouth-foaming lather that NO (that’s zero) WORTH HERE! to avoid the crackpots or to avoid hearing suggestions that differ from the beliefs is detremental to the study. (Avoiding crackpots might not be detremental, but there’s no practical way to identify them a priori.)
I just don’t understand the overreaction to many things like the above. Overreactions always imply insecure defensiveness, which in turn hurts credibility. Philip (168) gets upset because Gray accuses the models of using a flat earth and no difference between night and day. Problem is, for the most part, at the base level GCMs use exactly that, which is very sensible with virtually no adverse mathematical effect (as far as I know), except in some unusual regional assessments, when those assumptions are modified. Maybe Gray made his accusation in a misleading demeanor, I don’t know. That would be worthy of refutation, but not a major war. [sidebar: Philip’s post is really not a very good example of my point. But it’s in the ballpark and it’s timely and handy.]
[Response: Where are you getting this stuff? You’ve been here long enough that you could hazard a question or two and be reasonably sure of a good response. The GCMs do not posit a flat earth, and do not have ‘no difference’ between night and day. If people get annoyed at that kind of characterisation, it is because it’s complete garbage. It’s on a par with people claiming that models have 1 year timesteps because all they saw were annual numbers plotted on a graph (and that’s happened…). - gavin]
29 July 2008 at 13:55
SecularAnimist, I’m curious how you see any consistency in your definitions of denial:
Apparently someone who disagrees with you and climate experts on climate science is a climate denialist, and someone who disagrees with you (but agrees with economic experts) on economic issues is an economic denialist.
The only consistency I see there is whether or not they agree with you.
Hank, this will be my last response to SA.
29 July 2008 at 14:35
re: #80
“it seems to me it would be helpful for a clear and simple rebuttal of these kinds of ideas to be published”
One place to get a quick overview of some of the common “skeptical” claims is “Global Warming: Questions and Answers” on the NASA Earth Observatory (a site I help develop):
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/GlobalWarmingQandA/
29 July 2008 at 15:29
Barton Paul Levenson (#165),
Barton Paul, I try to be positive and listen to everyone’s opinion. There is always value. From his wording, I think Maxwell is a researcher.
For my experience research, development or engineering needs three things: knowledge, methods and social competence. Usually specific knowledge and specific methods might only get contributions from the experts in the field; however general scientific methods or general knowledge can and should be contributed by experts from other knowledge areas. Moreover, scientific methods in problem solving, how to carry out an experiment, statistics or programming, solving differential equations … can get contributions from a lot of different fields. That is especially true for applied sciences. Social competence can and should be contributed by everybody.
29 July 2008 at 15:39
Hank Roberts wrote: “Doing that here doesn’t help us amateurs understand the science.”
Point taken and my apologies. I suppose I have become impatient with the seemingly endless “debates” about the science with denialists who have no intention of “understanding” it, while the reality is that the science is already sufficiently well understood so as to justify urgent action to phase out all fossil fuel use, and other activities that generate global warming pollution, as rapidly as possible. (And it could be done quite rapidly, along the lines of Al Gore’s recent proposal, without causing mass starvation, given the will.)
I would humbly suggest that you consider the assertions in the first paragraph of my comment posted at 11:46AM today (currently #174), and ask yourself whether or not you think they are correct. If on balance you think they are likely to be correct, in light of current “understanding of the science”, then how much more “understanding of the science” is really needed, in order to get us to do what is necessary?
Having said that, I do realize that this is a forum for discussing climate science per se, rather than for discussing technological and/or economic solutions to the global warming crisis, and will comment accordingly henceforth.
29 July 2008 at 17:07
Rod,
Knowledgeable input (critical or laudatory) is always welcome. Input from an ignorant food tube too lazy to crack a book and learn something about the subject before spouting off is not welcome–and that does not change because said ignorant food tube has a PhD. Scientific method varies slightly from discipline to discipline. Bacon and Hume stressed repeatability to establish causality. So because we cannot repeat the conditions of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) exactly, should we conclude that we can never understand it? Science has grown to be able to accommodate such subjects because its methods have grown, and it is not fruitful to have those who have never used or even heard of such methods–who don’t know the difference between a dynamical and a statistical model–declare good science invalid or to cast aspersions on the folks doing it.
29 July 2008 at 18:47
Well, Monckton stays in form:
At SPPI, see “Chuck it, Smith” (to Arthur Smith).
and
Chuck it Again, Schmidt”. Gavin’s efforts in “FalseClimate” are refuted, although of course no ad hominems are used. I only get a quick mention.
[Response: That’s hilarious. Just his definition of what is ad hom kept me amused for minutes. Here are the terms he thought were unprintable: A link to Deltoid, “amusingly”, “his main error”, “So he makes another dodgy claim”, “There are many more errors in his piece”, “Umm… “, “bizarrely”, “Needless to say, the multiple errors completely undermine the conclusions regarding climate sensitivity.”. In toto, three adjectives, a vocal affect, a hyperlink, and 3 statements declaring His Vicountness to be in error. Am I alone in finding find him rather over-sensitive to crticism of his ideas on climate sensitivity? - gavin]
29 July 2008 at 19:01
R. Simmon, thanks for the pointer to the Earthobservatory site. One question, that site
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/GlobalWarmingQandA/#08
says:
“… there is just as much chance that the models are underestimating the severity of future warming as they are overestimating warming.”
That puzzled me because it sounds like a bell curve.
Compare that to this:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/29/economics-of-catastrophe/
July 29, 2008, 8:22 am
He begins:
_____________
Away from the headlines, there’s a really important discussion going on about how to think about the economics of climate change. The key player is Marty Weitzman, who has made a simple point (albeit using very, very difficult math) that’s nicely summarized at Env-Econ:
“Climate change is fundamentally a problem about uncertainty. We are conducting an experiment with our planet by doubling CO2 levels in the atmosphere from pre-industrial levels. Concentrations have not been this high in hundreds of thousands of years. By and large, we don’t know much about the implications. Tackling this uncertainty is crucial. Extreme outcomes — fat tails — matter and should be at the heart of much of research.”
——–end of excerpt———
(There are links on the original page to the source of the Weitzmann quote)
29 July 2008 at 19:41
Hank Roberts (187) — As best we currently understand the uncertainty, the Earthobservatory site has it wrong: the heavy tail is on the side of underestimation.
[Captcha syas “limited bounties”. Make out of that what you will.]
29 July 2008 at 19:53
In re: 162
And we’re already there, but there’s so much noise, including “we aren’t there yet”, that people just aren’t listening.
All of this exists now, just go out and buy some.
In response to the claim that we have to stop coal fired power tomorrow, I must agree with the “and how many people would die if we did that?” What we should do is stop building the stuff and insist on conservation measures to increase capacity reserve.
29 July 2008 at 19:58
Mr. Monckton was kind enough to reply to my inquiry about his statement that there is no warming and in fact a cooling trend since 2001. Odd that he mentions the fact that one should not cherry pick, but still “cherry picks” 2001???
“One should not cherry-pick one’s years: the correct approach is to calculate the trend over a period of several years by linear regression. Linear regressions on the temperature record since late 2001 for four major datasets - GISS, UAH, RSS, and Hadley - all show a pronounced downtrend. This is uncontroversial, but not at all well known because the media find it very hard to believe that during the years of hype about “global warming” the globe has in fact been cooling. The cooling between January 2007 and January 2008 was the greatest since records began in 1880. All of this is clearly set out, with the four linear regression graphs, in my paper Clinate Sensitivity Reconsidered, published this month in Physics and Society. The year 2005, which you mention, was a more than averagely intense El Nino year, though not of the same magnitude as 1998. We are now nearing the end of a la Nina, which has a cooling effect on global temperatures; and of an unusually prolonged solar minimum (ditto); and the Pacific decadal oscillation has now moved to its cooling phase. These natural signals, between them, have proven more than enough to overcome the comparatively weak forcing from increases in anthropogenic CO2 emissions. The cooling does not prove that CO2 cannot cause warming - it is reasonably well settled science that it does. The central question (addressed in some detail in my paper) is how much warming will a given increase in CO2 concentration cause? Based on the current literature, the warming effect is likely to be small: and the significance of the seven-year cooling trend is that it points toward a far lower climate sensitivity than that imagined (on no good evidence) by the IPCC. - M of B”
29 July 2008 at 20:10
re: #186
Monckton introduces a fascinating concept:
a) If a piece contains numerous errors and outright silliness
b) And someone picks a few to refute
c) Anything not mentioned must be *true* and irrefutable!
This is in the section called
“The Schmidt who did not bark in the night-time”.
“The Schmidt” did not refute the idea that computer models failed to predict “global warming on Mars”, hence models clearly don’t work
[Response: And did you note that we are on a ‘lavishly funded blog’? (I hope everyone is appropriately appreciative of the gold trim and luxury facilities - the sidebar came from Harrods you know….).
- gavin ]
29 July 2008 at 20:28
Is Monckton correct in claiming that the GCMs sum forcings and feedbacks as in Control Systems Theory (he refers to Bode)?
[Response: Not really. The feedback analysis is just a way to diagnose what the GCMs are doing - what they actually do is governed by the physics they contain. - gavin]
Do Modelers believe feedbacks can cause the Earth’s climate to be unstable or to “run away”?
[Response: Not under present conditions, no. Though it is likely that some hundreds of millions of years ago, we did enter into a ‘Snowball Earth’ condition. And in hundreds of millions of years hence, the sun will become a red giant and boil away the oceans (at which point you might get a runaway effect). But right now? Not a chance. - gavin]
Thanks for any guidance,
29 July 2008 at 21:19
Re: #190 (Adam)
Monckton says:
Wrong. NONE of them even shows a statistically significant downtrend. For GISS and UAH, the trend isn’t even statistically significant if you model the errors as white noise — so Monckton can’t even excuse this ludicrous falsehood by claiming statistical naivete.
Monckton says:
Only for GISS data. For HadCRU, it’s Feb. 1973 to 1974, for both UAH and RSS it’s April 1998 to 1999. I guess when Monckton said “One should not cherry-pick” he was excluding himself from that prohibition. And of course, it’s typical of the most ignorant of denialists to focus on temperature change for a single year.
Monckton says:
Wrong. It’s entered it’s *cool* phase, not its *cooling* phase. This is one of the favorite memes of denialists.
Monckton says:
Wrong. The significance of the seven-year “cooling trend” is that it reveals how denialists focus on propaganda points rather than valid statistical analysis. I guess that’s all Monckton is capable of.
29 July 2008 at 21:27
gavin: “Am I alone in finding find him rather over-sensitive to crticism of his ideas on climate sensitivity?”
Oversensitive? Probably, but what seems inappropriate may depend on which side you are on. I have had a number of comments rejected here that seemed to me to be pretty mild. And I see many comments that appear to me to viciously attack ‘enemies of the cause’ that are allowed to be posted.
[Response: The issue is content. Stating the same thing again is dull if you don’t back it up with substance. Don’t get drawn into snappy back and forths (and this goes for others too). The level of conversation here is somewhat higher than elsewhere and we’d like to keep it that way. - gavin]
29 July 2008 at 22:04
Gavin, as to the cliche-spouting about flat earth models, the deliberate confusion of 1-D models and GCM’s in the popular imagination goes back to the selling of the TTAPS ‘Nuclear Winter’ model as the macguffin in the Cold War film “Threads”
Unlike GCM’s with nifty map animations of parameters like optical depth it only drew static XY plots of time-temperature curves , so to get ‘nuclear winter ‘’s optical depth 20 apocalypse ready for prime time ,the ,pardon the expression, Freeze Movement, retained the Creative Department of Porter Novelli to air-brush some 70’s Whole Earth images flat blackfrompoletoequator.
These were bandied about in the pages of Parade, C. Sagan,Science Editor, and shown time and again on the evening news and The Tonight Show, becoming utterly famous in the process.
None of the 3-D GCM refinements which cut the effect from the global deep freeze merchandised in 1984-6, to the pale and thoroughly defosted shadow of the effect Robock is still trying to flog benefited from adequate advertising , so the only collective memory of the meltdown relates to complaints that a flat out 1-D radiative transfer model was used to sell 40 days and 40 nights of biblical catastrophe as a policy concept without mentioning that the model had dispensed with sunrise and sunset along with the thermal mass of the ocean.
Many in DC were not amused and said so, Al Gore included , and the bipartisan huff lives on as the critique of nuclear winter as an imposed urban myth of the cold war spills over into the current generation.
Now as then, it isn’t enough to get the sign right. In the face of persistent hype folks will eventually get testy and start asking for two significant digits. Some may even question the authority of those unable to provide them.
29 July 2008 at 22:32
Gavin (180), all the analyses I’ve seen, at least at the basic level, show incoming insolation at about 340watts/square meter, not the ~1360 that it actually is. That’s because… (I can’t believe I’m explaining this) it makes no difference over long climatic periods and is easier to handle and to relate to outgoing IR radiation if one flattens the sphere (and equivalently quartering the insolation), making it, well, flat instead of spherical, and eliminating the difference between night and day. What am I missing here?
[Response: That’s fine for back of the envelope calculations - but it’s useless for the Arctic, for diurnal temperature ranges, for tropical precipitation patterns etc. etc. GCMs need to calculate the weather otherwise their statistics for storm tracks, rainfall, winds etc would all be way off. It’s true that most GCM papers don’t show sub-monthly output, but that’s not because they don’t produce it. Quite a number of the AR4 analyses used it for instance to look for MJO patterns and the like. - gavin]
29 July 2008 at 22:44
Ray (185), I agree. But you gave me a good example. There are, in fact a whole lot of scientists and mathematicians outside the field of climatology who understand models forward and backward and the difference between dynamic and statistical modelling. I think they could very well question/ask about GCMs beneficially. And, as I said, if you only knew who the real crackpots are up front, it would be easy — but you don’t.
29 July 2008 at 22:56
Re:#193 (tamino)
Yes, the skeptics are always WRONG. So what type of scenario would make climate science WRONG on the global temperature issue?
29 July 2008 at 22:58
And in hundreds of millions of years hence, the sun will become a red giant and boil away the oceans (at which point you might get a runaway effect).
I dont think that is runaway effect from feedbacks.
That is more like what we call servo control. I intend to be chillin’ out a safe distance past pluto when that happens 
29 July 2008 at 23:02
Adam (190), et al, is Monckton incorrect in his temperature analysis? I’m not asking if it is inappropriate, but incorrect. Nor am I asking about his opinions and assertions re interpretations or his other seemingly goofy comments — just his mathematical assessment of the temperature since 2000-1.
29 July 2008 at 23:18
Congrats on such a well debated site, keep up the good work.
I am an engineer (not a climate scientist) but I have some exopertise in the handling of risk and the analysis of wind, earthquake risk for design of buildings.
It is clear to me that the argument of the last 5 years indicating a down turn is not supportable. You only have to look at the graph to see that the trend is up with no indication of a turn yet. If the graph was a share price, I do not think any share trader would be thinking of selling their shares.
The trend is up and has been substantially for the last 100 years (approx. 1 degree of rise). The last 5 years is simply a pause like many other pauses over the last 100 years. The reverse during the 40’s was much larger, but it soon turned upwards again in the 50’s.
The graph is clear - we are going up (and accelerating) and we won’t be going down until we stop polluting our atmosphere. We are currently heading for 550 CO2e ppm and on towards 700 ppm by 2100. So we better get our act together!
29 July 2008 at 23:19
Re: #198
> So what type of scenario would make climate science WRONG on the global temperature issue?
I think a negative trend in global temperature over a period of > 15 years would do it, assuming no major volcanic eruptions.
Not that I think that is the least bit likely, but if it did occur I would certainly wonder if something was being missed.
29 July 2008 at 23:39
Just as an aside, it’s always interesting to look up the current year’s information when anyone mentions some old science as being bogus, just to see what’s new. As I mentioned in the recent thread on journalists, it really doesn’t take hardly any time at all to get a new clue when someone brings up an idea the journalist doesn’t know whether to rely on or not.
E.g.:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?&q=nuclear+winter&as_ylo=2008&btnG=Search
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/105/14/5307
From the Cover: Massive global ozone loss predicted following regional nuclear conflict
MJ Mills, OB Toon, RP Turco, DE Kinnison, RR, 2008 - National Acad Sciences
… The ozone losses predicted here are significantly greater than previous “nuclear winter/UV spring” calculations, which did not adequately represent …
Old work, even when wrong, sometimes leads to interesting new work. Easy, now, to find.
30 July 2008 at 0:36
The drop that would break the trend would have to be more than say 0.2 degrees over 10 years, or say 0.3 deg over 15 years, or say 0.5 deg over 25 years. the fact is that the trend reversal has to overcome the 100 year established trend we have already had. Given that the acceleration of emissions has been mostly in the last 30 years, we have a lot of momentum built up in the atmosphere and we havn’t yet seen the effect of it (do yo agree Gavin).
30 July 2008 at 5:25
Gavin
is it true that recent work by James Hansens team looked at the drop in temperature from a known epoch of time and compared that to CO2 drops during this time. I have found an explanation for it here.
====================================================================
This is what James Hansen is talking about : the Carbon Dioxide levels in the atmosphere were very high before about 50 million years ago, and then they started to decrease, and the effect of decreasing Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere was Global Cooling of such an intense nature that it kicked off glaciation. (formation of Antarctica I believe)
But it would not have ended there. The Global Cooling was an overshoot. If the CO2 levels had remained the same after their fast reduction to 450 (give or take) ppm, then after the necessary time lags, the Earth would have readjusted from that violent cooling swing to the relevant average heat for that CO2 level. And that would have been high. Higher than today.
James Hansen is saying that if you look at the change in the levels of CO2 roughly 50 million years ago, and looking at the temperature swing that the sharp dip in CO2 caused, then you can use that to work out the the temperature swing out for the sharp rise in CO2 we are now experiencing.
He says that this historical data can be used to calculate what happens at the end of the swing, as well.
Here’s what he says (with his colleagues) :-
“Equilibrium sensitivity, including slower […] feedbacks, is [of the order of] 6 degrees C for doubled CO2…”
Equilibrium, that point at which the time lags are over and the swing is finished and come back to a balanced point, appropriate to the level of CO2 in the sky.
Sensitivity, that total change of global temperature in response to the CO2 signal.
===============================================================
Or in other words we know climate sensitivity on the earth with some good accuracy (ok we have cooling agents to which we need to take into account and they are uncertainly known - hence the error bars) and hence it is scientifically sound to argue that raising atmospheric CO2 by any amount is unsafe but to 450 ppmv and above as we are currently looking to do will cause humanity a lot of issues as the temperature rise is relartive to where we live globally and what we do on this earth, ie grow crops and irrigate water.
I cannot see how Mr Monckton can fail to appreciate this and why he continues to write such seeming nonsense. surely he must be funded.
[Response: No - he’s a freelance purveyor of nonsense. - gavin]
The whole article can be found here:http://portal.campaigncc.org/node/2096
Once again the detractors to the science of climate change are just being obtuse and silly.
I even read recently an exchange between an UK climate scientist and Martin Durkin (TGGWS) who were having an exchange about the programs errors or inaccurate graphs etc and found papers written that tried to show that the MWP and LIA were global in origin and not solely European. They were localised phenomena weren’t they?
[Response: Our best understanding is that there was a global pattern of climate anomalies (i.e. that there was a global pattern of shifting atmospheric circulation, altered patterns of precipitation, drought, etc). This isn’t really a matter of dispute. However, in terms of surface temperature changes over the earth it was probably largely a zero-sum game. We now understand (see e.g. the latest IPCC report, chapters 6 and 9 here) that the modest changes in solar and volcanic radiative forcing which led to a very modest (0.1 to 0.2C at most) warming of the globe, also led to substantial shifts in the so-called “North Atlantic Oscillation” and El Nino/Southern Oscillation, phenomena. This lead to very large regional changes, including alternating patterns of substantial cooling (e.g. tropical Pacific) and warming (e.g. Europe), sitting on top of very modest anomalies in global mean temperature. All reconstructions shown in the IPCC report indicate peak medieval warmth that at hemispheric scales was significantly below the warm of the past one to two decades. -mike]
30 July 2008 at 5:52
Heads Up! Monckton Strikes Back!
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/chuck_it_again_schmidt.html
30 July 2008 at 7:13
Re #206, he is not striking back, he is being daft.
30 July 2008 at 8:16
Viscount Monckton writes:
But not a significant one since the sample size is too small. Monckton probably inflates the number of points by using monthly data instead of annual (for a phenomenon where the characteristic time scale for statistical significance is 30 years). It’s kind of like me saying temperature rose sharply here between 6:15 AM and 9:15 AM, dividing that into 181 minutely temperature readings so that the regression tests as significant, and concluding that the oceans will boil in a few days.
30 July 2008 at 8:19
Rod B., The good Viscount would have difficulty locating his posterior with both hands and a flashlight even if given a GPS programmed to their coordinates. WRT his assertions (and they are nothing but) on temperature, see:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2007/08/31/garbage-is-forever/
30 July 2008 at 8:23
Russell Seitz posts:
Except that it’s not a myth. The major study held to “refute” it, Schneider’s 1984 “nuclear autumn” paper, made a mistake in plume height simulation such that it was off by a factor of three. If your plume heights are too short, the soot doesn’t enter the stratosphere in sufficient amounts, and the cooling is temporary and mild. If your plume heights are correct, it does enter the stratosphere, and the cooling is for two or three years and severe — quite enough to destroy human agriculture and with it, human civilization. Much as right-wingers might be unhappy with it, nuclear war is still a bad idea.
Mr. Seitz appears to feel that radiative-convective models can’t tell us anything of interest, since they conflate night and day and have no surface relief. Do any climate scientists here agree?
30 July 2008 at 10:06
Re Monckton strikes back, it’s a pretty glancing blow: “the FalseClimate propaganda blog…has launched a malevolent, scientifically-illiterate, and unscientifically-ad-hominem attack on a publication by me”?
Wow. He should guest on Colbert.
reCAPTCHA: Champlain Won
30 July 2008 at 10:12
Rod B (196):
I may be misinterpreting your question regarding the factor of four in solar intensity (the “flat Earth”). If you already know this explanation then I apologize, but it may be useful for other readers. It doesn’t matter if you have an electric field, a magnetic field or an electromagnetic field (sunlight) hitting a curved surface, you have the same problem. To calculate the total flux, you need to perform an area integral of the dot product of the field vector and the normal vector for each surface area element. Since the Sun’s rays are parallel to each other, they will be directly perpendicular to the surface (or parallel to the normal vector) at the Equator (on the Equinox), and will hit at glancing angles (perpendicular to the normal vector) at the poles. This makes for a nasty integration, where it is easiest to convert to spherical coordinates, etc. Luckily, Gauss comes to the rescue. (That precocious little bugger!)
Gauss came up with the following thought experiment. Imagine a weird object with contorted surfaces. Suppose you have a field vector, e.g. sunlight, passing through this volume. Since no sunlight is created within the volume, the flux passing through one surface must be the same as the flux passing through the opposite side. The surface area can be HUGE on one side (imagine a steep-sided conical hat), but the flux must be the same. Now imagine if one side happens to have an easy integration . . .
When I explain this concept to my high school AP students, I bring in a colander, with one hemispherical surface and one circular surface. Since this is for an Electricity & Magnetism class, I use magnetic field as an example, but the same principle works for sunlight. Imagine that you turn the colander upside down an a flat surface. You then pass a magnetic field straight down through the curved surface. The magnetic field will then be parallel to the normal vector at the highest point on the colander, and will be perpendicular to the normal vector around the rim. The angle between the two vectors will vary continuously between these points. As for the bottom surface, the normal vector always points down (away from the surface). Remember that the flux through the hemispherical region always is the same as the flux through the circular region. While the curved surface has a nasty integration, the circular area has a simple one: the normal vector is always parallel with the field vector. That means that you can replace the dot product with a product, or simply multiply the solar intensity by the area of a circle. Note that the area of a circle is one-fourth the surface area of a sphere. That may be the origin of the “flat Earth” conundrum. Or maybe I have horribly misread things . . .
30 July 2008 at 10:22
I do recall what Dr. S. is referring to above, I think. For a story on nuclear winter, an illustration of the globe was excessively darkened to near complete blackness and published in some magazine (Time?) to make the idea more scary. (Rather like a more recent cover where they did the same thing to a picture of wossname during his murder trial.) No cite, sorry.
The current nuclear winter idea is being belabored here with Dr. S. with appropriate illustrations. It’s a better place to engage in it.
http://www.defensetech.org/archives/003108.html
30 July 2008 at 10:23
Barton Paul Levenson wrote: “Much as right-wingers might be unhappy with it, nuclear war is still a bad idea.”
During the cold war there were policy makers who advanced the notion that a global thermonuclear war with the USSR and China would be “winnable”. In the 1980s, one US government official stated that following a nuclear war, “if there are enough shovels to go around we’ll be OK.”
It appears that some in the current US government and corporate elites have a similarly cavalier attitude towards the consequences of global warming: it will be “winnable” — for a small number of extremely wealthy and powerful people who will be able to command the resources needed to survive it.
30 July 2008 at 11:04
Re#, Re# 205, Thanks Mike for the response. So the global 0.8C we have experienced in the 20th Century and the 0.6C latent in the Oceans is going to be quite significant then as it will be truely global but also localised such as in the Arctic?
[Response: Yes–that’s fair to say. The thing that makes the late 20th century temperature increases unique is really the globally-synchronous nature of the warming, which contrasts with the typical pattern of natural variation. Relevant to this also is our previous post on the Osborn and Briffa (2006) Science article that addresses this issue by looking at how the homogeneity of trends has changed over the past 1000 years using various climate proxy records. -mike]
30 July 2008 at 11:09
Monckton has no shame. He accuses the APS of “crumbling” and in effect lying to the effect that his paper wasn’t peer-reviewed. His evidence? Nothing. Why doesn’t he just publish the reviews? To save you reading the whole thing:
Chris, you’ve been debunked here. Why not be a decent chap and actually answer the criticisms at a site where people have the qualifications debate you, rather than indulge in an “ad-hominem approach” like “For the second time, the FalseClimate propaganda blog, founded by two co-authors of the now-discredited “hockey-stick” graph by which”…? Or is Gavin’s plough a tad sharp for you?
I’m sure Gavin will be kind enough to indulge a detailed debate.
One more thing: the scientific method is not an algorithm.
[Response: He did publish the ‘review’ (it’s included in his letter to the APS linked above). Read it and you will realise why the ‘no peer review’ case is unanswerable. Plus the author of that review, Saperstein, very clearly states on the New Scientist piece that it wasn’t a ‘peer review’ - just a review of a peer.
- gavin]
30 July 2008 at 11:11
Ray, et al, I see your and Tamino’s point (saw his post here after I posted mine). BPL seems to agree with me (my inference within my highly constrained question) and you and Tamino don’t seem to really answer that Monckton’s mathematical analysis is incorrect. It was a curiosity question, might not have any significant (or any…) relevance, and asked simply if his regression analysis from 2001 through 2008 was mathematically accurate. I understand that such an analysis likely has no relevance to any long-term temperature trend, or anything else, and might be entirely mathematically inappropriate — which isn’t the same as “mathematically inaccurate”. I probably should not have used “incorrect” — it could be interpreted as inappropriate, which is not what I meant.
30 July 2008 at 11:28
Jeff (212), thanks. Your description is mathematically more complete and informative. I think it is also what I was simplifying: the total energy/power flux from the sun striking half of the earth as a hemisphere (area of 2(pi)r^2 using dot products, integration and all), turns out to be mathematically equal to the flux striking head on the equivalent cross-section circle of area (pi)r^2. This is also mathematically equal to flattening the sphere to a flat area of 4(pi)r^2 and dividing the actual flux by four. This is what I said, agreeing with Monckton, is like using a flat earth with no day-night distinction. Though Monckton seemed to be trying to confuse, mislead, and imply something beyond my very simple comparison.
30 July 2008 at 12:12
Rod,
Tamino’s analysis is quite clear–there is no downward trend. Monckton is simply flat-assed wrong.
30 July 2008 at 12:22
Re: #217 (Rod B)
Let’s make an analogy: suppose we want to monitor the height of men who walk into a coffee shop in order to determine whether there’s a trend over time. The first person through the door is Shaquille O’Neal, I’m the next person. You may already have guessed that I’m not as tall as Shaq.
Along comes Chris Monckton and says, “the height of men walking through that door shows a pronounced downtrend.” This conclusion is based on two people.
Is this mathematical analysis incorrect?
30 July 2008 at 13:22
(Re #220) and of course the answer is “depends on what you mean by ‘correct’”.
Same with Monkton despite Roy’s attempts to narrow down the query to a state where no answer that can be given in less than dissertation length would be immune to him twisting to make him “right”.
thinking hats is the captcha. Looks like the Oracle of Captcha has scored another one!
PS we shouldn’t mouth the Oracle’s words too often, in case we expose a pattern. People with nefarious aims seldom care whether the effort is worth it…
30 July 2008 at 14:05
Ray, O.K…., I think. But, Tamino, if you follow Shaquille O’Neal through the door, then saying the height of men walking through the door is in a downward trend is mathematically accurate. Maybe meaningless; maybe inappropriate; but accurate. Ray, Tamino am I correct (accurate) here?
30 July 2008 at 14:15
1) Nothing about Viscount Monckton’s a behavior is a surprise. Of course, his characterization of “the usual suspects” is likely to be rather far off the mark as an accurate description of the APS President’s actions.
2) But still, I once again invite people to examine the articles listed in #68 by Dr Gerald Marsh, to which I add:
9. June 2005 “No consensus on prime cause of global warming”
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/10ea480e-dba7-11d9-913a-00000e2511c8.html
10. Dec 2004, “CO2 cannot be called a pollutant”, letter to Financial Times
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/72a811d4-593e-11d9-89a5-00000e2511c8.html?nclick_check=1
I think one can make the case that Monckton would never have gotten an invite without Marsh. It would be truly fascinating to know the whole list of five names.
Has Marsh published any peer-reviewed articles on climate change?
3) And again, although he appears not to have started this, Dr. Larry Gould certainly helped out later, and one might examine his home page.
4) I observe a pattern that has been seen before…
Needless to say, free speech is fine, but maybe colleagues might want to ask such people why they want to damage their reputations, by opining on topics outside their expertise, and via OpEd, letters to editors, whitepapers on thinktank websites, etc, etc … but not in peer-reviewed credible publications. The Web has a long memory….
30 July 2008 at 14:24
No, Rod. Basic statistics 101 is where you learn how many data points, over how much time, you need to state with a given level of likelihood of being right that a trend can be inferred from the data.
You’re confusing bullshit with statistics. This isn’t your fault, but it is why taking Stat 101 changes people’s lives and the way they view the world.
Recommended.
30 July 2008 at 14:43
Rod B. #222,
Yes, correct, meaningless and inappropriate.
30 July 2008 at 14:59
Gavin responds under #216:
…and a review by a “peer”, i.e., someone just as, eh, competent on the subject matter
30 July 2008 at 15:03
Re: #222 (Rod B)
Rod, no you’re not correct. If you said the 1st person through the door was taller than the 2nd, then that’s correct. But to use the word “trend” without being mathematically mistaken, you have to test statistical significance. The 2-person “trend” fails.
So does the “trend” in global temperature for *every* data set mentioned by Monckton. In the context of mathematics, trend means more than just “today isn’t as warm as yesterday.”
30 July 2008 at 15:23
Rod B #222: yes, I would agree that Monckton’s statement may be construed by a lawyer as not factually false (why am I thinking of Bill Clinton?)
“Downtrend” true for a suitable definition of “trend” — not the one used by scientists though, who would insist that in order to exist a trend must be statistically significant.
“Pronounced”, matter of taste… british lords are known for their weird tastes
Counterquestion: do you see intent to deceive? I know I do.
30 July 2008 at 15:55
Re #206
Monckton must move in some pretty sheltered circles. It can be deduced from his SPPI document in response to this posting, that he thinks the following were Ad-Hominem attacks…
“He amusingly…”
”But back to his main error”
“So he makes another dodgy claim.”
”There are many more errors in his piece”
“He bizarrely…”
and my favorite!
“Umm…”
Blimey, no wonder Monckton is so peeved, with such cutting attacks!
30 July 2008 at 17:05
Hank, Tamino, Ray, Martin, et al. I’ll have to agree that the two man example is bad and can’t indicate a trend. However, three maybe, theoretically, might if you are willing to accept a humongous error. Still,. mathematically, Monckton’s 2001-2008 regression ought to have sufficient points for a mathematically accurate trend. Though I recognize climate stuff requires many more points over time to get to a reasonable margin of error, compared to other things. You all keep replying that his analysis is inappropriate (meaning an unacceptable margin of error) or cherry-picked. I don’t disagree or question that. I’m just wondering how someone can make a numerical error in the calculation of a linear regression, or, e.g., calculating an average; the mathematical algorithm is not complicated, pretty straight forward, and requires little advanced math. You are saying he did; but I suspect (though it’s my question) you are saying it was inappropriate and insignificant. Regarding my question, this is not the same thing.
Yes, my impression is that he was trying to mislead. But just because he may be acting like a dork doesn’t mean he can’t accurately calculate the average of squares.
30 July 2008 at 17:14
Rod:
http://atmoz.org/blog/2008/01/29/on-the-insignificance-of-a-5-year-temperature-trend/
30 July 2008 at 17:46
Re #229
“Monckton must move in some pretty sheltered circles. It can be deduced from his SPPI document in response to this posting, that he thinks the following were Ad-Hominem attacks…
“He amusingly…”
”But back to his main error”
“So he makes another dodgy claim.”
”There are many more errors in his piece”
“He bizarrely…”
and my favorite!
“Umm…”
Blimey, no wonder Monckton is so peeved, with such cutting attacks!
I agree for a classicist to not understand what ‘ad hominem’ means is surprising!
However it get worse, he claims to take the ‘high ground’ when he declares: “I shall refrain from any ad-hominem remarks of my own,”, and then proceeds to pile ad hom on top of ad hom!
The last three pages are nothing but ad hom, I didn’t attend Harrow but at my school we were taught to play the ball, not the man, (a non-classicist’s definition of ad hominem). I do agree with Monckton in one respect though, Monckton’s liberal use of ad hominem remarks does serve to indicate that his remarks are politically and not scientifically motivated.
A rather poor translation of Occam’s razor too!
I read the ‘peer review’ of his paper and as I posted elsewhere I found it extremely superficial, a proof reading rather than a review which didn’t address any of the science.
Monckton’s pretentious use of foreign phrases is rather annoying, however it is amusing when he gets it wrong such as when he uses per impossibile
30 July 2008 at 17:49
Rod B #230:
“Still,. mathematically, Monckton’s 2001-2008 regression ought to have sufficient points for a mathematically accurate trend.”
So show us. If it ought, and statistics isn’t rocket science
, so show us the results.
30 July 2008 at 18:38
Rod 230, Tamino’s post is also quite convincing.
30 July 2008 at 19:44
Rod, In order to establish a trend, we must do a statistical analysis on some quantity. Since you cannot even really define a meaningful standard deviation on a sample size of 2, I think we can safely conclude that there is no trend.
Any fool can lie with statistics. Using them to bring out the truth–that takes skill.
30 July 2008 at 20:25
# 222 Rod B Says:
“But, Tamino, if you follow Shaquille O’Neal through the door, then saying the height of men walking through the door is in a downward trend is mathematically accurate.”
No it is NOT mathematically accurate.
Statistical analysis of time series is all about estimating how likely it is that some pattern occurred by chance. If it is highly unlikely it occurred by chance, then we can say it’s a trend.
To do that, you need a big enough number of observations. In general, the more observations, the more certain you can be. Only when you have sufficient observations can you say there is a trend, and there are standard statistical tests for this. In the same way, a horse that has won 20 out of 20 races is a safer bet than a horse that’s won only one from one.
In your case, everyone coming through the door will be a different height than the previous person, even if there is no trend at all. So measuring only Shaq and Tamino tell us nothing whatsoever about the existence or otherwise of a trend.
You also need to specify your “model”. Your example assumes, implicitly, that people are coming through the door at random. Is there something else affecting your observations that might not be related to an underlying trend?
You might need, for example to allow for the fact that Shaq’s team predictably only comes to town once every few years or that a family of pygmies is passing through town on their annual vacation today, or that every Tuesday the coffee shop has a “shortass hour” between 10 and 11, free coffee for midgets.
The effects of these known events, which have occurred in the past, can be estimated.
In the same way, climate models make allowances for, say, el Nino and la Nina events and volcanic eruptions.
There may also be random unobserved events whose effects are unknown. For example, the Secret Tall People’s Coffee Drinking Team may have been kidnapped by aliens.
So your sample needs to cover a long enough time frame so such things will not affect your conclusions.
If you don’t take acocunt of these (and other) things, then the results of your trend analysis are likely to be misleading.
That’s why this talk of a downward trend since 1998 is misleading.
You could take a look at the wikipedia entry on “trend estimation” as a starting point, or get a book about introductory econometrics from your library.
The statistical methods used in econometrics are generally applicable to discussions like these and the texts are mostly accessable - they have to be, because we economists aren’t as smart as real scientists.
30 July 2008 at 21:56
Well, we’re beating hell out of a near dead horse. I went back and checked. The “trend” from 2002 thru mid-2008 is down as shown in Moncton’s paper. However, eyeballing other graphs (with all apologies
), had he started in 2001, not so much; 2000? not a chance. Monckton also talks of downward trend since 1998. That too is accurate. However starting in 1997 or 1996 it’s not, depending on how the linear regression would handle 2008. Starting any other year back to 1860 it is not. This is all that I was asking about/questioning. You guys keep answering, in essence, ‘..but he’s a dork’, or ‘it’s meaningless’, or ‘it’s statistically insignificant or misleading’. I knows dat; wasn’t what I was asking.
But, I know, I’ve taken this thing beyond any worth. So I won’t belabor it further.
30 July 2008 at 22:09
Re # 197 Rod B:
Why do you (apparently) assume those scientists and mathematicians haven’t had input into global climate modelling from the very beginning, or that the climate scientists (and graduate students learning the ins and outs of climate modeling) don’t consulted with mathematicians and computer scientists and other modelling experts?
More importantly, I suspect the real limitation of global climate models comes not from deficiencies in an understanding of the requisite mathematics, statistics, writing of computer code, etc, but rather from gaps in “our” knowledge of the complex dynamics of atmospheric and oceanic physics that has to be incorporated into those models - that knowledge is likely to come from climatologists and oceanographers, not from outsiders.
31 July 2008 at 0:12
> why do you (apparently) assume
Er, because we’re fun to watch? Boring.
31 July 2008 at 2:04
Unfortunately, as long as you keep using the word “trend”, it IS what you are asking. And without the word “trend”, it is a meaningless question anyway.
So what’s your point? Are you hair-splitting over exactly *what* Monckton is lying about? He’s clearly lying, so I suppose classifying his lie might be an interesting exercise to some, but not to me.
31 July 2008 at 3:56
Rod #237, point taken.
Note that the Viscount’s use of “trend”, as apparently borrowed by you, is not too different from your use of “temperature” for single molecules
Yes, we scientists may forget when folks are struggling for understanding rather than terminological precision — which is so central in science.
And he is a dork.
31 July 2008 at 4:10
Rod B,
Please show us your raw data and your calculations.
Please also ensure you have included the noise level and significance calculations. We need to see your raw data and since this is only 5 years data, should be easy to produce.
Basically, I’m skeptical of your results.
31 July 2008 at 4:37
Re #197, classic denialist rhetoric as per usual. Another flawed attempt to undermine GHG theory.
31 July 2008 at 6:34
Rod B posts:
No, it is NOT accurate. You have a fundamental misunderstanding here. You can’t just calculate a linear regression to find a trend. A linear regression isn’t just a line, it’s the significance of the slope as well. A trend that isn’t significant is not a trend.
31 July 2008 at 6:49
Gavin, under the heading “Schmidt’s errors”, Monckton accuses you of making I think 13 errors.
Could you please do all of us a service and rebut his accusations so that we can clearly see you are right and he is wrong?
[Response: I leave it as an exercise to the reader (or I would if I were writing a textbook). But it could be an interesting exercise in any case. Which of these claims seem credible to you and why? I might add an addendum at the weekend. - gavin]
31 July 2008 at 7:27
Re: #237 (Rod B)
Rod, you’re the one who’s beating a dead horse because for some reason you refuse to admit that Monckton isn’t just being stupid and/or misleading, he’s actually wrong. The word “trend” has a meaning. It does not mean “the slope of a linear regression is non-zero.” That will always happen, even if you analyze a series of random numbers. If that slope is statistically indistinguishable from zero, then you have no evidence for a trend. But Monckton says “pronounced downtrend,” not only making him wrong, but a propagandist as well.
Nobody said he can’t add. But his statement is not mathematically correct.
31 July 2008 at 8:34
RE: Rod @237
“The “trend” from 2002 thru mid-2008 is down as shown in Moncton’s paper.”
“You guys keep answering…‘it’s statistically insignificant or misleading’. I knows dat; wasn’t what I was asking.”
I think the point here is that if you use the term trend (without the scare quotes you used in the line I quoted) in a paper on science, directed at scientists, it should be safe to assume you intend a technical, scientific meaning of the term. In this usage, I believe that a pattern of observations is definitively NOT a trend if it does not reach statistical significance.
31 July 2008 at 9:52
Let’s see if we can discern a “trend” from two data points:
1. As reported by Associated Press, yesterday “Exxon Mobil reported second-quarter earnings of $11.68 billion … the biggest quarterly profit ever by any U.S. corporation … Setting U.S. profit records has become commonplace for Irving-based Exxon Mobil. The $11.68 billion topped its own U.S. record of $11.66 billion, posted in the fourth quarter of last year. Right behind that was the $10.9 billion it reported to start 2008. Exxon Mobil owns the record for at least the top six most-profitable quarters for a U.S. company, as well as the largest annual profit.”
2. As reported by The Wilderness Society, on Tuesday of this week “allies of Big Oil in the Senate” blocked passage of legislation that would have renewed the investment and production tax credits for wind and solar energy and provided tax incentives for high-efficiency automobile technology.
The problem of anthropogenic global warming is real, and extremely serious — and Exxon-Mobil and other fossil fuel corporations fund a campaign of deceitful propaganda to prevent the public from realizing this.
The solutions — clean, renewable energy technologies that would enable a rapid phase-out of fossil fuels — are at hand, and Exxon-Mobil and other fossil fuel corporations bribe legislators to prevent even meager tax incentives to spur the development of these new energy industries.
Does anyone detect a “trend”?
31 July 2008 at 9:54
Oh! Boy!
I meant that I was beating the horse; so you can get off yours, tamino.
My data is Monckton’s linked article and various graphs I have coming from GISS, HadCrut3, et al sources. They’re not secret or unknown or difficult to look at.
You guys will go to no end to avoid saying Monckton once in a while maybe by chance can add and subtract. His data from 2002 to 2008 is sufficient to establish a mathematical trend. The mathematical accuracy depends simply on the error and standard deviation. But I was (maybe wrongly) using the term “trend” loosely (which is why I put it in quotes, not to scare (???) people). You all keep saying that, numbers or not, a presumed trend is meaningless unless it logically fits the context, and a 5-6 year analysis is meaningless within the context of climate. I keep saying I know that and agree with it. But you all keep pounding away. So, I’ll ask, no more, no less, does the smoothed out global temperature measurements decrease between 2002 and 2008? (regardless of Monckton’s terminology, which I have admitted ad nauseam that I think is misleading.)
31 July 2008 at 10:14
Chuck (238), so you claim the writers of , if not the most, one of the top half-dozen complex complicated mathematical models could whip it out like eating Cheerios in the morning, and could get absolutely no benefit what-so-ever from folks, who designed models for something other than climate, checking out a few instructions, algorithms, etc. from time to time. Boggles the mind.
Even more mind boggling and downright astonishing is how my thought here, as pete best says (243), meets the standard for, “classic denialist rhetoric as per usual. [and] Another flawed attempt to undermine GHG theory.” Wow! — suggesting that the climate model developer/architect might find some improvement by asking Jeanie down the hall in the astrophysics model shop????
[Response: I’ve never had much useful input from astrophysicist modellers, but I’m still young. But climate modelling is a very open field, and we certainly get input from mathematicians (I started out as one), oceanographers, meteorologists, dynamicists, sea ice specialists, biologists, geologists, atmospheric chemists, remote sensing experts etc. Some of them are in the same building, but mostly they are scattered across the world. The biggest issues in bringing so many people together, is that they often do not appreciate the constraints that GCMs impose on more detailed models - overall conservations, consistency and appropriate levels of approximation. - gavin]
31 July 2008 at 10:55
Rod, the answer is you can’t tell, if you want an answer about the planet.
Do you just want an answer about the numbers? Just the integers?
Everyone here will agree that 10 is larger than 9, 9 is larger than 8 and so forth.
But while you’re attaching the numbers you’re reading to the notion that they tell you something definite about the planet, people will go on telling you you haven’t understood this yet.
They don’t go out and read one thermometer one day a year.
You need to understand where the numbers Monckton is using come from.
You’re ignoring the range of error, because you don’t understand the concept.
Statistics 101 will change your life, if you understand the material.
Now, are you going to tell us you know this already?
If so, you’re just taking up all this time and attention although you _know_ these numbers have nothing to tell us about the planet, and you’re just trying to get everyone here to admit that some integers are more equal than others.
If so, why bother?
31 July 2008 at 12:23
Rod B., Two things. First, let’s look at what people in the past have said about statistics:
Disraeli–”There are three types of lies: lies, damnable lies and statistics.”
Andrew Lang–”He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts - for support rather than illumination.”
And so on. Now given that people have this impression of statistical analysis, it is not surprising that people who understand statistics insist on precision of both analysis and terminology. It is very easy to misuse statistics. One can use an analysis that is inappropriate to the problem. One can use a statistical measure that gives misleading or biased estimation. One can cherry-pick starting and end points. One can keep looking at different analyses until one finds one that supports one’s contention. All of these things can be done–and more important, experienced statisticians can spot them, where laymen are likely to be taken in.
Now as to your contention that someone from, say, astrophysics can step right in and help out Gavin et al…. Remember, scientists study their discipline for a decade or more before they get their PhD. They then do a post-doc for about 5 years more. Several years as asistant professor, and on and on. Experience counts. Every field has its own history and techniques. If you are ignorant of that history, you will make old mistakes and reinvent wheels. The experienced researcher you are trying to help will probably spend more time explaining to you that your ideas have been tried before than you will actually producing anything of substance.
When I’m having a particularly bad day, juggling 3 different telecons at the same time, I sometimes fantasize about switching to medical physics. After all, I do radiation effects in semiconductors and medical physicists look at radiation effects in bags of water called human beings. Pretty much the same physic, right? Yet, I know it would take me at least three years before I could say anything meaningful about my new field. Don’t discount the value of experience.
31 July 2008 at 14:43
Re: #250 Rod B
Rod,
If you re-read my post (# 238) you’ll see that I claimed no such thing. Rather, I suggested (in my question to you) that climate modelers do use input from those non-climatologist scientists and mathematicians with relevant expertise, and Gavin confirmed this point.
It boggles the mind that you could misinterpret my comments so badly.
31 July 2008 at 16:44
Gavin, I’m on board with everything you say (250).
I don’t think it refutes my contention (which has expanded a lot during the discourse), which was, roughly, arbitrarily and completely excluding everyone from outside climatology from commenting on the discipline, especially my example of computer modelers, is stupid, silly, and not helpful. I did not contend that letting all the outsiders talk would solve all (or even many, or even some) of the problems, or that they would even show up! Ray, neither do I contend that these outside questioners are the nirvana. No way are they as versed as the guy with 10-11 years of post secondary education followed by a bunch of actual work. Maybe only once in a great while they might maybe mention something that has been over-looked. That’s not the point at all. My point is as above, literally, nothing more, nothing less.
Ray and Hank re my #249: I’ll turn up the volume. Please listen carefully with some discrimination. I’M NOT IGNORING RANGE OF ERROR. I ACCEPT RANGE OF ERROR; REALLY BAD. I AGREE WITH THE MEANINGLESS NATURE OF 5-6 YEARS ANALYSIS IN THE CONTEXT OF CLIMATE. NOT WHAT I ASKED. I didn’t ask about “the planet”! My question, literally, nothing more, is, “does the smoothed out global temperature measurements decrease between (1Q)2002 and (2Q)2008? The answer is a simple YES or NO, and does not imply anything else.
31 July 2008 at 16:50
Chuck, well, your last paragraph of 238 sounded like it at the time. If I misread that, I apologize.
31 July 2008 at 20:38
Rod B., would you please let a lay person help you? I am an engineer, but even I recognize that Monckton is making a famous error in statistics, one that was first defined 80 years ago.
He is saying that there is a trend in the data, when in fact the data could easily have been caused by random variation. In fact, it is far more likely that the data is caused by random system behavior than a causal factor.
Let me quote a bit of W.Edwards Deming, one of the most famous statisticians ever (although his degree was in physics), “the numbers mean nothing, until you know by what system they were measured” further, “until you know the system’s variation, you cannot predict the system’s response”. Deming of course, made his name teaching the Japanese how to build better quality cars back in the 1950s (his picture, along with the emperor of Japan, and the founder, is in the front lobby of Toyota).
Monckton is looking at annual global temperatures. Since 1975, the annual global temperatures have a standard variation of over 0.1 deg C. So to get a result that is 95% certain, the uncertainty bands have to be drawn +/- 0.2 deg C just to account for the natural variation in the Earth’s system.
But Monckton is saying (paraphrased): But there is an obvious downward trend!
Well, there is a statistical test for that, used in statistical process control (SPC), and that is seven consecutive steadily rising (or falling) trend. Does your data show that? Is 2001 cooler than 2000, AND 2002 cooler than 2001, AND 2003 cooler yet, AND 2004 cooler yet, AND 2005 cooler yet, AND so forth. Now that is for 3 sigma certainty, and 2 sigma is less, so perhaps 5 consecutive data points will do the trick. Does your data show five consecutive cooling years? If so, there could be a special cause, so lets go looking for the volcanic eruption and solar activity and so forth.
Another statistical test sometimes used, is seven consecutive data points above or below the mean. Does your data show seven consecutive years of temperature anomaly below the mean of the years since 1975? How about five consecutive years below the mean?
If none of these tests are met, then perhaps you don’t have statistically valid conclusion to draw. Monckton doesn’t seem to know any statistics, or perhaps he is ignoring this completely.
Here is a link to this famous statistical error:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_I_and_type_II_errors
If you want to try your hand at this, here are some statistical patterns you can look for to determine statistical significance:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Electric_rules
Remember when applying these “dumb rules” (meaning that you don’t need to know about the system beyond the standard deviation to apply them), that you need the standard deviation to set the two sigma and three sigma levels, but the guys here provided that.
Final word, it seems that climatologists are letting you off easy… they are only asking for two sigma significance. Be thankful you aren’t supply the auto makers, who demand three sigma to establish statistical significance.
31 July 2008 at 21:21
gavin,you state that “I’ve never had much useful input from astrophysicist modellers”. Just to remind you,your friend James Hansen,famous for his high profile,is an astrophysicist modeller.
[Response: Valid point - but he hasn’t worked on planetary atmospheres (other than the Earth) since at least the 1980s, so this pre-dates my connection to GCMs by almost 20 years. - gavin]
1 August 2008 at 8:02
Re - 186 - just read the “chuck it….” PDF.
I loved this bit:
“Al Gore took care to ensure that Hansen’s testimony to Congress in the hot summer of 1988 was staged
on a particularly hot day, for maximum political effect.”
I’d love to know how he does that in advance. When I arrange field trips for people, I spend three months praying for sunshine and it usually tips it down!
Cheers - John
1 August 2008 at 8:50
#254 Rod B NOT WHAT I ASKED. […] My question, literally, nothing more, is, “does the smoothed out global temperature measurements decrease between (1Q)2002 and (2Q)2008? The answer is a simple YES or NO, and does not imply anything else.
Oh for crying it loud, dude! That is NOT how you put it in any other comment. You kept saying “trend”. People kept correcting you. Say this and we can all move on:
“I now realise I used the wrong word, and gave you a misleading impression of my intention. I apologise for the confusion, it was unintentional. To clarify, I meant that the smoothed out figures decrease for the period concerned. I understand that this is not a statistical trend, and that Monckton was in error if he claimed it was.”
Regardless of your intention, by using a technical word out of context without clear elaboration, you said something different to what you (clearly, now) meant. This was a small slip, but no-one who called you on it can be faulted for assuming you meant what you said.
1 August 2008 at 9:06
@RodB, and the “ZOMG!!!IT’S JUST A SIMPLE YES/NO QUESTION!!!” question:
I, for one, don’t know. But given that, as you have repeatedly point out, you have acknowledged that the answer is meaningless in practical terms, why do you care?
And I would guess that the reasons people haven’t answered you with that simple yes or no you’re looking for include things like the following:
1) Having also recognized that the answer would be meaningless in practical terms, they DON’T CARE and so haven’t bothered to look for an answer.
2) Although the answer is not practically useful in terms of climate science, if the answer is “yes,” it could be put to use in constructing misleading rhetoric. I can easily imagine someone copying a yes response to your question, and pasting it out of context somewhere else, while proclaiming “see?!? Even those RC people are admitting Monckton was right!!!1!”
See what I mean?
1 August 2008 at 9:56
Rod B: You ask: “does the smoothed out global temperature measurements decrease between (1Q)2002 and (2Q)2008? The answer is a simple YES or NO, and does not imply anything else.”
Er. You’d have to define what you mean by “smoothed”. I like 5 year moving averages myself. But a five year moving average for 2002 to 2008 gets you all of 2 points (2004 and 2005), and the 2nd point is warmer than the first point because 2007 is warmer than 2002. (the 5 year average around 2005 is significantly warmer than the 5 year average around 2002, if you care).
Or are you talking about just sticking 3 month averages from GISS into STATA and doing a linear regression? Well, then, fine, the “best fit” for the 3 month quarters between 2002 and present is temperature = quarter*-0.15 + constant, so yes, negative, but a 95% bound of -0.75 to plus 0.45, so it is pretty clear that that tells us nothing. (95% bounds on regressing monthly temperature vs. time are not significant either).
So, regardless of the fact that EVEN IF there was an actually significant trend from 2002 to 2008 it would be meaningless because of how we understand the climate system, at least according to GISS there is NO statistically significant trend during that time period. Satisfied?
1 August 2008 at 11:06
Rod, don’t shout. Read.
1 August 2008 at 11:24
Re: 254, Rod B. You are asking a statistical question, and statistical questions do not ever under any circumstances have yes or no answers. If I flip a coin 100 times and it comes up heads 100 times and then I am asked is this an honest coin, I go not give a yes or no question. I give a probability and a confidence level or best guess and error. I’m telling you that I don’t lie with statistics. You are asking me to tell you what the liar’s statistical answer is. See the problem?
1 August 2008 at 11:29
Viscount C. M of B: “Al Gore took care to ensure that Hansen’s testimony to Congress in the hot summer of 1988 was staged
on a particularly hot day, for maximum political effect.”
John Mason:”I’d love to know how he does that in advance. When I arrange field trips for people, I spend three months praying for sunshine and it usually tips it down!”
Why, of course, he used the UN death ray they’ve been using to warm up the planet and enslave us under one-world government and socialized medicine and stuff. Not only can it vaporize opponents from a typical UN black helicopter, it is the real cause of global warming! And I hear it makes real good barbecue, too!
1 August 2008 at 12:43
A brief conversation yesterday gave rise to a thought about “skepticism”.
The science of climate change is rare among fields of scientific inquiry in having an organized opposition of self-described “skeptics” who are quite devoted to challenging it at every level, with some going so far as to question whether it is even science at all, as opposed to guesswork, a “religion” or some sort of ideological agenda. As I have often commented here, much of this organized opposition results from the deliberate campaign of deceit and disinformation by those who profit from the continued use of fossil fuels, whose desire to undermine public confidence in the conclusions and implications of climate science is readily understandable, if reprehensible. But not all of the vehement “skepticism” is driven by the profit motive. Why then are some “skeptics” who have no such ulterior motive so strongly committed to rejecting climate science?
While climate science is rare in having to contend with organized opposition, it is not unique. As most readers of this site will be aware, the science of biological evolution is also confronted by an organized opposition who claim to be “skeptics”, who work very hard to challenge evolution at every level from its foundations to its details.
And, as I was reminded yesterday, parapsychology is another field of scientific inquiry that has to deal with an organized opposition of so-called “skeptics” who vociferously argue that it is not legitimate science, and have gone so far as to campaign to revoke the affiliation of the Parapsychological Association with the AAAS. (Parapsychology is a particular interest of mine, so I have followed this “controversy” fairly closely for years.)
What I see in common here is a so-called “skepticism” that is, in reality, an a priori refusal to accept the conclusions of a particular field of inquiry, a refusal that can never be overcome by evidence or reason, for this reason: in each case, the results of scientific inquiry challenge the fundamental basis of someone’s world view, their deepest sense of what the world is and what they are within it.
If the phenomena studied by parapsychology are “real”, then the view that the world is entirely mechanistic and “physical” in nature is called into question, and to some people this is totally unacceptable. Therefore, the phenomena cannot be real no matter what the evidence may show.
[edit - no religion or ID discussion]
If human activities are warming the earth and altering the climate, biosphere and hydrosphere in ways that threaten the viability of human civilization and perhaps the viability of the rich, diverse Holocene biosphere, then the continuation of “life as we know it” and as we have known it throughout human history is at grave risk, sooner rather than later — and to some people this very idea is totally unacceptable, because it threatens their world view that life will continue indefinitely much as it always has and that there is no way that ordinary human activities could alter this. Therefore, the theory of climate change must be wrong no matter what the evidence may show.
A priori refusal to accept evidence, and the implications of that evidence, because those implications threaten one’s world view is not “skepticism”. It is merely obstinate denial. It is understandable — no one likes having the rug pulled out from under their most basic sense of reality and their place in it. In the cases of evolution and parapsychology, such obstinate denial has little practical import. In the case of climate science, however, it is a very real danger to all of us.
1 August 2008 at 12:44
Ah - thanks Ray - you have saved me the (possibly impossible) task of asking the man himself!
Back to more serious stuff, as someone who works in science, and therefore accepts the way science works, and sadly the way nonscience works too, this sort of thing is so typical. Most folk (i.e. your proverbial Man On The Street)won’t understand the details of the “recalculations” presented in the RPS article. However, once the game is at least partially, if not wholly up, absurd comments like the one I quoted start to be found, and as a non-climatologist, but a geologist and keen amateur weather/climate type, even I can spot that! In fact I suspect over 50% of “Men On The Street” might!
Cheers - John
1 August 2008 at 13:30
Paul K., I appreciate your learned and patient response. But I think you’re still not getting my question. For Owen P., kevin, Marcus, et al, it turns out maybe there still could be some value (maybe not a lot, though…) continuing this a bit longer, so let me review the bidding.
I was initially just curious if, and only if, Monckton did the math calculations correctly. I said (200) that is all I was curious about, not whether his analysis was appropriate or about any thing else he said — which I termed goofy-looking in the post. This was all I wanted. I had no hidden agenda; just was curious, presuming his conclusions and words were “goofy”, if he could at least add and subtract (actually do linear regression math) correctly
The initial responses all addressed what I did not ask. I responded (217) with a thanks for their good information and that I recognized that, “such an [his] analysis likely has no relevance to any long-term temperature trend, or anything else, and might be entirely mathematically inappropriate“, but I was really just interested in the basic math operations. Still didn’t use the “scare” term “trend” [loved that scare thing
]
The following responses basically repeated the initial responses. Not important, but interesting, Ray was the first to use “trend” in this discourse. tamino also presented the two man scenario, the 1st being The Shack, to which I said a downward trend was mathematically accurate (tamino used the term “trend”). I later agreed to the correction and retracted that response on the basis that three is probably the minimum data set with any mathematical validity. (Though tidal later agreed with me, as did Martin though with the clear caveat that I was not using an accepted use of “trend”.) I suggested (230) that the number of data points of temperature between 2000 and 2008 ought to be mathematically sufficient. I again reiterated that I was not asking about appropriateness or Monckton’s assessment, which I admitted (again) looked wrong, sounded misleading, and [he] was acting like a dork.
I then did my own eyeball analysis of Monckton’s graph and some graphs I have archived and asserted (237) that I thought it obvious the “”trend”" (first time I used the term on my own, and it was in quotes — scarry to some) from 2001-2008 was down. I also observed that 1999-2008 was not down, etc.
Etc., etc., etc. This continues with no deviation.
The insight is that you guys can not, seemingly mentally impossible to, look at a graph of global temps which unquestionably and unequivocally shows the “smoothed out global temperature measurements decreasing” between 2002 and 2008 and admit to it. (Smoothed out meaning linear regression, averages, end-to-end line, whatever.) I would guess because you fear I would take that answer out of context and try to beat you up over it like Monckton is trying to do — despite my incessant discounting and refutation of anything Monckton had to say on this topic. This, friends, while maybe not terribly important, is, interestingly and possibly sadly, nothing short of defensive religion. Sadly because it, frankly, diminishes credibility.
I must go duck now.
(anticlimactic) ps. yes, Ray, but if I asked you “did heads come up more the 50 times?”, the answer is yes, pure and simple.
1 August 2008 at 13:46
Rod asks, “Does the smoothed out global temperature measurements decrease between (1Q)2002 and (2Q)2008? The answer is a simple YES or NO, and does not imply anything else.”
For a brief six years — who knows? But if you had read tamino’s post you would know that the answer is NO for 1998 to 2008:
So the oft-repeated “cooling since 1998″ claim is flatly wrong. Why would you have greater confidence in an analysis with 40% fewer samples?
1 August 2008 at 13:58
I’d like to offer agreement with Secular Animist’s analysis.
My impression is that we (in the cultures I’m familiar with, USA, UK, Europe) build up a worldview during childhood and adolescence which is not really consciously perceived. It’s just the taken-for-granted backdrop to our ‘reality’.
I think that the contemporary Western worldview is built from a number of strands which are mingled together. Close inspection would reveal incompatibilities, but few people are that self-aware. Some examples might be, from the Christian tradition, the idea in Genesis that humans have a ‘God-given’ right to dominate the Earth and all it’s creatures. Another would be from materialist science of the Enlightenment, that the ‘world’ is mechanistic, all just inert physical ’stuff’ to be manipulated as we please. Another would be from free-market capitalism and economic models of infinite expansion. Another might be the American doctrine of ‘Manifest Destiny’…and so on and on. These cultural constructs are illustrated on a daily basis in ordinary conversations, and in the media, as sub-textual assumptions which are so broadly distributed that, largely, they pass unquestioned, and anyone who challenges them is assigned a label to neutralise the challenge, perhaps politely, as ‘eccentric’ or ‘maverick’ (James Lovelock ?) or more nastily, as crank, crackpot, extremist, lunatic, etc.
My conclusion, having pondered these matters, as a philosophical quest, is that the reality is, that nobody knows why we exist, or why anything exists. Faced with that rather awesome and terrifying ‘void’, we tell ourselves stories to try and make our situation tolerable.
However, not all stories are equal. Science (and also the Law) are distinctly different from all other categories of story, insofar as empirical evidence is required to support the propositions. So, IMHO, science is superior in that respect.
But there’s a down side. We are social animals. We *need* gossip, myth, poetry, fantasy, music, play, etc, for our well-being. Science doesn’t provide much sustenance (although those deeply absorbed in science might disagree)for the soul, for the spirit, partly because science (like economics) can’t accept any dimension that cannot be measured.
For many millions of humans, the ’stuff that can’t be measured’ is vitally important to their daily lives. Their Faith is a core belief. (Hence,e.g. the statements that God wouldn’t allow the planet to heat up, because He gave us the coal and oil, etc.
On the other side, there are the futurist optimistic technophiles, who fantasize about colonising the Universe, starting with Mars…when we can’t even take care of the beautiful world that produced us.
I do think that the psychological mechanisms involved are comparable to denial by alcoholics. People get angry and upset, if they are told they have to change. Changing your fundamental picture of what the world is like, and your expectations, is stressful.
There are many more examples that spring to mind, but this is already too long.
1 August 2008 at 14:02
> guys can not, seemingly mentally impossible to, look at a graph of
> global temps which unquestionably and unequivocally shows …
No one who’s taken and passed Statistics 101 can do this, Rod.
If you take and pass the class, you won’t see the illusion either.
It’s one of those things you see until you understand it’s not there.
Boo!
1 August 2008 at 14:07
Monckton called it a *trend*, and describes the piece in which he wrote it “a major scientific paper in a peer-reviewed journal”.
So, by the standards he’s holding himself to, he did not do the math correctly because he claims significance but made no effort to show significance, undoubtably because it’s not significant (and therefore NOT A TREND).
That’s what, the 20th time you’ve been told this?
1 August 2008 at 14:13
re: 267. “nothing short of defensive religion.”
There you go again. When pushed into a corner several times before on details, you’ve come back with the grossly insulting “religion” line. Peer-reviewed science does not work that way. It is clear that even after all this time you still have not learned what peer-review and the scientific method are all about. Perhaps you should not duck so much.
1 August 2008 at 14:50
RodB
It looks like you got what you wanted…evidence
“that you guys can not, seemingly mentally impossible to, look at a graph of global temps which unquestionably and unequivocally shows the “smoothed out global temperature measurements decreasing” between 2002 and 2008 and admit to it.”
But I think you’re neglecting some important stuff that people have said along the way. As Hank pointed out, if you’re just basically asking if integer A is bigger than integer B, what’s the point? You can damn well see for yourself whether integer A is bigger than integer B, so you appear to be playing a game–and people here resist playing into it. That really should not come as a surprise.
If your intended question concerned anything more mathematically involved than a greater than/less than comparison, then it’s not clear that there even IS a yes or no answer–for example, what do you mean by “smoothed out,” as marcus asked? But you won’t accept the nuanced answers, saying “no really, I’m just trying to get you to say ‘decreasing temperature.’ Seriously, we all agree it won’t mean anything, but just say it. C’mon, say it. Whaddaya, some kinda religious nut or something?”
So what are you, reliving the sixth grade? “HAHA, MADE YOU SAY IT!!”
Please stop it. It’s trollish.
PS when I wrote about someone copying and pasting and using people’s answers to nefarious purposes, I wasn’t saying that YOU would be the one to do it…but can you see that SOMEONE very easily might?
1 August 2008 at 14:51
Re Dan @272: “There you go again. When pushed into a corner several times before on details, you’ve come back with the grossly insulting “religion” line.”
Yes, and it is always the last line of defense of those who do not have a real argument.
Come on Rod, we know you are smarter than that.
We also know that you are capable of admitting it when you are shown to be wrong.
1 August 2008 at 16:36
Rod B., Get serious. This is not some silly number game like Soduku. This is statistics, and there are only 2 reasons to do statistics–to bring out the truth or to lie. What you asked was whether the Viscount was correct in his analysis. It was Monckton who used the word trend, and you have been shown unequivocally that Monckton’s analysis is not just wrong, but laughably so. You did not ask “Is 2008 cooler than 2007 on average.” That can be answered in the affirmative. You asked about an analysis, and that depends not just on the value of the answer, but on the validity of of how you got your answer. You asked your question. You got the same answer from everybody you asked. Now either accept the answer or come up with a meaningful argument of why it is valid to cherrypick two dates, calculate a slope, report the value with no error bars and draw a conclusion based on that travesty of an analysis.
2 August 2008 at 0:04
Rod, assuming your not trolling here and are really sincere–although that is becoming a harder notion to maintain–you need to understand that the answer to your question would have no validity. Validity in science is a VERY BIG DEAL, and you need to know that what you are asking for (a meaningful trend between 2002 and 2008, a mere six years) would have no validity (especially in the context of climate science)–it would be a meaningless–as Ray and others have been endlessly patient in trying to explain to you.
As Ray just pointed out to you, you need to: “come up with a meaningful argument of why it is valid to cherrypick two dates, calculate a slope, report the value with no error bars and draw a conclusion based on that travesty of an analysis.”
What Ray and others (and consider the expertise here; tamino, for example is a professional statistician, and others are scientists with Ph.D.s) have been trying to tell you is you can’t come up with such a valid argument–and an introductory statistics course will make this abundantly clear to you.
You write: “This, friends, while maybe not terribly important, is, interestingly and possibly sadly, nothing short of defensive religion. Sadly because it, frankly, diminishes credibility.”
Au contraire! Had they given you an answer either way, that answer would have decreased their credibility. That is because a yes or no answer would be wrong: those data can’t be used to give you a meaningful and credible answer! This is something that you and Monckton don’t seem to understand. Bottom line: what Monckton reported about a trend from 2002 to 2008 is meaningless because it has no statistical validity. If you’re still unclear about this, read Ray’s explanation again. And read and re-read tamino’s “garbage is forever” posting on his blog.
2 August 2008 at 4:44
For those who are interested, I did a lengthy analysis of Monckton’s 2000-2008 graph here. So far, I haven’t gotten around to answering all the replies there (some of which are quite hostile). Feel free to answer them if you have the time…
2 August 2008 at 6:34
SecularAnimist writes:
Except that the evidence doesn’t show anything. Whenever a parapsychology experiment seems to produce significant results, tightening the controls eliminates the effect. When parapsychologists learn to run an experiment that doesn’t allow systematic errors, scientists will start listening to them. Until then, they won’t.
[edit - no religion]
2 August 2008 at 6:39
CL writes:
Except that that isn’t what the Christian tradition actually says. What it says is that “the Earth is the LORD’s, and the fullness thereof” (Psalm 24:1). Genesis describes Adam and Eve’s task in the Garden of Eden as being to steward it on God’s behalf. The meme that the Bible somehow says to exploit the Earth is not backed up by actually reading the Bible.
[Response: enough - please drop religious discussion here. ]
2 August 2008 at 8:39
In re @ 265:
Whoa! Hold the phone!
There’s a lot more to the IPCC papers, and the arguments advanced here, than the pure science.
The science can tell you things like watts per meter squared, degrees per doubling, and so forth. It cannot tell you how people are going to respond to climbing oil prices or other forms of energy. And yet, the IPCC has charts that people reference with projections, and some of those projections are absurd. Chinese’s increased use of fossil fuels has come with a pretty hefty price, and while they aren’t showing too many signs of changing their path of self-destruction, at some point being self-destructive is self-correcting.
So, I think there is a lot of room for skepticism, provided one understands and can support their arguments.
(ReCaptcha sez: rental Hanna. With or without the wigs?)
2 August 2008 at 10:06
Re: #277 (Jurgen Hubert)
I already knew Monckton’s argument was invalid, but I had no idea how much he’d manipulated — especially his “extreme cherry-picking” (and he does go to the extreme!) — to misinform.
Thanks for the link to an excellent expose’.
2 August 2008 at 10:24
reading back through the comments, it’s amazing how much energy is wasted over divisive issues that cannot be advanced by internet debate. to continue in this waste of energy is both a tactical and strategic error on our part, and is a failure of our leadership.
scientists and journalists and most ordinary people have (at least at rock bottom) one common interest that threatens the wealthy elite that dominate this planet. our common interest is in the telling of that thin slice of truth that is objectively observable, and telling the truth threatens all who attain power through coercion and deception. the mantra of that elite has been “divide and conquer” since practically the beginning of time, and the elite have worked (consciously and unconsciously…..cf. Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States) to set everyone –nations, tribes and ordinary individuals– against each other. the energy we waste in petty conflict with each other is only a fraction of the energy we need to tap in order to hold our own against those who commit every last unit of their energy to the acquisition of property and power.
perhaps it would be productive for us to reprioritize some of the energy we’ve been dedicating to ongoing defense of our individual core values to the task of organizing a defense of one (the only?) little interest we all have in common: maintaining the continuing habitability of the earth.
2 August 2008 at 11:23
Re parapsychology, I’ve been following this for some time:
2 August 2008 at 11:43
# 277, Tamino
and still so much more to see.
2 August 2008 at 12:08
tamino, I followed a link in this comment on jhubert’s blog post that may have been the source for Monckton’s cherry picking:
To Tell the Truth: Will the Real Global Average Temperature Trend Please Rise? Part 2
The author uses the “Chow test”:
2 August 2008 at 12:49
I should have used religious, as in religion-like, not religion. “Religion” connotes an all-encompasing institution that dominates the thinking, and that’s not what I meant or mean. What I do mean, validated by most of the recent repetitive response posts, is this. Looking at a simple object, process, idea and insisting with no reservations or arriere pensee that it does not exist, despite it being plainly visible and obvious, is irrational and usually stems from the fear (valid or not) that admitting such would create a crack, no matter how miniscule, in strongly held beliefs. This is religious, not scientific.
“Is this wagon red?”
“In what context do you mean?”
“In the context of, is this wagon red?”
“You have to look at the handle and wheels.”
“Just the body; is it red?”
“What’s it being used for?”
“Is it red?”
“It’s a stupid question; why do you ask?”
“Want to know if the painter knew what he was doing. Is it red?”
“If I don’t have others to compare, it’s statistically meaningless.”
“Is it red?”
“blah, blah, blah…….”
That’s characteristic of a liturgy, not a scientific method (nor a “religion”).
Here’s the problem, which I mean as a helpful criticism along with the straight criticism. (Which, to validate, I have done much of here: as a skeptic none-the-less offering helpful suggestions (not on the science, but) how AGWers can best present or argue their case for effect.) Man #2 now goes to a bystander who observed the above and says, “Let me explain the truth and facts of AGW.” The bystander replies — (fill in the blank with whatever repulsive phrase you like). Note that I don’t suffer the same negativism. I have been around all of you long enough that I can get past these periodic religious infirmities because, by experience, I know you have real science in your mind, and I’m able to separate the stuff and benefit from it. But to expect a newbie to accept anything you have to say (given the above kind of scenario) is futile.
A few specific responses:
Jim G., so 2002-2008 is completely bogus but 1998-2008 is perfectly good. Valid to invalid seems to have a really steep almost step function. If you start with 1998 (depending on when in 1998) the temperature direction is down. I think you really meant if you start looking at 1998 in a chart that started in 1975….. Not the same thing.
dhogaza, Ray, et al, et al: for the umpteenth time I did not ask about (nor do I agree with) Monckton’s analysis. Most of you imply that I did (Ray asserts it directly), yet you will find no evidence of that. I know it’s what you all wished that I had asked, but as the man says, wish in one hand, crap in the other and see what fills up first.
kevin, I have been properly chastised for eyeballing graphs, so I wanted only to simply ask if Monckton seemed to know how to calculate a least squares (or similar) linear regression.
Let me pose a question. You are all taking the GRE and one question asks, “there are 60 data points for something happening between 1995 and 2000; calculate and graph a least squares linear regression.” Would you all, I would guess, just write on the answer sheet, “Meaningless.”? Would you expect or get full credit?
Dan, what on earth does this discourse have to do with “peer-reviewed science”? Your wrath is making you flail.
Jim says, “[religion] is always the last line of defense of those who do not have a real argument.” Are you referring to me or you all??
And then, out of the blue comes Jürgen Hubert (277), seemingly properly credentialed, with a direct, no fuss no muss answer to my question! Boggles the mind! His answer basically said the temperature between 2002 and 2008, as calculated with linear regression, has been decreasing. His downward rate was different from Monckton’s and casts a question on (probably) Monckton’s calculation ability. He then proceeds to destroy Monckton’s analysis and logic. Check it out. See how easy it is!
2 August 2008 at 13:05
SecularAnimist (265), Like Furry, I think you took your logic beyond reasonable and made some assertions that were a bit too complete and inflexible. Short of that, I thought the post was erudite, informative, and offered some worthwhile stuff to consider.
2 August 2008 at 13:13
Rod, you get it backwards. Again.
You claim:
“His answer basically said the temperature … has been decreasing.”
This is what you’re paraphrasing:
—–excerpt follows——-
“The linear fit produced a warming of 0.0349044 °C for the entire decade”
_______________end excerpt____________________
2 August 2008 at 13:40
First Rod B:
Last Rod B:
I do believe I get to call “bullshit” at this point.
Gee, I wonder why …
Sort of like the missing empirical evidence that supports the AGW hyptothesis, I imagine …
I report, you decide …
2 August 2008 at 13:56
In other words, Monckton was flat out wrong, because he claimed 2001 to 2008 …
That’s even worse than an algebraic sign error, I do believe …
2 August 2008 at 14:38
Rod B., I’m going to try one last time, and then if you want to continue to make a fool of yourself, you are welcome to do so without my assistance.
First, you did not ask about an intrinsic property (e.g. red color) of a physical object. You asked if an analysis was correct. It was an analysis involving a physical quantity–slope of a temperature trend. An analysis to be correct must have not just a numerical value, but errors on that numerical value and some way of interpreting both. Without that, it is not correct–regardless of whether the arithmetic is done correctly.
I am sorry if you interpret this as religious fervor. In reality, there is no more emotion in this than I would have in grading the test of a student. If it’s wrong, I’ll tell you about it. You can fix it, or you can get it wrong on the final, too. Your choice.
2 August 2008 at 14:56
Barton Paul Levenson wrote: “Whenever a parapsychology experiment seems to produce significant results, tightening the controls eliminates the effect.”
An extended discussion of parapsychology would be wildly off-topic and inappropriate for this forum, but if the moderator will indulge I would like to respond in order to elaborate on my point about skepticism.
With all due respect, Mr. Levenson’s statement is simply incorrect. An open-minded examination of modern day parapsychological research will find that it is conducted according to the highest standards that apply to any field of scientific inquiry, and has obtained robust, replicable results that demonstrate the existence of certain types of psi phenomena.
Jessica Utts, who is professor of statistics at the University of Californa, chair of the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies, and a member of the board of directors of the Parapsychological Association (an affiliate of the AAAS) wrote in a 1995 review of US government-sponsored parapsychology research:
Now, clearly parapsychology and climate science differ in their subject matter; moreover climate science is widely known and understood by a large community of scientists whereas parapsychology is a relatively small and obscure field of research. The conclusions of climate science with regard to the “reality” of anthropogenic warming are widely known and almost universally accepted by scientists both within and outside the field; the conclusions of parapsychology about the “reality” of psi phenomena are little known and not widely accepted by scientists outside the field. And the conclusions of parapsychology, while they suggest tantalizing new horizons for scientific exploration and our understanding of the world, do not bear urgently upon the survival of human civilization and the well-being of the Earth’s biosphere as do those of climate science.
And yet, it is not hard for me to find in the contrast between Mr. Levenson’s view and that of Professor Utts, a parallel with a certain sort of conversation that has occurred numerous times on this site:
It is easy to judge harshly — as I often do — those obstinate climate change deniers, who misname themselves “skeptics”, who approach the subject with an a priori certainty that anthropogenic global warming is not, and cannot be, must not be, real, who seem driven by a refusal to accept something that profoundly challenges their sense of the world, who thus reject science that they have not studied, and will not study and will never accept no matter what, because they already know that it must be wrong, and the work of frauds or incompetents or ideologically-motivated environmental radicals or Al Gore or whatever.
And yet, I would not be surprised if the majority of the scientists and science-minded laypersons who participate in this site, would react to the mention of parapsychology much as Mr. Levenson has with his quite incorrect characterization of the state of that science — with an a priori rejection of the reality of phenomena that challenge their world view, an inclination to reject the results of decades of scientific research with which they are actually unfamiliar, and a suspicion that the whole subject is the work of frauds or incompetents or “spiritualists” or Uri Geller or the “X-Files” or whatever. If this is your reaction, you might ask yourself honestly whether you would be easily able to undertake a dispassionate, impartial, open-minded examination of the subject.
I think it behooves all of us when we engage with obstinate climate change deniers, to recognize that all of us are capable of “denial” to some degree, when our most basic sense of the world and our place in it is challenged, and to extend compassion to those who may be so disturbed by what climate science has to tell us, that they have great difficulty in approaching the subject with an open mind.
2 August 2008 at 15:00
Hank (288), you’ve taken this otherwise contentious (not to mention getting boring) topic beyond the pale. I’m really losing my patience treating these responses with the seriousness they’re fast not deserving. Calling it as I see it, you are both wrong and stupid. Stupid because you deliberately misread the site page, hoping no one would notice, when the shenanigans are as clear as a 100-foot billboard. You didn’t think anyone beyond a 3rd grade education would notice??? For the record the very first upfront and prominent commented result of Jürgen’s analysis is, and I quote,
Your quote was a couple of pages and graphs down. If you have trouble seeing the above negative numbers or reading the graphs, go ask tamino or someone for help. I can’t do it.
Jürgen then went into debunking Monckton’s thing, which I have never questioned.
Sorry for the flame. Maybe I’m losing it.
dhogaza (289), you try to refute my contention that I was not asking about “analysis”, just mathematical calculations, with the quote from my very first (and what I thought was pretty simple) post on this subject (#200), “Adam (190), et al, is Monckton incorrect in his temperature analysis?”
Boy! Sounds bad. Wonder why you tried to slide the whole post under the rug. It was:
You’re resting your religious tenants on a general use of one common word, which was immediately explained? Pretty chancy!
I’m done.
2 August 2008 at 16:46
ps. that of course should have been tenets, not tenants. I care not who pays you rent
2 August 2008 at 17:35
Rod B (203 . . . “I’m done.”
One can only hope.
2 August 2008 at 17:41
Re: #186 ad homs
Gavin, I think you left out “rigorous arithmetic.”
(Captcha fortune cookie: announce analyzed)
2 August 2008 at 18:19
New question: can a solitary person posting on a blog have a temperature, or is a temperature only possible with interactions?
2 August 2008 at 19:34
> #276 Rod, assuming your not trolling here and are really sincere–although that is becoming a harder notion to maintain–you need to understand that the answer to your question would have no validity. Validity in science is a VERY BIG DEAL, and you need to know that what you are asking for (a meaningful trend between 2002 and 2008, a mere six years) would have no validity (especially in the context of climate science)–it would be a meaningless–as Ray and others have been endlessly patient in trying to explain to you.
This is so funny. 6 or 8 or 11 years is all totally insignificant but when Hansen went to congress in 1988 he had only 9 years of data to support his theory of AGW. He got a lucky move in 1998 when the El Nino came along making his scenarios actually look plausible. So, we’ve gotten 20 years of rising temperatures (preceeded by 30+ years of falling temperatures which was preceeded by 30 years of rising temperatures apparently caused by something else again.) We are down to 0.15 degrees / decade or 1.5K / century sensitivity for the last 30 years. For the temperature to get to Gavin and Hansens 3.0K / century (or doubling of CO2 I should say) we would have to have 0.4-0.6K/decade for the rest of this century.
[Response: Try doing that with actual arithmetic (clue - it’s 0.32K/dec) - gavin]
That is unprecedented and it would mean the NAO/AMO, PDO phenomenon would magically just disappear, that we would have no more unexplained pauses in temperature for the next 90 years as temperatures soared unlike ever before in recorded history.
[Response: There’s no reason to think natural variability disappears - but yes, such a temperature change would clearly be unprecedented. Possibly that’s why people want to avoid it? - gavin]
Excuse me if I don’t BELIEVE but need more than models which are unbelievable and which have failed every effort to validate them.
I want to make clear that the models are completely unproven and thus Monckton is perfectly right in questioning their results. The models have zero validity against past data because they were FITTED to that data. [edit]
[Response: No they are not. If they were, they’d do a better job. Show me anywhere in (for instance) Schmidt et al (2006) and Hansen et al (2007) which describe the GISS modelE development and simulations where there is a piece of physics that is tuned to the changes in the 20th Century. Or the mid-Holocene, or the 8.2 kyr event, etc. - gavin]
Monckton is simply pointing out that the best that can be concluded from the data is that feedbacks are probably mostly negative, not positive.
[Response: This is neither what Monckton is doing, nor is it true. - gavin]
This seems confirmed by the fact that so many pieces of data are not conforming to the models. I.e.
1) lack of warming in the antarctic
2) lack of ocean warming
3) lack of tropospheric warming
4) increased rain beyond model predictions
5) lack of land temperature increases for 10 years
6) ozone depletion not predicted
[Response: Ah, and your analysis of the the models on short time periods demonstrating this can be found in which publication? And how is ozone depletion relevent? This was predicted ahead of time, but ended up being much worse than expected in Antarctica - how does this help your case? - gavin]
The models also fail to model NAO and PDO phenomenon. They fail to predict as shown in a recent hydrology paper.
So, the confidence in these models is very suspect. The feedback components are clearly in question as the chief of the IPCC AR4 has indicated he no longer believes cloud cover is related to temperatures as was modeled. He now speculates the connection between cloud cover and temperature is either non-existant or inverse. If the connection is broken then Moncktons analysis is exactly right.
I want to re-iterate. Trying to defend these models of climate is a pointless exercise not worthy of any scientist. They clearly must be riddled with errors. It would be shocking if they weren’t so it is not surprising at all that 2 peer-reviewed studies published in the last 7 months have shown the models fail miserably at predicting short term or longer term temperatures.
There is no basis to say science has proved anything more than a 0.6C/doubling of CO2 temperature sensitivity to CO2 forcing. This is why the APS did not bring a paper that even tried to scientifically justify the 0.6C figure let alone 2 or 3 degrees. It’s impossible to justify anything more than 0.6C through physics, Watts/cm2. That’s why they couldn’t produce such a paper. As Smith admitted the lack of such justification in essence is more of an attack on the significant AGW hypothesis than Moncktons paper!!!
[Response: Monckton’s paper is not significant in the slightest. But we have all of paleo-climate history to demonstrate that the climate is sensitivity to perturbations - gavin]
[edit]
The argument by Smith to justify a 2C/doubling of CO2 using a curve fitting algorithm is just as bogus as any analysis I’ve seen. Reducing the complexity of climate to CO2 alone and ascribing all heating since 1750 to CO2 is more absurd than any other asssumption one could come up with. It is just as likely that walnut production worldwide is related to temperature in the same way and may be more efficient and predictive than a 2C/doubling curve fitting. The Vostok data alone would invalidate such an analysis on the face of it. With Smiths assumoption the planet should all have burned up 300 million years ago.
The fact is that there is no scientific way to justify >0.6C / doubling of CO2 and therefore all this argumentation is pointless. If there was such a defense of the Hansen/IPCC theory of large feedbacks then APS could have found an author who could scientifically defend that hypothesis [edit]
[Response: The FPS (not the APS) could have certainly found such people - or they could have just read the IPCC report. I recommend you do too. - gavin]
2 August 2008 at 20:53
This is giving me such a deja vu, taking me back almost 30 to the time my brand new colleagues at Elsevier Science Publishers handed me the newly arrived issue of the Journal of Irreproducible Results for my perusal.
2 August 2008 at 20:57
I’m sorry, I forgot to mention that this odd experience has included a trip to SPPI’s site, which is something out of the Twilight Zone.
2 August 2008 at 22:59
Hank (297), that is good!
2 August 2008 at 23:11
This is a simple yes/no question: has Rod B. posted more than 20 responses trying to beat to death a question the answer to which is meaningless?
Bonus question (also yes/no): has he managed to waste an inordinate amount of time of people who have a lot to contribute on the actual topic of this web site, climate change?
PLEASE do not give a reason why this question is or is not relevant. I just want a simple yes or no!
2 August 2008 at 23:52
SecularAnimist wrote in 292:
I certainly think so. However, a demonstration would be handsomely rewarded here:
One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge
James Randi Educational Foundation
http://www.randi.org/joom/challenge-info.html
3 August 2008 at 0:10
I just did what I do whenever there’s a good opportunity — watching Alpha / Zarya / the ISS cross my nighttime sky.
http://www.n2yo.com/ pick your location, check ‘5 day prediction’
Can’t miss recognizing the Station, if you can see even the brightest few stars behind the skyglow. Any pass showing a local magnitude near 0 or negative — basically any more than 20 or 25 degrees above your local horizon — will be unmistakable.
Don’t miss seeing it. It’s the only one we’ve got.
3 August 2008 at 3:51
Rob B.’s question about recent temperature trends is a valid one. I realize that some here are apprehensive about his motives - understandable, given how many “skeptics” bend and misquote the facts - but if we are to retain the scientific high ground here, we must look at the facts themselves and build our argument on them. How else can we convince others that we are right (well, through propaganda, but I prefer not to go down that road…)?
According to the data I crunched, there has been a downward trend in recent years. We must acknowledge that before we present our larger arguments - that this isn’t sufficient to represent a reversal of the trend - because climate skeptics are using that to present the whole theories surrounding global warming as wrong. I’ve seen it numerous times on their website, and those who buy into their propaganda frequently link to them. This is the “hottest” issue among global warming skeptics right now (if you forgive the pun).
I would like to see a post by RealClimate on the recent short-term cooling, and its significance on Global Warming (or rather, it’s lack of it), since that would allow me to have something I could link to in return.
[Response: We’ve addressed this previously here and here. - mike]
3 August 2008 at 5:06
#302 John Hollenberg:
Yes.
No. [Hint: waste != expend. Many, many readers honestly don’t “get” statistical significance. But I would agree that the explanations could have been tailored for those readers, rather than for the intentionally dense original questioner. Heck, now I answered more than 1/0 — no apology forthcoming
]
3 August 2008 at 5:39
SecularAnimist #292, very true, very observant, and very necessary — in spite of being nominally OT.
Thank you, and thanks to the moderators!
Timothy (#303): it all depends on the rules, doesn’t it?
3 August 2008 at 7:29
John Mathon, With your post, I believe we have very nearly completed the map of the Denialist Memome. In your single, we have one-stop shopping for ignorant denialist talking points
1)the warming is insignificant and short-term (wrong–it is part of a trend thatgoes back to the onset of the industrial age)
2)It has stopped warming (wrong)
3)models are unreliable and tuned (wrong–why don’t you learn the difference between a statistical and a dynamical model)
4)It’s all natural
5)CO2 is only a minor greenhouse gas
6)all the feedbacks are negative
If you’d only thrown in cosmic rays, and the meme about CO2 and a warmer world being good for us, you’d have exhausted them all. I suggest that you contact the denialist mother ship for information on these.
3 August 2008 at 8:04
But Juergen (305), you use the term “trend” contrary to the usage by the rest of the scientific community… surely a fruitful debate requires use of accepted terminology? Please use “regression coefficient” or whatever. It doesn’t become a trend until it reaches significance.
3 August 2008 at 8:21
Let them dig that hole as deep as they want (but as martin say, please don’t misuse the word “trend”).
Because when the next El Niño hits, this whole line of argument’s going to bite them in the ass, and there’s been so much posted so widely over the “significance” of short-term variation that they’ll never be able to disown it.
3 August 2008 at 8:45
Johann Hari of The Independent (U.K.), who spent a month travelling on the delta of Bangladesh, wrote an extensive, poignant and very graphic article on the effects of the sea level rise that has already occurred there:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/bangladesh-is-set-to-disappear-under-the-waves-by-the-end-of-the-century–a-special-report-by-johann-hari-850938.html
3 August 2008 at 10:09
Re: #309
OK, “regression coefficient” - sorry about that. English is not my native language, and while I do work in a scientific field, I don’t use all that much statistics in it and so wasn’t sure of the precise word.
But this raises another important point: How to explain scientific jargon to laypeople. I understand why my use of “trend” in that instance was wrong, but how can you explain that to someone without scientific training? To give another example, I still wince when I remember the numerous times I read someone posting on other forums: “Evolution hasn’t been proved, it’s just a theory.” Having to explain what a “theory” means in the sciences over and over again is extremely frustrating - and that’s part of the dilemma.
Kurt Vonnegut once wrote: “Any scientist who can’t explain to an eight-year-old what he is doing is a charlatan.” While our target audience is not eight-year-olds, the average member of the public still only has a limited amount of attention to spare. And if we need to explain the jargon before we start explaining the facts while the “skeptics” can immediately start their easily digestible propaganda, we will have already lost.
3 August 2008 at 11:49
> OK, “regression coefficient” … “trend” in that instance was wrong,
This is where editing the thread is about the only answer. It’d mean getting you, and Rod, both to agree where to go back and strike out one word, insert the other in square brackets, and add a footnote marker to the explanation.
I think if the two of you could, it would show where early on in the exchange the misunderstanding occurred and why it lasted til now.
3 August 2008 at 12:32
SecularAnimist writes:
I can, but you apparently can’t. Your whole approach has been one big ad hominem argument — scientists reject ESP because it threatens their worldview. You know what? That’s especially untrue for me, because I happen to believe in ESP! I’ve had psychic experiences myself.
What I do NOT have is reproducible evidence that such experiences exist. Nor do you. Nor does Jessica Utts. All the statements that ESP has been “scientifically proved” comes from ESP researchers with an axe to grind. Any other scientist examining the field seems to disagree. There was a reason the parapsychologists got kicked out of the AAAS, and it wasn’t closed-mindedness on the part of the other scientists.
I haven’t mischaracterized the state of the science at all. You have. There simply isn’t any good evidence of ESP. There are tons of anecdotal evidence and lots of experiments with crummy controls, like Rhine’s stuff from the ’30s that so impressed Robert Heinlein and others. And as I said, every time controls are tightened, the effect disappears.
3 August 2008 at 13:18
Martin Vermeer wrote in 306:
Let’s see…
From the James (and truly “Amazing”) Randi challenge for demonstrating the existence of psychic ability:
From the Junk Science challenge for demonstrating the existence global warming:
Yes, I believe it does.
The challenge given by the James Randi Educational Foundation is one of objectivity and testability, whereas the Junk Science challenge is involking rules defined by means of concepts and terms which are self-admittedly “inherently and necessarily vague, and involve subjective judgment” and where Junk Science “reserves the exclusive right to determine the meaning and application of such concepts and terms.”
*
SecularAnimist appealed to the authority of statician Jessica Utts who argued for the existence of small to medium remote viewing ability during the Stargate Project funded by the CIA and DIA. Her findings were opposed by fellow evaluator Dr. Ray Hyman. Funding for the project was discontinued after both findings were issued.
*
Our understanding of global warming is supported by a wealth of data. Climatology is roughly on par with evolutionary biology. Both are well-integrated with our scientific understanding of the world. No such claim can be made of psychic phenomena. Now if someone is ignorant of the science — your regular off-the-street Joe Blow — his dismissal of global warming may be roughly comparable to his dismissal of psychic phenomena, and may perhaps be partly reinforced by his politics — with some vague “us vs. them” view of the world that influences his take on some issues in science.
Likewise, for a while, prior to looking into the science, I had ideological reasons for dismissing global warming as an Objectivist, “despite” the fact that I hadn’t really looked into it. Objectivists “pride” themselves on their “objectivity,” but they tend to dismiss science which think incompatible with their philosophy (usually their a prioristically understood metaphysics), e.g., quantum mechanics, special relativity and general relativity. But I accepted all three — and had actually picked up and read textbooks on these subjects prior to becoming interested in Objectivism.
However, there are many Joe Blow Objectivists who don’t take the time to learn any of the science and they end up supporting to some extent psuedo-scientists who argue for some alternative to mainstream science in those areas. At this point we are talking about ideological blinders similar to what SecularAnimist was proposing.
*
But I would argue that in the give-and-take of internet debate where people are repeatedly exposed to a vast array of evidence, particularly in the the context of climatology and evolutionary biology, mere ignorance soon gives way to willful ignorance. We’ve seen the fallacies, the repetition of failed arguments, the willingness to buy into anything which might seem to support their views and the willingness to dismiss everything else.
We have seen that those who are active in the debate for a while become invested in the denial of the science. The creationists who actively debate and are invested in the denial of evolutionary biology, the denialists who deny the connection between AIDS and HIV, and even those who were active in denying the connection between secondhand smoking and its health effects. And there is also the overlap between these different categories. An individual who is inclined to deny well-established science in one area is often inclined to deny it in others.
For example, Phil(l)ip E. Johnson - an old earth creationist who fathered the intelligent design movement - is also an HIV causes AIDS denier who apparently entertains quasi-conspiratorial notions as to why mainstream medicine (”the medical establishment”) embraces the view that HIV causes AIDS. He has signed his name to a list that now includes over 11,000 signatories denying the well-established scientific link between HIV and AIDS.
Roy Spencer is an AGW denialist, but he is also a proponent of Philip E. Johnson’s intelligent design — and thus an evolutionary biology denialist. The Heartland Institute is a “secondhand smoke” denialist organization that later became AGW-denialist as well.
Such individuals give their allegiance to some value, tribe, authority or rebellion against an authority precedence over their adherence to reality. Once they have done this, they find it far easier to subvert their objectivity in other areas by placing evaluation before identification.
Now you may ask whether I am entirely closed to the possibility that some sort of psychic phenomena might exist. No, I am not. But currently I believe there is no scientific support for the phenomena. And if it existed, there would have to be a causal, scientific explanation for its existence, integrable with the rest of our scientific understanding. Science is a unity because reality is a unity. As I see things at present, it is not the belief in anthropogenic global warming which is equivalent to the belief in psychic phenomena, but the belief in an alternative to anthropogenic global warming which is equivalent to the belief in psychic phenomena, e.g., the sun is doing it — even though evidence and even the principles of physics points to the contrary.
3 August 2008 at 14:09
PS to my post 315 above
A quick aside regarding objectivity and psychic phenomena. I obviously do not believe in the existence of psychic phenomena. However, I believe that even given the current state of science, on the basis of one’s own personal experience, one could believe in the existence of psychic phenomena and still be objective.
Objectivity consists first and foremost of the relationship between the individual and reality where the individual chooses to place nothing above their adherence to reality, that is, the process of identification itself. The objectivity institutionalized by science is a derivative, social application of this.
Of course, if someone fingering the sun as culprit for late twentieth century warming chose to do so on the basis of their psychic ability, I don’t think they should expect anyone else to take their claims seriously.
3 August 2008 at 14:15
Could we take ESP elsewhere?
Save this site for climatology?
Thank you.
3 August 2008 at 14:25
Rod B, I’ve taken daily average temp from 2002 and another from 2008 and the 2008 temperature is about 8 degrees higher.
I will leave it to you to prove it wrong. Hint: find out which day I used in 2002.
Jurgen, #312: Well, how do you explain the atomic excitation of lasers to someone who doesn’t know even junior school physics?
Monkton isn’t a neophyte at statistics. RodB says he did the work so must not be ignorant of statistics. And your Kurt quote is irrelevant: we don’t HAVE 8 year olds to explain to: we have completely grown up adults. Telling kids what we do is REALLY simple:
1) We burn the oil
2) The oil when burned makes a blanket around the earth
3) The earth warms up
4) People will die or have to move
Telling people like RobB and Monkton is more difficult because they demand more detail. Detail an 8-year-old would not know how to ask.
In short, the GW arguments are very easy to explain to kids. The denialists arguments are all on elements far too complicated to explain to a kid.
Who do you think is the charlatan?
3 August 2008 at 14:32
David B. Benson wrote in 317:
Works for me…
3 August 2008 at 14:36
Who do you think is the charlatan?
Monckton, of course. As I have shown.
But that’s beside the point - I think the scientific jargon hinders us in the debate to some degree. After all, our goal is not to convince Monckton, who is likely beyond convincing. Our goal is to convince the public that Monckton is wrong - but to do this, we first have to explain all sorts of basic information about statistics in general. And how can we do that without either boring or overwhelming them with technical details - and thus losing them to the other side?
That’s what I am wondering about…
3 August 2008 at 15:59
Rod, want to be our test pilot for this effort? We’re sincere.
Both those who really understand statistics, and bystanders like me.
Aiming for interaction, not mere collision and rebound.
This likely isn’t the place. Someone will offer to host the effort.
3 August 2008 at 17:04
315. Surely science is not a unity. If one goes to the heart of current physics, for example, one finds that the basic orders implied in relativity theory 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 particles and fields. In essence, quantum mechanics implies the opposite. However, what they have in common is an unbroken wholeness. According to Bohm (in the Undivided Universe), for example, the principal difficulty in the attempt to make theoretical physics coherent is the mathematical notion of a point in space-time without extension or duration. This notion has reached its limits of usefulness and validity.
Given the inherent pathology at the heart of what some may regard as one of the more rigorous sciences, and the impasse currently being faced in taking that particular discipline forward, is it not premature to suggest a broader unity across science?
3 August 2008 at 21:10
“Captcha” wrote in 322:
What then is relativistic quantum mechanics?
“Captcha” wrote in 322:
As it was formulated as a semi-classical theory, yes, it required continuity and determinism. Relativistic quantum mechanics and relativistic quantum field theory do not. Quantum mechanics demonstrated the complementarity of particle and wave interpretations of both energy and matter, but this required bringing in a probablistic understanding of causality.
Now with regard to strict localism, quantum mechanics does not violate the causal relationship in which a cause must precede its effect. It does however appear to introduce non-local coherences that cannot be explained by means of a hidden variable theory — as suggested by Bell’s Theorem. But such coherences do not permit useful information to travel faster than the speed of light — as would be required for the creation of a grandfather paradox. They would simply demonstrate that a metaphysics based upon strict localism do not apply to our universe. Counterintuitive? Undoubtedly.
Please see:
*
With respect to the advanced theories of physics, e.g., general relativity and quantum mechanics, it is worthwhile keeping in mind that while they are certainly represent advances in our scientific knowledge, their ascendance does not mean the complete invalidation of the theories which came before them. The body of knowledge represented by newton’s gravitational theory is still knowledge, but as an approximation of general relativity which holds for smaller masses over larger distances. In fact, in the construction of general relativity (for example, Schwartzchild’s solution — the simplest solution to Einstein’s field equations), one must appeal to a correspondence principle in order to solve for one last constant. In this sense, the “replacement” of newton’s gravitational theory by general relativity did not mean that everything we once knew is no longer true, but only that it is an approximation which is applicable within certain domains but not in others. General relativity is an advance and involves the accumulation of more knowledge, not the invalidation of everything we claimed to know by means of newton’s gravitational theory. Moreover, similar principles of correspondence exist between quantum mechanics and classical mechanics and between special relativity and classical mechanics.
Scientific theories are a form of knowledge, but they are a form of corrigible knowledge — and science itself is a falliblistic, self-correcting endeavor — in which progress is real, and knowledge is cummulative despite the errors which may be made along the way.
So as not to repeat myself, I will refer you back to an earlier comment of mine here regarding the argument that scientific theories receive justification and are consequently a form of knowledge:
*
One of the points which is also worth keeping in mind at this point that properly there is a distinction which needs to be made between the form and the material of knowledge. For example, the language in which Newton’s gravitational theory was expressed was that of a flat space with absolute time - and gravitational forces. However, it is possible to express the theory in terms of a curved spacetime - in which the curvature exists only between the the dimensions of space and the dimension of time, but not between different dimensions of space where gravitational forces are no longer necessary. Similarly, I understand that general relativity may be expressed in terms of a flat spacetime with gravitational forces. Shifting between these two languages is much like a shift between polar and Cartesian coordinate systems.
But why do we use one language in the case of one theory and a different one in case of the other? Because the equations would become unwieldy and calculations would become extremely difficult - that is, for the same reason that one might use Cartesian coordinates for one problem, but polar coordinates for another. The language in which each theory is expressed is the language which is appropriate to that theory. Moreover, given the language in which general relativity is expressed, it is the simplest theory which fits all of the available, relevant evidence.
When a given theory (such as Newton’s gravitational theory or classical mechanics) has stood test of a great deal of time and a great many experiments, it qualifies as a form of knowledge. Moreover, we have every reason to believe that if and when it is superseded by some later theory, much of the content of the original theory will be preserved in the more advanced one, although the form in which it is expressed may be quite different. Such is the meaning of the correspondence principles relating special relativity to classical mechanics, general relativity to Newton’s gravitational theory, and quantum mechanics to classical mechanics.
*
Captcha wrote in 322:
Perhaps at some level of description (e.g., the Planck-Wheeler scale) it will be necessary for a theory to abandon it — strictly speaking. But if so, the theory will have to such that the classical description of our world is nevertheless recoverable by means of a correspondence principle, otherwise there will be no meaningful way in which such a theory can be related to our world where we perform science, and build and use instruments to discover what it is that that theory describes.
*
Captcha wrote in 322:
Just because we do not know everything does not mean that we know nothing. Just because we may be in error sometimes does not mean that we may be in error all the time. All science is related inasmuch as it is knowledge concerning the world in which we live and which we must be able relate back to our level of existence if it is to be regarded as meaningful. To suggest otherwise is indicative of either a self-referentially incoherent pathology known as radical skepticism, or what is more likely, sophistry.
*
Captcha fortune cookie: Deakin Special
3 August 2008 at 22:12
Hank (321), I don’t know what effort you mean…
4 August 2008 at 2:24
John Mathon: That is unprecedented and it would mean the NAO/AMO, PDO phenomenon would magically just disappear, that we would have no more unexplained pauses in temperature for the next 90 years as temperatures soared unlike ever before in recorded history.
Gavin: [Response: There’s no reason to think natural variability disappears - but yes, such a temperature change would clearly be unprecedented. Possibly that’s why people want to avoid it? - gavin]
Gavin, the reason people don’t believe such apocalyptic predictions and bizarre changes in behavior is partly because such predictions in the past have been so wrong. Malthus, Ehrlich, Club of Rome, anti-nuclear power wackos, pop up in my mind. These people and many others in history have predicted doom time and time again. Even religious leaders saying the world was going to end in 2000 or 2012 or whatever. We’ve had so much of this doomsaying and it is ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS WRONG. Amazingly wrong. Every 10 or so years Ehrlich predicts 50% of the worlds species will be extinct and every 10 years he reissues the threat only to find that there is no apparent decrease in species every time. The anti-nuclear power folks told us that nuclear power was dangerous and yet its proven to be the safest form of energy ever invented. The club of rome told us we’d be out of oil by now or dead from pollution or living in poverty. None of that happened even though they were from MIT and used the most sophisticated computer models of the time. These people are ALWAYS WRONG. Instead of apocalypse the world is better off than ever. I know there is a large segment of the population (not a majority but a significant number of people) who want to believe in apocalypse and that everything is going to a handbasket but the FACT is that it isn’t. The world is demonstrably richer in every conceivable way. A recent satellite survey showed that life on the planet earth has increased 20% in the last 40 years. An astonishing result considering all we hear from the environmental extremists and our press is that life is dying everywhere. The disconnect of reality and these predictions of doom is just mind boggling. Many people are just obsessed with thinking things are going to H***. However, every statistic and fact belies that this is false. We are richer, fewer starving people, more food, more everything. Something like 20 million people have been coming out of poverty yearly for decades. The death rate from natural disasters has fallen 99+% in the last 100 years. If you ask most people they think natural disasters are worse and more deadly. The fact is exactly the opposite in a phenomenal way. The facts are that deaths from natural disasters are the single thing we as humans have been best as solving more than ANYTHING else and yet this is the thing eco-wackos tell us is going to kill us. The very thing we are best at and that we are most capable of reducing is the thing that is claimed is going to kill us and the amazing thing is people believe it!
The world isn’t dying and the temperatures aren’t soaring out of control, they are actually declining for the last 10 years! CO2 is a plant nutrient and everything we look at says that the increasing CO2 in the atmosphere has been a net positive for life on the planet earth. The moderate and more or less continuous temperature increases since 1750 been good for humanity and every living thing on the planet.
I am sorry Gavin but these apocalyptic visions are false just as Malthus and just as Club of Rome and just as Ehrlich. Stopping building nuclear reactors because people told us it was too dangerous is ironic because it is the same people who are telling us that the resultant CO2 (from not building nuclear reactors) is going to kill us. They were wrong then and they are wrong now. We have now started burning our food supply to prevent global warming only to erase 30 years of poverty improvement. People told us preventing global warming would save lives but the very first thing we do to stop global warming puts 1 BILLION people’s lives at risk for starvation and plunges millions of people into poverty! Yet we are told by people who project unmitigated and unprecedented temperature increases for 90 years that we need to reduce CO2 (a plant food) to save the planet from starvation. The irony couldn’t be more extreme. Also, Ironically it is the people who were trying to save us from nuclear power that put us in this situation where we had to burn so much fossil fuel.
I want to make clear I have absolutely NO objection to the theory of global warming. I am perfectly happy to accept AGW or any warming if it is proved. It obviously can’t be proved or you or somebody from the pro-AGW position would have put a paper in the newsletter of the APS demonstrating such a proof. The mere fact that such a paper has not been produced and can’t be produced is irrefutable evidence that such a proof is impossible therefore the science of AGW and sensitivity of 2-4C/doubling of CO2 is simply a theory. It is a theory in trouble because the data is all going in the opposite direction. Temperatures are spiking downward on the land, in the ocean, in the troposphere. Heat is escaping the system somehow or being stored someplace we don’t know about. Phenomenon like the PDO and NAO cannot be explained by the theory even though they are clearly real phenomenon. The GCMs have been unable to explain the lack of heat in the antarctic for 50 years, the destruction of ozone which seems to be related to the destruction of methane and other GHGs. The recent article in a Hydrology publication shows the models are less efficient at predicting than a simple arithmetic average.
I’m saying you people are in denial. It is NOT 8 years of static temperatures that is the problem. If that were the only thing people (including me) might still be believing this theory of massive positive feedbacks. The problem is much more severe for the AGW crowd.
1) lack of warming in the antarctic
50 years of lack of heating even though every model predicts the poles will heat equally. Instead what we’ve gotten is lots of heating at the north pole which conforms much more to the NAO phenomenons predictions than any GCM.
2) lack of ocean warming
Unexplained ocean temperatures are impossible to understand and unpredicted. They caused a German science team to publish a peer-reviewed article in Nature magazine predicting 10 more years of flat temperatures.
3) lack of tropospheric warming
30 years of balloon and satellite measurements showing insufficient heat in the troposphere. Recent papers showing “implied” heat in the troposphere not completely convincing leaving grave doubts if GHGs were causing much if any of the warming we saw in the 1977-1997 period.
4) increased rain beyond model predictions
Raising severe doubts about the supposed linkage between clouds, rain and temperature and therefore making the feedback assumptions in the GCMs destroyed.
5) lack of land temperature increases for 10 years
The problem here is less that we have 10 years of lack of temperature increase than it is unexplained. During the 90s there were several much shorter down periods but these were explained sufficiently with volcanoes. We haven’t had any volcanoes of merit in the last 10 years therefore this recent cooling is unexplained.
6) ozone depletion not predicted
This means there was a negative feedback not anticipated which also seems to be related to destruction of methane and other GHGs in the pacific ocean. Is this the reason for 5)?
7) GCM model prediction failures.
2 studies in the last 7 months published and peer-reviewed have concluded that GCM models are lousy at predicting temperatures, rainfall at any level of the atmosphere or for any time period tested.
The reason that I and many people have become skeptics and that you are getting flak in the press and now even in scientific publications is not that dweebs from the enemy are outflanking you politically or something. It is that the data is contradicting the theory and there are no convincing arguments to explain any of these phenomenon.
Since the lack of warming in almost all of the world has become apparent severe AGW enthusiasts have turned to the arctic as the last place that there is evidence their theories are working but at least 2 papers have come out in the last 6 months which demolish this argument.
1) The NAO phenomenon explains at least 50-80% of the arctic warming over the last 30 years and also explains better than GCMs the recent cooling.
2) Black carbon pollution from diesel vehicles primarily but also from all carbon sources is causing another 20%-50% of the warming in the arctic.
This is therefore another reason that the feedback sensitivity of 2-4 degrees is unsustainable.
Lastly Ray Ladbury Says:
3 August 2008 at 7:29 AM
> John Mathon, With your post, I believe we have very nearly completed the map of the Denialist > Memome. In your single, we have one-stop shopping for ignorant denialist talking points
> 1)the warming is insignificant and short-term (wrong–it is part of a trend thatgoes back to the onset of the industrial age)
Coincidentally also happens to go back to the last ice age ending (the little ice age). Were you expecting the little ice age to go on forever? Why did the little ice age happen and do the models predict it? What stopped it? Some CO2 from coal stopped the little ice age? What stopped or started other weather phenomenon over the last 20,000 years?
> 2)It has stopped warming (wrong)
Yes it has. I say this because the oceans have 300 times the heat capacity of the entire atmosphere and the ocean has cooled over the last 5 years. That means that the heat is gone.
> 3)models are unreliable and tuned (wrong–why don’t you learn the difference between a statistical and a dynamical model)
I know a lot about models and you don’t want to defend these models. It would be astonishing if these models didn’t have hundreds of wrong assumptions, wrong physics, missing or incomplete descriptions and even bad coding. Admit it, it would be astounding if the models worked. They don’t. I am not taken in by these “oh and these are our sophisticated computer models” trying to impress me with big words and complicated math. They did models at the Club of Rome and they failed just as spectacularly.
> 4)It’s all natural
I never said that. I believe in GHG warming. I just don’t believe it is 2-4K/doubling of CO2. I have no reason not to believe 2-4K/doubling except that I don’t see any proof or evidence of such a number. If the data or science was there I have no reason to argue against it. I actually did believe there was going to be significant warming. I have been converted by evidence and by looking at the science.
> 5)CO2 is only a minor greenhouse gas
It is minor. H2O is the major GHG and we don’t understand the physics of all these chemicals operating in a chaotic system and the inputs which drive their interactions. We may eventually understand more of it and be able to prove the interactions but we are not there yet so I believe that it is “theory” in need of verification not proven fact. The only thing that is proven is that GHGs do create some forcing, however the sensitivity of the temperature to such forcing is unknown especially the feedback component.
If you could prove the sensitivity such a paper would be produced and delivered to the APS. The fact that the APS could not procure such a paper is the strongest proof that such an argument doesn’t exist. The sensitivity of 2-4K/doubling is theory not scientific fact. Stop saying it is fact and arguing it is fact and you will get a more responsive audience.
> 6)all the feedbacks are negative
I have no idea what the feedbacks are but I suspect that the failures of the models are largely due to massive overstatement of the positive feedbacks.
4 August 2008 at 2:37
Jurgen, #320.
Epic miss.
How can we be expected to explain ourselves in a way that the public understands when we are having to counter arguments either irrelevant or so obscure the public doesn’t understand either?
Irrelevant: “Science is not consensus”. How CAN that be countered in a way the public will understand? It’s true, but not a lot of help and countering it either requires us to answer with a half-truth which is picked up or by telling them about the thousands of scientific reports which they’ll NEVER find or understand. On a hiding to nothing here.
Obscure: “Middle Ages warming”. Apart from saying “that was cooler” which isn’t being taken as a rebuttal, what can be said here? You need to show the raw data and how the data shows this wasn’t a globally warmer period than today. Lots of maths, physics and so on.
We can counter these sufficient for “the public” but the denialists will use the necessary simplifications to make more noise and confuse the public.
4 August 2008 at 3:57
Timothy Chase #315:
But I have outstayed my welcome.
BTW I had forgotten how slimey the Milloy challenge really is… the main difference between Milloy and Randi is not in the rules
4 August 2008 at 4:20
Timothy Chase #323:
Hmmm, as I understand it, quantum mechanics is invariant for time inversion (perhaps together with parity and matter-antimatter conjugation, CPT). The “arrow of time” comes from thermodynamics (entropy).
Both quantum theory and thermodynamics involve probability, but in subtly different ways.
4 August 2008 at 4:30
323. ‘Perhaps at some level of description (e.g. the Planck-Wheeler scale) it will be necessary to abandon it’. That is all that post 322 was pointing to.
4 August 2008 at 7:07
Timothy, I think that what Captcha is referring to is the nonlocality of quantum theory vs the locality of general relativity. Indeed, this is a funcamental issue. However, there are various movements to bridge the gap–string theory among them. None of this has any relevance to climate science, economics, paleoclimate or the intersection thereof. As you pointed out, relativistic quantum mechanics (really an application of special relativity to quantum theory) shows that there is fruitful ground even when there are deep divides at the fundamental level. General relativity is a very different beast than the special theory.
4 August 2008 at 7:33
Mark, Communicating science to the public is difficult. Sometimes anecdotes help. In explaining the importance of consensus, I’ve found that the story of the N-ray affair is illustrative:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-ray
And of course, there is Einstein’s rejection of quantum mechanics, which went ahead and progressed around him despite his opposition. I find that this episode is particularly important, as it shows that despite the tremendous respect physicists had for Einstein, ultimately they opted for the approach that maintained maximum progress. Einstein had valid grounds for concern about quantum mechanics, but he offerd no fruitful alternatives, so his attempts to undermine the foundations of quantum mechanics were stillborn. This is very like the situation in climate science (or for that matter wrt evolution), where so-called skeptics offer blistering critiques of the research, but no positive alternatives.
As to the MWP and other obscurities, that’s more difficult. The stories of “Greenland” and vineyards in Britain are more compelling than paleoclimatic reconstructions. Here, I think it is relevant to point out that much of Europe’s heat comes from the Gulf Stream (Rome is at the same latitude as Denver, after all), and that the best science says we are warming VERY rapidly.
4 August 2008 at 7:44
Martin and Tim,
We’re verging on digression here, but if the moderators will permit, a bit on quantum mechanics, thermo, causality and the arrow of time. First, quantum entanglement, as exemplified for the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen experiment does pose some significant challenges for conventional ideas of causality, physical reality and even free will. If you veiw measurement by observer A as the cause of the wave function collapse of the entangled distant object, it would seem that this requires a spacelike signal, although it can be shown that this signal carries no actual information.
As to the arror of time, there is indeed a thermodynamic arrow of time, which is generally equated with the direction in which Entropy increases. Note, however, that this only applies to macroscopic ensembles of particles, since reversibility applies at the level of the fundamental interactions.
There is also a comsomological arrow of time–the direction in which the Universe expands.
Finally there is an arrow of time associated with the Weak Nuclear force and the decasys of K and B mesons, where both CP and T invariance are violated, but CPT is preserved. This is, to my knowledge the only place we know of where an arrow of time exists on a point-like scale.
4 August 2008 at 7:58
Martin Vermeer wrote in 326:
Classical mechanics is also invaraint with respect to time inversion. Not quite the same thing as being able to introduce a grandfather paradox — which presumably you could do if you could travel faster than the speed of light, or alternatively send a message that you received before you sent it telling you not to send the the message.
However, there is another level besides thermodynamics where time symmetry is evidently broken:
Martin Vermeer wrote in 326:
I will grant you that.
Interestingly, one can interpret the values of the probability density matrix as complex number truth values of statements, then treat the operators which act on the probability density operator as logical operations which transform one set of statements (e.g., involving position) into another set (e.g., involving momentum), in which case the whole of quantum mechanics could be viewed as a form of alternate logic.
Anyway, I got to get to work.
4 August 2008 at 8:05
John Mathon repeats one oh-so-common science denialist claim that always raises my “iiar!” red flag …
“I used to believe in Evolution but then I looked at the evidence and the science”
“I used to believe that HIV causes AIDS but then I looked at the evidence and the science”
“I used to believe that second-hand cigarette smoke might be harmful but then I looked at the evidence and the science”
“I used to believe that DDT caused raptor population declines, but then I looked at the evidence and the science”.
It doesn’t matter which genre of science denialism is being discussed, they always come out with a variation on this theme. Which is meant to imply, of course, that the only reason the rest of us haven’t changed our minds is because we don’t study the evidence or the science, or aren’t bright enough to see how the Evil Science Conspiracy is fraudulently misleading the rest of us.
4 August 2008 at 8:56
Timothy, thanks for the link!
Yes, weak interactions do that — CPT is conserved but the individual T may be broken. Or P, which got Lee and Yang their 1957 Nobel…
Well, that is again a slightly different issue, that of not being able to Lorentz transform the arrow of time into a retrograde direction, i.e., it lies inside the light cone.
Is that (non-existence of information carrying tachyons) quantum theory or relativity? Is it even theoretically proven? Clearly it is a requirement for a well defined information/entropy arrow of time to even exist.
Way over my head
4 August 2008 at 8:57
Actually, I’m curious about one thing, though:
Where did it go? Please, John, please tell us … where did it go?
reCaptcha says “literature in”, which I guess is a hint as to where John wants to find an answer that will impress us.
4 August 2008 at 9:27
331
As I understand, atmospheric circulation is primarily what causes the warmer temperatures in Europe, as opposed to say, North America. The THC keeping the North Atlantic warmer than the northern pacific. A shutdown of the THC should cool Europe but also cool on the western side of the Atlantic.
4 August 2008 at 9:48
Is there any relationship between the new userid “Captcha” and the many quotations we’ve been making to Captcha words in the past few weeks? Or is this just coincidental?
ReCaptcha: “ach standard”
4 August 2008 at 9:50
John Mathon, 325, wrote :
“A recent satellite survey showed that life on the planet earth has increased 20% in the last 40 years.”
Um, would you care to provide a cite or source for that strange statement ?
4 August 2008 at 10:12
@ John Mathon:
You say “the ocean has cooled over the last 5 years. That means that the heat is gone.”
Leaving aside the whole issue of generalizing about climate with 5 years of data–what exactly are you looking at that leads you to believe that the ocean has cooled over the last five years? And, for extra clarity, are you contending that the **heat content of the oceans as a whole** has declined over the past five years?
4 August 2008 at 10:26
@ Rod B: FWIW I see what you’re saying. But I still think you generated the resistance you cheekily observe by the way you phrased things. For example, I believe this was your first instance of asking:
“is Monckton incorrect in his temperature analysis? I’m not asking if it is inappropriate, but incorrect. Nor am I asking about his opinions and assertions re interpretations or his other seemingly goofy comments — just his mathematical assessment of the temperature since 2000-1.”
And this is from your recent response, the part directed at me:
“I wanted only to simply ask if Monckton seemed to know how to calculate a least squares (or similar) linear regression.”
I think if you had started with the latter phrasing you would have had a different set of responses. I can see how you maybe meant the same thing both times, but “is Monckton incorrect in his temperature analysis?” generates a “no” response for standard RC usage of the words “temperature analysis.” Also, in “his mathematical assessment of the temperature since 2000-1,” I think it was predictable that “mathematical assessment” would be read by posters here to be inclusive of valid statistical practice and whatnot. By contrast, something like “given the numbers he used, did he do the regression equation right?” is a much more specific, well-constrained question. I imagine you probably still would have gotten some resistance, and most people (like me) would not have bothered to try to check the math, but I think it’s fairly likely that someone would have said “it looks like it, but that’s not the point” or something.
Of course you could have further boosted the odds of getting the obvious (per you)response by phrasing it as “given the stupid, silly numbers he used, did he *EVEN* do the regression equation right, the jackass?” (”well, he’s stupid alright, but it looks like he may have gotten lucky and got THAT much right, heh heh”)
But then I suppose I’m straying back into your point
4 August 2008 at 10:28
Ray Ladbury, 332, wrote :
“it would seem that this requires a spacelike signal”
Well, for me, (no physicist), that’s the most interesting area in the whole of science. My wild hunch, it might explain much that is presently inexplicable, (re the earlier ESP comments), possibly via Penrose-Hameroff microtubules. I may easily be wrong, but I have read that quantum effects may be expected up to (almost) macroscopic scale, e.g. amoeba size, just on the boundary of human vision…
(Sorry, this is off topic, but my enthusiasm is hungry for info…)
4 August 2008 at 10:42
John Mathon makes the following extraordinary claim:
This claim is false; you are not following the science. Please see the following graphs. They shows alarming declines in populations of various ocean species.
Biomass Decline at the Southern Grand Bank
North Atlantic Biomass Trends
North Carolina Shark Population Extinction
Sequential Collapse of Pacific Marine Mammal Populations
I’ve collected these and more data, with full citations, in a handy slide deck:
State of the World’s Oceans (12MB pptx)
John, you may tell yourself that there’s no human-caused mass extinction occurring, but you’re whistling past the graveyard.
4 August 2008 at 10:44
John Mathon, Should you ever tire of demolishing straw men of your own construction, this site would be an excellent place for you to START learning about Earth’s climate. There are several posts on this site that demonstrate the fallacy your argument. I can direct you should you care to read them. Otherwise, you are welcome to your ignorance. If you don’t mind, the rest of us are going to learn about the climate and the crisis we face.
4 August 2008 at 10:49
#325 John Mathon:
Here are the graphs of the original 1972 “Limits of Growth” report to the Club of Rome. Ugly lineprinter graphics. Study them. What you should especially do, is cover with your right hand the part past 2008. First graph, 1972 known resources; second, doubled resources (more realistic).
You see what I see? I know you do. The report hasn’t even had the opportunity yet to be wrong. Even for 1972-known resources, everything looks hunky-dory, all the good curves going up. The collapse is still in the future.
Yes… that’s called “overshoot”.
You know the corny joke about the guy falling from a skyscraper, who was overheard saying when passing the third floor: “So far so good…”?
That guy is you.
4 August 2008 at 11:21
I think the satellite must be recording the average obesity of the US populace, not “life” per se.
4 August 2008 at 11:39
I differ with Barton Paul Levenson and Timothy Chase on the state of the evidence for the existence of so-called “psychic” phenomena that has been produced by modern parapsychological research. But my point is not to engage in an off-topic discussion about psi research. Rather I am trying to make a point about skepticism.
Consider how you would react to a self-described AGW “skeptic” who denies that any warming exists, who exhibits an a priori hostility to the very idea, and who gets all of his information about climate research from organized “skeptical” sources, e.g. various “think tanks”, so-called “conservative” media, and people like Monckton and Singer who are not climate scientists but are making a career of discouraging public acceptance of the idea of anthropogenic warming — but who is unfamiliar with the actual research itself, particularly the most recent research, and who is dismissive of the value of studying the actual science because he already knows that it doesn’t amount to anything.
Now, if you count yourself as a “skeptic” of psi research, ask yourself to what extent your views are based on a a priori hostility to the very idea of psychic phenomena, on information that you receive from organized “skeptical” sources such as CSICOP, stage “magician” James Randi’s group, and others who are not parapsychologists but have made a career of discouraging public acceptance of and scientific research into the reality of “pyschic” phenomena, vs. how familiar you are with the actual research itself, particularly the most recent research, and whether you are inclined to be dismissive of the value of studying the actual science because you already know that it doesn’t amount to anything.
As a final comment, I offer this excerpt from the “lost chapter” of Alice In Wonderland:
4 August 2008 at 11:52
In re: 331
I think a large part of why “Greenland” and “vineyards in Great Britain” get so much press, along with “But it was an ice age in the 1970’s” is the way “we are warming VERY rapidly” is presented. Because people do look at global temperature charts and the “we are warming VERY rapidly” stops, and now “we are going sideways”, and if the last time “we are going sideways” goes the same way, it’ll be “we are going down.” Right? Forget the science for a moment — that’s what the charts did the last time. Global temps went up, then sideways, then down, then “The Ice Age Is Coming!”, then up.
So, in an effort to call attention to the problem, there’s a lot of ignoring what people know to be the truth. I really did read about that “coming Ice Age” when it was in the popular press.
Other aspects of the science — how GCMs actually work, for example — make the science suspect to the lay reader. The first GCM I ran, after I downloaded one courtesy of reading this blog, raised red flags. If we can’t predict the weather a week in advance, how the heck is “weather” a useful part of a GCM? We don’t know where Eduordo is going to go, but someone has a GCM that says rainfall in the American Southeast is going to below average? It only takes a few hurricanes spinning up out of the Straights of Florida for the American Southeast to get a TON more rain.
So the science has to be presented in a way that people can look at what’s out there for the lay public and understand how that doesn’t invalidate the big messages being given. If you told me “we are warming VERY rapidly”, and I look at 8 years of temperature data, I’m going to disagree. And if you tell me “lots more hurricanes”, and I look at the cyclical nature of Atlantic basin tropical storms, I’m going to disagree. There’s a lot of information being presented that’s not being presented in a way that’s consistent with what the public is seeing, and that has to be fixed, and “we are warming VERY rapidly” needs to be stated in terms that are more consistent with whatever “pause” we’ve been taking for the past few years.
(reCaptcha — “Al impassable”. Who is this Al person?)
4 August 2008 at 12:46
I would just like to correct one error of fact:
Barton Paul Levenson wrote: “There was a reason the parapsychologists got kicked out of the AAAS”
“The parapsychologists” have not been “kicked out” of the AAAS, in spite of the efforts of “skeptics” who campaign to discredit and discourage research in the field. As of today, the AAAS website still lists the Parapsychological Association as an affiliated organization.
4 August 2008 at 12:52
He’s probably misunderstanding:
wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/06/08/surprise-earths-biosphere-is-booming-co2-the-cause/
which misstates Solomon,
who misunderstands NASA’s press release
which didn’t explain why more pond scum isn’t better.
4 August 2008 at 14:21
It is hard for me to find any humor in the global warming situation, but The Onion made me laugh out loud with this headline:
“Al Gore Places Infant Son In Rocket To Escape Dying Planet”
4 August 2008 at 15:32
Not that anyone probably cares, but I noticed a typo in my earlier comment–
“is Monckton incorrect in his temperature analysis?” generates a “no” response for standard RC usage of the words “temperature analysis.”
Should have been:
“is Monckton incorrect in his temperature analysis?” generates a “yes” response for standard RC usage of the words “temperature analysis.”
I hate it when I do that.
4 August 2008 at 15:41
Here is one way to answer the question of whether Mockton’s conclusions are based on cherry-picked data. Suppose you define a temperature increase function that depends on two parameters, the starting date the the ending date, F(s,e). Each F(s,e) would be the slope of the least-squares fit of the temperature data between dates e and s. You could then produce a 2D contour plot of F(s,e) with s along the y axis and e along the x axis and with the plot being in the triangular region s.lt.e. This would not be a constant function, it would reveal the cooling trends in the 1950’s, the major volcano eruptions, the El Nino and La Nina periods, and so on. If the time resolution where fine enough, it would reveal seasonal fluctuations. Suppose the negative areas of this plot were colored various shades of blue, and the positive areas of the plot were colored various shades of red. The question then is whether this graph would be a vast ocean of red with isolated islands of blue, or a vast ocean of blue with isolated areas of red, or some 50/50 mixture of each. If it were mostly red with isolated islands of blue, then Mockton’s conclusions would clearly require cherry-picking one of those blue islands to make his cooling claim. Statistically, the most reliable areas of this graph would be near the x axis, and the least reliable areas would be up near the s=e line (because of the statistical 1/sqrt(e-s) uncertainty).
Is there anyone with access to all the relevant data that could produce such a graph?
4 August 2008 at 15:57
kevin (341), I’ll briefly come out of retirement (on this discourse) because you asked/commented so civilly.
It quickly became evident and I agree that the choice of words (”temperature analysis”) was not good, even with my attempt to clarify what I meant even in that very first post (#200), which you accurately referenced. As time and posts went on I tried very hard, with some success in my view, to be very precise as to what I was asking; IMHO it was then not at all hard to understand. Recheck #23 and my shouting #254 as a couple of examples. But no one, save one, would let me off the hook with my original too-general use of wording despite my incessant elucidation and protestations. Everyone kept saying (paraphrasing), “No, Rod. I know it’s what you said you asked; but it’s not!”. Take the second phrase you quote in your post. Then go read the following responses. It’s completely obvious they had some interest in answering a question I didn’t ask, and no desire to answer instead the one I did, which I clarified until I was blue (red?? sorry about that…) in the face. I think it is instructive that Jürgen had no difficulty what-so-ever.
I wish not to pursue this further, but for the record, this is where the religiosity comes in. They absolutely refused to see my (eventually) obvious question because, it seems, they would have to mutter some words that there might be some relatively short recent periods when the average global temperatures declined. I think only religious inclinations make people that adamant and (I shouldn’t use this word) a strict denier. It’s like a fundamentalist watching tsetse flies or bacteria mutate in front of their very eyes and say, “Not happening!!”
I probably should not psychoanalyze so much. It’s just how I see it.
4 August 2008 at 16:01
Jim (343) you species response to John is right on, but the thousands of species that go out of existence all the time is not necessarily “alarming”.
4 August 2008 at 16:09
I’m not sure why we’re still arguing about parapsychology, but since it’s still going on:
SecularAnimist seems to think that there are:
1) Believers in parapsychology.
2) Close-minded skeptics of it.
but not:
3) Skeptics (in classical sense)who:
- have at least a little background/experience in experimental psychology
- have had discussions with psychologists about common ways in which experiments go wrong and people fool themselves
- have followed a lot of efforts to *find* PSI phenomena, with very weak results [i.e., the serious research efforts, not the obvious hoaxes], so that a massive amount of negative results have accumulated.
- worry about the lack of plausible physical mechanisms for most of the supposed effects
- worry about tiny effects that disappear with better controls.
- have watched things like PEAR go away, or Susan Blackmore switch from belief to skepticism.
- might even *wish* that PSI effects were real, if only so some of their favorite stories could be science-fiction rather than fantasy
- and yes, have read CSICOP, Randi, etc.
- and tend to have listened harder to Martin Gardner, Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov than to Puthoff and Targ, for example…
- and simply come to believe there is nothing useful there…
How many decades of negative results does it take before a PSI-skeptic isn’t close-minded, but just accepting of the evidence?
4) In any case, here are a few of my favorite books on rational open-mindedness, skepticism, and evidence:
Martin Gardner
a) Science - Good, Bad, and Bogus, 1981.
(There are newer editions.)
b) “Did Adam and Eve have Navels?”, 2000
James Randi
c) Flim-Flam! 1986
Robert Ehrlich (Physic Prof at George Mason)
d) Nine Crazy Ideas in Science (A few might even be true), 2001
e) Eight Preposterous Propositions, 2003.
On this specific topic, here’s a long-time parapsychologist-turned-skeptic:
Susan Blackmore
f) The Elusive Open Mind: Ten Years of Negative Research in Parapsychology. 1987.
g) Why I have given up 2001.
5) Finally, to bring this back to climate, it is a strange fact that some people who are ardent skeptics of much pseudoscience are simultaneously convinced that AGW is a hoax…
Last Summer, CSI’s Skeptical Inquirer published a straightforward article on AGW by NASA GSFC physicist Stuart Jordan .. that elicited a firestorm of “cancel my subsciption”-style letters, stunning editor Kendrick Frazier. Here are Stuart’s responses.
This is a good reminder that good classical skepticism is humanly difficult to apply uniformly. However, masses of evidence favor:
- existence of AGW
- nonexistence of psi
4 August 2008 at 16:29
Spencer Response.
Several posts in this thread have requested a response to the recent Dr Roy Spencer submission to a Senate committee. My suggestion is that the RealClimate team, saintly though they are in their patience and forbearance, should remain silent in this case. The Spencer submission is in two parts: an actual peer-reviewed journal article to be published shortly, and the written submission itself. I have only read an abstract of the article, which concerns a simple climate model that shows previous estimates of climate sensitivity to be too high due to neglect of natural cloud variability. The written report to the Senate concerns ‘exciting new discoveries in recent weeks’, about which he has exchanged emails with IPCC climate scientists. The peer-review and IPCC emails are cleverly woven into the narrative to give the submission credibility.
So far as I can tell Spencer’s new theory, that climate sensitivity to GHG forcing is so low as to be trivial, falls into Pauli’s ‘not even wrong’ category. On that basis there should be no response from RealClimate, but this assertion of mine needs to be qualified in that I am not a climate scientist. For anyone needing to rebut Spencer, I suggest using extracts from his submission; namely that the IPPC scientist email points out that the effect Spencer claims to have discovered is small, and that Spencer’s own report states that he does not yet know if his assertion is true.
From Spencer’s career it appears he was a weather guy who was displaced by the incoming wave of climate scientists and funding. Events like this, and the resulting sulks, are familiar to anyone who has worked in a large organization of any type; the losers in this game tend to hold a contrarian view no matter what the facts on the ground may be. The archetype was the British geologist who famously refused to believe the 19th century reports that snow-capped mountains existed in the heat of equatorial Africa and went to his grave convinced that Kilimanjaro was capped not by an ice-sheet but by marble.
Spencer has a new twist on this, as his career is now being presented as if it were a chapter from Joseph Campbell’s ‘Hero with a Thousand Faces’. Spurned by the king’s court (the Clinton administration) he retreats to the groves of academe where he contemplates alone for seven whole years. Then he makes a wondrous discovery, described in his own words as ‘the Holy Grail of climate science’. Triumphantly he returns to court and presents his discovery to the new rulers in the capitol, and so saves a grateful world from the scourge of global warming.
A theory like anthropogenic global warming needs its doubters and detractors to ensure its robustness and completeness. Dr Spencer will no doubt continue to attack AGW for the rest of his life, and doing it through peer-reviewed articles is in a way admirable, but this submission to a Senate committee has crossed a moral line and is to be regretted. While we must hope that a new dawn of knowledge will in due course illuminate his dark night, so that he does not go marble-headed into retirement, for now the best response from his scientific peers is an icy silence.
4 August 2008 at 17:04
John Mashey wrote: “SecularAnimist seems to think that there are: 1) Believers in parapsychology. 2) Close-minded skeptics of it.”
I do think there are those two classes of people. I don’t think, nor did I say, that those two categories exhaust the possible attitudes towards the subject.
Again, my point was to note what strike me as common features of “close-minded skepticism” of both climate science and parapsychology — the sort of pseudo-skepticism that arises from an a priori conviction about a subject. A genuinely open-minded skeptic might examine the scientific evidence relating to the existence of psi phenomena and conclude either that its existence has been demonstrated, or that it has not. A close-minded pseudo-skeptic will be unlikely to examine the evidence for something that he already knows is bunk. Such a person is more likely to comfort himself with the pronouncements of “organized skeptic” groups who are hostile towards the subject and actively seek to discourage interest and research in the field.
When a commenter here falsely asserts that the Parapsychology Association has been “kicked out” of the AAAS, and then sweepingly claims that “All the statements that ESP has been ’scientifically proved’ comes from ESP researchers with an axe to grind”, I cannot help hearing an echo of the many “AGW skeptics” who have commented on these pages that “all the evidence for global warming comes from climate researchers with an axe to grind who are just trying to get more grant money”. When someone comes to a subject with such a predisposition, can they honestly claim to approach it with open-minded skepticism?
4 August 2008 at 17:07
Pat McLean (357) — Tamino has done in one of Spencer’s presentations:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/07/28/spencers-folly/
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/07/30/spencers-folly-2/
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/08/01/spencers-folly-3/
4 August 2008 at 18:23
SecularAnimist, maybe you would accept that any signal of PSI is overwhelmed by the noise. And, since we have no idea what’s doing it, we have no way of working out how to improve the signal or build up from earlier works.
I suppose you could genetically meld people who score highly to see if you can get more PSI rated people, but genetic fiddling like that isn’t really going to happen, is it?
Me? I’m pretty certain that all of what is considered in PSI to be bunk. Some of the rest of it could be because our understanding of the reality is not good enough to explain what’s happening and the rest of it is so vastly underexplained by proponents that any scientific modelling is impossible.
Mostly I figure PSI to be so ineffectual even where true to be a fruitless search for something.
4 August 2008 at 18:32
Rod, I don’t know what you find in those graphs that’s not alarming. They’re terrifying. Those aren’t just single species going extinct; they represent entire ecosystems that are vanishing. These extinction rates are vastly above the background rate.
Surely you don’t maintain that it’s natural for whole ecosystems to decline simultaneously around the globe. What about the phrase “human-caused mass extinction” is ambiguous?
4 August 2008 at 18:55
Re 358, I think it’s a good point, Secular Animist, and both interesting and important to better understand how we arrive at the positions we hold.
There’s another facet to the ESP question. How does one weigh personal direct first hand experience against an opposing consensus view ?
It’s easy for me to chose re AGW, because even though I’m not equipped to grasp the mathematics involved, I have confidence in those who can, and having closely followed the story of CFCs and similar controversies over several decades, I know who I trust and who I don’t.
On the other hand, I have followed zen buddhism for at least as long as Susan Blackmore, and IMHO, she has her zen back to front and upside down, so to speak. I have not read her 2001 book, so I don’t know whether my view of her buddhism would effect my estimation of her view on parapsychology. However,it wouldn’t matter how many authoritative voices denied certain ESP experiences, because they are all outweighed by my own personal experiences. It would be like people telling me I can’t run or jump or swim, when I know I can. The problem arises when science is applied, and, in a sense, the fact that ESP is so elusive, and despite all the anecdotal evidence, seems to evaporate when scrutinised just make it even more fascinating and intriguing.
4 August 2008 at 19:07
Incidentally, IMO, the most interesting scientific research presently re psychology and parapsychology is being done by Allan Wallace
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2381164272554857228&hl=en
4 August 2008 at 20:41
CL, regarding the weirdness of the quantum world. While the weirdness is undeniable, I don’t think we’re talking about sending telegrams to the past–or even spacelike telegrams to the present. It is difficult to think how you’d extract any information from an entangled system. The existence of entanglement tells us something profound about physical reality–indeed, it casts doubt on the entire proposition for some philosophers, though not for physicists. You can certainly see why Einstein found it disturbing, but as Bohr said anyone who is not disturbed by quantum theory hasn’t understood it.
4 August 2008 at 22:01
Captcha wrote in 329:
I am sorry if I misinterpretted your intent.
I think part the difference in how we viewed things lay in how each of interpreted the phrase “The unity of science.” I am thinking in terms of the subject (reality) and the endeavor to understand it. You appear to have been thinking in terms of the product — the individual theories. And I will grant you that there are tensions between different theories, that some theories may have to be abandoned, others modified and so on. But the ultimate subject and the endeavor are the same. Of course different sciences are specialized in different subjects, but nevertheless, there will oftentimes be overlap, and the more we engage in the scientific endeavor, the more overlap we should expect as they are merely studying different aspects of a unified reality.
But I would also stress that science is cummulative — particularly in terms of the correspondence principles between earlier and more advanced theories, and I would also stress the fact that one generally cannot test more advanced theories except by recourse to more basic theories. And likewise, I would stress that for a theory to be meaningful, it must be possible to relate it back to our level of awareness, e.g., in terms of human-readable instruments. And once they are related to our level, they are also related to one-another, however indirectly.
*
In any case, with respect to the Planck-Wheeler level, the thought is that fluctuations in vacuum energy at a scale of roughly 1.6 x 10^-35 meters and 5.43 x 10^-44 seconds should be sufficient to produce black holes which exist momentarily, prior to giving back the energy which they borrowed by means of the indeterminacy involving energy and time. If this is the case, then one should expect the geometry of space and time to take on a less definite, more probablistic nature as one approaches that level. But even as the geometry becomes less definite, no doubt we would continue to employ well-defined geometric concepts to describe it — like a wavefunction.
And incidentally, while it had been thought that the Planck-Wheeler level might forever lie beyond the reaches of our instruments, things have changed. Tests have already been performed which eliminate some quantum gravitational theories on the basis of effects which the Planck-Wheeler level would have upon the spectra of distant quasars. The idea is that over sufficiently large cosmological distances the foamy-ness of spacetime would lead to a cummulative difference in the lengths that photons traveling nearly identical paths would take, and as such this would blur the spectra of distant objects.
Here are a couple of articles describing the experiments before the fact:
Gravity-wave interferometers as quantum-gravity detectors
Giovanni Amelino-Camelia
Nature 398, 216-218 (18 March 1999)
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v398/n6724/full/398216a0.html
Phenomenological description of space-time foam
April 2001
Giovanni AMELINO-CAMELIA
http://arxiv.org/pdf/gr-qc/0104005
… and the results as described in a more recent article:
Presto! Space-Time Blurriness Vanishes
published online January 2, 2004
http://discovermagazine.com/2004/jan/astronomy/article_view?b_start:int=1&-C=
With current measurements we are unable to pick up the effect — and it would appear that we will need instruments at least a trillion times more sensative to the effect in order to detect it. Could it be forever beyond our reach? Perhaps. But then again we have essentially photographed the universe during its first trillionth of a second — and given this extraordinary accomplishment I am hopeful.
*
Here are a couple more related stories…
Here is a story on how Lozentz invariance may break down — which higher energy photons being slowed relative to their lower energy brethern by the foamy-ness of space. But Lorentz invariance has held up so far.
Einstein Makes Extra Dimensions Toe The Line
ScienceDaily (Dec. 24, 2003)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/12/031219074416.htm
This is one about how we are placing limits on the size of the rolled up dimensions required to account for the other forces. Once they are no longer of a negligible size, the force of gravity should vary inversely to higher power of distance than two, meaning that it will be stronger than we would otherwise predict. But so far the effect has not been seen.
University Of Washington Physicists Find That Extra Dimensions Must Be Smaller Than 0.2 Millimeter
ScienceDaily (Feb. 13, 2001)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/02/010213070804.htm
However, if these dimensions are of a sufficient diameter, the increased strength at lower energies/mass may be sufficient to place miniature black holes within the range of the Large Hadron Collider — which will be brought online on the eleventh of this month. I have been waiting for that device to come for years — but given the shear volume of data it should take some time before they will be announcing any major discoveries.
4 August 2008 at 22:33
#358 SA:
you introduced the parapsychology topic in #265 (to which I was primarily reacting), saying:
“And, as I was reminded yesterday, parapsychology is another field of scientific inquiry that has to deal with an organized opposition of so-called “skeptics” who vociferously argue that it is not legitimate science, and have gone so far as to campaign to revoke the affiliation of the Parapsychological Association with the AAAS.”
In context where, you have set two categories:
A: real scientists, open-minded, doing real science, getting results
B: close-minded
A1: almost all climate scientists on AGW
B1: organized anti-AGW folks
A2: Almost all bioscientists on evolution
B2: Discovery Institute, etc. on evolution
A3: Parapsychologists, i.e., Parapsychological Association, which has existed for 50 years, on existence of PSI phenomena
B3: AAAS members who don’t think PA belongs there, Randi, Martin, CSICOP, etc.
===
Can you compare the strength of each case, i.e., assume A+B = 1, and assign values to A1, A2, A3?
If you offer a high value for A3, then I’d suggest that folks in B1 would like you: Many folks in B1 claim that they are really A, and the bulk of the climate scientists are really B- the latter claim to see an effect (AGW) that doesn’t really exist, due to measurement error, wrong computer programs, or unwillingness to believe GW is entirely natural due to cosmic rays, sunspots, 1500-year cycles, etc, etc.
Do you really mean to do that?
4 August 2008 at 22:54
CL wrote in 362:
Personally, I would argue that one needs to take a quasi-Bayesian approach — at the level of the individual. And this is something which I would likewise apply in terms of the innovative thinkers who are in fact on the cutting-edge of science — and opposing the “consensus” view — because they believe they see something which others haven’t as of yet — and which they themselves haven’t had the time to communicate. The background thoughts for the ideas that they put into the foreground in their written work, perhaps. And perhaps they truly have — or perhaps they have not. But objectivity itself cannot simply collapse into some social version, otherwise this leaves no room for the individual exploration and innovation which moves us forward.
*
captcha fortune cookie: 1888 churches
That year does not have a pleasant association with it for me. Not sure what churches have to do with it, though.
4 August 2008 at 23:21
Chuckle. Let’s not start _believing_ the web has achieved sentience and is choosing our Captchas consciously.
Or maybe that’s how may sects Bayesians will split into (grin)
5 August 2008 at 0:22
Ray Ladbury wrote in 364:
The “bunch” I was with drew the line at probabilistic causation — where the probabilistic nature of the phenomena was inherent in the object. And this is of course the same bunch that took the existence of volition to be a “corollary” to an axiom.
Thesis, antithesis, synthesis… I was always attracted by the concept of complementarity. And I would apply this in the case of causality. We had to grasp necessitated causation first, but the grasping of it would not be possible without the existence of probabilistic causation.
As a “realist” (albeit not one who has any problem with entanglement / the Einstein Podolsky Rosen Paradox / Bell’s Theorem) I believe that the collapse of the wave function is not brought about by the act of observation — but rather the physics of observation, the amplification of a microscopic fluctuation to the macroscopic level by a macroscopic system which is itself unstable. Essentially something along the lines of Illya Prigogine’s microscopic theory of irreversible processes as expressed in “From Being to Becoming.” However, I understand that Prigogine (a contemporary and associate of John Archibald Wheeler, incidentally, who drew him away from his “participatory universe” view) never actually finished his “theory.” At this point I am skeptical that he ever could.
However, it is clear that instability is an essential ingredient in measurement of the microscopic realm — and in consciousness itself. Likewise, dissipative structures clearly exist — as does self-organization. But the attempt to mathematically formulate a law governing the production of entropy under far from equilibrium conditions is at best problematic.
For a critique of Prigogine, one might try:
About some common slipups in applying Prigogine’s minimum entropy production principle to living systems
James J. Kay
http://www.nesh.ca/jameskay/www.jameskay.ca/musings/mep.pdf
*
For better or worse, entropy production principles have made their way into (perhaps overly) theoretical climatology.
See for example:
Maximum Entropy Production and the Earth’s Climate
By ÉUGENIE CRÉMER, MATTHIAS CUNTZ, GRAHAM D. FARQUHAR, and GARTH W.
PALTRIDGE
http://www.rsbs.anu.edu.au/ResearchGroups/EBG/documents/TechnicalReport_MEP.pdf
Maximum entropy production as a constraint on the climate system
Supervisors: Jonathan Gregory, R´emi Tailleux, Maarten Ambaum
http://www.met.rdg.ac.uk/phd/topics/descriptions/jg.pdf
*
For a critique of entropy production principles, I would recommend — for whatever my recommendation is worth:
Classification and discussion of macroscopic entropy production principles
Stijn Bruers
(Submitted on 20 Apr 2006 (v1), revised 5 Sep 2006 (this version, v2), latest version 2 May 2007 (v3))
http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0604482v2
Personally, I tend towards a kind of minimalist metaphysics — one that consists of nothing more nor less than an analysis of the subject-object relationship for a being possessing volitional awareness — in which one begins with the object that the subject is aware of and not the subject who is aware. This gives me a certain flexibility when it comes to the discoveries of science.
*
One thought, though, we have discovered a form of microscopic irreversibility — an arrow to time — in subatomic particle decay. Illya Prigogine had suggested that there would be a slight violation of the law of exponential decay. This isn’t it. But it is an arrow to time.
And now it is time for me to call it a night.
5 August 2008 at 3:34
Ray Ladbury, 364, and quantum weirdness. Thanks for the response.
I’m well out of my depth, and not qualified to opine, but seems to me, we have organs which can perceive photons. We didn’t know that, until physics and biology explained the mechanism. Might be that consciousness is in some respect a quantum phenomenon, or has quantum aspects, and microtubules might suggest a plausible mechanism. If that was somewhere near the case, then one might well expect for weird ESP stuff to occur, via entanglement or whatever. It’s all vague hand waves on my part. I’ve read the several different possible interpretations available and am in no position to say which, if any, is correct. But I am personally convinced that the mind has powers which can be trained and developed which most people would regard as ‘impossible’, and just as for visual seeing, there must be some physical explanation. But science is good at this stuff. The little chinks that open up new vistas. Strange anomalies, like friction causing static electricity so a comb can pick up fragments of paper were once equally bizarre and mysterious. I’m curious. I want to know. How ? Why ? What does it mean ? I enjoy having my mind boggled. Richard Feynman’s lectures explaining quantum physics for ordinary folks are one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen, as great as a Shakespeare play
5 August 2008 at 3:50
Timothy Chase, 367, Thanks for the suggestion. There’s something deeply poignant, the moment when a human being knows that he or she knows something new, something nobody else knows or has ever known. And then comes the hard struggle of trying to explain it to others. ‘After nirvana, washing the dishes’.
5 August 2008 at 6:10
Like most readers here, I’m highly skeptical of claims about paranormal phenomena. But I suspect I also share this with most readers: I have only a passing familiarity with the available research. My personal opinion is that it’s bunk — but I haven’t got the data or knowledge of the literature to back that up.
One thing I’m sure of: it’s off topic for this blog. I’ll bet those who wish to debate the subject can find a blog for which it’s relevant.
5 August 2008 at 6:32
John Mathon posts:
Tell it to the Ukrainians.
WHAT “satellite survey?” Cite a source. And up 20% measured how? Not in biomass, that’s for sure. It sounds awfully like you just made this up.
Cite a source. I don’t believe you.
You never took a statistics course, did you?
Tim Ball’s errors
Tilo Reber’s errors
Cite a source. I don’t believe you.
Cite a source.
Science doesn’t deal in proof. Mathematics or formal logic does. Science deals in empirical evidence.
No, they are not.
No, it isn’t. You don’t know what you’re talking about. At best, you have increased CFCs confused with decreased GHGs (and none of them are decreased in real life).
The models don’t predict any such thing. Who told you they did?
You obviously don’t know anything about climate models, or you wouldn’t post such ignorant falsehoods. The GCMs correctly predicted the magnitude of global warming, the cooling of the stratosphere, polar amplification, decreased diurnal temperature variation, increased droughts in continental interiors (ask the Australians), and the duration and magnitude of the cooling from the eruption of Mount Pinatubo.
Been reading Monckton?
Papers in climatology are normally published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, Geophysical Research Letters, Atmospheric Science, or if of enough interdisciplinary interest, Science or Nature. The newsletter Monckton published in isn’t even peer-reviewed.
The rest of the repetitive arguments snipped for brevity.
5 August 2008 at 6:40
SecularAnimist writes:
I’ve already told you I believe in psi, yet you continue to post the same ad hominem argument. Insulting the people who disagree with you does nothing to prove your case. Want to convince me there’s objective evidence for psi? Show me a double-blind study in a peer-reviewed journal — and not a parapsychology journal. And by “double blind” I am implying adequate controls, not the sort of controls that let the experiment produce positive results when the experimenters are believers but negative or inconsistent results when they aren’t.
5 August 2008 at 7:38
Secular Animist,
I am rather an agnostic on matters of the paranormal. However, I would be more receptive to it if someone could posit a credible mechanism that did not violate the known laws of physics. Telekenesis has some pretty serious problems with energy conservation. Precognition is a little difficult to rationalize in a Universe where time (and information) flows in only one direction. Telepathy seems the most plausible, but again, since many practitioners suggest the effect doesn’t decrease with distance, energy conservation again becomes an issue. I am not being flippant or dismissive. I have trouble being receptive to paranormal studies for the same reason I tend to beleive climate science–that position is consistent with both the physics and the evidence.
Now if you posit a cause outside the physical realm, well and good. But somehow that cause must interact with the physical realm, and that too, causes difficulties. It seems to preclude scientific study. I mean no offense. This is just my thinking on the matter.
5 August 2008 at 7:49
John Mashey #366:
Argument from consequences (”Do you really want to be an atheist, knowing that it undermines morality?”). There is a fancy Latin name for this fallacy…
I have no problem granting that A3 < A1 ~ A2. My problem is that even A1 >> what in any other science would already have been considered highly convincing evidence (as prof Eysenck put it “[t]o the hilt” already in the 1960’s). I don’t think that the folks in B3 are nearly as intellectually or actually dishonest as the leadership in B1 and B2. Just a blind spot, mostly. And yes, that even happens to scientists
As to the argument that psi “doesn’t fit in”, yes, it seems that way, doesn’t it. Doesn’t that tickle your curiosity? Occam was never meant to exclude fields of investigation, and this one is very small already.
5 August 2008 at 8:27
BPL FYI re:373
This data from the EMDAT database would seem to contradict John’s statement somewhat (notwithstanding the complex issues regarding the recording of such fatalities). Particularly as the noughties have got a couple of years to run. Whilst I agree, fatalities have certainly reduced in recent decades, the suggestion that they have fallen 99+% is clearly a misrepresentation of the Global record
Sorry I can’t do a table but the following series represents the recorded deaths attributed to natural disasters for the period 1900 - 2008, by decade (e.g. 1900-1910, 1911-1920 …) and as a percentage of all recorded deaths (i.e. 28,516,773)
16.29; 22.38; 19.39; 4.06; 13.52; 7.57; 7.36; 2.18; 2.89; 1.71; 2.64
http://www.emdat.be/Database/AdvanceSearch/advsearch.php
5 August 2008 at 8:50
Rod B:
I’d call it a variation on groupthink, rather than religiosity, but at some level we’re probably talking about the same thing. High-consensus groups are extremely susceptible to groupthink, in-group and out-group bias effects, dogmatism, etc. Which is something we would all do well to bear in mind.
5 August 2008 at 8:57
Even if it was true that the death rate had diminished, etc, it’s fairly easily restored
http://www.newstatesman.com/books/2008/07/nuclear-weapons-atomic-war
5 August 2008 at 9:20
Jim (361), yes, losing entire ecosystems would be a problem.
5 August 2008 at 9:45
Rod, 9:20 AM
> losing entire ecosystems would be a problem
Is.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22losing+entire+ecosystems%22
Confronting a biome crisis: global disparities of habitat loss and protection
Ecology Letters
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118669233/abstract
VL: 8, NO: 1, PG: 23-29, YR: 2005
US: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1461-0248.2004.00686.x
5 August 2008 at 9:58
To Barton Paul Levenson:
First of all, I am not arguing here for the existence of so-called “psychic” or psi phenomena. I am trying to make a point about skepticism vs. pseudo-skepticism.
I reference parapsychology for several reasons, among them: (1) I have studied it for some time and know quite a bit about it; (2) I also am quite familiar with the varieties of “skepticism” towards parapsychology, ranging from what I would call genuine open-minded skepticism (which I have acknowledged might lead someone who actually studies the subject to either agree or disagree that the occurrence of psi phenomena has been scientifically established), to what I would call close-minded pseudo-skepticism, including organized groups who are hostile to and actively seek to discourage and discredit research in the field); (3) I see some parallels between the varieties of “skepticism” that address parapsychology and those that address global warming research; and (4) I find those parallels particularly illuminating precisely because the actual subject matter and the state of scientific knowledge of parapsychology and climate science are so different (though there are occasional parallels such as the challenges of distinguishing signal from noise in results).
I have not engaged in any “ad hominem“. In the sentence you quote, I asked readers to “ask yourself to what extent your views are based on an a priori hostility to the very idea of psychic phenomena”. I asked that question because I think it is valuable to recognize that the faults we find in others — such as the a priori hostility to the conclusions of climate science that seems to drive so many “AGW skeptics” — can reside in ourselves as well.
You have evidently already asked yourself that question, and answered that your views are not based on any such hostility. Fine. I believe you. I think that’s entirely legitimate. As I have now said repeatedly, I agree that genuinely open-minded skeptics might very well examine the state of psi research today and come to differing conclusions about what it has and has not established.
On the other hand, based on my own knowledge of the field, I think that what seems to me to be your harshly negative view of parapsychology and parapsychologists is unfair and unfounded. Even Ray Hyman, who is a founding member of CSICOP, and in my view not skeptical but antagonistic to the field, has stated that the practicing parapsychologists whose facilities he visited and whose work he evaluated (in the course of a study commissioned by the US Army) were serious scientists conducting their research with integrity, according to the best standards of science, even as he concluded that they had not proved that such phenomena exist.
BPL wrote: “Show me a double-blind study in a peer-reviewed journal — and not a parapsychology journal.”
That seems an odd request. Would you require that climate scientists publish their results in the peer-reviewed journals of some other unrelated field, before you would consider their work credible? It is certainly true that parapsychologists have encountered disinterest and even hostility towards publishing their work in scientific journals outside the field. As the New York Times reported on the occasion of the closing of the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) Lab, which for nearly 30 years studied mind-matter interactions and remote perception (as described in the book The Margins Of Reality):
I appreciate that the moderators have indulged this discussion and I want to again emphasize that I am not trying to engage in an off-topic discussion of parapsychology, but rather to reference parapsychology in order to make a point about the varieties of “skepticism”. But at this point I think I have either made that point, or failed to make it — that’s up to other readers to decide — and I will not test the patience of the moderators with any further comments on the subject.
5 August 2008 at 10:00
#377… More:
Because then I thought “Oh he just means natural disaster deaths have reduced by 99+% in just the US and Canada”
Nope!
Same thing, decade to decade deaths (1900 - 2008) as a percentage of total N. American deaths (92,915)
10.04; 57.12; 3.51; 4.25; 1.86; 3.53; 3.86; 4.25; 3.53; 3.93; 4.13
PS. I assume I’m correct in attributing the incredibly high 1920 total to Spanish Flu (EMDAT classes a total 50,000 loss in that period as being ‘Epidemic’ related
5 August 2008 at 10:25
Nice work, Hugh! Thank you.
5 August 2008 at 10:51
Ray Ladbury wrote: “I am rather an agnostic on matters of the paranormal. However, I would be more receptive to it if someone could posit a credible mechanism that did not violate the known laws of physics.”
I would be more than happy to share my own thoughts on that matter, but it would be way, way off-topic and I fear I have strained the hospitality of the moderators already. Perhaps some other time, in some other forum. Suffice it to say that I regard the term “nature” to be synonymous with “all that is”, and therefore all phenomena are natural phenomena, and are accessible to study and understanding through the methods of natural science. In my view the term “supernatural” has no referent; if something exists, then it is part of nature. If pyschokinesis, precognition, remote perception and even something resembling reincarnation do in fact occur then they are natural phenomena, and they can be studied and understood by science. That’s the entire premise of parapsychology. Whether such phenomena can be understood in the context of current scientific knowledge, or whether they represent aspects of nature that are beyond our current knowledge and understanding, is in my view an open question. I would commend to your attention Dean Radin’s book Entangled Minds if you are interested in pursuing this subject further.
5 August 2008 at 11:16
Rod B, kevin:
It’s not really about groupthink. I’ve just re-read Rod B’s early comments, and his intent, in hindsight is fairly clear. But he kept using the wrong terms. And his attempts at clarification also included the wrong terms (or rather, terms used incorrectly in a technical sense).
He was corrected, by tamino amongst others, and even accepted that correction. But then went on to say things like:
“Monckton also talks of downward trend since 1998. That too is accurate. […] You guys keep answering, in essence, ‘..but he’s a dork’, or ‘it’s meaningless’, or ‘it’s statistically insignificant or misleading’. I knows dat; wasn’t what I was asking.”
AFTER his use of trend was corrected, he went on to use it the wrong way. Saying “I knows dat; wasn’t what I was asking” doesn’t help, because, like it or not, what he MEANT isn’t what he SAID. It’s an unfortunate situation, but you can’t fault people for responding to what was said, when the same error was repeated several times in followup comments.
5 August 2008 at 11:17
Ray #375: yes, those are important constraints on what makes psi ‘tick’.
…and you forgot the most important one: if there are folks out there who can influence or foresee the turn of the roul-ette wheel or the roll of the die, how come ca-sin-os the world over are all in all pretty sound business operations?
5 August 2008 at 14:06
Reduction of deaths due to natural disasters.
If true this is completely unsurprising.
Just 2 examples.
1) Canvey Island Floods UK 1953.
e.g. http://canveyisland.org.uk/06-floods/5-clippings/intro_clippings.htm
The death toll was higher than any comparable recent UK flood event (like 2007) due to lack of warning - the storm surge had gone down the whole east coast in the hours preceding but there was no organised system to pass warnings on. Furthermore as seen in last year’s UK floods the military and civil authorities were able to bring to bear a comprehensive command and control system backed up by assets such as helicopters, even inshore rescue teams from RNLI were bought in to assist.
As an aside; this event lead to the formation of RAYNET, British Radio Ham organisation dedicated to assisting in emergencies. http://www.norfolkraynet.org.uk/page5a.html
2) The Boxing Day Asian Tsunami,
As an example of an overwhelming catastrophe affecting “undeveloped” societies (i.e. not high tech and well resourced like the UK). Unlike the smaller catastrophe of Krakatoa, massive international aid was rapidly bought to bear, saving many lives that may otherwise have been lost in the aftermath. As a result of the media many more people now know not to stand and gawp if the sea rapidly recedes (if you didn’t know; you should run for high ground - assuming there is high ground if you ever see such a thing, you’re now in a position to contribute to the reduction in casualties). Furthermore the Pacific Tsunami warning system model is being rolled out in the Indian Ocean, which should further reduce casualties if the same thing happens again.
I don’t want to open old wounds or start a pointless spat, but I consider this a crucial point: The American presence in the Asian Tsunami effort and aftermath was/is commendable, and typical of the US. That is interesting to note in view of New Orleans - capability is a pre-requisite, but organisation is critical. Both AGW and Peak Oil have the capability to damage our capability.
None of this should be construed as support in any way for John Mathon’s post #325 which I personally consider facile.
Cobbly Out.
5 August 2008 at 15:32
Re John Mathon, just google his name+global warming or climate change.
‘Nough said.
5 August 2008 at 16:15
Can there be any better journal to learn about psi powers than the Journal of Scientific Exploration, an all around source for denialists and denial. As they themselves say
“While one organization may cover parapsychology, another consciousness, a third exotic energy sources, and a fourth UFO inquires, the SSE cover the gamut&