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MA Rodger at 11:42 AM on 24 November 2011Economic Growth and Climate Change Part 1 - Factors Influencing CO2 Emissions
Sphaerica @16 You're asking a bit too much here. The lag (always present) is variable in length and perhaps could be due to the season the El Nino/La Nina occur in. Also the ampitude. Or whatever. That use of an index like MEI comes so close to the CO2 rises with only a starightforward linear re-scaling I fine pretty impressive. And getting a better fit would require a step into the modelling arena, a major piece of work. The “2002 on” section – I wonder that if the next El Nino sees CO2 rises passing well above 3ppm pa, those wobbles wouldn't then look so odd. Your requested 'third line' will require a mix of annual data & monthly data so this is a little more of a task than something done over a cup of tea. And I do wonder what would be gained by plotting CO2 emissions as a separate line. If this does gain a place on my to-do list, I would see more to be gained by subtracting the emissions increase to leave the wobble without the trend. (Of course, it doesn't have to be me that creates the graph when the data is available to all.) MEI data monthly CO2 data CO2 emissions – FF & cement CO2 emissions – land useModerator Response: [Sph] Links fixed. When you post links, try not to use "curly" (“curly” instead of "straight") quotes (or to copy from Word, which tends to automatically give you curly quotes). They aren't the same (to HTML) as straight quotes, and hence the problems (the "extraneous characters" were the curly quotes themselves). -
Bert from Eltham at 11:38 AM on 24 November 2011Pielke Sr. Misinforms High School Students
I wonder if Pielke would think that it would be quite acceptable for me to urinate and defecate in my or any other street. Or maybe his street or front yard. Could I just throw my rubbish anywhere I liked? Say out in the same street. Surely as I am only some miniscule proportion of any large group this would not matter? There is no linkage proved with my waste and any disease or annoyance. So if we all did this and put billions of tonnes of this waste into the environment it has absolutely no harmful effect! My body waste and rubbish are very nutritious foods for all sorts of living things such as plants and bacteria and will neatly add to productive food for all! In the middle ages people used to throw their rubbish into the street and waste ran down the gutters. It did them no harm in fact they flourished along with rats and other benign native animals. They even grew grapes in Scotland! We just do not need sanitation or clean water as it costs far too much. Anyway nature or providence will take care of it. There is no evidence that all this expenditure will make an iota of difference! All these people worried about 'pollution' are just anally retentive. They have a secret agenda for world domination by regulating our lack of anal retention. Bert -
muoncounter at 11:04 AM on 24 November 2011Economic Growth and Climate Change Part 1 - Factors Influencing CO2 Emissions
MA Rodger, I'm not seeing the point of this wobblometry. Hansen and Sato's 2004 analysis was reproduced here by D. Kelly O'Day.If you are suggesting there's some sort of causal relationship between MEI and deltaCO2, what is it and why does it work? And why would that be important, as it is little more than an oscillation on a rising trend?
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J Bowers at 10:45 AM on 24 November 2011Climategate 2.0: Denialists Serve Up Two-Year-Old Turkey
lurgee -- "Thus far, the most 'exploitable' line seem to be Phil Jones's comment about the IPCC being above national FOI requests, which seems a reasonable enough statement when referring to an international body" I'm sure that's covered in the first set of emails and jumped on by denialists last time (Caspar Amman, IPCC?), but probably just an email that wasn't cherrypicked for the first release. Zombiegate/Sloppy-seconds-gate/Whatevergate. Same crap, different conference. -
Bob Lacatena at 10:43 AM on 24 November 2011Economic Growth and Climate Change Part 1 - Factors Influencing CO2 Emissions
MA Rodger, What about 2002 on? What about amplitude, as well as an apparent "lag" in some cases but not others. Your eyecrometer seems to be malfunctioning. You are seeing strong correlation and stopping your thought process dead because, in your mind, it's "close enough." Again, why only include those two variables on your graph? Add emissions, then you can make your case more clearly and completely. -
MA Rodger at 10:39 AM on 24 November 2011Economic Growth and Climate Change Part 1 - Factors Influencing CO2 Emissions
Sphaerica @14 My apologies but I'm at a loss what you mean by "a lot of major disconnects." This leads me to wonder what you are defining as "short-term". The CO2 increase trace is characterised by a series of wobbles superimposed onto a rising trend of increasing slope. With the exception of the volcano years (63, 82 &91) the MEI matches the CO2 wobble for wobble with perhaps the exception of 2005-8. If the wobbles are the short-term features, surely ENSO represented by MEI is "the major short term factor." That's where I'm coming from. Until I can grasp where you're coming from, thoughts of "a third line" (which will require the use of annual data on a month graph) would be premature. -
Bob Lacatena at 10:30 AM on 24 November 2011Newcomers, Start Here
141, imthedragon,So it is really the atmosphere and not greenhouse gasses that provides the stability of the temperature...
No. You are very grossly understating the role of greenhouse gases. As you already pointed out H2O is a very strong greenhouse gas and, as both skywatcher and I have explained, it dominates near the surface. So where do temperatures vary the most on earth, in a desert or in a rainforest? The latter has nice, cool trees to shade you, and yet it is stiflingly, achingly hot during the day and gives you little respite at night, too. The desert has burning sands in the day, but temperatures plummet at night. The difference lies in water vapor, the powerful greenhouse gas, that is pervasive in a tropical rain forest and prevents it from losing heat, but almost totally absent in a desert and so allows the heat to escape the moment the sun goes down. -
Bob Lacatena at 10:22 AM on 24 November 2011Newcomers, Start Here
140, imthedragon,CO2 and water vapor both absorb infrared from a nearly identical portion of the spectrum
This is wrong because, just like the radiation/collision aspect of things, the system is far more complex than that. It's not nearly as simple as just saying they overlap, so the change can't matter. For example, the concentration of CO2 proportionally in the atmosphere is fairly constant regardless of altitude, while the concentration of H2O drops the higher you go, because temperatures drop as you get higher and the ability to hold moisture in the air is temperature dependent. Why does this matter? Because a big part of what is changing, and causes greater surface temperatures, is that the altitude from which the planet radiates away its energy is increasing. The earth must have a mean global temperature of 255˚K when seen from space. It must, because that's the amount of energy that it absorbs from the sun. That can't change. What can change is the distribution of energy beneath the point where it radiates the energy into space, and the altitude where the radiation occurs. Picture the atmosphere, for the sake of argument, as a series of layers. Every layer absorbs IR, gets warmer, and radiates IR up and down. Above the lowermost layer, every layer is receiving IR from above and below. As you go up the air is less and less dense, with proportionally less H2O and the same concentration of but less total CO2. So as you go up more and more IR succeeds in radiating upwards, working it's way out into space, rather than downward and warming the surface. When there is less CO2, the layers above have less chance of trapping the outgoing energy. The radiation to space effectively occurs at a lower altitude. With more CO2, the layers above trap more radiation. Things progress upward, and the ultimate radiation to space occurs from higher layers. Add H2O, which overlaps with the CO2 absorption range. But H2O is not evenly distributed. It is more present in the lower layers, and more rarefied in the upper layers. So if you add CO2, and radiate the energy into space from high enough up, the overlap of CO2 and H2O is irrelevant. CO2 dominates. -
skywatcher at 10:07 AM on 24 November 2011Newcomers, Start Here
#140 imthedragon - it's important to remember that, although there's overlap between CO2 and water vapour, one condenses and precipitates at Earthly temperatures and one does not. Additionally, in the upper atmosphere, it's the radiation from CO2 that dominates due to pressure effects (see for example this RealClimate article or this excellent series by ScienceOfDoom). So while it's tempting to think of CO2 and water vapour similarly, you cannot, as one is doomed to be a feedback to the other's forcing, and one is not so prevalent or effective in the thin upper atmosphere. -
adelady at 08:22 AM on 24 November 2011The Debunking Handbook Part 4: The Worldview Backfire Effect
I notice that advertising companies have picked up on this. Can't remember the company (I've already got mine) but "I'm not trying to save the world. I'm just saving up for a trampoline." is advertising genius. -
John Hartz at 07:39 AM on 24 November 2011World Energy Outlook 2011: “The door to 2°C is closing”
Suggested reading: “Climate-Control Policies Cannot Rely on Carbon Capture and Storage: That’s My Side of The Economist Debates” by Joe Romm, Climate Progress, Nov 22, 2011 Click here to access this article. -
imthedragn at 06:39 AM on 24 November 2011Newcomers, Start Here
So it is really the atmosphere and not greenhouse gasses that provides the stability of the temperature. Instead of frigid cold overnight and scorching heat during the day, the temperature stays more moderate because of the atmosphere even if the atmosphere were devoid of greenhouse gasses. The additional heating of the greenhouse gasses by their absorbtion of the infrared radiated from the planet's surface allows that average temperature to be nudged a bit higher.Response:[DB] "even if the atmosphere were devoid of greenhouse gasses"
Umm, no. Please read Atmospheric CO2: Principal Control Knob
Governing Earth’s Temperature -
imthedragn at 06:31 AM on 24 November 2011Newcomers, Start Here
Sphaerica, that is by far the best response I have ever seen to that question I had of Mars. The fact that surface temperatures are both much cooler and much warmer than they would be otherwise and that the "global warming" simply refers to the shift in those average temperatures really puts things in perspective form me. The remaining item in my mind that I need to clear up is defining a "static" greenhouse effect. By that I mean if we raise the CO2 level by x amount and then keep it there perpetually, the global average temperature will eventually stabailize to what. In my mind, regardless of how much you try to categorize things as forcings or as feedbacks, CO2 and water vapor both absorb infrared from a nearly identical portion of the spectrum, I still conceptualize them as if they were acting as a single gas. -
John Hartz at 06:13 AM on 24 November 2011Climategate 2.0: Denialists Serve Up Two-Year-Old Turkey
Suggested reading: Real 'Climategate' Scandal: UK Police Spent Measly $8,843 In Failed Attempt to Identify Criminal Hacker” DeSmog Blog, Nov 22, 2011 Click here to access this article. -
Bob Lacatena at 06:12 AM on 24 November 2011Economic Growth and Climate Change Part 1 - Factors Influencing CO2 Emissions
12, MA Rodger, I see a lot of major disconnects in your graph between MEI and CO2, which clearly points to MEI being only one factor, and not in any way the major short term factor in comparison to emissions. Clearly there is something missing, and changes in actual emissions are the obvious candidate. You should amend your graph to clearly include a third line demonstrating actual human emissions each year. -
John Hartz at 06:08 AM on 24 November 2011Climategate 2.0: Denialists Serve Up Two-Year-Old Turkey
Suggested reading: “East Anglia SwiftHack Email Nontroversy Returns: What You Need To Know”, DeSmog Blog, Nov 22, 2011 Click here to access this article. -
Bob Lacatena at 05:57 AM on 24 November 2011Newcomers, Start Here
138, imthedragon, The thinner atmosphere is crucial. People often get so caught up in the radiative aspects of CO2 (and other greenhouse gases) that they lose track of the collisional transfer of energy. In the Martian atmosphere there is little to be heated except for the CO2 itself, so radiation dominates, and energy transfer up and out is quick, even if it must "make some stops along the way." In the Earth's atmosphere a very, very important piece of the puzzle is that closer to the surface, where the air is denser, CO2 absorbs IR, but before (usually) it is able to re-emit that energy, a collision with O2 or N2 transfers that energy to those molecules, which do then not as easily or as readily emit energy in the infrared. The end result is that surface radiation heats the CO2, and the CO2 heats the surrounding atmosphere. As one gets higher and higher in altitude the atmosphere becomes less and less dense, and the balance shifts, so that eventually radiation becomes the key factor, and CO2 acts to cool rather than to warm (i.e. collisions between O2/N2 and CO2 transfer energy from the O2/N2 to the CO2, which is then emitted as IR and potentially lost to space). Admittedly, this interaction is not crucial to the greenhouse gas effect (see Venus, which has roughly the same proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere, but where the atmosphere is far more dense and the GHG effect still dominates). But it is important to what happens on Earth, and to understanding some of the differences between the Earth, Mars and Venus. -
imthedragn at 05:39 AM on 24 November 2011Newcomers, Start Here
GREAT comments gentlemen. Look again at Mars. The realtive amount of CO2 is higher (by several thousand percent), but the absolute amount of CO2 exceeds that of the earth in excess of 10 fold. The thinner atmosphere effects the ability to retain heat. It also effects the "well mixed" amounts of CO2 in the dry upper atmosphere the same way. where the air is half as thin, the greenhouse effect of CO2 at that altitude is less than half (no idea by how much, just believe it not to be a linear realtionship) -
r.pauli at 05:20 AM on 24 November 2011The Debunking Handbook Part 4: The Worldview Backfire Effect
Wikipedia has a nifty list of human biases http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases -
Bob Lacatena at 05:17 AM on 24 November 2011Climategate 2.0: Denialists Serve Up Two-Year-Old Turkey
29, Albatross, I would note that when the problem ripens, and adaptation is required because hesitant, faltering, too-little-too-late mitigation has failed, the rich countries will successfully if not easily adapt as well they can, armed with reasonably robust economies, infrastructures, industry and technology. The poor countries (and poor people within rich countries) will adapt as people traditionally have, by up and moving. Mass migrations, refugees, population culling by starvation and resource wars, and more will be the adaptive tools of the poor, developing countries. Everyone will adapt, just in different ways. -
Bob Lacatena at 05:10 AM on 24 November 2011The Debunking Handbook Part 4: The Worldview Backfire Effect
5, Ian, Excellent point, and something that always amuses me. Climate science "believers" are often accused of being in a religious faith (thus completely subtracting the word science from any meaningful sense in the debate). Yet this is exactly how deniers are viewed, as clinging to their position religiously, in spite of the evidence. And yet, now we must turn this back on ourselves, and ask if we aren't being religious in our secular appreciation of the science, by projecting this religious faith view of belief on the deniers who project it on us. Perhaps it is us who are so religiously wedded to science and facts that we can't see that we are unable to shed that burden and free ourselves from the need to believe in evidence and logic, or at least to realize that the evidence and logic, no matter how strong, are countered by the equally powerful forces of wishful thinking and common sense. [Okay, sorry, I just can't bring myself to even imply that full scale denial is anything but a bizarre, psychological impediment.]Man in Black: All right. Where is the poison? The battle of wits has begun. It ends when you decide and we both drink, and find out who is right... and who is dead. Vizzini: But it's so simple. All I have to do is divine from what I know of you: are you the sort of man who would put the poison into his own goblet or his enemy's? Now, a clever man would put the poison into his own goblet, because he would know that only a great fool would reach for what he was given. I am not a great fool, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you. But you must have known I was not a great fool, you would have counted on it, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me. Man in Black: You've made your decision then? Vizzini: Not remotely. Because iocane comes from Australia, as everyone knows, and Australia is entirely peopled with criminals, and criminals are used to having people not trust them, as you are not trusted by me, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you. Man in Black: Truly, you have a dizzying intellect. Vizzini: Wait till I get going! Now, where was I? Man in Black: Australia. Vizzini: Yes, Australia. And you must have suspected I would have known the powder's origin, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me. Man in Black: You're just stalling now. Vizzini: You'd like to think that, wouldn't you? You've beaten my giant, which means you're exceptionally strong, so you could've put the poison in your own goblet, trusting on your strength to save you, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you. But, you've also bested my Spaniard, which means you must have studied, and in studying you must have learned that man is mortal, so you would have put the poison as far from yourself as possible, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me. Man in Black: You're trying to trick me into giving away something. It won't work. Vizzini: IT HAS WORKED! YOU'VE GIVEN EVERYTHING AWAY! I KNOW WHERE THE POISON IS!
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Albatross at 05:07 AM on 24 November 2011Climategate 2.0: Denialists Serve Up Two-Year-Old Turkey
Dana @30, His/her motives also further undermine the whole "whistle blower" myth. -
dana1981 at 05:04 AM on 24 November 2011Climategate 2.0: Denialists Serve Up Two-Year-Old Turkey
The Climategate hacker is clearly very misguided and misinformed in his misplaced motives for releasing these stolen emails. As a result, he's harming those he claims to want to help (poor nations). We'll have a post on this subject in the near future. -
muoncounter at 05:02 AM on 24 November 2011Economic Growth and Climate Change Part 1 - Factors Influencing CO2 Emissions
MA Rodger#10: "The wobbles you tabulate & shown in the lower graph are climatic wobbles not economic ones." Sphaerica is, of course, correct; the growth of atmospheric CO2 is modulated by both economic activity and the absorption by the oceans. But emissions are clearly driven by economics and global events:data from CDIAC, graph source Finer scale graphics reveal no coincidences in this behavior. The annual increment in atmospheric CO2 bumps up and down, but tracks emissions very consistently.
--source
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MA Rodger at 05:01 AM on 24 November 2011Economic Growth and Climate Change Part 1 - Factors Influencing CO2 Emissions
Sphaerica @11 I don't think one displaces the other. Surely they just have different impacts. The short-term wobbles from the climate are going to be there whatever the emissions. It's the emissions, driven by economics, that ramps up the CO2 over the longer term. And to hone my graph-upliading skills, a wobble graph for you. (Hey, spot the volcanoes!) -
Albatross at 04:14 AM on 24 November 2011Climategate 2.0: Denialists Serve Up Two-Year-Old Turkey
This excellent article from Richard Black at the BBC is well worth the read. "I have it from a very good source that it absolutely was a hack, not a leak by a "concerned" UEA scientist, as has been claimed in some circles. The Norfolk Police clearly see it as a criminal act too, a spokesman telling me that "the contents [of the new release] will be of interest to our investigation which is ongoing" And "In some reports, these figures were combined to form $37 trillion. But the bulk of that is to feed power to the poverty-stricken people FOIA 2011 cares so much about - nothing to do with climate change." And "The majority of poor countries lobby for more, not less, action on climate change" -
Grignr at 04:02 AM on 24 November 2011The Debunking Handbook Part 4: The Worldview Backfire Effect
Interesting examples! Confirmation bias has many causes and is difficult to "turn off," no less so for climate science than for other domains. There's a sort of opposite effect to the self-affirmation findings in the post. Specifically, showing your "credentials" on a topic can leave you free to express the opposite of what the credentials imply. For instance, proclaiming yourself to be non-racist first can make you more likely to display racism later, such as making a race-based hiring decision. This would seem to point in the opposite direction to the self-affirmation effects; I don't know if these two have ever been reconciled. (good ref is Monin, B. & Miller, D. T. (2001), Moral credentials and the expression of prejudice, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81). And I'm not trying to be contentious, but it's important to note that a die-hard WUWT fan could read this post and think "Yes, confirmation bias is exactly why those SkS and Real Climate people believe what they do. If only they could open their eyes and drop their preconceptions." The processes that underlie, say, confirmation bias, or the illusion of truth effect, don't work one way for info that matches the real world and another way for info that's fantasy, they'll operate no matter what the actual veracity of the information. -
Albatross at 04:01 AM on 24 November 2011Climategate 2.0: Denialists Serve Up Two-Year-Old Turkey
The real motivation for this whole affair is so transparent, and I sincerely hope that the media, politicians and public are not duped a second time. First, this release of the emails stolen back in 2009 has occurred a week before the climate talks Durban. The emails were initially stolen before climate talks in Copenhagen in 2009. Second, the hackers have explained why they think this is necessary and it has nothing to do with the science. The hackers say: "One dollar can save a life" "Poverty is a death sentence. Nations must invest $37 trillion in energy technologies by 2030 to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions at sustainable levels." So this is about them pushing their ideological, and horribly misguided agenda. People really need to understand where this is coming from. It is not about transparency, scientific rigor, complying with vexatious FOI requests from "skeptics" and deniers, or the IPCC review process. This pathetic and desperate ploy is only about people who are in denial about AGW pushing their ideological agenda, in the process holding us all back and ultimately bestowing more suffering and pain and poverty on those very people who they so righteously allege to care so much about. They are using those poor people in developing nations as pawns in a political game. And who alleges to care so much about such poor people and who weaves their plight into their narrative to stall taking action on GHGs? Those in denial about AGW Monckton, Christy, Spencer and others. Spencer and McKitrick (Steve McIntyres buddy) are members of the Cornwall Alliance who believe that: "We believe Earth and its ecosystems — created by God’s intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence — are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting, admirably suited for human flourishing, and displaying His glory. Earth's climate system is no exception." In other words, burn fossil fuels at will because it (supposedly) helps the poor and the earth is self-regulating and self-correcting. -
Bob Lacatena at 04:00 AM on 24 November 2011Economic Growth and Climate Change Part 1 - Factors Influencing CO2 Emissions
10, MA Rodger, I'm not sure why this has to be an oversimplistic either-or. Clearly the two largest factors in CO2 level are going to be: 1) Economic activity which directly generates CO2 2) Ocean surface temperatures that directly impact the ability of the ocean to absorb (or even release) CO2 More activity generates more CO2 -- a lot more. Higher temperatures retard the ability of the ocean to absorb CO2 -- a lot more. Why must one completely displace the other? -
John Hartz at 03:37 AM on 24 November 2011Climategate 2.0: Denialists Serve Up Two-Year-Old Turkey
Suggested reading: "Climategate 2.0?: New Emails Hacked -- Pay No Attention to the Energy Industry Behind the Curtain" by Shawn Lawrence Otto*, The Huffington Post, Nov 23, 2011 Click here to access this article. *Author, 'Fool Me Twice'; science advocate; filmmaker; co-founder, Sciencedebate.org, -
Bob Loblaw at 02:55 AM on 24 November 2011The Debunking Handbook Part 3: The Overkill Backfire Effect
Sally@14: You've prompted me to download the guide. I also bought a copy of "Climate Change Denial" when it came out, but still haven't had the time to read it. Now there are two things on the list. Doug@15: From a Devil's Advocate position, I'd be tempted to argue the elitist opinion that "average intelligence" and "stupid" aren't mutually exclusive, depending on your definition of "stupid". For practical purposes, though, "stupid" (or a more diplomatic term) should be reserved for the small minority at the low end of the distribution. I am reminded of a comment on a course evaluation back in my teaching days that said "the mid-term was so hard that half the class got below average". My thought was "the mid-term was so easy that half the class got above average!". A first-year class, where the student clearly hadn't taken (or understood) statistics, yet. Another throwback from my teaching days: the course outline for the first-year climatology course (half of one term) was very similar to the outline for the third-year climatology course (a full semester). The level of detail in the course was much different, though. Start with simple explanations and gloss over the details, but have a way of coming back to the details when a deeper understanding is needed. The difficulty in the "debunking" process is that the "skeptical" position is often based on either a strawman version of the simple explanation (which might require details to show why it is wrong) or an inflation of the uncertainties in the details (thus trying to make it look as if climatologists know nothing). For that reason, the SkS Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced tabs are a great idea. Sometimes, however, complex subjects just require complex explanations. -
Tom Curtis at 02:51 AM on 24 November 2011Climategate 2.0: Denialists Serve Up Two-Year-Old Turkey
Further to my point (4) @25, Peter Thorne (one of the misquoted scientists) has this to say at Real Climate:"It seems that a couple of my mails have been highlighted by people wishing to take them out of context. Both related to a very early draft of the IPCC fourth assessment observations chapter that I was asked to review informally as part of the accepted report preparation pathway. This would have been in 2005 or 2006 not 2011. IPCC has several review cycles and numerous lead authors on each chapter to ensure balance and representivity. However, the very earliest drafts inevitably reflect the individual contributor’s perspectives. The review which I undertook was and still is intended to catch such cases and rectify before the formal reviews. I would note that none of the formal review versions retained the vast majority of the text that was being discussed in this email. In other words the process worked. I would note in passing that my understanding is that US FOIA precludes early drafts of papers and discussions thereof precisely because it is vital to be able to discuss fully and frankly scientific work prior to publication, peer review being a necessary but not adequate condition. It is good that scientists care about issues and imperative that they are allowed to discuss report and paper drafts openly if we want the best reports and papers possible."
Peter Thorne's full comment is well worth reading. -
Albatross at 02:51 AM on 24 November 2011Climategate 2.0: Denialists Serve Up Two-Year-Old Turkey
Robert @9, I agree, but only to a point. Surely, you being in academia, you know that discussions whether it be in person or by email can be heated and emails are often really badly worded/phrased. People (including scientists under pressure in a highly politicized playing field who are being antagonized and misrepresented by "skeptics") are not perfect and that holds for you, me, your boss and perhaps even the person in your field who you admire and respect the most. How would we hold up under such scrutiny and relentless pressure? I'll be honest, probably not very well at all, especially after a while. Let me give readers an example of how an email exchange can be distorted. I sent a draft of my first PhD paper to my committee, most of them thought that it was a good start but that it needed more work. But one of them said it was half baked science and that he did not want to be associated with it. That really hurt, and in some ways they were right, so I buckled down and in the end we produced a solid paper that made it though peer-review, and the person who was originally so unhappy remained on as an author. Now, imagine someone quote mining my emails. They could easily infer three things: i) That I am incompetent and that we were conducting "half baked" science. ii) That there was not consensus and we were in-fighting. iii) That in subsequent dialogue when I was defending certain choices that I was trying to hide or cover something up. Science is not pretty, email is an awkward form of communication, people say stupid things in emails (period). It would be nice (but naive) if that were not true, but that is reality. The thieves and ideologues know that. -
MA Rodger at 02:37 AM on 24 November 2011Economic Growth and Climate Change Part 1 - Factors Influencing CO2 Emissions
muoncounter @9 Absolutely true. 2010 was not a record year for CO2 level increase. The coincidence was simply this above average 2.3ppm (or 2.42) increase coincided with record emissions. I cannot agree with your final statement however. The wobbles you tabulate & shown in the lower graph are climatic wobbles not economic ones. They match the wobbles in ENSO pretty convincingly. -
Tom Curtis at 02:31 AM on 24 November 2011Climategate 2.0: Denialists Serve Up Two-Year-Old Turkey
MarkR @19&20: 1) There is a difference between auditing and replicating. The gold standard in science is that all results should be replicable, and results which are not replicable are considered suspect. To replicate a result, you design an identical or equivalent experiment, gather your own data, analyse them and publish the result. There is no need to have access to the original research's data in order to replicate the observations. The Met Offices (Hadley) and University of East Anglia (CRU) papers on global temperatures where clearly replicable based on the information released with their papers. I know that because their results have been replicated by NCDC, GISS, and most recently by BEST. In auditing, the "auditor" tries to use your exact original data, and to reproduce your stated techniques to ensure that they reproduce the results you claim they reproduce. The difference between them is that replication shows a result to be robust, while auditing shows that no fraud has been committed. However, if there is no reason to suspect fraud (and there is not, in this case) there is also no purpose in auditing. Consequently, it has not been the standard in science that raw data has been preserved after the publication of a paper. Still less has it been the standard that that raw data has been made available to any and all that request it. Indeed, before the advent of modern PC's and the internet, such a standard would have been impossible to satisfy. Clearly what the FOI requesters where attempting to do was to audit the HadCRUT index, not replicate it. Given that there was good reason to think the "audit" would be a hatchet job rather than a genuine audit, and given that this supposed standard of free release of all data was in fact not the common standard at the time, there was no ethical (as distinct from legal) reason for Jones to release the raw data. 2) It is very far from clear that we should move to a standard of free access to raw data. If we were to do so, it would prevent any scientific publication of results from private or military research. Such publication would require release of either propriety information, or sensitive military information. Given the frequency of research partnerships between universities and private (or military) researchers, much university research would also be unpublishable for the same reason. Further, such a standard imposes significant cost and time constraints on researchers who would then need to fund both storage and access of the data, and its distribution on request. Storage would also require periodic transfer of files to more modern storage media, and updating of file formats to meet modern protocols. Given the large amount of research scientists can be involved in, this is a large commitment. 3) As it happens, both considerations apply to HadCRU. The Hadley SST index used information obtained from navy ships that was sensitive for military reasons. CRUTEM used data from propriety sources (mostly national meteorological offices) that could not be released in raw form except by agreement. And in fact, most of the raw data was not kept by the CRU in the form of a single file in any event. 4) Finally, with respect to emails, the notion that scientist's communications should all be available for selective and out of context misrepresentation to a scientifically illiterate public is absurd. If scientists have to treat every interpersonal communication as a press conference (as they would need to in such a situation), that would preclude any brain-storming. Nothing would be a quicker bar to effective research than an effective bar to scientist's being able to kick ideas around with each other without fear of misrepresentation. -
Bob Lacatena at 02:22 AM on 24 November 2011Climategate 2.0: Denialists Serve Up Two-Year-Old Turkey
The comments on FOI say nothing more than anything that was already said in other e-mails. Clearly, the thieves went through every e-mail they could already, looking for the juiciest bits, and released them in 2009. Today, unable to hack into another source of fodder that they could manipulate and count on sorry bloggers like A-"the cause"-W to trumpet and misrepresent, they are left with instead releasing the stuff that didn't cut it the first time. They are counting on the fact that those same fools that crowed and bleated before will get their undies all in a bunch this time, too, and do it again, making a big, huge deal out of absolutely nothing (but even less nothing than the last time!), while giving a free pass to the thieves themselves, the shabby journalists that use this stuff for their own gain, and whatever selfish interests there are in the world who benefit from fooling the general public and undermining the science and the scientists. My sole consolation in this is that 10 or 20 years from now there's not going to be any doubt at all. Everyone is going to know and admit what is going on, and everyone is going to look back on this and the culprits -- not only the thieves, but far more importantly the suckers who fell for it and magnified it and used it to promote their own sad, distorted, and valueless position -- are going to be vilified. As they should be. -
muoncounter at 02:14 AM on 24 November 2011Economic Growth and Climate Change Part 1 - Factors Influencing CO2 Emissions
MA Rodger#7: "news that atmospheric CO2 had risen 2.3ppm over the year 2010 was but conicidence." Not sure what you mean by that 'coincidence'; nor does data from MLO show 2010 was a record year for CO2 concentration increase: year delta (ppm) 1998 2.93 1999 0.93 2000 1.62 2001 1.58 2002 2.53 2003 2.29 2004 1.56 2005 2.52 2006 1.76 2007 2.20 2008 1.62 2009 1.88 2010 2.42 Those figures suggest that global economic activity (both up and down) is a factor in the year-to-year rate of change. -
shoyemore at 02:09 AM on 24 November 2011Climategate 2.0: Denialists Serve Up Two-Year-Old Turkey
#19 MarkR FOIA issues are very 2009. I think the scientists involved took their lumps back then. Remember the enquires that found no manipulation of data and no wrongdoing? Scientists were just being chary of requests for items like computer code, demanding a lot of work to add comments and explanation, and for data from weather stations they had been asked not to release to 3rd parties. They were doubly cautious when the requests came from known "skeptics" and when the requests seemed frivolous and designed to cause maximum annoyance. The equiries were critical of UEA/ CRU in information sharing, and the process has been completely overhauled. So it seems to me to be grossly unfair to try and convict scientists twice, when they have already made amends for the offence after the first occasion. If these e-mails had shown continued flouting of the recommendations of the enquiries, you might have a point. BTW, the denialist Global Warming Policy Foundation also seems to havge a problem with FOIA requests. UK Minister attacks GWPF -
muoncounter at 01:57 AM on 24 November 2011Climategate 2.0: Denialists Serve Up Two-Year-Old Turkey
HH#17: "why all 220,000 email weren't released back in 2009." Sounds like someone wanted to have 'an ace in the hole;' tucked away for a time when the denial side is running on empty. They'll play this for all its (not really) worth, with plenty of breathless exaggeration to boot. But this is a ray of sunshine: Norfolk police have said the new set of emails is "of interest" to their investigation to find the perpetrator of the initial email release who has not yet been identified. So we have an email hacking scandal combined with what starts to look like a media-manipulation/public opinion management strategy. Isn't there a major self-proclaimed 'news' outlet already involved in such activities? -
MarkR at 01:54 AM on 24 November 2011Climategate 2.0: Denialists Serve Up Two-Year-Old Turkey
Tom Curtis @ 15 Post #19 was aimed at you, and I meant to conclude that I therefore still think that the data should have been made available asap. Although from a personal PoV, I understand that for the individuals involved it would have been a big sacrifice. They would have been prevented from doing real work whilst they cleared up the misunderstandings and smears that would come from the release, all to deal with the miniscule chance that there was a major correction needed to their work which would be found thanks to this. -
MarkR at 01:51 AM on 24 November 2011Climategate 2.0: Denialists Serve Up Two-Year-Old Turkey
But Tom, ethically I can't see any reason not to accede to FoI. As a public funded scientist your data and methods should be available to the public on demand. It's that simple IMO. Knowing that others will manipulate, lie and just plain fail to understand the science to help spread ignorance... I can see why some people would see this as 'extenuating circumstances'. I'm not certain of the ethics of it myself, but I would still lean towards saying it should all be available. Even if you _know_ that liars and spinners will be horrendously immoral in their use of it. -
Anne-Marie Blackburn at 01:48 AM on 24 November 2011Climategate 2.0: Denialists Serve Up Two-Year-Old Turkey
There is an excellent article in The Guardian - Attacks on climate scientists are the real 'climategate'. The reaction in the UK has been fairly muted - everyone, including the Daily Mail, is questioning the timing of this release. And everyone, from what I've read, has made it clear the work of scientists was found to be reliable following Climategate 1.0 even if there were problems with FOI requests. It looks like a spectacular own goal by whoever released this batch of carefully selected quotes. -
Bob Lacatena at 01:44 AM on 24 November 2011Newcomers, Start Here
136, imthedragn, A rise in humidity would cause warming, but what would cause the rise in humidity other than warming? And as soon as something else (anything else) swung temperatures back down, humidity would drop. The key to this is that humidity is almost entirely dependent on temperatures. If temperatures rise, for whatever reason, humidity will increase, raising temperatures even further. If temperatures drop, again for whatever reason, humidity will drop, decreasing temperatures further. Of course, unlike CO2, H2O is not entirely "well mixed" in the atmosphere. There are moist and arid regions of the earth, and since it is heavily dependent on the temperature of the air, humidity changes with altitude. Changes are seasonal and latitudinal (the further from the equator, the cooler and therefore less humidity). Water is transported by advection far more than diffusion. This is why you can't get a good, hard number for the percent H2O in the atmosphere, because it is not evenly distributed and it is constantly changing. The basic facts are: 1) Humidity is dependent on temperature 2) Increasing temperatures increase the ability of the atmosphere to hold water 3) The change in lapse rate will also increase the ability of the upper troposphere to hold water 4) Increasing temperatures will increase evaporation, providing the water 5) Increases in humidity further increase temperatures 6) H2O acts entirely as a feedback, not a forcing, because the response to temperature is so relatively fast as compared to other factors (like melting ice-albedo changes, out-gassing of CO2 from warming oceans, and ecosystem changes that release CH4 and CO2) -
Stephan Lewandowsky at 01:34 AM on 24 November 2011The Debunking Handbook Part 4: The Worldview Backfire Effect
@3. Well put. That's exactly what the literature suggests: Reframe the issue and go straight to the solution. Sadly, that doesn't always work; there is astroturfed opposition to renewables too, often conducted with the same emotional venom. Apparently windmills, too, can be communists. -
imthedragn at 01:05 AM on 24 November 2011Newcomers, Start Here
[DB] Thank you for your response. I will definately follow those links. I understand that humidity precipitates out of the atmosphere while GHGs linger for decades. You mention that rising temperatures cause higher humidity which causes even more warming. Wouldn't any rise in humidity cause enough warming to raise humidity? if raising temperature raises humidity which further raises temperature, then humidity alone should cause the same effect. I am not trying to say that CO2 is not causing any wamring, I only question the warming causing humidity feedback loop. Lastly, if CO2 is more effective than an equal amount of water vapor at retaining heat, why then isn't Mars noticably warmer. Mars does have over 10 times as much CO2 in its atmosphere than Earth.Moderator Response: For practical purposes, humidity cannot be raised above the level that the current temperature supports. Of course there are small and temporary deviations above that level, but they are so short-lived (about 10 days) that there is inadequate time for any significant warming. Remember also that that nominally single level really is an average across lower and higher levels spread spatially and temporally. In contrast, CO2 and other warming causes last long enough for significant warming to occur. See also the Argument "Positive feedback means runaway warming."Regarding Mars: Although there is relatively much more CO2 in Mars's atmosphere than in Earth's atmosphere, the absolute amount of CO2 is still far too small to, by itself, trap (delay) much infrared radiation. More importantly, there are almost no other greenhouse gases in the Martian atmosphere, so CO2 is left to do the entire job by itself. In particular, there is no H2O in the atmosphere to feed back the warming. See the online text "The Planets" by Seligman.
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imthedragn at 00:48 AM on 24 November 2011Newcomers, Start Here
CBD.. The 1.5% is just a number I threw out to as a basis of scale. I nor anyone else knows the exact average atmospheric H20 content. I have seen numerous sources that indicate water vapor as between 1 and 2 percent and as high as 4%. I just grabbed 1.5% as a starting point. The actual numbers don't really matter as much as the point that co2 has a greater effect than an equal amount of water vapor. I have been struggling for year to find something difinitive. So far everytyhing seems to point to pure conjecture based on observed warming. Your comments nonetheless are appreciated. I agree that my values and calculations are incorrect, they weren't meant to draw any conclusions, only to make an oversimplified point. -
Hyperactive Hydrologist at 00:44 AM on 24 November 2011Climategate 2.0: Denialists Serve Up Two-Year-Old Turkey
I am curious as to why all 220,000 email weren't released back in 2009. If there was a genuine cover up by scientists then surely releasing all the emails would expose this and clear up the debate once and for all. However, if your objective is to confuse and cast doubt then releasing a few carefully selected emails, which could be taken out of context and spun by the denial PR machine, would be more effective. This also allows you to release a second batch at a later date to cause more confusion. I think the main stream media has learn't from the original debacle and the impact of this release will be significantly diminished. -
Enginerd at 00:28 AM on 24 November 2011Climategate 2.0: Denialists Serve Up Two-Year-Old Turkey
This obsession with e-mails is really tiresome. I have encountered a handful of people in the last two years who told me they have spent many hours reading the stolen e-mails from Mann, Jones, etc. Yet, when I asked these same people how many journal articles they have read from these scientists? You guessed it. Zero. Like Robert (#9) noted, the content of some of these messages is not very flattering to the authors. However, I am honestly not too bothered by this. When a respected researcher publishes a scientifically sound article indicating, for example, that we are looking at possibly 2 meters of sea level rise by the end of this century, do I really care if that person occasionally wrote some unpleasant and critical e-mails? -
CBDunkerson at 00:18 AM on 24 November 2011The Debunking Handbook Part 4: The Worldview Backfire Effect
Following on from Kevin and JMurphy; To borrow a phrase from 1984, 'We have always been at war with Eastasia!'. Some people are quite capable of firmly believing things that their own memory should tell them are untrue. They will rewrite their own memories, facts, friendships, arguments/logic they supposedly find compelling, and nearly anything else in order to preserve the viability of 'sacred Truths' in their own minds. Generally, the only way you can get something past such a distortion filter is if you can figure out the underlying beliefs and then somehow get the facts to fit within that fictional framework. For example, here in the U.S. most people in rural areas are Republicans and thus 'know' that global warming is just an evil scheme by commie liberal elitist government types out to destroy the American way of life. However, wind power companies have managed to make headway in many of these areas by presenting themselves as ways to be self sufficient ('we don't need no elitist government bureaucrats sticking their noses in our business, we can generate our own power') and 'patriotic' ('this is American wind we are using... not commie terrorist oil') and never ever mentioning that they will reduce global warming. -
Tom Curtis at 00:16 AM on 24 November 2011Climategate 2.0: Denialists Serve Up Two-Year-Old Turkey
MarkR @14, that is a very astute comment. Indeed, as most of the FOI requests came from McIntyre, or people closely associated with him, Phil Jones knew that no matter how good his methodology, the released information would be distorted into an attack on his integrity. No wonder he was non-cooperative.
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