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The Skeptical Chymist at 03:38 AM on 21 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
Ken @114 Since you obviously value the knowledge and opinion of Dr Trenberth I find it somewhat curious that you don't seem to have taken the time to learn what he is talking about. As discussed on this very site (and in his linked paper) Dr Trenberth's concern is that while satellite measurements show the earth is continuously accumulating heat, our ability to measure that heat and track where is it going is limited. The temperature record doesn't rise monotonously every year, even though the earth as a whole now contains more heat, it is this inability to "account for the lack of warming" that Trenberth refers to. So nothing to do with climate models either. And as to Trenberths current opinion, well in the same paper he says "global warming is unequivocally happening" so I think it likely he would agree with what John wrote. Given the esteem in which you obviously hold Dr Trenberth I am hopeful you will read his paper and the one linked by Daniel (@119) and desist from putting forth arguments that misrepresent his views. -
Camburn at 03:18 AM on 21 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
muoncounter: You brought it up...and statistically speaking, I am correct. -
Riccardo at 03:10 AM on 21 November 2010The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
Disentangle the different contributions to the DTR change is not easy. As for CO2, the reason lies in the non linearity of the temperature-forcing relation. If you apply the forcing F starting at temperature To, the temperature change depends on To. Though, it's true that this is not the whole story, effects not directly related to CO2 play a role. -
batsvensson at 03:07 AM on 21 November 2010The Fake Scandal of Climategate
@Marcus "the reality is that the underlying science behind climate change has always been sound-& remains sound-a fact" So there is no conspiracy. "in Perth its the worst its ever been-& even if it does, that doesn't automatically rule out the possibility that future rises in global temperature won't be catastrophic." Neither does it rule out the possibility it wont be catastrophic either. "The reality remains that the Fossil Fuel Industry-using its connections" But there are some conspiracies. "it still amounts to CRIMINAL ACTIVITY-something I've yet to see the AGW proponents to be guilty of." So we got Bad Guys and Good Guys. "in spite of the claims ... no contrarian has been able to provide *evidence* " So, when Bad Guys claims there is a conspiracy there isn't one, but when Good Guys claims there is conspiracy there is one. "Seriously Ken et al, the moment you have something amounting to *evidence* that the predictions about AGW are false-rather than ever more fanciful ad hominem attacks-then maybe you'll gain some credibility." I would rather call it projections than predictions. But it doesn't matter because a prediction or projection or whatever label we like to use, can not be true (nor false) in climate science. It is at it best in state of being unknown until confirmed by an observation and as far as I know someone has yet to came back from say year 2100 and reported X meter elevated sea levels with predicted catastrophic events in case we do nothing. However, even if such observation would be the case, which may or may not be the case, at year 2100 we will still at that future time point have no means to tell if the made prediction was correct (i.e. true) due to an accurate model or a temporal relations since we have no parallel universe to compare the result with. It is a fact that climate science is not a experimental science but at most an observational science - compare with say astrophysics. The problem with observational science is that they are limited to only tell "just so"-stories. So whatever the case turns out to be in the predictions; if we do everything in our power, or do nothing a pro-AGW'ist can always find an add-hoc answer that will explain just exactly what happen no matter what the end result is, i.e. we are limited to fit data to a theory that best explains the observations. Any science theory must work like this, the difference for observational science is that the laboratory happens to be the subject of observation itself. Hence things can not be falsified until observed as such - if ever observed. This is one of the reason why hard core experimentalist are critical to observational science as their proposition in advanced can not be tested in a controlled test environment. As of no big surprise some valid scientific critics against climate science are made from the most hard core of all science we have, namely physics. At last, to round this up, if you because of what you claim think you are more credible than the bad guys just because you you claim your self to be with the good guys, then consider that the arguments you makes, makes you in my eyes no better then the one you condemn as being the bad guys. -
tobyjoyce at 02:58 AM on 21 November 2010The Fake Scandal of Climategate
In one way, I agree with Ken Lambert. Climate scientists and climate blogs have probably paid more attention to Climategate than it merits. Most of what has happened since is unrelated. "Happened afterwards, therefore because of" (post hoc ergo propter hoc) is an old, old fallacy that has given rise to a heap of superstitions. Climategate's residual significance is that a lot of US states are suing the Federal government on the grounds that the data for global warming is faked. It is the old "hockey stick is broken" argument, and we know that leads nowhere. With so many investigations completed, it is time to move on. Responses on Climategate should be only as appropriate when it arises. -
dana1981 at 02:55 AM on 21 November 2010The Fake Scandal of Climategate
Nice article James, very thorough and excellent points. I particularly agree about the double standard when it comes to climate change. It's an interesting question to ask how much press the Wegman Report investigations would be getting if it was "pro AGW". No doubt a whole lot more than it's presently receiving. "Skeptics" seem immune to scandals somehow, while virtually everything climate scientists do becomes a media-driven scandal. -
muoncounter at 02:51 AM on 21 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
#118: "there has been no warming " See how that notion (yawn) went bust here. Switch to that thread for further comments if you like; but really, why start the same discussion again? -
Paul D at 02:47 AM on 21 November 2010The Fake Scandal of Climategate
batsvensson: "A second point I been thinking about when reading this article is why should scientist be granted immunity to dirty tricks/propaganda in a political debate?" 1. There are no dirty tricks on the scientists side. 2. What political debate? The science is not political. The solutions and policy are political. -
tobyjoyce at 02:45 AM on 21 November 2010The Fake Scandal of Climategate
Imagine that the Watergate burglars had actually installed their bugging equipment in Democratic Party HQ in 1972. Suppose they actually taped some compromising conversations before they were caught (e.g. a senior figure talking to a wealthy backer, another making unflattering statements about senior Republicans, maybe some discussing how to "spin" news stories in their favour). Imagine, that in the aftermath, most press coverage focuses on the conversations, which are sensationally inflated into a theory of a conspiracy to subvert the whole political process. The illegality of the break-in and the conspiracy behind it are virtually ignored. A shocking dereliction by the media? No Woodward and Bernstein? But case for case, it is what happened in the instance of so-called Climategate. -
Gestur at 02:44 AM on 21 November 2010Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
actually thoughtfull--Thanks very much for your thoughtful comments. Your response got me to do what I should have done in the first place and that’s to look at the CO2 emissions by economic sector and then think about how a carbon tax would actually work in the economy. The assumption that I used in my back-of-the-envelope exercise (I wouldn’t grace it by calling it a re-analysis)—that the CO2 reductions should be more or less proportional across all the economic sectors—was naïve at best, at very best. What I relatively quickly realized is that a tax of a specified amount on a ton of carbon would represent quite different amounts of the prices of various products due to the quite different amounts of carbon in the final products. Specifically, the initiation of a carbon-tax would entail a larger _percentage_ increase in the price of ten thousand tons of delivered coal than it would for the price of 100 gallons of gasoline at the station. Consequently, other things constant like elasticities of demand, the drop in CO2 emissions by product or sector will not be anywhere close to proportional. And by the first end-point of 2030, I think that this consideration likely explains by itself—given that the reductions in total CO2 emissions are modest enough—why the contribution of coal-generated electricity could be pretty out-sized, as you correctly note, and why the contribution of gasoline could be pretty small proportionately, as I puzzled over. That noted, when we move to the last end-point of 2050, things become more complicated. Looking at the CO2 emissions by economic sector, according to the EPA and in 2006, electricity accounted for 41% of CO2 emissions in the US, and eyeballing the bar graph, it looks like a good 80% of that is from coal. [Seems high to me based on where I live where it’s closer to 60%, but there are very large differences regionally across the US.] Given that the substitutes for coal in electric generation will be dominated by natural gas (although hopefully renewables will not be trivial), we will get some significant reductions in CO2 emissions from reduced use of coal but it won’t come close to being 41% x 80% , or ~ 21%. And currently (~2006), eyeballing again from the bar graphs, it looks like around 32% of CO2 emissions in the US are accounted for by transportation, and 2/3 of this, according to the EPA, is accounted for by cars and light trucks. So perhaps around 21% of CO2 emissions in the US are the result of cars and light trucks and hence the gasoline that drives them. So this tells me that by 2050 we would need to have a very substantially higher carbon tax in order to effect the reductions in CO2 emissions estimated, and that would imply some substantially higher prices of gasoline. Of course, we weren’t given those intermediate model outcomes for 2050 for the various bills. If I want to think about this some more, I need to dig into these models more deeply myself. I have to take exception to your comments about the impacts of $4/gallon gas on gasoline consumption, however. For much of the time that these gas prices were ramping up, I was downloading gasoline consumption data and miles driven from various federal websites and then calculating arc-elasticities of demand using these data over various lengths of time. Of course, these were relatively short-term measures of the sensitivity of gasoline consumption to price rises, but before the recession introduced a big income effect and clouded the picture substantially, I was really disheartened by how small these elasticities were. [This was a real pain for someone like me who won’t even drive a car anymore, I must say.] So I don’t really share your view that this period represented a tipping point, although I sure hope it comes soon. Finally, and thanking you again for getting me to think a lot more critically about this issue, it occurs to me that I just displayed what a true skeptic should do: someone who can’t quite accept some finding on initial assessment, and then through more critical analysis finds grounds for changing his initial views (or rock-solid support for them). -
muoncounter at 02:42 AM on 21 November 2010The Fake Scandal of Climategate
#8: "three quick fire threads have been run on Climatgate on this excellent blog in the last few days is an indication" Or it indicates that this so-called scandal took place a year ago? For some reason, we tend to remember events in annual cycles: The way in which people estimate when an event occurred and the accuracy of their estimates are of concern both to psychologists interested in the structure of event memory and to other researchers who, for a variety of reasons, rely on the accuracy of people's temporal estimates. -
Paul D at 02:39 AM on 21 November 2010The Fake Scandal of Climategate
Argus: "I really don't understand why the AGW lobby has to keep repeating that there never was a scandal, and that the scientists never did anything wrong. Who believes in all that white-washing anyway?" You answer your own question by stating something was white washed. -
Daniel Bailey at 02:35 AM on 21 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
Re: Ken Lambert (115) To echo Riccardo (118), by 'out of context' do you mean providing older quotes from Dr. Trenberth instead of his latest? If so, great example! Trenberth 2010:"This discrepancy suggests that further problems may be hidden within the ocean observations and their processing. It also highlights the need to do better, and the prospects for that. Experience in the atmosphere has long highlighted the desirability of working with ‘anomalies’ as departures from a well-established climatology. Moreover, methods of analysis and interpolation of gaps in space and time should take account of the warming climate, and care is needed not to bias results towards background values."
Emphasis added. The Yooper -
Camburn at 02:31 AM on 21 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
muoncounter@117: The degree of warming in your graph is not even close to the amount of warming that Mr. Trenbeth calculates should be here. That is the travesty that he is talking about. 2010 is not above average as far as temp. Statistically, there has been no warming during the past 10 years, and in fact 15 years. You can show trends without the error bars and try to fool some people. When one is talking on a site that seems to be somewhat technical, it is better to show everything. -
muoncounter at 02:22 AM on 21 November 2010The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
#14: "a simplified version of my argument:" I suspect that daytime R is much greater than nighttime R, as a hotter body radiates more energy. So D = S - Rd and N = -Rn; with Rd > Rn, the difference is D - N = S - Rd + Rn. Another component of the impact of GHGs and anthropogenic aerosols in this process is the DTR difference between weekdays (typically higher urban CO2, corresponding with urban traffic patterns) and weekends. From Forster and Solomon 2003: The “weekend effect,” which we define as the average DTR for Saturday through Monday minus the average DTR for Wednesday through Friday, can be as large as 0.5 K ... We conclude that the weekend effect is a real short time scale and large spatial scale geophysical phenomenon, which is necessarily human in origin. We thus provide strong evidence of an anthropogenic link to DTR, an important climate indicator." -
Daniel Bailey at 01:58 AM on 21 November 2010Climategate a year later
Re: batsvensson (46) And in your world, the "broader picture" is...? The Yooper -
robert way at 01:52 AM on 21 November 2010The Fake Scandal of Climategate
Re: Argus (10) "Only a week ago, on this site, we could read that significance tests are misused in three quarters of climate science papers." http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/11/13/much-ado-about-something/ -
muoncounter at 01:50 AM on 21 November 2010The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
#13: "how much higher can carbon dioxide concentrations be around densely populated urban areas" Phoenix, due to its topography, is one of the worst CO2 domes I've found in the literature, as in Wang and Starzewski 2004: Recent measurements reveal that atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations in the urban core of Phoenix, Arizona, are often 200 ppmv above the surrounding areas. This increase is up to two orders of magnitude higher than comparable values in other cities. ... Measurements taken to date reveal that the CO2 levels are greatest during the winter morning periods when the atmosphere is most stable and Phoenix vehicular traffic is increased substantially by its many winter visitors. As far as the direct impact on temperature due to 'locally' increased CO2, that seems to be an open, and in my opinion, very interesting question. Balling et al 2001 concluded that the impact was small, as the "elevated levels of CO2 decline rapidly to the height of the morning inversion layer". How they measured this by airplane during the morning rush hour is not clear. On the other hand, Stott et al 2004 spoke in terms of probabilites: ... estimate the contribution of human-induced increases in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and other pollutants to the risk of the occurrence of unusually high mean summer temperatures throughout a large region of continental Europe. Using a threshold for mean summer temperature that was exceeded in 2003, but in no other year since the start of the instrumental record in 1851, we estimate it is very likely (confidence level >90%) that human influence has at least doubled the risk of a heatwave exceeding this threshold magnitude. -
Daniel Bailey at 01:47 AM on 21 November 2010The Fake Scandal of Climategate
Re; Karamanski (9) Here's a link to the Muir Russell report. I also commented on it here. In a nutshell, the Muir Russell Commission was indeed an independent investigation. I'll let you read it rather than influence your opinion in any way. The Yooper -
batsvensson at 01:42 AM on 21 November 2010Climategate a year later
@actually thoughtfull "As usual, the bad guys have better marketing than the good guys." This argument is known as playing the victims card. Used carefully, like here, it is very powerful but never less not an argument. -
Daniel Bailey at 01:41 AM on 21 November 2010The Fake Scandal of Climategate
Re: Argus (10)"Only a week ago, on this site, we could read that significance tests are misused in three quarters of climate science papers."
Argus, if you had taken the time to read the linked paper that the post you reference was based on, you'd have noted that the author sampled 1 issue of 1 Climate Science journal. Sample size of one. Pretty tiny. What Maarten Ambaum (the author of that paper) did not do was examine other publications in other disciplines to get a reference baseline for comparison purposes. I mean no disrespect to the author; a canvassing-the-field-type of investigation was not the intent of the paper. That would be like me reading your comment and extrapolating your words I quote above to mean that most of your comments take things out of context. One has to be careful with one's quotes, doesn't one? The Yooper -
Marcus at 01:34 AM on 21 November 2010The Fake Scandal of Climategate
As always, Ken, we can rely on you to post complete & total rubbish. The reality is that the underlying science behind climate change has always been sound-& remains sound-a fact that has irked the contrarians like yourself. Also, one good year of rain does *not* mean the drought is well & truly broken-indeed, in Perth its the worst its ever been-& even if it does, that doesn't automatically rule out the possibility that future rises in global temperature won't be catastrophic. The reality remains that the Fossil Fuel Industry-using its connections in Russia (probably Organized Crime)-hacked Web Sites & then distributed the e-mails (out of context) so as to coincide with the Copenhagen Conference. No matter how you try & spin that, Ken, it still amounts to CRIMINAL ACTIVITY-something I've yet to see the AGW proponents to be guilty of. Also, in spite of the claims that temperature data was fabricated (which would, if true, have been a real scandal) no contrarian has been able to provide *evidence* that the CRU data was false (hilariously, due to the smaller coverage of their weather stations, CRU show a *smaller* temperature gradient than the NOAA, RSS or GISS). Indeed, the worst that the e-mails reveal is that some scientists suffer from bouts of pettiness, anger & frustration-just like the rest of the Human Race. Seriously Ken et al, the moment you have something amounting to *evidence* that the predictions about AGW are false-rather than ever more fanciful ad hominem attacks-then maybe you'll gain some credibility. Until then, remember that even those from your own side *privately* don't believe their own propaganda. Now that should tell you something, shouldn't it? -
batsvensson at 01:34 AM on 21 November 2010Climategate a year later
This thread is hilarious, normally we would see at skepticalscience.com arguments that skeptics are cherry picking and do not see the broader picture. However in this case the situation has been reversed. *Gets some pop corns and beers and leans back in the chair...* -
Jeff T at 01:21 AM on 21 November 2010The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
Rob @11, thank you for the link to Dai et al. (1999). They find that changes in cloud cover cause the reduced DTR. Therefore, GHGs would be responsible for reduced DTR only if they change the clouds. That sequence of causation seems to be a negative feedback. muoncounter @12, I don't follow your logic. Here is a simplified version of my argument: During the day, the vertical heat flux is D = SolarInsolation(S) - NetLongWaveRadiation(R) At night, the flux is N = -R The difference in the fluxes is D - N = S - R -(-R) = S Suppose that GHGs reduce R to R'. Then we have D = S - R', N = -R' and D - N = S. The day/night difference doesn't change. If the difference in fluxes doesn't change, the temperature range shouldn't change. The argument that GHGs cause the observed reduction in DTR seems pretty weak. -
batsvensson at 01:15 AM on 21 November 2010The Fake Scandal of Climategate
@Riccardo #5 I think your comment sweeps under the carpet an issue that have concerned at least me for a very long time. John made this comment to a post of mine once: "Perhaps a more precise description would be that a common pattern in global warming skeptic arguments is to focus on narrow pieces of evidence while ignoring other evidence that contradicts their argument." And this is the issue the article discuss, but in my opinion this article is in guilt of this as well. It focus on a narrow set of non representative claims, claims which is indeed pure propaganda by some skeptics, however the article also suggest guilt buy association and as such these propaganda claims then gets attributed to the be opinions of the entire skeptic camp. In doing so, the OP becomes guilty of the very same issue the OP tries to address. In other words, the issue I try to raise is not about the exact numbers or figures or any particular facts but the fact that the claim I quoted is obvious nonsense. It is nonsense because it a sweeping statement with no specifics and as such it is an empty statement and means nothing. A second point I been thinking about when reading this article is why should scientist be granted immunity to dirty tricks/propaganda in a political debate? Is it because they speak under the name of science? If that is the case, why shall we not grant the same right to other spokesmen for other organization?Moderator Response: This is the first post in a series on Climategate. I will address more specific allegations in the coming days. - James -
Argus at 01:13 AM on 21 November 2010The Fake Scandal of Climategate
I really don't understand why the AGW lobby has to keep repeating that there never was a scandal, and that the scientists never did anything wrong. Who believes in all that white-washing anyway? Everybody knows that there was a bit of a scandal, and that the scientists did what they did, and wrote what they wrote. The fact that the scientific community, afterwards, is unable to find any errors within itself, is not convincing, just a bit boring. Climate scientists, who keep claiming that the Earth is heading towards a global disaster, have to be very careful with what they write and say. Only a week ago, on this site, we could read that significance tests are misused in three quarters of climate science papers. And what about the Himalayan glaciers? -
Karamanski at 01:11 AM on 21 November 2010The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
muoncounter, how much higher can carbon dioxide concentrations be around densely populated urban areas compared to the global CO2 concentration? How large of an impact can local variations in carbon dioxide concentrations have on nightime temperatures? -
Riccardo at 01:09 AM on 21 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
Ken Lambert, what's the context, in your opinion? -
Karamanski at 01:05 AM on 21 November 2010The Fake Scandal of Climategate
Many conservative columnists claim that the investigations were sponsored by the Unversity of East Anglia. Is this even true? If so, is it relevant to the accuracy of the investigations? Just to clarify, I am not a skeptic. -
muoncounter at 00:45 AM on 21 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
#115: KL, Hasn't the old 'lack of warming - its a travesty' dodge run its course?
--Realclimate
Even the highly “cherry-picked” 11-year period starting with the warm 1998 and ending with the cold 2008 still shows a warming trend of 0.11 ºC per decade (which may surprise some lay people who tend to connect the end points, rather than include all ten data points into a proper trend calculation).
And then we have 2010, which continues to be well above average:
- The October worldwide land surface temperature was 0.91°C above the 20th century average
- The October worldwide ocean surface temperature was 0.40°C above the 20th century average
- The global average ocean surface temperature for the period January–October tied with 2003 as the second warmest on record, behind 1998.
Taking all the evidence, seems pretty solid.
-
Ken Lambert at 00:41 AM on 21 November 2010The Fake Scandal of Climategate
Original Post The fact that three quick fire threads have been run on Climatgate on this excellent blog in the last few days is an indication that Climategate (fairly or not) has does serious damage to the cause of AGW activism. Mass media always overshoots and exaggerates. The AGW alarmists had a very good run - here in Australia protagonists like Tim Flannery and our living science legend Robin Williams were talking catastrophe - the 10 year drought was definitely permanent climate change - rivers might never run again - Robin (100 metre sea level rise) Williams refused to even read the Climategate emails. Climategate swung the pendumum to the other extreme - the scientists (nearly all funded by you and me) were under the pump. Their socks rubbed harder on their sandals as they scrambled for clear air. Cries about criminal hackers funded by big oil, tobacco, rightist conspirators etc were heard. Panchuri cried 'voodoo science' as he denied ever knowing about objections to the preposterous 2035 claim. How things change in a year. The drought is broken over most of Australia - Tim Flannery has gone quiet and Robin Williams is airing a science journo who says that AGW scares have been exaggerated. Some balance might have been restored as the pendulum swung, and our hard working misunderstood scientist bretheren will take more care with their emails in future. -
muoncounter at 00:28 AM on 21 November 2010It's the sun
#731: "The glacial cycle would seem to have made a much bigger difference " The 'glacial cycle' is a result, not a cause. Increased atmospheric CO2 is a causative agent (aka 'forcing') of increased warming. See CO2 is not the only driver. Please find the appropriate threads for further comments about whatever you refer to as 'cycles' -- this is 'its the sun'. -
muoncounter at 00:17 AM on 21 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
#99: "Given what has been reported in the press about suppression of articles critical to the AGW premise," If by press, you mean the usual crowd of denial blogs, conservative 'think-tanks' or the claims of the ID crowd that they aren't allowed to 'teach the debate'. But on balance, you've got it backwards: Hansen on censored science Research findings suppressed by government -
Ken Lambert at 00:13 AM on 21 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
John's Original Post and Marco: "The evidence for human caused global warming is as solid as ever." Why don't we ask Dr Trenberth a lead author and recognized expert on the forcings and energy balances: This excerpt from the NP and Climategate emails: Quote: The 2001 Synthesis Report looked authoritative in its carbon and temperature outlooks. But one of the “lead authors” was Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado. Eight years later, Mr. Trenberth shows up in the emails. On Oct. 14, 2009, he wrote to Tom Wigley: “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.” In other words, one of the lead authors of the 100-year climate forecasting exercise says there’s something wrong with the models —or the data. End Quote Ref: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/12/18/terence-corcoran-a-2-000-page-epic-of-science-and-skepticism-part-1.aspx#ixzz15pLvdnlg Before you all scream 'out of context' - please consider in what context such an opinion of a leading expert in this field and lead IPCC author would support the proposition that "The evidence for human caused global warming is as solid as ever." -
kdkd at 00:12 AM on 21 November 2010Climategate a year later
KL #44 Why do you waste your time with that comment, when you could try and provide a sensible answer to #37 instead? If you managed that it would greatly strengthen your argument. However the fact that you won't or can't looks to me like a tacit acknowlegement that your argument is on extremely thin ice. -
KeenOn350 at 00:04 AM on 21 November 2010The Fake Scandal of Climategate
Kudos, Jame. Agree with David Horton. -
muoncounter at 23:59 PM on 20 November 2010The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
#7: "Why should greenhouse gases (GHGs) reduce diurnal temperature range (DTR)?" You've answered your own question: "GHGs reduce that radiation loss both day and night." During the day, there is more incoming solar radiation, so the ground/water heat up or maintain an equilibrium. At night, there is no incoming solar radiation, so the ground gives up heat with little to replace it - except by conduction/convection. Since more GHGs are in the atmosphere, more of that outgoing LWIR is trapped -- and what should be cooler nights turn into warmer nights. Here's a primer: CO2 ... traps radiation or heat given off by the earth. This captured heat warms the lower atmosphere, preventing strong nighttime cooling. Carbon dioxide levels are highest near industrial sections since carbon dioxide is the by-product of combustion, a common manufacturing process. The atmosphere surrounding large cities contains higher concentrations of carbon dioxide, thus nighttime cooling in large cities is less than in surrounding areas. -
jorgepeine at 23:58 PM on 20 November 2010The Fake Scandal of Climategate
thank you, James. It is a very transparent paper and I will use it within my paper on the situation - which is similar here in Germany - Contrarians contra Mainstream -
Ken Lambert at 23:35 PM on 20 November 2010Climategate a year later
Marco #41 Give me your email address and I will snd you my last 14 years of business emails. They will cure your insomnia. I am sure you will agree with my radical personal opinion expressed to my Yankee associates in there somewhere that George W. Bush is vying for the title of worst US President of all time with Rutherford Hayes. I have no reason to not accept the truth of the below excerpt from NP: "Mr. Mann meddled in other ways. In January 2005, he called the editor of Geophysical Research Letters, the official science publication of the American Geophysical Union, to try to head off a paper by Mr. McIntyre. The editor, Steve Mackwell, defends the decision to publish and tells Mr. Mann that the McIntyre paper has been thoroughly peer reviewed by four scientists. “You would not in general be asked to look it over,” Mr. Mackwell told Mr. Mann. Later in 2005, Mr. Mann wrote to Mr. Jones on their troubles with the GRL journal after Mr. Mackwell’s term as editor was up: “The GRL leak may have been plugged up now w/ new editorial leadership.” Reference: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/12/21/terence-corcoran-a-2-000-page-epic-of-science-and-skepticism-part-2.aspx#ixzz15p66k1Ad Now you have mis-represented your 'rejection' of a paper in a peer review process with what is described in the above excerpt. The two are not the same. The Mann incident is an attempt to interfere with a peer review process at GRL which had already been conducted by 4 scientists by pressuring the Editor. When the Editor's term expired, Mann described it as a "leak which has been plugged"!! A leak in what - a well respected journal of record such as GRL was 'leaking' - leaking what? Clearly anything which Mr Mann and his colleagues did not agree with. And clearly the new Editor of GRL was 'their man (or woman)' because now the leak had been plugged. So now Marco - your honest appraisal and rejection of a paper in your role as peer reviewer you seem to regard as equivalent of 'suppressing other people's work'. Oh dear Ken, thats what we do in science as gatekeepers of the citadel. Amen. Dear Marco, it all depends on your reasons for rejecting other peoples' work, and whether you improperly attempt to compromise the independence of other peer reviewers or pressure Editors to interfere with a properly conducted peer review process. If that cap fits - wear it! -
Riccardo at 23:08 PM on 20 November 2010The Fake Scandal of Climategate
batsvensson it does not make much sense to quibble on the numbers or on who is and who is not. The point James is making should be clear enough to anyone, the double standard. -
batsvensson at 22:15 PM on 20 November 2010The Fake Scandal of Climategate
"Climate scientists have to be right 100% of the time, but contrarians apparently can get away with being wrong nearly 100% of the time." Says who? -
David Horton at 21:37 PM on 20 November 2010The Fake Scandal of Climategate
Good work James, I disagree with gp. It is past time we all got angry, very angry, at what these people have done and continue to do. Dispassionate science doesn't cut it with the denial industry or with the media (and that "or" really isn't there). It's time to fight back with everything we can throw back at them. -
Riccardo at 21:26 PM on 20 November 2010The Fake Scandal of Climategate
It's not about science, indeed. But I think we should not let politically motivated people intentionally ignore the clearings of the allegations and mislead the public. I hope that we'll not see other agressions to scientist so we, and scientists in first place, can only focus on the science of climate change. But I'm not that optimistic. -
Dikran Marsupial at 21:14 PM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
cjshaker @ 99 Firstly, Nature is pretty much *the* top journal in the natural sciences, publishing there is *extremely* competitive and the paper needs to be excellent and essentially flawless to get published. E&E, on the other hand is pretty much the bottom of the pile - if M&M had wanted the paper published in a peer reviewed journal there are plenty that they could have chosen that lie somewhere in the spectrum between Nature and E&E. Not getting published in Natura is not the same as not being able to get published. What generally happens is that an author will send a paper to the best journal that he/she thinks will accept it. If it gets rejected, it gets submitted to a journal on the next rung down on the ladder (hopefully after having been revised to take into account the reviewers comments). Eventually if the paper has any merit it will get published; generally the stature of the journal where it gets published is an indication of the quality of the publication. As for Shaviv, the authors responses to papers do not routineley get sent to the reviewers is the paper is rejected without the option of resubmitting (which is what happens if the paper has a fundamental flaw). I very much doubt an editor should give a comment like "any paper which doesn’t support the anthropogenic GHG theory is politically motivated, and therefore has to be rejected" in writing - it would be a cereer limiting move - you have to ask yourself why has the rejection letter/email not been published as evidence of editorial bias? As a scientist myself that has published, reviewed and edited journal papers, neither story is very convincing. -
Rob Painting at 21:00 PM on 20 November 2010The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
Jeff T @7 - It's not obvious to me that the effect of GHGs should be greater at night. You make a valid point. Further to Ari's suggestion: Effects of Clouds, Soil Moisture, Precipitation, and Water Vapor on Diurnal Temperature Range "The nighttime minimum temperature is largely controlled by the greenhouse effect of lower atmospheric water vapor, while the daytime maximum temperature depends heavily on the surface solar heating, which is strongly affected by cloud cover, and the amount of it that is released into the air by sensible and latent heat, which depends on soil moisture content." -
Paul D at 19:57 PM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
cjshaker and others have not raised anything new in respect to this subject. There are two outcomes to all this: 1. The science is correct. 2. The CRU made management mistakes and is correcting them. eg. all outcomes are positive. -
perseus at 19:56 PM on 20 November 201010 Indicators of a Human Fingerprint on Climate Change
I have just realised that most of the observations in the illustration is strictly not evidence of anthropologically induced global warming, only global warming. Natural warming could induce more water vapour into the atmosphere producing many of these radiative effects. The remaining observations only suggest that we have simply released more carbon into the atmosphere! To show AGW we need to show a) the basic theory of GHG warming in conjunction with evidence that these GHGs are human based (eg. from isotopic analysis), you have done this elsewhere. b) the measured relationships between GHGs and temperature, particularly the sudden rise in global temperatures when large quantities of carbon emissions were first released around 1900. Have any statisticians assessed the probability this rapid change, in conjunction with GHG concentrations might have happened by chance (the null hypothesis). I guess this would be very low. c) the absence of any plausible natural mechanism, once again you have covered this elsewhere. -
Paul D at 19:54 PM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
Philippe Chantreau: "The FOI requests thing is so abusive that anyone who really cares about conserving the FOI process should be concerned." Indeed. The CRU was 'spammed' and failed to manage the issue adequately. -
Paul D at 19:51 PM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
cjshaker: "If it can't stand up to a hostile researcher, it is not science." Your description of 'hostile research' doesn't sound like science to me, it sounds like business, PR and business competition. -
Paul D at 19:46 PM on 20 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
cjshaker: "Some of the hacked emails reveal scientists encouraging their colleagues to delete emails, apparently to prevent them from being revealed to people making FOI requests." 1. It didn't happen, as Phil Jones has pointed out in Nature. 2. It wouldn't be illegal in any case, because an FOI request for the emails hadn't been placed before the suggestion to delete emails was made. There isn't a requirement to archive emails!
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