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Joe Blog at 09:02 AM on 17 June 2010Andrew Bolt distorts again
canbanjo at 02:11 AM on 17 June, 2010 I would assume hes meaning those qualified for attribution of anthropogenic radiative forcing/and its effect on climate/atmospheric/oceanic circulation... obviously pointing to evidence of climate change in itself is not proof of the cause(climate has at no stage been static) And this is the key, its no good saying ah ha, arctic ice is decreasing, thus it proves AGW. You have to be able to differentiate from natural climate oscillations, and show the mechanism by which additional anthropogenic radiative forcings are predominately driving climate changes in those regions etc.(lets face it... most of us arnt qualified to comment on line by line coupled atmospheric/oceanic climate models) I dont think he has written anything unreasonable. In all honesty, if i was debating this in public for the negative and someone pulled the whole "2500 ipcc" out, id be grinning like a Cheshire cat. There are so many ways you could attack that. From pulling up how many of the 2500 are actually in the hard sciences(some are government officials/bureaucrats) or pulling up various dissenting reviews/ and views. I think it is a disingenuous claim, and as Doug Bostrom pointed out, irrelevant. Its the science that matters. Not various demographics opinions on it.Moderator Response: Nice try Canbanjo, but the IPCC authors/editors/reviews are not " government officials/bureaucrats" they are overwhelmingly if not entirely scientists. You can grin, but it is a fact. (JB) -
kdkd at 08:59 AM on 17 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
BP #162 Nope, you're still incorrect. What you seem to be describing are the conditions required to develop a scientific law. However outside a very small range of disciplines these are very rare, and the only things we can be sure to develop are scientific theories. Fields where issues around complexity are substantial (such as climate science), the sheer number of variables, and problematic measurement models preclude the further development of scientific laws, and we have to rely on induction driven theory instead. In my experience, people with backgrounds in some parts of physical science and engineering fail to appreciate this, in much the same way that molecular biologists often fail to understand, and discount the importance of ecology. So my conclusion is that you're showing your bias as someone with a background in a small part of the physical sciences or engineering, and your education has not prepared you to deal with the consequences of complexity and uncertainty properly. I could be wrong, but I don't think so. -
Stephen Baines at 08:49 AM on 17 June 2010Astronomical cycles
Interesting. Can't you use likelihood to choose between models. That would be a little less than arbitrary. Of course, the choice will be heavily influence by what happens at the ends of the series, and I guess Scaffeta would then argue that the offsets at the extremes are real because they match his expectation. So maybe it gets you nowhere in the end. It's still arbitrary. Is there any way physically to link gravity variations driven by orbital cycles to variations in solar output? I'm not up on this. -
Berényi Péter at 08:47 AM on 17 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
#171 e at 01:02 AM on 17 June, 2010 Surely you don't think we can have positive knowledge with 100% certainty? If we can't say anything with certainty, and if we can't say anything probabilistically, what is there left to say?
Good question. But simply that's how things are. Probability has a very specific meaning as applied inside science. At least since 1933, when Andrei Nikolaevich Kolmogorov presented his axiom system for probability, it has. It is only applicable if the sample space (field of events) is given. This is often overlooked in some mistaken probability calculations; if you cannot precisely define the whole sample space, then the probability of any subset cannot be defined either. If you try to apply this concept of probability for certainty of knowledge, you have to know in advance everything there is to be known. You need to define the set of conceivable propositions, with no truth-value assigned to them at this stage of course. But this is an impossible quest. Therefore yo can't have a probability measure either, there is no proper way to assign probability values to propositions (except under very specific conditions, which are seldom granted).
Your usage of the term probability is like that of energy in Seven Tips for Deriving Energy from Your Relationships. E = m×c2 clearly does not apply here.
Same word, different concept. That 100% in your rhetoric question above can't be a number, it should be understood in a metaphoric sense. In that sense we can never have absolute certainty indeed, that belongs to someone else.
But it does not imply propositions should be inherently fuzzy. They can have perfectly sharp truth values even if our knowledge of it is imperfect. In a sense it is the clash of two belief systems. You seem to believe truth was something to be constructed while I think it is given, it simply is irrespective of our state of ignorance. I pursue discovery, your business seems to be invention.
It is a metaphysical difference with far reaching consequences.
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Doug Bostrom at 08:42 AM on 17 June 2010Astronomical cycles
Hats off to Riccardo for doing this. Leaving aside for moment the confusion this paper will undoubtedly sow, from my mile wide, inch deep perspective I found Scafetta's paper to be enjoyable because he's not at all inhibited about throwing open his kitchen shelves and dumping in whatever ingredients might spice up the dish at hand. In this case I learned that the traditional Chinese calendar includes a 60 year cycle, of dubious relevance to the topic but nonetheless interesting to learn. Scafetta enthusiastically throws himself into the sauce: Perhaps, this sexagenary cyclical calendar was inspired by climatic and astronomical observations. There's also a ton of other intriguing arcana on orbital phenomena. Unfortunately Scafetta goes on to claim that current models are "fundamentally" flawed because they fail to incorporate his unidentified physical mechanism and as well predicts a cooling world in the decades to come, these conclusions being the strained-metaphor equivalent of smoke belching out of the oven as Scafetta's dish is overcooked. -
Stephen Baines at 08:30 AM on 17 June 2010Andrew Bolt distorts again
I'll have to say that I also find Hulme's statements perplexing. I guess he's saying that 2500 people can't all be experts in attribution, or in species distribitions, or in ocean circulation or in GCMs or... That seems a very microscale view. What I find compelling about AGW is the fact that independent lines of inquiries conducted by individuals with widely divergent expertise converge on a common general picture of what's going on at present. So a specialist in bird migration does not need to be facile with radiative transfer models to partake in a broader "consensus" that climate is changing. I guess it all depends on which consensus one is talking about. Bolt has clearly taken him completely out of context. He seems to be exploiting Hulme's rather academic attempt at precision to suggest something Hulme does actually believe. It's ironic considering that Hulme is often keen to lay part of the blame for the controversy surrounding AGW at the feet of scientists' imprecise statements. -
Rob Honeycutt at 08:16 AM on 17 June 2010Astronomical cycles
I will defer to smarter folks that are surely going to comment after me here, but I think it would be problematic to dismiss anthropogenic CO2's role in current climate change based on one paper, as you suggest. From everything that I've read there is a great deal of paleoclimate that gets explained very neatly by atmospheric CO2 and rock weathering cycles. If you dismiss the role of CO2 in temperature then you have to explain how these mechanisms also work in a very long list of other areas. -
Stephen Baines at 08:11 AM on 17 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
It's a curse, but one that I hope can bring a little joy to the world ... at my expense of course. -
David Horton at 08:10 AM on 17 June 2010Astronomical cycles
Good work Riccardo. There is a fallacy in archaeology which goes like this. I find a piece of stone in the ground and I don't know what it is. So I juggle it around in my hands a bit and hey presto, if it sits a certain way my hand will fit around this knob here, so it must be a tool. The problem is that almost any piece of stone (or wood) can be held in a certain way and therefore be a tool. This fallacy is particular active in the study of early human society with (often) very simple technology, and there have been many instances of "early human" tool use being postulated which have later evaporated. In fact there are objective ways you can decide if something is a stone tool, based on such things as type of stone, fracture pattern, secondary chipping, use wear, residue analysis, and a comparison between an individual item and others at the same site, or of the same age, and so on. Some you may be able to hold in your hand, most not, for many there can be endless debate about exactly how they were used. But all of this has to be based on objective research, not after the fact hypotheses. In short, you can't just look at some mathematically created cycle and then invent a reason for it and then use it to predict the future. The graph may seem to fit well in the hand, but this is almost always an illusion based on wishful thinking. -
Stephen Baines at 08:01 AM on 17 June 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
Took too long to post! Ned at 81 not only nailed it, he sunk the nail, spackled the hole, and painted the wall a nice pretty color of red. Lovely. -
Stephen Baines at 07:55 AM on 17 June 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
Really I think Ned at 71 nailed it. That graph shows that virtually all of the predictive power of Lon's model is the result of assuming a constant rate of increase in CO2, month on month as indicated by the INTERCEPT of his regression. Temp may be important for looking at changes in the rate of change on short time scales, but it tells you nothing about the trend in CO2. Looking at the r2 of the temp vs dCO2/dt regression is very misleading in this case. The r2 only tells you the proportion of the variance AROUND THE MEAN that is explained. It says nothing about how far the mean of the response variable is above zero relative to the variation around the mean. It wouldn't matter in most cases, but here you have an iterative calculation, where the intercept is added at each sequential time step. -
David Horton at 07:50 AM on 17 June 2010Andrew Bolt distorts again
I read and re-read the Hulme comments and the questions on this thread and I remain baffled. And then I read the use that Bolt (and I'm sure others) make of it and I remain angry. In any endeavour involving thousands of pieces of scientific work being combined there must inevitably be coordinators/editors, doing the combining. I was once the Editor of an Encyclopaedia. Was I an expert in every discipline incorporated in that work? Of course not. But I had advisory editors who were responsible for broad disciplinary areas, and contributing editors who put together particular topics, and they in turn were using the work of thousands of other researchers over (in my case) approximately 200 years of research. In my case, to say, oh well, this is the work of only 20 people, they could be biased, is just nonsense, and this seems to be what Hulme has done. Consensus is often referred to in climatology as if it is some mysterious process that takes place among a few conspirators in smoke filled back rooms at the UN. But consensus comes from the grass roots up. It comes from researcher X in America in one sub-discipline deciding how his/her work relates to past findings and to the work of researcher Y in Australia and researcher Z in, say, Greenland. Do the findings agree, yes, no, if no, why not? Is it because, ah yes, instrumentation is different, statistical treatment is different, geography is different, right, correct for that, ah yes, now they match, or, no, still not, what have we missed. Scientists, in short, don't just do a piece of work, in a vacuum, and put it out there, hoping that somewhere, someone, will see how it relates to other work. These relationships are a major feature of the way science is done. So indeed it is the work of thousands of scientists going into the IPCC reports, and the job of summarising has in effect been done. The only way this could not be true is if there was some fundamental disagreement - some scientists think CO2 is a ghg, some don't, hmm, what to do, I know, someone (a faceless bureaucrat who wants one world government) will make a decision at the UN as to which opinion is correct. I know this is what Andrew Bolt would like to believe. Probably does believe. Does Hulme believe this? Does he seriously believe that just a "few dozen" scientists with an agenda are creating global warming? -
Doug Bostrom at 07:47 AM on 17 June 2010Abraham reply to Monckton
JESTL I share your frustration to some extent but think about this problem from an analytical perspective. The term "false statement" does not imply certain knowledge of motivation, while "lie" connotes intentional conveyance of inaccuracy. Short of us being somehow telepathic, "false statement" is arguably a superior way of describing the utility of a given example of Monckton's erroneous communications because the term does not presume to characterize the underlying cause of the problem. -
scaddenp at 07:11 AM on 17 June 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
Ned, kudos for continuing to try and communicate. Can I suggest you copy your post to WUWT as well in case any intelligent life visits there? -
Albatross at 06:46 AM on 17 June 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
Ned, you have the patience of a saint. Thanks for all your work on this! Lon @78, Sorry, but I honestly do not know what you are trying to say. -
JESTL at 06:31 AM on 17 June 2010Abraham reply to Monckton
So it did. First item. Sorry about that. I admit, I hadn't read the policy because I assumed it was like many others. But it seems that dishonesty is a "method" used against AGW, not just a motive, so it's difficult to talk around the problem of lies. Not that you want my opinion, but the whole thrust of Abraham's presentation is that Monckton is making false statements. I'm about a quarter of the way through the thing, and it's breathtaking. -
Philippe Chantreau at 06:21 AM on 17 June 2010Peer review vs commercials and spam
Cloneof, it is possible that this Spencer paper is actually quite bad. "Skeptics" have a tremendous variety in their rationales as to why peer-review does not work, or can't be trusted, yet strangely enough they trumpet vigorously every skeptic paper that gets published, regardless of the potential value. From the reading I've done on skeptic sources, it appears that all the objections raised about peer-review do not seem to apply the same to skeptic papers. -
Ned at 06:15 AM on 17 June 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
Despite some real misgivings, I'm going to accede to Lon Hocker's request and show the results of a "Hocker-style" model that estimates CO2 concentration as a function of fossil fuel emissions:
The data are from ORNL-DAAC. The model, again designed to have the same structure as Hocker's, is as follows:
Month(n) CO2 = Month(n-1) CO2 + [2.02748E-05]*(Month(n) emissions + 553.59116)
where "emissions" is the annual global total from the source provided, in million metric tons C (monthly data are not available).
Obviously, the emissions model looks like a very good fit to the observations. Does that mean we can conclude that anthropogenic fossil fuel emissions are the cause of the long-term rise in CO2 concentration?
Well, yes, we can conclude that, but not from this model! The point that Lon apparently still does not understand is that in this model, like his model at WUWT, the overall rise in CO2 is "built in" to the model, and the independent variable (T anomaly in Hocker's model, emissions in this one) only contributes a small fraction of the explanatory power of the model.
So you can't use this kind of model to conclude that factor X is the primary cause of the rise in CO2. The "beautiful correlation" that Lon is so impressed by in this comment is not provided by the temperature data at all, just by the constant term in his model!
So, how do we know that the observed rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration is caused by anthropogenic emissions (from fossil fuels and land-use change), rather than from volcanoes or a warming ocean or something else?
It doesn't require calculus. It doesn't require statistics. All it takes is the ability to look at two numbers and say "A is bigger than B" ... something most children can do well before arriving in Kindergarten.
We know (from various accounting studies) how much CO2 we are contributing to the atmosphere each year ("A"). We know how much CO2 is accumulating in the atmosphere each year ("B"). Since "A" is bigger than "B" it is blindingly obvious that our emissions are responsible for more than 100% of the annual increase in CO2.
As icing on the cake, though, we also know with a very, very high degree of confidence that the oceans are NOT the source of the observed rise, because there is a net flux of CO2 from the atmosphere to the oceans. This has been very, very well established through decades of direct measurement of C chemistry in the upper ocean. (Once again, I direct those who have questions about this to Takahashi 2009 and Sabine 2009).
See also points 1-4 from my comment above, which still stand.
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Doug Bostrom at 06:02 AM on 17 June 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
Lon, just a quick point that quite apart from mathematical misunderstandings your hypothesis is foundering because it's incoherent with a mountain of other research findings. The issues Ned brought up are just a few twigs of the thicket you need to negotiate. There's no shortcut here, you needed to reverse a host of other results -before- you started working your "simple correlation." This has happened before (the famed G&T false falsification) and is a classic error for a physicist. Don't feel alone. -
JESTL at 05:58 AM on 17 June 2010Abraham reply to Monckton
Uh, was it unacceptable to post that Monckton is misrepresenting Abraham and also that he is demanding a professional courtesy even though he's not a professional?Moderator Response: The "lying" and "lie" in your comment violated the comments policy. -
Doug Bostrom at 05:51 AM on 17 June 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
Lon: "(2) That overall increase is coming from anthropogenic sources, not the ocean. Emissions have been well quantified; about half of the annual anthropogenic emissions accumulate in the atmosphere while the other half is taken up by various sinks in the ocean and the terrestrial carbon system." I disagree. Well, if you disagree and your hypothesis depends on maintaining and defending that disagreement you're not done with your work, yet. Some might even say you've not even started to make a case or at least have skipped over a vital dependency. You need to show why and then how you disagree. You're saying "I doubt it" without actually contradicting the observations you're doubting, an insufficiently persuasive argument. "(3) CO2 is on net moving from the atmosphere to the ocean, not the reverse (see the references to Takahashi 2009 and Sabine 2004 at the top of this thread)." I assert that the CO2 concentration is calculable from the temperature. No anthropogenic contributions and it comes from the ocean, enough anthropogenic contributions and it goes into the ocean. The concentration still correlates to the ocean temperature" So -where- is the C02 you're correlating with temperature coming from? Atmospheric C02 is still increasing, the quantity in the ocean is increasing. What physical process driven exclusively by temperature is causing observed C02 to increase simultaneously in the ocean and atmosphere? As an additional complication, isotope ratios indicate that a substantial amount of the observed increase is derived from fossil fuels, unless you can show how it is not, in detail as opposed to punting with "I disagree." Assuming you can make a persuasively detailed argument against using isotope ratios as a fingerprint, an argument sufficiently powerful to supersede accepted research on that topic, then how does the increase in temperature change the isotope ratio of carbon found in C02 samples? -
Lon Hocker at 05:08 AM on 17 June 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
I think we are stuck in a loop. gp2: Why does El Nino affect the rate of change of CO2, not the CO2 level directly? Albatross: The temperature anomaly explains ALL of the CO2 change if you reference the anomaly to about 1850 when temperatures are generally accepted to have been constant. Global SST rise caused by the CO2 induced greenhouse effect definitely does not fit the data. The anomaly would be linearly dependent on CO2, and it isn't. It depends on the rate of increase of CO2. No, I do not address any other of the "greenhouse" gasses. I'll leave that to others. -
Albatross at 04:22 AM on 17 June 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
Lon, "I have no idea how my model illustrates this, and accordingly I disagree." [referring to a positive feedback] That response is woefully inadequate. With respect, I do think that you do not understand the carbon cycle, and the feedbacks which form part of that cycle. It is no surprise that variation in ocean temperature "explains" about 35% of variation of the rate of change in atmospheric CO2. As others point out that R^2 value is indicative of a positive feedback at work. Of course, correlation does not suggest causality, and what do you attribute to explaining the other 75% of the variability in the rate of change of CO2? Have you considered applying a Granger causality test? Ned and others have soundly refuted your misguided assertion (e.g., in the main post, and at #70, and at #71). I also find it odd that some "skeptics" are trying to argue that the oceans have not been warming, yet it its that very warming that lies at the heart of your hypothesis. You also might want to ask yourself what has been causing the increase in global SSTs. Answer, a positive net energy imbalance on account of an enhanced greenhouse effect. It is well established that about 45% of anthro CO2 remains in the atmosphere, with the remainder being sequestered into the oceans and vegetation. Or do you question that fact? You model also does not address why other greenhouse gases such as N2O and CH4 have been increasing. There is an anthro connection there too. Do you trump that up to coincidence? Your hypothesis is also not consistent with global ocean pH declining. What you work does seem to support the well-established fact that as the oceans continue to warm, their ability to act as a sink for carbon will be inhibited. -
NewYorkJ at 04:09 AM on 17 June 2010Andrew Bolt distorts again
"Correcting and Clarifying Hulme and Mahony on the IPCC Consensus" It looks as much like a correction as it does a clarification. The original Hulme statement: "Claims such as ‘2,500 of the world’s leading scientists have reached a consensus that human activities are having a significant influence on the climate’ are disingenuous. That particular consensus judgement, as are many others in the IPCC reports, is reached by only a few dozen experts in the specific field of detection and attribution studies;" So only a "few dozen" experts (involved in the IPCC process?) have input into anything involving the influence of human activities? Hulme seems to "correct this" somewhat. "Third, it is the chapter lead authors – say 10 to 20 experts - on detection and attribution who craft the sentence about detection and attribution, which is then scrutinised and vetted by reviewers and government officials." So it's not a "few dozen" after all. Other things to consider: - The contribution from human activities is not confined to the "detection and attribution" section. It's also dealt with in the sections on radiative forcing and paleoclimate, for example. - Do contributing authors (not just lead authors) to the relevant sections have no say? - What of the many scientists who are co-authors on papers referenced in these sections but are not lead authors on those sections? - Aren't authors from other chapters reviewers as well? This gets at the "binary" approach Hulme is taking that Heraclitus refers to. Lastly, Hulme states: "And for the record .. I believe that the warming of the climate system is unequivocal and that most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid 20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations " But he's not a lead author of the detection and attribution section. How can his view possibly be relevant? (sarcasm) I think Hulme's original statement was poorly written and the correction insufficient. -
gp2 at 04:06 AM on 17 June 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
@Lon Hocker It is explained in the paper that i have linked before Satellite temperature anomaly lags enso by aprox. 7 months that's because it requires times before warming/cooling in the tropical pacific affect the entire world. Also carbon dioxide short term fluctuations lags enso by approx. the same time...that's because el nino reduce rainfall over tropical rainforest and it requires several months before this lead to decreased gross primary productivity and increased plant and soil respiration (the forest do not dry out within 1 month...)and the opposite for la nina. So the strong correlation is due to different mechanism that both lags enso by approx. the same time and assuming you have computed correlation between enso and co2 at lag 0 no doubt that this is lower -
Erin at 03:11 AM on 17 June 2010We're heading into an ice age
Thank you chudiburg. So I have another question. If you look back on the 100k year cycles in figure 4 they all peak at about where we are now and that peak is sharp. Why does the projection for the natural cycle in figure 4 predict the same estimated high temperature for the next 50,000 years if that has not happened in the past (at least in that figure)? -
Tom Dayton at 03:05 AM on 17 June 2010Peer review vs commercials and spam
Many journal submissions are rejected by editors without the editors sending the submissions to reviewers. That is normal, expected, and necessary. See also this comment. -
Lon Hocker at 03:00 AM on 17 June 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
doug: "(1) The actual rate of increase in the atmospheric CO2 concentration isn't linear; it's close to exponential (but actually a bit steeper than exponential)." Actually it correlates beautifully to the integrated temperature anomaly referenced to about 1850 when temperatures are generally accepted to be reasonably constant. That is the thesis of my post. "(2) That overall increase is coming from anthropogenic sources, not the ocean. Emissions have been well quantified; about half of the annual anthropogenic emissions accumulate in the atmosphere while the other half is taken up by various sinks in the ocean and the terrestrial carbon system." I disagree. "(3) CO2 is on net moving from the atmosphere to the ocean, not the reverse (see the references to Takahashi 2009 and Sabine 2004 at the top of this thread)." I assert that the CO2 concentration is calculable from the temperature. No anthropogenic contributions and it comes from the ocean, enough anthropogenic contributions and it goes into the ocean. The concentration still correlates to the ocean temperature" "(4) What your model actually illustrates -- the existence of a carbon-cycle feedback whereby CO2 warms the climate, and that warming results in the addition of more CO2, further amplifying the warming -- has been known to scientists for at least three decades, and is discussed in the IPCC reports. This is not news." I have no idea how my model illustrates this, and accordingly I disagree. As for your first order problems, perhaps you are referring to the 0.58 term which puts a starting point to the anomaly at about 1850. Beyond that I am at a loss to understand your objections. Also doug: I asked Ned to calculate CO2 based on the anthropogenic contributions because it's a lose lose for me if I do. If I can't come up with a good fit, you will claim that I didn't do it right, if I do come up with a good fit, and you disagree with the equation, you'll say it's wrong. If Ned does it, you won't argue. Ned appears to be a bright guy, let's see what he can come up with. Willis had a shot at it a while back on WUWT, maybe Ned can do better. gp2: The rate of increase of CO2 correlates to enso. Why should that be? Also, the rate of increase of CO2 seems to correlate a lot better to the temperature anomaly than it does to enso. Does that fit your understanding? -
dhogaza at 02:35 AM on 17 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
Stephen Baines, I hate to do this but ... "I must apologize for all my mispellings now and in the future." You've misspelled "misspellings". Keep on hammering BP, though, misspellings and all! :) -
dhogaza at 02:27 AM on 17 June 2010Peer review vs commercials and spam
Agreed. However, science has its share of powerful personalities who dominate the scene by their presence (and not always by their integrity). This applies to the sceptical side as much as (in some cases more)to the AWG side.
In this case, the six editors who resigned included von Storch, who leans towards the skeptical side of the argument. In other words, the paper (Soon and Ballunis) really was crap. -
dhogaza at 02:26 AM on 17 June 2010Peer review vs commercials and spam
Well then I don't want to sound like a little bitch, but there was some contreversy as Spencer tried to publish hi's own latest paper that got rejected from Journal of Climate and Geophysical Research Letters without no reason and is finally getting published in the Journal of Geophysical Research. I would call that a bitt odd.
Cloneof, as Tom Dayton says, it's not odd at all. It's not at all unusual for a scientist to have to trot around a paper before it gets accepted. Think of journals like Science and Nature, where 90-95% of the submissions get rejected. Do you think the authors of those papers just round-file them, or do they shop them around looking for a journal that will accept it? What's odd is Spencer trumping this up in the denialsphere, when he knows perfectly well that there's nothing unusual in not getting accepted into the journal one picks as one's first choice. -
Doug Bostrom at 02:21 AM on 17 June 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
Lon, "cutting to the chase" necessarily requires you to reasonably address at a minimum the inconsistencies noted by Ned here. Since you're so strong on maths, you should probably do so in detail. Don't expect other people to do work for you, you're making an extremely bold claim based on what you yourself describe as "a simple correlation" and it's up to you to make it function. Can you defend your hypothesis against first-order problems, yes or no? -
Albatross at 02:14 AM on 17 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
Riccardo at #167, an excellent assessment Riccardo. Thanks. Another observation that has been made regarding "skeptical" arguments is the contradictory nature of their arguments. For example, a little while ago John posted this story "Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?" So there "skeptics" acknowledge that the oceans are warming and indeed use that very fact to try and claim that warmer oceans are driving the increase in atmospheric CO2 (FYI commentator Ned has just posted an excellent rebuttal to that misguided hypothesis). Yet, here we have skeptics arguing (#162 and #168) that the oceans are not warming, or more specifically that the warming trends are not robust. It seems that they chose to ignore Fig. 1 shown in Trenberth's comment on the Lyman et al. (2010) paper which clearly shows otherwise. And that introduces another tactic used by "skeptics", cherry-picking incredibly very short windows (e.g., 2001-2003) to try and make a case that OHC or global surface temperatures are no longer warming or to claim that the long term trends are not robust. -
Rob Honeycutt at 02:13 AM on 17 June 2010Peer review vs commercials and spam
Argus quoted... "I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report," Jones writes. "Kevin and I will keep them out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!" If I remember correctly, the papers in question here actually ended up being mentioned in the IPCC report. It's a perfect example of what this article is discussing. Peer review can be a very competitive sport. Sometimes it's bare knuckle and back biting but what comes out as a result is that better science generally prevails. I seem to also remember that there were equally bitter battles waged in science when it was proposed that some dinosaurs and modern birds were related. So, I don't believe this is confined to climate science. -
canbanjo at 02:11 AM on 17 June 2010Andrew Bolt distorts again
John Mc, I understand and agree with that. But I thought the point about AGW theory is that it is a theory which is constructed from an array of disciplines - can there be a single discipline that has more authority or understanding level of the overall AGW theory than others? And if so (as Hulme seems to be saying) what is the significance of this? What point was Hulme trying to make when he wrote: "statements such as “most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid 20th century is very likely [greater than 90% likelihood based on expert judgement] due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations” is a very specific piece of knowledge crafting which I – and most other experts engaged by the IPCC - are not qualified to engage in at first hand." and what does 'knowledge crafting mean'? this is crazy. -
gp2 at 02:04 AM on 17 June 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
@Lon Hocker There is no surprise that the rate of change of CO2 correlate well with satellite temperature anomaly since both have a common cause(enso), both satellite temperature and carbon dioxide lags enso by several months however this doesn't mean that carbon dioxide short term fluctuations are due to ocean outgassing...as i have pointed out before it is well known instead that oceanic carbon anomalous fluxes and enso are anticorrelated while tropical land fluxes and enso are correlated and this is mainly due to precipitation change associated with enso driven atmospheric patterns not temperature. Also this mechanism cannot account for long term co2 increase because forests are a net carbon sink in the last two decades. -
john mcmanus at 01:57 AM on 17 June 2010Andrew Bolt distorts again
I think Hulme said that although he is not a ranking expert in areas within climate science outside his niche he does feel well enough educated in climate science to judge the merit of papers others write and had no trouble agreeing with the vast majority of the scientists that write them. Only a specialist on pollen will get a paper concerning pollen in sediment published. Many , however, with other scientific foci will read such a paper and be qualified through mathematical and statistical training etc. to make a judgement on the value of the paper. John McManus -
Lon Hocker at 01:54 AM on 17 June 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
OK, cut to the chase: I have a simple model that relates the rate of change of CO2 to the temperature anomaly, or conversely shows that you can derive the CO2 level from the temperature anomaly (I used the ocean temps). You folks apparently believe that this is false, despite the correlation. You would also seem to believe that the anthropogenic contributions are important. Ned, you made an excellent plot using decimal date, how about making a similar plot, but starting with some function of the anthropogenic CO2 emissions. You might even want to modulate it with the temperature data. -
canbanjo at 01:49 AM on 17 June 2010Andrew Bolt distorts again
Philippe, I normally find it very clear cut that deniers interpretation of events do not stand up to scrutiny unlike the articles on skeptical science. However in this case I cannot see how Hulme's statements could be clear to anyone - you can interpret them how you want to. Does "at first hand" mean something certain in the scientific community that laymen would not appreciate? I don't see how his response has clarified anything. So who are these people at the extreme end of the spectrum you mention? -
Stephen Baines at 01:45 AM on 17 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
BP, "So you are welcome, start that falsification job and let others join in. At least give it a try." That's what others have been doing previously. My point at #148 was that you responded to many of their arguments (which were based on apparent consistency among data sets) with an apparent attack on any approach that appealed to such consistency as evidence. I was also correcting your interpretation of KRs use of the term "robust." KR meant it in a different way that you took it. While I didn't actually say (in #148 at least) that science produces provisional and probabalistic statements(e and KR were making that point, and quite well I might add), I agree with the idea. Read the Popper link in e's comment for context. Scientific theories, because they project beyond the realm of experience to make predictions regarding new data, are inherently inferential. Deduction is only possible when the the logical loop can be closed. Deduction is useful in specific circumstances, obviously. Ken Lambert. I didn't comment on the OHC data in my post at 148. I think you're addressing someone else? -
Tom Dayton at 01:37 AM on 17 June 2010Peer review vs commercials and spam
cloneof, it is extremely unlikely that Spencer was given no reason for his paper's rejection. Most likely is that he didn't like the reason that was given. That's not odd. Rarely is an author happy with the reasons for rejection. Nor is it odd that his paper eventually was accepted in a different journal. It happens most of the time. -
Philippe Chantreau at 01:12 AM on 17 June 2010Peer review vs commercials and spam
Chriscanaris @ 4. Yes, some behave like that. Can you cite precisely climate scientists who try to pretend that uncertainties do not exist? And then there are the Beck and Limbaugh. So, really who's doing the worst howling out there? -
Philippe Chantreau at 01:07 AM on 17 June 2010Andrew Bolt distorts again
Indeed cabanjo. This is what happens when language appropriate for describing what we know of reality and how we know it (i.e. how assured we are of that knowledge) gets thrown into the "public debate" type of situation. It does not work. Hulme statements were perfectly reasonable, in accordance with what really happens in the IPCC process and in fact a good description of reality. Then they were high-jacked. -
chris1204 at 01:04 AM on 17 June 2010Peer review vs commercials and spam
dhogaza 2 29: So in other words, you're saying that journal editors are under pressure to not publish junk science. I would hope you don't consider this a bad thing. Agreed. However, science has its share of powerful personalities who dominate the scene by their presence (and not always by their integrity). This applies to the sceptical side as much as (in some cases more)to the AWG side. Moreover, the metric of success for any academic is mainly their publication record - publish or get no grant. Somewhat off topic, but Henry Kissinger disingenuously liked to pass himself off as a naive academic and newcomer to politics when recruited by Richard Nixon. In fact, he already had a giant footprint - how else do you get to be a professor at Harvard? -
How climate skeptics mislead
BP > it does not and should not make the truth-value of the proposition itself probabilistic. You are quite simply wrong, and yes we are talking about the meta-level of science not within science itself. Any scientific knowledge applied to unobserved events (inductive reasoning) is strictly probabilistic. Did you read the Karl Popper essay? Surely you don't think we can have positive knowledge with 100% certainty? If we can't say anything with certainty, and if we can't say anything probabilistically, what is there left to say? Here's another link that neatly summarizes the topic of scientific "proof". I quote: "Thus, it is important that you shift your frame of reference from one of proof and certainty of knowledge and interpretation of facts to one that is PROBABILISTIC in nature, where our confidence in whether or not we understand something properly is not and never can be absolute." -
cloneof at 00:51 AM on 17 June 2010Peer review vs commercials and spam
Well then I don't want to sound like a little bitch, but there was some contreversy as Spencer tried to publish hi's own latest paper that got rejected from Journal of Climate and Geophysical Research Letters without no reason and is finally getting published in the Journal of Geophysical Research. I would call that a bitt odd. -
Berényi Péter at 00:49 AM on 17 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
#148 Stephen Baines at 10:15 AM on 16 June, 2010 If you showed any willingness to acknowledge that this situation raises questions about the validity of your method, and that maybe it needs revision or rejection as a consequence, people would be more receptive. As it stands, its appears your idea is the one that is unfalsifiable and subject to confirmation bias. Hereby I do acknowledge that this situation raises questions about the validity of my method. However, the questions raised should be formulated. Having done that answers are to be supplied. So you are welcome, start that falsification job and let others join in. At least give it a try. -
Stephen Baines at 00:43 AM on 17 June 2010Peer review vs commercials and spam
As was pointed out in the Nature editorial on the topic of those two mysterious papers.. "A fair reading of the e-mails reveals nothing to support the denialists' conspiracy theories. In one of the more controversial exchanges, UEA scientists sharply criticized the quality of two papers that question the uniqueness of recent global warming (S. McIntyre and R. McKitrick Energy Environ. 14, 751–771; 2003 and W. Soon and S. Baliunas Clim. Res. 23, 89–110; 2003) and vowed to keep at least the first paper out of the upcoming Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Whatever the e-mail authors may have said to one another in (supposed) privacy, however, what matters is how they acted. And the fact is that, in the end, neither they nor the IPCC suppressed anything: when the assessment report was published in 2007 it referenced and discussed both papers." -
Alexandre at 00:40 AM on 17 June 2010Peer review vs commercials and spam
Argus, Lindzen gets published, even if his evidence against the known climate sensitivity is fragile. Pat Michaels gets published, even if it´s rubbish. No grounds for suggesting group thinking prevents "mavericks" to have their space. Papers that confirm AGW, on the other hand, not only survive peer scrutiny, but also get confirmed by independent research. -
Berényi Péter at 00:36 AM on 17 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
#148 Stephen Baines at 10:15 AM on 16 June, 2010 modern scientific theories are probabilistic Yes, they are. But you should always keep meta-level and subject-level propositions apart. In scientific propositions probabilistic concepts are of course allowed. However, it does not and should not make the truth-value of the proposition itself probabilistic. The proposition "mean and standard deviation of measurement is such-and-such" is not a probabilistic one, but a proposition having definite truth-value about probabilistic phenomena, which is a very different thing. There are some preconditions of the very applicability of probability theory for any subject matter, the first one being the existence of a predetermined event field. Until it is given, it does not even make sense to guess the probability measure. If you try to apply probabilistic reasoning at the meta-level of science, as IPCC AR4 triesWhere uncertainty in specific outcomes is assessed using expert judgment and statistical analysis of a body of evidence (e.g. observations or model results), then the following likelihood ranges are used to express the assessed probability of occurrence: virtually certain >99%; extremely likely >95%; very likely >90%; likely >66%; more likely than not > 50%; about as likely as not 33% to 66%; unlikely <33%; very unlikely <10%; extremely unlikely <5%; exceptionally unlikely <1%.
you run into trouble. Based on this scheme they state for example "Overall, it is very likely that the response to anthropogenic forcing contributed to sea level rise during the latter half of the 20th century" (IPCC AR4 WG1 9.5.2) Now, by very likely they mean something with an assessed probability of occurrence between 90% and 95%. OK, we have the probability measure for a specific event. But what is the entire field of events? What kind of events are included in the set with an assessed probability of occurrence between 5% and 10% for which it is not the case that the response to anthropogenic forcing contributed to sea level rise during the latter half of the 20th century? Does this set include counterfactulas like "people went extinct during WWII" or not? What is the assessed probability of occurrence for that event? Does it include worlds where sea level is declining? Or is it rising for all elements of the complementer set in the field of events considered, just with a 5-10% assessed probability of occurrence the response to anthropogenic forcing has somehow not contributed to sea level rise at all during the latter half of the 20th century? Does this sentence make sense at all? Without any doubt some message is transmitted by the qualification "very likely" in this case, but it has nothing to do with probabilities as they occur in science. The field of events is not defined and can't be defined, therefore the numbers supplied can't possibly be estimated values of a probability measure, but something else. True, all kind of things happen all the time and we seldom have the luxury to know all possibilities in advance. That's simply human fate. While staying in NYC a crane collapsed at a construction site crashing the roof of a nearby hotel and killing a guy in his bed instantly who slept in the top apartment at high noon. Now, what's the assessed probability of occurrence for that event? Can it be taken into account in any prior risk assessment? Has the guy considered the probability of a crane coming down on his head before taking a nap? Still, people somehow manage to handle risks in situations where preconditions for applicability of probability theory are lacking. There are empirical studies on this with some weird findings. It is not even easy to construct a conceptual framework where actual human behavior in obscure risky situations can be interpreted as rational. But the fact people have managed to survive so far indicates it can't be too irrational either. BTW, these things have far reaching consequences for e.g. economics. This kind of ability of experts is relied on when assigning "probability" to various propositions being true or false. It has nothing to do with science as such and it is utterly misleading to mix everyday language used in this semi-instinctive risk taking behavior with scientific terms. I don't know what the term "post-modern science" even means No one knows for sure. But everyone seems to do it.
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