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Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
Lon, I don't think what Ned is saying to you is sinking in. Ned has pointed out that the reason your model is able to recreate the modern CO2 trend from temperature data, is that the background trend of CO2 release has been hard coded into your model as a constant multiplier. You cannot draw any conclusion whatsoever from this as to where that background trend comes from, your model just assumes it exists as a static value. When you are "reconstructing" the CO2 trend from temperature using your model, all you are doing is taking that background trend and combining it with the temperature signal. Basically all this exercise accomplishes is to restate the conlusion that the rate of CO2 accumulation is correlated to temperature. This is the only conclusion you can come to. Attempting to extrapolate this to suggest that the level of CO2 is correlated to temperature to the same degree is logically invalid. I have a counter-challenge for you: try applying your model to some out of sample data, specifically a time period where the rate of CO2 release was significantly different from that of the last 30 years. If Ned is right, your model will fall apart rather quickly. -
Donald Lewis at 15:29 PM on 17 June 2010Astronomical cycles
Bravo NewYorkJ! I am now adjusting my position in the market based on correlations with temp projections (or NOT!). Thanks. On the one hand, correlations point to possible connections, so it is valuable to explore them. On the other hand... explain the cause to me before I endorse a correlation as a cause. I viewed the paper at arxiv. The most striking thing to me is that the author superimposes a periodic temperature variation upon a QUADRATICALLY growing base, and doesn't address (did I miss it) why the base temp at any moment is accelerating in time. Argh! His correlations may "explain" some periodic variability, but only if the base temp is accelerating over time. Good grief! Is the author offering an "astrological" explanation of why the temp of the earth is accelerating, or not? I didn't catch it if the author did. The acceleration is the "trend" that concerns me. Is the author suggesting the quadratic base curve is statistically significant? If not, the whole analysis is suspect. If it is, then the problem is to explain it. I offer a wacky idea... something to involving CO2 emissions. -
How climate skeptics mislead
BP >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. The underlying "truth" of reality and our imperfect knowledge of reality are two very distinct entities. I believe truth may be absolute, but our knowledge of that truth certainly is not. We are not born with this knowledge implanted in our minds, we have no choice but to construct that knowledge from our senses and our ability to apply logic. When that application of logic is used to derive general principles from given observations, that logic is by its very nature inductive, and thus can never give us a truly binary answer. Asking whether these conlusions should be fuzzy is irrelevant, we have no choice in the matter. I won't disagree that your proposition has a binary truth value in the underlying fabric of reality (though that point is philosophically debatable); the problem is that, as we lack omniscience, humans are never privy to the "true" nature of reality. The best we can possibly do is weigh inductive conclusions against one another based on our current limited knowledge of the world, and that's exactly what I was doing when I pointed out the improbability of your specific claim. And yes I do understand you cannot assign hard probabilities to inductive conclusions, that wasn't what I was doing. I was qualitatively judging the likelihood of your claim relative to the competing claim. KR's post above gives a great explanation of the types of probabilistic statements we are making. As for your talk of "modules", this a general post discussing the relevance of the sum of all current evidence on climate change. In the spirit of this post and the theme of this entire blog, I ask a very relevant question, why should this very speculative hypothesis cast doubt on the current state of climate science and its evidence taken as a whole? Your obsession with trying to steer the conversation back to a "narrow piece of the puzzle" does a great job of proving John's point, and highlights your stubborn refusal to admit the simple point that lots of evidence is better than a little evidence. -
Stephen Baines at 14:19 PM on 17 June 2010Astronomical cycles
Warming is good for the economy! -
NewYorkJ at 14:08 PM on 17 June 2010Astronomical cycles
Ok, folks. Global warming theory has been debunked once and for all. I've found a strong correlation between S&P 500 stock index growth and global mean temperature (NCDC) since 1950, using a linear trend with the proper scaling and a 36 month running average.
As is obvious, there's very little room left for greenhouse gases.
Ok maybe not the perfect analogy to Scafetta, but you get the idea.
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KR at 12:41 PM on 17 June 2010Astronomical cycles
We're human - and we're really really good at seeing patterns. There are tons of papers in this; seeing patterns in woodland undercover (nasty critters!), environmental noise (there's somebody behind me!), and even in tea leaves (I have no idea here, I never see anything but leftover tea!). In unmitigated nature this is a huge advantage. The cost of a false positive is a short period of panting and high blood pressure, while the cost of a false negative is much higher - being eaten by something, or clubbed by a competing caveman. However, as a result of a false positive pattern bias, we also see gnomes in Zurich manipulating currency, UFO's in clouds, conspiracies among the neighborhood pets, on and on and on. If you go looking for a pattern, you're likely to find one somewhere. I'm much more impressed (charitable?) when someone finds that a pattern falls out of their data, and then search for and find a corresponding pattern in a reasonably forcing influence. -
KR at 12:27 PM on 17 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
Berényi - your post on probability is excellent. it is, however, not the same definition as the probabilistic statements I discussed with regard to inductive proofs. An inductive argument cannot, by it's nature, be assigned distinct probabilities. You are generalizing from the specific to the general case, from some set of observations to the 'universe' of possibilities. Since you have not observed all cases in all situations over the entire universe, you don't know the solution space, and can't assign a specific and numeric probability. This is a different domain from an inductive argument. In scientific induction, what you can do is to take multiple inductive arguments, evaluate the deductive and probabilistic premises, and decide based on those which of the inductive arguments carries more weight. This is often a deferred judgement - awaiting the predictions of the various inductive arguments to see which has the most predictive or widely applied generalizations. But it is a judgement call. Initial reviewers of the General Theory of Relativity didn't assign a numeric probability to it's correctness - they looked at its consistency with multiple sets of observed data, parsimony of explanation (no complex system of crystal spheres, no backbending of the theory to explain certain observations), and predictive power in ways that differed from competing hypotheses. Even then, when a few unique predictions were confirmed, it took multiple avenues of independent evidence to raise the General Theory to the state of an accepted consensus. Inductive arguments cannot be assigned hard probabilities - that would be a deductive argument based upon complete knowledge, another creature entirely. An inductive argument can indeed be more probable than alternatives - in the definition of supported by evidence strong enough to establish presumption but not proof (a probable hypothesis)" - Merriam Webster, 1st definition, as opposed to the 2nd definition, "establishing a probability (probable evidence)". It's important not to confuse those, which I feel you have in your most recent post. The 10 numeric alternatives you noted for agreement in the Fourth report are indeed judgement calls, not deterministic probabilities based upon complete knowledge. Perhaps you would be more satisfied with a range of "wholeheartedly agree" to "ambivalent" to "You must be kidding"? A numeric range at least gives readers some weighting on how strong the agreement is! Inductive arguments cannot be proven; they can be better supported than the alternatives, or, eventually, they can be disproven by contradictory evidence. You have to accept some uncertainty in science, or you will never be able to add to your knowledge by generalizing to cases and combinatorics you haven't yet seen. -
scaddenp at 12:13 PM on 17 June 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
Sigh - the McLean maths issue. Try doing same trick tamino did your data. Add an arbitrary linear trend to the raw data, repeat your analysis. Aside from that. "Make a model that makes sense physically". Yes indeed. In real world oceans are still absorbing CO2 where deep water is created. Sure there is outgassing of CO2 where deepwater rises to surface - that detrended signal you are seeing - but net effect is that oceans are still net sink. Your model is not physically reasonable in this light. It is contradicted by CO2 accounting, by ocean acidification and by isotope measurements. -
Lon Hocker at 12:00 PM on 17 June 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
Doug, all that was in my original posting, though not in as much detail, as I figured most folks could follow what I had written. I guess you didn't read the original posting, or if you did, you certainly didn't understand it. What maths error? -
NewYorkJ at 11:51 AM on 17 June 2010Astronomical cycles
This doesn't look fundamentally different from the curve-fitting "it's mostly PDO" argument. Ignore physics entirely and try to find a correlation somewhere (this time with a more obscure unexplained physical mechanism), using a variety of selected data. It reminds me of a friend of mine who asked me about a Superbowl prediction system that claimed to be 90% successful. It had all sorts of obscure metrics such as "number of 4-point victories this season" and "number of extra points blocked". When about 20 metrics were combined, it accurately predicted winners of about 90% of past Superbowls. I advised him that given the sheer number of data metrics to choose from, one will always be able to combine any obscure metrics together for an accurate hindcast. There's no rhyme or reason to it, and such a system is likely to be no better than 50/50 going forward. Well...it's been 3 years and it correctly predicted 2 out of 3 Superbowls. So my friend thinks it's been vindicated. (Sigh...) Anyone can find a correlation. http://www.skepticalscience.com/The-CO2-Temperature-correlation-over-the-20th-Century.html If the CO2 / global temperature link was based simply on a correlation, it would be rightfully attacked. I suspect "skeptics" won't meet Scafetta's study with appropriate skepticism. That's what this site is for. -
Doug Bostrom at 11:40 AM on 17 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
BP I forgot to mention that I found your post #176 very thought-provoking, though I slighted it as a "side issue." It seems to me that overzealous application of Kolmogorov's axiom system could lead us to effective paralysis in a host of different fields beyond climate research, including for instance medicine and my decision over whether to add earthquake insurance to my homeowners' policy. -
Berényi Péter at 11:33 AM on 17 June 2010Peer review vs commercials and spam
Brain, Volume 123, Number 9, Pp. 1964-1969 September 2000 Reproducibility of peer review in clinical neuroscience Is agreement between reviewers any greater than would be expected by chance alone? Peter M. Rothwell and Christopher N. Martyn Agreement between the reviewers as to whether manuscripts should be accepted, revised or rejected was not significantly greater than that expected by chance -
Doug Bostrom at 11:19 AM on 17 June 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
My model is similar to this, except that it claims... Not so simple after all, it seems. Natch, the first claim generates more exceptions, more claims. I don't think Lon intends this to be taken seriously, as a substitute for research, but I presume to say that. Anyway, what about the maths error? -
chris1204 at 10:55 AM on 17 June 2010Peer review vs commercials and spam
Philippe @ 36 Can you cite precisely climate scientists who try to pretend that uncertainties do not exist? None would be so naive or silly. I don't even suggest it in my post @ 4 or anywhere else. -
Lon Hocker at 10:48 AM on 17 June 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
Wonderful work, Ned. I really appreciate your input. Now let me add another challenge. Make a model that makes sense physically and fits the data, including the kinks. Use an anthropogenic term, but add a term allowing for the CO2 sink that you know exists, and makes sense physically. I would imagine that this term should be proportional amount of CO2 in the air, and to the temperature anomaly plus some value related to the temperature at which the ocean is saturated with CO2 at that temperature (the bigger this difference,the more it will be able to absorb). If and when you find a fit, you will have coefficients that mean something! My model is similar to this, except that it claims that the very top surface (averaged over the ocean) is in equilibrium with the atmosphere, but it there is a huge time constant associated with the mixing of the surface and the whole ocean, so the system is in an approach to equilibrium state where the CO2 rate of change is proportional to the difference between the current ocean CO2 level and the level it would reach if the mixing had occurred. You could put a time constant in your absorption equation too. Albatross: The temperature anomaly is a temperature referenced to an arbitrarily assigned starting temperature. As I remember, in this case it's the average of temperatures between 1980 and 1990. The .58 in my equation moves this reference back to temperatures that are generally accepted as being seen in about 1850, when they were considered relatively constant, and coincidentally when anthropogenic contributions were relatively small. -
Berényi Péter at 10:47 AM on 17 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
#179 doug_bostrom at 09:43 AM on 17 June, 2010 here we are, once again scrutinizing some very fascinating side issues visible only with a vanishingly small field of view I would not call it a side issue. Quantifying uncertainty in an absolutely bogus way is a key issue with the Uncertainty Guidance Note for the Fourth Assessment Report.Likelihood Terminology Likelihood of the occurrence / outcome Virtually certain > 99% probability Extremely likely > 95% probability Very likely > 90% probability Likely > 66% probability More likely than not > 50% probability About as likely as not 33 to 66% probability Unlikely < 33% probability Very unlikely < 10% probability Extremely unlikely < 5% probability Exceptionally unlikely < 1% probability -
scaddenp at 10:39 AM on 17 June 2010Peer review vs commercials and spam
Richard.hockey - I'm intrigued. On the internet we have all these complete rubbish "papers" being put out by the clueless and the mendacious in a vast no. of fields. Peer review is a starting point for sorting the chaff. If the internet was around 90 years ago, what process do you would have replaced peer review for providing some basic gate-keeping? -
kdkd at 10:35 AM on 17 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
BP #180 Again there's a problem here. Reductionism will only get you so far, and can not explain much of the variability of complex natural systems. My own field of research (in the social sciences) suffers from these same problems, and a reductionist approach simply won't work. Same for ecologists. With a single dependent variable, mathematical chaos can result from a three (yes, 3) parameter model, without including stochasticity. In this kind of situation, a reductionist approach will not help. -
richard.hockey at 10:32 AM on 17 June 2010Peer review vs commercials and spam
Interesting article in The Scientist: "Is Peer Review Broken?" http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/23061/ I would also contend that if the internet existed 50 years ago peer review wouldn't exist. However seeing that it does exist, although I think its days are numbered, I support the idea of full disclosure. see: http://www.nature.com/emboj/about/emboj_review_process.html -
Joe Blog at 10:25 AM on 17 June 2010Andrew Bolt distorts again
"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)" It was me, joe, not Canbanjo saying that, and i wasnt clear by what i said, how many of the 2500 are in social sciences, political sciences etc... Is what i mean by non hard sciences.(a bit disingenuous o me to claim non scientist/politician ) If i come up with a new idea for a compressor/expander, i dont think how well its going to work... i think hard about what can go wrong. And i think in a public debate the 2500 claim has so many ways you could attack it... i mean merely pointing out John Christy for example is included in the 2500. Or how many reviewed the attribution chapter etc... it really dosnt take long to find all sorts o ways you could attack this argument. It is an appeal to authority... with holes in it. -
Berényi Péter at 10:11 AM on 17 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
#177 kdkd at 08:59 AM on 17 June, 2010 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 The same problem arises in software engineering. When complexity is skyrocketing, people simply get lost. However, there is a solution to this problem, and an old one for that matter. Modularization. You should break down the problem to its constituent parts, treat sub-problems separately, verify, define standard interfaces, re-assemble. Do it in a recursive manner if necessary. The tricky part of course is to find proper module boundaries. BTW, I am still not sure climate is not governed by laws (I mean high level ones). It is an energetically open system with many internal degrees of freedom. Systems like this tend to be self-organizing and develop minimax properties. -
David Horton at 10:10 AM on 17 June 2010Astronomical cycles
Stephen "Is there any way physically to link gravity variations driven by orbital cycles to variations in solar output?" - I don't know either and while it seems very unlikely to me I guess anything is possible. But there is the more general point that I think arises from this (and many other denier hypotheses) and that is that you can't do this stuff post hoc. Let us imagine that some cosmologist had done a careful analysis of the orbital variations of the planets and that the changes in gravity effects contributed by these (especially Jupiter and Saturn) could be calculated and those effects in turn could be shown by some well known physical/chemical mechanism to affect the output of heat from the Sun. You could then turn around and say "oh, I wonder if that changing output has affected the temperature on Earth". You would then do the calculations of the amount of heat variation, the pattern of global warming, and connect the two in a graph and show that this then also matched the orbital variations of the planets. If you do the reverse, the search for some apparent patterns in the past which just happen to match something else, then you are looking at correlation not causation. Ironic, is it not? -
Doug Bostrom at 09:43 AM on 17 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
BP's here stripped to essentials: If land surface temperature trend is reduced... A big if. I'm not going to say Berényi Péter's misleading but here we are, once again scrutinizing some very fascinating side issues visible only with a vanishingly small field of view. What a great example of rotating the microscope turret, turning up our magnification until we're effectively blind. -
Joe Blog at 09:39 AM on 17 June 2010Andrew Bolt distorts again
canbanjo Well the basic radiative properties of co2 is totally robust(measured LW in various wave lengths at surface and TOA IS empirical proof of the various effect of the different GHG) And the instrumental record further backs this... but you still need to be able to differentiate and quantify the anthropogenic effects to rule out natural factors, negative feedbacks etc... at the moment there simply isnt enough high resolution climate data to do it that way.(a bit over 30 years really) But how this added radiative forcing will effect climate IS complex. How will it effect oceanic/atmospheric circulation/ which will effect evaporation/ which is effected by radiative forcing which effect radiative forcing, which could effect cloud, which effect planetary albedo etc. You could go on for ever. The way to figure this stuff out is to run high resolution line by line climate models. And try different scenarios. Which is not something yah can do with a calculator. And id be assuming the people he is referring to would be the likes of Gavin Schmidt, Hansen etc, that do run these models... But you would need to ask Mike Hulme;-) -
Tony O at 09:37 AM on 17 June 2010Astronomical cycles
Not such a stupid proposition. Gravity affects the sun, the sun affects us. But the sun is still very quiet, and we are at record (globally averaged)Jan to May temperatures. Is there any data about the tilt of the sun compared to the planetary planes. If there is anything in Scafetta, it will probably end up showing we should be freezing right now. -
Berényi Péter at 09:26 AM on 17 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
#172 Stephen Baines at 01:45 AM on 17 June, 2010 That [i.e. starting the falsification job] is what others have been doing previously No, they have not. Everyone started to talk about something else. Perfect example of preoccupation with robustness, when merit of a claim is not considered in itself, but in its external connections (networking properties). This same approach, as applied to persons, is a post-modern phenomenon in cultures with European roots, and a sad one. Never ask who the guy actually is, ask about his supporters (this way you don't have to take responsibility for him). It is a moral failure on a mass scale. The quest for all of you in this specific case is to find the error inside the module, not outside of it. A rather simple line of reasoning is presented here as a response to #128 skywatcher at 01:21 AM on 16 June, 2010. -
Ed Davies at 09:23 AM on 17 June 2010Astronomical cycles
Fitting 2.5 "cycles" with some arbitrary post-hoc function: isn't this a lovely example of the sort of spam that peer review is supposed to catch? -
canbanjo at 09:16 AM on 17 June 2010Andrew Bolt distorts again
Joe the key point here which Hulme has confused - is that on the one hand we are told that AGW theory is completely robust, which I take that to mean that one does not need to be expert in all details of AGW to come to the same conclusion that the theory is fundamentally robust. Hulme has cast doubt on that. WHO ARE THE EXPERTS HE REFERS TO? jo -
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.
-
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.
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