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Philippe Chantreau at 03:07 AM on 16 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
Ken, you might have missed the beginning of this discussion, where I pasted a link to an example of how climate skeptics mislead, from one of the most prominent "skeptic" internet sources. I should add that it does not employ any of the more subtle methods described in the OP, just really bad maths, which the "skeptics" are all too eager to accept. If this is what you consider "getting at the truth" we may not be able to communicate at all. http://www.skepticalscience.com/How-climate-skeptics-mislead.html#16040 -
Philippe Chantreau at 02:59 AM on 16 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
So the reasoning is that a spurious correlation, postulated in a non reviewed blog post, based on a less than adequate dataset, in disagreement with previously published work, should be used to make one dataset vary more than 45% from the others, so as to invalidate all datasets. Interesting. -
Doug Bostrom at 02:32 AM on 16 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
Ken BP left unaddressed as far as I know the question of whether the entire record of OHC from left to right was simply an error. -
KR at 01:41 AM on 16 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
Might I suggest that this conversation continue on the more appropriate Heat Island or Temp record unreliable threads?Moderator Response: Perhaps this conversation will serve as a case study appropriate to the topic of the post? -
KR at 01:40 AM on 16 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
Berényi - you seem to see a problem with the ground station data (that others have not) and say that As it stands, both SST history and satellite temperatures are consistent with GHCN derived series. If trend in the latter one is decreased by 45%, they become inconsistent. In that case something has to be done. You're absolutely correct. If three independent data sets are in agreement, and an objection is raised that moves one set 45% away from the others, some thing should be done. You should drop the objection. Occam's razor and general parsimony should lead you to conclude that the objection is not valid, rather than the rather odd conclusion that two other datasets are completely wrong based on an objection that has already been examined and invalidated. -
skywatcher at 01:21 AM on 16 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
You misunderstood me BP: Spencer does not provide good evidence for such a trend (hence why I called it spurious), and as you are basing your assertions on Spencer, your correlation is spurious. The fact that one of the key datasets in Spencer's correlation is not up to the task he sets of it is the reason the correlation provided by Spencer cannot be trusted. I did not even need to verify his temperature data - if one of the two measures in a correlation is dodgy, the relationship, if one exists, that emerges will also be dodgy. That leads neatly onto what KR (and many others here) post regarding the many independent verifications of the warming trend, namely that the trend as identified in multiple independent sources is in all probability real, and there is still no reason to doubt it. Despite your best attempts at muddying the waters... -
chris at 01:14 AM on 16 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
Ken Lambert at 23:47 PM on 15 June, 2010 "If this does not have a significant impact on the surface temperature measurements of the USA, then perhaps you could explain why." It doesn't have a significant impact on the surface temperature anomalies of the USA since this effect is taken into account in assessing the anomalies. This is done either by correcting urban sites by reference to non-urban sites, or assessing the anomalies purely from the non-urban sites. This is described extensively in the scientific literature. Let's not pretend that we don't know what we do know! "BP's point about the geothermal heat flux warming the deep oceans is relevant. A very small temperature diffential from the bottom up must be present to drive the heat upward through the water column - and I wonder if Willis' 0.1W/sq.m equivalent deep ocean warming can be separated from the geothermal heating effect." The geothermal heat flux has been warming the ocean bottom for eons. It's obvious that this heat is distributed through the oceans and dissipated entropically by movement of ocean waters. Indeed it's rather well established that the geothermal flux contributes to deep water mixing. So it's likely that "Willis 0.1 W.m^2 equivalent deep ocean warming" can be separated from the geothermal heating effect, since any recent deep ocean warming is a supplement to the background heat content that results from all natural contribution to ocean heat including the geothermal flux. Again this is extensively described in the scientific literature. We should use current knowledge as a starting point for a deeper understanding of phenomena in the natural world. -
KR at 01:06 AM on 16 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
Berényi, you do realize that the data has already been corrected for the UHI effect? That several studies done (as prompted by the skeptic argument about the decline in number of stations not being properly handled, also here, which I highly recommend you re-read) on drop-out rates, sub-set selection, rural vs. urban stations, etc., all show the UHI and area corrections work, leaving no warming biases via station selection? The slight bias found indicates that the ground station data as currently processed is actually underestimating global temperatures. That directly contradicts your argument. I would point out that the demonstrated independence from sub-set selection is an excellent validation of data treatment for this temperature dataset. UHI does not lead to overestimation of warming. Add to that the two independent satellite data sets, all in agreement - that's a significant confirmation of the local station data. Your claim that the satellite data is incorrect really doesn't fly, so to speak. This has been discussed ad nauseum - I think you're making imaginary mountains out of molehills. -
Ned at 00:45 AM on 16 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
I agree completely that this would be a rather strange outcome. Most people, I think, would take this as an indication that your estimate of the effect of UHI is inflated. You, apparently (?) take it as an indication that the global sea surface temperature trend is incorrect, though you don't actually come out and say that in plain language so I might be misinterpreting you. -
Berényi Péter at 00:34 AM on 16 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
#123 Ned at 00:19 AM on 16 June, 2010 if we accept this assumption If, and I mean if you accept this assumption, your least concern is how large the UHI contribution is compared to land+ocean temperature combined. Before venturing to such calculations you have to explain why sea surface temperature increases significantly faster than atmospheric temperature 2 m above land. That's a tough question. Such behavior is neither predicted by computational climate models nor do we have a simple physical mechanism to transfer the better part of heat trapped by atmospheric CO2 immediately to the sea with an ever higher efficiency as time goes by. -
Ned at 00:19 AM on 16 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
Ken, I disagree with your interpretation of the OHC thread, but that's neither here nor there. In this thread, BP has assumed a very specific relationship between local population density and local temperature (0.16C per doubling of population density). I've showed that even if we accept this assumption, UHI would constitute about 5% to 6% of the current warming trend. I don't think there's much more that needs to be said. -
Ken Lambert at 00:05 AM on 16 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
Ned #115 and BP #117 BP's forensic approach is to be admired. Even the title of this thread "How skeptics mislead" does imply some intention to mischief rather that getting at the truth of what is going on. And the point is well made - resorts to peer review as some absolute authority without understanding the technicality of the arguments contained in said papers is superficial. Note that BP has made some very telling points in the OHC thread showing that the warming was not 'robust' at all (with which my own small contributions agree) - and no serious counter argument was made by the well furnished regulars on this blog including the owner. Peer reviewed scientists should have seen that the large jumps in OHC were not 'messy data' but impossible leaps due to instrumental transition offsets. -
Ned at 23:53 PM on 15 June 2010It's the sun
One more point... Johno writes: Most climate scientists today agree that some external force (the sun, changes in the Earth’s tilt and rotation, etc) caused past global temperature increases, which were then followed by increases in atmospheric CO2. That's true of some past climate changes, but not others. See the discussion in this thread. There have been quite a few times when changes in climate were driven by changes in CO2. You might also be interested in Richard Alley's AGU presentation CO2: The Biggest Control Knob: Carbon Dioxide in Earth's Climate History -
Ken Lambert at 23:47 PM on 15 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
Chris #94 it might be small when averaged GLOBALLY Chris, but human released waste heat would be significant when the total is divided by the urbanized and arable land areas. Your 0.028W/sq.m globally if applied to an arable land area of about 10.5% of the Earth's surface would equate to a heat flux of 0.26W/sq.m. Applied to an urban area of about 1.5% of the Earth's surface if would be a large 1.86W/sq.m, and applied to a number somewhere in between (about 6%)it which would represent a heat flux of about 0.46W/sq.m. So the number of 0.3-0.5 W/sq.m across the continental USA is not far out of the ballpark. If this does not have a significant impact on the surface temperature measurements of the USA, then perhaps you could explain why. BP's point about the geothermal heat flux warming the deep oceans is relevant. A very small temperature diffential from the bottom up must be present to drive the heat upward through the water column - and I wonder if Willis' 0.1W/sq.m equivalent deep ocean warming can be separated from the geothermal heating effect. -
Berényi Péter at 23:44 PM on 15 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
#118 skywatcher at 22:46 PM on 15 June, 2010 a spurious logarithmic dependence for which there is no evidence I wonder if you understood what you have said. IPCC TAR WG1 2.2.2.1 claims there was no significant difference between rural and urban trends. There is no doubt the logarithmic relation holds for high population density (AKA urban) areas (absolutely independent of Spencer). If the logarithmic dependence breaks down early as settlement size is decreasing and turns into linear, quadratic or whatever around urban -> rural transition, the similar trends can only be explained by much shorter population doubling times at rural sites than at urban ones. It is not likely demographics supports this claim in an age of urbanization. An alternative solution would be to suppose an almost zero UHI even at urban sites, but it is plainly contradicted by a plethora of facts. Therefore you can only negate logarithmic dependence (with a coefficient similar to the ones found in urban heat island studies) by refusing to accept IPCC TAR WG1 2.2.2.1 and all the papers referenced there. Is that what you are trying to tell us? -
Ned at 23:37 PM on 15 June 2010It's the sun
Johno, the warming/CO2 lag in the ice cores is very well understood, and has been discussed in great detail on this site. You really ought to spend some time reading this site. A few relevant posts: Why does CO2 lag temperature? The significance of the CO2 lag You can find more by typing the word "lag" into the Search box at the upper left. Likewise, we are all very familiar with the fact that "Most of the world’s CO2 is actually not in the atmosphere, it is dissolved in the oceans." This is the source of part of the CO2/temperature feedback, which amplified the Pleistocene glacial/interglacial cycles. However, it's quite clear that the oceans are currently a sink rather than a source for atmospheric CO2. See here Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans? CO2 is [not] coming from the oceans See also Takahashi 2009 and Sabine 2004. Finally, you end with the following comment: Declaring the change in CO2 (0.01%) significant, while ignoring the change in solar insolation (0.1%) as insignificant is equivalent to scientific malfeasance. With all due respect, you have that seriously confused. CO2 is increasing by about 1% per year, and will double before the end of this century. If you're referring to the absolute concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, that's completely irrelevant. I'm not sure what source led you to think that is significant ... but you should probably discount anything else that source is telling you, because it's just plain wrong. -
Ned at 23:19 PM on 15 June 2010It's the sun
Johno writes: No, Ned. I followed the links provided at the top of this thread. Odd. The quote you cite appears to be from Lockwood 2010, which just came out. Google only has two references to that quote, one from the 2010 paper itself and one from a very recent commentary about it. I don't doubt you, but could you tell us which of the links at the top of the thread has that quote? -
Mal Adapted at 23:02 PM on 15 June 2010Request for mainstream articles on climate
John, do you consider National Geographic magazine to be mainstream media? They've always been on the side of science. The current issue features the impact of AGW on Greenland.Response: Yes, National Geographic is definitely mainstream. -
skywatcher at 23:01 PM on 15 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
Just to add, the map that Spencer uses has a density of 6-25people/sq km evenly spread around Barrow over an area that is approximately 10km x 5km. Clearly there's a fair bit of smoothing and blurring going on to construct the map, as the density in the core of Barrow is much higher, and in neighbouring areas of tundra is clearly zero. Large areas of Highland Scotland, which I know are uninhabited, suffer from the same blurring that is placing 2-5 people/sq km. The people live in small communities of higher density, but the averaging covers many empty regions. Ditto Iceland and Greenland. This observation alone puts Spencer's hypothesis on incredibly shaky ground, as one of his two fundamental datasets is not good enough for the task he asks of it (though it may be useful to its designers for other studies). And as has already been described by Ned and muoncounter and others, the independent validation of the temperature record means that we already know the UHI does not operate as Spencer suggested. -
Riccardo at 22:52 PM on 15 June 2010It's the sun
Johno, please point me to any scientific paper claiming that the forcing leading to the glacial-interglacial cycles has been CO2. It's astonishing how this trivial mistake keeps hanging around. -
skywatcher at 22:46 PM on 15 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
Depends what you call valid, BP... your point (1): different processes, different causes, same apparent temporal effect. I might as well correlate the number of stars visible from Edinburgh to global temperature (most in winter and most at night!), but of course that would be silly. (2), so what? (3) Do you think one of those effects might be to release greenhouse gases, must have some effect! You've provided no valid evidence, bar a single blog post to show that the largest effect should be in *very* sparsely populated places. (4) How close is subjective - as shown in the Barrow example, it's not in a place affected by urbanisation. And BTW, you brought up Barrow, so we're quite happy to debunk you on it. (5) Precisely, hence why using kilometre-scale population averages as Spencer has done is an invalid exercise. You've still provided no concrete examples. (all remaining points) based on a spurious logarithmic dependence for which there is no evidence. The figure in #113 misleading for your point, as it is not showing the local variations - ie that the heat island will be present/stronger in the built-up areas of Barrow and marginal on open ground beyond the airport. The contours are averages, and won't capture the local variations. And w've already established that there's no evidence of further urbanisation here near the weather station anyway (required, surely, for an increase in temperature by your spurious hypothesis)... -
Berényi Péter at 22:44 PM on 15 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
#115 Ned at 21:22 PM on 15 June, 2010 this does make for a fascinating illustration of the theme of this website (and this thread) Yes, it was my intention to serve you and make this thread an illustration. Unfortunately I have not seen yet any well reasoned refutation of a sizable UHI effect on temperature anomaly trend as measured by surface stations, just fallacies ("big picture"), empty rhetoric ("it is really surprising that you try to revive the now largely abandoned mantra of the UHI effect"), refusal to take a closer look ("focusing on some tiny detail, and blowing it all out of proportion"), attributing vile intentions ("the attitude of skeptics to mislead people by focusing on the tiniest part of the picture"), labeling ("random blog commenter's off-the-cuff estimate"), declaration ("the urban heat effect is a red herring"), utterly false accusation ("you did not read the paper nor check where the met station is in Barrow") and the like. I am frightfully sorry for you. And this passion to debunk. Instead of searching for truth. Guys, the first thing to do in cases like this is to actually understand what is said. No amount of peer reviewed literature can make up for the lack of effort. Then you'll be able to spot errors easily if there is any. Or simply help. This is also the only legitimate way to use published papers. I mean by understanding them, learning what is there to be learned and then - then simply use your own head. These publications are not to be used as infallible authorities, this attitude belongs to the worst scholastic tradition (not even followed by outstanding medieval scholastic thinkers). -
Johno at 22:37 PM on 15 June 2010It's the sun
No, Ned. I followed the links provided at the top of this thread. -
Johno at 22:35 PM on 15 June 2010It's the sun
Usoskin et al (2005) relies on Mann et al (1999) and Mann and Jones (2003) for temperature reconstructions. Unfortunately, the work of both Mann and Jones have since been discredited. Therefore, it would be appropriate to discredit Usoskin's paper. To understand the link between solar insolation and global climate, one must first understand what sunspots represent, and why they track so well with mean atmospheric temperatures. Sunspots appear when the sun's magnetic field begins to flip, as it does for some unknown reason every nine to thirteen years (the famous 11-year solar cycle). The sunspots are regions of magnetic disturbances (irregularities) which correlate with distortions in the sun's corona, with solar flares and with coronal mass ejections. The lay person could view sunspots like holes in a giant cosmic sprinkler system -- each spot spews enormous amounts of energy out into the solar system. The law of conservation of mass and energy require the entire solar system to either heat or cool, depending on the number and duration of sunspots, and the total solar equivalent energy output. However, the exact energy variability is not yet quantified. Data from satellites like SOHO and STEREO and ULYSSES are still under analysis, and won't yield science applicable to climate change for at least another 10 years. In the meantime, ice core data has already indicated temperatures over the past 600,000 years have increased (on average) about 800 years before CO2 started to increase. It is hard to argue any CO2 increase caused global warming to occur some 800 years BEFORE it began. Most of the world’s CO2 is actually not in the atmosphere, it is dissolved in the oceans. When global temperatures increase, the oceans give up some of their CO2, outgassing it into the atmosphere and increasing atmospheric concentrations. The amount of CO2 thus "outgassed" is far greater than the total CO2 produced by all anthropogenic sources combined. Mean atmospheric CO2 concentration would seem to be a good proxy for mean global ocean temperature. Most climate scientists today agree that some external force (the sun, changes in the Earth’s tilt and rotation, etc) caused past global temperature increases, which were then followed by increases in atmospheric CO2. Declaring the change in CO2 (0.01%) significant, while ignoring the change in solar insolation (0.1%) as insignificant is equivalent to scientific malfeasance. -
Ned at 22:29 PM on 15 June 2010Request for mainstream articles on climate
CBDUnkerson writes: Had to find one more to add [...] just so I could pass you Ned. :] Ho ho, I just leapfrogged over you and Tom Dayton which I believe puts me solidly in 5th place. Unfortunately, I will be traveling much of the next ten days, so I fully expect others to seize these laurels in my absence..... -
Ned at 21:54 PM on 15 June 2010It's the sun
That said, thank you for pointing out Lockwood 2010, which is newer than the papers cited in this thread and which might be of interest to many readers. -
Ned at 21:44 PM on 15 June 2010It's the sun
Johno, I believe you're referring to Lockwood 2010, rather than any of the papers actually cited in this thread, right? But in any case, which part of the quotation do you disagree with? The first part of the quote just says that in past scientific controversies (e.g., geocentrism vs. heliocentrism) there was no particular urgency that necessitated action. There's no citation, but it seems fairly straightforward. If the "skeptics" of the time had the effect of slowing acceptance of the Copernican Revolution, there was no palpable consequence other than a slight retardation of scientific progress. The second part of your quote merely points out that in the case of global climate change, there is evidence that there will be more severe consequences for delay. Lockwood provides two citations to peer-reviewed papers that justify this claim. I don't read that as a "polemic" at all. Your final paragraph seems a bit problematic, though. You write all evidence indicates warmer temperatures and higher levels of CO2 are beneficial, not harmful. You must not be very familiar with the evidence -- perhaps you should spend more time exploring this site? Here is a good page to start with: Peer reviewed impacts of global warming. "Beneficial" and "harmful" are value judgments, and are only relevant within particular frames of reference. However, some impacts (e.g., amplification of the hydrologic cycle leading to increases in both drought and flooding) are likely to be economically and socially harmful more or less across the board. -
Berényi Péter at 21:33 PM on 15 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
A couple of valid points.- UHI is strongest in winter and at night. Just like warming attributed to CO2.
- Local population density is only a proxy to the actual level of changes in land use, road network, architecture, industrial activity which are the direct causes of UHI.
- Some changes to the environment are to be expected even at very low population densities. If there are people at all, they are there for a reason, therefore they do something. Like cutting down trees, growing crops, mining, conducting scientific research programs on climate change, etc. These activities need supply, transportation, housing, infrastructure, energy, recreation facilities, sewage & garbage disposal, things like that.
- Weather stations are not located randomly relative to local population density clumps. They have a much higher chance to occupy a place not too far from human habitation, otherwise data collection, repair work and performance monitoring gets expensive.
- It can get tricky to define "local population density" properly. Population distribution has a fractal-like structure over spatial scales of several orders of magnitude. Defining averages over fractals is not an easy business, but can be done.
- The logarithmic relation, though valid over a wide range, has to break down somewhere, otherwise for zero population density (the case before the first human was born) UHI anomaly would be −∞°C, which is smaller than absolute zero. The empirical question is: where does it break down exactly and in what manner?
- GHCN temperature trends for urban and rural sites do not show dramatic differences, not even the ones located in very sparsely populated areas. However, if logarithmic relation would break down too early, one would expect significant divergence.
- One does not need historic temperature time series to check the limits of logarithmic dependence of UHI on local population density. It can be done here and now.
- It would require a major research program to do it properly and would obviously cost money. One reason being satellite data are useless for this particular job, because they do not have sufficient vertical resolution. We would like to have temperature readings at 2 m above ground while as a result of calculations based on satellite brightness temperature measurements the entire lower troposphere is included.
- Present day reanalysis UHI adjustment practice of using nearby "rural" stations as reference is inadequate for removing long term UHI bias due to general population increase.
-
Ned at 21:22 PM on 15 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
Responding to an astonishingly unskeptical comment by Berényi Péter, muoncounter writes: Extraordinary. Three independent datasets agree, yet one may have a theoretical inconsistency, so they all must be wrong? That's bass-ackwards. It's quite a bit worse than that, muoncounter. The first two data sets (lower troposphere temperatures and sea-surface temperatures) are both measured by multiple separate groups using data from satellites processed according to objective, well-documented methods. Satellite retrievals of SST in particular are very well validated. The "theoretical inconsistency" is with the land surface temperature record. Actually, there's no inconsistency with the land surface temperature record either; there's an alleged inconsistency with one commenter's assumption about the effect of UHI on the land surface temperature record. That assumption in turn is apparently based on one speculative blog post by Roy Spencer, which the commenter here then extrapolated to the whole world. Obviously, nobody is going to throw out two completely independent and mutually consistent satellite-based global temperature data sets because they allegedly disagree with some random blog commenter's off-the-cuff estimate of UHI. But this does make for a fascinating illustration of the theme of this website (and this thread). When it comes to climate change, many so-called "skeptics" are completely asymmetrical in their application of skepticism. There's an extreme unwillingness to accept even the most straightforward evidence in support of AGW, combined with a peculiar eagerness to promote any argument against AGW no matter how tenuous and unjustifiable. I like John Cook's subtitle for this site: Getting Skeptical About Global Warming Skepticism -
Johno at 21:14 PM on 15 June 2010It's the sun
Lockwood exhibits his bias in the context paragraph that precedes his scientific paper: "But there is a crucial difference about the climate change debate compared with many of its predecessors: humankind could often afford to wait for previous controversies to abate ... There is evidence ... that time for effective action is extremely short (Kriegler et al. 2009; Vaughan et al. 2009)." This type of unnecessary polemic is unscientific, and leads the reader to conclude that Lockwood is grinding a political axe -- not furthering any scientific understanding. Indeed, all evidence indicates warmer temperatures and higher levels of CO2 are beneficial, not harmful. So what is the purpose of Lockwood's context, if not to scare people into failing to use their objectivity when forming conclusions about anthropogenic global warming? -
Riccardo at 20:35 PM on 15 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
Berényi Péter, i agree that this discussion has been overstated. More, as already said before its extreme cherry picking is totally irrelevant and based on faulty arguments. This discussion clearly demonstrates two things. One is the attitude of skeptics to mislead people by focusing on the tiniest part of the picture. The other is how easy it is, while it's not so easy doing real science. Overall it has been very clear confirmation of the topic of this post which makes me more and more think that in general no real scientific curiosity guide the self-proclaimed skeptics. -
Berényi Péter at 19:58 PM on 15 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
#107 Riccardo at 07:13 AM on 15 June, 2010 do you want me to believe that being in an open space at least hundreds of meters away from the village or in between walls much warmer than air is the same thing? It is obviously not the same thing, but weather station at the Will Rogers Memorial Airport (red dot in figure) is located well within the heat island (for 09 Feb 2002) which spans some 2 km around the village.
From Hinkel 2003 Fig. 9
But this Barrow thing is getting overdiscussed. The whole point of it was to demonstrate UHI is present even at GHCN stations flagged "rural". Mission accomplished, move on folks. -
skywatcher at 19:29 PM on 15 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
BP, given that Barrow quite clearly does not show any increase in urbanisation round the weather station, as your own image helpfully shows (this report also has an image of the ASOS station, which is clearly not built-up around it), have you any examples where this theoretical effect of yours can be shown to happen. I would think, for example, one like where the weather station is not surrounded by buildings, say 30 years ago, and is clearly surrounded by buildings now? In a small settlement, with such tiny population densities as you and Spencer suggest? Barrow's weatehr station is visible on Google Earth at 71deg 17' 00.30"N and 156deg 46' 53.00"W, in the location described by robhon. It's in utterly un-urbanised open ground. Once again, how would building some houses the far side of Barrow affect that? Riccardo's point on the required densities is worth repeating - the largest change in Spencer's graph is between 5 and 20 people per square km, speculatively relating to 0.5C temperature change. That is moving from one house, to at the very most 10 houses in a whole square km. They would have to be tightly clustered round the weather station to have any effect at all as the referenced report nicely shows. Barrow's 'urban' area, measured on Google Earth, is (very generously) 6sq km, whose population of 4600 (~766/sq km) has declined slightly between 2000 and 2008. Barrow's population density, according to Spencer's model, is already well off the scale and in the region of negligible warming. So this goes to show that you and Spencer ar attributing most of global warming to the addition of very small numbers of houses to virtually uninhabited sites at enough weather stations around the world to bias the temperature record. Truly remarkable. I ask again, show me a site where this theoretical effect is observably real. And as David Horton said earlier (#11) "How do I explain this to the glaciers?" -
chris at 19:24 PM on 15 June 2010Monckton Chronicles Part IV– Medieval Warm Period?
Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 23:46 PM on 14 June, 2010 With respect Arkadiusz, you're missing the point. Mr Monckton in his presentation used the Powerpoint slide in Figure 2 of the top post as a "front" to his assertion that: "....the Medieval Warm Period was real, was global, and was warmer than the present. That is the scientific consensus....." This immediately preceded (and followed) by unpleasant segments in which Monckton accuses the IPCC of attempting to make the MWP disappear and that the scientists involved effectively told lies about their data. So we are addressing Monckton's assertions in the light of the evidence he shows to "support" these assertions and accusations. We find in fact that (a) the IPCC didn't attempt to make the MWP disappear since it is there in all their reports and the saupporting published papers, (b) the scientists involved didn't lie and misrepresent their data (Monckton shows no evidence for this creepy slur), (c) that of the data sets he shows at least 6 do not support his assertions at all (see Abraham's and my previous, and others posts on this thread), (d) that there is no evidence to support the assertion that the MWP was warmer than now (the evidence, even Monckton's examples, supports the opposite conclusion), (e) that there is little evidence that supports the assertion that the MWP was contemporaneously global (the evidence as it stands supports the opposite interpretation), although this remains to be established one way or another, and (f) that taken together (a) to (e) are a more faithful representation of the "consensus". Now you may want to hunt around for bits and pieces of data than might or might not support alternative interpretations (about the global homogeneity of the MWP). No one has a problem with that; scientists are doing this as we speak. But there are thousands of man hours of efforts of scientists that have the tools to address these questions properly. If one wishes to make conclusions about the homogeneity of the MWP (say) then the proxy data needs to be addressed en masse. These analyses give us the information (see Figure 1 of Dr. Abraham's top post) that allow these questions to be addressed scientifically. Scratching around at this or that bit of individual data isn't going to add very much to our understanding....that's not to say it might not be fun if you like doing that sort of thing. However you should be a little clearer about what insight you consider you'll gain from this... -
James Wight at 17:16 PM on 15 June 2010Every skeptic argument ever used
I’ve noticed some more errors in the Resources section that you should know about. Probably the most important is that the resources pages for “It’s the Sun” and “It’s cosmic rays” no longer seem to contain any links! But there are supposed to be hundred of them – where have they all gone? (This problem may extend to other pages, but I haven’t checked them all.) Another thing I’ve noticed recently is that the lists of Pro-AGW resources for each argument no longer include the corresponding Skeptical Science pages (though the SkS pages do seem to be included in the tally of Pro-AGW links displayed in green on the main Resources page). Did you intentionally remove them? (And why isn’t there a tally of Neutral links as well as Pro-AGW and Skeptic?) When you view an argument’s “peer-reviewed resources” page, there is a link at the top saying “View peer-reviewed papers only”. Shouldn’t this link direct the reader back to the full list of links?Response: Okay, realised why some pages weren't showing all the links - it's because I limited each page to only 25 links which means the arguments with lots of pro-AGW links used up their allotment before they even got to the neutral or skeptic links.
The link to the skeptical science rebuttal of each argument was missing because of a stupid error in my code. Took me a while to discover the error, took even longer slapping myself in the forehead for making the error then only a second to fix it.
The link saying 'view peer-reviewed papers only' is meant to show only papers for that argument. I added it because I personally found it annoying having to go back to the main directory, select 'peer-review only' then go back to the argument. I wanted immediate satisfaction.
Why isn't there a tally of neutral links? Meh. Who cares about how many neutral links there are? Well, I'm sure you do, James :-)
BTW, as always, many thanks for the feedback and helping keep the ever expanding and bloating website in some semblance of order. -
Bern at 14:16 PM on 15 June 2010Abraham reply to Monckton
deconvoluter at #62: thanks for that, it looks like a nice concise summary of the relevant equations. As I mentioned, I only googled for three seconds, so I obviously only found the basic radiative heat transfer equations. Reality is much more complex, as your link shows, when you throw an absorbing/re-radiating atmosphere into the mix. I would think, though, that a quick search for papers discussing heat transfer through the atmosphere would get you there a lot faster than three months! Or perhaps it took three months to find some equations that gave answers Monckton liked? It's a shame physics doesn't work that way, or we'd have free energy, anti-gravity, hyperdrives, and colonies in other star systems already! -
Doug Bostrom at 13:26 PM on 15 June 2010Uncertain motives: Theil misrepresents the science
The Ville if you're looking for informed commentary on the reporting itself you could do worse than regularly checking the Knight Science Journalism Tracker. KSJ Tracker is a service for science journalists, created and funded by the Knight Science Journalism Fellowship Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and launched in May 2006. We believe that if science reporters and editors have convenient and timely access to the work of peers across the country, they can better evaluate and improve their own performance. Our goal is to provide a broad sampling of the past day’s science news and, where possible, of news releases or other news tips related to publication of science news in the general circulation news media, mainly of the U.S. Our goal is to have a new batch of posts up each day of the work week by 2 pm Eastern time. -
muoncounter at 11:36 AM on 15 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
#105 "both SST history and satellite temperatures are consistent with GHCN derived series. If trend in the latter one is decreased by 45%, they become inconsistent." Extraordinary. Three independent datasets agree, yet one may have a theoretical inconsistency, so they all must be wrong? That's bass-ackwards. Especially when you add in the other datasets that tell the same story. For example, here's a snippet from a report of the Meteorological Service of Canada in 2000, which used 210 stations scattered across Canada: "the area with significant upward trend has expanded from the Prairies to include northern B.C. and Manitoba. The greatest warming during spring is well over 2 deg C for the 1900–1998 period in the Prairies." From the prairies to northern BC and Manitoba? Let's look at Manitoba, as an example, where the 20th century population growth looks nothing like the GISS temperature record. BTW, Manitoba has an area of approx. 650000 sq km with a 2006 population of 1.15 million (same reference as 'population growth', above). How can urban heating be responsible for 2 deg C in 99 years in a place as un-urban as Manitoba? -
Philippe Chantreau at 10:11 AM on 15 June 2010Monckton Chronicles Part IV– Medieval Warm Period?
FACT: Arkadiusz should know that Haas' take on the Maxwell Bay sediment core does not agree with the work of other researchers. The snarky tone combined with the superficial look at the existing science on the subject could lead some to suspect that Arkadiusz might be misrepresenting the science by selecting only one article that supports his view. To avoid such suspicion, it may be wise for Arkadiusz to dig deeper and stay away from the snarky tone. First, before Maxwell Bay, there was Palmer Deep, which yielded a lot of useful information and has a number of significant differences compared to Maxwell, especially the length of the Holocene Optimum (the difference may be up to 3500 years according to Klein). The 108 meters core obtained by the SHALDRIL (Maxwell) project was used by a number of teams to look at Holocene climate in Antarctica. Besides Haas et al, there was also Milliken's team. Milliken has done extensive work on Antarctica's reconstructions and his take is quite different: "High-resolution Holocene climate record from Maxwell Bay, South Shetland Islands, Antarctica." Milliken et al, 2009. http://bulletin.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/abstract/121/11-12/1711 Excerpt: "The highest resolution Holocene sediment core from the Antarctic Peninsula to date was collected during the first SHALDRIL cruise (NBP0502). Drilling yielded a 108.2-m-long core (87% recovery; site NBP0502–1B) from Maxwell Bay, South Shetland Islands. This high-resolution sediment record comes from a region that is currently experiencing dramatic climate change and associated glacial retreat. Such records can help to constrain the nature of past climate change and causal mechanisms, and to provide a context for evaluating current climate change and its impacts." Further, it reads: "Minimum sea-ice cover and warm water conditions occurred between 8.2 and 5.9 ka. From 5.9 to 2.6 ka, there was a gradual cooling and more extensive sea-ice cover in the bay. After 2.6 ka, the climate varied slightly, causing only subtle variation in glacier grounding lines. There is no compelling evidence for a Little Ice Age readvance in Maxwell Bay. The current warming and associated glacial response in the northern Antarctic Peninsula appears to be unprecedented in its synchroneity and widespread impact." Allison Klein did a thesis on the SHALDRIL core and the most she will say is this: "Productivity slowly decreases from 6500-2000 cal yr BP with increasing sea-ice cover (Milliken, 2008 - Chapter 1), after which it begins to remain relatively stable until present day with a slight increase 900-700 cal yr BP, perhaps a signal of the medieval warm period (Figure 19)." A far cry from Haas' sweeping statements. Klein's thesis is available as a pdf: http://dspace.nitle.org/bitstream/handle/10090/6428/s10geol2008klein.pdf?sequence=1 I don't have access to the Haas paper so I don't know why he believes that he can be so affirmnative in his MWP/LIA statements, but certainly his conclusions are not shared by the other teams that have worked on the SHALDRIL core. -
Rob Honeycutt at 09:30 AM on 15 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
FYI... You can actually see the ASOS station in the google image. It's just to the left of the little club shaped thing on the opposite side of the airport from town. It's at the end of a small road. -
Stephen Baines at 07:55 AM on 15 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
@johnd 103 I believe the difference in temp increase between the Northern and Southern hemispheres is because a much larger proportion of the surface area in the southern hemisphere is ocean. Of course, the ocean has a much higher heat capacity, so the same amount of heat results in a smaller temperature change. -
citizenschallenge at 07:50 AM on 15 June 2010Podcasts, interviews and Monckton bashing
As one of those who had a post deleted though 'I' didn't think it was that bad - I say thanks to the moderators - after all, none of us is the best judge of our own writing. Stick to your guns folks. PS. the proof is in the puddin: "This has to be one of the most on-point and focused comment threads I’ve ever seen in an energy and enviro discussion." (Lou Grinzo) Awesome website! peter -
Rob Honeycutt at 07:26 AM on 15 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
Berényi Péter... I just looked at a more recent google map satellite image of Barrow and there is virtually no change in urbanization in Barrow since this 1997 image you're posting here. I'm not the expert here but I don't quite understand where the UHI effect is coming from.
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MattJ at 07:18 AM on 15 June 2010Uncertain motives: Theil misrepresents the science
Phila makes a very important point: these false arguments never die, no matter how much they deserve to die. And lack of critical self-examination certainly has a lot to do with the reason they never die, but the deeper reason is even worse: when we get right down to it, the so-called skeptics (and their paymasters) really do not care that what they are doing is so destructive. So of course they avoid the hard work that is "critical self-examination" -
Riccardo at 07:13 AM on 15 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
Berényi Péter, do you want me to believe that being in an open space at least hundreds of meters away from the village or in between walls much warmer than air is the same thing? -
Berényi Péter at 07:01 AM on 15 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
#102 Riccardo at 03:34 AM on 15 June, 2010 The metereological stations, on the contrary, are outside the village, at the airport for a while Come on. That's how far away is the airport from Barrow.
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batsvensson at 06:40 AM on 15 June 2010Collective Intelligence and climate change
@Doug 00:35 AM on 12 June, 2010 thank you for the elaboration reply. -
Berényi Péter at 05:39 AM on 15 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
#100 Ned at 01:58 AM on 15 June, 2010 I stand by the comment that your proposed UHI effect (0.29C/century over land) works out to approximately 5 or 6 percent of the current global trend It is much worse than that. As it stands, both SST history and satellite temperatures are consistent with GHCN derived series. If trend in the latter one is decreased by 45%, they become inconsistent. In that case something has to be done. Computational climate models also have to be recalibrated using revised data. So if I would be right, it could get pretty inconvenient for folks involved in diverse branches of climate science. It is better to debunk it ASAP. However, not by rhetoric, but valid arguments. -
MattJ at 05:31 AM on 15 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
Answering #61: Scientists may not have collected the data themselves, but scientists ARE responsible for a certain sort of "due diligence" to make sure the data they used are sound. That is where they did not do well here. Even if it is true that UHI has had little effect, the 'proofs' of this really do sound too much like circular reasoning. Or, if, as some seem to be doing in this forum, we insist on referring to satellite measurements to justify the accuracy of the surface measurements, then all we have really done is replaced our confidence in one measurement with total confidence in another. We may as well have skipped the one to begin with. The epistemology behind such an approach is obviously disappointing. -
Phila at 04:56 AM on 15 June 2010Uncertain motives: Theil misrepresents the science
#1 Geo Guy "In the end, reliance on the IPCC reports is simply not realistic - perhaps that is why the UN has initiated an investigation into the methodology and processes used by the Panel?" Actually, I think the reason they've done this is because it's necessary in order to counter the politically motivated attacks against them, even though they've made fewer demonstrable errors in their massive documents than the average "skeptic" makes in a single 100-word blog comment, and should therefore be far more credible by the skeptics' own alleged standards. In any case, that kind of critical self-examination and self-correction is precisely what makes the IPCC process scientific. And the lack of it is exactly why "skeptical" arguments never die, no matter how many times they've been debunked (cf. "hiding the decline").
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