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Alexandre at 01:10 AM on 8 May 2010University of Queensland talk wrap-up
Very good slideshow. I downloaded the high-res version to make sure I have my copy. It's hard subject to get through in just a few minutes, and you did it well. One minor comment: when I first heard of the stratospheric cooling, I also understood it via the mental picture of that "blanketing" effect at the troposphere. But I was surprised to find out it's far more complicated than that. The blanket analogy works for the imbalance period, but the cooler stratosphere is the equilibrium state predicted in the models. Even Gavin Schmidt had a hard time expaining it at RealClimate - which is saying a lot. Ramanathan used another mental picture that I found a bit more enlightening: since the temperature increases with altitude in the stratosphere, more CO2 there would mean less heat coming down (thanks to ScienceOfDoom here). -
Byron Smith at 01:08 AM on 8 May 2010University of Queensland talk wrap-up
Thanks John - another great resource! I second the comment above about including ocean acidification in any future and slightly longer presentations. Also, if you think you might start getting more invites to information sessions like this, a short course on public speaking might be useful. I have no idea of your skills in this area, and so don't take this as any kind of attack, but everyone can improve and if you've only done a few talks, then getting a handle on some of the basics could help your verbal communication. This message is too important to have people distracted by irrelevant factors. -
D Kelly O at 01:07 AM on 8 May 2010University of Queensland talk wrap-up
John: Great slideshow, I'll add a link to it on my blog. Ned: I agree with your comment about ..."positive examples of "citizen science". Keep on "obsessing", you have at least 1 supporter! -
Ned at 01:05 AM on 8 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
chris, I don't disagree with anything you say there. I was just reacting to the comment "I can see why he cannot get anything published" and perhaps reading too much into it. CL has published quite a lot in his own field, and in perfectly fine journals. Maybe you're right and the previous commenter was just referring to "why he cannot get any climate change papers published." If that was unclear to me, it was probably unclear to others as well (or, maybe not :-) -
chris at 00:53 AM on 8 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
Ned, I don't normally do this (deviate from the science), but I think it's appropriate to comment more generally on on Loehle's recent publications, since this issue came up in the top article on this thread; i.e.:" What I got from him was that he believes himself to be one of the scientists whose work is blocked from publication for political reasons. And I got that his motivation for this 2007/2008 paper was to point out the "politically motivated" science trying to obscure the MWP by Michael Mann and others. I do not doubt Loehle is genuine in this statement and that he is genuine in his desire to do good science."
(i) "good science". Loehle's reconstruction isn't very good science (see the posts that actually address the science, on this thread). His note in the magazine Energy&Environ. on upper ocean heat content wasn't good science (final sentence "...and it remains possible that the result of the present analysis remains an artifact" - quite so!). His recent misplaced assertions in Atmospheric Environment isn't "good science". We could discuss these poor and unnecessary efforts in case anyone considers that my comments are overly subjective. (ii) "work blocked from publication". Loehle has published around 80 papers largely on various aspects of forest and landscape ecology, environmental impacts on habitats etc. He knows what's required to get decent science into decent journals. Pretty much anything that complies with the basic standards of the scientific method can be published somewhere. If Loehle is being sincere, he needs (it seems to me) to confront the reality that his diversion into climate physics has produced sub-standard analyses that don't make the grade (I personally believe he knows this, and that these recent publicationds aren't actually about science at all). We don't have to beat around the bush on this - Loehle has got his papers published in a magazine (E&E) and elsewhere, and we can see for ourselves what it is that Loehle seemingly considers he should have been allowed to publish in proper journals. -
HumanityRules at 00:52 AM on 8 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
97.chris Ron pointed out in post 87 that Loelhe acknowledges that the data is sparse. Much of the problems you level at Loelhe's work are suffered by Mann. The question might be whether Mann and the IPCC (and you) are prepared to acknowledge the limitations of their work? -
Paul D at 00:47 AM on 8 May 2010University of Queensland talk wrap-up
John I think a comment you make in your PDF notes is key to the skeptical attacks and strategy. You said: "...independent lines of evidence all point to the same result..." For those that understand the issues 'independent lines of evidence' are key to proving something. They are the fingerprints of the big picture. However those same 'independent lines of evidence' are a political gift for those that want to spread doubt and confusion. -
Dikran Marsupial at 00:17 AM on 8 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
Poptech @ 25 asks: "What are the reasons CRU raw data is not publicly available?" Most of it is, from the GCHN repository. The bits that are not are owned by various national met offices and CRU have no legal right to distribute them. They are however available from the national met offices. This has been explained e.g. in Phil Jones' testimony to the house of parliament inquiry, and ought by now to be common knowledge to anyone interested in the debate. The reason CRU can't distribute all of the data is because governments (including that of the UK) insist that national met offices make money from commercial licensing of their data, so that the met offices maximize their value to the tax payer. The reason that the data is not all in the open lies with government policy, not the CRU. However, CRU and the UK met office have been working to get permission from the national met offices to distribute the data, although not all are likely to agree. -
carrot eater at 00:11 AM on 8 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
michael sweet: Loehle's paper attempts to answer the question, what happens if you don't use any tree ring proxies. So it will necessarily have fewer proxies than a paper that does use tree rings. Don't knock it for not having 1000 proxies. Loehle does limit himself though by only using proxies where the original authors also published a calibration. Loehle only accepts temperatures as inputs. Loehle 2007/2008 is a couple steps backward from Moberg 2005, which also attempted to reduce the influence of tree rings. Moberg itself could be improved, but Loehle is worse, yet came out afterwards. So even after the basic errors in the 2007 version were corrected, Loehle 2008 isn't progress upon the existing literature. But I'm still glad that some sceptic bothered to try to make a reconstruction. -
Ned at 23:46 PM on 7 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
Michael Sweet writes: When I examine Loehle's paper I can see why he cannot get anything published. That's a very unfair statement. Loehle has published many papers, primarily on forestry, forest ecology, and related topics, in a variety of well respected journals (i.e., not just E&E). Insofar as there are concerns about anything in this paper, let's discuss those concerns. But let's not make sweeping (and incorrect) statements denigrating his publication record in general. -
James Wight at 23:38 PM on 7 May 2010University of Queensland talk wrap-up
A good summary of the basic science – though it is a shame you had to cut some slides. Have you thought have using the graph on slide 31 in a response to “Deserts are retreating”? Also, just out of interest, where did that temperature graph on slide 4 come from? It doesn’t look much like the usual “hockey team” of reconstructions.Response: It's by Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist from Texas. It's constructed from ice core and sediment records, she kindly sent me the raw data so I was able to plot it in a format matching the other graphs. I used it because of its longevity, most of the other hockey stick graphs only go back 1000 to 2000 years. -
Ned at 23:26 PM on 7 May 2010What causes Arctic amplification?
skepticstudent writes: One thing I fail to see in all 30 previous posts on this subject is the fact that in 2008 the temperatures were the third coldest since thermometers were invented in 1775. Are you kidding? 2008 wasn't even close to being that cold. In fact, it was above the average of the past 30 years*, and that 30 year period itself is way warmer than any other period in your 1775-present timeframe! In fact, although 2008 was cooler than some other recent years, in the GISSTEMP record it was the 10th warmest year since the start of the record in 1880! Every year since 2001 is in the top 10. Where on earth did you get the idea that "2008 was the third-coldest year since 1775"? You need to check your sources, and preferably provide references for your claims. * 2008 was warmer than the 1979-2009 average in the RSS, GISS, CRU, and NCDC records. It was slightly cooler than the average in the UAH record. -
michael sweet at 23:02 PM on 7 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
When I examine Loehle's paper I can see why he cannot get anything published. He has a "me too" paper. He is re-examining an issue previously addressed by someone else. He has basic math and other basic errors. He uses only 18 proxies versus Manns over 1,000. He claims global coverage that he does not have. What is added to scientific knowledge by this paper? Nothing. It is a waste of paper. Mann has already carefully covered this topic and Loehle adds nothing useful to Manns' analysis. Scientific journals are not open blogs where anyone gets in. A new paper needs to add to knowledge to get published. Either by adding new data (Loehle does not begin to address the many proxies Mann uses) or by developing a new, better analysis. Loehle has just written a poor opinion piece. Good journals have good papers to publish that advance science. Loehles whinging about his inability to get published shows his lack of understanding about what a paper should contain. -
Ned at 22:41 PM on 7 May 2010University of Queensland talk wrap-up
Okay, I've looked through your slides, and you've really done a good job of covering the main points. I like the fact that you include some graphics that are actually very fundamental but that aren't always shown in these kinds of talks. What would I add if you had more time? Maybe a slide or two about ocean acidification ... it's important to remind people about that, particularly since a lot of proposed geo-engineering "solutions" only address warming, not ocean pH. Also, depending on the audience, it might be nice to include positive examples of "citizen science" (e.g., people verifying the surface temperature trend by independently analyzing the same data used in the four "official" data sets [GISS, CRU, NCDC, JMA] ... yes, I know I've been obsessing about this lately; sorry, I just think what Clear Climate Code, etc. have done is really neat!) A slide about this would probably be appreciated by an audience of engineers or non-academics. What would I trim if you needed to save time? I don't know exactly how much time you spend on each section, but I note a string of 9 slides in the middle that focus on the cryosphere (starting with "glaciers are retreating" and ending with "Arctic sea ice is melting"). If you needed to shorten it up a bit, you might be able to consolidate this topic, though it'd be a shame to not include any of the figures you've got there. All in all, well done!Response: I intentionally left out ocean acidification because the next talker, Ove, was a coral reef researcher with many peer-reviewed papers on the subject. I didn't want to steal his thunder. If I present that talk in the future, if I have more time, I would add more impacts at the end. -
Ned at 21:38 PM on 7 May 2010University of Queensland talk wrap-up
Congratulations, John. I'm going to download your slides and look them over. I wish I were able to go to one of your talks, but unfortunately I'm in the wrong hemisphere :-( John writes: [...] my notes (which I forgot to refer to on the day anyway) [...] Apart from a few hiccups [...] I had trouble fitting all the content into 20 minutes [...] I had to jettison [...] which was a great shame (I have much fondness for those graphics). Mental note: make sure I'm allocated enough time to include my superfluous but pretty graphics next time around. [...] Unfortunately, there was only time for a couple of questions which was a disappointment. [...] Well, I've given many dozens of scientific talks over the past couple of decades and the laments you list above could have described pretty much ... all of them! If those are the worst you can say in retrospect, consider it a great success. (No surprise to anyone here, we've seen ample evidence of what an effective communicator you are.) I hope you'll keep doing these presentations because they're desperately needed.Response: Looking at all those quotes, I really am a glass-half-empty type! :-( -
Ned at 21:25 PM on 7 May 2010Why are there fewer weather stations and what's the effect?
skepticstudent, thanks for your comment. However, I would gently suggest that it's often best to keep one's comments a bit shorter and more focused on one or a few points, rather than trying to include everything at once. (Of course, I say this as someone who has produced more than my share of too-long comments!) In science it's very important to be clear about what the question is that you're addressing. Taking photographs of weather stations could be part of testing the following question: (1) Does weather station X meet the following criteria [...] that we use to define a "good" station? In addition, if you used an appropriate sampling scheme (completely randomized, systematic, stratified random, ...) one could also test the following question: (2) What is the best estimate of the percentage of the weather stations in the US that meet the criteria, and what are the 95% confidence intervals around that estimate? Merely taking photographs, however, does not address the following question: (3) Does the suboptimal siting of individual weather stations have a statistically significant impact on estimates of the regional (or global) temperature trend? Now, Watts has made a lot of assertions that his photos "prove" that there is a problem with the temperature record. But neither he nor any of his colleagues has ever published (on his blog, or in the literature) anything that actually shows that quantitatively. In fact, the only quantitative analyses of Watts's surface station results (by John Van Vliet on various blogs, and by Menne et al. 2010) clearly suggest that the kinds of problems Watts and others have identified don't actually propagate through to the final estimates of temperature trends. Likewise, Watts and D'Aleo pointed to a decline in the numbers of stations, and claimed that this decline (particularly among stations that are high-latitude, high-altitude, and/or rural) is artificially biasing estimates of the global mean temperature trend. But neither Watts nor D'Aleo did any quantitative studies to justify their claims. Once again, when people actually started calculating and quantifying the impact of this, it became quite clear that there's been no significant effect at all -- and in fact, insofar as there is any effect, it's been a slight bias in the opposite direction. In fact, you can actually get a good estimate of the global temperature trend using a very small number of stations. This is because temperature anomalies are spatially autocorrelated over long distances. In a recent analysis, Nick Stokes used only the 61 stations in GHCN that have more than 90 years of data and that are categorized as rural. The results match what you'd get using the full set of stations very closely, though there's clearly much more year-to-year variation in the 61-station version:
FWIW, the entire US including Alaska is less than 2% of the surface area of the Earth. So one could actually calculate an accurate global mean temperature data set using a group of stations that included only a single station within the US.
Of course, more stations is better! But anyone claiming that the decline in the number of stations has a significant effect needs to prove that quantitatively, and all the studies I've seen so far have found exactly the opposite.
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JMurphy at 21:24 PM on 7 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
Someone asked about a list of different types of proxies. Lots can be found at NOAA, inluding climate reconstructions. And did I dream it or did someone actually include a link to the Science [sic] and Public Policy Institute ? -
Riccardo at 21:04 PM on 7 May 2010Why are there fewer weather stations and what's the effect?
skepticstudent, only climate change skeptics claims that scientists say there's no UHI. On the contrary, scientists say it's there and it is accounted for. Sea surface temperature is not at its minimum in 35 years. It looks like your long "dissertation" is not based on recognizable facts. -
HumanityRules at 20:03 PM on 7 May 2010University of Queensland talk wrap-up
That reminds me, Mark E. Smith of 'The Fall' famously used to sing through two mics at gigs, it never did him any good either. The Fall - "What about us?" "question time which was dominated by discussion of policy, human psychology and over-population" I enjoy the focus this website has on the science but it's worth remembering that it's the politics that really drives policies on climate change. Misanthropic ideas about human nature and population are the most worrying aspect of the whole affair to me. -
Ned at 19:50 PM on 7 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
This thread has gone off-topic in several directions, and should probably be brought back into focus. One tangent (which I contributed to -- mea culpa!) involves questions about analyses of global mean surface temperature trends. For anyone who is sincerely interested, I think this has now been addressed satisfactorily (see the second page of this thread). If there are more specific questions about CRUTEMP, GISSTEMP, etc. those should probably be addressed to the people who maintain those data sets. Any further discussion on this site should probably be moved here or here. Likewise, discussion of the journal E&E, its quality or lack thereof, and whether or not its papers are peer-reviewed, should probably be taken here (where many of these exact points have recently been debated). Carrot eater's comment upthread is important, IMHO. While discussing concerns and issues with Loehle's reconstruction, it's important to recognize that he's made a sincere effort to contribute to this part of the field and it deserves to be considered critically and seriously. -
skepticstudent at 19:06 PM on 7 May 2010Why are there fewer weather stations and what's the effect?
sorry, I had a typo, I meant it they said it wasn't their fault... -
skepticstudent at 19:05 PM on 7 May 2010Why are there fewer weather stations and what's the effect?
Ok I will respond to two different comments here, the rest are just similar in line with these two comments. .41 Ned and # 16 Nautilus_Mr You are both pretty much saying the same things as everyone else and I challenge these statements. First Nautilus_Mr is saying that Watt’s famous photos are red herrings and dumbing down the information. No! Those pictures are the crux of what is wrong with much of the information being pushed by the side of ACGW alarmists. On one hand you say that obviously the first will be a casual effect of weather increase but in the same breath you say that these pictures are red herrings. These new weather stations were placed between 1995 and the year 2000. There were guidelines which were obviously ignored in the placement of numerous sensors. I have pictures of about 30 sensors that are placed either over asphalt or lava rock, or in front of air conditioner outlets or even in the case of two pictures, within 50 feet of the exhaust of airplanes where they sit on the hot tarmac with the exhaust aimed right at the sensor. These sensors were placed at about the same time that the temperature anomalies started showing up. Also the sensors that are missing aren’t just one or two, there are 30,000 sensors that have been removed and are no longer giving temperature. This occurred roughly during the same time period between the years 1995 to 200. People talk about UHIE and how it doesn’t have any appreciable effect. I have lived in Southern Arizona and I know for a fact that there are more people now. A tremendous amount versus 1984 when I lived in the Tucson area and the Grand Canyon area. How can any scientist in good conscious not consider that data from an area whose paved roads, homes, automobiles, trucks bringing in supplies and goods to a vastly increased population would further increase temperatures in an already extremely hot place? I just can’t understand it. Not to mention if you look at the main USHCN sensors, I am currently looking at a 10.5 X 11 picture of it as I write this… Just look at the picture and ask yourself what is wrong with this picture. There are at least 10 cars that have parked within 15 feet of it, obviously by looking at its placing you can see with your own two eyes that they had to go passed it and then stop and cool down. Have you ever felt the heat given off by a catalytic converter in a cold town let alone one like Tucson? There is also a very large building nearby which anyone that has lived in Arizona, New Mexico, Utah or Mexico will tell you that this type of building will give off a tremendous amount of heat and is less than 50 feet away. The reason why I talk about this town and this sensor so much is it is frequently mentioned as one of the hottest growing towns in the last 25 years. Can I just be a man and lose the scientific pontification for a minute and just say an emphatic DUHHH! Then you throw in the 30,000 sensors that disappeared from Russian and numerous other high latitudes or high altitudes. You put all those things together and try to tell me seriously with a straight face while you look me in the eye that those are all nominal enough that you can just wipe them out with an adjustment in a proxy in a computerized model and it don’t mean anything? Seriously? As if all the other evidence wasn’t enough for the Jury at hand… There was a study done for UHIE effects in Barrow Alaska, one of the smallest villages in the world, in one of the coldest places in the world. There were several dozen temp sensors placed around the village with roughly 200 or less people depending on the birth, death, and escaping of teens to warmer more exciting climes…. And then several dozen more placed outside the “urban area”. Now when I say urban area, there are only a few buildings, you can only drive a full size vehicle less than three months out of the year and around 200 people. This is not a metropolis folks. It’s an Alaskan village. But still even in the middle of winter, (a very cold winter I might add) the study showed an increase in temperature in the town versus the outlying “rural” area. If that doesn’t make a believer out of you on UHIE I don’t know what will. But yet once again this is one of the many things that the ACGW believers either aren’t willing to talk about, don’t know about, or try to hide. Ned… here’s a good match for scientific reality for you. View the report about the joint study between NASA with their Satellites, and an organization called Remote sensing Systems. They took the information provided by NASA and their own oceanic buoy sensors and both Satellite and buoy information shows that even with Vulcanic offflow (which is very important because I think both sides of the equation would agree that heat rises, unless there is a new study for that now as well) the oceanic temperatures are cooler now by a considerable amount than they have been for the last 35 years since Satellites have flown around our orbit. Keep in mind, any kind of satellite data is relatively new since they have only been flying since 1975. If you go to their website you can view a real time chart that shows the globe with a daily updated view of all the buoys on the globe, there are a lot of them. http://www.remss.com/ This is a grid of buoys as of their daily update from about 2 weeks ago. As you can see there is quite a large amount of these sensors splattered across the globe. This mixed with science I feel can be a very good depiction of true information. I would challenge anyone to tell me that surface and shallow subsurface temperature sensors placed around the oceans of the globe would not be a far better even keeled relative measurement than land surface sensors that have all sorts of built in biases. Looking at Ocean bound sensors that tell us that temperatures for the last 20 years have been cooling globally (even though they have to deal with Volcanic effluence) are not a better picture of the global warming or cooling trends I would love to have you help me wrap my brain around that. Ignoring all the papers that have been written on the side of the ACGW can you still tell me that UHIE amounts to nothing? So yes it does matter that new sensors aren’t being placed very intelligently (or at the most polite that I can be, failed to follow the rules of best practice given to them by the people telling them what to do and where to go) Yes it does matter and no it is most certainly not a red herring when you look at a picture of a sensor less than two feet and right over the top of a very large industrial grade air conditioning outvent. Or sensors very near where the exhaust of a plane would blow for long periods of time as it warmed up before takeoff. Yes it does matter that towns have more people in them and more asphalt roads. It matters very much. http://www.remss.com/ also shows a grid of sea surface temperatures that are pretty much flat since the beginning of the 21st century and shows the drastic decrease of sea surface temperatures in 2008, which mimic the cold temperatures on land surface. If you look at the map on the link below it shows a gridded map of surface temperaatures across the US over a period of time. It points out Tuscon, AZ specifically.(Map by Steve McIntyre in 2007 of USHCN data adjusted for Time of Observation. http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1687) Let’s also look at the facts of Amateurs who truly had nothing to gain, and people that work for an arm of the government that is spending trillions of tax payers dollars to research in the name of global warming. Who is more trustworthy here folks? Is there a scientific formula or computer model to proxy or filter out greed and corruption? What does this have to do with anything you might ask? It’s not politics and it’s not ad hominem, it goes to the evidence of what placing of sensors has to do with anything and why the UHIE is real and it effects the numbers beyond what you can wish away with a computer model. The timeline of all this, the disappearance of 30,000 colder clime sensors, the takeover of weather sensor monitoring and placement by United states government workers, all correlating to roughly the same time period, 1995-2000. How can you look me in the eye, scientist or otherwise and deny these facts and tell me that sensor placement, or UHIE has nothing to do with the presentation of those on the side of ACGW? Next I will bring up the incident where the Goddard institute had to eat crow and admit the fact that it didn’t do any quality control of information given to them. There was a report put out about the anomaly of the warmest snowy day in history. It talked about the anomaly of 2008 when there was more snow in Russia than there had been in a very long time. There was also a lot more snow in the Pacific Northwest and in Alaska in a very long time, yet the information given stated that it was the warmest October on record. Continued signs of global warming. Not just in the United States but also in Russia. What the paper didn’t state was that the person giving the Goddard institute it’s temperature data apparently for some reason decided to give the same data two months in a row, in reality instead of giving data for September and for October, they gave the same data for September two months in a row. (You have to ask yourself why the rocket scientists at NASA didn’t catch this) I have to say here that my 83 year old mother who is about as far as you can get from being a scientist has told me since I can remember, that September is typically one of the warmest months of the year and is even warmer than August usually, it’s called Indian Summer. The question begging to be asked, If my 83 year old mother who can’t even figure out how to program her VCR and watch another show at the same time understands this why didn’t Goddard? The best excuse they could come up with is that it is third party information that has been given to them for a long period of time and it wasn’t there fault. Isn’t part of the scientific method and the idea behind the ETHOS of writing a presentation supposed to be that you follow up on your information so no bad information ever gets past you? This isn’t to insult the scientists at Goddard in an ad hominem attack, this is to point out some very shoddy scientific writing that is supposed to support the agenda of ACGW and deny UHIE and other information pretty much drives home the importance of those two previously discussed items more than ever. -
quokka at 18:52 PM on 7 May 2010University of Queensland talk wrap-up
Very nice set of slides with excellent logical progression. Lots of material to get through in 20 mins. The ABC science show Catalyst this week had an interesting piece on "CO2 is plant food". The point was essentially that even if higher CO2 is good for plants (disregarding issues of water, nutrients etc) it may not be good for either humans or the ecosystem as a whole. At high CO2 levels protein content of important crops drops significantly and levels of toxins in some plants increase significantly. One suggested consequence was that under such conditions Koalas may no longer be able to subsist on a diet of Eucalyptus leaves. (Maybe deniers can fixate on Koala bears instead of Polar bears now!) It would be interesting to know more about this research if anybody has any references.A guest post would be nice :) -
dpovey at 18:15 PM on 7 May 2010University of Queensland talk wrap-up
Really enjoyed your talk John, and yes it's a shame that the moderator let the panel waffle a bit and we missed the opportunity to see some skeptic smackdowns :-). -
Riccardo at 17:44 PM on 7 May 2010What causes Arctic amplification?
skepticstudent, if you're looking for a discussion on a particular year or month you should try to find a weather related blog. Climate is different. P.S. The place where I live has been called "the Heaven on Earth". I don't think we should take this ancient testimony litterally. -
Riccardo at 17:30 PM on 7 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
This very long serie of comments very clearly elucidates the central point of the post, a meaningless Kung-fu fight to distract from the real issues. And this tactic, while useless for the improvement of our understanding of climate, works quite well. This is the other side of the coin of putting a too powerful weapon (science) in the hands of the untrained, chances are that an acceptable (although questionable, as always) piece of scientific work (Loehle's) gets misused. -
skepticstudent at 16:51 PM on 7 May 2010What causes Arctic amplification?
One thing I fail to see in all 30 previous posts on this subject is the fact that in 2008 the temperatures were the third coldest since thermometers were invented in 1775. I lived in Anchorage, AK in 2008 and not only was the winter one of the coldest ever, but October 2008 was the 3rd coldest October in the same history frame. Fort Yukon had temperatures plummet to -79 degrees F for weeks at a time. The Yukon river was frozen from its outlet in Alaska all the way down through the Yukon territory of Canada. I drove along it for miles and have tons of pictures of it being completely frozen in June. It was frozen the whole summer the year before as well. Also one of the things I see no one talking about is the fact that the fabled Northwest passage was completely open and navigable in spring, summer, and fall of 2007, but by winter of 2008 when a liberal ecologist (not an ad hominem that was his own listing) tried to take a kayak followed by two vessels of camera teams, journalists, and assistants tried to navigate the famed Northwest passage to show the world how the evils of ACGW was destroying our earth, the ice had already gathered in such a large vast amount he was turned back. In fact studies show that there was more ice growth in the Arctic in 2008 than in the last 20 years previous. The four famous polar bears talked about by Mr. Gore in “An Inconvenient Truth”, as dying because of Arctic warming. Were actually autopsied by experts and it was found they didn’t starve to death due to too much warming; they died from exposure to extreme cold during the worst wind storm known.(The Eskimo’s and other native tribes are excellent at recalling history of weather for many generations). The same windstorm pattern that blew from Alaska in the west had similar patterns all the way across to Hudson’s Bay in the east. This windstorm in the west also caused a major phenomenon which few people outside the skeptic realm ever talk about. Because there was such incredible wind for such an extensive period of time there was no snow to insulate the ice and make it take longer to build up like usual and the moisture that fell caused exponential amounts of ice to form. Now for any of you who are close to being a skeptic but are unsure, look into the great Northwest passage looked for, for so long by so many… There are verified reports of Canadian vessels traveling east to west across the Inland Passage at least 4 times in the past 200 years. Those that never found it were not there at the right time. Just like the gentleman in the Kayak in 2008. Could it be that the Earth regulates itself, and has for eons and no matter what man does, it won’t allow him to step outside of its control of itself? -
skepticstudent at 15:21 PM on 7 May 2010A peer-reviewed response to McLean's El Nino paper
I will admit that my level of science expertise is not as august as those that surround me. However at the age of 50 I’ve been around the block a few times and I’m able to put 2 and 2 together and see through a few holes. However I would like to make some comments and ask some questions out of full seriousness not being trite. I believe I did offer some evidence in regards to oceanic cooling. The end all be all of scientific focus on the side of global warming seems to be from James Hansen and the NASA Goddard institute, and Michael Mann’s Hockey stick. However let’s just focus on Oceanic Temperatures for now. Since this thread is talking about whether or not the oceanic temperature frame could be cooling or stable and related to Antarctic Ice melt is at the core of that As I mentioned earlier a joint NASA Remote Sensing Systems paper shows the combined science of satellite imagery and oceanic buoy readings which show a general oceanic temperature decline over the last 10 + years. http://www.remss.com/ If you look at their website it shows In Situ Data collocations for the most recently completed day. It shows a group of buoys placed all over the oceans of the world. Now as to your comment of forcings then, versus forcings now, and the forcings that were around 10million years ago that are not active today. What is your basis in fact in this comment? There is ice core evidence and lake bed sediment evidence that during the last 10 million years there have been numerous periods where the ice in the Antarctic has done the same thing as it is doing now, what forcings were in play then that aren’t now. I have heard that said over and over but yet never proven to my satisfaction. One of the major contentions against the McLean/Carter et al.’s paper is that El Nino has been around since about 1895 even though that’s almost a century earlier than what I have heard for the last two decades but I’ll just go with the flow for this argument, the other part of the contention is that McLean/Carter et al. are trying to deny ongoing activity. Well how can you say on one hand this has been going on for a very long time and then on the other hand say that there is no evidence that the forcings 10milion years ago aren’t continuing today? You are robbing from Peter to pay Paul in your argument. I think one of the major errors that people who believe one thing and one thing only are missing is that there is a multiplicity of things causing fluctuations of temperature. Also this is a regional thing not a global thing. Also there has been a major ignoring of the fact that there is evidence over eons, that when the Arctic ice has a major growth pattern, the Antarctic recedes and vice versa. The Arctic ice pattern has had some major growth patterns since 2008. Now if anyone wants to debate me on the amount of snow and ice and windstorms in the state of Alaska in 2008 and 2009 I lived up there and I will be glad to debate you on “warming” in Alaska. I won’t argue that perhaps the Antarctic ice has melted a little more than expect in the last two years. I won’t argue that most likely the Pacific Decadal Oscillation would most likely not be the single culprit of Antarctic melting. But I would also stand strong and deny that any amount of anthropogenic CO2 output is the sole cause of any amount of warming. I’m trying to stay to the theme of this thread but it is rather difficult, without bringing in corollary evidence. You might be asking yourselves where this guy is getting his information from if he admits that he is not a scientist per say. I am a scientist of sorts. I am a Network Engineer and I have to understand electronics and a million other things and piece things together one step at a time forming theories and hypotheses as to what might keep one part of a communications network from functioning properly with another. If that is not the heart of the scientific method I don’t know what is. I have also studied for years about weather and astronomy. I also happen to have two friends who are a retired meteorologist expert for the US Weather Bureau, and another is a climatologist. As far as whether or not the McLean/Carter et al. paper is fit for peer review, I would say that what they were saying is that you have to look at the facts and see that there are other things besides mankind’s contribution to carbon footprint globally. I believe they proved that. Did they prove that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation was the sole corollary cause of global warming? No but having read the paper I don’t think that was the intention. As in so many areas I believe that when science can’t be refuted you attack the scientist. I believe since their paper is stating that other things are at play in any temperature fluctuation and that is the main bone of contention I believe it is fair to quickly discuss the fact once again, that during the carboniferous period there was 7000 to 14000 ppm of CO2. Who drove cars then? What factories were putting out CO2? Was the temperature any different than it is now? (At different periods of time yes at others no) On the opposite side of the coin, there were times when CO2 was at around 400ppm the equator was nearly frozen solid. So the main quest of their paper was to show that CO2 really isn’t the cause of any warming past, present, or future. I’m not going to get into the other areas as they are not within the confines of this thread and I’m trying to play within the rules of this blog since I’m not the author. Ps... I just got an email from Mr. Bob Carter and I advised him of this blog, I'm sure he will be thrilled beyond description over the excitement and enthusiastic discussion of his hard work. -
quokka at 13:59 PM on 7 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
A bit off topic but definitely newsworthy: 255 members of the US National Academy, including 11 Nobel Laureates, defend the integrity of climate science in a strongly worded statement that includes terms such as "deniers" and "outright lies". It seems the patience of the scientific establishment is reaching it's limits. It's about time. Joe Romm reports -
carrot eater at 13:09 PM on 7 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
For what it's worth (and he can speak for himself), I don't get the impression that Loehle intends for his reconstruction to be seen as being above criticism. The relative low number of proxies, the lack of SH coverage, and the difficulty of using low-res proxies - these are problems. The questions are, did he handle these problems as well as one can? At the very least, 'global' just shouldn't be in the title. Leave out the token 3 SH sites, and call it NH, like Moberg did. Moberg is sort of like the cousin of Loehle's paper. And as it happens, Moberg's results are the most similar to Loehle's. -
Rob Honeycutt at 12:17 PM on 7 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
@poptech... I don't think it's okay to post the full text of private emails between Dr Loehle and myself. That would be a breach of trust. But I can assure you that this was definitely the gist of what he said. As well, as I stated before, Dr Loehle has read my blog post and said to me that it was a "good post." I believe I have treated him fairly in my post and he was extremely generous with me in the process. If you can't accept my paraphrasing of his statements to me then I don't think there's anything more I can offer. If the tables were turned I would accept your statements. But that's just me. -
carrot eater at 12:07 PM on 7 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
Poptech: No. I'll happily read a paper. I read Loehle's corrected paper. I'll read a relevant blog post, if you have one. But I'm not going to go digging through a comment thread to find something that may or may not be there. So if Loehle really did address concerns about spatial representation, how to appropriately handle such low resolution proxies, and the lack of attention to calibration/validation, please point directly there. -
Rob Honeycutt at 11:56 AM on 7 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
@poptech said... "Your assertions of Dr. Loehle's motivation are unsubstantiated." Actually NewYorkJ restated what Dr Loehle's words to me were. I think that might just constitute being substantiated. -
scaddenp at 11:52 AM on 7 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
poptech; What raw data are you talking about?? I assumed it was raw data behind Hadcrut. The reasons is as stated. It is not "their" raw data. Most comes ready processed from GHCN. The rest is from national weather centres. It MAY be publicly available - but not from CRU because they are not the data custodians. I would be pretty upset if my raw data supplied to client was made publically available by them. This is just skeptic talking point and off topic. Or are you talking about some other raw data set which CRU collect and are custodians for? -
carrot eater at 11:40 AM on 7 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
Poptech: This is laziness. That's just a blog post that notes that the correction had been put out. Are you telling me that Loehle addresses the remaining issues somewhere in the 356 comments down below? If so, please extract the timestamps of the relevant comments. It's appropriate to give somebody a paper citation to look up. I think it's inappropriate to ask somebody to go fishing through a long list of blog comments. I can't imagine what he could say to defend the simple average, beyond that it was.. simple. -
NewYorkJ at 11:26 AM on 7 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
"Your assertions of Dr. Loehle's motivation are unsubstantiated." It's substantiated by his own words. Imagine if someone had noted a conversation: "And I got that his motivation for this paper was to point out the "politically motivated" science trying to create a MWP that doesn't exist by Loehle and others." "You could say the same thing about Dr. Mann and his motivations for wanting to not show a MWP warmer than today. " That would be unsubstantiated. -
NewYorkJ at 11:21 AM on 7 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
"Peer-reviewed as in refereed." ...by like-minded skeptics for a journal set up for skeptics by skeptics in order to publish contrarian arguments (and not necessarily good ones). "Your comparison to blogs is just absurd." It's rather apt, actually. Blogs aren't useless, though. Occasionally some useful stuff gets presented there that eventually gets published. Example: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/10/tropical-tropopshere-iii/ What one should object to is treating E&E on par with the many dozens of reputable scientific journals (it's clearly not), when it has the review standard of a contrarian blog. "On the other hand I am basing mine on complaints I have read from him in the past, which were focused on certain (not all) journals." He's always free to publish among those other reputable journals that he doesn't slander. Does it occur to you at all that perhaps some of his stuff has been rejected because it's not very good and he refuses to take apt advice from reviewers? While you can erroneously claim that Loehle has addressed all problems with his reconstruction, do you really think Loehle 2007, riddled with errors, should have been published as is? -
scaddenp at 11:16 AM on 7 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
Poptech - CRU - HadCrut is almost entire GHCN stations which are published. The remainder is extra national weather stations for which CRU is not the custodian. If you want that data you go to the national provider. This has been discussed ad nausieum in media and climate fora. Back to subject? This one is too boring. -
scaddenp at 11:10 AM on 7 May 2010A peer-reviewed response to McLean's El Nino paper
skepticstudent - it would seem to believe things (like broken hockey stick and ocean cooling that are not true. Perhaps you might like to check on that and comment if you have fresh evidence in the appropriate place (not this thread). Antartica - models predicted antartic would grow period. When it is not, then obviously it becomes focus of attention. But it appears that East antartica may be losing mass as well. See antarctic ice which would be a matter for concern. What happened in past isnt that relevant - no one disputes that natural climate change happens (slowly), but the forcing that act in the past arent acting now (or acting to cool but not). -
NewYorkJ at 11:06 AM on 7 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
Rob: "And I got that his motivation for this 2007/2008 paper was to point out the "politically motivated" science trying to obscure the MWP by Michael Mann and others." It is that reason why one might question Loehle's judgment. Prior to actually doing a thorough analysis, he had already made up his mind about the MWP (a co2science.org reader perhaps). Therefore, it seems unlikely he would attempt to publish a reconstruction that did not have a strong MWP, more pronounced than existing reconstructions. -
NewYorkJ at 10:57 AM on 7 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
"NewYorkJ, so far you have been entirely wrong about all your assertions about E&E. Sonja has explicitly stated what her "political agenda" is, which is not what you implied or continue to." Editors should be not be following a political agenda. I understand what her agenda is. "The Pielke quote is his subjective opinion nothing more." Most climate scientists agree with him. Even those like Pielke Jr. who routinely attack mainstream scientists at least value credibility. E&E is no better than a contrarian blog. "The Wigley quote was to show that he accepts E&E as peer-reviewed. Why would I include his discussion of a paper that has nothing to do with the question of E&E being peer-reviewed or not?" Your omission problem was not of that discussion (which was generally relevant to the discussion of the thread topic), but of neglecting the full context of the quote. "Furthermore, I do not think that a direct response will give the work credibility. It is already 'credible' since it is in the peer reviewed literature (and E&E, by the way, is peer reviewed). A response that says this paper is a load of crap for the following reasons is *not* going to give the original work credibility -- just the opposite." Note the quotes around "credible" and the context of the public nature of the study. It's unclear if Wigley believes it's truly a credible peer-reviewed journal or if E&E is falsely perceived as such. "It is illogical. I have overwhelmingly proven E&E is peer-reviewed." Peer reviewed or "peer reviewed"? Blogs are "peer reviewed". It doesn't mean their process is anything remotely credible. For example, as mentioned earlier, I've seen Watts make the baseline error you appear to have made, in an effort to give the appearance that GISS is biased high. I've also seen several hundred responses to such threads where no one bothers to correct him. Credible peer review? "No one is proclaiming systematic conspiracy anywhere. The complaints made towards being published revolve around a select few journals. " If Dr. Loehle has a problem with a few selected journals, he should state those problems clearly and concisely. More importantly, he should then seek to publish in one of many dozens of others of genuinely credible journals, rather than making sweeping ad hominen attacks against all journals, editors, and reviewers that publish climate science-related studies, and towards distinguished scientists like Dr. Mann. -
scaddenp at 10:56 AM on 7 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
Perhaps we could return the debate to some substance. Is there any evidence from paleoclimate reconstructions that would support the idea that the current warming is more due to a natural cycle than to anthropogenic factors? Especially, is there any evidence that MCA cannot be accounted for by known natural forcings which could be also operating today? I see no sign of this in Loehle or anyone else's work. -
scaddenp at 10:51 AM on 7 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
poptech - Hadcrut methodology is published. The entire dataset is not for well publicized reasons which I am sure you are aware of. Since this is immaterial to the debate, why are continuing to bring it up? -
carrot eater at 10:44 AM on 7 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
Look, E&E is a questionable journal with questionable peer review, but just because a paper appears there doesn't mean it's automatically bad. I greatly applaud Loehle for trying. Many sceptics say many things about paleoclimate, but so far as I know, he's the only one to step up and try publishing a reconstruction for himself. McIntyre hasn't. The co2science guys just take papers that mention some period of relative warmth at some spot on earth at some point in time over a period of 600 years, and call it MWP. But unlike them, Loehle has actually tried to put it together. I think his effort (after corrections) still comes up short in some serious ways, but it's a start, and apparently an honest one. As more proxies come available that meet whatever standards he set, maybe he'll revisit, and combine the proxies in a more defensible way (I'm worried about both spatial and temporal), and consider calibration/validation. -
carrot eater at 10:37 AM on 7 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
Poptech: only some of the most glaring (and easiest to fix) issues mentioned by RC there were addressed in the correction. RC points remaining: Dating - I'm not sure that using centennial-resolution proxies here (like Viau)is at all helpful for this purpose. No matter how they tried to interpolate. That said, I think others have gotten published while using such proxies (Moberg, I think?) Fidelity and calibration of individual proxies: Not assessed by Loehle. He's using the proxies as received, and assuming the original authors took care of worrying about such things. Probably not a deal-breaker for getting published in a normal journal; I don't know. Compositing: This is something of a disaster in Loehle's work, I think. Just taking a simple average of all these disparate things and calling it a global record just isn't justified. No assessment of the spatial distribution at all. This is probably the biggest remaining weakness, beyond the choice of proxies. Validation: Loehle didn't. -
NewYorkJ at 10:33 AM on 7 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
The Soon et al. argument appears to engage in the similar silly logic that co2science.org engages in. Brendan noted this in: http://www.skepticalscience.com/Common-graphical-tricks-and-the-Medieval-Warm-Period.html#12894 "What CO2Science are doing is looking for any warm part in each of localised data, then labelling that as the MWP, regardless of the dates involved." This is why multiproxy studies are necessary. Loehle at least appears to make an attempt to get a genuine hemispheric reconstruction. But as RC also noted in their earlier post: "Update (Jan 22): Loehle has issued a correction that fixes the more obvious dating and data treatment issues, but does not change the inappropriate data selection, or the calibration and validation issues. " -
NewYorkJ at 10:18 AM on 7 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
In other words...Sonja's putting her foot back in her mouth after revealing her political agenda. "Pielke Jr. is not a skeptic, go ask him." Did I say Pielke Jr. was a skeptic? Do you only find a statement worth reading if stated by a skeptic? Note also the Wigley quote (much of which you left out) puts quotes around the word "credible". You might be mistaking the appearance of credibility with the reality. E&E was set up to create the public appearance of credibility. Since you quoted Wigley, from the same link, we can view Wigley's thoughts on another E&E paper, on a similar topic. "So what is their method? I need to read the paper again carefully to check on this, but it seems that they say the MWE [LIA] was warm [cold] if at a particular site there is a 50+ year period that was warm, wet, dry [cold, dry, wet] somewhere in the interval 800-1300 [1300-1900], where warm/cold, wet, dry are defined relative to the 20th century. The problems with this are ..... (1) Natural internally generated variability alone virtually guarantees that these criteria will be met at every site. (2) As Nev Nicholls pointed out, almost any period would be identified as a MWE or LIA by these criteria -- and, as a corollary, their MWE period could equally well have been identified as a LIA (or vice versa) (3) If the identified warm blips in their MWE were are different times for different locations (as they are) then there would be no global-mean signal. (4) The reason for including precip 'data' at all (let alone both wet and dry periods in both the MWE and LIA) is never stated -- and cannot be justified. [I suspect that if they found a wet period in the MWE, for example, they would search for a dry period in the LIA -- allowing both in both the MWE and LIA seems too stupid to be true.] (5) For the uniqueness of the 20th century, item (1) also applies. So, their methods are silly. They seem also to have ignored the fact that what we are searching is a signal in global-mean temperature." Obviously, if Loehle or Soon's work had gone through an objective peer review, it's more likely the fatal errors would have been discovered (some of which Loehle later admitted to), and a better quality argument would have been presented to the public. How could anyone be against that? But as noted in the emails, the purpose of such junk science is political. I disagree with Rob about assuming Loehle's assertions of journal bias are entirely sincere, although assuming good faith is generally a good idea. If there was not an audience for such assertions, they probably wouldn't be made. There are many dozens of journals where good work can be published. Proclaiming systematic conspiracy in every one of them doesn't fly, and reflects poorly on the person making the accusations. Instead, those conducting shoddy work make these arrogant claims as a way to boost their stature to well beyond what is warranted by the quality of their work. It's rather shameful, in my view. -
skepticstudent at 10:06 AM on 7 May 2010A peer-reviewed response to McLean's El Nino paper
While I'm thinking about it. Where do you guys stand on the research published in a NASA supported document from Remote Sensing Systems in 2009 where the joint information from NASA Satelites and their globe wide drifting, or Moored buoy's have shown a steady decrease in oceanic temperatures over the last ten years? My first comment was removed without any response overnight, so I don't expect much cooperation on these two comments either. -
Alexandre at 09:50 AM on 7 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
This RealClimate article ellaborates on the subject of how "high" the bar of E&E's peer review is. -
NewYorkJ at 09:36 AM on 7 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
3700+ journals. No E&E http://science.thomsonreuters.com/cgi-bin/jrnlst/jlresults.cgi?PC=K "I'm following my political agenda -- a bit, anyway. But isn't that the right of the editor?" Boehmer-Christiansen - lead E&E editor Also, take a look at the rest of their editorial board. Being "peer-reviewed" by like-minded contrarians admittedly following a political agenda is no better than self-publishing on a blog of like-minded contrarians. Pielke Jr.: "...had we known then how that outlet would evolve beyond 1999 we certainly wouldn't have published there. The journal is not carried in the ISI and thus its papers rarely cited." http://blogs.nature.com/climatefeedback/2007/05/should_hurricanes_be_part_of_t.html#comment-86797 The stuff that ends up in E&E is usually verifiably of poor quality.
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