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gallopingcamel at 15:01 PM on 6 April 2010Are we too stupid?
Fascinating post. Maybe your best yet. I have been wondering how long it will take for the Deniers and Alarmists to realise that nothing much will be achieved as long as they enjoy debating more than trying to find common ground with their opponents. This thread may be venturing into the realm of "solutions", something that John Cook has avoided to date. When it comes to solutions I can think of several issues that both sides of the climate debate could support. According to Milinski things have to get pretty bad (90% probability of disaster) before the warring parties will be motivated to make common cause. The fly in the ointment is that hard science usually expects predictions to meet a 5 sigma limit (Normal distribution). This corresponds to a very high probability that the result is not random. In matters of life and death, even higher standards may be involved. For example, the probability of remaining alive after taking a scheduled air line flight in the USA exceeds the 6 sigma limit (p>0.99999998). When it comes to "Climate Science" it is hard to find any results at the 2 sigma level. Some even argue that a probability at the 1 sigma level (p=0.8413) should be good enough when they are predicting "the end of civilisation as we know it". I call it junk science that brings us real scientists into disrepute. -
Tom W at 14:11 PM on 6 April 2010McLean, de Freitas and Carter rebutted... by McLean, de Freitas and Carter
The splicing across more than one graph and the offset in the y-axes points to a deeper problem. Why not just offset the GTTA axis 6 inches down the page? Or expand the heck out of the scale. Since two axes refer to different metrics with no clear QUANTITATIVE relationship you're free to represent them however you want. Therefore MacLean's inference drawn from the observation that the GTTA never rises above the SOI doesn't mean anything. -
HumanityRules at 13:34 PM on 6 April 2010Are we too stupid?
There are so many bad things to say about Lovelock's opinions in that interview that I don't know how you could find it in you to take up one point. If I could just restate Humanity does in fact Rule. -
Ned at 11:04 AM on 6 April 2010Oceans are cooling
Berényi Péter writes: Sometimes you should use your own head. No amount of peer reviewed literature could save you that effort. It's important to use your own head and think about things for yourself. But when considering a highly complex subject outside your own area of expertise it's equally important (or more important) to make an effort to understand what people who spend their whole careers studying that subject have to say. If one only uses one's own reasoning and disregards outside expertise, one is liable to be led into serious errors like this: "[Water vapor] feedback is not positive. If it would be positive, the scenario described above [a runaway greenhouse effect like on Venus] is inevitable. It is not climate science, not even physics. Just plain old math. Plus the empirical fact we are still alive." If you will forgive me for making a critical comment, I think that this kind of disregard for learning from active scientists is one of the weaknesses of many of your comments here. I rarely if ever see you engage at all with the peer reviewed literature, which is a bit puzzling -- this site is unique among climate science blogs because of John's emphasis on discussing the peer reviewed literature, so if you have no interest in that, why do you comment here? This current topic is a case in point. Many people have worked on reconstructions of ocean heat content from the 1950s or 1960s onward. There are debates within the field about the best ways to handle sparse data, the best ways to handle instrumentation biases, and whether there are sufficient data pre-1967 to permit a statistically valid reconstruction before that time. All of these are interesting topics and all of them are discussed in great detail in the literature. Against all that, we have your flat assertion that pre-ARGO ocean heat content data are unreliable. Why? Well, you just say "look at this graph". It's not clear what you think you see in that graph. Oddly enough, the graph itself (here) is actually from a paper titled "Global ocean heat content (1955-2008) in light of recent instrumentation problems," a paper in which the authors describe how they were able to reconstruct ocean heat content from 1955-2008 in spite of various difficulties associated with pre-ARGO instrumentation. Why would you link to that as justification for your claim that the pre-ARGO data aren't reliable? I have no doubt that when you write something like "In #86 I have demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt, that recent decrease of OHC has nothing to do with ENSO. Just have a look at the figure" you sincerely believe you have in fact demonstrated that beyond a reasonable doubt. But alas, what seems convincing to you may be completely unconvincing to others. This is the advantage of testing your understanding against the accumulated expertise of scientists working in the field. -
Bernard J. at 10:23 AM on 6 April 2010McLean, de Freitas and Carter rebutted... by McLean, de Freitas and Carter
Berényi Péter at #24. If the oceans are "not quite" warming, what then accounts for the consistent rise in level, if not thermal expansion? Note that the rise occurs in the face of dam inpoundment which, according to BF Chao, removes more than 0.5mm/yr additional rise, from river inflows around the planet. -
gallopingcamel at 09:41 AM on 6 April 2010A residential lifetime
Many trees, from Sequoias to Olives can survive thousands of years when we let them. Even if we harvest the trees for lumber that wood can have a long lifetime, especially high quality woods. Instead of incentives for food and timber production we have provided incentives for farmers to produce ethanol from corn as an additive for gasoline, so the carbon absorbed is soon released back into the atmosphere. It is hard to see much benefit from this idea while the disadvantages have become increasingly obvious, including poorer vehicle performance, higher food prices and the pollution of water ways. Phillipe mentions the lobbyists who pressure governments into making bad public policies. The ethanol in gasoline idea is a notable example of that; it can be traced directly to ADM (Archer, Daniels, Midland). To influence the residence time for CO2 in the atmosphere we need to implement better solutions than the ones tried so far. I agree with John Russell (#76) when he says humans can overwhelm the natural processes that sequester carbon; it is important that we make good choices. As Phillipe Chantreau points out, it is not going to be easy but this might be something you could persuade "Deniers" to support. I would also point out that it does less harm to the world's economy to produce valuable goods (non-perishable foods and high quality timber) than goods that are useless or perishable. Probably the worst kind of public policy is the all too common practice (USA & EEC) of paying farmers to grow nothing at all. -
Alexandre at 09:37 AM on 6 April 2010Are we too stupid?
Very interesting post. One great work to be added here is the one by the 2009 Nobel Prize Elinor Ostrom. Her book "Rules, Games and Common-pool Resources" is enlightening on the dilemma "private vs. collective result". Some games have a structure that lure agents to a destructive end result. A fisherman won't preserve his much needed tuna only by individually choosing to fish less. Only collective coordination of individual action can provide: 1) A rule of use of the resource that keeps consumption below its carrying capacity (eg limiting number of users or limiting individual consumption) 2) Some way of enforcing the above. -
Berényi Péter at 09:24 AM on 6 April 2010McLean, de Freitas and Carter rebutted... by McLean, de Freitas and Carter
#9 ubrew12 at 08:14 AM on 5 April, 2010 "The oceans are where the judgement of AGW is actually written, and those oceans are warming" The first part of the sentence is true. The second one is not quite so. -
Marcus at 09:22 AM on 6 April 2010McLean, de Freitas and Carter rebutted... by McLean, de Freitas and Carter
Heres the thing I fail to understand though. ENSO is hardly a *new* phenomenon-indeed humans have been *aware* of it for at least 250 years. Yet prior to the last 30 years we're supposed to believe it had *no* impact on long-term climate, but is now suddenly the cause of global warming. Excuse me if I'm a *little* incredulous, but isn't it just as likely that global warming is driving changes to ENSO, rather than the other way around? -
Berényi Péter at 08:37 AM on 6 April 2010Does record snowfall disprove global warming?
#89 Ned at 21:40 PM on 5 April, 2010 "this subject is off-topic for a thread on snowfall" Right. I have also switched to the ocean cooling thread. -
Berényi Péter at 08:31 AM on 6 April 2010Oceans are cooling
#4 Ned at 21:37 PM on 5 April, 2010 "I'm replying here, since the subject was off-topic for that thread" OK, it was, indeed. However, it came there naturally, as things are interconnected. Just for reference: it was a response to #85 Ned at 00:29 AM on 5 April, 2010 under topic Does record snowfall disprove global warming? You have claimed there that "we've been in El Nino conditions for some time now and there's typically a short-term decrease in OHC when the cycle shifts from El Nino to La Nina". In #86 I have demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt, that recent decrease of OHC has nothing to do with ENSO. Just have a look at the figure. I have also noticed there, that the 2003 jump in OHC may be an artifact due to instrumental change. The NODC OHC graph shows an increase of about 5 × 1022 J in a single year. Since heat storage capacity of all other components of the climate system are negligible compared to the oceans, this energy could only come from an abrupt 3 W m-2 increase of radiative imbalance at TOA (Top of Atmosphere). Let us see.
Well, if ISCCP data are considered reliable, nothing like that has happened. There was a sharp decrease of some 4 W m-2 in net incoming flux at TOA between 2000 and 2002. Since then it is practically flat. Therefore reconstruction of OHC history before ARGO is suspect.
Sometimes you should use your own head. No amount of peer reviewed literature could save you that effort.
#87 Riccardo at 06:43 AM on 5 April, 2010 in same thread wrote:
"you're dangerously falling into a grim denialism. You do not bother to verify you claims and let other people do the dirty job to make your denialism apparent. It's a bit boring"
Now. I kindly request our host to comment on this attitude. According to the site's Comments Policy "Comments using labels like 'alarmist' and 'denier' are usually skating on thin ice". A couple of other points come to mind as well. John, I would rather not ask you to delete that comment, as it also includes a false claim I'll comment on shortly, but it definitely deserves one of those green boxes.
#87 Riccardo at 06:43 AM on 5 April, 2010
"Your claim about the jump in the deployment of Argo floats in 2003 which you immagine is the cause of the jump in OHC is blatantly false. Check youself (pag.4)."
Riccardo, you are referring to this image:
First things first. I have not claimed there was a jump in deployment. What I did claim, there is a jump in OHC reconstruction and at the same time instrumentation went through a huge change.
However, as you may notice, there is indeed a jump in Pacific ARGO deployments during 2003.
This jump is due to lack of ARGO floats in southern Pacific (to a lesser extent in southern Atlantic as well) during early 2003. The gap was filled in by December 2003, but it took another four months to get a reasonable distribution by random drift.
As for the number of active ARGO floats, it went like this:
2002-04 465
2003-04 797
2003-07 832
2003-08 860
2003-12 1023
2004-04 1158
2004-07 1257
2004-11 1500
2005-04 1788
2005-05 1871
2006-05 2451
2006-11 2743
2007-11 3070
2008-05 3111
2009-07 3319
The histogram shows the annual number of profiles collected, the blue line is the number of active floats.
Compare the distributions above to current status:
It is only the Number 5 December 2004 issue of Argonautics Newsletter that declares:
"Uses of Argo data
Perhaps the most important feature is that the array is now global and this permits us to start to address important scientific issues and to make the data useful to operational centres"
You can see how sparse OHC data really are prior to ARGO:
All other sources of OHC data also diminished dangerously by the year 2002. It is slide 6 in the Leviticus presentation:
Caption: The number of 4°x2° boxes that meet the observation criteria as a function of time for both MBT and XBT comparisons based on computations from WOD data.
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philc at 08:26 AM on 6 April 2010Is the science settled?
Re 106-111 and humidity. Relative humidity is just that relative. To get to the root of the matter go with absolute humidity(g of water/g of dry air) and dewpoint(the temperature at which water condenses from the air in question). The term relative humidity was invented to explain why one might feel more comfortable on a warm dry day than on a slightly cooler but much more humid day. In order to get precipitation the air has to cool below the dewpoint. This might happen at 5,000 ft for cumulus clouds with high absolute humidity, or at 50,000 ft for cirrus clouds with low absolute humidity. Precip can happen at any altitude and any temperature, depending on conditions. That is why using a parameter to simulate it in a 200km grid box in a model is a dubious proposition at best. Trenberth's paper was very good. "The global energy budget is not closed." In other words we don't know where significant amounts of energy are going in the climate system. Per table #1, the residual is 30-100 Jx10^20 per year, which is in the range of the forcing attributed to GHG(~107 Jx 10^20/yr). It's also 1-3 times the total net positive imbalance in figure 4. I totally agree that long term, reliable measurements of the TOA radiation from a source such as the CERES satellite are needed. "A climate information systrem that first determines what is taking place and then establishes why is better able to provide a sound basis for making predictions and (sic)which can answer important questions such as 'Has global warming really slowed or not'". I agree 100%. Until we have real, reliable, accurate measurements of the TOA radiation we don't know sXXX. -
Riccardo at 08:04 AM on 6 April 2010McLean, de Freitas and Carter rebutted... by McLean, de Freitas and Carter
johnd, McLean's claim is different. He says that from the short term SOI variation logically follows the long term trend, which is quite obviously not the case. -
Doug Bostrom at 07:52 AM on 6 April 2010It's land use
BTW, johnd, what doubts do you harbor about what you term "revelations" concerning the UHI effect? -
Doug Bostrom at 07:43 AM on 6 April 2010It's land use
The answer for your #6 is easy, johnd. With steadily improving insulation the Earth's retained heat will increase, until the planet reaches thermal equilibrium again. This whole issue is really not complicated in its essential features but the scale of the phenomena involved defies our intuitive numeracy. -
johnd at 07:29 AM on 6 April 2010It's land use
Doug @4. I believe that if the infrastructure humans build creates additional thermal mass that stores heat that otherwise would radiate off at a faster rate, then that does alter the immediate environment we live in. This is something we all know, what a relief to escape the stifling city heat during the warmer days, or nights....With regards to the UHI effect, there are 2 aspects to it. The first is what effect it has on the natural climate. The second is what effect it has on the data collected that is used to quantify the physical conditions. I am not certain that the scientists have got a handle on the second as yet. Certainly revelations in recent times have created a considerable amount of doubt. -
Doug Bostrom at 07:17 AM on 6 April 2010The human fingerprint in global warming
Philc, this is one of those situations where a very simple experimental analogy can resolve a misunderstanding. The experiment's so easy to picture it's probably not necessary to do an actual implementation. But if you want to do it, you'll need an empty one gallon paint can, a thermometer, a 75 watt reflector lamp, and an old sweatshirt or other piece of cloth. -- Fill the paint can with water. -- Situate the can in a place with a stable ambient temperature -- Allow time enough for the temperature of the water to reach the ambient temperature of its location. -- Take a reading of the water temperature -- Arrange a 75 watt reflector bulb so that it is shining into the top of the can from a few inches away. -- Continue to take temperature readings, until the temperature has stabilized at its higher level. Record the stable temperature. -- Wrap the can with the old sweatshirt or cloth, leaving the top of the can and water exposed to the lamp. -- Take more temperature readings until the temperature of the water has stabilized at its new higher level. You've just seen why the Earth's temperature will rise but will not rise forever when its better insulated. The experimental analogy is not perfect because the insulation you've added to the can not only retards radiation but also reduces convective losses, but it's adequate to model the situation. -
johnd at 07:15 AM on 6 April 2010It's land use
Doug, I don't want to turn a fun experiment into a full blown project, but to get the most out of such an exercise, the temperature of the slabs would have to be tracked at least a full 24 hours with an additional slab stood at right angles to the other standing slab, as well as the temperature being recorded just below the soil surface over the same period. One of the objectives I believe is to measure under what conditions any residual heat will remain after a full day/night cycle. Of course what matters really is what heat remains after a full summer/winter cycle. -
johnd at 07:04 AM on 6 April 2010McLean, de Freitas and Carter rebutted... by McLean, de Freitas and Carter
Sean @20. It depends on what short and long term refer to. There is no doubt that the SOI does help form longer term variations seen as the multi decadal IPO or PDO which cycle over about 6 or 7 decades, and these have been identified back centuries. Reconstructions of El-Ninos (Quinn El-Ninos 1527-1987) indicate that the 1500's and 1800's were times of more frequent El-Ninos than more recent times. -
Tom Dayton at 06:54 AM on 6 April 2010The human fingerprint in global warming
philc, maybe I misunderstood what you wrote. Increased insulation reduces outgoing radiation, causing an imbalance between incoming and outgoing. Temperature increases, increasing the radiation trying to get out, until the extra radiation trying to get out overwhelms the additional insulation, resulting in, once again, the outgoing matching the incoming. -
Ned at 06:53 AM on 6 April 2010The human fingerprint in global warming
philc writes: Sorry Tom, but assuming the earth in in radiative energy balance [...] That's the whole point. The earth's radiant energy budget is currently not in balance -- outgoing LW radiation is less than the incoming solar radiation. This causes the planet to heat up, which in turn causes more LW radiation to be emitted. Eventually outgoing LW radiation will thus be back in balance with incoming solar radiation, but at a higher temperature (and with less LW in the CO2 absorption bands and more LW outside those bands). That's assuming that CO2 stops rising and then plateaus at some value for a long enough time for the radiation balance to reach equilibrium. -
philc at 06:24 AM on 6 April 2010The human fingerprint in global warming
Sorry Tom, but assuming the earth in in radiative energy balance(that we aren't in thermal runaway and are doomed) the incoming and outgoing radiation have to be equal. Any mechanism that slows the transfer of energy through the atmosphere("insulation") would result in an increase in temperature within the earth's atmosphere with no permanent change in the outgoing radiation. Depending on the rates involved there might be a temporary, measurable change in the outgoing radiation, but given the large amounts of radiation involved and the large variations in already already existing measurements, it might be very hard to pinpoint. The slower the heat transfer, the larger the temperature difference that will be supported. -
Sean A at 05:51 AM on 6 April 2010McLean, de Freitas and Carter rebutted... by McLean, de Freitas and Carter
McLean: "If the SOI accounts for short-term variation then logically it also accounts for long-term variation." That's so classic! I can't believe he actually said that. ;-) On blaming ENSO for global warming... where does the heat come from? No matter how much handwaving is employed, you can't ignore thermodynamics. -
Philippe Chantreau at 04:12 AM on 6 April 2010A residential lifetime
There is no doubt that vegetation is a great way to take a hold of all that carbon. That's how it was stored in the first place. As others have mentioned, the problem is to not only store, but actually remove that carbon from the cycle. It would be, in fact, low tech and possibly low impact geo-engineering. Problem is, it's not so easy to do that from vegetation because it implies that the vegetation will neither burn nor rot. The remarkable thing that happened in the carboniferous was the storage of immense quantities of vegetation in anoxic conditions. Now all that carbon/hydrogen is getting back to the oxygen with a vengeance, thanks to us. If we want to get anywhere close to the kind of quantitative result we need, we're going to have to use, reuse and recycle ad-infinitum every scrap of wood we produce, and produce vast quantities of it. Feasible but difficult and perhaps energy intensive too. There is no silver bullet. We're looking here at a solution requiring: massive land use changes, infrastructure changes, attitude changes (getting back to using wood for all sorts of applications). Not to mention that the displaced industries will fight with their usual methods (i.e. the current climate disinformation, tobacco campaigns, lead paint campaigns, etc). It will also involve some strain on the world's economy. It's not a bad idea and I'm not opposed to it in principle but it will be every bit as hard as reducing emissions. -
Ned at 02:32 AM on 6 April 2010The human fingerprint in global warming
philc, your comment here is a bit unclear, but it seems like a restatement of your recent comment over on another thread (Empirical evidence that humans are causing global warming). I replied to it there. -
Tom Dayton at 01:57 AM on 6 April 2010The human fingerprint in global warming
philc, you are incorrect that "If the mechanisms that slow this energy transfer act to slow the energy flow further, the surface would increase in temperature with no change in the energy absorb vs that emitted." If the surface temperature increases, the surface radiates more energy. -
philc at 01:41 AM on 6 April 2010The human fingerprint in global warming
"A comparison between satellite data from 1970 to 1996 found that less energy is escaping to space at the wavelengths that greenhouse gases absorb energy (Harries 2001)." The key driver here is not "that less energy is escaping to space at the wavelengths GHG absorb". The key metric is whether the overall radiation from the earth at all wavelengths is in balance with all the energy absorbed by the earth. The atmosphere/oceans/biosphere act as an insulator, slowing the rate of energy transfer from where it is absorbed to where it is emitted. They have done this for millennia, maintaining a higher temperature at the surface than we would have absent atmosphere/oceans. If the mechanisms that slow this energy transfer act to slow the energy flow further, the surface would increase in temperature with no change in the energy absorb vs that emitted. No change in the overall radiation balance is required to change the temperatures in the system, simply a change in the rates of transfer. CO2 certainly absorbs IR radiation, but how this affects the mechanisms that move the energy around in the system is far from understood, particularly when water(vapor,liquid, and ice) has such a large effect on the atmosphere and surface. The overall climate, barring catastrophic meteors and volcanoes, has remained hospitable to life for over a billion years. The reasons why this is so still don't seem to be understood. -
Riccardo at 23:25 PM on 5 April 2010Arctic sea ice melt - natural or man-made?
Ned, i'm no expert so i'll only place my bet: it has something to do with the Arctic Oscillation which became about neutral in March. We'll soon have the response. -
Ned at 22:55 PM on 5 April 2010Arctic sea ice melt - natural or man-made?
The northern hemisphere sea ice extent graph for this winter/spring is a bit remarkable. For most of the winter the ice was tracking the 2006-2007 extent line quite closely. But instead of plateauing and starting to drop in late Feb. or early March, it just kept going:
It will be interesting to see what NSIDC has to say about this in their next monthly update, which should be out soon.
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gallopingcamel at 22:07 PM on 5 April 2010A residential lifetime
Phillippe (#78), I will choose my words more carefully! Several folks are discussing the production of timber and that is another great strategy for sequestration. Are we headed for consensus on something? -
Ned at 21:58 PM on 5 April 2010McLean, de Freitas and Carter rebutted... by McLean, de Freitas and Carter
Re MCdF09 Figure 7, the jump from panel (a) to panel (b) is a real problem. I don't think the offset in left vs right Y axes for panels (b) and (c) is a problem (I disagree with Jeff F. about this). The bigger issue is that MCdF claimed that SOI explained 81% of the variability in the MSU record, but that was based on the detrended data. That was their ONLY quantitative comparison of the two, and it was fundamentally wrong. Figure 7 is just for "eyeballing"; there's no quantitative analysis included. In his recent comments McLean keeps trying to shift the discussion to Figure 7. It's important to note the problem with Figure 7 (panel a vs. b/c) but it's also important not to let him shift the discussion away from his erroneous quantitative claims. -
Ned at 21:40 PM on 5 April 2010Does record snowfall disprove global warming?
Berényi Péter: writesPre ARGO project OHC data are unreliable. You're wrong about this. Pre-ARGO data on OHC are more sparse and more difficult to work with, but there have been many successful analyses of long-term trends in OHC. Because this subject is off-topic for a thread on snowfall, I've replied over in the thread on Does ocean cooling prove global warming has ended? -
Ned at 21:37 PM on 5 April 2010Oceans are cooling
Over in another thread, Berényi Péter writes: Pre ARGO project OHC data are unreliable. I'm replying here, since the subject was off-topic for that thread and it's on-topic here. Pre-ARGO OHC data are sparser and more difficult to work with. But there are many papers that have successfully analyzed long-term trends in OHC. Here are just a few examples from the past two years: Levitus et al. 2009 Ishii and Kimoto 2009 Domingues et al. 2008 Much of the work from the Levitus et al. 2009 paper was also treated in this2009 presentation at CLIMAR. Note the following comment: "There was a concern that instrumental bias corrections might have affected the long-term trend (1955-2007) in ocean heat content that we previously reported. It will be demonstrated that, although some small corrections are indeed necessary, the instrument bias corrections do not affect the previously reported long-term trend in ocean heat content."
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Ned at 20:54 PM on 5 April 2010It hasn't warmed since 1998
Jeffomatic writes: In fact, it's April 04, 32 F. outside and snowing right now! That kind of anecdote is not particularly useful. On the same date here in northern New England (where there's normally still snow on the ground at this point) it was in the mid-70s F (after having been an astounding 83 F the previous day). -
John Russell at 18:51 PM on 5 April 2010A residential lifetime
Doug Mackie: 77 I see now where you're coming from if your vision of woodland/forest is the monoculture cash crop of pines which are rased and replanted every 30 years or so -- as also are oil palm plantations. That's the current reality of most commercial forestry, enabled by the ready availability of cheap diesel. I'm talking about woodland management of indigenous trees which are coppiced and thus highly sustainable and, I would claim, a net carbon sink. That's the only sort of tree-planting I wish to promote. -
Tom Dayton at 16:36 PM on 5 April 2010A database of peer-reviewed papers on climate change
Correcting my previous comment that "It's nice if they at least acknowledge receipt of submissions, but that, too, takes time, so they don't always." I intended to write that pre-submission inquiries such as the one that McKitrick said he made to BAMS are not always responded to. In fact, I suspect that few such inquiries are responded to by any journal in any field, because it takes time. If you want to know whether there is any chance of the journal accepting your paper, just send them your freakin' paper. The editor is disinclined to spend the time to respond to you "Well, maybe, but that depends on exactly what's in your paper." The editor can just as rapidly tell you "no" upon seeing the title and abstract of your paper, as by reading your pre-submission inquiry's description of your paper. -
Doug Mackie at 15:47 PM on 5 April 2010McLean, de Freitas and Carter rebutted... by McLean, de Freitas and Carter
Being vain, I seldom hesitate to repeat myslelf: (this also posted at Deltoid). I’ve offered this up before elsewhere. Here are links to submissions made by McLean to a New Zealand Parliament Select Committee that was considering an Emissions Trading Scheme. Three Select Committees have had a go. For the first round in 2008 McLean co-submitted with someone who in a previous life called for a boycott of Mobil because of climate change issues and is now a denialist. http://www.parliament.nz/en-NZ/PB/SC/Documents/Evidence/9/1/7/48SCFESCEvidenceCCETRP_ET44-Terry-Dunleavy.htm For the second round in early 2009 McLean went solo: http://www.parliament.nz/en-NZ/PB/SC/Documents/Evidence/6/3/2/49SCETSSCevidenceETSR_047A-John-McLean-supp1.htm http://www.parliament.nz/en-NZ/PB/SC/Documents/Evidence/3/6/2/49SCETSSCevidenceETSR_047-John-McLean.htm And nothing for the 3rd round in late 2009. -
Tom Dayton at 15:32 PM on 5 April 2010A database of peer-reviewed papers on climate change
Harold, the journal Science's editors reject 80% of submissions without sending them to reviewers. -
Tom Dayton at 15:26 PM on 5 April 2010A database of peer-reviewed papers on climate change
Harold, only a small fraction of submissions to peer reviewed journals are accepted. The exact percentage depends on the field and on the journal within that field. The most prestigious journals have the lowest acceptance rates, because those journals are the most stringent in applying their publication criteria, which is what makes them prestigious, which is why so many people submit to them, which is one cause of the huge submission rate that creates so much competition among submissions thereby lowering the chances of being accepted,.... For example, the journal Science accepts less than 8% of submissions. Consequently, editors don't even send all submissions out for review. Many submissions get rejected based on the editor reading the title and abstract, because the topic might not be suitable for that journal regardless of the submission's quality, or because the journal has been publishing many articles on that topic recently and wants to give space to other topics, or because the findings of the submission are not novel enough or do not contribute enough to the literature to justify taking up space. Submissions never are judged solely on their own merits, but also on whether the literature is better served by publishing them or their competition of other submissions. The editor's job is to make those decisions if possible without using the scarce time of the (volunteer) referees. The referees' opinions are merely advisory to the editor, though different journals have different rules about how much weight the editor should give the reviews. Editors are busy people, so they rarely respond to rejected authors' subsequent inquiries. It's nice if they at least acknowledge receipt of submissions, but that, too, takes time, so they don't always. It's not that different from any non-scientific periodical; they do not always (and some never) acknowledge unsolicited submissions. Harold, this really is how the scientific peer review system works, and has for a very long time, in all fields. It handles submissions as best it can, but the reviewers all are unpaid volunteers who already are desperately busy, the editors get paid little or nothing and also usually have full-time other jobs, and there is barely enough funding to publish the small percentage of articles that do make it all the way to print. Publishing in a peer-reviewed journal (or a conference, for that matter) is not a right, it is a privilege. -
johnd at 14:58 PM on 5 April 2010McLean, de Freitas and Carter rebutted... by McLean, de Freitas and Carter
Given that the intensity or magnitude of any ENSO events in the Pacific Ocean are subject to influence of the IOD in the Indian Ocean, any theorising that fails to incorporate that and other regional influences, that combined, represent the entire global climate, is unlikely to come up with all the answers. I realise Australia is not the world, but when scientists were putting too much emphasis on ENSO in trying to predict our weather their success rate was lucky to be as good as tossing a coin, perhaps worse. Now as greater understanding of the IOD begins to filter in things are starting to make more sense. -
Harold at 14:51 PM on 5 April 2010A database of peer-reviewed papers on climate change
Oops. I just read the policy page that forbade cutting and pasting from previous comments. My apologies. This issue regarding McKitrick's paper has been pushed as far as is decent, and I will leave it alone. Thanks again. -
Philippe Chantreau at 14:44 PM on 5 April 2010A residential lifetime
GC "I can't put it much plainer than that." Indeed, and that's a significant progress compared to the horrific- pestilence type of formulation. I conclude that we are in agreement on the better ways to word an argument. -
Harold at 14:27 PM on 5 April 2010A database of peer-reviewed papers on climate change
I appreciate those of you who have responded to my comments and the patience of this blog to allow me to press the issue. I have continued to press the issue because it does not appear to me that the issue raised McKitrick has been squarely addressed. Tom Dayton writes "All the things he complains about in his public screed have been publicly addressed, and his paper is just... well, wrong" and then directs me to this paper published in Jan 2009 which calls into question McKitrick's 2007 published paper. But the paper that McKitrick has been submitting since early 2008 addresses the objections that have been raised to the 2007 paper, including (according to McKitrick) those articulated in the Schmidt's 2009 paper. I am not sure how his position can be considered to be publicly addressed when it has not even been seen. Quoting Tom again, "McKitrick's experience was typical for anyone whose submitted work is severely and fundamentally flawed." This is fair, if the editors/reviewers consistently says so. However, McKitrick's summary of the responses he has seen is the following: "Altogether I sent the paper to seven journals before it went to SP&P. From those seven journals I received seven reviews, of which six accepted the findings and supported publication. The one that rejected my findings contained some basic technical errors, but the journal editor would not respond to my letter pointing them out. Nature, Science and Geophysical Research Letters would not even review the paper, while the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society never acknowledged the pre- submission inquiry. Global and Planetary Change received one review recommending publication, blocked another reviewer before he could submit a report and then turned the paper down." This is not how I would expect a working peer review system to respond to a fundamentally flawed paper, even if that system is imperfect. Comment 27 points to an article that tries to show how peer review is effective at accomplishing quality control while avoiding censorship. I would be interested to see what it takes to qualify as censorship in the climatology field. -
Tom Dayton at 14:18 PM on 5 April 2010McLean, de Freitas and Carter rebutted... by McLean, de Freitas and Carter
From Peru, it doesn't matter what the proposed mechanism is for ENSO's effect on global temperature. The actual, empirical, observed data show that ENSO can explain only short-term variations in temperature, not the long-term increase. That's the point of this post, and of the post It's El Nino. Click on the link to Deep Climate that I provided in my comment #5 above, and look at the graphs there. -
Jeff Freymueller at 13:44 PM on 5 April 2010McLean, de Freitas and Carter rebutted... by McLean, de Freitas and Carter
#13 Chris G, Foster et al in their comment pointed out that the filtering McLean et al. applied to "reduce noise" mainly filtered out the long-term trend. Foster et al. are correct. McLean et al. found a strong correlation between the filtered SOI and filtered GTTA (which is fine, and non-controversial). Then they made a series of statements that were true for the filtered time series, but they stated them as if they were true for the original series (they are not true for the original series). I think you can conclude for yourself from Figure 1 whether SOI explains the trend in GTTA -- it explains a lot of short-term variability but clearly SOI does not have the trend that GTTA has. -
Jeff Freymueller at 13:36 PM on 5 April 2010McLean, de Freitas and Carter rebutted... by McLean, de Freitas and Carter
#10 michael sweet, I think it is not normal. I would never do such a thing intentionally in my own work, and I would be embarrassed if I did it accidentally. Having the zero point on the y-axis be different on both sides, yet so close that a quick look makes it seem the same? The effect is deceptive, and it is the authors' responsibility NOT to be deceptive. #11 comment, actually I think the smoking gun wasn't firing blanks, but it ended up pointed back at the shooter... #12 Humanity Rules, if you put the three panels together, added back the 0.2 degrees offset in GTTA between panels a and b, then I think you would see the trend more clearly. Also note that the x-axis is expanded in panels b and c relative to panel a, which makes the trend appear smaller. In any case, as I mentioned above, the effect of putting the zero label in slightly different places on the right and left y-axes is visually deceptive. The bottom line is that Figure 1 is a straightforward plot of two quantities, and they did several things differently in Figure 7, all of which had the effect of obscuring the trend in GTTA, which is obvious in Figure 1. You might ask yourself why they did that, or why they removed the trend for their statistical correlation while claiming they were just removing noise? I've drawn my own conclusion. -
Chris G at 13:34 PM on 5 April 2010McLean, de Freitas and Carter rebutted... by McLean, de Freitas and Carter
OK, this may be a naive question, but if the SOI is a function of air pressure differences, and El Nino/La Nina is water temperature, well, aren't both of those dependent to some extent on the amount, or pattern of distribution, of energy in the system? If so, changes in them are driven by changes in energy, or energy flux. I think it would be surprising if there were not feedbacks or interdependencies involved, but I'm wondering if there is some confusion here between cause and effect. Also, did I understand this correctly that they filtered out the long term trend, and then state that they detect no long term trend (global temperature rise)? -
HumanityRules at 12:54 PM on 5 April 2010McLean, de Freitas and Carter rebutted... by McLean, de Freitas and Carter
#8 jeff, If we were concerned about absolute values I would take your point about the shift in the axis but what matters here is trends and I still don't understand why the trend difference is more obvious in figure 1 than it is in figure 7. If the difference existed in figure 7 it would be shifted to one end of the graph (1980 or 2000) because of the axis shift, but it isn't.Response: The shift in axis is significant because Figure 7a uses the same SOI Y-axis as Figures 7b and 7c. And yet Figure 7a uses a different temperature Y-axis from Figures 7b and 7c. They're shifting the goal posts, they're splicing the data sets then trumpeting this graph as disproving the large body of empirical evidence that more CO2 is causing warming. -
thingadonta at 10:02 AM on 5 April 2010McLean, de Freitas and Carter rebutted... by McLean, de Freitas and Carter
I never thought much of filtering out long term trends to show short term trends are making short term trends, as in the Mclean et al paper. The long term trends remain relevant and must be explained. But one hide the decline (divergence) doesn't validate another hide the divergence (Mann et al 1998). The long term trend remains, and it doesnt follow either Mann's tree rings or short term climate variations.Response: "one hide the decline (divergence) doesn't validate another hide the divergence (Mann et al 1998)."
Of course it doesn't, noone is suggesting "McLean hid the decline therefore it's okay for Mann to hide the decline". In the case of the tree-ring divergence problem, what is required is a proper understanding of the tree-ring divergence problem. Contrary to what is commonly reported, it's not a divergence or decline in temperature - but a decline in tree-ring growth due to some factor other than temperature. This is an issue that is openly discussed in many peer-review papers.
In contrast, what we're talking about here is more straightforward - the direct comparison of temperature and SOI. But the comparison is being obscured by splicing of data, of obscuring the splice by dividing the graph into multiple boxes, of using different Y-axis ranges in the different boxes and a curious lack of divergence in Figure 7 that is not apparent in Figures 1 and 4. The way McLean and others talk up Figure 7, it's the smoking gun that disproves anthropogenic global warming. With all the question marks over this graph, it's more a smoking gun firing blanks. -
michael sweet at 09:28 AM on 5 April 2010McLean, de Freitas and Carter rebutted... by McLean, de Freitas and Carter
Re: Jeff Freymueller at #8: It seems to me that Jeffs comments about the axis being shifted is correct. I presumed that the zero on each side lined up when I looked at the graph. It was very difficult to see that they did not line up. To McLean et al: is it normal to have this type of axis shift?
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