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Comments 30801 to 30850:
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Tom Dayton at 11:11 AM on 4 March 2015It's not bad
Good article and comments on Tol's corrections at And Then There's Physics.
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MarkOhio at 10:22 AM on 4 March 2015It's not bad
There is an update to Tol 2009. See Jourrnal of Economic Perspectives 28(2): 221-26, Spring 2014. Update corrects errors in 2009 article and adds 5 new studies. Shows that GDP impact is negative for any increase in temperature anomaly. Previous paper showed positive impact up to 2degC anomaly. While Tol 2014 does not update estimate of optimal carbon tax, guessing it will be substantially higher than the original $45 per ton.
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MarkOhio at 10:04 AM on 4 March 2015It's not bad
@343-347 discussing the 2009 Tol research review of overall impact to humans of climate change, quantified in dollars.
This article needs to be part of the Further Reading associated with this argument. It reflects the state of economic knowledge about climate change impacts, published in the premier economics journal used to summarize research to date. To my knowledge the Tol research review hasn't been updated.
I am not sure if AR4 or AR5 incorporates this review or the studies it summarizes/synthesizes. If not would like to understand reasons for exclusion. If so, the SKS write up needs to do a better job incorporating the research into this part of its site. The current write up doesn't fairly represent uncertainty that exists in the current science focused on quantifying net impacts of climate change. That said, the science still shows that rational decision makers should be willing to pay to reduce carbon emissions, which goes toward debunking the claim that we do not yet know enough to act.
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Dcrickett at 09:07 AM on 4 March 2015New Series: Science Communicators – Why We Love Communicating Science
Jim Hansen… altho he has done a pretty decent job on his own.
Nicole Hernandez HammerI wish I could name a few from the conservative side!
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Flakmeister at 02:51 AM on 4 March 2015With climate change, US presidents matter
If you want to understand KXL, you had better understand what the corporate perspective is. As always, follow the money.
The purpose of KXL was bring discounted dilbit to the Gulf Coast refiners for tax-free export of distillates. This exploits the massive crack spread between diesel/distillates and the tarsands "oil". The yield of distillates is as good as for WTI and lighter oil at a fraction of the price
If you dig into the Valero 10-Q filings and investor presentations from 2010 or so you will see the plan spelled out in simple english.
The real politics can be distilled down to this, the Kochs through Flint Hill Resources would pocket about 150,000 bbl x $15 a day exporting refined products compared to ~150,000 x $8 a day if the crude was transported by rail. Do the math, and then throw in that Warren Buffet (a known Democrat supporter) through Berkeshire Hathaway benefits if KXL is cancelled because his most recent purchase of BNSF would have increased rail traffic.
Moderator Response:[JH] Your characteriztion of Warren Buffet's political role on the proposed Keystone XL appears to be incorrect. See:
Warren Buffett Backs Keystone XL, Says U.S. 'Thumbing Nose' At Canada by Alexander Panetta, The Canadian Press, Huff Post Canada, Mar 2, 2015
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billthefrog at 02:23 AM on 4 March 2015New Series: Science Communicators – Why We Love Communicating Science
Hi Collin,
Thanks for this interesting piece, and good luck with the rest of the project.
It would be fantastic to garner the views of people like Richard Feynman or Carl Sagan on the topic of deliberate disinformation, but communication from beyond the grave is still a tad on the unreliable side.
Speaking with a UK bias, there are some candidates for your questionnaire that spring easily to mind...
David Attenborough, Brian Cox, Jim al Khalili, Helen Czerski, Gabby Walker, Mark Miodownik, Marcus du Sautoy
I'm sure there are many, many more, but I'm about to head off to muck out the donkeys.
Cheers Bill F
PS Prof Brian Cox is the co-host on a BBC Radio 4 program called "The Infinite Monkey Cage". This involves some serious discussion on matters scientific, but with a large slice of satirical humour thrown in for good measure. It doesn't necessarily happen every time, but taking the piss out of climate change denial is part and parcel of the show's format. If you are unfamiliar with the show, it is worth trying to get hold of a podcast.
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KR at 01:21 AM on 4 March 2015Climatology versus Pseudoscience book tests whose predictions have been right
It's my understanding that much of Arrhenius's high estimate was due to data limitations (spectroscopy - including the comb-like structure of GHG absorption/emissions), not to mention that the stratosphere had at that time not been discovered.
Barton Paul Levenson has an interesting graph from a few years ago that I've always found interesting, showing the progression of climate sensitivity estimates over the years - Arrhenius's estimate is the first point:
It seems pretty clear to me that multiple estimates over time, using multiple methods, have converged to something around 3C/doubling of CO2...
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billthefrog at 23:26 PM on 3 March 2015Understanding adjustments to temperature data
Bollocks!
Final paragraph above should have started...
"Few are going to have the cojones..."
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billthefrog at 23:19 PM on 3 March 2015Understanding adjustments to temperature data
@ Jim H & OPOF (#34 &35)
" ... many of those people will never allow themselves to be convinced"
Therein lies (pun intended) the rub. As most rational people will have long since realised, the so-called debate about global warming has nothing to do with science, or indeed with logical thought.
Much of the MSM is owned, body and soul, by oligarchs with a special (i.e. financial) interest in the maintenance of the status quo. (This is an instance where it could be quite understandable to mistakenly render the word "oligarch" as "oiligarch"!) As this section of the MSM tends to be aimed squarely at right-leaning viewers, readers and - ultimately - voters, the whole climate change denial meme has become subsumed into the collective ring-wing mindset.
I live in a small village next to Dartmoor National Park in the SW of England, and an overwhelming percentage of the populace are deeply conservative in their political opinions. The two best-selling newspapers at the local shop are - surprise, surprise - the Telegraph and the Mail.
The problem I experience in trying to introduce some sanity into any debate about AGW is that it is well-nigh impossible. Why? Because any attempt to rebut the seemingly never-ending stream of drivel from the likes of Rose or Booker (or Monkton or WUWT, etc., etc.) is instantly perceived as an attack on intrinsic Tory values. Any attempt to illuminate the matter by introducing unwelcome and inconvenient concepts such as actual facts (as opposed to made-up or cherry-picked varieties) just gets shrugged off by those warmly cocooned in the smug arrogance engendered by never stopping to question one's own beliefs.
On a personal level, the situation down in sunny Devon is exacerbated by the fact that, despite having spent 40-odd years south of the border, I still have a very pronounced Glaswegian accent. There are people with very strong anti-AGW sentiments living here who would gladly scoop out their own eyeballs with a rusty spoon, rather than admit that some jumped-up Satan-spawn from Red Clydeside knows more about the topic than someone - upon whose every word they hang - writing in their paper of choice.
However, leaving aside the parochial, the issue does actually run deeper. As mentioned before, this is not a genuine scientific disagreement over the interpretation of data. There are people in the MSM (and in many pseudo-science blogs) engaged in the dissemination of utter falsehoods. Eventually, they will stand trial at the bar of history - although personally, I'd much prefer that they stand trial in the conventional sense.
Eventually, the guff emanating from the likes of Booker and Rose will be shown up for what it is, and, for many, it will be a truly bitter pill to swallow. People will have to accept the fact that their deeply held views were, not simply wrong, but utterly nonsensical - and that much of the MSM was knowingly complicit in perpetrating a fraud of truly biblical proportions. People will be forced to look themselves in the mirror, and admit that they were played as a fool*, and that they cheerfully went along with it for years.
(* Although the Scots term "eedjit" is a far more apt descriptor.)
Few are going to have to cojones to admit this: many are just going to stuff their heads ever deeper in the sand. And as long as there are those prepared to buy their wares, the merchants of doubt will continue to spew forth their bile.
And on that cheerful note... awrabest Bill F
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topal at 22:35 PM on 3 March 20152015 SkS News Bulletin #2: Willie Soon & The Fossil Fuel Industry
Wiilie Soon's relationship with the fossil fuel industry while employed by the Smithsonian Institution at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
The Smithsonian policies are explicit: all fundings go the Insitute, not to individual scientists. Agreements are signed by its administration, not individual scienitsts. The Institue retains 40% of the grant amount for its administration.
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Tom Curtis at 20:54 PM on 3 March 2015Climatology versus Pseudoscience book tests whose predictions have been right
michael sweet @11 and sailrick @12, in 1896 Arrhenius worked out temperature increases for a variety of latitutudes from 70o North to 60o South. The mean of the twelve values he determined is 5.5 C for a doubling of CO2, but that is not a global average. The minimum value was 4.95 C at the equator. Hence a global estimate would have been above 5 C, and probably greater than 5.5 C. He later gave a figure of 5.7 C in a lecture in 1896. By 1908 he had revised that down, but only to 4 C per doubling. I cannot track any further revisions.
Unfortunately it is not possible to turn these figures into a temperature prediction. Because of thermal inertia, temperatures do not rise to the full Equilibrium Climate Response immediately. As Arrhenius' values are for Equilbrium Climate Sensitivity rather than the Transient Climate Response, to convert them into a prediction by Arrhenius you would need a value from Arrhenius for the thermal inertia, which is, SFAIK, lacking.
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Tom Curtis at 20:21 PM on 3 March 2015Models are unreliable
protagorias @various, of course climate modellers want to make their models more accurate. The problem is that you and they have different conceptions as to what is involved. There are several key issues on this.
First, short term variations in climate are chaotic. This is best illustrated by the essentially random pattern of ENSO fluctuations - one that means that though a climate model may model such fluctuations, the probability that it models the timeing and strengths of particular El Ninos and La Ninas is minimal. Consequently, accuracy in a climate model does not mean exactly mimicing the year to year variation in temperature. Strictly it means that the statistics of multiple runs of the model match the statistics of multiple runs of the Earth climate system. Unfortunately, the universe has not been generous enough to give us multiple runs of the Earth climate system. We have to settle with just one, which may be statisticaly unusual relative to a hypothetical multi-system mean. That means in turn that altering a model to better fit a trend, particularly a short term trend may in fact make it less accurate. The problem is accentuated in that for most models we only have a very few runs (and for none do we have sufficient runs to properly quantify ensemble means for that model). Therefore the model run you are altering may also be statistically unusual. Indeed, raw statistics suggests that the Earth's realized climate history must be statistically unusual in some way relative to a hypothetical system ensemble mean (but hopefully not too much), and the same for any realized run for a given model relative to its hypothetical model mean.
Given this situation, they way you make models better is to compare the Earth's realized climate history to the multi-model ensemble mean; but assume only that that realized history is close to statistically normal. You do not sweat small differences, because small differences are as likely to be statistical aberrations as model errors. Instead you progressively improve the match between model physics and real world physics; and map which features of models lead to which differences with reality so as you get more data you get a better idea of what needs changing.
Ideally we would have research programs in which this was done independently for each model. That, however, would require research budgets sufficient to allow each model to be run multiple times (around 100) per year, ie, it would require a ten fold increase in funding (or thereabouts). It would also require persuading the modellers that their best gain in accuracy would be in getting better model statistics rather than using that extra computer power to get better resolution. At the moment they think otherwise, and they are far better informed on the topic than you or I, so I would not try to dissuade them. As computer time rises with the fourth power of resolution, however, eventually the greater gain will be found with better ensemble statistics.
Finally, in this I have glossed over the other big problem climate modellers face - the climate is very complex. Most criticisms of models focus entirely on temperature, often just GMST. However, an alteration that improves predictions of temperature may make predictions of precipitation, or windspeeds, or any of a large number of other variables, worse. It then becomes unclear what is, or is not an improvement. The solution is the same as the solution for the chaotic nature of wheather. However, these too factors combined mean that one sure way to end the progressive improvement of climate models is to start chasing a close match to GMST trends in the interests of "accuracy". Such improvements will happen as a result of the current program, and are desirable - but chasing it directly means either tracking spurious short term trends, or introducing fudges that will worsten performance in other areas.
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sailrick at 17:38 PM on 3 March 2015Climatology versus Pseudoscience book tests whose predictions have been right
michael sweet
I'm pretty sure I read that Arhennius recalculated climate sensitivity later on and came up with more like 2.5 C which is even closer to the IPCC most likely 3 C
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One Planet Only Forever at 12:18 PM on 3 March 2015Understanding adjustments to temperature data
Ryland@30,
I agree with Jim Hunt's summation that you have been identifying the unacceptable behaviour in the MSM reporting regarding climate science. Unlike Jim, who asks what you believe climate scientists should do, I would ask why you expect that your comments here will change the unacceptable behaviour in the MSM that you are aware of.
The people who contribute to this site or frequently visits this site are probably well aware of the unacceptable behaviour of many reporters/opinion makers in the MSM as well as at other misleading sites. And it would be wonderful if a proper presentation of the actual facts of the matter could be provided as an introduction to every misleading report in the first posting of the misleading report, but that won't happen.
What can happen is the continued development of the best understanding of what is going on, not just the climate science, but also what is going on in the presentation of information to the public and how people who claim to be 'leaders' have actually been behaving. That is what this site, and many like it are all about.
Eventually the majority of the population will stop believing the misleading claim-making and the fraudulent 'leaders', realizing who the real trouble-makers are. That is the only future for humanity and that effective majority realization is already here (even in the Canada, USA, and Australia), but the trouble-makers are still able to deceptively maintain undeserved wealth accummulation and power (and abusive misleading marketing influence). However, their days are clearly as limited as the unsustainable damaging pursuits they strive to prolong with the small pool of support from people who can never be expected to give up their fight to get away with undeserved unsustainable and damaging desired actions.
'Every man on the street' does not need to be convinced. In fact, many of those people will never allow themselves to be convinced. The developing better understanding and progress of humanity toward a sustainable better futre for all will leave them bitterly disappointed, as they deserve to be, with their only real choice being to 'change their mind'. And the continued pursuit of the best understanding of what is going on is the key to making that happen.
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protagorias at 11:32 AM on 3 March 2015Models are unreliable
DSL,
You're right. I hadn't even noticed that! I tend to make wild leaps sometimes, i apologize for that.
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DSL at 10:54 AM on 3 March 2015Models are unreliable
Protagorias, I suggest you actually read the articles you link to. That insurance one is about insurance models. It has nothing to do with GCMs.
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Jim Hunt at 09:54 AM on 3 March 2015Understanding adjustments to temperature data
Ryland @30 - So we're agreed that the "sceptical MSM" just make stuff up that they think their audience would like to hear? That being the case, what should climate scientists do about that situation. Start making stuff up as well? Failing that, how should they alter their communications such that they start to "resonate with the man in the street"?
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protagorias at 09:36 AM on 3 March 2015Models are unreliable
Yet that is precisely what is relevant. Why else would climate modellers be asking for better software from which to better model climate change, if they didn't have, or at least recognize, the need for better input?
Please note this recent article in the Insurance Journal. Climate Change Modelling on Cusp of Paradigm ShiftSilicon Valley-based modeler Risk Management Solutions last year partnered on the Risky Business initiative, a year-long effort co-chaired by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, and Farallon Capital founder Tom Steyer, to quantify and publicize the economic risks the U.S. faces from the impacts of a changing climate.
For the initiative RMS provided an analysis of the impacts that climate change will likely have on coastal infrastructure and related assets. Risky Business issued a report late last year focused on the clearest and most economically significant risks: “Damage to coastal property and infrastructure from rising sea levels and increased storm surge, climate-driven changes in agricultural production and energy demand, and the impact of higher temperatures on labor productivity and public health.”
Paul Wilson, vice president of model development for RMS and leader of the firm’s North Atlantic hurricane modeling team, said clients are often asking the same question: “How much variability can we expect?”
“That’s a conversation RMS has very regularly with our clients,” Wilson said. “We need to think about to what degree climate change is impacting that variability, to what degree is climate change impacting that baseline around which we build our models.”
In response to these conversations, RMS will be incorporating more variability into more models in future, although it’s the overall concern over variability, and not necessarily climate change, that may be driving some of that interest, he added.
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chriskoz at 09:27 AM on 3 March 20152015 SkS Weekly Digest #9
John,
Where does the sentence on Leonard's picture come from. Did Leonard say it and on what occasion? Can you provide the source?
While we are remembering his life I want to know more about him and want to know in detail why he's featured here in SkS. Thanks!
Moderator Response:[JH] Many members of the all-volunteer SkS author team are fans of Star Trek. Mr. Spock embodies the concept of logical thinking which underpins science. The poster is from the album section of the "I Heart Scientist's" Facebook page.
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protagorias at 08:24 AM on 3 March 2015Models are unreliable
Only one quick example
International Journal of Climatology Vol 25, Issue 15 High Resolution Climate Surfaces for Global Land Areas
For many applications, data at a fine spatial resolution are necessary to capture environmental variability that can be partly lost at lower resolutions, particularly in mountainous or other areas with steep climate gradients. However, such high-resolution data are only available for certain parts of the world...
Moderator Response:[PS] Except that it is not. What is discussed is not input into any GCM.
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KR at 06:03 AM on 3 March 2015Understanding adjustments to temperature data
Sorry, that last post should have said "_fewer_" skeptics on talk shows.
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swampfoxh at 05:54 AM on 3 March 2015New Video: What Climate Deniers Learned from Big Tobacco
Thanks guys, for the correction. I marched off to take my wife to the opera before proofing my comment.
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KR at 05:51 AM on 3 March 2015Understanding adjustments to temperature data
ryland - Fortunately, with the exception of the usual suspects (Fox News, The Telegraph, the Australian, and so on), mainstream media appears to be taking climate change much more seriously.. Skeptics on talk shows, dimension of climate change comes more and more often in general news shows, etc.
It's my impression that the deniers are just becoming less and less credible.
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knaugle at 04:47 AM on 3 March 2015Cowtan and Way 2014: Hottest or not?
To expand on KevinC (#7 above)
One thing about how some trumpet how 2014 was only 38% likely most warmest, is they fail to follow up with which year was "warmest". Most imply 1998 is the big winner. I went looking for this information and found Brett Anderson's Climate blog on AccuWeather:
http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-blogs/climatechange/expert-commentary-on-global-te/40988095
Where he shows that the other candidates for "warmest" fared even worse. 2010 was 23%, 2005 17%, 1998 4% and the remainder presumably single digit. So in the arena of "lies, damnable lies, and statistics", it seems 2014 remains the big dog in the fight.
Moderator Response:[PS] Fixed link
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billthefrog at 03:25 AM on 3 March 2015Understanding adjustments to temperature data
@ Zeke,
Thanks for the illuminating piece, I look forward to reading parts II & III.
In the PHA section, you briefly mention Reno, and this has triggered some - possibly false - memory. A nagging little voice (Aside to the wife: No, not you dear!) keeps telling me that I've read that the UHI adjustment for Remo is somewhere in the order of 11o C.
Does that sound about right, or shall I merely add it to the list of "things that I thought were real, but weren't"?
I suppose the same kind of problem exists in the wonderful world of phenology (not phrenology). Yet another article has appeared on the BBC discussing non-instumental indicators.
Cheers Bill F
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ryland at 02:46 AM on 3 March 2015Understanding adjustments to temperature data
My apologies to all for my inability to express myself in a manner that makes my stance clear. My comments at 25 were directed at the MSM appealing to the man in the street and are not, repeat not, me having a go at Gavin Schmidt. I thought, obviously incorrectly, that my comment "The Daily Mail, whatever you may think of this paper it does have a very wide circulation, does know its audience and made Gavin Schmidt look a charlatan" made it clear that it was not me but headline in The Daily Mail making Gavin Schmidt appear a charlatan. Personally I know what margins of error are but does the "man in the street"? The point I obviously didn't make is that columnists know how to get their message across, after all it is their job, and no I certainly don't accept every word these journalists write. Nor did I chide Gavin Schmidt on margins of error, I was pointing out that that is what David Rose in the Daily Mail did. I agree it is a privilege to post here and have no wish to lose it. I obviously need to make it much clearer than I have done in 25 above, which are my own thoughts and which are the thoughts of others. In a nutshell I think, and this is a personal think, that the sceptical MSM is winning the debate on human induced climate change. This could be because the papers that "the masses" read don't want opinion pieces from climate scientists and/or that the language used in op-eds and other publications from climate scientists does not resonate with "the man in the street"
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Rob Honeycutt at 02:16 AM on 3 March 2015Understanding adjustments to temperature data
"This statistic might give you cause for pause, the article by Christopher Booker in the Telegraph got 31,758 comments. The title of the piece was "The fiddling of temperature data is the biggest science scandal ever" In contrast this piece at SkS has 24 to date."
That would still mean this SkS thread has roughly twice the number of substantive comments as the Telegraph article.
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billthefrog at 02:07 AM on 3 March 2015Understanding adjustments to temperature data
@Ryland
Nice segue from a seemingly innocent comment about the CET in #1 to letting rip with some blatant ideology in #25.
I would like to ask a straightforward question: When you're reading articles by the likes of LLoyd, Booker or Rose, does it ever occur to you to actually employ some genuine scepticism, or does every word they write simply get accepted at face value? (Since you hail from the CET area, I'm sure you won't mind if I spell "scepticism" without the increasingly ubiquitous "k".)
Since you seem to have a bee in the bonnet regarding error margins, here's a little trick - meaning technique or procedure - which you may care to try out some time...
Pick any of the main global temperature datsets (UAH, RSS, Gistemp, HadCRUT, NCDC or BEST) and work out the most recent half dozen or so pentadal (5-year) averages. (i.e. 2010-2014, 2005-2009, 2000-2005, 1995-1999,1990-1995,1985-1989)
Notice any underlying trends there?
As the periods of interest are now 60 months long - rather than just 12 - the associated uncertainties will have decreased. Kevin Cowtan wrote an article on this matter about 3 years ago describing the SkS temperature trend calculator. Perhaps you should peruse this before digging a deeper hole for yourself.
David Rose making Gavin Schmidt look like a charlatan? - Pot, Kettle, Black!
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Jim Hunt at 01:59 AM on 3 March 2015Understanding adjustments to temperature data
Ryland @25 - It may interest you to learn that according to The Sunday Telegraph's Head of Editorial Compliance:
[Christopher Booker’s article] is clearly an opinion article and identifiable as such.
http://GreatWhiteCon.info/2015/02/a-letter-to-the-editor-of-the-sunday-telegraph/#Feb20
Furthermore we also have proof positive that David Rose simply makes stuff up for his articles in The Mail on Sunday:If you have any further questions (that conform to the SkS comments policy) then please do not hesitate to ask!
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PhilippeChantreau at 01:07 AM on 3 March 2015Understanding adjustments to temperature data
Ryland, I'm surprised that you start your post describing accurately some newspapers' attitudes then ends by chiding scientists for not including the margin of error. Seems you're the one being naive. The only thing doing damage to climate scientists is to be targeted by despicable people who will back at nothing to undermine the public's understanding of science. The silly talk about margin of error is laughable coming from the clowns who keep saying that it hasn't warmed since 1998 or that there is a pause. Let's start there for statistical accuracy why don't we? But the media never calls this kind of BS a "scandal" do they?
The real problem of climate scientists comes from the stooges willing to organise harassment campaigns, steal e-mails to twist their meaning, threaten them with physical violence, use every dirty trick in the book with no regard whatsoever for any kind of intellectual honesty or scientific accuracy. The real problem comes from media outlets that are used to foster the ideological agenda of their owner and manipulate peope's minds without any scruples or regard for such details as physical reality. The real problem is that scientific illiteracy is so deep and prevalent that a buffoon like Monckton can manage to attract attention with his delirious ramblings and gather more credibility than those who know what they're talking about. That's the real problem. There is no other.
Regardless what they do, climate scientists are damned. There is no debate with people like that. It's like being on trial with Staline as the judge. They're only out to silence you and they'll stop at nothing so long as they are reasonably sure they'll get away with it. Margin of error? Give me a break.
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ianw01 at 00:20 AM on 3 March 2015With climate change, US presidents matter
So, if the tar sands were in North Dakota, would he have vetoed it? No way. Let's not over-do the credit to Obama. This was a political opportunity to take a high-profile stand against one foreign source of CO2, while overseeing increases in domestic sources (see Synapsid comment #1). Meanwhile the illusion that meaningful progress is underway lives on.
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ryland at 23:10 PM on 2 March 2015Understanding adjustments to temperature data
Tom Curtis and Glenn Tamblyn In view of Rob Paintings's comment @ 19 I had not intended to write further on this but I do think the level of naivety in your posts, particularly that from Tom Curtis, does need addressing. Those writing the articles know exactly the audience they wish to reach and write accordingly. Graham Lloyd almost certainly didn't give a hoot about his wording he just wanted to get a simple message across and so used simple language. Similarly most readers of these pieces neither know of or care about anomalies. They just look at the simplistic analyses presented and as you state say "yeah looks reasonable to me" This statistic might give you cause for pause, the article by Christopher Booker in the Telegraph got 31,758 comments. The title of the piece was "The fiddling of temperature data is the biggest science scandal ever" In contrast this piece at SkS has 24 to date. One thing that does damage climate scientists cause are statements such as "2014 was the hottest year ever" which then has to be modified in view of the margins of error. The Daily Mail, whatever you may think of this paper it does have a very wide circulation, does know its audience and made Gavin Schmidt look a charlatan (http://tinyurl.com/lsr87rg). Unlike the MSM, connecting with the "man in the street" does not seem the forte of those promoting the dangers of human caused climate change.
Moderator Response:[JH] You are skating on the thin ice of sloganeering which is prohibited by the SkS Comments Policy.
Please note that posting comments here at SkS is a privilege, not a right. This privilege can be rescinded if the posting individual treats adherence to the Comments Policy as optional, rather than the mandatory condition of participating in this online forum.
Please take the time to review the policy and ensure future comments are in full compliance with it. Thanks for your understanding and compliance in this matter.
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protagorias at 21:30 PM on 2 March 2015Models are unreliable
Glenn Tamblyn
You may be right.
Be that as it may, I will continue to maintain that increased accuracy in measurement is one of the primary drivers of model improvement.
Moderator Response:[PS] Then maybe you would like to provide evidence to support that assertion.
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Glenn Tamblyn at 21:07 PM on 2 March 2015Models are unreliable
protagorias
"Well, to the extent that certain specific models can be improved I think you'll see a decrease in public misunderstanding and "denialism", and an increased acceptance of the science."
With respect I think that is utterly naive. Most misunderstanding and denialism has diddly-squat to do with the minutiae of the accuracy of specific models. 99.999% of the earths population have no idea of how 'the models' differ.
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Glenn Tamblyn at 20:23 PM on 2 March 2015Understanding adjustments to temperature data
Tom
" I think that is just poor wording by Lloyd"
Not so sure. In terms of his personal understanding of the temperature record is concerned it may simply reflect his ignorance - and enthusiasm for promoting a message. But it plays to a deeper misunderstanding.
I suspect most people who think about how temperature record calculations are done can easily fall into the trap of thinking that adding/removing warm stations/cold stations will automatically bias the calculation.
They don't get the difference between the Anomaly of the Averages, and the Average of the Anomalies.
So dropping/adjusting stations can seem far more significant than it actually is.
That's why this particular zombie just keeps on walking. And every time someone waves a voodoo wand at it again to keep it moving a whole new audience can be left scratching their heads - 'yeah, sure looks reasonable to me'.
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protagorias at 19:47 PM on 2 March 2015Models are unreliable
Tom Curtis,
So what is the purpose of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project as mentioned in #800, if all the models are homogenized as you appear to suggest? According to CIMP5, one of the goals is "determining why similarly forced models produce a range of responses". Clearly, not all models are equally valid in their predictions. I'm not suggesting that they don't all improve over time, but merely that certain improvements may more accurately reflect appropriate environmental factors. For example, heat in the oceans may be an appropriate factor.Furthermore, what is the purpose of discussing consensus itself as a specific factor if not to encourage acceptance of the facts, if non-acceptance (which I agree is motivated by ideology) - leads to unhelpful inaction on the part of the public?
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Peter Metaskeptic at 18:38 PM on 2 March 20152015 SkS Weekly Digest #9
I just answer to a comment at http://sciblogs.co.nz and the question of using social dilemmas crops up.
Why aren't social dilemmas a core tool in our battle against GW-deniers (which can also be applied to anti-vax? Social dliemmas give us a pretty good explanation about why we fail to weigh on the political momentum of our civilization. (ref: tragedy of the commons)
Peter : http://www.metaskeptic.net
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Tom Curtis at 17:16 PM on 2 March 2015Understanding adjustments to temperature data
Glenn Tamblyn @22, I think that is just poor wording by Lloyd, ie, that the claim is that not using those stations increases the trend. Unfortunately I have been unable to find a more detailed exposition of the claim to confirm that, or to find a list of the stations purportedly excluded. In fact, all I have found is a powerpoint presentation of Stockwell's more general critique of ACORN-SAT which proves he is just another denier. The proof is in his running the argument that the difference in rate of positive and negative adjustments between different time periods proves there is something wrong, without noting tha the algorithms used in homogenization do not factor in the decade of the adjustment, and therefore logically cannot be biased in the way he claims.
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Tom Curtis at 17:07 PM on 2 March 2015Models are unreliable
protagorias @802:
First, your claim is false. There has been a remarkable and continuous improvement of the models over time. Going back to Hansen 88, models did not even include aerosols. By the TAR, they universally did, but did not show ENSO like fluctuations. By the AR4, some did, but others did not. Now, with AR5 they all do. None of this has had any noticable effect on public non-acceptance of climate science - which is not driven by the science, but by political ideology.
Second, no scientist anywhere should alter how they do science to "increase acceptance of the science". Doing so is just modifying science to suit political ends by a different name. Indeed, that is exactly what you are after, a fact given a way by your desire "that certain specific models" be "improved", rather than that all of them be improved by standard methods. By "improved" you mean no more than adjusted to give the results that you want.
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protagorias at 16:56 PM on 2 March 2015Models are unreliable
Well, to the extent that certain specific models can be improved I think you'll see a decrease in public misunderstanding and "denialism", and an increased acceptance of the science.
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wideEyedPupil at 14:36 PM on 2 March 2015Why the Miocene Matters (and doesn’t) Today
Fiction is a great way to help the non-scientitst (but former science student in my case) engage with technically complex topics in a way that brings them to life and provides a backdrop inviting and understanding of more technical information. It's seems like SciFi has inspired many technological breakthourghs and science careers, certainly my fathers career in nuclear physics was accompanied at an early stage with heaps of SciFi.
Perhaps we need more CC fiction to help win the war against FF and livestock industries.
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One Planet Only Forever at 13:01 PM on 2 March 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #9B
The LA Times article contains very little technical information, yet the comments are mainly opinions from people who seem to desperately need to not accept that human burning of fossil fuels is an unsustainable practice that needs to be curtailed earlier than the un-natural marketplace of popularity and profitability would bring the practice to its inevitable end. The willful lack of understanding is outstanding.
p.s. The line at the end of my previous comment is not meant to have been part of another point.
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One Planet Only Forever at 12:55 PM on 2 March 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #9B
One way to address the "Pause" or "Hiatus" with a "Climate Science Doubter" is to show them the SkS Temperature Trends visualization tool and ask them to review the Land/Ocean history since the 1800s, any way they wish to look at all of the data. Then ask them to explain what they see in the data that is so particularly unusual about the most recent temperature values that needs to be explained to them, rather than other peculiar things like how unusually warm 1998 was relative to the years before it, or the very long "pause" in the temperatures from 1950 through 1980 that were definitely not "the end of the global average temperature increases".
o explain why they are asking about the most recent set of data
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Glenn Tamblyn at 12:35 PM on 2 March 2015Understanding adjustments to temperature data
ryland
"It is claimed that the BoM removed 57 stations from its calculations replacing them with 36 on-avreage hotter stations and that this has created an increase of 0.42C in the recorded Australian average temperature independently of any actual real change in temperature."
And in this Graham Lloyd highlights that he doesn't understand how temperature trends are calculated. Just substituting warmer stations doesn't necesarily increase the trend. One actually would need to substitute warming stations to manipulate the trend.
This harks back to claims some years ago about the dropping of high latitude stations in Canada from the analysis, implying that since they were from a colder region, this would bias the trend higher. When in fact, since the fastest warming in the world is happening in the Arctic, if dropping stations from there were to have any impact (it doesn't by the way, there is still enough coverage) it would actually lower the trend.
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Tom Curtis at 09:25 AM on 2 March 2015Understanding adjustments to temperature data
ryland @16, with regard to the claims made in The Australian, several of them are certainly false. Thus Graham Lloyd writes:
"ACORN-SAT, which the Senate was told this week is managed by a two-person team in BoM, uses information from a select range of weather stations and computer modelling to compile its national temperature record. The data is also used to help create the global temperature record."
However, the various teams generating global temperature series independently access the raw data from their own choice of stations. Therefore, selection of stations used by the BoM has no bearing on those global temperature records.
That fact also means those global records can be used as an independent check on the ACORN-SAT method, something done by the BoM as part of the review of the independent peer review of ACORN-SAT. Of most interest is the comparison with BEST, not made in that review. BEST, like ACORN-SAT shows a 0.9 C warming from 1910 to current. That is interesting because BEST leaves out no records. So whether you use 686 current, and 821 former stations (BEST) or 112 stations choses for their high quality and largely continuous record (ACORN-SAT), you get essentially the same result.
That in turn means that if stations left out of the ACORN-SAT network make a difference to the trend, they were left out for good reason, ie, that station moves, change of equipment or changes in station surroundings have rendered those stations poor records of centenial change.
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DSL at 09:25 AM on 2 March 2015Models are unreliable
I'm still not sure what "increasing importance of precipitation data" means in the context of general circulation modeling. Is it not important enough right now? Why should it become more important?
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scaddenp at 09:03 AM on 2 March 2015Models are unreliable
You will note that IPCC reports make heavy use of CMIP model runs.
CMIP = Coupled Model Intercomparison Project. Read about it here.
Funnily enough it exists to highlight and explore differences between models and understand what is going on.
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protagorias at 08:48 AM on 2 March 2015Models are unreliable
Some models predict better than others and failing to adequately account for emerging environmental factors of differing importance - for instance the increasing importance of precipitation data - will likely, over time, negatively impact a model's predictive capacity.
Moderator Response:[JH] You are once again skating on the thin ice of sloganeering which is prohibited by the SkS Comments Policy.
Please note that posting comments here at SkS is a privilege, not a right. This privilege can be rescinded if the posting individual treats adherence to the Comments Policy as optional, rather than the mandatory condition of participating in this online forum.
Please take the time to review the policy and ensure future comments are in full compliance with it. Thanks for your understanding and compliance in this matter.
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Stephen Pruett at 08:19 AM on 2 March 2015Understanding adjustments to temperature data
Excellent article. Will you be addressing the status of metadata in the climate records and how this influences adjustments? After reading the Harry_readme file of climategate fame, I have the impression that at least some climate records have incomplete, confusing, and perhaps incorrect metadata. I have also read that older records (pre 70s) generally have little or no metadata associated with them. I would appreciate any information you could provide about this issue.
Also, are any of the raw climate records with metadata available online? It would be interesting to me to see at least a small sample. I have done analysis of microarray data for quantifying gene expression for over 40,000 genes and these data generally require normalization due to quirks of the fluorescence readers and the microarrrays, so I understand that it is sometimes necessary to adjust data. However, most journals that publish microarray data require the results and a description of the normalization method to be placed in a public database before the paper can be published. Wouldn't something like that be useful for enhanced credibility in climate science?
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KR at 01:51 AM on 2 March 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #9B
The first link, to the LA Times, is wrong, and in fact seems to point to a SkS login page.
Moderator Response:[JH] Link fixed. Thanks for bringing this to our attention.
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