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Dikran Marsupial at 01:45 AM on 13 June 2013UK Secretary of State for the Environment reveals his depth of knowledge of climate change (not!)
HJones, stringing together a set of individually correct statements doesn't mean they necessarily support a conclusion, for example:
"in proxy data CO2 is correllated with, but lags temperatures; the solubility of CO2 decreases with increasing temperatures; the oceans have warmed, thus it is natural to expect that CO2 has risen as a result."
this combines three individually correct statments that come together to imply a conclusion that is false.
The problem with Paterson's statment is that it reveals that he has a very weak grasp of the fundamental issues surrounding climate change, as he raises several issues that provide at best questionable support, even where technically correct, for his downplaying of the anthropogenic element of climate change. This is a very worrying thing to see in a secretary of state for the environment.
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MA Rodger at 01:19 AM on 13 June 2013UK Secretary of State for the Environment reveals his depth of knowledge of climate change (not!)
HJones.
You say @14 that you do not distort the language or ignore inconvenient facts. Are you then confining yourself to distorting numerical equivilances?
I ask this as you assert @8 that "the temp has not changed in the last seventeen years" is a statement of truth. So you appear to be telling us here that 0.469ºC = 0.245ºC, these being respectively the present HadCRUT4 rolling annual temperature and that same measure from 17 years ago.
Your assertion is truly a distortion.
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shoyemore at 01:08 AM on 13 June 2013UK Secretary of State for the Environment reveals his depth of knowledge of climate change (not!)
Tom Curtis & HJones,
A few barley seeds found in a midden does not demonstate the Vikings ever grew food crops on large scale. This recent, very small find only shows how sparse the evidence is.
In the medieval chronicle, the King's Mirror, a son asks his father about Greenland.
Son. You stated earlier in your talk that no grain grows in that country; therefore I now want to ask you what the people who inhabit the land live on, how large the population is, what sort of food they have, and whether they have accepted Christianity.
Father. The people in that country are few, for only a small part is sufficiently free from ice to be habitable; but the people are all Christians and have churches and priests. If the land lay near to some other country it might be reckoned a third of a bishopric; but the Greenlanders now have their own bishop, as no other arrangement is possible on account of the great distance from other people. You ask what the inhabitants live on in that country since they sow no grain; but men can live on other food than bread. It is reported that the pasturage is good and that there are large and fine farms in Greenland. The farmers raise cattle and sheep in large numbers and make butter and cheese in great quantities. The people subsist chiefly on these foods and on beef; but they also eat the flesh of various kinds of game, such as reindeer, whales, seals, and bears. That is what men live on in that country.
As I said above, the only crop was hay. No doubt attempts were made to grow grain crops, but no evidence has ever ben found that these were sucessful.
PS I misremembered "men who did not know bread" as "men who did not know beer" above in #2.
www.northvegr.org/misc%20primary%20sources/misc%20lore%20translations/004.html
It is almost not relevant to Paterson's point, and possible shows he owes his climate "science" more to Christopher Monckton and Lord Lawson that to his advisers.
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HJones at 00:04 AM on 13 June 2013UK Secretary of State for the Environment reveals his depth of knowledge of climate change (not!)
HJones just ignores it.
I didn't ignore it. I didn't even comment on it, I only commented on Patterson's statement! You seem to validate his claim here
Yes, Funder finds that during the Holocene climatic optimum, Arctic sea ice effectively disappeared at summer minima.
whereas I left it as saying his comment was exaggerated.
Tom Curtis,
You are comparing apples and oranges here too. I am not distorting the language.
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Robert Murphy at 00:04 AM on 13 June 2013UK Secretary of State for the Environment reveals his depth of knowledge of climate change (not!)
"the climate has not changed, the temp has not changed in the last seventeen years."
Even looking at the very small component of the climate that is the lower troposphere, this is untrue. Over the last 17 years (this meme keeps mutating into longer periods, BTW), UAH shows over .16*C of warming; HADCRUT4 shows about .12*C of warming. GISS shows about .2*C of warming over the last 17 years. Only RSS shows minimal warming, about .01*C. I bet you think that one must be the correct one.Of course, as has been pointed out numerous times here, most of the accumulated energy from the enhanced greenhouse effect is going into the oceans, which has continued to warm unabated.
"To refute this last statement by talking about ocean heat content is comparing apples and oranges."No, it's looking at the whole picture not just the small part of the climate system that is the lower tropsophere.
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DSL at 23:32 PM on 12 June 2013UK Secretary of State for the Environment reveals his depth of knowledge of climate change (not!)
HJones, are you actually going to stick around and defend/discuss your claims? I look forward to you doing so.
As for Patterson (and your defense, HJones), there's no critical contextualization being done. For example:
Patterson: "the Arctic melted completely and you can see there were beaches there."
This is probably a reference to Funder et al. (2011), titled "A 10,000-Year Record of Arctic Ocean Sea-Ice Variability—View from the Beach." Yes, Funder finds that during the Holocene climatic optimum, Arctic sea ice effectively disappeared at summer minima. That has been used to make MWP-like claims about sea ice: "sea ice has been lower in the past; therefore there is nothing remarkable about current sea ice loss." What Peterson, HJones, and sites like HockeySchtick fail to mention is that Funder et al. also found a hockey stick during the late 20th century. Arctic sea ice extent slowly grows from the HCO until it reaches around 1970, when it sharply goes into decline. Hockey Schtick went so far as to chop off that end of the graph. HJones just ignores it. Patterson has probably never read Funder; someone told him it would be a good thing to mention. They also fail to mention that despite the long-term decline in solar forcing -- and the short-term decline of the last 50 years -- Arctic sea ice extent is plummeting and will reach conditions similar to HCO summer minima within decades (again, without help from the sun; indeed, with the sun trying to cool). -
Tom Curtis at 23:27 PM on 12 June 2013UK Secretary of State for the Environment reveals his depth of knowledge of climate change (not!)
HJones @8:
Owen Patison indicated that the Arctic Ice was completely melted "when Greenland was occupied, you know, people growing crops", ie the MWP. That is false. He indicated that the LIA followed immediately the period when the Arctic Ice was completely melted, ie, the Holocene Climactic Optimum; and then proceeds to indicate that the MWP followed the LIA. Both false. Trying to find one or two words you can construe as true among that mishmash of confused falsehood shows only your desperation to defend the indefensible. Patison would have been better simply saying that he knows nothing of the issue, even though it is within his portfolio. That, at least, would be honest.
It is true that the Vikings grew crops in Greenland, but it is also true that they grow crops in Greenland today.
Finaly, over the last seventeen years, the Earth has warmed faster than it did, on average, since 1900. You may wish to distort the language so much as to say faster than centenial average warming is no warming - but that only tells us something about you.
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Lionel A at 23:11 PM on 12 June 2013UK Secretary of State for the Environment reveals his depth of knowledge of climate change (not!)
This does not surprise me at all. After all this is the government which is pushing for fracking as hard as it is trying to block green energy sources especially wind turbines.
As for US training, picking up on tamikenn57 at #6, sure there has been input from the direction in the shape of Richard Lindzen for one but I suspect the steady drip from other sources such as the 'squeezer of watermelons' aka 'Interpreter of interpretations' has been at work too.
Question Time has a record of allowing ignorant or ideological blinkered denialists on a panel where climate change is brought up as seen some while back where Melanie Phillips gives forth.
Thanks for bringing this to our attention John.
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Dikran Marsupial at 23:07 PM on 12 June 2013UK Secretary of State for the Environment reveals his depth of knowledge of climate change (not!)
HJones wrote "the climate has not changed, the temp has not changed in the last seventeen years. This is also true. There hasn't been any significant warming for quite some time."
This is incorrect, "no significant warming" does not mean "no warming", it just means there hasn't been enough warming to rule out the possibility that there has been no warming, and the shorter the period you choose, the greater the warming has to be in order to reject the possibility that there has been no warming. This is why climatologists tend to use a period of about 30 years for assessing trends. This canard has been addressed repeatedly on SkS, if you want to discuss it, then please at least read the appropriate article first.
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HJones at 22:53 PM on 12 June 2013UK Secretary of State for the Environment reveals his depth of knowledge of climate change (not!)
Let's look at what the SoS actually said:
the climate's always been changing - er - Peter mentioned the Arctic and I think in the Holocene the Arctic melted completely and you can see there were beaches there - when Greenland was occupied, you know, people growing crops
The climate has always been changing. Nothing wrong there.
The Artic melted completely - as the post points out - this one is objectionable - exaggerated - what ever.
beaches in Greenland - again, as the post points out, this is correct.
When Greenland was occupied - people were growing crops - The Vikings were there for a couple of hundred years - it is inconceivable that they did not grow crops during this time frame - so again, this statement is true.
we then had a little ice age, we had a middle age warming - the climate's been going up and down - but the real question which I think everyone's trying to address is - is this influenced by manmade activity in recent years and James is actually correct - the climate has not changed - the temperature has not changed in the last seventeen years
we then had a little ice age - we did. This is also true.
we then had a middle age warming - we did have a medeaval warm period. This is also true.
The climates been going up and down - again obviously true.
the climate has not changed, the temp has not changed in the last seventeen years. This is also true. There hasn't been any significant warming for quite some time.
To refute this last statement by talking about ocean heat content is comparing apples and oranges. I am not saying the man is competent. I am not saying that the man has a grasp of science. But to make claims that he does not have a grasp of science or is incompetent based on the above statements is just wrong.
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Mikemcc at 21:52 PM on 12 June 2013UK Secretary of State for the Environment reveals his depth of knowledge of climate change (not!)
I would suggest polite e-mails to his boss at No 10 to point out that such a view point demonstates incompetance to hold the office that he does. I sent one that said:
It has been brought to my attention that the Rt Hon Owen Patterson, SoS for the Environment, has demonstrated an amazing lack of understanding of the climate (http://www.skepticalscience.com/paterson-on-climate.html). That the SoS of the Environment is so blinded to the scientific position concerning a crucial part of his remit is remarkable and demonstrates a level of incompetence that makes his position untenable.
Regards
Mikemcc
the contact website is: https://email.number10.gov.uk
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tamikenn57 at 21:50 PM on 12 June 2013UK Secretary of State for the Environment reveals his depth of knowledge of climate change (not!)
That isn't good news putting somebody in this position using the denial talking points so fluently. Maybe there was some US training involved. My guess the denier pundits in US government will turn around and accept these public statements as another argument to refute science.
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Cornelius Breadbasket at 21:26 PM on 12 June 2013UK Secretary of State for the Environment reveals his depth of knowledge of climate change (not!)
Thank you - THANK YOU - so much for this measured response. I was left speechless when I first heard Mr Paterson speak on this subject. I have written to both the PM and to Mr Paterson already and covered much of what you have said in your article in my own correspondence. Skeptical Science is a fabulous resourse.
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jsam at 21:15 PM on 12 June 2013UK Secretary of State for the Environment reveals his depth of knowledge of climate change (not!)
The good news, for the BBC, is that they have clearly bent over backwards to accomodate the false skeptics. So they've dodged the Delingpole-Bishops Hill snarly swarm. The Conservatives will breath a sigh of relief too. They've been accused of being all warm and cuddly, eg allowing gay marriage - and allowing UKip to challenge them. Instead they've used the national media to reinforce that they won't be out-conservatived by anyone. They can be as anti-science as anyone, http://skeptical-voter.org/wiki/index.php?title=Owen_Paterson. Owen has a long, loud and proud unscientific bent. His statements weren't really a surprise.
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Jonas at 19:35 PM on 12 June 2013UK Secretary of State for the Environment reveals his depth of knowledge of climate change (not!)
Here in Germany, we also have deniers in the conservative and liberal spectrum, but also elsewhere. Fortunately, Merkel is not a denier, but she is a far cry from being the "climate chancelor" she once communicated to be, because she fears requesting more climate action might make her loose the elections.
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Dennis Meadows recommended the book "Deceit and self deception - Fooling yourself to better fool the others" by Robert Trivers in a talk at the Smothsonian Institute. The book title fits particularly well for politicians ...
Review of Trivers book: " ... His overarching premise is that if we can only see our own point of view, we can authentically argue our case because our deceits blind us to the truth. Ignorance can be bliss, until you are outwitted by a perspective you don't share. ...":
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/oct/07/deceit-self-deception-robert-triversTrivers book and the SkS debunking handbook incited me to review my strategy: I now start with the science model (where does energy go, what forcings exist, ...) and try not make anyone look bad/stupid ("I also was confused by ..., but then I read": nobody likes to be stupid ...): it's kind of "agree and then embed into the full reality context". That works also for cherry picking ("Yes, I also read that May was statistically cold, but then I read that what we experience here is only a local phenomenon and that there were almost 30C in Helsinki and May was very warm in Pakistan with up to 51C ...) and downplaying ("Yes climate has always changed, but that does not help us, since the civilization we live in has developed in a relatively stable climate and why would we want to destroy this ourselves?").
I wonder if this works for politicians too, especially on stage, but it might be worth a try.
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shoyemore at 18:12 PM on 12 June 2013UK Secretary of State for the Environment reveals his depth of knowledge of climate change (not!)
"People growing crops in Greenland" ... the main Viking crop was hay for their domestic animals. One a few burnt barley seeds have been found in an old midden .. soemone may have tried growing it to make beer - the Greenland Norse are desribed in one annals as "not knowing beer". Vegetables were probably grown in small gardens.
Amazing how the (totally irrelevant) image of Vikings frolicking in balmy Greenland has seized the imaginations of politicians like Paterson, who seems to be have been atrociously briefed or just unable to grasp the salient facts.
If it is any comfort, Hain and Wood seems to have come out ahead of Delingpole and Paterson, who probably ending up pleasing no one. Thank God the Conservatives did not get an absolute majority to form a government on their own. The Liberals at least are a brake on their wilder fantasies.
Elsewhere, politically at least, there will soon be a Tony Abbott government in Australia (it seems), which will be "interesting". There is some comfort in Canada where the Harper crowd are mired in scandal and the more environmentally friendly Liberals have a new and popular leader. Harper may still cling on for a year or so, though.
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mcba at 16:05 PM on 12 June 2013Lu Blames Global Warming on CFCs (Curve Fitting Correlations)
jdixon1980 @68, it doesn't make sense to add up impact factors over a number of journals. Since the impact factor is the number of citations per paper, about all you can do is average the impact factors for IJMP[A-E]
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OPatrick at 15:31 PM on 12 June 2013UK Secretary of State for the Environment reveals his depth of knowledge of climate change (not!)
This was shocking to listen to and shame on the BBC for setting it up in this way. There was no hope of meaningful debate with Delingpole on the panel so in most people's eyes Owen Paterson probably got away with his extreme views on climate change by virtue of sounding reasonable in comparison to him.
I hope this gets picked up and Owen Paterson is held to account for his words. I'll be contacting my (Conservative) MP to express my concern, particularly as he's just sent me a letter reassuring me that they are still working hard at being the 'greenest government ever'. Ha!
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yocta at 13:23 PM on 12 June 2013A Miss by Myles: Why Professor Allen is wrong to think carbon capture and storage will solve the climate crisis
I work in research and development in the CCS industry. The claim by Myles Allen that a priority to invest in this field is wrong at the expense of others.
Most researchers I know and have met would agree on those points.
However, a significant portion of my peers are very pesimistic about humanity and giving up its love of coal. I would not agree with comments that it is soley a political spin. Many of my peers got into the research in order to make developments, or, knock it down, but with scientific scrutiny.
A significant overhead is on the investment in technology, and so an active role is on CO2 reuse technology with an aim to lower the cost of CCS technology. Examples include enhanced oil recovery, and enhanced coalbed methane.
CCS does have the potential to work. It is expensive (perhaps up to 20% of a power station's running cost) but that doesn't mean we should stop researching it.
I think it comes down to perspective, on what the best solution is at the time.
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Ken in Oz at 10:35 AM on 12 June 2013A Miss by Myles: Why Professor Allen is wrong to think carbon capture and storage will solve the climate crisis
I think the true role of CCS so far has been as political spin, that encourages the view that we can keep on burning fossil fuels because 'soon' the emissions will be able to be sequestered. I still recall then Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd addressing the UN and urging the world to develop working CCS, and recall thinking that what he really meant was that Australia would never stop digging up and selling coal to the world, so the world had better make CCS work. He may have been genuinely convinced of it's viability, but I struggle to see how it can ever be cost effective, even for those power plants that have the good fortune to sit on top of suitable geology.
I have serious reservations about CCS, starting with simple arithmatic; for every ton of quality coal burned there will be in excess of 3 tons of CO2 given off, all taking specialised plant and heavy energy usage to deal with. The kinds of deep drilling needed would IMO be much better used developing geothermal energy sources - probably less drilling required for that than for CO2 sequestration.
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scaddenp at 09:30 AM on 12 June 2013An estimate of the consensus project paper search coverage
Consensus is not a measure of scientific validity but is the only rational basis for determining policy.
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scaddenp at 09:25 AM on 12 June 2013A Miss by Myles: Why Professor Allen is wrong to think carbon capture and storage will solve the climate crisis
Phil, I would think that market forces would push electricity generation towards non-carbon resources. That said, coal is far more damaging than petroleum - we have so much more of it for a start. A move to oil instead of coal would be limited by production capacity within the oil industry. A move to gas instead of coal is probably an improvement. For many parts of the world though, electricity generation from non-carbon means would get a big boost. Will we pay more in the end? Up front - probably. The problem with the current price we pay for energy is that it doesnt include the external costs from climate change (and probably quite a few other costs in many parts of the world).
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jdixon1980 at 08:06 AM on 12 June 2013Lu Blames Global Warming on CFCs (Curve Fitting Correlations)
John0001 @69, yeah, I think that's why Dana made only a passing reference to the impact factor, musing as to a possible explanation of why the article passed peer review despite its low merit, which is addressed in the rest of the post. I was just curious as to what an "impact factor" even is, how much lower this journal's was compared to others, etc., and thought I might save other curious individuals like me some legwork.
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Tom Curtis at 08:06 AM on 12 June 2013An estimate of the consensus project paper search coverage
william @4, maladapted @5, the argument that there is a concensus of climate scientists that AGW is happening has not been used by SkS, and should not be used to anyone. The argument used by SkS is simply that fake "skeptics" claim that there is no consensus, but on the contrary, evidence shows that there is. In turn, the claim by fake "skeptics" that there is no consensus is used as the premise in a number of invalid arguments such as - "There is no consensus, therefore there is reasonable scientific doubt about AGW", and "There is no consensus, therefore both sides of the evidence should be presented equally to the public", and "There is no consensus, therefore it is too soon to initiate any policy on climate change".
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kar at 07:34 AM on 12 June 2013There's no empirical evidence
I have a couple of suggestions/questions about the text:
What about changing:
Figure 3: Spectrum of the greenhouse radiation measured at the surface. Greenhouse effect from water vapor is filtered out, showing the contributions of other greenhouse gases (Evans 2006).
To:
Figure 3: Spectrum of the greenhouse radiation messured at the surface. Greenhouse effect from water vapor is filtered out but showing the contributions of other more evenly distributed greenhouse gases (Evans 2006).
Something is missing at questionmark between figure 4 and 5:
... accumulate heat to the end of 2008 at a rate of 0.77 ± 0.11 Wm?2
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Mal Adapted at 07:10 AM on 12 June 2013An estimate of the consensus project paper search coverage
William:
To use consensus to justify any scientific position is to stand on very shaky ground. We should abandon this argument. The evidence is very strong and speaks for itself. If the consensus was that climate change is nonsense, would this make it any more true.
The existence of the scientific consensus on AGW is not being used to justify the position to other climate scientists. It's being used to make it clear to members of lay public, who don't have the skills and knowledge to understand the evidence directly, that there really isn't a debate still going on about AGW within the community of experts, contrary to the insistence of the deniers.
Genuine skeptics who are not themselves experts on climate science will acknowledge and respect the judgement of those who are. On another thread I linked to the text of a talk by Texas State Climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon at last year's AGU meeting, titled Scientific Meta-Literacy, I think it's germane to your comment as well.
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Don9000 at 04:51 AM on 12 June 2013A Miss by Myles: Why Professor Allen is wrong to think carbon capture and storage will solve the climate crisis
I agree with MarkR. Choosing the sequestration option as Professor Allen has done makes complete sense if we accept his argument's starting point: he is suggesting that humanity is incapable of not burning the carbon fuels that are causing the problem. In that scenario, sequestration is the only option left if we want to hold down the impact of burning all that carbon-based fuel.
Beyond the likelihood that sequestration, if chosen as the only solution, would prove to have serious limitations, I think there are two more pressing and daunting problems with Allen's approach.
First, it is unlikely to actually happen. For example, I seriously doubt that in the present political climate here in the US that there is any realistic chance that Congress could set us off on the carbon sequestration path in any meaningful way in the next several years. I'm sure many other countries would face similar obstacles in implementing such a fundamental course shift, and I doubt it would happen on a global basis in the time frame and on the scale necessary.
Allen's approach is also dangerous because if sequestration did gain political credence as a "silver bullet," the process of implementing it would give those opposed to taking real action a convenient excuse for delaying other possible solutions, since after the legislative sturm und drang we'd probably end up with a rather anemic array of "model" solutions that those opposed to systemic change would strum their political lyres over for ten or twenty years while the world continued to warm.
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Phil at 04:32 AM on 12 June 2013A Miss by Myles: Why Professor Allen is wrong to think carbon capture and storage will solve the climate crisis
I'm somewhat confused by the information conveyed by prices. I would expect an extra cost on electricity generation by mandating CCS would push the market towards petrol burning cars, space heating by oil and gas rather than electricity and use of local oil generators to (illegally?) produce electricity. Perhaps Allen consider this to be insignificant ?
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John0001 at 04:31 AM on 12 June 2013Lu Blames Global Warming on CFCs (Curve Fitting Correlations)
A strong argument.
But should we pay more attention to Lu's Physics Reports (2010)? Phys Rep has an impact factor of 20.574, whereas he did nothing more than a random correlation in that paper!
It might be an open question to target the impact factor, because some stupid scientists have pointed this out:
http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2013/05/call-to-abandon-journal-impact-f.html
We should focus on the point that Qing-Bin Lu is not a climate scientist at all; he knows nothing about global warming! Far enough.
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soo doh nim at 04:30 AM on 12 June 20132013 SkS Weekly Digest #23
Thanks, guys. I debate these things in other forums and can use all the ammo I can get. Thanks again!
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william5331 at 03:27 AM on 12 June 2013An estimate of the consensus project paper search coverage
To use consensus to justify any scientific position is to stand on very shaky ground. We should abandon this argument. The evidence is very strong and speaks for itself. If the consensus was that climate change is nonsense, would this make it any more true.
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KR at 03:00 AM on 12 June 20132013 SkS Weekly Digest #23
soo doh nim - Add in the fact that the satellite line in Christys graph appears to be the average of the RSS (~0.09C/decade, not inconsistent with model results) and UAH (~0.03C/decade) TMT data - the UAH data as produced by Christy and Spencer is a clear outlier.
This factor of 3x difference was, I'll note, not discussed by Spencer in his presentation.
Quite frankly, the outlandish accusations accompanying Spencer's blogging of Christy's graph say it all: with claims of the mainstream having "willingly ignored the evidence", "their willful blindness", and complaints that "scientists who still believe that climate change can also be naturally forced have been virtually cut out of funding and publication by the ‘humans-cause-everything-bad-that-happens’ juggernaut", Spencer is showing classic signs of denial. See Characteristics of global warming consensus denial #5, Conspiracy Theories.
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jdixon1980 at 01:40 AM on 12 June 2013Lu Blames Global Warming on CFCs (Curve Fitting Correlations)
I was curious about Dana's reference to the "impact factor" (for people like me who need that explained, it is a measure of average number of citations to articles in the journal over some unit of time, probably a year?) of the journal that published Lu's article. The title of the journal itslelf is not mentioned in Dana's post - it is apparently the International Journal of Modern Physics B: Condensed Matter Physics; Statistical Physics; Applied Physics. Indeed, its impact factor of 0.361 is by far the lowest, being the only one below 0.591. Arguably, comparing the impact factor of a branch of a journal subdivided by topics to that of another entire journal is not a fair apples-to-apples comparison. However, a quick scan reveals that there are a few other journals or branches of journals directed to statistical physics (I assume that is where Lu fits into IJMP B), each having a significantly larger impact factor: Journal of Statistical Physics (1.397), Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications (1.374), Physical Review E: Statistical, Nonlinear and Soft Matter Physics (2.255).
As another type of comparison, the impact factors of the entire IJMP added up (4.1) seems to put it more or less into a well-populated second-tier of journals, not remarkably tiny, but far behind some of the leading journals (it looks like there are six of them with impact factors ranging from 10 to 40+).
A modest pedigree that I wouldn't be inclined to think impugns the credibility of the article by itself, but certainly not one that is proportional to the media attention the article received, or that would tend to suggest the article was thoroughly vetted by climate experts.
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Lou Grinzo at 01:25 AM on 12 June 2013A Miss by Myles: Why Professor Allen is wrong to think carbon capture and storage will solve the climate crisis
While I think this is a very good summary of and response to Myles' position, there's an aspect of CCS that I don't think gets nearly the attention it deserves: The dichotomy between adding it to new power plants vs. retrofitting it onto old plants.
The former has more than enough hurdles we have to clear before it can be a useful contributor in our efforts to reduce GHG emissions, but the latter is truly a nightmare. Existing plants were designed and located without CCS in mind, making the complete process very expensive. I think this is largely why coal companies are so enthralled with CCS: They know that any carbon restriction that forces power plants to embrace CCS will also force them to abandon many existing plants long before their expected service lifetimes expired. Coal would be particularly hard hit, with some related industries, most notably railroads, also feeling big impacts.
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KR at 00:57 AM on 12 June 20132013 SkS Weekly Digest #23
soo doh nim - As Rob said, Glenn Tamblyns (and Joel Shores) comments are an excellent analysis of that particular mess.
The set of models Christy ran were for "Mid-Troposphere" using one of the highest IPCC emission projections (i.e., the top end of the model range), compared to the satellite TMT signals (with known stratospheric cooling components) meaning that that graph isn't even comparing the same atmospheric components. Nor have they sourced the radiosonde data - radiosondes and their reanalyses are an ongoing topic of evaluation. A more appropriate comparison is probably between those model outputs (with realistic emissions) and the UAH TLT or RSS TTT products; and it's noteworthy that if you compare apples and apples there is far less difference.
Spencer (and Christy) also fail to mention that satellite data has long been suspected of a cool bias, for example as per Chedley 2012 "UAH has a significant bias that reduces the midtropospheric trend", or Chedley and Fu 2012, who state that:
The analysis reveals that the UAH TMT product has a positive bias [...] that artificially reduces the global TMT trend by 0.042 K decade−1 for 1979–2009. Accounting for this bias increases the global UAH TMT trend from 0.038 to 0.080 K decade−1, effectively eliminating the trend difference between UAH and RSS and decreasing the trend difference between UAH and NOAA by 47%.
Satellite temperature products are the result of quite complex modelling - Spencers unspoken assumption that they represent 'ground truth' is not well supported. And Christy, who produced the graph, is well aware of this - he's an author on 2006 US CCSP Temperature Trends In the Lower Atmosphere, which states (emphasis added):
This inconsistency between model results and observations could arise either because “real world” amplification effects on short and long time scales are controlled by different physical mechanisms, and models fail to capture such behavior; or because non-climatic influences remaining in some or all of the observed tropospheric datasets lead to biased long-term trends; or a combination of these factors. The new evidence in this Report [...] favors the second explanation.
In short - the graph is nonsense, lacking context.
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Mike at Watch the Deniers at 22:44 PM on 11 June 2013A Miss by Myles: Why Professor Allen is wrong to think carbon capture and storage will solve the climate crisis
Good post on both CCS and the Allen's comments. "Magic bullet" thinking does concern me, given just how complicated the issue is.
Perhaps there is a place for CCS in order to draw down some of the CO2, but like other geo-engineering proposals it does nothing to address emissions. Then there is the issue of leaks/out gassing.
I dare say the response has to be multi-pronged, and by mid-century CCS will be part of the portfolio of technology responses. However, it would be prudent to match these with policies and mechanisms designed to switch energy sources and abate emissions. Critical to this is to keep the estimated 560+ Gt of Co2 in the ground, which would otherwise global av. temps beyond 2C.
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MarkR at 21:35 PM on 11 June 2013A Miss by Myles: Why Professor Allen is wrong to think carbon capture and storage will solve the climate crisis
I understand Allen's point; he starts on the assumption that we will burn all fossil fuels, so all of that carbon will end up in the air. If that were absolutely true then logically only carbon sequestration would deal with it.
But I don't think he's demonstrated that it's true and I don't think he's shown that CCS would work economically.
He's basically argued for a trade war if countries don't agree to CCS, and assumes that's realistic for hugely expensive CCS but unrealistic for much, much cheaper alternatives.
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Rob Painting at 19:45 PM on 11 June 20132013 SkS Weekly Digest #23
An epic fail indeed - by Roy Spencer. See Glenn Tamblyn's comments at Roy's blog here. Lesson No.1 - if it looks bogus, it probably is.
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soo doh nim at 18:22 PM on 11 June 20132013 SkS Weekly Digest #23
What do you guys make of this:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/06/climate-modeling-epic-fail-spencer-the-day-of-reckoning-has-arrived/
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Dikran Marsupial at 16:48 PM on 11 June 2013The anthropogenic global warming rate: Is it steady for the last 100 years? Part 2.
KK Tung wrote: "In any case C is deterministic and that is the major defect of the thought experiment."
This is irrelevant to the central point.
"The whole problem can still be solved algebraically."
It is irrelevant whether the problem can be solved algebraically, we are discussing a limitation of MLR, so the solution that MLR finds is the issue.
"The criticism of your experiment in my post 134 still stands. If you wish I can repeat it with the correction in B that you just told me."
Yes, please do so.
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Ari Jokimäki at 15:40 PM on 11 June 2013An estimate of the consensus project paper search coverage
Mspelto, thanks for the insider view. I think there are lot of papers in each category, where things are left unsaid just because the scope of the study.
Lanfear, that last comment was made tongue at least halfway in the cheek. We don't yet have the ~900 papers in our hands but it would need some digging to find out them all. We would need to rate every climate paper there is in order to find them. Having rated a few papers during this project, I know how tiring the rating process can be, so if we would like to rate large amount of papers, we would need lot more raters.
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Chemware at 15:06 PM on 11 June 2013A Miss by Myles: Why Professor Allen is wrong to think carbon capture and storage will solve the climate crisis
On economics:
There was an excellent study in 2009 from Harvard University by Mohammed Al-Juaied and Adam Whitmore, the former a respected researcher into carbon capture:
Realistic Costs of Carbon Capture
It found that the cost of capture at a First-of-a-Kind Plant was around $150 per ton CO2, and $35-$70 per ton for a mature (Nth of a Kind) plant.
Most other estimates I have seen come in at around $100 per ton.
As I understand it, photovoltaic, wind and even nuclear become viable at much lower levels. That's without getting into the interesting SHE issues that enormous quantities of contaminated waste amines would raise.
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KK Tung at 10:52 AM on 11 June 2013The anthropogenic global warming rate: Is it steady for the last 100 years? Part 2.
In reply to Dikran Marsupial on post 151. My reply to your post 134 is post 154. It was sent before I saw your correction to your D in the new post 151. It may be confusing because it arrived after your post 151.
Now with the correction, D has a different period as B. I still don't know what you intended it to be. In any case C is deterministic and that is the major defect of the thought experiment. The whole problem can still be solved algebraically. The criticism of your experiment in my post 134 still stands. If you wish I can repeat it with the correction in B that you just told me. But it is probably not necessary.
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Tom Dayton at 10:15 AM on 11 June 2013Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas
There's a good article in the June 2013 issue of Physics Today: "Water in the Atmosphere," by Bjorn Stevens and Sandrine Bony, pages 29-34.
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KK Tung at 10:03 AM on 11 June 2013The anthropogenic global warming rate: Is it steady for the last 100 years? Part 2.
In reply to Dikran Marsupial on the thought experiment he posed on post 134: I have a little time today and can get back to understand your thought experiment as I promised.
Conclusion: A conflated D and an error in plotting the deduced Anthropogenic response. But basically this is the trivial case that I had already discussed on post 124, this being the deterministic limit of Dumb Scientist's example.
In the thought experiment that you posed and later abandoned in favor of this one, there was a nonexistent AMO. This time there is an "unobserved signal D". I don't understand why you need it. Anyway, let's keep it but realize that D is simply the same sinusoid as B unless there was a typo. So it can be replaced by B. The problem is then rather simple:
Y is supposed to be your global mean data:
Y=A+1.5*B+0.1*radn(size(T)),
where A is his anthropogenic trend, with a quadratic term:
A=0.00002*(T+T.^2)
B is a natural oscillation:
B=0.1*sin(3.7*pi*T/150).
C is supposed to be your N. Atlantic mean temperature that you will use to define the AMO index, but there is no noise term. This is a major defect.
C=0.5*A+B.
Cd is C linear detrended, so it is
Cd=0.5*(A-beta(2)*T)+B=0.5*0.00002*T.^2+B
C and Cd are deterministic, and so this is a trivial case. No need to do MLR. (This is similar to the case of DS when the regional Atlantic noise is set to zero). I can solve this problem exactly to yield:
Y-1.5*Cd=0.00002*(T+0.25*t.^2)+0.1*radn(size(T)).
This is the same as your deduced A plus residual that you plotted in green line in your last figure. This is almost linear as you found because the quadratic term is 1/4 the original value in A. So it looks like the blue linear trend you draw in that figure.The reason the blue line and greenline are offset below the red line A is that in your MLR X you have subtracted the mean of T, and so T does not start at 0 at year 0, but is zero at year 75. You can see it in the blue line in your last figure. Your claim that it falls outside the confidence interval is probably caused by this offset error.
In any case, regardless of the confidence level (which I have not checked because I did not repeat the MLR), you have not come up with a credible thought experiment to make your case against our MLR procedure. The present one is the same as a trivial subcase of Dumb Scientist's example that I discussed in my post 124. It is also very unrealistic because you did not include a noise term in your N. Atlantic data.
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Dumb Scientist at 09:07 AM on 11 June 2013The anthropogenic global warming rate: Is it steady for the last 100 years? Part 2.
... I need to reiterate the basic premise of parameter estimation: if A is the true value and B is an estimate of A but with uncertainty, then B should not be considered to underestimate or overestimate A if A is within the 95% confidence interval (CI) of B. ... Not taking CI of the estimate into account is not the only problem in your post 117. ... [KK Tung]
My Monte Carlo histograms estimated the confidence intervals. To make these 95% confidence intervals more explicit, gaussians are now fit to the histograms. For comparison, 95% confidence intervals from the post-1979 trend regressions are also reported now.
A more serious problem is your creation of an almost trivial example for the purpose of arguing your case. ... I said this is an almost trivial example because if this small "regional" noise were zero it would have been a trivial case (see later). Even with the small regional noise, your n_atlantic is highly correlated with your global data at higher than 0.8 correlation coefficient at all time scales. [KK Tung]
My original timeseries were simply chosen to look like these real timeseries from GISS and NOAA.
I wrote a new R program that downloads the HadCRUT4 annual global surface temperatures, and calculates annual averages of NOAA's long monthly AMO index and N. Atlantic SST:
The correlation coefficient between annual HadCRUT4 and N. Atlantic SST is 0.79. Linear regression is based on correlations, so my original synthetic timeseries were too highly correlated. Thanks for pointing this out, Dr. Tung.
To make your synthetic data slightly more realistic while retaining most of their features that you wanted we could either increase the standard deviation of the regional noise from 0.1 to 0.3---this change is realistic because the regional variance is always larger than the global mean variance... [KK Tung]
In my original simulation, the regional variance was already larger than the global mean variance because the regional noise was added to the global noise. In reality, the annual N. Atlantic SST variance is 0.04°C^2 but the annual global HadCRUT4 variance is 0.07°C^2. Adding 0.3°C of regional noise yields a reasonable correlation coefficient, but it doesn't look realistic:
Or we could retain the same combined standard deviation as your two noise terms in n_atlantic, but from a different draw of the random variable than the random variable in global... [KK Tung]
That looked more realistic but the average correlation coefficient over 10,000 runs was 0.64±0.08, which is too small. So I chose new simulation parameters to match the real correlation coefficient (0.79) and produce more realistic timeseries:
human = (t-t[1])^7
human = 0.7*human/human[length(t)]
nature = 0.15*cos(2*pi*(t-2000)/70)
global = human + nature + rnorm(t,mean=0,sd=0.11)
n_atlantic = human + nature + rnorm(t,mean=0,sd=sqrt(0.11^2+0.11^2))Now the AMO's amplitude is 0.15°C and the total human contribution is 0.7°C, both of which match the lower bounds in Tung and Zhou 2013. The nonlinearity is now 7th order to keep the true post-1979 human trend at 0.17°C/decade.
Averaged over 10,000 Monte Carlo runs, the synthetic correlation coefficient was 0.74±0.06, which contains the real value (0.79). The synthetic global variance is 0.06±0.01°C^2 which contains the real value (0.07°C^2). The synthetic N. Atlantic variance is 0.07±0.01°C^2, which is still larger than the real value (0.04°C^2). However, the discrepancy has shrunk and the LOWESS smooth removes fast fluctuations anyway.
You can also make your example less deterministic and hence less trivial, by smoothing your AMO index as we did in our paper. [KK Tung]
A 25-year LOWESS smooth was applied to the real and synthetic AMO index to match your paper:
smoothed_amo = lowess(t,amo,f=25/n)$y
amo = smoothed_amo
Here are the real residuals:
Here are the synthetic residuals:
Here are the real results:
(For easier comparison, the true human curve was shifted so it has the same post-1979 mean as the estimated human trend.)
Those results only use a white-noise model for comparison to the simulations. The real data are autocorrelated, and the caption of Fig. 1 in Zhou and Tung 2012 says the noise is order AR(4), which yields a trend of +0.12±0.05°C/decade.
Here are the synthetic results:
Averaged over 10,000 runs, the synthetic post-1979 trends and 95% confidence intervals are +0.09±0.04°C/decade. This histogram provides another similar estimate:
The true quadratic term is +5.15x10^(-5)°C/year^2, but the estimated value and its 95% confidence interval is +3.24±0.72x10^(-5)°C/year^2. The estimated human influence is still signficantly more linear than the true human influence, which is actually 7th order.
... In the MLR analysis of the real observation the degree of collinearity is much smaller, hence our error bars are much smaller, and so our MLR analysis gave useful results while your artificially constructed case did not yield useful results. ... [KK Tung]
Despite smoothing the AMO index and choosing simulation parameters that yield timeseries and correlation coefficients that are more realistic, the true post-1979 trend of 0.17°C/decade is still above the 95% confidence interval. The same procedure applied to real data yields similar trends and uncertainties. Therefore, I still think Tung and Zhou 2013 is a circular argument.
In our PNAS paper, we said that because of the importance of the results we needed to show consistency of the results obtained by different methods. The other method we used was wavelet. Applying the wavelet method to your example and to all the cases mentioned here we obtain the correct estimate of the true value foranthropogenic warming rate over 98% of the time. The wavelet method does not involve detrending and can handle both linear or nonlinear trends. [KK Tung]
The wavelet method may have its own problems, but these problems are orthogonal to the problem of the MLR as no detrending is involved. [KK Tung]
The wavelet method is just another way to curve-fit, which is also inadequate because attribution is really a thermodynamics problem. Again, your curve-fitting claim that ~40% of the surface warming over the last 50 years can be attributed to a single mode of internal variability contradicts Isaac Held and Huber and Knutti 2012 who used thermodynamics to conclude that all modes of internal variability couldn't be responsible for more than about 25% of this surface warming.
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MA Rodger at 08:38 AM on 11 June 2013The anthropogenic global warming rate: Is it steady for the last 100 years? Part 2.
KK Tung @149.
Well, here is the statement from your first SkS Post and, as written, its context is quite clear. Figure 3 applies to the "final adjusted data" not to the "first step," not to any "intermediate step." Yet the presence of the "minor negative trend" is clearly accepted and while the rest of it is plainly described as "almost just noise" despite it still containing half the de-trended signal for 90 years of the 160 year of the MLR (as shown @148 above). This situation is described as "successful."
The arbitrary comment is made that this "small negative trend" can be added back from residual into anthropogenic regressor, but as written this is continuing to treat the "small negative trend" as one entirely negligable in consequence (because no consequences are described).
"Of the different regressors we tried the single anthropogenic regressor that is closest to the final adjusted data turns out to the QCO2(t) function given in Figure 1b. This is shown in Figure 3. The difference between the adjusted data and the QCO2 regressor is the Residual, which is shown in the inset. Except for s a minor negative trend in the last decade in the Residual, it is almost just noise. So the MLR with QCO2 as the anthropogenic regressor is successful. That small negative trend in the Residual, when added back to QCO2, yields a more linear trend in the adjusted data, similar to what we found in Tung and Zhou and in Figure 2b here. (The physical interpretation of why the net anthropogenic warming appears to follow the radiative heating by CO2 alone and with so little lag between forcing and response is rather tricky and will not be discussed here.)"
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jdixon1980 at 08:17 AM on 11 June 2013The 5 characteristics of global warming consensus denial
DS @ 78: But what if they say, no, the scientists have come up with a better scheme than trying to sell uncertainty as to human cause, because there is only so long they could drag that out before their funders threw their hands up and said look, we've given you enough money, and if you're not sure by now, we must not be causing it. Instead, their scheme is to present a united front on human cause, and claim that they need enormous sums to create and continually refine computer models, study the impacts of various projected scenarios, propose and periodically revise emissions targets, periodically reassess climate sensitivity, etc. etc., thus creating an inherently self-perpetuating stream of research funding. Unlike the "uncertainty" approach which is bound to wear thin eventually, with this strategy there will be no point at which the gravy will stop, because the "so-called 'consensus'" as to human cause and seriousness of the problem attaches great importance to the research pertaining to details.
Of course, it's silly - those who are so inclined can always come up with convoluted rationalizations for believing in grand conspiracies. And John Hartz @ 79 is probably right - by trying to get inside their heads and preemptively refute every kooky thing they may come up with, I will never succeed in guiding them to sanity, but I may succeed in driving myself insane!
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Lanfear at 06:28 AM on 11 June 2013An estimate of the consensus project paper search coverage
"Perhaps one of them is the one that turns around the whole of climate science."
Then it would need to be a thick one, since it needs to overthrow a sizeable chunk of the known, and settled, science.
Or, of course, the explanation is dispersed over a number of papers.
Either way, both cases are testable, either look into the thick research papers and see if they provide an alternative explanation which covers all the known detected anomalities. Or see if there are number of papers that does the same, being referred by each other.
After all, ~900 papers should not be that hard to read through. That's less than 3 years with 1 paper per day and I'm pretty sure you can automate this.
What are the odds of pseudosceptics picking up this task?
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mspelto at 05:14 AM on 11 June 2013An estimate of the consensus project paper search coverage
Your comment fit well with my mass balance work on glaciers, "impacts papers are more inclined to mention the phenomenon causing the impacts they are studying, whereas for climate scientists it might go without saying that they are studying climate change related issues and they are perhaps more concentrated on studying the little details of the issue." All of my results indicate the impacts of global warming on glaciers, but the focus in word choice in the abstract will be more on negative mass balance, glacier retreat due to warming in the region. Since we are studying a locality that is the focus, and so it sometimes goes unsaid that it is all driven by global warming. .
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