by Judith Curry
As the IPCC struggles with its inconvenient truth – the pause and the growing discrepancy between models and observations – the obvious question is: why is the IPCC just starting to grapple with this issue now, essentially two minutes before midnite of the release of the AR5?
Well I suspect that the short answer is that they didn’t think it was important and/or they thought they could get away with ignoring it; after all they are the experts and in charge of the ‘consensus.’ It seems that reviewers and policy makers have been clamoring for the IPCC to address this issue; I suspect that David Rose’s MSM assault on this issue, largely fueled by blogospheric analysis, has played a significant role here.
A few weeks ago, I ran a post Overestimated global warming over the past 20 years that referred to a recent paper published in Nature Climate Change by Fyfe et al. This paper starkly laid out the discrepancy between CMIP5 model projections and observations of global surface temperature change. This wasn’t exactly news to those of us who follow the skeptical blogosphere; we have seen similar analyses by John Christy (presented in his Congressional testimony) and the analysis of Ed Hawkins that was made famous by David Rose’s article.
My blog post on the Fyfe et al. paper triggered an email from Pat Michaels, who sent me a paper that he submitted in 2010 to Geophysical Research Letters, that did essentially the same analysis as Fyfe et al., albeit with the CMIP3 models.
Assessing the consistency between short-term global temperature trends in observations and climate model projects
Patrick J. Michaels, Paul C. Knappenberger, John R. Christy, Chad S. Herman, Lucia M. Liljegren, James D. Annan
Abstract. Assessing the consistency between short-term global temperature trends in observations and climate model projections is a challenging problem. While climate models capture many processes governing short-term climate fluctuations, they are not expected to simulate the specific timing of these somewhat random phenomena—the occurrence of which may impact the realized trend. Therefore, to assess model performance, we develop distributions of projected temperature trends from a collection of climate models running the IPCC A1B emissions scenario. We evaluate where observed trends of length 5 to 15 years fall within the distribution of model trends of the same length. We find that current trends lie near the lower limits of the model distributions, with cumulative probability-of-occurrence values typically between 5% and 20%, and probabilities below 5% not uncommon. Our results indicate cause for concern regarding the consistency between climate model projections and observed climate behavior under conditions of increasing anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emissions.
The authors have graciously agreed for me to provide links to their manuscript: [manuscriptMichaels_etal_2010 ] and [supplementary material Michaels_etal_GRL10_SuppMat].
Drum roll . . . the paper was rejected. I read the paper (read it yourself), and I couldn’t see why it was rejected, particularly since it seems to be a pretty straightforward analysis that has been corroborated in subsequent published papers.
The rejection of this paper raised my watchdog hackles, and I asked to see the reviews. I suspected gatekeeping by the editor and bias against the skeptical authors by the editor and reviewers.
The author team includes prominent skeptics Pat Michaels and John Christy; lukewarmer blogger/analysts Lucia Liljegren, Chad Herman, Chip Knappenberger; and James Annan, a scientist critical of high-end climate sensitivity estimates, but not someone typically associated with climate change skeptics (and in fact, whose inclusion raised some eyebrows). Interestingly, James Annan was one of the two reviewers of Michaels’ original submission to GRL, and signed on as a co-author after helping them solve some issues noted in the first set of reviews. The second round of review consisted of 4 reviewers, none of which supported publication.
Well, it seems like ‘skeptical’ papers require a larger number of reviewers (2-3 is typical), especially after one of the original reviewers ‘defects’ and ends up as a coauthor on the paper. I’ve gone through the reviews and discussed them with Michaels and Knappenberger, and we’ve agreed on the following summary of the second round of reviews:
The primary concerns regarded the inclusion of error bars on the observed trends (which the authors pretty clearly have demonstrated was not required, and in fact would have been wrong to do so); misinterpretation of the statistics (although those comments too, seemed off the mark); that Michaels et al. did not take into account things that were absent in the model projections (such things as solar variability, indirect aerosol effect, stratospheric water vapor trends); and perhaps most universally, that Michaels “cause for concern” statement really seemed to rub the reviewers the wrong way.
My own personal reaction to the rather lengthy reviews (12 pages worth) is that all of the reviewers rejected the idea that IPCC model projections could be compared in such a way that led to the conclusion that indicate cause for concern regarding the consistency between climate model projections and observed climate behavior under conditions of increasing anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emissions.
For context, about 5 years ago the “pause” in the rise of the global average surface (and lower troposphere) temperatures was starting to get uncomfortably long, and stretchy efforts to reconcile the observed trend with climate model projections were starting to appear in the literature. The first was by Easterling and Wehner (2009) followed shortly thereafter by Knight et al. (2009). In both cases, the authors concluded that 10-yr periods with little to no warming were still perfectly consistent with climate model expectations when considering natural variability.
Three years later, it seems pretty obvious and widely acknowledged that climate models have been unable to correctly capture the earth’s surface temperature evolution over the past several decades. Lucia continues to do good work on this subject; head over to her blog for a technical discussion on this topic and the Michaels et al. paper.
And we see where ‘pause denial’ has led the IPCC, potentially to a crisis point in the AR5. It will be very interesting to see how this plays out in Stockholm next week.
JC message to James Annan: kudos, and thank you.
“We had reached ‘a superb agreement’ based on complete misunderstanding.” (Valery d’Estaing, Tokyo Summit, quoted in Carter, 1982: 113)
You can also call it science filter. Kuhn called it paradigm paralysis. Also known by many other names.
“You can also call it science filter. Kuhn called it paradigm paralysis. Also known by many other names.”
Saddam Hussein retard syndrome?
They could have gotten the paper through with the standard technique: include a completely non-sequitur assertion in the conclusion that “none of the above invalidates the Global Warming theory, of course.”
It’s been the most frustrating part of the “debate” for the last 12 years (for me). The peer review filter was set to block science at every opportunity and provide cover to the lie that AGW is…
..it has tainted the scientific community.
Gavin’s always been clear on the subject – real data shouldn’t be compared to model outputs, rather used to improve the models.
The issue arises when people fantasize about the models being useful already.
One suspects that he is wearing burning trousers.
The models are quite clearly trained to fit the hindcasting period and then fail to forecast.
I am running a model at the moment; I have human cancers growing in the brains of immuno-suppressed mice and half are treated with a new drug and half with saline. The respective death curves are end points. This type of model is standard in drug development even though rodents are not primates and immuno-suppressed mice are not mediated humans.
The whole ‘real data shouldn’t be compared to model outputs’ didn’t stop the ‘Climate Scientists’ predicting Thermogeddon when their forecasts could not be compared after a decade.
This type of reaction is why ‘Climate Science’ is discredited and it is hurting the rest of us.
Your last point is extremely valid. I work with engineering models and recently the suspicion in some customers minds caused by the failure of climate models has begun to rub off on engineering applications where models, which have been verified and used in applications over long periods, are used.
We are increasingly having to justify the validity of our engineering models as a result failure of the pseudo scientific climate models which have received so much publicity in the press recently.
@jbenton2013 just wondering – do engineering models contain random number generators like climate models?
More work, more money, but better engineering models. I wish I could be sanguine that dubious critics could do the same for GCMs.
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jbenton;
Is it not sufficient to indicate that your models are validated before use, in contrast to CC models which are never validated?
“More work, more money, but better engineering models. I wish I could be sanguine that dubious critics could do the same for GCMs.”
Even the Sydney Harbour Bridge was ‘modelled’ by hand calcs BUT THEN WAS VERIFIED e.g. loading with 100 steam locomotives at strategic points before traffic passed over it; modelling climate? Get real.
Very nice and thank you. What has happened is that the GCMs failed verification after loading with only one heat engine, Planet Earth.
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Doggonit, ‘heat locomotive’ would have been much better.
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Perhaps it is time to invoke a new Lysenko paradigm which asserts that hypotheses, and the models which spring from them, are the ultimate truth. The task then is to force ragtag data from the real world to behave itself.
Our results indicate cause for concern regarding the consistency between climate model projections and observed climate behavior…
You got to have faith and, unfortunately, many scientists do have faith and have placed it in all the wrong places (e.g., in Al Gore’s pocketbook).
To the extent that absolute chance ‘is a real factor operative in the universe,’ which is the case made by the philosopher of Tychism, Charles Peirce (see wiki), e.g., where everything proceeds as expected—i.e., where what is happening can only be explained according to principles that make sense where the rules of Einstein leave off—we will never know if a seer is actually capable of predicting the future until that ‘future’ comes to be.
Lucia also wrote a paper, or rather a comment, criticising the misleading Easterling and Wehner 2009 paper that you mention. Again her comment was rejected – this time “bench rejected”, i.e. not even sent for review. When she mentioned this in a tweet recently I persuaded her to post it up at her blog, see
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2013/easterling-and-wehner-mists-of-time/
She highlighted two serious problems with E&W – (a) the historical period they chose to illustrate lack of warming coincided with a strong volcanic eruption, a fact E&W chose not to mention; (b) For their future projections they used a model with an unrealistically high variation, shown very clearly in her figure 1.
The standard response recommended by Alarmist Activist Central seems to be that the “models and empirical data agree with each other and the deniers simply don’t understand this”. There is lots of sciency speak about fourier transforms, third order polynomials, ice loss, deep ocean heating and so on which means that everything is on track and thermageddon still beckons.
When you point out that none of the models agree with each other let alone the temperature record and yet they embody all that is known by climate science so surely a review of the model parameters is in order that old killer argument is provided. You are in the pay of big energy, which always trumps any facts and anyway there is more frequent extreme weather. The old squirrel defensive move.
At some point I suppose the whole thing will have to be started again from scratch with better understanding and the politics removed but for that to happen the IPCC will have to get the Tim Flannery treatment but who will shoot that particular puppy? It seems more likely that the dead whale will continue to be kicked down the beach while out here in the blogosphere we will continue to knife and fork it. *
* I thought I would inject some MBA speak for a change of pace.
Keitho, hard to disagree with you except: why do we even need a do-over on climate science at all? Nobody seemed to need climate science before the CAGW mania struck; since then, climate science has given us, at great expense, risibly little in terms of usefully understanding nature; so why not simply shut it down and send every professor and PhD candidate in “Climate *” (where * represents any word) to their nearest unemployment office?
With the exception of Judy!
+1000!
I see no purpose in squandering more dosh on a failed genre. McDonald’s is hiring I believe
Thanks Latimer; good to know old posts don’t go to waste.
I didn’t really need the qualifier “usefully” in there. I’ve recently taken to asking cli-sci apologists if they can name anything—at all—we know about the climate that we didn’t know 5 years ago.
If they ever answer I’ll let you know.
I totally agree Brad. When I read it through it was obvious that no new “insights” had been arrived at. Mind you, when you see the brilliant articulation of well thought out science being distilled into “think about the grandchildren” then you know you are dealing with knaves.
Lat certainly gets it and his tireless activities across countless threads, blogs and newspapers are invaluable. I do my little bit under a different name and it is plain that these “woebegone” types hate being confronted with facts, science and clear thinking.
Judy, an earlier battleground on the discrepancy between models and observations was on the tropical troposphere.
Santer et al 2008 laundered the inconsistency by using data only to 1999, asserting that this data did not show a statistically significant difference. This attracted blog ciriticism almost immediately at CA and at Lucia’s. Ross and I submitted a comment to the journal in January 2009 simply pointing out that their results did not hold up with updated data. Our comment was rejected. Our re-submission was also rejected. Phil Jones was promptly informed of the rejection in Climategate correspondence. Santer et al continued to be cited through the US CCSP program though its results were bogus.
Ross eventually managed to publish a related article (McKitrick et al 2010) under the pretext of doing something “original” – using an econometric technique on the data – but the use of the new method was not relevant to the false claims made by Santer et al.
Lucia also submitted a lucid comment refuting Easterling and Wehner 2009 (also discussed at length at her blog). Her comment was rejected as well, though it is 100% on the money. Given her withering commentary on Easterling and Wehner 2009, it is amazing to see that it is one of the primary IPCC citations on the discrepancy between models and observations.
Shortly after the publication of Santer
I guess the official cutoff for papers making it into the AR5 was some time ago. As a conspiracy theorist however, is it possible that Kosalka and Xie were let through into a major journal prior to the official release of AR5 as a “softener”?
@ Jan P Perlwitz | September 19, 2013 at 9:43 pm |
“As if a significant fraction of scientists who work an publish in the field would care about whether their studies get the approval of Anthony Watts or of any other fake skeptics.”
What an arrogant comment typical of the once mighty (but now defunct) alarmist propaganda brigade. Your little cult thingy is showing…
What about the new Santer paper?
Sep 16 2013 PNAS doi: 10:1073/pnas.1305332110
Human and Natural influences on changing thermal structure of atmosphere.
scott
Yes, I will be very interested to see this dissected. At first glance, it seems kind of nutty. If the climate models are having a hard time making accurate predictions why would you use them to back calculate temperatures in the upper atmosphere back to 1860?
The object seems to be to generate alarming graphs while maintaining plausible deniability of bias: After all, the models comprise equations based on fundamentals and reasonable assumptions. So it’s reasonable to use them to guess at past climate.
Anthony has a post on it.
“Claim: simulated satellite data back to 1860 proves global warming caused by humans
This is just nuts, sorry, I just don’t have any other words for it.”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/18/claim-similuated-satellite-data-back-to-1860-proves-global-warming-caused-by-humans/
Perhaps when Anthony sees a paper by Santer, he is tempted to beat the crap out of it.
As if a significant fraction of scientists who work an publish in the field would care about whether their studies get the approval of Anthony Watts or of any other fake skeptics.
They don’t seem to care that the crap gets beaten out of their papers, either.
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Anthony certainly beat the crap into his paper
There are some people’s papers I won’t even bother to beat the crap out of anymore.
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There are some people’s papers I expect to find in a dark alley.
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PNAS papers are suspect: members of the Academy have the possibility to publish without peer review. Many of the warmists are member. It is wise to check the submission history and look for the editor that has communicated the paper.
Santer is a member:
http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/2011/05/04/ben-santer-elected-to-national-academy-of-sciences/
This type of publication is generally recognizable due to the absence of a communicating editor, and the lack of a revision history dates.
Who is this “they” in the IPCC??
I dunno, how many english words can you spot in this song
long legs, luscious lips
I am going to watch it again to see if I can spot some more.
Three. “Implied.” “Petulant.” “Carburetor.”
“Carburetor” is French; from carbure he French for Carbide, invented by an Italian, Enrico Bernardi and Patented by a German, Karl Benz.
Bernoulli’s Swiss lips, and long luscious pressure curves.
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”
As the IPCC struggles with its inconvenient truth – the pause and the growing discrepancy between models and observations – the obvious question is: why is the IPCC just starting to grapple with this issue now, essentially two minutes before midnite [sic] of the release of the AR5?
”
Well, gosh, Dr Curry.
Could it be the fact that there really is no “growing discrepancy between the models and observations?”
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/02/2012-updates-to-model-observation-comparions/
Your ‘heretical scientist’ narrative demands that climate science is facing a crisis.
Sorry. It isn’t. Except in denialist-land.
But don’t let facts get in the way of a good narrative.
Your, “denialist-land,’ includes all scientists outside Western academia.
A large portion of the models basically suck at reproducing the most fundamental metrics.
A. The spread in absolute temperature is on the order of 3K
B. The spatial patterns of warming are either flat wrong or badly
exagerated
C. The response to volcanos matches poorly
The sooner people start to evaluate models and throw out the bad ones and improve the good ones, the better.
http://berkeleyearth.org/graphics/model-performance-against-berkeley-earth-data-set#regional-warming-model-comparison
How do you know which ones are the good ones, Steven? It seems like a situation similar to the evaluation of mutual fund managers:
http://www.ifa.com/12steps/step5/step5page2.asp
“Unlike the 20-year characteristic of an index, the past performance of money managers has no bearing on their future performance. Every reputable study of mutual fund performance over the past 30 years has found there is no reliable way to know if past superior managers will win again in the future. This is why some variation of the disclaimer “past performance is no guarantee of future results” must appear in all mutual fund advertisements and prospectuses, even though the SEC allows it to be written in very small print.
Studies show that those who have outperformed some past benchmark are more likely to underperform it in the future. Burton Malkiel, author of the long-time investment best seller, A Random Walk Down Wall Street, conducted a study in 1995. In the study’s conclusion, he states, “It does not appear that one can fashion a dependable strategy of generating excess returns based on a belief that long-run mutual fund returns are persistent.””
Maybe the models that most closely match recent climate data just got lucky. Maybe we are looking at what is essentially a Random Walk Down Climate Street. What say you, Mr. Mosher?
“How do you know which ones are the good ones, Steven? It seems like a situation similar to the evaluation of mutual fund managers:”
how do you know? well you never know. Typically what you do is specify metrics that you decide are important. Then you measure against those metrics.
For example: you might decide that getting the absolute temperature correct to within 1C over a 30 year time span was important. Then deciding which pass and fail is easy.
That means the real decision is NOT about which is best, the question is what metrics are important. For that you probably want to look at which metrics are drivers in the cost functions. Then you select those that perform best on those metrics. Or you could just use all the models. That hasn’t worked, so you might consider the wisdom of repeating the same action and expecting different results
Right on Steven!
And Don, the way you tell which models are good is obviously to compare them to other models! /sarc
“well you never know.”
Correct.
@Mosher
I’m tempted to believe that no climate scientist is as bright as a fifth grader who will pick an apple with the fewest blemishes out of a basket but no, they’re not quite that stupid. You however are that stupid for suggesting something so obvious and presenting it like a personal stroke of genius.
Macro-scale system response functionals are not fundamental metrics. Any functionals that map trillions of calculations of a few hundred models of Climate Science to global spatial averages as a function of time are the wrong focus. Weather is local, climate is local.
We are at last progressing from a false focus on the “well established”, no-questions asked, PDEs and ODEs of the basic equations of fluid motions and radiative energy transport to the parameterizations that actually do all the heavy lifting. Maybe we will soon get to, Does the coding actually solve the discrete approximations.
The numbers come from the numerical solutions of the discrete approximations, including the parameterizations. The numbers do not come the continuous “well established” PDEs and ODEs.
Demonstration that the coding correctly solves the underlying discrete approximations should be the first order of business. Answer the question, What are the application / operational temporal and spatial orders of the solutions of the discrete approximations.
That’s a fundamental metric.
David
‘David Springer | September 19, 2013 at 4:05 pm |
@Mosher
I’m tempted to believe that no climate scientist is as bright as a fifth grader who will pick an apple with the fewest blemishes out of a basket but no, they’re not quite that stupid. You however are that stupid for suggesting something so obvious and presenting it like a personal stroke of genius.”
Huh, a guy asks a question i answer. its not a stroke of genius. I leave those to you.
As far as I can tell, there is no pressure to have models reflect reality. The recent “National Strategy for Advancing Climate Modeling” didn’t mention any concern with models’ accuracy, but seemed more intent on promoting more complex, higher resolution models apparently as an end in itself. It seems akin to a thought process like “Soup without any spices is dull. Therefore if we keep adding more spices, the soup will get better.” But throwing more spices into the soup doesn’t necessarily improve it.
No Steven you volunteered the plan to thin the herd (of models). Montfort asked how you would know which to cull and then you answered by establishing some metrics. So you volunteered a plan as old and obvious as thinning a herd and then answered a question about how to proceed that was just as lame saying essentially take out the slow, sick, and weak which again is so obvious it’s trite. Dumbass.
The models are mostly based on the political decided UNFCCC and if they are UNFCCC conform in their results they are political correct at least?
http://berkeleyearth.org/graphics/model-performance-against-berkeley-earth-data-set#warming-at-the-poles-since-1950
hard to argue with the results of comparing model to observation.
Its one thing to argue that models are the best we have, its another thing to blithely pretend that they perform adequately.
Put another way, when the models underestimate ice loss, folks like you have no problem being critical of models.
jebediah,
Nice link to CMIP3 data. have you heard of CMIP5?
When a model is adequate?
The Earth system is so complex that it may take long before we have genuinely and essentially better models. I’m sure a number of competent scientists and model builders have contributed to the present models. The issues are not necessarily such that the greatest scientists could have produced an essentially better model.
The present models are surely good enough for answering many relevant questions, as other complex models are in other fields of research. Such models are of value as tools for scientists working with the models but may at the same time produce results that are highly misleading when presented to others as predictions.
In other fields related to climate issue such models are used in assessing technology development and in comparing policy alternatives. I’m sure that the climate models perform much better in predicting future temperatures than the assessment and economic models perform in their tasks. In spite of that, I do consider even the latter useful as long as they are used properly and their great limitations are understood.
Pekka Pirilä
The present models are surely good enough for answering many relevant questions, as other complex models are in other fields of research.
Your word “surely” is seriously in doubt. You don’t list any of the “many relevant questions” so how about the following: What will the mean temperature of the Earth be in 20, 50, 100 years from now? Until recently, the model extrapolations were used to substantiate a claim that the Earth mean temperature would be really high really soon, like maybe catastrophically high as soon as 2040.
The models are failing in the most important single use claimed for them.
The Very Reverend Jebediah Hypotenuse: Could it be the fact that there really is no “growing discrepancy between the models and observations?”
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/02/2012-updates-to-model-observation-comparions/
Your ‘heretical scientist’ narrative demands that climate science is facing a crisis.
That graph shows a growing discrepancy between the mean temperature trends and the mean model forecast. It also shows that only the bottom quartile of the predictions are close to the data (compared to the random variation in the data.) That the wide range of uncertainty in the models is greater than the random variation in the data suggests that the models do not have enough in common to substantiate a claim that they provide a reasonable understanding of how the temperature is produced by the climate system that is being modeled.
If the temperature trend continues (which, I emphasize, we do not know yet) then in a few years the temperature will be below the lowest prediction by more than the standard deviation of the non-systematic portion of the data. That graph is a cause for concern to anyone who has believed up to now that the models provide a guide to human action, whether the guide be called forecast, prediction, projection, model or anything else.
The graph at Real Climate is rather misleading. It’s important to understand that the comparison is with anomalies and the baseline period in that graph is 1980-2000. This means the each model run and the earth observations are all forced into general agreement between 1980-2000. The method of forcing agreement is “subtracting the difference between the average temperature during that period.) After that point, the observations and models can slowly diverge with that divergence happening only at a rate proportional to the difference in the trend in models and observations. As that difference has been between 0.1C-0.2C for roughly a decade,
RC chooses to show a graph indicating the ‘great agreement’ during the period where subtraction is used to force the models and observations into agreement, and the observations are only about 0.1-0.2 C below the multi-model mean. Shown this way, on a graph showing the spread of individual years in all models (due to all weather in all models) the amount can easily be pseudo-explained as being “weather noise” because weather noise for individual years is about that large.
But the difficulty is that the ‘test’ is essentially crap because the baseline period is so close to the period in which the comparison is made. (It would actually be possible to show that ‘test’ has unnecessarily low statistical power, but the demonstration is tedious. But tests with unnecessarily low statistical statistical when used instead of equally simple tests with higher statistical power fall in the cateotry of ‘crap’ statistics. When done intentionally to craft a preferred message their use falls under the category of “a big fat lie”.)
Comparing trends over fixed periods increases the statistical power of any comparison because trends are affected only very slightly by choice of baseline period and the ways in which they are affected is not very important. (It amounts to slightly different residuals from the fit.)
In some regard, the fact that Real Climate choses to make an argument using that graph suggest either (a) they don’t know very much about making comparisons or (b) they wish to mislead so as to hone a message they prefer. There may be other explanations, but I haven’t thought of them.
Michaels and company are cowards with that paper. They could have put it out there for public review, even though it got rejected by the peer review process.
So Knappenberger and others are holding a pity party at Lucia’s outpost.
Kind of embarrassing for people that supposedly run a think tank, don’t you think?
”
Kind of embarrassing for people that supposedly run a think tank, don’t you think?
”
I look forward to the billboards.
WebHubTelescope, so you have no criticisms of the paper? Only of the authors? Is that your confession that the paper is fundamentally sound?
I have now read the paper since it has been officially leaked. It is not research quality. It is in fact one of the worst POS papers on earth sciences that I have recently come across. No original work equals not publishable in a research journal.
Webster, ” No original work equals not publishable in a research journal.”
So since everyone knows the confidence intervals are crap, it is not original or ground breaking enough to publish. The peer-review process appears not to be all that useful for rebuttal eh?
Cappy, Let’s see one of your published research articles.
Or are they all in the submission phase to the Southern Journal of Redneck Physics?
Webster, “Cappy, Let’s see one of your published research articles.”
Nothing new to publish as “science” Humorous non-fiction has a change though. Instead of CliFi, more like HiCli :)
” No original work equals not publishable in a research journal.”
So the research literature has _established_ the growing chasm between measured reality and the models ?
Correction:
” No original work equals not publishable in a research journal.”
So the research literature has _already_ established the growing chasm between measured reality and the models ?
Good to know.
WebHubTelescope: No original work equals not publishable in a research journal.
So the result of comparison of models to data is unobjectionable because the misfit was already well known?
WebHubTelescope,
It’s not standard to post stuff online just because it was rejected. Moreover, what we discussed was that we would just wait a few years for the situation to recur. As it happens, we waited too long since Zwiers published almost essentially the same thing but at a point in the cycle where the rejection is less obvious that at the time we were submitting. Whether this is right, wrong cowardly or not cowardly… so? Are people required to be valiant knights jousting in public? I was never under the impression that was how it was supposed to work.
On the issue of originality: That’s an odd claim since Zwiers paper which does nothing any more original that what we did in 2013 was published this year. If it’s sufficiently original now, presumably ours was then. Moreover, the complaint wasn’t that the analysis wasn’t original. It was that somehow, there must be more uncertainty somewhere and so the bounds must be larger than we were saying they were.
Certainly Santer 2009 on the tropical troposphere, Easterling and Wherner and so on are no more original that what we did. These are all merely applying more or less unexceptional methods to fresh data. All sorts of papers do that. In fact: one is generally not expected to rediscover or create entire new branches of statistics when analyzing scientific data. The only exceptions are when inventing new types are statistical processes are needed because standards ones are inadequate to the task. But applying t-tests, or distribution tests to fresher data to find a new result is not generally considered “unpublishable”. (And more over, that was not a criticism.)
As for what reviewers seemed to not like: They seemed to not like the result. One reviewer suggested there must be some extra uncertainty we weren’t accounting for and that we could call in Zwiers to settle the argument about this extra uncertainty. Now in 2013– 3 years after we wrote our paper, this extra uncertainty happens not to be included in a paper whose co-author is Zwiers (as it should not be included because including it would be double counting.)
Well you did finally release it.
To wait until something temporarily comes true makes whatever you discovered not an invariant law. If it is not a law then you should indicate what is causing it to go in and out of validity.
For example, why not use the same statistical analysis on the long pause that appeared prior to James Hansen making his prediction of warming in 1981?
Where I come from, this would not be called a scientific research paper. It is perhaps more like scientific journalism.
Webster, Since you only respect “peer reviewed” published literature, how do you think I should touch this up for publishing.
http://redneckphysics.blogspot.com/2013/09/seasonal-impact-on-baseline-selection.html
Oh, wait! Everyone already knows. It is not groundbreaking enough. It is just a simple screw up that never gets discussed. If you want less natural variability just change your baseline.
Mr. Telescope is in a particualrly odd situation: he dismisses work out of hand based on his ignorance, trashes the workers without understanding their work, and is unable to engage on the topic in anything other than an ad hom basis. But he is the self-declared expert.
Lucia’s patient, professional and clearly informed responses make Mr. Telescope look shabby indeed.
“The systems studied in chaos theory are deterministic. If the initial state were known exactly, then the future state of such a system could theoretically be predicted. However, in practice, knowledge about the future state is limited by the precision with which the initial state can be measured, and chaotic systems are characterized by a strong dependance [sic] on the initial conditions.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deterministic_system
This may be their “out.” The models are fine. We simply don’t have good enough data to initialize them or evaluate the results. Even now. Further research and money is required.
Re Speed’s comment: The models are fine. We simply don’t have good enough data to initialize them or evaluate the results.
A model can be tested to see whether it is good enough for predictions given our current accuracy of data by running it with a random selection of starting conditions and seeing how these initial uncertainties grow. That this testing isn’t being routinely perform speaks poorly of the modeling community.
No actually, there are three possibilities: inadequate initial data description or inadequate algorithms or both are inadequate. That third case is the actual situation. A lot of money could be dumped into trying to fix both problems. What is especially bad is that the only way to find out if the modeling is correct is to record the results and check them against the real world some time in the distant future.
Of course, that is the difference between real modeling in the engineering world and what climate scientists do. Engineering models are tested to see if they accurately predict something that has not part of the initial data sets. Claiming climate models deserve the same respect as engineering models is pure hubris.
I know I’m late here but:
RE: “In fact: one is generally not expected to rediscover or create entire new branches of statistics when analyzing scientific data.”
I’m guessing the ‘Team’ would say otherwise.
hahaha, it takes a lot of foolishness or watermelon-sized balls to post this graph to show that the model indeed have predictive power.
To me it looks like the confidence band is so huge it barely predict anything at all (you can fit a downward trend in the forecast region, FGS), and even assuming an inflated confidence interval to be on the safe side, the average shows a marked decrease in accuracy going from hindcast to forecast. This is the mark of an overfitted model which you can not trust for prediction, especially longish term prediction.
But hey, what do I know, I am not a climate scientist (even if I earn my living working with numerical models or building news ones all day long)
Reverend:
When the observed data [increasingly] lies outside the error bars of all the IPCC models, there is a problem. Not for the data, but for the IPCC and its models. In normal Popperian science the model/hypothesis is said to have been “falsified”.
But then again, as a reverend you understand that you shouldn’t let hard facts interfere with the core beliefs of your religion…
what does it say when science isn’t swayed by a scientific discourse, rather because Governments and the Daily Mail complain about the absurdities?
it obviously says it wasn’t science in the first place.
Judith,
Are you still happy to be part of the BEST team? Do you consider the graph, your graph, below as valid? If so, can you explain how comments about a “growing discrepancy between models and observations” make any sense at all?
http://static.berkeleyearth.org/img/decadal-comparison-small.png
Here’s one point to the explanation:
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/data-tampering-at-ushcngiss/
luckily we dont use USHCN Monthly from GISS. GISS uses monthly data.
We use daily data.
Or you drop USHCN all together, its only 1200 stations out of 20000 in the US. Guess what happens what happens when you drop those USHCn stations? you get the same answer
I suspect that the masters of other data sets use similar techniques and assumptions, justified by the same stack of papers in the literature, as used for USHCN. After all, the political emotional talk among the keepers is similar. I suspect it’s just a matter of time that new papers will justify new adjustments that fix the recent Pause.
Yes, Curry’s data shows about a 3C ECS based on the BEST land warming trend starting before 1900.
That puts it smack dab in the middle of the climate model aggregate average.
Who would have thunk it?
“I suspect that the masters of other data sets use similar techniques and assumptions, justified by the same stack of papers in the literature, as used for USHCN. After all, the political emotional talk among the keepers is similar. I suspect it’s just a matter of time that new papers will justify new adjustments that fix the recent Pause.”
Well you would be wrong if you suspected that.
The most important adjustment, TOBS, is almost utterly unique to the US.
The other most significant adjustment, MMTS, is also unique to the US as they changed instrument types.
Look at where it ends. I believe the IPCC stayed on the trend line and the observations started a new trend line. So the comment makes perfect sense doesn’t it? The Berkeley work is sound as far as I know but forecasting is tricky as trend lines don’t always last forever.
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y164/wteach/Global%20Warming/screenhunter_256-mar-02-06-55_zpse62c3379.jpg
It’s strange I have never seen a student of Prof. Curry post on her blog? Perhaps they are uncertain of the consequences?
Uh . . . they are to busy working
I think they are intimidated. Surly there are hundreds of former students that are aware of your activism. The silence is deafening.
Remember, students are free to choose their professors. Dr. Curry doesn’t seem to try to hide her skepticism of certain claims by climate scientists. Many admire that, both the skepticism and the willingness to discuss it.
Why not stay on topic, instead of turning to character attacks?
Actually, one of my former M.S. students Angela Fritz is now a blogger for weather underground
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/angelafritz/show.html
And probably loving it! A hard teacher is often one of the best.
Your student Angela believes that fracking rock thousands of feet below the surface will harm the land she cares about. There just aren’t any facts to back up the feeling.
Nobody’s perfect.
============
Jim2, I had a Saudi student who believed that all humans descended from Adam and Eve; which is a bit hard for a Biochemist.
Doc – more intellectually oriented people have problems buying the conceptual story posited by various religions. And then there are exceptions like your student. Faith just doesn’t fit into the frame of science.
I look at religion as a net good thing. If you ignore the conceptual issues, religion provides a social fabric for many. They do keep moral principles highlighted for members. Members will still do bad things from time to time, but it is a much better scenario than having no moral compass, or worse, being a member of a criminal gang – and there seems to be too many people in that social milieu.
And, I know bad things have been promulgated by religion over the centuries, I’m talking more here and now – even then, there are issues. But still, net net, Western religions at least are a good thing for the people who practice them, as are most religions around the world.
Islam, I’m not so sure about. Any religion that commands non-believers be killed is not a good religion, IMO.
DocMartyn
To equally require a person to believe contrary to stochastic natural laws for the origin of life, and cause and effect for the origin of the universe violates the principle of objective validating observations – and conscience.
David, I don’t demand anybody believe in anything; being lawful is good enough for me. I don’t care what belief system people have, they can even bring it into the lab, if i doesn’t interfere with work.One of my collaborators is Creationist and I care that he is a great chemist and nice guy.
It’s an anonymous blog. A former or current student would have to stipulate as much.
RE: jim2 “Faith just doesn’t fit into the frame of science.”
Good one. Apparently you haven’t been paying attention.
I suspect The Pause is actually much longer than the 13-17 years being discussed:
When you consider that over half of the warming trend of the highly “adjusted” and “homogenized” surface station temperature data is not seen in the raw data, it really should alert the scientists to go back and re-visit the assumptions in those rather thin papers upon which the adjustments and homogenizations are based. If the warming trend isn’t so great in the older data, at least that could give them an excuse for why the empirically based calibrations of their models are off keel.
There is no ‘pause.’ The word pause implies that it is already known that there will be future increases in temperature. In fact, the data tells us that the previous increase in temperature has stopped. It has yet to be determined whether there will be a future increase. The assertion that there will be such an increase is a prediction, not a known fact. And the current state is a stop, not a pause. I’d like to see all skeptics/lukewarmers make a point of replacing the word ‘pause’ with something more appropriate. Plateau would be far more acceptable.
It is fascinating, disturbing, and unfortunately not surprising to see first hand reports of exactly what the Climategate emails said the ‘cabal’ was doing, controlling journals to suppress contrary science and POV. This selection bias is also provable with respect to UTrH in AR4. And it has come back to haunt the IPCC in AR5.
But to my mind even more damaging is the flood of bad papers that got through pal review in support of the CAGW ‘consensus’. Judith kindly hosted guest posts on the WA sea level rise misrepresentation and on the Marcott hockey stick, both in the past year. Those are just the tip of a very big iceberg upon which it seems the ship of climate science has foundered. I have already deconstructed several others equally bad, or worse. This calls the entire current government sponsored research system and much of academic research into fundamental question.
A lot needs to be rethought structurally to prevent a recurrence of what is slowly becoming a CAGW scientific debacle.
”
This calls the entire current government sponsored research system and much of academic research into fundamental question.
”
It’s about time we got to this.
Everything since Newton is utter garbage.
With the possible exception of Pommer’s law.
Combine Pommer’s Law with the Dunbar Number and you can understand how a self-satisfied echo chamber originates.
WebHubTelescope (@whut) | September 19, 2013 at 1:53 pm |
Combine Pommer’s Law with the Dunbar Number and you can understand how a self-satisfied echo chamber originates.
There’s a name for it – the Consensus
The Dunbar number suits the size of the group you might find in a moose lodge. The consensus is the stuff of which textbooks are written — you know, the classes that you can flunk out of if you aren’t paying attention?
Rud, I have great hopes that this episode of infectious pathology in climate science will allow the body politic to generate long lasting antibodies to similar infestations.
==========
Not a hope
Politicians work on short-term bogeymen to justify their egoistic impulses
In the entire of human history, there has never been a shortage of manufactured bogies
Kim, me too. But as just a business guy, I struggle to find a simple set of solutions. Dr. Curry proposed journal audits on a previous post. Right, we do that all the time in my world. Did not stop Enron… And so forth.
In the end, I think we have to trust educated persons and common sense. Alas, the former appears to be declining due to dumbed down BS college degrees, and the latter seems increasingly impaired by the Internet.
Highest regards.
If you can find just the right point in the refinery, amongst the tangled coils of pipes, there is a distillate of common sense on some blogs, ferinstance, our dogged hostess’s.
===========
Unfortunately Kim, pathological science is NOT restricted to Climate Sceance.
UK FMD Epidemic 2001
WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO OUR INSTITUTIONS?
Roger Windsor’s talk, read on his behalf, to the Central Veterinary Society.
http://www.warmwell.com/nov11windsor.html
Predictive models and FMD: the emperor’s new clothes?
R.P. Kitching
National Centre for Foreign Animal Disease, 1015 Arlington Street, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada R3E 3M4
So how could the control policy for a major disease outbreak be based on models which had never been validated? If the predictions for the number of new variant Creutzfeld–Jacob disease (vCJD) cases in the UK made in the late 1990s had not been sufficient to undermine the credibility of the predictive modellers, surely the FMD experience should have made the modellers appreciate the limitations of their science and accept at least some responsibility for the misery and expense that their models initiated. Predictive modelling has become fashionable but, often without much evidence that it serves any useful purpose, is the science based too much on reputation?
http://www.warmwell.com/04feb17kitching.html
Carnage from a computer
WE ARE USED to politicians suppressing the truth. When scientists do it as well, we are in trouble. Not one of the Government’s senior advisers, from Sir David King, the chief scientist, downwards, has yet dared to confirm in public what most experts in private now accept, that the mass slaughter of farm animals in the 2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak was not only unnecessary and inhumane, but was also based on false statistics, bad science and wrong deductions.
The mistakes that were made in attempting to control the outbreak are laid bare in a devastating paper recently compiled by Paul Kitching, one of the world’s leading veterinary experts, and published by the World Organisation for Animal Health. It finds that, of the ten million animals slaughtered, more than a third were perfectly healthy; out of the 10,000 or so farms where sheep were killed, only 1,300 were infected with the disease; scientists were wrong to claim that the FMD virus was being spread through airborne infection; the epidemic had reached its peak before the culling began; the infamous 3km killing zone was without justification; estimates of infected premises were little better than guesswork.
The language used in Dr Kitching’s report has a controlled anger about it. He talks of “a culling policy driven by unvalidated predictive models”, mentions the “public disgust with the magnitude of the slaughter” and concludes: “The UK experience provides a salutary warning of how models [statistics used to predict the course of an epidemic] can be abused in the interests of scientific opportunism.
http://tinyurl.com/28z67y
Sir David King “Does” Virology
VACCINATION FOR FOOT AND MOUTH
A Personal View by Dr James Irvine,
http://www.warmwell.com/vaccoct27.htm
Use and abuse of mathematical models:
an illustration from the 2001 foot and mouth
disease epidemic in the United Kingdom
R.P. Kitching (1), M.V. Thrusfield (2) & N.M. Taylor
Summary
Foot and mouth disease (FMD) is a major threat, not only to countries whose economies rely on agricultural exports, but also to industrialised countries that maintain a healthy domestic livestock industry by eliminating major infectious diseases from their livestock populations. Traditional methods of controlling diseases such as FMD require the rapid detection and slaughter of infected animals, and any susceptible animals with which they may have been in contact, either directly or indirectly. During the 2001 epidemic of FMD in the United Kingdom (UK), this approach was supplemented by a culling policy driven by unvalidated predictive models. The epidemic and its control resulted in the death of approximately ten million animals, public disgust with the magnitude of the slaughter, and political resolve to adopt alternative options, notably including vaccination, to control any future epidemics. The UK experience provides a salutary warning of how models can be abused in the interests of scientific opportunism.
http://www.oie.int/doc/ged/D3278.PDF
More Pathological Science. That another UN agency, the WHO (World Hysteria Organization?) is responsible for a lot of it should be a sobering wake up call for us all
Britain’s most expensive myth
http://www.warmwell.com/2may18booker.html
Canada BSE/vCJD link
http://judithcurry.com/2013/09/04/what-is-scientific-mediation/#comment-375295
Following the outbreak of SARS, one thing was certain: Professor Roy Anderson of Imperial College would soon be hitting the headines.
Private Eye
May 2003
Following the outbreak of SARS, one thing was certain: Professor Roy Anderson of Imperial College would soon be hitting the headines.
And so it came to pass. While the World Health Organisation was being severely criticised by the Canadian government and others for “over-reacting”, it found welcome backing last weekend from a report by Anderson which claimed that Sars was twice as deadly as previously thought. “We have not seen the report so we could not comment,” a WHO spokesman said, “except to say that this is a top-class professional and any figure he commits himself to is likely to be as close as possible to accurate.”
Tony Blair would undoubtedly agree. Two years ago it was Roy Anderson who created the computer model used by the government to claim that the number of FMD cases would fall to zero by 7 June 2001. As the Eye noted at the time, a certain amount of statistical jiggery-pokery was required to achieve this desirable if implausible result, but it allowed the Dear Leader to call an election for that very date and boast that he had the crisis licked.
Back in 1987 Anderson’s mathematical talents again proved useful to a politician’s election prospects. He was invited by Norway’s Prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland to help produce an “independent assessment” of how many minke whales Norwegians could sustainably kill each year. The International Whaling Commission had introduced a moratorium on commercial minke whaling, which Brundtland feared would lose her support in the northern whaling constituencies. She hoped that a report by a four-man committee of experts, including Anderson, would persuade the IWC to ease the ban.
Lo and behold, the committee came up with exactly the same figure – 200 whales – which the whalers thought they needed to make a profit. But then a mathematical biologist on the IWC’s scientific committee went through the algebra and found “fundamental flaws in the methodology”: Anderson and his chums had achieved the result Brundtland wanted only by creating unreal (indeed “impossible” ) parameters.
The report was duly rubbished by the experts, just as Anderson’s foot-and-mouth model was two years ago. But politicians continue to admire him, including of course the former Norwegian PM. And where is Gro Harlem Brundtland now? By happy coincidence, she is director-general of the World Health Organissation.
http://www.warmwell.com/2may1pe.html
Latest flu outbreak is shaping up as fourth pandemic dud in the past six years
Jul 22, 2009 04:30 AM
DR. RICHARD SCHABAS
I’ll end with a challenge to the media. The media love this story and accept the pundits’ gloomy predictions uncritically. If this turns out to be the fourth pandemic false alarm in six years, as I think it will, it will be time to start asking some probing questions.Dr. Richard Schabas was Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health from 1987-97
http://www.thestar.com/comment/article/669727
WHO’s credibility questioned as pandemic fears fade
OTTAWA — For those who have followed the swine flu outbreak, it has almost become a daily ritual, as routine as the morning weather forecast.
Each day, at roughly 11 a.m. ET, a senior official from the World Health Organization, often speaking in a dry, matter-of-fact tone, has appeared on TV screens to update the world on the outbreak.
But as fears of a catastrophic pandemic wane, some medical experts are questioning the apocalyptic statements that have occasionally emerged from WHO’s otherwise subdued press conferences.
“Sometimes some of us think WHO stands for the ‘World Hysteria Organization,'” said Dr. Richard Schabas, who was Ontario’s chief medical officer of health from 1987 to 1997. “There seems to be a culture at WHO where they’ve convinced themselves that a pandemic is such an imminent danger that they overreact.”
Perhaps the most sensational statement by WHO came on April 29, the day the UN agency raised its six-point pandemic alert to phase five, meaning it believes a global pandemic is “imminent.” Calling on all countries to “immediately activate their pandemic preparedness plans,” WHO director-general Margaret Chan reminded the world: “it really is all of humanity that is under threat during a pandemic.”
Ms. Chan qualified her remarks by noting the world is better prepared than ever before to fight a pandemic, and the agency was still gathering data to determine the potential severity of a swine-flu pandemic.
Nevertheless, her “threat-to-humanity” quote hit the 24-hour news cycle with all the subtlety of a neutron bomb — triggering ominous headlines in newspapers and newscasts around the world.
This week, WHO officials appeared to tone down their rhetoric in the face of mounting evidence the outbreak might be milder than originally thought. As of Friday, 44 deaths had been confirmed in Mexico, less than one-third the number of deaths suspected last week. Most cases elsewhere in the world have caused symptoms consistent with the seasonal flu.
Ms. Chan has defended her statements, saying it’s her job to cautious.
“I’m not predicting the pandemic will blow up, but if I miss it and we don’t prepare, I fail. I’d rather over-prepare than not prepare,” she told the Financial Times.
http://thisbluemarble.com/showthread.php?t=13612
Reconstruction of a Mass Hysteria: The Swine Flu Panic of 2009
Swine flu kept the world in suspense for almost a year. A massive vaccination campaign was mounted to put a stop to the anticipated pandemic. But, as it turned out, it was a relatively harmless strain of the flu virus. How, and why, did the world overreact? A reconstruction. By SPIEGEL staff.
The situation on June 11, 2009 did not correspond with these descriptions. Critics were already asking derisively whether the WHO had any plans to declare the latest outbreak of the common cold a pandemic. “Sometimes some of us think that WHO stands for World Hysteria Organization,” says Richard Schabas, the former chief medical officer for Canada’s Ontario Province.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/reconstruction-of-a-mass-hysteria-the-swine-flu-panic-of-2009-a-682613.html
Can we really trust chief scientific officers? – The Times del 11/01/2010 , di Ross Clark
Can we really trust chief scientific officers?
The Times del 11/01/2010 , articolo di Ross Clark
I have an idea how officials could try to get rid of 60 million unwanted doses of swine flu vaccine: put them on eBay with the words “will exchange for a very large pile of grit”.
What a week it has been for scientific embarrassments. First we have had the spectacle of the Met Office trying to wriggle out of its prediction of a mild winter, and now the Government’s admission that swine flu, after all, isn’t going to lay waste to the country. In fact, forget the 65,000 deaths predicted last July to result from swine flu; by December 31 just 203 with swine flu had died – and many of these were people who were already mortally ill.
It is just ten weeks since Sir Liam Donaldson, the Chief Medical Officer, was warning the country to ignore the “extremists” who, he said, were trying to undermine the vaccination programme. Given that a few days earlier I had been debating with Sir Liam on Radio 5 the merits of being vaccinated, I can only imagine that I was one of the extremists he had in mind. Though he didn’t quite say it, one could sense in his voice that he didn’t consider a pipsqueak such as me, without even a biology O level, qualified to speak on the subject.
True, I don’t know a lot about virology, but I know enough about human nature to treat a scientist’s word with the scepticism it deserves. I also happen to remember that Sir Liam had previously made grim prophecies about bird flu – which he predicted in 2005 could cause 50,000, and possibly as many 750,000, deaths in the UK. The disease never killed a soul in Britain. Remember the Sars scare of 2003 and vCJD, the human form of mad cow disease, which a team from Oxford estimated would eventually kill 136,000 people? The tally so far is 162.
There was a time when, if you read a scientific scare story, you tended to put it down to the over-active imagination of a redtop journalist. No longer: nowadays it is outwardly sober government scientists who spin the biggest scares. They know they can get away with it because laymen have an irrational respect for words uttered by scientists.
That much was proved by the 1963 Milgram experiment in which the Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram persuaded volunteers to administer a – simulated – potentially fatal electric shock to another human being when instructed to do so by a man in a white lab coat
http://www.agenziafarmaco.gov.it/aifaminesi/201001/articolo_20100111_115257211.htm
Conservation and the Misuse of Science
Hedgehogs, Bats and Badgers
Dr James Irvine
The manner in which Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) is handling the problem of the multiplying, egg-eating hedgehogs that threaten waders and other birds in North Uist (1, 2) raises serious concerns about how science is being applied by Government Departments or their agencies involved in conservation. These same concerns also pertain to the problems of bats transmitting rabies to man (3) and badgers transmitting tuberculosis to cattle (4).
Uist Hedgehogs and Waders
Protracted, expensive and inappropriately detailed research would appear to have taken over from common sense. Instead of constructively helping to solve such problems, the delays that occur before applying a predictable remedy have been highly damaging. Surely a better balance needs to be struck between ultimate political correctness and competent management.
Snip
Bats and Rabies
Snip
It frankly does not require a three year study by SNH or anyone else to reveal the essence of the problem, the hazard involved and the need to urgently reduce the risk. The commonsense action would be to eradicate bats from homes. People come before bats, however rare any particular type of bat might be (18). According to the Bat Conservation Trust to refer to rabies-infected bats in people’s homes as vermin is to be “emotive” (20), but of course that is just what potentially rabies-infected bats are. The emergency arrangements for protecting persons from potentially rabies-infected bats can subsequently be adjusted in the unlikely event that the findings of further research turn out to be sufficiently reassuring
Snip
Tuberculous Badgers
The same problem of prolonged procrastination on the grounds of scientific “correctness” is manifest with regard to tuberculosis in badgers, contributing as they surely do to the marked rise in the incidence of tuberculosis in cattle. There are conservation orders on badgers (25), as there are with bats.
As long ago as 1980 Lord Zuckerman was commissioned by the Government of the day to write a report on the problem. He did so with exemplary efficiency, professionalism and promptness (26, 27). He recommended that, along with other measures, sets of tuberculous infected badgers should be culled. This amounted to good commonsense. Instead, increased legislation, achieved by lobby groups interested in the conservation of badgers, succeeded in extending badger conservation orders (25).
Snip
When New Zealand observed a rise in TB in its cattle, it found that possums were carrying TB and were thought to be a reservoir of infection – just like the badgers in the UK. It appeared probable that the possums were at least partly responsible for the problem. There was no endless prevarication as in the UK. The infected possums were culled. That measure, along with others implemented at the same time, sorted the problem of TB in their cattle (26). Cattle are important to the economy of New Zealand. They are also important to the economy of the UK, and in particular Scotland. Scotland’s economy is presently in dire straits (32, 33). It can ill afford to endlessly prevaricate over what to do with TB infected badgers.
Conclusion
Whether it be hedgehogs, bats or badgers it would appear that SNH and others are happy to”fiddle” at taxpayers expense “while Rome burns” in terms of damage to human and animal health and to the economy. It is time that a stop was put to this form of self-indulgent and extravagant pseudo science.
Dr James Irvine FRSE
http://www.land-care.org.uk/environment/current_topics/2003/april2003/conservation_science_15_04/conservation_science_15_04.htm
How the members of the Independent
Scientific Group on Cattle TB were appointed
http://www.land-care.org.uk/tb/current_topics/tb%202007/june%202007/comp_isg_22_06/comp_isg_22_06.html
The “Independent Scientific Group” advises against badger cull as part of plan to control TB in cattle.
A sad day for science, and for animal health that it is supposed to protect.
http://www.land-care.org.uk/tb/current_topics/tb%202007/june%202007/isg_badger_18_06/isg_badger_18_06.html
Tuberculosis in Cattle: DEFRA in no hurry to review Strategy
http://www.land-care.org.uk/tb/current_topics/2003/march2003/defra_tb_strategy_10_03/defra_tb_strategy_10_03.htm
“Nothing has been learned in climate science in the last 30 years.”
“Climate science is different from all other fields of science.”
Simple anti-science statements made by people with agendas in positions of ignorance.
Global temperatures have been rising recently, according to Roy Spenser’s site which shows monthly temperature anomalies for the past 20 months. The anomaly for the last 10 months (Nov. 2012 – Aug 2013) averages + 0.266, which is much greater than the + 0.150 average for the preceding 10 months. The first 8 months of 2013 also were warmer than the first 8 months of 2012.
Everyone knows, however, a period of as little as 10 months is too short to tell us much about what global temperature is doing. We need a period of time that’s just right. The consensus among global warming skeptics seems to be the “just right period” is one which shows a pause in warming, and any period shorter or longer than that is misleading.
I thought we all agreed that UAH was bogus and that RSS was the gold standard.
Bottom line Max, you will find all manner of selectivity when it comes to data .. on all sides of the debate.
And here is the big clue… when your results, pro or con, change when you make minor changes in data selection, then you probably need to work on cleaning up the data. Its not science and nobody likes to do it. And in the end folks will say I told you so.
NOW you want to use the evil UAH data?
Steven Mosher, “And here is the big clue… when your results, pro or con, change when you make minor changes in data selection, then you probably need to work on cleaning up the data.”
True, or consider realistic uncertainty since the data is what the data is, seriously baseline dependent.
“NOW you want to use the evil UAH data?”
I’ll do what I always do. Use and compare all sources.
And then try to get down to the fundamental differences.
@Mosher: when your results, pro or con, change when you make minor changes in data selection, then you probably need to work on cleaning up the data.
You do no such thing. Data is data. Keep your filthy adjusting fingers off the data. Instead, adjust your conclusions, error bars, and confidence levels.
…”clean up the data…” Sheesh!
Stephan.
So, when the data says that Guam is at -144W, you do nothing?
you adjust your conclusions?
weird, most of us would realize that they had made a sign error
So, when you see that the data is in farenheit, but the metadata says
its Kelvin, you leave it as is? or adjust the conclusions. Most of us fix the error.
So when the temperature reads 15000C you leave that as it? you
adjust the conclusion? Funny most of us do QC.
When the Tmin field gets flied with tmax? you leave it?
or when one tree in Yamal has a 6 sigma growth spurt, you just use it?
Mosh, I was addressing Max_OK. I thought my comment was along the same line as yours that we agreed UAH was bogus. I assumed you were pointing out to Max_OK that he used to prefer RSS.
Mosher: this was the condition that caught my ire:
when your results, pro or con, change when you make minor changes in data selection
Of course you should eliminate data that is obviously errors. Adjusting data to suit a preconception is quite a different matter and far more dangerouse. But you did not stop there.
Here you say data cleaning is conditional on your analysis. No you should not do that. It is a recursive cherry picking of data that is giving your analysis problems. There is a point where you must take the data for what it is. Once your cleaning of the data is dependent upon your data selection, you have past that point.
Here’s a UAH graph that shows warming has accelerated since 2008.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1970/plot/uah/from:2008/trend/plot/uah/to:2008/trend
Should we expect Daily Mail headlines?
Don’t blame me! I am just using the skeptic method of analyzing temperature data. (eg http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1970/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1970/to:2002/trend)
The method is as follows:
1) Pick a date x. They choose x=2002. I chose x=2008.
2) Plot a trend line from 1970 to x
3) Plot a trend from x
4) Compare the two trends and claim they show how the rate of warming has changed since x.
Funny thing is you don’t get many skeptics reporting the accelerating warming trend since 2008. And it’s Roy Spencer’s record so if anything they should believe it over the others!
Where are the daily mail headlines “NASA satellites show global warming acclerated over the last 5 years”?
Fun with graphs.
Here’s the same graph picking the 2007 cherry.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1970/plot/uah/from:2007/trend/plot/uah/to:2007/trend
And you want some real giggles?
Here’s what happens when you pick the 2009 cherry.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1970/plot/uah/from:2009/trend/plot/uah/to:2009/trend
That was my point Gary. Perhaps I was too vague.
I will be clear then:
-Skeptics are using a method that is succeptible to the choice of X. Pick x=2008 and you get warming accelerating.
So then the burden is on skeptics who want to use this method but pick a different x (eg x=2000) to explain why x=2008 is invalid but x=2000 is okay.
lolwot,
If that was your point, it was a curious one to make, in response to Max_OK’s comment.
You both are following the Skeptical Science Keystone Klimate Kop Straw Man logic, but down different paths.
Skeptics aren’t cherry picking the start of the “pause.” They aren’t “choosing a period because it’s a pause.” They are responding to the incessant claims by you CAGW drones have been making for decades.
First you all denied there was any pause at all. (OK, the real zealots like you are still making this silly argument, but leave that aside for now.) Then Phil Jones let the cat out of the bag by admitting reality, so the argument became the pause wasn’t long enough to matter.
So skeptics respond as time continues to pass, and the pause continues, by calling attention to the fact that even the more rational warmists are admitting the travesty.
The longer the pause lasts, and the more the borg like united front of pause denial breaks among the climaratti, the more manic you hard core advocates are getting. And the more you try to divert attention from that growing dissent in your own tribe. Like by arguing that you can cherry pick a different start date to show a different trend.
I don’t think that picking this data means a great deal. Nobody denies that the temperature has increased. The point is that the rate of increase is much less using satellite data than using surface stations.
lolwot, No the funny thing is how simple you warmers think the problem is. The data is baseline dependent. Different things have different impacts at different times in different places. That “Global” mean surface temperature has confidence intervals that are complete BS.
http://redneckphysics.blogspot.com/2013/09/seasonal-impact-on-baseline-selection.html
The actual range of uncertainty is close to half of the change and you are picking out a small change and calling it significant. You have been led astray by your fearless leaders and now they will leave you swinging in the wind.
Were you taken in by cunning frauds? Did you sign the dihydrogen monoxide petition before checking your facts?
@RC Saumarez 7:59 am
The point is that the rate of increase is much less using satellite data than using surface stations.
That is A point. A more important point from a policy persepective is the rate of increase appears to be neither constant in time, nor tightly linked to GHG concentrations.
WoodForTrees, RSS and CO2 (sensitifity = 3.5 deg C/ double), 15 year trends at 1980, 1990, 1998)
Dr. Curry,
Why do you accept the word “pause,” even though you use it in quotations? Describing the lack of increase in warming as “pause” implies a certainty that the warming will resume. Isn’t it more accurate to say we know only that it has halted and may or may not resume? Why not call it the “halt?” I mention this because the warmists are adept at manipulating language. I.e “global warming” has become “climate change,” “jungles” became “rain forests,” etc.
Frank,
That some people spin language is not an especially good reason for Judy to spin by decreeing this a “halt” rather than a “pause”. While the future is difficult to predict, currently, the word “pause” can be justified. The word “halt” cannot. I will be very surprised if the ‘pause’ ultimately turns into a halt. But if it continues for 10 more years, maybe we can start considering using the word ‘halt’.
I’m declaring that the pause started in 2003. I’m also declaring the ~60yr cycle is real. 2003+60/2 = 2033 – 2013 = 20 more years of pause :)
The longterm warming trend from 1970-2003 was about 0.17C/decade.
So since 2003 we should have expected about 0.17C warming? No.
Not every 10 year period will have exactly 0.17C warming.
And picking 2003 specifically as a start date biases the 10 year trend lower. I think this is what skeptics are overlooking. 2003 starts off at solar maximum and follows with a string of el ninos, before diving into a low solar minimum with a couple of La Ninas. You couldn’t pick a more biased 10 year period. If any 10 year period were to be capable of masking 0.17C warming, it would be this one.
lolwot:
I picked 2013 because it seems to fit a repeating pattern in which all trends between 7 and 61 years agree:
https://sites.google.com/site/climateadj/multiscale-trend-analysis—hadcrut4
Could be a false alarm though, eh? That’s the nature of the beast.
Correction… that should read “I picked 2003 because…”
lolwot:
My attempt it to be fair:
Conclusions can be weaker in shorter frames.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/mean:10/plot/uah/trend/plot/uah/from:2008/trend/plot/uah/from:2003/trend/plot/uah/from:1998/trend/plot/uah/from:1993/trend/plot/uah/from:1988/trend/plot/uah/from:1983/trend/plot/uah/from:2010/trend/plot/uah/from:2005/trend/plot/uah/from:2000/trend/plot/uah/from:1995/trend/plot/uah/from:2006/trend/plot/uah/from:2009/trend/plot/uah/from:2011/trend
And on what robust statistical analysis is this claim about the alleged “pause” in the surface/tropospheric temperature trend founded, which you also are promoting here as “justified”, together with Judith Curry?
Jan P Perlwitz:
Everything is relative. The term “the pause” is appropriate when used in comparisons of models vs. observations. This was robustly statistically analyzed in the rejected paper. Perhaps “the pause” is even more appropriate when comparing the 1975-2003 trend to the 2003-2013 trend. I’ll admit though, I’d find the term “slow down” more agreeable.
If there has been a pause or a halt, then when did the “it” start and what was cheapening before the it?
Perhaps it is best to simply say: the climate changes and still is.
Based on collected future evidence, blogging climate linguists will soon have to decide – and that won’t be easy:
abeyance
break
caesura
cessation
comma
discontinuance
downtime
freeze
gridlock
hesitancy
hesitation
hiatus
hitch
interlude
intermission
interruption
interval
interim
lapse
layoff
letup
lull
rest
recess
respite
stoppage
suspension
stand-by
standstill
stay
stillness
stopover
break-off
breathing spell
coffee break
happy hour
rest period
time out
And that’s only some of the English language “pause” words!
Or – you could just randomly pick one and put a question mark after it.
Or perhaps they’ll be more poetic:
“Constipation”?
“abeyance
break…” etc…
I’d call it, “the beginning of the end of the greatest science mistake in the history of the modern world.”
If you can come up with one or two words to convey all that, you’ve found a winner.
Oh wait, I know “deal-breaker.”
Let’s stick with “pause”. It rhymes: The pause is killing the cause.
How about naming it in honor of one of the last remaining pause deniers.
“lollypause”
Rocky Model High.
==============
Tetons saw grand teeth.
Yamakata-Foodin-Gee.
Take that filter! Skep tic a loo lah lay.
===========
lolwot and the rest of the Keystone Klimate Kops are like the kids in that classic ketchup commerical, with the Carly Simon song Anticipation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoLoyg3JKRQ
The problem is that their bottle of CAGW appears to be empty.
But they will wait, singing the same song, for eternity for the ketchup to come out of the empty bottle.
How about “sabbatical”, “vacation”, or “holiday”?
I agree with NotAGolfer. I have been told by climate alarmists that the heat is building up in the oceans and will eventually emerge with great and alarming force imperilling mankind. So it is not really a pause, it a clear case of constipation that will eventually and naturally pass.
If you “pause” your CD player, it isn’t mandated that you must eventually press “play”. You could next press “stop” or even “eject”. I pause don’t imply restarting – it just implies stopping for an indeterminate time.
Ill argue that both halt and pause are inappropriate. To me, both imply there USA “normal” state and that the current direction is an anomaly. To me, climate does as it wills and will continue, unabated (and unaided), in the future. Down, up, sideways. Given this, it never starts, stops, halts, pauses, etc.
“Describing the lack of increase in warming as “pause” implies a certainty that the warming will resume. Isn’t it more accurate to say we know only that it has halted and may or may not resume? Why not call it the “halt?””
“Plateau” seems more neutral.
god all this semantic quibbling to find the right word reminds me of an IPCC expert review meeting.
Someone points out that plateau cannot be used as it implies temperatures will fall off the otherside.
Pause is for your VCR, you must be looking for our weather rheostat.
Miss Curry,
I know there’s a terrific chance you won’t read this because of the volume of responses you generate with every post. Regardless, I just want to take a moment to tell you that I’ve been following your blog for some time and and greatly appreciate the work you expend keeping this up, along with everything else you do. I’ve had the opportunity to use much of the information I’ve found here on other sites. Sure, I’m usually blasted as a troll, accused of being scientifically illiterate, or flat out blasted with ignorant invective, but I persist. Regardless, thanks for the amazing information you continue to post.
Prof Curry, I think that posting this rejected paper in its entirety was a good idea, a “signal” or “significant” service. I hope that we get to see more of the rejected/revised/rerejected papers that relate to the possibility of peer bias in the peer-reviewed literature. Reports by others, such as Steve McIntyre retold here, suggest the problem is real, and it would be very helpful to have more examples.
Reblogged this on grumpydenier and commented:
Drip, drip. Tick, tock.
Here id Dr. Phil Jones of CRU talking about something that sounds like a pause.
So yes, you do have to wonder why it took the IPCC so long to deal with the pause when Phil Jones himself is at the heart of the IPCC.
Sorry
I meant: Here is Dr. Phil…………..
Here is Dr. Phil again in 2010.
Yet the IPCC waited until now to grapple with the pause. Were they living in denial of observations?
Comparing Hansen et al 1981 side-by-side with Hansen et al 2014 (in press), and noting in particular “the curious incident of the climate-change dog in the night” — namely the inexplicable-by-skeptics lack of decadal reversals in energy imbalance, sea-level rise-rate, and ice-mass loss — certainly suggests that your bizarre “no-progress” claims have little or no objective scientific basis, eh jbenton2013?
Controlled thermonuclear fusion? Civilian supersonic transport? Single-stage-to-orbit space shuttles? Human-type artificial intelligence? X-ray laser missile defense? Richard Nixon’s “War on Cancer”? Earthquake prediction? Reactor safety assessment?
Or in the realm of economic “science” and/or political “science”: Randian objectivism? Supply-side economics? Neo-conservative nation-building strategies in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Conclusion Climate-change science looks pretty darn solid! It’s true that the implications of climate-change science are evolving to be less-and-less palatable to far-right ideologues … but this can scarcely be the fault of climate-science.
Query Why are libertarians so commonly climate-change consensus-deniers?
The world wonders!
Sea level rise and ice loss started a long time ago, before industrialization, with varying rates of change and short periods of opposite trends. With all these metrics, rate-of-change in sea level is a tampered with number. “Corrections”, “calibrations”, “adjustments”, and “homogenizations” are always brought in to whip the unconforming data into shape.
And don’t forget the non-strawman arguments:
*increasing amounts of industrial soot on the ice
*historical records discussing alarming rates of ice decline back in the late 1800s and early 1900s, indicating a natural cycle
A fan of *MORE* discourse: Climate-change science looks pretty darn solid!
The part that is in doubt is whether any of the climate changes are caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gases.
“The part that is in doubt is whether any of the climate changes are caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gases.”
That’s only in doubt by the irrational.
I guess you think all true scientists then are irrational.
The basic question for today is why are the models so bad?
Peer pressure.
Used CO2 instead of Nitrogen airing up the models’ tyres.
==================
Catwalk fever
They looked fine fronting up, but oh, the walk back.
=============
“Next question: Why are libertarians often believers in conspiracy fantasies?”
Please don’t skip to the Loo.
Query : Why are libertarians so commonly climate-change consensus-deniers?
The starting point is that totalitarians/statists commonly support the cagw consensus. No need to ask why – because it helps drive up taxes and government interference generally.
Now to answer your question : because libertarians began to notice this.
(Interesting term, “consensus-denier”. Doesn’t give the user of it the reputation of being a drooling idiot – the fate users of the plainer “denier” commonly suffer).
Thus, you are saying that libertarians’ rejection of results of a whole body of scientific research in a field of nature sciences, which has been published over the last three to four decades, or even further back, is mostly politically/ideologically motivated.
Next question: Why are libertarians often believers in conspiracy fantasies?
Yet the world is not warming for another decade or three – and the models are wrong.
Jan P Perlwitz:
“Thus, you are saying that libertarians’ rejection of results of a whole body of scientific research in a field of nature sciences, which has been published over the last three to four decades, or even further back, is mostly politically/ideologically motivated.”
I imagine some of us have gravitated to the more conservative Climate Scientists. We don’t have a great record of winning on the issues, but we’ve shown up for this one. If the question is, do we have baggage, the answer is in many cases yes. But I am hoping for some open minds and a better understanding of the issue. Nice credentials btw Dr. Perlwitz.
The case of “the curious incident of the climate-change dog in the night“ was solved when it was pointed out that what the climate scientists had identified as a dog was in fact a chicken, and not a dog, and that chickens do not bark.
The solution is staring us in the face.
What does ever rising sea level tell us about ocean heat content?
Not a thing if we know nothing other than the facts you presented.
“What does ever rising sea level tell us about ocean heat content?”
Nothing. That rising sea levels are due to thermal expansion of the oceanic waters is an unproven postulate.
If you were able to prove that thermal expansion has resulted in X% of the observed rise in sea levels you would have some sort of point. However, I have yet to see evidence that thermal expansion is driving sea level changes.
Amazing how much textbook and coursework material these deniers are desperate to debunk
http://curry.eas.gatech.edu/Courses/courses.html
Why are many libertarians climate realists? Simple. We tend to have a healthy skepticism of most things and do not take them at face value. When someone says the government will start a program to do such and such, we don’t just say, “Oh that’s great. I know it will all work perfectly as we say it will” We look at all sides. At “both seen and unseen” as Bastiat put it. We think in advance about what are other outcomes that could or are likely to result from this policy using our understanding of human nature and economics as a guide. And then we go back and look honestly at the data later to see if it matches the intended purpose or if one of the other outcomes we suggested were likely had occurred instead. We are constantly raining on other’s parades and on their plans to interfere with other people’s lives so we are not liked by either the “progressives” or the “conservatives”. And in the end we are often right but since few are intellectually honest enough to think things all the way through (or perhaps just can’t get past their emotional baggage), we don’t get credit. It is also quite possible that there is so much obfuscation and so many false claims made regarding libertarians that people don’t really know what policies we advocate. There were many false claims about George Bush instituting “libertarian” policies for example. When in truth, most of us thought Bush was the worst president ever precisely because he did the exact opposite of what we advocated in so many cases. But then we were unpleasantly surprised when Obama turned out to be worse, even on things we thought he would be better on like the Patriot Act and marijuana laws.
We apply the same careful analysis to climate data and claims and look at all sides. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
An evident aspect of libertarians, to my limited anecdotal experience, is that each one seems unique. I’ve never found two libertarians of identical politics, often not even close. They musta got groupthink antibodies in the Mama’s Milk.
============
This paper starkly laid out the discrepancy between CMIP5 model projections and observations of global surface temperature change. This wasn’t exactly news to those of us who follow the skeptical blogosphere; we have seen similar analyses by John Christy (presented in his Congressional testimony) and the analysis of Ed Hawkins that was made famous by David Rose’s article.
Except that Ed Hawkins also pointed out that Rose had both misread his chart and drawn incorrect conclusions from it.
“David Rose has written an article in the Mail on Sunday which, by eye, seems to use the top left panel from the figure below, but without mention of its original source. In the article David Rose suggests that this figure proves that the forecasts are wrong. David also incorrectly suggests that the shaded ranges shown are 75% and 95% certainty. As labelled below, they are actually the 25-75% and 5-95% ranges, so 50% and 90% certainty respectively.”
http://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/2013/updated-comparison-of-simulations-and-observations/
aa, ” David also incorrectly suggests that the shaded ranges shown are 75% and 95% certainty. As labelled below, they are actually the 25-75% and 5-95% ranges, so 50% and 90% certainty respectively.”
A bit of a hair split there. 5-95 is the 90% range with only a 5% probability of either above or below that range. There would indeed be a 95% confidence that actual would be above the minimum 5% range. As for “forecasts”, “predictions” or “projections” If they serve no purpose why are they included?
Capt, I agree the bit about the uncertainty ranges isn’t massively important, it’s more indicative of Rose’s sloppiness and lack of understanding. The key point is that the graph simply doesn’t prove what Rose says it does (see the corrected version of Hawkins’ s comment).
I’m not sure anyone is saying that the forecasts/projections serve no purpose.
But my point was that it was wrong for Judith to cite Hawkins’ graph in support of her argument given that he is on record as objecting to that interpretation of it.
aa, “I’m not sure anyone is saying that the forecasts/projections serve no purpose.”
That depends on what their intend purpose was supposed to be. For projecting climate, they are not proving to be very useful.
Hmm.
Judith?
andrew adams: But my point was that it was wrong for Judith to cite Hawkins’ graph in support of her argument given that he is on record as objecting to that interpretation of it.
Why is that wrong? The two of them disagree over the interpretation of his graph, and her interpretation is defensible.
Did Prof Curry’s “interpretation” depend on the misunderstanding of the labels of the confidence limits?
Here is one reference, where Rose’s article is mentioned with some others:
http://judithcurry.com/2013/03/31/uk-msm-on-climate-sensitivity/
Not to speak for Adam, but it isn’t wrong per se. What is wrong is for her to discuss the issue without noting Hawkins’ reaction to Rose’s article.
It is wrong because it is incomplete, and conveniently so. As such, it does little other than just play into the same ol’ same ol’ tribal narrative.
Joshua,
Yes, that just about sums it up.
Joshua, will want to now throw out MSM as well, because it’s fairly incomplete all the time? Look at how much we have all saved already, once we stopped buying our newspapers… sucker sales have dropped along with the TOA too.
> Why is that wrong?
An hypothesis:
http://judithcurry.com/2013/09/04/what-is-scientific-mediation/
You may ask yourself if it’s too much to ask from Climateballers, even those with scientific credentials.
***
This hypothesis does not exclude other reasons. For instance:
http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/28/the-art-and-science-of-effective-science-advice/
But again, you may ask yourself if it’s too much to ask from Climateballers, even those with scientific credentials.
***
Not disclosing Hawkins’ interpretation while using his work might very well be suboptimal.
You will one day be right willard…
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/football/ex-nfl-star-face-lawsuits-parents-house-crashing-teens-article-1.1462008
tell us all about this, while you are thinking.
I just realised that in copying and pasting Hawkins’ objection to Rose’s use of his graph I managed to delete the key part. It should read
“David Rose has written an article in the Mail on Sunday which, by eye, seems to use the top left panel from the figure below, but without mention of its original source. In the article David Rose suggests that this figure proves that the forecasts are wrong. This is incorrect – the last decade is interesting and I have discussed these issues previously (as have many others) and I have even co-authored a published article about the most sensitive simulations being less likely. David also incorrectly suggests that the shaded ranges shown are 75% and 95% certainty. As labelled below, they are actually the 25-75% and 5-95% ranges, so 50% and 90% certainty respectively.” [my italics]
“It will be very interesting to see how this plays out in Stockholm next week.”
Perhaps, but I rather suspect the outcome is already pretty clear: The IPCC, at least in its current from, will NEVER openly acknowledge that projections of extreme warming are less likely as a result of ‘the pause’.
The current politics within the IPCC simply will not allow empirical data, no matter how compelling, to have that effect. I think the IPCC is as likely to be disbanded as to admit that global warming catastrophe is any less likely in light of ‘the pause’, because creating endless cries of alarm is why the IPCC exists. Without growing alarm, there is no need for the IPCC, at least not in its current form. One might just as well ask a cow to stop producing milk and start laying eggs as ask the IPCC to stop producing alarm and start making lower projections of future warming. Neither can do it, and neither is going to try.
Well there might very well be a food fight in Stockholm with at least some of the policy maker delegates. THAT is what will be interesting to see.
The problem is if the “summary for policymakers” doesn’t properly represent the main report, any policy built using it as a rationale will be subject to attack.
Also, I suspect, quite a few policymakers would be happy enough for a summary that could be used to justify low-cost, “no-regrets” initiatives, even if it clearly didn’t justify the radical “raise the price of energy” agenda others are following. Thus, they would support a summary that more closely represents the main report. And ditto the main report and the underlying science.
Be wonderful if the food fight evolved into an indefinite string of postponements of the release date for the report. Politics in (in)action.
I think it was McKitrick in his very fine piece who predicted the next few years will be “electrifying.” The toothpaste is increasingly out of the tube and can’t be put back.
I hope you are right; I fear you are wrong.
Don’t food fight with milk or eggs, a waste of protein. Wadded up bread is best.
=========
I think it’s pretty predictable how this will pan out. If there is disagreement it will be billed as a “food fight” and cited as evidence of an IPCC “crisis”. If not, that will be cited as evidence of the IPCC following a political agenda.
Cry, Sis,
Got you with some pie.
=================
Andrew Adams,
Yup.
But IOKIYAL.
Well, let’s set a food fight scale. Shoes used as gavels, food fight. More than one group of delegates walk out, food fight. Any form of assault (includes pointed fingers making contact, hurled eggs, produce or coal etc.) food fight. More that two copies of final draft flung in the general direction of a wall, food fight.
Or are we talking something more civilized?
I’m sure we will actually get something entirely different from all that, it’s how it is portrayed which is the question.
Kim.
“Don’t food fight with milk or eggs, a waste of protein. Wadded up bread is best.”
That leads to an increase in carbohydrate emissions.
Weapons of Massive Obesity. Which reminds me of the first rule of food fights: Wait ’til everybody’s full. That includes those BRIC poor relatives at the end of the table stuffing themselves silly.
===============================
LOL … meanwhile in a parallel scientific universe:
An extended quote by Kahan explains why:
Yowzah! So does Dan Kahan’s “Identity-protective Cognition” provide a cognitive-science basis for Judith Curry’s “consensus denialism”?
Conclusion Cognitive science has explained (at last!) why libertarians prevalently — yet irrationally! — embrace consensus denialism?
Thank you for assisting Climate Etc readers to appreciate the implications for climate-change discourse of “identity-protective cognition”, Judith Curry!
‘”rational people’ will be convinced by the science of the forthcoming blockbuster climate report.”
-Pachauri
Dearest Fan.
Almost everything you say is half way to crazy, but of course I celebrate your right to say it. And I greatly appreciate something many miss, your never failing good humor.
And yet I can’t help asking, how is it that you miss the real meaning of Pachy’s words? Can’t you see what he’s doing? It’s the same trick these guys have been using for years now, but it’s at last wearing thin as even the MSM begins to shake off its customary torpor.
Stand by, Fan. The next few years will be “electrifying.”
Rational people don’t deny that rising CO2 causes warming. Nor do they deny that the rate of CO2 rise implies a dominant role for CO2 warming.
You’re way off track. It simply makes sense that libertarians would be the first to spot totalitarian moves masquarding as science afoot.
See invisibleserfscollar.com
===================
How about progressives who think that the right answer in science matches results in nature?
It’s rather sad to see how the global warming evangelicals embrace denial of their own when the inconvenient facts don’t measure up to their preconceptions. What happened to ‘go where the data leads you’?
Where does the data lead you Scott Basinger?
It’s time for less denial and more common sense. Otto et al showed that most of the warming since 1950 is very likely to be human caused. Reaffirming the IPCC statement.
To answer the earlier question, this is where the data should lead you
I will match your Kahan and raise you a Achen
“Many social scientists believe that dumping long lists of explanatory variables into linear regression, probit, logit, and other statistical equations will successfully “control” for the effects of auxiliary factors. Encouraged by convenient software and ever more powerful computing, researchers also believe that this conventional approach gives the true explanatory variables the best chance to emerge. The present paper argues that these beliefs are false, and that without intensive data analysis, linear regression models are likely to be inaccurate. Instead, a quite different and less mechanical research methodology is needed, one that integrates contemporary powerful statistical methods with deep substantive knowledge and classic data–analytic techniques of creative engagement with the data.”
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07388940500339167#.UjuVDMZ6ZLV
I couldn’t agree with you more. I’ve argued with social scientists about the use of statistical packages at length. Generally they seem to believe that if a result comes out of a computer, it must be true!
‘Generally they seem to believe that if a result comes out of a computer, it must be true!’
It happens in my field too. I have twice, in three years, had to explain to Chinese post-Doc’s that replicants are not true n’s; so three cultures measured in triplicate is not an n=9.
They’re addressing it right now because the recent election in Australia has resulted in the dismantling of the “carbon” pseudo-intellectual bureaucracy there.
Climate models are imperfect. However the surface temperature is not the only metric of importance in determining whether the earth is getting warmer. Most of the excess heat is absorbed by the earths ocean, and is contained in the deeper parts of the ocean. The total heat gain in the top 2000 meters of ocean has been increasing and the increase has not abated.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/big-picture-global-warming.html
The variety of results obtained from different surface temperature models indicates that improvements in these models are needed. This does not indicate that the warming of the earth by GHG’s is stopping.
At risk of stating the bleeding obvious: if the missing heat is sinking to the bottom of the oceans – somehow in defiance of the laws of physics – then why the hell should anyone care?
Not really, see here. As for “why the hell should anyone care“, it does to contribute to a (somewhat specious) rationale for a drastic raising of energy prices via a world-spanning bureaucratic monstrosity.
@AK, below me since there’s no reply button;
I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic but I understand that hot and salty water can sink below cooler water occasionally. To suggest that this is happening, on average, just recently, and across the world’s oceans is laughable.
@FergalR…
My point is that there are several plausible mechanisms by which there can be a net flow of heat to the depths, and without leaving footsteps along the way. Or, more properly, a change in net heat flow resulting in some of the “lost heat” finding its way there.
This doesn’t represent a valid rationale for the sort of things that many on the left are proposing as “solutions”. But claiming something is “impossible” when it’s perfectly plausible because you don’t like the political agendas it’s being used to rationalize just pollutes the science. And offers opponents an opening wedge to deprecate your whole argument.
Fair enough, AK, it is absolutely risible to suggest that the “missing heat” is sinking to the bottom of the oceans in the sense that even children know that heat rises. No scientific knowledge other than the observation of a boiling pot is needed.
A boiling pot of tap water? If somebody’s going to use simple (mental) models of the ocean to validate such statements, it helps to start with the fact that the density of sea (and other salt) water varies not only with temperature but salt content, which latter can change due to evaporation, precipitation, and differences between their rates.
AK says “it helps to start with the fact that the density of sea (and other salt) water varies not only with temperature but salt content, which latter can change due to evaporation, precipitation, and differences between their rates.”
It’s still laughable. Heat rises.
I’ve already stated your mechanisms which can make heat sink but those are heavily self-limiting.
Heat rises. It would require a perversion of the laws of physics to pump heat down to the depths of the oceans.
Heat sinking to the bottom of the ocean [Trenberth] is laughable.
In case you missed it I’ll repeat with emboldening:
I understand that hot and salty water can sink below cooler water occasionally. To suggest that this is happening, on average, just recently!!!, and across the world’s oceans is laughable.
So I turned my oven on and set it to broil, and put a steak in there.
I like it medium rare, how long should I leave it in there?
I think water is a little thicker, but there are no laws of physics preventing heat moving to the deep oceans, after all the water deep is colder so heat also travels from hot to cold, so we got that working too.
The fact is that “occasionally” is all it takes. If eddy diffusion moves masses of water up and down randomly, and larger-scale upwelling and downwelling does the same, then that will move heat downwards.
That is the idea behind diffusion — hot and cold will tend to balance as the excess heat moves to volumes of a heat deficit. Entropy is the dispersion of heat.
The heat-absorbing ocean is simply a way to avoid upsetting the near-100% consensus in the face of contradictory data.
The reason it’s insisted upon is that there is an imbalance of radiation (In-Out) at the top of the atmosphere. The instruments show an unrealistic imbalance, which would lead most to disregard the values. However, as Hansen said, they instead calibrated the instruments so that the values fell in line with what the models were predicting. So they calibrated the instruments to the models, which predict a net absorption of heat, and now they act as if that model prediction is real data and so the missing heat MUST be somewhere. It MUST be in the deep ocean! Which spun off a whole new set of speculative hypotheses about how the ocean is absorbing it all. Every data set (oceans, satellites, surface station) is being “adjusted” to align with the hypothesis and alarm.
eadler2
There are no meaningful data prior to ARGO in 2003. Since then the upper ocean is being measured – showing slight net cooling at first and then (after some corrections were made) showing slight net warming (thousandths of a degree per decade, assuming this can be measured at all).
To say the “heat gain has been increasing” is absurd, because this statement is not based on any meaningful physical evidence.
The whole OHC story looks to me like a red herring.
Max
Yes Max,
it seems
unlikely that
modellers in
cloud towers
measuring,
in the sea
red herring,
on land,
chameleon,
and in clouds ,
flocks of
black swans,
likely are
interrelating
these
in a theory
that relates
ter the realities
of changes
in climate.
bts
Yes, indeed, peer review has been used to filter out skeptics of official propaganda.
Belatedly I realized that almost all my discoveries were of information that world leaders agreed to hide out of FEAR of possible nuclear annihilation.
I thought I was clever to discover the interior of the Sun is iron (Fe) and put it on my auto tags (FE-SUN) before learning from Sir Fred Hoyle that the Sun’s Fe-interior was well known and widely accepted before 1946!
Another example of overestimation by the metoffice has been dug up by commenter “anonymous” on klimazwiebel:
http://web.archive.org/web/20080708230357/http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2007/pr20070810.html
10 August 2007
The forecast for 2014…
Climate scientists at the Met Office Hadley Centre will unveil the first decadal climate prediction model in a paper published on 10 August 2007 in the journal Science. The paper includes the Met Office’s prediction for annual global temperature to 2014.
Over the 10-year period as a whole, climate continues to warm and 2014 is likely to be 0.3 °C warmer than 2004. At least half of the years after 2009 are predicted to exceed the warmest year currently on record
These predictions are very relevant to businesses and policy-makers who will be able to respond to short-term climate change when making decisions today. The next decade is within many people’s understanding and brings home the reality of a changing climate.
Hans Erren
re: Met Office forecast for 2014: 0.3C warmer than 2004
HadCRUT4 annual average for 2004 = 0.445C
Trend since 2001 has been slight cooling
2013 has averaged 0.459C so far
For the MetOffice prediction to come true, 2014 will need to average 0.745C.
Ouch!
Fits in there with other predictions of “record hot years”, “BBQ summers” and “snow-free winters”, all of which never came to pass.
Max
What we are seeing now is the invalidation of the climate models, by the warmists’ own massaged temperature reports.
They argued for years that climate models could not be validated, and did not need to be. But no matter how much obscurantist massaging of the language they do, the decline (in the validity of the models) is getting too large to hide.
You can only defend models whose results continue hockey sticking upwards for so long, when your own estimated, inferred, assumed, massaged, kriged mean surface temperature anomaly series refuses to cooperate.
As everyone ‘breathlessly’ waits for the AR5, I predict it will have little or no affect to the world public at large. In the US, media like Huffington or Drudge will direct their minions to the appropriate sources to interpret it. It only has value to people that follow it and the scientific community. No one is going to care what a bunch of bickering scientists think. Most people already have established their opinions based on politics not science.There are a lot more problems ahead for the economies of the world. When Obamacare kicks in and young people who voted for him suddenly find out they are forced to buy insurance they can’t afford (or get fined) even if they still do live at home, they will have a day of reckoning. Climate Change is going to continue to be on the bottom of ordinary peoples list of priorities as polls have shown. Most people live paycheck to paycheck (if their lucky enough to have a job) and are just trying to survive.
… then Americans surely will experience the same fear-filled collapse of civil society as Europe!
Seriously ordovic, all of Europe’s diversely many health-care systems are
• lower-cost than US healthcare
• greater-access than US healthcare
• better results than US healthcare
Is it any wonder than *NO* nation that has embraced managed-market healthcare has *EVER* gone back to a (deranged! inefficient! inhumane!) US-style healthcare system?
Prediction ObamaCare will evolve toward a Swiss-style health-care system. And that system, while imperfect, will be *far* better than what the US has at present! Even conservatives will learn to love it, and defend it.
That will be *GOOD*, eh ordvic?
Breathe in a bag! Conservatism will be perfectly OK under the new system!
“better results than US healthcare”
Measuring dead people is a rather easy metric and so cancer survival rates are a reasonable rule-of-thumb for comparing systems; the UK system sucks.
Ask any NHS clinicition what they think of ‘NICE”.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-136377/US-v-UK-The-breast-cancer-survival-stakes.html
Seriously Fan I wish they would have gone straight to the socialist plan! I own a small business and can’t really afford Obamacare either. I’m trying to get the thing to a point that I could sell it when I retire. This is just another thing keeping me from getting the dies ready to start a chance at an internet version of my business. This Obamacare is a killer for me. It looks like it’s purposely designed to fail so they can go the direction you suggest but the economy is so weak I will be surprised if there is not another collapse. What will happen after that I don’t know but it just looks like it sucks. Europe is in a lot worse situation than us just waiting for another Greece or Spain collapse that will start the house of cards to fall. When government gets bigger than the private sector and the pensions come due it is just fiat floating as long as it can.
Gosh DocMartyn, why would *anyone* trust The Daily Mail, when the scientific literature speaks plainly
• US versus GB cancer-death rates identical
• US costs hugely higher
• US access far worse
• US medical bankruptcies disastrously common
The science speaks plainly, doesn’t it DocMartyn?
The present-day US healthcare system disastrously sucks!
The Great Mystery Why does *any* rational person trust tabloid science?
You just misreported the data from that study.
The Very Reverend Jebediah Hypotenuse | September 19, 2013 at 11:30 am “Well, gosh, Dr Curry.
Could it be the fact that there really is no “growing discrepancy between the models and observations?”
Reply : So that we all get our terms correct, does this make you a ‘Denier”?
Since there is now a consensus in the “pause”, you are now a “Climate Consensus Denier”.
ColdinTN
The Reverend, being a man of the cloth rather than a technically or scientifically savvy individual, relies on “faith” rather than “scientific evidence”.
His faith tells him it must be warming, even though all those thermometers out there (even the ones next to AC exhausts in summer or heated buildings in winter) are screaming at him that it is cooling slightly instead.
“Blessed are those who have not seen yet believe…”
Max
It’s been pointed out here in different ways and at different times but I find it ironic that the consensus crowd denies the plausible questioning of their conclusions based on a denial of the their own data’s inaccurate modeling results. How very odd this is.
Thought for the Consensus Crowd: Simply address the subject. How can the model be improved? Is carbon really the bad guy? (Pick any other AGW centric or naturally occurring candidate – almost anything is bound to be better at this point.) This would seem to be scaling new heights of denial. They deny their own denial.
They’re projecting.
jbmckim, obviously the models are constructed by very clever people and reality just happens. mindlessly, so it is reality that is on the blink and nor a failure of software designers.
Discussions on how to Spin It :)
Global warming slowdown complicates job of UN climate panel
IPCC, countries argue over how to communicate science behind recent trend
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/global-warming-slowdown-complicates-job-of-un-climate-panel-1.1860527
Will they just use Juncker’s methodology? :: ))
Head Of Eurogroup Admits To Lying About “Secret Greek Meeting” Out Of Fears For Market Collapse – “When It Becomes Serious, You Have To Lie”
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/head-eurogroup-admits-lying-about-secret-greek-meeting-out-fears-market-collapse
The IPCC is a political organization created to invent quasi-science arguments to rationalize carbon regulations and controls on a global basis. Any time the presumption about the IPCC that doesn’t admit this you know you are being lied to. Dr. Curry maintains the facade and the fake science discussion directed from the political consensus driving AGW even she appears in dissent. It’s pitiful that this is accepted in the skeptical community and is a primary reason such a deeply flawed regulatory ambition has hung on beyond all reason in an advanced civilization.
“why is the IPCC just starting to grapple with this issue now, essentially two minutes before midnite of the release of the AR5?”
The IPCC is a green activist, global statist and left-wing organization built for expanding a regulatory meme based on climate fears. It’s adjunct to left-wing media, government expansionism globally (U.N. has similar dna) and a largely green/leftist activist academic enclave called “consensus climate science”. Most of this was figured out no later than the 1980’s when the organization was formed by many members including Dr. Lindzen.
Rather than ask foolish rhetorical questions as if you didn’t know the answer Dr. Curry now would be an opportune time to publicly acknowledge the corruption based nature of the IPCC and be specific as I have been as to why it is corrupt. Greenshirt, activist, statist advocates with a pro-carbon regulation agenda before any science truth.
Does that answer your question?
Own up.
….and the black helicopters are coming.
res ipsa loquitur ;
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/sep/19/ipcc-chairman-climate-report?CMP=twt_fd
“We are an intergovernmental body and we do what the governments of the world want us to do,” he said. “If the governments decide we should do things differently and come up with a vastly different set of products we would be at their beck and call.”
In short they are admitted tools of the agenda I listed.
The blue helmets are coming; hide the women and children.
============
Your Wish is My Command, Master
http://sketdance.wikia.com/wiki/Your_Wish_is_My_Command,_Master_%28chapter%29
“Drum roll . . . the paper was rejected. I read the paper (read it yourself), and I couldn’t see why it was rejected, particularly since it seems to be a pretty straightforward analysis that has been corroborated in subsequent published papers.” – Judith.
Journals must publish all submitted articles??….or Judith sees a conspiracy!!
The rejection of this paper raised my watchdog hackles, and I asked to see the reviews. I suspected gatekeeping by the editor and bias against the skeptical authors by the editor and reviewers.
um, that’s some formatting weirdness. Try again.
“Drum roll . . . the paper was rejected. I read the paper (read it yourself), and I couldn’t see why it was rejected, particularly since it seems to be a pretty straightforward analysis that has been corroborated in subsequent published papers.
The rejection of this paper raised my watchdog hackles, and I asked to see the reviews. I suspected gatekeeping by the editor and bias against the skeptical authors by the editor and reviewers.” – Judith.
Journals must publish all submitted articles??….or Judith sees a conspiracy!!
And I might add, this kind of thing raised by BS hackles.
Phil Jones
“I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”
Peer review in climate has changed; the outside is now peering in.
=======================
Editors are……gatekeepers.
Oh noes, hold the front page (don’t tell the editor)!!
Here comes Judith ‘Scoop’ Curry.
Ask nice, Michael…
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/430649/What-climate-change-Fewer-people-than-EVER-believe-the-world-is-really-warming-up
there you go.
Do electric pianos dream of wired lamp posts?
=============
Wrong story Tom.
But hilarious – nice example of why tabloids like that are a POS.
Maybe the more interesting take from that is – 80% of people beleive the world is warming.
And for context – int the US only about 50% of people beleive in evolution.
Go climate scientists!!
Now you are talking, Michael.
Good to see you have BS, because you have no point. Straw men do nothing to raise the awareness level.
Try addressing what is said, not creating straw men out of nothing.
“Journals must publish all submitted articles??….or Judith sees a conspiracy!!”
Now that the duplicative Fyfe paper has been published, it indicates that the Michaels et al. paper deserved to be published.
Michael, you came all the way across the pacific just to demonstrate your ignorance by constructing a straw man that no one but you would even conceive of?
I am writting an essay on climate change in which, focusing in statistics, I disagree with the scientific work of Annan, Hawkins, Fyfe, Rose … and with many comments of JC about the pause.
I don’t believe that, when taking statistics into climatic account, people like Heidi Cullen could rectify. But I hope that independent scientist (either skeptics or consensus) will do rectify.
Please ignore my comment in moderation Judith. I miscounted the links.
‘Thus the body of scientific research consistently shows that global warming continues unabated, and is predominantly human-caused. The Pacific Ocean has likely played a significant role in the slowed global surface warming over the past 15 years by transferring more heat to the deep oceans, but that change appears to be a temporary one. When the Pacific Ocean enters its next warm cycle, we’re likely to see a rapid warming of global surface temperatures. If we continue to use the temporary slowed surface warming as an excuse to delay climate action, we’ll regret that decision when the surface warming kicks in with a vengeance.’
http://www.occuworld.org/news/311643
Nuccitelli is at least 10 years behind the science. They have been so sure and so dismissive for so long and now are struggling to rationalise the emergent conceptual anomalies.
The first point to note is that the Pacific has alternately added to and reduced warming on decadal scales in the 20th century such that attribution to CO2 has been entirely mistaken. Another point is that the changes in ocean and atmospheric circulation change cloud cover. Cloud cover is negatively correlated to sea surface temperature. Here is the reason for real planetary – oceans and atmosphere – cooling since the 1998/2001 climate shift.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/ProjectEarthshine-albedo_zps87fc3b7f.png.html?sort=3&o=3
‘Earthshine changes in albedo shown in blue, ISCCP-FD shown in black and CERES in red. A climatologically significant change before CERES followed by a long period of insignificant change.’
The insignificant change in CERES is sufficient to cause a modest increase in ARGO heat content. This was all in less reflected SW over the period. One of the problems is that the new generation equipment for monitoring of ocean heat and radiant flux missed the critical 1998/2001 shift.
Enric Palle and Ben Laken (2013) have spanned the data divide using ISCCP-FD and MODIS cloud and validating the splice with Pacific equatorial sea surface temperature.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/cloud_palleandlaken2013_zps3c92a9fc.png.html?sort=3&o=26
It shows cloud cover declining to the end of the century – a sudden jump – and small changes since.
The most interesting aspect is the nature of the sudden shift in warming and cooling modes. It is first of all a Pacific wide phenomenon – best known as the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation – that shows up in decadal patterns of ENSO variability. The abrupt nature of the changes on mode suggests – convincingly – that the pattern is deterministically chaotic.
‘ENSO causes climate extremes across and beyond the Pacific basin; however, evidence of ENSO at high southern latitudes is generally restricted to the South Pacific and West Antarctica. Here, the authors report a statistically significant link between ENSO and sea salt deposition during summer from the Law Dome (LD) ice core in East Antarctica. ENSO-related atmospheric anomalies from the central-western equatorial Pacific (CWEP) propagate to the South Pacific and the circumpolar high latitudes. These anomalies modulate high-latitude zonal winds, with El Niño (La Niña) conditions causing reduced (enhanced) zonal wind speeds and subsequent reduced (enhanced) summer sea salt deposition at LD. Over the last 1010 yr, the LD summer sea salt (LDSSS) record has exhibited two below-average (El Niño–like) epochs, 1000–1260 ad and 1920–2009 ad, and a longer above-average (La Niña–like) epoch from 1260 to 1860 ad. Spectral analysis shows the below-average epochs are associated with enhanced ENSO-like variability around 2–5 yr, while the above-average epoch is associated more with variability around 6–7 yr. The LDSSS record is also significantly correlated with annual rainfall in eastern mainland Australia. While the correlation displays decadal-scale variability similar to changes in the interdecadal Pacific oscillation (IPO), the LDSSS record suggests rainfall in the modern instrumental era (1910–2009 ad) is below the long-term average. In addition, recent rainfall declines in some regions of eastern and southeastern Australia appear to be mirrored by a downward trend in the LDSSS record, suggesting current rainfall regimes are unusual though not unknown over the last millennium.’ http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00003.1?journalCode=clim
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Vance2012-AntarticaLawDomeicecoresaltcontent.jpg.html?sort=3&o=81
There are interesting correspondences as well in Moy’s 2002 proxy from a South American lake.
Approximate 1000 year periodicity, mega droughts and mega floods, the switch from a La Niña regime to El Niño about 5000 years ago.
The decadal regimes persist for 20 to 40 years over the last 1000 years. There are 2 points to draw from all this – CO2 is by no means the major factor in recent warming and change back to warmer conditions is by no means guaranteed.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/ENSO11000.gif.html?sort=3&o=140
“If we continue to use the temporary slowed surface warming as an excuse to delay climate action, we’ll regret that decision…” – http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2013/sep/03/global-warming-pacific-ocean-puzzle-piece
The part that I don’t follow is that if CO2 is highly controlling, it has to run the show between the Oceans and its wheelhorse, the Sun. The most logical way to me that it can do that, is with the clouds albedo. I believe The Chief has shown many times change in the albedo trend with a little bump up in the cooling direction around 2000-2002:
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/cloud_palleandlaken2013_zps3c92a9fc.png.html?sort=3&o=26
Thank you.
I am open to CO2 being able to do that, but I doubt that the data is showing that.
It’s my opinion that the SSTs are showing us at least two things, messages from the Oceans and the Sun. (The SW being gated by the clouds.) Messages with real significant heat content.
“They have been so sure and so dismissive for so long and now…”
Simply considering could their presentation approach be more effective, I’d say yes. When I read their articles, I expect to see a committed approach. And I usually see it.
I realize the chart I linked to was clouds, not the same as albedo.
A chart showing albedo from Palle et al:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Lxqre8hMG3M/S9NdJYv-UjI/AAAAAAAABLI/jkMTUSYQ6pc/s1600/weatherAlbedo2007.jpg
Sorry about the mistake.
Hate to say – but that last one is out by a factor of at least 2. Palle has corrected. Best not to rely on it.
Albedo is mostly cloud – and clouds are net cooling.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/from:1983
Mirror image of your Palleandlaken chart?
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/tropicalcloud.png.html?sort=3&o=71
Chief said:
“CO2 is by no means the major factor in recent warming and change back to warmer conditions is by no means guaranteed.”
——
If he was correct in his speculation he ought to be awarded a Nobel prize for physics for proving that our fundamental understanding of GH gas physics is wrong. My speculation is that he shall not get the Nobel prize.
The problem with a nasty little warminista dweeb who laughably threatens to make life intolerable on a blog is that they forfeit any presumption to honesty and credibility.
Oh, rather that I should accept without question someone grossly misrepresenting what I say?
I think not.
Heh, RG, correcting the record is more persuasive than threatening to make an intolerable situation. It’s also more effective. I can just see your correspondent shivering in his boots, enduring your intolerance, and smiling inwardly.
You gave your religious little self away a few weeks ago with your remark about the ‘carrying capacity’ of the Earth. Now your iron fist takes off a glove; just how is it that you intend to make life intolerable for those humans your ilk would presume excessive?
===============================
The latest climate study — released two days ago (and, signed onto by 50 scientists from around the world) finds that, “the hypothesis of human-caused global warming comes up short not merely of ‘full scientific certainty’ but of reasonable certainty or even plausibility. The weight of evidence now leans heavily against the theory.”
It’s not easy giving up three decades of work that turns out to be worthless. It is also not easy giving up when you have been screaming like a banshee at the people that were trying to warn them that their work is most likely worthless. It’s also not easy giving up when you know that by doing so you will also be giving up your income, your good time friends and your prestige and your reputation. No need to wonder why now they hesitantly, begrudgingly and fearfully begin pulling at cards from the bottom of the house that they built?
A pause, or not a pause … that is the question.
Regarding,
Independent on the question whether a discrepancy between model simulations (CMIP3 or CMIP5) and observations is emerging, I think the analysis is methodically too flawed to allow the conclusions the authors draw.
Please anyone correct me, if I misunderstood the analysis in the manuscript.
The authors compare distributions of model trends, derived from running trend calculations over the period 2001 to 2020, with one individual realization from observations for each time period for each observation data set. Then they find the observed trends were in the 5% to 20% percentiles of the model trend distributions. And from this they conclude “concern about the consistency” between the observed temperature trends and model projections.
Why do I think the analysis is flawed?
1. For the argument I assume the models were all perfect. For the same changing conditions driving externally Earth’s changing climate, the models would produce a distribution of trends, due to unforced variability, which would be the same as the distribution of all possible temperature trends in Nature, from which the observed temperature trend is only one realization. Because of the assumption of perfect models, if the observed temperature trend lies in the tail of the distribution of natural trends, being a statistical outlier within the natural trend distribution, it will with necessity also lie in the tail of the model trend distribution. To conclude from this that there was a discrepancy between observed trend and model distribution would be a false conclusion. If the conclusion was even wrong for perfect models it also is wrong for imperfect models. In reality, all models are imperfect. I suspect the authors have exactly done this. They do not compare the model trends to randomly picked observed trends, or the average of the observed trend distribution. Instead, the basis for their analysis is a time period which is known to have a very strong El Nino near the beginning of the analysis period for all the trends between 12 and 15 years, and La Ninas at the end of the analysis period. The choice of the observed trends is already biased in favor of the conclusions.
And why do the authors present a 5% to 20% probability of occurrence as if this was something that shouldn’t likely have been observed, if there wasn’t a discrepancy? Based on running trends with monthly steps, even a 5% probability of occurrence means one still gets a trend like the observed one every 20 months on average, using the same approach of running trends for the observations, if the model trend distribution and the natural trend distribution are the same.
2. The comparison between models and observations is not based on an equal footing regarding the external forcings. Claiming that the observed CO2 increase is similar to the prescribed one for the model simulations is not sufficient, since there are other forcing too, which are important on a time scale from 5 to 15 years of the observations. For a proper analysis one would have to take into account possible discrepancies between the variability of other forcings and what was prescribed as idealization for the model simulations, e.g., regarding stratospheric aerosols or tropospheric aerosols. Or regarding solar forcing. The model period from 2001 to 2021 includes almost two full solar cycles, which also were prescribed as idealization as just being a repetition of previous solar activity variability. So the net effect of changes in solar activity in the models is probably negligible for the whole 20 year period, therefore also for the distribution of model trends derived from the whole 20 year period. In contrast, solar activity in Nature moved from a maximum in the year 2000 to a minimum in 2008. This came with a change in solar forcing by about -0.25 W/m^2. This is about the same magnitude as the increase in the magnitude of radiative forcing by CO2, but with opposite sign, over the same time period. So the decrease in radiative forcing from solar activity could fully compensate the increase in radiative forcing from CO2 over the time period from the year 2000 to 2008. The net energy input change from the combination of the two forcings over the same time period was about Zero. I would expect a significant effect on temperature trends over similar length ending in 2009, coming from this, everything else equal. The authors have not taken this into consideration for their analysis.
IMHO, a correct methodology is to compare the distribution of trends from the model simulations with the distribution of trends from observations, after accounting for possible divergences between the observed variability of external climate drivers and the climate drivers prescribed for the simulations. Or subtract the components of short-term variability from the models and the simulations first, and then compare the residual trends to study whether there are discrepancies between simulations and Nature regarding the longer-term trend. And then one still would have to check whether a possible divergence is due to a divergence between observed external drivers and prescribed external drivers in the simulations, before one could draw conclusions about the skill of the models.
If the paper starts near a solar minimum and ends near a solar minimum, why would we expect that to skew the results? I’m not following this line of argument.
little steven,
This is what Jan says
The authors could have used the long temperature record between the years 1940 and 1975 where it appeared to be flat:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1940/to:1975/plot/gistemp/from:1940/to:1975/trend
That would give a distribution of trends from observations.
The log sensitivity to CO2 ln(331/307) between 1940 and 1975 was about the same as in the last 15 years ln(398/366).
So one can see that these historical cases of plateauing are not unheard of in the context of the theory of CO2 forcing.
That’s what the paper needed, some real analysis.
Web, that’s nice. It doesn’t answer my specific question regarding a specific portion of his critique. I am glad to see you are taking up the skeptic position that a replay of the mid 20th century cooling is a possibility.
@steven:
The observed trends in the paper are from the period ending in December 2009 back in time for 5 to 15 years. However, the model trend distributions with equal period lengths are derived from the model simulations from January 2001 to December 2020 by calculating running trends. The model simulations include almost two full (idealized) solar cycles. Thus, the average change in solar variability over the whole 20 years for which the model trend distributions are valid is close to Zero. However, in Nature, solar activity decreased from a maximum to a minimum from the year 2000 to 2008. The change was about -0.25 W/m^2. So Zero on average for the model trend distribution versus -0.25 W/m^2 in Nature for time periods of about the same lengths regarding solar forcing change. This decrease in solar activity is not negligible compared to the radiative forcing increase from increasing CO2 over the same time period. It’s about the same magnitude, but with opposite sign. I would expect a significant effect on those observed trends, ending in December 2009, which have about the same lengths, everything else equal, since the summed up net forcing change of the two factors was about Zero in the real world.
The individual realizations of the observed trends, ending in December 2009, are not on equal footing with the distribution of modelled trends. They are already biased toward lower trends, due to the decrease in solar forcing from the maximum in 2000, particularly the ones which start near the solar maximum. The authors could have selected subsets of the modelled trends, instead, for which the solar forcing change is about the same as the observed solar forcing change over the same period length of observed trends, and then compare the observed trends to the distributions of the subsets. I anticipate that the distribution of such a subset of modelled trends is shifted to lower trends and has a lower average trend compared to the distribution of all modelled trends. Then the individual trend realization from Nature would have been on a more equal footing with the subset of the modelled trends, regarding the underlying change in solar variability.
I already have noticed that I should have made this clearer in the first paragraph of my criticism that the authors used different time periods for the observed trends and the modelled trends from which the trends are taken, even though I referred to this at some later point. I’m thinking about reposting my criticism of the manuscript on my own blog. If I do I will clarify this in the first paragraph.
Odd things, those solar forcings.
======
Jan, if your interpretation is correct then I can understand your complaint. My interpretation is that they manipulated the data in a similar manner for observations as they did for the model. For instance for the 5 year trends they would have started the series in the mid 90s and finished in 2009. This would have included 5 year trends both from minima to maxima and from maxima to minima. It would have been the logical way to compare as opposed to just using a single trend with 2009 as an end point and would have cancelled out most of any influence in the results a change in the solar cycle would have had.
Reading it again I think you have the right interpretation. It would still cancel out for the most part on the 15 year trend.
It is simply remarkable that the discussion around the models have not yielded any clear agreement one way or the other that retro-fitting with past data does not necessarily enhance predictability.
The incompatibility of the paleo data with physical measurements was an issue IMO but now it seems we even have difficulties with the reconciliation of the physical measurements of the past 200 years with the satellite data since 1979.
So the situation we now have is that the comparison of fudgy model projections with fudgy empirical measurements are not yielding coherent information that is of value for regions undergoing climate stress.
It looks like we will need to keep refining the satellite data so that everyone can agree on their validity for forecasting future climate trends but I suspect that this will not happen for another 200 years or so.
Given that meteorology is currently performing a valuable if limited function for regions in need of reliable weather forecasts, it seems that it would be more fruitful for more work to be done on extending the reliability of regional forecasts over longer time periods.
In the above context one would be forgiven for questioning whether the study of global climate trends should be put on an equal footing with the prediction of solar fluctuations and other forms of astronomical research, which would be of academic interest only.
There’s only one way to restrict global climate trends to academic interest only:
-Cut CO2 emissions so that CO2 level in the atmosphere is no longer rising at an unprecedented rate.
And yet the world is not warming for a decade to 3 more.
Why on earth would you predict 3 decades of no warming? That’s a crazy prediction. Under business as usual CO2 is going to climb ever higher in the next 30 years. So that’s a large warming effect in the bag.
Just what are you expecting to counteract that?
You are already wrong, the earth hasn’t yet stopped warming.
Anyone who has any idea at all numbnut is recognising that the Pacific is cooling things off.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/09/19/peer-review-the-skeptic-filter/#comment-382847
Hardly, have you seen SSTs lately?
Look, you’ve been warned. Watch what happens, the world will continue warming. Please don’t come back and pretend you had know way of knowing it would happen. All of you have been provided with sufficient data to realize that human CO2 is in the driving seat here. You all choose to skirt around that in various Anything But Carbon Dioxide ways.
SST are consistent with decadal variability in the Pacific – as they must be.
lolwot – There’s only one way – -Cut CO2 emissions…
No the only way is geo-engineering, err I mean bioengineering err… a sunshade at the L1 Lagrangian point… , etc
OK i give up. How does one choose 1 option so decisively?
Chief said:
“Anyone who has any idea at all numbnut is recognising that the Pacific is cooling things off.”
—
By “things” he of course means the troposphere and by “cooling” he of course means not warming. The ocean is not passing heat along as readily to the atmosphere. But of course, rather than speaking to oceans gaining energy, let’s talk unscientifically about “things”. Or maybe simply recite some Vogon poetry?
Chief said:
“And yet the world is not warming for a decade to 3 more.”
—
By “world” he is referring to the lower troposphere as measured by sensible heat, not the much much larger and more consistent metric of ocean heat content.
Oh, wait for it…now his rabid nutter post of a 2003 study or some other irrelevant or outdated bit of data.
You have seen the data many times gates. The problem with a nasty little dweeb who laughably threatens to make life on a blog intolerable has lost any claim to honesty and credibility.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/LymnaandJohnson2013OHCA_zps703732d0.png.html?sort=3&o=0
Doesn’t look like 1998 was the peak in ocean heat content there Chief. Is that what you consider credible data to back up your contention? You have credibility?
Perhaps as a Vogon poet.
2003 peak is continually increasing heat content? The energy budget peaked at the end of the last century. You are dishonest, a fool and a nasty little dweeb to boot.
I have absolutely no clue about what you are talking in these two paragraphs. What “retro-fitting”? What incompatibility of the paleo-data? What about satellite retrieved measurements since 1979 and physical measurements of the past 200 years?
Projections/Predictions. Retro-fitting/hindcasting. Adjustments/Reconciliations. Algorithms/Models.
And Metaphors and Tortoises went
Oui oui oui all the way down.
=============
No clue whatever Jan P Perlwitz?
The very process of modelling involves simulation runs with existing datum and adjustments to the math formulae to obtain good fits with the data. Subsequent adjustments are made with the accretion of fresh data. Not so? Ask any modeller, if you know any.
The Mannian hockeystick is another bone of contention Jan P Perlwitz. How would you go at splicing paleo data that is of low resolution, spatially and temporally, with much higher resolution data from modern time series? Probably not much better than Michael Mann, who is at this moment attempting to distance himself from his example of undergraduate level mediocre science. Not so? Perhaps you need to Google Michael Mann’s latest papers.
The BEST project has our Steven Mosher among the research team that is currently re-examining our data sources with a view to restoration and cleanup of the various land based and ARGO buoys temp data. He and other are at this time in the process of reconciling BEST data with the satellite data. Same problem with the difference in resolution of Earth based observations with the very high resolution that is provided by the satellite data. Not so? Ask Steven Mosher, he often contributes to this blog.
I suspect that I have just wasted 10 minutes of my time because you know that I must be wrong and that you are right Jan P Perlwitz? Not so? Then show me and the other readers of this blog why your opinion should taken more seriously than mine.
@Peter Davies:
If you are claiming projections with physical state of the art climate models are based on statistical fits to past observed climate trends, show the evidence that this was the case. Because I say this is not a fact. I know enough people involved in climate modelling who I can ask. Or I just ask myself.
A nice example how fake skeptics often argue, when they don’t like the results from scientific research. Some unspecific assertions are being made about it, garnished with innuendo and ad hominem, and then the opponent to whom the assertions are proposed is requested to “Google” the alleged evidence for the assertion by him/herself.
wrong place
Michael Mann:
“Why an obscure graph published in a scientific journal should enrage so many people has been the subject of much internet conspiracy (or genuine scientific debate, depending on your point of view).
The original 1998 hockey stick study by Mann and his colleagues did in fact emphasise the tentative nature of estimating past temperatures before the invention of accurate thermometers.”
“When we first published our Nature article in 1998, we went back six centuries,” Mann says. “A year later we published a follow-up going back 1,000 years with quite a few caveats. In fact, the caveats and uncertainties appeared in the title, and the abstract emphasised just how tentative this study was because of all the complicating issues.
“It’s frustrating that to some extent all of that context had been lost and the result has been caricatured. Often the errors bars are stripped away, making it appear more definitive than it was ever intended.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/michael-mann-the-climate-scientist-who-the-deniers-have-in-their-sights-6290232.html
Such caveats and uncertainties certainly got little air time when the graph was used for political purposes Jan P Perlwitz.
Now for models:
“Climate/weather models are run on grid-like structures, but observations come irregularly: we do not have equally spaced observations over the surface of the Earth and through the atmosphere. To operate, the observations have to be placed on the model grid. The analysis, then, is a sort of interpolation that does this. This is not a detriment; it is a necessary step to get these models to run.
Once the analysis is complete, the model is integrated forward in time to produce a forecast. OK so far? Because it’s about to get tricky. At that future point—the time of the forecast—come new observations. Ideally, the climate/weather model’s output would be checked against these actual observations, at only the irregularly spaced sites where they are taken. These observations are, are the truth, the whole truth, and the only truth.
But that’s not what happens. Instead, these new observations are read into the model in a new analysis cycle. This interpolates these new observations to the model grid. Then the old model integration is checked against this new analysis.”
“Two problems arise when comparing a model’s integration (the forecast) with an analysis of new observations, which are not found when comparing the forecast to the observations themselves. Verifying the model with an analysis, we compare two equally sized “grids”; verifying the model with observations, we compare a tiny number of model grid points with reality.
Now, some kinds of screwiness in the model are also endemic in the analysis: the model and analysis are, after all, built from the same materials. Some screwiness, therefore, will remain hidden, undetectable in the model-analysis verification.
However, the model-analysis verification can reveal certain systematic errors, the knowledge of which can be used to improve the model. But the result is that the model, in its improvement cycle, is pushed towards the analysis. And always remember: the analysis is not reality, but a model of it.
Therefore, if models over time are tuned to analyses, they will reach an accuracy limit which is a function of how accurate the analyses are. In other words, a model might come to predict future analyses wonderfully, but it could still predict real-life observations badly.”
http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=2067
In both cases Jan P Perlwitz, the overconfidence is disturbing. Are you comfortable with this? I’m not but I am a fake sceptic anyway!
Jan, Honey, we don’t belieeeeeeve you anymore. It’s getting much more like bereave.
========
2003 peak is continually inceasing heat content? The energy budget peak at the end of the last century. You are dishonest, a fool and a nasty little dweeb to boot.
The michael et al seems to have been very carefully done and I can’t see why it was rejected as it stood;
However the validity of models of this type with random elements should never depend on gross output alone. Validity can only be eastablished by first ensuring the validity of each and every process within the model. Unless this is done there is no guarantee that a close comparison between model and observed values was obtained purely by chance, not physics. For many years it has been reported that many of the processes within the models were not well understood. All the more reason to suspect the outputs of such models.
By supporting about 20 (different?) models it appears that the IPCC thought that quantity was nore important than quality. I have often written of the fallacy of this theory, but to no avail. One good properly validated model was all they needed.
I can see why.
I can see wily, now, the view has cleared.
==============
I can see allllll icicles in my way.
He has explained why in a lengthy and well reasoned post a little further up. Their method is hopelessly flawed.
skeptic’s ”bull -detector” is falling a sleep, tragic…
everybody is into the phony GLOBAL warming, both camps… join the circus
They should have extended the analysis back the full length of UAH which is 1979. The mean surface trend since then was about 0.016 C/yr, so the models would have averaged only a little higher (0.02) which could be attributed to their later averaging period (2001-2020). Their excuse for not going back beyond 1991 was Pinatubo, which was a small blip that would only have added some noise to the short trends, but would have made the long trends more robust with more samples. The fact that changing the analysis period would somewhat affect their conclusion is probably why they did not do this. Hopefully at least one of the reviewers made this suggestion to improve their work.
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/ar5_spm_fig1-cropped1.png
Spot the “pause” (with Bob Tisdale’s arrows to help you.)
Having a paper rejected is ego-bruising especially when you’re certain that your creation, although not perfect, is no less perfect than the others and deserves to see the light of day. It happens to the best. I hope the authors will glean whatever is useful from the referees’ comments, revise, and submit it somewhere that is likely to give them a fair shake. Why not try a journal like the Annals of Applied Statistics which has published climate papers before and doesn’t seem to be stuck in the climate culture wars?
BREAKING NEWS: THE ‘PAUSE’ IS OVER !!!
Seriously, Climate Etc readers are overlooking what is by *far* the most likely four-part near-term eventuality:
Eventuality 1 energy-imbalance continues unabated
Eventuality 2 sea-level rise continues unabated
Eventuality 3 ice-mass loss continues unabated
Eventuality 4 land-heating resumes record-setting
Conclusion Mediocre-to-weak computer-modeling and cycle-seeking science — the science is the main focus of Climate Etc wrangling — is only tangentially relevant to the mainstream progress of climate-change science, which is driven by energy-balance analysis. And energy-balance climate-change science is in TERRIFIC shape!
Summary The future belongs to Hansen and Francis, not Monckton and Watts!
“August 2013 also marks the 35th consecutive August and 342nd consecutive month with a global temperature above the 20th century average.”
How deceiving! 20th century average? Simpletones.
LOL … “simpletones”? Rather, “subtletones“!
Seriously Edim, more-and-more folks are appreciating that harmonious scientific/social understanding is feasible … and the principles of conservatism will mature and prosper in light of this understanding!
There is nothing to worry about Edim … unless rational conservatism is destroyed by moronic Moncktonian denialism, that is!
Simpletons!
fan is simper fi.
============
Edim yelled :
”
Edim | September 20, 2013 at 6:53 am |
Simpletons!
”
Fan does have a point. It is true that the Earth retained more heat than ever in the last month. The Earth has a heat capacity and so the calorimetric measure of thermal energy is continuing to rise. Temperature is only an intrinsic surface measure of a three-dimensional extrinsic value (joules of thermal energy).
A potentially higher average temperature some years ago can be eclipsed by the fact that the ocean has continued to retain more thermal energy and more latent latent heat has been absorbed by melting ice. The total heat retained is now at a historical record.
This is thermal physics, not simpleton physics as you claim, Edim.
BTW, where are Essex and McKitrick now? I thought they were always complaining about using temperature as a measure. Hmmm?
“
How many gigatons of CO2 since 2005 to apparently no effect?
==================
LOL! Link added!
Breathe in a bag, kim! Conservatism will grow stronger once it faces up (responsibly!) to climate-change realities
When fan doesn’t want to talk about temperature he talks about sea level. Remarkably reminiscent of a committee without a chairosaur. But whence the rigid tone, chrysales in cocoons?
=======================================
Well it looks like Essex and McKitrick finally got their wish. The calorimetric measure of thermal energy is eclipsing the use of a thermometric measure of thermal energy.
If you don’t know what I am talking about, you don’t know the comical history of denier reasoning and the story of T-REX. (ha ha)
Some denier goon can fill you in, lil kim.
I am sure there are deniers that understand thermal physics out there.
LOL … kim, don’t denialists of global long-term energy-imbalance focus obsessively upon local short-term temperature fluctuations? That style of denialism ain’t very smart — or very foresighted either! — is it kim?
Here is a lil limerick for lil kim:
How’s that for a quip, lil kim?
Fixed it for yah (hopefully), Webby! (details here!)
Seriously, the future looks to be strong long-term (energy-balance) climate-science, affirmed by weaker short-term (dynamical modeling) climate-science, with purely statistical “cycle-science” relegated to the dust-bin of climate-change history. And rightly so!
The swelling ocean
Responds without emotion,
But to what, and when?
==================
Thanks Fan,
Shows how scientists can work together !
You mean to say it takes two PhDs to screw in a LaTex light bulb.
ROFL
I kill me sometimes.
SpringyBoy,
The problem with the various TEX parsers is that they are very forgiving when it comes to what is acceptable syntax. The WordPress parser is not forgiving and has no preview.
Back to the equation, since you seem to be so interested in it
The first line states that the overall heat change is due to three components of specific heat change, one for water, land, and atmosphere respectively. These are summed over all of the delta volumes that are subjected to a temperature change. The last item represents the latent heat change due to ice melting, etc.
The second line indicates that due to the large heat capacity of the ocean and the near monotonic rise of ocean temperature through its volume, the heat content will continue to increase over time.
Glad to be able to educate you SpringyBoy — both on syntax parsers and on thermal physics!
FOMobfuscation-
Liar liar, pants on fire
+(-1)^0.5
There’s a very definite feeling in the air that the IPCC is having a final solitary drink in the Last Chance Saloon, before riding out to be permanently swallowed up by the bad lands outside town. The previous report got torn to pieces by the skeptics and this one, judging by the commentary on leaks of it from various quarters, won’t fare much better.
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2013/09/20/armageddon-report-no-5/
Pointman
This one’s been drawn, gutted, quartered, and is being dragged in four directions at once; it will take a tankard of miraculous akvavit to re-assemble the pieces into a unity capable of rough-riding policy.
But zombies don’t stumble on harmlessly; there is much destruction and danger ahead.
================
LOL … you are entirely right kim! … that’s why conservatives need to quit following deranged denialist ideo-zombies! `Cuz following anti-science zombies just ain’t smart, eh kim?
There’s a wonderful analogy between the belief in speculative models, and the belief in the effectiveness of propaganda.
===================
Links added by FOMD!
Summary As the earth’s energy imbalance inexorably accumulates, it’s looking more-and-more like “game over” and “end of story!” for “pause-denialism” and “consensus-denialism”.
Postulate As rational conservatism abandons climate-change denialism, the long-term result will be healthy for conservatism and libertarianism!
Isn’t that pure common-sense, kim and pointman?
So that red square on Peru, which notes the highest temperature ever recorded, is accurate?
Peru Declares State of Emergency in Puno as Temperatures Drop
http://www.peruviantimes.com/28/peru-declares-state-of-emergency-in-puno-as-temperatures-drop/20080/
More than 250,000 alpacas have died due to freezing temperatures and snow storms.
http://elcomercio.pe/actualidad/1623460/noticia-puno-zonas-afectadas-nevadas-fueron-declaradas-emergencia
Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?
Chico Marx in Duck Soup
Pingback: The IPCC Is Pretty Much Dead Wrong | lessbull.com
“Models may not be accurate but they are the best we have and they are useful”
Garbish, rubbish, nonsense, a lie and any other similar words you can proclaim.
Send me a random sample of say a thousand or so spins at roulette and I will send you a model that will show you can win money at roulette by changing your betting pattern. Send me another sample and I will do the same. Send me a thousand samples and i will send you a model for each one. Now some of the models will be slightly different but they will operate in the same way and all will show the same thing, that you can win money at roulette by varying you betting pattern.
So that’s ‘proof’ of something is it?
Any alarmists or fans of the climate models out there like to argument that these inaccurate models are useful to some extent?
Alan
Alan Millar, your data-fitting example-models are notably deficient (as “cycle-chasing” climate models are generically efficient) in that they have large Kolmogorov complexity, and hence little predictive power.
The essay you *want* to read is Dick Hamming’s You and Your Research. Aye, Climate Etc lassies and laddies, now *THAT’S* an essay!
I notice you didn’t provide a link for ‘“cycle-chasing” climate models are generically efficient‘. Care to provide some sort of demonstration that climate models don’t also have large “Kolmogorov complexity“? Considering the source, I don’t at the moment intend to spend (waste?) time searching myself.
BTW, has anyone else noticed how Fan sometimes switches from socialist glop to actual science when the subject enters certain areas?
Excellent example! Easy to understand and devastatingly effective.
You see the useful idiots just don’t get it.
The period for which we have accurate climate data is absolutely minute given the time scales of the Earth’s natural climate processes.
My roulette example is absolutely true, I could do it every time, with any data samples of a thousand spins or even a few thousand for that matter.
That is because with 37 possible outcomes, natural variation rules over such a comparatively amount of data and I can play around with the parameters. Send me a sample of a billion spins and I think I am in trouble. Hell I KNOW I am in trouble!
It is the same with the climate we have a far too small a data sample to produce an accurate model and that presupposes we know the effects of all the processes, which we don’t.
With such a small sample of data, compared to all possible outcomes, then it is so easy to create a model that matches the data.
These modellers are deluding themselves in the amount of confidence they can place in their matches.
The odds that they have got it anywhere near right must be vanishingly small.
Alan
Alan Miller, you are the one who is talking nonsense.
Or, if you are claiming you are not, please show that you can develop a climate model for Earth conditions, which is based on known physics and which predicts global cooling, instead of global warming, or, at least, no significant change, when the CO2 in the model atmosphere is increased by the same magnitude as observed and with a continued increased as plausibly assumed for the rest of this century, everything else equal, since you claim it was all just nonsense or lies what is calculated with the climate models used in climate research.
AGW “skeptics” like to make bold assertions that the climate models were all just nonsense and garbage, the physics in the climate models was wrong etc., and they were useless for understanding the real world. Why hasn’t there been any “skeptic” climate model published yet, not a single one, with which “skeptics” can demonstrate that one gets very different results based on supposedly correct physics, then, when greenhouse gases are increased in the atmosphere? I am still waiting for it.
*Alan Millar
Sorry.
You have no idea what you are talking about!
Of course I can produce a Climate model that can match the past temperature record anyone with half a brain can do that,
When you get to choose the effect and size of the parameters like aerosols, black carbon, land use, effect of clouds etc etc then you can match anything.
Are you not aware that with free enough free parameters you can match anything to?
The real test of an accurate model is if it can match future events not past events they can all be fitted to the past it is not difficult.
An inaccurate model is not useful in any way. Indeed it can be possibly dangerous if you take decisions based on it and that is what a lot of Governments have done. They have made energy more expensive, throwing a proportion of their population into fuel poverty and people are dying as a result.
Alan
@Alan Millar:
You are wrong about that. I have a pretty good idea what I’m talking about, in contrast to you as it reveals further below.
These statements by you are an indication that you don’t know what you are talking about, when you talk about climate models, since you obviously assume for your claims – I already have suspected that – that climate model calculations are based on statistical matching procedures of the calculated climate response to changing parameters like CO2, aerosols, land use etc, and then extrapolating the derived statistical relationships to the future. And this is simply wrong.
Climate models are based on physics, but not based on statistical matching procedures between parameters and climate response. This is why a asked you to show that you can develop a climate model, which is based on known physics and which produces global cooling, instead of global warming, for an increasing CO2 content in the atmosphere, everything else equal. And you even didn’t seem to have understood what I asked you, since in your reply you talked about statistical matching.
Jan P Perlwitz | September 20, 2013 at 2:42 pm |
You really are clueless aren’t you?
Have you ever looked at a GCM?
You can’t have, you have just swallowed the Koolaid that they just use physics. Well they don’t my man their results are obtained from inputting various forcing effects giving these a value and changing these values over time.
Well I have I looked at GISS model;E to see how it operates.and it is amazing how they change their values at certain time points seemingly unrelated to any verified data. The values for some are known like solar TSI but a lot aren’t and they get to choose in the model. Heck, on some even the sign of the effect has not been conclusively shown yet.
You need to wise up my friend and do some independent thinking and examination because at the moment you are just a useful idiot for some people who are starting to realise they have got it wrong and are looking for an exit strategy.
Alan
Jan P Perlwitz | September 20, 2013 at 2:42 pm |
As an example I was having an exchange with Real Climate’s attack dog Ray Bradbury about the changing parameter values in the models. He of course played ‘The Teams’ usual response.
“No, Alan, the modeler will not decide on a “value” at all, but will instead model the processes using the best possible physics available. There will be a degree of subjectivity in selecting which physics is “best”, but once selected, that’s it for the model.”
I replied.
“Well Ray why do we have a number, of these modelled processes, have their values in GISS model E basically flat lining from the late 80s. Are you really saying that all these forcings suddenly flat lined from the same date without the intervention of the modeller. That wouldn’t be credible would it?
One of the flat lining forcings, for instance, is black carbon which up to that time showed a quite strong constant rising effect.
I don’t understand why it is shown a strong rising trend up to then anyway as Greenland ice cores show them peaking around 1920 and having a declining trend since.
What can the explanation be?”
Guess what?
Real Climate refused to post my reply they just censored it out of existence. Why would a ‘science’ site do that you think?
Wouldn’t be that they didn’t want useful idiots like yourself reading it and perhaps have an independent thought would it?
Alan
Climate deletionism is still, alas, alive and well. Who can forget the email from the founder of RealClimate, who boasted “we will be very careful in screening which comments get through…”
@Alan Millar:
Hmm. Have I?
Really! You claim to have looked at GISS ModelE. Thus, tell me some of the parameters in ModelE to which you are referring, which were arbitrarily set and where they are set in the model (file, subroutine, line number), and demonstrate that you can produce a totally different response, like global cooling, to an increase in greenhouse gases, everything else equal, by changing the values of those parameters arbitrarily and it would still be reconcilable with known physics and individual processes would still be in agreement with measured data. Like you loudly claimed you could. And you said it was easy. So far you have presented yourself only as a noisy bragger.
Jan P Perlwitz | September 20, 2013 at 5:58 pm
You haven’t ever looked at the models have you, admit it?
I have given you an example..
GISS, in its model, has been flat lining the following factors since the late 1980s. Black Carbon, Reflective Aerosols, Land Use and Ozone all of which it had changing values for in the model prior to the 80s
So Einstein tell me how this came about, explain the ‘physics’ behind it?
Also explain how prior to this, the model showed a rising trend effect for Black Carbon when the ice cores showed a declining trend.for Black Carbon.
You can answer this can’t you because you understand the models don’t you, you aren’t just parroting a line that you have swallowed have you?
Alan
Ahh the wonders of state run capitalism, Chinese style. You can purify the internet just like you purify the atmosphere of ACO2.
“In an offensive that some critics have likened to the political purges of the Mao era, Beijing has recently detained or interrogated several high-profile social-media figures, issued warnings to others to watch what they say and expanded criminal laws to make it easier to prosecute people for their online activity—all part of what one top propaganda official described on Tuesday as ‘the purification of the online environment.'”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324807704579082940411106988.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories
AP and the Daily Mail answer the original question; but this sentence is hilarious:
“… leaked documents seen by the Associated Press, yesterday revealed deep concerns among politicians about a lack of global warming over the past few years.”
So the politicians worry that there might be NO catastrophy?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2425775/Climate-scientists-told-cover-fact-Earths-temperature-risen-15-years.html
Well spotted Alexey! It reminds me of that Climategate email that read something like, “if this [pause] goes on for 15 years it’ll be time to get *worried*.” Not relieved; worried. There can be little doubt, from their words and actions, that alarmists are pro-catastrophe.
D’oh—I meant Alexej.
D. Koutsoyiannis documents his experiences with Skeptic Filters in Prehistory: Rejection by Geophysical Research Letters and by Nature Geoscience
Judith Curry wrote:
So, your own personal reaction to the reviews (12 pages summed up, so 3 per review on average, or 12 pages on average?) you are presenting here, is basically just an ad hominem accusation against all four reviewers to have succumbed to confirmation bias.
Jan, looks like you summed it up nicely.
An ad hom, technically speaking, is an attempted diversion from the content of an argument to the character or behavior of the argumenters. If it is not a diversion, it is not an ad hom. Accusations and insults, provided they are only lagniappe, are not ad homs.
well, I would call it paradigm paralysis among these reviewers who appear to have been carefully selected by the editor with the motivation of rejecting the paper; your inference of ad hominem accusation against the reviewers is utterly baseless
> I would call it paradigm paralysis among these reviewers who appear to have been carefully selected by the editor with the motivation of rejecting the paper
The emphasized bit shows why some may ask themselves if you’re not indulging into an ad hominem, Judy.
Motivations are not skin deep, but they’re still beneath some skin.
It’s not the color of the skin deep, it’s the conduct of the motivations.
==================
@nevaudit…
You missed the key phrase:
She denied ad hominem accusation against the reviewers.
You said before, “… all of the reviewers rejected the idea that IPCC model projections could be compared in such a way that led to the conclusion that indicate cause for concern regarding the consistency between climate model projections and observed climate behavior under conditions of increasing anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emissions.
I understand your statement in the quote that you claim all the reviewers rejected the paper because they couldn’t accept the specific conclusions in the paper, so the method in the paper had to be wrong. But this is nothing else than accusing them of confirmation bias.
And here you not just are extending the accusation to the editor, you even accuse the editor of malice.
”
…with the motivation of rejecting the paper
”
Oh – This is the scene where the Klimate Konsenus Kop kills the skeptic scientists’ careers…
But Willard’s already carefully read the script. Spoiler alert!
AK,
Nice to hear from you,
To determine if the accusation toward reviewers is baseless, you have to do some mediation about the concept of ad hom. Do you think that Judy’s accusation against the editor an ad hom? You do not discuss this, and what is not being said is very important in our comedy of menace.
Suppose that you do: attributing motives is an ad hom. Now, how does this motivation works exactly in Judy’s accusation? It is so strong as to be responsible for the whole agency at work in the story.
In other words, I think it is safe to say that according to Judy, the editor manipulated puppets. Tools. Pawns. Mindless automatons. Yes men.
Some may very well ask themselves if the accusation of ad hom against the reviewers can be dismissed as baseless. Being “paralysed by a paradigm” may very well have an ad hom aspect to it.
If it does, I hope this will get owned.
Hope this helps.
Thank you for your comment.
@nevaudit…
A traditional ad hominem attack involves attempting to deprecate/discredit an argument by attacking the person presenting it. (As such, it would be acceptable against somebody arguing from their own “authority”.) IMO accusations of improper motives do not constitute an ad hominem attack, unless they are part of some attempt to discredit a specific argument.
It might be said that the entire line of “global warming” advocacy by mainstream scientific publications (e.g. Science , Nature) is discredited by attacks on the motives of their publishers. This could arguably be called an ad hominem attack. The “Science” is less “scientific” because it’s biased by paradigm defense of key journal editors.
I guess it would depend on one’s definition of “science”. In the sort of Kuhnian terms I use, paradigm defense is a part of “science” that often goes beyond the bounds of what’s considered appropriate within the paradigm. I was unsurprised by the revelations of “Climategate”, because I was already confident such behavior was underway, by analogy to other fields where I’ve seen paradigm defense.
The difference is that those other fields aren’t (mostly) being used to justify major efforts at political reorganization.
Please call me willard, AK, for I don’t scan the page for “nevaudit”.
You claim:
> IMO accusations of improper motives do not constitute an ad hominem attack, unless they are part of some attempt to discredit a specific argument.
I agree with you, for then the ad hominem attack becomes a part of an argument.
As far as I can see, this is exactly what Judy does: her “paradigm paralysis” rationalization only works because reviewers are taken as enthralled tokens, which gets injected into her blaming of reviewers.
One does not simply use Kuhn to get to Mordor.
***
See it another way. If you accept my reading, we get rid of every kind of pseudo-explanation of mental or sociological processes from our debates. No more deniers, DKs, motivated reasoners, or else. Self-righteous indignation will have to be powered by something else.
What do you say?
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• jbenton2013 | September 19, 2013 at 12:41 pm |
Your last point is extremely valid. I work with engineering models and recently the suspicion in some customers minds caused by the failure of climate models has begun to rub off on engineering applications where models, which have been verified and used in applications over long periods, are used.
We are increasingly having to justify the validity of our engineering models as a result failure of the pseudo scientific climate models which have received so much publicity in the press recently.
***********************************************************************************************
JBenton, If I may ask, what branch of engineering are you involved in? How well do your model results match real-world recorded data?
Engineering models used for existing building energy analysis are routinely “tuned” to get the answer wanted to justify a particular project. These programs have hundreds/thousands of user inputs. Rarely are they peer-reviewed due to the complexity of the analysis, and associated costs for doing so.
This practice is implicitly reinforced by municipalities and utilities in order to meet required annual energy savings, which are the result of climate change programs to begin with.
When the project is done and if the savings are not realized, the whole thing tends to gets buried with the public none the wiser. Yet, everyone involved claims success, slaps each other on the back, and moves on to the next project.
How do you stop people from doing things like this when they use it to justify their existence (and paycheck)? I haven’t found the answer….
I do suspect there is a bias against papers written / authored by those who are known to be on skeptical side of the consensus.
The problem I have in this specific case is that, in order to show a specific bias, the people who acted as reviewers and rejected the Michaels paper would have to have then been shown to have accepted the newer paper that used the same methodologies. Unless I missed it, the reviewers were not the same. If some did review BOTH papers, they have some explaining to do.
However, the pattern of favoritism has shown up consistently in climate science peer review, and it doesn’t help that the Climategate emails confirm that several scientists had no problem running interference when they felt papers they didn’t agree with were getting submitted and considered for publication. Can’t have that.
Judith Curry states:
“The rejection of this paper raised my watchdog hackles, and I asked to see the reviews. I suspected gatekeeping by the editor and bias against the skeptical authors by the editor and reviewers.”
As Judith Curry very well knowns, Michaels’s paper was not the only paper “filtered off” by the AGU editors during the last 5 years. They have rejected papers even after 4 reviewers expressed positive opinions agaist the opinion of just one IPCC advocate.
It is evident that these abuses need to finish.
I think that there is a need of reforming the anonymous peer review process with the goal of reducing the censoring faculty of the editors, who also may have severe conflict of interests against specific topics.
Curry is right in denouncing these situations, but it will be more useful to investigate ways to reform the scientific review process to avoid editorial abuses.
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the looming problem for mainstream climate scientists,and clowns like the very reverend jeremiah ,web hub telescope etc is up until now the debate has been all nicey nicey between fellow academics with a differing viewpoint.
unfortunately ordinary people in many countries have paid a high price due to the prophecies of thermageddon.
some of us are extremely unhappy about this.
some of us have had just about enough of this madness and are sick of lying politicians basing policy on the advice of what appear to be some of the most arrogant people in the world,who refuse to believe they are wrong.
the models are wrong.there is no tropospheric hot spot. temperature (if you believe it can be accurately measured in the first place) has flatlined for a decade and a half,and appears to be heading for cooling.
sea levels are doing NOTHING out of the ordinary.we still get snow in winter in the uk.extreme weather events are at all time lows.
the corruption of science will be a stain on ALL scientists.those that do not speak out for fear of losing funding are as complicit as those perpetuating the fraud.
the peer review process has been exposed as a sham for ALL of science.
perhaps climate science has exposed how many nonentities witter away their lives in academia purely down to the fact they have NOTHING to offer the real world.
after all,it appears there are thousands of climate scientists,spending billions of dollars,and what have they contributed to humanity ? NOTHING.
how much of those billions could have been spent on something worthwhile ? we will never know,because they have been wasted on a bunch of wasters.
to the two posters mentioned above,some of your comments are down right ignorant.very easy when you hide behind a pseudonym ,i guarantee you would not speak like that face to face with me twice.
apologies to judith for the rant,but as an ordinary citizen i am sickened by this whole debacle.
bit chilly, would you do the same if it was some trash-talking opponent in a sporting match? Is your fuse really that short?
You can’t take all the fake theories being spouted by the deniers on this commenting board seriously. Perhaps you don’t understand the long history behind the deniers that happen to fall under the category of cranks or crackpots. There has always been diverging opinion on whether to actively argue with them or to simply ignore them. Obviously, I take the former stand, and it appears that you mistake my attitude as anything more than a scientific beat-down of some awfully strange beliefs in physics.
Webby has not a clue about Earth sciences – or nonstationary statistics or non-linear and nonequilibrium physics. It is all just hopelessly 33 degrees C, obsessively fitting curves without rhyme or reason and one line algebraic solutions of climate. If anyone has strange ideas – it is especially webster.
Someone mentioned Wally Broecker on another thread – quoting this passage.
While Broecker is an advocate of utilizing alternative fuels, he is realistic about humanity’s addiction to fossil fuels – especially in industrializing nations. He was recently featured on the BBC’s Hardtalk, where he spoke of his unlikely climate optimism in the face of rapidly industrializing nations: “I think we have an option and the option is to let them industrialize but take care of the problem by capturing and storing the CO2.” He says that “we’re going to have to learn to capture the CO2 and bury it – just like we learned to collect and put away garbage [and] sewage… We’ve taken over stewardship of the planet and with that we have the responsibility to take care of it.”
I prefer this one.
The climate system has jumped from one mode of operation to another in the past. We are trying to understand how the earth’s climate system is engineered, so we can understand what it takes to trigger mode switches. Until we do, we cannot make good predictions about future climate change… Over the last several hundred thousand years, climate change has come mainly in discrete jumps that appear to be related to changes in the mode of thermohaline circulation.
People like webby are clueless on either front. It is funny as hell that he champions simplistic ideas while missing the most interesting and relevant concepts – and is such a nasty little dweeb-boy on top of it.
Why does Chief quote Wally Broeker?
Broeker coined the term global warming and predicted this trend upwards in 1975:
http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/broecker_warming_chart.png
So we agree that I am not Wally Broeker. ws
Reblogged this on sainsfilteknologi and commented:
Climate Model
web hub telescope,i am not interested in the history of deniers.what i am interested in is climate scientists getting back to ,or actually doing,science .like the majority of people ,i rely on professionals to advise me on topics and situations i am not well versed in.
up until a couple of years ago i believed i was being informed by the best science possible that cAGW was real and happening,as i had,what turned out to be incorrect,absolute faith in the scientific community.
this faith was based on research and development work i have carried out in conjunction with scientists in an industrial application.
however,i am also a keen sea angler,and take an interest in angling politics which led me to read a paper on common skate by a phd student .this paper was full of assumption, supposition and conclusions drawn that were incomprehensible to me. the paper was peer reviewed ,so i dare say it,and all its errors will now be cited time and time again in papers in the future.
after this i happened upon a few sceptical cAGW articles in the mainstream press,which at the time i was very surprised by. once i started reading critical deconstructions of the cAGW from a variety of people it became apparent that far from the science being settled,it was in its infancy.
now i would not have an issue with that if the climate scientists acknowledged the real state of climate science,acknowledged that variation in climate may be greater or lesser than they state due to factors unknown,and that it is entirely possible that a rapidly rising amount of co2 might not have the effect they state .
the actual position is hardly settled.i keep hearing the physics is settled,well i am sorry,but there has to be a particular interpretation of radiative physics to come to the conclusion that co2 is capable of doing what climate scientists say it can in the trace element it exists in the atmosphere.
climate gate was a disgrace for the whole academic community ,ALL of academia was tarred by that brush.i have friends that failed to gain acceptance into a branch of science in the uk,and it is apparent if you do not toe the accepted line your face will not fit,this is plain wrong ,its POLITICS not science.
for people that discussed corrupting the peer review process to exclude alternative hypothesis to still be employed there after was an horrific own goal for those in charge of the group of scientists involved,the fact many of those scientists were in receipt of tax payer funds should have ensured they were punished.instead there was a few faux investigations where certain questions were prevented from being asked.
and after all the controversies,manipulated data,plain lying,and wild interpretations, climate science still expects public support !
well here is one member of the public that wont support the scientific/academic community until the trust and respect i have lost is restored.
going by what i read and see ,it will not be happening anytime soon.
the fact that climate science feels it has to convince people by carrying out “consensus” studies, creating online blogs that do not allow debate (sks) away from the party line,and using certain elements of the media to highlight every major weather event as climate change driven,when actual observations show major weather events such as drought,floods and tornadoes are actually at an all time low shows they are clutching at straws.
what other branch of science carries on in this vein ?
the australian population has just shown they do not care to be treated in this manner. i suspect many other countries will be doing the same in the very near future.
you clearly started by looking at the wrong websites, search a bit harder
Like Anthony Watts’ junk science blog?
Jan,
If you think wuwt and sks operate in similar manners, then you have serious credibility issues. Both may be “junk” science, but the one at least wins blog awards while the other conducts editing and deletion of comments it does not like.
Not that it matters, but who might have better “qualifications” for a science blog? A Meteorologist or a cartoon artist?
The handwriting is on the wall, and doesn’t use capitals.
=================
@timg56:
I have never experienced as much bullying from the blog host himself, and harassment and abusive language against me, not just from the fan crowd in the comment section, but even from the moderators of the blog anywhere else, as I have experienced at Watts’ blog, during the time when I still posted comments there (if I was successful to post them and they didn’t get just vanished before being published or shortly after, in the first hand).
Most of the articles are just opinion, misrepresentation of science, or other articles, if they are supposed to be analyses, which don’t fulfil scientific standards, and would never make it in the specialist journals where those standards are mandatory.
Heh, Jan’s never been a skeptic posting at an alarmist site. No wonder he finds WattsUp harsh.
==============
You want to document the Junk part?
Your opinion is worthless without that.
Are you asking for examples for posts on WUWT, which are junk science?
Just take all articles by Monckton. Or by Archibald. Or, … well, I leave it with that.
And
– – – – – – – – –
First, I found very noteworthy that Judith Curry closed her post on GRL’s rejection of Michaels et al paper with a heartfelt thanks to Annan, across the perceived skeptic chasm. She shows one can interact with those who you may have current disagreements without name calling and rude behavior that is seen all too often. We can all learn from her example.
Second, the anonymity of reviewers begs the kind of gate keeping (skeptic filtering) behavior Judith investigates and that we have seen in CG1 & CG2. If reviewers knew their reviews and names would eventually be made public after the decision to publish a paper or not, then It would be less likely for there to be systematic long term gate keeping.
John
Translation: Creating an atmosphere in society where reviewers must be afraid of public smearing, harassment or other forms of retaliation from an angry and aggressive “skeptic” mob or from “skeptics” in positions with power, if the reviewers do not provide favourable reviews of manuscripts submitted by “skeptics”, would be desirable.
Perhaps, one also could create a blacklist then of all the reviewers who refuse to submit to “skeptic” pressure, together with a list of those scientists who dare to publish results from research, which do not conform with the political, ideological, or religious views of “skeptics”, as a compilation for the time when all those evil climate scientists can finally be punished for doing their work.
Jan, be more a man, be more like Annan.
==============================
Judith Curry writes:
The editor and/or the journal should be informed about this serious accusation made against them in public, so that they can have the opportunity to provide a proper response to it, if they want to.
Should? Should? Be not like the cat who let “I dare not” wait upon “I would”.
===================
Done.
kim, you don’t know much about polite wording, do you?
Don’t know much about history. Don’t know much about geography.
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Jan,
Judith is just dog-whistling (see Kim bark).
I’m sure she knows that the editor needs nothing other than their own perogative to accept or reject a paper; a paper with favourable reviews may be rejected and one with poor reviews published.
…if they want to. Where were you when TARP was funded and Lehman Brothers, went under? Oh the vanityn of the humanity… But nobody wanted to sue the other firms so know charges all around. You could have been a profit.
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