by Judith Curry
A few things that caught my eye this past week.
Policy/Politics
The big story this week is that Rachendra Pachauri has resigned from the IPCC, over a sexual harassment scandal [link]. I will have an in depth post IPCC in Transition sometime next week.
Obama Administration Declares Green War on India [link] …
Climate adaptation careers are heating up. Insider tips on the skills needed: [link]
Energy
Clean Power Plan vs. Reliability: A False Dilemma for States: [link]
Why the power grid of the future is in California and New York [link]
Science
Uncertainty behind climate projections could be cut in half by 2030, study shows [link]
Zeke has a post at Skeptical Science: Understanding adjustments to temperature data [link]
Carbon sequestration: Biology’s growing role [link]
More & more research results clearly indicate that solar activity has an impact on how the climate varies over time [link]
Multiple Changepoint Detection Using Metadata [link]
“Australian BOM under fire – questions about “adjusted” temperatures exploding around the world” [link]
Climate science history: The Original Climate Skeptics [link]
Climate history: Basic science and politics under Thatcher [link]
Rewriting the climate history of Iceland [link]
Global warming will NOT lead to an overall stormier atmosphere. [link]
Christopher Essex on fluid dynamics, climate models and media climate activism [link]
How to interpret expert judgment assessments of 21st century sea-level rise [link]
Over 200 peer-reviewed papers demonstrating solar control of climate published since 2010 [link]
Media reports that GMO science is settled are flat out wrong [link]
The war on genetically-modified food critics [link]
Climate Wars
I am very thankful to all the support that I have received this week, from the Denizens, people on twitter, and email from colleagues.
A very good letter from the American Meteorological Society on Grijalva’s witch hunt [link]
AGU response implicitly supports Grijalva (D-Ariz.) [link] A failure of leadership by Margaret Leinen – President, AGU
Senate EPW Republicans take a stand for academic freedom [link]
Nordhaus & Shellenberger: Climate of incivility [link]
Good post from Victor Venema: Stop all harassment of all scientists now [link]
What is the difference between Willie Soon and Joe Romm?
A comment on selective COI outrage. [link]
On Funding and Bias in Climate [link]
The problem with consensus – some thoughts on how focusing on agreement leads to more polarization on #climatechange [link]
William Connolley (Stoat) has a good post on Grijalvi inquisition [link]
A defense of Willie Soon [link]
How to balance transparency with academic freedom? [link]
German Analysis: “97 Percent Consensus” Does Not Exist … Demands To End Debate Are “Way Off Sides” [link]
Coming next week
Assuming that nothing currently unforeseen happens, I have the following posts planned for the coming week:
- Critique of Monckton, Soon et al. paper
- IPCC in transition
- 2 new papers on the hiatus
Ran across this: “Psychology Journal Ban Significance Testing.”
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/psychology-journal-bans-significance-testing/
Any statisticians care to comment on the significance, if any, of this?
When sample size is irrelevant, science is pretty easy: just say what you feel and feel what you say.
http://www.nature.com/news/replication-studies-bad-copy-1.10634
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21528826.000-is-medical-science-built-on-shaky-foundations.html#.VPJW-V1WphE
Umm, it is worse than that.
Bayer can only reproduce 1/3 of biomedical studies.
Amgen can only reproduce 11% (6/56). These were landmark studies with lives on the line.
Part of the problem (from reading) seems to be sample size/data issues and degrees of researcher freedom.
If the researcher was forced to rigidly lay out his methodology ahead of time (and follow it) he would not be able to adapt his methods to the data.
Researcher can use practices like collecting data and checking significance until they get a positive result. This is called gambling in Los Vegas. It is not likely to yield a reproducible result.
PA,
Think you might find this of interest. It’s about 15 min. as I recall: http://www.ted.com/talks/ben_goldacre_what_doctors_don_t_know_about_the_drugs_they_prescribe#t-787899
Yeah, DT that is a valid point.
Not reporting negative or null results produces a biased distribution of study results since most reported results are from successful studies which report a statistical significant conclusion.
If for a given topic there were 9 “failed” studies that did not show a significant result (or had a negative result) that were unreported, and one “successful” study that showed a significant positive result that was published – how valid is the published study?
How likely is it that the “successful” researcher used some of his degrees of freedom to produce significance?
PA,
I appreciated the registry concept. Thought that might even apply to our climate topic. But I guess I’m a bit skeptical the more I look at things.
What treatment modality can be blinded as well as powder in a capsule? Immense bias, right there.
===================
Kim,
Assume you viewed it?
I’d have more questions for my doc in the future. Wonder where I’m learning that skill?
Well, when the gold standard of medical knowledge is the prospective, double-blinded, placebo controlled clinical trial, then it is practically not knowledge unless it’s pharmaceutical.
I exaggerate to make the point. There is a warp to this in medicine similar to the warp to CO2 in climate. The analogy has many flaws.
Do I really have to submit to a Ted Talk. I know lots about throwing rocks down Broadway to hit a dog on the Bowery.
================
It’s especially useful to remember that ‘pharmakos’ in Greek means ‘poison’, for most of our ‘ethical drugs’ poison some metabolic or biochemical pathway, with consequences often undreamt of.
============
Both the English words “poison” and “potion” come from the same Latin root; which means “something you drink”.
BTW, according to Wiki
According to Strong’s, a reference to Biblical Greek:
Pharmakon
http://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/pmahon/pharmakon.html
https://users.polisci.wisc.edu/avramenko/Methods/Derrida_PlatosPharmacy.pdf
Pour deep, drink deeper. I like Alexander with Philip of Acarnania.
===================
Socrates wrote nothing. To him writing was just a cheat sheet for those unable to hold their thoughts in real time.
” The mechanisms whereby such belief structures are altered are not well understood, but the evidence from previous cases offers hope that such peculiar belief structures do collapse.”
Dr. Lindzen’s optimistic prediction may apply since the 17th century scientific revolution, but history is clear that peculiar belief structures can persist far longer when enough hegemony is garnered by the perpetrators. Fortunately, the same degrees of freedom allow us to object, so far…
Will it take a few volcanic eruptions and quakes along the way, during the course of a natural cooling trend, to trigger a poignant departure away from global warming to a new mass mania about an endless summerless future?
Researcher can use practices like collecting data and checking significance until they get a positive result. This is called gambling in Los Vegas. It is not likely to yield a reproducible result.
You mean like Dr Michael Mann?
Mann, the Yamal Whisperer?
PMHinSC Any statisticians care to comment on the significance, if any, of this?
It is getting some discussion among some members of the American Statistical Association.
Given that 40% of the results reported in medical and neurophysiology journals can’t be replicated (higher in psychology journals), and given the shortcomings in Bayesian inference (“A comparison of Bayesian and Frequentist Methods of Estimation” by Francisco Samaniego of UC Davis), it is hard to see that decision leading to improvement.
Good. We have a strange situation in which the superiority of Bayesian methods is now generally accepted, but most scientists still seem to use frequentist methods most of the time.
The best introduction to this topic that I know, for a scientist or engineer, is this paper by Jaynes from the height of the ‘Bayes Wars’:
http://bayes.wustl.edu/etj/articles/confidence.pdf
The best longer treatment is Jaynes “Probability theory: the logic of science”. Methematicians might prefer “Good thinking” by I J Good. For a modern how-to book, see BDA3 by Gelman et al.
IMO the problem is that scientists trained in frequentist methods (my age and older) are used to a ‘cook book’ approach. Choose a recipe (‘statistic’) and if the result seems to be nonsense you can always try a different one. Then the “Bayeasian” approach is seen as just another recipe. That misses the point. “Bayesian” statistics is just mathematical probability theory, rigorously applied.
E.g. the p-value just looks at one measure: The probability of the evidence E given the null hypothesis H0:
P(E | H0)
But any assessment of evidence needs at least two hypotheses, and the question is how much the evidence shifts the balance between them. Rejecting the null hypothesis does not make any sense of your alternative is not any better! The right way to do this is the likelihood ratio (or odds ratio):
LR = P(E | H1)/P(E | H0)
Where H1 is the alternative hypothesis. This number tells you everything you can possibly learn from that evidence about that pair of hypotheses. If it is greater then one, the evidence favours H1. If it is less than one the evidence favours H0. If it is exactly one it favours neither.
But that does not tell you probability of the hypothesis is true given the evidence. For that you need this:
posterior_odds = LR * prior_odds
where the odds is the ratio of probabilities:
odds = P(H1)/P(H0)
Thus every new piece of evidence updates the odds. The idea of prior odds has caused a lot of argument because it has not been understood by many frequentists. But it just means the odds based on all the evidence you had before you acquired the new evidence E. That, in a nutshell is “probability theory as extended logic”.
Ad-hoc methods like the p-value are fine if you have loads of evidence and the result is obvious. In that case you don’t really need statistics at all. But in cases where there is not enough evidence and conclusions may be finely balanced it is essential to be clear what the competing hypotheses are, what the prior evidence is, and to use the full apparatus of probability theory to compare them. Of course “Bayesian Statistics” is not a panacea. Statistical problems are still hard. But it helps to start out with the right mathematical framework, and to know how to apply it.
PS I’m not sure I count as a statistician – I don’t have any pieces of paper to that effect. I normally describe myself as physicist turned software engineer. But over the years I have had to tackle a variety of statistical problems found that for hard problems, the Bayesian approach is the one that works.
I have a suspicion that much of the fruitless debate in climate science on an issue such as ‘the pause’ is because of a failure to identify priors. The warmist tendency to dismiss nearly two decades of data as a statistical fluctuation implies putting a very high prior probability on the model results being correct. Put that out in the open and it is very hard to justify.
==> “The warmist tendency to dismiss nearly two decades of data as a statistical fluctuation implies putting a very high prior probability on the model results being correct.”
Interesting.
So I guess only “realists” have tendencies and high priors?
Good thing that “skeptics” don’t have tendencies or high priors, right?
Of course, a skeptic might be skeptical of such a conclusion, but “skeptics” will eat it right up.
So Joshua doesn’t even try to justify it. Egad, it’s hard.
==============
Gareth: Good. We have a strange situation in which the superiority of Bayesian methods is now generally accepted, but most scientists still seem to use frequentist methods most of the time.
If that is what you think, then let me recommend the book “A Comparison of Bayesian and Frequentist Methods of Estimation”, by Francisco J. Samaniego. He makes the case that the theoretical advantages of Bayesian methods are seldom realized in practice; the mean of the prior has to be at least sufficiently close to the true value, what he calls a “threshold”. And he says that practically never happens in multivariate settings. As for “true value”, it is the value to which the Bayesians claim that Bayesian and maximum likelihood estimates converge.
The problem is that subjective probabilities are not based on frequentist probability theory so there is no preason to believe that the math of probability theory applies to them. In fact it does not because that is not how people reason.
More simply put, the weight of evidence is not probabilistic.
Joshua,
We all have priors. What is more, if we have different evidence, it is quite OK that we should have different priors. But if we are doing science, then we will want to try to agree what is the relevant evidence, and how this translates into a measure of probability.
So, (and @ David Wojick) I would be happy to use a purely subjective prior if was betting on horse, but I would not expect to get that kind of probability published in a scientific journal. In a scientific context, one has to have a reason for one’s prior, and if it is not a prior everyone else can agree with, then at least it can be documented as an assumption, along with all other factual and theoretical postulates on which the result may depend. This is the ‘Objective Bayesian’ approach championed by Jaynes.
The problem with frequentist reasoning is that the priors are ‘swept under the carpet’ and not examined.
Matthew, thank you, I found a chapter of Samaniego here:
http://www.springer.com/cda/content/document/cda_downloaddocument/9781441959409-c1.pdf
It gives me a flavour but does not allow me to judge the claims about the threshold problem.
However, I am doubtful of any claims that a frequentist estimator is superior to a Bayesian estimator, in any particular case, for several reasons:
1) Any coherent frequentist statistic is a special case of Bayesian, for a particular (often unstated) choice of prior. e.g. a maximum likelihood estimator is Bayesian, with a flat prior.
2) Of course it will be possible to model a case in which you get a better frequentist estimator, if the unstated frequentist prior is in fact closer to the real (ie modelled) prior than the stated Bayesian prior. But that is not a meaningful test.
3) Once you recognise that Bayesian inference depends only on the axioms of probability theory (which frequentists implicitly accept) then the only possibility is either (a) you did not encode all the relevant prior information in the Bayesian analysis, or (b) you have found a counterexample to the axioms of probability theory.
The mistake is to think there are really two ‘schools’ of statistics. The Bayesian ‘school’ is to work out the maths from first principles. That may bring in quantities you don’t know, such as priors. If you can’t figure out a way to estimate them then tough, that’s not the fault of the maths.
The frequentist ‘school’ is to make an educated guess on a ‘statistic’ to use, which may turn out OK, but you never really know for sure what it is telling you about the quantities you are interested in. The approaches are not really comparable.
Often, frequentist analysis gives a reasonable result, and indeed often it is numerically identical to the Bayesian analysis. but the only way you can know when this will be true is by doing the full Bayesian analysis.
In the limit or large amounts of data, everything converges to maximum likelihood. But it is the cases where you have small amounts of data that are difficult, and interesting.
==> “We all have priors. What is more, if we have different evidence, it is quite OK that we should have different priors. But if we are doing science, then we will want to try to agree what is the relevant evidence, and how this translates into a measure of probability.”
OK.
==> “So, (and @ David Wojick) I would be happy to use a purely subjective prior if was betting on horse, but I would not expect to get that kind of probability published in a scientific journal. In a scientific context, one has to have a reason for one’s prior, and if it is not a prior everyone else can agree with, then at least it can be documented as an assumption, along with all other factual and theoretical postulates on which the result may depend. This is the ‘Objective Bayesian’ approach championed by Jaynes.”
I’ve got no problem with that statement either.
But I still see problems with the statement I excerpted above. We could start with the unstated “subjective priors,” if you will, reflected in your use of “warmist.” We could discuss what you mean by “dismiss” as I think that your use of that term is highly subjective.
But my larger point was that you seemed to be arguing about “warmist” tendencies as if they are somehow distinguishable from human tendencies.
Gareth:
Who has “generally accepted” this? How do you even measure that? Most of the people I know who’ve looked at the issue say neither is better overall. They, like me, say each one is more useful in some situations. Even so, both approaches can usually (always?) handle any problem the other can handle.
I’ve long argued this is a false dichotomy. There are situations where there are better options than either Frequentism or Bayesian.
Gareth and Joshua, the problem is that there are no “priors” because that is not how humans reason. Bayesian math may well be fine, as math. But in science the question is typically “what math fits this case?” which is an empirical question.
My point is simply that Bayesian math does not fit the case of human reasoning, however elegant it may otherwise be. There is no reason why probability theory should describe human reasoning and so far as I can tell, after 40 years of study, it does not.
I also think that thinking that Bayesian math accurately describes human reasoning, which it does not, has kept the science of human reasoning from advancing. Getting the model wrong is something climate folks should understand well.
When complex issues are involved, people routinely consider thousands of pieces of evidence, which are often highly interconnected. See my crude little text on this at http://www.stemed.info/reports/Wojick_Issue_Analysis_txt.pdf. At no time in this process are mathematical probabilities estimated. That is not what is going on.
The Earth Is Not a God “The false theology of radical environmentalists”
Jerry Weinberger gives a good review of
The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, by Alex Epstein
e.g.,
Part of the adaptation is that of energy sources to move away from those that lead to climate change while trying to stabilize the climate. This is an adaptation problem too as we get used to new energy. It can be done.
If solar continues its exponential decrease in price, adaptation to cheaper energy will be enough to mandate the switch of many functions from “on-demand energy” design models to “on-energy-supply” models. Pumping for long-distance water supplies, for instance. Desalination.
AK | February 28, 2015 at 11:20 am |
If solar continues its exponential decrease in price, adaptation to cheaper energy will be enough to mandate the switch of many functions from “on-demand energy” design models to “on-energy-supply” models.
It is hard to believe that any source that generate energy less than 50% of the time will ever have anything other than niche market applications. The breakthrough that is necessary is for someone to make the sun shire at night.
PMHinSC
Ask rather what is needed to provide day/night solar power. It “just” takes “a bit” of storage.
Focus resources on that and it will be provided.
David L. Hagen | February 28, 2015 at 1:56 pm |
PMHinSC
Ask rather what is needed to provide day/night solar power. It “just” takes “a bit” of storage.
Focus resources on that and it will be provided.
If I need 1 kW of power 24 hrs per day I have to buy a 1kW solar unit to provide power for the day and another 1kW solar unit + storage to provide power at night. I bought 3 times as much equipment so at least 50% of my capital expense can sit idle. That is being generous since solar is closer to 30% than 50%, and that is not even addressing the distribution costs for solar power. Happy talk about how fast the price of PV cells is coming down completely ignores, system, utilization, and life cycle costs. Solar will only be a niche market power source until someone can figure out how to make the sun shine at night.
That “niche market power source” could well include all the desalination and pumping necessary for agriculture to feed a world with 20 billion people.
Heh, the sun’s already pumping out all the freshwater used by agriculture, and al.
==========
PHinSC
Then WHY do utilities install gas peaking plants with only 5% capacity
Because they are needed AND because they provide a commercial return on investment!
You have to look at the FULL picture and what is needed to achieve commercial returns to supply a demand.
David L. Hagen | March 1, 2015 at 11:58 am |
PHinSC
Then WHY do utilities install gas peaking plants with only 5% capacity
Thanks for the link.
@ AK
“If solar continues its exponential decrease in price…………”
If there is any real world ANYTHING for which the cost has CONTINUED to change at an exponential rate I am unaware of it. Why should I assume that the cost of solar should be an exception?
What would the kw-h cost of electricity provided by a gigawatt solar farm be if the cost of the actual solar cells FOB the receiving dock at the solar farm were zero?
Computing Power. In a rough way, combining speed, number of transistors on a chip, etc. based on end price.
Depends on the cost of the remaining equipment. Of course, as the cost of PV gets lower, the incentive to find cheaper ways to do the rest will get higher.
Statistical Basis for Predicting Technological Progress by Bela Nagy, J. Doyne Farmer, Quan M. Bui, Jessika E Trancik SFI WORKING PAPER: 2012-07-008
AK
Thanks for interesting paper.
Suggest complimenting that with papers & principles by Armstrong & Green on Forecasting Principles.
PS The paper you cited only looked at Crude Oil over its exponential growth phase to 1968 – NOT since when the growth has declined by an order of magnitude. See PeakOilBarrel.com and OurFiniteWorld.com
I followed Zeke over to SKS, and now wish I has not. Arguements weaker than posted earlier here, no rebuttals to previous thread critiques here.
Why flee over there to ‘repost’ same old, unless just more comfortable?
Not worth delving into details. motives and locations are a big wave off.
In my experience Zeke is very mathematical in his claims.
So which of his claims do you agree with, and why?
Oh yeah i forgot, willie soon is more important than pachauri
==> “Oh yeah i forgot, willie soon is more important than pachauri”
????????
Judith, your political biases show more and more every day you write and publish.
Why is Pachauri more important than Willie Soon?
I believe that Judith’s statement was intended to be ironic but it seems Joshua and David missed this and construed this to be her political bias showing through. I honestly believe Judith to be much less political than her “sceptic” and “realist” denizens.
Why do serfs find yr mean minded comments appalling?
beththeserf,
Maybe you meant appelling – in this case, a petulant stamping of the foot, without the ability to follow through. In other words, all talk, and no trousers!
I’d challenge him to a contest of wits, but my parents instructed me that it was bad form to indulge in combat with an unarmed opponent.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Threading broken again, methinks. Read further down.
“I just want to know who’s paying J Curry for her services.”
Sigh.
Exxon gave to the AGU – by your reasoning, we should disband the AGU and you can’t believe anything they ever wrote.
We know John Kerry gave Hansen $250,000, on the eve of an election Kerry was in no less ( and Hansen obliged, making a politcal speech ). According to you, nothing Hansen wrote is valid and he should be erased.
To be sure, funding from any source can cause a conflict of interest ( mostly of course, to continue funding ) but that includes, maybe especially includes, government funding! Dr. Curry has written about this at length.
Can you not apply your own human reasoning skills to accept, or reject, data and statements on their own merit?
Argument from Ad Hominem are attacks of the person not the content.
Politicians love ad. hom. of course – attacks ads and ‘going negative’ have proven effective.
But educated people are supposed to be able to think for themselves.
Full disclosure: the nation of origen of this story is almost entirely funded by fossil fuels.
Three Billy Goats Gruff
Once upon a time there were three billy goats, who were to go up to the hillside to make themselves fat, and the name of all three was “Gruff.”
On the way up was a bridge over a cascading stream they had to cross; and under the bridge lived a great ugly troll , with eyes as big as saucers, and a nose as long as a poker.
So first of all came the youngest Billy Goat Gruff to cross the bridge.
“Trip, trap, trip, trap! ” went the bridge.
“Who’s that tripping over my bridge?” roared the troll .
“Oh, it is only I, the tiniest Billy Goat Gruff , and I’m going up to the hillside to make myself fat,” said the billy goat, with such a small voice.
“Now, I’m coming to gobble you up,” said the troll.
“Oh, no! pray don’t take me. I’m too little, that I am,” said the billy goat. “Wait a bit till the second Billy Goat Gruff comes. He’s much bigger.”
“Well, be off with you,” said the troll.
A little while after came the second Billy Goat Gruff to cross the bridge.
Trip, trap, trip, trap, trip, trap, went the bridge.
“Who’s that tripping over my bridge?” roared the troll.
“Oh, it’s the second Billy Goat Gruff , and I’m going up to the hillside to make myself fat,” said the billy goat, who hadn’t such a small voice.
“Now I’m coming to gobble you up,” said the troll.
“Oh, no! Don’t take me. Wait a little till the big Billy Goat Gruff comes. He’s much bigger.”
“Very well! Be off with you,” said the troll.
But just then up came the big Billy Goat Gruff .
Trip, trap, trip, trap, trip, trap! went the bridge, for the billy goat was so heavy that the bridge creaked and groaned under him.
“Who’s that tramping over my bridge?” roared the troll.
“It’s I! The big Billy Goat Gruff ,” said the billy goat, who had an ugly hoarse voice of his own.
“Now I ‘m coming to gobble you up,” roared the troll.
Well, come along! I’ve got two spears,
And I’ll poke your eyeballs out at your ears;
I’ve got besides two curling-stones,
And I’ll crush you to bits, body and bones.
That was what the big billy goat said. And then he flew at the troll, and poked his eyes out with his horns, and crushed him to bits, body and bones, and tossed him out into the cascade, and after that he went up to the hillside. There the billy goats got so fat they were scarcely able to walk home again. And if the fat hasn’t fallen off them, why, they’re still fat; and so,
Snip, snap, snout.
This tale’s told out.
Oops … I meant “nation of origin”…my pride is wounded…for Mr Appell and his tribe of bridge dwellers
Willie Soon is more important because he truthfully and objectively applies the scientific method to the observed data.
Pachauri will have to answer to “the Supreme Judge of the world” for his actions.
Peter –
==> ” but it seems Joshua and David missed this and construed this to be her political bias showing through.”
No. Judith’s comment was mis-threaded, and it seemed bizarre in response to David’s and Rud’s comments about Zeke – hence the question marks.
I certainly wouldn’t miss Judith’s sarcasm about Soon vs. Pachuiri – as it is in-line with her biases that are always (at least that I can recall), predictable.
What’s interesting about the “witch hunt” of Judith, RPjr., etc., is that;quite a few folks on the “realist” side are not following along with easily predicted biases – such as Steig, Connelley and Victor.
Notice relative paucity of the reverse where people objected to the “witch hunt” of “skeptics” – with Fuller as one exception, I’m sure there are a few others as well.
I hear Professor Curry is a terrific baker. And I love apple crumble.
Rud Istvan,
As Wagathon quoted –
“Global Warming has become a religion.” Zeke presumably prefers preaching to the converted, rather than being heckled by the unbelievers. I am reasonably sure he thinks his work has value, rather than being a waste of time, effort, and somebody else’s money.
Endlessly trying to establish past temperatures has no effect on tomorrow – but I have objection to somebody indulging their fantasy, as long as they don’t expect my willing participation. It’s all a bit odd, isn’t it?
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
I just want to know who’s paying J Curry for her services.
Why do you find that so threatening?
Most of my income comes from Georgia Tech salary. All of my grants at Georgia Tech are and have been govt grants. I also receive some K-1 income from my company (a general profile on my company’s clients is given in the conflict of interest post, which was also attached to my testimony). This past year, I have accepted several modest honoraria for giving invited lectures (the largest was for $2500, from Ohio University).
David Appell,
You wrote –
“Why do you find that so threatening?”
I find very few things threatening – actually none that I can think of. I assumed you would know this. If you think that I even care what sort of questions you ask, and of whom, you have vastly over estimated my care factor.
It is precisely zero, in your case. My flabbers are well and truly gasted by the importance you apparently imbue yourself with.
But press on nevertheless, laddie. I’m sure that someone, somewhere, cares what you think, but it’s most assuredly not me!
It’s possible that Professor Curry feels inclined to waste her time on your inane query, but that’s up to her. Maybe if you threaten her enough, you might be able to bend her to your will. Or maybe not. Good luck anyway.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
@david appell
I assume that a ‘freelance science writer’ has to earn a crust somehow? Unless you are of private means.
Please send us your client list for the last five years. With a list of deliverables and amounts. We require to examine your credentials.
And for the avoidance of any doubt, I am lucky enough to be retired with most of my income coming from a large IT company’s pension plan. The small remainder comes from a part-time job with a major public transport organisation.
I am beholden to no-one.
Oh noes. Lucifer, Dr. Curry says she gets grants..
Joseph,
“Oh noes. Lucifer, Dr. Curry says she gets grants..”
I’m not the one concerned about funding.
I like to read and think for myself whether ideas hold water.
But that’s too much for some.
I have no doubt that Hansen is an ideologue but it is the content of what he says or intimates that I can prove to myself.
When Hansen uses ‘Worse than expected’ to the press, with respect to global warming, I know I can objectively demonstrate that observed temperature trends are all less than even the low end model results he testified to Congress with in 1988 ( something Grijalva should investigate if he’s really concerned with truth ). So I know that Hansen is wrong, warming is less than expected, regardless of his being influenced by political money.
When Hansen intimates, as he did to the press, that half of all living species could go extinct ( due to global warming ) I know the extent of warming, the millenia long Holocene Thermal Max, the evolution of all species in and out of glaicals, that this is nonsense. It doesn’t matter about my suspicions of him – the content of his statements is wrong.
Aargghh!
Peter –
==> ” but it seems Joshua and David missed this and construed this to be her political bias showing through.”
No. Judith’s comment was mis-threaded, and it seemed bizarre in response to David’s and Rud’s comments about Zeke – hence the question marks.
I certainly wouldn’t miss Judith’s sarcasm about Soon vs. Pachuiri – as it is in-line with her biases that are always (at least that I can recall), predictable.
What’s interesting about the “witch hunt” of Judith, RPjr., etc., is that;quite a few folks on the “realist” side are not following along with easily predicted biases – such as Steig, Connelley and Victor.
Notice relative paucity of the reverse where people objected to the “witch hunt” of strike>“skeptics” “realists (from “skeptics”) – with Fuller as one exception…I’m sure there are a few others as well. Also, GaryM has shown a few elements of consistency of logic and reasoning related to this issue as well – although I doubt it would extend so far as to him objecting to “realists” getting “witch-hunted.”
Aargghh! X 2!!!!!
Peter –
==> ” but it seems Joshua and David missed this and construed this to be her political bias showing through.”
No. Judith’s comment was mis-threaded, and it seemed bizarre in response to David’s and Rud’s comments about Zeke – hence the question marks.
I certainly wouldn’t miss Judith’s sarcasm about Soon vs. Pachuiri – as it is in-line with her biases that are always (at least that I can recall), predictable.
What’s interesting about the “witch hunt” of Judith, RPjr., etc., is that;quite a few folks on the “realist” side are not following along with easily predicted biases – such as Steig, Connelley and Victor.
Notice relative paucity of the reverse where people objected to the “witch hunt” of
“skeptics”“realists (from “skeptics”) – with Fuller as one exception…I’m sure there are a few others as well. Also, GaryM has shown a few elements of consistency of logic and reasoning related to this issue as well – although I doubt it would extend so far as to him objecting to “realists” getting “witch-hunted.”As Pielke Jr. pointed out, once the funding string gets pulled, (paraphrasing), there will be a tangled mess at the end. Not only have government grants sometimes been skewed toward one type of funding (not just in climate areas), but grants from all kinds of profit and non-profit groups have been given freely to both sides of the climate debate. Except the amounts have been overwhelmingly in favor of the climate change “team”. (Trying to avoid using a more divisive description).
While I applaud this sudden outpouring in favor or free speech and academic freedom, in the back of my mind, I wonder how much of it is the desire to not have attention to the fact that many people on the “team” (including Green NPOs) have obtained a lot of money from big oil and and from companies with a vested interest in renewable energies.
*Why do I say govt. grants are sometimes skewed? Sometimes this happens due to the nature of the RFP (the way it is worded). And the other obvious reason is that in any field where there is a strong political or scientific debate going on, if one side has more reviewers of the grants, their side is more likely to get funding. If funding was available back during the debate over plate tectonics, I’m sure one could observe this pattern then as well. After all, if those who thought plate tectonics was nonsense were in the majority, why would they fund more than the occasional grant trying to research something they thought was nonsense?
I was also disappointed that zeke retreated to the safe haven of sks where any contrary comment will be moderated away. I guess his ego needed some stroking.
Judith: How much of your income comes from your private business?
Please provide a list of those of your private business clients, with their amount of funding. You can email it to me here:
David Appell, freelance science writer
e: david.appell@gmail.com
w: http://www.davidappell.com
t: @davidappell
b: http://davidappell.blogspot.com
m: Salem, OR
DA, I can certainly see why a journalist would not want to use sources with a conflict of interest. Could you give us a list of those that have responded with their data to your funding question and the date of their response? I’d like to check that randomly against your referencing patterns and see if there is any chance of a positive correlation.
Sorry, no way will I give out information on my company’s clients, that is proprietary and competitive information. I wrote a paragraph describing my company’s clientele in the conflict of interest post. Last year, contracts with energy companies (for weather prediction; nothing to do with climate) comprised less than 15% of the company’s income, but some of that was for wind power and hydropower prediction (the rest was for hurricane prediction and temperature prediction).
Transparency is going to be wonderful and dreadful.
=======================
David Appell,
Dr. Curry kindly responded to your request. So when might we expect your article? I, for one, look forward to reading what you have to say w/r/t the disclosure. It’s only fair that a credible journalist when seeking information and receiving same then follow up with the results in a public format.
I have no dog in this fight but am an interested observer and have an expectation of unbiased presentation of facts. If, and how that information is delivered will tell us much about those involved. Looking forward to a link in a timely fashion.
Regards,
I went to Appell’s link. First sentence:
“F#ck. Lou Reed is dead.”
OK, he didn’t sanitize it.
I wouldn’t waste another second taking this guy seriously.
David Appell, I call to your attention a fact that barackobama.com just started a campaign to “call out the climate change deniers”. Is the timing a coincidence, a coordination, or a conspiracy?
An input from a science writer will be highly valued.
And YOUR funding, Mr. Appell? Drivel for the masses media enterprises. Evangelistic university press releases. Preach to the choir concertos.
Make a list of your top ten arguments about zekes post… Not unrelated crap… But your top ten objections.. And we will address them all at a venue of your choosing.
They must be on his arguments.. No coat racking to advertise your books.
Meh, moshe’s machine meshugginah.
===========================
How does one know that temperature stations were moved from the roof’s of buildings to water treatment plants/airports when one maintains that one cannot trust written records about station moves?
Doc you and rud make a list of your top 20 questions about Zekes article.
We will answer. First compile the list.
We did this for Parker. See the climate audit thread that used this approach.
Saves us all time
You know how you got wot you don’t know wot.
================
Well, like a lot of folks, I’ve got a thermometer in my back yard.
But I don’t even trust that number!
Why? Because the only convenient location for it is under a 60` tree.
Further, I know there are lots of temperature variations across the width of the yard, and deviations from the ‘official’ station – I’m not sure what the representative temperature of my back yard really is.
I’m sure that Zeke, Mosh, and any other learned peoples trying to make sense of the temperature record have it at least somewhat right.
I also doubt excluding all the problems will ever occur but I don’t worry about it too much because the trend numbers are reasonably close to the other measurements ( SST, MSU, RAOB ) and land is less than a quarter of the measured surface of earth.
More interesting to me is the fact that the trends are less than the low end models predict and the fact the the lapse rate appears to be increasing and not decreasing as modeled.
According to the various descriptions of the BEST protocol you are able to model a temperature field across a local, with the pixilation being a function of the number of stations, and part of your product is a maximum and minimum field.
If my representation is true, we could experimentally determine the change in the CUS max/min temperature with ease.
Volunteers at WUWT will maintain pristine stations at locations unknown to you, recording daily temperatures for a period of three years.
You will be asked to provide the 1920 and 2020, max/min monthly temperatures, at these site locations. You will state, a prior, how we can statistically determine if the 2017-2020 monthly (maximum)/2 readings recorded by volunteers match your model.
Question 1). Are you ready to accept having your work physically validated using instruments that replicate the ones used in 1917-2017?
Doc
“Question 1). Are you ready to accept having your work physically validated using instruments that replicate the ones used in 1917-2017?”
You and Rud compile a COMPLETE list of questioned relating to
Zekes Post at SKS.
For an example of how to do this
http://climateaudit.org/2007/06/14/parker-2006-an-urban-myth/
1. Zeke’s post is not about BE.
2. We will post again on BE. I suggest your question #1 would
belong there.
3. try to imagine yourself as a reviewer of what zeke wrote on Sks.
and confine you comments to how THAT can be improved or challeneged.
Then, when we get to your question #1, But first, review what zeke wrote at Sks.
Eventually, rather soon I suspect, we will start to put up stuff on our blog.
And one thing I want to do is treat questions in a more orderly fashion as if readers were doing peer review, rather than just makng busy work.
When we do that I would look at your question #1 and ask some clarifying questions so we can reach agreement.
my questions would be
a) How can we prove that an instrument used today is a REPLICA
of a historical device? Do you mean same design?
same manufacturer? Propose a way to demonstrate that an
instrument today is a replica of a past instrument. Simple example.
Take orland Ca. 1927. What instrument was used? how do you know? and how do we prove to you and others that it is a replica?
b) what do you mean by “physically validated”?
We estimate a past temperature. And we do so with error bars.
What level of error passes a “validation” test. What does “validation” of current temps, tell you about the error bars around past temps. Just looking for a clarification of the logic. And further how many sites would you need to test before you said the test was complete?
Just now belatedly noticed had been challenged to a Mosher foodfight.
Now, why challenged to post top ten questions in a comments thread here? Because they would get memory holed immediately at SKS. Which you and Zeke both know. So much for ‘net neutrality’.
Steven, you did not know that I had already completed a more limited possible post for JC on temp problems. Mostly not about BEST. About the impossibility of making silk purses out of sows ears. You have just inspired me to maybe expand it greatly into a more fully reasoned and globally illustrated full brief. Perhaps JC would post (probably not, brief would be too long and detailed.) But she could get it to you with my backchannel coordinates.
If I decide to spend time doing it. Because as explained later on the Zeke TOBS thread at CE, is a tempest in a tea cup which would not under ordinary circumstances merit any time whatsoever. But these are not ordinary circumstances. See tomorrows guest post for clarifications to both circumstances and big tempests unrelated to teacups.
Rud
Now, why challenged to post top ten questions in a comments thread here?
1. because I figured you would read it.
2. if you didnt I plan to make it a regular feature at our new blog
3. Its not a challenge, its an offer.
4. I am blocked from commenting at SKS
Because they would get memory holed immediately at SKS. Which you and Zeke both know.
1. I know no such thing
2. I cant control how anyone else runs their blog
3. we did something similar at climate audit and it seemed like a good idea
So much for ‘net neutrality’.
1. this has nothing to do with net neutrality
2. I am trying to offer you a coherent, traceable, approach to
YOU getting Your questions answered.
Steven, you did not know that I had already completed a more limited possible post for JC on temp problems.
1. This has nothing to do with your post
2. If you want o review and critique Zeke’s work i offer you
a method we have used at climate audit.
Mostly not about BEST. About the impossibility of making silk purses out of sows ears. You have just inspired me to maybe expand it greatly into a more fully reasoned and globally illustrated full brief. Perhaps JC would post (probably not, brief would be too long and detailed.) But she could get it to you with my backchannel coordinates.
1. speak english
2. When I am asked to review publications ( see the acknowledgements on curry and lewis for example ) I like to do so
in private. If the work has merit and I think it advances the science
I will comment. Otherwise, I dont waste my time.
If I decide to spend time doing it. Because as explained later on the Zeke TOBS thread at CE, is a tempest in a tea cup which would not under ordinary circumstances merit any time whatsoever. But these are not ordinary circumstances. See tomorrows guest post for clarifications to both circumstances and big tempests unrelated to teacups.
1. after years of chasing nits on the temperature series I decided that
No amount of nits would rise to the level of work that changed
any of the central facts of climate science. No nit will magically
transform C02 into a non GHG. No nit will magically improve the GCMS. No nit will change estimates of ECS. but the nits are fun.
All perspective has been lost.
In any case we will probably start doing our own blog. I’ve got some ideas about how to better handle questions and challenges.. I bet Zeke has his own ideas. I suggested something pioneered at Climate audit.
Not a bad precedent.
Go read the parker threads.
Essentially the readers were tasked with selecting the 20 best ( or so I dont recall) Objections, questions, etc. thse were submitted.. kinda like a review
So What I will suggest is that people do the same.
1. Pick the best on topic questions.
2. Pick the best counter arguments
3. Pick the best suggestions for additional testing.
Now of course we dont want reader to do to us what say Steig did to Odonnell. But I expect under your leadership folks will be reasonble in their requests
Hmmmm…
When someone’s determined to portray himself as a victim…
This:
==> “Doc you and rud make a list of your top 20 questions about Zekes article.
We will answer. First compile the list.”
Is the equivalent of being “challenged to a food fight.”
Fascinating.
Joshua
The thing is some of these guys have no sense of history.
Climate audit did a “take down” of parker on UHI.
of course we all wanted parker to show up and take all questions.
20 v 1
So we came up with an idea. Submit what we collectively agreed were the best questions.
And then parker answered them.
That seemed like a fair solution. People had to decide what mattered.
Parker answered.
Mosher, may I ask you, based on your extensive analysis of the US temperature record, which area of approximately 500 mile^2 has the best coverage extending back >100 years and that you believe has the highest signal to noise ratio?
I only ask as this is a prelude to a question.
“Mosher, may I ask you, based on your extensive analysis of the US temperature record, which area of approximately 500 mile^2 has the best coverage extending back >100 years and that you believe has the highest signal to noise ratio?
I only ask as this is a prelude to a question.
#################################
1. is this related to Zeke’s post
2. Define “best coverage”
a) number of stations?
b) number of stations at different atitudes?
c) most stations with fewest metadata changes?
d) most station months?
e) most tmax/tmin measurements
f) most synoptic measurements
g) most hourly measurements?
3. Signal to noise? define how you measure that.
Vague preliminary questions as a pretext to another question, will just generate more questions.
Better if you suggest a test. explain what you think that test will show.
and we can see if the test makes sense.
==> “Better if you suggest a test. explain what you think that test will show.”
This (in bold) suggests the problem with “skeptics” (as a group) in a nutshell.
A strong hypothesis should include speculation about what to expect would happen if it holds, as well as what to expect would not happen.
Think of the Bradford Hill criteria. Think of the arguments of “skeptics” (as a group). Notice the never (or at least rarely) do the twain meet.
Steven, it is late enough and I have had enough wine tonight to take you up on this stuff. Forget my’ coat racked’ books which you will never, ever read, more the pity. Just your blog stuff versus my stuff. References. You know, citations to peer reviewed papers and such.
I have started by archiving indelibly Zeke’s SKS post per your comment. Simple screen shot capture on my hard drive, date stamped by .pdf . We will work from that now indelible beginning, even if SKS later erases/modifies it per its usual MO. 10 questions? Heck, less than 10 suffices.
This will not end like you want. BEST 166900 will be returning, using your own archived previous explanation for that little but significant abomination turning actual temperatures into your minimum error expectation field. So will the BEST ingestion records of Reykjavik and Rutherglen ( have you checked/fixed either?) No matter, already archived and date stamped, and returning soon. And much, much more. Not just about BEST. GISS, NCDC, BOM…I am on record saying BEST is the best (of the miserable lot)… the question is, good enough?
You might want to start planning a bottom line reply now, explaining how you make your lipstick, and how it is applied to beautify this climate pig.
Sometimes, stuff is best left alone. I offered an olive branch to you all on the TOBS thread. Tempest/teacup, and all that. You could have grasped it. Instead, you continue to challenge on off topic threads where my opinions are basically absent. That degree of defensiveness indicates problems worth delving deeper into. Else, you would have let them go.
So here will eventually come a time wasted ‘offensive’ response.
Why the H can you guys not figure out how to let stuff go, when you cannot win and it is not so important? Ah, because any wrong part of the warming meme means the whole is suspect. That is a big chink in your armor. Ponder how many chinks there now might be.
Just give me a few days, as also have and have had better things to do. Like the MSLB deconstruction tomorrow, which contains a few surprises.
Rud,
Steven, it is late enough and I have had enough wine tonight to take you up on this stuff.
I trust the liquid courage is top shelf
Forget my’ coat racked’ books which you will never, ever read, more the pity. Just your blog stuff versus my stuff. References. You know, citations to peer reviewed papers and such.
This not you versus me or my stuff versus your stuff.
The offer is simple. you Objected to SKS . I suggest you focus your efforts on rebutting Zeke’s POST. 5 10 15 whatever questions
ABOUT THAT POST. stay on topic. Act like a reviewer of THAT piece.
If this goes well, we can extend it to other pieces.
I have started by archiving indelibly Zeke’s SKS post per your comment. Simple screen shot capture on my hard drive, date stamped by .pdf . We will work from that now indelible beginning, even if SKS later erases/modifies it per its usual MO. 10 questions? Heck, less than 10 suffices.
weird. you dont trust SKS to keep it up. What if I didnt trust you
to archive it properly without alteration.? But never mind, whatever
you think is fire
This will not end like you want. BEST 166900 will be returning,
1. How I want it to end is an improvement
2. This is about Zekes article. Stray from that, stray from his driect words, and you’ll be ignored.
3. Your time to respond to BE will come on our blog no less.
using your own archived previous explanation for that little but significant abomination turning actual temperatures into your minimum error expectation field.
Off topic for Zeke’s post
So will the BEST ingestion records of Reykjavik and Rutherglen ( have you checked/fixed either?) No matter, already archived and date stamped, and returning soon.
Off topic for zekes post
And much, much more. Not just about BEST. GISS, NCDC, BOM…I am on record saying BEST is the best (of the miserable lot)… the question is, good enough?
Off topic for zekes post
You might want to start planning a bottom line reply now, explaining how you make your lipstick, and how it is applied to beautify this climate pig.
One less glass of wine next time.
Sometimes, stuff is best left alone. I offered an olive branch to you all on the TOBS thread. Tempest/teacup, and all that. You could have grasped it. Instead, you continue to challenge on off topic threads where my opinions are basically absent. That degree of defensiveness indicates problems worth delving deeper into. Else, you would have let them go.
either that or its a trap to include you with luminaries like goddard.
So here will eventually come a time wasted ‘offensive’ response.
Why the H can you guys not figure out how to let stuff go, when you cannot win and it is not so important? Ah, because any wrong part of the warming meme means the whole is suspect. That is a big chink in your armor. Ponder how many chinks there now might be.
two less glasses.
Just give me a few days, as also have and have had better things to do. Like the MSLB deconstruction tomorrow, which contains a few surprises.
When you publish science, send an alert.
Joshua
‘A strong hypothesis should include speculation about what to expect would happen if it holds, as well as what to expect would not happen.”
Ya, A couple of examples. When we were testing the effectiveness of
stealth designs say x sq meters versus 1/10th x, we started the test with an expectation: smaller will be better. And to do it right you even had to have an estimate of how much better to plan the test. you wanted a test that had Power given the expected effect size.
With UHI for example I had read everything skeptics wrote. UHI in a city is 1C, 2C, 3C more! And so one expected that if you divided stations
in rural and urban you would see a difference.
So you try seperating by population. and you find no clear effect
hmm
so you change the defination of urban and use nightlights. you expect a difference. no difference.
so you change the definition of Impervious surface area. no difference
so you change the definition of urbaan built areas.. no difference
so you change it to a combination of many features… no difference.
To people on the outside, they just think try something different. ty this try that. and you want to know at what point will they give up their belief that there is a detectable difference.
If they have to do the work.. if they have to bet their belief.. my observation is they give up their beliefs earlier.
So, you give folks the tools encourage them to do the work themselves.
because formulating and testing your ideas and failing is a great teacher.
Steven –
Like many Republican Congresscritters, I’m not a scientist. But from my understanding of the scientific method, if you have a hypothesis…
You should be able to predict what will happen if it holds, and you should be able to predict what won’t happen if it holds.
You should also be able to predict what would happen if the hypothesis doesn’t hold, and what won’t happen if the hypothesis doesn’t hold.
You should also be able to identify relationships between cause and effect, such as when the magnitude of the cause increases the magnitude of the effect increases, or when the magnitude of the cause decreases, the magnitude of the effect decreases.
If I have a hypothesis that poor station siting causes “artificial” warming, then I could test that hypothesis using the scientific method.
Taking pictures of poorly sited stations would not cut the mustard.
If I have a hypothesis that the UHI causes “artificial” warming, then I could test that hypothesis.
Taking pictures of temperature stations situated on blacktop would not do the job.
If I have a hypothesis that adjustments made to data caused “artificial” warming, then I could test the hypothesis.
Pointing out that in a few areas, the data showed more warming in the adjusted data than in the raw data would not suffice as a test of my hypothesis.
————————————-
Confirmation bias is a well-known human tendency. The scientific method is a (imperfect) way to control for that bias.
————————————–
As far as I’m concerned, people who data mine in order to confirm a hypothesis shouldn’t call themselves “citizen scientists.” They should just call themselves citizens. Now citizens can be correct about issues where scientists are wrong. It can happen.
But let’s at least be clear about who is employing the scientific method here, and who isn’t.
Now I don’t understand the technical arguments being thrown back and forth – but as near as I can tell, one side in this debate can more generally be described as employing the scientific method to test hypotheses, and the other side can generally be described as asserting hypotheses over and over, and determining that their hypotheses hold even though they haven’t been tested.
Steve, I asked a simple question. You can chose to answer it or evade it.
I would prefer you answer it without sophistry or evasion.
That you do not answer simple points just makes me doubt your personal and intellectual integrity and also your work product.
Judity wrote:
>> The big story this week is that Rachendra Pachauri has resigned from the IPCC, over a sexual harassment scandal [link]. <<
Your politics are showing, Judith. Ever hear of Willie Soon?
David,
So in your fevered imagination an old, recycled story about an obscure, generally considered irrelevant researcher, who has possible conflict of interest failings, beats a steamy, still unfolding, (He apparently was just admitted to the hospital and others are coming forward to support her story) morality tale about the resignation of the long time head of a powerful United Nations organization that has had enormous influence on politicians around the world. If you’re not kidding, I suggest you take your cub reporter beanie off and go back to what you’re more qualified for: throwing newspapers on people’s front porches.
David, the head of the Nobel-awarded IPCC resigning in scandal overshadows a manufactured non-scandal against one lone obscure scientist by about a million to one. YOUR politics are really showing….
We have been hearing of Willie Soon since 2005, specifically about his funding sources. The same sources that funded CRU and Stanford University. Shall we turn our guns on them?
Various fossil fuel sources are funding renewables. Playing the political game; “We’re good guys, too.” Keeping in touch with the power brokers. And getting insider status.
They may well be perfectly aware that it’s a loser pseudo-solution, and will be the inevitable “fall-back” when the economics begin to bite: observe Germany’s 2nd highest power rates, and the resort to lignite and Russian coal imports to try and defuse the stupidity of Energiewendel.
corr: Energiewende
What did Willie Soon resign because of a sex scandal? The pot calling the kettle black I think.
There really was nothing for Willie Soon to resign from- except perhaps as an “expert” for hire. His credibility was always very low among professionals (his association with Heartland did this plus the 2003 scandal) , and now it will be hard for those outside of climate science to ever take seriously a paper he is part of – including those who used to hire him to create his pseudoscience.
Sooner Gates tramples facts and gallops over truth in his urge to stake out history.
=============
Will see how history views Willie in the years to come. I suspect not kindly, if much at all.
R Gates, You claim Willie Soon is involved with or what he does is psuedo-science. Do you have any information or is that just your usual posturing? I suspect his scientific chops are far greater than yours. You usually make interesting posts with good information why bother trying to take him down unless you have something constructive to add?
“Your politics are showing, Judith. Ever hear of Willie Soon?”
Yep, Judith trying to move on from that ASAP.
The sooner the better.
David Appell:
That’s not even a story except as a study of the mental defects of his critics.
The issue is whether Soon has left as undisclosed an immediate financial COI by not reporting one or more of his sponsors. Which as far as I can tell, he hasn’t.
It is an unfortunate fact for the critics that it is not that atypical to have sponsors choose whether to have their name listed, nor is it unusual to have sponsors have an opportunity to review a paper before it is published.
In fact nearly all of my sponsors reserve this right to review my research prior to publication.
Regarding anonymity, Berkeley Earth has $500,000 in anonymous funding for their last two reporting periods. Does this mean they can’t publish unless they reveal the donors? Of course not. It’s just a stupid argument manufactured to fling dung at a denier.
The only time there would be a problem not reporting a sponsor (other than failing to identify the sponsor’s potential ownership of intellectual property) is when the sponsor has a vested financial interest in the outcome of the study.
For global warming, what is the vested financial interest of an electric company though? ANS: There is none: If we have a new Paris accord, it may raise electric prices, but the electric company passes that on to his customer. Typically the utility company will earn more, not less, as prices go up (usually your profit margin scales with the cost of the product, for a given product).
The reason there has been a recent interest (more recent than most of the papers Soon has been criticized for not reporting his sponsors in, say 2012 and forward) is the specter of pharm companies funding research to study the efficacy of their drugs, then have the researcher not report that vested interested.
That’s an example of a substantive conflict of interest.
For Soon’s research, I’ve seen no examples of where as financial conflict of interest exists at all. If anything, they have more of a vested interest in the outcome of “alarmist” research.
Certainly this is the case for insurance companies: You can’t sell flood insurance for ocean side properties if there is no perceived risk of flooding. The best outcome for an insurance company is when the perceived risk is greater than the actual one.
Insurance companies actually benefit fiscally from exaggerated risks of flooding. But electric companies on the other hand have no traceable fiscal benefit from underplaying the risks associated with AGW.
So Soon is not much of a story, and to the extent it is one, it’s a black eye for Soon’s critics in the long run. Obviously the head of the IPCC resigning is a much bigger story.
+ 10
This doesn’t say much for your grasp of ethics Carrick.
Sure, your sponsers can choose to request whether or not they are revealed….just as you can chose to reject such a demand, and their sponsorship.
And when a publication demands such transparency, the author has a simple option available to them – publish somewhere else, where no such conflicting demand exists.
As for Davids point about Judith – pretty obvious I thought.
Judith has wailed and gnashed her teeth to a great extent over ‘climate-gate’ and the terrible threat to the integrity of science. And this even bears direct relevance – what was one of the ‘climate-gate’ issues – the ‘perversion of peer-review’ . and in wonderful irony, who’s paper was at issue? Wille ‘ethics, what ethics?’ Soon was the co-author.
I guess some much -maligned people recognise industry funded FUD when they see it . Don’t expect much in the way of apologies.
But suddenly Judith has little interest. Of much greater import to climate science is the fate of an IPCC bureaucrat where that issue has absolutely nothing to do with science.
Judith’s confirmation bias is overwhelming.
And a W man with an eye for skirts to boot! Go figure.
Notice how Carrick, in his expression of deep, deep concern about dung-flinging, neglects to mention the constant motive-hunting through guilt-by-association, and reverse engineering from funding sources, found in practically every stinkin’ thread in the “skept-o-sphere.”
It’s double-standard-a-palooza, and Carrick doesn’t want to be left out!
Or maybe not…
Seems to me, that if folks are upset about the criticism of Soon, they should line up to tell all of our much beloved “Denizens” that they should stop judging the work of “consensus” scientists on any basis other than the merits of their work. He should be the first to inform Judith and the rest of the “skeptics” that “Climategate” and political advocacy might be relevant information, but are quite insufficient for determining the merits of scientists’ work.”
So whadda’ think, Carrick? You abhor tribalism, right?
Are you ready to object to the “witch hunts” conducted by “skeptics,” or do you only get upset with “witch-hunting” from “realists?”
The world awaits, bro.
Even in Oz there are good and bad witches.
=============
Tribalism arises naturally and I think it serves a purpose that is generally positive. Sometimes it makes sense to join a tribe and defend it. Sometimes, to the death.
Carrick;
+1++
Very well put. As far as P’s resignation, observe the unqualified fool from Sedan who is replacing him! Probably can’t even drive a choo-choo.
David, Why should Judith be punished by innuendo by you or anyone? You are unapologetically leftist, so what I doubt anyone cares. I would suspect you don’t think that clouds your scientific reasoning. I don’t judge you that way, I read your comments and base them on their merit and I usually think you do a pretty good job when you stick to science.
I thought the big news about Pachauri was his admission he was a member of the Church Of Manmade Global Warming, not the fact that he had to (allegedly) harass a young woman for the IPCC to realize he was a disgrace.
False dilemma? D finely a real dilemma. Still out of country but quick comment without full review. NERCS comments are very restrained. Don’t forget NERC includes industry representatives from the renwable energy sector and they push and have considerable power to moderating the responses of NERC. We were trying to state the obvious and they worked to weasel and water it down, Trying to agree with Battle if you spend enough money the reliability impacts can be mitigated to a larg extent. But it is likely so large an amount that will not ever be spent and reliability would suffer. You certainly can’t have reliability at costs near where they are now.
I was hoping to see you respond to that post. Hopefully, you will have time to comment further.
I’m looking at the report now. Brattle does not stand behind it, just the authors. If you don’t care about the reasonableness of their arguments, but just wasn’t something to say NERC has been refuted, this fits the bill. They point out things NERC did not “look at” (except the industry has looked at and struggled with these things for years). Examples:
NERC is concerned about intermittent renewable resources. Response-States can use clean resources that are not intermittent, more storage (Duh-Don’t the goals pretty much presume wind and solar.)
NERC is concerned about adequate gas supply. Response – greater use of LNG and gas storage (LNG was supposed to be the hedge that kept gas from going through the roof in the early 2000’s (pre-fracking) but it did not because the infrastructure was not there. Utilities are always looking at gas storage – it’s expensive.)
NERC – concerns about reaching coal heat rate targets. Response- waste heat recovery, co-fire with biomass, co-generation (Coal plants are generally remote from cities and using waste heat is a challenge then. These authors need to share how they would accomplish what ‘s challenged us all for years.)
Basic summary – We Brattle authors are optimistic about new developments, markets, existing technology, synergy and focusing on making things work (that have never worked before) so that we see no problems.
AEE seems to everything but FF. Brattle says not to worry about NERC, everything is gonna be just fine, but I smell a rat in bRATtle.
Why be a common warmie when you can be a adaptationist, carbon sequestrator, or something else cool that can be redefined at need? And you only prepare for the eventualities predicted by experts in these fields, rather than for ALL eventualities, like with common engineers. Gotta be cheaper. Like when the adaptation experts saved us the cost of new dams in Australia because the rain had gone for good. (Pity about the rain interrupting the construction of desals…but we haven’t needed the desals, so no big deal.)
The main thing is to keep that climatariat front and centre – hard line or soft line, hot or lukewarm.
The climatariat IS the message.
Yeah, the first fall-back position. Gotta keep the approved buzzwords flying!
“Media Reports that GMO Science is Settled are Flat Out Wrong”
Please note that the article’s most important contention is that 300 scientists signed as supporters of a paper supporting the title’s contention that was published in the Open Access journal “Environmental Science Europe.” That journal is one of a huge number of online journals printed by SpringerOpen.
Then remember that: “The publishers Springer and IEEE are removing more than 120 papers from their subscription services after a French researcher discovered that the works were computer-generated nonsense.” I guess Abe Lincoln was right when he said, “Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet.”
Then nurture your skepticism because the anti-GMO group USRTK suffers from a dangerous affliction: “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” C.S. Lewis
Why are we still engaging in debates about carbon dioxide as a cause of climate change? Isn’t there a large body of evidence that an increase in the earth’s temperature results in an increase in atmospheric co2 and not vice versa? So says Piers Corbyn, Managing Director and founder of WeatherAction.com. Mr. Corbyn asserts, “…there is no observational evidence in the thousands and millions of years of data that changes in CO2 have any effect on weather or climate. There are no scientists in the world who can produce such observational data. There is only effect the other way, namely that ocean temperatures control average CO2 levels.”
As I mentioned on the previous thread, if there is concern about the fossil fuel industry influencing congressional testimony, they also need to look at the members on the committee, who often rely on the fossil fuel industry’s approval to be even elected. By the time the panelists have been invited, the industry has already had its say through helping to decide who sends out those invitations. We need to be realistic about where the influence lies, and it is not in the panelists who are often just used as sounding boards for the committee’s own ideas. They will only invite people that give them a positive feedback on their predetermined view. This is similar to what happens with some journalists and who they decide to use for opinion, again ‘use’ being the operative word.
agreed. academics are minority in terms of witnesses; people from industry and advocacy groups dominate. somehow blaming academics for misleading the politicians is a bit of a joke
Litchurchur, eh?
==========
It is mostly just theater when hearings are held and testimony given. Rarely does any of it actually influence opinion but it is meant to put on a display of why each side’s previously entrenched position is justified – so it only matter that each side is able to call “experts” that have credibility about the topic being debated. In short, testimony rarely changes anyone’s mind, thus it is absurd to blame “expert” testimony for anything other than bad theater if their performance doesn’t meet expectations.
Most decisions in modern broken American politics are made based on money or such overwhelming events or circumstances that action must be taken. It would be nice if the people would get a functional republic back someday.
Academics are responsible if they participate in political dog an pony shows, by presenting selective testimony at the behest of politicians who are pushing particular policy pathways.
Academics are brought in for their credibility as performers in political theatre. No politician makes up their mind on issues (nor do their staff members) from testimony in hearings. Hearings are all about putting on a display as to why your side’s position is justified. Money drives the actual position on most issues – not facts.
Joshua and R Gates make some good points. It would be refreshing if more politicians would pay attention to unbiased opinions like Judith”s
Jim D,
I agree with your analysis. Unfortunately, it’s not just the Fossil Fuel industry that’s buying access. At OpenSecrets.org you can view the amount of donations to every Congressional politician and their relative ranking in each industrial, institutional or power elite category. Sadly, based on my awareness of post-donation voting records it would seem that “Money doesn’t talk, it swears.”
Made even worse by the Citizens United decision, which rules that money is speech, with the consequence that as far as elections go, if you have less money, you have less speech. Money calls the shots.
Tell it to Tom Steyer, Meg Whitman or Michael Huffington.
“Made even worse by the Citizens United decision, which rules that money is speech, with the consequence that as far as elections go, if you have less money, you have less speech. Money calls the shots.”
I think this cartoonist agrees with you:
http://comicallyincorrect.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Donation-GW-590-LI.jpg
Baby got Jack!
===========
“Money calls the shots.”
_____
As it has for thousands of years. The rich get to make the rules, and they can only hope to put on enough circus acts, wave enough flags, toss out enough bread crumbs to pacify the restless hoards.
r. gates, “As it has for thousands of years. The rich get to make the rules, and they can only hope to put on enough circus acts, wave enough flags, toss out enough bread crumbs to pacify the restless hoards.”
the rich, the strong, the vocal, the devious, the cruel, but the ones that pass out the most crumbs are the ones held fondly in our hearts, until the crumbs run out.
http://product.nuji.com/large/fd35a2af-747a-4e26-b7fb-eb3f53f18591.jpg
Jim D:
I don’t understand your opposition to the Citizens United decision.
Money has always been speech and people have always had different amounts of it.
Fame is also a factor in speech.
For example, Apple issues a press release about building a new green plant – it is covered by the press for free. Why? Because it is news.
I issue a press release about my opinion on global warming – it is not picked up by any news outlet (I actually didn’t issue a press release – it is just an example). Why? Because nobody cares what I say. I get no free speech.
However, say Brad Pitt issues a press release about global warming (or Bono from U2) – does it get covered? Of course – it is news.
Back to Citizens United.
Do you really want to live in a country where the Government can say how much of your own money you can spend on communicating your opinion (should you choose to do so)?
I don’t.
Sure some people don’t have any money to communicate with. So what? Those people aggregate via Sierra Club or Greenpeace and speak through organizations.
Do you want to live in a country which bans Greenpeace from communicating on its issues?
Some people can afford to take out a full page ad in the Wall Street Journal. I cannot. But that rich person has every right to spend their money on communicating their opinion.
I personally think it is wrong and a violation of the constitution to think that you or anybody else has a right to control how I spend my money (in terms of communicating my opinion).
Only people get to vote – all other organizations influence lawmaking and rule making via communication and lobbying.
Do you want to live in a country which says Unions cannot buy speech (i.e. ads)?
I don’t.
You should really think very carefully about what would happen if Citizen United wasn’t the law of the land. I can assure you that you wouldn’t like what our country would become.
Citizens United is about election campaigns and the degree to which the wealthy can control which candidates can even run on, especially, the Republican side, based on their own litmus tests. They turn out a set of clones that only vote en bloc in Congress according to the campaign financiers’ interests and not their electorates. Their electorate doesn’t even get to choose someone who might represent them more properly, because those with free wills are suppressed as being unreliable even before becoming candidates for the Party. The Red states have been particularly affected by this. Money just torques the electoral system, and the “Representatives” are not representative, except of the special interest lobbies. They know which side their bread is buttered. What’s wrong is the amount of time these people have to spend getting funding for their next election, and that is because elections have so much money in them now that it is just an arms race, or a race to the bottom, with the average people being left out. In many European countries, you don’t get this, and the members actually do represent their constituents, poor and wealthy, because these all have voted for them, and their candidacy has not been bought. There are better democracies in the world.
Jim D,
does that mean you’re questioning climate change because of all the money Tom Steyer is giving Democrats?
And Soros, Buffett, Gates and on and on. Big Oil funds most if not all democrats as well:
http://www.thesluethjournal.com/clinton-foundation-raked-millions-big-oil-pro-keystone-groups
“They turn out a set of clones that only vote en bloc in Congress according to the campaign financiers’ interests”
Card Check and the public employee unions would like a word with you.
The REAL money in politics from opensecrets (top organization contributors):
Some previews…
9 of the top ten donate > 90% to Democrats
SEIU is # 1
American Federation of Federal State and Municipal Employees ( gov employee union) is # 3
The first appearance of a corporation is # 12
Koch Industries #50
Big Blue (left wing org) is #2
Bottom line, corporations controlling politics with money is a MYTH!
See for yourself:
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php
“if there is concern about the fossil fuel industry influencing congressional testimony..” How about my concern about the so-called “renewables” industry influencing committees at all levels? Do you know that California carbon tax is routed through an opaque Delaware company? Looks like a fertile ground for corruption.
Yes, it is. We are the USA leaders for mandatory renewables, expensive energy, high taxes, debt, and unfunded gov employee pension liabilities. It is a paradise. The weather is nice.
The carbon sequestration link only leads to a general page at Nature. This is presumably what you meant?
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v8/n3/full/ngeo2386.html
Thanks Michael.
Looks very interesting, unfortunately it is behind a very expensive paywall.
I stopped subscribing to Nature several years ago, I didn’t read enough of it and it became rather political/idealogical.
I’d like to read many articles, but the price is just too high.
Re the U.S. administration declaring Green War on India –
“He wouldn’t put it this way, but Secretary of State John Kerry announced this week that the U.S. government will turn the screws on India over the country’s environmental record.” – Washington Post.
Another War on Something or Other – maybe one that they’ll actually win! Or maybe the same result as all the others – the War on Poverty, the War on Drugs, and so on.
At least they’ll get plenty of exercise – turning the screws on a billion people or so. If that gets boring, they can have a bit of variety by holding a couple of billion feet to the fire. Green fire, of course, not the ordinary CO2 generating type. What utter balderdash!
Mahatma Ghandi was once asked what he thought of American culture – he supposedly responded that he thought it would be a good idea!
Maybe the administration could consider getting its own house in order first, and then leading by example. Many Indians are patriotic, and take pride in being part of the world’s largest democracy, with a rich and varied history going back thousands of years. Some of them even object to upstart Western politicians telling India what to do, and how to do it.
They obviously need a good American screwing!
Live well and prosper,
Mime Flynn.
Yeah, India co2 emissions is a far bigger threat than the jv team known as isis, and since hillary hit the reset button with russia, they are no longer a threat either.
The rapid industrializaton of India (and China) has certainly created environmental problems in those countries, with real and immediate dangers to their citizens. Pressure is building from the emergent middle class for improvements in air and water in both countries. I predict these local problems, (with some prodding from the western countries and companies that purchase the goods manufactured in India and China) will start to be addessed at an increasing rate. Any talk about reducing CO2 levels, however, is just empty words and promises. Our friends in India and China are rational operators and will work in their own self interest. Restraining their development isn’t on the agenda.
This is a picture of the U.S. before the Snail Darter gained dominance. It has been very tough on people to do the appropriate things at the right time.
We have outsourced NASA to Russia, to do something even better.
Rich tourists are now able to watch about 15 Sunrise to Sunset cycles per day… What a view to have. With the right-stuff, now can feel weightless at the same time. After we find another Earth, then we will all be able to visit on our free paid vacation.
Don’t hold your breath…say the rational operators.
The Chinese and Indian governments are doing the right thing by their people. This is as it should be. Or would you rather more of them starve to “save the planet?”
We see the curve is different today, everything moves faster. Growth, Appropriation, Taxes, Death… life goes on. Depending on your view.
pete – even with the “real and immediate” dangers, they know they are better off now. And that thanks to fossil fuels. Same applies in the US and elsewhere.
200 peer reviewed articles that indicate a good hard look at the sun might be in order? Quick scan and this one stuck out a bit to consider as it specified it should be looked at for past and “modern” ice maximums in Greenland: http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v7/n9/full/ngeo2225.html
Dr. C, is this in part why you felt bitten by your uncertainty bug?
I’m not sure I know any more than I did when I started this quest +/- 4 months ago. And I’ve not read so much on one topic in all my life.
Do you think skeptics tend to be less skeptical of solar effects than GHG effects on climate? It seems that way. In terms of forcing, doubling CO2 is equivalent to a 1% solar increase, which is more than the sun has changed in millions of years.
Jim D,
If you ever come across an experiment that shows that you can raise the temperature of an externally heated object by surrounding it with CO2, do let me know. Nobody seems to have done it yet.
Talk of CO2 forcings is purely fantasy, but seemingly easily believed by the gullible, and mentally lazy, who can’t be bothered thinking for themselves. One might as easily believe in the indivisibility of the atom, or n Rays. At least there’s a little more logic and reasoning involved.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
It’s insulation.
JimD,
Can’t really say. I see much less discussion about solar impacts than CO2 but it seems much of the skeptical discourse is predicated on the AGW side’s focus almost entirely on CO2.
You stated that CO2 doubling is equal to a 1% solar increase, but can you cite a resource for verification? I’m getting lots of correlation to CO2, but with few exceptions not that much causation, and when causation is cited then modeled obvious issues are found with results and where that missing energy is. Then PDO is tossed in as the cause for hiatus (I’d say correlated here again but a current theory and only one of many) as indicated here: http://www.climatecentral.org/news/warming-spurt-looms-will-it-change-minds-on-climate-change-18716.
But it could be volcanos to blame: http://news.discovery.com/earth/global-warming/undersea-volcanoes-could-affect-climate-change-150205.htm
What is it rls states: “I don’t know” IS a scientific statement. Well some seem to know, but I sure don’t. They all seem plausible and are potentially each a part of the puzzle.
JimD,
And this comes out indicating an emperical observation of CO2 forcing, but note that the time is fully encompased within the temperature hiatus all while CO2 levels continued to increase: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature14240.html
Danny, yes 3.7 W/m2, which even the skeptics agree on for CO2 doubling, is equivalent to a 1% solar increase because the area-averaged solar flux is 340 W/m2. The sun increases in strength by about 1% only every 100 million years. It is quite a steady star varying within 0.1% in its cycles.
JimD,
Thanks. That’s math even I can follow. Now, where is that pesky missing heat? Why isn’t the climate system performing as the models expect? Are there 60 year cycles in seas? Why is 90 years of historic SLR modified by Hay from 1.6-1.9 mm/yr down to 1.2 mm/yr and “suddenly” the SLR is declared as “increasing”? Was subsidence factored in or groundwater removal from aquifers? Why was Iceland’s history changed (article in Dr. C’s offering). What caused the temp increase in 1940’s (why weren’t WWII aerosols and therefore cooling high), and subsequent drop, then the later rise? What were the natural aerosols (dust) earlier in the record vs. temps.? Why do we measure LWIR via satellite and is this compared with total IR shielded from entering our atmosphere? What were the causes of previous warming not associated with ACO2? Has that been subtracted from current? Why is Arctic/Greenland ice volume reducing and Antarctic increasing? Where do volcanos fit in (aerosols/CO2)? PDO/AMO? El Nino/La Nina? Is there heat in the deeper oceans upwelling? Does the increase in CO2 partially eminate from warmer waters? (Leaving out precip/clouds/albedo…..I’ve more work to do)
What makes us think we’ve got this all figured out to soley CO2? What will be the result? What do we do to fix it?
Danny, this is the problem with looking at short periods. The sun and ocean cycles can conspire to do cooling of 0.2 C which counteracts a typical decadal CO2 increase, and then you get people talking about pauses. Since 1950, CO2 is expected to have had an effect of 1.4 W/m2 or 0.7 C, which is similar to that observed because ocean and solar cycles tend to cancel themselves on longer time scales.
Danny, I think everyone agrees that a sea-level rise of 70 mm since 1990 is rather an unprecedented rate, and, not only that but the ocean heat content has been rising during the so-called pause, which means it isn’t such a pause after all. Antarctica is worse than we thought (see what I linked below). And, yes 3.7 W/m2 is far larger than anything the sun can do, let alone the 6 W/m2 we would get to without some kind of slowdown by 2100. The LIA was only worth a negative 0.5 W/m2 to put this forcing in perspective.
Hay and Mitrovica reduced it because it was wrong. Subsequent work will confirm this.
JCH,
Show me your crystal ball. “Hay and Mitrovica reduced it because it was wrong. Subsequent work will confirm this.” 90 years were reduced. 90 years!
NOAA and NASA and several papers indicated 1.6-1.9mm/yr. Only one, Hay, which reduced 90 years of history with the push of a computer button, says differently. Why did Hay stop at 1900 and not go back to 1880 (which is where I understand the tidal gauges date). When the preponderance of evidence is the higher range, what would lead me to accept only Hay and toss out the rest?
As a follow up, if it turns out NOAA/NASA and all the rest were wrong what leads me to trust them for their alternative conclusions?
I get that science builds on science, but changing a specific 90 year data set then declaring SLR is accelerating should make one question the new findings first shouldn’t it? It seems you don’t and I’d really like to understand the thinking.
Jim D,
You are absolutely correct that looking at short periods can give an incorrect impression.
The only period that will shield all from accusations of cherry picking is the longest available. That is, from the time of the Earth’s creation to the present.
If I am not mistaken, the Earth’s surface was molten then, but not so much now. Nothing stopped it cooling. Nothing at all. The fact that you can stand on something solid should be proof enough.
Cooling. Not warming, not insulation, not heat trapping, accumulation, or storing. Nonsense, all of it.
Keep worshipping – maybe I’m wrong, and you will be among the saved, and I will be damned for all Eternity. I think I’ll just continue to be an unbeliever, and leave you to pray for Warmageddon.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
The uncertainty could be cut in half by 2030 due to the growing dominance of greenhouse gases and a better handle on the presumably reducing aerosol effect (see article on 2030). So, yes, the length of the record is important. If we go from the current three successive warmest decades since records began to five successive decades as is predicted to happen by then with a fair amount of certainty, just maybe, more people might start to believe that AGW has something going for it as a theory instead of that crazy 97% of scientists.
Jim D writes:
“ocean and solar cycles tend to cancel themselves on longer time scales.”
So your theory is that twentieth century warming is cancelling the Little Ice Age?
https://polination.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/beaver-crushed-by-his-own-tree.jpg
Jim D,
I overestimated your knowledge, apparently. May I respectfully point out that insulators are often used to keep things cool – for example houses, cold rooms, drink cool boxes, refrigerators, and so on.
Obviously, magical CO2 insulators not only keep things warm only, but also heat them up. Where can I buy one to heat my cold coffee back up to boiling? I’ll even put it in the Sun if I have to.
Warmists. I suppose we need them for light relief.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Jim D
I am glad you have such certainty with science’s ability to reconcile the old tidal gauge system with the satellite era data. Given the adjustments necessary in both, let’s just say I am dubious.
That pervasive hubris is clouding the judgment of some in the establishment, who think they can account for the difference of the thickness of a dime. But equations are are wondrous things.
David in TX, the LIA is worth -0.5 W/m2, GHGs by 2100 will be worth +6 W/m2 of forcing, so 20th-21st century warming will be rather larger than your LIA, but that is just in quantitative terms.
Mike Flynn, in case you didn’t know, the heating comes from the sun. It’s insolation.
It’s actually the thickness of one inch of ocean surface. It was out of balance by a very large amount of water that had no origin.
Jim D
Best estimate of current imbalance is 0.5 – 1.0W/m2
See: http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-13-00294.1
You say the LIA imbalance was 0.5W/m2
Again, looks like you are right about it just being long term ocean/solar cycles balancing out.
Thanks for the revelation!
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/e4/fd/ff/e4fdff0a1508f0c5e69dcbc04de02a21.jpg
Jim D,
Yes indeed. Heat from the outside – ie insolation – is prevented from heating the surface (to a degree) by insulation.
This is why you need thicker insulation if you want your beer to stay cold in the Sun. According to Pierre-Humbery, the insulating capacity of the atmosphere is equivalent to one seventh of an inch of polystyrene, although he doesn’t say what type. I suppose to a Warmist, it doesn’t matter – religion doesn’t need scientific rigour.
In any case, without the insulating effect of the atmosphere, life as we know it could not exist. Too hot, too much short wave radiation such as UVC and so on.
Dream on. There is no such thing as a magic one way CO2 insulator. You might have noticed that the surface tends to cool at night, even though there is just as much GHG in the atmosphere. It seems as though global warming only occurs when the Sun shines. That’s a surprise, isn’t it?
Let me know if you find an experiment which shows the GHE. You don’t seem to be having much luck so far.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Mike Flynn, if you think CO2 affects solar radiation to any significant extent you have had too much sun. Its effect is in the infrared which is the way heat escapes.
JimD and/or Mike,
I’ve asked elsewhere but didn’t get a response. My (minimal) understanding is that Solar IR enters the atmosphere and converts (?) to LWIR after reaching land/ocean. Is there a measurement of the delta between the total sun supplied spectrum(s) and that which passes through specifically the CO2? Thinking CO2 as an insulator has to have some effect both ways. It seems this would be an interesting consideration in the totality. If off base, just say so. Thanks.
Jim D: . In terms of forcing, doubling CO2 is equivalent to a 1% solar increase,
Not exactly equivalent, because different wavelengths at different effects.
Jim D: The uncertainty could be cut in half by 2030 due to the growing dominance of greenhouse gases and a better handle on the presumably reducing aerosol effect (see article on 2030).
I agree. Future opinions and policy recommendations will depend a great deal upon what happens between now and then. The recent paper in Science by Feldman et al (read all about it at RealClimate and WUWT) seems to portend that the plateau will last 10 years or so more, depending on factors besides CO2 and ocean temperature cycles.
I’m kind of sorry to hear that a doubling of CO2 is only about a percent of change in the sun’s output. That’s not much leeway for not knowing the direction or windspeed of the solar weather, nor how it will bend the boat. Heck, we’ve little idea of the shoreline either.
Cap’n Trenhab is focused on the great whale of fright, carbon dioxide, and the evil cabal behind it, mankind.
==================
When the ~1.9mm numbers were produced, there was an unexplained imbalance: ocean water from heaven.
Your take on this is just plain strange.
JCH,
Cannot tell if this is addressed to me. Can you clarify? Names help.
Danny – yes to you.
Mitrovica is a heavyweight. It’s not the first time he has stood SL science on its head.
JCH,
Thank you. So then are we to no longer accept that NOAA/NASA and all the other scientists (and IPCC) who state the 1.6-1.9mm/yr are no longer credible? Why? Because of the “heavyweight” standing of one scientist. Why would we not wait for confirmation/refutation?
The SLR rates of the 20th century never made sense. One of the reasons is they are out of balance.
It’s now in balance.
Mitrovica is a very good scientist. This study is a vast improvement, and I expect it to be affirmed by additional work.
JCH,
It would be helpful to address comments as when it comes to me it showed as a response to JIMD.
Please provide substantiation for this:”The SLR rates of the 20th century never made sense. One of the reasons is they are out of balance. It’s now in balance.” Were we missing water? Was there a GT of ice loss conversion to liquid that was “missing” that should have equated to an expected SLR? I’d love to see that analysis taking tapering coastlines, subsidence, thermal expansion, etc. in to account. It might exist but I’ve sure missed it. But I’m a newbie.
Danny – there was too much ocean water. They could not figure out from where it came.
JCH,
You’re gonna have to give me more than that. Are you saying somehow the volume of water was measured so SLR was changed to fit? I’m not understanding what you’re trying to say. I’m dense. Write slowly.
Re: “Media reports that GMO science is settled are flat out wrong”
Delightful irony/hypocrisy to be found at the point where they bleat about the possibility of “the rapid spread of herbicide-resistant weeds”.
I own a farm, and am very much in favor of GMO crops, IF properly done. Amongst other things, that means never all GMO, and crop rotation rather than monoculture.
Thanks to boneheads, over 10 million US acres are now infested by 8 species of really nasty glyphosate resisant resistant weeds. That means RoundUp Ready corn and soy have already been rendered useless by Darwin on those acres, and it speads every year. That is what makes weeds weeds.
The weed thing is not a bleat. Already happened. Details in the food chapter of ebook Gaia’s Limits.
My point was not that it couldn’t happen, but that people who entirely oppose the use of herbicides will also complain about resistance to hebicides.
And yes, I know you have written a book. I heard you the 17th time.
Interesting…how does the glyphosate resistance trait go from corn to weeds?
Justin –
==> ” how does the glyphosate resistance trait go from corn to weeds?”
It doesn’t.
You use lots of herbicides on herbicide resistant corn – to kill weeds in the corn fields. The weeds that survive are the ones that are resistant. They reproduce.
No way to know that. It doesn’t have to, but it could, via Lateral gene transfer
Isn’t there a difference between conflict of interest in funding sources
and the deceitful use of data in scientific research?
The two should not be conflated. Money may have a point of view, but it does not write papers and draw conclusions. It can’t massage data. Considering the huge amounts of money involved, an ‘investigation’ is warranted when there is evidence of purposeful misrepresentation of data. Funding source makes no difference if methods are fully disclosed.
Undisclosed money sources cannot invalidate scientific method.
The questions about the ‘hockey stick’ and the assault on the ‘seven’ are not moral equivalents.
In science, first results on something are usually considered provisional until independently confirmed or disconfirmed by another group. This is how the consensus progresses. One line of evidence is not enough.
For example, this reported today
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/27/the-big-melt-antarctica_n_6766290.html
Now it is the skeptics turn to go to Antarctica to say the ice isn’t meting that fast. They have been a bit lax on this type of thing so far, so the warmist message is getting ahead of them. The skeptics need to do the field work but are AWOL when it comes to this type of issue.
As usual, Jimmy Doodle, the HuffPuff piece has no hard evidence to it
Try http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073pnas.140S184111 (not* paywalled)
But remember that this paper has hard evidentiary geology in it, so be careful of polluting your mind
IANL8888,
The link did not work. Can you provide a correction?
Thanks.
Jim D
I have noticed you read HP frequently, which explains some things for me. The Antarctic piece has accomplished its purpose. Those needing a psychological fix for their addiction to global warming hysteria can live a normal life for another week or so until they start feeling a downer coming on and then the cycle starts all over again.
I couldn’t open the ianl8888 link but I assume it is about that study last year discussing the geothermal activities on the West Peninsula affecting the glacial melt rate. Of course it paid the obligatory tribute to AGW, but true scientists would be asking many more questions.
Not to mention the refusal to share data and code. When I was in school, if I gave a correct answer but did not show my work, I still failed.
I’m going to put that solar paper in the evidence for solar driven ocean heat transport column.
Here come de Sun.
=============
Re the Grijalva debacle this merits reading.
‘Publicly singling out specific researchers based
on perspectives they have expressed and implying
a failure to appropriately disclose funding sources
– and thereby questioning their scientific integrity
– sends a chilling message to all researchers.’
H/t The American Meteorological Society. 27th Feb, 2015.
I had a look through the Monckton, Soon et al paper this week. I really didn’t know what to expect, but I was surprised at how deeply flawed it is, and how obvious the flaws are. Essentially the authors assume their own conclusion. I’ve posted a review up on my blog:
https://jonathanabbott99.wordpress.com/2015/02/25/review-of-why-models-run-hot/
JA, went over and read your review. Agree with past, disagree with part. Interested to get your reaction to my review which is next up here. A bit more mathy. Regards.
While I’m at it, I’ll mention an issue that’s minor in this context but keeps coming up in Lord Monckton’s writings.
There may be some way to make sense of the §8.3.2 passage, “Also, in electronic circuits, the singularity at g_inf = +1, where the voltage transits from the positive to the negative rail, has a physical meaning,” but I haven’t been able to envision the “transits” part.
Guys who know this stuff have told me that a g value of +1 has a meaning for a portion of the amplifier’s operating regime, but the amplifier tends promptly to leave that regime, losing incremental open-loop gain and possibly clamping its output to one or the other rail, or, depending on delays in the feedback, possibly oscillating.
So those who understand how the “voltage transits from the positive to the negative rail” would be doing a service by explaining it.
Sorry about mis-posting my last comment; I had intended to post it as a third reply to Jonathon Abbot’s.
Still, any light you could shed would be welcome. None of my attempts to come up with a set of assumptions that make a “Bode”-containing writing by Lord Monckton intelligible has met with success.
Joe Born. See the last couple of pages in the pdf.
https://www.tcd.ie/Physics/ultramicroscopy/teaching/sf-current/notes/PY2011/L5-DC-Transient-2011.pdf
From the article:
…
While it is not possible to devote full attention to generalized functions in a typical undergraduate course, this confusion surrounding 0 − and 0
+ — this “skeleton in the closet” as [10] calls it — needs to be brought out fully into the light. The goal of this article is to highlight Laplace transform definitions and properties that allow a readily taught and correct analysis of
dynamic systems incorporating nonzero initial conditions and where the system is driven by signals that include singularity functions at the origin. To this end, we advocate the use of the L− Laplace transform (3), along with its derivative rule (4). We present reasonable mathematical support for
this approach, along with an accessible theory of generalized functions, including how singularity functions are defined, how these functions are combined with regular functions to form generalized functions, and how mathematical operations on these generalized functions can be consistently defined. This treatment is suitable for most engineering uses.
…
http://www-math.mit.edu/~hrm/papers/lmt.pdf
jim2: Thanks for the references regarding basic linear circuit analysis.
As you no doubt recognize, of course, those linear treatments don’t clarify Monckton et al.’s discussion of real-life amplifiers’ distinctly non-linear operation, i.e., where the ratio of amplifier output to input is highly dependent on input value.
I haven’t read the paper. Just trying to be helpful.
I would point out that op amps can be configured for non-linear operation.
https://www.physics.wisc.edu/undergrads/courses/fall2014/321/Lab%20Instructions/expt12.pdf
Some chaotic op am circuits
http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/pubs/paper245.htm
Lorentz attractor:
http://users.physics.harvard.edu/~horowitz/misc/lorenz.htm
jim2: Again, thanks for your efforts.
But, actually, I know most of that stuff. The point is Monckton et al.’s discussion of g = + 1. Absent delays, that means that the amplifier’s output would grow without bound if the amplifier were ideal. In real life, of course, there are limits on amplifier output so that in effect g falls, reaching a small-signal value of zero at some point.
That’s what I’m told is manifested as the output’s being clamped to a rail. The Schmitt trigger comes to mind. Or, if phase-shifting energy storage occurs, the circuit oscillates; back in the stone age when I was a young lawyer I heard the term “astable multivibrator” used in that connection. Maybe Lord Monckton is referring to such a circuit. Who knows?
jim2: I just noticed that Dr. Curry has asked us to hold Monckton et al. discussion in abeyance because Mr. Istvan is on the verge of addressing that in detail on this site.
Do we have a link to the good Lord’s paper?
jim2: http://www.wmbriggs.com/public/Monckton.et.al.pdf
Your critique makes some good points. Since both you and Mr. Istvan are silent about the part that confused me the most, I assume you understand it. So I wonder whether I might impose upon you to explain it to us laymen.
The part that raised the most questions for me was the transience-fraction part, §4.8. Its Table 2 is described as “derived from” the Gerald Roe paper, but it’s not clear how that derivation occurred. Table 2 is not consistent with a simple application of Roe’s (lumped-parameter) Equation 29 (where Roe’s f is Mockton et al.’s g), so maybe they eyeballed Roe’s (distributed-parameter?) Figure 6? Yet the correspondence between feedback values and temperature values as a function of time is not immediately apparent in that graph. How did Mockton et al. get their Table 2?
In that connection, how were the values in Table 4 obtained from Table 2? Presumably there was some kind of interpolation, but it would aid understanding to make that more explicit.
Also, §4.8’s penultimate paragraph compares the Table 2 r_100 value ostensibly derived from the Roe paper for feedback f = 2.1 (presumably Roe’s f / lambda_0) with values computed from the AR4 central estimate of 21st Century warming. But the stimulus of which Roe’s Figure 6 depicts the response is a step function, whereas I’m guessing the stimulus assumed for 21st Century warming is more like a ramp. Surely the yet-to-be realized portion 1 – r_t of the response depends on whether the stimulus has been (1) a constant value over the preceding t-length time period or (2) a ramp only reaching that value at the end of the time period.
Also, later usage of that parameter left me scratching my head. Specifically, I didn’t understand how the §7 statement that “the 0.6 K committed but unrealized warming mentioned in AR4, AR5 is non-existent” was arrived at. That section refers to Table 4, which shows that the values computed for the model result from multiplication by a transience coefficient r_t, supposedly taken from Table 2. The r_t values 0.7, 0.6, and 0.5 respectively given in Table 4 for f values 1, 1.5, 2.2 suggest that in fact the central estimate leaves (1 – 1/0.6) * 0.8 = 0.53 K of warming yet to be realized. What am I missing?
Any light that anyone could shine on the r_t issue would be welcome.
Rud’s post on the Monckton et al. paper will be posted in about 6 hours, best to defer significant discussion on that topic until then
hopefully, Judith you will also provide your insights on the paper’s methodology
Joe, only silent because an entire post is coming. With a surprising math result included. Monckton may have ‘jumped the rails’ ( his Bode voltage inversion) but the equation with a better 4.8 rsubt is quite useful.
Regards.
Don’t comprehend the physics’
deep whys and wherefores,
but understand, c’est toujours,
a matter of empiric evidence
and not the politics.
Hi Judy, Thanks for the Iceland link. I had another post last week on Australia. Using the GISS web data base, I clicked on Alice Springs and this delivered a list of the 30 nearest climate stations within 1000 km radius. I was wanting to test the effect of GHCN V3.1 homogenisation. It turns out that for these sites it changes everything and nothing. But the BIG SURPRISE for me was that the average temperature for these 30 stations was a TOTALLY FLAT line for the last 100 years.
Temperature Adjustments in Australia
http://euanmearns.com/temperature-adjustments-in-australia/
and the temperature chart
http://www.euanmearns.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/average_raw_1907.png
PS. this chart is raw GHCN V2 temperatures, in comments I posted chart for anomalies that shows same thing
Hi Euan
So they are all in one place here is the Iceland link again.
http://euanmearns.com/re-writing-the-climate-history-of-iceland/
Hopefully Mosh, Zeke or Nick will be along soon and they can clarify why the temperatures appear to have been adjusted in Iceland and Australia.
tonyb.
Tony, thanks for this. Doubt the other side will come along on Iceland. Way too documented, replicated, confirmed, and awkward.
Rud
I’ve bought he popcorn concession and the ticket rights so if they don’t show up I am out of pocket.
I am sure they have a detailed and intelligible response that will allay all concerns. They will be here soon.
Any minute now..
Any minute…
Anyone want cheap popcorn and discounted tickets?
Tonyb
Tony, the GHCN V2 T profile for Iceland is not materially different to BEST. It is what has been introduced to the V3.1 data that is of interest. I’m surprised at the absence of commentary on my Australia chart. I’ve sent that post to Judy and hope she publishes it. Its been up on my own site for several days now and no one has yet pointed out a fundamental flaw.
And to put a little more flesh on Iceland. I have done a simple comparison of GHCN V2 raw and V3.1 homogenised records. Subtracting one from the other produces this:
http://www.euanmearns.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/iceland_dT.png
Homogenisation has the effect of cooling the past. But there are some more specific data adjustments centred on 1939 where raw records are adjusted down in a narrow band by up to 1.5˚C removing the record warmth of that year. And in a narrow band in the 1960s when Iceland experienced significant cooling, records appear to have been systematically deleted.
Re-writing The Climate History of Iceland
http://euanmearns.com/re-writing-the-climate-history-of-iceland/
I’d quite like the Australian and Iceland posts to get much wider exposure. Coming next week is Southern Africa which is another BIG surprise. One thing I cannot reconcile in all this is BEST. Maybe we can have a debate about that in coming weeks?
Hi Euan
Just left some additional info on WUWT regarding the Bond et al dating slippage
euan, the pair wise homogenization, interpolation or kriging of temperatures with “neighbors”. tends to screw up “local” temperature records. Iceland is a great example because it has a “unique” climate meaning it isn’t very representative of its region. Kriging is the greatest thing since slice bread for a “global” product, but it will cool or warm local temperatures as it smooths or “smears” the unique climate details into the region. Unless you or someone else does a proper “local” temperature record, you are pretty much stuck with the results.
The same deal with NCDC TOBs adjustment. Since they use anomaly, they appear to cool the past, but if they used absolute temperatures they would be warming the present. For whatever reason they went with the cool the past approach which leads to a different set of questions than the warm the present approach.
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/ihad4_krig_v2_Iceland.png
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/iberkeley_tavg_Icelanda.png
Or you can just pick which product gives you the local results you like best :)
This should be easier to compare.
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-fS-wUa7YWgo/VPHB8GexilI/AAAAAAAAM1w/PAK24G_mmYc/w797-h473-no/iceland%2Bbest%2Bv%2Bc%26w.png
captDallas–
euan, the pair wise homogenization, interpolation or kriging of temperatures with “neighbors”. tends to screw up “local” temperature records. Iceland is a great example because it has a “unique” climate meaning it isn’t very representative of its region. Kriging is the greatest thing since slice bread for a “global” product, but it will cool or warm local temperatures as it smooths or “smears” the unique climate details into the region. Unless you or someone else does a proper “local” temperature record, you are pretty much stuck with the results.
o Kriging is a class of interpolation techniques. There are many types of interpolator and no one is the best in all circumstances. [This includes kriging as a BLUE.]
o Kriging is usually considered to be an exact interpolator–this is not the same as problem free.
o Kriging is considered to be an excellent local estimator and is prominent in industry including the delineation of ore grades, estimating the spatial extent (including uncertainty) of contamination, etc. Places where real money is involved.
To say that kriging smooths or smears details requires much more discussion of what one means by ‘smears’ or ‘smooths’. The image that conveys is incomplete and I suspect likely misleading to those not experienced with interpolation. When choosing between and working with different interpolators one has to keep in mind both smoothing and artifact generation. Also the nature of the data, e.g., flatness, sharp gradients spacing, etc. impacts the relative performance of different interpolators.
Interpolation is a curious endeavor.
To be clear this comment says nothing in regard to pair homogenization or the BEST scheme/implementation.
Best regards,
mwgrant
mwgrant, “To be clear this comment says nothing in regard to pair homogenization or the BEST scheme/implementation.”
Note this, ” Iceland is a great example because it has a “unique” climate meaning it isn’t very representative of its region. “, Unique limits “pairs” as in peers. I believe a :”corner” is one class of unique data point. If you tried to average the income of China, Hong Kong would be a unique data point. Pair wise homogenization, Best version kriging, C&W version Kriging and GISS interpolation would all produce different results in the area of Hong Kong, but the overall average would be the same.
I am not sure how to “clear say” they smooth/smear other than providing an example.
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-fS-wUa7YWgo/VPHB8GexilI/AAAAAAAAM1w/PAK24G_mmYc/w797-h473-no/iceland%2Bbest%2Bv%2Bc%26w.png
Best versus Cowtan and Way Iceland.
mwgrant, This is a non-kriger explanation of the issue. In my former field I was used to data issues and developed various sanity tests to keep me from looking too bad.
http://redneckphysics.blogspot.com/2015/03/surface-temperature-product-issues.html
Hej Captn
My statement
“To be clear this comment says nothing in regard to pair homogenization or the BEST scheme/implementation.”
was in reference to my reply and not your comment. I should have been more clear. That is, in my reply I was only attempting to clarify some properties of kriging–separate from all of the other attendant GW-related issues.
If you tried to average the income of China, Hong Kong would be a unique data point. Pair wise homogenization, Best version kriging, C&W version Kriging and GISS interpolation would all produce different results in the area of Hong Kong, but the overall average would be the same.
Out of the chute this is not at all apparent and I am skeptical. For starters what do you mean by ‘overall average’? How does each methodology arrive at an ‘overall average’ and what assumptions constrain the methodology in detail? Even calculating a non-spatial ‘average’ (univariate) one has a number of choices and attendant assumptions/issues about the underlying distribution: arithmetic mean, geometric mean, harmonic mean, transformation-backtransformation, bootstrap approaches, etc. and they give different results for a global ‘average’.
Sanity tests are a must. However, finding sane sanity tests may be a problem and [degree of] sanity of the tests need to be documented.
Regards,
mwgrant
mwgrant, “Out of the chute this is not at all apparent and I am skeptical. For starters what do you mean by ‘overall average’?”
When you have a “hard” quantities, cash and population you have fewer abstract options,so an average per capita income would be easier to determine than an average net worth which requires more interpretation. That should limit the number of options resulting in an easier to determine “average”. Hong Kong would likely have a per captia income in the 10s of thousands versus mainland China in the 100s so you could determine an average fairly easily but then you have to determine how meaningful it really is.
Global temperature anomaly is fairly abstract. An equatorial degree is worth three or more Arctic degrees. An Iceland degree is worth two Oymyakon degrees. That is a problem in thermo related to the zeroth law, much like junk bonds are an issue in finance.
Global temperature anomaly is fairly abstract.
Now that is an understatement! Global temperature is not a physical quantity. It a preliminary stub subsuming a lot of unknown science stuff. It is only an abstract metric–a composite of local temperatures. When you combine such different numbers as local temperatures, i.e., perform ‘averaging’ calculations then choices in approach are made.
That is a problem in thermo related to the zeroth law
As global temperature is not physical quantity I am guarded with respect to any thermodynamic arguments or baggage attributed to it. SUch arguments have to break at some point. If something using it works fine. If not…well that is fine too. Why? because it is only a crude analogy to a physical quantity.
mwgrant, “As global temperature is not physical quantity I am guarded with respect to any thermodynamic arguments or baggage attributed to it. Such arguments have to break at some point. If something using it works fine. If not…well that is fine too. Why? because it is only a crude analogy to a physical quantity.”
Since it is all you have to work with that is why you need so many sanity checks. There are somewhat accurate temperature measurements, mainly SST because that doesn’t change as quickly and you can estimate to a point how much error is involved with “global” average. Having a huge range of uncertainty related to latent just makes the problem that much more interesting. Land “surface” temperatures would really need to be converted into potential temperatures that allow for lower specific heat capacities and the wide range in energy per unit anomaly.
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-OvQHzJy8gFU/VLF3XHImAqI/AAAAAAAAMGM/X1vv5Tx0kiI/w689-h411-no/oppo%2Bover%2Bmann.png
With an energy problem I would start with the majority of the energy, oceans and specifically tropical oceans like the Oppo et al 2009 reconstruction instead of the Mann et al high latitude tree ring reconstruction from the noisiest regions possible. That fortunately or unfortunately depending on your point of view, indicates a lot more past climate variability and a lower end “sensitivity” to CO2.
Another advantage of ocean only is that it has less, land use change, black carbon forcing, albedo change and hydrology cycle changes to deal with.
That is beside the point though since “sensitivity” is defined based on a change in “surface” temperature which is the most abstract metric one could conceive of :( We are thermodynamically stuck with a crude analogy so the problem is how to make it as reliably useful as possible. Energy weighting of anomaly seems to be a little bit of help. I am not be kind saying it is “fairly abstract” because I think it can be made less abstract. I could be wrong of course since working within the system, Lewis and Curry hasn’t had as much impact as I would have imagined, mainly because there is always a new interpretation of “global” surface temperature to play with. To be useful the target needs to quit moving.
Captn,
Good interaction…got me thinking at a conceptual level about the problem of a good metric. Thanks.
mwgrant
Does BEST select “comparison” stations based on having similar weather? I mean, you shouldn’t use a near station if the altitude is markedly different. And you shouldn’t use a near station if the adjusted station is inland and the near station on the coast. You get the idea.
Jim2, the answer is apparently not. Look at BEST station 166900, Amundsen Scott at the South Pole. Arguably the best maintained, and certainly the most expensive station on the planet. BEST converted no trend into slight warming by dropping 26 months of extreme cold that did not QC their regional expectation. Well, the next nearest year round manned station on Antarctica is McMurdo, 1300 km away on the coast and 2700 meters lower. This simple to check fact gives Mosher fits!
A link to Skeptical Science is like asking Tokoyo Rose for status on the war during WW2.
:)
Was Pachauri quoted as saying “97% of woman love me”?
:)
Seems it may not be the 97% that is of concern. The 3% might be where one should focus.
Scott M,
I think he claims that 97% of climate scientists believe that women love him….
Zeke, is staying away from the Iceland data, saying he is not an expert on it.
Which is tantamount to saying I don’t want to go there because I know I will prove Eaun & Paul’s case.
The Iceland data has already been adjusted by the IMO and should not be touched by GISS or BEST end of story.
Iceland ain’t a big place. How long would it take to become reasonably familiar with ‘the data’? Half a day?
Latimer
Iceland is a good test case as the data is rather limited and therefore doesn’t require months of work to verify. As you can see over at Euan’s blog I expressed scepticism that the data has been maliciously tampered with.
Trying to turn a pigs ear into a silk purse through the use of algorithms and over complex mathematical formula and statistical interpretation seems to me the most likely explanation. However, with each passing day without a clear and INTELLIGIBLE rebuttal that doesn’t go off at tangents, from the major keepers of the global records my doubts increase.
tonyb
Exactly right, tony.
I wish the data adjusters would just answer the questions. Have they stopped beating their wives out not? The longer they go without providing a clear answer, the stronger my suspicion that they haven’t stopped.
Joshua, “I wish the data adjusters would just answer the questions. Have they stopped beating their wives out not? The longer they go without providing a clear answer, the stronger my suspicion that they haven’t stopped.”
Asking why the “global” temperature reconstruction methods totally screws up your local temperature record isn’t the same as asking when you stopped beating your wife. You did stop right? :)
Many of the “skeptics” have pretty clearly explained that interpolation or kriging “smears” as in smooths out details on a local scale so “global” temperature reconstruction methods make poor “local” reconstructions.
Since you have several groups producing very similar “global” products and very different “local” products in some cases, what is wrong with a guy from iceland, new zealand, georgia or paraquay asking why their temperatures after “global” manipulation don’t match their local records?
You could do the same thing with “global” bank accounts, only the guys who lost money are likely to bitch.
@ tonyb I went to a lot of bother to check the homogenisation algorithms in Australia and find that while they change everything, the net outcome is zero – so no conspiracy there. I reach same conclusion for Southern Africa.
Iceland is a bit different since the data are already homogenised. Re-homogenising leads to the past being cooled. Bad practice but still a conceivable accident.
The bit that concerns me about Iceland are the two narrow bands of temperature adjustment. I’m unconvinced that a bot did that. Without these adjustments, 1933 is the warmest year in Iceland.
joshua
You are going off into one of your abstract tangents again. Do focus on the issue which isn’t wife beating.
The issue is that SOME sceptics are claiming the temperature record has been deliberately fiddled
I say that is incorrect and there is no conspiracy but ask such as the Met Office and BEST for a clear explanation as to why the records have been adjusted in the way they have that has caused such suspicion and has been backed up by various examples.
I get it in the neck for asserting there is no conspiracy and in return think it reasonable for a clearly written page I can link to that would explain the official position.
tonyb
The IPCC will go ahead with AR6, according to this press release from the Nairobi meeting, with a bit more time between Working Group reports
http://www.ipcc.ch/news_and_events/docs/p41/P41_closing_press_release.pdf
So no sign of the continually updated, more responsive format suggested by some.
h/t Richard Betts on Twitter
https://twitter.com/richardabetts/status/571426958896193537
Danny T. posted this link in a comment in the Conflict post.
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/warming-spurt-looms-will-it-change-minds-on-climate-change-18716
I just wanted to point out that our Hostess’ stadium wave hypothesis predicts a continuation of the cooling for, IIRC, 10-30 years. The article mentions 5 more years of cooling.
At any rate, the ideas expressed in the article aren’t even new. They’ve just been repackaged. The idea that the anthropogenic warming is superimposed on natural cycles has been around a long time in Climate War years.
2014 was the warmest year in the instrument record.
It is also was the warmest 12-month span in the record. It held the throne for a mere 31 days. The new King was Feb 2014 through Jan 2015. He died today.
Wow! Have you told anyone else?
Had to wait 28 days to announce the latest slice in the stadium wave. It’s a terrible way to go.
JCH,
I believe that Gavin Schmidt announced that 2014 was the hottest year ever, unless it wasn’t. He was something like 38% sure, but nearly twice as unsure. This is not terribly surprising, as his presentation gave a 40% probability that either 2010 or 2005 was the warmest year ever.
If either of these were the hottest, and of course he’s not sure, then it is sure that 2014 was cooler, which shows that it wasn’t warmer!
He goes on to say that for 2014, the Arctic ice extent was the 6th lowest on record, but the Antarctic was the highest on record. Obviously proof of global warming, or what?
The layers of the atmosphere varied between the third warmest and the thirteenth coolest – whatever the heck that means.
So we have the lower troposphere being the third warmest, but somehow also the hottest ever!
In case you think I made it all up, it’s on the RealClimate site, authoured by someone calling themselves gavin, and referring to NOAA and NASA . But maybe he’s only 38% sure he wrote it, and 62% sure it was little green men. This Global Warming is tricky, to be sure, to be to be sure!
I’m glad to see you have faith in your leader. There’s much to admire in a man who is sure of his facts!
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Flynn – 2014 is the warmest year. It was not a photo finish. It’s no longer the warmest 12 months in the record.
JCH,
On whom do you rely for 2014 being not even a tie. NOAA/NASA at 32/38% confidence. MET, not warmest. BEST (tie). C & W at Sks (2nd). Trying to figure out if you’re just preaching or if you look at detail. NOAA/NASA in that same 1.6-1.9mm/yr historic SLR and you’ve stopped trusting that. If you trust them on temps do you even consider their confidence, or is the face (Gavin) of NASA good enough? Just trying to figure this out.
@ JCH
“It is also was the warmest 12-month span in the record. It held the throne for a mere 31 days. The new King was Feb 2014 through Jan 2015. He died today.”
Interesting.
So what was the old record, what was the new record, and how many years in the data base used to determine the record?
You know, on Thursday as a gazed at the frost on the windshields and the twinkling ice on the roads in Houston the first thing that crossed my mind was that this was going to be the month that broke all high temperature records.
That the ‘global temperature’ rises while it is freezing cold where people live is a bit of a mystery.
Danny
I was at the Met office on Monday and had a meeting with Dr Richard Betts.
The met office believe in the pause and published three pdf’s on it
They believe that 2014 was one of the top ten hottest years but it is too close to be able to differentiate.
I find the idea of the scientists there waiting for me to leave then gleefully falsifying the temperature records to be fanciful but they do need to clearly explain why the records do appear to be changed on occasions.
Tonyb
Tonyb,
Thank you and for your continued patience with me. I in no way perceive dishonesty or malfeasance in this epic but instead what I see is more unsettled science than “science” cares to admit (w/few exceptions IE Dr. C). This is what I saw from MET (read as one of the warmest) http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/release/archive/2015/2014-global-temperature.
In my simple brain when I look at the totality of of NOAA/NASA/MET/BEST/C&W and when I see how those temps are derived and factor in the confidence/error bars then I hear “hottest year ever” it comes across as propaganda and I don’t understand why the don’t just describe it as it is……..one of the warmest with highest confidence. Propaganda is needed soley for an agenda, but not for science. But I’m new at this and naive.
Danny
Here are the three pdf’s from the met office.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/news/recent-pause-in-warming
They also had a top level meeting in 2013 when the pause was discussed. All the great and the good were there. I obviously wasn’t invited…
Tonyb
Danny
On the whole the Met office tend to be more circumspect than Giss. I suspect that is a British trait. Unfortunately whilst the met office have a treasure trove of weather related historic data which i dip into at Their library they do not carry out primary historical rsearch. Firstly it is too expensive and secondly to secure funds they would have to state the likely outcomes.
I would think around 1% of the material in their library and archives has been digitised and if it isn’t digitised it doesn’t exist for many researchers relying on the Internet.
Many of the records I read in the old books bear little relationship to the temperature record? I suspect because the algorithms and statistical manipulation that takes place smooth and average everything and take out the substantial natural variability that can be clearly observed over the centuries
Tonyb
Tonyb,
I’ve thought some on Steve Mosher’s comments that if the records had not been modified there would be two results, not just the one where he said “we wouldn’t like it” (assuming I’m learning cryptic well) which indicates warming would have been greater. On the other side of that would it not also mean that whatever is causing the pause would have larger ramifications? I can’t do the calculations, but if the energy budget has been balanced as the “missing heat” (the pause) has been found in the ocean then it seems to me that the natural portion (the offset) would have to have more impact and therefore being underrepresented in the discussion. More cooling masking warming? Which would make me want to look for more of a natural warming as part of the puzzle. Am I off base here?
JIM2,
Thank you. Part of my interest was the way “the pause” was waved away when even IPCC acknowledges it (guess that means 97% of scientists do too, right?) “William (Bill) Collins of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and lead author of the modeling Chapter 9 of the IPCC AR5 said “Now, I am hedging a bet because, to be honest with you, if the hiatus is still going on as of the sixth IPCC report, that report is going to have a large burden on its shoulders walking in the door, because recent literature has shown that the chances of having a hiatus of 20 years are vanishingly small.”
Yet in the HuffPo that Jim D offered earlier, M. Mann waves it away also http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-e-mann/climate-change-pause_b_6671076.html?ncid=edlinkushpmg00000090
Even I can recognize goal posts being moved. Why can it not be stated “we projected this, and that happened” but I seldom (if ever) see where folks will state “we don’t know” or “we goofed”. But then we’re expected to trust them for all future “projections”. From my view, as part of the “state of the climate” evaluations it’s incumbent on IPCC to self evaluate, provide a grading system, and track if there is a change (improvement or otherwise) in the “consensus” science. To this observer, I wonder why it’s not done and how much it would improve credibilty were it.
And after communications (or lack of) such as this folks wonder why there are ranges of skepticism.
Natural variability of +/-0.1-0.2 C over decades, seen in the global temperature records, is enough to pause global warming rates of 0.2 C per decade. This should be no surprise to anyone. The difference is that the warming is persistently there in the background. The skeptics seem to be the ones that need convincing that natural variability can lead to pauses sometimes.
JIMD,
Ya know. I’m a bit new at this, but I’d have to say:”The skeptics seem to be the ones that need convincing that natural variability can lead to pauses sometimes.” This applies to warmists too!
Based on this theory, we’d be talking 1970’s global cooling all over again, eh?
JCH right here says no pause, M.Mann in the article you linked said “faux pause”. All I can see is a pause, and I have no idea what goes on from here.
The issue is how much of the warming in last quarter of 20th century was also natural variability.
Dr. Curry,
So far, in my efforts, the best I’ve been able to get out of others is there was only cooling. Jim D offered -.1 to -.2C, although no source. I personally have not run across this, but it seems strange that coincidental with the “discovery” of AGW the 350 year warming trend suddenly went cool for an 18 year “hiatus” time frame. Did I miss something here? I often do.
The issue is how much of the warming in last quarter of 20th century was also natural variability.
The problem is the asymmetry in the global temperature response (the different rates of evolution in the NH/SH t)
As a first order problem, it is being described as the asymmetry in land /ocean,this would also suggest there would be asymmetry in albedo,however this does not seem to be the case,where the emergence of dissipative structures such as cloud banks in the SO are an observation seeking an explanation.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014RG000449/abstract
Maksimovich,
Thank you. Will read again (and again) but in a first look I’m a bit surprised they found the albedo to be so symmetrical in NH/SH. Our good old Mom nature and her ever balancing. I’ve even wondered if she won’t devise a way to address her current infestation (man) by offsetting what we throw at her in her own way and own time, but that is strictly supposition. By that I mean, not climate change but instead natural reaction.
Dr Curry,
What does AR5 say about the level of natural variability? I tried find it but only saw a hockey stick type graph labled Psuedo Proxy ….. If that is their estimate for natural variability than it has to be close to zero. And where does it come from.
Thank you,
Richard
Danny – people can draw flat lines in the data for 2 meters above the land and the SSTs. This is a completely unremarkable fools paradise. The 15-year trend to 2006 is .26C per decade. That’s a pretty stout warming to be right in the middle of a pause/standstill/death of GW/etc. in warming.
The sun warms the earth. ACO2 slows the loss of that energy. It sometimes warms places outside of 2 meters above the land and the SST. I know. Hard to believe, but it has likely stopped doing that. Should it, what one would expect is the warmest temperatures in the instrument record, which is exactly what we’re getting.
JCH,
Then why did MET do this: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/news/recent-pause-in-warming
And why did a lead IPCC author say this to APS: “illiam (Bill) Collins of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and lead author of the modeling Chapter 9 of the IPCC AR5 said “Now, I am hedging a bet because, to be honest with you, if the hiatus is still going on as of the sixth IPCC report, that report is going to have a large burden on its shoulders walking in the door, because recent literature has shown that the chances of having a hiatus of 20 years are vanishingly small”
Even JimD says it’s actually a mask from .1-.2C of cooling (no source offered).
I never called it a death of AGW, but it’s something that needs explaining. Transfer to the oceans is plausible. You and M.Mann seem to be the only one’s saying there is and never was a pause. And from my understanding it didn’t begin in 2006, but instead started in 1998. From Sks: http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-stopped-in-1998-intermediate.htm
JCH,
You wrote –
“The sun warms the earth. ACO2 slows the loss of that energy.”
More correctly, the sun may warm the part of the earth exposed to its rays. Minus 90C recorded in Antarctica at the height of summer is not what I would call warm, but you may. Obviously, the non illuminated portions of the earth lose energy from the surface, and cool, regardless of the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. A decrease in the rate of cooling does not result in a rise in temperature, regardless of the mindless maunderings of the average dedicated Warmist.
ACO2 slows both the input and loss of that energy, as does the rest of the atmosphere, particulate and other matter suspended in it, clouds, ozone and so on.
You can obviously expand further if you wish. If you believe that the earth has warmed since its creation, so be it. I don’t believe it, but you are entitled to your religion.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
@ Danny Thomas
“Even I can recognize goal posts being moved. Why can it not be stated “we projected this, and that happened” but I seldom (if ever) see where folks will state “we don’t know” or “we goofed”. ”
Scientists routinely make statements to the effect ‘Wow, that’s interesting! Looks like my theory was wrong.’ And go on with their efforts to advance the ‘state of the art’, maybe in a slightly different direction.
When is the last time you ever heard a politician say anything like ‘Well, after ten years and several billion dollars, it looks like the whole program was a waste of time and money and didn’t accomplish anything. If anything, it made the problem it was designed to solve WORSE. Let’s shut it down.’?
Climate Science writ large is conducted in support of POLITICAL objectives, not scientific ones. And no, I do NOT mean that every scientist engaged studying how our climate system works is doing politics instead of science. But the folks at the pointy end of the Climate Science Pyramid most assuredly are.
@ rls
“What does AR5 say about the level of natural variability? ”
It doesn’t actually matter WHAT AR5 says about natural variability.
Since by the testimony of a huge body of climate science there have been extended periods during which the planet was significantly warmer than today and other periods during which it was significantly cooler, it is clear that natural variability CAN plausibly account for ALL the observed variations in ‘global temperature (undefined)’ since we became interested in the subject.
Does that fact mean that all the observed variations WERE unaffected by ACO2? Of course not. The fact that ALL variation CAN be explained by natural variations and that we have no good understanding as to what caused past variations when ACO2 was not an issue does NOT mean that ACO2 had nothing to do with recent variations. What it does mean is that the attribution of a subset of the observed variations to ACO2 is arbitrary and is usually done for purposes unrelated to the scientific explanation of how the climate system actually works.
From the “Save Willie” piece:
I’d never heard of the “Kolmogorov cutoff”, although the scale mentioned suggest to me that it’s the point at which we can expect viscosity in the air to overwhelm the effects of momentum, allowing predictive linear modeling.
Looking it up, I discovered rapid
descenttransition into dense differential equations, which will take me some time to convert to any sort of intuitive model.Prof. Curry… do you know of any generalized explanation of the “Kolmogorov cutoff” that starts with an intuitive model of its relevance to climate modeling, and then goes into the differential equations?
I also discovered this interesting paper on long term climate memory: Extracting climate memory using Fractional Integrated Statistical Model: A new perspective on climate prediction by Naiming Yuan, Zuntao Fu & Shida Liu Scientific Reports 4, Article number: 6577 doi:10.1038/srep06577
I’m intuitively impelled to regard this paper as potentially important, perhaps part of the answer to going beyond ever more powerful GCM’s in climate science.
OOps! My first link was supposed to be to Wiki.
I wonder if this related bit would be useful for temperature constructions?
” Because its operation is a simple Moving Average (MA), the KZ filter performs well in a missing data environment, especially in multidimensional time series where missing data problem arises from spatial sparseness.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov%E2%80%93Zurbenko_filter
jim2, cool, now I know what the filters I use are supposed to be called.
Thanks for this reference, i agree it looks very interesting
This is for Tony “tongue in check” b.
From the article:
…
Already under fire for claims that President Obama doesn’t love America, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani doubled down, saying Obama has had “communist” influences since an early age.
“He doesn’t talk about America the way John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan did, about America’s greatness and exceptionalism,” Giuliani said in an interview with The New York Post published Saturday. “He was educated by people who were critics of the U.S. And he has not been able to overcome those influences.”
The former GOP presidential candidate walked through Obama’s life, “from the time he was 9 years old,” when Giuliani says “he was influenced by Frank Marshall Davis, who was a communist,” to his “17 years in the church of Jeremiah Wright … the guy who said ‘God damn America, not God bless America,” a critique Obama faced during his first presidential campaign.
…
He also took exception to the president’s handing of last year’s shooting of Michael Brown in Missouri, which “turned out to be justified,” he said, compared to how Obama speaks of violence from Muslim extremists.
“How could you hold a press conference about Ferguson and not hold a press conference when Christians and Jews were slaughtered?” he asked.
…
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/233410-giuliani-obama-has-communist-influences
jim2
tongue in cheek but with a ring of truth
tonyb
Tony. Obumbles and the Dimowits are pushing the US as fast as possible into yet more socialism.
1. Essentially nationalized medical insurance.
2. Now, will control the internet here.
3. Trying to ban ammunition for the most popular gun, the AR-14. They have already bought up so much ammo, that some gun shops have gone out of business due to the fact that customers go to those shops mainly to buy ammo. This reduces the threat of rebellion.
4. Co-opting illegal immigrants as a means to obtain a permanent majority of votes, thus ensconcing themselves for the next, some number of decades.
5. Impeding and punishing political enemies with the IRS. Obama has an enemies list just like Nixon did. Funny that, in a perverse sort of way.
This is serious.
The Dimowits tell illegals to come to the US and they will get:
1. Cash, as a tax rebate.
2. Public housing.
3. Free medical care.
4. Free food.
5. Free education.
Some Republicans are attempting to woo the illegals too. But they mostly tell illegals that they are welcomed to come here and get a job, work hard, and succeed. (And they will be taking jobs that our anemic economy would otherwise provide to citizens.) Other Republicans what to enact some giveaways to the illegals. But then, they are no longer really Republicans, just a Dimowit version 0.5.
My feeling is that the Republicans are toast and so is the US as we knew it. It will become another Venezuela or Cuba at this rate.
From the article:
…
As gun shops report shortages of AR-15 ammunition following the ATF’s proposal to prohibit the sale of steel-tipped 5.56-millimeter bullets, one reader contacted us to report that his local Walmart had sold out of the ammo despite having substantial stocks just two weeks ago.
…
http://www.dcclothesline.com/2015/02/27/reports-of-panic-buying-walmart-begins-to-sell-out-of-ar-15-ammo/
From the article:
…
Power supplies could drop suddenly next month when the UK is plunged into darkness with an eclipse of the sun.
Energy experts warned there could be possible blackouts in the biggest solar eclipse since 1999.
Nearly 90 per cent of the sun’s rays will be blocked out in parts of Europe on March 20.
…
The European Network Transmission System Operators for Electricity said: “The risk of incident cannot be completely ruled out. Solar eclipses have happened before but with the increase of installed photovoltaic energy generation, the risk of an incident could be serious without appropriate countermeasures.”
The organisation said it had been planning for months so that suppliers across Europe provide more energy from other power stations during the hours that solar energy supplies are hit. Patrick Graichen, executive director of Agora Energiewende, a renewable energy think-tank in Berlin, said such events might become problematic in the future as more solar farms are built.
He told the Financial Times: “In a way March 20 is a glimpse into the future of our power systems.”
…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/11433786/Solar-eclipse-to-disrupt-power-supplies.html
Looks like there is pressure on solar installations to pay their fair share of grid maintenance costs and to get paid a fair price for the electricity they feed into the grid. There is no way an electricity supplier should get paid the same price they pay for electricity. The economics don’t work that way.
From the article:
…
For example, Hawaiian Electric Co. Inc. this year asked the state’s Public Utilities Commission to abolish its net metering policy because customers with photovoltaic panels aren’t paying their fair share of maintenance costs.
Indiana legislators are pushing bills to make it more costly for consumers there to go with solar by reducing tax credits awarded for it. Legislation, such as HB1320, introduced by Indiana state Rep. Eric Koch, a Republican, would compel fixed charges on customer bills and reduce tax credits. The bill comes as the solar industry is fighting to get on its feet in the Hoosier state.
Koch, has said the bill’s purpose is “to promote and grow net metering.” Democratic state Rep. Matt Pierce said the bill “would effectively end net metering” by eliminating the incentive to deploy solar power.
Other states, such as Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Ohio, New Mexico, Louisiana, and Wisconsin, are discussing or have passed revisions to their net metering policies that would included fixed monthly surcharges for residences and businesses that install solar to make it less competitive with conventional forms energy.
For example, the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) — the state’s public utilities authority — voted to charge $0.70 per kilowatt (KW) to rooftop solar owners to help offset utility revenue losses. The fee works out to about $7 a month for a typical 10KW residential system.
Last year, the Kansas House Energy Committee passed an anti-net metering bill (HB 2458) that was pushed by two major utilities — Westar Energy and Kansas City Power & Light.
If made into law, the Kansas legislation would allow utilities to pay solar customers using net metering less than the retail rate of electricity. In turn, utilities could use the excess electricity that customers were turning back to them and sell it at the retail rate.
…
http://www.computerworld.com/article/2888358/how-regulators-and-legislators-make-it-harder-for-you-to-use-solar-power.html
This is cool. A jet engine made in a 3D printer. This should give pause to you 3D-printing deniers! :)
From the article:
…
Monash University researchers along with collaborators from CSIRO and Deakin University have printed a jet engine. In fact Monash and their spin-out company Amaero, have printed two engines. One is on display this week at the International Air Show in Avalon, while the second is displayed in Toulouse at the French aerospace company Microturbo (Safran).
The engines are a proof of concept that’s led to tier one aerospace companies lining up to develop new components at the Monash Centre for Additive Manufacturing in Melbourne, Australia. And the project has created advanced manufacturing opportunities for Australian businesses large and small.
…
http://www.scienceinpublic.com.au/media-releases/monash-avalonairshow-2015#more-20018
I want a 4-D printer that will print climate.
==========
I want a 13D printer that will print another universe.
GCMs print out a climate with faulty material. The modelers proudly display cocoanut shells over their ears.
==================
I want a 1-D printer that always gets the point.
“Do you think skeptics tend to be less skeptical of solar effects than GHG effects on climate?”
Maybe that’s because we experience the sun changing things on a daily/hourly/minute to minute basis.
See, Warmers are indeed attached their own imagination and reality is ignored.
Andrew
JCH’s question screams that Warmerism is a joke, and it’s getting hoarse after a couple decades of yelling.
Andrew
What question is that?
The question in my initial comment, Sherlock.
Andrew
Sorry, that was JimD’s question. But, one Warmer is the same as the next.
Andrew
Moronic comment. Jim D is most likely a scientist, and with certainty highly educated. I’m a cowboy of average intelligence, but one heck of a guitar player.
And you’re the joke.
All JCH knows is what he reads in the newspapers and what he lassoes with his mind and his wit.
============
From the article:
…
Today’s vote by a bitterly divided Federal Communications Commission that the Internet should be regulated as a public utility is the culmination of a decade-long battle by the Left. Using money from George Soros and liberal foundations that totaled at least $196 million, radical activists finally succeeded in ramming through “net neutrality,” or the idea that all data should be transmitted equally over the Internet. The final push involved unprecedented political pressure exerted by the Obama White House on FCC chairman Tom Wheeler, head of an ostensibly independent regulatory body.
“Net neutrality’s goal is to empower the federal government to ration and apportion Internet bandwidth as it sees fit, and to thereby control the Internet’s content,” says Phil Kerpen, an anti-net-neutrality activist from the group American Commitment.
The courts have previously ruled the FCC’s efforts to impose “net neutrality” out of bounds, so the battle isn’t over. But for now, the FCC has granted itself enormous power to micromanage the largely unrestrained Internet.
…
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/414483/comrades-net-neutrality-john-fund
More from that link:
…
His goals have always been clear. “At the moment, the battle over network neutrality is not to completely eliminate the telephone and cable companies,” he told the website SocialistProject in 2009. “But the ultimate goal is to get rid of the media capitalists in the phone and cable companies and to divest them from control.” Earlier in 2000, he told the Marxist magazine Monthly Review: “Our job is to make media reform part of our broader struggle for democracy, social justice, and, dare we say it, socialism.” When I interviewed him in 2010, he admitted he is a socialist and said he was “hesitant to say I’m not a Marxist.”
In essence, what McChesney and his followers want is an Unfree Press — a media world that promotes their values. “To cast things in neo-Marxist terms that they could appreciate, they want to take control of the information means of production,” says Adam Therier of the blog TechLiberation.
…
Et to, Net Neut?
============
Well, shoot. That was supposed to be ‘Et tu, Net Neut?’ Preview is for brutes.
==========
Net neutrality was about preventing the information superhighway from becoming a set of toll roads with pay-for-play fees that would have raised costs for certain types of data that would have been passed on to the consumer, of course. It was a near miss where certain corporate interests missed out on a new revenue source as internet toll-road operators.
https://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/salvador-4k-annotated.png
This chart provides more data which shows a climate/solar connection does exist.
Tallbloke should have thought this through properly before rewriting the history of the chronology of the Dark Ages cold periods, which were largely in the 4th to 6th centuries. The 8th century was very warm in Europe, solar forcing would have been higher then. The Steinhilber data seems to represent a temperature proxy for Greenland, which was colder in the 7-8th centuries.
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v6/n5/images_article/ngeo1797-f2.jpg
Michael Mann has an article in The Huff:
“Climate Oscillations and the Global Warming Faux Pause”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-e-mann/climate-change-pause_b_6671076.html?ncid=edlinkushpmg00000090
The theories multlply.
Richard
Worth a read for those interested in natural variability cycles. Mann suggests in a new Science paper that natural variability is currently dominated by a Pacific cooling phase rather than an Atlantic warm phase, which explains the pause. This is their abstact.
“The recent slowdown in global warming has brought into question the reliability of climate model projections of future temperature change and has led to a vigorous debate over whether this slowdown is the result of naturally occurring, internal variability or forcing external to Earth’s climate system. To address these issues, we applied a semi-empirical approach that combines climate observations and model simulations to estimate Atlantic- and Pacific-based internal multidecadal variability (termed “AMO” and “PMO,” respectively). Using this method, the AMO and PMO are found to explain a large proportion of internal variability in Northern Hemisphere mean temperatures. Competition between a modest positive peak in the AMO and a substantially negative-trending PMO are seen to produce a slowdown or “false pause” in warming of the past decade.”
There’s nothing false about the pause, other than in some people’s heads.
The PDO has been working against warming since 1983.
In 2012 it started going positive, right in time for its ~45-year peak.
Posted this here many times. The AMO is feckless. It’s a hitchhiker and a wanderer. The PDO is a powerhouse, but it lost its ability to lower the surface air temperature in 1983.
This is Mann’s graphic. NMO is the net of the AMO and PMO.
http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2015-02-12-Sci15FigHuffPost.png
There’s something darkly humorous that Mann doesn’t like the temperature constructions. The temp construction guys just can’t get a break in any quarter.
“These factors include the likely underestimation of the actual warming that has occurred, due to gaps in the observational data. “
Probably referring to the oceans, not the surface land stations.
Mann, like many others, actually believes the AMO has a significant SAT consequence.
Mann has an agenda.
The AMO is now currently negative, while the PDO although in a cold phase has been in a warm spike for the past year.
Yep, looks like we are in a long term negative PDO. This would seem to favor Dr. Curry over Dr. Mann and company.
But, oddly, the skeptics don’t want to say that this is strong enough to explain the pause which is what Mann does. The shoe is on the other foot here.
Saying the PDO is causing the cooling does not prove CO2 will cause catastrophic warming. So, maybe I misunderstand, but I don’t see the connection.
The question would be why, if natural variability is in a cooling phase, is the global temperature staying near record highs, if not exceeding them.
Because we are at the peak of a longer cycle?
The AMO is a hitchhiker. In 1983 ACO2 picked it up and took it for a ride.
It’s not negative. It’s merely faux paused.
It’s not negative. It’s merely faux paused.
http://www.nc-climate.ncsu.edu/climate/patterns/PDO.html
This data will show what JCH tries to convey is wrong.
PDO being in a warm phase from 1977-2008 or so.
https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/amopdoustemp.jpg
More correct data showing how strong the PDO/AMO correlate to temp.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B99I1OACYAM0Q98.png
latest data on AMO.
Here is another interesting paper for consideration some day:
Nature | Letter
Observational determination of surface radiative forcing by CO2 from 2000 to 2010
D. R. Feldman,
W. D. Collins,
P. J. Gero,
M. S. Torn,
E. J. Mlawer
& T. R. Shippert
Nature
(2015)
doi:10.1038/nature14240
The climatic impact of CO2 and other greenhouse gases is usually quantified in terms of radiative forcing1, calculated as the difference between estimates of the Earth’s radiation field from pre-industrial and present-day concentrations of these gases. Radiative transfer models calculate that the increase in CO2 since 1750 corresponds to a global annual-mean radiative forcing at the tropopause of 1.82 ± 0.19 W m−2 (ref. 2). However, despite widespread scientific discussion and modelling of the climate impacts of well-mixed greenhouse gases, there is little direct observational evidence of the radiative impact of increasing atmospheric CO2. Here we present observationally based evidence of clear-sky CO2 surface radiative forcing that is directly attributable to the increase, between 2000 and 2010, of 22 parts per million atmospheric CO2. The time series of this forcing at the two locations—the Southern Great Plains and the North Slope of Alaska—are derived from Atmospheric Emitted Radiance Interferometer spectra3 together with ancillary measurements and thoroughly corroborated radiative transfer calculations4. The time series both show statistically significant trends of 0.2 W m−2 per decade (with respective uncertainties of ±0.06 W m−2 per decade and ±0.07 W m−2 per decade) and have seasonal ranges of 0.1–0.2 W m−2. This is approximately ten per cent of the trend in downwelling longwave radiation5, 6, 7. These results confirm theoretical predictions of the atmospheric greenhouse effect due to anthropogenic emissions, and provide empirical evidence of how rising CO2 levels, mediated by temporal variations due to photosynthesis and respiration, are affecting the surface energy balance.
Already destroyed over at WUWT.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/02/25/almost-30-years-after-hansens-1988-alarm-on-global-warming-a-claim-of-confirmation-on-co2-forcing/
and Tallblokes.
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2015/02/26/new-result-shows-co2-has-almost-no-effect-on-temperature/
Not. WUWT just repeated the study as evidence against their own “dragonslayers”, and tallbloke seems not to have grasped the implications of fingerprinting the increased forcing.
You obviously did not read the comments then.
WUWT posted as if it was good news, but the commenters showed it for what it was, a very Cherry Picked slice of data that identified a supposed CO2 driven increase in Radiative forcing when their own previous study over a longer period showed that the DWIR had dropped. Their data just happened to conicide with the La Nina to El Nino period.
Even if the science was sound it means at the current rate of CO2 increase the Radiative forcing would be a whole 2 Watts per square meter after 100 years, which equates to a whopping 0,36C warmer than today.
But if you look at the average increase per year there were 2 years where it went down while CO2 was going up. So 2 out of 10 years falsify the overall cherry picked result.
AC, yes, I think many skeptics think that for CO2 to be correct, every year has to be a new record because there is more CO2. Simplistic.
A C Osborn: Already destroyed over at WUWT.
Commented, but not destroyed. Even I commented. The shortcomings are (1) only 2 measured sites and (2) data series too short. The results are too important to overlook, and I am hoping for many attempts at replication in the future.
Matthew R. Marler,
I’ve e-mails in to see if the data in the study was limited to 2010, or if there was another reason why it wasn’t extended to a more current time especially considering that the CO2 levels have continued to increase. I’ve never tried contacting one directly so will report back if/when I hear.
Thanks for that Tallbloke link.
It always amuses me to see the similarity at different sectors of the blogosphere.
Go to a realist site, and you’ll see intelligent and knowledgeable people saying that “skeptics” and “sky dragons” are obviously wrong and just not willing to admit it (or out-and-out lying) . And they prove it with nice graphs. So the reader will know that “lukewarmers” and “sky dragons” are i*iots, trying to starve poor children in Africa, and just not as good looking as “realists.”
Go to a “luewarmer” site and you’ll see intelligent and knowledgeable people saying that “realists” and “sky dragons” are obviously wrong and just not willing to admit it (or out-and-out lying). . And they prove it with nice graphs. Their graphs, of course, show that “realists’:and “sky dragons’” graphs are cherry-picked. So the reader will know that “realists” and “sky dragons” are id*ots, trying to starve poor children in Africa, and just not as good looking as “lukewarmers.”
Go to a “sky dragon” site and you’ll see intelligent and knowledgeable people saying that “realists” and “likewarmers” are wrong and just not willing to admit it (or out-and-out lying). And they prove it with nice graphs. Their graphs, of course show that “realists’” and “sky dragons;”‘ graphs are cherry-picked. So the reader will know that “lukewarmers” and “realists” are id*ots, trying to starve poor children in Africa, and just not as good looking as “”sky dragons.”
Joshua,
Thank you for that observation and sharing. Misery does love company.
They could tell what was attributed to the increased CO2?
===============
It’s the wavelengths.
Hmmm. Nineteenth Century physics. When they hook it to temperature we’ll find out the effect is net beneficial.
=================
I like 17th century physics – one Sir Isaac Newton in particular. Still widely applicable. Not everywhere; especially not in radiative physics. But the ease with which proponents of simplistic models apply Stefan-Boltzmann law to a single wavelength leaves me baffled.
skeptics demand observations to confirm a theory.
they get observations that confirm the theory
Attack observations.
Funnily they think blog comments are science.
Steven Mosher: Attack observations.
Here is what you call the “attack”:
1. the effect attributable to CO2 was small enough not to cause alarm, a “lukewarmer” confirmation: The time series both show statistically significant trends of 0.2 W m−2 per decade (with respective uncertainties of ±0.06 W m−2 per decade and ±0.07 W m−2 per decade) and have seasonal ranges of 0.1–0.2 W m−2. .
2. only two sites on Earth were measured.
3. the series of data was only 10 years long.
4. it is insufficient to show that warming is due to increased CO2, or that future CO2 will cause future warming.
The study was well-done, definitely worthy of being replicated in many other parts of the world. If the result is “robustly” confirmed, then the public policy debate is over.
Steven Mosher: Funnily they think blog comments are science.
Is this your way of exhorting us to ignore your blog comments about BEST?
Mann, the PDO has been in it’s warm phase up to 2008 along with the AMO until this year. The temperature pause started in 1998. Get your facts straight ,something you have a hard time doing.
When the PDO goes down, the SAT goes down. When the PDO goes flat, the SAT goes flat.When the PDO goes up, the SAT goes up. That is the relationship Tsonis established in the 20th-century record. Until 1983, where the PDO started its downward phase and the SAT diverged. Because of ACO2.
This says it all and does put to rest the co2/temp issue.
Consider the earth 14,000 years ago. CO2 levels were around 200 ppm and temperatures, at 6C below present values, were rising fast. Now consider 30,000 years ago. CO2 levels were also around 200 ppm and temperatures were also about 6C below current levels, yet at that time the earth was cooling. Exactly the same CO2 and temperature levels as 14,000 years ago, but the opposite direction of temperature change. CO2 was not the driver.
Now consider 120,000 years ago. Temperatures were higher than today and CO2 levels were relatively high at 290 ppm. Atmospheric H20 was high, and albedo was low. According to the theorists, earth should have been warming quickly. But it wasn’t – quite the opposite with temperatures cooling very quickly at that time. CO2 was not the driver.
If CO2 levels and the claimed lockstep feedbacks controlled the climate, the climate would be unstable. We would either move to a permanent ice age or turn into Venus. Warmer temperatures generate more CO2. Increased CO2 raises temperatures. Warmer temperatures generate more CO2 …… etc. It would be impossible to reverse a warming or cooling trend without a major external event. Obviously this has not happened.
By definition, CO2 is not the driver unless you physically pump CO2 into the atmosphere from the deep geological layers. This is only a recent phenomenon, but also occurred in paleo volcanic periods.
http://www.murdoconline.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/gisp2-ice-core-temperatures.jpg
Earlier warm periods warmer then today despite lower CO2 concentrations.
Regarding the witch hunt letters, they have an artful aspect as far as intimidation goes. My understanding is that each is not addressed to the skeptic in question, but rather to the head of their institution. So Lindzen’s letter is sent to the President of MIT. But each letter enumerates various specific actions on the skeptic’s part and demands a lot of info thereon. Thus the boss is enmeshed in an unpleasant bookkeeping exercise because of the skeptic. Intimidation by botheration.
I hope that no one answers these goofy letters, since they are merely personal inquiries from a few minority Congresspeople, with no legal force. But some of these ivory towers receive a lot of Federal funding, MIT for example. They may reply in “an abundance of caution,” as the lawyers put it. I am sure the lawyers are all over this one. What a circus!
There’s no legal reason to take any notice of these idiotic harassing letters.
There are political and PR reasons to consider responses, alas. No academic institution wants to run afoul of scurrilous demagogues in Congress or the NSF etc. bureaucrats who may be influenced by their funding committees. Even the “minority” Congress-critters can have outsized influence since it is often easy for one member to block funding and other kinds of action.
I prefer goofy to scurrilous. This is a bonehead play for the Dems because (1) it invites escalating reciprocity and (2) unlike the Dems the Reps can compel responses. They have subpoena power. The Reps can send out 1000 letters to prior Dem witnesses, on a whole range of hot topics, compelling massive info releases, including every Fed that has testified in the last 6 years. It could turn testifying into a scorched earth zone. Hopefully this will not happen but I am sure it has been considered. Markey & Co have stupidly started a shoving contest they cannot win.
perhaps “perverse” is a good descriptor
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B-nqu6RWoAAW2o4.png
More data that shows no relationship between the temperature and CO2.
CO2 is a result of the climate (oceans) , environmental conditions (forestation) ,and biological activity.
CO2 , is governed not the governor.
JHC , stop making up data , it is neg.
The data comes from JIASO. I’m not making up anything. The first positive number in the current PDO index happened in 2013. Every single PDO index number in 2014 was positive. The first number in 2015 is PLUS 2.46.
The negative phase of this PDO event is likely dead. Nathan Mantua and other scientists in the Pacific NW are openly speculating this. There is speculation in the Pacific NW that fish populations are being decimated by record warm surface waters and their lack of nutrients.
The PDO is defined as the leading EOF of mean November through March SST anomalies for the Pacific Ocean to the north of 20N latitude. For the EOF calculation, the global mean SST anomaly was first removed for each month in order to reduce the influence of the long-term trends in the data. The above plot is of the amplitudes of this EOF in monthly data from 1900 – February 2005. The amplitudes have been standardized and you will have to contact Nate Mantua (mantua@atmos.washington.edu) to find out which years he used to standardize the time series. Positive values indicate months of above normal SSTs along the west coast of the North and Central America and on the equator, and below normal SSTs in the central and western north Pacific at about the latitude of Japan. Fluctuations in this pattern are dominated by variability on the decadal time scale.
The cool phase and warm phase are references to negative phases for fish counts and positive phases for fish counts, not to periods of increases or decreases in surface air temperatures. The Surface air temperature starts going down or up the second the PDO index changes directions. See Tsonis – coupled and synchronized. The index can be strongly positive and see a collapse in surface air temperature. The collapse happens when the PDO index peaks and changes to a downward direction from its positive high: as seen here in its 1940 peak.
Over 200 peer-reviewed papers demonstrating solar control of climate published since 2010 [link]
It will be interesting to see how well that sunspot integral performs in predicting future temperature. Like all the other models, it has not been tested against out-of-sample data, so no one can tell now how good a prognosticator it is. It does, however, portend future surface cooling instead of warming, after the hiatus.
Pachauri: 97% of climate scientists believe that women love me.
classic Mark Steyn this week:
(for those who may have missed the “boss” references, one is for Penn State ex-President Graham Spanier, and the other is for IPCC ex-Guru Pachauri)
Jim D,
You wrote –
“Mike Flynn, if you think CO2 affects solar radiation to any significant extent you have had too much sun. Its effect is in the infrared which is the way heat escapes.”
I see. So infrared emitted by the Sun is unaffected by CO2, but the same wavelengths emitted from the Earth’s surface are affected. Must be Hansen’s Demon at work! I jest, of course.
My definition of infrared includes wavelengths covering the nominal IR spectrum from 700 nm to 1 mm, to obviate confusion.
Some 50% of total radiation from the Sun reaching the Earth’s surface is within this range. In addition, some 30% of the total insolation does not reach the surface, comprising all of the UVC, and various proportions of other wavelengths, due to various mechanisms.
This is more or less irrelevant, as you go on to demonstrate the confused thinking which is typical of Warmists (and many others who should know better).
You may have noticed that at night, the surface cools, and very rapidly under conditions of low relative humidity – tropical deserts being a case in point. So yes, radiation at relatively long wavelengths, (certainly shorter than the visible spectrum in the main), is the mechanism by which the surface and atmosphere lose energy, resulting in lowering of temperatures, and no, CO2 in the atmosphere does not prevent this occurring, as the atmosphere itself cools as well as the surface.
I don’t know whether you understand the mechanism by which a radiation inversion forms, but I can assure you it demonstrates quite graphically the effects of basic physics, involving radiation, specific heat, relative density and so on.
So the usual Warmist messages, such as yours, are purely nonsensical, and demonstrate a lack of knowledge of reality. There is no global warming due to CO2, no matter how devoutly you may wish it to be true.
If you can produce any experimental evidence to support your assertions that CO2 creates an increase in temperature, please share it. I am unable to discover any, and I am sure it does not exist.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Mike Flynn, most of the sun’s energy is not coming at 15 microns. The sun’s effect is mostly visible, perhaps to your surprise. A larger fraction of the earth’s radiation is at wavelengths affected by CO2. Why is this so difficult to understand?
It is easy to understand. The question is this:
Is it hot…or not? If it is hot, is that bad? If it is bad, is it natural? If it is because of us, can we change it? If we can’t change it, can we adapt to it?
As for sea level rise, the rock in the Pacific I started fishing from 40 years ago is still in the same place, still fishable. So, either the rock floats or the sea level rise over 40 years is insignificant, yet CO2 ppm has risen dramatically. What would a reasonable person conclude from that information?
The mutual financial interests of green NGOs, politicians grubbing for campaign money, commercial interests that sell products and services to mitigate CO2, and government agencies and employees that derive their funding from climate scare stories should be cause for thoughtful consideration by any reasonable person. Any person outside of that self-interested circle not skeptical of this arrangement of interests would have be gullible.
I leave the science to the scientists, it is beyond my pay grade. Let them duke it out, like they did over plate tectonics. I will enjoy the entire process as I watch the science unfold.
When you start taking money out of the public purse to fund boondoggles like Solyndra – a company led by an Obama campaign donation bundler – then I get very interested, and skeptical.
Keep your hands out of our cookie jar!
Jim D,
You wrote –
” The sun’s effect is mostly visible, perhaps to your surprise.”
It certainly would be a surprise, if it was true. Luckily for me, like the rest of your nonsense, your statement is incorrect outside of your fantasy.
You can chase up the source of the following quote, do your own experiments, or hide in the Warmist recesses of your denial – makes no difference to me, physics, or Nature.
“In terms of energy, sunlight at the earth’s surface is around 52 to 55 percent infrared (above 700 nm), 43 to 42 percent visible (400 to 700 nm), and 5 to 3 percent ultraviolet (below 400 nm).”
Anybody of reasonable intelligence would accept that 43% of visible light is less than the 52% of infrared. Merely making stuff up to suit your agenda, is unlikely to be accepted these days.
Even Gavin Schmidt, after breathlessly announcing the hottest year ever, had the good grace to admit he was a little over enthusiastic with hIs announcement. I have pointed out what he wrote, and what he opined officially.
You may choose not to believe fact. Most Warmists find it difficult to accept reality, but their number is steadily dropping. It really matters not – it is of no concern to me whether you wear a tinfoil hat, or claim that everybody else in the world is wrong, and Warmageddon is just down the road.
I wish you all the best with enjoying your retreat from reality. There’s not much wrong with enjoying life, is there? Keep beating the drum!
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Mike Flynn, so what is the ratio of the sun’s visible light to how much is at 15 microns where the main CO2 band is, because that is what your “theory” relied on. Read back on what you wrote before answering. You are saying that CO2 blocks solar energy from reaching the earth, right? Perhaps you are confusing near infrared with thermal infrared wavelengths? Maybe this will help.
https://noconsensus.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/image0011.gif
Jim D,
You wrote –
“Mike Flynn, so what is the ratio of the sun’s visible light to how much is at 15 microns where the main CO2 band is, because that is what your “theory” relied on. Read back on what you wrote before answering. You are saying that CO2 blocks solar energy from reaching the earth, right? Perhaps you are confusing near infrared with thermal infrared wavelengths? Maybe this will help.”
Maybe you are simply confused. The main CO2 band? Near infrared with thermal infrared? The ratio of what?
Try breathing in some air containing CO2. Hold it in your lungs for a second or two, and breathe out. The CO2 you just exhaled is around 37C. If the air temperature around you is 25C, something warmed the CO2 in your cells, in your blood, and in your lungs.
If you choose to believe the CO2 warmed as the result of a particular wavelength hidden away in your body, please do so. Pardon me if I snort with derision. You might care to read a small book by a guy named Richard Feynman, called The Strange Interaction Between Light and Matter, if I recollect correctly. I suggest you read this before you start sprouting rubbish about conduction, convection, rotational, translational and vibrational thermalisation, the absorption and transmission spectra of CO2, and all the other obfuscatory Warmist nonsense.
I have no particular personal theories, unless you wish to discuss a theory I have which might explain spooky action at a distance, the contradiction that if energy can neither be created or destroyed, how is it that the Universe exists? It also answers the requirement that photons must necessarily travel back in time as we understand it, to explain parts of the wave/particle conundrum. I am reasonably that neither you nor anybody else is particularly interested, so I won’t bore you with details.
Have fun!
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
While it is also true that the graph I showed just belied everything you said. Study it. The solar energy (insolation) is in the wavelengths of the left peak, while the thermal emission is in the right peak. Note how CO2 only impacts the right peak (insulation). Like I said right at the beginning. Now read all of your own comments, if you can bear to, and see if you can find where you went so wrong.
I have to say that its interesting that believers (hardcore Venema, Conolley, Steig, Mann ect) and skeptics agrre that its not proper to persecute scientists. I believe that in the years to come most of the hardcore believers will be hardcore deniers because they are in fact scientists and will realize the errors and also will be retired anyway… . basically if your <30 you believe if youre over 40 you dont LOL I support you JC dont worry LOL
Regard the ox being gored. Examine especially the guts.
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The latest vendetta from Congress, Rep Lamar Smith goes after ‘questionable’ NSF grants. My GaTech colleague Rodney Weber is one of the ‘lucky ones’ chosen for investigation
http://news.sciencemag.org/funding/2015/02/malware-and-search-engines-lamar-smith-goes-far-afield-his-latest-hit-list-nsf
http://news.sciencemag.org/sites/default/files/NSF%20GRANTS%20REVISED.pdf
Going after Rodney Weber is just ludicrous
http://www.aerosols.eas.gatech.edu
Unless I’m missing something here, some Congressmen seem to be going after the NSF, not the scientists. To me, they are doing the right thing by overseeing how tax payer money is spent. Not to say that initiative can’t go awry, but to me it sounds like a proper role for our elected officials.
Let’s see. Congressmen funded by industry trying to restrict the direction scientific research goes. What could possibly go wrong?
Jim D. That’s a reality of government in any capacity and one that I rail against. But, it is good and right that someone monitor how our tax payer dollars are spent.
Jim2 –
Lol!
jim2, I don’t think he is primarily concerned about the taxpayers with some of these choices. They are for his sponsors.
Jim D. As I said:
“Not to say that initiative can’t go awry,”
Even for a grizzled, veteran observer of the climate wars, the double standards on the whole “witch hunt” issues are spectacular.
It’s hilarious.
Joshua sees double standards whenever it serves his cause.
If you go and read the wording and subjects of climate RFPs on the NSF website it is pretty obvious that the NSF has been overrun by activists and some of those people should be fired.
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2010/nsf10530/nsf10530.htm
The RFP uses the acid, or words with acid as a root, 45 times in describing an ocean study.
It uses the word alkalinity (with a question mark after it) once. No other words based on alkaline are in the proposal.
The ocean is alkaline. CO2 is not going to add enough carbon to the 38,000 Gt of carbon in the ocean to make it acidic. It is clear what the proposal wants as a outcome.
As if it were just a matter of wasteful. Bah, humbug.
=============
Like this one – no tax payer dollars should go to BS like this. This is NOT science!
RCN-UBE Incubator: Trial network to
bring music to the study of biology
Judith,
Like pigs in a trough, they are all going after the big Steyer-style campaign donations. The unintended consequence of their clumsy, and crude, campaign of harassment is that your status will only rise. They can’t touch you, you are anti-fragile.
McCarthy did basically the same thing, harassing people to bolster his own political status. It didn’t end well for him.
I’m betting that the CO2 mitigation solutions will be politically impossible, but rational people world-wide will go all-in for adaptation, and you will be right there.
I owned a home in Lamar Smith’s District until late last year. I’m still within a few miles of the border. Smith is a Republican with a district gerrymandered to include the wealthiest portions of Austin and San Antonio.
That was a very short list of NSF grants targeted for investigation. I highly doubt Smith’s staff picked it out at random. Surely Professor Curry you must have some inkling of why your colleague’s grant was selected.
the words ‘climate change’ in the grant title seems to be the only rationale
Heh, ‘may help to explain’ a regional phenomenon, which shouldn’t have been expected in the first place. Sorry, Judy, the research may not be corrupted, but the obvious rationale is.
==================
Better had I said ‘to explain away a regional phenomenon which needn’t have been expected anyway’. Really, the climate models have no regional skill. Even if his science was rigourous, he’d have come up with the wrong explanation.
This is sick science, apparently by a not sick scientist. Wicked, indeed.
=============
Kim, climate science uses unskilled models because they are cheaper to hire than skilled models.
The government seems to think 30-70 unskilled models are better than 3-5 skilled models.
==> “I guess I can’t understand why any climate skeptic would object to this research. Maybe Lamar Smith is an undercover warmist.”
Lol! Or maybe your expectation that “skeptics” as a group reason are any better than “realists” as a group is….well….not particularly well-reasoned (nor skeptical).
Couldn’t be that, now could it?
Too funny.
@Joshua…
That sentence was struck out…
Well, politicians…
“Southern Oxidant and Aerosol Study” could have aroused his curiosity. The “southern” part as he is nominally from the South.
I’m curious if anything came of the scrutiny? Did Smith object to the study after review?
Professor Curry “climate change” appears once in the abstract but not in the title.
A quick search of active NSF grants with “climate change” in the title or abstract brings up 2,389 grants. I find the probability that your colleague was pulled out at random for the phrase used once in the abstract a bit on the incredible side.
http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/simpleSearchResult?queryText=%22climate+change%22&ActiveAwards=true
There’s a better than 99.9% chance that the selection wasn’t just a random pick based on “climate change” in the abstract. To be fair let’s look a the size of the grant as a factor. Your colleague’s is ~$400,000.
http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/advancedSearchResult?PIId=&PIFirstName=&PILastName=&PIOrganization=&PIState=&PIZip=&PICountry=&ProgOrganization=&ProgEleCode=&BooleanElement=All&ProgRefCode=&BooleanRef=All&Program=&ProgOfficer=&Keyword=%22climate+change%22&AwardNumberOperator=&AwardAmount=4&AwardInstrument=&ActiveAwards=true&OriginalAwardDateOperator=&StartDateOperator=&ExpDateOperator=
There are 405 active climate change grants between $500,000 and $1,000,000 and another 307 greater than $1M. Given a great many bigger fish to fry in NSF climate change grants there is almost certainly something else quite significant that made your colleague get singled out,
It appears the committee is selecting some projects more or less at random to get a better representation of what’s being funded. The allegations that these projects are being investigated at the urging of political contributors hasn’t been proven with any evidence, AFAIK. Is this more like paranoid hand wringing than anything else?
From the article:
…
“The committee plans to eventually look at a broad cross-section of grants from all directorates and sub-directorates,” the statement reads in part. “Some grants for which the committee has requested information have previously attracted constituent, Member, or press questions. Others have been selected because the subject matter seems interesting. Still others are selected randomly to assure the cross-section alluded to above. Reviewing the project jackets for some complex projects in the physical sciences will help the committee to understand the potential difficulty of composing non-technical summaries that convey a project’s underlying scientific merit and national interest.”
…
http://news.sciencemag.org/funding/2015/02/malware-and-search-engines-lamar-smith-goes-far-afield-his-latest-hit-list-nsf
Here once again I fail to see the danger or risk to a researcher being asked for information related to government funded research. Particularly with respect to issues in post-modern, agenda driven science like climate change.
The second article suggests that Smith has looked for info on 60 grants in all. My question is – why so few? Who on this planet should think that the progressive dominated NSF should somehow be immune from oversight by the Congr4ess that specifically limited its authority with respect to grants.
The ‘target’ here is not the researchers, it is the NSF.
The purpose is not intimidation, but whether a government agency is following the law. And with this administration, with the IRS, DOJ, DHS and particularly the office of the president, ignoring any law they find inconvenient, such oversight is not only proper, but desperately needed.
Not to abuse the term “big boy pants” used but others, but if you want the tax payers to fund your work, you should not complain if you and the agency funding you are asked for information.
Tell this to the snitch, that lived in Compton. Get it?
Duty before the truth. Top Secret. JFK. Tell us more please…
Good test takers are blind.
Breitbart has a lengthy defense of Willie Soon
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/02/28/dr-willie-soon-a-scientist-in-the-humble-quest-for-truth/
Read it already. A very good treatise that reveals the truth and shows the corruption within the catastrophists who are now in a state of panic seeing their pet theory going to the dogs and their funding at risk of drying up while their reputation flounders.
Reminds me of the Nazi’s attacks on Einstein. One journalist pointed out a title on a newspaper that said: 100 Nazi scientists against Einstein, for which Einstein replied: If I am wrong then one would have been enough.
I vaguely remember something like “You don’t need 100 scientists to prove me wrong. You need one fact.”
That is quite a read. I had not realized that the Soon kerfuffle is warmed over hash. And am ashamed at how the Harvard Smithsonian is conducting itself. Looks like another pointed complaint to president Gilpin is in order.
In the very beginning of his article Christopher Monckton says, “This campaign of libels…”
I haven’t read the articles but I would think Dr Soon has some considering to do. He may be the type to suck it up and just go on with his research. As this is not the first attack that may be his approach. Perhaps he thinks history will vindicate his work. Since he makes such a pittance, hiring a lawyer would be a question of hours not days of legal advice nonetheless even starting to take on those media giants. If he were somehow able to get some backing from some groups and have an attorney who would work pro bono it would still be a long and arduous road away from his career. It’s really a shame these media devils have no mercy.
Media has sold its soul for the luxury to enjoy bias.
==============
Ordvic, this got too up close and personal. There is much I could post later, but not yet. All the Soon accusations were aired before, and came before to naught. There is nothing new at NYT that was not previously hashed.
There is nothing except another already refuted attack on a secondary author of the new ‘irredicibly simple equation’ paper. Stay tuned for more on that. Coming soon to a blog near you….tomorrow.
http://images.intellicast.com/App_Images/Article/129_5.png
PDO DATA
So, based on this article, is seems we need to burn coal without removing aerosols. Remove the mercury and we’re good to go :)
From the article:
…
In ongoing data collection by the Cultural Cognition Project at Yale Law School, fewer than one in four people in a general population sample in Southeast Florida understood that if human beings stopped emitting carbon dioxide tomorrow, global temperatures would continue to rise. “Believers” in human-caused global warming were just as likely as “disbelievers” to misunderstand the extent to which we are already committed to future temperature rises.
…
Points of no return. If the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can be limited to a doubling—from about 280 parts per million (ppm) in the pre-industrial era to 560 ppm in the future (we’re currently at about 400 ppm)—the IPCC assessment estimated with “high confidence” that Earth’s temperature will reach an equilibrium somewhere between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures. However, the report cautioned, “some aspects of climate will continue to change even if temperatures are stabilized.”
Among some of the most likely changes: The melting of snow and ice will expose darker patches of water and land that absorb more of the sun’s radiation, accelerating global warming and the retreat of ice sheets and glaciers. Scientists agree that the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet has already gone into an unstoppable decline. Currents that transport heat within the oceans will be disrupted. Ocean acidification will continue to rise, with unknown effects on marine life. Thawing permafrost and sea beds will release methane, a greenhouse gas. Droughts predicted to be the worst in 1,000 years will trigger vegetation changes and wildfires, releasing carbon. Species unable to adapt quickly to a changing climate will go extinct. Coastal communities will be submerged, creating a humanitarian crisis.
…
The scientists, however, put their finger on what is needed to turn things in the right direction: socio-economic action. Changing self-destructive behaviors can be extremely difficult, as any dieter knows, and unrealistic optimism can be just as counterproductive as defeatism. In fact, these are the twin enemies of climate action. Even climate “believers” seem to feel that either there is little they can do to prevent disaster (beyond pointing fingers at “disbelievers,” of course) or, alternatively, that technology is making (or will make) speedy progress against the problem.
Those in the over-optimistic camp may think that geoengineering, for example, can turn back the climate clock in a pinch. Unfortunately, although measures such as injecting sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere merit increased research and development, they are not ready to be safely deployed at the scale necessary to combat climate change. As a National Research Council committee recently concluded, “there is no substitute for dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.” The world needs an emissions diet plan—and a full complement of socio-economic incentives and support systems to ensure its success.
…
http://thebulletin.org/climate-change-irreversible-not-unstoppable8044#
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MuE96w7Przw/TbjOsWYiGkI/AAAAAAAABEI/epSfJr-EGeY/s1600/800px-PDO_svg.png
One more chart showing PDO data.
http://meteora.ucsd.edu/~pierce/elnino/make_enso_plot_v2.R.gif
The reason why the temperatures went up when the PDO declined post 1983 is first of all the PDO, although in a decline remained very much positive until 2007 overall, which in turn gave rise to frequent El Nino periods.
In regards to the Anti-GMO screed: I was a former extreme organic gardener. How extreme was I? My off-the-grid organic farm was in an otherwise uninhabited small mountaintop valley looking out across the nearly empty Eel River Valley to the nearby Yola Bolly Wilderness area. For my own amusement I would walk naked through my large garden and orchard and graze their bounty without the use of my hands. I was truly in touch with the food I ate. But, that was an elitist dalliance, totally unsuited for the realities of the wider world.
If the Anti-GMO crowd gains traction with their lies, distortions, bad science and nitpicking they will kill hundreds of millions by starvation and disease. Hyperbole? Sadly no. This story has many parallels to the environmental opposition to the “Green Revolution” decades ago.
I’d urge you to read the Wikipedia entry for Norman Borlaug, quite possibly the greatest scientist who has ever lived: “(March 25, 1914 – September 12, 2009) Norman Ernest Borlaug was an American biologist, humanitarian and Nobel laureate who has been called “the father of the Green Revolution”, “agriculture’s greatest spokesperson” and “The Man Who Saved A Billion Lives”. He is one of seven people to have won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal.
In the criticism portion of the entry he says in replies to his critics: “some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists. They’ve never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they’d be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things”.
If you read the entire entry you’ll see that many of the actions of the Green Revolution critics were similar to those now being pushed by the FF Fools and the anti-GMOers in regards to hampering development in the Third World.
It is wise to look for the emergence of unintended consequences in any developing new technology. But, to forget that perfection is the enemy of good is the path to mass murder.
Crying out for tractors, Borlaug found the path to future increased capture of the sun’s energy, as food.
=================
John, a small but real example. Bt maize (corn) was initially developed to cut down on costly insecticide use, especially against corn rootworm (actually the larvae of a beetle.) For big American farms like mine with proper crop rotation, it is mostly about the economics; yield differences are maybe 5%. For subsidence farmers in Mexico who cannot afford much in the way of insecticides and without enough land for sufficient crop rotation, the yield difference is 25%. Enormous benefit to them.
There is no difference in the nutritional value of the corn, nor is it in any way harmful to animal or human digestion. Once digested, the Bt proteins have been converted to amino acids and no longer exist.
The ignorance displayed by the anti-GMO crowd is pretty amazing.
I find the anti GMO screed to be nonsense. It looks like Modi in India does too:
http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/02/28/modi-sees-extraordinary-promise-of-gmos/
Mark, Modi knows that over 80% of the India cotten crop, and 85% of the corn crop, is already GMO. See ebook Gaia’s Limits. Improved yields up to 30%. Without which India would already be starving. Regards
Since 1955, the presence/absence of conditions resulting from the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) has been gauged using the Oceanic Niño Index, or ONI. A time series of the ONI is shown in Figure ONI-01. The equatorial and northern North Pacific oceans experienced several very intense El Niño events (1972-72, 1983-1984 and 1997-1998) along with prolonged events from 1990 to 1995 and 2002-2005, and most recently a short, but relatively strong event in early 2010.
Questions for Zeke and/or Mosher:
If we break the earth’s surface into a grid with each block composed of 10,000 square miles there are ~20,000 blocks.
1) For each decade in the twentieth century how many of the 10,000 blocks in the southern hemisphere had one or more continuously operating min/max temperature stations?
2) Same question but instead of the southern hemisphere consider the 320 blocks that cover the continental United States.
Oh dear oh dear oh dear!
Heresy!
And there’s me me believing witch-burning went out in the seventeenth century!
Well, it makes excellent spectator sport if nothing else.
And somehow, I can’t help feeling that this is going to backfire, big style!
Willie Soon’s funding and Pachauri’s alleged lechery are trivial.
Pachauri’s IPCC, its shallow assumptions and infinitely rortable statistics are also trivial.
A Nobel Peace Prize, especially when shared with Al Gore, is one of the few known examples of Norwegian irony. Apart from that, trivial.
Willie Soon’s work is not trivial.
Climate War Archaeologists have discovered one of the badly sited and biased thermometer stations that led to confusion about 1934’s place in the climate record.
Actually, I’m tired of socialists trying to re-engineer society in the image of Marx using climate as an excuse. I welcome fossil fuels. They cook my food, keep me warm or cool, and get me to work.
“[S]ocialists” have been “trying to re-engineer society in the image of Marx using” whatever excuses they could find since the mid-19th century. You shouldn’t blame the straw man for their use of him.
OOps! I meant stalking horse, not straw man
Ok Russell, I must admit that was funny
Tonyb
Hi Denizens. I’m seeking links for skeptic claims that rise warming precedes CO2 in medium and short term periods. I know about the Vostok ice core updates already. I know Salby has analysis of this in his video but no paper to go with, yet. Appreciate any links anyone can toss me. Doesn’t have to be peer-reviewed, just substantial.
That (bolded by me) qualification puts you ahead of over 90% of both skeptics and alarmists here.
Wish I could help you, but I’m still looking myself. Our hostess has promised a post on Salby, but there’s no time-frame yet.
Please read essay Cause and Effect in ebook Blowing Smoke. It references all the most recent papers on this isssue. Provides the answer you seek, with many references. NOTE that all those time scales do not relate to the post 1950 attribution issue concerning CAGW. Another example of muddled climate thinking.
Have you got a link to a non-paywalled copy? One that I can link to for everybody?
No. That is why it is a copyrighted ebook from my actual real publisher, who expects a cut. Amazon is (was?) running a sale at just $7.99. Rather cheap for two plus years of almost full time research. Portions of 11 of the 52 essays were previously guest posted here. Those portions are of course public domain. But one would still miss half the fun of essay Shell Games…
Such is life.
Giving away understanding. Tisdale, too. Still.
===========
Whatever.
Personally, I’m not going to waste time on arguments people have to pay to read. Your time? It’s yours, and you can choose how you spend it, and what you require people to spend for the results. Personally, I spend most of my time on remunerative work, and the time I spend researching and discussing issues of social importance, I donate to my cause.
Hey, AK. Get Judith to give me your coordinates, and I will gift you a copy since you are plainly in self proclaimed dire economic straights.
You still need to read it, since have just evidenced little real knowledge of the asymetrical economic PR warfare going on (of which tomorrow’s guest post here will be a small unrepresentative sample). I spent most of my time just earning a living like you do. Next time you are at McDonalds, think about whether one BigMac Meal is equal value to the discounted cost of this ebook. You appear to go with a Big Mac. i go with two+ years of research and writing. We all have our own value systems.
Hi Rud, I bought the ebook on Amazon a couple weeks ago, have just started in on it. Thanks for the link to the Cause and Effect chapter, will check it.
I know Tallbloke keeps mentioning there are studies / data about medium and short term H2O leading CO2 as well, but not sure where exactly… I guess I just need to search his site.
BTW are you guys aware Salby is speaking in London in March?
“Tuesday 17th March, 7.00 for 7.30pm, Emmanuel Centre, Marsham Street SW1P 3DW”
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2015/2/24/salby-in-london-1.html
Man has put the equivalent of about 250 ppm CO2 into the atmosphere via emissions. The amount staying in the atmosphere has risen 120 ppm in a coincidental period, and in proportion to the emission rate, and the ocean has acidified as a result of CO2 being added there. Good luck finding evidence that the CO2 came from somewhere else.
Jim D,
Who cares? You are exhaling around 40000 to 60000 ppm CO2 with each breath.
All oxygen breathing carbon based life produces CO2 in similar fashion. It is estimated that the termite biomass exceeds the human by a significant factor. There are of course many other species, and presumably ongoing evolutionary processes creating more species as time passes.
Of course, your average not terribly bright Warmist will not bother to do the arithmetic to figure how much CO2 in the atmosphere is due to the processes of life, but will simply dismiss an interesting fact by calling it mousenuts, or some similarly puerile inanity. I won’t even attempt to point out CO2 production from other processes necessary for to be maintenance of human life.
Your ability to pollute the atmosphere with CO2 does not stop just when you stop breathing of course. Carbon oxidising creatures of various sizes feast on your remains, and even inorganic oxidation processes occur.
I appreciate your refusal to accept that an increase in the human population by a factor of five or so over the last century may have created a quite natural increase in atmospheric CO2 levels, or that photosynthesis may sequester all the additional CO2 in complex carbohydrates. If you care to work it all out for us, your input will no doubt be welcomed.
In any case, CO2 does not warm anything at all. Nothing. You’re beating an invisible drum with a non-existent drumstick, but even so, your actions provide some light hearted diversion on occasion.
I wish you well.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
OT Mike but sorry to hear of your hero Mr Spock’s passing. Live long and prosper.
Well, JD, burning rainforest has destroyed about 40 Gt/year of carbon sinking. It is currently adding 2 Gt/y of carbon to the atmosphere and destroying 0.5 Gt of sinking every year for a combined 42 Gt/year positive influence on atmospheric carbon. There is also the outgassing from the ocean due to post LIA warming.
But no – 9.8 Gt of annual emissions MUST be the source of atmospheric CO2.
PA, yes, 10-20% is from deforestation/landuse changes according to the best estimates. I am not sure when deforestation started but CO2 growth has been somewhat proportional to the emissions growth since the 19th century.
Well, JD …
Given that a lot of carbon sinking was destroyed (about 20% of total sinking) and the collective effect has been steadily increasing, the carbon sink destruction and emissions will have similar trends. The linear nature of the CO2 atmospheric increase in the face of drastic Chinese emissions increases argues for a greater ocean/carbon-sink-loss role since the emissions are increasing far ahead of the increase in the CO2 level.
You are arguing that the problem is because someone turned on the faucet. I’m arguing that there was already a faucet running and somebody stopped up the sink.
https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/oco2-global-2014.jpg
Virtually all (83%) of fossil fuel emissions are in the Northern Hemisphere.
Does it really look like only the Northern Hemisphere is the problem?
PA, you noticed that image was just November, right? May tells the opposite story. The most common error associated with this widely publicized picture is to ignore or forget the 6 ppm annual variation from vegetation that peaks just around spring. Why do the skeptics never want to show May, you may ask?
Jim D,
I might ask why the Wonderfully Wacky Whimsical Warmists GHE charts and graphs never show what happens at night, in the absence of sunlight.
Is it because the surface cools, regardless of CO2?
Or does the Woefully Wondering Warmist World bathe in the demiglow of a constant and never changing average amount of insolation? Where total internal reflection, the Fresnel effect, and all similar normal physics are discarded in favour of paranormal physics?
Even Gavin and his ilk are now apparently having second thoughts. They appear to be reaching the conclusion that Natural processes are subject to Natural variation. Obviously, there should be a law against it!
Sorry to laugh at it all, but it is a little ridiculous, isn’t it?
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
JD – the point is the Northern Hemisphere isn’t 83% of the CO2 problem IE fossil fuel emissions may be a contributor to the CO2 rise but not the cause of the CO2 rise.
PA, 250 ppm from human activities is the cause of the rise and the acidification. You have to try very hard to separate these, particularly given the timing correlation of the rise and emissions. We are adding deeply sequestered carbon back to the surface budget and this is obviously what happens.
Just type in ‘co2 lags temperature’ on goggle.
Doh. Thx ordvic. Will try it… was assuming ‘co2 lags temp’ research (other than Vostok ice cores) is mainly in skeptic blog comments… let’s see…
Maybe type in science papers after.
No that doesn’t help either. The papers used to pop up on the first link.
here we go (provided my link works)
http://scholar.goggle.com/scholar?q=co2+lags+temperature+climate+science
Nope, Just type in climate science after. Scholar or scholarly might help. I spent quite a bit of time there before I might have to agsin now that you reminded me.
Just did it, went a few pages deep. Most of it is about the ice-core lags — which I already know about. I’m still trying to understand how all consensus folk can admit the huge lag, but not see that as undermining the basic claim of CO2 drives warming.
There’s a few things about 20,000-10,000 period. Almost nothing about truly short-term stuff like yearly or decadal.
The one surprise was in CO2Science’s review article – apparently someone found the lag in re-glaciation as well!
Left-libertarian critique?
“Science as the New Religion” – Tony Cartalluci
…”A truly scientific examination of the facts would reveal that the climate always changes – that humans are most likely impacting the climate since virtually everything else does – but that also both big-oil and big-business possess enough money to buyout both sides of the climate change debate, and profit from it without actually truly understanding the climate or what humanity can do to adjust to it no matter what it does or why.”
Other relevant quotes: “The fact that the climate of the planet naturally changes, however, does not absolve humans from minimizing their impact on the planet. Beyond ending the reckless genetic contamination of the planet’s genetic heritage through the use of GMOs, the petrochemical industry and the heavily centralized consumerist paradigm that currently exists must also be dismantled, decentralized, and converted to more sustainable and healthier alternatives, not only for the planet, but for society and human beings individually.”
“But dismantling immense oil and retail monopolies and replacing them with self-sufficient, high-tech local communities seems to be furthest from the minds of those championing urgent activism in response to climate change. Instead, they propose even more power be put into the hands of governments, banks, and corporations to create “policy.” The “policy” to no one’s surprise, leaves more power centralized in the hands of the very special interests that are truly and quantifiably destroying the environment.”
Also ties in GMO and vaccine debate. Def worth reading.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/science-as-the-new-religion/5433889
Let’s make our own horse shoes, thrash our own grain, … wait … isn’t that back to the work from daylight to dark life that everyone wanted to get away from?
When I trekked, half, now only a third, of the world’s population did hard physical labor from dawn ’til dusk, for barely enough to get by on.
=====================
I didn’t see the article as particularly luddite, maybe I need to re-read it. He’s calling for tech innovation, just freed up from mega-corporate control, and applied on a distributed basis.
Oil (WTI) is still near $50, although it fell a bit this week. Brent is near $60, regaining the more typical spread between the two. The WTI year-out contango is $11, placing downward pressure on prices. There is some force unknown to me that is holding up the price of WTI.
Due to the contango, traders can buy oil at $50 now and sell it for a guaranteed profit some number of months later. This activity tends to support prices. However, inventory continues to build. At some point, storage will get filled and difficult to find and this support will fade. When this happens, we could see a dramatic drop in WTI price to $20s or 30s.
That is, if hostilities stay manageable and no other unforeseen event occurs.
11/27/14
OIL________68.92___-4.77
BRENT______72.49___-0.09
NAT GAS_____4.22___-0.1357
RBOB GAS____1.91
1/16/15
OIL_______48.69
BRENT_____49.90
NAT GAS____3.127
RBOB GAS___1.3588
1/23/15
OIL_______45.59
BRENT_____48.55
NAT GAS___2.986
RBOB GAS__1.3479
1/30/15
OIL_______45.68
BRENT_____50.11
NAT GAS____2.684
RBOB GAS___1.3641
2/6/15
OIL_______51.69
BRENT_____58.16
NAT GAS____2.579
RBOB GAS___1.559
2/13/15
OIL_______53.17
BRENT_____61.53
NAT GAS____2.686
RBOB GAS___1.6192
2/27/15
OIL______49.76
BRENT____62.48
NAT GAS___2.734
RBOB GAS__1.9779
Need to push gas and oil much much lower if possible. A win-win situation helping consumers and putting the squeeze on Putin and his war machine.
“More & more research results clearly indicate that solar activity has an impact on how the climate varies over time..
Over 200 peer-reviewed papers demonstrating solar control of climate published since 2010..”
Paywall after paywall. It’s about time that we got to read what is publicly funded without being charged.
Ulric Lyons,
Fully agree. Yet another speed bump in our collective learning curve. If we’ve paid once, seems we shouldn’t pay once again. Think this would be an interesting topic of discussion along with the grant process for those of us uninitiated.
Ulric, in part I share your pain. Bought many of these (hundreds), paid for at public expense. Thank god, mostly tax write off costs for me. Right. Still paid most of the costs muself despite having been funded by my taxes.
BUT, the journal process (editors, reviewers, print costs) was never free, so they had to derive income from their subscriptions. Like newspapers, ads, and subscribers.
The whole internet/world anybody peer review/(and in my case ‘free’ color illustrations) is disrupting this science journal business model. Don’t know where it will end, but suspect you will be reading a lot more ‘science’ on blogs like CE. For an example, stay tuned tomorrow evening EST US.
I was though very pleased to find this free access paper on the solar proton event(s) of 775 AD:
http://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/pdf/2013/04/aa21080-13.pdf
The heliocentric Jovian configuration type in 775 AD, where they occurred through the CET series, regularly show as a small cluster of very warm years and very positive NAO conditions, even in the middle of Maunder in 1686. With further examples in 1727, 1796, 1826, 1865, 1934, 1948, 1975, and 2003. http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/tcet.dat
The periodicity of this Jupiter-Saturn-Uranus quadrature series since 1865 is precisely that of the recent 69 year AMO envelope.
“…paywall…publicly funded…”
It does seem like a scam, where we are all suckers. Frustrating…
I’ve made that exact point many times for years – since this has made no difference, I’ve given up
One can find many reasons for paywalling critical information/data, such as the business of publishing journals, academic tribalism (keep the hoi polloi out); I’m extremely hard put to find a single “useful to the taxpayer” reason
Ulric
Agreed. Pay-walled papers make it difficult and expensive to find the full picture. If it is publicly funded research it is difficult to see why we should pay twice.
tonyb
Proton storms induce ionospheric electric currents.
“As the magnetospheric ring current and the auroral electrojets and their return currents that are responsible for geomagnetic activity have generally North-South directed magnetic effects (strongest at night), the daytime variation of the Y or East component is a suitable proxy for the strength of the SR ionospheric current system..”
Y component measurements (using Gauss magnetometer) since 1840s are currently used to recalibrate the existing sunspot records (Svalgaard et al)
But what all this has to do with the CET ?
Proximity of the N. Atlantic and effect of its SST (the AMO).
Data shows direct correlation of the AMO to the geomagnetic Y (East) component
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/GMEC-AMO.gif
Why 60N ?
N. Hemisphere’s climate is under control of the polar and sub-tropical jet-streams, whereby the long term zonal-merdional positioning of jet streams depends on the extent and strength of three primary cells (Pollar, Ferrel and Hadley).
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/jetstream//global/images/jetstream3.jpg
.
tonyb,
pay ‘n pay’n pay agen,
that’s how it goes,
everybody knows.
@vukcevic
My analogues suggest that there was generally higher levels of solar activity at 774-775 AD, and that it was also at a sunspot cycle maximum, so the chances of a large solar storm were greatly increased. The shorter term effects of a strong proton event on weather patterns though would be major ozone depletion in the polar region.
Ulric Lyons,
Maybe things have changed, but University and other publicly funded libraries used to purchase research materials – papers, books, and so on. This meant that the taxpayer paid over and over, because they funded the researchers in the first place, then had to pay for the results to be published, and again to be able to read the results.
With the enormous growth in the research industry, everybody wants a share of the pie, or more properly wants a place at the trough big enough for their snout. Data supposedly becomes valuable, even if you didn’t originate it. Intellectual property becomes precious, even though nobody is prepared to pay for it. A fiercely protective dog in the manger attitude develops, where the researcher steadfastly refuses to allow access to data they may well have purloined along the way, on the basis that it is extremely valuable, or they are concerned that it may be re tortured to the detriment of the holder.
It is likely that the vast majority of so called research is useless, pointless, and undertaken solely to satisfy various egos. Institutions apparently value their scientific stature by the amount of money they spend on research. Donors no doubt bask in the warm glow of sums being spent on politically correct research, without any thought of checking to see whether the output was worthwhile.
Peer review is probably useless. New ideas, by definition, have not been thought of previously. Who is competent to review the fresh thoughts of the towering intellect? What if that intellect gets one new thing right, but another new thing wrong? Look at some of the rubbish published, and subsequently retracted. Then look at some Nobel Prize winners (Michael Mann excluded, of course), who were derided by their peers for their supposed lunatic ideas.
History shows that on occasion, breakthrough work is overlooked, or forgotten, for decades or even centuries. Gregor Mendel springs to mind. Throwing ever increasing amounts of money at the research industry doesn’t appear to help to generate progress. Luck, serendipity, and human observation and synthesis of things plainly obvious to all, cannot be purchased or legislated for. Gravity existed for everyone – not just for Newton.
Newton’s Laws of Motion work quite well without knowledge of Newton, but we can do lots of things much better, because of his insights.
I have seen no research to indicate that intelligence of researchers can be increased by payment of large grants, or that the application of money guarantees innovation. It would seem that almost the contrary applies, as vested interest in maintaining the status quo tends to suppress the expression of new, and possibly contrary, ideas.
Unfortunately, I had the solutions to all this written down in Mike Flynn’s Little Book of Answers, which I seem to have misplaced. Maybe it’s next to the Unobtanium. I’ll look tomorrow.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Diminishing returns here as everywhere.
@ Mike Flynn
ANOTHER great post!.
Thanks.
“History shows that on occasion, breakthrough work is overlooked, or forgotten, for decades or even centuries. ”
Brings to mind the saga of dark matter/dark energy.
The universe at large was observed to be behaving in a manner inconsistent with general relativity (GR).
This was–and is–considered to be prima facie confirmation that 90+ % of the universe consists of dark matter/dark energy, the exclusive evidence for which is that their existence and computed distribution is required to preserve GR.
Meanwhile, a PhD physics professor at a British university has announced a theory that explains the astronomical observations from which the existence of dark matter/dark were deduced (and several other bits of seemingly unrelated ‘anomalous’ data) without requiring either dark matter OR dark energy, but does not even garner enough recognition for his theory to be examined and rejected. He is totally ignored. GR is no longer a theory, subject to confirmation or rejection by observation. It is an axiom to which the universe is adjusted to conform. Just like the axiom of ACO2 driven catastrophic warming and the seemingly endless flogging of recalcitrant data necessary to confirm it.
@Mike Flynn
I would like to see mandatory free publication of publicly funded research findings, and with an open twin stream review process. One where the author(s) invite both professional and lay specialist reviewers of their choice as being suitable, and a second public review stream where a small financial incentive is given for a successful major refutation of the works. That would leave no direct role for journals in selection and review, but it could eliminate a fair proportion of dross, and nurture a healthy and active relationship between scientists and the general public.
Uncertainty behind climate projections could be cut in half by 2030, study shows [link]
Or maybe not: They assume that future temperature change will be more clearly dominated by CO2 change. With everything else that we know now, I would be surprised if the uncertainty over the size of the CO2 effect were reduced 20% compared to now; unless the Bayesian estimates with broad uniform priors are scrapped all together.
“How Climate Adaptation Experts Help Companies Prepare for Disaster”
There is an interesting article in the March 1st issue of Scientific American, titled “Fantasy Island,” that concerns this subject. A summary reads: “Using the Pacific nation of Kiribati as a poster child for the ravages of rising seas is not only misleading, it may also be harmful.” The author has a very nuanced point of view about the evolution and growth of coral islands, sea level’s effects on them, the potential of change from rising seas caused by Global Warming and the poorly thought out efforts attempted at mitigating this so far.
I was surprised to read of a study he mentioned that coral reef islands in general have gained in size since 1941. And that these islands being “poster children” for Global Warming has had numerous cultural negativities for these islands’ peoples. And that mitigation efforts have failed in a number of places they were tried. And that problems caused by development errors have been blamed on global warming.
He writes of the extreme high water mark he noted in 2005 that helped create this furor has not been reached again. He claims the reasons are that it happened in an El Nino Year when a low pressure center coincided with the highest tides of the year. (Shades of Sandy?)
All in all, it alerted me to a lot of the unintended consequences that can rise up when you are chosen as the “Poster Child” for some cause and mitigation efforts begin. I give it a strong recommendation irrespective of your position on the dangers of the current Sea Level Rise rate.
Speaking of conflicts of interest:
http://youtu.be/poL7l-Uk3I8?t=10m30s
Good point Willard. Originally in the US, the States were to elect Senators. Too bad that was changed so they were elected by the People instead. Pure democracy is bad for the health of the economy and therefore to the nation as a whole.
Sure, jim2. Speaking of health, same should apply to doctors, right?
You don’t elect your president, BTW. The Electoral College does.
I’m not following your line of thought on doctors. Do you want, in the US, for the states to elect doctors?
I think you may mean that because it would be better if states elected senators that it would also be best if Obamacare gets to select my doctor. I’m thinking that’s what you meant.
Following your line of reasoning, this also makes sense: Because shoes are nailed to horses’ hooves, your shoes should likewise be nailed to your feet.
You seem to have a real talent for applying one-size-fits-all solutions to disparate problems. But then again, one-size-fits-all is what Socialism is all about. Right Willard?
He isn’t following your line about Senators selected by states, either.
Is there anything special here to distinguish it from the usual willard conversation?
===============
If you want pure democracy, jim2, why not elect doctors? What about engineers? Appealing to pure democracy sounds like a one-size fit all solution to me.
Not sure where you got that, Willard. I’m for limited democracy, but still democracy. See, middle of the road, so to speak.
> Not sure where you got that, Willard.
Here:
In other words, I got it from your first comment.
***
> See, middle of the road, so to speak.
Tell that to Dr. Overton.
Willard – are you suggesting that we should elect doctors? Or elect who is tall and who is short? Who is blue-eyed and who is brown-eyed? No limits on democracy at all? What should be a penalty for an elected doctor for a botched surgery?
THE US government appears not to know the difference between soot and carbon dioxide.Both can result from the combustion of fuels, but soot is a pollutant while CO2is a non toxic invisible gas and the stuff of plant life. CO2 should not qualify as a pollutant because it is a clean, non-toxic gas. Soot is bad for the lungs of both humans and animals, but it is a local problem in India and China. There is nothing to stop US citizens wearing a face mask to protect their lungs as many locals do.
So the US government could be accused of meddling in the affaires of India and China in its Don Quixite like charge at climate change.
Steven Mosher,
Whilst I appreciate that you have the right to waste your time in whatever fashion you choose, I am curious as to the point of trying to adjust historical records of weather events.
If all historical records of temperature, cloud type and cover, wind speed and direction, relative humidity and so on were to miraculously vanish, who would be the worse for it? As curiosities, some people have an interest in historical records of various types, just as people who collect minerals, or stamps, or empty beverage cans.
There does seem to be considerable heat generated about the methodology employed to perform a seemingly completely pointless task. As a hobby, it seems harmless enough, even better if you can convince somebody to pay you to indulge yourself.
Is there actually a point to any of this, is it just a shared semi obsessive pastime?
As Nature seems indifferent to any of the models, projections or predictions, maybe the time, effort and money, going into endless recasting of history, might be better employed to understand the workings of Nature.
I suppose if your obsession Is adding, dividing, averaging, interpolating, estimating, or creating millions of more or less random numbers, then trying to change to something else might be difficult. I understand if this is the case.
I just thought I’d pose the question, on the off chance others might share my view.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Another objection is that “global temperature” combines land surface air temperature and sea surface temperature measures. Land surface land temperature measurement and sea surface temperature measurement make some sort of sense – since you are measuring global temperature. Land air and sea surface is a synthetic number.
It is like combining red delicious apples and tomatoes for a “red fruit index”. Yes, you get a number, Yes, you can regularly “improve” tracking precision (just like with historic data). No, it isn’t really meaningful.
@ Mike Flynn
I share your view.
The purpose (as you well know) is not to engage in a harmless past time but to produce a trend line, manipulating the data as necessary, that ‘proves’ the Prime Axiom of Climate Science: Anthropogenic CO2 (ACO2) is driving the Temperature of the Earth (TOE) upwards at an unprecedented rate AND the rise in the TOE will prove catastrophic unless governments around the world take coordinated action to reduce or eliminate ACO2 by strictly controlling and/or taxing any activity that produces a Carbon Signature.
And make mo mistake: within Climate Science, it is NOT a theory. It is an axiom. And the politicians using the Prime Axiom as justification for their policies are deadly–literally–serious.
Mike Flynn,
Great question. Don’t expect an answer. And while Mosher tries to pretend that he is just a disinterested arbiter of the temperature data, Berkley Earth clearly has a fossil fuel and CO2 agenda.
Milke Flynn: I just thought I’d pose the question, on the off chance others might share my view.”
Sounds like a good view to me. No other field of science would accept the cavalier manipulation of data as is done in “Climate Science.” Particularly when those who are doing the manipulation concede that it doesn’t change the result.
There is a rule in politics that the more time you spend explaining an answer, the more likely the answer was wrong. So it is in Climate Science; the more time you spend explaining why you manipulated the data, the more likelihood that you shouldn’t have manipulated the data.
Californiamannipulation da dah!
Caliphornia represents a new age misuse of State powers with doubtful benefits to serfs.
Sifting through data … it’s a living.
Just listen to yourselves. Ego vs ego. Everyone bristling. Smarty-pants. He said, she said, why I oughta…..
The human condishun. : (
Back ter the turnip field.
https://beththeserf.wordpress.com/
Great serf post, beth. I’m with Schumpeter, Burke et al.
Although your reference to an “antient constitution” suggests a more collective form of organisation than those quoted favoured. :-)
beth, re the Sydney Harbour Bridge and NE England bridge-builders Dorman Long, the SBH is a scaled up copy of Newcastle’s 1928 Tyne Bridge, also built by DL. Though I must admit that when I first saw it, I didn’t think that I’d been somehow suddenly transported back to my home town. Somewhat different setting. Though the SBH doesn’t have an adjacent 12th C castle.
Edmund Burke…another Irishman batting for England.
Interesting new post over at the Serf Underground.
I must say, serfs are getting educated these days. Can this be good for the social fabric? I remember when they’d stand around cheering the safe arrival of my tokay shipment. They’d briefly toss their sweaty caps in the air, then get back into the fields till dark.
Perhaps with sufficiently expensive electricity we can help them get their subservient mojo back. Surely they’ll be happier when they have a common purpose again: the Leader, the Revolution, Gaia, the planet thingy…whatever.
Dear Beth,
Been wandering up and down the highways and byways of your fine blog. It’s lucid, compelling, and persuasive, a least to this young and handsome aspiring serf. It deserves a wide readership.
Black swans quietly gathering on the horizon. They look as if they mean business. It won’t be pretty.
@ beththeserf
Followed your link.
Outstanding!
Thanks.
mosomoso
Sweaty caps? What a luxury life style you lead. We were so poor we merely threw our sweat in the air. Caps were something we could only dream about.
tonyb
Thx fer kind word re me Serf Underground, Faustino,
pokerguy, Bob Ludwick, and recommendations from moso.)
bts.
@Beth
Your article on the SHB
Please look at the story behind the pylons which underpin and support the entire structure. Way more interesting than the minor detail of the rivets
Nothing changes, as we are all windbags at heart!
Peter Davies,
I resemble that remark!,
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
I’m a windbag at lung!
The whole mechanism simply evolved to ease torment of the mind.
===================
Windbag at lung as compared to windbag from neither region?
Though it does help to develop one’s capacity to scan and skip, to spot the nuggets amongst the dross. Quite a valuable skill these days.
February’s CET second half was at about twenty year average but mid-Jan to mid-Feb daily temps were about 1.5C – 2C below the 20 yr average.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-dMm.htm
Vuk
Prior to Christmas our various outdoor plants were about two weeks advance to normal (if there is such a thing) They are now about two weeks behind.
tonyb
We have a camellia in sheltered sunny back garden, it started flowering at the end of January and it is still in full bloom.
vuk
Ours was out in early November but we are in the English Riviera. It is so hot and sunny here that it makes Nice look like the Arctic circle. :)
tonyb.
Tony
I’ll be down on Tuesday for about three weeks, will report on the calving glaciers and stray icebergs. The way euro and ‘frenchonomy’ are going (there are strikes every other day, a bit like good old England in 70’s) your offer to purchase at 50% discount looks positively attractive proposition.
a modest proposal
let’s form IPUB…yes, i-pub
the Intergovernmental Panel of Unbiased People
they can produce a list of unbiased funding sources…
plus a list of unbiased researchers
that we can trust to produce a plethora of unbiased research
first step…come up with the group of unbiased people to create a list of unbiased people to appoint to IPUB
we can start with the list of ‘functional’ families to look for candidates
should be easy
I suggest we task it to the next Davos gathering
I am about positive solutions
People = Blokes
which would of course include women
Your “proposal” illustrates IMO everything that is wrong with climate science but also with human beings in general these days. The GFC is still contaminating the way we all perceive our economic future and the implications for future world prosperity is quite disturbing!
I was kind of surprised no one commented on the effect of the upcoming total eclipse on solar power in Europe. I guess for a two hour drop in output, people can just go without power for a while. Or, maybe a lot of backup can be built to sustain electricity supplies?
http://judithcurry.com/2015/02/27/week-in-review-45/#comment-679034
jim2
I would guess that the amount of solar power being produced in March anyway would be so low that no one will notice they have gone off.
— —-
Example of calculation
As an example on 10:00 26 March 2013:
Total UK Solar PV Capacity: 2.405719GW
Annual Average Load Factor: 0.085
Time of Year weighting for March, average hours sunlight = 4, average hours sunlght for year = 4.67, March insolation = 2.2, average year insolation = 2.51. March insolation weighting = (24 / 4.67) * ((2.2 / 2.51) / (4/4.67) = 5.2574
Percentage sunshine in the hour: mins = 47.8 /60 = 0.797 = 79.7%
UK Solar PV Output 12:00 23 March 2014 = 2.406 * 0.085 * 5.257 * 0.797 * 1000 = 856.9 MW
http://www.ukpowergeneration.info/embedded
tonyb
Thank you. Your perspective on output in March “up there” makes sense.
“More & more research results clearly indicate that solar activity has an impact on how the climate varies over time.”
Ya think?
Finding non-“consensus” views on global warming is about to get a lot harder.
From the article:
…
A Google research team is adapting that model to measure the trustworthiness of a page, rather than its reputation across the web. Instead of counting incoming links, the system – which is not yet live – counts the number of incorrect facts within a page. “A source that has few false facts is considered to be trustworthy,” says the team (arxiv.org/abs/1502.03519v1). The score they compute for each page is its Knowledge-Based Trust score.
The software works by tapping into the Knowledge Vault, the vast store of facts that Google has pulled off the internet. Facts the web unanimously agrees on are considered a reasonable proxy for truth. Web pages that contain contradictory information are bumped down the rankings.
…
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22530102.600-google-wants-to-rank-websites-based-on-facts-not-links.html#.VPMzMh-c1B3
jim2: The software works by tapping into the Knowledge Vault, the vast store of facts that Google has pulled off the internet. Facts the web unanimously agrees on are considered a reasonable proxy for truth. Web pages that contain contradictory information are bumped down the rankings.
A site that repeatedly cites the same old stuff with a bias will be given a high rating. A site that cites new research from a diversity of viewpoints will get a low rating. They nearly guarantee that the most informative sites will be outranked by pure propaganda sites. It will be next to impossible for the web pages of New England Journal of Medicine, Science, and Nature to achieve high rankings, because on a week-in and week-out basis they publish next to nothing that has unanimous backing.
I am hoping that your description is wrong.
I’m mostly quoting an article, for your and the other denizens’ enjoyment. I’m not thrilled about the prospect of checking the “truth” of a web site. Then you have to ask, who decides what the truth is? Since the Fed had chosen to regulate the internet even more, it will probably end up a political football, and the truth will be nowhere to be found.
@ jim2
“…and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
I guess that explains why the progressives make such an effort to ensure that the truth is inaccessible. And that the official DEFINITION of the ‘truth’ is whatever they define it to be.
Speaking of conflict of interests:
http://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archives/2015/02/27/hutchinson-era-good-for-gop-chairs-family
Ah, email with impunity. No need to make up fake names.
================
Wise choice putting someone with ties to the O&G industry in charge of ADEQ. The wrong person in that position could wreck the O&G business. That’s not good for Arkansas.
Jim2 makes an excellent point. there’s no telling just what harm the “wrong person” could do.
Josh – it’s nice that we agree. :)
The O&G business supplies a wide array of high paying jobs to people with a very diverse skill set. (Diversity is good speak, right?) Anyway, people with a lower education level can make really good money if they just work hard. I guess this isn’t as good as a lower income from welfare, but still.
People with lower education can even become millionaires, jim2. It helps when dad was too.
If some could become millionaires, everyone could. There are two readings to that last sentence.
Inflation? What inflation?
It helps if you have a father up in the unions or the government.
Amazingly, AGU, like Scientific American, censors comments!
Here’s the comment they blocked-
“Curry, like Pielke, is on of the straight shooters in the crazy world of climate science. I recall Curry writing not so long ago that recently she has only been asked to testify by Republicans/conservatives. She added that she did not self-identify as conservative or Republican. If my response is at all typical of liberals/progressives who are science literate, the Democrats are in trouble. I’ve voted for every Democrat who ran for president since 1960. I probably will not be voting for the Democrat in 2016.
While my lack of scientific training has pushed me to the back of the crowd, Professor LU is standing next to the parade route. I think he’s yelling back that everyone in the parade is strutting around with no clothes on, but I’m so far back that I can’t hear real well. What do you “carbon dioxide-based AGW” emperors have to say? And what about you “there’s no AGW” emperors? He also seems to be saying that nothing anybody does to the temperature causes any of the participants to clothe themselves. They just keep on struttin’ their stuff as if they have the answer.
A fellow interested bystander that is a little closer to the parade route actually yelled back that Professor LU said, “For global climate change, in-depth analyses of the observed data clearly show that the solar effect and human-made halogenated gases played the dominant role in Earth’s climate change prior to and after 1970, respectively. Remarkably, a statistical analysis gives a nearly zero correlation coefficient (R = -0.05) between corrected global surface temperature data by removing the solar effect and CO2 concentration during 1850-1970. In striking contrast, a nearly perfect linear correlation with coefficients as high as 0.96-0.97 is found between corrected or uncorrected global surface temperature and total amount of stratospheric halogenated gases during 1970-2012. Furthermore, a new theoretical calculation on the greenhouse effect of halogenated gases shows that they (mainly CFCs) could alone result in the global surface temperature rise of ~0.6°C in 1970-2002. These results provide solid evidence that recent global warming was indeed caused by the greenhouse effect of anthropogenic halogenated gases. Thus, a slow reversal of global temperature to the 1950 value is predicted for coming 5~7 decades. It is also expected that the global sea level will continue to rise in coming 1~2 decades until the effect of the global temperature recovery dominates over that of the polar O3 hole recovery; after that, both will drop concurrently.” My fellow bystander also said Lu had repeated this in the “Cosmic-ray-driven reaction and greenhouse effect of halogenated molecules: culprits for atmospheric ozone depletion and global climate change” abstract in the list of 200 articles. And to think all I heard was that a bunch of naked emperors were running around.
Mock me if you must, but include some analysis of what LU has asserted. Don’t just ignore the issue like you did last week when Professor Curry listed the article in her Week in Review. After all, if he is correct, doesn’t everything change?
Last time I checked, the ozone hole is no longer contracting. Something about Cl in the sea ice or some such.
You can read what SkS says about this here.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/lu-2013-cfcs.html
@ interestedbystander
“Remarkably, a statistical analysis gives a nearly zero correlation coefficient (R = -0.05) between corrected global surface temperature data by removing the solar effect ………..”
I have no intention of mocking you. My ‘quibble’ is this:
Are you confident that the people ‘removing the solar effect’ in fact understand every characteristic of the sun that varies (in addition to TSI) and has a firm grasp of the magnitude and sign of the influence of each variable on the surface temperature data, and that they have an accurate time history of each of the variables over the period from which the influence of the sun was being removed?
Amazing. I only ever managed short, snappy slogans for passing parades. Your friend must have run alongside it for some distance, his combined skills of running and dodging people while clearly articulating scientific points must be unique.
Minimum wage? Be careful what you ask for.
From the article:
…
The electronics industry may still be reliant on human workers to assemble products, but Apple supplier Foxconn Technology Group is hopeful that robots will take over more of the workload soon.
In three years, Foxconn will probably use robots and automation to complete 70 percent of its assembly line work, said company CEO Terry Gou on Thursday in news footage circulated online.
Although the Taiwanese manufacturing giant employs over 1 million workers in mainland China, it has also been investing in robotics research. Previously Gou said he hoped to one day deploy a ”robot army” at the company’s factories, as a way to offset labor costs and improve manufacturing.
Foxconn’s biggest client is Apple, but the two companies have faced criticism over labor conditions in China, following a string of worker suicides in 2010. Labor watchdog groups have complained that Foxconn workers have in the past faced long hours and harsh treatment from management.
…
http://www.itworld.com/article/2890034/foxconn-expects-robots-to-take-over-more-factory-work.html
Speaking of conflict of interests:
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/02/27/uninsured-bigoted-anti-obamacare-sheriff-now-begging-for-money-to-pay-medical-bills-screenshots/
The Washington Post just submitted its amicus brief (disguised as an editorial) on the latest Obamacare case before the Supreme Court. It is a masterpiece of psychological appeal to John Robert’s narcissism, correctly gauging that he is likely, again, to let his need.for approval from his fellow elitists to rise above his sworn obligation to support and defend the Constitution.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obamacare-threatens-to-end-john-robertss-dream-of-a-nonpartisan-supreme-court/2015/02/27/325cd0cc-bcb3-11e4-8668-4e7ba8439ca6_story.html
Yep, the Dimowits have been scrambling to find an argument that will sway JR. They studied his past statements and decisions and crafted something they think will work. I have to hand it to the Dimowits, they do dig deep and work hard to further their socialist cause.
It comes down to the intent of the law.
1. Was it the intent of the law that states that opted for a federal exchange would not get subsidies to help pay for healthcare?
2. Did the states setting up federal exchanges instead of state exchanges know that when they set them up?
The answer to both these is clearly no. But with an activist Supreme Court, who knows? Judges at all levels rule on the intent of the law all the time. Distorting the intent, especially when so clear, is highly activist.
The letter is clear, the intent unclear. Who you gonna believe, Gruber?
=========================
OK, and I read from this that some states are as foolish as Gruber said they would be in supporting the plaintiffs and not wanting to accept federal help deliberately even though their tax payers are contributing to other states. This may become a similar one-way tax situation to the Medicaid expansion refusals by many Republican states. They are threatening to shoot themselves in the foot to see if the other side blinks. See this
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/10/supreme-court-obamacare-case_n_6653568.html
Those states still have to cough up more money if they set up a state exchange. They don’t want to.
That’s what you get, Jim D, when it’s a party line vote on a bill nobody understood. Resistance, and now review. It’s about time.
=============
It’s a typically Republican choice. Save a few million state dollars, refuse hundreds of millions of federal dollars for their people, and let the healthcare costs come directly out of the pockets of their workers.
Jim D,
Laws don’t have intent. Legislators do, but that is relevant only if there is ambiguity in the statute.
And in this case the infamous Jonathan Gruber, who drafted the language for Obama, is on record repeatedly stating that the language was intentional, so that state’s would be convinced to create the exchanges.
Everything else said to try to save the law is a lie.
But then, since progressives have no problem with lying, as long as it further4s progressive ends, that is not a surprise.
It might be an interesting experiment if the Republicans in those states opt to take away the federal subsidy rather than opening a state exchange to keep their people insured with affordable rates. Some Republican states are already opposing the plaintiffs because they want to keep their subsidies. Others are planning on opening state exchanges, but there are a few left that want to stick to their people.
The law was deliberately and clearly written to coerce the states to set up exchanges, or they would not get the federal subsidies. Only a Disingenuous Denier from huffpo would try to pretend otherwise. Well, many states were not dutifully coerced, so the Deviously constructed convoluted law is in trouble. If the SCOTUS justices want to be constitutionalists on this one, instead of rank ideologues, the so-called Obamacare law will be gutted. Have the Gruberites shot themselves in their little Devious pseudo-Democratic feet? We will know soon. There could be a lot of tears at huffpo.
Don M, so none of those states wanted the federal help for affordable rates for their own people even though they pay for it via their taxes, or did most of them assume they would get it anyway? If they made a wrong assumption, do they deserve another shot?
Jim D,
“…so none of those states wanted the federal help for affordable rates for their own people even though they pay for it via their taxes, or did most of them assume they would get it anyway?”
There’s this thing called the free market, that has out performed socialism everywhere ion the world. You might have heard of it, it’s in all the best history books.
But then progressives like you, who run the education establishment have buried real history in favor of Chomskyism. So I an mot surprised that you have no clue of why anyone would refuse to actively participate in a centrally planned healthcare system, designed to destroy the insurance industry so we end up with socialized medicine.