by Judith Curry
Doubt and Certainty in Climate Science is an important new book that everyone should read. And its free.
It is a privilege to make available to you the book Doubt and Certainty in Climate Science, by Alan Longhurst
The book is 239 pages long, with 606 footnotes/references. The book is well written, technical but without equations – it is easily accessible to anyone with a technical education or who follows the technical climate blogs.
In this post I provide a brief overview of the book, biosketch of Alan Longhurst, some additional backstory on the book, and my own comments on the book.
Preface
The Preface provides some interesting history, here are some excerpts:
But more recently, I became troubled by what seemed to be a preference to view the climate as a global stable state, unless perturbed by anthropogenic effects, rather than as a highly complex system having several dominant states, each having a characteristic return period imposed on gradual change at millennial scale. The research of H.H. Lamb and others on the natural changes of regional and global climate of the Holocene appeared to be no longer of interest, and the evidence for anthropogenic climate change was being discussed as if it was reducible to change in a single value that represented global surface temperature.
The complex relationship between solar cycles and regional climate states on Earth that was central to classical climatology (and is still being discussed in the peer-‐reviewed literature) had been replaced with a reductionist assumption concerning radiative balance, and the effective dismissal of any significant solar influence. I found this rejection of an entire body of scientific literature troubling, and looked for a disinterested discussion of the balance between natural and anthropogenic effects, but could not find what I wanted -‐ a book that covered the whole field in an accessible and unprejudiced manner, and that was based solely on the scientific literature: I found text-‐books on individual topics aplenty, together with a flood of others, either supporting or attacking the standard climate change model, but none that was based wholly on studies certified by peer-‐review -‐ and whose author was inquisitive rather than opinionated.
One thing led to another and this text is the result. My intention has been to examine the scientific literature that both supports – and also contradicts -‐ the standard description of anthropogenic climate change, and its effects on Earth systems: I undertook the task with an open mind concerning the interpretation of the evidence presented in individual research reports, and collectively by those who have been tasked to report to governments on the progress of climate change and to predict future states.
Because of my experience, this review leans very heavily on discussion of the role of the oceans in controlling climate states, but I make no apology for this: their role is central and critical and too often ignored.
Anthropogenic modification of climate, especially of micro-‐climates, is undoubtedly occurring but I have been unable to convince myself that the radiative contribution of carbon dioxide can be observed in the data, although modellers have no trouble in demonstrating the effect.
Because there will certainly be some who will question my motive in undertaking this task, I assure them that I have been impelled by nothing other than curiosity and have neither sought nor received financial support from any person or organisation in the prepaatio and distribution of this eBook.
Table of Contents
1 –The crisis in climatology
- 1.1 -‐ Climate change science: new paradigm or new community?
- 1.2-‐ Estimating certainty levels in the scientific literature
- 1.3-‐ Numerical climate simulation
2 -‐ Radiative forcing of atmospheric processes
- 2.1 -‐ Radiative forcing by active molecules
- 2.2 -‐ Carbon dioxide
- 2.3 -‐ Methane
- 2.4 -‐ Nitrous oxide.
- 2.5 -‐ Water vapour
- 2.6 -‐ Sulphur dioxide, and volcanic activity: a special case
- 2.7 -‐ Aerosols and particles, natural and anthropogenic
3 – Earth’s climate is not a closed system
- 3.1 -‐ The consequences of the variable geometry of the solar system
- 3.2 -‐ Environmental consequences of the Wolf sunspot cycle
- 3.3 -‐ The relationship between solar cycles and regional climate state
- 3.4 -‐ The 1470-‐year Bond cycle and the glacial-‐interglacial transitions
- 3.5 -‐ Was there a role for CO2 in the orbitally-‐forced glaciations?
- 3.6 -‐ The probable effects of the coming solar cycle
- 3.7 -‐ Lunisolar tidal cycles and global temperature
- 3.8 -‐ The Holocene CO2 and CH4 anomalies
4 – Can a global mean temperature be measured?
- 4.1 -‐ Consequences of patchy observations and doubtful assumptions
- 4.2 -‐ Adjusting the observations and extrapolating over a global grid
- 4. 3-‐ Sea and land surface temperatures are incompatible
- 4.4 -‐ Regional patterns of warming of the troposphere
- 4.5 -‐ Cooling of the stratosphere
5 – The ocean: main global sink of solar heat
- 5.1 -‐ How does heat enter the ocean and how is it stored there?
- 5.2 -‐ Progressive warming of the ocean
- 5.3 -‐ Cloud cover-‐ a difficult-‐to-‐measure variable aperture
- 5.4 -‐ Does global cloud cover respond to solar and galactic forcing?
6 – Regional patterns of temperature change over land surfaces
- 6.1 -‐ Regional anomalies in the evolution of SAT during the 20th century
- 6.2 -‐ The use of proxies to understand the past: the trees do still speak clearly
- 6.3 -‐ The thermal footprint of changes in land use and vegetation cover
- 6.4 -‐ The thermal consequences of urban development
- 6.5 -‐ The regional effects of anthropogenic heat of combustion
7 – The North Atlantic: moderator of climate states
- 7.1 -‐ Consequences of changing wind patterns over the North Atlantic
- 7.2 -‐ The density-‐driven circulation
8 -‐ The top and bottom of the world: two special cases
- 8.1 -‐ Arctic ice cover during previous centuries
- 8.2 -‐ Is surface air temperature really increasing over the Arctic Ocean?
- 8.3 -‐ Why is the Arctic climate and ice cover so strongly variable?
- 8.4 -‐ Is the loss of the Greenland ice cap imminent?
- 8.5 -‐ The bottom of the world
9 – Intensification of extreme weather events
- 9.1 -‐ The variability of cyclonic storms
- 9.2 -‐ Droughts, floods and the ‘expansion of the tropics’
- 9.3 -‐ Concerning storminess to come
10 – The ocean: sea level and acidification
- 10.1 -‐ Rising sea levels
- 10.2 -‐ On living on islands and coasts
- 10.3 -‐ Acidification of sea water: uncertainty levels
- 10.4 -‐ Experimental evidence for acidification effects
11 – Attribution and detection: natural or anthropogenic?
- 11.1-‐ Formal attribution of cause
- 11.2 -‐ Conclusions
Attribution and Detection – Natural or Anthropogenic?
The conclusions from Longhurst’s analysis are presented in section 11.2:
While I am aware that the general opinion of the relevent scientific community is that no further debate is necessary after five successive assessments by the IPCC, I suggest that this is premature because these conclusions concern topics that have not yet been properly addressed by that body, and so should be accorded status in a continuing debate concerning the influence of anthropogenic effects on regional climates.
If the peer-‐reviewed scientific literature, with all the levels of uncertainty associated with individual contributions, has anything to say collectively in assessing the standard climate model, then a small number of conclusions may be drawn from the 600 peer-‐reviewed papers that I have consulted:
• -‐ the global archives of surface air temperature measurements are unreliable estimators of the consequences of atmospheric CO2 contamination, because they are already themselves contaminated by the effects of deforestation, land use change, urbanisation and the release of industrial particulates into the lower atmosphere (Sections 6.3, 6.4, 6.5).
• -‐ users of these data are not able to judge the consequences of the adjustments that have been made to the original observations of surface air temperature ashore, although the limited investigations now possible show that the adjustments have changed the long-‐term trends that had been recorded by some reputable national meteorological services (Sections 4.1, 4.2).
• -‐ sea surface temperature is not a substitute for air temperature over the oceans because it responds to changes in vertical motion in the ocean associated with coastal and open-‐ocean upwelling; the resultant change in surface temperature is independent of any changes in atmospheric temperature caused by CO2, yet these changes are integrated into the GMST record which is used to estimate the effects of CO2 (Section 4.3)
• -‐ surface air temperatures respond to cyclical changes within the Sun, and to the effect of changing orbital configurations in the solar system: the changes in the resultant strength of received irradiance (and of tidal stress in the oceans, which also has consequences for SAT) are both predictable and observable (Sections 3.2, 3.3, and 3.4),
• -‐ our description of the evolution of the global heat budget and its distribution in multiple sinks is inadequate for an understanding of the present state of the Earth’s surface temperature, or to serve as the initial state for complex modelling of climate dynamics. Future states are therefore unpredictable, cannot be modelled, and will certainly surprise people living through the next century (Sections 4.1, 4.2, 4.4, 4.5),
• -‐ the planetary heat budget is poorly constrained, perhaps principally by our inability to quantify the mechanisms that control the accumulation and loss of heat in the ocean, where most solar heat accumulates; the quantification of changes in cloud cover is so insecure that we cannot confidently describe its variability -‐ yet clouds are the most important control on the rate of heat input at the sea surface (Sections 5.1-‐ 5.4),
• -‐ the evidence for an intensification of extreme weather events and, in particular, tropical cyclones is very weak and is largely due to the progressively-‐ increasing reliability and coverage of weather monitoring: todays frequency of cyclones and other phenomena does not appear to be anomalous when longer data sets can be examined (Sections 9.1, 9.2),
• -‐ global climate in the present configuration of the continents falls naturally into a limited number of patterns that are forced externally and patterned by internal dynamics. Some of these climate patterns will tend to conserve global heat, some will tend to permit its dissipation to space, while all move heat from one region to another. Two dominate the whole: the North Atlantic Oscillation that describes the flux of tropical heat through the North Atlantic Current into Arctic regions, and the Southern Oscillation that describes the strength of trade winds, especially in the Pacific, and thus the relative area of cold, upwelled water that is exposed to the atmosphere (Sections 7.1, 7.2),
• -‐ the recent melting of arctic ice cover over larger areas than 20 years ago in summer is not a unique event, but is a recurrence of past episodes and is the result of cyclically-‐variable transport of heat in warm North Atlantic water into the Arctic basin through the Norwegian Sea; the present episode will likely evolve in the same way as earlier episodes (Sections 8.1-‐8.3),
• -‐ sea level is indeed rising as described by the IPCC and others, but the causes -‐ especially at regional scale -‐ are more complex than suggested by that agency and involve many processes other than expansion due to warming. Had the human population of some very small islands remained within carrying capacity, their occupation could have been permanent, but this is not the case (Sections 10.1, 10.2),
• -‐ the consequences of acidification of seawater is one of the most enigmatic questions, and may bring serious biological problems, although it seems now that (i) marine organisms are more resilient to changing pH than was originally feared, because of the genetic diversity of their populations and (ii) the history of pH of seawater during geological time suggests that resilience through selection of genomes has emerged when appropriate in the past (Sections 10.3, 10.4).
Unfortunately, the essential debate on these issues will not take place, at least not openly and without prejudice, because so many voices are today saying – nay, shouting -‐ ‘enough, the science is settled, it is time for remediation’. In fact, many have been saying this for almost 20 years, even as fewer voices have been heard in the opposite sense. As discussed in Chapter 1, the science of climate change -‐ like many other complex fields in the earth sciences -‐ does not function so that at some point in time one can say “now, the science is settled”: there are always uncertainties and alternative explanations for observations.
BioNotes
Alan Longhurst is a biological oceanographer who has studied the ecology of the continental shelf of the Gulf of Guinea (1954-‐63), and the trophic structure and flux of energy through the pelagic ecosystems of the eastern Pacific (1963-‐71), the Barents Sea (1973), the Canadian Arctic (1983-‐89) and the Northwest Atlantic (1978-‐94). He coordinated the international EASTROPAC expeditions in the 1960s and directed the NOAA SW Science Center on the Scripps campus at La Jolla (1967-‐71), the Marine Ecology Laboratory at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography (1977-‐79) and was Director-‐ General of that Institute (1970-‐86). He has published 80-‐odd research papers and his most recent books are “Ecological Geography of the Sea” (Elsevier, 1998 & 2007) and “Mismanagement of Marine Fisheries” (Cambridge, 2010).
See also Longhurst’s biosketch at Elsevier [link].
Backstory
I have been communicating with Alan for several years about the book. In preparing the blog post, I asked him to provide some backstory, and here is what he wrote:
“It started out with my being asked to talk abut climate change to an informal evening seminar club here in rural SW France, as the only scientist in the group. So I had to started reading into the subject, and because I can no longer give off-the-cuff seminars (my mind clogs up) I had to write a text. Then, since I was pretty much written-out in my own subjects, I didnt stop reading once the semiar was out of the way, so it snowballed and grew to book-length. My previous publishers (Elsevier for “Ecological Geography of the Sea” and Cambridge for “Mismanagement of Marine Fisheries”) wouldnt touch it, nor would any of the other top-line houses that I tried, and I thought that the book would not carry much weight if it were to go to a small publisher specialised in stirring things up.
One of my motivations for completing the book was finding to what extent ‘climate change’ had become a religion and the strength of imperatives to conform – which seemed to me not to bode at all well for the future of science. I have tried to emphasise that I really dont think the science is as settled as many pretend.
One of the things my research career taught me was that you cant understand how the ocean works from studying one region – just as I know that you cant make any solid conclusions about how the climate works from studying just the short period since 1960, which is what many people are doing.
I wouldnt have known that but for the fact I’ve had personal experience working (and travelling by sea, in the old days) in all the major oceans and in many dfferent marine environments: the tropical Gulf of Guina (where I spent almost 10 years) works totally differently from the tropical eastern Pacific, where I next worked from Scripps, and was able to compare the tropical pelagic ecosystem with that of the California upwelling region; later, I had the good fortune to work in the arctic (Barents Sea and Canadian archipelago, each totally different environments), and on both sides of the North Atlantic. Tthe fact that my research work has been done on similar processes in many diverse regions has given me (I hope) a good understanding of regional characteristics that prepared me for thinking about diverse and changing climates.
I was also lucky that although I held administrative posts at the NOAA lab on the Scripps campus, and later at the Bedford Institute in Canada, I was always able to keep my plankton lab going and get to sea at least once a year. My last 10 years were free of admin, and I got involved in the Canadian climate change programme and had a very productive time. The group I was with produced the first global computation of ocean primary production from the first satellite data and some of the first evidence for the dominance of photosynthetic bacteria in tropical oceans during a cruise that I organised in the eastern Pacific – which was a game-changer. My own work, once I left the African labs, was on the exploration of the details of how the production and consumption of organic material was organised in th pelagic realm.”
JC reflections
This is a remarkable book, a tour de force. There are fresh insights in each chapter, borne of Longhurst’s objective analysis of the data and the literature. The papers he cites are from Nature, Science, PNAS, Journal of Climate and other mainstream, high impact journals. I doubt that John Cook’s activist abstract classifiers would classify many if any of these papers as ‘skeptical’. However, each of these papers provides a critical link in Longhurst’s reasoning that produces conclusions that do not agree with the ‘consensus.’
I am reminded of this quote by Galileo: “In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.” The value of an independent assessment of this broad range of topics, by a scientist who does not have a dog in this fight, is extremely high. Very, very few climate scientists have personally dug as deeply as Longhurst over such a broad range of climate science topics. This reminds us that the broad range of complex issues surrounding detection and attribution of climate change are outside the scope of what most climate scientists consider, and one can only infer that their support for the consensus conclusions is based on second-order belief regarding many topics outside of their personal expertise and research experience.
Will everyone agree with Longhurst’s analyses? Of course not, although he presents arguments from both sides and extensively discusses uncertainty and doubt. The important factor here is that he presents carefully reasoned arguments supported by data analysis and citations of the elite published literature. In the coming weeks, I will select individual sections for discussion, that I regard as either provocative or controversial.
Chapter 4 is pitiful.
Nothing is as pitiful as certainty.
Thanks for your input.
Downloading; I’ll hope for more from the other ten chapters.
Did you read it Steve or is your position a priori based on the infallibility of surface temperature measurements?
I read it. My entire point is that the surface record is NOT infallible.
nothing is infallible.
For grins start with the title of the chapter.
I don’t know Steven Mosher. Chapter 4 seems to build perfectly on what you say about the surface temperature record in your book.
yes. since I wrote a HISTORY of what skeptics were arguing that would be the case. And he seems stuck in 2009 as well..
Steven Mosher:
Um… no. That’s not what you described your book as, at all. You did not describe your book as merely a history of what skeptics were arguing, and none of the context of your claims about the surface temperature record implied you were merely describing what people had said about it.
But sure, keep making excuses. Don’t own up to your mistakes.
Brandon
‘Um… no. That’s not what you described your book as, at all. You did not describe your book as merely a history of what skeptics were arguing,
#############
note that NO where have I said it was MERELY a history.
its largely a chronology at least that is the way many people have described it to me. since CG is a story about FOIA and NOT THE SCIENCE.. you have to tell the story of willis’s FOIA and that means recounting the history.
and none of the context of your claims about the surface temperature record implied you were merely describing what people had said about it.
Go ahead and quote where I take positions. That was 2009 and if my positions have changed I will gladly explain.
Basically today I think there are still issues with micro site, UHI and adjustments. So go ahead quote where I explicitly state my position.
as usual you read into things when you want to and and read literally
when you want to.
But go ahead.. what claims did I make? Now too be sure I am sure some of my positions have changed because I actually started to do my own work after watching jeffId .. but go ahead.. my positions as you “see” them.
I’ll make it easy.
My position on data sharing, then and now
My position on CRU methods then and now
My postion on UHI then and now
my position on microsite then and now
my position on adjustments then and now
my position on the great thermometer drop out then and now
my position on essex then and now
my position on satellites then and now
my position on sampling then and now
go ahead.. with quotes
Steven Mosher:
I chided you for criticizing someone for saying things you yourself had said. You responded by saying:
If you want to defend yourself by claiming you didn’t say you said it “was MERELY a history,” you can, but nobody will take you seriously. Your response to me was only responsive if it was a defense where you defended your mistake by claiming to merely have said those things as writing a history of what skeptics were arguing. If you said it for any other reason, your response wasn’t responsive.
Um, no. I’m still waiting for you to go back and explain things where you last called me a liar. You even showed up to join the discussion when I wrote a post about it only to double down on your position, then ran away again rather than try to resolve anything.
So no, I’m not going to pretend you’re actually willing to try to resolve things. Because you’re not. The moment you can’t handle something I say, you’ll either run away, or you’ll throw out some pathetic insults then you’ll run away. That’s all you ever do. And I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s noticed or experienced it.
Brandon
Clearly you understand the difference between me writing that I wrote a history of what skeptics were saying and you claiming that I said
what I wrote was MERELY a history.
It was history, it was mystery, it was some polemics.. In the lasy chapter that Tom wrote.
Brandon
You claimed that Muller said things he did not say.
I even explained to you in mail .
so you need to apoligize
Steven Mosher:
No, you did not. As the post I linked to clearly shows, Richard Muller said exactly what I claimed he said. You showed up to try to argue he didn’t say what I claimed he said despite the post providing proof he did, then you promptly ran away and everyone just shook their heads at you because nobody could understand how you could believe he didn’t say exactly what I claimed he said.
And no, you didn’t explain anything “in mail.” I can show people every mail you’ve ever sent me. Nobody will agree with you any of them contain any such explanation.
You’re just making things up Mosher. The only person who owes anyone an apology is you, for calling me a liar for saying something that was completely true, and for continuing to defend your ridiculous accusation for weeks.
Well, I guess Muller also owes everyone an apology for telling people BEST had released data it hadn’t released. I mean, that is probably something he should apologize for too.
Just a reminder: we should be discussing the climate change debate, not what Steve Mosher said, or thinks, or anything Steve Mosher. Let’s focus on this new book Judith is encouraging us to read.
Actually, chapter 4 is arguably the least interesting chapter in the book (also the extreme events chapter wasn’t that interesting), unfortunate that people are focusing only on this chapter. Take a look at the other chapters please, some of them are gems! No more comments on Chapter 4, please.
jimeichstedt
well said. There are some extraordinary diversionary sub threads developing here. Lets concentrate on the book. Yes, we seem to have done Chapter 4 to death.
I will carry on reading beyond it for the rest of the evening. I hope Judith will let this post run a little longer but it would be nice to have the author chip in.
tonyb
Oh, and in case my last comment didn’t make it clear, I don’t intend to pursue the matter any further here.
Oh look. Yet another handbag fight between Schwollenburger and Moshnuts. Too funny.
“Chapter 4 is pitiful.” That epitomises the warmist approach to debate.
Steven Mosher: Chapter 4 is pitiful.
I had been wondering which chapter to read first. Now I know.
How about the place where he ASSERTS without proof and against all evidence that thousands of stations are adjusted by HAND?
tour de farce?
I think the questions should be did Judith read it?
SM. that is not what he wrote. Moreover, he was just quoting from the first step of NASA GISS QC, exactly, in italics. Page 83. You are flat wrong.
> that is not what he wrote. Moreover, he was just quoting from the first step of NASA GISS QC,
Searching for “GISS,” I stumbled upon this:
Page 87.
With the Author’s own emphasis.
***
Interestingly, as if to please you, Sir Rud, there’s a mention of Ross’ analysis on page 83. One of the few Internet references.
Fancy that.
By HAND?! Obviously, so much (crummy) data requires alGoreithms.
go = untouchedByHumanHands( gi );
What was dumped, again? Phil Jones, was the AGW historian. What did he know and why did he dump it? Right, it was to ‘save’ space. You must know all by now, Steven.
Fact: WHAT DOESN’T EXIST, CANNOT HAVE A ”PAUSE” simple logic
Santa has a same ”PAUSE” between january and december… SAME as the phony global warming!
Warmist invented the ”pause” because there are still lots of people on the street that can think for themselves, and are noticing that IS SAME TEMP AS ALWAYS WAS… AND: to prove to the politicians and the media that: –” skeptics are capable of thinking and reasoning as three old kids, OR as a 60y old fencepost”…
https://globalwarmingdenier.wordpress.com/venus-runaway-greenhouse-con/
the treatment of BEST is clearly inadequate. This is the only reference that I found: p 89: footnote 213: I have not referred here to the independent Berkely data archives, that I judge to be inacceptable in both format and treatment.
Is there any shareable reasoning behind that judgment? I don’t mean what we might reconstruct or hypothesize, but what in his case led to that dismissal? Maybe he will share his reasoning with us. Is there another “treatment” that is demonstrably better for summarizing the earth land surface trends? He does not name one, and I doubt that there is one that will be capable of any but small improvements. For example, it would be an improvement if we could ascertain and then use date and station-level information on the reliability of each observation, and use that in the weighted estimation procedure, but that is impossible.
I do not share the sentiment that the whole chapter is “pitiful”.
ya netcdf is a horrible way to store data
I like the part where he calls it a simple arithmatic average.
I think he is confusing everyone else with Goddard
He may be referring to the two facts that (1) BEST uses a lot of short records, so the sampling procedure is constantly changing and (2) they build a continuous global temperature field, which entails an infinite amount of interpolation. If he thinks BEST is the worst then I agree.
The biggest reason that ‘BEST’ doesn’t indicate what’s really going on is simply the resolution. BEST smooths out the actual variation. That may not matter much the resulting ‘global average’, but it obscures the small variation and cooling trend locations which are visible in the UDEL analysis which has the finest resolution. All indicate warming, of a similar extent, but better resolution gives better understanding than the nice smooth BEST. The real atmosphere is not nice and smooth.
https://climatedataguide.ucar.edu/sites/default/files/styles/node_lightbox_display/public/key_figures/climate_data_set/global_temperature_difference_19912010smins19011920_0.png
“He may be referring to the two facts that (1) BEST uses a lot of short records, so the sampling procedure is constantly changing and (2) they build a continuous global temperature field, which entails an infinite amount of interpolation. If he thinks BEST is the worst then I agree.”
#############
So now you read minds?
You get the same answer with or without short records.
short records give you better local detail and smaller confidence intervals.
Also if you DONT like short records just “hold” them out
create the field without them
Then use the short records as your out of sample test.
you skeptics….
Finally, INFINITE interpolation?
Dude, all interpolation is “infinite”
formally you have a continuous function but in practice you grid
so not infinite.. ding dong
“The biggest reason that ‘BEST’ doesn’t indicate what’s really going on is simply the resolution. BEST smooths out the actual variation.”
Huh, you didnt read the mehods.
you didnt read the subsequent work?
its KNOWN that the method can smooth. The question, real technical, hard to solve question, is how much local detail can be improved and how.
do you guys read?
The other surface statistical models only use interpolation when a cell has no records. BEST is averaging a continuous field, so the station data is swamped by an infinite number of interpolations. BEST assumes a temperature for every point on the surface of the earth.
More precisely, BEST assumes a temperature for every point on the surface of the earth then averages all those temperatures. This is well known to be a rough approximation method, at best (pun intended).
“More precisely, BEST assumes a temperature for every point on the surface of the earth then averages all those temperatures. This is well known to be a rough approximation method, at best (pun intended).”
wrong. all those temperatures are not averaged.
The BE approach uses the SAMPLED locations to create a regression formula where the Climate ( think Koppen climates) is expressed as a function of Latitude and Altitude and Season. Willis has shown the power of this approach using satellite data.
The residual is then interpolated using kriging.
The temperature at any given point is thus given by C +W or the
climate for that point plus the weather for that point.
This is known to be an Optimal estimation method. And its testable.
How?
Simple.
http://static.berkeleyearth.org/memos/robert-rohde-memo.pdf
This is a very simple approach and one suggested by skeptics First!
Create a synthetic field of realistic climate time series data.
For that you have a Known average of the field.
Take a sub sample.
Use various method to estimate the full field given the sample.
measure the error of various approaches.
What do you see?
the HOME GROWN method of CRU and GISS dont perform as well
as the method SUGEESTED BY SKEPTICS!!!
jeez wojick did you miss all the discussion at CA and WUWT about how CRU and GISS were untested as METHODS!! did you miss the suggestions that people should use known tested methods, like krigging?
Did you miss McIntyres suggestion that methods papers be published first before results papers? and that GISS and CRU had NO METHODS papers?
basically we did everthing skeptics asked
“The other surface statistical models only use interpolation when a cell has no records. BEST is averaging a continuous field, so the station data is swamped by an infinite number of interpolations. BEST assumes a temperature for every point on the surface of the earth.”
Wrong again.
All values WITHIN a grid cell are mathematically interpolations.
second, EMPTY GRID CELLS assume the value of the whole GLOBE
TE.
BAD BOY.. comparing a .5 degree field with a 1 degree field.
BAD BAD BOY
Turbulent Eddie and David Wojick, you state some good reasons for skepticism about the BEST output. However, the terse statement by Alan Longhurst, the featured writer, is clearly inadequate. I hope that he will stop by and clarify his summary dismissal.
Alan Langhurst made two assertions that I think are likely to withstand attempts at detailed rebuttals. (1) because of variations in local conditions (e.g. altitude, ocean currents, upwelling), changes in the global mean temperature can not be taken as accurate indications of changes in heat flows through the atmosphere; (2) because of the well-documented problems with the land temperature records (inadequate sampling plan, changes in the land use near thermometers, changes and failures in the thermometers), even accurate reconstructions (or estimates) of the changes in global and regional mean land temperature trends are not likely to be achieved.
As to (2) the BEST team have addressed the problems in great detail, and have provided estimates of the imprecisions of their estimates. If someone can do a better job than BEST has done, with extant thermometer data, it is about time for them to do so.
David Wojick: BEST is averaging a continuous field, so the station data is swamped by an infinite number of interpolations. BEST assumes a temperature for every point on the surface of the earth.
That’s two false statements. You ought to have quit after your first comment.
” (2) because of the well-documented problems with the land temperature records (inadequate sampling plan, changes in the land use near thermometers, changes and failures in the thermometers), even accurate reconstructions (or estimates) of the changes in global and regional mean land temperature trends are not likely to be achieved.”
A. the problems are not well documented.
B.) The sampling is FINE if anything its over sampled. That is
why you can for example pick 110 PRISTINE sites in the US
(CRN) and predict the rest of the country: Including
100s of other pristine sites ( RCRN) and 1000’s of “bad” sites.
What’s it tell you when you can start with 60 samples and get
one time series… then add 300 and get the same,,, then add
3000 and get the same…. then add 30000 and get the same?
whats that tell you about sampling?
Whats it tell you when you can pick 5000 and then predict any
other 5000 or 10000?
SAMPLING more just changes the local DETAIL but in terms
of global average.. sampling is fine as it is.
C) land changes. the most significant land changes have been investigated. No effect on the global number. Again, changes local detail.
D) changes in thermometers.. You are unaware of the side by side studies.
E) Accuracy is a vague term. Accurate for What purpose. It’s accurate enough to say that those who deny that its warmed since the LIA
are wrong. Plus you can test the accuracy. just hold out data.
go ahead..
TE.BAD BOY.. comparing a .5 degree field with a 1 degree field.
Precisely.
BEST, and probably even UDEL, lack sufficient resolution.
See the little blue spots in UDEL?
And also, see the little red spots in UDEL?
I think they’re real, but not represented in BEST.
Would seem to me that to get every station equal representation,
the resolution should be about the same as the distance separating the two closest stations.
Now, UDEL makes some crazy estimates for Antarctica, which are completely unjustified (not even BEST fabricates there).
And BEST, UDEL, and GISTEMP make gross errors smoothing over discontinuous areas ( e.g. estimates for 3km higher terrain elevation areas over Greenland ) and over far too far distances from stations ( South America, Africa, Antarctica, Greenland ). In that regard, HadCRUT is the only honest broker, using the “I don’t know” missing data.
BEST is not the worst, and may even be good, but it’s in no way the ‘best’ – keep trying.
https://climatedataguide.ucar.edu/sites/default/files/styles/node_lightbox_display/public/key_figures/climate_data_set/global_temperature_difference_19912010smins19011920_0.png
“Precisely.
######################
So you admit to doing a dodgy comparison
BEST, and probably even UDEL, lack sufficient resolution.
FOR WHAT? resolution is USE specific. If we did .25 degrees
you would bitch about that.
how about 1km? Look at Prism. Doing 1km is easy BUT
the question is this ‘is the local detail now FALSE”
See the little blue spots in UDEL?
And also, see the little red spots in UDEL?
I think they’re real, but not represented in BEST.
Why do you think they are real? from a theromodynamic standpoint
they dont make sense. Further 1km surface data from satellite
DONT show this.
Would seem to me that to get every station equal representation,
the resolution should be about the same as the distance separating the two closest stations.
Wrong.
Now, UDEL makes some crazy estimates for Antarctica, which are completely unjustified (not even BEST fabricates there).
fabricates? you have the data as recorded. You have a method.
the method produces an estimate. as we say in our paper the south pole is likely to have larger errors. the field will never match the observations.. the biggest differences show up in areas that stress the regressions. as always
And BEST, UDEL, and GISTEMP make gross errors smoothing over discontinuous areas ( e.g. estimates for 3km higher terrain elevation areas over Greenland ) and over far too far distances from stations ( South America, Africa, Antarctica, Greenland ). In that regard, HadCRUT is the only honest broker, using the “I don’t know” missing data.
WRONG: missing data is not I dont know. Missing data is mathematically the same as the average of the whole globe
in independent tests CRUTEMP is the worst.
BEST is not the worst, and may even be good, but it’s in no way the ‘best’ – keep trying.
Not the best implies you know of a better one. cite it.
and the independent methodological test that shows the method
is the best.
Steven Mosher: A. the problems are not well documented.
the problems are well-documented. There are partial solutions.
turbulent eddie: BEST is not the worst, and may even be good, but it’s in no way the ‘best’ – keep trying.
Is there something demonstrably better for handling the extant surface thermometer data?
Steven Mosher: WRONG: missing data is not I dont know. Missing data is mathematically the same as the average of the whole globe
in independent tests CRUTEMP is the worst.
Missing data is “I don’t know”.
Assigning some computed values to serve in place of the missing data is called “imputation”, or sometimes “augmentation”. If your algorithm is assigning the global mean to missing values, then that is a mistake. It should be using one of the many “multiple imputation” methods.
SM:
What is the impact on BEST’s error range attribitable to this treatment of missing data? Is it assumed that it adds nothing to the error bars?
turbulent eddie: BEST is not the worst, and may even be good, but it’s in no way the ‘best’ – keep trying.
Is there something demonstrably better for handling the extant surface thermometer data?
Berkley is somewhat to blame for the cutesy name, cutesy names which Mosher seems not to like in the chapter title of the book.
So BEST begs the question of what the comparison is to.
Is it a comparison with other analyses?
or with the best we can do?
And how does one compare with either because ‘analyses’ are by definition spatial models for areas for which there are no observations.
If you examine the land areas of the five different analyses in the graphic, all five have significant variance.
Mosher admits BEST is not best because it lacks the resolution of UDEL.
My subjective analysis is that UDEL is better than BEST for continental analysis excluding the areas of poor coverage ( hundreds of kilometers from the nearest observation ). I write this specifically because of the small scale features which appear with the finer resolution ( 1/2 degree ) of the UDEL. BEST is nice and smooth, but the real atmosphere has lots of discrete and discontinuous processes which make trends rough and dirty as opposed to clean and slick.
We can do better and I intend to give it a go soon.
Mathew
My comment concerning the BEST data was based on several issues:
1 – the integration of short fragments of observational data into the archive.
2 – the publication of the account of the new archive in the early issues of two of 54 (I think it was) new journals that were announced simultaneously and for which at least the first announcement left peer review as an option to editors.
3 – the reported failure of the data to detect a UHI effect.
I decided that I had more important things to do than dig into this initiative, is all.
Alan
As demonstrated well by TE’s plots posted above, the strongest century-scale warming is well away from anywhere you would expect a UHI effect. The UHI argument is in contradiction to the facts and very few people still make it.
Alan Longhurst: My comment concerning the BEST data was based on several issues:
thank you for your reply.
More errors
My comment concerning the BEST data was based on several issues:
1 – the integration of short fragments of observational data into the archive.
#################################################
A) the archive aims at completeness. Showing ALL the data without
ANY ad hoc decisions about what is LONG ENOUGH.
B) The method was proved out with GHCN-M which selects
an ARBITRARY selection criteria for “long record” CRU
also selects an arbitrary long record criteria.
C) The inclusion of short records (define short ) does NOTHING
to the global average. It gives you better local detail.
D) Short records tend not to be effected by changes in TOBS or
station moves or instrument changes.
E) the decision to throw out short records is a decision that must
be tested. Everyone assumes long records are more reliable
F) the decision to only use long records is a requirement of
GISS and CRU untested methods
G. The basis for using short records is actually an approach devised
by skeptics.
2 – the publication of the account of the new archive in the early issues of two of 54 (I think it was) new journals that were announced simultaneously and for which at least the first announcement left peer review as an option to editors.
All papers were peer reviewed. theinsinuation that they were not
is beneath the author.
3 – the reported failure of the data to detect a UHI effect.
I decided that I had more important things to do than dig into this initiative, is all.
A) UHI effects ARE DETECTED and they are adjusted for.
B) The SIZE of the overall effect on a global basis is SMALL after adjustments.
C) The small effect is consistent with ALL other studies, so the author is illogical. he did not ignore other work because of its failure to detect UHI
Finally, I critcize the author for the misleading statements he made about others, not for his failure to stay CURRENT with the research
a sample UHI correction, The author didnt take time to examine the data.
http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/stations/173102
Trend BEFORE adjustments 1.85C
Trend AFTER adjustments .7C
Finally, if I had to choose the biggest lapse it would his failure to discuss C&W
Mosh
Why does the renoe international data finish at oct 2013? Nothing sinister in the question, just curious.
It’s such a long one I hope it hasn’t been discontinued.
Tonyb
The point of chapter 4 seems to be that the surface statistical models are unreliable. If so then I agree strongly. The satellites are the proper estimating measure of global temperatures. They show no warming 1978-1997 and 2001-2014. No evidence of GHG warming whatever.
ignore all his errors and stress ‘The point’
I see how skeptics ‘read’ critically…pretty funny.. Wojik…
ignore all the detail and focus on “the point”
Lets see… I read all of Mann’s papers and basically his point is
that the MWP might have been smaller than we though..
Ya… goood point Dr Mann.
The point is the point, is it not?
Not when his point relies on an eroneous characterization of the science
Longhurst makes the mistake of looking at individual station data, comparing nearby stations, regional data, corrections to station data, and even starts comparing various datasets. Anybody doing this becomes sincerely disillusioned after a short time. They start shaking their heads and muttering “What a mess, what a mess …”. I’ve witnessed it here at CE and elsewhere. This is work is better left to unfeeling algorithms.
And finally he makes a pretty convincing argument that the Global Average (interpolated, smoothed, indexed, whatever) Temperature is really a useless number altogether.
“chapter 4 is pitiful”
As an ever humble tech-tard, I have no means to directly assess the validity of this comment. In most matters of scientific controversy, I have to go at things indirectly, often by trying to weigh a person’s biases and by applying what I consider a decent amount of social intelligence. Perhaps the most important factor to be weighed is whether or not I respect a person, based on history and past observations. So for example when Judith makes an assertion, I tend to assume she knows whereof she speaks. In other words I trust her…
I respect Mosher too, and trust him, thus I start out with a fair amount of confidence that his comment above is in his view anyway, wholly defensible. What I find myself noting however is he’s left out the rest of the book. He doesn’t say, “well chapter 4 is pitiful, but on the whole the book has much to recommend it,” which I assume it must based on Judith’s post.
Bottom line Mosh, I think your bias is showing. On my newly devised, special poker guy credibility scale I award your comment 2 grains of salt, For a frame of reference, I’d give a Michael Mann comment 5 grains..
ane.
I try to stick to what I have experience in. I will put it this way
anyone who titles the chapter “Can we measure global temperature?” has already lost.
1. All approaches estimate
2. we all estimate an INDEX
if you can’t bother to get the basics right then you cant have a tour de force..
Steven Mosher: I will put it this way
anyone who titles the chapter “Can we measure global temperature?” has already lost.
The title is only a title, not the whole essay. Whatever you want to call the process, the result does not have sufficient accuracy to the purpose of estimating changes in heat flows on the order of the changes expected to be induced by doubling CO2.
“The title is only a title, not the whole essay. Whatever you want to call the process, the result does not have sufficient accuracy to the purpose of estimating changes in heat flows on the order of the changes expected to be induced by doubling CO2.”
here again with the special pleading for the tour de farce.
NOBODY is trying to estimate heat flows by constructing an INDEX of temperatures. NOBODY.
Further doubling c02 says nothing about heat flows.
IF he wanted to have a chapter about heat flows he should have written one.
The climate is a complex system. with any complex system you can create a DIAGNOSTIC metric. A metric that doesnt capture all of the system but rather just one slice. And then you track that metric as
an INDICATOR of total system change.
these indicators are NOT the sum total of the system.
the best indicator is OHC. but there we have a short record. so if your goal is understanding — as opposed to arm chair skepticism– you work with what you have and caveat as required.
Steven Mosher: NOBODY is trying to estimate heat flows by constructing an INDEX of temperatures. NOBODY.
what this is all about is trying to estimate the effects of additional CO2 in the atmosphere, which might impart an additional 4 W/m^2 of energy flow to the surface, with warming effects and effects on rainfall all over the place. recent attempts to estimate other heat flows include attempts to model the “pause” by measuring the change in the heat flows of the thermohaline circulation — a paper that was published earlier this year and discussed here. — and changes in heat flows into the Arctic and Antarctic regions, and from the Western Pacific to the Indian ocean, and from the ocean surfaces to the atmosphere via cyclonic storms.
You need to comment less and read more. I appears that on this topic you are totally ignorant.
mathew
Some basic logic.
when we estimate temperatures we are not trying to estimate heat flows.
Nobody who estimates temperatures is trying to do that. nobody.
So his critcism that we dont do what he wants us to do, and what others are doing is kinda silly.
How about his claim that thousands of stations are adusted by hand?
What did he say about cowtan and Way?
did you notice and other flaws? I bet not.. awesome critical reading skills
bro, just awesome.
Dont you want skeptics making the best arguments?
Steven Mosher: when we estimate temperatures we are not trying to estimate heat flows.
That’s we, and it’s when estimating temperatures. Other people try to use the temperatures in the estimation of heat flows; for example, Romps et al.
You seem to have come to an agreement with the author: the temperature estimates can not be used in the estimation of heat flows.
Steven Mosher: Further doubling c02 says nothing about heat flows.
Do the people promoting the catastrophe version of the consensus know that?
Steven Mosher, “here again with the special pleading for the tour de farce.”
LOL A 6 C anomaly around -60C is about as useful as teats on a bore hog.
apologies, boar hog or bore hole :)
You read all 15 pages in a few minutes or you already had the text?
Try this, ordvic:
(1) Read the first few paragraphs until you spot the main claim; if there’s a division (“we’ll do A, B, C, and D”), you win.
(2) Read the first sentence of the next paragraphs;
(3) For each paragraph that springs to you, also read the last sentence.
(4) Read the last paragraphs to check if the A lands on his feet.
I bet you can do 15 pages under one minute.
I suppose that if he suggests that all this measurement and calibration is without meaning Mosher would have to say that (Mosher’s work) is without meaning. Mosher would have to, in kind say that the authors work is also meaningless.Ahh life without meaning that could create a pathology.
Oh, and this is the workhorse method. Here’s the lazy one:
(1) Search for “chapter 4” in the text.
(2) Read the paragraph that contains it.
(3) Use your background knowledge to predict the rhetorical function of the chapter.
***
In our case, this should lead you to this:
(I removed the “!” and the extraneous spacing to get this quote.)
This quote should tell you all there is to know about that chapter in ten seconds top. You can use the workhorse method outlined above to confirm your hypothesis. Such confirmation is required when dealing with unmastered writing.
Very good W. Thanks! My method has always been read the first and last sentences of the first and last paragraphs. But your method is more thorough.
In this case starting with 4.1:
“The term ‘global mean temperature’ has no formal meaning, and I have found
no clear definition of it: IPCC4 simply introduces it as the “global mean temperature
over ocean and land surfaces”.”
…
:Together, these are used as the principal indicator (as the GSMT) of the progress of anthropogenic global climate warming;
unfortunately, these measures are incompatible, even if they are all we have. ”
…..
“The authors note that “It is possible that the models are correct and that both
SSU data sets are in error” despite the fact that, as they point out, most models suggest
that increasing greenhouse gases accelerate circulation in the stratosphere and that
this should decrease ozone levels and hence induce cooling at low latitudes – as is
confirmed by observation.”
…
“The authors leave the matter there, with some
suggestions for resolving the impasse.”
“(3) Use your background knowledge to predict the rhetorical function of the chapter.”
yes, the line will go like this.
A) attack the notion of global temperature and cite Essex.
B) move on to sampling and nods toward the great thermomter drop off.
C) say something about accuracy, precision, calibration,
D) nods to Watts.
E) Then onto adjustments… pick a few cases you have studied
The goal is to destroy the land sea record and there are only so many lines of argument. same old chess game.
Once you destroyed the record, then you clear the ground for an appeal to satellites.
i could program a bot to do it
Excellent! Mon Ami
Steven Mosher is a genius.
Photographic memory helps.
Thank you willard.
two funny stories.
mcintyre calls me one day and asks ‘what is the mail where gavin talks about the founding of RC”
moshpit: search for the word megaphone. its the only mail with that word
Bishop calls me… similar question
moshpit: search for the phrase “squeaky clean”
I will say that with age it is deteriorating greatly. I used to be able to recall page numbers and paragraphs from a lot of old books, book locations in the stacks… card locations in the old library drawers…
funny story… first philosophy class I was asked what was socrates argument for the immortality of the soul.
I got an F.
I reproduced the dialog roughly from memory.
Professor Earle said “I said give me his argument I meant in your own words’
but its not what it used to be.. Speed reading has also dropped off tremendously, but still really fast.. I like your method above.
there was a Borges story i loved..
http://faculty.washington.edu/timea/art360/funes.pdf
Judith, it I think it would sometimes be helpful if international readers could see a more accurate timing/date-stamp of your posts and subsequent comments.
That way, people could more quickly judge the drive-by-diarrhoea comments of Steven kinetics-can-tell-you-nothing Mosher, and his ilk.
Try an RSS reader, michael. I like The Old Reader. Feedly is cool too. There are many others.
The only other alternative would be a flat thread.
Willard, I shouldn’t have to. I have no problems with most sites/blogs from around the world.
Steven Mosher “Chapter 4 is pitiful.”
Ah, MRDA! (Mandy Rice-Davies applies)…
So no surprise there!
Steve Mosher,
Took a while to read the book, could do with a spelling checker and the inclusion of the missing diagrams.
I have got to say that I rather enjoyed chapter 4 though.
If it’s permissible to ask a question re an averaging temperature problem not mentioned by Longhurst : If photon emissivity is related to Temperature (kelvin) to the power of 4, why are we not measuring the average of Temperature (kelvin) to the power of 4 ? Also it means that interpolations into unmeasured regions cannot work, you would be missing the extremes which matter the most in a power 4 relationship. Surely the planetary extremes -90c to to +94c must make that power 4 significant.
I now realise that this is your area of expertise and I always knew I was and am a novice here but would appreciate a more detailed answer than your opening post (which may be completely apposite from your perspective).
Best
First you have to understand what the global temperature average is and is not.
It is not an average of temperature, the physical property temperature.
It is an INDEX. its an index because it combines two measures (SAT and SST ) which measure different things.
Second, its not really an average, rather its an estimation of what you would see if you sampled the unsampled areas.
Third, you dont take the 4th power because you are predicting the following
You are predicting what you would read on a thermometer.
Go that?
lets look at your back yard pool. you stick a thermometer in it.
it reads 75F
You then make a prediction.
Stick a thermometer anywhere in my pool and my best estimate is that
it will read 75F. 4th power aint got anything to do with this prediction.
Stick a second thermometer in your pool. It reads 80F ( neighbor kid in the pool is smiling ) Now make your estimate..
One method is to simply average these two things and say
I guess 77.5 F And to call this “the average” but what you are actually claiming is the following:
If you stick a third thermomter in the pool I bet that 77.5 will be the reading
THAT is what folks are doing when they average temperatures. TECHNICALLY we are saying….
IF you place a thermometer at a random location, and know nothing else about that location then the best estimate (smallest error ) of what you will READ ON THAT THERMOMETER is 77.5F ( for example )
you wrote
“Also it means that interpolations into unmeasured regions cannot work, you would be missing the extremes which matter the most in a power 4 relationship. ”
Thats wrong. testable and wrong.
Part of the confusion may arise from the fact that Berkeley Earth refers to the “Average Earth Surface Land Temperature,” “Global Temperature Land Average” and the “Temperature Averaging Process”.
Opluso. Yes we don’t do ourselves any favors.
Geez Steve, why didn’t you start your shower of feces with this comment?
“I try to stick to what I have experience in. I will put it this way
anyone who titles the chapter “Can we measure global temperature?” has already lost.
1. All approaches estimate
2. we all estimate an INDEX
if you can’t bother to get the basics right then you cant have a tour de force..”
So Steve, your answer to the question posed in chapter 4’s title would be:
“No”?
Why not just write that?
The effective temperature of the earth could only really be measured by a bolometer way out in space.
Pingback: New book: Doubt and Certainty in Climate Science | Enjeux énergies et environnement
Thank you, Professor Curry, for making this book available. I have not had time to study it, but condfident it will be worthwhile after reading the first comment.
After a quick scan, I like the caution Dr. Alan Longhurst communicates.
While I am personally convinced AGW confidence is exaggerated, as is the scientific community’s understanding of Earth’s heat source – the Sun – Dr. Longhurst patiently suggests that the debate should continue because the IPCC’s conclusions concern topics that have not yet been properly addressed.
While I am aware that the general opinion of the relevent scientific community is that no further debate is necessary after five successive assessments by the IPCC, I suggest that this is premature because these conclusions concern topics that have not yet been properly addressed by that body, and so should be accorded status in a continuing debate concerning the influence of anthropogenic effects on regional climates:
+++++++++++++++++++
> See also Longhurst’s biosketch at Elsevier [link].
404.
Found this:
http://scilib.ucsd.edu/sio/biogr/Longhurst-STOR.pdf
“Data from 86 detailed Zooplankton profiles taken during the EASTROPAC cruises of 1967 to 1968 have enabled a first-order description to be made of Zooplankton distribution in the upper 1000 m of the water column in relation to density, light, oxygen, and phytoplankton. A layer of abundant epiplankton contains a subsurface maximum that tends to coincide with the bottom of the mixed layer and with the depth of maximum carbon fixation, but lies above the chlorophyll-a maximum. Zooplankton abundance declines sharply downwards across the pycnocline, forming a discontinuity between the epiplankton and the low-biomass plankton below. Coincident with the deep sonic scattering layers are diurnal layers of migrant interzonal species which rise at night into the epiplankton. Major regional differences are caused by the shoaling of the pycnocline at the equatorial divergence, and the very deep pycnocline of the southern gyral region. An hypothesis, based upon the EASTROPAC data, is stated: that the form of phytoplankton profiles, in periods or regions of stable production, may be primarily determined by a depth-differential in herbivore grazing pressure, rather than by differential cell-sinking rates as is suggested in classical production models.”
It would be interesting to have a look at his methods..
Ask Vigilantfish at Tony’s. He knows more about Andy’s work than any other Denizens, perhaps including Judy.
If you can get Judy to confirm that she read the book, that would be great.
Allan, not Andy, of course.
Alan, not Allan.
OK. Break time. See you tomorrow.
Steven
My methods are described in Deep-Sea Research 23, 729-74 of 1976. I obtained profiles of zooplankton to 500m, the samples being partitioned at 10m intervals down the profiles, with accompanying physical data. Optical and chlorophyll data were obtained with near-simultaneous equipment by my colleagues, In this case, 86 profiles in the eastern Pacific gave me a good coverage for an analysis of how production and consumption of organic material in this region works. I used the same technique in the North Atlantic, the Arctic Ocean, the Barets Sea and the California Current. I’m sorry I cant send pdfs – I have only paper copies of all the publications that came out of this work.
Alan
Alan,
Just thanks for the hard work and interesting results. Still reading and digesting what is in the e-book but appreciate the hard work and effort.
Please let the nasty uncivil comments slide off your back like water off a ducks. When they get specific and civil you can take what is useful and reflect on the comments to improve the book
respectfully
Scott
If the future of the climate is so uncertain, why would you want to artificially change the dynamics on a global scale by increasing CO2 emissions?
Because of the number of people whose lifestyle it will improve? That’s a lot closer to certain, although not certainly so.
Would you mind linking your full cost accounting of the the positive and negative externalities associated with burning fossil fuels? I must have missed it in previous threads.
What “negative externalities”?
Unintended humor or did someone switch Joseph’s lights on?
Joseph | September 21, 2015 at 1:10 pm |
We can use renewables to do that.
climatereason | September 21, 2015 at 1:37 pm |
Joseph Which ones?
Joseph | September 21, 2015 at 1:55 pm |
The process is not going to happen overnight, Tony.”
especially if you are dependent on solar power.
Joseph, Do you drive a car? Heat your home? Use lightbulbs?
I expect that where Joseph shops and works also don’t use fossil fuels and the local hospital is solar powered.
Tonyb
We can use renewables to do that.
Joseph
Which ones?
When the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine they have their shortcomings, are frequently highly expensive and take up a lot of space in proportion to their output
. Storage technology needs to be improved vastly before they become viable and even then it’s renewable horses for courses, solar is useless in britains climate with 1700 hours of sun but might be a good idea in Kimberley with 3700 hours.
Tonyb
The process is not going to happen overnight, Tony. I expect the technology to improve and costs to come down as they have already.
Joseph: We can use renewables to do that.
Maybe some day, but not now. For now, use of fossil fuels has great utility, which is why (to answer your question) humans do it. Whether the CO2 has counterbalancing negative consequences is potentially (because of laboratory science) an important question, but the evidence for such negative consequences is slim to none (and in my opinion, less compelling every year.)
Do you get it? All over the world, people of almost all cultures and ethnicities derive value from burning fossil fuels. Getting equal value from alternitives is going to take decades more work.
It’s going to take several decades to get there. The costs of renewable have already decreased substantially in the past decade. And if we can get a global agreement on emissions reduction, that will get the private markets to invest in R&D reducing the cost even further.
Your opinion on the science is basically worthless. I hope you realize that.
Joseph: “Your opinion on the science is basically worthless. I hope you realize that.”
Priceless! Utterly priceless!
Joseph, you wouldn’t recognise science if it scuttled under your bridge and bit you on the snout.
You really haven’t the first clue, have you?
I know I know, weazle, It’s just a made up hoax to scare the masses into submission like the boogeyman or something.
Joseph: “I know I know, weazle, It’s just a made up hoax to scare the masses into submission like the boogeyman or something.”
So that’s your take, is it?
Oh dear, talk about utterly missing the point!
As I observed, you really haven’t the first idea what the debate is about.
And unfortunately, you never will.
Well explain it to me, Weazle. I would like to know why so many scientists and scientific organizations are saying AGW is a problem. If they aren’t making it up, why are there so many people involved on one side and hardly any on the other side? I have yet to hear a “skeptic” give an adequate answer to that question without wild speculation and don’t expect you to either.
All things being equal, you wouldn’t want to run the risk. But all things aren’t equal. So you choose the proven,very large, short and medium term benefits of using fossil fuel and take your chances with the unclear and unproven possible negative consequences.
Joseph…think of the entire planetary system, oceans and air. You are increasing co2 at the rate of about 1.5 ppm in air. Do you really think that the sun, the oceans, with 1000x the heat capacity of air, stochastic events, and the very design of the entire system do not overwhelm the influence of that small an amount? Have you ever asked yourself why humans and animals in general, exhale 100x more co2 than they inhale, and why plants grow best at 3-4 times the amount of co2 in the air than what we have now. Does it not seem logical that nature adapts simply by the controls on the system which are much much bigger than the what we are putting into the air. Do you wonder why warmer times were referred to, up until this recent generation of alarmist took control, as climate optimums. The true hockey sticks of the fossil fuel era are in global progress, number of people, life expectancy and personal GDP. I would venture to say, that without fossil fuels the progress man has made so you can even offer your opinion on a blog like this would not have been possible. Surely you understand that. So why would you want to stop the chance for others to have this? I hate to say it, its as if now that you have yours, you wont consider the implications of what you are implying by saying a creature that exhales 100x more co2 than it inhales, is part of nature, is artificially changing the dynamics, especially since co2 is perfectly natural to the system, one so large and magnificent in design, it easily adapts to the very tiny amount relative to the entire system, we put into it cheers
Why do you say “small?” We have gone from 280 ppm to 400 ppm in less than a 150 years. When was the last time that happened in Earth’s history? When is the last time the temperature increased by .8C in such a short period of time? I don’t consider those “small” changes.
Compared to the quantities the greenhouse gas, water vapor, 0.028% – 0.040% seems like a small amount to me. I’m not sure what Joe’s reasoning is.
This morning, between 6:32 and 7:05 am.
“When is the last time the temperature increased by .8C in such a short period of time?”
Nobody knows. Apparently we can’t even be sure about the last 18 years as witnessed by the re-jiggering of the data that is currently going on in an attempt to resolve/eliminate/explain the current warming hiatus.
It is hard enough getting modern instrumented measurements correct. Why would anybody have much confidence in historical proxy data?
Joseph,
You do know that your considerations on the importance or size of impact is basically worthless, correct? I hope you realize that.
It’s based on what most actual climate scientists that I read say about climate change. That there are risks associated with increased temperature. It’s not really my opinion.
The temp increase 1908 to 1941 was virtually the same duration and magnitude as the temp increase 1977 to 2005. The first was almost certainly “natural” and the second likely somewhat anthropogenic. So, Joseph, the answer is the last time it warmed naturally this fast was when my mom was a kid.
True, true, it’s like the impending collapse of, Cumbre Vieja:
”This is a true story – only it hasn’t happened yet!” ~wiki
i.e.,
i.e.,
If the model is correct…
Alan seems to appreciate Bob Carter’s Taxing Air:
http://www.taxingair.com/complete-reviews.html
An objective analysis that seems to share Dr. Art Raiche, Professor David Bellamy, Nick Minchin, Former Senator and Minister for Finance, Lubos Motl, Matt King Coal Ridley, Max Rheese, Emeritus Professor Don Aitkin, James Delingpole, Paul Monk, FHB5, and many otters.
Alan seems to appreciate Bob Carter’s Taxing Air:
http://www.taxingair.com/complete-reviews.html
An objective analysis that seems to share Dr. Art Raiche, Professor David Bellamy, Nick Minchin, Former Senator and Minister for Finance, Lubos Motl, Matt Ridley, Max Rheese, Emeritus Professor Don Aitkin, James Delingpole, Paul Monk, FHB5, and many otters.
“I became troubled by what seemed to be a preference to view the climate as a global stable state” – AL
A troubling start.
Longhurst might need to ponder on how he manages to perceive this rather odd perception.
“I found this rejection of an entire body of scientific literature troubling…” – AL
Even more troubling is the exaggeration and mis-respresentaion required to bso aldly make this statement.
“The research of H.H. Lamb … appeared to be no longer of interest…” – AL
The ‘but Lamb’ gambit – another red flag
Such early mis-steps do not a train-wreck make, but……
As with any other disaster, you don’t have to wait until calamity to get out of the way
But then you do have the luxury of being certain….
Which came first the egg or the moon?
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/22/science/earth-blamed-for-cracks-in-moon.html?_r=0
You just had to drive around on the Moon, didn’t you?
Nothing odd about it.
Yeah. People like you don’t like having the truth boldly stated. No “exaggeration” or “mis-respresentaion” [sic] needed.
Yup. Lamb did real science. Any time you hear his name mentioned, you know you need to use dishonest rhetoric to smear the mention, and mentioner.
AK,
How could anyone come to a conclusion that science views the climate as stable when it’s science that has described the huge swings in past climate?
Nobody has accused “science” of anything. Nobody has said “science” has come to wrong conclusions.
Many scientists in very recent times have avoided or minimised the constant swings in climate – big and small, cyclical and linear – which other scientists have long taken as a given.
The climatariat sins warily by omitting more than by committing. Wording helps. What was, till very recently, regarded as the actual climate is now called something like natural variation or internal something-or-other. It’s in a broom-cupboard or under the sink, if anyone wants it.
mm,
Well maybe you can explain this alleged “preference to view”? Who has it??
“What was, till very recently, regarded as the actual climate is now called something like natural variation or internal something-or-other” – mm
Gee mm, sounds like you’re against the idea of scientists noting climate is not a “global stable state”.
Michael, the preferrers have the preference, I’d say. Certainly not an entity or body called “science” which “says”.
As for natural variation, just say climate change…and hope we don’t cop a Bond Event to remind us how severe cold+dry can be for little humans.
You’ve got nothing.
OK.
Science also accepted the existence of a Medieval Optimum, and a Little Ice Age. Until Mannomatic (Mannomaniacal) “scientists” tried to “get rid of it” and created the fraudulent hokey stick.
Leaving aside all your arm-waving strawl-man arguments, the tendency was very pronounced and evident in the early part of the century: to view “climate” for the last few thousand years as “a global stable state” except for anthropogenic influences.
How could anyone come to a conclusion that science
views the climate as stable when it’s science that has
described the huge swings in past climate?
No cli – sci Michael. Why, the looooooooong shaft of
Mann’s hockey stick shaft became the icon of IPCC
TAR and fear and guilt global policy profligacy spending
ter the tune of an estimated $I.5 trillion (ter date.).
It’s as if they don’t know that Mann’s original research was into natural variability…….all the HS buzz came later.
No, Mann’s research was always pointed to “getting rid of the MWP”. None of it was ever real science, only pseudo-science defended from real scientific questions by bureaucratic hooliganism.
The evidence is all out there, and has been linked repeatedly.
The truth is out there.
The AK Files?
We both know you’re just wasting my time.
Michael: Gee mm, sounds like you’re against the idea of scientists noting climate is not a “global stable state”.
I am not against it. But as I noted, all the estimates of the effect of doubling the CO2 concentration treat the climate system as being “forced” from one equilibrium to another equilibrium. If you know of an exception, please share it.
Michael and Brian
You are criticizing Dr Longhurst’s Preface, describing why he decided to write the book. Isn’t a bit premature on your part? This reflects more about you than than him; appears you are inclined to think preface predicts conclusions, that all scholars approach their work with unbridled bias.
Richard
prefaces come before and written after
Mosher
Thank you for the clarification. Did you not though, question the criticisms of Michael? Criticisms directed at Dr Longhurst’s motivations for writing the book, rather than his actual work? I suppose we must accept that some scientists start research that is motivated toward a preconcieved conclusion, however don’t we (or shouldn’t we) expect a higher standard from scientists? It appears to me that Michael expects the opposite, that scientists are expected to reach conclusions compatible with their motivations.
Richard
I don’t generally read or agree with Michael.
I read the 15 pages that I know something about.
It’s not a tour DE force.
Sorry.
Joseph: Longhurst might need to ponder on how he manages to perceive this rather odd perception.
All of the calculations of the effect of changing CO2 treat the climate as though the CO2 increase changes the climate from one equilibrium to another equilibrium. This has been much discussed here and elsewhere. I said “All”, but it really only means “All that I have read”, of which I shall cite only 2 here: Pierrehumbert, “Principles of Planetary Climate” and Randall “Atmosphere, Clouds, and Climate”. If you know of even one exception, please tell me about it.
“I became troubled by what seemed to be a preference to view the climate as a global stable state” – AL
There is a STABLE WELL BOUNDED CYCLE, but this is a cycle and not a stable state. It would be like saying an AC Electrical Circuit had a DC electrical voltage. Temperature goes up and down and back up and back down. it does not ride along the hockey stick handle and then turn up at the blade. Look at actual data.
There is a stable, well bounded cycle, there is not any kind of a stable state.
Judith –
You don’t always (usually?) explicitly endorse other people’s analysis of the science climate change, but you seem to have with this one. That’s kind of interesting that this one, in particular, would stand out for you.
As such, I have a question from the very first page that I read. It says the following:
Now I doubt that you’d give such a strong endorsement to an analysis that makes assertions without supporting evidence. So I’m wondering if you could provide evidence in support of the claim that “skeptical” scientists generally keep their doubts to themselves, and if you can’t, you could ask the author to provide that evidence?
“…sceptical scientists – and there are some – generally keep their doubts to themselves”
If they are still working and might lose their jobs or funding, this is true.
If you consider scientists who are retired, or have tenure, they are more likely to speak out, or have a blog where opinions that disagree are published and discussion and debate is promoted.
No math = I won’t pick it up.
I want to see the first definition of “radiation forcing” with no cyclically defined variables.
Or perhaps it’s just laziness. No, on second thought, I suspect the majority of “peer review” comes from incompetent time-servers with no idea about the science they’re supposed to “review”. Except for pal-review, and its diametric opposite: enemy review. Those are usually competent, but agenda-driven.
Or perhaps they are all delusional and can’t think for themselves.
I just started reading the section on numerical models and it is a jewel. The most interesting point is that those who “run the models” have higher confidence in the output model results than those who actually build the models. This struck a strong chord with me because it is so true in my field. We actually are trying to address this bias and there are some new papers coming out by big names (not me) about it. But I do have a paper on it in the works trying to do a rigorous job of evaluating uncertainty. Even for problems considered trivial, its much larger than the literature would indicate.
Of course in climate science, the problem is very bad. Political partisans and activist but ignorant scientists feel a strong need to defend the models despite deep ignorance. It’s a bad situation.
“Sounds like science” + “Has some obscure terminology ” + “Has some equations thrown around no matter how ill-defined the reasoning behind it” + “progressives believe it”
= it is science
The data to prove CO2 has no effect on average global temperature already exists.
The relation between mathematics and the physical world mandates that, for a forcing to have an effect, it must exist for a period of time. The temperature changes with time in response to the net forcing. If the forcing varies, (or not) the effect is determined by the time-integral of the forcing (or the time-integral of a function thereof).
The atmospheric CO2 level has been above about 150 ppmv (necessary for evolution of life on land as we know it) for at least the entire Phanerozoic eon (the last 542 million or so years). If CO2 was a forcing, its effect on average global temperature (AGT) would be calculated according to its time-integral (or the time-integral of a function thereof) for at least 542 million years. Because there is no way for that calculation to consistently result in the current AGT, CO2 cannot be a forcing.
Variations of this proof and identification of what does cause climate change (R^2 > 0.97) are at http://agwunveiled.blogspot.com
Dan, I’ve read your blog and recommended it to many who want to learn about another explanation for temperature trends. I would like to see you expand this into a full paper and publish it through a peer-reviewed journal.
I have also tried to use your scheme to model (fit) temperature trends. Your model appears to fit reasonably well back to 1850 or so. Before that I see the model breaks down because the number of sunspots was so low. Have you looked into the pre-1850 era at all?
Peer reviewed version of the work as it existed a couple years ago is published in Energy and Environment, vol. 25, No. 8, 1455-1471.
The paper at agwunveiled has graphs (created by my EXCEL model constructed as described in the method) back to the beginning of regularly recorded sunspot numbers (1610). The sustained period of low sunspot numbers coincides with the depths of the LIA. No world wide direct measurements of AGT exist that far back in time. The proxy estimates are consistent with the equation.
Solar amplification in sea level by satellite altimetery
Thought provoking book. Shaviv & Svevnsmark further support solar amplification in sea level trends warming LOWERING oceans.
The solar and Southern Oscillation components in the satellite altimetry data
Daniel Howard, Nir J. Shaviv, Henrik Svensmark, Space Physics 13 May 2015 DOI: 10.1002/2014JA020732
David L. Hagan: Daniel Howard, Nir J. Shaviv, Henrik Svensmark, Space Physics 13 May 2015 DOI: 10.1002/2014JA020732
Thank you for the link.
Interestingly, its sign implies that a higher ocean temperature gives rise to a higher rate of water leaving the ocean basins and getting trapped on land, thus lowering the sea level.
Warmer oceans are covered with less sea ice and produce more snowfall. Colder oceans are covered with more sea ice and produce less snowfall.
This is why temperature and sea level have been bounded. The values have changed over the past 50 million years toward a cooler world because the ocean levels and currents changed to circulate more warm tropical water into Polar Oceans and that melted more sea ice and supported more snowfall. There is a natural ice machine in the Arctic and in the Antarctic that do regulate the temperature in each hemisphere. If you add heat, from any source, solar cycles, orbit cycles, greenhouse gas, you can make a difference for awhile, but that will warm the oceans, remove sea ice and ramp up the snowfall rates. If you remove heat, by any method, you can make a difference for awhile, but that will cool the oceans, add sea ice and ramp down the snowfall rates. The thermostat set points are the temperature that Polar Oceans Freeze and Thaw. Look at the past data. it has always cycled up and down. Over the past 50 million years the temperature has cooled but during that cooling the warm cold warm cold cycle was always in the data. The circulation of more warm water in Polar Oceans does turn the ice machines up. The sea ice freezes and thaws to keep the temperature regulated. This cycle is very robust.
Weekly climate energy news Roundup #197 links to 100 papers on solar-climate.
ALL THE CONFUSION ABOUT THE PHONY GLOBAL WARMING, was created long, long time ago. Failed geologist, that were not able to get themselves job in the mining industry did it, it wasn’t the butler who did it…!
Example #1: all extinctions were pinned on global warmings / coolings and comets hitting the earth. The truth: most viruses are smart and leave 10-60% of the host alive, so that the virus can survive, BUT: some viruses were stupid – easy to spread, were killing every host – wasn’t any immunisation invented => host left only fossilized bones to be found, virus extinct; or other animals invented immunity for it and the virus survived – probably now that virus is harmless nuisance as flue virus or similar. But for shionks that; every summer is global warming / every winter global cooling; is handy to blame the ”global” temperature for every extinction…?!
Example #2: alluvial deposits in Colorado canyon are as pages in a book; can tell the past very accurately: bigger gravel deposit = it was more rain – only fine dirt deposits are proof of not much rain, BUT: that doesn’t say even for Colorado state – it only tells about the rainfall of upstream the river catchment, full stop – definitely not about the whole planet!!! b] maybe was a wet year, OR: on 29 of February was lots of rain, rain melted the snow and the water from both created very big flood, then for the rest of the year was dry / no rain… for the shonks that’s irrelevant…?! c] then another shonky geologist finds same imprint in Mongolia, just a coincident – if it wasn’t exactly – he forced it to fit (same as you forcing your sock on a horse’s foot, for money and publicity, you can do it) That double proof cements the knowledge, goes in education books, it’s final proof… The question is: –”if there isn’t SAME imprints on all the other lands between Colorado and Mongolia, were all those lands on another planet at that time?”! That question was never asked, why not? a] more rain doesn’t mean ”warmer year” b] simultaneously floods and droughts happens on many places, all the time, the planet is a big place!
Example #3: most important: the official North Poll was on different places in the past – when North Poll was for example on Iceland, or west Canada-> some temperate lands now, was tropics / some today’s tropics were in cold climate. Milutin Milankovich was the only correct in his theory, nobody else! But: for the last 150y they found tropical imprint in cold climate; they declared it as ”the planet was much warmer” OR: when they found imprint of cold climate somewhere in the tropics; was declared as ” snowball earth” top stupidity! Now the western democracies are paying for that stupidity, and even democracy will be lost… because of ”established Pagan beliefs”…
Example #4: in a cave the shonk vandalizes the best stalagmite; cuts it and analyses the rings of calcium: thicker ring for him represents wetter year, WOW! It’s thicker ring because a herbivore animal drops something above, in the poo from the grass is ”extra calcium’‘ – another time a snail died above – from snail’s shell the calcium leached down and made bigger ring on that stalagmite; but that was declared instead as:7200 years ago was warmer by 2C, the WHOLE planet! One dead snail increased the temp on the whole planet, from Africa to Antarctic… reason: because somebody didn’t get into that cave and braked the shonk’s arm, for vandalizing the beautiful stalagmite, BECAUSE: if that stalagmite was able to tell the temp above on the surface -wouldn’t be 30 ALL different shapes and sizes stalagmites in 10m radius in the cave! Was it 30 different climates simultaneously in the 10m radius above the cave, so every stalagmite is different; YOU tell me!
I will at least read the book before commenting. It would make for a better informed discussion if everyone else did the same before shooting from the hip.
tonyb
Good idea. Wish more postwrs woild follow it. I just spent several hours speed reading the whole book (not checking references, and such. Just topical thematic.). Much to come back to for deeper checking. Stuff he found that I had not, especially on the Arctic, oceans, and marine biology. That I missed freshwater river flows into the Arctic Ocean, and the resulting salinity and cyclic ice impacts, is just embarassing. But very enlightening about that part of a ‘wicked’ problem. Live and learn. Like about CET.
climatereason: I will at least read the book before commenting.
Radical!
One might say the same for the ipcc reports.
But a better approach is to read the parts where you have the deepest understanding.
I will say that there is nothing new or worthwhile in the treatment of land surface data.
You know that
Every reader of wuwt, CA and judithcurry.com knows that.
Mosh
It would be interesting to get your take on the Kimberley data on page 87 of Chapter 4-the one you described as ‘pitiful.’
tonyb
He is wrong. he is claiming that series are adjusted largely by HAND.
Liar. or he is just making crap up
Kimberly
http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/stations/159038
That is what DAILY data gets you.
Note almost No change in trend after adjustment.
he is comparing GISS and CRUTEM
bad idea.. he doesnt even know the data sources.
Mosh
I assume we are all talking about Kimberley In south Africa and not the one in Canada.
I think the early data is largely anecdotal. Kimberley was at the centre of the boer wars at the turn of the century and Of the disturbances that continued for Years afterwards. Just like the mariners on board ships in world war two who didn’t take SST’s for obvious reasons, I doubt that much accurate reporting of temperatures went on for much of the early
Period.
Although Kimberley was a large town in 1900′, hence it’s importance to the British, it is now some 7 times larger at approaching a quarter of a million people. Is there a uhi allowance in the data?
Also I think the station has moved a Fair number of times in the intervening period. Kimberley is at a high altitude and any of the station moves could compromise the data if it went higher or lower up the hills.
What makes you believe that your numerical data in this instance is any better than the anecdotal stuff that my monks might produce?
Tonyb
> I assume we are all talking about Kimberley In south Africa and not the one in Canada.The Moshpit’s link leads to Kimberley, South Africa, TonyB.
You don’t need to assume we’re talking about that town, since it’s in the text:
That’s on page 87. before Andy’s “individually and largely by hand” underlined innuendo.
SM, to repeat, he does not say what you have now wrongly claimed twice. On page 83, he is quoting the NASA GISS step one of quality control. A quote in italics. Take your beef to Gavin Schmidt if you don’t like how Hansen set up his fudge factory.
Here, Sir Rud:
Page 87.
With the Author’s own emphasis.
***
There are 51 hits for “adjust” in the document. Professor Zipf might find it odd. Should I quote some?
I’d start with the one in the overall conclusions.
Willard, for the record I understand your point his wording/misunderstanding statement on page 87 of a what? 237 page free book that has other understandable minor problems. Heck,my ebook publisher made bigger mistakes in all 3. So did I.
Tell me, is his citation of NASA GISS on page 83, which I have now cited twice, correct? For if so, therein lies his IMO minor misunderstanding. Hardly grounds to reject everything else.
BTW, re the general topic, check out my essay When Data Isn’t. A less scholarly, more vividly illustrated explanation reaching the same conclusions differently. And especially check out technical footnote 24. The BEST station 166900 example, plus a lot more. A modeled temperature field expectation IS NOT an observed temperature datum.
I could go on. See for example the recent WUWT guest post using SurfaceStations.org classifications to demonstrate the hash GISS homogenization makes of pristine CRN 1 suburban and rural stations in USHCN.
A couple of suggestions. 1. I am not a sir, so stop the slur. 2. Try bringing some actual own study of the data and science, rather than an ankle biting echo of SM, to the conversation. On any such analyses, I would willingly research independently and engage with you. Please evidence some ability to do so? So far, you have woefully not AFAIR.
> I understand your point his wording/misunderstanding statement on page 87 of a what?
I’m not sure I understand your question, Sir.
Perhaps there’s no need to clarify it, since the matter is quite simple. You opined twice about what Alan “does not say” and I showed twice what Alan does indeed say. Before minimizing what Alan does indeed say, it might be nice if you could acknowledge what Alan did indeed say.
***
Since you mention that Alan gave his review for free, may I ask you why don’t you do the same with your ebooks? It’s not as if you really needed the money.
I think rud owes me an apology. Kidding.
Look there are issues with adjustments.
Rud and Brandon have done good work.
Neither of them made the stupid mistake of saying that the adjustments are done by hand.
The book was described as a tour DE force.
Now people are special pleading for work that is inferior to their own.
Drop the humility rud.
Your work is way better than his.
Please read Peter.
Willard and rud.
I would like to comment on an argument form.
Here is an exemplar
Willard, for the record I understand your point his wording/misunderstanding statement on page 87 of a what? 237 page free book that has other understandable minor problems.
Mathew up thread made a similar appeal.
It goes like this.
Yes there is a mistake, but the book is big?.
Or
X makes Y claims. Y is a big number.
You found Z mistakes. Z is a small number.
From this come two conclusions
Line A. We should not trust the rest
Line B. Nothing to see move along.
Now consider what the author did.
He purported to find a few stations out of thousands that look odd.
Now consider what rud has written.. Again a few stations out of 40k.
I will avail myself of the rud defense.
A few stations wrong out of 40k is nothing.
Blame the publisher of the ebook and move along.
Or
Claim that a few mistakes is all it takes.
“Also I think the station has moved a Fair number of times in the intervening period. Kimberley is at a high altitude and any of the station moves could compromise the data if it went higher or lower up the hills.”
That’s detectable if the change is large enough. One reason why you
cannot rely on metadata alone.
I wonder how much you would doubt the records if they were a part of CET.
Here is the problem tony
you have no method.
Rud
“SM, to repeat, he does not say what you have now wrongly claimed twice. On page 83, he is quoting the NASA GISS step one of quality control.”
Page 87. Rud. Page 87.
Jeez, and people on this thread have doubted Moshpits ability to look at 15 pages and spot and recall errors.
maybe I sucked the text into my automated text analysis system and spotted the word “hand” in the text…..
zipfs law.. many uses.. some people use computers.. some peoples brains just do it.. weird I know.
Mosh
As I have said before, I doubt the precision of all historical temperature records. CET is better than most as it has been so thoroughly examined and can be constrained and verified in its ‘generality’ by crop records and anecdotal accounts.
Kimberley is rather more suspect for a variety of reasons of which altitude/station move is just one.
You need to raise your numerical data above the levels of ‘anecdotal’ just as you ask me to do with the text version
tonyb
Mosh
On page 87 it says this;
‘It seems clear that what is presented in the current data sets has
resulted from a multitude of individual decisions, big or trivial, made
by the technicians responsible for adjusting the data; the complexity
and magnitude of adjusting, individually and largely by hand, several
thousand data sets surely requires that a careful record must be kept
and made widely known.’
In the original version (although not in this copy and pasted version above) the words ‘individually and largely by hand’ is underlined. Whether the precise meaning of that is qualified elsewhere I don’t know as I have been too busy chasing a flock of Willard’s squirrels to read too much more.
However on first and second read I would take it to mean that the technicians have carefully looked at the data and-for whatever reasons- have decided to adjust it manually in a rather painstaking and deliberate process.
Have I missed something?
tonyb
where individual scrutiny comes in is selecting which observations/stations to include; even if this is ‘automated’, the automated rules were based on scrutiny of situations surrounding individual observations/stations.
Berkeley Earth is apparently totally automated in this regard; the other analyses are not, to my knowledge.
Steven Mosher: Mathew up thread made a similar appeal.
I do not know what that refers to so let me restate. You ought to spell my name correctly.
The treatment of BEST is clearly inadequate.
Alan Langhurst made two assertions that I think are likely to withstand attempts at detailed rebuttals. (1) because of variations in local conditions (e.g. altitude, ocean currents, upwelling), changes in the global mean temperature can not be taken as accurate indications of changes in heat flows through the atmosphere; (2) because of the well-documented problems with the land temperature records (inadequate sampling plan, changes in the land use near thermometers, changes and failures in the thermometers), even accurate reconstructions (or estimates) of the changes in global and regional mean land temperature trends are not likely to be achieved.
As to (2) the BEST team have addressed the problems in great detail, and have provided estimates of the imprecisions of their estimates. If someone can do a better job than BEST has done, with extant thermometer data, it is about time for them to do so.
I may not have said it yet in this thread, but I think that BEST is unlikely to be improved upon.
the consensus theory is that a doubling of CO2 concentration will change energy flows sufficiently to increase surface temperatures by a small amount, less than 1% of baseline temperature from a small change in the rate of outgoing LWIR. Given what we now know about a bunch of the heat transfer processes, and their nonlinearities, their natural variations, and given the likelihood that there is much more for us to learn, it is not likely that an achievably accurate reconstruction of the past land surface temperature record will be useful in estimating any of the relevant changes in the energy flows.
ClimateReason: However on first and second read I would take it to mean that the technicians have carefully looked at the data and-for whatever reasons- have decided to adjust it manually in a rather painstaking and deliberate process.
Furthermore, he is not describing BEST, which he summarily dismisses.
Peter O’Neill has helpfully supplied us with portions of the computer code. I would call rewriting code on a station-by-station basis, and judging the results by a process that includes eyeballing, as “manually”, even though the process is thereby automated for subsequent runs.
Giss does not individually scrutinize 7000 stations.
They made a decision to use ghcn m.
They made a decision to use ushcn
They made a decision to use scar.
A few stations were added by hand.
The comment that adjustments are made by hand follows the discussion of Giss disappearing a portion of a record. As Peter points out that is the result of
An algorithm.
Cru make no changes to data post climate gate.
They accept the adjusted data products of nws.
The only hands on data occurs at nws.
They must be in collusion.. Ahem
Look. There are real challenges in the temperature record. Construction of adjustment codes and validation of these codes. With thousands to adjust you can and must find odd balls.
Odd balls – Iceland for example – – can be handled by
Dropping the series
Adjusting the code
Hand adjusting the data
Leaving the data alone
Going on site
It cannot be handled by categorically rejecting the
Adjustment process or by insinuating that
Unnamed people are man handling the data.
Psst. Zeke has figured Iceland out by visiting the nws.
Here is the beautiful thing.
If you look at individual stations you are accused of
Having your thumb on the scale.
If you use a hands off approach you are then
Accused of not paying attention to details.
Further folks demand that you speak for the algorithm and explain in every case what it did and why.
Now if you look at cases where your algorithm screwed up.. And fix the code you are again accused of man handling data.
I would call rewriting code on a station-by-station basis, and judging the results by a process that includes eyeballing, as “manually”, even though the process is thereby automated for subsequent runs.
####$$$$
Generally you don’t do that.
You find one station done poorly.. U find out the reason and fix the code.
Example. A user pointed out a buggy station.
We fixed the code. 600 stations were effected.
Even with 5000 stations manual review is not Gunna
Happen. Try it.
Rud
And especially check out technical footnote 24. The BEST station 166900 example, plus a lot more. A modeled temperature field expectation IS NOT an observed temperature datum.
#############
Precisely!!!!!
The field is a prediction that minimizes the global error. That entails some locations will be really wrong.
Think of them as typos.
> Have I missed something?
Yes, that I quoted the very same passage on p. 87, TonyB. Twice already. The one that includes the words individually and largely by hand. Including right in the very subthread you’re commenting right now.
***
> I have been too busy chasing a flock of Willard’s squirrels to read too much more.
First, it’s “I was asleep” and it’s “I was busy”. Not just busy: busy chasing squirrels when all I did was to quote the two damn documents under discussion.
This is getting surreal.
Go team!
Not surreal Willard. More like squirrel. You appear to be breeding flocks of them.
Btw surely I was agreeing with you about the changing by hand? Clearly that is what was written.
Tonyb
Steven Mosher: Example. A user pointed out a buggy station.
We fixed the code. 600 stations were effected.
That was you. the author was not describing BEST.
> More like squirrel. You appear to be breeding flocks of them.
You appear to have a very poor understanding of that concept, TonyB. Playing squirrels is a way to introduce extraneous informations to evade a particular commitment.
To take a recent example not far from here, your whole comment to JCH is a big fat squirrel. You claimed that Calendar’s conjecture has been “elegantly refuted here by Giles Slocum in 1955”. When you read the conclusion to Slocum 1955, we see that this claim is false. Now, instead of acknowledging this, you went from “read harder” to doubling down with “Slocum considered it was refuted” (a fantastic claim to make when facing a quote where Slocum says exactly that it was not!) to “but the scientific establishment” and now to “but the met office”.
While you threw all these squirrels around, I simply kept repeating that your claim that Calendar’s conjecture has been elegantly refuted by Slocum 1955 is false.
And that notwithstanding all the “sorry I can’t hear you” and other kinds of passive resistance, like “you’re playing games while I’m a very serious person,” paraphrasing of course your cheap ad hom.
***
> [S]urely I was agreeing with you about the changing by hand?
The best way to agree with what has been quoted earlier would have been to say “I agree with was has been quoted earlier” and then point to it. To quote it again like it’s some kind of discovery does not sound like the agreement speech act.
If you want to agree with something relevant, try to acknowledge that the Moshpit linked to the correct Kimberley station, contrary to what you implied earlier. That, at least, won’t be squirrel territory.
Willard
I agreed with you and mosh against rud about the ‘by hand’ item. How on earth does that warrant ‘go team!’
I never at any time said that mosh did not link to the correct Kimberley. What sort of new diversion is this?. I commented that the data for Kimberley was likely compromised for the reasons I stated.
I merely said that I assumed we were talking about the south African version because after reading chapter 4 I spent some time researching Kimberly and came across quite a few Canadian references. Consequently I wasn’t 100 per cent certain we were discussing The south African one and had no intention of going back in again to read the chapter as it took a long time to download and then locate the right place.so to ensure we were all talking about the same place I made a passing comment.
Please cite the cheap ad Homs. I can’t see any. You read way too much into the simplest comment.
Tonyb
You are being trolled, Tony. He calls it Trollball. Trademark pending.
Willard likes to pretend he is Bertrand Russell’s squirrel. But he really is just a wild and crazy one running about with no sense of direction. For him, pointless but detailed and superficial analyses are the nuts he lives off during the winter.
Remember Russell’s Decalogue and try harder.
Willard
If any of the denizens has the slightest interest in this increasingly surreal sub thread they can read the words of both of us and make up their own minds, that is of course if they have the faintest idea as to what it is all about.
Tonyb
> they can read the words of both of us
Not anymore, TonyB.
Good night Willard
Tonyb
I’m replying to the initial “Kimberley” comment, since replying to one of the later comments in the thread may make less sense.
First, Kimberley is not an example of (page 83)
The reason early years are dropped by Gistemp can be found in the comments of PArars.f, in the STEP2 FORTRAN code:
In the case of Kimberley the early years are dropped because they fail to provide at least 3 supporting rural stations. This can be seen in PApars.GHCN.CL.1000.20.log for the December 2014 data (my enhanced version has added some extra information here). The initial urban Kimberley record starts from 1897, but only two rural records start before 1959:
I have chosen to show the December 2014 run above simply because that was the month for which I had parameters already set, even though I have also run Gistemp for more recent months. The first year which is included in the adjusted Kimberley record varies from month to month. I have not yet checked, but I presume that the reason for this will be found on examination of the adjusted GHCN-M data which is used by Gistemp as input. I’ll add another comment here when I have checked that presumption.
PO, this is (IMO) an important contribution to how the official land records are calculated. In this case, the inherent bias would be toward showing UHI. Consistent with my own analyses elsewhere. And the opposite of what is claimed to be done.
I urge you to write this up as a stand alone guest post and submit to Judith. Few have delved into the actual Fortran code like you just did. A big deal.
Peter, I am game for a guest post on this
Have you read Alan’s book in full before calling it a tour de force, Judy?
I’ve read multiple drafts of the book
Thank you!
I can write a guest post if needed, although probably not immediately – I’m on holiday in France until the weekend,travelling back to a car ferry with another change of city tomorrow.
I suggested “if needed” as most of the essential information on the reason for the loss of early Kimberley years is already contained in my comment above. I still need to look at Gistemp for a few other months to examine why the year adjusted data starts changes, and I’ll post a comment on that here. If that is as straightforward as I expect, a comment should suffice. If not I’ll write that guest post.
If there are other puzzles regarding Gistemp behaviour which i may be able to explain from the code, it might be worth then covering these as well as a guest post. My implementation of Gistemp provides considerable extra output and allows setting of breakpoints for the adjustment of a specified station, so, for example, I was able to watch the treatment of each rural station used to adjust Kimberley. My blog is linked from my name here, and any other puzzles I may be able to help with can be left as replies on my “About” page.
Having said that, with the adoption by GISS of adjusted GHCN-M data as input rather than the unadjusted GHCN-M v2 data used previously, I now tend to regard Gistemp as GHCN-M “Light” (and any Irish reader of a certain age will likely spot a parallel terminology with the introduction of Guinness “Light”, which was not an overwhelming success). Piling a further automated urban heating/cooling adjustment, using many stations wrongly identified as urban or rural on the basis of poor location metadata, on top of another automated GHCN Pairwise Homogenization adjustment which also has issues just does not seem wise. The addition of a small number of SCAR stations, and polar region interpolation issues, do not seem to me sufficient to justify the continued use of Gistemp. So I will if requested look at Gistemp puzzles, but I have concentrated my attention on GHCN-M more recently, as my blog will show, and I suggest that this is where you concentrate your attention too.
I referred to GHCN Pairwise Homogenization adjustment issues (and these probably also arise with USHCN, but I have not yet archived enough USHCN data). The adjustments made to past data show a lack of consistency from GHCN-M version to version, and even from one day to the next, beyond that which might be expected from a well behaved robust algorithm. Station relocations are presumably relatively rare events in the life of a station. The magnitude and frequency of changes to past values do not seem consistent with this. Plenty of examples can be seen in recent posts at my blog. For now I will just add two examples to this comment, Marseille (France, the first station I examined) and Sacaton (US, but GHCN not USHCN here).
As I suspected, those two images have been stripped out when the comment appeared, although they show in the preview. They can be seen at Marseille (France, the first station I examined) and Sacaton (US, but GHCN not USHCN shown here)
@Peter O’Neill…
To include a picture in a WordPress blog comment (such as here), put its URL alone on a line by itself: after the previous text, hit enter/return (on a Windoz keyboard), then paste in the URL of the picture, then (if you want to say more) hit enter/return again.
The URL has to end with “.jpg”, or a similar picture identifier. If your original URL has an ampersand followed by parameters after the “.jpg”, you need to strip those off, and then verify that the resulting URL actually calls up the picture you want to show.
(From some picture-oriented sites it doesn’t: they require the parameters to serve the picture. In that case, you’re SOL unless you want to save the picture out of your browser then re-upload it somewhere that will serve it in native form. I usually use Blogger: I have a draft post that I upload pictures to, then copy/paste the raw URL from the post into my browser’s URL field to verify the picture works.)
Trying AK’s suggestion instead of the “insert image” icon
http://oneillp.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/sacaton.jpeg
Sacaton. And that does not look like a well-behaved robust adjustment.
And since that worked, Marseille:
http://oneillp.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/marseillejan781.jpeg
Both images should enlarge when clicked. Useful to knowthat there is this workaround for the failure prone WordPress “Insert image” icon. I’ve had the same problem before elsewhere as well. The “Preview” button shows the reply with the desired images, but they are lost on submission.
Peter is one of my heros
He has been for a long time.
You want tour DE force? Follow Peter.
Additional comment on starting year. I’ll need to check the code for the exact rules used, but the adjusted record is allowed to start somewhat before the start of the combined rural record. The Kimberly adjusted record starts in December 1955, with 1956 as the first full year, while 1959 is the first year in which three or more rural station records overlap. I’ll post another comment when I have checked the code.
I’m just speaking for my own peanut gallery but I think we would all benefit from a guest post. When I read through your blog, not being a scientist, I found much of the material to be incomprehensible for the layperson. If you worked on a post that made your material more readily understandable to us novices it would surely be a fruitful endeavor and perhaps concentrate the essence of the material?
It does look like a guest post on Gistemp and GHCN-M adjustment would be useful. There have been a number of issues raised which I might be able to comment on, and now perhaps better in one post rather than scattered as a number of replies among nearly 300 so far in this post. I’ll start to build a post based on issues raised here.
As Kimberley has been discussed here, I will now add an image of the range of adjustments made to the Jan 1978 temperature value over recent years:
http://oneillp.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/kimberley.jpeg
Jan 1978 lies within the usual 1951-1980 and 1961-1990 anomaly base periods, and other months within those base periods will have undergone similar changes. As the most recent temperature values are not adjusted, the most recent anomaly values will show changes reflecting the changing base period average. For v3.0.0 and v3.1.0 GHCN-M did not adjust Kimberley. From v3.2.0 on GHCN-M started to adjust Kimberley, and while seeming to vary less than those for Sacerton and Marseille posted earlier, these adjustments are hardly a model of consistency either. The subsequent Gistemp adjustments sometimes increase the adjustments made by GHCN-M, at other times decrease it. Borrowing a term from another context, it seems clear that GHCN-M, not Gistemp, is the main “forcing” for these adjustments.
I have seen a considerable increase in blog traffic, referred from judithcurry.com, but most visitors have browsed general posts rather than those related to Gistemp and GHCN-M.
For anyone wanting a worked example of Gistemp adjustment, start from Introduction: the station for adjustment (post 1 of 6 in GISTEMP example) (but note that posts 5 and 6 in the series were never added – I may now add post 6 to explain the code which extends the adjusted urban record beyond the combined rural record)
For anyone wanting to look at the consistency of GHCN-M adjustments (which is what I suggest should be of interest rather than Gistemp), start from Wanderings of a Marseille January 1978 temperature, according to GHCN-M
I am so glad to see you get the traffic peter!!!
Peter is a great example of how its done.
1. he got the code
2. he got it working
3. he wrote emails to hansen and company with his observations/corrections.
that is real work.
Now you’ll note that more people here probably know goddard than Peter.
ask me who I think does great work
Same goes for other guys I wont mention..
Note that Peter has a focus. he knows it inside and out.
Peter,
I took your advise and read
Introduction: the station for adjustment (post 1 of 6 in GISTEMP example)
Wondering where 5 & 6 were until I got back to this thread LOL.
This has been most informative and I appreciate greatly this lesson as it has been the most informative lesson since I started trying to understand climate and data. Thank you very much!!
Steven,
Even as novice as I am I realized the problem with Goddard a long time ago. Whenever I go to a link from Drudge and it ends up on the Dorothy page I quickly ignore it and move on.
A couple of days back we stood to have our first warm spring day here. Then the clouds rolled in, rather unseasonably for September.
It was a warm day, but we didn’t feel it, no did any thermometers. You see, as the old sixties song goes, clouds got in the way: clouds which hung about to give us a higher minimum than we might have had otherwise.
Never mind. If winds are more from the inland in our dry late winter/early spring months we can get heat, high fire risk and hard frost all in 24 hours, as often in the 90s. Then we really miss the clouds.
Temp records are not made poor. They are born poor.
Thanks for the interesting discussion on data adjustments. I have a couple of questions for those of you who have dug deep into the data on this issue.
… What are the pluses and minuses of sat temps vs sfc thermometers ?
… Sat temps have risen more in the past 12 months but less in the last 35 years than sfc thermometers. Why are they different ? Is the difference error of measurement or can it be explained otherwise.?
… The USA started a pristine database in 2004. How does it compare to Giss, Hadcrut, Best, Uah, Rss? Have other countries set up similar surface networks?
… What is your estimate of error in our ability to est global temp index?
… If you were global climate czar with current funding levels, where would you spend more and where would you reduce funding?
Thx
I thought it was generally accepted that the winds that accelerate up through cumulus clouds is accelerated by the energy given out by condensation in the cloud itself. (I don’t think this energy is directly released as heat, instead it is efficiently converted to upward momentum by the “cloud pump”. But many insist this wind is caused by front interaction or by the warm low pressure air below pushing it up. However if we accept that the cloud IS causing the increase in speed of wind up through the cloud, there are 2 consequences. Newtons equal and opposite reactions, means that the cloud is being pushed lower a little bit and also there is a suck of the air below, up. I imagine it to be like a fleet of doughnut shaped airships, (with helicopter rotors in the “hole” floating at 30,000 ft. Now they all dive to 10, 000 ft. What do they do? they all turn on their rotors to push air up to make the airships go down. At 10,000 ft, the rotors are going and air is being pumped from under the airships to above. Air must come from elsewhere (some horizontally) to replace the air that they pump. What would the air pressure below the fleet be? And above? (I’m too tired to figure that out). I made a little video to show the analogy. I know clouds are not discrete “things” but there should still be an effect going on. Somehow they will be a bit lower “than they should be” , or pressures will be slightly “Wrong” in areas of intense cumulus cloud. (I think). Feel free to attack the idea, but don’t make it personal. Video is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPO8dWm_GIg
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Brian White: Evaporation means a change of state from liquid water to water vapour which has a molecular weight of 18 compared to a molecular weight of dry air of about 29. Convective movement of air result from moist air being lighter than dry air.
Frederick Colbourne. Condensation releases huge amounts of energy. Convection doesn’t stop at the cloud. It continues in and through the clouds. (sans the water vapor that initially drove the convection but which has just condensed) (the droplets are heavier than air) Heavier than air droplets are as you know influenced by gravity to go down. But the upward motion accelerates (in larger clouds) due to that energy release. The energy released is efficiently converted by the 2 phase gas/droplet flow in the cloud into upward motion of air, and an efficient drying process for that air. The air is being dried faster in the cloud than the air beside the cloud. So it can go up faster. Especially if rain develops.
Thank you for providing what appears to be a very informative read. I note the usual ankle biters go for the minutiae rather than reflecting on the overall. I’m breathlessly waiting on the certain to come slimeball personal attacks that are sure to titillate, something like when the author threw spitballs at his 5th grade teacher. The more of that stuff, the more I know the author is on to something.
Just like when I’ve looked up the background of many high profile skeptics, the author appears to have had an illustrious career, one that suggests to me an innate desire to be inquisitive. And one that many are aspiring to.
I would need to read the content of particularly chapters 3, 7, 8, 9 and 11 to tell how helpful the book is.
He notes that solar changes since the Maunder Minimum amount to 0.5 W/m2 and that CO2 effects already since then are three times as large. He does not note that future CO2 changes can be three times further multiplied, and why he still thinks solar effects are important in the context that they are ten times smaller. Climate is all about the forcing, but his forcing chapter is not about quantifying the GHGs relative to other effects. Elsewhere he seems to have dismissed or ignored the whole field of geological paleoclimate explanations for temperature variations on time scales up to the last billion years. He keeps saying things are ignored, and just ignores some very pertinent findings himself. Solar variations are small compared to GHGs, so they are not being ignored but treated in proportion to their importance to future climate change which is as a small player. Same with internal ocean variations.
Good to see a biologist with long, practical, and diverse experience weigh in on the topic. For too long climate science has been dominated by physicists who reduce everything to equations and lose some of the complexity of natural processes. Sure, physics is crucial, but we’re trying to understand a bio-chemo-geo-system.
I know it’s only a comment on a climate blog but it would be kind of nice if conflicts of interest were occasionally mentioned.
For instance Steven Mosher could mention, at the end of his comment about how pitiful Chapter 4 is, something along the lines of;
“The author of this comment is employed by Berkeley Earth, the product of which is described as “unacceptable” by the .author of the book, and therefore has a direct pecuniary interest in the topic.”
But of course scientists, amongst all the creatures of the earth, aren’t subject to such conflicts. That’s why they have their pals review their work.
Full disclosure;
I personally applied for a $500,000 grant from Exxon Mobil to make this comment but was turned down.
Nothing is complete without memes of catastrophism –e.g.,
It’s interesting though to compare imagined risks and behaviors in different situations:
► we cannot do anything about the risk so we are sanguine about it like, Lindzen’s meteor strike;
► we could do something about the risk — like, not live close to the coast — but, we’d rather assume the risk; and,
► we pretend we can do something about the risk — like, stopping seas from rising by demonizing coal-fired power plants — when, neither the pretense nor behavior makes any sense.
Or we could lay on the floor with a paper bag over our head.
(Hitch hikers guide to the Galaxy)
…while wearing brand new black-and-white Nikes? (like, the Heaven’s Gate cult, blasting off for the dark side of comet Hale-Bopp)
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“studies certified by peer-‐review”
A majority of peer-reviewed studies are flawed. Not much of a certification.
Any review of what we “know” about science which considers all published studies to be ‘certified’, is an attitude I don’t understand. As a matter of logic and rationality, I think that attitude is certifiable.
Yeah they should just write more books and avoid peer review all together.. Dr Curry likes this book, so that should be good enough for science. And if anyone else criticizes it, well they are just warmists taking pot shots from the peanut gallery.
Anyone who thinks studies are “certified” by the peer review process is insane. I don’t care if they write books, blog posts, or children’s fiction.
And this insanity goes way beyond this author. It infects the entire scientific establishment. This insanity is why science, as an institution, is completely untrustworthy.
Science has no credibility because it has no quality control. People who embrace crap, like the hockey stick, without ever giving a thought to checking it are reckless in the extreme. They should never be trusted.
So people who trust science are insane? Man that is harsh..
Stanton, don’t tell Joseph about the stats on bad science papers. His head might explode.
Until science, as an institution, realizes that quality matters, why would you trust it? We currently have idiots relying on claims of findings in an abstract without the slightest clue if the study is any good. Any time someone assumes (without justification) that peer review is a guarantor of quality, that person’s opinions about science should not be trusted.
People who knowingly rely on crap to form opinions are stupid. Or insane. A rational public should steer clear. At least until some adults show up with enough maturity to understand what quality means.
Stanton Brown: A majority of peer-reviewed studies are flawed.
It’s worse than that: every paper is flawed.
But if you are not going to read everything, selecting only the peer-reviewed literature is probably better than other strategies for picking and choosing.
A study a day keeps the doctors away.
http://atlanta.cbslocal.com/2015/09/22/study-heart-attack-sex/
Fear is all they got.
I can’t copy-paste from Alan’s PDF without getting floods of exclamation marks.
Does anyone have better luck?
Willard
This from my iPad which is not always the most cooperative of devices, from ‘about the author ‘
of Oceanography (1977-‐79) and was Director-‐ General of that Institute (1970-‐86). He has published 80-‐odd research papers and his most recent books are “Ecological Geography of the Sea” (Elsevier, 1998 & 2007) and “Mismanagement of Marine Fisheries” (Cambridge, 2010).
It seems ok. Sorry I can’t spend longer but there seem to be around 90 comments on this book to date and Mosh appears to have made around 107 of them…
Tonyb
Willard
This from my laptop from the same paragraph as my ipad. I have had to truncate it as you can see the problem;
About
the
author
Alan
Longhurst
is
a
biological
oceanographer
who
has
studied
the
ecology
of
the
continental
shelf
of
the
Thanks, TonyB. The PDF may have been produced using a Mac encoding. It may be something else, but I won’t bother to diagnoze, since I can manage using this method:
(1) Search all “!” and replace with a space (” “).
(2) Replace all double spacing (” “) with a single space.
(3) Join (CTRL-J on some editors) all lines to make a beautiful one.
I had the same problem as climatereason with the PDF file opened in the browser, but after downloading it, cutting and pasting works fine. E.g., this rather surprising remark that is erroneous in several ways.
“Recent studies concur that the trend in the fraction of anthropogenic CO2 from all sources, not only the combustion of fossil fuels, that remains in the atmosphere is rather stable at 0.44% with an increase of only 0.3%.yr-1, which is not significantly different from zero: no trend in the relative size of this fraction can therefore be detected. “
Judith, thanks for the reference. I have sped read the the entire book, and will now go back and study a number of sections. His discussion of Arctic variability, oceans (wind driven currents, regional variation, cycles), and marine ecosystems (fisheries as temperature proxies, overblown ‘acidification’, the consequences of fishing out parrotfish) contain a wealth of material that is new to me. He certainly touches on all the usual warmunist alarms, as is readily seen from the TC. One overwhelming takeaway is how biased the IPCC process has been, because a lot of his published counter information simply is missing or glossed over. Positive, having studied AR4 and AR5, both WG1 and WG2, cover to cover.
Anyone who has taken a look at the founding documents for the IPCC, the 1990 UN World Climate Conference, or the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The whole process was political from the beginning to establish the human effects on the climate for the UN to use. By design, the IPCC reports never included any studies on basic climate mechanisms, climate/weather interactions, or any related science.
This should not be a surprise to anyone interested in the climate, weather, climate change, or climate science. The entire problem is a result of a political process designed for political purposes.
There are not two sides to this argument if one evaluates the data properly which is AGW theory has been proven FALSE, by the data and by the atmospheric processes the theory has predicted.
AGW theory is wrong and wishy washy publications do not interest me.
Of course not, although he presents arguments from both sides and extensively discusses uncertainty and doubt.
Dr. Curry says he presents in the above sentence.
My reply is the AGW side has nothing to present that is even remotely supportive of their asinine theory. Zero!
This is the trouble with some when it comes to this subject which is they can’t bring themselves to say AGW theory is wrong and here are the reasons.
You can not have it both ways, AGW theory is either right or wrong. I say it is 100% dead wrong and we will know before this decade ends.
Salvadore
“AGW theory” is that human released CO2 will warm the planet if other conditions remain stable. What is it in the basics that you or anyone else can disagree with???
read below.
You should try to get your terminology right. You seem to not be arguing the basic theory but the how some have expanded on the basics
““AGW theory” is that human released CO2 will warm the planet if other conditions remain stable.”
It’s “AGW hypothesis” actually.
And it doesn’t – or not so as we can discern at any rate.
What are you talking about? Terminology ? I just gave you the evidence.
What matters is this, which is what the global temperatures will do going forward.
The basic AGW theory argument is there is a positive feedback between CO2/WATER VAPOR which was suppose to create a lower tropospheric hot spot which would lead to rapid global warming..
Guess what it is wrong on all counts.
“The basic AGW theory argument is there is a positive feedback between CO2/WATER VAPOR which was suppose to create a lower tropospheric hot spot which would lead to rapid global warming..”
Wrong! When you do not understand even what the basic theory is, there is little point in an exchange
No I am correct.
I do agree it would be a waste of time since I posted about 50 things wrong with the asinine theory which you do not want to acknowledge.
Typical AGW BS response.
No kidding Rob.
Salvatore
I do not think that there is adequate information to conclude that AGW will lead to significantly net negative conditions for the USA or the world overall.
You simply do not seem to understand the difference between the basic theory and some people’s beliefs about how the impact of the basic theory will be amplified by additional forcings that are hypothesized to increase the negative impact on humans.
I hope that helps.
Rob, here is what I understand which is the data and atmospheric processes this theory has called for are NOT happening.
That said let us see what the global temperatures do going forward. That will decide this issue.
Rob and Salvatore are using two different meanings of AGW. S is referring to CAGW, which includes strong positive feedback. R is referring to the no feedback GHG case. Hence they do not disagree because their talking past one another, talking about two different things.
I think I have been pretty clear to distinguish between denial of the greenhouse effect, which is really denial of physics, and questioning AGW, which does not necessarily involve denying basic physics but does involve adopting a very selective view of the evidence.
My reply the above from an AGW theory supporter.
Joel here is the evidence. Why don’t you refute each point with data ,not theory to prove I am wrong. You will not do it because there is no supportive data. I would hardly call all these blunders SELECT EVIDENCE.
AGW theory has predicted thus far every single basic atmospheric process wrong.
In addition past historical climatic data shows the climate change that has taken place over the past 150 years is nothing special or unprecedented, and has been exceeded many times over in similar periods of time in the historical climatic record. I have yet to see data showing otherwise.
Data has also shown CO2 has always been a lagging indicator not a leading indicator. It does not lead the temperature change. If it does I have yet to see data confirming this.
SOME ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES AND OTHER MAJOR WRONG CALLS.
GREATER ZONAL ATMOSPHERIC CIRCULATION -WRONG
TROPICAL HOT SPOT – WRONG
EL NINO MORE OF -WRONG
GLOBAL TEMPERATURE TREND TO RISE- WRONG
LESSENING OF OLR EARTH VIA SPACE -WRONG? I have a study showing this to be so.
LESS ANTARCTIC SEA ICE-WRONG
GREATER /MORE DROUGHTS -WRONG
MORE HURRICANES/SEVERE WX- WRONG
STRATOSPHERIC COOLING- ?? because lack of major volcanic activity and less ozone due to low solar activity can account for this. In addition water vapor concentrations decreasing.
WATER VAPOR IN ATMOSPHERE INCREASING- WRONG- all of the latest data shows water vapor to be on the decrease.
AEROSOL IMPACT- WRONG- May be less then a cooling agent then expected, meaning CO2 is less then a warming agent then expected.
OCEAN HEAT CONTENT TO RISE- WRONG – this has leveled off post 2005 or so. Levels now much below model projections.
Those are the major ones but there are more. Yet AGW theory lives on.
Maybe it is me , but I was taught when you can not back up a theory with data and through observation that it is time to move on and look into another theory. Apparently this does not resonate when it comes to AGW theory , and this theory keeps living on to see yet another day.
Maybe once the global temperature trend shows a more definitive down trend which is right around the corner (according to my studies ) this nonsense will come to an end. Time will tell.
Greenhouse score card showing more blunders
http://www.warwickhughes.com/hoyt/scorecard.htm
Past historical data showing no correlation.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/11/does-co2-correlate-with-temperature-history-a-look-at-multiple-timescales-in-the-context-of-the-shakun-et-al-paper/
Current data not agreeing with what AGW calls for.
http://patriotpost.us/opinion/34748
“Joel here is the evidence. Why don’t you”
Joel? some confusion here, Salvatore; don’t believe I posted anything except my note below (further down) about Mosher, etal
It was not you ,sorry. it was Joel Shore . I should have included the last name.
From the massive postings of Mosher and his ilk, they appear rather concerned that this book will have a significant and unfavorable impact on their stances and, therefore, they need to squelch the postings of others as extensively as possible. Too many topics being addressed all at once, I suspect for them. Their posting frequency here is even stronger, from I viewpoint, than their bashing of JC in “JC’s Conscience”. Double “hittings” bing applied here.
The book must something they are really worry about!
“The book must something they are really worry about!”
Cui bono?
“Yet the seeds of what was to dominate the literature today had already been planted much earlier with the studies of Arrhenius, Tyndall and Fourier in the 19th century that introduced the concept of the CO2 greenhouse effect-Alan Longhurst”
None of the mentioned names ever spoke of heat trapping gases or backradiation. Arrhenius called the concept as untested. He only used absorption coefficient in his calculation, which is a reasonably sound science. The concept of greenhouse gas effect as we know it appears to be introduced by modern climatologists, and historians do not seem to know when and how. I really would like to know.
Certainly Callander referred to the heat trapping effect in his seminal 1938 paper. Whether it was referenced earlier I don’t know
Tonyb
Thank you.
Tonyb, I did research this. So did Steve McIntyre, in a different way at a different time. So far as either of us can find (and I no way place myself in SteveMc’s league except for complusive data searching), Callendar 1938, presented to the RS by proxy by Dr. Dobson F.R.S. since Callendar was a ‘mere engineer’, is the first precise description of log(CO2) AND the first realistic estimate of ECS ~ 1.7. An intellectual tour de force. Essay Sensitive Uncertainty.
Those unfamiliar with Callendar’s seminal 1938 paper will find it referenced and elegantly refuted here by Giles Slocum in 1955
http://www.pensee-unique.fr/001_mwr-083-10-0225.pdf
tonyb
In conclusion, I don’t find any “elegant demolition” of Callendar’s paper there.
Thanks again for an interesting study,
w.
Apparently Shrub disagrees.
Eli may have a robust way to remind you of a resolution you just made to read before commenting, TonyB:
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2013/02/rtfr-pops.html
When you do, please take time to take back your “elegantly refuted” instead of going silent like you did earlier and elswhere in the thread.
Read harder as Mosh might say. Slocum (and much of the establishment of the time) considered it was refuted (in full or in part) and his writing style is certainly elegant and clear compared to much of todays scientific output.
Elsewhere you say;
‘When you do, please take time to take back your “elegantly refuted” instead of going silent like you did earlier and elswhere in the thread’
Where do you mean? Perhaps I had gone to bed. If so, sorry about sleeping.
tonyb
> Slocum (and much of the establishment of the time) considered it was refuted […]
Hence his claim that ” the data, at present available, are inadequate as they now stand to prove or disprove a statistically ” etc, TonyB. In other words, Slocum explicitly contradicts your claim in the conclusion of his paper. There’s no need to read harder.
Even Pop removed that reference in his bogus list.
***
> Where do you mean?
Look for another place where I responded to one of your comment, TonyB.
No, not the one about the copy-paste bug.
Willard
What and What?
tonyb
> What and what?
For the first “what” you need to search for my name on the page or for “South Africa”, TonyB. It’s easier to do than to try to copy-paste from Alan’s review. It’s quite possible you have not seen it, but I doubt you were sleeping, since you wrote a bit later:
This resolution contrasts with the second “what,” i.e. your reading of Slocum’s paper. Slocum’s “the data, at present available, are inadequate as they now stand to prove or disprove a statistically” (and passim) clearly contradicts your claim that Slocum “elegantly refuted” Callendar’s conjecture.
***
Do you think Judy read the book before saying it’s a tour de force, BTW?
Willard
My comment about reading the book was made very early on, when, as far as I recall, there had as yet been very few comments, so not sure of your first point..
The scientific establishment of the day (mostly) refuted Callendar’s work and in the years following his treatise in 1938 their doubts grew. It came to a point where Callendar himself doubted his own theory just a year or so before his death, due to a combination of a decade long decline in temperatures and the very severe Little Ice Age type winter in 1962/3
First link hereunder is a remark by another commenter following up on one of my comments, the second is mine. The text is reproduced for your convenience;
——- ——-
“The photomontage heading this thread was from James Fleming’s bio of Callendar published by the American Meteorological Society. I came across one of Callendar’s papers about 25 years ago while involved in an engineering investigation re constraints on infrared absorption/ emission by unsaturated air, and was interested to preorder a copy of Fleming’s book when it was published in 2007.
On page 31 Fleming writes that “his confidence in the theory of climate warming, however, was shaken by the downturn in global temperature in the 1950s and 1960s”. In chapter 5 Fleming discussed Callendar’s puzzlement that the climate did not continue to warm monotonically and his hope that improved measurements of the dispersal of CO2 and more comprehensive temperature measurements would resolve the issue.
Shortly before his death, Callendar speculated in his notes about the reasons for the growing non-acceptance of his theory by his peers.
In 1964 he had an exchange with birdwatcher G Harris (see Weather 19, 264-265 March 1964) which appeared to end with Callendar conceding “a general decline of (European) temperature in recent years remains unaffected by considerations” of author bias, computational errors, and changes in the location of some stations as reasons for the cooling trend of up to 10degC reported by Harris.
Some other refs: Handel M & Risbey J, Climatic Change 21 (1992) 97-255
Weart S, Bulletin Atomic Sci June 1992, 19-27
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/11/13/guy-stewart-callendar/#comment-1789808
—- ——-
Well, I looked through the cd archives. They are often a very difficult read as much of it is in the form of hand written notes and letters and data entered into notebooks.
Some very interesting exchanges with the great and good of the day including Lamb, Manley and Keeling. Interesting letter from Lamb to the Guardian in 1963 commenting about the decade long downturn in temperatures and also from the Met office acknowledging Callendar’s point that SST’s in 1890 were substantially warmer than in 1910.
I will have to re-read the written biography again sometime, but for those interested in the intense period of scientific endeavour from the 1930’s to the 1960’s you could do worse than buy the archives and have a browse through. A little at a time to spare your eyesight.
—— —— ——-
When his peers and the author himself comes to doubt his own theory I think it is fair to say that it was fairly well refuted (at that time) I find Slocum’s writing elegant, but that is of course subjective.
I have Callendar’s archives and have read the biography twice. I very much like him and his achievements and his inventiveness during the war was intriguing.
Before you began treading on all the Angels toes as you started to dance on the rather well worn head of a pin, did you have any substantive comments to make about the Kimberley data I posted, as you seem to have gone off on one of your entertaining tangents?
You will remember that I reckoned that using the earlier Kimberley temperature data in order to draw definitive conclusions was perhaps not wise, whether the material came from the author of the book or from Mosh
tonyb
Willard
As I started writing my previous lengthy response I saw a comment from Judith that she had read many of the drafts. Presumably if she read the final one she would not have found a need to read the final book. There are only so many times you can read large amounts of text before your eyes glaze over and you fail to spot changes and mistakes
The book would benefit from a firm editor and some spell checking etc. This is a job you would be admirably suited for, why don’t you offer your services?
tonyb
Note, Longhurst has just fixed many of the typos (as many as he could easily spot), and a cleaner version of the book has just been posted.
> My comment about reading the book was made very early on, when, as far as I recall, there had as yet been very few comments, so not sure of your first point.
If you read that thread, TonyB, you ought to know that I follow comments using an RSS reader. Which means I get to read comments in chronological order. Your comment about Kimberley was made a tad later than your comment about reading the book first. Considering that the Moshpit has linked to Kimberley, South Africa, it may not have been the best of times to insert your remark about Kimberley, Canada.
Search harder. Click harder.
Passive resistance is futile.
***
Read harder too:
> The scientific establishment of the day (mostly) refuted Callendar’s work and in the years following his treatise in 1938 their doubts grew.
Before we go chasing that storytelling squirrel, it might be nice of you if you acknowledged that the conclusion of Slocum 1955 contains words that contradict your own interpretation of that paper.
More active resistance is futile too.
> Presumably if she read the final one she would not have found a need to read the final book.
We’re not talking about spelling or even wording, TonyB. There’s no reason to expect that Alan’s storyline changed much. It comes straight from the Contrarian Matrix. I’ve even added a sentence for it:
https://contrarianmatrix.wordpress.com/we-won/
Which means that Judy applauds this tour de force “en toute connaissance de cause,” so to speak.
Thank you nevertheless for your kind offer.
Willard
Sorry, I suspect you are playing climate ball whilst I am not, as I don’t begin to understand the point of your pin head dancing with squirrels.
I made the comment about reading the book, then half an hour later, after reading Chapter 4, I asked Mosh for his take on Kimberley. I would like your take as well but you seem to have gone off in a direction that has your squirrels running in your wake giving you quizzical looks.
When the author of the 1938 paper comes to doubt his own theory and the scientific establishment of the time increasingly come to doubt it as well, I think that is pretty well refuted. That it later gained credence does not alter the facts of the time.
tonyb
The paper was not refuted, and it was not demolished.
> I suspect you are playing [C-l-i-m-a-t-e-B-a-l-l] whilst I am not.
Your claim that Callendar’s conjecture has been “elegantly refuted” by Slocum 1955 is contradicted by reading Slocum’s own words in his conclusion, TonyB.
Everything you did so far to counter that fact is to throw squirrels around, find poor excuses, or feign ignorance.
Your suspicion is unwarranted, and your passive resistance is futile.
Jch
You need to put yourself in the mindset of the time.
The greenhouse theory went against the scientific establishments prevailing thoughts in the middle part of the last century .
Callendar himself came to doubt it -as referenced above- and in that he was merely reflecting the status quo and perhaps acknowledging peer pressure and the reality of the downwards temperature trend.
At some point the establishment mostly came to believe in his theory. It didn’t happen during his lifetime as he died in 1964 as temperatures entered their second decade of relative decline.
When that tipping point came was really the point of nabils original question.
My guess is that it became the generally prevailing scientific viewpoint in the late 1970’s or so as more and more researchers realised that the cooling trend had reversed. Whether there was a particular paper that caused the tipping point remains to be found. I suspect again that there was a growing consensus which Hansen articulated in 1988 and brought centre stage.
Interestingly, his paper used many of the 200 temperature stations that callendar had used in the 1930’s. In that he was following the Mitchell curves, a forerunner of many modern data sets.
The met office initially had a low opinion of callendar as he was considered an amateur on the fringes of science.
Tonyb
The Callendar 1938 paper is a great read. I’m not sure we really know more than he did!
“Every gas in this table is perfectly transparent to light, that is to say, all waves within the limits of the visible spectrum pass through it without obstruction”
We know today that this is not the case. All gases absorb solar radiation at different rates.
Seems like too many are taking the view that “seeds” contain all that will be generated from the “seed’. In the general sense, “seeds”, in the context that we often use them in science, are just the springing forth of the imagination.
Seems some would have us believe that the “the knowledge of fire, wheels, etc” were not “seeds” because they did not explicitly call out all the components of modern day science that are even remotely associated with them. Seems more reasonable to view “seeds” as the engenders of imagination about a vast world of knowledge hitherto unimagined. It is a sorry state of affairs when this sort of nitpicking about definitions is the main emphasis that can dredge up.
This is placed here, but it belongs in many places in this blog. So, I make no singular call-out to this person, but, rather, to those in general who desire to nitpick about what was in the “seeds” instead of accepting that not all concepts are totally thought out and presented at conception.
Vaughan Pratt once posted about a ~17th-century Swiss intellectual/scientist who theorized the sky acted like a greenhouse.
If you’re referring to Horace de Saussure that would be 18th century: 1740-1799. In 1767 de Saussure invented the heat-trapping solar oven, which works by allowing incoming insolation in through a glass window, but blocks the outgoing longwave radiation. “The highest temperature he reached was 230 °F, which he found did not vary significantly when the box was carried from the top of Mt. Cramont in the Swiss Alps down to the Plains of Cournier, 4,852 feet below in altitude and 34 °F above in temperature, thereby establishing that the external air temperature played no significant role in this solar heating effect.”
Saussure also invented a number of instruments for measuring climate parameters. “In the Essai sur l’hygrométrie, published in 1783, he records experiments made with various forms of hygrometer in all climates and at all temperatures, and supports the claims of his hair hygrometer against all others. He invented and improved many kinds of apparatus, including the magnetometer, the cyanometer for estimating the blueness of the sky, the diaphanometer for judging of the clearness of the atmosphere, the anemometer and the mountain eudiometer.”
“His modifications of the thermometer adapted that instrument to many purposes: for ascertaining the temperature of the air he used one with a fine bulb hung in the shade or whirled by a string, the latter form being converted into an evaporimeter by inserting its bulb into a piece of wet sponge and making it revolve in a circle of known radius, at a known rate; for experiments on the earth and in deep water he employed large thermometers wrapped in non-conducting coatings so as to render them extremely sluggish, and capable of long retaining the temperature once they had attained it.”
In the 1850s Tyndall invented the spectrophotometer and used it to measure the extent of absorption of radiated heat by a number of gases. He gives a table of 13 gases with explicit absorptivities relative to air, including CO2 but oddly not water vapor, and says “Every gas in this table is perfectly transparent to light, that is to say, all waves within the limits of the visible spectrum pass through it without obstruction; but for the waves of slower period, emanating from our heated plate of copper, enormous differences of absorptive power are manifested. These differences illustrate in the most unexpected manner the influence of chemical combination. Thus the elementary gases, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen, and the mixture atmospheric air, prove to be practical vacua to the rays of heat; for every ray, or more strictly speaking, for every unit of wave motion, which any one of them is competent to intercept, perfectly transparent ammonia intercepts 5460 units, olefiant gas 6030 units, while sulphurous acid gas absorbs 6480 units. What becomes of the wave motion thus intercepted? It is applied to the heating of the absorbing gas. Through air, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, on the contrary, the waves of ether pass without absorption, and these gases are not sensibly changed in temperature by the most powerful calorific rays. The position of nitrous oxide in the foregoing table is worthy of particular notice. In this gas we have the same atoms in a state of chemical union, that exist uncombined in the atmosphere; but the absorption of the compound is 1800 times that of the air.”
Tyndall acknowledges a number of predecessors, saying “De Saussure, Fourier, M. Pouillet, and Mr. Hopkins regard this interception of terrestrial rays as exercising the most important influence on climate.”
“Every gas in this table is perfectly transparent to light, that is to say, all waves within the limits of the visible spectrum pass through it without obstruction”
We know today that this is not the case. All gases absorb solar radiation at different rates.
There is a statue to Horace in Chamonix.
There is also Horace’s son Nicolas who was a chemist and worked on plant photosynthesis
http://www.cropsreview.com/de-saussure.html
He took some of the early readings of the fraction of atmospheric co2
tonyb
There is also Horace’s grandson Henri de Saussure, a distinguished entomologist and geologist. Even more famous is Henri’s oldest son (of nine children) Ferdinand de Saussure. Less well known is Ferdinand’s linguist brother René de Saussure who was an important figure in the development of Esperanto before abandoning it in favor of his invention of Esperanto II. (Motto: when you’re on a good thing stick to it.)
See here for an even larger family tree descended from Horace.
@nabilswedan: We know today that this is not the case. All gases absorb solar radiation at different rates.
Very profound, Nabil. Equally profound is that we also know that all stars warm the Earth at different rates, with our own Sun at the head of the list. We can even calculate to an accuracy far better than picowatts per square kilometer just how much they vary.
Vaughan
I can read wiki and am well aware of the family tree, thank you.
I just thought that it was;
a) interesting that there was a statue to Horace-who you had specifically named. Of less interest is that I had suggested my reluctant wife come over to view it, thereby delaying our visit to the adjacent café for a hot chocolate by a few minutes. This also demonstrates the virtue of observations as I can confirm it does exist…
b) That Nicolas was especially relevant bearing in mind his were some of the earliest readings of atmospheric co2–a subject of more than usual interest to Denizens.
Of course, you might think the assorted relatives you have assembled to have some sort of passing relevance as well.
tonyb
Sorry, Tony. Had it occurred to me that what I wrote could somehow be taken negatively by you I wouldn’t have written it.
So is anyone here interested in anything other than disproofs of global warming, great poetry from kim and beth, and the negative in everything else?
Avast there rounded filer binned
Watching legends in their own wind.
========================
Vaughan
Just jo*hing with you, as you well know. (Hope mentioning the J word wont put me in moderation so to be on the safe side have substituted a letter…)
The Saussure family were very clever weren’t they?
PS The Hot chocolate was very overpriced.
tonyb
Vaughn, don’t miss your chance
To sign up with Shukla;
Finest creased pants
And boatloads of mooklah.
====================
The Saussure family were very clever weren’t they?
Most impressive. Prompts one to ask about Horace’s ancestors.
PS The Hot chocolate was very overpriced.
Say what?
@kim: don’t miss your chance To sign up with Shukla; Finest creased pants And boatloads of mooklah.
Even in the 20th century blogs with adult supervision were in short supply. It hasn’t gotten any better since. Kids learn by testing how far they can push adults.
Ah, poor baby. Were your widdul feelings trebly hurt?
==========
In response to Mosh
Is chapter 4 pitiful?
No
Is the book a ‘tour de farce?’
No
Is the book perfect?
No
Is it mostly very good and interesting?
Yes
Tonyb
Tony
Perhaps Mosher is distracted by his new mission. Building mountains from molehills. Do we really care if data is adjusted by hand? What is the alternative? A roboadjuster? Did he miss the Lungi clue? A person or roboadjuster determined that Lungi, a small beach community that has not changed since 1950 should have the same temperatures as Dakar. Amazing!
Richard
Richad
Perhaps Dakar suffers from the reverse uhi they were talking about over at wuwt? :)
Or perhaps the adjustment should not have taken place
Tonyb
I really appreciate this eBook, just started reading this evening. As said elsewhere, putting the text through a spell checker and editing repeated or broken lines and words would be a big plus… These are avoidable glitches in an (mostly) excellent text.
Not to mention the inserted missing ‘nn” page references. But you get what you pay for.
I had much worse experiences with a real editor and an actual eBook publisher. Like WRONG charts. Like a mistyped label to a cartoon that I went and got the author’s express permission to reproduce! And provided the ebook publisher as a single image file. Inexcusable, but reality.
This mgnificent effort is to be applauded for its merits, not criticized for its minor surface blemishes.
I think we are at the point now where their is just not that much more to say about the climate as far as supporting one view versus another view.
I think every possibility has been covered over the past 20 years.
I think what is left now is to see which direction the climate goes in and try to pinpoint the reason behind that direction.
I think what is left now is to see which direction the climate goes in and try to pinpoint the reason behind that direction.
Reminds me of the 19th century assessment of physics: what is left now in physics is to estimate the physical constants to ever higher precision.
The molecular theory of gases then being promoted by the likes of Maxwell, Reynolds, Boltzmann and Gibbs was by no means universally accepted in the 19th century.
And 18th century physics clung steadfastly to Newton’s corpuscular theory of light, which was not displaced by Huygens earlier wave theory until the 19th century.
What will be left in 2100 is the phrase what is left now. Likewise in 2200. Its referent in each case will be very different, as also for 2300.
To my recollection Lamb knew nothing about how to extract periodic components from a broadband signal and did so incorrectly.
He was erudite and an important founder of paleoclimate; his magnum opus is rather interesting and unlike most here I have read it. Also unlike most here I know something about spectral analysis. Lamb’s mathematics was naive and his calculations about periodicity are justifiably not considered relevant.
I seem to recall writing a longer explanation but I’m not finding it. But I wrote in 1997 shortly after reading it that “Lamb is not considered a reliable source these days. He was a very interesting man and writes remarkably well, but his grasp of statistics was weak, and some of his graphs are, well, bogus. He simply overdrew his conclusions in many ways.”
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/sci.environment/tobis$20lamb$20hh/sci.environment/ad8l7CsTvOU/WOHKdpZ_Qh8J
Lamb is an odd hook on which to base a criticism of modern science.
MT, it would be greatly appreciated if you would guest post more here. As an econometrician, I know a fair (but rusty) bit about spectral analysis- and a bunch of orher stats stuff. So your assessments of both odd hooks and modern science would be interesting to evaluate. So far, the modern (climate) science stuff is not doing so well. Even by first year college standards.
The new Stanford paper applying 1940’s aurocorreleation techniques to the 21st century pause? Gimme a break. We learned better than that as undergrads in the 1970’s. Please show your homework.
You tell them, mt.
http://www.informationweek.com/government/leadership/volkswagen-software-cheated-emissions-test-epa/d/d-id/1322257
Scientist know how to fool proof models, for the EPA and CAFE. What’s going to be next you need to wonder.
Michael
What do you consider to be his magnum opus? If you read it in 1997 are you talking about the second edition of ‘Climate history and the modern world’ first published in 1982? He did of course carry out a great deal of valuable research and this was just one publication amongst very many.
Here is a list of his numerous publications;
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/pubs/byauthor/lamb_hh.htm
Lamb was the first director of CRU in 1972 and remains an outstanding source of information on climate. I would recommend anyone unfamiliar with his work to buy ‘Climate history and the modern world’ which they will find interesting, well referenced and still relevant.
His painstaking research on historic climate reconstruction and lack of ability to respond to his critics due to his death in 1997 means that those uncomfortable with his research find him an easy target to criticise.
tonyb
@MT: To my recollection Lamb knew nothing about how to extract periodic components from a broadband signal and did so incorrectly.
Michael, do you know any more about extracting periodic components than Lamb? And if so have you been able to extract any periodic components from Central England Temperature more correctly than Lamb? If you have, would you care to share them with us?
If not then what is the merit in your complaint about Lamb?
I’ve had two graduate level courses on the subject from the editor of the 1970s IEEE volume on it, one D. G. Childers. (“Modern Spectral Analysis” IIRC) My grasp is quite rusty now but was fresh when I read Lamb.
The roots of this discipline (https://ia700702.us.archive.org/4/items/TheMeasurementOfPowerSpectra/BlackmanTukey-MeasurementOfPowerSpectra.pdf ) were contemporaneous with Lamb and it’s unlikely he had heard of it.
It is my recollection that it was clear from the text that he had no idea about preconditioning data or extracting significant periodicities from noisy records.
In my opinion, on physical grounds, is unlikely that any meaningful periodicities are in the record, so no, I can’t do “better” if “better” means identifying things that aren’t meaningfully there.
The idea that climate variability is usefully modeled as a superposition of periodicities is at best an unproven hypothesis, but some analyses take it for granted. The approach is fundamentally flawed. Lamb was neither the first nor the last to do this badly.
Whether it’s worth digging up the relevant material and going through it again is dubious as far as I’m concerned. One would have to find Longhurst’s approach worth bothering with in the first place. I just wanted to point out that he’s not starting on a strong foundation.
I don’t know that me brushing up on spectral analysis and posting for a general readership would add any value to the climate conversation. I think there are other places where an engineering background are more relevant to climate theory. All I’m claiming is that Lamb’s approach struck me as mathematically naive. Since he wrote contemporaneously with the development of the theory, this is not terribly to his discredit. But it’s bizarre to be picking that thread up now.
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I am 1/2 way through the book (I admit to being a slow reader) and several items stand out to me. Longhurst goes through his arguments and then moves on. No moralizing or not very much. Those items to which I pay particular attention have to do with oceanography which I understand was his career vocation. Other items that were mentioned have been mention before on this blog by Chief (Robert Ellison), and Capt’nDallas regarding ocean currents and abrupt climate change plus the talking points of Willis Eschenbach regarding tropical cumulus clouds.
I sure wish Steven Mosher was more specific regarding his dissing chapter 4. Making comparisons between BEST and other data sets is not my shtick.
So far, the book seems to be a narrative providing a viewpoint that I can read, absorb and consider; really, all that I believe Longhurst wanted.
I agree with Judith, good read and worth thinking about.
Judith Curry,
Moderation seems like an unwarranted place for me since I am giving just half thoughts.
I think Mosh is a little upset that Alan doesn’t see BEST as useful in determining the effects of GHG and changes in climates more broadly.
Thanks. That’s much more informative. I’ll keep that in mind when I read the chapter and maybe it will give me clue of my own critical thinking limits.
Nope.
I criticize what he said, not what he didnt say
The author raises objections to the hypothesis that man burning fossil fuels is causing climate change that were raised in the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, the 90s and researchers looked at each objection and found that none could account for the observed change in the environment.
For example, the sun is not increasing its energy output enough.
The sun is not moving closer or hitting the earth more in the northern hemisphere enough.
There are not enough volcanoes to cause the warming,
The earth’s core is not undergoing higher nuclear reactions to warm the earth.
The earth has not been hit by more objects from space to cause warming.
And on and on through all the proposed alternative reasons.
The author simply raises the objections but fails to report the research that excludes those factors as causing the changing environment.
We do not completely understand past periods of warming and cooling, but we do know that
1) they never happened as fast as the earth is warming over the past two centuries – fossil fuel burning has been increasing for four centuries
2) they coincide with major events like massive volcanoes or big meteor or comet impacts, none of which have occurred at the scale required for over five centuries
Why doesn’t the author actually do original research to prove that something other than burning fossil fuels is causing the problem, something that no scientist has ever thought to study in the past century?? Maybe nothing the author can think of hasn’t already been researched and excluded???
Michael Pettengill. Are you aware the Earth is ~ 4.5 billion years old? Yet, you claim to know in detail the exact rate of warming and cooling from the past? Where’s your data, Michael? The proxies we do have indicate warming rates from the past that exceed the rate now. Of course, the proxies carry uncertainty.
Actually, nobody knows that. This is the primary reason the “hockey stick” is essentially a fraud: a high-resolution modern record was effectively grafted onto the end of a much more “smoothed” record (or pseudo-record constructed from “proxies”).
The temperature “rise” you’re talking about lasted about 2 decades. Such dramatic increases (and corresponding decreases) may well have happened during the Medieval Climatic Optimum. Indeed, they may well have happened during the Little Ice Age.
All the “proxies” we have for those times are more or less local, and any effort to provide a “global average” will inevitably smooth things out compared to how a thermometer index might have looked.
Bottom line: we don’t know. Decade-scale variation on top of sub-century and century scale variation and the final exit from the Little Ice Age due to internal “unforced” variation with no contribution from anthropogenic CO2 are fully consistent with the observations.
So is some level of decade-scale variation “overlaid” on some level of rise from anthropogenic CO2. As are many varieties of combination of the two.
For the moment, we just don’t know.
MP:
Perhaps he is waiting for research to demonstrate there actually is a problem?
“There are not enough volcanoes to cause the warming,”
The money shot.
A major volcano is usually associated with temporary COOLING, not warming. This is perhaps counter-intuitive, as volcanos are really hot, but the sulfur dioxide gas emitted by the volcano is further oxidized in the stratosphere to sulfur trioxide, then combines with water forming thin clouds of tiny droplets of sulfuric acid. This raises the albedo of the earth a little for a couple years, reducing the sunlight absorbed at the surface.
Um yeah that was what I meant, Pinatubo and all that.
The way I read MP’s first sentence (which is not easy) plus his list of “objections”, Longhurst is either saying there were not enough volcanoes to explain the warming or that someone else was saying same.
Wouldn’t this comment mean that whomever said it (the original objection) has very limited knowledge regarding the effect of volcanoes on the climate?
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Someone needs to proof read the book, it is littered with typos, some of which confuse the meaning. But otherwise, a good read.
Steve Mosher,
Thanks for the reply. I was assuming climate science is interested in average temperature because it’s a proxy for energy in the atmosphere & oceans. So say for a weather a station with a minimum of 270K and a maximum of 320K in a single day. Is the best average (270+320)/2=295K or (in excel) = power((power(270, 4)+power(320,4))/2, 0.25) which comes to 298.1K ?
The latter would seem to me to be best energy proxy however I can see how it would make life difficult.
WRT GSMT, I think this passage says it all succinctly and clearly:
“But the single number that represents a global mean surface temperature (GSMT) over land and sea – relentlessly recorded every month by several government science agencies – is based on data that are incompletely understood, that are often wrong, and collectively are perhaps meaningless. That changes in this number do not represent changes in heat content of the oceans and atmosphere is very little discussed, yet this is the quantity that is critical to understanding the dynamics of radiatively-forced climate change, be it the Sun or CO2 that does the forcing.190 Such are the problems addressed in this chapter.”
Yes, this global surface number is simply absurd. One cannot measure the heat content of the atmosphere from the boundary layer, not to mention that most of the area is done by SSTs. Only the satellite measurements are real and they do not show any GHG warming.
At the risk of ad hominem, consider who developed and adjusted these surface statistical models. Wigley, Jones, Hansen and Karl. Warmers all. When I first started to question these surface models, many years ago, I got an angry email from Wigley, saying they knew about these problems. My response was that unlike them, I was prepared to conclude that the model results were incorrect.
Ok, here is what I get using the Skeptical Science trend calculator for 1979 to present.
UAH – .139 +- .064 /decade
RSS = .121 +- .063 /decade
Why do you say they don’t show any GHG warming?
The satellite SAT series are a joke.
@DW: Only the satellite measurements are real and they do not show any GHG warming.
Perhaps, but they definitely show warming from some cause:
http://clim.stanford.edu/LowerTroposphere.jpg
In particular UAH shows a trend of +1.39 °C/century. To what do you attribute this strong warming if not GHGs?
Couldn’t be the oceans.
Attribution, she’s a bitch;
Don’t know why, just scratch that itch.
Puff the Magic Climate,
Lived by the CO2,
Nature turned and bit him, someplace rich.
==============
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-amo/from:1980/plot/rss/from:1980
Welcome back , kim. Things haven’t changed much so just start in where you left off.
The ESRL AMO is significantly detrended and still matches the RSS. Interesting. What does this mean? I think the UAH will soon be discredited by the skeptical community because it is rising too fast for them.
Sat temps have risen more than sfc based temps in the past 12 months.
BTW, UAH6.0 now shows shocking correlation to RSS. Satellite data gets adjusted too.
A doctor has a an anal thermometer and phone access to a satellite passing overhead. He needs to know the baby’s temperature so he can save it.
He punches in a connection to the satellite… LMAO.
“A doctor has a an anal thermometer and phone access to a satellite passing overhead. He needs to know the baby’s temperature so he can save it. ”
The doctor has a billion babies. Some have thermometers. Most don’t. All different kinds of thermometers…digital…analog, mercury, etc. Some are measured anally, some in the ear, some under the arm. Some under the tongue. Some are measured in the morning in the sun. Some at night outside. Sometimes they change when they measure. Sometimes they just guess. Sometimes, they give them hot tea and measure before bed. Sometimes, the babies die and they measure a different one.
Maybe the billion babies need saving. Maybe not.
The satellite measures all the babies, all the time, the same way. It’s not perfect either, but it treats all the babies the same.
Would the real Vaughn Pratt please step forward, you know, the one with a little credibility he’d like to cherish?
========================
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2015/09/24/exogenous-redux/
UAH shows a step warming coincident with the giant ENSO. No warming before and none after, but the latter flat line is a little warmer that the prior flat line. This is not GHG warming, unless there is a huge heat capacitor hidden somewhere in the system. The steady increase in GHGs cannot produce no warming for 20 years, then a jump during a giant El Nino, followed by no warming for 15 years.
UAH 6.0 is said to be more like RSS, so I would expect its trends would mirror RSS instead of GISS, which is what the wood for trees versions of UAH sort of does… back when it was more accurate.
UAH does not show anything except a surface temperature fantasy; ditto for RSS.
Settled Wojick science
“The steady increase in GHGs cannot produce no warming for 20 years, then a jump during a giant El Nino, followed by no warming for 15 years.”
Notice that skeptics just make assertions.
Can you explain to me how 1998 could have changed the climate to make it warmer now? The trend analysis after all considers all of the years in the period, not just one.
Yeah, JCH, I don’t know what to make of the satellite measurements. The difference between the version trends is so large. That makes you wonder what is going wrong that would cause such a disparity. Because it’s obvious something is wrong.
The climate is a hyper-complex non-linear system. It could certainly “produce no warming for 20 years, then a jump during a giant El Nino, followed by no warming for 15 years” in response to the “steady increase in GHGs”. Unfortunately, it could also produce it as a result of unforced internal variation. Or all sorts of other things.
At least David W. presents a logically consistent argument (by assertion). It might be wrong (I’m not smart enough to say), but at least it’s logically consistent.
Unicorns? Do you have any papers on potential explanations other than AGW?
I just gave a “potential explanation[…] other than AGW”. Unforced internal variation. A natural component of discrete non-linear dynamical systems. But I found a few papers discussing internal variability, albeit from a perspective of a prior assumption that “global warming” is happening. Meaning that they couldn’t be used to “prove” “global warming” without begging the question.
Externally Forced and Internally Generated Decadal Climate Variability Associated with the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation by Gerald A. Meehl, Aixue Hu, Julie M. Arblaster, John Fasullo, and Kevin E. Trenberth J. Climate, 26, 7298–7310.
How Much Have Variations in the Meridional Overturning Circulation Contributed to Sea Surface Temperature Trends since 1850? A Study with the EC-Earth Global Climate Model by Torben Schmith, Shuting Yang, Emily Gleeson, Tido Semmler J. Climate, 27, 6343–6357.
Quantifying the Role of Internal Climate Variability in Future Climate Trends by David W. J. Thompson, Elizabeth A. Barnes, Clara Deser, William E. Foust, and Adam S. Phillips J. Climate, 28, 6443–6456.
Southern Ocean Sector Centennial Climate Variability and Recent Decadal Trends by Mojib Latif, Torge Martin, and Wonsun Park J. Climate, 26, 7767–7782.
Climate Change: Multidecadal and Beyond (World Scientific Series on Asia-Pacific Weather and Climate) by Chih-Pei Chang, Michael Ghil, Mojib Latif, John M Wallace
Willard flips the two-headed coin.
==============
Willard says…
“This suggests that something happened around 2000 to cause these data sets to diverge. Thermometers didn’t change how they measure temperature, nor balloons how they rise through the atmosphere. But satellite instruments have gone through many changes, satellite orbits have altered, and the satellites themselves change over time. I strongly suspect that there’s a serious problem with the satellite data after about the year 2000, as indicated by their divergence from thermometer data.”
I agree there is a divergence. Eventually we will resolve this. In the meantime, skeptics will love their satellites and non-skeptics will love their ground base.
But, I think your conclusions are a bit hasty. Thermometers do change. More importantly, the methods of adjusting them and gridding them have changed a lot.
What if there was a third source of data to compare them to get some sort of validation? I believe there is in the CFS data.
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/model-data/model-datasets/climate-forecast-system-version2-cfsv2
This data series is developed objectively every hour to initialize the climate models and archive historical grids. Other similar schemes initialize the weather models every day. The data includes all valid data sources… sfc obs, balloon, sat data, aircraft recon, etc.
Compared on a monthly basis to GISS, Hadcrut, UAH, and RSS, the correlations are all about the same. Makes sense because it uses the same data.
The trend is what is interesting. Since 2000, land based temp indexes show significant warming, satellites just a small amount and the CFS data shows slight cooling.
This would seem to give the trend accuracy nod to the satellite data.
I’m not knowledgeable enough to claim to know the answer. However, I do know that the divergence is real and there is a limit to how long it can continue. In the meantime, in the last 12 months, satellites have been warmer than sfc data.
So, skeptics, be careful what you fall in love with. Better if everybody just keeps working transparently to make the data better.
@Roscoe Shaw: Since 2000, land based temp indexes show significant warming, satellites just a small amount and the CFS data shows slight cooling. This would seem to give the trend accuracy nod to the satellite data.
Comparing global troposphere to land is apples and oranges because (a) 70% of the troposphere is over sea, not land and (b) evaporation and spray make for a much more intimate thermal contact of air with sea than with land. One would therefore expect lower troposphere to track sea surface closely, certainly much more closely than land. And one would also expect the troposphere to fluctuate more on account of having a thermal inertia equivalent to only the top 3 m of ocean, which is less than 10% of the oceanic mixed layer.
So does the data bear out these expectations? Well, here’s RSS and SST (HadSST3 global), both smoothed to a 5-year running mean, with RSS offset by 0.12 so that both have the same mean over 1979-now. Judge for yourself.
http://clim.stanford.edu/SatSea.jpg
(WoodForTrees link for the above plot)
The RSS trend is +1.21 °C/century while that of SST is +1.27 °C/century (click on Raw Data at the WoodForTrees link). The UAH trend is +1.39 °C/century. The mean of the two satellite trends is 1.30 °C/century which is within 0.03 of the SST trend. Since the two satellite trends are so far apart this would seem to give the trend accuracy nod to the sea surface data.
Although there were no satellite observations of the lower troposphere prior to 1979, the foregoing expectation of close tracking, backed up by its excellent empirical confirmation, makes SST likely to be the best proxy we’ll ever have for the lower troposphere prior to 1979, better even than if there’d been satellites back then given the significant disagreement between RSS and UAH.
Incidentally unlike some people I do believe the hiatus happened; for one thing it’s quite visible in the graph I just gave. I found the statistical proofs that the hiatus didn’t happen, implicitly by Santer et al and more explicitly by Rajaratnam et al, unconvincing for multiple reasons, the main one being the modeling, in both papers, of climate fluctuations not attributable to CO2 as random noise, as opposed to a combination of signals well correlated with accurately observable natural phenomena.
> Willard says…
You must be new here, Roscoe.
The italics indicate a quote.
The quote leads to Tamino’s.
You can go debate his conclusions with him.
Thank you for your concerns.
@DW: One cannot measure the heat content of the atmosphere from the boundary layer, not to mention that most of the area is done by SSTs.
@2-year-old child: One cannot calculate 27×34.
Just because you can’t is no reason to conclude that more competent people can’t.
Logic fail of the day
“This would seem to give the trend accuracy nod to the satellite data.
I’m not knowledgeable enough to claim to know the answer. “
Heh, Willard suggests going to Tamino’s and debating with him. Been there, done that; Willard, white rabbit, words are a habit.
=====================
The passage is gibberish
“But the single number that represents a global mean surface temperature (GSMT) over land and sea – relentlessly recorded every month by several government science agencies – is based on data that are incompletely understood, that are often wrong, and collectively are perhaps meaningless.
1. It’s MORE THAN a single number. You can choose to look at the whole field (360*180 numbers), You can choose to look at the average of all those.
2. The data is understood. I understand it every month. I can tell you what it is, what the uncertainty is and what it is likely to be next month. EVERY FRICKING DAY national weather services use this data to forecast weather. Its the same fricking data.
3. ALL measurement is wrong. UAH, RSS, land ocean… all of it. But its correct enough to tell us
A) climate was changing… and lately it paused!
“That changes in this number do not represent changes in heat content of the oceans and atmosphere is very little discussed, yet this is the quantity that is critical to understanding the dynamics of radiatively-forced climate change, be it the Sun or CO2 that does the forcing.190 Such are the problems addressed in this chapter.”
This is perhaps the most inane comment.
Suppose I told you that the top speed of a car was 160mph and YOUR response was that “this told me nothing about the gas milage”
OF COURSE the temperature tells you little about the heat content
DUH, DUH, DUH, DUH. and DUH!
he is criticizing an elephant for not being a mouse.
No it didn’t. It’s continued changing in a number of interesting ways.
One thing that does appear to have paused is that single number (“index”) everybody’s looking at.
But lot’s of stuff’s continued changing, often along a different trajectory. I’ve posted the occasional link, some of which our hostess has noticed.
@AK: No it didn’t [pause]. It’s continued changing in a number of interesting ways.
Oh, come on, AK, get real. If you were a traffic cop waiting at a stop sign and I stopped, you’d book me for not waiting until everything in my car including the crankshaft and my heart had stopped.
AK.
what he wrote was stoooopid.
please dont side with stooopidness.
when people make dumb arguments even if they are on your side.. just tell them to stop..
It wasn’t dumb. Just a little unclear.
The whole “global warming” thing is a bait-and-switch. Adding CO2 might change the climate, and that might have effects we don’t like. There might be serious negative effects even if the “global average temperature” doesn’t change. There might be no serious effects even if the “global average temperature” does change.
The “global average temperature” is a myth: anything you compute from measuring temperature at/near the surface is irrelevant to planetary heat loss via radiation. (And so is your whole “temperature field”.) Anything you compute as the “average radiative temperature” is irrelevant to what surface/lower troposphere temperatures do.
No, but if you slammed on your brakes at the last moment, and slid through the stop sign with your wheels locked and killed a pedestrian, I’d arrest you for negligent homicide.
Missing heat deep in oceanic throats,
Or radiant energy, taken to the boats.
==========================
Surface temperature is used as a proxy for outgoing IR in the energy flow budget. Also, the amount it exceeds 255 K is the greenhouse effect.
When things don’t make sense, there are many possibilities –e.g., we’re all too stupid or everyone else is or we don’t know as much as we think we do or there are powerful ulterior motives underlying why people say and believe what they do even though reality paints a different picture. Or, it’s because we simply believe without facts and despite alternative explanations and evidence to the contrary, which pretty much explains belief in global warming, i.e., it has become a religion.
Interesting parallel between VW’s diesel scandal and global warming. VW was not able to make diesel cars that gave the results they were after and still meet pollution standards so they used software that gave them the results they wanted. What’s illegal in the automotive industry and immoral by any standard in the business world in general is, however, common practice in the field of climatology, even despite the fact they’ve been caught.
I’ve been waiting a long time for the “Hitler learns about…..” video that actually had relevance.
“Everyone leave the room except for Michael Mann…”
Chapter 4 is superb … a tour de force!
I couldn’t get the link on his education
See also Longhurst’s biosketch at Elsevier
to work.
I found him on google at the NOAA link technical memo ;Sep 1989 Southwest Fisheries Center at Scripps; The First 25 Years. His PhD was from Bedford College University of London and D.Sc University of London
If anyone is interested in his educational background.
Thanks to him and to Dr Curry for the interesting information.
Scott
“But more recently, I became troubled by what seemed to be a preference to view the climate as a global stable state, unless perturbed by anthropogenic effects”
a human free climate does not exist
can we say with any ‘certainty’ that a human free universe exist?
humans ‘perturbing’ anything is a construct of humans
every darn thing we observe has an ‘anthropogenic’ component
the Pontiff picking up ‘climate change’ as a cause makes perfect sense
because one needs a Supreme Being to make ‘man free nature’ have logical legs
there is, without question, a highly emotional political constituency behind much of the alleged science in this field
as a result, the continuous revamping of data looks suspicious
as we cannot separate the world we observe from ourselves
I doubt we will have much luck removing this issue from politics, religion and philosophy … not saying it’s altogether a wasted effort
1. glaciers retreat?
2. glaciers advance?
3. glaciers stable … now that would be unnatural
I wish us all good luck with the search for a global stable state … and income equality
Obama seems to like religious people if they happen to be Communists. Funny, that.
Good to see a qualified oceanographer’s physically-motivated take on available climate data thoroughly documented. This is a much needed antidote to the blind number-crunching perspective of “global temperature index” makers, who treat what should be data as mere numbers to be variously adjusted to meet geophysically naïve expectations. Despite some warts, here and there, the message is abundantly clear: the globe is far from being well-covered by data adequate for bona fide scientific work. The index makers are in the business of creating salable fiction.
Converted it to rtf and sent it to my kindle. Not perfect, but a million times better than dealing with a pdf.
Looks like Dr. Evans is ready to take a second run at a climate model.
…
New Science 1: Pushing the edge of climate research. Back to the new-old way of doing science
…
1. Introducing a Series of Blog Posts on Climate Science
Dr David Evans, 22 September 2015. Project home page.
Breaking the Intellectual Standoff
There is an intellectual standoff in climate change. Skeptics point to empirical evidence that disagrees with the climate models. Yet the climate scientists insist that their calculations showing a high sensitivity to carbon dioxide are correct — because they use well established physics, such as spectroscopy, radiation physics, and adiabatic lapse rates.
How can well-accepted physics produce the wrong answer? We mapped out the architecture of their climate models and discovered that while the physics appears to be correct, the climate scientists applied it wrongly. Most of the projected warming comes from two specific mistakes.
Given all the empirical evidence against the carbon dioxide theory, there had to be problems in the basic sensitivity calculation. Now we’ve found them.
…
http://joannenova.com.au/2015/09/new-science-1-pushing-the-edge-of-climate-research-back-to-the-new-old-way-of-doing-science/
Steven Mosher: There are SMART arguments about sampling: Pielke Sr. MAKES THEM
There are smart arguments about UHI and micro site: Ross (on methods)
(anthony on data)
There are smart arguments on adjustments: Brandon and carrick make them.
In case Alan Longhurst wants to update and upgrade this chapter in the future, he would do well to master the BEST treatment and master what Mosh here calls the “SMART arguments”. I don’t join Mosh in claiming that all of Lonhurst’s chapter is pitiful, but the treatment of BEST is “clearly inadequate”. In the end, the temperature trend reconstructions based on extant surface thermometers are not accurate enough to address the energy flow problems entailed in the theory of catastrophic anthropogenic greenhouse gas induced global warming. Hence my claim (2) above, even should Mosh’s advice be taken. Has the flow of energy into the deep oceans increased, thus creating the observed “pause”? What accounts for the greening of the Sahel over the last 40 years? Were the changes in ENSO caused by an increase in downwelling LWIR? Can the surface temperature records elucidate how much global natural variation independent of CO2 there has been? Why has the energy dissipation in hurricanes an typhoons remained as stable as it has?
Recommendations for improvement are a dime a dozen. If it were easy, IPCC wouldn’t take as long as they do.
The sea surface temperature record is even less informative than the land surface temperature record.
Are those supposed to be quotes from Steven Mosher or something else? I thought the italics meant they were quotes, but I don’t see him (or anyone else) saying them anywhere on this page.
I think matt made those quotes up, brandoon. You better call the quote police. Better yet, get a freaking life.
Brandon S?: Are those supposed to be quotes from Steven Mosher
Yep. I copied and pasted them directly. Doing a search on the string “SMART arguments”, I do not find them anywhere except in that post of mine.
?
Several of Steven’s comments have disappeared. His response to one of mine is gone.
We are through discussing Mosher’s take on chapter 4 on this thread.
wow.
We let sky dragons go on for 2000 comments,
but we cant criticize the tour de farce
The issue is repeating the same comments ad infinitum. And the comments address only a small fraction of the post.
Judith, Climate Etc needs a tally sheet of postings. Posters like Mosher just fill the blog with 1-liners intended often as just needling. Godd that you have taken the initiative here. You have given Mosher and some other quite a bit a leeway. And, of course, he has bitched that he could not go on as infinitum.
yes aaron
You asked for specifics and I listed more than half a dozen problems to aid you.
Than comment did not REPEAT anything.
The effect of the editing is that you asked a question for more speccifics.
I gave them
Now, months from now someone will come along and cite the thread as proof that I wont answer honest questions.
ys matthew thank you for quoting me.
that was too funny.
I think the quote police must have been eating too many donuts
In comparison to Longhurst, what BEST knows about the physical climate would fit in a thimble, with room left over for their modesty.
Page 193:
No citation for that indirect quote.
***
Alan’s claim that
is misleading at best.
It took me one minute to find the article he was likely citing.
http://climateaudit.org/2010/12/02/odonnell-et-al-2010-refutes-steig-et-al-2009/
I haven’t read the book so I don’t know myself how well this item was referenced or cited, but there was enough in your quote for me to find it from what I remembered of the incident, ya know, like Mosher does.
One minute is too long, jeez. It should have taken you 10 seconds.
Alan’s “but 88 pages” omits an important detail that I’m sure you’ll be able to find out in your research.
In any case, that’s beside the point. Claiming to use very little Internet reference while omitting some stretches the bounds of justified disingeniousness.
If you recall the O’Donnell affair, saying “justified disingenuousness” should suffice to jigger your memory:
http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/tagged/antartica
***
There are other implicit references like that in Alan’s tour de force. Since most chapters are based on the CAGW storyline, there’s no way out.
Got a minute willard?
http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2015/09/22/growing-number-believe-californias-drought-is-a-government-conspiracy/
May you say geo-engineering? What would you say if true?
The truth is out there, Arch. Go play squirrel with TonyB. That’ll help him grasp the concept.
Jammer 5, out.
None of these claims pass the straight-face test. The text is poorly written in the classical sky dragon style of run-on sentence structures with convoluted and backward logic flow. It’s not technical at all, it just uses technical jargon in a random pattern. There is at least one equation, so that’s not true. It is not easily accessible to anyone with real technical skill because of the poor sentence structure, logic flow and lack of coherent content.
This tome leans heavily on solar and barycentric drivers to discount the influence of CO2 on increasing temperature. At the same time, it attempts to make a case that the temperature data is too sparse and overly manipulated to trust.
Calling this wordy disorganized melange of half-baked pipe dreams a Tour de Force is jumping the shark. It is disappointing to admit that ATTP, Eli, et al are right about Climate etc..
Judith
Horst makes an extraordinary number of generalised comments and I think this sniping and heavy artillery fire by a variety of commentators has detracted from the thread. Some of the criticism may well be valid, but because we are discussing a whole book with many complex ideas and subjects there has been relatively little homing in on any genuine problems the book may or may not have on specific topics.
Can I suggest that one chapter is taken as a stand alone article in the next few days, in the hope that people will focus on it and confine their criticism to the data contained within it and not go off on some unrelated subject.
Because of its importance I would suggest that Chapter Ten ‘The Ocean and sea level rise and ph’ is showcased. This starts on page 207. It also has the advantage that it may well be that those who are commenting may not yet have reached as far as page 207 so it will be new ground for them
During their comments people might actually like to be helpful and point out where, for example, there is ‘poor sentence structure, logic flow and lack of coherent content.’
tonyb
> we are discussing a whole book with many complex ideas and subjects
I’d rather say the review is a complex of well-known ideas with the usual subjects, TonyB.
However, I agree with you about Chapter 10. It’s at least original.
Chapter 1 is a mash-up of Kuhn, Judy’s (?), and teh modulz.
Chapter 2 starts up with a shopping list of forcing and ends up with “but Hymalayas”.
Chapter 3 is basic natural cycles all the way to Ruddiman’s hypothesis and “but unprecedented.”
Chapter 4 is, well, Chapter 4.
Chapter 5 is about the oceans but ends up with “but it’s the Sun, stupid”.
Chapter 6 is about Senior’s pet topic and ends up with connecting with, well, Chapter 4.
Chapter 7 is about North Atlantic and ends up with “but Gulf Stream shutdown”.
Chapter 8 is about the Arctic and ends up with “but Antarctica” and the O’Donnell affair.
Chapter 9 is about Junior’s pet topic, and ends up with Mr. T dancing a touchdown dance.
Chapter 11 is about Judy’s pet topic and ends up in a very strange ellipsis.
The Conclusion is, well, the conclusion.
***
Zooming in the most original chapter of the review might not help evaluate the whole tour de force. It may lead us where we’re less used to go, which is a good thing.
Go team!
it was my intention to focus on individual sections in coming weeks.
Tony: I was refuting Dr. Curry’s generalization claiming a very high quality of the book with a generalization of my own. Based on my sampling of the book, it’s length could be easily shortened by half.
Ever the optometrist, I have started to plow through Chapter 10 based on your and Willard’s recommendation.
Horst
Ever the optometrist? Are you suggesting that we haven’t read the book properly and need our eyes testing? :)
Yes, Chapter 10. Suggested by TonyB and endorsed by Willard. The dream team.
Chapter Ten T-shirts and souvenirs are now available from all good outlets.
tonyb
I’ll put a separate post up to discuss ch 10 later tonite, I’m under some insane deadlines at the moment.
> Based on my sampling of the book, it’s length could be easily shortened by half.
It could a two-pager with minimal effort:
(1) Copy-paste the bullet points in the conclusion;
(2) Add references.
First half of chapter 10.. is well.. nothing special.
although he does make a point I’ve made over and over..
building on coasts is dangerous..
Chapter 10:
Spends mass quantities of words outlining many of the problems with Sea Level measurements, but then curtly concludes that IPCC ultimately gets it right. Blathers on and on that near-shore urbanization is bad with and without AGW SLR.
Cites recent peer reviewed papers on ocean acidification that demonstrate many marine organisms are robust in lower pH higher Temp conditions. Apparently rapid evolution may save the planet from collapse. The book slams California Current Acidification Network without cause for good measure. He fails to mention anthropomorphic nutrient loading via wastewater discharges and agricultural runoff that impacts nearshore marine ecosystem
==> “It is disappointing to admit that ATTP, Eli, et al are right about Climate etc..”
Right when they said what? Can you be specific?
J0$[-]V^: Not without moderation
How about a link?
Do you read those blogs or just comment ;^{)
Tweedle dee meets tweedle dum. We are amused.
Mosher shooting himself in both feet, good and bad.
“B.) The sampling is FINE if anything its over sampled. That is
why you can for example pick 110 PRISTINE sites in the US
(CRN) and predict the rest of the country: Including
100s of other pristine sites ( RCRN) and 1000’s of “bad” sites.
What’s it tell you when you can start with 60 samples and get
one time series… then add 300 and get the same,,, then add
3000 and get the same…. then add 30000 and get the same?
whats that tell you about sampling?
Whats it tell you when you can pick 5000 and then predict any
other 5000 or 10000?”
What it tells anyone with common sense is that all the sites have been linked to each other by an algorithm and are no longer individual raw or individual site modified data but data that has been homogenized to fit in with every adjacent site.
This is not something to be proud of.
This is scientifically very, very wrong.
Any true set of recordings makes allowance for the fact that temperatures very from minute to minute from site to site and that due to known weather variations sites do not have to match each other in step.
What Mosher alludes to is pure chicanery.
Any set of sample sites that agrees this perfectly means they are not real temperature recordings anyway in any form.
It is the Cowtan and Way Kriging experience over again.
You must be able to pick sites that do not agree with each other in any sample.
That is what weather temperature, measurement is all about.
When you link everything to each other so they all move in step whatever sample you take you do not have real measurements.
Try it on the raw data Steven. See if they all move the same way whether you use 2 or 50,000.
I will guarantee they don’t.
Take your modified data and prove they all link perfectly.
I guarantee they do as well. I have your word for it.
And what do you call your data?
Well not data anymore.
“E) Accuracy is a vague term.”
No it is a very accurate term
“for example pick 110 PRISTINE sites in the US
(CRN) and predict the rest of the country
you can for example 1000’s of “bad” sites.”
So in your system bad sites are just as accurate as pristine sites.
That alone makes none of them pristine any longer and all of them bad.
wrong
“What it tells anyone with common sense is that all the sites have been linked to each other by an algorithm and are no longer individual raw or individual site modified data but data that has been homogenized to fit in with every adjacent site.
This is not something to be proud of.
This is scientifically very, very wrong.”
###############################################3
This is wrong. The “raw” data still exists. The raw data is used
like ANY SAMPLE to make an estimate or prediction: we predict
as all spatial stats does “what would we likely observe at UNSAMPLED
locations” to do that we use the sampled data to create a regression.
#######################################333
Any true set of recordings makes allowance for the fact that temperatures very from minute to minute from site to site and that due to known weather variations sites do not have to match each other in step.
A) there is no “true” set of recordings. there are records of measurements. period. We predict a monthly average, not an hourly
or minute average. The temperature changes micro second by micro second. but we are not predicting that. we are predicting monthly tmax
and monthly tmin. and the average of these two. Nothing more or less.
What Mosher alludes to is pure chicanery.
Any set of sample sites that agrees this perfectly means they are not real temperature recordings anyway in any form.
####################################
Bizzare. The sites dont match perfectly.
#############################
It is the Cowtan and Way Kriging experience over again.
You must be able to pick sites that do not agree with each other in any sample.
A) you can.
Try it on the raw data Steven. See if they all move the same way whether you use 2 or 50,000.
I will guarantee they don’t.
Take your modified data and prove they all link perfectly.
No they dont MATCH read harder
“E) Accuracy is a vague term.”
No it is a very accurate term
Wrong again. Suppose I record the temperature to a single
digit. 32.1 is that Accurate? if the true measure is 32. then
it is accurate to .1C. is that Accurate? it depends. The real question is is it accurate enough FOR A PURPOSE. if my purpose is to decide whether to wear a jacket or not I can accept a measure that is good to 5 or 10 degrees!! if I am controlling a chemical process I may need more accuracy.
“for example pick 110 PRISTINE sites in the US
(CRN) and predict the rest of the country
you can for example 1000’s of “bad” sites.”
So in your system bad sites are just as accurate as pristine sites.
That alone makes none of them pristine any longer and all of them bad
WRONG.
You take 100 perfect sites. They predict the US average will be
74.5 F
You now average the 20,000 “bad” sites. GUESS WHAT
their average will be very close to 74.5F in spite of their
collective biases and inaccuracies. None of those 20000 will
be free of error but collectively the biases and errors tend to cancel.
thats testable and true.
So take 100 perfect. Predict The prediction is 74.5F
Now test the prediction
take the 20K average them
answer.. 74.55 F like that get it?.
“You take 100 perfect sites. They predict the US average will be
74.5 F
You now average the 20,000 “bad” sites. GUESS WHAT
their average will be very close to 74.5F in spite of their
collective biases and inaccuracies. None of those 20000 will
be free of error but collectively the biases and errors tend to cancel.
that’s testable and true.”
Seems to me that would only be true if the 20,000 “bad” sites had biases and inaccuracies for essentially random reasonsand also were located in a pattern very similar to but merely more dense than the 100 “perfect” sites.
“Seems to me that would only be true if the 20,000 “bad” sites had biases and inaccuracies for essentially random reasonsand also were located in a pattern very similar to but merely more dense than the 100 “perfect” sites.”
It doesnt matter what SEEMS to you.
The simple fact is you can predict the 20000 bad sites from the 100 good sites.
WHY?
1. The bad sites are not that bad
2. Where they may be bad the errors TEND to offset.
Understand, the definition of GOOD site has never been TESTED
in the field in a rigorous way. such that the difference between good and bad can established. In other words “bad” sites still can be good enough.
See why it doesnt matter what “seems” to you
From 2005-2013, BEST had a 0.95 monthly correlation to CRN “Pristine” data set over the contiguous USA. Both trendlines were essentially flat but CRN warmed a bit more.
My first impressions are that this book merits reflective reading. On Doubt and Uncertainty there are really two separate issues – identifying changes occurring over recent times and the consequences of increasing CO2 levels for tropospheric temperatures. D&U focuses on the former. My interest has been with the latter. It’s expressible in mathematical terms and the growing question in my mind has become, has climate science reached the Pauli criterion of not even being wrong?
I await the day when the D&U aspects of CS theory are as thoroughly taken to task by those versed in quantitative reasoning and uncommitted to current memes.
Thanks JC for the link, definitely a keeper!
Why is there so much Mosher-type comment in this thread? And why is it so activistic? The book must be very threatening. Perhaps it is difficult to understand for some.
As I have said we have a great natural test here.
Increasing CO2– warmer global temp. trend
Minimum prolonged solar and associated effects– colder global temp. trend.
Time will determine which one is correct.
We should have the answer before this decade is out.
I expect colder.
There was a Roman Warm Period, then a cold period, Then the Medieval Warm Period, Then the Little Ice Age, Now the Modern Warm Period.
You do not settle a thousand year cycle with a decade of data. There is plenty of good data to look at for the past ten thousand years. Look at that data.
The Roman and Medieval Warm Periods lasted several hundred years. We will have some shorter warm and cold cycles but this warm period will last several hundred years, like it is supposed to.
How can well-accepted physics produce the wrong answer? We mapped out the architecture of their climate models and discovered that while the physics appears to be correct, the climate scientists applied it wrongly. Most of the projected warming comes from two specific mistakes.
Lost is the culture where repeated observations matter and where no authority, and no opinion, is higher than the data.
When climate model output disagrees with data, the models are wrong and the mistakes come from lack of knowledge about the science of climate. There is one or more things about climate that are really important that they really do not understand.
I have only read one chapter in detail. Based on what I have read about BEST and other reconstructions, I think that the chapter conclusions are likely to withstand criticism, even though I think the BEST team have done better than Alan Longhurst thinks they have done. BEST has been much discussed here at ClimateEtc.
This is not an easy field for one person to read about and summarize in one book. I hope that we can devote some time to the other chapters. I feel a lot of respect for Alan Longhurst for attempting a survey in a relatively small volume, and for reading such a lot of reference material. Is there a single volume that is a better introduction? Possibly the scientific portions (not the summaries for policy makers) of IPCC AR(5)?
Chapter 10
Didnt take long to read the first half. some key texts I would probe later.
below I give you the basic argument:
This!chapter!examines!the!proposition!that!although!sea!coasts!are,!
and!always!have!been,!a!critical!habitat!for!the!development!of!human!activities,!they!
are!unstable!and!not!suitable!for!large!permanent!settlements!and!industrial!activity.
This! is! yet! one! more! case! where! linear!
projections! of! rates! observed! today! into! the! future! are! meaningless:!what! one! can!
predict!with!great!confidence!is!that! the!cyclical!nature!of!change!in!sea!level!is!not!
going! to! disappear!into! a!linear! future.! !And,! once! again,!it! should! not! be! forgotten!
that! the! start! of! the! 20th! century! was! not! very! long! after! the! cold! anomaly! of! the!
1860s! and! 1870s,! so! that! any! centennial linear! trends! are! likely! to mislead!
concerning!conditions!to!come.
This! suggestion is! comforted! by! reported! observations! of! a! 60Ayear! cycle! in!
rainfall!in!Africa!and!the!Americas!that!is!significantly!correlated!with!the!AMO!signal!
in! North! and! South! Atlantic! SSTs;! it! also! suggests! that! we! should! examine! the!
consequences! for! sea! level! of! a! progressive! change! in! salinity! of! the! ocean,! a!
possibility! almost! completely!ignored!in! the! literature,! even! though! during! the! last!
halfAcentury!about!10%!of!the!mean!sea!level!rise!has!been!caused!by!a!freshening!of!
the!upper!3000m!of!the!oceans,!as!fresh!water!from!the!continents!has!been!added!to!
the!oceans.!!Of!course,!the!freshening!of!ocean!water!is!not!similar!everywhere,!and!it!
penetrates!more!deeply!in!some!regions!than!others.5
The!recent!AR5!of!2014!has!performed!what! I!believe! to!be!an!excellent!and!
fairAminded!review!of!recent!sea!level!rise!A attributing!the!multidecadal!change!that!
has!been!observed to!changes!in!the!major!climate!indices,!the AMO,!ENSO!and!so!on.!!
Their!conclusions!are!summarised!as! follows
Although!it!is! clear that! the! community!is! not!going! to! stop!gnawing! on! this!
bone,! the!more! reasonable!approach!would! be to!accept! uncertainty! rather! than! to!
overstate!confidence!in!any!single!computation;!in!any!case,!as!shall!be!discussed!in!
the!next!section,!the!problems!of!coastal!and!island!communities!A which!are already!
serious! A from! an! invasive! ocean! have! little! or! nothing! to! do! with! climate! change,!
anthropogenic!or!otherwise.
Wherever!you!look,!similar!situations!are!to!be!found:!many!city!founders!built!
in!the!wrong!places.!!When!parts!of!New!York!become! flooded!in!the! future,!as!they!
will! be,! this! will! be! due! not! only! to! sea! level! rise,! but! also! because! Manhattan! is!
sinking;! the! difference! between! sea!level! rise! obtained! from! the! Battery! tide! gauge!
and!sea!level!stability!observed!in!satellite!data!makes!it!clear! that! the! fill!on!which!
this!part!of!the!city!is!built!is!sinking!significantly.!!
############################################
Chapter 10 first half
the basic argument, somewhat lame, but there are parts i agree with.
A) Sea level increase is hard to measure.
B) Linear predictions (skeptics do these ) are no good.
C) The IPCC do a fair job
D) But UNCERTAINTY…
E) Despite uncertainty, we are already Living in the wrong places.
F) But Corals
The basic argument is this. measuring and predicting sea level increase is a hard thing to do. Poor records, many adjustments, too short satellite records.. you cant trust a simple linear prediction.. it could be worse..
So all knowledge of the future is undermined.
Looking at the past and present we see that we are already living in dangerous areas, except for coral atolls, they adapt . The problem is we picked the wrong places to live.
##########################
Flip the argument around
1) Given we picked unstable coastal areas to live.
2) An uncertain science suggests things will generally get worse
in a warming world.
3. Therefore, do what you can to keep a bad situation from becoming worse
Mosh
I think you need to read Willards comments above and my response to him.
He had a suggestion as to how to fix the exclamation mark problem, but you probably know it anyway.
Tonyb
Copy with formatting and dump it into MS Word, then copy-paste into blog comment window.
Roller Derby. It was only for a short period anyway.
didnt read it.
I am on a fablet
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VSKn8RlD7Is
I don’t think exploring the thought instead of the format is what he wants to do. Everybody else saw the explanation for the exclamation points but it was just too good to pass up as non-productive ridicule.
A) COMPLAIN.
I believe a summary of chapter 4 could be:
1. The global temperature index provides little informative information about the earth’s climate.
2. There is not a single suthorative index; we don’t know what the global surface temperatures are or what they have been.
Richard
What’s odd is that there are serious minded types who believe a record of maxima and minima, fiddled or not, can possibly be a record of “temperature”, disregarding cloud, humidity, wind, duration etc. The rest of the global temp search is merely odd, but the min/max thing is just too silly. Do these experts ever step into a paddock or even open a window?
A record of something is a record of that thing. It is not a record of something related to that thing because it is “best available”. What you don’t know, you don’t know. Shouldn’t need saying of course, but these days…
Mosomoso
Well written, from a superb mind.
Richard
We statistical types certainly believe a reliable estimate of a global temp index can constructed. It’s really not that hard… It just has error bars.
I am concerned, however, that all the adjustments I have seen have made the overall warming trend greater. Can anyone cite a major revamp of a sfc temp data set that made the temp trend lower? Could be… I am a casual observer.
I would prefer to see error corrections that fall more randomly in a normal distribution around the mean. Every time you flip the coin, it comes up heads. After a while, you begin to doubt the coin.
I am concerned, however, that all the adjustments I have seen have made the overall warming trend greater. Can anyone cite a major revamp of a sfc temp data set that made the temp trend lower? Could be… I am a casual observer.
In all SST studies adjustments COOL the record.
Understand THAT
for 70% of the planet the adjustments GO IN ONE DIRECTION:
COOLING
for 30% of the record the adjustments go in the other direction:
Warming.
The NET EFFECT of ALL ADJUSTMENTS is to
COOL THE RECORD
Now, where I ask you is there a skeptic who demands to see an SST record where adjustments WARM the record.
here is your mistake: expecting corrections to center on ZERO
that is the least likely outcome
Can you point to a specific surface temperature revision that resulted in a smaller global warming trend than before the revision?
Stephen Mosher: “In all SST studies adjustments COOL the record.
Understand THAT
for 70% of the planet the adjustments GO IN ONE DIRECTION:
COOLING
for 30% of the record the adjustments go in the other direction:
Warming.
The NET EFFECT of ALL ADJUSTMENTS is to
COOL THE RECORD”
Ah, you’re being disingenuous – mendacious even – again, Mosher. You are entirely dodging the point, as is your custom.
It appears that the vast majority of the 70% of COOLING adjustments occur BEFORE a certain date, and the vast majority of the 30% of the WARMING adjustments occur AFTER that date, thus amplifying the gradient of warming trend by a very considerable amount.
So why don’t you repost your 70% / 30% assertion, this time telling us what proportion of the adjustments occurred during which time periods – let’s say decadal for starters?
One of my questions remains unanswered…. Has there ever been a significant set of adjustments applied to GISS or Hadcrut that resulted in a lower rate of the warming trend for the global temp index in the undated version?
I’ve been told many times by skeptics that every time a set of adjustments are done to the surface data that the net effect is a greater warming trend. This is what I was referring to when I expressed statistical concern over the one-sided effect of adjustments.
Is this true? If not, someone please cite an example.
My first problem is not with any cooling or warming, of actual climate or of statistical record. (I dare say our Holocene epoch has consisted of nothing but such blips.) My first problem is that the thing measured (min/max) is not the thing desired to be known (temp). Of course, that’s just the first prob.
IMHO, the max/min issue is a non-problem in the statistical hurdles required to get a good estimate of global temperature. Max min only stations can be easily quality controlled vs other data types.
In determining a global temp now you have more resources to help you arrive at a muddy conclusion which is at least a conclusion (maybe). But in determining past temps, global or local?
Consider Australia’s and the Southern Hemisphere’s highest official daily max (Oodnadatta, Jan 2 1960, 50.7°C (123°F), Maximum/Minimum Thermometer in Standard Stevenson Screen). What was useful for me was to check the days around that temp. They were close to the record in what was very likely to have been a cloudless period. So, helped by some anecdotes and reportage, I conclude that it was hellishly hot in that part of Oz in early Jan 1960. It is barely scientific to talk of “hellishly hot” – but it is not scientific at all to dwell on min/max as if that could tell the story of a day’s weather or temp. When several high min/max readings occur in consecutive days, it’s reasonable to guess that there was a lot of heat outside the peaks, and that’s when min/max get a bit more useful.
Sydney’s record max of 2013 was unsustained and highly localised, though that summer was indeed hostile for a bit. The record it just broke, that of 1939, was part of a heatwave which remains Australia’s most lethal natural event. (Interestingly, Sydney’s seldom mentioned 1960 heatwave was localised but far more sustained than any before or since. What was it about 1960? I remember swimming lots.)
I speak as a total skep who could not care less if the planet is warming a bit. Old min/max readings are interesting, numbers and stats are interesting, statisticians are interesting people. But what you don’t know…you just don’t know!
Mosomoso
Was the Sydney event a heat plume?
http://rgsweather.com/2015/07/09/reigate-june-2015-weather-summary-three-plumes-june/
These tend to be localised and short lived. It wa a Spanish heat plume that caused the ‘record’ 1 July temperature at heathrow airport but to illustrate your point the summer, despite that one event, was actually cooler than normal.
Tonyb
Tonyb, there had been very high temps here north of Sydney that summer, but no records and not very hot on the day of the new Sydney record. Other Sydney stations recorded a very high or record max (I checked), but it’s interesting that the weather station in the middle of Sydney Harbour, just a paddle from the main BoM station at the Observatory, was not just a few degrees cooler (as it normally is). It wasn’t even heatwave conditions out there. (I checked!)
Sydney got quick relief after its new record, and the summer settled down for most us after that, though too late for a good bamboo shooting. God knows what they’d say about a repeat of the 1960 heat in Sydney. It set no daily records but it just wouldn’t go away. It would be a real hipster Armageddon now, then it was just a four day super-stinker. Since I preferred swimming in Kogarah Bay to sums at St Pat’s, I hardly minded. And doing the old fried egg on the footpath trick was a thrill.
We’ve had shockers of summers in Oz recently, 2009 for example, but 1896 and 1939 still seem to lead the pack for shockingness. 1939 with its fires and heat deaths was so unreasonable as to be a La Nina flanked by neutral years. Can’t win sometimes.
Ok, except for the weird mono atomic molecules (O2 and! N2). Properly called homonuclear diatomics, but other than showing that the author is kinda clueless about the field, no harm here, but this is followed by the clanger which tells Eli that this is another Sky Dragon
Ah no. What happens is that the excited molecule collides with O2 or N2 (or whatever else) and converts it’s vibrational energy to kinetic energy. The internal excited energy of the molecule is transformed into thermal motion of the molecules nearby through collisions. This takes about a microsecond, a millionth of a second and is roughly a million times more likely than the molecule directly emitting IR light.
In the same way unexcited greenhouse gas molecules can be excited by collisions into a state where they emit. It turns out that the rate at which excited molecules can form and their emission spectrum is determined by the temperature, so by looking at the spectrum at any location we can tell the temperature of the layer. If we look above the atmosphere we can measure the temperature and the level at which radiation at a particular wavelength is emitted to space.More Detail at RR but suffice it to say the claim that re-emission is immediate is a pretty good indicator that somebunny has a high DK number
That’s a nice shirt you are wearing today, Eli.
This is a bit confusing. In this section of the book he was discussing top of atmosphere were re-radiation would occur more frequently than collisions. But, it’s not clear in the paragraph you cite if he was still discussing TOA or not.
The chief bunny rabett says, “Ah no. What happens is that the excited molecule collides with O2 or N2 (or whatever else) and converts it’s vibrational energy to kinetic energy. The internal excited energy of the molecule is transformed into thermal motion of the molecules nearby through collisions. This takes about a microsecond, a millionth of a second and is roughly a million times more likely than the molecule directly emitting IR light.”
Only off by a factor of ~3 orders of magnitude. According to climate denier Princeton physicist Will Happer, it is on the order of one BILLION times more likely for CO2 to transfer quanta of E via collisions with N2/O2 in the troposphere than via relaxation and emission of a photon.
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2015/09/why-greenhouse-gases-dont-trap-heat-in.html
Bunny hole continues, “In the same way unexcited greenhouse gas molecules can be excited by collisions into a state where they emit. It turns out that the rate at which excited molecules can form and their emission spectrum is determined by the temperature, so by looking at the spectrum at any location we can tell the temperature of the layer. If we look above the atmosphere we can measure the temperature and the level at which radiation at a particular wavelength is emitted to space”
Ah no, the bending mode transitions of e.g. CO2 are FIXED line-emissions centered ALWAYS at 15 microns! The surrounding kinetic temperature of the atmosphere from 0-100km is a MINIMUM of 220K in the tropopause (per 1976 US Std Atm), much WARMER than the so-called “partial equivalent blackbody emitting temperature” of CO2 15 micron emission (if CO2 was a TRUE BB, an emitting temperature equivalent of 193K) all the way from the surface to the edge of space! Thus, CO2 is absorbing/emitting as many 15 micron photons as it possibly can ALL the way and at every single geopotential height ALL the way from 0-100km, not limited by the surrounding kinetic temperature of the atmosphere which is >193K all the way from 0-100km!
Oh, and the quanta of E transferred preferrentially by CO2 to N2/O2 INCREASE the kinetic expansion, rising, and COOLING of these warmed air parcels, which thereby ACCELERATES convective COOLING of the surface.
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Mosher various quotes
“Bizzare. The sites dont match perfectly.”
“That is why you can for example pick 110 PRISTINE sites in the US
(CRN) and predict the rest of the country: Including
100s of other pristine sites ( RCRN) and 1000’s of “bad” sites.
What’s it tell you when you can start with 60 samples and get
one time series… then add 300 and get the same,,, then add
3000 and get the same…. then add 30000 and get the same?
whats that tell you about sampling?
Whats it tell you when you can pick 5000 and then predict any
other 5000 or 10000?”
Um, it tells you that the sites do match perfectly?
“You take 100 perfect sites. They predict the US average will be
74.5 F.You now average the 20,000 “bad” sites. GUESS WHAT
their average will be 74.5F”.
Um, it tells you that the sites do match perfectly?
“Create a synthetic field of realistic climate time series data.
For that you have a Known average of the field.
Take a sub sample.
Use various method to estimate the full field given the sample.”
Um, it tells you WHY the SYNTHETIC sites do match perfectly?
The sites dont match perfectly.
you dont understand.
I suggest you run the code
“What’s it tell you when you can start with 60 samples and get
one time series… then add 300 and get the same,,, then add
3000 and get the same…. then add 30000 and get the same?
whats that tell you about sampling?”
Simple Steven, you are intelligent, it says the sites match perfectly.
Why state the above and then write rubbish like “the sites do not match perfectly”
How can you, as an intelligent scientist do this?
If sites are, as Nick Stokes glowingly asserts
[“The public expects that people who actually know what they are doing will give the best estimate they can of global temperature. And they do. That involves detecting and correcting inhomogeneities.”]
totally adjusted to remove discrepancies [ inhomogeneities to us , right]
and every sample you can take agrees in lockstep as you state above ,then the sites must match perfectly, Zeke would not leave any inhomogeneities in, would he?
I wish some of the scientist types here , including Judith, could take this assertion of yours, and Cowtan and Ways, of perfection when you run your algorithms and expose it for the scientific cruelty it is.
Measurements must vary, must have errors, must have cloudy days when areas do not agree with surrounding areas. You cannot wipe this variability and difference out in the name of homogenization.
It is not science to cover up data that does not agree with you or your “recipe”.
It has another name but I am not a Steyn type.
Are there others out there who can explain this to Steven.
In BEST, they detect and correct for inhomogeneities. They never claimed it was perfect, only that it is better than the raw data. Tell us where they claim it is perfect.
JimD, thank you for your reply. BEST detect and correct for inhomogeneities.
Once done there are none left. The imperfections have been removed.
Once there are no imperfections something is perfect.
QED.
This does not mean the data is correct but it is correct to say that such data allows Steven to make the laughable claim that one can take any bit of the data, in any order, Pristine data, Dirty data, dogs breakfast data and have it all give the same perfect result.
And then he says the sites do not match perfectly?
Unbelievable.
Where are the support troops. How can you and he write such tripe.
“JimD, thank you for your reply. BEST detect and correct for inhomogeneities.
Once done there are none left. The imperfections have been removed.
Once there are no imperfections something is perfect.
QED.”
The imperfections will never be removed. Period. What you aim for
is LESS bad, closer to the truth.
################################
This does not mean the data is correct but it is correct to say that such data allows Steven to make the laughable claim that one can take any bit of the data, in any order, Pristine data, Dirty data, dogs breakfast data and have it all give the same perfect result.”
##############################
Wrong. That is not the claim.
1. Take the 110 sites blessed by WUWT as “pristine”. They
are built and mainted to a spec.
2. Using them construct a spatial model to predict the temp
at other locations ( in the US for this demonstration
3. Predict the temps at the locations of so called “bad” stations.
4. Your predictions will match the actual, with some error
but nothing remarkable.
OR
1. Construct an average from the 100 pristine sites
2. Construct an average from the bad sites
3. compare them
4. You’ll not see any substantial difference.
So they match, as I said, you inferred perfectly… nothing is perfect son
The author has clearly spent considerable time on the oceans away from the shore. This will give you an entirely different understanding of the earth’s climate than those that live almost exclusively ashore, mostly in artificial cities, learning about climate from books.
Looks like a good book. If I wasn’t obsessively reading history right now I would spend some time with it, maybe soon!
Cromwell, and Charles the First, kinda fun.
=============
Whoa, there’s a disturbance in the Force.
=============
Kim? Kim? Hmm, I remember that name. Welcome back-please pay your monthly subscription direct to me as Judith is very busy at the moment
Tonyb
Already spent on Fraser, Wedgwood, and Kenyon. Mebbe later.
================
Alan Longhurst thank you for appearing on this thread. I’m an English major and published author and admire your writing style. There are however quite a few errata that seem to show a lack of careful proof-reading. Perhaps repeated exposure to your drafts has made your readers too close to see the slip-ups. Would you like to be notified of these and if so, to which address?
In Chapter 11 “Detection and Attribution”, Longhurst states:
I completely agree with this statement. We could bulldoze every single coal-burning power station today, and we could extract and sequester every anthropogenic molecule of CO2 from the atmosphere, but the climate will still change. There seems to be an implication that if humans would just stop emitting CO2 that the climate would somehow settle back into its “natural, static state” (i.e., the handle of the hockey stick). The sea level, the global temperature and general weather patterns are going to change no matter what we do. So there is a need to make policy to address adaptation. On the other hand, mitigation policies seem to be based on the assumption that “CO2 is climate and climate is CO2.” I’m not against mitigation, we should not be releasing CO2 if it is going to exacerbate or make worse the change that would occur anyway. But most mitigation seems to be based on a CO2 control-knob phantasy.
There’s precious little evidence that CO2 is powerful enough to exacerbate warming changes, and only a little more that it can ameliorate cooling change. The discrepancy in the evidences is because cooling is unequivocally damaging, and warming is not even hypothetically damaging, except at unprecedented, impossible from CO2, extremes.
=================
The full court lefty press continues … from the article:
A melting Arctic: The world is skating on thin ice
…
The race for the Arctic is on in more ways than one, creating new environmental, human and geopolitical risks in one of the world’s most inhospitable environments—one in which no nation is fully prepared to operate. Consequences to the future of our planet are huge. This month researchers in Sweden published a study showing how melting sea in the Arctic is encouraging methane emissions—exacerbating climate change and the warming of the atmosphere. That’s because the ice acts like a windshield reflector to the sun’s warming rays, and without it the oceans absorb more heat.
According to a recent scientific study by Cambridge University and the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center, this climate change will add an extra $43 trillion of cost to the global economy by the end of the next century.
…
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/24/a-melting-arctic-the-world-is-skating-on-thin-ice.html
Sir Joseph Banks and the Royal Society got all excited about a suddenly melty Arctic back in 1817. Then the bloody place froze up worse than Windows Vista.
Jim, I like it that the cost is going to be an extra $43 trillion by the end of next century. Odd numbers like 43 or 97 are so much more convincing. Clearly this has been a study by experts. Now, we just need a survey on how people feel about all this. My guess is that 93.7% of respondents will think it’s time to tackle melty ice. And they’ll be the nice empathic ones with emotional literacy.
Gawd…don’t you just yearn for an adult now and then? It’s like we’re stuck in some creche with brats showing us their colouring-in and Lego models non-stop. And they’re the ones getting paid.
What does the Pope say?
Pope Junta wants equal poverty for all…and the Falklands back.
Sir Joseph Banks and the Royal Society got all excited about a suddenly melty Arctic back in 1817. Then the bloody place froze up worse than Windows Vista.
That is really good!
If the rich people in the world share their wealth, then everyone will be poor and no one will have enough to promote development and create jobs.
The best thing we can do for the poor is to help them get abundant, low cost energy, so they can raise their standard of living closer to our standard of living. They should be able to buy from us and produce more that we can buy from them.
Limiting the poor to windmills and solar and telling them that the worst thing for the world is for them to be able to afford what we have is criminal and genocide.
The strangest part is that this is being enacted at a time of massive fossil fuel production and consumption by the very parties preaching against fossil fuels. Germany, that new-old lignite digger, might at least have placed its stupid solar panels in a third world country where the sun do shine. Instead of at 50+ degrees north! Did they think the atmosphere has borders?
I suspect that when we engage in the climate wars we are also involving ourselves in a commercial war between coal/nukes and oil/gas where all parties try to flash their green credentials to win by sentiment what they can’t win otherwise. The solar panels and whirlygigs are the hyper-expensive decor for Carbon Has Talent.
Coal is the bad boy, all snips ‘n snails and puppy dog tails. And it has been rising irresistibly in the market place even as it plummets in the virtual market place where you can make anything cheaper or more expensive using the same mock-science that brought us that accelerating sea level rise nobody can find.
Errata, typos.
As “oldfossil” remarks, there are too many – to my considerable embarrassment. My fault, obviously, but the problem is that the text has been on the stocks much too long, evolving progressively as I explored the literature over the last 3 years or so. I am currently going very, very carefully over a print-out and, when done, I will ask Judy to re-post it. Later, I shall also have some copies printed as v cheap paperbacks for distribution to anybody who wants them.
Alan
Appreciate yr journey.
nhill
I’m glad someone picked up the point that there will always be climate surprises in store for us, no matter what we do about CO2: I’m surprised that I have not seen anywhere the obvious conclusion stated – that we are evolving our way of life as if the climate was stable and unchanging, and whichever way it goes in the coming century, we – or rather some of you – ware going to be very uncomfortable. The more complex our society becomes, the more vulnerable it is to unforeseen climate conditions.
Time someone wrote an essay on the problem, isnt it?
Alan
You might want to modify that statement. There seems to be plenty of evidence that our increasingly “complex” society is progressively less vulnerable to climate over time than comparatively “simple” societies.
Stupid decisions (building on floodplains, deserts, and barrier islands, for example) are not related to complexity and are driven by other factors.
Right, opluso, a wealthier, more complex society will be better able to withstand all the projections from the effects of AnthroCO2. The inevitable climate change it won’t be able to withstand as well is eventual cooling, for that will destroy wealth.
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Excellent point, Kim. But don’t forget to mention our pets, who will also do well.
When that time comes the rest of the biosphere will look like the moon does today. No vegetation, no wildlife, nothing living in the sea.
as well is eventual cooling, for that will destroy wealth.
Only the hot money. The cool cash will come out of its cave.
Oh, and houseplants. Let’s not forget them.
CO2, an impuissant molecule, unable to keep us warm when the chips are down.
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Chips are down? What have you done with the kim we used to know?
Heh, you and your hiatus. It’s dawning on a few alarmists that in order to maintain their faith in high sensitivity, they have to argue that we’d be cooling now without anthropogenic CO2. What’s really funny is to watch the ones who so argue without the dawning.
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Houseplants and unhousebroken plants. Anthropogenic CO2 is feeding an extra billion people. Too bad we can’t get much warming from CO2.
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Kim, Picasso depicted us as variously blue, rose, cubically shaped, and crystalline. You seem to be trying to depict climate scientists, but so far you don’t seem to have found any poetic depiction requiring fewer than ten words.
Tighten up. wannabe poet.
No answers blown
When dips are shown.
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The pause has made complete fools of a lot of very smart people, including poets. ACO2 is still the control kimob.
A vernier tuner
Spun later or sooner
By those who hear
One frequency, fear.
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You can skim your poems until the kows kome home, you are still wrong.
May be, maybe not; there is less evidence, as time goes by, of CO2’s extraordinary or catastrophic effect. What do have that may reverse that trend of evidence?
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Climate surprises from scientific discovery of that which man is a participant, as well as from that which man is not a part: http://www.babwnews.com/2015/09/this-icelandic-volcano-is-three-times-as-toxic-as-all-of-europes-industry/
Mr. Longhurst,
Thank you for your work and willingness to share in such a public forum.
Some might/should acknowledge that even if not in total agreement with all aspects of your offering, you’ve done ‘the work’.
Forthcoming essay
Climate changes
The world ain’t what it supposed to be
A kind of genre
What’s it all about willard?
http://blogs.woodtv.com/2015/09/26/snowstorm-in-alaska/
Just think what it was like last year. Ice age here this year?
Whataboutism is another genre altogether, Arch.
@Alan Longhurst: Alan, I haven’t commented on your book per se so far, partly because I don’t have anything concrete to say about it and partly because I’m a lot junior to you and perhaps therefore less wise. Send me an email (google my home page) and we can talk about it.
Should also mention that I was working on bluefin tuna spawning with Barb Block here at the Stanford Hopkins Marine Station but have just switched to the thermodynamics of white sharks.
Vaughan
We had a very large shoal of Blue Fish tuna off the coast of Cornwall and am hoping they are heading to my county of Devon
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/11817895/Shoal-of-bluefin-tuna-appears-off-coast-of-Cornwall.html
The seas around Britain are unusually cool this year after a cooler than average summer. Its around 1C cooler than normal and fully 3C cooler than last year.
We have also had a lot of jellyfish. Are both species following currents, food, instinct?
tonyb.
Vaughan Pratt writes another meaningless comment.
There is no reason to believe that the climate will change unusually rapidly due to human released CO2 or that it will change in a net negative manner.
There is accumulating evidence, once someone looked, that AnthroCO2 will induce change in a net positive manner. This whole thing is backwards, and the perverted view was convenient, for a few.
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It is more accurate to write—-
“AnthroCO2 will induce change”. There is no reliable information to conclude it will change in a net negative manner.
Fear cooling, embrace warming; now off to bed, and sweet dreams.
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There is no reason to believe that the opinions on Climate Etc. will change unusually rapidly.
When the mists of illusion clear, Sunday morning comes down with a thud.
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Rob, since you’ve thrown down the glove about my comments being “meaningless,” could you please be a little more specific about what makes this comment about RSS/UAH vs. SST meaningless? It has two parts, theoretical prediction and experimental confirmation. Are you saying both are meaningless, or only one, or what?
Vaughan–read more carefully. I didn’t write that ALL your comments are meaningless. Increasing temperature does not justify the conclusion that the climate will be net worse for humans and certainly not for any specific country.
In that case I have no idea what comment you’re referring to, since I haven’t written anything bearing on either specific countries or negative impact on humans.
I grew up in the 6th coldest city in the USA. I have no fear of cooling. Lol. My mother made a rule, no rides to school until it got to 15 below zero. And then the Edsel would never start, so we walked anyway.
Alan, AnthroCO2 is an amazing, if inadvertent, geo-engineering blessing. Its great greening and mild warming would be miraculous if not so predictable. So we’re taught to fear a warmer, greener, earth? Our children will understand better.
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They’ll understand there were some ideal knuckleheads in 2015.
Its great greening and mild warming would be miraculous if not so predictable. So we’re taught to fear a warmer, greener, earth?
Good to see you moving on from WG1 (physical basis) to WG2 (impacts and vulnerabilities), kim. WG2 deals with both the (likely) winners and losers. Only those who view the world through polarized glasses describe it as all one or all the other.
The problem with having winners and losers is that in the course of a century, the losing species may go extinct but the winning species don’t provide immediate replacements for the extinct species, the winners are merely better off. The net effect of abrupt climate change therefore is to reduce the number of species. Increasing the number of species is a much longer term proposition, happening gradually after mass extinctions whether major or minor.
This is just as true in the vegetable kingdom, where some plants such as kudzu and poison ivy thrive on more CO2 (up to a point) while others such as wheat and rice that are currently at their optimal level find additional CO2 toxic because higher CO2 levels increase ethylene (C2H4) synthesis in those plants which inhibits seed set (production of seeds).
Paleontology has yet to show the limits of the benefits of warming, and always shows the detriments of cooling.
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Anthro greening is feeding a billion people. Anthro warming, probably not so many.
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I know what this says about wheat and rice and co2.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11540191
I’m not sure what study you are relying on to show harm above present levels. Perhaps one of those studies where they studied the effects of increased co2 and chose to simulate the drought conditions they decided would go with it.
Disease and pests thrive in warmer environments, but Man tends to have a shorter lifespan.
Disease and pests thrive in warmer environments, but Man tends to have a shorter lifespan.
Is that why so many people choose to retire in Phoenix and Florida?
TE, how many of those retired people have to work outside in the summer there? That is a factor in the lifespan when you measure it by warmer and colder nations. Productivity also goes down with warmth leading to less wealth in general too.
I’m surprised that I have not seen anywhere the obvious conclusion stated – that we are evolving our way of life as if the climate was stable and unchanging, and whichever way it goes in the coming century, we – or rather some of you – ware going to be very uncomfortable.
The climate of the past million years was extreme, compared to the most recent ten thousand years. We have advanced much in the most recent ten thousand years because the temperature and sea level were regulated in tighter bounds. We could stay in the same places and develop. This is the new normal. We will get cycles in the future just like the cycles of the past ten thousand years. Ocean Levels and Ocean Currents have evolved to the current state and the current state supports warm periods like the Roman, Medieval and Modern Warm Period and it supports cold periods like the Little Ice Age.
China will put in place cap-and-trade and we can depend on them that this will limit their emissions – of course we can. Of course, there are no specifics here, just hopium.
From the article:
…
China has been developing and carrying out smaller cap-and-trade programs for at least three years. In 2012, it started pilot programs in seven provinces, intended to serve as tests for a national program.
Last week, Chinese officials met in Los Angeles with top environmental officials from California, which has enacted an aggressive cap-and-trade program. People who attended the talks said they were meant to pave the way for a possible linkage of the Chinese and California cap-and-trade systems.
…
The Chinese announcement comes less than two months after Mr. Obama unveiled his signature climate change policy, a set of Environmental Protection Agency regulations that would force power plants to curb their carbon emissions. The rules could shut down hundreds of heavily polluting coal-fired power plants. They have drawn fire from Republicans and coal-state lawmakers, but international negotiators say Mr. Obama’s regulations have also helped break a longstanding deadlock between the United States and China on climate change.
…
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/24/china-to-limit-greenhouse-gas-emissions-in-cap-and-trade-program.html
Tanks rollover
Market makers combover.
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Welcome back, Kim! Missed you!
Reblogged this on I Didn't Ask To Be a Blog and commented:
See link to download PDF!
I asked this before but never got much in the way of answers…I’ll rephrase and ask again…
RE: temperature measurement and data adjustments…chapter 4
… What are the pluses and minuses of sat temps vs sfc thermometer data sets?
… Sat temps have risen more in the past 12 months but less in the last 35 years than sfc thermometers. Why are they different ? Is the difference error of measurement or can it be explained otherwise? Would any differences in behavior be expected?
… The USA started a pristine database in 2004. How does it compare to Giss, Hadcrut, Best, Uah, Rss? Have other countries set up similar surface networks? (I answered this myself somewhat showing a 95% monthly correlation between BEST and CRN 2005-2013 with no significant difference in trend.)
… Many temperatures adjustments have been made. Has there ever been a major update to GISS or HadCrut (new version #) where the overall temperature trend was reduced (cooler). Skeptics have claimed to me that “adjustments have all raised the trend”. I’m not talking about individual adjustments. I’m talking about the overall global temp index.
… What is your estimate of error in our ability to estimate global temp index?
… If you were global climate czar with current funding levels, where would you spend more and where would you reduce funding?
@Roscoe Shaw: … Sat temps have risen more in the past 12 months but less in the last 35 years than sfc thermometers. Why are they different ? Is the difference error of measurement or can it be explained otherwise? Would any differences in behavior be expected?
Answered here.. Bottom line: Theory, confirmed by observation, predicts that the lower troposphere will track sea surface, not land. No significant difference expected, nor observed, hence no need for any explanation besides that in the theoretical prediction.
But GISS and Hadcrut are global temp indexes just like Sat data….weighted by grid point. I don’t see how they should be different. They all assign temps to grid points, all have 70% ocean. Lower trop should correlate near perfectly to sfc temp due to lapse rates.
So, I still don’t understand why sat and sfc obs should diverge. No difference expected…but a difference has been observed since 2000
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I should have said “surface based temperature indexes” not “land based ”
That may the source of confusion.
GISS and HadCrut are surface based, but global in scope including oceans. They should agree with satellite measurements.
All I see is VP’s graph is confirmation that whatever caused the pause, it happened after 2005, and that the most likely culprit is the actual negative phase (index numbers are predominately negative) of the PDO, which is characterized by La Nina dominance.
This took place after 2005.
But why has sat global temp index data diverged lower than sfc temp index data?
I’m trying to get at why they are different…is there a reason they could legitimately be different…and which one is right?
Personally, I prefer the Wood For Trees because it’s consensus approach essentially benefits from a statistical “wisdom of crowds”
There was a comparison of maps against GISTEMP here recently, and the patterns agreed on the current global anomalies, except for the satellite map’s complete lack of an East Pacific El Nino warm anomaly as of about July, and that was probably already the largest anomaly in GISTEMP. Given that the satellites had a very large 1998 El Nino, this is surprising.
As of August they still don’t have the signature equatorial anomaly.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/09/11/global-temperature-report-august-2015/
while GISTEMP is now at about 2 degrees.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/nmaps.cgi?sat=4&sst=6&type=anoms&mean_gen=08&year1=2015&year2=2015&base1=1980&base2=2014&radius=1200&pol=rob
Try https://granthaminstitute.wordpress.com/2015/10/16/taking-the-planets-temperature-how-are-global-temperatures-calculated/. I wrote it for those not wanting to get too mathematical
Chapter 3:
*The mean period between solar minima is roughly ten solar cycles, around 108 years, not 200 years.
*El Nino occur regularly around one year after each sunspot minimum, exactly where the solar wind is slowest. Some solar cycles also have a major low in the solar wind at sunspot maximum, and where that happens, there will also be an El Nino episode or conditions. That should tell you that solar wind effects on the NAO/AO and associated teleconnections like ENSO dominate strongly over the effects of solar irradiance variability through the sunspot cycle.
*The AMO warm mode is driven by increase negative NAO/AO, that’s from weaker solar wind states, solar wind density and pressure has declined from the mid 1990’s. The idea that solar irradiance follows the AMO is specious, and has the sign of forcing reversed.
Quoting Ioannides
What then are the chances of this government-funded alarmist Consensus that so favours government expansion, being true ?
“Very unlikely”, in the official terminology (<10%).
And considering the widespread contempt for the scientific method revealed by the deafening silence and official coverups following Climategate, and general ostracism of dissenters, maybe even "Exceptionally unlikely" (<1%).
‘Guv-uh-mint funded conn-sen-suss favouring guv-uh-mint
expansion?’ Correction -not guv-uh-mint but public funded,
however unwittingly or unwillingly. Serf’s up!
https://beththeserf.wordpress.com/
“Very unlikely”, in the official terminology (<10%).
I strongly disagree. I say less than zero percent.
Chapter 8:
“Modern analyses and simulations of ice cover generally concur that the late 20th century ice loss is caused by the radiative effect of anthropogenic GHGs on surface air temperatures.”
Not possible, increased forcing of the climate increases positive NAO/AO, that can only cool the Arctic.