Now IPCC hurricane data is questioned
Open science: Got Excel? Debunk this
By Andrew Orlowski The Register
Above: Hurricane ACE data from Ryan Maue. Note where 2009 is in the scheme of things. More here.
More trouble looms for the IPCC. The body may need to revise statements made in its Fourth Assessment Report on hurricanes and global warming. A statistical analysis of the raw data shows that the claims that global hurricane activity has increased cannot be supported.
Les Hatton once fixed weather models at the Met Office. Having studied Maths at Cambridge, he completed his PhD as metereologist: his PhD was the study of tornadoes and waterspouts. He’s a fellow of the Royal Meterological Society, currently teaches at the University of Kingston, and is well known in the software engineering community – his studies include critical systems analysis.
Hatton has released what he describes as an ‘A-level’ statistical analysis, which tests six IPCC statements against raw data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric (NOAA) Administration. He’s published all the raw data and invites criticism, but warns he is neither “a warmist nor a denialist”, but a scientist.
Hatton performed a z-test statistical analysis of the period 1999-2009 against 1946-2009 to test the six conclusions. He also ran the data ending with what the IPCC had available in 2007. He found that North Atlantic hurricane activity increased significantly, but the increase was counterbalanced by diminished activity in the East Pacific, where hurricane-strength storms are 50 per cent more prevalent. The West Pacific showed no significant change. Overall, the declines balance the increases.
“When you average the number of storms and their strength, it almost exactly balances.” This isn’t indicative of an increase in atmospheric energy manifesting itself in storms.
Even the North Atlantic increase should be treated with caution, Hatton concludes, since the period contains one anomalous year of unusually high hurricane activity – 2005 – the year Al Gore used the Katrina tragedy to advance the case for the manmade global warming theory.
The IPCC does indeed conclude that “there is no clear trend in the annual numbers of tropical cyclones.” If only the IPCC had stopped there. Yet it goes on to make more claims, and draw conclusions that the data doesn’t support.
Read the rest of the story at the Regsiter here
Rich Horton (12:21:50) :
“IPCC Statement: “Intense tropical cyclone activity has increased since about 1970.””
There’s a little editing go on here – that’s not what the IPCC said. From AR4 Working Group 1:
“There is observational evidence for an increase of intense tropical cyclone activity in the North Atlantic since about 1970, correlated with increases in tropical SSTs.”
We should thank Tom P for galvanizing discussion.
Where is Joel Shore loitering these days?
Ian Summerell (14:28:15) :
‘I’ve read all of the blogs on here and I would like to ask one question.
Where is it all going to end?
If the government’s of the world have managed the data and mislead us all. How do we every get them to make things RIGHT?’
You throw the ones In governments out on their ears and star over.
climategate2009 (02:09:37) :
Re: Pachauri video
Could you tell me when and who interviewed Pachauri in that video? Thanks in advance.
Quote: Ian Summerell (14:28:15) :
“I’ve read all of the blogs on here and I would like to ask one question.
Where is it all going to end?
If the government’s of the world have managed the data and mislead us all. How do we every get them to make things RIGHT?”
By getting to the filthy bottom of the climategate iceberg!
The international community of climatologist followed the well-trod path of NAS, NASA, DOE, etc by misrepresenting and manipulating data to please those who control the research funds.
But climatologist very foolishly lied about something that everyone can check for themselves – Earth’s climate.
NAS, NASA, and DOE cleverly manipulated and misrepresented data that almost nobody could check:
a.) Reporting that helioseismology confirms the Standard Solar Model (SSM) of a Hydrogen-filled Sun.
[If so, analytical chemistry labs could be closed and compositions of unknown samples determined by shaking and listening to the rattle!]
b.) Claiming that solar neutrinos oscillate away to confirm the SSM fairy tale.
c.) Ignoring nuclear rest mass data that show the Sun and the cosmos are powered by neutron repulsion, a far greater source of nuclear energy than H-fusion (H-bomb) or U-fission (A-bomb).
“How do we every get them to make things RIGHT?”
Melt the Climategate iceberg and expose the unholy alliance of politicians, publishers and news media that use science as a propaganda tool to control the world.
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Emeritus Professor of
Nuclear & Space Sciences
Former NASA PI for Apollo
Domino’s falling!
http://www.heliogenic.net/2010/02/16/dominos-falling/
Tom P
“Not really”:
A distinction without a difference, Tom. But you already knew that, I hope, as did I.
“Melt the Climategate iceberg and expose the unholy alliance of politicians, publishers and news media that use science as a propaganda tool to control the world. ”
——-
The year was 1824. Jean Baptiste Fourier sat stooped over in his study, when he felt a thrill of fear at the approach of a rasping, metal-on-metal sound. All too soon, the Grand Wizard appeared before him.
“Sir Newton” Fourier asked with a slight shiver of fear, wondering if he would ever get used to the unnatural steam-powered apparatus that prolonged the life of Isaac Newton, the greatest of the European Illuminati. “How may your humble servant assist you?”
“Fourier, we need you to fabricate something called a “greenhouse effect” saying that CO2 warms the planet.”
“CO2!” Fourier was shocked. “But it’s a harmless trace gas!”
“I know, Fourier, and of course, all clear-thinking minds know intuitively that a large and important effect cannot proceed from a small cause. To maintain this deception, we will have the falsify vast amount of scientific data for the next two centuries. But we must convince the ignorant that this is so.”
“But my master, why?”
“Wheels within wheels, my son. Wheels within wheels.”
Flash forward to 1989. James Hansen is in his private lab, working on Vensuvian climatology. Steven Hawking enters, making use, far from prying eyes, of the cybernetic body suit designed for him by Robert Noyce in refuge in Atlantis.
“It’s time, James. All our work with Fourier, Tyndall, Arrhenius and thousands of lesser scientists in about to bear fruit. You – you will have the honor of unveiling to the public the theory of anthropogenic global warming!”
“I still don’t understand, Hawk. Why must we go forward with this deception? What will it achieve?”
“Don’t you understand yet, James? All our preparations and planning has been for this – to give the world no choice but to phase out fossil fuels and stop deforestation!”
“But why?”
“To destroy the Earth! After which I will return to the use of my family name, Darvos, and be free to design a race of pitiless cyborgs to enslave the galaxy! EX-TER-MIN-ATE! EXTERMINATE!”
Robert (13:05:41) :
“…by and large, no peer-reviewed science supports [Steven Mosher’s] argument that the theory of AGW is false.”
Planet Earth has been generally cooling for most of the past decade, while CO2 has been steadily rising. Conclusion: planet Earth is falsifying CO2=CAGW.
So who are we gonna believe? Robert the English Lit major? Or planet Earth, and our lyin’ eyes? click
Is is just me or does there seem to be an inverse correlation between El Nino and storms?
@Leif
“In evolutionary terms a false positive is harmless.”
I’m glad you linked to my field of expertise. I would say that in evolutionary terms a false positive is a waste of energy unless there are circumstances where the response is useful. Let’s keep the observations running before deciding on the cyclical nature of hurricane activity and solar influence.
“Planet Earth has been generally cooling for most of the past decade,”
Except for the part where it is the warmest decade in the climate record. Cue the increasingly frantic efforts to try and guess my background . . .
“Robert the English Lit major . . .”
There it is. Tightly written for a post of Smokey’s: just the basic factual error, argument from (a fantasy of) authority, and out. Well done, Smokey. You’ve distilled your faith-based thinking into its essentials.
J.Peden (18:59:17) :
“A distinction without a difference, Tom. But you already knew that, I hope, as did I.”
I was trying to be kind, but as you insist on a clear distinction: you’re wrong:
http://img514.imageshack.us/img514/413/oyad06.png
Robert,
Actually the planet has not shown any statistically significant warming since 1995 – from the horses mouth, Phil Jones.
Falling back upon the outmoded excuse that the current decade is the “warmest on record” is to deny several things at once. Alarmists are well practised at that particular mind game.
Planet Earth has been generally cooling for the last 12 years, ENSO adjusted, from Gavin’s figures, remains unrefuted by the realclimate contortionists(yes, they have tried)-
http://reallyrealclimate.blogspot.com/2010/01/twelve-year-satellite-temperature.html
-requires reading and comprehension skills that fall somewhere between those of an English Lit major and a creature from Norse mythology.
Robert 23:29:11 All I need to know about your background is that you repeat mindlessly the warm last decade trope as if it had meaning. Why wouldn’t the end of a rising series be the warmest?
=====================================
Tom P (00:36:48),
One more time: what is the provenance of that anonymous chart? Because it conflicts with this one: click
If that chart was real, peer reviewed, etc., the alarmist contingent would be using it to defend Briffa. In fact, its hokey stick shape is even more scary than Briffa’s, so I question its validity.
Robert,
You constantly denigrate commenters with education in the hard sciences, as if you had an equal education. But your replies appear to simply be cut ‘n’ pasted from realclimate sources.
You have asked me numerous questions, and I’ve answered them all in detail. My one and only question to you has been: what is your personal educational expertise, that you can presume to be more knowledgeable in science matters than people here with established credentials? But you always squirm around, avoiding answering my one and only question.
The fact that you avoid providing your credentials, if any, rather than providing a straightforward answer, pretty much makes it clear that you lack a science background. The “post normal science” crowd believes they have the answers based on their non-rigorous education. But they’re simply poseurs.
So what is it? Sociology? History? English Lit? Some sort of “studies”? Or Theology, like Al Gore? Or is it physics, electronics, geology, math, etc? Post your CV.
Oh, and Robert, contemplate the irony of your comment about ‘faith-based’. It is becoming apparent that the whole alarmist credo is faith-based. What is the climate’s sensitivity to CO2. We don’t know, and all of you who claim whatever number you claim do so on the basis of faith.
====================================
Smokey (05:02:47) :
“One more time: what is the provenance of that anonymous chart?”
What a short memory you have! I told you on the thread below yesterday – you can find it on Climate Audit:
http://climateaudit.org/2009/09/30/yamal-the-forest-and-the-trees/
“In fact, its hokey stick shape is even more scary than Briffa’s, so I question its validity.”
No need to be frightened – it’s identical to both Briffa’s and McIntyre’s chronology from this data, see e.g.:
http://climateaudit.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/rcs_merged_rev.gif
-quote
Tom P (17:03:18) :
Rich Horton (12:21:50) :
“IPCC Statement: “Intense tropical cyclone activity has increased since about 1970.””
There’s a little editing go on here – that’s not what the IPCC said. From AR4 Working Group 1:
“There is observational evidence for an increase of intense tropical cyclone activity in the North Atlantic since about 1970, correlated with increases in tropical SSTs.”
-endquote
Tom P., you do realize those are two independant statements, right? I mean you cannot “correlate” one thing with another (for example – oh, I don’t know – the numbers of intense cyclones in a region and Sea Surfce Temps in that region) unless they are independant variables. Therefore, there is nothing wrong in looking at each seperately. Hatton didn’t look at SST, and he didn’t need to in order to say something about the frequency of tropical cyclones.
You understand that, right?
Smokey (05:02:47) :
Tom P (00:36:48),
One more time: what is the provenance of that anonymous chart?
I thought it said CRU…so it must be ‘beer-reviewed.’
Rich Horton (08:33:30) :
Don’t be disingenuous.
The critical difference is that your supposed quote from the IPCC omitted that it only referred to the North Atlantic. Hence you went on to disprove the claim in terms of global cyclone activity, a claim the IPCC never made.
Tom P (06:57:58),
You’ll be happy to know I’ve spent the last forty minutes clicking around through 300+ comments, looking for your hokey stick chart. You might have indicated that it was linked in a particular post. No wonder I didn’t find it yesterday.
But it’s an interesting thread, which thoroughly skewers both your claims and Briffa’s.
Numerous posts like this deconstruct everything you tried to say:
“Steve’s substitution as a sensitivity test did what it was intended to do. It showed that using another legitimate sample removed the sharp [temperature] rise in recent times – clearly a rise that was due only to the live proxies which were selected in some determined fashion.”
So you cherry picked; what’s new? But I suppose everyone cherry picks to some degree. What bothers me is the unfounded belief that tree ring width equates directly to past temperatures. The result is the claim that Briffa had a lot of treemometers that told him what he wanted to hear: temperatures are rising fast.
In fact, numerous studies show a much greater correlation to CO2 than to temperature: click [see how easy I make it to find a graph?]
Your hokey stick treemometer graph was debunked from numerous different angles in that thread, by plenty of knowledgeable people. But nobody should take my word for it. Take a look at Tom’s treemometer deconstruction.
Smokey (11:39:20) :
“But it’s an interesting thread, which thoroughly skewers both your claims and Briffa’s.”
You’ve got a lot more reading ahead of you on Climate Audit if you want to understand the problems with McIntyre’s substitution. You’ll then see that he left a couple of important questions unanswered:
1. What is the cause of the divergence between the young and old tree chronologies in his substitution that occurs not just recently, but continually and to an even greater extent in the past over the last two thousand years, in direct contradiction to his claim in:
http://climateaudit.org/2009/10/04/gavins-guru-and-rcs-standardization/
2. What values do he get for correlation and t statistic between his substitution chronology and the Yamal temperature during the growth period.
He promised a response to both questions three months ago. I suppose he might need a reminder.
Real Climate’s response:
“Whatevergate”
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/02/whatevergate/
Oxymoron: