Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I took a lot of flak last year for my post saying that the global 50% drop in phytoplankton claimed by Boyce et. al was an illusion. I had said:
So where did the Nature paper go wrong?
The short answer is that I don’t know … but I don’t believe their results. The paper is very detailed, in particular the Supplementary Online Information (SOI). It all seems well thought out and investigated … but I don’t believe their results. They have noted and discussed various sources of error. They have compared the use of Secchi disks as a proxy, and covered most of the ground clearly … and I still don’t believe their results.
In other words, I took my chances on my experience and went way, way out on a limb with my statements. And of course, people didn’t let me forget it.
Figure 1. Life Cycle of Phytoplankton
Now we get these two “Brief Communications Arising“, from Nature magazine (emphasis mine).
Nature Volume: 472, Pages: E6–E7
Brief Communication Arising (April, 2011) Arising from D. G. Boyce, M. R. Lewis & B. Worm Nature 466, 591–596 (2010)
Phytoplankton account for approximately 50% of global primary production, form the trophic base of nearly all marine ecosystems, are fundamental in trophic energy transfer and have key roles in climate regulation, carbon sequestration and oxygen production. Boyce et al.1 compiled a chlorophyll index by combining in situ chlorophyll and Secchi disk depth measurements that spanned a more than 100-year time period and showed a decrease in marine phytoplankton biomass of approximately 1% of the global median per year over the past century. Eight decades of data on phytoplankton biomass collected in the North Atlantic by the Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) survey2, however, showan increase in an index of chlorophyll (Phytoplankton Colour Index) in both the Northeast and Northwest Atlantic basins3, 4, 5, 6, 7 (Fig. 1), and other long-term time series, including the Hawaii Ocean Time-series (HOT)8, the Bermuda Atlantic Time Series (BATS)8 and the California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations (CalCOFI)9 also indicate increased phytoplankton biomass over the last 20–50 years. These findings, which were not discussed by Boyce et al.1, are not in accordance with their conclusions and illustrate the importance of using consistent observations when estimating long-term trends.
Along with this one:
Nature 472, E5–E6 (14 April 2011)
Brief Communication Arising (April, 2011) Arising from D. G. Boyce, M. R. Lewis & B. Worm Nature 466, 591–596 (2010)
… Closer examination reveals that time-dependent changes in sampling methodology combined with a consistent bias in the relationship between in situ and transparency-derived chlorophyll (Chl) measurements generate a spurious trend in the synthesis of phytoplankton estimates used by Boyce et al.1. Our results indicate that much, if not all, of the century-long decline reported by Boyce et al. is attributable to this temporal sampling bias and not to a global decrease in phytoplankton biomass.
OK, so I was right. The Boyce paper was nonsense, the claimed trend was spurious, plankton biomass is holding somewhere near steady or even increasing, and a number of independent records show that the Boyce et al. paper is garbage built on bad assumptions.
I bring this up for three reasons. The first is to show the continuing shabby quality of peer-review at scientific magazines when the subject is even peripherally related to climate. Nature magazine blew it again, and unfortunately, these days that’s no news at all. It’s just more shonky science from the AGW crowd … and people claim the reason the public doesn’t trust climate scientists is a “communications problem”? It’s not. It’s a garbage science problem, and all the communications theory in the world won’t fix garbage science.
The second reason I posted this is just because I enjoy it when it turns out that I’m right, particularly on a risky statement made with no data and in the face of opposition, and I wanted to enter that fact into the record. Childish, I know, but at least I’m adult enough to admit it.
The third reason is a bit more complex. It is to emphasize the value of actual experience. I didn’t disbelieve Boyce et al. because I had any data. I had no data at all.
What I did have was a lifetime spent on and under the ocean. Phytoplankton form the basis of all life in the ocean. If the phytoplankton had actually gone down by 50%, all life in the ocean would have gone down by 50% … and my experience said no way that was true. Fish catches haven’t gone down like that, numbers of species on the reef and along the coast haven’t gone down like that, I would have noticed, people around the world would have been screaming about it.
So I put my neck on the chopping block, and I trusted my experience … and in the end, despite the people who laughed at me and abused my claims, my experience won out over Boyce’s “science”.
Does this mean that we should always trust our experience over science? Don’t be daft. Science is hugely valuable, and often shows that our experience has misled us completely.
But far too many scientists forget to check the obvious – their own experience. Not one of the Boyce authors thought “Wait a minute … since the oceans live almost entirely off the phytoplankton, if plankton is down by half why haven’t I seen oceanic populations from krill to whales and octopuses dropping by half?” Or perhaps they just didn’t have the experience to check the obvious.
The moral of this story? Well, the moral for me is that trusting my experience over the “science” of high-powered scientists living in an ivory tower far above the ocean worked out well … this time.
But the real moral is that scientists need to pay more attention to the “laugh test”. I know when I first heard the Boyce claim, I busted out laughing … and when our experience is that strong in saying that science is wrong, it’s likely worth checking out.
w.
ADDED LATER For me, there’s a few tests that I apply regularly that seem to not be applied by far too many mainstream AGW supporting scientists. These are the smell test, the laugh test, and the eyeball test.
The laugh test weeds out the worst, like the preposterous claim that plankton had been decreasing by 1% per year for the last century. The “Rule of 70” gives the doubling time for an investment. You divide 70 by the annual interest rate, and that gives the doubling time in years.
The Rule of Seventy gives seventy years for doubling time at 1%, so that means in a hundred years the total biomass of the ocean has decreased by more than 50% … seriously, I laughed. The biomass of the ocean decreased by more than half and nobody noticed until now?
The smell test is more subtle. It depends on the provenance of the information, and the way it has been handled, whether it looks “natural”, the history of the investigators, and the like. While the smell test can’t reject anything, it shows me where to look for something wrong.
The eyeball test is simple. Look at every single dataset. There is absolutely no substitute for the experienced human eye. You say there’s seven thousand of them? Boo hoo. You can’t just make up an algorithm and apply it without seeing what it does to every single station record. If there’s a large number, I just write a program in R that just flashes them on the screen for a second along with an ID number. I just let it roll, and jot down the numbers of the ones that stand out.
Now before anyone starts screaming about computerized checking, yes, they are extremely valuable. I’m a whiz at error-trapping, anomaly finding, and computerized checking in a variety of computer languages.
But computerized checking is only as good as the person who wrote the computerized checks. And until you understand every different way that your data might be contaminated or tainted or erroneous for a host of reasons, you will not be able to write computerized checks to identify those particular errors.
And the only way to do that is to put each and every dataset to the eyeball test. There’s an example of what I mean in my post When Good Proxies Go Bad over at ClimateAudit. (Y’all should definitely visit ClimateAudit, Steve McIntyre is continuing his amazing exposition of the never-ending revelations of the “hide the decline” fandango …)
Keith Minto says:
April 25, 2011 at 5:17 pm
“Confusing? it is to me, and I agree with Willis that these creatures are the start of a long food chain, that does not seem to be diminishing.”
It is reason enough to deploy the age-old slur “sophist” in science. Prior to Galileo, scientists were sophists. After Galileo, only lawyers and armchair sophists were sophists. Now scientists are sophists. Devolution.
Excellent followup Willis. I was behind you 100%. As I said in the original thread, I married into cattle farming. And while I certainly don’t know nearly as much as I should about it, I know for a FACT if you have half the amount of food, you can only have half the number of cattle. It really gets no simpler than that. That paper failed the sniff test from the get-go.
Willis Eschenbach says:
April 25, 2011 at 4:27 pm
“In addition, pH is an intensive variable, so an “average” is
a somewhat tenuous concept. ”
Temperature is also an intensive property of matter, and thus, the “average temperature” of a system has no physical meaning either.
DadGervais says:
April 25, 2011 at 7:11 pm
Beat me to it dammit!
DaveE.
Boris Gimbarzevsky says:
April 25, 2011 at 6:48 pm
Willis, I’d have the same suspicions about this data. A 50% drop in plankton would affect all sea life and, (as Pat Frank beat me to it), atmospheric O2 levels would be showing a small decline as a result. Considering the precision to which atmospheric composition can be determined for the last 50 years, it would have been prudent for the authors of the declining plankton paper to have checked if their conclusions were consistent with atmospheric O2 concentrations.
——————————–
……. and the answer would have been, according to this link, oxygen has gone from 20.95% to 20.95% from 1990 to 2001 (an essentially imperceptible 0.0003% change).
A few months ago, there was a poster on WUWT who was convinced that the (purported) decrease in phytoplankton was going to cause his own asphyxiation due to oxygen depletion in the atmosphere. Sad but true.
Here’s another related link, and I draw no conclusions from this. Possibly another imperceptible factor on O2 concentrations, but interesting nonetheless:
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2008/april2/plant-040208.html
Generally I apply a “this is new and let’s see if it holds up test.”
Were there any replies from the authors? Oh yes, there were. The provide evidence that their blending of different proxies for phytoplankton abundance was valid. At this point it still seems to be an open question with the balance of the evidence being on the side of the commenters. More research is needed to answer this question. But then this is how science proceeds. A single paper does not a finding make.
It is sooo valuable to develop a knowledge filter, aka BS filter. All of one’s background in science contributes to the filter. The laugh, smell, and eyeball tests are aspects or manifestations of this filter.
“philincalifornia says:
April 25, 2011 at 7:39 pm
according to this link, oxygen has gone from 20.95% to 20.95% from 1990 to 2001 (an essentially imperceptible 0.0003% change).”
If my source is accurate, then CO2 went from 353 ppm to 370 ppm between 1990 and 2001. That is an increase of 17 ppm. You may or may not agree with the following, but I will assume that half of the CO2 that is produced by man ends up in the atmosphere. (The other half then would go into increased photosynthesis and into the ocean.) The bottom line is that 34 ppm of additional CO2 was produced between 1990 and 2001. Therefore 34 ppm of oxygen must have been used up in the process as it takes one O2 to produce one CO2. So the oxygen should have decreased by 0.0034% based on the CO2 produced. Since the change was an order of magnitude smaller according to the above, we need to figure out why. Is it possible the plankton greatly increased?
R Gates
Failure to comment on new findings is an abdication of responsibility.
That is part of how we got into this AGW snowballing effect. Nearly everyone ignored the enviroscientists and climatologists and thier research. We were all going about our own legitimate business. But since they were not doing adequate quality control the rest of us probably should have wised up sooner and applied the smell test, and other tests in a more vigilent manner.
Fortunately there are an increasing number of people who are no longer going to accept that there is anything special about climate science. This branch of research is comming under increasing scrutiny. In my opinion the result is a widespread loss of confidence in climate scientists.
By the way, well done Willis.
Well either you are wrong or right on any question, the clever bit is demonstrating why you are right, so I am not sure why Willis is so self satisfied?
Andy
I am an AGW sceptic from life experience. Having lived and worked in desert areas over many decades I never noticed any change in night time temperatures.
I think a long term record of MINIMUM temperatures from some remote desert region would provide interesting data.
Rob R says:
April 25, 2011 at 10:06 pm
R Gates
Failure to comment on new findings is an abdication of responsibility.
____
Uh…Boyce did respond, though apparently Willis failed to mention that. Part of his response says:
“Although we cannot entirely discount the possibility that changes in sampling methods may introduce fractional bias, extensive sensitivity analyses detailed below show that this is not responsible for the observed Chl declines. Furthermore, the accuracy of CT as a proxy of surface Chl has been independently verified4, 5, and indicates that CT explains only 0.5–1.5% less of the variance in surface Chl than precision measurements of water-leaving radiance (remotely sensed ocean colour)5.”
Again, this is far from settled and I think Willis is crowing a bit too much and way too early…
Interesting that you use the “eyeball test”.
I’ve spent a great deal of my life as a Harry The Hacker, looking at strangeness or figuring out how various computer programs work. Many of my colleagues don’t and they wonder at how I reach a better understanding than them. For me its simple, I look at stuff.
If’ I’m peripherally interested in something, I’ll get the source code and take a look. I don’t really try to understand, just glean the general principles. You can look at a lot of stuff quickly and get a rough feeling for how it works, as well as the discipline of those who created it.
And its amazing what your eye can pick up if you want to find something – I’ve done a lot of “string dumps” of executable programs, over the years, looking for strings, messages, or other things that might be in there. Just doing a dump, and holding your finger on the page-down key letting the pages of crap go flicking by… its amazing how soon you just KNOW that something interesting stood out – without knowing exactly what or why. Thats what going back and looking again is for.
The quick-eyeball-scan of large amounts of stuff is amazingly good at spotting things to go look at in more detail.
I don’t think it’s smug or childish to point out that you were right. It’s also worth highlighting this correction to yet another sloppy paper accepted for publication by Nature. You can bet MSM will not be making a song and dance over it.
You went out on a limb and were proved right , fair game.
Joe Lalonde says:
April 25, 2011 at 5:30 pm
First, you do understand the meaning of “citation”? I asked for one for the claim of the amount of water loss, if you recall. Saying “We DO have proof” is not a citation …
Second, you seem to think that the oceans being ~1,ooo metres deeper four billion years ago is significant to something … but I still don’t understand what practical difference that makes.
w.
Hi Willis, good smell test and good tip about oxygen (can’t remember commentator who made it). Hope this reply is not too late, just saw it. I think I remember commenting on the original article.
I worked for 25 years in biological oceanography and regularly used secchi discs in very clear, tropical, oceanic water. There are all sorts of rules for using these simple instruments, but one which has been routinely ignored is the wearing of polaroid sunglasses. Sunglasses, especially polaroid ones, came into vogue in the 70s and 80s and even more in the 90s and 00s, when we were willing to pay ridiculous amounts for these fashionista items and when eye-health warnings came about. Wearing sunglasses, again especially polaroid ones, allows you to see deeper into the water (less surface reflection). Hence, scientific staff (or often crew members) would give greater secchi disc readings when wearing these sunglasses, hence the appearance of “clearer water” and lower phytoplankton (chlorophyll) counts. You could probably track increasing sunglasses with “clearer” ocean readings.
Of course, the mixing of such diverse data sources should already have rung alarm bells. It certainly is a message about the quality-control of Nature magazine.
R. Gates says:
April 25, 2011 at 5:44 pm
R. Gates, if you want to continue believing that there is only a third of the phytoplankton there was a hundred years ago until the final nail is put in, you are welcome to do so.
Me, I still say it’s nonsense that doesn’t pass the laugh test. I didn’t believe it when there was no scientific evidence supporting my position, and I believe it even less now that there is scientific evidence in that regard. Of course, YMMV.
w.
PS – My joy in being right is childish, I admit that, but there is nothing childish about desiring to be right as you claim, that’s your misunderstanding. I rather suspect, for example, that you desire to be right … is that “childish” on your part?
Phil’s Dad says: (April 25, 2011 at 1:54 pm)
No one under 50 should ever be allowed to make a decision that affects someone else.
This statement need’s thought and refinement, Phil’s Dad. It has a kernel of truth and a useful caution within it; but to be entered into the roll of great statements of mankind it requires further work. I think it deserves that work.
AndyW says:
April 25, 2011 at 10:07 pm
The clever bit is demonstrating why you are right? No, the clever bit is getting the right answer. Only if you get the right answer can you demonstrate why you are right.
And it is particularly clever if you can get the right answer with only a few hints and no scientific data to support the answer. Finally, it is really clever if you take a big chance and announce your result quite publicly and await the outcome. I put my experience, logic, and intuition on the line, and it was right. So yes, I’m satisfied. If you publicly put your name behind a gamble like that and it came off, I certainly hope that you would be satisfied as well.
In my case, I was right because my fisherman/rancher’s logic was correct—a cut of phytoplankton to 1/3 of its biomass in 1900 would have huge repercussions in the ocean, and we haven’t seen those repercussions (or anything like what would be expected).
As the world works, I just saw on TV a woman who went to her doctor convinced that she had a tumor. The doc said no. The woman persevered. The fourth doctor she went to found the tumor … and you think she’s not clever until she can explain why she was right?
w.
Roger Carr quoted Phil’s Dad @ur momisugly April 25, 2011 at 11:43 pm
“No one under 50 should ever be allowed to make a decision that affects someone else.”
and commented:
“This statement need’s thought and refinement, Phil’s Dad. It has a kernel of truth and a useful caution within it; but to be entered into the roll of great statements of mankind it requires further work. I think it deserves that work.”
I thought it too stupid to comment on when I read it.
Women over 50 are usually beyond childbearing age. Therefore, the proposition is equivalent to no woman of childbearing age should be allowed to make the decision to bear a child. Bearing a child affects the father, grandparents, siblings etc. It would be preposterous in our society to suggest that women be denied the right to make that decision. Presumably in Phil’s Dad’s world, the donor of the man-juice would be over 50. Dunno how the young ‘uns would take to that!
BTW Excellent work Willis. It was the O2 levels that were the giveaway for me.
The second reason I posted this is just because I enjoy it when it turns out that I’m right,
And you deserve to glory in it, because after all if it had proven to be completely wrong, you would have had egg on your face.
Werner Brozek says:
April 25, 2011 at 9:12 pm
“philincalifornia says:
April 25, 2011 at 7:39 pm
Werner, I somehow managed to lose the link to my source of data in my original comment. It’s here:
http://www.rsbs.anu.edu.au/o2/O2_2_Atmosphere.htm
On the assumption that this is accurate (the original source of the numbers is not referenced) first, they calculated the 0.0003% based on 7 years of oxygen “consumption”, and I think it’s badly worded and should read 0.0003%/year, so it jibes with your calculation. Sorry for the confusion.
Whatever, it still doesn’t impact 20.95% oxygen.
“It’s just more shonky science from the AGW crowd … and people claim the reason the public doesn’t trust climate scientists is a “communications problem”? It’s not. It’s a garbage science problem, and all the communications theory in the world won’t fix garbage science.”
Indeed.
And the AGW crowd do know this. That’s why we see the proclamation by the AGW proponents that the science behind this paper, for example, isn’t ‘settled’, and that therefore ‘more research is needed’ – meaning ‘we need more money’.
Why is there no mechanism to cut off funding for those who produce such papers? Why should the taxpayers cough up more money to be wasted on such projects?
I’m sure a lot of unemployed Ph.D.s, who dare not open their mouths in fear of never getting a job might be gainfully employed by some agency to cut fundings to research which is refuted by other scientists. That would certainly concentrate some minds …
Oh Willis I love your approach. It’s like watching an oxygen bubbling system starting up in a tank of stale water and torpid fish.
Now I’ve got two topics that to me fail the smell test big time – but they need careful deconstructing and crowdsourcing here is such a joy. These topics are crucial planks/cards in the House Of Cards of AGW and I’d love to see you write on them here. I’d do them myself but… various reasons… but if you don’t bite, then I shall, but you’d do them better, quicker, and are more likely to get them posted here.
I’m indebted to others for the first; the second is my own hobbyhorse. First, a glaring issue in Trenberth’s famous diagram of energy exchanges. Second, the Ice Hockey Sticks – almost the only remaining bit of visual science in the now-threadbare IPCC Summary For Policymakers and Synthesis Report – the Ice Hockey Sticks which “show” a “sudden catastrophically big rises” in the concentrations of CO2, N2O and CH4 “since industrialization”. Mann’s Hockey Stick of 2001 has been disappeared, and has not been replaced, even in the text, in the Summary; there is also no mention of UHI challenges to the temperature record.
If you want more info please email me action […at] greenworldtrust.org.uk – cheers.
Thank you Willis for this post, and many earlier posts too of course, and Anthony for the many posts and long hours, and to the many others who work at this blog:
I find the articles and discussion here absolutely amazing. That such great issues can be discussed with such candour – such willingness to share – such fun in the challenge – and scientific rigour. There’s so much to learn. I really appreciate the opportunity to read and learn new things, not only about the science, but the way you deal with disagreements and how open discussion can work. Excellent stuff – simply excellent!
Robin