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 …)
I haven’t read through all the comments, but in my own (very) small way I’ve read lots of things that utterly fail the smell test and the other tests, which I have no idea how to prove wrong, and have no time to anyway. I like a ‘That smells like nonsense to me’ statement’, so long as the person saying it, often me, at the same time says ‘but I can’t prove it (yet).’
Back in the eighties I was staying with a friend whose husband had recently died of AIDS, also staying was the HIV specialist doctor who had treated him. This doctor explained everything he knew about HIV to us. Of course he knew far more than anyone, and it was fascinating – but it sounded like nonsense to me then, and, without going into his specific projections, has turned out to be so. I fully expected him to be right, as I had no medical or scientific basis for my scepticism at all. Ever since I’ve trusted my nose more.
Werner Brozek says:
April 25, 2011 at 6:59 pm
The movement of massive rocks by glaciation is one example of “head scratchers” to a theory. Massive amounts of snow and Ice build-up, plus a few earthquakes are suppose to move rock around. Rocks breaking off other rocks are sharp and defined. Straight rainfall would pit and flatten or pool over extremely long periods of time. An Ice Age would cover a massive area with snow and ice, the melt off is at the edges heading northerly slowly.
Volcanic activity at the beginning of this planet should show massive amount of outcropping and many vents. If this was under a massive amount of water pressure then would flatten these activities, inhibit ash in the atmosphere and generate massive amount of silica from venting and pressure that would implode porous rock. This would also generate pressured rock formations not like some porous rock formations from volcanoes. A water world loosing it’s water then can have massive icebergs that can easily scrape and move rocks around. Freezing and breaking off massive chunks of ice can pick up rocks and move them impressive distances. The receding water can also move rocks around and round them up through much wave actions.
Most ice buildup is water freezing from underneath the ice. Very little is attributed to precipitation on down.
Well if Boyce is wrong (as I believe he is) then he should be forced to admit it.
Then there is the matter of the 67,400 results from a Google of
phytoplankton boyce
most of which are alarmist articles, which need to be corrected.
Also, all cites of the Boyce paper need to be corrected.
Willis,
1,ooo metres deeper four billion years ago is significant to something … but I still don’t understand what practical difference that makes.
This has a difference of pressure exerting on the newly formed crust of this planet. There is a great deal of trapped and pressurized gases under this planets crust. Even the planet slowing down makes a difference in allowing these gases to expand after 4 billion years. Heat transference from water is a great deal different especially in massive amounts of pressure compared to todays atmospheric pressure. Compressed sand does form sand stone. There was very little glaciation below a certain point on this planet. most of this is through theories.
Our understanding of Ice Ages is through ocean core samples that show a build-up of H2 18 O in the shells of a certain ocean species that give us a time line of when they occurred. And not what they have done.
Willis,
Must be old age…I missed adding that this planet was close to where Venus is and rotated faster 4 billion years ago.
Nice one, Willis, and reminds me of the multitudes of idiot ‘surveys’ carried out by unknown ‘scientists’ and trumpeted in the MSM; older people who have been around the block a time or two examine these and think ‘Why didn’t the scientists just go down to a local pub and ask the same question and get a reasonably accurate answer for free?”
A classic case; an earnest young Sociologist I worked with years ago was awarded a generous grant by the government of the day to examine and write a paper on the marriage patterns of a specific migrant community; after he carefully explained the results of his survey to me, I said “You have spent all that money finding out that we marry who we meet!”
He looked startled, then laughed ruefully. “You bastard, Alexander! You’ve accurately summarised my ten thousand word paper in five words! My reviewers never saw what you’ve seen, either.”
Willis, the laugh test doesn’t work when the punchline is what they accept without question.
@Willis
> The clever bit is demonstrating why you are right? No, the clever bit is getting the right answer.
So a stopped clock is “clever” twice a day?
Dave H says:
April 26, 2011 at 9:00 am (Edit)
Thanks, Dave. No, a clock is stupid, stopped or not … but a man who can tell the time using a stopped clock is clever.
w.
PS – I am reminded of the class of students who were challenged to tell the teacher how to calculate the height of a tower using a very expensive and very accurate barometer. One kid said “Drop it off the top of the tower, and measure how long it takes until it smashes on the ground”.
Another barometer solution is to look at the cornerstone of the building. Go to the Architect and say, “If you tell me the height of your building, I’ll give you this shiny new barometer.”
Alan Mitchell says (emphasis mine):
April 25, 2011 at 11:24 pm
Alan, many thanks for highlighting a couple important points.
The first is that even the simplest of measurements (e.g. Secchi disk measures of water clarity) is subject to operator error.
The second is to underscore again the importance of experience. I’ve never used a Secchi disk, and despite years and years on the ocean, when writing these two articles on the subject I never once thought about the issues regarding polaroid sunglasses. And that invisible factor may explain a large amount of the difference in the measurements.
w.
Willis Eschenbach says:
April 25, 2011 at 11:30 pm
R. Gates says:
April 25, 2011 at 5:44 pm
Is this settled? Really? To claim “you’re right” about this so quickly seems a bit premature to say the least, though I can well understand your self-admitted “childish” desire to be right about this, but I think a proper skeptic might sit back and remain skeptical toward either side of this issue until a wee bit more data and studies have been done.
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.
_____
Willis, again, I would urge caution to you on this issue. The more you crow now about being right could lead to a larger amount of crow you will need to eat later…again, this is far from settled.
Wow, if I had paid for the Boyce study I would be demanding my money back right now.
Thank you for this post.
“the Boyce et al. paper is garbage built on bad assumptions.”
I don’t understand the apparent vitriol here. Sometimes that’s the way science works. Boyce et al. gathered data, analyzed it and reported the findings. Findings that may have surprised them. So they ask around and nobody can see anything they’ve done wrong (including reviewers), so it gets published. Others see it and question -doing their own science. As a result, now everyone knows what they did wrong and we all understand a bit more about the system.
Like I said, sometimes that’s the way it works. The way it doesn’t work is if authors don’t provide enough information for others to find out where they may have made a mistake.
Willis, despite all alarmist attempts to educate, you still have it backwards. Instead of questioning this catastrophic phytoplankton decline, you should be wondering what measurement errors are hiding the decline in marine animal populations!
/sarc, as if it’s needed.
Revkin has posted comments from some folks who are more familiar with the data:
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/26/on-plankton-warming-and-whiplash/
Joe Lalonde, are your comments accidentally being posted on the wrong thread? I’m sure you must be making very valid points, but I just can’t figure out what they have to do with Willis’ post . . .
It would make a lot of sense if before a scientific paper was published the authors had to fly around the world, and look, not sleep. I am convinced that 99.9% of the worlds population have no idea how big our planet is.
From one that has sailed all 7 seas.
Willis,
While I agree that a decline of 50% doesn’t pass the smell test for a global average- I’m wondering about your statement: “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.”
Lets leave aside the limitations of chloropyll a (or spectrophometric) and secchi measurements as an appropriate proxy for phytoplankton abundance. Phytoplankton abundance at any point in time is a function of a complex set of variables.
Lets use one of the more important variables controlling phytoplankton – grazers. A decline in the number or type of grazers can produce both a crash in fish population and an increase in phytoplankton. As I noted earlier we can have a fenced pasture that allows no herbivores and end up with waist high grass. Let sheep enter and we have a finely cropped system. So which is more productive? If we move the analogy from the terrestrial back to the aquatic– the collapse of the oysters along the Atlantic coast is much like removing sheep from a pasture. Phytoplankton can boom with the loss of grazing and crash with an increase in grazing. Many other things can also cause phytoplankton increases and decreases as well. (I’m one that thinks the composition of the phytoplankton may actually tell us more than the mass)
Sorry if this seems like splitting hairs but am in the middle of some local disagreement about the cause of increased phytoplankton being linked to a politically correct cause (nutrients). My point- phytoplankton alone is insufficient to describe total biomass in an ecosytem -either going up or down.
I will add to your smell test that with the increased use of fertilizers world wide and increased fish and shell fish harvest (and hydrology modifications to estuaries)– one would not expect such a drastic decline. But that is admitting to not knowing what impact the long term ocean cycles (upwellings (nutrients), T, and grazing pressures) may have on phytoplankton production.
Willis:
See — breaking news at
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110427171503.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29
“Record Number of Whales, Krill Found in Antarctic Bays”
Kip Hansen says:
April 27, 2011 at 4:28 pm
Funny, Kip, I had just gotten done reading it before reading your post. Half the phytoplankton? Well, not there, at least.
w.
Thanks for the words of wisdom, R. Gates, but I didn’t get here by following that path. Occasionally wrong but rarely uncertain, that’s me. Is it settled whether we have only a third of the biomass of phytoplankton now than we had a hundred years ago, or half of what we had when I was a kid? It’s settled for me, because I’m a man of the ocean and I have both eyes and a brain. You can continue to claim that the Boyce is correct.
For me, I’ve seen nothing in all of my commercial fishing or my sport fishing or my extensive diving or any of the reading that I’ve done to suggest that Boyce is correct. So while you may claim that the question is “far from settled”, it is not at all clear what you are basing that on.
I mean you say it as though there was other evidence that Boyce is right, that we have half the phytoplankton we had in 1950 … but as the citations I gave indicate, the evidence actually indicates the opposite.
And we know that the ocean is generally slightly warmer than in 1950 … and plants in general grow faster when it’s warmer, so there’s no theoretical reason to expect a drop in phytoplankton from slight warming.
Finally, I found Boyce’s arguments, in opposition to the scientific objections to his claims that I quoted in the head post, to be weak and un-compelling. He said, for example, that the reason that the plankton counts went up while his counts went down was that the plankton counts included larger plankton including smaller zooplankton.
But so what? If the total including the smaller zooplankton are increasing, are we to believe that there’s half the phytoplankton, but despite that decrease the number of zooplankton has gone through the roof? What are all those zooplankton eating, if there’s half the biomass of phytoplankton? Again, that logic doesn’t pass the laugh test.
You are correct, R. Gates, if I stick out my neck I may have to eat crow in the future. But for me, that falls into the zone of “no guts, no glory”. I believe I’m right, and I’m not afraid to say so. If I’m wrong, I’ll eat plenty of crow, I’m sure you and others will see to that, and rightly so.
w.
A couple points about that, John. First, if this were an isolated incident, you’d likely be right. But it’s not. All you have established here is that the peer review process was slipshod. Me, I’ve had it up to my eyeballs with slipshod “pal review” in climate science.
Yes, science generally is self-correcting. But you seem to be using that fact to excuse bad science. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, but the extraordinary climate science claims get passed through peer review with no evidence at all, the claims of the paper just get nodded at. It’s not just the air traffic controllers that are sleeping on the job.
The problem is that the Steig study makes the cover of Nature. But by the time that Steig’s results are shown to be a newbie error (not knowing that his analysis “spread out” the peninsular warming, or that his analysis formed Chladni patterns), the authors have “moved on” and the news is buried on the back pages.
That’s why, despite the fact that science is self-correcting, the media hype surrounding bogus climate science papers is not self-correcting. And I’m tired of being bombarded by bull, and having to raise the alarm.
Anyhow, John, that’s why the vitriol. Because I’m sick of the unending stream of the most pathetic excuses for climate science being published as if they were hard fact. I’m tired of the reviewers just phoning it in because it fits their agenda. I’m outraged by the journals taking positions on the climate science question, and then using the power of their rags to spread those positions by accepting and publishing science that falls apart as soon as someone kicks the tires.
Details available upon request, although they are all around you, including this paper of Boyce’s.
w.
Pat, I commented on this objection above. People such as yourself point out (correctly) that grazing generally increases the productivity.
But if the biomass goes to half, by what mechanism are you postulating the possibility that the net primary productivity (NPP) of the phytoplankton could remain the same?
As one of the experts in the Revkin article commented,
So yes, the NPP of phytoplankton is increased by grazing … but if the biomass goes to half, it is grazed before or after, so there’s no reason to think the efficiency of the phytoplankton would increas.
w.