Bishop Hill writes of a new paper, one so “toe curling” it is worth mentioning here to get more exposure. He writes:
This is science? This is progress?
Reports on Progress in Physics, a journal published by the Institute of Physics here in the UK, has published a paper by Raymond Orbach, an engineer at the University of Texas at Austin. It’s available in return for free registration, and I actually think it’s worth it, if only because it’s so toe-curling.
In some ways the paper’s title tells you all you need to know about it. `Our Sustainable Earth’ looks at (you guessed it) eight climate myths propagated by bad people. Like every other set of climate myths you have ever seen, each of the myths is entirely devoid of sources – Orbach has taken them from this page at his university’s website. Where they got them from is a mystery.
In fact, absence of citations is a bit of an issue. Here’s how Orbach starts to deal with claims about the medieval warm period.
Climate scientists now understand that the Medieval Warm Period was caused by an increase in solar radiation and a decrease in volcanic activity, which both promote warming. Other evidence suggests ocean circulation patterns shifted to bring warmer seawater into the North Atlantic. Those kinds of natural changes have not been detected in the past few decades.
Interesting claims – but where did they come from? We are not told. We are expected to take Prof Obach on trust. At the risk of repeating myself, one would never get away with this kind of thing on a blog.
(PS: Note to Prof Orbach – the ocean near the top of the globe is the Arctic (with a c in the middle). And it’s Santer not Senter.
“That’s about as slap-dash as it gets. Noting p** me off more than grammatical laziness, ”
““The scientific data do not support the claim…” I’m assuming he means “does not”?
“Dr. Orbach scored a perfect trfecta:”
I suggest that all you English majors stop complaining about the good doctor’s spelling and grammar, very few of your posts are error free.
‘common sense says:
October 12, 2011 at 1:40 am
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/execute.csh?amsutemps
NB: lowest global sea level temp for this day in past 10 years!’
All I’m getting here is a Error message. Has it been removed as an Inconvenient Truth?
The esteemed Texas Tribune has picked up the story…give it two days.
Alex. Sinclair says:
“Actually Daggett data is plural, the singular being datum.”
That would be true under it’s original ussage in Latin. However, as used in modern English, data is considered a mass noun like oil or dirt and as such it has NO singular form.
It seems that the new AGW strategy is to point out all of the information which is contrary to their models and theories as being “exceptions” in some way to real climate. However, it is apparent to anyone using logic that all of these “exceptions” over time are part and parcel to what makes up real climate. Along with the lack of citations, it smells of desparation to me.
Darn … you missed it. NHC got it corrected. But at least I’ve got the screencap, so I know it was real.
Let’s see if I got this:
2005 and 2010 are in a statistical tie for first.
1998, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2007 and 2009 are in a statistical tie for third.
Unless 2005 and 2010 were several standard deviations from the average, that would imply that the period 1998 to 2010 exhibited warming that was statisticaly insignificant.
Now how is it that GISS comes up with a statisticaly insignificant temperature change from 1998 to 2010 that is different from the statisticaly insignificant temperature change over the same period from HacCrut? Well,,, HadCrut uses the highly innacurate method of extrapolating Arctic temperatures from global temperatures, while GISS uses the highly innacurate method of estimating Arctic temperatures. Estimates based on what we don’t know, but obviously estimates from unknown sources are more accurate than extrapolations from known sources!
Yet, they both conclude that warming since 1998 is statisticaly insignificant. It appears that the difference of a few hundredths of a degree between them is an argument as to whose insignifcant results are the least insignificant.
Now if I may move on to the most laughable part of the first few paragraphs, if the only difference between the two data sets is the Arctic, then remove that from both and compare them. Ooops, that would give us totaly and completely insignificant warming since 1998 (a big step up from plain old insignificant) with both HadCrut and Giss in agreement. That would lead to the following conclusion:
If there has been any significant warming world wide since 1998, it has been entirely contained in the Arctic. We don’t know how bad it is of course, because all we have to go on are two data sets, one of which is extrapolated and one of which is estimated. Denmark’s actual measured data since 1958http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php isn’t used by either GISS or HadCrut because it is actual data and who would use actual data when you’ve got extrapolations and estimates instead?
But hey, I’m OK going with Raymond Orbach. Nothing significant world wide, and if anything significant IS happening, it is contained to the Arctic. We don’t know for certain what is going on temperature wise, but the polar bear population has quadrupled in the last couple of decades (although my understanding from the WWF is that just because the population has quadrupled, it doesn’t mean they aren’t going extinct. I’m uncertain if the extinction is an estimate or an extrapolation).
That’s what I got from those first few paragraphs, I didn’t read the rest. Are they just as stunned? I mean stunning?
This is more than astonishing. First you need to understand who Dr. Orbach is. Read his background at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki.Ramond_L._Orbach . Then will understand that he was in charge of all science funding at the DOE during his tenture as Under Secretary for Science. It was this department that has funded Phil Jones in the past, and funds Ben Santer and the climate modelling efforts at Lawrence Livermore Lab among many others. The research budget just for the Biological and Environmentaal Research section (which includes climate) is over US$ 400 million for this year.
From his lack of understanding of many issues and his highly prejudicial treatment of different views, it is not surprising that many scientists have found it difficult to get their projects funded if they did not share the CAGW viewpoint.
He’s even claiming to have found the tropical troposphere “hotspot” when even Dr.Syukuro Manabe, the godfather of climate modeling, now agrees with Fred Singer that it’s not there (see Fu, 2011) and that climate models overstate the warming by 2 to 4 times.
Besides the article being an embarassment, it provides strong evidence of the high probability of exclusionary standards in funding climate science.
Raymond Orbach, Director, Energy Institute, University of Texas at Austin has a letter published in today’s (Oct 12) Wall Street Journal where he states that “as shown recently by Benjamin Santer et al., one must average over at least 17 years of data to reduce annual (or even decadal) variabilities to detect overall trends”, that “RSS v3.3 displays a consistent warming trend (from January 1980 to December 2010) of 0.152 degrees C per decade”, and that “minimal warming over a single decade does not disprove the existence of a slowly evolving anthropogenic warming signal.” I believe the money quote is “does not…disprove anthropogenic warming” as I understand that the theory of anthropogenic global warming cannot be disproven.
They’re now becoming DESPERATE to reduce CO2 but it isn’t to save the planet – it’s to save their own a@ur momisugly@. As the cooling trend becomes more and more obvious to everyone their opportunity to connect it to CO2 reduction is evaporating before their eyes. If there is any way for them to claim a reduction of human CO2 ‘might’ be the reason for cooling – they’ll take whatever they can get their greedy hands on to keep the gravy train rolling.
I can almost hear them in five years if they get their way, “Our efforts to curb CO2 have resulted in a 10% reduction of human emissions and that appears to have been enough to stem the tide of global warming .. for now.”
Hello Mauna Loa – http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/webdata/ccgg/trends/co2_data_mlo.png
Even us IT professionals no longer concern ourselves about whether data is plural or singular. We also don’t worry about whether to say us IT professionals or we IT professionals. Remember, most of us are public school graduates.
The “Climate Change Myths” piece in the University Of Texas At Austin (“What Starts Here Changes The World”) is written by Marc Airhart, main Science Writer for internal and external communication at the Jackson School of Geosciences at UofT Austin.
http://www.jsg.utexas.edu/people/do-gf.html
Mythbuster Marc is also responsible for demolishing the Urban Heat Island effect (Myth #6) http://www.utexas.edu/know/2010/11/15/climate_myth6/
“Update: Richard Muller, a U.C. Berkeley physicist leading a team creating its own independent record of 20th Century global surface temperatures, says their preliminary results agree well with the three other major groups evaluating temperature trends (NASA, NOAA and the UK’s Met Office). The result is significant because
the research was designed to show that the other three efforts were biased
particularly with respect to underestimating the importance of the heat island effect. The new research is funded by the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, “the nation’s most prominent funders of efforts to prevent curbs on the burning of fossil fuels,” according to the LA Times. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-climate-berkeley-20110404,0,772697.story”
Eternal vigilance of fossil fuel bias is needed. If the Muller team reaches the wrong conclusion, you are forewarned.
The insidious tentacles reach everywhere, however.. Further down the Dean’s Office personnel list we discover that Luciano Correa is in charge of managing the royalty assets of the Jackson School
“more than 1,300 oil and gas wells”.
Say it isn’t so!
How about no warming for 15 years? I just graphed RSS data yesterday. No warming from 1997 to 2011. The warmistas are grasping at straws.
I’m certainly not a proponent of AGW and very much a skeptic – or denier, depending upon your climate change perspective. However, I am human and do make grammar and spelling mistakes – not unlike the good professor. There are, though, some mistakes that have been posted in the thread that may not be… fair.
For example – while the term “climatic” is a better fit when viewed within the context of the accompanying sentence, it’s possible Orbach was trying to emphasize the term “consequences” by using the adjective “climactic” as in: constituting a climax or peak… of consequences.
Also, the verb tense associated with the term “data” typically references the plural (i.e., the data do) rather than the singular (i.e., the data does).
These clarifications notwithstanding, other faux paus do exist in the paper (as published online). In the Introduction alone, the following “concerns” are noted:
1. improper noun/verb associations (e.g., “Recent evidence from many sources all point to…”). The evidence “points” because “from many sources” is a prepositional phrase that modifies the noun evidence. The term “all” adds confusion to the noun/verb pair and represents the inappropriate use of an absolute;
2. inconsistent hyphenation (e.g., short term vs. long-term);
3. awkward sentence transitions (e.g., “The issues are increases in long-term global temperatures, human responsibility for these increases, and if so, what can be done about it?”) . The assertion is that these ARE; thus, why muddle the sentence flow with “if so”…?
4. missing parallelism (e.g., “This paper summarizes data from recent relevant reports, first with respect to the question of global warming.”) Unfortunately, the author fails to provide a “second” or “third,” although a “finally” is detailed three paragraphs later.
5. confused personality (e.g., “Section 7 summarizes our findings, and expectations for the future.) The article clearly references one author – Raymond L Orbach; therefore, it’s unclear as to the persons are that constitute the “our,” when the author discusses the paper’s findings.
Although many of us have specks, motes, and planks aplenty for our eyes, the paper was published in a scientific journal managed by the Institute of Physics (IOP) Publishing, Ltd. This journal is sadly lacking in editorial skills and/or experience. Although it asserts that the author is responsible for proofing their manuscript, a competent editor would have flagged the concerns – sparing the journal and author embarrassment.
It’s possible, though, that such mistakes were raised by the editor but discarded by Orbach as unnecessarily costly to correct; IOP Publishing does warn that, “Only essential corrections should be made. You may be charged for excessive corrections arising from your own errors or omissions,” – http://authors.iop.org/atom/help.nsf/0/BB0C7FB81A28560B8025701F005AA63E?OpenDocument#_Toc29 . Regardless and were I a professor grading the paper as submitted, its grammar and spelling would receive a C to C-. This paper is not written in the caliber required of a scientific journal. The content is (unfortunately) trashed drivel, but admittedly, one person’s trash is another’s treasure – science be damned.
I recommend Orbach contact L.H. Greene, the person named as the paper’s inviter, and request he be removed from the latter’s contact listing.
The claim is that the only difference between GISS and the UK is how they treat the Arctic. (If math is not your strong point, jump to #15.)
I have done some “back of the envelope calculations” to see if this is a valid assumption. I challenge any GISS supporter to challenge my assumptions and/or calculations and show that I am way out to lunch. If you cannot do this, I will assume it is the GISS calculations that are out to lunch.
Here are my assumptions and/or calculations: (I will generally work to 2 significant digits.)
1. The surface area of Earth is 5.1 x 10^8 km squared.
2. The RSS data is only good to 82.5 degrees. (I will assume this applies to HADCRUT3 as well.)
3. It is almost exclusively the northern Arctic that is presumably way warmer and not Antarctica. For example, we always read about the northern ice melting and not what the southern areas are gaining in ice.
4. The circumference of Earth is 40,000 km.
5. I will assume the area between 82.5 degrees and 90 degrees can be assumed to be a flat circle so spherical trigonometry is not needed.
6. The area of a circle is pi r ^2.
7. The distance between 82.5 degrees and 90.0 degrees is 40,000 x 7.5/360 = 830 km
8. The area in the north polar region above 82.5 degrees is 2.2 x 10^6 km squared.
9. The ratio of the area between the whole earth and the north polar region above 82.5 degrees is 5.1 x 10^8 km squared/2.2 x 10^6 km squared = 230.
10. Let us compare GISS and HADCRUT3 for 2010 and 1998.
11. According to GISS, the difference in anomaly was 0.07 degrees C higher for 2010 versus 1998.
12. According to HADCRUT3, it was 0.07 degrees C higher for 1998 versus 2010.
13. The net difference between 1998 and 2010 between HADCRUT3 and GISS is 0.14 degrees C.
14. If we are to assume the only difference between these is due to GISS accurately accounting for what happens above 82.5 degrees, then this area had to be 230 x 0.14 = 32 degrees warmer in 2010 than 1998.
15. If we assume the site at http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php can be trusted for temperatures above 80 degrees north, we see very little difference between 1998 and 2010. The 2010 seems slightly warmer, but nothing remotely close to 32 degrees warmer as an average for the whole year.
Readers may disagree with some assumptions I used, but whatever issue anyone may have, does it affect the final conclusion about the lack of superiority of GISS data to any real extent?
@naturalclimate:
““The problem with that analysis is that it is incorrect” – Herman Cain.”
Just think of how many times, and in how many different situations Cain is going to be able to employ that line if he gets elected President. He could be addressing James Hansen, Al Gore, Michael Mann, any Keynesian economist… the potential list goes on forever!
“Beth Cooper says:
October 12, 2011 at 3:57 am
Tell me, why should I believe anyone who can’t spell ‘Arctick’? :-)”
—————
Well, an arctick is a rare white arachnid, blending in extremely well with ice and snow, Ixodes polarius, which feeds on the blood of drowned polar bears. It is threatened by global warming because as the ice and snow melt, it will be easy to spot by predators and eaten to extinction. See Charles Monnett and his 2006 article on drowned polar bears in Polar Biology.
j/k
I think we could solve any global warming problems by just getting these people to quit blowing hot air everywhere.
This fellow is a professor at the University of Texas. Nothing more need be said.
However…
BOOMER SOONER
Via the “myths” web page ( http://www.utexas.edu/know/2010/11/15/climate_myth6/ )
“…if you remove all ground based weather stations that are within six kilometers of populations over 30,000 people, on the assumption that these are the stations most likely to be affected by the urban heat island effect, the warming trends remain essentially the same.”
Why wouldn’t these folks mention the weather stations Anthony is famous for pointing out INSIDE of the population areas? Call me an idiot if I have it wrong, my assumption would be that those city-located stations are the ones most likely to be affected.
And here I thought the AGW freakouts were telling me the Arctic was so cold last wenter that it melted the ozone layer????
more AGW whiplash.
I’m not sure if I should laugh or cry. I think both, i.e. laugh so hard I cry. I see it was an invited paper and I know nothing about the institute of physics or Mr. Greene. I suspect strongly that if this is example of what they publish I don’t want to either.
Alex. Sinclair says:
October 12, 2011 at 4:13 am
“Once upon a time, literate people would treat ‘data’ as a collective noun.”
Believe me, literate people still do.
You are all so mean!
Just because the guy is totally ignorant is no reason to rain on his parade.
Is he not an expert? He says so, and that must be true.
And how dare you criticize him for his writing? If his paper were well written, it would be far easier to debunk his conclusions. Fuzzy writing is the best defense against criticism. If you can’t understand what an author means, you can’t easily disagree with him/her.
And besides those artic ice sheets persistently refuse to go away. Everybody said they would. And here they come again.
And the explorers never made it to the magnetic north pole, either. Oh, well.
It was such a nice idea.
Gail Combs says:
October 12, 2011 at 6:10 am
No wonder science is now extinct in the USA. From his CV you would think this guy was another Dr. Feynman. . . .
Gail,
Politicians really prefer a populace that is handled like mushrooms – i.e. kept in the dark and fed on b.s. Neither party in the US really supports an educated populace. The right prefers the simpler “can’t afford” approach, which simply keeps schools dark, while the left insists on course content that has a high b.s.fraction.