Today is a day I got not one thing done for myself due to the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature release sucking all the oxygen out of the climate debate with their pre-peer review release shenanigans. Tonight was no different, as I spent it watching Dr. Ben Santer give a presentation at Chico State University. I had a front row seat, as you can see below:
First I’d like to say that no, he didn’t try to make good on the famous Climategate email line about Pat Michaels. Both he and the host, Jim Pushnik were quite gracious, with both of them talking to me personally. I was prepared to stand up and argue the use of the word “denier” should Dr. Santer have used it, fortunately he did not. I was surprised that Dr. Santer recognized me when I asked a question (I talked with him afterwards), unfortunately, I didn’t phrase the question well enough, and I should have brought a printout of the graph I was thinking of with me. More here.
Here’s the program, video follows.
From CSUC
Dr. Ben Santer Speaks on Climate Change, Oct. 20
Please join us October 20th for an important climate event!
Dr. Ben Santer of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will speak on “The causes of recent climate change: Separating fact from fiction”
Date: Thursday, October 20th
Time: 7:00 p.m.
Place: Colusa Hall Conference Center, Room 100
Cost: Free and open to the public, seating may be limited.
Climate scientist Ben Santer is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), shared in the Nobel Prize awarded to the IPCC and has received a Distinguished Fellowship from the American Geophysical Union, and MacArthur Genius Fellowship for his research on human‐induced climate change (read full story).
Dr. Benjamin Santer is currently a atmospheric scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). His research focuses on such topics as climate model evaluation, the use of statistical methods in climate science, and identification of natural and anthropogenic “fingerprints” in observed climate records. Dr. Santer’s early research on the climatic effects of combined changes in greenhouse gases (GHGs) and sulfate aerosols contributed to the historic “discernible human influence” conclusion of the 1995 Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Santer, is considered an expert in the climate change research community, has worked in the Laboratory’s Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Inter-comparison (PCMDI) for nearly 20 years, and is a frequent contributor to congressional hearings on the science of climate change. He credits his success to the exceptional scientists he collaborates with at LLNL.
Presented by The Institute for Sustainable Development, the Rawlins Endowed Professorship for Environmental Literacy, and the Gateway Science Museum.
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Part 2 – only 3 minutes of Q&A and then my battery died, there was about 5 minutes of questions after that.
I’ve completed my viewing of the video. Santer glosses over the embarrassment to science that the East Anglia email revelations represent. I was surprised to find that he questions that the CO2 radiative influence is logarithmic, I doubt he would do that without some evidence, does anyone know what literature cite he might be relying upon? I understand the “wings” argument, but has any investigation quantified that in a credible way? Is Santer questioning the level of CO2 forcing claimed by the IPCC?
Otter17, Why must the warming have just “the” driver? If CO2 is only 30% or so of the recent warming, there are plenty of other candidates that can share the “driving”, the positive phases of multidecadal ocean climate modes like the PDO, increases in anthropogenic black carbon, decreases in the anthropogenic cooling aerosols, climate commitment from solar remaining at a grand maximum plateau through the remainder of the 20th century, oceans returning to “normal” after the little ice age.
Mark Smith says:
October 23, 2011 at 5:24 am
“Also 90% confidence is worth about vague link- no other science would accept such a weak link.”
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This “Physical Review Letters” study on neutrino oscillation data indicates a 90% confidence level in the abstract. Correct me if I am interpreting this incorrectly. I did a Google Scholar search and found other abstracts that mentioned 90% confidence level as well. I am not a statistics guru, but I understand that 90% and 95% are two standard confidence intervals used. Aside from that, as a layman, isn’t 90% confidence level good enough for making decisions on the science? It is highly unlikely we can ever have 99.9%.
Oops, forgot the link to the previous comment concerning the “Physical Review Letters” paper on neutrinos.
http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v81/i8/p1562_1
Martin Lewitt says:
October 23, 2011 at 7:11 am
“I’ve completed my viewing of the video. Santer glosses over the embarrassment to science that the East Anglia email revelations represent.”
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Actually, he addressed the issue directly, mentioning that he was affected/involved and also mentioning the six investigations into the matter. He also makes mention of how the incident doesn’t affect IPCC and NAS statements concerning human’s major contributor to global warming. He talks about it for a minute or so, what would you rather he have said? Have you read some of the reports/material from the investigations into the incident?
>> “I was surprised to find that he questions that the CO2 radiative influence is logarithmic, I doubt he would do that without some evidence, does anyone know what literature cite he might be relying upon?”
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As I understand his response to Anthony’s question, he doesn’t deny a logarithmic effect, only that it is not near saturating, even at very high concentrations such as 1000ppm. Table 1 in the paper linked below gives an equation for CO2 radiative forcing as CO2 concentrations increase. Also, you could take a look at the Ray Pierrehumbert reference that Dr. Santer gives in the presentation. I believe Dr. Gilbert Plass studied the “wings” effect of the CO2 band as far back as the 1950’s.
http://www.pnas.org/content/97/18/9875.full
>> “Why must the warming have just “the” driver? If CO2 is only 30% or so of the recent warming, there are plenty of other candidates that can share the… ”
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Sorry if my comments prior may have caused some confusion in that regard, but the evidence shows that there are indeed multiple drivers, the values of the forcings are illustrated in Figure 1 in the link below. Others in the comments above have mentioned what they believed to be sole drivers of climate, such as the PDO for one person and the sun (with chaotic weather feedbacks) for another person, if I have paraphrased them correctly. I do not believe they are correct based on the peer-reviewed evidence I have seen. To me, your comment seems to be the most correct.
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2011/20110415_EnergyImbalancePaper.pdf
otter17,
I recently attended a talk by Dr. Gutzler of the U of New Mexico that was very similar to Santer’s and he gave a similar exoneration of the East Anglia revelations citing the various investigations. But when pressed on the attempts to frustrate FOI requests, to pressure editors not to publish skeptical papers and to hide a failure of the proxy data to track temperature, he admitted that we would not find anything like that should his correspondence be made public. He doesn’t act less honorably in private than in public.
Martin Lewitt says:
October 23, 2011 at 11:09 am
“But when pressed on the attempts to frustrate FOI requests, to pressure editors not to publish skeptical papers and to hide a failure of the proxy data to track temperature, he admitted that we would not find anything like that should his correspondence be made public. He doesn’t act less honorably in private than in public.”
______________________
Well, being honorable in every single one of your private correspondences is nice and all, but what really matters are a person’s actions in the public sphere. In the public sphere, the skeptical papers ended up in the IPCC 2007 report, so their correspondences to pressure editors did not come to fruition. Many of the FOI requests were deemed to be frivolous or of a nature that CRU could not respond to them. If the data that CRU held could not be released to a third party due to permissions, there was nothing that CRU could do for some FOI’s; the requesters needed to do their due diligence and ask the individual data holders themselves. Yes, agreed that CRU was ill-equipped in size of staff to deal with such a large amount of FOI’s. Again, in the public sphere, CRU did what they could for the FOI’s, albeit in a quite haphazard way. As far as hiding the failure of proxy data to track temperature, the investigations saw no fault with their peer reviewed papers, albeit the graphs shown in the IPCC report did not show the caveat. It is not fair to claim that CRU was involved in some malfeasance to cover up the proxy data if none of the investigation panels found them guilty of malfeasance (that I know of). Read the investigation reports before making claims of malfeasance about these scientists (or any scientist for that matter). If you have already read the investigations, and you are not claiming malfeasance, I apologize.
Here is the short version of the East Anglia inquiries (with Royal Society as consultants):
http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/CRUstatements/SAP
I beseech you; read it if you haven’t already.
Furthermore, if you believe that the incident had any bearing on the science within the major scientific communities, read these statements from AMS, AGU, AAAS, and NAS.
(AMS) http://www.webcitation.org/5lnFDGhdZ
(AGU) http://www.agu.org/news/archives/2009-12-08_hacked-emails-climate-researchshtml.shtml
(AAAS) http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2009/1204climate_statement.shtml
(NAS) http://www.sciencemag.org/content/328/5979/689.short
(the NAS statement is actually a bunch of NAS-affiliated scientists but not speaking on NAS behalf)
otter17 said:
“I’m just a guy who likes science and engineering”.
That may be the most accurate statement from all your posts. Rather than liking engineering and science, I am an engineer and scientist.
Let me quote what Roger Pielke Sr. says about climate models: “i) the global models do not have all of the important human climate forcings (e.g. NRC, 2005), and ii) they fail to properly simulate the physics of the climate system . These models have also failed so far to skillfully simulate large scale atmospheric circulations . The mult-decadal global climate models DO NOT accurately simulate the climate system and its response to human climate forcings.”
So if you want to learn something about climate models from a true expert, who I believe does not have an agenda, hop on over to Roger Pielke Sr.’s site. You may learn something.
Regarding AGW, the science is not settled, not by a long shot, not even close. And science is not conducted by consensus. So if all these “scientific” organizations have hopped on the AGW bandwagon, well, it tells me their leadership does not know what the hell the scientific method is all about, and that they do have an agenda.
I have been following WUWT for years and this is only my second post, because I didn’t feel that I would significantly add to the discussion, and I am just not in the same league as some of the highly talented and extremely educated persons who post on this site. You may want to consider this as well, and maybe go back to school and actually study engineering and science.
ThePhysicsGuy says:
October 23, 2011 at 5:00 pm
“Rather than liking engineering and science, I am an engineer and scientist.”
“I have been following WUWT for years and this is only my second post, because I didn’t feel that I would significantly add to the discussion, and I am just not in the same league as some of the highly talented and extremely educated persons who post on this site. You may want to consider this as well, and maybe go back to school and actually study engineering and science.”
__________________________
Ok, cool that you are an engineer and scientist. What type of engineer and what type of scientist are you? What school did you attend? I am an electrical engineer working for an R&D unit at GE Energy. I have a master’s degree and pretty soon I will be able to sit for the P.E. exam.
Anyway, enough chit chat, as far as Roger Pielke Sr.’s remarks on models, do you know if he has any other peer reviewed papers that make the criticisms of models that you quote in your comment? And if you believe he doesn’t have an agenda, that’s good enough for me. I don’t assume anybody has an agenda unless I see some evidence otherwise. I’ll have to do a search for (NRC, 2005), thanks.
ThePhysicsGuy says:
October 23, 2011 at 5:00 pm
“So if all these “scientific” organizations have hopped on the AGW bandwagon, well, it tells me their leadership does not know what the hell the scientific method is all about, and that they do have an agenda.”
___________________
Wait, so you think that the National Academy of Sciences of has an agenda? This society has been around for a long time (Civil War when Lincoln commissioned it). Plus, if any of the membership realized that there was a biased agenda, they would leave in droves. I haven’t seen that happen. Try reading this joint statment in the link at the end of the paragraph. It contains sign off from national academies of Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Russia, UK, and USA. Do you feel that all those national academies have an agenda? They all analyzed the large body of peer review scientific evidence and came to the conclusions in the statement.
http://nationalacademies.org/onpi/06072005.pdf
Tell you what, let’s both read this Wikipedia article. I have read much of it before, but it never hurts for a refresher, eh?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method
otter,
Here are some related links:
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/On_The_Hijacking_of_the_American_Meteorological_Society.pdf
http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv15n2/reg15n2g.html
McKitrick corrects the IPCC
http://www.climatechangefacts.info/ClimateChangeDocuments/LandseaResignationLetterFromIPCC.htm
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0809/0809.3762.pdf
Congressional Budget Office states that $99 Billion has gone into studying the climate. Naturally, the more alarmist someone is, the more likely the are to get payola.
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Ben_Santer.pdf
You can get up to speed by reading up on these serious problems while you’re recuperating. And then of course there’s this.
Ah, so it would appear that your career is reliant upon GE’s green success.
Otter17,
I have the emails, I don’t need investigations to tell me what to think. If they are corrupt in private, then what they do in public is a lie. If they grew up loving truth, they lost it someplace along the way. They aren’t scientists.
Can someone please explain the process used to determine “satellite based estimated observations”? Is this some kind of adjustment to temperatures recorded? I hope I’m not the only one in the room who isn’t clear about this.
Concerning Brazilian rain forests, “About 38 million acres of original rain forest are being cut down every year, but in 2005, according to the most recent “State of the World’s Forests Report” by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, there were an estimated 2.1 billion acres of potential replacement forest growing in the tropics — an area almost as large as the United States. The idea has stirred outrage among environmentalists who believe that vigorous efforts to protect native rain forest should remain a top priority. But the notion has gained currency in mainstream organizations like the Smithsonian Institution and the United Nations, which in 2005 concluded that new forests were “increasing dramatically” and “undervalued” for their environmental benefits.” http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/30/science/earth/30forest.html?_r=2&hp=&pagewanted=print
I took an Earth View fly over of Brazil and other countries in South and Central America on googlemaps. Yes there are some roads and farms but most of all there are thousands of miles of rain forest and dense canopies.
What was Dr. Santer implying about the Central Valley climate change as a result of irrigation? Was he referring to the less frequent hundred and teens for weeks at a time that we saw in the 50s? Did he notice that before dams, there was a huge lake (Tulare Lake)? Was he referring to Tule Fog? That’s been around forever and I’m not aware of any change. I heard the statement implying change but no explanation. Can anyone clarify?
I’m sorry if I’m well behind the curve. Thanks for your help.
Anthony,
Thank for providing the video. I also have hearing problems. I know how frustrating and confusing it can be, even with the best hearing aids available. Why was Dr. Santer so agressive when you asked your question? His body language is so clear. He might have ready answers but he could never play poker. This, in itself could be productive. His discomfort may make him and others think about what they are saying and how they are received.
Dr Santer is especially scared when the Medieval Warm Period is mentioned and doesn’t even try to answer that part of the question. Obviously his model doesn’t work for that period or any other warming period so why does it work now?
Smokey, you’re so unspeakably cynical. You imagine the whole scientific community is either corrupted by a drive to “get payola” or fulfill some sinister agenda, which you never clearly define. Isn’t it possible that the vast mainstream of scientists are simply trying to uncover the truth about vital natural processes and systems, and to describe their observations and conclusions. Sometimes their language is difficult for us (laymen) to understand, and we often have many questions, but getting the answers to these queries will always be skewed if we are deeply committed to an anti -science agenda.
Jeff Alberts says:
October 23, 2011 at 8:06 pm
“Ah, so it would appear that your career is reliant upon GE’s green success.”
______________________
Not really, supplier to diverse markets. The company that I work for was recently acquired by GE. We deliver products and custom solutions for motors, generators, drives, and inverters for a variety of market segments. The market segments include mining, steel production, marine, fossil/nuke power generators, and renewables. I happen to be mostly in marine.
Martin Lewitt says:
October 23, 2011 at 9:11 pm
“I have the emails, I don’t need investigations to tell me what to think.”
___________
I guess you have not read the investigation reports then? Reading the investigations does not tell you what to think necessarily. It only provides you with additional insight from experts that have looked at more information than just the emails themselves. You have to admit there is at least a small chance that you may have taken something out of context from the emails you read. Plus, one has to admit that 6 investigations provides a pretty solid case, not fool proof of course, but certainly solid. I believe the great scientist Richard Feynman would encourage you to read the investigations just to be sure your understanding is correct.
>> “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.”
— Richard Feynman
http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/CRUstatements/SAP
“If they are corrupt in private, then what they do in public is a lie.”
________
I believe a guy by the name of Jesus said that “he that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone…”. Everybody at some point in their lives has said something unsavory behind someone else’s back, yet acted nicely to the person’s face. Out of 1000 emails stolen, only a handful indicated this type of behavior. Cut them some slack. Now, that isn’t to say I agree with what was said, some stuff wasn’t nice.
” If they grew up loving truth, they lost it someplace along the way. They aren’t scientists.”
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No, they ARE scientists. They have spent much time studying in school, conducting research, and publishing many peer review papers/results that have been confirmed by other researchers. They continue to have their jobs even after the incident.
Mark Smith says:
October 23, 2011 at 11:31 pm
“Obviously his model doesn’t work for that period or any other warming period so why does it work now?”
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Dr. Santer says in the seminar that these are not his models. His job at Livermore Labs is to rigorously test all the world’s best climate models against past data, as well as do forecasting tests. Aside from that, do you have peer reviewed evidence to show that these models do not work for past warming periods?
Mycroft says:
October 21, 2011 at 7:46 am
So this is the Santer who changed the “no discernable human influence” to discernable human influence, and had thousands of scientists asking for their names to be taken off the IPCC document!
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Do you have any documentation to support your claim of thousands of scientists asking for their names to be taken off the IPCC document?
Thank you Otter17 for turning this into an interesting thread.
You are informative along with being a wonderful example of civility,
as one who allows passions a tad too much sway you are an inspiration worth trying to emulate.
Peter
Hugh Pepper says:
October 24, 2011 at 10:11 am
“Smokey, you’re so unspeakably cynical.”
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While it may be difficult to speak with Smokey since he does behave in a somewhat antagonizing way, I would encourage you not to speak in an accusatory tone towards him. I would rephrase that as “Smokey, your thought process on this matter seems cynical”.
I don’t want to tell you how to speak, of course. I only recommend that we all try to keep discussions as civil as possible, no matter how someone treats us or how cynical someone appears to be. I am not religious, but I do agree with that cool cat named Jesus when he said “if someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.” Heck, I have screwed up in this regard many times, but I try to do better each time.
Mycroft says:
October 21, 2011 at 7:46 am
So this is the Santer who changed the “no discernable human influence” to discernable human influence, and had thousands of scientists asking for their names to be taken off the IPCC document!
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Yes, I would have to agree with citizenschallenge that this claim seems like it would need some direct evidence.
I offer this paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107.abstract
Here is the abstract:
“Although preliminary estimates from published literature and expert surveys suggest striking agreement among climate scientists on the tenets of anthropogenic climate change (ACC), the American public expresses substantial doubt about both the anthropogenic cause and the level of scientific agreement underpinning ACC. A broad analysis of the climate scientist community itself, the distribution of credibility of dissenting researchers relative to agreeing researchers, and the level of agreement among top climate experts has not been conducted and would inform future ACC discussions. Here, we use an extensive dataset of 1,372 climate researchers and their publication and citation data to show that (i) 97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of ACC outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and (ii) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.”
citizenschallenge says:
October 25, 2011 at 6:32 pm
“Thank you Otter17 for turning this into an interesting thread.
You are informative along with being a wonderful example of civility,
as one who allows passions a tad too much sway you are an inspiration worth trying to emulate.”
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Your comment made my day, citizenschallenge. Thank you. I would say that passions are what drive us to do great things, but they must at all times be kept in check by logic and reasoning. I just made that up, but I sound a little like Spock from Star Trek, hahaha.
Hugh Pepper says:
“Smokey, you’re so unspeakably cynical.”
I try to keep up, Hugh, but it’s hard given the target-rich alarmist environment.☺
otter17,
Your incessant mindless yammering, threadjacking, and playing kissy-face with your one or two equally pseudo-scientific numpties has not convinced one skeptic to change their minds and start running around screaming, “The sky is falling!” Why not? It’s because the putative ‘facts’ you post are not facts at all, but easily countered misinformation. Every argument you have made has been refuted. Don’t believe me? Post one of your alarmist talking points and I’ll deconstruct it.
I’m still waiting for one of you jamokes to try and falsify my hypothesis that CO2 is globally harmless, and that a degree or so of warming is on balance beneficial. Instead, you avoid answering, and rant on with your silly, inane globaloney talking points that anyone with average common sense can easily debunk.