Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
James Hansen has taken time off between being arrested to produce another in the list of his publications. It’s called “Earth’s Energy Imbalance and Implications“. This one is listed as “submitted” …
Normally these days I prefer to only deal with scientific papers, which of course leaves activist pleadings like Hansen’s stuff off the list. But in this case I’ll make an exception. Here’s my sole reason for bringing this up. Hansen’s paper says the following (emphasis mine):
The precision achieved by the most advanced generation of radiation budget satellites is indicated by the planetary energy imbalance measured by the ongoing CERES (Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System) instrument (Loeb et al., 2009), which finds a measured 5-year-mean imbalance of 6.5 W/m2 (Loeb et al., 2009). Because this result is implausible, instrumentation calibration factors were introduced to reduce the imbalance to the imbalance suggested by climate models, 0.85 W/m2 (Loeb et al., 2009).
I bring it up because it is climate science at its finest. Since the observations were not of the expected range, rather than figure out why the results might be wrong, they just twisted the dials to “reduce the imbalance to the imbalance suggested by climate models.”
And curiously, the “imbalance suggested by climate models”, of some 0.85 W/m2, was actually from Hansen’s previous paper. That earlier paper of his, by coincidence called “Earth’s energy imbalance: Confirmation and implications“, gave that 0.85 W/m2 figure as a result from Hansen’s own GISS climate model … but all this incestuous back-slapping is probably just another coincidence.
Of course, you know what all this means. Soon, the modelers will be claiming that the CERES satellite results verify that the GISS and other climate models are accurately duplicating observations …
You can see why Hansen’s “science” gets left off my list of things to read.
w.
PS—Upon further research I find that according to Loeb et al., 2009, they didn’t just tweak the dials on the CERES observations to get the answer they wanted, as I had foolishly stated above.
No, they didn’t do that at all. Instead, they used…
an objective constrainment algorithm to adjust SW and LW TOA fluxes within their range of uncertainty to remove the inconsistency between average global net TOA flux and heat storage in the earth–atmosphere system.
I’ll sleep better tonight knowing that it wasn’t just twisting dials, they actually used an objective constrainment algorithm to adjust their Procrustean Bed …
UPDATE: Some commenters have noted that my article implies that Hansen used those CERES satellite results in the study in question. Hansen did not use them, stating correctly that the uncertainties were too great for his purposes. —w.
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A physicist;
Proceeding on the assumption that your lack of understanding of “the problem” is genuine, allow me one more crack at it.
If you were actually a physicist (I’m not, but I play one on WUWT) you would recoil in disgust at the mere thought of measured data being subordinate to computer models in any way shape or form. Following is the money quote from one of your comments above:
“There can be no credible expectation that [Loeb’s] tuning/calibration procedure can reduce the error by two orders of magnitude as required to measure changes of Earth’s energy balance.”
This statement presumes that the error is entirely in regard to the measured data. It leaves no room for the possibility that the models are wrong and the measurements correct, nor does it allow for the possibility that both the models AND the measurements are wrong. However, that is the lesser of the two sins committed by Hansen in that statement.
The greater sin is in suggesting that the tuning is invalid because no tuning procedure could reduce the error by two orders of magnitude. Even putting aside the presumption that the error is 100% in the data, and 0% in the model, it makes little difference if the adjustment in question is two orders of magnitude, one order of magnitude, or 1%. There can be no justification for making ANY “calibration” or “tuning” of the data without the physics theory to suggest what the adjustment should be combined with experimentation to verify the physics. No adjustment of any amount would be acceptable science when justified by matching to models alone.
Hansen’s sin is not that he was critical of Loeb’s methodology, but that his criticism went no where near far enough. Loeb should have been excoriated, not for proposing a two order of magnitude adjustment based on model results, but for proposing ANY adjustment based on model results. By failing to do so, Hansen promotes the myth that models are a valid way of verifying actual measurements.
They are not.
And that sir, is “the problem”.
Yes, that is the litany of the “climate change scientists,” isn’t it? (Is that a new speciality—not just ‘climatologists’—heaven forbid!—nor ‘climate scientists’, but ‘climate change scientists’?) But where has it been empirically demonstrated that “CO2 and aerosols” are “the two main agents of climate change”? Only in the modeling exercises and speculations of the Warmists, who are promoting a political agenda, not science. Never mind the sun, the clouds, the oceans, the vast biosphere—not to mention real climate change on geological time scales, where continental drift, and the Earth’s orbital changes come into play. Just “CO2 and aerosols”? Not bloody likely!
/Mr Lynn
crosspatch says:
December 21, 2011 at 6:54 pm
“So whose confirmation bias is correct, yours or his?”
I do not see bias on my side. Scientists should not be adjusting the satellite numbers for the purposes of particular articles. We do not want 100 scientists applying 100 different adjustments to the same satellite data. Hansen’s argument is with the people who manage the satellites and no one else.
“If his model numbers are in fairly close agreement (or closer agreement) to what had been measured in the past, that would tend to give me confidence in using my model numbers.”
In the NH, this is the longest night of the year. Strange things can happen on such a night. I believe that the thought that anyone could trust Hansen’s models numbers qualifies as such a strange occurrence. You will feel much better tomorrow.
A physicist says:
December 21, 2011 at 3:30 pm
So you say that’s what’s been causing this “climate change” that’s been in continual operation on earth since the first primordial materials started collecting more than 4.6 billion years ago?
Just one big question–what gives you warmistas the right to commandeer the term “climate change” when it’s been an ongoing process for practically all of earth’s history–way way before mankind even arrived?
What give you warmistas the right to define “climate change” to your own liking (particularly to your own political ends), when it has been responsible for a far larger range of temperatures and climatic conditions than manking could ever be responsible for?
So please, don’t pirate the term–as a geologist I’m taken aback with the extreme sense of self righteousness you warmistas use to steal the term, distort the meaning, and try to make it your own territority, with the exclusion of everybody else. (Or is your argument about the climate so weak you have to jump onto some natural phenomena just to have something to ride? Shame on you!)
“Climate chage” Is simply NOT your term. Stick with “global warming”, or “weather wierding”, or “climate scientists for hire to the lowest government influence you can imagine and willing to commit fraud and evasion of the law”. But “climate change”? No, you cannot claim the term and you are a fool for trying. You apparently set yourselves as climate gods, endowed with the ability to predict or control the climate, but I’ve got news for ya: climate change gods ye are not! Quit blaspheming the term!
Nobody ever does.
Lets say I measure the brightness of the sun for 10 years with a particular instrument. That instrument dies. Now I am given access to a different instrument. This instrument reports the sun is much brighter than the last instrument did. Not only that, the seasonal variation due to orbital eccentricity is different. I need to make adjustments in order for the data from the new instrument to compare with the data from the old instruments. In order to do that I need to identify the sources of difference and quantify them.
Adjustments are often necessary in all sorts of things. You may know that your oven runs a little cool of the thermostat setting and adjust cooking times. But someone else’s oven might run a little warm.
We do stuff like that all the time. Same in science.
Crosspatch, you seem like a pretty savvy person, but in the interest of balance, you ought to have mentioned that plenty of species did not survive those climate changes. Seem any mammoths, ground sloths, dire wolves, cave bears, or teratornis lately?
‘a physicist’ does not have the slightest bit of testable evidence that any species died out as a result of warmer temperatures. His belief is akin to religion, because it is based on blind faith and nothing else. Science based on the scientific method is entirely beyond the religious belief system of ‘a physicist’.
A physicist;
Crosspatch, you seem like a pretty savvy person, but in the interest of balance, you ought to have mentioned that plenty of species did not survive those climate changes. Seem any mammoths, ground sloths, dire wolves, cave bears, or teratornis lately?>>>
Well no, but they died out because of a COOLING period. They were just fine with with +5.
You may as well argue that water is bad because look what happened when the deserts dried out.
Those extinctions happened well AFTER the end of the ice age and those species had survived the ice age before and the ones before that. It is likely that humans killed off most of those species.
Well, wolly mammoth, wooly rhino, auroch, etc were all likely killed by humans, went extinct well after the end of the ice age (when climate was stable but still COOLER than the interglacial before, which they survived). It depends on exactly when they went extinct, exactly as to the cause. Could have been disease in many cases, too.
Nick Stokes says:
December 21, 2011 at 7:20 pm
“You muddle things with pronouns. Hansen said that Loeb introduced calibration factors. So what has Hansen done?”
Here is the quotation:
“The precision achieved by the most advanced generation of radiation budget satellites is indicated by the planetary energy imbalance measured by the ongoing CERES (Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System) instrument (Loeb et al., 2009), which finds a measured 5-year-mean imbalance of 6.5 W/m2 (Loeb et al., 2009). Because this result is implausible, instrumentation calibration factors were introduced to reduce the imbalance to the imbalance suggested by climate models, 0.85 W/m2 (Loeb et al., 2009).”
The first sentence states very simply and plainly that the satellite “finds a measured 5-year-mean imbalance of 6.5 W/m2.” It does not say anything more. Agreed? Hansen does not say that Loeb made this claim. He owns the claim. The reference to Loeb is irrelevant to the content of Hansen’s sentence. If Hansen had wanted to say that Loeb but not Hansen made this claim then he could have. But he did not.
The second sentence says that the result (from the first sentence) is implausible. I take that to mean that Hansen affirms that the result is implausible. He has made it his claim. The fact that he references Loeb is irrelevant to the fact of his ownership of the claim.
The next clause states plainly that the result (from the first and, now, second sentences) was reduced to the imbalance suggested by the climate models. Hansen has made this claim his claim. The reference to Loeb is irrelevant to Hansen’s ownership of the claim.
The remaining clause states plainly and simply that instrumentation calibration factors were the means used to reduce the result to that suggested by the climate models. Hansen owns this claim.
Putting it all together, Hansen has written, in remarkably poor English, that he affirms that the satellite results are implausible and he affirms their reduction to agreement with climate models and he affirms the means used to achieve the reduction, namely, instrumentation calibration factors.
You want to read Loeb into Hansen’s statement but you have no justification for doing so as I have shown. Hansen affirmed all this and he owns all this. If he had wanted to say that Loeb was responsible for something that he, Hansen, does not affirm then he failed to do so.
Maybe the problem is that Hansen has poor command of the English language. But the English language is no less important in communication than are statistics or difference equations. If the English language is Hansen’s problem then he is fully responsible for the mistaken sentences that he has written and no less subject to criticism than if he had shown incompetence in statistics.
I am writing about what is on the written page. I believe that you are reading into Hansen’s words a lot of material that is not written there. In debate about what Hansen said, you are permitted to create your own position but you are not permitted to create your own words and use them to replace Hansen’s words.
Remember that this is a debate. Eschenbach wrote an article that began with this quotation from Hansen and I have been responding to your criticisms of Eschenbach by referring to this quotation. But this quotation is not your topic at all. You are all over the place introducing material from Loeb and other material from Hansen. Yet this debate is not about your other concerns and should never have been about your other concerns. Eschenbach’s thesis is about the quotation from Hansen that we have been discussing. Focus on that quotation. If you cannot make your case from that quotation, then please realize that you are not addressing the article that Eschenbach wrote.
“Well no, but they died out because of a COOLING period.”
Quite likely so. The 8.2ky event would have been nasty, indeed. So was the Younger Dryas. Lure species North with warm temperatures and suddenly slam them with glacial conditions and they can not migrate fast enough to get out of the way.
The Interglacial was full of those periods, too. We could have interstadials were temperatures would suddenly go to near modern day temperatures for maybe 100-500 years and suddenly back to glacial temperatures. We had a really warm period about 40,000 years ago, almost came out of the glacial, but didn’t quite make it out and went back into glacial conditions.
I am liking the recent galactic dust talk, that explains a lot.
“‘a physicist’ does not have the slightest bit of testable evidence that any species died out as a result of warmer temperatures.”
Of course not. If you look at the natural variation of climate over the past 600,000 years, “global warming” is positively not even noticed. It is such a tiny variation on the overall scale that it wouldn’t even be noticed even of the worst IPCC scenario came to pass which is becoming less likely every day as the observations continue to diverge from the models.
The models have proven to be complete and utter bull. They are completely discredited at this point.
Smokey says:
December 21, 2011 at 8:32 pm
‘a physicist’ does not have the slightest bit of testable evidence that any species died out as a result of warmer temperatures.>>>
I notice also that when his arguments get crushed by logic…. he changes the subject.
A physicist says:
December 21, 2011 at 8:17 pm
“Crosspatch, you seem like a pretty savvy person, but in the interest of balance, you ought to have mentioned that plenty of species did not survive those climate changes. Seem any mammoths, ground sloths, dire wolves, cave bears, or teratornis lately?”
The creatures that have not survived the temperature rise since 1850 are the climate scientists who understand and practice scientific method.
crosspatch says:
December 21, 2011 at 8:07 pm
Instrumentation adjustments should not be made by people who are writing articles that use data from the instruments. Instrumentation adjustments should be made by the people who manage the instruments. Hansen should take up his case with the instrument managers, follow the case to its conclusion, and report the results of that inquiry in his article.
Except for the existence of PAL review, Hansen’s article would never have seen the light of day. Reviewers would have said to him that he has no justification for using his model numbers rather than satellite data. They would have told him to resubmit his paper after that matter is settled.
davidmhoffer says:
December 21, 2011 at 8:39 pm
And that climate change was accompanied by an ‘alien species’ invading the range of these extinct megafauna, human hunters armed with big spears, strategic group hunting methods, and fire if needed. But since climate change allowed them to reach southern North America I guess we can blame it all on climate change, if we were totally simplistic and wanted to.
A physicist says:
December 21, 2011 at 3:30 pm
. . . What’s impressive is that Flohn foresaw in detail, decades earlier than anyone else, that CO2 and aerosols would be the two main agents of climate change, that these two mechanisms would compete, and that the latter would have a short atmospheric lifetime. All of which in later decades became main themes of James Hansen’s research (and many other climate change scientists too).
————————————————————-
In debate I never allow anyone to use the term climate change, and no sceptic should. The acronym is CAGW, with C for catestrophic being the operative word on which all CAGW proponets fail. The ever predicted never realized disasters make the debate for CAGW proponets a hopeless proposition. The benefits of CO2 which increase as CO2 increases, are known. The negative effects are what if modeled maybes which exponentially decrease, and have failed to materialize.
@ur momisugly Hans:
December 21, 2011 at 7:39 pm
Hans, excellent explanation. All energy within the earth system transferring multi-faceted at it’s own proper rate (current velocity, conductivity, diffusivity, wind speed, etc, etc) as it degrades and is eventually (sometimes fast, sometimes not) radiated into space as IR waves. That is the way I have always viewed it.
A bit off topic but I got into a discussion about mankind changing the in and out of earth’s radiation transfers. I said sure, I know that, but probably not at the same level or aspect as you others see it. If you dig a few meter deep hole in the ground then you (mankind) has altered earth’s daily radiation rates, no doubt about it. Yes, terribly small and immeasurable but you have changed it none the less. On the scale of cities maybe not.
They didn’t understand. I explained that since the emissivity of soil is clearly not one and that deep hole to incoming radiation is just next to one, a black body, that hole is going to absorb more energy into the wall of the hole during the daytime that the same area of soil would have absorbed. But being a near black body now that hole would also radiate energy at a greater rate than the same soil. But soil inside the hole is also absorbing by conduction. One thing is for sure since the top one centimeter of soil has thermal mass, the soil inside the hole would hold more energy than before, to be released during the night part of the cycle thereby altering radiation at lease over time if not absolutely.
This all had to do with UHI and vertical structures we tend to build being mankind and at all scales, tall buildings and lower homes. And we like conveniently placed thermometers almost always in the proximities of these vertical structures, for a conglomerate of vertical structures appear from above as being closer to a black body than the original flat earth soil and fields.
But Hans, I got to one question I could not answer and your knowledge in physics might help me. Would the net energy absorbed during the first complete day-night cycle be greater than without the hole, and, what would the temperatures of the one) air and two) the top centimeter of soil compare in the two cases. I got stumped there. Seemed to me greater over the complete cycle but Kirchhoff haunts my thoughts there. (but Kirchhoff also is not taking into account the increase in soil area inside the hole either, same as brick venires on most structures)
Any help?
Willis, I usually love your articles, but here I have to partially agree with Nick Stokes and “the physicist”: your article is quite misleading because Hansen doesn’t really use the satellite data. Instead, the bulk of his estimates comes from OHC measurements, and the bulk of those come from quite reliable ARGO data. I think the interesting questions to ask about Hansen’s paper are:
* Are the estimates of Schuckmann and Le Troan good enough? (also see my comment above, their final paper gives lower numbers than Hansen used)
* and how about the southern and abyssal ocean warming estimates?
* If yes to those – how can the lower ocean layers warm in a period where the upper 700 m stay more or less constant?
I think you should applaud that Hansen is actually moving in the right scientific direction when he turns his interest to OHC data. That’s where the bulk if the heat goes (if it goes anywhere)!
As I am from the wonderful world of Oz (which has fantastically ignored reality and imposed a new ‘economic extinction’ tax laced with green kool-aid called the ‘Carbon Pollution Tax’ based on the rubbish perpetuated by this pseudo-science. Isn’t there some sort of RICO law in the USA to do with racketeering and conspiracy that allows the FBI to target conspirators who defraud the public purse? Having read Donna Laframboise “Delinquent Teenager” Mosher “Crutape”, Plimer “Heaven & Earth”, etc there has to be a case for these people to answer.
If not, I have a secret formula for turning Pillars of Salt into Gold, all I need is a $100M government grant.
Graeme says:
December 20, 2011 at 8:52 pm
I can’t stop laughing! Very good words to the wise, otherwise, Anthony.
Graeme says:
December 20, 2011 at 8:52 pm
Maybe we can get an audit of Hansen’s taxes done to see if he’s doing something like that, and then finally we can get the guy fired! Lol!
crosspatch says:
December 21, 2011 at 2:22 pm
I’ve always wondered about the Mauna Loa CO2 data myself. I asked Roy Spencer one time about the fact that the Mauna Loa station was as close to the volcanoes of Hawaii as it was, doesn’t this create some uncertainty about the trends in the data, and he gave me an answer, if I remember correctly, to the effect that they only take data at certain times and places around the site and that they somehow compensate or allow for the fact of the volcanoes. I think it is time to reassess those methods, maybe. And by the way, as an attorney (and perhaps a cynic about statistics), I understand the value of calibrating your instruments and making “corrections” when necessary to account for what you are actually looking to measure. But making high-falutin’ corrections (my Texan coming out in me) to adjust back to – wow – what your model predicts? Such a coincidence! It’s all a little too convenient to me. The poster “a physicist” is also acting strangely obtuse for a physicist – if in fact he is one.
I note that Dr. Hansen appears, in these events, to be dressing himself in a fashion similar to that of Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer at the time of the first experimental atomic explosion in 1945.