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.
A physicist says:
December 21, 2011 at 6:19 am
It is pretty exciting, A Physicist, I will sleep better. Your cited article talks of problems with the satellite instruments measuring Total Solar Irradiance (TSI), and then says:
Gosh. You mean they are actually going to test the satellite instruments in a vacuum? With light levels comparable to the ones they will encounter in space? That’s absolute genius, why didn’t someone else think of it!
Boy, that is a forward thinking, cutting-edge kinda group there. It’s 2011, and they’ve finally built a facility to TEST THEIR SPACE-BOUND INSTRUMENTATION IN SPACE-LIKE CONDITIONS …
No telling what they might get up to next, folks, but stay tuned. I’m sure A Physicist will bring their next grand conceptual leap to our attention.
A Physicist, do you think that this kind of brilliant forethought might have something to do with the fact that the CERES measurements don’t add up, so that they have been adjusted to match Hansen’s model?
w.
A physicist says:
December 21, 2011 at 10:43 am
“More seriously, Flohn’s 1981 predictions have been well-confirmed by the warming seen to date, and are broadly consistent with Hansen’s more recent predictions. As anyone can check for themselves.”
You are yet another Warmist propagandist who is vastly ignorant of science and whose every statement about science reveals that fact. You do not know the scientific definition of ‘prediction’. To have a scientific prediction, you must have some set of reasonably well-confirmed hypotheses that can be combined with statements of initial conditions to imply observation statements that are found to be true.
Flohn’s work amounts to some vague hand-waving ideas, like all of climate science excepting Pielke, Sr., and a few others, that has no independent confirmation whatsoever and, for that matter, has never been rigorously formulated as physical hypotheses.
Sir, in your benighted understanding of ‘prediction’, you think that any given statement about the future is a prediction. You think that the statement “The Packers will win the superbowl this year” is a prediction. It is not, Sir, for the simple and obvious reason that there is no set of reasonably well-confirmed physical hypotheses which can be used to imply it. Your understanding of science is at kindergarten level.
crosspatch, you are mistaken about the Keeling CO2 data from Mauna Kea. They only take CO2 readings at night when the land has cooled and a strong downdraft condition is is place, bringing fresh, uncontaminated air down from the stratosphere. It is a tour de force of intelligent experiment design, unlike much else in the climate debate.
Robert Brown says:
December 21, 2011 at 10:47 am
“Well, or one could, perhaps, just average and integrate from the moon. The moon swings through its orbit. In the process it samples all angles from nearly oblique reflection to grazing. The intensity of sunlight incident on the earth is well known. The geometry of the reflected light is well known. By simply running such an observatory for a year one could get a very accurate estimate of the total scattering cross-section and hence the albedo.”
There you go again showing your instinct for the empirical and the experimental. What you suggest is the beginning of a serious science of albedo. The response you receive from the Warmists will be either total silence or sustained vituperation. (For those who might not understand my comment, I think Professor Brown’s suggestion is excellent and should have been undertaken thirty years ago.)
I’ve long had the same idea. We talked about it here and here this past summer in another thread. Just a rough idea for using the near side that always faces us with multiple sites for redundancy. Clearly, you have thought about this in more detail though.
Later on in the future, it would probably be a really good idea to place large telescopes and other equipment on the far side as a permanent Hubble-like installation for classical astronomy, and of course routine scanning for asteroids and other hazards. This would no doubt require several satellites to maintain line of sight real-time communication.
How sad is it that so much of this could already have been done were it not for the needless waste of billions on the climate farce. The entire team and all their silent enablers should be terminated, and then replaced by serious Scientists.
To clarify, the telescopes and Keeling CO2 measurement facility are on the dormant Mauna Kea, while Mauna Loa to the southwest is still active. The Mauna Loa Observatory is a volcanology facility, not focused on astronomy and climate, and its CO2 readings are intended to detect the volcano emissions. For more information see http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/program_history/keeling_curve_lessons.html
It ain’t complicated, Willis.
(1) Hansen plainly states that the overall calibration of the CERES data, whether adjusted or not, is so uncertain as to be useless for energy balance purposes. And so, he doesn’t use it.
No problem here.
(2) Hansen refers to Loeb’s work, which applies an overall correction to the CERES data so that it becomes useful to “studies that infer meridional heat transports”. The point is that even if the CERES data has an uncertain overall calibration, Loeb and his colleagues show how the data can still be useful for studying (for example) differences in cloud coverage at high and low latitudes.
No problem here.
(3) Both Hansen and you urgently recommend work to improve satellite calibration. And Hansen explicit recognizes that such calibration is very difficult.
No problem here.
What’s hard to understand, Willis, is simply this: What’s the problem?
Oops, I got it backwards- the Keeling observations ARE made at Mauna Loa- but the important point is that the measurements are made only during downdraft conditions and are clearly NOT contaminated by volcanic emissions.
A says:
December 21, 2011 at 7:25 am
A, thanks for the note. I looked at the post I wrote, but I couldn’t find the broken link you referred to. Which one is it?
Regards,
w.
A physicist says:
December 21, 2011 at 3:36 am
“Hansen’s point (which is plain in the article) is that the calibration uncertainties in the CERES data are so large as to place no constraints upon aerosol forcing. For this reason, Hansen’s article takes care to ensure that precisely none of its conclusions and recommendations depend upon the CERES data correction that the WUWT post is complaining about.”
What Hansen’s conclusions depend on are the same tired, old “a priori” assumptions that he has been using throughout his career. The man simply cannot find a place for the genuinely empirical and experimental in his work, unless of course we are talking about the Divine Hunches that make up all of Warmist climate science that has some vaguely empirical character.
I read their adjustment procedure a while back, I was satisfied at the time that it worked but I recall being worried that if anything changed, they could get wildly different results. This is why actually the monthly number is missing many daily readings, because they often have to throw out the data for that day and they create a “fill” number that fits between the last good reading and the next good reading, if I recall correctly.
David Middleton says:
December 21, 2011 at 7:55 am
Not true at all. He was referring to trying to influence what particular instruments go on board a satellite, so that the needed key information can be gotten from space-based measurements. Totally legit in my book.
w.
Doug Jones says:
December 21, 2011 at 11:26 am
“crosspatch, you are mistaken about the Keeling CO2 data from Mauna Kea. They only take CO2 readings at night when the land has cooled and a strong downdraft condition is is place, bringing fresh, uncontaminated air down from the stratosphere. It is a tour de force of intelligent experiment design, unlike much else in the climate debate.”
And all this is based on the assumption that CO2 is “well mixed,” meaning distributed randomly throughout the atmosphere regardless of the location of its source, right? If I am mistaken, please state the well confirmed physical hypotheses that explain just how this instantaneous mixing occurs. Also, please state the history of experiments done in the atmosphere to show that the physical hypotheses are in fact well confirmed. Or admit that there is actually no empirical science of CO2 distribution in the atmosphere. Admit that you are extrapolating from laboratory work.
A physicist says: ” were largely anticipated 30 years ago, by Herman Flohn’s Life on a Warmer Earth” “This should ease the mind of skeptics who regard climate change as any kind of recent conspiracy.”
Okay, Flohn should be credited with originating the conspiracy of climate change. While Hansen, Mann, Gore, et.al. actually elaborated on Flohn’s conspiracy, turning it into a recent scam of Global profitable proportions.
A physicist says: “More seriously, Flohn’s 1981 predictions have been well-confirmed by the warming seen to date”.
And had Flohn’s 1981 predictions also predicted the recent cooling, he would have very-well-confirmed, but alas he did not. Missed it by ” ” that much…
A physicist says:
December 21, 2011 at 8:48 am
A physicist, it’s pretty incredible that you have still not grasped what Hansen did. You claim he “carefully criticized” the satellite data.
But Hansen said nothing about adjusting satellite data to fit his own climate model. He actually thinks that procedure will reduce the errors. He was only unhappy because he didn’t think the procedure would reduce the errors enough, viz:
So he has problems with the final accuracy, but does he have problems with the method? No way. He goes on to say:
A physicist, you keep claiming or implying that I said Hansen used the CERES data. I said nothing of the sort. I was astounded by Loeb’s procedure, and even more astounded that Hansen would discuss using the procedure as one possible option … all without either Hansen or Loeb noting the elephant in the room.
That is the unmentioned fact that the Loeb procedure was to take observations and adjust them until they agreed with HANSEN’S OWN MODEL.
So no, A Physicist, Hansen didn’t criticize Loebs results for being a non-scientific hack, or for squeezing observations until they fit Hansen’s own model data. Hansen, unsurprisingly, seems to have had no problem with that part at all.
He criticized them because at the end of the non-scientific adjustment to fit Hansen’s model results, they still weren’t accurate enough. And you seem to think that’s sufficient criticism to make everything just peachy keen and totally fine.
Others of us still follow the scientific method …
w.
A physicist says:
December 21, 2011 at 10:43 am
Any time someone claims that something is “broadly consistent” with something else, I assume that it is in fact inconsistent, and the “broadly” is a crutch to cover that up. It’s good, because it tells me where to look for whatever they don’t want noticed.
Now, off to take a look at Flohn’s predictions.
w.
PS—A Physicist, since Hansens’ predictions have been uniformly pretty bad … how is “broadly consistent with Hansen …” any kind of help?
A physicist says:
December 21, 2011 at 10:43 am
OK, here’s Flohn’s work from your citation:
Well, he thinks there was a Medieval Warm Period that was a full degree warmer than 1981. So far so good …
And he also thinks that we will see that 1° temperature rise from 1981 by 2000-2010 … BZZZT.
A Physicist, you tried to convince the uninformed that this Flohnish nonsense of a one degree rise by 2010 is “well-confirmed by the warming to date”??? That’s nonsense. HadCRUT3 puts the 1981-2010 warming at half a degree, all of which happened before 2000. So Flohn is wrong, and not only wrong, he’s wrong by 100%. And like other alamists, he totally missed the current 15-year hiatus in the warming.
You can see why I said above that when someone claims “broadly consistent with” it’s a huge red flag. Yes, Flohn’s predictions are broadly consistent with Hansen’s predictions—but only because they’re both off by about 100% …
w.
PS—You invited everyone to “check for themselves”, do I did. You were wrong. You really should think about that before inviting people to check for ourselves, because around here, we’ll take you up on the invitation …
A physicist says:
December 21, 2011 at 11:40 am
“A physicist”, Loeb adjusted actual observations so that they would agree with Hansen’s climate model results.
I know you don’t think that’s a problem. And it is obvious that Hansen doesn’t think that’s a problem.
But out here in the real world, adjusting data to fit your model is not considered science.
What’s hard to understand is why you don’t think that adjusting observational data to agree with Hansen’s model is a problem. Nor have you told us why it’s not a problem. You could resolve this uncertainty simply, by starting off a sentence with
and then keeping going from there.
I await your explanation because to me, that kind of nonsense is a real problem in climate science. The mistaking of model results for data is one part of it.
But actually adjusting data to agree with Hansen’s model results? Sorry, that’s a real problem, whether Hansen ends up using those results or not.
w.
LOL … Willis, “check for themselves” is exactly what IMHO folks *should* do.
And it sure seems to me that Flohn called it pretty much right, for sure Flohn was more foresighted than anyone else in the 1970s and 1980s.
How did Flohn do it, do you think? Could it be that Flohn (and Hansen too) shared a pretty solid understanding of the basic physics of climate change?
So as my earlier post (11:40 am) asked, “What’s the problem?”
But Willis, if they just adjust the data to fit the models, there would be no error to talk about. Blahahahahaha.
Some serious PWNEAGE going on in this post. Keep talking A Physicist, you are really helping “the cause”.
Ps – I don’t know any physicists, chemists, engineers, or any other scientist, other than climate scientists, that have no problem changing observational data to match model output. In the professional world you get fired and loose your license for that kind of activity.
Willis Eschenbach says: December 21, 2011 at 11:09 am
” My point was that the adjustment, despite having the Nick Stokes seal of approval, was bogus.”
Where do you get that from? All I said was that it was Loeb’s adjustment, not Hansen’s, and Loeb’s paper is the one to read to find out what it is for. Leprechauns brought it overnight (thanks), so I shall do that.
What I was saying is that the adjustment clearly does not have Hansen’s seal of approval, in terms of producing an accurate result. So, like “a physicist”, I’m left wondering – what’s the problem.
Wiillis, like I said in my 11:40 am post, this stuff ain’t hard.
Suppose we have a satellite (CERES) whose overall calibration us uncertain, but whose space-time resolution us outstanding.
That satellite us of little use for assessing earth’s overall energy budget (Hansen’s “energy imbalance”).
Yet by normalizing the data, we *can* use that same satellite’s data to reliably infer relative heat balance, for example tropical-to-arctic heat flow (Loeb’s “meridional heat transports”).
Both of these strategies, Hansen and Loeb’s, are reasonable and clearly explained.
And of course, both strategies leave everyone wanting better-calibrated satellites. Which ain’t easy, but (hopefully) these satellites are coming! 🙂
So like I asked before: What’s the problem?
A physicist says:
December 21, 2011 at 12:49 pm (Edit)
You are putting up Mann 2008 as your citation? Have you lost the plot totally? There were so many problems with that paper, it’s a joke in the trade.
Heck, it doesn’t even agree with Flohn. Remember that Flohn said that the Medieval Warm Period was 1°C warmer than today … and you seriously think Mann 2008 agrees with Flohn? Mann has spent his professional life trying to get rid of the MWP that Flohn takes as established fact … surely you know that?
There’s been a host of posts listing huge problems of all types with Mann 2008. Here’s mine. Here’s one on proxy weighting. Here’s another. You’re way behind the curve here, A Physicist. Google is your friend. You may be up-to-date in your field of physics, but you are way behind in this field. You should take some time to read something other than RC and Michael Mann, or people will just continue to point and laugh whenever you post.
w.
A physicist says:
December 21, 2011 at 1:04 pm
And like I said before, more than twice, the problem is adjusting the observations so that they match Hansen’s model. I invited you to explain how that is no problem. I even gave you the start of your reply, viz:
Despite that, you keep refusing to discuss the problem, and persistently pretending that the issue is elsewhere. By now it’s clear that you are not missing the point, you are dancing around it.
Finish the sentence above, and I’ll believe you are serious. Otherwise, you’re just blowing wind.
w.
@Willis – I will give it a go:
“Adjusting satellite observational data to agree with James Hansen’s climate model is absolutely no problem because …we are saving the world”
Or
“Adjusting satellite observational data to agree with James Hansen’s climate model is absolutely no problem because …the ends justify the means”
or
“Adjusting satellite observational data to agree with James Hansen’s climate model is absolutely no problem because …we are the enlightened ones. We know what’s best for you”
or……