UPDATE: Below is Peter Hadfield’s response in entirety, submitted Feb 7th, 2012. I’ve made only some slight edits for formatting to fit. Comments are open. – Anthony
By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Various You-Tube videos by a former “science writer” who uses a speleological pseudonym “potholer54” sneeringly deliver a series of petty smears about artfully-distorted and often inconsequential aspects of my talks on climate change. Here, briefly, I shall answer some of his silly allegations. I noted them down rather hastily, since I am disinclined to waste much time on him, so the sentences in quote-marks may not be word for word what he said, but I hope that they fairly convey his meaning.
For fuller answers to these allegations, many of which he has ineptly and confusedly recycled from a serially mendacious video by some no-account non-climatologist at a fourth-rank bible college in Nowheresville, Minnesota, please see my comprehensive written reply to that video at www.scienceandpublicpolicy.org. The guy couldn’t even get his elementary arithmetic right – not that the caveman mentions that fact, of course.
The allegations, with my answers, are as follows:
“Monckton says he advised Margaret Thatcher on climate change. He didn’t.” I did.
“Monckton says he wrote a peer-reviewed paper. He didn’t.” The editors of Physics and Society asked me to write a paper on climate sensitivity in 2008. The review editor reviewed it in the usual way and it was published in the July 2008 edition, which, like most previous editions, carried a headnote to the effect that Physics and Society published “reviewed articles”. Peer-review takes various forms. From the fact that the paper was invited, written, reviewed and then published, one supposes the journal had followed its own customary procedures. If it hadn’t, don’t blame me. Subsequent editions changed the wording of the headnote to say the journal published “non-peer-reviewed” articles, and the editors got the push. No mention of any of this by the caveman, of course.
“Monckton says the Earth is cooling. It isn’t.” At the time when I said the Earth was cooling, it had indeed been cooling since late 2001. The strong El Niño of 2010 canceled the cooling, and my recent talks and graphs have of course reflected that fact by stating instead that there has been no statistically-significant warming this millennium. The caveman made his video after the cooling had ended, but – without saying so – showed a slide from a presentation given by me while the cooling was still in effect. Was that honest of him?
“Monckton says Greenland is not melting. It is.” Well, it is now, but for 12 years from 1992-2003 inclusive, according to Johannessen et al. (2005), the mean spatially-averaged thickness of Greenland’s ice sheet increased by 5 cm (2 inches) per year, or 2 feet in total over the period. The high-altitude ice mass in central northern Greenland thickened fastest, more than matching a decline in ice thickness along the coastline. Since 2005, according to Johannessen et al. (2009), an ice mass that I calculate is equivalent to some six inches of the 2 feet of increase in Greenland’s ice thickness over the previous decade or so has gone back into the ocean, raising global sea levels by a not very terrifying 0.7 millimeters. According to the Aviso Envisat satellite, in the past eight years sea level has been rising at a rate equivalent to just 2 inches per century. Not per decade: per century. If so, where has all the additional ice that the usual suspects seem to imagine has melted from Greenland gone? Two possibilities: not as much ice has melted as we are being told, or its melting has had far less impact on sea level than we are being invited to believe.
“Monckton says there’s no systematic loss of sea-ice in the Arctic. There is.” No, I said that the 30-year record low ice extent of 2007 had been largely reversed in 2008 and 2009. The caveman, if he were capable of checking these or any data, would find this to be so. In fact, he knew this to be so, because the slide I was showing at that point in his video, taken from the University of Illinois’ Cryosphere monitoring program, shows it. Of course, the slide was only in the background of his video and was shown only for a few seconds. Since that particular talk of mine the Arctic sea ice has declined again and came close to its 2007 low in 2011. But it is arguable from the descriptions of melting Arctic ice in 1922 that there may have been less sea ice in the Arctic then than now.
“Monckton says there has been no correlation between temperature and CO2 for the past 500 million years. There has.” Well, there has in the past few thousand years, but the correlation since the Cambrian era has been spectacularly poor, as the slide (from a peer-reviewed paper) that the caveman fleetingly shows me using at that point demonstrates very clearly. For most of that long period, global temperatures were about 7 Celsius degrees warmer than the present: yet CO2 concentration has inexorably declined throughout the period.
“Monckton says a pre-Cambrian ice-planet shows CO2 has no effect on climate. It doesn’t.” No, I cited Professor Ian Plimer, a leading geologist, as having said that the formation of dolomitic rock 750 million years ago could not have taken place unless there had been 300,000 ppmv CO2 in the atmosphere: yet glaciers a mile high had come and gone twice at sea-level and at the Equator at that time. Professor Plimer had concluded that, even allowing for the fainter Sun and higher ice-albedo in those days, the equatorial glaciers could not have formed twice if the warming effect of CO2 were as great as the IPCC wants us to believe. At no point have I ever said CO2 has no effect on climate, for its effect was demonstrated by a simple but robust experiment as long ago as 1859. However, I have said, over and over again, that CO2 probably has a much smaller warming effect than the IPCC’s range of estimates. The caveman must have known that, because he says he has watched “hours and hours” of my videos. So why did he misrepresent me?
“Monckton said there had been no change in the Himalayan glaciers for 200 years. There has.” No, I cited Professor M.I. Bhat of the Indian Geological Survey, who had told me on several occasions that the pattern of advance and retreat of these glaciers was much as it had been in the 200 years since the British Raj had been keeping records. That is very far from the same thing as saying there had been “no change”: indeed, it is the opposite, for advance and retreat are both changes. Why did the caveman misrepresent me?
“Monckton says only one Himalayan glacier has been retreating. Many have.” No, I mentioned the Gangotri and Ronggbuk glaciers as being notable examples of glacial retreat in the Himalayas caused by geological instability in the region. To discuss one or two retreating glaciers is not the same thing as to say or imply that only one or two glaciers have been retreating. Why did the caveman misrepresent me? It is this kind of intellectual dishonesty that permeates the caveman’s cheesy videos. He has not the slightest intention of being accurate or fair. If he had, he would surely have mentioned that the IPCC tried for months to pretend that all of the glaciers in the Himalayas would be gone by 2035. The IPCC’s own “peer-reviewers” had said the figure should be “2350”, not “2035”, but the lead author of the chapter in question had left in the wrong figure, knowing it to be unverified, because, as he later publicly admitted, he wanted to influence governments.
The caveman says I misquoted the lead author who had left in the erroneous date for the extinction of the Himalayan glaciers, but here is what that author actually said in an interview with the Daily Mail: “We thought that if we can highlight it [the erroneous date], it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.” For good measure, he said I had misquoted Sir John Houghton, the IPCC’s first science chairman, who had said that unless we announced disasters no one would listen.
Sir John, too, tried to maintain that I had misquoted him, and even menaced me with a libel suit, until I told him I had a copy of the cutting from the London Sunday Telegraph of September 10, 1995, in which he had said, “If we want a good environmental policy in the future, we’ll have to have a disaster”, and that I also had a copy of an article in the Manchester Guardian of July 28, 2003, in which Sir John had luridly ascribed numerous specific natural disasters to “global warming”, which he described as “a weapon of mass destruction” that was “at least as dangerous as nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons, or indeed international terrorism”. Perhaps the caveman didn’t know any of this, but here’s the thing: I do not recall that he has ever bothered to check any of his “facts” with me (though, if he had, I wouldn’t have known because he lurks behind a pseudonym and, even though I am told he has revealed his identity I have no time to keep track of the pseudonyms of people who lack the courage and decency to publish under their own names).
“Monckton says Dr. Pinker found that a loss of cloud cover had caused recent warming. She disagreed.” No, I drew the conclusion from Dr. Pinker’s paper, and from several others, that cloud cover does not remain constant, but waxes and wanes broadly in step with the cooling and warming phases respectively of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. I did not misrepresent Dr. Pinker’s paper in any way: I merely used it as a source for my own calculations, which I presented at the annual seminar on planetary emergencies of the World Federation of Scientists in 2010, where they were well received. Less cloud cover, particularly in the tropics, naturally warms the Earth: the point is surely uncontroversial. If one removes the influence of this natural warming phase from the record since 1976, it is reasonable to deduce that climate sensitivity based on that period is much lower than the IPCC thinks. Strictly speaking, one should study temperature trends in multiples of 60 years, so as to ensure that the warming and cooling phases of the PDO cancel one another out.
Frankly, that’s quite enough of these dull allegations. There are others, but they are all as half-baked and dishonest as these and it would be tedious to deal with each one. You get the drift: the caveman is a zealot and we need not ask who paid him to watch “hours and hours” of my YouTube videos to realize from these examples that his videos are unreliable. More importantly, it would interfere with my research: I hope shortly to be in a position to demonstrate formally that climate sensitivity is unarguably little more than one-third of the IPCC’s central estimate. My objective is to reach the truth, not to distort it or misrepresent it as the caveman has done.
He concludes by challenging his small band of followers to check the scientific literature for themselves to establish that the Earth has been warming and that CO2 is “largely responsible”. Of course the Earth has been warming since 1750: I have at no point denied it, though that is the implication of the caveman’s statement.
And of course there are scientists who say CO2 is “largely responsible” for the warming: that is the principal conclusion of the IPCC’s 2007 report, reached on the basis of a fraudulent statistical abuse: comparison of the slopes of multiple arbitrarily-chosen trend-lines on the global-temperature dataset falsely to suggest that “global warming” is accelerating and that it is our fault. Not that one has ever heard the caveman utter a word of condemnation of the IPCC’s too-often fictional “science”. But it is also reasonable to mention the growing band of scientists who say CO2 may not be “largely responsible” but only partly responsible for the warming since 1950. Would it not have been fairer if the caveman had pointed that out?
Climate skeptics have come under intensive attack from various quarters, and the attacks have too often been as unpleasantly dishonest as those of the caveman. Also, there is evidence that someone has been spending a lot of money on trying malevolently to discredit those who dare to ask any questions at all about the party line on climate.
For instance, after a speech by me in in the US in October 2009 went viral and received a million YouTube hits in a week (possibly the fastest YouTube platinum ever for a speech), a Texan professor who monitors the seamier side of the internet got in touch to tell me that someone had paid the operators of various search engines a sum that he estimated at not less than $250,000 to enhance the page rankings of some two dozen specially-created web-pages containing meaningless jumbles of symbols among which the word “Monckton video” appeared.
These nonsense pages would not normally have attracted any hits at all, and the search engines would normally have ranked them well below the video that had gone platinum. The intention of this elaborate and expensive artifice, as the professor explained, was to ensure that anyone looking for the real video would instead find page after page of junk and simply give up. The viral chain was duly broken, but so many websites carried the video that more than 5 million people ended up seeing it, so the dishonestly-spent $250,000 was wasted.
At one level, of course, all of this attention is an unintended compliment. But no amount of sneering or smearing will alter two salient facts: the Earth has not been warming at anything like the predicted rate and is not now at all likely to do so; and, in any event, even if the climate-extremists’ predictions were right, it would be at least an order of magnitude more cost-effective to wait and adapt in a focused way to any adverse consequences of manmade “global warming” than it would be to tax, trade, regulate, reduce, or replace CO2 today.
The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley
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Note: for anyone who wishes to see what this is about, you can see “potholer54” aka Peter Hadfield on Monckton at YouTube here – Anthony
UPDATE: Here is Peter Hadfield’s response in entirety, submitted Feb 7th, 2012. I’ve made only some slight edits for formatting to fit. – Anthony
Response from Peter Hadfield:
In January, Christopher Monckton criticized me on WUWT after I made a series of videos exposing errors in most of his claims. I have asked Anthony Watts for the opportunity to respond in kind, so that we can put Mr. Monckton’s verbatim assertions up against the documentary evidence he cites.
At first I was puzzled as to what Mr. Monckton was responding to in his WUWT guest-post, because he failed to address any of the rebuttals or the evidence I showed in my five videos. Then I realized he must have watched only the last video in the series, including a light-hearted 30-second ‘mistake count’. So in this response I am going to deal with what Mr. Monckton actually said, as shown and rebutted in my videos, rather than what he thinks I think he said, and what he thinks I rebutted.
Mr. Monckton doesn’t claim to be an expert, and neither do I. All I can do is to check and verify his claims. So the question is whether Mr. Monckton has reported the sources he cites accurately in order to reach his conclusions. I have made it very easy for you to check by playing clips of Mr. Monckton making these assertions in my videos, then showing images of the documentary evidence he cites. Since this response is text I will write out Mr. Monckton’s assertions verbatim and quote the documentary sources verbatim (with references in the body of the text.) References to the relevant video (linked at the bottom) and the time on the video where they are shown, will be shown in square brackets.
ON THE COOLING EARTH:
Since Mr. Monckton failed to address the evidence, but implies I was duplicitous in my timing, let’s see what my video actually showed. In a speech given in Melbourne in February 2009, Mr. Monckton said: “We’ve had nine years of a global cooling trend since the first of January 2001” [Ref 1 – 4:06] — and St. Paul in October 2009: “There has been global cooling for the last eight or nine years” [ibid.].
So in my video, the period Mr. Monckton was talking about was clearly identified in his own words, as well as in the graphs he showed, and I showed the dates the speeches were made, and the studies I cited covered the same period.
[“Waiting for Global Cooling” – R. Fawcett and D. Jones, National Climate Centre, Australian Bureau of Meteorology, April 2008]
[“Statisticians reject global cooling” — Associated Press 10/26/2009 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33482750/ns/us_news-environment/]
ON THE MELTING OF GREENLAND:
Again, let’s deal with what Mr. Monckton actually said, which is what I rebutted. In a speech in St. Paul in 2009, Mr. Monckton cited a paper by Ola Johannessen, and told the audience: “What he found was that between 1992 and 2003, the average thickness of the vast Greenland ice sheet increased by two inches a year.” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbW-aHvjOgM 11:40)
No, he found no such thing. Johannessen said he only measured the interior of Greenland above 1,500 metres [1 – 11:59] In fact, he specifically warns that the very conclusion Mr Monckton reaches cannot be made: “We cannot make an integrated assessment of elevation changes… for the whole Greenland Ice Sheet, including its outlet glaciers, from these observations alone, because the marginal areas are not measured completely…. ” [“Recent Ice-Sheet Growth in the Interior of Greenland” Ola M. Johannessen et al, Science November 2005]
ON THE LOSS OF ARCTIC ICE:
Mr. Monckton claimed there is no long-term systematic loss of ice in the Arctic, and I rebutted this with studies showing a decline in Arctic summer sea-ice extent since satellite measurements began in 1979. [1 – 8:20 onwards]
Mr. Monckton’s response: “I said that the 30-year record low ice extent of 2007 had been largely reversed in 2008 and 2009.”
So, as I said, he did not tell his audience there had been a 30-year decline. Quite the opposite – he said there was no long-term decline. Mr. Monckton showed his audience a slide covering just three years, referring to the 2007 low as a “temporary loss of sea ice” which had recovered by 2009. Then he told them: “So we’re not looking at a sort of long-term systematic loss of ice in the Arctic.” [1 – 8:27]
ON THE CORRELATION BETWEEN CO2 AND GLOBAL TEMPERATURES SINCE THE CAMBRIAN:
Mr. Monckton’s conclusion about a lack of correlation rests entirely on a graph showing CO2 concentration and temperature over the last 500 million years [3 – 0:04]. The graph uses temperature data from Scotese and CO2 data from Berner. Neither researcher supports Mr. Monckton’s ‘no correlation’ conclusion. On the contrary, Berner writes: “Over the long term there is indeed a correlation between CO2 and paleotemperature, as manifested by the greenhouse effect.” [“Geocarb III: A revised model of atmospheric CO2 over Phanerozoic time” — R. Berner and Z. Kothavala, American Journal of Science, Feb 2001]
How so? Because paleoclimatologists have to factor in solar output, which has been getting stronger over time [3 – 4:45]. If the rising curve of solar output is compared to global temperatures over the phanerozoic (500 million years) there is a similar lack of correlation. But it would be absurd to draw the conclusion that the sun therefore has no effect on climate.
So when gradually rising solar output is taken into account there is a very clear correlation between CO2 and global temperatures, and the source of Mr. Monckton’s data points that out. So does another senior researcher in the field [“CO2 as a primary driver of Phanerozoic climate” — D. Royer et al, GSA Today, March 2004].
ON THE PRE-CAMBRIAN ICE PLANET:
Again, let’s look at what I showed in my video, which was a clip of Mr. Monckton himself, speaking in a debate:
“750 million years ago, a mile of ice at the equator, ice planet all round, therefore at the surface 300,000 ppm of CO2. Will you tell me how that much CO2 could have been in the atmosphere and yet allowed that amount of ice at the equator?” [3 – 5:17]
Since Mr. Monckton thinks this is a puzzle for climatologists, let’s go through the well-understood explanation step by step.
Mr. Monckton agrees with the experts that the frozen planet was due to very weak solar output (about 8% less than today.) And he agrees that the high albedo (reflectivity) of this white surface would have reflected most of what little solar warmth the Earth did receive.
But he doesn’t seem to accept that volcanoes would have continued releasing CO2 into the atmosphere of this frozen planet over millions of years, and that this eventually warmed the planet enough to unfreeze it [“CO2 levels required for deglaciation of a ‘near-snowball’ Earth” T. Crowley et al, Geophysical Research Letters, 2001]. He cites no peer-reviewed research showing why paleoclimatologists are wrong. (No, the opinion of “a leading geologist” is not the same thing.)
ON HIMALAYAN GLACIERS:
Mr. Monckton writes in his WUWT response: “the pattern of advance and retreat of these glaciers was much as it had been in the 200 years since the British Raj had been keeping records. That is very far from the same thing as saying there had been “no change””
Then let’s look at what Mr. Monckton actually said to his audience in St. Paul:
“The glaciers are showing no particular change in 200 years. The only glacier that’s declined a little is Gangoltri.” [3 – 10:20]
So is it a pattern of advance and retreat? Or no particular change? Or only one glacier retreating? Which?
In his WUWT resp onse, Mr. Monckton went on to say: “To discuss one or two retreating glaciers is not the same thing as to say or imply that only one or two glaciers have been retreating.”
But you DID say it, Mr. Monckton. Here it is again: “Only one of them [Himalayan glaciers] is retreating a little and that’s Gangoltri.”
ON MISQUOTING MURARI LAL:
Speaking about Murari Lal, the man behind the IPCC’s 2035 disappearing glaciers fiasco, Mr. Monckton told his audience there was: “….an admission that he [Lal] knew that figure was wrong but had left it in anyway because he knew that the IPCC wanted to influence governments and politicians.”[4 – 3:50]
This is not even borne out by Monckton’s own source, cited in his response, which is a quote from Lal in the Daily Mail about the 2035 date: “We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.” Nowhere does Lal say he knew the figure was erroneous.
MISQUOTING SIR JOHN HOUGHTON:
Mr. Monckton claims Houghton wrote this in the Sunday Telegraph of September 10, 1995: “Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen.” [4 – 5:50]
And I maintain Houghton wrote: “If we want a good environmental policy in the future, we’ll have to have a disaster. It’s like safety on public transport. The only way humans will act is if there’s been an accident.”
Who is right? Well, both Mr. Monckton and I have exactly the same source [Sunday Telegraph, September 10, 1995], but I actually show an image of it in my video [4 – 7:24]. Take a look. Even though it turns out my quote is correct and Mr. Monckton’s is clearly a gross misquote, he still insists in his WUWT response that he got the quote right.
ON HIS CLAIMS ABOUT THE ROLE OF THE SUN…
Mr. Monckton showed and quoted an extract from a paper by Sami Solanki: “The level of solar activity during the past 70 years is exceptional, and the previous period of equally high activity occurred more than 8,000 years ago. We find that during the past 11,400 years the sun spent only of the order of 10% of the time at a similarly high level of magnetic activity and almost all of the earlier high-activity periods were shorter than the present episodoes on to come.” [5 – 1:21 onwards]
That could suggest the sun is a likely culprit for recent warming. But why didn’t Mr. Monckton tell or show his audience what Solanki wrote in the very next line?
“Although the rarity of the current episode of high average sunspot numbers may indicate that the Sun has contributed to the unusual climate change during the twentieth century, we point out that solar variability is unlikely to have been the dominant cause of the strong warming during the past three decades.” [“Unusual activity of the Sun during recent decades compared to the last 11,000 years” — S.K. Solanki et al, Nature Sep 2004]
ON THE ROLE OF THE SUN IN RECENT WARMING:
Mr. Monckton said: “The solar physicists – you might take Scafetta and West, say, in 2008, they attribute 69% of all the recent global warming to the sun.” [5 – 3:48]
No, they don’t. In my video [5 – 4:32] I showed the actual document Mr. Monckton refers to (an opinion piece) where Scafetta and West wrote: “We estimate that the sun could account for as much as 69% of the increase in the Earth’s average temperature.” [“Is climate sensitive to solar variability?” Nicola Scafetta and Bruce J. West, Physics Today March 2008]
I hope we all understand the difference between “69%” and “as much as 69%.” But what about all those other “solar physicists” who purportedly support Monckton’s position? Well, they don’t. Solanki’s figure is up to just 30%, Erlykin less than 14%, Bernstad 7%, Lean ‘negligable’and Lockwood –1.3% [5 — 4:40]
[4:41 “Can solar variability explain global warming since 1970?”– S. K. Solanki and N. A. Krivova, Journal of Geophysical Research, May 2003]
[“Solar Activity and the Mean Global Temperature”
A.D. Erlykin et al, Physics Geo 2009]
[“Solar trends and global warming” — R. Benestad and G. Schmidt, Journal of Geophysical Research” July 2009]
[“How natural and anthropogenic influences alter global and regional surface temperatures: 1889 to 2006” J. Lean and D. Rind, Geophysical Research Letters, Sep 2008]
[“Recent changes in solar outputs and the global mean surface temperature. III. Analysis of contributions to global mean air surface temperature rise” — M. Lockwood, June 2008]
Mr. Monckton then asserts that the International Astronomical Union (IAU) agrees with this conclusion (that the sun is largely responsible for recent warming.) After he had been confronted during a TV interview with the plain fact that it didn’t [5 – 5:49 “Meet the Climate Sceptics” BBC TV Feb 2011], Monckton gave a reason for the error in his WUWT response:
“I cited a paper given by Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov at the 2004 symposium of the IAU in St. Petersburg, Fla, but put “IAU” at the foot of the slide rather than Dr. Abdussamatov’s name.”
Maybe so. But that doesn’t explain why Mr. Monckton continued to make exactly the same claim elsewhere. At St. Paul he said:
“Most solar physicists agree [that the sun is largely responsible for recent warming]. The International Astronomical Union in 2004 had a symposium on it, they concluded that that was the case.” [Monckton rebuttal – WUWT 16:27]
And in his film ‘Apocalypse No!’ a slide headed ‘International Astronomical Union Symposium in 2004’ was shown to an audience, along with its main conclusions. Third on the list, Monckton read: “The sun caused today’s global warming.”
Monckton told the audience: “This is not my conclusion, this is the conclusion of the International Astronomical Union Symposium in 2004. This is what they said, this is not me talking here.” [Monckton rebuttal – WUWT 16:34]
Mr. Monckton has to accept that this claim is completely spurious. This is why he dislikes detailed examinations of his sources. While he takes every opportunity to debate on stage, where his speaking skills are essential and his assertions can’t be checked, an online debate is far tougher, because every paper and fact CAN be checked. So come on, Mr. Monckton, let’s debate this on WUWT to see which of us has correctly read your sources.
The rebuttals I made are not “inconsequential aspects of my talks” as Mr. Monckton claims; they include almost every major topic he covers, from the melting of Arctic and glacial ice, to the role of the sun and the correlation between CO2 and temperature. His only recourse in his WUWT response was therefore to call me names, attack my character and my competence, and question my financing and my motivation… anything but answer the documentary evidence I presented. And then he adds one more error — a ridiculous claim that I asked my “small band of followers” to “check the scientific literature for themselves to establish that the Earth has been warming and that CO2 is “largely responsible.”
Since I can’t establish that myself, I certainly wouldn’t advise other amateurs to have a go. So I ask Mr. Monckton to cite the source for this claim, sure in the knowledge that once again we will see a yawning gap between what the source actually says (in this case, me) and what Mr. Monckton claims it says.
References: (Hadfield’s own videos)
1 — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbW-aHvjOgM
2 — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTY3FnsFZ7Q
3 — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpF48b6Lsbo
4 — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3giRaGNTMA
5 — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRCyctTvuCo
Keep working at it, James. Even tho’ it’s “all sciencey and that”, the concept of statistical significance isn’t really that difficult to grasp.
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This is just too much. I try to avoid this sort of dialogue, but your stalking leaves me little recourse.
Dictionaries, thesaurus’, even specialized dictionaries are freely available on the nets. There’s no reason for you to dwell in this ignorant state.
No, statistical significance isn’t a hard concept to grasp, even though you obviously don’t understand it. Statistical significance isn’t the same as significance. They are two entirely different concepts and you need to familiarize yourself with both if you wish to be taken seriously.
Significance, when used in statistics does not mean important or meaningful, as is the connotation in everyday use. They are talking about probabilities. Conversely, when someone says statistically insignificant, it doesn’t mean that the observation wasn’t important or that one can’t take meaning away from the observation!
Do you have that, Jack? You’re conflating the two meanings, as have many others. Typically, but not always, I speak in terms of what has occurred, and what is occurring. in other words, posteriori. I’m not referencing theoretical probabilities, which often, statisticians argue and debate about what best methodology to use to come to the statistical significance threshold, or even what that threshold is.
So Jack, when you and anyone else blathers about statistical significance, tell me what methodology was used? Monte carlo? Lasso? What? Are you talking from the Bayesian school or Neyman–Pearson? Did you use a priori? What was the objective criteria used to get it? How many steps did it take? How is it that you guys and gals attach meaning to the term but incorrectly use the term in our common discourse? Oh, I know…… you don’t know WTF it means.
Again, like another, if you don’t understand what I’ve just stated, please copy and paste it and email it to someone who can explain it to you. Obviously, with the language barrier we have, I can be of no help to you in this regard. If and when you ever come to an understanding about the differences between statistical significance and significance (and the inverse), you then need to look into the differences between subjective and objective. After you’ve mastered those concepts, then try and understand why the appeal to authority is often rendered meaningless because of the various subjective interpretations of objective information. Finally, when you’ve come to grips with all of that, then, by all means, get in touch and we’ll have some wonderful and meaningful conversations.
Martin Lewitt says:
February 12, 2012 at 9:23 am
Evidence of whether what Lord Monckton attributed to Sir John Houghton is a misrepresentation of his motives, rather than just a misquote, would be whether Sir Houghton does seem to exagerate or hype beyond the evidence. There is something that indicates that he does, his “weapon of mass destruction” essay. He showed little restraint in associating all kinds of extreme events with global warming.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2003/jul/28/environment.greenpolitics
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Hey!!! No counts, showing that he’s doing exactly what Monckton said he was doing!!! He used quote marks!!! So, because he used quote marks, we will ignore the message and attack the messenger. I think Christopher was absolutely correct when he applied the word mendacious.
>> Are you still defending the overlayed Scotese/Berner graphic as clear evidence of the lack of correlation between CO2 & temp?
This caught my attention (and sorry if I am repeating information others may have said). I figured someone would find a problem with those graphs.
Those graphs do show a lack of correlation between co2 and temp in the same way that I can create a graph of water added to plants over time and create another graph of plant growth over time and find these two graphs to be uncorrelated because dependencies on other variables (like sunlight and fertilizer) are skewing the results. We have to remember that CO2 in the atmosphere does not define surface temperature. There are a number of factors that work together to define surface temperature. We need not just water, but water, fertilized soil, sunlight, CO2, and stable temperatures related to what the plant tolerates (to pick major contributors) in order to see a plant grow.
Let’s look at a simple analogy. Planet CO2 will relate to plant CO2 and planet solar irradiance will relate to plant watering. The planet’s temperature will be the height of the plant.
Let’s say I plant a 1 meter high plant in a controlled greenhouse with acceptable temperature, in soil with necessary nutrients, where the plant gets necessary sunlight. Thus, I factored out these 3 variables.
I set the initial CO2 levels in the greenhouse to a very high value.. eg, to match the CO2 levels in old earth. Over a year I will reduce the CO2 levels from the very high initial value until finally they are at ordinary levels found in the atmosphere today. I will reduce the CO2 over the year to match the CO2 graph used by Monckton in the presentation.
As for the water, I will start by giving the plant virtually no water, just enough to keep the plant from dying and from shrinking but little enough that the plant won’t grow. After 2 months, I notice that just like the temp graph in the presentation, the plant has not grown. Then I remove the water and the plant starts to wither and shrink. After 2 weeks, I notice that the plant has shrunk to match the dip in temperature in the graph. For the next month, I add water to get the plant back up to earlier size and then cut back on water to just keep it there. ….Well, I’ll skip the tedious narration since we can see the pattern in how I can control water to get the height of the plant to follow that temp graph despite the initial very high level of CO2 and its decreasing status over time.
Does this experiment mean that CO2 doesn’t matter? No, CO2 does matter as Smokey has pointed out many times with his tips on better gardening. What it means is that when CO2 is very high we can get the same growth effect using less water. As CO2 drops, we need more water to get the same effect.
OK, now this was only an analogy to demonstrate the issue of dependencies and how variables can be adjusted to lead to certain graphs that hide the full information needed to understand the “if all else remains equal” relationships among the depicted variables. Fact is that those graphs ignore that the sun (and irradiance falling on planet after albedo affect) was increasing in intensity over that time, much as water was increased in order to make up for reduced CO2. Yes CO2 matters. Yes, more CO2 does promote higher temperatures, but we have to look at all the variables in order to see that correlation. Those two graphs by themselves won’t show it because they are not “if all else remains equal” scenarios.
This said, the graphs suggest to me that CO2 at very high levels shown there under the somewhat weaker sun is not enough to cause our average temperatures to go too high (if other variables remain similar). There is the fourth power relationship between power flux “forcings” and temp which means it gets more and more difficult to raise the temp further. It also appears that there is a trigger that causes temps to rise to the higher level from the lower level. This might be ice keeping our albedo high enough or otherwise melting to lead to a much lower albedo. A different mechanism might be keeping the temps from going too high. What is that mechanism and how sturdy is it? The ceiling protection might be a limited amount of potential ghg, nice distance from the sun, bounded albedo based on ice formations and large body of water, and the cooling effect itself of evaporation. [Note I am just speculating, and have not studied this.]
Of course, there is a lot we don’t know about early earth. There can be tipping points reached in today’s hotter sun that would not have been possible before. If we get too hot, enough water might evaporate so that the greenhouse warming from that water could tip things. This might be a stable condition (ie, it might take more water and other ghg in the atmosphere than we have disposable.. since water condenses out). But remember that we might get a forward feedback mechanism that goes slowly until eventually it speeds up very fast as the polar ice finishes melting. This very fast change, in the last days, will likely lead to significant water events (flooding and hurricanes devastating populations of many species), making what we get today appear like getting splashed by a passerby just before the tsunami enters the city. How far inland should we be and will key species die?
The speed of temperature rise may be detrimental to key species we may depend on (that is a complex topic to understand all the relationships among organisms). Personally, I really value nature. I like life and wonder at all the amazing things that have developed. Once we lose certain ecosystems, it might be nearly impossible to turn the clock back. Costs could be huge, say, if bees disappeared because of some disease that in the past was kept in check by more stable or cooler weather and or other organisms that thrived under those conditions we might be removing (or because other microorganisms grew better in current warmer temps to displace the ones that played a key role protecting bees from the more dangerous pathogens). Life is complex, and we should be a little humble to our ignorance. Too much change too fast hurts organisms. The simplest of organisms are the most robust generally. .. Anyway, I don’t want to go into this topic much more.
@James Baldwin Sexton said February 12, 2012 at 11:57 am
I’ll be happy to address your diversion re: statistical significance, James.
But first, we have an issue of you desperately clinging to the tactic of diversion/deflection to avoid defending your misinformation and misunderstandings. This stream of interaction is based on my reply to TGB, here => http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/11/monckton-responds-to-potholer54/#comments , where I included an example of you as a blinder-wearing defender of Mr. Monckton. More specifically, my example focused on CO2/Temp correlation about which both you and Mr. Monckton advanced the Scotese/Berner graphic to discredit any claimed correlation between CO2 & temp over the past 500+ million years. After finally viewing Mr. Hadfield’s debunking of that graphic it seems that you’ve now backed off on the validity of using that graphic to discredit the correlation. I’ll repeat the question I posed in my last post.
Are you still defending the overlayed Scotese/Berner graphic as clear evidence of the lack of correlation between CO2 & temp? If you are, what is the basis of defense?
Answer that, then we can move of to statistical significance.
James Sexton, when the temp ticks up for 2 months in a row, say, ticking up a fairly large amount and not just a tiny bit, will you ignore everything that passed before and claim we are on an amazing rise in temperatures because a straight line (or parabolic, exponential, etc) extrapolation means we will reach 100 degrees C in a few years?
Of course not.
In the context of the natural climate cycles (which we will only ever understand up to a point and many will argue over the details), some changes are not significant. You understand this intuitively. I think most other people understand this intuitively despite what you just claimed about Jack (and I haven’t read much above or know J Greer (although name sounds a little familiar)). We understand, yet each continue to pick our own time periods without invoking any math.
Anyway, different statistical reasoning I imagine can lead to different values of significance. This is another case of people on opposite sides of the debate speaking past each other, where we each follow the lead of others but at no point actually describe our reasoning mathematically.
The computer models model a number of natural cycles, and I think pick their statistical significance boundary based on that. [I don’t know.] I have seen 30 years being tossed around as a significant measuring period for trends of some sort. I don’t know.
Martin Lewitt >> There is also this comment from I’ve seen him dismiss Lindzen’s work as only covering the tropics when that is the very area where the models are correlated in having net positive feedback from the clouds.
Someone, maybe Smokey (haven’t read that comment well yet, but I caught note of the link and surrounding context), provided a link to a recent Lindzen paper on WUWT http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/16/new-paper-from-lindzen-and-choi-implies-that-the-models-are-exaggerating-climate-sensitivity/ . Unfortunately, the comments closed there.
I started reading the paper, and it will probably take me a while to digest it. I did notice this theme that his analysis is based on the tropics.
I think he basically follows an acceptable (which is not to say we can’t criticize elements of it) high level feedback system analysis on the full planet+atmosphere system in reaching equation 5 right on page 2. To then produce equation 6, he invokes an earlier paper he co-wrote to claim that you can move from that step to an analysis of only the tropics by simply adding in a parameterized value “c” which he chooses to be some value picked from somewhere and acknowledges is a knob of sorts to be tweaked.
He also claims elsewhere that G_0 (the open loop system response) is a value we can measure today.
I tried to quickly find what he does to justify that he is indeed measuring 2xCO2 and not something else. After all, we want to estimate temperatures at 2xCO2 before 2xCO2 actually arrives. Our model has to have some way to anticipate that 2xCO2 point on the curve of the temperature values the model will produce.
I did not quickly find any further clues on 2xCO2. Assuming there isn’t another major clue, I suspect that paper might have the same sort of mistake I have seen in various other papers that claim a low climate sensitivity for one reason or other. These papers claim to analyze the 2xCO2 condition which will exist in the future but do so by filling in variables as they are supposed to exist then instead using values that are measured today. This sort of mistake conveniently can sweep-under-the-rug the greenhouse effect and any other physics-supported time evolution that it failed to model.
[BTW, you can’t conduct science without modeling. Newton certainly modeled, as did those before and after him. We have no choice but to model and simplify to various degrees based on our best understanding of system behavior.. for whatever system we want to analyze and try to understand at any point in the future. People who criticize climate models tend not to use math themselves to form their views and so perhaps don’t really realize how we have no choice but to use model. The question is which model do you use, not whether or not you use one.]
…So I suspect that Lindzen is assuming the G_0 and the c values (and indirectly maybe other values as well) he measured today would remain that way in the future. I don’t know all the details of his model, but if he doesn’t use reasonable physics with time varying dependencies in his model and leverage this properly, his measurements of values today — a point many heavy-duty skeptics consider to be a selling point of such studies — means he almost certainly is going to get the wrong answer.
He states that eqn 6 and/or further derived eqns (aka, his “tropics” version of the main system feedback formula he derived as equation 5.. and I’ll have to read the referenced paper to see what derivation/argument he uses to justify the tropics subcomponent) is an open system. Well, that is true and certainly opens this form of analysis to many classes of mistakes since he will likely not properly balance energy values. You can’t ignore the huge reservoir effect provided to today’s environment near the tropics by the poles/ice. Without that reservoir (especially the melting ice absorbing heat without a corresponding change in temperature), the tropics will suffer a greater blunt of the greenhouse warming.
To conclude, I suspect Lindzen is underestimating climate sensitivity in part because of his failure to account for the poles/ice, and a clue of this might show up in the mathematics if we could fast forward to the future to note the G_0 and perhaps over values he claims are constants would be found instead not to be constants at all. If he switches to open loop analysis, he has to make sure he is quantifying the entire coupling of the tropics with the poles in a way that accurately describes this coupling at least at 2xCO2. I have not read his earlier work he invokes (nor this paper very much), but treating G_0 and c as constants likely is a mistake. Certainly, you can’t just assume these values are constant, as that assumes CO2 greenhouse has no effect (which is what he is effectively assuming). Also, he does define the open loop G_0 response to include 2xCO2. You can’t measure such a G_0 today because 2xCO2 does not exist today. [He can try to fix some of these problems by first making 2xCO2 be part of the feedback response (and 1xCO2 be part of G_0), but then he likely can’t come to his tidy conclusions as he did without first finding a way to model the CO2 varying effect over time.]
Jack Greer says:
February 12, 2012 at 1:10 pm
@James Baldwin Sexton said February 12, 2012 at 11:57 am
I’ll be happy to address your diversion re: statistical significance, James.
==========================================
Jack, that wasn’t a diversion, you’re the twit who demonstrated you didn’t understand what you were babbling about while attempting to project it on to me. If it was a diversion, then you were the idiot that brought it up.
And if you read my response to you, you would know that I did, indeed, address your idiotic obsession. No, wait, you’ve a comprehension problem. Go here…. http://suyts.wordpress.com/2012/02/12/objective-and-subjective-observations/ Dear God! will there ever be a point in time when people such as yourself ever come to the understanding that a conclusion in a paper is a subjective analysis and not, and I’ll repeat for emphasis, not a euphemism for truth.
No, of course not. Sorry Jack, I don’t acquiesce my ability to think for myself, as opposed to people such as you. I’ve a choice, I can choose to believe what the lady had to say in her paper and Hadfield’s idiotic analogy, or, I can believe my own lying eyes. WTF? That’s her interpretation of observations. Schneider wrote a few peer reviewed papers on the prospects of an impending ice age. As did others. Peer reviewed, and accepted in the journals. Schneider S. & Rasool S., “Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Aerosols – Effects of Large Increases on Global Climate”, Science, vol.173, 9 July 1971, p.138-141
Tell me Jack….. does this mean you’re wrong if you worry about the CO2 hotting us up? You really can’t have it both ways. Which is it? Is peer review a euphamism for truth or not? Can someone look at the same data and reasonabley come to a different conclusion?
“After finally viewing Mr. Hadfield’s debunking of that graphic it seems that you’ve now backed off on the validity of using that graphic to discredit the correlation. Are you still defending the overlayed Scotese/Berner graphic as clear evidence of the lack of correlation between CO2 & temp? If you are, what is the basis of defense?”
He didn’t debunk it, he offered other people’s opinions on it. But, not before he offered his own erroneous analogy. And quite frankly, its a silly argument. They’ve done exactly what Monckton was accused of doing, cherry picking a point in the graph and saying “aha! There is a correlation!!!” And, that’s true, just like my broken clock correlates with the time twice a day. But, when it doesn’t correlate, well, then there’s a rationalization which must be put forward because of the engrained belief that CO2 correlates with temps. There are plenty of other parts of the graph which call into question the correlation. I’m dying here hear the rest of the rationalizations. No, wait, I’ve got it!!! You can posit that the sun was cool, then warmed up and then got cold again!!! But, then we get back to the hypocrisy and duplicity that you seem so adamate to defend.
But, I’m not defending nor rejecting the graph. Its is simply a graphical compilation of observations. You can take whatever meaning you wish from it. As can Monckton. As can I. No, wait, I forgot, you can’t. You have to wait until you’re told what to think about it……
Jack, I’m really no longer interested in having you embarrass yourself with me any further. Truly, move on, I’m becoming embarassed for you.
Jose_X says:
February 11, 2012 at 8:47 pm
I would like to comment on a few things from this entry. Your comments are in ital.
If I didn’t say it before (and I thought I did), let me say that AGW absolutely does not claim that temperatures will rise continually day to day
This is very true, however in 1990 the IPCC figured there would be a rise of between 0.2°C and 0.5°C per decade. However since the rise has been only 0.16°C/decade since 1990, at some point it has to rise faster to even reach the lowest IPCC projection/prediction of 0.2°C/decade. As Phil Jones said in the BBC interview about two years ago, the fastest rise for any longer period at any time in the previous century was only 0.166°C/decade.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511670.stm
Since the IPCC agrees that the increase in temperature due to CO2 is logarithmic, I see no reason to assume that the increase in temperature this century would exceed this value at any time. Would it therefore seem reasonable to NOT spend any extra money on carbon capture, etc until such a time as the temperature increase actually reaches 0.2°C/decade starting with 1990?
I did not see a link to Phil Jones discussion.
See the link above, question A.
That bottom graph has a stray point downwards a little past 2010. That value doesn’t appear in any of the other graphs you have shown recently. What gives? If we remove that point…
It appears as if BEST rather rushed this release and the down spike is a result of just having a few Antarctic values. Removing that point would give a slightly higher slope for the last 10 years. However I would like to point out that the BEST data only goes to May, 2010 and is not up to date. Considering that 2011 was either the 9th or 12th warmest, depending in which data set you use, IF BEST were up to date, then the two items could be close to cancelling each other’s effects and the BEST data would also show a relatively flat recent decade, temperature wise.
Jose_X says:
February 12, 2012 at 12:55 pm
>> Are you still defending the overlayed Scotese/Berner graphic as clear evidence of the lack of correlation between CO2 & temp?
See the following which shows carbon dioxide and methane and temperature on the same graph.
http://motls.blogspot.com/2006/07/carbon-dioxide-and-temperatures-ice.html
Note the spikes every 100,000 years or so. A perfectly natural explanation is Milankovitch cycles which causes warming and as a result of warming, the warmer oceans release all gases such as CO2 and CH4. Then when the cycle is in a cool phase, the oceans absorb these gases again to a greater degree.
OK, I am going to retract a large chunk (…ok, all of it) of the Lindzen pre-critique I made a little earlier. His model includes an increase in temp (about 1 C) for the base CO2 ghg effect. This value is assumed correct by Lindzen (and many people..including Wikipedia). I haven’t seen the analysis, but supposedly this is standard (ghg effect) stuff derived in text books (Lindzen mentions one by Hartmann in 94).
I don’t right now know the details of what that 2xCO2 derived baseline value represents to know if I should be challenging the assumed constancy of G_0 and/or of any other values.
Jose_X says:
February 12, 2012 at 1:32 pm
That is something I entirely agree with. Nor am I sure it is a worthwhile pursuit because of the overreaction to perceived understanding. It once held that the more you know, the more you know you don’t know. But today, we think we’ve gained enough understanding as to believe we can control the climate. And the effects of this have been devastating.
This is true, I don’t invoke any mathematical reasoning for the time periods I present. The reason why I don’t is because I’m not under the delusion, I or anyone else knows about what time frame is significant or not, statistically or conventionally. The 30 years is an arbitrary time frame which I’ve never seen a good argument for it. But, it is only put forward when people reference a shorter time period. It is entirely abandoned when people point out longer time periods. To assume one knows what is a relevant time frame is assumes knowledge of things we don’t yet know.
What I try to show, is how much we don’t know and how circular the discussions are. I offer no insights to what drives the climate, because in spite of the ego some have stated I have, my ego isn’t that massive as to believe I know what causes our climate to behave in the manner it does.
Specifically speaking to some of the more recent history, throughout this discussion, I’ve shown time frame well beyond the 30 year time frame. In response, what wasn’t outwardly stated, but implicitly stated, was that regardless of how many years our current dearth of warming continues, many will not accept that CO2 isn’t driving our climate. I show them 10, they laugh, I show them 15, I’m cherry picking, I show them 50 and 70 consecutive years of increasing CO2 and no temp change and I get nothing. To my knowledge, you have been the only exception. But, this is a very lengthy thread so I may have missed a response or two. I’m still mulling it over, but I think we can, without trying to add the logarithmic to the exponential, simply proceed with the view of a “doubling” atmospheric CO2 or a percentage of the doubling with out the constraints of time. But, even considering the “doubling” is a bit vexing. Is our start point truly 280ppm?
So much we don’t know, so certain some are in imagining we do know. ……..
Jose_X,
Here is Prof Lindzen’s CV, with his peer reviewed papers. There are more than two hundred. You can find them with a web search.
Werner Brozek, the Milankovitch cycle is not expressed in that other time chart (from the presentation) whose resolution probably is above 1 million years.
The hotter part of the M cycles can lead to CO2 releases from the ocean. That is like the historical lag people talk about. That explanation doesn’t pre-empt that adding CO2 first won’t enhance greenhouse warming.
I can have a crash on the road as a result of talking on the cell phone (and closing my eyes, etc), but I can also talk on the phone (and close my eyes) as a result of having had a crash. That one of these cause-effect relationships is true doesn’t imply the other can’t be true as well.
>> then the two items could be close to cancelling each others’ effects and the BEST data would also show a relatively flat recent decade, temperature wise.
I think we would probably have to extend the “decade” by at least a little and assuming the new data does show enough cooling (which it might). I am not sure if that decade would be redone by BEST though since those points are after Jan 2010.
I do think what you surmised about the stray point and incomplete data is reasonable. I don’t think the BEST analysts were trying to con anyone.
>> See the link above, question A.
Concerning those 3 trends Smokey linked to http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/hadley/Hadley-global-temps-1850-2010-web.jpg , we can compare to http://berkeleyearth.org/analysis/ . The older trends have a greater error bar. We simply are not as sure about those values. The BEST graph makes that uncertainty clearer. Additionally, the 3rd trend (the one we are currently living) still appears to have grown in length and taken place at a higher displacement.
Jones didn’t look at the BEST graph, where the differences are a little more pronounced. Regardless, the question he answered was about the rate (statistical significance of a difference between trend slopes). We can see there is some imposed temperature rise (a positive bias to the signal) on the 3rd trend which is consistent with CO2 warming added on top of what can potentially be a cyclical effect we see in the graphs.
>> however in 1990 the IPCC figured there would be a rise of between 0.2°C and 0.5°C per decade. However since the rise has been only 0.16°C/decade since 1990
The projections are here http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm-projections-of.html
>> Since the IPCC agrees that the increase in temperature due to CO2 is logarithmic, I see no reason to assume that the increase in temperature this century would exceed this value at any time.
CO2 levels have been increasing faster than exponential. The rate of growth from 1850-1900 was around 3.5% (I eyeballed this earlier from some graph). The next 50 years were at 5%. Then we had 19.5% growth leading to 2000. The next 50 years appear to be on a pace over 30%
>> Would it therefore seem reasonable to NOT spend any extra money on carbon capture, etc until such a time as the temperature increase actually reaches 0.2°C/decade starting with 1990?
Ignoring what I just mentioned about the faster than exponential growth.. in general, I don’t see why we would ignore the global warming threat or avoid doing anything if somehow we stayed say at .15/decade for a couple decades. I don’t think we should ignore it now.
I do agree that significant commitment in the near future should probably not occur if we appear to be on the low end of the projections.
I do think there is time to keep improving our forecasting and see what sort of things shake out. I would like to see a greater number of scientists from outside disciplines support the climate scientists “consensus” opinions.
Anyway, I do think we should invest in things like improving CO2 sequestering research. If we can manage to efficiently remove CO2 not too much slower than the rate at which we put in out (and somewhat cost effectively), then we would solve many problems. I have read about a number of interesting work in this area. They are using the sun, semiconductor chips, even bacteria or other microbes to absorb CO2. Why not use the sun to put the gas back in the bottle for later reuse? Renewable fossil fuels sounds pretty good.
And keep in mind that if there is a serious problem, the costs go up the longer we wait. It will also take longer to develop accurate models and good understanding if we punt. It is our kids unto which we are passing on the risks. “Sorry, grandchild of mine. I had not yet gotten up to speed on the research and wasn’t convinced.”
FWIW, I don’t think .2/decade is a magic number, but if we look at the trend line values for the trends from 1990 to 2000, we do get at least .2 from each of these three datasets:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1990/to:2000/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1990/to:2000
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/best/from:1990/to:2000/trend/plot/best/from:1990/to:2000
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1990/to:2000/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1990/to:2000
The lowest is GISTEMP at a dash under .2/dec.
If we look at trends from 1990 to 2010, then HADCRUT3 drops down a lot to around .16/dec while the other two each remain about the same as they were before (with BEST much higher than GISTEMP).
Jose_X says:
“We can see there is some imposed temperature rise (a positive bias to the signal) on the 3rd trend which is consistent with CO2 warming added on top of what can potentially be a cyclical effect we see in the graphs.”
What you are seeing is an artefact of a zero baseline chart. When commenting about a trend [which you were], you need to show a trend line chart. When you show a trend line chart, the acceleration disappears. You can see what happens here.
When plotting anomalies, a zero baseline chart is fine. But using an arbitrary zero baseline chart to show a trend is deceptive [and that is exactly why they are used]. The trend has not changed during the time when CO2 levels rose ≈40%. Doesn’t that tell you something? It tells me that CO2 does not have the claimed effect. Isn’t that perfectly obvious? The reason is because the first 20 ppmv of CO2 does most of the warming. Adding more has an increasingly minuscule effect.
There is no acceleration in global temperatures. In fact, there hasn’t been much change for the past 15 years. And the mild rising trend has been unchanged [within relatively small error bars] for close to four hundred years. The planet is simply emerging from one of the coldest periods of the Holocene, the Little Ice Age.
Next, you say that “CO2 levels have been increasing faster than exponential.” How can a rise be faster than exponential? That makes no sense.
Finally, you say: “… I don’t see why we would ignore the global warming threat or avoid doing anything if somehow we stayed say at .15/decade for a couple decades. I don’t think we should ignore it now.”
What “threat”?? There is no evidence supporting any supposed threat. It’s all handwaving and circular arguments. Furthermore, the planet has been much warmer in the geologic past, with no harm to the biosphere. The current *mild* temperatures are unusually fine [although a couple of degrees warmer would be even better, for the reasons explained here repeatedly].
Instead of buying into the hokum being peddled by self-interested parties in government, in universities, and in the media, you would do much better listening closely to what more than thirty thousand scientists and engineers – all in the hard sciences, and including over 9,000 PhD’s – have personally co-signed:
Those 31,000+ co-signers knew exactly what they were signing. The identity of every signatory was verified. They could not sign by email; they had to either mail in an original signature, or sign in person.
Those are the people you should be listening to, not the self-serving, self aggrandizing connivers and charlatans who have hijacked the climate peer review process, and climate journals, and professional societies. Between $6 – $7 Billion is handed out every year to ‘study climate change’. That is a huge motivation to make exaggerated, wild-eyed, alarming claims. And that is exactly what they are doing. That grant money would soon disappear if they told the truth and said, “We should keep an eye on the situation, but so far, there is really nothing to be concerned about.”
The science does not support the scare, Jose. Not at all. But after being bombarded by “global warming”, “carbon”, “sustainability”, and similar terms 24/7/366, it’s hard to not begin to nod your head in agreement. It takes moral courage, character, a willingness to really look at the situation, and the ability to go against the herd instinct. If you do, you will be surprised to discover that CO2 and global warming are both beneficial, not harmful. But there is no grant money for those who tell the truth. That’s why it takes character.
James Sexton>> But, when it doesn’t correlate, well, then there’s a rationalization which must be put forward because of the engrained belief that CO2 correlates with temps. There are plenty of other parts of the graph which call into question the correlation.
Lindzen appears to agree there is a correlation. Are you saying that your opinion is that this correlation and a lot of Lindzen’s work are invalid?
The analogy I gave was not to rationalize a correlation. I am suggesting that the graphs are consistent with many possible theories that could exist that correlate temp and CO2. I am saying it does not follow that CO2 and temp are independent from each other (uncorrelated).
Wait. I’m being possessed.
Can someone point to me how that graph was generated? If I am not going to trust the author’s own conclusions, why should I trust their the interpretation they are giving to their measurements? How do I know the measurements are real and valid?
Who says brain cancer is real. I think there are only spirits. I have never seen any so called cancer. I interpret those colors on those petri dishes and behind that microscope lens differently. blah blah blah.
Jose_X says:
February 12, 2012 at 6:02 pm
I agree with most of what you say. Just some comments:
When Jones made those comments about two years ago, he was strictly going by HadCrut3 and BEST was not even in existence then. Regardless what the error bars may be, the slopes were basically the same for those three periods.
As for the “between 0.2°C and 0.5°C per decade”, that was taken from page 5 of this for one of the scenarios:
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/wg_I/ipcc_far_wg_I_spm.pdf
CO2 levels have been increasing faster than exponential.
I know what you mean. So if y = x^2 is exponential, then y = x^3 is faster than exponential. That may well be true, but as Smokey showed in the above entry, it does not look like it makes any real difference.
Anyway, I do think we should invest in things like improving CO2 sequestering research.
I do not agree. There is no proof a bit of extra CO2 is bad and we are extremely far from any economical sense on this matter. It would take a major breakthrough. I did some number crunching on this issue since in Alberta, Canada, they still want to spend about a billion dollars on one carbon capture project. At the present time, humans emit about 90 million tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere every DAY. I DO NOT believe this to be the case, however let us assume there will be the IPCC average number of 3.000 degrees C increase in temperature due to our emissions if we do nothing. So if a billion dollars is spent to capture 1 million tons a YEAR, this amounts to a fraction of 1 in 32,850. So if nothing is done, let us assume the temperature will presumably go up 3.0000 degrees C, but if a billion dollars is spent, the temperature would go up by 2.9999 degrees. Or to put in another way, if we take the temperature of 10,000 cities now and then again in 100 years from now, 9,999 cities will have the same temperature and one city will be 1 degree C colder if a billion dollars is spent.
if we look at the trend line values for the trends from 1990 to 2000, we do get at least .2 from each of these three datasets:
That may be true over only 10 years, but climate seems to go in 60 year cycles and the present flatness over the last 10 to 15 years, depending on which data set you use, just confirms this. For the 60 year cycle, see:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/akasofu_ipcc.jpg
>> What you are seeing is an artefact of a zero baseline chart. When commenting about a trend [which you were], you need to show a trend line chart. When you show a trend line chart, the acceleration disappears. You can see what happens here.
Can you rephrase this? For example, what important information do you want to show via a non-horizontal baseline (trend lines)?
The zero baseline is arbitrary. Regardless of where you place that horizontal line the rightmost trend is at elevated temperatures relative to the prior two trends (that is the “bias” I was talking about).
>> The trend has not changed during the time when CO2 levels rose ≈40%
I disagree. The start is at a higher temp (which itself doesn’t prove anything by itself without first looking at important variables such as solar irradiance), and the trend lasts longer. Additionally, it is not clear that such a trend has even ended.
The trend is clearly stretched out more (and higher up) in the BEST graphs.
But I’ll spot something else in the graph you presented. From 1880 to 1910 we go downward a little. Then from 1910 to 1945 we go up at a steeper angle. Then from 1945 to 1975 we go almost exactly sideways (or down very little). Then from 1975 to 2005 we go up at the fastest rate yet. Then from 2005 to say 2030 (use your imagination) we’ll go up slightly. Then from 2030 to 2060 we go up very fast. ETC. In other words, we have upish and downish cycles except the the upish parts keep getting steeper and the downish parts also are rotating from negative to zero to positive and more positive slopes. The increased warming effect couldn’t be more noticeable, wouldn’t you agree?
>> Isn’t that perfectly obvious?
Well, isn’t it?
I think so.
CO2 is kicking into gear (look at the CO2 charts), and it has been leaving a clear trail of this evidence of associated warming for at least 150 years now… or at least such evidence is consistent. The CO2 increasing rate of growth seems to match up with the temp increasing growth.. once we factor out the cycles.. and even accounting for the logarithmic penalty.
And I used your own graph (BEST graph shows this as well, except it’s a little “ahead of the curve”).
>> Next, you say that “CO2 levels have been increasing faster than exponential.” How can a rise be faster than exponential?
Imagine a starting point in a coordinate plane (the horizontal axis is time and the vertical axis is temperature). Imagine a new point further to the “right” (ie, a point further along in time). These two points define a line. For example, we can draw a line from the point at 1880 to the rightward point at 1885.
What would faster than linear mean?
Let’s see. Let’s create some more points further to the right (eg, at 1890, 1895, 1900, and 1905). First let’s note that we can always create a new line through our new point and our starting point. Ex, we can draw a line between 1880 and 1890 or between 1880 and 1895 or between 1880 and 1900 or between 1880 and 1905, etc. However, “faster than linear” means that each new point we add lies above the line that extends from the line connecting our last two points. Eg, if the next point is at 1905, then if that point is above the line connecting the point at 1895 and 1900, then just we went faster than linear when we created the point at 1905.
At least this is what I mean now (for this discussion) when I say “faster than linear”.
In the same way, if we create an exponential curve to take us from a to b, then if the next point to the right, c, lies above that curve, we just went faster than exponential. Sure, we can always find a new exponential curve that goes through the starting point and our new point, just as we did above with the lines, but to say “faster than exponential” means that once you are going at a given exponential (aka, geometric) rate of growth, the next point you look at will be above that curve. This is the same analogy as for faster than linear.
A line is defined by an arithmetic sequence. By this I mean that at each new step to the right the next number in that sequence gives the temperature value of this next point. Eg, 2,5,8,11,14… is an arithmetic sequence and could define the line that goes through the points; (0,2), (1,5), (2,8), (3,11), (4,14), ….
An exponential curve can be defined by a geometric sequence. Eg, the sequence 2,6,18,54,162,… can define an exponential curve that would have the points (0,2), (1,6), (2,18), (3,54), (4,162), ….
Note that each new value in the arithmetic sequence was 3 larger than the prior. Note that each new value in the geometric sequence was 3 times as large as the prior.
If we start plotting new points and find ourselves increasing the value that must be added to each new term, then we are going faster than linear. If we start plotting new points and find ourselves increasing the multiplier that takes us from the last point to the next one, then we are going faster than exponential. Of course, if we go faster than exponential, we also necessarily go faster than linear.
Note: This is not a rigorous mathematical explanation. To be mathematically precise, we’d have to define what we mean by “exponential” in precise mathematical terms.
Note2: Polynomial growth would be somewhere in between linear and exponential. [Again, I am speaking informally.]
>> What “threat”?? There is no evidence supporting any supposed threat. It’s all handwaving and circular arguments.
I’ll answer the first part by clarifying what I intended to say, “the global warming risk”.
However, “handwaving” is your opinion. It is not the opinion of a great number of scientists.
Feel free to more clearly define “handwaving” and to cite a specific work that you believe is handwaving. Then cite a work that you think is not handwaving (but first define “hand waving”). And please explain how the former hand waves while the latter avoids it.
If you can’t define these well, then I fear we’ll just argue like madmen in our own handwaving style if we keep on this subject.
>> the planet has been much warmer in the geologic past, with no harm to the biosphere
I presume you were just about to direct me to your opus detailing just how hot it was and quantifying just how little “harm” was done to which “biosphere”.
Like I have hinted already, I am not interested in finding out that after losing some important-to-humans species A, that the more fit species B (“fit” in the Jurassic context) that drove A into extinction cannot fill the role for humans that A was filling.
>> you would do much better listening closely to what more than thirty thousand scientists and engineers – all in the hard sciences, and including over 9,000 PhD’s – have personally co-signed
And your evidence that these people are who they claimed they were is what?
And your evidence that these people have a clue about the mathematics and physics supporting climate science is what?
I get the feeling you picked your side and have little idea about the science that supports each side’s argument.
Oh, wait. You appear to follow what others with pedigree or degree say you should do. In that case, I have a long list of expert PHDs and other lords who opine the opposite. I am sure you will change your mind now, right?
>> Between $6 – $7 Billion is handed out every year to ‘study climate change’. That is a huge motivation to make exaggerated, wild-eyed, alarming claims.
The profits of just one company in just one quarter (exxon mobile) beats that. Keep lining up the interests and what they earn and you will see how much money likely is flowing towards the anti-AGW side. And they have no reason to pay people who even make an effort to be honest or have anything on the line.
I don’t think you will win the money-bribe-FUD angle.
Jose_X says:
February 12, 2012 at 7:30 pm
James Sexton>> But, when it doesn’t correlate, well, then there’s a rationalization which must be put forward because of the engrained belief that CO2 correlates with temps. There are plenty of other parts of the graph which call into question the correlation.
Lindzen appears to agree there is a correlation. Are you saying that your opinion is that this correlation and a lot of Lindzen’s work are invalid?
The analogy I gave was not to rationalize a correlation. I am suggesting that the graphs are consistent with many possible theories that could exist that correlate temp and CO2. I am saying it does not follow that CO2 and temp are independent from each other (uncorrelated).
……noted sarcasm………
==============================================
Jose, I wasn’t referring to your rationalization.. ….. And, I’m not going to opine on Lindzen’s work except to say the hydrology of the atmosphere would seem to me to be a place to start when concerning ourselves with our climate and radiative budgets. But, I appreciate the tactic. Yes, we got it backwards. We’re going to obsess over a molecule that’s nearly infinitesimal, which doesn’t have near the IR absorption properties of H2O and doesn’t have the magnitude nor the characteristics of H2O, including cloud formation and albedo. Yeh! Why start there when we can spend trillions obsessing and flagellating ourselves over some trace molecule which by all reckonings was a greatly beneficial gas until the Luddites took hold of climate sciences. But, what I will say is that as time goes by, humanity will look at this period and laugh, much in the same way people laugh about the vigor and rigor people argued about the earth being the center of the universe.
Directly referring to that highly controversial graph; apparently, the posit is that CO2 pulled the temps down towards the right end of the graph. I’ll ask what was asked of me the other day…… When did the Drake Passage open?
>> So if y = x^2 is exponential, then y = x^3 is faster than exponential.
No, exponential is y=k^x. Polynomial is y=x^k. Here I use “k” to designate a number that doesn’t vary (aka, a constant).
Eg, if moving unit steps to the right leads to these temp values: 1, 8, 27, 64, 125, 216, … then we are on the polynomial y=x^3.
Eg, if moving unit steps to the right leads to these temp values: 1, 3, 9, 27, 81, 243, 729, … then we are on the exponential y=3^x.
Exponential is faster than polynomial.. in the limiting case. A slow exponential (eg, y=.000000001^x) eventually overtakes a fast polynomial (eg, y=x^10000000000). For practical purposes we usually don’t consider such crazy cases since they are meaningless in the context of measurement precision and a human’s lifespan.
An exponential follows a geometric sequence. Each term is some constant multiple of the prior term. Note how 9 is 3 times 3. 27 is 3 times 9. 81 is 3 times 27. 243 is 3 times 81… Each new term is 300% of the prior term. That is an exponential.
So,
linear: 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11…
square polynomial: 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36…
cube polynomial: 1, 8, 27, 64, 125, 216…
…
exponential (base 2): 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64…
exponential (base 3): 3, 9, 27, 81, 243, 729…
The starting points were arbitrary. Also, exponential power of 2 does overtake cube poly and any other poly.. although it might take a while before it does if the poly is very large.
Now, “faster than exponential” means that we eventually overtake even the highest of exponential bases. One example of a faster than exponential function is y=x^x. Another example is y=x! (factorial).
Anyway, if the rate of growth of CO2 as a fraction of the prior year (or decade, etc) keeps going up, then we are at faster than exponential. And this means that when we take the logarithm, we will still be getting a larger and larger number as well… although the logarithm won’t grow too fast.. and CO2 growth will eventually slow down because there isn’t an infinite amount of CO2 available or land on which to burn it.
I wasn’t planning on commenting on this, though I have been following the comments with interest, but I feel obliged to point out something that Smokey said about a survey of 30 000 scientists, who all signed a statement that “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.”
In 1998, a letter, signed by Dr Fred Seitz, the former President of the National Academy of Sciences, who had been paid off for fraudulent research by the Tobacco Companies in the 70s, to scientists around America. Attached was a paper, Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide, claiming that C02 was a harmless trace gas. This forced the National Academy of Sciences to release this statement, “The council of the NAS is concerned about the confusion caused by a petition being circulated via a letter from a former president of this Academy… and a manuscript in a format that is nearly identical to that of scientific articles published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The NAS Council would like to make it clear that this petition has nothing to do with the National Academy of Sciences and that the manuscript was not published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences or in any other Peer reviewed journal. The petition does not reflect the conclusions of the expert reports at the Academy.”
Joke names such as Posh Spice and Michael J Fox were also found on the list. When questioned on this, Art Robinson, the man who had organised the petition, admitted, as reported by the Seattle Times, that “little attempt was done to verify the credentials of those who responded,” and in his own words, stated “When we’re getting thousands of signatures there’s no way of filtering out a fake.” So, Smokey, the statement of yours that “Those 31,000+ co-signers knew exactly what they were signing. The identity of every signatory was verified,” is demonstrably false. And yes, there may be thousands of supposed PHDs signing this. However, only 39 of those supposed signatories, ONLY 39 of 31 000 are climatologists. While I freely admit that other scientists may well be informed on the subject, I would not go to 12,000 students with a bachelor of science, or the 3000 people with a medical degree who signed this petition, or even Posh Spice, on a specialised topic such as this, any more than I would go to a neural surgeon to treat skin cancer.
On a final note, I think it would lend a lot more credibility to Lord Monckton, who this is supposed to be about anyway, if he could at least admit that he was wrong on a point and bring in other evidence instead of denying any misunderstanding of the Peer Reviewed literature (which somehow manages not to be corrupt whenever it points against a long term warming trend caused by man-made gases.)
I am willing to take on board new evidence, Smokey, but I will not let it stand when people reading these comments will possibly believe that 30 000 leading scientists honestly think Global Warming is no threat when that is simply not the case.
Any response to this would be welcome.
Cheers.
(I also applaude Anthony on allowing Peter Hadfield to reply here.)
lol, I think y= ax suffices for now……. where a is any number and x is any number so a could = x ….. , but typically, when considering exponential, this suffices. x could also equal ax
re post by: Joel says: February 12, 2012 at 11:27 pm
Old and outdated news Joel, which is no longer correct. After a few bogus names were put on the list either by jokers or saboteurs, the list was revised, and as Smokey already noted, hard copy snail mailed signatures were obtained for all signatories. Your dismissal of the list no longer holds water in this regard.
Next you castigate the list because of the paucity of ‘true’ climatologists on the list. If you use that standard, I suspect you’d have to similarly eliminatethe majority of the IPCC authors – few of which actually have climatology degrees either. I do believe that includes your presecious Michael Mann. Add in Railroad Engineer Pachuri who heads the whole IPCC up – he’s not a climatologist, and therefore by your logic has zero business being in that position. Similarly say bu-bye to Michael Mann of the dismally prepared Hockey Stick fame. His undergrad is physics and applied math, where grad school was physics and geology/geophysics.
No climatology degree there, guess we’d better get ALL of his climate related papers retracted, along with any other paper that used one of his as an important foundation for their papers. Even Phil Jones of the CRU only has a BA in environmental sciences, with an MSc & PhD unspecified at the notoriously inaccurate Wikipedia. What it boils down to is that until very very recently, universities didn’t offer a degree in climatology, so the vast majority of “climate scientists” have all sorts of different degrees, typically in some type of earth science, or geology, physics, math, biology, meteorology, chemistry, etc., etc. So you’re hitting on the composition of the petition project for the very same thing you would have to hit IPCC members with. If they’re not good enough for the petition project in your mind, then neither are the majority of those working on the IPCC reports or submitting papers for it. You’d have to toss them too, including some of your most highly respected guys.
Furthermore, any competent scientist is able to evaluate a majority of papers with regard to proper application of the scientific method, pretty much regardless of the subject matter. That doesn’t make them an expert in the field nor necessarily able to evaluate the robustness of results and conclusions – but far too often in ‘climate science’ one doesn’t need to get even that far and papers can be rejected or at the least taken with a large grain of salt because of improper experimental design, or clear problems in terms of methods and materials, and so on. One glaring problem in this regard with many ‘climate science’ papers is the issue of uncertainty. If you are unable to specify a meaningful level of uncertainty to your data and follow thru to your results, clearly the scientific method hasn’t been properly applied. If you hypothesis doesn’t have a rational null hypothesis, there’s a problem. If your experimental design is such that your hypothesis either cannot be falsified during the experiment, it’s yet another case where the scientific method isn’t being followed. If your conclusions go WAY beyond what is reasonably supported by your data, it’s a major problem. These are the sorts Issues that often don’t require specialty in the field to be able to pick up on – just a good solid basis in the scientific method.
Next, however, is a huge issue. The ‘climate scientists’ won’t release their data along with sufficient data regarding methodologies, or, for example, even the specific stations which were used to construct the global temperature charts – they’ve admitted they can no long associated the data used with the proper station. If the work cannot be identically recreated and verified and validated, then the results are almost meaningless. This is a huge problem with much of the basis for the AGW ‘climate science.’
I’ll break into a second section to make commenting easier.
I should have added, for clarity, that the claim that most of the petitionproject scientists can’t be considered because they aren’t climatologists is bogus, as a result of points I made above.
Well crap….. that html doesn’t play here…… trying again….. y=a^x suffices but a could = x and x could equal n^x Which is enough to describe the double exponential and whatnot, save for the factorials….. but then x could = n! ….. so then what? 🙂
more re: Joel says: February 12, 2012 at 11:27 pm
In addition to the previously mentioned 31,000+ climate or related fields scientists, consider the following:
The AGW hypothesis doesn’t even rise to the level of a theory yet, let alone something that is unanimously believed by scientists. Any claim to ‘unanimous’ agreement or even a large consensus of scientists is bogus on the face of it, especially with something as complex as our climate system. Science isn’t run by consensus, but by empirical data (not climate model projections) that is falsifiable (look up the father of modern science, Karl Popper’s ideas on falsifiability), verifiable, and repeatable. Currently the AGW hypothesis fails on all three counts.
As to scientists who do NOT concur with AGW, Freeman Dyson’s stance is a good example. Add eminent professor Harold Lewis (physics) http://tinyurl.com/2ab7uto or the 7 eminent physicists skeptical of AGW alarm, including a great video of Dyson himself on the issue: http://tinyurl.com/4zcrb5f Be sure to listen to his complete video there – it’s short, only 6 or 7 min if I recall correctly, and well worth watching.
Try: **900+ peer reviewed research papers supporting skeptical arguments http://tinyurl.com/y9jrjaf Be sure you READ the explanation up front too, or you’ll be spouting the nonsense that’s out there as talking points against this set of papers too.
**100 prominent scientists including Nobel winners and IPCC lead authors who wrote the U.N. warning against ‘Futile’ climate control efforts http://tinyurl.com/yo7fcz
**31,000+ scientists disavowing AGW http://www.petitionproject.org
**Over 700 scientists worldwide disavowing AGW signed onto USA Senate report http://tinyurl.com/yaqd3fn
The list goes on and on. Try quibbling with the credentials of many of those eminent scientists, particularly the 700+ and the 100+. The list includes Nobel Laureats – the REAL kind, for hard sciences, not the politicized denigrated ‘peace price.’ Also includes former and current IPCC authors.
Add to it the two Germans who just published “The Cold Sun.” and had articles in mainstream german media in the past week and a post here on WUWT about it.
re post by: James Sexton says: February 13, 2012 at 5:49 am
All fun and games, except as far as I understand it, thus far an exponential curve fits the data just fine without any problems. In other words, CO2 increase has been and appears likely to stay exponential. This “faster than exponential” comes out of the blue and has no basis in the CO2 increase reality. Frankly it sounds as if it was tossed in just to be a bit of a scaremonger.