Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Anthony highlighted a study called “Recent Plant Diversity Changes on Europe’s Mountain Peaks” (paywalled here , hereinafter Pauli2012). The Supplementary Online Information (SOI) is here.
The study concluded that the plants had moved vertically up the mountain by 2.7 metres, and Anthony was justifiably amused by the accuracy of the number, calculated to the nearest tenth of a metre. But that hardly begins to touch the oddity of the study. Here is their Figure S1, from their SOI:
Figure 1, from the Supplemental Online Information from Pauli2012. ORIGINAL CAPTION: Fig. S1. Basic design of a study summit, divided into eight summit area sections (SAS) that were used as sampling areas; the upper four areas extend from the summit point down to the 5-m contour line, the four lower from the 5-m to the 10-m contour line.
See what I mean about the oddity?
The crazy thing to me is, that they are only studying the area right at the very tippy-top of the summit of the mountains. They are solely and only looking at the top ten metres (33 feet) of vertical elevation of the mountain … and from that tiny vertical slice off of the mountaintop, they profess to be able to tell if the plants are moving uphill …
Now, I’ve spent a bit of time at the tops of mountains. They are subject to many variations in weather. The biggest one is the wind. Wind is a huge factor up at the mountaintops, and even a slight change in the average wind direction can turn a warm spot into a cold spot, or turn a wet spot into a dry spot.
So when (not if but when) there is a change in the composition of the plants eking out a living at the very mountaintop, my first suspect would be a change in the prevailing wind.
So, what do they have to say about the wind as a confounding factor in their study? Well … nothing. The wind doesn’t even get mentioned.
Next, the claim is made that a change in the warmth is allowing or encouraging the plants to move uphill. This presumes, of course, that the plants are near the top of their temperature range.
But these suckers are living at the very top of the mountain. Are we supposed to believe that somehow, in the mere ten vertical metres of the mountaintop that are being studied, the top limit of plants’ ability to resist cold temperatures just happens to fall in that very narrow range?
Next, we have to consider the difference in temperature due to a vertical move of 2.7 metres. The adiabatic lapse rate is 1°C per hundred metres vertical movement. That means the inherent temperature difference would be about 0.03°C …
Let’s be realistic. Plants that live on mountaintops live in cold, windy, dry conditions. Even the slightest change in any of those can easily stunt or kill off the plants that have a tenuous foothold there. Their range is constantly shifting and changing as those factors shift and change.
As a result, the only way to study the question would be with lots of temperature and wind and humidity and precipitation sensors scattered all around the mountaintop. The downwind side of the peak will be different from the upwind side. The sunrise side will be different from the sunset side. The side that gets the mist and clouds will be different from the dryer side.
Without those kinds of detailed measurements of those variables, any study done on this basis, of the top ten metres of mountain summits, will show us exactly nothing. There are too many confounding variables, and we cannot account for them without the necessary measurements.
I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that this kind of rubbish gets published, but hope springs eternal … and in climate science, hope gets frustrated about as often …
In any case, I have long held that the quality of a scientific paper is inversely proportional to the square of the number of authors. This study, which is about four pages long, has 32 authors … just sayin’ …
w.
PS—Did you notice in Figure 1 that this is the gang that couldn’t draw straight? The inner box doesn’t line up with the outer box. So many authors … so few artists …
PPS—In researching this, I looked at a number of photos of mountain summits … many of them are steep, up to about 30° or so. The slope of many of them seemed to be somewhere around 10°. If the slope is 10°, the total study area is about 1,600 square metres. That’s less than a fifth of a hectare, or less than half an acre, a tiny area for such a study … so figuratively they are arguing not only about how many plants can dance on the head of a pin, but about just exactly where on the head of the pin they happen to be dancing this year, compared to where they were dancing seven years ago …
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Steven Mosher says:
April 26, 2012 at 2:00 am
“It could be fun to check out the data loggers for hourly temperature”
I only opened one file but it appears to me that they only took one reading for temp every 25 hours. I’m in a hurry so I don’t have time to look at this in depth but if that is the case…I think we should request a refund.
Shevva says:
April 26, 2012 at 12:42 am
I’m going to stick with my original assesment of this study, it was just a simple excersie in visiting nice palces around the world using CAGW as the funder.
Just look where they’ve been http://www.gloria.ac.at/ like I said nice work if you can get it.
—————————
Yeah but, my bet is they use sailboats to cross oceans and once on land they ride their mountain bikes and hike to their destinations. That’s what I would expect from the folks at GLORIA? Wouldn’t you agree they’d NEVER submit to using dirty oil if there is any other way.
Steven Mosher says:
April 26, 2012 at 2:00 am
A better experiment would be to place planter boxes every year up to the peak with starter plants/seedlings/seeds and tally which ones survive.
Limiting the variables is the experiment is essential for accurate results and conclusions.
Often in experiments we can be surprised by results we never expected.
Some variables are hidden and are only revealed by restricting the conditions.
This whole concept seems silly. if you want to look at climate change, look where the tree line is, ie. the point above which nothing grows. It is about 10K feet at 39°N. If this line moves up, ie. things grow where they didn’t previously, it is getting warmer. What about the dead trees that once lived above the current tree line? It used to be warmer than it is now…
Oh, this also means we have up to 4K feet in Colorado on many mountains above 10K feet that have plenty of room for migrating plants, lack of elevation shouldn’t be an issue.
This reminds me of a paper (~15 y.a.?) reporting that grasses were growing (for the first time ever) on the Antarctic Peninsula and that was a sure sign of global warming. I think we disussed this at Still Waiting for the Greenhouse and I showed pictures from locations in the Canadian Arctic at higher latitudes where grasses always grew. It was suggested that the grasses were transported to the Antarctic on the shoes/boots of climate researchers/tourists.
Again, is it at all possible that these plants were moved up the mountain(s) by climate researchers/tourists?
Willis,
I, too, have spent a lot of time on mountain tops. I’m an ex-field geologist, also, so I’ve seen a lot of environments undergoing “normal” changes. The problem we are facing in much of the climate field is what you have identified: the ones making the claims have little to no useful world experience. It’s all theory and extrapolation from a few observations. Like the 97% of scientists who agree with CAGW.
Donna LaFam has well chronicled the lack of experience in the IPCC. Mann wasn’t so old when he did his Awful Thing. The powers that count use the inexperience and enthusiasm for speculation for their purposes, knowing that age and wisdom temper one’s declarations. Caveats is what you get from those who have been around the block a few times. Not useful at all.
After 25 years I went to my university graduation reunion and was surprised to find that the professors I had held in such high esteem had, generally, far less practical experience in their field than their former students. Yes, the profs could give you the latin names for things, but the connection between what they understood and the world in action was lost on them.
The climate wars are revealing facets of the scientific mind that go back to the ’50s depiction of scientists – forgetful, sometimes mad, but mostly impractical thinkers who needed a daughter or wife to keep them fed regularly. I won’t go as far as “mad”, but what we see is certainly impractical, and if Hansen and Mann are example, forgetful as well – at least when it comes to what they actually did or said.
Did I miss something. They didn’t say we lost vegetation in the first 2.7 meters of the mountains we just gain more. Sounds to me like things are just getting better and better. More warmth, more plants, yeah, better and better. I haven’t seen any “C” in CAGW . These people really confuse me, a whole lot.
Decadal change based on two years sample? Measurement of distance from summit was to the nearest five meters; the vertical movement was inferred from an “altitudinal index” tied to the change in relative abundance of plants on different mountains sampled within a region. Available moisture on many of these peaks would be heavily dependent on snow cover, and the phenology, abundance and observability of plants dependent on the subsequent pattern of snowmelt and warming. Eurasion snow cover and melt (ftp://ftp.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/wd52dg/snow/snw_cvr_area/EU_AREA) was quite different between 2001 (7.8 million sq km in May) and 2008 (10.1 million sq kilometers in May). Did increased available moisture allow more abundant plant growth in 2008? Did later snow melt affect seasonal plant development and dessication? Do they know they sampled at phenologically similar times? Too many variables not considered in moving to their desired conclusion.
I assume the mountain tops had fairly easy access. My observation in mountains in Colorado in the last 10 years, especially those with relatively easy access (class 1 & 2), is that the number of people making the trek is growing tremendously. Life tends to be fragile in these locations, and the more people stomping around is hard on the little bit of life clinging to the rocks and very thin soil.
I would be amazed if the miniscule fraction of a degree increase (or is it decrease?) in global temperatures between 2001 and 2008 had a greater impact than an increasing number of visitors.
The authors of the paper say the impact comes from reduced precipitation, presumably as a result of global warming. How were the plants distributed 30 years ago? 100 years ago? Haven’t we been lectured over and over that 7 years of data cannot define a climate?
Does the article say just how elevation was measured? The simplest confounding issue will be that of accurately determining elevation. GPS determinations can be fraught with problems without a known datum nearby that can be used as a reference. It’s even true if you simply use trigometry and a transit. Were elevations repeatedly taken to acquire an error in measurement? Until these points were clarified, I would not really worry about the plant behaviour. After that, then issues linked to local changes in climate like shifts in prevailing winds need to be addressed. After all those issues were dealt with, then would be the time to see if there is any systematic residue of change left in the data.
“Recent Plant Diversity Changes on Europe’s Mountain Summits” is two pages long, has 11 paragraphs (including the abstract). but it has 32 authors.
Unless similar plants have gone extinct 2.7 meters (or more) further down, where previously they thrived, it looks to me as if the extra CO2 is doing as well as expected. (By sensible people that is).
Do you know what you call the guy who graduted last in his class at MIT ? scientist …
The thirty authors got to mountain climbing and picnicking on someone else’s dime. In MN we just heard about 5 doctors going with a group to Mt Everest claiming they were going to monitor health under stressful conditions as this would somehow relate to sick people under medical stress. One would think that a Stairmaster in a hyperbaric chamber would be a little more repeatable. But then there would no lovely scenery to look at.
Like the frog studies, I would be more inclined to suspect the researchers unintentionally transporting plant seed material than climate change for this miniscule change in range.
Throw in possible elevation measurement errors which would totally swam this small change unless extreme care was used in geolocation of the study plants and you have asserted change that is wholly inside the likely elevation measurement errors.
This study is not worth the digital paper it is printed on.
Larry
Steven Mosher says: April 26, 2012 at 1:33 am
”Arguing, from little information that is is NOT (one variable) is as tenuous as arguing that is solely due to (that same variable).”
With so many reputable brains unable to agree, the gambler in my will bet on that it is NOT that specified variable.
Willis,
the surveyed area was 16m² per summit, according to the field manual.
Thanks for that link, Wolfgang. The mindset of the authors is revealed by the very first sentence in the manual, viz:
Riiiight …
w.
Steven Mosher says:
April 26, 2012 at 2:00 am
Thanks as always, Steven. Although I sometimes can’t follow your more cryptic posts, you are always talking about the science, which is a great pleasure. Thanks particularly for the link to the GLORIA site.
Regarding the winds, they are even more variable than the temperature. At the mountain summits, of course, they have a much greater effect than at the surface in some valley forest.
So the question is not have the winds changed, but the by how much. In the ridiculously short time of the study (about seven years) even a single El Nino or La Nina would lead to different wind regimes, and that would bias the whole study. Unfortunately, as is all too common in climate science, they seem to have not heard of the idea of confounding variables.
I couldn’t disagree more. At least on my planet, the term “authors” means “people who wrote the paper”, not “people who collected the data”.
Gotta leave some fun for the reader … but since you asked:
Unless I missed it, they do not provide any information on how they calculated the error bars on their results … Also, I couldn’t find any information on how they measured the actual elevation.
Well, they give five different temperature files from different dataloggers at the summit of G´hacktkogel. Three of them stop short, perhaps equipment failure. Two of them go through the entire period.
One shows a rising temperature trend of 0.11°/year. The other shows a falling temperature trend of -0.05°/year … go figure.
My best to you,
w.
Larry Ledwick (hotrod ) says:
April 26, 2012 at 11:54 am
Yeah, plus they’re not the only ones visiting the summits. Another ignored confounding variable heard from …
w.
Willis Eschenbach says:
April 26, 2012 at 1:38 pm
Thanks for that link, Wolfgang. The mindset of the authors is revealed by the very first sentence in the manual, viz:
Rapid climate change threatens biodiversity – of alpine ecosystems in particular.
Riiiight …
________________________
Oh they are correct Willis. A quick descent into an ice age would do a tap dance on the alpine ecosystems. THINK OF THE MAMMOTH!
(Do I really need the sarc tag?)
Regarding the large number of authors, this is a well-recognized trend.
And do you know why? Believe it or not, “it’s George Bush’s fault”!
I know because a “peer-reviewed paper” says it’s so!
As Dave Berry likes to say, I’m not making this up.
“Commentary: Too many authors, too few creators. ”
http://www.physicstoday.org/resource/1/phtoad/v65/i4/p9_s1?bypassSSO=1
Those draconian cuts? Quite obvious in the following graph.
http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/usr07.pdf
/sarc
Come on guys! Give them a break. Like a nice mountain-hike break for a few days every couple of months on the tax payer’s back. C’mon! You would – wouldn’t you?
Nice article Willis, thanks again.
About the multiple authors. If each of 20 authors write one paper a year and puts 19 coauthors on, and then the next author does the same, etc.. All 20 or the authors then claim 20 publications a year. It is the same with the number of people on successful grants. Each of 20 get 20 grants funded. The result, the morally corrupt and publishers of trivial or trivial and incorrect papers, rush to the top. Just like the mountains, the worst scientists race to the top, the so so scientists are farther down, and the good scientists are lost in the blizzard of useless paper.
Anything can be proven by this record of peer reviewed papers. Like Chubby’s club house, only friends and coauthors are invited into the club.
In the UK several nature agencies have been saying that the practice of scattering the ashes of loved ones on their favourite mountain/hill peak is upsetting the ecosystem by bringing in extra nutrients that would not normally be there this can cause the death of some plants that are adapted to poor soils and the sudden arrival of plants that would not grow but for the boost in the nutrients, these extra plants seeds have been there but unable to germinate or are brought on the feet of those walking the hills.
James Bull