I criticized Andrew Revkin yesterday for lack of an irony detector. Today I’ll point out that he’s got a well balanced article on the new meme being pushed in the alarmosphere by the McKibbenites and the ThinkProgressers that keep trying to argue that the weather is getting more severe due to “climate change”, which of course is unsubstantiated by the data at hand and likely due more to technology and reporting increases.
From Dot Earth: Varied Views on Extreme Weather in a Warming Climate
I was pleased to see Kerry Emanuel say this, and for Andy to cover it:
I see overstatements on all sides. Extreme weather begets extreme views. On the Russian heat wave, Marty is citing a single paper that claims it had nothing to do with climate change, but there are other papers that purport to demonstrate that events of that magnitude are now three times more likely than before the industrial era.
This is a collision between the fledgling application of the science of extremes and the inexperience we all have in conveying what we do know about this to the public. A complicating factor is the human psychological need to ascribe every unusual event to a cause. Our Puritan forebears ascribed them to sin, while in the 80’s is was fashionable to blame unusual weather on El Niño. Global warming is the latest whipping boy. But even conveying our level of ignorance is hard: Marty’s quotation of Harold Brooks makes it sound as though he is saying that the recent uptick in severe weather had nothing to do with climate change. The truth is that we do not know whether it did or did not; absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Revkin adds:
Regular readers of my work will not be surprised that I align with Emanuel.
I had started out writing this post with the idea that Mr. Revkin was more balanced than I thought, but the article sat in que for awhile as I needed to attend to other things. During that time, a new video from Revkin came to light.
While I applaud this article, I still wonder though, just how balanced Andrew Revkin is in his reporting. For example, here he mixes his university teaching with the politics of climate, by having RealClimate.org founder Gavin Schmidt address his students.
As we know, RealClimate.org is funded by Fenton Communications, a political organization.
One wonders why Andy has never bothered (that I’m aware of) to offer his students the opportunity to hear what a skeptical scientist has to say, such as Dr. Roy Spencer or Dr. Richard Lindzen.
Andy likes to put forth the idea that he’s balanced, for example when he says things like this:
Regular readers of my work will not be surprised that I align with Emanuel.
and from yesterday’s story on WUWT:
I’ve been pretty quick to question anyone trying to cast climate science as a “party loyalty” kind of issue.
But if he’s only offering his students one side of the debate from a politically funded blog, it seems to me he really can’t make broad claims of balance with accuracy. If you look at all of his videos here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/anrevk#g/u
You’ll also find a video interview with James Hansen and Sir John Beddington, both vocal proponents for climate alarm, but not a single skeptical scientist rates an interview in his video channel that I can find.
How about it Andy? Are you ready to show a skeptical scientist and lend your considerable media clout to making it known worldwide?
UPDATE: From comments –
One batch of my students at UCSB’s Bren School spent 90 minutes getting to know Marc Morano via Skype for their class project. I’ll be posting that video at some point (Marc gave permission).
REPLY: Good to know, and thank you. I’ll add this to the body of the post when available. – Anthony
Kerry Emanuel: [H]e is saying that the recent uptick in severe weather had nothing to do with climate change. The truth is that we do not know whether it did or did not; absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
One could as plausibly argue that severe weather is caused by space aliens, since absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Emanuel has evidently joined Trenberth’s view that the authority of the IPCC reverses the onus of proof. It doesn’t: the onus of proof is impervious to authority. A pile of assertions without evidence cannot “level the playing field,” no matter how high the pile.
The debate over AGW is entirely over the validity of the evidence offered by the alarmists. If that evidence doesn’t logically imply the conclusion they draw, then the only rational response is to ignore their assertion of AGW — i.e., to carry on as though the assertion had not been made. It is not the task of skeptics to prove anything. A rational person does not ask for evidence of absence.
biff33,
Excellent comment. It can’t be pointed out often enough that neither computer models nor IPCC ‘authority’ are “evidence”. Evidence is composed of testable, verifiable data. And although AGW may exist to some degree, there is no evidence connecting X human emissions to Y temperature increase [or decline]. Thus, AGW is a conjecture.
The onus for the AGW conjecture is entirely on those proposing that conjecture. Skeptics cannot prove a negative. Skeptics have nothing to prove. The burden is entirely on those putting forth the conjecture that increases in anthropogenic CO2 are causing global temperature increases. But there is zero evidence supporting that conjecture. That’s why computer models are so important to the alarmist argument. They confer an aura of legitimacy, in a field otherwise lacking empirical, testable evidence.
@Ron C.
“The dots do not connect as claimed.”
There is only 1 dot: CO2 has risen. You can’t connect dots if there is only one.
One would have to present much more evidence than I have seen to date, before I would accept the increase in severe weather meme. Speaking anecdotally, I see severe weather decreasing over the last 60 years. There are a lot more built up areas now and no storm goes unreported. The young must understand, the severe weather they have experienced, has been happening all the time. It was just as scary 60 years ago… probably worse. If we cool, y’all will see what severe weather can do! GK
Careful, there. The role of the Null Hypothesis is to be the default, assumed, causal explanation, and hence must first be disqualified before alternate hypotheses are considered. So, for example, you see statements that results are inconsistent with the Null Hypothesis at the .05 or .01 level. Only then do you get to sort out which “alternate” makes sense.
So, in a way, disproving the H0 is “proving a negative”.
This is what Climate Science warmists must do before considering AGW: establish that a pattern falls outside the variance of natural processes excluding one or more of their favored independent variables. Only then there would be some case for considering their influence important.
He is not balanced but he does let me post. As for comments on Hansen’s article, I have no idea why you think Kerry Emanuel is anybody you can trust. The other person commenting was Martin Hoerling and I give Revkin full credit for that. Kerry got the last word in, started nitpicking on what Hoerling had said and totally ignored Hansen’s paper. But Hoerling systematically demolished the outrageous claims in Hansen’s op-ed. Here are some of them: Hansen claimed that within the next several decades the semi-arid region from North Dakota to Texas will develop semi-permanent drought. Hoerling pointed out that there was no projection of “semi-permanent drought” in this time frame over the expansive region of Central Great Plains. Vision of a Midwest Dustbowl is a scary one and Hansen is obviously intent on instilling fear rather than reason with this claim. Then the article asserts further that “The global warming signal is now louder than the noise of random weather…” How could anyone tell? But Hoerling fortunately is up on climate and tells us that this is simply patently false. Next Hansen claims that extremely hot summers have increased noticeably and attributes heat waves in Texas and Russia to global warming. Hoerling does not agree and points out that scientific studies of the Russian and Texas heat waves indicate this claim to be false. Finally, here is the aim of Hansen’s lesson: “The science of the situation is clear – it’s time for the politics to follow.”
Hansen adjustments: shouldn’t he also make adjustments for weather satellites, modern communications etc. that only increase our knowledge of weather events? If he did he would have to downplay the ‘anomalies’ he says are caused by CAGW, he can’t adjust the past. If he followed his own adjustments theories he’d have to eliminate countless tornadoes, heat waves etc. Just who does he think he’s fooling? It’s the same with sun spots, the increase in telescope qualities and size has surely caused the modern era to observe more spots than Galileo? Shouldn’t Hansen increase the past counts to reflect the increase in sightings due to technology improvements? When you start making adjustments you need to adjust everything, not just temperatures. The new results are simply one persons guess. In which case no guesses should be made. Why hasn’t Hansen made is ‘formulas’ available for scrutiny, if he’s so smart what does he have to lose? For all we know he’s made a tiny simple mistake somewhere that could be corrected, or maybe has has justice for his rantings. One of my main concerns is that they keep changing their forecasts, and that the perception of reality is worse than reality unless the facts come out, and this doesn’t mean models!
Brain H says The Null Hypothesis is the default. I agree
The null hypothesis is that climate is nature at work. Those who believe otherwise must present proof of AGW above and beyond natural variability.
What does the null hypothesis mean quantitatively? Looking at HADCRUT3 since 1860, we find 60-yr. cycles where GMT rises at a rate of 0.1C/decade for at least 3 decades in each instance. These cycles are overlaid on a longer-term rise of 0.4C/century since the Little Ice Age. The cycles appear before there is any proposed attribution to CO2 effect.
Thus the record shows that a sustained increase in GMT of 0.14C/decade is normal and natural. Add 0.01C/decade for the uncertainty of a chaotic system, and we can propose a threshold of 0.15C/decade. If there is a persistent increase in GMT over that amount, then we can say that natural variability has been exceeded by an unnatural forcing.
Two notes:
1) It is clear that ENSO oscillations can produce rises above the threshold over a 1-3 year period, often resulting in a step-change followed by a GMT plateau. Thus the rise must persist for 5-10 years to be considered abnormal.
2) I see that HADCRU are making “adjustments” to the record, and they are systematically reducing older temperatures, and increasing more recent ones. If they cause either the 60-yr. or longer-term trends to increase, the threshold will have to also increase accordingly.
Ron;
Glad you were so impressed with my observation, but I NEVER call myself “Brain H”.