Seems almost a planned effort this week, Sea Ice, Iasaac, and now the AMS statement.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
617-227-2426 ext. 3901 August 27, 2012 kseitter@ametsoc.org
American Meteorological Society Releases Revised Climate Change Statement
August 27, 2012 –The American Meteorological Society today released an updated Statement on Climate Change, replacing the 2007 version that was in effect. The informational statement is intended to provide a trustworthy, objective, and scientifically up-to-date explanation of scientific issues of concern to the public. The statement provides a brief overview of how and why global climate has changed in recent decades and will continue to change in the future. It is based on the peer-reviewed scientific literature and is consistent with the majority of current scientific understanding as expressed in assessments and reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and the U.S. Global Change Research Program.
“This statement is the result of hundreds of hours of work by many AMS members over the past year,” comments AMS Executive Director Keith Seitter. “It was a careful and thorough process with many stages of review, and one that included the opportunity for input from any AMS member before the draft was finalized.” The AMS releases statements on a variety of scientific issues in the atmospheric and related sciences as a service to the public, policy makers, and the scientific community.
The new statement may be found on the AMS web site at:
HTML Version:
http://www.ametsoc.org/policy/2012climatechange.html
PDF Version:
http://www.ametsoc.org/policy/2012climatechange.pdf
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New AMS statement on Climate Change
Another one of lifes great mysteries … right up there with why doesn’t knitting yarn come already rolled into balls?
Roger Sowell says:
August 27, 2012 at 5:25 pm
Dr Svalgaard, it seems to me more than a bit premature to announce the failure of a prediction that lies 2 or 3 years in the future.
His prediction depends on an extrapolation of this trend: http://www.leif.org/research/Abdussa2.png which did not happen [there is no downward turn of TSI] and when extrapolated further off goes off the rail: http://www.leif.org/research/Abdussa3.png
Smokey – August 27, 2012 at 4:09 pm
Another amusing group of distorted and cherry-picked graphs from Smokey: An unlabeled graph of GHCN and something else (meaning not clear), two plots of CET temperatures (a _single_ station on an island, in the context of global temperatures, one a graph which has a compressed Y axis), a 10-year data (sub)set of the US (4% of the globe, seasonal only, and far too short a time for any statistical significance).
My favorite, however, is this one: http://butnowyouknow.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/globa-mean-temp.gif?w=469&h=427 – global mean temperature change on a scale of 30-80 degrees F. A 1.5F change plotted in a graph with a range more than 30x the range of change? One could hardly ask for a more blatant visual distortion, or a more deliberate attempt to minimize the perceptual impact of the data. The only chart I’ve seen that was even more distorted was the plot of temperature changes in degrees Kelvin – with a range extending to absolute zero.
Seriously, Smokey – how much time and effort do you put into finding and creating such distorted graphs? That’s a _lot_ of work, all of which (IMO, mind you) appears aimed purely at misleading people.
—
I will, however, thank you for these in one respect. I will likely be teaching a class later this fall involving (in part) how to clearly present data, and have been keeping track of your graphs as counterexamples of distortion and cherry-picking. I’m actually going to have to pick and choose from them – you’ve given me far more material than I can spend time on.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 27, 2012 at 3:00 pm
Jim G says:
August 27, 2012 at 2:35 pm
Leif Svalgaard says:
Thank you, is there total by century? The total of the above two highest cycles would put the 20th century higher than the 18th or 19th, but not by much.
“Total by century is difficult because the data before 1749 are very uncertain. If you compute R-squared for the trend using each year from 1749 to 2012, it comes to 0.0046, thus no significant trend.”
I believe a more pertinent measure would be the slope of the line of the form y= a +/- bx where b is the slope. The time series type R-squared number is more a measure of percent variation in the dependent variable (sun spots) that is explained by the independent variable (Time) and can be quite low or quite high but is not an indicator of whether or not the dependent variable (sun spots) is increasing over time. If you ran a linear regression the b factor from the equation above would tell us if the sun spots were increasing over time. The sign and absolute value of that factor would indicate if, indeed, there has been any changeover the 3 centuries.
Jim G says:
August 28, 2012 at 8:20 am
If you ran a linear regression the b factor from the equation above would tell us if the sun spots were increasing over time. The sign and absolute value of that factor would indicate if, indeed, there has been any changeover the 3 centuries.
Of course, b is +0.04+/-0.04 spots/yr, so over a century that is 4+/-4 spots
KR, in terms of classical public debate versus public political rhetoric, you may be teaching in the wrong area of expertise. Rhetoric appears to be the stronger discipline for you. Your reponse to Smokey is a very good example of such style. Classical debate would have you examine Smokey’s graphs in dry, technically supported reasoning arranged in logical sequence; the very essense of the argumentative mode of writing.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 28, 2012 at 8:40 am
Jim G says:
August 28, 2012 at 8:20 am
If you ran a linear regression the b factor from the equation above would tell us if the sun spots were increasing over time. The sign and absolute value of that factor would indicate if, indeed, there has been any changeover the 3 centuries.
“Of course, b is +0.04+/-0.04 spots/yr, so over a century that is 4+/-4 spots”
What values did you use as x and y observations in your regression analysis?
What is your linear regression equation in the form of y = a + bx where your observations are:
y = (number of sunspots) dependent variable ( there should be 300 observations or 251 if you only start at 1749)
a = calculated slope intercept
b = calculated slope of the line
x = 1749 through 2000 for the years of the observation (Time)? independent variable
The r squared will be small as a sinusoidal type of line would fit better in this cyclical situation but a straight line with slope will tell more accurately if spots are increasing over the entire time period. Is the data you used available, if so where? I would not think that time would be a very good predictor of the variation in sunspots irrespective of what type of line is fitted and therefore the r squared will be low though I believe that using the actual years may be more enlightening than simply the series 1-251 due to the percentage difference between low and high in the time series for dates vs 1-251, one from the other. And, obviously, the sinusoidal type fit should produce a higher r squared.
Jim G says:
August 28, 2012 at 10:33 am
What values did you use as x and y observations in your regression analysis?
year 1749-2012 and SSN
What is your linear regression equation in the form of y = a + bx
y = -16.3 + 0.04 x, r2=0.0046
where your observations are:
y = (number of sunspots) dependent variable ( there should be 300 observations or 251 if you only start at 1749)
There are 264 observations
a = calculated slope intercept<
Somewhat meaningless -16.3 [if using years]. 53.3 if using numbers.
b = calculated slope of the line
+0.04 +/- 0.04 per year
x = 1749 through 2000 for the years of the observation (Time)? independent variable
1749-2012
the r squared will be low though I believe that using the actual years may be more enlightening than simply the series 1-251 due to the percentage difference between low and high in the time series for dates vs 1-251, one from the other.
r squared does not depend on if years 1749-2012 or numbers 1-264 are used
All of this is somewhat irrelevant as the correlation is consistent with the null-hypothesis of no trend
Pamela Gray – If you feel that pointing out rhetorical distortions, unmentioned and unsupportable data modifications, or cherry-picking/incomplete evidence fallacies in someones argument is itself rhetoric, I would suggest checking a dictionary.
If you would like a somewhat more complete analysis of one of Smokey’s graphs, see http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/07/the-folly-of-blaming-the-eastern-u-s-heat-wave-on-global-warming/#comment-1026852 – having gone over that in depth at one point, I did not repeat all steps here. My apologies if I provided insufficient context in this thread.
From that post:
Pamela Gray says:
“KR, in terms of classical public debate versus public political rhetoric, you may be teaching in the wrong area of expertise. Rhetoric appears to be the stronger discipline for you.”
KR is another of those folks who will not ever accept any of the hundreds of charts I post here every year. He simply cannot. He has painted himself into a corner that forces him to reject every chart from every source.
Because once KR starts acknowledging the empirical evidence contained in the charts’ data, he will quickly be forced to admit that, while there is ample evidence showing that CO2 follows temperature, there is NO measurable scientific evidence showing that changes in CO2 precede temperature changes. Effect cannot precede cause; there is zero scientific evidence showing that anthropogenic CO2 causes global warming. None. No evidence. It is simply a conjecture; an opinion.
•
Jim G says:
“We have had 12000 years of interglacial warming, makes sense that CO2 would be on the rise, perhaps precipitously, at this point in the interglacial… Ice core charts show the lag between temperature and corresponding CO2 increase which the AGW crowd attempts to explain away. Present day temps are not showing corresponding increases relative to the present day CO2 increases. At least 10 years of lack of temp increase in the face of CO2′s major increases.”
Jim, KR cannot accept those facts, either. The CO2=CAGW crowd’s belief in the evil “carbon” is evidence-free. However, there is plenty of real world evidence showing that the planet’s emergence from the LIA is the cause of net CO2 increases. The alarmist crowd put the cart before the horse when they argued that CO2 is the cause of global warming. That conjecture has zero supporting evidence, and it is past time when the relatively small clique of CAGW true believers accepted the only scientific evidence: the rise in CO2 is the result of global warming, not the cause.
See, KR? Not one chart this time, just a logical, evidence-based argument. Wake me if and when you can post empirical, evidence-based facts per the scientific method, showing conclusively that human-emitted CO2 is the cause of the very mild rising temperature trend since the LIA. I have posted ample evidence showing that rises in CO2 follow rises in temperature on all time scales, from years to hundreds of millennia. What have you got, except for your evidence-free belief?
Smokey says:
August 28, 2012 at 2:04 pm
there is zero scientific evidence showing that anthropogenic CO2 causes global warming.
There is plenty of evidence that it does, the question is how much [and the answer is ‘not much’, but it is wrong to say ‘zero’]. Don’t overreach and grandstand so much.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 28, 2012 at 1:04 pm
“All of this is somewhat irrelevant as the correlation is consistent with the null-hypothesis of no trend.”
The correlation r has not much to do with anything, The r squared explains the percent of the variation of y that can be explained in terms of the variation in x. The Trend is the b in the equation y = a + bx. It will be +b for a positive trend and a -b for a negative trend. It will be one or the other. Your statement of irrelavence is incorrect. You indicated to Alec Rawls, “Solar activity was equally high during the 18th and 19th centuries”. Your chart LOOKS like that statement may not be correct. Your responses to me indicate your confusion between the meaning of r squared and b in a linear regression. I would be happy to just see the data and do the analysis myself. But then just blowing it off as irrelevent seems to be easier for you.
Leif,
You’re right, zero was not the proper word. But I would be using too many words if I had to always repeat all my arguments. I had written before that the net CO2 change is caused by temperature change. That takes into account any minor warming from anthro CO2. I’ve always acknowledged that CO2 may cause some minuscule warming. And conjectures can be true, they are the first step in finding a new theory or law.
Sorry about any perception of ‘grandstanding’. That’s the first time anyone has used that word regarding a comment of mine. Glad to see you’re following my comments, though. ☺
Smokey says:
August 28, 2012 at 2:39 pm
Sorry about any ‘grandstanding’. That’s the first time anyone has used that word regarding a comment of mine.
Well, somebody had to tell you …
Leif,
Thank you for that help. And I would never use the word ‘martinet’… ☺
Smokey says:
August 28, 2012 at 2:39 pm
I had written before that the net CO2 change is caused by temperature change.
I don’t think the net CO2 change the past 50 years is caused by temperature change as we are putting CO2 into the atmosphere commensurate with the observed increase.
We know this both by calculating the amount released based on various national statistics, and by the ratio of carbon isotopes in the atmosphere, as the burning of fossil fuels releases CO2 containing carbon of different isotopic ratios to those of living plants.
It is unfortunate that everything is framed in terms of that single parameter.
Smokey says:
August 28, 2012 at 2:44 pm
And I would never use the word ‘martinet’
If you would stick to valid science, no martinet will bother you.
Jim G says:
August 28, 2012 at 2:32 pm
It will be +b for a positive trend and a -b for a negative trend. It will be one or the other.
But there is an uncertainty on b [and that is where r squared comes in]. The calculated b is 0.04 with a one sigma uncertainty of 0.04, so b = 0 is consistent with the data. You can bump up the trend by carefully selecting a starting year with a low sunspot number and an ending year with a high sunspot number [some people do that].
You indicated to Alec Rawls, “Solar activity was equally high during the 18th and 19th centuries”.
to the extent we can determine it. The original claim implied [without analysis – which you did not complain about] that there were a significant difference, and I show that there is not. Now, some people would claim that there is a significant difference between 100 and 110. I don’t.
Your responses to me indicate your confusion between the meaning of r squared and b in a linear regression.
There is no confusion, if r squared is tiny it doesn’t matter what b is as the uncertainty on b would be large.
I would be happy to just see the data and do the analysis myself. But then just blowing it off as irrelevent seems to be easier for you.
I NEVER blow anything off. Every statement is the result of thought, analysis, and care. The data is available on my website http://www.leif.org/research/New-SSNs.txt [if you want to use it, please wait a bit, because there is maintenance on the system at the moment]
Leif,
I agree that the buildup of CO2 is due to human emissions [Ferdinand Engelbeen patiently convinced me of that, based on his data and the isotope ratios]. But I see no verifiable scientific evidence showing that X amount of anthro CO2 causes Y amount of warming. There is certainly no agreement on that point. Ferdinand later commented: “In my opinion even a doubling would have little impact, as clouds are a negative feedback (while all current GCM’s include clouds as a positive feedback!), thus a doubling of CO2 would have only moderate (and thus globally positive) effects.” That is my position, too. The additional CO2 is harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere.
Next, there is incessant arguing over the climate sensitivity number, indicating that no one really knows the answer. If the amount of warming caused by human emissions could be quantified, then the sensitivity to 2xCO2 would be known. But it is not known. There are numerous conjectures, from 0.00ºC to the IPCC’s outlandish 3º – 6ºC per doubling. But there is no consensus.
However, there is solid evidence showing that CO2 is a function of temperature. And that, combined with the lack of warming over the past decade and a half, and also with the fact that there appears to be little corellation between rises in CO2 and subsequent rises in temperature, convinces me that the CO2=CAGW conjecture is scientifically unsupportable. I can be convinced. But it will require solid, testable evidence, not just opinions.
Add to that the fact that there are $Billions in grants handed out every year to ‘study climate change’, and you have a situation where people are being paid to blame every natural event on “carbon”. I notice that they do not get grant money if they point out that there is no problem.
Smokey says:
August 28, 2012 at 3:38 pm
But I see no verifiable scientific evidence showing that X amount of anthro CO2 causes Y amount of warming.
If Y is small enough, say 0.0000001 degree, would you still deny there is an effect? I caution against the use of absolute statements [‘no’ evidence, etc]. The issue is always: “how much”, and if the answer is “not much”, nobody except scientists who care about the science of the atmosphere would be interested.
Leif,
Once again I must point out that I have been saying “no measurable effect.” Everything has an effect at some level. But the only available measurements as far as I am aware show that CO2 is an effect of temperature, not a cause.
The entire debate is based on taxing CO2 emissions. If it were not for that dismal prospect, no one on either side would care very much. There is certainly no cause to get worked up over a small 0.8ºC rise over a century and a half; many times during the Holocene global temperatures have varied by much more than that – and at times when CO2 was much lower.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 28, 2012 at 3:35 pm
Jim G says:
August 28, 2012 at 2:32 pm
It will be +b for a positive trend and a -b for a negative trend. It will be one or the other.
“But there is an uncertainty on b [and that is where r squared comes in]. The calculated b is 0.04 with a one sigma uncertainty of 0.04, so b = 0 is consistent with the data. You can bump up the trend by carefully selecting a starting year with a low sunspot number and an ending year with a high sunspot number [some people do that].”
I will not attempt to adulterate the data. The simplest way to look at this will be to total sunspot activity by century just to start with. I aso realize counts may be less dependable further in the past. I have not yet been able to get into the site and will try later.
Smokey says:
August 28, 2012 at 3:55 pm
The entire debate is based on taxing CO2 emissions.
And the people [and the voters who keep them in office] who want to do this don’t care about your science and arguments one whit. I say people have the government they deserve, and since CAGW is a political problem, it must be solved at the ballot box: throw the bums out.
Leif,
I am in complete agreement with you. Throw the bums out!
Jim G says:
August 28, 2012 at 4:18 pm
The simplest way to look at this will be to total sunspot activity by century just to start with.
We have three independent ways of measuring solar activity, SSN, Ap index, and Heliospheric Magnetic field.
using centuries as you suggest might be a good [unbiased] way, even if the data does not perfectly overlap.
The three indicators per century come to
Cent. 18 19 20
SSN 65 51 64
Ap ??.?? 13.08 13.34
HMF ?.?? 6.45 6.43
These numbers are the basis for my contention that we have no evidence for any significant change. Cosmic rays is another [but less direct] indicator, and again there is no evidence for a secular trend of the three centuries: http://www.leif.org/research/Svalgaard_ISSI_Proposal_Base.pdf