Since failures in climate science claims are on the rise, can we start naming climate prediction failures after scientists and activists? I can think of a few: The Hansen Hiatus, for example.
Climate campaigners seem to think they have a winner with this takedown of elected officials who reject global warming science, in which fake news reports talk of the turmoil and tragedy created by Hurricane Marco Rubio, Hurricane James Inhofe, Hurricane John Boehner and more.
The trouble is, the science on a connection between hurricanes and global warming is going in the opposite direction, if the near-final draft of next month’s climate science assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is any indication.
Andrew Revkin at NYT’s DOT Earth
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Twitter / RyanMaue: El Reno tornado reclassified …
El Reno tornado reclassified from EF-5 to EF-3 highlighting some debate at the time about using radar wind data http://www.your4state.com/story/national-weather-service-re-classifies-el-reno-ok-tornado-to-ef-3/d/story/9i6cjSZVfUWnisUjHByPSg …
See also this WUWT story bringing the “widest tornado” claim into question.
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What? Polar bears are out on that disappearing sea ice in late summer?
To put all this into perspective, note that research in this region between 2000 and 2005 determined that, on average, only 3.7% of all Southern Beaufort polar bears spent time on land between mid-September and the end of October (Schliebe et al. 2008). As the estimated total population at that time was 1,526 bears (and still is), it means that on average, only about 56 bears spent time on land each summer in the early 2000s.
See Susan Crockford’s blog: Ten out of ten polar bears being tracked this summer in the Beaufort Sea are on the ice
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What? Algae don’t have enough atmospheric CO2 so they have to make their own?
A paper published today in Nature finds that marine algae, which evolved and thrived with atmospheric CO2 levels 15 times higher than the present, required a novel adaptation to adjust to the relatively low CO2 levels during the Cenozoic era, when CO2 levels were still more than twice current levels. According to the paper, this novel adaptation was to manufacture their own CO2 at the reaction site for photosynthesis, required due to a paucity of CO2 in the atmosphere. Algae evolved more than 500 million years ago, when CO2 levels were ~15-17 times higher than the present; current CO2 levels are near the lowest levels of the past 500 million years.
Algae evolved more than 500 million years ago, when CO2 levels were ~15-17 times higher than the present.
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/08/new-paper-finds-algae-have-to.html
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Rowers give up. Another “save the planet from global warming” Arctic trek gets a reality check from Nature:
Severe weather conditions hindered our early progress and now ice chokes the passage ahead.
Our ice router Victor has been very clear in what lies ahead. He writes, “Just to give you the danger of ice situation at the eastern Arctic, Eef Willems of “Tooluka” (NED) pulled out of the game and returning to Greenland. At many Eastern places of NWP locals have not seen this type ice conditions. Residents of Resolute say 20 years have not seen anything like. Its, ice, ice and more ice. Larsen, Peel, Bellot, Regent and Barrow Strait are all choked. That is the only route to East. Already West Lancaster received -2C temperature expecting -7C on Tuesday with the snow.”
Richard Weber, my teammate to the South Pole in 2009 and without doubt the most accomplished polar skier alive today, is owner and operator of Arctic Watch on Cunningham Inlet at the northern end of Somerset Island. Arctic Watch faces out onto our proposed eastern route. Richard dropped me a note the other day advising: “This has been the coldest season with the most ice since we started Arctic Watch in 2000. Almost no whales. The NWPassage is still blocked with ice. Some of the bays still have not melted!”
…we’d require at least another 50-60 days to make it to Pond Inlet. Throw in the issues of less light, colder temperatures, harsher fall storms and lots of ice blocking the route and our decision is easy.
…Our message remains unaffected though, bringing awareness to the pressing issues of climate change in the arctic.
Despite that admission of failure due to so much ice, readers are hard pressed to find many pictures of it in their photo stream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/95019072@N08/
I suppose showing pictures of ice is counter-productive to their mission, since like many fools before them, they expected the Arctic to be mostly ice free due to global warming. – Anthony
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Uh, oh
New paper finds cloud assumptions in climate models could be incorrect by factor of 2
More problems for climate models: A new paper published in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres finds that models must take into account not only the presence or absence of clouds but also how clouds are stacked vertically. The authors find that changes in vertical stacking of clouds can change radiative forcing assumptions by a factor of two [100%]. However, state of the art climate models do not take vertical stacking into consideration, and most global datasets of cloudiness also do not contain this information. “Clouds, which can absorb or reflect incoming radiation and affect the amount of radiation escaping from Earth’s atmosphere, remain the greatest source of uncertainty in global climate modeling,” and according to this paper, that uncertainty has just doubled from what was previously thought.
See: THE HOCKEY SCHTICK
Why the forthcoming UN IPCC Report is already toast
The IPCC is set to release its latest Assessment Report 5 [AR5] in about 1 month, yet the report will be dead on arrival and hopelessly out-of-date in light of recent inconvenient peer-reviewed papers published after the cut-off date for inclusion, as well as papers published before the cut-off date which the UN continues to ignore. Since almost the entire report hinges on the output of climate models, and those models have recently been falsified at a confidence level of >98% over the past 15 years, and falsified at a confidence level of 90% over the past 20 years, the entire report and its Summary for Policymakers are already invalidated even before publication.
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/08/why-forthcoming-un-ipcc-report-is.html
Ric Werme says:
August 31, 2013 at 8:59 am
“Gary Pearse says:
August 31, 2013 at 8:32 am
> Maybe a CO2 hungry algae tower to bubble CO2 stack gases through, and use algal production as biomass to refuel the electricity plant boilers.
“You’d need a huge sunny area for growing the algae, and all the effort at collecting and drying the algae. Easier to use natural gas, coal, or trees. Or nukes or E-cats..”
Dang, these things never work do they! Maybe blow the smoke through a windmill first and then have rooftop combination solar/algae solar collectors?
So then purging the inconvenient climate history as has been happening is really climatoscopy prep? And a Mann Hunt is the search for Trenberth’s missing heat?
Terry Oldberg:
At August 31, 2013 at 8:03 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/31/wuwt-hot-sheet-for-saturday-august-31st-2013/#comment-1404606
in this thread you have yet again posted your untrue nonsense
I am extremely disappointed that you have done this because I have repeatedly refuted the nonsense you have again posted (including in two other WUWT threads during this week). For considerable time I have been telling you that you were making a false and untrue excuse for IPCC climate model failures, and IPCC supporters could be expected to adopt the same excuse.
Kevin Trenberth has adopted the same untrue excuse for IPCC climate model failures that you have been promoting and continue to promote. See
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/25/trenberths-ipcc-claim-of-no-predictions-by-ipcc-at-all-refuted-by-ipccs-own-words/
Despite all that, your post in this thread says
No. You are plain wrong!
I list some of the misunderstandings concerning equivocation and of IPCC predictions stated in your words I have quoted here.
1.
You are incorrect when you say
That is not true. The truth is
Often, in the literature of climatology, authors treat “predict” and “project” as synonyms in making arguments, though the two words have differing meanings. Such an argument is an example of an equivocation. By logical rule, one cannot properly draw a conclusion from an equivocation. THAT AFFECTS THE CONCLUSION.
2.
You are wrong when you claim
In its definitions the IPCC says
So, the IPCC defines a prediction is the projection with highest confidence.
The definition does NOT provide an equivocation because the definition makes a clear distinction between
a prediction (i.e. the forecast with highest confidence)
and
a projection (i.e. a forecast with less confidence than another forecast).
3.
You are completely illogical when you assert
Drawing a conclusion from a climate model does NOT provide an equivocation so there cannot be an equivocation fallacy.
The IPCC defines that a projection is converted to become a prediction if it gains confidence. This conversion does NOT create an equivocation.
It is important to note that a projection can become a prediction without there being an equivocation. And whether or not your paper has been peer–reviewed has no relevance to this.
4.
You are plain wrong when you say
The IPCC defines that a model’s projection with highest confidence is a prediction.
When the IPCC provides a forecast that the IPCC says is a prediction then the IPCC has made a prediction.
How and why the IPCC made that prediction does not – and cannot – prevent that prediction from being a prediction.
You make a logical error when you refuse to accept a forecast as being a prediction when the forecaster states the forecast is a prediction.
The forecaster alone knows the intention of the forecast. And it is not possible for anyone else to know the intention of the forecaster is other than the forecaster says.
Therefore, when the forecaster says the forecast is a prediction then there is no possibility of anyone disproving it is a prediction: the most anybody can do is to show the prediction is improbable.
YOU ARE EXCUSING THE IPCC’S MISTAKES AND LETTING THEM OFF THE HOOK. STOP IT!
Richard
Massive Release of Hot Air Expected Soon
Background noise is tennis on CBS, announcer said they may break to CBS News soon.
Drudge says Obama was to address the nation at 1:15PM EDT (seems to be running late), the sixth warship has arrived near Syria, the UN inspectors (who just left Syria yesterday) will need another two weeks for test results. Attack expected soon.
Will Obama order action before the definitive science is completed, going basically by popular news reports and assorted science-like opinions?
Wouldn’t be the first time.
I was going to respond to Terry’s comment about the two words and thought it was misleading when I came to your reply Richard while I was mulling over what to wrote,now I will just say good reply!
In 1990 IPCC report they originally used the word PREDICT and got burned on it thus the use of the word Projection came along which gives them some wiggly room to their definition on what is probable in their future forecasts.
The Mann Minimum could also refer to a lot of other minimums he has exhibited beside global cooling.
Academic integrity would be appropriate as would a description of his future in academia.
Just another clueless academic with an exaggerated sense of entitlement to his liplock on the public teat.
Well past the time that situation should be remedied.
Terry Oldberg says:
August 31, 2013 at 8:03 am
In claiming that the climate models have been falsified, this post at the Hockey Schtick errs. A model that predicts is susceptible to falsification. A model that projects is insusceptible to falsification. The climate models project. They do not predict.
—–
A distinction without a difference. Let’s ask: (a) what is it to report the output of a climate model? and (b) what is the purpose of a speech utterance or narrative that reports the output of a climate model?
Surely (a) is an assertiion that the global average temperature will rise x degrees in y years (hedged probabilistically, if it is honest)? If it’s not a statement about the future, what else could it be? And if the purpose of reporting the model output is not to communicate an expectation of future temperature, then there seem few alternatives other than to treating it as dissembling with the purpose of deceiving the listener/reader.
It seems to me that the only reason for drawing a distinction between prediction and projection in this manner and in this context is to be able then to assert that the models reflect reality despite the mounting discrepancies between them and the world. Mere scholasticism.
Every time I see someone like Terry Oldberg trying to make the case for predictions vs projections, the same though occurs to me:
How stupid do they think we are?
Upon reflection, it occurs to me that the people who make this argument may actually believe it themselves. Accordingly, my question in regard to stupidity may have been focused on the wrong subject.
Tweeting with Mann reminds me of an old saying : “Never wrestle with a pig—you get dirty and the pig likes it”
Okay, he’s on now.
Obama-speak translation requested:
“There will be no military intervention.
There will be no boots on the ground.”
There shall be bombing, drones, military assaults of all sorts (but somehow limited), yet it shall not be military intervention?
PS Obama is comfortable with his decision to not wait for the UN Inspector report. Go figure.
But he will seek Congressional authorization. Although he (as stated a few minutes previous) is ready to initiate military action today, tomorrow, or next week, etc.
It is time for all my fellow Americans to join together in unison, and speak to Congress with one voice, that this is the Global Warming we don’t want, which will be harmful, that we can prevent, that we are calling on Congress to fight. Not the other, which is none of those.
If Michael Mann is so eager to sue everybody – maybe he’d better consider whether it’s smart to libel Anthony with his comments about Koch,
REPLY: Yes, I’m actually considering some options there. I’ve never r=taken a dime from Koch, and Mann doesn’t know what he’s talking about. For somebody who is in the libel lawsuit business, he’s certainly a loose cannon. – Anthony
JDN says:
August 31, 2013 at 9:24 am
I’d like to see a more detailed paper, too. Since coccolithophores rely on CO2 dissolved in sea water, atmospheric concentration of the gas should be less important to them, it seems to me, but I don’t know much about them.
However, I’ve wondered about algal response to the Cenozoic crash in CO2 levels in the air. In land plants, the C4 & CAM systems evolved to deal with the fall from ~3500 ppmv in the Early Eocene to ~650 by its Middle, possibly as a result of the Azolla Event. Some algae are partly or indirectly reliant on atmospheric CO2, or at least can use it if need be.
Reblogged this on gottadobetterthanthis and commented:
WUWT provides a particularly noteworthy hot-sheet today. Good stuff.
I’m particularly pointing out the dial-back of the El Reno tornado from an EF-5 to an EF-3. That is what they were initially calling it around here. Oh well. I am heartened to see the commitment to getting it right overall.
I’ll remind that polar bears eat snowy owls.
The CO2 note is particularly worth remembering. Our current CO2 levels are abnormally low. Please be mindful of the wording. CO2 is low. CO2 on our planet has been much higher throughout the geological epics, and current levels are well below average. A little lower and all life on earth will die. (As in 100% extinct, all of it.) While we are not in danger of CO2 going dangerously low, it seems particularly silly to worry about it going up a little when we are so close to the danger zone.
The Nature paper referred to is http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v500/n7464/full/nature12448.html, and they want $32 for it. Proud, aren’t they? (I like to think of knowledge as free, but what do I know. Knowledge is power, so they must think they can charge you for it.) The abstract and figures are available there, and the reference list and a supplemental information file, if you are so inclined.
The abstract is informative, and their use of models (and checking the results against the available data) seems appropriate.
It is most remarkable that these plants managed to evolve to control the concentration of CO2 where they needed high concentrations to match their original environment half-a-billion years ago. Cool. Of course if they hadn’t managed, they’d have died out, and we’d be trying to figure out why there is a change in the isotopes. Again, cool.
In the closing sentence of the abstract, the authors put themselves out there with a prediction that we will find more evidence of a CO2 reduction at that time so long ago. It also reminds me that cold kills. Warmer is better.
http://www.sail-world.com/USA/North-West-Passage-blocked-with-ice%E2%80%94yachts-caught/113788
I posted this for them on the rowers face book page thinking it would make them feel a little better about not being the only ones who were stymied and it was promptly removed.
They had a poorly designed boat which was taking a beating. It could not handle even normal winds as well as a kayak can, let alone the coming gales of autumn. They would not have made it even if the passages had been ice free. Glad they are safe and made the right decision to withdraw.
It seems to me that they make conditional predictions–e.g., if GHGs rise at rate A, then surface temperatures will rise by rate Y, plus or minus amount Z. If the condition is satisfied (CO2 rises at rate A), then the prediction is triggered.
Mann tweeted, “Being stalked by #HeartlandInstitute/#Koch-funded climate change denier #AnthonyWatts & his mob:”
That phrasing falsely implies ongoing funding, and it also falsely implies that such funding as there was, was funding for your blogging (“denying”), not just for a side-project that is merely an attempt to provide a user-friendly interface to a government dataset. So those are two chinks in his armor.
rogerknights says:
August 31, 2013 at 12:39 pm
Terry Oldberg says:
August 31, 2013 at 8:03 am
In claiming that the climate models have been falsified, this post at the Hockey Schtick errs. A model that predicts is susceptible to falsification. A model that projects is insusceptible to falsification. The climate models project. They do not predict.
It seems to me that they make conditional predictions–e.g., if GHGs rise at rate A, then surface temperatures will rise by rate Y, plus or minus amount Z. If the condition is satisfied (CO2 rises at rate A), then the prediction is triggered.
——–
You are correct, but only because it is tautological (albeit not self-evidently so) that all predications that involve causation are necessarily conditional statements. In contrast, the statement “1 + 1 = 2” is not a prediction – not even of a child learning its arithmentic – because the result is not an effect of the arithmetic operation.
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Anthony, “Pack the facts. Leave the cannoli.”
can we start naming climate prediction failures after scientists and activists?
The Hansen Hiatus
Not a bad idea, but it needs reworking.
“The Hansen Hiatus ” makes is sound like he predicted the Hiatus.
“Hansen Hallucination” is more on target.
“Hansen Hype-a-Temp” covers the GISS manipulation of the historical records.
“The Hansen Hoax” need to be reserved to describe the whole past quarter century of CAGW.
There are a couple of algae for bio-fuel plants in the Pilbara region of Western Australia that show promise: http://pindanpost.com/2013/04/09/algae-based-bio-diesel/ It’s just a pity CO2 levels are not higher it seems …
The Mannian Mannipilation
The Hayhoe … Where’d it go?
richardscourtney:
Thank you for taking the time to respond.
In reference to the issue that you raise, “anonymous” responds that ( http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/08/why-forthcoming-un-ipcc-report-is.html#comment-form ) “OK, not falsified. How about “shown not to provide information useful for evaluating human impact on the global climate”? Anonymous is spot on but his response diametrically differs from yours. How can this be so?
In the investigation of a suspected example of an equivocation fallacy, one translates the language of the suspected equivocation into an unambiguous language for the purpose of establishing whether or not a term changes meaning in the midst of the argument. Rather than disambiguating the language of your response, you respond in an ambiguous language that supports your fallacious conclusion.
Sunsettommy:
The term “project” comes to us from the field of ensemble forecasting where it has a precise meaning. Under this usage, “to project” has a different meaning than “to predict.” Unlike a “prediction,” a “projection” conveys no information to a policy maker about the outcomes from his or her policy decisions.
While climatologists that include Kevin Trenberth distiguish between “prediction” and “projection,” most do not (Green and Armstrong, circa 2007). A consequence from conflating the two terms is an equivocation fallacy that is the sole basis for the erroneous conclusion that carbon dioxide emissions should be regulated.