Opinion by Kip Hansen — 18 July 2024 — 650 words/3 minutes
In the spirit of co-operation, I’d like to help publicize the effort of Ed “Show Your Stripes” Hawkins, a climate crisis hawk at University of Reading in his search for “a motivated researcher to develop storylines of extreme weather events, including their attribution.”
You see, the first part of the job is to develop storylines of extreme weather events. You might think that his just means “make up stories” or maybe “invent Just-So stories” for extreme weather events, then blaming them on Climate Change. You might be right.
The Extreme Weather Event Storylines are important for the types of climate science done in Hawkins’ department at University of Reading – supplying quotable storylines blaming climate change for extreme weather events to The Guardian and other media gets the University and Hawkins in the news and helps bring in research funds.
This Post-doc will be guided by a technique made-up by Hawkins himself:
“This project will develop a reanalysis-based approach to translate observed historical and recent extreme weather events into different climates to quantitatively describe how those weather events and their impacts would be different in warmer or cooler ‘counter-factual’ worlds.”
Oh, yes, the “reanalysis-based approach” is to be based on Hawkins et al. 2023: “ESD Ideas: Translating historical extreme weather events into a warmer world”.
Note: “Earth System Dynamics [ESD] – An interactive open-access journal of the European Geosciences Union”.
Here’s a sample:
“A new reanalysis-based approach is proposed to examine how reconstructions of extreme weather events differ in warmer or cooler counter-factual worlds. This approach offers a novel way to develop plausible storylines for some types of extreme event that other methods may not be suitable for. As a proof of concept, a reanalysis of a severe windstorm that occurred in February 1903 is translated into a warmer world where it produces higher wind speeds and increased rainfall, suggesting that this storm would be more damaging if it occurred today rather than 120 years ago.”
and
“Whenever a severe weather event occurs with harmful impacts in a particular region, it is often asked by disaster responders, recovery planners, politicians, and journalists whether climate change caused or affected the event. The harmful impacts are caused by the unusual weather, but climate change may have made the weather event more likely, more severe, or both. In those cases, the harmful impacts may be partly or even mostly due to the change in climate. In some cases, the worst consequences may be due to the vulnerability or exposure of the local population or ecosystems, or due to a combination of many other factors.”
This not-so-scientific approach only seeks to “develop plausible storylines” – in short, just something that the general public, ignorant as they are as to the real causes of weather and climate, will be willing to swallow without question – you see, the storyline just needs to be plausible:
Plausible — that’s Hawkins’ word, not mine. The storylines they want are not even intended to be scientifically valid.
Readers might want to read the proof of concept example in the paper…a masterpiece of model fiddling, cherry-picking multiple-model-runs output for the run that supports one’s hypothesis and the unholy hubris involved with the pretense that climate models of the past, present or future output single, definitive and true representations of moment-in-time regional single-factor weather features.
But, hey, the position pays well:
Salary: £33,966 – £44,263 per annum ($44,000 to $57,000)
Only those lacking scientific integrity and having flexible moral fiber need apply.
# # # # #
Author’s Comment:
Let me supply the “end snarcasm ” tag here: “/snarc”.
There, I hope you are satisfied. Sometimes I get a “little testy” and it just kinda boils over.
Honestly, I laughed out loud when I read the following line in Hawkins’ paper where the authors admit:
“This approach offers a novel way to develop plausible storylines for some types of extreme event that other methods may not be suitable for.”
My apologies to some that might be offended and to some others, not.
Thanks for reading.
# # # # #
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Otherwise known as just making sh!t up?
Plausible making sh!t up! Not as easy as it sounds.
Tom and Kevin ==> Yes, plausible is pretty loosey-goosey — but of the many examples I have seen, there plausible Just_so stories are constructed from the Top Ten Climate Crisis Talking Points, or even here and here.
The Climate Crisis Memes — simple statements, repeated endlessly without regard to veracity, lay the groundwork for Plausible Extreme Weather Attribution storylines.
I’m predicting a run on bullshit detectors from Amazon.
The sad part is they really believe manufacturing scenarios to scare people into compliance with their ideology is perfectly OK.
mleskovar ==> From Hawkins’ viewpoint, it is his duty to convince the world’s people that Climate Change equals “all bad things weather-related”.
Remember, he is the author of the misleading Climate Change Stripes meme…and ever so proud of it.
We have the Real Climate Stripes here.
Seems like they risk being hoisted by their own retard.
Some religions do he same thing. Behave as we tell you or burn in hell for eternity.
“My apologies to some that might be offended and to some others, not.” Don’t bother.
“Hundreds of racist plant names will change after historic vote by botanists.
Scientific designations containing a racial slur will be altered — the first time that any species names have been adjusted because of the offence they cause…..
From 2026, plants such as Erythrina caffra will instead be known as Erythrina affra. Credit: Orazio Puccio/Alamy.” https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-02365-x
They don’t understand that they be bigots themselves and/or don’t have anything better to do. I was in a Faculty Senate once when someone brought up the pollution problem about released balloons. A couple agreed until someone put it down with something like WHAT?
I was given a sign saying “if something here OFFENDS YOU please let me know so we can all use a GOOD LAUGH” Unfortunately, this is not funny as it is an example of the failure of a “pure democracy.” However, a similar zoological proposal was properly shot down with common sense by an International Committee. There are though a number of proposed changes for scientific author’s names alleging discrimination against helpers.I wonder if this partly explains the increasing number of authors in scientific papers. I was a long time member of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists that recently changed its journal name “Copeia” because Cope was some kind of jerk of which we still have an abundant supply. “Plausible?.”
hd ==> Crazy huh? Cope was brilliant, incredibly hard-working, and, like many of his era, misguided about human races.
What the one has to do with the other is a mystery. The name change was made out of fear: “5 June 2020 reinforcing the Society’s solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement,”,
The ‘extreme weather attribution’ melodrama started with the work of Stott et al and Tett et al in 2000 and was incorporated into the TAR, the Third Climate Assessment Report published by the IPCC in 2001. It is based on the pseudoscientific assumption that a greenhouse gas ‘radiative forcing’ changes the energy balance of the earth and that the surface temperature increases to restore this energy balance.
When the atmospheric CO2 concentration is increased, radiative transfer calculations show that there is a small decrease in the longwave IR (LWIR) flux emitted to space within the spectral range of the CO2 emission bands. This is called a radiative forcing. In this case, the decrease in LWIR flux at the top of the atmosphere is supposed to warm the earth. Other types of radiative forcings, such as an increase in aerosol concentration may reflect more sunlight back to space and produce a cooling. These forcings are then modified by a contrived set of pseudoscientific ‘feedbacks’. The combination of forcings and feedbacks is ‘tuned’ so that the climate model results match the desired measurements. Usually this is the ‘global mean temperature record’. The result for a doubling of the CO2 concentration is called the climate sensitivity. This comes in two flavors. The equilibrium climate sensitivity, ECS, is the temperature increase obtained by running a climate model to a steady state condition. The transient climate response, TCR is the temperature at the CO2 doubling point obtained by ramping up the CO2 concentration inside the climate model often at 1% per year.
In the real world, the effect of an increase in CO2 concentration is too small to measure in the normal daily and seasonal variations of the temperature and humidity. There is no climate equilibrium state that can be perturbed by a ‘greenhouse gas forcing’. At low and mid latitudes, a doubling of the CO2 concentration produces a maximum change in the tropospheric LWIR cooling rate of +0.08 K per day [Iacono et al, 2008]. At an average lapse rate of -6.5 K/km, a temperature increase of +0.08 K is produced by a decrease in altitude of about 12 meters. This is equivalent to riding an elevator down four floors.
The next time Ed “Show your stripes” Hawkins rides an elevator down four floors, tell him to take a good thermometer with him. Maybe his reanalysis will give a temperature increase of +0.08 K. “Ride the elevator down four floors to climate hell”
For a more detailed discussion, please see the recent paper ‘A Nobel Prize for Climate Modeling Errors’ Science of Climate Change 4(1) pp. 1-73 (2024) https://doi.org/10.53234/scc202404/17
Roy ==> Thanks for the link to your recent paper. Very nice.
interesting- I think I’ll need to read all of your 73 page item!
Loved you on Hee Haw!
I like the old TV series “Matlock” with Andy Griffin.
But the beginning of the first episode (The pilot?) has him defending a murder suspect where no body was found. (This is just the first few minutes, not the whole case.)
He faces the jury, points to a door and says the victim is going to walk through it. The whole court room looks at the door.
Nobody walks through it.
Then he tells the jury that since they all looked at the door, that proves they have “a reasonable doubt” and they must rule his client innocent?!
Nonsense!
Yet we have failed predictions after failed prediction of (CAGW, AGW, Climate Change, etc) to the point that ANYBODY “walking through the door” (a weather event) is proof that Man’s CO2 is guilty?
Gunga => I like the story….Matlock was one of the definitive TV shows of its day.
😎
I remember on MeTV, they had Perry Mason followed by Matlock with commercials advertising the lineup.
They often did “mashups” promoting their lineups. One of my favorites was where they had Kirk and Spock beam down into a city. Then clips of the citizens of Maybury reacting. (Some scenes of Star Trek were shot on the same set.)
Anyway, I sent in a suggestion that they tout Matlock’s legal expertise with the question, “Where did he learn it?” followed by the clip from one Perry Mason where he orders a hot dog with everything on it.
They never did it. Oh well.
Here’s the Star Trek thing.
https://youtu.be/bfeenAf5phc
Gunga ==> Cute, that.
Andy GriffiTH
Jeff ==> Those in the know, knew.
Always better to correct, else one live in ignorance.
OOPS! 😎
A job in Hollywood would pay much more.
Chris ==> the storylines there would have to be compelling, interesting, and entertaining. A far higher standard….
Doesn’t really seem to be a requirement any more.
“it is often asked by disaster responders, recovery planners, politicians, and journalists whether climate change caused or affected the event. “
The answer is, no one knows, and can’t know.
Jeff ==> First, there would have to be “force”or “a thing” that could be called “climate change” (other than the fact things climatic change).
Their real question, seriously is “Does this event represent a change, or just “more of the same”?
Exactly. Absolutely no one can say what any particular storm would have been like without “cliimate change”, or with the utterly meaningless “global mean temperature” a tenth of a degree cooler. No one.
From the website —
The University of Reading has been at the forefront of UK higher education for nearly a century. Over the decades we have become innovators and pioneers, pushing academic boundaries and leading social change.
It would be refreshing if just once the CAGW clowns would produce some actual science. They have been repeating the same nonsense since the 1990s. No science just computer models, anecdotal evidence and scare stories. They are pathetic.
“They are pathetic”
__________________________________________________________
True, but it’s working for them.
There i was, watching a very good BBC documentary about Shackleton exploring Antarctica when in the end the presenter of course did the obligatory thing: pointing to manmade climate change by highlighting a disappearing gleisher. I mean, do they get a directive from on high?
bally ==> yes, they get directives (Editorial Narratives) from on BBC High.
AR6 chapter 12 page 90 blows them out of the water. No extremes. But what is their agenda? Why are they producing this drivel? Is it to reduce CO2 emissions? Impossible. Btw who’s producing the £44k salary? You and me?
Lion Heart ==> Hopefully you are supplying the salary — assuming you pay taxes in the UK.
I am in the U.S. and pay taxes to support false information from NOAA and NASA and send rovers to the Moon.
I’ll quote Stephen Schneider here since he seems to fit right in with Kip’s analysis and Hawkins’ “research”:
We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.
Stephen Schneider
Science as a Contact Sport: Inside the Battle to Save Earth’s Climate (ed. National Geographic Books, 2009)
Mark ==> the upside is that Stephen Schneider, despite displaying sociopathic tendencies (“I can break the law because I’m me…”), at least admitted to what others were secretly thinking and doing.
Motivated into doing what? Researchers used to be motivated by searching for truth. Apparently, times have changed, as this is no longer a job requirement.