A fairly long time ago Jimmy Carter was elected President of the United States, and the Federal Agencies scrambled to find projects in Georgia that they might propose. The National Science Foundation looked to improve the quarrying of granite, one of the centers for which was in Elberton, GA, and some of the technology at the time was relatively unhealthy. Georgia Institute of Technology (GIT) was prime on the contract, and I was initially a member of the Advisory Panel, but eventually took a crew down to Georgia and, working with the Georgia Tech folk and the Elberton Granite Association, went to a quarry and cut a slot some 11 ft long, and about 2 ft deep to demonstrate that high pressure waterjets were a practical tool for use in the quarries. The technology has since transitioned into use around the world, and we carved the MS&T Stonehenge out of Elberton Granite (with water). It left me with a pleasant memory of the folks that deal with Earth Science down at GIT.
This week James Stafford, who runs the Oilprice.com web site contacted me to ask if I wanted to run an interview that they had conducted with Dr. Judith Curry, who is now the Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech. Dr. Curry writes the discussions on climate change at her Website Climate, Etc. The original interview can be found at Oilprice.com. I am glad to reproduce it here.
. . . . . . . . .
OilPrice.com: What are your personal beliefs on climate change? The causes and how serious a threat climate change is to the continued existence of society as we know it.
Dr. Curry: The climate is always changing. Climate is currently changing because of a combination of natural and human induced effects. The natural effects include variations of the sun, volcanic eruptions, and oscillations of the ocean. The human induced effects include the greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, pollution aerosols, and land use changes. The key scientific issue is determining how much of the climate change is associated with humans. This is not a simple thing to determine. The most recent IPCC assessment report states: "Most [50%] of the warming in the latter half of the 20th century is very likely [>90%] due to the observed increase in greenhouse gas concentrations." There is certainly some contribution from the greenhouse gases, but whether it is currently a dominant factor or will be a dominant factor in the next century, is a topic under active debate, and I don't think the high confidence level [>90%] is warranted given the uncertainties.
As I stated in my testimony last year: "Based upon the background knowledge that we have, the threat does not seem to be an existential one on the time scale of the 21st century, even in its most alarming incarnation."
OilPrice.com: You have said in the past that you were troubled by the lack of cooperation between organizations studying climate change, and that you want to see more transparency with the data collected. How do you suggest we encourage/force transparency and collaboration?
Judith Curry: We are seeing some positive steps in this regard. Government agencies that fund climate research are working to develop better databases. Perhaps of greatest interest is the effort being undertaken by the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, which is a (mostly) privately funded effort to compile and document a new data base on surface temperatures, in a completely open and transparent way.
OilPrice.com: Do you feel climatologists should be putting more effort into determining the effect of the sun on our climate? As the IPCC primarily focuses on CO2 as the cause of climate change – Is the importance of CO2 overestimated and the importance of the sun is underestimated?
Judith Curry: I absolutely think that more effort is needed in determining the effect of the sun on our climate. The sun is receiving increased attention (and funding), and there is a lively debate underway on interpreting the recent satellite data record, reconstructing past solar variability, and predicting the solar variability over the 21st century. Nearly all of the solar scientists are predicting some solar cooling in the next century, but the magnitude of the possible or likely cooling is hotly debated and highly uncertain.
OilPrice.com: You are well known in climate and energy circles for breaking from the ranks of the IPCC and questioning the current information out there. What do you see as the reasons for the increase in skepticism towards global warming over the last few years.
Judith Curry: Because of the IPCC and its consensus seeking process, the rewards for scientists have been mostly in embellishing the consensus, and this includes government funding. Because of recent criticisms of the IPCC and a growing understanding that the climate system is not easily understood, an increasing number of scientists are becoming emboldened to challenge some of the basic conclusions of the IPCC, and I think this is a healthy thing for the science.
OilPrice.com: What are your views on the idea that CO2 may not be a significant contributor to climate change? How do you think such a revelation, if true, will affect the world economy, and possibly shatter public confidence in scientific institutions that have said we must reduce CO2 emissions in order to save the planet?
Judith Curry: Personally, I think we put the CO2 stabilization policy ‘cart' way before the scientific horse. The UN treaty on dangerous climate change in 1992 was formulated and signed before we even had ‘discernible' evidence of warming induced by CO2, as reported in 1995 by the IPCC second assessment report. As a result of this, we have only been considering one policy option (CO2 stabilization), which in my opinion is not a robust policy option given the uncertainties in how much climate is changing in response to CO2.
OilPrice.com: There has been quite a bit of talk recently on geo-engineering with entrepreneurs such as Bill Gates and Richard Branson pushing for a "plan B" which utilizes geo-engineering to manipulate the environment in order to cool the atmosphere. Geo-engineering could be much cheaper than reducing emissions, and also much quicker to produce results and scientists are lobbying governments and international organizations for funds to experiment with various approaches, such as fertilizing the oceans or spraying reflective particles and chemicals into the upper atmosphere in order to reflect sunlight and heat back into space. What are your thoughts on geo-engineering? Is it a realistic solution to solving climate change or is it a possible red herring?
Judith Curry: With regards to geo-engineering, there are two major concerns. The first is whether the technologies will actually work, in terms of having the anticipated impact on the climate. The second is the possibility of unintended consequences of the geoengineering.
OilPrice.com: You have been noted to criticize the IPCC quite openly in the past on several topics. Even going so far as to say: "It is my sad conclusion that opening your mind on this subject (climate change controversy) sends you down the slippery slope of challenging many aspects of the IPCC consensus."
Do you believe that the organization as a whole needs to be assessed in order to better serve progress on climate change? What suggestions do you have on how the organization should function?
Judith Curry: The IPCC might have outlived its usefulness. Lets see what the next assessment report comes up with. But we are getting diminishing returns from these assessments, and they take up an enormous amount of scientists' time.
OilPrice.com: Would renewable energy technologies have received the massive amounts of funding we have seen over the last few years without global warming concerns?
Judith Curry: I think there are other issues that are driving the interest and funding in renewables, including clean air and energy security issues and economics, but I agree that global warming concerns have probably provided a big boost.
OilPrice.com: What do you believe are the best solutions to overcoming/reversing climate change; is a common consensus needed in order to effectively combat climate change?
Judith Curry: The UN approach of seeking a global consensus on the science to support an international treaty on CO2 stabilization simply hasn't worked, for a variety of reasons. There are a range of possible policy options, and we need to have a real discussion that looks at the costs, benefits and unintended consequences of each. Successful solutions are more likely to be regional in nature than global.
OilPrice.com: I saw an interesting comment on another site regarding climate science that I thought I'd get your opinion on as it raises some very interesting arguments: Climate science has claimed for 30 years that it affects the safety of hundreds of millions of people, or perhaps the whole planet. If it gets it wrong, equally, millions may suffer from high energy costs, hunger due to biofuels, and lost opportunity from misdirected funds, notwithstanding the projected benefits from as yet impractical renewable energy. Yet, we have allowed it to dictate global policy and form a trillion dollar green industrial complex - all without applying a single quality system, without a single performance standard for climate models, without a single test laboratory result and without a single national independent auditor or regulator. It all lives only in the well known inbred, fad-driven world of peer review.
Judith Curry: I agree that there is lack of accountability in the whole climate enterprise, and it does not meet the standards that you would find in engineering or regulatory science. I have argued that this needs to change, by implementing data quality and model verification and validation standards.
OilPrice.com: Do you believe that the language used in papers and at conferences is a problem? The public just wants straight answers to questions: Is the climate warming, By how much, and what will the effects be? Scientists need to step out from behind the curtain and engage the public with straight answers and in their own words. Is this achievable, or is climate science too complex to be explained in laymen's terms? Or is it because even climate scientists can't agree on the exact answers?
Judith Curry: I think the biggest failure in communicating climate science to the public has been the reliance on argument from consensus. We haven't done a good job of explaining all this, particularly in the context of the scientific disagreement
OilPrice.com: What resources would you recommend to people who wish to get a balanced and objective view on climate science and climate change.
Judith Curry: There is no simple way to get a balanced and objective view, since there are so many different perspectives. I think my blog Climate Etc. at judithcurry.com is a good forum for getting a sense of these different perspectives.
Interview by. James Stafford, Editor Oilprice.com
Note that both sites appear on this site's blog roll.
Showing posts with label climate change. Show all posts
Showing posts with label climate change. Show all posts
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Predictions of climate change
There are a couple of controversial items that have made it into the mainstream press recently that seem to have stirred a little controversy, and which are worth at least a mention. (And please note that the original post has been updated).
The first was the Opinion piece in the WSJ back in January in which 16 scientists wrote that there was no need to panic over Global Warming. They note, in their letter
The original authors have now replied. I will quote the reply under the fold, but the first part of their response points out that, for major surgery, it is often best to get a second opinion, and to look at the record of the proposed scientists. They then put up a graph of the accuracy of the IPCC predictions for temperature rise, which I thought worth repeating.
IPCC projections for temperature rise, against reality. (WSJ)
UPDATE There is a response to the more recent letter on RealClimate which complains that the WSJ plot does not include error bars, and that, when those are included, that recent temperature plots fall within the range of the predicted models. I have appended that plot to the end of this post.
Te response begins thus:
They note that the Earth has been warming since the Little Ice Age (for which there is much evidence) and prior to the LIA there was the Medieval Warming Period, and before it the Holocene Climate Optimum, neither of which can have been caused by greenhouse gases but which instead point to a natural cycling of temperature, which current science has not disproved as a cause of the current warming period. And they also express concern about the statement that "decarbonization would drive decades of economic growth."
Of course a wind farm, or solar farm employs significantly less workers than a coal mine (though arguably more than an oil or gas well - though not if one includes the refineries - since when it gets to power station levels both should surely balance out). I rather suspect that this is not the end of the discussion, and that the debate is starting to get a little more public exposure than it has been able to achieve in the past.
In passing I should note the small furor about the release of some of the documents from the Heartland Institute, mastered by one Peter Gleick, who was a MacArthur Fellow, has confessed to dishonestly obtaining and then releasing them. Not apparently that this is stopping the climate change advocates from pointing out the money that the Heartland Foundation has (though virtually none report on the relatively roughly hundredfold larger size of the sums of money being put into work that advocates climate change - but with money comes power and access, and the Heartland group has much less). I guess just because you're a recognized genius doesn't mean that you can't do stupid things.
However, the other thing that is worth a comment is that there seems to be a growing recognition that biofuels may not be the savior of the atmosphere that they have been purported to be. Apparently the Friends of the Earth have issued a report which indicates that switching to biofuels won't have much effect on cleaning up the air, in fact the switch may make things worse. At the same time the switch may cost drivers in Europe something on the order of $24 billion a year. And in the process of looking into the topic there is another new report (unfortunately behind a paywall) which suggests that much of this was known before the regulations were put in. Bishop Hill has a post on the report, which suggests that some un-named, but central and powerful individual, was able to manipulate the EU into making the moves that have led to the adoption of the 10% biofuel requirement, without adequate consideration of the evidence. Apparently none of the non-supportive data was made available. I wonder why that sounds familiar?
And in passing, and closure, I wrote, in the past about Dr. Hansen's predictions of global warming that were one of the seminal events that got the climate change movement the financial success that it has since achieved. It is interesting to take the graph he used, and add some of the data from the plot above. It would appear that more than one computer model has been falsified. Because Dr. Hansen's models seem to use a different zero, I have slightly adjusted the values from the curve above to extend the data on actual temperatures relative to those predicted. You can see that they are starting to fall below the values that Dr. Hansen predicted would only be achieved if there was a radical reduction in carbon dioxide and the greenhouse gases - which hasn't happened, and so would perhaps indicate that the effects of said gases are less than he was predicting.
Projected temperature rise anticipated by Dr Hansen (Dire Predictions)
The plot which RealClimate have used as a rebuttal is this one.
Real Climate plot showing the error bars that they state exist for the models.
It is an interesting point though since all the model error bars are conflated makes it difficult to see how much validity there is to the argument.
Incidentally Profesor Lindzen gave an excellent talk (pdf) at the Houses of Parliament in the UK the other day. It got favorable coverage in the Independent.
UPDATE: There have been a couple of posts over at Watts Up With That? (WUWT) that provide better versions of the plots than the one I gave above. The first points to a presentation by Dr. Evans, which contains this plot:
Temperatures as measured by satellite against Dr. Hansen's predictions in 1988.
The other compares the IPCC predictions with actual temperature data, and quotes a post by Clive Best, that contains this plot:
IPCC predictions of long-term temperature change.
The first was the Opinion piece in the WSJ back in January in which 16 scientists wrote that there was no need to panic over Global Warming. They note, in their letter
Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet. Lysenko and his team lived very well, and they fiercely defended their dogma and the privileges it brought them.Their letter received a response from a group that included some of the more prominent (and funded) of the climate change advocates, which avoided the discussion of funding, but rather spoke to the eminence of those who are forecasting gloom.
Speaking for many scientists and engineers who have looked carefully and independently at the science of climate, we have a message to any candidate for public office: There is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to "decarbonize" the world's economy. Even if one accepts the inflated climate forecasts of the IPCC, aggressive greenhouse-gas control policies are not justified economically.
Do you consult your dentist about your heart condition? In science, as in any area, reputations are based on knowledge and expertise in a field and on published, peer-reviewed work. If you need surgery, you want a highly experienced expert in the field who has done a large number of the proposed operations.(You will note the little unsubtle ad hominem at the end.)
You published "No Need to Panic About Global Warming" (op-ed, Jan. 27) on climate change by the climate-science equivalent of dentists practicing cardiology. While accomplished in their own fields, most of these authors have no expertise in climate science. The few authors who have such expertise are known to have extreme views that are out of step with nearly every other climate expert. This happens in nearly every field of science. For example, there is a retrovirus expert who does not accept that HIV causes AIDS. And it is instructive to recall that a few scientists continued to state that smoking did not cause cancer, long after that was settled science.
The original authors have now replied. I will quote the reply under the fold, but the first part of their response points out that, for major surgery, it is often best to get a second opinion, and to look at the record of the proposed scientists. They then put up a graph of the accuracy of the IPCC predictions for temperature rise, which I thought worth repeating.
IPCC projections for temperature rise, against reality. (WSJ) UPDATE There is a response to the more recent letter on RealClimate which complains that the WSJ plot does not include error bars, and that, when those are included, that recent temperature plots fall within the range of the predicted models. I have appended that plot to the end of this post.
Te response begins thus:
We agree with Mr. Trenberth et al. that expertise is important in medical care, as it is in any matter of importance to humans or our environment. . . . . . . . . .In this respect, an important gauge of scientific expertise is the ability to make successful predictions. When predictions fail, we say the theory is "falsified" and we should look for the reasons for the failure.They point out that the heat that was to have raised the temperature has now been suggested as having gone, instead, into the oceans, but point out that there is no evidence to sustain that theory.
They note that the Earth has been warming since the Little Ice Age (for which there is much evidence) and prior to the LIA there was the Medieval Warming Period, and before it the Holocene Climate Optimum, neither of which can have been caused by greenhouse gases but which instead point to a natural cycling of temperature, which current science has not disproved as a cause of the current warming period. And they also express concern about the statement that "decarbonization would drive decades of economic growth."
Of course a wind farm, or solar farm employs significantly less workers than a coal mine (though arguably more than an oil or gas well - though not if one includes the refineries - since when it gets to power station levels both should surely balance out). I rather suspect that this is not the end of the discussion, and that the debate is starting to get a little more public exposure than it has been able to achieve in the past.
In passing I should note the small furor about the release of some of the documents from the Heartland Institute, mastered by one Peter Gleick, who was a MacArthur Fellow, has confessed to dishonestly obtaining and then releasing them. Not apparently that this is stopping the climate change advocates from pointing out the money that the Heartland Foundation has (though virtually none report on the relatively roughly hundredfold larger size of the sums of money being put into work that advocates climate change - but with money comes power and access, and the Heartland group has much less). I guess just because you're a recognized genius doesn't mean that you can't do stupid things.
However, the other thing that is worth a comment is that there seems to be a growing recognition that biofuels may not be the savior of the atmosphere that they have been purported to be. Apparently the Friends of the Earth have issued a report which indicates that switching to biofuels won't have much effect on cleaning up the air, in fact the switch may make things worse. At the same time the switch may cost drivers in Europe something on the order of $24 billion a year. And in the process of looking into the topic there is another new report (unfortunately behind a paywall) which suggests that much of this was known before the regulations were put in. Bishop Hill has a post on the report, which suggests that some un-named, but central and powerful individual, was able to manipulate the EU into making the moves that have led to the adoption of the 10% biofuel requirement, without adequate consideration of the evidence. Apparently none of the non-supportive data was made available. I wonder why that sounds familiar?
And in passing, and closure, I wrote, in the past about Dr. Hansen's predictions of global warming that were one of the seminal events that got the climate change movement the financial success that it has since achieved. It is interesting to take the graph he used, and add some of the data from the plot above. It would appear that more than one computer model has been falsified. Because Dr. Hansen's models seem to use a different zero, I have slightly adjusted the values from the curve above to extend the data on actual temperatures relative to those predicted. You can see that they are starting to fall below the values that Dr. Hansen predicted would only be achieved if there was a radical reduction in carbon dioxide and the greenhouse gases - which hasn't happened, and so would perhaps indicate that the effects of said gases are less than he was predicting.
Projected temperature rise anticipated by Dr Hansen (Dire Predictions)The plot which RealClimate have used as a rebuttal is this one.
Real Climate plot showing the error bars that they state exist for the models. It is an interesting point though since all the model error bars are conflated makes it difficult to see how much validity there is to the argument.
Incidentally Profesor Lindzen gave an excellent talk (pdf) at the Houses of Parliament in the UK the other day. It got favorable coverage in the Independent.
UPDATE: There have been a couple of posts over at Watts Up With That? (WUWT) that provide better versions of the plots than the one I gave above. The first points to a presentation by Dr. Evans, which contains this plot:
Temperatures as measured by satellite against Dr. Hansen's predictions in 1988.The other compares the IPCC predictions with actual temperature data, and quotes a post by Clive Best, that contains this plot:
IPCC predictions of long-term temperature change.Read more!
Sunday, January 1, 2012
And some "change of year" thoughts on climate change
The year has been quite mixed for those who follow the climate change debate. Those who have developed the CO2/temperature theories and predictions on which much Government action has been based, remain largely as much or more in control as they have been in the past. Governments in place, whether in Europe, Australia or the United States are sufficiently convinced that the theoretical predictions of future higher temperatures are correct that quite significant changes in fuel policy have been put into place. This change is now placing greater reliance on renewable power sources, with natural gas seen as the back up and replacement power source during the transition away from historic fuels. And the historic fuels of the late twentieth century, coal, oil and nuclear power are being consigned to the scrap yard as fast as legislation and political power can move them.
Yet at the same time the economic realities are biting into the renewable energy business. In Spain the largest solar power station is just coming on line but the funding to continue the transition (which some of us might designate as the experiment) is beginning to disappear.
The Ernst and Young report came out in November, and reflects a growing concern about the ability to find the financing required to continue construction of wind and solar farms, even as the fossil fuel plants are being closed. European finances are in a difficult phase for other reasons, but in addressing rather large problems elsewhere, the funding and subsidies for renewable energy are likely to be reduced. The problems of a growing gap between the power that will be required in the future and that which will be available are so far being glossed over, but that is not an issue that can be hidden forever.
The arguments over the need for reducing the production of carbon dioxide continue to prevail in the mainstream. However, much as there was a change from Anthropogenic Global Warming to Climate Change, when the planet didn’t take the hint and follow the predicted model temperatures (even when assisted with a little judicious “adjustment” of recent trends, as the individual state temperature study revealed) so now there is the beginning of a move to change the concern from Climate Change to the increase in Extreme Climate Events induced by the changes in the atmospheric composition.
This allows those who wish to gut the current methods of energy production to make claims that any extreme event (including those where there is a lower than normal temperature) can all be laid at the feet of fossil energy production. This argument fails to consider that the study of events, such as cyclones, hurricanes and tornadoes have been going on for decades. Professor Curry implies that Kevin Trenberth was the initiator and instigator of this change in focus, and NOAA wants to allocate “the blame.” (Which sort of implies that before we had a power grid that perhaps we didn’t have extreme events.) Naturally the role that atmospheric compositional changes has in influencing these events will be evaluated by theoretical models – and naturally that will require more funding for bigger and better computers and more time build and run the models and to address the issues that arise . . .
The problem with establishing an industry built around modeling climate change and its effects is that in order to justify next year’s budget new ideas have to be advanced each year in order to keep those government dollars running and after a while it becomes harder to find those new concepts. The role of attribution of extreme events seems to be one of those newly developing tangents.
After a while the need for justification requires that somewhat wilder claims will be made, and while the main stream press is remarkably supine in accepting the statements made in published papers, there are times where credulity is challenged (on both sides). A relatively rare look at the truth of conflicting claims in two opposing op-eds appeared in the Houston Chronicle recently. The two pieces that were reviewed were an op-ed in Salon which lauded the arguments that extreme events are getting worse, all due to climate change. The review compared this with an editorial in the Colorado Springs Gazette which suggested that the Global Warming theories were losing their credence.
The first article had eight statements of fact which were:
Which I suppose brings me to my ending gripe for this post. Those who are concerned over global levels of carbon dioxide have been every effective in selling the message that if you disagree with them, then you are saying that global warming is not happening. You are therefore a denier, and, by association with those who denied the Holocaust, you are an idiot.
One of the consequences of the Hockey Stick graph that Michael Mann has partially built a career on was that it denied the presence of the Little Ice Age. He has since, grudgingly, changed his mind and admitted its existence, but the recognition that the globe has been warming since the depths of the LIA has been neglected. Explanations for that warming trend have to be provided and the relative proportions of natural and anthropogenic warming properly evaluated before a truly valid discussion can be had over the role of the atmospheric composition, as opposed to the solar variations, on our climate. Just saying that the only thing that explains the change is rising CO2 becomes less persuasive as global temperatures fail to follow the predictions that, for example, Dr Hansen made in starting the whole shebang.
But those discussions are not held. With the imposition of the assumption that carbon dioxide is driving global climate change and forcing weather events to be increasingly extreme the goal posts are moved so that we do not discuss the weakness of the underlying argument.
The global financial changes are going to force governments to face more squarely the relative costs of their commitments to reducing carbon emissions. As they do so, they will need to justify backtracking from some of their earlier promises. At such time, while theoretical scientists demand more money their programs, justification and validation will be under increasing scrutiny and competition for funds may change the playing field. In future years it may be said that the high water marks of the climate movement were either just before the Copenhagen summit, or with the passage of the recent agreement in Durban. From here it may be increasingly downhill.
Yet at the same time the economic realities are biting into the renewable energy business. In Spain the largest solar power station is just coming on line but the funding to continue the transition (which some of us might designate as the experiment) is beginning to disappear.
Even if government cuts do not deepen, which is unlikely, the Ernst & Young report claimed that a gap of $22.5bn on investment in renewable energy and subsidies is likely to emerge across 10 leading world economies in less than four years. Among them is the UK where the shortfall is estimated to be $5bn, while in Spain – effectively confirming Kistner's fears – it would be $6bn.
The Ernst and Young report came out in November, and reflects a growing concern about the ability to find the financing required to continue construction of wind and solar farms, even as the fossil fuel plants are being closed. European finances are in a difficult phase for other reasons, but in addressing rather large problems elsewhere, the funding and subsidies for renewable energy are likely to be reduced. The problems of a growing gap between the power that will be required in the future and that which will be available are so far being glossed over, but that is not an issue that can be hidden forever.
The arguments over the need for reducing the production of carbon dioxide continue to prevail in the mainstream. However, much as there was a change from Anthropogenic Global Warming to Climate Change, when the planet didn’t take the hint and follow the predicted model temperatures (even when assisted with a little judicious “adjustment” of recent trends, as the individual state temperature study revealed) so now there is the beginning of a move to change the concern from Climate Change to the increase in Extreme Climate Events induced by the changes in the atmospheric composition.
This allows those who wish to gut the current methods of energy production to make claims that any extreme event (including those where there is a lower than normal temperature) can all be laid at the feet of fossil energy production. This argument fails to consider that the study of events, such as cyclones, hurricanes and tornadoes have been going on for decades. Professor Curry implies that Kevin Trenberth was the initiator and instigator of this change in focus, and NOAA wants to allocate “the blame.” (Which sort of implies that before we had a power grid that perhaps we didn’t have extreme events.) Naturally the role that atmospheric compositional changes has in influencing these events will be evaluated by theoretical models – and naturally that will require more funding for bigger and better computers and more time build and run the models and to address the issues that arise . . .
The problem with establishing an industry built around modeling climate change and its effects is that in order to justify next year’s budget new ideas have to be advanced each year in order to keep those government dollars running and after a while it becomes harder to find those new concepts. The role of attribution of extreme events seems to be one of those newly developing tangents.
After a while the need for justification requires that somewhat wilder claims will be made, and while the main stream press is remarkably supine in accepting the statements made in published papers, there are times where credulity is challenged (on both sides). A relatively rare look at the truth of conflicting claims in two opposing op-eds appeared in the Houston Chronicle recently. The two pieces that were reviewed were an op-ed in Salon which lauded the arguments that extreme events are getting worse, all due to climate change. The review compared this with an editorial in the Colorado Springs Gazette which suggested that the Global Warming theories were losing their credence.
The first article had eight statements of fact which were:
By my reckoning, the strong evidence scorecard is 2 correct, 2 mostly right, 1 mostly wrong, and 3 wrong. I think this means that the author is able to type with one eye closed and his finger stuck in one ear. It’s difficult to argue that climate change is not a hoax when half of your debating points are the equivalent of hoaxes.On the other hand, by putting up a plot of recent temperature trends he undercut the argument of the writer in the Gazette with no further criticism needed.
Which I suppose brings me to my ending gripe for this post. Those who are concerned over global levels of carbon dioxide have been every effective in selling the message that if you disagree with them, then you are saying that global warming is not happening. You are therefore a denier, and, by association with those who denied the Holocaust, you are an idiot.
One of the consequences of the Hockey Stick graph that Michael Mann has partially built a career on was that it denied the presence of the Little Ice Age. He has since, grudgingly, changed his mind and admitted its existence, but the recognition that the globe has been warming since the depths of the LIA has been neglected. Explanations for that warming trend have to be provided and the relative proportions of natural and anthropogenic warming properly evaluated before a truly valid discussion can be had over the role of the atmospheric composition, as opposed to the solar variations, on our climate. Just saying that the only thing that explains the change is rising CO2 becomes less persuasive as global temperatures fail to follow the predictions that, for example, Dr Hansen made in starting the whole shebang.
But those discussions are not held. With the imposition of the assumption that carbon dioxide is driving global climate change and forcing weather events to be increasingly extreme the goal posts are moved so that we do not discuss the weakness of the underlying argument.
The global financial changes are going to force governments to face more squarely the relative costs of their commitments to reducing carbon emissions. As they do so, they will need to justify backtracking from some of their earlier promises. At such time, while theoretical scientists demand more money their programs, justification and validation will be under increasing scrutiny and competition for funds may change the playing field. In future years it may be said that the high water marks of the climate movement were either just before the Copenhagen summit, or with the passage of the recent agreement in Durban. From here it may be increasingly downhill.
Read more!
Monday, October 24, 2011
The Delinquent Teenager - the IPCC and the WWF
I mentioned last week that Donna Laframboise has just written a new book with the lengthy title “The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World's Top Climate Expert”, but which, for this post I will shorten to “The DT”. The book is a fascinating dénouement of the reality of the structure of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC issues reports which it describes as:
The work is widely reported as being that of the world’s experts in the different aspects of climate, and its impacts, with the assessment reports bringing those ideas together under the supervision of panels of additional experts in the various fields. Thus it is claimed to summarize the opinions of thousands of scientists and to mark the quintessence of thinking on the state-of-knowledge. With that reputation it is quoted as the justifying document for a wide ranging set of governmental actions around the globe, including the move by the EPA to control Greenhouse Gases, and for example, the moves in Europe to restrict the use of coal in power stations and to justify the increase in investment in wind and solar energy technologies.
But that curtain of respectability based on the “authority” of the authors has been shattered through the revelations of the book. And while it should be noted that many of the individual facts have been discussed in the past, they have never been chained together to shake the edifice so thoroughly and justifiably as is done here.
There are, of course, those who will denigrate the work, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has issued a press release in which if “refutes ‘ludicrous’ claims’ that it infiltrated the IPCC. However, the power of the book comes in the detail that allows me to look up the role of the WWF. Chapter 4 of the report of Working Group 2 deals with species extinctions, and it has five of the 10 most senior personnel affiliated with the WWF. The WWF has, as Donna notes (and details) worked to persuade IPCC authors to join one of its panels, and she goes on (in footnote 31-5) to list 78 IPCC personnel who have thus become involved. (Also on her Website). The facts deny the WWF protestations.
But it is in the revealed mediocrity and mendacious nature of the reports themselves that The DT is most disturbing. Rather than relying purely on the skilled knowledge of the world’s experts, and their papers, as the IPCC claims is the practice, considerably less upright behavior is documented throughout the book. Very junior scientists are recruited to draft significant portions of the material, and many documents used turn out to be from non-peer-reviewed sources. It is not that I am necessarily impressed with “peer review”, as an academic I have very mixed feelings about those who consider that nothing is established until it is in a peer-reviewed publication – despite physical evidence or other real world experience - but if you claim that the material is peer-reviewed and as is shown here it is not, then you are at best proven unreliable. The actions of the “Team” in filtering papers that try to get into such journals, and the consequences to those who doubt the “Climate Bible” and the editors who publish them are now well documented in books such as Andrew Montford’s “The Hockey Stick Illusion”, and the Mosher and Fuller book “Climategate: the CRUtape letters” . The "gatekeepers" to the journals are working hard to ensure that only their views are heard, thus the value of these books.
The DT illustrates, for example, the actions of Kevin Trenberth, who with little documented background knowledge in the area of the possible effects of climate change on hurricane intensity, led that chapter of the Climate Bible, and in the process over-rode the expert knowledge of Chris Landsea, who had commented “there are no known scientific studies that show a conclusive physical link between global warming and hurricane frequency and intensity.” (The full e-mail with this objection is a Webcite within the electronic version of the DT).
This really is a highly informative, well documented look at the IPCC which deserves wide distribution, and it should be read by all those who cite the IPCC as justification for a multiplicity of processes. Sadly to say, I rather doubt that it will get the hearing and the proper respect that is its due. What has become evident over time is that the pathways to “getting the word out” lies through a band of “environmental reporters” who would not have work if there were no “environmental crisis.” Rather than review opposing viewpoints or disquieting information, such as that found in this book, their practice has been to ignore the message in the hope that it will go away. After a while they can then say “oh, but it was brought up, and really it was but a storm in a teacup!” They then move on, blissful in their disregard for anything but to maintain a status quo that keeps them gainfully (???) employed.
I would however suggest that it is well worth taking the time to understand what foundation the IPCC is built on, because there is, in all things “ a time when all things come to those who wait.” And as the ball of that discontent grows you will be able to understand both its context, but also what other legs of straw will also fall, in time, as the edifice crumbles. This is a worthy beginning to that eventual result. It is unfortunate that the world could not hold out for a change in IPCC structure, that would allow the true picture to emerge, but as the book shows, the powers that are entrenched have their own agenda, and the controls to maintain it . . . for the present.
an update of knowledge on the scientific, technical and socio-economic aspects of climate change.Four reports have been issued to date, with work ongoing on the fifth, which is referred to as the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) and which will be released in the 2013/2014 timeframe. The book deals with the way in which the current report, AR4, released in 2007, and which might be considered the “Climate Bible” (Donna’s words) was compiled, and the makeup of the writing teams for AR5.
The work is widely reported as being that of the world’s experts in the different aspects of climate, and its impacts, with the assessment reports bringing those ideas together under the supervision of panels of additional experts in the various fields. Thus it is claimed to summarize the opinions of thousands of scientists and to mark the quintessence of thinking on the state-of-knowledge. With that reputation it is quoted as the justifying document for a wide ranging set of governmental actions around the globe, including the move by the EPA to control Greenhouse Gases, and for example, the moves in Europe to restrict the use of coal in power stations and to justify the increase in investment in wind and solar energy technologies.
But that curtain of respectability based on the “authority” of the authors has been shattered through the revelations of the book. And while it should be noted that many of the individual facts have been discussed in the past, they have never been chained together to shake the edifice so thoroughly and justifiably as is done here.
There are, of course, those who will denigrate the work, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has issued a press release in which if “refutes ‘ludicrous’ claims’ that it infiltrated the IPCC. However, the power of the book comes in the detail that allows me to look up the role of the WWF. Chapter 4 of the report of Working Group 2 deals with species extinctions, and it has five of the 10 most senior personnel affiliated with the WWF. The WWF has, as Donna notes (and details) worked to persuade IPCC authors to join one of its panels, and she goes on (in footnote 31-5) to list 78 IPCC personnel who have thus become involved. (Also on her Website). The facts deny the WWF protestations.
But it is in the revealed mediocrity and mendacious nature of the reports themselves that The DT is most disturbing. Rather than relying purely on the skilled knowledge of the world’s experts, and their papers, as the IPCC claims is the practice, considerably less upright behavior is documented throughout the book. Very junior scientists are recruited to draft significant portions of the material, and many documents used turn out to be from non-peer-reviewed sources. It is not that I am necessarily impressed with “peer review”, as an academic I have very mixed feelings about those who consider that nothing is established until it is in a peer-reviewed publication – despite physical evidence or other real world experience - but if you claim that the material is peer-reviewed and as is shown here it is not, then you are at best proven unreliable. The actions of the “Team” in filtering papers that try to get into such journals, and the consequences to those who doubt the “Climate Bible” and the editors who publish them are now well documented in books such as Andrew Montford’s “The Hockey Stick Illusion”, and the Mosher and Fuller book “Climategate: the CRUtape letters” . The "gatekeepers" to the journals are working hard to ensure that only their views are heard, thus the value of these books.
The DT illustrates, for example, the actions of Kevin Trenberth, who with little documented background knowledge in the area of the possible effects of climate change on hurricane intensity, led that chapter of the Climate Bible, and in the process over-rode the expert knowledge of Chris Landsea, who had commented “there are no known scientific studies that show a conclusive physical link between global warming and hurricane frequency and intensity.” (The full e-mail with this objection is a Webcite within the electronic version of the DT).
This really is a highly informative, well documented look at the IPCC which deserves wide distribution, and it should be read by all those who cite the IPCC as justification for a multiplicity of processes. Sadly to say, I rather doubt that it will get the hearing and the proper respect that is its due. What has become evident over time is that the pathways to “getting the word out” lies through a band of “environmental reporters” who would not have work if there were no “environmental crisis.” Rather than review opposing viewpoints or disquieting information, such as that found in this book, their practice has been to ignore the message in the hope that it will go away. After a while they can then say “oh, but it was brought up, and really it was but a storm in a teacup!” They then move on, blissful in their disregard for anything but to maintain a status quo that keeps them gainfully (???) employed.
I would however suggest that it is well worth taking the time to understand what foundation the IPCC is built on, because there is, in all things “ a time when all things come to those who wait.” And as the ball of that discontent grows you will be able to understand both its context, but also what other legs of straw will also fall, in time, as the edifice crumbles. This is a worthy beginning to that eventual result. It is unfortunate that the world could not hold out for a change in IPCC structure, that would allow the true picture to emerge, but as the book shows, the powers that are entrenched have their own agenda, and the controls to maintain it . . . for the present.
Read more!
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
The volcano in Iceland
The current volcanic eruption in Iceland raises a question of the Precautionary Principle but one calling for an opposing action to that most commonly sought in ameliorating damaging climate change. If I can summarize the situation in a somewhat condensed version, the current eruption in Iceland at the Eyjafjallajokull site has now been going on for a couple of days (video) and is throwing a plume of ash up to 5 miles into the overlying air.
View of the plume from the Eyjafjallajokull eruption (scienceblogs). More photos here
What should be a concern, it appears, however, is that this particular volcano, although in itself not that large, is often a precursor to the eruption of the Katla volcano, which is nearby but further north- east. While the current eruption started away from a glacier, the Katla lies under the Myrdalsjoekull glacier, and the precedents are not good.
The second Katla eruption has, historically, had much greater impacts since it has had the power to inject large volumes of particles and gases into the atmosphere that create a sufficiently dense cloud that sunlight is reduced, harvests are affected and famines result. For example when the nearby Laki fissures erupted in 1783 the results that were reported included:
(Sigurdsson 1982)
But it is not the fine particles that apparently cause the most climate impact, rather the large volumes of gases that also are ejected and turn into acid aerosols that contribute to the disastrous consequences. It has been projected that there were some 8 million tons of fluorine and 120 million tons of sulphur dioxide released. To put this in context, during the Mount Pinatubo eruption (which also had a short term cooling on global climate) the volcano is projected to have emitted some 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide and that this lowered the global temperature by perhaps 0.8 deg C in 1992. (The aerosols reflecting back more solar energy into space.)
Mount Pinatubo erupting (USGS photo)
The fissures themselves, from which the Laki lava flowed, stretch some 16- miles though not as a continuous crack, but rather the lava flowed from about 130 craters.
Laki craters (climate4you)
The general locations of the Katla to the earlier Laki and Eldgja eruptive flows is shown here:
Location of the Laki, Katla and Eldgja fissures, the current eruption is further south and west, on the hidden side of the Mydalsjokull glacier.
The severity of the impacts of these eruptions on the global climate and the resulting devastation on the harvests is a matter of record. We know that there are more coming, and, from past history the damage will be great.
That record suggests that there will soon be another serious eruption that, on past performance, will also eject large quantities of sulfur dioxide gases into the atmosphere and induce another period of cooling.
Since the previous evidence has shown that this cooling has not been good for the global health, perhaps it might be about time that folks started working on what can be done to stop, or collect these large volumes of gases before they become too predatory. Certainly the problem of neutralizing the gas or otherwise collecting it or storing it is significant (but then so is that for carbon dioxide). However we know where it is going to come from, and some of the mechanics of how it will migrate upwards. There are large unknowns in terms of how we might capture, control, or neutralize a lot of the acid-forming gasses, but the size of the problem has never stopped us before.
And if the problem were to be addressed by the nations of the world, perhaps we could, in time, assuage some of the known negative effects from the global cooling that we can now expect as the Icelandic eruption continues. This cooling may well already be more certain than near term global warming, and more immediately likely to occur, so under the same Precautionary Principles that are driving the huge investments in climate change already, ought we not be spending our time right now trying to find ways to stop the impact of these massive eruptions on the health of the globe.
Silly thought – but one that suggests that the problems don’t always only have one side, and that we might find out by visual observation the down-sides of too much cooling and its effect on people and agriculture, perhaps sooner than we would like.
View of the plume from the Eyjafjallajokull eruption (scienceblogs). More photos here What should be a concern, it appears, however, is that this particular volcano, although in itself not that large, is often a precursor to the eruption of the Katla volcano, which is nearby but further north- east. While the current eruption started away from a glacier, the Katla lies under the Myrdalsjoekull glacier, and the precedents are not good.
"Eyjafjallajokull has blown three times in the past thousand years," Dr McGarvie told The Times, "in 920AD, in 1612 and between 1821 and 1823. Each time it set off Katla." The likelihood of Katla blowing could become clear "in a few weeks or a few months", he said.
The second Katla eruption has, historically, had much greater impacts since it has had the power to inject large volumes of particles and gases into the atmosphere that create a sufficiently dense cloud that sunlight is reduced, harvests are affected and famines result. For example when the nearby Laki fissures erupted in 1783 the results that were reported included:
Iceland's Laki volcano erupted in 1783, freeing gases that turned into smog. The smog floated across the Jet Stream, changing weather patterns. Many died from gas poisoning in the British Isles. Crop production fell in western Europe. Famine spread. Some even linked the eruption, which helped fuel famine, to the French Revolution. Painters in the 18th century illustrated fiery sunsets in their works.The last eruption of Katla was not that severe, although there was severe flooding. But it can be violent, throwing large volumes of material into the air. The consequence of the Laki eruption of 1783-4 (it lasted for eight months and ejected over 9 cubic miles of basaltic lava and a quarter of the population of Iceland died from starvation, the effect on winter temperatures in the US was evident.
The winter of 1784 was also one of the longest and coldest on record in North America. New England reported a record stretch of below-zero temperatures and New Jersey reported record snow accumulation. The Mississippi River also reportedly froze in New Orleans.
(Sigurdsson 1982)But it is not the fine particles that apparently cause the most climate impact, rather the large volumes of gases that also are ejected and turn into acid aerosols that contribute to the disastrous consequences. It has been projected that there were some 8 million tons of fluorine and 120 million tons of sulphur dioxide released. To put this in context, during the Mount Pinatubo eruption (which also had a short term cooling on global climate) the volcano is projected to have emitted some 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide and that this lowered the global temperature by perhaps 0.8 deg C in 1992. (The aerosols reflecting back more solar energy into space.)
Mount Pinatubo erupting (USGS photo) The fissures themselves, from which the Laki lava flowed, stretch some 16- miles though not as a continuous crack, but rather the lava flowed from about 130 craters.
Laki craters (climate4you) The general locations of the Katla to the earlier Laki and Eldgja eruptive flows is shown here:
Location of the Laki, Katla and Eldgja fissures, the current eruption is further south and west, on the hidden side of the Mydalsjokull glacier.The severity of the impacts of these eruptions on the global climate and the resulting devastation on the harvests is a matter of record. We know that there are more coming, and, from past history the damage will be great.
That record suggests that there will soon be another serious eruption that, on past performance, will also eject large quantities of sulfur dioxide gases into the atmosphere and induce another period of cooling.
Since the previous evidence has shown that this cooling has not been good for the global health, perhaps it might be about time that folks started working on what can be done to stop, or collect these large volumes of gases before they become too predatory. Certainly the problem of neutralizing the gas or otherwise collecting it or storing it is significant (but then so is that for carbon dioxide). However we know where it is going to come from, and some of the mechanics of how it will migrate upwards. There are large unknowns in terms of how we might capture, control, or neutralize a lot of the acid-forming gasses, but the size of the problem has never stopped us before.
And if the problem were to be addressed by the nations of the world, perhaps we could, in time, assuage some of the known negative effects from the global cooling that we can now expect as the Icelandic eruption continues. This cooling may well already be more certain than near term global warming, and more immediately likely to occur, so under the same Precautionary Principles that are driving the huge investments in climate change already, ought we not be spending our time right now trying to find ways to stop the impact of these massive eruptions on the health of the globe.
Silly thought – but one that suggests that the problems don’t always only have one side, and that we might find out by visual observation the down-sides of too much cooling and its effect on people and agriculture, perhaps sooner than we would like.
Read more!
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Being a Climate Scientist for a day
So who is right, Phil Jones or Anthony Watts? Basically they disagree over the influence of town size on measured temperature. So being an experimentalist I wondered what I could do to check and see who was right. And, since this is something that you can do at home, I’m going to explain exactly what I did, since I only used the data from Missouri, and there is data available for all the states, so that those who want to can repeat for their state, what I did. (And for that reason I will explain it in excruciating detail).
Now, if you are going to analyze data it is a good idea to define what the questions are that you are seeking an answer to before you start. So let me state 3 initial hypotheses. The first is from Jones et al in 2007, which refers back to a paper by Karl and James in 1990, which says, in part
The second comes from the way in which the Goddard Institute for Space Sciences classifies site sizes, calling communities below 10,000 rural. So the hypothesis is that there is no change in temperature with population below a community size of 10,000.
And the third hypothesis comes from reading Anthony Watts, and it seems to me that if his finding about the deteriorating condition of weather stations holds true, then the scatter of the data should get worse with time. So my hypothesis is that the standard deviation of the results should increase with time.
OK so I have my hypotheses – where do I get my data (you also need to have a spread sheet program, I am going to use Microsoft Excel running on a Mac) and a state map (or equivalent source for town populations). As I said I am going to look at the data for Missouri, but before I get the data I need a table to put it into. So I open Excel and create the table I want. To do this I first type titles starting in square B3, and going sequentially down, inserting the titles Station; GISS; USHCN Code; Latitude; Longitude; Elevation; and Population. I then move to square A11, and type in Calendar Year. So we start with a table that looks like this:
I am going to be putting data in from 1895 to the year 2008, and so I put 1895 into square A12, and then (=A12+1) into square A13. Then I highlight from A13 to A125 and select “Fill down” from the EDIT menu at the top of the Excel page. This now puts the years to 2008 into the A column. So now I need to get the data to put into the table. To get this I go to the US Historical Climatology Network and select Missouri from the scrolling list on the top left of the page.
I then clicked on the Map Sites button to get to the data that I wanted.
The map that now comes up shows the 26 sites that are listed for which there are records going back to 1895 in Missouri. These are listed to the right, and if you click on any one of them then the identification for it shows on the main map. I have done that for the first site on the list, Appleton City, so that you can see what I mean.
From the map information I can get the USHCN Code (230204), the latitude, longitude and elevation of the site. So I can enter those below that station name in my table, which now looks like this:
Now I need the historic temperature data for that site, and to get this I click on the “Get Monthly Data” phrase in the map balloon. This takes me to a new window.
We need to have the data in a form that will fit into the EXCEL spreadsheet, so click on the middle line in the second set of options, to create a download file. This drops you down to the bottom half of the page, and what we want (for today) is the Annual Average Mean Temperature, which is on the upper half of the screen, so I click on that box (a tick mark appears). Then I press on the submit button.
This brings up a response, which tells you the name of the file that will be downloaded to your computer, when you click the blue line, which I did.
This is the data that you want from the file (and why I included the site number when I made the table, so that I could check that I was getting each range copied into the right column, and that when I was finished I had data from all the sites). The file is downloaded into your downloads file on your computer, and when you open it in EXCEL, you get:
The data that you want is in the third column (C ) and you want to make sure that you have the Annual Average Temp so C2 should read as shown. Copy the numbers in the column (Select C3 to C116 and copy or command C). Then re-open the initial EXCEL page where we are storing the data (I call mine Missouri Annual Temp, so I will refer to it as the MAT page from now on). Place the cursor on box C13 and tell the computer to Paste (either from the Edit menu or by using command V). You should get the data pasted into the spreadsheet, as I have shown.
This is the information for the first site, and should fill down to C126. It is now a good idea to save the file.
Now we go back to the USHCN page, close the window that had the data file on it, and you should be looking at the map and list of sites again. Now select the second name on the list (in this case Bowling Green) and repeat the steps to input the site information to the spreadsheet, then select Monthly Data, and the Annual Average Mean Temperature, download the file and copy the information, and then paste it into the spreadsheet.
Keep doing this as you work down the list of stations and by the end you should have 26 station records (if you are doing Missouri – the numbers vary – Illinois has 36 for example). The right end of the EXCEL file now looks like this (except that I have put in some information in boxes W4 and Y4 that I will explain in a minute).
(and the files extend down to row 126).
Now I need the information on population, and for that I went to the State Map (since it has it all in one place), and by each town there is the population from the 2000 Census). So I then inserted this set of numbers as I moved along row 9. I had a problem when I got to Steffenville, since no population is shown. So I went to Google Earth and had a look at the place. It looks as though there is perhaps a dozen or so houses there, so I gave it a population of 30, and for Truman Dam, looking it up on Google, the Corps of Engineers Office is in Web City, so I used the population of that town for the station.
Now I’m not quite done getting data, since the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, GISS, actually doesn’t use any of these, but uses information from three of the largest cities in the state, Columbia, Springfield and Saint Louis. So I need to get the data that they use, but since they record the data in degrees C, and the rest are in degrees F, I don’t want to put their data right next to the information in the table, so while I create the station names, and put them in boxes AC3, AD4 and AE4 I am going to create the initial data columns further over in the table (actually in columns AN, AO and AP) so that after I insert the numbers I can convert them back to Farenheit.
So where do I get the GISS temperatures? Unfortunately I have forgotten the exact route I used, but you can start with the GISTEMP Station Selector page and if you click on the shape of Missouri on the map
You will get a list of the stations that they have in Missouri, though, as I said above, apparently they only use 3 of them - in part because some of the other series are not complete. (I am only going to show the top of the list down past Columbia. ) You click on the name of the station you want (we are going to use the three listed above, so the procedure is the same for each from this point).
Clicking on the station, at GISS, gives you a plot of the average temperature over the past , but you need to go one step further and click on the bottom phrase of those shown to get to the data page. Oh, and it is this page, with the populations that are less than 10,000 being considered as rural, that gave rise to the second hypothesis that we are testing. (Which I guess you might call the “and is James Hansen right?” corollary to the initial question I asked).
And being their usual helpful selves this is not easily downloadable into our table. So, having no other way to proceed, I hand-downloaded the info that I wanted into the table. I have only shown the top of the table, and the numbers that I want started out in the column on the far end, but, as I explain below, I changed the array (If you are doing this, the table can be stretched so that all the data for one year are on a single line, and then you need the data in the far right column). So the data that I am inserting in a column, starting in box AN13 is the metANN (mean temperature Annual) data. (Small hint, to check that I had the years and data correct I squeezed the frame down so that the row data for a year appeared in 2 rows with the metANN in the second row one column over, as shown, and I started with 1895 (12.05) to be consistent with the other tabulated values. (And I only copied the left half of the screen that contains what I need).
This took a little while, since the data had to be hand entered for all three sites, but after maybe an hour (remember I titled this a day as a climate scientist – this is why), we have the data from the three sites that GISS uses in Missouri entered into the table, in Centigrade. The latitude and longitude aren’t given quite as precisely, we don’t have heights, and the population values don’t match the census, but this is the GISS data, and we gratefully take what we are given.
Now we need to go over to the initial columns for these stations (AC to AE) and insert the same data, converted to deg F. (so box AC13 has the equation = 32+(AN13*9/5)). Then I filled down from AC13 to AC126, and then filled right AC to AE, and the conversion was done). In the new columns I also entered the 2000 census data for the three sites, rather than the GISS values.
Now I have the raw data that I need to do the analysis. As they say most research is in the preparation, the fun part comes a lot more rapidly. To get to that we need to add just a few calculation steps into the raw data table. The first one that I am going to add is to simply take three different sets of averages. The first is for each year for the USHCN data without the GISS stations, the second is each year for the GISS stations, and the third is for each station over the full period of the data set. (I am not going to show the screens for this since they are rather straightforward.)
To get the first average I go to column AG – call it Historic ave, without GISS) and in AG13 type =SUM(C13:AB13)/26 which calculates the average or mean value. Then I select from AG13 to AG126 and fill down from the EDIT menu. That gives me the average annual temp for the USHCN data. Then I add, in column AH, which I call Standard Deviation, and in box AH13 a statistical formula (that I get from the Insert menu > Function > STDEV ). This puts =STDEV() into the box, and I give it the range I want examined by either selecting all the boxes from C13 to AE13. Or typing that in, so that the box reads =STDEV(C13:AE13) and click ENTER. This gives me a measure of the scatter in the data for the year 1895. I then select the boxes AH13 to AH126 and filled down. This now has tabulated the change in the scatter of the data over the last 113 years. (And I’ll come back to this in a minute).
Now I want the average of the GISS stations, so I created this in column AJ, typing the formula =(AC13+AD13+AE13)/3 into that box. Then, as before, selecting and filling down the column. And then there is a final column – which I call Difference, which is the difference between the Historic data set and the GISS set. That is created in column AL, and is simply typed into AL13 as =AJ13 – AG13, then filled down to AL129. (It is extended to include the average values that are calculated next). And to provide the overall average for the state I combined all 29 station data into a combined average in column AF.
And the individual station averages are created by typing =sum(c13:C126)/114 into box C129, and then filling that right to column AG129. This formula can then be copied and pasted into box AJ129 to give the average value over the years for the stations that GISS relies on. And immediately it is clear, by looking at box AL129 that there is an average difference, over the years, of 1.19 deg F between the stations that GISS are using, which are in the larger cities, and those of the more rural stations in Missouri. (Which would seem to validate the criticism from E.M. Smith, but that, as they used to say in debate, “is not the question before the house.”)
Now you are going to have to take my word for this, but when I started making this data set I had no knowledge as to how it would turn out, though I had some expectations. Let us now see what happens when we plot the data. (I am going to use the charting function of EXCEL, and add trendlines to the data, with equations and the r-squared value, so that we can see what is happening, since the data is scattered about a bit on each individual plot).
So the first hypothesis we wanted to verify was - the rate of warming does not significantly change, as a function of the size of the community around the weather station. Given that the historic average is for smaller stations and the GISS average is for the larger communities, this would, initially suggest that a plot of difference against time should show no change, if this hypothesis is true.
(Plot of column AL against A)
Well this shows that the difference has been getting less, rather than increasing – which, if anything I suppose initially supports the hypothesis. But out of curiosity I wondered how much temperature change we have had, since the actual relationship hypothesized was about rates of change. So let’s plot average temperature against time.
Now if you look at that plot Missouri has had quite a wimpy warming, less than half a degree F over a hundred and fifteen years, so given that small range, detecting changes in the rates is perhaps not feasible. But let’s plot the difference as a function of temperature just to see if there is anything.
And still it goes down? Wonder if that is trying to tell us something?
Moving on to the second hypothesis, which comes from GISS, and is that temperature is insensitive to adjacent population below a community size of 10,000 folk. This is a plot of row 129 plotted against row 9. I am going to show the plot twice. The first time I am using a log scale for the horizontal axis to cover the range from a population of 30 to that of over a million.
And now I am going to change the scale so that the horizontal scale is linear, and truncate it so that it only shows the data up to a population of 50,000.
Notice how the temperature is much more sensitive to population BELOW a population of 10,000 relative to the sensitivity above that size. Thus the assumption that GISS makes in classifying every town below 10,000 as rural without any sensitivity to population is clearly not correct.
And interestingly this also possibly explains the decline in the temperature difference with time (although it would require inputting data from earlier years census to fully explore the topic). The assumption behind the first two hypotheses was that the larger towns had a greater sensitivity to urban heat, which is getting worse, but in reality, if the smaller towns were growing faster (and require less population change to have an impact on the measured temperature) then they would be gaining temperature, because of that growth, faster than the urban sites – hence the negative slope to the graph.
Which brings me to my hypothesis that the scatter in the data would get larger with time, given the deterioration and urbanization around the weather stations. By using standard deviation to illustrate scatter, the plot, if I am right should have an upward slope, over time.
Hmm! Well it looks as though I got that wrong – it was heading the way I thought until the 1940’s and then it started to bend the other way. Apparently the change from glass thermometers to the automated Maximum/Minimum Temperature System (MMTS) started about then and the changing shape of the curve is perhaps indicative of the spread of the new system.
In all these graphs it should be borne in mind that Missouri has had a relatively stable climate over the past hundred and fifteen years or so. There are also likely influences across the state due to changes in latitude and longitude. And since, with the data table assembled, generating additional plots is easy and relatively fast, we can take a look. It turns out that Longitude doesn’t have that much effect, but the temperature values are much more sensitive to Latitude than anything else that we have discussed.
And it may well be that dependence that hides some of the nuances of the other relationships.
Well there we are, a little exercise in climate science. Of the three hypotheses we looked into, it turned out that the second and third were wrong, and because of that it may be that the data on which the first was based was not focused sufficiently on the changes in the small size of some of the communities (if the sensitivity gets less above a town size of perhaps 15,000.
The procedures that I spelled out in such detail should allow anyone else to run this same series of steps to determine if what I found for Missouri holds true over other states in the Union, and if anyone wants a copy of the spreadsheet, let me know where to send it through comments. (While yes I work at a University and yes I acquire data, I have no clue how to store it on the master servers –all of ours, for lots of good reasons, are stored otherwise, and so I don’t know how to make the file available in other ways than by attaching it to an e-mail).
And so to summarize the exercise, which as I noted in the title took me about a day to do and write up – by analyzing the data from 29 weather stations in Missouri, which have a continuous record of temperature from 1895 to 2008 (and are still running I assume) we have shown that
a) It is not possible to decide if Anthony Watts or Phil Jones is correct, since there may have been an incorrect assumption made in the data collection, which (conclusion b) means that the wrong initial assumptions were made in parsing the data.
b) The assumption that the “urban heat island” effect gets greater with larger conurbations is not correct in Missouri, where the data suggests that the sensitivity is most critical as the community grows to a size of 15,000 people.
c) The hypothesis that the data scatter gets worse with time because of deterioration in station conditions does not hold in Missouri, when the assumption is predicated on increase in the standard deviation of the readout between stations in a community. However this assumption may have been valid where reliance was placed on glass thermometers, since it is possible that the change to automated instrumentation has, at least for the present, over-ridden that deterioration.
So much for my venture into climate science, at least for now. I just wanted to show that it is not that difficult to check things out for yourself, and, provided you have the time, it can yield some unexpected results. (Though I should point out that Anthony Watts and Joseph D’Aleo quoted Oke in their report on surface temperature records, (page 34)
Which is the other thing that you learn when doing research, most of the time someone else has been there before you, and there is little that is new, under the sun.
* Oke, T.R. 1973. City size and the urban heat island. Atmospheric Environment 7: 769-779.
Now, if you are going to analyze data it is a good idea to define what the questions are that you are seeking an answer to before you start. So let me state 3 initial hypotheses. The first is from Jones et al in 2007, which refers back to a paper by Karl and James in 1990, which says, in part
If the Canadian stations behave similarly to stations in the United States, the decrease of the DTR (diurnal temperature range) may be exaggerated by about 0.1 dg C due to urbanization.This correlates with the 2007 paper which says
Urban-related warming over China is shown to be about 0.1°C/ decade over the period 1951–2004, with true climatic warming accounting for 0.81°C over this period.So the hypothesis is that the rate of warming does not significantly change, as a function of the size of the community around the weather station.
The second comes from the way in which the Goddard Institute for Space Sciences classifies site sizes, calling communities below 10,000 rural. So the hypothesis is that there is no change in temperature with population below a community size of 10,000.
And the third hypothesis comes from reading Anthony Watts, and it seems to me that if his finding about the deteriorating condition of weather stations holds true, then the scatter of the data should get worse with time. So my hypothesis is that the standard deviation of the results should increase with time.
OK so I have my hypotheses – where do I get my data (you also need to have a spread sheet program, I am going to use Microsoft Excel running on a Mac) and a state map (or equivalent source for town populations). As I said I am going to look at the data for Missouri, but before I get the data I need a table to put it into. So I open Excel and create the table I want. To do this I first type titles starting in square B3, and going sequentially down, inserting the titles Station; GISS; USHCN Code; Latitude; Longitude; Elevation; and Population. I then move to square A11, and type in Calendar Year. So we start with a table that looks like this:
I am going to be putting data in from 1895 to the year 2008, and so I put 1895 into square A12, and then (=A12+1) into square A13. Then I highlight from A13 to A125 and select “Fill down” from the EDIT menu at the top of the Excel page. This now puts the years to 2008 into the A column. So now I need to get the data to put into the table. To get this I go to the US Historical Climatology Network and select Missouri from the scrolling list on the top left of the page.
I then clicked on the Map Sites button to get to the data that I wanted.
The map that now comes up shows the 26 sites that are listed for which there are records going back to 1895 in Missouri. These are listed to the right, and if you click on any one of them then the identification for it shows on the main map. I have done that for the first site on the list, Appleton City, so that you can see what I mean.
From the map information I can get the USHCN Code (230204), the latitude, longitude and elevation of the site. So I can enter those below that station name in my table, which now looks like this:
Now I need the historic temperature data for that site, and to get this I click on the “Get Monthly Data” phrase in the map balloon. This takes me to a new window.
We need to have the data in a form that will fit into the EXCEL spreadsheet, so click on the middle line in the second set of options, to create a download file. This drops you down to the bottom half of the page, and what we want (for today) is the Annual Average Mean Temperature, which is on the upper half of the screen, so I click on that box (a tick mark appears). Then I press on the submit button.
This brings up a response, which tells you the name of the file that will be downloaded to your computer, when you click the blue line, which I did.
This is the data that you want from the file (and why I included the site number when I made the table, so that I could check that I was getting each range copied into the right column, and that when I was finished I had data from all the sites). The file is downloaded into your downloads file on your computer, and when you open it in EXCEL, you get:
The data that you want is in the third column (C ) and you want to make sure that you have the Annual Average Temp so C2 should read as shown. Copy the numbers in the column (Select C3 to C116 and copy or command C). Then re-open the initial EXCEL page where we are storing the data (I call mine Missouri Annual Temp, so I will refer to it as the MAT page from now on). Place the cursor on box C13 and tell the computer to Paste (either from the Edit menu or by using command V). You should get the data pasted into the spreadsheet, as I have shown.
This is the information for the first site, and should fill down to C126. It is now a good idea to save the file.
Now we go back to the USHCN page, close the window that had the data file on it, and you should be looking at the map and list of sites again. Now select the second name on the list (in this case Bowling Green) and repeat the steps to input the site information to the spreadsheet, then select Monthly Data, and the Annual Average Mean Temperature, download the file and copy the information, and then paste it into the spreadsheet.
Keep doing this as you work down the list of stations and by the end you should have 26 station records (if you are doing Missouri – the numbers vary – Illinois has 36 for example). The right end of the EXCEL file now looks like this (except that I have put in some information in boxes W4 and Y4 that I will explain in a minute).
(and the files extend down to row 126). Now I need the information on population, and for that I went to the State Map (since it has it all in one place), and by each town there is the population from the 2000 Census). So I then inserted this set of numbers as I moved along row 9. I had a problem when I got to Steffenville, since no population is shown. So I went to Google Earth and had a look at the place. It looks as though there is perhaps a dozen or so houses there, so I gave it a population of 30, and for Truman Dam, looking it up on Google, the Corps of Engineers Office is in Web City, so I used the population of that town for the station.
Now I’m not quite done getting data, since the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, GISS, actually doesn’t use any of these, but uses information from three of the largest cities in the state, Columbia, Springfield and Saint Louis. So I need to get the data that they use, but since they record the data in degrees C, and the rest are in degrees F, I don’t want to put their data right next to the information in the table, so while I create the station names, and put them in boxes AC3, AD4 and AE4 I am going to create the initial data columns further over in the table (actually in columns AN, AO and AP) so that after I insert the numbers I can convert them back to Farenheit.
So where do I get the GISS temperatures? Unfortunately I have forgotten the exact route I used, but you can start with the GISTEMP Station Selector page and if you click on the shape of Missouri on the map
You will get a list of the stations that they have in Missouri, though, as I said above, apparently they only use 3 of them - in part because some of the other series are not complete. (I am only going to show the top of the list down past Columbia. ) You click on the name of the station you want (we are going to use the three listed above, so the procedure is the same for each from this point).
Clicking on the station, at GISS, gives you a plot of the average temperature over the past , but you need to go one step further and click on the bottom phrase of those shown to get to the data page. Oh, and it is this page, with the populations that are less than 10,000 being considered as rural, that gave rise to the second hypothesis that we are testing. (Which I guess you might call the “and is James Hansen right?” corollary to the initial question I asked).
And being their usual helpful selves this is not easily downloadable into our table. So, having no other way to proceed, I hand-downloaded the info that I wanted into the table. I have only shown the top of the table, and the numbers that I want started out in the column on the far end, but, as I explain below, I changed the array (If you are doing this, the table can be stretched so that all the data for one year are on a single line, and then you need the data in the far right column). So the data that I am inserting in a column, starting in box AN13 is the metANN (mean temperature Annual) data. (Small hint, to check that I had the years and data correct I squeezed the frame down so that the row data for a year appeared in 2 rows with the metANN in the second row one column over, as shown, and I started with 1895 (12.05) to be consistent with the other tabulated values. (And I only copied the left half of the screen that contains what I need).
This took a little while, since the data had to be hand entered for all three sites, but after maybe an hour (remember I titled this a day as a climate scientist – this is why), we have the data from the three sites that GISS uses in Missouri entered into the table, in Centigrade. The latitude and longitude aren’t given quite as precisely, we don’t have heights, and the population values don’t match the census, but this is the GISS data, and we gratefully take what we are given.
Now we need to go over to the initial columns for these stations (AC to AE) and insert the same data, converted to deg F. (so box AC13 has the equation = 32+(AN13*9/5)). Then I filled down from AC13 to AC126, and then filled right AC to AE, and the conversion was done). In the new columns I also entered the 2000 census data for the three sites, rather than the GISS values.
Now I have the raw data that I need to do the analysis. As they say most research is in the preparation, the fun part comes a lot more rapidly. To get to that we need to add just a few calculation steps into the raw data table. The first one that I am going to add is to simply take three different sets of averages. The first is for each year for the USHCN data without the GISS stations, the second is each year for the GISS stations, and the third is for each station over the full period of the data set. (I am not going to show the screens for this since they are rather straightforward.)
To get the first average I go to column AG – call it Historic ave, without GISS) and in AG13 type =SUM(C13:AB13)/26 which calculates the average or mean value. Then I select from AG13 to AG126 and fill down from the EDIT menu. That gives me the average annual temp for the USHCN data. Then I add, in column AH, which I call Standard Deviation, and in box AH13 a statistical formula (that I get from the Insert menu > Function > STDEV ). This puts =STDEV() into the box, and I give it the range I want examined by either selecting all the boxes from C13 to AE13. Or typing that in, so that the box reads =STDEV(C13:AE13) and click ENTER. This gives me a measure of the scatter in the data for the year 1895. I then select the boxes AH13 to AH126 and filled down. This now has tabulated the change in the scatter of the data over the last 113 years. (And I’ll come back to this in a minute).
Now I want the average of the GISS stations, so I created this in column AJ, typing the formula =(AC13+AD13+AE13)/3 into that box. Then, as before, selecting and filling down the column. And then there is a final column – which I call Difference, which is the difference between the Historic data set and the GISS set. That is created in column AL, and is simply typed into AL13 as =AJ13 – AG13, then filled down to AL129. (It is extended to include the average values that are calculated next). And to provide the overall average for the state I combined all 29 station data into a combined average in column AF.
And the individual station averages are created by typing =sum(c13:C126)/114 into box C129, and then filling that right to column AG129. This formula can then be copied and pasted into box AJ129 to give the average value over the years for the stations that GISS relies on. And immediately it is clear, by looking at box AL129 that there is an average difference, over the years, of 1.19 deg F between the stations that GISS are using, which are in the larger cities, and those of the more rural stations in Missouri. (Which would seem to validate the criticism from E.M. Smith, but that, as they used to say in debate, “is not the question before the house.”)
Now you are going to have to take my word for this, but when I started making this data set I had no knowledge as to how it would turn out, though I had some expectations. Let us now see what happens when we plot the data. (I am going to use the charting function of EXCEL, and add trendlines to the data, with equations and the r-squared value, so that we can see what is happening, since the data is scattered about a bit on each individual plot).
So the first hypothesis we wanted to verify was - the rate of warming does not significantly change, as a function of the size of the community around the weather station. Given that the historic average is for smaller stations and the GISS average is for the larger communities, this would, initially suggest that a plot of difference against time should show no change, if this hypothesis is true.
(Plot of column AL against A)
Well this shows that the difference has been getting less, rather than increasing – which, if anything I suppose initially supports the hypothesis. But out of curiosity I wondered how much temperature change we have had, since the actual relationship hypothesized was about rates of change. So let’s plot average temperature against time.
Now if you look at that plot Missouri has had quite a wimpy warming, less than half a degree F over a hundred and fifteen years, so given that small range, detecting changes in the rates is perhaps not feasible. But let’s plot the difference as a function of temperature just to see if there is anything.
And still it goes down? Wonder if that is trying to tell us something?
Moving on to the second hypothesis, which comes from GISS, and is that temperature is insensitive to adjacent population below a community size of 10,000 folk. This is a plot of row 129 plotted against row 9. I am going to show the plot twice. The first time I am using a log scale for the horizontal axis to cover the range from a population of 30 to that of over a million.
And now I am going to change the scale so that the horizontal scale is linear, and truncate it so that it only shows the data up to a population of 50,000.
Notice how the temperature is much more sensitive to population BELOW a population of 10,000 relative to the sensitivity above that size. Thus the assumption that GISS makes in classifying every town below 10,000 as rural without any sensitivity to population is clearly not correct.
And interestingly this also possibly explains the decline in the temperature difference with time (although it would require inputting data from earlier years census to fully explore the topic). The assumption behind the first two hypotheses was that the larger towns had a greater sensitivity to urban heat, which is getting worse, but in reality, if the smaller towns were growing faster (and require less population change to have an impact on the measured temperature) then they would be gaining temperature, because of that growth, faster than the urban sites – hence the negative slope to the graph.
Which brings me to my hypothesis that the scatter in the data would get larger with time, given the deterioration and urbanization around the weather stations. By using standard deviation to illustrate scatter, the plot, if I am right should have an upward slope, over time.
Hmm! Well it looks as though I got that wrong – it was heading the way I thought until the 1940’s and then it started to bend the other way. Apparently the change from glass thermometers to the automated Maximum/Minimum Temperature System (MMTS) started about then and the changing shape of the curve is perhaps indicative of the spread of the new system.
In all these graphs it should be borne in mind that Missouri has had a relatively stable climate over the past hundred and fifteen years or so. There are also likely influences across the state due to changes in latitude and longitude. And since, with the data table assembled, generating additional plots is easy and relatively fast, we can take a look. It turns out that Longitude doesn’t have that much effect, but the temperature values are much more sensitive to Latitude than anything else that we have discussed.
And it may well be that dependence that hides some of the nuances of the other relationships.
Well there we are, a little exercise in climate science. Of the three hypotheses we looked into, it turned out that the second and third were wrong, and because of that it may be that the data on which the first was based was not focused sufficiently on the changes in the small size of some of the communities (if the sensitivity gets less above a town size of perhaps 15,000.
The procedures that I spelled out in such detail should allow anyone else to run this same series of steps to determine if what I found for Missouri holds true over other states in the Union, and if anyone wants a copy of the spreadsheet, let me know where to send it through comments. (While yes I work at a University and yes I acquire data, I have no clue how to store it on the master servers –all of ours, for lots of good reasons, are stored otherwise, and so I don’t know how to make the file available in other ways than by attaching it to an e-mail).
And so to summarize the exercise, which as I noted in the title took me about a day to do and write up – by analyzing the data from 29 weather stations in Missouri, which have a continuous record of temperature from 1895 to 2008 (and are still running I assume) we have shown that
a) It is not possible to decide if Anthony Watts or Phil Jones is correct, since there may have been an incorrect assumption made in the data collection, which (conclusion b) means that the wrong initial assumptions were made in parsing the data.
b) The assumption that the “urban heat island” effect gets greater with larger conurbations is not correct in Missouri, where the data suggests that the sensitivity is most critical as the community grows to a size of 15,000 people.
c) The hypothesis that the data scatter gets worse with time because of deterioration in station conditions does not hold in Missouri, when the assumption is predicated on increase in the standard deviation of the readout between stations in a community. However this assumption may have been valid where reliance was placed on glass thermometers, since it is possible that the change to automated instrumentation has, at least for the present, over-ridden that deterioration.
So much for my venture into climate science, at least for now. I just wanted to show that it is not that difficult to check things out for yourself, and, provided you have the time, it can yield some unexpected results. (Though I should point out that Anthony Watts and Joseph D’Aleo quoted Oke in their report on surface temperature records, (page 34)
Oke (1973) * found that the urban heat-island (in °C) increases according to the formula –It is interesting to note that his coefficient is 0.317 and the one I found is 0.396.
➢ Urban heat-island warming = 0.317 ln P, where P = population.
Thus a village with a population of 10 has a warm bias of 0.73°C. A village with 100 has a warm bias of 1.46°C and a town with a population of 1000 people has a warm bias of 2.2°C. A large city with a million people has a warm bias of 4.4°C.
Which is the other thing that you learn when doing research, most of the time someone else has been there before you, and there is little that is new, under the sun.
* Oke, T.R. 1973. City size and the urban heat island. Atmospheric Environment 7: 769-779.
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Saturday, January 9, 2010
The CIA, Climate Change, and the Booker and Plimer books
Thanks to Bruce Everett I gather that just when there are concerns about how well we are handling the war on terror, the CIA is being diverted to look at the evidence for climate change. Now I don’t have any problem with folks making use of data that was acquired while the CIA was carrying out their main responsibility. If the pictures of Afghanistan, for example, looking for terror camps could also monitor where the ice fields are and this can be given to those working in the field then that is a good thing. Afghanistan has a problem with water shortages, and there could be good reason for the CIA to be aware of some of those issues.
However the claim by some of the participants that the program is basically “free” appears to be a bit of an overstatement. And there is more to it than the initial statements would imply.
A report from 2006 notes that rural electricity reaches only 20% of the population.
I read a couple of books over the holidays, the first, which I highly recommend is Christopher Booker’s “The Real Global Warming Disaster.” For those who are less cynical of the AGW arguments there is a contrasting review at the Guardian, but that review highlights the way in which those whom I now refer to as the distorters argue when faced with a straightforward investigative report of the evolution of the climate change movement. The book is a very readable and documented assembly of fact leading up to the mess that the United Kingdom Government is rapidly getting itself into with its future plans for energy supply, as it tries to meet EC regulations and its own promises for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
The Guardian criticism on the other hand (bearing in mind that Mr. Booker writes for one of their rivals – the Telegraph – in the UK) is the more typical generic global warming diatribe. It is headed with a picture from New Orleans after Katrina hit (a characteristic choice typical of the fear-mongering and “grab anything scary” mentality of the distorters, but given the lack of hurricanes striking the USA last year after AGW proponents had forecast greater damage and frequency of such hurricanes perhaps becoming a bit of an embarrassing one). It is however interesting to read the Guardian comment on the hockey stick graph from Professor Mann.
Go read the book, I enjoyed it and it was informative.
On the other hand I also am plodding through “Heaven and Earth” by Ian Plimer, which has been acclaimed as providing the “missing science” to the global warming debate. And it does, but largely by bringing together the facts in the 2,311 articles and references that have information that relates to the global warming debate. The problem with trying to integrate such a voluminous amount of material is that it means that there are roughly four different references to a page and thus the information from any one of them can only be slightly discussed as it is integrated into the greater whole.
As a result the book reads much more like one of the dusty textbooks that I used to have to struggle through in an earlier part of my life. The facts are there, they are relatively well assembled, so that if I want to know more about the relative elevation of land after the passing of the great ice sheets from most of Europe the information is collated, there are a couple of contour maps, and there are the references. But while the subject of land subsidence, rather than sea-level rise is covered, and combined with a very brief history of the Thames (which explains in very brief passing why the Thames Barrier has to be raised more frequently with time), the subject is not described in much detail. There is so much that has to be covered, that the pace of the book ends up being too fast, and topics such as that, which could stand more discussion, are already left behind. Of course in covering such a broad field, had that type of coverage been given then the book would likely have been at least three times as thick. The provision of so many references does, however, provide a body of fact, which is as with Booker's book, met with significant criticism not all of which was as well based in the facts, which the book in general provides, either directly or through reference.
And the problem that this can get Professor Plimer into is that because it is such a great compendium of information, it is difficult for him to cover any specific area of the topic in enough detail to get much beyond the superficial comment. And this is a pity because the topics are sometimes covered so rapidly that it is hard to grasp all the meanings of the information, although the references are there so one can follow up on areas where there are questions.
It will probably end up on my reference shelf, not so much for what it says, but so that, when there is a question on a particular topic I can find the references that he uses and chase them up to get the more detailed information that I am looking for.
However the claim by some of the participants that the program is basically “free” appears to be a bit of an overstatement. And there is more to it than the initial statements would imply.
The monitoring program has little or no impact on regular intelligence gathering, federal officials said, but instead releases secret information already collected or takes advantage of opportunities to record environmental data when classified sensors are otherwise idle or passing over wilderness.Since it appears that there is more involvement by the CIA than just passing over some pictures.
Controversy has often dogged the use of federal intelligence gear for environmental monitoring. In October, days after the C.I.A. opened a small unit to assess the security implications of climate change, Senator John Barrasso, Republican of Wyoming, said the agency should be fighting terrorists, “not spying on sea lions.”So that there is the cost and opportunity cost for that group which I suspect does not come for nothing. And thus to the comment from Congresswoman Jane Harman (D-CA), the Chairman of the House Intelligence Subcommittee, who apparently said
“If you really want to understand where al-Qaida and other bad guys are going to move next, one of the things you have to understand is climate change. Famine and drought cause human migration and poverty. That creates pockets where terrorists can organize.”I rather suspect that the problems that the terrorists are more able to exploit are those such as the power shortages in countries such as Pakistan, that I have written about before, where load shedding of up to 9 hours a day is already occurring, or the lack of electric power (and the benefits that it brings) in countries such as Yemen.
A report from 2006 notes that rural electricity reaches only 20% of the population.
The low access and the absence of reliable electricity supply have been recognized as severe constraints to economic growth in Yemen, and to the achievement of the Government of Yemen’s poverty alleviation objectives.It ranks far down the list of nations, on a par with Haiti, and just ahead of Bangladesh and Sudan. Yet such is the focus of the current Administration on Climate Change – despite the growing evidence that the whole program needs a serious review to determine how honest it has been – that more critical concerns are getting subsumed below that effort. And if these involve the diversion of CIA time and effort then it goes beyond just being dumb.
I read a couple of books over the holidays, the first, which I highly recommend is Christopher Booker’s “The Real Global Warming Disaster.” For those who are less cynical of the AGW arguments there is a contrasting review at the Guardian, but that review highlights the way in which those whom I now refer to as the distorters argue when faced with a straightforward investigative report of the evolution of the climate change movement. The book is a very readable and documented assembly of fact leading up to the mess that the United Kingdom Government is rapidly getting itself into with its future plans for energy supply, as it tries to meet EC regulations and its own promises for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
The Guardian criticism on the other hand (bearing in mind that Mr. Booker writes for one of their rivals – the Telegraph – in the UK) is the more typical generic global warming diatribe. It is headed with a picture from New Orleans after Katrina hit (a characteristic choice typical of the fear-mongering and “grab anything scary” mentality of the distorters, but given the lack of hurricanes striking the USA last year after AGW proponents had forecast greater damage and frequency of such hurricanes perhaps becoming a bit of an embarrassing one). It is however interesting to read the Guardian comment on the hockey stick graph from Professor Mann.
Predictably, he attacks the infamous "hockey stick" graph, a plot of global mean temperatures over the past 1,000 years produced by two scientists in 1998 which shows little change for the entire period until suddenly soaring in the 20th century.Somehow I don’t recall seeing that admission in any Guardian headline. And the Guardian article, rather than specific detailed criticism of the facts in the book (there aren’t any given) relies on “trust me” and “all those scientists couldn’t be wrong.”
It is now mostly accepted that the analysis that produced these data was wrong.
Go read the book, I enjoyed it and it was informative.
On the other hand I also am plodding through “Heaven and Earth” by Ian Plimer, which has been acclaimed as providing the “missing science” to the global warming debate. And it does, but largely by bringing together the facts in the 2,311 articles and references that have information that relates to the global warming debate. The problem with trying to integrate such a voluminous amount of material is that it means that there are roughly four different references to a page and thus the information from any one of them can only be slightly discussed as it is integrated into the greater whole.
As a result the book reads much more like one of the dusty textbooks that I used to have to struggle through in an earlier part of my life. The facts are there, they are relatively well assembled, so that if I want to know more about the relative elevation of land after the passing of the great ice sheets from most of Europe the information is collated, there are a couple of contour maps, and there are the references. But while the subject of land subsidence, rather than sea-level rise is covered, and combined with a very brief history of the Thames (which explains in very brief passing why the Thames Barrier has to be raised more frequently with time), the subject is not described in much detail. There is so much that has to be covered, that the pace of the book ends up being too fast, and topics such as that, which could stand more discussion, are already left behind. Of course in covering such a broad field, had that type of coverage been given then the book would likely have been at least three times as thick. The provision of so many references does, however, provide a body of fact, which is as with Booker's book, met with significant criticism not all of which was as well based in the facts, which the book in general provides, either directly or through reference.
And the problem that this can get Professor Plimer into is that because it is such a great compendium of information, it is difficult for him to cover any specific area of the topic in enough detail to get much beyond the superficial comment. And this is a pity because the topics are sometimes covered so rapidly that it is hard to grasp all the meanings of the information, although the references are there so one can follow up on areas where there are questions.
It will probably end up on my reference shelf, not so much for what it says, but so that, when there is a question on a particular topic I can find the references that he uses and chase them up to get the more detailed information that I am looking for.
Read more!
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