A common question from AGW "skeptics" is why it was so hot in the middle of the 20th century. This is a neat model, (sorry it is so small, click the acknowlegment for the original).
This shows how, contrary to the skeptics' claims, climate models do include all factors, and that they produce a good match to the data. Not perfect, because nothing is perfect.
Monday, December 07, 2009
Petroleum: Decision under uncertainty.
Hunting for the answer to the question, "What is the rate of formation of oil deposits compared to present consumption rates", I stumble on to Petroleum Online, and the first thing I find is this:
"The petroleum exploration process, like the process of buying common stock, involves a series of decisions made under uncertainty—we do not know whether oil or gas is present until after an exploratory well has been drilled".
Which exactly parallels what is happening at Copenhagen: there is still a small amount of uncertainty about the details of climate change, but we will have to make the decision under uncertainty.
Thank you, petroleum persons.
Anyway, back to the quest.
How long did it take to make the carbon that we are burning?
Here's a ball park figure.
The Carboniferous period lasted 60 million years.
Let's assume we have chewed our way through 1/6th of the total geologic resource.
That means that we have burned 1n 150 years carbon that took 10 million years to take out of the atmosphere.
Which means that in any one year we are burning carbon that took 64,000 years to be formed.
O dear.
I think I need to go back to bed...
"The petroleum exploration process, like the process of buying common stock, involves a series of decisions made under uncertainty—we do not know whether oil or gas is present until after an exploratory well has been drilled".
Which exactly parallels what is happening at Copenhagen: there is still a small amount of uncertainty about the details of climate change, but we will have to make the decision under uncertainty.
Thank you, petroleum persons.
Anyway, back to the quest.
How long did it take to make the carbon that we are burning?
Here's a ball park figure.
The Carboniferous period lasted 60 million years.
Let's assume we have chewed our way through 1/6th of the total geologic resource.
That means that we have burned 1n 150 years carbon that took 10 million years to take out of the atmosphere.
Which means that in any one year we are burning carbon that took 64,000 years to be formed.
O dear.
I think I need to go back to bed...
Sunday, December 06, 2009
Carbon pricing and the poor
Butterfly on the Mail board asks about the effect of carbon pricing on fuel poverty.
Dear Butterfly
It is impossible to take forever from a finite resource, and it is impossible to expand forever into a finite space.
All finite fuels will run out. They are not infinite.
Therefore we are heading for shortages, for sure.
So, irrespective of AGW, we need to transfer using the energy that the Sun gives us everyday, instead of using the energy that she Sun poured onto primaeval forests and swamps.
In a day we are burning stuff that took tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of years to burn. (Maybe someone out there has figures; I'm guessing)
So we have to kick the carbon habit, before it kicks us.
We Greens have been calling for 3 decades for humanity to kick the habit.
With every year that passes, it is going to become more difficult.
But we have to do it. There is no alternative, as our dear Margaret used to say.
This means that fuel will become more expensive.
As you say, the main concern must be to keep the seniors warm. Absolutely. I wrote a book in 1996, and fuel poverty is in there.
So, we insulate the houses of the elderly. Check their thyroids are functioning. And give them the warmth they need, subsidising as necessary. Oh, and give them lots more looking after, good neighbour schemes.
Because part of the solution is in the community. Looking after each other. Social isolation causes illness.
I'll leave it there for the minute.
Others will be chipping in soon with "what about underlying prices? Inflation?"
Cheers
Richard
Dear Butterfly
It is impossible to take forever from a finite resource, and it is impossible to expand forever into a finite space.
All finite fuels will run out. They are not infinite.
Therefore we are heading for shortages, for sure.
So, irrespective of AGW, we need to transfer using the energy that the Sun gives us everyday, instead of using the energy that she Sun poured onto primaeval forests and swamps.
In a day we are burning stuff that took tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of years to burn. (Maybe someone out there has figures; I'm guessing)
So we have to kick the carbon habit, before it kicks us.
We Greens have been calling for 3 decades for humanity to kick the habit.
With every year that passes, it is going to become more difficult.
But we have to do it. There is no alternative, as our dear Margaret used to say.
This means that fuel will become more expensive.
As you say, the main concern must be to keep the seniors warm. Absolutely. I wrote a book in 1996, and fuel poverty is in there.
So, we insulate the houses of the elderly. Check their thyroids are functioning. And give them the warmth they need, subsidising as necessary. Oh, and give them lots more looking after, good neighbour schemes.
Because part of the solution is in the community. Looking after each other. Social isolation causes illness.
I'll leave it there for the minute.
Others will be chipping in soon with "what about underlying prices? Inflation?"
Cheers
Richard
Giving Peter Mandelson a Wave
Peter Mandelson - not as bad as they make out
HT to George Lucas
HT to George Lucas
A funny thing happened to me on Saturday at the Stop Climate Chaos Wave march. I was handing out Green Party leaflets to the shoppers, when, steaming up the pavement* ("sidewalk" to ex-colonials) comes none other than Peter Mandelson, Pooh-Bah, Lord High Everything Else of New Labour.
So I gives him a leaflet with the words "I don't suppose we can count on your support?"
And he's like, "I think you can" or words to that effect.
I think he meant that the Govt is on board with doing something about global heating, not that he is going to vote Green.
He's not as tall as he looks on telly.
* No bodyguards, no limo, nothing. Is he on the way out?
Sympathy for the Deniers: the clash of ideologies
I have an odd feeling in the current furore over climate change.
The battle is between the scientific consensus, and a tiny minority of independent scientifically trained people who are trying to attack the bastion of consensus.
I have been in their position on three issues in the past:
on the issue of the relation of leukaemia to low level radiation and powerlines. Official science denies a causal relationship. Green scientists affirm a causal relationship. Chris Busby and the LLRC is continuing this battle, and I think that history will prove him right.
I had a clash with official science over Lowermoor incident, when illness followed the accidental dumping Aluminium Sulphate into drinking water.
In both of these cases, official scientists used the scholastic method, not the scientific method, to refute causality. They argued "The book says that the substances could not have caused the illness we observe, therefore the events are not causally connected".
The third issue was in the 2001 Foot and Mouth incident, when I was Green Party campaigner joining with a small group of independent vets and campaigners calling for vaccination rather than slaughter.
So how come that I was proud to be in a minority then, but proud to be in the majority now?
First, the climate scientists have a real scientific approach, not the scholastic approach used in leukaemia at Sellafield and Lowermoor, nor the bureaucracy-knows-best approach used in FMD2001.
Second, there is the issue of paradigm shift. The climate change "skeptics" claim that they are challenging the current paradigm, which is what happens with all big shifts in science - plate tectonics being the classic example. This does not really apply, because the AGW theory has been built up on an evidential basis over the past 30 years, although its concept goes back 200 years to Arrhenius.
The deniers characterise the IPCC as a "political" body, though its real status is as a scientific advisory body to the UN, which is a political body. Equally, they are a political lobby group, wedded to the ideal of free market fundamentalism.
There is indeed an ideological clash of historic proportions here, between the old paradigm of individualistic, free market idealism, that views the individual as a self-existent being, and the ecological ideology that views mankind in the context of our planetary life support system.
The battle is between the scientific consensus, and a tiny minority of independent scientifically trained people who are trying to attack the bastion of consensus.
I have been in their position on three issues in the past:
on the issue of the relation of leukaemia to low level radiation and powerlines. Official science denies a causal relationship. Green scientists affirm a causal relationship. Chris Busby and the LLRC is continuing this battle, and I think that history will prove him right.
I had a clash with official science over Lowermoor incident, when illness followed the accidental dumping Aluminium Sulphate into drinking water.
In both of these cases, official scientists used the scholastic method, not the scientific method, to refute causality. They argued "The book says that the substances could not have caused the illness we observe, therefore the events are not causally connected".
The third issue was in the 2001 Foot and Mouth incident, when I was Green Party campaigner joining with a small group of independent vets and campaigners calling for vaccination rather than slaughter.
So how come that I was proud to be in a minority then, but proud to be in the majority now?
First, the climate scientists have a real scientific approach, not the scholastic approach used in leukaemia at Sellafield and Lowermoor, nor the bureaucracy-knows-best approach used in FMD2001.
Second, there is the issue of paradigm shift. The climate change "skeptics" claim that they are challenging the current paradigm, which is what happens with all big shifts in science - plate tectonics being the classic example. This does not really apply, because the AGW theory has been built up on an evidential basis over the past 30 years, although its concept goes back 200 years to Arrhenius.
The deniers characterise the IPCC as a "political" body, though its real status is as a scientific advisory body to the UN, which is a political body. Equally, they are a political lobby group, wedded to the ideal of free market fundamentalism.
There is indeed an ideological clash of historic proportions here, between the old paradigm of individualistic, free market idealism, that views the individual as a self-existent being, and the ecological ideology that views mankind in the context of our planetary life support system.
East Anglia CRU results are reliable and reproducible
Acknowlegements to NOAA. This link also gives an important explanation for the graph.
Click on the figures to see in their entirety.
OK. The Climate Research Unit (CRU) at East Anglia University has taken a pasting recently.
In previous blogs here Phil Jones' "trick to hide the decline" has been shown to have no relevance to the scientific data, only to the appearance of a graph on the front of a report,
and Kevin Trenberth's expression of frustration ("travesty") was all about an abstruse problem with data from the outer atmosphere.
Those are the most serious verbal statements. The next challenge is the CRU computer codes, which have to do immensely complex calculations to allow for altitude and other variables on each collecting station. The CRU codes appear to be sub-prime.
The sceptics are therefore working to undermine the credibility of CRU work, which underpins the "uptick" - sharp increase in modern temperatures - seen on this most important graph here.
Given that they have undermined the credibility of CRU - until such time as an inquiry has examined the effects of the poor coding - we need independent confirmation that their results are reliable.
Three copies of the raw data on temperature records are kept, one by the National Meteorological Services, one by NOAA, and one by NASA.
The NOAA graph is shown above, with CRU for comparison.
We can see that there is no substantive difference.
Therefore, there is no reason to doubt the credibility of the most important graph - the temperature record of the planet, which is most clearly "spiking a fever" as we doctors call it.
So there we have it. Despite a burglary, a hack, and a coordingated attack, the Business As Usual lobby have failed to discredit the key point of climate science - global temperatures are rising at a rate and to a level that is unprecedented in the last 2000 years.
There is only one rational, reasonable political response - for all the world except the tiny coterie of free market fundamentalist "skeptics" to call for, agitate for, and pray for a clear, legally binding agreement in Copenhagen.
Saturday, December 05, 2009
New Zealand Climategate bomb blows up in skeptics' faces
Meanwhile, on the other side of the planet, in New Zealand, another climate science row is boiling up.
The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, (NZSC), a skeptic group, have published a paper on 25th November which claims that NIWA scientists massaged the figures to produce a warming effect on their temperature trends. Their graphs do show as flatter, although there is a suggestion of an upward trend from 1970 onwards, and it is a pity that they did not apply a trend line.
The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) responds that the adjustments were made to the data because the instruments had been moved to a higher location. This is standard procedure, since it is cooler at higher altitudes.
NIWA quote: NIWA climate scientists have previously explained to members of the Coalition why such corrections must be made. NIWA’s Chief Climate Scientist, Dr David Wratt, says he’s very disappointed that the Coalition continue to ignore such advice and therefore to present misleading analyses.
The skeptics have had access to the data, and have been in discussion for 2 years, but have published now, at a time convenient to the skeptics.
NIWA gives one site elevation instance.
NZSC claim the altitude reasoning does not always work.
However, NIWA shows it clearly does in one of the areas in question.
NIWA also say that their results are confirmed by independent data:
A paper published in 1995 identified an upward trend of about 0.7°C from 1900 to 1993 in night time minimum air temperatures measured from ships over the ocean surrounding New Zealand. That trend is similar to the trend from the seven-station land network over the same period. Also, sea surface temperatures measured from the same ships warmed by 0.6°C in that period.
That sites that were not shifted show the same trend:
Dr Jim Salinger has identified from the NIWA climate archive a set of 11 stations with long records where there have been no significant site changes. When the annual temperatures from all of these sites are averaged to form a temperature series for New Zealand, the best-fit linear trend is a warming of 1°C from 1931 to 2008. We will be placing more information about this on the web later this week.
To round it off, the sceptics have put out a press release containing a direct lie:
So far, neither Dr Salinger nor NIWA has revealed why they did this,” said Mr Treadgold
So, while we wait for full exact data on the sites which were moved, it looks as if the so-called "sceptics" have lied, dissembled, and indulged in timing, hoping for maximum effect in the news at the time of Copenhagen.
It remains to be seen whether the sceptics end up hoist on their own petard.
The fact remains that GHGs are the only possible explanation for recent warming.
The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, (NZSC), a skeptic group, have published a paper on 25th November which claims that NIWA scientists massaged the figures to produce a warming effect on their temperature trends. Their graphs do show as flatter, although there is a suggestion of an upward trend from 1970 onwards, and it is a pity that they did not apply a trend line.
The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) responds that the adjustments were made to the data because the instruments had been moved to a higher location. This is standard procedure, since it is cooler at higher altitudes.
NIWA quote: NIWA climate scientists have previously explained to members of the Coalition why such corrections must be made. NIWA’s Chief Climate Scientist, Dr David Wratt, says he’s very disappointed that the Coalition continue to ignore such advice and therefore to present misleading analyses.
The skeptics have had access to the data, and have been in discussion for 2 years, but have published now, at a time convenient to the skeptics.
NIWA gives one site elevation instance.
NZSC claim the altitude reasoning does not always work.
However, NIWA shows it clearly does in one of the areas in question.
NIWA also say that their results are confirmed by independent data:
A paper published in 1995 identified an upward trend of about 0.7°C from 1900 to 1993 in night time minimum air temperatures measured from ships over the ocean surrounding New Zealand. That trend is similar to the trend from the seven-station land network over the same period. Also, sea surface temperatures measured from the same ships warmed by 0.6°C in that period.
That sites that were not shifted show the same trend:
Dr Jim Salinger has identified from the NIWA climate archive a set of 11 stations with long records where there have been no significant site changes. When the annual temperatures from all of these sites are averaged to form a temperature series for New Zealand, the best-fit linear trend is a warming of 1°C from 1931 to 2008. We will be placing more information about this on the web later this week.
To round it off, the sceptics have put out a press release containing a direct lie:
So far, neither Dr Salinger nor NIWA has revealed why they did this,” said Mr Treadgold
So, while we wait for full exact data on the sites which were moved, it looks as if the so-called "sceptics" have lied, dissembled, and indulged in timing, hoping for maximum effect in the news at the time of Copenhagen.
It remains to be seen whether the sceptics end up hoist on their own petard.
The fact remains that GHGs are the only possible explanation for recent warming.
Friday, December 04, 2009
BBC PM, 4th December. EAU hack.
Brilliant interview with Prof Andrew Watson a few minutes ago. This is how journalism should be done. The interviewer was calm, and did not interrupt. The Prof was calm, clear and rational. He communicated.
From my notes of the interview, in italic. They are not verbatim records, gist only.
My comments are in normal type :
Andrew Watson: People will have less trust in climate science.
RL: We need to explain the science to the people, so they understand what is happening, and what we have to do.
AW: There was no fudging of the fundamental data. The Phil Jones' "trick" was in the presentation of diagrams for the front of a report to reconcile different tree records to make the graph look better.
I think I remember seeing this diagram, before and after. [memo: find diagram]
This is vital. If true, it destroys one of the two greatest shadows that these emails have cast over the climatic science community.
The other one is the "Hide the decline" clause. Give us the context for that.
Hide the Decline referred to tree ring data.
This is a fiercely complicated issue, but my understanding is that the inner rings in a cut tree give pretty accurate accounts of climatic conditions, but the outer rings do not. Using simple proportionality, all of these trees will tell you that the weather recently has been getting cooler. If it is this "decline" that Price was trying to hide, then there is no problem.
Except in the minds of the sceptics, who will continue to try to milk this for all it is worth.
My experience is that the central tactic of the AGW sceptic* lobby is to seize on any and each an every detail that can be seized upon, and exaggerate it into the Final Incontrovertible Proof of their case, which is that Nothing Should Be Done to Reduce Carbon Emissions.
The net result is that they slow up progress on global warming, because the more doubt they can sow in the minds of the people, the less courageous will be the actions of the politicians.
There is clearly a massive ideological clash taking place in the minds and hearts of humankind.
The clash is between the Individualists, who are rooted in the idea of the absolute Self, and the Greens, who are rooted in the idea that our health is dependent on a healthy relationship with the planet we live on.
*I have been asked by a colleague to refrain from the use of "Deniers" because it is a bit provocative. They say it puts them alongside Holocaust deniers. I use the term as a psychiatrist, because I think the uninformed ones are indeed in denial. Maybe some of the real scientists are genuinely sceptical in a good sense, legitimately critical, I'm not sure.
Oh. Well, if it helps keep the peace OK.
(Eppur si muove).
[ongoing]
From my notes of the interview, in italic. They are not verbatim records, gist only.
My comments are in normal type :
Andrew Watson: People will have less trust in climate science.
RL: We need to explain the science to the people, so they understand what is happening, and what we have to do.
AW: There was no fudging of the fundamental data. The Phil Jones' "trick" was in the presentation of diagrams for the front of a report to reconcile different tree records to make the graph look better.
I think I remember seeing this diagram, before and after. [memo: find diagram]
This is vital. If true, it destroys one of the two greatest shadows that these emails have cast over the climatic science community.
The other one is the "Hide the decline" clause. Give us the context for that.
Hide the Decline referred to tree ring data.
This is a fiercely complicated issue, but my understanding is that the inner rings in a cut tree give pretty accurate accounts of climatic conditions, but the outer rings do not. Using simple proportionality, all of these trees will tell you that the weather recently has been getting cooler. If it is this "decline" that Price was trying to hide, then there is no problem.
Except in the minds of the sceptics, who will continue to try to milk this for all it is worth.
My experience is that the central tactic of the AGW sceptic* lobby is to seize on any and each an every detail that can be seized upon, and exaggerate it into the Final Incontrovertible Proof of their case, which is that Nothing Should Be Done to Reduce Carbon Emissions.
The net result is that they slow up progress on global warming, because the more doubt they can sow in the minds of the people, the less courageous will be the actions of the politicians.
There is clearly a massive ideological clash taking place in the minds and hearts of humankind.
The clash is between the Individualists, who are rooted in the idea of the absolute Self, and the Greens, who are rooted in the idea that our health is dependent on a healthy relationship with the planet we live on.
*I have been asked by a colleague to refrain from the use of "Deniers" because it is a bit provocative. They say it puts them alongside Holocaust deniers. I use the term as a psychiatrist, because I think the uninformed ones are indeed in denial. Maybe some of the real scientists are genuinely sceptical in a good sense, legitimately critical, I'm not sure.
Oh. Well, if it helps keep the peace OK.
(Eppur si muove).
[ongoing]
Climate change skepticism, science, logic and ideology
AGW skeptics assert that human greenhouse gases have no effect on global climate.
If it is a faith-based assertion, there is nothing that will change their mind.
If on the other hand, they view it as a factual assertion, then it it is a statement in the scientific arena, and must therefore be capable of being refuted.
They agree that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, that is, that it traps infra red radiation, since this is a physical fact.
They agree that concentrations have risen since the Industrial Revolution, since that is an observed fact.
They accept that global temperatures are rising, since they often say that "climate change is happening, it happens all the time, due to natural variation".
So their case is that although CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and is rising, it makes no contribution to the rise in temperature. Or maybe they mean it makes a negligible contribution.
But the climate models say that it is making a significant contribution.
So they reject the use of climate models out of hand, rather than agreeing that they are, like all machines, a useful but imperfect instrument.
It is impossible accurately to study a complex system as the atmosphere without models.
Therefore there is nothing that will convince them that they are wrong.
Therefore their case is not a scientific case, because science must always be falsifiable.
What this leads to is that just as they accuse us of having an ideological agenda, so also do they have an ideological agenda.
It goes like this:
"I believe in individualism. My prime responsibility is to Me as No 1, also my family if I so choose. I will look after my own interests in my own way, and Government should get out of my face and my backyard. There is no such thing as society. I am not responsible for what happens to others, if bad things happen to them, that is there look out. Sh*t happens.
Individualism demands free market fundamentalism. Individualism means that corporations, which are individual persons in law, must not be subject to any regulation, because the Invisible Hand of the Market will produce the best of all possible worlds.
If global warming were true, it would be necessary for representatives of the people to intervene in the market to make carbon pay for the damage it does.
I reject any intervention in the market.
Therefore I reject the idea man-made global warming.
Nothing will induce me to change my mind on this point, because I am an individualist".
If it is a faith-based assertion, there is nothing that will change their mind.
If on the other hand, they view it as a factual assertion, then it it is a statement in the scientific arena, and must therefore be capable of being refuted.
They agree that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, that is, that it traps infra red radiation, since this is a physical fact.
They agree that concentrations have risen since the Industrial Revolution, since that is an observed fact.
They accept that global temperatures are rising, since they often say that "climate change is happening, it happens all the time, due to natural variation".
So their case is that although CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and is rising, it makes no contribution to the rise in temperature. Or maybe they mean it makes a negligible contribution.
But the climate models say that it is making a significant contribution.
So they reject the use of climate models out of hand, rather than agreeing that they are, like all machines, a useful but imperfect instrument.
It is impossible accurately to study a complex system as the atmosphere without models.
Therefore there is nothing that will convince them that they are wrong.
Therefore their case is not a scientific case, because science must always be falsifiable.
What this leads to is that just as they accuse us of having an ideological agenda, so also do they have an ideological agenda.
It goes like this:
"I believe in individualism. My prime responsibility is to Me as No 1, also my family if I so choose. I will look after my own interests in my own way, and Government should get out of my face and my backyard. There is no such thing as society. I am not responsible for what happens to others, if bad things happen to them, that is there look out. Sh*t happens.
Individualism demands free market fundamentalism. Individualism means that corporations, which are individual persons in law, must not be subject to any regulation, because the Invisible Hand of the Market will produce the best of all possible worlds.
If global warming were true, it would be necessary for representatives of the people to intervene in the market to make carbon pay for the damage it does.
I reject any intervention in the market.
Therefore I reject the idea man-made global warming.
Nothing will induce me to change my mind on this point, because I am an individualist".
Thursday, December 03, 2009
Climategate computer codes: it is clear what to do
Not only have the Saudis warned that "Climategate" - the hacked East Anglia University CRU emails story - will be a topic at Copenhagen, but also the "Harry Read Me.txt" is about to hit the mainstream media fan. Newsnight has got hold of it - go to 11 mins 45.
Pajamas Media, who seem to be sane, have the story. They have spoken to a programmer who had looked at what the guy in my blog below(let's call him Harry) was doing.
Apparently he was trying to organise data with a programme that was not fit for purpose. Newsnight have picked it up the story.
OK.
Here is what we have to do.
What we have to do is pull all the CRU work out of the equation. Not because they are necessarily wrong, but because they are under suspicion.
I am confident that the Spaghetti Graph, relieved of one or two strands however many emanate from CRU, will still show significant warming.
The CRU work may or may not stand up to review. That will have to wait. The vital action now is to get a revised, CRU-free Spaghetti Graph where people can see them.
[Update: 4 Dec 15:21
Hokay.
I have spent most of the morning trying to disentangle CRU from the graphs.
Only 3 of the 9 studies in the Spaghetti Graph are not heavily dependent on CRU data, because they were doing the instrumental data - that is, collecting all the readings from all over the world, tidying them up, and rendering them into usable form - which is the part of the graph, the black line, which shows the major uptick in recent times.
I am still waiting for a couple of other lines of enquiry, but not holding my breath.
What I still do not understand is that there are three datasets, one held by CRU, one by NASA, and one by NOAA. There must be modern temperature workouts from them. Where are they?
Anyway, it looks as if we cannot work around the problem of diminished public confidence by finding a CRU-free temperature graph. We will just have to slug it out, making the case that the dataset is sound as any huge dataset can ever be, that Price's "trick" was just a workaround, and that Trenberth's "travesty" was an expression of frustration at a particular problem he was working at in the upper atmosphere data.
Ah well. Worth a try.
[Update: I found another way to work around the EAU/CRU data doubt, here.]
Brilliant video of an interview about the hacked emails with George Monbiot here.
Pajamas Media, who seem to be sane, have the story. They have spoken to a programmer who had looked at what the guy in my blog below(let's call him Harry) was doing.
Apparently he was trying to organise data with a programme that was not fit for purpose. Newsnight have picked it up the story.
OK.
Here is what we have to do.
What we have to do is pull all the CRU work out of the equation. Not because they are necessarily wrong, but because they are under suspicion.
I am confident that the Spaghetti Graph, relieved of one or two strands however many emanate from CRU, will still show significant warming.
The CRU work may or may not stand up to review. That will have to wait. The vital action now is to get a revised, CRU-free Spaghetti Graph where people can see them.
[Update: 4 Dec 15:21
Hokay.
I have spent most of the morning trying to disentangle CRU from the graphs.
Only 3 of the 9 studies in the Spaghetti Graph are not heavily dependent on CRU data, because they were doing the instrumental data - that is, collecting all the readings from all over the world, tidying them up, and rendering them into usable form - which is the part of the graph, the black line, which shows the major uptick in recent times.
I am still waiting for a couple of other lines of enquiry, but not holding my breath.
What I still do not understand is that there are three datasets, one held by CRU, one by NASA, and one by NOAA. There must be modern temperature workouts from them. Where are they?
Anyway, it looks as if we cannot work around the problem of diminished public confidence by finding a CRU-free temperature graph. We will just have to slug it out, making the case that the dataset is sound as any huge dataset can ever be, that Price's "trick" was just a workaround, and that Trenberth's "travesty" was an expression of frustration at a particular problem he was working at in the upper atmosphere data.
Ah well. Worth a try.
[Update: I found another way to work around the EAU/CRU data doubt, here.]
Brilliant video of an interview about the hacked emails with George Monbiot here.
What about the Medieval Warm Period?
source (note that I have flipped the above graph horizontally so that it matches the first graph)
sourceAnother common theme of the skeptics: How come it was so warm in the years 800-1300 AD?
On the top graph down we see that the temperatures nearly touched modern values, yet there was no industrial carbon dioxide release then.
The second graph shows that there was an increase in sunspot activity at that time, and unusually long period of increased solar activity. That is one possible candidate for the causation of the Mediaeval Warm Period.
The third graph shows that there is no correlation between modern temperatures and solar activity. The fit is much better for CO2 levels.
The lesson here is that the earth's temperature is a result of six variables:
a. the distance from earth to sun, which varies very slowly
b. sunspot activity, which has a cycle of about 11 years
c. Albedo - the reflectivity of the earth's surface - mainly clouds and snow
d. aerosols and soot, mainly from volcanoes, which can cool the atmosphere by throwing dust into the air. Industrial soot plays a part here
e. greenhouse gases, which trap the sun's heat
f. Ocean currents, notably El Nino and La Nina
We are affecting d and e, but they are enough, in a finely balanced system, to create serious problems.
Note that there is some doubt about whether the MWP was local or global.
More here
Local group questions CORWM on health issues
This is from Parents Concerned About Hinkley (Nuclear Power station) to the Comittee On Radioactive Waste Management
The only issue I have with it is the clause "have caused". It is safer to say "are associated with". Causation is the result of a long process of induction.
1 Dec 09
We wish to draw your attention to current problems with waste management at Hinkley Point A station in Somerset.
1. Magnox South’s contract does not require them to put public health safety first.
2. As a result of an unexpected build up of pressure inside the defuelled Hinkley A reactors, Magnox South installed vents into the reactor roofs. This is in breach of the 80-year reactor decay period.
3. Subsequently, radioactive gaseous discharges from these reactors have caused an epidemic in nearby coastal communities of heart attacks, brain tumours, strokes, skin cancers, kidney problems, sudden deaths. All of these illnesses have been identified among nuclear decommissioning workers:
International Journal of Epidemiology 4 March 2008.
Westlakes Scientific Consulting: Professor Steve Jones.
This large study of 65,000 men employed at Sellafield reprocessing plant between 1946 and 2002 found the risks of death from heart attacks and strokes increased with exposure to higher levels of radiation.
American Journal of Industrial Medicine, December 2007
Authors: Dr David B Richardson, University of North Carolina.
This study is of 19,000 employees of the Savannah River Site, South Carolina which has processed nuclear materials since the 1950s. It found excess leukaemia and pleural cancers among men and elevated rates of kidney and skin cancers in women, highlighting the range of potential occupational health effects among nuclear workers, especially diseases that typically take years to become apparent.
4. The two operational Hinkley B AGR reactors will close soon; what steps will CORWM take to prevent similar or even worse public health outcomes from their decommissioning and waste management?
5. Magnox South have another problem with Intermediate Level Waste on the Hinkley site. Again, as they do not have to take account of public health damage, they currently plan to use Cement Encapsulation to deal with waste from the existing ILW storage vaults. Cement Encapsulation will discharge 144 million cubic metres of radioactive gases into the atmosphere. The Polymer Encapsulation option would produce no discharges into the atmosphere but would cost more. Will CORWM insist on the use of Polymer Encapsulation? As the act of opening up the existing vaults will immediately result in radioactive discharges, why cannot the vaults be left closed for at least 100 years?
6. New nuclear build would require spent fuel to be stored on site for 160 years. This is not possible at Hinkley due to the limestone geology of the site. In view of Hinkley’s disastrous record of public health damage, there should be no new build, but if this should be allowed, the spent fuel will have to go off-site and there is not likely to be anywhere for it to go.
The only issue I have with it is the clause "have caused". It is safer to say "are associated with". Causation is the result of a long process of induction.
1 Dec 09
We wish to draw your attention to current problems with waste management at Hinkley Point A station in Somerset.
1. Magnox South’s contract does not require them to put public health safety first.
2. As a result of an unexpected build up of pressure inside the defuelled Hinkley A reactors, Magnox South installed vents into the reactor roofs. This is in breach of the 80-year reactor decay period.
3. Subsequently, radioactive gaseous discharges from these reactors have caused an epidemic in nearby coastal communities of heart attacks, brain tumours, strokes, skin cancers, kidney problems, sudden deaths. All of these illnesses have been identified among nuclear decommissioning workers:
International Journal of Epidemiology 4 March 2008.
Westlakes Scientific Consulting: Professor Steve Jones.
This large study of 65,000 men employed at Sellafield reprocessing plant between 1946 and 2002 found the risks of death from heart attacks and strokes increased with exposure to higher levels of radiation.
American Journal of Industrial Medicine, December 2007
Authors: Dr David B Richardson, University of North Carolina.
This study is of 19,000 employees of the Savannah River Site, South Carolina which has processed nuclear materials since the 1950s. It found excess leukaemia and pleural cancers among men and elevated rates of kidney and skin cancers in women, highlighting the range of potential occupational health effects among nuclear workers, especially diseases that typically take years to become apparent.
4. The two operational Hinkley B AGR reactors will close soon; what steps will CORWM take to prevent similar or even worse public health outcomes from their decommissioning and waste management?
5. Magnox South have another problem with Intermediate Level Waste on the Hinkley site. Again, as they do not have to take account of public health damage, they currently plan to use Cement Encapsulation to deal with waste from the existing ILW storage vaults. Cement Encapsulation will discharge 144 million cubic metres of radioactive gases into the atmosphere. The Polymer Encapsulation option would produce no discharges into the atmosphere but would cost more. Will CORWM insist on the use of Polymer Encapsulation? As the act of opening up the existing vaults will immediately result in radioactive discharges, why cannot the vaults be left closed for at least 100 years?
6. New nuclear build would require spent fuel to be stored on site for 160 years. This is not possible at Hinkley due to the limestone geology of the site. In view of Hinkley’s disastrous record of public health damage, there should be no new build, but if this should be allowed, the spent fuel will have to go off-site and there is not likely to be anywhere for it to go.
For once the clouds are still
for once clouds are still
the round moon shines through silver
change is in the air
.
Is it all down to Sunspots?
Skeptics ask whether global warming is due to changes in solar activity. The sun does fluctuate in its output on an 11-year cycle, which are shown above as sunspots. This variation does affect the weather patterns that we see, but the influence of solar variation is only 1/8th as strong as the influence of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Sometimes the sun is active for a longer period, and I personally expect that the Maunder Maximum of sunspot activity will be shown to account for at least some of the Mediaeval Warm Period.
Nobody claims that computerised climate models are perfect, but as the science progresses, they will become increasingly accurate. There are at least six variables that affect the earth's temperature. We can only modify one of them - our greenhouse gases. This we have got to do, and Copenhagen is the place to do it.
Sometimes the sun is active for a longer period, and I personally expect that the Maunder Maximum of sunspot activity will be shown to account for at least some of the Mediaeval Warm Period.
Nobody claims that computerised climate models are perfect, but as the science progresses, they will become increasingly accurate. There are at least six variables that affect the earth's temperature. We can only modify one of them - our greenhouse gases. This we have got to do, and Copenhagen is the place to do it.
Climate Denial in Two
There are seemingly an infinite number of questions put out by the AGW deniers, but there are two major themes:
1) Using a detail to try to invalidate a whole picture. Argue from a particular to the general.
For instance, the hacked emails show that scientist are human, with the usual human emotions and failings. Surprise.
But what should impress us is that despite the intense scrutiny of the emails by the skeptics, no-one has made a case that invalidates the whole body of climate work. Even if Price and Trenberth's work were taken out of the corpus of climate studies, there are still more than enough studies to confirm that we have a serious man-made global warming problem.
This is well illustrated by the composite graph of long term temperature studies. After Mann's work was criticised (and this is what science is all about, criticism of the evidence), the approach has been reproduced nine times, as shown in the graph above.
The result is a lousy hockey stick for sure, since hockey sticks made of cooked spaghetti lack the structural integrity to deek, let alone deliver a slap shot, but it does very convincing picture of a world that is clearly undergoing warming in recent history.
Convincing, that is, except to those whose ideology prevents them from accepting the necessary policy changes that arise from the science.
Which leads us to the second theme:
2) The Conspiracy Theory.
The US shock jocks are coming right out with it: The Great Global Warming Conspiracy, which runs like this: Gore, Soros and a few others (including, in some versions, George W Bush), in collaboration with unnamed socialists and greenies, have paid scientists to manipulate the data in order to generate a false picture of global warming so that they can achieve World Government.'Nuff said.
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
Climate Change skeptics - what about the last 10 years?
This figure was created by Robert A. Rohde from publicly available data. Click here for a full sized graph.AGW skeptics and deniers frequently claim that global temperatures are lower over the last 10 years.
I have found a valuable resource at Climate4you here, which shows a variety of recent temperature readings.
It is clear that there is a sinuous line, with a notable peak in 1998, and generally since then, a flattish line with an sharp upturn in the lat 12 months.
This is consistent with the red line in the graph shown above, which has a fairly regular variation of about 10 years. The peak of 1998 is shown, and since then the line should fall before the upturn, which we can see on the Climate4you graphs.
It is tiring, but necessary, to meet all these claims of the skeptics. There is a consistent pattern in their arguments: pick one item out of the hundreds or thousands available in the field, and extrapolate from that item to draw the conclusion that we should do nothing that might damage the bottom line of the oil companies' account sheets.
Climate change FAQs.
Tuesday, December 01, 2009
Sound advice on global warming science
Superb set of YouTube resources on AGW. Clear, level headed exposition of the science, the scientific controversies and the myths. Shows how reports in science journals is distorted by poor journalism.
HT to FemmeFatale
The science
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52KLGqDSAjo&feature=channel
The objections:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoSVoxwYrKI&NR=1
BS versus scientific papers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EU_AtHkB4Ms&NR=1
Gore versus Durkin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2B34sO7HPM&NR=1
Putting Mc Science in its place:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5hs4KVeiAU&feature=channel
HT to FemmeFatale
The science
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52KLGqDSAjo&feature=channel
The objections:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoSVoxwYrKI&NR=1
BS versus scientific papers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EU_AtHkB4Ms&NR=1
Gore versus Durkin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2B34sO7HPM&NR=1
Putting Mc Science in its place:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5hs4KVeiAU&feature=channel
The comfort of AGW denial
Charlie on the Daily Mail AGW debate believes that the world of AGW activists is nicer than the world the AGW deniers.
Charlie,
Whatever else you may be right about, you could not be more wrong about this.
Yesterday, trawling through the skeptic websites, I caught myself thinking "What if these guys were right?"
A lovely wave of relaxation swept over me.
Maybe we do not face a global heating crisis . Maybe we can continue with business as usual. Maybe there is an unlimited supply of oil and gas in the ground, being specially created by God out of nothing, as a special gift to his children, so that they can drive 4x4s.
Maybe God will alter the laws of physics for us, so that greenhouse gases lose their heat retention properties.
It was a lovely moment. A moment when difficult physical, economic and political realities fell away.
Then I woke up.
Charlie,
Whatever else you may be right about, you could not be more wrong about this.
Yesterday, trawling through the skeptic websites, I caught myself thinking "What if these guys were right?"
A lovely wave of relaxation swept over me.
Maybe we do not face a global heating crisis . Maybe we can continue with business as usual. Maybe there is an unlimited supply of oil and gas in the ground, being specially created by God out of nothing, as a special gift to his children, so that they can drive 4x4s.
Maybe God will alter the laws of physics for us, so that greenhouse gases lose their heat retention properties.
It was a lovely moment. A moment when difficult physical, economic and political realities fell away.
Then I woke up.
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