Jeff Masters on Mann and PCA

Jeff Masters, the meteorologist who blogs at wunderground.com, has written the standard-issue five star review of Mann's Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars.

I thought I'd highlight something Masters wrote about the infamous short-centred principal components analysis used in Mann's paper.

[Mann] takes the reader on a 5-page college-level discussion of the main technique used, Principal Component Analysis (PCA), and shows how his famed "hockey stick" graph came about. It's one of the best descriptions I've seen on how PCA works (though it will be too technical for some.)

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Number 10 discusses shale gas

This exchange from the House of Commons yesterday on the subject of shale gas is quite interesting.

Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton, Labour): Will not the biggest impact on reducing domestic energy bills be achieved by bringing shale gas online as quickly as possible?

Edward Davey (Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Employment Relations, Consumer and Postal Affairs), Business, Innovation and Skills; Kingston and Surbiton, Liberal Democrat): I do not think so. We had a seminar at No. 10 recently, which the Prime Minister participated in, along with myself and the Business Secretary. We heard from experts in the shale gas industry who had been working in America and looking at the major opportunities in places such as Ukraine and China. They were clear that it would take some time for shale gas to be exploited in the UK. They were also clear that we needed strong regulation to proceed and that the shale gas reserves in this country are not quite as large as some people have been speculating.

I'm intrigued by a group of shale gas experts who would be demanding strong regulation and who claim that it will take a long time to do anything and that reserves are not as large as thought. This sounds rather like the Deutsche Bank report on shale. I've glanced at this report in the past and I must say I raised my eyebrows at the suggestion that there would be delays caused by lack of equipment. I mean, can't more equipment be manufactured?

I wonder who Number Ten's experts were?

Rand Simberg reviews the Yamal story

Rand Simberg at PJ Media reviews the Yamal story, quoting extensively from yours truly.

But at a minimum [Yamal] should be the final blow to the hockey stick, and perhaps to the very notion that bristlecone pines and larches are accurate thermometers. It should also be a final blow to the credibility of many of the leading lights of climate “science,” but based on history, it probably won’t be, at least among the political class. What it really should be is the beginning of the major housecleaning necessary if the field is to have any scientific credibility, but that may have to await a general reformation of academia itself. It would help, though, if we get a new government next year that cuts off funding to such charlatans, and the institutions that whitewash their unscientific behavior.

Stern's nut graph

We had an interesting chat a couple of weeks ago about the way the noble Lord Stern had portrayed the effects on climate change on wheat yields. However, alongside his wheat graph is another graph portraying a similar effect of raised temperatures on ground nuts (click for full size).

The cited paper, Vara Prasad et al (2001), is not online, but the abstract is here. Unlike the wheat paper, Vara Prasad appears to look only at the effects of temperature on groundnuts and Stern's graph seems to reflect the abstract pretty much exactly.

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A book review

Maurizio Morabito points us to this rather interesting review of a book entitled A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change.

Adam Smith once noted that we are less troubled by the prospect of a hundred million people dying as a result of an earthquake in some distant location than of losing our little finger, but would nevertheless be horrified by the idea we might allow them to die in order to save it. Climate change effectively transforms the former scenario into the latter, and so places unprecedented demands on our moral imagination. Almost every little thing we do contributes to our carbon footprint, which increases greenhouse gases, which could in turn ultimately threaten hundreds of millions of lives in some remote time and place – the uncertainty only adding to the sublime awfulness of our responsibilities.

IPCC reversion

We learned a couple of days ago that the UK government had noted that the amendment of the IPCC's procedures, which appeared to prevent reviewers seeing the other review comments, had been made in error.

The text deleted was this:

All written expert, and government review comments will be made available to reviewers on request during the review process

Now, Marcel Crok is able to confirm that this deletion will indeed by reversed, pointing to this document, which proposes a reversion to the original text be made at the next IPCC meeting at the start of June.

...the deletion of the first part of the original sentence was erroneous. The IPCC-33 decision only pertained to the open availability of drafts, comments and responses, and not to the availability to reviewers on request. Hence, the erroneous deletion of the “All written . . . review process” should be corrected.

In an email, David Holland notes that it remains unclear as to whether the reviewers will be able to see the lead authors' responses.

Perpetual nonsense

Holly Williams, Sky News's China correspondent, reports on a Chinese farmer who has discovered a solution to the world energy crisis. The answer, it seems, is a hybrid electric/wind powered car. Apparently, above 40mph, a wind turbine kicks in and starts to generate power for the car.

Yes, our Holly has uncovered a perpetual motion machine!

Watch the video while you can.

(H/T Niels)

International Disinformation Agency

This from ESI-Africa, a website focused on energy issues for Africa.

Ambassador Richard H. Jones, deputy director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), opened the IEA's April conference by-lined Clean Energy Progress, by saying global temperatures are "probably" going to rise by "six degrees Celsius" by about 2050.

According to the IEA website, Jones has a degree in mathematics. I guess this was a long time ago.

(The Hockey Stick Illusion gets a mention in the article too)

Update on May 16, 2012 by Bishop Hill

In the comments, Jonathan Jones notes that Bloomberg are reporting a slightly different version of events, namely that emissions by 2050 will lead to 6 degrees of warming.

Dealing with The Heretic

Mr Richard Bean
Director
Melbourne Theatre Company

Richard Bean's play The Heretic has been causing a few ructions in Australia ahead of its opening in Melbourne. Richard forwards this email, which was sent to him by Andrew Glikson, a scientist at the Australian National University.

Dear Mr Richard Bean

As an Earth and paleo-climate scientist of some 45 years-long experience and more than 150 peer-reviewed publications, I suggest the show “The Heretic”, which I have not seen but about which I have read, can only lead to trivialization and further denial of what the scientific world regards as the greatest threat humanity and nature are facing.

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Worse than we thought

The wires are beginning to buzz with the news that a new set of climate talks are about to begin in Berlin. The reports are all breathless with the news that UNFCCC Climate boss Christiana Figueres reckons that it's worse than we thought.

As UN climate chief Christiana Figueres urged all states to turn political pledges into concrete action to save the planet, observers and developing states insisted the rich world should commit to tougher reduction goals.

Figueres cited new research which predicted Earth's temperature rising by as much as five degrees Celsius (41 degrees Fahrenheit) from pre-industrial levels on current pledges, instead of the 2 C limit being targeted.

It may be, however that it is Ms Figueres' mathematics that is "worse than we thought".

H/T Mike.

[Updated to correct Figueres' affiliation]

Stocker in Action

This is a guest post by David Holland

Simon Anthony’s excellent report on Thomas Stocker in Oxford reminds me that I should add a postscript to the piece that Andrew and I posted after the 33rd IPCC Session when the IPCC decided to make the drafts and comments of its Assessment Reports confidential. We did not say so at the time but that was the handiwork work of Thomas Stocker. How he did it is a good story in the style of the "hockey stick" and I have posted a rough draft of it here. In short, it was achieved by the sort of chicanery that we have come to expect from the "directing circle". However for the first time to my knowledge the British Government seems to have has woken up to what’s going and in a letter sent to my MP, has stated,

We are aware that this new text would mean that reviewers would not have the opportunity to see how their comments had been addressed by IPCC authors before acceptance of the final report. It was not the IPCC’s intention to change the procedures in this way and it is likely a drafting error. Indeed, the intention of the update in the procedures was to increase openness in the way that IPCC reports are prepared. We understand that the IPCC is aware of this issue and intends to address it at the next appropriate opportunity.

We shall see - but I will not be holding my breath. If the rule is agreed to be that Expert Reviewers get to see the responses to their comments before each draft of the AR5 Report is published what is to stop them from blowing the whistle if we have another bit of chicanery?

Update:  As Paul points out in the comments, Steve McIntyre did a great forensic post on Stocker's earmark in January this year.

A blast at Nordhaus

There's a very interesting article at the Institute for Energy Research website, looking at Nordhaus's recent critique of the 16 optimistic scientists.

Although leading climate economist William Nordhaus tries to cast himself as the messenger of objective science, his attempt to rebut the “global warming skeptics” is itself filled with misleading arguments. The actual situation is that the physical climate models have indeed predicted more warming than has actually occurred, while the economics literature casts serious doubts on the case for immediate government mitigation efforts.

I particularly enjoyed reading about Tol's review of the economics literature on the effects of AGW. That net benefits are enjoyed for warming of less than two degrees struck me as an important, and little appreciated idea.

(H/T GWPF)

Peiser on journal and media bias

Benny Peiser's review of the way scientific journals and newspapers cover global warming is a must-read:

The integrity of the science media will depend on whether they will encourage critique and fault-finding analysis by consensus sceptics - or whether they will continue their course towards unbalanced campaign journalism. Given the well-documented reluctance of mainstream science media to accept submissions by critical scientists and the aversion to report on critical papers published elsewhere, I remain unconvinced that science journalism will moderate its blinkered attitudes in the near future.

Stocker in Oxford

Simon Anthony sends this report of Thomas Stocker's recent talk in Oxford.

Yesterday I attended a talk at Wolfson College, Oxford by Thomas Stocker, co-chair of the IPCC's AR5 WG1 on "Climate Change: Making the best use of scientific information".  He's an intelligent, well-mannered and rational man, in a position of great influence.  It's therefore all the more concerning to see the weakness of the evidence and arguments which have, it seems, convinced him of the reality and urgency of AGW and which he feels should convince everyone else.

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BBC attempts to outdo Heartland

Is this an attempt to outdo the Heartland Institute? On Thought for the Day, BBC Radio 4's prime time religion slot, John Bell, a church of Scotland minister discussed men, and in particular their badness:

However the notion that men are inherently superior doesn’t stand up to empirical proof. While in physical strength they might usually have the advantage, in terms of moral fibre and human decency men don’t always come out on top.

No indeed. One aspect of their badness that is of concern to John Bell is of course, climate change:

...the people who are most vocal in denying human responsibility for the disastrous effects of climate change are mostly male.

That's bad, I must say. But there are other equally bad men around, sinners to rank alongside those who are a bit doubtful about whether we are all about to fry. Can you guess what they are?

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