Saturday
Dec052009
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Unthreaded
Dec 5, 2009 Climate Some of the comments threads are going way off topic, so I'm setting up an unthreaded post for people who want to point to interesting stories or put forward their own theories.
Reader Comments (472)
Also:
StraightTalk BBC on Saturday night...(20 March 2010)
Andrew Neil (who had a very sceptical one or 2 blog articles) interviews Caroline Lucas
'leader' of the Geeen Party..
Interesting section on no warming for 10 years, climate gate emails, etc..
Might be a good quote or 2 from the green party leader for you..
Should be available on iPlayer for a while.
Gosh
It’s incredible that a global warming theory could agree with both the IPCC (discernable anthropogenic influence) and the sceptics (low long term risk from emissions) but there you are.
Nice image at Roger Pielke's
I've written a some notes on 'A meeting on sustainability' held in Oxford on March 17th - a celebration of 350 years of the Royal Society. Programme here: http://www.ox.ac.uk/gazette/2009-10/weekly/110310/lecs.htm#4Ref. Lecturers included Myles Allen (the Trillionth Tonne) who spoke (among other things) on his reactions to climategate.
If you'd like me to send you my report, Andrew, please email me.
Vive La France. Vive la revolution!
The French postpone their plans for a carbon tax indefinitely stating that they will only pursue it again when all the heads of Europe agree on a policy.
http://www.7sur7.be/7s7/fr/1505/Monde/article/detail/1083657/2010/03/23/La-France-abandonne-la-taxe-carbone.dhtml
A thread was posted on 12 March 2010 - "An interesting medical paper"
see: http://www.inters.org/disf/sites/default/files/Onest%C3%A0_nella_Scienza.pdf
The second paragraph of the paper reads:
"Yet real science must be an arena where truth is the rule; or else
the activity simply stops being science and becomes something
else: Zombie science. Zombie science is a science that is dead,
but is artificially kept moving by a continual infusion of funding.
From a distance Zombie science looks like the real thing, the surface
features of a science are in place – white coats, laboratories,
computer programming, Ph.D’s, papers, conferences, prizes, etc.
But the Zombie is not interested in the pursuit of truth – its actions
are externally-controlled and directed at non-scientific goals, and
inside the Zombie everything is rotten."
Having examined the Royal Academy of Engineering report of 18 March 2010 and the I.Mech.E. report of 10 March 2010, it dawned on me that it is possible to substitute "engineering" for "science" in the above paragraph and it still makes sense when applied to the two reports.
Thus: "Zombie engineering is engineering that is dead, but is artificially kept moving by a continual infusion of funding. From a distance Zombie engineering looks like the real thing, the surface features of engineering are in place – white coats, laboratories, computer programming, Ph.D’s, papers, conferences, prizes, etc."
Eureferendum blog has information on the scale (tens of billions) of this continual infusion of funding, see http://tinyurl.com/ykurjes
Perhaps we should call any publication that purports to have an engineering basis, written by groups of eminent professionals and which advocates the mass deployment of carbon capture and storage, wind power, solar arrays, wave power etc. a product of "Zombie Engineering".
Let us look forward to a Grauniad headline: "MPs embrace latest examples of zombie engineering to combat global warming".
Roger Highfield, editor of New Scientist, appears to be taking a step back from "the science is settled" in this piece in the Telegraph:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/7499524/You-cant-predict-the-weather-or-climate-change.html
The French are abandoning the proposed CO2 tax. I guess the people have spoken.
The government has responded to the petition calling for the suspension of the CRU:
http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page22924
"CRU’s analysis of temperature records is not funded by, prepared for, or published by the Government. The resulting outputs are not Government statistics".
Yeh right! Pull the other one.
The BBC are spinning like heck again. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/8584665.stm tells of how a tiny island off Bangladesh has been inundated. Rising sea levels are clearly to blame - therefore it's Global Warming wot dunnit.
"Professor Hazra said his studies revealed that sea levels in this part of the Bay of Bengal have risen much faster over the past decade than they had done in the previous 15 years".
Presumably the Indian Ocean is not only incapable of eroding anything, it is able to build unique water heaps which capriciously respond more to stable temperatures than a warming phase?
Who is kidding who?
Martyn
Gives me the impression that there is some distancing being put between the government and CRU prior to the election, but maybe I'm just an old sceptic.
JimD
I've checked up on your island. It first emerged in 1971. That would have been due to Global Cooling no doubt.
http://www.banglapedia.org/httpdocs/HT/S_0503.HTM
Following Martyn's post about the government's response to the e-petition http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page22924
"CRU’s analysis of temperature records is not funded by, prepared for, or published by the Government. The resulting outputs are not Government statistics."
" That is why the Government funds a number of institutions, including the University of East Anglia, to carry out research into climate change science."
So do they or don't they fund it?
And why isn't the temperature record part of the environmental data? The National Audit Office keeps an eye on the UK's reported carbon emissions, maybe they could look at the temperature too?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/mar/17/climatechange.carbonemissions
Downing Street responds to CRU petition.
http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page22924
For anyone following the VS/Bart/Tamino arguments over whose stats are better, Lubos Motl has written in response a series of highly readable articles on the use of statistical analysis in hard science, and the requirement upon much higher levels of confidence (5 sigma) than is currently advocated by Tamino (2 and 3 sigma only) and others in climatology.
For anyone lost in the arguments bandied back and forth on Bart's blog, Lubos' memos are IMHO much more readily accessible, and written from the POV of a (non-climate) physicist, are much more concise and relevant, as might be expected.
His latest, a must read and which can be found here is on the mathematical consequences of relying on 2-sigma confidence in foundational results.
In summary, as a body of knowledge is built upon those foundation results through citation in next generation studies, through simple probability calculations Lubos shows how this leads to exponential growth in errors with every subsequent generation result. Ie rather than reach greater validity over time, the opposite is highly more likely.
Lubos' other memos on stats relevant to the Tamino/VS ding dong and well worth reading are:
self similarity of temp series on how the signal to noise ratio in temperature trends looks the same on every time scale
his input and subsequent censure chez Tamino; and
defending statistical methods a response to those who use only soft statistical results, and the correctness of the rigorous use of statistics in modern science.
This latter memo is required reading for anyone who needs to know why 90% or 95% confidence, as bandied about by the IPCC for it's assessment forecasts, is not nearly as significant or certain as it pretends to be.
DR
I think the funding for CRUTEM came from the US Department of Energy.
Lots of coverage of a poor island off India/Bangladesh that's sunk beneath the waves. An Indian Oceanographer seems to think that it's due to global warming. Pity he didn't talk to his colleagues in the history, geography or politics departments who could tell him it rose out of the water in 1970, reached a height of 2m, then went back where it came from, nearly causing a minor war between India and Bangladesh in the process.
Anybody read Terry Pratchetts 'Jingo'? The parallel is uncanny.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/8584665.stm
I agree with Drew: Luboš’ “Proliferation of wrong papers at 95% confidence level” is a must read.
I don't know if anyone listened to it but Mike Hulme was on a BBC Radio 4 programme this week discussing global warming. He said that there was AGW but people should understand that 55% of the warming caused by humans was for reasons other than the emission of CO2. My take is that like most people outside of the enviromental movements, and politics, he can see the impracticality of reducing CO2 output any time soon given the social dimensions, and the policing difficulties and would like us to address those issues we can make an impact with in a fairly short timeframe. Seems eminently practical to me. But, where did he get the 55% from does anyone know?
Any news from the Royal Society uncertainty jamboree?
Maybe the outcome was, er, uncertain?
My, that Muir Russell enquiry really knows how to move things along. Take a peek at the action notes from the meeting on the 25th Feb
http://www.cce-review.org/Meetings.php
Now remember the Science Media Centre? All those lovely self referencing peeps? Well since they were so kind as to 'help and support' Muir Russell at his launch meeting, the reveiw panel have decided to give SMC £1500 of our money!
Muir Russell advised the group that "he was in the process of making enquiries regarding the procurement of the services of a project manager". Eh! How many review committee members does it take to change a light bulb? Obviously to this crew 'work' is something someone else does.
There are also references to making submitted evidence available on the web site "as soon as practicable". We know Dr Mann submitted at the beginning of March.
Go read it, it's a hoot. There was also a meeting on 20th March, no minutes yet.
Josh has done loads of cartoons, but I don't think he's going to write a report because they are going to be podcast soon.
Jack
Didn't you hear? At the RS Uncertainty Lectures, the climatologists learnt that uncertainty really exists and has been dealt with by the quantum physicists and mathematicians for ages.
They were particularly impressed with the potential to subvert the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle as a way to back claims that the newly admitted uncertainty in their quaint branch of natural philosophy means that even more massive funding is required.
Thus the Climate PUP (Post normal Uncertainty Principle) was hypothesised, and will no doubt quickly be enshrined into legislation so that, should the science of the PUP not prove "robust", an esoteric concept held in high regard by those mathematicians and physicists, but of not much use in climatology, it will be too late anyway.
Please see my post here, comment #6 for more on the "basic physics", the PUP, and how it ties everything nicely together in the parallel world of climato-politics.
Cumbrian Lad
As the Chinese say, "Golden Rice Bowl".
Work for the govt. in any of its many tentacled forms, and you have a magical golden rice bowl to feed from, one that will never be empty, no matter how little work you actually do yourself, no matter how little value you add or more likely, subtract from the world.
MR. SMC. RS. SMERSH/GLOBE.
Its the Magic Roundabout. As another commenter remarked on your GLOBE story, where are the good guys?
Drew
"Iron" rice bowl is the correct expression.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_rice_bowl
Armageddon cancelled, lets just be friends. Surely this should be plastered all over the front pages?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7521270/Government-accused-over-taking-credit-after-greenhouse-gases-fall-during-recession.html
Wed March 24th interesting post on Harmless Sky on further detail within UEA emails. It is demonstrating the over riding concern of IPCC authors to provide suitable political presentation for their masters rather than best presentation of the science.
Your Holiness Bishop Hill
Your interest in rice bowls is most welcome. I believe iron bowls might possibly have been more acceptable amongst the comrades of the cultural revolution, but to ordinary Chinese, gold is the bowl of choice.
The expression "gum fan woon" (literally, gold rice bowl) is in common use amongst everyone who has spent any time in southern China, Hong Kong and elsewhere in south east asia amongst the diaspora.
Rather than consulting wikipedia, I have my own rather more authoritative source, Mrs. Drew, an expert on things Chinese. Mrs. Drew says that as gold is what glitters and iron is a bit rusty, golden bowls are more commonly heard of than iron ones. In Chinese culture, gold is always used descriptively to indicate very auspicious things, and things that are very nice to have, such as being virtually unsackable with a cast iron pension and not having to deliver any value.
Mrs. Drew further comments that wikipedia together with Global Warming can "dieu koy lo mo", which is another rather colourful expression widely in use by said ordinary Chinese peoples to express their distaste when those with golden bowls tell them how to live and what to think.
I lived in Southern China for a couple of years myself, during the 90s. There was much talk at the time of how to deal with the iron rice bowl of the civil servants.
Interesting. And in light of your travels, Bishop, you doubtless won't need a translator for Mrs. Drew's last expression.
Back to bowling, I might point out that in the science of climatology, transmutation of base metals into gold (with a 90% statistical significance) is a common trick, taught even to first year climate change undergrads. Hence your iron is now widely thought to be golden.
On living in China, I too have been fortunate enough to live there and other parts of asia half my life and managed to pick up a number of wonderful local expressions. I'd tell of my favourites, but even over here on the far side of unthreaded I do not want to risk upsetting a man of the cloth or joining another recent contributor in the 24 hour time out zone.
Chuckles: Of COURSE the Government can take the credit for the reduction in CO2 - as long as they take the credit for b%&**ering up the economy too!
New humble Pachauri claims he's going to adopt a "neutral advisory role" in future and stop advocating draconian taxes. However, he also says the IPCC is planning to recruit more spin doctors because at the moment they're “terribly ill-equipped” to communicate with the world’s media (yes dear - that would be because your "science" is crap).
He also let the Times see his tax return for 2008/9: apparently, he earned £44,600, with the rest of the dosh going to his "charitable" TERI organization (bet he didn't show the Times TERI's accounts though).
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7078140.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=797093
well well well I feel Mrs Drew needs the soap and water mouthwash:-)
Suggestion: increase the number of comments per page, from 20 to, say, 50.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/7530961/Can-we-trust-the-Climategate-inquiry.html
"It is not correct to say there are people who don’t trust me."
--Rajendra Pachauri, when asked why he has not resigned as IPCC chair.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7078140.ece
There is a report about the divergence problem in tree-ring proxies at "Climate of the Past":
http://www.clim-past-discuss.net/6/225/2010/cpd-6-225-2010.pdf
Yer Grace
Not sure if anyone here has an interest but the CERN Hadron collider will be doing its thing again tomorrow and it will be webcast beginning at 8.30am CEST.
http://webcast.cern.ch/lhcfirstphysics
"Five webcasts will be available from CERN on 30 March. The main webcast will include live footage from the control rooms for the LHC accelerator and all four LHC experiments and coverage of the press conference to announce the first collisions. Webcasts will also be available from the control rooms of the four LHC experiments: ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb. The webcasts will be primarily in English.
The main event is the first attempt to collide protons at 7 TeV in the center of the LHC experiments, a very complicated procedure that could take time to accomplish. Changes from the published schedule will be announced in the webcast"
From http://press.web.cern.ch/press/lhc-first-physics/webcast/
Sorry! bishop
Compare and contrast 4 months. (both links bbc)
Pre - Copenhagen - 24th Nov 2009
Gulf stream failing due to climate change (scare)
Post climategate - Today
Gulf Stream Not slowing down, bit of natural variability (experimentation/observation)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Weaker Gulf Stream -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8369236.stm
"A rise in temperatures around the world due to carbon emissions since the industrial revolution means many icecaps and glaciers are steadily melting.
Rising temperatures have also caused ocean waters to expand - the main cause of sea level rise in the 20th Century.
The 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projected a likely sea level rise of 28-43cm this century, but it acknowledged that this was probably an underestimate, as not enough was known about how ice behaves.
"The fact that sea levels are rising is a major reason for concern and it's a combination of the global average rise together with the natural variability leading to larger regional rises," said Dr John Church, from Australia's government-funded science and research body, the CSIRO.
The weakening of the Gulf Stream coupled with the gravitational effects of being closer to the North Pole mean waters in the northern hemisphere are experiencing the biggest rise. "
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now: (less than 1 Hour ago)
Gulf Stream 'is not slowing down'
By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News
Data came from the global network of Argo floats in the oceans
The Gulf Stream does not appear to be slowing down, say US scientists who have used satellites to monitor tell-tale changes in the height of the sea.
Confirming work by other scientists using different methodologies, they found dramatic short-term variability but no longer-term trend.
A slow-down - dramatised in the movie The Day After Tomorrow - is projected by some models of climate change.
The research is published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
The stream is a key process in the climate of western Europe, bringing heat northwards from the tropics and keeping countries such as the UK 4-6C warmer than they would otherwise be.
It forms part of a larger movement of water, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, which is itself one component of the global thermohaline system of currents.
Between 2002 and 2009, the team says, there was no trend discernible - just a lot of variability on short timescales.
The Atlantic overturning circulation is still an important player in today's climate
Josh Willis, Nasa
The satellite record going back to 1993 did suggest a small increase in flow, although the researchers cannot be sure it is significant.
"The changes we're seeing in overturning strength are probably part of a natural cycle," said Josh Willis from Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California.
"The slight increase in overturning since 1993 coincides with a decades-long natural pattern of Atlantic heating and cooling."
Another interesting memo from Lubos Motl. Based on well understood and tested physics and worthy of a read:
Black body limits: climate sensitivity parameter can't possibly be high, a proof
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/29/james-lovelock
James Lovelock: 'Fudging data is a sin against science'
I know Lovelock is considered an irrelevant curmudgeon by some but I think what he says in this interview is going to considered quite a story, iconoclastic:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/mar/29/james-lovelock
James Lovelock on the value of sceptics and why Copenhagen was doomed
Read the full transcript of James Lovelock's G2 interview with Leo Hickman
Lovelock is also saying Democracy is part of the problem - http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/mar/29/james-lovelock-climate-change
"Even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while."
There's a few comments from warmists on the Guardian site agreeing with that last sentence, and, already, a lot more elsewhere.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/03/29/a-new-id/#comment-24070
Jeff has a son named Ethan.
AGW and the TV Licence Fee
From a discussion on The Gramophone website [about the prospect for FM broadcasting]:
Quality is a long way down their priority list, though there must still be people there who care somewhere. The management's main worries are keeping the government on their side to maintain their claim to a compulsory licence fee, to keep their pay packets, pension funds and expenses paid.
Explains a lot.
Climate Realists Post 29th March 2010 ( in case you have not read it yet)
Climate Change At The Crossroads by Will Alexander, S. African UN Scientist
An interesting post at Climate Realists on an article by Will Alexander which points to a sense of reality gaining in less privileged countries and makes an interesting comparison to UK fuel policies. There is also the role of WWF ( I always thought they were about protecting Wild Life) in their attempts to prevent South Africa receiving a loan from the World Bank.
"South Africa recently announced its decision to continue with the construction of coal-fired power stations to meet its electricity requirements for the immediate future. These will be followed by the construction of nuclear power stations. It has applied for a World Bank loan for the completion of the large coal-fired power station now under construction.
The national and international reactions to these decisions are described in the attached Memo 06/10 Climate change at the crossroads. They are likely to have far-reaching consequences."
Now it can be told, the iPad is going to doom us all to die and disappear in a suffocating pile of data centres.
http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/news/the-ipad-internet-climate-change-100329
It must be true, Greenpeace said so.
Nigel Lawson and Kevin Anderson debated global warming on the Jeremy Vine show on Radio 2 today - it was a civil affair, although Anderson pulled a sleight of hand by arguing, in response to Lawson's assertion that temperature hasn't risen this century, that "energy" in the whole earth/atmosphere/ocean system has gone up dramatically even though temperature hasn't (how do they measure "energy", I wonder?).
I too listened to the Jeremy Vine show. It was very disappointing. Nigel Lawson is not really up to the mark to present the case against AGW. He has, like most, a basic common sense grounding in the science but is unable to tear apart the warmist cause. He's too urbane and is unable to debate the nity gritty arguments very successfully.
Another sceptic who appears on Radio 4 as a panelist on the programme "Home planet" is Dr. Philip Stott.
How this person can be regarded as a sceptic is a bit weird really. He is nothing of the sort and frequently talks about the dangers of climate change on this programme and yet makes the case slightly stronger in his essays.
Perhaps He dislikes confrontation I don't know.