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)
An interesting report on the BBC web site, covering the Cryostat 2 satellite launch. It covers Arctic ice area too, but not an opinion or exaggeration in sight, just interesting facts.
Sorry, forgot link:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8606303.stm
A tooned Bishop and a Lucia
According to R4 spring is coming a few days earlier, a message brought to you in part by non other than the Roy. Soc. They then told you that the number of people on th lookout had increased by at least a hundred fold since 2000 due to various reasons, but mainly down to BBC springwatch (the clue is in the title). AGW was alluded to, but like Voldemort, they dare not speak its name.
Perhaps we should educate the BBC/Roy. Soc. about Guassian tails and the effects of setting boundaries with single events in parallel with a massive increase in the number of samples.
SDCS
White Paper:
I've started to think about the white paper idea. As a first off, maybe a simple paper on the physics would be a good place. A lot AGW proponents talk about CO2 increase being linked to AGW by simple science, but I've a suspicion that few really understand what even the phrase means. I have the impression that a significant proportion of BH readers are more technically competant than the average warmist and thus I thought we could begin to put together a really simple paper on the physics of heat gain/loss and the optical properties of CO2
I did some calculations using Stefan-Boltzmann which show that for a body at 300K every 1K rise in temperature increases radiative output by 1.5% (assuming constant emissivity). I have heard figures of between 2-11K in the next hundred years. Thus for an 11K rise, we would need an extra 17% more energy to be trapped and transferred to the surface. Given that CO2 is a trace gas with relatively narrow absorption bands when compared to the broadness of the black body spectrum of a 311K object, it would be nothing short of a miracle if a stable point this high could be maintained.
Grateful of thoughts.
SDCS
Cumbrian Lad, 7am news on radio 4 had mention of the launch, plus some "expert" commentary along the lines of "we know the ice is disappearing, what we are now researching is the long term effects of the ice-free arctic".
Sad.
Sir Digby
Lubos Motl published a couple of excellent pieces on the same subject in the last few weeks, along with further excellent pieces on the rigorous use of statistical analysis in hard science compared and contrasted with the way climatologists and other social sciences claim to have statistical evidence (90% significance) when in fact such claims are weak, relying instead on the mathematical ignorance of their target audience.
The physics articles are:
On the importance of black bodies
and
IPCC figure for climate sensitivity contradicts the basic laws of well undertsood physics
However noble your idea for the white paper on the "basic physics" that the AGW industry pedals as "proof" ad infinitum, and no matter how persuasive its arguments will appear to the scientifically literate, I'm sadly doubtful any alarmist would bother to read, and even more doubtful any will make the effort to learn the science in order to understand. Most of the alarmists if not all appear to me to have little or no hard science or maths education / understanding whatsoever.
If, on the other hand, realists make the effort to understand more of the solid foundations upon which climatology claims to be built, then the next time another AGW apologist mouths off the "basic physics" argument, it might just embolden them to ask, "Go on then, show me this basic physics. Derive for me your conclusions from fundamental, proven principles and physical law."
Good luck with your efforts, and I look forward to seeing how they develop.
Drew,
Damn that man is good!
He's got it all there and he's a great writer, but maybe what I was thinking is something that my son's teacher can put in front of a room full of 12 year olds and they get 80% of the message (with the teacher getting 95%). Hence the two page maximum and a couple of visually appealing diags. etc.
Another way to look at it is to give guys like James Dellingpole something that he can boil down to three sentences and hit Monbiot over the head with when the 'simple science' line is trotted out. It may well be a challenge too far but worth a try.
SDCS
Sir Digby
Have you looked at The Science of Doom in connection with your white paper?
Sir Digby
Yes I agree that's the way to go with this. A primer on the basic physics, for Everyman. If every sceptic and journalist worthy of the name knew enough, then every time the AGW devout hijack the name of physics in their defence they could be challenged to explain their assertions with rigour. The Emperor may be found out not wearing very much.
Benjoman0,
Thanks for the ref. Again there appears to be a lot happening on this front already, but it is a (very) weak flank of the argument, as Lubos points out it maybe that some of the simulations start to get close to breaking the laws of thermodynamics.
SDCS
Shub Niggurath said:
"To the Bishop:
Take a look at this:
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100406/full/464821a.html
Since you wrote about about an illusory Hockey Stick, this is a real hockey stick. :) "
Not really. The first comment after the article said:
"This story is quite misleading. The $500 million committed by the Hewlett Foundation in 2008 is to be paid out over five years, but the graph and the accompanying story imply that it was a one-time grant for one year – thus the "hockey stick" trajectory of the graph. It utterly misrepresents how money is spent. (...) To pre-suppose whether a grant is "one-time" or the first of many would be more appropriate for a publication devoted to metaphysics.
Eric Brown
Communications Director
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation"
Folks - I hope somebody can give me good advice. I appear to have annoyed the moderators at the Graun CiF sufficiently that I have not just been put on the naughty step, but expelled completely from the school. And apparently all for agreeing with an article by Monbiot!
I'm sure that I'm not the only one this has happened to. Just wondered what others had found to be the least hassle way of getting reinstated. Or is it easier to invent a new persona? Thanks
Latimer Alder
I don't know I'm afraid! But I am rather mystified as to why you would want to anyway!
In the unlikely event that there are still producers of amateur G & S with a ‘topical’ slant, perhaps the following?
Warmists:-
The flowers that bloom in the spring
Tra la
Breathe promise of climate decline
We merrily churn out these things
Tra la
In hope to our cause you will swing
Tra la
To share in our sureness sublime
To share in our sureness sublime
And that’s what we mean when we say our tree rings
Show warming like flowers that bloom in the spring
Tra la la la la
Tra la la la la
The flowers that bloom in the spring
Skeptics:-
The flowers that bloom in the spring
Tra la
Have nothing to do with the case
Your theories with uncertainly ring
Tra la
As the data you had to erase
As the data you had to erase
Yet recklessly still you continue to bring
Such rubbish of flowers that bloom in the spring
Tra la la la la
Tra la la la la
The flowers that bloom in the spring
UN to make "ecocide" (including climate change denial) a crime?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/apr/09/ecocide-crime-genocide-un-environmental-damage
'I don't know I'm afraid! But I am rather mystified as to why you would want to anyway!'
Thanks MingMong
The real reason that I'd like to be reinstated is to be able to present the sceptic case in a pretty generally warmist environment. Though posting here among 'friends' is very pleasant, it is not advancing the cause very much apart from among the already convinced. So I try to be a Frank O'Dwyer in reverse (if that makes sense).
Plus there is a certain amount of pleasure in watching the true believers frothing at the mouth with rage when I point out some Inconvenient Truths. The Arctic Ice regeneration has had them in logical convulsions for days....... :-)
Bishop
Someone on Radio 4's Broadcasting House this morning (Christopher Frayling?) commented on the Observer's story on the RI. 'The reputation of science will suffer. First the emails at the University of East Anglia and now this.'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/apr/11/susan-greenfield-royal-institution-vote
What will happen to the Science Media Center?
MartinA:
I read that comment too before I posted here. It is a classic case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand does, in environmental charity.
First and foremost - the Foundation Center, which put together this report is funded by the Hewlett Foundation, yes.
The communication director Mr Eric Brown is aghast that Nature made their $500 million look like a hockey stick. But if you read the report the Foundation Center put out - there is no indication to suggest otherwise. It does seem like a single-time donation - from the report.
I've sorted out some of the hairy details of the Hewlett and the Packard Foundations. It is amazing that Mr Brown even wandered over to Nature which is obviously only being a shill for Hewlett in publicizing its vaunted climate dollars, to deliver a rap on the knuckles for drawing a hockeystick.
http://nigguraths.wordpress.com/2010/04/08/climate-money/
My Lord Bishop,
Yesterday about noon I popped in to my local bookshop (since I still don't trust this interweb thingie) and ordered a copy of "The Hockey Stick Illusion". "Yes," they said, "we can get it.", so I departed rejoicing into the sunset. This morning they rang me at 1000 to tell me it was in and ready for collection. My flabber was ghasted at a rate unprecedented since records began! Now that's service.
Have just started to read, and am so far well impressed with the readability. Many thanks.
Jerry Monk (aka Disputin - we religious must stick together, mustn't we.)
Yer Grace
Totally off main topic but relevant to the emerging Arts element in your Diocese.
I have just read that Kenneth McKellar died on April 9.
A very, very fine lyric tenor with superb diction. His recording of "Angels guard thee", from Godard's opera 'Jocelyn', is equal to Jussi Björling's version.
Vale Kenneth McKellar.
The No Consensus citizen audit of the IPCC report is now complete: see press release here:
http://www.noconsensus.org/ipcc-audit/press-release.php
This thoroughly debunks the oft-cited claim that the IPCC work is based on peer-reviewed science: about a third of the references cited overall come from non-peer-reviewed sources.
Monseigneur
"This petition has nothing to do with Science, it is about a police force for Science."
Serge Galam, who wrote a sceptical book (Les scientifiques ont perdu le nord ) a couple of years ago, joins the Allegre controversy. When French intellectuals start quoting Schumpeter on Marxism things are getting serious:
“The religious quality of Marxism also explains an attitude characteristic of the orthodox Marxist with regard to his contradictors. In his eyes, as with the eyes of any believer in a faith, the opponent makes not only an error, but also a sin. Any dissidence is condemned, not only from the intellectual point of view, but also from the moral point of view.”
http://www.causeur.fr/des-scientifiques-demandent-une-police-de-la-science,6062
In Edinburgh tonight, as part of the International Science Festival, there was a lecture entitled 'God, Science and Global Warming'. It was delivered by Sir John Houghton. He was quite good on faith though alarmingly alarmist on global warming.
About 90 people there and the questions were generally very supportive of his position on global warming. I queried the basis of some of the science and when I offered, he graciously agreed to accept a copy of the book I offered him to explain some of my concerns. In brief discussion afterwards he kindly said he would do his best to prioritise reading it, noting that he did not consider himself an expert on the hockey stick science.
Bishop, I'm going to have to buy more copies of The Hockey Stick Illusion.
I've been having a look about to see if there was any comment on the interweb on whether the eruption of the Eyjafjallajoekul volcano in Iceland had any likelihood of becoming another Pinatubo type cooling event. The various comments I'd found seemed to suggest not, though obviously early days yet, the usual reason being small amounts of sulphurous compounds by comparison with Pinatubo. I then spotted this report on BBC web site:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8623534.stm
which highlights a chap in Oslo saying "We can actually smell sulphur in the air here now from the volcano cloud,"
Second tranche of submissions published on the ICCE Review, including somebody called M. Mann
Better book early for this one...
http://www.tavi-port.org/Climatechange
Chuckles
The Institute of Psychoanalysis has a SCIENTIFIC Committee?
You should change your handle to Bellylaugh!
Fascinating article by Claes Johnson, Professor of Applied Mathematics at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden from 17 April 2010 linked as A New Approach to Climate Sensitivity on his blog http://claesjohnson.blogspot.com.
The article states that how the Stefan-Boltzmann Black Body Radiation Law is applied in IPCC AR4 The Physical Science Basis -
"An albedo decrease of only 1%, bringing the Earths albedo from 30% to 29%, would cause an increase in the black-body radiative equilibrium temperature of about 1 degree Celsius, a highly significant value, roughly equivalent to the direct radiative effect of a doubling of the atmospheric CO2 concentration"
is fundamentally incorrect.
Johnson presents a model study showing that basic climate sensitivity (without feed back - as is the AR4 assessment) can be estimated to be 0.15 degree C rather than the IPCC stated 1 degree C.
Andrew, you led us non-scientists/statisticians/mathematicians to a wonderful discussion on statistics, perhaps you could now do the same regarding the Stefan-Boltzmann Radiation Law and possibly the Navier-Stokes equations referred to by Johnson?
As always, love the blog
On Broadcasing House's review of the Sunday papers this morning;
Denis Goldberg (Nelson Mandela's comrade) picked up Christopher Booker's piece in the Sunday Telegraph and showed strong support. Sarah Sands disagreed, the D word was used, the discussion was closed.
Thanks for pointing that out Dreadnought, just listened to it. It was interesting the way that Sarah Sands went from fawning over him in the early part to a trenchant denouncement when he quite gently outlined his position against AGW. I think that must have given most of the non-thinking intelligensia a bit of a double-take.
I notice from the Met Office website that they are one of only two centres involved worldwide with tracking volcanic ash. This presumably means that the current Icelandic ash cloud information including its preojected distribution and density results from Met Office modelling capabilities.
Is this why no one can actually find the ash in situ
http://www.latimes.com/news/la-fgw-volcano-flights19-2010apr19,0,7701134.story
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSLDE63H06A20100418
Potential prize winnner for stating the obvious from the BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8628832.stm
"UK water use 'worsening global crisis'
The report, focusing on the UK, says two-thirds of the water used to make UK imports is used outside its borders"
Presumably the other third is used in free trade zones or bonded warehouses within our borders, or to rehydrate imports? Still, one side effect of the flight ban might be to get people to understand where our supermarkets buy our produce from and how it arrives in these shores, and whether that is really sustainable.
A model by any other NAME
http://web.archive.org/web/20070109200727/www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/nwp/publications/nwp_gazette/dec00/name.html
Is it any wonder that the airline industry is sceptical of the data if it relies upon a MET office model?
Climate science crying wolf has even more to answer for I just hope that it doesn't include deaths from plane crashes because people don't trust science anymore!
Get those grant applications in now !!!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/apr/19/climate-change-geological-hazards
Frank Furedi on the volcanic erruption and worse case scenarios:
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/8607/
There is a piece in todays Economist about the Oxburgh Report. I've sent them this letter.
"Lord Oxburgh's panel said the CRU scientists were careful with the caveats, people who subsequently made use of their results including the IPCC sometimes simplified issues,underplaying possible errors." (Economist Apr 17th) Lord Oxburgh said this was "regrettable" but failed to mention that the lead authors responsible for substituting "settled science" for uncertainty were none other than Jones and Briffa, principal members of the CRU under scrutiny by Oxburgh's panel. Such omission repeated by the Economist who must know the truth, totally alters the exculpatory verdict of the panel.
Sorry your Holliness but I've been chortling for the last hour and couldn't resist.
Caught a site where a gentleman has published pictures of what he thinks is a 'Bishop's Ring' and is asking for verification, maybe you could assist in his dilema.
http://spaceweather.com/submissions/large_image_popup.php?image_name=Richard-BR-001_1271704421.jpg
New post up at Barts, which is a to me mind numbingly patronising overview of how real science and publishing and peer review works, and how different it is from the lumpenproles airing their ignorance and prejudices on a blog.
I continue to be floored by the extent to which these people do not get it.
Check out Richard Tol’s devasting critique of the IPCC and its processes from his long-term insider’s vantage point at Donna Laframboise’s blog:
nofrakkingconsensus.blogspot.com/2010/04/seasoned-veterans-view-of-ipcc.html
Anyone else get the feeling that the blanket closure of national airspace smacks of nannying and over reaction?
I've been following some of the debate, and it seems that the serious damage to aircraft is within a few hundred miles of much bigger volcano eruptions, not a couple of thousand miles out from a little squeaky thing like this one.
The big airlines will certainly have planes with only a few tens of hours left before they go for full stripdown, and engines with a few tens of hours before mandatory scrapping.
I've been on plenty ten and twelve hour flights, that is more than long enough to fly a more southerly path across the Atlantic avoiding the plume, and there are people who are willing to pay a premium to fly NOW!
These are commercial decisions, WTF are national aviation Bureaucrats doing dictating them?
Keenan, and Queens, Belfast.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/apr/20/climate-sceptic-wins-data-victory
Here's something that requires immediate attention, and comment from BH: http://www.state.gov/g/oes/rls/rpts/car5/index.htm.
This "draft" puts the US State Dept. squarely behind the IPCC. They need to be informed that the science is NOT settled"!
A po-faced Michael Mann is threatening the M4GW with legal action over their "hide the decline" video. They've responded with another one - good for them.
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/climategate-figure-threatens-lawsuit-over,1256901.shtml
It will be interesting if climate content finds it's way onto this tool.
I just stumbled across this piece of **** in my travels.
Some may have seen it before. I haven't, and I'm angry.
http://www.climatecops.com/downloads/climate_cops_crime_cards.pdf
How to incorporate clouds in climate models::
"When the volcanic ash started to spew in the first days, one could not help but notice a particular ash cloud formation. Even the most nonrepresentational vision could not help but see the astonishing volcanic dust cloud form of a lion with pouncing front paws and stretched torso. It's as if mother earth was saying to us in cloud symbolism that she is angry."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cartoon/2010/apr/21/steve-bell-cancelled-flights
Wee Willie said I just stumbled across this piece of **** in my travels.
Some may have seen it before. I haven't, and I'm angry.
Yes, it has a very nasty flavour of Orwellian kids blowing the whistle on their ungood parents for their thoughtcrimes. Indoctrination of kids with this rubbish is bad.
The global warming religion is far from finished. It might be all over in three year from now and everyone will wonder how it took hold.
On the other hand, who can say that, 1000 years from now, stringent anti-carbon measures will not still be in place to ward off the CAGW that was been prophesied by St Michael and St Phil all those years ago? With fervent believers rooting out Deniers and bringing them to inquisition...
After all, some of the cargo-cult religions that took root in the Pacific during WW2 are still going strong (if I remember correctly what I have read on the subject).
that, three years from now, we all look back and wonder how it could have happened - like the 17the century Dutch selling their houses to buy tulip bulbs.
This looks interesting...new book...http://www.drroyspencer.com/
"The great global warming blunder- how mother nature fooled the worlds top climate scientists"
US Poll finds that 59% of scientists disagree significantly over global warming.