Climate cuttings 27

Last time round, we surmised that Stefan Rahmstorf had tweaked the smoothing period for his temperature graph for inclusion in the Copenhagen Synthesis report. The effect of this undisclosed change in method was that the warming trend appeared to be continuing up to the present day. He has now admitted that this supposition is correct and he can throw no light on why the graph's legend was wrong.

Lucia Liljegren amused herself at Rahmstorf's expense, describing his method as seeming "to involve a) guessing future data and b) smoothing using a filter with m=”number of years Rahmstorf currently likes". The issue she is getting at is that Rahmstorf is trying to test his predictions against observations, and smooths his observations to make it easier to do this. The problem is that the smoothing is itself has to create artificial future observations in order to create smoothed values for the present. As one of the commenters notes, creating more predictions is not a good way to test your predictions.

Steve McIntyre then piled in to the melee, discovering in fairly short order that Rahmstorf's method was not as exotic as he claimed, and that the smoothing period was not eleven years as originally claimed, not fifteen years as surmised last week, but actually 21 years.

A new paper finds no trend in tropical cyclone damage. Which is odd, because I'm sure someone mentioned that global warming was going to make storms more damaging.

Sceptics have been trying to get hold of the raw station data for Phil Jones' HADCRUT temperature index for years. Jones may now have slipped up, by providing the data to a researcher he viewed as sympathetic. This will make it hard to resist future FoI requests. Expect a reply to the latest one in the second half of July.

Much excitement among fans of Svensmark's theory that galactic cosmic rays cause cloud formation thus cooling the earth down. CERN are throwing money at a new set of Svensmark experiments, suggesting that arguments among AGW enthusiasts that the theory is discredited may be overdone.

It's not very hot - latest satellite readings show that global temperatures were pretty much on their long-term average in June.

And finally, the latest horror caused by global warming is an decrease in size among wild sheep in Scotland.

Comments

[Alex Cull]

It's the shrinking sheep I worry about; apparently they are still shrinking, which means that eventually they will be the size of mice and will be preyed upon by the local cats. There's a sensible solution, though - subject the island's human population to the same climate-induced evolutionary pressure as the animals, so that way the shepherds will shrink down too, and be small enough to cope with the task of looking after the micro-sized sheep. And their carbon footprints will be tiny!

[Kevin B]

Alex, while your solution to the shrinking sheep crisis has merit, it doesn't meet the key requirement of all AGW solutions in that it requires no major sacrifices in either money or lifestyle of the proles.

True, the shrinking shepherds will be required to aquire, (knit?) new clothing, but the rest of us will hardly suffer at all.

[Frank O'Dwyer]

Bishop,

"Much excitement among fans of Svensmark's theory that galactic cosmic rays cause cloud formation thus cooling the earth down"

An interesting way of phrasing this given that there has been no recent trend in galactic cosmic rays and the earth has been warming. It's a bit like getting excited about new research on hypothermia when you're on fire.

"CERN are throwing money at a new set of Svensmark experiments."

What, you mean none of the libertarians put up their own money for this? This is being funded by 'theft'?? Surely not. How statist.

Still we'll have no more claims that dissenting work is being suppressed by governments, will we?

"suggesting that arguments among AGW enthusiasts that the theory is discredited may be overdone"

I don't know that anyone's suggested it's been discredited, except as an explanation for recent warming. Aside from that it's speculative as an explanation for anything, hence the experiments.

However I do believe that if the theory predicted any kind of warming you would be calling it discredited, if not hinting that it involved some kind of fraud.