Bishop Hill Hegerl lecture
Oct 6, 2010 Climate: IPCC Climate: MWP Climate: Models Climate: other I was in Edinburgh last night for a public lecture by Gabriele Hegerl. Hegerl, some of you may remember, is a climatologist and she appears briefly in the Hockey Stick Illusion as a witness at the NAS panel hearings.
The lecture was frankly rather disappointing, being pitched at an introductory level, and being largely a run through of the standard AGW talking points. That said, there were a few issues that I noted down as being of interest.
The first of these was when, early on in the talk, she said that the IPCC acknowledges different sides to scientific debate but that disputes are resolved, often by the author teams taking a position on the debate. As I understand it this is what happens, but it is against the guiding principles of the IPCC.
Glaciergate got a brief mention. Hegerl said in essence that Fred Pearce has misheard the number, which is not the way I remember the story at all. She also said that the figure SPM was correct in the SPM but the figure was wrong in the chapter. I hadn't heard this before.
Climategate was mentioned extremely briefly - there was an overwhelming sense of "moving swiftly on", with just enough of a pause to say that the allegations emerging from the emails had been "largely refuted".
There was little discussion of paleo although the spaghettin graph (Fig 6.13) from AR4 was shown. Hegerl said that the medieval/modern differential wasn't of particular interest - the response of temperature to drivers was more important.
She said that sceptics were "stupid" and that she wished we asked more intelligent questions.
[Updated to correct the nuance on what was said about Glaciergate]
Reader Comments (74)
I also was at the presentation and concur with Bishop's points. In addition, I noted:
: I believe I heard her say (along with the person who introduced her) that she is able to correlate the recent extreme weather, e.g. in fires in Russia and Greece and the added precipitation that is seen now in the world, with AGW
: There is no doubt that we have more CO2 in the atmosphere than in ever the last 650,000 years, and it is increasing.
: Can relate the "unequivocal" recent warming with the retreat of glaciers (photographs shown)
: AGW is proven by the "fingerprints" (no more elaboration than that, with some references to the industrial revolution
Did you get to talk to her, or does she not stoop to talk to the stupid underclass?
Has anyone anywhere managed to find anybody who is prepared to identify these "fingerprints"? I guess we're too stupid to have noticed them.
Maybe the skeptics would be asking more sophisticated questions at this point if they had received more straightforward answers to the simple ones they already asked.
She's right. We ARE stupid. We pay her salary.
She works where?
No wonder she swiftly moved on from Climategate. Her "fingerprint" was well in evidence in the emails.
Confused
University of Edinburgh
Duke University NC - USA
I think "The Age of Stupid" is a good title to explain everything that's going on.
Like the causes for WWI and the like - rather than complicated marxist or conspiracy theories, stupidity of the people involved makes much more sense.
Calling people Stupid, Flat Earthers or having a personality disorder are hardly going to win any one over. The Hockey Stick is dead, the temp increase has stopped and they are left with CO2 in a test tube experiment and wildly optimistic forcing. So the argument is over and they have run out of ideas.
Seems the only way out is the Red Button.
In an age of uncertainty, she ought to prove her certainty. She is certain about her certainty. Why the secrecy, about what ever it is that makes her so certain? What is she trying to hide? Apart from the decline, in certainty amongst other things.
Name-calling - the last refuge of those who lose an argument! [Other than blowing up the winners of course]
"Hegerl said in essence that Fred Pearce has misheard the number"
Fred Pearce has said that he stands by the number.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fred-pearce-i-wrote-the-offending-article-i-stand-by-it-1876419.html
QUOTE: Syed Hasnain told me that was his conclusion in an unpublished report to the International Commission on Snow and Ice.
New Scientist (where Pearce published the story) also says that it stand by the number.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18420-climate-chief-admits-error-over-himalayan-glaciers.html
At least one other media outlet independently reported the same story over a month before Pearce's report (June 1999).
http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/node/319
QUOTE: "Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 is very high," says the International Commission for Snow and Ice (icsi) in its recent study on Asian glaciers.
Also, if the original story was wrong, it would seem unlikely that the scientist responsible for it, Hasnain, would wait until the clamor before saying anything, especially after it was cited by the IPCC.
Moreover, even if the story had been correct, this would not excuse the IPCC for citing a 2005 report by WWF, which in turn cited the 1999 article in New Scientist.
So, the scientists made an error, and now they are trying to get a journalist to take the blame.
You have to remember that Gabriele Hegerl has in the past, 2006 to be precise, rejected her own empirical research, the real data, that showed the estimates of climate sensitivity used in climate models were far too high. Ms Hegrel simply could not bring herself to say that the planet's responses to increases in CO2 were weak, instead she reiterated her belief in CAGW.
As for calling sceptics "stupid" - well there is the old saying that if you think you are talking to someone who is stupid make sure they are not thinking the same.
Mac
Tell us more.
You can't "largely refute" what's on the face of the Climategate emails. Phil Jones DID instruct to delete emails to hinder FOI requests.
I'm not impressed by this lady. As coordinating lead author on the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report for Working Group I we have seen her bias and disdain before. But at least she admits the 'divergence problem': "I'm worried about what causes the divergence...As long as we don't understand why they diverge, we can't be sure that they accurately represent the past."
Seems the AGW community are communicating at us, not with us.
From Memory:
The "gone by 2035" figure was wrong in the chapter and not mentioned in the SPM. - so you could say the SPM was correct by omission. have I remembered it correctly?
Here is a question for Hegerl.
In resolving in IPCC type issues why does she prefer such discussions are held outwith the IPCC process and involving only a select number of people?
Namely: Myles Allen, Phil Jones, Toru Nozawa, David Karoly, Nathan Gillett, Jonas Bhend, Jesse Kenyon, Richard Smith, Tim Barnett, Hideo Shiogama, Daithi Stone, Francis Zwiers, Reto Knutti, Peter Stott, Hans von Storch, Jonty Rougier, Reiner Schnur, Karl Taylor, Ben Santer, Mike Wehner, Claudia Tebaldi, Doug Nychka.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/04/0419_060419_global_warming.html
GSW, you have remembered it correctly. The SPM just says glaciers are melting, and in the future, snow cover is projeced to decrease, with no numbers.
So assuming BH is quoting her correctly, your recollection of the IPCC report is better than Hegerl's. And she was one of the SPM authors!
[BH adds: She quoted from both, so to that extent what she said was fair. I've corrected the report to make this clear].
The lady, as is common with many climate scientists, is ill-informed, and using her authority as a climate scientist, does not hesitate to misinform.
Pearce heard correctly. Hasnain repeated the same number at a presentation to the CSE in New Delhi, who then reproduced it in their Down to Earth magazine. The text in the IPCC comes from 'Down to Earth'. The ballpark figure of 40-70 years has been repeated many, many times citing Hasnain each time - something he claims he was unaware of.
Pachauri was quoted giving out similar figures in 2006 in a news article.
The 2035 figure is not mentioned in the SPM. Indeed the IPCC used this fact to wriggle out of issuing any correction to the WGII report text, with the added shameful excuse that the error is buried in a 1000 page report. I guess one cannot expect these dinosaurs to not know that such antediluvian pretexts do not cook. What is the meaning of 1000-pages for a web page available online, within two clicks?
As you point out, Dear Bish, her affirmation of what actually happens i.e., "I am lead author, so it is my turn to have a say" is the opposite of what an 'assessment' of the science is supposed to be. Assessments of science are almost impossible in climate science if, as we have seen with the Team's behaviour, the major strain of ideology running through the field, consists of deleting and suppressing opposing viewpoints, in order to tell the 'larger truth'.
http://www.santonbridgeinn.com/liar/index.html
Hegerl's 2006 paper on low climate sensitivity was a subject of a Steve McIntyre blog.
http://climateaudit.org/2006/04/20/hegerl-et-al-in-this-weeks-nature/
Note the tetchiness of Hegerl's response to McIntyre's request for the data.
Asking to see the data is such a 'stupid' question!
However it does indentify a human flaw in how Ms Hegerl tries to communicate her own science with others whilst trying to stay true to the CAGW message. In rejecting her own science, a low value of climate sensitivity, in 2006 she must have realised that she had crossed a line between science and advocacy. Her claims that we are all stupid is simply a defensive response to failure on her part - she had let herself down, the sceptics became easy and acceptable scapegoats for her own troubled conscience.
Her office is apparently just along from Geoffrey Boulton's, as you've pointed out before:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/2/12/everybody-needs-good-neighbours.html
Mac:
That National Gegraphic article you cite is a fine example of where Hegerl uses climate model outputs as evidence (she is a mathematician after all). Also we have the usual quote "the problem is worse than we thought".
Nothing changes in "climate science". What goes round comes round.
What was she before she became a climatologist? All climatologists have had a previous life whether as a physicist, meteorologist, biologist, geographer and so on. Most if not all climatologists would struggle with some of the concepts from areas outside their specialist field given it is such an eclectic area of study but it allows the option of describing another as stupid. One often hears of sceptics being dismissed because he or she is not an expert. Pachauri is a railway engineer so he is an expert in what exactly?
"Pachauri is a railway engineer so he is an expert in what exactly?"
Oct 6, 2010 at 1:12 PM | Wilson Flood
Hi Wilson. If you do something called 'research' it's easy to get answers to the questions you are asking. His first job was being a railway engineer - he's had a distinguished academic and industry career since then.
Do you define yourself and other people by the first employed position they held? If not, then surely you are just trying to use a demeaning label?
If you want, I can copy and paste some paragraphs from Wikipedia for you, but I would have thought that you could go and look it up yourself.
Quote - "Climate change: past, present, and future
A public lecture presented by Professor Gabriele Hegerl on Tuesday 5 October 2010.
This is the second lecture in the Our Changing World series.
Gabriele Hegerl is Professor of Climate System Science at the University.
Video
A video of this lecture will be able to view online soon after the event". - unquote.
See: http://tinyurl.com/36ddsyh
As GH apparently mislead the audience about the SPM Glaciergate business, I wonder if the video will ever appear?
Here's a paragraph for you:
Pachauri was on the Board of Governors, Shriram Scientific and Industrial Research Foundation (September 1987); the Executive Committee of the India International Centre, New Delhi (1985 onwards); the Governing Council of the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi (October 1987 onwards); and the Court of Governors, Administrative Staff College of India (1979–81) and advises such companies as Pegasus Capital Advisors, GloriOil, the Chicago Climate Exchange, Toyota, Deutsche Bank and NTPC
Says far more about his conflicts of interest than about his academic credentials, which seem to run to about 3 years post-doc economics work, and no physics whatsoever.
Mr P Bratby (second in command of the forthcoming English revolution to throw off the chains of the EU)
You DO know what the fingerprints are ^.^
CO2 has two main stable isotopes in the atmosphere, one has Carbon 12 and the other Carbon 13. One of these is preferred by plants (C13 I think) so that when fossil fuels are burned the resulting CO2 is the C13 isotope. The balance between these two isotopes in the atmosphere is changing and the C13 isotope share is growing, warmists claim this shows mans fingerprint on the warming.
The fact that they do not consider any other sources of C13 CO2 does weaken the argument in my opinion ^.^
David S
I actually agree with ZedBed on this one, I think you respond to people on the basis of what they say and do and that Patchy's past employment is of no interest.
Fortunately for us, was Patcy says and does is self evidently wrong.
"The fact that they do not consider any other sources of C13 CO2 does weaken the argument in my opinion"
Oct 6, 2010 at 3:28 PM | Dung
Hi Dung - I feel slightly guilty here, as I'm almost asking you to prove a negative. However, could you point me towards some work on carbon fingerprinting where it's explicitly mentioned that no other sources are considered, or is it your own conclusion as there's no explicit mention of other sources investigated?
Thanks.
Greetings Mr ZedBed :)
Firstly as a 62 year old borderline alcoholic (I have not given up and am sure I will make it all the way one day!), perfect memory is not my strong point ^.^.
However I am fairly sure it was in AR4, the working group, the scientific basis. I think it was in the part about "attributing".
Sorry I cant remember more than that mate.
ZedBed
Rereading your post; yes it is the case that the only source of C13 CO2 mentioned was the burning of fossil fuels, other sources were not mentionedor considered (I think hehe).
Dung.
Oviously it's my bible, I worship it, and every single line, especially the bits about glaciers, is correct. Nonetheless, it's really boring.
Oh well, thanks for the point, I'll dig it out again and start trawling.
Thanks.
ZedBed
IF it is your bible then it could be a great basis for argument because imo it is certainly not all correct :)
One of the most troubling emails is from Phil Jones, gloating over he death of a skeptical scientist:
You can draw a straight line from this to the 10:10 splattergate mindset.
Again going back to Hegerl's 2006 paper on climate sensitivity. The problem that Hegrel had with the data and the analysis, the determination of the upper bound limit on climate sensitivity, is that it took climate science back 30 years to a point when scientists were concerned over AGW but not CAGW. Weak or mild warming of the planet due to rises in atmospheric CO2 was of no great political concern back then.
However, recent studies prior to Hergerl's 2006 paper showed a much higher upper bound limit of climate sensitivity that took science into the alarmist realms of CAGW. Hergerl's paper had effectively knocked CAGW on the head, she knew that, but wouldn't or couldn't say it. She simply reiterated the line on CAGW, we were all going to hell on a hand cart.
In saying that sceptics are stupid, in reality, she was taking us to be stupid in an attempt to ease her own conscience in trangressing that line between science and advocacy.
It is no wonder in this public outing she glossed over many contentious aspects of climate science, spending any time on these matters would be personally embarrassing.
I find Hegerl's attitude perfectly understandable ^.^
She is a Dendrochronologist and therefore all her contributions to the CAGW camp have been tree ring paleoclimate reconstructions.
The CAGW camp is now distancing itself from paleoclimate reconstructions (where they have seen their arguments totally refuted, not least through "The Hockey Stick Illusion").
She had to go out there and tell people: Hegerl said that the medieval/modern differential wasn't of particular interest - the response of temperature to drivers was more important.
So she is effectively told to go and walk the plank.
They want to move the argument into an area where the science is not settled but at least nobody can pull apart their theories by scientific means.
It is heart warming, that she is so cocksure of the 'science', why can she not inform us, as to why she is so certain of herself and of her beliefs then?
Or is it cognitive dissonance? Lots of CO2 ( maybe and open to question, where does it issue from- man yes but not by any means all of it) and some (background) warming, does not equal AGW.
Someone didn't press her button(s).
A little courtesy wouldn't go amiss, what is it with climatologists, they seem to have the manners of raiding Norsemen - going a 'viking', hardly ladylike, hardly scientific either.
Zed, Pachauri is repeatedly referred to as a railway engineer because of the obvious sense that he has run the IPCC off the tracks.
==============
And Hegerl tells us we're stupid to believe the trains aren't running on time.
=================
She sounds like an apratchik defending the CCCP in the early days of Perestroika.
Hegerl is also listed as "staff" at National Centre for Atmospheric Science, including amongst many, Brian Hoskins and Jonathan Gregory. http://ncas-climate.nerc.ac.uk/staff
Hi guys, its easy to be misunderstood in talks (as they are more informal than papers!) BUT:
IPCC author teams discuss if some positions are supported by stronger arguments, but they do represent both sides of a scientific debate. Not only did we follow the IPCC guidelines, I firmly believe that these are the right approach! And you can see in the report that this approach was followed.
I did NOT say that the recent extremes are caused by greenhouse gases - indeed, I spent quite a bit of time saying it is hard to estimate if climate change has changed the probability of extremes.
And I feel misquoted in much more of the above, most significantly: for sure I called nobody stupid,
but some questions are much smarter (ie grounded in physics and logic) than others.
Gabi Hegerl
[BH adds: Thanks for commenting. I'll respond at the bottom of the thread.]
There's a CO2 fingerprint, there's a missing AGW fingerprint and there's "climate scientists" fingerprints.
No alibi. Guilty as charged.
Gabriele: There's nothing like a good grounding in physics. It's a pity that most of the "climate scientists" who form the consensus we are repeatedly told we must obey, don't have a good grounding in physics.
I hope she's put something aside for a rainy day;)
Gabi, thanks for taking the time to come on this thread, maybe we can make it a regular event, and you can listen to the misgivings many of the physicists, engineers etc. have about the way climate science is being done. For example, nobody argues that the recent warming doesn't have some contribution from human activities, but the logic we see from the climate community is that there has been a rise in temperature, a portion of it can be explained by natural forcings, and with an aplomb non-existent in engineering (my discipline) the climate scientists announce that the rest MUST be caused by CO2. Well it may be, but you can't make assumptions based on your inability to explain events. So why don't we have these discussions and you can explain to us why you can make a seeming leap in logic and then demand that the developted world commits economic suicide to avoid the assumed disaster.
Please could commenters note that while Prof Hegerl is on the thread I will be taking a very firm line on contributions that do not adhere to the highest standards of courtesy. None of your usual rowdiness please, gentlemen!