Bishop Hill Phil Jones in the Sundays
Feb 13, 2010 Climate: CRU Climate: Jones There's sure to be some analysis of Phil Jones' comments to Roger Harrabin in the Sunday papers, and I'll post links up as I get them. Thanks to Steve2 in the comments for the first of these:
MAIL ON SUNDAY: Untold billions of pounds have been spent on turning the world green and also on financing the dubious trade in carbon credits...You might have thought that all this was based upon well-founded, highly competent research and that those involved had good reason for their blazing, hot-eyed certainty and their fierce intolerance of dissent. But, thanks to the row over leaked emails from the Climatic Research Unit, we now learn that this body’s director, Phil Jones, works in a disorganised fashion amid chaos and mess.
Not Phil Jones, but very funny all the same.
Jonathan Leake is going to turn himself into even more of a hate figure for the green fraternity, reporting today on an interesting paper by Terry Mills that suggests that recent warming is just as likely to be a statistical artefact as a real change in the climate.
Gordon Brown is launching a new climate panel and denounces us all as "deniers" in the process. I guess he didn't get the memo either.
Reader Comments (117)
RichieRich,
More to the point, if it is really true that we don't have a clue about CS, and all we know is that CO2 is a GHG (which we do know), then why is it safe to (continue to) raise CO2 to levels that have not been witnessed since long before our species evolved?
(btw correction to my previous post, that should read 15M and not 20M yrs)
Re: Frank O'Dwyer
And on the same page as your quote there is a graph of the CO2 and temperatures that has the CO2 lagging temperatures. They might not have had the accuracy to determine with any degree of certainty that the lag is 800 years, but the data shows a lag.
TerryS,
That figure doesn't show any error bars on the timing axis (not even sure how that would look).
The point is that there wasn't just uncertainty about the magnitude but also the sign. At that time, there was not sufficient accuracy to say the lag was real. Why else do you think they are talking about the 'solving the chicken and egg problem'?
Yes, that's correct.
Bill Illis
Still waiting for you to support your claim:
Please name three of these people and cite papers with their estimates excluding 3C
Thanks in advance.
RichieRich, my reply to Frank was based upon my understanding of what’s reported in the IPCC documents; more specifically, the details in AR4WG1, Chapter 10, Box 10.2, p.798 (http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_Ch10.pdf).
I could be wrong (and often am :-), but the description of the way they assessed the probability density functions indicates that the models were ‘trained’ to mimic the historic data by ‘tuning’ their sensitivities, amongst other things, to give a best match. If true, this hardly constitutes an independent verification because any model deficiency will likely be reflected as an error in the ‘derived’ sensitivity. The fact that the IPCC is so candid about the significance of cloud related uncertainties merely adds to my concerns about model prediction skills.
Of course, this makes Frank O’Dwyer’s comment (“the point is that there are sensitivity estimates that don't require you to believe in any model, if it is the models you don't like”) seem rather strange to me because I see no references to methods that don’t use the models to ‘derive’ the sensitivities from the real-world data. Maybe I’ve missed something, in which case I’d be genuinely happy to be corrected.
As for Frank’s comment that “warming isn't the only reason to decarbonise (there is also acidification of the oceans), and CO2 isn't the only reason to move away from fossil fuels, esp. oil (which we will one day run out of, and which results in funding a variety of ugly regimes around the world)”, well you may be surprised to know that I totally agree! However, doing the right things for the wrong reasons is, to my mind, both morally repugnant (i.e. a prostitution of science) and downright dangerous (i.e. crying wolf).
This brings us full circle, because it highlights the fact that if the IPCC lower-level findings had been more honestly reported (where have you seen discussions of the type we’re having here presented in the main stream media?) the so-called sceptics would have had no cause for concern. There are genuine and major environmental issues (deforestation, sea pollution, fish-stock depletion) as well as massive human tragedies in the third-world that are being overshadowed by the AWG bandwagon... but, as they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Hi Dave
Thanks for your reply. If can see that if models are used to derive CS from palaeo data, then concerns about models re-enter the fray! Perhaps Frank can shed some light on the matter.
Wrt to the issue of model skill, there's a very interesting post at William M. Briggs, in which Briggs and Gavin Schmidt swap snark and thoughts.
I don't know whether it's a case of lower-level findings not being honestly reported or whether most journos don't have enough knowledge to drill down to this level. But, whatever the explanation, I do agree that more constructive dialogue between skeptics, lukewarmers, warmers and alarmists can only be a good thing.
Frank,
Two recent papers come out with results that not consistent with the models assumptions on water vapour feedback (Solomon and Paltridge). The papers themselves don't refute the models but examples of this inconsistency.
As for evidence, it would take another 40 years of data (a full PDO cycle) to establish CO2 senstivity with any degree of certainty.
In any case, the sensitivity discussion is only an issue when alarmists insist that it is a known quantity and that we are guaranteed to get x amount of warming if we don't change our ways. I am willing to accept that 3 degC is plausible but so is 1 degC. I don't consider higher sensitivities that plausible because we would have seen a lot more warming of that was the case.
In any case, we will not reduce CO2 emissions until someone comes up with alternatives other than nuclear which are cheaper than fossil fuels. Policies that demand for emission targets are doomed to fail and are simply being used as a excuse to pay off the various rent seekers which have bought the ears of politicians. For that reason I will oppose them no matter what the science says. If CO2 is a real problem we need real solutions that start with building lots of nuclear plants - not ineffectives solutions dreamed up by left of center types looking for an excuse to redistribute wealth.
RichieRich, I'm about done with this thread but would like to say "thanks" for the civilised dialogue... very rare these days.
Dave
You've been a model (!) of courtesy and I've found our exchange very helpful. As a parting gift, here's a quote from palaeo section of the Knutti and Heregl paper which confirms your position that (at least some of) the estimates from the palaeo data rely on models.
Jones on the BBC told us what the science is. It's perfectly clear. Any fool would understand it.
According to Jones:
1. There was an upward trend in temperature over the last little while (up to 15 years ago)
2. It was not caused by a change in solar activity or by volcanoes (???? don't they cause cooling??? Is this another snow job? Ha! Ha! Jones can't help himself)
3. Jones et al can't think what else could have caused it.
4. Therefore, it was man-made.
That's the settled, solid, science that has caused untold billions of dollars to be taxed off us and spent on these spivs.
Annie, read Phil Jones' answers in the BBC interview.
Speaking of the last 30 - 40 years he says:
1. There has been a general warming trend.
2. The "climate scientists" have decided that it was not caused by solar activity or volcanoes (yes, volcanoes, I kid you not).
3. They cannot think what else could be causing it.
4. Therefore, it must be man-made.
Go back 1,200 years to Norway.
1. There are often bright flashes of light and loud sounds during storms in the sky.
2. No one can think what natural process could be causing the light and sound.
3. Thereofre, it must be caused by an intelligent being.
4. Therefore, it is caused by Thor smashing his hammer on an anvil.
Get the drift?
Here we have Panchuri and his crooked mates wanting to tax us $trillions simply because Phil the dill doesn't know the cause of a natural phenomenon and ascribes it to us.
That's about as unscientific as you can get.
How he ever got his PhD, let aione his job has me completely mystified. Maybe Thor gave it to hi,
Frank Dwyer
Funny thing. There has been no warming, according to Phil the Dill between 1995 and 2010.
More to the point, your link is to the Nature article about measurement of outgoing longwave radiation in 1979 and 1995. Nothing about paleo-records.
1995 - 2010 is too short a timescale, you need a chronolgy of at least 30 years to show up any significant changes
Frank O'Dwyer - what irritates me about you is,
1. Your constantly claiming something has been said in a paper, with maybe a link to the paper, but without the quotes. For example, claiming Hansen predicted that CO2 would lag the temperatures. Please give the quote where he does and state, (even if he did), what exactly does that prove?
2. Your cherry-picking only those studies that agree with AGW and ignoring those that contradict it.
3. Your insistence that what someone said, and someone else said hear hear to that, trumps evidence. If Hansen said that climate sensitivity was 3-4C, and the temperature records, such as they are, shows that is probably not true, Hansen is still gospel and whatever he said, his reasoning etc still holds good.
Dave Salt,
First I would like to echo RichieRich's thoughts above - thank you for such polite and interesting comments. Some days it feels like a bit of a cold house here for those who actually find the century and more of work on this problem rather impressive instead of a conspiracy. :-)
I'm talking about calculations such as those made by Arrhenius and Callendar - which clearly didn't involve any computer model. In Tim Lambert's recent debate with Monckton he does a similar calculation.
You may of course protest it is still based on physical models in the general sense - but the temperature at equilibrium is observed, not calculated by any model. Therefore it must include the real world behaviour precisely. Also there is no tuning going on because there is nothing to tune. There is still uncertainty of course - but look at Jim Annan's paper which shows how independent lines of evidence can be combined to reduce uncertainty.
John Murphy,
Wrong. There has been no statistically significant warming in one dataset - a statement that is quite different from 'no warming'. Besides, overall heat content of the earth's systems (including the oceans) increased during that period. This is discussed on a different thread anyhow.
Yes, I already pointed that out and corrected the reference up the thread somewhere.
Richard,
Who cares what irritates you? And why am I the topic? But since you've brought it up I'll say your irritation with me probably has something to do with the fact that I've proved you wrong on several occasions.
Since I already gave the quote for that it looks like you're wrong to be irritated, doesn't it? The solution is in your own hands - read what's already been written. Your claim about 'constantly' is BS and you can look up the paper's conclusions for yourself. I'm not going to read them aloud to you.
As for what it proves, the reason I brought it up is that it is pretty silly to bring up the lag and pretend it is some kind of rebuttal to the theory that predicts it. It's like saying that objects falling to earth is somehow a problem for the theory of gravity.
I'm not cherry picking anything and you are perfectly free to bring forth your studies that contradict what I've said. But you don't have any do you? I guess I can see why you'd find that irritating.
I've never insisted that so it appears to be a complete fabrication on your part. Again you appear to be irritated over nothing.
Plus, you don't actually have any evidence do you? If you did you would have posted it by now instead of sitting there all irritated, like.
Frank O’Dwyer, you mention “calculations such as those made by Arrhenius and Callendar” but I see no mention of their names or work within the AR4WG1 document. However, although I see references to Annan’s work, it’s also associated with the caveat (Cf. Box 10.2, Figure 1 legend) “Note that Annan et al. (2005b) only provide an upper but no lower bound”, so I’m not so sure how this supports your point.