Bishop Hill Myles Allen's ad hominem
Mar 22, 2010 Climate: CRU Climate: Models Climate: WG2 Reader DR sends these notes from A Meeting on Sustainability at the University of Oxford
'What can be said about future climate? Using observations to constrain the forecast and the implications for climate policy.'
Myles Allen introduced himself as a member of an endangered species, a climate scientist. He agreed that energy measures will be needed regardless of climate change, but wanted to argue that climate change is important. He said that climate scientists have recently been faced by many questions, both from sceptics and from the policy community, and said that most people are asking the wrong questions. It is clear, he said, that CO2 is rising and temperatures are trending upwards.
He showed a slide listing the issues raised by Climategate, and said that he had not read the emails, but none of the accusations have come to anything. In terms of data sharing, he said that Phil Jones only ‘crime’ (if there was one) was to use his professional judgement to distinguish between scientists on one hand and ‘activists and nutters’ on the other. Allen said that personally he receives numerous emails purporting to have disproved relativity or some such, and he worries that freedom of information legislation may be removing his right to ignore such communications. He said there was no problem with data sharing in climate science between climate scientists. Indeed he had emailed John Christy and Eduardo Zorita, and they said they had never had any problems obtaining data from Phil Jones. Allen also criticised the press, e.g. the BBC’s Newsnight airing criticism of software, which was not in fact temperature software despite the impression given in the programme.
Allen then turned to climate predictions. He showed that the prediction he made 10 years ago (Allen et al. 2000) was exactly right for the average temperature of the first decade of the 21st century. But, he said, some predictions have been too conservative. Arctic sea ice has retreated faster than predicted (he showed sea ice data up to 2008), and sea level rise is at the top end of IPCC predictions. The 2003 european heatwave caused perhaps 40-70,000 extra deaths, which he said could be termed an ‘industrial accident’ (for the fossil fuel industry). The challenge for climate scientists, he said, was to distinguish the impacts of climate change from weather fluctuation – one should not blame everything on climate change, but neither should one blame nothing. He mentioned the strong financial incentive to be a ‘victim of climate change’ – there is a $100bn fund available to those who can prove it.
What is dangerous climate change? Allen showed the figure of various impacts of different temperature increases [a variety of the first graph on this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_global_warming] and said that the main negative impacts would be avoided if total temperature increase was limited to 2 degree C (about 1.5 degrees C from where we are now), but we don’t know how to ensure this. He feels it is encouraging that there is far more of a consensus between countries that emission reductions are needed, even China agreed this (in principle) at Copenhagen. But, Allen feels that CO2 targets are the wrong approach. Science cannot tell us whether CO2 should be stabilised at 350 or 450ppm. He argued that the total amount of fossil fuel burned is crucial – the long term temperature response is similar whatever the rate of emissions – but we cannot stabilise temperatures below 2 degrees C increase if we produce more than a trillion tonnes of CO2 (see Allen et al, Nature, 2009, and TrillionthTonne.org).
Allen feels that Kyoto took policy in the wrong direction (see e.g. Prins and Rayner, The Wrong Trousers) and that the failure of Copenhagen is an opportunity – it is time to consider alternatives. He cautioned against geoengineering, including pumping CO2 out of the air after the temperature has increased. His models predict that removing CO2 might have unwanted effects on rainfall – there is a danger of ‘replacing warming with drying’ and increasing climate instability. We don’t have the modelling capacity, he said, to predict all of the consequences of geoengineering, so we should attempt to prevent CO2 emissions reaching the cumulative limit, by reducing usage and making carbon capture mandatory.
Reader Comments (36)
"...introduced himself as a member of an endangered species, a climate scientist. He agreed that energy measures will be needed regardless of climate change..": what is it about being a climate scientist that qualifies him to opine about "energy measures"?
Wow. Sounds like a science-fiction convention. All these exciting scenarios these guys know about. Just when will the coinage of the 2003 heatwave start to get dull? Climate change localised in Europe - during a short period of time. Excellent. I wonder how that theory works.
An industrial accident? Crazy.
He sounds like ideal material for heading the next inquiry :)
And what was the impact of that heatwave on annual deaths?
'sustainability' is a password that allows access to Area 51.
For an extremely well-educated stats man, Myles is a very naughty boy. His use of the 2003 heatwave death number illuminates his status as a fully-paid up alarmist, belying the measured tones of some of his analysis of the GCMs. Here's what the docs say about cold and warm weather deaths:
"Our data suggest that any increases in mortality due to increased temperatures would be outweighed by much larger short term declines in cold related mortalities, although this offers little reassurance for those affected by the heat." W R Keatinge, MJ 2000;321:670-673 (admittedly before the 2003 heatwave, but also before the 2010 freeze....
Sorry BMJ of course....
myles allen says he hasn't read the Climategate emails! bit like your reviewers who haven't ready your book, bish. allen's suggestion in Dec that the MSM had reversed their CAGW narrative is such a laugh.
11 Dec: Guardian: Myles Allen: Science forgotten in climate emails fuss
No one identifies any scientific flaws in Phil Jones's work, yet the 'fallen idol' narrative is too alluring for the media to resist
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/dec/11/science-climate-change-phil-jones
It is clear, he said, that CO2 is rising and temperatures are trending upwards.
Why is it that I get really concerned about the state of climate science with I read those words? When was the last time CO2 and temperature trended upward at the same time?
Guess I'll have another beer and review my stats book about correlation and causation. Where did I put my copy of "Statistics for Dummies"?
At least Myles has sense of humour. Which says something for him. From the quote below;
"In terms of data sharing, he said that Phil Jones only ‘crime’ (if there was one) was to use his professional judgement to distinguish between scientists on one hand and ‘activists and nutters’ on the other"
I'd have liked to ask him which of the 2 groups; McIntyre, Wijborn Karlen and Warwick Hughes fell into.
Having read the emails; Jones would definitely be in my personal 'activists and nutters' category.
In a word, "Sad" Get a life Myles. We did. Yes, there is a life after the melt down of 2004, it's called the winter of 2009-2010 when the New Ice Age started -- or so it seems.
Off topic, but VS is having a good time at Chez Bart's isn't he? Any clue who is the Virtuoso Statistician? I wonder if he is a caped crusader -- Faster than an quad -- I7 Core Intel, more powerful than a speeding Root Unit, capable of leaping gigantic false assumptions in a single bound! VS Man to the Rescue!
Born on the far off planet Reality, VS man comes to Earth to right the wrongs fostered on mankind by the evil forces of AGW, a sinister force determined to enslave mankind under the shackles of Cap and Trade, forcing mankind to pay the onerous carbon tax to the Great Green Lords led by the evil Al Gore.
Josh, you just gotta do another cartoon of VS man! Just gotta! In fact we could get together and do a comic book, I'll write it, you do the art work. I am sure that the rest of the crew could come up with a whole bunch of suggestions for a plot.
" He cautioned against geoengineering, including pumping CO2 out of the air after the temperature has increased. His models predict that removing CO2 might have unwanted effects on rainfall – there is a danger of ‘replacing warming with drying’ and increasing climate instability. We don’t have the modelling capacity, he said, to predict all of the consequences of geoengineering, so we should attempt to prevent CO2 emissions reaching the cumulative limit, by reducing usage and making carbon capture mandatory."
Adding CO2 causes drought and removing CO2 causes drought???? Apparently everything causes drought!!
The models can't tell us what effects changes in the CO2 level will have?? Of course, he has just admitted that the models have no skill and he and the rest of the people who use them for forecasts instead of scenarios (which do not match our earth) are delusional!!
O/T but the carbon cowboys are probably what will bring the scam home to more people than the science ever will:
22 March: BusinessWeek: Microdyne, Broker of Used CERs, Isn’t on CO2 Markets (Update1)
Microdyne, which bought and resold United Nations carbon offsets already used by an emitter in Hungary, said a “typing mistake” misrepresented the company on its Web site as a member of the three emissions exchanges. “It was fixed when we found out about it,” the company said in an e-mail today in response to written questions from Bloomberg...
Anvar Kasimov, listed as Microdyne’s owner on the March 18 letter, couldn’t be reached at the telephone numbers listed on the correspondence and the Web site at www.microdyne-uk.com. A person answering the phone today at its office at 55 Bryanston Street in London declined to give his name and said the company would respond to questions by e-mail.
Patrick Birley, chief executive for the London-based European Climate Exchange, said Microdyne isn’t an ECX member...
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-03-22/microdyne-broker-of-used-cers-isn-t-on-co2-markets-update1-.html
There can never have been an area of science so plagued with logical and conceptual errors. The concept of 'sustainability' is one of these incoherent and ambiguous phrases. People feel able to justify various programs as increasing sustainability without ever having put down criteria for 'sustainable' communities, so we could tell which are and which are not. They then go on to argue that their pet programs will make them more sustainable, without having been able to show that what they propose will be the best way, or even any sort of way, of increasing the qualities which define sustainability.
It is, for instance, supposed to make our local city more sustainable if all the food its inhabitants eat is raised or harvested within 10 miles of its boundaries. Really? Dos sustainability mean that the death rate will fall? The illness rate fall? Of all illnesses, and if not which? Will alcoholism fall? Will employment rise?
Who knows? The concept has become a way of saying of a measure that we like it, its a sort of inarticulate grunt of approval for it. Its content free.
"He had not read the emails himself" yet he still felt himself amply qualified to pontificate on their effect. Well they helped to scupper Copenhagen for starters.
Oh sorry. How thoughtless of me, and me not even a climate scientist or anything.
'.....Myles Allen introduced himself as a member of an endangered species, a climate scientist...'.
An endangered species? Is Myles predicting that in the near future climate scientists will be held in such low regard that they wont be able to find anyone willing to breed with them?
Myles said,
"Arctic sea ice has retreated faster than predicted "
He stops in 2008! I wonder why!
"Sea level rise is at the top end of IPCC predictions"
Swedish geologist and physicist Nils-Axel Mörner says, "the sea is not rising, It hasn't risen in 50 years. If there is any rise this century it will not be more than 10cm (four inches), with an uncertainty of plus or minus 10cm". Here is a guy that actually goes out and uses the real world rather than models!
"The 2003 European heatwave caused perhaps 40-70,000 extra deaths"
Its that "Perhaps/Maybe/Possibly" time again! As AGW is still only a theory how does he prove the heatwave was man made?
"So, we should attempt to prevent CO2 emissions reaching the cumulative limit, by reducing usage and making carbon capture mandatory"
We are still waiting for them to prove causation are we not. We know they can prove it by fiddling graphs and models but in the real world? (Or was that kitchen sink experiment on the BBC supposed to convince us all?) Logarithmic is a word that pops into my mind everyday now!
I really am now of the mind that anyone that places "Climate" before Scientist is simply a person not worthy of trust!
Rant switch to off!
Thanks to DR for providing these notes and congratulations on his self control for not jumping on Mr. Allen and choking him.
According to the activists and nutters at the Danish Meteorological Institute the Arctic sea ice a couple of weeks ago was at its greatest extent since 2005. It's the bears I feel sorry for.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
Paris lies in a very large bowl of land which traps heat. It's historically bad for hot conditions during hot summers. That's life, innit?
I believe Myles works at the same place where Sir John started out.
"We don’t have the modelling capacity, he said, to predict all of the consequences of geoengineering, so we should attempt to prevent CO2 emissions reaching the cumulative limit, by reducing usage and making carbon capture mandatory."
Curbing CO2 emissions is, itself, a form of geoengineering.
Would that have made me an activist or a nutter? :-) Audience questions weren't invited - this was part of a day of talks in celebration of 350 years of the Royal Society, attended by many of Oxford's great and good (and me...).
Seriously, I went hoping that Myles Allen would speak to his title and give a reasoned defence of climate modelling and how climate predictions are constrained by observations. I hoped learn more about the subject from one of its leading exponents, for instance a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of climate models as in his paper from 2007 http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/365/1857/2145
Myles is an intelligent, articulate and engaging speaker and I felt felt that he missed an opportunity to communicate his science to a wider audience.
When Myles Allen gave a presentation for Climateprediction.net's Open Day in 2004 where he predicted that the Earth would warm by nearly 2C for the first 50 years of this century, that translates into 0.4C per decade. The three previous periods of warming over the past 150 years have been no more than 0.15C per decade, which is nearly 3 times as small as Myles Allen prediction for this century.
How is Myles Allen's prediction doing? Well the planet has cooled over the last decade, and may continue to cool, or not warm, for another 20 years. If that were to happen the only way that Myles Allen's prediction were to come true was for the planet to warm at a WHOPPING 1C per decade.
What are the chances of that happening? Well according to the IPCC it won't because it can't.
So it seems that the reason that climate scientists like Myles Allen are a endangered species is because they are seen as being educated fools.
He mentioned the strong financial incentive to be a ‘victim of climate change’ – there is a $100bn fund available to those who can prove it.
Sounds like nonsense of some sort.
Credulity on\
Perhaps Myles would be totally in agreement with the desicion to not allow democratically elected councillors their opinions because they object to green technology. Endangered species indeed, how about those that are repressed?
http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/1651038?UserKey=
Credulity off\
The activists and nutters at the DMI also added, "However, the total estimated ice area is underestimated due to unclassified coastal regions where mixed land/sea pixels confuse the applied ice type algorithm."
Yet all we here is that the Arctic Ice is melting, although it is well known outside climate science circles that the ice in the arctic has had a very variable existence, even during the photographic age.
His defence of Jones is pathetic, once data has been used in a paper it should be made available, if it is science is sound and the data unchallengable then activists and nutters could do nothing with it because there would be a robust scientific response. Scientist who are frightened of activists and nutters looking over their work are clearly not producing work that can pass muster with critics.
The 2003 heatwave didn't cause any more deaths than can have been expected averaged over a year or so, it simply brought forward the deaths of those who were already dying by a few weeks. After a heatwave there was a compensating reduction in mortality. But averaged over a year or so the numbers even out.
This is not the case with cold. Cold causes deaths to those who could expect to live for many years longer, not only due to hypothermia, but mainly due to flu, respiratory diseases and complications. The increase in mortality due to cold is not compensated by a reduction in mortality immediately afterward, so cold causes 'excess' mortality. Heat just induces a small time shift to those already dying.
'Sustainability' is a buzzword. It's bandied around as part of the eco-imperialistic agenda, and because it conveys a feelgood factor on company brochures. If you use the word 'sustainable' or 'sustainability' it is a coded message that you are part of the eco-imperialist army. It's the verbal equivalent of a lapel badge. Of course, that word was only used judiciously and infrequently until a few years ago. It is essentially a Marxist concept, and you will find its use right the way back to Karl Marx and part of Marxist ideology ever since. Whenever I see the word I have to figure out whether it is cynical manipulation, crass stupidity or Marxism. Probably all three rolled into one these days.
Myles Allen misread his taxonomic label. He is a sub species of 'pseudo-scientus alarmista', called 'AGW promoter', a species that mimics various science species, but is in reality a parasite that uses fear mongering to create false alarm about the climate, and feeds off of the monies that victims of the fear mongering shed in their panic.
Successful parasites know better than to destroy their victims. The problem that puts the
'ssp. AGW promoter' at some risk of rapid extinction is that this sub species sought to enlarge its niche from simply taking money from victims, to making blatant and ridiculous efforts to rewrite history, lie about the present, and to pretend that a ~1o over a century's time was somehow cause for concern.
Isn't Allen the perpetrator of Climate@home, climate modeling on your PC in its spare time, that had to be withdrawn because the Pacific was freezing at the equator and half the runs were blowing up because the earth's temperature went to 0 K?
oxonmoron
Much of the excess mortality during the 2003 heatwave in France was due to the fact that most of those who might have been helping the victims were away on holiday, be they neighbours, emergency services, doctors or civil servants from the MInistry of Health.
President Chirac made no comment until he returned from holiday TWO WEEKS after the end of the crisis and then blamed families for going on holiday and leaving their grannies behind.
Emergency planning is now much better.
"It is clear, he said, that CO2 is rising and temperatures are trending upwards."
Okay, let's say that's true. That doesn't mean that one causes the other--that either A causes B or B causes A. Factor C could in fact be causing both--not acknowledging that possibility is called Ignoring a Common Cause. Now, they might try to claim that Factor C is US...that we are the cause of both. However, in order to prove that, they need to rule out every single other possible explanation, including that big yellow/white ball in the sky. They haven't done that and would never even consider such a thing. It's too much like work for them.
In addition to making stats mandatory for anyone in a science major, they should also be required to take logic, preferably at the same time as stats. You could drive a truck through climatologists' thinking and have room to spare.
Just my two cents. :)
Allen is responsible for the ClimatePrediction.net website.
http://Climateprediction.net is a distributed computing project to produce predictions of the Earth's climate up to 2080 and to test the accuracy of climate models. To do this, we need people around the world to give us time on their computers - time when they have their computers switched on, but are not using them to their full capacity.
Temperature 'could rise by 11 degrees', says study 27 January 2005
http://www.scidev.net/en/news/temperature-could-rise-by-11-degrees-says-study.html
Nearly 100,000 people worldwide have taken part in the largest ever climate study and shown that global warming could be more extreme than previously thought — temperatures could rise by 2-11 degrees Celsius if carbon dioxide emissions go unchecked.
The new estimates are based on computer simulations run by 95,000 members of public worldwide who have taken part in the 'climateprediction.net' experiment, whose first results are published today (27 January) in Nature.
It is important to note that the bottom of the range corresponds to previous estimates, says Myles Allen of the Department of Physics at Oxford University, United Kingdom, who helped set up the experiment.
This shows the results do not simply mean scientists are less certain about the effects of greenhouse gases than before, but that worst-case scenarios might have been underestimated.
"The uncertainty is greater at the upper end — not the lower end," says Allen.
In terms of international climate change policy, the study suggests it will be difficult to set a level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that can be trusted to be safe. It also implies that stabilising carbon dioxide emissions at current levels may not be sufficient.
"DR"
Did you attend the whole of that meeting? I ask because Chris Llewellyn-Smith who opened with "The Energy Challenge" was my D Phil examiner (we even published a paper together, which may count as a conflict of interest) and, at least in those days, seemed a "proper" scientist. However, ostensibly he's long since stopped doing science and moved into admin - DG of CERN, Provost of UCL, director of JET... I wondered whether you were able to form a view of his stance on the science of global warming.
In answer to Simon Anthony, I only attended the morning session. I hope Andrew will forgive this long post, but here are my notes on Christopher Llewellyn Smith's talk on 'The Energy Crisis'.
In summary he sees the energy crisis as a huge problem, whether or not there is climate change, and he outlined the possible ways of meeting the looming energy gap, favouring solar and nuclear as the only realistic ways of meeting global energy needs in the long term. He did not say much about climate change as such except for a brief mention of CCS, and he showed the McKInsey curve of the cost of various emissions reduction strategies. Nuclear fusion is clearly his main enthusiasm.
Here is his talk in more detail:
Christopher Llewellyn Smith said that in the face of population growth, climate change and depletion of fossil fuels, the problems of sustainable energy are facing us now. We can’t go back to the society of 200 years ago that ran on muscle power (human and animal) so what is to be done? We have to think holistically, there is no single answer. For instance biofuels currently provide 1% of vehicle fuel, but they use 1% of agricultural land, so clearly can’t be scaled up indefinitely.
Statistics: the average global energy use is 2.4 kW per person, ranging from the USA at 10.3 kW to Bangladesh at 0.2 kW (UK 4.6). Currently 80 % of this energy is from fossil fuels. Electricity supplies about one third, a proportion that is rising, and could supply almost all energy needs except aviation. If, as in the UK, coal-fired and nuclear power stations are closed as they come to the end of their lives, and if they are not replaced, a serious energy gap will open up.
To bring everyone to 90% of current ‘western’ living standards based on the Human Development Index (life expectancy, education etc) we would have to double global energy use. [A graph of HDI vs energy use can be seen here: http://www.thewatt.com/node/170]
But how can this be realised? We will have to adjust expectations and way of life, especially as oil runs out. Then he gave some calculations based on a recent report from the UK Energy Research Centre about how long oil, gas and coal are likely to last, even with unconventional extraction – around 100 years, given the likely increase in energy demand as countries develop and populations rise. He does not believe that fossil fuels will remain unburnt (‘they should but they won’t’). CO2 stays in the atmosphere for 100s of years, so carbon capture and storage (CCS) is needed as a matter of urgency, which will add about 10% to the cost of electricity. Even without climate change, we need to solve the energy crisis by all the following measures (except CCS).
The measures needed are reduced demand, which will only reduce the growth in energy use, given population increase, and better efficiency particularly in housing and transport (though regulation is needed to translate efficiency gains into reduced demand rather than, say, larger cars). He said that a suite of low-carbon electricity generation technologies must be developed, but he calculated that together wind, marine, biofuels, hydroelectric and geothermal could only provide a maximum of 7 terawatts (and that is with absolutely everything done to optimise their use). Currently world consumption is 15 terawatts (predicted to increase), and in the absence of fossil fuel, the gap will have to be met by nuclear and solar. He then listed the options for solar power, and said that the problems are storage and transport, as well as cooling water for some forms of generation, but there is much scope for solar electricity generation. Nuclear power would be a large part of the answer, there is uranium available for hundreds of years, and thorium and fast-breeder reactors would greatly increase the effective supply, and he said that these programmes are currently proceeding too slowly. His own interest is nuclear fusion. He said he cannot tell when it will work reliably and economically, but we have to try. Compared to the $5 billion we spend on energy each year, the amount spent on researching fusion is tiny, and the potential rewards are enormous.
Llewellyn Smith ended by showing the McKinsey curve (e.g. here http://www2.grist.org/gristmill/images/user/8/mckinsey_mid_range_abatement_curve.jpg) showing that some emissions reduction measures have low or negative cost, but said that public and political will is needed to implement them. He also noted that many countries lack the capital to put many of the measures in place. He made an impassioned plea to tackle the forthcoming energy crisis by means of portfolio of measures, each implemented where they make sense.
Sorry - typo in long post above (penultimate para) - world energy cost is $500 bn/year not $5 bn.
"DR"
Thanks for the summary of Chris Ll-S's talk; it's encouraging to see that his principal concerns were with how to supply realistic amounts of energy if/when fossil fuels run out and with mitigation of possible CO2 effects rather than massive reductions in energy use.
This is exactly the point that critics of Jones are making. Jones suppled data to some people and not to others. This is not a good thing