Bishop Hill English version of the solar story
Jun 27, 2010 Climate: other The Czech sceptic who wrote the original piece about the IPCC's handling of the question of a solar influence on climate has posted a proper translation, which can be seen here. The man in charge of the satellites used for collecting the data makes this rather damning assessment of Lean and Frohlich.
Fröhlich made unauthorised and incorrect adjustments... He did it without any detailed knowledge of the ACRIM1 instrument or on-orbit performance...The only obvious purpose was to devise a TSI composite, that agreed with the predictions of Lean's TSI proxy model.
Ouch.
Bishop Hill
Leif Svalgaard weighs in on this subject at WUWT:
Froelich does not ‘manipulate’ somebody else’s data. The ACRIM data is still there and has not been touched by Froehlich. What Claus does is to assign a different weight to the ACRIM data when he build his own private composite of all available data. Nothing wrong with that, just a reflection of Claus’ different [and likely correct, IMHO] opinion about what the degradation of ACRIM has been.
This is a startlingly different take on the question to the one you get from the original quote.
Reader Comments (32)
The post starts with sexist remarks and ends in drivel. This does not reduce the credibility of the core, but it makes for a very painful read.
re: "Fröhlich made unauthorised and incorrect adjustments... He did it without any detailed knowledge of the ACRIM1 instrument or on-orbit performance...The only obvious purpose was to devise a TSI composite, that agreed with the predictions of Lean's TSI proxy model."
I am sure the Lord Oxburgh types would interpret, "unauthorised and incorrect adjustments" as being scientifically legitimate and would judge that Fröhlich is a person of the highest integrity.
That is how climate science is done these days - open and independent - NOT
We had tricks to "hide the decline", we now have discovered with JudithGate a trick to "hide the incline".
Perhaps there is a novelete in this to be written.
Richard
I agree the tone of the piece is unfortunate and will allow some to sweep it aside. As you say though, the central point seems sound enough.
I misread "novelette" for a brief Freudian moment as "omelette". I guess the later has already been produced by the IPCC.
I'll take bets that nothing comes of this. IPCC omelettes are cooked up in teflon frying pans.
Just another example of post-normal science. Adjust the facts to agree with the hypothesis or model and get the required narrative.
Richard Tol wrote:
"The post starts with sexist remarks and ends in drivel . . "
I accept that there are, well, lapses of taste in the text but at least the author didn't compare Judith Lean to an apologist for the Holocaust.
More seriously, when you say ". . . ends in drivel", can you perhaps be more explicit?
Thanks
I didn't see any sexist remarks.
"Pretty geek chick in charge ... " may be objected to?
http://www.acrim.com/TSI%20Monitoring.htm
Compared to the robust rebuttal of Scafetta et al on RC, she perhaps got off lightly, but some of the comments made are rather unprofessional. Some of the rest may just be lost in translation.
It does seem odd though that the primary heat source gets so little attention in AR4, and soon in AR5. I'm also curious what the outcome will be. When I started looking into AGW, intuitively the Sun was the obvious culprit, hence my name choice. As I've learned more about it, partly guided by Dr Svalgaard, I'm less certain. It's easier to get correlations between TSI and climate than it is to explain the mechansims given the variations are small. But this is a problem common to climate science. There seems to be far more effort and research money in proving our carbon fixation than in other areas that may be relevant.
I would like to see a combination of features of Steve McIntire's Climate Audit and Anthony Watt's Surface Stations Poject. That is to have a network of volunteers reviewing published material. The first question to ask is "Does the author provide access to data, methods, code etc so that the results can be replicated?" A second question would be "is the data, methods, code, etc valid" The third question is "can the results be replicated? " This is fundamental in the advancement of science.
Mr. Kremlick is to be commended for uncovering this deception on solar influence. Why did it take so long for someone to question this basic factor in earth's climate?
I have written a strawman of requirements that I would like journals to follow at www.socratesparadox.com. I do not have access to any of the journals, so I cannot verify that currently access to data is a consistent issue. There has been much published about Steve McIntires fights to get data, which I believe is the underlying issue of Climategate. I think this issue should be vigorously persued.
I just got my copy of "The Hockey Stick Illusion" in the mail yesterday from Amazon.com. It took a long time to get it here in the US. Am looking forward to reading it.
In 2005 two Russian solar physicists bet climate modeler James Annan $10,000 that global temperatures ten years from then would be cooler, not warmer.
CERN's CLOUD experiment was motivated by the known correlations between solar activity and climate. See page 3 of http://aps.arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0804/0804.1938v1.pdf
for graphs of correlations.
Mechanisms may not be understood, but that is no reason to dismiss the sun.
With this kind of ethical behavior, these scientists seem to have the same morals as the Wall Street goons who packaged mortgage derivatives into scuzzy investments and classified them with Triple A credit ratings.
Ouch indeed.
Craig
"I didn't see any sexist remarks."
I tend to agree with the Bishop more than Richard, but the immediate reaction I had to her photograph was "Blond Bimbo". Particularly the smile. I think the photograph was unfair to her. And it could have been purposely chosen. I don't know that it was, but it could have been
I long ago learn not to judge a book by its cover or a woman by the color of her hair. But still, I did have that reaction. I suspect others did as well and at least subconsciously had that reaction. Now play that against the "geek chick" remark, I can see Richard's reaction
As for Fröhlich, that was outright dishonesty.
Yes, the tone is not professional, but more that of a "lively" blog. But if you want sober and dry analysis, the embedded letters from Wilson and Hoyt will do.
I'm beginning to appreciate Czech humour. What Ms Lean and Frohlich have done deserves no respect. You reap what you sow.
If your read Lubo's blog, you'll come to better understand Czech tones and humour.
Judy Lean will soon have a place on my list of gates: Judy Lean-gate.
Back to blogging lads?
Most of you have probably turned off your sets by now.
I can't blame you all for that.
You need to focus on cricket and billiards. Forget football.
I feel awfully sorry for the poor English living in Germany right now.
Leif Svalgaard thinks Judith's analysis is fair. That the IPCC process is poor does not necessarily mean a poor result in this case. I'm going to try to see what he thinks of the allegation against Froehlich.
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Whoa, twice I tried to ask about the Froehlich allegations, and twice the comment disappeared into the void.
If the Froehlich allegations are correct, how can the Lean analysis be 'fair'.
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OK, what I gather now is that the IPCC process is flawed, but that its conclusions are consensual among the relevant physicists. If the sun rules the climate it is not directly through changes in TSI.
So, though this episode is useful for showing flaws in the IPCC, it is a red herring enticing toward rhetorical grief.
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Kim
Where are you getting this from?
Leif is speaking on the 'Spotless Sun' thread at Watts Up.
In a way this may all be sort of irrelevant. The sun is showing us behaviour which may give us a clue to another mechanism besides TSI by which the sun directs the climate.
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If it had been John Lean, rather than Judith, this would have been called "solargate" rather than "johngate"; there probably would not have been a picture; and there would certainly have been no remarks about the sexual attractiveness of Dr Lean.
How about a comment on the IPCC process and not on the variance between Dutch and Czech sensibilities, or rather, between yours and his?
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And please tell me, has any science about the sun changed since the last IPCC report?
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Better, Richard, would you still favor carbon encumbering if you came to believe that the fading sunspots presage a century scale global cooling?
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Richard Tol wrote:
"If it had been John Lean, rather than Judith . . . there would certainly have been no remarks about the sexual attractiveness of Dr Lean."
Certainly? Hmmmm. Maybe that's true and maybe it isn't (though it probably is). Whatever, while I accept that the post is, by current west European standards, in poor taste, I am not so ready to accept that it makes no substantive scientific points.
You said that it "ends in drivel . . . ". Putting the writer's apparent emotional immaturity to one side for a moment, can I ask you (again) to say what in the text can reasonably be described as "drivel"?
@Dave B
Everything after "I hope Batman ..."
"there probably would not have been a picture; "
Most of these things are accompanied by pictures. It's just that no one yet, to my knowledge, has found the likes of Michael Mann or Rajendra Pachauri sexually attractive. Perhaps some of their followers do?...
DonB- "Mechanisms may not be understood, but that is no reason to dismiss the sun."
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I'm certainly not dismissing the Sun, and I still think it's responsible. Not so much by raw TSI variations, more variations in spectral composition and intensity. I also like the idea of our declining magnetic field having some involvement but the numbers are again small.
Problem is the IPCC seems to be dismissing the Sun by not including (or excluding) solar scientists. The nett effect of Lean's influence or the Frolich and Lean paper looks to have been a 50% reduction in TSI forcings from TAR to AR4. This strengthens the case for anthropegenic GHG's, and reduces natural variability with some questions about the justification for doing so.
This is perhaps a bigger problem for climate science though. Most of the money and effort seems to be in trying to prove our carbon fixation and ignoring other factors. Contrarian points of view get less funding, and the PNAS blacklist may make that worse, especially in our current economic climate.
Once we've got global bloody warming out of the way can we all make a start on political bloody correctness please?