Bishop Hill Standing on the shoulders of pygmies
Aug 19, 2010 Climate: other Greens An extraordinary article at Nature's Great Beyond blog, reporting on a new paper by Judy Allen et al from the University of Durham.
Human hunters off the hook? Climate change caused wooly mammoths' extinction, say scientists.
Uh huh. So how do they know this?
Climate change, rather than human hunters, drove the wooly mammoth to extinction. That’s the claim from scientists who say that the hairy beasts lost their grazing grounds as forests rapidly replaced grasslands after the last ice age, roughly 20,000 years ago. The researchers used palaeoclimate and vegetation models to simulate the plant cover across the mammoths’ habitat around that time.
Yes folks, it's a modelling study. Another one. From the paper's abstract, the researchers took output from the Hadley Centre's Unified Climate Model and pumped it into another model which purports to simulate how a variety of plants react to temperature changes. So even if the vegetation model works it still relies on the Hadley Centre model being something one can rely on. Is it just me that finds this all rather unconvincing. I mean is the Hadley Centre Unified Model something you'd want to bet the house on?
Well, according to this article, the Unified Model is:
"the same model that is used to produce every weather forecast you see on British terrestrial television."
Oh dear.
Reader Comments (49)
Whenever I see mention of a mathematical model, caution kicks in as I remember my Statistician colleagues telling me loudly and often that all models are wrong but some models are useful. I also remember that correlation does not indicate causation.
I suppose it's fortunate for us that our future does not depend on how or why the wooly mammals became extinct. But this article begs the question as to why everything is now dependent on the results from climate models (plus other models) which have zero validation and thus zero predictive capability.
My own computer model (just written) shows that wooly mammals were wiped out by an early form of Mad Mammoth Disease combined with early varianst of Foot and Trunk disease, Mammoth TB and Mammoth Flu, all of which were exacerbated by climate change brought about by early human release of CO2 from spit-roasting mammoth burgers.
Yes, its hilarious. The forecasts are issued 5 days out. Today, for instance, there is a forecast out for Monday August 23.
So all you have to do is write down what it is for your region. Then do the same thing tomorrow, the next day, and so on until the day, and the weather arrives.
There are then three simple ways of telling whether these guys know what they are doing. One would be whether the forecast stays the same. It rarely does, except in periods of stationary high pressure. The second is whether the weather resembles what was forecast 5 days in advance. It rarely does, with the same exception.
The third is whether the forecast, for any given day, is any more accurate than the naive forecast that it will be the same as that on the day the forecast is issued. I have never done this last test, but I have done the first two once or twice, and am sure that they would fail this one too.
They can give accurate forecasts about one day out in periods of stationary high pressure. But so can we all. What they cannot do is give accurate forecasts at any other time.
The proposal to privatize the Met Office is correct. If anyone is fool enough to want to buy their forecasts, let them. There is no reason the long suffering taxpayer in the UK should be forced to pay for this garbage.
My last post, by the way, was written while our clothes are still haning up to dry from being caught in the last downpour, which occurred in the evening of a day forecast at 7am to be bright and sunny. We were caught in it walking back to our car. Tourists looking like drowned rats scurried along the side roads as we drove home. We picked a couple up who said with a surprise which would have prompted wild laughter from less polite people, that the weather forecast had been that it was going to be fine.
Quite so. The triumph of hope over experience.
Ah yes, the woolly mammoth. Climate change was its greatest triumph, but also its downfall. Yet more evidence that climate change is the underlying cause of everything that happens in the world, and also its result! :o)
Some bloggers are suggesting that 'biodiversity' is gradually replacing 'climate change' as the big environmental issue for campaign groups such as BBC and The Guardian. If that takes off, then we can expect a new article: "Climate Change off the hook? Man's selfish self interest caused wooly mammoths' extinction"
Not to worry in the future we will be able to use ancient DNA to bring those poor old woolly mammoths back from the dead. Then they can starve to death all over again.
We visited a theme park on holiday. The best attraction for myself and my sons? Good old fashioned Dodgem's (bumper cars) with few waiting in the queue.
After about 10 go's, I was asking myself (as you do): could this be modelled? Due to computer games people think it can. And I am sure visually a model could be created that would give the impression of a Dodgem session. But I looked at the variables, and thought no way could this be effectively modelled. Just a simple 5 min Dodgem session.
The results of models are always something that is familiar, feels comfortable, looks right. They often use feedback to alter the model to make it give what they think is 'right'.
What happens if you apply this mammoth model to rabbits? Will I be writing this pushing floppy ears out of my keyboard and snacking on a carrot?
Unfortunately in the age we are in, people think that we can model reality. Only one person can do that, and he/she/it is not letting on.
The Daily Telegraph's Louise Gray has just posted an article about this study which is almost exactly the same as an article she posted last year:
Spot the difference:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/5559450/Woolly-mammoth-killed-off-by-climate-change.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/7950058/Woolly-mammoth-killed-off-by-climate-change.html
Same title, same picture, same speculative nonsense, only she's upped the alarmism this year - we must be winning!
OT. A commentor on the Erice 2010 thread posed this excellent question.
Jim Pacheco says:
Aug 18, 2010 at 9:53 AM
Let’s look at the basic tool of the temperature over time graphs.
Remember the anthropogenic global cooling movement in the 70′s. As I look at the modern temperature over time graphs, the cool ’70s are becoming flat. Who is making these after-the-fact adjustments, when were they made, how often were they made, and are they archived anythere.
End quote.
Strikes me that this well worth running with. Lots of potential for demonstrating, using archive data, that something rather strange has occured to the temperature record in the interim.
Bish?
Oops. Erice 2020 is a CA thread, I should have added.
Louise Gray has previous with this type of thing.
It is just cynical lazy journalism. What would happen to many of us professionals if we dusted off a year old deliverable and changed the date? It would mean we think our Boss is really stupid.
You cannot escape the conclusion that she thinks her readership is stupid. The old phrase "you can fool some of the people all of the time...." comes to mind.
There would have been masses of CO2 producing the climate change, and making all those trees grow, and the CO2 production was undoubtedly caused by the ... oh, wait a minute, I need another model....
But who was driving the SUV's that created the CO2 that warmed the Globe which killed the Wollies.
I fail to see the logic in supporters of CAGW using Clinate Change as a causation for every wierd event, it just adds to the fact that Climate Chnage always has and will happen with or without CO2.
JohnH it wasn't CO2 that time but Methane, or to put it crudely Farts. Basically they Farted too much, thus releashing too much methane causing the temperatures to rise. This in turn caused the change from grassland to forest. So you can say they commited suicide via farting. now if they had only enacted a ETS on Farts they would still be alive.
Well spotted Chilli & Jiminy - The Daily Telegraph articles do indeed use the same photo & headline. However, on closer inspection I noticed that they didn’t actually use the same words or report the same news, the rascals! The articles refer to different pieces of research that come to broadly the same conclusion – the one they cunningly highlight in the headline. Sneaky, eh? Not sure that’s really a hanging offence, but then I also have “previous” – I did once use the cut & paste buttons myself.
This was on the radio yesterday, and mentioned the CO2 rise without actually relating it to the plant activity. The presenter (through gritted teeth, I imagine) admitted that the CO2 increase was 'natural' but of course, nobody asked him the obvious question: might that not also be the case now? Or, even, might it be an effect of the warming, and not the cause?
As if extinction is not part of evolution! Have these people never seen an elephant?
Maybe the null hypothesis is too obvious, it would mean species could cope with a changing climate after all, and we can't have that!
No, clearly mammoths farted themselves to death as Judy Allen says (she's a scientist you know) and elephants walked off the ark only 2000 years ago! (see Noah et al 0001)
....Nelly the mammoth packed her trunk and said goodbye to the tree ring circus... :)
Personally, I'm rather relieved that woolly mammoths (and most of the other large, lumbering species) have all ceased to exist. Imagine trying to live with them around - they'd no doubt be a "protected" species and we wouldn't be allowed to shoot them. I am so heartily sick of my mere existence being blamed for bad climate, disappearing species and generally all the malaise of the world - it's not MY fault that nothing stays the same over the eons...
I have to say that Louise Gray is innocent as charged. I don't think one can criticise her for reporting two studies on the same subject.
This was touted all day long on the TV news here in London. I'm used to hearing the 'question no-one asks' during news reports these days. It often hangs in the air, on a variety of political, technological or sociological subjects and is often obscured by whatever the presenter or channel's prejudices – or intellectual failings – are.
This time it was: 'Surely this means that the earth's climate changes drastically WITHOUT man's intervention?'
Think about that for a second Climate hysterics, and get back to me.
Slightly OT but relevant
The extinction of the Australian Megafauna and the change in type of the flora species (including trees) has been laid squarely on original human entrance to Australia - i.e. The Aborigines some 40,00 years ago to perhaps 100,00 years ago.
The change in tree species from rainforest and deciduous to such species as fire tolerant Eucalypts (even fire dependent) is listed as a result of fire lighting habits of the early Aboriginals. This resulted in a major loss of species, and the development / adaptation of other species to be fire tolerant and even fire dependent.
The extinction of the megafauna followed along from that - either by loss of natural sources of food, or by hunting.
The end result was - prior to the climate change of the exit of the ice-age - most major changes had already occurred and are squarely at the feet of man.
I had a look at the Judy Allen et al item mentioned above by His Grace. this is as far as I got:
LPJ-GUESS dynamic vegetation model.
My Collins English Dictionary defines the word GUESS as follows:
To form or express an unceretain estimate or conclusion (about something), based on insufficient information.
Yep, that about sums it up.
Peter Walsh
Just wondering about the link between these two press releases and the authors Adrian Lister & Brian Huntley
From here:
http://www.gg.rhul.ac.uk/gamble/research.html
"I am examining the human impact on megafaunal extinctions... Working with a NERC funded team from the Natural History Museum (Adrian Lister...) and Durham University (Brian Huntley...) we have targeted key species – Mammoth, Giant deer, Hyena, Cave Bear and Cave Lion – to determine the impacts that... rapid environmental change... had on these distinctive elements of the Pleistocene fauna. This investigation between abrupt environmental change and human response is central to the NERC funded consortium bid RESET that starts in January 2008."
From here:
http://www.nerc.ac.uk/press/releases/2007/26-abruptclimatechg.asp
"Consortium wins £3m to investigate how our ancestors coped with abrupt climate change: A five-year project named RESET (Response of Humans to Abrupt Environmental Transitions), funded by the Natural Environment Research Council,"
Your taxes hard at work producing useful research!
Of course I'm not objecting to state funding of honest research - but I do object to 'research' with a pre-determined outcome to reinforce a political agenda - in which the researchers on the team take turns to produce annual press-releases full of completely unfounded claims like this from Huntley:
"This is a model for what may happen as a result of rapid climate change over the next century linked to human activity. "
The older post in the Telegraph is longer there.
Sorry should say no longer there.
Arthur
Yes it is.
According to the model it looks like the mammoths enjoyed a BBQ Summer before their demise.
Sorry, it,s the new article thats showing can't be found.
[BH adds: No, that's there too!]
Some contributors above are confused by what the definition of 'climate change' actually is. It can means any change (warmer/colder wetter/drier etc) from any forcing (solar, internal natural variation, human activity) measured over a period of time (not less than twenty years as a guideline) affecting an environment (local, regional or global).
The one constant on this planet is that the climate changes - not surprising in a coupled, non-linear chaotic system. So the woolly mammoths thrived during the last ice age and failed to adapt to our current interglacial period. Big deal.
re the Louise Gray articles. You can't criticise her for reporting on two different studies, but writing about the new one as if the older one had never existed is a little odd. How many "woolly mammoth extinction" stories has she written if she forgets them so quickly?
from June 2009: "Previous studies had suggested the Ice Age beasts were killed off by early man 21,000 years ago. However, new radiocarbon analysis of bones found in Shropshire show that mammoths were in North Western Europe until 14,000 years ago when it is suggested the end of grassy habitats caused by rising temperatures killed them off."
from August 2010: "Previously it was thought that mankind or even a giant comet impact killed off the ice age beasts around 20,000 years ago."
I find it interesting that most climate research these days is being conducted in front of a computer screen. Am I wrong to suppose that most of the background scientific training of such experts was accomplished in front of a computer screen (acquiring computer skills)?
AW - seen the review of your book on the guardian by Bob Ward - unsurprisingly, he doesn't like it.
Do you care to respond on the comments thread...?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/aug/19/climate-sceptics-mislead-public
Looks like the book is causing a stir, great job !
The mamoth and the elephant had a common ancestor (I don't think I need to tell you why I know this). The common ancestor is extinct (I don't think I need to tell you why I know this either). So are all extinctions co-incidence with climate change? If they are, there have been billions of climate changes Q.E.D.
@simpleseekeraftertruth
A "common ancestor" species need not necessarily have become extinct. The original population could simply have evolved along one, two or more different paths, leading to the surviving population(s) (or to populations that became extinct later).
This can't be correct. Western civilisation has to be to blame somehow.
Actually I have always wondered about woolly mammoths. I know they are only artists' representations but the mammoths are always shown wandering about in snow and ice. So what did they eat? An elephant needs huge amounts of fodder daily. Mammoths would need similar and then some given they are in a cold climate. Any views?
I also thought the cavemen were brilliant in the BBC report. They looked just like the middle class cavemen in the Armstrong and Miller Show.
@jsprow 3:26pm
Proboscidea, a Greek word, means having a proboscis, or nose. Over 50 million years, it has been determined that there have been over 350 species of proboscideans. These animals inhabited every continent of the world, except for Antarctica and Australia. Today there are only three major species left; Asian, African savanna, and African forest elephants.
Oh dear indeed.
But aren't Goldman Sachs still selling mammoth forward contracts at $1000 per kilo? The modeling input, combined with the Black-Scholes option model, make this is actually a AAA+ investment grade security.
Grond feel so guilty before, much happier now.
Prof Philip Stott has something to say about this: Global Warming - A Mammoth Insult To Our Ancestors. He starts "One can only laugh uproariously as the latest research....."
http://thegwpf.org/opinion-pros-a-cons/1397-philip-stott-global-warming-a-mammoth-insult-to-our-ancestors.html
Neither the abstract nor the article addresses either of the two questions that are begging to be answered:
1. Why would the latest glacial-to-interglacial transition be any harder on the mammoth population that any of the many previous transitions? I have seen no evidence that this last transition was any more abrupt than previous ones?
2. Why couldn't/wouldn't the mammoth population follow the climate zones north as the glaciers receded, particularly in North America? It isn't as if they were tied to a particular area because they had expensive mortgages there... And aren't the authors familiar with the Great Prairies of North America that still provided hundreds of thousands of square miles of grassland in the interglacial?
Does anyone have access to the full paper (I'm certainly not going to pay for it based on what I've seen so far) to see if these questions are addressed?
*ting* Recursive modelling! We take take the output of the vegetation model and feed it back into the climate model, to model how the climate responds to vegetables!
We can create a model of how Humans hunt so we can take the output of the Mammoth model, which incorporated the output of the vegetable model, which incorporated the output of the climate model, and use it to model the effects of climate on Human populations!
Our conclusions will be unmitigated rubbish!
We're getting paid to do this!
This is hilarious. I heard a recent blub on a local science show that claimed that the spread of forests as CAUSED BY the extinction of the mammoths. This study used spores in mammoth dung to draw its conclusions and pointed to the fact that modern day elephants are very good at keeping trees from messing up thier hood.
But didn't mammoths, like elephants, have long trunks in order to reach food that's high above the ground, i.e., tree leaves? Why would grass eaters have an extremely complex structure like a trunk, plus the long legs, if they lived on plants that were 3-4 feet high? Wouldn't it have been far more efficient for them to have mouth parts like a horse?
I looked at the original article and it seems to be a quite reasonable study.
They modeled the old climate using Hadley, they used a software LPJ-Guess predicting an occurrence of grass, various trees and shrubs depending on the modeled values for CO2, precipitation and similar, but they ALSO compared the modeled paleo flora with the pollen counts in at various paleo locations - i.e., real data!
Also, a test run with modeling the (known) situation at the beginning od 20th century was done.
Navy Bob said "Wouldn't it have been far more efficient for them to have mouth parts like a horse?"
Don't think so. Horses have long neck and can lower their head to the plants. Elephants cannot.