Bishop Hill Chutzpah of the day
Mar 12, 2011 Climate: Sceptics Climate: other Tamino has written an article about Josh, criticising his Paul Nurse cartoon. He fully admits that Josh is correct, but apparently he's a bad man for mentioning it. I can only describe this argument as, well, Taminoesque.
Those who deny the reality, human cause, or danger of global warming, don’t always tell outright lies. One of their common tactics is to say what’s technically true, but is also irrelevant, misleading, or more often, both.
This is a remarkable thing to say, when one remembers Tamino's outrageous quoting out of context in his RealClimate article on the Hockey Stick Illusion. I'm not sure why it was OK for the Horizon programme to say incorrect things about the relative size of human and natural CO2 emissions while correcting these errors was blameworthy in some way. If the ratio is irrelevant and misleading when Josh puts it in a cartoon, why is it not equally irrelevant when Dr Bindschadler speaks about it?
Reader Comments (131)
cthulhu
The trick by the tomato due is to paint Josh's cartoon into a statement #4 corner, even as the program pulled the cheap rhetorical trick of actually making statement #2.
Josh's cartoon is only holding up a mirror to Nurse's own trickery.
Better luck next time.
"tomato dude" above
I have had a discussion with the good people on Sceptical Science about attribution of the rising CO2 fraction (there's a selection of questions and 'It's Not Us' is, I think, no.72). I have also seen a discussion with Ferdinand Engelbeen about this big question and I was not convinced by his logic either.
How can we know that the CO2 increase is anthropogenic?
I'd appreciate a link that goes through the reasoning slowly and simply, because I fail to understand how we can say anything about attribution when there are so may variables in sources and sinks.
And please, not the old mass balance argument, or only at least with a simple explanation of its underlying assumptions. It looks to me as if it assumes a perfectly steady, pre-lapsarian state abruptly destroyed by sinful Man: again, I cannot understand how that statement can be made.
Tamino shows a graph of CO2 from ice cores which is a slam dunk argument for the hockey game (sorry, mixed metaphor there), or it would be apart from 2 things; one, he's suppressed the zero on the graph, which is a warning sign I have been taught to watch out for; two, the CO2 level starts to go straight up before mankind had started emitting enough CO2 to disrupt anything other than a system so finely balanced that it would have failed to keep up with annual variability.
JF
Has anyone heard of 'climate volatility'? Someone from the Earth Policy Institute used ithe phrase on the World Service tonight. When they start to say 'variability' we can all relax....
The error that the cartoon pushes is far far worse than the error in the Horizon tv program.
Ignoring the 4 "relevant statements" (relevance being relative of course... these people do like setting their boundaries as the definitive, the absolute and the unquestionable, or more appropriately using the language of the playground, "My ball! My rules!")
I am guessing we have a few non-UK visitors, but I get feeling this is similar to the Spitting Image being forced to submit their scripts to Number 10 for approval, because Maggie never used the Gents.
Mirror mirror on the wall... sometimes the mirror doesn't say what you want it say... life is a b***er.
Atomic, a most helpful and succinct post.
Orkneygal, if my reply to Tamino was resurrected it has since disappeared, maybe your link to this blog was enough ;-)
Cthulhu, I think you summarise the point of the cartoon well.
Mr Josh-
I think your comments have been homogenized, adjusted for UHI affect, sanitized and otherwise a-climatised to make them suitable for tomatoisation prior to releasing them into taminosphere. Perhaps that is why you don't recognise "your own typings".
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2011/03/11/dishonor-among-deniers/#comment-49387
Slioch has sallied forth in your defense over there at Closed Mind and the tamato man actually let his commentary stand, unedited apparently. Well done Slioch, well done!
Oops-
Forgot to turn on and off the sarcasim in my commentary about Slioch's "he's absolutely accurate so he's absolutely dishonest" post over there.
The cartoon is great, it is making me re-question how a 3% contribution can increase CO2 levels by 40%. Thank you for the fresh perspective, Josh.
I am often fooled by charts that dont have a zero origin Y-axis and Tamino's atmospheric C02 chart is one of these, as Julian Flood points out. The real (zero) origin of Taminos CO2 plot is somewhere down near the google ads.
"cthulhu
The trick by the tomato due is to paint Josh's cartoon into a statement #4 corner, even as the program pulled the cheap rhetorical trick of actually making statement #2."
The more I look at that cartoon the clearer it is that it IS making statement #4. Just look at the language in it. It screams "human CO2 emissions are too small to matter". If that was shown to 1000 laypeople, a great number of them, perhaps all of them would go away thinking statement #4, unless they had the intelligence to doubt the cartoon itself.
"The cartoon is great, it is making me re-question how a 3% contribution can increase CO2 levels by 40%. Thank you for the fresh perspective, Josh."
See. I told everyone the cartoon was misleading. Now we have a poster who confirms it.
"I am often fooled by charts that dont have a zero origin Y-axis and Tamino's atmospheric C02 chart is one of these, as Julian Flood points out."
That's ridiculous.
Re Julian Flood
Most of it is. AR4 is pretty readable and the carbon cycle is explained in WG1 Ch7 I linked earlier. Roughly 75% of the anthropogenic increases come from fossil fuels and cement production. Contributions from those can be estimated from fuel and cement production/consumption figures. Less certain is the contribution from land use changes. If we add more CO2 than can be absorbed naturally, then the CO2 accumulates giving the '40%' figure. The fact that we're adding CO2 is undeniable, and Josh's figures/cartooon was accurate.
The errors that Tamino pushes are far far worse than the errors in the Horizon tv program. Tamino should know better than to claim that all the CO2 increase is anthropogenic though. But being a statistician, he's perhaps an interpreter of interpretations so could be forgiven, if people are feeling generous. AR4 does not make this claim and points out there are variations in the CO2 fluxes, so he's misleading when he claims otherwise.
He also performs the Nature trick by splicing ice core data to sampled data creating another hockey stick, without mentioning any of the uncertainties or issues around ice core data. That's misleading, but helps create the tidy story that current CO2 levels are the highest in 10,000 years, and there was some kind of equilbrium pre-industry. Other ice cores like Vostok show large variations in CO2 levels, showing there are natural changes in CO2 levels.
The rate of increase may be higher than previously, but it does not mean we're doomed if the planet responds, ie plants grow faster thanks to the extra food. If that response is slower than we produce, then CO2 levels will continue to rise. What happens then depends on the sensitivity assumptions, where the evidence seems to be against strong positive feedbacks. If that's true, then there's no need to panic and waste billions chasing unrealistic emissions targets, just enjoy the higher crop yields.
Cthulhu
For the last time: Josh is a satirical cartoonist. Satire. You know, exaggerating things to make a point with a comic gloss.
You are wasting your time trying to mischaracterise a cartoon as a presentation of scientific data.
You have apparently missed the not particularly subtle humour: the cartoon is miles out, just like Nurse and Bindschadler were. It just goes the other way.
This is beyond belief tedious and you are looking more than a little silly. Perhaps it is time to stop and go for a long, healthy walk.
Cthulhu said:
Statement 4 is neither false nor true - it is an unknown. It is only through assuming the slight warming increased CO2 should bring will cause subsequent positive feedbacks that you get the temperature projections which continue to sustain climate alarmism.
It's all about guilt. One side pushes man's guilt, the other man's innocence. In fact, we don't know.
======================
"While technically correct, the statement is both irrelevant and misleading."
Analogy A swimming pool has a pump and a hose which drips water into the pool.
What causes the water of the pool to rise?
According to Josh it would be the pump that "provides" 97% of the water.
Tamino is right (just this time though)
Re BBD:
"For the last time: Josh is a satirical cartoonist. Satire. You know, exaggerating things to make a point with a comic gloss. You are wasting your time trying to mischaracterise a cartoon as a presentation of scientific data"
You don't understand satire then. The whole point of satire is that it's supposed to put across a serious underlying point or criticism. It's not meant to be simply funny and irrelevant. In this case the underlying point of the cartoon happens to be a very misleading message.
"You have apparently missed the not particularly subtle humour: the cartoon is miles out, just like Nurse and Bindschadler were. It just goes the other way."
The cartoon depicts Nurse correcting his claims. Having him exaggerating them in the other direction serves no satirical point at all. You are just fumbling for excuses.
Furthermore satire would only work in this case if the exaggeration was absurd. But it isn't - the misleading part of the cartoon is almost word for word copy of misleading claims made seriously by skeptics elsewhere (eg see "a closer look at the numbers" site).
The way the cartoon is framed it's advocating statement 4. Nurse is made to have a eureka moment that statement 4. It's utterly misleading.
"This is beyond belief tedious and you are looking more than a little silly. Perhaps it is time to stop and go for a long, healthy walk."
You are just circling the wagons. Deep down I suspect you know that cartoon is extremely misleading. How do you expect scientists to do the dirty on each other when one of them errs when you guys can't even set a cartoonist straight?
All very alarming, eh, C?
========
Re Cthulu
Most of us don't believe in the old gods, we prefer hard evidence. The Horizon programme was still wrong, as Tamino admits. His complaint should perhaps be levelled against the BBC for not fact checking the programme prior to broadcast and thus avoiding making misleading, or just plain false statements. As it stands, people who watched that show will have seen two experts telling us man produces 7x more CO2 than nature, which is just plain wrong. If climate scientists do not correct that kind of mistake, then it's easier to assume there's a biased or advocacy position rather than scientists acting as honest brokers. That does nothing to help the reputation of science, which was the supposed focus of the show.
However, Tamino preferred to attack Josh instead. He also did some misleading of his own. Do you think Tamino's statement that:-
"Although our CO2 emissions are only a small part (about 3%) of the total flow into the atmosphere, they account for all of the excess
Is correct, or misleading? Do you honestly believe there was a perfectly balanced system prior to industrialisation?
Cthulhu
That's what I said. You even quoted me. In your eagerness to make your 'point' you have stopped thinking.
Unfortunately, you haven't stopped being offensively arrogant.
Do read your own stuff through. You come across as woefully humourless and rather self-obsessed. As I said earlier, you would do better to go for a walk.
BBD, I think Cthulhu gets the cartoon about right. I do hope I have not exaggerated anything, and it is heartening to read that Tamino says it is 'technically correct'. Actually it is great that nearly everyone gets the point of the cartoon.
Orkneygal, your link is to my first comment, which Tamino did post. I replied ( ie I hit the reply link to that entry ) to his repsonse but he snipped it out and posted it down the page. Would it help to put all four bits together so they can be read as they were meant to be, or is this getting too tedious?
Josh
Well, will you talk to C then? I've got work to do. And besides, these boorish, humourless, self-righteous climate attack dogs bore the piss out of me.
BBD, don't let the trolls get you down! And thank you for your vigorous support, it is really appreciated.
But I am glad cthulhu is getting the point that skeptics the world over are making: CO2 is not a thermostat, it is a trace gas, and man adds 0.1% to the CO2 and water vapour greenhouse gases annually. At least that is what the cartoon says so it must be true ;-)
Tamino, as often, presents assumption as fact. Firstly, the pre-industrial 280 ppm is largely an assumption arrived at by taking the inital recordings at Mauna Loa (since the 1950's) and then saying this is the figure for anything pre- that time. This is then supported by taking the lowest of the preceding 100 years of chemical measurements and ignoring the other measurements of CO2 measured chemically (with an accuracy of +/- 3%) for the preceding 100 years, some of which go as high as 400+ ppm. Those measures amount to around 90,000 values, all ignored.
The ice core data is often quoted as only peaking at 290 ppm (actually I recall Vostok reaches around 305 ppm) but this ignores the mixing in the gas measurement in an ice core. You cannot take a measure from ice core and expect the highs (or the lows) to be properly measurable. They real values were almost certainly over a larger range than the observed min/max values. That's basic measurement theory, conveniently ignored by Tamino and others every time they quote these numbers.
Further, if the CO2 goes up due to warming (which it does - outgassing and bioactivity by plants) then one has to accept during a warming period CO2 will go up. With an 800 year lag, we could even be seeing a response to the MWP, if not at least somne CO2 increase must be due to current warming.
Tamino's general argument is based on another assumption - the "fingerprinting" is highly reliable, saying its all fossil fuels. I do not agree the finger printing is accurate at all, although the greater part of the CO2 increase probably is from anthropogenic sources (remember land use change is very significant too, but much more difficult to estimate).
Then Tamino assumes, as others note, that CO2 was in equilibrium for 10,000 years. This is an absurd assumption about such a large scale, dynamic system as the atmosphere and ocean system and, as already noted above, papers demonstrate CO2 likely higher during MWP (no, wait - the MWP didn't happen, did it?). Also, given the very large uncertainties in some of the estimates of natural flux (eg 30 - 40 % errors on 100 Gt fluxes) with opposite signs it is remarkable (a) that the numbers "magically" balance out to equilibrium and (b) that we can even be sure there is a natural equilibrium anyway. Why should there be?
Finally, from the equilibrium assumption then comes the assumption that we should represent anthropogenic contribututions as a huge percentage of the net CO2 part of the carbon cycle. I believe this is a fallacy. You have to compare to the total flows precisely because they are SO large. The capacity of nature to manage ENORMOUS fluxes is awesome and to think somehow that the CO2 is at critical balance and the slightest change causes catastrophe is crazy. An ice core shows CO2 varying by 150 - 300 ppm quite naturally.
Overall Tamino presents the argument as though the facts are known, whereas much of the argument is based on assumption, all of it is based on highly uncertain measurements and (in the case of chemical estimates of CO2) inconvenient data is just simply ignored (surely not?)
Finally, to Atomic Hairdryer the comment about Stella was great - just a shame its only understood by the Brits! LOL.
Yesterday I went to the Tamino blog for the very first time. I read the item about the cartoon and the comments below it.
I shan't be going back. I'm not wasting my time on that kind of childish, spiteful silliness.
Cthulhu quite patently has not the slightest idea what political cartoons are all about and whatever his views on climate change (which appear to me to be unoriginal, not to say derivative, po-faced and bordering on the unreadable) his views on satire and political comment are not worth spending the time on.
What Tamino is saying about CO2 concentrations, on the other hand, is worth tackling head on. There has been a sudden glut of bloggers and trolls using this argument -- the 7% figure is irrelevant; all the additional net CO2 is anthropogenic -- following the Nurse/Bindschadler cock-up. Almost as if someone had decided that it was essential to go on the attack as a matter of urgency.
I'm not proposing to argue the figures. I am happy to accept that there is an "anthropogenic" finger print.
The net effect (assuming the base figure of 280ppm is correct, which is still a matter for debate) is that mankind has added 1 part per 10,000 to the CO2 concentration in the last 200 years. So far there is no evidence -- at least that I have read -- of a detrimental effect to mankind or anyotherkind occasioned by that increase.
I would hate to bore you all with a list of the benefits that have accrued during the same period to a very great extent as the result of the very behaviour that has caused that increase, not least of which is the technology that allows both Tamino and Cthulhu to make their narrow-minded and, in one case at least, arrogant opinions available to an adoring public.
And to us as well, of course.
JF wrote 'how do we know it's anthropogenic?'
Atomic Hairdryer wrote:
quote
Most of it is. AR4 is pretty readable and the carbon cycle is explained in WG1 Ch7 I linked earlier. Roughly 75% of the anthropogenic increases come from fossil fuels and cement production. etc
unquote
So says AR4. Are there no alternative explanations of the increase which match the data? Let us say, for example, that the deep ocean currents, made saline and warmer by the MWP, have at last begun to raise the temperature of the deep clathrate deposits. Bacteria, long prevented from making inroads on the clathrates, multiply enormously and begin to devour the resultant methane, bubbling off light C CO2, using oxygen. Let's assume that the result is an extra 27 Gt per year of light C CO2.
Now make a statement about the human contribution: does it go down to 37.5%? How, in other words, can you say anything meaningful about the contribution before you have exhaustively measured the sinks and sources? The mass balance argument is childishly simple, but it is also simple-minded.
quote
If we add more CO2 than can be absorbed naturally, then the CO2 accumulates giving the '40%' figure.
unquote
If.
Do we know the limits on the ability of the natural sinks to absorb CO2? Plus or minus what? Do we know if we have disrupted the paradisical status quo ante by altering one of the sinks, reducing its ability to pull down atmospheric CO2? Have we, for another example, damaged the phytoplankton, surely one of the great CO2 absorbtion mechanisms?
I see here, again, the assertion that the increase is anthrogenic. May I ask again, how do we know?
JF
Re Julian Flood
That's why I was questioning Tamino's misleading statement that 'all' the increase in CO2 levels is attributable to human activity, directly or indirectly.
Neither AR4 nor the papers it relies on support that view, yet it's a view often heard from the alarmists. There is more certainty that we contribute to the increase via our emissions, but that's relative to any natural changes or responses. The human element is still dwarfed by the natural fluxes, which is the point Josh made and Horizon got wrong. Tamino and his followers may want to deny this to keep the focus on the human element, not the 27x larger natural element and the uncertainties around those.
Tamino's comment was very misleading, and as a climate scientist, he should know better. I think it's quite probable that we have caused a reasonable part of the increase, but not all of it. If there are no strong positive feedbacks, then the greatest threat and cost to humanity turns into free fertiliser.
quote
I think it's quite probable that we have caused a reasonable part of the increase, but not all of it.
unquote
I'd agree. And yet people say, without any qualification, that all of the increase is anthropogenic. Call me naive, call me an idealist, but I fail to see how the loud proclamation of truth does anything than provide a motivation for counting the spoons.
And it could well be, should we go the max by cutting our CO2 emissions to zero, that the rate of increase would drop slightly and that is all. What would we do then, form a lynch mob?
So, no proof that it's us? Anyone?
JF
That's it right there, Josh.
That is the reason that bothers chthulhu. He even can grasp the idea behind the cartoon, but he is not bothered about that. What about some 1000 odd people who see just your cartoon? They are the benchmark - that is what is bothering chthulhu and the tamato dude.
That is how propagandists/communicators get their feathers ruffled. They think not whether there is some truth to what to you say, but calculate the effect it will have on someone listening in.
Shub, yup, and very rewarding it is too when someone like Cthulhu gets the message, let's hope another 1000 get it too.
Tamino is correct in that cumulative effects are important.
He's an absolute idiot by assuming the system has a linear response.
At least he's not promoting a positive feedback effect.
There is bugger-all science that examines the actual effect on the CO2 cycle of increased or decreased injection levels.