Thursday
Sep082011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Coopting extremes
Sep 8, 2011 Climate: WG2 Nature reports on a new project to investigate links between extreme weather and global warming.
"The idea is to look every month or so into the changing odds" associated with that influence, says Peter Stott, a climate scientist with the UK Met Office's Hadley Centre in Exeter and a leader of the ACE group. Stott is writing a white paper laying out plans and requirements for a near-real-time attribution system, which he will present in October at the World Climate Research Programme conference in Denver, Colorado.
Dear Kev seems to be involved.
Reader Comments (195)
A 'little' background on severe weather historically recorded:
http://www.breadandbutterscience.com/Weather.pdf
Warning, large pdf file.
"Dear Kev"
He really is the sceptic's most willing assistant. Why is he like this? I don't believe it can be to do with the urgency of saving the planet, because he must surely notice that his effect is so often the opposite. Simpler and more plausible is an overwhelming desire to be proved right.
LB - ta for that but gave up waiting. Here's a useful site for historical weather events in the British Isles:
http://booty.org.uk/booty.weather/climate/wxevents.htm
If you think about it, ...
... the only effect on society that climatologists have, is to raise a tax, or to raise insurance rates.
A set of scientists who cannot.do.anything.else.
All people who suffer from a lack of venues for professional/marital/athletic/monetary/creative consummation, especially when they actively seek these, are potentially dangerous. Climate science fits the bill.
...and Trenberth wants a 'near-real-time' attribution system.
We already have that. In fact, we have a real-time attibution system - the mass media. Everything, is already due to climate change, and everything causes climate change.
And, can you imagine a 'attribution system' that goes: oh yeah, that tornado...that was caused by global warming, but this one here, was not. It was just a random thing.
Look at the graphic on this page from Nature magazine:
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110907/full/477148a.html
Look at the graphic from this Greenpeace page in 1994:
http://archive.greenpeace.org/climate/ctb/index.html
See any difference?
The storm called the All Saints Floods occurred on 11-12 November 1570 [All Saints’ Day is celebrated
on 1 November in Western Christianity]. This storm affected most of the North Sea between Britain and
Denmark, and adjoining land areas. Presumably the Netherland was hit hardest. The cities Amsterdam,
Muyden, Rotterdam and Dordrecht were all flooded. Somewhere between 100,000 and 400,000 persons
were reported to have drowned. This represents an exceptionally high number of casualties, which should
be seen in relation to the much smaller total population at that time.
[In Western Europe], the winter lasted from the end of November 1570 to end of February 1571. The
winter was so severe that rivers were frozen for three months so that wagons could drive over ice. The
cold destroyed the fruit trees, even in the Languedoc, France, down to the root. The frost began in
Flanders, the eve of the Feast of St. Nicholas (December 5), and lasted until 10 March. Up to the very
last days of winters, the Maas (Meuse) River, the Waal River and the Rhine River were still frozen
1590 A.D. In England, there was a drought all the year, and heat.47
A very strong heat and drought prevailed in 1590 in the temperate climate zones of Europe. In Germany,
there was a lack of hay, rowen and vegetables. But wine was available. [The heat wave] caused
numerous fires in Germany. In Thuringia, Germany, many cities and villages were destroyed by fires. In
many places the forest fire started and burned, especially in the Bohemian mountains. On 30 July, a fire
was ignited in the vicinity of Vienna, Austria by the action of sunlight on the hay wagon, which then
traveled into a dairy. The grape harvest began in Dijon, France on 10 September, i.e. 14 days earlier than
the mean. This is the earliest time since year 1556.62
In England, there was a great drought through the whole year; so that corn was thin; wheat small; hay
very little; herbs, peas and beans very few; little wine. [Because of the dryness] there were many fires in
the Nation. In the area of Thuringia in Germany, towns and villages were burnt up; woods in many
places took fire and were consumed; especially on the mountains of Bohemia. On 30 July, carts bringing
hay home from the fields in Vienna, Austria were set on fire and burnt by the sun.
Winter of 1594 / 1595 A.D. Europe experienced a cold winter. The Lagoons of Venice froze and didn’t
thaw until February 1595.28
In 1594 in Italy, the Port of Venice was frozen.58, 80
In 1594 A.D., the sea at Marseilles, France and Venice, Italy froze.38, 60
In 1594, the sea froze on the coast of Marseille, France.79
In 1594, the Rhine River in Germany, the Po River in Italy were frozen as well as the sea at Marseilles,
France and Venice, Italy.62
As it was, so shall it be!
Peter Stott is one of the 17 authors of the Santer et al paper "Separating Signal and Noise in Atmospheric Temperature Changes: The Importance of Timescale" that we were discussing only the other day.
What a small world the inner circle of "climate science" is.
"World" PDF worth waiting for, but both extremely useful. "The first thing man learns from history is that man never learns from history" .... I do wish these "scientists" would get their noses out of the trough and learn something from the past - they might even be able to go some way to "Save the Plaaanet".
I can save them some time if they use Excel...
=If (or(temp<record_low_temp, temp>record_high_temp), CO2_attribution%=100, CO2_attribution%=100)
Obviously I will need millions of pounds to implement this...
Of course it's a hair brained idea, how are they to compare with historical controls (surely there is publication bias these days). I guess what they could do is find some decrease in events with current decreasing temps (prospectively), apply the law of desperate reciprocals and conclude a pear is an orange.
I only have school level science and I can see this is not right - If you look for connections and patterns you will find them, but that doesn't mean that they are there.
Three things I remember being drilled into me at school
1. correlation is not causation
2. you should try to prove your theory wrong not right
3. a theory that has no predictive powers is a useless theory.
Are these people really scientists?
Denver, Colorado, October: slight chance of snow.
It used to be said that weather is not climate
From the site:
"A technical error prevented us retrieving comments for this article. Please try again later."
Hmm... is it a real error or are they busy filtering the responses?
"to investigate links between extreme weather and global warming"
That would be the premise, I imagine. I somehow doubt there'll be much exploration of their possible independence, much less a conclusion to that effect. I'd put money on it, but I don't suppose the odds would be very favourable...
"It used to be said that weather is not climate"
Good point, Arthur, but it can be if it's extreme (and therefore newsworthy) and connected in a way that helps the Team.
Kev says:
"a few million dollars would be enough to coordinate an international service using facilities already in place at his institution, the Met Office"
In the immortal words of Mandy Rice-Davies: he would, wouldn't he?
I say "let them". Every time these idiots open their mouths is another cut to their reputation. The Met office tried to predict global temperature ... they completely failed and after a press release saying how accurate it was (0.06 when the change they were predicting was 0.05) for obvious reasons they dropped the scheme.
Likewise when Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia in 2001 said that within a few years winter snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event .... Children just aren't going to know what snow is,".
He likewise proved that the climate "scientists" don't have a clue about the climate and their predictions are abysmal.
So, bring it on!! The more the public see these guys for the doomsday (post event) prophets they are, the less anyone will take them seriously.
I assume that Peter "Children just aren't going to know what snow is" Stott is one of the converts to the opinion that any extreme weather type can be attributed to global warming.
Have any of this lot heard that a good scientific theory is supposed to predict stuff before it happens?
"near-real-time attribution system"
So the extreme event has to happen before it can be attributed to global warming. Wow it couldn't be any easier.
What about predicting an extreme weather or seasonal event that can argued will be attributable to global warming.
Lets see the individual predictions before the attributions.
For example warmists have predicted that the drought early spring would continue right through-out the summer across the entire UK, all attributed to global warming. The data is in - in many parts of the UK this summer has been the wettest for over 90 years.
The warmist prediction was wrong, and so the extreme event of heavy rainfall throughout the summer cannot be attributed to global warming.
Add to that the prediction, again based on climate models, of a mild winter last winter. That prediction by warmists was also badly wrong.
What we are dealing with here is bogus science.
With all due respect to your Grace this should now of course properly conclude “Dear Kev (pbuh) seems to be involved…”: see
http://climateaudit.org/2011/09/06/the-stone-in-trenberths-shoe/#comment-302169
If anyone felt the need to fill some time it would be a nice little project to log the extreme heat and cold events. year/season, from Weather.pdf against CET, Solar cycles, CO2, volcanic erruptions to see if there is any correlation. I wonder if a funding application is reasonable?
Mac
Agreed.
Suggested alteration to your last sentence.
"what we are dealing here is BOGUS".
Camp David - I do like your law of desperate reciprocals. It's the cornerstone of some of the more outrageous predictive aspects of climate science.
BTW I hope your name is not really David, or does camp only have the one meaning in the UK?
From the article:
But, by hook or by crook, they're gonna give it a damn good try!
Amazing. Simply amazing.
Peter Stott has a track record for predictions and probabilities. After a series of mild winters which led some to say that snow was a thing of the past, in 2008 the UK suddenly had its heaviest snowfalls for 18 years. At that time, Peter Stott, Climate Scientist at the Met Office, reassured everyone of the freak nature of this event by saying, on the Met.Office web site,: "Despite the cold winter this year, the trend to milder and wetter winters is expected to continue, with snow and frost becoming less of a feature in the future. The famously cold winter of 1962/63 is now expected to occur about once every 1,000 years"
Unfortunately, the cold winter of 2008 was followed by two more exceptionally cold winters in a row, with heavy snow, and December 2010 was officially declared to be the coldest since records began.
So what happened to Peter Stott's prediction of milder winters? Well, the Met.Office have acted in typical fashion and removed the incriminating prediction from their web site.This seems to be a standard reaction in the field of climatology - hide the evidence.
However, for the time being, you can still find the embarrassing Met.Office story with Peter Stott's failed prediction in the national archive. Here
Is he the right man for the job?
Statisticians the world over will...keep silent. Yawn.
The Nature's chart for climate shift in those news must be comparing temperature on Earth with temperature in some planet in Alpha Centauri or beyond.
I have seen that kind of pseudo-statistical propaganda before, but today I was curious about how well it represent reality. I took the daily summary of temperatures from about 8524 weather stations in 1998 (a warmish year) and 11788 in 2008 ( a coolish year) and plot their probability distribution.
Mean temperature in 1988 was ~ 12.93 in 2008 ~ 12.20, sd ~ 12.7 in both cases, ranges between -80 and 45. So I did another plot for an increased mean temperature of 3C with same sd.
You can see the results compared to Nature chart here.
http://img854.imageshack.us/img854/2328/climshift.png
Not so dramatic I am afraid, as for the probability of more record hot weather, pretty insignificant.
The point of this proposed work is not really about "proof" of AGW, it's more about looking at how the likelihood of extreme events has changed, due to human causes or otherwise, in order to inform adaptation.
eg: most building or infrastructure projects use climatological data to inform their building standards, to make sure things are robust to the kind of extemes that can be expected. But if past statistics no longer reflect the true likelihood of certain weather events, things may not be able to cope, so we need to know whether different building standards are needed. Clearly such changes should not be undertaken lightly as cost implications will be enormous, so simplistic responses based on the messages of green activists designed to scare people in to cutting emissions should be avoided. It needs looking into properly.
Sadly, as some of the above posts illustrate, it is all wrapped up in one thing in some people's minds. The thinking is: climate scientist = green activist = fiddled science in order to cheat us out of our taxes. This is not the case (but I know you won't believe me!).
My colleagues are aware of the limitations of current models - see Peter Stott's quote in the Nature article. This is not something they'll be able to do tomorrow, it's a long-term vision.
BTW steveta_uk I don't think it was Peter who made the comment about children not seeing snow, and no he's definitely not someone who blindly thinks everything can be blamed on global warming.
The no snow winter was David Viner from CRU
Couldn't agree less, Richard.
Schmidt:
"Thanks to advances in statistical tools, climate models and computer power, attribution of extremes is hard — but it is not impossible" No mention of pre CAGW history, data (save in the sense that observations will be "fed into models" and likely adjusted until it fits), or empirical method. Some might read his meaning as - we'll find the link come what may. After all the "loose" group is called Attribution of Climate Related events and it is a collection of "climate researchers" - presumably tax payer funded government approved - therein lies a clue. The purpose is to seek to assess a link between weather "extremes" and climate change. Quite similar to the IPCC's brief to "assess" human impact - and we all know how that is going and the direction it took.
If, as you say, it needs looking into properly can we have an assurance that the attribution study will be undertaken by a cross section of academics with different views about the "consensus"? Thought not.
And as to the purpose of this exercise:
"...with results being announced on the nightly weather reports."
"Reliable attribution of extreme weather events is also important for the public's understanding of climate change, and to their willingness to support measures to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Unlike more distant impacts of global warming such as the slowly rising sea level, the effects of local weather extremes tend to be instantly tangible and vividly remembered. Surveys suggest that people who feel they have personally experienced the effects of climate change are more likely to believe it is a real problem — and one that needs solving — than those who have not. "
We are back to the "message" again. Daily doses of CAGW propoganda beamed into your living room. And no doubt paid for by us. And who wants to bet against the only informing of adaptation resulting in more hectoring, more grant funding, more taxes, more building control, regulation and cost, and higher insurance premiums. Is there any aspect of life that climate scientists do not think has become their domain?
Oh yes and please can we stop having a go at Trenberth. He is a "distinguished scientist". He said so himself in his letter supporting Mann's intervention in the UVA/ATI FOI case.
All the usual suspects, of course, and pretty much the same game -- trying to make something be true because they want it to be true.
Reality is the main loser, as usual.
Richard,
'climate scientist = green activist = fiddled science in order to cheat us out of our taxes'
I think yor view of what we perceive is a little simplistic.
Almost O/T but did you manage to inform your colleagues of the previous thread about CET/England temps discrepency?
It seems that there has been a linguistic shift: last year's "cause" is this year's "attribution". The new terminology does not, however make it any easier to demonstrate that one phenomenon causes another. How can supposedly intelligent people behave so simplistically?
With the "travesty" of our current non-warming world becoming more and more apparent, this attribution of normal bad weather becomes more and more necessary.
There is no such thing as 'extreme weather'. This clown is looking for taxpayers' money to pay the mortgage and his kids' school fees.
Richard:
I wish I could believe you. But I see nothing coming out of the Met Office that looks vaguely like "objective science". Everything is based on the assumption of "climate change = man-made climate change". Where are the warnings to Government that there are "limitations" in the current models (I would say that is the understatement of the century) and that the "projections" of rising sea levels and "dangerous warming" and avoiding "tipping points" and ensuring no more than "2degC warming" are based on climate models with no validity? I hear no such messages from the likes of Julia Slingo or Bob Watson. Where are the warnings to government that they are wasting billions of our money on climate models with no predictive skill and no validity?
Complete silence from the Met Office is what I hear.
Commentersteveta "Have any of this lot heard that a good scientific theory is supposed to predict stuff before it happens?"
That's the old science ... the stuff we got taught.
Like the A level it had to be "improved" to ensure it was more PC.
And don't you see how much it has improved just as people used to needlessly fail the old A level, so the old science used to needlessly get predictions wrong. It didn't exactly enhance the reputation of science to see all those predictions that were proven wrong. Phlogiston, the ether, it made science a laughing stock.
Such an old fashioned idea! Why make predictions that can be wrong? Why ruin the reputation of science - Why were people so impatient? Just wait till you know the result then make the prediction
"If the surge in frequency is a result only of natural cycles, it will probably subside someday soon. But if the increase is a result of global warming, losses and damages could continue rising indefinitely"
Heads I win, tails you lose.
Travesty Trenberth should not utter another word for publication until he has completed his search for the missing heat.
He should not cease in searching for the rest of his life. This will prove to be his only significant contribution to mankind and planet earth
We have managed to construct infrastructure based on risk (100 year flood event, 100 year wind event etc). Is there any evidence that these exrtreme events are getting any worse. Having a limited memory of the last half of the 20th century and reading history, I get the impression that the climate has recently been quite benign compared to conditions in the past and the extreme events that have occuured. There is nothing new under the sun! Trying to link extreme events with global ewarming is just another way to waste taxpayers money and to scare people into accepting the BS and the ever-increasing regulations, the green taxes and the rise in fuel and food prices that mitigating climate change are causing.
Hi Lord Beaverbrook
Glad to hear my remark was too simplistic. That is how it often comes across though! Can you provide a more nuanced view?
(On the CET query, BH emailed a colleague of mine and I believe the query was passed on.)
Attempts to link 'extreme' weather to AGW are noticeably more common in the Anglosphere media lately.
Clearly this is a reaction to the temperature not playing ball over the last decade or so (see P.Jones) and so undermining the case for AGW in the public's mind.
With all due respect to Richard Betts, and whatever the actual science behind it, there's no question in my mind it is being pursued more as a marketing tool than anything else.
Lets reverse the attribution arguement.
How likely is it for a climate scientist to be a green activist of some description?
I would argue that is very likely. That is the null hypothesis.
When it comes to weather events and climate change a clear link has been established - attribution is activism.
Anyone like to argue against?
Patagon
Re your chart: http://img854.imageshack.us/img854/2328/climshift.png
Do you have an article somewhere, or could I offer to put it on my own blog http://scottishsceptic.wordpress.com?
@ Caroline
Are these people really scientists?
No, shamans would be closer to the mark. Portents in the sky, the gods are displeased with us, sacrifices are necessary...dogma, heresy....etc.
I think some scientist should do a study looking at the links between childhood obesity in the under tens and extreme weather events. So far it hasn't been picked up but ever since articles started to appear about the weight problems of young children I'm sure there's been a similar increase in the articles about hurricanes etc.
This should be looked at monthly. We deserve to find out more and such attribution -real time or otherwise could provide crucial policy indicators.
@Mike Haseler
Feel free to use the chart, I can pass you the data and R code to replicate it if you like. You can reach me at my web name: John.Patagon thatsymbol gmail com
Attribution is activism.
Richard Betts commented above, "The thinking is: climate scientist = green activist = fiddled science in order to cheat us out of our taxes. This is not the case (but I know you won't believe me!)."
I'm sure Richard is right about this, at least for the majority of climate scientists. But ... there is good reason to be suspicious of some: see for example, Climate Fix chapter 8. I don't know any of these guys, but as I stated earlier (7:59 AM) my bet is that their bad behaviour is motivated more by intellectual rivalry than by anything else, and magnified out of all proportion by the interweb and the potential seriousness of the situation. A little while back on her blog, Judith Curry scolded one of their number to just grow up ... I reckon that is the best available advice.
Global Warming has already been shown to be a cause of fewer pirates:
http://borkweb.com/story/global-warming-causes-pirate-population-decrease
Broadly, though, you can take pretty much anything you like that has been altering in one direction over the last 20 or 30 years, and claim it's caused by global warming too. All you need is a rhetorical argument.
So, on that basis, global warning has caused:
- vinyl seats to be replaced by leather in my 1973 car
- progressively younger actors to play Doctor Who
- an increase in STDs among the under-30s
- lower than expected returns on endowment policies.
- etc
These are sillier than actual claims made only in the sense that a meretricious argument in support isn't readily available.