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)
Richard Betts Sep 8, 2011 at 11:14
"BTW change doesn't always mean an increase of course. Some climate models project a decrease in overall Atlantic hurricane activity with climate change due to increased vertical wind sheer (Lee et al 2010)"
Yeh, we know, after decades of a decrease in Atlantic hurricane activity we now have a model that predicts that it would happen. But when they do occur we are met with:-
"How Does Global Warming Make Hurricanes Like Irene More Destructive?"
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/08/27/306044/how-does-global-warming-make-hurricanes-like-irene-more-destructive/
For pity's sake when is somebody going to stand up and tell it as it is?
Roy
No, I'm not saying that there was no LIA. I said:
The evidence required is for the existence of an effect on modern climate of an ongoing 'recovery' (as you put it) from the LIA.
There isn't any.
We seem to have stopped talking about the reasons why most climatologists think increased RF from CO2 explains why energy is accumulating in the climate system now.
Funny that. Happens all the time.
BBD. Serious question, seriously I mean it!
Why in the UK do we get our coldest weather at night in winter with a cloudless sky, but our warmest nights in summer, also with a cloudless sky?
Or is this a figment of my imagination?
Sep 8, 2011 at 3:51 PM | Justice4Rinka
Re: your point about the implications of having certain people aligned to your (or your opponent's) side.
Always a bad move to start making those kind of arguments. It works both ways and generally backfires. ThinkProgress posted a particularly inane article about the Norwegian mass-murderer including climate sceptic arguments in his manifesto - I had a bit of a go at them about that, as reported by Autonomous Mind. While I don't agree with AM's statements about lack of evidence for climate change, I do agree that just because one unsavoury individual has certain views on one particular topic, this does not in itself make those views on that topic wrong, and making such an argument just distracts from better arguments.
golf charley Sep 8, 2011 at 11:53 PM
The guys in the bar want to know if you have hole in one insurance?
Green Sand. No, had to think about that!
The gardeners in the shed would like to know if you have fertile soil?
golf charley
I've no idea. Do you have some Met Office data for this?
Also, there's a lot more atmospheric water vapour than clouds, so we need to be cautious here.
Richard Betts, I think Green Sand and I both viewed your statement in a similar manner, but chose to respond in a different manner.
The points and engagement you make here are appreciated, but do not seem to be reflected by the IPCC or media.
You dismissed Patagonias reference for not being peer related science, but that is all the public are subjected to.
Please continue to challenge us at this blog, be prepared for some flak, but please apply the same principles to those who pay your wages, and be prepared for a change in management
Good luck gc
golf charley
Well it's not that relevant to my own chapter (land ecosystems) but I will be making a point of reminding the authors of the relevant chapter(s) about it.
Cloudless nights tend to follow cloudless days, and the warmth of the night can depends on how much heating was received from the sun in the day, and the temperature of the surrounding ocean and local air mass.
In winter, even on cloudless days the ground will have received little solar radiation because of the short day length and the sun being low in the sky - so the ground and near-surface air don't get chance to warm much. We're also surrounded by cold sea keeping the air cold.
In summer, cloudless days (should they occur - ha!) the ground will have received lots of solar radiation, due to long daylights hours and the sun being high in the sky. This will be especially important if you live in a city due to the urban heat island effect. We're also surrounded by warm(ish!) sea keeping the air warmer. The large heat capacity of water introduces thermal inertia, keeping conditions warmer or colder despite short-term fluctuations.
BBD is right about water vapour. In deserts, nights can get really cold because the drier atmosphere lets longwave radiation out to space more easily than our damp British atmosphere (this is water vapour doing its bit as a greenhouse gas...!).
BBD, thanks for your response. I remember waking up in april 1981 (?) to minus 17c in Oxfordshire in 1981 (?) and there were blueskies
Hot nights in summer, when I can't sleep (not many for the last few years) I could go outside and stargaze.
I appreciate the importance of humidity in terms of human comfort, but why does the air temperature stay high during summer high pressure nights, but plummet during nghtime winter high pressures?
It is the weather lore I grew up with. Does CO2 affect it?
Richard Betts and BBD
Apologies for cross post
Will re read Richards Post tomorrow
Richard Betts Sep 9, 2011 at 12:16 AM
"We're also surrounded by warm(ish!) sea keeping the air warmer. The large heat capacity of water introduces thermal inertia, keeping conditions warmer or colder despite short-term fluctuations."
And the same happens on the Franco-German border and the Central Massif interesting isn't it?
Hi Green Sand
I think my sea temperature point is secondary - it's probably less important than the fact that the ground's simply heated up a lot on summer days.
@Richard Betts Sep 8, 2011 at 11:26 PM
[re "complete list of things caused by global warming"!]
And some of us get amused and annoyed, too! But I digress ...
Perhaps you are unaware of the rash of complaints about the media's failure to "communicate" the science in a convincing way to the public (most of whom, let's face facts, are not about to rush off to buy subscriptions to journals which would enable them to verify that which they read/hear in MSM reports).
It's unlikely (or at least I'd like to think so!) that the media made these linkages out of thin air. Rather, it is far more likely that they derived from a press release, issued by the institution at which the author of the "study" is based. Consider, for example, the following comment made in early Jan. 2010 at WUWT:
As I had noted last month, even Mike Hulme had observed (circa Nov. 16/09):
Your response, however, confirms two problems (at least from where I'm sitting):
1. That scientists (who do know better) are failing to monitor the media in order to correct the record - or they are choosing to remain silent (as they have been regarding the constant stream of hyperbole from the likes of Al Gore)
2. Unless I'm mistaken (it has been known to happen!), I believe you are discounting the claims you examined because they appeared in press reports - rather than in the peer reviewed literature. Yet the example I provided above strongly suggests that such claims may well have originated in "scientific papers".
IMHO, this is somewhat akin to the defensive position we have seen taken by some in response to errors found in AR4: In some instances, an error has been hand-waved away because "it wasn't in the SPM", while in others, the hand-wave is away from the SPM to the "science" in the underlying report (and/or some other paper somewhere).
But stepping back and looking at the big picture ... the CO2->GHG->AGW hypothesis has always struck me as being a conflation that verges on dishonesty. Because the "unequivocal" statements do not mention "CO2" (nor its proportional purported contribution to GHG). Rather, such statements are carefully phrased to focus merely on the GHG->AGW link. Yet we are expected to take a giant leap of faith that human generated CO2 is the "primary" culprit in the apparent absence of any real-world (as opposed to model-world) evidence of attribution.
This latest proposal (which should perhaps have been dubbed JOKER rather than ACE) appears to be more of the same. At least that's the view from here :-)
Judith Curry on Climate Etc reminds us that today 8 September is the anniversary of the 1900 Galveston Hurricane, the most deadly natural disaster in US history. She recommends a book about that, Isaac's Storm, (which I thought was wonderful).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1900_Galveston_hurricane
It's a Trenbersty.
On the plus side, anything that Travesty Trenberth has a hand in usually ends up a crock.
Sep 8, 2011 at 11:14 PM | Richard Betts says:
“The now-discredited Global Humanitarian Forum report "Anatomy of a Silent Crisis" was particularly bad, claiming 300,000 deaths per year due to climate change through weather disasters...”
The Guardian carried four articles on this report. One by Mark Lynas
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/29/climate-change-death-toll
In which he said:
“During one awful night in Paris, on 10 August 2003, 2,000 people – mainly elderly – were carried out of their apartments in body bags. So climate change can and will affect us all eventually”.
One by Kofi Annan, one by John Vidal, and one by George Monbiot
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/may/29/monbiot-kofi-annan-climate-change
which suggested that AIDS is spreading because of climate change-induced drought.
There were hundreds of critical comments to these articles, (but none from climate scientists) which didn’t stop Caroline Lucas and others from quoting the 300,000 figure ad nauseam.
Why didn’t you scientists complain? Lucas, Lynas, and Monbiot only get a hearing because the public thinks the science backs them. Why don’t you say, loud and clear, in a Guardian article, that it doesn’t?
Lord Beaverbrook (Sep 8, 2011 at 12:07 PM) says:
“The arrogance of man is truly astounding that he promotes himself as a god in order to control the climate. There should be a verb for this, to canute..”
It’s usually spelt “Cnut” nowadays. Type carefully.
Geoff - have you tried to imagine what would happen to any scientist who would engage head-on against the Grauniad's coverage of climate science?
IMNSHO scientists are employees first, then scientists. Only a handful have the courage AND ESPECIALLY the obstination needed. And the seniority.
Maurizio
I can’t see that Richard Betts would be risking his career if he said the same things to 100,000 Guardian readers as he says to us here. The Guardian has given space to an Oxford academic who suggested that the situation is so serious that we should be discussing the suspension of democracy. Nobody of note complained.
As I noted on a previous thread, the Guardian regularly accompanies their direst warnings with quotes from Betts and his colleagues. They could not refuse him space to express the views he has expressed here.
Paul Nurse has a letter in the Guardian:
8 Sept: Guardian: Letters
A time may come when mankind will need to consider geoengineering the climate to counteract climatic effects of greenhouse gases. If that time comes, we need to have a good understanding of whether such efforts will work and, just as importantly, whether they will have any negative side effects. Those who oppose such exploratory research on the grounds that we do not know what its effects may be (Want to mimic a volcano to combat global warming? Launch a Wembley-size balloon, 1 September) are missing a fundamental point of research, which is to allow us to potentially rule out any technology that would have negative effects that outweigh the positive.
The article was incorrect in stating that the Royal Society backs the Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering (Spice) project, the subject of the article. The Society's comprehensive review of possible geoengineering technologies, published in 2009, did identify stratospheric aerosols, which the Spice project is investigating, as one of the more plausible ideas that required further research. However, the Society's current work is focused on the Solar Radiation Management Governance Initiative (SRMGI), a project to develop guidelines to ensure that geoengineering research is conducted in a manner that is transparent, responsible and environmentally sound...
Hopefully we will never need geoengineering but, if we do, to fail to assess its usefulness and safety in advance would be a risk no one, least of all those most concerned with the environment, would thank us for.
Paul Nurse
President of the Royal Society
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/sep/08/geoengineering-research-royal-society
Richard Betts,
Re MOD funding, my mistake I stand corrected, thank you.
geoffchambers,
Tis time for the party conferences, I think we should issue a challenge to all the good people out there.
Ultimate cudos to the first person seen on a national news report wearing a t-shirt with a slogan in the following manner: (select name in accordance with your own political stance)
Huhne is a Cnut!
Josh, do you fancy knocking up a design, throne on beach, offshore windmills, politician or scientist of choice with smug grin?
I guess it'll be another model as usual, no real world observations needed.
I've decided that a name needs to be given to all the climate models so they can be identified for what they are so I'm putting forward 'Skynet', out to destroy humanity.
Or maybe 'Sim Enviroworld', where the universe is in a utopian state until you add a human.
I completely agree that climate scientists need to be more pro-active in making sure our science is properly understood and not misrepresented, particularly when it comes to not blaming everything on AGW - and I have said so here in my article on the BBC website which got quite a lot of coverage (google it - you'll find loads of re-posts and other discussion pieces picking it up).
Hilary, perhaps the worst of these misleading press releases was from the UN itself following AR4.
Evidence is now ‘unequivocal’ that humans are causing global warming – UN report
Of course the IPCC said no such thing. Four years on this false press release, and another similar one from UNEP, remains uncorrected.
Richard, I welcome your concern that climate science should not be misrepresented.
Please could you as an IPCC author try to get the erroneous UN press release mentioned above corrected or deleted, and the similar one from UNEP,
Evidence of Human-caused Global Warming “Unequivocal”, says IPCC
[In case people are not aware, what the IPCC report actually said is "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal"]
Richard Betts
Your BBC article of January 2010 is an excellent statement of the general principles of rational discourse which you apply so well here. Judging by the comments, it mostly reached expats like myself. It certainly didn’t reach the ears or eyes of Richard Black, judging by his recent article on the Roy Spencer paper; or of Sir Paul Nurse, whose recent Horizon programme was an excellent example of “climate science being misunderstood or misused” to use your formula; or of Brian Cox, who used a televised talk on science in the media to describe the opinions of Lindzen and Spencer as “bollocks”.
As you point out, journalists are only doing their job when they try to elicit the exciting quote, and you are doing yours when you try and resist their efforts and present an objective view, as you do here.
I repeat, why not do the same thing at the Guardian, where Comment is Free, and you would reach a thousand times more readers than you reach here? They pay £60 an article, so you could hardly be accused of doing it for the money.
geoff
Did Cox actually say that Lindzen and Spencer's work specifically was bollocks? I didn't follow the Cox threads here.
@ Richard Betts
There are many, one that comes to mind is the mystery of the shrinking sheep of St. Kilda:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/325/5939/464.abstract
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8130907.stm
... all that in the amazing period of 20 years... which by the way is the upward phase of a cycle that just finished in the 80s, bringing back the temperature where it was in the 30's (Stornoway GISS)
BBD
Cox says:
“The Great Global Warming Swindle broadcast on Channel 4. Now, what is there to say about this film (which is, in my opinion, factually total bollocks, of course)?”
Since the factual content of Durkin’s film is simply a series of interviews with scientists like Lindzen, and Spencer, Cox must mean that Lindzen’s and Spencer’s work is total bollocks. Unless he meant nothing at all, of course. Since his talk was the Royal Television Society's Huw Wheldon Memorial Lecture on Science, this can hardly be the case, can it?
The entire transcript of Cox’s lecture can be found at
https://sites.google.com/site/mytranscriptbox/home/20101201_b2
geoff
Thanks for the quote and for the link to the transcript.
I hadn't realised that Cox was quite so blunt about TGGWS and by implication, Lindzen and Spencer.
LB@8.33 am.
"Huhne is a Cnut!"
I have a Germanic leaning and tend to spell it with a "K". Oddly, especially in tortured Gothic graffiti script, it seems much more offensive that way...
Colleagues on other, more influential, papers concurred.
The scientists are failing to monitor their university PR departments — it was almost always government-funded research institutions that were guilty — or just as likely they need the sort of conclusion that will have enough people phoning or emailing their MPs to say "something must be done".
Politicians understand the principle all too well. You have to be in power (in post with funds) to carry out your manifesto (continue with your research) and so a certain elasticity with the truth is essential.
Sort of striking a balance between honesty and effectiveness, if you get my drift!
I missed out on the Cox stuff too..anybody could provide links pls?
Richard Betts,
I generally am sympathetic to what you said, however, the key premise you assume is the central problem and thus you do not address it. Your premise is that the IPCC climate science is a falsifiable science. And also, even if it is assumed so for the sake of argument, is the IPCC assessment balanced for all views of climate science?
Let’s start there with the implied premises, then, if we see problems in the premise we might make better sense of the value of your quote above.
John
Can people stop traducing Canute's memory? He should really be a hero of sceptic rationalists. It was Canute's sycophantic courtiers who told him that he was so powerful that he could control the forces of nature. To prove them wrong, he sat on his throne in front of the incoming tide and was duly soaked even though he did his best to order the tide to stop. A Huhne is the complete reverse of a Canute.
Talking of extremes, take a look at the UK forecast for Monday 12 Sep on the Met Office website. There is a massive disconnect between the 'Severe Weather Warning' for wind on Moday and the forecast winds. The strongest wind on the forecast for Monday is in Kent at 33mph sustained with gusts to 50mph (that's almost a gale!). The amber alert area is forecast to have maxima less than the winds in Kent.
The Daily Mail has an article suggesting the Met Office has forecast winds of 60-70mph, another forecaster expects waves peaking at 30-50 feet.
What's going on here? Is this the Fish effect?
Since it will be a matter of some concern to me (what clothes am I likely to need for a boating holiday in the Midlands the week after next?) I have tried to get the relevant forecast (albeit probaby a wee bit vague) for the Birmingham area.
The Met Office provides me with this: http://tinyurl.com/dkjk4o
while Accuweather gives me: http://tinyurl.com/3wu4lb6
To my mind: no contest! One gives me the weather day-by-day as it sees it: the other covers its backside so that there is no chance of my being able to go back and say "you got it wrong" but tells me nothing that is of any real value to me either.
It looks pretty windy here
@Patagon
That won't cause 50 foot waves though, will it?!
I hope the study includes three points.
1. There is huge natural variability in climate.
2. UNIPCC AR4 Synthesis Report page 50 - Examples of the impacts associated with global average temp change relative to 1980-1999 average.
3. There are anthropogenic impacts on climate separate from global warming. For instance, in Southern Brazil the removal of much of the Atlantic sub-tropical forest in the 20th century has made the climate drier.
The natural variability is huge. It may be tiny compared to a warming of 5 celsius, but is probably much larger than a warming associated with 0.5 degrees. The difference of impacts between 0.5 and 5 degrees if warming is not 10 times, but much, much more.
Now even if the assumptions that
a) the climate will warm by 5 degrees or more, and
b) this will have catastrophic consequences
are accurate, we still have a problem of correctly splitting the anthropogenic from the natural causation. the track record ain't very good. Hurricane Katrina; the Australian Droughts and following floods; the Lake District Flood; the cold Winter of 2010/11; and the Moscow heatwave / Pakistan Flooding were all most likely natural phenomena, but assigned anthropogenic influences.
Let me be pessimistic. given the current state of climate alarmism, any variation from a supposed norm will be attributed to "climate change", along with trends from very short runs of data. Any below average recent events will be ignored.
@ Billy Liar
Those winds lone, not. But waves follow the history of wind, and what we are getting on the western shores of Ireland and Britain is the remnants of Hurricane Katia, There is plenty of time and fetch to build waves up to 40 ft. See the Navy forecasts here
Patagon,
Interesting. According to IE9 navy.mil has a security certificate not issued by a trusted authority!
When I looked the max forecast significant wave height on the west coast of Ireland was 27-30ft, mainly swell. I doubt that's uncommon.