Thursday
Sep132012
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Tamsin on the jet stream
Sep 13, 2012 Climate: Models Climate: Surface Climate: other Tamsin Edwards has posted a link to a recent interview she gave BBC radio on the subject of the jetstream, among other things. Paul Matthews comments:
If most climate scientists were like @flimsin, there'd be hardly any sceptics.
I've only managed to listen to the first five minutes or so, but I can see what he means.
Reader Comments (46)
So can I. Great interview.
I did like Tamsin's "not getting hysterical" comment.
Does getting her own thread here make her a candidate for the Global Warming Disinformation Database?
She was quite sensible, although weather forecasters are a bit like economists - very good at explaining why things didn't happen as they were supposed to - not so hot at predicting what will happen. The mindset of the interviewer was an irritant - typical BBC "This is what I am told to think. I do not have a mind of my own. Let's all snigger at those who disagree."
Thank you! Glad you liked my first climate (and my first live) media piece. (I did a R4 prerecord on the Higgs discovery).
Tamsin
P.S. Mike, you know I'm not a weather forecaster?
Tamsin's better than usual zealous climate scientist, on the BBC, whose sure he (and it's usually a "he") knows the truth of it: That all warming, in the last half of the 20th century, is man-made. That the ‘tipping-point’is upon us, etc etc. And that we've got reverse the industrial revolution, and go back to 'natural' sources of energy.
The problem is she's still operates within the 'I am but a humble scientist, seeking truth and being objective', paradigm. If she’d stuck to particle physics, in which she got her PhD, she would be working within a science that still operated effectively with internal debate, competing groups and theories, lots of empirical evidence and argument, and a clear sense that the science was making progress.
But she's trapped in a scientific community which long ago (and far away) stopped practising science. “Climate science” has become so politicised, with so many vested interests, and so much money involved, it cannot, and has not been operating as proper science for at least 20, and possibly 30 years. It employs people called scientists, people who describe themselves scientists but it’s not a functioning science. Tamsin is clearly keen to be a fair and objective scientist, and good luck to her. But I fear that it isn’t possible in such a corrupted, suborned simalcrum of a science. She’d be better off going back to particle physics.
Bravo, Tamsin.
That must have been quite hard work in the face of the rapid-fire blether of your interviewer.
Congratulations Tamsin - if that was your first time you are a media natural.
Mark P - I think you are forgettingthe distinction between 'climate science' (lots of physcists, etc, a few paleo that get too much attention, and 'climate change science' or even eco-psyhology.
I find it much easiar to relate to the former (including a number of friends) than those more towards wg2 & wg3 end of the IPCC)
Tamsin:
Excellent interview. It is a refreshing interview to listen to; thanks to an absence of "Man is the cause of our doom!" statements. Thank you for sticking to the science and remaining faithful to the scientific method!
Also; incredible job of sidestepping that Interviewer's attempts to get you to make a 'BBC & Team type' of statement.
Now, about your knitting...?
She Done Good!
Sorry, Tamsin. Climate Scientist.
Oh dear Tasim, performances like that will not make you popular with 'the Team ' , best retract your heretical ways now or find yourself cast into the outer darkness of social science studies .
Barry
I wish I could believe that some groups/schools within the climate sciences were independent, untainted, and pursuing real science, but climate science has been a political science for so long, I fear it’s too corrupted. It’s like trying to be an honest copper in the South Yorkshire police in 1989, after the Hillsborough disaster. You haven’t, despite being an honest and fair individual, got a chance.
If your friends, the physicists were working in a truly independent way, we’d see clear evidence of a forthright internal debate between the various climate sciences, but we don’t. All of them accept the overweening assumption, that carbon dioxide increases, caused by humans, are driving the Earth’s temperature upwards. This was clearly the belief of the founders of the IPCC, and all the science academies, professional societies etc that have signed up to the doom and gloom that follows from this (huge) assumption.
No doubt your friends try their best, but they function within a highly politicised and corrupt milieu, which they cannot question.
If thats her first BBC interview she did exceptionally well just on the stage nerves aspect alone. But primarily she triumphed on balanced scientific reason and stressing complexity of the Earth's ( I still prefer Earth to 'Planet', but thats my generation I suppose) climatic variability. There was a provocative attempt to prompt her into commenting on the interviewer's attempt to compare sceptics to lone wacko MMR freaks, skilfully avoided, (but at least she could rely on some BBC respect and sympathy, more than any sceptic enjoys-aka Dimbleby - Delingpole: Nurse - Delingpole etc. ). All in all an excellent 'maiden speech'.
Perfectly clear, balanced and sane. Therefore persuasive. Magnificent.
It was nice to hear a voice of reason and one which tried to avoid being cast as a pro or anti AWGer.
Tamsin, what the world needs are people who will champion the cause of 'science'. I think you are a good candidate. Science will thank you if you stay faithful.
Tamsin, you came across very well, and as has been said above coped with the embarrassing BBC interviewer very well. Granted you made the point about the need to avoid getting hysterical, but at the end you did agree that there was emerging evidence that AGW is affecting the track of the jet stream - to be fair and for the sake of accuracy I will transcribe:
My problem with this is that I'd like to know what this new evidence is, specifically for how slightly increased atmospheric CO2 concentration has achieved all this. Also, it does not add up - not the Arctic sea ice anyway; the Arctic sea ice extent was actually very high in the spring and into summer, and Arctic surface temperatures were also average or below average all through summer. Not to mention that the models have all been predicting that we would see warmer drier summers and wetter milder winters in the UK. I maintain that none of the weather (and extreme weather events) we have experienced in the UK in the last 30 years is unprecedented or anything unusual - just look at some historical weather e.g. the period between 1750 and 1800 in which there were a series of cold winters, very wet summers etc. So kudos for what you said in general, but please don't jump onto this latest AGW~sea-ice~jet stream bandwagon or give it any credence as it is bollocks and you should know better.
Tamsin,
A quite rational role model.
John
Now, if the jet stream gets as far south in the summer as the Alps on a regular basis, the glaciers there will start growing again and we'll all be going to church to pray that they cease their advance before rubbing out Zermatt.
Well, I will. Maybe Skiphil too?
An excellent interview Dr.Edwards. I suspect it may be more than a couple of years before the attribution of Jetstream movements to global climate change can be regarded as solid, but that would be nitpicking. I hope the rest of the BBC takes note and adopts a rather more open type of debate.
The interviewers references to the MMR debate were clearly designed to bolster the view that no dissent should be given airtime, and you skirted that without actually saying that there are reasonable and valid arguments to be heard in the climate discussion, especially on the subject of feedbacks etc, but lets give it time!
I hope we hear more of you, hopefully on more accessible channels.
KnR makes a good point. One does wonder, with performances like that, how long it will be before Tamsin receives a stiff dose of the (Judith) Curry treatment. I'm surprised Richard Betts has got away with it for so long. HG
Sep 13, 2012 at 8:54 PM | lapogus
Couldn't agree more.
Sandy
Hi Tamsin, good interview!
Any comment on how Global Climate Change (man or natural) is affecting the Southern Hemisphere Jet Stream?
Barry
"eco-psyhology"
I know you do a lot of typing (and I do a bit of proof-reading) but couldn't you use a spellchecker? I read your tweets and they bring out my inner Lynne Truss all the time!
Tamsin - well done. Cogent and reasonable - not what the Beeb are used to at all!
Well done Tamsin can't be easy at the current time for a climate scientist to follow the science rather than the money. And well done on your interview, I'm sure you must have been nervous but you came across as confident and but not too confident. Shame he didn't ask you for the reason behind your blog's name.
Did you agree with his implied suggestion that only fools believe that solar activity has an effect on the Earth's climate?
Tamsin
Well done in the interview, although I would of thought you may have given a little more credence to the effects of ENSO as described by Adam Scaife of the MET. Unfortunately I would disagree with you that aGW was causing or had an influence on ENSO which is what came over in the interview, never the less I would feel more confident in your stance than many that have been on the BBC.
Well done, Dr.Edwards. You and Dr.Curry should have a chat.
It is fascinating to observe that more (climate) scientist are finding the courage to speak out and bring some sense to this whole debate. This Canadian welcomes that.
http://qik.com/video/15211552
Harrabin on the Today program this morning talking about a new paper giving a more responsive model to predict winter extremes due to jet stream position and direction of winds but nothing on the BBC website as yet. Perhaps the science is now overtaking policy?
One can only hope.
That's just what I want from my climate scientists. More light than heat and a pleasant speaking voice.
Well done Tamsin, you were excellent.
Mark P, I don't agree with you about climate scientists, there are thousands of them beavering away trying to understand the incomprehensibly complex climate. Many are publishing papers that cast doubts on the CAGW theory, and doubtless most of them are motivated to be good scientists. Many, or most, I don't know which, genuinely feel that humans are having a deleterious effect on the climate and there will be problems, but that doesn't stop them doing good science. At the core of this scandal there are around 50-100 scientists who select the papers for inclusion in the IPCC reports, and who produce the SPMs. That the exclude papers that don't fit their own pre-determined views of what's happening in the climate from the IPCC process is the heart of the scandal, for they have thrown out uncertainty and replaced it with frightening propoganda, which isn't working, hence the continued introspection about how they communicate the science. Which brings me back to the beginning, a junior scientist in the form of Tamsin has just shown them how the science should be communicated.
BBC has caught up:
Met Office model 'better at predicting extreme winters':
Regulars might recall Tamsins thought about how to communicate science to Dr Peter Gleick, a little while back.
Tamsin's email to Peter:
“I would personally be infuriated if I was dismissed on account of the behaviour of a group of people I talk with. Every single person I talk with has a different viewpoint, and I learn a lot about how better to communicate climate science by listening to them. If we dismiss swathes of people by association then our attempts at communication become futile: we end up only ‘preaching to the converted from an ‘ivory tower’, as it were”.
Of course, if communication of climate science is not your aim, then it is your choice if you prefer to communicate with nobody! – Tamsin Edwards
---------------------
the exclamation mark was Tamsin's
http://unsettledclimate.org/2012/02/02/clarifications-and-how-better-to-communicate-science/
Dear Geronimo
Climate scientists, working in universities and research institutes the world over, learned the ‘facts’ of climate change at school, and then some went on to learn the detailed ‘facts’ of CAGW on their degree & post-graduate courses. These ‘facts’ aren’t shoehorned into curricula, they’re there as unquestionable FACTS. They suffuse our whole educational system from primary school to university.
And the young scientists (raised in their childhood on “Captain Planet” etc, which my children assiduously watched) don’t question them. It doesn’t matter whether they came to climate science through physics, or computer modelling, or any other science, their base unquestioned assumptions, are that humans burning fossil fuels (that powered the industrial revolution, and the modern world) have increased atmospheric CO2, and that this in turn has caused the majority of global warming. There may be a bit of wiggle-room about the seriousness of the human-induced threat, but there’s no questioning or alternative explanations, that we’re harming ‘Planet Earth’.
As you say yourself, “…many….genuinely feel that humans are having a deleterious effect on the climate and that there will be problems…”. But you then go on to say, “…but that doesn’t stop them doing good science.” I say that it’s bound to stop them doing “good science”.
In fact their firmly held beliefs will hobble and constrain their vision and their thinking. And you can see this in practice. In a normal science, working normally (good Kuhnian term) there would be schools of research and competing groups and even competing journals. Almost none of this applies to climate science. It looks like a proper science. Has journals, with peer review an-all, like a proper science. Lots of conferences, and research grants (many of those). But all this happens in a hugely political area with enormous sums of money and influence at stake.
Very few sciences can survive and function in such circumstances. When climate science was a backwater people like H Lamb could do good investigative exploratory work, and speculate and ruminate in a free way. There’s no room for that now. The stakes are far too high. The confusion comes from viewing all sciences as the same, as operating in the same way. They don’t. Some still work well. Some are damaged. Some have stopped functioning. I think it’s clear that climate science stopped working years ago. And those of us who are not ‘believers’ have to turn to a few brave and persistent individuals such as The Bishop, Prof Lindzen, Roy Spencer etc. There are no schools or groups to turn to.
I am sure you are right about the corrupt IPPC writing process, but I don’t think that that explains the nightmare we are living through. Climate science is dead in the water, and if the ‘believers’ have their way, so will be the UK economy. Very sad, but very true.
I too am impressed by Dr Edward's performance in this interview. Lucid, calm in the face of an interviewer bringing up topics like rabbits out of a hat (jet stream, El Nino, sunspots, email hacking, MMR controversy, balance in the media, scientists 'in a spot'), and providing engaging, informative replies about the complexity of the system, and about recent interest in looking for links between jet stream movements, Arctic ice, and North Atlantic temperatures.
In the interviewer's introduction, he noted movement of the jetstream as a proximate cause of wet summers, and then recalled how he and his chums suddently realised they hadn't asked 'why has the jetstream moved?'. That reminded me of the summer in 1976 when I was in London during the heatwave. An atmospheric physicist pointed out on radio that he could explain the heatwave by pointing to the blocking high over Europe, and an omega-shaped flow in the jetsteam, but he couldn't explain why it was there! Maybe we'd have had more progress on that puzzle if we'd not had the ugly, often politically-driven, dramatisation of CO2 in the intervening decades?
Good indeed. I doubt if I could have talked for that long without saying at least one thing that I would have regretted later. And in fairness, I think the interviewer did a reasonable job, or at least gave a good impression of trying to do so.
It jogged my memory of a news-anchor asking Weatherman John Kettley for his opinion on the matter about a couple of decades ago. Kettley shifted uneasily, and said "I think we'll probably know in about 50 years time".
John - Indeed. I recall reading a letter a few years ago, by Peter Taylor (Chill), where he recounted phoning up the Met Office to ask to speak to their expert on the jetstream. To which they replied that they didn't have one, and suggested he contact someone in the US aviation website. Shortly after this the UK economy suffered billion pound losses due to the completely unforeseen severe winters of 2009-10 and again in 2010-11, which were attributed to jetstream blocking.
I have found the link - 'Not warming, but cooling', Peter Taylor, This is Bristol, February 02, 2009
The BBC: Met Office model 'better at predicting extreme winters'
Once again Harrabin at the BBC pushes out the boat without allowing comments: "UK weather forecasters can predict cold winter weather a season ahead with more confidence..."
We don't want confidence. We want accurate predictions. As far as I can tell, this paper doesn't make one.
From the paper: "Here we investigate winter 2009/10 with the Met Office seasonal forecast system." The last time I checked, it is now 2012.
Dr Edwards: "since 2007 we've had these bad summers...a lot wetter"
Pardon me for asking but wasn't the meme being put forward up until it started to rain in April that we had "unprecedented" drought and we were all going to die. Exactly how does that tie in with the statement above?
Ivor Ward
Mark P. I don't think we're a hundred miles apart, but my experience is that the rump of any group are not extremists. While I'll admit that many of the scientists are staying schtum, most are doing it from a mild belief that humans are causing damageq, but enjoying the money pouring in too much to put their careers on the line by defying the Slingos and Jones of this world. However, if you read the blogs there is a whole bunch of work going on within the climate science community that is ignoring the "consensus" and producing results that don't support the apocalyptic IPCC rubbish. I'm pessimistic about the future because there are too many carpetbaggers on the right in the UK while the left is being run by a bunch of kids who are apparently In the final year of their GCSEs. For my part I believe that a degree in PPE should automatically ban you from being in parliament or advisers to anyone in parliament.
The one saddening thing here is that everyone's waxing so congratulatory about a scientist giving a rational account of science in a BBC interview. I'm old enough to remember a time when that would have been expected.
Having said which ... congratulations, Dr. Edwards! KUTGW.
Mark P: "Climate scientists, working in universities and research institutes the world over, learned the ‘facts’ of climate change at school"
We have a known fact: doubling CO2 causes 1°C rise for a doubling.
We have another known fact: that the climate warmed at a "massive" rate of 1.6°C from 1970 (end of cooling) to 2000 (not warmed since).
Of this trend of 1.6°C per century the greenhouse warming effect of CO2 can only account for about 0.05°C/century.
In order to explain this discrepancy between the science of CO2 and what actually happens, we then have the belief that it is somehow related to CO2. That if you stuff the factors that they believe affect the climate and adjust the scaling effect of each these parameters, that the model you have predicts the climate.
There is no rational basis for this belief. There is in fact quite clear evidence that they produced similar models in the past for global cooling (based on camp century cycles now discredited) and there is clear evidence from the lack of any warming since 2000, that the models lack any useful predictive power.
However, note I say the trend is 1.6°C/century. So how do they get to trends as high as 6°C per century? We are getting to nut-job "watch the alien" type ideas. Because not only do you have to massively scale up the amount of CO2 (assume the economy grows steadily and isn't destroyed by carbon taxes) but you also have to start adding in a lot of other ideas to scale it up further which are just comic book science and have no justification in the climate record.
In a real sense this is just a religion like any other: it is an attempt to explain the unexplainable by inventing an apparently semi-rational "concept" that if not examined too deeply, fills in the gap which more pragmatic people would label "WE DO NOT KNOW".
And like all religions, once this nebulous concept is created, some idiots then extend and extend the idea until we get the absolutely absurd ideas like a 6°C rise.
Science prides itself on how much it does know. So those practising science find it very difficult to admit that they do not know what fills in this "gap" in knowledge between the known effects of CO2 and what has been happening to the climate.
I agree, a good interview from Tamsin Edwards in terms of stressing the uncertainty in science.
However, one thing that was disappointing was that the interviewer seemed of the impression that Tamsin was clearly on the 'mainstream' side of climate science, and would therefore be against the sceptics. He seemed to be arguing against the need for balance in the media on the subject. Also, the MMR is in no way a good comparison to climate science. She did not seem to challenge this.
We need more good scientists' like Tamsin Edwards to do more to defend 'good scepticsm' in climate science, to distant themselves from those who claim 'the science is settled and unequivocal', and ideally to help dismiss 'bad' climate science (eg. the misleading use of proxy data and shoddy statistics).
Dear Geronimo
The ‘good’ climate scientists you refer to may not be “extremist” but they’re still in well-funded groups lead and driven by ‘believers’. Just to use the term ”believer”, and the opposite boo word, “deniers” tells anyone looking in from outside that this isn’t about science or truth or scientific truth. As I hope I explained, climate science as a proper science stopped functioning years ago.
I agree that there is a difference between a “mild belief that humans are causing damage” and a zealous belief that the threat is imminent and catastrophic. But such beliefs amongst climate scientists (of all sorts) mean that they won’t question the dogmas they’re taught, and which underpin they’re made-up ‘paradigm’. At a personal level scientists like to believe (as do many people) that their work has some meaning and purpose. What greater purpose could there be than ‘saving the planet’. It’s very, if not too seductive. And, as you say, the shed-loads of governmental money keep many scientists “schtum”. Bevan got the doctors to sign up to the NHS by “stuffing their mouths with gold”. The mouths of a whole generation of climate scientists have been similarly stuffed (with our tax money).
As for the Left and the Right. The Left lost a grand narrative when communism died. They jumped ship onto the grand narrative of eco-doom, because it still ‘explains’ why capitalism is soooo bad, and it’s utopian and millenarian. The Right like it because it puts them in command of ‘the plebs’ who need leadership (after all there’s no empire to run now), and many are completely cynical opportunists (like Yeo). I agree about a parliamentary PPE ban, but I am not sure a science degree makes immune either!
Dear Mike Haseler
By “learning the ‘facts’” I meant that the current crop of climate scientists were told, at primary and secondary school, that CO2 was the Earth’s thermostatic gas. And that human use of fossil fuels was dangerously warming “Planet Earth”. There was no science worth a candle in all this, but they walked into their university departments with, in effect Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and WWF propaganda, swirling round inside their heads.
I agree with you about the temperature rise that one can calculate from a doubling of CO2. Like you, from the evidence I have gleaned, in practice the amount of warming is likely to be far, far less than 1degree centigrade (although I didn’t follow the logic of your fourth sentence).
As for how you get from 1 degree to 6, you put it down to “watch the alien” nut-job ideas. I’d add, the almost complete lack of any empirical evidence for the positive feedbacks needed to translated doubling CO2 into 6oC. Despite all the satellite measurements, and journals, and trips to the Arctic/Antarctic climate science is oddly (and tellingly) non-empirical. It doesn’t test any of the ‘nut-job’ assumptions in its models with real, relevant, observational data! Because it’s not a real science.
You say all this craziness is due to climate religion. I’d go further. The whole eco-doom litany is a religion, and the awfulness of our dreadful species shows itself in its endless environmental venial sins but the real biggy, the one that’s going to damn our species-soul for all eternity, is our mortal carbon sin. We’re so sinful, we don’t deserve to survive.
In your penultimate para you say that the climate scientists, who work their model magic-tricks are “idiots”. They’re not idiots. Many are very clever, very intelligent scientists. But they are not operating in a proper science. They’re lost in a Gaian ecodoom religion, which they serve with their cleverly adjusted models (all peer reviewed I am sure). And all looking like proper science, when it’s an imitation, a corrupted simulacrum of a science. And has been for years. An important issue is to explain how this has all happened. Something I am wrestling with.
I agree on the not knowing part of your last paragraph. It’s clear that the Earth’s climate system is complex, non-linear, chaotic with, in some parts of the system, very long lags, for instance, deep ocean currents. Compared to many (most?) planetary processes our lives are short. Much of the ‘interpretation’ of this ‘cold Summer’ or this ‘warm Winter’ is as close to ‘reading’ the entrails of a sacrificial chicken, as makes no odds. If not non-scientific, it’s close to pagan weather-worship, and fits in with your view that climate science is (part of) a religion.
Such entrail reading is also neurotic. I’d go further and say it environmentally induced psychosis. The cure for anyone lost in a religion is reformation. I look forward to that day, and to pinning the liberatory declaration on the climate cathedral door! Not sure which door to choose. Parliament? 10 Downing Street? Met Office? May be all, and more.