Bishop Hill More Rose reaction
Mar 19, 2013 Climate: Models Climate: Surface A couple more reactions to David Rose's article have appeared.
First up is James Annan, who feels that his views have been misrepresented. Rose quoted Annan as saying this:
James Annan, of Frontier Research For Global Change, a prominent ‘warmist’, recently said high estimates for climate sensitivity now look ‘increasingly untenable’, with the true figure likely to be about half of the IPCC prediction in its last report in 2007.
The quote appears to have been derived from an interview Annan gave Andy Revkin, where he was quoted as follows
T]here have now been several recent papers showing much the same – numerous factors including: the increase in positive forcing (CO2 and the recent work on black carbon), decrease in estimated negative forcing (aerosols), combined with the stubborn refusal of the planet to warm as had been predicted over the last decade, all makes a high climate sensitivity increasingly untenable. A value (slightly) under 2 is certainly looking a whole lot more plausible than anything above 4.5.
I'm guessing that Rose has read this as Annan writing down climate sensitivity from 4.5 to just under 2°C (hence the reference to "about half"). If so it looks like a misunderstanding.
The second, perhaps more amusing response is from Phil Plait ("Bad Astronomer") at Slate. This is quite extraordinary nonsense.
Plait's case is that Rose's article represents "denial of climate change", and his argument appears to rest on a number of pillars. Firstly, he seems to be saying that Rose should have examined ocean rather than surface temperatures. Now the argument that ocean temperatures should be preferred is undoubtedly well-founded, but it is hardly "denial" to use the measure favourted by the IPCC itself. It would be interesting to see how often Phil Plait has made the case in favour of catastrophic global warming based on surface temperatures.
He next misrepresents Rose's argument, suggesting that he doesn't understand what the graph shows:
Now look again at the graph, and note the measured temperatures are still within that band. Sure, it’s at the low end, but even if the temperatures fell outside the band it doesn’t mean “the world isn’t getting warmer” as Rose so incorrectly claims. It just means the temperatures weren’t quite as high as predicted. They are still within the expected range, though, and still running at a high confidence level.
This is very silly, because it's easy enough to see that Rose understands perfectly well that the graph is comparing predictions to outcome. The first words of his article are:
The Mail on Sunday today presents irrefutable evidence that official predictions of global climate warming have been catastrophically flawed.
Plait goes on to show that if, instead of comparing the outcome to the model ensembles that were used in Rose's comparison (CMIP5), you use the some older simulations (CMIP3), spanning a much broader range of possible outcomes, the predictions are still in play. The latter comparison is based on an article at Real Climate, which notes of CMIP3:
The CMIP3 model simulations were an ‘ensemble of opportunity’ and vary substantially among themselves with the forcings imposed, the magnitude of the internal variability and of course, the sensitivity. Thus while they do span a large range of possible situations, the average of these simulations is not ‘truth’.
So old, uncertain predictions are still in play. More up to date, somewhat less uncertain ones are not. And this is meant to be evidence of Rose's "denial"? (As an aside, we should not Plait's failure to criticise RealClimate's discussion of surface rather than ocean temperatures).
There's what looks like some straw-clutching with invocation of La Nina - presumably as we shift into El Nino conditions, the temperature will leap upwards and Rose's arguments will fall apart. Unfortunately, we have been in El Nino conditions for most of the last 12 months and global temperature still seem to have responded.
Finally we have the usual obfuscation about temperature trends:
He also says, “The graph confirms there has been no statistically significant increase in the world’s average temperature since January 1997 – as this newspaper first disclosed last year” which again was wrong last year and just as wrong now.
Which presumably means that Pachauri and Forster are deniers too. Forster's quote was:
‘The fact that global surface temperatures haven’t risen in the last 15 years, combined with good knowledge of the terms changing climate, make the high estimates [of climate sensitivity] unlikely.’
It's an amazing piece and reading it is an educational experience. See it here.
Back in the real world though, we seem to have three of the top UK experts on climate sensitivity - Allen, Forster and Annan - agreeing that the lack of warming in the last 15 years means that climate sensitivity must be lower than previously thought. And no amount of fulminating from Phil Plait is going to change that.
Reader Comments (58)
Bish, I'm not sure I would call Allen, Annan and Foster top climate experts on climate sensitivity, but such designations are in the eye of the beholder.
As for Phil Plait, what nonsense he has written. But is it that surprising? Phil has built his reputation (such as it is) by knocking down easy targets such as Richard Hoagland. When it comes to something that needs a little thought, research and analysis, such as climate change, he takes the knee-jerk option.
Anyway, who cares what he says?
Bad Astronomy used to be an ironic title. Now that Plait appears to have gone bats%&*t crazy it is looking more like a most appropriate monicker.
I loved the picture of the burning planet. Very sciency...
Whatever is discussed it does not seem to have influenced our PM as a reading of his recent, largely unreported, speech at the RS reveals.
http://www.ukace.org/2013/02/david-camerons-speech-at-the-launch-of-deccs-energy-efficiency-mission/
A fascinating juncture in the UK climate debate. Richard Betts has warned of the dangers of polarisation in the previous thread. But there's merit in plain speaking too. I go back to David Whitehouse's assertion in Rose's piece that we have time to make our plans without triggering climate catastrophe. Once we're agreed on that the finer points of sensitivity - especially whether it varies in time - will I expect be the study of other people's lifetimes. And good luck to them.
It's clear that Rose misquoted Annan. However, I'm really looking forward to seeing what the new IPCC range for climate sensitivity looks like.
@cwhope
The trick with the projections was to make them so wide that over a short time period almost anything fell within them. Anything from a steep increase to a modest decrease was covered. The actual (assuming for a moment that they are correct) temperatures have almost dipped out of the bottom extreme of the projections already and on the current trend are going to crash out of them very soon as the projections rise over time.
Predictions so broad that they cover almost all eventualities reminds me, as so much else about climate "science", of particularly clumsy fake psychics.
(not that I am suggesting that there are any real ones)
artwest
the Met Office latest decadal forecasts fit the same criteria.. ie a range that covers any recent observed rate of warming/cooling
Yes, Phil Plait made the very erroneous supposition that integrity is equal across the scientific disciplines -- and in so doing has besmirched his own. Fortunately, the blight is slight.
The climate astrologers with their CO2-filled and therefore opaque crystal ball don't like being challenged so dramatically in the mass media. Hopefully any misquotes or misinterpretations will be corrected in due course, perhaps in another dramatic follow-up article by Rose. Meanwhile, the followers (or are they the leaders?) of this astrology who have been intent on getting it into school curricula don't like being challenged somewhat less dramatically in a government consultation document on school curricula for the under-14s in England: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/mar/18/climate-change-schools-backlash.
It is fair to say that both groups are alarmed by these recent developments.
Do you want to know how the IPCC came across the range 1.5(now 2 in AR4) and 4.5? Well I'll tell you anyway, when Charnley was writing his report there were only two models that extimated sensitivity, one used by Mannabee which estimated a sensitivity of 2C and one used by Hansen which estimated a sensitivity of 4C. Charnley to a flier and estimated that they were +/- 0.5C and bingo! the range became 1.5C to 4C that's stood the scrutiny of the best minds for 34 years. What we have to consider I suppose is either Charney's guess was spot on, or the climate scientists don't know enough about the system to have the faintest clue what it is.
James Annan has at least let the observations speak for themselves and has hinted that the sensitivity could be less than 2, or 2.5, which David Rose, whose mathematical education must have been quite orthodox by today's standards, estimated to be half of the IPCC's best guess which is 3, I'm assuming David Rose used the maximum figure to get to his half, and wasn't deliberately lying. However, you can understand James' distress given the possible revenge inflicted on anyone who breaks ranks.
I believe what we're seeing in action is a slow withdrawal from entrenched positions. It will be hard, because a lot of these climate scientists (not all for sure, but a lot) are outraged that the public, or at least the thinking part of it, wouldn't believe they could foretell the future, or that the science was in any state to even try given the complexity of what they, the climate scientists, were trying to understand.
I think the sneer was "citizen scientists" over on RC. Twenty years from now this will be seen as the South Sea Bubble of our time.
Plait is just parroting Skepticalscience so he's not worth the time. Skepticalscience, as you note, has been clutching at the Rahmstorf straws *and* the ocean straws both, at the same time. I don't know how that's possible.
The ocean thing is such bunkum that one doesn't know where to begin. The contortions required to believe such chains of logic are too many.
Note that in comments on the previous thread, Richard Betts did exactly the same misdirection trick in pointing me to the old CMIP3 diagram at Real Climate.
I was not impressed.
Well, looks like there are some slips all around. I agree that Annan was mis-quoted; I don't recall a sensitivity value below 2.5 from him; and certainly not 1.5, which would be how I would interpret "half of the IPCC prediction in 2007". Piers Forster noted humorously at BH yesterday that his personal estimate for CS has increased (to 2.5) since his 2006 paper which suggested a value under 2.
On the other side of the ledger, RC's post used the 95% intervals from CMIP3 to argue that observations weren't yet quite inconsistent with models, and Richard Betts cited this at BH yesterday. The problem is that CMIP3 has some outliers, which stretch the 95% interval beyond reason. Rose in the Daily Mail appears to use CMIP5 projections, which were (I think!) performed in a more consistent manner. [To be fair, RC has compared observations against CMIP3 since a time well before CMIP5 results were available; their chart merely continued the practice. However, I'm sure they're aware of the large spread between model runs, and also of the more recent results.]
Note, at the end of the article, thanks are given to Mann and Nuccitelli (of the (great?) Skeptical Science site) for their assistance in "preparing" that article.
Where was Al Gore?
The warmist brigade should realise that they convinced governments around the world that global warming would have catastrophic consequences within a few decades. Their alarmist claims may well be catastrophic in terms of fuel poverty, destruction of manufacturing industry, collapse of the economy and the spoiling of our countryside.
They should be hugely grateful that at this stage they have only lost their credibility.
Am afraid Plait, who had a great start in Astronomy, is just a Mannian mouthpiece in climate stuff. He repeats all the conspiratorial stuff, silly arguments, warts and all.
Plait's problem is that since he is a blogger the half-life of his idiocies is a few seconds, compared to the days Marcott's and Gergis' managed to survive.
(needless to say, Plait blocked an account of mine on Twitter - when I used a second account to ask the reasons, he replied about "offensive" remarks and then proceeded to block my second account too - his is Mannian Worshipping at its worst)
Oh dearie me. The Warmists are getting their knickers in a twist, just because a single journalist has had the temerity to break ranks with the great New Age Religion of Climate Psience.
The fact that David Rose made a couple of trifling errors in his apostasic piece has got the High Priests and their acolytes huffing and puffing with righteous indignation.
No mention of the egregious errors made on an almost daily basis by Climate Psientists and slavishly recited in the vast majority of the media.
Well what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander- and Warmists need to start to get used to it.
BTW...I have missed Richard Betts' reply about the use of older, wider estimates as last-resort since the new stuff is on the edge of failure (yes, it's an euphemism - I don't think he's replied yet).
I am also confused even more than usual, this time on why clouds and their miraculously positive feedback would make a sensitivity below 2C really unlikely.
David Rose is a serial 'misinterpreter', yet Andrew bends over backwards to defend him.
If Rose was a climate scientist, his name would be mud by now.
We're starting to see some climate scientists and hangers-on putting themselves in the brace position as they know the wheels are about to fall off the wagon.
Those that aren't so wise continue to whip the horses.
Richard:
Not at all fair. Look at how the host set up the thread Reacting to Rose yesterday, including the first comment.
David Rose has raised some vital issues of which the UK public should be fully aware. His quotes of Piers Forster and James Annan are now being dissected but the bigger questions he's raised remain entirely valid. And the host here is steering a good course.
Why don't you address the central issues of whether globally averaged surface land instrumental temperature anomaly is about to escape the 95% CI of recently published GCM runs? And whether this and the temperature standstill means there is no urgency to decide costly global warming mitigation policies. The last point of course means that we would have a lot of rolling back of stupidities to do right away, beginning with subsidies for biofuels and wind farms. Agreed on these points at least?
See another response to David Rose's recent work that appeared in yesterday"s Vancouver Sun:
fruitless debate
If the remedies one proposes rely on the cooperation of free people, those people need to be persuaded rather than insulted and dismissed. Skeptics don't disappear just because a journalist decides they're stupid. How hard is this?
"The truth is, the planet is warming up and we’re the cause."
Phil Plait
We're the cause? So, if it weren't for us, the world would not be warming up? Or have been warming for the past 12,000 years? That is climate denial big-time!
Note at the bottom of Phil Plait's attack on Dave Rose:
Tip o’ the thermometer to real climate scientist Michael Mann, and Dana Nuccitelli from the fantastic Skeptical Science site for their help with this.
Donna Laframboise wrote:
quote
people need to be persuaded rather than insulted and dismissed.
unquote
Climate Change is desperately important, the greatest threat ever faced by humanity. However, it's not important enough to be polite to people because... well, just because. If believers couldn't be rude and superior then why would they bother?
Social psychologists are going to have a field day with all this when the scare evaporates.
JF
There seems to be signs of growing alarm amongst students that they may in future be denied an adequate diet of political indoctrination in their Geography classes, although they will still receive undiminished doses of AGW junk science in Chemistry as I understand from the proposals. So I was interested by this in the Graun Environment Blog today (The World's Leading Journalists On Climate, Energy and Wildlife):
"Geography taught me climate change is unjust – and inspired me to fight.
Previous generations' ignorance led to global warming. To change the curriculum now is an outrageous backward step"
The article is by Esha Marwaha, a secondary school student from the Heathland School in Hounslow and a member of the UK Youth Climate Coalition (UKYCC), who is the organiser of a petition to keep climate change on the Geography National Curriculum for children up to 14 years old. Hmm, I wonder if the government will act swiftly to allay Esha's fears?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog
In 2005 James Annan made a $10,000 bet with Galena Mashnich and Vladimir Bashkirtsev; the astrophysicists believed the planet would be cooler during 2012-2017 than it was in 1998-2003.
With nearly 5 years left, Annan is probably not yet worried.
It really takes the biscuit that almost any article questioning catastrophism is hit by a tsunami of nit-picking criticism, while years of gross and manifest alarmism normally passes without a whisper of dissent from the research community, sometimes even with covert encouragement. For example the case illustrated in the Bishop's and Tony Newbery's Leveson submission contesting Fiona Fox's version, from which these quotes are noteworthy
Simon Cox: It’s true that we journalists have a tendency to simplify and then exaggerate, assuming we understand the science in the first place. The climate scientist Hans von Storch believes there’s a process of exaggeration that starts with scientists trying to make their research more interesting to get in popular science journals. It then continues with the press release that strips away many of the caveats and contexts, and ends with journalists focusing only on the extreme scenarios. He’s clear where the responsibility lies.
Hans von Storch: It is often my impression that scientists speak to the media in a way that they don’t mind if they are misunderstood in a specific way. And then the scientists can say, ’Well[ I never said that, I mean you know how the media are, the are just wanting dramatic stories’. So I think it’s very often so that the scientists are making up a story, or indicate what the journalists should say and then the journalists do it. I think that one should definitely not blame the media.
http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Joint-submission-from-Bishop-Hill-and-Harmless-Sky.pdf
[Interesting but O/T]
omnologos (Mar 19, 2013 at 12:19 PM) : "I have missed Richard Betts' reply about the use of older, wider estimates as last-resort since the new stuff is on the edge of failure"
In this comment, Richard Betts wrote: "the observations are still within the 95% range of the CMIP3 models", linking to a Real Climate post.
Aside: Bish, is there any way to configure the site to provide links to comments, such as are available at CA ("permalinks")?
When reality is scraping the bottom 5% of the confidence interval of your predictions, it is time to give up.
Instead of fighting with journalists.
One is left with the distinct impression that climate scientists (and politicians/activists?) actually are seriously miffed by the long stall in warming- hoping and praying that warming will return, and the more the better.
Speaks volumes. Should be delighted of course that things are not 'worse than they thought' any more. Perhaps its the grant money :-).
Don B
Given that the average NCDC temperature anomaly from January 2012 - February 2013 is only 0.026 degrees higher than that for 1998-2003 (0.577 plays 0.551) I suggest that James Annan might be a little nervous. I remember him being supremely confident in 2005 when the bet was struck. From here it is looking like a toss of the coin.
I'm sorry but to this under edumacated denier I'm failing to see where the evil denialists who is obviously under the employ of big oil mid-quoted Annan?????
Mailman
As Annan notes, there is nothing worse than a "stubborn..planet" refusing to warm.
JLK wrote at 10:18 am: "Bish, I'm not sure I would call Allen, Annan and Foster top climate experts on climate sensitivity, but such designations are in the eye of the beholder."
In 2008 McIntyre discovered there are no experts in climate sensitivity and that there are no up-to-date, engineering-grade papers on the subject. He wrote: "By 'engineering quality', I mean the sort of study that one would use to construct a mining plant, oil refinery or auto factory – smaller enterprises than Kyoto."
I don't think that has changed much in five years. The post below details an exchange of emails he had with Annan in which Annan responded in detail on the subject:
http://climateaudit.org/2008/01/02/james-annan-on-25-deg-c/
(Annan's comments on climate sensitivity are accurately characterized by Rose in my view, given that all comments on the subject by everyone are almost entirely speculative.)
Harold at 3:41 pm: I just clicked on your name in your post and was given the option to "copy link location" on my Mac. I've pasted it below:
http://www.bishop-hill.net/member/haroldw
Should work, I think.
HaroldW: never mind. It didn't work. So I join you in your request for linking capabilities.
Mar 19, 2013 at 4:07 PM | Unregistered CommenterGeckko
Given that the average NCDC temperature anomaly from January 2012 - February 2013 is only 0.026 degrees higher than that for 1998-2003 (0.577 plays 0.551) I suggest that James Annan might be a little nervous.
Of course he is NOT nervous, NCDC will ensure that the current temperatures are NOT lower than 1998-2003, or haven't you noticed all the revisions to data going on?
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/3/19/more-rose-reaction.html?page=1#comment19846892
theduke, I believe the above will link to my earlier comment.
The URL is the page url, followed by page=n for the comment page number, followed by the comment number. I'm sure there must be an easy way to work this out, but I dumped the page source, located my comment, and foudn this in the html: id="comment19846892"
I left the following comments at Annan's blog:
and
theduke/stevata
If you pick out a few words of text from your comment, then search for it using the search tool, it should bring up your comment. Clicking on the header of the 'find' - the address bar then gives the specific comment link for you to copy and paste.
As others have, I chuckled when I skimmed Plait's article on his website to the end and read the fulsome thanks to Dana Nuccatelli and SkS for their help. To me, if anyone needs help from those sources they are adrift from reality by more than a few degrees.
At what point in time will the term "climate science denier" be appropriate to describe people refusing to acknowledge the planet is not warming?
Reaction in today's Vancouver Sun news paper:
Pete McMartin of the Vancouver Sun calls us all the D word in today’s paper:
http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Cherrypicking+fruitless+debate/8118451/story.html
Excerpt:
One global-warming denier, David Rose of the Mail on Sunday, claimed a "quietly released" (read "purposely hushed-up") report by the Met office on Dec. 24 of last year showed that global warming stopped 16 years ago and that "there has been no statistically significant increase in the world's average temperature since 1997."
It seems that some climate scientists are getting hysterical in a Mannian style, accusing David Rose of wilful misrepresentation or even "lying" about what may be simply a misunderstanding//mis-statement. These guys don't fly off the handle accusing scientists (or journalists) they regard as on their side as "lying" every time there might be a mistake, eh??
How about Annan asks David Rose politely for a correction, and only breaks out the artillery if there is clear evidence that Rose is wilfully misrepresenting Annan. I thought that what Rose probably got mixed up about (innocently, not from nefarious intent), was the Annan quote to Andy Revkin, which seemed to lower "plausible" sensitivity estimates. (Slightly) under 2 is said by Annan to be more plausible than anything above 4.5. So perhaps in his mind Rose conflated this with saying IPCC estimate should now be halved, when ofc the "Central" IPCC estimate is closer to 3, not 4.5.
[Annan to Revkin, emphasis added]
Going nuclear with all this yelling about misrepresentation and "lying" is ridiculous, unless/until Annan tries to politely correct the record and sees whether Rose resisted making the correction!!
Compare Annan's current post with anything he's written in the past about sensitivity. Scientists surely become quite touchy when their views are read back to them, as it appears from the outside.
In terms of representing Annan's views, I certainly support Annan. Rose could have afforded a chance to Annan to go over his position. But in terms of what the position actually is, Annan's cries of lying and plagiarization appear silly. It has all the hallmarks of someone who's suddenly scared of seeing their own views in the next day's newspaper.
Annan doth protest too much
"A value [slightly] under 2 is certainly looking a whole lot more plausible than anything over 4.5"
So 4.5+ is looking very unlikely. And something slightly under 2 is looking less unlikely [more plausible than before]. Which still leaves the most likely value somewhere between 2 and 4.5.
Which makes the quote Rose made up --while attributing it to Annan-- not reflective of Annan's view. As Annan has said.