Bishop Hill An odd coupling
Jun 17, 2013 Climate: Models Climate: other Reader Jelle U. Hielkema left an interesting comment about Aubrey Meyer's evidence to the Environmental Audit Committee last week. Meyer has accused the Met Office of deliberately misleading the committee in earlier evidence:
[Y]ou asked me to summarise the key points in Aubrey's work. I am assuming you mean on the matter of ‘contempt for the house‘. To do this you need to look at Aubrey’s *written evidence* to the EAC particularly on pages 19 and 20. It is here: -http://www.gci.org.uk/Documents/EAC_Real_.pdf
The key point in this is the *proof* on pages 19 and 20 that the UKMO did intentionally mislead [lie to] the original EAC enquiry in 2009 and that they are continuing with the lie now. This is knowingly misleading the house and when and if the EAC gets its head around that, they will pursue it.
This is what you need to pursue, if you [all?] want to go after the UK Met Office for *provably lying to the EAC*. The UK Met Office is incidentally the UK Government's main 'arm' in IPCC and UNFCCC. The *lie* is deliberately concealing in 2009 that UKMO turned a major *positive*-feedback in the projected carbon-cycle [fully reported as such in IPCC AR4 in 2007] into a major *negative*-feedback in the model upon which the UK Climate Act [which became law in 2008] is based and not telling the EAC they had done this. In other words, they sold the EAC a 'Story' which Aubrey Meyer has documented in the written evidence to the EAC and which I sent this blog earlier and which raised 'not yet banned's Question. I send it again here: -http://www.gci.org.uk/Documents/EAC_Real_.pdf
Please do understand, the *sign* of the feedback is a very big deal indeed. Aubrey says, think of positive feedback in the carbon-cycle as a *bad-thing* [it makes a bad situation worse as more and more carbon stays in the sky as a fraction of the ‘budget-emissions’ from fossil fuel burning etc]. However, think of negative feedback as a *good-thing* [it makes a bad situation less bad as less and less carbon stays in the sky as a fraction of the ‘budget-emissions’ from fossil fuels etc that you are burning]. In fact you can think of a negative feedback in the carbon cycle as like finding the Holy Grail. It is like turning water into wine; in response to budget-emissions, carbon will be falling out of the sky and not adding up in it. So the 'discovery' by UKMO in their model that what was first a positive feedback was in fact a negative feedback is [at least in their terms] huge ‘good news’.
So on contempt for the House, the issue is not which of these [positive or negative] is true. The issue here [on contempt for the house] is, why would UKMO have lied to the 2009 Enquiry and misled them into believing that this so-called ‘coupled carbon cycling’ was in the Climate Act as very significant positive feedback [as reported in IPCC AR4 in 2007], when in fact you knew [but didn’t say] that using a model called MAGICC the feedback had been turned into a negative feedback in the UK Climate Act at least fully one year earlier in 2008.
Why did they do this? It is something that if anything they would have shouted about. But UKMO didn't say anything about this change of sign. In fact they did exactly the opposite, as the evidence from Dr Jason Lowe [quoted on page 20 of Aubrey’s evidence shows], they continued to make the EAC believe that it was a positive feedback making things worse.
This is an area of the climate debate that has rarely been touched on at BH, and so I'm very much in learning mode. But it seems to me that if the Met Office model had included the climate-carbon cycle feedbacks as positive, then we would have an even bigger divergence between models and observations.
I guess this is one plausible reason why the sign might have ended up reversed.
Reader Comments (73)
Bishop
I've submitted here a copy of what I have just posted on the "You call this progress" thread.
Please delete one or the other if you think this is inappropriate.
Somebody please correct me where I am going wrong.
The Met Office tells the EAC (or anyone else who will listen) that climate feedback is positive.
Then (according to Hielkema) "...the UKMO ... lied to the 2009 Enquiry and misled them into believing that this so-called ‘coupled carbon cycling’ was in the Climate Act as very significant positive feedback when in fact you [they?] knew ... that using a model called MAGICC the feedback had been turned into a negative feedback in the UK Climate Act at least fully one year earlier in 2008."
I don't understand what this means. Did parliament pass the 2008 Act in the belief that the negative feedback was actually positive? Hielkema seems to be saying that it was known to be negative but it is difficult to get a grip on that (language problem, I'm sure). If so (and I don't believe it) why would the MO then go back to saying it was positive a year later?
And who believes that parliament knows (or cares) very much about the positivity or negativity of feedbacks? The 2008 Act is a political instrument and would almost certainly (at the 95% confidence level?) have been passed anyway since the UK's entire stance on global warming is based on the massive philanthropic gesture that the country needs to give a moral lead to the world.
Misleading the EAC is naughty but in the overall scheme of things fairly irrelevant unless I'm missing something.
I am with Mike on the language issue. It is not entirely clear to me what evidence was laid before the House in the run up to the Climate Change Act, nor evidence to the EAC.
Whilst misleading a committee is obviously an offence, it is difficult to see what impact and effect any mislead may have had.
In particular, I fail to understand how evidence given to the EAC in 2009, could have a bearing on the evidence put before the House in 2008 and earlier covering the run up to the passing of the Climate Change Act, unless the evidence given in 2009 shows that the evidence put before the House say in the period 2005 to 2008 was false, and was at that time (ie., between 2005 to 2008) known to be false.
My reading of the post is that the model evidence put before the House prior to the Climate Change Act was correctly modelling as a negative feedback what was by then conisdered to be a negative feedback. However, as said, the language is not clear so my impression and understanding may be mistaken.
I commented on the other thread too, to the effect that nobody has a handle on the (ill-named) carbon cycle.
I personally will not be following links put up by Meyer or Hielkema. Not again. I try to put my points such as they are briefly and with all the info you need. I don't usually put in links to papers and obsessive websites elsewhere requiring hours of homework which by the time you finish you return and find a new comments and a whole new slew of links and a shifted subject. My philosophy requires that when I find I am doing something stupid, I should stop.
Typical climate psience. Positive is negative, black is white, hot is cold, etc. etc.
This is all very strange. It feels like a peek into a twilight world.
According to Richard Betts in several (as I recall) comments on this blog, the operators of GCMs do not insert feedbacks. Rather the feedbacks emerge as part and parcel of the model runs. So I am puzzled about claims that the MO inserted a positive feedback and later switched to a negative one to help with the passage of the Climate Change Act. Why the passage of that piece of panic-legislation would have been facilitated by a calmer model is not clear to me.
Then there is this MAGICC software which I confess I had never heard of before. It is well-named. It looks at first glance to be an attempt to get a user-friendly piece of software portrayed as a climate model and geared to allow the user to generate their own alarming results about what will happen if they don’t stop producing CO2. It is as if a religious cult had decided the way to go was to create software portrayed as a god model and geared to allow the used to generate their own alarming results about what would happen if they don’t stop breaking the cult’s rules.
Oh dear, the cult would seem to have infiltrated the MO: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/i/8/AVOID_WS2_D1_11_20100422.pdf
They have created software called AVOID which allows the sinner to explore ways to avoid the dooms presented by MAGICC.
This is the stuff of nightmares. It is even worse than I had previously thought. They really do live in another world. Twilight zone indeed.
No, surely not - more smoke and mirrors?
MAGICC software Abracadabra and hey presto - all done in a puff of
smokeemissions!It must be, the MO are members of the magic circle?!
What was needed, it turned out - was a bit of necromancy: because the body of MMGW was long dead.
The last redoubt of mountebanks is consensus and now it seems add a bit of magicc too, how once again - are we not surprised?
Perhaps the UKMO view of the future changed between one report and the other?(I am reluctant to say 'improved') All it would take is for them to have decided the biosphere will do a better job of sequestering CO2 than they previously thought.
So Aubrey Meyer is trying to claim that in 2009 the Met Office UNDER estimated the warming by including negative feedback in their models, this despite the massively exaggerated hockey stick graph they produced in September 2009 - see page 4 of their booklet "Warming - Climage Change, the Facts"
http://people.virginia.edu/~rtg2t/future/gcc/UK.Met.quick_guide.pdf
And despite the fact they have had to adjust their outlooks downwards based on actual temperature data -
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2013/01/05/major-change-in-uk-met-office-global-warming-forecast/
Alarmists simply never learn!!
Real Science has found a job advert for 'Government Climate Scientist' that helps demonstrate how Twilight Cultism might have taken hold over there in the States:
That skill set should be more than enough for effective operation of such devices as MAGICC and AVOID.
Climate Science, the only science where it’s legitimate to inverse the slope of a graph to get the result you were paid for!
But hey it’ll be coming to an ETS near you soon.
Jelle and Aubrey are co-authors of this remarkable paper: Pythagoras Renewed
The conclusions of this work are:
(where I have corrected one spelling mistake, and replaced some ‘z’s with ‘s’s)
All I can say is that if and when this immediate puzzle of the inserted feedbacks is resolved, readers can turn to this paper for a treasure trove of other mysteries to investigate. I won't be one such reader - it is all too spooky for me.
This seems a little excitable to me. Negative feedback in the carbon cycle is surely different from their posited (and, in my view, absurd) theory of net positive feedback in overall GH effect via water vapour? Since the majority of alarmist catastrophism relates to this effect (rather than CO2 which is nearing saturation of its putative warming influence).
Carbon cycle feedbacks relate to the rate of change of uptake by plants and algae etc and therefore the net rate of increase in CO2 in the atmosphere given the additional human output. This is a footnote to the wider debate and would, I think, have little effect upon the overall model outputs.
Most of these parliamentary committee 'evidence takings' and 'audits' seem to me to be cynical charades. To have any semblance of credibility audits must take and fairly judicate on submissions from both AGW promoters and sceptic critics. As far as I can judge, parliament has only once attempted this due diligence, and that was the HoL Select Committee in 2004-5 on the Economics of Climate Change.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldselect/ldeconaf/12/12we01.htm
Their conclusions from this lengthy and exhaustive review recognised the controversial nature of the scientific evidence and was deeply suspicious of what it termed the 'flawed' IPCC process. Subsequently the HoC rejected all their recommendations, effectively ignoring the whole work.
It is true that the Science and Technology Committee hearings following Climategate heard sceptic representation, but again the pro-policy bias was obvious, even to the overruling of Graham Stringer's concluding statement from the minutes. And here's what Stringer thinks of it all
"Vast amounts of money are going to be spent on climate change policy, it's billions and eventually could be trillions. Knowing what is accurate and what is inaccurate is important. I view this as a Parliamentarian for one of the poorest constituencies in the country. Putting up the price of fuel for poor people on such a low level of evidence, hoping it will have the desired effect, is not acceptable. I need to know what's going on."
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/07/09/stringer_on_russell/print.html
I can do MAGICC:
This has always been Tom Wigley's baby, (Wigley is a former director of CRU and has a long-time presence at NCAR).
"MAGICC/SCENGEN, is a coupled gas-cycle/climate model (Model for the Assessment of Greenhouse-gas Induced Climate Change) that drives a spatial climate-change SCENario GENerator (SCENGEN). MAGICC version 6 is currently in use. The companion product, SCENGEN, is a global and regional climate change scenario generator."
The widely-used MAGICC model has been one of the primary models used by IPCC since 1990, to produce projections of future global-mean temperature and sea level rise. You can download a user’s manual for version 5.3, (2008), where they describe how they had to change the model to fit the AR4 conclusions. “Changes have been made to MAGICC to ensure, as nearly as possible, consistency with the IPCC AR4.”
Download here: http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/wigley/magicc/UserMan5.3.v2.pdf
MAGICC is still in use and is now version 6 the last time I looked. MAGICC and SCENGEN contain the templates that produce the colourful global pictures showing a heating planet. Anyone can obtain the program and use the pre-installed databases to produce “new research” for any region in the world. Professor Richard Lindzen once commented that a minor weather clerk in a developing country can now be classed as a “climate scientist”.
A UNFCCC Climate Model Training guide can be downloade here: http://unfccc.int/resource/cd_roms/na1/v_and_a/v_a_presentations/Climate_1_Formatted.ppt.
One slide says, "By now you may be confused" "So many choices, What to do?" It reminds the user that scenarios are basically educational tools to see the ranges of potential climate change and to provide tools for better understanding the sensitivity of affected systems. "So we need to select scenarios that enable us to meet those goals"
You can also dial a scenario, using sliders to change the year etc.
SCENGEN is a joint venture between the US EPA, CRU, UEA and NCAR. "Concept and Scientific Programming, T.M.L. Wigley; Design, Wigley, Hulme, Salmon and McGinnis". Other contributors include P.D. Jones, M. New and B. D. Santer.
You could also have a look at PRECIS, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRECIS_(Providing_Regional_Climates_for_Impacts_Studies):
"PRECIS is a regional climate model (RCM) ported to run on a Linux PC with a simple user interface, so that experiments can easily be set up over any region of the globe. PRECIS is designed for researchers (with a focus on developing countries) to construct high-resolution climate change scenarios for their region of interest. These scenarios can be used in impact, vulnerability and adaptation studies, and to aid in the preparation of National Communications, as required under Articles 4.1 and 4.8 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
PRECIS has been developed at the Hadley Centre at the Met Office with funding from the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC).
PRECIS is made available at workshops that are run regularly by Hadley Centre staff which are provided to address the many issues involved in its application. Support and follow up is provided through the PRECIS website and an email based help line."
How else would you get global consensus, other than by everybody using the same data, models and conclusions?
John Shade: IIRC, some weeks ago, on another thread - on which I commented - Richard Betts was explaining the MO models. Apparently, they have something like 17 models which they run and then consolidate with MAGICC - so as to get a definitive 'answer'.
There is no closed loop carbon cycle. It is not sensible to treat it as if it were the H2O cycle, it is not. I'd guess it hasn't even been through the range of possible states in the whole of geological time.
The corollary of that is that anybody who tells you he knows about carbon with any degree of certainty is WRONG.
Re: Jun 17, 2013 at 9:46 AM | richard verney
"In particular, I fail to understand how evidence given to the EAC in 2009, could have a bearing on the evidence put before the House in 2008 and earlier covering the run up to the passing of the Climate Change Act, unless the evidence given in 2009 shows that the evidence put before the House say in the period 2005 to 2008 was false, and was at that time (ie., between 2005 to 2008) known to be false."
Totally agree with you Richard, and it seems to me that "the evidence put before the House" and indeed the rest of the Country was certainly known to be false.
See for example this brochure they produced in July 2007
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/b/1/informing.pdf
where it says "warming of the climate system is unequivocal" and "We are now using the system to predict changes out to 2014. By the end of this period, the global average temperature is expected to have risen by around 0.3 °C compared to 2004, and half of the years after 2009 are predicted to be hotter than the current record hot year, 1998."
No mention there of the fact that there had been no warming for the decade before this brochure was produced
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2217286/Global-warming-stopped-16-years-ago-reveals-Met-Office-report-quietly-released--chart-prove-it.html
Nor indeed in the one produced in September 2009
http://people.virginia.edu/~rtg2t/future/gcc/UK.Met.quick_guide.pdf
And interesting that they have now revised their forecast downwards!!
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2013/01/05/major-change-in-uk-met-office-global-warming-forecast/
And somehow I suspect that the lower confidence line will prove to be the more accurate!!
We sceptics are well used to parsing gibberish emanating from the climate establishment but this takes gibberish to a whole new level and to heights to which I do not aspire.
I see harrabin is at it again
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22913559
snotrocket
So what they are doing, in effect, is exactly what Robert G Brown says you can't do which is taking the output from 17 models all of which are supposedly using the same known laws of physics to reach their conclusions but none of which agrees with any of the others, averaging this output, and then saying that they have produced something that is meaningful.Drivel.
17 bits of guesswork / 17 = still guesswork.
The documents folder in the Climategate files indicates that the MAGIC/SCENGEN scenario generating software was developed at UEA CRU, which I presume means not technically the Met Office.
I recall also reading documents and emails indicating an intention to get such software on a CD that could be sent to schools etc.
Puff the Magic Carbon,
Lived by the CO2
Clouds appeared on
The horizon;
Pitter patter little feedbacks.
====================
for mh:
The creative writing
Of propaganda
Is returning and biting,
Goose and gander.
============
C'mon trohpy
Don't be mopey,
Gibberish
Is delish.
======
Carbon based beings
At Rhoda's chance
Have as a feature
Grand ignorance.
============
I have no idea what he's saying, except that I do know that negative feedback means the temperature won't rise wildly, what it doesn't mean is that CO2 will fall out of the sky.
Oops, I didn't get past the title 'Odd Couplets'
As is my wont I just skipped to the comments.
=================
I've no idea if this has any validity of not as the entire presentation reminds me of the semi-insane rants produced by PSI.
If I was a member of the EAC and was presented with the "evidence" from Aubrey Meyer I think it extremently unlikely that I've have got past the first 2 pages. Despite repeated readings, I've no idea what point they are trying to make. FFS, I cannot even tell if this is a WARMIST rant or the opposite.
The whole of climate science thrives on positive feedbacks, ie everything that happens causes things to get worse. Stupid but that's climate science.
CO2 is an IR reactive gas in that it adsorbs incoming energy, insolation, and emits energy at a lower level whilst getting warmer. so it reduces energy levels falling on the surface, ie., negative feedback. Water vapour does the same, plus evapouration, so cools the surface, due to latent heat need, from whence it comes so negative feedback. Climate models have both these as positive feedbacks warming the surface. The GHE theory fails to explain why dry deserts are hotter that rainforest, at the same latitude so same insolation, and warmists will not answer such a question because the answer negates their favourite theory.
I've spent some time looking into what Aubrey and Jelle are trying to say. If they are taken seriously enough to get in front of a Parliamentary committee then we should take notice (so I don't agree with Rhoda on the other thread).
From what I can make out it is the old tipping point argument (methane in the permafrost etc) plus a huge dollop of the precautionary principle. So in Aubrey's mind the MO have massively underestimated the Climate threat to mankind. Luckily Aubrey has a solution: His Contraction and Convergence (C&C), Climate Justice without Vengeance approach where all humans get the same Carbon amount to spend. And looking at some of the quotes on the website, some of the Great and the Good Climate folk have amazingly bought into this. Wow.
However as the Bishop correctly points out, scientifically speaking if the MO models had Aubrey's missing tipping points in them then they would produce even scarier scenarios, which in turn would be even further from the current reality and so they would be even more wrong. Perhaps Aubrey or Jelle would comment on that point. Why should we take notice of invalidated models?
I have no problem per se with Aubrey being a Musician getting involved in the Climate debate (Steve McI is a mining consultant after all) but I would like to see a track record of being correct on pertaining matters particularly if our lawmakers are listening to him. So Aubrey/Jelle what can you tell us about your past predictions?
MAGICC followed by AVOID - are the software specialists at the Met Office and UEA been doing quite a few practical jokes at the expenses of their esteemed scientist colleagues, one wonders...
From the point of view of a curmudgeonly old retired engineer like me there is a whole world of difference between the credentials of a mining consultant and a musician to have an input into what is, essentially, a scientific & economic debate.
I have had a brief Google around - looking for an insight into the Aubrey/Jelle green philosophy - and come to the conclusion that it's just another celebrity green ego trip in the Yoko/Bono mould - but dressed up in an impenetrable miasma of pseudo philosophical intellectualism.
I think Rhoda nailed 'em in her first comment and John Shade delivered the coup de grace with the quote:-
# empirical evidence suggests that Reality is universally mathematical in nature and that music is the purest expression of that Reality;
Yeah - I'm quite happy to have my future energy use arbitrated by these folk - will I have to sing to my gas meter?
I you want a real giggle about the Aubrey/Jelle show - read his daughter's Twitter feed where she mixes cheerleading his planet-saving mission with posting pix of her new trainers.
Another fascinating little glimpse into the wonderful, wacky world of celebrity eco-activism.
If reading Aubrey & Jelle's stuff hasn't yet got you into the fully transcendental state - try visiting the link that Jelle Tweeted to Aubrey's daughter.
Page 23 of the Meyer document reveal the reason for his concern. The earlier estimates by UKMO involved setting a CO2 ppm limit and working backwards to decide what the carbon budget needed to be to achieve it. The more recent start from the other end of the problem - set a carbon budget and see what the models say the CO2 ppm might be. If Meyer understands this I can't see what his complaint is. He is not comparing apples with apples. The uncertainties have changed from being on the carbon budget side (in order to achieve a fixed outcome) to being on the outcome side (given a fixed carbon budget).
Meyer appears to be pushing a position that relies more on a totemic goal than it does science - in his own words:
My instinct is that the more recent approach is marginally more reasonable. They begin with a carbon budget and then project a range of CO2 levels that reflect the uncertainties in knowledge and computer models. The way Meyer has presented the previous work makes it much easier to pretend the uncertainties don't exist.
More news of windfarm subsidies.
Aubrey Meyer has been making these alarmist claims for some years. He used to phone me up and waffle on for ages, until I made a note of his number so I could screen calls and let him evangelise to my voicemail, and eventually he gave up. He was always trying to get me to endorse his "Contraction and Convergence" policy.
On Twitter he's sometimes done a double act with Jo Abbess trying to convince me to join their scaremongering.
Some, maybe most politicians don't understand the concept of feedbacks. As far as they are concerned 'negative' means 'bad' and 'positive is 'good'.
This is a classic example with Ed Miliband: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/climatechange/2009/05/miliband_versus_armstrong.html ~1 minute from start.
Does that mean that the Met Office's official position is for negative feedback, thus little warming?
Perhaps they should call Richard Lindzen and Roy Spencer to their defense!
Michael Mann has also expressed support for negative feedbacks."There's a reputation out there that I am some sort of - climate alarmist, but actually I think there is a missing negative feedback."
The poor fella's got it quite backward, and won't learn. He is warring on the poor, and has been told so.
=================
Are people getting confused about the feedback? I understand it in this context to be feedback in the carbon cycle, not the temperature. Well, if there was a carbon cycle. Or maybe I am the one confused.
"Or maybe I am the one confused.'
No, you're not the only one Rhoda. The definitions and terminology struck me as very loose or not defined. I decided I wasn't going to spend much time on it.
I get the distinct impression that greenists are rather thick...
To tell the truth, I am getting somewhat bored with this, particularly after a recent engagement with someone on the Liberal Conspiracy site (don’t worry, I won’t paste any link). His insistence on calling sceptics “deniers” while denying the existence of the now-commonly-accepted temperature plateau, and chasing enough straw-men to populate an episode of Dr Who, has somewhat jaded my zeal. Now the argument is about is whether the “forcing” is positive or negative in the “proof” of AGW.
The argument is won; AGW is dead. There are still a few necromancers trying to raise it, but it is dead. If it wasn’t nailed to the perch… ah, no – that’s another story. Let’s move on to encouraging politicians to join Tim Yeo in their defenestration.
I'm confused, Richard.
If Aubrey is such a known wacko that respectable government scientists in the field, like you, have to dodge his calls - how does he get invited to appear before the EAC?
Foxgoose, good question. On wednesday the HoC Science & Technology Committee is taking oral evidence for its inquiry into climate scepticism. Who have they invited to give evidence? Cilmate sceptics? Andrew M? No, a political activist called Greg Philo from the Glasgow media group, who has no background in science and no published research papers relevant to the field. But he blogs, demanding a wealth tax. So that's all good.
Hi Paul M - apologies for the OT diversion, but I wonder if you visited the "Birthday gongs" thread? If you have a minute to browse, I put a fairly lengthy post up on which I'd appreciate your comment. If you have any interest, I'll pick up with you on that thread. Thanks.
Bloody 'ell - He's like a poor man's Red Ken but without the warmth and affability.
I thought these Dave Spartist loonies died out around the time of Militant Tendency & the miner's strike.
I suppose academia is the only place left where they can hide and peddle this sort of stuff.
I hope he gets carried away & trots out his pet idea of taking 20% of asset value of the top 10% in front of the MP's - given London house prices there may be a few of them making a note of his name, for future avoidance.
A good joke about loonies in Parliament is in order.
"As Albert Einstein, the great 20th Century Theoretical Physicist and humanitarian said, 'If humankind wants to survive, it will have to adopt a radically different way of thinking.'”
Jelle and Aubrey would have us accept that means not thinking at all. I don't believe that's what Einstein had in mind.