Bishop Hill Answers, non-answers
Jul 5, 2013 Climate: Parliament This is a guest post by Doug Keenan.
The recent Bishop Hill post “Questions, questions” lists eight Parliamentary Questions that were tabled by Lord Donoughue, pursuant to suggestions in the Bishop Hill Discussion “Questions to suggest to Lord Donoughue”. The eight Questions have now been answered, as shown below. Lord Donoughue happily thanks those who suggested Questions and he would be grateful for ideas on how to proceed further.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Newby on 22 April (WA 358) which stated that "it is the role of the scientific community to assess and decide between various methods when studying various time series", what mechanisms exist within the Government to ensure (1) appropriate oversight of scientific advice, and (2) that scientists advising them are accountable to (a) Ministers, and (b) Parliament. [HL966]
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Baroness Verma): Every government department has a chief scientific adviser (CSA) who is responsible for ensuring the quality and accuracy of the scientific evidence base provided for policy making and delivery in their department. The Government Chief Scientific Adviser (GCSA) has a cross-government coordinating role in this work.
The GCSA works with the CSAs to ensure departments have effective structures and processes for accessing the relevant science expertise and maintaining the requisite internal capability. The work of the GCSA (along with other scientific issues of Parliamentary interest) is scrutinised by the Commons Science and Technology Committee.
Civil servants have an obligation to provide objective, impartial advice to Ministers, subject to the Civil Service Code1. All CSAs are civil servants for the duration of their appointment and therefore accountable to Ministers, who in turn are accountable to Parliament.
Some departments have a Scientific Advisory Council, comprised of external independent academics, which brings independent external input to supplement CSAs. In many departments, advice on specific issues is also provided by Scientific Advisory Committees. Both types of advisory body are governed by the Code of Practice for Science Advisory Committees (CoPSAC)2. Also, the 'Principles of Scientific Advice to Government'3 define the relationship between independent advisers and Ministers and are included in both CoPSAC and the Ministerial Code.
In developing policy, Government is guided by the scientific evidence. This comprises a wealth of peer-reviewed and published research and reviews thereof. Scientists whose publicly-funded work informs and advises Government are accountable scientifically to their peers and professionally to their institutes and/or professional bodies through their relevant quality assurance processes.
1 http://www.civilservice.gov.uk/about/values
3 http://www.bis.gov.uk/go-science/principles-of-scientific-advice-to-government
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Verma on 22 April (WA 358), whether, on the basis of a driftless third-order autoregressive integrated model, they consider the recorded increase in global temperatures of 0.8 degrees celsius to be statistically significant. [HL967]
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Verma on 21 May (WA 44–5) and the briefing paper by the Chief Scientist of the Met Office, "Statistical Models and the Global Temperature Records", issued on 31 May, which stated that a linear trend model was "less likely to emulate the global temperature time series than the third-order autoregressive integrated model", why the Met Office favours a linear trend model. [HL969]
Baroness Verma: I refer the noble Lord to the briefing paper "Statistical Models and the Global Temperature Records" produced by the Met Office Chief Scientist, which states that the Met Office's assessment of global climate change is not based on assessing the evolution of global surface temperature using statistical models in isolation. As the paper notes, the Met Office does not use a linear trend model to detect changes in global mean temperature change. I would also refer the noble Lord to the Written Answer I gave on 27 March 2013 (Official Report, col. WA 237, 238), concerning statistical models.
With regard to the use of a driftless third-order autoregressive integrated model in assessing statistical significance of the 0.8°C rise in global temperature, I refer the noble Lord to the Written Answers I gave on 21 May (Official Report, col. WA 44, 45) and 12 June (Official Report, col. WA 248) and note further that we do not consider this model to be appropriate.
I am concerned at the expense incurred in relation to the series of questions on this issue and so I invite you to meet with the Department's Chief Scientific Adviser, to discuss these scientific matters.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have carried out any risk analysis to assess any actual or potential losses to the United Kingdom attributable to any failures in the accuracy of climate forecasts. [HL968]
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord De Mauley): In 2012, the Government published an assessment of the key risks for the UK arising from current and predicted climate change up to the year 2100 (the UK Climate Change Risk Assessment or CCRA). The CCRA makes use of the UK Climate Projections 2009 (UKCP09) that represent a range of possible future changes in UK climate. The range of possibilities takes into account uncertainties in natural climate variability, how the UK's climate may respond to global warming, the future trajectory of emissions, and how these might magnify any regional climate change effects.
The risks were assessed for a range of plausible climate scenarios — presented as a range from a lower to an upper estimate of magnitude — to take account of uncertainty in future climate scenarios. The CCRA did not consider actual or potential losses to the UK as a result of the accuracy of climate forecasts, but it did take account of uncertainty in climate projections.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether the Met Office has set a date by which, in the event of no further increase in global temperatures, it would reassess the validity of its general circulation models. [HL1080]
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Baroness Verma): General circulation models developed by the Met Office are continually reassessed against observations and compared against international climate models through workshops and peer reviewed publications. The validity of general circulation modelling has been established for over four decades, as evident in the peer-reviewed literature. Such models are further developed in light of improvements in scientific understanding of the climate system and technical advances in computing capability.
Short term fluctuations in global temperature do not invalidate general circulation models, or determine timelines for model development. The long term projection remains that the underlying warming trend will continue in response to continuing increases in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether there has been an independent audit of the accuracy of the Met Office's recent forecasts of (1) wetter winters, (2) dryer summers, and (3) higher global temperatures. [HL1081]
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord De Mauley): The methodology for the projections in the summary statements from the UK Climate Projections 2009 (UKCP09) and from the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report (IPCC AR4) was peer reviewed prior to launch and has since been followed by further publications in leading journals.
Projections are fundamentally different from forecasts. The Met Office has not issued a forecast for wetter winters or drier summers. Long term projections, such as those included in UKCP09 and IPCC AR4, by their definition cannot be audited for accuracy until the period the projections cover has passed. For UKCP09, time periods are in 30 year slices and the earliest such projections are for 2010-2039.
It is possible to compare the existing projections against results from new climate model studies as these emerge, to check whether or not the projections remain consistent with the latest understanding and capabilities available worldwide. The next opportunity to perform such a check will be provided by the forthcoming publication of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report and the Met Office Climate Programme contains effort to do this.
The Met Office provides an annual forecast on the expected difference, from the long term average, of the world's global average temperature for the year ahead. This is publicly available on the Met Office website. For example, the global average temperature for 2012 fell well within the range forecast by the Met Office on 4 January 2012, which had a most likely value of 0.48 °C above the long term average. The independent body of the World Meteorological Organisation stated that global average temperature in 2012 was 0.45°C above the long term average.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have co-ordinated a cost-benefit analysis of their policies to introduce wind farms, on- and off-shore, as part of the United Kingdom's national energy generation; whether any such analysis took account of any specified forecast reductions in global temperatures; and, if so, what reductions. [HL1082]
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Baroness Verma): The Government response to the Renewables Obligation banding review set out our intentions to support onshore and offshore wind under the Renewables Obligation over the period 2013 to 2017. The accompanying impact assessment details the analysis behind these decisions and can be found here:
The modelling for the RO Banding review used the Department's energy and emissions projections. The UK is on track to meet its first three carbon budgets and as such, DECCs energy demand projections are in line with carbon reductions as specified in the first three carbon budgets (to 2022).
DECC's policies are aimed at reducing carbon emissions to contribute towards the UNECCC's goal of limiting global temperature rise to less than 2°C above pre-industrial levels.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what estimate they have made of the comparative carbon footprints resulting from converting Drax power station from coal to biomass, including the estimated total costs, in money and carbon, of mining, logging, processing and transporting, and the relative energy outputs and efficiency. [HL1083]
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Baroness Verma): DECC has analysed the potential contributions from different renewable, low carbon and fossil fuel technologies to develop scenarios of how the UK could cost-effectively achieve its energy and carbon targets in 2020 and beyond. We have not made estimates for individual power stations. However, as outlined in our Bioenergy Strategy, the use of sustainable biomass as a transitional fuel to reduce carbon emissions from current coal power generation is an important decarbonisation pathway.
Reader Comments (131)
Dung
Those who discuss science with me get science discussion back. Those who troll me get trolled back.
I have studied both the ice core data, other paleoclimate data and the IPCC reports. What they show is a coupled system in which, over the last 2 million years, orbital changes drive temperature changes which interact with CO2 concentration in a positive feedback system. The same coupled system also operates over timescales of hundreds of millions of years, with a wide variety of forcings.
If a forcing increases temperature it leads to release of CO2 from sinks and a further increase in temperature.(eg start of interglacials)
If a forcing decreases temperature it leads to uptake of CO2 by sinks and a further decrease in temperature.(eg. end of interglacials)
If a forcing increases CO2 it leads to increased temperature and a further increase in CO2.(eg. vulcanism during recovery from Snowball Earth conditions, AGW)
If a forcing decreases CO2 it leads to decreased temperature and a further decrease in CO2.(eg. onset of Snowball Earth conditions.)
Assuming you do not just reject the paleo data out of hand , these patterns show over all timescales from our modern temperature record, up to the geological carbon cycle driven by plate tectonics.
Your failure to recognise these patterns suggests that you are not quoting from your own studies, but parroting something from a sceptic propoganda site.
"If we are lucky this pause could go on for some time."
At least until the magic ohc mechanism switches off again.
not banned yet
Already past my bedtime, but I'll try.
The parameter in Table 1 , stripped of the subtleties, is a measure of the ability of each of the three statistics mentioned to match the statistical properties of the observed temperature record.
The first and second are those preferred by Doug Keenan and Lord Donoughue. The third is the Met Office's.
The reason why the first two models show lower skill is that they assume a priori that there is no trend. At an early stage of their procedure. this is confirmed by deliberately detrending the data to remove any slope in the time series. (After all, if there is you already assume there is no trend, this will make no difference. :-) )
When you apply this to data with a trend, the detrending procedure removes the trend and gives a false zero slope, This is why the Keenan/Donoughue approaches fail.They include an assumption which is not valid for the measured data.
It is also why this whole charade is a political exercise, not a scientific one. The BHC is knowingly promoting a false statistical interpretation of the data.
Goodnight
"This is the person who has responsibility for ensuring that the scientific basis of UK climate policies, which cost hundreds of billions, is sound.
Or he is the one responsible for ensuring that the policy based climate science is conform to the UNFCCC and appear as "sound" as possible to the people so that "they" can implement the policies they so want?
Thanks for the reference EM, I will look at it as soon as I get time.
I do not regard you as a troll. You come here for a good argument and you are clearly a scientist (not a clueless lawyer!) who takes an alternative view, which is healthy and makes us think, rather than just reenforcing what could be prejudice.
I still think the central problem with your thesis is that you are trying to detect a signal, caused by a theoretical imbalance predicted by the AGW hypothesis, that is an order of magnitude less than the uncertainty in albedo (with or without feedbacks, positive or negative) which governs the magnitude of SW radiation entering the system. Can you respond to that point?
"If a forcing increases temperature it leads to release of CO2 from sinks and a further increase in temperature.(eg start of interglacials)
If a forcing decreases temperature it leads to uptake of CO2 by sinks and a further decrease in temperature.(eg. end of interglacials)
If a forcing increases CO2 it leads to increased temperature and a further increase in CO2.(eg. vulcanism during recovery from Snowball Earth conditions, AGW)
If a forcing decreases CO2 it leads to decreased temperature and a further decrease in CO2.(eg. onset of Snowball Earth conditions.)"
If the all the ice core studies show that temperature goes up and the CO2 continue to go down or don't move for aprox 600 years and that when temperature goes down the CO2 continue to go up or don't move for aprox 600 years. It's hard to believe what you say above is true? Because what you say is that CO2 is also a forcing and that the atmosphere reacts with a runaway warming or cooling. But this has never happened on Earth as we know the last 1 billion years?
nby
"Poor attempt at humour or the comment of a fool."
Or both, or neither. The possibilities are endless. Would you like some mouldy pizza?
Roger Longstaff
You may have noticed a tendency for me to make back-of-the -envelope calculations at odd moments, like my answer to Osseo yesterday.
I see the Earth as a heat engine driven by its Sun and like to play with the numbers for energy flow through its various parts.
For example. my answer to osseo yesterday calculated that an average square metre of ocean would warm at a rate of 1C in 150 years, 0.067C/decade.
The observed global temperature record gives a warming of 0.8C in 130 years, 0.062C/decade.
For such a simple calculation, the degree of agreement is impressive, to me at least. Two completely different estimates of warming rate using independant data sources and techniques, get within 8% of each other.
This is why I have more confidence in the numbers than you do. They fit together into a coherent overall energy flow pattern, like pieces of the same jigsaw. If the 0.58W/M^2 imbalance estimate was grossly in error a lot of energy budget calculations would simply not add up
Jon
Two points.
1) 600 years is short term thinking. The adjustment time is millennial. It can take 10,000 years of gradual change and short term excursions before temperature and CO2 settle to a new equilibrium after a natural change in forcing.
2) There is a limited amount of free carbon in the sinks. This limits the amplitude of changes.
Remove all the atmospheric CO2 and you get Snowball Earth conditions, with glaciation right to the Equator and average temperatures more than 15C lower than today.
Release all the carbon in the sinks as CO2 and you might get a 10C warming, like Miocene conditions.Remember too, that a massive temperature rise would produce a very humid atmosphere with continuous cloud cover, which would increase albedo and damp out further temperature change. Your runaway greenhouse effect looks unlikely until the Sun gets a lot hotter a billion years hence.
Thanks EM, but you have now changed the argument. You previously said "Empirical satellite measurements demonstrate that there is an imbalance, with more energy entering the climate system than leaves it" - which I disputed (and continue to dispute).
Your new argument relies on a steady state radiative imbalance, everything else being equal, and an arbitrarily selected ocean depth of 700 m with isotropic warming (it wouldn't work at any other depth). This gives a monotonic rise in temperature - far from what we have observed over the last 2000 years. Sorry, but I just find it to be an opportunistic, linear curve fit for 150 years of data.
Roger LongstaffMy choice of 700M was not arbitrary. It is the depth to which the ARGO buoys show regular mixing; the depth to which heat is normally carried. It did indeed leave out a lot of other factors, but mst of the other variables tend to cancel each other out. I worked forwards, not backwards, so the match was not a fix. I'm afraid it was more than just an opportunistic linear fit.
http://www.iac.es/galeria/epalle/reprints/Palle_etal_Science_2004.pdf
This is the sort of information on albedo you may be looking for. The albedo figures are mostly. measured from the strength of earthshine reflected from the Moon. Not a bad substitute for your satellite at L1.
Look particularly at Figure 3.The 95% confidence limits for the albedo figures are +/-0.0025 on an albedo around 0.31. The energy equivalent in terms of surface insolation is +/- 2.5W.
What really intrigued me when I looked again at the graph is that the albedo increase has reduced insolation by 8W/M^2 between 1998 and 2004. That should have produced a drop in temperature of 2.2C, yet all we have seen is a short term steady state.
Entropic: "It did indeed leave out a lot of other factors, but mst of the other variables tend to cancel each other out."
------------------------------
That sounds like your typically IPCC-type ad hoc way to dismiss data that you cannot, or will not, attempt to quantify: Arbitrarily make two unknown and potentially significant numbers be equal and opposite and "et voila!" they disappear.
Roger Longstaff is right to continue contesting your assertions about the net radiative of the planet. Apart from the difficulty due to measurement errors, warming due to increased sunlight entering the atmosphere (and not due to decreased IR leaving) is a problem for the CO2 based cAGW meme. You forgot to mention that.
Average ocean depth is ~4300 metres. Your choice of the top 700 metres of ocean is a curious cherry to pick since Trenberth is claiming to be looking for his missing heat lower down. (Of course I don't think he'll find it there either, but he is smart enough to know that the small numbers could so easily be lost in the measurement error and that many will be fooled into thinking that it must be down there.)
Thank you for the reference EM - very interesting! I have not seen it before. It may seem ungrateful (and I admit is blatant cherry picking), but I can't resist quoting from the paper:
"...the reflective increase.... would be difficult to attribute to monatonically increasing greenhouse gasses. Natural variability is a much more plausible explanation..."
Nevertheless, you have alerted me to albedo measurements that make the discussion more credible. Thanks.
michael hart
I look forward to your numbers on this.
Roger Longstaff
Estimating the energy imbalance can be approached from two directions.
1) Measuring and summing solar insolation, albedo, OLR etc from satellites gives boundary values within which any imbalance should lie. You havent quoted a value for the uncertainty you mention. I would estimate overall 95% confidence limits of +/-5W/M^2. That would give values between -5.6 and +4.4. If I remember the convention correctly a net accumulation in the system is expressed as a negative value.
2) Measuring the energy needed to produce the changes observed. The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are losing 500 gigatons of melting ice a year between them. Glaciers are losing another 100gigatons.
That melting is soaking up latent heat and causing about 1.7mm/year of rising sea level.
The rest of the rise in sea level comes mostly from warming induced expansion. Again this comes from heat absorbed into the ocean.
Add in a few other smaller effects and you can calculate the size of the energy imbalance needed to produce them.
EM, if your figures are correct you are trying to detect an AGW signal of 0.58 W/m^2 with satellite data that have an uncertainty of +/- 5 W/m^2. It can't be done. Also, you are now using latent heat to account for the "missing heat". To me this all adds up to unproven at best, and nothing detected at worst (from your point of view).
As interesting as this discussion is, I notice that we have been deflected from the original point of ths thread - which to me was the misleading statement that HMG had evidence of GCM validation. Others here say that a PQ to obtain the evidence would be a waste of time, but I disagree. It is not like the case when Blair was allowed to present misleading information to Parliament before the invasion of Iraq (when he could use national security condiderations to hide his (non-existent) evidence) - in this case HMG say the evidence is in published literature, and I would like to see it.
I will write to the Met Office and ask the question.
I have made the following enquiry to the Met Office:
Dear Sir / Madam,
The following statement was made in Parliament, in response to Parliamentary Question HL1080:
“The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Baroness Verma): General circulation models developed by the Met Office are continually reassessed against observations and compared against international climate models through workshops and peer reviewed publications. The validity of general circulation modelling has been established for over four decades, as evident in the peer-reviewed literature. Such models are further developed in light of improvements in scientific understanding of the climate system and technical advances in computing capability.”
Please could you supply me with the references to the evidence in the peer-reviewed literature that have established the validity of general circulation modelling for over four decades?
Yours sincerely,
Roger Longstaff
Roger, that is a good move. If you don't get a satisfactory answer, next step FOI (if it applies to the Met Office).
Thanks to Hilary for her comments. I bear not a scrap of malice to those who disagree with me about this point. One of the best things about BH is the capacity for people to have civil disagreements.
Thanks johanna - there is certainly no malice on my part either.
I doubt that the FOIA will be necessary, as there could be no defence under cost or national security. All I am asking for are references to publications that the Met Office cliam validate GCM methodology. And there is definitely a public interest....
When the Met Office supply their references I will post them on BH and the discussion will revert to the technicalities of "validation".
Roger Longstaff
While the melt and sea level rise continue to absorb energy from a system with static temperatures I doubt that any positive value for the imbalance is likely. That would set the probable limits between 0 and -5.6W/M^2 for the satellite data. On that basis the IPCC's -0.586W/M^2 sounds positively conservative.
I'm concerned that you are so focused on the satellite data alone, while ignoring other lines of evidence. Your failure to see the relevance to imbalance measurement of latent heat as an energy absorbtion mechanism implies that you lack an overall mental picture of how energy flows through the heat engine that is our climate system. You focus just on odd bits here and there.
Roger Longstaff
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/GCM.htm
For a general history of GCMs try the above link. The reference list at the bottom would start you on your quest.
Personally I was impressed by the simple 1-dimensional model published in Hansen (1981) , which successfully described. the subsequent 20 years of warming.
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1981/1981_Hansen_etal.pdf
EM, I only talked about satellite data because you said: "Empirical satellite measurements demonstrate that there is an imbalance, with more energy entering the climate system than leaves it" As temperatures have not risen for 17 years Occam's Razor tells me that there is no radiative imbalance.
Furthermore, I do not regard the Earth as a heat engine - rather an insolated planet that is in diurnal thermodynamic equilibrium.
"Empirical satellite measurements demonstrate that there is an imbalance, with more energy entering the climate system than leaves it"
I had understood that the precision of satellite measurements (in vs. out) was insufficient to say one way or the other - hence the endless debate. One US govt site discussing the missing heat explicitly says so.
I think the "more coming in than leaving" is because they cannot get their estimates of where it goes to to match the known incoming - not because of actual measurements showing an imbalance.
Roger Longstaff, Martin A
Unfortunately the climate system is not in equilibrium. You've a lot more than diurnal variation going on. There are local regional and global energy flows on all timescales. There's a continuing water cycle and carbon cycle. There's weather. There's a seasonal cycle.There's a solar cycle. There are at least two other Camp Century cycles. There's a century of AGW. There's the long latter interglacial decline.
Muttering about uncertainty and that vague copout of natural variability is not enough. Which natural variables? How are they acting . What are the energy budget numbers? You cannot complain about the uncertainties in my numbers and then make unsubstantiated statements about you paradigm without giving numbers of your own.
If the system is in radiative balance, where is the energy coming from to melt 600 gigatons of ice sheet and glacier a year? Where is the thermal energy coming from to expand the oceans by another 480 cubic kilometres a year on top of the 600 cubic kilometres from ice melt? What has powered the Summer Arctic ice volume drop of 75% in the last 30 years?
All of these are endergonic processes. If you insist the the planet is in radiative balance, you need to show that the energy for all these processes is coming from within the system. I look forward to your evidence.
EM, now you begin to understand - we can not attribute a 0.7C rise in average planetary surface temperature over the last 150 years to "AGW" when we have two millenia of evidence that shows natural variability cycling between hotter anf colder conditions (MWP, LIA, etc.) that were clearly unrelated to AGW.
In a previous thread I gave you a reference to a theory that planetary dynamics produced gravitational harmonics which may have governed sunspot activity, and consequently albedo. Is this correct? I have no idea, but to me it is a serious attempt to understand natural variability, which completely masks any AGW effect, if it exists at all.
EM, I've hust seen this presentation, to be made at the UK Space Conference next week:
"TRUTHS – A UK mission proposal to provide observational climate data to enable the unequivocal detection of climate change.
Paul Green, Senior Research Scientist, National Physical Laboratory
TRUTHS – A UK mission proposal to provide observational climate data to enable the unequivocal detection of climate change.
Sound climate change policymaking requires high confidence in future climate predictions, with these predictions primarily based on complex climate model simulations. High confidence in the model predictions can only be achieved with verification against an accurate, rigorously-anchored observational dataset tailored to allow direct comparison with the model output. TRUTHS has been conceived to provide this observational dataset.
TRUTHS is a proposed satellite mission to measure the spectrally-resolved Earth-reflected solar radiance and incoming solar spectral irradiance to an accuracy approximately 10 times higher than is available from current sensors, traceable to SI. By taking snap-shots of the energy flow into and out of the climate system, a climate benchmark can be created, which repeated over time, will reveal the detailed structure of climate change and allow climate models to be validated more rapidly, so enabling confident policy decisions."
I wonder if it will ever fly?
Roger - good to see your request for the MO's references on model validation in the PRL. I hope you get a worthwhile response. Related story at WUWT today:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/11/quote-of-the-week-nature-on-the-failure-of-climate-models/
Re: TRUTH - the proposal seems to be about instantaneous energy flow measurement rather than detection of climate change which as I understand it is a long term process. I also think it is a non sequitur to claim that having this data will do anything to help validate climate models for policy purposes. See this post at Judith Curry's where TOA and GSTA are used as the calibration variables:
http://judithcurry.com/2013/07/09/climate-model-tuning/
AFAIK that does not mean a thing for the accuracy of actual on the ground, location specific predictions which, IMO, are what are required for policy decisions.
Roger Longstaff
I remember your reference. It struck me then as clutching at straws to avoid confronting the CO2 problem, for which there is much more evidence. The hypothesis seems to have dropped out of sight. I've seen nothing further published on the subject.
I look forward to AlecM's information on why the OLR dip at 13micrometres is not retaining energy.
Regarding TRUTH, it would be a useful addition to the information flow, especially if it fills the gap left by GLORY. Who should I contact to lobby for it?
Any chance of you working on it? You might be better persuaded to my viewpoint by data from a satellite you had a hand in designing.
How did you get on with that History of GCMs? Know your enemy!
nby, I have a reply from the MO that they have sent my request to the appropriate department, so it should not take too long for them to send references to publications that they claim validate GCMs. I will post their response on BH, and we can all take a view.
Regarding the TRUTH satellite, I agree that it will not measure surface conditions, but it could add valuable data to the TOA energy budget debate. I think it will have a lifetime of 5 years, so if nothing much changes over the period it is difficult to see how it could be used study decadal climate change, including any feedback mechanisms.
EM, no, I am not working on TRUTH, but it looks like an interesting project. It is actually quite a small satellite and it shouldn't be too expensive. I would hope that even if it is a UK lead that it could be an ESA project, or even a joint ESA / NASA project, and that costs could be shared. If we are all going to spend trillions on AGW mitigation a couple of hundred million for a satellite seems like a good deal. To support it write to the head of the UK Space Agency, and your MP. Maybe even DECC?
"To support it write to the head of the UK Space Agency, and your MP. Maybe even DECC?
Jul 12, 2013 at 9:45 AM | Roger Longstaff"
Thank you. I'll write to the first and third. My MP does not attend Parliament (refusing to take the oath) and is little use in such matters. Before you ask, no I did not vote for him!
Bump for Roger - Any references yet? Sorry if you've posted them on another thread and I've missed them. Thanks.