Bishop Hill A life propagandic
Aug 27, 2013 BBC Climate: Sceptics Climate: solar The BBC's Life Scientific strand today featured Joanna Haigh, the Imperial College physicist who studies links between the sun and the climate, although she is not above a bit of propaganda for the greens either.
The programme was excruciating. One reader emailed to say she'd switched off after hearing about two minutes of it. We heard about how much easier it is to predict the climate than the weather, with not even a question mark raised over the failure of the climate models to predict the climate in recent decades. There was a section that could best be described as a promotional podcast for the IPCC. And there was an extended section in which Haigh bemoaned the climate "deniers" closely followed by others in which she was lauded by a colleague for her outreach efforts to those who dissent from the climate mainstream and another in which she told us how hard she tried to be polite. The lack of self-awareness was almost comical.
Once again, the BBC has done a full-scale propaganda piece for the IPCC and the green movement. The spirit of the Cambridge Media and Environment Programme is alive and well within the corporation.
The audio, for those with strong stomachs, should be here in the next couple of hours.
Reader Comments (107)
Listen to Radio 4 that's what you get. Y'all should know better...
MikeHaseler at 3:44pm: well said.
I would add that climate scientists and alarmists routinely quote the 100 year or so number (0.8 C - whether that is accurate or not) as though all of that is due to CO2, failing to acknowledge to their less knowledgeable listeners that about half of that increase was before CO2 levels had risen by much.
Yes it was obvious Jim A hadn't done his homework and hasn't a clue. She was talking about the temperature pause and he thought she was talking about sensitivity. What an idiot.
After hearing the trailer at 08:30 I decided not to listen to the programme. Then I changed my mind. I was glad I did. I learned much about Ms Haigh, none of it very flattering. I can now understand how she fits in to the clique of that period.
Ms Haigh really made my day. I was worried that she might be an honest credible scientist with good technical points to make about global warming, challenging my own sceptical views. I needn't have worried. She immediately descended into liberal use of the word "denier", bringing her own type into further disrepute.
The disgraceful BBC shall receive another complaint.
Jim Al-Khalili: : "Because of course a climate change sceptic will say that those who review the IPCC reports are..."
Joanna Haigh: "Part of the club"
Jim Al-Khalili: "... part of the club"
Joanna Haigh: "I have to say I slightly object to the use of the term sceptic because there is absolutely nothing wrong with being sceptical, all good scientist are sceptical, so I tend to refer to those people you mean as Climate change deniers, because they just deny it's happening and choose various reasons"
So there you have it. A pretty straightforward use of the word "denier" being applied to anyone who questions the IPCC process.
"they just deny it's happening"
Really? Point me to one, Professor.
Joanna Haigh: " ... there is absolutely nothing wrong with being sceptical," ... except when she is making categorically false and libellous comments like: "they just deny it's happening".
The simple undeniable fact is that the only document stating the Sceptic view (as far as I know), from the only association representing sceptics in the UK makes it very clear that:
*There has very probably been warming of average global temperatures in the last 150 years.
*There is a greenhouse effect and CO2 is a greenhouse gas. The best scientific estimate of this effect (for doubling CO2) is about 1C warming.
I like Mike Haseler’s summary of the sceptical position (Aug 27, 2013 at 3:44 PM | MikeHaseler). All very rational, evidence-based and not alarming.
As for Joanna Haigh, I’m disappointed. She is one the first, and the few, women professors of physics, and she’s very pleasant to meet in person. I don’t know why she trots out the ‘all recent warming is definitely due to anthropogenic emissions of CO2’ meme. And then goes further to smear sceptics as “deniers”. I guess she must believe what she says. Is this due the closed group-think minds of the climate science community? May be the shed-loads of money available for academic believers to do research influences her thinking? It’s certainly not about settled physics. I am puzzled.
But Professor Haigh has been saying the same thing for many years. This is the text of the letter to the Observer (15th March 2007) she signed, in response to Channel 4 having the temerity to broadcast Martin Durkin’s film.
”Robin McKie, your veteran science editor, was quite right to criticise the
Channel 4 programme, The Great Global Warming Swindle (Comment, last week). This programme misrepresented the state of scientific knowledge on global warming, claiming climate scientists are presenting lies. This is an outrageous statement.
The physics of the greenhouse effect is well understood: water vapour in the atmosphere, and to a lesser extent naturally occurring carbon dioxide, warms the planet by about 30oC. Humans are adding to the amount of carbon dioxide and, by the same physics, warming the planet further.
Other factors do affect our climate, such as variations in the sun’s energy and volcanic eruptions and we do not dismiss them. But their net effect is small. The observed warming has been caused predominantly by human emissions of greenhouse gases.
We defend the right of people to be sceptical, but for C4 to imply that the thousands of scientists, and published peer-reviewed papers, summarised in the recent international science assessment, are misguided or lying lacks scientific credibility and simply beggars belief.
Alan Thorpe, Natural Environment Research Council
Brian Hoskins, University of Reading
Jo Haigh, Imperial College London
Myles Allen, University of Oxford
Peter Cox, University of Exeter
Colin Prentice QUEST Programme”
Mark ... First "the Sceptic View" was a joint document worked on by quite a few sceptics. It was less an agreed position and more one that after about 5 revisions no sceptic strongly objected to.
"Is this due the closed group-think minds of the climate science community?"
There is a saying "if the only tool you have is a spanner every problem looks like a nut".
The prevailing methodology in science is to create a model that fits the data. As such, scientists tend to assume all "science like" problems should all be tackled by creating a model and using that to predict what will happen. So when they started getting global temperatures it was only natural for them to take the data, create a model and predicte what would happen.
That was what they were taught in science was the "right way to do things".
And when engineers & others, who have found out the hard way that scientific models are all very good in theory but often do not work in practice, try to explain to the scientists that they've seen many similar models and that the global warming predictions has all the signs of those models that do not work ... people like Prof Haigh simply cannot fathom how we could say such nasty things when all they have done is to approach the problem in the only way they know how to approach a problem.
Mark Piney:
I have also recognised that many climate scientists really do believe all aspects of AGW and find it a bit of a mystery.
The following is speculation, but others can comment. I would like to understand why the climate scientists are the ones increasingly adopting the role of being in denial. Their belief cannot be explained by funding reasons alone.
I tend to think of climate science as being a soft discipline back in the sixties, full of theories but not much you can do to test them. It may have been a bit of a backwater and perhaps did not attract the best candidates.
Many areas of science had some questionable ideas and practices in these days but eventually got over them as new blood challenged the established thinking. I rather suspect that climate science was going through its first major expansion phase, but being a new science, the elders were still held in awe and the youngsters accepted the teachings. Perhaps there was not enough challenge.
GHG theory and computer enabled modelling started driving growth in the field. If you put the two together, you get the rich seam to tap, which has attracted massive funding in recent years. I just feel that the massive growth, the switch of skills towards maths, computing and modelling, the lack of an opportunity to get all of the fundamentals on a solid footing, have all contributed to the situation we have today. I think climate science was channelled down the GHG opportunity before the physics or the modelling was developed enough to consolidate the basics.
I feel that we now have a trillion dollar industry based on poorly understood science and pretty unreliable measurements. But the scientists who surfed the first massive wave are the ones who are honoured today. They are still with us. Their underlings are true believers. Debate has been discouraged, peer review is no longer reliable, but these people are being applauded and honoured by their peers in other disciplines.
As I said at the start, I am speculating, but I do believe that something like this has happened and would explain the behaviour of the guest on this morning's radio programme.
Thank you Mike H. Reminds me of the saying: If a bridge stays up. it's to the credit of the architect. If it falls down, it's the engineers's fault!
"The physics of the greenhouse effect is well understood: water vapour in the atmosphere, and to a lesser extent naturally occurring carbon dioxide, warms the planet by about 30oC. Humans are adding to the amount of carbon dioxide and, by the same physics, warming the planet further."
And thereby lies the problem! For anybody who doubts that the above is nonsense look at the Moon, which has the same insolation, and correct for rotation (see NASA's Diviner and Apollo data for the answer, then add 30C).
Maybe neither of them are in a position to rock the boat without risking their livelihood. Either way, they get rewarded for doing what their paymasters want, which is not necessarily being scientific even if science is in their job titles.
What I find remarkable is the stupidity. As noted above, she labels everyone who qurstions the IPCC a denier. Then praises herself for her constructive engagement and says that she responds to letters. Well she has set herself up for a barrage of abusive emails.
Rog: Please could you elaborate or give a link. I remember when you were debating this but missed the conclusion. A punchline would be great.
She has been caught out twice before
Here
and
Here
"Rog: Please could you elaborate or give a link. I remember when you were debating this but missed the conclusion. A punchline would be great. Aug 27, 2013 at 7:31 PM | Schrodinger's Cat"
About a year ago we talked about this on the discussion thread - several, including TheBigYinJames, actually modelled the Moon using the correct SB physics and the correct geometry. They virtually reproduced the Diviner results:
http://www.diviner.ucla.edu/science.shtml
The mistake the IPCC made is to simulate the Earth as a flat plate, rather than a sphere (ignoring Holder's Inequality - the bit that Nikolov and Zeller definitely got right (although they got the bit about rotation wrong)). This makes a complete nonsense of the "33k" greenhouse warming meme - which the IPCC belatedly admitted. Any analysis based upon this incorrect mathematics and physics is so seriously flawed that it is meaningless.
All from memory - others can wade in.....
Aug 27, 2013 at 7:29 PM | Paul Matthews
But, but, but .... Both Haigh and the evidently not-up-to-speed Al-Khalili (or lazy enviro-journo, you may take your pick!) seem to be totally unaware that even the Chair of the IPCC, himself, has recently declared (albeit with a caveat!):
We have the right to question science!
Ms Haigh stated that she 'always replies to letters personally'. Ok, fair enough; then why don't the regulars here at BH put together a few questions for her?
Given she's always eager to correct the naughty deniers of the error of their ways I'm quite sure she'd be polite enough to respond. (She was very polite btw, regardless of whether people share her views)
Some starters for 10:
"ALL three of Dr James Hansen's A, B and C computer models have now been falsified as having too high a climate sensitivity to CO2 when compared to actual observed temperatures. Then 73 out of 73 IPPC models were also shown to be too high against observed temperatures. Given the entire 'global warming' scare was predicated on long-term computer models programmed with high CO2 sensitivity - every one of which have now been falsified, how can the theory still be taken seriously?"
"No hotspot, no excessive surface warming, no runaway ocean warming, and no sign of Kevin Trenberth's 'missing heat' either: How do you explain the lack of 'missing heat' these last 15 years or so while still promoting catastrophic agw?"
"How long does the 'pause' need to last to falsify agw theory?"
"Did any climate change alarmist / scientist, anywhere in the world, accurately predict the rise to almost 400ppm CO2 would be accompanied by a 17 year global temperature standstill?"
"Wasn't the Arctic nippy this summer?"
That's enough from me. I'm sure you guys can come up with much sharper questions....
Freeman Dyson must have been unavailable.
Schrodinger's Cat: "The following is speculation, but others can comment. I would like to understand why the climate scientists are the ones increasingly adopting the role of being in denial."
I think we should have a certain degree of sympathy for those involved in climate "science" because there was almost an inevitability to all this.
Think of it this way: for practical purposes, the global "climatic" temperature can only be measured once every decade. So, in 2000 there were 15 measurements to model of which the first 5 to 10 were quite suspect. So, we have a data set which really only consisted of 5-10 data points and a massive amounts of noise.
With such a poor dataset it is possible to come up with many different ideas of what they "mean", none of which can be tested until the next decadal period is up ... and even then with so much noise anything like "the pause" can be claimed as an "outlyer" ...
So by 2010, many climate models had had only one extra data point by which to be tested. This was THE CURRENT PAUSE and just as prof Haigh has done, this was dismissed as "the ups and downs" of climate variation. But now we are approaching 2015, which is half way through the next decadal cycle and yet again the data is failing to support their models and so what are they to do?
For all practical purposes, someone in Climate "science" could do a PhD in climate - come up with fanciful ideas about climate - with no way they can be challenged - rise to the rank of lecturer and then professor ... and they climb all this greasy pole without once having their assertions tested against the real climate.
So, people got on in climate "science" not because their models were any good at predicting anything but because they were best at brown-nosing appointments, getting in grants and generally self-publicity. And how did they get that publicity? By spreading paranoia and alarm! It was pretty inevitable that this subject would be run by self-publicist speculators who were most adapt and mining the same data for ever more subtle nuances of alarm.
In itself that isn't a problem. Many academic subjects are full of people pushing their own ideas which have no evidential basis. The problem though, was that climate data isn't missing ... it is just slow to come in.
So, imagine it yourself. 20-30 years of telling the world that a particular interpretation of the climate record was unquestionable and even that "the science is over" ... and then the huge embarrassment of each year's climate data which unlike all the underlings who you have recruited ... now refused to comply with your models.
Of course they are in denial. They have too much of their credibility tied up in their past assertions about the climate to accept the actual data from the climate.
Schrodinger's Cat
t am sure you are right. I suspect that when CS was a backwater it didn't attract the brightest and best in general so it was probably easy to progress and become a leader in the field. Someone who could barely perform basic work in Excel or someone barely out of college could end up producing massively influential statistics and be the CS version of rock stars.
Of course once CAGW hit full swing then the inrush of people into the field would be a self-selecting bunch of believers - and those few who weren't were probably quickly shown the door.
As an ex-IC geoscience postgrad I struggle to find a reason why an obviously intelligent and honoured academic would stoop so low as to allow themselves to be flung into the open sewer of anti-sceptic abusive insult and political propaganda so unwisely. Not what one would expect from one steeped in the etiquette and invective of genteel scientific disagreement. But this is an ideological contest, and science favours the 'bad guys'. So exceptional circumstances demand unconventional measures.
Totally agree with Schrodingers Cat and artwest about how climate studies started as a backwater - a make-work occupational scheme for unemployable numpties with their baggy jumpers and leather elbow patches. And DIY hair cuts.
Not sure if I would sign up to the skeptics' charter.
My own view is that climate science is an area of non-achievement: those involved have achieved absolutely nothing over a 20 year period and have muddied the water so much that real progress is harder than it would be from a cold start.
The landscape is littered with junk concepts:
* world climate as a singular entity (and not many climates)
* an average temperature for the world
* an average change of temperature for the world
* averages of averages
* running a computer simulation and thinking you are conducting an experiment
* lack of fieldwork
* masking (as in "the profits were masked by the losses")
* countless anthropomorphic ideas like "the climate will punish mankind for our wickedness"
I could go on but its like clearing out someone else's garden shed
I thank you all for commenting on my rather inadequate suggestions.
I think the summary (so far) is that:
1. Climate science is an inadequate pseudo science which requires fundamental overhaul from the very basics onwards.
2. Some so-called leading climate scientists perpetuate denial of reality since any other response would expose them to loss of credibility. Yet their models continue to deviate from reality for seventeen years and counting.
3. The CAGW scare attracted many new recruits to climate science. These were mainly environmentally concerned individuals and already believers, wrecking any opportunity for the science to strengthen by healthy criticism from within.
I don't expect warmists to accept any of this for one minute, but I do think it is a reasonable assessment of where we might be today.
Cheshirered :: "Haigh stated that she 'always replies to letters personally'. Ok, fair enough; then why don't the regulars here at BH put together a few questions for her? "
Here is the questions I would like her to answer:
1. Are you a prostitute? **
On the assumption you are not ...
2. if a radio 4 presenter described you as a prostitute, either knowing it to be false, or repeating an obvious libel without any kind of fact checking - would you consider this fair comment? Or would you expect a very full and frank apology if not serious recompense?
3. If others in the BBC repeatedly called you a prostitute and encouraged their guests to discuss how you were a prostitute and what kind of prostitute you were and how to persuade you not to be a prostitute - does this continued use make it true? Does it make it acceptable for everyone to repeat the libel?
4. If now the BBC referred not to you individually but everyone in your group (e.g. "women staff at Imperial are prostitutes") would this now make it acceptable?
5. If you wouldn't accept the BBC libelling you ... why do you think it is acceptable for them to libel me and others like me?
**This is a fair comparison given the way the BBC likened climate sceptics to paedophiles and sex slavers on the today program. And no, they did not apologise for this libel either.
RE: Roger Longstaff and the Moon. Recently I have been looking at the moon surface temperature data and comparing to the Earth. To any rational mind, it clearly shows the nonsense of the "30 degC CO2 blanket" meme.
The Earth and the Moon recieve the same insolation from the sun (at least at Top of Atmosphere in the case of the Earth).
The moon has no atmosphere. The surface temperature on the daylight side is 390 degK, on the night time side it is 100 degK. Ie +117 degC and -173 degC respectively.
The Earth has an atmosphere. On the daylight side the temperature peaks at about +36 degC at the equator but is much hotter at about +/- 30 deg latitude where desert surface (not air) temperatures peak at up to 70 degC. Towards the poles temp drops very closely following the azimuthal daytime solar heating you would expect follwing a cosine rule.
Temperature highs and lows on the Earth never reach the extremes of the moon. Why? Because the Earth has an atmosphere that modulates and smooths the temperature, preventing very high tempertures on the daylight side (water vapour, convection) and damping low temperatures on the night side (heat capacity).
So the atmosphere cools and smooths the temperature. There is no space in the physics for the enormous 30 degC CO2 global warming effect.
This does not mean that CO2 has no effect - it must cause a delay in the re-radiation to space, but it is the delay that moderates, not warms. And remember deserts are hot because they are dry, not dry because they are hot (if that were true, the highest temperatures and deserts would be at the equator, whereas they are genrally at higher latitudes at the edge of the Hadley Cells.).
Propoganda for the IPCC. Interesting as only last week high priest Abrahams had a piece in the Guardian where he openly questioned the continued role or use of the IPCC. Obviously Ms Haigh did not get the memo or maybe she has not got her funding completely in place for the next few years.
Thinking Scientist :
"There is no space in the physics for the enormous 30 degC CO2 global warming effect."
So, what do we do?
Claim that the climate scientists are wrong?
Try to gain publicity for that statement?
Publicly challenge some scientists?
Publish a paper?
Sorry, I like what you write, but we need progress. How do we get progress? I am sick of everyone else in the world smugly claiming lies. If you believe you have a bit of truth to share, how can we make it matter? What do you think can be done to put right the misinformation that is peddled by the good and the great such as our wonderful BBC guest who probably thinks you are a denier?
Schrodingers Cat: I don't know the answer to your questions, although I understand where you are coming from . I have Murry Salby's book, I was reading the temperature calculation based on average insolation at earth's surface the other day. It cannot be correct, with a T^4 calculation, to compute black body temperature using an average (Total/4) insolation. That calculation would say that deserts are not hot, nor the tropics. On these points the PSI lot ("dragon slayers") have a pretty solid argument I think, and I was very surprised by the calculation shown in Salby's book. The PSI point that sushine is hot, not cold, is absolutely spot on (wait for a cloud on a sunny day). I don't think the PSI argument overall is right though, because if you are mixing or averaging the temperatures at the earth's surface then you do not average using Stefan-Boltzmann, but using heat capacity arguments. So I think they get a meaningless answer too, trying to emulate the "average" that the CO2 greenhouse people argue for.
Yet Salby's book contains a whole section on the "greenhouse effect" following the energy balance of the IPCC. How do you challenge that? Does Salby think its correct? How do you show that an undergraduate text like that is wrong if you are not an offically annointed physicist? Perhaps I am wrong, or too thick to understand, but I don't think so. There is something fundamentally incorrect with the "greenhouse effect = +33 degC" meme.
I think change will only happen when the "Climate Science" in the form of the IPCC edifice collapses. If we are lucky and temperatures do not rise, highlighting ever greater divergence between models and reality, then there will be a readjustment in the science. If models disagree with reality, everyone will see how hopeless the modelling is and it will be discredited. If we are unlucky and temperature goes up again over the next 10 years or so....well I don't what will happen then. Perhaps when power is so expensive that people are dying in winter and the lights are going out a new political view will emerge that will walk away from this nonsense. I would support a pragmatic political view like that, but the problem at the moment is that the only political grouping with that view is UKIP and they seem to have too many idiots and not enough sense at the moment, even if I would agree with their position on climate change.
Thinking Scientist, the difference between the average surface temperature of the Moon and that of the Earth is actually about 90K IIRC. This can be shown by both numerical simulation and analytical calculation, and it has been measured by Diviner. The average surface temperature of the Moon is about 197K and that of the Earth 288K (all from memory). This gives the overall effect of the atmosphere, as the Earth and Moon are made of the same stuff and receive the same insolation.
For years the IPCC incorrectly claimed that the Earth's atmospheric GHE was 33K (I assume that is where the claim of "about 30C of warming" came from). This is based upon incorrect physics and it it not credible to make statements like "The physics of the greenhouse effect is well understood". If the basic physics is wrong then all that follows is nonsense.
@mike haseler
'The prevailing methodology in science is to create a model that fits the data. As such, scientists tend to assume all "science like" problems should all be tackled by creating a model and using that to predict what will happen.'
Wow. We used to do experiments instead. And test any models against them. Do they just leave out this essential step nowadays?
As a recent retiree I have come to greatly appreciate the varied content of Radio4 and especially the series The Life Scientific - a programme I make a particular effort to listen to. I did not consider the latest pregramme to be particularly good, not because I disagree with the "science" content (which I do) but because, unlike most other programmes this version concentrated more on the science and less upon the person being interviewed. At its best this series concentrates upon the person; upon how and why they took up their particular discipline; why they were successful and what is the significance of their discoveries. Some of the programmes have been outstanding. I would even argue that the programme involving Prof Haigh fulfilled most of these objectives. Even those sections that covered her prosletyzing AGW were relevant in that she has been active in this area in the past and its part of her profile. The programme gave the listener the opportunity to examine how a well informed and highly successful scientist could still hold the views she does. Does anyone really believe 1) she has not done seminal science, 2) she is honest with herself about her beliefs concerning AGW. The programmes's only failing in my view was that it didn't take the opportunity to press the poiint strongly enough that there are people with equally impressive scientific credentialsi who hold contrary views. al-Khalili should have persisted with his questioning about changes in our views about climate sensitivity which Prof Haigh brushed aside. Nevertheless, the programme is NOT designed to critically appraise the science within it.
With all this in mind I looked at the posts on this site only to discover, as I would have predicted, that the "usual suspects" took the earliest opportunity to bash the BBC, the programme, and the programme's presenter. Jim al-Khalili is criticized for not being "well prepared". Who prepared him, presumably people associated with Prof. Haigh and from the BBC who get their views from the predominant authorities available. And sad to say these do not include many, if any, from the anti-CAGW brigade. But please don't castigate the whole of the BBC and the majority of its science output (including most of The Life Scientific) for this "failing".
@lanK
@lanK
Yeah I agree with you, the programme did what it set to do i.e. examine someone's life in a scientific career. I think Jim al-Khalili did his job perfectly well and drew out of her a pretty clear picture of where she stands and how she got there.
There is obviously going to be differences in perceptions in what it all means. I saw in her someone who has specialised in solar influence and has worked her way into quite an established position in the climate science hierarchy that has all the baggage associated with its current emphasis on GHG modelling being pre-eminent , and she has fitted into that.
For instance she says:
"I would never say that the sun is more important than the greenhouse gases in effecting the surface temperature on decadal timescales.
I think her statement here shows declaration of conformity in a way that shows a blending between a scientific outlook and a willingness to be loyal to a current paradigm.
@Latimer Alder
Me: 'The prevailing methodology in science is to create a model that fits the data. As such, scientists tend to assume all "science like" problems should all be tackled by creating a model and using that to predict what will happen.'
Wow. We used to do experiments instead. And test any models against them. Do they just leave out this essential step nowadays?
An experiment is a means whereby a model is tested. In chemistry, that model is how chemicals react, in physics it might be how bodies behave and in climate ... it is how the climate behaves.
Unfortunately, experiments often don't test what we expect. E.g. the exact order in which chemical are added may effect the outcome. So, in ideal conditions the experiment is repeated many times (or at least with a control). Each of these experiments create an added data point by which the model (or hypothesis) can be tested.
But when we come to climate, the time it takes for "climate" to change is of the order of a decade. So, in effect we only have one addition "test" point each decade.
As a rule of thumb (I just made up to help the argument!), you need n+1 data points to distinguish between n different hypothesis or models.**
But in climate "science" we have hundreds of different models and theories and possible explanations of the climate ... so the subject is "model rich" and "data poor".
So, to answer the question (was it a question?) effectively the world is doing its own experiment each decade ... and mother nature is ruthless telling the academics which of them have any aptitude at all at predicting the climate (none!)
**I'm tempted to suggest that each test weeds out a proportion of the models so the number of experiments might be proportional to log(number of models). So e.g. if the test is whether the model could predict the sign of the global temperature. First decade ... oops it didn't warm and they all got thrown out ... which just proves that a theory about the number of theories weeded out by the test just can't account for the human factor that always cocks it up.
A word. Please don't confuse "natural science" with "climate science". Natural scientists (some aka "geologists") had identified climate change (redbeds vs tills, the four great European glaciation, Wurm, Riss etc.) in the 19th Century. Before Greenpiss took over, Palaeoclimatology was a respectable backwater, the protagonists were in it for curiosity, not money, power or fame. Thats where I came in.
I've done my little piece for natural science. There's no money or career for natural scientists in palaeoclimate reconstructions. It's CAGW or nothing. Please don't confuse the naturalists with the activists.
Hector (ex UEA ENV, Reading Sedimentology).
Roger Longstaff: "The average surface temperature of the Moon is about 197K and that of the Earth 288K (all from memory). This gives the overall effect of the atmosphere, as the Earth and Moon are made of the same stuff and receive the same insolation."
Clearly the insolation is the same, but I disagree about the earth and moon being made of the same stuff and the average temperature difference being due to the atmosphere alone. The "average temperature of the moon" is also a function of the moon's rotation and orbit and the heat capacity of the lunar regolith. If the moon had one side permanently facing the sun and the other side in continual darkness then a double cosine integration of the average surface temperature of the daylight side would give 277K (with a maximum temperature at solar zenith of 380K calculated, which is pretty close to the 390K observed) and the dark side of the moon would be at zero. The arithmetic "average" of those would be 138K. The dark side of the moon is actually warmer than we expect because of the rotation and heat capacity, the sunny side cooler for the same reason.
On earth its the above plus water. And water is funny stuff with unusual properties.
According to greenhouse theory the average temperature of the earth without GHE would be 255K. This is arrived at by 255K = (1370/4 * (1 - 0.3) / 5.67e-08)^0.25 and hence the argument that 288K - 255K = 33K = GHE.
But if we make the same calculation for the average temperature of the moon we find the moon should have an "average" temperature of (1370/4 * (1 - 0.136) / 5.67e-08)^0.25 = 269K. Which is significantly higher than the actual average lunar temperature of 197K.
Why doesn't this "average" temperature calculation work for a body without an atmosphere which is right next to us? Or does the moon have a reverse-GHE of -72K?
Or is the "average" temperature calculation made in this way a nonsense?
The rotation and the water in all its states are what make the difference. CO2 might play a bit part. There is no 'right' temperature for a planetary body given only the albedo. And even the albedo doesn't work the way it is supposed to, the number used in astronomy is not really anything more than an approximation when used in temperature calculations.
And of course an average temperture is, if not totally meaningless, a number of limited value. Obviously an average temp of 288K could kill us all twice a day.
Hector Pascal: "A word. Please don't confuse "natural science" with "climate science"."
Hector, I understand your point because there has been quite a distinct difference in attitude between climate science, real science and those who have more right to be called "scientists" but choose not like geologists.
However, it is also true that many academics have tolerated the outrageous behaviour of climate "scientists" and have acted in concert (behind Paul Nurse, etc.) to vilify those outside academia like myself and others who had the audacity to suggest that academia had problems with climate science (as you will see if you read the various contributions to the climategate inquiry).
Personally, I think this whole climate fiasco is a symptom a far deeper problem. Academia has an institutional problem recognising that there exists a considerable body of expertise in all areas of life and notably in understanding the climate OUTSIDE ACADEMIA. The result is that anyone outside academia is systematically attacked. So, e.g. you have this consistent and libellous statements from people like Haigh asserting that anyone outside academia who dares to question them is a "denier".
Or to turn it around, academics seem to think that no one is allowed to deny the academics what they see as their god given right to force every else to do what they tell them by putting a thin scientific/academic veneer on respectability to push blatantly political views such as we have seen with climate propaganda.
So, whilst some subjects & certain individuals may be more culpable than the rest, the truth I feel is that none of this could have happened unless the entire academic establishment did not support this wholesale unscientific nonsense. A nonsense which has caused untold misery to all those affected by wind farms and those whose fuel bills continue to rise because of the illogical and unnecessary demonisation of CARBON.
Let me put it this way. Unless or until "natural science" creates clear blue water between itself and the conduct of climate "science" and actively condemns their behaviour, there is no reason for us outside academia to artificially create a distinction.
Rhoda: I agree with everything say. But the main issue I have is with the 1370/4 bit. That's not physics.
I think the problem may lie within the employment contracts for climate scientists: there aint no sanity clause.
TS & rhoda - I agree with all you say (btw, I was assuming that an airless Earth would not have any surface water, and the only correction wrt to the Moon required is rate of rotation...).
Average planetary surface temperature is the metric of choice of the "climate scientists". In order to calculate this properly requires the correct spherical integration of the planetary temperature field, by calculating the temperature at every point by taking the fourth root of the absorbed radiation at that point, and then averaging the resulting temperature field across the planet's surface (in other words accounting for Holder's Inequality). NOT the way that they do it!
I agree that 1370/4 is the problem - incorrect physics and incorrect mathematics. As I have said before, if the first step of the calculation is wrong then everything that follows is nonsense.
Roger - I was going to suggest the moon is actually made of greenn cheese and therefore not the same material as Earth...;-)
Thank you for your answer - I keep thinking I am going nuts when I read the 255K figure is the average without GHE!
Hector’s managed to be a real scientist, working in a still-functioning science. Seems like it can happen. Good for him. It’s a source of some hope.
Mike Haseler, I agree that sciences ignore, and often denigrate external commentators on their territory. And sometimes they are right to do so. Think of the anti/unnatural MMR ‘it’s very risky’ vaccine brigade. Or the anti-GM hysteria created and supported by endless green groups. It’s important that sceptics, that don’t agree with the alarmist CAGW mainstream are clear, and calm, rational and persistent, so it’s more difficult to bracket with the many campaigning crazies out there.
But the real problem lies within the sciences themselves. As in other organisations, especially those heavily reliant on volunteers, the activists usually make the most noise, get the most publicity and are most organised; so they dominate. And when they induce and get privileged access to a huge grant-lode of money, they control the debate, the conferences, the journals, the academic posts and the universities. Related subjects, like mathematics, are bought in/off with the research money.
Such activist sceinces behave like Militant Trotskyist entrists in the Labour Party (LP) did in the 1980s, and damage from within. In the case of the LP, there was a principled and courageous fight-back by Kinnock et al, but it took time, and put the LP in the wilderness for over a decade.
How could a proper science cleanse itself of activist CAGW ‘scientists’? I guess this only happens when the damage is far greater, and there is a danger to whole branch of science. For instance if the current temperature stasis continues, or cooling becomes greater, and the gap between the CAGW models and reality becomes bigger, and less deniable. This may not happen soon, and the damage to the UK/Europe/USA will go on. And the Militant climate activist scientists will continue to dominate, brain-wash and reproduce. Depressing but, at the moment, highly likely.
I seem to have read/heard that Nurse used to be in some sort of ultra-left socialist group (SWP?), so his drive to turn the RS into a campaigning and ‘telling the scientific truth unto government’ NGO would sort of fit with his the ‘youthful excess’ of his younger radical self. He loves the power to tell, and many liberal/left politicians like to be told, hiding behind what the science “says”. Saves all that ideological argument, and debate, and messy democracy. Just “do as you’re told”, by “science”, and the white-coated elite. It’s heady, powerful, stuff, and seems to have seduced whole chunks of academe.
A complete transcript of The Life Scientific with Joanna Haigh is now available here:
https://sites.google.com/site/mytranscriptbox/home/20130827_jh
The scientist are trying to save their UNFCCC based jobs and BBC have invested their pension fond in green solutions and the BBC journalists are just protecting their pension.
@Aug 28, 2013 at 10:57 PM | Unregistered CommenterAlex Cull
Thanks Alex much appreciated!
Cheers Alex for the transcript : BH is one of those places where people prefer to check their facts
...rather make quick assumptions and jump on bandwagons.
I received no reply to my BBC complaint yet
- I didn't complain of bias, I don't think they care, cos that is allowed. Subjects can give whatever biased view they want (within the law) and the BBC doesn't have a policy of balancing them with a program pro the opposition in the future.
- So I did mention 2 legal points they should take notice of 1. Defamation 2. Production negligence in allowing so many mis-representations without proper challenging.
Sins of omission & carbon taxes for the remission of emissions
I listened to the " Life scientific " interview of Joanna Haigh. At about 1min30s-2min in she said temperature has gone up & up then wobbled a bit then she expects it will go up & up again. That doesn't sound very scientific. Would have expected her to give a reference to the graph she was thinking of and some detailed figures.
Hans Von Storch gave a more detailed account to Der Spiegel on 20th Jun 2013 : Storch: So far, no one has been able to provide a compelling answer to why climate change seems to be taking a break. We're facing a puzzle. Recent CO2 emissions have actually risen even more steeply than we feared. As a result, according to most climate models, we should have seen temperatures rise by around 0.25 degrees Celsius (0.45 degrees Fahrenheit) over the past 10 years. That hasn't happened. In fact, the increase over the last 15 years was just 0.06 degrees Celsius (0.11 degrees Fahrenheit) -- a value very close to zero. This is a serious scientific problem that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will have to confront when it presents its next Assessment Report late next year.
Yet later in Life scientific interview ( 17min28s) Joanna Haigh said " over recent months increasing trend seems to have flattened off a bit "
, would have thought when it has been over 12 months Joanna should have started using ' years '
I would like to see the reports that back up the claim that the IPCC summaries have been "reviewed more heavily than any scientific paper you could ever imagine " ( 16min 9s). " , me thinks she protests too much, she then waffled about hundreds & hundreds of referees comments. Which reports should i look at ?
When Joanna talked about the reviews she said, " They couldn't just say, " That's stupid " , they have to say why they think it is stupid ". Isn't that the sort of comment you'd expect to hear in primary school ? Would have thought it would be more like, " That comment is contested by this paper ref xyz "
Maybe Joanna Haigh should have recommended people do their own survey of all the competing ideas and work it out for themselves - as an interesting exercise in looking at the details. Also give some positive views on CO2 like recommending Dr William Happer on Youtube who points out that below 150 ppm of CO2 plants would die and atm was not much above that pre industrial revolution so in fact our mining & driving cars & flying planes may have helped life on earth more than harmed it.
She could have recommended reading Andrew Montford's books for a contrasting opinion and make your own mind up, be educated about the full debate. Or read Nigel Lawson's " An appeal to reason " which gives alternative approaches as to how to respond to the IPCC alleged threats. Or read " Punchdrunk from CO2, dizzy from spin " by Peter Sullivan.
Don't worry - Drive - be happy
20130130_TA " Which is then reviewed more heavily than any scientific paper you could ever imagine being reviewed. " then Joanna Haigh could have continued: in fact Steve McIntyre, Ross McKitrick, Peter Holzmann, David Holland, Craig Lochle, Edward Wegman reviewed the hockey stick graph and showed so many flaws in it that it had to be dropped. You can read all about it in Andrew Montford's book, " The hockey stick illusion "
See Willam Happer on Youtube CO2 science, " The Orwellian movement of global warming "
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lg-frkJBxm4
I'm enjoying " The propaganda bureau ". You don't notice the way that information is excluded on BBC until you have done a survey of the much greater range of opinion on the internet. The ministry of truth works by giving a little information instead of it all, by leaving out detail, by using vague terms.