Tuesday
Feb112014
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Another AR5 hearing
Feb 11, 2014 Climate: Parliament The second of the Energy and Climate Change Committee's hearings into the Fifth Assessment Report is taking place this morning. The panels are:
- Sir Peter Williams, Royal Society, and Dr Emily Shuckburgh, Royal Meteorological Society
- Guy Newey, Policy Exchange, Jonathan Grant, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and James Painter, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford
The hearings started at 9:30 and the video is below (direct link here).
<script src="http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Embed/js.ashx?14877 460x322"></script>
Reader Comments (61)
Alternative URL for those like me who refuse to install Microsoft SIlverlight (I do wish that site stopped using it)...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/21006886
I have put a few comments here though I was only able to listen to the first part.
There was quite a spat between Lilley and Shuckburgh, then a brief one between Lilley and Yeo.
Emily seems to be saying...
look at the small print really carefully - see we are not being dishonest or implying anything, over here, in the small print, if you interpret it very carefully, we are saying other posibilities, etc,etc..
I'd chuck them out, if it was a climate/supplier meeting
Nice to see my GWPF report getting an airing. Peter Williams didn't seem to want to stand by the Royal Society's older statements on climate.
... what a slip..
client/supplier meeting !
Jonathan Grant, PricewaterHouse Coopers, just talking about the massive reductions required to get down to the 2C/century pathway. 6%/annum reductions required!
Nobody pointed out to him that were currently only on 1.2C/century, and that assumes warming resumes PDQ.
Barry
I know exactly what you mean.
None of these waffling, feather-bedded, inflation-proofed, quango clowns has ever been in a meeting where what they say is written down and put into a contract.
They act as though it was all a moderately amusing, North London dinner party chat.
No bias in the list of interviewees, then ;))
Highlights?
Emily Chuckleberger, a civil servant attempting scientific jargon, Lilley nailed her to the floor and she replied, "well, if we could meet somewhere where I could just explain........................"
Stringer, against PwC shill, and paraphrasing, British emissions at <2% why are we doing anything? And because we are attempting to limit our emissions - we are reducing competitiveness of British industries.
There came back - no answer.
The bloke from Oxford, Painter was a total waste of space and Newey was just making up the numbers as indeed they all were.
Oh the the irony of Shucks and Williams evading questions from politicians!
So Emily's 'other lines of evidence' are just other computer models which have just been initialised differently?
Yeo over-ruling Lilley at approx. 10:00 to let Shucks off the hook was extraordinary.
Shortly after Williams stated that they will "continue to" measure the temperatures of the deep ocean, I didn't think they had taken any measurements to date.
10:13 - Emily explains that the reason the Antarctic sea-ice has not declined is due to the wind patterns, but does not mention the significant role played by wind in the summer break up and transport of sea-ice out of the Arctic. e.g. What Happened To The Thick Ice In The Arctic?. Image source: http://nsidc.org/news/press/2007_seaiceminimum/images/20070822_oldice.gif.
With Climate Science only the past is uncertain.
Guido is covering it.
http://order-order.com/2014/02/11/sketch-peter-lilley-v-tim-yeo/#more-160667
What an amazing scene
Peter Walker [Williams]presumably lives on another planet, his bit on there being a previous hiatus in the past was simply evasive. The fact that AGW theory cannot explain the current one is completely ignored. Also the bit about the Trade Winds - in another few years the authors will say the opposite AGAIN.
Emily Shuckburgh talking absolute nonsense and evading the question! This is a spokesperson for a "Learned" society - ha ha ha what a mess climate "science" has made.
Tim Yeo - it is bad enough that we have to be put up with someone as Chair of the CCC who formly believes in AGW and gets plenty of money whilst he is an MP, but really what he did with Lilley's question was outrageous!
I fear that now Yeo as been deselected he will only get worse (if that was possible). It also looked like the chairman of the select committee and the giggling weather girl had prior communication to get their message across.
I suspect Dr Emily admission with regard to Climate Prediction on the decadal scale is an intitial conditions problem is a bigger deal than one might suspect.
Is Climate Prediction Sensitive To Initial Conditions?
Since there has been so much interest in the topic of the âbutterfly effectâ?, a weblog on climate prediction with respect to its sensitivity to initial conditions is warranted.
The answer to the question posed on todayâs weblog, of course, is YES.
With respect to weather prediction, the importance of initial conditions is universally accepted. As just one example, we can refer to their importance in hurricane track forecasts, where the size of the initial hurricane vortex, its initial motion, and its intensity each matter in terms of its subsequent motion. These are large enough perturbations to upscale (unlike a butterflyâs flapping wings!). Weather also exhibits chaotic behavior such as when slight differences in large-scale flow patterns can determine whether baroclinic cyclogenesis occurs or not.
For climate prediction, however, the existence of two definitions of "climate" complicates the discussion. The term "climate" has been used to mean long-term weather statistics, but also the coupled atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, and biosphere (see the weblog posting for July 29th entitled âWhat is climate changeâ?).
The use of long-term weather statistics to mean "climate", however, is an atmospheric-centric view. Weather statistics, as the definition for "climate" has traditionally been limited to physical variables such as temperature and precipitation, but not even to atmospheric chemical composition (see the AMS definition of "climate").
The distinction is important. With the atmospheric-centric view, the ocean, land, and continental ice are often treated as boundaries that are prescribed. This places a constraint on the climate prediction since the interactions with these surfaces are reduced or even ignored. With the more inclusive definition of climate, there are interfacial, nonlinear fluxes between the atmosphere, oceans, land, and continental ice. That is there are no true boundaries.
This subject is discussed in my essay – Pielke, R.A., 1998: Climate prediction as an initial value problem. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 79, 2743-2746. In that essay, I concluded that as a result of the variety of significant ocean-atmosphere-land surface interactions, model-based forecasts of future climate should be viewed as sensitivity analyses rather than as reliable predictions.â?
A specific example on a seasonal time scale of the sensitivity of a climate prediction to the initial soil moisture content (i.e., a non-atmospheric variable) as its affects growing-season weather is presented in Pielke Sr., R.A., G.E. Liston, J.L. Eastman, L. Lu, and M. Coughenour, 1999: Seasonal weather prediction as an initial value problem. J. Geophys. Res., 104, 19463-19479. In this paper, we concluded
See also Lu, L., R.A. Pielke, G.E. Liston, W.J. Parton, D. Ojima, and M. Hartman, 2001: Implementation of a two-way interactive atmospheric and ecological model and its application to the central United States. J. Climate, 14, 900-919.
What is missing from the IPCC and US National Assessments is the recognition that climate is not atmospheric-centric (or even physical ocean-atmosphere centric), but as involving significantly the other components of the climate system as both forcings and feedbacks. Ocean plankton distributions, fresh water river and sediment discharge into the oceans, and land-cover/land-use are just a few examples of climate variables that need to be initialized in the non-atmospheric components and involve interfacial, nonlinear fluxes, but whose importance has been ignored or understated.
When we learn of projections, forecasts, and predictions of climate decades into the future (e.g., see âNo Winter by 2105? New Study Offers Grim Forecast for the U.S. ), we should first assess whether the suite of model simulations that were used to create the envelope of predicted future climate has included the spectrum of the initial climate conditions which must include the non-atmospheric components. If they have not (which is the case for all existing modeling studies of this type), the value of such studies are as sensitivity experiments, and should not be presented, as the National Geographic has done, as forecasts.
I spoke to Tiim Yeo about factual errors in the RMetS response to Springers planetary 'energy buttons' question and he seemed too have already realised that Shuck might have been talking about some other planet. His rebuke of Lilly was more to keep things moving since there appeared to be no useful means of getting Shuck to shift from her perch - chastising the witnesses is just not done old boy.
Funny but for long time they were making claims that they could produce two decimal place accuracy over a range of many years in their models for factors such as temperature.
Now they’re just ‘projections’ , but still we should bow down before them and never ask any questions. Frankly their kidding no one but themselves.
"Chastising the witnesses is not done..."
unless, as with Richard Lindzen and Donna Laframboise, who came from abroad at their own expense, they are known sceptics, and therefore can be interrupted and slapped down at the chairman's will.
Shuckburgh appears pleased as Punch at her ability to - oh so very, very patiently - repeat "answers" to questions by her inferiors.
After all, these amateurs just cannot not be expected to understand or appreciate the depth of her wisdom and expertise.
BBC iplayer recording (most but not all of the session).
BBC news story, focusing on the Shuckburgh/Lilley/Yeo clash.
Loathe though I am to admit it, the Lilley–Shuckburgh spat (beginning at the 9:43 mark) was a clear points win for Shuckburgh, achieved by as a neat a piece of dissembling, accompanied by appropriate de haut en bas sniggering, as I have seen for a long time.
The point being, I fear, that it really doesn't matter who is winning the argument about the science. It is the political argument that counts. And as a wholly smug, wholly self-satisfied, fully paid-up member of the consensus, with all the self-regarding perks this entails, Shuckburghand the like, grinning and preening in the certain knowledge that only their voices will be heard by the government, remain formidable players.
Yeo, for what it is worth, was his normal ignorant self: shameless, cretinous and deeply stupid.
So it is hypothesized that the hiatus is because heat is going into the oceans and counteracting surface warming. No mention of the possibility of heat coming out of the oceans in the 90s contributing to surface warming. The problem of assessing global heat balance is an interesting subject to get to grips with but despite this the models are designed to predict 100 years but predicting 10-30 years is very difficult. Antarctic sea ice growth is predominantly caused by winds but longer term the oceans will dominate but it's very complicated. No mention of winds in the Arctic breaking up ice.
If I were a policymaker I'd want to know what to do during the next 10-30 years but the answers today imply there is no science strong enough. Should the UK be worried or comfortable over that time period, should Europe be worried or comfortable same for Asia, Americas etc? They don't know and don't have the tools.
Bish, why do you inflict this pain upon us ? ;))
agouts:
Perhaps, but it seems to me that she completely failed to cite any evidence to support her argument that the heat is hiding in the deep Ocean. She hand waved about Arctic ice melt. Lilley may not have nailed her, but a careful and open minded listener would have recommended a repeated "trust us, we are scientists" argument.
"prior communication"
I wonder if Yeo and Ms Chuckle-brother will be meeting afterwards? I can just imagine the odious Trougher proferring "some Madeira, m'dear"...
Messenger - good point. Today's preformance was a less adversori affair than the last match.
Shuckburgh will be buying a very expensive dinner for Yeo this evening and
I bet they won't discuss scrapping the summary for policy makers.
We need an Alexian transcript and a working group of logicians, rhetoricians, sophists, jurists, and scientists to spend a week on it in some quiet retreat. We have the basis for a master-class in sophistry here and it deserves to be put under various microscopes.
Bernie:
But that's the whole point. You never cite anything concrete. You need merely frown, smile indulgently – and then start dissembling (aka lying). Again. As you did before. Certain in the knowledge that your half-truths, indeed quarter-truths, will never be challenged where it counts, ie in Whitehall, where the big decisions are taken and where your own contribution will always be acknowledged. And where your self-satisfaction as a 'major player' – you will excuse me while I step outside to throw up, I hope – can be properly rewarded.
Thus is the multi-billion pound ruination of the British economy sent spinning upon its merry way.
How wonderful it must be to be so important.
Simon Carr nails it at Guido's:
Peter Lilley was right that it was disgraceful. As Carr says the multi-trillions of climate policies deserve far, far better. The BBC report is not too slanted and only really exists because Lilley expressed his anger. I'm with the MP all the way.
"Just for clarification when we talk about aerosols we are not talking about hairsprays"
Good grief Emily! Was that patronizing or humour?
"Just for clarification when we talk about aerosols we are not talking about hairsprays" No, we're talking about Yeo (in Swedish)
(However....She may have been having a sly dig to MP Robertson at the last AR5 Committee who said he knew that everyone had one - an aerosol.)
Stephen Richards: "Bish, why do you inflict this pain upon us ? ;))"
No, Stephen, I'm sad to say that it was Lilley who inflicted it. Shuckburgh was talking of 'data' as if it was real, when it was from models. Lilley failed to pick up on that. If he had, he would have had a killer punch. (EG: Deep ocean temps....measured, or modelled?)
Feb 11, 2014 at 6:53 PM | Unregistered CommenterHarry Passfield
I was talking about the whole broadcast :)
I thought it was Häcken hål
Martyn..."Häcken hål" ... BING translator is your friend ;) You're quite right!
Stephen Richards: You're quite right too. The whole thing was a pain, but I think it could be taken in two subtle ways: there was the pain of our 'champion', Lilley being screwed by Emily and Yeo; and there was the pain of the whole thing being such a complete puff piece for Yeo's mates.
The future strategy surely has to be to get Lilley et al to strip out the model 'data' from empirical data.
"Thus is the multi-billion pound ruination of the British economy sent spinning upon its merry way." --agouts
There will be blood.
As explained in detail elsewhere, climatologists are being unfairly blamed for flaws in more basic fields of science.
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/02/11/met-office-sea-level-forecast-no-resemblance-to-reality/
Now that the curtain has been pulled on this charade,
All is well,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
Harry Pass field
Could you clearly describe what you mean by empirical data?
I would also be fascinated to see your empirical data on temperatures in thirty years time, and the time machine you used to take the measurements. :-)
Harry Passfield
Models are primarily forecasting tools. To replace them with empirical data you need a way of measuring future temperatures.
How do you plan to do this?
Harry Passfield
Models are primarily forecasting tools. To replace them with empirical data you need a way of measuring future temperatures.
How do you plan to do this?
Feb 11, 2014 at 9:09 PM | Unregistered CommenterEntropic man
Measuring the future? That's a new one.
EM: "Models are primarily forecasting tools. To replace them with empirical data you need a way of measuring future temperatures." Haha...You're Emily's Father! I can detect the condescension.
The point I was was making, and you know it, was that Emily was trying to persuade a Parliamentary committee that what she had was 'data' when all when had was model output. She didn't specify or explain the difference.
It is the resiliance of the AGW promoters and rent seekers in the face of being so wrong for so long that is impressive. Of course they only get to do this because the AGW dysfunction is so powerful it does not require facts or integrity or meaningful predictions. AGW works by providing scary predictions and expenisve policies that enrich insiders.
Harry Passfield
Model output is based on physical law and input data. I think what you mean is "empirical data"
For the ocean heat content the prime empirical data comes from ARGO , its American predecessor and research ship data. For Arctic ice there are ship and aircraft logs and, since 1979, satellite data. There is 130 years of station data. There are satellite data on insulation and OLR.
Do these not count as empirical data?
I've encountered this phrase on sceptic blogs before, but have never been clear on its meaning . I suspect that the sceptics who use it are not clear either.
Haha...You're Emily's Father! I can detect the condescension.
(...)
Feb 11, 2014 at 9:38 PM Harry Passfield
HP - I assume that Entropic Man's unfortunate way of talking down to people is something he developed in teaching science to adolescents over the years.
It's something that seems to afflict some schoolteachers. Years of noticing that they know more about their subject than the other thirty people in the room slowly convinces them that they are (as someone put it on another thread) the sharpest knife in the cutlery drawer.
It's very clear that Emily was aiming to deceive by giving the impression that output from models was data from observations.
Martin A, Harry Passfield
Thank you for the insults. I found them most encouraging.
When you respond with abuse I know
1) I have scored a point.
2) You have no answer.
Martin A ,Harry Pasafield
Mr Lilley said a third of the total carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere in human history had happened since 1997 and yet it had not resulted in a rise in the surface temperature of the earth.
He asked Dr Shuckburgh if this had reduced, increased or left unaltered her confidence in future projections.
Dr Shuckburgh said the surface temperature was "one measure of heat" in the entire climate system and pointed to "very dramatic" changes elsewhere in the eco-system.
"The last three decades have been successively warmer than each other," she said.
"So we have seen strong decreases in Arctic sea ice, we have seen an increase in sea level, we have seen increasing heat content of the ocean, we have seen decreasing snow cover in the northern hemisphere, so other parts of the system have clearly demonstrated changes in temperature."
This came from the BBC report on the meeting.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26133916
All the points ahe mentioned came from measured data.
At 10:13:45 Shuckburgh tells a whopper about Antarctic Sea ice.
She claims there have only been 'insignificant' changes in Antarctic ice and the data 'has uncertainties'.
This is a huge lie. The Antarctic sea ice anomaly (relative to the 1979-2008 mean) has remained above zero since late 2011 and is currently 760,000 sq km. There is no other period in the satellite record where the anomaly has remained positive for over 2 years.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.antarctic.png
Why does she need to expose herself to the hazard of lying to a Parliamentary Committee? Even NSIDC says:
'Antarctic sea ice remains significantly more extensive than average.'
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
Sir Peter 'I am not a scientist' Williams certainly does not hold back when it come to pontificating on both the contents of AR5 and his interpretation of the technical reports.
I particularly liked his comment about the 'manifest obviousness of the glacial ice loss'. He should be in Pseuds Corner in Private Eye.
It sounds like he would make an ideal climate scientist - 'data ... what's that'?
At 10:13:45 Shuckburgh tells a whopper about Antarctic Sea ice.
------------------------------------------------
It is so annoying and disturbing to see such untrue statements again and again.
Why do supposed to be scientists act like activitists in the name of the cause ?
Is it just group think, is it incompetence or is it a spineless response to external pressure from co-activists, politicians and media ?