Bishop Hill Silliest climate paper ever?
Apr 15, 2015 Climate: WG2 In what looks to be one of the silliest climate papers known to man, researchers at the University of St Andrews are claiming that the 0.1°C warming in ocean temperatures that is alleged to have been caused by human activity has caused whales to migrate one month earlier than they did 30 years ago.
A long-term study conducted between 1984 and 2010, now published in scientific journal PLoS-ONE, has documented for the first time how whales have adapted to increases in sea surface temperature over recent decades.
The research, conducted with Canadian research body the Mingan Island Cetacean Study, has found that over the 27-year period the whales arrived at feeding grounds on average one day earlier each year, suggesting a remarkable ability to react to small fluctuations in sea temperature.
Remarkable indeed. But not so remarkable as the idea that anyone would take this nonsense seriously.
Reader Comments (121)
Bish, I strongly doubt it is the silliest climate paper ever. At least, not yet.
it seems to have taken them five years to get it through peer review.Mind you,
It really has been a fun fest over the last few weeks with the Greens getting some media attention.
I would not miss any of their statements- they are priceless.
Forget any conventional TV comedy shows the Greens can easily have you rolling in the isles with spontaneous uncontrollable mirth.
How they can keep a straight face while delivering pure nonsense tops it all.
Forget Labour or Tories or UKIP lets have much more of the Greens to cheer us up on these cold miserable nights
Michael Hart
It takes five years to produce/find enough Rhodes Scholars to form the peer review team.
Bish, I was not impressed by this post. All it says is that they are silly and wrong, but no attempt to justify why you say so. I read the press release that you linked and couldn't see anything immediately daft. I suspect that the paper might be "nonsense" for a number of reasons - and maybe it is, maybe not - but just saying so without any further justification is no better than a typical "greenie" argument.
Other than that, Great :-)
michael hart, I am not sure it spent 5 years in peer review.
A more likely scenario is that the original study was completed 5 years ago, generating not a lot of publicity.
Some years later, in a a desperate trawl for anything indicating climate change, someone eager for research funding, found something, and cobbled together a report, worthy of climate science recognition, and defence by aTTP and Eli.
Cobblers, is I believe the polite technical term.
Coming so soon after the Mann/Rahmsdorf Gulf Stream Shocker, even semi-educated whales must be wondering, if they could get funding to advise climate scientists. It would only seem fair given the sacrifices made by whales in the name of scientific research.
attp, you may be itching to get 'banned' but you are out of luck. As I said before, you are incapable of earning it.
aTTP "Just out of interest, did anyone here actually read the paper?"
Did you read it? Do you seriously believe that any creature/plant on this planet has to respond to a 0.1C increase in temperature of their habitat? Shut the front door!
ATTP,
Did you read the paper?
The whales evolving behavior reflects their growing taste for polar bears
This is quality junk science, as could be guessed from Eli's and ATTP's frenzied defence. Even a quick look at the data shows that they aren’t measuring the arrival dates of the Fin Whales, they are measuring the start dates of their fin whale counts. The earliest recorded date is day 156, but only in three years (1992, 1993, 2010) did counts actually start before day 156.
Furthermore the “average length of stay” between average arrival and departure dates is derisory, in one year (1985) actually 0.07 days and maximally (2010) 21.12 days. This is because most Fin Whales were only seen once per year which is a rather shaky statistical basis for estimating arrival and departure dates to put it mildly.
Another interesting point is that they found that their survey effort had zero correlation with their results. This implies that they would have gotten the same result without any survey effort at all, which does seem implausible.
The paper is here:
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0121374#pone-0121374-t002
but as is often the case, the interesting part is the “additional data”
The MOST CONVINCING PROOF EVER that GREENHOUSE RADIATIVE FORCING is FALSE PHYSICS</B>
I've shown below, using the AGW conjecture, that we should expect some areas on Earth to reach temperatures of over 100°C when the flux from the atmosphere is added to the Solar flux in Stefan Boltzmann (S-B) calculations. Hence the whole concept that such flux can be added is obviously false, and so too are the rest of the energy budget diagrams (K-T, NASA, IPCC etc) and of course the computer models.
It is obvious that in climatology physics courses they brainwash students who end up like Joel Shore and Roy Spencer being adamant that we must add the back radiation to the solar radiation. That is shown to be wrong in my March 2012 paper and also by a professor of applied mathematics in "Mathematical Physics of BlackBody Radiation" written towards the end of that year.
Let me explain it simply:
The AGW proponents correctly estimate the mean solar radiation being absorbed by the surface as 168W/m^2. They then add 324W/m^2 of back radiation and deduct 102W/m^2 to allow for the simultaneous losses by evaporative cooling and conduction, convection etc. This gives them the "right" 390W/m^2 that coincides with 288K that they claim is the mean surface temperature. (Personally I think it's closer to 10°C than 15°C.)
Now we need to understand that this 168W/m^2 of solar radiation is a 24-hour annual mean for an average location at a latitude of 45°(S or N) that is half way between the Equator and the relevant Pole. Even that location will receive a mean of twice that in 12 hours of average daylight with average cloud cover. Locations such as this in the far south of New Zealand have mean annual temperatures around 9°C or 10°C.
You need to remember that we start with the solar constant of 1360W/m^2 which is what the one location on Earth where the Sun is directly overhead would receive if there were no atmosphere. But, again on average, there is about 30% reflection and 20% absorption which reduces that to about half. So, on an average day with average cloud cover at noon where the Sun is directly overhead, that location would receive half of that 1360W/m^2, namely 680W/m^2. But on a clear day there is only about 10% reflection, not 30% because two-thirds of the albedo is due to clouds. So that location receives about 70% of 1360W/m^2, namely about 950W/m^2.
However, the AGW proponents claim that an average location at 288K receives back from the atmosphere 83% (324/390) of the radiation it emits. I don't dispute that. But the electro-magnetic energy in that radiation from a cooler source is not converted to thermal energy in the surface. The AGW proponents say it is. Hence they add it to the solar radiation in S-B calculations.
Now, the solar radiation does not achieve the S-B temperature we might expect for two reasons, the first being that there is simultaneous energy loss by non-radiative processes and the second reason is because there may not be enough time in the day for the solar radiation to reach the maximum temperature. However, if we deduct 200W/m^2 from that 950W/m^2 as a reasonable estimate for losses by non radiative processes (that are only half that amount at 288K) the resulting 750W/m^2 does explain the observed temperatures which have been recorded in the forties and fifties °C. But let's just use 600W/m^2 (which has a blackbody temperature of 48°C that is realistic) thus making an allowance for the limited time in the day.
But, if we were to now add 83% back radiation (that is, 83% of something like 600W/m^2 that would be emitted by regions like this on clear days) we get about 1100W/m^2 which of course gives ridiculously high temperatures in the vicinity of 100°C.
Hence it is obviously wrong to add back radiative flux to solar flux and use the total in Stefan Boltzmann calculations. And so the whole GH radiative forcing paradigm is wrong, as are those models, and that's why you need to consider the totally different 21st century paradigm here that is based on the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
The whales were always on time. It was the observers who were coming one day earlier each year.
Geronimo, the gulf of St. Lawrence and off of Nova Scotia is NOT the globe, so if you want to say something about this paper, you need to figure out what the temperature difference in the area is, and more importantly how the sea ice cover has changed in the Dec-March time period.
The waters East of Canada host downwelling and represent a regional extreme of sea surface cooling .
Back on dry land, PlanetaryPhysicsGroiup ( sic) says :
"I've shown... that we should expect some areas on Earth to reach temperatures of over 100°C ... Hence the whole concept that such flux can be added is obviously false, and so too are the rest of the energy budget diagrams (K-T, NASA, IPCC etc) and of course the computer models."
But the inconvenient ease of frying an egg on asphalt or coke at high noon on the equator reminds us that real world surfaces reach such temperatures every day.
PlanetaryPhysicsGroiup -
As I'm sure you wouldn't post an entirely irrelevant, off-topic comment, I presume that your comment is meant to relate to the post's subject by competing for the title of "silliest climate paper." Sadly, its brevity precludes awarding it the honour.
Russell -
Really, 100 °C surfaces are common? You must hang out in some interesting places.
And it doesn't take 100°C to fry an egg.
Oh dear!
The poor whales suffer from miniscule surface temperature increases...
A whale is eminently suited to withstand extreme temperature changes, day to day or dive to dive.
A one tenth of a degree surface warming just might be enough to foster faster growth of their food. Considering the amounts a whale eats daily, food is far more important to a whale than slight temperature fluctuations.
These whale researchers are desirous of continuing their sea jaunts, so of course they blame the temperature. What better way to continue their parasitic existence off the CAGW money flow.
And Then There's Physics >> If [Bish] he doesn't like people pointing out .... he should just ..... ban them
And Then There's Physics seems to think all blogs are run as his is.
"Because of warmer temperature in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and off Nova Scotia the winter sea ice there has been strongly decreasing in the past 30 years or so. This accounts for the difference in migration patterns and oh yes, about that 0.1 C change"
"This accounts for the difference in migration patterns" Oh really? Could it be a bit of a stretch and conflating one naturally induced change, a phenomenon maybe entirely unrelated to cetaceans and their free swimming travelling habits - do we know what they were doing prior to the 30 years in question?
I'll bet that thar she blows - twas a might cooler there this last winter gone, oh I know what you're thinking...one winter doesn't a climate maketh.....and 0.1ºC degree is a pi99 in the ocean for a whale.
Harold W asks :
'Russell -
Really, 100 °C surfaces are common? "
Just how common do you imagine "frying an egg on asphalt or coke at high noon on the equator" to be?
Thin absorbing films on IR relective thermally insulating substrates can transiently go even higher in temperature- - the
The MOST CONVINCING PROOF EVER that GREENHOUSE RADIATIVE FORCING is FALSE PHYSICS</B> dude's ignorance of radiative transfer washes over into thermal physics.
A few metres deeper would make a 0.1C difference ?
Surely while whale #1 is at Xm deep and whale #2 is at Ym then they'd be at 0.1C difference in temperature
Anyone know what X-Y would be ? 2m, 10m ?
Also 0.1C seems close to the margin of error of the instruments surely ?
Dr Halpern: "Geronimo, the gulf of St. Lawrence and off of Nova Scotia is NOT the globe, so if you want to say something about this paper, you need to figure out what the temperature difference in the area is, and more importantly how the sea ice cover has changed in the Dec-March time period."
I didn't write the paper, but they don't mention sea ice, maybe you should point it out to them that they've got the wrong culprit. Either way it doesn't say a lot about them as scientists, searchers of truth, if they haven't taken into account the sea ice. If sea ice, is indeed important to the whales and lack of it sends them off to their feeding grounds.
The other thing that they seem to have got wrong, if you're knowledge of the gulf of St Lawrence is as good as you think, is the temperature. True they don't say 0.1C, but they do say:
"...suggesting a remarkable ability to react to small fluctuations in sea temperature."
I don't' have the expertise in the temperatures of the waters of the gulf of St Lawrence, but this paper gives an estimated whopping 7.3C/century increase over the period 1985 - 2009, athough they don't seem to quite believe it themselves they go with the data. (Temperatures in Gulf of St Lawrence 1985 -2009). However you don't appear to have read the article anyway. What the article says is that the whales have moved one day earlier every year for thirty years which means that even if the gulf of St Lawence waters had increased by an improbable 2.19C over the period these whales appear to be detecting a 0.073C change each year.
Of course it could have nothing to do with the temperature, but more to do with the diminishing O2 in deep waters in the gulf of St Lawrence, CO2 in Gulf of St Lawrence.
The diminishing O2 is, of course, caused by an increase in CO2 in the atmosphere, my latest paper will go on to show that all of the O2 in the increased CO2 in the atmosphere comes from the Gulf of St Lawrence, I'm nearly there, both Nature and Science have accepted it and I've selected the reviewers. Now I merely have to write the paper with a few graphs showing lack of diminishing O2 in waters throughout the world (difficult I know, but I'll use "interpolation" which should ease the process) and bingo I'm there. Stocker has told me it's likely to be the poster child of AR6..
geronimo,
Yes, they do, all over the place. For example (page 3/15)
and
So, I take it that the answer to my question "did anyone here read the paper" is "no"?
My tongue was slightly in cheek when I wrote that, Golf Charlie.
I actually thought it more likely that they might have found the last five years didn't fit the pattern, so decided to omit the data entirely. That might appear unjustifiably cynical in other disciplines, but in global-warming claims such depths are plumbed frequently.
I am not quite sure why leporidaic meanderings can possibly be defined as a defence, but aTTP seems to think it is, so it must be. What a wonderful world it must be, where anything you believe is the unquestionable truth. Of course, there can only be one source of this Truth (any suggestions?), and any doubters may then be summarily punished, perhaps by the edict of Parncutt.
Sadly (for some; gladly, for others), the real world does not operate that way. The truth is often well-concealed, and may take many attempts to be revealed; though, even then, there might be doubts. It does appear that doubt is the greatest fear of many people; sadly, this fear exists in all fields, even those of the sciences.
Oh, dear. As usual, I post my ever-so-witty comment without reading the previous, considerably more sagacious comments. tty (Apr 16, 2015 at 12:20 AM) thoroughly trounces any of the weak defences put up for this. As scientific studies goes, this is should be treated like a British wine – laying down, and avoided at all costs!
michael hart,
Thanks, I've been looking for a polite term to use. That's probably the one.
What cobblers :-) I'm not actually defending the paper. I have no real idea if it has merit or not. I'm simply pointing out that noone here appears to have actually read it, and that - given what our host seems willing to promote without comment - our host really doesn't know what's nonsense and what isn't. I'm you're going to criticise what I say, at least try and criticise what I actually say, not what you think I said, or what you think I meant.
You haven't read the paper, have you? You couldn't have, celebrating anniversary and 'engaging' below the line.
Russell: "Just how common do you imagine "frying an egg on asphalt or coke at high noon on the equator" to be?'"
Not my point. In your 1:50 AM comment, you wrote, in apparent rebuttal to PPG's discussion of the implausibility of 100°C surface temperatures, "But the inconvenient ease of frying an egg on asphalt or coke at high noon on the equator reminds us that real world surfaces reach such temperatures every day." To me, I interpreted this as suggesting that (a) frying an egg requires 100°C temperatures, and (b) one can observe such temperatures on real world surfaces with "inconvenient ease".
Happy to accept clarification of your 1:50 AM post on either or both of the above points.
aTTP: pot and kettle? You obviously did NOT read what I wrote, instead putting your own interpretation of what you think I wrote. Where did I say that you were defending the paper? However, it would appear that you think that Eli The-edge-groove was (Apr 15, 2015 at 8:47 PM):
(… yeah, yeah… I know… that is not what you meant, and it is my fault for not knowing what you did mean… blah, blah, blah….)Sven (Apr 15, 2015 at 1:51 PM) suggests a more apposite title for the paper, but, as he points out, it does not have the bling of climate change. Having scanned through it myself, it gives the impression of relying upon statements of the bleedin’ obvious, all dressed up in fancy language. There is one gem, though:
So, the 0.8°C over the last century is not quite as “unprecedented” as we are led to believe, is it? I wonder what humans were doing, then…?As the single largest area in the study, the Grand Banks, can have large variations of SST within a few kilometres, quite why there should be a belief that whales or their prey can be sensitive to a 0.1°C change has to be questionable, even if that change was actually measurable, bearing in mind that the acceptable error margin for most field thermometers is usually 0.2C.
A bit late to comment on this post but did anyone chase down the absolutely marvellous data whereby they logged the travel itinerary of hundreds of whales over this period. I followed one fin (F002) for sixteen years and he (she) showed no discernible pattern in arrival (day 170 - 286) departure (day 187- day 286) or the time of stay (1 day, frequently, but up to 92, in 2010). A brief look at others suggested that probably no individual actually exhibited the apparent collective behaviour deduced by the researchers and attributed to atmospheric CO2. For some reason they had no interest in researching the actual behaviour of the subjects or in the huge variation in the actual number of whales sighted year to year.
I briefly followed a contemporary of F002 - one F012 but who sadly, in 1993, seemed to have an encounter with Captain Ahab and was recycled as Pedigree Chum.
Judging by Attp's comments his knowledge of whales is limited to believing that Moby Dick is something treated with a little blue pill.
"believing that Moby Dick is something treated with a little blue pill."
Steady, you'll have flustered of Hertfordshire on the line again - and ATTP is not getting any younger.............
'Ay, ay, lads - there's some of them 'climate scientists'.... I hear they've detected a 0.1C difference in the sea temperature.... Let's pretend that we're in distress so they can go back to their unis and write stupid stuff to get their grants...'
diogenese2 +1
That's one for the Bishop' s Hall of Fame.
Hold the Nobel Prize!! We've found a replacement for the mercury thermometer. It's calibrated in "number of days". The temperature has changed by 0.1C and over a 27 year period the whales migrate on the average one day earlier per year. That's a 0.0037037037.... degree C each year. So by measuring the "day" the whales migrate, we can measure the ocean temperature to an accuracy of 0.0037 degrees C. Now if I only had a place to keep a few whales.
Sherlock @ 3.09pm: You may be on the right track. My point is that if no individual responds to the temperature change how can they collectively do so except by deliberate will. We know that they talk to each other but not what they say. To Douglas Adams I am indebted for the perception that they may be studying us and egging us on in the global warming delusion. If so the joke is on them as they have forgotten what we used for light before kerosene.
Bishop Hill
Could you elaborate on exactly why you think this paper is "nonsense"? What specifically is wrong with their methods, data or interpretation?
igsy
No, and indeed that's the point. If you read the paper, they specifically say:
There's several comments above about the relationship with temperature, but again if you read the paper, the authors talk more about sea ice change and the availability of the whales' food supplies, both of which will depend on local temperature changes and also changes in ocean currents and upwelling of deeper water affecting nutrients, which can be indirect effects of a changing climate.
As ATTP points out, it's worth actually reading a paper before simply cynically dismissing it out of hand because of what you assume it says…. ;)
Richard Betts -
[Emphasis mine]The press release mentions solely the temperature change as the cause:
HaroldW
Well that was silly of them - thanks for pointing that out.
Nevertheless you should always check out for yourself what a study has actually done. I think we all know that it's not uncommon for research to be over-simplified in the media and even institutions' own press releases. I'd particularly expect people who describe themselves as 'sceptics' to check things out for themselves…. ;)
The press release isn't brilliant, but it does also say
So, it doesn't take much to work out that it's not just because SSTs are 0.1K higher. Of course, if you have no desire to actually see any merit in some work, it probably is much harder to work these things out, than if you approached it with a moderately open mind.
"Nevertheless you should always check out for yourself what a study has actually done." Richard Betts.
Why? Isn't the whole reason for a press release to give the highlights of the paper? Are you saying that scientists have no involvement with the press release and are just helpless victims of the spin media? It seems to me that if no one questions the press release then that's fine, if they do then we should read the paper. Cake and eat it time.
Tiny,
Press releases are often rubbish and - IMO - we should be aiming to avoid press releases appearing to make a result seem more exciting than maybe it actually is. However, universities want their research in the media and it is a university press officer's job to try and get it there. That doesn't excuse poor press releases, though, it just highlights that it is an endemic problem, and not something specific to climate science.
However, if one is going to call a paper rubbish, then it should be judged on the paper itself, not on the press release. Otherwise, all you've done is argue that a press release is rubbish and that is almost always true. You should also bear in mind that just because a press release says something you don't like, it isn't necessarily nonsense. For example, I think it's probably impossible for a press release about a piece of mainstream climate science to not be judged as nonsense by the host of this site and by the regular commenters. If it's impossible to draft one that wouldn't be judged as nonsense, what can actually be done about this and why bother?
The field of climate science is known to two generations of people on this planet via press releases.
I agree, it's not just climate science that's guilty of sexing up the press releases of academic papers. Invariably when you read the paper for a headline grabbing press release you find quite different information, not least that the study is often impossibly small to give any honest conclusion. By choice or not, press releases are turning scientists into liars. It's not our job to clean up your pool. Your attempts to pretend we have some responsibility to be more balanced than scientists/press offices is laughable. One side is being paid (usually public money) to be responsible the other is a bunch of unpaid members of the public.
p.s. TinyCO2 +100!!!
Tiny,
I said no such thing and why would I think you have some responsibility to be more balanced that scientists/press officers? I'm suggesting that if you're going to call a paper rubbish, read the paper!
Richard Betts -
Granted, in aTTP's words, "press releases are often rubbish." One might almost say "always".
Yet, having only skimmed the paper, it triggers my order-of-magnitude-tilt-detector to suggest that a large change in timing of a migration of thousands of kilometers is triggered by such slight temperature changes or ice concentration at the destination. And yes, "changes in ocean currents and upwelling of deeper water affecting nutrients ... can be indirect effects of a changing climate," but the paper merely performs regression rather than looking into such intermediate causes (and whether changes therein are forced or "natural").
I am also disturbed by this bit: "Mean date of first sighting is thus a potentially biased (late) estimate of population arrival date, mean last sighting date is a potentially biased (early) estimate of population departure date and residency times are thus potentially underestimated." There's no "potentially" about it; it is necessarily a biased estimator. I don't find their approach to investigating its effects convincing. For example, there are noticeably fewer sightings in the earlier part of the observation interval (figure S1), and fewer observations will increase the bias. A logical expectation would be a statistical (likely, Monte Carlo) exploration of the bias associated with frequency of sightings.
Well, if the phenomenon in question is from warming, and it is blamed on man, we can assume it is at least half wrong, or thereabouts.
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