How are the statistics?

I'm not a statistician, but I have been hanging around with statisticians for several years now and I have picked up a certain amount along the way. I was therefore intrigued by the paper by Lohmann et al, which Luning et al discussed at WUWT a couple of days ago. The Lohmann paper is a comparison of climate model output with proxy sea surface temperature reconstructions for the Holocene and concludes that the correlation between the two is poor.

I had a leaf through the paper and was struck by the fact that they seem to have calculated a simple R2 for the correlation. Can any of my statistically qualified readers tell me if this is right? I had thought that both series would be highly autocorrelated and that any correlation measure would therefore be inflated. Shouldn't they correct for autocorrelation?

Conservatory tax scrapped

A few days ago I mentioned new measures that would have required homeowners to spend thousands of pounds upgrading the energy efficiency of their homes if they wanted to introduce a home improvements such as a conservatory or a new boiler.

Yesterday the Mail reported that these plans have been dropped.

Ministers are to scrap plans for a ‘conservatory tax’ following a massive Tory backlash.

A senior Government source told the Mail that the proposals are ‘dead in the water’.

This latest abrupt U-turn comes only a week after we revealed the move which would force homeowners to fork out hundreds of pounds extra on measures to improve energy efficiency when they build an extension or fit a boiler.

The OK coral

Matt Ridley reports on a new paper in Current Biology, which finds that natural variations in pH along the Great Barrier Reef are larger than anything likely under global warming:

The good news from the research, says Professor Hughes, is that complete reef wipeouts appear unlikely due to temperature and pH alone.

"However, in many parts of the world, coral reefs are also threatened by much more local impacts, especially by pollution and over-fishing. We need to address all of the threats, including climate change, to give coral reefs a fighting chance for the future."

Scruton on HSI

Roger Scruton's new book, How to Think Seriously About the Planet cites The Hockey Stick Illusion.

...the notorious `hockey stick' graph of global temperature change has been subjected to devastating criticism in Andrew Montford, The Hockey Stick Illusion...

Update on Apr 14, 2012 by Bishop Hill

Bob Ward tweets to journalist Ed West:

Your colleagues should read this article about climate change by conservative philosopher Roger Scruton: http://bit.ly/wt8GxZ

Does this mean Bob is now endorsing The Hockey Stick Illusion? :-)

To an incredible degree - Josh 162

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Cartoons by Josh

Update on Apr 13, 2012 by Josh

H/t  to Anthony Watts for some text tweaks and the crystal ball. 

Hansen and the cost of carbon

I was in Edinburgh last week, for the ceremony to award James Hansen the Edinburgh Medal.

Hansen's speech after the event was not much to write home about, but one or two things made me take note. Among these was Hansen's much trailed call for a carbon tax in the USA. This in essence was to be a Pigou tax, with a cost per tonne of CO2 collected at source and redistributed equally among US citizens.

In Hansen's last slide, he mentioned a paper he and a bunch of the usual suspects have submitted to Science, setting out their case. Apparently the paper is struggling to find its way through peer review, although I have to say that if the excerpt we were shown was anything to go by the overwrought tone of the authors' prose would give any reputable journal pause for thought.

I was intrigued, however, by one name on the author list. Frank Ackerman appeared briefly on BH, when I noted his extraordinary inflating of the cost of carbon dioxide from the generally cited $20-30 per tonne to something more along the lines of $1000 or even higher.

Now Americans use 18 tonnes or so of CO2 per capita per year. So that's a minimum of $18000 of redistribution of income per year.

That's a lot.

Lindzen's response to Hoskins et al

Richard Lindzen's response to the critique of his presentation at the House of Commons last month has been posted at GWPF.

Cool exchange

A couple of weeks ago Tamsin Edwards discussed what I think might be a better way forward for those who are interested in understanding the climate debate.

I think a large part of the audience who visit this blog (thank you) contradict these findings. Your trust in the science increases the more I talk about uncertainty! And I think you place greater importance in “calculative” rather than “relational” trust. In other words, you use the past behaviour of the scientist as a measure of trust, not similarity in values. I’ve found that whenever I talk about limitations of modelling, or challenge statements about climate science and impacts that I believe are not robust, my “trust points” go up because it demonstrates transparency and honesty. (See previous post for squandering of some of those points…). Using a warm, polite tone helps a lot, which supports Hebba’s findings. But I would wager that the degree of similarity to my audience is much less important than my ability to demonstrate trustworthiness.

Heat exchange

Updated on Apr 12, 2012 by Bishop Hill

Yale Climate Forum reports on a heated exchange between Doug Keenan and Scott Denning, a climatologist who has made outreach efforts to sceptics, notably attending the Heartland Conference last year.

I find the whole thing rather exasperating to tell the truth. Keenan's point - that we cannot detect any global warming signal in the temperature records - and Denning's point - that CO2 is a greenhouse gas - both seem to me to be substantive, but not decisive. The conversation would be more meaningul if both parties need to recognised this, and discussed what would be decisive.

Click to read more ...

Medallion man - Josh 161

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49 former NASA scientists and astronauts have written to NASA saying “We believe the claims by NASA and GISS, that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global climate change are not substantiated.” Something I am sure most of us thoroughly agree with.

You can read the whole letter here at WUWT

Great timing too considering that James Hansen, famous NASA employee, was awarded the Edinburgh Medal this week...

H/t to Anthony Watts for suggesting adding the NASA logo - why didnt I think of that?

Cartoons by Josh

Beddington whips science five-nil

Sir John Beddington, the government's chief scientific adviser, writes in Farmers Weekly.

There is much to prompt comment. For example, you might have hoped that a credible chief scientific adviser would not make statements like

the first decade of the 21st century was the warmest on record"

without commenting on whether this meant anything in the context of the remainder of the record. Advocacy 1, Science 0.

Click to read more ...

Westminster loses it

Christopher Booker's article in the Mail is extraordinary. The idea that we are intending to add massively to the cost of making home improvements by forcing people to complete a variety of other works at the same time is quite mindblowing.

Anyone thinking of building a new conservatory, replacing their old boiler or putting in new windows had better move fast.

If they wait a couple of years they could find themselves falling foul of a deluge of new ‘green’ red tape that will leave them having to pay thousands of pounds extra.

Under plans being discussed by the Government, revealed by yesterday’s Daily Mail, anyone hoping to make improvements to their home from 2014 may have to carry out a whole lot of additional works to show their property is ‘energy efficient’.

I find the idea that it will be forbidden to replace a broken down boiler without spending thousands more quite immoral. Are people supposed to sit in the cold if they can't afford it?

This is going to make ordinary people very, very angry.

Your taxes at work

More from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office activism files. This is a comment from Hannah Wood, the FCO climate officer last seen showing "green" movies to the natives in her posting in Tanzania. In this episode, she reports on a visit by Met Office staff:

Here in Tanzania we have also been happy to welcome the UK Met Office, working alongside the Tanzanian Meteorological Agency to provide advice and guidance on future plans. We were delighted to welcome two UKMO staff emembers – David Robinson and Tim Donovan.

David was here to install some essential digital recording equipment, provided by the Foreign Office, which will allow the TMA to record and digitally distribute their weather forecasts, thus keeping the forecasting up to date and helping with distaster risk reduction. David also provided guidance on filming and editing of material to produce a climate change awareness film for broadcast on national television and distribution among Tanzanian secondary schools.

Just remember when you hear people complaining about cuts to government spending, that we can still afford to help Tanzanians make "climate change awareness" films.

Hide the incline

Willis Eschenbach has been looking at the Shakun et al paper that was the subject of my Greenhouse reversal post a couple of days ago. It looks as if he has found something important:

I leave the readers to consider the fact that for most of the Holocene, eight millennia or so, half a dozen different ice core records say that CO2 levels were rising pretty fast by geological standards … and despite that, the temperatures have been dropping over the last eight millennia …

Spending cuts

The British Antarctic Survey is up in arms because its funding is due to be sharply cut as the government desperately tries to get the public sector under a semblance of control.

The British scientific research body which discovered the hole in the ozone layer and whose work is now vital to understanding climate change is fighting for its life. Cuts of more than 25 per cent to the budget of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) have been proposed, and threaten not only its continuing work but also have already caused one major casualty, a furious interdepartmental row in Whitehall and prompted the intervention of the Prime Minister.

Interestingly, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has become involved.

The BAS director, Professor Nicholas Owens, and NERC chief executive, Professor Duncan Wingham, are reported to have clashed sharply over the issue. The argument came to a climax in December when Professor Owens went over the head of NERC and made the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) aware of the proposed changes he felt were being forced through. FCO officials are so concerned at the proposals to scale down BAS's work it raised the issue at a National Security Council meeting in January, prompting the intervention of Prime Minister David Cameron. As part of its dual role, it also provides presence in the region for the FCO, where its science work informs government policy. However the FCO does not provide funding for BAS.

Perhaps it should. The FCO seems to have money to burn - it still maintains a network of climate change officers at embassies around the world. These people are engaged in important activities like showing environmentalists' movies to Johnny Foreigner.