Away

I'm off to London for the day - there's a GWPF event on. Blogging will therefore be light.

More signs of the times

Brian Micklethwait, writing at Samizdata notes what may be the beginnings of another significant phase of the climate wars: comedians are starting to laugh at alarmism, or at least those in charge of ITV's series Plebs are.

Britain’s telly comedians are following public opinion on this rather than shaping it. Until a couple of years ago or so, they were constantly going on about how stupid climate non-alarmists were. Then they went quiet on the subject. Are they beginning seriously to see sense?

Advisers advise politicians to look in the peer-reviewed literature

Lord Donoughue is still trying to get the government to respond on the subject of global temperature series:

Lord Donoughue:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answers by Baroness Verma on 14 January (WA 110), 5 February (WA 31-2) and 21 March (WA 170-1), whether they will ensure that their assessment of the probability in relation to global temperatures of a linear trend with first-order autoregressive noise compared with a driftless third-order autoregressive integrated model is published in the Official Report; and, if not, why not. [HL6620]

Lord Newby:

As indicated in a previous Written Answer given by my noble friend Baroness Verma to the noble Lord on 14 January 2013 (Official Report, col. WA110), it is the role of the scientific community to assess and decide between various methods for studying global temperature time series. It is also for the scientific community to publish the findings of such work, in the peer-reviewed scientific literature.

This is quite interesting. The government calls on the Met Office to provide it with advice on climatological matters and there is a raft of chief scientific advisers on board too. The advice seems to be that the temperature rise witnessed in the last century is statistically significant. But no backing for that view seems to be forthcoming apart from "it's in the peer-reviewed literature".

A bit sensitive - Josh 216

Not sure which direction Dana 'Scooter' Nuccitelli is going but I dont think it is too worrying.

H/t to Anthony for suggesting this cartoon.

Cartoons by Josh

SkS quietly withdraws allegation

Last week I ribbed Dana Nuccitelli and Gavin Schmidt over the former's comparing the mean of the Aldrin paper to the mode of Lewis's. Here's the quote:

One significant issue in Lewis' paper (in his abstract, in fact) is that in trying to show that his result is not an outlier, he claims that Aldrin et al. (2012) arrived at the same most likely [i.e. the mode] climate sensitivity estimate of 1.6°C, calling his result "identical to those from Aldrin et al. (2012)."  However, this is simply a misrepresentation of their paper.

The authors of Aldrin et al. report a climate sensitivity value of 2.0°C [per the paper, the mean] under certain assumptions that they caution are not directly comparable to climate model-based estimates. When Aldrin et al. include a term for the influences of indirect aerosols and clouds, which they consider to be a more appropriate comparison to estimates such as the IPCC's model-based estimate of ~3°C, they report a sensitivity that increases up to 3.3°C. Their reported value is thus in good agreement with the full body of evidence as detailed in the IPCC report.

Click to read more ...

Moriarty on peer review

The University of Nottingham's Phil Moriarty has written an excellent piece in Times Higher Education looking at post-publication peer review, whether through official channels or via blogs.

Responding last year to criticism of their field in the wake of the serial fraud committed by Diederik Stapel, three social psychologists - Wolfgang Stroebe, Tom Postmes and Russell Spears - published a paper in Perspectives on Psychological Science, titled “Scientific Misconduct and the Myth of Self-Correction in Science”. This provided compelling evidence that, across the disciplines, peer review fails to root out fraud. This is worrisome enough. Yet even basic errors in the literature can now be extremely difficult to correct on any reasonable timescale.

Meanwhile, Jonathan Jones points us to this post - at once appalling and hilarious - about just how difficult publishing comments has become.

You cant keep some things down - Josh 215

Over at Climate Audit, Steve has been looking at the resurfacing of some Hockey Stick science papers, and the fun continues here and here.

Cartoons by Josh

(click on the image for a slightly larger version)

Met Office on the cold in March

The Met Office has issued a news release on the reasons for the cold March, together with a more detailed technical explanation for climate and weather geeks. While Lord Hunt's "cold caused by melting Arctic" line is repeated, other possible causes are explained in full as is the existence of precedents for this kind of weather. A balanced briefing from the Met Office? Whatever next?

Whilst the cold March 2013 weather is certainly unusual, it is not unprecedented or outside the expected natural variability of our climate. There is particularly heightened interest in the role of the Arctic on the UK's weather, given rapid changes in Arctic sea ice, and on the likely changes we may observe given future decline. It is worth re-emphasising, however, that while changes in the Arctic are consistent with predisposing the climate system to cold weather in northern Europe, this is only one possible driver among several potential factors which could account for the cold March weather. What we have still to understand is the degree to which our changing climate may alter the likelihood and intensity of extreme events. With the rapidly changing Arctic, this is now high on the research agenda.

The low carbon fairy story

It seems there were actually two debates on climate at Westminster last week. In second, on the subject of Low Carbon Cooperation with China, Lilley was again on fine form:

Mr Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con): Criminologists have observed that the victims of confidence tricksters are often willing—indeed, eager—to believe the story to which they fall victim.  The more absurd, fantastic or fabulous the story, the more willing they are to believe it.

This Select Committee report - Low Carbon Cooperation with China - and the government's reply prove that Ministers and Members will willingly believe any delusion as long as it is sufficiently fabulous.  It contains all the characteristics necessary for the sort of fairy tale in which one wants to believe: it has a faraway country, mysterious powers that we attribute to ourselves, and pots of gold—green gold—at the end of the rainbow.

Click to read more ...

Still crazy after all these years

Richard North has an interesting report on yesterday's Westminster Hall debate on the future of the UNFCCC process. Peter Lilley appears to have been on fine form.

But lunacy, in the shape of Yeo, Gardiner and Labour's Luciana Berger, seems to have reigned supreme.

Lewis 2013 as an "outlier"

One of the strangest things about Dana Nuccitelli's article about the Lewis 2013 paper is its twin-pronged attack - alleging that Lewis misrepresented the match between the mode of his estimate and that of Aldrin et al, and suggesting that the Lewis result is an outlier.

In the graph below, I have redrawn Lewis 2013 and a selection of other papers: Aldrin et al, Forster and Gregory, and Troy Masters' new paper. The IPCC's 2-4.5deg range is shown as the shaded area.

Click to read more ...

Donald ducks

Donald Prothero, a geologist and (official) skeptic, has written an article about the Marcott hockey stick, but mentioning its less illustrious forebear as well. While there is obviously quite a lot one can say about Marcott's work, I thought it best to address myself to the section on Mann. This was as follows:

The chief legitimate scientific criticism about the original “hockey stick” paper (so-called because it shows climate as nearly a straight trend through the past 1000 years, culminating in a sharp bend upward in the past 200 years,  like the blade of a hockey stick) was that Mann and colleagues generated a composite curve of actual observed global temperatures (the last 150 years or so), with older records from tree rings, ice cores, and a few other data sources. Since all these recorders measure global temperature differently, it is always a challenge to calibrate them properly so they yield a single consistent climate curve. However, NONE of these attacks on the data of Mann et al. (1998) contradict the fact that the sharp rise in temperatures in the past 200 years is real, or that it is much more rapid than any climate change we could detect from these data sources over the previous 1000 years.

As readers here will no doubt realise, this is about as wrong as it's possible to be in three sentences, so I submitted a comment as follows:

Your paragraph on the original hockey stick is not even close to being correct. The overlaying of instrumental temperatures on the proxies was a minor talking point – it merited a paragrah in my book.

The major criticisms related to use of proxy data that were known to contain a non-climatic signal and the use of an ad-hoc statistical technique that overemphasised hockey stick shaped series in the dataset and the fact that it failed standard statistical verification tests.

The point that none of the criticisms of the hockey stick refuted the idea that temperatures have risen sharply in the last 200 years is a surprising thing to say, given that the hockey stick shows temperatures rising only from the year 1900. However, that wasn’t what the hockey stick paper or the criticisms of it were about anyway (why would you need proxies to tell you about 20th century temperatures?). What was in dispute was whether the medieval warm period was warmer than today.

These words were deemed too horrible for the sensitive Skepticblog readers and my comment has not appeared.

Dr Prothero is, it seems, a man who would rather duck the possibility of being confronted with his errors.

Far fetched and fatuous

Lord Stern's latest wheeze is the startlingly fatuous idea that we are in the midst of a carbon bubble. The argument goes that markets are overvaluing fossil fuel assets which are worthless because they will have to remain under the ground so we can meet our emissions targets.

The market's valuation of fossil fuel assets seems to me to be a rather rational recognition that we need fossil fuels in order to keep the lights on. The idea that politicians will choose to let the lights go out in preference to burning gas and coal seems just a tad farfetched to me. They might try it but any that did try it would not be around for long, I would say.

Richard Tol describes Stern's ideas as "far-fetched fiction". That sounds about right.

Gavin Schmidt slams Skeptical Science

Gavin Schmidt, a much misunderstood character in the global warming debate, has demonstrated his good faith and honourable intentions by issuing a denunciation of Skeptical Science.

Earlier today Gavin and I exchanged some tweets about the use of means and modes in climate sensitivity studies. Gavin's thoughts were as follows:

@aDissentient @micefearboggis Comparing the mode to previously reported means is a sleight of hand.

Click to read more ...

Walport on climate change

Mark Walport, the UK's new chief scientific advisor was interviewed on the BBC's World at One show. In an introductory segment Roger Harrabin suggested he would not be as "dogmatic" as Beddington on climate and this supposition was certainly tested by the interviewer Martha Kearney who pressed the new man for a bit of support on the green front.

The relevant segment is below.

Walport interview