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Bishop Hill Feb 3, 2012 Climate: other Media Lord Oxburgh chairs a discussion meeting at Imperial College, London. I ribbed Alice Bell about her earlier description of the event as a "debate", and you'll see why when I list the participants:
The audio is here.
Bishop Hill Feb 3, 2012 Climate: other
Updated on Feb 3, 2012 by
Bishop Hill
Updated on Feb 3, 2012 by
Bishop Hill
The Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology has published a briefing paper on weather and climate. I've had a quick glance, and this caught my attention.
Natural forms of climate variability are likely to be the main influence on the UK’s climate over the next few decades.
Who knew?
Bishop Hill Guido Fawkes has just tweeted about Chris Huhne, our Energy and Climate Change Secretary:
+ + + Vicky Pryce: “”I understand there will be charges” + + +: BBC correspondent tweeting unconfirmed rumour: V...
Toast?
Bishop Hill
Charges it is.
A short pause for celebration, followed, no doubt, by the (inevitable) appointment of someone just as bad.
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George Monbiot tweets
I'm sad to see #ChrisHuhne go. He's been one of the few voices of (relative) sanity in the Coalition.
Bishop Hill Feb 3, 2012 Climate: other Hilary Ostrov posted this in the comments to the Burton Richter thread. Worthy of a header post IMHO.
There once was a laureate named Richter
Who issued an obiter dicta:
That I am be-medalled
Means the science is settled
I can tell by one glance at the picture
Bishop Hill Feb 3, 2012 Climate: Sceptics Media Sometimes concurrent events can cause, if not cognitive dissonance, then at least a pause for thought. The news today brings two such events into focus.
Firstly, there is a petition to have Michael Mann disinvited as a speaker at a public lecture at his home university, Penn State, a kerfuffle reported in indignant terms by Andy Revkin here. (In passing I'm struggling to recall similar indignation from Revkin over all the disinvitations to sceptics -perhaps my memory is failing me, or perhaps it's the attempt to show public support for a disinvitation that is upsetting him).
Meanwhile, the Australian billionairess Gina Rinehart has bought major stakes in several media businesses, bringing with it access to Australian TV and the horrible possibility of sceptic voices being heard by ordinary law-abiding folk. The upshot is another petition, this time demanding that Australian media ownership rules be changed to prevent this kind of wickedness.
Bishop Hill Feb 2, 2012 Climate: Models Climate: Surface Revkin posts what I have to say is an astonishingly fatuous letter from Nobel laureate Burton Richter in response to the letter of the 16 in the Wall Street Journal.
Armed with my own Nobel Medal, I say if you can read a graph, the evidence is indeed incontrovertible because the temperature has gone up. The Physical Society is right, he is wrong, and I can’t understand why he complains about the temperature rise issue when there is more to discuss on the second question; who is the villain?
This is what is known in the trade as a straw man. Nobody is arguing that temperatures have not gone up, including the 16 signatories of the Wall Street Journal letter. Somehow one expects that Nobel laureates would be able to string together a logical argument (or at least that the winners of scientific Nobels would be able to do so).
The 16 scientists note only that temperature hasn't risen for over ten years. This is inconsistent with a world warming at 2 degrees per century and is surprising in view of the increases in greenhouse gases we have seen over the same period.
Let me say it again: the question is not whether temperatures have risen or whether mankind has affected the climate. Temperatures have always risen and fallen and mankind has always affected the climate. The question is whether we have a problem on our hands. The poor performance of the climate models suggests that the problem is much less than we have been led to believe.
Bishop Hill Feb 2, 2012 Climate: Sceptics Climate: other Barry Woods has published an interesting email exchange between himself, Tamsin Edwards and Peter Gleick. This revolved around Gleick having publicly accused him of being offensive. Barry - possibly the politest tweeter there is - was understandably miffed and asked Gleick to substantiate his remarks. There's a happy ending, of sorts.
Bishop Hill Feb 2, 2012 Climate: other Here's Tamsin's second post - a sort of AGW equivalent of the political compass.
I remember doing something vaguely similar myself several years ago. The fact that there is a range of views among AGW dissenters is an important one.
Bishop Hill Feb 2, 2012 Climate: CRU Climate: Jones Climate: Surface Thanks to reader William for pointing out Climategate 2 email 4578. The context seems to be a discussion of how to present temperature trends, and it is worth reading the full email thread. But Jones' contribution to the thread looks a bit problematic.
date: Mon Jul 18 14:25:52 2005
from: Phil Jones <p.jones@uea.ac.uk>
subject: Re: Text and CQ stuff
to: "Parker, David (Met Office)" <david.parker@metoffice.gov.uk>, Kevin Trenberth <trenbert@ucar.edu>Kevin,
Even without smoothing it is possible to get a trend of nearer 0.75 if the trend starts around 1920 (especially if the cold year of 1917 is at the start). The periods chosen for Table 3.2.2 had some justification, so we need to be a little careful. As a schematic for CQ2 though, it will be a different way of showing the same data.
I'll talk it over with David.Cheers
Bishop Hill Feb 1, 2012 Climate: Sceptics Matt Briggs has been reading The Bad Astronomy post about global temperatures and is not impressed.
...the scientists were right and Plait was wrong. Or, as he might phrase it, he blatantly misinterpreted long term trends. Notice old Phil (his source, actually) starts, quite arbitrarily, with 1973, a point which is lower than the years preceding this date. If he would have read the post linked above, he would have known this is a common way that cheaters cheat. Not saying you cheated, Phil, old thing. But you didn’t do yourself any favors.
Somewhat amusingly, Plait ends his semi-random venting by telling us that Michael Mann has been “tweeting furiously” about this. Good grief! This isn’t helping his case. Mann’s understanding of statistics may be likened to an overly enthusiastic undergraduate who left the lecture early.
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Bishop Hill Feb 1, 2012 "Travesty" Trenberth et al are in the Wall Street Journal today, taking issue with last week's letter suggesting that panic over global warming is not required. Presumably, the message from the scientific establishment is that panic is a necessity.
It's pretty dull stuff - "97% of climatologists whose funders expressed a preference" - that kind of thing. But I was struck by this:
Climate experts know that the long-term warming trend has not abated in the past decade. In fact, it was the warmest decade on record.
Bishop Hill Feb 1, 2012 Climate: Models To the layman, the word "model" implies a scaled down version of something, correct in all its salient details. We all know the kind of thing.
A climate model is not like that. As everyone knows, climate models are not validated out of sample and we don't know if any of their salient details are correct. Some features of the real world are reproduced on a "hindcast" basis, but the ability of models to make meaningful predictions is more in the realms of hope than established fact.
