Santer: pause now 20 years long

David Whitehouse has taken a look at the Santer et al paper in Nature Geoscience that claims to find a partial explanation for the hiatus in surface temperature rises in the cumulative effect of a series of small volcanic eruptions.

As an aside, Whitehouse notes that once you have adjusted the temperature data for the non-AGW effects, the pause in warming is very long indeed:

Their Fig 1 shows raw lower temperature data (a), that with the El Nino removed (b) and that with El Nino and El Chichon and Pinatubo removed (c). Looking at 1c one sees that the lower atmosphere shows a standstill since 1993, that is 20 years! This is in itself a remarkable graph extending the ‘pause’ into the start of its third decade.

And suffice it to say, the attribution to volcanoes is shonky indeed.

Up against the Wall - Josh 260

Over at Climate Audit Steve McIntyre's posts on the 'Mann vs Steyn' battle are great fun to read and the comments are very entertaining. The posts are here, here, here, here, here, and here, with another post added today.

Many thanks, Steve, for a great set of posts - the cartoons are queuing up.

Cartoons by Josh

PS In case you are wondering where Mann's attire comes from the reference is here

The mind-boggling coincidence hypothesis

Also hot off the press is a new paper by Gavin Schmidt and colleagues. Doug McNeall reckons I'm not going to like it, but having taken a look (it's open access for registered users of the Nature website), I have to say I think it's lots of fun.

Schmidt and his colleagues are looking at the hiatus in surface temperature rises and considers why the CMIP5 ensemble all got it so wrong. In their new paper they explain that the reason for this is not – as wild-eyed readers at BH might think – that the models are wonky. In fact it's all down to an incredible, incredible coincidence

Here we argue that a combination of factors, by coincidence, conspired to dampen warming trends in the real world after about 1992. CMIP5 model simulations were based on historical estimates of external influences on the climate only to 2000 or 2005, and used scenarios (Representative Concentration Pathways, or RCPs) thereafter⁴. Any recent improvements in these estimates or updates to the present day were not taken into account in these simulations. Specifically, the influence of volcanic eruptions, aerosols in the atmosphere and solar activity all took unexpected turns over the 2000s. The climate model simulations, effectively, were run with the assumption that conditions were broadly going to continue along established trajectories.

Click to read more ...

Bovver boys in pinstripes

The big news today has been the publication of a joint Royal Society/US National Academy position statement on climate change. With my speaking engagement this morning, I haven't had much time to look at it but my initial impression is that it's not as bad as some of the nonsense these two organisations were putting out ten years ago.

That said, the headline message is clearly written with alarmist public relations in mind:

Click to read more ...

Catastrophe risk

I've been on my travels. This morning I was speaking about hurricanes and climate change at a conference of catastrophe risk modellers, adding a bit of sceptic spice to a discussion panel of insurance people, including one familiar name in the shape of Pielke Jr's regular sparring partner, Robert Muir-Wood of RMS. We had a nice chat after our session was over.

Much of the focus of the session was on shorter-term predictions than are relevant to climate change concerns, although there was an interesting divergence of opinion among the panellists, with Muir-Wood arguing against the insurance industry's traditional focus on historical data alone and arguing for a greater emphasis on models. Others took the view that unless the models included all the complexities and subsystems of the real atmosphere, the output was likely to be dangerously misleading. The similarities with the arguments over the use of GCMs in public policy decisions need hardly be stated.

I'm now on my way home and will pick up blogging on the train.

Communicating the pause

Ed Hawkins, Tamsin Edwards and Doug McNeall have an article in Nature Climate Change about the way the pause/hiatus/standstill has been communicated by climate scientists. It's paywalled here, but Tamsin has blogged about the contents here, calling for communication to be a conversation rather than a lesson. This is a step forward from the way early attempts to point out the inconvenient truth were dealt with.

Update on Feb 26, 2014 by Bishop Hill

The Hawkins et al article is part of a series of pieces about the pause in this edition. Most of it is paywalled but there is a rather amusing editorial that is free to view

The author notes that the public had previously been advised to expect year-on-year temperature increases but seems somewhat mystified at the idea that people should have been a bit taken aback when they were told that this was no longer the case. Fortunately, Bob Ward is on hand to explain that in fact it was all the fault of the carefully-orchestrated-big-oil-funded-massive-right-wing-conspiracy.

Glad that's clear then.

The Hawkins et al article is part of a series of pieces about the pause in this edition. Most of it is paywalled but there is a rather amusing editorial that is free to view

The author notes that the public had previously been advised to expect year-on-year temperature increases but seems somewhat mystified at the idea that people should have been a bit taken aback when they were told that this was no longer the case. Fortunately, Bob Ward is on hand to explain that in fact it was all the fault of the carefully-orchestrated-big-oil-funded-massive-right-wing-conspiracy.

Glad that's clear then.

The Hawkins et al article is part of a series of pieces about the pause in this edition. Most of it is paywalled but there is a rather amusing editorial that is free to view

The author notes that the public had previously been advised to expect year-on-year temperature increases but seems somewhat mystified at the idea that people should have been a bit taken aback when they were told that this was no longer the case. Fortunately, Bob Ward is on hand to explain that in fact it was all the fault of the carefully-orchestrated-big-oil-funded-massive-right-wing-conspiracy.

Glad that's clear then.

Wind power eases off

Readers will remember the ding-dong between Gordon Hughes and DECC's Chief Scientist David Mackay over the rate of decline of wind turbine performance over the years. Hughes had written a paper that suggested that this was significant, with Mackay arguing that Hughes' approach was flawed.

At the time Mackay pointed to a forthcoming paper by Staffell and Green that he said would support his case. This has now appeared in the journal Renewable Energy and it indeed supports Mackay's case.

The Renewable Energy Foundation, who published the original report, have issued a statement that suggests the story is far from over:

Click to read more ...

Met Office tweaks the evidence

In the comments on the previous posting, Doug Keenan notes that the Met Office have been..ahem...tweaking the evidence:

The video shows, at about 1:10, a document that was issued on 21.11.13, by the Met Office. The document is available at
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/m/8/A3_plots-precip-DJF-2.pdf

I found the document by googling this:
"21.11.13" site:metoffice.gov.uk

The google results list the title of the document as “below-average precipitation”. That must have been the title at the time that Google indexed the document. On the Met Office website, the title is now changed to “A3 plots-precip-DJF-2”.

Update on Feb 26, 2014 by Bishop Hill

In the comments, it has been determined that Doug was mistaken.

GWPF TV on the floods

GWPF have put out an excellent short film about the floods and the alleged link to climate change.

Hubert Lamb: The scepticism of CRU’s founder

This is a guest post by Bernie Lewin.

The Wikipedia article on the founder of CRU, Hubert Lamb,states:

At first his view was that global cooling would lead within 10,000 years to a future ice age and he was known as “the ice man”, but over a period including the UK's exceptional drought and heat wave of 1975–76 he changed to predicting that global warming could have serious effects within a century. His warnings of damage to agriculture, ice caps melting, and cities being flooded caught widespread attention and helped to shape public opinion.

Click to read more ...

Blustering bully backs off

Michael Mann finally seems to have had his bluff called. Having referred to Andrew Bolt as someone who was paid to lie by Rupert Murdoch, he has been on the receiving end of a fairly blunt invitation to retract the allegation and apologise or face the consequences.

This appears to have had the desired consequences.

Mike Haseler's survey of sceptics

Many readers will remember Mike Haseler's survey of sceptic opinion. The initial results are now available and a press release has been issued.

The Scottish Climate & Energy Forum has been conducting a survey on the background and attitudes of participants to online climate discussions. Thanks to the generosity of all who participated, the survey has had a massive response which will take time and resource to process. However initial analysis already shows that the actual views and backgrounds of participants are in sharp contrast with some high-profile statements being made about the participants. Therefore I felt we should make these initial results known as soon as practical to avoid further damage, both to the reputation of those involved in the online debate, as well as those making the unfounded and presumably mistaken accusations of “denial”.

As such, I am releasing the following statement regarding the survey.

Click to read more ...

Irony fail

This made me laugh. CNN's Reliable Sources programme interviewed string-theorist Michio Kaku and a senior media editor from the Huffington post about climate change. The opened with with presenter Brian Stelter asking about how certain the science of global warming is:

STELZER: Dr. Kaku, you're the expert here.  Tell us before we go any further how definitive is the evidence?  Is there any room for debate?

KAKU:  Climate change is the 800-pound gorilla in the living room that the media dances around.  But in the scientific community it's a settled question:  95 percent of scientists believe this is happening with 100 percent confidence temperatures are rising.

After which they moved on to media treatment of the subject, with Stelter wondering if it wasn't "irresponsible" to allow sceptics on air, and noting the particularly heinous case of a discussion about global warming featuring a politician "with no particular expertise in this subject".

Tee hee.

Euan Mearns on the Met Office report

Euan Mearns has been analysing the Met Office's report on the floods and has raised some important concerns:

Sea level along the English Channel has already risen by about 12cm in the last 100 years. With the warming we are already committed to over the next few decades, a further 11-16cm of sea level rise is likely by 2030. This equates to 23-27cm (9-101⁄2 inches) of total sea level rise since 1900.

12 cm in 100 years translates to 1.2 mm per year of sea level rise along the English channel over the past 100 years. The Met Office is now suggesting that this is going to accelerate to 13.5 cm (median) in the next 16 years giving a rate of 8.4 mm per year until 2030. This represents an acceleration in the rate of sea level rise of 700% that is forecast to start happening tomorrow! This must surely be total drivel (Figure 3).

There is also this worry about the report's coverage of tides:

In the main body of the report the authors do discuss the exceptional Spring tides of early and late January but in the summary instead choose to present drivel on sea levels. Clive Best has estimated that the additional tidal height caused by rare alignments of Earth, Moon and Sun may have added over a meter to the normal Spring tide events. If correct this will have added significantly to coastal flooding and is totally unconnected to manmade global warming.

As Euan explains, the report is not all bad, but some of the issues he raises, and the fact that some high, but not exceptional rainfall caused a report to be published in the first place, make it look as if there is a political subtext to its publication.

Read the whole thing.

Booker on the Somerset floods

Being a resident of Somerset, Christopher Booker is in a good position to get into the nitty gritty of the truth behind the floods this year.

This morning he has set out the full case that there was a cold-blooded government decision to allow the Levels to return to nature, with residents left to fend for themselves. The Levels were of course a creation of the state, having been drained and enclosed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries at goverment command, and the residents therefore relied upon the state to maintain their waterways and the security of their homes. Now, on a green-tinged whim, the state has tossed them aside in favour of a few wading birds, lives and livelihoods wrecked in the process.

As someone once said, the state is not your friend.