A response to Cox and Stockwell

Retired geophysicist Geoff Davies has responded to the Cox and Stockwell article (discussed here) about Hansen's new paper on climate model representation of ocean heat uptake and mixing. He accuses them of misrepresenting Hansen.

The article contains basic misrepresentations of Hansen and of the substance and implications of a draft paper by Hansen.

The Hansen paper does not weaken the case that humans are the main cause of global warming. On the contrary, it suggests we have unwittingly and temporarily shielded ourselves from the full effects of our activities.

I've only whizzed through both the Cox/Stockwell and the Davies articles, but I think the difference is over the credibility of Hansen's explanation. Hansen is saying that ocean heat uptake has been overestimated, and therefore the reason we haven't seen much warming is that we must have got aerosols wrong too, with the two errors effectively having balanced each other out. Cox and Stockwell are saying that maybe the effect of CO2 is not as strong as previously thought.

Is that right?

Hansen the hopeful - Josh 98

Back from the brink

A sudden outbreak of sanity seems to have taken hold Canada. Firstly the idea of a carbon tax appears to have been killed off for good:

Conservatives kill carbon tax

Conservatives have kiboshed a carbon tax, Environment Minister Peter Kent confirmed Thursday.

"It's off the table," he told reporters Thursday after accepting an award from World Wildlife Fund International on behalf of Parks Canada.

"There's no expectation of cap-and-trade continentally in the near or medium future."

...and then this:

Government delays pulling plug on old-fashioned light bulbs

Tories propose pushing deadline to 2014 over lack of alternatives to incandescents

(H/T to Ross McKitrick, who offers to send a real estate guide)

Singhing about the decline

Andy Russell has a report from the Royal Meteorological Society AGM, which was addressed by John Mitchell and Simon Singh. This bit was particularly interesting

There was also an interesting question for Simon about the similarities between the “hide the decline” episode and an edit Simon showed us that he had made to one of his own documentaries (substituting “primes” with “numbers” in an interview with a mathematician to make it understandable for a wider audience). Simon argued that they were quite different situations as the removal of unreliable proxy data was done for scientific reasons whereas his edit was done for communication reasons. I wonder if there isn’t more of an overlap, though. I’m not sure we’ve properly acknowledged the needs of different audiences and how scientists decide to summarise their work for them.

Removing the bit of data that shows the rest of the series to be unreliable is not a "scientific reason". It's called "cheating".

Scrutinising the models

There has been something of a flurry of posts around the sceptic blogosphere about climate models and I wonder if this may continue to be a theme in coming weeks after James Hansen's recent admission that climate models are getting ocean heat uptake and the mixing of heat in the ocean wildly wrong.

This story is covered in layman's terms here by Anthony Cox and David Stockwell:

The Earth’s energy balance is the most important measure of anthropogenic global warming [AGW] because it shows whether energy is leaving or accumulating.

Among 52 dense pages of science, Hansen reports on two experiments from the last eight years that call for major revisions to the GCMs.

This is definitely a "read the whole thing" kind of article.

Put alongside the poor performance of the models against observations in recent years do we really have a watertight scientific case that demands a policy response?

Another climate conference

At the end of last month another conference bringing together the two sides of the climate debate took place quietly in Germany. The participants were a team from the Potsdam Institute - Schellnhuber, Rahmstorf et al - and a group from EIKE, the main sceptic body in Germany.

EIKE have just issued a report documenting the discussions from their point of view. This can be seen below.  The Hockey Stick Illusion is mentioned.

EIKE-PIK conference

HoL on BBC science coverage

The House of Lords Communication Committee questions Brian Cox and Sir David Attenborough on BBC science programming. Is it just me, or do parliamentary committees only ever want to hear from people who aren't going to rock the boat.

That said, there is some interesting probing of the "how to deal with dissent" question, with Brian Cox looking somewhat uncomfortable at one point.

Click to read more ...

Sir John B and the IPCC

As readers no doubt know, I have previously obtained a great deal of Sir John Beddington's correspondence around the Climategate affair. As evidence of Sir John's involvement in setting up the whitewashes grows, I started to wonder about the information that Sir John's office had said they had withheld for one reason or another. In particular I wondered what was covered by this:

* various internal advice from Government Office for Science and other officials to Sir John regarding the UEA incident and the establishment of the independent reviews, and advising on aspects of the handling of this from the viewpoint of the Government and his personal role.

Since there is a presumption in favour of disclosure, I decided to appeal the decision to withhold and I have now received some further information.

Click to read more ...

Comets, climate and admitting you are wrong

The Miller-McClune site (H/T Paddy, via GWPF) carries an interesting story of how a theory of comet-caused climate change turned out to be wrong and how hard it was to get the truth out.

It seemed like such an elegant answer to an age-old mystery: the disappearance of what are arguably North America’s first people. A speeding comet nearly 13,000 years ago was the culprit, the theory goes, spraying ice and rocks across the continent, killing the Clovis people and the mammoths they fed on, and plunging the region into a deep chill. The idea so captivated the public that three movies describing the catastrophe were produced.

But now, four years after the purportedly supportive evidence was reported, a host of scientific authorities systematically have made the case that the comet theory is “bogus.”

Lord Turnbull advises caution

GWPF has issued a report by Lord Turnbull advising caution over UK energy policy.

Lord Turnbull, the former Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Home Civil Service (2002 – 2005), has called on MPs and ministers to consider more carefully the rising costs and economic risks of Britain’s unilateral climate policies.

In a dispassionate but devastating critique of current policies, Andrew Turnbull also criticises the blind faith in the propositions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) given that they do not bear the weight of certainty with which they are often expressed.

In his briefing paper for the Global Warming Policy Foundation, Lord Turnbull outlines the many doubts and disagreements that exist about key IPCC assumptions.

Non-linear system is linear

Only in climateland - Willis Eschenbach's post at WUWT is very interesting. He shows that the output of a major climate model is essentially just a lagged linear combination of its inputs. This is kind of odd when what they are modelling is a non-linear system.

Wegman paper retracted

USA Today is reporting that the allegations of plagiarism made against Edward Wegman have hit their mark. Said et al, a paper describing the uncomfortably close relationships between cliques of climate scientists has been withdrawn after it was shown that elements of the paper were plagiarised.

The journal publisher's legal team "has decided to retract the study," said CSDA journal editor Stanley Azen of the University of Southern California, following complaints of plagiarism. A November review by three plagiarism experts of the 2006 congressional report for USA TODAY also concluded that portions contained text from Wikipedia and textbooks. The journal study, co-authored by Wegman student Yasmin Said, detailed part of the congressional report's analysis.

As far as I can tell, nobody is disputing the paper's findings though.

Update on May 16, 2011 by Bishop Hill

Somebody is taking issues with the findings here. The chief objection appears to be that the data is not well-documented:

Compared to many journal articles in the network area the description of the data is quite poor. That is the way the data was collected, the total number of papers, the time span, the method used for selecting articles and so on is not well described.

They don't seem to particularly object to what was said though:

Is what is said wrong? As an opinion piece - not really.

Is what is said new results? Not really. Perhaps the main "novelty claim" are the definitions of the 4 co-authorship styles. But they haven't shown what fraction of the data these four account for.

Update on May 16, 2011 by Bishop Hill

Keith Kloor says I'm twisting myself into contortions over this. I think he's overdoing it a bit. It seems to me that in logic the presence of somebody else's material in a paper cannot tell you anything about the truth or otherwise of the contents of that paper. It can raise your suspicions about the quality of the work, for sure, but it proves nothing.

I also think I'm consistent on this. It was necessary to examine Mann et al 2008 and argue the merits (or otherwise) of the paper. It could not be falsified by reference to the goings-on over the Hockey Stick.

UKCIP defunded

From the Oxford Mail:

CLIMATE change experts working in Oxford fear their jobs could be lost after funding was cut by the Government.

The UK Climate Impact Programme, set up in Oxford 13 years ago, currently receives £1m a year from the Department of the Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

The programme, part of the university’s Environmental Change Institute, has been told that there will be no more Government support from September.

(H/T DaveB)

Climate cuttings 52

Here is my latest attempt to round up the bits and bobs that I should have blogged about in recent weeks but haven't quite got round to.

Hilary Ostrov noted the IPCC apparently approving their recent report on renewables before they actually reviewed it. Some deft rewriting of history by the IPCC appears to have ensued.

Shub Niggurath takes a look at what I call the "official sceptics" and finds that almost none of them are sceptical of climate change. Does this say more about the nature of their scepticism than the status of global warming research? You would have thought the falsification of the models (or the lack of falsifiability according to some) would have raised a few doubts.

Click to read more ...

Beddington - definitely a lobbyist

A few days ago, I noted the frank admission by the chief scientist in Australia that he saw himself as a lobbyist for the scientific community. I wondered at the time whether our own head boff was working for the benefit of those who pay his salary or just for scientists.

Here's the answer, found in Hansard:

Q5 Chair: Should the Committee, perhaps, re-think its position on the desirability of a Chief Scientific Officer at the Treasury, or do you think the need is even greater now?

Professor Sir John Beddington: I do believe it would be sensible to have a Chief Scientific Adviser in the Treasury. It is a thing I have discussed with Nick Macpherson, the Permanent Secretary in the Treasury. In the run-up to the CSR I did have meetings with the Senior Management Board of the Treasury, which Nick chairs. We were discussing primarily the Science Settlement and there are people in the Treasury who do absolutely know a lot about science and the importance of science, but I don’t think that is a substitute for actually having somebody who comes in from outside who has an appropriate external experience of science and engineering. I do think it is still important. The last month or so has been quite busy, so it is not a thing I have been pursuing with much energy, I confess.