Met Office responds to Keenan

Doug Keenan's article about statistical significance in the temperature records seems to have had a response from the Met Office.

The text is here and there is a blog post here.

Vision of awfulness

The Vision Prize describes itself an "an online platform for communicating expert opinion on climate risk" and seems to be essentially a fairly basic online poll.

I was intrigued by the way its experts assessed climate sensitivity. The relevant question was what the effect on temperature relative to the year 2000 will be if carbon dioxide concentrations reach 550ppm (i.e the first doubling, expected around mid-century).

Here are the results:

The mode is 1.5-2.0°C. Given that this is temperatures relative to the present day, we have to add say 0.8°C to get the "climate sensitivity" figure, which would be 2.3-2.8°C. It seems to me that this figure is hard to justify if transient climate response is 1.3°C and effective climate sensitivity is 1.7°C, as seems likely from the empirical evidence.

Perhaps then the results are affected by climatologists who lie to promote political action.

Yeo clarifies to obscure

Tim Yeo has issued a statement "clarifying" his views on climate change:

In the light of what has appeared on the Telegraph website suggesting that I have changed my views about climate change, I wanted to make clear that this is not the case.

My views have remained the same for over two decades. I accept the overwhelming scientific evidence that human activities are having a major impact on the climate – there is an overwhelming probability that the impact of greenhouse gas emissions from human actions are contributing to climate change.

I will continue to press for urgent action on this matter, making the case that the move to a low carbon economy is not just right environmentally but also in our economic interest.

Meanwhile the Telegraph has released its audio recording of what Yeo said (here). His remarks do seem to me to represent a toning down of his position, but it's possible that we are over-interpreting.

Now I've heard everything

Tim Yeo is once again demonstrating his unerring ability to bend with the wind:

Tim Yeo, the chairman of the Commons Energy and Climate Change committee, said he accepts the earth’s temperature is increasing but said “natural phases” may be to blame.

Such a suggestion sits at odds with the scientific consensus. One recent survey of 12,000 academic papers on climate change found 97 per cent agree human activities are causing the planet to warm.

As an aside, can I just point out to the learned journalist at the Telegraph that there is quite a lot of ground between "humans to blame" and "humans not to blame". There are at least fifty shades of "humans partly to blame".

Environmentalism brings you forest clear-cutting

Thanks to the efforts of environmentalists such as Friends of the Earth and WWF, forests in the southern USA are being clearcut in an effort to meet European demand for wood pellets - a demand that has been driven by biomass power generation.

Read the whole thing.

Hope and change

The prime minister's new parliamentary adviser on climate change, George Eustice MP, has committed the hanging offence of suggesting that global warming sceptics should be heard in public:

Science questioning climate change should not be "rubbished or ridiculed", a Westcountry MP charged with devising energy policy for David Cameron has said.

George Eustice, Conservative MP for Camborne and Redruth, says he believes there is a link between carbon emissions and warming the planet, but argues "all perspectives" should be heard.

On its own, the statement doesn't amount to very much, but as another sign of a gradual change, it's all to the good.

Tom Chivers on climate sensitivity

The Telegraph's Tom Chivers has joined the throng of journalists who have covered the low climate sensitivity story. His take, which is pretty level-headed, is here.

There are some gripes, however:

• the suggestion that Otto is a an outlier - a single paper - is demonstrably nonsense. There are now many papers showing climate sensitivity less than 2°C.
• the suggestion that the heat is all going into the oceans is at best only "possible". All the studies with low climate sensitivity take ocean heat uptake into account (or, in Forster and Gregory's case use a methodology that is unaffected by it). Trenberth's new suggestion that the heat is below 2 km depth in the deep ocean is at best speculative.

That said, it's not a bad piece at all and is well worth a look.

‘Landmark consensus study’ is incomplete

This is a guest post by Shub Niggurath.

In a self-publicized Environmental Research Letters paper, Cook et al claim to have performed a climate consensus-hunting literature survey they call "the most comprehensive of its kind" using "the largest sample". The comprehensive nature of the survey is important to the author and his group. For instance, close associate Lewandowsky writes:

Click to read more ...

Met insignificance

This is an ultrasimplified version of Doug Keenan's post this morning.

The Met Office has consistently said that the temperature rise since 1850 is too large to have been caused by natural causes. Questioning from Lord Donoughue elicited the information that they came to this conclusion by modelling temperatures as a straight-line trend (global warming) plus some noise to represent normal short-term variability.

However, would a model in which temperatures went up and down at random on longer timescales, but without any long-term trend at all, be a better match for the real temperature data? Doug Keenan has come up with just such a "temperature line wiggling up and down at random" model and it is indeed a much better match to the data than the "gradual warming plus a bit of random variation" model used by the Met Office. In fact it is up to a thousand times better.

In essence then, the temperature data looks more like a line wiggling up and down at random than one that has an impetus towards higher temperatures.* That being the case, the rises in temperature over the last two centuries and over the last decades of the twentieth century, look like nothing untoward. The global warming signal has not been detected in the temperature records.

*Here I'm only referring to the two models assessed. This is not to say there isn't another model with impetus to higher temperatures which wouldn't be a better match than Doug's model. It's just nobody has put such a )third model forward yet. (H/T JK in the comments)

Met Office admits claims of significant temperature rise untenable

This is a guest post by Doug Keenan.

It has been widely claimed that the increase in global temperatures since the late 1800s is too large to be reasonably attributed to natural random variation. Moreover, that claim is arguably the biggest reason for concern about global warming. The basis for the claim has recently been discussed in the UK Parliament. It turns out that the claim has no basis, and scientists at the Met Office have been trying to cover that up.

The Parliamentary Question that started this was put by Lord Donoughue on 8 November 2012. The Question is as follows.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government … whether they consider a rise in global temperature of 0.8 degrees Celsius since 1880 to be significant. [HL3050]

Click to read more ...

Significantly Met O££ice - Josh 223

Following Doug's extraordinary post this morning we imagine Julia Slingo, Met Office, offering an apology.

Cartoons by Josh

(Click the image for a larger version)

Updated text H/t Doug

Ian Fells on energy shortfalls

Professor Ian Fells was interviewed on the BBC's PM programme about the story that Britain recently came within 6 hours of running out of gas. He is very interesting on the electricity supply problems a couple of years ago, suggesting that, despite official denials, these were due to a lack of gas.

The audio file is attached below.

Ian Fells, PM programme

Myles' fighting talk

Myles Allen has entered the climate fray again, with an article in the Mail on Sunday which strikes several blows at UK energy policy, and in particular windfarms, carbon trading and carbon taxes.

90 per cent of the measures adopted in Britain and elsewhere since the 1997 Kyoto agreement to cut global emissions are a waste of time and money – including windfarms in Scotland, carbon taxes and Byzantine carbon trading systems.

Unfortunately, he thinks the answer lies in carbon capture, an approach that can best be described as "speculative". However, recognition of the madness is the first step towards a cure, so we should probably welcome Myles' move.

Homework fail - Josh 222

John Cook and Dana Nuccitelli whose tweets and recent survey have been much discussed on the blogs, especially by Brandon and Lucia at The Blackboard, here, here, here, here, here and here. H/t and thanks to both of them for helping get the cartoon right ;-)

Cartoons by Josh

Lilley's reply to Anderson

A couple of weeks ago, we discussed Professor Kevin Anderson's rather strange article in which he claimed, somewhat improbably, that Peter Lilley had maligned him. Lilley has now passed on his response to Anderson, which I am reproducing here with his permission.

Dear Professor Anderson,

Thank you for drawing my attention to your response to my Spectator article on shale gas.   I apologise for the delay in replying.

I am sorry if you were offended to be called the ayatollah of the green movement.   Far from being intended as an insult, it referred to your extreme frankness.  

Click to read more ...