Striking back at Svensmark

Nigel Calder reports on a new paper that purports to rebut Svensmark's cloud hypothesis.

During recent years, so the story goes, the Sun has been weak, cosmic rays have been relatively intense, and yet the expected increase in low clouds has not occurred. On the contrary, we’re told, low cloud cover has remained relatively sparse. That’s according the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project, ISCCP, which pools data from the satellites of several nations.

However, the ISCCP data are apparently problematic:

The conspicuous downward trend in the ISCCP cloud data is almost certainly unreal. An expert view is that it results from changes in the operational status of the satellites from which the data are pooled.

In other words, the jury is still out.

Calder is very critical of the authors of the new paper - Agee et al - suggesting that they have cherrypicked the ISCCP figures rather than mentioning any of the other data sources, which tell a different story. He calls the paper "shoddy".

Hansen at the Royal Society

James Hansen is among the speakers at the Royal Society's "Warm Climates of the Past" event next week.

Two new tweeps

Twitter users may be interested in two new members of the Twitterati:

@RossMcKitrick

@MichaelEMann

A bogging temperature reconstruction

Actually it's not that bad, but the headline was too good to resist. I'm grateful to a reader for sending me a copy of the new temperature reconstruction from Moschen et al, recently published in Climate of the Past. The authors reconstruct temperatures from carbon isotope analysis of Sphagnum moss.

The temperature reconstruction is based on the Sphagnum δ13C cellulose/temperature dependency observed in calibration studies. Reconstructed GST anomalies show considerable centennial and decadal scale variability. A cold and presumably wet phase with below-average temperature is reconstructed between the 4th and 7th century AD which is in accordance with the so called European Migration Period, marking the transition from the Late Roman Period to the Early Middle Ages. At High Medieval Times, the amplitude in the reconstructed temperature  variability is most likely overestimated; nevertheless, above-average temperatures are obvious during this time span, which are followed by a temperature decrease.

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Nobel winner: AGW debate damages science

Australian winner of the Nobel prize for physics, Brian Schmidt is going to set the cat among the pigeons with these remarks:

“I think that [the carbon debate] has, maybe in the short term, diminished in some people’s minds the standing of science but to my mind it is part of the scientific debate,” he said at a press conference in Canberra this morning.

“I think that science should inform public policy. Public policy needs to take it as an input. It doesn’t mean it’s the only input.

Update on Oct 5, 2011 by Bishop Hill

Schmidt has a Twitter account it seems, and has just tweeted this:

The biggest day of my life, I am trending on the Australia twitter... but I am still behind Happy National Taco Day? I have a lot to learn.

SMC squirms

I was amused by this guest post at the blog of Fiona Fox, the director of the Science Media Centre. It's written by one of her staff members, Tom Sheldon and looks at the Times Atlas furore..

Science is self-correcting, and we should be proud of that. It is also above politically-motivated bickering, or worse, 'messaging'. If we want science to have the respect of the public, scientists must be seen to be honest and neutral.

There we agree. However, the SMC as a 'messaging' body has no part to play in that, particularly when one looks down the list of its board members. There are just one or two too many people on that list who will sully any message that the SMC tries to propagate.

Another review

Another review of the Hockey Stick Illusion has been published - this time in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. It's paywalled, but is complimentary.

Aztec in the unthreaded provides this excerpt:

The book provides a fascinating and engaging level of detail, which brings scientific, statistical and even political procedures vividly to life, a feature which elevates this book into an important source of historical insight.

Blackboard piracy on the High Seas - Josh 122

This last week has been about the blog heavywwight wrestling match between The Blackboard's Lucia and Christopher Monckton in a discussion which is way above my grey cell grade. So how about some cartoons... Update: Part 3

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How science works

One of the problems with building a demand for political action on science is that it tends to get in the way of the proper conduct of science. Correcting mistakes becomes difficult, if not impossible, because there are too many political vested interests involved.

It's nice then to be reminded of how things are meant to be, with this heartening story of an eminent mathematician who thought he had found something amazing, started writing a book about it and then let on in a discussion on Google+ about what he was working on. This led to some engagement with other interested mathematicians and shortly afterwards him posting the following remarks:

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Averting catastrophe

I am grateful to a reader for alerting me to an article in The Chemical Engineer by Stephen Bush and David MacDonald on the subject of the UK's looming energy catastrophe. It's not online, but here are some excerpts:

In the UK, the Climate Change Act 2000 has set the country the challenging target of reducing emissions of CO2 and CO2 equivalents by 34% from 1990 levels by 2020, 50% by 2027, and 80% by 2050, though the 2027 target is subject to review in 2014. Coupled with rising demand and the already painful impact of higher energy prices, meeting this target will be challenging indeed, leaving some engineers to wonder what it will take to square this cirde.

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The special contribution of Vaclav Klaus

David Henderson writes:

Vaclav Klaus, the President of the Czech Republic, recently passed his  70th birthday. To mark the occasion a Festschrift volume has been put  together, with a wide range of contributors. I understand that the main  topics in the book are: capitalism and the free market; European  integration; the euro; climate change issues; and the Czech  transformation after 1989.

 The English version of the volume has been sent for publication. Meanwhile I have been given clearance to circulate my own contribution,  which is herewith attached. It is entitled ‘Climate Change Issues: The  Special Contribution of Vaclav Klaus’.

Climate Change Issues: The Special Contribution of Vaclav Klaus

David Henderson

1 An established policy consensus

In relation to climate change issues, there is an official policy consensus. That consensus has been firmly in place for over twenty years, and virtually all governments subscribe to it. By way of recent example, paragraph 66 of last year’s G20 Summit Document year, begins as follows:

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A bad bet - Josh 121

Flogging the same old horse? It's not going to run far, that's for certain.

Cartoons by Josh

More Climate Change Committee

Remember this? These were some of the impacts expected for various degrees of global warming as described in the Climate Change Committee's report.

Click for full sizeThe source for this table is IPCC WG2 - it's a direct lift from one report to the other. The IPCC report then provides citations for each impact described.

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Inaugural Scottish sceptic meet

The first meeting of the new Scottish sceptics group is to be held on 8 October - details here. There is probably room for a couple more people.

More Matt

Matt Ridley won the Manhattan Prize for his brilliant book, the Rational Optimist. As well as the cash prize, he gets to give the Hayek Lecture. This is what he had to say:

H/T HaroldW