I came across this interesting polemic about climate change denialism and because I’m going to be too busy today to post anything original I thought I’d reblog it here.
Someone told me off last week for my “Academic Journal Racket” post, arguing that polemics never advance an argument. I disagree, actually. Polemics are good, as long as they’re good polemics.
In “Confessions of a Climate Change Convert”, D. R. Tucker explained the change in consciousness that came to a conservative writer after seriously looking at the evidence for anthropogenic climate change. Today, he offers another insight into the conservative's climate quandary. The amusement parks I visited when I was a child had signs indicating that one had to be “this tall” in order to go on a ride. Viewing the endless stream of op-eds and … Read More
via Climate Denial Crock of the Week
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In the Dark 
September 5, 2011 at 10:33 am
Funny, then, that it’s not getting warmer any more even though China is opening coal fired power stations every week and CO2 levels continue to rise…
If the atmosphere were perfectly dry then calculating the warming effect of differing CO2 concentrations would be a back-of-the-envelope matter. But this effect interacts with the formation of cloud, which reflects sunlight back into space better than land or sea does. The interaction is so complex that computer models are worth very little and can be tweaked to give whatever result pleases you. And *that* has to do with more than truth – it has to do with sponsors, with peer pressure, with your own environmental views, etc.
Many politicians in democracies are attracted to power, and the more money they have to spend, the greater power they have. So they are happy to use carbon as an exscusse to raise taxes. They have also geared green industries up with massive subsidies; those industries pander to climate alarmism to help boost and maintain their subsidies. And third world politicians, mostly people who grant their subjects very poor civil rights, see the opportunity of free handouts which I doubt would ever get beyond the bank accounts of the ruling clique. All in all, it’s a bandwagon.
September 5, 2011 at 1:43 pm
Anton
You said “it’s not getting warmer any more”. Really?
Peter
September 5, 2011 at 9:03 pm
I’ll bone up and discuss at the cricket if we don’t drink too much. I’m in London just now. But even Phil Jones at UEA has said this.
Anton
September 5, 2011 at 10:48 pm
This idea that Phil Jones (a scientist at the centre of the UEA “climategate” scandal) has admitted that there has been no warming, comes from a Q+A he did with the BBC. He wasn’t saying that it hasn’t warmed since 1995. He was saying that it HAD warmed from 1995-2009 but that it did not (quite) meet the 95% statistical significance.
This was of course reported in the Daily Mail as “Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits : There has been no warming since 1995”
but he was really saying no such thing. As Phil Jones says in the next sentence
“Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.”
and so it was not that much of a surprise that once one more year of data was added from 2010 it did now meet the 95% limit
It is indeed still getting warmer, or as the IPCC say “the warming of the climate system is unequivocal”
September 5, 2011 at 11:09 pm
that 2nd link was it did now meet the 95% limit
September 5, 2011 at 11:11 pm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13719510
September 6, 2011 at 8:19 am
I’m not basing my assertion *only* on Phil Jones…
September 8, 2011 at 7:32 am
Hi,
Where is the peer-reviewed paper showing that post-1995 warming has occured to a 95 %C.L. ?
September 10, 2011 at 10:37 am
The ‘only’ here is completely disingenuous. You can’t base your assertion on Phil Jones because he never said anything which supports it; in fact he almost directly contradicts you. If you ever asked Jones whether warming is still occurring, he would say Yes. You can try to base your assertion on misconstruing and misquoting Jones-from-two-years-ago a la Lubos Motl, but as you can see, that didn’t pass the fairground test.
So who can you quote /in opposition/ to Phil Jones to show, with the requisite degree of observational evidence and statistical confidence, that ‘it’s not warming any more’?
September 13, 2011 at 2:47 pm
Sorry for the delay, I had been looking only at the bottom of the thread. See:
Perlwitz, J., Hoerling, M., Eischeid, J., Xu, T., and Kumar,
A. 2009. A strong bout of natural cooling in 2008.
Geophysical Research Letters 36: 10.1029/2009GL041188.
This paper reports “a decade-long decline (1998–2007) in globally averaged temperatures from the record heat of 1998” and noted that US temperatures in 2008 “not only declined from near-record warmth of prior years, but were in fact colder than the official 30-year reference climatology … and further were the coldest since at least 1996.”
September 13, 2011 at 4:10 pm
Just to provide the full context for the casual reader, here is the abstract from that paper:
“A precipitous drop in North American temperature in 2008, commingled with a decade‐long fall in global mean temperatures, are generating opinions contrary to the inferences drawn from the science of climate change. We use an extensive suite of model simulations and appraise factors contributing to 2008 temperature conditions over North America. We demonstrate that the anthropogenic impact in 2008 was to warm the region’s temperatures, but that it was overwhelmed by a particularly strong bout of naturally‐induced cooling resulting from the continent’s sensitivity to widespread coolness of the tropical and northeastern Pacific sea surface temperatures. The implication is that the pace of North American warming is likely to resume in coming years, and that climate is unlikely embarking upon a prolonged cooling.”
September 13, 2011 at 8:01 pm
Kav: Fair enough, but the authors’ views of the future are rather less certain than of the past.
September 5, 2011 at 2:54 pm
When has the UK government raised taxes citing global warming as an excuse?
September 5, 2011 at 9:01 pm
I didn’t say it had, but it has in Australia.
September 5, 2011 at 4:21 pm
I can’t stand the current situation in which climate science has become political.
It should be perfectly fine to question the science without being labelled a “denier” or, worse, a “sceptic”. I thought we were all supposed to be sceptics. Since when did this become a term of abuse ?
I would certainly class myself a sceptic, not least since the climate models have yet to conform to the classic tests of a good scientific theory:
(1) Describe existing data
(2) Make a prediction for something unmeasured.
(3) No fiddling with parameters if the tests fail or saying “it doesn’t matter” when, if the converse were the case they would be saying how much the data supports their models.
The fact that (1)-(3) haven’t been met (and I’ve asked lots of climate scientists about this) doesn’t mean that its wrong. I’m sure its very hard to conduct a test over a short time scale. However, this also means that the predictivity of the models is not so assured.
September 5, 2011 at 5:07 pm
I agree with what you say about scepticism, and indeed I’ve blogged on this topic before. However there is a big difference between proper scientific scepticism and dogmatic denial.
I would say that climate scientists must take a share of the blame for how we’ve ended up in this situation – it’s an area which has made me an even more ardent proponent of Open Access and Open Data.
September 7, 2011 at 8:03 am
Dogmatic agreement is as bad as dogmatic denial – I’ve seen examples of blind, unthinking responses from both sides.
As mentioned, I don’t have a great deal of confidence in the predictivity of the climate models because they haven’t passed the classic scientific tests. Its clear that the models give a good description of historial trends and existing data but this has necessarily been achieved at the expense of predictivity.
Something that surprises me is that, in their public statements, the climate scientists do not stress uncertainties. At best the possibility that recent global warming has not largely been man-made is excluded at 95% CL (if I remember the IPCC report correctly). This 95% figure must be questionable since confidence levels evaluated in experiments with large systematic uncertainties are never altogether reliable. Furthermore, I’ve seen 2-sigma deviations come and go many times during my career. Were I a climate scientist my message would be:
“The current science implies that humans have made a significant impact on the climate and, according to our models, this is going to get worse, *but*, the uncertainties on the models are often difficult to quantify”.
I don’t see the “but” in their statements. I appreciate that sometimes a simple message is needed but not at the expense of the core message. I’m teaching a course in conducting experimental physics right now and my main theme is that one must get the uncertainty right, and that sometimes its simply impossible to do this reliably in a non-subjective way. The simple “done deal” message is also pervading the funding agencies. For example, the Royal Society is against funding studies which attempt to find non-anthropological explanations for climate change. Wow! I’ve spent much of my career trying to find evidence which falsifies a theory which is far more successful and well grounded than anything in climate science – we should always be trying to overturn the consensus. A consensus is merely a description of how the community currently thinks. It is not a reliable guide to how the field will evolve and shouldn’t be used in an argument supporting the reliability of predictions. Science isn’t a democracy – the right argument wins not the majority viewpoint.
I “buy” the idea that there is a signficant likelihood that we are driving climate change and should start to take sensible measures to reduce our CO_2 footprint – many of which are painless and anyway needed given the limited resources on the planet. I just don’t buy that the case is proven beyond any reasonable doubt or that the “science is settled”, a phrase I particularly hate, not least since the theories involved have yet to pass the classic tests required of all scientific theories.
September 5, 2011 at 9:08 pm
Open access, open data you bet. But do make sure that it is the actual measurement recorded rather than values ‘corrected’ for some effect. I have been shocked at what goes on in climate science since it became political. The only honest approahc is to reconrd the measured temperature and state why it might need correcting.
September 5, 2011 at 11:14 pm
Now that the tornado warning is over, I can address some points. Anton, read the metadata that comes with the data. That should tell you what has been corrected for and why.
I too am shocked that many who are in denial think that, for example, correcting a temperature record because the instrument was moved to a location with a different altitude is fraud.
I am also shocked that many who cry foul have never in their lives seriously handled or analyzed environmental data taken over years, decades and even centuries. Being involved in several environmental collection programs, as well as using such data series extensively, I can say from experience that it is a very different fish from laboratory data.
Adrian
September 5, 2011 at 11:34 pm
Anton said that: “The only honest approahc is to reconrd the measured temperature and state why it might need correcting.”
This is standard practice in climate science and has been for a very, very long time. It is also standard practice in the environmental sciences that I have contact with.
Also: “I have been shocked at what goes on in climate science since it became political.”
As far as I can tell, the only change has been that climate science has become more “open access” than before.
There are many raw data sets out there. Making sure that all data in the record are correct is a huge undertaking requiring many man hours, arduous detective work and specialized knowledge. That is why documented, processed data sets are also made available.
To give you a small idea of the kinds of things that happen, I had occasion to use weather data from the Alaskan North Slope in developing an irradiance model for that region. I obtained (it’s freely available on the web) weather data from a nearby airport. I was particularly interested in cloud cover, which is traditionally determined by an observer looking at the sky and saying how much of the sky is covered by cloud. The unit of cloud cover is called an octa (1/8th of the sky). All well and good. I wrote some code to extract the data in the format I needed and all went well until a certain date (the record was several decades long of measurements made about every hour) when my code went crazy. It took me several days to track down the problem. It turned out that some bright spark at the airport decided that they could estimate cloud cover in 1/16th of a sky!!! This change was not recorded in the metadata.
The above is a very small example of what can happen. Compiling a global dataset from thousands of stations in different countries using different technologies over many decades is a huge undertaking. Are things missed? From time to time yes, which is why there are continual re-analysis efforts. A great example is the analysis of the Argo float data which showed that some of the floats had sensors that were reporting bad values – but only a little bad, just enough to mess with your head, but not enough to be obvious with a cursory glance.
So please, don’t be shocked. Although climate science may not be rocket science, it is not trivial either and the analysis of data and development of models is undertaken by people who want to know the truth of what is happening, and why.
Adrian
September 5, 2011 at 6:31 pm
As someone who works on the edges of climate science (and that probably invalidates my comments in the eyes of some) I’d like to add a couple of things.
1) To my mind, climate models do not fit the standards of a scientific theory. The simple reason is that these models are horrendously complex. Again, this probably invalidates them in the eye of many. However, they are useful tools, and that is the way that the vast majority of climate scientists view them. They are viewed this way because a) climate scientists recognize that a great deal remains unknown about how the climate system responds to forcing, and b) even the best computers we have to date are so woefully inadequate for the task at hand. Let me give an example directly from my own work. To understand how the oceans take up and sequester carbon in the deep one needs to understand the production of new organic carbon through photosynthesis, and how that carbon is transported through the oceanic food web as particles of organic carbon (dead material, detritus, faecal material) sink through the ocean. This requires knowing about species compositions and how they change over time which in turn requires knowing about the physics of upwelling, mixing and turbulence in the ocean. All of the above processes are understood in broad brush, but not in detail. We also know that to quantify many of these processes, we need to work on scales of about 1 km (or less) horizontally and about 10-50 m vertically. Even if we understood perfectly how each of these physical, chemical, biological and ecological processes worked, representing them accurately in a present day computer is not feasible – unless one wants to run a simulation that takes longer than real time! So we have to resort to techniques such as sub-grid parameterizations. Some of these work well, others do not. Many people are working hard to refine our understanding of mechanisms involved so that these parameterizations can be improved.
2) Perhaps climate scientists do share some of the blame for the current state of climate skepticism – a term that covers a very broad range of viewpoints from denial to genuine skepticism. However, climate data and climate models have long been freely available and more and more is being made available each year. Is every piece of climate data and every climate code available? No. But I would argue that climate science is open and has been for a long time. You can download model codes, model output (such as that used for the IPCC assessments), ice core data, atmospheric and oceanic carbon dioxide data, paleo proxy data, precipitation data, daily sea ice data, weather records (heck, someone recently analyzed an HOURLY temperature record from Mauna Loa that started in 1977 and compared it with the similar carbon dioxide data – both data sets are freely available)……… A good starting place (and I stress, this is only a starting place – for example there are many more freely available ocean geophysical fluid dynamic codes out there) is
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/
So, is climate science at the same level of scientific certainty as say general relativity? No. Do climate models do a good job? Yes, within reason.
As for the comment that “it’s not getting warming anymore”, well, at the risk of stirring a hornets nest that I don’t have the time to deal with, I’ll just say that there are many factors affecting global temperature (ENSO, volcanic eruptions, greenhouse gases etc) and at any one time, one or more of these factors may outweigh the others leading to either a relatively warmer world, or a relatively cooler one. Just as, at the moment here in Georgia it’s somewhat cooler than it has been these past few days thanks to Lee. This is called natural variability, and if you want to look at the effects of greenhouse gases you first have to look at LONG TERM TRENDS (> 30 years). If you want to look in more detail, you then have to remove these inter annual effects. The upshot is, if you remove the inter annual factors we know about and look at the long term trend, global temperatures ARE increasing still. What is more, you get the same result (both qualitatively and quantitatively) if you use any of the GISSTemp, HadCRU, NCDC, RSS or UAH global temperature records (all of which are freely available), each of which determines surface temperature in a different way. So I think we can be pretty confident that, contrary to some in the media and blogosphere, greenhouse gases are continuing to cause increased global surface temperatures.
Adrian
Adrian
September 5, 2011 at 6:52 pm
Thanks for the comments and, especially, for the link. I really should look at the science in more detail…
September 6, 2011 at 2:08 pm
David Archer (University of Chicago) has written some good books aimed at the the popular level. His book “Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast” is meant to be good, but I’ve not read it yet. Some good technical books have been published recently, such as “Principles of Planetary Climate” by Ray
Pierrehumbert. It’s difficult to find a comprehensive overview covering more than just say the physics of the problem. An old collection, but a good one and quite comprehensive one, is “Climate System Modeling” edited by Trenberth. A collection of the primary literature can be found in “The Warming Papers” edited by Archer and Pierrhumbert – this is a collection of the classic papers on the subject together with commentary.
The history of the science is nicely done in the book “The Discovery of Global Warming” which can be found online at
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.htm
Adrian
September 5, 2011 at 8:32 pm
Adrian – thanks for a thoughtful and measured contribution on a topic which does seem to polarise people so strongly. I just thought I’d add that the site that you reference (RealClimate) is also a source of excellent discussion and analysis. Good commentary on climate science at a less technical level can be found at Skeptical Science (http://www.skepticalscience.com/) – there are many more resources indexed at these sites.
Huw
September 7, 2011 at 3:21 pm
Dave makes some very good points, and perhaps climate scientists need to have greater patience. It is however incredibly exasperating, frustrating, depressing and soul-destroying to have, for example, ones findings misinterpreted and ones statements twisted and to find oneself yet again correcting these years after they were made. If you wish know more of this, look at any of the talks by Lord Monkton. He cites the scientific literature, but if you contact the authors of those papers he cites, they will tell you that there is no way that their paper concludes what Monkton is telling people it does. It is not too surprising that climate scientists in general give little attention to such people, and as a result appear unfavorably. However, the media and lay public and those fueling climate denial continue to repeat Monkton’s words.
One also has to be careful when using and interpreting phrases like “the science is settled” and “beyond reasonable doubt”. To most climate scientists I have come across, these terms refer to the climate forcing resulting from increased greenhouse gas concentrations. The attribution of these changes to human activities is less certain. However, the evidence is definitely pointing a large finger in that direction and, if I were on a jury, I would convict beyond reasonable doubt.
However, this does not mean that there is no uncertainty. As I’ve mentioned before in this thread, interdisciplinary environmental sciences like climate science do not have the luxury afforded to disciplines like experimental physics, chemistry etc. In fact, they are more akin to astrophysics, where one has to rely on passive observation rather than experiment (though one might well argue that we are presently conducting a huge experiment!). Unlike most of astrophysics, the data we have to deal with come from diverse instruments using diverse technologies often collected by people who are non-scientists and for whom such monitoring is just part of their job. This leads to myriad problems when looking at the data and, by and large, most climate scientists are very careful in talking about the resulting uncertainties. In fact, the last IPCC report has several sections and appendices on how to deal with uncertainties, how to interpret them, etc.
As for non-consensus views, I cannot speak to the Royal Society, but definitely here in the US, there are people who do research this. This provides a nice tie-in with Anton’s comment about clouds. As I mentioned before, global average surface temperature time series show a trend plus inter-annual variability (or “noise”). The consensus view is that this inter-annual variability is largely due to ENSO (El Nino Southern Oscillation) with things like volcanos adding a little flavor from time to time. There are other effects that climate scientists are well aware of and can account for with varying degrees of accuracy, but they all tend to be much smaller. An example is the COWL (Cool Ocean, Warm Land) effect, where abnormally strong winds increase ocean evaporation and transfer the heat to the land. Because of the difference in heat capacities between land and ocean, this leads to an anomalous cooling of the ocean and warming of the land. However, these additional effects are generally small compared to ENSO.
Climate scientists do know about clouds and what they do and that they provide climate feedbacks (both positive and negative). Two recent papers, one by Lindzen and Choi (Asia Pacific J. of Atmos Sciences, 2011), the other by Spencer and Braswell (J. Climate, 2011) both reverse this view by claiming that clouds CAUSE the change in surface temperature rather than act as a feedback on changes arising from other means. If true, this would really upset the apple cart as it would mean that atmospheric scientists have got it all completely wrong. This would be something like the Copernican revolution for atmospheric sciences.
As one can imagine, most climate scientists reacted with considerable skepticism, and many informally pointed out problems with the arguments presented in both papers. Now, Andrew Dessler from Texas A&M has published a comprehensive rebuttal of both papers (J. Geophys. Res. Lett, 2011). In it he shows that the model they use can violate conservation of energy, and that during the time period chosen by Lindzen and Choi, ENSO is indeed the greatest cause of temperature fluctuations. Dessler’s paper is quite comprehensive in pointing out the errors of both the former papers. These include a bad model, parameterizations that are unrealistic, etc.
Now, both Lindzen and Spencer have in the past done some great work. Sadly, much of their climate work in recent years has been, well, just plain wrong. However, those who do not like the conclusions of climate scientists never mention that these papers have been utterly refuted in the scientific literature. Instead, they continue to bring up the points raised in the original papers.
Imagine that thousands of people and hundreds of weblogs continually touted the original steady state theory, continually stating that there were glaring errors in the science and newspaper articles and TV programs continually claimed that maverick scientists had shown that the Big Bang Theory was wrong and that scientists who worked on the Big Bang Theory were all in collusion and that there was a huge conspiracy going on. The words and conclusions of Big Bang Theory proponents were continually being reported but twisted to mean the opposite of what was originally said. Politicians proclaimed that Big Bang scientists were perpetrating a hoax on the public and used anti-Big Bang positions as political talking points and electoral stands. This should give an idea of what is happening.
Take for example Mike Mann. Did he use a statistical technique that is was perhaps not quite the correct one? Yes. He fully admits it. Did using the more correct technique change his results? Marginally. He has just been found to not have done anything fraudulent after a full investigation. In fact, it was the 4th or 5th full investigation on his research, all of which have come to the same conclusion. He must be the most investigated scientist of all time! Image what that does to you!
Some scientists have tried to approach these attacks in a rational and calm way, even explaining the uncertainties involved. The comments made by Phil Jones about whether recent temperature changes are significant is a great case in point. His comments were distorted with only one sentence being used, and out of context. The blogs and media outlets proclaimed that he had admitted climate change was not happening. He hadn’t.
So I think climate scientists as a whole (though not all) have retreated. I think the field would welcome genuine suggestions as to how to get across their findings, what they mean and what the uncertainties are in their findings. Many would welcome genuine discussion on the science. So far, it hasn’t happened except in isolated cases. I have my own theories as to why the reaction against climate science is so virulent.
So, whilst climate scientists may indeed be partly at fault, try understanding what they are doing and imagine walking in their shoes for a short time.
Adrian
September 8, 2011 at 3:31 am
Hi Adrian,
thanks for your reply. However, it appears that you were addressing points that I didn’t made. Furthermore, I have a hard time reconciling a couple of your statements. I hope I’m not quoting you out of context (its certainly not my aim) but you write: “To my mind, climate models do not fit the standards of a scientific theory” and that they are best regarded as “useful tools”.
At the same time you argue that the science behind the forcing mechanism and man-made global warming is, in your opinion, “beyond reasonable doubt”.
To me these statements are fundamentally incompatible. If a theory has not passed a classical scientific test any inferences drawn from it must be questionable. It doesn’t matter how many people believe it.
On another note, you mention the Mann hockey stick and the statistical techniques he used. While I’m not a climatologist I do understand the basics of statistics and Mann made some elementary errors here. Furthermore, he compounded this by not admitting to it. Its also unclear if the effects were, as you say, marginal – at least in the conclusions which can be drawn. Certainly, the people who identified the original mistake and who had, unjustifiably, a very hard time in publishing their work wouldn’t agree with this. The Mann hockey stick was one of the main PR figures for quite some time and something as important as that ought to have been independently worked out in collaboration with the competent statisticians, as well as being independently reproducible by others. It may well be reproducible now but it wasn’t at the time. To me this is worrying and is at variance with the way we behave in the particle physics community – witness the careful treatment in how we evaluate the results of the Higgs searches. While its impossible for person X to reproduce this we have four independent experiments making Higgs searches which would love to prove the other experiments wrong if they make an erroneous claim. A basic statistical mistake in a Higgs search would not have survived very long. To some extent this difference is due to the relative sizes of the different communities. However, the Mann work was weak science and there is no room for that in a high profile area. Instead of brushing things aside with a “it doesn’t matter” or “its all politically motivated”, a mea culpa would have been more appropriate. Even if one does buy that the change was marginal, poor science is poor science and needs to be admitted irrespective of whether not some of the people making the charge undoubtedly are politically motivated.
One issue which has troubled me, and I hope you can provide some insight here, is the state of the proxy measurements. As I understand it (and I’d be very happy to be proven wrong) the majority of proxies used for historical reconstructions don’t extend much beyond 1980. Since we have gone through quite some warming since then it is imperative to see how these proxies would respond to this. As an experimentalist, I can’t understand why all of the proxies are not up to date. Doing so would further either confirm the validity of the proxy approach or indicate that systematic errors are larger than thought. Given the uncertainties involved, and the relatively modest costs to make more proxy measurements, I would have thought this would have been done long ago. Again, with my particle physics hat on, the more data the better. As mentioned earlier, I’m happy to be shown to be wrong here. If so, can you point me towards the latest hockey sticks which show proxy reconstructions up to the present time.
September 8, 2011 at 7:54 pm
Hello Dave, (sorry, couldn’t resist thinking of that in HAL-like tones)
“it appears that you were addressing points that I didn’t made”
I apologize, I thought I was addressing some of them, but I was also guilty of conflating answers (conservation of cognitive processes, and there rests the case for the defense m’lud).
I don’t think that the two statements you refer to are contradictory, though perhaps I did not explain myself properly. I think it’s true that the basic science behind the forcing mechanisms of global climate are well settled and well established. We know about the radiative behavior of carbon dioxide, we know about the astronomical cycles etc. etc. Is there a possibility that we’ve missed something? Yes (as always), but all the present data that I’m aware of are consistent with the known forcings. As I discussed in my first post on this thread (Sept. 5th), modeling the interactions between the various forcings and earth system responses is non-trivial and this is why models are tools – it might be best to think of them in terms of simulations rather than models. If we had everything correct and perfect – and this includes the black art of the development of the numerical code – then our models would be in perfect (or as near as would satisfy everyone) agreement with reality. This is not the case, but models can be used as useful tools to test ideas, test our current state of knowledge, make predictions even etc. I would not classify them as “theories”, rather as depictions of our level of understanding and knowledge. So in that sense, I stand by assertions.
As for the case of attribution, that’s a more tricky one. Attributing the current climate change largely or entirely to human activity is consistent with everything we see. Other explanations have been put forward, and all the ones I’ve seen or looked at have either major flaws in them or are inconsistent with real data. If climate change was due (or even largely due) to another cause, then there will be large parts of established fundamental physics, chemistry and environmental science that we would have to consign to the circular filing cabinet. So in that sense, I would convict beyond a reasonable doubt.
As for your other points, I hope I will not disappoint you by asking questions instead of straight away giving answers. I have found that, especially on the internet, it is all too easy to talk at cross purposes. So before replying, I would like to know precisely what you’re referring to. I hope you don’t take umbrage at the questions, but I’ve found that without knowing precisely what the question is, and without clarifying many of the statements leading to those questions, it’s hard to provide a well reasoned answer that actually addresses the question being asked, instead of the one I might think you’re asking. So, here we go:
1) “in terms of basic statistics Mann made some elementary errors here” – could you be please be specific as to exactly what errors he made in terms of basic statistics.
2) “Furthermore, he compounded this by not admitting to it.” – Could you please provide evidence for this.
3) “Its also unclear if the effects were, as you say, marginal” – could you please elaborate on the changes to the conclusions of Mann et al that resulted from doing the statistics differently and how they were not marginal.
4) “the people who identified the original mistake and who had, unjustifiably, a very hard time in publishing their work” – which people are you referring to here and what “hard time” are you referring to?
5) “It may well be reproducible now but it wasn’t at the time.” I’m not sure what you mean by this. Do you think that independent verification of any discovery needs to be made at the same time as the actual discovery? I’m confused here.
6) “To me this is worrying and is at variance with the way we behave in the particle physics community”. There are many differences between practices in the particle physics community and those in the environmental sciences. Are you only referring to my point (5) above, or something else?
7) “However, the Mann work was weak science” – could you please explain why?
8) “Instead of brushing things aside with a “it doesn’t matter” or “its all politically motivated”, a mea culpa would have been more appropriate. ” – Could you please provide evidence that Mann et al said or did these things? Or are you referring to someone else?
9) “Even if one does buy that the change was marginal, poor science is poor science” Again, can you please say why Mann et al was “poor science”. I ask again because it looks to be as if you’ve made up your mind already, and I would like to know if this is because you have studied the papers in questions, or are using some other source of information.
As for your proxy data question, I’m not sure I understand. Proxy data are used when you don’t have actual measurements of the thing you’re interested in. However, if you’re interested in how things like tree rings respond to CO2 and temperature changes, there is a fair amount of work on this though the results are far from definitive. Keith Briffa is one person who works on this.
As for the 1980 cut-off, very, very, very, very few available high-resolution proxy records extend beyond this into more recent times. As for the ease of getting more proxies, whilst doing so may not be as expensive or as intricate, complicated or as involved as building the LHC, proxy work is painstaking, difficult work with many traps for the unwary (disclaimer – I do NOT do proxy work). There are also very, very, very, very, very, very few people who can do it and do it reliably and well. It is also not as easy or as cheap as perhaps you think. Collecting proxy data often involves long, arduous field trips to remote locations with heavy equipment being needed in relatively inaccessible locations and is a (relatively) labor intensive undertaking.
A similar problem has occurred in oceanography. When I moved into the discipline in the mid 1990s, there were still one or two practicing phytoplankton taxonomists around – people who would spend their time looking at phytoplankton through microscopes and who were able to identify species etc visually. With the advent to genetic sequencing, their skills were viewed as out of date and almost no young people wanted to be trained in what was seen as a dead-end part of science. Now we have the problem that we need this expertise, and there are a few (very few) young people who are getting the required training, but we are missing close to a generation of experience and expertise.
Adrian
September 10, 2011 at 10:57 am
‘Someone told me off last week for my “Academic Journal Racket” post, arguing that polemics never advance an argument. I disagree, actually. ‘
Peter, this leaves open the question of what /is/ a good polemic – and you mustn’t define it circularly as ‘one that advances an argument’.
I would say a good modern polemic should have the following qualities:
– Sincerity. Not just done for effect.
– Directness. Get to the point immediately. Closely related to sincerity: if you spend a couple of paragraphs preluding around, it suggests you’re mainly out for style points.
– Brutality. Call a spade a bloody shovel. Extra merit for being brutal and subtle at the same time.
– Unconventionality. No merit in running along with the crowd, however stylishly.
– Unexpectedness. The reader must be confronted with a proposition they haven’t heard a hundred times already. Even if the main thrust is familiar, the author must find an original angle or make some new connection.
Any other requisites?
September 11, 2011 at 7:15 am
Hi Adrian,
apologies for my late reply – a heavy schedule of work and baby….
(1) His principal components analysis inadvertently data-mined i.e. promoting those data samples following a hockey stick. See “Corrections to the Mann et. al. (1998) Proxy database and northern hemispheric average temperature series” Energy & Environment · Vol. 14, No. 6, 2003. McIntyre and McKitrick. Also, Geophysical Research Letters 32: s. L03710, M&M.
The conclusions of these papers were also supported by an independent study by Edward Wegman, past chair of the National Research Council’s Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics. This report wasn’t peer reviewed since it was commissioned by a Senate enquiry but was distributed to colleagues for comments in a peer-review like exercise.
(2)
Here one find a description, by one of the authors of the first paper listed above, of their attempts to reproduce the Mann et al. hockey stick. This isn’t particularly consistent with the openness we all value:
Click to access stattered.consensus.ch2.pdf
(3) As shown in the first paper, the conclusions that we are experiencing unprecedented warming are undermined by the inappropriate way in which the PC method was applied.
(4) Here is an audit trail of M&M’s dealings with nature (home of the original hockey stick study) http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/fallupdate04/update.fall04.html
(5) I think its obvious that if a work is put forward for publication then it should be reproducible by anyone else at that time, unless it is logistically impossible. I consider particle physics to be logistically impossible to reproduce. The data involved in climate science, especially for a study of the scope of the hockey stick, are far more easily managed and archived. The argument about reproduction is especially pertinent is the work is to be used in a political context. Or do you think that a plot which is shown as a highlight of an IPCC report and shown all over the world, eg put through the letterbox in Canadian homes or shown to my wife, bizarrely, in a government-approved course on driving shouldn’t be easily reproducible at the time of publication ?
(6) I’m referring to the poor use of statistics given that appropriate use of statistical methods are vital for the evaluation and reliability of a confidence limit. We regularly interact with mainstream statisticians. As mentioned in the Wegman report there is a little evidence that this was the case with the Mann hockey stick.
(7) I wasn’t referring to Mann saying “it doesn’t matter”. I was referring to the response given to M&M. I can dig out records of this but I’ve already spent some time writing this. The poor science is in the treatment of statistics.
(8)/(9) Why do you think I’ve made up my mind ? I’m talking about one measurement which I’ve taken the trouble to read up on and, for which, I have some relevant expertise (eg statistics). I draw the inference that it is worrying that such a high profile work can be representative for the field. This seems natural. As I wrote elsewhere I’m happy to be proven wrong.
Regarding the proxies, I’m afraid this is terribly weak. One of the major arguments for acting now is that we are (or about to) experience unprecedented warming. To make this claim one needs reliable historical data. It is ridiculous that the proxies end at ~1980 given (a) that we experienced large warming since and (b) have a better control over the instrumental records in recent years than, say in the 1950s. Updating the proxies and seeing how they perform against recent precision instrumental records would undoubtedly reduce the uncertainties in historical reconstructions. I can’t believe that the community is not treating this as a priority and putting together joint bids. The costs are very small.
Finally, I’ve spent a bit of time writing the above. If you wish to continue this discussion then dispute the studies and arguments that I’ve put forward not those I haven’t mentioned.
September 12, 2011 at 8:24 am
Some time ago I grumbled on a response in this blog that people were now referring to computer simulations as ‘experiments’. Climate might be the area in which the chickens associated with this abuse come home to roost.
September 12, 2011 at 9:52 am
A concrete way in which many of my worries could be allayed would be for one or more independent collaborations of scientists to be set up to remake a series of measurements central to the claims of climate science. For example, hockey stick measurements. Similarly, they would also, from first principles, verify the correctness of the models which are used to predict future temperatures and, critically, the uncertainties associated with models and experiments.
These collaborations would not be staffed by climate scientists. Instead, the best physicists, statisticians, modellers etc. with no “dog in the fight” would be selected. Given a modest budget (eg some postdocs and PhD students), a wide remit, and sufficient time (eg 5 years) we could have a wholly independent verification (or the refutal) of the case for man-made global warming.
As mentioned above, I’m unhappy with the statistical treatment of one of the major studies. I’m also unhappy with the difficulties that those who pointed this out had in reproducing the work. Things may have changed since then. I don’t know and nor do I have the time or energy to check. Hence the need for an independent audit.
One could argue that this is all a little unfair on the climate scientists. After all they are highly qualified specialists who are doing their best, quite often in the face of unjustifiable and nasty criticism. However, these are exceptional times and this is a special topic. Getting it wrong could ruin a lot of lives. Were I a climate scientist I would actually be glad if a wholly independent complementary set of studies were made by people outside the community (as long as I could be assured of their competence and impartiality, and therein lies the challenge since real working scientists would be needed and *not* the great and the good).
September 13, 2011 at 5:04 pm
“Things may have changed since then. I don’t know and nor do I have the time or energy to check. Hence the need for an independent audit. ”
For those interested in how things have changed since then; how the ‘Hockey Stick’ has been reproduced by a number of authors and disputed by others, Wikipedia has a page on the controversy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_controversy
Of course, it is Wikipedia and so please take the the time to check the references. These include a link to the M&M paper that was eventually accepted by GRL (after rejection by Nature) and you can then see the discussion on problems in the methods of M&M (which did not necessarily vindicate Mann et al.) in GRL.
The archives of realclime.org have quite some discussion on these topics, including a climate scientist’s perspective of why M&M got it wrong (and possibly why they struggled to get published in Nature) and links to other papers that rebutted the M&M claims.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/02/dummies-guide-to-the-latest-hockey-stick-controversy/
There is a fair bit of discussion spread across the site about the M&M problems with publishing in Nature. Of course it is written by climate scientists so one may feel it suffers from their own prejudices. I recommend reading all the sources.
September 13, 2011 at 5:13 pm
Sorry for the delays in posting some of these messages. The software automatically holds messages with multiple embedded web links in case it is spam, which usually has links to sites you’d be advised not to visit.
September 13, 2011 at 8:23 pm
Kav
I’ve read the criticisms of M&M and I simply don’t buy them. My opinion is based on specific expertise with this type of statistics. I found M&M’s criticisms were valid. Furthermore, as mentioned, an independent study by the past chair (Wegman) of the National Research Council’s Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics, which was commissioned to look into this, also agrees. The Nature “audit trail” shows that the referees had no serious issues with the substance of M&M’s complaints. They just thought it was unclear if they should be published for (spurious IMO) reasons of length, complexity etc.
Furthermore, I know that I bang the drum about this, but it seems nobody else really cares. I can’t believe a scientific community has not prioritised the taking of recent proxy data which could minimise uncertainties on historical reconstructions, which is ultimately what this discussion is all about. Were I a climate scientist I would have been crying out for the data to test and constrain my reconstruction algorithms against a set of precision instrumental measurements for the past 30 years taken under the best possible conditions. Laws are being passed, taxes are being raised etc. etc. and a complete dataset has not been used to inform these decisions. This really is incredible. Have I missed something ? Does it really not matter ?
September 15, 2011 at 8:16 pm
My apologies for a tardy response, my schedule of late has been insane, and is about to get worse with three trips being planned, one being a return to Antarctica. Consequently, this will be my last lengthy post on this (or any other) topic for a while, though I will check in from time to time.
I hope Dave will forgive me if I conflate several of his posts and respond in a single reply.
1) The McIntyre and McKitrick papers have been rebutted on many points, and errors in their papers have been pointed out, by many authors (e.g. von Storch and Zorita (Geophys. Res. Lett. 2005; Huybers, Geophys Res Lett. 2005; Wahl and Ammann, Climate Change, 2007). Mann et al have also provided rebuttals in the literature and McIntyre and McKitrick have responded to these. I can provide a detailed bibliography of both sides of the argument to those that are interested, although a quick science citation index search should pull up the relevant papers. One may wish to “not buy them”, as Dave does, but people should make up their own minds.
2) Dave refers in different posts to the so-called Wegman report. However, he doesn’t mention the National Research Council report published by the National Acadamies and which addresses the same thing, though in a far broader context. Putting aside the political activities that led to the commissioning of the Wegman report, it is, as an independent, unbiased document, highly suspect. Firstly, by Wegman’s own admission, he and his team consulted with McIntyre (p 29 of the Wegman Report), they did not contact Mann, or any of his colleagues. Secondly, Wegman and the report bearing his name are still (to my knowledge) sitting under the cloud of possible plagiarism. Thirdly, a substantial part of the Wegman Report deals with a social networking analysis that is interpreted by the authors as indicating what amounts to cronyism within the paleo-climate community – i.e., people favorably reviewing manuscripts by their friends. This part of the report was submitted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal, but then withdrawn by the authors, again under charges of plagiarism
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v473/n7348/full/473419b.html
Whatever one thinks of the statistical findings of the Wegman Report, it is an incredibly sloppy of piece of work. To talk to only those on one side of the argument they were investigating is not good practice at all.
The NRC report (“Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the last 2000 years” – you can find this as a pdf online at many locations) found that the centering procedure used by Mann et al was not a good one, but taking in all the evidence, agreed with the conclusions of Mann et al., though were more conservative in their confidence in those conclusions.
3) Dave seems to agree with McIntyre and McKitrick that something was amiss with the rejection of their submission to Nature (Dave, please forgive me if I have misinterpreted your position on this, but this is how I read your comments). Firstly, Nature is not beholden to publish every manuscript that receives favorable review. It’s a commercial enterprise (I actually refer to it half jokingly as the tabloid of the scientific publishing industry). In fact, if you look at the criteria Nature gives for publication of these brief communications, you’ll see that the Nature editor acted within his or her purview (hmmm…maybe this belongs in another thread on this blog!).
One of the questions typically asked of manuscript reviewers is whether or not the manuscript in questions fits within the topic, scope and purview of the journal in question.
So it seems to me that, if there is a problem here, it’s with the editors of Nature, not with anyone in the climate community. In fact, if I understand the chain of events correctly, this paper was later published in Geophysical Research Letters – this is a prestigious journal published by the American Geophysical Union, think Physics Review Letter but for geophysics.
If every person who had a paper rejected from Nature (or Science) reacted in the same way as McIntyre and McKitrick, then we would be awash with complaints of collusion, conspiracy and subversion.
3) Dave worries about research on proxies and feels that not enough is being done. This is laudable. However, proxies are only a very small part of the increasingly large body of evidence for global warming. It’s also unclear exactly what proxies Dave is talking about – many, very different proxies are used in temperature reconstructions. Examples of proxies include lake sediments, ice cores, bore-hole temperatures, and of course tree rings. It is the latter that cause most headaches, particularly over what is called the divergence problem – SOME tree ring records produce temperatures that diverge from other proxies and people are not sure why. I hasten to add, tree ring proxies are only one of a number of proxies that are used.
However, I suggest that Dave and I start petitioning the funding agencies to make this a high priority funding item. To do this, we will need research to collect high resolution proxies in many regions of land and ocean. We will need to train a (relatively) large number of people in this field. My guess (and it is only a seat-of-the-pants guess) is that we’re talking about $100-200 million per year for say 10 years, and then maybe $50-100 million for another 20 years after that (we will need the high resolution – i.e, annual – proxies over about 30 years to get good records).
These may seem high dollar amounts, and perhaps they are. I’m extrapolating from what I know. For example, to take a large research vessel to sea costs $50-100 k per day, depending on the size of the vessel and the equipment provided. This doesn’t cover the costs of the scientists and their instruments etc. I have colleagues in the Atlantic at the moment on a 5 week cruise – there’s at least $2 million off the bat.
So, where do we get that money? We could ask for increased funding to the agencies from governments, but under the current situation, that’s unlikely. However, as Dave says, the results of such work have huge societal consequences. So, let’s ask the particle physicists to forego their hunt for the Higgs for a few decades and divert some of those funds to proxy work (I sincerely hope that no one reading this blog suspects that I would seriously propose such a course of action).
And yes, many climate scientists would welcome genuine efforts by outsiders – as some of you may know, I am one such person. In fact, every climate scientist I have talked to hopes with great fervor that they are wrong, and global warming is not happening and that humans are not responsible. But the data are increasingly making those hopes fade to nothing.
So Dave, offer your services (I have, though not for proxy work I must admit). It sounds as if you have expertise that would be very valuable and you definitely have a passion. You will have to learn a huge amount, but it is very satisfying and the intellectual problems are fascinating.
So, toodle-pip for the time being, hopefully I’ll survive my third trip down to Antarctica.
September 20, 2011 at 9:42 pm
One might equally well write that there is a correlation between being secular and being an AGW zealot…
September 27, 2011 at 11:50 am
In Australia the leading AGW sceptic is Ian Plimer, a geophysics professor who has also written several books from a secular viewpoint arguing against the Bible.
October 9, 2011 at 11:42 pm
Your claimed correlation is Westocentric. Chinese and Indians, the people now building coal-fired power stations (and good luck to them!), reckon AGW is a racket. They are not Christian and there are a lot of them!
October 10, 2011 at 10:17 am
Phillip,
They think it is a racket invented by the West to try to prevent them getting up to speed industrially, so that the West can keep its lead. In other words, they think we have an ulterior motive and that we can’t possibly be as stupid as we are about this issue.
China’s *per capita* emissions are now higher than several wealthy nations including France and Italy, and could even overtake the USA within six years; see:
http://www.smh.com.au/world/chinese-sceptics-see-global-warming-as-us-conspiracy-20111007-1ldl1.html#ixzz1aMlQdCby
Not that it worries me as a carbon-AGW sceptic. The back-of-the-envelope CO2 calculations would be correct in a dry atmosphere, but in a moist one where water vapour can condense into (reflective) cloud, the situation is so complex that the best computer models remain of little value, and people play Take-your-pick according to political criteria.
I agree that it is not only Christians who believe things by faith. You too will have a faith (albeit not a theistic one), since all reasoned argument proceeds *from axioms*. (Doing this also involves faith in reason!) Where in James does God say that without faith He is nothing?
Anton
October 10, 2011 at 1:34 pm
Phillip,
I would expect that most people, in a country told by its rivals that its attempt to catch up with them industrially was environmentally unacceptable, would think that it was a trick; wouldn’t you? Asking me to name a Mr Chen or a Mr Patel is useless – you would just say he is one of millions. Instead, I gave you a politician, and you say he is dubious for a different reason. Is there any evidence accessible to me that you would accept even if it were true?
There are indeed some strange bedfellows in this matter – Greens and multinationals, for instance.
“people of the same type as the AGW sceptics in the West”
People like Prof. Richard Lindzen of MIT or the authors of that peer reviewed paper I quoted on this thread saying that the most reliable (ie, satellite) data show no warming over the last decade (although CO2 has continued to increase)…
You misunderstand my back-of-the-envelope comment. It was actually inspired by a comment of yours in an earlier discussion of carbon-AGW on this blog, saying that it was relatively straightforward to calculate the amount of warming corresponding to the amount of CO2 and that it had been done early in the 20th century. Today we call that an undergraduate exercise or a back-of-the-envelope calculation. But it neglects the effect of water vapour in the atmosphere, and even the sign of that ‘forcing’ effect is ardently disputed scientifically at present.
Nobody is saying “I’ve disproved AGW” in the same way cranks say that they have disproved Einstein, because AGW has never been proved. Shout Louder is Al Gore’s idea of proof.
Anton
October 10, 2011 at 2:08 pm
“Those who aren’t lowering their own emissions don’t make such claims.”
The Chinese man I gave the hyperlink to is a counter-example.
“Unless you really believe greens and multinationals are working together behind the scenes…”
The vast amount of taxpayers’ money now on offer as green subsidies is attracting multinationals like flies.
“Do you really think that modern climate models don’t include water vapour?”
No. What I did say – and maintain – is that the resulting models are of little value while we don’t even know whether the effect of water vapour is to reinforce or reduce the warming effect of CO2, and by how much.
As for the (non) consensus – we did that last time, so please would you look up the previous exchange.
October 10, 2011 at 3:57 pm
Yes, some misunderstanding. AFAIK sounds like a resistance movement to me!