Climate Change

[mdettweiler]

@cheesehead: Since our back-and-forth has now grown to two separate posts, with at least the first one probably running into the character limit, I'll start afresh here to avoid confusion.

First of all, regarding the distinction between surface temperatures and subsurface heat content. Subsurface ocean heat content is an important factor in global warming only if it's actually having an effect on the planet. Yet, we don't see this effect occurring. Usually the easiest and most direct way to measure the effect of global warming is to watch polar icecaps. Note that for all the icecaps that have been melting, others have grown in proportion--which is perfectly consistent with the plateau in surface temperatures. Yet this flies in the face of the findings that subsurface ocean heat content is increasing; the only way this can make sense is if the subsurface ocean heat content actually has no effect on polar ice caps. And if subsurface ocean heat content doesn't contribute to the tangible effects of global warming, then it would seem logical that the numbers we should be looking at are the surface temperatures.

Also, if you think about it, there's not really much way we can know whether the increase in subsurface ocean heat content is due to humans, or just normal geological activity. There could easily be cycles in the magma flow that cause increases and decreases in the ocean heat content, yet AFAIK we have no way whatsoever of measuring them.

Now for what defines a "real" climatologist. Our debate on that would seem to hinge somewhat on our discussion of subsurface vs. surface temperatures, so there's not too much more to be said specifically on this for now, but I will remind you of one thing: obviously somebody considers these guys knowledgeable in order for them to have big positions at pro-AGW climate research facilities. And no, I can't completely verify that the quotes weren't taken out of context or similarly mutilated, but for that matter, you can't really do that with any news article; after all, it's not like you've heard the original quotes yourself.

Lastly, may I remind you that the news media (and in fact much of the climatology community as well) is heavily dominated by people who have a political interest in the pro-AGW position. As is demonstrated even by those leaked emails that ewmayer and HRB have been posting about throughout our discussion, there's been enough of a crackdown on the few remaining outlets (journals, etc.) that would allow anti-AGW evidence to be presented. Given that, my confidence in the veracity of much of the evidence presented for AGW is somewhat low, since there's no place that could refute them without being immediately slapped down as "junk science".

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by mdettweiler

First of all, regarding the distinction between surface temperatures and subsurface heat content. Subsurface ocean heat content is an important factor in global warming only if it's actually having an effect on the planet.

Um ... the ocean is part of the planet.

What, exactly, do you think the Earth consists of, besides land surface and air?

Do you think that every ocean voyage is an off-planet excursion?

Yet, we don't see this effect occurring.

Yes, we do - the subsurface oceans have been directly measured to be warming.

What do you think happens when heat transfers from ocean surface waters to deeper waters because of vertical circulation?

Usually the easiest and most direct way to measure the effect of global warming is to watch polar icecaps.

Why would you prefer such "easy and direct" methods to more-comprehensive but hard methods, such as taking temperatures of deep ocean water, that help give a more accurate picture of the overall situation by filling in the "blanks" between what's "easy" and "direct"? Is convenience and ease more important than obtaining an accurate overall picture?

Note that for all the icecaps that have been melting, others have grown in proportion

(Are you including glaciers in "icecaps"?)

Rising temperatures cause more precipitation. More precipitation over Antarctica causes that icecap to increase in thickness (as long as its temperature stays below freezing, that is), but that's a known and expected consequence of global warming.

You say "others have grown in proportion", implying that the decrease in some areas is balanced by the increase in other areas. Can you cite data showing that that equality is true? Or did you mean something else?

Yet this flies in the face of the findings that subsurface ocean heat content is increasing; the only way this can make sense is if the subsurface ocean heat content actually has no effect on polar ice caps.

You seem to have a simplistic view of the way heat transfers through air/surface/subsurface ocean.

Have you ever taken a physics course or studied physics independently?

The polar ice caps have contact only with the surface ocean waters, not the deep waters. Heat transfer isn't magic; it requires some sort of contact. Infrared rays don't travel far underwater, so it's only the ocean water that's in contact with polar ice that melts it. So, yes, deep ocean water has no effect on ice caps -- and that's perfectly consistent with global warming. There's no contradiction there. There's no flying in the face of the findings.

And if subsurface ocean heat content doesn't contribute to the tangible effects of global warming,

Do you think that the only tangible effects are those someone can could directly see and touch without use of instruments? Deep ocean warming is perfectly tangible, through use of thermometers lowered into those levels. Haven't you ever consulted an outdoor thermometer that was visible through a window so that you could determine the outside temperature without actually exposing your own skin to it?

then it would seem logical that the numbers we should be looking at are the surface temperatures.

... but only if you're determined to ignore data that contradicts your theory. Ahem.

Also, if you think about it, there's not really much way we can know whether the increase in subsurface ocean heat content is due to humans, or just normal geological activity.

Normal geological activity leaves the temperature relatively constant, because the hot vents are pretty continuous and earthquakes don't noticeably affect ocean temperature. Can you cite any evidence that geological activity has somehow heated up the ocean recently?

There could easily be cycles in the magma flow that cause increases and decreases in the ocean heat content, yet AFAIK we have no way whatsoever of measuring them.

When magma flows, it causes plate tectonics and volcanoes, which are well-observed. There's been no particular increase in either activity.

obviously somebody considers these guys knowledgeable in order for them to have big positions at pro-AGW climate research facilities.

... which means nothing if their quotes are taken out of context or distorted ...

And no, I can't completely verify that the quotes weren't taken out of context or similarly mutilated,

Can you partially verify it to any extent at all?

but for that matter, you can't really do that with any news article;

... which is why a scientific journal article would be much more convincing than any news report!

Lastly, may I remind you that the news media (and in fact much of the climatology community as well) is heavily dominated by people who have a political interest in the pro-AGW position.

A political interest in the pro-AGW position? Please explain what would that be.

As is demonstrated even by those leaked emails that ewmayer and HRB have been posting about throughout our discussion, there's been enough of a crackdown on the few remaining outlets (journals, etc.) that would allow anti-AGW evidence to be presented.

Wow, you've really got paranoia.

Know the difference between paranoia and reality?

Evidence.

Show us the evidence that your vague fears of the media and mainstream journals are justified.

Given that, my confidence in the veracity of much of the evidence presented for AGW is somewhat low,

... and you've failed entirely to show us that your confidence has any scientific importance!

You can go off and believe in your convenient conspiracy theories, which comfort you by not requiring you to change your beliefs, if you're really satisfied to do that. But it's self-deception on your part unless you have actual evidence. Do you prefer self-deception to reality?

BTW, have you ever studied, or taken a class in, geology, meteorology, or any other earth science?

since there's no place that could refute them without being immediately slapped down as "junk science".

That's just crybaby conspiracy theory.

Anyone who presented actual, real, verifiable evidence to disprove AGW could easily find a way to publicize them. There are plenty of conservative media outlets who'd be friendly to anti-AGW data (as shown by their frequent criticism of AGW without any scientific evidence!).

However, as I indicated above, the anti-AGWers are mostly outside the community of scientists with relevant knowledge, so the real reason you don't see scientific refutations of AGW is that there just aren't any nowadays -- the evidence of AGW is too strong for anyone who understands that evidence. Over and over and over again, the anti-AGW arguments I see have some elementary scientific flaw (such as ignoring some data, or falsely accusing mainstream science of overlooking/ignoring some data).

Oops, that plays into your conspiracy theory, doesn't it? Conspiracy theories are very handy in that respect -- contrary evidence is simply taken as confirmation of the conspiracy. Well -- you can choose between (a) your comfortable conspiratorial simplistic view of the world, or (b) reality.

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by cheesehead

Show us the evidence that your vague fears of the media and mainstream journals are justified.

Got the blinkers strapped on extra-tight today, eh? Credible evidence of wide-ranging and systematic scientific misconduct by some of the top pro-AGW scientists getting posted all around you, but you continue trying to bully mdettweiler into some kind of "public retraction", while failing to address EXACTLY THE KIND OF EVIDENCE YOU ASK FOR ABOVE. Talk about being "in denial"...

[__HRB__]

Originally Posted by cheesehead

A political interest in the pro-AGW position? Please explain what would that be.

The DHS is not interested in showing that the terrorism-threat has been blown out of proportion, either. But, please spare us your b-b-b-but that's different, because that's evil totalitarian-conservative hyperbole, not good totalitarian-conservationist hyperbole.

[__HRB__]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

[...]

Hey, does this means we're friends again? Or are we just a Pimp and a Priest trying to stop new brothels from opening?

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Got the blinkers strapped on extra-tight today, eh? Credible evidence of wide-ranging and systematic scientific misconduct by some of the top pro-AGW scientists getting posted all around you, but you continue trying to bully mdettweiler into some kind of "public retraction", while failing to address EXACTLY THE KIND OF EVIDENCE YOU ASK FOR ABOVE. Talk about being "in denial"...

I asked for evidence about "media and mainstream journals" (because that's what Max was referring to), not other aspects. Misconduct other than at the media or journals themselves is another matter.

Your definition of "EXACTLY" seems a bit fuzzy.

Do I need to explain in detail how an unbiased competent journal with integrity could win up publishing a paper based on fraudulent data if the normal peer review process did not uncover the fraud before publication? Unbiased people with integrity can still make mistakes and oversights, or be deceived by others.

How tight are your blinders/blinkers today?

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

My Comment: The NYT article I referenced above has AGW proponent Michael Mann attempting to explain this benignly this way: "scientists often used the word 'trick' to refer to a good way to solve a problem, 'and not something secret'" ... but in the above e-mail (assuming it is authentic), the word 'trick' is closely followed by 'hide the decline', which makes it seem that this particular 'trick' was used to solve the 'problem' of data not fitting the hypothesis.

From http://www.realclimate.org/index.php...ack/#more-1853

. . .

No doubt, instances of cherry-picked and poorly-worded “gotcha” phrases will be pulled out of context. One example is worth mentioning quickly. Phil Jones in discussing the presentation of temperature reconstructions stated that “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” The paper in question is the Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) Nature paper on the original multiproxy temperature reconstruction, and the ‘trick’ is just to plot the instrumental records along with reconstruction so that the context of the recent warming is clear. Scientists often use the term “trick” to refer to a “a good way to deal with a problem”, rather than something that is “secret”, and so there is nothing problematic in this at all. As for the ‘decline’, it is well known that Keith Briffa’s maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the “divergence problem”–see e.g. the recent discussion in this paper) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682). Those authors have always recommend not using the post 1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while ‘hiding’ is probably a poor choice of words (since it is ‘hidden’ in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand why this happens.


The timing of this particular episode is probably not coincidental. But if cherry-picked out-of-context phrases from stolen personal emails is the only response to the weight of the scientific evidence for the human influence on climate change, then there probably isn’t much to it.

. . .

[__HRB__]

Originally Posted by cheesehead

From http://www.realclimate.org/index.php...ack/#more-1853

Right...and Foxnews is a reliable source for objective political commentary.

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by cheesehead

From http://www.realclimate.org/index.php...ack/#more-1853
...
The timing of this particular episode is probably not coincidental. But if cherry-picked out-of-context phrases from stolen personal emails is the only response to the weight of the scientific evidence for the human influence on climate change, then there probably isn’t much to it.

More weak apologia: If 'hide' really means what the realclimate writer says it does, then it is extremely implausible that any scientist would use such wording, even in a private e-mail: One would say e.g. "correct for". But fine, let`s assume this was just really, really unfortunate wording on the part of the e-mail writer ... subjective interpretations of phrasing in any particular e-mail (note that "stolen" would seem to imply "genuine", BTW) would be a tenuous basis for broad claims of "AGW is bogus" ... which is why I find highly detailed articles by scientists working in the field like the one by McKitrick above (and those have been followed up on numerous fronts - see the "Hocley Stick Controversy" link below) to be much more damning. That article in effect turns the you-can't-just-take-a-few-e-mails-out-of-context argument around, in that it shows that some of the key data underpinning the AGW hypothesis, instead of representing "a broad and diverse corpus of independent data" are in fact nothing more that a single data set of extreme statistical sparseness and highly dubious provenance, reproduced and republished in various forms by the same small group of authors. The e-mails thus are not needed for the core scientific question about "how robust are the data", but rather paint a consistent picture of data manipulation designed to "confirm" a favored hypothesis. Since these same data have been widely published in leading journals like Nature and Science and are one of the key buttresses of the IPCC conclusions which dominate the "scientific debate" as reported by the mainstream media, I stand by my assertion that such evidence is EXACTLY of the kind you ask for when you say "Show us the evidence that your vague fears of the media and mainstream journals are justified" - but with the caveat that my "fears" are becoming much less "vague" all the time.

C'mon cheesehead, I know you're smarter than to believe that a handful of purloined emails with possibly-ambiguous phrasing would suffice to settle the argument ... so why not tackle the science? If the AGW evidence and the "Mann hockey stick" are so scientifically solid, it should be easy for you to show us where folks like McKitrick (and perhaps more pertinently Edward Wegman, Hans von Storch, et al) have their facts "totally wrong" regarding the dubiety of the "last few decades are unprecedented since the last Ice Age" claims of the AGW alarmist camp. I note that all that is needed to show that the IPCC conclusions are full of crap (or at least way, way, premature) is to demonstrate that there is a genuine scientific controversy here: Well, here you go. Please tell us how this "controversy" really ain't one, because none of the "doubters" are qualified, etc.

One last point (for today): The questionable nature of the tree-ring data used for the first wave of "hockey stick" papers by Mann et al only became clear after one journal forced public release of the authors' data - this is still a far from universal practice among scientific publications. So cheesehead, when you cite scientific work supporting whatever argument you are making from here on out, I would hope that the article(s) are from journals which require full disclosure of their authors` data and methods.

[garo]

While the case is troubling there is nothing in the behaviour of the scientists involved that is new. Read Bill Bryson's A Short History of Everything to see scientists behave much more badly. These days, the pressure to publish has meant that academics have had to hide or ignore contrary data not just in this but in may other fields. Failure is not tolerated so you cannot try, try and try again like say Edison did.

At the same time I do not agree with Ernst that most of the IPCC work was based on or predicated on the hockey stick graph. Here is a balanced critique by Richard Tol on http://www.irisheconomy.ie/

The Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia is a leading research centre on climate change. They are known for the data that they provide, particularly their estimate of the annual, global mean surface air temperature since 1850 or so. One of their servers was hacked and some 1000 emails and 3000 documents were stolen, most of them 10 years old. These emails were posted on the web, and are now being scrutinised by every one who has a grudge against climate change or climate policy, and against people who harbour such grudges.
What has emerged? There is a lot of chit-chat, and bitching about colleagues (with perhaps ground for a defamation suit or two). There are attempts at blocking other people’s careers, but no signs of success. There are hints of data manipulation. None of this surprised me. There are also indications of a systematic obstruction of freedom of information requests.
What does this mean? Not much really, although some people may end up in jail for stealing data and others may lose their jobs for breaking legal and academic rules on transparency.
Doubt has been cast over the CRU data. Insiders never really trusted their data, and it is actually little used as an input to other climate research. The global mean temperature record is used for communication rather than research. Most of the temperature graphs you have seen in the newspaper are from the CRU, but independent research has corroborated their main findings. Statistical analyses similarly have used alternative data series, and the results are broadly the same.
Some people have portrayed the climate debate as noble scientists versus savage businessmen. That image is now shattered, but it was pretty naive anyway. There are bad apples on both sides of the debate.
So? Objectively, nothing has changed. Climate change is still real, and still a real problem. A carbon tax is still the right policy. Subjectively, things are different. It is harder to argue that wise scientists of impeccable standing recommend action. Proponents of climate policy have to make a real case. I do that here.

http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/4245

[__HRB__]

Originally Posted by garo

While the case is troubling there is nothing in the behaviour of the scientists involved that is new.[...]

As long as loans defaulting are uncorrelated one can diversify the risk, but as soon as defaults are correlated, you have one-helluva-problem. Analogously, the crucial point is not that scientists are human and have the incentive to massage results and lie a little in all possible directions to get funding for their work, but that there has been biased funding towards research to fabricate proof that Saddam Hussein has WMDs GW is the Biggest. Problem. Evar. and we're all going to die, unless we start a ridiculous war create an infinite amount of zero-effect legislation (peer-reviewed scientific model: inf/inf=1).