May 29, 2008
Oops…about those global temperatures
An item for those who believe that climate science is “settled”. A new article in Nature reports that the post-war sea-surface temperature record is biased. See this report by the BBC. It is all to do with whether you take the temperature of water near ships’ engine inlets or from buckets. Really technical stuff like that. Apparently, because the method changed, and the change was not properly taken account of, the sea surface did not cool as abruptly in the 1940s as the figures had previously indicated, nor (it follows) warm as quickly during the rest of the century. Climate modellers are working out the implications right now. How much this amounts to–how far it influences projections of future changes in temperature–is unclear. Maybe not much, but we shall see.
Steve McIntyre, author of Climate Audit, a thorn in the side of the climate-science establishment, has been on to this anomaly for some time. (See “Nature ‘Discovers’ Another Climate Audit Finding”.) The article in Nature does not cite him. Despite the evident diligence and seriousness of his work, he is not part of the officially sanctified peer-reviewed network, and indeed appears to be shunned by it. I dare say there are lessons to be drawn here about open-mindedness, or lack of it, in official climate science, and in the claque that surrounds it.
As the climate blogger James Annan puts it: Oops. “This seems pretty embarrassing for all concerned.” But look on the bright side, he argues: “one could almost portray this as another victory for modelling over observations, since the models have always struggled to reproduce this rather surprising dip in temperatures.” Well, that would be one approach. He credits McIntyre, but cannot bring himself to utter the name: “[the issue] wasn’t overlooked by everyone [link to Climate Audit], actually. But I anticipate that plenty of people will try their best to avoid looking and linking in that particular direction.” File under, “Approved Scientific Method”.
We have had a somewhat chilly winter in New York, with a late spring. Right now we are having some lovely spring weather, which no one would want to be any warmer or any colder.
Posted by: algasema | May 29th, 2008 at 7:40 pm | Report this commentNature has a policy of refusing to acknowledge the existence of Steve McIntyre, despite his undoubted contributions to the field. They are quite happy to link to environmental campaigners though.
Another great British institution subverted by greenery.
Posted by: Bishop Hill | May 29th, 2008 at 7:46 pm | Report this commentThis change relates to the period after WW2 when the temperature record appeared to show a dip, despite the hugely increased CO2 emissions from the post-war economic boom.
Posted by: Freddy | May 29th, 2008 at 8:26 pm | Report this commentClimate modellers always had a hard time explaining this, and used lots of very vague, hand-waving arguments about sulphate aerosols reducing incident sunlight.
The effect of this adjustment will be to remove the temperature dip. The reaction from the global warming types will be to brush the aerosols into the memory hole, and say, Look, CO2 is the overwhelming driver.
At this point, any journalists worth their salt will start asking very pointed questions about the aerosols, about why they were supposed to be real when they were needed to fit models to observations, but magically disappear as soon as they are no longer needed.
They might further ask why it is that, no matter what the supposed observed data, the modellers always come to the same conclusion.
They might further ask, given the huge uncertainty in the measurements and the very small amount of change in temperature (less than a degree over a century …), whether the whole global warming charade is fantasy from start to finish.
Bah. I could go on …
First reaction - the truth will out!
Posted by: John | May 29th, 2008 at 8:41 pm | Report this commentSecond reaction - this does not change my view that human behaviour is responsible for a minority of “global warming” but, as it is the only factor over which we have any control, we should act to alleviate its ill-effects.
Re: “Second reaction - this does not change my view…”
Such is the power of belief over reality for many people, and for many climate “scientists” who still believe the theory even though the data doesn’t fit. However, in real science, observation trumps hypothesis and repeated peer reviewed publications have shown that climate models don’t fit observed temperatures nor predict climate. Belief maintained in the presence of such contradiction is the perfect definition of faith.
At least one scientist has challenged that no real world observation, including global cooling, can disprove CO2-derived antropogenic warming. Therefore, decreased planetary temperatures prove global warming theories as they are modeled today. That is not only religion, that is a religious scam as we are all now being asked to pay for something in which a few people believe and evangelize.
Remember, most of what you know about climate change comes from politicians, actors, and journalists. Most people cannot name a single climate scientist that has shaped their knowledge on the subject. The house of cards built by alarmists is collapsing because for the first time a few statisticians and economists are taking a look at the “knowledge” with the scrutiny of an accountant. Unfortunately the numbers don’t add up.
It is shameful that several scientists apparently paralleled the work of a blogger, a year later, and submitted it as their own work, and the peer reviewers and publishers at Nature considered it novel and surprising. What are we now to think of this particular field of “science?”
Posted by: June | May 29th, 2008 at 11:05 pm | Report this commentInterestingly, the Independant have a story on this and give it a completely different (and to my mind more plausible) spin. The new evidence supports the case that global warming is largely anthropogenic by accounting for an anomaly in the data. The anomaly had long been cited by sceptics who argued that it showed that temperature variation has more to do with sun activity than
Posted by: Craig | May 30th, 2008 at 10:58 am | Report this commentCO2.
Ah well, in fifty years we’ll either be laughing about how the whole world was taken in by hysterical climate change spin.
Or we’ll be living under water in the SE of England and having cocktails by the pool in the middle of winter.
The issue I have with this is the very mechanics of how the Climate Change industry functions.
And make no mistake, it is an industry. And a massive one at that.
And its an industry that survives off the back of alarmist propoganda.
The fact that the average Climate Change charity (it should really be called a business) spends more than half their funding on advertising to entice yet more funding sort of flies in the face of conserving resources and is a slight on an industry supposedly trying to saver the world.
Then you have Climate Change scientists. These guys are employed by the “charities” mentioned above.
The problem is that if they dont reveal the results their benefectors are looking for, i.e. alarming eveidence that the world is about to implode and be sucked into some sort of carbon-neutral black hole, their funding will be cut off.
Now try and tell me that won’t motivate them to smooth over data, espcially if they believe the spin themselves.
Simple case of scientists providing the product that their clients are looking for.
If you want a sensible debate on climate change then force all so-called climate change experts to reveal who pays their salaries.
Posted by: Jonathan | May 30th, 2008 at 12:27 pm | Report this commentThis is really funny…or sad.
If there is any doubt that (possible) Global warming is not occurring nor made by human activity, there is huge cry: ALARMIST ARE DEAD WRONG! I mean as far as I know the evidence is contradictonary, but is moving towrds the assumption that a) Global Warming is happening and b) it is influnced by humans. The science seems to be more united today than a decade ago. But yes, evidence is not water-proof.
“Green industry”, “Green lobby”? Yes, environmentalist have money and they influence policy makers. And oil companies, car industry, manufacturing does not have money, does not do lobbying? Please!
Does smoking cause cancer? Tobacco companies denied it (with good success) for decades.
Posted by: Viking | May 30th, 2008 at 12:55 pm | Report this commentI do believe enough good scientists have confirmed a warming trend, but the question for society is whether it is induced by human behavior.
This certainly doesn’t mean warming everywhere. It indeed means greater variability in many places.
We certainly know that climate has changed many times just in the Common Era.
Tacitus called North Africa the granary of Rome. Today it is a desert.
The Norsemen who established settlement in Newfoundland long before Columbus was born were likely extinguished by climate change.
Mini ice ages had rivers in Northewrn Europe frozen over about three centuries ago.
Britains grew grapes once, then didn’t, and are now starting to do so again.
Society will have to adapt to the changes underway. I doubt very much we can avoid them by changes in behavior.
There will be massive migrations coming as the basic climate of some places makes them uneconomic. There will be flooding of coastal places. Parts of the world that today are semi-deserts, like the American Southwest, will likely become true deserts.
I think measures that advance our technology and the flexibility of our economies are well worthwhile, but not because they will alter our climatic fate. Change is always a spur to human ingenuity.
Posted by: JOHN CHUCKMAN, TORONTO | May 30th, 2008 at 1:16 pm | Report this commentI am not surprised that the climate change establishment encounters climate change skeptics with skepticism. This is because there is such a powerful political and economic interest in this skepticism. Many charlatans with few scientific credentials thrive on this interest, create headlines in the news media and have a disproportionate influence on the political debate. McIntyre may be one of the more serious skeptics. While his work was not published in Nature - he shares this fate with many scientists - it received early and very significant coverage in the news media (http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag-w/2005/aug/business/pt_wsj.html).
Posted by: Ingo Hein | May 30th, 2008 at 3:31 pm | Report this commentYou ask why is he not part of the IPPC (the “officially sanctified peer-reviewed network”)? IPPC skepticism of skeptics could partly account for that. But would McIntyre like to be a part of the IPPC (I doubt it)? - its voluntary, after all. Second, he is not a scientist in the strict sense (he has no PhD) and has only published one article in a peer reviewed journal. So if he indeed wanted to be part of the IPPC, he should simply publish more in peer reviewed journals. There is a vast choice and they not all “controlled” by the IPPC. This is simply how science works. Believe it or not, but climate science works like that, too.
Ingo Hein :
Posted by: Freddy | May 30th, 2008 at 4:47 pm | Report this comment“You ask why is he not part of the IPPC”
McIntyre is part of the IPCC - he was one of their reviewers, though they did their best to ignore him.
And if you seriously think that climate skeptics have been able to :
“create headlines in the news media and have a disproportionate influence on the political debate”
Then I have to wonder what media you have been reading in the last decade.
Climate science, like all science, should be conducted in as careful and impartial a manner as possible. Mistakes by climate scientists are by themselves no evidence of bias in the scientific community.
Meanwhile, Mr. Crook appears to have at least partially fallen for the idea that giving more media attention to climate-change skeptics will somehow change the facts on the ground. Whatever is happening to the climate, Mr. Crook, it will not be changed one bit by what gets reported in the media.
Posted by: Noah Smith | May 30th, 2008 at 5:26 pm | Report this commentLeading climate scientist, Clive Crook, shows the IPCC for what they are: fraudsters!
We are saved! Data measurement mistake in 1945 disproves global warming theory!
Heaven help us. Otherwise intelligent people bury their heads in the sand.
Posted by: agog | May 30th, 2008 at 8:12 pm | Report this commentYes, but a continued pattern of bias in the authors of a document such as the “Summary for Policymakers” is incontrovertible evidence of bias in that community.
It’s not the mistakes, it’s the selective incorporation of data and models, the sloppy use of basic statistics and forecasting, and the hoarding of data that evidence more ego than openmindedness. Somehow all of these unscientific characteristics withstand peer-review. What does that say about the peers?
Parts of the earth may be warming and such warming may have real consequences. If attribution is sloppy (e.g. if C02 is not the culprit), efforts at mitigation may be disastrously misguided.
This is why we need to back off this laughable propostion of “scientific consensus” and demote any of our public employees who selectively use information to support a preconceived conclusion when their job description is the opposite.
Posted by: June | May 30th, 2008 at 8:17 pm | Report this commentWasn’t Steve McIntyre who proved that peer-review falls short of the “due diligence” required in many industries but apparently not necessary in Climate Science? Wasn’t his showing that the peer-reviewed “Hockey Stick” was complete crock which made him noticed? If so, why would he want to submit himself to a method he believes to be fraudulent and biased (I mean, think about it “peer-review”; isn’t that a synonym for “professional-bullying”)?
Posted by: Frederick Davies | May 31st, 2008 at 5:30 pm | Report this commentThere’s an interesting conundrum for the modellers now. Having spent years explaining that the post-war drop was caused by aerosols, they are now going to suddenly decide that the effect of aerosols was overestimated.
That’s the way climate science works.
Posted by: Bishop Hill | May 31st, 2008 at 8:45 pm | Report this commentModellers are constantly going back to their drawing boards to correct the flaws in their models. Now they will have a hard time trying to correct their models to factor in the fact that although CO2 has been rising steadly for the last 10 years, there has been a period of flat temperatures and now two consecutive years of severe cooling. Tell that to us in South America!
About the correction they want to make on data from buckets and water intakes, we must consider that in those times data from the oceans had an anecdotal character. Thermometers on ships were precise down to 0.1ºC at the most, and many of them were calibrated only in ONE degree steps. The accuracy was on the viewer’s eye to distinguish the line nearer to the mercury.
Another point to me made is that the delay between the bucket being hoisted aboard and the reading cannot be greater than 20 seconds. That delay is not enough to cause a measurable cooling (or warming) of the bucket’s 10 liters water content, much less with a rough scale thermometer used in those days.
Furthermore, the cooling would occur in the first topmost millimeter of the bucket, while the thermometer would be introduced into the bucket by 10 or more centimeters.
Another strong point: people in the ships and the Navy were not scientists trying to do a perfect job. It was a bureaucratic task that many days couldn’t be performed because of weather conditions (gales, storms, etc) and other times because they simply forgot to do it, or they couldn’t do it. So they just filled the empty space in the record with a reading that “seemed” plausible. Otherwise operators would be punished (or admonished for their fault) if they showed a blank space in their records.
Therefore now they cannot make any correction on the data because they have no solid ground into which base their calculations. It is just another wild and desperate movement to keep “proving” that man is responsible for climate change.
Posted by: Eddie from South America | June 1st, 2008 at 9:47 pm | Report this commentHo Hum, climate change theory is based on a lot more indicators than just sea surface temperature.
I would tend to favour the IPCC over the conspiracy theorists still.
Posted by: Fergal | June 5th, 2008 at 7:47 am | Report this commentDear Clive,
“he is not part of the officially sanctified peer-reviewed network”…
…or ’science’ as it is more widely known?
Seriously, what does this mean? He doesn’t submit his papers to peer review? (In which case why should we take hime seriously?) He submits them to his peers who point out their flaws and therefore refuse to publish them in their respected journals? (This is why the journals are respected, they do not publish flawed research)
Dear freddy,
“no matter what the supposed observed data, the modellers always come to the same conclusion.”
Perhaps this is because, no matter what the desired conclusion (how much simpler life would be if the problem would simply go away) the observed data always come to the same conclusion - the climate is getting warmer far too quickly.
Of course the science is not ’settled’, science never is - this new research actually clears up an anomaly - many scientists actually think the situation is worse than the IPCC ‘consensus’ document admits. Last week NASA admitted political interference to tone down its own position.
Overwhelmingly, evidence from many different studies and disciplines supports a hypothesis of accelerating climate change linked to human industrial/agricultural activities.
Posted by: David | June 10th, 2008 at 9:10 am | Report this comment