Presto Agitato

Quote of the Day: The Hack's Prayer

Our Gaia in heaven, hallowed be your name
Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in academia
Give us this day our daily propaganda, and forgive us our setbacks as we also have forgiven our comrades.
And lead us not into science, but deliver us from data …. – ‘Doug S.’

Blogfodder: The Smell of Fear

As somebody who has championed science all his career, carrying a lot of water for the profession against its critics on many issues, I am losing faith.  Recent examples of bias and corruption in science are bad enough.  What’s worse is the reluctance of scientific leaders to criticise the bad apples.  Science as a philosophy is in good health; science as an institution increasingly stinks. – Matt Ridley, The Times, 8 Dec 2014

I think maybe he's a bit pessimistic. Signs of proper scientific pushback are budding everywhere.

Quote of the Day: Roll the Bones

Tree rings are proving to be almost as good a proxy for paleotemperatures as goat entrails. – Comment over at Watt's place, re: Mann's continuing BS.

I've said it before: Dendroclimatology is to dendrochronology as astrology is to astronomy.

Quote of the Day: Deadly Sins

The planet has been through a lot worse than us ... been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles, hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages – and we think some plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? – George Carlin

On Evidence

A friend recently made, on Facebook, what I thought was a fairly innocuous comment about a confused news story on global warming, only to get the incredulous reply, ‘What, you don't believe in Climate Change?’.  Sigh.  But this is the sort of buffoonery I have come to expect from those who fancy themselves as enlightened about ‘Climate Change’.  ‘Enlightenment’ is rarely illuminating.

Leaving my friend out of it, here's what I believe with reasonable confidence:

• From the end, in the mid-19th century, of the Little Ice Age, to the end of the 20th century, Earth's atmosphere warmed slightly, well less than 2° C but the exact figure depends on whose data you use and how you run the numbers.
• The planet has probably warmed, on average, since the mid-20th century, although that picture is clouded a bit by siting issues and dubious ‘adjustments’ to the surface temperature data set.  In any case, the majority of 20th-century warming happened previous to 1940, i.e. previous to the majority of human emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs).  (Note to the Associated Press: The correct plural form is GHGs, not GHG.  Also, RBIs and WMDs.  Thank you.)
• The warmest temperatures on record were in the 1930s.
• There has been no statistically detectable warming since the mid-1990s, 1996 or 1997 for sure and possibly back to 1993 depending on the dataset and how it is processed.
• Human action has contributed to global warming, but increased greenhouse effect due to human GHG emissions is probably less than 50% responsible, with or without ‘amplification’.  The urban heat-island effect is a significant player, too.
• Natural variability (e.g., the end of the Little Ice Age and changes in El Nino patterns, probably not human-induced) is a significant factor.
• BEST was a bust.
• The overall temperature effects of increased concentration of atmospheric water vapor, clouds included, are at most nearly neutral.  Cloud effects, plus and minus, are significant, but are on balance a strong negative feedback.  The postulated ‘amplification effect’ due to water vapor has not been observed.  (A recent study, claiming the opposite, contained several glaring errors.)
• To date, ‘climate change’ as a result of anthropogenic GHGs is mostly limited to the increase in temperatures.  There is no evidence that we are significantly affecting severe-weather patterns.  Indeed, there is no evidence that severe-weather patterns are changing at all.  (The effect of severe weather on increasing human populations is a different question.)
• All other things being equal, climate sensitivity to changes in CO2 concentration is logarithmic, i.e. not a straight line.  Climate sensitivity to increased concentrations (from present) of CO2 is currently and will be slight.  Future climate change as a result of increased anthropogenic CO2 will therefore be slight and practically negligible.  The IPCC study that projected great cataclysm was based on the high end of IPCC temperature projections.  At the low end – which, according to the IPCC, is more likely – they admit that climate effects will be minor.
• All of this is consistent with the ‘97% consensus’ figure, which has been fundamentally misreported and therefore generally, indeed wildly, misunderstood.  (For what it's worth, if the proposition is that the planet has warmed significantly since the mid-19th century and that human action has contributed to this change, then 97% is probably a significant underestimate.  On that point, even the ‘skeptics’ agree.)

But I have this nasty habit of reading past the headline and lede, and not just getting my information from press releases and news reporters.  My bad.

Meteorological Meatheads

Listen, and this means you, headline-writers at CBS 2 in Chicago (the weather-lady has the story right and seems properly frustrated with the hype), the ‘polar vortex’, aka the circumpolar flow, is a normal jetstream-like condition consequent of the fact that the planet (not just this planet, either) is spinning on its axis.  If it stops, then we're really in trouble!  From Wikipedia, which appears to be mostly correct this far:

A polar vortex is a persistent, large-scale cyclone that circles either of[a] planet's geographical poles.  On Earth, the base of the polar vortices are located in the middle and upper troposphere and extend into the stratosphere.  They surround the polar highs and lie in the wake of the polar front.  These cold-core low-pressure areas strengthen in the winter and weaken in the summer due to their dependence upon the temperature differential between the equator and the poles.

Somewhat less usual (but not really ‘rare’) is when the flow becomes so distorted that it brings the polar airmass to the central United States.  But when that happens, the flow is distorted northward somewhere else, which is why, while we were freezing our toes and other dangly bits last January, the frigid folks in Alaska and northern Russia were enjoying uncharacteristically moderate weather.  (See the images at the top of the Wikipedia article.) 

So next week, the jet-stream (not really the circumpolar flow) will dip south into the United States, bringing temperatures ten to fifteen degrees colder (and drier air) than usual.  This is not shocking, and it's not a ‘Polar Vortex II’ (sheez!), so take a pill!

Hyperdipsia

The argument has been offered, by a science blogger no less (name withheld because I don't have the link and, anyway, I don't want to add to his traffic), that:

1. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas
2. Without the greenhouse effect, Earth would be uninhabitably cold
3. Human action is increasing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere
4. Therefore, dangerous anthropogenic global warming is happening, ‘Deal with it.’

The sort of boob who would seriously offer this species of argument has some nerve to screech that those of us with remaining questions (!) are ‘anti-science’!  Hint: The risks of hyponatremia and drowning are no excuse not to drink water, nor even more water.  (Dihydrogen monoxide is killing people!  Stop DHO today!)  The question, always, is how much and in what manner, at least if you're pretending to make a scientifically valid claim.  Oversimplification (this means you, Mr. Unnamed Blogger) is almost always misleading.

*  *  *

Considering the utter failure of climate models to explain the current situation (no warming at least since 1997 and perhaps as far back as 1993, depending on the data set and method of analysis), and of the vast majority of them even to come close to reality, one wonders how anyone can take them or their proponents seriously.  But the models' shortcomings were apparent before the passage of the last 17 years, given that they're all twiddled and tuned to get the correct result for a specific date range but fail to produce accurate results for other date ranges, e.g., the warm period from 1920 to 1940, which has so far (like the current ‘pause’) defied modeling either as a natural or man-made phenomenon.  Also problematic:

• Carbon dioxide is not the most potent greenhouse gas, nor even nearly so.  The models assume a large ‘amplification effect’ (positive feedback) due to water vapor, the magnitude of which is simply a SWAG (scientific wild-ass guess) because the actual number is hard to nail down, both in magnitude and in sign.  The latest research suggests that water vapor, all effects included, may actually work against additional warming (i.e., against an increase from the current status quo), due to the formation of sun-blocking low clouds and the opening of heat-venting ‘apertures’ in high clouds.  (The question is what will be the difference given the status quo, not how the planet got to the status quo.)  But whatever the case, the margin of doubt on the modelled fudged amplification effect is far greater than the supposed warming effect, meaning that the models are completely unreliable (but the data alone should have told us that) and there's a high chance that the models are bullshit at their core.  But never mind all that if you're a warmist.  It's not important!  We must save the planet!  (Insert Michael Jackson tune, here.)
• There is little doubt, now, that variations in solar activity have a significant effect on Earth's temperature.  Variations in solar irradiance aren't significant, but that's beside the point.  It's important to account for irradiance in order to better isolate other trends, but the real issue is the Sun's effect on incoming cosmic radiation, which varies with the solar cycle.  A weak heliosphere means more incoming cosmic radiation and therefore more cloud formation and, consequently a cooler planet.  A stronger and more-extensive heliosphere blocks cosmic radiation, reducing cloud condensation nuclei in Earth's atmosphere, and therefore cloud cover, thereby increasing temperatures on Earth.  But, the question remains, how much.  More work is necessary, but the effect does appear to be significant.  Enough to get notice in IPCC 4, anyway, which is a better performance for the IPCC than in IPCC 3, in which they blithely dismissed the straw man of irradiance.  So much easier, that straw-man bashing!
• The catastrophist view is utterly unsupported by either data or theory.  Indeed, given that extreme weather is caused, primarily, by strong temperature gradients (the meteorologist's mantra: Temperature differences cause pressure differences, and pressure differences cause weather) and that anthropogenic global warming is expected to have the greatest effect in high latitudes, in the winter, and at night (in other words, cold air warms more than warm air) thereby weakening the temperature gradients, the expected result is a moderation of extreme weather events.  Also, the strongest factor in tropical cyclone development is vertical wind-shear, but AGW creates more shear and more shear means that these storms will be torn apart before they can fully develop.  Every hurricane scientist knows this – it's Hurricane 101 – but good luck getting that point through to a warmist!  They don't want to hear it.
• ‘But what about California!’, the warmists bleat.  ‘What about the drought?’  What about it, indeed?  The best models (for what they're worth, see above) predict that anthropogenic global warming should lead to wetter weather in California, not drier.  Remember that weather is not climate.  The simple analogy is: Weather is mood, climate is personality.  Sometimes you just need a good cry but, unless you're making a habit of it, there's no reason to suspect clinical depression.  So California had a dry year, and Texas has had a couple.  This happens.  It's not evidence for anthropogenic global climate change.  (Unless you're an anti-science warmist!)
• ‘But what about the 97.1% of scientists who agree?  Isn't that enough?’  But what is that that they're supposed to ‘agree with’?  In fact, the proposition tested (not surveyed, by the way) was that 1. Earth has warmed since the mid-19th century, and 2. Human action has played some role in that.  Put that way (notice no mention of ‘climate change’ beyond the average temperature), even the ‘skeptics’ agree; 97% is probably an understatement!
  
  But, as I said, the Cook, et. al., ‘study’, such as it was, wasn't even a survey; the researchers rated the abstracts of a sample of published studies, looking for agreement with that uncontroversial proposition, and found that, of the 33% of rated abstracts that actually expressed a view on the question, 97.1% were in agreement with the proposed ‘consensus’.  (So it's 97% of 33% of a sample.)  But, for some mysterious reason (you will please pardon the sarcasm), they aren't sharing their data.  But wait, you ask: Isn't that a basic rule, that published science must include the data so it can be verified and replicated?  With global warming science, apparently not.  Not that this has gone without official notice: A couple of the more reputable journals have been so embarrassed by the publication of bad statistical work, especially in climate reconstructions (*cough*Michael Mann*cough*), that they have now put out a call for more statisticians to serve as reviewers.  They're also demanding that all article submissions must hereafter include the data and calculations.  It's a start.
  
  What's more, the study's claimed ‘independent’ reviewers were actually a group of friends of the lead author, participants on his warmist blog who in fact discussed amongst themselves how to rate specific abstracts.  So much for independence!  Perhaps not surprisingly, attempts to replicate the study, using fresh data (since the authors won't share theirs), have failed.
• The list goes on; I should probably also mention the ‘homogenized’, i.e. fudged, and otherwise suspect surface temperature data, and the broader but divergent satellite temperature record, but time is short and I must get to work.

All in all, a seriously defective ‘theory’.  But as annoying as this is on its face and in its political and economic consequences, what really irks me is that it's bullshit like this that leads people to suspect that science, generally, is not so great as advertised, thus allowing patent bullshit like ‘intelligent design’ to get a toehold in the public mind.  That's not a shortcoming in the scientific method but in the behavior of the few who would allow politics and greed (whatever it takes to grab that next research grant!) to get the best of their objectivity and scruples.

Quote of the Day: The Camel's Back?

‘Okay, this Obama guy is really starting to annoy me.’ – Steven Hayward

One notes a touch of sarcasm ….

Clarity

A Dubious Discovery

Our friends at the Associated Press have today declared that ‘Carbon dioxide is the chief greenhouse gas.’  I wonder when they plan to submit their discovery to Geophysical Research Letters.

Note to the AP: The standard understanding is that CO2 is a relatively weak greenhouse gas, far outclassed by nitrous oxide, methane, and water vapor.  Neither is it the most abundant.  (Water vapor wins that title.)  Climate models assume a substantial ‘amplification’, due to water vapor, of CO2's direct greenhouse effect.