Now IPCC hurricane data is questioned
theregister.co.uk
theregister.co.uk
"I personally cannot in good faith continue to contribute to a process that I view as both being motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being scientifically unsound. As the IPCC leadership has seen no wrong in Dr. Trenberth’s actions and have retained him as a Lead Author for the AR4, I have decided to no longer participate in the IPCC AR4."
Do you think that's absolutely trivial as well?
"My view is that when people identify themselves as being associated with the IPCC and then make pronouncements far outside current scientific understandings that this will harm the credibility of climate change science and will in the longer term diminish our role in public policy."
In other words, he thinks global warming science should influence policy debate. In this instance, he feels the IPCC made a statement it shouldn't have, and it will hinder future efforts to affect policy.
People are obviously interested, though, and I can't believe anyone (again, statistically speaking) actually thinks it's better for the debate to be limited to purely symbolic posturing over cherry-picked details.
How hard could it be to write some software to (nucleate a community to) track what's disputed and what's not, how much variance of opinion there is, etc?
Moreover, even if we had automated retrieval at the correct time, there are issues with the stations.
“The story is the same for each one. The popular data sets show a lot of warming but the apparent temperature rise was actually caused by local factors affecting the weather stations, such as land development."
That's from John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a former lead author on the IPCC.
These stations, they believe, have been seriously compromised by factors such as urbanisation, changes in land use and, in many cases, being moved from site to site.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article702...
There is definitely concern over absolute accuracy in the collection of this data. However, it doesn't seem like these concerns have somehow debunked AGW, and certainly haven't even put a dent in current estimated global climate change. I get very frustrated when people see the sausage of science being made and suddenly get angry. "What? Scientists are not right all the time? Well then they must be right none of the time!"
If the apparent temperature rise was actually due to other factors, what's the basis for the claim that there is warming?
> certainly haven't even put a dent in current estimated global climate change
So what? It's an estimate, one that happens to be wrong. If the estimate and the reality are different, why should we pay attention to the estimate?
As the leaked emails said, the models don't predict what's actually happening. Why should we act as if they do?
You can keep saying that, but you're wrong. They did. They said that the models' predictions didn't correspond to what they thought that they were seeing from the measurements.
Christy's work appears to be post-leak and wasn't considered in the e-mails. He says that the supposed temperature increases, which the e-mails admit were less than what the models predicted, aren't real. What's your basis for claiming that he's wrong about the actual measurments?
> Please stop suggesting they actually had any significant impact on the science in question, because they did not.
How about telling us what you'd take as a statement or evidence that AGW wasn't happening?
Note also the difference between statistically significant and scientifically significant. Phil Jones is currently hanging his hat on the former and staying very quiet about the latter. However, the latter is the hockey stick.
It didn't correspond to tree-ring measurements. Which is already an unreliable and lossy sort of data, so they applied corrections for other phenomenon. And if it were a primary line of evidence in the case for climate change there might be a problem. But, as it stands, they were not and it was not.
Further, at this point, all the work they did is replicable. The orignal data was not lost, it simply wasn't kept at that facility (for a variety of reasons). The IPCC is investigating any serious wrongdoing and having an independent group check the results.
> How about telling us what you'd take as a statement or evidence that AGW wasn't happening?
Sort of like asking, "What you'd take as evidence that evolution isn't real." At this point it'd need to be fairly extraordinary, since there is a LOT of data (both observed and modeled) that supports the hypothesis.
So I dunno. Do you have anything better than, "One statistician disagrees with Al Gore's movie from 4 years ago but agrees with the IPCC?" Or maybe, "These people did something with data that I don't understand and called it a trick, I knew those guys were up to something!" Maybe something to counter the EIS footage? Or perhaps data to argue against the basic tenants? Is there actually much less CO2 in the air than claimed?
What evidence would you take that it is happening? Epochal records of CO2 content in the air? We have that. Clear evidence of sharp and sudden environmental change in temperature sensitive areas? We have a ton of that; some of it is incredibly dramatic. Decade-term data that still shows overall warming trends? We've got that and its far more reliable than the extreme longterm data. Clear chemistry explaining what should happen? The base science backs this up.
Do we have absolutely conclusive proof yet? No. Do we have enough evidence to start taking this seriously? Yes, I believe my threshold is met. Do post-industrialized nations like America stand to gain a lot financially by embracing this? I think we have much more to gain (and a lot to lose if we let China continue to outpace us in renewable energy research and production). So not only do I see a lot of science backing this notion, but I see a lot of opportunity. That's enough for me.
Wrong e-mail. I'm referring to the "it's embarrassing that we can't account for the recent measurements" e-mail. They weren't talking about the tree stuff, which has its own problems, but is not recent.
> Further, at this point, all the work they did is replicable.
Phil Jones disagrees.
> The orignal data was not lost
They can't produce it, so what definition of "not lost" are you using?
> Do you have anything better than
I have the person who did the IPCC's work on temperature measurement. You found his work compelling when you agreed with it.
> Sort of like asking, "What you'd take as evidence that evolution isn't real."
Yes, exactly. There are many possible observations that would contradict some/all of evolutionary theory. We don't see them, but they're very easy for an honest scientist to imagine.
> At this point it'd need to be fairly extraordinary, since there is a LOT of data (both observed and modeled) that supports the hypothesis.
You're overstating things. The recent temperature data is broken and even then contradicts the models. The "tree data is good when it supports the AGW but not when it doesn't" argument is weak. Jones admits that the arguments for ignoring the medieval warming period have problems. The hurricane stuff was wrong. The glacier data is far from conclusive (and overstated anyway). Arctic ice isn't behaving as predicted. And so on.
> Epochal records of CO2 content in the air? We have that.
Yup. It shows that with significantly higher CO2 concentrations (2-10x), we didn't see significantly higher temperatures.
> Clear chemistry explaining what should happen?
Actually, CO2 chemistry, or rather its physical properties, doesn't predict the magnitude of AGW. AGW requires feedback from other things.
> Clear evidence of sharp and sudden environmental change in temperature sensitive areas?
The AGW theory is that CO2 is causing climate change. Since climate changes constantly anyway, it would be surprising if we couldn't find such things now. The problem with using them for evidence of AGW is that we can find them from pre AGW eras as well. In other words, they occur independently of AGW.
> I see a lot of opportunity. That's enough for me.
Good for you - spend your money. I hope that you get rich.
However, the current state of AGW research is no where near good enough to impose those beliefs on anyone else.
Please link this email then?
> They can't produce it, so what definition of "not lost" are you using?
They cannot personally produce it, but they can list where they got it and then you can do those sources.
But here's the key thing to keep in mind: neither you nor I know the full story there. There's not enough evidence to suggest fraud, only enough to warrant an investigation. You'are acting as if the science is discredited, but it seems to me like you want it to be discredited so you're preemptively declaring it so.
> I have the person who did the IPCC's work on temperature measurement. You found his work compelling when you agreed with it.
I found the whole body of work compelling. Only a few individual pieces of work are truly compelling on their own, and Phil's never was one. And by the way, I was skeptical until about a year and a half ago. Now that physical observations are starting to replace pure models and showing similar (if somewhat less aggressive) temperature gains, I am less dismissive of it.
> You're overstating things. The recent temperature data is broken and even then contradicts the models. The "tree data is good when it supports the AGW but not when it doesn't" argument is weak. Jones admits that the arguments for ignoring the medieval warming period have problems. The hurricane stuff was wrong. The glacier data is far from conclusive (and overstated anyway). Arctic ice isn't behaving as predicted. And so on.
I'm pretty sure the glacier datais not "overstated", anymore than time lapse photography with accurate scales and a simple chart of ice changes can be. It's pretty obvious that several glaciers are retreating at what can reasonably called a "surprising" rate.
> Good for you - spend your money. I hope that you get rich.
You know, I hope you're right. Because if I'm right the next 35 years are going to be shitty for everyone.
You're claiming familiarity yet are unaware of one of the passages quoted most often?
Google is your friend. (I missed the phrasing a bit.)
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2009/1128/as-copenhage... http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5AP3NI20091126
> > They can't produce it, so what definition of "not lost" are you using?
> They cannot personally produce it, but they can list where they got it and then you can do those sources.
You're backpedaling. Unfortunately for that position, they were the source of their "adjustments" and they've admitted that they can't reproduce those. And, it's not clear that the original sources still have the data.
> Now that physical observations are starting to replace pure models
You're rejecting them. In addition to rejecting the temperature data, you're rejecting the hurricane data. http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/tropical/
> I'm pretty sure the glacier datais not "overstated", anymore than time lapse photography with accurate scales and a simple chart of ice changes can be.
The question isn't whether some glaciers are shrinking. It's whether glacier changes as a whole are somehow different since 1934. They're not.
No, I've actually read the leaked emails in their entirety. And I suppose you're talking about the quote: "The fact is we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it's a travesty that we can't." Because that's the only quote from the email in either of your articles that caught my eye as salient. If you were referring to something else, please clarify. Anyways, that's not talking about the general temperature trends. Go read the email it came from. Or you can read the summary with quotes from Trebeth that MediaMatters researched so that you don't have to:
http://mediamatters.org/research/200912010002
And before you say MediaMatters is biased, their sources are listed and verifiable. If you're gonna link CSM I think MM is at least fair game.
> You're backpedaling.
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
> Unfortunately for that position, they were the source of their "adjustments" and they've admitted that they can't reproduce those. And, it's not clear that the original sources still have the data.
That's not the fault of the group you're claiming discarded the data. It's not feasible for every project to keep every piece of data they've ever touched. It might be approaching that in 2009-2010, but when the original work was carried out (and historically, to account for bureaucratic lag) it was not.
You can argue it's bad, and I won't disagree that it's disappointing. It is not damning, though. The endless cycle of claim/proof/verify is what science is.
> The question isn't whether some glaciers are shrinking. It's whether glacier changes as a whole are somehow different since 1934. They're not.
That's absurd. Have you looked at the EIS data? There isn't enough glacier to sustain that consistent and quick a decline for 34 years. Even lowballing the observed decline in some areas that's hundreds of miles of glacier. Even saying this suggests you haven't even looked at this footage. I encourage you to. Even if you do not believe me or the data, the images presented are beautiful.
Edit: ...and I'm at -2. Guess nobody else remembers that the same British press hyping climate denialism now is the British press which hyped the vaccine/autism link a few years ago? Science journalism in general is bad, but the British papers make most others look like peer-reviewed journals by comparison...
Meta-discussion doesn't go very far and specifically, ad hominem arguments like discrediting the messenger doesn't do anything to address the veracity of a story -- at least not from the perspective of rhetoric and formal logic.
By way of example (and not to say that "two wrongs make a right"), an argument always used by climate-change believers (is there a better term? I don't want to say "supporters") is that they must be considered in the right because a preponderance of scientists agree with them. Yet recently, we've seen that those books were cooked, and that fewer scientists than they claimed were in agreement. Now, does the fact that we now know they were acting unethically mean that we should simply discard everything they've said? I think not; it simply means that we must apply a greater degree of skepticism.
The "fact" that the register will only report on papers that support a particular view point does not tell us that those papers are wrong, or that they're correct.
However, your assertion that it does tells us how you evaluate evidence.