16 Sep 2019

I’m Pretty Sure I LOL’d

Climate Change 24 Comments

…when I first encountered the Abstract of a paper talking about the 1.5 degree target, where one of the authors was a Lead Author for the IPCC Special Report on the 1.5C target. I wrote up the tale for IER.

24 Responses to “I’m Pretty Sure I LOL’d”

  1. Transformer says:

    Another way of interpreting the paper might be be:

    ‘Limiting temperature increased to 1.5C would have very tangible benefits including preservations of ecosystems (including preservation of coral reefs and significant reduction in species elimination); reduction in the occurrence of extreme weather events such as heatwaves, floods, and droughts; reduction in risk to agriculture, water supply and healthcare provisioning, and a possible lowering in risk of hitting tipping points for catastrophic outcomes.

    When one attempts to do a CBA (measured in effect on Global GDP) its very hard to get a definitive conclusion because of the huge number of variables at play but its quite possible using appropriate assumptions that even only taking into account Global GDP effects (and ignoring some of the other benefits listed above) that limiting global warming to 1.5C may still be justified.’

  2. Tel says:

    On the topic of climate certainty … what’s fascinating is that back when they believed in global cooling instead of global warming … they predicted the exact same dire consequences: loss of food production, floods and extreme weather.

    https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/2017-11-01064204_shadow.png

    What actually happened was that global food production has increased significantly (thanks in part to technology, and somewhat to the plant food CO2), and at least measured by Accumulated Cyclone Index the extreme weather is about the same as it always has been.

      • Tel says:

        Some press reports in the 1970s speculated about continued cooling; these did not accurately reflect the scientific literature of the time, which was generally more concerned with warming from an enhanced greenhouse effect.[1]

        Garbage.

        I linked right to a copy of the letter that was produced at a conference of scientists calling themselves Quaternary researchers at Brown University in 1972. The conference is documented here https://science.sciencemag.org/content/178/4057/190

        That’s not a press report, it’s a letter from concerned scientists to President Nixon. Wikipedia has plenty of left-leaning editors who simply ignore anything that doesn’t suit them.

        You might also note that they show the GISS graph which has already deleted the cooling after 1940 even while in the text of the article it does describe that cooling period. The GISS graph has changed over time, as they apply adjustments to the past. Yes they really rewrite history.

        https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/GISS2001_2015.gif

        There’s an overlay of what NASA produced in 2001 with cooling visible after 1940, and that NASA produced in 2015 which is tweaked to produce extra warning. You won’t find that on Wikipedia.

        Most of the warming is driven by data adjustments … it’s a scam.

      • Transformer says:

        Can’t make head nor tail of those charts but intrigued by:

        ‘Wikipedia has plenty of left-leaning editors who simply ignore anything that doesn’t suit them.’

        Would love some additional data on that.

        BTW: Love your contribution to this site even if I disagree with 72.17% of what you say. I just think that (as conspiracy theories go) its much more likely that big business is holding back on us on the reality of Climate Change than that somehow there is a conspiracy of client-scientists (even if funded by the UN) to pull the wool over our eyes.
        ,

        • Transformer says:

          big business = businesses with significant market share who make some of their money from rent-seeking (state-backed) activities.

        • Tel says:

          There’s huge amounts of money going into the whole climate caper, so it’s certainly making someone wealthy.

          http://joannenova.com.au/2018/07/climate-lobbying-is-a-2-billion-dollar-industry-money-talks-but-this-report-has-no-idea-what-it-is-saying/

          If you want to search the case of Peter Ridd the marine physicist who worked for an Australian university and got booted after giving some skeptical views on climate questions, as well as disagreeing about some stuff with the Great Barrier Reef. This case went to court and Ridd won the case (consuming more tax money in the process, since just about all Australian university money goes via tax and government-backed student loans), although there might be more appeals.

          This gives you some idea of the pressure towards conformity that exists in academia. For every Peter Ridd who speaks out and is willing to fight for it, there are a hundred or more quiet head-down type people who get the message and go along to get along.

          Big government generally is interested in more big government, and the funding structure is such that if they like what they hear, the funding keeps coming. I can find a long list of people who have found their careers shortened for saying the wrong thing. Does anyone remember David Bellamy? Kicked off the BBC because he started doubting. Johnny Ball was another one, he gave an excellent interview on “The Delingpod” if you want me to post a link to that. Judith Curry ended up resigning, even after being ever so slightly skeptical, she said she wasn’t forced out but wanted to leave after things had gotten so very political.

          Curry gave testimony to Congress, which as quite unadventurous and reasonably balanced, but included some mild criticism of the climate alarmists.

          Summary

          Anthropogenic climate change is a theory in which the basic mechanism is well understood, but the potential magnitude is highly uncertain. We know that the climate changes naturally on decadal to century time scales, but we do not have explanations for a number of observed historical and paleoclimate variations, including the warming from 1910-1940, the mid-20th century cooling and the 21st century hiatus in warming. Disagreement regarding climate change arises from our recognized uncertainty regarding natural climate variability

          Hmmm … there’s that cooling again. After 1940 in the USA there was cooling until around 1970 or so. So strange that the temperature chart on Wikipedia shows the recent NASA temperature graph where this historical cooling was removed by adjusting the record (Judith Curry is too polite to go into that, but she does at least mention that the cooling was real).

          Philippe Verdier (Meteorologist) got sacked because they didn’t like his book.

          Edward C. Krug wrote a great book called “Environment Betrayed: The Abuse of a Just Cause” giving his side of the story about the time he reported the scientifically correct but politically unwelcome answer on the question of acid rain and how it mostly relates to plants and soil, not to power stations. Krug found it difficult to get work after that, they went after him, tried to blacklist him and discredit everything he did. Krug has sort of vanished from contact since 2012 was his most recent Twitter post, about that book.

          There’s more if you think that lot were mere coincidence.

          • Harold says:

            “After 1940 in the USA there was cooling until around 1970 or so. So strange that the temperature chart on Wikipedia shows the recent NASA temperature graph where this historical cooling was removed by adjusting the record”

            Odd that it seems to be there after all
            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_temperature_record

            When you require a conspiracy of thousands of scientists working for hundreds on institutions to lie about their actual findings (for which they must ultimately be proved wrong) in order to sell your story, perhaps you should look for a new story.

            • Tel says:

              Harold consider the advice of the great Yogi Berra, “You can observe a lot by just watching”.

              The chart you link to has a tiny blip of warm around 1940 with a bit of cooling until 1955 and then levels out until 1970.

              So do you think that researchers writing in 1972 would have been sufficiently worried about cooling that they would write a letter to the President, after that little bit of cooling coming down from the “Dustbowl Drought” which ended in 1939? They would need to be stupid.

              But wait, here’s a link to an article in 1987 with a temperature series (there are three: global, northern hemisphere, and southern hemisphere) and you can see that those researchers were working on different data. They weren’t stupid, they simply hadn’t been data fiddling back then as much as they do today.

              https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ha00700d.html

              Download the PDF, check Figure 6 on page 13,351 and look at the peak of the global 5y mean just before 1940 as compared with the bottom of the global 5y mean 1965 where it hits the local minima. The peak to peak slope is 0.25°C over a period of 25 years which is 1.0°C per century.

              Now in the modern NASA temperature series (the thing you already linked to) the local minima around 1965 is almost gone and the difference between the peak in 1940 and the bottom in 1965 is a mere 0.15°C over a period of 25 years which is 0.6°C per century. Oh look at that the cooling period got adjusted. Thermometers have changed their mind about the meaning of temperature.

              History ain’t what it used to be.

              When you require a conspiracy of thousands of scientists working for hundreds on institutions to lie about their actual findings (for which they must ultimately be proved wrong) in order to sell your story, perhaps you should look for a new story.

              It requires people like you Harold who don’t even bother to check the actual data right in front of them. Any excuse will do, right? NASA have changed their data over the years, including editing past temperatures and this is proven unequivocally be NASA’s own reports which are downloadable any time by any person.

              That’s why Heller put the two graphs on top of one another with animation to make the difference obvious, but then you go blaming Heller for noting the difference!

          • Harold says:

            Jo nova, still desperately trying to explain why the “notch” theory – basically an appeal to magic – is not resulting in global cooling yet. The whole idea is preposterous and devoid of either evidence or rational basis, yet still some people adhere to it. Why is anybodies guess, but whatever the reason it cannot be a seeking the truth.

            • Tel says:

              That’s a lame smear tactic.

              The “notch” theory wasn’t Jo, it was her husband, and anyway it’s only one theory among many, as good as any other theory. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the issue of researchers being bullied into conformity, Soviet style. I listed a bunch of other people who have never associated with Jo and the same story keeps coming up, each one gets pushed out if they deviate from the party line.

              Jo has gone to some effort to document where the lobbying money goes and who gets it. If you disagree with any part of her conclusion then check her sources … it’s all linked. She runs an open blog, you can do your own research at any time and point out exactly what she got wrong, then post right under the article.

              https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/20/campus-free-speech-crushed-chaos-as-protesters-disrupt-climate-skeptic-moranos-speech-at-georgetown-university-campus-police-shut-down-event-activists-would-not-accept-the-hosting-of-skepti/

              There’s the climate activist argument: be as loud and rude as possible, shut people up my any method, ignore the actual argument, never present a real argument, and drown out anyone you disagree with. If you want to work the guilt by association angle … then keep in mind the type of people you are associated with.

              • Harold says:

                “as good as any other theory”

                No, certainly not.

              • Harold says:

                “The “notch” theory wasn’t Jo, it was her husband, ”

                It was promoted in a series of 26 or so posts on her blog. when Lubos Motl panned the theory she repeatedly said “we” in reference to the theory. It was Jo that came up with the sun as the cause of the mysterious “force X” to explain the 11 year delay. Whilst it is largely David’s work, Jo has claimed joint ownership.

        • Harold says:

          It is always difficult to make head or tail of a Heller graph. You have to look past the cherry picking and manipulation. The first point to make is that he is trying to show a particular result, not trying to show reality. Who knows what data he used? It is not attributed.
          Sometimes he takes the raw data from weather stations and simply does a numerical average. This is totally invalid because the weather stations move and some drop put and others come in. Measurement practices change, such as time of day the measurement is made. To simply average this from the raw data is not valid. This may be the case here because he says Global temperature (meteorological stations)

          Tamino demonstrates the type of thing Heller does to produce startling graphs.
          https://tamino.wordpress.com/2018/08/08/usa-temperature-can-i-sucker-you/

          • Tel says:

            The Heller graph that I linked to is NASA’s global temperature chart with running 5 year mean. How is that “cherry picked”. Explain what you mean by that.

            https://web.archive.org/web/20011129113305/http://www.giss.nasa.gov/data/update/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A.ps

            There’s the link to the 2001 graph, which is the entire graph and the exact graph off the NASA website produced by NASA in 2001. The only thing Heller did was put it together with the other NASA graph from 2015, and make note in red of the year each graph was created.

            So what part of it is manipulated?

            Tamino yabbers on about people trying to selectively start their data at a particular year, but hey the years are right there at the bottom on Heller’s chart, and it goes back to 1880. Is that difficult to read? Gosh, that’s exactly the same year of the NASA global temperature chart that you linked to yourself. How about that? It’s the same chart!

            Talk about clutching at straws.

            Sometimes he takes the raw data from weather stations and simply does a numerical average. This is totally invalid because the weather stations move and some drop put and others come in.

            It’s a lot more legitimate than muddling the data together with a bunch of ever-shifting adjustments where the past temperatures get edited. Besides that, Heller has gone through region by region, in the USA, and to some extent in Australia as well and dug out individual long-running surface temperature stations and he has looked at statistical properties (e.g. histograms of days over certain threshold temperatures) and looked at means as well.

            We can talk about Heller’s many charts any time you like, but the link I gave was NASA charts, taken right off the NASA website.

            • Harold says:

              He may not lie in the same way every time – the start date was an example. It is one of very, very many. Given his track record we know a lie is very likely.

              Your link to the chart does not work for me.

              But we can look into it anyway, and waste a bit more time demonstrating the unreliability of a charlatan.

              Looking at NASA’a site, they show the anomalies historically. They say “For historical reasons we also maintain a calculation of the anomalies that would result if one only used the meteorological station data.”

              So there is the first lie – the data Heller shows is not the global temperature product from NASA, but a sub-set maintained for historical reasons. Bang! There is your cherry picking.

              Are adjustments made? Yes, of course – they have to be. From NASA “The most significant adjustments to data relate to changing ship-based instruments and methods used to measure sea surface temperatures around the time of World War II. As the use of thermometers in buckets of water hauled up on deck was replaced by thermometers in ship engine water intake pipes, the measured temperatures changed slightly, necessitating a correction to ensure an “apples-to-apples” comparison.”

              So what is the effect of all the adjustments? Slightly reduce the warming since 1880. Yes, you read that right -the adjustments reduce warming, not increase it.

              Why is this? The land adjustments increase it, while the sea adjustments decrease it. Overall the sea adjustments are just stronger then the land, so the global warming is reduced. Yet Heller tells us the opposite? How can this be?

              Heller shows only land, of course, because that is the story he wants to tell. He deliberately ignores the bigger picture, and by cherry picking makes it seem the scientists are lying. Of course, it is he, not they, who are lying.

              Mark Richardson says “Fortunately the scientific method can reliably test new claims through submissions to scientific journals for peer review, which tends to filter out obvious dumb mistakes like ignoring how afternoons are warmer than early mornings. Blog posts, think tanks and newspapers have no such filter.”

              If you prefer to trust the bloggers than the scientists, I say that demonstrates an unwillingness to face the truth and is a form of wilful ignorance.

              So keep quoting Heller and his charts, it gives a clear signal.

              NASA historical data here
              https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/history/

    • Harold says:

      Heller’s other blog.

      https://tonyhellerakastevengoddard.com/who-is-tony-heller/

      He is so discredited you need another source lest you appear to be ill-informed. Anyone using Heller as a source signals their lack of understanding. It is like a big red flag. It is quite funny really.

      I was amusing myself by looking at the howlers Heller has made. I had not realised that he was one of the “global temperatures can be explained by the lapse rate” brigade. This conjecture is really so stupid that anyone with a modicum of physics can see it is wrong. He has no conception of energy balance – the very most basic thing required to explain temperature.
      Here he is explaining his conjecture
      https://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/08/venus-envy/

      Even Anthony Watts eventually got fed up with him, booting him from WUWT and calling him hopelessly stubborn and worse than Mann at admitting his mistakes.

      Anmusing as it is, there is just so much stuff to chortle at that I will have to postpone further pleasure and get something else done. It is good to know that there is an almost endless well of enjoyment to come back to, laughing at his errors.

      The amusement is somewhat spoiled because so many people seem to find it convincing, which makes me despair for the idea of sound reasoning winning an argument.

  3. Harold says:

    I am genuinely interested and puzzled why people who are obviously intelligent and demonstrate complicated analysis skills in some areas, choose sources of information that are demonstrably unreliable. We know that Heller will claim certainty about stuff he clearly has no understanding of. The CO2 snow in the Antarctic, the mistaking sea ice for a glacier, the invalid averaging of station temperature data. In each position he was simply wrong, but refused to accept it. This is all a matter of record and pretty much indisputable. Even Anthony Watts and Judith Curry – no friends of the so-called alarmists -pretty much assume whatever he says is nonsense. None of that calls into question his motivation, just his obvious lack of understanding of his own limitations. Even without reference to deliberate misrepresentation he is unreliable.

    I wonder why people still go to him for information? If a supplier gives bad stuff 4 times in a row, you don’t say “well, maybe this next time he will get it right” No, you find a new supplier. It seems that no matter how many times Heller is proved wrong, people still go to him a a supplier of information.

    Which makes me wonder -what is it they are actually seeking? If it was information, then they would go elsewhere, as the supplier has proved so unreliable. I think they are going to him not for information – which can be obtained far more accurately elsewhere- but for a story.

    Tel, ask yourself, when you go to realclimatescience.com rather than realclimate.org, what is going through your mind? Are you seeking truth, or are you looking for a soundbite or giff that will back up a pre existing belief? Because at realclimate.org you will find discussion of actual scientific papers and the latest information on climate science. Whereas at realclimatescience.com you will find Heller’s incompetent analysis of specific local data he can spin to promote his message, with literally no attept to examine this in context of our best understanding of climate science. I do mean literally no attempt.

    Confirmation bias is something we all have to try to deal with, if we are seeking the truth. I am not immune to this, but I do make a genuine effort to examine ideas I initially disagree with. I am sure I do not succeed perfectly but I do make an effort. I ask you to question your following if this particular source. I find it hard to believe that a truth seeker could use this source, once the problems with it had been pointed out.

    • Tel says:

      I am genuinely interested and puzzled why people who are obviously intelligent and demonstrate complicated analysis skills in some areas, choose sources of information that are demonstrably unreliable.

      The links point back to NASA, that’s the source of the GISS data. The reason I point to that source is that many people over the world consider it an authoritative source for global temperature data.

      I glad you agree that NASA is somewhat “unreliable”, but that’s a handwaving and meaningless term. Specifics are important here, which is why the actual adjustments to the data are significant. They are not arbitrarily unreliable like tossing a coin, there’s a specific historic trend in their data adjustments.

      • Harold says:

        ” there’s a specific historic trend in their data adjustments.”

        That is not really correct, adjustments go both ways, but the overall effect is to slightly reduce the warming.

        I can understand why you think the opposite, because you ony seek out sources that point out adjustments that go one way.

  4. Tel says:

    Here’s the two NASA global temperature graphs, one from the 1987 report and the other from 2001, both linked above if anyone wants to examine the original.

    I did this by taking screen shots and overlaying the images. These are exactly the charts taken out of the reports and splotted on top of one another … you can see that the years 1900 to 1920 are the same in both and 1970 to 1980 are the same in both, but the middle section around 1940 has been adjusted to reduce the warm period, by not quite a full 0.1 deg C.

    https://ibb.co/G5K7BhM

    The cool years around 1965 have just been slightly adjusted, thus the cooling slope between 1940, and 1965 changes quite noticeably. Global cooling no longer fitted the narrative … and then it started going away. Modern global temperature charts have reduced it right down to a small wobble just around 1940.

    So just give up with telling me there’s no adjustments in the data and that global cooling never was there in the first place. Don’t bother using stupid arguments like “cherry picking” because this is right out of the NASA reports and the entire chart is there without jiggering the start or end years. Don’t start with “Gosh I can’t figure out what’s going on here” because it’s all linked above.

    • Harold says:

      Now the bogus “adjustments have made global warming worse” claims have been exposed, the claims are “adjustments made the 1940’s cooling disappear”. Nobody really cares that much. New work showed that past
      temperatures had a bias, so a correction has to be made to remove that bias. Deniers want to have it both ways –

      Denier: “There is no warming – it is all due to urban heat island and badly placed stations!”
      Climate scientist: “OK, we will correct for those inaccuracies.”
      Denier: “Look! the data has been adjusted! Foul!”

      • Tel says:

        https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/GISS2001_2015.gif

        Are you seriously saying you can look at that animation flip between the two graphs (2001 vs 2015, both graphs from NASA, sourced different years) and not notice that the 2015 has a steeper slope?

        This is getting a bit weird, to be honest with you. Quite weird.

        How about “Evaluating the impact of U.S. Historical Climatology Network homogenization using the U.S. Climate Reference Network” by Zeke Hausfather, Kevin Cowtan, Matthew J. Menne, and Claude N. Williams, Jr.

        Here’s their quote:

        However, the net effect of adjustments on the USHCN is quite large, effectively doubling the mean temperature trend over the past century compared to the raw observational data [Menne et al 2009]. This has resulted in a controversy in the public and political realm over the implications of much of the observed U.S. warming apparently resulting from temperature adjustments.

        They are like, climate scientists, with ya know, certifications n stuff.

        You were explaining to me how important all those things are. These guys claim the adjustments DOUBLED the warming trend. I see that as not bogus at all.

        You still struggling to believe you own lying eyes on that graph slope? What about the years where the measurements are circled there, can you recognize the change in slope when two points move like that?

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