# Week in review

by Judith Curry

A few things that caught my eye this past week.

Politics/Policy

Al Gore in Davos–> “extreme weather events which are now a hundred times more common than 30 years ago” http://gu.com/p/3m6t3/stw

Is the Pentagon hyping climate change? [link]  …

Pontifical Academy Of Sciences Pushing For Climate Treaty…Finds Fossil Fuels Akin To “Modern Slavery” http://bit.ly/1Hxps8c

Gina McCarthy, EPA: We must act now to protect our winters. Looks like she missed the memo that AGW causes more snow [link]  …

CONFIRMED: Researchers show that military intervention has been dominated by need for oil http://bit.ly/1wAXxJd

Obama’s Plan: Allow Drilling in Atlantic, but Limit It in Arctic http://nyti.ms/1D4jRzH

“The more that decision-making is centralized, the more intensively those decisions will be distorted by ignorance.” http://bit.ly/1tcWfZM

John Dizard taking John Kerry to task for making false claims about disasters & climate change [link]

In major shift, Obama administration will plan for rising seas in all federal projects. http://wpo.st/JgS20

Catch up on all the climate and energy amendments in the #infrastructurebill http://j.mp/1EU5wHM

“How much are you willing to spend in an attempt to mitigate future global warming?”    [link]  …

Energy

Biofuels are not a green alternative to fossil fuels, [link]

One upside of cheap oil — it’s helping countries ditch their fossil fuel subsidies: http://bit.ly/1A3o9Kl

The next energy revolution: our brains [link]  …

New research paper from Harvard on energy efficiency http://bit.ly/1By7OLp

Energy efficiency paradox and climate change policy http://bit.ly/1y6igpR

Science

We need better science on the way science is done. [link]  …

Met Office puts high odds on the next few years being warmer than 2014 [link]

Why snowfall is one of the hardest predictions for a meteorologist http://bit.ly/1A6R2Fi

Pew Research Center: 87% of scientists say global warming mostly due to humans http://ow.ly/IcRvT

Study: Climate change to bring more nasty La Ninas http://usat.ly/1CEbNrg

Physicists find link between Sun and #ElNino cycles  http://ow.ly/HTowV

Arctic sea-ice erratic as expected. [link]

Tales of future weather: it’s not more ensemble studies we need, but tales of high-impact weather in a future climate http://rdcu.be/b2j5

Scientists under the microscope [link]  …

Snowfall measurement: A flaky history [link]  …

No “China Deal” for now, Obama ends visit to India with stalemate  http://nyti.ms/1D25BHL

Comparing observations & CMIP5 projections of global temperature [link]  …

New paper finds sea levels 20-30 feet higher & temps warmer during the last interglacial vs the present [link]

The hiatus in global temperature trends: No systematic error in climate models [link]  …

Climate Models Disagree on Why Temperature “Wiggles” Occur: [link]  …

Climate wars

The hazards of a climate science career [link]

Mourning Our Planet: Climate Scientists Share Their Grieving Process [link]

Warmists take the hardest hits [link]

Cowardly Calls For Climate Scientist’s Firing http://wmbriggs.com/post/15170

Climate Skepticism in British Newspapers, 2007–2011 [link]

Can the media please stop quoting Bill Nye (Science Guy) as a science expert? [link]

Sponge Bob Smear Pants  [link]     …

Another witch-hunt:  Willie Soon fire him soon [link]

### 335 responses to “Week in review”

1. Eystein Simonsen, Norway

Where does the former Vice-president get his scientific advice and who has told him that extreme weather events are a hundred times more common than 30 years ago?

• He probably gets it from Obummer’s Science Guy………..John Holdren.

• tty

Well, after almost ten years with no major hurricane landfall in the US he is probably counting each additional day without a hurricane as an extreme weather event.

• pokerguy

It’s increasingly clown car climate change, the depressing thing to me is how many people really can’t see how patently ludicrous that claim is.

• Diag

“Clowns to left of me, Jokers to the right. Here I am, stuck in the middle with you”
[Josh Homme, Jesse Hughes (Stealers Wheel)]

Do-gooders to the left of me, evil-doers to the right, stuck in the middle with you.
Evil-doers to the left of me, do-gooders to the right, caught in the crossfire with you.

• timg56

Agree.

One can make any claim they want about impacts of climate change and never expect anyone to ask for supporting data. Like that clown at the Pentagon. He’s repeated shown that his statements do not follow the facts and it doesn’t matter.

• If one can trust the Guardian’s quoting, it’s worth remembering that when Gore made that claim there were many luminaries and scientific experts in attendance who might have wanted to correct it. The Guardian itself might have wanted to add a whimper of reason.

Instead, respectful silence. And one fears that if this shabby billionaire indulgence salesman had said “a thousand times more” there would have been a similar respectful silence.

My god, we’re in a world of trouble here. And no amount of navel-searching, culture-unravelling, narrative-pondering or good-cop psychologizing will help.

I’m no protestant…but it’s time to nail a few protests hard into a few pious doors. Time to separate out.

• pokerguy

Mos,
I think that’s right. Lately there’s been a blizzard of propaganda while we skeptics seem caught back on our feet. We need to find ways to fight back.

• RR

100 is a nice round number…one he simply rounded up to. What I’ve always enjoyed about Gore is that the CO2/temp chart in his own book doesn’t support his claim. But..he sold one to me back then. Mission accomplished.

• John

Read graduate level political science texts, one of which used to be, and may still be, Machiavelli. You are given examples of how being fastidious with the truth can achieve “the Prince’s” objectives (from Machiavelli). Politics is about getting results, about doing what the people who elected you, and who paid for your campaigns, want done. Politics is hardball, it doesn’t matter how you get your results, whether you convince people with sweat reason or scare the s..t out of them with constant disaster PR.

It isn’t where where politicians like Gore (or GW Bush) get their science advice, it is more where they get their political advice.

2. roddycampbell

I shall be amused when fossil fuel subsidies plummet in 2015 and people claim it is action when little will have happened other than the wholesale price falling.

Even that is offset by falling price linked taxes in developed world. I’ll never understand why a government that says petrol costs 5c a litre counts as a subsidy and petrol taxed to $2 a litre isn’t a negative subsidy. 3. The Paul Homewood central south america two step manufactured warming thing is getting interesting media traction. Graham Lloyd in Australia, Delingpole in the UK. Just discovered than another blogger essentially showed the same thing for the entire Artic last year, and has a cache of documented progressive changes to Iceland in 1900, making it ever colder then. • It’s pretty mechanical. Things happen, stations change. People wanting a climate index do some adjusting. Some go up, some down. Every year or so (starting probably with Darwin, 2009) someone trawls through and finds one or a few that went up. Shock horror. And yes, the usual folks demagogue it. • DocMartyn “It’s pretty mechanical” Nick, I no longer have faith in any of the global temperature series. my faith in BEST was shattered comparing the pdf’s of station data recorded by state officies with the BEST raw data used in their temperature field generation. The raw data used by BEST does not match written, and signed off, records. The ‘adjustments, are to arbitrary and opaque for them to offer any confidence. That you defend these changes only steels my resolve to dismiss them, as you have a habit of supporting the indefensible. • “That you defend these changes” What I have done is to compute an index without the adjustments. So have others – described by Zeke here. It’s not that hard, and it turns out to make very little difference. If all the kvetchers could simply make a bit of effort to see what the effect is, it would save some time. But I guess that isn’t the point. • Doc, Do you have a link to those pdf’s? • DocMartyn I think the lineshape about right, slope wrong and units wrong. • tty However the changes for Iceland are unusually egregious since everyone with any reasonably knowledge of the country (including the Icelandic Met. Service) is perfectly aware that the “anomalous” cold and warm intervals adjusted away were very real: http://en.vedur.is/climatology/articles/nr/1213 • catweazle666 ‘Some go up, some down.” They should. But they don’t, as you know full well. Post-1970 approx, they go up. Pre-1970, they go down. Again as you are well aware. Can you explain why that should be? • Steven Mosher 1. the records were different stations 2. the electronic version is the official version. 3. Throw out the entire US. the answer doesnt change. • Steven Mosher “They should. But they don’t, as you know full well. Post-1970 approx, they go up. Pre-1970, they go down. Again as you are well aware. Can you explain why that should be ######################## In the US that is exactly what you would expect given the instrument change. And exactly what you expect given the station change in TOBS. and the station relocations. • “But they don’t, as you know full well.” I know full well what they do, and I posted about it here and here. The effects on trends follow a normal histogram, with mean slightly positive. But yes, some go up, some go down. Here is the Darwin story. • catweazle666 Steven Mosher: “3. Throw out the entire US. the answer doesnt change.” Given that the “homogenisation” has been applied to stations on a global scale, that is disingenuous. Steven Mosher: In the US that is exactly what you would expect given the instrument change. If that were really the case, I would expect a very clear step change, in all the graphs from the same period. But that is not what your graphs show. • Incorrect assertion, Nick, and you probably know that. The paper presented at Europe AGU showed systemic bias. You can read it at http://www.itia.ntua.gr/en/docinfo/1212. And the bias has been increasing over time, demonstrated in several ways in essay When Data Isn’t. You cannot erase the indelible evidence. • kim I don’t think Nick sees the cultural muck he gallops(slogs) through, his eyes are only for the finish line. ================= • Rud, “The paper presented at Europe AGU showed systemic bias.” Rud, that is a very poor presentation. It looks at just 182 of the 7280 GHCN stations. I don’t know why such a small set – in Willis’ original Darwin thread, GG came up with a complete analysis within a day or so. It doesn’t seem to have appeared in a journal. • Steven Mosher wow Rud thats a horrible paper. can you say selection bias. The proper way to study a method is with synthetic data. • David in TX Mosher claims adjuments don’t make a significant difference. Why bother with them in that case? Non sequitur. • Steven Mosher here is just one example ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/daily/status.txt USW00053865 contains data previously provided under USC00168543. GHCN-Daily station ID USC00168543 is discontinued as a separate station. USW00013839 contains data previously provided under USW00093843. GHCN-Daily station ID USW00093843 is discontinued as a separate station. USW00004840 contains data previously provided under USC00472836. GHCN-Daily station ID USC00472836 is discontinued as a separate station. Data from sources “X” and “0” for 1948-1994 were moved from USC00018380 to USW00093806 to more accurately reflect the respective station locations at the time of data collection. Data from source “0” for the period after September 2007 were moved from USC00047821 to USW00023293 to more accurately reflect the respective station locations at the time of data collection. Data from source “X” for the period from January to June 1949 were moved from USW00014770 to USC00368673 and source “X” data from July 1949 onwards were move from USW00014770 to USC00367931 to more accurately reflect the respective station locations at the time of data collection. Data from sources “7”, “H”, and “0” after 1993 were moved from USW00014757 to the new GHCN-Daily ID USC00306820 to more accurately reflect the respective station locations at the time of data collection. Data from sources “H”, “7”, “K”, “6” and “0” moved from USW00014753 to the new GHCN-Daily ID USC00190736 to more accurately reflect the separate sets of measuring equipment. In addition, data from source “X” before May 2009 were remove from USW00014753 pending determination of what measuring equipment they reflect. Finally, data from sources “M”, “B” and “W” were removed from USW00014753. GHCN-Daily ID USW00053147 was changed to USW00023141 to reflect the current WBAN ID and source “W” previously provided under USC00263980 are now provided GHCN-Daily USW00023141. GHCN-Daily ID USW00053147 is discontinued Some of the data sources previously provided under USW00012928 are now provided under the new GHCN-Daily Station ID USC00414810. Some of the data sources previously provided under USW00013886 are now provided under the new GHCN-Daily Station IDs USC00383742 and USC00383735. Some of the data sources previously provided under USW00023152 are now provided under the new GHCN-Daily Station ID USC00041194. Some of the data sources previously provided under USW00024017 are now provided under the new GHCN-Daily Station ID USC00251575. Some of the data sources previously provided under USW00024162 are now provided under the new GHCN-Daily Station ID USC00356294. Some of the data sources previously provided under USW00024215 are now provided under the new GHCN-Daily Station ID USC00045983. Some of the data sources previously provided under USW00024242 are now provided under the new GHCN-Daily Station ID USC00358634. Some of the data sources previously provided under USW00026422 are now provided under the new GHCN-Daily Station ID USC00502607. Some of the data sources previously provided under USW00026422 are now provided under the new GHCN-Daily Station ID USC00502607. Some of the data sources previously provided under USW00093816 are now provided under the new GHCN-Daily Station ID USC00112687. Some of the data sources previously provided under USW00094030 are now provided under the new GHCN-Daily Station ID USC00429111. Some of the data sources previously provided under USW00094040 are now provided under the new GHCN-Daily Station ID USC00255310. Some of the data sources previously provided under USW00094008 are now provided under the new GHCN-Daily Station ID USC00243555. Some of the data sources previously provided under USW00024131 are now provided under the new GHCN-Daily Station ID USC00101022. Some of the data sources previously provided under USW00054742 are now provided under the new GHCN-Daily Station ID USC00437054. Some of the data sources previously provided under USW00094871 are now provided under the new GHCN-Daily Station ID USC00200710. Some of the data sources previously provided under USW00023176 are now provided under the new GHCN-Daily Station ID USC00425654. Some of the data sources previously provided under USW00023176 are now provided under the new GHCN-Daily Station ID USC00425654. GHCN-Daily Station ID USW00026512 has been changed to USC00505881. • Steven Mosher more 1) Updates for most Chinese stations. At the same time, 15 stations that are new to GHCN-Daily will be added for China. A new data source code (lower case “s”) will be introduced to indicate that these updates and additions are provided by the China Meteorological Administration/ National Meteorological Information Center/Climatic Data Center. 2) A change in the network identification code for most Chinese stations from “0” (unspecified) to “M” (based on the World Meteorological Organization identification number). In general, only the third character of the GHCN-Daily ID will change (e.g., CH00059316 becomes CHM00059316). 3) There was a problem where the most recent portion of the record (since 2007) attributed to the Bjelasnica Observatory (WMO ID=14652) was coming from a data source (“S”) for the station at Sarajevo (WMO ID=14654). This has been fixed in version 3.10. At the same time, the GHCN-Daily station ID for Bjelasnica has been changed from BK000014652 to BKM00014652 and the GHCN-Daily station ID for Sarajevo has been changed from BKE00100933 to BKM00014654. 4) Data covering the complete periods of record for RAWS stations have been re-downloaded from the Western Regional Climate Center to incorporate corrections that were made to three stations in North Dakota (USR0000NECO), USR0000NHOT, and USR0000NLIM). Effective 25 June, 2013 GHCN-Daily version 3.03 will be released with the following changes: 1) U.S. ASOS/AWOS stations are now updated solely by source “W” (NCDC’s Integrated Surface Data). The previous realtime update source “A” is no longer used and has been removed entirely from GHCN-Daily. In addition, March 2013 will be the last data month for source “X” (DSI-3210); updates previously provided by source “X” are now also provide by source “W”. Effective April 10, 2013: 1) USW00053921 contains data previously provided under USC00034991. GHCN-Daily station ID USC00034991 is discontinued as a separate station. 2) USC00049785 contains data previously provided under USC00041484. GHCN-Dail station ID USC00041484 is discontinued as a separate station. 3) Some of the data sources previously provided under USW00014815 are now provided under the new GHCN-Daily Station ID USC00200552. 4) Some of the data sources previously provided under USW00012832 are now provided under the new GHCN-Daily Station ID USC00080211. 5) Some of the data sources previously provided under USW00014819 are now provided under the new GHCN-Daily Station ID USC00111577. 13 March, 2013 Effective March 14, 2013 GHCN-Daily version 3.02 will be released with the following change: Daily updates for RAWS will be provided. Updates are dependent upon availability in the Western Regional Climate Center’s database. 20 February, 2013 Effective February 26, 2013 GHCN-Daily version 3.01 will be released with the following change: Snowdepth values from ECA&D (SFLAG=”E”) will be 10 times larger than in version 3.00. ECA&D provides snowdepth values in cm. The GHCN-Daily system system now correctly converts the values to mm. 21 December, 2012 Effective December 20, daily updates to SNOTEL data will be provided. Updates are dependent upon availability in the Western Regional Climate Center’s database October 10, 2012 Due to some hardware changes in the processing system, GHCN-Daily will now be updated once per day seven days per week via an update process that begins at 1 am (0100) Eastern Time everyday. This change is effective immediately. October 9, 2012 Due to a hardware issue, GHCN-Daily updates for Monday, October 8 and Tuesday October 9, 2012 have been suspended. Additional information regarding GHCN-Daily’s status will be provided on Wednesday, October 10, 2012. Effective September 24, 2012 A new version of GHCN-Daily (v3.00) will be deployed that includes two new station networks for the U.S.: (1) The SNOwpack TELemtry (SNOTEL) Network (668 stations) (2) The Remote Automatic Weather Station (RAWS) Network (1453 permanent stations) Data for both networks are obtained from the U.S. Western Regional Climate Center. GHCN-Daily IDs for SNOTEL stations are based on the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) alfanumeric identifiers and are denoted by the network code “S”. The data source flag for SNOTEL data values is ‘T’. Elements for SNOTEL stations include TMAX,TMIN,TOBS,PRCP,WESD. RAWS station identifiers are denoted by the network code “R”. The data source flag for RAWS data values is ‘U’. Elements for RAWS stations are limited to TMAX and TMIN. Since these temperatures represent the highest and lowest hourly values for the day, they are accompanied by the measurement flag ‘H’. September 14, 2012 The upper bound for the world record temperature exceedance check has been lowered from the recently invalidated value of 57.8 degrees C to 56.7 degrees C. See http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/BAMS-D-12-00093.1 for further details on the investigation. August 27, 2012 Due to a hardware issue, GHCN-Daily updates for Monday, August 27, 2012 have been delayed. Updates are expect to resume on August 28, 2012. Effective June 25, 2012 A new version of GHCN-Daily (v2.93) will be deployed that includes the following changes: 1) Updates for many Russian stations as well as for a few stations in some surrounding countries. At the same time, 116 stations that are new to GHCN-Daily will be added for the same region. A new data source code (lower case “r”) will be introduced to indicate that these updates and additions are provided by the All-Russian Research Institute of Hydrometeorological Information-World Data Center (ARRIHI-WDC). This new data source will lead to an increase of about 17 million daily values in the dataset and to about 28 million replacement values since the ARRIHI-WDC source will supersede values from other sources for existing stations that are being updated by the new ARRIHI-WDC data. For the most of the replacements, only the source flag will change. 2) A change in the network identification code for most Russian stations from “0” (unspecified) to “M” (based on the World Meteorological Organization identification number). In general, only the third character of the GHCN-Daily ID will change (e.g., RS000027612 becomes RSM00027612). May 22, 2012 Due to a processing glitch, station files for the the 138 new stations added to the ghcnd-stations.txt list on May 18, 2012 are not available. Data for these new stations are expected to be available on Monday, May 28, 2012. Effective May 21, 2012 145 Slovenia stations will be removed because they are no longer available in the source dataset (SFLAG=”E”) and 132 newly available CoCoRaHS and 6 U.S. Cooperative Observer stations will be added. Effective March 19, 2012: GHCN-Daily version 2.92 will be available with the following changes: 1) Data source flag (SFLAG) “W” will be added to denote an additional source of data for stations indexed by the WBAN station number. 2) Station ID USW00092762 has been corrected to USW00093762. Station ID USC00914840 has been changed to PSC00914840. 3) The of stations will increase by 62 with the addition of new Cooperative Network Stations. Effective January 30, 2012: GHCN-Daily version 2.91 will be available with the following changes: 1) Data source flag (SFLAG) “Z” will be added to denote official data additions and replacements associated with the Datzilla data error tracking system. Version 2.91 includes Datzilla values for ASOS stations including temperature, precipitation and snowfall, and snowdepths edits for 2011 and approximately 200000 snowfall and snowdepth values submitted by Weather Forecast Offices for years prior to 2011. 2) The number of station will increase by 268 with the addition of newly available CoCoRaHS stations. The total number of stations is now 80615. Effective December 5, 2011: The number of GHCN-Daily stations will increase to 80347 with the addition of over 1400 CoCoRaHS network stations. The release of GHCN-Daily version 2.90 is planned for Monday, November 21, 2011. Version 2.90 includes the following changes: 1) About 1270 new stations will be added from the European Climate Assessment Dataset (ECA&D). At the same time, approximately 450 stations already in GHCN-Daily will receive updates and/or edits from the ECA source (data source flag [SFLAG] = “E”). The additions and updates will increase the number of values in GHCN-Daily by approximately 50 million (50000000), and the source flag for a number of existing values will change from “S”, “I”, or “G” to “E” to reflect the addition of the new ECA source. The earliest year in the dataset will change from 1832 to 1763. ECA data are described in Klein Tank, A.M.G. and Coauthors (2002): Daily dataset of 20th-century surface air temperature and precipitation series for the European Climate Assessment. Int. J. of Climatol., 22, 1441-1453. Data and metadata available at http://eca.knmi.nl). 2) The station identifier “SI000000192” (LJUBLJANA BEZIGRAD) will change to “SIM00014015″. November 3, 2011 The latitude for station USC00325848 has been corrected. The correct latitude is 48.0781, but was reported erroreously as 46.0781. Effective September 15, 2011 1) NCDC DSI 3207 data (WxCoder3) are added for July 2011 (SFLAG=”7″) 2) U.S. Cooperative Summary of the Day data digitized from paper observer forms between September 7 and September 14, 2011 are added (SFLAG=”K”) Effective Monday September 12, 2011 1) DSI 3200 is given priority over DSI 3206 2) The measurement flag “P” is added for values identified as “missing presumed zero” in DSI 3200 and 3206. This flag was set in DSI 3200 and 3206 when no value was indicated by the observer. Affected are more than 100 million PRCP, SNOW, or SNWD values. Particularly for data before 1982, it appears that the absence of the “missing presumed zero flag” does not necessarily imply that the value was originally recorded as zero. Effective June 13, 2011: 1) Data source “K” (U.S. Cooperative Observer Summary of the Day data digitized from paper forms) will be added. Weather types, soil temperatures, water equivalent of snow depth from source “K” are forthcoming. Beginning in 2011, U.S. Cooperative Observer data is comprised of sources “7” and “K” and “H”. The last year for DSI-3200 is 2010, with sources “7” and “K” being a direct continuation of DSI 3200. Source “H” provides real time updates. 2) Elements PRCP, SNOW and SNWD from source “M” will be removed. Daily precipitation totals from this source were too small. Effective May 23, 2011 data source “2” (preliminary keyed data for U.S. Cooperative Observer stations) has been removed. Note that data source 2 at some stations was attributed to the wrong calendar month. Effective May 16, 2011: GHCN-Daily version 2.70 will be replace by version 2.80. This includes the following changes: 1) The records for approximately 800 U.S. stations are now indexed using network code “W” instead of network code “C”. For example, data for ASHEVILLE AP are stored under GHCN-Daily USW00003812 instread of USC00310300. 2) Reidentified the data sources for all U.S. stations to reflect changes in the indexing of stations in the source datasets 3) Data from source “1” has been replace by source “7” (DSI-3207-WxCoder3). 4) The file “ghcnd-us-states.txt” has been replaced with “ghcnd-states.txt” and now also includes codes for Canadian provinces Effective February 14, 2011 1) 31 new elements will be added from DSI 3210. See the readme.txt file for element definitions. 2) The element for water equivalent of snow on the ground has changed from “WTEQ” to “WESD” to be consistent with the element “WESF”. 3) A fix will be implemented to take into account an undocumented way in which multiday totals are reported in DSI 3200. The fix corrects the number of days in multiday sums after the year 2004 at U.S. stations 4) The number of stations will increase by 12 from 76671 to 76683 with the addition of new U.S. Cooperative Observer Stations. 21 January 2011 Effective January 24, 2011, the number of GHCN-Daily stations will increase by 325 to a total 76671 with the addition of new U.S. Cooperative Observer and CoCoRaHS stations. 17 December 2010 Effective December 20, 2010, the number of GHCN Daily stations will increase by 36 to a total 76346 with the addition of new U.S. Cooperative Observer stations. In addition, the following station ids were changed to reflect the correct FIPS country codes: USC00668814 changed to RQC00668814 USC00670820 changed to VQC00670820 USC00671316 changed to VQC00671316 USC00671348 changed to VQC00671348 USC00671790 changed to VQC00671790 USC00671980 changed to VQC00671980 USC00672551 changed to VQC00672551 USC00674820 changed to VQC00674820 USC00679222 changed to VQC00679222 • http://jennifermarohasy.com/2014/09/absolutely-politically-incorrect-maximum-temperatures-at-bourke-and-bathurst/ Comment@25/09/14 by Mikky: ‘To this list of places that cooled can be added the “Rutherglen cluster,”( Beechworth, Benalla, Wangaratta, Tocumwal, Tatura ) … The regional consistency of the RAW data is PROOF that the BOM’s homogenisation process has failed, as others , Jennifer and Ken Stewart … already know.’ • Post @ Jennifer Marohasy – analysis of BOM “ACORN” temp adjustments show almost all the pre 1971 temps are adjusted cooler., and post 1971 adjustments are up. http://jennifermarohasy.com/2014/05/corrupting-australias-temperature-record/ • angech2014 Beth Steven Mosher | January 31, 2015 at 6:29 pm | has already explained it all. 1. the records were different stations 2. the electronic version is the official version.[ DON’T ARGUE]. 3. Throw out the entire original Australian records Also Steven Mosher | January 31, 2015 at 7:17 pm | In AUS that is exactly what you would expect given the instrument change. And exactly what you expect given the station change in TOBS. and the station relocations. Some words [countries] have been changed to crucify the innocent. • Steven Mosher AUS and USA are two of the few places that have TOBS issues • Regardin’ TOBS issues, this serf wonders how, in the land of Oz, where the BoM *quality control* ( * denotes ACORN homogenisin’ process) adjusts them pre 1971 temperatures predominantly down, since BoM’s …er … quality control now entails TOBS at 1pm. – peak sun yer’d say – but hafta’ correct pre 1971 temperatures ‘down,’ when they were taken other than TOBS ? If the TOBs was not consistent with BoM’s peak TOBS, why FGS down? http://jennifermarohasy.com/2014/05/corrupting-australias-temperature-record/ • tonyb Beth For the last couple of years BOM has been inputting new historic data and in the process removing those that rely on anything other than a Stevenson screen. So if there was a ‘record’ temperature in say 1905 recorded by other than a Stevenson screen it would likely be removed in favour of one captured using the regulation screen. Reading times for observations were always all over the place except in those city stations with dedicated paid observers. This timing was a recognised world wide problem that I referenced in a previous article. tonyb 4. TJA Do you think the planning for rising seas will go as well as the light duty replacement for the Great Lakes ice breaker Mackinaw went? 5. ordvic ‘Hardships for Nuclear Power in the US’ appears yo have the wrong link? 6. The Willie Soon thing is very ugly. Briggs has returned heavy factual fire, showing Laden to be a Liar. Reposted on WUWT for more exposure. Laden may or may not be bright enough to realize how much impact the new Briggs, Soon, Monckton paper might have. I think the paper would have been much stronger if there had been less zeal to discredit the Bode feedback equation and to calculate negative net feedback from grey earth SB ~1.2 (1) the 1/(1-f) net feedback equation is stable and valid to the inflection at about 0.75, as shown in the paper’s figure 5. Not 0.1. Even the IPCC’s overstated WV and cloud feedbacks are only f~0.65. Lindzen uses the Bode model in Lindzen and Choi 2011. It is not ‘bolted onto’ GCMs, whose ECS are determined from the century runs as described in the CMIP5 experimental design paper by Taylor, Meehl et. al. 2012 in BAMS. (2) Reestimate equation transience r from the typical IPCC TCR/ECS ratio gives 0.76, not 0.82. Reestimate Bode f 0.25 by halving WV from 0.5 to 0.25 (for which there is empirical evidence in the fallacious constant UtrH (guest post from early 2012), missing tropical troposphere hotspot, and the CMIP5 underestimation of precipitation by half), and cutting cloud feedback from 0.15 to 0 (for which again there is much empirical evidence, laid out in essay Cloudy Clouds). Bode f~0.25 gives equation feedback sum ft ~ 1.5. Plugging those quick reestimates into the paper’s irreducibly simple sensitivity equation, using the other parameters derived in the paper (lamda~0.31, k=5.35, q~0.83 gives an ECS ~1.75. That is remarkably close to Lewis and Curry 2014, Loehle 2014, even Callendar 1938. In other words, it foots. That is powerful. Even if a ‘lukewarm’ conclusion, is still near half of the IPCC alarm estimate, is at the low end of their plausible range, and suggests no need for drastic immediate action using IPCC’s own criteria. Essentially, the new paper is a simple way to show the sensitivity impact of GSM overestimate of humidity and cloud feedbacks, and places the AR5 discussions of those uncertainties into sharp relief. Maybe that is why the Laden smear. Or maybe he is just a nasty piece of business. • ordvic It would be nice if they could calm down and have a sccientific discussion. It would be rewarding for all. • I doubt Laden has the intellectual chops to even run the simple equation, even though it just multiplies together stuff including ln(2). Hence the false funding attack, which if valid would amongst other amusing results nullify both AGU and CRU, which have taken or are taking substantial contributions from big oil. • DocMartyn A climate sensitivity of <2 means that we can burn as much as is economical while we gradual shift over to other energy sources and only good things happen. This outcome would not suit some people at all. • ordvic Ah, I see now, I was under the mistaken impression Greg Laden was a climate scientist but he is an anthropologist. Nothing wrong in that but his questioning an astrophysicist acumen as far as solar seems a stretch. I see what you mean about chops. • Michael Edwards I went to that site. Expected to find mis-informed but honest opinion. Left disgusted with the very low intellect & sleazy innuendo of the blogger. I did leave comment, but do not expect this vermin to allow posting. Suggested he crawl back under his rock, or if in fact he has a job, we should work up a petition to have him fired (sorry Ms Curry, I know you have wonderful patience for fools). Maybe I do not read enough of the Stupid ones blogging on this topic to have developed a tolerance for this. And if so, I do not intend to start only 2 years prior to retirement age, after more than 15 years of following the facts. Chem engineer for 40 years, was a kid when the next ice age was on our doorstep, no need to waste time on the likes of Laden. • Steven Mosher “Laden may or may not be bright enough to realize how much impact the new Briggs, Soon, Monckton paper might have.” it will negatively impact briggs. • Cryptic as usual. Please explain? The equation is wrong–not. The Monckton driven parameter derivations–already criticized here and directly to Monckton on another thread? Which he graciously acknowledged as the main value of his irreducibly simple model. Or is there some other statistical beef between you and Briggs. As a Ph.d level econometrician (stats plus, like Ross McKittrick), please explain. • Steven Mosher No beef. I think he hooked up with people far below him in skills. my prediction is that the result won’t stand. I’d step away from it while you can. just a word to the wise. • Steven, I already scrubbed the paper. Equation derivation is impeccable math. Surely you agree. Three of five basic physical parameters (lambda, K, and q ) are indesputible. Well, we could argue about long term stability of q. All IPCC values. Surely you agree. r transience is a simple thing to get from IPCC TCR/ECS. Just not what the paper got. Lets use IPCC or Lewis/Curry ratios. Not controversial. Leaves ft. Ah, ft. Focuses the mind. See my comments above, and alternative derivations elsewhere. Greatest uncertainties in AR5, and provably overstated therein via my new book with a foreward from our hostess. Or, as you as so fond of saying, read more, comment less. Read book, get back. Here, or more privately via Judith. Note I have been defending BEST as best amongst all the flawed temp adjustements. Flaws proven. Least flawed is my presumption by checking against worse homogenized stations around the world. And, as said at Paul Homewoods earlier today, I do not think more fixable than BEST has. • Jeff Norman ” I think he hooked up with people far below him in skills.” +1/2 7. Danley Wolfe The important points re the Pew Research poll http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/01/29/public-and-scientists-views-on-science-and-society/ are: The gap between scientists “belief” in manmade causes involvement in global warming (87%) and general public “belief” in manmade causes (50%) i.e., a 37% gap. Of course this is the wrong question. Of course science is not determined by polling of hands but by validation of falsifiable hypotheses/verifiable facts. Of course the poll is about beliefs and not science. Of course the qualifications and identities of the “scientists” are not revealed. Of course the issue is attribution and not belief. This is about opinion leading policy and not about science. And how about that continuing hiatus thing. I think we can be assured that AAAS / publisher of Science Magazine will now even expand / increase its politicized approach to climate change and science in general with the naming of Rush Holt to replace Alan Leisher as head of AAAS http://www.politifact.com/new-jersey/statements/2013/jul/28/rush-holt/rush-holt-warns-millions-will-die-climate-change-g/ Holt ex. Democratic congressman is he uber climate warmer meister … knows climate speak … say good bye to Science, now I have canceled my subscription) >>> “goodbye Science.” • Vaughan Pratt Of course science is not determined by polling of hands but by validation of falsifiable hypotheses/verifiable facts. Let P be a falsifiable hypothesis that 87% of scientists believe to be false. Let S be a scientist who has validated P. Is P now true? • again and again and again they say that recent years have all been hotter than the average they compare with. Of course they have! These years have been the hottest years because we are in the same part of a warming cycle as was this same part of the Roman and Medieval warm periods. Climate is following the same pattern as past cycles and is well inside the same bounds. With or without man-made CO2, Temperature is right where it should be, following the path of the historic cycles. Speak up if you can’t see this. NOAA and NASA have the actual data, you can look at the data. They don’t understand what it means, but they do have the data. • You dont have tombe a scientist to belong to AAAS. And many ‘scientists’ who do are not hard physical scientists. And there are hard physical sciences like medicine that do not remotely relate to the poll questions. And Science refused to respond to my formal, documented, and received by them complaint about Marcott 2013, which shoild have been corrected or withdrawn. See my guest posts here in 2013. It looks like AAAS was trying to redo Cook’s 97% mess in prep for COP21 in Paris, and used Pew to do it. More the science is settled, see. So ignore all those inconvenient general public ‘denier’ questions. I cancelled Sci Am after they published Mann 2014. Voted with feet, like you. • David Wojick Anyone who subscribes to Science is a member of AAAS. That is how you subscribe. Same with AGU and EOS. • pokerguy “anyone who subscribes is a member.” Just stunning. I used to think I was a cynical person. The climate issue has taught me I was a mere babe in the woods. 8. Diag meta comment — I like to see where I’m going before I click on a link; I really dislike link-shortener links. What is the point? To save a few bytes? Are these shortcuts truly permanent or will future readers not have a clue about where they went? • aaron + But I think theyrethey’re used for twitter and just copied from there. 9. ordvic William M Briggs says: “This makes Laden’s insinuation a lie. No fossil fuel industry funding was recieved. And even if it was …” Greg Laden doesn’t seem to say where he got this notion? Was it from the petition (I didn’t look)? Why did Briggs say, “And even if it was”? It would be interesting to see Laden and Briggs come on here and explain all this. Willie Soon sure is a hot button. His solar views seem to have scorched Laden. Idiots? • The notion was traced elsewhere. Laden said he got the funding notion from DeSmog blog (always a reliable source), who quoted David Suzuki quoting a Greenpeace assertion. Whether the Greenpeace assertion cited Laden is presently unknown… But suspected. • ordvic Willie soons wiki has him receiving$1 million in grants from Koch, API, and Exxon. He seems to say so what:

“Soon has stated unequivocally that he has “never been motivated by financial reward in any of my scientific research” and “would have accepted money from Greenpeace if they had offered it to do my research.”

• Don’t trust wikis . But Popeclimatereason knows Soon personally, and says we can trust him to do honest research no matter what.

• timg56

When discussing funding, I like to remember the number $26 million. What Sierra Club got from Chesapeake Energy, following which they started plugging natural gas over coal. • ordvic Watts posted this in an update on Briggs post: 10. On the biofuels article, essays Wishful Thinking, Bugs, Roots, and Biofuels, and Salvation by Swamp lay out a bigger picture background reaching the same general conclusions. 11. Al Gore won, hands down, he told a bigger lie than Gina McCarthy 12. DocMartyn So the actual data is bouncing along the 95% confidence band so there is a 50% chance that temperature is less than 95% of the simulation band. in most science this would discredit the model. • Yes, in most other sciences, model output must match real data or the models are wrong. Only the president and the alarmist consensus scientists and the alarmist consensus media can make flawed model output that is clearly wrong be viewed as proving that real actual data must be wrong. If you are an Alarmist, you likely will not read this. I hope some Alarmists do read this 13. About Willie Soon. Research should be published based on its own merit, with nothing to do with who paid for it. I do know Willie Soon. I have listened to him, I have talked to him, I consider Willie to be a good friend of mine. We consider Willie to be a member of out Climate Study Group. We have listened to Willie and gone out to eat together after some of our meetings. If Fossil Fuel interests paid Willie Soon for research, Willie would publish the truth, no matter if it supported or did not support the interests who paid Willie. Research is not published based on its own merit. Research is published based on the bias of the alarmist consensus. Willie is trying to get the truth published and is taking much abuse for trying to spread truth. Galileo tried to publish the Truth and was in House Arrest afterwards. The sentence of the Inquisition was delivered on 22 June. It was in three essential parts: Galileo was found “vehemently suspect of heresy”, namely of having held the opinions that the Sun lies motionless at the centre of the universe, that the Earth is not at its centre and moves, and that one may hold and defend an opinion as probable after it has been declared contrary to Holy Scripture. He was required to “abjure, curse and detest” those opinions.[67] He was sentenced to formal imprisonment at the pleasure of the Inquisition.[68] On the following day this was commuted to house arrest, which he remained under for the rest of his life. His offending Dialogue was banned; and in an action not announced at the trial, publication of any of his works was forbidden, including any he might write in the future.[69] Willie Soon is a Galileo class person. It is likely that Willie did not get money from fossil fuel interests and somebody lied, or, it is likely that he did not know where the money came from. That is the nature of “Dark Money”. Did you ever think about why it is called “Dark Money” There is likely a lot of “Dark Money” on the many different sides of the climate issues and many other issues. The people getting the money do not always know where it came from. Maybe they can make a good guess or maybe not. No Dark Money has come to me, yet, I can still hope. If Willie did get money from fossil fuel interests, he would need to keep it hidden or not get published and I am ok with that. Willie would publish the truth, no matter where the chips fall. But, if the truth is outside of the Consensus Box, it is really difficult to get it published. • According to Greenpeace, every grant Dr. Soon has received since 2002 has been from oil or coal interests. Wow! The oil and coal interests have their whole future based on knowing the truth, and they trust Willie Soon to understand and tell them the truth. After they know the truth, they can use that knowledge to cheat or lie, but first, they must know the truth. That is what Willie is really good at. 14. Joshua Duplicate links to the Harvard energy efficiency study..recommend revkin’s and Roberts’ posts related to the study. 15. Morph @Nick Stokes Can you come up with a list of stations where the adjustments have been in the opposite direction – i.e. the past got warmer and the present got colder after “Correction”. Thanks. • Morph The met office. We just discovered that the 1659 start date of CET has altered recently. It has been adjusted upwards by 0 .3 degrees. Why 350 year old records needs to be adjusted perhaps Nick can explain. It is one of many changes over the last five years. Tonyb • JCH I read about this. They found an old painting of a picnic in January. • Jch Sorry, but Are you trying to be even more cryptic than mosh? I physically have a 2007 print out of CET from the met office data base. I also physically have the 2015 version. Many of the figures are different. Perhaps you could explain why, for example, a record from 1659 should need to be adjusted? Tonyb • John Smith (it's my real name) tonyb what? 2007 different than 2015? has Met offered explanation? • John As mosh says, figures change as more information comes in. I haRdly think new information is going to be forthcoming on the first record of such a famous series as CET though, so why 1659 has altered I don’t know. A quick check shows quite a number of the records have changed but until an analysis is done its impossible to know if it’s swings and roundabouts. I am hoping to meet up with Richard betts of the met office in the next week or two who would know the reasons for the changes. No conspiracy theory, but changing such an old record seems odd. Tonyb • Steven Mosher old records get improved all the time. • TJA “Old records get improved all the time.” Ha ha ha! They sure do! • TJA It just seems like a series like CET should not change without a published paper explaining the change. But creating propaganda is always more important than building trust, so there’s that. • Steven Mosher • Tonyb, Someone has been warming the past? CET is managed quite differently to the global indices. It’s an average of a few stations, and I expect they found other data. Or decided one series was unusable.. • Steven Mosher “It just seems like a series like CET should not change without a published paper explaining the change. But creating propaganda is always more important than building trust, so there’s that.” ######################### it’s doubtful than anyone would publish it. it isnt scientifically important. Look at the list of changes I posted. nobody would care to publsih a paper on those changes. Why? because the changes amount to nothing. Oh ya, somebody could write a blog post. nothing • tonyb Nick I know how CET was compiled, both the Manley and the Parker version. I met up with a Parker a year or so ago. More information come to light? On a 1659 record? The changes are up and down. It just seems odd to alter such old and thoroughly scrutinised records. Whether any of the changes are material or not will have to be seen. No conspiracy theory. tonyb • jim2 This discussion highlights why I trust the satellite readings much more than land temperature constructions. WRT land constructions, no one knows enough about the past temperatures to apply adjustments. All that is a guessing game. In fact, for land based temps, in many cases there is no raw data at all. It has already been “corrected” for something or another, if not lost altogether. So, the land based reconstructions can’t even start with truly raw data. For sat temps, if a better method comes along or a needed correction is discovered, the sat crews have all the unvarnished original data. The new method, which is based in physics, is applied to all the raw data. This, plus the dense sampling of the atmosphere, puts satellites way ahead of land based. • lolwot “This discussion highlights why I trust the satellite readings much more than land temperature constructions.” Is that why the satellite records disagree with each other more than the surface records do? and why the satellite records are subjected to large adjustments? • jim2 That’s a big LOL alright. • Don Monfort Yes lollie, a little more consensus seeking confirmation bias and collusion could line the satellite records up with each and the other nicely. Or, we can take the magical multi-model mean of UAH and RSS and go with that. Who could argue with that method? • catweazle666 Stephen Mosher: “old records get improved all the time.” Yes, we’ve noticed. However, I believe some of have different ideas to you about the precise meaning of “improved”. • kim Mebbe he meant ‘improvised’. ============== • angech2014 Tonyb | January 31, 2015 at 4:42 pm | “Perhaps you could explain why, for example, a record from 1659 should need to be adjusted?” This should help. It incorporates Mosher’s and Zeke’s explanations Basically the further back in time you go the more you have to adjust temperatures downwards. Zeke and Nick Stokes know this, it’s common knowledge. Why are you surprised? “Zeke (Comment #130058) June 7th, 2014 at 11:45 am Mosh, Actually, your explanation of adjusting distant past temperatures as a result of using reference stations is not correct. NCDC uses a common anomaly method, not RFM. The reason why station values in the distant past end up getting adjusted is due to a choice by NCDC to assume that current values are the “true” values. Each month, as new station data come in, NCDC runs their pairwise homogenization algorithm which looks for non-climatic breakpoints by comparing each station to its surrounding stations. When these breakpoints are detected, they are removed. If a small step change is detected in a 100-year station record in the year 2006, for example, removing that step change will move all the values for that station prior to 2006 up or down by the amount of the breakpoint removed. As long as new data leads to new breakpoint detection, the past station temperatures will be raised or lowered by the size of the breakpoint. An alternative approach would be to assume that the initial temperature reported by a station when it joins the network is “true”, and remove breakpoints relative to the start of the network rather than the end. It would have no effect at all on the trends over the period, of course, but it would lead to less complaining about distant past temperatures changing at the expense of more present temperatures changing. • kim Incredible tangle, angech; we can’t have present temperatures dancing around at the call of a machine. Nope, can’t have it. ==================== • JCH tonyb – a painting of a picnic in January would be proof of anomalous winter warming. • nottawa rafter Not necessarily proof. Maybe just an artist with a fertile imagination. Perhaps his generation’s Dali. • Steven Mosher Morph the adjustments are done by an algorithm the algorithm has been tested in a double blind study It doesnt bias warm or bias cold. As a matter of history in the US the adjustments have tended to warm the record. The algorithm dont care about AGW. • Woody Parallax error. The Braille one didn’t work. • catweazle666 “Morph the adjustments are done by an algorithm” Shouldn’t that be spelt AlGore-ithm? • “Can you come up with a list of stations where the adjustments have been in the opposite direction” If you go to this post, there is a Google Maps app where you can subset the whole set of GHCN stations into different colors according to the trend difference made by adjustment. Any range you like. Click on the station flags for details. In the Darwin post, I’ve listed the stations that go down by as much as Darwin went up. I treated Coonabarabran in detail. 16. Geoff Sherrington I tried posting “Gina, I think you are terrific.” on the EPA website linked to the comment Judith mentions. It immediately reacted with a bar and a comment very like “Sorry, it appears that you are a spambot.” Is this an example of the USA Government curtailing freedom of speech? Note that to my recollection, I had never tried to post at that site before nor otherwise interacted with US EPA. I conclude that I am on some USA Govenment persona non grata list for unexplained reasons. 17. Joshua ==>> “Is this an example of the USA Government curtailing freedom of speech?” Hmmm. How to respond without getting hit with the moderation hammer? • pokerguy Mildly cute. 18. Philbert “Extreme events” seemed to have dramatically aged Gore. • ordvic It was probably from inhaling too much jet fuel fumes from his private jet he needs to travel to all the climate events. 19. David Wojick The 87% figure is a tad higher than my 80% estimate, which is based on polls showing that 80% of scientists are Democrats. • pokerguy I have n idea for a poll. Administer truth serum first. That would shake a few true believers off the tree anyway. • rogerknights Did those polls include scientists outside of govt. and academia? 20. Jim D From the hiatus link “The claim that climate models systematically overestimate the warming caused by increasing greenhouse-gas concentrations therefore seems to be unfounded. ” They show that the last 15 years is typical of other 15-year periods since 1900 in natural variation, and the models do not deviate as a result of sensitivity bias, but as a result of not representing this particular 15-year natural variation. The models have natural variations of the correct amplitude, but not in phase with the observed ones. • Jim D, that is called moving the goalposts after the play. State of the climate climate 2008 (published in 2009) said 15 years. Santers’s 2011 paper said 17 years. And, follow your logic to its conclusion. So, there are at least 15 year long natural variarions. So, how much of the warming from 1975-1998 was also a natural variation? You argue NV as an extramodel explanation for the pause, you blow IPCC CO2 attribution out of the water. Cannot have it both ways unless asserting natural variation only cools, and never warms. In which case there is the little problem of provably exiting the LIA before industrialization appreciably affected CO2. Busted. • Said Time of no temp rise to falsify climate models. My bad. • Bill Rud, you think logic will work? You are so idealistic! • JCH Can’t argue with logic, but on what Santer said, what is the meaning of “at least”? • Was it Trenberth who said that such confidence in models was misplaced because of the hopeless inability of models to model these thing? • Rob Ellison Study: Climate change to bring more nasty La Ninas http://usat.ly/1CEbNrg “Not too many, if any, models are really realistic,” Kevin Trenberth I don’t see this statement as back peddling by Trenberth, just an attempt to still be in the funding game when the observed global surface temperatures are no longer within the 95% confidence intervals. This observation not following model projections would eliminate Michael Mann, and Gavin Schmidt would have some difficulties following White House orders if the Republicans gain access, so I see Kevin Trenberth making some space for himself to remain a Federal Climate Scientist. All very self servicing I might add. • JCH Same scientist: El Niño events are a prominent feature of climate variability with global climatic impacts. The 1997/98 episode, often referred to as ‘the climate event of the twentieth century’1,2, and the 1982/83 extreme El Niño3, featured a pronounced eastward extension of the west Pacific warm pool and development of atmospheric convection, and hence a huge rainfall increase, in the usually cold and dry equatorial eastern Pacific. Such a massive reorganization of atmospheric convection, which we define as an extreme El Niño, severely disrupted global weather patterns, affecting ecosystems4,5, agriculture6, tropical cyclones, drought, bushfires, floods and other extreme weather events worldwide3,7–9. Potential future changes in such extreme El Niño occurrences could have profound socio-economic consequences. Here we present climate modelling evidence for a doubling in the occurrences in the future in response to greenhouse warming.We estimate the change by aggregating results from climate models in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phases 3 (CMIP3; ref. 10) and 5 (CMIP5; ref. 11) multi-model databases, and a perturbed physics ensemble12. The increased frequency arises from a projected surface warming over the eastern equatorial Pacific that occurs faster than in the surrounding ocean waters13,14, facilitating more occurrences of atmospheric convection in the eastern equatorial region. The 1982/83 and 1997/98 extreme El Niño events … • Modeling climate shifts in the Pacific is about as accurate as tossing a coin – to paraphrase Latif, • Well, Kevin, just so long as we don’t get a repeat of 1791-3 or 1877-8. Too global for comfort, those suckers. Of course, there’s no certainty about El Nino definitions, measures etc, but it’s hard to ignore 1878 especially, which must be worthy of intense study due to its extremity, intensity, and the global spread of its dire effects. Climate scientists spend a lot of effort ignoring climate, don’t they? • Jim D It shows that every 15-year trend is not the same. It varies by +/-0.1 C per decade around the mean. This is true of the models and observations. It shows that 15 years to too short to draw any conclusions about long-term trends from. • Reinforcing your goalpost move from the previous published literature. • Jim D The paper was about 15-year trends. If you want to investigate 17-year trends, go for it. No one is stopping you. • Well, the trends that ‘matter’ are the later ones, with high CO2 • JCH • Jim D There is a natural variability in 15-year trends and it is +/-0.1 C per decade. If the model average is within 0.1 C per decade of the 15-year trend, it is within the noise. Nothing can be asserted from one 15-year trend. Just a couple of decades ago the 15-year trend was 0.25 C per decade. Did we complain then that the models were underdoing it? No. • steven A couple of decades ago the expected trend was 0.3C/decade so of course they didn’t complain the trend was above the models lol. • Jim D steven, today’s models underpredicted the previous 15 years and over predicted the current one, making them about right for the last 30 years. I am not sure what you are saying, but no one expected 1998 20 years ago, not even close. • steven Jim, as I told you before, of course today’s models underestimate previous warming. They had to because the warming stopped and if they didn’t adjust down they would be even further off today than they already are. • Don Monfort Yimmy’s defense of the models is that they are not very good at predicting. Should yimmy transfer his talents to the legal field, he would make a very mediocre low- priced lawyer. Public defender. • Jim D So the complainers only talk about the last 15 years and are quiet about the underestimation period of 1984-1998. Disingenuous or just forgetful? • Don Monfort If the weatherman predicts it’s going to rain for 15 days, but it doesn’t rain at all…no problem. He predicts no rain for the next 15 days, but it pours every day. Average it out, and he hit it. • JCH • Jim D Don M, read the hiatus link. Your misunderstanding of what they are saying is so tiresome. • Don Monfort I am talking about what you are saying, yimmy. Read harder, comment not at all. Say yimmy, what did the modelers learn from the first 15 years of getting it wrong that helped them get the second 15 years so wrong? Did they say to themselves “We underestimated warming for 15 freaking years, so let’s really crank this freak up.” Is that how they operate with our$BILLION$, yimmy? • steven I’m perfectly happy to talk about 1984-1998. AR1 projected a warming rate of 0.3C/decade with no decade below 0.2C. How did that work out for them? • Jim D Don M, like when I said 15 years is too short to draw any conclusions about trends from? That didn’t stop you, did it. • Jim D steven, I thought we were talking about AR5, like all the newspaper articles and op-eds did. • steven We were discussing why they didn’t make a big deal out of the models being too cool a couple of decades ago. I was pointing out that they didn’t make a make deal out of them being too cool because at that time they weren’t. • Jim D That wasn’t what I was talking about. It was the op-eds, etc. about the models and the pause, which is what the hiatus article was about. I don’t know what people were saying about models 20 years ago. That was before I was interested. When I mentioned 20 years ago, it was these models and their representation of the temperature 20 years ago. Sorry you were confused. • Don Monfort They got two 15 year periods wrong, yimmy. That’s thirty years. Thirty years of wandering in the wilderness and the predictions do not match reality. How many of the gaggle of modles is even close to reality, yimmy? Models Vs. Reality. Doesn’t match. Period. Everybody knows it. Stop making a fool of yourself. • Jim D Don M, read the article. It explains it all. • Don Monfort I am talking to you, jimmy. About what you are claiming. It’s the same BS that you peddle here day in and day out. You are engaging in repetitive, mindless filibustering. Do you think nobody notices? • JCH The surface air temperature flattens; the amo flattens. Smells like the AMO is feckless. The PDO provides downward pressure; the surface air temperature flattens. Makes physical sense. Takes some braking power to drag down the husky ACO2 warming. Starting in 2012 the PDO goes sharply positive; in 2012 the AMO goes down; and, in 2012 the surface air temperature rockets to a warmest year in 2014. I keep trying to give the AMO a chance, and it just comes out as the wiener, and not the winner. The PDO? At least changes in PDO line up with changes in in the SAT. Well, other than 1983, but that’s another story. • The is the projections of a single perturbed physics model constrained to those results that actually look like observations. What you really need to do is start from a minor differences and then see how they evolve. The fact that models are hopelessly inadequate at representing the complex physics of climate should give pause but rarely seems to for the true believers. • lolwot Don I realize the pause is precious to you and given accumulating evidence that the “pause” isn’t even statistically significant and probably never wause, I’ll go easy on you. • lolwot • lolwot Shouldn’t need an explanation, but some people are so stupid. • A. Voip That is still, a wot? • Don Monfort I see another repetitive, mindless filibusterer has been reanimated. Where you been, lollie? We didn’t notice you were absent, until you came back. • Lucifer Since 1979, temperatures trends are all at or less than the low end projections: • Don Monfort This can’t be right. Little yimmy dee says that over a thirty year period the models get it right. But according to your chart the models are diverging from reality rather than converging. You are going to get it when yimmy sees this. • Jim D At 0.15 C per decade, the GISS and NCDC are about where the AR5 models are over this period. Skeptics have trouble getting that rate with their idea of sensitivity because it implies 2 C per doubling, even with the pause there. • Don Monfort yimmy, yimmy What did the models predict 30 years ago? What did the theory predict 30 years ago? What did your guru Hansen predict 30 years ago? • Jim D • Don Monfort OMG! SkS, yimmy. You couldn’t find anything at huffpo. I don’t have any more time for you. This covers your AR5 BS: http://climateaudit.org/2013/12/09/does-the-observational-evidence-in-ar5-support-itsthe-cmip5-models-tcr-ranges/ • Jim D But then there is this which shows actual temperatures. • Matthew R Marler Jim D: From the hiatus link “The claim that climate models systematically overestimate the warming caused by increasing greenhouse-gas concentrations therefore seems to be unfounded. ” The other message from that study is that 15-year projections have never been reliable. The only really “out of sample” data are the data since the model runs, and for the out of sample data the 15 year trends are high. Totally lacking is any reason to believe that current model extrapolations into the future will be any more reliable than the 15-year projections have ever been. This is about as clear a demonstration of the unreliability of the model projections as has yet been published. • Jim D You can’t get an accurate long-term trend from a 15-year sample of the observations. Its variance since 1900 is +/-0.1 which is comparable with the decadal trends you are trying to measure. It turns out that 30-year trends have much smaller variations where you can get decadal trends reliably from a 30-year sample. Most of the 15-year variance just cancels in 30 years. It seems to be the nature of the global time series that somewhere between 15 and 30 years you get this cancellation making 15 no-good and 30 good for detecting long-term trends. • ‘Natural, large-scale climate patterns like the PDO and El Niño-La Niña are superimposed on global warming caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases and landscape changes like deforestation. According to Josh Willis, JPL oceanographer and climate scientist, “These natural climate phenomena can sometimes hide global warming caused by human activities. Or they can have the opposite effect of accentuating it.” http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=8703 The regimes are quite obviously 20 to 30 years in duration – and not remotely +/- 0.1 degrees C. . • Don Monfort • JCH You would have funded a Mars rocket if you had to pay a royalty to NASA for every time you have linked to that article. • And yet a couple of leading climate scientists and the imprimatur of NASA doesn’t penetrate the quaint belief systems of true believers. Take it as a starting point. • Jim D Don M, he doesn’t show the spread of TCR from AR5, notice. The spread easily covers 2 C per doubling. The aerosol uncertainty allows for a wide range of TCRs. You can get TCR=2 C per doubling since 1950 by having aerosol effects strong enough to oppose non-CO2 GHGs. You can boost the net forcing to reduce the TCR, so in effect a low TCR means a lot of climate forcing above that of CO2 alone, which is what he used. As far as the forcing rate of change goes, it is a worse-than-we-thought scenario, more quickly proceeding to an effective doubling. It is a low-sensitivity/high-rate which is equivalent to a high-sensitivity/low-rate scenario in terms of time to a particular temperature rise. So don’t be lulled by low-sensitivity numbers because they imply a high rate of forcing change. • Lucifer Global SO2 emissions have been declining for decades now. You will have to find some other excuse as to why warming is less than expected. • JCH Stay with it. Fine with me. I said it was going to get hotter. It did. It’s going get hotter still. You’re losing to a C student. Has to be tough on the ego. • Don Monfort I get it, yimmy. The spread covers it and it’s worse than we thought. And a penny saved is a penny earned. And don’t forget the partridge in the pear tree. My all-time favorite is still: The pause is killing the cause. • Matthew R Marler Jim D: You can’t get an accurate long-term trend from a 15-year sample of the observations. Where is the evidence that you can get (or have gotten) a long-term trend at all? 21. jim2 On the New research paper from Harvard on energy efficiency article. Maybe the guys at Harvard have never bought a bunch of curly bulbs, installed them, then watched them deteriorate or just stop working long before the advertised life. Truth seems to be a big problem with “green” people and companies. • Jim2, you are embarassing me. At their insistance, a major gifts planner is having lunch with me Feb 12 to understand why Harvard will not get another nickel until the Oreskes thing is delt with. Straw that broke the camel’s back was an email last year from Drew Gilpin. My problem is, neither the Law nor the B schools hired Oreskes. But they are complicit. I hate compact fluorescents flicker and color temp. Not to mention the mercury pollution. • DocMartyn Thing is, they knew the LED’s were on the way, there was no need for the massive investment and pollution for compact fluorescents. A single incandescent to LED would have been better all round • jim2 Doc – LEDs are an improvement. I’ve bought about 15 LED lights. Three have bit the dust long before the promised 25 years. At 10 or more bucks a pop, I’m not happy. • I stockpiled a decades worth of incandescents, and will let things shake out. Am guessing LED’s will be a viable replacement about the time my stockpile depletes. Adaption rather than mitigation… BTW DocMartyn, you got featured and footnoted in my essay Sensitive Uncertainty in the newish ebook with Judith’s foreward. Good analysis just is, and always deserves wider recognition. Loehle’s 2014 paper did something similar. You were first by years, and got the text recognition. Craig was relegated to a footnote and a small part of a big graphic in that essay. He got featured in others. TY. • Dick Hertz LEDs are the much better than CFLs. So far I have not had any burn out. I have converted all my ceiling fan bulbs. based on the life of incandescent bulbs, I will be money ahead soon. Of course I was hearing avoid CFLs and wait for LEDs for a long time. • DocMartyn Rud, I want someone to get a max/min thermometer of the type used in the 20’s/30’s. Set it up in an authentic shelter, place it in a field, in the middle of a BEST temperature field, and measure the daily max/min and see if it matches the field or not. If not, we would know how to calibrate. • Steven Mosher easy Doc There are 400 stations in Korea we didnt use 72 stations in michigan a bunch in the Yukon 2000 or more in ITSI maybe a 100 or so in oklahoma ( pristine quality) there is plenty of data you can go buy.. proprietary of course. dont forget what the monthly error of prediction is. here is a similar approach by some of my R buddies http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2013JD020803/abstract Combined Global Surface Summary of Day and European Climate Assessment and Dataset daily meteorological data sets (around 9000 stations) were used to build spatio-temporal geostatistical models and predict daily air temperature at ground resolution of 1 km for the global land mass. Predictions in space and time were made for the mean, maximum, and minimum temperatures using spatio-temporal regression-kriging with a time series of Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) 8 day images, topographic layers (digital elevation model and topographic wetness index), and a geometric temperature trend as covariates. The accuracy of predicting daily temperatures was assessed using leave-one-out cross validation. To account for geographical point clustering of station data and get a more representative cross-validation accuracy, predicted values were aggregated to blocks of land of size 500×500 km. Results show that the average accuracy for predicting mean, maximum, and minimum daily temperatures is root-mean-square error (RMSE) =±2°C for areas densely covered with stations and between ±2°C and ±4°C for areas with lower station density. The lowest prediction accuracy was observed at high altitudes (>1000 m) and in Antarctica with an RMSE around 6°C. The model and predictions were built for the year 2011 only, but the same methodology could be extended for the whole range of the MODIS land surface temperature images (2001 to today), i.e., to produce global archives of daily temperatures (a next-generation http://WorldClim.org repository) and to feed various global environmental models. download the paper and read. Then you will understand what I mean when I say we predict temperature “Station observations are commonly used to predict climatic variables on raster grids (unvisited locations),where the statistical term “prediction” is used here to refer to“spatial interpolation” or “spatio-temporal inter-polation” and should not be confused with “forecasting.” In-depth reviews of interpolation methods usedin meteorology and climatology have recently been presented by Priceetal.[2000], Jarvis and Stuart [2001],Tveito et al. [2006], and Stahl et al. [2006]. The literature shows that the most common interpolation tech-niques used in meteorology and climatology are as follows: nearest neighbor methods, splines, regression,and kriging, but also neural networks and machine learning techniques.” • DocMartyn “dont forget what the monthly error of prediction is” as a matter of fact I have no idea what the monthly error is. I have no idea if the modeled-actual is Gaussian, if the distribution is different with altitude, or nearness to bodies of water or to human habitation, I have no idea if temperature monthly errors change if farmers plant corn, soy or sunflowers. I do know two things; whenever the various reconstructions of global temperature are updated the past becomes cooler and the confidence of the authors increases. I have lost faith in the integrity, honesty and impartiality of the authors of all the reconstructions, including BEST. • Steven Mosher doc then you didnt read the paper. I suppose now you deny the LIA • DocMartyn Steve, you have made the point time and again that in a long temporal window, stations do not exist. You look at a local, and the assign station breaks that result from instrument changes or moves. You have stated many, many times, that Station ID’s are meaningless as identifiers of a continuous measurement of temperature, at a single local. Now you argue that one can show the robustness of the BEST temperature field generation by comparing out of sample ‘stations’ with the BEST field. I find the logic faulty. Science rests on positive and negative controls. You state that that you cannot be sure of values from any site are dependable, which is why you have a data screening process. Building and monitoring sites that you KNOW to be reporting correctly is a minimum starting point. Plonk down a station in a field and compare its daily min/max, recorded both electronically and via mercury max/min thermometer, compare this with your ‘field’. State, a prior, what analysis you will use to test if your temperature field reports values that are statistically insignificant from the actual, physical, values reported by mercury expansion and thermonuclear. Stations are not migratory. They do not move due to Brownian motion. They do not change their local due to some random process. Stations move because people move them. People are motivated to move them, at expense, for a variety of reasons, but the fact that the site would be more useful for something else is probably the biggest reason. The motivation for movement is a bias, and one that you ignore. As for the little ice age, why the jibe Steve? I can live with knowing that things are fuzzy. I work on cancer and try to understand the pathophysiology, knowing full well that I do not understand normal cell physiology. I understand full well that much of what I believe I know is little more than guesswork. You can live with the fact that your raw station data is not raw station data and has already undergone, unacknowledged and undescribed, manipulation before you place it in your sausage machine. You only play these silly word games to distract from the real. • Steven Mosher Doc “Now you argue that one can show the robustness of the BEST temperature field generation by comparing out of sample ‘stations’ with the BEST field. I find the logic faulty. Science rests on positive and negative controls. You state that that you cannot be sure of values from any site are dependable, which is why you have a data screening process. Building and monitoring sites that you KNOW to be reporting correctly is a minimum starting point. Plonk down a station in a field and compare its daily min/max, recorded both electronically and via mercury max/min thermometer, compare this with your ‘field’. THAT is exactly what I am saying you should do. its what I did. Its what robert Way is doing in canada. YUP putting stations up and measuring new data. I helped him frigging process the new data dont be a dolt. further, you dont have to build and monitor sites. We already have them. Sites that are built, monintored, calibrated, that are NOT used to construct the field. For example: you can drop CRN ( 10 years of data ) from the field. Build the field without them. and then check. Or you can go get other stations https://www.mesonet.org/index.php/site/help what these sites look like https://www.mesonet.org/index.php/sites/site_description/retr This is labor intensive cause they dont have ftp sites to download. And you have to sort out which stations are not in your data And after you do all this work. no one will publish you. no skeptic will believe it. and no commenter will do the work themselves to double check. • Mosher, You can only doctor up the data up to a point, then the law of diminishing returns kicks in. I say this in the sense of it’s marketing value. We are at the point where it’s just squiggly lines. Time to give up. Andrew • DocMartyn Mosher, you have no faith in station datasets being continuous, which is why you dice them so much. now you say you can trust out of network stations for calibration. Do you see the problem with your logic? You don’t believe the records because of station/instrument changes when making a field, but do believe them to calibrate the field. I know, for sure, that one can build a screened max/min mercury thermometer and measure the max/min temperature in a rural local and have it measured everyday. If one would do this, and compare the max/min over a year to a rural station of the past, one could work out how much the local had warmed. • KenW “… the most common interpolation tech-niques used in meteorology and climatology are as follows: nearest neighbor methods, splines, regression,and kriging, but also neural networks and machine learning techniques.” so, wild aßß guess, basicially. • KenW Neural Networks will say anything you want if you torment them. You can even drive them Insane! This gives the concept of torturing data a whole new dimension. 22. It is a series of quasi equilibrium states jumping every 20 to 30 years – with abruptly changing means and variance. The changes may be small and transient or they may be immense and persistent. It is completely dominated by natural variation – with huge and rapid transition between multiple states occurring repeatedly in the Quaternary. 23. GaryM Here’s the real news of the week. z”How Climate Change Leads to Volcanoes (Really)” http://time.com/3687893/volcanoes-climate-change/ Well, since volcanoes are responsible for the ‘pause’, and now globalclimatewarmingchange causes volcanoes, maybe this is a good thing? Maybe they’ll cancel each other out? Quick somebody do some statistics…I mean science. Phrenology’s got nuthin’ on ‘climate science’. • Joseph (if that is your identity), a visit to a latrine is never welcome, and only when necessary. Not here, not now. • Steven Mosher Rud anthony got the post horribly wrong he misinterpreted this sentence “The finding is bad news not just for one comparatively remote part of the world, but for everywhere.” He got it really wrong. people make mistakes. he made one • Mosher, I read the Time article, multiple times since incredulous. One of us is a bit reading comprehension challenged. An old Army rule of digging holes. When in one and wishing to get out, the first thing is to stop digging. • Mosher you need to stop being so cryptic without context. I have no idea why you think Anthony got that sentence wrong and why the sentence or getting it wrong is even relevant. The Time piece is loonie bin stuff. And the Hot Whopper author is a bigger Dingbat than Edith Bunker. I can’t believe you are defending anything she is saying. Please explain how the TIme piece has anything to do with Global Temperatures. • Steven Mosher ““The finding is bad news not just for one comparatively remote part of the world, but for everywhere.” Dirt simple Anthony interepreted this by assuming that the author meant that volcanoes would get worse in other places WRONG. thats not what he meant He meant and EXPLAINED that the icelandic volcanoes would cause issues in other parts of the world. durr • GaryM Yeah, that article is as scientifically illiterate as the Time piece. See if you can find the bait and switch. “Taking the pressure off the surface can lead to more volcanic activity. Hence the headline and article in Time to which Anthony Watts took such exception. The headline read: How Climate Change Leads to Volcanoes (Really)” This will be a tough one for consensus acolytes to spot, so I’ll give you a few minutes. …. OK. Notice the change from “taking pressure off the surface CAN lead to more volcanic activity” to “Climate Change LEADS TO Volcanoes (Really).” Oh, and this all ignores the fact that “climate change” when used by warmists can mean either all climate change, or anthropogenic climate change or whatever else they want it to mean at the time. That is why when it comes to this kind of research, it is all about the headline. This would be a more honest headline. “Researchers believe that melting glaciers make an increase in volcanic activity possible.” But then you wouldn’t get the PR value, which is what “climate science” is all about. And another minor but telling point, melting ice doesn’t “lead to volcanoes,” the volcanoes are already there. What is possible is that melting glaciers could lead to increased volcanic activity, including eruptions. Burt again, honesty and accuracy destroy the effect of the scare headline/science. • Joshua Why I lurve the climate blogosphere. Handbag fights between overly confident people absolutely certain that they are absolutely right and that other overly confident people who disagree with them are absolutely wrong. About issues which are inherently subjective. And some of these people consider themselves “skeptics,” and are fully convinced that they are in an elevated position from which to tell others how their reasoning processes are flawed. • GaryM “Anthony interepreted this by assuming that the author meant that volcanoes would get worse in other places WRONG. thats not what he meant He meant and EXPLAINED that the icelandic volcanoes would cause issues in other parts of the world.” No, he didn’t. The Time article says nothing about the impact of Icelandic eruptions on other parts of the globe. A charitable interpretation would be that the Icelandic research would apply to other volcanoes under glaciers. But the author makes no explanation for his broad based statement, which is why it is so easy to make fun of. • kim Dig deep, that lipstick’s gotta be in there. I see you found the mirror. ======== • Joseph oops Gary my response is below • Steven Mosher what GaryM said: “No, he didn’t. The Time article says nothing about the impact of Icelandic eruptions on other parts of the globe.” What the author wrote: “Not only is that damaging Icelandic habitats and contributing to the global rise in sea levels,” See the word global AND FURTHER: “Contemporary humans got a nasty taste of what that’s like back in 2010 when the volcanic caldera under the Eyjafjallajökull ice cap in southern Iceland blew its top, erupting for three weeks from late March to mid-April and spreading ash across vast swaths of Europe. The continent was socked in for a week, shutting down most commercial flights.” in short. the” trouble everywhere” that the author refers to is this 1. increase in GLOBAL sea level 2. Disruption of air travel. Anthony mis interpreted “trouble everywhere” to mean increase in volcanoes everywhere BUT to use Willis’ rule “Quote my words” the author never says it will increase volcanoes everywhere. he says “trouble” Trouble is explained as a rise in sea leve. Trouuble is explained as disruption of air travel We MIGHT accuse the author of hyperbole. but NOT of claiming that vulcanism will change everywhere garyM. read more, comment less • phatboy Steven, the offending sentence was: “The finding is bad news not just for one comparatively remote part of the world, but for everywhere” (my bold) “The finding” being the one about melting ice contributing to increased volcanism, not the rise in sea level – which was an aside. And, btw, the word ‘trouble’ was used once, and not in the context of sea level or anything global. I suggest you read a bit harder. • JCH True again. You have to be a complete Mbillseal to disagree with Mosher. • phatboy And not to mention the gratuitous straw man about the magma not causing the ice melt – apparently put there for no other reason but to take a side-swipe at ‘deniers’ • phatboy And also not to mention that 11 billion tons of ice melt equates to about 0.03mm of sea level rise. • GaryM Mosher, I’ll take reading comprehension lessons from the Climate Etc obscurantist in chief when I take lessons in public speaking from Yogi Berra. Here is the quote, in context. “Now, you can add yet another problem to the climate change hit list: volcanoes. That’s the word from a new study conducted in Iceland and accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters. The finding is bad news not just for one comparatively remote part of the world, but for everywhere.” Two things you might have noticed if you were reading for comprehension rather than for ammunition for your latest daily screed on how stupid everyone in the world but you is. “Now, you can add yet another problem to the climate change hit list: volcanoes.” Notice the ‘es’ at the end of volcano. That’s what known, to those of us who read words to mean what they say, as a plural. Meaning more than one. And he doesn’t say the world’s problem is Icelandic volcanoes, but just simply volcanoes. The author was clearly (well OK, not so clearly) suggesting that the purported increase in volcanoes (I still get a kick out of that nonsense since the study is about volcanic activity) in Iceland was symptomatic of a global problem. Unless you actually think that the authors meant that the rise in sea level from ice melt in Iceland is dangerous on a global scale? Maybe you can plug their computer generated numbers into another computer model and with the magic of statistics tell us exactly how much sea level will rise on a global scale as a result of the effect of the anthro component of “global warming” on Icelandic ice melt. (I could also point out, again the title “How Climate Change Leads to Volcanoes (Really)”, and again point out the plural and that there is no limitation to “Icelandic” volcanoes, but why beat a dead semantic horse?) My reading of the Time article is in fact more generous than you own. But then, all you care about is critiquing what Watts said, and winning the semantic argument of the day. • Jim D I think Watts realized his readership would take the Time wording wrong, so he jumped out in front of them to blame the writer for saying something could so easily fool his readers. It’s more a reflection of his regard for the reading comprehension of the WUWT readers. We should check the comments there to see if they thanked him or were offended. • phatboy And JimmyDee fantasizes once again • Joseph Gary, I know the headline is sensationalized, but if you actually read the article you will know what is meant. The media has always used sensationalized headlines to entice people to read their articles. Even Fox News does it.. Come on,Gary.. • kim Note the ‘cultural’ use of ‘climate change’. When will they ever learn, when will they ever learn? ================ • Joseph I see sound and fury, about nothing,, • GaryM Joseph, It is not just the headline that is sensationalized, the whole article is. It takes all the assumptions that went into the ‘research” then expands the purported findings beyond what the researchers claimed. “The Earth, we are learning yet again, demands respect. Mess with it and there’s no end to the problems you create.” How sciency can you get? And I know progressives think Fox News is a bunch of conservative ideologues like the NY Times and the rest of the Dem PR machine are for progressivism, but Fox is not conservative. It is conservative in a comparative sense in that most of the talking heads are not full blown supporters of outright socialism like most of the MSM (whether they know it or not), But it is not conservative as that term was properly used until recently. With the exception of Sean Hannity, .every commentator I can think of on Fox is a “moderate” or “independent” or “libertarian” conservative. They are like the GOP leadership (or most European “conservatives”). They are all for central planning, they just want “conservative” central planners, which is an oxymoron. They are also all for the progressive social agenda, with maybe the exception of abortion on demand until the date of birth. But conservative? Nope.. • GaryM Joseph, And my response to you is in moderation. Probably because I used the “a” word – as in the Roe v Wade “a” word. • Joseph I hope you can explain why Fox News does it.. And I agree, if Obama or other prominent figures start saying climate change cause volcanoes, that maybe something needs to be said about that article. But I just don’t think that is going to be an issue or topic coming up in the future.. What do you think, Gary? • Joshua Joseph – Just forget about it. You see, like 90% of the American public, meaning anyone who is to the left of atilla the hun, you are a “progressive,” and thus just incapable of even comprehending GaryM’s level of critical thinking. Don’t bother trying to convince him of anything, just sit back and watch in awe what someone of such intellectual and moral superiority comes up with. • GaryM Joseph, Why Fox News does what, uses sensationalized headlines? For the same reason all the other media outlets do. Ratings. My only point was that Fox is not conservative, not that they are paragons of journalistic values. I put nothing beyond possibility with this administration. But I doubt even the headline writer meant that CAGW causes volcanoes. The point of the article was that melting ice on volcanoes CAN result in increased volcanic activity. The author’s clear implied point, Mosher notwithstanding, is almost certainly that Iceland is not the only locale that has volcanoes that MIGHT be affected by ice melt. As long as you use qualifiers like can, might, possibly etc., the point is not even controversial. Much of the underlying mainstream climate science is similarly acceptable in the policy arena when accompanied with reasonable qualifiers and uncertainties. Which is the problem. “Ice melt could cause increased volcanic activity” becomes ”How Climate Change Leads to Volcanoes (Really).” • kim Heh, earth rebounding from under ice would drop sea level, there anyway. But, hey, beware the whole earth because climate change. =============== • phatboy The rise they’re seeing is largely because the earth’s crust floats on top of the molten mantle, and so any decrease in the crust’s weight is going to cause it to rise, with little or no change in the pressure gradient through the crust. But that aside, given that ice is much less dense than the underlying rock, just how much difference do they imagine that losing around 1 ton of ice per square metre per annum is going to make to the depth beneath the surface at which the critical pressure occurs? 24. John Smith (it's my real name) regarding Willie Soon My naive view of science 1 concoct hypothesis 2 concoct experiment to test 1 3 observe, measure, draw a conclusion 4 write it up, show it to others so they can repeat and see if they get the same result who pays for 1 through 3 cannot change 4 the bias of the concoctor cannot change 4 naivete…my excuse for being surprised by HUAC era tactics from the liberal science left blacklist the skeptics clear parallels between Cold War hysterics and Climate Change politics 25. Danny Thomas Steven Mosher, Just wanted you to know I dropped my chamber pot. All my questions were stored in it, yet I still don’t feel like I’m passing (yet). There was also a Deja Vu, thingy going on. 26. ordvic “The two measurements, plus warming of the deep ocean, would equal the global sea level rise of 2.78 millimeters over the last decade. So, through the process of elimination, they figured out the contribution of deep ocean warming to the observed sea level rise. It was negligible. The study was called ‘deeply flawed’ by Keven Trenberth, a climatologist from the National Center for Atmospheric Research.” …. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mystery-of-ocean-heat-deepens-as-climate-changes/ The more I look at how temperatures (of any kind) are handled by deeply biased so called scientists my confidence rapidly wanes. It’s too bad all these institution have been taken over by extremists. I used to take all this information for granted now I treat it, in my minds eye, the same as other psuedo science. It seems you can’t trust anything anyone says and that was my original problem trying to learn climate science. I couldn’t decipher what was real science and what was not. If the climate science community can’t be relied on to even cough up some honest numbers, what good are they? They seem to only be interested in their own pet theories and just want data that fits their beliefs. • JCH I agree. Cowtan and Way failed to manipulate their series into being a warmest year, so it’s rubbish. • No matter what their conclusion was, their method was rubbish. See our hostess own comments, or my essay Unsettling Science. Kriging across summer land/ice is statistical BS. • Steven Mosher It validated. Against really analysis Against AIRS Against bouys. Stop blowing smoke. You can krig across the boundary. It’s better than not in filling Better than mere extrapolation Not perfect. It’s just better. Probably better • Steven Mosher Damn auto correct. Reanalysis • mwgrant Rud Istvan: “Kriging across summer land/ice is statistical BS.” At times sea temperature impact the temperature of the air over land and at times the opposite occurs so clearly there is some lateral mixing across the boundary suggesting a finite transition zone; seems to me the game hinges on the quality of the semivariogram or correlation function–in particular at the shorter correlation lengths. As for being statistical BS–that would depend on what statistics one tries to wring out off it. Indeed one is not even required to make a ‘statistical’ statement when kriging. So using a vague term like ‘statistical BS’ is really no more just throwing red meat into the discussion. —————————————————– Steven Mosher:Mosher “You can krig [sic] across the boundary.” Yes. Not perfect. It’s just better. [yes][oh?] Probably better [So not demonstrated better? Then is it really validated?] • ordvic Steven, Look to motivation. C&W we’re determined they were going to find missing heat in the arctic. They are biased. • ordvic were determined • Steven Mosher “Look to motivation. C&W we’re determined they were going to find missing heat in the arctic. They are biased” ###################### Look you weasel. I’ve worked with Robert Way on a bunch of projects. The method they use in the arctic is very much like the method used by skeptics in the Antarctic– to debunk the steig paper. The data is clear The method is clear They rigorously tested it Robert is all about the testing and validation. When it comes to paleo work, he is all about challenging the work that other do… to improve it. He is not the kind of guy who sits behind a computer screen. He is out there, among the polar bears, setting up stations for new observations to test his statistical work. Go away • Steven Mosher Damn auto correct PROVABLY BETTER • kim I’m a little amused that the method will show cooling faster, if it develops. ================ • Steven Mosher, “Robert is all about the testing and validation. When it comes to paleo work, he is all about challenging the work that other do… to improve it. He is not the kind of guy who sits behind a computer screen. He is out there, among the polar bears, setting up stations for new observations to test his statistical work.” Cool! Perhaps you can talk him to do a guest post on the polar bear stock assessment statistic kerfuffle? • kim Heh, Cap’n, he can krig to find the endangered bears. ============ • mwgrant “Heh, Cap’n, he can krig to find the endangered bears.” Sounds like he should be concerned about them finding him… • mwgrant, “Sounds like he should be concerned about them finding him…” I heard they were on the brink of extinction since the Arctic is so much warmer now that it was in the 30s and 40s. • ordvic Steven, No you look you weasel. You completely changed the subject. I don’t doubt their methods etc etc. I’m sure it’s fine. I am questioning their motive and bias that took them there in the first place. You go away! your nothing but a nasty tool! I don’t really mean any of that, just returning serve. • kim Over and over again, in the last four or five years, a paper has come out to support the alarmist consensus over some skeptical criticism. Over and over again, in the last four to five years, the papers have been blown up within days, sometimes hours. Cowtan and Way have been somewhat resistant to this phenomenon, but I think it’s really cool that their method will show Arctic cooling first, if it develops. Skeptical critique is now driving climate science; we thank Way for the early detection of cooling tool. =============== 27. There are two kinds of scientists – Chemists and Physicists. The former are more numerous probably because the pharmacy industry depends on them and requires large numbers to dispense our prescriptions. They are the watchdogs of pharmacy and are acknowledged as such by governments. Neutrons, because they have no electrical charge play no part in chemical reactions, so tend to be dismissed by chemists. Also neutrons were not discovered until the 1930’s by James Chadwick at Cambridge. So text books printed earlier and teachers of chemistry before 1930’s knew nothing of neutrons. Yet neutrons are heavy particles that resonate with IR frequencies and so fundamentally alter the absorption of IR in the atmosphere. An important property in climate research. Could it be that the 97% of scientists who support the IPCC are mostly chemists who, to this day, have little professional interest in neutrons and readily dismiss them? 28. Joshua Judith – You’ve got more work to do: http://www.c-span.org/video/standalone/?c4524774/whitehouse-inhofe2&popoutPlayer In which Inhofe explains why man can’t change the environment. Remember – you don’t listen to anyone who thinks that ACO2 has no influence on the climate. You testify at the request of Republicans in Congress – and they don’t seem to be getting your message. You’ve got a lot of work to do, Judith. • Joshua Correction. Inhofe says that man can’t change the climate (and the notion that they can is a “hoax”). • A. Voip It’s about time too. • Joshua Hi Tom. • Did someone say my name? 29. CONFIRMED: Researchers show that military intervention has been dominated by need for oil Not so much oil… Israeli leadership has our Congress and a lot of a certain political party in their back pocket and they can live with our boys being blown to pieces doing regime change for them. Our president is spineless. War i$ a racket just like Smedley Butler said. And if you invoice oil in Euros instead of dollars your chances of regime change probably go way up.
Dick Cheney bankrupted Halliburton while overseeing it, but continued to get paid by them as VP. Why would Halliburton do that?

• I’m more interested in charting the oil the military consumes.

30. Don Monfort

Well, this is really silly:

CONFIRMED: Researchers show that military intervention has been dominated by need for oil http://bit.ly/1wAXxJd

Do you seriously believe they have CONFIRMED anything by modeling the motives of governments, Judith? Do you seriously think the U.S. spent all that money and sacrificed all those lives because we had to have Iraqi oil? We could have bought the oil in the market. If we wanted to control Iraqi oil we would have installed a compliant government and made sure that American companies controlled oil exploration and production. Same with the British in Nigeria. Why didn’t we invade Saudi Arabia and Venezuela? That’s where the freaking oil is. Iran’s got oil. Mexico. Norway. Did we intervene in the Balkans for oil? How about Afghanistan? Korea? Vietnam? Granada? The Brits in the Falklands?

Simplistic claptrap motivated by ideology.

• johanna

The fact that Dr Curry cites an article in her “week in review” posts does not mean that she endorses it, as anyone who has been reading here for more than a couple of weeks should know.

• Don Monfort

Well johanna, even in the linked self-serving article wherein the authors toot their own horn, it did not say that they had CONFIRMED: anything. Not even a lower case confirmed. I done seen you round here for more than a few weeks, so presumably you do know that Judith actually writes the words introducing the items in her “Week in review” posts. Do you think that CONFIRMED: is a big fat ALL CAPS: typo, or do you think it might reflect Judith’s opinion? Did you read far enough into my comment to notice that I asked her:

“Do you seriously believe they have CONFIRMED anything by modeling the motives of governments, Judith?”

She seems to have given up on defending her comments, so I don’t expect her to reply. I am sure she will appreciate your help, johanna.

Maybe this is what Judith meant to say:

Researchers tooting their horn assert there is strong evidence that military intervention has been dominated by need for oil http://bit.ly/1wAXxJd

• Joshua

I know I agreed to a truce, so let me try to keep this civil.

==> “She seems to have given up on defending her comments, ”

Interesting approach you bring to trend analysis.

• Don Monfort

Why don’t you just try to keep it relevant, joshie. If you will spare us the coming 5,000 word meandering essay, I will withdraw the snippet you quoted, for some reason known only to yourself.

• I just cut and pasted a tweet referring to the article. None of the articles in week in review imply my endorsement, they are merely links, with a brief phrase (in most instances, the tweet that pointed me to the article)

• Don Monfort

Oh well, I thought they were things that you had actually read and found interesting, meaningful, non-trivial, containing a grain of truth, or a tidbit of wisdom. I have been wondering where you got the time to peruse the week’s cornucopia of news and select the gems you pass on to us. It’s all beginning to make sense.

• Don, from your comment I believe I can safely infer that you’ve never blogged. Talk about an editorial hole to fill… especially when you’re doing a roundup and nothing really cool is going on that motivates you… I’m surprised Judith doesn’t occasionally link to Garfield.

31. Group of physicists

The whole concept of “parcels” of air is totally inapplicable when considering natural (free) convective heat transfer, which includes conduction and diffusion by definition, but occurs only in the absence of wind or any other forced convection. PARCELS OF AIR CAN ONLY BE HELD TOGETHER IN FORCED CONVECTION.

Temperature is a measure of mean molecular (INTERNAL) kinetic energy. Heat transfers in natural convection can only occur via molecular collisions, because all wind of any form is excluded. If air moves because of pressure differences, that is wind. When net molecular movement is able to be detected in natural convection it is because of excess thermal energy driving the net motion away from that source.

A molecule only “knows” about how hard it is hit by another molecule. It “knows” nothing about buoyancy, pressure or density in neighboring regions. The overall speed of heat transfer in natural convection depends entirely upon the differences in energy potentials, and those energy potentials must take into account molecular (internal) gravitational potential energy and not just molecular (internal) kinetic energy. When those energy potentials become equal, that is when natural convection stops because we then have maximum entropy and so we have the state of thermodynamic equilibrium.

Thus, in the state of thermodynamic equilibrium, because we have no unbalanced energy potentials, we thus have homogeneous (PE+KE) for internal (molecular) energy. Thus, because PE varies with altitude, we have a temperature gradient.

Natural convection only starts again when the energy potentials become unbalanced, normally due to the absorption of new thermal (kinetic) energy. The direction of the resulting convective heat transfer will be from the higher energy potentials to the lower energy potentials, and that may be downwards to warmer regions because we are including gravitational potential energy in the entropy calculations, not just kinetic energy.

And that obviates the “need” to try (incorrectly) to explain with back radiation the obvious short fall of energy into the surface.

• A fan of *MORE* discourse

Group of physicists  Thus, in the state of thermodynamic equilibrium, because we have no unbalanced energy potentials, we thus have homogeneous (PE+KE) for internal (molecular) energy. [\hellip;] Thus, because PE varies with altitude, we have a temperature gradient.

Lol … “group of physicists” is aptly *NOT* named “group of competent physicists”.

Let $\beta$ be the thermodynamic potential associated to energy. Then:

(1)  $\beta$ is spatially constant at thermodynamic equilibrium, and

(2)  For $s(u,\rho,z)$ the entropy function, with $\rho$ the mass density, and $z$ the spatial height, the equilibrium relation $\beta = \partial s(u,\rho,z) / \partial u = \mathsf{\text{constant}}$.

Working through the details, at thermal equilibrium we don’t have a spatial gradient in temperature.

Conclusion  “Group of physicists” and “market fundamentalists” alike require stronger math and greater thermodynamic realism … combined with less arm-waving to reach predetermined conclusions.

Scientists, Scholars, Knaves and Fools
by Ed Wilson

They [young scientists] know the first rule of the professional game book: Make an important discovery, and you are a successful scientist in the true, elitist sense in a profession where elitism is practiced without shame.

You go into the textbooks. Nothing can take that away; you may rest on your laurels the rest of your life.

But of course you won’t. Almost no one driven enough to make an important discovery ever rests.

Any discovery at all is thrilling. There is no feeling more pleasant, no drug more addictive, than setting foot on virgin soil.

Remark  Skepticism fails to recruit young scientists because skeptical forums tolerate nutjob theorizing.

THAT is evident to *EVERYONE*, eh Climate Etc readers?

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• DocMartyn

Define equilibrium
Explain when it is reasonable to use the equilibrium approximation to describe a steady state.
Do the energy fluxes of rotating planets and the steady state cyclical nature of surface and atmospheric temperatures allow this system to be reasonably described by the equilibrium approximation?

• A fan of *MORE* discourse

Perhaps more broadly illuminating than any of your circumscribed questions, DocMartyn, is this one:

Illuminating Question  Why does James Hansen’s climate-change worldview not rely primarily upon large-scale dynamical models?

James Hansen says “I’m using models less and less — although they are very helpful in confirming our understanding — but it is not correct to say that these assessments are based on models.”

Analogous question  Is our understanding of biology based primarily upon large-scale dynamical models?

Answer  In climate-science as in molecular biology, large-scale dynamical models serve as secondary verifications, of a scientific worldview that rests primarily upon non-computational foundations of thermodynamics and energy-balance principles, illuminated by paleo-evidence (both evolutionary and climatological).

*THAT* robust hierarchy of 21st century scientific understanding is evident to *ALL* young scientists, eh DocMartyn?

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• DocMartyn

We do not use ‘energy balance’ models in bioenergetics as biological systems are kinetically, not thermodymanically, controlled. You know sweet FA about energetics, mostly you defined a system and then show that your system follows the mathematics of your definition. You should look to your end Falstaff, it is not dignified.

• Group of physicists

Thermodynamic potential is not entropy. The Second Law is about entropy tending towards a maximum, not about thermodynamic potential at all, so your conjecture crumbles because you ignore the law.

You, Fan . are assuming the very thing you are trying to prove. You assume the state of thermodynamic equilibrium in a gravitational field would be isothermal, whereas the Second Law may be used to prove that would be impossible in a gravitational field. But you in your naivety, without the slightest effort to read our group’s website, you just assertively state such garbage and then use that false assumption to prove – guess what – the assumption itself. Maybe you should try less discourse and more physics next time.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics is about entropy increasing to a maximum, and in no way is that law confined to the false conjecture you imply, namely that entropy changes are brought about only by changes in (molecular) kinetic energy, The rest of my response is here which is being read by about 1,000 others each week, because word is getting around that it is correct physics therein..

Now, Fan of more Blah, before you reply, come out from your cloak of anonymity and declare your qualification in physics, and provide further details as to any specialized study of thermodynamics such as I have done.

• Group of physicists

What “Fan of more discourse” does not understand (or chooses to ignore) is the fact that the thermodynamic potentials (which are internal energy, the enthalpy, the Helmholtz free energy and the Gibbs free energy) are all derived with respect to an “engine” that is essentially in a horizontal plane wherein temperature differences over the height of the engine are negligible (because the temperature gradient is of the order of only 7C°/Km) and are thus ignored. But internal molecular gravitational potential energy cannot be ignored over a significant height in a planet’s troposphere. Such PE (if it changes – as it does with altitude) will have an effect on entropy. The continuation of this response (and the supporting evidence) is here..

• Group of physicists

You write: “(1) \beta is spatially constant at thermodynamic equilibrium”

No it’s not. The condition of maximum entropy implies only that there are no further net energy transfers across any internal or external boundary. That does not preclude a temperature gradient. You are merely assuming what you plan to prove. Your assumption assumes there can be no heat transfer from cooler to warmer regions in a vertical plane in a gravitational field. That is wrong, because it is possible for entropy to increase with such transfers provided that unbalanced energy potentials (which take PE into account) are diminishing. Without such heat transfers you have absolutely no explanation as to how the troposphere gets hotter as you go down into any planet’s troposphere, even well beyond temperatures to which any direct solar radiation could raise those regions and any surface.

• Group of physicists

You see, Fan of more discourse, you are using computations based on what you could read here

“In thermodynamics, certain forces, such as gravity, are typically disregarded when formulating expressions for potentials. … the gravitational potential energy term in the formula for the internal energy would usually be ignored because changes in gravitational potential within the engine during operation would be negligible.”

Sure they would be negligible “within the engine” but within 1Km of a vertical column of Earth’s troposphere they cause there to be a temperature difference of about 7C° on average.

All you have done, Fan of more discourse, is use a formula which ignores gravitational potential energy in order to “prove” that gravitational potential energy has no effect. (LOL)

• Hugh

‘Thus, because PE varies with altitude, we have a temperature gradient.’

If you have a bare temperature gradient, it doesn’t sound stable equilibrium in the first place.

For example, protostars are hot from inside but they radiate and cool down eventually, if they are not massive enough.

• Group of physicists

Hugh writes: “it doesn’t soumd … “

LOL – is that the limit of your understanding of physics? The school boy Clausius :hot to cold” statement from mid 19th century which only applies in a horizontal plane where gravitational potential energy does not change and thus has no impact on entropy. Is that really all that hard to understand?

• A fan of *MORE* discourse

FOMD’s exercise

Step 1  Specify any entropy density function $s(u,\rho,z)$, where $u$ is the energy density, $\rho$ is the mass density, and $z$ is a spatial coordinate (nominally vertical); such that $s$ is convex in $u$ and $\rho$.

Step 2  Specify any spatially nonuniform distribution of energy and mass $(u(z),\rho(z))$.

Step 3  Calculate the total entropy $S = \int\,s(u(z),\rho(z),z)\,dz$ and the spatial distribution of temperature $1/(k_{\text{B}}T(z)) = \delta s(u(z),\rho(z),z)/\delta u(z)$.

Then from the calculus of variations derive:

FOMD’s Theorem  If $T(z)$ is nonconstant, then there exist alternate energy, mass distributions $(latex u'(z),\rho'(z))$, specifying the same total energy and total mass as $(latex u(z),\rho(z))$, such that $T'(z)$ is constant and $S' \gt S$.

Alternate statement  There is no entropy-driven temperature-gradient “Loschmidt Effect” … as Johann Josef Loschmidt himself eventually realized.

Conclusion  A world governed by Group of physicists hand-waving science, Peter Lang’s hand-waving economics, and Rud Istvan’s hand-waving politics, would be a bizarre world indeed!

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• Group of physicists

“Fan of more discourse” whoever you are hiding in anonymity …

All of the above ignores the effect of changes in gravitational potential energy and how such changes affect entropy.

You have empirical evidence against you in a Ranque Hilsch vortex tube which very clearly develops a huge temperature gradient in its cross section due to the huge centrifugal force. Calculations* show that the temperature gradient in the Ranque-Hilsch vortex tube closely matches the expected gradient, that being the quotient of the acceleration due to the force field and the weighted mean specific heat of the gases.

You need less discourse and more thought process.

As I said, read our group’s website and especially the ‘Evidence’ page. Also read this comment that is already posted over 100 times elsewhere.

You’re a beggar for punishment “Fan” but be assured that I’ll dish it up against you and anyone else promulgating false physics.

State your name, “Fan of more discourse” and who pays you. When our group writes their regular comments that go on climate blogs and hundreds of social media comments we like to name those whom we rubbish, as we did recently for Stephen Wilde.

* On Talk page in Wikipedia article

• Group of physicists

Imagine two horizontal planes of identical IR-inactive molecules all with identical molecular (internal) kinetic energy. Each plane has sufficient numbers of molecules to enable temperature measurement, which is of course proportional to mean molecular KE. We will assign a “temperature” T to each molecule reflecting its KE. Likewise, since specific heat Cp is an intrinsic property, we can assign such to each molecule.

Suppose the two planes are separated in distance by the mean free path of the molecules between collisions. We will assume the molecules just happen to bounce back and forth in a vertical plane between the two layers.

As per the assumptions of Kinetic Theory here the molecular motion can be treated classically and, because they have mass, the gas molecules will be affected by gravity.

Clearly there is an interchange of molecular PE and KE during the vertical free path motion. We can quantify the KE change using the specific heat to determine the energy causing a change in temperature dT for the distance dH between the planes. Of course the change in PE for a molecule of mass m is m.g.dH and so …

m.g.dH = m.Cp.dT

giving a temperature gradient dT/dH = g/Cp where g has opposite sign to dH

QED

32. harrywr2

Confirmed….whether or not the earth has warmed .0.6C or 0.8C in the last century will have little or no impact on Climate Change Policy.

China’s coal consumption declined in 2014 by 2.5% due to market forces that had NOTHING to do with climate change or climate change policy.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/29/china-economy-output-coal-idUSL4N0UZ3PO20150129

Steam Coal above $80/ton is economically unsustainable regardless of what one believes about climate change. 33. michael hart “Being an astronaut would help him change the world, he [Bill Nye] says. He considers changing the world to be a lifelong goal.” My youngest niece heard his name mentioned yesterday and said he was inflicted on her at school. She considers him an idiot. • If only they’ll accept me I could my life long goal achieve: Say, ‘I will do such things – what they are yet I know not, but they shall be The terrors of the earth.’ H/t King Lear. 34. jim2 From the article: In the US, the cost cutting has reached frenetic levels. One place where it shows up on a weekly basis is the number of rigs actively drilling for oil. And that rig count dropped by 94 to 1,223 in the latest week, as Baker Hughes reported Jan. 30. A phenomenal plunge, by far the worst ever. In January, the rig count crashed by 276, the most ever for a calendar month. That’s 18.4%! the rig count is now down 386 from its peak on October 10, by nearly a quarter! And yet, it’s still just the beginning. The chart shows the breathless fracking-for-oil boom that started after the financial crisis. Not included are the rigs drilling for natural gas. That fracking boom had started years earlier and ended in a glut and total price destruction that continues to this day (chart). Note the two-month cliff-dive, the worst ever. During the financial crisis, the oil rig count fell 60% from peak to trough. If this oil bust plays out the same way, the rig count would drop to 642! The bloodletting in the industry would be enormous. http://seekingalpha.com/article/2872176-oil-price-soars-rig-count-plunges-worst-ever-but-bloodletting-just-beginning • JCH Ah, my 3rd bust. • tonyb Nero (alias Tom) A nation is unlikely to demand ALL of its money back at once. It can however demand staged repayments or to take over industries on a wink and a nod i.e special treatment Some countries like Greece will take the view that you have expounded -too big too fail-and I don’t know how that will turn out. But they are small and can afford to tweak the lions nose as they have little to lose and the alternatives are worse than the tweaking. However, any serious country is likely to find severe consequences if they try to shrug off repayments. I cant see that anyone is tackling it. (many Western countries have a similar problem) but America is the lynch pin, which at the same time is increasing its debt whilst hoping the rest of the world wont dare to call its bluff. tonyb • A. Voip Today we pay for our little boots on credit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_store I hope, this helps. • A. Voip It is central bank money, Tony. Not our money. I understand the house of Windsor, is long on property around the world. As I heard it they are stockholders of the very private FED… they helped created it, they are responsible to maintain its value. Open markets and all that. If a central bank note goes to zero. Why don’t the nations go back to a national currency. Think of the lessons to be learned. • tonyb A Voip I don’t know if this explosion of debt can be traced to the advent of credit cards where everyone can be wealthy until they reach their card limit. Then they have to pay off at up to 25% pa interest (or get another card as well). It gives everyone the opportunity of buying things they don’t need, or are overpriced, without having to think immediately about the consequences. As for merely wafting your card vaguely towards a terminal in order to part with your money… Mr Micawber had the right idea. tonyb • A. Voip That is all so yesterday. I just heard the President say that he wants everyone to feel safe in our ‘New Economy’. What could go wrong now? • JCH Ah, the good old days. I remember when business owners were looking at being taxed at up to to 75%. It was interesting how human it made them. They would actually say something like “rather than give it to Uncle Sam, I’ll give Christmas bonuses!” Now people charge their Christmas bonus on Visa. Hard to say right now, but the rig count could drop to the 200-to-400 range. • A. Voip Nothing has changed much in the world, since the movie Dr. Topaz. • tonyb A Voip I Googled your ‘feel safe’ quote in order to read the full speech and came across this; http://www.neweconomics.org/publications/entry/21-hours Apparently everything will be solved if we all work a 21 hour week.. tonyb • jim2 We are down 386 rigs. At 12 wells per year per rig, this represents 4,632 wells that won’t be drilled in the next year. At$7 million per well this comes to $32 billion in lost spending. And more cuts to come. • DocMartyn What will the$60 per barrel that was being sent to oil producers last year be spent on this year?

• jim2

True that, Doc.
From the article:

(Bloomberg) — The rout in crude oil prices may mean as much as $75 billion in gasoline savings for U.S. drivers in 2015, according to AAA. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-12-31/aaa-says-u-s-motorists-may-save-75-billion-on-gasoline-in-2015 • jim2 But, the extra money to the consumer might not be spent. I heard something similar to this on CNBC. From the article: Americans are taking the money they are saving at the gas pump and socking it away, a sign of consumers’ persistent caution even when presented with an unexpected windfall. This newfound commitment to frugality was illustrated this past week when the nation’s biggest payment-card companies said they aren’t seeing evidence consumers are putting their gasoline savings toward discretionary items like travel, home renovations and electronics. Instead, people are more often putting the money aside for a rainy day or using it to pay down debt. That more Americans are saving their bounty at the pump comes as a surprise, because the personal savings rate, after rising during and after the recession, has declined steadily over the past two years. “We haven’t seen the extra savings from lower gas prices translate into additional discretionary consumer spending,” said Ajay Banga , chief executive of MasterCard Inc., on a conference call Friday to discuss quarterly earnings. The new data is perhaps the best indication to date that the pain of the recession remains fresh in the minds of many Americans, even as the economy picks up steam. http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/peak-debt-at-work-savings-at-the-pump-are-staying-in-consumer-wallets/ • Jimd According to th article I saw, American debt Of all kinds stands at 70 trillion dollars with personal indebtedness rising(depending on how it is calculated) http://rt.com/usa/166352-us-total-debt-sixty-trillion/ I have been worried about rising US debt and the ramifications of it on the world economy since clintons time. If someone who didn’t like you very much, such as China, requested repayment the ramifications are enormous. Can America continue to service it’s huge debt burden or should it be doing something about it? Tonyb • GaryM tonyb, I think that US debt is a real danger, but not because China might request payment. There’s an old saying her in the US. If you owe the bank ten thousand dollars, the bank owns you. If you owe the bank ten million dollars, you own the bank. Not to mention, no one can “call” US Treasury securities. They have a set maturity date. What could happen would be that China and others would stop buying the new bills issued by the treasury as it rolls over existing debt, That would be a problem for short term T Bills, but I believe most of what China holds is long germ debt. There was a movie in the 80s I think with Kris Kristofferson, based on the same fears of Arab countries selling off dollar assets. It had about as much to do with the real economy as the movie The China Syndrome had to do with nuclear power. (I think the Japanese were the next group Hollywood worried were buying America.) The Chinese economy is probably the ultimate bubble. I suspect they are no serious threat to the US economy, except for the ancillary effects that might come from a Chinese implosion. But on your larger point, the world economy is too complex for anyone to accurately predict what will happen if the US keeps printing trillions of dollars to prop up the stock market. We are in unexplored territory. Funny how no one is concerned about the uncertainty principle when it comes to government spending. (By the way, about$49 trillion of the US debt is future entitlements, and much of that can be reduced by an act of congress. Not that they will ever have the sense of courage to do so.)

• Garym

Thanks for that. I came across this which said that American debt should be looked at in a different manner and by that criteria it is as indebted as Greece.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreydorfman/2014/07/12/forget-debt-as-a-percent-of-gdp-its-really-much-worse/

whether or not that has any validity or not I can’t say, but however it is sliced US debt is frightening and as you say what the future consequences may be are as yet unknown.

I agree that china has its own problems but on the whole they own debt rather than owe it to third party countries

Tonyb

• GaryM

tonyb,

I agree with the point of the Forbes article. The US debt in itself is not the most serious problem. It is roughly equal to GDP. But the bigger problem is the fact that tax revenues are not keeping up with expenditures, which starts a snowball effect. Add that to the government created stock bubble of quantitative easing, and the US is its own worst economic enemy.

But I think that it is not the debt alone that is slowing growth, but it is the panoply of other progressive policies that are slowly strangling the economy.

But no matter how you look at if, I agree with your central point, that US debt is a serious problem, and only getting worse.

• Tonyb

Do not fret about US debt, as it is virtually “money for nothing” as the interest is so low. Also, there is really nowhere else to park money. The EU has moribund growth prospects, and the BRICs all have corruption problems. Money and immigrants that want to work continue to flow into the US. All that said, the growth of social welfare in all it’s forms and the declining labor participation rate are cause for concern. Also, the secular growth of socialist demographics and the antipathy toward business is alarming.

• Don Monfort

Justin know what he talkin bout. The U.S. is a magnet for money. We are in less bad shape than the rest. But as Justin points out, there are fools driving us in the same direction as the stifled Euro-socialist economies. Out of one side of the mouth of our ruling regime comes bragging about having less unemployment and more growth than the Euro unfortunates. Out the other side of the gaping maw there is talk of more paid leave for the workers, free community college, child care, gold-plated pre-school and subsidized chrome plated rims with lowrider hydraulics for the Prius drifters.

As soon as Feb 4, the fate of the Greek socialist- communist leftloon-rightwing fascista coalition regime could be determined. That’s when the ECB reviews the ELA. If the Greek regime is still talking tough, the ECB claims they will turn off the cash spigot. No money no honey. Wait till the German taxpayers realize they are gonna take the hit for Greek bankruptcy. If Angela wants to stay in power, she will have to do whatever she has to do to kick the can down the road. They have spent themselves into a very big mess over there.

• It’s total debt to GDP that you have to watch. I think in the US it’s a bit over 100%. Not really something to worry about.

• Sorry–changed tracks in the middle of a thought. Government debt is roughly 100%. Total is what–350%? Still not much to worry about, especially with low interest rates.

• kim

Think of the grandchildren.
===============

• nottawa rafter

The more important number is the Debt Held by the Public, which is a subset of Total Debt. Of the Total Debt of $18 Trillion, nearly$13 Trillion is Debt Held by the Public. The $5 Trillion is Government debt owed to itself. Most is SS Trust Fund. But the Interest on the$13 Trillion goes out the door and is a true Outlay just like any other spending. This “Net Interest” was $232 Billion in 1995 when Debt Held by the Public was$ 3.6 Trillion.

In 2014 the “Net Interest” was $223 Billion on the$13 Trillion.

How is that possible? Fed Reserve incredibly low rates. When Interest Rates normalize you can guess what Debt Service will be.

I don’t have an answer. I hope the Federal Reserve does.

• nottawa rafter

To further confuse, the Fed holds unprecedented levels of the Debt Held by the Public and some day that has to be unwound and rolled over and then someone will pick it up in the open markets. Do the arithmetic to see what happens when we pay rates that were paid in 1995 on the $13 Trillion + which is going up by at least$500 Billion per year as far as the eye can see.

• tonyb

Justin, Nottawa, Gary, Tom and others

Some scholars (but not all) attribute the fall of the Roman Empire to increasing debt.

A nation (the US) and its individuals that believe it can owe untold trillions but that is not a problem must be akin to Nero fiddling whilst Rome burned.

Whatever way you slice it the US debt in its many forms is eye watering. Interest rates don’t stay low for ever. Countries can exert political leverage if you owe them vast sums of money. I see no sign the problem is being addressed perhaps because it is not seen as a threat.

tonyb

• Hiya Tony

I like the lead in the amphora theory for Rome’s decline. As for our debt to China, it reminds me of the old saying–if I owe you $20, I have a problem. If I owe you$20 million, you have a problem. China has a problem. How much did they loan Venezuela?

• Joshua

Lot’s of alarmism in this sub-thread, I see.

But you never know, right? I mean U.S. of the 20th century and Rome of 470 CE equals same, same, but different.

• Joshua

or even the 21rst century. :-)

• tonyb

Tom

Sorry, my reply ended up in wrong place.

https://judithcurry.com/2015/01/31/week-in-review-41/#comment-670856

I was thinking too hard as to how to get America to pay the money it owes Britain and how I could collect my 10%…
tonyb

• Don Monfort

Don’t worry, tony. The Keynesian-socialists will work it out. Just print more money. Inflate our way out of trouble.

Obama is sending up a $4 trillion budget. No problem. The 2016 deficit will only be$500 billion projected to rise to $700 billion in 2025. Of course somewhere in the interim, there will be an economic downturn and the deficit will balloon for a while. And our Dear Leader has expressed his sympathy and support for the new Greek left-loon socialist rightwing-fanatic coalition government’s effort to extort more debt forgiveness and more Euro cash out of their creditors and rollback reforms imposed on them by the meanies who have been financing their very existence. Times are good, tonyb. You all were smart not to fall for that monetary union foolishness. • tonyb Don We will see the monetary union madness being enacted over the next day or two between the two players at the extreme ends of the spectrum, where apparently the wealthiest one didn’t seem to realise the meaning of it, whereas the poorer one knew exactly what it meant Trying to jam a sophisticated and very much first world country such as Germany and Greece, who decidedly aren’t, into the same financial system is economic stupidity. However, who is to blame? Germany knew Greece didn’t fulfil the necessary criteria. Greece knew it couldn’t afford the lifestyle it was giving its people. On the whole Monetary Union has been good for Germany but disastrous for Greece. Time for Greece to leave, or for Germany to realise what the real world consequences of a monetary union are? I don’t think Germany’s population will like it however when they realise it means forgoing some debt and transferring large chunks of their money to the less well off in other countries. As for QE…. tonyb • Don Monfort Tony, Monetary union was an opportunity for Greece, just as it was an opportunity for Germany and the other countries who joined voluntarily. Greece should have benefited more than Germany. The big flaw in the plan was that they forgot that to have a workable monetary union you have to have fiscal union. They counted on the various states to be on their best fiscal behavior and to actually collect taxes from their citizens to more or less cover their expenditures. Big mistake. Greece needs to throw off the chains of Euro austerity, default and bring back the loveable old drachma. Print tons of them and scatter them across the new Hellenic Socialist Paradise. Le bonton roule, or whatever the Greeks say. • Here’s a link to a post some of you may wish to read http://peakoilbarrel.com/peak-oil-right-now/ I don’t necessarily agree with the main conclusion (my comments are found below the post), but there’s a significant probability we may be about to hit “peak oil”. • Oh, no, Fernando. Not again! • GaryM Don’t tell me. It’s worse than we thought? • AK Given how much coal there is in the world, I wonder if hydrogen from solar could be combined with coal to produce gas and/or fuel? Well, of course it could, I guess what I wonder is what it would take to do it economically? If the cost of solar PV continues its exponential decline, and we see substantial reductions in the costs of electrolysis (highly probable, IMO), I’d say yes. And AFAIK storing H2 under pressure is fairly well-developed technology, so downstream plants wouldn’t even have to be designed to be on-supply. The conversion itself is a different matter. It’s certainly not mature technology, given that today hydrogen has to be created from fossil fuels. But my guess is it could be brought to maturity very quickly once the price of solar/electrolytic hydrogen comes down far enough. 35. jim2 From the article: OPEC 12 production has averaged slightly above or below 30 million barrels per day for about two years now and there is little chance it will go anywhere very fast. But what is obvious from the above chart is there has been no surge in OPEC oil production. OPEC’s December production f 30,204,000 barrels per day is still more than 1.4 million barrels per day below the peaks of 2008 and 2012. http://seekingalpha.com/article/2846106-opec-crude-oil-production-whats-next • “The Sierra Club used the Chesapeake Energy money ($26 million), donated mainly by the company’s chief executive from 2007 to 2010, for its Beyond Coal campaign to block new coal-fired power plants and shutter old ones.” – NYT

To their credit – or because of disclosure? – Sierra Club refused a further \$30 million from Chesapeake after 2010. (This according to Bloomberg.) I wouldn’t dare speculate that the indignation shown by Greenpeace was actually jealousy, but those eco-warriors were certainly snarly about Sierra’s huge take.

Let’s just say you have a world very, very, very far from peak oil or peak gas, and that same world is centuries away from peak coal…

I think a good ol’ oil boy could find a lazy 50 or 100 hundred million to to fight the scourge of coal. I’m guessing a few more million could be found to fight the scourge of nukes. Maybe even Greenpeace could be persuaded, what with the grandchildren ‘n all.

When you’re Coca Cola, you might say to the world that the problem you are solving is thirst or fatigue or heat. But the only problem you really care about is Pepsi Cola.

I think we’ll be seeing some very green oil and gas guys in the coming years. They’ll be particularly concerned about the effects of coal and nukes on their grandchildren and their grandchildren’s grandchildren…and the rest of the non-existent grand-guys who are supposed to justify our present foolery.

36. JamesG

The hubbub about the warmest year ever thanks to an el nino is an exact reflection of what happened in 1998 thanks to another el nino and like 1998 it will be followed by a large drop, and perhaps another 15 years of no real rise or perhaps even a fall (thanks to the pdo reversal).

Clearly since 1998 these scientists and journalists who tout the hottest year have either learnt absolutely nothing about natural climate change or they just don’t cannot admit their failings: It’s called the ‘backfire effect’:

http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/06/10/the-backfire-effect/

“The Misconception: When your beliefs are challenged with facts, you alter your opinions and incorporate the new information into your thinking.

• DocMartyn

Well it is quite clear that they used every trick in the book to get the highest possible temperature and still failed.
The increasing discrepancy between the satellite and surface measurements needs to be addressed.

37. Ian Wilson

Physicists find link between Sun and #ElNino cycles  http://ow.ly/HTowV

Judith, an alternative idea is that the Moon’s tides trigger El Nino events:

http://astroclimateconnection.blogspot.com.au/2014/11/evidence-that-strong-el-nino-events-are_13.html

Ad I am in the process of writing a paper to show the actual physical link.

38. tonyb

Rgates

If you are around thought you might be interested in this that I just came across..

“This painstaking work, using scientific reports from the well-documented eruption of Krakatoa in 1883, and also from Iceland, the Mediterranean, Alaska, Greenland, Kamchatka, and elsewhere, led to his thesis which developed an assessment of the world’s volcanic eruptions since 1500. His paper, ‘Volcanic dust in the atmosphere… A chronology and assessment of its meteorological significance’, was published by the Royal Society in 1970. And with its publication, the Lamb Dust Veil Index entered the scientific literature.

My investigations had shown that beyond reasonable doubt that great volcanic eruptions do affect the weather and climate for several years afterwards, while suspended materials – not only the fine dust, but minute droplets and even gases – thrown up into the atmosphere by the blast are still present. 2

The study showed that it was the greatest explosions in the low latitudes between about 30°N and 30°S that most regularly yield products that spread around the world, and that the most regular effect of such eruptions was a weakening of the strength of the global circulation. Whereas an eruption in the middle and high latitudes tended to strengthen the circulation in that hemisphere.”

—— ——
Yes, a very big volcano situated in the right place can impact on the weather for a short period. I still have found no evidence that it precipitated the LIA as claimed by Mann and Miller.

tonyb

• ATAndB

TonyB,

“I still have found no evidence that it precipitated the LIA as claimed by Mann and Miller.”

I am confused. I thought Mann erased the LIA from existence. How could he attribute the LIA that he doesn’t believe exists to a volcano?

• ATS and B

Dr Mann always believed there was an lia but that it was limited and localised. He did somewhat review his pOsition and accepted there was a larger variation than he had at first believed but still somewhat less than that believed by other researchers.

His paper here looks at the 1258 volcano which didnt show up in tree rings but should have done, as some believe the volcano caused severe cooling and that it led to the decline into the lia. Dr Mann came to see this date as significant

Having examined the sorts of contemporary observations that Mosh derides as anecdotal it is apparent that there had already been a decade of cold weather prior to the volcano eruption and temperatures warmed up shortly afterwards.

But then, what do those who were there at the time know?

Tonyb

• Steven Mosher

“Having examined the sorts of contemporary observations that Mosh derides as anecdotal it is apparent that there had already been a decade of cold weather prior to the volcano eruption and temperatures warmed up shortly afterwards.”

That is not my argument.

1. I have yet to see how the “observations” are turned into numbers
2. I have yet to see how the quality of the “observations” are ascertained.
3. I have yet to see how the process of turning ‘it was cold” into a number has been validated.

you know, I’ve yet to see the science.
nothing wrong with estimating temperature from a written record ( regardless of Cripwell type argument ) but one has to show the work.
And show that any reader of the document would come to the same numerical answer.

• Mosh

We are fortunate in having a number of continuous contemporary observation and for the period surrounding 1258 they are consistent in placing that year into context as a continuation of what went before not a radical departure from it.

I have told you at least three times that I follow the van engelen, buisman and Unsen formula of splittimg years into various categories of cold and warmth which was detailed in Phil jones ‘ book ‘ history and climate’ page 105 .

I also emailed this information to you several years ago.

How do you validate the quality of the individual temperature observations used in BEST, some of which come from rather dubious sources?

Camuffo dismissed many of the European historic observations and they were taken by apparently more reliable people and instrumentation than fills much of of the BEST historic database. The figures are often just as anecdotal as my written accounts.

Tonyb

39. Judith

I dont know if you came cross this Scary piece by David rose in today’s mail on Sunday about ‘green thuggery’

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2934540/What-happens-dare-doubt-Green-prophets-doom.html

Tonyb

• Thanks, Tony, a sensible and balanced article, I hope that some learn from it.

40. Group of physicists

When Stephen Wilde writes on Roy Spencer’s site “Free convection is not mostly conduction/diffusion. It is the physical movement of a parcel of gas … It can occur very rapidly ..” he is totally incorrect because he is talking about forced convection.

The ONLY process which establishes the temperature gradient is that process which is exemplified in the “hot car in garage” example wherein the level of thermal (kinetic) energy per molecule in the car is lowered and that in the garage raised as thermal energy is transferred out the car doors and into the closed garage by way of molecular collisions and diffusion. We all know this is not occurring “very rapidly” and yet the example represents a greater temperature difference than would normally be found in adjacent regions in the troposphere, and so it is faster than most free (natural) convection.

What Stephen Wilde keeps referring to in his confusion is not free convection at all: it is forced convection involving wind which is caused by the pressure differences to which he refers.

Natural (“free”) convection is caused by differences in energy potentials and nothing else.

That does not necessarily imply a difference in temperature (kinetic energy) because, if there is a state of thermodynamic equilibrium, then the difference in molecular KE is nullified by an opposite difference in molecular gravitational PE, such that (PE+KE)=constant. This is the well known situation wherein convective heat transfer can cease in calm conditions at around dawn, even though the environmental lapse rate is still apparent.

So all of Stephen Wilde’s conjectures about parcels of air rising and then falling when they run out of macro KE (which does not affect temperature) and all his talk about pressure differences that cause wind in all its forms, and all the references to cells (wherein wind cycles around) is not in any way related to the process which forms the temperature gradient (slowly) in the tropospheres of Earth, Venus, Uranus etc etc.

41. miker613

“The hiatus … No systematic error in climate models” I am not following properly what they are trying to accomplish. Anyone looking at model temperatures vs. the actual temperatures will easily see that the models track the temperatures fairly well, within a certain window. Assuming that they are not far more twisty than the actual temperatures, the 15-year trends will presumably track as well. This is true for models with high and low sensitivity. Obviously, there are other factors (aerosols and the like) that balance the sensitivity and make it come out kind of even.
So what was this supposed to prove again? That the models are not running too hot? No one ever suggested that they were – for the hundred years of training data for the models. The issue was how they are doing out-of-sample, and the answer is not so well.
Is the claim that the out-of-sample error is not much different from the in-sample error? That would be encouraging, but I don’t think anyone is making that claim. The models seem to have done badly since they were turned loose.

• ianl8888

> … for the hundred years of training data for the models

The period for training data is simply extended, for as long as it may take. QED

Just ask Jimmy Dee Doo, master extraordinaire of goalpost moving

• Group  of  physicists

Yes well this graphic “tracks the temperature” far better than IPCC models – and it’s based on planetary orbits, not carbon dioxide levels, and gives temperatures until the year 2200..

42. Very interesting article about solar updates for 2015 – a few good ones here I can’t wait to read. Thanks for the compilation.

43. harkin

Quote from “Mourning Our Planet”:

“human-driven climate disruption will turn out to be one of the main drivers of the anthropocene mass extinction event now well under way.”

If it’s “well under way”, doesn’t that mean that a good portion of the species on earth have already been killed by man-made global warming/change change/climate disruption?

44. harkin

Should have said “killed off”

45. angech2014

The Arctic Sea Ice Area anomaly is about to make one of those transitions that we dream of, a stellar jump towards parity. Currently it is 0.76 mill sq K below normal and falling which does not sound good. A combination of a much improved [Piomas] volume, a negative AO index, Arctic Temperature above 80 degrees north falling below average and a similar big jump this time last year holds out a lot of hope for a new big jump.
Go ice!

46. Joshua

I don’t see any particular reason to think that conspiracy ideation is any more prevalent among “skeptics” than among realists.

But when you read a post and comment thread like this one:

You really have to wonder if Leweandowski doesn’t have a point.

Wow!

47. Mike Flynn

It appears that some Warmists have lapsed into old habits.

Wow! Durr! Look, you weasel. The data is clear. Stop blowing smoke. I suppose now you deny the LIA.

What next? The science is settled?

The world wonders – but not much!

Live well and prosper,

Mike Flynn.

48. Group of physicists

See this comment.

49. c1ue

Professor Curry,
Here is an interesting episode from the BBC talking about how an Englishman’s ideas (Hanley) – were transformed by 2 American brothers (Odum) into the ecosystem/Gaia belief system through a-scientific means.

• c1ue

Sorry, should be Townsley and Odum. With a big dose of Forrester and Fuller thrown in.

• c1ue

Did you mean to say non-scientific? There is an unfortunate line break that muddles the message.

• c1ue

Indeed, non scientific. Or more specifically, an originally well meaning research topic expropriated and transformed beyond its original purview.

50. miker613
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