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Thursday, January 30, 2014

How Expert is Arctic Climate Expert Judith Curry?

Sou | 11:52 PM Go to the first of 16 comments. Add a comment


Judith Curry has a blog post (archived here) in which she tries to justify this statement she made in her written testimony to a recent US Senate Committee Hearing.
Further, Arctic surface temperature anomalies in the 1930’s were as large as the recent temperature anomalies.

The Arctic and Antarctica


Judith made the statement in a section of her testimony about sea ice in the Arctic and Antarctica.  Judith included the following sentences in her written testimony, relating to Arctic sea ice and Antarctic sea ice.  Unlike other science I've read and despite the gross differences between the two regions, Judith packaged the Arctic and Antarctica together.  She wrote:
The increase in Antarctic sea ice is not understood and is not simulated correctly by climate models. Further, Arctic surface temperature anomalies in the 1930’s were as large as the recent temperature anomalies. Notwithstanding the simulations by climate models that reproduce the decline in Arctic sea ice, more convincing arguments regarding causes of sea ice variations requires understanding and ability to simulate sea ice variations in both hemispheres.

Her first sentence is more definite than the science I've read suggests.  If she'd written "is not completely understood" or even "not well understood" it would be a more accurate representation of the state of science.

Her second sentence is most likely incorrect, as we'll see below.  (I've emphasised that sentence in bold italics because it is going to be the main focus of this article.)  But while we're here, let me just ask the question - if the Arctic was as warm in the 1930s as it is now, how is it there was so much more ice in the Arctic region back then than there is today? On land and sea.

Her third sentence is out of the blue and as far as I can make out, doesn't link directly to anything else in her testimony (except it fits her general theme of "scientists don't know nuffin' so forget-about-it").

The differences between the Arctic and Antarctica are vast.  About the only similarity they share is they are both cold places with lots of ice. I'd be interested in what readers think about the "more convincing arguments" comment and just what Judith might mean by that.  Sure it applies to Antarctica, but I can't see that the Arctic and Antarctica are linked as closely as Judith seems to be suggesting.  I'm not arguing that what happens in Antarctica is divorced from the rest of the world or that it could not possibly have any impact on the Arctic.  Merely that what happens in Antarctica is unlikely to have any greater impact on the Arctic than it has on anywhere else in the world.  Similarly, what happens in the Arctic would not necessarily affect Antarctica any more than it would affect other regions in the world. And being in different hemispheres, they'd both arguably have less impact on each other rather than more.

So while it will be nice when all the different forces acting in the high latitudes of the southern hemisphere are better understood, I don't understand why Judith links Arctic sea ice with sea ice in the southern oceans.

However in this article I particularly want to discuss the recent blog article of Judith's in which she tries to justify her statement and respond to Tamino's criticism of Judith's writing:
Further, Arctic surface temperature anomalies in the 1930’s were as large as the recent temperature anomalies. 
(Tamino has also written a response, so I'll try to keep this short.)


Judith Curry is an expert on the climate of the Arctic


Now Judith introduced herself to the US Senate Committee as an expert on the climate of the Arctic.  The first two sentences of her written testimony show how she presented herself:
I am Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. I have devoted 30 years to conducting research on topics including climate of the Arctic, the role of clouds and aerosols in the climate system, and the climate dynamics of extreme weather events.

So the first area of expertise she listed was that of the climate of the Arctic.  So if anyone knows about the climate of the Arctic then she should.  I am aware Judith has had quite a few papers about the Arctic published, her most recent being as co-author of one of Marcia Wyatt's "stadium wave" papers I believe.

However, rather than cite any of her own work on the Arctic to support her statement that the Arctic was as hot in the 1930s as it is now, what Judith does in her blog article is select three passages from the IPCC AR5 report in the section on Arctic sea ice (plus some other material).  These are the sections she quotes - note they are not sequential in the IPCC report and are not adjacent to each other, though in her blog article Judith runs them all together as if they were a single segment.  All are from Chapter 10, "Detection and Attribution of Climate Change: from Global to Regional".

The first segment is from page 10-27 of AR5 WG1, in Section 10.3 Atmosphere and Surface:
Gillett et al. (2008b) detect anthropogenic influence on near-surface Arctic temperatures over land, with a consistent magnitude in simulations and observations. Wang et al. (2007) also find that observed Arctic warming is inconsistent with simulated internal variability. Both studies ascribe Arctic warmth in the 1930s and 1940s largely to internal variability. Shindell and Faluvegi (2009) infer a large contribution to both midcentury Arctic cooling and late century warming from aerosol forcing changes, with greenhouse gases the dominant driver of long-term warming, though they infer aerosol forcing changes from temperature changes using an inverse approach which may lead to some changes associated with internal variability being attributed to aerosol forcing. We therefore conclude that despite the uncertainties introduced by limited observational coverage, high internal variability, modelling uncertainties (Crook et al., 2011) and poorly understood local forcings, such as the effect of black carbon on snow, there is sufficiently strong evidence to conclude that it is likely that there has been an anthropogenic contribution to the very substantial warming in Arctic land surface temperatures over the past 50 years.

The above does not support or refute her contention that the Arctic was as warm in the 1930s as it is now. It's mainly blog padding.

The second segment is from page 10-43, except that Judith left out the first sentence of the paragraph, which I'll include as italics enclosed in square brackets.

[A question as recently as six years ago was whether the recent Arctic warming and sea ice loss was unique in the instrumental record and whether the observed trend would continue (Serreze et al., 2007).] Arctic temperature anomalies in the 1930s were apparently as large as those in the 1990s and 2000s. There is still considerable discussion of the ultimate causes of the warm temperature anomalies that occurred in the Arctic in the 1920s and 1930s (Ahlmann, 1948; Veryard, 1963; Hegerl et al., 2007a; Hegerl et al., 2007b). The early 20th century warm period, while reflected in the hemispheric average air temperature record (Brohan et al., 2006), did not appear consistently in the mid-latitudes nor on the Pacific side of the Arctic (Johannessen et al., 2004; Wood and Overland, 2010). Polyakov et al. (2003) argued that the Arctic air temperature records reflected a natural cycle of about 50–80 years. However, many authors (Bengtsson et al., 2004; Grant et al., 2009; Wood and Overland, 2010; Brönnimann et al., 2012) instead link the 1930s temperatures to internal  variability in the North Atlantic atmospheric and ocean circulation as a single episode that was sustained by ocean and sea ice processes in the Arctic and north Atlantic. The Arctic wide temperature increases in the last decade contrast with the episodic regional increases in the early 20th century, suggesting that it is unlikely that recent increases are due to the same primary climate process as the early 20th century.

Judith bolded the second sentence in the above passage and omitted the first.  A couple of people have made much of this, and I agree that it is ambiguous.  The second sentence could be read as a continuation of the first with the meaning: "As recently as six years ago it appeared as if Arctic anomalies in the 1930s were as high as those of the 1990s and 2000s".  Or it could be read as a standalone separate sentence, meaning that "today it appears as if Arctic anomalies in the 1930s were as high as those of the 1990s and 2000s".

If you choose the second interpretation then that second sentence is the only bit of Judith's IPCC quotes that supports her contention that the Arctic was as warm in the 1930s as it is today.  However it isn't consistent with anything else I've read in the IPCC report and I found no other statement of that nature in the report.

Not only that, but the very last sentence in the above passage should have been enough to alert Judith to the inconsistency - that the recent warming is Arctic-wide, unlike the warming in the early twentieth century, which was described as "episodic regional increases".

What is most concerning for people who might still harbour hope that Judith Curry has a bit of the scientist left in her, is that in talking about Arctic temperatures, Judith selected that particular passage and ignored conflicting passages.

The third passage Judith quoted is from page 10-42, still in the Arctic ice section of the report.  The sentence in square brackets and italics was not quoted by Judith but is part of the same paragraph so I've included it for completeness.
Turning to model based attribution studies, Min et al. (2008b) compared the seasonal evolution of Arctic sea ice extent from observations with those simulated by multiple GCMs for 1953–2006. Comparing changes in both the amplitude and shape of the annual cycle of the sea ice extent reduces the chance of spurious detection due to coincidental agreement between the response to anthropogenic forcing and other factors, such as slow internal variability. They found that human influence on the sea ice extent changes has been robustly detected since the early 1990s. The anthropogenic signal is also detectable for individual months from May to December, suggesting that human influence, strongest in late summer, now also extends into colder seasons. Kay et al. (2011b), Jahn et al. (2012) and Schweiger et al. (2011) used the climate model (CCSM4) to investigate the influence of anthropogenic forcing on late 20th century and early 21st century Arctic sea ice extent and volume trends. On all timescales examined (2–50+ years), the most extreme negative extent trends observed in the late 20th century cannot be explained by modeled internal variability alone. Comparing trends from the CCSM4 ensemble to observed trends suggests that internal variability could account for approximately half of the observed 1979–2005 September Arctic sea ice extent loss. [Attribution of anthropogenic forcing is also shown by comparing September sea ice extent as projected by seven models from the set of CMIP5 models’ hindcasts to control runs without anthropogenic forcing (Figure 10.16a; Wang and Overland, 2009). The mean of sea ice extents in seven models’ ensemble members are below the level of their control runs by ~1995, similar to the result of Min et al. (2008b).]

The above should have been a signal to Judith to look further to make sure her claim of 1930s warming was correct.  While it doesn't directly conflict with her claim, it states that recent warming is outside the bounds of natural variability, whereas the second passage she quoted above stated that the 1930s warming could be explained by natural variability.  Anyone with half a brain would be asking themselves if that might mean that it was hotter recently than in the 1930s.

To sum up then, of all those passages, there is only one sentence that relates directly to Judith's claim.  That's the sentence in the second passage that reads:
Arctic temperature anomalies in the 1930s were apparently as large as those in the 1990s and 2000s. 
Thing is, that sentence is, as we've seen, ambiguous in the context of the paragraph.  Not only that it is well and truly contradicted elsewhere in the IPCC report.  I don't know who wrote it or why it slipped through when it could be read as conflicting with findings described elsewhere in the report.  It could be an oversight.  Yes, it could be a difference of opinion among scientists.  If so then normally it would have been described as such in the report.  So I'm thinking it's an ambiguous statement that no-one picked up on to remove the ambiguity.  Maybe because the actual meaning was obvious to the IPCC authors and they didn't see any ambiguity.

To recap, Judith is attempting to justify her own statement to the US Senate Committee that:
Further, Arctic surface temperature anomalies in the 1930’s were as large as the recent temperature anomalies.
The above isn't an IPCC quote, it's Judith's own considered opinion as an expert on the Arctic climate.  Like I said, in her blog justification she picked three passages from the IPCC section on Arctic sea ice, of which only one sentence of one passage could be argued as being supportive of her claim.


The evidence Judith Curry ignored


What Judith chose not to quote was this passage on Arctic temperatures in Chapter 14, pp 14-39 and 14-40 (my bold italics):
The surface and lower troposphere in the Arctic and surrounding land areas show regional warming over the past three decades of about 1°C/decade—significantly greater than the global mean trend (Figures 2.22 and 2.25). According to temperature reconstructions, this signal is highly unusual: Temperatures averaged over the Arctic over the past few decades are significantly higher than any seen over the past 2000 years (Kaufman et al., 2009). Temperatures 11,000 years ago were greater than the 20th century mean, but this is likely a strongly-forced signal, since summer solar radiation was 9% greater than present (Miller et al.,
2010). Finally, warmer temperatures have been sustained in pan-Arctic land areas where a declining NAO over the past decade ought to have caused cooling (Semenov, 2007; Turner et al., 2007b).

Now there are two conflicting statements in different chapters of the IPCC report (assuming Judith's interpretation of the ambiguous sentence). The one a sentence that Judith quoted from Chapter 10, and the above paragraph from Chapter 14.

I looked further to see what else was in the IPCC report that Judith may have chosen to omit from her testimony.  Here is a passage from page 5-33 of Chapter 5 of the IPCC report.
Since AR4, regional temperature reconstructions have been produced for the last 2 kyr (Figure 5.12; PAGES 2k Consortium, 2013). A recent multi-proxy 2000-year Arctic temperature reconstruction shows that temperatures during the first centuries were comparable or even higher than during the 20th century (Hanhijärvi et al., 2013; PAGES 2k Consortium, 2013). During the MCA, portions of the Arctic and sub-Arctic experienced periods warmer than any subsequent period, except for the most recent 50 years (Figure 5.12) (Kaufman et al., 2009; Kobashi et al., 2010; Vinther et al., 2010; Kobashi et al., 2011; Spielhagen et al., 2011). Tingley and Huybers (2013) provided a statistical analysis of northern high-latitude temperature reconstructions back to 1400 and found that recent extreme hot summers are unprecedented over this time span. Marine proxy records indicate anomalously high SSTs north of Iceland and the Norwegian Sea from 900 to 1300, followed by a generally colder period that ended in the early 20th century. Modern SSTs in this region may still be lower than the warmest intervals of the 900–1300 period (Cunningham et al., 2013). 
Further north, in Fram Strait, modern SSTs from Atlantic Water appear warmer than those reconstructed from foraminifera for any prior period of the last 2000 years (Spielhagen et al., 2011). However, different results are obtained using dinocysts from the same sediment core (Bonnet et al. (2010) showing a cooling trend over the last 2000 years without a 20th century rise, and warmest intervals entered at years 100 and 600.

The words in the above passage do not by themselves directly refute Judith's one sentence claim that the Arctic was as hot in the 1930s as it is now.  Nor does it lend any support to her claim.  According to my reading of the above, the Arctic reconstruction suggests that recent temperatures in the Arctic are the highest they've been since the Medieval Climate Anomaly at least and probably the highest they've been in nearly 2000 years (at least).  The "last fifty years" is not the 1930s but the period since the 1960s. We can leave aside the "portions of the Arctic" sentence because the issue is around the Arctic as a whole.  The "recent extreme hot summers" is likely more relevant, but I haven't read the cited paper to see if it's "whole of Arctic".

Anyway, here is figure 5.12 which was referenced in the first paragraph of the above quote, which Judith chose to not divulge to the US Senate Committee:
Figure 5.12 IPCC AR5 WG1 [Arctic only] Regional temperature reconstructions, comparison with model simulations over the past millennium (950–2010). Temperature anomalies (thick black line), and uncertainty estimated provided by each individual reconstruction (grey envelope). Uncertainties: Arctic: 90% confidence bands. ...Simulations are separated into 2 groups: High solar forcing (red thick line), and weak solar forcing (blue thick line). For each model subgroup, uncertainty is shown as 1.645 times sigma level (light red and blue lines). For comparison with instrumental record, the CRUTEM4 dataset is shown (yellow line). Green bars in rectangles on top of each panel indicate the 30 warmest years in the 950–1250 period (left rectangle) and 1800–2010 period (right rectangle). All lines are smoothed by applying a 30 year moving average. ... Reconstructions: from PAGES 2k Consortium (2013). Models used: simulations with strong solar forcing (mostly pre-PMIP3 simulations): CCSM3 (1), CNRM-CM3.3 (1), CSM1.4 (1), CSIROMK3L-1-2 (3), ECHAM5/MPIOM (3), ECHO-G (1) IPSLCM4 (1), FGOALS-gl (1). Simulations with weak solar forcing (mostly PMIP3/CMIP5 simulations): BCC-csm1-1 (1), CCSM4 (1), CSIRO-MK3L-1-2 (1), GISS-E2-R (3, ensemble members 121, 124, 127), HadCM3 (1), MPI-ESM, ECHAM5/MPIOM (5), IPSL-CM5A-LR (1). In parenthesis are the number of simulations used for each model. All simulations are treated individually, in the timeseries as well as in the MCA–LIA bars. More information about forcings used in simulations and corresponding references are given in Table 5.A.1.

Now given that Judith is a self-professed expert on the Arctic climate and has the publication history to prove it, there is no excuse in my mind for her to not divulge this to the US Senate Committee.  She can't complain that she didn't know about it.  It's in the very same document from which she selected her own quote.

Even if she disagreed with the latest research, she was being irresponsible at best, given that the above research is what is presented as being the current state of knowledge.  Had Judith been acting as a scientist rather than a political stooge for the denialist party (Republicans), Judith would have presented the full spectrum of research and explained why she disputes the more recent findings.

In her blog article she didn't refer to the above either.  She focused on material to support her claim (Wondering Willis style) while ignoring conflicting evidence.  And it's especially damning that she put forward some guff from a blogger/denier (not a climate scientist) who thinks we're on the verge of an ice age and who can't read a simple chart of the Central England temperature (in which he ludicrously claims fame and expertise). (Another main bit of "evidence" Judith drew on in her blog article was some unpublished "work" one of her pet fake sceptics, Tony "ice age cometh" Brown who barracks for the Central England team of deniers. So if you needed more evidence that she was searching for material to support her claim rather than reporting the science no matter what it showed, there you have it.)

Since I started this article, Tamino has written his second blog article about the matter with more evidence against Judith.  I might as well add this contribution to the mix since I've gone to the trouble of pulling it together.

The other reason I decided to go ahead and publish this is that Judith is flinching a bit and any bit of encouragement to act like a scientist could be worth it.  I don't think Judith enjoys being shown up as just another ordinary fake sceptic blogger.  I doubt she will change now, she's made her bed, chosen her path, whatever.  Still, it's not too late for her to put aside her denier garb and don her white lab coat again, should she change her mind.

I'll leave it at that.


16 comments:

  1. Sou: "Judith bolded the second sentence in the above passage and omitted the first. A couple of people have made much of this, and I agree that it is ambiguous. The second sentence could be read as a continuation of the first with the meaning: "As recently as six years ago it appeared as if Arctic anomalies in the 1930s were as high as those of the 1990s and 2000s". Or it could be read as a standalone separate sentence, meaning that "today it appears as if Arctic anomalies in the 1930s were as high as those of the 1990s and 2000s"."

    I do not think that there is a strong case of the IPCC intending to write "today it appears as if ...", because the references are: (Ahlmann, 1948; Veryard, 1963; Hegerl et al., 2007a; Hegerl et al., 2007b). In other words, the newest reference was 6 years old.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, Victor. I agree with you for the reasons I've outlined above, but particularly given that it conflicts with other parts of the report.

      It could have been worded less ambiguously though. As it's worded it was ripe for the (cherry) picking by someone like Judith Curry whose aim is to misrepresent the science.

      What really gets me is that she promotes herself as an expert on the Arctic but pretends not to know that it's warmer in the Arctic now than it's been in centuries or longer.

      I've referenced your article by the way. I'll do it again here in case people miss it.

      http://variable-variability.blogspot.com.au/2014/01/testimony-judith-curry-arctic-temperature-misquotation.html

      Delete
    2. IPCC: "Arctic temperature anomalies in the 1930s were apparently as large as those in the 1990s and 2000s. "

      Sou: "Thing is, that sentence is, as we've seen, ambiguous in the context of the paragraph. Not only that it is well and truly contradicted elsewhere in the IPCC report. I don't know who wrote it or why it slipped through when it could be read as conflicting with findings described elsewhere in the report. It could be an oversight."

      With the sentence before the IPCC quote and the references, I do not see a problem with the quote. I would not call that an oversight, but rather would call the selective quotation by Curry a serious problem.

      There may be some history to the sentence. At Open Mind someone wrote that in the first drafts of the IPCC report, a similar claim was made about the 1990s and that only at a later stage the 2000s were added.

      The IPCC quote is surely right for the 1990s. It is still acceptable for the period up to 2007 (even if I would expect that that it been written from scratch another wording had been used, but it is still in the range of scientifically acceptable statements). The moment you make the claim about recent temperatures it becomes much too strong and it no longer fits the facts.

      Yes, the sentence is vague. It is hard to summarise the findings of four studies in just two sentences, which will all have studied a similar, but not same question.

      At Variable Variability, Rachel suggested to write: "Arctic temperature anomalies in the 1930s were thought to be as large as those in the 1990s and 2000s." Sounds better, if it still fits to the references. However, I do not think you can write such a long report, while making sure that none of the sentences can be taken out of context to make wrong claims. Even if that is possible, the scientist writing that part will not have expected such behaviour, that is simply not done in science.

      Delete
  2. The quote above is also very revealing for the suggestive language of Judith Curry: "I have devoted 30 years to conducting research on topics including climate of the Arctic, the role of clouds and aerosols in the climate system, and the climate dynamics of extreme weather events."

    How would you summarize this sentence in your own words? Close your eyes, don't read further, what would be a good summary?

    The post of Donna Laframboise on Curry's congressional testimony The Invisible Judith Curry picked up the error and writes: "Dr. Judith Curry has spent 30 years studying the climate." I would expect that most people would summarise the quote that way.

    However, if you look closely, she only wrote the she has 30 years of research experience, much of this experience is studying clouds (in the Arctic). She surely suggested 30 years of experience in climate research. And she linked to the post of Donna Laframboise without correcting the erroneous interpretation.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You make good points, Victor.

      On the other hand, Judith's got her name on sufficient papers about the Arctic over the years. I cannot imagine any reputable scientists writing so many research papers about the Arctic on various topics ranging from clouds, radiation fluxes, snow and sea ice, "stadium waves", water vapour feedback and more - without reading papers on the arctic climate more broadly.

      It's not just with Donna, Judith's "fame" (FWIW) with the tabloid newspapers is as a "climate scientist" and the record shows she's willing to advocate publicly in general climate science beyond her own areas of research.

      I also agree with you in your other comment that scientists can't expect to second guess every misuse of their words by science deniers.

      Delete
  3. tamino has just published an article that demolishes the idea of a 'pause' in GW, even if you just consider surface temps across alll the different temp records:

    Global Temperature: the Post-1998 Surprise

    Of course, what all fake skeptics do is start with the 1998 *data point*, when what you must do to make the statistics valid is start with the *trend* in 1998.

    It's a slam dunk, but the fake skeptics won't even read it because of the source. Typical

    ReplyDelete
  4. Excellent post, Sou. Your indefatigability never ceases to amaze.

    As I've noted before, the arc of Judy's behavior from the time she started her private weather/climate consulting business *and* entered the blogosphere ~2005, comprising several years of consensus defending followed by a very quick reversal ~"Climategate", is consistent with an effort to obtain notoriety as a means of promoting the business. As is obvious from looking at her publication record, her scientific chops were never going to be enough for that. As well, in a Georgia/Georgia Tech context the sort of notoriety she's achieved can be seen to be a benefit to the business rather than a detriment, an instinctive denial being thick on the ground among business leaders in the U.S. South.

    Re the graph, while it does support the general point about Arctic trends, the 30-year smoothing could mask some sharply warmer individual years in the 1930s.

    Also, just so there's clarity on this point, AFAICT Judy's current (amended) claim is that while very recent years in the Arctic have indeed been warmer than earlier in the 20th century, the IPCC said otherwise and so her statement to the Senate was justified.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Replies
    1. Sorry, Steve. I turned on moderation because I was going to be away for a while. There are a few unruly visitors at the moment and I didn't want things to get out of hand like they did earlier this week.

      Delete
  6. Excellent post, Sou, well worth what must have been considerable effort.

    Curry has really called down The Wrath with her combative response to Mann. A rookie error for someone so vulnerable. McIntyre would never have made it (but then, he'd never have made the BEST mistake).

    Deniers just don't have a decent talent pool to turn to, and what they've got is demographically challenged. The resulting decay of the movement is now quite advanced.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Interesting post.

    Seems to me like this part is pretty significant:

    > The Arctic wide temperature increases in the last decade contrast with the episodic regional increases in the early 20th century, suggesting that it is unlikely that recent increases are due to the same primary climate process as the early 20th century.

    Doesn't that get to the heart of Judith's impliedargument - which would be that the occurrence of warming in the 30s puts into question whether recent warming is primarily anthropogentically caused?

    Of course, Judith says that the point of her testimony was not to argue about the degree to which climate change is caused by ACO2 - only to argue about the confidence in the IPCC AR5. Personally, I'm not buying that one.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Sou
    Thanks for the post.

    I think part of the reason Judith Curry is so miffed is that Tamino ruined the launch of her News & Views article in Nature Geoscience:


    Climate science: Uncertain temperature trend
    Judith Curry
    Nature Geoscience 7,83–84(2014)doi:10.1038/ngeo2078
    Published online 30 January 2014

    "Global mean surface temperatures have not risen much over the past 15 years, despite continuing greenhouse gas emissions. An attempt to explain the warming slow-down with Arctic data gaps is only a small step towards reconciling observed and expected warming."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You could be right. Ian.

      Her News and Views piece was very bland and surprisingly (for Judith) uncritical of Cowtan and Way. (I wonder if it was edited much.) A bit of a nothing article really. It didn't manage to capture the full scope of Cowtan and Way and didn't add any new insights. But at least she's letting her colleagues know that she's able to take off her denier hat and put on a scientist hat when she thinks it appropriate. (Contrast that article with what she writes on her blog and what she says to the tabloids.)

      In the Nature Geoscience article she only wrote a couple of sentences that her followers can twist into her favourite meme - "it's all so uncertain". Plus the title of course, which is all deniers need and probably more than they'll read.

      http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v7/n2/full/ngeo2078.html

      Delete
  9. sou,

    To me the crucial issue here is her response to Mann's accusation of distorting science. She CHALLENGED him to show where anything she wrote was in any way incorrect or anti-science
    Eli, Tamino and Way all posted parts of her testimony that they felt qualified as such.
    She then responded to Tamino by posting research showing 1930's temps as high as "recent temps". that was foolish.
    Tamino then posted research shooing that she was excluding research after 2002

    To me that was the devastating thing. That in her defense of NOT distorting science she distorted the science.
    And when she was outed, she said that she would not respond any more.
    I hope her crass and disingenuous behavior at least gets climate scientists to see her as not being anything like an objective player. That she is, in fact, not only being an activist, which she claims is a bad thing for a scientist, but that she is willing to promote invalid science to fit an anti-sciecne agenda. what is worse than a lying activist?
    she is a real scientist and I hope that she will step back from what should be a humiliating smack down and get back to presenting science accurately.
    I have no problem with her pointing out the questions of uncertainty or other places where climate science is on shaky ground
    but she went over a cliff on this one and needs to reassess her goals. Does she want to be a scientist with an impact on understanding the realities of climate change, or does she want to just be a political puppet for the right,

    ReplyDelete
  10. Herefollowing, Dame Judith's research methodology...

    http://judithcurry.com/2014/01/06/ipcc-ar5-weakens-the-case-for-agw/

    See especially JC Summary; Para 2

    idunno

    ReplyDelete

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