Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Hypocrites! Denier bloggers whining about slashed climate budgets! And writing nonsense about climate models.


A couple of remarks to show how hypocritical are the anti-science climate science denying bloggers. And how they whine.

Anthony Watts has posted another "Weekly Climate and Energy New Round Up" which he copies and pastes every week from some other anti-science crowd (archived here).  The "roundup" in the title is a misnomer.  It doesn't destroy the weeds, quite the opposite.  What it does is collate miscellaneous rubbish from all the disinformation plants - plants that are unwanted, undesirable and could do with a decent spray.


USA isn't spending enough on climate monitoring


This time one of the whines is about the fact that the USA isn't spending enough money on satellites and Argo buoys to support monitoring of the climate.

Yes, you read that correctly.  After devoting years of blogging complaining about how the USA spends "billions and trillions" on climate research (by far the bulk of the "billions and trillions" over the past few decades went on satellites), now they are moaning that not enough money is being spent.  They are wanting the dreaded guvmint to spend more on Argo buoys and satellites, writing:
The budget for maintaining the buoys fell from about $10-$12 million to $2-3 million. Somehow Washington can spend $22.6 billion in 2013 on climate change but not maintain critical instruments on understanding weather and climate change. The amount for buoys is tiny compared to DOE spending on renewables....
...TWTW Reader Timothy Wise reminded us of a GAO report last February, which stated that there is a significant timing gap between the end of scheduled life existing satellites, and replacement with new satellites. The US has two complementary sets of satellites, polar-orbiting ones, and geostationary ones. They are used by weather forecasters, climatologists, the military, etc. According to the GAO report, the timing gap between end of scheduled life and replacement with new satellites could span from 17 to 53 months or more, depending on how long the current satellite lasts and any delays in launching or operating the new one. As reported in past TWTWs, based on three separate, but somewhat overlapping government reports, the US has spent some $165 billion on climate change since 1993, but the US cannot spend the money needed to maintain critical instrumentation. 

What hypocrites! What an about face! These are the same people who elected the drongoes because they wanted them to slash the budget.  They almost brought the USA to its knees more than once and nearly sent the world economies into a tailspin. Now they have the cheek to complain. Are they finally realising that climate monitoring is critically important?


Anti-science bloggers know zilch about climate models


Although they have now done an about face on climate spending, these same bloggers know zilch about climate models.  Some anti-science blogger in the UK called Andrew Montford (who has achieved some notoriety in the UK apparently) is reported as having written about CMIP5 models, alleging in a very mixed up manner:
Writing in Bishop Hill, Andrew Montford observes that once climatologists get a new generation of climate models into the open, as may occur with the Assessment Reports of UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the climatologists spend the next few years writing papers on their analyses of the outputs of the models. They do not attempt to validate the models against actual observations, which those engaged in empirical research and model testing would do.

 So they spend the "next few years" analysing the outputs of models but "they do not attempt to validate the models against actual observations".  What a mixed up notion.  What does he think they "analyse?"  All this just goes to show that either Andrew Montford is knowingly telling lies or he hasn't the first clue about climate modeling.

Either way he can be ignored.

I normally do.  I only mention him in passing because his name popped up at WUWT.  (Everyone who's anyone in the climate science rejection brigade pops up at WUWT sooner or later.  That's why I mostly only bother with monitoring that one anti-science blog.)

There is an entire chapter in the IPCC report which evaluates the climate models.  I refer you to Chapter 9 of the IPCC AR5 WG1 report, called, incidentally "Evaluation of Climate Models" (my bold italics):
The direct approach to model evaluation is to compare model output with observations and analyze the resulting difference. This requires knowledge of the errors and uncertainties in the observations, which have been discussed in Chapters 2 through 6. Where possible, averages over the same time period in both models and observations will be compared, although for many quantities the observational record is rather short, or only observationally-based estimates of the climatological mean are available. In cases where observations are lacking, we will resort to intercomparison of model results to provide at least some quantification of model uncertainty via inter-model spread.

Here's a sample of more of the idiocy that passes for science denial:
As the major funder of the PCMDI-CMIP effort, the DOE has the responsibility to the US taxpayer of insisting that the CMIP models be rigorously tested and validated (only one model can be valid).

"Only one model can be valid"?  What complete nonsense! If you want to learn more about climate models, you can't go past this excellent article by Scott K. Johnson at ArsTechnica.

The "round-up" also refers to a new "all the models are wrong" article by Roy Spencer.  That deserves a separate article, which I've done here!

5 comments:

  1. And if there were just one model, they would complain about a mafia controlling that model. The unreasonable will always complain, no matter what.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Andrew Montford is a Chartered Accountant who has taken up climate blogging, with a blog named 'Bishop Hill' (which I believe is a place rather than a clergyman).

    He was pretty much invisible until he wrote a 'maths-lite' summary/rehash of some of Steve McIntyre's Climate Audit posts about the papers that vindicate or support Mann's 'Hoockey Stick' study entitled 'Caspar and the Jesus Paper'. He's a reasonable writer, and this was popular amongst the inactivists and got more hits than all his previous musings combined. The piece is an entirely one-sided piece of fiction, containing such nonsense such as

    'With the replication of the hockey stick in tatters, reasonable people might have expected some sort of pause in the political momentum.'

    which is a typical Monford sentence, he favours weasel words, implication and rhetoric over outright accusation and clear meaning. You can imagine this gained him some friends amongst the ignorati. He's never looked back, publishing a book 'The Hockey Stick Illusion', subtitled 'The Corruption of Science', which has been characterised as a 'History of Science' work but (from viewing a few free chapters on Amazon, I'm not going to buy the thing) is the same skewed rehash of the already unbalanced and flawed work of Steve McIntyre.

    More recently his blog has become the focus for the UK denialati and he's been signed up by the 'Global Warming Policy Foundation', an inaction-leaning think tank with undisclosed backers to write more skewed reports into 'ClimateGate' and the Royal Society.

    Beats bean-counting, I bet.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There's not much to distinguish one UK denier from another is there? One's a tabloid journalist, one's a wannabe journalist who keeps a blog for a tabloid (the equivalent of Andrew Bolt in Australia, but more raucus), the chemist (I think) turned accountant turned science denier, the phys ed teacher and the retired politician. Is that the lot? They are a motley lot aren't they, with the only thing holding them together being their political ideology and rejection of science.

      I imagine that Lord Lawson has to stifle his snob instincts every time he has to deal with young Benny. And they all must have to smother their instinctive dislike of the idiot Delingpole. While they turn up their nose at David Rose, only tolerating him because he has a wide exposure to people who want to read about the latest scandal involving the royals or some reality television "star".

      I doubt any of them have any time for Christopher Monckton. And they'd all regard someone like Anthony Watts as well below their social class and educational status, but a useful idiot to use when it suits them.

      Does that sound snobbish? Ha ha.

      Delete
    2. Heh. With apologies to Cleese, Barker, Corbett

      Lonk Monckton, Viscount of Benchley:

      "I am Upper Class, I am a bona fide Member of the House of Lords (0 votes), I put a pink portcullis on my peer-reviewed research and my pseudoscientific outpourings are informed by a Classical education, ergo liberally seasoned with Latin bon mots, like the truffles in a Fortnum and Mason hamper. I look DOWN on him"

      Lord Lawson:

      "I am middle class. A veteran politician and economist. My work is scientifically illiterate, but informed by the ineffable conclusion that doing something about global warming will cost money. This is a Bad Thing. No I am not going to tell you where we get our money from. I look UP to him, but DOWN on them"

      Delingpole and Rose (in unison) :-

      "We know our place!"


      I leave a more talented satirist to develop the theme. In case this means nothing to you: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00hhrwl

      Delete
    3. Oh boy, that brings back memories. The golden days of British comedy. What a team they were :)

      Delete

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