Global warming is in the air, in the UAH lower troposphere

The UAH data for October is out. John Christy and Roy Spencer from the University of Arizona Huntsville have a contract with NOAA to analyse temperature changes in the atmosphere. Each month they publish the latest data.

Deniers dislike it less than other data sets, especially since John and Roy revised the latest version considerably downwards, making their data an anomaly!

I came across a chart I prepared a few years ago and thought I'd do it over again using the latest UAH data.

Insignificant record warming and other climate remarkables from deniersville

Despite climate science deniers thinking global warming will stop on 20 January, there is little changed in climate conspiracy land. It's just more of the same old denier memes that have been circulating for years. At WUWT they've had John Christy going on about CO2 being plant food, and some very detailed work to try to prove something or the other about the medieval climate anomaly (see the interactive map and references here).

Deniers still enraptured with medieval warming

Regarding the latter, I'm not sure that deniers know that it was climate scientists who did the hard work to determine the extent and timing of warmer and cooler periods in recent history. (In climate terms, the Holocene is recent history.)  Many of them have some odd notion that climate scientists, who've been the ones finding out about the past, have also been trying to "cover up" what they've found.

Deniers are a odd bunch.

Barmy bloopers from John Christy and co at WUWT seven years later

Another Oh My! article has hit the denier-waves. This time from John Christy of UAH infamy, and friends (WUWT article with link is archived here, update here). It purported to be about green houses that are gassy, or something like that. The first sentence in the preface is:

On December 15, 2009, EPA issued its Green House Gas (GHG) Endangerment Finding, which has driven very significant and costly regulations beginning with CO2.  

Seriously. These guys claim to be writing about greenhouse gases and they don't even know how to spell greenhouse?

Warning: this is another long article.

Why nights can warm faster than days - Christy & McNider vs Davy 2016

At WUWT, Anthony Watts has written about a new paper by John Christy and Richard McNider, which was published in Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology of the American Meteorological Society. The researchers were looking at trends in summer-time maximum temperatures centering the analysis on three cities in Alabama, and using stations in Alabama and Tennessee. The purpose was to come up with a methodology to construct "long-term datasets by accounting for heterogeneities or changes in the observed time series without the use of station metadata".

There was a press release for the paper, which seems to have been picked up by almost no-one, except WUWT (archived here). In it the authors say:

In addition to creating some arcane mathematical tools useful for creating climate datasets, the team also found daytime high temperature data is less likely to be contaminated by surface issues — such as deforestation, construction, paving and irrigation — than nighttime low temperatures.

However I cannot find anything in the paper that supports that specific finding of contamination, or not strongly so.

Anthony Watts' #AGU15 poster on US temperature trends

Credit: NOAA

Anthony Watts has a poster at this year's AGU Fall Meeting. He is very proud of the effort he made (his WUWT article is archived here). He is also looking over his shoulder, fearful of a conspiracy to stop him from publishing. Actually, Anthony's main contribution seems to have been organising other people to do the work, which is a talent well worth having.

Anthony has made his poster available for downloading from his own website, though it's not available on the AGU15 website (yet). His press release is on the AGU website. The poster has some gaps that could be important. But first, what does it show.

Watts' US surface station temperature trends (revised)

According to the poster, the researchers took the following steps with US temperature records dating between 1979 and 2008. First they removed all weather stations that had been moved or had had a change in time of observation. They classified the remainder using one (not all) of the criteria set out in Leroy (2010), specifically "proximity to artificial surfaces, buildings, and other such objects with unnatural thermal mass".

Anthony Watts puts Roy Spencer and John Christy on notice

Anthony Watts has put Roy Spencer and John Christy on notice (archived here). He has found an article about how some computer programmers have written a fancy paper. The paper is "fancy" in that if you click on links and charts, you're apparently taken to program code and data.

Now providing data and code might be new in the world of computer science but it's been the norm for climate science for years. There's more data than deniers know what to do with. Articles on anti-science blogs like WUWT show that deniers don't have a clue what to do with the data that is available. In fact most of them don't even know that there is a heap of data and code they can play with.

Deniers will be delighted with UAH v. 6 beta

Roy Spencer and John Christy have finally, nine years later than first mentioned, released version 6.0 beta of the UAH temperature record. Deniers will be delighted. Here is a comparison of v5.6 and v6.0 together with RSS.

Data sources: UAH v6, UAH v5.6 and RSS

UAH v6 is now a touch cooler than RSS and the trend isn't as steep. However v6 beta lines up better with RSS for the last couple of years.

You can read about it on Roy Spencer's blog - I've archived his description of the changes here.

On pace for rapid warming, while Anthony Watts laughs at live dragons at WUWT...

"Never laugh at live dragons, Bilbo you fool!" he said to himself, and it became a favourite saying of his later, and passed into a proverb.
The Hobbit, Chapter XII, by  J. R. R. Tolkien.
Credit: Sascha Kozacenko (Sascha Kozacenko, with kind permission for GFDL.) Wikiquote

Today Anthony Watts has an article with the headline:

Laughable modeling study claims: in the middle of ‘the pause’, ‘climate is starting to change faster’

Then he put up the shonky chart from Roy Spencer and John Christy (see here and here), without identifying it or explaining how that pair managed to deceive the willing. Though he does provide a link to a WUWT article about it.

Anthony thinks it's really funny that global warming means that the world will most likely be heating up faster than ever in human history. Some say it will be at a pace ten times faster than any period in the last 65 million years.

Double standards at WUWT. When is a witch hunt a witch hunt?

Anthony Watts' blog WUWT is known for inconsistency, its collation of pseudo-science claptrap from around the climate deniosphere, attacks on climate scientists and double standards. I've not posted much from there the past few days because I've been busy. Also because many of the recent WUWT articles are bemoaning a witch hunt, or what passes for a witch hunt at WUWT.

Are climate contrarians witches?

So what is the WUWT definition of a witch hunt? Is it the endless requests for personal emails by right wing lobby groups that Anthony Watts frequently hails on his blog? Is it court cases to push for release of personal emails from climate scientists, like of Michael Mann here and here and here and lots more. Is it harassment of James Hansen to list all his payments from speaking engagements - like here?

When deniers have nothing, they recycle dead arguments....

In the ongoing effort to demonise the work of Professor Michael Mann in particular, Anthony Watts, Steve McIntyre, Judith Curry and John Christy are passing around wrong and worn out "arguments", presumably to try to bolster a defense for the people who allegedly libelled Professor Mann.

It's a pathetic effort on behalf of a pathetic lot from the climate science disinformation brigade.

In a repost at WUWT, Steve McIntyre (and Anthony Watts) are arguably wanting to be added to the list of people being sued.  It's as if they think that if they misrepresent history often enough someone will believe them.

I don't know what point they think they are trying to make. It looks as if they are trying to resurrect "trial by email", which has been tried before and failed dismally. (Update: see especially Marco's comment below, and the links to deepclimate's damning indictments of Steve McIntyre here and here).

I've already written about the misrepresentations from John Christy, which Judith Curry resurrected recently and that is now apparently being touted again at Steve McIntyre's blog and WUWT.  Anthony Watts (archived here) copies Steve McIntyre who copies Judith Curry who quoted from John Christy's misleading testimony to the US government:

Christy gave the following damning summary of Mann’s conduct as IPCC TAR Lead Author:

Regarding the Hockey Stick of IPCC 2001 evidence now indicates, in my view, that an IPCC Lead Author working with a small cohort of scientists, misrepresented the temperature record of the past 1000 years by (a) promoting his own result as the best estimate, (b) neglecting studies that contradicted his, and (c) amputating another’s result so as to eliminate conflicting data and limit any serious attempt to expose the real uncertainties of these data.

Three things.

1. Serengeti Strategy: Singling out one from 850 plus people

Firstly, John Christy was also a lead author of Chapter 2 of TAR, the chapter in question, so he is as culpable as any other lead author of its content.  The other lead authors were: R.A. Clarke, G.V. Gruza, J. Jouzel, M.E. Mann, J. Oerlemans, M.J. Salinger, S.-W. Wang.

In addition there were two coordinating lead authors of Chapter 2, C.K. Folland, T.R. Karl, who presumably vetted the final content.

And two review editors:  R. Hallgren, B. Nyenzi who would also have had a say.

Not only that but there were 140 contributing authors:

J. Bates, M. Crowe, P. Frich, P. Groisman, J. Hurrell, P. Jones, D. Parker, T. Peterson, D. Robinson, J. Walsh, M. Abbott, L. Alexander, H. Alexandersson, R. Allan, R. Alley, P. Ambenje, P. Arkin, L. Bajuk, R. Balling, M.Y. Bardin, R. Bradley, R. Brázdil, K.R. Briffa, H. Brooks, R.D. Brown, S. Brown, M. Brunet-India, M. Cane, D. Changnon, S. Changnon, J. Cole, D. Collins, E. Cook, A. Dai, A. Douglas, B. Douglas, J.C. Duplessy, D. Easterling, P. Englehart, R.E. Eskridge, D. Etheridge, D. Fisher, D. Gaffen, K. Gallo, E. Genikhovich, D. Gong, G. Gutman,W. Haeberli, J. Haigh, J. Hansen, D. Hardy, S. Harrison, R. Heino, K. Hennessy,W. Hogg, S. Huang, K. Hughen, M.K. Hughes, M. Hulme, H. Iskenderian, O.M. Johannessen, D. Kaiser, D. Karoly, D. Kley, R. Knight, K.R. Kumar, K. Kunkel, M. Lal, C. Landsea, J. Lawrimore, J. Lean, C. Leovy, H. Lins, R. Livezey, K.M. Lugina, I. Macadam, J.A. Majorowicz, B. Manighetti, J. Marengo, E. Mekis, M.W. Miles, A. Moberg, I. Mokhov, V. Morgan, L. Mysak, M. New, J. Norris, L. Ogallo, J. Overpeck, T. Owen, D. Paillard, T. Palmer, C. Parkinson, C.R. Pfister, N. Plummer, H. Pollack, C. Prentice, R. Quayle, E.Y. Rankova, N. Rayner, V.N. Razuvaev, G. Ren, J. Renwick, R. Reynolds, D. Rind, A. Robock, R. Rosen, S. Rösner, R. Ross, D. Rothrock, J.M. Russell, M. Serreze,W.R. Skinner, J. Slack, D.M. Smith, D. Stahle, M. Stendel, A. Sterin, T. Stocker, B. Sun, V. Swail, V. Thapliyal, L. Thompson,W.J. Thompson, A. Timmermann, R. Toumi, K. Trenberth, H. Tuomenvirta, T. van Ommen, D. Vaughan, K.Y. Vinnikov, U. von Grafenstein, H. von Storch, M. Vuille, P. Wadhams, J.M. Wallace, S. Warren,W. White, P. Xie, P. Zhai 

And nearly 700 "expert reviewers".

So to my way of thinking, to put imagined "wrongs" of any single IPCC report (which has been twice superseded) on the shoulders of one lone individual and neglect the more than 850 other people who played a part, is a bit much!  What it demonstrates is the Serengeti Strategy so beloved of disinformers and deniers. This time they try to isolate one individual from a very large herd.

2. A false claim from the disinformers

Secondly, the chapter did not misrepresent the temperature record of the past 1,000 years. At the time, arguably the paper by Mann and colleagues was indeed the "best estimate". In any case, Chapter 2 of the IPCC TAR included references to other reconstructions with citations and charts.

3. Deniers are out of touch and out of date

Thirdly, there have been two more IPCC reports since TAR and they present more recent research, which has refined knowledge with new data and multiple new temperature reconstructions, all of which lend support to earlier findings.

Box TS.5 Figure 1 Last-millennium simulations and reconstructions Source: IPCC AR5 WG1

Disinformers are misleading

Anthony's copy and paste misleadingly includes the following claim:

Further, both the Oxburgh and Muir Russell reports concluded that the IPCC 2001 graphic was “misleading”. 

This is misleading! The Muir Russell report referred to the WMO graphic used on the cover of the 1999 report and only indirectly, in parenthesis, to the IPCC TAR, writing about "one of the series" (not the others of the series):

25. The WMO report is a short document produced annually. It does not have the status or importance of the IPCC reports. The figure in question was a frontispiece and there is no major discussion or emphasis on it in the text. The caption of the figure states: "Northern Hemisphere temperatures were reconstructed for the past 1000 years (up to 1999) using palaeoclimatic records (tree rings, corals, ice cores, lake sediments, etc.), along with historical and long instrumental records”.

26. Finding: In relation to "hide the decline" we find that, given its subsequent iconic significance (not least the use of a similar figure in the TAR), the figure supplied for the WMO Report was misleading in not describing that one of the series was truncated post 1960 for the figure, and in not being clear on the fact that proxy and instrumental data were spliced together. We do not find that it is misleading to curtail reconstructions at some point per se, or to splice data, but we believe that both of these procedures should have been made plain – ideally in the figure but certainly clearly described in either the caption or the text.

The Oxburgh report does not use the word "misleading" in relation to the WMO graphic or any TAR temperature reconstruction.  The only relevant passage I could find was this:

Recent public discussion of climate change and summaries and popularizations of the work of CRU and others often contain oversimplifications that omit serious discussion of uncertainties emphasized by the original authors. For example, CRU publications repeatedly emphasize the discrepancy between instrumental and tree-based proxy reconstructions of temperature during the late 20th century, but presentations of this work by the IPCC and others have sometimes neglected to highlight this issue. While we find this regrettable, we could find no such fault with the peer-reviewed papers we examined.

I think it's worth emphasising what the Oxburgh report noted. For example, one of the papers referred to in TAR emphasizes uncertainties and limitations in its title - Mann, M.E., R.S. Bradley, and M.K. Hughes, 1999: "Northern Hemisphere Temperatures During the Past Millennium: Inferences, Uncertainties, and Limitations". Geophys. Res. Lett., 26, 759-762.  Since that paper was published there have been numerous other reconstructions. When you take them together with the instrumental records you end up with a hockey stick!

It's also worth highlighting the Addendum to the Oxburgh report, which clearly states about "any research group in the field of climate change":

For the avoidance of misunderstanding in the light of various press stories, it is important to be clear that the neither the panel report nor the press briefing intended to imply that any research group in the field of climate change had been deliberately misleading in any of their analyses or intentionally exaggerated their findings. Rather, the aim was to draw attention to the complexity of statistics in this field, and the need to use the best possible methods.

Meanwhile, the world takes its sweet time to act decisively

The main point, though, is that all this is past history.  There has been a lot more work in the thirteen years since then.  While climate science deniers are obsessed with misrepresenting the past, we keep marching on toward hotter global temperatures and rapidly changing climates. The world hasn't even stopped increasing annual CO2 emissions, let alone reduced them.

What pushed Judith Curry over the edge?

Serious question. Look, we've all known that Judith has been getting more and more ratty as time goes on. Just when we think she can't sink any lower she surprises us again.  But this time she's really gone over the edge. I mean really and truly.

I've been a bit busy the last few days and have only just got around to checking out the various denier websites. I was surprised to see Judith Curry (archived here) putting up some old, wacky and long bit of idiocy from John Christy. Back in 2011, John was whining to the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, protesting the IPCC, the northern hemisphere temperature reconstructions pre-2001, and all else besides.

Earth is as cold as a summit in Central Greenland?

At face value John, and therefore Judith, were doing a Denier Don Easterbrook, arguing that the temperature of earth is the same as it is on the top of the summit in Greenland.  John was complaining that a paper by Dahl-Jensen et al (1998) wasn't referred to in Section 2.3.2 in Chapter 2 of TAR, Temperature of the Past 1,000 Years. Yes, they are talking about the IPCC WG1 report from 2001, thirteen years ago.  Not the current report, not the 2007 report. The third assessment report from 2001.

Anyway, John complained that instead of discussing the temperature of Greenland's ice sheets over the past 1,000 years as if it represented global temperatures, the authors decided to discuss the temperatures of the whole world over the past 1000 years as far as it was known at the time (weird, huh?).  Turns out that back then (as is still the case to a great extent) there was an emphasis on the northern hemisphere reconstructions because there wasn't a lot of data for the southern hemisphere in 2001.

John Christy even admitted the other authors didn't think much of his idiocy:

To me Dahl-Jensen et al.’s reconstruction was a more robust estimate of past temperatures than one produced from a certain set of western U.S. tree-ring proxies. But as the process stood, the L.A. was not required to acknowledge my suggestions, and I was not able to convince him otherwise. It is perhaps a failure of mine that I did not press the issue even harder or sought agreement from others who might have been likewise aware of the evidence against the Hockey Stick realization.

Note too that there were several paleoclimatologists as lead authors of Chapter 2, so I don't know why John talks about "him" rather than "them". It's a case of the Serengeti Strategy again I guess.

John didn't point out that the paper was referred to in Section 2.4.2, How Stable was the Holocene Climate? Here is the relevant passage (my bold italics):

The early Holocene was generally warmer than the 20th century but the period of maximum warmth depends on the region considered. It is seen at the beginning of the Holocene (about 11 to 10 ky BP) in most ice cores from high latitude regions e.g., north-west Canada (Ritchie et al., 1989), central Antarctica (Ciais et al., 1992; Masson et al., 2000) and in some tropical ice cores such as Huascaran in Peru (Thompson et al., 1995). It is also seen during the early Holocene in the Guliya ice core in China (Thompson et al., 1998) but not in two other Chinese cores (Dunde, Thompson et al., 1989; and Dasuopu, to be published). North Africa experienced a greatly expanded monsoon in the early and mid-Holocene, starting at 11 ky BP (Petit-Maire and Guo, 1996), and declining thereafter. In New Zealand the warmest conditions occurred between about 10 to 8 ky BP, when there was a more complete forest cover than at any other time. Glacial activity was at a minimal level in the Southern Alps and speleothem analyses indicate temperatures were about 2°C warmer than present (Salinger and McGlone, 1989; Williams et al., 1999).

By contrast, central Greenland (Dahl-Jensen et al., 1998), and regions downstream of the Laurentide ice sheet, did not warm up until after 8 ky BP (including Europe: COHMAP Members, 1988; eastern North America: Webb et al., 1993). 

Nor did John Christy point out that the temperature reconstructions described in Chapter 2 of TAR were based on many more proxies than just tree rings.  Nor that there were several reconstructions discussed, not just those of Michael Mann and colleagues. Nor that there were lots of caveats in TAR (as always).

Now the fact that John and Judith think that the summit of Greenland on its own is a proxy for global temperatures is wacky enough and way beyond Judith's usual fare. But she not only put forward John's silliness as if it ought to be taken seriously, she threw in snippets of stolen emails as evidence of something or other.

Not only that, but she resurrected her jealousy of Michael Mann, that he was one of eight lead authors of a chapter in the IPCC's third assessment report, whereas she was but a lowly contributing author of Chapter 7. John Christy was a lead author in the same chapter as Michael Mann, so goodness knows why he and Judith were whinging. (Maybe she was miffed that Michael Mann wasn't just a lead author of Chapter 2, he was also a contributing author of Chapter 7 and Chapter 8.)

I mean we're talking TAR, the third assessment report. Judith is going back thirteen years.

Here is another reason I think Judith has finally lost it for good. She wrote:

Christy’s assessment, when combined with the UEA emails, provides substantial insight into how this hockey stick travesty occurred.  

John Christy's assessment! Climategate! Sheesh, Judith is scraping the bottom of the barrel isn't she.  What will Judith write about next? The fake Oregon Petition?

Here is a sample of John Christy's conspiracy ideation - and this is only a snippet.  There's more of the same where that came from.  Here he is referring to authors of the IPCC reports, writing:

As time went on, nations would tend to nominate only those authors whose climate change opinions were in line with a national political agenda which sought perceived advantages (i.e. political capital, economic gain, etc.) by promoting the notion of catastrophic human-induced climate change. Scientists with well-known alternative views would not be nominated or selected. Indeed, it became more and more difficult for dissention and skepticism to penetrate the process now run by this establishment. As noted in my IAC testimony, I saw a process in which L.A.s were transformed from serving as Brokers of science (and policy-relevant information) to Gatekeepers of a preferred point of view. 

John Christy is so deluded as to think that politicians throughout the world will gain economically and politically as a result of global warming. Tell that to Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard! Tell that to Tony Abbott! Tell that to the James Inhofe and the GOP!

And what "hockey stick travesty"? The hockey stick keeps showing up in all the subseqent IPCC reports.  This is from the latest AR5:

Box TS5 Fig 1 Source: IPCC AR5 WG1 

Doesn't Judith know what the current instrumental record shows compared to the Holocene as a whole?  I don't believe it. She has subsequently written an article about the recent Neukom paper under a weird title: "The inconvenient southern hemisphere".  In that article she "rebuts" the paper by referring her readers to, of all places, WUWT! Yep. She's well and truly gone over the edge. Here is Figure 2 from that paper - guess what it shows. You guessed it, a hockey stick:

Figure 2 Temperature variability over the past millennium. a, 30-year loess filtered ensemble mean temperature reconstruction for the Southern Hemisphere (SH; blue) and Northern Hemisphere (NH; red) relative to the millennium mean for the period 1000–2000. Blue shading based on Southern Hemisphere reconstruction uncertainties (Supplementary Section 2.4). Thin orange lines represent the ensemble means of the nine individual temperature reconstructions making up the Northern Hemisphere dataset5. b, as a but for the 24-member climate model ensemble. Note for consistency with reconstruction data, simulated temperatures are shown as individual simulations for the Northern Hemisphere and a probabilistic range based on ensemble percentiles for the Southern Hemisphere.

Source: Neukom14

Back to basic Curry - the IPCC and Michael Mann

For once Judith isn't being her usual ambiguous self.  She is up front about her motivation. She has it in for Michael Mann and the IPCC. She has ever since I first heard of her - when she "came out" as a denier on Keith Kloor's blog way back when.  This is what she wrote the other day:

Back in April 2011, I had a post on The U.S. House of Representatives Hearing on Climate Change: Examining the Processes Used to Create Science and Policy.  John Christy’s testimony is worth revisiting, in two contexts:

• problems with the IPCC process, most recently highlighted in context of WG3 [link]
• the Steyn versus Mann and Mann versus Steyn lawsuits [link]

So she's back to basics - Judith Curry waging a war on the IPCC and Michael Mann. That's bare bones Judith Curry - in a nutshell. Forget science. Forget politics. For Judith, this is personal.

---

Neukom, Raphael, Joëlle Gergis, David J. Karoly, Heinz Wanner, Mark Curran, Julie Elbert, Fidel González-Rouco et al. "Inter-hemispheric temperature variability over the past millennium." Nature Climate Change 4, no. 5 (2014): 362-367. doi:10.1038/nclimate2174

Anthony Watts arrives late at the APS climate party ... and gets it wrong

I see that Anthony Watts has only just discovered that the American Physical Society is reviewing its climate policy statement.  He wrote excitedly (archived here):

That noise you can hear in the distance is the sound of John Cook’s, Dana Nuccitelli’s, and Joe Romm’s heads exploding

Lindzen, Christy and Curry appointed to APS climate statement review panel

He earlier wrote, quoting Simon of Australian Climate Madness, that:

The American Physical Society, which previously issued a highly alarmist statement regarding climate change, is to review it, and has appointed three climate realists to the panel of six. 

...before slightly amending it to insert the word "[address]" after "climate realists".


Anyway, Lindzen, Christy and Curry did attend a workshop of the APS sub-committee back in early January.  As well as the contrarians, the sub-committee invited three more highly regarded and serious climate scientists (Ben Santer, Isaac Held and William Collins).  Goodness knows why they had Richard, John and Judith along.

Lindzen, Christy and Curry aren't on the sub-committee and I don't hold great hopes that the sub-committee will end up with a sensible climate policy. If you read the transcript of the January workshop it's clear that the Sub-Committee members themselves know zilch about climate science.  You'd think that out of all the members of the APS they could find some climate experts to prepare a draft statement.

By the way, this is another example of Anthony either forgetting or not reading stuff he's already posted on his blog before, too. And he doesn't read Judith Curry's blog or Rabett Run either, both of whom wrote about this a month ago.

Eli's post is a must read.  He starts off scathingly:

The American Physical Society had done it again.  In a surprisingly repetitive fit of Dunning Kruger they have assembled a subcommittee to guide the Panel on Public Affairs (POPA) in a review of the APS statement on Climate Change which is composed of nuclear physicists and others who know nothing about climate relevant physics.

From the WUWT comments

Even though the sub-committee has a lot of learning ahead of it when it comes to climate science, I wonder if WUWT is going to be a repeat of Richard Muller's temperature reconstruction - where they all cried "hurrah" anticipating a finding that earth had cooled or something - only to turn on him when his analysis was completed.  I mean how likely is it that the APS would reverse its current policy position?

The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring.

If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.

Terry Comeau says:

March 20, 2014 at 7:53 am
What I would give to sit in on the meetings of the panel. The alarmists on that panel must be panic stricken. Three people with such impressive scientific credentials to actually put real questions of science and integrity to their blatant and exceedingly flimsy eco-activistic pseudo-scientific constructs. How on earth can they try to maintain their house of cards under those circumstances? The gig is up and they must see it coming like a light in a train tunnel, and there isn’t a damned thing they can do to avoid it. Wow. Break out the popcorn.

Ken Hall says:

March 20, 2014 at 8:01 am
AT LAST!!! An authorititive and august scientific institution actually using a scientific approach to investigating the merits, or lack thereof, of the CAGW hypothesis. fully balanced and fully in public, without hiding anything. About effin time!

To overtly mangle metaphors, once this domino falls it should creat a crack in the dam of CAGW alarmism which should spread through all the other authorititive and august scientific institutions, including the Royal Society. Once this happens, real science may prevail and we may see a return to sanity in science and politics. It is early days yet, but fingers crossed.

John Whitman says:

March 20, 2014 at 10:29 am
It does not get any better than this for it finally shows a reasonable good level of openness and transparency in climate science assessment. The review panel has high level personnel who are very critical of the processes that supported the controversial aspects of climate science used for the IPCC reports.

This APS process is a prototype that the The Royal Society, the IPCC, the NAS, AAAS, AGU and the US Congress should emulate.
John 

Let's wait to see how this plays out.  The American Physical Society has a reputation to uphold after all.  It could well be that WUWT will suffer a series of head explosions, not John Cook, Dana Nuccitelli or Joe Romm.

"Rum is Sailor Food" - Dr Richard McNider and Dr. John Christy a tiny minority of shoddy scientists

John Kerry said recently in Indonesia (my bold italics):

First and foremost, we should not allow a tiny minority of shoddy scientists and science and extreme ideologues to compete with scientific fact. Nor should we allow any room for those who think that the costs associated with doing the right thing outweigh the benefits. There are people who say, “Oh, it’s too expensive, we can’t do this.” No. No, folks. We certainly should not allow more time to be wasted by those who want to sit around debating whose responsibility it is to deal with this threat, while we come closer and closer to the point of no return.

I have to tell you, this is really not a normal kind of difference of opinion between people. Sometimes you can have a reasonable argument and a reasonable disagreement over an opinion you may have. This is not opinion. This is about facts. This is about science. The science is unequivocal. And those who refuse to believe it are simply burying their heads in the sand.

You can read the full speech in Business Green here.

There is also a short interview on ABC radio here.

John Kerry sees the big picture but gets the science wrong

John Kerry made some gaffes, describing the greenhouse effect as a very thin layer on the edge of the atmosphere, perhaps confusing it with the ozone layer?  He wrote:

"Try and picture a very thin layer of gases – a very thin layer of gases – a quarter-inch, half an inch, somewhere in that vicinity – that’s how thick it is. It’s in our atmosphere. It’s way up there at the edge of the atmosphere. And for millions of years – literally millions of years – we know that layer has acted like a thermal blanket for the planet – trapping the sun’s heat and warming the surface of the Earth to the ideal, life-sustaining temperature." 

Update:
Here is a diagram I've "borrowed" from askamathematician.com that shows the size of the atmosphere to 100 km up compared to earth (left) and up to 7.5 km up (right).  This might have been what John Kerry meant for people to visualise, but he screwed it up.  I still think he was confusing the ozone layer with well-mixed greenhouse gases, referring to "at the edge of the atmosphere" - but if so, he got that bit wrong too because it's up to 10 km "thick", not "a quarter-inch, half an inch, somewhere in that vicinity". And the ozone layer is in the lower stratosphere, not "at the edge of the atmosphere".

Credit: askamathematician

...and describing ocean acidification, wrongly, as acid rain falling into the ocean!

"The changing sea temperature and the increasing amount of acidity – the acidity comes from coal-fired power plants and from the pollution, and when the rain falls the rain spills the acidity into the ocean."

John Kerry should have got a scientist (or even me) to edit his speech before he made it.  However were his gaffes any worse than the deliberate obfuscation of facts by two scientists who have no excuse?  Read on...

Shoddy scientists and science and extreme ideologues ...compete with scientific fact

So what happens?  Anthony Watts, an "extreme ideologue" promotes a tiny minority of "shoddy scientists", Dr Richard McNider and Dr. John Christy, to criticise John Kerry's speech.  But they didn't mention the things that John Kerry said wrong - like I did above.  Instead they focused on what he said that was right - and complaining about it.  What Richard and John complained about was him referring to "shoddy scientists".  It seems John Kerry struck a nerve with the shoddy scientists.  Richard and John wrote:

In a Feb. 16 speech in Indonesia, Secretary of State John Kerry assailed climate-change skeptics as members of the “Flat Earth Society” for doubting the reality of catastrophic climate change. He said, “We should not allow a tiny minority of shoddy scientists” and “extreme ideologues to compete with scientific facts.”

But who are the Flat Earthers, and who is ignoring the scientific facts?

To demonstrate just who it is who is ignoring scientific facts, shoddy Richard and John put up this shoddy chart (archived here):

Source: WUWT

Notice how Richard and John don't provide any information about their sources other than "various" and "as described in the "State of the Climate 2012".  How they talk about the "linear trend intersecting" - what does that mean?  How they don't say what the baseline is.  How they've put up "five year averages" - but managed to start them in 1979 and end them in 2013?.  How they left off surface temperatures.

Alright, let's be sceptical and check with the record.  Here is a chart of five year averaged temperatures.  It has to start at 1983 (five years after the first full year of satellite data).  I've plotted UAH and RSS on the same chart as the mean CMIP5 surface temperature plotted on the same 1981-2010 baseline:

Data Sources: UAH, RSS and KNMI Climate Explorer

Brownie points if you can spot the difference.

Richard and John claim:

For instance, in 1994 we published an article in the journal Nature showing that the actual global temperature trend was “one-quarter of the magnitude of climate model results.” As the nearby graph shows, the disparity between the predicted temperature increases and real-world evidence has only grown in the past 20 years.

I tried to find their paper and this "scientific communication" was all I could find in the time available.  I did find a description of it in Santer et al (1995):

The only previous study that has considered recent short-term trends in global-mean annually averaged temperature is that by Allen et al. (1994), which investigated the significance of the linear trend in global mean low- to mid-tropospheric temperature (sampled by the satellite-based microwave sounding unit, MSU) from 1979–1994. Allen et al. (1994) used detrended instrumental sea-surface temperature (SST) data to estimate the magnitude of natural variability on time scales appropriate to the length of their signal, and concluded that the 15-year trend in low-to mid-tropospheric temperature was not significant.

The Santer paper was attempting to progress science.  It's title was: "Towards the detection and attribution of an anthropogenic effect on climate".  Richard and John by contrast are attempting to squash scientific research writing things like: "Shouldn’t modelers be more humble and open to saying that perhaps the Arctic warming is due to something we don’t understand?"

Yeah, that would surely win a Nobel Prize, wouldn't it.  I can see it now.  Headlines in Nature News.  Scientists stop all scientific research on climate saying it's because they don't understand it.  Contrast this with how Santer et al expressed the "unknowns", nearly twenty years ago:

The caveats regarding the signals and natural variability noise which form the basis of this study are numerous. Nevertheless, we have provided first evidence that both the largest-scale (global-mean) and smaller-scale (spatial anomalies about the global mean) components of a combined CO2/anthropogenic sulfate aerosol signal are identifiable in the observed near-surface air temperature data. If the coupled-model noise estimates used here are realistic, we can be highly confident that the anthropogenic signal that we have identified is distinctly different from internally generated natural variability noise.

Santer et al go on to describe the caveats.  They also describe what they found.  Their focus is on adding to knowledge without trying to hide anything.  Richard and John are negative scientists.  They build straw men so they can paint a distorted picture of science to further their ideological aims.

You'd be hard-pressed to find two more negative, shoddier scientists who've somehow managed to con the taxpayer into continuing to pay them big bucks.  And what do taxpayers get in return?  Shonky charts on shonky pseudo-science blogs, devoted to persuading the world not to lift a finger to prevent damaging global warming.

"Rum is sailor food" cry the shoddy scientists!

Richard and John are full of it!  Full of strawmen arguments - twisting arguments like: "in the 18th century, more British sailors died of scurvy than died in battle" to insinuate that because vitamins weren't discovered until the early twentieth century, 21st century scientists like Richard and John "don't know nuffin' about climate".  Now, when scientists have discovered the equivalent of Vitamin C as the cure, Richard and John will have none of it.  It's the Richards and Johns of the world who are arguing "it's not Vitamin C"; and "Rum is Sailor Food"!

It may well be true that there are shoddy scientists like Richard and John who pretend they "don't know nuffin'" about climate.  Fortunately they are in the minority.  There are thousands of scientists today who know an awful lot about climate.

In my opinion, universities ought to get rid of shonky scientists who write mainly for pseudo-science blogs like WUWT and replace them with decent scientists who will add some to the world's knowledge, not mess about with shonky charts.

From the WUWT comments

The article brought lots of nutters out of the woodwork (archived here):

In the shortest comment I've seen him make, rgbatduke says:

February 20, 2014 at 1:52 pm
Science and politics make terrible bedfellows.
rgb

fobdangerclose says:

February 20, 2014 at 1:47 pm
Put it this way. If facts and the truth had any thing to do with this climate change lie and Kerry’s
lies being heard still,,, then the facts on Kerry would have had him end up in the dock and tried for treason and or also lying under oath before congress.l

DavidG says:

February 20, 2014 at 1:42 pm
Bring back the Mafia and protection rackets rather than this international climate protection racket scam Kerry is trying to peddle around the world. Read Antony Sutton to find out what Kerry’s up to, with his penchant for wealthy women and his Patriarchate.

Bruce Cobb says:

February 20, 2014 at 1:18 pm
Did he miss anything? I think he managed to cram all of the Warmists’ lies and flawed logic they’ve ever used over the years. Impressive.
Yes, the idea of man-caused climate change is simple enough for simpletons like Kerry. Except that it fails the reality test miserably.

DavidG says:

February 20, 2014 at 1:33 pm
Kerry, the secret Hegelian termite in the Obama administration.:]

Eliza says:

February 20, 2014 at 11:47 am
I really don’t know why such eminent scientists such as Christy and McNyder who are obviously intimately involved with temperature measurements (AMSU) even bother to reply to such a obvious ignorant unread unsophisticated person such as Mr Kerry. By replying here they are giving him attention he does not deserve 

---

Alien, M. R., C. T. Mutlow, G. M. C. Blumberg, J. R. Christy, R. T. McNider, and D. T. Llewellyn-Jones. "Global change detection." (1994): 24-24.

Santer, Benjamin D., Karl E. Taylor, Tom ML Wigley, Joyce E. Penner, Philip D. Jones, and Ulrich Cubasch. "Towards the detection and attribution of an anthropogenic effect on climate." Climate Dynamics 12, no. 2 (1995): 77-100.

2013 the fourth hottest year in the UAH record

This won't be pleasing news to anyone, let alone the deniers at WUWT.  From WUWT (archived here):

2013 was the fourth warmest year in the satellite era, trailing only 1998, 2010 and 2005, according to Dr. John Christy, a professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. The warmest areas during the year were over the North Pacific and the Antarctic, where temperatures for the year averaged more than 1.4 C (more than 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than normal. There were small areas of cooler than normal temperatures scattered about the globe, including one area over central Canada where temperatures were 0.6 C (about 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit) cooler than the 30-year norm.

The Antarctic was much warmer than 'normal'

All sorts of things should shake the faith of the denialati, not least of which is the fact that according to UAH analysis, the Antarctic was one of the warmest areas -  where temperatures for the year averaged more than 1.4 C (more than 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than normal.

After all their recent ravings over sea ice around Antarctica, that should have given the deniers at WUWT pause.

I've done a quick chart of annual UAH annual global lower troposphere temperature anomalies, up to and including 2013:

Data Source: UAH

Addendum - RSS and UAH

I've included HadCRUT below, here is RSS and UAH together, for the sake of completeness.  GISTemp isn't out yet. They are fairly closely aligned, at least up until a couple of years ago. [Sou 10:19 am 5 Jan 14 AEDST]

Data Sources: UAH and RSS

Update

I've made minor corrections to the charts, using the latest data from UAH. [Sou 11:33 am 5 January 2014 AEDST]

Despite this, the denial continues - from the WUWT comments

Lots of comments of the type "I don't believe it" and "it's about to cool down" and even "warmer = cooling". You've got to admit that WUWT houses a lot of utter nutters.

RichardLH says:

January 3, 2014 at 12:30 pm
Given that we appear to be at the top of a well observed 60 year cycle then this is not unexpected. The real question is ‘How much down from here do we go and for how long?”.

Gareth Phillips queries Richard and says:

January 3, 2014 at 12:37 pm
The point is Richard, the trend remains upwards.It may be a small amount, but it is still rising, not falling or staying still. Is there any objective evidence that we are at a peak and the trend will reverse?

To which RichardLH replies (excerpt, quotes removed):

January 3, 2014 at 12:41 pm
Well the HadCrut4 says there is a 60 year and we are at the top of it.
The UAH says the same (though with only data since 1979 you can only see half a cycle).
What evidence do you have that this is an upward trend? It looks very, very cyclic to me.

Let's look at HadCRUT4 to see just how we are now at temperatures of sixty years ago. I've animated with UAH superimposed as well - with a 1981-2010 baseline:

Data Sources: UAH and UK Met Office Hadley Centre

Nope - we should surely be at the temperatures of 1953 if all that affected climate was a sixty year cycle. But no, we're not. And no-one's likely to see surface temperatures of the 1950s for at least tens of thousands of years, barring supervolcanic eruptions or some other cataclysmic event.

Incidentally, in HadCRUT4, 2013 is the eighth hottest year on record, after (in order)  2010, 2005, 1998, 2003, 2006, 2009 and 2002.

JimS demands a recount from science deniers Roy Spencer and John Christy and says:

January 3, 2014 at 1:03 pm
I find that very hard to believe, quite frankly – 2013 being the 4th warmest year in the last 30 years. I demand a recount, or, perhaps the coolists should be given opportunity to “adjust” the figures, this time, eh?

WeatherOrNot doesn't understand anomalies and says:

January 3, 2014 at 1:12 pm
Is mean global average temperature data available, rather than just the anomaly? I’d be interested to know the trend for the actual average global temperature over the years.

LT says:

January 3, 2014 at 1:13 pm
It looks like UAH continues to deviate from the other global temperature datasets. Something seems off.

dp says that warming means it's cooling - huh?:

January 3, 2014 at 1:14 pm
Having that heat in the atmosphere above the north Pacific is a net cooling effect to the planet as the ocean heat passes through the air before making its way back the the dark regions of the universe. People are viewing this as a bad thing – I don’t understand that. Rejoice, people – that is what global cooling looks like.

Steve from Rockwood rides a cycle and says:

January 3, 2014 at 1:28 pm
If there is such a thing as a 60 year cycle then using a 30 year average for the negative half of the 60 year cycle and then claiming that 2001-2013 are the warmest years is … well … entirely expected. With the positive peak of a 60 year cycle centered around 2005 anything other than 12 of 13 years being 2001 or later would be very unusual – like 1998 which shouldn’t be there (we all know why it is an exception). It seems as though the world is unfolding as it should.

Steven Mosher posts a challenge to deniers and says:

January 3, 2014 at 1:35 pm
Time for all you sun nuts and PDO fans to place your bets.
we are at solar max.. If the sun is the cause then its time to make predictions

justsomeguy31167 goes for "it's a conspiracy" of the "gremlins in the satellite" type and and says:

January 3, 2014 at 2:03 pm
Since you get your data from NASA, any chance it is “pre-cooked” Hansen and Gavin?

bazza  misunderstood the ABC, thinking that "since 1889" means it was hot in 1889, not realising it means "since records began in 1889" (in that part of Queensland) and says:

January 3, 2014 at 2:36 pm
The abc here in australia are obsessed with the hot weather we are getting in qld at the moment.They spent most of the news talking about it no mention of the extream cold in the us.At one point in the show they had a [so called] weather expert on and with great joy he said it has not been this hot since 1889 scary scary we are all going to fry.My question is what made it so hot in 1889?it was not SUVs and air con, trust me the weather is no different now than it was in the 1950s.When will this global warming madness end?so we can stop spending billions of dollars on stupid research projects like that fiasco in antarctica with there ship stuck in the ice that they claim is not there.

This is for bazza courtesy HotWhopper and the Bureau of Meteorology:

Adapted from: Australian Bureau of Meteorology

Bob Grise applies the logical fallacy of argument from incredulity when he says:

January 4, 2014 at 12:25 am
You look at all this massive ice at the poles and all that mass of water in the oceans and then do some math. The population of man per square mile of Earth is only 35, or one person per 18 acres. How the heck did that influence climate, or the amount of ice at the poles in any given year? It can’t be possible. This is nature at work. Natural variation. We have very little to no control.

Arno Arrak writes a very long post, of which the following excerpt is probably the gist of it. Step warming happened but it isn't really warming. (My para breaks and bold italics.)

January 3, 2014 at 5:07 pmThis way of calculating temperature is all wrong. What happened is that the 1998 super El Nino brought so much warm water across the ocean that it created a step warming immediately following it. That step warming raised global temperature by 0.3 degrees Celsius and then stopped. This 0.3 degrees rise looked like another El Nino at first but the temperature rise it created became a permanent addition to global temperature, starting with the year 2002. As a result, all 21st century temperatures sit on a high platform created by this step warming. It is a pretty level platform too, judging by the fact that global mean temperature has stayed the same throughout this century.

Just comparing twenty-first to twentieth century temperatures will give the impression that some kind of warming is taking place which is wrong. Warming did happen but it was a step warming and is over.

But it did leave a permanent imprint on global temperature whose consequences we must account for. It is not clear why the temperature rise it created stayed at that high level instead of going back to the pre-1998 period. Superimposed upon this platform are the 2008 La Nina and the 2010 El Nino that are part of the ENSO oscillation. That super El Nino of 1998 was itself preceded by eighteen years of temperature standstill, just like the one we have now.

Hansen noticed the temperature increase and pointed out that the ten warmest years all happened in the twenty-first century. He was right of course but he did not understand the role of the step warming and jumped to the conclusion that CO2 was responsible.

The super El Nino and its aftermath are a climate mystery that should have been intensely investigated. Nothing like this has happened for more than a century. Instead we see billions of dollars wasted on trying to prove greenhouse warming which does not exist. These “experts” controlling the money don’t have a clue about 1998 and its aftermath. Real climate science just does not interest them

You can read more dross at the archived WUWT article.

Judith Curry - what lengths is she prepared to go to keep the coal fires burning?

Following on from my last article, here are some quotes from Judith Curry from an article she wrote about the recent US House Subcommittee on Environment hearing (archived here):

Attempting to reduce the damages associated with extreme weather in the 21st century by reducing greenhouse gas emissions is very misguided IMO, and misses important opportunities to focus on better weather forecasting, better emergency management practices, and reducing infrastructure vulnerability.

First - it's hardly misguided to mitigate global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Second - what does reducing emissions have to do with weather forecasting, emergency management and reduction of infrastructure vulnerability?  It's not an either-or choice.  We need to do all these things and people are doing all these things.

Third - if we don't reduce emissions we leave ourselves much more vulnerable to climate change. Infrastructure replacement will be much more costly if we don't reduce emissions.  Floods, fire and heat can destroy infrastructure.  If we can slow down global warming we can spread the cost of infrastructure replacement over a longer period.  As for emergency management, it is already stretched to the limit when it's most needed.  I can vouch for that when a few years ago, a fire got away here because all the local firefighters were fighting a blaze two valleys away.  It ended up burning a huge area.  (Indulge me - climate change can be very personal, not simply something that might affect other unlucky people. The first lot of photos were taken outside my home and the later ones from the pond just down the road. This was just one of three major fires in our region since 2003. )

Risk management? Pffft! says Judith Curry

Judith seems to be against risk management, writing about David Titley's testimony:

I don’t find Titley’s testimony to be effective.  He didn’t sell hard the AGW-extreme weather link, rather his main argument was ‘absence of evidence is not evidence of absence’.  With his deck of cards analogy, he discounts the possibility of AGW removing an Ace from the deck.  He then brings in a risk management approach, and his final recommendation seems to be moving away from carbon energy sources.  IMO, none of these seems effectively targeted (either logically or policy wise) at the issue of the relationship between climate change and extreme weather.’

And Judith isn't in favour of governments around the world asking for scientists to cooperate across international borders and inform them about what we are doing to the earth system.  John Christy included a paper written by Judith at the back of his written testimony to the US House Subcommittee on the Environment:

The diagnosis of paradigm paralysis seems fatal in the case of the IPCC, given the widespread nature of the infection and intrinsic motivated reasoning. We need to put down the IPCC as soon as possible – not to protect the patient who seems to be thriving in its own little cocoon, but for the sake of the rest of us whom it is trying to infect with its disease. Fortunately much of the population seems to be immune, but some governments seem highly susceptible to the disease. However, the precautionary principle demands that we not take any risks here, and hence the IPCC should be put down. 

Misleading the US Government? "As temperatures have declined"

She said she was going to present that paper at a US House Committee hearing that was cancelled.  In other words she was going to mislead the US Government, writing (my bold italics):

Seven years later, with the release of the IPCC AR5, we find ourselves between the metaphorical rock and a hard place with regards to climate science and policy:

• as temperatures have declined and climate models have failed to predict this decline, the IPCC has gained confidence in catastrophic warming and dismisses the pause as unpredictable climate variability

Judith Curry was willing to testify to the United States Government that global surface temperatures have declined!  Even knowing Judith wishes the world would hurtle faster towards a climate no human has ever ever experienced, battling metres of sea level rise, heat extremes, fires, floods and droughts like we've never seen - I'm still surprised to read that.

The fact is, Judith indicated that John Christy asked for her permission to include her paper in his testimony. So in fact one could argue that she did tell a lie to the government.

Roger Pielke Jr sez we can still afford more weather disasters and WUWT protests at all and sundry

Roger Pielke Jr argues that the cost of weather disasters hasn't (yet) outstripped the increase in gross domestic product - in the USA and in the world as a whole.  However he warns that absolute costs will continue to rise and that "The inability to detect and attribute increasing trends in the incidence of hurricanes, floods, tornadoes and drought does not mean that human-caused climate change is not real or of concern".

US House Subcommittee on Environment - Hearing on Weather and Climate

As they do from time to time, the U.S. House Subcommittee on  Environment had a hearing on weather and climate.  The House Committee called on three people: John Christy who has a reputation for spreading disinformation not based on science, Roger Pielke Jr who always seems to be the one who gets trotted out to give evidence about the cost of adapting to and recovering from extreme weather events (more the latter than the former from what I've read) and Rear-Admiral (ret'd) David Titley, who was nominated by the Democrats to give testimony.

The purpose of the hearing was "to examine the links between climate change and extreme weather events such as hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, and floods".  Here are links to the written testimony of John Christy, Roger Pielke Jr and David Titley.

The House Subcommittee was putting on a political show.  They were (probably deliberately) asking the wrong question of the wrong people and even then had to leave out half the testimony to report the answer they wanted to get.

Some comments on part of Roger Pielke's testimony

I'll just make some observations about part of Roger Pielke Jr's written testimony. He wrote:

Globally, weather-related losses ($) have not increased since 1990 as a proportion of GDP (they have actually decreased by about 25%) and insured catastrophe losses have not increased as a proportion of GDP since 1960...

...The absolute costs of disasters will increase significantly in coming years due to greater wealth and populations in locations exposed to extremes. Consequent, disasters will continue to be an important focus of policy, irrespective of the exact future course of climate change. 

The inability to detect and attribute increasing trends in the incidence of hurricanes, floods, tornadoes and drought does not mean that human-caused climate change is not real or of concern. 

It does mean however that some activists, politicians, journalists, corporate and government agency representatives and even scientists who should know better have made claims that are unsupportable based on evidence and research. 

Such claims could undermine the credibility of arguments for action on climate change, and to the extent that such false claims confuse those who make decisions related to extreme events, they could lead to poor decision making. 

...The remainder of this written testimony provides data and references to support the claims made in the “take-home points” above.

I didn't find anything in his testimony to support his claim that  "scientists who should know better have made claims that are unsupportable based on evidence and research" - although I suppose he didn't have to.  I guess John Christy's testimony (see below) would have been sufficient. (Nor does he give a clue as to the nature of such claims.)

Roger quotes himself a lot, such as in his representation of tornadoes, saying "there is some evidence that they have declined" (in the USA).  He doesn't say what that evidence is but does refer to his own paper.  I looked at his paper and it seemed to be ambivalent on the issue, making statements that appear to be inconsistent (my bold italics):

On climate time scales there is no indication of increasing incidence of tornadoes, and the increases documented over the short (sub-climate) period 2000 – 2011 are strongly influenced by the large number of events documented in 2011. However, the decreased frequency of high damage events in recent decades as compared with previous decades is a notable feature in the time series and provides strong counter-evidence to claims found in the scientific literature that the atmospheric environment that spawns tornadoes has intensified leading to more intense events on climate time scales (e.g. Trenberth, 2012).

...The most recent review by the IPCC found no basis for claiming an increase (or decrease) in tornado incidence or intensity (IPCC, 2012).

...The degree to which this decrease is the result of an actual decrease in the incidence of strong tornadoes is difficult to assess due to inconsistencies in reporting practices over time. However, an examination of trends within sub-periods of the dataset is suggestive that some part of the long-term decrease in losses may have a component related to actual changes in tornado behaviour. Further research is clearly needed to assess this suggestion.

So have they increased, decreased or is the data insufficient to say?  Roger says they've decreased but then again he makes his "difficult to assess" claim and he also talks about them increasing.  I couldn't see that his paper that he refers to supports his claimed "decrease".


I checked Roger's reference to Trenberth12 above and Kevin Trenberth does not claim that there have been more tornadoes.  In fact his paper states:

Trends in the tornado record are not reliable, as increases in population over previously rural areas lead to more reporting of tornadoes, but the exceptional nature of the 2011 spring is not in doubt.

Global warming does not contribute directly to tornadoes themselves, but it does contribute to the vigor of the thunderstorms that host them through the increased warmth and moisture content (moist static energy) of the low level air flow. 

As an aside, in Roger's paper, his normalisation does not appear to account for preparedness or adaptation. That is, if the cost societies have incurred in regard to adapting to higher seas, increased precipitation and severe storms were added in, how would that affect his sums?  Major and minor initiatives like the Thames barrier, stricter building codes, better bridges, flood mitigation works etc aren't cheap at the local level nor at the global level.  I expect that they would have cost less than not adapting and trying to repair the damage afterwards instead.  (Take Katrina as an example of the cost of not adapting sufficiently and trying to make up after the event.)  In his written testimony Roger writes:

The peer-reviewed literature on this subject is extensive and robust. Neumayer and Barthel (2011), in a study conducted at the London School of Economics and supported financially by Munich Reinsurance conclude:
“[B]ased on historical data, there is no evidence so far that climate change has increased the normalized economic loss from natural disasters.”12

Here is the full quote from that paper (my bold italics):

Applying, therefore, both methods to the most comprehensive existing global dataset of natural disaster loss, in general we find no significant upward trends in normalized disaster damage over the period 1980 to 2009 globally, regionally, for specific disasters or for specific disasters in specific regions. Due to our inability to control for defensive mitigation measures, one cannot infer from our analysis that there have definitely not been more frequent and/or more intensive weather-related natural hazards over the study period already. Moreover, it may still be far too early to detect a trend if humaninduced climate change has only just started and will gain momentum over time. 

Some other parts of Rogers testimony could also appear to be contradictory on first reading.  For example, he wrote:

• Similarly, on climate timescales it is incorrect to link the increasing costs of disasters with the emission of greenhouse gases. 
• Globally, weather-related losses ($) have not increased since 1990 as a proportion of GDP (they have actually decreased by about 25%) and insured catastrophe losses have not increased as a proportion of GDP since 1960. 

On closer examination, the two statements are not necessarily contradictory.  What Roger is saying is that although the cost of disasters has increased, GDP has risen more.  So far, the world has managed to keep one step ahead of the extra cost not just of adaptation (building codes, planning schemes, flood mitigation works, water storages, storm barriers etc) but also the cost of preparedness, response and recovery from weather disasters.  Bearing in mind that I don't think Roger has factored in the cost of adaptation.  In any case, Roger doesn't give any indication of how much longer we'll be able to stay on top of this as climate change kicks in this century.

John Christy admits he's all at sea when it comes to climate science

In his written testimony, John Christy indicates that he has difficulty he has with some climate-related topics.  Early in his written testimony he said he thought that in order to define a weather event as statistically unusual, he would need 1,500 to 2,000 years of data.  He's not very good at data analysis. 

John also admits he doesn't understand how climate models can be used to determine the extent to which global warming is caused by increased greenhouse gases and the extent to which it's caused by solar and volcanic forcing.  He's not too bright all around. He wrote that it doesn't make sense to him:

First, the IPCC relies on climate models to distinguish “natural” from “human” caused climate change because instruments can’t. However, as demonstrated, these same models on average fail by a significant amount to reproduce the climate of the past 35 years (the years most directly impacted by rising greenhouse gas emissions.) But in conclusion, the IPCC now has even more confidence that the models can distinguish “natural” from “human” change over a period the models clearly fail to simulate well. It doesn’t make sense to me. 

Apart from finding data analysis all too hard, the other reason it might not make sense to John is because he's got climate models all wrong.  If he'd taken the time to look at the model outputs, he'd have known they've been quite close to observations over most of the past 35 years.  He thought they "failed" over the past 35 years, silly boy.  

I don't know of any models that hindcast cooling since 1977 outside of denier "models".  Anyone?

Do you think John Christy was confusing scientific climate models with those of Denier Don Easterbrook?  Like this one from 2001?

Here is a shot of the CMIP5 models vs the full record of GISTemp actual anomalies:

Data Sources: NASA and Climate Explorer 

And here is the record going back over the last 35 years:

Data Sources: NASA and Climate Explorer

It's only the last few years where there is any divergence.  If the surface temperature had gone up more after 2005 no-one would be using the words "pause" or "hiatus".  John Christy is trying to fool people with this "35 years".

From WUWT

I see Anthony Watts has his knickers in a knot over the fact that the Democrats in the USA issued a press release after the hearing.  Anthony didn't (or couldn't) do his own write up. Posting the Democrats version of the event seems a bit odd for a science denier. He could have posted the press release from the Committee Chair who, going by his statement is a science denier.  Not that it matters so much any more, as Ryan Cooper points out in his blog at the Washington Post. (The WUWT article is archived here.)

Anthony complained that the Democrats press release didn't quote the testimony of Roger Pielke Jr and John Christy.  Well, the Committee itself didn't quote any of the testimony from any of them that showed how climate change is affecting the weather.  The committee was more concerned that the administration shouldn't scare people.  Although they denied or ignored the known links between global warming and extreme weather events, at least in the press release the GOP majority didn't deny climate change.

What's odd too is the reaction from the WUWT peanut gallery to the Democrat's press release.  A few of them seem to be accepting that temperatures are rising but they seem to think that's "natural".  Some are even calling it a "random walk".  Random?  If it were random it would be going down as much as up.  But it's not.  Others are saying that "it's cooling".

Here is a sample of comments (archived here).

dp decides the USA has gone to the dogs and says:

December 12, 2013 at 11:46 pm
The US is the world’s newest Banana Republic. Maybe Blazing Saddles would be a better metaphor.

Willis Eschenbach doesn't trust the free market and private sector and says:

December 12, 2013 at 11:47 pm
Talk about fools. Taking climate advice from the Reinsurance Industry is like asking your barber if you need a haircut …
w.

gopal panicker is a bit lost for words and reaches for the word he hears most often:

December 12, 2013 at 11:49 pm
crazy

ivor ward doesn't know what anyone at the hearing wrote or said, but he knows what he knows and says:

December 12, 2013 at 11:53 pm
Even when they listen to the truth they are determined not to hear it.

ronald was in a great rush to see his words in print, but had a few problems with sticky keys:

December 12, 2013 at 11:58 pm
Isendt that what they alway do in the AGW curch? If you cant use it dump it. We now cane only hope that someone coms out and says what going wrong.

Doubting Rich thinks if the baseline is shifted up, it might get cool again - or CO2 will lose all its properties, or something:

December 13, 2013 at 1:44 am
Wow, no concept of a random walk! It is hard not to laugh at the idea that the climate refers back to a time period over which the science of meteorology was developing rapidly, just before computers developed sufficiently to make crude climate modelling possible, to decide what temperature to be.

Is there some weather god up there thinking “ah, yes, I’ll use the 1961-1980 mean as a reference; lets flip this coin to see whether this year’s base temperature will be higher or lower. Of course man-made CO2 will then influence the temperature from that point.”

Alan the Brit doesn't seem to know or care what he's responding to and mutters something irrelevant:

December 13, 2013 at 1:54 am
The madness starts when the lies are believed, & the lies are perpetuated to the point of religious fervour, when the “Emperor’s new clothes” become the norm. Truly we live in an insane mad world! Maybe Man is destined to “die-off” sooner rather than later?

johnmarshall lives underground in a cave and thinks the world above him is turning into an ice block:

December 13, 2013 at 2:13 am
Warming world??? How about a cooling world!!!!!!!
Extreme weather is part of the chaotic weather mix, GET USED TO IT.

Rob is another one who doesn't know how to express his thoughts, or maybe he doesn't have any:

December 13, 2013 at 2:30 am
I don`t even have words for this.

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Simmons, Kevin M., Daniel Sutter, and Roger Pielke. "Normalized tornado damage in the United States: 1950–2011." Environmental Hazards 12, no. 2 (2013): 132-147.

Trenberth, Kevin E. "Framing the way to relate climate extremes to climate change." Climatic Change 115, no. 2 (2012): 283-290.

Neumayer, Eric, and Fabian Barthel. "Normalizing economic loss from natural disasters: a global analysis." Global Environmental Change 21, no. 1 (2011): 13-24.