Stillborn - a suicide note from a lost civilisation

Late edition: see below


Update: Anthony's WUWT article, which is devoid of any substance other than a baseless whine, has so far garnered 200 equally inane comments from the WUWT crowd, so I've updated the archive here in case there is anyone masochistic enough to wade through them all.

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The contrast between a new article in Rolling Stone and a blog article by Anthony Watts (archived here, updated here) could hardly be greater. The Rolling Stone article is another powerful piece on climate change, centred on the imminent release of the first volume of the next major IPCC report.

The last few days have seen a hodge podge of articles emerge from WUWT.  A couple of them were Anthony's copies and pastes of press releases about new scientific papers with little or no comment by Anthony.  Then there was the really silly stuff from really silly people like "mad, mad, mad" Steve Goreham and Benny Peiser of the GWPF and Christopher Monckton, who was recently awarded a Distinction in Childish Bluster.

Today Anthony's written practically a whole article all by himself.  If you thought his zeal might have dimmed or he might just decide to become more "scientific" after proudly announcing that he's been written up as the biggest (pseudo) science blog in the blogosphere, it hasn't.

Rolling Stone on IPCC AR5 Working Group 1: The Physical Science Basis

Jeff Goodell of Rolling Stone has written a very strong article centred on the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the IPCC.  At the end of the month, two reports will be released: the Summary for Policymakers is expected on 27 September 2013 and three days later the accepted Final Draft of the full Working Group I report, comprising the Technical Summary, 14 Chapters and three Annexes, will be made available online.

This is a long article so I've put in a break to save readers' bandwidth.  If you're on the home page, click here.

WUWT argumentum ad ignorantiam or what a bunch of ignoramice

Anthony Watts and Bob Tisdale think that there is no movement of water in the world's oceans.  Anthony seems to think the ocean warms as if it is a single solid mass.  He thinks it warms from the top down gradually and no other way.  He cannot fathom that cold water might come up to the surface from the depths or that warm water might be drawn down to lower levels in the ocean. How do I deduce this?  Because Anthony asks:

How does that heat get to the deep ocean hidey hole, down to 2000 meters, without first warming the upper 700 meters in transit? That’s some neat trick.

I'd say he's built a strawman.  Here is a chart of ocean temperatures to different depths over time:

Data source: NODC/NOAA

So for starters, the oceans' top layer is warmer than deeper layers overall.  No surprises there.  Next thing to note is that the ocean is heating up at depth as well, right down to the two kilometres deep layer as has been discussed in recent published papers, like Nuccitelli et al (2012) and Balmaseda et al (2013)

Another funny thing, not so much for Anthony Watts, we know he knows nothing.  But Bob Tisdale keeps boasting about how he knows the ocean inside out and upside down.  Yet he writes this, and Anthony quotes him:

Can well-mixed human-created greenhouse gases pick and choose between the hemispheres, warming one but not the other? One might think that’s very unlikely.

Why is that unlikely?  What rule is there that says that all over the world has to warm at the same rate all at once?  Why wouldn't oceans in particular heat or cool at different rates at different times?  The land does, why not the oceans?

The weird thing is that it's only a few hours since Anthony posted an article about how the Indian Ocean didn't warm up as quickly as others until recently, most probably because of aerosols.  Makes you wonder if he ever reads anything he posts or if he just copies and pastes without reading the stuff.

Here is a chart showing the changes over time in the vertical mean temperature of the different oceans to 2000 metres:

Data source: NODC/NOAA

And here's a chart of the ocean temperature changes over time between the northern and southern hemispheres, again to 2000 metres:

Data source: NODC/NOAA

If you go to WUWT (no need really), you'll see that Anthony has focused on only the past few years, from around 2005 and is looking at changes in ocean heat content, not temperature.  So let's consider that, except we'll look at all the available data, not just the past few years.

Data source: NODC/NOAA

There is only data to depth for the last few years, but there is a lot more data for 0-700 metres.

How does the heat move around in the ocean?  I come across terms like meridonial overturning circulation - where meridonial denotes north-south and overturning denotes surface-depth.  Water in the ocean moves around all the time.  The ocean isn't all the same temperature.  Parts are warmer than others, which is obvious to all but people like Anthony Watts and Bob Tisdale apparently.  (Have they ever wondered how sea ice forms do you think?  Have they ever been swimming in the sea or a river or a lake and noticed how the temperature can change, even at depth?)

Finally, here is one more chart, from Nuccitelli et al (2012) showing where the heat is going:

Data Source: Nuccitelli et al (2012)

A sample from WUWT denialati comments

Eustace Cranch takes 27 words to ask:

July 24, 2013 at 8:17 am  Sorry for the scream, but: again and again, WHAT IS THE MECHANISM? What told the heat to hide? In 50 words or less of plain English, please.

David Becker, another fake skeptic, doesn't query what the deniers write but says:

July 24, 2013 at 8:34 am  Just out of curiosity, why did this process (energy going into the deep ocean) not occur from 1970 to 1996? Does it just occur when the solar radiance decreases (rhetorical question.) I too, wondered to many AWG supporters how the deep ocean might warm, but the surface not. This is more pathological science from very poor scientists who have a poor grasp of basic thermodynamics.

Mark isn't aware that ocean water moves up and down as well as forward and backward and says:

July 24, 2013 at 8:48 am About the only obvious mechanism for deep water to heat up is through vulcanism.

I know Jimbo doesn't keep up with the latest data and is a denier, but he's close when he says:
July 24, 2013 at 9:30 am  Bearing in mind hiding heat > thermal expansion shouldn’t we be seeing an acceleration in the rate of sea level rise?

We would see an acceleration if the oceans were heating faster (at an increasing rate, that is, accelerating) and/or ice sheets and glaciers were melting faster. Here's a chart of sea level - yep, it's rising faster:

Data Source: U Colorado

Chad Wozniak is the ultimate in denial, he says, every chance he gets:

July 24, 2013 at 9:58 am Actually, the overall cooling began in 1938 . . . it’s been going on, net, for 75+ years now . . .

This is for Chad:

Data Sources: NASA and UK Met Office Hadley Centre

Anthony Watts and his illiterati at WUWT deny ocean acidification

Anthony Watts in referring to a post in which William Connolley at Stoat expresses frustration with the uncertainty monster Judith Curry, for her lack of understanding of basic chemistry among other things:

"Is is just me, or does professionalism and f-bombs not go together? Sheesh."

Sheesh, is right, coming from Anthony Watts.  He might frown on "f-bombs" but he's not shy when it comes to ad hominems rather than science.

Not that Anthony would recognise science when he saw it.  He ridiculously quotes a sentence from this study in PLOS One (my bold, not Anthony's):

This natural variability has prompted the suggestion that “an appropriate null hypothesis may be, until evidence is obtained to the contrary, that major biogeochemical processes in the oceans other than calcification will not be fundamentally different under future higher CO2/lower pH conditions".

I wonder does Anthony know what calcification means?  And I wonder why he didn't quote this sentence:

For all the marine habitats described above, one very important consideration is that the extreme range of environmental variability does not necessarily translate to extreme resistance to future OA. Instead, such a range of variation may mean that the organisms resident in tidal, estuarine, and upwelling regions are already operating at the limits of their physiological tolerances (a la the classic tolerance windows of Fox – see [68]). Thus, future acidification, whether it be atmospheric or from other sources, may drive the physiology of these organisms closer to the edges of their tolerance windows. When environmental change is layered upon their present-day range of environmental exposures, they may thereby be pushed to the “guardrails” of their tolerance [20], [68].

Or this one:

In contrast to more stochastic changes in pH that were observed in some sites, our coral reef locations displayed a strikingly consistent pattern of diel fluctuations over the 30-day recording period. Similar short-term pH time series with lower daily resolution [69], [70] have reported regular diel pH fluctuation correlated to changes in total alkalinity and oxygen levels. These environmental patterns of pH suggest that reef organisms may be acclimatized to consistent but moderate changes in the carbonate system. Coral reefs have been at the center of research regarding the effects of OA on marine ecosystems [71]–[73]. Along with the calcification biology of the dominant scleractinian corals and coralline algae, the biodiversity on coral reefs includes many other calcifying species that will likely be affected [74]–[77]. Across the existing datasets in tropical reef ecosystems, the biological response of calcifying species to variation in seawater chemistry is complex (see [78]) –all corals or calcifying algal species will not respond similarly, in part because these calcifying reef-builders are photo-autotrophs (or mixotrophs), with algal symbionts that complicate the physiological response of the animal to changes in seawater chemistry.

He seems to think the study was another "nothing to worry about" study.  He's wrong.

I won't bother with the dozens of ad homs in the WUWT comments.  Nor with the ignorant comments about acidification, pH and the like at WUWT (or Curry's blog).  It's very basic high school chemistry.  Or about the idiotic comments about corals and fish not being sensitive to pH.  That's very basic aquaculture that anyone who's owned a fish farm or home aquarium would dispute.  Sure, some species are more tolerant of a wider range of pH than others.  Some are very intolerant of any change beyond a narrow band.  Same with tolerance to temperature as has been widely observed in the ocean.  (And temperature can trigger or prevent breeding.)  An even bigger issue, which was brought out in the PLOS study quoted above, is the impact on the ecosystem as a whole, given the interdependencies.

Frankly, the more I read WUWT the more I see that what I snipe about them being illiterati is quite true. It would be hard to find more people gathering together who have such a disdain for knowledge as you'll find at WUWT.  Or such a large gathering of people who take so much pride in their ignorance.

Denier weirdness: Nature article and the UK Met Office

I admit to finding this a tad weird even for WUWT.  Anthony posts an excerpt from a complaint by Stephen McIntyre.

Jeff Tollefson wrote a feature article in Nature about an experimental approach to modelling of near term climate projections (decadal forecasts).  McIntyre is complaining that he didn't write about something else instead.  I think, but I'm not entirely sure, that he wanted him to write about the difference in actual Met Office near term forecasts.  That is, to compare the current one to previous ones.  Even had Tollefson been able to read McIntyre's crazy mind in advance of McIntyre himself, I'm not sure that he would have obeyed his command.

I don't know why McIntyre wanted Tollefson to write about the Met Office near term predictions instead of the these experiments.  The Met Office itself has a number of articles on the topic, which McIntyre could read if he felt inclined to learn about it.  McIntyre's articles are so full of smear and innuendo that it is often difficult to understand what his actual gripe is so I'm guessing.  This is what McIntyre wrote:

In yesterday’s post, I observed that Nature’s recent news article on Met Office decadal forecasts failed to show the most recent Met Office decadal forecast ...

Well, Steve.  For starters, the article wasn't about Met Office decadal forecasts per se.  It was about an experimental approach to making near term climate forecasts, including the differing opinions held by various modelling experts on the usefulness of the approach.  I'd say there was quite a lot the article failed to show.  I noticed it didn't show any flying elephants, or sharknadoes or star-spangled ballet shoes.  But unlike you, I'm not complaining.

The article was about recent experiments with a different approach to modelling near term forecasts.  Here is how they describe it:

To make its climate prediction, Smith's team used its standard climate model, but broke the mould by borrowing ideas from the way meteorologists forecast the weekly weather. 

Typical climate projections start some way back in the past, often well before the industrial era, in a bid to capture the average climate well enough to forecast broad patterns over the long term. Weekly weather forecasts, however, begin with the present. They make multiple simulations with slightly different initial meteorological conditions to give an array of outcomes that has some statistical validity despite the weather's inherent chaos.

Steve wasn't happy with the scope of the article.  He wanted to talk about something different.

So somehow both McIntyre and Anthony Watts have managed to morph a complaint that the journal Nature chose to publish a topic different to what McIntyre wanted into: "the UK Met Office is hypocritical" and "the Met Office hides the decline".

Talk about denier weirdness!

Somewhere in all the kerfuffle, Richard Betts responded to a question from Anthony.  Neither Anthony nor Steve liked his answer and said so.  Which gave a person for the deniers to target. The name of an individual.  Deniers find it much more satisfying to attack a named person than a faceless agency like the UK Met Office.

Here are some comments from WUWT - bear in mind, the original complaint seems to be that McIntyre didn't like the topic chosen by Nature.  It's got nothing to do with the Met Office or with Nature - it's all about Steve McIntyre.

Goodness only knows what Fred thought he was was commenting on when he says:

July 17, 2013 at 7:40 pm This just astounding. The temp records around the world are being manipulated, and climate science says nothing. Don’t they realize the risk? If the temp is dropping and they are hiding the decline the world is unprepared for the right change!

Bill H doesn't care about the subject matter, he just wants to air his fantastic conspiracy theory:

July 17, 2013 at 8:00 pm  You must realize the IPCC is part of the UN. Their primary objective is world depopulation.. (UN agenda 21) .. The lie in hiding the decline is purposeful..

A prize to anyone who ever figured out Joseph Bastardi's denierisms - he is suitably outraged at someone or something but heaven only knows what:

July 17, 2013 at 8:09 pm This is flabbergasting. Is he really serious?

Solar Cycles gets caught up in the mood and like the others, doesn't have the first clue about what the Nature article is about, what Anthony is going on about or what McIntyre is raving about:

July 18, 2013 at 12:43 am  I’m surprised that others are surprised, temp manipulation has been part and parcel of climate science for over thirty years. The real shocker is are our governments aware?

Resourceguy seems to be talking about something else altogether when he says:

July 18, 2013 at 6:42 am  This is how dictatorships and monopolies work in day to day practice.

Huh?

As for McIntyre and Watts.  They can sit back and feel smug.  They have rallied the idiots despite having said nothing that makes any sense.  All they had to do was make up a yarn out of thin air, toss out some smears and innuendos and everyone chimes in that climate science is a hoax.  It's a giant conspiracy involving the UN, the British Government, the US Government, every climate scientist in the world, every weather bureau in the world and probably every person in the world except the tin foil hat brigade on weird and wacky denier websites like McIntyre's place and WUWT.

WUWT comes right out and says "We Aren't Interested" in facts

WUWT published an article yesterday by Matt Ridley in which he writes all sorts of wrong things.  An example: he calls Bob Carter a "paleo-climatologist" when he isn't (although he has misrepresented himself as an "expert witness" on numerous occasions).  In recent years Carter has shifted away from marine geology to being a professional climate science denier, publishing mostly in the magazine "Quadrant" and on retainer to the Heartland Institute as an Expert Denier. (Quadrant is a right wing political magazine, at times indistinguishable from The Onion.)

At one point in his article, Matt Ridley wrote:

Two Greek scientists recently calculated that for 67 per cent of 181 globally distributed weather stations they examined, adjustments had raised the temperature trend, so they almost halved their estimate of the actual warming that happened in the later 20th century.

A scientist and expert on the topic, Dr Victor Venema knew to what Ridley was referring and knew that the statement was misleading.  However this is what happened on WUWT when he made a comment to direct people to find out the facts and why these scientists were wrong:

WUWT isn't interested in facts, only in disinformation.  Yes, we all knew that already.  But it's good of WUWT to remind its readers of that fact from time to time.

Readers here can get the inside story from an expert on the topic.

Disinformation piled onto disinformation

There is more to the story of course.  The Ridley article on WUWT is promoting a book by Bob Carter, which Ridley indicates is filled with disinformation, using an article by Matt Ridley that is filled with disinformation on a website that is devoted to disinformation about climate.  It is so devoted to disinformation that its owner doesn't even disguise the fact and writes bald-faced lies.  He publishes articles that are so stupid one wonders if they are satire.  And the blog owner, Anthony Watts, bans people for pointing to his double standards.

Anyone who tries to point WUWT readers to facts risks getting their comment snipped and eventually banned.  I guess when one supplements their taxpayer-funded superannuation by peddling disinformation, and then gets a free promo on a disinformation blog, then one expects to be protected by the disinformation blog owner:

Whatever Ryan said was snipped by Anthony Watts:

July 15, 2013 at 6:40 am  ...

{snip}

Dr. Carter puts his life work, name, and reputation on the line while you take pot shots from the comfort of anonymity. If you want to to make criticisms like that, you are welcome to do so, but have the courage to put your own name on on the or STFU. Feel free to be as upset as you wish – Anthony Watts

You think Bob Carter still cares about his reputation among scientists? Not on your life. He sold his soul to the disinformation brigade quite some time ago.


Hat tip to BBD in the comments on a related article.

Matt Ridley Preys on People Who are Scared of Being Scared

Is it just me or are the fake skeptics getting nuttier?  I used to think Matt Ridley was a "lukewarmer" but now he's jumped into bed with a couple of crackpots from down-under: Bob Carter and the cartoonist and science denialist John Spooner (who wrote an incoherent article I discussed some months ago).

Bob Carter is known for saying he doesn't know what is happening to the climate.  He says he prefers to be called agnostic on climate change but he's kidding you.  Bob Carter is not agnostic nor sceptical.  He's at best an ideological science denier when it comes to climate science. He's also a conspiracy nutter of the Lysenko kind.

According to Matt Ridley on WUWT, Bob Carter and John Spooner have written a book for the scaredy cats.  The article is even titled as such so the scaredy cats will know it's for them: "Abnormal extreme weather? Just another scare tactic".  It's targeted squarely at people who are looking for reassurance that climates are not changing, that extreme weather isn't happening more often.

Research suggests that the conservative brain is ultra-sensitive to fear.  It's no surprise then that the fear factor is what drives some people to reject reality and turn to charlatans like Carter, Ridley and Monckton to tell them not to worry.  There's a sucker born every minute.

Going by the Ridley piece, Carter and Spooner are most likely saying that the record heat waves, extreme floods, storms, disastrous droughts and killer wildfires in various parts of the world in the past few years are either "normal" or didn't happen.  Ridley writes:

After demolishing many other arguments for carbon taxes and climate alarm, Carter runs through recent weather events, showing that there is nothing exceptional, let alone unprecedented, about recent droughts, floods, heat waves, cyclones or changes to the Great Barrier Reef.

Carter isn't known for originality either.  One imagines he will say - there was a big flood in the 18-somethings therefore no flood can ever be considered extreme.  Tell that to the residents of Gympie, who had five floods in two years, four of those in twelve months, and two of those back to back in the space of four weeks.

A scan of the media reports from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology show that heat records, drought records and wet records continue to be broken, with very few cold records being set.  So it's not just "extreme" events that seem to be happening more it's record-breaking events.  One thing is for certain, extreme weather that wasn't "normal" last century will become "normal" this century.  Another thing, I'll pay attention to what climate scientists like Drs Lewis and Karoly find and not heed the mewings from people who feed off scaredy cats, like Bob "not a climate scientist" Carter, Matt Ridley and a conservative cartoonist.

Matt Ridley has now shifted well and truly into the anti-science denial camp.  Like Richard Tol, he's hooked up with the GWPF, a lobby group in the UK whose main purpose is to stop the world shifting to clean energy and keep the proletariat in their place.

Ridley is also losing his writing skills if the article on WUWT is anything to go by.  It comes across as a last ditch rant against global warming of the "it's not happening" kind.

Matt, have a gander at these indicators and tell us global warming is "not happening":

In case you can't tell, I have no patience for tricksters like Matt Ridley, Bob Carter and John Spooner or the fools who look to them for comfort.

Has it ever been this hot in Helsinki even once since the Big Bang?

Anthony Watts of WUWT is mocking Seth Borenstein for tweeting about "jet stream weirding", saying that it was a tad warm in Helsinki for 5 o'clock in the afternoon.  Anthony reckons it's nothing unusual.  WeatherUnderground says otherwise (it's a new record max for the date) and is on the side of Mr Borenstein.

But never mind that.  What I picked up was a classic response in the comments.  How often have you seen a fake skeptic write a response like the one below from Otter:

Ryan says:
June 26, 2013 at 9:49 am  Seth needs to get it together and start reporting on the bug respiration. Like real Scientists do! 

But seriously, do you guys think that the jet stream hasn’t been wonky for the last few years? Because the people who study it do.

Otter says:
June 26, 2013 at 9:53 am Ryan~ please demonstrate your proofs that such things have NEVER happened before in the history of this planet.

Otter's response epitomizes Anthony Watt's post beautifully.  If something has happened even once before in the 4 plus billion years of Earth's history, it's not only not a "record", it's not even extreme.

How Anthony Watts gets a bit confused about ocean heat content

Willis Eschenbach has posted an article on Anthony Watts' WUWT blog.  He's wondering this time about ocean heat and forcing.  He's done something similar to what Bob Tisdale did a little while ago and wrote about here.

Here is Willis' chart.  Willis has done some sums on ocean temperature and plotted this chart in units of watts/sq metre.  Willis calculated from scratch and may not have got the conversion ratios quite right.  I didn't check.  I do know that it's not that easy to work out the specific heat of sea water going all the way down to two kilometres deep into the ocean.

This next chart is also from Willis' spreadsheet.  He doesn't plot it or show it in his article, but it shows up in his calculations.  This time it's what he calculated as the heat accumulated in the ocean.  He did this calculation before working out the year to year differences and converting to Watts/sq metre.  In other words, it's part of the very same data he used to generate the chart above.  This one shows the cumulative effect on the ocean of the year to year changes shown in the top chart.  

This next chart is based on a chart from SkepticalScience.  What I did was take the Skeptical Science ocean heat content and added in the heat content from the latest few years from NODC/NOAA (with an estimate from ocean temperature to fill the missing year 2004) and worked out the difference in heat being added to the ocean each year.  This is the same as Willis chart shown above but using data from a different and more trusted source.  It looks like more accumulated heat than Willis' chart in part because the base is different and in part because of Willis' different calculation, but both show a large accumulation.

Lots of people fall for Willis' line and go on about how the ocean isn't really heating up etc.  What is a surprise (but probably shouldn't be) is a comment from Anthony Watts.

How Anthony Watts is tricked...

In the comments to Willis' article, Anthony Watts put up the SkS version of the above chart (which looks pretty much the same except it includes land and atmosphere as well), writing (my bold):

June 19, 2013 at 4:13 am

Hmmm, this rather puts the kibosh on this graph from the SkS zealots:
Makes me wonder how Murphy finds such a large trend in OHC, but Levitus does not find any trend in forcing.

 No, Anthony, it's Willis who says he found the "average forcing is small" and that the overall mean is "not significantly different from zero" and that only a few of the individual years are significantly different from zero.  Willis finally gets around to pointing out Anthony's error, though he argues again that "it's not statistically significant" writing:

[REPLY: Thanks, Anthony. There is a large trend in OHC, as you show in your graph, but it is not statistically significant. This is because of the high autocorrelation of the data (lag-1 autocorrelation of 0.92). As usual, SkS forgot to mention that ... w.].

I'm not about to check that out but will just observe that the standard errors quoted by NOAA are much lower than the heat content reported.  SkepticalScience has links to relevant papers, but they are behind a paywall.  It's certain that the ocean is heating up (sea levels are rising etc) just as it's certain the oceans are getting more acidic.

Small mercies.  I suppose Willis could have denied it was warming altogether or put it down to one of Bob Tisdale's magical ENSO leaps.

Addendum:

20 June 2013 3:50 pm AEST

Thanks to Dana, here is the up-to-date SkepticalScience.com chart showing how heat is accumulating on Earth:

Source: SkepticalScience.com

Read the comments below for some good insights and further information, including other references to scientific publications and data.

Will WUWT's David Archibald be right and severe cold hit Central England?

Anthony Watts of WUWT infamy favours David Archibald, who makes funny sunny predictions.  This time Archibald is asking if Central England will have a sudden drop in temperature for a bit.  He bases his surmise on "wiggle matching" with the temperature drop in 1740.  The Archibald post oddly enough comes straight after a post by a physicist denier, rbgatduke, who slammed Christy and Monckton for what he saw as their abuse of statistics and charting.

Anyway, I thought I'd do some pattern matching of my own to see how well that would have worked for David Archibald in the past.  I've superimposed the bit around 1740 onto what look like the closest matches later on.  Same as David Archibald did only he just did it for the current period.

Here's the result - you'll probably have to click on the animated gif chart to see the larger version.

Source: Adapted from UK Met - Hadley Centre

So there was a dip in the late 1879, but not as great as the 1740 drop, other than that nothing.  Like David Archibald says, we'll have to wait and see.  With the jet stream the way it is, climate change and the weather in the UK being a bit weird lately, I suppose anything could happen.


There is a paper on the 1740 event written by Dr Phil Jones but I can't find a full copy.  Here is another paper by Dr Jones (2008) that touches on the subject and is a good read in its own right; and a myth-buster.

Update:

Here's an animated chart for anonymous in the comments, to put the weather in the UK during March 2013 and December 2010 into context of the whole world.  Winter still happens, it's just that when taken over the whole world, the earth's land and sea surfaces are considerably warmer than they used to be early last century.  There are still "cold" records being set, but not nearly as many as "hot" records.

Data source: NASA

Anthony Watts attacks Christy, Spencer and Monckton

How Anthony Watts and rgbatduke attempt to expose the chicanery of Christy, Spencer and Monckton

Anthony Watts puts up an article slamming the chart of Roy Spencer and John Christie and Christopher Monckton's charts all in a few words.  All his commenters agree they are nonsense.  They've run out of arguments against "warmists" so now they are attacking each other.  Good to see.

Here's the slam from rgbatduke:

This is reflected in the graphs Monckton publishes above (Sou: see below), where the AR5 trend line is the average over all of these models and in spite of the number of contributors the variance of the models is huge. It is also clearly evident if one publishes a “spaghetti graph” of the individual model projections (as Roy Spencer recently did in another thread) — it looks like the frayed end of a rope, not like a coherent spread around some physics supported result.

Note the implicit swindle in this graph (Sou: he is referring to Monckton's chart as shown below) — by forming a mean and standard deviation over model projections and then using the mean as a “most likely” projection and the variance as representative of the range of the error, one (Sou: ie Monckton) is treating the differences between the models as if they are uncorrelated random variates causing >deviation around a true mean!.

Say what?

I kind of like they way rgbatduke wishes climate behaved the way a single particle behaves in a laboratory-controlled physics experiment.  If only.  (By the way, I'm not twisting this in any way.  rgbatduke is referring directly to the workings of Christy, Spencer and Monckton.  He may think he's criticising the IPCC but they are not IPCC charts.  It's not the IPCC that used the data that way.  It's only Christy, Spencer and Monckton who did the charts and calculations in the way they did.)

The rest of his article reads as if it's written by a person (maybe a physicist) who doesn't know anything about climate science.  rgbatduke says as much, admitting his "comparative ignorance".  It comes across as the logical fallacy of personal incredulity.


Anyway, here are some reactions:

Ian W says:
June 18, 2013 at 5:24 pm  An excellent post – it would be assisted if it had Viscount Monckton’s and Roy Spencer’s graphs displayed with references.

mark says:
June 18, 2013 at 5:43 pm damn. just damn.

Chuck Nolan says:
June 18, 2013 at 6:02 pm I believe you’re correct. I’m not smart enough to know if what you are saying is true, but I like your logic.  Posting this on WUWT tells me you are not afraid of critique. Everyone knows nobody gets away with bad science or math here.

Abe says:
June 18, 2013 at 6:04 pm WINNER!!!!!  The vast majority of what you said went WAY over my head, but the notion of averaging models for stats as if they were actual data being totally wrong I totally agree.

Rob Ricket says:
June 18, 2013 at 8:03 pm  What a brilliant application of scientific logic in exposing the futility of attempting to prognosticate the future with inadequate tools. It takes a measure of moral courage to expose fellow academics as morally bankrupt infants bumbling about in a dank universe of deception. Bravo!

Jeef says:
June 18, 2013 at 7:32 pm  That. Is. Brilliant.  Thank you.

Only a couple of people seemed to understand what rgbatduke wrote.  

Once again, Nick Stokes asks some pertinent questions (my bold):
June 18, 2013 at 6:22 pm  As I said on the other thread, what is lacking here is a proper reference. Who does this? Where? “Whoever it was that assembled the graph” is actually Lord Monckton. But I don’t think even that graph has most of these sins, and certainly the AR5 graph cited with it does not. Where in the AR5 do they make use of ‘the variance and mean of the “ensemble” of models’?

Monckton pops in and thanks Nick Stokes for being gracious and coming to his defense.  

No, that's not what he does.  Monckton calls Nick Stokes a liar and a troll and and then goes on to say he did exactly what Nick Stokes and rgbatduke said he did. He writes: "in my own graph I merely represented the interval of projections encompassed by the spaghetti graph and added a line to represent the IPCC’s central projection."  That's precisely what rgbatduke was referring to when he originally wrote in reference to Monckton's chart, of the:

"implicit swindle in this graph — by forming a mean and standard deviation over model projections and then using the mean as a “most likely” projection and the variance as representative of the range of the error, one is treating the differences between the models as if they are uncorrelated random variates causing >deviation around a true mean!"

Monckton somehow "forgets" to mention the variance he shows on his chart (see below).

Monckton also admits to using a confidential draft AR5 chart, which if he was an expert reviewer he pledged to keep confidential.  The AR5 chart itself has errors AFAIK and the public version will no doubt be different.

Monckton shows his lack of moral fibre and his lack of grace.  His behaviour shows he is not an upright citizen, an honest man of his word or a gentleman.  Monckton is a bombastic ignorant fool who has lost his entertainment value.  I've noticed that some people who are in the wrong are incapable of admitting it, and have a tendency to get very aggro.  As if they think it will fool anyone but other fools.  Monckton also has a very compartmentalised brain. It holds his lies and truths in different compartments but he can spout either or both at the same time, usually mixed with his misplaced self-righteous venom.

A final mention to Tsk Tsk who observes the strawman (my bold):

June 18, 2013 at 7:01 pm  Brown raises a potentially valid point about the statistical analysis of the ensemble, but his carbon atom comparison risks venturing into strawman territory. If he’s claiming that much of the variance amongst the models is driven by the actual sophistication of the physics that each incorporates, then he should provide a bit more evidence to support that conclusion.

Here are the charts prepared by Christy, Spencer and Monckton that so offended rgbatduke, all the WUWT deniers and Anthony Watts, but which they are only now saying so.

Spencer and Christy's Spaghetti

Monckton's Swindle

Here are my previous articles on:

• Spencer and Christy's exercise
• Monckton's diatribe

Here is a figure from the 2007 IPCC report - Summary for Policy Makers. The left panel is emission scenarios, the right panel shows multi-model means of surface temperature for different scenarios. The bars at the right show the "best estimate" surface temperature and likely range for 2090-2099.  The best estimate is not the same as the model means you'll notice. Click to enlarge.

Figure SPM.5. Left Panel: Global GHG emissions (in GtCO2-eq) in the absence of climate policies: six illustrative SRES marker scenarios (coloured lines) and the 80th percentile range of recent scenarios published since SRES (post-SRES) (gray shaded area). Dashed lines show the full range of post-SRES scenarios. The emissions include CO2, CH4, N2O and F-gases. Right Panel: Solid lines are multi-model global averages of surface warming for scenarios A2, A1B and B1, shown as continuations of the 20th-century simulations. These projections also take into account emissions of short-lived GHGs and aerosols. The pink line is not a scenario, but is for Atmosphere-Ocean General Circulation Model (AOGCM) simulations where atmospheric concentrations are held constant at year 2000 values. The bars at the right of the figure indicate the best estimate (solid line within each bar) and the likely range assessed for the six SRES marker scenarios at 2090-2099. All temperatures are relative to the period 1980-1999. {Figures 3.1 and 3.2}

Shhh - there's too much noise and I can't hear the signal - or Ben Santer's 17 years

There's an eccentric English chap called Christopher Monckton of Brenchley who has Anthony Watts of WUWT in thrall. Barry Bickmore can fill you in on this vexatious Viscount.

Monckton is claiming that there 'hasn't been any significant warming for seventeen years and four months'.

That's right.  I kid you not!  He has done his sums and it's seventeen years and four months. Oh and I guess its seventeen years, four months, one day, 13 hours and 25 seconds by now.

It's good to know that he's finally settled on a number.  His previous lucky dips were for 16, 17, 18, 19 and 23 years (all in the one letter); then he went for "approaching two decades"; then just last month it was 18 years.

Apparently Monckton is trying to put one over the 8% Dismissives over at WUWT, an anti-science blog.  I don't know why he bothers.  The clowns over there already have their heads stuffed full of insects, underwater volcanoes, exploding vegetation, ice ages peeping around corners, lack of ENSOs, leaping El Ninos and scientific dogs.  I doubt there is room in their heads for another denier meme.  Still, I suppose Anthony has to fill up that white space with nonsense several times a day to keep his crowd entertained.

The way I see it, Anthony Watts had a whole heap more than usual of Friday Funnies on WUWT this week.  This article by Monckton was just one of many.  Anthony chose to make Monckton's article a "sticky".  When you're down on your luck you take what you can get.  And Anthony hasn't been having much luck at all lately.

The basis of Monckton's article was ostensibly Santer et al (2011), so I thought I'd write some of what that research found.

Ben Santer and colleagues, the signal and seventeen years of noise and counting

The Santer paper is titled: Separating signal and noise in atmospheric temperature changes: The importance of timescale.

First up they let us know that they are comparing satellite estimates of lower troposphere with CMIP3 model simulations.  What they find, unsurprisingly, is that the signal to noise ratio increases the longer the time period.  From the abstract:

...Because of the pronounced effect of interannual noise on decadal trends, a multi-model ensemble of anthropogenically-forced simulations displays many 10-year periods with little warming. A single decade of observational TLT data (temperature of the lower troposphere) is therefore inadequate for identifying a slowly evolving anthropogenic warming signal. Our results show that temperature records of at least 17 years in length are required for identifying human effects on global-mean tropospheric temperature.

In the Discussion and Conclusions section, the authors elaborate further.  Here are some excerpts (my bold):

Efforts to apply rigorous statistical methods to the problem of identifying human effects on climate commenced over 30 years ago [Hasselmann, 1979]. At the inception of this endeavor, it was recognized that any human-caused climate change signal is embedded in the noise of natural climate variability, and that separation of human and natural influences requires information on signal and noise properties over a range of timescales....

...Our estimated signal-to-noise (S/N) ratios for global-scale TLT changes were less than 1.0 on the 10-year timescale (Figure 6c). On the 32-year timescale, however, S/N exceeded 3.9 in all three observational TLT data sets. The latter result shows that natural internal variability, as simulated by current climate models, is a highly unlikely explanation for the observed lower tropospheric warming over the satellite era (Figure 6d). Comparisons between simulated and observed low-frequency TLT variability suggest that our estimates of S/N ratios on 5–20 year timescales are conservative (Figures 9 and 10). The strong timescale dependence of S/N ratios arises primarily because of the large decrease in noise amplitude as the period used for trend fitting increases (Figure 6b)....

... In summary, because of the effects of natural internal climate variability, we do not expect each year to be inexorably warmer than the preceding year, or each decade to be warmer than the last decade, even in the presence of strong anthropogenic forcing of the climate system. The clear message from our signal-to-noise analysis is that multi-decadal records are required for identifying human effects on tropospheric temperature. Minimal warming over a single decade does not disprove the existence of a slowly-evolving anthropogenic warming signal.

What I understand from that research is that:

• the longer the time period the more the signal emerges from the noise
• multi-decadal records are needed, the more the better
• it's important to not introduce noise unnecessarily.

How did Monckton fare against these findings?  First, Monckton misrepresented what Santer said.  Santer et al wrote that at least seventeen years and the longer the better to extract the signal from the noise:

Our results show that temperature records of at least 17 years in length are required for identifying human effects on global-mean tropospheric temperature....

...The clear message from our signal-to-noise analysis is that multi-decadal records are required for identifying human effects on tropospheric temperature. Minimal warming over a single decade does not disprove the existence of a slowly-evolving anthropogenic warming signal.

"At least seventeen years are required", and "multi-decadal records are required". Compare that to this, from Monckton:

However, as Anthony explained yesterday, the stasis goes back farther than that. He says we shall soon be approaching Dr. Ben Santer’s 17-year test: if there is no warming for 17 years, the models are wrong.

No, Christopher, that's not what Dr Santer and his colleagues found.  Santer didn't write about 'models being wrong'.  He was pointing out that the longer the better.  Even in the press reports this is what was written:

In order to separate human-caused global warming from the "noise" of purely natural climate fluctuations, temperature records must be at least 17 years long, according to climate scientists.

Look we're used to Monckton making up stuff.  We don't have to just lay down and take it though.  

Let's move along.  What else did he do wrong?  

For one thing, he plotted temperature by month, not annually.  What he hoped to achieve I don't know.  Nor do I know if his "results" would have been any different.  But what I do know is that a monthly plot exaggerates the noise and hides the multi-decadal signal.  Why do you think Spencer always provides monthly plots?  It's so that every so often he can gig up the crowd by claiming a drop in temperature.  Yes, from the previous month! Even though it's well above the temperatures of the eighties and nineties.

What else did Monckton do wrong?  For another thing, Monckton misrepresented his chart as an IPCC chart, which it most certainly isn't.  Heck, he even put the name of his foundation on the chart.  And the IPCC doesn't do sloppy, not like Monckton.  Here's one of his charts.  I've animated his "brand" and added an arrow:

As if you couldn't tell anyway.  He's presenting the chart as a monthly chart, stuck some lines on it that he claims are IPCC "backcasted projections", added some dodgy numbers in the left hand corner and put a reference to an IPCC AR5 figure, when AR5 hasn't even been released yet.

Monckton describes it as follows - see if you can understand what he writes. It's not easy:

The IPCC’s forthcoming Fifth Assessment Report backcasts the interval of 34 models’ global warming projections to 2005, since when the world should have been warming at a rate equivalent to 2.33 Cº/century. Instead, it has been cooling at a rate equivalent to a statistically-insignificant 0.87 Cº/century:

I suppose he was right about one thing.  Any "cooling" he might have been able to fiddle is not going to be statistically significant.

On the other matters, since the IPCC's "forthcoming" Fifth Assessment Report is still "forthcoming", neither Monckton nor I would be in a position to say whether it will include any charts that hindcast or backcast or project.  He may have access to the previous draft, but that's a long way from a final version.

What is obvious is that Monckton hasn't the slightest clue about models or climate.  I mean in his second chart as shown above, he's looking at only eight years for heavens sake.  Eight years isn't multi-decadal.  Does he expect surface temperature to go in a straight line somewhere?

Let's do multi-decadal using the same temperature series, HadCRUT4.  It doesn't look anything like what Monckton drew.  You can check for yourself here.

Source: HadCRUT4

I've marked both 1995 (seventeen years of data) and 1996 (sixteen years of data) for what it's worth.  But you don't have to stop at 1995 or 1996.  You can see the trend goes back a lot further than that.  The world is getting hotter.

It's not just the land and sea surface that's warming

I didn't see anyone ask Monckton to explain all the other signs that the earth is warming, but there were a lot of comments so I might have missed it.

Recommended reading

For a different takes on global temperature trends, here are some papers and blogs to check out:

• James Hansen, Makiko Satoa and Reto Ruedy: 2012: Perception of climate change. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., 109, 14726-14727, E2415-E2423, doi:10.1073/pnas.1205276109.
• Grant Foster and Stefan Rahmstorf (2011): Global temperature evolution 1979–2010, Environ. Res. Lett. 6 (October-December 2011) 044022, doi:10.1088/1748-9326/6/4/044022
• Nick Stokes at Moyhu has some pretty charts as well as some interactive charts for you to play with.
• Tamino's blog - with lots of articles and statistical analysis of trends
• and more in the scientific literature.

The comments at WUWT had a lot of the usual bowing and scraping to the potty peer.  There was some fun to be had though.  There was one guy called rgbatduke (yes, I read ratbag too, then came to realise it's his initials and he teaches at Duke - which leads us to another play on words).  People were calling him Professor Brown but he isn't a climate researcher.  (I don't think he does much research at all.  He teaches physics I believe.)

Anyway the rgbatduke got stuck right into the analysis, with a very strongly worded missive on how you can't do this, that and the other thing and it's all a mess and so on and so forth.  It took up a few screens so I'll only post one bit from somewhere around the middle of his rant.  rgbatduke says:

June 13, 2013 at 7:20 am  ...Note the implicit swindle in this graph — by forming a mean and standard deviation over model projections and then using the mean as a “most likely” projection and the variance as representative of the range of the error, one is treating the differences between the models as if they are uncorrelated random variates causing >deviation around a true mean!.

Say what?

Monckton didn't seem to object to being called a swindler and we'll see why shortly.  Nick popped in quite some time later and recognised rgbatduke had made an erroneous assumption.  Nick figured out that rgbatduke had the wrong end of the stick and thought the graph was one of the IPCC's.  rgbatduke is obviously not au fait with IPCC reports or he would have twigged at once that the charts were inventions of the potty peer himself.

The thread continued with mostly mindless denialist stuff, occasionally interspersed with Nick's astute comments and some general stirring by Mosher.  As usual, Nick was unflappable, remaining calm and polite and sticking to the facts.  Not like Monckton, who was apoplectic flinging wild accusations left, right and centre.  He called Nick a liar (and a Mr instead of Dr, while calling rgbatduke Professor - unsubtle!).  Monckton even wanted Nick to be banned from WUWT.  Then Anthony chimed in to tell Nick, the only cool head in the place, to keep it cool; to behave himself, he was upsetting the potty peer and denier rgbatduke as well as everyone else.  (On WUWT the unwritten policy is that as long as you deny science you can say what you like.  If you write sensible stuff you're under tight watch and banned if enough people flame you.)

It's a madhouse at WUWT.

As a reward for reading through to the end, here's a little bit of CO2 for your exploding plants.

More denier weirdness: Ed Hoskins Magic Numbers

Anthony Watts is scraping the bottom of the barrel again on WUWT.  He only has a couple of posts up so far today.  In one he is expressing shock horror at a couple of tweets between scientists.  Anthony feigns surprise that Michael Mann doesn't tolerate disinformation-spewing trolls like BishopHill*.  What does he expect?  That anyone other than snark bloggers and the denialiti would pay them any mind?

Ed Hoskins' magic numbers

In another he publishes an incomprehensible article by Ed Hoskins, who previously wrote that we are on the verge of an ice age.

The gist of Ed's argument is that plants love CO2 so we should give them more.  He seems to be advocating a rise in CO2 up to 1000 ppm or more.  I can't follow his arithmetic at all.  I have no idea what he is doing with the numbers.  So let's just look at the effect a rise to 1000 ppm of CO2 may have. (Click image to enlarge)

Source: NRC Report: Climate Stabilization Targets

If we were to continue to increase emissions at an exponential rate and achieve 1000 ppm by 2100 the average global surface temperature could get up past four degrees even this century.

Just think how that might affect extremes.  Temperate Melbourne has already had temperatures of 47 degrees.  Even cold Hobart has hit more than 42 degrees.  Imagine if it got to 55 degrees, or 60 degrees!

It could happen, but think of this...

Well I'm not even sure it could happen.  The reason I have some doubts is because if we head towards that, then some time on or shortly after the middle of the century, the weather would be such that societies would become dysfunctional and economic activity would wind down enormously, therefore burning fossil fuels would be reduced significantly.  Agricultural production would all but cease in many countries.  Water supplies would be made unreliable by unpredictable excessive downpours and droughts.  Millions, maybe billions would have died from intolerable heat, storms, floods, famine and disease.  Transport and communications infrastructure would be broken beyond repair. There would be civil wars and wars between nations that still had the wherewithall to muster an armed force.  There would be epidemics and pandemics of disease.  Pests would proliferate and spread.

Plants wouldn't be suffering from lack of CO2.  They'd be suffering from lack of water or too much of it.  They'd be suffering from heat stress - the ones that were still able to germinate and send up shoots.

Ed's in cloud cuckoo land - in fact winter is warming faster than summer

People like Ed Hoskins live in cloud cuckoo land.  At the same time as he is talking about a rise in temperature he is writing that:

With a quietening sun, changing ocean circulation patterns and the present evidence of much colder winters in the Northern Hemisphere over the past 5 years, that cooling could already be upon us. The cooling climate could well last for many decades or even centuries.

The winters of the last year or two might have seemed colder and some cold records might have been broken even.  But the coldest of them was still hotter than the 1951-80 average by 0.5 degrees Celsius.  In 2007 the northern hemisphere had the hottest winter on record so far at a whopping 1.1 degrees hotter than the 1951-1980 average.

I notice that Ed doesn't mention northern hemisphere summers.  Let's see why that might be.  Here is an animation of northern hemisphere winter and summer temperatures and the global surface temperatures. (Click to enlarge.)

Source: NASA

Whoops!  The northern hemisphere summer temperatures are shooting way up!  Whoops again - northern hemisphere winters are getting warmer faster than summers! And globally the earth just keeps on getting hotter and hotter.

Ed does some weird arithmetic to "prove" that cutting carbon emissions won't cut carbon emissions.  The fact is that if we replace fossil fuel-based energy with renewable energy we still have a chance of limiting the rise to two degrees, which will be bad enough.  But we have to get a move on.

Ed Hoskins' fake "experts"

I also see that in his "paper" Ed Hoskins has referred to David Archibald as if he is a reputable sceptic.  David's prediction is that before seven years is out, earth will get colder than it was in the Little Ice Age!

And Anthony wonders why climate scientists don't bother 'debating' fake sceptics and disinformation propagandists!

Anthony Watts' pet slayers

In the comments, Anthony's pet dragon slayer has backed off a bit from saying the greenhouse effect isn't real, but still manages to do so.  dbstealey cuts and pastes from his other identical comments:

June 8, 2013 at 11:40 am  Not the ‘root cause’? There is no scientific evidence that CO2 is any cause of global warming.

Of course it is possible that CO2 causes some minuscule warming. However, there is no verifiable and testable supporting evidence that this is so. There are empirical observations showing that CO2 levels are a direct response to changing temperatures. But there are NO such measurements showing that rising CO2 is the cause of rising global temperatures. None.
Within the Scientific Method, the only conclusion to be reached is that CO2 does not matter regarding global temperatures. If that is wrong, anyone is free to post their empirical observations right here, showing that ∆CO2 in fact causes ∆T.

This challenge has been on offer for months. But so far — no takers.

Janice Moore also asks for "proof" and says:

June 8, 2013 at 4:30 pm  “CO2 makes it harder for the sun’s heat energy to leave the planet … .” [Jai @ 11:42 AM today]

Prove it.

Not only is there ample evidence in the scientific literature, David and Janice, but since 1988 scientists have volunteered their time to pull this information together and provide comprehensive reports.

For a shorter readable account of how the greenhouse effect works, look no further than this booklet from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.

Make up your mind, Anthony Watts

As Ryan notes, just last week WUWT was telling everyone that it wasn't people causing the rise in CO2, it was insects.  Anthony Watts can't get his story straight.  And he wonders why real scientists won't bother to pass the time of day with him.

* I see in that Twitter conversation poor old dithering doddering Anthony Watts is still vainly protesting Marcott et al. ROTFL