If you've enjoyed exploring the shockingly bad science of the Ivory-bill fiasco, you may also enjoy exploring the details of the current global warming debate.
If you're interested, please take a very careful look at this piece (PDF) by Christopher Monckton.
If you'd like to dispute one or more of Monckton's specific points in the comment section, please feel free. I do ask that you humor me by actually reading Monckton's entire piece.
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here is another interesting web site that goes even further into the evidence that any warming seen in the last 150 years is mostly natural. There is a chance that a small amount is human induced...maybe .25F!!!
check out:
http://community.myfoxphilly.com/blogs/
David_Aldrich/2007/01/08/Global_Warming_A_MultiSided_Argument
Alright let's assume there is no global warming (or no global warming due to humans). Is it still such a bad idea to work on energy solutions that do not pollute? Aren't there other compelling reasons to develop safe, renewal, and clean energy sources. Isn't it just better economically for your refrigerator to do the best job it can using the least amount of energy? How are we worse off if we all drive hybrids? Economies of scale will drive the cost down. Isn't it better to not lose the tropical rainforest regardless of it's ability to absorb carbon?
To bring it back to the IBWO, if the consensus of our most prominent ornithologists is that the Luneau bird is a PIWO, then why is it not acceptable when the consensus of climate scientist says that global warming IS going on?
Thanks for the comment, ibwo_agnostic, but I ask that you tightly focus your thinking on the specific points made in the Monckton piece. I think all of us here basically agree that things like reducing pollution, working on alternative energy sources, saving energy, and saving the tropical rainforests are obviously Good Things. You shouldn't have to use bad science to sell them to the public.
If you listen to the mainstream press, you might think there is a scientific consensus that humans are causing catastrophic global warming. It's not true.
Humans appear to have no way out of their reproduction and consumption frenzy that will cover the earth and use all of its resources. The global warming "debate" is making some self-serving politicians and self-indulgent consumers think about their relationship to the "natural" world and there is something positive in that.
But I agree with ibwo agnostic. We would not say there is a possibility that the IBWO lives as long as there are people who hold out hope. At some point there is a need to say "This is what we know now. We may be proved wrong as more evidence is gathered but we would be foolish to not draw certain conclusions based on the current evidence".
Ok I'll take the bait here.
Overall, the paper reads more like a press release with a series of talking points than like a scientific document. There are no references at all, and many allusions to unnamed sources. Where claims are made that data do not support the conclusions, or alternative data are presented, the sources of these data are not given.
Point by point:
Reduction in estimated magnitude of effects. I see nothing contradictory about concluding a higher confidence of a somewhat smaller effect, based on 5 years additional research and data. This is a refinement of earlier estimates, not a contradiction of them.
Global temps are not rising, sea level is rising too slowly, methane concentrations are falling: Data? Time frame? Without clarification these claims are meaningless. Even if these data are from the IPCC report they should be cited.
Temporal separation between release of summary and full report: Not unusual.
2006 no warmer than 2001: comparison of individual years is meaningless when discussing long-term trends. Long-term anthropogenic climate change would be expected to be superimposed on other variability, long- and short-term, from natural and stochastic causes. Year-to-year variability from other causes masks long-term trends when looked at over short time scales (such as only 5 years).
Unnamed sources: discard out of hand.
Downward revision of radiative forcings: what is wrong with revising earlier estimate based on new research? Estimates are revised all the time, it is part of their nature.
90% confidence interval: Since this confidence interval is stated clearly and has been included in many of the mass media reports, I hardly see how there is anything misleading about it.
Slight downward revision of temperature increase estimate: See above.
1940 to 1975 temperatures fell in spite of rising CO2: Long-term trend does not preclude shorter-term variation superimposed. And which temperature trends are referenced here? Global? Regional? Or is it just a single year comparison of 1940 to 1975? Has warming since 1975 more than cancelled out cooling 1940-1975? Statements such as this are vague and easily used to mislead and misrepresent, especially when the data they are based on are not represented. The figures may all be in the IPCC report, but if so they shoud be cited by page and figure or table number.
"Demographers say:" Which demographers? All of them? I doubt it. Reference?
Cooling of oceans since 2003: Long-term models are not designed to predict short-term changes, comparison of a trend of only a few years is meaningless and misleading.
Failure to accurately predict last 5 years of methane trend: See above about short-term comparisons.
Failure to predict El Niño: The ENSO cycle doesn't submit to such detailed short-term predictions by any model; this is completely irrelevent to assessment of long-term climate change.
The remainder of the text is supposition and opinion that has no relevence to evaluation of the actual scientific data concerning anthropogenic climate change.
The point-by-point rebuttals that finish the article are repetitions of the same logical errors as above: Selective data, arbitrary comparisons, and large numbers of "factual" statements with no references to support them.
Grade assigned if this were an undergraduate research paper: F. No citations, inappropriate comparisons, heresay and rumor, vague and generalized statements without supporting data or references.
"...vague and generalized statements without supporting data or references."
I'd like to sincerely thank you for taking the time to actually read Monckton's piece! Note that this particular piece is not a formal paper; it's only a first, "fast analysis" that was put out very soon after the latest IPCC report was publicly released.
If you want some more formal Monckton analysis complete with lots of supporting data and references, please check out the Monckton links here .
Who is Monckton, and why should we believe him when a throng of other scientists take a very different view? Should we treat him any differently than CLO, when a throng of scientists (and birders) take a very different view from CLO's interpretation of data? Help me...I'm trying to find some consistency here.
"Who is Monckton"
I size him up as a very smart fellow with a gift for independent thinking. He's got a throng of scientists on his side. (An article about one of them is here .
If you have any interest in a subject with opposing throngs like this, I think you should take the time to personally examine the detailed arguments made by each throng.
Okay, for one specific point:
In his "Summary of the summary" Monkton says "Temperatures stopped rising in 2001".
If that were the case then 2002-2005 could not be among the five warmest years since the 1890s. According to NASA those four years and 1998 make up the five warmest years. 2006 was apparently the sixth warmest globally and the warmest ever for the U..s.
Monkton says "Temperatures stopped rising in 2001".
Thanks for actually addressing a specific point from Monckton's piece!
Monckton was writing about global temperature above, and he is correct. Here's a more detailed snippet from his piece:
"Figures from the US National Climate Data Center show 2006 as about 0.03 degrees Celsius warmer worldwide than 2001. Since that is within the range of measurement error, global temperature has not risen in a statistically significant sense since the UN’s last report in 2001."
Please check out the blog post here , which makes a similar point using World Meteorological Organization data.
In the years since 1998, real-world global temperatures have stubbornly refused to rise as predicted by the IPCC's models, which has to be the source of great embarrassment to them.
As someone who was around when Silent Spring ( I believed it ) and The Population Bomb ( I fell for that one, too, and helped organize the first "Earth Day" at Iowa State where Erlich gave the keynote address ) were published, I find the following argument about "Global Warming" hysteria to be very compelling:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/02/a_necessary_apocalypse.html
The false and misleading nature of Monkton's claims about recent global temperature trends is demonstrated by the following figure, which clearly shows both the longer-term trends and the significant year-to-year variation:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/2005/ann/global-blended-temp-pg.gif
Nothing at all is revealed by looking at time periods of 5 years or so. Claims based on short-term comparisons are irrelevent.
Appreciate the discussion, Tom.
Monkton says:
"Ice mass in Greenland and Antarctica (95% of the world’s ice) has grown in the past 30 years, compensating for
loss of mountain ice."
I can find no basis for this statement and would appreciate your posting one if you can. If you do a Google on "greenland melt cires" (no quotes used in the search) the first hit discusses the finding that the Greenland ice underwent a maximum melt in 2005. I would be surprised if mass was increasing under these circumstances (given the annual trend included on that site).
If Monkton publishes his sources this would be easier, which does not make him wrong but does help explain why he is treated the way he is on realclimate.org
Tom, in response to Monkton's statement about 21st century global temperatures you provide a link that focuses on post-1998 global temperatures. The link makes a great deal out of 2006 being "colder" than 2002-2005 ignoring the high temperatures in those years(among the top warmest five years on record). The same site has graphs showing that world temps have gotten "cooler" since 1998, the warmest year on record.
If you think Monkton is correct in saying temperatures haven't risen since 2001 (because the temps fall into the range of error) then you should also not cite people who say temps are getting "colder" over the same period - as in the link you provide.
You quote Monkton and say "global temperature has not risen in a statistically significant sense since the UN’s last report in 2001" and then mention that the lack of an increase goes against the U.N. model which should bring embarrassment to the creators of the model.
You and most people who read this blog know that there are few linear responses that do not show variation. This is why the longer the time series the better the determination of the importance of explanatory variables and the output of the model. I would be amazed if every year was warmer than the previous one and it is bad enough that so many of the warmest years on record include recent years.
But I think that the important point is that Monkton and the link you provide are cherry-picking short-term trends in a discussion that focuses on the much longer term. Global temperatures in 2005 were about 1.36 degrees Fahrenheit (0.75 Celsius) above the average between 1950 and 1980, according to the Goddard analysis.
I, for one, hope that annual global temperatures start to drop - and in a statistically significant way. There likely is a very self-important climate modeler who is gleeful when his or her "warming model" proves to be correct but as you know and this blog proves, academia can breed that sort of irrational behavior.
But I appreciate the dialog and applaud your efforts to question the conventional wisdom.
"If Monkton publishes his sources this would be easier..."
Monckton provides many sources in the document here (PDF). Some text on pages 18 and 19 may be helpful for your particular question about ice mass.
Followed a Chylek link to CO2 Science and even they (after discussing the literature on what is happening in Greenland) say:
"we can only conclude that to truly know what is happening to the Greenland Ice Sheet - and to know why it is happening - will require much more work on the subject than has been conducted to date."
Which would not appear to support Monkton claiming that the Greenland ice mass has been increasing for 30 years or compensating for glacier loss. Which makes one wonder why he made that claim.
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