Category Archives: I wouldn't have seen it if I didn't believe it

NCAR’s missing heat – they could not find it any-where

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“NCAR’s missing heat – they could not find it any-where“. Anthony Watts gives us a particularly painful bit of doggerel as his insight into an National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) article on global energy flows:

The heat is gone, oh where, oh where?
Maybe in the oceans?
Maybe in the air?
It’s just not there.
They could not find it any-where.

“Missing” heat may affect future climate change discusses how the measured energy flows are inadequately tracking where that heat is being stored.

Either the satellite observations are incorrect, says Trenberth, or, more likely, large amounts of heat are penetrating to regions that are not adequately measured, such as the deepest parts of the oceans. Compounding the problem, Earth’s surface temperatures have largely leveled off in recent years. Yet melting glaciers and Arctic sea ice, along with rising sea levels, indicate that heat is continuing to have profound effects on the planet.

NCAR Global Net Energy Budget

Satellite measurements vs measured Ocean heat content. NCAR.

For Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. this is an opportunity to declare that “Thus, a large amount heat (measured as Joules) does not appear to be stored anywhere; it just is not there.” Therefore, of course, there is NO GLOBAL WARMING. Except for all the other evidence.

Funny how every rational discussion of the need to improve climate change measurement is to the Denialists proof that the conventional understanding of Global Warming processes are FALSE, while every example of unsupported Denialist arm-waving is blindly accepted.

Oxburgh’s 5 page Climategate book report gets a failing grade

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“Oxburgh’s 5 page Climategate book report gets a failing grade“. Oh, here’s a shocker. Anthony Watts tells us that the latest report on Climategate, by the Oxburgh Panel, is worthless. A whitewash!!!!

The Global Warming Policy Foundation, the denialist operation that is home to such notables as Ian Pilmer and Nigel Lawson, call it “Another Unsatisfactory Rushed Job“.

Steven McIntyre is still fixated on a certain word, he declares “Oxburgh’s Trick to Hide the Trick”.

Could it be because the report exonerates the Climate Research Unit and Dr. Phil Jones (emphasis mine)?

We saw no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit and had it been there we believe that it is likely that we would have detected it.  Rather we found a small group of dedicated if slightly disorganised researchers who were ill-prepared for being the focus of public attention. As with many small research groups their internal procedures were rather informal.

Or because of how they describe the assaults of denialists like Steven McIntyre (emphasis mine)?

We have not exhaustively reviewed the external criticism of the dendroclimatological work, but it seems that some of these criticisms show a rather selective and uncharitable approach to information made available by CRU.  They seem also to reflect a lack of awareness of the ongoing and dynamic nature of chronologies, and of the difficult circumstances under which university research is sometimes conducted.

2012-07-19 Update: Norfolk police have called off their investigation for procedural reasons, but state:

“However, as a result of our inquiries, we can say that the data breach was the result of a sophisticated and carefully orchestrated attack on the CRU’s data files, carried out remotely via the internet. The offenders used methods common in unlawful internet activity to obstruct inquiries. There is no evidence to suggest that anyone working at or associated with the University of East Anglia was involved in the crime.”

Response to Dr. Meier’s answer #9 – coin flips in the context of climate modeling

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“Response to Dr. Meier’s answer #9 – coin flips in the context of climate modeling“. Steven Goddard finds fault with Dr. Walt Meier’s example of coin flipping as an analogy for long-term prediction.

We know that weather models are very accurate for about three days, and then quickly break down due to chaos. There is little reason to believe that climate models will do any better through successive iterations.

His proof? Some seasonal weather predictions that weren’t as accurate as he thinks they should be. Nice try. Steven still feels smugly comfortable concluding thus:

I don’t see much theoretical or empirical evidence that climate models produce meaningful information about the climate in 100 years.

Maybe Steven should open his eyes a bit more. Skeptical Science talks about the success of climate models a bit here.

Arctic Sea Ice Reports: who to believe?

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“Arctic Sea Ice Reports: who to believe?” Anthony Watts implies deception about Arctic sea ice extent because different organizations (the EU’s “Arctic ROOS” and The National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado), using different comparison periods and different methodologies, have slightly different ice extent graphs.

Anthony actually discusses the differences between two methods of calculation, which you’d think would be a starting point for realising that they’re different. But he prefers to lazily imply ulterior motives with statements such as this: “Of course we know that NSIDC director Mark Serreze is very active with the press.”

You know that when Steven Goddard comes in to offer expert commentary the argument is profoundly flawed but he pops up here to declare that the chart below, to which I have added a 27-year  trend line, is good news for denialists! Go to the NSIDC link and compare the maps of the >2 yr. sea ice extent, shown as green pixels, for Sept. 2009 and Mar. 2010 and tell me what you think of Steven’s claim…

Ignore the 27-year trend, look at that blip in 2009!

Anthony finishes by trying to turn around criticism of his own earlier statements:

Don’t be fooled though. “Decreasing ice is climate. Increasing ice is weather.”

Anthony’s the one who tried to use a short-term increase in sea ice as a global warming disproof. Nothing that happens over a day, a month, a year, even a few years is “climate”, the denialists are the only ones who try to claim otherwise.

A New And Effective Climate Model

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“A New And Effective Climate Model“. A 5,699 word guest post by Stephen Wilde, who has falsely identified himself as a meteorologist, states that existing climate models have “no predictive skill whatever despite huge advances in processing power and the application of millions or even billions of man hours from reputable and experienced scientists over many decades“. That’ll surprise the climatologists who have been predicting things pretty well for some time now.

But he’s here to set it all right. He’s got a “serious hypothesis”! It involves talking about “Solar surface turbulence”, boiling pots and sandwiches. Backed up by newspaper article references. Groan. Looks like textbook example of the Dunning–Kruger effect.

Why is Anthony posting this goof-ball rubbish? Oh I see. This line, buried 3/4 of the way down – “The contribution of the Greenhouse effect is miniscule.”

In spite of the generally credulous welcome given to this nonsense in the WUWT comments, Solar Physicist Leif Svalgaard makes this authoritative and entertaining comment, taking two sentences to address Wilde’s 5,699 words:

I think the first two points:
1: Solar surface turbulence increases causing an expansion of the Earth’s atmosphere.
2: Resistance to outgoing longwave radiation reduces, energy is lost to space faster.
are wrong, and hence the rest.
The part of the atmosphere [the thermosphere] that expands and contracts is 1 centimeter thick [if at same pressure as at the surface] and contains 1/1000,000 the number of molecules, so has no measurable effect on point 2.

Climate Craziness of the Week: Global Warming Activist Freezes to Death in Antarctica

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“Climate Craziness of the Week: Global Warming Activist Freezes to Death in Antarctica“. That last sentence is a dead link. Anthony Watts fell for a lame hoax article on Eco Enquirer about an Antarctic tragedy but has since deleted the post. I have it here so you can wonder at Anthony’s powers of critical thinking.

From the Eco Enquirer, tragic news that I hope is not repeated by other activists.

Famed global warming activist James Schneider and a journalist friend were both found frozen to death on Saturday, about 90 miles from South Pole Station, by the pilot of a ski plane practicing emergency evacuation procedures.

“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing”, recounted the pilot, Jimmy Dolittle. “There were two snowmobiles with cargo sleds, a tent, and a bright orange rope that had been laid out on the ice, forming the words, ‘HELP-COLD’.”

One friend of Prof. Schneider told ecoEnquirer that he had been planning a trip to an ice sheet to film the devastation brought on by global warming. His wife, Linda, said that she had heard him discussing the trip with his environmental activist friends, but she assumed that he was talking about the Greenland ice sheet, a much smaller ice sheet than Antarctica.

“He kept talking about when they ‘get down to chili’, and I thought they were talking about the order in which they would consume their food supplies”, Mrs. Schneider recounted. “I had no idea they were talking about Chile, the country from which you usually fly or sail in order to reach Antarctica.”

Apparently, while all of Prof. Schneider’s friends were assuming that the July trek would be to Greenland, during Northern Hemisphere summer, his plans were actually to snowmobile to the South Pole – which, in July, is in the dead of winter.

Mr. Dolittle related how some people do not realize that, even if there has been warming in Antarctica, the average temperature at the South Pole in July still runs about 70 degrees F below zero. “Some people think that July is warm everywhere on Earth.”

Rewriting the decline

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“Rewriting the decline“. Anthony Watts’ friends have been down in their basement and found a 1976 issue of National Geographic with a temperature history chart of North America that looks different from current global temperature histories! Could there really be a decline in temperatures since the 1960’s that evil climatologists have tried to hide from us?

After admitting that “the global records are not available to check, it’s impossible to know how accurate or not this graph is” they proceed to make the usual speculations and accusations ( including the suitably Orwellian “history has been rewritten”) based largely on a digital photo of a squished magazine illustration. (The version I post here includes more of the original figure than the denialists revealed.)

Art illustrations as scientific evidence. Note: chart in the lower left, excluded from the discussion, is apparently NOT evidence.

The j’accuse comes pretty quick: “the data had been adjusted (surprise)“, backed by this supporting evidence:

But, as usual, the adjustments were in favor of the Big Scare Campaign, and the reasons and the original data are not easy to find.

So in other words, they have no idea why the modern, global, chart differs.

Anthony compounds this ignorance as usual by failing to understand the term “accuracy”, but he really got my attention with his sudden conversion to dendrochronology.

Many tree rings showed a decline after 1960 that didn’t “concur” with the surface records. Perhaps these tree rings agree with the surface records as recorded at the time, rather than as adjusted post hoc?  Perhaps the decline in the tree rings that Phil Jones worked to hide was not so much a divergence from reality, but instead was slightly more real than the surface-UHI-cherry-picked-and-poorly-sited records??

Anthony, do you really think that the temperature records were maliciously altered around the world to suit an implied political agenda? And that now we should trust the innocent, uncorrupted, tree rings?

Spencer’s UHI -vs- population project – an update

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“Spencer’s UHI -vs- population project – an update“. Dr. Roy Spencer is already trying to re-explain yesterday’s proposed paper “proving” the nefarious Urban Heat Island effect. Anthony Watts characterizes it as “a unique and valuable analysis”, but I wouldn’t go further than “unique” myself.

Right off the bat he admits that, because it’s a too “difficult influence to correct for”, he hasn’t considered any of the local factors that are actually relevant to UHI. Details, details! His analysis is merely goofing around in Excel.

Dr. Spencer also says that he’s among those that “believe that much as 50% (or more) of the ‘global warming’ signal in the thermometer data” is a product of UHI. That’s a seriously fuzzy claim that leaves him lots of wiggle room. Too bad there have been objective statistical analyses trying to quantify just this idea and they’ve concluded that the bias is actually toward slightly under-reporting the warming. See Open Mind, Clear Climate Code, The Blackboard and Menne, 2010 (described at Skeptical Science).

How did he select his urban/rural station pairings? It seems to boil down to simple proximity, with no attempt to match geographical settings. This ignores an important environmental factor… Unless it is used behind the scenes to cherry-pick pairings for a particular result.