Bishop Hill Wunsch on Nature
May 4, 2012 Journals This from a reader:
I saw a talk by Carl Wunsch at Wolfson College, Oxford this evening. He's probably best known outside of his field (oceanography) for disagreeing with how his views were represented in "The Great Global Swindle". He's somewhat equivocal on the certainty of AGW, maintaining that anyone who claims to be able to forecast the climate even a decade or two ahead doesn't know what they're talking about. Of course that cuts both ways so "deniers" (he included the quotation marks) can take no comfort in such ignorance and certainly not use it as the basis for inaction. He's broadly in favour of precautionary measures.
Anyway, that was fairly general ho-hum. The money-quotes came late on when he talked about "the Nature-Science problem". He seemed faintly disgusted by the lengths to which some climate scientists will go to get published in Nature or Science with the attendant publicity, media appearances and so on. He sometimes found it difficult to tell which of the Daily Mail and Nature was the peer-reviewed journal and which the tabloid. Nonetheless, he said, his colleagues reassure him that just because something appears in Nature doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong.
Reader Comments (104)
May 6, 2012 at 9:06 AM | Jeremy Harvey
Yup very occasionally frauds do get stuff published. Schoen is a rather exhilarating example of serial fraud, and if you like car-crash “science” the website “RetractionWatch” is interesting. Wegman of Mann-hounding fame is a lesser example but pretty disgraceful nevertheless, and the retraction of his paper indicates that fraud isn’t a particular Nature/Science problem (and quite of few of Schoen’s retracted papers were obviously in journals other than Nature/Science). Incidentally, fraud can be tricky to spot in peer-review, which is actually rather sad for the fraudster since his (mostly “he”s!) frauds are usually identified in hindsight with consequences that are usually more tragic than would have been the case if the fraud had been picked up in peer review.
The Allen paper. I didn’t know of this paper before you brought it to my attention, but I think it’s pretty interesting. It explores the really tricky problem of assessing possible contributions of background phenomena (global warming) to individual extreme events. I expect it’s easy to pick holes in the methodology (personally speaking, I would like to see the same analysis done with 1950’s climatology as the AGW-minimized “background”), but it seems like a useful early approach into this problem. But Allen’s paper has pretty much zero effect on my consideration of the science on global warming and its implications, and it would be great if the blogosphere didn’t give the impression that every new climate science paper either had to be shot down (pro prevailing science…booo!) or lauded as the “nail in the coffin” of the science (anti prevailing science…yaaaay!).
You consider that the Allen paper has a serious flaw that: ”overall, there has not been an increase in heavy rainfall events in the UK.” I’m not sure that’s the point of the paper which is to assess how the local climatology that resulted in heavy flooding would progressed under similar climatological conditions in a non-greenhouse-warmed world.
On the other hand I did have a very quick look at the data on heavy rainfall events this morning and it seems to me that the evidence indicates that heavy rainfall events have increased over the last half century especially in winter but also with lesser confidence, in spring and autumn:
Fowler, H. J., and C. G. Kilsby (2003), Implications of changes in seasonal and annual extreme rainfall, Geophys. Res. Lett., 30(13), 1720.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2003/2003GL017327.shtml
D. Maraun, T. J. Osborn and N. P. Gillett (2008) United Kingdom daily precipitation intensity: improved early data, error estimates and an update from 2000 to 2006 Int. J. Climatol. 28: 833–842
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/joc.1672/abstract
Met office 2010 report on “Changes in the frequency of extreme rainfall events for selected towns and cities” for Ofwat. This isn’t as helpful as it sounds since it’s all about projections. However they state in the intro:
“Annual mean rainfall over England and Wales has not changed significantly since records began in 1766. However, the proportion of winter rainfall falling in heavy rainfall events has increased over all regions of the UK over the past 45 years. In summer, rainfall has decreased in all regions except north-east England and northern Scotland. The UKCP09 climate projections (Murphy et al., 2009) suggest that UK rainfall is likely to continue to become more polarised in the future – winters are projected to become wetter and summers are projected to become drier but with less confidence.”
http://www.ofwat.gov.uk/sustainability/climatechange/rpt_com_met_rainfall.pdf
May 6, 2012 at 9:37 AM | Simon Anthony
May 6, 2012 at 10:42 AM | John Shade
That would be interesting, but not, I think, using the specific example that you describe, since that sounds like an invitation to a truly tedious exchange of quotes of excerpts of books and stuff copied of blogs. I'm more interested in the science as it stands and less so in the bitching that accompanies efforts to get stuff published.
If there's a more interesting and broader subject to discuss then I'm happy to do so. As Simon says, it is curious how two people come to very different conclusions about scientific issues. So perhaps we can come up with a way to address that point...If I have any ideas on a way into this I'll post them...
@ chris
"That would be interesting, but not, I think, using the specific example that you describe, since that sounds like an invitation to a truly tedious exchange of quotes of excerpts of books and stuff copied of blogs. I'm more interested in the science as it stands and less so in the bitching that accompanies efforts to get stuff published."
That would only happen if we allow it too. As I've no interest is such a futile activity (and from what you say, neither have you) there's no reason why it should happen.
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding but I'm somehow getting a feeling of mistrust from you, as though you think I'm trying to trap you. I'm not: I'm acting entirely in good faith.
My suggestion is that we go through the history of the hockey-stick, identify the shortcomings in Mann's original work (which you say, "could have been done better") and examine exactly how these shortcomings have been overcome in subsequent work.
You say "I would be confident in the fact that the analysis of paleoproxy data is in broad agreement that were very likely to be already a good bit warmer than during any period in the last 1000 years in the Northern Hemisphere, and we can be more confident about that statement now than a decade or more ago."
And I'm a good deal less confident. Deadlock. Unless we examine our reasons for reaching these views, neither of us is likely to make much progress. I'm sure that there are aspects of my understanding which aren't entirely clear. Without knowing anything very much about your understanding, I'd say that the same applies to you (as it would to anyone).
My suggestion is that, as reasonable people, we examine the evidence - including all the modifications to and developments of Mann's work that you mention and which are covered in the books I proposed we base our discussion around - and see just where those key differences between us lie.
You say "I'm more interested in the science as it stands and less so in the bitching that accompanies efforts to get stuff published." and I agree with you. Let's not spend time on who said what to whom. My proposal is that we focus on the science and do so in the context of the development of the hockey stick.
My views on AGW are subject to modification in light of evidence and argument. I'm sure yours are too. It's an important subject so I'm very happy to take the time and trouble to analyse it with someone who has a different view. If we're successful in working out a modus vivendi, then I'd be pleased, as you suggest, to extend it to discussion of other topics.
If it helps, and you don't have them (and you let me know your details), I'll have Amazon send you copies of Montford's and Mann's books.
chris, if you are still reading, I found the paper correlating accuracy of protein crystal structures with impact factor. It is:
Quality of protein crystal structures
E. N. Brown and S. Ramaswamy
http://dx.doi.org/10.1107/S0907444907033847
The key plot is Figure 4.
About Allen and rainfall: I do not think that the papers you cite, taken together with the rest of the literature on this topic, provide a compelling case for there having been a deviation from natural variability in rainfall patterns.