Bishop Hill Robbins in the minefield
Sep 20, 2013 Climate: Models Climate: Surface Climate: sensitivity ;)
I've been very nice about Martin Robbins from time to time - I do think he writes some interesting stuff, and he looks at things from interesting angles occasionally too. His blind spot on climate change has always been a bit of a mystery to me.
His article in Vice (which sounds dodgy, but appears to be safe enough) seems to throw some light on the reasons, suggesting that he really only has the most superficial understanding of the subject. For example, he pulls out the NOAA temperature graph and berates us dissenters for pointing out the post-millennial pause, the one that the IPCC is struggling to explain. "But look at the pre-millennium temperature rise" he seems to say. "What a bunch of cherrypickers you bad people are!"
One of the things that I have been able to agree on with mainstream climate scientists is that you can't tell very much from looking at the temperature record alone: the records are too short to tell you whether the 20th century warming was anything other than a blip. Doug McNeall's view is, I believe, that you can only tell whether there's anything going on by comparing the temperature trend to a climate model. (This means of course that we have no wholly empirical evidence of global warming, but that's another story)
So then we ask whether the climate models are trustworthy, and we compare the temperature trend since the last set of predictions were issued (around the millennium) to the predictions themselves. And we find that the models got it completely wrong.
That's why we look at the trend since the millennium Mr Robbins and that's why we get excited about it. Perhaps next time read a bit before you write?
The rest of the article is equally superficial. For example, there is lots of discussion of Arrhenius, but no mention of feedbacks. Does Robbins really not see that the difference between disaster and decades - centuries even - of gentle, beneficial warming is the feedbacks? What is gained by shouting "Arrhenius" at the top of your voice.
And of course there's discussion of conspiracy theory too, despite the fact that the most frequent discussion of conspiracies in the climate debate comes from the climatological mainstream. Hell, they even write learned papers about the massive evil oil-funded denialist conspiracy.
And to finish there's this, hilarious, mindboggling, gobsmacking bit of idiocy:
Or you could just believe that scientists are really stupid – that they lucked out on stuff like the internet and the Higgs Boson, but when it comes to thermodynamics and atmospheric physics, generations of our finest minds have been outsmarted by you, Rupert Murdoch, a backbench MP everybody confuses with David Davis, some incredibly tedious bloggers and that boggle-eyed UKIP bloke in the pub.
Generations of our finest minds! What planet is this guy on? Climatology was an academic backwater until global warming came along to save it. This is the field that propelled Phil "how do you work Excel again" Jones to the top. The field that cleared Mann's hockey stick for takeoff, promoted it to the heavens, and then defended it to the death when it emerged that it used an ad-hoc statistical procedure that didn't hold water and data that everyone agreed was unsuitable. This, ladies and gentlemen, was the field in which a blatantly incorrect Bayesian approach was ubiquitous and in which even papers that did things correctly were rewritten by the powers that be on the incorrect basis!
Dear heavens, these are "our finest minds"?
No, Martin.
No.
Reader Comments (33)
More breaking news- this one's got legs!
http://en.ria.ru/russia/20130920/183600132/Greenpeace-Russia-Conflict-Grows-Into-Diplomatic-Spat-With-Guns.html
A waste of space.
He's changed the final paragraph you quote. I wonder if he reads BH.
There isn't much skill required in setting up strawmen to knock them down. The fact that Mr. Robbins is not up to speed on real sceptical arguments makes his contribution irrelevant. Which leads me to conclude that it isn't much use for us to promote him to a status where he needs to be dealt with at length. After all, you have done nothing when you have bested a fool.
One of my understandings is that for a long time Arrhenius was regarded as being wrong thanks to the work of Angstrom who actually did some experimentation. One of Angstrom's findings was that CO2 absorption bands were saturated so additional CO2 would have no effect as there was nothing left to absorb. It was only in the 1970s that Arrenhius was revived and reworked.
AlecM talks about erroneous physics quite a lot, without confirming the connection I have assumed this is what, at least in part, he is talking about.
Bish where do you find these bozos? Every word we write opens a window through which others can peer into the workings of our minds. When I peer through Martin's window I see a bit of sawdust and an old cigarette card showing a photograph of Charlie Hurley.
If you have time your grace I would recommend that you have a shufty at a post by Chris Monckton at WUWT - http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/17/dodgy-statistics-and-ipcc-assessment-reports/#more-93954. Monckton has a slide used by Lindzen which shows the first half and the second half of the 20th century surface temperature record. It is illuminating and someone with greater IT skills than me might be able to link to it directly.
The slide appears above the following text:
"One panel shows the global temperature anomalies from 1895-1946. The other shows the anomalies from 1957-2008. Both cover 52 years. Both are plotted to an identical scale. Dick Lindzen asks his audiences whether they can tell which panel covers which period. It is not at all easy to tell."
Obviously not the sort of thing that Martin's sawdust filled brain could attempt to comprehend.
Strange article; I’ve not heard of the man before but he is not insightful. For example, he posts the 20thC temperatures from NOAA but doesn’t seem to be able to read a graph. .
Look at the rate of warming prior to 1950.
Then look at the rate of warming after 1950.
Spot the difference? No, because there isn't any.
QED: CO2 emissions did not change with the mass industrialisation of the second half of the twentieth century and so are not manmade...
Or,
QED: CO2 emissions do not affect global temperature very much.
As a sceptic I go with the latter (but can't necessarily rule out the former).
So me, I don't have to wear the tinfoil hat and say "Act now! The world is ending!"
Yet, as he can’t read a graph, he does seem to choose bacofoil couture.
' generations of our finest minds have been outsmarted by you, Rupert Murdoch, a backbench MP everybody confuses with David Davis, some incredibly tedious bloggers and that boggle-eyed UKIP bloke in the pub.'
Is he talking about me?
Yet another tiresome idiot that doesn't deserve the oxygen of publicity. I know times are slow, but I'd rather see nothing than the Bish continually printing the words of these bozos, raising them to a level far above their worth.
New last paragraph
Or you could just believe that scientists are really stupid – that they lucked out on stuff like the internet and the Higgs Boson. Or perhaps that hundreds of thousands of scientists around the world have been engaged in a massive 120-year-old conspiracy to invent and propagate a bogus bit of physics that nobody would give a crap about for about the first 70 years of its existence; that the Met Office are at the vanguard of the socialist New World Order and that it’s all a secret plot by the UN and David Attenborough to depopulate the world and steal our precious bodily fluids.
The reason that "nobody would give a crap about for about the first 70 years" was because of the work I mentioned earlier by Angstrom
M Courtney snap
and the Mail are keeping up the pressure
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2425775/Climate-scientists-told-cover-fact-Earths-temperature-risen-15-years.html
I
Let's hope Martin is big enough to take some criticism.
I find that most folk are incredibly ignorant about the ins and outs of the science involved in climate change. They tend to fall in three camps: 1) Swallow what the meeja serve them, and angst over what a terrible problem Climate Change is, 2) Instinctively smell the fact they are being served poo on a plate and reject it, and 3) Wot?
The parishioners here, or at Skeptical [sic] Science [sic], say, are quite unusual. And, as we know, the scientists themselves are few in number and lacking in firm evidence.
I am given to understand that in 1906 Arrhenius reconsidered his climate sensitivity estimates, and reduced them to 1.6 C (2.1 accounting for water vapor). Which falls in line with all the recent research papers....
and even the Express are getting in on the act
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/430649/What-climate-change-Fewer-people-than-EVER-believe-the-world-is-really-warming-up
thats it for me. one and out
sorry that last post of mine was as it turns out a bit premature
this is well worth a read
http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-week/leading-article/9027511/a-climate-glasnost/
and Bish apologies for hijacking this thread
It's a useful exercise to compare climate science with economics. After all both rely on incredibly powerful computer models to try to explain and predict complex systems (and both fail)
But there's an old saying in economics - get three economists in a room and you'll get 5 different opinions.
How come while economics is full of competing theories and predictions climate science is not?
Can you imagine prime ministers and presidents headlining - 97% of economists believe the economy is changing! You'd think they were stupid. And if they say that those 97% believed it was changing because of one driver you'd think they'd completely lost their minds.
And then imagine if the people who questioned this ridiculous assertion were called economic change deniers....
@SandyS: Climate Alchemy has failed dismally in its IR physics, probably because Ramanathan doesn't know basic statistical thermodynamics. The principle of local thermodynamic equilibrium, based on the law of equipartition of energy, means that the proportion of activated ghg molecules is set by temperature an cannot be increased by incident IR from a higher temperature source.
What this means is that thermalisation is always heterogeneous, clouds or Space. The failure to understand the basics of radiative physics, which applies to most scientists, means that the alchemists imagine the radiation field of an emitter is a real energy flux - back radiation. This does not exist.
The radiation transfer modelling is based on real absorption and emission data so is correct. However, you can't apply the two-stream approximation at an optical discontinuity as Trenberth does in his energy budget. This exaggerates IR warming by nearly 6.85 times. They knock of half of this by applying Kirchhoff's Law of Radiation at ToA then more by using double real low level cloud optical depth in the hind casting. This and the 3x exaggeration of the ghe means the models create extra evaporation, an artefact.
The Met Office modellers defend this perpetual motion machine of the 2nd kind by a trick justifying the energy generation out of thin air. the rest of the modelling is fine, just that they have to start again having corrected 13 mistakes not considering the failure to include the irreversible thermodynamics at ToA which means the planet adapts climate and lifeforms to minimise radiation entropy production rate.
They need to start again under competent management, of real quality not the lightweight con artists dating from Sagan..
Dolphinhead wrote: "Monckton has a slide used by Lindzen which shows the first half and the second half of the 20th century surface temperature record. It is illuminating and someone with greater IT skills than me might be able to link to it directly."
Another version of this is to simply add a small visual gap in the standard plot of HADCRUT4 global average temperature:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1960/to:2012/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1895/to:1955
Chivers at the DT has launched a broadside at the doubters here, citing Robbins and someone else I've never heard of...
http://tinyurl.com/kt2xfd9
The problem with computer models or as Mr. Robbins might prefer to say, 'crap in, crap out'.
Dolphinhead
"and even the Express are getting in on the act
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/430649/What-climate-change-Fewer-people-than-EVER-believe-the-world-is-really-warming-up"
This is pretty key. Most people aren't going to spend a nanosecond thinking about ECS. But they do care about what most other people think. As fewer and fewer give a monkey's, this position becomes a safe norm. Then the truth can come out.
But who will ever say sorry for this mess? We will need a new "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds."
Hans Erren has a decent review of the kerfuffle between Arrhenius and Angstrom, with links to the original papers, here:
http://members.casema.nl/errenwijlens/co2/
See several links under "History of Climate".
It's been a while since I went through this, but Arrhenius used bad numbers for the IR transmittance of "clear" substances he used in his original experiments that yielded high sensitivity values.
Let's not forget that there are in fact situations that do deserve the word "conspiracy," and we've seen ironclad proof of one in the Climategate papers: people central to the IPCC operation conspired to keep competing theories from seeing publication.
Thought up a new Godwins Law
When Left Wing policies fail (which invariably they do) blame Rupert Murdock, Big Business or the CIA.
Works for David Icke and Julian Assange but not the Jews.
Curt
and Hansen and his posse repeated the error.
Gixxerboy,
"And, as we know, the scientists themselves are few in number and lacking in firm evidence."
Few in number? I think not. Robbins can set you straight on that:
"Or perhaps that hundreds of thousands of scientists around the world have been engaged in a massive 120-year-old conspiracy..."
Hundreds of thousands.
You have to feel sorry , I mean what would be like to find your Mann's long lost son .
O.K. So he's a bit wrong about global warming.
"A White Sport Coat and a Pink Carnation", "El Paso", "Streets of Laredo", "Devil Woman" are still great songs.
jamspid, I've kim's corollary to Godwin's Law; whoever shuts down a discussion of authoritarianism is a useful idiot.
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What would Miles McInnes (brother of the founder of Vice) say?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLvOHsQBcSg
RoHa
Cool Water and The Hanging Tree perhaps?
"His blind spot on climate change has always been a bit of a mystery to me", writes the Bish.
The same can be said about Private Eye, the scourge of rent whores except for those on the Global Warming bandwagon.