Bishop Hill On entering the climate arena
Jun 16, 2014 Climate: Sceptics This is a guest post by "Lone Wolf", who is an academic at a UK university.
A few years ago, I was looking for something for a final year student project/dissertation where the student did some statistical modelling type work on a large dataset. I came across the CDIAC data for the Vostok Ice Core. I looked at it myself first, and decided there was enough there for the student to get their teeth into.
During the analysis, we noticed many interesting features, especially during the present interglacial, which seems to have a 'seasonality'. We estimated the seasonality and proceeded to remove it, using a technique I teach in their course, in order to find the underlying trend.
Having done this, we noted that not only was there underlying further seasonality and cycles, but that firstly the temperature according to the proxy record was considerably below its maximum and also secondly that the temperature was rapidly decreasing.
Next we looked at the carbon dioxide content. The CO2 data was quite sparse, and certainly not enough for a final year student to conduct any form of correlation with the temperature, which followed each other. On researching this correlation, we were surprised to learn that the change in CO2 lags the change in temperature by between 200 and 1000 years.
These findings were presented at a small conference at one of the major learned societies. You must remember that I am not a climatologist or bona fide weather expert, and approached this topic from a purely statistical point of view. I mentioned that according to the proxy record the temperature was considerably lower that it has been and that it is decreasing. I then proceeded to comment on the lag between temperature and carbon dioxide and explained that it seemed 'incorrect' to blame temperature rises on CO2 when clearly the CO2 rises lag temperature increases, also noting that you can't really develop a mathematical time-dependent model that allows CO2 to force temperature rise, when the temperature has stopped rising up to 1000 years prior to the CO2 rising. There must be something 'missing' that we don't understand.
During the question time that followed my talk, I was strongly criticised, with audience members suggesting that I didn't know what I was talking about. Afterwards, one audience member told me that I had actually insulted a 'scientific religion' and that I should expect further criticism. The following day, I had several polite emails pointing out what were claimed to be the errors in my work (but which actually had nothing to do with it).
Several months afterwards, the society's ‘newsletter’ was published. It contained a special section on the conference at which I had spoken, with a brief description of each talk, the work behind it, and with thanks offered to each speaker. I searched for my name – nothing. My presentation was ignored in its entirety.
"Disheartening" isn’t the term I would use, and I seriously considered giving up on the entire idea of academia, and getting a nice little 9-5 job. But, I am still here, still working on the problem, still uncovering, lets call them ‘anomalies’, in many areas, which the scientists involved have no clue how to explain, but about which they will hear no view other than their own.
I was told by a teacher of mine that science describes what is going on in the world, and that if a theory doesn't explain what we observe, then that theory is wrong. It is interesting to note that no one on the IPCC has any credible explanation for the 'pause' as they call it. We currently have no confirmed mechanisms for many climate phenomena, such as El Nino, the NAO, the Madden Julian Oscillation etc and of the 'pause'. Yes, we know what they are, but we have little or no idea how or why.
It baffles me how scientists can hold such faith in a model that disagrees so much with the actual phenomena it is supposed to be representing.
Reader Comments (108)
Not just 'something', I assume, but many things. Just a very immature science. Thank you for this very clear piece of history.
The willingness to 'disappear' anyone who speaks a divergent message, even if they're completely new to the field and coming at it from a strictly statistical viewpoint, is very worrying. It won't end here. There's a mighty battle to fight.
Well, Ok Mr Baffled, consider that scientists have children to support and mortgages to pay like everybody else, then tell me who's going to rock the gravy train to mix metaphors for a moment. There are many scientists (I use that term in its broadest possible sense) who would actually have to go out and get a job if it wasn't for the billions of dollars/pounds handed over to their institutions by gullible politicians.
Follow the money.
one would think Mc Carthyism techniques would not be needed when the "science" is so settled ?
Maybe the sociopaths at the no doubt very democratic institutes (invariable a taxoverpaidfor unaccountable tent with leftist scumbags doling themselves out the dough, and staying on top via one checkbox voting "policies")
The pause is as simple as turning on your shower. Walk into the bathroom, take the temperature of the air. Then turn on a hot shower and return 10 minutes later. The air will have warmed till it reaches a balance with the warmth and increased moisture being put into the air by the warm shower. Once it does, the rise will pause, Turn the shower off and it will return to the temperature it was at before, given no new advection of colder or warmer air.
The flip in the PDO to warm added major amounts of warmth and increased moisture to the air. This can be seen in the posts I have been doing at weatherbell showing the mixing ratios over the tropics during the warm PDO vs the past several years with the cold pdo. The balance was reached and the pause occurred, Once the AMO flips the fall that has started since the turn of the pdo will be more pronounced and temperatures as measured by OBJECTIVE SATELLITE READINGS will be back to where they were in 1978 in 2030. I presented this on the Oreilly factor in 2007, labelled it the triple crown of cooling ( sun and stochastic events involved) Should solar ideas be right, the fall will be greater and a couple of well timed volcanoes in the right spot will add to it.
The simple answer is the best answer, and makes sense.. Its also cyclical climate theory 101, though I realize such simplicity destroys the desire of anyone that wishes to make a name for themselves explaining the complex. In the end the DESIGN of the system is the unmoved mover, not a trace gas needed for life on the planet
[Snip - venting]
'It baffles me how scientists can hold such faith in a model that disagrees so much with the actual phenomena it is supposed to be representing.'
One way offers funding and jobs the other less funding and less jobs , you take your pick.
I fear you were telling them something they already knew and have locked in the cupboard like a skeleton. They rationalise it away because the alternative is to dial back the hysteria. Even though you reached your conclusions independently, they will have assumed that Big Oil had got to you. I’m sorry you’ve been caught up in the battle. I have hoped that more statistics experts without an axe to grind entered the fray. I suspect if the whole science was subject to scrutiny it would be decimated.
What I do wonder is how many cases like this will there be before the main warmist pundits have to stop claiming there’s no censorship of sceptics.
Unfortunately, you need only look at what Newton did to Liebniz to realise
that this sort of attitude has been prevelant for some considerable time.
I would go as far as to say that it is ubiquitous. I put a lot of it down to the
Dunning-krugger effect.
Well done. Your now officially a "Climate Denier" who thinks the moon is made of cheese. According to the president of the united states.
It doesn't matter that all your maths are correct.
Your now officially a climate denier.
Its just interesting that anyone even slightly competent in maths. i.e. you. Steve Mac etc etc.
find that the work if climate scientists is to put it bluntly rubbish.
Now watch this Video... if you haven't already.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvhipLNeda4
Lone Wolf;
You are not the first to point this out but it is good to have the point made once more by an independent. There are many explanations: I like this one from the New Scientist in 2007 (there are earlier ones);
The lag proves that rising CO2 did not cause the initial warming as past ice ages ended, but it does not in any way contradict the idea that higher CO2 levels cause warming.
Sometimes a house gets warmer even when the central heating is turned off. Does this prove that its central heating does not work? Of course not. Perhaps it's a hot day outside, or the oven's been left on for hours.
Just as there's more than one way to heat a house, so there's more than one way to heat a planet.
Now I thought it was the Sun that did the heating but it could be that space got warmer or we left our ovens on.
As many BH readers will already understand, it is very well known that CO2 lags the proxy for temperature in the ice cores. Milankovitch orbital forcings are thought to be the trigger for the initial ice age changes - which is why the ice ages have occurred roughly every 100kyr for the last ~700kyr - fitting the ellipticity cycles in Earth's orbit . As the planet warms the natural carbon sinks decrease, producing more CO2 in the atmosphere to amplify the initial Milankovitch trigger (and vice versa for the cooling). Lots of interesting science left to do though.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11659-climate-myths-ice-cores-show-co2-increases-lag-behind-temperature-rises-disproving-the-link-to-global-warming.html
[Snip]
Consensus.
Change.
Sustainability.
Third way.
Or you are "out".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ykELwj1Ta8
Joe Bastardi Said
<The pause is as simple as turning on your shower. Walk into the bathroom, take the temperature of the air. Then turn on a hot shower and return 10 minutes later. The air will have warmed till it reaches a balance with the warmth and increased moisture being put into the air by the warm shower. Once it does, the rise will pause, Turn the shower off and it will return to the temperature it was at before, given no new advection of colder or warmer air.>
Actually Joe its nothing like that. In the real world example you gave the temperature rise from cold to warm is measurable over the 10 minutes it takes to reach equilibrium, similarly the cooling is gradual and measurable
The Ocean swallowed the Warming theory requires an undetectable heating of the deep oceans without any detectable warming of the intervening ocean surface or air. There is no mechanism given whereby this could happen. As an individual with a good knowledge of thermodynamics I find it incredible that when this 'explanation' is given so called science journalists take it seriously for a nano second.
Such behaviour by learned societies really worries me. Where will it all end? Years of covering up poor science, years of rewarding lies and inefficiency? In the end it will be more than climatology that suffers, it will be increasingly bad policies, that will affect millions of ordinary people. This case needs much more exposure, than in this excellent blog. An article by one of the sceptical journalists, in a major daily/on-line paper would help.
All
This thread is about social pressures on scientists rather than the Vostok ice cores.
scientifically, the moon COULD still be made from cheese as nobody to my knowledge has actually tasted moonsamples.
"Climate change" is man made, but not anthropogenic. It is anthropomorphic. Lone Wolf and so many others have run into this. The critic described as being concerned that the scientific religion (great oxymoron) was violated by Lone Wolf's heresy tacitly admits to the anthropomorphic origin of "climate change".
This guy must be the world's most sheltered academic. Can anyone in this day and age be unaware that AGW is a sacred cow?
The essay can be taken as a commentary on the rather fragile state of life in universities at the moment. Global Warming is a research topic pretty well ignored in Physics departments (or Schools as they tend to be called now). Ignored also in Statistics departments. In spite of the fact that both disciplines are central to any plausible research effort. Empires have been built up round what were often failing Geography departments, to the point where they have morphed into vast Environmental Science schools, drawing on research skills typical of social sciences (including modellers). The people involved often have no background in physical science at all. I am not in the "knock a psychologist" game, but the plain truth is, social scientists lack the necessary skills. It is shocking that universities allow this state of affairs to persist. If you talk to undergraduate students of physics about Global Warming you generally get a rather embarrassed response (actually I find this rather consoling). If you then try to draw them out on the detail you almost invariably get the response "you're joking." There are parallels in many other domains. For example, Business Schools have somebody teaching something a little half-baked about contract law, while the same university may well house somebody in the Law School who has written the definitive text on the subject. He or she would simply not want to get involved (for what they would describe as good academic reasons). Departments of Social Work often have people teaching about "child development" (often with a rather antiquated Freudian orientation) when the Psychology Department down the corridor may well have half a dozen authorities on the subject. Medicine is the only area I can think of where this problem (aka getting the right experts to tackle the right questions) is being addressed at all seriously . It's going to be hellishly difficult to sort the mess out.
Just trying to imagine what I would do, if my (well paid) job required me to say that up was down and hot was cold.
yep. my wife would probably be wondering why I was taking a cold shower upside down
James Davidson gave a paper on this issue at Ross Mckitrick's conference in Guelph. It can be found at his website here http://people.exeter.ac.uk/jehd201/research.html. It seems to be hard to say anything definitive.
Peter Stroud:
My thoughts entirely. But for that I guess Lone Wolf would have to agree for his identity to be revealed. For shame, everyone involved in this suppression not just of science but of truth itself.
It speaks volumes that Lone Wolf needs to remain anonymous.
Shame he can't name and shame the conference/society without revealing himself.
(although I'm pretty sure they recognise themselves)
It does appear that “the powers that be” do share the view that some (few in numbers) human beings are actually ‘masters of the universe’ and the Earth is actually like a teat, an endless source of all supplies masters of the universe could possibly want for whatever purposes they intend. For this tiny, hyper-influential, global hegemony the watchwords are NO LIMITS. That is to say,
no species limits http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1332674/
and no physical limitations http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1253687/
Is there any chance that an anonymised version of the paper could be placed somewhere? I'd love to read it.
Lone Wolf's experience reminds me of a conference I attended in 2005. A presentation was made on declining snowpacks in the interior of British Columbia over the previous couple of decades and early spring melt. Climate change was the offered explanation. I asked if the presenter had considered the influence of the PDO, which has a significant effect on winter temperatures and precipitation in BC. When it transpired that the presenter had not thought of investigating the PDO, the atmosphere in the room became quite hostile and I was effectively "shouted down" for even implying that there may be an explanation other than "climate change".
We have entered a cool phase of the PDO and, as expected, spring snowpacks in BC are now often above average.
The sacred cow is the GHE. When the climateers come round to acknowledging that CO2 has no role to play in climate the better we all will be.
Lone Wolf,
Expect more of the same as you dig deeper. If one treatment of this type causes you to question academia, you may not want to proceed down this path. It certainly won't forward your career, although it may forward the science. I for one, am extremely curious to see your results, particularly with regard to cooling as where we are in the cycle is extremely important for humanity. Ice ages are generally very bad for mammals.
The post reads, "We currently have no confirmed mechanisms for many climate phenomena, such as El Nino, the NAO, the Madden Julian Oscillation etc and of the 'pause'."
We do have confirmed mechanisms for ENSO. The fact that climate models cannot simulate them is something else entirely.
Cheers.
"As the planet warms the natural carbon sinks decrease, producing more CO2 in the atmosphere to amplify the initial Milankovitch trigger (and vice versa for the cooling)."
Well in fact the ice albedo is already well understood to be the major feedback to the Milankovitch trigger and it handily works in both directions, unlike CO2 which, being a heating amplifier, can only retard the cooling. So as cooling begins when CO2 is at it's maximum value then there either has to be a sudden massive carbon sink appearing out of nowhere or other factors must dominate the cooling phase. And if CO2 is not needed for the cooling phase then of course it is not needed for the heating phase either. This is what objective observers intrinsically understand yet mainstream academics like Ed Hawkins still just hand-wave away or ignore.
In Richard Alley's book about the Gisp2 cores, he specifically discounts CO2 for several heating/cooling cycles but especially for the Younger Dryas. There is no actual need to bring CO2 into the ice-age feedback loop or any other heating/cooling phases of history. Suggested alternatives in the literature are ocean cycles as well as albedo but basically nobody yet really knows. Only one thing is certain; it is just illogical dogma to believe, in the face of so much contradictory data, that CO2 is a climate driver.
All that was needed was a caveat stating a belief in global warming and that the presentation does not contradict it.
It's about the only way contrary evidence gets published.
The hostility of the reaction "Lone Wolf" received is an indication that:
1. the work contradicts established scientists
2. the work is significant
3. the work should be published.
I gave a talk about 6 yrs ago at a local mid-sized university in US about my work on tree ring reconstructions. No problems with that part. During questions, someone asked about sea level rise due to melting ice caps. I replied that IPCC says Antarctica is expected to gain ice for a while and Greenland ice is in a bowl of mountains and can't slide into ocean. A prof of geology -- glacier expert, he claimed!-- stood up, and began to yell at me that Greenland ice was indeed sliding into the sea (like, the whole ice cap, sudden collapse) and I was crazy, and then he stomped out of the room. My host was quite embarrassed.
The significance of a scientific finding can best be judged by hostility of the reception it receives from other scientists.
If they welcome you, it is because your work simply confirms their own. If they are indifferent, it is because your work is not significant. If they are hostile, it is because your work contradicts their own and is significant.
In 1931, a book was published, “100 Authors Against Einstein.” Albert Einstein’s response: “If I were wrong, then one would be enough.
Lone Wolf:
That someone should point out that you had actually insulted a scientific religion should give you the measure of the minds that you are up against: a) they do not think that anything which others may take insult at should be aired, and b) they think that an oxymoron of a “scientific religion” could possibly exist.
Give up, and get out, while you still have your sanity and some true scientific credibility. Sweeping the roads would be of greater benefit to humanity and your own self-worth than working with the mentality you have unearthed.
We’ve all heard or read this kind of story before. It’s absolutely nothing new. Whilst I have a little sympathy for Lone Wolf for the position he finds himself in, he, perhaps unwittingly, only exacerbates the problem. All the time he and others that have had similar experiences choose to remain anonymous, or decline to name the societies and individuals involved, it allows those that would gatekeep this form of mandatory groupthink to continue stifling dissent. Further, it allows the usual suspects (as in the Bengtsson affair) to claim it never even happened. Who knows? They might even be right. To make an anonymous post about anonymous people and anonymous societies on a blog (even one as good and well read as this one) doesn’t achieve anything at all. Either come out from the cupboard under the stairs and start naming names or just keep quiet. Colour me unimpressed.
Any one who thinks he has found something by identifying a lag in C02, needs to remember these two words:
Primary research.
yes, C02 lags. it also causes warming.
yes, c02 lags, as predicted by Hansen.
I was going to say what Laurie just said. As it stands this is just unverifiable anecdote, which doesn't sit comfortably at a sceptic blog where we are constantly demanding evidence for claims. Furthermore it encourages speculation - is the learned society the Royal Statistical Society? I wasted 10 minutes looking through their newsletters for a report of a stats/climate meeting. Furtherfurthermore, if he were to 'come out' he might well find out that he is not such a 'lone wolf' after all.
Lone Wolf
Can we get a look at the data and analysis?
What is it about climate science? We regularly see evidence that demonstrates that many in that community are nasty people of low integrity. Their science appears to be junk. Well done, Lone Wolf for having the courage to share the latest example.
The astonishing and depressing factor in all of this is that the establishment and learned societies seem to have been infected by the same alarmist disease and show the same unpleasant characteristics.
However, I am now very optimistic that the climate science house of cards may start to crumble very soon. Jo Nova is publishing a description of a new solar model developed by her husband, David Evans. These two, in my view, have more credibility than most climate scientists.
For those who enjoy strange coincidences, an error in an RSS feed seems to have resulted in an old, rejected paper finding its way into the current WUWT offering. It seems to my layman's eye that this paper may add support to the story unfolding at Jo's blog.
If this is legit, the data and analysis must be passed to McIntyre/McKitrik/Jean S for example and an new, hopefully confirming, analysis performed and posted on one of the bigger climate blogs. Until then, this post is just a bit like "death threats for climate scientists", ie quite possibly the events occurred primarily in their own heads. I politely request an independent analysis.
Steven,
Hansen also predicted much more warming than reality has been willing to provide, that Manhattan would be a subtropical envirpnment and that Earth would turn into Venus.
I feel duty-bound to defend use of a pseudonym, as I always have. :)
First up, I assume that the Bish has done some "due diligence" before making this a main post. If this is really pretended history from Lone Wolf (LW) I'd be very surprised.
Second, we're plunged into the normal debates about paleo CO2 and temperature. Mosh may well be right for all I care. But that doesn't make it right for the institution concerned to 'disappear' LW, alone of the presenters (as I assume it was), from the proceedings of a public event it put on. No way.
Third, it's absolutely fine for LW to use a 'nym on BH. That's how many folks start in this area.
Got to eat dinner now, that's just been delivered. But thanks again to LW for the clear account and the issues it raises. That in itself takes courage.
I would love to see this graduates paper and analysis. Any chance "lone wolf"
"scientifically, the moon COULD still be made from cheese as nobody to my knowledge has actually tasted moon samples."
Yes they have. It was a girlfriend of a NASA lab rat...I can't remember the source of the anecdote, it was either Bill Bryson, or Dava Sobel.
"Lone Wolf", who is an academic at a UK university".
Why so secret, everyone at the small conference at one of the major learned societies know who he/she is. Which means every academic in the climate world and beyond know who he/she is.
Seems like baloney to me.
Any one who thinks he has found something by identifying a lag in C02, needs to remember these two words:
Primary research.
yes, C02 lags. it also causes warming.
yes, c02 lags, as predicted by Hansen.
Jun 16, 2014 at 4:18 PM | Unregistered Commentersteven mosher
That wasn't the point of the post. It was the reaction to his finding that so startled him and it's that reaction that is so abhorent and which emenates so freely from the AGW teams.
I wonder what the wonderful Betts thinks about this little episode particularly the reference to models.
Jun 16, 2014 at 4:18 PM | Unregistered Commentersteven mosher
Steven, why do you always come out with these ridiculous obscure comments? I'm sure you're a really smart guy and therefore doing it to impress all your friends, but in the real world of 'normal' work I'm pretty sure people would dislike you pretty quickly for stuff like this..
Jun 16, 2014 at 11:15 AM Joe Bastardi
JoNova thinks she has an explanation for the ocean cycles:
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/06/big-news-part-ii-for-the-first-time-a-mysterious-notch-filter-found-in-the-climate/