Harry Clarke is very annoyed. Again. It seems the Met Office have provided a rebuttal to the Daily Mail piece that Steve linked to a few days ago showing no global warming over the past 16 years.
I haven’t noticed a retraction at either of the local sites I mention.
So I went to have a look at the rebuttal.
To address some of the points in the article published today:
Firstly, the Met Office has not issued a report on this issue. We can only assume the article is referring to the completion of work to update the HadCRUT4 global temperature dataset compiled by ourselves and the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit.
We announced that this work was going on in March and it was finished this week. You can see the HadCRUT4 website here.
Secondly, Mr Rose says the Met Office made no comment about its decadal climate predictions. This is because he did not ask us to make a comment about them.
Gee – how convincing was that?
We can only assume …
Yes. We know.
Zut alors, the climatic Fabian choo choo seems to have left the rails and the choo choo engineer has only now started to realise this?
Perhaps the delusion we climate sceptics are supposed to live in might actually be reality, and that the PM reality that our critics dwell in, the real delusion.
Louis Hissink
19 Oct 12 at 10:38 am
This is really quite delicious isn’t it Louis.
For all future questionable socialist science scams we’ll be able to say;
“Like Global Warming?”
Forester
19 Oct 12 at 10:46 am
This Clarke person seems to be a right fuckwit.
Speaking of retractions, Jo has this on the much vaunted [by the usual suspects, the ABC and Fairfax] Gergis paper.
This has happened time after time; pronouncements are made about the fact of AGW and then when the proof is revealed to be utter bullshit, no retraction.
The process started in earnest with the infamous Steig paper; Steig proved the Antarctica was warming; but he used a dud statistical technique which was dismantled on the blogs by the likes of Jeff Id and McIntyre; eventually a peer reviewed rebuttal came through which showed how Steig had fiddled his results; but this was over 2 years later when the hoopla had died down and the original message had permeated the hive consciousness of the media; so no reanalysis or retraction of a flawed paper.
But the scandal goes beyond that fact; the reason why the rebuttal of the Steig paper took so long to be published is Steig was one of the anonymous reviewers of the critique of his own paper.
Now we have this Clarke fuckwit wanting a retraction of comments which correctly interpreted evidence from the horse’s mouth, the MET, which shows AGW is stupid.
How fucking ironic is that?
cohenite
19 Oct 12 at 10:46 am
Let’s not launch into Harry.
That is the general point: the Mets own data do not support their prejudices.
Sinclair Davidson
19 Oct 12 at 11:02 am
“Gee – how convincing was that?”
If only you’ kept reading down the page, maybe?
Jarrah
19 Oct 12 at 11:13 am
Down the page isn’t the rebuttal its what they told the journo.
Sinclair Davidson
19 Oct 12 at 11:16 am
I think Sinclair Davidson makes the appropriate point, but we might add that the folks at East Anglia, etc previously thought 15 years was sufficient, and others have used particular years (such as 1998) to create political alarm. It is the moving of the goalposts as to what constitutes an adequate period by which to judge that is indefensible, whatever the data say.
This then takes on the same logical structure as Millenarians who reinterpret the scriptures to find new predictions for the Apocalypse when the initially predicted date passes uneventfully. Leon Festinger described this as cognitive dissonance and wrote up (with others) an NSF funded study as ‘When Prophesy Fails.’
I note that the Met Office rebuttal includes the fallacious argument that ‘eight of the warmest years on record have occurred in the past decade.’ The more statistically qualified among you might know of a name for this fallacy — or perhaps it is a new one and I can claim authorship — but it is the equivalent of arguing that a 20 year old is still growing because eight of their tallest measurements have been in the last decade, when they stopped growing at 18. (It’s induction, at least).
The hypothesis that they are still growing cannot be falsified on this basis, but in this case we know it will be because we have observations of multiple individuals..
Aynsley Kellow
19 Oct 12 at 11:17 am
Yet another sweary rant from a lawyer/blog scientist cohenite.
The more relevant part of the rebuttal from MET linked above (not the mere opening comments shown in this post) is, of course, this:
Furthermore, interested readers should have a look at a post just today by Texas Climatologist John Neilsen-Gammon which gives a good look at the related question of whether increasing CO2 over the last decade or so is really consistent with the “flat line” temperature record. The type of graph he critiques have, I am sure, appeared before at Catallaxy.
You have to read the whole post to understand, and it is admittedly only done in a somewhat simplified fashion, but the conclusion still looks pretty convincing: and I quote:
As much as blog scientists and small government, free market economists may like to think to the contrary, the current period of the temperature has not disproved that AGW is real, or that it will just stop and not be a serious problem for future generations.
steve from brisbane
19 Oct 12 at 11:25 am
“Down the page isn’t the rebuttal its what they told the journo.”
It’s all a rebuttal.
Jarrah
19 Oct 12 at 11:30 am
So the Met rebutted before the article was published? Hmmmmm.
Sinclair Davidson
19 Oct 12 at 11:43 am
“So the Met rebutted before the article was published? Hmmmmm.”
If the ‘journo’ ignored the information he was given, and writes contrary to it, it stands as a rebuttal to his claims. I guess that’s what Harry meant.
Jarrah
19 Oct 12 at 11:46 am
So, no warming for 16 years, that’s gotta make the climate change devotees happy, surely? All their hard work seems to be paying off.
Gab
19 Oct 12 at 11:49 am
I’m glad you brought up the issue of transient and equilibrium sensitivity steve; these are essential parts of AGW and are explained in TAR.
Looking at the diagram we can see there are, in AGW theory, 2 parts to the climate’s sensitivity to CO2 increase.
The first is the Transient Climate Response [TCR] which occurs at 2XCO2, a doubling of CO2 to ~ 560ppm; for calculation purposes that 2XCO2 is arrived at a rate of increase of 1% PA. The current rate of CO2 increase exceeds that but no matter.
The Equilibrium Climate Response [ECR] occurs at a time after the 2XCO2 event and is based on no further increase in CO2. The argument is that a higher temperature occurs at ECR because of stored or hidden heat on the Earth, the “additional warming commitment” which takes a further time to ‘come out’ after TCR is achieved.
The TCR “integrates all processes operating in the system, including the strength of the feedbacks and the rate of heat storage in the ocean,”. TCR is a full system response to the 2XCO2 where all system processes contribute.
How then can heat continue to emerge from the system if it has been utilised in achieving the TCR?! The answer, according to AGW, is that while the upper ocean contribution to the release of heat at TCR occurs within 10 years after 2XCO2, deep ocean release will take “several millennia”.
It is trivial that “at least 90% of the variable heat content of Earth resides in the upper ocean.” [Knox and Douglass, 2010]. So, at most, the difference between TCR and ECR will be 10% more than the TCR temperature.
How much will the TCR be? According to AGW, about 2C above 1XCO2. According to GISS the ‘official’ AGW temperature, GAT has gone up about 0.8C after a CO2 increase of about 40% above 1XCO2 of about 280ppm. That will include most of the upper ocean contribution over the period [about 90%].
That is a perfect result for TCR! If CO2 increase ceased now TCR would have been confirmed. And the AGW assumption that natural variables play no part in temperature trend would be confirmed.
But what about ECR. That would be no more than 10% of TCR, giving an ECR of about an extra 0.08C for a final temperature increase of 0.88C.
But TAR says if we don’t stop increasing CO2 until 560ppm for a 2C increase then ECR will be 2.2C with the extra 0.2C spread over “several millennia”!
And all this assumes no effect by natural variables. And that Trenberth can find his “missing heat”. And a few thousand other things.
In other words it is speculative, contradicted by current conditions and relies on future conditions being extrapolated from current conditions which do not exist.
The MET explanation is garbage but continue to raise what you think are crucial aspects to their explanation.
As for “sweary rant”, stick it up your arse; AGW has cost this nation $billions and corrupted institutions and public discourse; and your comeback is that I swear.
Fuckwit.
cohenite
19 Oct 12 at 12:00 pm
Cohenite:
.
Stop praising him, willya?
He’s pus dripping from a syphilitic chancre on the rotting dong of the greenfilth. And that’s his good point.
Mk50 of Brisbane
19 Oct 12 at 12:01 pm
Mk50, I hadn’t come across him before; I looked at his blog; he seems intense. Sinclair said not to comment on Clarke so I won’t persist but his support of the MET qualifying a surrepstitious admission of truth is egregious.
The example by MET that you should not cherry pick is stupidly true; it is stupid because it was the MET which selected the 16 year period.
Secondly, it is legitimate to pick a starting time in the late 90′s because it was then that a climate shift occurred in a step fashion similar to the well documented 1976 climate change and consequent step in temperature.
cohenite
19 Oct 12 at 12:21 pm
Sinclair, your statement “showing no global warming over the past 16 years.” is simply incorrect. This topic was well covered (including the Met office and Curry rebuttals) when Steve first posted. The chart Steve K showed was a perfect example of cherry picking. You can refer to the charts I posted before to see what I mean. The distorted chart is the sort of thing I would expect Monckton to produce, and not the sort of chart I would expect someone with your numerical analysis capability to support.
SteveC
19 Oct 12 at 12:23 pm
because it was the MET which selected the 16 year period.
Really cohenite? How did you deduce that?
SteveC
19 Oct 12 at 12:24 pm
because it was
the METJoneswhichwhoselectedagreed the 16 year period showed no warming but was climatically too short.Better?
cohenite
19 Oct 12 at 12:31 pm
No cohenite, not better. The author of the chart, and Chris Rose selected the 16 year period in a feeble attempt to prove a point. The Met simply responded, (exactly as I did on Steve K’s original post), that the 16 year period is not useful.
If you look at my chart from a few days ago, you will see that if you increase the span just by one year to include 1996, then suddenly there is a significant upward trend. Which just proves the original point that trying to choose specific time periods to prove a point is statistically invalid, and simply stupid.
SteveC
19 Oct 12 at 12:46 pm
I can play with WFT too stevec; I gave you climatic reasons and linked to a paper by McKitrick to justify the selection of trend from the late 90′s.
Are you saying that there weren’t climatic shifts in 1976 and from about 1997 onwards?
cohenite
19 Oct 12 at 12:55 pm
“Sinclair said not to comment on Clarke”
I can’t tell if it’s a sense of brotherhood among economists, or tolerant affection for a mad-uncle-type, or if Harry saved Sinc from certain death a long time ago in the Incident that they promised never to speak of again.
Jarrah
19 Oct 12 at 1:00 pm
I thought McKitrick’s paper was stupid. Why would you expect climate to work in a step function in short (15-20 cycles). What underlying reason can you suggest for that behaviour?
SteveC
19 Oct 12 at 1:03 pm
Great analysis; explanations for why there should be steps in trend as a response to climate phase changes is explained here.
A number of major concurrent climatic events are desribed in the paper to explain the step changes in temperature; one is variation in ocean upwelling; this has profound effect on sea surface temperature and vitiation of recycling of atmospheric heat into the ocean.
cohenite
19 Oct 12 at 1:08 pm
Flatulent cattle again?
C.L.
19 Oct 12 at 1:11 pm
Harry’s nightmare: Gassy cows that smoke.
Infidel Tiger
19 Oct 12 at 1:13 pm
Stevec – I’m referring to the post steve put up not making any additional statement.
Sinclair Davidson
19 Oct 12 at 1:17 pm
cohenite, you have potsed that paper before. I noted at the time it hasn’t been published in a journal where it could be critically reviewed. Is that still the case.
Your paper contains the statistical model, but does not itself explain the underlying causes. The main cause stated, from cited papers, seems to be the PDO. My understanding is the PDO is about a 60 year cycle, so why would we see that in 15-20 year cycles?
I haven’t read all the cited papers, can you identify which of the cited papers best provide an explanation for the observed “step” behaviour that Stockwell and Cox modelled?
SteveC
19 Oct 12 at 1:28 pm
Start with McPhaden, M. J. & D. Zhang (2004). Pacific ocean circulation rebounds. Geophys. Res. Lett., 31 . URL http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/
2004GL020727, and Guilderson, T. P. & D. P. Schrag (1998). Abrupt shift in subsurface temperatures
in the tropical pacific associated with changes in el nino. Science, 281 (5374), 240{243. URL http://www.hubmed.org/display.cgi?uids=
9657714.
cohenite
19 Oct 12 at 1:37 pm
SteveC: the answer is that these “step” arguments do not have a proper physical basis at all.
They are simply motivated by a desire to suggest that AGW will just stop.
steve from brisbane
19 Oct 12 at 1:41 pm
Fair enough Sinc, so SteveK’s comment “showing no global warming over the past 16 years” was wrong then and it’s still wrong now, when you repeated it
SteveC
19 Oct 12 at 1:41 pm
Good work lads. The two missionaries for Gaia are corralled in this thread.
Infidel Tiger
19 Oct 12 at 1:43 pm
I escaped a second ago IT
SteveC
19 Oct 12 at 1:48 pm
Tamino has also looked at the “step function” theory earlier this year (dismissing it, of course.)
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2012/01/09/steps/#comment-58442
Cox (cohenite) was specifically mentioned there to come and explain how it is meant to magically work physically, but he made no appearance in comments.
cohenite will now come here and likely make some sweary, dismissive complaint about Tamino not knowing what he’s doing.
steve from brisbane
19 Oct 12 at 1:48 pm
Cohenite taking on the Two Gaia Girls – unfair odds! Poor Gaia Girls don’t know wot hit ‘em.
Gab
19 Oct 12 at 2:02 pm
Gab, you are easily conned by a lawyer blog scientist.
steve from brisbane
19 Oct 12 at 2:16 pm
Steve C – I’ll remind that the ‘step’ in the PDO corresponds to the half wavelength. You were going to replicate my graph of detrended HadCRUT?
We can call the 60-ish year cycle a sine wave, saw tooth or square wave, whatever you like, but the step happened when the index crossed the baseline, and the 16 year trend we’re talking about is consistent with this too.
And if we just take the last decade the trend is downwards. As you would expect in a cycle which should again hit the X axis in about 10 or 15 years time.
If you draw a trendline up the side of a sine curve it rises. That is what Foster & Rahmstorf did. If you draw a trendline along the top of a sine curve it will be flat. That is what the Daily Mail did. If you draw a line down the other side you get a fall. That is what I just did.
Its a good sign that the Met Office at least mentions ENSO, AMO and PDO. Perhaps they will eventually also mention the cycle corresponds with over half of the temperature rise 1979-2002.
It isn’t happening guys. You can’t get dangerous warming out of a 2XCO2 around 0.7 C. Do the sums, its a logarithmic relationship. The carbon tax is a double lie.
Bruce of Newcastle
19 Oct 12 at 3:22 pm
Before I reply to steve1 just expanding on Bruce’s comment about PDO periods and cycles generally.
Climatic cycles are NOT symmetrical and do not reduce to a mean over the full cycle so that any trend which results must be due to non-natural, that is AGW causes.
This asymmetry is well documented. It happens in the short-term , over centuries and regionally, as well as globally.
Possible causes for this include solar amplification as suggested by Meehl [Amplifying the Pacific Climate System Response to a Small 11-Year Solar Cycle Forcing,” Gerald A. Meehl et al] and Stockwell.
The significance for temperature is that over any period if there is a preponderance of +ve PDO’s which feature hot and dry climate compared to -ve PDO’s then the temperature trend will be up.
This is what happened over the 20thC, in fact from about 1850, where the world has had +PDO’s which were greater in impact then the corresponding -ve PDO’s; not only that but over this period there were MORE +ve PDO’s; so there has been 2 natural factors operating to create trend in temperature.
In respect of steps in temperature trend; there is a multitude of papers which have statistically documented the climate shift and consequent step in temperature in 1976, including Breusch and Vahid, who did the statistical work for Garnaut’s reports, Tsonis and Swanson, Seidel, Lindzen, Bratcher, McKitrick etc, all with peer reviewed papers.
I can’t link to tamino’s blog right now to see what statistical chicanery he has prestidigitated, but quite frankly I’ll rely on the published papers rather than what a very angry blogger is saying.
cohenite
19 Oct 12 at 3:47 pm
As I have noted a while back, my mother and I have between us 120 years of living in the same region of OZ. There has been no discernable trend in the weather/climate in that time. And that period takes in the rapid increase in atmospheric CO2.
I know that CO2 will absorb particular wavelengths resulting in increased vibration, thus temperature. But as a biologist, I find a reasonable test is always useful and CAGW doesn’t pass my reasonablness test.
And personally, I wouldn’t give a toss one way or the other.
Biota
19 Oct 12 at 3:48 pm
Stop linking to that fucking joke Grant Foster or whatever the pricks name is. He’s a discredited warming shill.
Fuck off Steve you geriatric twat.
harrys on the boat
19 Oct 12 at 4:15 pm
Stevec – I’m making no inference either way. I haven’t looked at the data myself and have no plans to do so until another 12 months worth of data is available since the last time I looked at it (that is around February/march next year).
Good try though
Sinclair Davidson
19 Oct 12 at 4:20 pm
Climate Yoda says: Fear, does Tamino cause.
steve from brisbane
19 Oct 12 at 4:32 pm
Grant Foster does hang around with bad company, so I guess you’re right Steve.
Bruce of Newcastle
19 Oct 12 at 4:43 pm
I can link to tamino now; he says:
That is not true. In fact AGW relies on a linear trend which increases over each successive period.
But this is end point fallacy where an increasing linear trend can be produced by starting the trend further into the +ve PDO period but ending it before the +ve PDO ends; in addition, as anyone who has used running means knows, you can have an increasing trend even when the data is declining as the temperature data is now doing.
Tamino also says this:
Again that is wrong; the null hypothesis is an increasing linear trend; the whole AGW notion of accelerating warming, runnaway etc is predicated on this.
The notion that CO2 increase can cause steps in trend, up and down, as has happened since 1976 is ridiculous.
PDO phase change, as I have explained, however, does explain this pattern as this shows.
cohenite
19 Oct 12 at 5:21 pm
It may be a pause in the 250 year warming trend or may not, no one knows except apparently s f b.
The longer the temperature plateau continues the more “worried” Phil Jones and the devotees will get.
An extended pause or falling trend must falsify the dangerous human induced warming hypothesis but a continuing warming trend cannot verify it because the current temperature condition is by no means unique or threatening.
manalive
19 Oct 12 at 5:35 pm
The short answer to blog scientist’s cohenites last comment is: AGW from greenhouse gases is not the only thing going on in the earth’s atmosphere/surface/oceans.
Your statement that “CO2 increase can cause steps in trend, up and down, as has happened since 1976 is ridiculous” is disingenuous BS, as per usual.
steve from brisbane
19 Oct 12 at 6:34 pm
Can you explain why?
Gab
19 Oct 12 at 6:37 pm
I’ve given you papers, analysis, correlation with climatic factors and you’ve given me tamino who agrees the step statistical analysis is valid but who pulls a rabbit out of his arse and announces the linear trend is better at representing AGW than the step model, thus contradicting his initial statement that AGW isn’t based on a linear temperature trend.
And I’m accused of disingenuous bullshit?!
And you complain when I call you a fucking moron!
cohenite
19 Oct 12 at 6:46 pm
“my mother and I have between us 120 years of living in the same region of OZ.”
What?
Jarrah
20 Oct 12 at 8:46 am