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Comment on El Nino watch by Hólmsteinn Jónasson


Comment on El Nino watch by Bart R

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philjourdan | April 17, 2014 at 9:43 am |

You link to the ‘raw’ (actually, derived from derived from derived) numbers; I use the data. Numbers don’t merit the name ‘data’ just by lying on the page, just like Big Liars don’t become honest by dint of lying on the internet. Numbers become data when valid analyses and inferences are performed on them.

You want me to show the elementary arithmetic of confidence intervals? Pfft. http://www.wikihow.com/Calculate-Confidence-Interval for you!

I refer you to the works of Santer (http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00223722) and Schmidt (www.clim-past.net/10/221/2014/cp-10-221-2014.html), if you need examples pertinent to your question at both ends of the difficulty scale. Alternatively, if READing HARDER isn’t for you, I suggest you email the BEST team, as they’re incredibly helpful and somewhat knowledgeable.

However, I _will_ give you a basic lesson in Statistics that will help you to get to the point where you’ll be able to grasp Santer’s reasoning and math: when a ‘trend’ is negative but the confidence in it is low, you can indeed construe it to be positive, at another low confidence. Ignoring flat trends, the two probabilities for the trend to be either negative or positive are complements summing to unity.

Comment on Forest climate and condensation by Pierre-Normand

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OK, I think I finally got an intuitive handle on the evaporation/pressure process. The tethered helium balloon or or tethered sunken boat are good analogies to the increasingly moist air above a large forest (where the air was initially dry). I was just misled about the nature of the ‘tether’. It isn’t a fix mechanical tether but a transient inertial one. First, the added water vapor mass lengthens the atmospheric column and this has two initial effects.

It indeed increases the ground level pressure (just as is the case with the tethered boat that displaces water and thereby lengthens the effective column) and it makes the moist air buoyant as a result of its decreasing density.

But the lift of a very widely spread and thick sheet of air is a slow process. There is no solid tether restraining it but there is an inertial one, exerted mostly by the dry air above and around the moist air sheet. Just like a balloon that we cut free of its tether, the buoyant force makes it slowly rise — and similarly the moist air sheet slowly contracts and thickens (thus gaining a net upward motion). The buoyant force thereby communicates upward momentum to the moist sheet. As a mechanical reaction, the surrounding dry air must acquires a downward momentum of the very same magnitude. This momentum is transmitted down to the ground in the form of a transient increase in pressure (just as in the airplane analogy).

This process goes on so long as continued evaporation from below replenishes moisture within the thickening moist sheet. So, the inertial ‘tether’ isn’t ‘pulling’ on the ground at all. Rather it is resisting the buoyant ascent of the moist air sheet though compensating its upward momentum gain with a downward momentum of the surrounding air, which, in turn, contributes to the increasing pressure at the bottom of the sheet (and around it) as it transfers momentum back to the ground.

Comment on Forest climate and condensation by Jim Cripwell

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Reverend, you write “Guess what? HITRAN works.”

I know HITRAN works. I have said HITRAN works. I agree HITRAN works.

But HITRAN works if and only if, you ask it the right question. Now the people who use HITRAN routinely, I am sure, ALWAYS ask HITRAN the right questions. What I do not know is this. Is asking HITRAN to calculate the change in radiative forcing for a doubling of CO2, asking the right question? Is HITRAN capable of answering this question? The peer reviewed literature is silent on the issue.

All I have is Pekka’s assurance that HITRAN is, indeed, capable of answering the question. I must accept this, as he knows far more about the subject than I do, But I am deeply suspicious, and I would love to have a published paper which describes WHY HITRAN is capable of calculating the change in radiative forcing for a doubling of CO2..

Comment on Are academia and publishing destroying scientific innovation? by Bart R

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philjourdan | April 17, 2014 at 10:13 am |

Dude, I provided that link to the judgement.

Here’s a couple more relevant links:

http://books.google.ca/books?id=cUycAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA507&lpg=PA507&dq=dimmock+ait+burton&source=bl&ots=cahuTfLIEc&sig=J4swibfy6z6EbNsDJ5KmmWQXBlI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=w-hPU_aZAYreyQHh6ICoCQ&ved=0CHgQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=dimmock%20ait%20burton&f=false

and, as anodyne for the grossly unbalanced and untrue reports so many cite,

http://www.desmogblog.com/an-inconvenient-judgment-u-k-court-actually-endorsed-gores-film

But I go further. An honest reading of what the judge did requires understanding what a judge may do in Science, which is only to apply the Daubert test, precedent, and the law.

What are called ‘errors’ by the plaintiff are not called errors in the judgment, which is unrestrained in its praise of the merits of AIT, but which are treated as points on which AIT fail Daubert, the test of whether a statement corresponds to the mainstream of Science and thus need not be treated as opinion, conjecture or exaggeration.

Three of these ‘errors’ were found to merely be imprecise, in that AIT did not explicitly specify the timescale of the claims. Enh. The film apparently presented a multi-million year or hundred-thousand year timescale for climate, so quibbling that it didn’t repeat timescale in three small statements is really beyond hairsplitting to a reasonable person.

Of the six remaining ‘errors’, half have since become accepted by the scientific mainstream, and thus pass Daubert. That makes the judgment itself more in error than AIT, and as with most science, erring on the side of least drama, not on the side of truth or justice.

AIT made hundreds or thousands of claims. Dimmock and the proto-GWPF alleged four dozen or so errors and called for banning or censoring. The judge found nine small points of legal nicety and ordered a tiny amendment to guidance notes without determining error at all.

Al Gore’s a big, easy target who’s done and continues to do a lot to be criticized about; AIT isn’t one of them.

Comment on Forest climate and condensation by Douglas in Norway

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A related pair of questions that you may enjoy to consider (key to biotic pump) are “why do clouds not fall”? and “where is the weight of the resulting water droplet felt when water condenses as a drop … and what is the implication for pressure below?”

Comment on Forest climate and condensation by Douglas in Norway

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The drops are “falling” (or held aloft by updrafts).
The effect on weight and pressure are analogous to the evaporation story, only now we are removing not adding (so local pressure now decreases), at terminal velocity the weight of the drop is balanced by a drop-centered force that is shared over a large region).

Comment on Curry versus Trenberth by Danley Wolfe

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PhilJourdan, I think we are generally on the same page but probably both of us are short of a very good strategy to win the day. I would like to see someone with better stature and standing than any of the names mentioned. I agree that Lindzen and Spencer have record of actual hands on climate science “doing.”. As I understand Judith Curry is not “doing” climate science in the sense of “creating data” and is more like Pielke Jr who focuses analysis and policy (which is an important role). The IPCC and (especially) Al Gore being awarded the Nobel Peace prize was a great joke on mankind (as were ones given to some US presidents for talking but doing nothing, accomplishing nothing). I think screaming doesn’t get you far and agree with Curry and Pielke Jr interpretations, positions and approaches. My sense is Lindzen and Spencer do not have respect and do not overcome the mainstream dismissal of being denialist. More and better is needed. E.g., a bone fide Übermensch of Science that transcends all propagandistic jingoistic trashing from the left greatly supported by the mainstream media like ABC/CBS and NYT etc. I do believe that IPCC is losing credibility. I also think more needs to be done to educate the youth on what Science is and what the climate science is.


Comment on Climate change: what we don’t know by climatereason

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Holmsteinn

The adjustment to some Icelandic temperatures has been well known for years. My self and a colleague wrote this;

http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2010/09/01/in-search-of-cooling-trends/

We researched Haell in Iceland, and established a very long term cooling trend. We also examined the data for your capital which appeared to show warming, but it was so confused and had been adjusted so many times we decided to discount it and moved on to other places.

I was in Iceland last year and was intrigued by the siting of the weather station at the Keflavik airport which seemed to be in an inappropriate position.

tonyb

Comment on Climate change: what we don’t know by Don Monfort

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daly, daly

You must be from another planet. I will set it right, just for you:

If any single thing comes from the pause, it should be the fact that the pause is killing the cause.

Are we straight now, daly?

Comment on Worst case scenario versus fat tail by AlainCo (@alain_co)

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Very interesting discussion about tail risk.

i see two point about the argument of fat tailes :
- first of all choosing one kind of fat tail is taking the risk to suffer from a really unexpected fat tail…
imagine, ice age, economic downturn causing general revolution, war…
the error of AGW fan is that they are not accepting other risk… the economic risk.
for exemple they ignore that economic development is the best protection agains climate extreme.
they also ignore that knowledge, technology, errors, are good school to react to blackswan events.
GMo might be frightening, but mastering GMO may save from any species going crazy on earth like it happen for Irish potatoes, or grapevine disease, or rabbit disease… same for climate change or zombie attack. alarmist forget what is an active defence. they imagine we sit like couch potatoes waiting for the end of the world, and so they ask us to panic.

the big question that i’ve heard about blackswan event is what nassim Nicholas taleb calls “Convexity”/”concavity” alias “antifragility”/”fragility”,

it is clear that the fear of serious climatologist alarmist is feat of concavity…
ther error is the myopia on CO2 only…
soot, CO2, land usage, are recent change in climate, and may cause anything.
so trying to limit CO2 is only a small part of the question.

gaining in power to solve the unexpected, by technology progress, economic development, is more important than preventing CO2.

by the way technology have already solved CO2 problem, and not with the expensive intermittent subsidized renewables…

and what delayed that revolution is :
- academic consensus
- terror against dissenters
- scientific frauds
- pal review, and other pathological review
- incompetence in experimental science
- focus on theory and model more than on experimental results
- general groupthink and mutual assured delusion
- Kuhnian fear to change of paradigm
- Malthusianist ideology used as bias to reject positive hypothesis

Comment on Climate change: what we don’t know by philjourdan

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Some of us are interested in all views.

Some of us apparently are not.

Comment on Worst case scenario versus fat tail by ordvic

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When is that suppose to happen? If I remember right National Geographic said it could happen within the next 75 to 200 years. What’s the probability?

Comment on Climate change: what we don’t know by Berényi Péter

Comment on Worst case scenario versus fat tail by Bart R

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Dr. Curry, your argument errs on several elementary grounds, but first let us discuss how Dr. Emanuel’s argument errs more fundamentally.

Dr. Emanuel wonders if “scientists” ought discuss or hold back discussing rational conclusions that are somewhere in the probability distribution — and having uncertainty of what the pdf is does not negate that the pdf does map these risks as non-negligible, so your point there is completely ineffectual — in a way reminiscent of the phrase, “Why should I share my data with you, when…?”

If Science has a job in communication of future speculation, it is hardly to hold back and limit that speculation for ulterior reasons, be they credibility or alarmism, erring on the side of least drama or to support the status quo or to attack the status quo. Give the full and forthright picture, and for the pdf choose those pdfs which are simplest in terms of assumptions, most parsimonious in terms of exceptions, and most universal in applicability, until such time as new observations require amending the pdf collection.

This “Open PDF” approach would wipe out all Dr. Emanuel’s paternalistic concerns, and your own, as well. We could each of us then consider based on our own individual risk tolerance and uncertainty tolerance what value we privately place on the options before us, and arrive at a figure for the price of CO2E emission we would demand from those on the Open Market who wish to buy up rights to emit, as well as of the penalty we ought demand from those who steal more CO2E emission than is their due.

Simple. Parsimonious. Universal. Accurate, or very nearly true.


Comment on Worst case scenario versus fat tail by Roger A. Pielke Sr.

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pottereaton – Thank you for the feedback. On Fivethirtyeight, that is Roger Jr. :-)

Roger Sr.

Comment on Worst case scenario versus fat tail by Jim Cripwell

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I was about to write a long discourse on this, but, fortunately, Roger has beaten me to it. I would point out our hostess also wrote “values less than 1C are extreme unlikely,”

Global temperatures have not risen in the 21st century, despite massive increases in the amount of CO2 we have added to the atmosphere.. Global warming has ceased, at least temporarily. No-one has measured a CO2 signal in any modern temperature/time graph. Beenstock et al looked for such a single, and failed to find one.

I suggest our hostess should not ignore the fact that the lower limit of the bounds of climate sensitivity might be just plain wrong. The lower limit is, IMHO, indistinguishable from zero.

Comment on Worst case scenario versus fat tail by Shaun Lovejoy

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In my recent Climate Dynamics paper (http://bit.ly/1h9WrME), with Q+A: (http://bit.ly/1i2lqlr) I quantify the pdf’s including the fat tails for natural global,temperatures for changes from annual to 125 year time scales.
Specifically, if we treat the problem classically with bell-surves (Gaussians), then the probability of the warming is between one in a hundred thousand and one in ten million. However due to the fat tails, the extremes are far more frequent: at least one hundred times more so. However we can still comfortably reject the natural warming hypothesis.

I think that we’re in the process of taming the natural variability and that even the black swan events are well characterized (the pause and post-war cooling also fall out easily as natural variability, but this is under review!).
If this is true, we’ll finally be able to move on beyond often sterile debate about “possible” extremes to discuss the actual extremes. Let’s move on!

Comment on Climate change: what we don’t know by Bart R

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Alexej Buergin | April 18, 2014 at 12:00 pm |

Okay. One more time. Please give your version of these facts citing specifics and furnishing a more complete narrative. Your telling here has all the hallmarks of Big Lie about it, and I know no Icelander wants to be accused of spreading a Big Lie.

Who exactly did what exactly, and when, and how, exactly?

Documentation, not narrative.

Comment on Worst case scenario versus fat tail by David Appell (@davidappell)

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Judith wrote:
Unverified hypothesis about fat tail events are NOT what we KNOW. Presenting this as knowledge rather than speculation, and unduly focusing on it, is alarmist.

Tail events aren’t presented as “speculation”, they’re presented as possibilities.

They’re not presented as “knowledge,” they’re present as a result of a lack of knowledge, i.e. of uncertaintly.

There is never going to be complete knowledge of the future climate system. The question then, is how you make decisions in light of imperfect knowledge? Many think that means you don’t make decisions, or you make a decision to do nothing, when in fact we don’t do that in other areas of our individual or societal lives.

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