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Sunday, July 22, 2012

 

Support Michael Mann (and other climate scientists)





Scientists have to put up with a lot for speaking plainly about research that challenges preconceived notions or vested interests. From Simon Singh to Michael Nutt,  the price for speaking the truth can be high.

Climate scientists in particular have borne the brunt of those who feel threatened by reality. Michael Mann in particular has borne the brunt of many of these attacks, as he produced some iconic research the "hockey stick" which has clearly illustrated the unusual nature of recent warming.

He's had to put up with people claiming his research was fraudulent for a long time, despite it being independently replicated by many others (see diagram above). Well, he's finally striking back, yet another correspondent has publicly accused him of doing fraudulent research in print.

Now, the "Hockey Stick" is not fraudulent. This discussion of the "Hockey Stick" goes into much better detail about it (actually, it gets a bit technical), but the take home message is that the results are well validated, reproducible in other studies and most importantly, the statistical treatment (it wasn't a "mathematical formula as most lay people would understand) did not automatically generate "hockey sticks" (It was principle component analysis for crying out loud). See also this discussion of "Hockey Stick" myths. 

Anyway, he has, through his lawyers, issued a letter asking for removal of the article and a public apology. Good on you Michael, let's hope you get the apology.

If you are interested in helping climate scientists defend themselves for the numerous attacks on them, you might consider contributing to the Climate Science Legal Defence Fund.

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# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 11:00 pm 0 comments

Monday, September 13, 2010

 

My Seminar with Barry Brook

A couple of weeks back Professor Ian Plimer gave a seminar in my School, this week, it was the turn of Professor Barry Brook, who runs the Brave New Climate blog (as well as doing climate change research of course, but this is a major outreach effort so I'm highlighting that).

Professor Brooks talk was the antithesis of Professor Plimers. Consistent, logically developed, and a very good summation of our understaning of climate change. He also spoke about the various energy options we have for mitigation, and real world examples of mitagations schemes to reduce carbon emissions (contrasting France and Denmark as one example of neuclear vs wind power).

One thing was clear, was that work on mitigation schemes must occur soon, if serious climate change is to be avoided. You can read more about the energy issues at Barry's blog, so I won't go into detail here, but I would like to point to the Oz-Energy Analysis site, and Open Science site where sustainable renewable energy options are being investigated. Have a look and get involved.

Like last time I was unable to stay and ask questions, haveing too run a workshop, but I did learn the Barry was an amateur astronomer when he was younger!

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# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 10:52 pm 0 comments

Monday, August 23, 2010

 

My Seminar With Ian Plimer

gisstempfiga.png

Image source NASA.

Professor Ian Plimer, one of Australia’s leading Climate Change Inactivists, gave a talk at my School today. Professor Plimer has written a book about global warming, “Heaven and Earth”, which has an impressive list of inaccuracies and errors. I found out about the talk late, so I had very little time to get my thoughts together before the talk started.

Professor Plimer is a very good and charming speaker, but he didn’t make it clear where he was going in his talk. He gave a grand sweep of geological time, but even I who is a geological time geek, found it difficult to follow which way he was going. He was trying to show that temperatures and climate had varied a lot in the past and that CO2 was not the main driver, but because he hadn’t really set up the issue of modern global warming, it was unclear where he was heading.

In fact, he managed to talk about climate change without showing contemporary graphs of surface temperature change (with two exceptions which I’ll talk about later). He spent a long time talking about how surface temperature stations were bad (they are not; again, this was without showing the temperature record itself), then showing the satellite record at a scale where it was hard to see what was going on and claiming that a) satellites were more accurate (they have different problems) and b) temperatures had not changed (but satellite measurements confirm land surface measurements). He flashed up a small segment of the land surface record that was dipping while showing CO2 going up, but if he had shown the full CO2 /temperature record the picture would have been entirely different.

Image credit Real Climate. Showing how the satellite record of temperatures follows the surface temperatures.

He also showed a version of the dodgy sunspot cycle vs temperature graph from the "Great Global Warming Swindle" that I knew was spurious (hey, I run an aurora alert service, I know sunspots). And well... heck there was so much of it that was wrong (Roman warm period as global not local, misrepresenting the CO2 levels during neoproteozoic snowball earth, dodgy CO2 measurement graphs, virtually everything he got wrong in his book was trotted out) . It is of enormous irony that Professor Plimer, once a foe of creationism, should be using the Gish Gallop.

The main thing about the talk was it's overall contradiction, approximately half the talk tried to show temperatures weren't changing, and the other half tired to show that temperatures were changing and that the Sun (or cosmic rays or something; anything but people) was responsible.

When the Question time came I made a mistake, I should have gone for the inherent contradictions in the talk (If increasing sunspots track increasing temperature, doesn't that contradict your statement that global temperatures aren't rising). Instead I pointed out that the sunspot graph was wrong, and there was no correlation between sunspots and temperature in the contemporary period. Professor Plimer attentatively wrote down the details, perhaps in his next talk there will be one less error.

Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to talk to Professor Plimer after, I had to rush off to run a workshop for the second years. However, if Barry Brook can't convince Professor Plimer, I have no chance of influencing him.

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# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 11:19 pm 1 comments

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

 

Monckton on the Radio

gisstempfiga.png

Image source NASA.

While picking the kids up from the various places they have been sequestered at while I and the BEW have been working, I listened to an interview with Lord Monckton, visiting climate change denier, on ABC news radio.

In it he claimed that "Temperatures have not increased significantly in the past 15 years" and "there has been global cooling in the past 9 years". Would you believe he is wrong? Look at the graph to the left, see also here and here. 2009 tied for the second warmest year since records were kept, and the decade 2000-2009 was the warmest of all decades.

UPDATE: The Australian has an article on Lord Monckton, which is largely fact-free. A bit of research by that paper would find that his claims about climate forcings are wrong as well, (see also here). Most humorous moment in the article ""I'm boring, I check things," he says happily." Hmm, how about here, and here and here. Seriously, why does The Australian never bother to ask real scientists about these things?

UPDATED UPDATE: How did I miss this? "But that won't stop the torrent of claims and statistics and scientific data that pours out of Lord Monckton". Lord Moncktons' out put of scientific data is almost negligible, I can only find one actual scientific publication ( Christopher Monckton: "Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered", Physics and Society, 37, issue 3, p. 6 (2008) which is comprehensively refuted here) which is mostly just wrong-headed modelling not data, and his "stream" of statistics is rehashes of simplistic statistics with cherry-picked data (see here again). Again, journalists should have noticed this early on.

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# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 10:15 am 0 comments

Tuesday, June 02, 2009

 

Climate Futures Seminar, Tuesday June 2.

Here's the notification of the latest climate futures seminar.

Join us this Tuesday for the twelfth and last instalment of the Climate Futures Seminar Series entitled ‘Climate Futures’ convened by Dr Steven Cork.

The overwhelming focus of public discourse about climate change over the past few years has been on predictions of where and how much climate might change globally and nationally. Now that consensus is being reached that climate change is happening, attention is turning to what it might mean in terms of the lifestyles and well being of humans and other species. If there has been uncertainty about how bio-physical processes might change in the future, there is much more uncertainty about how climate change might interact with other economic, social and ecological changes and how humans might respond to these interacting changes. Scenario planning is one tool that has been used to explore the range of plausible futures and their implications. This seminar will take attendees through the steps of a typical scenario planning process, looking at the drivers of change that could combine with climate change to produce major challenges and opportunities, then synthesise a number of scenario planning projects from around the world and Australia, and consider the implications for preparing Australia for plausible futures. Prominent among most scenarios about the implications of climate change are considerations of how changes in energy resources and policies might interact with carbon policies and how both might interact with changes in governance models nationally and globally.

‘Climate Futures’ will be presented on Tuesday 20 May at 6-8pm in the Horace Lamb Lecture Theatre, University of Adelaide North Terrace campus. Registration for this event is preferred.

enquires to: environment@adelaide.edu.au

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# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 7:20 am 0 comments

Monday, May 18, 2009

 

Climate Futures Seminar, Wednesday May 20.

Here's the notification of the latest climate futures seminar.

Join us this Wednesday for the tenth instalment of the Climate Futures Seminar Series entitled ‘The Carbon Economy’ convened by Professor Christopher Findlay.

This seminar will explore what has to change in Australia’s economy to get to or near the global per capita average emissions needed under ‘ambitious’ mitigation. Policy options and recent changes in climate change policy in Australia will then be discussed , followed by a review of the international context of national policy making, likely events at the Copenhagen meeting, interaction between China and the US on climate change, and the gains from international linking of emissions trading schemes.

‘The carbon economy’ will be presented on Wednesday 20 May at 5-7pm in the Horace Lamb Lecture Theatre, University of Adelaide North Terrace campus. The entrance to the venue is indicated on the first attached flyer. We plan to commence by 5:15pm but doors will be open throughout the event. Registration for this event is preferred.

enquires to: environment@adelaide.edu.au

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# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 10:03 pm 0 comments

Monday, May 11, 2009

 

Climate Futures Seminar, Wednesday May 13.

I've been a bit slack about passing on notifications about the climate futures seminars (as I noted in a previous post, I've been busy). But here's the notification of the latest one.

Have you ever wondered how climate change is impacting rural communities? To discover more join us for the ninth instalment of the Climate Futures Seminar Series and hear from three speakers who will discuss the research being undertaken in this area and its application.

In this lecture Dr Peter Hayman, Principal Scientist, Climate Applications with the South Australian Research and Development Institute (SARDI) will be joined by Barry Mudge a farmer and consultant from Port Germain (north of Goyder’s Line) and Dr Paul Peitrie chief viticulturist with Fosters to talk about risk and resilience in the face of climate change.

This seminar will be presented on Wednesday 13 May at 5-7pm in the Horace Lamb Lecture Theatre, University of Adelaide North Terrace campus. The entrance to the venue is indicated on the first attached flyer. We plan to commence by 5:15pm but doors will be open throughout the event. Registration for this event is preferred.

enquires to: environment@adelaide.edu.au

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# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 10:26 pm 0 comments
 

The Australians War on Science Update and Ian Pilmer's Book

The Australian has again broken out in Global Warming silliness, and I'm just too busy and tired to do any refutation of their "same old-same old". However, Tim Lambert has over at Deltoid. See here, here and here.

I don't know what to make of Ian Pilmer. A while ago he was involved in the fight against creationism, but by all accounts his latest book "Heaven and Earth" uses the same creationist tactics, misleading, outdate or just plain flase information, again, Deltoid has a good review (and here and here), as does Barry Brook.

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# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 10:03 pm 1 comments

Friday, March 27, 2009

 

Earth Hour - Time for Some Astronomy

The western horizon as seen at 8:30 pm (local time) Saturday in Australia (click to embiggen).

Earth Hour is upon us! Various city councils, businesses and local citizens will be turning off their lights from 8:30 - 9:30 pm this Saturday (28 March) in this global action to raise awareness about climate change.

For suburbanites, the sky will be darker than usual, and rather than huddle inside reading by the light of torches, why not do some astronomy?

At 8:30 pm the beautiful Pleiades cluster will be lowering to the western horizon, above that is Taurus and the "V" shape of the Hyades cluster, then above that is Orion and his belt. To the south the Southern Cross is clearly visible, with the beautiful star fields and clusters of Carina and Vela (the keel and sail of the ship Argos) are well above the horizon. If you have binoculars, then these fields are georgous to behold.

Look for satellites going over; Genisis II, Various cosmos rockets and delta stages are going across the sky from 8:30 to 9:30, why not pop over to Heavens Above and get satellite predictions for your location? There is a good Iridium flare around 7:30 pm (but that's not part of Earth hour).

If you have a telescope, small or large, why not invite friends over for an impromptu star party? If you have a small telescope, why not set it up on the footpath for some footpath astronomy and show the sky to passers by? Especially Saturn at this time. If you have a large telescope, why not try looking for the shadow transit of Titan?

So come Saturday night, why not show some support for climate change action AND take advantage of suburban dark skies?

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# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 6:23 pm 0 comments

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

 

Jon Jenkins writes a letter...

..to the Australian (Let's cool down on climate). He says his opinion piece was "...perhaps too strongly worded...." and gives an apology. "Too strongly worded"! Accusing honest scientists of fraud and presenting untruths as fact goes way beyond "too strongly worded". I don't think Professor Jenkins has learned anything form this episode*.

Jon Jenkins turned up the the comments to Deltoids thread on this subject (his comments start here). Sadly, he completely missed the point (and I missed the chance to make a useful contribution).

*Yeah, he's fed up with being called names. You should see what I have been called by creationists, HIV/AIDS deniers and various other anti-rationalists. I think I win the title for "most swear words used as an adjective before my name". Somethines I get grumpy, but I have never used untruths or accused honest people of fraud to try and make my case against the anti-rationalists.

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# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 8:07 am 1 comments

Friday, January 09, 2009

 

What's Up with Polynomial Fits (yes, it has astronomy content)

A reader has wondered why I was so down on polynomial fits in my post on the Australians War Against Science*. Polynomial fits have their place, but to give you an idea of why polynomial fits are a Bad Thing (tm) in climate (or a wide range of) data, without extensive mathematical explanations, have a look at the graph to the left (click to enlarge).

The raw data, on casual observation, is a bit noisy, but appears to plateau then fall in the final observations.

The polynomial fit is the green curvy line (I've used a 5th order fit here, as the graph in the Jon Jenkins article used a 5th order polynomial). It sort of wobbles up and down a bit, then does a spectacular dive at the end, just like in the Jenkins graph).

A pretty good estimation of the trend eh? No. The data is actually a continuously increasing line to which I have added noise. The scale of the graph and the range of noise variation was chosen to match the UAH tropospheric temperature data. The "trend" given by the polynomial is dead wrong. The linear fit (black straight line) recovers the real line out of the noise pretty well.

The polynomial fit is quite sensitive to the final data points in a series, it just needs a bit of noise to send the curve flailing around like a snapped hawser. And climate data is very noisy, that's why scientists study long term trends, where the noise can be averaged out. Also, as we are coming off a La Nina event, we expect there to be a drop in global temperatures, it's what La Ninas do. To use a polynomial fit of truncated data when you know there is more data and you know we are coming out of a La Nina event is either sheer stupidity or culpable fraud.

This is why you don't use polynomials fits in these circumstances, they will either be misleading or completely wrong. Have a look at the second graph, it a graph of stellar intensity. The black line is the polynomial fit. Now, if someone told you that the polynomial "trend" meant that the star would soon fade away, would you accept that?

Espeically if you knew it was a truncated section of the intensity graph of Algol? That's the sort of thing Jenkins is trying to get away with.

* They are at it again today, with a headline "Obesity Epidemic a Myth", which grossly distorts the actual science. I'll rant about that later (our kids are nolonger getting exponentially fatter, they are still some of the fattest kids in the world though).

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# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 10:28 pm 12 comments

Thursday, September 18, 2008

 

Part 4: Free Climate Change Lectures at Adelaide University

The forth of a free, six part lecture series free public seminars on climate change being given at Adelaide University. The seminar "Are the impacts of climate change being overstated?" will be from 5:30pm to 7:00pm, Friday 19 September, Lecture Theatre 102, Napier Building, North Terrace Campus, University of Adelaide.

Podcasts and material related to the Climate Change Q & A seminars will be available at Professor Barry Brook's blog: bravenewclimate.com

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# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 7:05 am 0 comments

Thursday, September 04, 2008

 

Part 3: Free Climate Change Lectures at Adelaide University

The third of a free, six part lecture series free public seminars on climate change being given at Adelaide University. The seminar "What future climate change scenarios are possible??" will be from 5:30pm to 7:00pm, Friday 5 September, Lecture Theatre 102, Napier Building, North Terrace Campus, University of Adelaide.

Podcasts and material related to the Climate Change Q & A seminars will be available at Professor Barry Brook's blog: bravenewclimate.com

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# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 7:07 am 2 comments

Thursday, August 21, 2008

 

Part 2: Free Climate Change Lectures at Adelaide University

The second of a free, six part lecture series free public seminars on climate change being given at Adelaide University. The seminar "Can we distinguish between natural and human- induced climate change?" will be from 5:30pm to 7:00pm, Friday 22 August, Lecture Theatre 102, Napier Building, North Terrace Campus, University of Adelaide.

Podcasts and material related to the Climate Change Q & A seminars will be available at Professor Barry Brook's blog: bravenewclimate.com

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# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 6:47 am 1 comments

Sunday, August 17, 2008

 

Update to the Free Climate Change Lectures At Adeliade University

A while ago I gave notice of a seminar "Is the Earth really warming?" on Friday 8 August, at University of Adelaide. You can get podcasts of the seminar in three parts (Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3) as well as PDFs of the presentations (talk 1, talk 2) , over that the blog of Barry Brooks, Sir Hubert Wilkins Chair of Climate Change at the University of Adelaide, Brave New Climate. As well, you can subscribe to podcasts at bravenewclimate.com/feed or go to adelaide.edu.au/climatechange for details about this 6-part lecture series.

Do drop in on Brave New Climate, it has very interesting articles for anyone interested in the actual science of global warming and climate change.

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# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 7:41 am 0 comments

Thursday, August 07, 2008

 

Free Climate Change Lectures at Adelaide University

If you are not watching the Olympics tomorrow night (Friday 8 August), living in or around Adelaide and want to know the facts behind climate change, then come along to the first in a series of free public seminars on climate change being given at Adelaide University. The seminar "Is the Earth really warming?" will be from 5:30pm to 7:00pm, Friday 8 August, Lecture Theatre 102, Napier Building, North Terrace Campus, University of Adelaide.

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# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 10:41 pm 4 comments

Friday, July 25, 2008

 

Global Warming Resources

For people interested in learning the facts about Global Warming, then here a few resources that can help you.

To start with here's a link to a nice review that covers key elements of the field up to 2007.

http://www.thescientificworld.co.uk/headeradmin/upload/2007.03.91.pdf

Again, a good overview of climate change can be found at Steven Schneiders Climate Change pages

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (lots of articles and graphs)
http://www.ipcc.ch/

Pew Center on Global Climate Change which is an independent research centre, try their climate change 101 articles.
http://www.pewclimate.org/

EPA's Climate Change Web site, this is a comprehensive information resource.
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/index.html

Hadley Centre for Climate Change. This is the UK’s official centre for climate change research.
http://www.met-office.gov.uk/research/hadleycentre/index.html

Global Climate Change Research Explorer.
http://www.exploratorium.edu/climate/

For answers to denialist talking points, The Real Climate Index is a good starting point.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php

For discussion of the role of CO2 in climate change, see
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/06/a-saturated-gassy-argument/
and then
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/06/a-saturated-gassy-argument-part-ii/
(especially the graphs)
as well as
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/Radmath.htm
and especially this
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/08/the-co2-problem-in-6-easy-steps/

Happy reading!

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# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 8:58 pm 8 comments
 

The Advertiser's War on Science II

Image Source IPPC figure SPM-2.

Chris Kenny has another column on climate change in this weeks Adelaide Advertiser. Unfortunately, once again he fails to understand the science (or how science works)

Look at the graph to the left, then read this quote from Chris Kenny's column.
It is also a fact to say that the climate is always changing. And that no one has yet proved a link between human activities and/or carbon emissions and climate change. Sure, there are theories and models, some of which are widely respected. But there is no proven science.
I'll say this again, proof is for mathematics and whisky, science is about evidence (inference to the best explanation if you want to be technical). And what the heck is "proven science"? We collect evidence for or against specific hypotheses, we don't try and prove science (fans of Popper and Kuhn can go duke it out somewhere else). Evidence, collected by imperfect humans using imperfect instruments.

Science can almost never produce 100% certainty. We're 100% certain that earth is an oblate spheroid, and that Earth orbits the Sun, everything else comes with error bars. Small error bars in many cases, some aspects of general relativity have been measured to better than one part in a billion (that's really accurate), but error bars nonetheless. This is pounced on by many like creationists, HIV-denialists and anti-vaccinationists. To them, any degree of uncertainty means that the whole enterprise is discredited, and their brand of nonsense is more valid.

Things like biology and climate rarely have the nice, tight error bars that physics (mostly) gets (ask me about lysophosphatidic acid receptors and neurite growth some time), but we do have evidence. In the case of climate change, multiple forms of evidence, from actual temperature changes, to changing flowering patterns, to changing migration patterns to rises in sea level. To interpret this evidence we use theories and models. ALL science uses theories and models to interpret evidence (like the germ theory of disease), disparaging theories and models means you don't understand science.

And sometimes we have to act when our understanding is less than complete, John Snow did not wait until he had near prefect understanding of disease transmission, or even had a germ theory of disease, before getting the Broad Street Pump replaced during a cholera epidemic. Our understanding of climate change is imperfect, but we know that the climate is warming, and most of it is due to human activities. This is solidly based in physical law, you put more carbon dioxide into an atmosphere, it will retain more heat, this is high school science class stuff.

Chris Kerry misunderstands science again:

People are scorned as "deniers" simply for pointing out the scientifically agreed fact that Earth has not warmed for a decade.

First off, it is not a "scientifically agreed fact" that Earth hasn't warmed for a decade (see my original post), the earth hasn't stopped warming, no matter whether you use the GISS, Hadely or RSS databases, temperature is still going up. Climate scientists are in fact united in saying that the world has not stopped warming.

You don't get called a denier for saying the world has stopped warming, you get called a denier for keeping on saying that after the facts have been patiently explained to you numerous times.

A good overview of climate change can be found at Steven Schneiders Climate Change pages. See also Did Global Warming Stop in 1998?, Global Trends and ENSO , and Wiggles.

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# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 7:23 am 7 comments

Thursday, June 28, 2007

 

The ABC's war on Science

While waiting for the ABC's science program Catalyst I was appalled to see an add for "The Great Climate Swindle". I really don't expect Aunty foisting pseudoscience on us. The director of television, Kim Dalton, had this to say:
...in the ABC's recently revised editorial policies, a priority is placed in allowing principal relevant viewpoints on matters of public importance to be aired. We want the ABC to be Australia's town square where people can debate, hear alternative views and learn from each other.

It was in that spirit that ABC television made the decision to purchase the year's most contentious documentary, The Great Global Warming Swindle, written and directed by British producer Martin Durkin.
Sorry Kim, the sad fact is that the alleged documentary is not a contribution to a debate, but complete rubbish. It gets the basic facts of climate change wrong, it ergeriously quotes the lone climate scientist out of context (the majority of its so called climate experts are nothing of the sort), and it uses, to not put too fine a point on it, made up data* to make it appear as if climate hasn't changed (and their graph of solar activity vs temperatures is a little, shall we say, imaginative and shows a spurious correlation due to arithmetical errors). And its not like these basic flaws weren't well known when Aunty purchased this piece of fiction.

What's next Aunty? "The Great Heliocentric Swindle" complete with faked data showing the Sun orbiting the Earth?

UPDATE: To be fair to the actual Science Unit of Aunty, the TV management ignored the advice of the Robin Williams of the Science Unit, whom I have the greatest resect for.

*Yeah, there could have been an honest mistake where the vertical scale was exagerated, and 1988 was removed from the graph and replaced with 2000, without adding in the data to 2000 (see this image here comparing their graph to the real data) and then this mindboggling bit of incompetence had to be missed during the fact checking and post production of the show. This graph was a key part of their "argument", and if they can't get that basic fact right, with all the publically available data out their, it speaks volumes about the "accuracy" of the rest of the show.

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# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 10:10 pm 2 comments

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