Tomorrow, the Subcommittee on Energy & Environment of the US House of Representative will be holding a hearing tomorrow titled “A Rational Discussion of Climate Change: the Science, the Evidence, the Response”. The hearing has been divided into three panels (I recall there were titles attached to each panel, but I can’t find it now – if you come across it, please let me know in comments).In my experience, when looking at these types of panels one of the most interesting things to see is who has been invited to present to the hearing. Each panel has 4 presenters and it appears …
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Tomorrow, the Subcommittee on Energy & Environment of the US House of Representative will be holding a hearing tomorrow titled “A Rational Discussion of Climate Change: the Science, the Evidence, the Response”. The hearing has been divided into three panels (I recall there were titles attached to each panel, but I can’t find it now – if you come across it, please let me know in comments).In my experience, when looking at these types of panels one of the most interesting things to see is who has been invited to present to the hearing. Each panel has 4 presenters and it appears that …
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Tomorrow, the Subcommittee on Energy & Environment of the US House of Representative will be holding a hearing tomorrow titled “A Rational Discussion of Climate Change: the Science, the Evidence, the Response”. The hearing has been divided into three panels (I recall there were titles attached to each panel, but I can’t find it now – if you come across it, please let me know in comments).In my experience, when looking at these types of panels one of the most interesting things to see is who has been invited to present to the hearing. Each panel has 4 presenters and it appears that …
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I have so much work on my desk I didn't know where to start, so I made an executive decision and took a quick look at what was happening on the climate front these days. I see that Jay has linked to an interesting video in youtube (no, I am not going to link to it since in my opinion it is so bad - you can see it over at Jay's). There are so many problems with it that it would be hard to begin. Things like flipping back and forth between the Antarctic ice cores and the Greenland ice cores depending on what they want to show; trying to pass off a rise in the Greenland ice core as the hockey …
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A new phrase has been coined in the climate wars. Copygate refers to the alleged plagiarism of material in the Wegman Report. For those not familiar with the Wegman Report, it was a report to the US Congress dealing with the Hockeystick Controversy produced by Dr. Wegman, a renown statistician. It has since been alleged that of the 96 page Wegman Report, 35 pages were plagiarized. Not good for a report from an Academic.Now, apart from the point that Dr. Wegman appears to try to pass himself off as an expert in fields where he has little to no expertise, would plagiarism impact the results …
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A couple of points to start your long weekend.First, probably very few remember the National Academies of Science hearing into climate reconstructions. In it a Dr. Wegman produced a report critical of Dr. Mann's paleoreconstruction. Well, after a lot of digging by volunteers, it turned out that there are a number of significant errors in the Wegman report. How significant? Well, George Mason University seems to be taking it seriously. My hat's off to John Mashey and Deep Climate for their digging. It will be interesting to see how this goes. Of course if they exonerate Wegman, I will …
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It is indeed a bizarro world we seem to live in these days when those opposing the science of climate change hail the new Royal Society document Climate Change a Summary of the Science as a victory for their side. It appears to start with an article from The Times and then was picked up by the usual suspects. The Times article has disappeared behind a paywall but the little description on its front page says Britain’s leading scientific institution admits there is greater uncertainty over future temperature rises than previously thought.I am not sure where they get this from, from reading …
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Atlantic storms are nothing new for Newfoundland and Labrador, but Igor left a punch. The CBC station near where my inlaws live said their equipment showed a gust of 145 km/hr. I understand that there are few injuries and I hope that is the case but my thoughts are with the people who suffered damage.A little known fact is that the largest natural disaster in Canada in terms of lives lost was a hurricane that hit Newfoundland in 1775 and killed an estimated 4,000 people at sea (Navy and fishermen). To be clear, this hurricane says nothing about global warming, but with storms expected to …
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OK, since some claimed that the Penn State report was biased, we now have the Independent Climate Change E-mail Review report. Yet again the scientists involved are congratulated for producing excellent science. One of the interesting things about this report is that it actually looks at some of the issues involved. For example, one of the main criticisms of climate researchers is that they have not released their code. However the report actually investigated whether this was a real problem. Their finding:33. Finding: The computer code required to read and analyse the instrumental …
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Well, this should put the last nail in the coffin of the whole CRU Hack incident. If you recall two investigations in the UK and one by Penn State revealed that there was no indication of wrongdoing contained in the stolen e-mails. However the investigation by Penn State did decide that since the committee was comprised of mostly administrators, they were not equipped to judge whether Dr. Mann had violated best practices issues. From that initial report:Decision 4: The Inquiry Committee determined that "given that information emerged in the form of the emails purloined from CRU in November …
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The National Post has an interesting article by Lawrence Solomon ( here ). In his article Mr. Solomon quotes from a paper by the climate scientist Mike Hulme titled Climate Change: what do we know about the IPCC? While the quotes were accurate, the context did not seem to be. So I decided to investigate a bit. When contacted by e-mail Professor Hulme confirmed that the "National Post article offers a meaning rather different to that intended and to that implied." (Note that this does not necessarily mean that he endorses my position. His own website has his own clarifying …
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In a previous post talking about current temperatures, a point was raised in the comments that both 1998 and 2009 were el Nino years and that this was causing the observed increase in temperatures. Since I have a desk full of paper work and am looking for ways to avoid it I thought I would play with the data a bit. I used the time period 1900 onwards (since I happen to have an Excel spreadsheet of the GISS data for 1900 onwards) and obtained the el Nino years from this paper. I had to think about how to remove the el Nino years and still leave a workable dataset, so I decided that I would …
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I have criticized people in the past for making too much of a single reading so I will only note that the monthly anomaly for April is the highest value since we have been keeping records. Is this proof of global warming? Of course not. I would list it as information consistent with the theory laid out by global warming.However we also have this interesting bit of information. The graph below is from the UAH data set looking at atmospheric temperatures. This is the preferred data set for skeptics since it is produced by two of the few scientists whom I would classify as skeptics (in the …
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This article about conspiracy theories has captured the state of the climate debate perfectly. The fact that three different reviews of the CRU hacking incident have found nothing to challenge the science only shows that they are all part of the conspiracy. Read the whole thing.h/t Tim Lambert …
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The latest attempt to discredit climate science takes the form of another assault on the IPCC Assessment Reports. A group of people have gone over the IPCC references and have found that there are a number of non-peer reviewed references in the document. Some of these provide a good example of why context matters, for example they identify one of the non-peer reviewed documents as an article from Newsweek written by Peter Gwynne. How does the IPCC use this document? They use it as an example of early work published in the media which later turns out to be wrong. To quote from the …
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I found the first part of my series "What to do when you don't have science" a bit depressing. So to counteract that I would like to link to an excellent example of what you do when the science is backing you. On April 17, 2009, the Environmental Protection Agency found that greenhouse gases were a threat to the public health and welfare of current and future generations. However, before the agency could act, they called for public questions and comments. And did they ever receive comments - 380,000 of them.The agency then sat down and looked at and responded to all the ones that …
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I stand by my prediction about the results of the Science and Technology Select Committee but just wanted to add a data point. In the comments, the point was raised that The dissenting member was the only member with a science background.I was curious about this comment so I did a bit of digging around when I got a chance. There were 4 MPs on the committee who looked at this topic. The dissenting view was made by MP Graham Stringer who does indeed have a BSc. (hons) in chemistry and who worked in the field for a while.The other members are:Tim Boswell: Mr. Boswell has a degree in Classics …
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No time to blog about it today, but it turns out that the Science and Technology Select Committee of the Parliament of the United Kingdom has completely exonerated Dr. Phil Jones whose e-mails were stolen in November. While it is like a person who is accused of being a child molester and is then cleared of all charges (i.e. the stigma remains) congratulations to Dr. Jones.Oh yes, my prediction. The usual suspects will say that the Committee 1)was biased, 2) ignored the evidence, 3) was political (of course the fact that there was a dissenting member proves that) and/or 4) was British. …
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I am hoping to write a couple of posts about the topic above (as time allows). The thing about the climate debate that has struck me this year is how much is being voiced over so little. Today I am going to look at three scientific papers, what the papers show and how the press releases and/or the results are spun. The first is “Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature” by McLean, de Freitas and Carter. The paper itself is an interesting look at the effect of the Southern Oscillation on global temperatures. While this effect is well known, they provide some …
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Mr. Bernier has written an opinion letter discussing the debate over global warming and the position of the Canadian government titled Caution is the right stance for Canada. While politicians are entitled, even obligated, to form opinion, no one is entitled to their own facts. So I thought some fact checking of his article was in order. Here is my rough cut at the scientific errors Mr. Bernier makes (the quote from Mr. Bernier is given in italics and my reply in bold text after). I am on a couple of deadlines and short on time and there are other scientific errors in his text so please …
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Lots of interesting things going on in the world of climate and I thought I would give a brief update. Feel free to add your own in the comments.My friend and sometimes co-blogger - John Cook - has an excellent site called Skeptical Science (Dr. Dawg has a link on the sidebar). However I will have to add another distinction to John, he is the first person I know to have turned their site into an app for the iphone or the ipod (do I have my technical jargon correct - I didn't even know what an ipod was until my daughter wanted one for Christmas). Check it out and if you are ever in a debate, …
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OK, I have been following the debate between Dr. Lambert and Lord Monckton. A couple of notes, the debate was shown, but the slides that the presenters used were not. That turned out to be a more serious disadvantage than I thought. Also, I am trying to get this up as soon as possible, so I accept that there may be errors in how I noted things. If anyone can correct something I said, please let me know.They have just finished their opening statements. First up was Dr. Lord Monckton and he made 4 points as far as I can tell. The first one was that the production of biofuels caused the …
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One of my favourite bloggers, Tim Lambert, is going to be debating Lord Monckton on Friday. I have a lot of respect for Tim who has done some extremely good work in regards to the issue of AGW. There is no question that he knows his stuff and while I think this type of discussion is very important, a debate format is not the best for exploring science. I have seen a couple of these debates and the problem is that the denial side is able to throw up what amount to lies which have no hope of being justified, but would take too long to expose during a debate. I am not saying that Lord …
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While I think that most (all?) of the issues raised when someone stole e-mail from the CRU have been answered, there is still some cleaning up to do. Part of that cleanup was carried out today with the release of a report investigating Dr. Michael Mann. Penn State, where Dr. Mann is employed, received a number of complaints based on the stolen e-mails from CRU. It struck a committee to investigate and while there were no formal allegations of wrong doing the committee distilled four allegations of inappropriate behaviour on Dr. Mann's part from the complaints. Allegation 1: Did you …
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I know that a common phrase by the crowd doubting AGW is that "the wheels are falling off the bus". Well, it turns out that the wheels are still on and the nuts are getting tighter all the time.The latest wrench is a new paper published early in January titled On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record. If you are like me and have done any looking around skeptical sites, you are exposed to shot after shot of US weather stations that show poor siting factors followed by claims that the data is hopelessly corrupted. This paper has looked at the actual data involved, not just …
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Shortly into the new year, I felt some funny pains in my jaw. A couple of emergency trips to my very excellent dentist shortly revealed that I needed a root canal! I was scheduled for one very quickly, but that was enough for me to hear every story about bad root canals that you ever could (top prize goes to my daughter's flute teacher). Now I could be the exception, but I have to say that my experience was nothing but good! The only negative was that the procedure took a little longer than scheduled. However during it I felt little to no pain at all - far less than any other dental …
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After the politics of Copenhagen and the CRUHack, I think it is a good time to get back to some basic science. I want to look at the argument that “adding CO2 will not change anything” or that “adding CO2 will only cause a small warming”. In fact, I am going to try to establish that doubling CO2 alone will cause between 1 and 1.2 C temperature increase. While there are a number of scientific papers and books that look at this, I am hoping to do it without math or physics. Instead, I will look at what some of the sceptics say. Any branch of science will have a number of people who …
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The posting from my end has been a little light - life has been interfering. Thought provoking discussion outsourced to Eli Rabett for today.However there is one housekeeping item that needs to be announced! That is the winner of the first ever annual Dawg's Blawg climate prediction contest. It was a tough fight but Catelli and Lenny both were spot on for the December - November prediction, and were both only 2 hundredths of a degree off for the November prediction. So as stipulated in the rules, the winner is Catelli, who posted 2 hours ahead of Lenny (sorry Lenny, but in my opinion that …
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Well, this is not a great way to start a contest, but I am going to bend the rules already. I doubt that GISS will post their numbers until mid week so I will extend the deadline to enter the contest to midnight on the 14th. If it turns out that the GISS does post tomorrow, I will be forced to cut off the contest at that time so hurry up and enter your guesses.OK, here it is - what you have all been waiting for. Your chance to show the professional climatologists that you can do what they do. The Dawg's Blawg Climate Prediction Contest is your chance to predict how warm (or cool) the …
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My father passed away last week. He was somewhat of a sceptic. I probably could have changed his mind but we found it much more interesting to discuss our jobs (his old, mine ongoing), and my children.Dad was a financial person who seemed to lean more towards the conservative side of things, however he was always sensible and I appreciated his devotion to the truth and I loved his sense of humour. I remember during the Bush administration he said that the White House needed some Republicans. After seeing the look on my face, he continued "I mean real Republicans, not the idiots they …
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Now that "Climategate" appears to be just about over with nothing to show for a week of pouring over the e-mails, source code and personal relationships I note that there is one good thing to come out of it. Over at RealClimate they have a page devoted to organizing and releasing the data. This was an excellent move on their part. I suspect that almost none of it is new to the public but it shows their willingness to go out of their way to ensure that the public is informed. So skeptics, RealClimate has listened to what you said, saw some validity in it and acted. Any chance you …
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Now that the weekend has passed and the cries of “the arse is really out of ‘er this time” have echoed throughout the stratosphere, the hacked e-mails turn out to not reveal much of anything (the only exception is possibly the alleged deleting of e-mails in regards to an FOI request) – or so I thought. I was feeling fairly smart when I came across the smoking gun!I must now say that I was wrong. There is strong evidence of alleged fraud in the e-mails from the CRU hack. I stand corrected. That is me on the right. …
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Damn - I see that the good Doctor beat me to it! Well, since we are all talking about the hacked e-mails from the CRU, I suppose I should post about it as well. There are three points that I want to raise.First, I think this is one of the most despicable acts I have come across. The e-mails contained personal opinions and observations. Who among us has never written an e-mail which they would not want someone else to read. Regardless of what you think of the content, you have to give full credit to the way they have handled the broadcasting of such personal information.Second, from what …
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I have a friend - Jim Easter - who runs an interesting site called Some Are Boojums. It has been my pleasure to e-mail with Jim for the past several years and we once collaborated on a post looking at the science presented by one Dr. Jaworowski (which was one of the most fun posts I have worked on these years). However Jim is a multi-talented individual and about 4 years ago wrote a piece which I found amusing at the time. I do not consider myself to be very political, however in my opinion the latter Bush administration represents one of the low points of Western Civilization in very …
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I confess that I know very little in the way of general law, however I came across this the other day and would like to pose two questions to the wise and worldly readers of this blog.1) Would this be illegal in Canada (my answer is I don't know)?2) Should this be illegal in Canada (my answer is an absolute YES)?Open for comments. …
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This post is a departure from global warming, but it illustrates the need for science and specifically the space program. This article is an interesting review of how we look at molecules in space. In it the authors go looking for a particular molecule (CH3-CH2-OH) and find it.Not only did they find it, but they found it in very large quantities - roughly 11.4 × 10^(16) cubic meters. Or to put it into simpler terms 11.4 trillion trillion litres of pure drinking alcohol. Think about it! The average Canadian beer has about 5% alcohol, so this is enough for - roughly speaking - 228 trillion …
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I have acted as both reviewer and the reviewed in the area of peer reviewed literature. However I have never been a reviewer of a Peer of the British Realm. So I am pleased to be able to look at a piece on YouTube (no, I'm not going to link to it) that has been making the rounds. It is an interview of Lord Monckton (3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley) by Michael Coren. In it he claims to present a scientific argument against global warming and this is the claim I want to review. The interview was about 1 hour long and was unfortunately mostly made up of rhetoric. For example, he said …
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Mark Francis, in comments, wrote "Why don't you take a good swing at the kerfuffle over the recent Antarctica ice study by Marco Tedesco and Andrew Monaghan?" Now, that's more like it – the easy softball questions as opposed to Peter 1’s question about models (that one has kept me up all night for that last few days ;) )The "TEDESCO AND MONAGHAN" paper is called An updated Antarctic melt record through 2009 and its linkages to high-latitude and tropical climate variability. It has made a splash in the skeptic world because it shows the smallest "snowmelt index anomaly" ever recorded (of …
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