Tim Lambert (deltoidblog AT gmail.com) is a computer scientist at the University of New South Wales.
Nature has started Climate Feedback, a blog on climate change. One of the first posts is by Roger Pielke Jr, who claims
Even the venerable New York Times is prone to completely botching a discussion of the science of climate change. In a front page article today, the NYT reports on how the National Arbor Day Foundation has updated plant hardiness maps to reflect recent changes in climate. (A plant hardiness map presents the lowest annual temperature as a guideline to what plants will thrive in what climate zones.) The NYT misrepresents understandings of variability and trend and in the process confuse more than clarify.
However, it is Pielke Jr who has completely botched the discussion.
He writes:
The new map updates a 1990 USDA map based on 1974-1986 data, and replaces it with data from 1990-2006. In most places the range of increased average minimum temperature has moved north as can be seen from a difference map between the two time periods. The difference map, shown here, has the horizontal lines because the zones used are so broad -- 10 degrees -- that the differences are only noticeable at the margins of the zones.
The New York Times reports that these differences can all be attributed to human-caused climate change, using the case of Atlanta as an illustration:
Using data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Arbor Day map indicates that many bands of the country are a full zone warmer, and a few spots are two zones warmer, than they were in 1990, when the map was last updated.
Atlanta, which was in Zone 7 in 1990, is now in Zone 8, along with the rest of northern Georgia. That means that areas in the northern half of the state where the average low temperature was zero to 10 degrees Fahrenheit are now in a zone where the average low is 10 to 20 degrees. A scientific consensus has concluded that this warming trend has largely been caused by the human production of heat-trapping gases.
Because the zones span 10 degrees (or 5 degrees in the case of the 1990 USDA map) and the largest change shown on the difference map is 2 degrees, then clearly no location has jumped 2 zones! This is just an error.
Indeed it is, but the error is Pielke Jr's. The difference map shows not the change in temperature, but the change in zones (Hint: the legend says "Zone Change"). The largest change is not 2 degrees as Pielke Jr thinks but 2 zones. NYT 1 Pielke Jr 0.
Pielke Jr continues:
More important than this simple mistake is the claim in the NYT that the changes in temperature observed in Atlanta can be attributed to human-caused greenhouse gases. In fact, the IPCC argues that it needs 30 years of records to detect trends, much less make attribution. In fact, the IPCC report just out has reported that the U.S. southeast has actually cooled over the period of record as shown below.
But Pielke Jr has shown the trends since 1901 even though the IPCC only stated that most of recent warming is anthropogenic, not warming since 1901. Right next to the graph that Pielke Jr chose to present is one that shows trends since 1979 (AR4 Chapter 3 22Mb pdf):
The graph shows that the US South East has warmed since 1979. Now it is true that the IPCC has only attributed warming mainly to human influences over the past 30 years and at the level of continents, but the trend in the US South East over the past 15 years is similar to that over North America over the past 30, so the NYT is justified in attributing to human influences. NYT 2 Pielke Jr 0.
Hans von Storch and Eduardo Zorita have a post on the hockey stick that is going to annoy everyone involved in the hockey stick wars:
In October 2004 we were lucky to publish in Science our critique of the 'hockey-stick' reconstruction of the temperature of the last 1000 years. Now, two and half years later, it may be worth reviewing what has happened since then.
The publication in 2004 was a remarkable event, because the hockey-stick had been elevated to an icon by the 3rd Assessment Report of the IPCC. This perception was supported by a lack of healthy discussion about the method behind the hockey-stick. In the years before, due to effective gate keeping of influential scientists, papers raising critical points had a hard time or even failed to pass the review process. For a certain time, the problem was framed as an issue of mainstream scientists, supporting the concept of anthropogenic climate change, versus a group of skeptics, who doubted the reality of the blade of the hockey stick. By framing it this way, the real problems, namely the 'wobbliness' of the shaft of the hockey-stick, and the suppressing of valid scientific questions by gate keeping, were left out.
Mann and company are not going to appreciate the insinuation that they were involved in the suppression of valid scientific questions, while McIntyre is already hopping mad that he wasn't given credit for totally smashing the hockey stick.
Update: Since I can't post images in the comments, here is a graph (from the NCDC) of Jan temperatures in the US. It warmed 2°F per decade.
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Comments
Er, don't you mean McIntyre is mad that he wasn't given credit? [Oops. Fixed. thanks. Tim]
Posted by: Glen Raphael | May 4, 2007 3:12 AM
Tim:
Why? Why would Nature do that?
Also, can someone give us a Pielke overview? Which of the two, Jr. and Sr., have done what, said what, etc.?
This is very dispiriting. I completely have boosted Nature, and I imagine we all have at one time or another.
Posted by: Marion Delgado | May 4, 2007 3:12 AM
I have a feeling that RP Jr. may have lobbied Nature to start this blog, which would tend to explain the presence of Kevin Vranes. Note that of the five contributors who aren't Nature editors, three are from Boulder! Does the third one (Paty Romero Lankao of NCAR) have an RP Jr. connection?
Also, RP Jr. may have been eager to expand his blogging horizons since the lagomorph-inspired boycott of Prometheous has vastly reduced the quality of the commenters there.
Marion, a Pielke clan retrospective exceeds my current energy level, but IIRC Mature has been quite partial to RP Jr.'s stuff for several years at least. The obvious conclusion would seem to be that he has an in with one or more of the editors.
Posted by: Steve Bloom | May 4, 2007 5:52 AM
Thanks for the nice welcome to tbe blogosphere.
Not being a climate scientist myself I will not comment on the scientific comments you make, but in response to M. Delgado and S. Bloom, the contributors to the Nature Reports Climate Change (note, not a part of the journal Nature, but a blog of the separate (online) publication Nature Reports Climate Change, http://www.nature.com/climate/index.html, published by Nature Publishing Group) are clearly listed on the blog itself, if you click on the category "contributors" on the front page. http://blogs.nature.com/climatefeedback/contributors/ Roger Pielke Jr's entry reads: Roger A. Pielke, Jr. is a Professor in the Environmental Studies Program and Fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado. He has degrees in Math, Public Policy, and Political Science, and spent 8 years at the U.S. National Centre for Atmospheric Research, 1993-2001. In 2006, he received the Eduard Brueckner Prize in Munich, Germany for outstanding achievement in interdisciplinary climate research. His most recent book is The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics (Cambridge University Press).
Nature Publishing Group doesn't need anyone to lobby us to start blogs, we love blogs and have been running them since 2005. You can set one up yourself if you like, on our Nature Network at http://network.nature.com. (I run two Nature Publishing Group blogs myself, one for authors and one on peer review. Nobody lobbied me in either case ;-) )
Posted by: Maxine | May 4, 2007 7:51 AM
However Maxine, you do need someone to pay attention to the comments who is not gone for the first five days or so that the blog is opened. Eli posted a comment last night, very nice and polite it was, that pretty much matched in content that of Tim, and got an out of office reply till Wednesday.
Let me give you a clue. The success of a blog depends on the community that it builds and comments are an important part of that.
While Real Climate (with whom you obviously intend to compete) is going through growing pains with comments since the blorgers deal with them themselves, as a commercial enterprise you should be able to assign people to this.
BTW trying to blow people off with Roger's CV is not a useful tactic. We know him quite well, for good and ill as does pretty much anyone who blogs or comments on climate Roger is not shy, and neither are we. All you have done is show that you are clueless about climate blogs, which kind of contradicts your closing paragraph.
Posted by: Eli Rabett | May 4, 2007 8:06 AM
Tim-
I did write degrees when I meant zones. The point stands. To see a change of 2 zones requires a temperature change of >10 degrees if the zones span 10 degrees each. You can let me know where average minimum temperatures have increased by 10 degrees over 30 years.
Your views on short-term regional attribution are counter to those of the IPCC. You are entitled to them, but climate scientists disagree.
I'm happy to see that the Nature blog will attract the usual online trolls and conspiracy theorists, should ensure a continued focus on ad homs which I am sure Nature will love ...
Thanks!
Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr. | May 4, 2007 8:54 AM
Did RP just call Tim a troll and conspiracy theorist?
How disappointing.
Posted by: MarkH | May 4, 2007 9:12 AM
Roger is not responding to Tim (and my) point, nor to what he wrote, but is moving the goalposts. His argument here is one with the USDA, who obviously did change the zones from 1990. And, btw folks that is 10 F not 10 C, and most of the zones are divided into a and b regions with 5 F differences between them.
Posted by: Eli Rabett | May 4, 2007 9:24 AM
I don't know for sure who RP was calling a troll and conspiracy theorist. However, in this thread, there was someone who said "I have a feeling that RP Jr. may have lobbied Nature to start this blog, which would tend to explain the presence of Kevin Vranes." They also said, "The obvious conclusion would seem to be that he has an in with one or more of the editors."
The assumption that RP was referring to Tim is, well, disappointing. Perhaps he was. Only RP knows for sure. But certainly an odd conclusion to draw...
Posted by: oconnellc | May 4, 2007 9:27 AM
So nice to see that Roger Pielke Jr. started his first post at Nature with yet another troll for attention. Typical Pielkieism.
And it is also typical of him to to cite the IPCC to buttress his opinion, when only last week he called the IPCC "embarrassing" for containing a graph that he disagreed with. Classic Pielkieism.
And it is so typical of RP Jr. that he will not respond to points that undercut any argument he makes. It looks like he must have some sort of relationship with an editor at Nature. That is the only thing that explains why they would bring him on, and it also explains why he keeps publishing opinion pieces in the magazine section.
I don't know what the people at Nature were thinking when they brought along people like RPJ and Kevin Vranes, but this just looks bad.
Posted by: Thom | May 4, 2007 9:32 AM
Roger,
(1) You did not write degrees when you meant zones. Here is your comment with zones substituted for degrees:
Because the largest change shown is 2 zones the largest change can't be 2 zones? Doesn't make sense does it? What you actually did was misread the map as showing differences in degrees instead of in zones.
Show you a place where average minimum winter temperatures have increased by 10°F? That's what the difference map shows you. If you think its wrong, I think you need to present some evidence.
Is such an increase plausible? Well, if you look at the map, it looks like zones have moved on average half a zone north, corresponding to an average increase of 5°F. But some places have cooled, ie their increase was more than 5°F less than average increase. It seem likely that if some places were more than 5°F less than the average increase then others could be more than 5°F more than the average increase.
(2) The IPCC AR4 WG1 SPM states:
That's mid-20th century not 1901. So why did you show a map of trends since 1901 instead of the map that was right next to it in the report that showed trends since 1979?
(3) [bites tongue]
Posted by: Tim Lambert | May 4, 2007 9:37 AM
To clarify:
Tim is not a troll, but he likes to make mountains of molehills and start fights (e.g., see this post).
Steve Bloom displays some serious conspiracy theory tendencies here.
Eli- What is your point? You wouldn't be trolling would you? ;-) Perhaps you are right that the problem is with the analysis of the USDA, Arbor Day folks -- and that lets the NYT of the hook, right? (see Judy Miller)
Bottom line is that the NYT front page article has some serious problems in how it presents basic climate science for adaptive decision making.
Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr. | May 4, 2007 9:39 AM
Lambert, quit wasting your time trying to lay out a logical argument to Pielke. You won't get a decent response, or you'll get his typical request for "substance."
Posted by: Thom | May 4, 2007 9:42 AM
Tim #11-
Well thanks for the substantive reply. A reply in turn:
You basic confusion about what the graph actually shows underscores how poorly the NYT communicated this point. Had you spend a little more time looking at the map you'd have noticed that the Arbor Day folks actually got rid of 2 zones at the extremes. You write, "it looks like zones have moved on average half a zone north, corresponding to an average increase of 5°F." Wrong. It is exactly this misleading impression that the NYT article gives. The reality is that the temperature increase is much closer to 2 degrees between the periods: http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2007/images/usa-temps-1895-2006.jpg
Why did I present the long-term IPCC graph? Well that is the one used for attribution, which was the point I was making. The southeast has cooled over the long-term. Are trends since 1979 caused by global warming? I don't know and neither does the IPCC. This is not what the NYT said.
Why you begin by assuming that people present information in bad faith is beyond me. Reasonable people can discuss and even disagree without a bar fight breaking out.
Thanks!
Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr. | May 4, 2007 9:59 AM
I don't know if Tim will see my comment or not, but I do have to disagree with what he terms as the "plausible" explanation for what is going on in that graph. Personally, I look at a graph like that and I think that of the places that changed zones upward, they were probably places that were within .5 degrees or less of the nearest zone. So, when their temperature went up .6 degrees, they changed zones. Same for places that went down a zone. We know that temperature on the planet has been warming for at least 100 years, probably much longer, I'm not at all surprised that the majority of the places that changed were places that changed upwards.
And I think I agree with Roger that there is a chance that there are mistakes on this graph. Because the zones are 10 degrees, to assume that the swings are half of that doesn't see real plausible to me. If I have time this weekend, I may try to track down the underlying data and find the places that had such enormous changes in temperature. My engineering and laboratory background has tought me that when I see something that looks odd (especially this odd. Average minimum temperature increases of at least 11 degrees? That just seems sooo high....), you should verify.
Neither of us has any reason to think that we are right without examining the underlying data. Perhaps the only conclusion I would really draw is that a hardiness zone map is only useful for determining if your plant is hardy enough, and not for drawing climate conclusions.
Posted by: oconnellc | May 4, 2007 10:12 AM
a few points.
The USDA map is not based n average temperature, ti is based on minimum winter temperature. The NYT article says this, lambert says this, any gardener knows this. But Pielke Jr keeps pointing to the averae ANNUAL temeprature charts, which show les than 10F warming, and saying that USDA got it wrong. Minimum winter temperatures and average annual temperatures are different things - this is b edrock basic, and Pielke Jr is getting it wrong.
USDA as in the past used 13 and 15 year preceding periods to update the zone map. For this update they used 30 years. This tends to UNDERSTATE the recent change, compared to previous analyses, and this is clearly stated in the article.
Posted by: Lee | May 4, 2007 10:16 AM
Steve (#3) wrote:
since the lagomorph-inspired boycott of Prometheous...
What are you talking about??
Posted by: andy | May 4, 2007 10:23 AM
R. Pielke claims: "The New York Times reports that these differences can all [bold added] be attributed to human-caused climate change, using the case of Atlanta as an illustration:"
But the text that Pielke uses from the Times to prove his point includes this:
"A scientific consensus has concluded that this warming trend has largely been caused by the human production of heat-trapping gases."
This means just what it says. It does not mean that the Times has attributed every shift on the zone map entirely to human-caused climate change.
Anyone who looks at a map of the temperature changes occurring over the US over the past few decades (or over the entire past century) can see that there has indeed been a warming trend for most of the US.
Only the Southeast and southern Great Plains experienced a (slight) cooling over the entire 20th century (primarily due to the cool decades of the 1960's and 1970's.), but since the 1970s have had increasing temperatures as well.
Anyone who looks at the changes to the hardiness zone map can see the same trend.
Most people know the difference between a trend and individual details -- and the difference between the words "largely"[NY Times] and "all"[RP, Jr].
But Pielke apparently does not.
Posted by: JB | May 4, 2007 10:24 AM
RP Jr. on Lambert, post #6: I'm happy to see that the Nature blog will attract the usual online trolls and conspiracy theorists, should ensure a continued focus on ad homs which....
RP Jr. clarifies, post #12: Tim is not a troll, but he likes to make mountains of molehills and start fights (e.g., see this post).
RP Jr. then writes of Lambert, post #14 : Well thanks for the substantive reply.
Well, Lambert you've gone from troll to Mr. Substance, in the span of a few hours. It appears that Roger Pielke Jr. is backing off and realizing what a twit he looks like to others.
Posted by: Thom | May 4, 2007 10:25 AM
Roger Pielke says above: "Tim ...likes to make mountains of molehills"
In light of the context, that has to be one the most ironic statements I have ever read.
How many of those small "2-zone-change" spots [read: "mole hills"] are there on the plant hardiness map for the entire US?
Very few.
And taken together, what percentage of the entire US land surface do they comprise?
Diddly-squat.
Posted by: JB | May 4, 2007 11:08 AM
20 JB- Indeed, which is why I said it wasn't so important as compared with the attribution and time-period issue!
All- Thanks for the attention, and keep up the good work! There will be more stuff to pick nits at on the Nature blog before long, so keep reading ;-)
Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr. | May 4, 2007 11:25 AM
Roger Pielke Jr: Thanks for the attention, and keep up the good work! There will be more stuff to pick nits at...[snip]
Ah yes....the back-handed compliment mixed with the subtle "nit pick" pejorative.
Another classic Pielkieism.
Posted by: Thom | May 4, 2007 11:44 AM
Roger Pielke:
I'm not interested in stupid rhetorical games. If I were, I would post over on Prometheus.
Posted by: JB | May 4, 2007 11:46 AM
Roger: I hardly see how Tim Lambert and others are nitpicking here. You accused the NY Times of saying something that you said is "just an error" and was one of your major points in your post attacking the Times article. That is a pretty strong statement and it is in fact just plain wrong. The NY Times said that the Arbor Day map indicates that many bands of the country are a full zone warmer, and a few spots are two zones warmer, than they were in 1990, when the map was last updated." This is in fact an accurate description.
You may think it is silly that they pointed out these few spots rather than just ignoring them and may question the underlying data regarding these few spots that changed by 2 zones. However, that is a very different argument than claiming that the NY Times made an error in describing the map when they did no such thing and when in fact you made a huge error yourself in reading that map by apparently confusing zones and degrees...when in fact a change in zones differs from a change in degrees by an order of magnitude!
If you are going to accuse others of making mistakes when in fact they are right and you are making the mistake, you should expect to be called on it and should be willing to eat some crow.
Posted by: Joel Shore | May 4, 2007 11:50 AM
Joel-
I am happy to admit that I made a mistake on that post. I appreciate the correction!
You misrepresent the NYT piece (what about attribution?)
Thanks again!
Posted by: Roger Pielke Jr. | May 4, 2007 12:04 PM
Degrees or zones Degrees or radians Radians or zones
Phew! My head's just spinning in the confusion
Posted by: Hugh | May 4, 2007 12:13 PM
Roger,
(1) I have looked at the Arbor Day map and they did not get rid of any climate zones. You wrongly linked to a graph of average annual temperatures when the maps are based on MINIMUM temperatures (and I already mentioned this). I looked at the NCDC site and I couldn't get a graph of minimum temperatures, but here is something similar: average temperatures for Jan (the coldest month) for the past 30 years. The trend is 2°F per decade, or 6°F over 30 years.
(2) I quoted the IPCC but you don't seem to have noticed what they said. Here it is again, with extra emphasis by me.
The IPCC is attrinuting most of the increase since the mid-20th century to humanity. I truly do not understand why you think they aren't.
Posted by: Tim Lambert | May 4, 2007 12:23 PM
Roger:
(1) I am glad that you admit the mistake now. I assume that you also retract your statement in post #6 above in which you say, "The point still stands," unless you used this as shorthand to mean, "The point that I was making [which is that the NY Times was wrong about the two zones] is utterly destroyed."
(2) You have this strange admit--attack thing going here. Where did I "misrepresent the NYT piece" [a phrase which is unclear to me, by the way...Is the "NYT piece" the NYT article or your blog entry discussing that article?]? I did not get into the attribution thing at all and the closest I came to generalizing from the one point I did discuss is when I said that this "was one of your major points in your post attacking the Times article." Do you deny that it was one of your major points? By my count, you presented only two specific criticisms of the NYT article. Maybe you want to call one of them a major point and one of them a minor point? Fine. [At any rate, I find your attribution point to be pretty nitpicky anyway. Even assuming that the IPCC does say you need 30 years to detect a trend, once they have established from a longer trend that this trend is indeed there and it is indeed attributable primarily to humans, it does not seem unreasonable to conjecture that a change seen over an ~18 year period is likely attributable to the same factors that are producing the longer trend. Perhaps the NYT wording could have been a little more careful but I don't see how they have made a major error of fact.]
Posted by: Joel Shore | May 4, 2007 12:56 PM
Oh...and I would add that it takes an extremely uncharitable reading of the NYT article to conclude that their statement attributing the warming to humans was meant to apply to the specific case of Atlanta. It seems fairly obvious to me that Atlanta is just a specific example and what they are giving the attribution to was not the trend in one specific city but rather the general trend for the whole map of the U.S. Again, I am not saying that the NYT wording was ideal in this regard...but it was fairly small potatoes compared to, say, confusing changes in degrees F and zones!
Posted by: Joel Shore | May 4, 2007 1:05 PM
This new Nature blog is off to a smashing start. You've got Roger spreading his normal contrarian nonsense, and then you've got Zorita and von Storch resurrecting zombies and attacking Michael Mann for the Hockey Stick study.
Best of all, you see in the comments below the von Storch article that the usual suspects, Lubos Motl and Hans Errens, are beating up on von Storch for not giving McKitrick and McIntyre credit for "smashing the Hockey Stick."
What a circle jerk.
Posted by: Thom | May 4, 2007 1:36 PM
Tim-
Here you go:
Vose, R. S., D. R. Easterling, and B. Gleason (2005), Maximum and minimum temperature trends for the globe: An update through 2004, Geophys. Res. Lett., 32, L23822, doi:10.1029/2005GL024379. http://www.agu.org/journals/gl/gl0523/2005GL024379/
If you don't have access to GRL: http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/100744.pdf
That should settle the question of the magnitude of minimum temperature increases in the US.
On attribution the IPCC you are misinterpreting the IPCC statement. It does not mean attribution has been achieved for any time period less than 50 years, but the opposite, that its attribution is for 50 years or more.
Joel-
I'll stand by my assertion that a change of 2 zones is a mistake, which maybe occurred when the Arbor Day foundation removed the most extreme zones, but who knows. The NYT faithfully reported this error, yes.
Lets agree to disagree that my NYT discussion was nitpicky .. maybe so maybe no. When you write, "it does not seem unreasonable to conjecture that a change seen over an ~18 year period is likely attributable to the same factors that are producing the longer trend" this is exactly the sort of misconception fostered by the NYT article! Such conjectures are simply not grounded in how the climate system works. This is why you see the debate in the NYT article over short versus long records for what to expect in the coming year.
Thanks!
Posted by: Roger Pielke Jr. | May 4, 2007 2:01 PM
Two quick points and then I'm done.
1 From the article that Pielke posted, we find in the Conclusion: [M]inimum temperature increased at a faster rate than maximum temperature during the latter half of the 20th century.
This is what plant people are interested in, and it was the point of the Arbor Day Foundation and the NY Times article. And it's what Lambert wrote (see above). So the point of you attack on the NY Times was what?
2 Pielke: I'll stand by my assertion that a change of 2 zones is a mistake
Wrong. That was Joel Shore's assertion.
Posted by: Thom | May 4, 2007 2:27 PM
Andy, the lagomorph reference was to Eli Rabbett (an intentional misspelling), who up until a year or so ago was a fairly constant critic of RP Jr. on the latter's blog. Along with Dano, another pseudonymous commenter, Eli was a pretty constant thorn in RP Jr.'s side (as were plenty of other who don't use psuedonyms, e.g. me). Tiring of the criticism, most of which was quite legitimate IMHO, RP Jr. changed his blog settings to bar pseudonymous or anonymous commenters. In response, Eli called for a boycott, which has been pretty successful in that the typical Prometheus commenter (on RP Jr.'s posts, anyway) is now a fairly low-grade denialist.
All of this may sound like a tempest in a teapot, but understand that from RP Jr.'s perspective his particpation in the blogosphere is intended to enhance his ability to influence climate change policy through e.g. Congressional testimony, op-eds and Nature articles. This would not be a problem if so many of his ideas weren't utter cr*p.
Posted by: Steve Bloom | May 4, 2007 3:24 PM
Oh, good grief, another "science weblog site"
Is this kind of collection of weblogs being done for the advertising revenue?
(Using Firefox I can block the ads, so I don't know how much advertising is being done on the Not-Really-Nature-Magazine website.)
A few months ago I noticed another attempt to come up with a "science weblog site" ---someone who happened to share my same first name was flogging his page in postings at RC for a while; I've lost track of it now (don't remind me, it wasn't impressive).
I suppose it's evolution in action (at least the mimicry aspect) that someone decided to create something that appears superficially to be from the well regarded Nature magazine, creating something that appears to be science weblogs.
Instead the content's familiar --- "you don't really understand me" argument predominates. Boring, eh?
Posted by: Hank Roberts | May 4, 2007 3:30 PM
Re #4 (Maxine from Nature): "Not being a climate scientist myself I will not comment on the scientific comments you make(.)" Then why let RP Jr. (a political scientist, not a climate scientist) interpret the science? An actual climate scientist would have been unlikely to err in that way, IMHO. Perhaps you (or the appropriate powers that be at Nature) should consider restricting him to posting within his expertise.
Posted by: Steve Bloom | May 4, 2007 3:36 PM
The Vose et al (2005) paper uses mean monthly minimum temperature data (from each station in the network that was analyzed). For each station, there were approximately 30 days (one month) of observations that were used to compute the minimum value for that one point in the series. For most of the data in the northern hemisphere, we are dealing with the average daily minimum temperature for January.
The plant hardiness zones are not based on mean monthly minimum temperatures, they are based on the minimum temperature recorded for each year.
The two data sets are not the same. The new plant hardiness zone map is based on annual minimums for a network of several thousand stations. The differences between the two maps highlight a change in extremes, not in mean minimum temperatures computed over a monthly basis.
So it appears that the Dr. Pielke has made an error in the interpretation of these maps and the data sets used to generate them.
Posted by: J Hamilton | May 4, 2007 3:47 PM
As an equal-opportunity lambaster, let me make the same criticism here I made in the not-really-Nature-magazine page (where it will appear later, if they accept it).
Please post links to the original information, not to a copy.
Neither of these images leads the reader to the original info:
http://blogs.nature.com/climatefeedback/usseipcc1901-2005.jpg http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/upload/2007/05/usseipcc1979-2005.png
Rule one of database sanity: one record, many pointers.
It's the only way to teach people how to look at the original information, read it in context, and think for themselves.
I realize it's a nuisance to make the effort. Please do.
Posted by: Hank Roberts | May 4, 2007 4:07 PM
Eli will admit to being a sharp carrot in Roger's side, but he does not recall asking anyone else to leave. OTOH the lack of his wit and Dano's wisdom did bring down the quality of the comments at the other place.
As someone with a small garden and a postage stamp front yard, I have to agree with M. Hamilton. What you need to know is the coldest day in the winter that will cost you your plants and you need to know the day of the last frost.
Posted by: Eli Rabett | May 4, 2007 4:07 PM
I can't help but notice that the trend in minimum temperatures means good news for growers in the US, and probably elsewhere as well. As Eli said
Warmer "coldest" days, and fewer frosts are good things, are they not? Certainly this balances some of the gloom and doom alarmism.
Posted by: nanny_govt_sucks | May 4, 2007 4:19 PM
Ahem.
I have multiple degrees in plant/environmental sciences. Not to argue from authority, but I use and think about this stuff often. I used to own a small landscape design company. I am making the plant list for my city, due next week. The announcement for this map IIRC came out mid-lateish last year and went around the plant geek listservs, & the arguments are old news.
The map will stand, there are no significant errors to warrant change.
Maybe Roger can share with all of us the letter and data he'll send to Arbor Day Found and we can discuss that. Anyway,
Plant hardiness maps (any of them, they are knock-offs of USDA's) are based on average annual low temps. That is: where Eli and the person behind the Dano character live (Dano lives in The Internets, of course), we can expect low temps between ~10º - -20ºF. Not every year, but most years.
Plants here expect to be chilled to this temperature for a certain time. Plants in other zones expect to be chilled to those average temperatures/times. If they aren't, they may not perform (fruit trees, some evergreens). One of my listservs recently asked about the rhododendron leaf burn in the US Northeast - likely due to abnormally warm winter (plant never went into dormancy, no sugars produced [antifreeze]).
This is why plants are migrating northward and higher in elevation - because they want certain low temperatures to achieve dormancy for a certain period of time. This migration is an indicator of climate change. We can guess why certain types don't want this hardiness zone optic to be spread around. Well, too late.
Denialists and contrascientists can atomistically quibble all they want. But plant people and ordinary gardeners have been dealing with this for at least a generation now.
You can't totemize this like a hockey stick, because little old ladies will laugh you out of their garden club meeting faster than you can squeeze your tea bag dry.
Forget it Roger. Your FUD will only work on the ignorant, and it won't work on the decision-makers. You should have tried this 6 months ago, and maybe you'd have play. Now you look like a clown. Sorry to be so blunt.
Best,
D
Posted by: Dano | May 4, 2007 4:20 PM
na_gs:
No. Crops have a max heat tolerance too. Your assertion must have both things working. Warming also means more spotty precip and likely less soil moisture overall. Sorry, wrong again you are.
Best,
D
Posted by: Dano | May 4, 2007 4:22 PM
This mail came following my attempt to post the above at the other site, re pointing to sources. So you read it here first.
"Heffernan, Olive" o.heffernan@nature.com "Out of Office AutoReply: [Climate Feedback] New Comment Posted to 'Confusion on Climate Variability and Trends'" .....I am out of the office until Wednesday, 9 May ...
Oy. is "nature.com" not Nature Magazine?
Aside, posted only here: yes, I know if people post the images on their own pages, and then link to them, that increases their own Google page rank ---- versus if people would post links to the IPCC page, to the original image, that would increase the IPCC page rank instead.
Think about that.
Posted by: Hank Roberts | May 4, 2007 4:42 PM
Re #31 (RP Jr.): The Vose paper uses a 5 degree square data grid, and so seems not especially pertinent.
Re #38 (ER): The most effective boycotts are the informal ones. Alternatively one could just say that the pattern of RP Jr.'s behavior that led him to evict the pseudonymice led others to stop participating. Certainly when I stopped commenting I hoped it would encourage others to follow suit.
Posted by: Steve Bloom | May 4, 2007 4:46 PM
This:
is nitwittery, NanGo.
You can look this stuff up. You're obviously not a gardener, or you'd know better. So since you know you don't know, why not make the least effort to find out?
You could guess these search terms: +gardening +"low temperature" +fruit
You'd find this typical statement, what any gardener will know, on the first page of hits:
http://www.urbanharvest.org/advice/fruitgardening/chillcolddata.html "... Latest Chill & Cold Data .... an understanding of winter is important in what we should consider planting. Many fruits, vegetables, and ornamentals either depend on winter chill for success or are damaged by too much cold, so it is important to use plants adapted to local cold. This depends on where you are .... How cold it gets on the coldest night of the year affects tropical, semi-tropical, and tender, temperate plants. ..."
It pains me to see you make ignorant comments that are so easily checked. And the garden club, who know this stuff, find pompous ignorance laughable. Please do better.
Posted by: Hank Roberts | May 4, 2007 4:55 PM
Exactly, and I'm certain that you'll find a wider variety of plants that are viable with the warmer min temps and fewer frosts.
Dano, max temps are not increasing as fast as min temps, so the question is whether the gains because of min temp increase cancel and perhaps surpass any supposed loss from the smaller max temp increase.
Posted by: nanny_govt_sucks | May 4, 2007 5:29 PM
I bow to Dano's plant wisdom. Eli only eats the damn things.
Posted by: Eli Rabett | May 4, 2007 5:49 PM
re: nanny and the "warmer is better" argument.
I guess this would be why the world's breadbaskets are in the tropics, and we get such marginal production from Kansas. (end snark)
It seems to have escaped the notice of too many people who keep repeating this 'warmer is better' stuff that the most productive farmlands for most of our most productive staple crops are in areas with substantial winter freezes. This is nto an accident. And nanny utterly ignores the issue of impact on local ecosystems of loss of sufficient winter chilling on locally-growing species.
Posted by: Lee | May 4, 2007 5:50 PM
Yeah. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6200114.stm http://blog.sciam.com/index.php?title=thankstoclimatechangeby2050america&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
Billy Sunday used to say, "They tell me I rub the fur the wrong way. I don't. Let the cat turn around." It's time for you to try turning in the other direction, to know you can.
Posted by: Hank Roberts | May 4, 2007 6:50 PM
Lee (#47) said: It seems to have escaped the notice of too many people who keep repeating this 'warmer is better' stuff that the most productive farmlands for most of our most productive staple crops are in areas with substantial winter freezes." So how come yields of wheat (kg/ha) are 6,500 in Egypt (FAO, 2005) which has no frosts and 2,800 in USA?
Posted by: Tim Curtin | May 4, 2007 9:06 PM
Roger, here is the USDA definition
and here is the Arbor Day one
Despite these clear definitions and corrections from multiple people in this thread, you keep arguing that the Arbor Day map is wrong using trends that do not measure average annual low temperatures. Your latest attempt is a map that shows average DAILY minimums. This is not the same as average annual minimums, which is the appropriate measure for cold damage or germination. Even I know that frost can kill plants and I live in zone 10.
The NCDC data is publicly available, so it is pretty easy to check the accuracy of the Arbor Day map. Which cam out last year, so if it was wrong, someone would have said so, since whether their plants live or die matters to a lot of people.
So you claim that the correct interpretation of the IPCC statement:
is
I don't think I need to say anything more.
Posted by: Tim Lambert | May 4, 2007 10:58 PM
Pielke Jr: "I'm happy to see that the Nature blog will attract the usual online trolls and conspiracy theorists"
Yes, the hockey team conspiracy theorists. Plenty of those on that blog.
Posted by: Chris O'Neill | May 5, 2007 1:17 AM
I did find Maxine's response helpful, and Pielke Jr.s CV was sort of useful in placing him.
I must say I was a little confused by some of it. Does this mean I could go there and start my own climate blog? Should I try?
Posted by: Marion Delgado | May 5, 2007 3:02 AM
I didn't want to put my ducks in a row so I haven't applied for a blog there (I have to assume it's an approval/moderation process). One problem is that I kept switching degrees, both undergrad and grad, and studied a lot of math physics (I suppose the computational physics selection is closest) and was most interested in thermal and statistical physics (not listed) and also it'd be interesting if you could say your interest was climate science skepticism skepticism, but you cannot. This is only the membership phase. I'll bite the bullet soon and see what happens. If this is wide open, any commenter here with a lot to say could do worse than to go there and join and perhaps start a blog.
Posted by: Marion Delgado | May 5, 2007 3:32 AM
Completely off-topic, right-wing think-tank hack Jen Marohasy is allowing John Berlau to work Tim Lambert over. http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/002024.html#comments
Posted by: steve munn | May 5, 2007 9:10 AM
RE #47
The "warmer is better" argument applies to agriculture in general, not specific crops in specific locations.
First of all, we are talking about projections of a gradual warming of about 2.3 degrees C over the next 100 years. If farmers can not adapt to that, they should not be farming. Secondly, the land-rich Northern Hemisphere is top heavy, with much more farmable land currently subject to a very limited growing season of only the hardiest crops. Warming will make this huge amount of land much more versatile and productive.
Finally, places like Florida are not the bread baskets of the country, but they are the fruit baskets and grow a big chunck of the domestic berry and winter vegitable supply. AGW should have less affect on Florida than on higher latitudes, so the net result will be a modest (almost indetectable) warming, with fewer killing frosts, but still plenty of the needed chill to make those oranges sweet.
There is not doubt that 'warmer is better' for global agriculture; at least the magnitude of warming we are taking about.
Posted by: Jim Clarke | May 5, 2007 10:11 AM
Jim Clarke has been shown many times how his arg