May 14, 2008
Category: climate snarking
Lucia lost the plot some time ago, mostly by cherry-picking her time period, using a weird data-fitting method and failing to understand what she was looking at. Now RP Jr follows her down the rabbett hole and bizarrely describes her post as "clear". Well, when people are telling you what you want to hear you're apt to approve.
As usual, you're better off avin a larf with James . Though if you're tired of slapstick, maybe reading the truth at RC would be more useful. I prefer bluetooth myself nowadays :-)
Posted by William M. Connolley at 6:05 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 8, 2008
Category: climate betting
The summary of betting on sea ice refers. If you look in my comments, you'll find any number of well intentioned people advising me that its time to close up the bets before I take a bath. But I haven't. Anyone wanting to pile in is still welcome (if you can't be bothered to look up the previous post the bet is simple: will this years Arctic sea ice extent minimum, as measured by the satellites, be less than last year? I say no).
The May 5th version of "Arctic sea ice news and analysis" provides some more fodder. I've ripped off a pic from them which I like. To me, it rather suggests no record this year. They somehow convince themselves that it does suggest a min. Hey ho, we'll find out in a few months. Their section on "Estimating September extent based on past conditions" is cute. I like it; its a nice idea. Totally lacking, of course, is how would this idae have fared if applied last year, or the year before, or...
My personal opinion remains that we simply can't forecast year-to-year variations with any degree of reliability. The long-term trend is clearly downwards, and there will be a new record sometime. But based purely on the behaviour of the sea-ice extent timeseries I still consider that new record this year is less than 50% likely. I also wonder if people aren't in some danger of getting a teensy bit carried away publishing these "forecasts" which they don't really believe. They are speculative prognosticaions, no more.
Andy Revkin (its him again!) covers this. In the comments, Bill Chapman is reported to say "I say the odds favor a new NH record minimum - put my money there." I've replied (#40) but haven't heard from him... I must give him an email.
Posted by William M. Connolley at 6:03 PM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: climate betting
As I said before, I don't think much of the latest prediction of cooling. But apparently , the authors take it seriously, and believe it as a prediction (pers comm). So RC has decided to see if they are serious. My expectation is that they will find some spurious excuse for wimping out (I've offered to put up $100 on the bet not being taken, with me paying out if it is taken; any offers?).
Andy Revkin covers this. The only complaint I have is that JA is being airbrushed out of the picture. Such is life.
Coming soon: betting on sea ice.
[Update: I *can* spell climate -W]
Posted by William M. Connolley at 5:17 PM • 17 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 3, 2008
Category: fun
"Next to Al Gore, William Connolley may be the world's most influential person in the global warming debate...". It would be nice; sadly its only the opinion of Lawrence Solomon, who is, errrrm, not very well informed.
LS's attempts to make sense of the innards of wikipedia are quite funny, for an insider - his confusion of KDP with Tabletop, for example. But I suspect thats rather in humour. If you'd like some more, then the list of cabals is good, as is WP:GIANTDICK, which for bonus points seems to be subject to a minor edit war: Replacing Nixon with a nuclear missile is a fine edit comment. And for weirdness, WP:SPIDER is worth a look.
Posted by William M. Connolley at 4:35 PM • 17 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 1, 2008
Category: climate science
All the blogosphere is abuzz with Advancing decadal-scale climate prediction in the North Atlantic sector. I don't have much to say that JA hasn't already said. But that isn't going to stop me saying it.
Firstly they've done something very odd with the reference model data in fig 4. The std IPCC projections would be right on their obs verification (which stops in 1998 for some bizarre reason) and their "forecast" would be even more obviously an outlier. I assume that the black line on fig 4 must be their own model. Looking again, I'm really rather baffled how this can possibly be anything useful, because their model so obviously goes wrong after 1995.
Secondly, the Torygraph quotes them as saying Noel Keenlyside of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences, Kiel, Germany, said: "The IPCC would predict a 0.3°C warming over the next decade. Our prediction is that there will be no warming until 2015 but it will pick up after that." No, thats not what the IPCC "predicts", and no, no-warming is not what your own model predicts. Just look at your own figure 4, you dolt. It quite clearly shows warming from 2005 to 2015.
Maybe we should read their own press release, entitled "Improved climate predictions suggest a reduced warming trend during the next 10 years" to which the obvious rejoinder is "in what sense, improved?" - in the sense that it got them into Nature? They say To date climate change projections, as published in the last IPCC report, only considered changes in future atmospheric composition. This strategy is appropriate for long-term changes in climate such as predictions for the end of the century. However, in order to predict short-term developments over the next decade, models need additional information on natural climate variations, in particular associated with ocean currents
Whats weird here is there total lack of reference to Smith et al. Or maybe it isn't so surprising. Smith et al have already done what they've done, except better. Mind you, it was published in Science, and the me-too effect may account for why this has got into Nature. Presumably the passing reference to assimilating ocean currents justifies their novelty; otherwsie they would have mentioned SSTs.
They go on The improved predictions suggest that global warming will weaken slightly during the following 10 years but their own figure 4 shows no such thing! (but its better than the no-warming-till-2015 junk that the lead author is quoted as saying). Connect the dots from 2005-2015 and you end up with 0.2 oC/decade, which is fairly standard. Maybe the annual data shows different, but they don't show that. Why are people lapping this stuff up without even comparing the words to the figures?
Conclusion: this appears to be a mildly interesting study, which may have some slight novelty although not much. But it looks to me like the obvious model flaws mean that it doesn't tell you anything useful about the real world, and it shouldn't be getting the publicity that it is.
[Update: well, it made R4 at 10 o'clock. They had that David King on. Sigh. Fairly clear that he'd read the press release but not the paper, and fell into the obvious holes -W]
Posted by William M. Connolley at 3:33 PM • 21 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 28, 2008
Category: climate economics
"Tesco to put carbon scores on goods" says The Torygraph. Sounds like a good idea in principle. Do go on ...The labels - which will be put on 30 products, including tomatoes, potatoes, orange juice, light bulbs and washing detergent - will detail how many grams of CO2 were created in their production, packaging, distribution and disposal. Well, that still sounds good. Whats the downside?
However, the scheme has come under fire from rival retailers, consumer groups and academics, who say shoppers - already bombarded by complex information on packaging - will be further confused. Hmmm. Sounds like typical whinging. Paul Monaghan, the head of ethics at the Co-operative group, said: "It is unfair to put the burden on to the consumer. "It should be up to retailers to use the information to lower their emissions." Sounds barking. If people will avoid higher-carbon stuff, then good. They need the information to do so, though. Hopefully the info will be reliable, though I'm not sure how that will be established. Hopefully also Waitrose will start doing this.
Posted by William M. Connolley at 5:08 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 22, 2008
Category: misc
Monday: to The Junction, that singularly unappealing Cambridge venue, for Bellowhead who were superb. You can find them on Youtube but its not the same as watching them live. They're on UK tour now...
If you're in Cambridge and that way inclined, on wednesday you can hear John Otway and Wild Willy Barrett. I've heard Wild Willy at the folk fest and he was superb and bizarre. Strongly recommended, I'd go but I have an outing. Read this.
Posted by William M. Connolley at 6:14 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 19, 2008
Category: climate snarking
Says the FT, via DSB. Since I've already argued that Stern is over-bleak, Im surprised he has got more pessimistic. Whats up?
Read on »
Posted by William M. Connolley at 5:04 PM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 16, 2008
Category: climate snarking
Just a provocative title, to point you towards I accept Bill Gray's climate bet offer - will he seal the deal? by Brian Schmidt. My feeling is that Gray will wimp out - I'll even put money on it if anyone is interested :-)
Posted by William M. Connolley at 5:42 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 15, 2008
Category: climate snarking
1.5 m sea level rise this century, that is. Nature sez the "estimate released today says that it could be as as much as 1.5 metres (4.9 feet) by the end of this century". Their source seems to be Reuters, and we'll pause briefly to condemn the oh-so-typical inflation of the worst case from the range into the only number mentioned in the headline. Sigh.
Read on »
Posted by William M. Connolley at 4:45 PM • 18 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 13, 2008
Category: fun
Do you realise that bufapopo doesn't get a single google hit? Its outrageous. Badger would be appalled.
[Seems pretty clear that youre not going to get it, so I'll have to tell you. Read on...]
Read on »
Posted by William M. Connolley at 5:40 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 12, 2008
Category: climate science?
I've realised that I've been dismissing a load of nonsense merely on the grounds that its discussing short trem trends, without troubling to look at those trends. But everyone else is talking about them, so why shouldn't I?
So Anyway, Lucia says that trends since 2001 are negative, based on a fitting procedure no-one has ever heard of. John V says they are positive.
Read on »
Posted by William M. Connolley at 5:59 PM • 38 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 11, 2008
Category: misc
Last night we had the first ice-cream van of the summer around our streets. But we didn't stop it and buy one.
Posted by William M. Connolley at 11:03 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 8, 2008
Category: misc
To the annual parish meeting. Thankfully I am no longer a parish councillor so am not obliged to go; but since a friend told me it was on I turned up. Of those who did, most were parish councillors, one was the district councillor, two were dogs walkers (I'll come on to that), two were my friend and me, and the remaining one was my friends daughter (who had done a very good hand-drawn childrens newspaper). [Update: oops, I forgot the sole stoic parishioner who turned up, and has turned up to every one for the last 20 years.]
Read on »
Posted by William M. Connolley at 4:39 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 7, 2008
Category: climate communication
Predictably enough, the Grauniad has picked up on Hansens target 350 stuff. And what he said before about W Ant now seems to have got transmogrified into:
Hansen said that he now regards as "implausible" the view of many climate scientists that the shrinking of the ice sheets would take thousands of years. "If we follow business as usual I can't see how west Antarctica could survive a century. We are talking about a sea-level rise of at least a couple of metres this century."
Posted by William M. Connolley at 3:29 AM • 20 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 6, 2008
Category: climate communication
Suppose you read a press release that started... Bleak first results from the world's largest climate change experiment and continued Greenhouse gases could cause global temperatures to rise by more than double the maximum warming so far considered likely by the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), according to results from the world's largest climate prediction experiment, published in the journal Nature this week. and went on The first results from climateprediction.net, a global experiment using computing time donated by the general public, show that average temperatures could eventually rise by up to 11°C - even if carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are limited to twice those found before the industrial revolution. Such levels are expected to be reached around the middle of this century unless deep cuts are made in greenhouse gas emissions. and lower down said Having found that these extreme responses are a realistic possibility...
What might you make of it?
Read on »
Posted by William M. Connolley at 6:13 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I am a Dragon. I emerge from my Egg. 
