Some things I see, I think: yes, you’re doing that very well. But I understand what you’re doing, and I could, if not do it myself – I could understand how to train to get there. Like running a marathon in not-much-more-than-2-hours. I’m never going to do that, and even if I trained I couldn’t, but I can roughly understand what’s going on. With this, I can’t even imagine my brain and hands working well enough to get anywhere close to this.

Sirocko et al.:Solar influence on winter severity in central Europe

Most of what you want to know about that is at Claim of solar influence is on thin ice: are 11-year cycle solar minima associated with severe winters in Europe? Although the idea itself isn’t totally wacky; Are cold winters in Europe associated with low solar activity? by Lockwood et al. comes to similar conclusions to Sirocko. Andy Extance (who he? I’m sure I know the name) doesn’t like it either.

GMO labelling

I liked KK channelling Ramez Naam on Why GMO Supporters Should Embrace Labels.

Climate and conflict

I’ve largely ignored this area. Perhaps What is the debate over climate and conflict about? is a good intro.

Climate sensitivity

Seems to becoming interesting again. JA has a post on a recent multi-author study that finds lower values that those from the good olde dayes when I paid attention. SS didn’t much like Lewis’s J. Clim. paper but those I’ve asked think it sane, and Lewis. Though it would be nice if he learnt not to associate too closely with the non-sane.

[Update: Da Plot Thickens. Such fun!

Politics

Pols in Dixie seem even more dysfunctional that anywhere else. BB senses some signs of hope in National Journal: The Coming GOP Civil War Over Climate Change; but from a very low base.

Marcott

Last month’s thrill was Marcott et al.; but a question I alluded to briefly was: “is he notable”? The answer is No or in more detail:

2013-05-16T00:16:42 Legoktm (talk | contribs) deleted page Shaun Marcott (Expired PROD, concern was: he is only postdoc with a nature publication)

which seems fair enough.

Busy

Blacklight retribution, rowing, work and the garden all mean I’m fairly busy now.

Refs

* Political failure modes and the beige dictatorship. Its not quite right, but I struggle to say what I mean in that area.
* Don’t make fun of renowned Dan Brown.
* mt also likes VV and adds a couple of nice extra points.
* Agnotology: learning from mistakes – Benestad et al..

The usual scheme of things that we see so often is that bad things happen (the Assad regime in Syria); it goes on and on and people wring their hands, or ignore it, and anyway whilst bad the people are useful anti-commies or somesuch; and then it gets bad enough that the locals start revolting. At this point, its very much a “which way are you going to jump” issue for everyone in the country. Do they throw in their lot with a pile of untested rebels? Or do they sit on the fence quietly? Or do they take this as a chance to ingratiate themselves with the regime by demonstrating loyalty? If you’re such a person, what the international “community” is going to do matters a lot. If you expect the “community” to intervene actively on the side of Justice and Freedom, to vigourously hunt down war criminals and prosecute them and confiscate their assets, then you have a strong incentive to jump onto the rebel side. But if you expect the West to be a useless shower like usual you have an incentive to hang on in and loot the country for as long as possible, meanwhile doing your best to be as nasty as possible and polarise the fight in order to commit people onto your side, by making it impossible for them to live under a changed regime. After not very long it becomes clear that attempting to talk about regime change is a waste of time, and so the people on the rebel side that come to the forefront are those with the least to lose, those most deeply committed to violence – in short, we do our best to marginalise those who we’re pretending to favour. And pretty well inevitably this is a chance for the Al-Quaeda types to step in; at which point the idiots who argue for nothing but talks chirp up brightly with “see! We told you so! Violence just encourages Al Quaeda”. Whereas its really the do-nothing-but-talk people who are recruiting for Al Quaeda. And don’t get me started on the Russian govt, whose role in this is so utterly stinkingly amorally sadistic.

Oh, and a corollary of all this is that I’m far less careful than I used to be about wading through “comment requires moderation” emails. If you’ve got one that’s stuck, mail me separately.

Refs

* Cashpoint morons warned to plan ahead

As one of the more highly trafficked climate blogs on the web, I’m seeking your assistance in conducting a crowd-sourced online survey of peer-reviewed climate research. I have compiled a database of around 12,000 papers listed in the ‘Web Of Science’ between 1991 to 2011 matching the topic ‘global warming’ or ‘global climate change’. I am now inviting readers from a diverse range of climate blogs to peruse the abstracts of these climate papers with the purpose of estimating the level of consensus in the literature regarding the proposition that humans are causing global warming. If you’re interested in having your readers participate in this survey, please post the following link to the survey:

http://survey.gci.uq.edu.au/survey.php?c=5RL8LWWT2YO7

The survey involves rating 10 randomly selected abstracts and is expected to take 15 minutes. Participants may sign up to receive the final results of the survey (de-individuated so no individual’s data will be published). No other personal information is required (and email is optional). Participants may elect to discontinue the survey at any point and results are only recorded if the survey is completed. Participant ratings are confidential and all data will be de-individuated in the final results so no individual ratings will be published.

The analysis is being conducted by the University of Queensland in collaboration with contributing authors of the website Skeptical Science. The research project is headed by John Cook, research fellow in climate communication for the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland.

I’m posting it here so anyone can see, though doubtless you’ve already seen it elsewhere. I’m dubious about the virtue of surveys to establish stuff though. In fact… why don’t I go off and do this one? <goes off… I’m back!> At the end, I got:

Of the 10 papers that you rated, your average rating was 3.2 (to put that number into context, 1 represents endorsement of AGW, 7 represents rejection of AGW and 4 represents no position). The average rating of the 10 papers by the authors of the papers was 3.1.

That wasn’t so hard, because 8/10 were “implicit endorsement” and 2 were “neutral” in my view.

Refs

* It’s true: 97% of research papers say climate change is happening – this or similar being published. I’ve lost track.
* David Appell doubts.
* So does KK but his last bit is wrong.

It starts with a nod towards pretending to have a clue:

According to well understood physical parameters, the effectiveness of CO2 as a greenhouse gas diminishes logarithmically with increasing concentration… This inconvenient [sic] fact is well understood in the climate science community…

…because not even WUWT readers are going to fall for the idea that it’s a surprise that CO2-effectiveness-is-log. He does feel obliged to pretend IPCC has “hidden” the obvious, although I’m not sure why – a token gesture to stir up the unwashed masses, or a feeling that since its a post at WUWT it really needs to have some obvious lies in it? But its unconvincing, as a commentator writes:

The sentence in chapter 2 AR4 “Note that for CO2, RF [radiative forcing] increases logarithmically with mixing ratio” is so very well hidden. You would never know it was there if you didn’t read it.

But, that’s not the main reason I want to take the piss out of this particular article. That is reserved for:

From the present concentration of atmospheric CO2 at approaching 400 ppmv, only ~5% of the effectiveness of CO2 as a Greenhouse Gas remains. This can only give rise to a maximum of a further of ~+0.21°C. Thereafter beyond 1000+ ppmv the effect of increasing levels of CO2 can only ever be absolutely minimal even if CO2 concentrations were to increase indefinitely.

Yes, really. He thinks the log function is bounded above. Truely this is the level of sophistication expected at WUWT. I can only echo commentator “Janice Moore” who enthuses:

WAY TO GO, WUWT SCHOLARS!!! YOU ARE THE BEST.

However, this stuff is so obviously drivel that not even all the WUWT readers fall for it. The fourth comment points out its all wrong. A little lower down, “Phil.” tries to rescue WUWT commentators well deserved reputation for stupidity with a high-scoring “But at higher concentrations it will transition to a square root dependence which will give a higher sensitivity” (its the other way round: CO2 goes linear – squareroot – log, though I forget at what levels [Update: my commenters seem to be telling me I'm wrong about that. Ah well. I don't believe it leads to higher sens, though]).

Refs

* CO2 – An Insignificant Trace Gas? Part Seven – The Boring Numbers – the best on-line ref for “its log” that I could find. Understanding Atmospheric Radiation and the “Greenhouse” Effect – Part Twelve – Curve of Growth looks to be good for linear (which is obvious) and square root (I didn’t trouble my pretty head with the details). Calling Eli…

Via AS I find Tol saying

As soon as the “market” expects that new regulation will seriously devalue an asset, its price drops. Bubbles only arise if the “market” is misinformed. The “market” is by no means infallible when it comes to pricing risk, but an expectation of “not much climate policy any time soon” strikes me entirely realistic

which is pretty well what I was going to say, so I won’t bother re-say it (note, BTW, that I’m of course not saying that I think sticking within 2 oC wouldn’t be a good idea. I think it would be an excellent idea. I’m just dubious about its plausibility). He continues with some econ-type stuff about how even if it were true it wouldn’t have the effects claimed, which seems plausible too, but I’m less interested in that. The Economist says about the same.

P3′s writeup says:

There’s a huge amount of evidence that… mainline financial analysts around the world are taking the argument on-board, and in a big way.

That’s hard to make sense of. If true, why aren’t the stock prices of oil companies tumbling? But I boldly plough on, to the report itself (Unburnable Carbon 2013:
Wasted capital and stranded assets). And don’t find much. Perhaps I missed it; its quite long and I only skimmed it.

Refs

* David Appell is even harsher than me.

I’ve been busy, which accounts for my pathetic lack of posts recently.

* I ran the Brighton marathon (3:46).
* We entered the Town Bumps at Oxford, in IVs!
* I ran the Head of the Cam again.
* I’ve discovered that Yahoo and Flickr are fuckwits. Mind you, scienceblogs is unimpressing me at the moment with its more than glacial slowness.
* Some folks at work pointed out that my posts are incomprehensible. Such is life, but I do have a glossary. I just added CAGW, in case you were wondering what that was. The ScienceBlogs Great March onwards to the WordPress platform broke most of the old links. Sorry about that.

But enough about me. On with the misc.

Early Warning points out that global crop yields continue their inexorable rise; anyone claiming *current* crop disaster from GW needs to examine that pic carefully.

Richard Dawkins and God to star in 70s-style sitcom it seems:

“In the first episode, God manifests in a burning bush in the front garden and asks Mrs Dawkins in a booming voice if she needs anything from Asda. Richard comes out and she’s forced to invent an unlikely explanation involving a pack of confused Welsh nationalists and a political canvasser with a malfunctioning tannoy.

I’ve pretty well given up reading WUWT – it used to be fun, but it seems to me that the quality of rant has declined. Or maybe I’m just getting jaded. There have even been posts by the Looney Lord recently (see, I still read the snippets in the not-quite-late but lamented google reader). HotWhopper now does the job of reading the few that are interesting enough to be worth working out what is wrong with.

Suppose you wanted to know what was wrong with climatology: how far is it really understood, what can it usefully describe and what not, what can it usefully predict: who would you ask? Not, I hope, one of the many “climate skeptics” whose meaningless ranting echoes around the wub. If you really wanted to know, you need to ask a climatologist. Preferrably, I’d admit, one slightly outside the mainstream and prepared to be forthright. Do we know any of those?

Now suppose you want to know what’s wrong with economics: does it understand the discount rate fully, for example. Where would you get your information: from people who just didn’t like the consequences of having a discount rate, or from people who had actually studied economics? What about the people who don’t like the discount rate but have never studied economics: would you take their views seriously?

You know who you are. Anyone else who wants to know can look at the comments on The ETS is stupid, part n.

To push this further: there are any number of people out there who don’t believe in Relativity, Special or General (some of them might even know the difference, many not). What 99.9% of such people have in common is that they’re utterly clueless about the theory they don’t believe in. So they should be ignored; on that subject.

I’ve said all this before of course. Perhaps I’ll get into the habit of saying it once a year.

This isn’t, BTW, an attempt to end the discussion on the ETS post, merely to provide a more obvious forum to continue it. Because I want to win over the “economics skeptics”.

[Updated: to add the pic. Which is the important bit, not the post behind it.]

Refs

* Models versus radiosondes in the free atmosphere: A new detection and attribution analysis of temperature – Lott et al., JGR 28 MAR 2013, DOI: 10.1002/jgrd.50255.
* Tol / Ackerman fun
* Is the Uncertainty about Climate Change Too Large for Expected Cost-Benefit Analysis? – Richard Tol. See more.

Incidentally, its been pointed out to me, not for the first time, that all this stuff is just incomprehensible to anyone not soaked in the debate, not “in universe”. In which case, as a token gesture, I point you at the glossary, Kevin.

Refs

* Hockey stick spotted in BT