Friday
Jun082012
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Gergis paper disappears
Jun 8, 2012 Climate: MWP Paul Matthews has just drawn my attention to the page for the Gergis et al paper at the AMS Journal website, which now displays a notice as follows:
The requested article is not currently available on this site.
Is this significant I wonder?
Update on Jun 9, 2012 by
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill
Steve M reports that the paper has been "put on hold".
Reader Comments (279)
Jun 10, 2012 at 12:05 AM | Richard Betts
"The seasonal forecasts are known to be of low skill............"
But the multi decadal forecasts of CAGW use the same models. How can we possibly have any confidence at all in them?
You can't win if the combined effect of all your wisdom and all your models and all your computers cannot produce an outlook which is better than a guess. If it was a question of being right more often than not, your best bet would be to keep public attention on the outlook statements and take a little flak now and then when they are wrong. That you (the collective you that is the met office) choose not to highlight the outlooks means that you have no confidence in them. Is there a competitive tendering process for the services the met provides to the nation for all its money?
Richard Betts
I think it's called "hoist with your own petard"!
As I'm sure you realise some of your colleagues in the wider climate science community have not been at all unhappy to have environmental activists (which includes not a few of them!) oversell the global warming issue and they have not demurred when the media have put the most extreme gloss on the science — as the media will always do; it's what sells!
It is only one step from there to creating headlines which have at best a tenuous connection with the story underneath and when the scientists themselves or their PR department are daft enough to try the same trick ("barbecue summer"!) that is a godsend.
Since the British are already obsessed with the weather, anything to do with that or climate (most laymen can't tell the difference, and that includes many activists and apparently not a few scientists as well) is going to get the full media treatment, no matter how far down in the MO website you bury it.
You can't just blame sceptics, I'm afraid. The science community has been happy enough to ride this particular tiger for quite a few years.
From the Ecclesiastical Uncle, an old retired bureaucrat in a field only remotely related to climate with minimal qualifications and only half a mind.
Back to the Bishop's question.
Acceptance of the report seems, in part, to depend on implementation of the IPCC’s conflict of interest policy document. However, in an interview, Mr Pachauri seemed to exclude implementation of the policy in respect of AR5 appointees. It might be construed that Mr P had a point with respect to their selection and appointment, since these were already in the past, but he said nothing to prevent it being assumed he was laying down the rules in respect of the work they were to do in the future. So it cannot be doubted that in case of need it will be declared that the conflict of interest policy was not applied to AR5 on Mr P’s say so.
However that is resolved, I am still left with the impression that any nimble bureaucrat could wriggle his way past any attack based upon the document’s provisions. In the current context, the exclusion of bias as a cause of conflict of interest seems to be a principle weakness. However, even if bias were permissible as a cause, there is nothing to prevent the IPCC from working on the underlying assumption that CAGW is the consensus position and that it is other views that are biased.
I do not think the policy will prove effective at stopping dismissal of comments by bloggers, hostile reviewers and the like as the uninformed tittle-tattle of the uninformed, etc, notwithstanding their cogency
So if they conclude that the Gergis paper advances the case they want to make they will find some way of dismissing all criticisms and including it. After all. the IPCC made its rules to facilitate its work and if, in practice, it finds they get in the way, it is only sensible that they be broken/amended/rescinded/replaced.
That is what self regulation means, surely. Quis custoodiet…?
What presently happening [to judge from the BBC Politics' problem] is that people associated with climate science and government are dogmatically claiming that if we don't act now we're doomed.
There is no proof of any CO2-AGW. The physics claiming it is wrong.
OK Stephen, that accounts for Richard Betts.
What's with Rob Wilson? :-)
Jun 9, 2012 at 7:02 PM | Don Keiller
Sorry Don, not cognisant of Wilson's work. Betts is a senor manager of their (one of ) climate unit and so take the responsibility for their output.
David,
Look at Jim Bouldin's obfuscatory posts at CA and now at RC.
"So, once again, if you are proposing that a random, red noise process with no actual relationship to the environmental variable of interest (seasonal temperature) causes a spurious correlation with that variable over the instrumental period, then I defy you to show how such a process, with ANY level of lag 1 auto-correlation, operating on individual trees, will lead to what you claim"
One's head can go reeling when you read the entirety of Bouldin's comments on CA. Absolute industrial strength RC-style obfuscation at CA, and nothing more. Bouldin's intense belief that his signal of interest (temperature) resides in the trees somewhere absolutely interferes with his seeing what is wrong with the Gergis et al paper.
The simple fact is, you *never* use the independent variable in an experiment to select members of a population exhibiting/carrying the dependent variable. You can sandwich various amounts of transformations and other calculations in between, but, it does not remove the circularity in inference. The imposition of several steps in between the two may serve to obfuscate the circularity but that doesn't mean it is not there!
Jim Bouldin is looking for references:
He can look at these:
[1] Voodoo Correlations Are Everywhere—Not Only in Neuroscience. Klaus Fiedler. Perspectives on Psychological Science 6(2) 163–171
[2] Everything you never wanted to know about circular analysis, but were afraid to ask. Kriegeskorte et al. Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow & Metabolism (2010) 30, 1551–1557
[3] Over-optimism in bioinformatics research Anne-Laure Boulesteix BIOINFORMATICS Vol. 26 no. 3 2010, pages 437–439
[4] Ioannidis, J. (2008). Why most discovered true associations are inflated. Epidemiology, 19, 640–648.
[5] Cureton, E.E. (1950). Validity, reliability, and baloney. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 10, 94–96.
[6] Vul, E., Harris C., Winkielman, P., & Pashler, H. (2009). Reply to comments on Puzzlingly high correlations in fMRI studies of emotion, personality, and social cognition. Perspectives on Psychological Science., 4, 319-324
[7] Vul E., Harris C., Winkielman P., Pashler H. (2009a). Puzzlingly high correlations in fMRI studies of emotion, personality, and social cognition. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. 4, 274–290.
[8] Begging the Question: The Non-Independence Error in fMRI Data Analysis Edward Vul, Nancy Kanwisher. Foundational Issues in Human Brain Mapping (Bradford Books) by Stephen José Hanson and Martin Bunzl (Apr 30, 2010)
[9] The problem of pseudoreplication in neuroscientific studies: is it affecting your analysis? Lazic S BMC Neuroscience 2010, 11:5
[10] Circular analysis in systems neuroscience: the dangers of double dipping Kriegeskorte et al, NATURE NEUROSCIENCE VOLUME 12 NUMBER 5 MAY 2009
Figure 1 in the last reference quoted above is especially relevant for the present case.
Who wants to bet that the tree/networks that show the best interannual correlation would be the same that show multidecadal correlations as well?
Detrending before correlation is just a way of fooling ourselves that we are rid of circularity in inference.
Of course I suppose we could not make them available at all, but then when they turn out to be "right", we'll just get accused of not warning people! We can't win :-)
Cheers
Richard
By some piece of good luck, Richard? If your long range forecasts are useless, which they are, and you don't want anyone to see them, which you don't (unless by some good fortune they are correct) then don't waste the UK taxpayer's money by doing them or for that matter, any other climate work. Stick to what you do best, very short range weather forecasts, and leave the rest to the experts in the private companies who appear to do a better job than the UK Met Off.
The Met off staff could then be housed in a shed at the bottom of someone's garden and the Liberals / conservatives could give more money to the african dictators to buy more weapons from BAE and thereby transfer employment from one useless, unproductive unit to a productive, tax contributing, unit.
The simple fact is, you *never* use the independent variable in an experiment to select members of a population exhibiting/carrying the dependent variable
Absolutely correct and very basic stats. French BAC 1 and GSCE level maths. Abviously too much for RC.
@richard betts
The easy way to make sure that you 'win' is to get the forecasts you do right. And if you can't forecast something, not to waste your time and our money on pretending that you can.
Jun 9, 2012 at 6:41 PM | stephen richards
Hi Stephen
The March-April-May 3-month outlook actually said:
Rainfall substantially above average is needed in southern, eastern and central England during the early spring (March-April) period for a recovery of the water resources situation here – the chances of this happening are very low.
During March the forecast for the UK as a whole favours dry weather, and the wind direction preferred in our forecasts makes the southeast of the UK more prone to dry weather than the northwest..................
Richard
Jun 10, 2012 at 12:05 AM Richard Betts
Richard
Had the UK Met off forecast at that super-duper green summet that " The next 2 months will be exceptionally wet in those areas that are currently dry and that sunshine will be belmow normal and that temperatures would be significantly suppressed for long periods" would there have been a hosepipe ban.
Oh yes, of course there would, silly me. The politics would have demanded it, wouldn't it??
As the effects of "boomerangate" reverberate around the world there's little doubt that, deep in the bowels of a climate science lab somewhere down under this weekend, Joelle Gergis, Dave Karoly, Ailie Gallant (et al) are sweating over their PC's as they torture their data for the MK 2 version.
With nothing to listen to but the frantic buzzing of the fans on their CPU heat sinks - perhaps a little ditty from their national bard will cheer them up:-
There's an old Australian climatologist lying, dying (well lying, anyway)
And he gets up on one elbow, turns to his mates
Who are gathered 'round and he says…
Tie the hockey stick down, sport, tie that hockey stick down
You don't want to look like a clown, sport, so tie that hockey stick down
Choose the data you fave, Dave, choose the data you fave
You can bury the rest in a grave, Dave, but keep the data you fave
Show those sceptics they've failed, Aile, show those sceptics they've failed
Shake your booty in a video and wail, Aile, to show those sceptics they've failed
Make those proxies look swell, Joelle, make those proxies look swell
Don't de-trend 'em to hell, Joelle, make those proxies look swell
Come to think of it, when they've finished re-torturing the data, they'll need a really punchy press launch to get the media onside for MK2 and who better to front it than old Rolf himself………
I can see it now……… the assembled enviro-hacks twitching with anticipation in the front row…… as Rolf approaches the huge roll of cartridge paper with his big felt-tip………. starting from the left, he skilfully scribes a horizontal line, neatly minimising the MWP and LIA before swooping upwards at the climax and calling out cheerily " Can yer tell what it is yit ?"
(You probably need to be of a certain age to follow this)
"Until Steve McIntyre addresses this "Screening Fallacy" issue (as he calls it), with conclusive, detailed analysis, he just doesn't have a case, period."
When I saw this upthread, I thought this looks like a gauntlet being thrown down and I wondered if we might be about to see not only the end of Gergis et al (on hold) but dendrothermomitry too.
I also wonder how the temp side of the analysis will stack up. RomanM has pointed out the sparse nature of the HADCRUT3v3 index it reminded me that somewhere along the way somebody posted a pretty convincing long history analysis of Australian temps - Geoff Sherrington perhaps?
Whatever happens it would be refreshing if this obvious "cock up" serves to deal with some of the longstanding issues with climate reconstructions in an open and honest manner. I hope Gergis et al have the good grace to apologise for their earlier brush off of Steve's enquiry and that as and when (if?) their paper is rereleased they do so with a full archive of data and code. For the several hundred thousand dollars of public money spent I don't see how anything less will be acceptable.
Jun 10, 2012 at 11:14 AM | Rhoda
Yes - for a large proportion of the services anyway, especially the main ones like the BBC contract.
I don't know whether the forecasts for the armed forced are competitively tendered or not.
Cheers
Richard
Jun 10, 2012 at 12:52 PM | stephen richards
Which private companies are doing a better job at the (extremely difficult) job of long-range forecasting?
As a matter of interest, Richard, who were the other bidders for the BBC contract?
Was it an open process and, if so, where can we see details of the tenders?
Jun 10, 2012 at 12:58 PM | Stirling English
er.... who's pretending? Have you actually read the documents I posted, with all their caveats, and did you see my earlier comment about low skill in seasonal forecasts? We are completely open about the fact that there is huge uncertainty in these outlooks :-)
Jun 10, 2012 at 1:39 PM | Foxgoose
Don't know exactly - but there are a number of private companies who I imagine would love to get one over on the Met Office and get the BBC contract! Probably best ask the BBC who else put a bid in.
It wouldn't be difficult to beat the MO in terms of value for money for long range forecasting: current long range forecasts are so poor as to have essentially no value, and driving the price down is the simplest approach. I could set up a web page displaying "buggered if I know, probably much the same as the average over the last 30 years" for under £100 a year.
For short term weather I find accuweather considerably better than the BBC summaries of the MO product, but this may just be because they are far more detailed.
Last year the Met Office announced that it was incorporating solar data in its weather forecasting. The level I remember reading was 50% solar, 50% CO2.
The fact is the present jet stream changes are solar. Corbyn learnt from his mistakes in not anticipating the Late May changes with a variant of his SLAT technique.
My suspicion is the the Met Office is in overdrive trying to catch up with the meteorologists reasserting control over WWF/carbon trader propaganda: http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/features/18374637
This is a return to the weather of the 1940s - 1970s before ENSO changed to warming. It looks bad for the WWF.
Which private companies are doing a better job at the (extremely difficult) job of long-range forecasting?
Jun 10, 2012 at 1:37 PM | Richard Betts
This demostrates a complete lack of understanding of your market and competitors. If you were a private organisation needing to make money to survive you would have been straight back at me with a list and KPIs of their abilities. I know why you did not, don't I?,
er.... who's pretending? Have you actually read the documents I posted, with all their caveats, and did you see my earlier comment about low skill in seasonal forecasts? We are completely open about the fact that there is huge uncertainty in these outlooks :-)
Jun 10, 2012 at 1:40 PM | Richard Betts
I have read them and exactly as you admit they are so full of caveats they are not worth issuing, as with the winter one for I think 2010 which said there was a 33% possibility of a cold winter, 33% of an average winter temp wise and a 34% possibility of a warmer winter than average. That is not a forcast worth the paper it is written on and certainly not worth spending another £60M on a bigger computer !!!
@Richard Betts
We are talking at cross purposes. You say
'We are completely open about the fact that there is huge uncertainty in these outlooks :-)'
My point is not that you aren't open about being useless at it, but that it is a waste of time and money to try to do something that you already know you can't. Brownie points for honesty but several naughty steps for trying at all.
Jonathan's $100 website saying
'"buggered if I know, probably much the same as the average over the last 30 years"
seems to sum up the state of the art knowledge.
And unless you have made a big theoretical/methodological breakthrough, that is how it will remain.
As another contributor mentioned, your short term forecasts are pretty good. You can make a good living doing them. But extending the short-term method to the medium and long-term clearly stretches the method too far and doesn't work.
RE: Breath of Fresh Air
"I have read them and exactly as you admit they are so full of caveats they are not worth issuing, as with the winter one for I think 2010 which said there was a 33% possibility of a cold winter, 33% of an average winter temp wise and a 34% possibility of a warmer winter than average."
Actually, the Met Office "prediction" was worse than that and I even got a complete post at BH after pointing it out. (5 mins of fame etc. etc)
The categories were as you said, but the ranges were from (as I recall) a lower bound of -1.5 degC to an upper bound of + 1.5 degC above average for the three categories, with the probs in the three categories adding to 100%. As you remind us, the probs are virtually the same for each category therefore there is no predictive skill (hate that word!) but the actual winter temp was about -3.5 degC below average, ie outside the range of all the categories - for which the sum of the chances was 100%!
Only journalists and politicians can believe that something is a "prediction" when all the categories have the same probability. Even my 12 year old could see the fallacy in what was presented. You might as well go and roll dice as any prediction based on what is virtually identical to a uniform distribution is not a prediction at all.
The MO, assuming it believed its story on CO2 causing warming, would shut itself down. All those supercomptuers, conferences, innumerable apparatchiks like Richard paid and pensioned by tax payers. The MO CO2 footprint is immense.
The bottom line is that organizations like the MO could be radically streamlined by modern technology - what used to be done by an army of Richards with pen and paper can now easily be done by a few people with one PC. Of course, this streamlining is unappealing to the well paid and complacent army, and instead of finding something productive to do with their careers, they flock to the latest -ism or -ology, in order to protect their incomes.
And buying carbon offsets, or a Prius or two, doesn't mean that the MO believes its own hype.
ThinkingScientist
"I think this episode clearly shows how valuable the collaborative work is from ClimateAudit (full credit to Jean S remember) and how shallow and partisan is the approach at RealClimate. Gavin's comment at RC is beneath contempt and he has gone down severely in my estimation over this." [emphasis added]
Well said!!! It must be emphasized that the "auditors" of CA (max. credit Jean S) saw through this paper which had passed "peer review" and was being trumpeted at Real Climate for more than two weeks without anyone there seeing a stats problem (not to mention being fast-tracked into the first draft of the IPCC's AR5). It was being treated as some historic paper by the co-authors and their media trumpets.
The experts at Real Climate, the IPCC (whoever dealt with this paper), and Journal of Climate got the big "FAIL" here. Steve McIntyre, Jean S, et al are the ones who upheld the principles of science.
Anyone who believes that the paper's co-authors would have been re-checking their stats without the scrutiny of Climate Audit, indeed anyone who simply assumes that the co-authors discovered the problem independently, I have some swampland (er, wetlands) to sell you in the middle of nowhere.
[ok let's grant it's possible if not plausible that the paper's authors discovered the problem on their own on June 5 ... no one familiar with the events can believe it's plausible that they would have been re-examining their stats at that time without the spotlight of the critical comments flowing out on Climate Audit.]
@Richard my enquiry was about Gergis et al (2012).
This paper was clearly designed to be "proof" of "unprecedented" Southern hemisphere warming, just in time for AR5.
As an AR5 author, you should have an opinion.
Cheers, Don.
I assume that AR5 will now be based solely on the imaginary** 'abyssal heat storage' introduced by Trenberth et al in 2009.
There's only one bit of physics which allows this to happen, and it's the mechanism which ends ice ages, without CO2 being necessary.
This may be a good time to turn up the pressure on a variety of scientific journals and societies which have been allowing confirmation bias, pal review, careless stats, and worse to blight the scientific and public debates. As a newbie I have occasionally seen a reference to a discredited Steig et al (2009) on Antarctic warming, but had not tracked down some references until now.
I strongly urge all to acquaint or re-acquaint themselves with this history (I remember the scary cover of "Nature" magazine on this, and remember later hearing that Steig et al (2009) was over-hyped or worse, but I did not know this sordid tale until now):
WUWT on rebuttal of Steig et al (2009)
CA on O'Donnell et al (2010) refutes Steig et al (2009)
Jeff Id on "Doing It Ourselves"
From Fiedler 2011
"Gergisgate" now gets 165 hits on google. Mostly from Dutch websites.
Its probably the name of a village in Holland!
Skiphill, WRT to Steig09 I absolutely agree that this paper should be withdrawn. RyanO's angry post at CA where he shows that what happens to the Antarctica predictions of Steig09 when you increase or decrease anomalies at the critical sites artifically (ie test the response of the predictor) is the complete opposite of what Steig09 claim is the significant finding is absolutely damning and irrefutable. The set of 16 little colour maps showing the sensitivities are on my wall permanetly. They are beyond contestation and Steig09 is refuted and should be withdrawn.
Anyone that still supports Steig09 is either perverse or crazy.
Wikipedia could do with adding a reference to O'Donnell at al (2010) here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Antarctic_Ice_Sheet#References
Stephen Richards: "Stick to what you do best, very short range weather forecasts, and leave the rest to the experts in the private companies who appear to do a better job than the UK Met Office."
By very short range I believe you might mean when we can all see the weather out of our windows, because, and I know this from personal experience, they, the weather forecasts, are all but useless until 24 hours before.
To put this in perspective on 25th March the Met Office put out a three month outlook forecasting drought, or near drought conditions for the next three months. 70 days later the depleted reservoirs were full again. I get the impression that the Met Office sees it's primary role as the respectable mouthpiece for the environmental NGOs and has all but given up on it's real primary b role of providing accurate weather forecasts and I believe it's time to privatise the weather forecasting arm and let the IPCC representatives pursue their "cause" unhindered by any obligations to produce anything of any use for the community paying them.
Mike Jackson, I believe the "weather's not climate meme came about because people were questioning why the weather wasn't behaving as it should be in a changing climate. Of course they are subtly different but the climate in Britain is crap if you want sunshine, but not if you're a farmer, because it rains a lot (weather). Whereas the climate in Spain is great if you want sunshine because the sunshines a lot (weather again). Hope that's put some clarity into it for you.
Jun 10, 2012 at 3:48 PM | Don Keiller
Well, clearly the lead authors of the palaeo chapter in WG1 have a potential problem here if they are citing this paper. They are in the middle of working on the Second Order Draft which will need to be submitted in less than 3 months' time (I think). Any revisions to this paper are obviously going to need to come pretty sharpish for it to be useful.
Incidentally, Don, can I have one last attempt to get you to register as a reviewer for the WG2 First Order Draft, which comes out for review tomorrow? Especially my chapter on land ecosystems. If you email me (name dot surname at metoffice.gov.uk) I will send you the details on how to register.
Cheers
Richard
'Any revisions to this paper are obviously going to need to come pretty sharpish for it to be useful.'
'useful' in the sense of promoting alarmism - right Richard?
The whole incident and its chronology is already an entirely factual summary of the state of climate science. (No modeling required).
Will WG1 include a timeline summary of the creation, review, and withdrawal, and perhaps rushed re-submission of the Gergis paper?
Such a timeline would be extremely helpful to politicians and bureaucrats.
More seriously: Yes, Steig et al is one of the papers that continues to be cited straight-facedly, despite O'Donnell's demolition job (see also the Bishop's quick summary). The travails O'Donnell at al. went through to get published will form an interesting contrast with what will no doubt happen to Gergis take two. Will the rejigged Gergis paper even go back to referees?
For Karoly and Steig who now say "this is how science works":
No, 'science' doesn't work this way. Papers would be published. Authors would not have to reproduce their results. Years would pass before someone would figure out something amiss. By then the authors would have their careers made. They would succeed in burying criticism due to their position. Eventually, decades would pass before people would realise that the original findings were wrong.
Organised science, it seems, takes credit for virtues that are not even its own.
If Gergis had turned out their code, the problems would have been ferreted out the first week. She and her co-authors just wasted everyone's time.
geronimo
I'm not sure I was confused. Weather is what I see every day looking out of my window. Climate is what you can expect the weather to be over a period of time, freak events notwithstanding.
And for all the talk about "the climate is changing; we must do something" and "the climate is always changing", my take on it is that by and large, climate doesn't change.
North of 70 degrees it's bloody cold; south of 20 degrees it's bloody hot; in between it's pretty OK.(Conversely down under). I don't see any evidence that minuscule changes in temperature are going to cause that to change any time soon even though doom-mongers seem to want to convince me otherwise.
Gavin made a high-minded sounding statement at RC (in a comment reply), about how real scientists don't care about assigning blame or gloating when a paper's errors are exposed. He said "real" scientits only care about finding the errors and then moving on and learning about what the data show us after the corrections are made. I challenged him to prove that sentiment by posting an update to RC's Gergis article entitled "Fresh Hockey Sticks Found in the Southern Hemisphere" and to either rename the article or post a bolded explanation at the top, explaining that the alleged fresh hockey sticks cannot yet be claimed, because of the withdrawn paper.
Gavin's ethical response: my post was deleted (not even routed to the bore hole), with no comment or response.
"The seasonal forecasts are known to be of low skill............"
But the multi decadal forecasts of CAGW use the same models. How can we possibly have any confidence at all in them?
Jun 10, 2012 at 11:10 AM | Roger Longstaff
It's an item of faith with climate modellers that, although the weather/climate is chaotic in the short/medium term, it stabilises to the extent of having defined statistics in the long term.
As I just said, this seems to be entirely an item of faith, without any basis of evidence. How could there be?
The activist background to some of the Gergis group is quite interesting. We know something of the outlook of Gergis from her deleted blog and rather fervid public comments. There is the sad participation of Ailie Gallant in that execrable rap video "I'm a Client Scientist" taking shots at critics like Andrew Bolt by boasting that "our work is peer reviewed."
So far the only public communication about Gergis et al (2012) being put "on hold" (whatever that means, a novel term for a scientific publication which was already announced as published online on May 17) has come from David Karoly.
He is not the lead author (which is of course Gergis), but he is apparently the senior member of the team and has taken the public lead initially in dealing with the problems. The name Karoly is well known from the IPCC context but then I also noticed per Donna L. that he has been quite involved with reports for the World Wildlife Fund (passage is hyper-linked):
"Karoly is a meteorologist. He has no expertise in floods or droughts. He’s also hopelessly tainted by his close association with the activist World Wildlife Fund. (That organization, as I’ve noted before, has a financial interest in promoting scare stories. When the public feels alarmed, it writes cheques to environmental groups.)"
"In 2003 Karoly was the lead author for a 2003 WWF publication that claimed global warming was contributing to “Australia’s worst drought.” The next year he helped write another WWF report titled Climate Change – Solutions for Australia. To this day he remains a member of the WWF’s Climate Witness Science Advisory Panel."
RE: Mickey Reno
That's sounds about right for Gavin. Full of ethical promise, but when called out on it he simply censors the post and pretends it never happened. He has form for this and I have also been treated in the same way. RC is its own worst enemy. Long may it live...and keep shooting itself in the foot whilst defending the indefensible.
Apart from its own hard core I suspect most of its traffic is referred from from WUWT, BH and CA. Without that it would be an echo chamber, sadly reminiscent of Saddam's Minister atop the building in Baghad claiming that it was lies that American troops and tanks were there, whilst simultaneously being filmed from below by TV crews with American troops and tanks. RC is becomig a laughing stock and certainly bears no relation to science. Its good entertainment though, so long may it continue. Its probably done more to convert neutrals to sceptic than any other web site.
Martin A: as far as can be worked out from the IPCC summary data, the climate models use 40% more energy than actually enters the lower atmosphere from the Sun, 400% more in the IR.
Richard Betts - I'm another layman who, like all the Bishop's readers, appreciates your input here.That said I don't think you've satisfactorily explained how the Met Office 3-month Outlook dated 23 March could be so spectacularly wrong when it headlined with "The forecast for average UK rainfall slightly favours drier-than-average conditions for April-May-June as a whole, and also slightly favours April being the driest of the 3 months."
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/p/i/A3-layout-precip-AMJ.pdf
There are caveats further down in the body of the page but my quotation above is what the Met Office obviously wanted us to concentrate on.
Martin A: as far as can be worked out from the IPCC summary data and correcting the wrong physics, the climate models use 40% more energy than actually enters the lower atmosphere from the Sun, 400% more in the IR. These excesses are offset by incorr4ect assumptions about the cooling processes, particularly clouds.
The models can't predict weather or climate.
"low skill" is a funny old phrase. How does it equate to "highly inept"? Or is is it something else altogether? Can it be applied to "ability to identify death threats"?
http://www.climatechangedispatch.com/home/10161-death-threat-fictions
I can tell from my experience: once you start the writing process, the analysis part of the brain shuts down. :)
Going back and fixing problems, maintaining a file version trace, and keeping track of things is such a pain (yes, it is, if you haven't learnt a real-life lesson yet). Soon your project folder is enormously junked up with "New Document.txt", "New Document(1).txt", "code.R", "code-temp.R", "code-temp-new.R", "code-temp-new-revised.R" and so forth. It is easy to stop analysis and move forward in such a situation once a seemingly breakthrough result arises.