New paper: climate models too sensitive

17 August, 2011 by

Climate sensitivity is the key to the AGW conundrum – how much will global temperatures respond to the extra forcing caused by anthropogenic carbon dioxide. If it’s nothing, or a few tenths of a degree, there really isn’t a problem. If it’s six degrees, there’s a problem.

Unsurprisingly, the majority of the consensus climate models indicate high sensitivity, meaning that in the IPCC’s view, it’s a problem that must be tackled.

However, Richard Lindzen and Yong-Sang Choi have prepared a new paper looking at real-world observations in an attempt to pin down climate sensitivity. The abstract contains the following:

We develop a method to distinguish noise in the outgoing radiation as well as radiation changes that are forcing SST [sea surface temperature] changes from those radiation changes that constitute feedbacks to changes in SST. We demonstrate that our new method does moderately well in distinguishing positive from negative feedbacks and in quantifying negative feedbacks. In contrast, we show that simple regression methods used by several existing papers generally exaggerate positive feedbacks and even show positive feedbacks when actual feedbacks are negative.  

And the conclusion states:

Our study also suggests that, in current coupled atmosphere-ocean models, the atmosphere and ocean are too weakly coupled since thermal coupling is inversely proportional to sensitivity (Lindzen and Giannitsis, 1998). It has been noted by Newman et al. (2009) that coupling is crucial to the simulation of phenomena like El Niño. Thus, corrections of the sensitivity of current climate models might well improve the behavior of coupled models, and should be encouraged. It should be noted that there have been independent tests that also suggest sensitivities less than predicted by current models.

…

Most claims of greater sensitivity are based on the models that we have just shown can be highly misleading on this matter. There have also been attempts to infer sensitivity from paleoclimate data (Hansen et al., 1993), but these are not really tests since the forcing is essentially unknown given major uncertainties in clouds, dust loading and other factors. Finally, we have shown that the attempts to obtain feedbacks from simple regressions of satellite measured outgoing radiation on SST are inappropriate. 

Sensitivity is one of the key areas of climate research. Whether you subscribe to Lindzen and Choi’s view, or the IPCC’s, one thing is certain. The science is most definitely not settled.

Download link here (PDF).

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Settled science: no Arctic "tipping point"?

16 August, 2011 by

Clouded with doubt

The alarmist argument goes like this: if the ice disappears from the Arctic, the darker sea will absorb more sunlight than the more reflective ice, which will increase warming, which will reduce the ice even further, etc etc. The climate tips over the edge of the abyss and it’s goodnight.

But as always, there are other factors at work, and a new paper which looks at the forcing caused by the total loss of the Arctic ice sheet includes the following caveat:

The potential for changes in cloud cover as a result of the changes in sea ice makes the evaluation of the actual forcing that may be realized quite uncertain since such changes could overwhelm the forcing caused by the sea ice loss itself, if the cloudiness increases in the summertime.

In other words, the higher evaporation from the sea surface due to the lack of ice may actually increase the cloudiness during periods of low ice, therefore reducing the incoming solar radiation, and acting as a negative feedback to prevent the mythical tipping point being reached.

Again, without a thorough understanding of cloud feedbacks, predictions of Arctic tipping points (and the outputs from most climate models) are virtually worthless.

Abstract here. (h/t Hockey Schtick)

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Labor: political survival above national interest

16 August, 2011 by

"Ha ha! F*** you, Australia!"

Ironic that this story breaks on the one year anniversary of “There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.” A more obvious sign that Labor and Gillard are more interested in clinging on to power than doing what is in the best interests of the country is difficult to imagine – a damning indictment of any political leader.

Why else would she refuse to reconsider the carbon [dioxide] tax in the face of serious international financial concerns, and the possibility of a GFC Mark II? There couldn’t be a worse time to introduce yet another tax – especially a tax on everything like this one (ignore the 400/500 biggest polluters nonsense – it’s all spin. Everyone will pay more for just about anything you care to mention). Even in sound economic times it would be suicidal, but with the US faltering and European countries lining up to default, it is beyond madness.

So why is she pressing on? Because she knows if she backs away from the toxic tax, the Greens support will evaporate (don’t forget, Labor bribed the Greens with a cowardly promise of urgent action on climate), and there will be an election – which Labor will lose catastrophically. So political survival takes precedence of the interests of the nation and the people whom she is supposed to represent. Disgraceful.

THE Gillard government has vowed to forge ahead with its carbon tax amid growing financial uncertainty, saying the “manageable” economic reform” will deliver certainty to Australian businesses.

While the worsening economic outlook has the government edging away from its 2012-13 return-to-surplus deadline, Climate Change Minister Greg Combet said the carbon tax would go ahead regardless.

“Yes we have had a period unfortunately of great uncertainty in international markets driven by debt concerns in Europe in particular,” he told ABC radio, as protesters gathered for a new anti-carbon tax rally outside Parliament House.

“However this is a reform to our economy that is necessary in the long term, it is a manageable economic reform, what’s more it will deliver certainty.” (source)

Maybe Greg will front up at the carbon dioxide tax demonstration in Canberra today to explain… Ha, not a chance. This government has abandoned the country.

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A bellyful of Greens

15 August, 2011 by

No more Greens…

That’s what I, and I guess a lot of you, have just about had. Environmentalism has become far too dominant, and it’s time it was taken down a peg or two.

I am sick to death of being told what to do, what to buy and how to behave, by governments and environmental activists, in order to “save the planet.” We have such short memories that we forget how many times in the past we have heard about the impending death of our planet, only for it still to be here, healthier, wealthier and stronger. And then the next scare comes along…

The planet has been here 4.5 billion years. It will be here for another 4.5 billion – long after we, and every other species, has disappeared. The conceit that the planet needs us to save it would be hilarious if it weren’t so tragic.

The latest lunacy, noted by Baldrick in the comments to an earlier post, is the plan for electricity companies to have the right to remotely switch off your appliances if demand gets too great. Just a reminder, in case you forget while reading the following extract, that this is Australia we’re talking about, not the former Soviet Union or an African dictatorship:

TVs, airconditioners and fridges could be switched off remotely by power companies during peak times under plans to rein in households’ demand for electricity.

The option is among measures being considered as part of a national review of the management of domestic power use.

The Ministerial Council on Energy has initiated the Australian Energy Market Commission review in response to the nation’s increasing demand for power.

The council is seeking ways to ease the demand for electricity during extremely cold nights and exceptionally hot days, to avoid the need for energy companies to build more power stations. (source)

The last sentence is the key. All of this is due to climate alarmism and the consequent imperative to cut emissions. If that alleged problem was not given the weight it is, the electricity companies would happily build more coal-fired power stations and supply us with as much electricity as we demand. But the nanny environmentalists won’t allow that. Oh no. Gaia’s representatives on earth require that we reduce our consumption of electricity, and personally, I’ve had enough of it.

I long for the good old days when if you wanted more electricity, all you had to do was pay for it. Which back then was easy since it was CHEAP. But not now – ridiculous, pointless and futile renewable energy targets and hopeless wind farms and solar power stations mean that electricity is frighteningly expensive, and, it appears, not under your control for much longer, if the above report is to be believed.

I am the first to agree that we must take care of our environment and use our resources wisely. But the key point is that there has to be a balance between environmental needs and the needs of humanity. And that balance is all wrong. At the moment, thanks to the green movement worldwide, and here in Australia, the Greens’ alliance with the Labor government, humanity is trailing a very, very distant second.

And the irony is that the inevitable result of this badgering and hectoring from the Green movement will be the opposite of what they want. Most people, like myself, who wish to do their bit for the environment, are increasingly irritated by the incessant demands of “the planet” curtailing how much petrol I use, or how much electricity I use, or dictating what kind of light bulbs I must use, or any number of equally intrusive and controlling requirements thrust upon us by governments in thrall to the green movement. The corollary of this will be a rejection of environmentalism to make up for decades of enslavement to the Green gods.

I won’t be sorry to see that happen. Environmentalism is out of control and needs a swift reality check. The activists and the governments need to realise that people who are tied up in green regulations will develop deep resentments towards environmental goals, rather than working towards them.

As Andrew McIntyre pointed out in his book “The Greens” (reviewed here), environmentally-friendly behaviour requires a high GDP and a high standard of living. The poorest countries have the worst environmental records.

Give people the ability to enjoy high standards of living, and they will voluntarily help the environment. Witness the emergence of the urban Greens. Start telling them how they must live, and punish them, on the other hand, and they will rebel. The Convoy of No Confidence is the first of many signs of this reaction.

Rant over. Final comment: I’ve had enough greens, thanks. Time for the next course.

Filed Under: Climate

Figures fudged to justify carbon price

15 August, 2011 by

China's carbon price is lower, Greg

This is what happens when ideology and a tawdry deal with the Greens takes precedence over the best interests of the nation.

THE Gillard government’s claims that Australia lags behind China in the effective price on carbon have been discredited by its Climate Change Department.

The revelations, in documents obtained through a Freedom of Information application, show that rather than trailing China’s implicit carbon price by more than $12 per tonne, Australia’s effective price could already be higher.

This undermines the government’s argument for Australia to introduce a carbon tax now at an additional cost of $23 per tonne.

The documents, obtained by the Institute of Public Affairs, show the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency warned that a crucial draft report on comparative implicit carbon prices overestimated China’s figure more than sixfold.

Despite that warning, the higher figure remained in the report and has been quoted by Climate Change Minister Greg Combet.

…

The report the minister referred to was not as independent as it sounds — it was funded by government through a $70,000 payment that went via the “non-partisan” Climate Institute.  (source)

The Climate Institute? Non-partisan? Oh, please.

Read Tim Wilson’s article in The Australian here.

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Sea change in America?

14 August, 2011 by

Sceptic's choice

The American people have discovered, rather late in the day, that Barack Obama did not possess the wisdom of King Cnut. The story of Cnut is often retold wrongly – that he was attempting to control the tides, and failed. In fact, he was demonstrating to his excessively worshipful people that he did not have the power of  a God to control natural phenomena like the tides.

Obama wasn’t so modest, and had no qualms about excessive worship. The Wall Street Journal asks “What happened to Obama?”:

In short, the spell that Mr. Obama once cast—a spell so powerful that instead of ridiculing him when he boasted that he would cause “the oceans to stop rising and the planet to heal,” all of liberaldom fell into a delirious swoon—has now been broken by its traumatic realization that he is neither the “god” Newsweek in all seriousness declared him to be nor even a messianic deliverer.

Humility isn’t usually a strong point with people suffering from a Messiah complex. And WSJ’s answer:

He is still the same anti-American leftist he was before becoming our president, and it is this rather than inexperience or incompetence or weakness or stupidity that accounts for the richly deserved failure both at home and abroad of the policies stemming from that reprehensible cast of mind. (source)

Now Rick Perry has entered the race for Republican nomination, and unlike Obama, he won’t be making any attempt to control the weather:

Perry calls global warming “all one contrived phony mess that is falling apart under its own weight.” Unlike many of the other GOP presidential candidates, he hasn’t expressed concern about climate change in the past, so he won’t have to do any back-pedaling. Notorious climate denier realist [apologies, this is the Guardian, after all – Ed] Marc Morano is a big fan: “Based on climate views alone, anyone who is holding their nose voting for Mitt Romney because there’s no other viable candidate will now rejoice to have an option with Rick Perry.”

The Texas governor will announce his intentions in the early primary state of South Carolina on Saturday, then head to New Hampshire andIowa to rub elbows with all of the other aspiring commanders-in-chief. As a social and fiscal conservative, governor of a state that’s been adding jobs (even if they’re low-wage), and owner of a full head of lustrous hair, Perry is expected to swagger to the front of the pack in the contest for the Republican nomination.

Perry served as Al Gore’s Texas campaign chair in the 1988 presidential race, just before switching his party allegiance from Democrat to Republican, but conservatives don’t have to worry that Perry holds any residual affection for the former veep. “I’ve heard Al Gore talk about man-made global warming so much that I’m starting to think that his mouth is the leading source of all that supposedly deadly carbon dioxide,” Perry said in 2007. (source)

At least the American people will have the choice of a genuinely sceptical candidate in 2012. Hopefully, Australia will have the same in 2013 (or before).

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Yes, I was "a bit rude to Fairfax"

12 August, 2011 by

Set the agenda

That’s how The Australian described my question on The Sunday Age’s Climate Agenda. Yesterday’s Cut and Paste reported the top questions (mine is number two):

THE Sunday Age is launching The Climate Agenda — giving you the chance to decide what stories we cover. What are you confused about in the climate debate? The Sunday Age commits to reporting on the 10 most popular questions and publishing regular updates . . . So if you’ve ever been critical of the media’s coverage of climate change, here’s your chance.

Top question so far (961 votes):

THE very point of Australia’s carbon tax is to reduce global warming. How much will reducing 5 per cent of Australia’s about 1.5 per cent contribution of global CO2 emissions reduce global temperature by?

Question two (303 votes):

 THE magnitude of any future warming is highly uncertain. Why is it, therefore, that the Fairfax press is reluctant to engage with and investigate this uncertainty with an open-minded impartiality, and instead continues to publish articles based on a rigid editorial agenda that “the science is settled”? (source)

And today in Strewth:

Vox populi paper

THE Age website yesterday ran the story “Hypersonic plane: Fly Sydney to London in 49 minutes”, which we suspect wouldn’t be the preferred direction just now. Meanwhile, The Sunday Age was continuing its quest, as meticulously noted in Cut & Paste yesterday, to give readers “the chance to decide what [climate debate] stories we cover . . . The Sunday Age commits to reporting on the 10 most popular questions and publishing regular updates.” A cry for help or a courageous piece of crowd-sourcing? Either way, the most popular question last night — with nearly 2700 votes — began, “The very point of Australia’s carbon tax is to reduce global warming. How much will reducing 5 per cent of Australia’s around 1.5 per cent contribution of global CO2 emissions reduce global temperature by?” The second was nearly 2000 votes behind but was a bit rude to Fairfax, which struck us as akin to arriving at someone’s else’s party and spitting on the Jeffrey Smart print. (source)

Not exactly what the Sunday Age was after…!

See here for the poll and here for my question.

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What's driving the "lack of respect" for scientists?

11 August, 2011 by

Yo, respect!

Rosslyn Beebe pens a “why, oh why?” piece in the Canberra Times about an alleged lack of respect for scientists:

The global science journal Nature has suggested it’s driven by “a suspicion of elites and expertise” mixed with religious anti-Darwinism and hostility to any form of government regulation. The journal points out that the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, is just one timely reminder “of why the US government needs to serve the people better by developing and enforcing improved science-based regulations. Yet the public often buys into anti-science, anti-regulation agendas that are orchestrated by business interests and their sponsored think tanks and front groups.”

In 1996, Scientific American journalist John Horgan published a book titled The End of Science, Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age in which he claimed the “great era of scientific discovery is over”. He coined the term “ironic science” to describe research which, in his view, “resembles literary criticism in that it offers points of view, opinions, which are, at best, interesting, which provoke further comment. But it does not converge on the truth.”

She is also shocked, shocked I tell you, that anyone should take a swipe at Tim Flannery (and gets in a dig at the great unwashed, as embodied, in her view, by the “shock jocks”):

In Australia, a posse of shock-jocks and media commentators – as well as politicians – are taking aim at scientists. “Tim Flannery – Professor Bullshit” screamed a blog headline recently doing the rounds via email. Only last week, a Sydney shock-jock was all a-flurry about his discovery that Professor Flannery lives (has done for well over a decade) in a house on the Hawkesbury River. The Australian newspaper took up the issue, publishing a Google Earth image of the location. A news report headlined, “Do as I say, not as I do: Flannery’s all at sea”, tried to link prior comments Professor Flannery had made about climate change and sea level rise with his home.

Why she should defend Flannery against this obvious case of hypocrisy isn’t clear. In reality, however, there isn’t a lack of respect for scientists as a whole, there is a lack of respect for CLIMATE scientists and their associated advocates and public figures. We still trust doctors to make the right diagnoses, trust our engineers to build safe buildings and bridges, trust the particle physicists when they tell us that a multi-billion dollar circle of magnets kilometres across is required to find a new sub-atomic particle. No-one questions any of that.

The problem with climate scientists and their hangers-on is the result of the actions of a small but visible minority, who are guilty of:

  • politicising science by advocating particular responses to climate change (most of which will damage our standards of living for no benefit)
  • claiming that the IPCC is an impartial review of climate science
  • passing off Greenpeace and WWF propaganda as credible science
  • making catastrophist predictions about future climate
  • conflicting themselves by accepting research grants from a government that itself advocates AGW alarmist policies
  • playing down uncertainty in their results and claiming the science is settled
  • fudging data in order to make it fit with their pre-conceived conclusions
  • silencing dissent and skewing the peer-review process (so that it essentially becomes “pal-review”)
  • refusing to share methods and calculations for independent confirmation of their results
  • hypocritical do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do attitudes (eg. Al Gore and Flannery, above)
  • abusing and smearing (dare I say, disrespecting) anyone that dares mention any of the above

Those are the simple reasons why climate science as a discipline has lost respect. The public is not stupid, and it can see when it is being misled. More openness, more debate, more honesty and less divisive language would help reverse the trend.

Article source is here.

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Sydney launch of "The Greens"

10 August, 2011 by

Essential reading

I attended the relatively low-key launch of this important book in the basement of Portico bookshop in Sydney last Friday. Janet Albrechtsen, who was to be the main speaker, was unfortunately indisposed, but Greg Melleuish, associate professor at the University of Wollongong, himself a contributor to the book, stepped in to fill the gap.

The book is a collection of essays analysing in detail the policies of the Greens, from constitutional reform and the economy to refugees, science and security. Andrew McIntyre was very keen to emphasise that he believed the Greens were simply misguided and naïve, and that the book was only concerned with the unintended consequences of the Greens’ policies, as the Introduction notes:

“This book is not a jeremiad. It does not wish to trace the historical roots of Green politics or impugn the motivations of individual Greens, or question the motivations of their party. What id does set out to do, however, is to provide an informed, objective examination of the consequences of the policies whilst putting the in the context of present day Australian reality.”

And it does this comprehensively. Each chapter is written by an expert in the particular field, analysing the real-world effects of the Greens’ policies, if they were ever put into effect. And the result is not pleasant:

“Taken as a whole, the impression given in reading these chapters is that the Greens have an uncontrollable urge to spend, almost everywhere and for everything; a mania for control – through legislation and regulation of both institutions and individuals; a disturbing and unwarranted confidence in central planning and belief that government knows best; an antagonism to initiatives by the private sector or individuals; and at best, a systematic and naive misunderstanding, both historical and practical, of how the world works.”

And the reason for this is clear. The Greens’ policies could only survive in a prosperous, free economy driven by market forces – the antithesis of Greens’ centralist political ideology. As a party which, historically at least, has had little influence in government, its policies were constructed in a vacuum, where moralistic ideals could be floated without a thought given to the result. Now that the Greens have power in the lower house and the Senate, suddenly their political ideals appear juvenile and gullible – the equivalent of the crusading teenager who wants to save the planet – and lacking any consideration for the issues that must be addressed in the real world.

I can understand McIntyre’s reluctance to get into the nitty gritty of the Greens and their motivations – but there are plenty of intended consequences of the Greens’ policies which are as dangerous and destructive as any that might be unintended.

Highly recommended – an essential read. Link to publisher’s page is here.

Filed Under: Climate

Labor's death spiral

9 August, 2011 by

No change

There is no respite for Labor. Julia Gillard has talked of everything except the carbon tax, and her popularity, and that of her government are still at record lows. As I have said before, people have simply switched off to Gillard and the government – no-one is taking the slightest bit of notice.

JULIA Gillard’s burst of policy outcomes in health, border protection and climate change has failed to lift her popularity, with the latest Newspoll showing no improvement for Labor in the past fortnight.

Despite a flurry of government policy activity in recent weeks, the Newspoll conducted exclusively for The Australian at the weekend found the Coalition ahead of Labor by 56 per cent to 44 per cent in two-party-preferred terms.

With the Coalition on a 47 per cent primary vote and Labor on 29 per cent, the results were identical to those of the previous Newspoll conducted from July 22-24.

Labor has been in the polling doldrums for months, with its attempts to bond with voters smashed by the Coalition’s campaign of opposition to its proposed carbon tax.

Read it here.

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