Category Archives: Science & Politics

The world will have to spend an extra $500 billion to cut carbon emissions for each year it delays implementing a major assault on global warming, the International Energy Agency said on Tuesday.

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Given our current delay in dealing with the climate change issue, I was reminded of this interesting article.  Should those who are obfuscating on climate change be made to pick up the tab?

(Reuters) – Tue Nov 10, 2009 6:18am EST

At United Nations climate talks in Barcelona last week negotiators from developed countries said the world would need an extra six to 12 months to agree a legally binding, global deal to cut carbon emissions beyond a planned December deadline.

The IEA, energy adviser to 28 industrialized countries, said the world must act urgently to put greenhouse gases on a track to limit global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius.

Every year’s delay beyond 2010 would add another $500 billion to the extra investment of $10,500 billion needed from 2010-2030 to curb carbon emissions, for example to improve energy efficiency and boost low-carbon renewable energy.

“Much more needs to be done to get anywhere near an emissions path consistent with … limiting the rise in global temperature to 2 degrees,” said the IEA’s 2009 World Energy Outlook. “Countries attending the U.N. climate conference must not lose sight of this.”

U.N. talks meant to agree a deal in Copenhagen in December to extend or replace the existing Kyoto Protocol have struggled to overcome a rich-poor rift on how to split the cost of curbing carbon emissions, for example from burning fossil fuels.

Developed countries accept that they have to take the burden of cutting carbon emissions, but want developing nations to accept binding actions too under a new treaty.

Poor countries want financial help to implement carbon emissions cuts and prepare for unavoidable global warming, including droughts, floods and rising seas.

The IEA report estimated that the world needed to invest an extra $197 billion annually by 2020 to make the necessary emissions cuts in developing countries, compared with a global total of $430 billion by then.

“The Copenhagen conference will provide important pointers to the kind of energy future that awaits us,” it said.

To continue present trends of energy demand and burning of fossil fuels “would lead almost certainly to massive climatic change and irreparable damage to the planet,” it said.

To implement swinging carbon cuts, on the other hand, would require a huge shift in the world’s energy system.

That would raise, for example, the share of non-fossil fuels to 32 percent of total primary energy in 2030, from 19 percent in 2007. The share of the internal combustion engine in new car sales would fall to 40 percent by 2030 from more than 90 percent under current trends.

Where’s the Apology From the Right for Lying About ‘Climategate’?

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The year is 1954, and the “science” that has been exposed as a “sham” by conservatives is the link between smoking and lung cancer. Welcome to Tobaccogate, as Fox News would call it. The conservatives are championing professor Clarence Cook Little, who says he has discovered insurmountable flaws in the use of statistics and clinical data by “anti-tobacco” (and quasi-commie) scientists. The press reports the “controversy,” usually without mentioning that Cook Little is being paid by the tobacco industry. A relieved nation lights up–and so, over the next few decades, millions of them die.

Sounds familiar?

It is happening again. The tide of global warming denial is now rising as fast as global sea levels–and with as much credibility as Cook Little. Look at the deniers’ greatest moment, Climategate, hailed by them as “the final nail in the coffin” of “the theory of global warming.” A patient study by the British House of Commons has pored over every e-mail from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia and interviewed everyone involved. Its findings? The “evidence patently fails to support” the idea of a fraud; the scientists have “no case to answer”; and all their findings “have been repeated and the conclusions have been verified” by other scientists. That’s British for “it was a crock.”

Head over to The Examiner to read the rest of the article. It’s hard not to ridicule the integrity of Monckton (who is not only a celebrity denier, but also claims that he can cure HIV).

Second CRU enquiry clears researchers of any wrong-doing

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Link to the Oxborough report here. The highlights are surprisingly honest:

We saw no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit and had it been there we believe that it is likely that we would have detected it. Rather we found a small group of dedicated if slightly disorganised researchers who were ill-prepared for being the focus of public attention. As with many small research groups their internal procedures were rather informal.

Also:

We cannot help remarking that it is very surprising that research in an area that depends so heavily on statistical methods has not been carried out in close collaboration with professional statisticians.

The final word:

We saw no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit and had it been there we believe that it is likely that we would have detected it.

So remind me again: where is the report as to who orchestrated this hack in the first place?

Tobacco and climate change: no difference.

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Many scientists are perplexed why we have lost the so-called ‘media war on science’ given that the evidence of climate change and its human origin is so extensive and considered unambiguous within the best scientific circles. Have a listen to this fascinating session at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (the peak US scientific association which also produces science magazine):

[audio:https://climateshifts.org/media/scienceshow.mp3]

The four speakers recorded by Robyn Williams at the ABC Science Show give fascinating perspective on why this has happened despite the fact that the science behind climate change is so solid.  Four major points emerge from their analysis:

1. Climate change is diffusing away from the scientific community and into general society.

“Conservative think-tanks, obviously with corporate support that we’ll hear about, have greatly amplified the work of contrarian scientists. They’ve recently been joined by conservative media, Limbaugh, Fox, conservative politicians, Inhofe, most Republicans these days with the exception of Lindsey Graham, and especially the blogosphere in waging an all-out war in climate change science. We can add undermining climate change policy to the policy impacts that we started out with of conservative think-tanks” (Riley Dunlap).

2. Scientists need to be more sceptical about those new studies coming out saying ‘well, it’s not so bad’.

“For the mass media we’re in time for a new era of coverage. If you decide to cover the ideological think-tanks at all after the American Enterprise Institute has already announced publicly that they’ll pay $10,000 for any scientist who will write something that says ‘hey, it isn’t so bad, this is why I’m sceptical’, if you want to cover them at all, what is worth covering is the tactics that these right-wing think-tanks are using. If you really want to report the conflict like a good journalist: ‘On the one hand this, on the other hand that’, the true other side, the scientifically credible other side on global warming issues is not that it’s not happening but that either it’s as bad as the IPCC says or else it’s worse.” (William Freudenburg)

3. There is a considerable gap between scientific knowledge and public perception.

I think we know that one reason for sure is that the balanced framework that so many journalists rely on unduly weighs outlier views. So we’ve talked about that a lot already, but it seems to me there is an important point for this audience which is how scientists think about the problem. Actually most scientists, it seems to me, don’t spend most of their time really worrying about the balance framework in the media, what they worry about more, or what they invoke if you ask them why the public are confused, is what we historians and sociologists would call the deficit model. That is to say, we tend to assume that the public are confused because they have a deficit of scientific knowledge, education and cognitive skills. That is to say that they’re scientifically illiterate.

So if the problem is a deficit, then the remedy for it is a surfeit. (Naomi Oreskes)

4. There’s no such thing as a good scientist who isn’t a sceptic.

I changed my opinion in 1970 from cooling to warming, published it first, it’s one of my proudest moments in science because we found, as the evidence accumulated, that there were a number of reasons, it’s all explained in chapter one of “Science as a Contact Sport”, and I still have to hear things from those famous climate professors, the ones that publish all the papers in the referee journals, professors Limbaugh and Will, you know, about how… ‘Oh Schneider, he’s just an environmentalist for all temperatures’, it’s a great line! (Stephen Schneider)

‘Climategate’ enquiry clears CRU scientists

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The results are out, and the recent British Parliamentary enquiry into the CRU email leak found no evidence

The Commons Science and Technology Committee criticised UEA authorities for failing to respond to requests for data from climate change sceptics.

But it found no evidence Professor Phil Jones, whose e-mails were hacked and published online, had manipulated data.

It said his reputation, and that of his climate research unit, remained intact.

Further:

The committee said much of the data that critics claimed Prof Jones had hidden, was in fact already publicly available.

But they said Prof Jones had aroused understandable suspicion by blocking requests for data.

The MPs’ report acknowledged that Prof Jones “must have found it frustrating to handle requests for data that he knew – or perceived – were motivated by a desire to seek to undermine his work”. (More from BBC News)

Good news. But… what’s the bet we haven’t heard the last of this one?

To quote a commentor from Reddit:

“How could an official inquiry – which is essentially no more than a group of educated people carefully analysing the facts of the case – trump an angry mob whose knowledge of the issue comes from newspaper headlines?”

Debunking the climate change myths of Dr Andrew Burns

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So quite often we get a torrent of completely pointless comments on Climate Shifts (e.g. “Don’t bother with the next scare of “Oceans going acidic, shock – horror” that one is dead in the water…. Get real, the AGW scare is gone forever. Climategate, glaciergate, amazongate, yawn, it goes it just goes on and on……” and “The public will determine policy based on preception so kiss AGW good bye baby! The skeptics have won. It’s over, go home.”). Other times, we get the usual “THE EARTH IS COOLING SO CLIMATE CHANGE IS ALL A LIE” approach. Here’s a comment we got this morning from Andrew Burns (unsurprisingly from this story) which seems to fit the usual template:

There’s thousands more scientists who have woken up to the global warming scam … and even more who look at the facts:

1. Warming since the Little Ice Age
2. A DECREASE in the rate of warming after 1945, when man’s CO2 output increased 1200%.
3. No warming in the past 15 years
4. No evidence that man’s CO2 has contributed to warming
5. Lots of faked temperature data (eg Darwin)
6. Oceans cooling for the past 5 years.
7. Sea levels rising for the past 6000 years with less increase in recent years.

Should we post comments like these? It’s pretty clear from above that it’s a deliberate campaign of disinformation. Instead, let’s dismantle this meme piece by piece (thanks in large part to Skeptical Science):

There’s thousands more scientists who have woken up to the global warming scam … and even more who look at the facts:

More often than not, these comments always appeal to the “facts” with zero evidence. So exactly who are these scientists? What is the scam they’ve woken up to? See these links for discussion on “Is there a scientific consensus on global warming?” and “Do 500 scientists refute the consensus?“. Here’s a challenge for you Dr Burns: name some of these thousands of scientists?

1. Warming since the Little Ice Age

Here’s one I never understood. Why do skeptics assume that all warming is anthropogenic? Anyhow, here’s what the science says:

“The main driver of the warming from the Little Ice Age to 1940 was the warming sun with a small contribution from volcanic activity. However, solar activity leveled off after 1940 and the net influence from sun and volcano since 1940 has been slight cooling. Greenhouse gases have been the main contributor of warming since 1970.” (Read more)

2. A DECREASE in the rate of warming after 1945, when man’s CO2 output increased 1200%.

Where does this figure of 1200% come from? Why is 1945 significant? Who knows? Either way, this seems to be a new spin on the same recycled argument. Here’s what the science says:

Early 20th century warming was in large part due to rising solar activity and relatively quiet volcanic activity. However, both factors have played little to no part in the warming since 1975. Solar activity has been steady since the 50’s. Volcanoes have been relatively frequent and if anything, have exerted a cooling effect. (Read more)

3. No warming in the past 15 years

The ‘it hasn’t warmed since 1998’ meme has been recycled and debunked more times than I can count:

The planet has continued to accumulate heat since 1998 – global warming is still happening. Nevertheless, surface temperatures show much internal variability due to heat exchange between the ocean and atmosphere. 1998 was an unusually hot year due to a strong El Nino. (Read more)

Empirical measurements of the Earth’s heat content show the planet is still accumulating heat and global warming is still happening. Surface temperatures can show short term cooling when heat is exchanged between the atmosphere and the ocean, which has a much greater heat capacity than the air.
(Read more)

Globally-averaged annual mean temperature anomalies in degrees Celsius, together with 11-year unweighted moving averages (solid lines). Blue circles from the Hadley Centre (British). Red diamonds from NASA GISS. Green squares from NOAA NCDC. NASA GISS and NOAA NCDC are offset in vertical direction by increments of 0.5°C for visual clarity.

4. No evidence that man’s CO2 has contributed to warming

On the contrary, there’s plenty of evidence that CO2 is contributing to warming:

Direct observations find that CO2 is rising sharply due to human activity. Satellite and surface measurements find less energy is escaping to space at CO2 absorption wavelengths. Ocean and surface temperature measurements find the planet continues to accumulate heat. This gives a line of empirical evidence that human CO2 emissions are causing global warming. (Read more)

5. Lots of faked temperature data (eg Darwin)

I don’t know where to start here. Darwin ‘faked’ temperature data?

6. Oceans cooling for the past 5 years.

Another debunked meme:

Early estimates of ocean heat from the Argo showed a cooling bias due to pressure sensor issues. Recent estimates of ocean heat that take this bias into account show continued warming of the upper ocean. This is confirmed by independent estimates of ocean heat as well as more comprehensive measurements of ocean heat down to 2000 metres deep. (Read more)

7. Sea levels rising for the past 6000 years with less increase in recent years

What was the rate of sea level rise for the past 6000 years? Without this we can only guess what was meant, but either way, the science is clear:

Sea levels are measured by a variety of methods that show close agreement – sediment cores, tidal gauges, satellite measurements. What they find is sea level rise has been steadily accelerating over the past century.(Read more).

Global mean sea level from 1870 to 2006 with one standard deviation error estimates

Thanks to Dr Andrew Burns for allowing us to correct his misunderstandings! Thanks too for Skeptical Science, check out their new iPhone app:

Clive Hamilton and the Global Change Institute: It’s all in your head

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Dr Linda Tonk and I attended a seminar on Wednesday night- actually the inaugural seminar of the “Insight Seminar Series” organized by the UQ Global Change Institute– given by Clive Hamilton about his new book, Requiem for a Species. I found myself nodding and sometimes laughing at his description of the exact emotions that I had felt over the last few years in dealing with climate change. I was so happy to finally understand the natural human response to “death”. Of course, it starts with denial. I went through this stage as an undergraduate student whilst writing critical essays which looked at both sides of the argument. As an amateur scientist with little climate change knowledge, it was easy to be swayed after reading a handful of peer-reviewed articles for my assignments and I always liked to argue for the sake of arguing (just ask my dad).

Towards the end of my undergraduate degree I did start to see the bigger picture and I had read quite a few more papers at this stage and so I moved to the next stage, Maladaption. Maladaption is a dangerous place to be and it is probably where most of the population sits at the moment. Depression leads to the inability to do anything so I had to pull myself out of that one. Blameshifting also gets you nowhere. Even if China is building a coal power plant every week, we can’t pretend we don’t play a part when we sell them the coal. Australians can lead by example. Up until last night, I was using a part of this Maladaption phase where I would just change the subject whenever climate change was brought up. I cannot answer every question on climate change but ask me specifically about ocean acidification and corals and I can talk all day. So now I am going to move to the final phase where you control your emotions and act. I am no longer going to change the subject in these conversations (but I’ll probably still steer the conversation to my area of expertise).

The other great part of the seminar was the description of the driving force behind the climate scientists (science) and the skeptics (power, money and not the least politics). Even if you can’t understand all the climate science enough to critically dissect the arguments, it makes it easier to pick a side if you understand their motives. Climate scientists are simply presenting their work and understanding of the forces of nature. Climate skeptics, on the other hand, are ultimately annoyed that humankind cannot conquer nature and that unrestrained capitalism does not lead to sustainable living. Linda also liked this part of the seminar:

“My main concern is the widening divergence between the actual climate science and the way it is perceived by the general public. Clive Hamilton’s lecture reminded me about this topic.

As a scientist, I also get confused about all the information and misinformation that exists on climate science. All I want is to know the truth. However, on more than one occasion, my efforts to find simple non -biased answers to my questions on the web has led me straight into the hands of climate denialists propaganda. Not knowing what I’d stumbled upon I feel confident to claim I read these documents with an open mind and I am not ashamed to admit they even had me going in the wrong direction for a few sentences. Because they are good! And this is what scares me the most. It’s all about taking advantage of situations, twisting words and even blatantly lying, but it looks very professionally done!

Of course the general public is confused. On the one hand we have the climate scientists, who by nature just aren’t the best in explaining complicated things and more importantly not prepared for the rules of the game turning dirty. On the other hand there is a seemingly well-organized and professional movement who are obviously very willing to play dirty.

Now we have to rely on media to provide us with neutral information. But how can we when it all just seems to shift towards the opinions of the people with the money and the power. This is the driving force behind climate skeptics and denialists and it IS very powerful. So during last night’s seminar I was reminded by all this and once again confronted with the difficulties of getting the truth out there for the public to understand and establish a well-informed opinion. The one question I was left wondering is who will to step up to the plate and provide the missing link.

My little moment of hope sprung from the realization that by providing clarity on the psychological issues of dealing with climate change and moreover providing insight in the driving forces behind both sides (climate science and denialists) we are a step closer to uncovering true motives and therefore a step closer to understanding the real climate science.  Now all that’s left is to find papers and people that are willing to inform the public.”

Afterwards there was a great Q & A section. My favourite part from this section was discussion about the Emissions Trading Scheme and specifically the buying of carbon credits overseas (For example, by saving a rainforest in Papua New Guinea). Hamilton’s response was that this scheme has “loopholes so big that you could drive a hummer through it.” However, when looking to alternatives we need to consider the time and lobbying that will occur before a new idea reaches parliament.

There were so many important concepts brought up at this seminar. It was a great free, public event and I recommend that people attend the future seminars in this series. There is only one thing left to do now: act!

Atrazine in Australian waters

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Atrazine is in the news again (e.g. ABC 7.30 Report Thursday 25th March, 60 Minutes, 21st March) and is being found in more and more water bodies in Australia, and notably Queensland in recent times.  Here is where it has been found so far:

  1. Rainwater at a few ng/l (unpublished data from Atherton, Qld), in streams in almost all of eastern Queensland at concentrations of between one and 50 ug/l (Lewis et al 2009; Packett et al 2009),
  2. Great Barrier Reef lagoon waters as far offshore as we have looked (outer reef waters) at ng/l concentrations (passive sampler work, Shaw et al 2010)
  3. Wet season discharge conditions in the lagoon at ug/l concentrations (Lewis et al 2009),
  4. Groundwater of the lower Burdekin at a few ug/l (as far back as 1976 (Brodie et al 1984) and
  5. Tap water in Rockhampton, Mackay, Ayr, Home Hill, Innisfail at 1 ug/l (unpublished and suppressed data)
  6. Noosa River associated with the infamous ‘two headed fish’, fish kills and human health problems (along with other pesticides) (Matt Landos’s work),
  7. Victorian tap water and in streams in Tasmania.

You might say this isn’t ‘everywhere’ but that’s only because we haven’t looked ‘everywhere’. Everywhere we have looked we have found it.

All I can say is that obviously current management (i.e. APVMA federally) is not working. Given this failure of management the only solution left is to ban atrazine. This is unfortunate for farmers as atrazine is a valuable product and possibly could be kept in use if there was a competent management regime. The part on the 7.30 Report story where APVMA notes that atrazine use was banned along watercourses says it all. This will have no effect in losses from sugar application where atrazine leaks from sugarcane via drainage (sugarcane is always drained due to dislike of wet roots) and is not used in watercourses anyhow!

This is the telling point against APVMA as their review (2008) does nothing whatsoever to reduce loss of atrazine from sugarcane crops. So a review that took 13 years produced no actions which had any effect on losses from sugarcane (and I suspect other crops as well), yet the problems of loss from sugarcane were well known by then and published in the open scientific literature.

Meanwhile APVMA continues to ignore the evidence and cannot provide a satisfactory management regime for these pesticides to keep them out of our waterways. Currently the role and scope for action of APVMA is being reviewed but it unlikely any major changes to make APVMA more effective will occur.

John McLean still manipulating data

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Still waiting for John McLean and Bob Carter to comment on the Foster et al response published in JGR outlining exactly how they manipulated their dataset to give a false conclusion. According to McLean’s website, although the authors were well aware of the Foster response before it was published:

The informal nature of the Foster et al critique makes it inappropriate for me to respond in detail.

Right. Apparently the long delay between the original McLean et al publication and the Foster et al critique was in part due to the fact that the McClean et al were invited to respond to the critique prior to it being published in JGR, but ultimately declined.

So, while we wait for a formal response, here’s another lie from McLean’s own homepage: sea surface temperatures (SST’s) along the Great Barrier Reef are not increasing. In recent times, climate scientists have been blasted for using ultra-secret ‘tricks‘ to manipulate their data. It seems that McLean has gone one up on this in his analysis of SST’s, using statistical averaging to hide the any possible trends:

The data is in form of values for grid cells of 1 degree latitude by 1 degree longitude.  From it I extracted the data applying to the GBR Marine Park and calculated the average across the park for each month.

The GBR covers over 200,000km2, from 11’S to 24’S. By averaging surface temperatures across the entire region, McLean effectively destroys any warming trend, and presents the data as an average, with no indication of error or confidence intervals. In fact, here’s how spatially variable SST across the entire GBR Marine Park really can be (from Lough 1994):

Here it is again, this time using SST’s over the past 105 yrs (De’ath et al 2009):

Considering the seemingly obvious with latitudinal temperature gradients, why did McLean ignore spatial variability in SST’s and reach the conclusion that sea surface temperature isn’t increasing on the GBR?

These graphs make it abundantly clear that the sea surface temperature along Australia’s Great Barrier Reef are not increasing at an alarming rate. The people who say otherwise have no evidence whatsoever to support their claims. These sea temperatures might rise in future but the historical evidence suggests that this will most likely be due to the natural forces of El Nino events.

In case you missed it, here it is again: “The people who say otherwise have no evidence whatsoever to support their claims“. Really? Instead of relying on website science*, let’s go to the published literature. Using mean annual sea surface temperature (SST) records were obtained from the HadISST1 for 1° grid cells, between 1900 to 2006, De’ath et al (2009) found clear temporal trends across 2° latitudinal bands:

We’ve tried replicating the results from McLean’s website results, but the methodology is (deliberately?) vague. Considering John McLean is an employee of “Applied Science Consultants” in Victoria, Australia, we can’t bombard him with FOI requests to show us his methods and data, so it seems only fair to ask McLean to be a little more transparent in his analysis. Otherwise, the conclusion that “.. people who say otherwise have no evidence whatsoever to support their claims” seems particularly disingenuous. Should we expect a retraction on McLean’s behalf? As David Horton pointed out the other day: “This was never a scientific debate, always an ideological one, or, rather, it was always science versus ideology.”

Climate scientist busted for fudging data

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Nope, it isn’t Phil Jones or Michael Mann. It is Bob Carter, a co-author on McLean et al. 2009 “Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature”.

Last year, Bob claimed “We have shown that internal global climate-system variability accounts for at least 80% of the observed global climate variation over the past half-century.”

Well a new paper (Foster et al. 2010) debunks these claims and shows the underlying analysis of McLean et al. 2009 to be totally erroneous. Oops.

See John Cooks technical overview here, but put simply, the authors transformed their data in a way that resulted in an erroneous conclusion. Their inappropriate treatment of their data greatly inflated the temporal relationship between ENSO (a natural cyclic phenomena) and warming of the lower atmosphere.

Basically, Bob and his mates used a few statistical tricks to smooth away the climate trend (have a look at Figure 3 and 4 in Foster and co. paper for how this works).

The Foster et al (2010) abstract states:  McLean et al. [2009] claim that the El Ni˜no/Southern Oscillation (ENSO), as represented by the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI), accounts for as much as 72% of the global tropospheric temperature anomaly (GTTA) and an even higher 81% of this anomaly in the tropics. They conclude that the SOI is a “dominant and consistent influence on mean global temperatures,” “and perhaps recent trends in global temperatures”. However, their analysis is incorrect in a number of ways, and greatly overstates the influence of ENSO on the climate system. This comment first briefly reviews what is understood about the influence of ENSO on global temperatures, then goes on to show that the analysis of MFC09 severely overestimates the correlation between temperature anomalies and the SOI by inflating the power in the 2–6 year time window while filtering out variability on longer and shorter time scales. It is only because of this faulty analysis that they are able to claim such extremely high correlations. The suggestion in their conclusions that ENSO may be a major contributor to recent trends in global temperature is not supported by their analysis or any physical theory presented in that paper, especially as the analysis method itself eliminates the influence of trends on the purported correlations.

Bob is a well-known skeptic who also happens to be a university PhD scientist at James Cook University in Townsville Australia, also home of our friend Peter Ridd.

His rightwing affiliations are outlined by sourcewatch here:

He is a member of the right-wing think tank the Institute of Public Affairs [8], and a founding member of the Australian Environment Foundation, a front group set up by the Institute of Public Affairs.

He has made countless outlandish and false claims about climate change, climate change science and the IPCC over the years, including these gems:

“atmospheric CO2 is not a primary forcing agent for temperature change”

“any cumulative human signal is so far undetectable at a global level and, if present, is buried deeply in the noise of natural variation”

If you have the time, you can peruse his impressive catalogue of denialist talks and essays here (including his appearances on the Glenn Beck show, talks at the Heartland Institute, you get the picture).

He recently penned a screed against James Hansen in which Bob related Hansen to soviet Lamarckian biologist Trofim Lysenko. (what?!) Carter argues for an investigation of climate science and scientists. Indeed. Since he is the first prominent climate scientists to be caught manipulating data to achieve a pre-determmined outcome, is it not obvious where the investigation should begin? Secondly, he also argues that the (mostly bogus and totally overblown) problems in some of the IPCC reports should result in a policy shift. Well the logic makes sense: science should in part drive the policy.  And when found to be incorrect, the policy should adapt. The same must certainly be true then of Bob’s policy prescriptions that he based on the results of his now debunked study. As Michael Tobis write, Carter made some wild policy arguments based on the McLean et al 2009 paper:

Bob Carter, one of four scientists who has recently questioned the justification for the proposed Australian emissions trading scheme, says that this paper has significant consequences for public climate policy.

“The close relationship between ENSO and global temperature, as described in the paper, leaves little room for any warming driven by human carbon dioxide emissions. The available data indicate that future global temperatures will continue to change primarily in response to ENSO cycling, volcanic activity and solar changes.”

“Our paper confirms what many scientists already know: which is that no scientific justification exists for emissions regulation, and that, irrespective of the severity of the cuts proposed, ETS (emission trading scheme) will exert no measurable effect on future climate.”

MT links to the Climate Depot story about the paper from July 2009 which includes the press release, which in turn includes these statements:

Nature not man responsible for recent global warming

Three Australasian researchers have shown that natural forces are the dominant influence on climate, in a study just published in the highly-regarded Journal of Geophysical Research. According to this study little or none of the late 20th century global warming and cooling can be attributed to human activity.

“The surge in global temperatures since 1977 can be attributed to a 1976 climate shift in the Pacific Ocean that made warming El Niño conditions more likely than they were over the previous 30 years and cooling La Niña conditions less likely” says corresponding author de Freitas.

“We have shown that internal global climate-system variability accounts for at least 80% of the observed global climate variation over the past half-century. It may even be more if the period of influence of major volcanoes can be more clearly identified and the corresponding data excluded from the analysis.”

Bob Carter, one of four scientists who has recently questioned the justification for the proposed Australian emissions trading scheme, says that this paper has significant consequences for public climate policy.

“The close relationship between ENSO and global temperature, as described in the paper, leaves little room for any warming driven by human carbon dioxide emissions. The available data indicate that future global temperatures will continue to change primarily in response to ENSO cycling, volcanic activity and solar changes.”

“Our paper confirms what many scientists already know: which is that no scientific justification exists for emissions regulation, and that, irrespective of the severity of the cuts proposed, ETS (emission trading scheme) will exert no measurable effect on future climate.”

Also see MTs analysis and related coverage (that predates the new Foster et al paper) here and the RealClimate take here (an atrocious paper…).  Tamino, not surprisingly, picked up on this error a day after the paper was published. (so why isn’t he an author on Foster et al. 2010 – or is he?)

the real reason they note such strong correlation is that their analysis method removes all temperature variation which is due to trend — which of course makes it impossible for their analysis to indicate anything whatever about the trend.

—

It’s certainly not true that their analysis shows “natural climate forcing associated with ENSO is a major contributor to variability and perhaps recent trends in global temperature.” It shows no such thing; their analysis removes all the effect of trends.

—

Bob Carter’s statement in particular, that “The close relationship between ENSO and global temperature, as described in the paper, leaves little room for any warming driven by human carbon dioxide emissions,” shows how little he understand the analysis he himself participated in. Of course, he wouldn’t be the first to fail to understand the impact of using estimated derivatives on correlation analysis.

read the rest here (warning, equations and graphs lay ahead)

The five things we want to know are:

1) Will McLean et al. retract the paper (and will Bob Carter admit fault or even discuss the errors publicly)?

2) Will the denial0sphere and the MSM give this story (a climate change scandal!) the same coverage it has recently showered on various IPCC hiccups?

3) Will there be an investigation as Bob Carter himself and so many other skeptics have insisted on over and over again, usually in response to bogus and unsubstantiated allegations.

4) Will Bob now reverse his policy positions and urge (vocally) politicians that may have been swayed by his bogus science to do the same?  After all Bob, shouldn’t the science drive the policy?

5) Will The Australian cover this pending scandal!  A scientist behaving badly!

In the CimateDepot post titled “Peer-Reviewed Study Rocks Climate Debate! ‘Nature not man responsible for recent global warming…little or none of late 20th century warming and cooling can be attributed to humans” Mark Morano (yes that Mark Morano, whom Randy Olsen describes as “arguably the loudest mouth in the climate skeptic movement with his increasingly popular website, www.climatedepot.com. He is a former field correspondent for Rush Limbaugh, helped to promote the Kerry Swift Boat Veterans story, and former spokesman for Senator James Inhofe“) makes the argument below:

Those who claim correlation using derivatives (differences) removes a linear trend miss the point. McLean et al use this method to construct Figures 5 and 6. It should be noted that detrended data was used purely to establish the time lag between the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) and MGT in Figures 5 and 6. This time lag was then used in Figure 7 to show that close correlation between trends in temperature and changes in the Southern Oscillation Index seven months previously.
Figure 7 presents the data in its original form; namely, data that is not detrended, but with the time shift in SOI obtained from the detrended data. If an underlying trend existed, it would have shown up in Figure 7. One would see the temperature line rising away from the SOI line if, for example, rising atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations had a significant influence. There is little or no sign of this.

Figure 4: Seven-month shifted SOI with (a) weather balloon RATPAC-A temperature data 1958–1979 and satellite UAH temperature data (b) 1980–1995. Dark line indicates SOI and light line indicates lower tropospheric temperature. Periods of volcanic activity are indicated.

Seem reasonable?  John Cook explains why it isn’t;

Another interesting feature of McLean et al 2009 is a plot of unfiltered temperature data (GTTA) against the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) to illustrate the quality of the match between them. However the temperature signal is a splice of weather balloon data (RATPAC-A) to the end of 1979 followed by satellite data (UAH TLT) since 1980. RATPAC-A data show a pronounced warming trend from 1960 to 2008 with the temperature line rising away from the SOI line. This warming trend is obscured by substituting the weather balloon data with satellite data after 1980. It is especially misleading because the mean values of RATPAC-A and UAH TLT data during their period of overlap differ by nearly 0.2 K. Splicing them together introduces an artificial 0.2-degree temperature drop at the boundary between the two. Unfortunately, the splicing is obscured by the fact that the graph is split into different panels precisely at the splicing boundary.

A simple mistake?  A mere coincidence?

This splicing + graph splitting technique is an effective way to “hide the incline” of the warming trend.

Precisely. Time for a climate audit?

To be clear, there is no way to discern the intentions of the authors from the published manuscript.  This could all be a series of mistakes that just happened to produce a surprising result that aligned with the ideology of the authors.  The only way to possibly determine why the authors chose the method of data transformation they did, stitched together disparate data, then effectively hid that data-melding in their figures is to ask them and/or to obtain their lab notes and correspondence about the paper. This would be invasive, but is precisely the type of scrutiny the Bob Carter’s of the world continually demand.

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References

McLean, J. D., C. R. de Freitas, and R. M. Carter (2009), Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature, Journal of Geophysical Research, 114, D14104, doi:10.1029/2008JD011637.

Foster, G., J. D. Annan, P. D. Jones, M. E. Mann, J. Renwick, J. Salinger, G. A. Schmidt, K. E. Trenberth. Comment on “Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature by J. D. McLean, C. R. de Freitas, and R. M. Carter. In Press at Journal of Geophysical Research (download the PDF preprint here)