Tag Archives: CRU

Potsdam Institute – Professional Advocates

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Posted by JJ on March 17, 2010 – 8:16 am
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The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, a group composed of natural and social science researchers, announced a study that “shows” that a solar minimum will not slow global warming.  The study is an attempt at a pre-emptive strike.  The sun goes into a cooler period and bingo – they rush to add to the endless repetitions of predictions of doom.  It’s what they do, and why they exist – to advocate for global warming.

The entire study depends on the assumption that the IPCC climate models are comprehensive and correct in their predictions of twenty-first century climate change.  These models include only the possible causes they know about and are capable of modelling, with all of their weightings of climate forcing tuned to enable reasonable hind-casting, applied to a warming world.  When the models approximately predict the global temperature (they are very approximate, and then only while the earth is warming) the climate change scientists conclude that they have proved their estimate of the climate forcing due to man-made CO2, and that their forecasts of temperature rises to come in the twenty-first century must therefore be correct.  They call this modelling technique “optimal detection”.  That is the technique that Ptolemy used in his geocentric model of the universe, which made very accurate predictions of the motions of the moon, planets and stars.  It took more than a thousand years for later scientists to discover the truth,  That is understandable – the relative predictive accuracy of Ptolemy’s model left little reason to suppose that it might be wrong.  So until Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler, astronomers fully accepted the geocentric model.

Similarly, the Potsdam people take AGW and the IPCC-sponsored models as fact.  The very notion that the earth cools and warms in cycles, and that in inter-glacial periods like the present, there are mini-cycles of warm periods between little ice-ages, is dismissed as unscientific wishful thinking.  It is nothing of the kind.  It’s simple observation.  And within the last two thousand years, we have written history to draw upon.  Written history that documents the Roman Warming and the Medieval Warm Period.  The IPCC claim that the recent warming is unprecedented is false.  So are the models.

There has been a fifteen-year hiatus in the warming, against the model predictions.  Even Phil Jones of the CRU agrees that there has been no statistically significant warming since 1995.  And in spite of the present warmth, all indications are that the PDO is now turning negative, and that in five-to-ten years the AMO will also turn negative.  The earth is in for 20 – 30 years of cooling, while CO2 continues to rise, fed by the economic growth in China and India.  The IPCC models did not predict the flat temperature since 1995, and they do not predict the forthcoming cooling.

Greenhouse gases did not cause the twentieth-century warming, or the earlier MWP and still earlier Roman warming.  When cooling sets in, it will not be because greenhouse gases are reduced, or because we are saved by a quiescent sun.  It will be a result of the natural cycles.

Reference:

Discovery News Article    http://news.discovery.com/space/the-sun-cant-save-us-from-global-warming.html

Potsdam Press Release:   http://www.pik-potsdam.de/news/press-releases/weakening-sun-would-hardly-slow-global-warming

Institute of Physicists under Attack

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Posted by JJ on March 14, 2010 – 9:25 am
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The UK Institute of Physicists submitted a strongly worded thirteen-point memorandum to the UK Parliament commission of enquiry into the CRU.  Leading scientists promptly attacked the submission in emotive terms, without addressing any of the points in the memorandum.  The I.O.P. response to the attacks is strangely meek.  It looks suspiciously like they are backing off, and I wonder why.

Every one of the numbered thirteen points in the “Memorandum submitted by the Institute of Physics (CRU 39)” is valid. There is no need for them to publicly apologise or, cap in hand, to stress that the I.O.P. “has long had a “clear” position on global warming, namely that “there is no doubt that climate change is happening, that it is linked to man-made emissions of greenhouse gases, and that we should be taking action to address it now”.  That “no doubt” sounds more like a recital of a creed than a scientific position.

For goodness sake, the IOP made submissions about disclosure of climate data, the implications for the integrity of scientific research, and appropriate terms of reference for the UEA independnt review. Valid submissions. So why is it subjected to attacks unsupported by any specific rebuttals of any of its points of submission?  Here they are:

John Houghton: “I consider it not only inappropriate but highly irresponsible for a body like the IOP to appear to presume a judgment on what is clearly not a simple issue without having the full facts and without presumably knowing the full context,”

Stefan Rahmstorf: “I was taken aback when I first read it,” he says.  “The evidence is both misinformed and misguided.”

Arnold Wolfendale: ‘the evidence is “not worthy” of the Institute and ‘the submission “further muddies the waters regarding global warming”.’

These generalised and emotive attacks are totally inaccurate as criticisms of the IOP submissions, but ironically, would be accurate if applied to the IPCC reports.  But for some reason the IOP does not call on the critics to be specific about their problems with the submission.  Instead, it rolls over, apologises and and quietly surrenders.

That is truly sad. The forces supporting AGW are mighty indeed if a body like the Institute of Physics is compelled to recant like Galileo. Are we returning to the dark ages?

References:

I.O.P. Memorandum:  http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/memo/climatedata/uc3902.htm

WUWT Report: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/13/iop-fires-back-over-criticism-of-their-submission-to-parliament/

AGW Religion:  http://www.herkinderkin.com/2010/01/anthropogenic-global-warming-as-organised-religion/

Red Herrings in the Enquiry Fishbowl

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Posted by JJ on March 6, 2010 – 6:09 pm
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In the wake of “”Climategate”, a British House of Commons panel has held an enquiry into the CRU unit.  Right there before the eyes of the world, they heard what Dr Phil Jones had to say:

  • “I have obviously written some very awful e-mails.”
  • “I don’t think anything in those e-mails supports any view that I’m trying to, or CRU has been trying to, pervert the peer review process in any way.”
  • CRU’s practice, he said, was to release “gridded data” (raw information that had been processed for analysis).
  • CRU withheld raw data in part because “most scientists don’t want to deal with raw station data, they want to deal with the derived product.”

Jones is the man at the very centre of Climategate – the man whose emails caused the fuss.  The man who sent an email urging all other associated climate scientists to destroy their data.  The man who, in an email to McIntyre, asked why he should provide data, when McIntyre would try to find something wrong with it.  The man who withheld data from McIntyre on the grounds of confidentiality while at the same time supplying the requested data to a scientist who supports AGW.

After his refreshing honesty in the interview with the BBC’s environment analyst Roger Harrabin, I felt some sympathy for Dr Jones, and said so, in an earlier blog entry.  But Jones has now lost that sympathy.  His answers at the parliamentary enquiry show that he has reverted to obfuscation.  Destroying data perverts the peer review process because it prevents other scientists from testing scientific conclusions. – Jones knows that.  Withholding raw data when it is requested by another scientists cannot be justified on the grounds that most others ask for the derived product -  Jones knows that.  All scientists, when reviewing the work of other scientists, try to find something wrong with it – that’s the scientific method, and Jones knows that, too.

But Jones was not the only witness at the enquiry to apply spin.

UK chief scientific adviser John Beddington said: “I think the general issue that global warming is happening and that it is induced by human activities is also correct.  I think this is unchallenged.”

Julia Slingo, head of the Met Office, said: “We know that (climate change) is unequivocal and that as the IPCC report said, over 90 percent, it’s very likely due to human activities.”  She said that the uncertainty is in projections of future warming, not in the cause.  She at least is right about the uncertainty of the projections.

The cause also is uncertain.  That climate change is caused by human activities is certainly challenged by scientists – by Lindzen, Watts, McIntyre, Woon, and others.  The data gathered so far do not show with any degree of certainty that human activities cause global warming, or that the warming is catastrophic.  We do not know that human activities cause global warming – that is no more than theory.

The parliamentary enquiry and more importantly, Joe Public the voter represented by parliament, deserve rather more than spin and red herrings.  Science itself demands more than that.

References:

NY Times Article on UK Enquiry: http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2010/03/02/02climatewire-climategate-scientist-admits-awful-e-mails-b-66224.html?pagewanted=1

BBC Interview with Phil Jones: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511670.stm