Friday, June 27, 2008

OISM meets Mike Powell. OISM loses

In the comments about the Robinson gang, Mike Powell gave good linkage :

One of my local denialists [Ed: Link Rot] was waving this Robinson et al. paper around and loudly proclaiming it to be ironclad proof that global warming is a hoax. I spent a couple weekends pulling up the primary literature that Robinson et al. refers to and then picking their paper apart paragraph by paragraph. I made it through about the first 4 pages before I just couldn't take it any more. If anyone's interested, my point-by-point "analysis" is here:

UPDATE: Mike's analysis has moved to an honored place at Rabett Run, The Tri-City Herald links have rotted.

These are the most complete set of comments about this denialist fig leaf that Eli has seen. To give you a taste, and perhaps some motivation let me quote a part of his analysis of Page 1

1. first page, 2nd paragraph. “When we reviewed this subject in 1998 (1, 2), existing satellite records were short and were centered on a period of changing intermediate temperature trends.” It’s not entirely clear what they mean by “changing intermediate temperature trends, but it’s worth noting that their previous paper devotes a considerable amount of attention to the old Spencer and Christy MSU data that did not show a warming trend (e.g., Figures 6 through 8 in that paper). Now that some errors in the Spencer/Christy analysis have been fixed, the satellite data *does* show warming. It appears as though the Robinson et al. (2007) appeal to “changing intermediate temperature trends" is an attempt to avoid direct mention of the fact that one of the principal arguments they made in 1998 has since proved to be false. . . . . .

4. first page, 5th paragraph and Figure 3. There are several problems with this graph. Why is only the Arctic temperature plotted along with total solar irradiance (TSI)? Shouldn’t the global temperature be used instead? And on what basis is the TSI scale adjusted to create the apparent match between Arctic temperatures and TSI? It appears as though the scales were adjusted “by eye” and there is not a physical basis for selection of the axis scales. . .

Also, again we have “hydrocarbon use” plotted rather than cumulative carbon emissions. Finally, note that TSI data after the year 2000 are not included. Perhaps this is because the TSI went down while Arctic temperatures continued to increase. Basically there’s been no secular change in TSI since 1980, but global temperatures have risen significantly.

Also, the source of the TSI data is apparently one of the authors (Soon) rather than one of the more widely accepted TSI reconstructions. See Figure 2.17 in the IPCC WG1, which provides the TSI reconstructions of Lean (2000) and Wang et al. (2005). These more accepted reconstructions show considerably less 20th century variation than does Soon’s reconstruction.

Young bunnies need this to protect themselves against Robinsons begging for signatures on the street corner. Of course, Mike has challenged us to read past page 4. . . . .

13 comments:

Dano said...

Maybe we can make this the standard referent for the OISM paper.

In this light, perhaps you should close comments or something to prevent comment spam.

Best,

D

Marion Delgado said...

As I said before, this is typical Warmer alarmist Al Gore Cult socialism.

Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre got the Nobel Peace Prize for Medicine in Physics in 2006 for proving that there is no such thing as either climate data or temperature.

This blog reminds me of an urban heat island - it generates a lot of hot air and obscures the real data!

EliRabett said...

Dano, on principle, I would like to keep comments open (and sharp), but I would also like to add a bit to what Mike said

Anonymous said...

"Robinsons begging for signatures on the street corner"

What, they need to beg? I thought, if they need a signature, they can just make one up. They're probably in the process of adding my "signature" to some "petition" already...

-- bi, International Journal of Inactivism

EliRabett said...

Bi, Art sends the boys out to shake the cup for silliness

Anonymous said...

Eli,

I'm pleased you find my Robinson et al. dissection useful. I intended to go through the entire paper, but once I had gone through the first few pages it was hard to justify continuing. How many errors must there be in a paper before it can be declared to be junk? I figured I (and others) had found enough of them. Still, for the sake of completeness, it'd be nice to get a full, paragraph-by-paragraph rebuttal together. Maybe I'll start plinking away at it again later this summer...

Magnus said...

Well not exactly spot on the subject but I have a question about Joyce E. Penner who recently some how made a science journalist on the Swedish Radio believe that the IPCC report Chapter 3 and 9 say that increased solar irradiance not greenhouse gases has contributed to most of the energy to the climate system since 1990. I have looked thru the chapters and briefly though her publications but really can’t find support for there claims. Any one know what they are on about? (changes in low cloud cover?)

(and that the recent “dip” in temperature could be due to low sun activity or changes in clouds)

Hmm... I know: http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm

(apparently she also suggested that the sensitivity probably could be less then 1,5)

Best Regards

Anonymous said...

Magnus, I think Gavin's answer when you asked at RC was appropriate -- you can't ask the unidentified voice you heard say that on some radio program. Why not ask the researcher directly? It sure sounds like a misattribution somewhere.

Anonymous said...

Magnus reached the radio journalist by email, more:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/06/more-pr-related-confusion/#comment-91170

Anonymous said...

The "no secular change in TSI since 1980" link seems dead.
:wq

Anonymous said...

> TSI
Try here:
http://www.pmodwrc.ch/pmod.php?topic=tsi/composite/SolarConstant

That's also a good reminder of why we should have Triana in place instead of sitting in a warehouse. Using one instrument to measure the entire sunlit face of the planet will avoid the problem of putting together many short-term and different satellite records, as that paper does, to get one longterm measure.

susan said...

What a wonderful post. We are old friends (or at least acquaintances) from DotEarth ... (Anderson)

Brian said...

Have you considered submitting a response for publication to the Journal of American Physicians and surgeons?