First Krammed, then Curtined

One of the things that you learn on your Doctor Mom or Dad's knee is to be suspicious of stuff that don't quite sound right. There are any number of three card monte dealers on the street who would be only too glad to prove this to you in the lab.

Tim Curtin, a Tim Lambert's favorite pinata, a guy so important that he has his own thread on Deltoid, has come up with a new one that he parked over at Honest Marohasy's Used Climate Argument Blog.

Tim C puts on his Tamino costume and scribbles

The temperature data at Mauna Loa from 1955 do not support the conclusions of the paper, of extreme warming at ‘high altitude Hawaii” to the extent of 0.268 C per decade since 1975. Actually as the graph shows there is a slight declining trend in the annual increases in temperatures at Mauna Loa.

A plot of changes in temperature and carbon dioxide year on year from 1959, as in the chart, shows a steady rise in concentrations of carbon dioxide but no increase in temperature.

I conclude that there is no relationship between carbon dioxide and temperature at a pristine site like that at Mauna Loa. In conclusion the whole theory of ‘radiative forcing’ allegedly arising from increasing concentration of carbon dioxide over time has no validity at pristine locations like Mauna Loa.

Give him credit (ok a few pieces from the penny jar) Tim C mentions that he got the graph from the Western Regional Climate Center at DRI but ding him, he doesn't point to where. Eli went looking and found a table for average monthly and annual temperature (link fixed), and being a good bunny he graphed the annual data using the 1955-1985 data as the base


with a mean annual trend of +0.041 K/yr. Then the Rabett went and found a very nice presentation from Donald Turcotte, Bruce Malamud and Jordan van Aalsburg, who find an annual trend of 0.022 K/yr from 1977 through 2006. More about that tomorrow

So dear reader what's going on?

Ah, very simple. The Curtin is not plotting temperatures, or temperature anomalies, but the CHANGE in annual temperatures. In other words, if the annual MLO temperature in 1975 was 4.5 C, and in 1976 it was 5.5 C, the CHANGE is 1.0 C.

Since CO2 concentrations are increasing approximately exponentially, and since the effect of CO2 on global temperature is approximately logarithmic, the net is that the annual CHANGE in temperature per year will be approximately constant. According to Tim Curtin's graph, at least at Mauna Loa, it is.

Watch the bouncing ball.

Head bangers

Anyone who has ever taught knows about head bangers, you know the sort of thing that you thought was clear and obvious except there is one kid in the class . . . well, let's put it this way, after you figure it out you want to go bang your head against the wall mumbling "Never Again" endlessly. This is why teachers are always asking questions to check that they are getting through and why the good ones are always swapping stories about the truly eerie interpretations they get back from their class so they can avoid them next time.

Eli has one from last week. During a lab class he had to go to the little bunnies room for a short, but pleasant, interlude only to return and find the lab tech on the floor with the mercury cleanup kit and a bunch of panicked kids.

Eli: "WHAT HAPPENED
Kids: We dropped a thermometer and the mercury spilled all over the floor

Eli: We don't have mercury thermometers here
Kids: We dropped a thermometer and the mercury spilled all over the floor and we don't want to die (slight exaggeration)

Eli: We don't have mercury thermometers here

(Light dawns)

Eli: What color was the liquid in the thermometer
Kids: Blue

Eli: What color is mercury
Kids: We've never seen mercury

Eli goes and gets a mercury thermometer out of the stockroom

Eli: This is a mercury thermometer
Kids: Oh.

Moral: Most people under twenty these days have not seen a mercury thermometer or mercury or if they have have not registered that mercury is a silvery liquid (they may know that nearly all metals** are silvery, but not made the connection).

In his defense the lab tech thought Eli had handed out a mercury thermometer and was prepared to make Rabett stew after cleaning up

Change in lab SOP: Show the students a mercury thermometer in the first week. Explain that there are none in the undergraduate labs anymore.

It is literally impossible to figure out all of the “crooked” ways that people can think, but if you have heard about them, you can head some of them off at the pass.

The mem about the "lifetime of CO2" provides an opening for such a head banger which could be avoided by talking a bit of care. Say things like, an increased amount of atmospheric CO2 lasts centuries. Maybe add, CO2 exchanges quickly with the ocean and biosphere, but that is an exchange, not an increase or decrease.

** Copper and gold are exceptions

Via Atmos a whole blog full of head bangers, including this one

Got any stories?

Motivated Reasoning

Lane Wallace writes (in a non climate change denial, non tobacco denial, non AIDs denial) about motivated reasoning

In other words, if people start with a particular opinion or view on a subject, any counter-evidence can create "cognitive dissonance"--discomfort caused by the presence of two irreconcilable ideas in the mind at once. One way of resolving the dissonance would be to change or alter the originally held opinion. But the researchers found that many people instead choose to change the conflicting evidence--selectively seeking out information or arguments that support their position while arguing around or ignoring any opposing evidence, even if that means using questionable or contorted logic.

The two base examples are interesting, did Perry or Cook reach the north Pole and

Everett Reuss left civilization to go live in the wilderness ... and was never heard from again. A whole folk myth movement sprang up around this young man who seemed to have slipped so completely into the wild that he eluded discovery for the rest of his life. An annual art festival in Escalante, Utah, is even named in his honor. But Roberts, who researched the case for 10 years, finally discovered evidence that Ruess had been murdered by two members of the Ute tribe almost as soon as he'd begun his journey. There was a witness to the murder, an unearthed skeleton, and DNA tests that were compatible with other family members.

The mystery, it seemed, had been solved. But the hue and cry surrounding Roberts' piece was both angry and loud, catching both Roberts and the Reuss family by surprise.

Real Climate is thumb sucking about how to communicate science, with the usual distribution of be nice and bash the moles recommended. It appears to Eli that you need to feed the trolls to the bird while being helpful to onlookers. His adventures in ACS land have reinforced this to him. At a minimum this requires building trust with the lurkers first by being initially helpful and polite, and then by outing the trolls in a way that the lurkers see that they are being disruptive. Among other things, especially in a one on one, it really helps to find a trusted intermediate. You do have to give the trolls a fair amount of rope but you should never give way to their moaning and never let them change the subject.

An interesting example emerges in an endless thread at Deltoid, where another tactic, which has some value, has emerged, corral the troll into a corrida and have the picadors stick pins in the beast. An endless thread featuring a libertarian Dunning-Kruger poster child (you know, the face on the cereal box of the cute kid, with the byline: our village has lost its idiot) has emerged as a source of useful information as others respond to the pinata (mixing Mexican metaphors is not a sin). You can dip into it at any point and find something interesting. Eli thinks they are going for 10K responses.

Comments?

Magical Solutions Anyone?

The operative definition of chutzpah is taking an axe to your parents and pleading for mercy as an orphan. Ethon has a new one, a certain tasty senior fellow of the Breakthrough Institute, you know, the delayers who current strategy is faith based research to combat future climate change, telling the new Japanese government off for setting goals in their first couple of weeks in power but not immediately having concrete plans for reducing greenhouse gases.

Of course, as E points out, not eating today because there might be a nice piece of liver tomorrow doesn't exactly take care of a hungry bird's tummy. However here we have our old playmate Roger P taking the Japanese to task for not specifying how to reach their goals. Except that he took the old Japanese government to task for the same thing, when they had specified both their goals and methods (see also comments at Environment 360 by Brendan Barrett). Anyone in bed with Marty Hoffert should not go around criticizing others for not being realistic.

Some things never change.

As Eli was saying

Barak Obama obviously reads Rabett Run, for in his speech to the UN special meeting on climate change, he said

We must also energize our efforts to put other developing nations—especially the poorest and most vulnerable—on a path to sustainable growth. These nations do not have the same resources to combat climate change as countries like the United States or China do, but they have the most immediate stake in a solution. For these are the nations that are already living with the unfolding effects of a warming planet—famine and drought; disappearing coastal villages and the conflict that arises from scarce resources. Their future is no longer a choice between a growing economy and a cleaner planet, because their survival depends on both. It will do little good to alleviate poverty if you can no longer harvest your crops or find drinkable water.

That is why we have a responsibility to provide the financial and technical assistance needed to help these nations adapt to the impacts of climate change and pursue low-carbon development.

A point that The Rabett has been stressing especially with respect to India (1, 2, 3) but also the other countries that draw drinking water from the rapidly vanishing Himalayan glaciers such as Pakistan and to an extent Bangladesh. Rabett Run, where you read it before it happens.

Gotta have a meeting

Chad Orzel, Dean Dad and Female Science Professor are having a contest to name the worst kind of meeting. Somehow they missed

Groundhog Day

The same meeting, every meeting, until you retire, then you dream about it until you die. Sartre was a smart cookie. Hell is your colleagues. There is no exit.

UPDATE: Steve Bloom wins the thread

S/he who dies having convened the most meetings wins.

How much is that Morano in the window?

You know, the cute little guy who was interviewed by Clean Skies News, a web based environmental news service.




They also interviewed Andrew Freedman, more about that later, but on to Villa Morano a small, but expensive building in Mostly Moaning Town. Marc paints the IPCC as totally political as a UN organization and therefore untrustworthy. The lack of flackish self awareness is astounding, something the interviewer calls him on later, and he attempts to push back to her. She could have been much stronger and persistent.

He claims that many IPCC scientists have rejected the IPCC. The interviewer, who had good questions, fails on the follow up, e.g. name some. There are, of course, a few like Spencer, but to get any numbers he would have to drag in the "Expert" Reviewers like the Mad Moncktons, Richard "Dipl Phil" Courtney, Vincent Gray and that ilk. It would have been amusing to watch him with an interviewer who had followed the blogs.

The same is true of the 700, ably deconstructed by the Center for Inquiry, and the 650list blog, which MM plays up. What did you expect, we didn't exactly fall off the carrot truck here at Bunny Farms, but again, the interviewer is unprepared to pin him down. Morano's line is hand waving. You have to at least try and pin him down.

Towards the end, Susan McGinnis, the interviewer, asks who was paying the freight for Morano in his new home at the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and who was paying for CFACT. She is much better on that as you would expect, journos are trained to follow the money. Pinning him down on who funds CFACT is, of course, difficult. He refuses and tries to distract her. Exxon Secrets has a bit about CFACT funding from Exxon, it appears to run about 50 K$/year, Source Watch references this and adds that they have gotten substantial support from foundations controlled by Richard Scaife, a noted US source for right wing funding, but again, McGinnis should have been better prepared, especially with a slippery character like Morano.

Morano put out two indicative false statements in the funding discussion. The first being that CFACT gets ~85% of its funding from individuals. According to its 2008 990 they got 60.2 and 40.5% from individual donations in 2008 and 2007 respectively. The second is when he told the interviewer that she could find out who donated to CFACT from the 990s on Guidestar. Donors are not listed on 990s, something that anyone familiar with Guidestar knows.

Susan McGinnis, had useful questions, but was unprepared to follow up with Morano in obvious ways. Further, the interview never really reached any scientific questions. In short, it was not a bad effort, but could have been much better.

To put on my inner MT, it is clear that even good journalists do not know how to prepare for these interviews. Their training encourages them to be a mile wide and an inch deep, but for interviewing "media representatives", who spend their lives looking for misleading sound bites they need to be inch wide and a mile deep or know someone who is, who can prepare them.

This interview should be required viewing for anyone who wants to deal with Morano. You need to be very specific and very persistent.

Oh yes, how much is that Morano in the window. Well, before he moved, about $135K/yr. Now, well we have to probably wait until next year's 990s. He only started at CFACT in the Spring.

Eli sucks at multitasking

Mostly, like a computer with a fast processor and no memory, he ends up spending all his time thrashing, so it was a happy day to read Rudy Baum's latest tirade in C&E news

We know from personal experience and from recent studies that multitasking while driving is a bad idea. Cell phones, iPhones, BlackBerrys, and the like just don’t mix with driving. People talking on cell phones while driving are as dangerous as people who are legally drunk. People who are texting are much more dangerous.

Multitasking outside of cars, however, is a different story. We’ve all been told that the ability to process multiple streams of information, most of it digital, is the wave of the future. Teenagers and young adults, we are told, have developed the ability to do homework, browse the Web, listen to music, watch television, and instant message simultaneously, packing so much more into every hour than we old-school unitaskers. . .

Guess what? It doesn’t work. The Aug. 30 New York Times carried a story on “The Mediocre Multitasker” that led: “Read it and gloat. Last week, researchers at Stanford University published a study showing that the most persistent multitaskers perform badly in a variety of tasks. They don’t focus as well as non-multitaskers. They’re more distractable. They’re weaker at shifting from one task to another and at organizing information. They are, as a matter of fact, worse at multitasking than people who don’t ordinarily multitask.”. . .

Chronic multitaskers do process information differently. They do it badly. The research definitively shows that multitaskers “have greater difficulty filtering out irrelevant stimuli from their environment … they are less likely to ignore irrelevant representations in memory … and they are less effective in suppressing the activation of irrelevant task sets.

Eli is getting to like that fellow Baum

H1N1

Academic blogs have been commenting that University administrations have been worse than usually useless in telling us how to deal with H1N1 outbreaks. Eli has come across what, to him, appears to be a useful site, hosted by EBSCO, you know the folk who sell your library journals at delicious prices. While not the end of civilization, there probably will be a fair amount of disruption as flu season moves into high gear. You can find the information at the EBSCO Influenza - Evidence Based Information Portal

Due to Pandemic H1N1 Influenza and concerns about the 2009/2010 flu season, the EBSCO Publishing Medical and Nursing editors of DynaMed™, Nursing Reference Center™ (NRC) and Patient Education Reference Center™ (PERC) have made key influenza information from these resources freely available to health care providers worldwide.
The editorial teams will monitor the research and update these resources continuously throughout the upcoming flu season.

UPDATE: Link fixed. Nick Stokes suggests Effect Measure for information about H1N1

Comments?

The Morano Mumble Jumble

Well, to boost the incoming at the WP, one of their meteorologists, Matt Rogers is now doing the Morano Mumble Jumble. More of the usual. Be good creatures and help him out. Marc is quite pleased

UPDATE: Pass the popcorn

Marc Morano is upset that Andrew Freedman, a blogger with the Washington Post, won't debate him about climate change. Not wanting to see Marc left without a debating partner, I'd be happy to debate Marc Morano on climate policy. Were we to do an Oxford-style debate I'd propose the following resolution:

Resolved: Governments around the world should adopt a low carbon tax to finance technological innovation and other policies focused on decarbonizng the global economy. At the same time enhanced investments are needed around the world on policies focused on improving resilience and adaptive capacity.

How about it Marc?

Although one of the commentors, Stan, made a useful point that also applies to Plimers dancing away from Monbiot

One of the biggest shortcomings of debate formats is that the debaters end up talking past each other because they define terms differently or want to stress completely different aspects of the issue (or fail to critique each other's "evidence"). I think the debate would likely be more interesting if the two of you both agreed to narrow the issue to one genuinely in dispute and published "briefs".

I guess the model for appellate courts works very well. The issues on appeal are specific, appellant files a brief, appellee responds, appellant replies to the response. Then each gets to make a presentation to the court in oral argument (often mostly responding to questions from the panel) in the same order. No surprises, both sides are fully apprised and fully prepared to respond.

For a debate, you should correspond to discuss precisely where you disagree and structure the debate to focus on those issues. Then you should make your initial case in writing (or cite previous work/studies relied on).

There is no point of having a debate where someone cites X and the other isn't familiar with X. It may score debating points, but a thoughtful audience really wants to know if X is really worthy or not and cannot find that out.

Comments

Now that you have pen in hand

Marc and his merry men are aware of all Internet traditions

[Marc Morano of Climate Depot Sept. 6, 2009 Statement: “I have been researching and reporting on the environmental movement since 1992 and specifically on man-made global warming science over the past decade. (see: here, here, and here.) The past few weeks have -- without a doubt -- seen the most dramatic acceleration of developments against the claims of a so-called 'consensus.' The Houston Chronicle science reporter Eric Berger's latest admission merely reflects an inescapable reality: Man-made global warming fears are quickly descending into the ash heap of history. Even top UN IPCC scientists are now openly questioning these claims.” Berger joins other reporters and media outlets in recent times who are being swayed by latest science. See "Related Links" below. - End Morano statement.]

Denial Depot is well aware of the important role that bloggers play

I believe that one day all science will be done on blogs because we bloggers are natural skeptics, disbelieving the mainstream and accepting the possibility of any alternative idea.

We stand unimpressed by "textbooks", "peer review journals" and so-called "facts". There are no facts, just informed ideas. We are infinitely small compared to nature and can't grasp anything as certain as a fact.

Eli's friends might enjoy having fun with the chum that Morano chased over to Eric Berger's place at the Houston Chronicle. Eli will try to be faster at this.

Rabett Run, the place to go to be told where to go.

Taking part

UPDATE: Those of you coming here from Marc Morano's Climate Depot, might want to take a look at an evaluation of his 700 Skeptical Scientists. To put it bluntly, not very many of them have ever done anything on climate. Eli blogged on this earlier, but the list is not very impressive.
--------------------
Andrew Freedman who posts on the Capital Weather Gang has been visited by a plague of Moranos. He wrote, not so long ago, that Obama needs to give a speech on the need for climate legislation which will control greenhouse gas emissions. For his efforts he has been visited by the banshees.

Andrew has written a letter to Marc

Your lengthy response to my piece "Obama Needs to Give a Climate Speech - ASAP" contains numerous errors of fact and interpretation. I think you revealed your politically driven agenda quite nakedly when you assailed the United Nations for its role in climate and energy policy. The fact that you think the solutions to climate change will cost more than letting the climate system run amok, particularly in the developing world, does not stand up to close scrutiny in the academic literature.

I stand by what I wrote, especially the criticism of your venture as existing largely to create the impression of a crumbling scientific consensus on climate change, when in fact there is no such trend taking place in the scientific community.

Eli would not recommend your visiting Climate Depot, as one of the commentors on Andrew's site wrote

I actually made the mistake of clicking over to that ClimateDepot link yesterday. I got about halfway down the page and stopped reading. It sounded like it was written by a young teen who was off his Ritalin. Much, though not all obviously, of the climate "skeptic" stuff does.

still, a visit and signing the guest book at the Capital Weather Gang, would help.

Paper delivery

Eli has come across a blog, AGW Observer, which has links to abstracts and Adobe Acrobat files of a number of useful papers on climate change related subjects. Have a peek. It looks like keeping the URL on your bookmark list might be useful

Merry-go Round

Both the Northern and the Northwest Passages are open. Georg Hoffmann has more about the Beluga lines freighters headed to the mouth of the Ob. Some nice pictures also so you don't have to read German. Georg called the Beluga Lines and scored this information

According to Verena Beckhusen from the Beluga Lines, he expected savings for a fleet of 6 ships taking the North-East passage above Russia instead of going through the Indian on the path between east Asia and Europe, would be an impressive three million Euro.

Eli has been looking at the Uni-Bremen ice maps. What looks to be happening is that a great swath of ice is breaking up

If that goes we are very close to 2007. You can get another picture of this from the companion image



The forecast along the Russian coast is for ~ 10 C (high 40s Fahrenheit)

You can blow the maps up by clicking on them

Jumping into the Klotzbach

As the innocent little bunnies may have observed there is a rather teapotish tempest going on about Roger Pielke Sr.'s work. For the most part the way science deals with stuff no one believes or cares about (pick one) is to ignore it, and a lot of what RPS has published fits into that category which irritates the old guy no end. Recently he and Jr. published a paper, Klotzbach, et al. which purports to show that there should be a significant (as in measured) difference between GLOBAL surface temperatures and those higher up. This would be a real difference, not an instrumental effect.

The idea is that nighttime inversion layers form near the surface limiting near surface cooling. As has been pointed out, first by Michael Tobis, the edifice rests on Pielke papers all the way down

That, of course, was only the beginning. Since then we have the prequel
e Pur Si Scalda - MT (8/3)

Enter the protagonists
Evidence that global temperature trends have been overstated - RPJ
Warm bias in the surface temperature trend - RPS at his "Climate for Dummies" site
New Paper Documents a Warm bias in the Calculation.... - RPS (8/13)

and the follow-on
Pielkes all the Way Down - MT (8/14)
Klotzbach in the Blogosphere - MT (8/17)
Evidence for Bias in Atmospheric Temperature Trends - JEB (in Stoat speak) (8/17)
An Exchange with Gavin Schmidt on Klotzbach - RPJ at his new lemonade stand (8/17)
Speeding through Haldane's Four Stages - RPJ (8/18)
Curiouser and Curiouser - JEB (8/19) where James swallows a Pielke and goes down the Rabett hole
The Global Average Temperature Warming Really Is Overstated - RPS (8/20)
The Paper “Heat Balance In The Nocturnal Boundary Layer During CASES-99″ By Sun Et Al 2003" - at the New Pielke Sr. Times
My Final Word on Klotzbach - MT (8/20)
Comment on MT's Final Word on Klotzbach - RPS (8/20)
Pathologies in Climate Science - RPJ (8/20)
PM05 Resolved - JEB
Pielke and Matsui Revisited - JEB (8/22)
Major Errors in James Annan's Post PM 05 Revisited - RPS (8/23)
Oh dear - JEB (8/23)
Comments on an Email Exchange with James Annan - RPS (8/23)
Does Gavin Schmidt Understand Boundary Layer Physics - RPS (8/23)
My Craven Rave - MT (8/24)
The Issue that James Annan and Gavin Schmidt Should Focus On - RPS (8/24)
A Bizarre Rewriting of History - JEB (8/25)
The Santer, et al View of The Importance of Error in the Surface Record - RPS (8/28)
Comments on a New Post by James Annan - RPS (8/28)
Scientific Arguments as Climate Science - RPJ (8/29)
Remarkable Admission by James Annan on Klotzbach, et al - RPS tag teaming (8/29)
But they Also Laughed at Bozo the Clown - JEB (8/31)

Well, now that the class has RTFR, Eli would like to drive a carrot truck through the procedings. As MT first, and later James, point out, Klotzbach's rests on Pielke and Matsui 05 which is connected to Eastman, Coungenour and Pielke, and so on.

Let us, as James did, get off at the first stop, Pielke and Matsui, 2005, which is an attempted refutation of Parker 2004. PM05 claims that there should be different trends in temperature records at different heights

Long-term climate trends of surface air temperature should not be expected to have the same trends for light wind and stronger wind nights, even if the trends in the boundary layer heat fluxes were the same. Parker (2004) segmented observed surface temperature data into lighter and stronger wind terciles in order to assess whether the reported large-scale global-averaged temperature increases are attributable to urban warming. We conclude, however, that trends at an individual height depend on wind speed, thermodynamic stability, aerodynamic roughness, and the vertical gradient of absolute humidity. We present an analysis to illustrate why temperature values at specific levels will depend on wind speed, and with the same boundary layer heat content change, trends in temperature should be expected to be different at every height near the surface when the winds are light, as well as different between light wind and stronger wind nights.

So Eli went and read the paper, which is really a thin thing that comes down to calculating the potential temperature profile at a height z (more or less quoting here) Δθ(z) for a "continually turbulent stable clear night boundary layer over a flat surface"

Δθ(z) = Δθ_s exp(-z/H_e)

where H_e is a scale length approximately equal to

H_e ~ a (V_RL)^0.75t^0.5

a is a constant, V_RL the wind speed and t the time from when the inversion is established (not quite, but close enough). Also

θ_s = Q_AK/H_e

Q being the cumulative heating. They calculate the profiles, lapse rates, etc for wind speeds from 1 - 10 m/s and different cumulative heating, but the rubber meets the road in that formula for θ_s.

Drive the wind speed to zero and you end up with a zero thickness scale length, an infinite temperature difference between ground and the layer a micron up. In other words, at some point this little model fails. It probably is not too bad for the upper range of the wind scale used, but, of course, in that case the scale length will also be larger, e.g. the layer thicker and the lapse rate not as extreme.

This calculation, borrowed from Stott's text, by itself is inappropriate for at least some of the conditions Pielke and Matsui are trying to model. Perhaps more kindly put, it may be right about the part of the system it is trying to model, but something is missing. The near ground lapse rates for windless conditions are too high and the scale height for the layer in contact with the surface too small. It is trivial (Eli does not do hard work) to reduce PM05 to an absurdity as a complete description of a real surface inversion layer and if it is not a complete description it is inappropriate and wrong as a refutation of the observation based work of Parker.

UPDATE: Having thought about this while watering the carrot patch, it must be that the estimate of the scale length H_e ~ a (V_RL)^0.75t^0.5 must have a minimum value and not go to zero when the wind velocity does. This basically means that the temperature differences between the 2 m surface temperature measurements and the satellite measurements are smaller than PM05 would imply.

Comments?