Something left unsaid about Koutsoyiannis et al.

The latest in here is a shiny statistical model that disproves everything you thought about greenhouse gases causing climate change is Koutsoyiannis Demetris, Onof Christian, Christofides Antonis and Kundzewicz Zbigniew W.2022  Revisiting causality using stochastics: 1. Theory Proc. R. Soc. A 4782021083520210835 and Revisiting causality using stochastics: 2. Applications Proc. R. Soc. A.4782021083620210836

Of course, the classic was the unit root and Bart Verheggen's weight loss program but recently we have Statistics Norway trying it on, and just a year ago another ground breaking article

Demetris Koutsoyiannis is a well established, tho emeritus, professor of hydrology at the National Technical University in Athens, Christian Onof a rainfall guy at Imperial College, Antonis Christofides, also at NTU Athens and Zbigniew W. Kundzewicz, a pretty well known rainfall/hydrology person. Add to this that the Proc. R. Soc. A, ain't MDPI and a bunny knows the sharks will gather

So no surprise to find them at Curry's, with the birth announcement (well, first year anniversary) on Twitter, and the usual pile in. 

Naomi Oreskes and John Cook have a lot to answer for, if it was not for them pointing out that there is very little serious literature disagreeing with the IPCC consensus poor Eli would not have to wade throught this stuff 

The TL:DR 

The remaining real-world case study led to an important side product of the current research. This is the surprising finding that, while in general the causal relationship of atmospheric T and CO₂ concentration, as obtained by proxy data, appears to be of hen-oregg type with principal direction 𝑇 → [CO₂], in the recent decades the more accurate modern data support a conclusion that this principal direction has become exclusive

and the problem is the usual one. As Eli, and others pointed out (there are some useful references)

 We know from measurements that more CO2 is being emitted by burning fossil fuels than remains in the atmosphere. We also have measurements showing that ~105 _+ 8 Pg C from these emissions has been absorbed in the oceans* and the biosphere has i** and we have measurements and theory on how temperature and salinity affect CO2 partial pressure in the gas phase above sea water*** where a difference of 1C corresponds at best to a few ppm.

Of course we know that the atmospheric concentration of CO2 has increased from ~290 to ~430 ppm over the last 150 years.

This poses some obvious problems for any statistical treatment which claims that CO2 concentration follows changes in temperature

*Feely, R. A., Sabine, C. L., Takahashi, T., & Wanninkhof, R. (2001). Uptake and storage of carbon dioxide in the ocean: The global co~ 2 survey. OCEANOGRAPHY-WASHINGTON DC-OCEANOGRAPHY SOCIETY-, 14(4), 18-32.

**Amthor, Jeffrey S. “Terrestrial higher‐plant response to increasing atmospheric [CO2] in relation to the global carbon cycle.” Global Change Biology 1.4 (1995): 243-274 and especially the annual cycle

***Weiss, R. F., Jahnke, R. A., & Keeling, C. D. (1982). Seasonal effects of temperature and salinity on the partial pressure of CO2 in seawater. Nature, 300(5892), 511-513

Poking about and tossed up this comment on Koutsoyiannis et al. by Leif Åsbrink in the january 11 2023 issue of PRSA. It says pretty much what everybunny has been saying

From the information in [1] we can therefore draw a second conclusion: For timescales in multiple decades, the results in figure 14 have no meaning since the data span a far too short time. The differentiation has also suppressed slow changes. Common perception that [CO2] causes an increase in the temperature can thus neither be verified nor falsified. It is self-evident that the effect ΔT → [CO2], which is seen on a short timescale, will also be present on all longer timescales. A temperature change in the order of 0.4°C will cause a change in [CO2] of about 2 ppm, as measured on the derivatives.3 The temperature change over the 42 years is about 0.5°C while [CO2] has changed by about 80 ppm. Some other mechanism is likely to dominate on timescales of multiple decades. Hence, the common perception that increasing [CO2] causes increased T seems likely. . . . . 

Settled science’ is supported by many lines of evidence and it includes many more factors than [CO2] as causes of the increased temperature since pre-industrial times. CO2 is however considered to be the largest factor. ‘Settled science’ includes the phenomenon that increased T causes a modest increase of [CO2] (outgassing from the sea), which is detected in [1]. The statement ‘in the recent decades the more accurate modern data support a conclusion that this principal direction has become exclusive. In other words, it is the increase of temperature that caused increased CO2 concentration’ that appears in Discussion and conclusions in [1] is not supported by proper arguments in the paper.

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspa.2022.0529

This comment is notable for two things, all the references are to websites (inc. Roy Spencer’s blog) and there is no reply by Koutsoyiannis. 

Also, Eli can't find it being discussed most anywhere at all and certainly not at Curry's. The editors at Proc. T. Soc. A seem to have tossed Koutsoyiannis under the bus.

"A Left That Refuses to Condemn Mass Murder Is Doomed"

(UPDATE 2024: well, that went to hell. Obviously the only morally sane thing to do is to stop.)

 

With us posting more at Twitter and much less here, there's been very little posted here unrelated to climate. Still, given my semi-informed opinion that the readership/commentariat trends pretty left, and it seems worthwhile to bring up the small fraction (I hope?) of the left that sees nothing wrong with the atrocities in Israel, exclusively focusing instead on the tragedies past and future in Gaza.

So the post by Eric Levitz at NY Mag applies, maybe. Read the whole thing etc., and some relevant parts:

More broadly, the notion that an ethnic group can boast the exclusive right to occupy any stretch of land is not a left-wing one. Virtually all land is “stolen land” if one rolls the tape back far enough. Individuals who were dispossessed of property as a result of their ethnicity have a right of return and reparation. But ethnic groups do not have a right to cleanse any geographic area of outgroup members, whether they are Israeli or Palestinian.

Pretty good for a broad statement. All in life is qualified though. Ukraine IMO has the right to kick out Russian immigrants that have arrived in Crimea since 2014, even the innocent children, given the options of living a few miles away in Russia proper. (I hope that if Ukraine gets Crimea back that it becomes flexible on this.) Palestinians have the right to get settlement land back in the West Bank given that Israel proper is right next door, although for utilitarian reasons they should negotiate on this. But Jewish Israelis, most of whose ancestors fled from the Holocaust or were expelled from other countries, shouldn't be forced to become international refugees, let alone killed in the process of forcing out the rest. That's Holocaust-level antisemitism. It's not going to happen anyway, but it's still a really stupid idea. 

For these reasons, it is a moral imperative for progressives to condemn Hamas’s atrocities, affirm the human rights of Jewish Israelis, and reject the ethno-nationalist claim that Palestinians have a unique right to reside in the region. And it is also a political imperative for them to do so....Yet since algorithmic social media favors incendiary speech, from the vantage of many X and Instagram users, the left’s response to last weekend’s events is characterized by bloodlust. In the face of that response, multiple progressive-leaning people in my life have expressed a sense of estrangement from leftists and newfound doubts about their worldview. Seeing an ideological group embrace a position that one knows to be intellectually bankrupt and morally odious will naturally lead one to view that group’s other claims — especially those concerning matters one knows little about, such as the intricacies of the Israel-Palestine conflict — with greater skepticism. It’s important, therefore, to ensure that the majority of progressives who abhor all war crimes makes itself as visible as possible. 

 ....The political necessity of criticizing Israel on universalist grounds, rather than ethno-nationalist ones, is similarly urgent. In defending their apologias for war crimes, leftists tend to cite the gross power imbalance between the Palestinians and Israelis as somehow exculpatory. But precisely because Palestinians cannot hope to prevail in a contest of brute force, it is incumbent on their champions to make the case for their liberation in terms that honor the basic rights of Israelis. If we posit that some ethnic groups have a unique claim to specific stretches of land, and that they also have the right to commit war crimes so as to secure this heritage, then we will do the Israeli far-right’s ideological work for it.

Not much to add to that. I fear that the level of death and destruction coming to innocent civilians in Gaza will soon far exceed what happened in Israel. And still I think Israel has to invade, despite being led by a goon that might even be worse than Trump. What Israel will do after it invades is a huge question mark - I doubt it will handle things better than we did in Afghanistan and Iraq. And West Bank's future is also up for grabs, something that I wonder may have been Hamas' motivation in committing such a huge gamble with certain death for most of its leadership.

Makes climate change seem like a pleasant subject. Guess I'll get back to that.

Well, crud

This is a new one for me:

 

 What other joy is out there?