Monday, December 23, 2013

Pielkes All The Way Down


Eli came into the kitchen only to see Ethon tearing into what looked like some extremely dry and dessicated pemmican.  The Bird was peckish.  It's all there is, he tweeted, no food value in this stuff and your fridge is stuffed with useless carrots.  Eli, Ethon asked, have you read the written submissions to the British Parliament's IPCC 5th Assessment Review.     The Weasel had sort of started the job.  Knocked down some low hanging fruit.  Ethon noticing that Roger Sr. has submitted and flew over there in search of liver chunks, after all Roger Sr. is about the tastiest that the rejectionists have.  A sad waste of calories.  RP phoned it in.

Several years ago, Michael Tobis, pointed out that a paper by Roger Sr, Klotzbach, et al.., was pretty much Pielkes all the way down.  Each sequential step was based on a previous paper by Roger Sr.

It’s a slippery slope. Once you look into what is being proposed as contrary science, it’s hard to avoid Pielke-land. . . .

Note that we have a chain, Klotzbach Pielke Pielke Christy; McNider 2009 to Matsui; Pielke 2005 to Eastman Coghenour; Pielke 2001 to Mahrer; Pielke 1977.

You can’t fool me Mr. Feynmann. It’s Pielkes all the way down.
Somewhat modestly (if MT has one fault it is that he is overmodest) MT never attempted to generalize. Roger Sr's written submission is a new high.
Tin(sic) my testimony to you, there is a wide range of subjects on climate I could present, which were inadequately or not at all assessed in the 2013 WG1 IPCC Report. I present four themes here. They (sic) which are discussed in detail in the articles and books listed under each.
And the old guy proceeds to list four of five of his publications under each question with a few words at the end.  Starting with the first, because after that it is hard to not require an extra favorite food groups to keep up and revive the spirits, RP Sr. writes

  • The IPCC AR5 Physical Science assessment inadequately considered the spectrum of human and natural climate forcings and feedbacks. Changes in climate are not dominated by the human input of greenhouse gases.
after listing  five of his papers, Roger summarizes
In addition to greenhouse gas emissions, other first-order human climate forcings are important to understanding the future behavior of Earth’s climate. These forcings are spatially heterogeneous and include the effect of aerosols on clouds and associated precipitation [e.g., Rosenfeld et al., 2008], the influence of aerosol deposition (e.g., black carbon (soot) [Flanner et al. 2007] and reactive nitrogen [Galloway et al., 2004]), and the role of changes in land use/land cover [e.g., Takata et al., 2009].

Unfortunately, the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment did not sufficiently acknowledge the importance of these other human climate forcings in altering regional and global climate and their effects on predictability at the regional scale. It also placed too much emphasis on average global forcing from a limited set of human climate forcings.
As a start, just to show where RPSr. is coming from, take a look at Figure 8.17 (details at Real Climate).  Shameful how the IPCC WG1 never ever mentions, considers, or evaluates any of these things


even worse, as RP Sr. puts it, the IPCC completely neglects the heterogeneous nature of many forcings.  Well, Eli has been told not to cite, quote or distribute, but perhaps a couple of sentences will be allowed to show how the IPCC WG1 authors have again completely neglected their duty
Forcing agents such as aerosols, ozone and land albedo changes are highly heterogeneous spatially and temporally.
The pattern and spatial gradients of forcing affect global and regional temperature responses as well as other aspects of climate response such as the hydrologic cycle. [8.5.2; Figure 8.18, Figure 8.19, Figure 8.20]
Oh, yes, Chapter 8.6 is, wait for it, Geographic Distribution of Radiative Forcing which obviously is not considered in Chapter 14 Climate Phenomena and their Relevance for Future Regional Climate Chang.

Perhaps Roger Sr. would like to spend some quality time with Ethon actually reading the AR5 WG1.  And, well if his POV differs, he can always join the NIPCC.  Might improve that product.

7 comments:

THE CLIMATE WARS said...

It's ust three more Pielkes on the way down to get to 99 & 44/100% Pure Pielke


Do you think it would float or just foam copiously ?

Anonymous said...

Maybe because English is a second language to me, I have hard time understanding this.

Sou said...

Loverly.

This bunny asks, how much further down can they dig? I know they aren't getting any help from rabetts. Echidnas? Nope. Moles? I doubt it. What else is down in the depths...

And Then There's Physics said...

Maybe not quite relevant, but I had been tempted to write a post about the recent congressional inquiry that included John Christy, Roger Pielke Jr., and a retired Admiral. Rather than commenting on their submissions I thought I might just post their concluding remarks. John Christy's was impressively extreme, the Admiral's seemed quite sensible, but Roger Pielke Jr's was simply a biography of himself. Then I thought, I might post his opening remarks, which also turned out to be a biography of himself :-)

Thomas Lee Elifritz said...

Roger Pielke Jr.'s agenda is Roger Pielke Jr. It has nothing to do with 'the world', 'reality as we currently kow it', or its local and global inhabitants, including and especially those who do not go by he label 'human'. When I think of Roger Pielke Jr., the only thoughts that immediately come to mind are country clubs and skiing resorts, lol. The rest of us are the 'little people'.

THE CLIMATE WARS said...

Somebody has to ski the Maldives and golf Greenland, why not the Rogers?

Anonymous said...

Russell, never been to the Maldives but have been to Diego Garcia which is close by. Would love to snow ski there! How can we make this possible? I don't think the CO2 thermostat will do it, but if we can adjust Gaia's plate tectonics we can! Raise the islands to have an elevation of 5,000 meters and we are skiing!