Mother Nature is Not Sitting Idle

She doesn’t do politics — only physics, biology and chemistry. And if they add up the wrong way, she will take them all down.

Here’s my bet about the future of Sunni, Shiite, Arab, Turkish, Kurdish and Israeli relations: If they don’t end their long-running conflicts, Mother Nature is going to destroy them all long before they destroy one another.

Tom Friedman (and Eli usually has not much use for Tom Friedman, the definition of conventional wisdom being what Friedman hallucinates in cabs), has noticed that physics, biology and chemistry have the last word and the ecological soup of sciences has been quite poisonous lately in the Middle East, thanks to the global cooks.

Friedman has been reading the news, and notes that this summer has brought unprecidentedly high temperatures and humidity, approaching the 37 C heat stroke barrier, above which all die, and that coupled with bad generation and distribution of electricity has made air-conditioning a rumor in Iran, Iraq and other places.  The heat killed more people in Pakistan this year than terror attacks

Ministers have been fired, riots in the street have happened. and it is the water supply too

see Syria: Its revolution was preceded by the worst four-year drought in the country’s modern history, driving nearly a million farmers and herders off the land, into the cities where the government of Bashar al-Assad completely failed to help them, fueling the revolution.

Brother Tap

Coal collapse and the first burst carbon bubble

The last few months have seen major bankruptcies among American coal companies and the near-elimination of the market value for the rest over the last 5 years (another Hockey Stick, except mirror-imaged and with the stick part also tilted down). What hasn't changed much is the amount of coal reserves these companies have. To the extent that these companies had been valued based on the reserves they own, usually the major component of their value, then the climate divestment argument that fossil fuel stocks are overvalued by a carbon bubble gets a lot of support. The market appears to be saying that a lot of that coal these companies own is now worthless and will stay in the ground.

I shouldn't overplay that argument as it applies to climate divestment. A number of these companies took on a lot of debt several years ago buying other coal companies (and their reserves) in a bet that there would be a major expansion in coal usage - a bad bet. The low-to-negative valuation reflects that debt in part, not a market assessment that all of their reserves are staying in the ground. OTOH, even before these purchases the coal companies had a much higher valuation, so if you assume that the recent coal acquisition is balanced out by recent debt, you still have to explain why the all the coal owned by the companies from prior years is valued so low.

Some parts of the bankrupt companies are still profitable under current law which allows them to impose pollution costs upon neighbors and the entire planet, so some of their reserves will still get used. We might have a better idea based on the valuation when they emerge from bankruptcy and can see then whether the carbon bubble in coal bounces back.

This is a pretty useful example for climate divestment. Six years ago no one could have predicted it. While natural gas had started its expansion back then, everyone expected unabated demand in China and India. Now it's much more up in the air, and meanwhile the bankruptcy papers are shaking out some interesting connections between climate denialists and previously undisclosed coal funders.

During the years that natural gas got primary credit for driving out coal, the renewable industry grabbed nearly half as much away from coal (see page 3, and good reference on coal's problems in general). That trend can accelerate.

One other question is whether climate divestment played a role in coal's trouble. You hear zero credit given to the movement, which I think is slightly unfair. We're now in a situation where at one point I'm watching a random business cable channel and see a discussion of the carbon bubble, and I think divestment helped highlight that risk to investors. And while I'm no stock expert, I don't see a lot of opportunistic buying of the still-standing companies even though you can get them over 90% cheaper than they used to be - as divestment grows and increasingly focuses on coal, it can help create uncertainty that blocks funding for the companies.

What Climate Change Adaptation Looks Like

Rick Piltz's Legacy

Eli's friend Rick Piltz passed away last fall.  In keeping with his wishes that Climate Science Watch continue it's work, his heirs, both family and professional have worked with the Government Accountability Project to launch his successor site the   Climate Science and Policy Watch.  His wife, Karen Metchis put it plainly

 "Among Rick's last wishes was his hope that his fight for the integrity of science against the climate deniers would continue. He recognized the need to protect our children's future from those who would sacrifice it for short term gain by denying the coming calamities if climate change goes unaddressed. It is gratifying to me to see Rick’s work continue. He always believed that GAP’s mission helping others reveal the truth fills an essential role.”

Michael Termini who worked with Rick at CSW and GAP is the interim director

"Rick was crystal clear about his expanded vision and where the effort needed to go, given the high-ground he and his team had achieved over the years with Climate Science Watch. After months of preparation by a team of contributors, composed of experts and colleagues Rick had mentored and worked with, today's launch is the first step in realizing that vision. Following his precise guidance, it is my privilege to lead the charge Rick sounded."

CSPW sees the continuing Climate Science Watch as its outreach to the public, but its primary work as within the government to oppose the obscurantists and highlight the contradictions within the current administration's policies.

 Welcome back

Open Thread - Meta Climate Division

Some things which caught Eli's Eye, but, it being summer, only a few comments from the meadow are likely.

- Andy Revkin don't take criticism lightly and is not above manipulating a few words to benefit his self image.  As the bunnies may remember, Andy blog posted an unsolicited review of the Hansen, et al we (or at least our grandkids) may die unless we do something paper, and both Eli, and Hansen, et al, had some comments on Andy's review.   

We were aware of those papers but included in our discussion only those mechanisms that could plausibly account for the relevant geological features. Our overall objective, improved insight about the threat of sea level rise and storminess posed by global warming, requires integrated analysis of information from paleoclimate and geologic studies, global modeling, and observations of modern climate change – together constituting a substantial undertaking. Thus we limited marginally pertinent material to avoid an unacceptably long paper. 

Which pretty much aligns with dsquared's comment on Twitter:  "devastating critique" is my word for when half-bright self-appointed science police get on the case of actual researchers.  Not that there aren't issues with this paper.  Hansen's POV is that Weitzman was right and what bunnies should be concerned about are the outliers, and here they are.  One may argue that he doesn't balance enough (on the other hand, that maybe Gentleman Jim is leaving this for others like Matty Hoerling).

Of course, Andy Revkin is defined by his control of NYTimes real estate, and he is not one to leave sleeping bunnies lie on the the beach when he can control the dialog.  In a rather meandering apologia he highlights his piece, buries the first submitted solicited review from David Archer, in the 10th paragraph or so, and highlights in the first a later, more critical review from Peter Thorne in the first paragraph.  Make, no mistake, both the Archer and Thorne reviews were professional and useful to both the handling editor, the authors and current and later readers of the paper.

Archer's bottom line is that there are warts, but "This is another Hansen masterwork of scholarly synthesis, modeling virtuosity, and insight, with profound implications".  Both Archer and Thorne have problems with the sprawling nature of the paper.  Archer concludes " Due to its important conclusions, primarily about the ice sheet melting climate feedback, I expect this paper will be widely read, but it will make its readers work for it".  Thorne, OTSH is really uncomfortable with the food fight that broke out and the length of the paper "The paper is of inordinate length closer to a thesis than a scientific paper in nature", and really really uncomfortable with the voice of the paper and the blog post like advocacy that he sees.

Both reviews, as well as the paper, deserve serious discussion.  On balance (there Eli goes again), Thorne has a strong argument that the paper may fit Climate of the Past better.

But the best part of Andy's review of the review, is his "re-outing" tamino and walking it back

One last thought. Perhaps Tamino can step out from behind the shield of anonymity (which too often fuels vitriol) and confirm if he is indeed Grant Foster (quoted on Climate Central).* Foster has published quite a bit on climate, including with Stefan Rahmstorf, a leader of that 2014 review of experts on sea-level rise that is a far cray from what the new paper is projecting. 

And we are both musicians, it seems. Although that perhaps doesn’t go well with the rigor “Tamino” requires in paper reviewers. 

Footnote, July 30, 11:30 p.m. | * I added a link to an Open Mind post in which the blogger known as Tamino acknowledges he is Grant Foster.

From this Eli concludes that Andy Revkin will defend his position in the nomenklatura to the last barrel of ink.

Open Thread - Science Division

Some things which caught Eli's Eye, but, it being summer, only a few comments from the meadow are likely.

- A really interesting paper in Climate of the Past Discussions, a collaboration between the PAGES2K (turbo proxy reconstructions) and PIMP3  PMIP3 (modeling of the past) groups "Continental-scale temperature variability in PMIP3 simulations and PAGES 2k regional temperature reconstructions over the past millennium" which will not bring smiles in certain quarters.  Warning, it is another Hansen, et al seventy pager.  To quote from the abstract:

Here, the recent set of temperature reconstructions at the continental scale generated by the PAGES 2k project and the collection of state-of-the-art model simulations driven by realistic external forcings following the PMIP3 protocol are jointly analysed. The first aim is to estimate the consistency between model results and reconstructions for each continental-scale region over time and frequency domains. Secondly, the links between regions are investigated to determine whether reconstructed global-scale covariability patterns are similar to those identified in model simulations. The third aim is to assess the role of external forcings in the observed temperature variations. From a large set of analyses, we conclude that models are in relatively good agreement with temperature reconstructions for Northern Hemisphere regions, particularly in the Arctic. This is likely due to the relatively large amplitude of the externally forced response across northern and high latitudes regions, which results in a clearly detectable signature in both reconstructions and simulations. Conversely, models disagree strongly with the reconstructions in the Southern Hemisphere.

It is not clear whether one should trust the models or the reconstructions, if for no other reason than there are fewer proxy's from the South.  Get busy.

- And indeed some have.  In a related development Sigi and about twenty others, settle the issue of when volcanic  eruptions took place in the past by aligning ice core proxy records.   "Timing and climate forcings of volcanic eruptions for the past 2,500 years"(no open source at the moment) provides a huge lever for the paleoclimate types to move their work forward on both the physical and historical levels.

Volcanic eruptions contribute to climate variability, but quantifying these contributions has been limited by inconsistencies in the timing of atmospheric volcanic aerosol loading determined from ice cores and subsequent cooling from climate proxies such as tree rings. Here we resolve these inconsistencies and show that large eruptions in the tropics and high latitudes were primary drivers of interannual-to-decadal temperature variability in the Northern Hemisphere during the past 2,500 years. Our results are based on new records of atmospheric aerosol loading developed from high-resolution, multi-parameter measurements from an array of Greenland and Antarctic ice cores as well as distinctive age markers to constrain chronologies. Overall, cooling was proportional to the magnitude of volcanic forcing and persisted for up to ten years after some of the largest eruptive episodes. Our revised timescale more firmly implicates volcanic eruptions as catalysts in the major sixth-century pandemics, famines, and socioeconomic disruptions in Eurasia and Mesoamerica while allowing multi-millennium quantification of climate response to volcanic forcing.

Variation in timing smears out and diminishes the effects of large eruptions and disappears that of smaller ones.  This new work, and aligning it with PAGES2K certainly requires a re-evaluation of Maas and Portman who in 1989 concluded that only the effects of the larges eruptions could be seen in the climate record records.

IEHO comparison of PAGES2K regional reconstructions using the Sigi et al chronology will allow major progress in identifying the sites of the smaller (and some of the larger) eruptions as well as refining estimates of global and regional volcanic forcings.  This, in turn will drive progress in paleoclimate modeling as well as estimation of immediate and equilibrium climate sensitivity.

Consider this an open thread.

Time Series Homeopathy

Recently Doug Keenan has again taken up the cudgels against the Met Office with backing from the usual suspects and indeed, the Met Office has taken a decision not to engage further.  While the Met Office thinks that some things Keenan says are interesting and very brave, with the greatest respect and they will hear what he says and bear it in mind, well, they choose not to devote further time to dealing with him.  A feature of these attacks are Keenan's claims that the best time series analysts tend to be in finance (see comment).  This, of course, is something that Richard Tol also firmly believes, giving rise to an hilarious disputation over at ATTP.

Eli has thought about this for a while and concluded that Keenan's claims about time series analysts in the financial industry are a clear reference to chartists, which happen to be the homeopaths of stock pricing.  There is no there there, only a few lucky winners when they roll up the sidewalks

The End of This Road

Many have remarked about how hot the world is this year.  Not too surprising given the shift to a strong El Nino, with the global temperature anomaly moving up.  Some have proclaimed it the end of the "hiatus"

Global warming continues apace. The pause button is broken. https://t.co/yqKv5Mvcre

— Simon Donner (@simondonner) August 15, 2015

whatsoever the hiatus may be.

Ethically this is a problem.  While Eli has always warned that global warming driving climate change is a sure thing, or as close to sure as you get these days, the outcomes are not going to be pretty.  Many people are going to be seriously hurt, so what should one's attitude towards those who have spent their time belittling the IPCC, and climate science, and preaching delay in one sauce or another.

Not simple.  Eli is of the opinion that reminding comes before forgiveness.

Irrelevance

RWE (Rheinisch-Westfälischen Elektrizitätswerk) is one of the largest electrical power companies in biggest soft coal (aka dirt or lignite) mining operations in the world.  It is also home base for Fritz Varenholt, one of Germany's most active solar fans (nonono, not wind energy, he don't like that or solar power either, but the sun, the sun, not greenhouse gases are the thing for Fritz).  Anyhow RWE is in big trouble because of the Energiewende, folks are not paying as much for what they make because they are using less of it and RWE is deep into coal and gas power generators.
Germany and operators of one of the largest lignite (brown coal, aka dirt) mines in the world

The Sueddeutsche brings news of a major reorganization typical of a failing concern that had overexpanded in the fat times.  Many of the 100 formerly more or less independently operating subsidiaries, with their own boards, are being hovered up into 32 and what is left will be directly controlled by the mothership. The command module will, of course, expand.  The large pink elephant of a headquarters building has been sold off, from which bunnies gather that they are turning stuff into cash as fast as they can.

What will make this change hard is that RWE has large public ownership, the cities of the Ruhr own great chunks of stock and depend on the profits cast off from the company for significant parts of their budget and, of course, while upper management grows, employment will shrink, which makes the unions happy.

Eli was thinking of this today when he read a re tweet from 350.org

Municipal investments in climate killer @RWE_AG should be a thing of the past. #Divest http://t.co/0QGLlWS0kB pic.twitter.com/SJoC4zjHtA

— Fossil Free De (@FossilFreeDe) August 11, 2015

Dortmund, Essen and the like are too deeply dug into RWE to get out.  OTOH, the fat times are over.  The lignite mines may have taken their last church.

"You can see it and you can feel it"

Starts about 15 seconds in:

"We can see it and we can feel it - hotter summers, rising sea levels, extreme weather events like stronger storms, deeper droughts, and longer wildfire seasons, all disasters that are becoming more frequent, more expensive, and more dangerous."

More backing for my argument that climate communication to the public should use the "can feel it in your bones" approach. Obama is talking about things people can experience directly and compare to their past.

I liked the next part too:

"Our own families have experienced it too - over the past three decades asthma rates have more than doubled and as temperatures keep warming, smog gets worse, and those Americans will be in even greater risk of landing in the hospital."

He's making clear that climate change is a direct risk to the listener and that person's family.

Two other comments on the Clean Power Plan:  first, nice piece by Simon Lazarus at Balkinization pointing out that the new standard for more active judicial review in the Obamacare case could affect review of whether the CPP is legal. One on hand it means less deference to agency interpretation, potentially bad for CPP since the agency interpretation is what makes CPP work. On the other, the new review pushes judges to interpret the law in a way that makes the law work, and the whole point of CPP in providing flexibility is to make the law work more effectively. So let's hope for the best.

Second, missing in the whole discussion of existing power plants is a reworking of the rule for new power plants. New coal plants would have to incorporate carbon sequestration. Good luck with that, although Clean Coal proponents keep talking about it. Their own talk can be used against them when they litigate on the basis that it's unrealistic.

Alternatives to the Iran Deal

Somewhat Realistic:

New Deal - one with less restrictions on Iran. This deal gets negotiated by countries other than the US. The US continues sanctions, so Iran is only willing to agree to a deal that provides fewer economic benefits because the new deal imposes fewer restrictions.

No New Deal Version 1 - sanctions fall apart, with the US and maybe some other countries continuing sanctions, while China, Russia, and many others end sanctions. Iran takes detected and undetected steps towards a nuclear weapon but doesn't explode a device over the next 10-15 years. The US wisely decides against a military attack to "stop" progress towards a bomb, and Israel wisely decides it can't effectively stop Iranian nuclear bomb progress on its own.

No New Deal Version 2 - same as Version 1 except that US and possibly Israel bomb Iran. In Iran public support coalesces around hardline opposition to the Great Satan, reinvigorating the aggressive theocrats for another 20-30 years. Theocrats vow to rebuild the nuclear program and more support for terrorist groups, insurgencies, and Assad in Syria. In 3-5 years Iran explodes a nuclear device (or possibly, just build their nuclear weapon capability without finalizing it via a test).

No New Deal Version 3 - same as Version 2 except that a year after the first bombing, the US bombs again to destroy the rebuilt nuclear program and thereafter continues periodic bombing along with continuous attacks to degrade Iran's air defense capability. Other consequences of Version 3's long-term low-grade warfare are unpredictable but likely to be unpleasant.


Very Unlikely:

Renegotiated Deal Version 1 - the facesaver. After getting voted down in Congress, the US gets some very minor tweaks that provide political cover for enough Congressmembers to finally support it.

Renegotiated Deal Version 2 - The Unicorn! During a last-minute attempt at renegotiation after Congress votes the original deal down, somebody thinks of an approach that no one had thought of before that makes the deal somewhat better in restricting nuclear development while still being acceptable to Iran.

Same Deal Minus the US - Iran is so desperate to lift sanctions from other countries that it renegotiates a similar deal as before with a few facesaving changes, despite continuation of sanctions from the US.

One-off Military Attack - this is not the Military Unicorn believed in by the John Boltons of the world. Instead this is similar to the Somewhat Realistic, No New Deal Version 2 except that after a single military attack on its nuclear program, Iran decides to discontinue it, AND to get revenge by other means such as vastly expanded support for terrorists and insurgencies. Very hard to see why Iran would do this, given that the attacks just build public support for hardliners. Maybe they decide to put Iran's economic interest ahead of their own political interests. This is Very Unlikely.


Conclusion:  

None of the realistic alternatives are better than the current deal. Only one of the very unrealistic options, The Unicorn Renegotiated Deal, is better, and it's both hard to imagine it being that much better while being much more likely to end up as one of the worse alternatives.

The View From Goresat

Al Gore conceived Triana as a satellite that would inspire us to see the Earth as our one world to cherish and protect, but Eli doubts that even he foresaw the latest image from NASA showing the moon crossing the Earth orb.

1 Samuel 17:46, Two Miracles and a Trampoline

Rud Istvan, playing the arrogant physicist par excellance at Curry's Climate Stand and DotEarth sent his "devastating critique" on the new Hansen, et al paper off to Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions stepping right into Dsquared's parlor on the nature of "devastating critiques"

@whinecough paradigmatically, it involves holding up something as a Fatal Flaw [tm] which was actually mentioned by the authors

— Dan Davies (@dsquareddigest) July 31, 2015

Istvan's comment at ACPD denigrates both the Hansen et al paper and David Archer's requested review on the grounds of there being no evidence for abrupt sea level rise in the Eemian, but rather than a dry recitation of the gist, allow Eli to simply quote Istvan

Archer’s comment shows how lax the climate science community has become about it’s ’Facts’. Archer, a Hansen paper reviewer, says the Eemian showed abrupt SLR the way Hansen models for the Holocene with CAGW, which gives the paper strong support. And then goes on about further support from WAIS observations such as Hansen co-author Rignot’s recent findings.  

Archer is sadly and quite provably mistaken on both counts. 

In particular Istvan does the rant on about a paper by Michal O'Leary, et al on "Ice sheet collapse following a prolonged period ofstable sea level during the last interglacial"

The two papers finding abrupt Eemian SLR are both geologically flawed. The Australian (O’Leary et.al.) paper that Archer refers to and which Hansen discusses extensively is so flawed it comprises a fairly clear case of academic misconduct. The flaws and the probable misconduct in the misrepresentation of its figure 3 are exposed in illustrated detail with references in essay By Land or By Sea in ebook Blowing Smoke. Incorporated herein by reference 

Along the Western Australian coast O'Leary, et al measure a sudden (like 100 yrs or less) ~5 m sea level rise roughly 118 kYr ago based on coral deposits.  They attribute this to a collapse of the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet.  The issue of rapid Eemian rise is of continuing interest not only for Hansen et al. but, for example, Pollard, deConto and Alley who model sea level rises of 5 m in 100 years from disappearance of Antarctic ice shelves alone.  However, as the stormy night in Scotland, this is not what interests us

Some, not Eli to be sure, might ask the bunnies to invest $7.99 in Rud's self published book but he has provided the argument on a certain blog.  After significant heavy breathing Istvan's Argument (IA below) is that tectonic activity could have pushed the land down to account for the apparent rise.  Indeed there was one location where this appeared to have happened, although nothing like the rapid sea level rise of 5 m that O'Leary found, and a considerable part of the O'Leary paper is spent dealing with this issue

The observed difference in the elevation of the lower shore platform compared with the upper marine units along the Western Australia coast has been variously attributed to localized tectonic uplift (13–15), isostatic deformation(16), or changes in ice volume (17,18) . We have demonstrated, based on the near-uniform elevation of the lower palaeo MSL datum, that there seems to have been minimal tectonic uplift or subsidence along the Western Australia coast since the last interglacial (Cape Cuvier being an exception). Although an early MIS 5e age [130 -115 kYr ago - ER] for the upper marine units would be indicative of a peak early isostatic highstand (plus a component of ESL rise), a late MIS 5e age can be indicative only of a eustatic jump in sea level. Therefore determining the age of the higher marine MIS 5e units relative to the age of the lower shore platform is critical to our understanding of sea-level variability and ice sheet sensitivity during MIS 5e.

So what is the shorter IA?

A single New Madrid like ‘event’ in the vicinity sometime between then and now could suffice

Now some, not Eli to be sure, might think that this would leave some trace in the geological record, but wait, it is not that alone, as Richard Telford contemporaneously pointed out at Quantpaleo

The authors write that the higher late last-interglacial shoreline is found across the southwest coast, but it is best represented along the 150-km-long Miocene Quobba Ridge, and it is here that all their dated corals are from. Istvar argues that an intra-plate earthquake analogous to the the 1811 New Madrid event could have displaced the shoreline on the Quobba Ridge. Istvar forgets the obvious. Firstly, this shoreline can be found across the region, not just in this one area. Secondly, if we invoke a large earthquake to lower the land at Quobba Ridge in the middle of 5e by 6m, this will disrupt the early 5e shoreline by 6m. As this shoreline is now approximately level, we need to invoke a second earthquake after stage 5e to raise the land back up again by 6m. 

What is Western Australia, a giant trampoline?

and in same vein at the last (and unanswered) comment at Climate Etc.

If you argue that tectonic activity at 119ka BP displaced the land by 6m, you need a second bout of tectonic activity after stage 5e to raise the land again so that the early stage 5e shoreline is ~flat. 

One massive intra-plate tectonic event is unlikely (it would need to be much larger than the New Madrid event). To have a second event that reverses the effects of the first event is implausible. The first event would have release all the stress, how could stress with the opposite sense have accumulated (and not overshot)?

A Speculation

John Quiggin at Crooked Timber discusses the increasing number of people who do not have a religious belief.  Eli speculates:

In the last 50 years, the ability of humans (well at least some humans) to explain and manipulate our planet and particularly the biosphere which supports us has grown to the point where as a practical matter religion is irrelevant or confounding to that understanding. In the last 20 years the availability of that information has grown to the point where that knowledge is available to most. What remains for religion is ethics, but even ethics does not require religion although for many it is useful.

A familiar legal faceplant

Rabett Run remembers David Schnare and the currently-monikered Free Market Environmental Law Clinic. At Legal Planet (good lawblog btw), I read about a 10th Circuit opinion that in no uncertain terms killed off a far-fetched attempt to say Colorado can't require some in-state use of renewable power because it buys power out of state and that would constitute governmental regulation across state boundaries. I went to the read the unanimous court opinion and only then found out who was involved.

Interestingly, the opinion was written by a Bush appointee who is the son of Ann Gorsuch, not someone likely to be a knee-jerk enviro. He was not amused by the arguments, writing the following:

Yes, the district court rejected all three arguments. But for reasons known only to it, [appellant] EELI has appealed just the district court’s disposition under Baldwin. So whether Colorado’s law survives the Pike or Philadelphia tests may be interesting questions, but they are ones that will have to await resolution in some other case some other day.

and

EELI’s contrary position would also risk serious problems of overinclusion. After all, if any state regulation that “control[s] . . . conduct” out of state is per se unconstitutional, wouldn’t we have to strike down state health and safety regulations that require out-of-state manufacturers to alter their designs or labels? See supra at 9. Certainly EELI offers no limiting principle that might prevent that possibility or others like it. Instead, it seems to embrace such results and, in this way, it seems to call on us not merely to respect the actual holdings of the most dormant authorities in all of dormant commerce clause jurisprudence but to revive and rebuild them on the basis of dicta into a weapon far more powerful than Pike or Philadelphia. That’s an audacious invitation we think the Court unlikely to take up, especially given its remarks about the limits of Baldwin doctrine in Walsh, and it’s a novel lawmaking project we decline to take up on our own.

That second issue in particular is telling. If you're going to try to get courts to extend the law in a new direction, you're more likely to win if you can tell the court that it's just a wee extension, almost perfectly justified by precedent, and clearly limited from making a hash of prior decisions. If instead you have visions of grandeur, you can take a different route, but it didn't work so well here.

I went to the Schnare's web page to look at their litigation victories, and I guess we can say they've been industrious about filing FOIA requests.

One other thing:  this type of litigation based on the dormant commerce clause is making use of classic judicial activism, but apparently that's no big deal.

Another look at Merchants of Doubt

Writing on the CounterPunch website, Louis Proyect reviews the 2010 book and the 2014 documentary film, Merchants of Doubt. Even though you may think the subject is exhausted by now, Louis Proyect's review has new insights. The two Freds (Fred Seitz and Fred Singer) play important roles, of course. But did you know that Fred Singer was once funded by the Unification Church and Rev. Sun Moon?? I didn't know that and I suspect many Rabett Run readers didn't know that, either.

Supplemental Materials

Eli is happy to present some supplemental materials expanding on a previous post and more

@whinecough "devastating critique" is my word for when half-bright self-appointed science police get on the case of actual researchers

— Dan Davies (@dsquareddigest) July 31, 2015

@whinecough paradigmatically, it involves holding up something as a Fatal Flaw [tm] which was actually mentioned by the authors

— Dan Davies (@dsquareddigest) July 31, 2015

@whinecough & then it's always "oh I was just raising wider issues WHY HAS THIS BECOME SO PERSONALISED"

— Dan Davies (@dsquareddigest) July 31, 2015

Shortly after coming across these, via a tweet from MT, now back at the old Only in it for the Gold stand, the Bunny happened on a post by Jeff Rouner in the Houston Press,  "No its not your opinion, you are just wrong".  It begins with a quote from Mick Cullen

I have had so many conversations or email exchanges with students in the last few years wherein I anger them by indicating that simply saying, "This is my opinion" does not preclude a connected statement from being dead wrong. It still baffles me that some feel those four words somehow give them carte blanche to spout batshit oratory or prose. And it really scares me that some of those students think education that challenges their ideas is equivalent to an attack on their beliefs. -Mick Cullen

Rouner points out that many things people claim as their opinion are actually statements about facts, and facts are not opinions.  Some things are opinions, such as Eli believing that carrots are the most superior food stuff.

There’s nothing wrong with an opinion on those things. The problem comes from people whose opinions are actually misconceptions. If you think vaccines cause autism you are expressing something factually wrong, not an opinion. The fact that you may still believe that vaccines cause autism does not move your misconception into the realm of valid opinion. Nor does the fact that many others share this opinion give it any more validity.

He continues

And yes, sometimes scientific or historical data is wrong or unclear or in need of further examination. Everyone knows water expands when it freezes. Do you know why it does that? when literally nothing else in the world does? Nope, and neither does science.[ *See correction below and related article] Or hey, here’s a question; what was the racial heritage of the Ancient Egyptians because historians can’t come to a consensus;and Egyptian art is too stylized to accurately judge.

Eli and several others pointed out that yes, science and a lot of people know why water expands when it freezes, and Jeff added a correction.  A very important correction, not for what it said about water, but for what it said about how misconceptions can and should be corrected.

* Correction:  I did get something wrong in the article. I said that science didn’t know why water was the only substance that expands when it cools. Turns out water is one of the few substances that expands while it cools, not the only one, and that we do know the reason it expands. I took finding this out with chagrin and further proof of my point that we all have much to learn. My opinion was based on bad data. Now it’s not.

This, to Eli is a major point, that one has to recognize one's own limits.  This is so unusual that one can only point to the title of Michael's most recent post:  They concede nothing, they can't

A Matter of Ethics

The open review of the Hansen, et al  paper on sea level rise has, as they say, gone nuclear, with the arrival of Andy Revkin and the local Dragon Slayer rep.  In that context Eli sees little difference between the two.

Reviewing papers is a matter of ethics.  First you don't review papers if you have any conflicts of interest with the authors.  Second you don't review papers if you are not an expert in the field.  In both cases you send the papers back to the editor with a polite note indicating the reason. 

The first is a question of fairness, the second a question of not making a fool of yourself and wasting everyone's time.  In either case you may have an opinion, but that's it.  It is YOUR opinion

As dsquared said on Twitter:  "devastating critique" is my word for when half-bright self-appointed science police get on the case of actual researchers.

Turn in your badge Andy.

What Fish Need is Bicycles - BPL

Title changed from Choking the Fish

While there has been considerable discussion of desorbing carbon dioxide from the warming oceans, less, to literally none, has been paid to the stuff that sea life breaths.  This, it turns out, could be of even more importance because oxygen concentrations in the ocean are not buffered in the same way that CO2 is as part of a complex series of chemical equilibria.

Oxygen behaves as a nearly ideal gas, whose concentration is controlled by Henry's Law and currents, the currents determining how well mixed it is, and among other things the depth profile.  For those who forgot, Henry's Law says that the concentration of gas well mixed into a liquid, C, is proportional to the partial pressure of the gas above the liquid, p,

C = k(T) p

where k(T) is a function of the temperature and the molecular identity of the gas.  For the purpose of this post, all one needs to know is that as temperature increases k(T) decreases, so the concentration of the gas in the liquid decreases also.  The van't Hoff equation can be used to calculate k(T).

ADDED: To provide an idea of how the maximum concentration of oxygen in water varies with temperature, the figure to the right shows the non-linear nature of the van't Hoff equation

In Science Deutsch, Ferrel, Seibel, Poertner and Huey, work out the consequences of a warming ocean on the ability of fish to breathe.

Warming of the oceans and consequent loss of dissolved oxygen (O2) will alter marine ecosystems, but a mechanistic framework to predict the impact of multiple stressors on viable habitat is lacking. Here, we integrate physiological, climatic, and biogeographic data to calibrate and then map a key metabolic index—the ratio of O2 supply to resting metabolic O2 demand—across geographic ranges of several marine ectotherms. These species differ in thermal and hypoxic tolerances, but their contemporary distributions are all bounded at the equatorward edge by a minimum metabolic index of ~2 to 5, indicative of a critical energetic requirement for organismal activity. The combined effects of warming and O2 loss this century are projected to reduce the upper ocean’s metabolic index by ~20% globally and by ~50% in northern high-latitude regions, forcing poleward and vertical contraction of metabolically viable habitats and species ranges.

There is an editor's summary which puts this a bit more forcefully

It is well known that climate change will warm ocean waters, but dissolved oxygen levels also decrease as water warms. Deutsch et al. combined data on metabolism, temperature, and demographics to determine the impact of marine deoxygenation on a variety of fish and crustacean species (see the Perspective by Kleypas). Predicted climate and oxygen conditions can be expected to contract the distribution of marine fish poleward, as equatorward waters become too low in oxygen to support their energy needs. Furthermore, even the more-poleward waters will have reduced oxygen levels.

Deutsch and co. looked at how the oxygen content would shift populations of cod, seabream, eelpout and rock crab.  They define a metabolic index Φ as the ratio of the available partial pressure of oxygen to the oxygen needed by a resting sea critter. When Φ = 1, about all a fish can do is float.  OTOH, for Φ < 1 the fish has to go somewhere else to be able to survive.  The figure below shows how this shifts under RCP 8.5 in 100 years from the generic 2000 to 2100.

To concentrate the mind, this is just a map of what happens because of a decreasing concentration of oxygen in the oceans, not changes in pH, pollution and other things.  This is also for the oceans, where there is a place to go.  Aquatic life in lakes and rivers can't for the most part pull up the moving van, and there are indications that the same sort of deoxygenation is happening there.  Consider the implications of "Globally significant greenhouse gas emissions from African inland waters" by Borges, et al.

ADDED:  Victor V at Variable Variability has more on how lakes are warming worldwide.  The implications for the things that live in them are not good unless fish are planning to grow legs.

Play it again Uncle Sam - climate action for the next president without Congressional approval

I was going to write about Clinton's initial climate plan and still will, but I got distracted with a plagiarism proposal I want to suggest. Much of her plan requires Congressional approval, and we all now how problematic that will be. What can be done without it?

I think the answer is a lot - just by doing more of what we're already doing, by plagiarizing Obama's Clean Power and making it stricter. More specifically, wait until the Clean Power Plan has cleared all its legal hurdles, and then set up the sequel.

It's not all the easy to find the guts of the CPP, but it's here (starting on page 8). A modified version of each state's predicted baseline carbon emission rate per MWh is established, and here (page 34837, assuming I've read it correctly) each plant has to meet that average rate or find a way to offset the excess, possibly through some state-established system. If all the above-average emission facilities have to get to average levels in some form, then the total emissions go down.

CPP tries not to be arbitrary, so making it tougher in a non-arbitrary way presents a challenge. OTOH, one factor in determining the predicted baseline rate is each state's future Renewable Portfolio Standard (see first link, page 15). If instead of using the individual RPS, the EPA applies the best-in-class RPS from a similarly-situated state, then that could significantly knock down the baseline average emission that plants would have to match.

Figuring out the best-in-class is somewhat flexible, but you could look at every state with a similar or worse level of existing percentage of renewables, take the one that has the highest RPS for the future, and determine that to be the best-in-class. This wouldn't force each state to match the toughest RPS, because they could find other ways to reduce carbon emissions.

This is my version of the "if ain't broke, do it some more" rule. Regardless, serious presidential candidates need to say what they will do on climate change if Congress doesn't cooperate with reality.

The Search for Terrestrial Intelligence

ATTP points to another pontification by the good Roger Pielke Jr., which as usual misses the point,
however, in fairness ATTP hisself also whiffs a bit.

Today a self proclaimed expert on football and FIFA (it is corrupt, something that Eli agrees with), Roger wanders into the SETI world.  However, there too, Ethon's food group betrays his lacks with the Pielke like set-up

Upon hearing of the new project, called Breakthrough Listen

Eli thought about this a bit.  Does anybunny associated with the Breakthrough Institute take time out from ceaseless self promotion to listen?  Sadly no, but it turns out that the Listeners are another bunch what has snagged them a rich Russian to fund a SETI project to the dismay of Shellenberger, Nordhaus the Lesser and Pielke the Jr. fudraising being the major industry of the Breakthrough types.

Jr. continues

I was reminded, of all things, of a recent prison break. Last month two convicted murders escaped from a New York prison. They had spent months carefully planning and executing their escape, which involved cutting and digging their way through walls, pipes and concrete. Remarkably, however, the pair gave little thought to what they would do if they actually succeeded in their plans. The consequence of the lack of planning was a short effort to flee from authorities followed by the death of one prisoner and re-capture of the other by authorities.

Well, no.  They suborned a prison worker to be waiting there on the outside with an automobile which would whisk them away.  Unfortunately for them, she got cold feet and was not waiting outside the manhole cover they popped out of.

Having taken literary license, Roger then draws the ill logical conclusion

The search for extra-terrestrial life shares some similarities. We are investing considerable attention and resources into the search, but little into thinking about the consequences of success.

But, of course, in the scheme of things relatively little resources have been spent on SETI, much of which has been analyzing astronomical radio telescope signals taken for and funded by astronomers for their purposes while bootlegging time on personal computers. And yes, people have thought of the consequences from early times as any reader of science fiction or the scientific literature would know. Tailoring of reality to fit one's needs is good sport in Boulder

Roger Jr. uses his fabrication view of the world as an introduction to a puff piece on an old science fiction theme, e.g. we should not shout out into the universe because things like Willard Anthony and Mark Morano, e.g. the deeply evil looking for an opportunity to take the fish, might be listening.

ATTP takes this up.  Discussion ensues about how to do SETI, is there a risk in listening, etc.

However all parties appear (Eli has not read all the comments) not to have noticed that in the last few years the SETI game has changed.  We no longer have to search everywhere.  Planet finding technology will allow those SETI bucks to be burned listening to or beaming out to stars that have earth like planets, today in the sense of being in the habitable zone and being rocky, and coming real soon having an atmosphere, even an oxygen rich one.  Maybe more.

Fraud via proxy still seems fraudy.

A puzzled Stoat asks what's the big deal and what's new about revelations that Exxon picked up on climate change issues back in 1981 while funding climate deniers for many years after.

I'll note by response that first those are two separate questions - even if you think it's not particularly news, that doesn't eliminate the problem for Exxon

The real issue as I see it is if Exxon has been trying to spread messages it knows aren't true - that's called fraud, and that's what got the tobacco companies in trouble. Paying someone to commit your fraud for you is no magic shield from liability.

There's this quote at Stoat (but not by Stoat):

Exxon NEVER denied the potential for humans to impact the climate system. It did question ‐ legitimately, in my opinion ‐ the validity of some of the science…

Well, I'm not sure that's an accurate statement, but again it doesn't matter too much if you're using someone else to do your denial for you.

Proving to a judge and jury that's what Exxon did isn't necessarily simple though. It's not Exxon speaking directly, so you'd have to show that Exxon is promoting that speech. Funding climate-denying politicians could just be because Exxon likes their bold stances in favor of motherhood and apple pie. Climate-denying non-profits that exist to do little else could be more problematic. Being able to subpoena documents could really clear this stuff up in terms of nailing down what the motivation was.

Via the Ubiquitous John Mashey, I see Scripps did a forum on the tobacco/climate connection from a few years back. I'm going to have to look at it in depth, but there's this:

A key breakthrough in the public and legal case for tobacco control came when internal documents came to light showing the tobacco industry had knowingly misled the public. Similar documents may well exist in the vaults of the fossil fuel industry and their trade associations and front groups, and there are many possible approaches to unearthing them.

We might have the first stage of this internal documentation with the latest info on what Exxon knew in 1981. Maybe we'll find out more.

An honest (well for Eli) question

For some odd reason, maybe it was the slow season, Retraction Watch has caught up with the Journal of Economic Prospectives latest gremlin whacker (gremlins being the newest moles), aka correction of Richard Tol's 2009 article on the costs of climate change.  Eli, of course, being the quick and dirty bunny he is had already had a say, but there remain things both interesting, perplexing and concerning about the paper, and indeed all of the papers that Richard cites for his paper, best seen in the figure displayed in the gremlin whacker linked above

and the supplementary Table 10-1 can be found in the supplementary material appended to the WGII report.

 The problem is that neither the discussion in the original paper, the WGII or pretty much anywhere else,  does not reference baselines for each calculation or for the conglomeration of calculations.

This of course is irrelevant to the question of whether IAM calculations are worth a bucket of warm spit (this being a family blog, which a few exceptions when Dad Rabett goes nuclear).

The serious question is what is the baseline for each study and which sets the zero of the temperature scale?  Did Poor Richard align the baseline for all the calculations.  For which is the baseline pre-industrial (in which case the world is now past Tol’s outlying positive point at 1.0 C), 1860 or so when instrumental records start in which case the world is pretty close to it, or some more recent time, in which case, another couple of degrees would, at least according to Tol, have little effect.

Eli notes that Chris Field Hope's model, which underlies the Stern report, appears to be making a differential calculation, which, also raises some interesting Couéen questions by itself.  Or, on the other hand, is there some agreed zero that you need to have the secret handshake to know about.

Eli has an honest question here.  Maybe.

Best Tweet Evah

Sandra Boynton is one, maybe the only, joy of Twitter.  Follow that cartoonist.

Rise above. pic.twitter.com/Vkdx8O6bEF

— Sandra Boynton (@SandyBoynton) July 22, 2015

Pictures from Goresat

Goresat, aka DSCVR has reached the Lagrange point and started sending back pictures of the Earth

Eli has been a fan of Goresat since it was Triana and is happy to see Al Gore's vision realized

setting records

Over and over again, the deniers claim that "Global warming has stopped". Show them this article including a very instructive graphic. The world climate is setting temperature records. Actually, smashing them.

Cascadia quake and climate correlations

New Yorker's article on the exposure of the Pacific Northwest to a massive quake and tsunami is well worth the read. I used to live there and knew they're equivalently vulnerable to quakes as we are in California, and much less prepared. I didn't know about the tsunami danger.

The correlations I see between this issue and climate are in the seriousness of risk, timescale, and effort needed to respond to the problem. Overall Cascadia may have an even greater problem with the quake and tsunami than they/we have with climate change - the long tail of risk includes immediate catastrophe as a possibility. If they/we are lucky for the next 50 years, taking action on both mitigating emissions and tsunami-proofing our coastal areas without a catastrophe hitting, my guess is the cost of tsunami-proofing in the region would be higher than mitigating and adapting to climate change.

One other overlap is that one way to adapt to tsunamis is to relocate away from sea level, at least with your most vulnerable communities and critical infrastructure, and that will help with sea level rise as well. Finally, they are doing something to deal with this problem, just not doing enough.

Having said all that, one thing that did bother me with the article is that some things seemed exaggerated. Getting knocked over by ankle-deep running water? Call me skeptical. Same thing with Sacramento's alleged vulnerability to tsunamis - I'd like to get learn more about this, but I do know that there are two constriction points between the city and the ocean (Golden Gate and Carquinez Strait) and lots of room for water to spread. Hopefully the other risks aren't exaggerated.

Climate confusion

According to a UPI dispatch, Prof. Valentina Zharkova, of the University of Northumbria predicts that the Sun’s output will decrease by 60% by 2030, triggering a mini ice age. This is just 15 years in the future.

However, this prediction smells like bunk to me.

The normal fluctuation in the Sun's intensity, the 11-year sunspot cycle, has an amplitude of about 0.1%. By comparison, 60% is huge.

If the Sun's output decreased by 60%, what would be the resulting change in the Earth's temperature??

Here's a very rough estimate. Assume that the surface temperature is proportional to the Suns power output, raised to the 1/4 power.

Then a decrease of the Sun’s output by 60% would cause a new temperature proportional to

(1.0 - 0.6)^0.25 = (0.4)^0.25 = 0.79,

which means a decrease of 21% in the absolute (Kelvin) temperature.

Since the surface temperature is about 15 C or 288 K, the change in temperature of 21% is about 60 degrees C. It only took a decrease of about 7 or 8 C to cause the last Ice Age!!

The estimate could of course be refined, but it would not change the conclusion: If the Sun's output decreases by 60%, it would cause an extremely cold ice age.

IF (and it could be a big "IF") UPI* has accurately represented Prof. Zkarkova accurately,

then there are only two possibilities:

if Zharkova is right, the Earth is doomed to freeze to death in 15 years.

Or Zharkova could be mistaken.

*Dunno if it's still true, but at one time, UPI was owned by Rev. Sun Myung Moon and the Unification Church, who do not exactly have a great reputation for accuracy.

Ezra Kleinian hippie-distancing

A version of something I wrote on email struck a chord with some folks regarding the assertion "GMOs are safe":

The term "safe" should be bifurcated into "safe for human health" and "safe for the general environment".  

GMOs are health-safe so far, with complications regarding farmworkers exposure to pesticide. There are serious concerns and reasons to proceed cautiously on environmental safety, especially for genetic contamination of wild relatives of domestic plants and animals.  

 I think there's a "cool kids" attitude among some, the Ezra Klein types, that tries to show how they're not old-school dirty hippies by expressing love of GMOs.

Incidentally, the term "safe to eat" is carefully chosen - many people conflate that as "safe for people" or just "safe", when it's a nice dodge around the issue of farmworkers' increased exposure to herbicides.*

I think there's also a broader issue here that connects to Ecomodernism and its unhealthy relationship to the unnatural. They're not quite hippie-punching, but they definitely want to show a distance. So to them being unnatural is either everything to be avoided on the natural side of the earth that is to be decoupled from humanity, or nothing to be worried about (and maybe even encouraged) on the parts of the planet where the human footprint should dominate.

Unnatural is a something that needs to be considered, not an everything or a nothing. Unnatural means we can't rely on experience and must rely on our feeble brains instead:

To some, [Ecomodernism] carries a whiff of triumphalism. “For a long time, I’ve been a card-carrying pragmatist about environmental issues, but the pragmatism of the Breakthrough Institute is a pragmatism I don’t recognize,” Ben Minteer, a professor of environmental ethics at Arizona State University and a co-editor of the new anthology “After Preservation,” told me. “I don’t see any of the humility or caution that’s such a central part of pragmatism.”

That doesn't mean don't go ahead, but rather as John Mashey says, "proceed with caution". And maybe don't proceed in some cases - I wouldn't plant GMO crops in regions where the wild originator of the domesticated plant exists, or where the plant spreads widely as a weed.

Unnatural indicates caution in other ways, with nuclear power as an example. The unnatural concentration of long-term radioactive waste is a problem, not something we have experience or even a geological record to understand how it may go wrong in future millenia. Still, it's a limited problem with a limited geographic scope. I'd put it a distant third in terms of the problems of nuclear power, after the distant second of catastrophic accidents, and the by-far number one problem that nuclear costs way too much.

Considering unnaturalness can be done, pragmatically acknowledging our limitations while not letting them control all we do. Ecomodernism misses this.



*GMOs may also result in farmworkers being less exposed to more poisonous herbicides, and to some insecticides. It's complicated, making "safe to eat" a not very comprehensive vision.

Moral Derpitude

With the summer doldrums, ATTP going to conferences and the Greek crisis, it becomes necessary for Eli to borrow seriously in order to maintain paid readership (Damn Eli needs to monetize this blog but Brian will demand a cut).  Thus by way of Crooked Timber, Noah Smith on definitive derpiness, a subject he has deeply studied

It has to do with Bayesian probability. Bayesian probability basically says that "probability" is, to some degree, subjective. It's your best guess for how likely something is. But to be Bayesian, your "best guess" must take the observable evidence into account. Updating your beliefs by looking at the outside world is called "Bayesian inference. Your initial guess about the probability is called your "prior belief", or just your "prior" for short. Your final guess, after you look at the evidence, is called your "posterior." The observable evidence is what changes your prior into your posterior.

How much does the evidence change your belief? That depends on three things. It depends on A) how different the evidence is from your prior, B) how strong the evidence is, and C) how strong your prior is.

What does it mean for a prior to be "strong" really, really believe something to be true. If your start off with a very strong prior, even solid evidence to the contrary won't change your mind. In other words, your posterior will come directly from your prior. (And where do priors come from? On this, Bayesian theory is silent. Let's assume they come directly from your...um...posterior.)

There are many people who have very strong priors about things. For example, there are people who believe, very strongly, that solar power will never be cost-efficient. If you confront them with evidence of solar's rapid price declines, they will continue to insist that, despite this evidence, solar will simply never be cost-competitive with fossil fuels. That they continue to insist this does not necessarily make them irrational in the Bayesian sense; they simply have very strong priors. Someday they may be convinced - for example, if and when unsubsidized solar power starts being adopted on a mass scale. It'll just take a LOT to convince them. (A more entertaining example can be seen in this classic comedy video)

But here's the thing: When those people keep broadcasting their priors to the world again and again after every new piece of evidence comes out, it gets very annoying. After every article comes out about a new solar technology breakthrough, or a new cost drop, they'll just repeat "Solar will never be cost-competitive." That is unhelpful and uninformative, since they're just restating their priors over and over. Thus, it is annoying. Guys, we know what you think already.

English has no word for the constant, repetitive reiteration of strong priors". Yet it is a well-known phenomenon in the world of punditry, debate, and public affairs. On Twitter, we call it "derp"

Go read Noah and the comments

The Amazon is Cool

Well, it's summer in the North, and the birds are singing, the bunnies, well, you know what, and people all over are sweating.  It has been particularly bad in Europe, the Western US, and disastrous in South Asia, both India and Pakistan.

As Eli could have told you the search is on for excuses, especially in light of new papers which attribute and increase in heat waves to climate change.  Some, not Eli to be sure, recommend very large air conditioners to handle the problem.   ARPA-E has been working on that, well along the line of solar and thermal driven units, not extra jumbos, and there is progress.

Others, actually the same some playing the others card, are going the ostrich route, nothing happening here, move on.  This has lead to a cheerful back and forth between La Curry and El Tamino.  Curry posted some slides from a talk by NOAA's Prashant Sardeshmukh describing shifts in mean temperature and the standard deviation of the temperature distribution and coming to the conclusion that there has been no increase in heat waves.

Now to be honest there are some issues with this.  First, the slides only deal with changes in December-January-February, which is the northern hemisphere winter (Yes, Eli knows about Australia and the newly popular concern of some of those who block the Bunny's tweets with Africa) but most land and most people find themselves in the northern hemisphere, which, also is where they get hit by heat waves during the summer.  Oh yeah, it's real TLT out there, the temperatures are from the 850 mbar level where no one is hot because of the lapse rate, and from reanalyses, not measurements.  Of course Eli expects that such manipulation would not be allowed in the blogs of denial.  Eli is often disappointed

Curry shows a slide of temperature distributions by Sardeshmukh defining a heat wave as when the temperature exceeds a fixed limit.  Curry then shows a slide by Sardeshmukh showing the global distribution of temperature changes,

and the global distribution of the change in the width of the temperature distributions

and, then what Sardeshmukh purports to be the probability of a heat wave

Red is increase, blue decrease.  Apologies to the color blind and Doug McNeall will be here in a moment.  Somewhat seriously, Uncle Rabett was so color blind that you could not let him out of the house without checking his dress, which often followed an early Rowan and Martin theme if not examined by Aunt Rabett.  There has to be a color shifting app to handle that.

Eli will let Tamino, who noticed this explain in detail, why this is sausage.  If you look at the little box on the right, it is an area where both the temperature and the width of the distribution go up, but the probability of a heat wave, according to Sardeshnukh go down.

How is this done, well, according to Curry, lots of air conditioners are installed as the world warms and this means that for a "real" heat wave the temperature at which one is declared, goes up too.

Go read the tweets and especially Tamino's two posts (one, two)  Sardeshnukh has weighed in at Curry's claiming that he did define heat waves as being past the post at a fixed temperature, and Tamino is asking (politely, as Mozart would) for the data.

Curry, however, was at least this morning, of Tamino's opinion about what Sardeshnukh had done

Tamino’s argument is essentially a quibble about how heat waves are defined, there are various definitions

For the heat wave forecasts that my company provides to the energy sector, so they can anticipate high energy demand, we define heat wave in terms of the standard deviation above the climatological mean for that location (we use 1.5 standard deviations for the energy demand applications, whereas Sardeshmukh used 2 standard deviations). For our heat wave forecasts in Ahmedabad India, we use specified temperature thresholds. Other definitions are tied to a specific temperature increment, e.g. 5C above daily average.

Sardeshmukh’s analysis uses two different baseline temps: one prior to 1950 and the other post 1950, and then calculates deviations from those means. His whole point is that the standard deviation and skewness changes can dominate, resulting in fewer large excursions from the mean.

As Tamino said in his first post

Which makes me wonder, what the hell is going on? If he was trying to emphasize that we can’t use the change in mean and standard deviation to understand the 2-sigma exceedance, well duh. When the mean goes up and the standard deviation goes up and you change the limit to define “extreme” temperature, you should expect nothing less.

All this will play out relatively quickly, but it did inspire Eli to play a bit with the temperature and standard deviation figures above using (shudder Powerpoint, which has some interesting features.  By sharpening up the colors and overlaying the two figures One can make out areas where both temperature and standard deviations changed in the same directions and in opposite directions

If they both increase, the color is red, if one increases and the other decreases purple.  There is ONLY one spot where both the temperature and the standard deviation decreased, right about at the mouth of the Amazon.