A Dark Fantasy

OK, I admit, I'm doing a lot of cutting and pasting here of late; my writing time is elsewhere.

But I really think this one needs to be shared. By Ray Pierrehumbert, from Science Fiction Atmospheres[PDF], Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 86, 696-698:

Despite these examples, and a few others, ”Atmospheric Science Fiction”
remains largely unexploited territory, at least in comparison to astrophysics,
and (recently) nano- and bio- tech. ... how about this one, verging on the world
of fantasy: A cult of philosophers discovers a subtle knife which can open
windows into the deep interior of the planet, bringing to the surface potent
black fluids or solids whose energy transforms society and makes everybody
more powerful than they could ever have dreamed of previously. But just
when everybody is most hooked by the Dark Power, a lonely savant discovers
that its use releases a substance that threatens to tear asunder the very fab-
ric of the planet’s habitable climate. At first, like Dr. Thomas Stockmann
in Ibsen’s Enemy of the People he is scorned and shunned, but eventually
(unlike the case of poor Stockmann) the greatest savants and wizards of the
world come to realize that he is right. Despite this, the faction favoring
the Dark Power has the upper hand. The emperor of the most powerful
kingdom on the planet dismisses the threat of Dark Power, and even wishes
to use the subtle knife to expose more, in hitherto sacred areas of the Far
North. In the innermost council chambers, the closest counselors to the em-
peror wave about propagandistic fictionalized accounts casting doubt on the
threat of Dark Power, unable or unwilling to distinguish fabrication from
reality. Meanwhile, inexorably, the world keeps getting warmer. No, that
plot line is too improbable – and too scary. Better not go there.

SwiftHack Pushback Site

Just got this in the mail:

I wanted to make sure you saw Swifthack.com, which I launched this morning.

SwiftHack.com offers dozens of links daily to reality-based news and analysis related to the ClimateGate story. The site will serve as an informal clearinghouse for pushback against the rapidly developing SwiftHack smear campaign against climate science.

Scientists, advocates, activists, bloggers and journalists have begun the important work of educating their audiences on the true story of ClimateGate -- the latest iteration of a decades-long smear campaign against climate science).

SwiftHack.com intends to be a repository of such efforts. With talks now underway in Copenhagen, correcting the false narratives being pushed by an army of oil-funded deniers is especially critical.

I need your help to make this site successful. First and foremost, email ideas, tips, blog posts and news headlines to swifthack at gmail d0t c0m. Second, please help spread the word about the site however you can.

Thanks for all that you do.

Josh Nelson
EnviroKnow.com

Update: Most of the links were removed above because the paste bollixed them up. (Thanks Oliver!) The remaining ones are tested. I kept the Jeff Masters "ClimateGate" one because it's one you shouldn't miss if you are still focused on these events.

Tempest, Meet Teapot

Tempest:

Richard North's idea is to take the ratio of Google web hits to Google News hits; he gets 22.5 million web hits vs. 46,025 news hits for Tiger Woods (a ratio of 489), and compares some other topics (some of them a bit UK-centric):

1. Climategate: 28,400,000 – 2,930 = 9693
2. Afghanistan: 143,000,000 – 154,145 = 928
3. Obama: 202,000,000 – 252,583 = 800
4. Tiger Woods: 22,500,000 – 46,025 = 489
5. Gordon Brown: 12,300,000 – 37,021 = 332
6. Climate change: 22,200,000 – 68,419 = 324
7. Sally Bercow: 25,000 – 86 = 290
8. David Cameron: 545,000 – 4837 = 113
9. Meredith Kercher: 261,000 – 3,471 = 75
10. Chilcot Inquiry: 125,000 – 4,350 = 29

Teapot:

Via Mark Liberman, who elucidates here.

The statistic indicates a lot of interest in the subject from writers of web content, not from readers. So what is really crucially revealed about the politics of the situation is not how shocked the public is at this little bit of insider talk, but how much effort is going into encouraging the public to be shocked.

Why is this? How does such a concerted attack emerge?

In any case, it seems the best thing to do is to move on and leave it echoing long into the night in the echo chamber. We'll never be entirely free of this media event, but it's not an unreasonable response to just leave it alone. It really isn't capturing the popular imagination at all, and it doesn't deserve to either.

Is Copenhagen Irrelevant?

Is the Copenhagen COP meeting irrelevant? Australian climate professor Barry Brook thinks so.

He concludes:

So, this is the pragmatic reality check: the Copenhagen UN Climate Change Conference is worthless, and we just shouldn’t care. It could never be any other way.

The hard fact is that there’ll be no gain until we’ve felt the pain, until we really know that we have our collective ’skin in the game’. For all our intellect and wisdom, we’re still evolved, instinctive animals, and we respond best to obvious, in-our-face threats. It seems we need a new Pearl Harbor, our next Thermopylae. I seriously doubt there’ll ever be a global price on carbon (or a meaningful one in any individual country) — by the time we truly understand why this was (in hindsight) necessary, it’ll be a useless gesture, because there’ll be the imperative for much more drastic action than any ‘economic instrument’ could possibly deliver.

Yet, mine is patently not a ‘doomer’ vision. ... I don’t accept the argument that a peaking oil supply will cause our society to collapse. Yes, it will help force our hand, but it ain’t gonna be our undoing — we’re way too resilient and ingenious for that — at least when the pressure is on. If society realises that it has to build 10,000 nuclear power plants in a period of 20 years, then it’ll do it (as others have pointed out, things happened incredibly fast in the early years of nuclear power — the first 15 years saw a staggering rate of technical development). We’ll find the way to make it happen — of that I have little doubt. ...

In the meantime, it’s up to people like you and me to work hard to try to concertina the length of time between the current fallow age of procrastination, and the coming age of action.

Follow the link to find out why.

Andrew Sullivan on SwiftHack

Not really a climate blogger though he sometimes plays up Jim Manzi's stuff, and a sort of conservative-in-spirit (though gay) anti-Republican, Andrew Sullivan is one of my main sources of information. He was brilliant on the Iran pseudo-election and is consistently on the mark about what drives the US Republicans. (I am also sympathetic to his views on religion, seeking a territory between militant atheism and superstition that preserves the value in religion in a non-medieval way. YMMV.)

He thinks the EAU emails reveal a potential unconscious bias problem and makes a fairly good case for it.

Although the point

(2) The programmer applied arbitrary adjustments to the data (he says so himself) to get the desired results.

is based on a misunderstanding, the larger argument is worth considering.

I'm pretty convinced the Charney sensitivity is between 2.5 C and 3 C per doubling or close to that, largely because I'm convinced that Annan and Hargreaves aren't really easy to sway by the weight of public opinion. I'm totally convinced that there is an AGW fingerprint that is totally clear in the stratospheric cooling [corrected, h/t TB]. I don't see how it's possible that we have the big picture as badly wrong as Lindzen suggests.

On the other hand, I'm not at all convinced that the tree rings are worth a good goddamn [Update: for establishing a global mean surface temperature record, I mean; it's certainly useful information for local information], whether Mike Mann is a nice guy or not.

As for the pre-satellite instrumental record, I'm sure Phil Jones is also a very nice fellow, but again that doesn't validate the record. I don't think that the four reconstructions are really independent, so that really doesn't help all that much.

Experimenter bias is a very big deal in medical science for a reason. Climate science doesn't seem to have much room for this question in its culture, and that is a real problem. I don't think the confrontational attitude of McIntyre & co actually helps.

Nielsen-Gammon, the Texas state climatologist, pointed out that paleo evidence, physical reasoning, stratospheric trends and the like don't mean much to people.

The whole business is called "global warming" and we are sort of stuck with that. People think "the theory" is about the global mean surface temperature trend. And every blip and every question about every blip calls "the theory" into question in the minds of the public. It will snow tonight in Austin. How many "global warming" jokes do you think there will be in central Texas tomorrow?

No need here to summarize all the extrinsic reasons that people don't want to believe "the theory".

COP15 was already derailed. Blaming it on Phil Jones is a profound injustice, and even blaming the hacker is scapegoating, but something like that will be convenient for both sides. On the other hand, that doesn't mean the temperature record is right.

Update: I am hearing rumors that Obama will manage to pull something off at COP15 after all. That would be interesting. So maybe it's best if we avoid casting blame too early.

Update: In a very complimentary link to this article, (Thanks!) Keith Kloor suggests that

Many of the people he admires are shrugging off “climategate” (yes, I don’t like the term either) as “a tempest in a teapot” or an “artificial” scandal. Not Tobis. He recognizes it’s much more than that, and to his credit, he’s trying to figure out how to engage it.

Unfortunately, since I hate to turn down compliments, this is not exactly what I am saying.

From the point of view of science I actually believe that it is a tempest in a teapot and an artificial scandal.

There is much to be learned from the instrumental and proxy records of the past.

Still the exact bumps and wiggles of global mean temperature aren't necessarily where we should be looking, and for all I know (and I don't claim to be an expert) might in fact be more or less indeterminate in principle.

Politically, though, it's obviously a big deal.

I should make this clear. I think the main thing that has happened, the most important aspect of the EAU email release, is that a criminal act has been perpetrated and is having a desired effect on a political process. This is a very unfortunate and destabilizing outcome, and people ought to think twice about celebrating it.

Snow in Austin

We're expecting a light snow tonight, perhaps a couple of inches up in the hills. This is not without precedent. The pattern of past snow events is peculiar and hard to characterize.

Update: Indeed we got some heavy snowfall, but it only lasted about two minutes.

However, measurable snow fell in Houston, and sure enough the denial sites are running with it.

--
Image: Austin Statesman

Best Comment on the UEA Emails

From Balloon-Juice:

One the one hand one can hardly deny that East Anglia shot itself in the groin when the story bubbled for so long without their input. But really, what did you expect would happen? We pay scientists to do science. Especially given the effort that it takes to talk intelligently about climate science*, we don’t pay them very much. I have worked on grants from NOAA, the agency that also funds climate research. The idea of our lab or our department retaining a worthwhile PR firm would certainly amuse the staff who scrambled every year to find money for cookies and coffee at our weekly seminars. The money for scientists to do anything that isn’t science just isn’t there. If you want professional PR to defend science then you have to fund it with something other than the grants that fund the science itself. Forcing researchers with a day job to act as the front line against Exxon’s army of professional denial firms, in the media, is ridiculous and sad. It’s like asking Sidney Crosby to defend Pittsburgh by way of competitive corndog eating.

A bit irritating, in that the above-quoted paragraph summarizes the main point of this blog better than this blog has ever managed. Still, credit where it's due. Balloon-juice describes the whole predicament perfectly.

Don't get me wrong. I don't think scientists should even do much PR in the usual sense.

I do think we need to make our case, diligently and calmly. Let the attention-deficient press scurry hither and yon over this or that collision between a golfer and a fire hydrant or whatever captures the popular imagination or is force fed to it in any given week. Meanwhile, though, we need mechanisms to actually explain to people what is going on. Nobody, not the press nor the institutions of science as they are currently constructed nor any independent organizations have anything remotely suitable to the task of getting the message across.

Hansen Book

Press release:

STORMS OF MY GRANDCHILDREN

The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity

by James Hansen

At the Copenhagen Climate Conference (December 7-18, 2009), one expected guest will be noticeably absent. Dr. James Hansen’s groundbreaking research on climate over the last thirty years has been startlingly accurate—research that is now accepted as irrefutable proof of global warming. But he has decided to sit out the conference in protest.

In his first book on the subject, STORMS OF MY GRANDCHILDREN, Hansen argues that we no longer can accept the greenwash of politicians and world leaders (i.e. those assembling in Copenhagen next month). Greater grassroots efforts must help mobilize the masses, even through acts of civil resistance, for the sake of our children and their children. STORMS is the blueprint for that action.

James Hansen is best known for his accurate predictions about global warming since the 1980s, as well as his advising Al Gore on An Inconvenient Truth. He is a frequent expert witness on Capitol Hill and the subject of numerous articles and profiles (including a recent feature piece by The New Yorker). He was also notoriously censored by the Bush administration for speaking out on global warming and the need to curtail carbon emissions. The book recounts this experience.

Though a vocal critic of public policy and author of several supporting papers, he has never before written a book on the subject of climate change. The title refers to his growing concerns about the world his grandchildren may inhabit if we do not do all in our power to address man-made pollution to the atmosphere. The book brings together three decades of research to explain for a general readership the science behind global warming.

It is also an impartial challenge to politicians globally—on either end of the spectrum—to accept the reality of the science and take the necessary steps to forestall further damage to the environment.

Dr. James Hansen is perhaps best known for bringing global warming to the world’s attention in the 1980s, when he first testified before Congress. An adjunct professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University and at Columbia’s Earth Institute, and director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, he is frequently called to testify before Congress on climate issues. Dr. Hansen’s background in both space and earth sciences allows a broad perspective on the status and prospects of our home planet. This is his first book.

"When the history of the climate crisis is written,

Hansen will be seen as the scientist with the most powerful and consistent voice calling for intelligent action to preserve our planet's environment."

— Al Gore on James Hansen (from Time magazine)

Note that Stephen Schneider has a new book out too (h/t Stoat).

Primate Change Denialism

MONKEYS IN DENIAL

H/T the infamous P Z Myers

An Interesting Gripe

Never one to shy away from sticking his neck out, Ray Pierrehumbert (aka Raypierre) has actually submitted a top level article to Dot Earth. Ray's follow-up comment is especially interesting.

There is so much uninformed comment here I don't know where to begin. So many people are complaining about the "open-ness" of climate modelling, when in fact it is just about the most open area of science there is -- certainly more open than the economic modeling used to make trillion dollar decisions routinely. People complain about data sets not being released, when the data in question represents only a tiny slice of the total. You can get virtually all of the data from public sources. And do you want to see what's in a climate model? The algorithms used in the models are all documented in the peer reviewed literature. For most of the key models, you can get the source code and technical documentation and look at it for yourself -- many of the models even will run to some extent on a laptop.

So before you go on declaring a fatwa against climate scientists, why not take some time to get to know us? What we are like, and the way we do our work, bears no resemblance to the hateful cartoon you are pitching. And what do you think any of us would have to gain from a conspiracy to distort climate data anyway? If we were interested in making money, we could do it a lot more easily by just becoming investment bankers. Most of us are in this because we think the world is facing real peril, and we want to understand the nature of that peril better. A better world for my grandchildren to live in. Your grandchildren, too. Everybody's grandchildren, everywhere. Is that something to hate us for?

Now it's especially interesting to me because I do know Ray. I have confidence in his moral integrity and tremendous admiration for his intellectual capacity and domain knowledge. The trouble with this "getting to know Ray" (or someone like Ray) algorithm that Ray proposes is that, as any computational person worth his salt will immediately point out, it doesn't scale worth a damn. It is an effective technique at small scale, though, and I heartily recommend it to those few people who get the chance.

But it's also interesting what response this gets. "Biker Trash" replies

" There is so much uninformed comment here I don't know where to begin. "

Well, let's take a couple of specific examples that illustrate why this might be the case.

" So many people are complaining about the "open-ness" of climate modelling, when in fact it is just about the most open area of science there is -- certainly more open than the economic modeling used to make trillion dollar decisions routinely. "

Let's compare the open-ness of climate science with the degree of open-ness of the independent review and verification of, the Yucca Mountain Project, the certification of passenger aircraft by the FAA, construction of a nuclear power plant by the NRC, approval of a new drug by the FDA, construction of bridges, elevators, buildings, and many other cases that effect the health and safety of the public. This is the standard for the degree of open-ness required for all decisions that have the potential to effect the health and safety of the public.

Consider the Yucca Mountain Project. Every calculation, every piece of data, every detailed aspect of the independent review and verification of this project is online and accessible to anyone. Every nitty-gritty detailed part of every aspect without exception; http://ymp.gov/. Note that the basis of the Yucca Mountain Project is a natural process, directly analogous to that of climate science.

The same degree of open-ness is true for construction of nuclear power plants; check the NRC Web site; http://www.nrc.gov/reactors.html. The complete independent review and verification, not the extremely limited and incomplete information that appears in peer-reviewed literature, is publicly available.

Where is the documentation that the procedures and processes used to ensure that independent review and verification of climate science results have been properly applied. Where is the documentation of the procedures and processes that are required to be applied.

" And do you want to see what's in a climate model? The algorithms used in the models are all documented in the peer reviewed literature. "

The phrase, "the peer reviewed literature" is not very specific and the climate science literature is enormous. We have been told several times the same thing that you say here. Several people have tried to find the following information without success. Because climate science is your field of expertise and experience you could save us hours and hours of additional time if you could give at least a hint or two having more specificity.

BT goes on a bit of a tangent about computational fluid dynamics; an understandable and informed error. Many people think of climate physics as primarily a classical problem in fluid dynamics; they are misinformed in some fundamental ways that few people are qualified to explain in a way that will be acceptable to those within the field and convincing to those outside it. I have tried with very limited success and I won't try again just now. (In short, getting the fluid dynamics right to high order is not among the key problems. We aren't trying to solve a well-specified system. We are trying to specify the system.)

But the part of the complaint above, as far as I am concerned, is perfectly valid. Given the importance of climate modeling, one would expect a more rigorous and contemporary development process. Steve Easterbrook (along with his student Jon Pipitone) is the first person I know from the software engineering community to really take the development process of these models at face value and understand the some of the constraints that make the codes work the way they do. But Steve is just scratching the surface. There are efforts from within the community to improve matters, but I am among those who find them misguided.

As matters stand, it requires weeks to understand how to effectively run a climate model on a supported machine, and typically months to get it working on a new one. The success rate closely depends on how well integrated into the community one finds oneself. An outsider downloading a few blocks of code with no guidance will get nowhere.

So Ray's claim of openness reminds me of the part in the Hitchhiker's Guide where the bureaucrat defensively stated that Arthur's public condemnation had been duly publicized when the notice was in a locked cabinet in an unlit basement in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "beware of the tiger!"

The thing is, climate scientists don't expect better, and never have seen much better. The fact is that despite the endlessly inflating claims of billions of dollars going to climate science, the software engineering staff on the leading American climate model has been reduced from eight to six, with the cuts coming from user support and documentation. This is why CCSM, though on release 3.1, is only documented to 3.0, and that only badly.

Yes, it's true, it's a trillion dollar problem, but the annual budget for studying it (once you subtract all the impact studies and the ecological observation programs and the satellite launches and satellite base stations, all very valuable but not what most people think of as climate science, and get right down to what is actually climate science) is about that of a high-profile Hollywood movie, and that for model development and maintenance on each individual model is far less. From 2003-2008 NCAR had to lay off approximately 55 people and lost another 77 positions due to attrition, totaling roughly 16% of NCAR positions, because of sub-inflationary NSF funding and decreases in other agency support. (Statement of program reductions at NCAR).

Here's a presentation of how NCAR is meeting a 9 million dollar shortfall this year. (PDF)

Yes, the support for the software used in climate science sucks. I promise you I hate it more than you do. Maybe if you all would stop treating climate science as a heinous enemy and supported improvements, or hell, even complete rewrites, things would get better.

What you see is what we get every bit as much as it is what you get. The climate community should stop pretending to any practical openness; in fact the only way to play is to sign up for a tour of duty. This is not because we are hiding anything. It is because we lack the resources (and to some extent the skills) to do any better. What is perceived as an intent to hide is mostly an incapacity to elucidate, exacerbated by some excesses of competitive zeal which come from a tightly competitive grants process.