Geoff Sherrington Responds to Chattering Class
Posted by jennifer, March 28th, 2006 - under Uncategorized.
Tags: Climate & Climate Change
I am responding to the criticism of my letter in ‘The Australian’ of 15 February 2006 which read:
“THERE is an excellent argument for curbing the public statements of scientists like those from CSIRO, a former employer of mine. Scientists, like the public, cover a spectrum of beliefs, some of which are based on emotion rather than science. There are greenie scientists in CSIRO and there are honest ones. Human nature being what it is, there are private agendas pushed by CSIRO people that would make your jaw drop. An example is the selection of Australian weather recording sites used to construct the temperature measurements of the continent, which play a big part in southern hemisphere weather models. From the beginning, most sites that showed little or no temperature rise or a fall from, say, the 1880s to now were rejected. The few sites selected to represent Australia were mainly from capital cities and under suspicion for “heat island” effects. I could give example after example as it was one of my employment functions to distill the best results from the bogus on many matters related to energy/greenhouse/nuclear etc. I found few truly objective submissions among those masquerading as science.”
1. Nowhere did I mention BoM.
2. Nowhere did I criticise BoM.
3. Nowhere did I say I had worked for BOM.
4. I was critical of some statements made by people in CSIRO, but not about the selection of weather sites for early greenhouse models. What alarms me more is the stupified silence of senior scientists when they see bogus data. That is my real criticism.
5. Since writing that letter I have recognised it was the University of East Anglia, not Bath, which used the climate data from Australia.
6. I have since asked Phil Jones from East Anglia for a copy of his selection of the original Australian data. He says “We no longer have the Australian station date we were using in the early 1980s. At that time we had a limited network.”
7. In the MID-1980s (which was my time choice) there were abundant stations which were not used by Jones at all. Here is a list for which data were then available, but not used by Jones – not a full list, just a sample: Geraldton, Narrabri, Hay, Albany, Rottnest Island Lighthouse, Walgett, Deniliquin, Bourke, Cape Naturaliste Lighthouse, Coonabarabran, Echuca, Cooma, Moruya Heads Pilot Station, Omeo, Dubbo, Alice Springs, Gabo Island Lighthouse, Bathurst, Strathalbyn, Mt. Gambier, Yamba, Wilsons Promontory Lighthouse, Newcastle Signal Station, Cape Otway Lighthouse.
8. These stations, when averaged from the 1880s to the mid 1980s, showed a temperature decline until about 1951. This decline was not used in Jones’s paper, which some would say ignited the greenhouse debate with its alarmist conclusions.
9. These and many other Australian stations, averaged from 1951 to 1985 or so, showed a slight increase in temperature. Jones’s modelling was essentially post-1950.
10. Point is proven.
11. I continue to find the poorest quality of science in greenie publications. The most common error is to manipulate the raw data to fit the desired theory. Some is quite stupid, like from the nuclear industry, “Radwaste has to be managed for 250,000 years”. How many nuclear scientist who know this to be nonsense, whether from the CSIRO or not, have stood up and said so?
12. The Think Tank for which I helped formulate direction was the Tasman Institute. The person who brought this climate data to my attention was Warwick Hughes, a geologist (I am a Geochemist) used to dealing with hard data.
13. The statistical manipulations being used for climate data, that I have read, would commonly fail the stringency tests required of geologists when interpolating values of economic ores in deposits from drill hole data. If high standards of maths are needed to avoid wrong estimates of orebody worth, then they are equally needed for political-scientific issues like climate modelling.
14. I have suggested to Phil Jones that he use a certain type of mathematical statistic to get better results.
15. So, how many of you bloggers will now admit to wrong interpretation of, and confusion about, my letter to the Australian? I can prove all that I said and have proved some of it above.
16. I am currently moving home, so my telephone, email etc address will change in the next few days and I do not yet know what they will be. So don’t bother to try to argue with me, contemplate your navels instead.
Jim,
>As to the “proof” test – isn’t AGW itself an hypothesis?
There is no such thing as proof in a complex physical science. To ask for one is to ask for the unanswerable. However, we know certain things about climate change and the anthropogenic greenhouse effect with extremely high confidence.
These include:
The enhanced greenhouse effect is an observational fact, with a closing of the atmospheric CO2/NO/CH4/CFC emission windows (Increase in greenhouse forcing
inferred from the outgoing
longwave radiation spectra of
the Earth in 1970 and 1997
John E. Harries, Helen E. Brindley, Pretty J. Sagoo & Richard J. Bantges
Nature 410, 355-357 (2001).
We know that if these windows close that the earth must find an alternative way to remove extra heat. These all require the surface to warm… a process which increases the upwards transport of heat energy (sensible heat), latent heat energy, and radiative energy.
We know that the globe is warming very rapidly (~0.2C/decade), and that this warming has occured in the absence of any natural forcing process and is occuring about 10 times faster than the sustained warming at the end of the last ice age.
We know the observed warming is happening at exactly the rate we expect to occur as a result of the enhanced greenhouse effect.
I could go on but I’m sure you get the picture.
As I often tell people, it is possible that the extra radiative energy is being swallowed by invisible endothermic monsters and that the warming is caused by the flapping of invisible fairy wings. There are a number of people on this blog who might even believe this explanation.
David
Phil,
You called on me to say whether I care to get invo’ved in argument. On topics that I’m not fully equipped on, and not fished all my homework ,I prefer to stay out of arguments and just ask questions and perhaps put up a few limited deductions for scrutiny.
As far as I’m concerned, errors in reason or judgement implied by Geoff need to be considered and put on the record in case they seriously undermine key hypotheses.
I do get concerned when they are not addressed. Someone has to do the legwork and check them out.
Whether they do threaten key hypotheses or not is another question entirely.
In fact argument by authority (eg CSIRO are pretty good professionals, blah blah blah, I’m sure they checked it out, etc, is not science, its medioeval religious authority.
On the other hand David’s last comment is really helpful – sound to the point summary of well established mechanisms. Where these counter Geoff’s suppositions they are worth taking seriously, but Geoff’s empirical observations can’t be dismissed without looking at them specifically.If they are in fact part of an exising comment by Warrick Hughes thats been already refuted please tell us specifically where.
What I am hearing from all this that there are several solar or atmospheric effects that perhaps amount to 30% of total forcing that may be being ignored by standard IPCC models and also substantial uncertainties in economics that mean the exact trajectory of future temperature changes is not certain. My sense of it is its a band of probability between manageable rises for which Business as usual will get us by, up to quite serious change where policies can minimise harm substantially.It still seems temrature increase will continue up for at least a few decades but exactly how far who knows. The empirical tragectory is not to worrying using linear extrapolation and seemingly at the lower end of this band.
BTW in re-reading William Cline in Lomborg 2004 I found his case for policy responses to AGW quite persuasive. I found it ironic that Lomborg is bucketed by John Quiggin for supposedly downplaying AGW when he actually presents a reasoned case (via Cline’s chapter) for action in his book on the Copenhagen Consensus Conference.
And since I’ve just re-read Ilya Prigogine’s The End of Certainty for other reasons (see GMO Pundit if you’re interested)and I’m starting again on Prigogine and Stenger’s Order Out of Chaos with Alvin Toffler’s brilliantly accessible introduction, I’m fully alert to the fact that strict determinism in systems away from thermodynamic equilibriun (eg the real world we live in) is a dead hypothesis, so we need to tread carefully when interpreting IPCC scenarios in terms of policy responses.
FYI, I’ve copied one of David’s comments above and started a new thread here: http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/001286.html relating to possible natural sources of forcing.
For David who wrote
“During the sequence of interglacials during this period, the peak temperatures have only varied slightly and fell short of the temperatures the Antractic will experience by the end of this century. Current estimates are that the West Antarctic will become vulnerable to disintegration at around 2C of further global warming… Greenland’s threshold for disintegration is rather lower. ”
Thank you for the additional information I sought.
The problem with your response is “Current estimates…. 2C..” This is an estimate and it is only as good as the data behind it. Much of the temperature data are taken from the last decade or two. If this data set is non-representative, then the projections are invalid. I keep asking why early records are not used, as we were putting CO2 into the air back then also.
Mt attitude is to use all available observations. This includes the resistance of the Antarctic ice to melting for a long time past. Who can state with confidence that there is not an compensatory feedback mechanism, as yet unrecognised, (such as a redistribution of ocean currents and heat flow, but not limited to that) that cuts in when the temperature in the kitchen gets too hot? We simply do not know. In the meantime, as I agree, it is prudent to reduce CO2 emissions by available means. Quickly.
When I write that CO2 is a pollutant, I mean that excess portion over the natural that is created by the actions of man (excluding breathing, growing and decay of the human body).
Yes, I do apologise, I apologise for the mention of University of Bath in an unexpected phone call from Jennifer when I cast my mind back 20 years in a hurry. I meant East Anglia. I had had matters with both in the past. The mention of CSIRO followed from a 4 corners program. I repeat my contention that there are scientists in CSIRO with private agendas which are way out of whack with mainstream thinking. I attended a talk by one on greenhouse on 15 March and it was zealotry, not science. But I did not say that CSIRO scientists had fudged temperature data. I was talking about the data available when world models first hit the scene in the mid 1980s. At that time I postulate that there was selective culling of data. I do not recall CSIRO being involved then or not. The effect of these early estimates was to set a benchmark which new models are compared against and to convince most of the interested public that warming was inevitable. Thirty years before that, wisdom was that a New Ice Age was coming.
My original letter stands. All I have got is some nit picking, partly arising from the loss of paragraph spacing in the version you people saw. The original scans differently.
I have offered no opinion as to whether global models are now right or wrong. I suspect them as being premature as others are still researching and discovering inputs that will affect the estimates. Even Phil Jones wrote the other day to say that differences had just been found in seawater records from the days of thermometer in bucket versus measurement at ship cooling water intakes.
Modellers would be prudent to keep their frameworks up to date, with periodic testing and private comparison with others, until consensus is reached that the methodology is scientifically good and all plausible effects are quantified. Economists should not make predictions until that consensus is reached, unless they like eating humble pie.
If, in my earth sciences past, our company had announced a new ore deposit and given figures for its value to the Stock Exchange that were premature, we would well have ended up incarcerated. If we got our maths wrong and mined a body that turned out a dud, we could go out of business and on the street. These outcomes instil a certian caution and accountability. Greenhouse modellers who produce premature estimates don’t have the same sword hanging over their heads. Their reward is more likely idolatory from supplicants.
Geoff,
Thanks for your efforts to respond to Four Corners and your call on scienctists with private agendas to be exposed. Clearly the general public expects that scientists base their public statements on rigourous scietific methodology, not a personal opinion or philosophy.
The Four Corners Program criticised industry people for attempting to influence Government Policy but criticised CSIRO management for restricting the activities of those employees who were also trying to influence policy. Four Corners was not affronted by the fact that one CSIRO scientist was a member of a lobby group put together by the WWF whilst still an employee of the government.
Keep up the good work of highlighting discrepencies in these types of public statements.
What a beatup – come on. Everyone has a private agenda. Is anyone acting for ultimate purity or some metaphysical high concept.
Geoff by the looks has plenty of agendas. Nuclear power? (and he is entitled to his view – maybe I even agree – but that’s not the point)
This sort of stuff is also used in industry protectionist mode – “did you actually observe the cigarette smoke causing the lung cell to mutate under a microscope??” Who decides what absolute proof is?
So it’s OK for politicians and members of the public to write any rubbish at all – and yet scientists are to remain silent until absolute proof. Come on.
Of course it’s very important that any scientists differentiates speculation of concern from suggesting hard evidence of proof. Or degreee or quality of evidence.
For example there is reasonable concern about the effect that climate change may have on tropical cyclones. Surely we need to know the concern – but are also entitled to know how strong the evidence is for such a proposition.
The CSIRO staff muzzling was about scientists potentially embarrassing a governent policy position. Witness Kevin Hennessy’s “no comment” in that interview. Repeated no comment. It’s a disgrace that he was not free to answer the question.
Scientists don’t set policy – they inform policy. It becomes very difficult if they are witnessing a policy that is not scientifically defensible. There is a long tradition in western society of seeking scientists’ opinions. And we seek that opinion even though it may not make us happy or be counter to our personal beliefs.
And I would have thought the electorate is as cynical as buggery about everything – big business, governments, NGOs, green groups, mothers, fathers and scientists too.
And cinders would it not be convenient for industry to keep any forestry type scientists with ecological concerns silent until they have absolute proof. Don’t want any trouble now do we?
Of course if the goverment wants some quick action with salinity maybe we can go with “sorta modelled – good enough for government work proof”)
Cuts both ways. You shouldn’t control scientists ability to speak publicly on issues of scientific concern. The responsibility also goes back to the scientist to live up to that trust of being seen to be fair and independent.
Whats your private agenda Phil?
And hows the new business going, the science based one? Tough times for putting theory into practice.
Rog – business is booming ! Not to the heights of Thinkso-saurus regina – I’m not at retirement like herself but close.
“Retirement” is as ill defined as is “solid financial background”, all euphemisms
Phil Done,
You totally miss my point and instead decide to attack the forest industry on baseless claims. Perhaps you have an agenda as well.
Four Corners clearly had one, no where in the script does the ‘WWF’ appear nor the association of the featured former CSIRO scientist had with this lobby group.
There is a clear conflict of interest of some one working for the tax payer also representing the views of a privately funded organisation. This interest must be declared so that the tax payer can be in the best position to make an informed decision.
Four Corners, that claims to be the best in investigative journalism, also appears to treat the viewer with contempt with a similar non disclosure.
Perhaps you could be better informed about Four Corner’s practices in environmental reporting by reviewing the ABC’s Independent Complaints Review Panel’s report on “Lords of the Forest’ available at the ABC’s corporate web site.
Am I attacking the forestry industry. Not really. Perhaps you have an agenda that you’re defending?
Maybe one of the scientists was a Mason too? Does it really matter. Perhaps one was a satanist. Did he mention WWF issues? How did he represent WWF?
Perhaps you can’t a be Labor Party member and work for the Howard Government or a Liberal Party person and work for the Beattie Govt.
Where do you stop?
This is just a generalist swipe against scientists. Anyone that doesn’t fit what the majority or even a minority lobby group wants – is a biased greenie ratbag.
Scientists who work for industry, are however, apparently entitled to make opinionated public statements and comment on policy in attempts to influence govt and public opinion.
It’s only the govt scientists with a tendency to think independently and ask q’s, and particularly those who care for the environment, who are expected to have lobotomies or resign to make way for ‘yes’ men.
Chatterers’ respond to their own criticisms of public condemnation of scientists..
..really thinksi + done, biased greenie ratbag thoust art.
Temperature reconstructions from ice cores over tens to hundreds of thousands of years rely upon oxygen isotopes in the main.
As one who used to own a laboratory with expensive, state of the art equipment I know a little about analytical error. As a geochemist who has worked with uranium, lead and other isotopes, I know a little about isotope theory. It therefore comes as no surprise that I cannot accept as gospel the ice core temperature data, when parts of a degree celcius are sought in accuracy from samples tens of thousands of years old. This is without going into the fractionation theories of oxygen isotopes, which are also partly hypothetical.
It is no coincidence that I quote Prof Richard Fairbanks of Lamont-Doherty: “Somewhat at odds with the ice core community, we have argued for some time that the primary oxygen isotope signal recorded in Greenland ice cores is changing air mass mixing and not air temperature, although the two correlate. Greenland is unique from a meteorological standpoint; it marks the confluence of numerous air mass trajectories containing very different oxygen isotope compositions. Changes in the proportions of these various air masses on a seasonal basis can explain most of the regional and millennial variability. In particular, Greenland oxygen isotope chemistry is very responsive to the flip-flop from meridional climate to zonal climate patterns that the North Atlantic region regularly experiences during the late Pleistocene.” Some of this hypothesis can be applied to the Antarctic.
Also, growing plant and other matter like coral discriminates between oxygen isotopes, but unlike ice cores which lock up the isotopes, these materials decay and release mixtures of oxygen isotopes throughout history, add ing noise to the signals in the ice cores. The constancy or otherwise of oxygen isotopes in ice core has to be adjusted for the global vegetation differentiation of oxygen isotopes and for seasonal changes and it is hard to model this back for 100,000 years.
I don’t place blind faith in predictions of Antarctic ice melting based on the oxygen isotope methods in past eras because of these and other uncertainties. Others might. It is taking a long brush to say that oxygen isotope measurements on Antarctic ice cores have not recorded temperatures higher than those of current times, or statements that approximate that. There are published papers that show otherwise. Whether they are right or wrong or uncertain is a bit academic. I again introduce the argument that we should be remediating CO2 rather than trying to predict what it will do.
This does not infect me with a pro-nuclear label, as someone has inferred. I simply find the relevant nuclear research more rigorous than the ice core work and the publications I have read are of better quality, especially in the relams of error analysis and coping with artefacts.
Perhaps its time to stick my neck out and say I bet no one on this blog has read more thermometers of one type or another over the last fifty years than me. Also, for a long time we could not read much better than half a degree C or one % of what ever in any measurement. I reckon we can make what we each want from old weather records.
This is partly in response to Geoff
Fifty years ago no one was that bothered about global averages even if they could calibrate to a standard of one hundredth of a degree. It leaves us stuck with a lot of guessing around say 15 C back then. But just 2 C rise from 1950 to 2050 is a hell of a lot of extra heat to hide. Only a fool would say the ice caps won’t notice meantime.
Let’s make another claim about whoz been studding vortexes. I started in the early 1960’s, vortexes in vessels, vortexes in fuels, vortexes in heavy particles, vortexes in bushfires, vortexes in streams and the atmosphere. The energy levels at plus 2 C will certainly create some surprises for those same fools.
Cinders mates can’t grow enough trees to stop it now however cinders may be surprised to know I recommended not a pulp mill but a complex to make paper wrappings for our consumer rubbish as we go on. Simply we won’t be able to afford the plastics.
Now; only those retired with out an axe to grind need give their opinion on my position
Thanks.
Phil
I have no issue with scientists or any one being a member of a political party or even a green organization. The issue I have is the conflict of interest when you are part of a Government body and a specifically convened Group, set up to lobby for a change in government policy.
Dr Pearman the former CSIRO scientist quoted on the Four Corners Program is a member of the WWF Australian Climate Change Group, in the program he made statements that appear to be from the WWF Climate Change solutions report.
The WWF created the Australian Climate Group to be an “
Oh good, a vortex expert. Let’s discuss a the sea off SE USA where the big blows were. Let’s assume that surface sea temperatures were indeed 2 deg C warmer than in previous years. I don’t know how much latent heat this means since I don’t know how deep the temperature anomaly was. I also do not know if the seas were warmer than normal on the hour that the storms seeded and continued.
Now let’s look at the vortex that was each major storm. It acquired its energy from either temperature redistribution of the surrounding air, or by transfer from the suface beneath, or a bit of both. My question is, given the comparative brevity of the storms, was there adequate mechanism for the excess surface temperature of the sea to find its way into the vortices? Or was it all over before the sea could contribute?
I’ve casually watched a few hundred willy-willys in the outback and formed the impression as a fool (not as a scientist) that they gained their momentum from redistribution of hotter and colder air as they wandered over the countryside that varied below them. Was I wrong? I am in unfamiliar territory and I am seeking the advice of experts, not expressing an amateur opinion.
It is part of my inherent scientists’ wonder about natural events (which others have said I lack).
Geoff: although far from being an expert I’m obliged to carry on with this vortex interest.
I stumbled upon this site a few weeks back where there are excellent diagrams of atmospheric events leading to extreme weather.
http://earthsci.org/flood/J_Flood04/wea1/wea1.html#TornadoFrequency
The hurricane structure (after Abbott) shows the downdraft in the inner tube. Now let’s introduce the Hilsch vortex tube and demonstrate the impact of separation on the cold fraction.
Our first attempt at ICI research labs years ago to copy the original design and build a pair in glass for a science exhibition failed. Besides the problems of freehand glass blowing at tiny but critical dimensions the glass itself carried too much heat back into the cold end. We went back to metal. See this rather similar construction-
http://www.visi.com/~darus/hilsch/
A Google on “vortex tube” reveals many industrial applications.
http://www.airtxinternational.com/how_vortex_tubes_work.php
Geoff; our discussions here around difficulties in obtaining average temperatures often remind me of our needs to homogenize solid suspensions in liquids. There is nothing better than a vortex to the job properly.
The same people above had me building tiny pumps in beakers for generating high speed recycling currents and then we built an intense shearing model based on a singer motor that was flat out at 10.000 rpm. Simultaneously Silverton in the UK patented theirs.
Now everybody has one and it’s called a stab mixer.
Google on vortex mixer homogenizer to see how they all latched on.
http://www.arde-barinco.com/osb/itemdetails.cfm/ID/865
Typical!
Thak you for the references to vortices. They are quite istructie qualitatively. I guess that the maths modelling has been done to verify that the postulated heat transfers can take place at the magnitudes and times required, I still have envisioning troubles with severe enhancement caused by a 2 degree C SST elevation because we are doing the maths in degrees absolute and going from figures like 293 to 295 degrees absolute, whic ain’t much.
Thank you again Geoff.
manufactured produce he has occasion for. Land even replaces, in part at scanty, in which labour is commonly maintained in that place.