Jennifer Marohasy

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“Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.”
Karl Popper, 1902-1994.

Karl Popper

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  4. peter azlac says

    Over at ClimateEtc, Judith Curry cites a paper that covers Popper´s views on ad hoc hypotheses – such as the current 52 excuses being used to explain the failure of the CAGW meme.:

    Dr. Kendrick piece on adding ad hoc hypotheses to explain failures of favorite hypotheses. http://mead.es/1pEhPOj

  7. egg says

    ‘ANTARCTIC sea ice has expan­ded to its greatest coverage since records began in 1978, continuing to confound climate scien­tists and proving even more hazardous than usual for shipping in the Southern Ocean.’

    Rick Morton / Oz

  8. egg says

    Warmist Confronts Reality

    ‘Odenwald also informs readers that the high level of solar activity from 1950 to 2009 indeed had been an outlier and that it is clear that “the global temperature, which has increased for more than 100 years, rose most strongly from 1975 to 2000.

    ‘According to the IPCC the 30-year period from 1983 to 2012 in the northern hemisphere was the warmest in 1400 years. Roughly calculated it coincides with the most recent Grand Maximum.”

    ‘Odenwald also writes that some climatologists believe “the real driver of climate change is our sun. Some are even warning of a new little ice age.”

    – See more at: http://notrickszone.com/#sthash.MZYd6sa9.dpuf

  10. Larry Fields says

    John Reid September 14, 2014 at 4:20 pm #
    “Larry Fields: nice idea to use Benford’s Law but I doubt if it would prove anything. Benford’s law works when people are making numbers up as when cooking the books in an accounting sense. I suspect BOM has some sort of algorithm for making these readjustments and this would not be detected by Benford’s Law.”
    (This was from the recent Tangled Web thread.)

    Benford’s Law is best applied to large sets of essentially continuous measurement data, which can span several orders of magnitude. That’s why it’s useful in the detection of ‘cooked’ numbers in financial documents.

    However there’s a fly in the ointment. Example: Applying Benford’s Law DIRECTLY to daytime high Fahrenheit temperatures in Honolulu would be problematic. The most common first digits would probably be 7’s, 8’s and 9’s!

    What we really need is a reasonable mathematical function, a 1-1 mapping of the raw Honolulu data set onto a second set that contains all possible first digits. Note: This is NOT the same thing as temperature adjustments, since ALL measurement data is treated in the same way. No TOBs, no ‘homogenization’, and no hallucinations.

    The main point: Mantissas of well-behaved measurement-based data are logarithmically distributed.

    Some researchers have also formulated a variation of Benford’s Law that looks at SECOND digits. However that method is less powerful than the first digit approach, and would require larger data sets to come up with anything meaningful. Moreover I don’t know how one would do a significance test on second-digit data.

    By the way, I strongly suspect that the people at BOM are mostly hacks, who have never heard of Benford’s Law. Given sufficiently large data sets that meet the two criteria that I’ve mentioned, BL should detect data diddling in the adjusted numbers, since they’re supposedly measurement-based quantities.

    UNLESS the BOM folks are a lot smarter than they appear to be, in the light of the fiascos at Rutherglen, Bourke, etc.

  12. Neville says

    In a June 2014 post Bob Tisdale included this comment about the difference in UAH and RSS. The last sentence implies that UAH and RSS will have a closer temp reading when UAH’s version 6 is introduced. The sooner the better IMHO.

    A Quick Note about the Difference between RSS and UAH TLT data

    There is a noticeable difference between the RSS and UAH lower troposphere temperature anomaly data. Dr. Roy Spencer discussed this in his July 2011 blog post On the Divergence Between the UAH and RSS Global Temperature Records. In summary, John Christy and Roy Spencer believe the divergence is caused by the use of data from different satellites. UAH has used the NASA Aqua AMSU satellite in recent years, while as Dr. Spencer writes:

    …RSS is still using the old NOAA-15 satellite which has a decaying orbit, to which they are then applying a diurnal cycle drift correction based upon a climate model, which does not quite match reality.

    I updated the graphs in Roy Spencer’s post in On the Differences and Similarities between Global Surface Temperature and Lower Troposphere Temperature Anomaly Datasets.

    While the two lower troposphere temperature datasets are different in recent years, UAH believes their data are correct, and, likewise, RSS believes their TLT data are correct. Does the UAH data have a warming bias in recent years or does the RSS data have cooling bias? Until the two suppliers can account for and agree on the differences, both are available for presentation.

    In a more recent blog post, Roy Spencer has advised that the UAH lower troposphere Version 6 will be released soon and that it will reduce the difference between the UAH and RSS data.

  13. Neville says

    Roy Spencer had this to say about version 6 in June this year. Here’s his quote——-

    “As we finish up our new Version 6 of the UAH dataset, it looks like our anomalies in the 2nd half of the satellite record will be slightly cooler, somewhat more like the RSS dataset….but we are talking small adjustments here…hundredths of a deg. C.”

  16. egg says

    UN Climate Summit Given Cold Shoulder by Leading Intellectuals

    ‘Harper joins President Xi Jinping of China, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India and Prime Minister Tony Abbott of Australia in choosing to skip the summit.’

    Climate Spectator

  17. hunter says

    Jennifer,
    That is a great timely quote from Popper. Keep up the good work in pressuring the cliamtocracy in Australia to come clean and be held accountable.
    What similarities do you see between the US and other national records in the West and the Australian debacle?

  20. Avatar photojennifer says

    This is funny… Simon Birmingham is going to appoint a panel to oversee homogenisation of the temperature record…

    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/birmingham-brings-early-change-to-bureau-review/story-e6frg6xf-1227059509503

    And Birmingham will ensure the panel includes respected external scientists and statisticians.

    What is nice about the article is that Graham Lloyd begins by identify the temperature record as “the national homogenised temperature record”. Yep. That is not the real one. 🙂

  21. Avatar photojennifer says

    Hunter,

    Similar methods are used in the US and UK. There should be zero tolerance to this revisionist approach.

    The most sensible paper on the subject that I have read has come out of China. They say you only homogenise when there is a statistically significant discontinuity supported by meta data that proves it to be non-climatic in origin.

  25. Neville says

    A new study has found that years of low Arctic sea ice are driven by high clouds.

    http://www.reportingclimatescience.com/news-stories/article/high-cloud-levels-drive-low-arctic-sea-ice.html

    Here is the abstract————

    Abstract

    This study demonstrates that absorbed solar radiation (ASR) at the top of the atmosphere in early summer (May–July) plays a precursory role in determining the Arctic sea ice concentration (SIC) in late summer (August–October). The monthly ASR anomalies are obtained over the Arctic Ocean (65°N–90°N) from the Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System during 2000–2013. The ASR changes primarily with cloud variation. We found that the ASR anomaly in early summer is significantly correlated with the SIC anomaly in late summer (correlation coefficient, r  ≈ −0.8 with a lag of 1 to 4 months). The region exhibiting high (low) ASR anomalies and low (high) SIC anomalies varies yearly. The possible reason is that the solar heat input to ice is most effectively affected by the cloud shielding effect under the maximum TOA solar radiation in June and amplified by the ice-albedo feedback. This intimate delayed ASR-SIC relationship is not represented in most of current climate models. Rather, the models tend to over-emphasize internal sea ice processes in summer

  27. egg says

    Antarctica: The elephant in the room.

    ‘Here’s proof that mainstream media journalism is either sloppy and just too lazy to check the data themselves, or is catatonically stuck in their now 18-year long illusion of global warming.

    ‘Recently a number of leading media outlets trumpeted (loudly) scary claims of “accelerating polar ice melt”. For example last May Germany’s leading online financial daily Handelsblatt cited a NASA study appearing in the Geophysical Research Letters and reported: “Polar ice melting much faster than assumed“, and warned of sea levels rising more than a meter.’

    – See more at: http://notrickszone.com/#sthash.zSFSAHw1.dpuf

  28. Neville says

    Bill Shorten’s old union the AWU now wants the aluminium industry exempted from OZ’s RET scheme. So why not also exempt the car, steel, power, etc industries from this brainless RET absurdity?
    It’s not as if any of our industries have plenty of fat and efficiencies to fall back on, when compared to our overseas competitors.

    http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/awu_demands_protection_from_the_renewable_energy_target/

  37. egg says

    And Q&A the other night was a disgrace, talk about groupthink. There appears no way to break through aunty’s armour and the sad thing about all this is that I’m constantly abused in real life and the blogosphere for suggesting that half of our population has been severely brainwashed.

  40. egg says

    ‘With each monsoon season India waits with bated breath for forecasts from the India Meteorological Department and other international forecasting agencies. This year’s forecast suggested a weakened monsoon, and sure enough for five weeks the monsoon has failed to provide the deluge that is expected.’

    The Conversation / July 2014

  41. egg says

    In my quest to find Sol driven climate change mechanisms.

    Abstract

    ‘Multiple proxy records (tree-ring, coral, ice and documentary) were examined to isolate ENSO signals associated with both phases of the phenomenon for the period A.D. 1525–2002.

    ‘To avoid making large-scale inferences from single proxy analysis, regional signals were aggregated into a network of high-resolution records, revealing large-scale trends in the frequency, magnitude and duration of pre-instrumental ENSO using novel applications of percentile analysis.

    ‘Here we use the newly introduced coupled ocean-atmosphere ENSO index (CEI) as a baseline for the calibration of proxy records. The reconstruction revealed 83 extreme or very strong ENSO episodes since A.D. 1525, expanding considerably on existing ENSO event chronologies.

    ‘Significantly, excerpts of the most comprehensive list of La Nina events complied to date are presented, indicating peak activity during the 16th to mid 17th and 20th centuries.

    ‘Although extreme events are seen throughout the 478 year reconstruction, 43% of the extreme ENSO events noted since A.D. 1525 occur during the 20th century, with an obvious bias towards enhanced El Nino conditions in recent decades.

    ‘Of the total number of extreme event years reconstructed, 30% of all reconstructed ENSO event years occur post-1940 alone suggesting that recent ENSO variability ap- pears anomalous in the context of the past five centuries.’

    Gergis and Fowler / 2006

  42. Neville says

    Egg here is that Gergis Fowler study, but I can’t understand their conclusions. For example 1998 is listed as a strong la nina while the very strong 1917 la nina isn’t listed at all.

    http://www.adv-geosci.net/6/173/2006/adgeo-6-173-2006.pdf

    But here’s NOAA’s reconstruction of the PDO for the last 1000 years, 993 to 1996.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_decadal_oscillation#mediaviewer/File:PDO1000yr.svg Rather a lot more room in that record for very extreme ENSO conditions I’d say.

  43. egg says

    The PDO appears to have been cool throughout the MWP, very interesting and worth following up.

    With the Gergis/Fowler paper its hard to give a definitive answer, they seemed to have covered all bases, but I take your point. There maybe other examples in need of cherry picking.

  44. egg says

    CO2 Science / Pau et al

    ‘Most pertinent was the three researchers’ finding that “a shift from dry to wet climate conditions marked the beginning of the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA) as evidenced by a precipitation reconstruction based on a pollen abundance index.”

    ‘They note, for example, that over the 2500 years of their record “there have been two major climatic events: first the MCA (AD 800-1300), followed by the Little Ice Age (AD 1400-1850).”

    ‘And with respect to this finding, they indicate that “increased rainfall during the MCA in Hawai’i supports the evidence that climate dynamics during the MCA was consistent with decreasing El Nino frequency or a persistent La Nina-like state,” as espoused by Crowley (2000), Bradley et al. (2003), Cobb et al. (2003) and Mann et al. (2005).

    ———-

    A persistent La Nina state travels nicely with persistent cool PDOs, Australia would have been awash.

  45. egg says

    “The CO2 story is over. It has been pointing the world in the wrong direction for too long. The serious implications of the developing mini ice age to agriculture and the world economy through the next 25 to 35 years must be addressed.”

    Piers Corbyn

    Indeed, but we need point to the mechanisms involved and explain what it means, the technical cause and effect and human impact. Historically weak or failed Indian monsoons would have played havoc.

    When the sun goes on the blink, a few oscillations switch to a different mode of operation. The North Atlantic Oscillation is directly linked to the behaviour of the sun.

  47. Neville says

    Egg my point was that the climate during the first half of that PDO record would have been very extreme compared to our mild climate over the last 150 years of the instrumental record.

    BTW another new SL study finds that there has been about 1.7mm/ year rise (about 7 inches/century) in SLR since 1900. The Wenzel et al study also finds that SLs have fallen along most of the OZ east coast since the 1950s. So much for the extremist BS promoted by the former Labor and Green coalition govt.

    http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com.au/2014/09/new-paper-finds-global-sea-levels-rose.html

  50. Neville says

    This review by German scientists looks at sea levels over the last 180 million years.

    http://notrickszone.com/2014/01/23/german-review-sea-level-rise-way-below-projections-no-hard-basis-for-claims-of-accelerating-rise/

    But the most recent observations show that SLR will be very minor by 2100. Probably about 3 to 4 inches over that time.
    Once again like temp recent SLR seems to following ocean oscillations like the PDO. Enso and the PDO seem to account for a lot of the temp changes and SLR since 1900.

  51. egg says

    ‘would have been very extreme compared to our mild climate over the last 150 years of the instrumental record.’

    Agreed.

  57. egg says

    ‘Even though human influences could have serious consequences for the climate, they are physically small in relation to the climate system as a whole. For example, human additions to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by the middle of the 21st century are expected to directly shift the atmosphere’s natural greenhouse effect by only 1% to 2%. Since the climate system is highly variable on its own, that smallness sets a very high bar for confidently projecting the consequences of human influences.’

    Steven Koonin / WSJ

  59. egg says

    To recap what I said earlier, the return of big rains in the 1870s saw the end of the LIA in North Queensland and in 1878 there was a gigantic spike in temperatures world wide.

    Coincidence? I think not.

  63. Neville says

    Obama’s science fantasist John Holdren seems to be completely wrong about the impact of his CAGW. Everything he says is the exact opposite to reality.

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/09/21/if-you-want-to-play-the-all-weather-is-influenced-by-global-warming-game-you-are-going-to-lose/

    BTW just heard on their ABC that China’s per capita emissions of co2 are now greater than the EU. Yet India and China emissions of co2 will continue to soar for decades to come. Africa, China and India have at least another billion plus people to lift out of extreme poverty.

  65. Neville says

    I wonder what SD thinks of that NOAA estimate of Fort Denison SLR of 0.65mm a year? I remember all the BS he had to cop from Luke etc about our soon to be inundated east coast.