Funny things happen on the Internet sometimes. Rather spectacular claims were made that 900 days of data “were fabricated”. This claim was described as not just speculation, but “a demonstrable fact”, and worse, the crime was apparently even “admitted to” by the man himself! Except that none of it was real, and three tiny misunderstood dots were not fabricated, not data, and not important. Welcome to a Bermuda-Triangle-moment in blog-land, where facts vanish, ships full of misquotes appear from nowhere, and ghosts-of-malcontent and misunderstanding roam freely. This post here is to slay the last loose ghosts, lest anybody think they might still have life in them, or indeed, think they ever did.
Usually a live debate is a brilliant way for spectators to learn. But in that particular science thread, the main lesson is not science but manners. Common courtesy may seem a quaint anachronism, but without it, logic and reason die on the sword of uninformed passion. A simple polite email and an open mind could have saved the world from a cloud of nonsense.
Thanks to the many valiant souls who fought for common sense.
It’s rare in a complex situation that the answer is so simple. (You won’t believe how small and irrelevant it all was.) The short answer is that the 900 days of fabrication was a fuss about three dots covering three years of data at the end of a 400 year graph. The tiny blue dots were described on the graph as “assumed as average” and added to the end of a solid red line. In other words, they were obviously not actual data, the description made it clear they were estimated, they were colored differently, and nothing was hidden. What’s more, their presence or absence made little difference to the arguments or the predictions. (So there was no incentive to fake them up.) It was kind of like a handy-hint was misinterpreted as a constitutional law and the trial went on for days before anybody noticed. Time for a cup of tea instead, then? We think so.
In round one, Leif Svalgaard said Evans was “blatantly wrong” about the big TSI drop (Willis Eschenbach said “wildly incorrect”) — so we explained how the fall was 11 year smoothed and was right there even in Leif’s own data. Both men read our reply (citing it here or on WUWT) and both men can comment freely here.Yet neither was willing to admit they were wrong, apologize, or correct their claims. Does accuracy matter? It does to us. This is round two, where their second mistake is as wrong as the first. We remain baffled at their behavior. We can but point to the data.
If you’ve come here for the science, the graphs and details of datasets come first. If the bloodsport competition is more your thing, the accusations and “highest” criticisms of our critics are printed at the bottom. You won’t want to miss those.
— Jo
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Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) Data
Dr David Evans, 4 July 2014, David Evans’ Notch-Delay Solar Theory and Model Home
We need to clear up some confusion over TSI data and the Solar Model. Sorry, there is no big new “News” here, but the details matter and allegations as serious as fraud or fabrication deserve a proper response. Plus there’s a sort of useful lesson in how a silly mistake can get magnified and live on for days. Much of what follows will be obvious or covered previously. (An early reviewer said it cemented some things in his mind and he liked that anyway). We’d rather be pushing the scientific ideas forward. Soon.
1 The Context: Why there is a fuss over a fall in TSI?
The notch-delay solar model predicts a sharp global cooling and the turning point is soon (see Post VIII). It’s widely known the current solar cycle is a lot lower than the one before, but the notch-delay model predicts a sharp turn. An obvious question arises: is there some other way, apart from using the model, to see there is going to be a sharp cooling soon? (Assuming the notch-delay theory is right.)
Figure 1: Climate model driven only by solar radiation, with no warming due to carbon dioxide. Predictions shown by dotted lines. See Post VIII for explanation and context.
The model includes a delay, a low pass filter, a notch filter, and parallel paths. For a move as gross as the projected imminent cooling, we can dispense with the subtleties of the last three elements and just focus on the dominant driving element—the delay. This is just a simple check. The model is of course very “aware“ of the sunspot cycle, so any corresponding fall in TSI is not of the usual sunspot cycle variety, but is a fall after taking into account the usual ups and downs of the sunspot cycle.
The obvious and simplest way to remove most of the sunspot cycle and reveal the underlying trend is to apply an 11-year smoother to the TSI. The sunspot cycle varies from 8 to 14 years, but averages 11 years. The goal is only to crudely mimic the model’s behavior in order to get more understanding of why it predicts an imminent cooling.
2 TSI in Post VIII
Here is the TSI graph presented in Post VIII: [Jo says: look out, this is the graph that generated the Bermuda-Triangle moment.]
Figure 2: The recent fall in TSI is the steepest and one of the largest ever recorded (records go back to 1610). (There is a trivially different original before the PMOD data was updated a few days ago, linked to in Post VIII.)
Which Lean 2000 dataset was that? It’s reasonably clear:
This TSI graph shows the composite TSI data used in our project, which is described in its bare bones on the graph itself (top left). Direct measurements of TSI only started in late 1978, by satellite. The reconstruction used for most of the data in Figure 2 is from Lean 2000, which is the main, standard reconstruction. Anyone familiar with the TSI datasets can also see that the Lean 2000 data used here is the newer version with the Wang, Lean, & Sheeley background correction (2005), because the level during the Maunder Minimum is about one W/m2 below the average level since 1940, whereas in the original Lean 2000 data the difference was over two W/m2—see the first graph here.
We did mention that smoother in Post VIII: “We put an 11-year smoother through it to give us the red line, which shows the trends in solar radiation.” We then commented on the three big falls in the red line, and made the point that the third fall, which started around 2004, will lead to a corresponding fall in temperature sometime around 2014 to 2017 (but more likely 2017) according to the notch-delay solar theory.
A close up of those misunderstood blue dots
Notice the blue dotted line (circled) at the end of the red line. Here it is, blown up:
Figure 3: Enlargement of the fall in the 11-year-smoothed TSI around 2004, in Figure 2 above.
The text on Figure 2 explains the dots: “Composite TSI for Sep 2013 to Dec 2015 assumed as average TSI value from Sep 2012 to Aug 2013, to extend smoothed curve (dotted line).” That period is roughly 900 days.
The extension was made to give us an idea of where the TSI fall might bottom out. If the data stops in August 2013, as in Figure 2, then the 11-year-smoothed values stop 5.5 years earlier, in January 2008.* We are close to a solar maximum in sunspots now, so the values of TSI for the rounded top will probably be about the same. You could reasonably disagree with that extrapolation, but the method was stated clearly on the graph.
The extension was noted in the explanatory text, dotted, and a different color to the data. It is described as assumed and used to extend. It is difficult to confuse with the data. (Apologies for stating the glaring obvious. It’s odd having to point out things this simple. We describe the fracas below. Who would have thought?)
The same dots are more obvious (and useful) on a close-up graph:
Figure 4: As per Figure 2, but from 1950. Notice how the extension of the data shows that the fall in 11-year smoothed TSI will likely end soon, and thus indicates the size of the fall in 2004, so it can be more easily compared to the falls in the 1600’s and in Napoleon’s time.
What are the differences in the TSI datasets?
TSI measurements come from satellite-based instruments. There are three main datasets. PMOD starts in late 1978, is the dataset Judith Lean used to reconstruct TSI back to 1610 from the sunspot data, and is the dataset we use predominantly. ACRIM had some troubles in the 1980s, but we use it from 1992. SORCE started in 2003. See footnote.**
Lief Svalgaard made it clear that he prefers his own reconstruction and the SORCE/TIM reconstruction (a reconstruction until 2003, then the SORCE/TIM data) to PMOD/Lean-2000:
Figure 5: The SORCE/TIM and Svalgaard reconstructions both show the three big drops in their 11-year-smoothed curves, including a recent fall. Compare to Figure 2.
Their 11-year smoothings both show three sharp declines — in the 1600’s, in the time of Napoleon, and recently — just like our composite TSI in Figure 2. However the timing of the most recent fall is different:
Figure 6: The start of the recent fall in the 11-year-smoothed trends of the SORCE/TIM and Svalgaard reconstructions occur earlier than in the PMOD/Lean 2000 data. Compare to Figure 4.
If the SORCE/TIM and Svalgaard reconstructions are to be believed, the recent fall in TSI started back in 1995. This is a significant difference. If TSI fell from 1995 then the corresponding fall in temperature should have been evident from about 2006 — but since it didn’t happen that would mean the solar influence is weak. (Toss out that theory eh?) But if the sharp fall started around 2004, the corresponding temperature drop is yet to impact Earth.
See the graph posted and discussed here. It shows that all the TSI estimates show a recent fall in their 11-year smoothed trends, and all the falls are of a similar magnitude. All show a TSI peak in about 1986. The only substantial differences (relevant to this work) are in the timing of the start of the recent fall.
Basically it comes down to a choice between the sunspots and reconstructions based on those sunspots, or the measured TSI. As Svalgaard himself said, “All so-called ‘reconstructions’ of TSI are Guesses. Most of them bad.” The only measured data covering the relevant period from the late 1980s (required to construct an 11-year mean of the early 1990s) to the current day is PMOD.
4 The Accusations (Aka science as a “bloodsport”?)
Comments below come from the post “A Cool Question, Answered?” (which turned out to be a Hot Question, Unanswered). Don’t Svalgaard and Eschenbach protest just a little bit too much?
There are basically three accusations that Svalgaard and Eschenbach repeat over and over:
1. That my claim of “TSI dropping” around 2004 is false.
They argue against a straw man, as if I had claimed that monthly or daily TSI readings have dropped since 2004. However Post VIII , linked to in the article at WUWT, makes it abundantly clear that I was talking about the trend, as established explicitly by 11-year smoothing and implicitly by the filtering action of the notch-delay solar model. See Figures 2 and 5 above. Svalgaard links to a graph or the SORCE/TIM measurements since 2003 as support for his position that there is “no such drop” — but his graph is of TSI, not ll-year smoothed TSI or any trend measure of TSI. They never acknowledge either that there was a recent fall in the 11-year smoothed TSI or that I was referring to it.
Svalgaard repeats his misunderstanding here. He links here to the Figure I used in Post VIII, which is labelled “Solar radiation (TSI) 11-year smoothing“. Here Eschenbach even pastes our graph of 11-year smoothed TSI estimates, and attacks our use of 11 year smoothing! So they knew. I talked about three big falls — which are clearly visible in the 11-year-smoothed red line, but not the brown line of 1-year smoothed TSI with many falls. It is hard to explain how they missed it.
Note that this is a separate issue from Svalagaard’s position that all the past reconstructions and recent measurements are wrong except his reconstruction and the SORCE/TIM measurements from 2003, which he explains here and here.
2. That I fabricated data in my TSI graph, which is Figure 2 above.
The extension is not data. I described it as an extension on the graph itself : “to extend smoothed curve (dotted line)”, the method used to obtain it is given on the graph and that makes it clear that is not data, it is presented in a different color from the data, and is dotted, not solid, like the data. See above. The general principle is you can put anything on a graph, so long as you explain what you are doing and it is not deceptive. The extension isn’t so useful on the 400 year graph, but on the 60 year graph (Figure 4 above) it shows the likely extent of the fall.
3. That I am hiding something by not releasing my data and calculations yet.
A reminder of what we said in the introductory post: “All the data, model, and computations are in a single Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. It runs on any pc with Excel 2007 or later; it runs at least partly (and maybe fully) on any Mac with Office 2011 or later. This is completely open science—every bit of data and every computation is open for inspection. We will be releasing this towards the end of the series of blog posts.” The reasons for this—so as not to preempt the blog posts, and to engender a more focused conversation with useful feedback –were given several times, and elaborated upon here. The spreadsheet would already have been released by now, but some people prepared to comment publicly on it still don’t know the basics, and it takes time to correct their mistakes.
Here are some of the , er, highlights:
Svalgaard 1. “The TSI used by Evans is totally wrong“. | Lean 2000, PMOD, and ACRIM are mainstream datasets. The datasets for the critical period from the mid 1980s on are basically the PMOD and ACRIM measurements. Svalgaard implies these measurements are “totally wrong”, while putting forward only reconstructions to cover the period before 2003. So, this is a case of measurements vs reconstruction.
Svalgaard 2. “The most blatant error is the statement that TSI has had a sharp unprecedented drop starting in 2003-2005 to now. This is complete nonsense. There is no such drop.“ | Straw man. A drop in 11-year smoothed TSI has clearly occurred, even in his own reconstruction (doesn’t he see it?).
Svalgaard 3. “As far as I am concerned, the model is already falsified. Not by the observations but by the [almost fraudulent – as there clearly is an agenda here] use of invalid input to begin with.” | Fraud implies lying with intent to deceive. See Figures 5 and 6: who lied? Svalgaard prefers his own reconstruction or the the IPCC reconstruction that recently replaced the one I used: who’s got an agenda?
Svalgaard 4. “The data is not slightly wrong, but verry wrong, and hence the prediction […] is wrong, which was my point.” | The prediction is based on measurements of TSI since the mid1990s, but mainly around 2004, made by PMOD and ACRIM. Svalgaard only offers a reconstruction for most of this period. Again, we use mainstream measurements while he uses reconstructions, both of which show a trend drop anyway.
Svalgaard 5. “On the contrary he has shown that Mr Evans used wrong TSI data. This is either incompetence [I will allow for that hence my ‘almost’] or a deliberate act [you made that call].” | Again, we use mainstream measurements while he uses his reconstruction.
Svalgaard 6. “The SORCE/TIM data is correct since 2003 and contradicts Mr Evans demonstrably false assertion that there was a sharp drop in TSI in the 2003-2005 time.” | Straw man. See accusation 1 above.
Svalgaard 7. “On the contrary, TSI is now higher than at any time in the SORCE/TIM record, so Mr Evans has spliced the SORCE/TIM data incorrectly to the observations covering 1978-2002.“ | Huh? How would he know? As it happens, I didn’t use the SORCE/TIM data.
Svalgaard 8. “That the 2000 Lean reconstruction is invalid is well-known [even Lean agrees with this] so Mr Evans is either incompetent or deliberately using invalid ‘data’ without having done his due diligence. The Krivova reconstruction suffers from the same problem as Lean’s obsolete one: invoking a background based on the flawed Group Sunspot Number.“ | My prediction of an upcoming fall relies on PMOD and ACRIM data from the critical period from the mid1980s, not from any reconstruction. Perhaps those making claims of incompetence ought first be competent readers?
Svalgaard 9. “Mr Evans made a horrible mistake [deliberately or out of ignorance – your call] making his prediction worthless; one cannot scientifically disagree with such nonsense. Disagreement requires substance and there is none in Mr Evans’ work.” | Straw man. See accusation 1 above.
Svalgaard 10: In response to something Christopher Monckton said, “You are correct that nothing can rest on Mr Evans’ incorrectly doctored dataset.“ | Oddly enough he refers to me as “Mr Evans” but accuses me of doctoring. Funny man.
Svalgaard 11: “I will agree that Mr Evans did not intend to have anybody discover his little ‘trick’. [One is reminded of Mann’s ‘Nature Trick’ of Climategate fame].” | The extension is plain to anyone. There was no “trick”, nor anything to gain from the dots—they limit the downward trend. See accusations 2 and 3 above.
Svalgaard 12: In response to “what’s all the hubub about?” Svalggard says “It is about scientific honesty [or rather lack thereof]”. | Dishonesty? I didn’t misquote Svalagaard or say he did things he didn’t, did I?
Svalgaard 13: “So Mr Evans fabricates out of thin air about 900 days of TSI and tags that to the end of the curve.” | The extension was clearly explained on the graph itself, and is visually very different from the data. See accusation 2 above.
Svalgaard 14: “Both Willis and I have shown that Mr Evans invented the decline of TSI since 2003-2005.“ | All the estimates and datasets show a recent fall in 11-year-smoothed TSI, even Svalgaard’s own reconstruction. See the first figure here.
Svalgaard 15: “And the fabrication [of data] is a fact as I showed above by Mr Evans’ own words.” | It’s a “fact” now? And wait… it’s in my “own words”, but you said I was hiding it? So which is it? See accusation 2 above.
Svalgaard 16: “Even the data he claims is Lean 2000 has been tampered with and doctored into shape.” | The TSI in the TSI graph in Post VIII is a composite of Lean 2000 and other sources, so it will not exactly match Lean 2000. As noted above, anyone familiar with the TSI datasets can immediately see that the Lean 2000 data used here is the version with the Wang, Lean, & Sheeley background correction. Odd that he didn’t notice.
Svalgaard 17: “Mr Evans does indeed fabricate and invent data. End of discussion.” | Since there is no fabrication or invention, where does that put Svalgaard and Eschenbach? See accusation 2 above.
Eschenbach 1: “I begged David Evans, begged him please, please, to release the hidden code, to stop keeping the model equation a secret, to reveal the data, to expose the numbers of tunable parameters, to show the results of the out-of-sample tests that Jo says he’s already done …” | Really? Begged? I don’t recall ever having talked with Willis or exchanging emails with him. And I’ve searched through all the comments Eschenbach left on the blog posts here about the notch-delay solar project…and no “beg”. No asking even. Certainly no “please”. Just lots of repetitive berating for not releasing material immediately, and he did not even address our clearly stated reasons given for introductions-before-material.
So how about you quote yourself Willis: where is this begging you keep said you did?. I’ll quote you — this is what you typically say at the bottom of one of your articles: “USUAL REQUEST: …please quote the exact words you disagree with. That way, everyone can understand your point of reference and your objections.”
Eschenbach 2:“I begged Jo and David to publish, and I got the same answer we’ve gotten from every other pseudo-scientist, that for me to ask was wrong, wrong, wrong, and that they’d publish the code and data and out-of-sample tests when they damn well felt like it … science at its finest.” | Yep, definitely said “begged”; see accusation 3.
[Jo adds: I note that Willis raised the “Mann and Jones” false equivalence on this blog on June 21, and my answer to this was not quite the “same answer we’ve gotten from every other pseudo-scientist”. Willis asked: “And why on earth do I have to ask you pretty please if you’ll release your results as if you were Phil Jones or Michael Mann?” Jo replied: “Because Phil Jones and Michael Mann get your taxes. We don’t. That’s why.” This from the man who insists people quote him exactly?]
Eschenbach 3: “…and admit that (at least according to their graph) they have made a wildly incorrect claim that the TSI has fallen precipitously since about 2004. It is on the basis of this supposed fall that they are predicting falling temperatures.” | Straw man. See accusation 1 above.
Eschenbach 4: “But neither of us owe David Evans an apology. He’s the one that made the horrendous newbie mistake, not us.” | Ummm, you didn’t notice it was 11-year-smoothed TSI and trends in TSI we were talking about?
Eschenbach 5: “That quote from the graph itself clearly says that they have invented the data from March of 2013 to December of 2015, which is the 900 days of data that Leif mentions. Now, I’ve used the word “invented” for that data. The graph itself uses the word “assumed” for that data. And Leif used the word “fabricated” for that data.” | “Invented data” now? Not so. (It’s like Chinese whispers: assumed means invented means fabricated. Go Directly To Jail!). It was clearly explained and marked on the graph itself. See accusation 2 above.
Eschenbach 6: “Next, David Evans has not released the data, the model, the model results, the equations, the out-of-sample tests, or any of the details. This is the same garbage we got from Michael Mann and Phil Jones. And now, here you are cluttering up WUWT with the same kind of garbage. There is no transparency. There is no data. There is no code. In what alternate universe does this pass for science?” | Didn’t read the introductory post perhaps? Don’t believe the answers we gave you? See accusation 3 above.
Eschenbach 7: “Christopher, I have a simple rule that has never failed me. When a man is hiding something, it’s because he’s got something to hide.” | I have a simple rule too: when a man attacks a scientific argument with accusations about motives, there is something else going on. See accusation 3 above.
Eschenbach 8: “I’m sad to see you and David Evans and Joanne taking up the habits of Mann and Jones, David. I’d thought y’all were scientists. Ah, well, live and learn.” | We are sad to see a skeptic taking up the habit of character attacks, as is commonly used by unskeptical people. See accusation 3 above.
And on and on and on.
We are looking forward to releasing the spreadsheet, and are grateful that Eschenbach and Svalgaard have made it clear they have made their conclusions already. ; -)
5 Conclusion
Otherwise, we remain baffled. The comments by Svalgaard and Eschenbach at WUWT are inexplicable. Svalgaard says that “science is a bloodsport”, but Joanne notes that it “doesn’t have to be… You could use logic and reasoning instead.” We offer no speculation on the reasons for their repetitious, tendentious, and aggressive comments. It doesn’t look like truth-finding to us when someone uses fallacies, fails to quote exactly, and fails to acknowledge polite responses pointing out their misunderstandings. We see little hope that their attitude will change, so we expect more of the same as we roll out the project.
A big thank you to Christopher Monckton and the others who objected at WUWT and pushed back. Thank you! They sensed that a crime was being committed and they did what they could. And thank you also to those who have emailed us, or left comments on this blog about the matter, or donated. (BTW Joanne spoke to Anthony Watts at length yesterday in a friendly exchange. He had arrived late at the “Bermuda Triangle”, and did what he could. Please keep comments constructive below. This post is about commenters and a new theory, not Anthony.)
We are still rolling out the introductory blog posts. It is taking much longer than we had anticipated partly because of the need to respond to unwarranted and inaccurate criticisms and statements. We very much want feedback, good and bad, and appreciate the well informed, polite sort the most. We will resume the series as soon as we can, other commitments, notwithstanding.
FOOTNOTES
*As of a few ago PMOD had issued data to the end of 2013, but ACRIM only to about the end of August 2013.
** The SORCE/TIM reconstruction uses the measured SORCE/TIM data from February 2003, but before that it is a reconstruction. The SORCE/TIM reconstruction changed significantly in February 2014—see here, or the blink comparator here. The old reconstruction is very much like Lean 2000—compare it to Figure 2 above. The new/current reconstruction uses a reconstruction by “N. Krivova et al. … which is used in the IPCC AR5 Working Group I’s Assessment Report”—see the SORCE/TIM data home.
It’s not easy to measure TSI exactly. Obviously everything before late 1978 is estimated from proxies. Judith Lean studied the way PMOD and sunspots varied, then used the sunspot data and models of solar behavior to estimate TSI before the satellite era — so the Lean 2000 reconstruction and the PMOD observations agree with each other.
However the PMOD and ACRIM data disagree until the early 1990s. Opinions differ on whether PMOD or ACRIM is more correct, but PMOD fits with Lean 2000 and is the longest measured dataset—running right through from the TSI peak around 1986 to when it started declining. So we effectively went with the PMOD data, by only introducing ACRIM into our composite TSI from the beginning of 1992.
Our composite TSI data from December 1978 through December 2008 is an average of Lean 2000 and PMOD, then an average of Lean 2000, PMOD and ACRIM through December 2008 (when the Lean 2000 dataset ends), then an average of PMOD and ACRIM, using averaging-equalizing offsets and blends at joins to make the composite. We could usefully add SORCE/TIM data from 2003, but haven’t yet because we didn’t find that data useful for analysis (at less than one sunspot cycle, it is not long enough).
In the final analysis we are basically using PMOD data, so the notch-delay solar model is essentially between PMOD-TSI and temperature. It is possible that PMOD somehow measures the components of TSI that predict force X better than other measures of TSI.
I’m confused as why so many (who I thought were level-headed and polite) skeptics have been so unnecessarily hostile and insulting towards a fellow skeptic. They could get their points across equally as well without the playground-putdowns.
882
Confused?
The larger the EGO, the less room for other peoples ideas.
The study of climatology is stale, it is obvious to most nonacademics that the cause is spiralling in.
For all the authoritarian claims of science, there is none supporting the magic gas concept.
Naturally without fresh input, such as D.E’s beautiful conjecture, the conversation will deteriorate.
Until we who pay taxes, turn on the fools and bandits who steal, waste and destroy our work, this kind of ugliness will only grow.
802
I’m not entirely sure that massive egos are the sole cause of the surprising and vehement vilification of Dr Evans from Dr Svalgaard and Mr Eschenbach, it may be they are from a different cultural mindset where civility and courtesy are regarded as weakness. That Dr Evans should be vilified for putting forward an hypothesis that he claimed very early on was just that-an hypothesis shows sheer ignorance of scientific protocol. Dr Svaalgaard seems to believe what he does not know about the sun is not worth knowing and is remarkably piqued that Dr Evans is suggesting that Dr Svalgaard may not be as omniscient as he, Dr Svalgaard, believes. Mr Eshenbach is, unfortunately, in this exchange is full of bombast and very little else as he totally disregards the points Dr Evans has made regarding publication of data. Perhaps his lack of a PhD, the entry point for any serious researcher in science, has given him an inferiority complex I can’t think of another reason for his vindictiveness. And finally, please note that I have used the correct honorific for Drs Evans and Svalgaard and Mr Eschenbach, a courtesy neither Dr Svalgaard or Mr Eschehach extend to Dr Evans. Perhaps they feel this is a necessary and integral part of their denigration of this scientist and his proposal. Naturally I will still look at WUWT and Climate Audit and as wellas SkepticalScience and RealClimate but regret that Dr Svalgaard and Mr Eschenbach care so little for the ammunition and propaganda they are providing for these and other similar sites in their efforts to discredit a fellow traveller.
880
As has been said elsewhere, it would appear they are suffering from the “It wasn’t my idea” syndrome. Other than the pedestal they have been placed upon over at WUWT, neither man, Svalgaard or Eschenbach, appear to be worth listening to based on this exchange. Whatever their qualifications are, neither is an Engineer, and Eschenbach from the information I have found regarding his qualifications appears to have no science background. He just happens to be “good with numbers.”
As you so aptly noted the “other side” will be having a field day with this one, not that either of them appear to care.
500
That is actually ad hominem and conjecture. A PhD is a prerequisite for teaching in a tertiary institution, and is simply a rite of passage into that career.
A count of the number of PhD’s on staff, is sometimes used by commercial research institutions as a marketing differentiator, when in pursuit of competitive funding.
But the majority of privately developed inventions, and the associated patents, are owned by people who do not have a tertiary degree, and sometimes holding no degree at all.
543
I stand corrected and apologise unreservedly to Willis Eschenbach It certainly is conjecture and although I had thought the use “perhaps” might ameliorate the comment to some extent this appears not to be the case. Whatever, I can do no more than say I’m sorry to Mr Eschenbach
90
Example: The nature of the degree – PhD
“A successful PhD thesis will demonstrate the candidate’s ability to conduct original research and to present the findings of that research to a professional standard. The thesis should give evidence that the candidate has made a significant contribution to knowledge in the particular field. On the award of the degree, the graduate should be a person capable of conceiving, designing and carrying out high-quality research in the area of their expertise without supervision.”
Original research and the abilities to conduct and supervise research independently are the touchstones here.
A PhD is certainly not a prerequisite for teaching in a tertiary institution, which may possess a substantial number of teaching fellows who do not hold PhD’s. In general, the rule is that one should hold a degree above the one is teaching into.
For some a PhD may well amount to a ‘rite of passage’ into a career that involves ongoing and extensive research. I have observed that those who say this are either experienced and successful researchers, or serial iconoclasts. I accept my observations may not account for all the possibilities this Universe may hold.
For many, it is a mind sharpening tool en route to business, commerce, politics or administration to name a few paths. However, there is little that is ‘simple’ about it. The quality of the institution from which the PhD was gained nonetheless may be a guide to rigour. The internet is not an institution in this context and paying for a PhD over it is as you put it, ‘simply a rite of passage’.
Far from ‘simple’ if there is any diminutive to be applied it might perhaps be ‘tenacious’ or ‘determined’. It is an exercise in these as much as it is in intelligence or the application thereof.
For those that gained their “PhD’s” in the back garage or school of hard knocks, these may well be seasoned, capable, original and indeed a dominant and celebrated source of private patent holders. So what? They may be idiot savants for all we know. It tells us nothing of their background or informs us of their wider abilities. A PhD on the other hand conveys an expectation among other things, which may or may not be lived up to.
And the ratio of individual private patent holders to institutional patent holders where the PhD’s are more usually found?
41
So what is the degree above PhD? Is it higher and higher degrees all the way up?
30
DSc
http://www.monash.edu.au/science/future/postgraduate-research/dsc.html
13
An good postdoc and research, supervisory experience elevate beyond the entry level. Furthermore, a PhD is not ‘taught’ in the classical sense. It could probably be crudely described as a supervised apprenticeship by committee. And then there comes the point when the principal investigator’s knowledge and expertise in the chosen topic (hopefully) becomes apical.
10
Manfred, you are correct that a PhD is an apprenticeship.
Supervision is not by a “committee” unless there is more than one designated supervisor.
The degree of supervision varies with the attitude of the supervisor.
Some treat PhD students as research assitants there to simply follow the instructions of the supervisor and his or her agenda.
Such supervisors inhibit the developement of independence in the student.
I reacall a department in which I was a research fellow where a instance where a PhD candidate, a surgical registrar, had a very intersting idea but the boss wanted him just to go on and measure the x hundredth breast sample biopsy.
I helped Peter carry out experiments on his idea in secret. I did not know that he put the boss’s name on a publication and submitted it without her knowing.
This is a real no-no. But when the work became well known she was in no position to complain.
This was the department and boss I blew the whistle on. Part of my reason for speaking out was that Peter told me that the supervisor’s management style was so distressing if he did not take a year off his candidature he would be clinically depressed. I could only concur
After my exile to Siberia, I was having breakfast listening to the ABC health report with Dr Norman Swan interviewing our former boss.
Dr Swan said: ‘There has been some really intersting work done recently in your lab concerning Barrett’s oesophagus.’ (A potentially pre cancerous condition.)
The Boss replied. ‘Yes we are really excited about this work…
I nearly choked on my wheaties and sent an email off to Dr Swan explaining the real story.
Then there are supervisors who give you a thesis subject and expect you to come back three years later with a thesis, (or consult them when you are writing a paper).
As a colleague once said “You spend a lot of time educating your supervisor.”
My supervisor at this end of the spectrum. This makes the whole project much more challenging for the candidate, but is much better training and gives a much greater sense of acheivement.
21
I would have given you both a green thumbs up and a red thumbs down if that were possible. The thumbs down for the Phd ad hom. The thumbs up for everything else you said.
111
And my above comment was to Ian at 2:24am
20
A PhD is merely a formal entry process to an academic career. Very few high achieving engineering graduates bother to pursue a PhD because they can earn far more in industry than in academia. During the mining boom Australian graduate engineers were often earning over $100,000 (the highest salary I saw was $140,000) straight out of university. It would have taken them at least 10-20 years to earn the same salaries in academia.
90
I think this scene summed it up best:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-c4iS454WA
11
Very few high achieving engineering graduates get PhDs because they go into engineering becuse they want to be engineers, for which a PhD is unnecessary.
Those who enrol in vocational degrees such as engineering do so because they are interested in persuing a career in that field.
By and large, students enrolling in engineering want to be engineers, those enrolling in medicine want to be doctors etc.
But there are some who in the course of an engineering degree (or any other) find they have an interest in research, or possibly teaching at a tertiary institution, and will go on to do PhD studies.
A medical practitiioner once told me that their colleagues who opt for an academic career are considered somewhat odd.
These people invarialbly practice in their field as well. But the time and effort they spend in academia is poorly rewarded financially compared to what they would earn if they spent all their time looking after patients.
And it is not because these people are not up to scratch clinically that they pursue these interests. I remember arriving at the lab at the University of Melbourne Department of Surgery at the Austin Hospital to see Professor Christophi dozing in his office chair because he had spent a long night giving someone a new liver. The people in this department are acknowledged leaders in their field.
Certainly academics or people who work in public research institutions are paid far less than they would be in the private sector, but not everyone is primarily motivated by money.
These days, many doctors who have no interst in continuing in research or teaching as such will do a PhD or Masters as that is a way to stand out from the pack in advancing in their specialist field. I have worked with and supervised a number of these people.
Rereke is correct about patent holders, as again inventors are smart people who make things, for which formal studies to a higher degree is unneccesary.
On the other hand in the past universities were very casual about their “intellectual property” and most discoveries were placed in the public domain and were therefor not able to be patented. Woe betide any academic who lets something potentially income producing slip through like that these days. It was very late in my academic career that I became a patent holder.
32
Well said
10
Yes Richard, that’s exactly how I saw it.
I quite like watching the dynamics of these things, though. After the initial flurry of posts here, the balance of the discussion took place over at WUWT where there was more . . . ummm ‘insulation’.
Not that I think that’s a bad thing . . . just interesting.
It occurs to me that the deliberate slow release of Solar Model is actually highlighting some benefits.
That is, early objections, valid or invalid, are able to be addressed ‘in-line’ as it were.
But as a colleague reminded me one day; “Don’t sweat the small stuff”.
230
The deliberate slow release of the Solar Model, seems to be making it more accessible to those folks (like me), who can only translate a limited amount or arcane jargon, in a single sitting.
I like the approach that says, “Now listen up, dummy. You take one of these things, and you hold it this way up; and you take one of those things over there, and you put that bit into this hole, got it?
Using a preponderance of unintelligible multisyllablic word constructions to demonstrate how superiorly erudite the presenter might be, combined with incredibly verbose and interminable sentence fabrications is oft the way of concealing ones own appalling lack of knowledge.
Jus’ saying …
532
And frequently used by those who were weaned on a Dill pickle….
40
Probably the reason is that sceptics believe in the facts and the fragmentation is not about the ’cause’ just about who is or is not supporting an individual theory.
On the other hand alarmists believe in the ’cause’ and wil all band together to support anything that even hints at proving that belief no matter how far fetched.
120
Because they dont consider tribal alliance to be important.
Because some of them excoriated Mann and CRU for similar padding tricks at the end of a series, whether
these tricks were documented or not.
That is because they are consistent, brutally consistent, whether you are “friend” or “foe”
148
One can’t help but think this is poetic justice for all the bile directed at real climate scientists over the years.
349
Come now Stephen, had David omitted the padding and had generated a wild artifact from that truncation, they would be whining about that too!
Mann grafted two dissimilar datasets WIITHOUT telling anyone, Evans added three data points of padding with explanation in a different colour and linestyle. Hmm, seems different to me.
420
hey, some of us are consistent is criticizing all padding whether disclosed or not.
its called principles.
some of us demand code and data upon publication ( even blog posts)
its called principles
Leif has them
Willis has them
the rest of you? i suspend judgment
360
And some of us Steve, those of us with Engineering backgrounds rather than literary backgrounds, don’t release code until it is in our consideration finished. It’s called principles as well and we do have them. We haven’t seen much from you indicating you are doing any more than projecting and defending “the team.” Now where have we seen THAT type of behavior before?
400
The code is less important than using the wrong input data. Garbage in with any code will give you garbage out. Especially an engineer should appreciate that.
345
Perhaps you should inform Mosher and Eschenbach that. Since it appears they are in a tizzy because they can’t play with the code RIGHT NOW!
As to the data, so far all I have seen from you is “it doesn’t agree with mine so it is wrong.” Please show us the proof that yours is correct, or “less wrong.” The impression you give us all is no different than what we would expect to see from an alarmist claiming “the science is settled so no matter what you think you’ve found it is wrong.”
Arrogance has no place in science, you should know that.
490
Dear Leif,
You seem not to comprehend the clear meanings of the simple words written above. Please re-read the post and re-submit your corrected manuscript for marking.
What this 71 years old engineer (first class honours, employed full-time in a forensic investigation role) cannot appreciate is such an abnormally obtuse response from one doctor of philosophy to another.
550
And ‘Sun King’ Svalgaard will decide what is garbage.
That is, if an analysis is not based on Svalgaard’s data reconstructions and conducted with his approval, it must be wrong, and somehow fraudulent. This is an egotistical totalitarian obsession which inhibits productive debate in solar science.
400
Please show your empirical demonstration of how the ACRIM TSI data set is “garbage.” There is no degradation there, and the ACRIM gap is filled with actual data. Not only that, but the ACRIM data correlates quite well to temperature for the last 30+ years.
Then explain how it is that you claim that “TSI right now is about 0.45 W/m2 higher than in 2003-2005” according to the SORCE/TIM data, but yet all of these SORCE/TIM graphs show that you are wrong…the trend is down in the last 10 years?
http://spot.colorado.edu/~koppg/TSI/TIM_TSI_Reconstruction.jpg
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/guillermo_image2.png
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/sorce_tsi_reconstruction_feb2013-feb2014.png?w=640
90
It is a shame Svalgaard does not seem to care about accuracy, for his own reputation’s sake.
I cannot fathom why he keeps insisting on the strawman that there was “no drop” in TSI when the discussion is about the trends of TSI (11 year smoothed) from 2003. Nor why he will not admit his defamatory claims of “fabrication of 900 days of data” were abjectly wrong and indeed self-evidently false if he had only read the graph he criticized. With every repetition he is advertising his poor judgement and low standards. See all his comments repeated in the post above that he still thinks are correct.
eg:
Svalgaard 15: And the fabrication [of data] is a fact as I showed above by Mr Evans’ own words.
How factual is a “fact” as asserted by Leif?
If the man is happy to put out false statements said with complete certainty, and not correct them, even when presented with direct quotes and graphs of his own data, then all his words have to be viewed through that prism. When Leif says something is “blatantly wrong” clearly it may be anything from blatantly wrong to completely correct.
Leif’s own words apply to Leif’s comments: “From false assertion only garbage follows.”
321
What a ridiculous comparison. To say that showing in contrasting color and then stating just what some points are vs seeing people interpret data you have produced without contrasting colors and not saying anything is repugnant and dishonest, as is your answer. Mann never said anything about the misinterpreting of data on his famous graph. He was probably perfectly happy to have it viewed that way, otherwise he would have said something. He should have said something.
180
Steve Mosher:
That has to be the most bizzare comment on this thread.
80
“…whether
these tricks were documented or not.”
Puhlease.
If you noticed it was there, you could hardly fail to notice that it was a different colour, or that the graph was clearly labelled. Compared to CRU, this is completely transparent.
IMHO, there is absolutely no need to invoke cries of “trickery” and make comparisons with Mann & Jones et al.
By all means dispute the method of estimation; by all means ask for code (remember “free the code”, Moshpit?); by all means suggest the method is defective. All these are normal and expected.
But remember that this is not publicly funded research, it is in the process of being released on the terms of those who funded it, and there is as yet no reason to believe that the code and data will not be released at the stated time. If you do not believe it can be properly evaluated without code and data (and I would agree with that), then wait for the code and data before offering a critique.
Perhaps BEST should have released ALL their code and data immediately too, but they didn’t – pots and kettles much? Let me guess – that’s different. If you think so, your hypocracy is showing.
320
“then wait for the code and data before offering a critique”
As we already know the data is bogus, there is no need to wait for the code.
261
The METHOD is useless because the data is wrong (not yours)?
So I take it that the use of arithmetic should be discontinued if some one has been found to be fiddling with the books?
That is a novel approach. Do you use it often?
180
Indeed, if the books have been fiddled with, any arithmetic performed on the numbers in them is of no use. This is a good principle to follow, and, yes I do that often.
440
Leif,
You are just some old tosser with an axe to grind, please stop cluttering up this blog as i only wish to read what the adults have written.
315
But you would junk arithmetic altogether if the books have been fiddled.
Or was that statement of yours incorrect? Or perhaps your wording was inartful?
120
Not the point being made. Arithmetic still works on bogus data.
Or are you claiming it does not?
It is rather silly to claim that a method is wrong because the data used in the method us wrong.
120
Leif:
Please show your empirical demonstration of how the “books have been fiddled with” with regard to the ACRIM TSI data set. There is no degradation there, and the ACRIM gap is filled with actual data. Not only that, but the ACRIM data correlates quite well to temperature for the last 30+ years.
Then explain how it is that you claim that “TSI right now is about 0.45 W/m2 higher than in 2003-2005” according to the SORCE/TIM data, but yet all of these SORCE/TIM graphs show that you are wrong…the trend is down in the last 10 years?
http://spot.colorado.edu/~koppg/TSI/TIM_TSI_Reconstruction.jpg
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/guillermo_image2.png
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/sorce_tsi_reconstruction_feb2013-feb2014.png?w=640
140
Kenneth Richard – He won’t answer that one.
80
“As we already know the data is bogus,…”
So even prior to full revelations from the author of the provinence of the data, you know it’s bogus?
Please forgive me for believing you have a closed mind and have no right to call yourself a scientist. By all means be sceptical of unverifiable claims, but trashing them without seeing the data when the author has made a commitment to release it, is indicative of someone with a dogma to defend rather than a passion for the truth. If David doesn’t release code and data within 3 months, I will withdraw and apologise.
200
So Steven – I guess we can take all the thousands BEST “estimates” as Mannian manipulation. Fair’s fair.
90
Richard, it is odd that anyone reading this blog can be surprised that skeptics can be “hostile and insulting” when they “could get their points across equally as well without the playground-putdowns.”
The fact that on this occasion the people they disagree with are “fellow skeptics” is irrelevant. That is the way they adress anyone they do not agree with.
217
What a classic case of projection.
110
No TedM, my own experiences on the recieving end of skeptic comments here and elswhere.
If try to remain polite in face of this provocation until I have had enough of it.
26
I will be amused to see your responses when you have had enough.
BTW I’m a believer in AGW especially with CO2 going up and now the long pause in response to that rise. Got anything that will help me keep the faith?
I get asked this a lot, “What is the proper level of plant food in the atmosphere?” Can you help me with that?
I also get asked, “What is the best temperature for the planet?” I have never seen an answer to that. Perhaps you can direct me to one.
60
M Simon. See some of my responses to griss, bullocky Bob_
I was banned from Watts for getting fed up when he told me to pull my head out of my rear end among other things.
It was indeed personal upping the ante on that kind of insult and did not think the moderators would even put it up
I kind of regretted it after but getting that kind of nonsnse from punters on the blog is one thing. Getting it from the proprieter of the blog is another, and it was meant as a sign off from further participation on that blog as I fully understood the consequences.
Here is something that may help with CO2 and the “pause”:
http://tinyurl.com/nyjroxe
18
Looks to me like no trend in the data for about 14 years just by eyeballing the graph.
And ya know. I believe Jones noticed this too. And he is a warmist.
50
The trend line for the last 14 years is in fact far from flat.
http://tinyurl.com/mxysg96
But the real point is that the statistical error in the trends for short perids such as the last 14 or 15 years means that the data is extremely unreliable.
(The graph was initially used to demonstrate the problems with cherry picking short data sets, specifically with respect to claims about the post 1998 el nino temperatures.)
From June 2000
Trend: 0.085 ±0.241 °C/decade (2σ)
From June 1999
Trend: 0.134 ±0.222 °C/decade (2σ)
The data from 1979 shows statistically significant warming.
Trend: 0.138 ±0.070 °C/decade (2σ)
17
So tell me according to your oracle what length of time does a trend need to continue for to get the SD below 1C? (still no warming since 1850)
How long does it need to extend for to get the SD below .5C (barely any warming).
So far the trend has continued for 30 years or so. And for the last 7 or 9 years we have started cooling a tad.
And most folks (including warmists) are saying we could be in for a cold spell. The warmists because they need to hedge their bets to keep their theory alive (other forces are in play – known but not previously accounted for – why no accounting? Well catastrophism goes away if the effect of CO2 is reduced much more from where it is). And the rest of us because at the very least – it was never CO2. It was ocean cycles. You start blaming CO2 when the ocean cycles are on the rise and you get 30 years of it is CO2 – for sure.
But then the cycle reverses. And then believers in CO2 look like fools – or worse.
BTW the flattening is just what you would expect if the heating was cyclic. And after the flattening comes the decline.
50
And just for a historical note:
We have been getting alternating heating and cooling scares about every 30 years since about 1895. Corresponding to alternations in the PDO cycle (and other cycles).
Had you looked at that record you might not have placed so much emphasis on CO2. But what did we hear instead? “This time it is different.” Evidently this time it is not different.
It never was CO2. That was just a ploy to advance other political goals (don’t even get me started on that one).
70
MSimon. The SDs we are talking about are in temperature /unit time. So I do not know what you mean by a SD of less than 1 C.
Once again, where do you get this ‘no warming for 160 years’?
“So far the trend has continued for 30 years or so.”
What 30 year trend?
UAH data since 1984?
Trend: 0.174 ±0.087 °C/decade (2σ)
16
Philip Shehan:
Yes, we can cherry-pick graphs too…
http://appinsys.com/globalwarming/ENSO_files/image030.jpg
Here are the raw temperature numbers taken directly from HadCRUT for the last 17 years. See if you can find a distinct warming trend here.
1997 0.392
1998 0.531
1999 0.301
2000 0.294
2001 0.437
2002 0.492
2003 0.503
2004 0.445
2005 0.539
2006 0.495
2007 0.483
2008 0.388
2009 0.494
2010 0.547
2011 0.406
2012 0.448
2013 0.486
The globe has warmed by a whopping +0.4 C since 1940…
HadCRUT temperature data:
1940 0.018
1941 0.018
…even though nearly 100 ppm of CO2 has been pumped into the atmosphere during the last 75 years. This period has included a cooling trend of -0.2 C between the years 1940/’41 and 1975/’76.
Here’s what the +0.4 C of warming since 1940 looks like plotted (using multiple datasets):
http://rankexploits.com/musings/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/global.png
And according to the IPCC, which uses the HadCRUT, we only warmed by +0.76 C from 1850 to 2005.
“The total temperature increase from the period 1850 to 1899 to the period 2001 to 2005 is 0.76°C ± 0.19°C.”
If we cherry-picked the late 1870s to start from rather than 1850, we’ve warmed by less than +0.5 C in the last 140 years.
70
The trend line for the last 14 years is in fact far from flat.
But if I put a ruler on the graph from the last data point to about mid 1997 the difference is zero.
50
Philip Shehan
July 6, 2014 at 11:53 pm
I must admit I misread your numbers (as you can tell from my comments). You can disregard my points about SD. But my main point still stands. From about 1997.9 to the present the trend is zero. That is over 16 years. Phil Jones thinks the pause is significant because such long pauses do not show up in CO2 driven models with the current rate of CO2 increase. His original opinion was that a pause over 10 years was significant.
Such a pause would not be unusual if the climate (30 years) was cyclic.
Such a cyclic nature would require greatly reduced CO2 sensitivity. If there is any sensitivity at all. Because what happened was that a cyclic rise was imputed to CO2 rise.
40
Kenneth, your comment is polite, well presented and thoughtful and backed by data so I would normally do you the courtesy of a detailed response.
However, I do not readily recall your name compared with others who I encounter frequently here and you seem to have missed my many posts on cherry picking, statistical significance, the mutifactorial nature of temperature forcings, and the consequent variability of the temperature record, “step” theories etc.
Others here are familiar with these arguments, and I must be elsewhere so I apologise for not repeating them again.
13
Regarding “cherrypicking”….
Considering that when we talk about the warming of the 20th century, we’re talking about only two periods of warming—1910 to 1940, and 1976/’77 to 1997/’98 (with the latter trend both starting and ending with strong El Nino years). That’s it. Those are the only two warming stretches of the last 130 years.
The 1910 to 1940 warming of +0.5 C coincided with a CO2 increase of just 5 ppm, as CO2 levels only rose from 300 ppm to 305 ppm during that 30+ year stretch. So that warming couldn’t have been mostly anthropogenic.
From 1940 to 1976, temperatures cooled by -0.2 C (despite CO2 levels rising by 30 ppm during that stretch).
From 1998 to 2012, we have “warmed” by +0.04 C per decade (according to the IPCC AR5) despite CO2 levels rising from 360 ppm to 400 ppm during that stretch…so this stretch really doesn’t fit the hypothesis either.
And if we go back to the 1877/’78 to 1910 trend, we see a drop in temperatures of nearly -0.5 C during that 30+ year trend. So that doesn’t fit either.
Simply put, the only stretch of time in the last 130 years that CO2 levels rose rapidly at the same time that temperatures rose rapidly were between the years 1976/’77 and 1997/’98, a 22-year period. Does 22 years out of the last 130 truly establish a correlation between CO2 amplification and temperature amplification?
This is the backdrop that must be considered when one references the subject of “cherry-picking.”
30
M Simon,
With respect to “What is the proper level of CO2 for plant food?” This is not my area but it is true that plants grow more with increased CO2 concentration but I am not sure what the limits are. It is also true that the nutritional value of plants grown under higher CO2 concentrations is lower.
It depends on what plants you are talking about. Natural selection will result in plants adjusting to whichever are best suited to whatever the conditions are.
Ditto with “What is the best temperature for the planet?
What people really mean is what is the best temperature from an anthropomorphic viewpoint, and even then that will depend on which people where. There will be winners and losers from global warming.
I remarked previously as to why the Prime Minister of Canada may have a relaxed atitude to AGW.
18
Plants seem to like from 1,000 to 1,500 ppm. We have a ways to go. Below about 250 ppm some plants don’t do well. At 100 ppm none of them do well.
I’d like to see about 500 to 800 ppm in the atmosphere. We may have to turn a LOT of calcium carbonate into CO2 to get there.
As to my preferred temperature for the planet. I like about 2C to 5C warmer than current conditions. I think we ought to leave the ice age behind. If we can.
90
Speaking as an Australian, I am not in favour of warming of 2 to 5 degrees, which would render Australia’s food bowl barren and inundation of coastal cities.
18
You fix barren with CO2 – lots of CO2. As to coastal cities? That is a problem.
But I’m tired of the ice age. I’ve lived in one all my life. And we may very well be near the end of the interglacial. I would think an end to ice ages would be worth some pain. After all – crops do not do well under ice.
50
Philip Shehan said …
What do you base this on? Temperatures rise by more than 5 degrees every day from the night before and catastrophe has not occur yet.
The much more scarier scenario is that a drop of 2C in average temperatures for the Northern Hemisphere and large areas of Russia and Canada stop being able to produce wheat. The spectre of wide spread famine becomes a real possibility.
Cold is orders of magnitude worse than warm.
40
MSimon. Plants indeed need CO2. They also need another vital substance: Water.
I live on the earth’s driest inhabited continent and the food bowl (South Eastern Australia) is almost perpetually on the brink of drought or in one. This problem is projected to increase dramatically in this region with rising global temperatures.
16
Yes, droughts are “projected” to increase by those who wish to equate rising anthropogenic greenhouse gases with drought frequencies (and rising flood frequencies at the same time—go figure).
But not only does the IPCC (now) acknowledge that there are no trends with regard to drought frequencies since CO2 levels began their precipitous rise in the 1950s, but there were more droughts reported prior to the 1950s than since. Besides, it’s well established that droughts are caused by solar forcing, not 1/100ths of 1% changes in atmospheric CO2 concentrations (300 ppm to 400 ppm).
———————————————–
IPCC summarizing statements from AR5 (2013):
“In summary, the current assessment concludes that there is not enough evidence at present to suggest more than low confidence in a global-scale observed trend in drought or dryness (lack of rainfall) since the middle of the 20th century.”
“AR4 conclusions regarding global increasing trends in drought since the 1970s were probably overstated.”
———————————————-
The peer-reviewed literature indicates that droughts were much more frequent prior to 1950, when CO2 emissions began their exponential rise, than since 1950. This establishes a non-correlation between amplified CO2 and drought frequency or intensity.
————————————————-
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2006GL025711/abstract
Droughts have, for the most part, become shorter, less frequent, and cover a smaller portion of the country over the last century.
————————————————–
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2009JCLI2683.1
Tree-ring records show that the twentieth century has been moist from the perspective of the last millennium and free of long and severe droughts that were abundant in previous centuries. The recent drought, forced by reduced precipitation and with reduced evaporation, has no signature of model-projected anthropogenic climate change.
—————————————————
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016819231000256X
[D]rought conditions over the period of instrumental records (since 1895) do not exhibit the full range of variability, severity, or duration of droughts during the last millennium. Thirteen decadal to multidecadal droughts (i.e., ≥10 years) occurred during the last millennium – the longest lasting sixty-one years and centered on the late twelfth century.
—————————————————
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v384/n6609/abs/384552a0.html
Extreme droughts of greater intensity than that of the 1930s were more frequent before AD 1200. This high frequency of extreme droughts persisted for centuries, and was most pronounced during AD 200–370, AD 700–850 and AD 1000–1200. We suggest that before AD 1200, the atmospheric circulation anomalies that produce drought today were more frequent and persistent.
—————————————————-
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/joc.619/abstract
[I]t is not possible to conclude that drought conditions in general have become more severe or frequent. The period analysed and the selection of stations strongly influenced the regional pattern. For most stations, no significant changes were detected.
——————————————————-
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v491/n7424/abs/nature11575.html
Here we show that the previously reported increase in global drought is overestimated because the PDSI uses a simplified model of potential evaporation that responds only to changes in temperature and thus responds incorrectly to global warming in recent decades. More realistic calculations, based on the underlying physical principles8 that take into account changes in available energy, humidity and wind speed, suggest that there has been little change in drought over the past 60 years.
——————————————————-
And droughts, of course, are not caused by carbon dioxide concentrations, or humans. They’re primarily caused by solar forcing.
——————————————————-
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/292/5520/1367.abstract
We conclude that a significant component of century-scale variability in Yucatan droughts is explained by solar forcing.
——————————————————–
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2008GL034971/abstract
These coherencies corroborate strong visual correlations and provide convincing evidence for solar forcing of east-central North American droughts and strengthen the case for solar modulation of mid-continent climates.
50
According to the IPCC, sea levels rose at a rate of 1.7 mm/yr, or 6.6 inches per century, from 1901 to 2010. And sea level rise has actually been decelerating (overall) since the 1920 to 1950 period, when CO2 levels were still in the low 300s ppm.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2006GL028492/abstract
Extending the sea level record back over the entire century suggests that the high variability in the rates of sea level change observed over the past 20 years were not particularly unusual. The rate of sea level change was found to be larger in the early part of last century (2.03 ± 0.35 mm/yr 1904–1953), in comparison with the latter part (1.45 ± 0.34 mm/yr 1954–2003).
http://www.psmsl.org/products/reconstructions/2008GL033611.pdf
The fastest sea level rise, estimated from the time variable trend with decadal variability removed, during the past 300 years was observed between 1920– 1950 with maximum of 2.5 mm/yr. [E]stimates of the melting glacier contribution to sea level is 4.5 cm for the period 1900 – 2000 with the largest input of 2.5 cm during 1910 – 1950 [Oerlemans et al., 2007]
http://multi-science.metapress.com/content/q7j3kk0128292225/
For the last 40-50 years strong observational facts indicate virtually stable sea level conditions. The Earth’s rate of rotation records an [average] acceleration from 1972 to 2012, contradicting all claims of a rapid global sea level rise, and instead suggests stable, to slightly falling, sea levels.
http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-10-00157.1
Without sea-level acceleration, the 20th-century sea-level trend of 1.7 mm/y would produce a rise of only approximately 0.15 m from 2010 to 2100; therefore, sea-level acceleration is a critical component of projected sea-level rise. To determine this acceleration, we analyze monthly-averaged records for 57 U.S. tide gauges in the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL) data base that have lengths of 60–156 years. Least-squares quadratic analysis of each of the 57 records are performed to quantify accelerations, and 25 gauge records having data spanning from 1930 to 2010 are analyzed. In both cases we obtain small average sea-level decelerations. To compare these results with worldwide data, we extend the analysis of Douglas (1992) by an additional 25 years and analyze revised data of Church and White (2006) from 1930 to 2007 and also obtain small sea-level decelerations similar to those we obtain from U.S. gauge records.
Non-accelerating sea levels have been documented for the coasts of Australia, too.
http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-10-00141.1
The Australasian region has four very long, continuous tide gauge records, at Fremantle (1897), Auckland (1903), Fort Denison (1914), and Newcastle (1925), which are invaluable for considering whether there is evidence that the rise in mean sea level is accelerating over the longer term at these locations in line with various global average sea level time-series reconstructions. The analysis reveals a consistent trend of weak deceleration at each of these gauge sites throughout Australasia over the period from 1940 to 2000.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378383912000154
The government of Australia is supporting the statement that sea levels are rising faster than ever before as a result of increased carbon dioxide emissions. Consequent to this, low-lying coastal areas, where the majority of Australians are concentrated, have been declared at risk of sea level inundations. Maps with 0.5, 0.8 and 1.1 m sea level rise have been proposed for Sydney, the major Australian city. However, long term tide gauges, recording sea levels worldwide, as well as along the coastline of Australia, and within the bay of Sydney, do not show any sign of accelerating sea level rises at present time.
http://multi-science.metapress.com/content/k3xg21881l4k0161/
There is a claim that, by the end of this century, Australian coastal communities will experience rising sea levels of up to more than 1 metre because of the anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions causing global warming. The paper shows that locally and globally measured data, collected over short and long time scales, prove that the claim of sea level sharply accelerating is false.
http://www.eike-klima-energie.eu/fileadmin/user_upload/jaeger/Moerner_Parker_ESAIJ2013.pdf
We revisit available tide gauge data along the coasts of Australia, and we are able to demonstrate that the rate may vary between 0.1 and 1.5 mm/year, and that there is an absence of acceleration over the last decades. With a database of 16 stations covering only the last 17 years, the National Tidal Centre claims that sea level is rising at a rate of 5.4 mm/year. We here analyse partly longer-term records from the same 16 sites as those used by the Australian Baseline Sea Level Monitoring Project (ABSLMP) and partly 70 other sites; i.e. a database of 86 stations covering a much longer time period. This database gives a mean trend in the order of 1.5 mm/year. Therefore, we challenge both the rate of sea level rise presented by the National Tidal Centre in Australia and the general claim of acceleration over the last decades.
And to put this into perspective for the last 10,000 years…
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jqs.2634/abstract
We conclude that relative sea levels rose at an average rate of 4 mm per year from 10,000-6,000 years ago, 2 mm per year from 6,000 to 2,000 years ago, and 1.3 mm per year from 2,000 years ago to AD 1900.
And since 1900, they’ve risen at a rate of 1.7 mm/yr, with most of that increase in acceleration occurring prior to 1950, when CO2 emissions were but a fraction of what they are today.
So, to address the original point, inundation of coastal cities due to rapid sea level rise/anthropogenic CO2 is highly unlikely.
Thank you for posting so many links to articles with short descriptions. This is very helpful. Cheers! – Jo
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I live on the earth’s driest inhabited continent and the food bowl (South Eastern Australia) is almost perpetually on the brink of drought or in one. This problem is projected to increase dramatically in this region with rising global temperatures.
Well then. If CO2 is disproved to be a driver of climate I’m sure you will be greatly relieved. We can then up the CO2 in the atmosphere further. If the Sahara is any indication (greening with higher CO2 levels) it should be a great boon to Oz.
As to “projected”. I wouldn’t place much stock in that. I project that if temperatures keep rising as they did in my location from 5AM (local time) to 1 PM in 20 days the local temperature will be on the order of 260F minimum. Evidently I’m doomed. 😉
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Philip Shehan
July 6, 2014 at 9:48 pm
M Simon,
With respect to “What is the proper level of CO2 for plant food?” This is not my area but it is true that plants grow more with increased CO2 concentration but I am not sure what the limits are. It is also true that the nutritional value of plants grown under higher CO2 concentrations is lower.
I think you’ll find that that “fact” is somewhat under dispute. See here
Jo says see my post:Increasing CO2 threatens human nutrition (From the Annals of Hype)
“…to solve a shortage of a 10% reduction in iron and zinc in rice, the average person eating 100g of rice would need to eat an extra 2.6 grams of chickpeas (or is that chickpea, singular?). As a bonus they would be getting five times more iron than what they are missing out on in the rice.” — jo
10
Mr Shenan
In #1.6.1.1.2, you say:
How would the coastal cities would be inundated? The level of the entire Pacific and the entire Indian Ocean would need to rise by several metres to achieve that. The area of the earth’s oceans is 361.8 million square metres, and that would need to rise by about 5 metres to “inundate” cities. Where would the 1809 million cubic metres of water come from, to do that?
Also, if the air temperature increased by 2 to 5 degrees, this would increase the amount of evaporation from the sea, would it not? That water vapour would eventually condense into droplets and form clouds, which would then increase the amount of rainfall. This is the water cycle they teach kids in primary school.
Can you explain to us, how either of these hypotheses are wrong?
20
I rest my case.
10
After reading some of Svalgaard’s endless postings, and his desperation to assert his authority, I’ve just realised who he reminds me of. It’s Captain Queeg.
50
“As Svalgaard himself said, “All so-called ‘reconstructions’ of TSI are guesses. Most of them bad.”
If David’s guess turns out less bad than Leif’s I will be greatly amused.
Given the large drop from the peak of cycle 23 to the peak of cycle 24 my best guess would put the start of the steepest decline (after smoothing) nearer 2004/5 as per David than 1995 as per Leif.
The jet stream tracks stopped moving poleward and became more meridional around 2000 and since then ozone above the poles has started to increase again, ocean heat content is no longer rising, the Earthshine project shows increasing global cloudiness and albedo, El Nino is not as dominant compared to La Nina as it was and incursions of cold polar air into the mid latitudes in both hemisphere have increased.
The most likely interpretation is that Leif spotted the initial change to a cessation of warming and maybe slight cooling in the mid 90’s (blogger HenryP set it around that time too, I think) but the recent very low minimum with record negative polar vortices may well have put the trend into proper cooling which, taking the 11 or so year lag into account, should give a cooling atmosphere by 2017 as David suggests.
I think blogger Salvatore del Prete has suggested the levels to which solar activity should drop so that that actual cooling begins.
Maybe Leif is a few years behind the curve on this?
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Good point Stephen (kicking myself for not seeing it myself :)):
“Given the large drop from the peak of cycle 23 to the peak of cycle 24 my best guess would put the start of the steepest decline (after smoothing) nearer 2004/5 as per David than 1995 as per Leif.”
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You are welcome.
This is getting to be fun:)
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such a pity you have had to devote so much time and energy answering criticism,whether valid or not,before the complete series of posts was completed. i really do believe some very clever people have problems reading at times.
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The problem is, you’re muscling in on someone else’s pile of dung which they thought they had come to control. Hence they find it impossible not to push back, hard, until they see the point of firm resistance indicating the real boundary.
I’m a different sort of character: my MO is to pass very swiftly across contested territory having done my detailed analysis in advance. That analysis always has at its heart the unassailable physics’ correction showing that the particular pile of dung is really being held under false pretences and it embarrasses the holder to continue holding it!
So, the difference is that you attack and occupy whereas I, one of Nature’s iconoclasts, undermine to the point of collapse then rebuild!
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“…you’re muscling in on someone else’s pile of dung…”
I am totally stealing that phrase, good one 8)
30
[…] Funny things happen on the Internet sometimes. Rather spectacular claims were made that 900 days of data “were fabricated”. […]
30
I’m not so confused by the behavior of Svalgaard and Essenbach.
You are treading on the Sun Gods toes. Whenever I was confronted with an expert, I always kept this definition in mind, “An expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less until they reach the pinnacle where they know absolutely everything about nothing”
The other case seems to be an example of the “Napoleonic small man complex”. I have to wonder how many times others were tempted to “punch his lights out, the argumentative little bast88RD”. Career wise the resume would raise red flags, two immediate thoughts would be either incompetence or interpersonal skill deficiencies. In school report parlance, “Does not play well with others”. Probably a fun guy to have a beer with but does not come over as a team player, a bright critical thinker but at times develops tunnel vision and loses the big picture.
Right or wrong, the positions taken and the antagonistic language used have done serious reputational damage. Childish, blinkered, arrogant and uncalled for.
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“An expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less until they reach the pinnacle where they know absolutely everything about nothing”
One of my favourite quotes that I’ve often borne in mind when commenting over the past several years.
Sometimes, being a generalist outsider is the best way forward.
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I prefer Ex – hasbeen Spurt- a drip under pressure.
I hope you have considered (as I have mentioned numerous times before) that the reason you are not seeing much cooling yet is because you are not looking at real data.
As long as NCDC and GISS have control of the final output of temperature data there will be no large amount of cooling in the so called official data sets.
Another point to consider is that Satellite data is showing the amount of warmth leaving the Earth, not the actual temperature of the earth. Which may be one reason why the values shown for various regions by the Satellite data bear no resemblance to what the people living in those regions actually experience at Ground Level.
See this post by the ScottishSceptic
http://scottishsceptic.wordpress.com/2014/07/03/reconciling-skydragons-and-mainstream-skeptics/
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Stephen,
But remember that “a generalist knows less and less about more and more and the pinacle is knowing nothing about everything”
80
A neat riposte but not quite accurate.
A generalist knows more and more about more and more but realises that one can never know everything about anything.
Generalists don’t drop out of whole areas of knowledge in order to focus more on a small area of knowledge which is what experts tend to do. Generalists try not to drop out of any areas of knowledge whilst they go deeper into as much as possible.
Leif, for example, knows as much as it is currently possible to know about the sun but I have little confidence in his knowledge about solar interaction with an atmosphere. In that latter area he is no more expert than many of us here.
Willis had an insight about a water based thermostat applying to equatorial sea surface temperatures but failed to take advice as to how it should be extended globally and why it is related to the weight of atmospheric mass pressing down on the water surface.
Neither of them has the breadth of general knowledge required to helpfully interpret the multidisciplinary complexity of a planet’s climate system.
190
My favourite was alway:
“an expert is someone who knows what he doesn’t know“.
In other words he is aware of the boundaries to his knowledge.
70
Quite correct Engineer.
And in fact scientists spend their days trying to come to grips with things they do not understand about their chosen field. That is why it is called original research.
25
Engineers try to come to grips with problems they do not initially understand in order to make their devices work. There is at least as much research going on in engineering as there is in science. It is just directed towards a different end.
In fact one of the cardinal virtues of engineering is the ability to discard a misleading or wrong hypothesis quickly. Scientists seem to lack that virtue – in the main.
I would guess that is why you find so many engineers among the CO2 sceptics. We don’t have time for ideas that don’t work.
50
My Dad always said to me to be cautious of Experts
He said to me “X” is an unknown quantity and “Spurt” is a drip under pressure.
50
Apologies to A C Osborn should have read the replies properly
30
The two of them have lost sight of a very basic principle that even Tony Soprano understands – those who want respect give respect.
100
I much prefer Feynman’s more succinct “Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts”.
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I already said I am going all-in on Nova and Evans.
Eugene WR Gallun
191
“Science is a bloodsport”
Said by those who prefer to think of themselves as the bullfighters rather than as the bullsh*tters they really are.
Keep up the good work David and Jo. When you’re getting hit with flying bullsh*t, you know you’re over the most fertile land.
750
Be careful, when walking behind cows that have been eating spring grass … 🙂
140
Don’t expect Slick Willy, the fishing cowboy who would be a scientist, to back down. Even when confronted with his mandated quoted material provided he side-steps through diversion as if he’d not even read what one has written. He likes to speak of the characteristics of the planet where he’s from – apparently humility is not found there as someone else observed. When center-punched by Jo Nova he did finally chant “mea culpa” when there was no wiggle room left.
He is conformed to his slap dash emergent phenomena hypothesis (which has never included an energy budget to power this regulator) and defending that hypothesis is his agenda. Leif is what you see – no further description is needed.
The sooner we all get past the unhelpful contributions of these two manics the sooner we can all see the full picture behind the mysterious X force. I’m looking forward to it.
400
I erred above and I hasten to correct the error. I wrote Dr. Curry but in fact intended to write Jo Nova.
Fixed. Thanks – Jo
30
AsI have noted before for Tallblokes, there appears to be a desire to keep the skeptic command firmly in the American hands. Substantive contributions by “foreignerd” seem to be greeted with suspicion. I’ve seen it in my oil and gas business: if a Texan didn’t come up with the idea, there must be something wrong with it. At a minimum? , it needs fixing.
The climate dispute displays cultural attributes just as we’ve seen through history. If it don’t come from our friends, we don’t have to pay attention. And if it turns out well, we somehow started the ball rolling.
People are tiring. Dogs are often better.
400
“there appears to be a desire to keep the skeptic command firmly in the American hands.”
As a Virginian in the USA, I hope that this is not the case. Michael Crichton laid out the dangers of the scientific community not remaining an international family that remains aloof from governments and pursue the truth en masse. Lysenko also comes to mind.
The truth of the matter is that the truth lies where it will, and no amount of PR or plans can change that.
60
I didn’t mind reading the bulk of this post which reiterated what has already been covered in the release of Dr Evans’ new theory and model so far. It convinced me that my understanding was correct and it was good to see some of the issues which have been raised, and some of the misunderstandings addressed in one place, i.e. rather than in the comments section of the previous posts.
But I felt sick in the guts when I read through the list of ‘Highlights’ noting specific comments by Svalgaard and Eschenbach. I had seen some of them of course, but putting them altogether was shocking, like staring at a gory train wreck. There is just no excuse for being so rude, impolite and defamatory. This is a science blog!
I am amazed at the grace and dignity Dr David Evans and Jo Nova have shown in handling this.
740
You can either use a rational and transparent scientific process or a post normal scientific process but you can’t use both.
The post normal scientific process is based upon Post Modern Philosophy in which truth is said to be unknowable. This is especially and because one must see, process the evidence one sees, and draw conclusions from that process to know. As Kant says, one cannot see a thing in itself (without process) therefor all that is seen is false. All truth is revealed only to those capable of knowing. That you don’t know proves your unworthiness. Mere reason is helpless in face of such magnificent wisdom.
It is because of that belief, the data, the exposed process, and the demonstration/experiment are all considered irrelevant. It is only the seriousness of the charge and the truth as revealed by the self selected significant observers that is relevant. How do they know? Well, they are superior beings of extraordinary vision of what is. Their word is the law because it is THEIR word. It is all justified by the mystical and magic word “somehow”.
If you *believe*, no explanation is necessary. If you don’t, no explanation is possible. Those who don’t *believe* are apostates worthy of only beheading. At first, figuratively by having their character assassinated and finally, if they do not submit to the superior mystical wisdom, literally.
It is all made so simple once you have the right perspective. You can dispense with evidence, demonstration, and experiment. You can then move immediately to the conclusions. The conclusions are correct simply because they are your conclusions. Reality had better cooperate with the program or else the human sacrifices will commence to force reality into compliance. That this has never worked except to produce mountains of dead bodies is part of the evidence they hold to be irrelevant. Their intent to make the universe pure and noble is all that matters.
Their hidden motivation is part of that body of irrelevant evidence and is not to be considered. Yet, if you keep doing the same thing and keep getting results contrary to your spoken objective, your real objective is the results you get.
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” if you keep doing the same thing and keep getting results contrary to your spoken objective, your real objective is the results you get.”
that’s the most awesome quote. i am so going to be using that next time i hear a taxpayer complain about taxes (he does it so he can complain) or a voter yammering on about voting (he does it because he’s codependent, submissive and self deluded.)
thanks for that!
20
The Maker help us if we move on from post normal science to post normal engineering.
80
If it were to happen I don’t think it would last long. After a few bridges or buildings collapsed or a few cars or aircraft gained a reputation as death traps those engineers would find themselves without work. When everything is theoretical there isn’t the same damage done to one’s reputation as when it must be applied but is applied incorrectly and results in deaths or injury.
Were I to design a power generator intended to parallel with the grid without any reverse power protection, phase synchronization safeties, etc. and it a) destroyed itself on connecting to the grid, or b) destroyed one of the main power generators on the grid after it was connected the repercussions would be immediate. Yet I can hypothesize that a trace gas will cause eventual planetary destruction at some point after I will be dead and buried with relative immunity as by the time either the damage of following solutions to prevent the outcome of my hypothesis or the reality that it was wrong become apparent it will be far to late to do anything to me about it. Well, I suppose you could write nasty things about me in the upgraded history texts but seeing as I’m dead by then it won’t bother me.
50
Doctors bury their mistakes one at a time, engineers by the dozen. If you wonder who is more cautious, check out the E&O rates for engineers vs. malpractice rates for doctors.
10
Lionell,
Your 15 microseconds of fame: http://classicalvalues.com/2014/07/results-oriented/
30
Lionell, there is no “post normal science” based on post modern philosophy.
And Robert, comparisons between science and engineering is comparing apples and spanners.
Engineering is based on relatively simple physical principles known to a very high degree of precision and accuracy.
Science deals with theories, many of which concern exrtremely complicated systems which are established to varying degrees of uncertainty and are subject to further research and modification.
46
I see you are totally ignorant of wafer fabs. You should not use computers if you don’t understand them.
Engineering in very complex systems is based on empiricism. Science can be very helpful. But it is not necessary if the empirics are good.
And scientists develop theories – whoop te doooo doooo. And the theories get trashed repeatedly. Especially those about complex systems. But empirics? If they worked yesterday and cover a sufficient range of factors they will work tomorrow.
Good science is a codification of empiricism. Bad science? Well that is everything else. There seems to be a LOT of everything else going around these days.
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I said “relatively” simple. It is the precision with which these principles are known that allows engineers to apply them and make instruments that work and bridges that don’t fall down.
Yes scientists develope theories, including those which engineers use, such as those behind the developement of wafer fabs. They could not be developed by empiracism alone, trial and error. There must be an understanding of the physical theories behind them.
Scientists develope theories based on what they learn from observations of the physical world, to explain that world, make predictions based on those theories and modify them, or trash them and replace them with new theories to account for new observations where required.
That is a description of the scientific project.
18
Philip,
“If you cannot use it to build something that works in the real world, it is speculation.”
An engineer’s view of science.
60
And science is the basis of engineering.
17
I might add that all modern understanding of electronics is based on quantum theory.
15
I might add that electronic devices were built without reference to quantum theory.
And I might also add that quantum theory may very well be wrong. But it doesn’t matter as long as the numbers are useful.
It works the same way as F=ma. That is wrong. Absolutely wrong. But it doesn’t matter in the cases where it is close enough to do useful design.
Empiricism trumps theory. And in the case of current climate theory – “its the CO2 stupid” – reality trumps that. 17+ years of stagnant temperatures while atmospheric CO2 is up about 25%. In order for the models to reflect that the efficacy of CO2 in driving temperatures will have to be reduced. Reality averts catastrophe. Carbon will not need to be taxed.
40
Of course quantum theory may be wrong.
But thus far it has passed every test to a degree of precision unparalled in science.
And truth seeker has a very narrow attitude to science.
The structure of DNA was not mere speculation until genetic engineering came along.
The fact is that much well established science waits a long time for a practical application, but that does not make it mere speculation either.
In my own field Nuclear Magnetic Resonance began with physicists studying the magnetc properties of nuclei. They did not foresee the constrruction of NMRE spectrometers and MRI.
The first bridge may have been constructed when a hominid pushed a log over a stream, but for a rather long time the fact has been: No science, no engineering.
16
Have you heard of Polywell Fusion? The people involved plan to use surplus MRI magnets to build a test reactor.
http://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/low-cost-fusion-project-steps-out-shadows-looks-money-n130661
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MSimon: No I had not heard about Polywell fusion. Very interesting. Thanks for the link.
22
You are welcome.
20
F = ma is not absolutely wrong.
In spite of Newtonian phsyics being superseded by relativity, it is still accurate enough for almost all terrestrial applications, including engineering, and to send space vehicles to the planets.
I have responde to the point about CO2 and temperatures above.
15
F=ma is ABSOLUTELY wrong. It is just as you point out (and I have been saying) close enough for a lot of work.
30
What a self important tosser you are.
Quit trying to trivialize engineering. Many of the principles are not relatively simple which you might understand if you were an engineer. And the repercussions when an engineer makes a serious error outweigh anything a scientist might face because his/her hypothesis was crap.
80
Robert, I am not trivialising engineering.
It is people like Truthseeker and yourself who are trivialising science.
‘Philip,
“If you cannot use it to build something that works in the real world, it is speculation.”
An engineer’s view of science.’
If that is really the attitude of a significant number of engineers they would be correctly characterised as narrow minded non-thinkers who can only operate a calculator.
I give them more credit than Truthseeker does.
My point is that the physical principles behind engineering are not as complicated, with multiple interactions as in living systems and climate, for example.
Quantum mechanics is in no way trivial. Nor are the physics behind the forces and stresses involved in civil engineering. That is why calculations can be made to a very high degree of precision and confidence which means that bridges can be constructed that will not fall down. As they did, along with pyramids and cathedrals when things were done on the basis of “emprical” experience, trial and error.
I was trained in the physical sciences looking at “relatively” simple systems, the structure dynamics and interactions between “relatively” simple molecules, and had some sympathy for Rutherford’s viewpoint that if you have to resort to statistics you have not done the experiment properly.
Then I moved into biomedical research, dealing with complicted and messy systems of living matter, animals, organs tissues etc. and understood that this was indeed a narrow minded attitude.
“And the repercussions when an engineer makes a serious error outweigh anything a scientist might face because his/her hypothesis was crap.”
Before the first atomic test, Edward Teller postulated that there was a non-zero probability that the test would set fire to the atmosphere. They did some more maths and decided to take the risk. (All a bit cavalier considering the possible consequences in my opinion.) The physics of nuclearfusion is however relatively simple. So the engineers and scintists involved in constructing “the gadget” on the basis scientists theories had a high “engineers degree of confidence the correct working of their bit of engineering.
I suggest that a serious error in scientist’s calculations and theories in this instance would have had consequences that outwieghed any negative outcomes of an engineering problem.
15
Despite all the “names” involved with the gadget it was an engineering problem. Feynman and the rest were not doing physics. They were doing engineering.
As to “unfortunate results” had one set of calculations proved correct – just goes to show that some things are not amenable to available math. You have to run the test.
30
Do a web search on “Post Normal Science” and you will find over 10,000 hits for the phrase. Here is a paragraph from one:
I call this a meaningless verbal word salad derived from the principles of Post Modern Philosophy. You may argue that my assessment is in error but you cannot properly argue that Post Normal Science doesn’t exist. The authors take this garbage seriously. So also do most so called climate scientists. That way they don’t have to do the hard work of real science and be honest, honorable, and open with the details of their work and data processing.
50
Lionell.
I have no doubt that academics in the Humanities and Social Sciences (including apparently the authors of your link: S. Funtowicz, Centre for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities, University of Bergen; J. Ravetz, Oxford) have ideas on “post normal” or “post modern science”. But do scientists themselves go along with this?
Such ideas are confined to these social scientists.
It is not something that scientists, who are the only people who count with regard to such an assertion, accept or even know about. They continue to practice science according to the old established norms.
As for sociologist’s claims that this is how science is or should be conducted, this is a decades old idea. For a brilliant take down of such nonsense which I read close to twenty years ago, I suggest Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science by biologist Paul R. Gross and mathematician Norman Levitt, published in 1994.
Richard Feynman said that History and Philosophy was irrelevant to science and a waste of time.
I see his point in that it also is unknown to most scientists and irrelevant to them in their day to day lab work, although as a separate discipline in its own right I was sufficiently interested to undertake post graduate studies in that area.
There is nothing wrong with “the need for greater participation in science-policy processes” and other such matters. In fact I am all for it. The uses of science should not be something that is only the preserve of scientists or governments or other “experts”. We need a scientifically literate and involved public to make decisions on how scintific discoveries are to be used.
But again this has nothing to do with the way scientists conduct science itself. Which is all that really matters.
12
David,
While I disagree with any nastiness in approach, I tend to agree with some points that both Willis and Leif made. More generally, this is one of the better graphs that show how TSI really peaked with the big sunspot cycle in the late 1950’s and has been rolling off ever since:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/Temp_vs_TSI_2009.gif
The TSI trend versus temperature trend is particularly telling– they are going in opposite directions and have been for many decades, notch filter or no notch filter.
I happen to think you are way off base on this, and that overall, each succeeding decadal average temperature will be higher than the previous decadal average for at least the remainder of this century. The only break in this trend will be the eruption of a large volcano or two in the same decade. The forcing from CO2 and other GH gas increases is just too strong compared to the solar influence (as the chart above clearly shows).
Prior to the large anthropogenic influence, volcanoes and solar cycle did indeed modulate shorter-term climate, with astronomical cycles (Milankovtich) modulating longer-term comings and goings of glacial advances over the past several million years.
327
That explains the pause very well. Almost 18 years now. Let me see. How many decades is that? A little less than 1.8 by my reckoning. How do you reckon?
171
“That explains the pause very well. Almost 18 years now.”
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/07/weekend-unthreaded-41/#comment-1503255
14
Almost 2C SD? Well then. Statistically there has been no warming for at least 160 years.
We have nothing to worry about.
50
Kindly supply some evidence to support your assertion that “Statistically there has been no warming for at least 160 years.”
15
each succeeding decadal average temperature will be higher than the previous decadal average for at least the remainder of this century
Gatesy, that’s just wishful thinking on your part. The current solar cycle appears inadequate to maintain the temperature rise, and according to Leifs data the next solar cycle is looking like being a repeat of this solar cycle, so the ‘pause’ or even slight decline will most likely continue. co2 is well into the flat part of its logarithmic curve and the biosphere continues to blossom. If PDOs and AMOs play any part in global temperatures then their influence on the next 2 or 3 decades is unlikely to be “higher” temperatures either.
Your gif you provided looks suspiciously like GISS or Hadcrut 4 adjusted warmist comfort food.
If anyone is “way off base” it’s you.
220
J Martin,
Adjustments to the temperature record are made to acount for inconsistencies and problems involved in past temperature measurement.
Many of the adjustments made to GISS data actually increase past temperature relative to more recent ones which is hardly of comfort to “warmists”. Others have a neutral effect.
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/06/are-transfer-functions-meaningless-the-white-noise-point-beware-your-assumptions/#comment-1499520
The fact is that all the temperature data sets are in very good agreement.
http://tinyurl.com/l5ojm6b
110
@ Philip Shehan. An inconvenient warm peak and subsequent trough wiped out by GISS.
https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/hansen-giss-1940-1980.gif
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J Martin,
You have provided no information about the graphs so I cannot properly assess them.
If they do actually represent adjustments made, you have given no reason why the adjustments may not be entirely legitimate as outlined in the paper.
For example, hadcrut4 superseded hadcrut3 because the latter did not adequately cover temperatures in higher latitudes. This makes a difference in the area of interest of your graphs.
http://tinyurl.com/ptj9cz2
The graphs you post showing changes in relative positions of the mean temperatures between 1945 and 1955 and 1969 to 1970 in fact make very little difference to temperature changes with respect to any argument about the role of CO2 in warming. Hansen himself stated in his 1980 paper that he did not expect the warming signal from CO2 to make an appearance above the noise due to natural variation until the decade of the 80s.
If, as you suggest, something illegitimate is going on to make things look better, why did they not simply shave temperatures off the top of the anomalous local peak around 1940?
By the way, CO2 concentration (currently 400 ppm) is no where near the flat part of the logarithmic curve.
http://knowledgedrift.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/log1-co2.jpg
15
Your point about not providing the associated post that came with the graph is fair enough, and I will endevour to do so in future. However, your co2 graph is so almost linear as to be absurd and bears no relation to laboratory tests. It looks to me as if your co2 graph is based on climate models and presumes a matching increase in moisture content which has yet to be seen.
50
From your co2 graph we see that it shows a temmperature rise of 2C from 280ppm to 400ppm. Whereas in reality the temperture rise over that period has been ~0.8C. And it has yet to be conclusively established that that rise had anything to do with co2.
Over the last 17 years and 10 months co2 has risen steadily yet temperatures have not changed one iota.
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J Martin,
Thanks for the reply and for looking for further information on the graphs.
I should point out that the verical axis on the CO2 graph is the forcing in Watts per metre squared, not degrees C.
I have not provided further information on this graph either so I will attempt to find the source.
Do you have information on the laboratory experiments you mention?
I do not dismiss the idea of a pause, although I do say there is no statistically significant temperature evidence to support it.
Such a pause does not invalidate the proposed effect of CO2 on temperature as of course many other forcings contribute to temperature sometimes reinforcing and at other times subtracting from the increase due to increasing CO2 concentration. The role of the sun is what this section is all about.
With regard to the observed temperature change with CO2 concentration,I have calculated the temperature rise with doubling of CO2 concentration for the following data.
The observed temperature is not entirely due to the effect of CO2 but includes contributions to warming or cooling from other forcings.
I posted this graph above, for which the rise is 1.80 ± 0.91 °C. The large error margins are a consequence of the relatively short temperature data range and subsequent error in that part of the calculation.
http://tinyurl.com/nyjroxe
For the data from 1958, when Muana Loa data begins the calculated value is 2.01 ± 0.38 °C
http://tinyurl.com/lhjpvkt
The data from 1850 in the following graph of temperature vs log CO2 concentration is 2.04 ± 0.07 °C
http://oi46.tinypic.com/29faz45.jpg
The agreement between the calculated value for the three periods is very good and is within the IPCC range for the sensitivity factor (1.5 – 4.5 C)
13
Such a pause does not invalidate the proposed effect of CO2 on temperature as of course many other forcings contribute to temperature sometimes reinforcing and at other times subtracting from the increase due to increasing CO2 concentration.
Then why don’t we see that in the models? Hint – for such a long pause the effect of CO2 would have to be diminished.
And if it was diminished it wouldn’t be a problem. Away goes the grant money.
So given all that why do you think CO2 emissions are a problem?
30
Which models?
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/326/5960/1646/F8.expansion.html
If the pause is real it is due to effects such as ENSO solar cycles etc. which are currently having a cooling effect.
The underlying problem of warming due to CO2 has not gone away.
What happens when the natural cucles reinforce the warming due to CO2?
13
So tell me why haven’t the climate models included the cycles as soon as they were known?
Because to include them it would diminish the effect of CO2. BTW nice graph at the link. But it will be a bad predictor if temperatures start falling.
So how about the alternate hypothesis? I have seen models that just include ocean cycles and solar effects that account for >90% of the temperature changes. A tad better than your model that includes CO2.
Perhaps a zero weight for CO2 is the best weight. Then what?
===============
But OK. Suppose it is CO2. Are you willing to go to war with China, India, and Germany to get them to cut back on CO2 production? Or is it you don’t in your heart believe it is worth a war to “save the planet”?
And please give us your sophistry on why when CO2 was 1,000 or 2,000 or 5,000 ppm didn’t we get runaway heating.
Warmists have an explanation for everything.
Warmism is a dying religion. And in 10 or 15 years when it has died down more we will get explanations on why it was never CO2. Be patient.
And if CO2 was the problem why didn’t the “Greens” go on a tree planting campaign (the cheapest way to fix the “problem”) instead of becoming anti-plant food? Greens anti-plant food. Now that is an excellent laugh line.
What happens when people figure out that there were no greens? Just watermelons.
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But you have to know those problems EXACTLY to make a proper adjustment. And you have to know the EXACT set of problems for each individual measurement.
What are the odds? Better – what is the evidence?
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M Simon, No.
Read the link and the linked paper within it.
13
Well that certainly convinced me that they know the problems EXACTLY. And they know the EXACT set of problems for each individual measurement.
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M Simon.
Firstly there is no such thing as an exact measurement. All measurements and resulting calculations involve an amount of uncertainty.
The rate of drop in temperature is known to be (to one significant figure) 6 C/km.
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/weather/wstdatmo.htm
The uncertainties in global temperature anomolies do not warrant temperature adjustment based on altitude to any higher precision.
Thus:
“The St. Helena station, based on metadata provided with MCDW records, was moved from 604 m to 436 m elevation between August 1976 and September 1976. Therefore assuming a lapse rate of about 6°C/km, we added 1°C to the St. Helena temperatures before September 1976.”
The question is which set of data more accurately reflects the change in temperature at St Helena, the data adjusted for the change in altitude or the unadjusted data?
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Well ok the lapse rate is known to one significant figure. That reduces all the measurements this adjustment is applied to to one significant figure. Did the adjusters do that? Now is what you are left with of ANY significance?
Depends on the error bar of the measurement. And all the other meta data for the move. Like are the wind patterns the same? Closer or farther from the ocean? Different measuring system? etc.
And you have to ask – is the lapse rate constant from day to day? Or is it an average? Is it more or less on rainy days? Sunny days. Cloudy days? Was that taken into account?
But OK. They have “improved” that station (for the sake of argument). What about all the rest?
I like Watts’ idea of only using unmoved and as much as possible unchanged stations. And BTW how well were the Stevenson screens (where used) maintained? Was the paint used (when repainting was needed) the same? How often were the thermometers checked? Was the checking traceable to NBS (NIST these days). What are the errors in the thermometers at temperatures other than the check point (slope of the error not just offset)?
The record is lousy. Given that I wouldn’t care to trust the system for changes under 1C (long term) and in my BOE estimation changes under 3C are probably not significant. Although such changes can greatly affect things like the growing season.
=====================
Here in the Mid-West after the terrible winter just passed the “faith” in global warming is greatly diminished. If next year is on par and affects more of the nation faith will be further reduced.
Any way, all that says to me that the sun and ocean cycles are probably a better way to judge the future than measuring CO2. Piers Corbyn likes the solar magnetic field and pattern matching as a judge of 6 months to a year ahead. He makes a living at it. So there may be something to it.
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You are indulging in hair splitting.
I believe the subject of cloudy days etc is covered in any number of references if you google temperature altitude. I chose a simple one for the point I made.
The basic question is, again:
The question is which set of data more accurately reflects the change in temperature at St Helena, the data adjusted for the change in altitude or the unadjusted data?
And here in Australia we have had a record warm autumn. What’s your point?
13
I believe the subject of cloudy days etc is covered in any number of references if you google temperature altitude. I chose a simple one for the point I made.
But that tells us nothing about the quality of the corrections made. A blanket adjustment for lapse rate introduces known errors. Which was my point.
The adjusting of data must be done very carefully. I am so far not impressed with the care with which that was done.
If it was me I’d call it a new station rather than continue the fiction that it is the same station.
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And again with respect to your questions, read the paper in the link.
14
Jo,
Great response, in a clear and logical, point-by-point manner. In my past career in aerospace, I have gone thru the same type of public scientific jealous affrontive castigation, for merely suggesting that factor “A” could be the cause of data “B”, simply because I thought of it instead of the resident “expert”. Because his tirade had been done in front of the entire staff, the animosity was even worse towards me when it later proved out that I was correct.
Such is life. Sigh.
It is the facts that matter, no matter who proposes them. This has been a fascinating discussion to follow, so please carry on.
Best,
Neil Streech
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I know that experience well. It happened to me so frequently, my name became “Damn It” as in “Damn It Griffith is right again.” I did nothing special except I observed carefully, thought about what I saw in a wider context, and drew the logical conclusions.
Was I ever found to be wrong? Yes but not often enough to satisfy my critics. My failure was to be right for the right reasons and being able to demonstrate my conclusions actually working the way I said they would work. I should have been eternally wrong, always fail, and be just like everyone else. That way I wouldn’t have offended those with whom I was working.
My bad. I was simply acting the way I thought a scientist and engineer should act so that I could actually be a scientist and an engineer. I never understood why always being wrong was so important and highly valued. I thought being right and successful was the point.
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Lionell,
You are correct, being accurate(right)is the entire point of science/engineering. If additional or clearer data come along then it will either contradict or confirm the accepted understanding. If It doesn’t fit, then it is time to reassess, both the new data and the status quo understanding.
Oh, and Jo, don’t expect any apologies, especially public ones. I think i have had one (1) in 45 years. Don’t be disappointed when it doesn’t happen.
Neil
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” If additional or clearer data come along then it will either contradict or confirm the accepted understanding. If It doesn’t fit, then it is time to reassess, both the new data and the status quo understanding.”
The ‘additional or clearer data’ is already here http://www.leif.org/research/No-TSI-Difference-Between-Minima.pdf . And has been here for three years. This should have been known to Evans. If it was [is?] not, then Evans failed to do the due diligence that is required in serious scientific work, which is why I noted that his theory is flawed at the get-go, based as it is on faulty data.
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The point is to offer the new data to test the theory rather than go on about failure and seriousness and flawed theory. What’s so hard about being helpful rather than accusatory? It makes you look spiteful and petty. You’re better than that.
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There are two interpretations of the initial hypothesis. The strong version is about the actual system behavior of the sun-earth interaction. The weak version is a about human added CO2 as the only possible explanation of the so called “observed” behavior.
Examining the data that the “team” uses to tune their model that works only if CO2 is added to the system is a critical test. Once done, it appears that additional CO2 is not the ONLY thing that can fit the existing (cherry picked, cooked, modified, corrected, adjusted, and approved by the “team”) data. I suggest that this is an important outcome. It doesn’t say anything about our actual climate but neither does the CAGW hypothesis as tested by the team. It simply says the current CAGW hypothesis is a cracked pot quite filled to over flowing with putrefied low quality crap.
To test the strong version will require a sufficiently accurate, sufficiently long, and sufficiently granular data set that truly reflects the behavior of the system. Unfortunately, most of the original raw data sets are impacted by the “my dog ate my homework” effect or “I won’t share it because you will only find fault with it” excuse. I doubt that any of the current data sets can be trusted to better than plus or minus 50%. It will take some extraordinarily high quality proof to convince me otherwise.
The earth has weather. The weather changes. There are some known gross patterns in that behavior. The causes of the patterns are subject to extreme speculation. There is nothing that stands as a well verified and substantiated mechanism beyond that energy level differences drive the patterns. There is not much else you can hang your hat on and truly expect it to stay put.
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The ‘additional or clearer data’ is already here http://www.leif.org/research/No-TSI-Difference-Between-Minima.pdf . And has been here for three years.
And yet your preferred data, which you claim shows “TSI right now is about 0.45 W/m2 higher than in 2003-2005,” is contradicted by your own source (SORCE/TIM):
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/guillermo_image2.png
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/sorce_tsi_reconstruction_feb2013-feb2014.png?w=640
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“And yet your preferred data, which you claim shows “TSI right now is about 0.45 W/m2 higher than in 2003-2005,” is contradicted by your own source (SORCE/TIM):
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/guillermo_image2.png”
So you show data [of the variance of TSI and not of TSI] that stops in 2009. Go figure. Here is SORCE/TIM data up to a few days ago:
http://www.leif.org/research/Monckton-Flaw-3.png
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“So you show data [of the variance of TSI and not of TSI] that stops in 2009.”
And from what I understood, we were talking about the overall trend from 2003 onwards. The trend from 2003 to 2009 was (way) down. It’s gone up since, but the overall trend, when smoothed, is still down. That was my understanding, anyway, of what Dr. Evans has been contending.
Do you think we shouldn’t include 2003 to 2009 as part of the overall (2003 to 2014) trend, though, Leif? If so, why?
40
Had the same experience, simply because I stayed out of things I wasn’t pretty certain about and would happily admit I’m uncertain, or don’t know enough yet. Once I reach a certain point of certainty based on the facts I’d speeak up.
Annoyed people lots.
Interestingly, wouldn’t be commenting here if I wasn’t almost 100% certain that global warming action is counter to the interests of my nation. Climate action fails on the science, fails on the economics and fails on the morality/politics.
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Their great fear, is being forgotten. What’s were their names again, you know thingamajig & umm
KBO
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My observation after reading comments and posts by Svalgard and Eschenbach is just that they have hair-trigger sensitivities and interpret nearly everything as a challenge. Maybe they’ve battled in the climate wars too long; maybe it’s a character trait; maybe they have chronic indigestion. They’re smart guys who stick their necks out and some of the reaction probably is legitimate, but much of it goes way too far. Your point about the need for a bit more courtesy and respect, especially when you have been careful to explain and annotate beyond what is typically practiced is correct. People seem to have gotten snippier lately, parsing the tiniest differences and belaboring arguments. Misunderstandings get amplified into misfeasances which then explode into malfeasances — all needlessly. This post should be the end of the matter. Resist the urge to reply to the likely response it will generate.
Whether your theory is correct or wildly wrong, you’ve promised to release the details soon and given a reasonable explanation for the delay. A target date might have helped mollify the critics, though. We’ve seen broken promises (by others) before and trust is in short supply.
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Good point.
Ignore them, they may come around once the disclosure process catches up with their desires.
Otherwise the damage done to their credibility with other viewers will only expand.
Whatever drives the over excited war of words…has little import for understanding this idea.
What? An idea that may point the way to understanding our weather?
Impossible.
Sarc?
Who knows any more.
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Willis recently commented (on his last WUWT post) at the seige he was under and how he was happy to be back in favour. This stouch has damaged his credibility a lot and he knows it. Pity it was completely unnecessary. Both He and Dr S dug themselves into a hole and forgot to stop digging.
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Throwing my two cents in to muddy the waters. I belive a major civility chilling of learned opinions occurred with Dr Roy Spencer who I find to be honest, informed and civil very much like Jo, posted , http://www.drroyspencer.com/2014/04/skeptical-arguments-that-dont-hold-water/
I know I was frustrated and upset by that post. The delay in radiation tranfer rates cased by mildly polarized molecules has nothing to do with the Greenhouse effect. Most explanations of raditive forcing do violate the 2nd law.
The above Spencer post was a gross drop in civility.
But Jo as always is in the highest class. May the force X be with you. It’s with me and I like it.
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Theirs has been the most blatant display of professional jealousy I have ever had the misfortune to witness.
They should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves, rather than whining “Don’t you know who I am???”
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“Who are you?” 😉
80
I think Leif has a valid point with his question of “who are you ?”
I use my real name, why don’t you ?
If you hide behinnd the name ‘Backslider’ for a valid reason, eg. you work for a warmist establishment and would get (restructured, a Uk term) fired if they knew you made sceptical comments on blogs, then a nom de plume is understandable. But you should at least say so.
If you have years of engineering or scientific experience and / or impressive qualifications, then you should say so.
Leif Svalgaard is without question one of the foremost solar scientists in the world and unlike most scientists he does engage with the us, the hoi polloi, and very frequently gives links to his work and others. This should be respected and is admirable indeed. I only wish other scientists would take a leaf out of his book (pun not intended).
No doubt he tends towards a rather robust style of commenting, as do Willis and Christopher Monckton, and others. Given that he doesn’t have to give us his time, though he does, and yet comes under what must seem to him to be attack, one can hardly blame him if his replies at times reflect this.
For myself there is much I don’t agree with Leif about, especially over Landscheidt, but on the other hand I do learn a lot from him.
I look forward to seeing what difference in the output might be obtained when Leifs data is input into Davids model. I am hoping that will produce a steeper fall to a lower temperature, but even if it doesn’t I expect the difference will not be great.
Currently I view Leifs and others concerns over choice of TSI data to be a storm in a teacup.
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Piffle…
22
Backslider, thankyou for eloquent comment.
10
Piffle is as piffle gets….
Get your facts straight for a start. I do not “hide” behind the name “Backslider”. Many people know exactly who I am.
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I’m sorry, I’m still stuck back at Svalgaard #1. Dr. Svalgaard’s contention is that Lean2000 is a flawed dataset and that its authors have acknowledged same and replaced it with a later dataset. Your response is that “Lean2000 is a generally-accepted data set”.
That’s orthogonal. A dataset can be widely used and “generally-accepted”… up until the point at which it’s determined to be wrong.
So granted that it’s generally accepted, do you agree or disagree that it’s correct, and why?
This, to me, is the crux of the issue. Why do you believe this is a correct data set to use?
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It is not ‘mainstream’ It is obsolete and has been superseded by other reconstructions, e.g. the one [by Krivova] shown on LASP’s website http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/sorce/data/tsi-data/
This does not mean that Krivova’s is much better [but that is another post].
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Why, Leif, do you prefer reconstructions and extrapolations and proxies—which, as you may acknowledge, can be modified in accordance with the biases of the ones doing the modifying—to the actual, raw measurements of the ACRIM TSI data set? Why aren’t actual measurements of TSI better than reconstructions of TSI—or “guesses” as you yourself call reconstructions?
If we had actual satellite data available from the year 1,000 AD that showed the MWP to be 1.3 C warmer than present, would you still prefer, say, Michael Mann’s reconstructed tree ring data that showed the MWP was -0.8 C colder than present?
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‘ACRIM’ is not a homogeneous dataset, but a composite of three datasets [from three spacecraft] with gaps between them so that it is difficult to compare the raw data: http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-Raw-Data.png This is what Froehlich pointed out when he made the PMOD composite [which incorporates ACRIM adjusted for the differences between the three ACRIM sensors].
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It may be “difficult,” but the ACRIM gap has been bridged, and bridged precisely and accurately, with actual, and not reconstructed data.
Not only that, but when lowering the ACRIM baseline to be in close agreement with SORCE/TIM, the relative variations/trends in the ACRIM do not change. Again, they do not change. The ACRIM TSI data still stand as the best measurement of TSI for the past 35 years—including the last 10. That’s not only my opinion, but the opinion of many scientists.
http://arxiv.org/abs/1403.7194
“The satellite total solar irradiance (TSI) database provides a valuable record for investigating models of solar variation used to interpret climate changes. The 35-year ACRIM TSI satellite composite was updated using corrections to ACRIMSAT/ACRIM3 results derived from recent testing at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics/Total solar irradiance Radiometer Facility (LASP/TRF). The corrections lower the ACRIM3 scale by ~5000 ppm, in close agreement with the scale of SORCE/TIM results (solar constant ~1361 W/m^2). Relative variations and trends are not changed.”
50
No, our response is that for the timing of the recent fall in TSI our data is PMOD and ACRIM — i.e. measurements — not any reconstruction. Svalgaard prefers reconstructions to the PMOD and ACRIM measurements.
As I said under Svalgaard 1, “The datasets for the critical period from the mid 1980s on are basically the PMOD and ACRIM measurements. … So, this is a case of measurements vs reconstruction.”
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And oddly, Leif would prefer you use Leif’s reconstruction as the one true valid data source. Vain, much?
241
If Leif has criticisms of (satellite) measurements, then we need to get better satellites up there.
I am suspicious of reconstructions and prefer measurements every time.
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Just a few words about the two balcony Muppet’s (I affectionately call) at WUWT.
I think the roll that Willis Eschenbach and Leif “it’s a blood sport” Svalgaard have is more important than some people give them credit for, it would be a strange world of science indeed if everyone agreed all the time, it would be the equivalent to the alarmist side of this debate packed full of yes men and nodding heads for the cause.
I personally enjoy their “old school” style when discussing various topics with them, they produce a challenge which gets the olde grey matter working, although the tough debates can be fun I have to say; being shot down no matter what you say, even if you were use Leif’s own work word for word (as I did a few years back and I still got corrected chastised) can be somewhat tiresome at times.
Even still.. I’ve found their cynical nature very useful and helpful over the years when bouncing ideas of them.
All the best guys! 🙂
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Who would vote negatively on someone and not leave feed back? shame on you!
610
Excellent call.
32
Because you are too forgiving when they are not forgiving at all.
Courtesy costs nothing but they still value the buzz of feeling superior over all else despite their relatively narrow (albeit very detailed in Leif’s case) knowledge bases
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Stephen I believe you maybe on to something there! You’re right of course. If there’s one thing I am it’s courteous, it’s probably my sense of humor they don’t get as-well. I understand Leif being voted negatively because well it’s Leif and he’s engaged in blood sport, he would usually tear any commenter a new one. 🙂
20
Me for one, the braying of an inconsiderate ass is still the braying of an ass.
I too respect these two,generally enjoy their comments, but in this case they are behaving like idiots.
Even if they are both absolutely correct.
Jo and David told us all in plain english how this would roll out.
But no, thats not good enough for the special ones.
And the “ROLE” of these two ???
I am pretty certain as to how they roll on this one.
110
We all knew.. David and Jo didn’t have to spell it out.
🙂
10
Sorry, I wrote “generally-accepted” when you wrote “mainstream”. The point still holds: Something can be “mainstream” yet incorrect. If the authors of the set consider it to be incorrect, why do you believe it is correct? And if your contention is that they don’t, upon what do you base that?
Please understand this is a serious question–I’m not taking sides, or even in a position to.
I’m not a practicing scientist (though I’m an engineer who has done some research in particle physics).
But in my world, the selection of data sets is critical, particularly for validation of models. If someone were to accuse me of selecting the wrong data set, I’d be investing a LOT of time and energy justifying my selection. You seem to believe that calling it “mainstream” is enough. Forget “mainstrim”–do you believe it is correct, and if so, why?
50
See this answer please.
60
I apologize for the mistakes my last comment, I’ve been typing all day and I think I’m getting “Typers Tunnel” and this space-bar is sticking every second click. 🙂
31
Evans’ problem starts already with his Figure 4, that shows the cycle 23-24 minimum being 0.2 W/m2 lower than the previous minimum. This is not correct. There is no observational evidence for such as decline http://www.leif.org/research/No-TSI-Difference-Between-Minima.pdf so there is no sharp drop in TSI. In fact, TSI now is almost 0.5 W/m2 higher than during the 2003-2005 timeframe, contrary to the central claim made by Evans.
There are also problems with the Wang et al. [called Lean 2009 by Evans] reconstruction, but that is for another comment. Let us go one at a time.
————
Note everyone, Leif refers to solar minima which we have made no comment on anywhere. The notching effect occurs at maxima, and the drop in maxima is obvious, as is the drop in the 11 year smoothed trends. When will Leif stop posting strawmen? – Jo
647
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/sorce_tsi_reconstruction_feb2014.png
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showing a reconstruction that is not correct does not do you any good. Makes one wonder about your motive. There is now no doubt that the decrease did not happen.
544
Gregg Kopp obviously thinks it happened, or he wouldn’t have published it.
The great solar data flattener Leif Svalgaard says not.
Where are the observations you are basing your judgement on Leif? I’d like to see them, and the metadata.
Thanks.
420
If you do not even bother to look at the link I gave you, why should I bother to respond to your over-the-top comments?
335
Leif thinks I’m the one who has been making over the top comments. Lol.
I’ve stayed well out of this debate while you’ve been ranting about “fraudulent” and “wrong input. You know: garbage in – garbage out.”
Further down the thread I see you are now demanding that he redo his work with your reconstruction rather than observations. Why don’t you just wait until he releases the spreadsheet? Then you can replace his datapoints and parametrisations with your own recon ‘datapoints’ and check the result without making [snip] of yourself in the meantime.
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If the deacrease did not happen yet there was a decrease in sunspot number at the last minimum and an increase in cosmic ray count, why would these correlations be breaking down?
This question being for anyone who can answer.
70
And BTW, the reconstruction shown is NOT the Wang et al. reconstruction which was used by Evans, so why try to compare oranges and apples?
144
You make your own reconstructions from your preferred data and theory. You didn’t get many in the land of the midnight sun to go along with your solar flattening though did you?
What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. David is perfectly entitled to use his own judgement of which data and theory to use in his own reconstruction derived from the data he prefers. The proof of the pudding will be in the activity levels we see over the next decade.
Be patient.
And polite.
611
Solar flattening…?
Is that similar to the Mannian flattening of the MWP ?
Same agenda, I’m guessing.
190
Leif,
I wonder what you’ll say if between 2014 and 2017 the temperature starts to drop. We already have some considerable evidence for what may be ahead of us.
360
The criterion used by Evans is ridiculous low [0.1C] and is within expected random variations. As solar activity now is on par with that of a century ago, one would expect a [much bigger] drop back to the temperatures then.
But Evans could also be right [about the 0.1C] but for the wrong reasons, especially since his prediction is based in wrong input. You know: garbage in – garbage out.
David Evans replies: The notch-delay solar model predicts a 0.5C drop starting around 2015 – 2018. However the model trained on the land thermometer data from 1850 to 1978, so it produces that amount of temperature rise for the TSI rise during that period. Given the possible exaggeration by the land thermometers, it seems prudent to scale the prediction back to 0.3C. The CO2 models predict warming in the next decade of maybe 0.2C (and maybe more for catch up due to the pause), so the criterion of 0.1C of cooling splits the difference — none of the CO2 models predict sustained cooling. All of these temperature figures are for 1-year smoothed temperatures, that is, on a sustained basis, not just random monthly fluctuations.
144
I know GIGO quite well. It’s been a daily consideration for more than 45 years. I also know a few other things such as the benefit of not rushing to judgment and keeping my communication with peers on a professional level. I also know I’m not the ultimate authority on anything. Do you?
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I know the data quite well [as opposed to Evans], and the data is the authority here. Wrong input data, wrong output. And there is no rush to judgement, we have known for some years now that the data used by Evans is not correct or that it therefore when put together by him into his private composite dataset does not give him a correct dataset to work with. Now, either Evans did not know this or ignored this. Which one do you think it is?
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Being a patient man I think I’ll simply wait and see how it plays out. 🙂
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Your arrogance may score points for you with your groupies over at WUWT, but the rest of us were tired of it after your first display. It would appear that you simply cannot fathom that perhaps you are wrong. Your snide comments towards Evans certainly don’t inspire anyone to listen to you. What it does do is make you look and sound just like Mann, Trenberth, and the rest who have behaved EXACTLY as you are doing now. If you can’t see that then you aren’t as intelligent as you think you are.
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So let me get this straight Lief, your input to this blog is “garbage in” and rebuttals are “garbage out” in your way of thinking?
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Not worth responding to.
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That is a response… which only serves to further highlight your pathetic arrogance.
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Lief, my model picks up on the recent fall in TSI, and the data used for that is PMOD and ACRIM — i.e. measurements — not any reconstruction.
By the way, as suggested by Figures 5, 6, and 7 above, your reconstruction also shows a recent fall in TSI. Running the model (parametrized for the composite TSI data I use, basically Lean/PMOD/ACRIM) on your reconstruction of TSI also shows a hefty temperature fall in 2015 (which will more likely be 2017 when the longer sunspot cycle is taken into account).
So, no matter whether we use the TSI measurements or your reconstruction, the notch-delay model predicts a hefty temperature fall in the same period (caveat: model parametrized for the Lean/PMOD/ACRIM data, not your reconstruction).
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“Lief, my model picks up on the recent fall in TSI, and the data used for that is PMOD and ACRIM — i.e. measurements — not any reconstruction.”
The ACRIM data have large systematic errors, and the PMOD data suffers from uncorrected degradation, e.g. the insert on http://www.leif.org/research/No-TSI-Difference-Between-Minima.pdf In addition recent measurement by the institution that measures PMOD show [see the same link] that “Observed data do not support a measurable TSI trend between the minima in 1996 and 2008!”
“Running the model (parametrized for the composite TSI data I use, basically Lean/PMOD/ACRIM) on your reconstruction of TSI also shows a hefty temperature fall in 2015 ”
This is the wrong way of doing this. You must parameterize using the same reconstruction as for running the model.
So, the valid test would be:
1) parameterize using ‘my’ TSI
2) run the model on ‘my’ TSI
3) compare with the temperature record
I await your agreement to this collaborative work with anticipation. Science should be [as generally is, except for fringe pseudo-science] building on each other’s work, so please join me in this venture.
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Leif’s adjustments do not effect the lower levels of TSI, which are zero, 10*0 is still zero.
Watts per square meter from the sun can be measured by shorting the circuit out!
11
How many working hours does this take? Ps:BTW, using good land temps is reassuring.
00
Leif – I’ll get to it, but finding the parameters for the model is complicated and slow, takes a few days. Might be a few weeks before I can get to it.
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We did not use ACRIM data before 1992, which seems to eliminate the larger errors.
I notice PMOD revised their data sometime in the last few months with what looks like a steadily increasing upward revision from about 1998, as if correcting said downward degradation.
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Leif Svalgaard July 5, 2014 at 3:23 pm
Leif, Go somewhere and buy a clue!
David does not want to use your “crappy data”, for good reason!
30
O, grate one, just because he didn’t initially use your guessed data set, doesn’t make him wrong.
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He is wrong because he used his own dataset, which was wrong from the outset.
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Do you know how the analysis that Dr Evans uses even works? Do you know how insensitive it is to transient error sources or constant biases? Do you know why engineers use this methodology?
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Lief – I used the PMOD and ACRIM measurements — not any reconstruction — for the timing of the recent fall in TSI and thus the timing of the imminent fall in temperature. I used the Lean 2000 dataset for the longer view. They are not my datasets or my reconstruction, so when you say “his own dataset” you are being inaccurate and misleading.
On the other hand, you really are using “your own” reconstruction.
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You made your own composite by splicing together various pieces, so it is ‘your dataset’. None of us are ‘inaccurate or misleading’, are we? We could be right or wrong, but I’m [reasonably] sure that neither one of us uses this forum to mislead anybody.
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Leif,
You could have said this in one comment in this thread, given your justification for it and retained the respect of many readers who are now no longer going to respect you or your work because you kept pounding away with an arrogant demeanor insisting you are right and David Evans is wrong.
Even if that comment resulted in some debate between you and David it would have been a better deal for you all the way around if it was kept respectful as one professional to another. You have blown it, Dr. Svalgard.
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His attitude is very similar to that of Mickey Mann……
… as is his agenda.
20
Leif,
Why does the success or failure of Dr Evans’ model matter so much?
Scientific curiosity would surely dictate waiting for results.
Or is it that there are a other vested interests?
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I presume it matters to Evans. Not so much to me as there are dozens of other wrong ‘forecasts’.
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Ahh, he doth protest too mucheth.
Leif, you argue constantly for the low solar influence viewpoint to the point of denying solar connections between solar minima and temerature minima. Strangely we have had this conversation before. Your viewpoint IS being challenged by Dr Evans, so much so that I sense you are as emotionally wedded to that view as you were when I last argued the point with you about it. That is not good for a scientist.
David’s hypothesis takes into account that there is something about sunspots that plays out differently to geometric influences of TSI. Being an engineer and knowing that thermal systems never have flat responses I must acknowledge that he is almost certainly correct about that. The solar impact on climate must be multifaceted, TSI must have multiple competing effects, not one effect, The only remaining issue being, is it important?
This is far better than your view which seems to be that TSI has a single effect, a fixed relationship with temperature in spite of the fact that spectral content varies over the cycle. You might be right, all things being equal variation of temperature change with TSI might be fixed an unvarying across the cycle with all the spectral changes, but if it does, in my experience as an engineer it’ll be by chance alone. It still leaves Dr Evans multifactor model or similar as a better description that a single factor TSI estimate.
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Evans uses [a faulty] TSI to show that TSI is not the causative agent, but rather an unknown factor ‘x’ which he claims is delayed one cycle wrt to the sunspot cycle [or the TSI cycle which is the same thing]. This, in my book, is the equivalent to the ‘the dog ate my homework’ excuse, and I don’t any engineer would have his work approved by the necessary approving-agencies if he claims that his design is safe because of the magic influence of ‘x’.
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No he didn’t Dr Evans used available data to extract a transfer function, a plot of the frequency content between TSI and temperature, he then used than knowledge to specify a lumped parameter filter that approximates the characteristics of that transfer function.
You continually fail to understand that even major problems with the reconstructions makes little difference to the results unless the ups and downs of the characteristics have significantly different timing or amplitude. Since all the datasets have similar cyclic variation, it doesn’t matter which one you choose within the limits of the method a similar transfer function will emerge. David wrote about that. In fact there are an infinite number of TSI and temperature series than could in fact represent this transfer function with ups and downs in different places.
When undertaking a simulation run any of the datasets could be used, and providing the models transfer function is something close to reality it will forecast pretty much equally well with any input data.
You really are reaching here, and unfortunately you are wrong, errors in the training dataset do not necessarilly cause the wrong model to be derived.
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LS. If it doesn’t ‘matter so much to you’ just why are you feeling the need to get so steamed up about it?
140
Me, steamed up? Not at all. Try to read some of the other blokes spew.
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Dr Svlgaard,
With all due respect, a model is only a representation of the principle under study. As such, the input data need only reflect the pattern and relative values of the observed empirical data. It does not need to include the actual value of each and every datum point.
You accuse Dr Evans of using incorrect data, because a) he is not using your construction; and b) he is using a combination of other data sources. In making this accusation, you may be perfectly correct in terms of the absolute accuracy of data values.
But that is not the issue, unless your construction shows an entirely different cyclic pattern of variation, to those used by Dr Evans.
Since all of the data sources are trying to depict the same phenomena, and since it is the pattern of trends that are of interest, I would expect them to be more or less interchangeable.
On that basis, I would personally choose to get as close as possible to the raw measurements, and bypass any adjustments or corrections that may have been inserted for purposes, unknown to me.
Dr Evans may well have made the same choices.
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I do flood modeling.
Under Dr Svalgaard’s eye, all of my modeling would be wrong because I didn’t use the correct storm event to model the flood event.
Whereas a design storm event is a mathamatical represtation of a hypothetical rainfall event of a given return period (1 to 100 year return interval). (Ie: it’s a generalise model of a storm event as input. The internal paramaters are almost all assumptions. The output could be + or – 30mm, or + or – 100mm depending on the size of the catchment and lay of the land).
Output accuracy to three decimal places simply confuses the purpose of the model.
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Leif,
May I then presume you argue as vehemently against each of the ‘dozens of other wrong forecasts’ as against the Evans’ forecast?
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Lief – The notch-delay solar model predicts a 0.5C drop starting around 2015 – 2018. However the model trained on the land thermometer data from 1850 to 1978, so it produces that amount of temperature rise for the TSI rise during that period. Given the possible exaggeration by the land thermometers, it seems prudent to scale the prediction back to 0.3C. The CO2 models predict warming in the next decade of maybe 0.2C (and maybe more for catch up due to the pause), so the criterion of 0.1C of cooling splits the difference — none of the CO2 models predict sustained cooling. All of these temperature figures are for 1-year smoothed temperatures, that is, on a sustained basis, not just random monthly fluctuations.
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It should have been trained on the whole dataset 1850-2013 to be valid.
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Not true, remember what’s being built is based on the frequency content of the climate data. The model may be slightly more representative with more data but it is far from invalid without it.
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There is another good acronym suitable for Leif.
PICNIC problem in chair not in computer.
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David
“David Evans replies: The notch-delay solar model predicts a 0.5C drop starting around 2015 – 2018. However the model trained on the land thermometer data from 1850 to 1978, so it produces that amount of temperature rise for the TSI rise during that period. Given the possible exaggeration by the land thermometers, it seems prudent to scale the prediction back to 0.3C. The CO2 models predict warming in the next decade of maybe 0.2C (and maybe more for catch up due to the pause), so the criterion of 0.1C of cooling splits the difference — none of the CO2 models predict sustained cooling. All of these temperature figures are for 1-year smoothed temperatures, that is, on a sustained basis, not just random monthly fluctuations.”
That is not a proper prediction Question
1. Did you use Land or Land Ocean?
2. Your prediction should come with ERROR BANDS so anyone can judge the probability that the prediction is wrong. “spliting the difference” is the kind of crap science that people did when they split the difference on sensitivity estimates.
You have a model. It has a prediction. what are the error bands
IF you want to suppose that land temps are biased, and you are trained on biased inputs then that doesnt matter because you will be testing against the same biased record. unless you think it is magically healed.
If you dont wantto construct error bands then when and if you release you can be sure that someone else will.
Best to get ahead of the game.
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Dear Dr. Evans,
First of all, let me apologise for all the grief I’ve given you in my professional… uh pride and uh.. ego, that I have not treated you kindly nor respectfully as I should have as a fellow scientist. I am sorry. I guess my position and knowledge got in the way, you know, “knowledge puffeth up?” I am aware I have also put a damper on open science as well, and discouraged a lot of people and fellow scientists as well by acting so blatantly… well.. not so nice. I hope you (and them) will accept my heartfelt apologies.
Now concerning the science, — If you’ll still have and allow me? — IMHO (in my humbled opinion!), your figure 4, that shows the cycle 23-24 minimum being 0.2 W/m2 lower than the previous minimum. It appears to me incorrect. There is no observational evidence for such a decline, please feel free to consult my http://www.leif.org/research/No-TSI-Difference-Between-Minima.pdf So there is no sharp drop in TSI. IMHO, TSI is now almost 0.5 W/m2 higher than during the 2003-2005 timeframe, contrary to your proposal. Correct me if I’m wrong! There appear to also be problems with the Wang et al. [Lean 2009] reconstruction, I have some other suggestions, but one at a time.
I now sincerely DO appreciate your courage and steadfastness in tackling this challenge of trying to empirically practice open source science with the help of so many of our confreres. I didn’t think it was possible. You are a brave pioneer. Thanks for taking all the corrections. I may be wrong, I have been wrong before! Ha!
Love and appreciation!
Yours’ cordially
Seif.
PS: My next comments will not be as apologetic and lengthy of course, if you and others do forgive me, but one thing is for sure, No more blood sport for me! Just friendly scientific teamwork without appeal to authority and all that carnal nonsense. I’m cured! I think? 🙂
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There is an apparent drop in TSI Leif, how much correction would there be needed to show no apparent drop in TSI, in percentage please.
As I understand it Anthony has also noted this on WUWT in the AP several times.
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http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/ap-index-1932-2008.png
20
TSI on Evans plot after 2003 should be increased by 0.2 W/m2 which is 0.015% or about one-sixth of the typical solar cycle variation of 0.1%
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Leif, seriously? is this what all this is about? ffs!
110
Very good by the way! 🙂
40
TSI on Evans plot after 2003 should be increased by 0.2 W/m2 which is 0.015% or about one-sixth of the typical solar cycle variation of 0.1%
So if Dr. Evans “corrected” the data by adjusting it exactly the way you describe above, would there still be a drop—slight or otherwise—in TSI from about 2003 or 2004?
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Your question is ambiguous. Evans’ claim is that TSI now is lower than in 2003-2005. This is not the case. TSI right now is about 0.45 W/m2 higher than in 2003-2005. This is not the result of ‘adjustments’, but of direct measurements by SORCE/TIM and TCTE/TIM.
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TSI right now is about 0.45 W/m2 higher than in 2003-2005.
Then why does the SORCE/TIM trends of the last few years appear lower on these graphs?
http://spot.colorado.edu/~koppg/TSI/TIM_TSI_Reconstruction.jpg
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/guillermo_image2.png
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/sorce_tsi_reconstruction_feb2013-feb2014.png?w=640
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Mike Singleton
July 5, 2014 at 1:14 am
!Right or wrong, the positions taken and the antagonistic language used have done serious reputational damage. Childish, blinkered, arrogant and uncalled for”.
I agree with these comments.
This kind of arrogance is to be expected (usually) from people who have
been seduced by their own advertising.
Extremely disappointing and leaves a very nasty taste in ones mouth.
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“The comments by Svalgaard and Eschenbach at WUWT are inexplicable.”
I don’t think the comments are “inexplicable”. I think you are just being too polite to explain the motivation behind those comments.
For some time now, the site WUWT has been polluted by just this sort of immature heifer dust that you have shown today in this post by example. (and what examples they were!) Sad and unfortunate.
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Could someone please explain to me how this man justifies using the term psuedo-scientist towards others when, based on his own qualifications, he would appear to be one?
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Projection.
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It’s what magicians do.
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I’d say there certainly is an agenda here. But Svalgaard seems to miss what it is. Someone who is certainly well qualified to think about the problem of climate change has developed a new model of what drives climate on Earth and he want’s to publish it and get feedback from the rest of the climate change world about it. And he wants ultimately to see if it works.
As was stated at the start, there appears to be no hope of getting this published in any scientific journal given the past history of what got published and what didn’t concerning global warming — you’re either in the mainstream of thinking or you’re an enemy or worse. So this is the available forum.
The proof of any theory is the same, can it accurately predict what happens when you test it? If that early morning Alamogordo test mentioned in a prior thread had not lit up the sky, think of what that would have meant.
The test is the same here, does it predict accurately, not whether Svalgaard or anyone else thinks it’s right. There will no doubt be debate for years to come if Earth cools off as the solar model predicts. And that’s good. And if it doesn’t cool off as predicted… …well, another theory ends up in history’s dustbin.
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And the current theory has certainly gone into the dustbin. It’s been there for years. 🙁
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None of this matters if the input data is wrong from the outset. One must assume that Evans knew that [now he most certainly does] and that that might even have been a contributing factor in not trying to publish the ‘theory’ in a respectable scientific journal.
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Wrong in totality? Or wrong in construction? Or wrong in accuracy? Or wrong in relevance? Or wrong in providence? Or simply inaccurate for the purposes in which it is being used?
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Wrong in all of the categories you propose. Wrong is wrong.
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Which is something you may eventually learn about yourself.
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Then ALL data from ALL sources is wrong because it must be measured and the act of measurement changes the thing measured to some finite extent. That change cannot itself be measured without it also being changed. Hence all measurement gives wrong results. By your own standard, no matter what conclusion anyone draws, it is wrong because the data used to derive the conclusion is wrong. Even your conclusions.
Since everyone, including yourself, is wrong from the get go and forever, why are you getting so hot and bothered by the fact that David is wrong? Are you afraid he is less wrong than you? Are you self absolved from your own standard by which you judge others as wrong? You can use wrong data and still draw correct conclusions?
I suggest something far afield from actual science is going on here and it isn’t pretty. In fact, it is all flavors of ugly.
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Some are more wrong than others. I don’t make forecasts about the climate, only about what I know something about.
234
If you don’t know what is right, how do you know something is partly or mostly wrong?
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Leif Svalgaard July 5, 2014 at 10:28 am · Reply
“Some are more wrong than others. I don’t make forecasts about the climate, only about what I know something about.”
Since you claim some knowledge of the Sun. Please list four other ways, beside thermal electromagnetic radiative flux, that do affect the total internal energy of planet Earth, in a measurable way?
40
Leif,
Do you have a perfect understanding of the Sun and its interaction with the Earth?
No? Then whatever you believe is WRONG because the universe only works in one way.
If you start from a position that you are wrong, you have some chance of learning something new. Think you are right and you have none. You cannot fill a cup that is already full.
The only thing that can be discussed is who is less wrong. Time and observations will tell that tale. Talk is cheap and pointless in the face of the universe.
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This is not the issue.
The issue is that Evans should not have used ‘data’, that are demonstrably wrong. If he does anyway, what credence can be put on the ‘result’?
338
By your own standard, the data you use is wrong too. You say it is less wrong. Yet, you can’t know that unless you know what is right. Please stop talking and show us a better way – if you can.
Like I said: “I suggest something far afield from actual science is going on here and it isn’t pretty. In fact, it is all flavors of ugly.”
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to Lionell G:
“Yet, you can’t know that unless you know what is right. Please stop talking and show us a better way – if you can.”
apart from that being nonsense, like if you claim you have seen a man run the 100m dash in 4 seconds, I would know you are wrong even if I don’t know his actual time.
“Like I said: “I suggest something far afield from actual science is going on here and it isn’t pretty. In fact, it is all flavors of ugly.””
Perhaps you are judging Mr Evans too harshly…
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Leif Svalgaard July 5, 2014 at 10:38 am ·
“This is not the issue.
The issue is that Evans should not have used ‘data’, that are demonstrably wrong. If he does anyway, what credence can be put on the ‘result’?”
This is only your issue which is nonsense. It is not the issue.
The issue is “Why has Dr. Leif Svalgaard not made a public apology to Dr. David Evans, for publishing false, crass, and insulting comments here and elsewhere?
80
That is not correct, there are in fact degrees of wrongness by your own admission. Did you not say “All TSI reconstructions are guesses” meaning all TSI reconstructions are WRONG. Then you carry on about how the wrong one that David thinks works best is somehow worse that the wrong one that you prefer. By your own illustration wrong is not wrong. Then you illustrate a point about a single decade in a record from a century, and conclude that a model, built in a process that is insensitive to this sort of transient error, is going to be junk. Rubbish, it is merely going to be a little bit less representative than it otherwise would be.
By the way, David’s model is WRONG, clearly there are multiple filters and delays at work here, so David’s model, a simple lumped parameter approximation ( as we would call it) is WRONG but in the real world where Engineers live, these WRONG lumped parameter models work well enough to get Voyager to the edge of the solar system using a computer system less powerful than a commodore 64
170
some are MUCH more wrong than others. If I state that my height is 7 feet I would be VERY wrong. If I said it is 6 feet, I would still be wrong, but not by much.
015
This still assumes you know what your true height is. After all, wrong is wrong. Even a little bit wrong is still wrong. At least by your standard. That is except when you want the amount it is wrong not to matter. Apparently, you have decided that you are the infallible and universal judge of wrongness. Hence, you think we must ask your permission to use any particular wrong set of data which you grant or not on your whim.
Interesting.
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Lionell Griffith
July 5, 2014 at 2:36 pm
“Hence, you think we must ask your permission to use any particular wrong set of data which you grant or not on your whim.”
You are, of course, welcome to use any and all wrong data you desire. And the results you’ll get will show you how wrong the datasets are. But perhaps that doesn’t matter to you as long the results supports your view of things.
217
Hmm, but suppose I was measuring your growth, is the fact that the data says that at age 9 you were 5′ 1″ tall, have relevance to the fact that you grew 2″ from age 9 to 10, if what I am interested in is growth? Would it matter, if instead you went from 4ft to 4′ 2″ ?
20
Gee. Thanks for giving me permission to use data. I am so relieved. Imagine, I have been using data all my life (77+ years) and never had your permission to do so. How did I ever get anything done?
80
Leif,
Engineering is exacting and unforgiving, but I continue to work within a margin of error called tolerance.
When I machine a specific peice within the tolerance I know it will work because I know the tolerance will allow for changes in both the internal and external environment of the equipment when operated.
I don’t understand how you can know the datasets used by Dr. Evans are less accurate than those you have.
All you can really say is that they are different.
That difference may be the key.
101
I suspect he means wrong because Leif Svalgaard told him it was wrong. Otherwise, why is he continuing along the same line of comment he started with?
230
Leif: You keep repeating the same BS over and over again. What are you so afraid of? Is there not one ounce of civility in your backbone? Can you not be missing something and heaven forbid be wrong? Come on man, quit being a d**k!!!
191
‘The proof of any theory is the same, can it accurately predict what happens when you test it?’
I have a theory that an alien spaceship is controlling the rotation of the Earth in order to use it for their navigation. My prediction is that the sun will therefore rise tomorrow morning at its usual time.
645
I shouldn’t answer this one but I can’t resist asking if there’s a link in there somewhere from cause to effect so there’s actually something to test.
140
yes, it is called force ‘z’ [as force ‘x’ seems to already used].
331
There you go again with your bias, that there is only a single factor that links from the Sol to good ole terra, let’s call it force T otherwise known as TSI.
You need to drop that precondition, it’s limiting your vision. By accepting that the Sun’s influence is multifactor (one or more), you lose nothing but potentialy have a lot to gain.
190
He seems to be arguing that TSI varies only in 11 year cycles, is he not? And those cycles have little or no effect on Earth’s temperature.
Once having staked his reputation on that he’s stuck with defending it no matter what. So a multifactor influence from old Sol that doesn’t agree with the 11 year cycle can’t be allowed to exist in his world, much less one with such a large effect as David suspects from his model. If it did exist he might turn out to be wrong — a bitter pill for some to swallow.
He may be very sharp, he may even turn out to be right. But that kind of attitude forever closes his mind to other ideas and other avenues of exploration. And that’s not how human knowledge advances.
That he has persisted with comment after comment isn’t a pretty picture.
50
He seems to be arguing that TSI varies only in 11 year cycles, is he not? And those cycles have little or no effect on Earth’s temperature.
I think it is Evans trying to show that the 11-yr cycles have no influence. Isn’t that what the notch-thingie is supposed to show?
All data we have points to the sun’s magnetic field being the cause of variations of TSI. The sunspot number has been shown to be a very good measure of the Sun’s magnetic field, so TSI should vary accordingly.
Once having staked his reputation on that he’s stuck with defending it no matter what.
What a stupid thing to say. Science progresses by correcting mistakes and scientists [most of them and certainly me] are very ready to admit to being wrong when the data doesn’t go their way. Let us see if Evans is ready to do that…
212
Nowhere in what I’ve read so far has David said the 11 year cycles have no influence. The whole thrust of his argument is that there is an additional factor that changes what those 11 year cycles do, not that they have no influence. In fact, if I understand correctly, David Evans claims the 11 year cycles have more influence than anyone previously thought.
You have insisted that Evans is wrong without having shown him to be wrong. Your personal word that there is no better authority than Leif Svalgaard is a fallacious argument.
Who has made the more stupid statement, you or me?
PS:
You prove my point by this kind of argument. Only seeing what the model can and cannot do can validate the model, your claims here and what Dr. Evans claims.
90
You seem to have a blind spot when it comes to the engineering practice of modelling, as opposed to the Climate Change use of modelling as a PR tool.
In engineering, the concept of “Force X” is used in the practice of reverse engineering cause and effect. You can only measure effects, and if the empirical effects you measure, do not fit the theoretical causes in your model, then something has yet to be identified and defined. That is all “Force X” is, in engineering terms.
With this definition, “Force X” may be a real force that has yet to be identified; or it could be a whole system of forces, acting as a single force, in regard to the overall model; or it could be a number of unrelated forces that just appear to act as a single force; or it could just be random variation in the external environment.
The presence of “Force X”, indicates to me that Dr Evans is not yet convinced that he fully understands all of the nuances in the system he is studying — a situation that is quite normal in prudent engineering practice.
90
Figure 6 is interesting. Leif’s 11 year smoothed TSI has the lows and highs reversed from where the lows and highs of the Sorce / Tim reconstruction are.
This is a point to watch out for that Greg Goodman has talked about before. Greg ?
70
“Leif’s 11 year smoothed TSI has the lows and highs reversed from where the lows and highs of the Sorce / Tim reconstruction are”
And so has Evans’ 11-yr smoothed TSI [look at his Figure].
This is a common defect in the simple running average. There are much better ways of doing smoothing that does not have this artifact, but I thought is was best to do it the same way as Evans. Don’t you agree that this is reasonable when comparing with his graph?
427
“Don’t you agree that this is reasonable when comparing with his graph?”
I honestly don’t know. I am out of my depth when it comes to such matters and would welcome comment from experts in this area. Such as Greg Goodman and others.
I do wonder, however, if this is all a fuss about not very big differences, David Evans data produces a drop to the temperatures of the 70s, putting your (Leif) data in will produce less drop, more drop, no drop, an increase ? But probably not a sufficiently big difference to be a concern to agriculture and our futures.
120
Leif,
Could you list the specific actions you would like David to take? Do you have any positive constructive input?
If not, why make any comments at all? You are currently not making any progress with your comments… If you think David is headed down the wrong path, why not sit back and let him fail?
190
I have already [a week or so ago] provided Evans with a dataset to try. So far, he has shown no interest.
David Evans replies: How would you know? I’ve graphed your dataset above, with a simple 11-year smoother, and see comment 24.2.1.1.4 above.
027
Leif,
When visiting this site you are in Australia, we tend to be a polite and patient people, we also tend to get a little pissed off with arrogant aggressiveness. That you have the effrontery to call back here, still making accusations, when all you have to do is shut up and wait. I have read much of what you have said about the sun and concluded that you believe the sun is a constant and has nothing to do with climate. That Davids work may prove you wrong is not our problem, it is yours.
270
Garbage in = garbage out is true in every country, no matter how polite and patient its inhabitants are.
I do not believe that the Sun is constant. On the contrary there is a well-documented cycle of solar activity [have you heard about that one? otherwise visit this website http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/SunspotCycle.shtml
Variations in TSI are caused exclusively [as far as we know and have observed] by variations of the sun’s surface magnetic field, which in turn varies very closely as the sunspot number [see e.g. http://www.leif.org/research/SSN/Stenflo.pdf ], reconstructions of the past TSI will look just like the sunspot number. Evans’ self-made composite does not. To spare him embarrassment [if he cores] I helpfully pointed that out to him and offered him a reconstruction which is much closer to what is believed to be the actual TSI so that he could see [and show his followers] what difference that would make. Such a ‘sensitive analysis’ is an important part of doing correct science. So far, Evans has not bothered. I understand he is a busy activist with many things to do, so perhaps he is excused. On the other hand, he has wasted a lot of time and energy on fruitless and ill-advised personal attacks on me [not that that bothers me], so perhaps some time can be found for the much needed sensitivity analysis…
——-
“Evans has not bothered” – except he has bothered. The biggest obstacle to David working with your dataset in the last week were the unnecessary fires in a flamewar lit by yourself with ill-informed, rash and defamatory zeal. Evidently, you have no interest in correcting your inaccurate statements. Finally, you say “I understand he is a busy activist” — I say, careful, you reveal a case of projection… Jo
435
Your suggestions are antagonistic Leif, But I will correct you nonetheless, it is the suns polarity that drives the magnetic field, it is the mass that produces the strength of the suns polarity by way of E=Mc2. If you don’t believe me? roll your sleeves up and prove Einstein to be incorrect.
141
“believed to be”(?!) Now you are appealing to belief. Worse, you are appealing to a reconstruction based upon a belief. What does belief have to do with what the TSI actually is? In other words, you still don’t know what it actually is but believe it be close to your reconstruction because “they” believe it is what “they” believe it is.
You call this science? I don’t.
Keep it up, you are exposing exactly what and who you are.
Like I said, the process works and converges onto the truth.
120
Show to us all where exactly David has done this?……
150
Sparks
Since when has E=MC^2 controlled strength of magnetic polarity?
Especially one pole at a time! Since when has anything that hot retained a magnetic field?
Do you see a problem with the math in this video?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q185InpONK4
Part 2 if you are interested. This is where your magnetic strength becomes infinite.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHZ5O0jTH8A
Leif
I do wonder how many people here will demonstrate their humble co-operativeness each time that is proven to be correct?
Yet with this list of spotless days you say the TSI has not dropped.
“2014 total: 0 days (0%)
2013 total: 0 days (0%)
2012 total: 0 days (0%)
2011 total: 2 days (<1%)
2010 total: 51 days (14%)
2009 total: 260 days (71%)"
From spaceweather . com
This may be a better link.
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2003/17jan_solcon/
I like the way it shows the effect continuing into the 20th century as an increase in solar activity, shows the warmth of the grand maximum and shows a far longer LPF delay than 11 years.
21
Oooops the rest of that list.
2009 total: 260 days (71%)
Since 2004: 820 days
Typical Solar Min: 486 days
10
There is no attack on you, Dr. S.
Most rebuttal comments are not about you personally; they are about your apparent refusal to hear what is being said without passing it through your own personal ‘notch-filtered’ hearing-aid.
240
That is, if an analysis not based on ‘Sun King’ Svalgaards’ data reconstructions and conducted with his approval, it must be wrong, and somehow fraudulent. This is an egotistical totalitarian obsession which inhibits productive debate in solar science.
80
“I…offered him a reconstruction which is much closer to what is believed to be the actual TSI”
Much closer to what is “believed to be” actual? This phraseology doesn’t sound convincing that your preferred data is significantly more robust than a presumption.
What percentage of the scientific community agrees with you about the “ridiculously” wrong ACRIM and PMOD data? What percentage of the scientific community agrees with Dr. Evans about the ACRIM and PMOD being more accurate measurements of TSI than your reconstructions?
Considering how frequently the latter are referred to, it seems that your presumptions of TSI accuracy are in the minority.
90
Siliggy
July 5, 2014 at 4:04 pm
The magnetic field of the sun is thought to be created by currents as opposed to crystalline (temperature) effects. And thus the sun does not in fact “retain” a magnetic field. From what we see on earth it reverses poles every ~11 years.
BTW interesting videos.
40
I rarely put in time on things that don’t bother me. Unless it is for entertainment purposes. I assume you are being well entertained.
40
Msimon
Yes am aware of the 22 year magnetic cycle. I was agreeing with L.S. that the currents you speak of are on the surface. More evidence of this is when you look down a sunspot vortex hole you see darker not brighter.
To Me the sunspots seem like a full wave rectification of the magnetic cycle (like vsqrd). Thus the natural resonance seems to be 22ish years. I suspect the 11 year cycle varies because it contains the double side band products of external modulation. Possibly the magnetic fields of Jupiter and Neptune etc give the natural frequency a kick like hiting a tuning fork at their orbital rates to hetrodyne with the 22 year cycle. This would slow it sometimes and speed it up others like a PLL that cannot lock.
The reason for the questions about the TSI not being the inverse of cosmic radiation are to tease L.S. about the sun being electric powered from outside our solar system via cosmic plasma currents. Which is about the only explanation I can see for a non correlation. That would make “Force X” partly extra solar.
Also think our planet may be partly electric or neutrino heated due to radioactive decay rates falling here just before a solar flare. How much energy do we loose as Hydrogen blown away by the solar wind?
00
Oh, no personal attacks on Evans in that quote are there? You are a nasty piece of work. The level of hypocrisy you demonstrate in the comments you make here is astounding.
Now for future reference, I have noticed you pouncing on others when they use the word “believe” as some justification for your claim that it therefore is not “science” yet you “offered him a reconstruction which is much closer to what is believed to be the actual TSI” so by your own arguments you are offering up something that is not “science” but is simply a “belief.”
You really should be more careful with those double standards.
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Looking back over this i wonder what L.S.may mean by “sun’s surface magnetic field,”
I had thought of the surface as the outside bit we see. Others may take the surface to mean deeper down. Deeper down seems cooler.
00
Lief – How would you know? I’ve graphed your dataset above, with a simple 11-year smoother, and see comment 24.2.1.1.4 above.
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Being just a hick from the (hockey) sticks, but it seems to me that one does not pre-judge any model or human beings until all the facts are in. That is, perhaps one can wait until the data, code etc. is given, then apply one’s own or anybody else’s data and see if the whole thing works. What is the hurry? What with internet speed, are there brownie points given out when you are the first one to try to shoot it down? Is this the scientific imperative nowadays?
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Would it be possible to provide David Evans with data you find acceptable?
What is the percentage of difference you are concerned about Leif, 20%?
20
I have already [a week or so ago] provided Evans with a dataset to try. So far, he has shown no interest.
There are two issues. The first one being the more immediate:
1) There is no sharp drop in TSI
2) The Lean 2009 [corrected by Wang et al.] is not correct
The ‘20%’ has nothing to do with anything.
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“Shown no interest”? I’ve graphed your dataset above, and applied a simple 11-year smoother, Figures 5 and 6 above. Also the first figure in an earlier post.
Also, see comment 24.2.1.1.4 above.
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I’m starting to suspect that Leif Svalgaard has simply programmed a Bot to keep repeating the same thing regardless of your responses Dr Evans.
The Bot isn’t smart enough to acknowledge your responses or when the comments made on behalf of Leif Svalgaard should be corrected, retracted or apologised for. Perhaps comment privileges should be suspended until the bot learns to do so?
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Thank you!
20
But according to Leif, wrong is wrong. So if there is any defect in the data, no matter how small, it is wrong and the conclusions drawn from it are wrong. Interestingly, he has not shared with us how he discovers data that is right so he can always make correct conclusions.
Sadly, Lief’s approach does not allow error, discovery, and correction. Once wrong, always wrong. Our mere mortal approach starts with the presumption that we can be wrong but that we can detect that fact and correct our errors. In fact, we relish the process of error, discovery, and correction because we learn more from or errors than from being right. It must be very uncomfortable to live the life of Lief. The slightest slip and he is doomed to be forever wrong. After all “Wrong is wrong.”
230
Nonsense. Small errors are always present, but don’t matter so much. Gross errors should be corrected.
Leif, you mean gross errors like: “And the fabrication [of data] is a fact as I showed above by Mr Evans’ own words.” Or, “”Both Willis and I have shown that Mr Evans invented the decline of TSI since 2003-2005.” ” Or “”So Mr Evans fabricates out of thin air about 900 days of TSI and tags that to the end of the curve.””? – Jo
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How do you know what is small and what is large? Especially if you don’t know what is right? Precision and accuracy are two very different things. Precision is a measure of how closely measurements cluster. Accuracy is how close the cluster is to the correct value.
The precision of any set of measurements larger than one measurement can be always be computed (standard error, standard deviation, variance, range …) no matter how inaccurate. However, the accuracy of any set of measurements can be known ONLY if you know what the true value is. By inference, a wrong measurement can be corrected ONLY if you know what the right value is.
You seem to have lost contact with your early studies on Elementary Statistics and Measurement.
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Well said Lionell.
110
You said it Leif, “Wrong is wrong”
70
… and pigs are MORE EQUAL than the rest of the animals! That is RIGHT, isn’t it Leif?
In order to judge ‘rightness’ of measured values, one must first know the ‘true value’ which you are trying to measure.
On present evidence, any judgment of ‘wrongness’ about solar output can only be a matter of opinion.
Nobody seems to know enough to say what the ‘true value’ is, so all data is subject to future proof of its correctness [or wrongness].
130
“one must first know the ‘true value’ which you are trying to measure.”
Especially an engineer should know that this is a question of error bars and measurement precision, not about ‘knowing’ anything.
019
Err, no, such a simplistic worldview, if I designed based on error bars and precision estimated, I’d have had my a*se sued off long ago. Error must also account variability in the processes, that is the actual measurement error, assumptions error etc. Since the processes are really unknown the measurements only have an “assumed” accuracy. For example, what frequency range is TSI measured over, might something else (say emission at the O-H bond natural frequency of from memory 2.4 Ghz) have an impact and need to be counted, that frequency works rather well in microwave ovens! We also need to be sure we are measuring the right thing, and that what we are measuring is what we think we are measuring. I can have an instrument with a precision of say 1 micron that could be misscalibrated and measure 5mm wrong very precisely. Your TSI radiometers are like that, because they are band limited, they measure only what they measure, it’s what they don’t measure that is at issue.
There is also the problem of carrying too much precision, from what I can see much climate science carries too much precision when they operate on data. This is important in engineering but climate science ignores this a lot. If I add 0.01 to 1.0 the result is 1.0, because I am not really entitled to carry three decimal points of precision.
If you think an Engineers life is as uncomplicated as error bars and measurement precision, think again! In the end, I’m rather glad you are not designing aircraft.
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bobl
July 5, 2014 at 5:41 pm
It is comforting to see so many aerospace engineers around here. I feel really at home.
50
“Gross errors should be corrected.”
To coincide only with the Leif dictate. !!
60
You misspelt “diktat”
20
I haven’t wanted to weigh in, but with Leif (who I respect) giving Jo and David a hard time I will make mention of my own model.
In 2010 after Climategate I built it to test whether ECS was low or high based on the longest cleanest dataset we have: HadCET.
Here are three time signatured graphs showing how its going:
end 2009
end 2012
end 2013
The forward projection of the model in blue out to 2021 is pretty much the same as Jo and David’s model. What is interesting though is the four years since the end of solar cycle 23 has been tracking the prediction quite well (but with a lag because I use a composite PDO+AMO cycle in the model, whereas I should really have used just an AMO cycle).
Why do I mention this? Because the key variable I use is a proxy for TSI plus the additional forcing from the Sun. Leif will probably not like it: I use previous solar cycle length correlation with temperature as reported in Butler & Johnson 1996 for Armagh, which is geographically near to the Central England Temperature measurement location.
In short, it works. Others use integrated SSN with much the same predictive skill. The solar-cloud link is also firming up in the scientific press too. I suspect if the IPCC ensemble modellers include this overall solar effect, and also the ~60 year cycle, in their models their predictive skill would be much better, even for medium term predictions. Unfortunately they cannot do it because including these significant variable would show CO2 is a minor driver of warming, and they’d then all lose their budgets and their jobs.
370
Are you planning on using Dr. Evans’s EXCEL spread sheet to run your hypothesis?
50
CC – No, I’m happy with my own Excel spreadsheet 🙂
The value for ECS that I get using it is 0.7 C/doubling. Which is the same as Lindzen & Choi’s median TCR value. Since I’m using 250 years of data that suggests climate response is pretty quick, which is supported by the ~60 year cycle and the temperature effect of the solar cycle on SST’s. You wouldn’t have those quick cycles if equilibration was slow.
David Archibald posted Jo & David’s model applied to HadCET. You can see it here. Compare it with my end 2013 graph and you’ll see they’re pretty similar, apart from the 5 year averaging I do to smooth out the noise.
50
Thank you, Were you able to have your model published in a Journal?
10
CC – I have not attempted to write it up for a journal for several reasons. Being outed as a climate sceptic is dangerous to your employment prospects. Its also difficult to publish sceptical climate papers, and to do it I’d need to put in much more effort on aspects like error bars, correction for volcanoes, UHIE etc. Climate science isn’t my day job. The model was originally a test for my own personal interest. The first link gives all the information necessary to replicate it if anyone wants to. As I said down thread I was considering entering the field, but when it became clear that empirical ECS is low I gave that idea away.
20
Thank You!
20
Im self employed. Give it to me and Ill publish it for you. Worst case scenario a few of my regular warmist frightbats will buy their e-cigarettes and ford pills somewhere else.
40
Aaron – You’re welcome to use the concept. The Excel takes a couple of days and all the datasets are available online. It would be harder to do a proper error analysis, and for volcanic correction there’s a graph on my Flickr photostream, but you have to convert it from Wm^-2 to K. If you want to try extending the model back to 1659, the start of the CET dataset, I’ve seen the solar cycles through the Maunder split in three cycles of about 18 years each. David Archibald has published this data, but I can’t remember where.
Really, though, the thing which should happen is the IPCC ensemble modellers should include the total solar effect on their models (ie through modulating of cloud cover, which has a bigger temperature effect than they assume) and the ocean cycle(s) too. They earn the big bucks modelling climate, so that’s what they should do, not write expensive fiction.
30
Rigorous debate. It was never going to be anything less.
And with so much skin in the game, (a cheap $1 Trillion dollars a day for some), a blood sport it is.
20
NB. Oops. $1 Trillion a year. Sorry.
40
100 Trillion on offer here.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/07/04/five-chances-to-win-one-hundred-trillion-dollars/
30
I am confused about why Total Solar Irradiance is so hard to measure accurately.
We have leant so much about Black Bodies from this and other blogs. Does not a black body cavity collect all of the solar energy and convert it into sensible heat (Temperature)? That should be a good measure. Surely that has been done? Is there not a reasonable proxy, eg the midday temperature record from Death Valley, California, or any number of desert sites in Australia which get good exposure to the Sun with minimal cloud cover?
10
Because the Earth’s atmosphere blocks some of the TSI, so we must use instruments in space. These instruments degrade when hit by solar UV, so we need to try to measure and correct for that degradation. This is the hard part.
167
Oh, so the earths reponse to TSI is sensitive to spectral content, well blow me over with a feather
190
Oh dear.. 🙂
How many feet can Leif fit in his mouth. !?
60
That’s the problem.
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/atmosphere/radbud/gs19_prd.gif
10
Yes, and the only way a change in spectral content is going to shift the jets and climate zones latitudinally is by altering the tropopause height gradient between equator and poles.
That means changing the balance of ozone destruction/creation differently at different heights and/or different latitudes (probably both).
That is my best guess for force x.
40
Except of course force X might not be spectral content related.
10
Possible but unlikely since force x needs to affect stratosphere temperatures (IMHO) which are largely controlled by ozone amounts.
One could include solar particles since some of them are involved in the ozone balance and those that are charged particles are directed in at the poles by the magnetic field.
I usually refer to ‘the mix of wavelengths and particles’ in order to cover both bases.
20
I do like your hypothesis, I was just keeping the thinking broad one doesn’t want to unfairly discard options prematurely. I tend to think it might be electrostatic in nature, don’t really know why, just a hunch. The atmosphere rises 200V per km from the earth up, that’s a lot of electricity, variations in charge profile have the potential for quite large effects. The top of the sunspot cycle also makes quite a large change in the earth’s ionosphere, huge in fact. Enough to bounce radio waves off!
Such a large change in our environment surely has possible interactions with climate, and particularly cloud nucleation? Is the fact that clouds are commonly associated with electrical discharges, significant, does the electrical environment affect cloud formation for example.
Frankly, we know no where near enough to conclude anything at all.
40
bobl,
The electrical / magnetic / cosmic ray approaches are reasonable as regards cloud nucleation but I prefer the tropopause height option because of the observation of latitudinally shifting climate zones from MWP to LIA to date. I don’t see how having more cloud nuclei could achieve that. One has to involve the polar vortices too and they are cloud free being situated in the stratosphere. Note that the polar vortices are separate from the circumpolar vortex which is in the tropsphere. Many confuse the two.
If one folows the sequence of climate and weather phenomena set out in my New Climate Model the real world has been behaving as expected. If the real world suddenly does the opposite then I will reconsider.
Leif used to berate me for putting forward a hypothesis that could not be falsified so I gave him a list of events that could falsify it. None have happened yet.
70
Yes.
20
That’s interesting, I have it down to something more basic, such as polarity! there should be an effect when the suns polarity tears past earths polarity at solar maximum, more so when it is slower. I believe it has the potential to become dangerous when it slows down as either polarity would be earth facing for longer periods. luckily the timing of Earths axial tilt should provide some cover.
The sun being uncontrollable should alarm some people but don’t have nightmares! we can control other irrelevant things such as CO2 and energy use and poor people! Mwhahahaha!
20
I bet it is. I mean, how do you know how much degradation has occurred? What is the standard used for comparison? Is the level of degradation the same for each satellite? Do they degrade at the same rate? Are there other potential causes of degradation, as yet unknown?
So many unknown unknowns. No wonder you say it is hard part. Perhaps tending towards impossible, might be a more accurate statement.
30
“how do you know how much degradation has occurred? ”
The standard method is to have several identical sensors, but expose them to sunlight a different amount of time. E.g. one open all the time, one open a shorter amount of time, and one open very rarely. These sensors will then have different degradation which can be used to gauge the degradation of the always-open sensor.
19
But these sensors are on satellites, in different orbital positions, are they not?
How are they exposed for varying lengths of time, and how is that physically achieved?
Also, how can you assess the sensitivity of each instrument to degradation? Even glass lenses, that are apparently optically identical, can have different hardness factors, that could cause them to deteriorate at different rates.
I am having a problem here in understanding what standard is being used, as a comparator against by whatever is meant by “degradation”, when we are referring to sensitive instruments mounted on satellites, and not the same instruments safely ensconced in the controlled environment of the lab.
Your previous answer implied that the sensors are standardised against each other. But this assumes that they are all in the same environment. But they are not, because space is not empty, and so some will be struck by high energy particles, whilst other are not.
The more I think about this, the more confused I become.
20
Generally, the sensors with different exposure time are on the same spacecraft [by design]. There are shutters that can open and close the sensor. No glass lenses are used: the sensor is open to the raw solar flux coming in through a small hole. And the most modern ones are compared to an absolute radiation standard in the laboratory [the same physical standard is used for all new sensors].
16
…. and those satellites are within the Earth’s atmosphere by how much?…. yes, they truly cannot accurately measure TSI, can they?
21
And to maintain accuracy and traceability such sensors are frequently recalibrated by standards traceable to NIST. Sometimes the recalibrations are done at NIST.
And you need to reclaibrate more often if you want to maintain accuracy. In some cases (high precision) monthly. And for radiation this is a high precision measuring device.
A new one of these devices should be sent up at least yearly. At least for a while. And they need to be placed as close to each other as possible in orbit. So the environment and time of observation are4 as similar as possible.
BTW for thermistors degradation is accelerated by heating and cooling. These instruments are not operated continuously (power limitations) so they thermistors are not being kept at a constant temperature to minimize curve shifts.
20
There does seem to be a drop in TSI, not sure if it is significant.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/pmod/plot/pmod/mean:132/plot/pmod/mean:66/plot/pmod/trend
I guess it hinges on whether this is all we’re going to see from Solar Cycle 24, and whether Solar Cycle 25 will also be depressed (very possible).
50
Starve the incessant fire by lack of oxygen. Ignore,Ignore Ignore.
30
It’s probably taking too stark a view to think that David Evan’s theory will either predict accurately, or not, and be abandoned. Think of the GCM’s relied on by IPCC. They have missed the historical temperature trends, but they did predict an increase, and sure enough, there has been some increase over 20 years, so the models are still alive. They may even be modified a little to make them more accurate, and while this is a bit comical, the modelers ought to be given a chance to see what they can do. So it is with the “Notch-Delay” model. If it is wrong, but wrong in the right direction, prudence argues for granting some leeway to make corrections. In fact, it’s worth going further: since the new model is both novel and complex, probabilities suggest that there will be at least some mistakes when the comparison with later observations is made. So, whatever the outcome in the next few years, it will probably usher in a period of refinement, but eventually a time of acceptance or rejection.
151
Truth only matters to engineers. For everyone else it is optional.
Thank the Maker engineers still respect it.
200
A bad data set is the wrong way to start a process that aims at finding a transfer function.
The dataset is bad. known bad even to those of us who dont work in the arena directly.
Of course when david’s model fails, he will go back and use the right data.
or he could just do that sensitivity test now.
or he could free the code and let people play.
432
I expect you will only have to wait a few days more based on the recent info release trend.
80
this is pretty simple.
if fact IT’S BASIC
This past fall we did a paper comparing Berkeley Earth to other datasets
For satellite there were 2 UAH and RSS
For other land there was GISS and CRU
For reanlysis there were 3
with multiple conflicting data sources the FIRST damn thing you do is test the sensitivity of your result to CHOICE OF INPUT DATASET
some bozos average the conflicting data
some bozos make arguments and only show you the best data
the pricipaled approach is to show them all
Leif has suggested this
I suggest it
What do you think the first test should be when your whole system depends on a dataset that IS IN DISPUTE
its brain dead simple
228
But is it true that the “whole system depends on a dataset that IS IN DISPUTE” ?
Have you run the code on different data sets? Have you run it on the data set you prefer?
IMO you are arguing without evidence. Fun stuff. If you are in it for fun. But generally unwise if you hope to make a point that sticks.
170
Ah… the paid mouthpiece for the BEST propaganda project returns..
170
This may appear to be coming out of left field but many of us who work out in the real climate/weather/environment. . .you know. . . people who work in fields like agriculture, transport logistics, building, construction, shipping, aviation, mining etc etc. . .are becoming more and more amused and less and less impressed.
Among other things, I am a SE Australian farmer. . .and when scientists and researchers genuinely unlock some of the mysteries of climate/weather forecasting, we applaud them and encourage their work.
Most of what we have seen in the last few decades is more about human ego and a meme that claims the ‘science is settled’.
From 2009 to 2013, many of us have been subjected to a litany of doom and gloom and very ordinary projections from entities like CSIRO and BoM accompanied by an attitude and a mindset that assumes we should unquestionably follow their advice and use their information as a major risk management tool in our businesses.
In 2009, CSIRO climate researchers informed us at various forums and workshops around the country that SE Australia was ‘drying up’ and the most worrying ‘trend’ was the drying Autumn trend.
The next 3 Autumns in SE Australia were the 3 wettest concurrent Autumns on record (go look it up 10/11/12) and this Autumn (2014, at least in a wide swathe of NSW, Vic & SA) we are witnessing the results of one of the best Autumn breaks we have seen in many a long year.
Last year (Autumn 2013) when BoM’s fancy, dancy and very expensive CGMs became officially live. . .their prediction was that Eastern Australia had an 80% probability of a wetter than average Winter/Spring 2013.
The result?. . .large areas of QLD and NSW had a damaging and severe seasonal drought that no one was expecting and no one was prepared for.
My conclusion is that the real climate/weather/environment is simply not interested in being owned and managed by human collected data and human invented trends at this point and that the advice being offered by entities such as BoM and CSIRO has not proved to be a good risk management tool at all.
It’s worrying that Natural Resource Management Government Departments are obliged to use this information as a major risk management tool because it has led to some very poor allocation of public resources.
I personally applaud Jo and David and many others who are humble and sensible enough to understand that we don’t have all the answers and that the REAL climate is apparently spectacularly uninterested in conforming to human invented trends. people like Jo and David are therefore still working on theories that might help to find further pieces of a very complex puzzle.
There will be no one happier than us farmers when seasonal variations and climate cycles are better understood and therefore easier to predict.
In the meantime. . .my humble suggestion to those who are arguing over which data set is the right or wrong data set and who has or hasn’t treated the data and records correctly and very particularly those who claim it’s ‘all settled’. . .FOR FOX ACHE!!!! . . .practice a little bit of humility and GO OUTSIDE and perhaps get an inkling that at this point….no one OWNS the weather and the REAL weather/climate/ environment is not interested in being managed by human collected data and trends.
Those of us who are living and working in the ACTUAL weather/climate/environment year in and year out at least know that it’s OK to be flexible and it’s OK to be wrong. . .as long as you learn from your mistakes and learn to be adaptable.
740
Debbie, like the “science is settled” folk I’m having trouble manipulating the “green thumb” data to multiply my input for the result of applauding your excellent post.
160
Yon,
There are farmers who have had their water taken off them from this nonsense over here, there livelihoods decimated. Advice about crop changes that failed to work and other PC nonsense that have cost real people real money. Farmers have been driven off the land and their resources usurped by impertinent and WRONG greenies. They attached water meters to private bores, withdrawing a right we’ve has since settlement to the water on our properties, without compensation. The government’s contractors TRESSPASSED on my property to install it, and interfered with my own private works without permission. Billions spent on desalination plants for rains that were to never come again, a pipeline was built here at a cost of about a billion dollars which has never been used. All in the name of climate change, my blood boils just at telling you about it. In the carbon tax legislation, the Commonwealth Government gave itself the power to enter your property if they reasonably expected you were using the wrong lightbulbs, not that the constitution stops them anyway… see above on water meters and tresspassing.
Constitutional breach after constitutional breach, it MUST stop NOW.
320
Sadly true, what’s the point of owning a Title for your land if government/NGO’s legislation become so restrictive that the owner of the Title cannot effectively use that land for any productivity?, as if we haven’t had enough useless ideas based on pseudo science that cripples a country with so much potential.
We recently looked into the possibility of buying land that had a Bushfire Management Overlay (BMO) on it, upon investigation I eventually spoke to a CFA “expert advisor” on BMO’s, the discussion lasted 30 seconds until the “expert” got nasty upon my questioning the authority and right to legislate how I manage my property.
Sorry to go OT so I’ll add this Leif character seems like a dead end for any constructive debate on David’s solar model, just think head and brick wall.
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Yes indeed bobl.
We too have had water resources and land confiscated with no compensation and it has caused some real pain and hardship in my part of the world. . . nearly all of it impractical and pointless and expensive and wasteful and unnecessary.
Instead of once working with great people from DPI, CSIRO et al. . .we now have to deal with ‘the tree police’ et al.
The interesting point however is that farmers generally do know how to be flexible and do know how to admit to mistakes and immediately work to correct them. If they fail to be adaptable and responsive to seasonal variations then they are heading for trouble. People who work in the real environment/weather/climate know that there is no such thing as a ‘one size fits all’ rule and they always have a plan B or C or however many adaptions they need!
The ‘impertinent ones’ you mention generally have no concept of flexibility and/or adaptability or any idea how to be flexible and adaptable and can’t seem to understand that even though they claim to care deeply about ‘the environment’, the real climate/weather/environment seriously couldn’t give two hoots about them.
I sometimes imagine that if ‘mother nature’ really was the fragile, human, emotional entity as many of our ‘green betters’ represent her (which looks such a silly thing to write but that’s because the whole concept is merely cerebral & silly!). . .she must have an extremely wicked sense of humour 🙂
As far as those projections and trends for SE Australia goes. . .she seems to have deliberately produced the opposite result and I can very easily imagine their constructed representation of her laughing her head off at them 🙂
The sad part, as I mentioned earlier, is that NRM Government Departments are obliged to use this information and it has indeed led to some very poor decisions about Natural Resource Management and has probably caused more triple bottom line carnage than anything else!
(Triple bottom line being pollie/bureaucratic speak for social, economic and environment)
So once again. . .my humble advice to those who are arguing incessantly about human collected and produced data sets and trends and who is or isn’t doing it properly or treating the data correctly or even which data set is better smoothed or homogenised. . .we’re talking about the weather/climate here. . .a lot of you need to just GO OUTSIDE!
Quite clearly no one actually owns the weather/climate/environment and quite clearly the weather/climate/environment has no interest in being a reportable, tradable commodity for anybody or any entity at this point in time.
And as I also said earlier. . .there will be no one happier than us farmers when seasonal variations and climate cycles are better understood and become easier to predict.
Anyone who is genuinely working towards that goal (and is humble enough to know that we aren’t there yet) has my full respect and encouragement.
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I had a wry smile there Debbie. It’s absolutely bucketing down with rain yet again here in Central Victoria…one of the reasons I can sit here with my laptop at this time of day instead of working at our little place!
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Damn, that’s another laugh-line chiseled upon the old visage !
Good post.
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Debbie,
I couldn’t agree more.
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Debbie,
I am a farmer in SW Australia and inside due to it being too wet to do any work outside, shaping up for a magnificent season, except for some waterlogging.
I was a told that an analysis of BOM seasonal forecast found that guessing was just as accurate.
My question is, why bother, if they can’t get any semblance of accuracy the BOM should just say it doesn’t know.
BOM say they have a new model for seasonal forecasts, I think they just bought a new dartboard.
I use at least 4 websites/apps to follow weather and they have some use up to 4 days, anymore than that, very unreliable. So how can climatologists forecast a 100 years when a meteorologist can’t forecast 100 hours?
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Yes Bob.
We use at least 4 different sites as well.
Unfortunately, since the new GCMs went live approx 12 months ago, BoM’s seasonal forecasting has not demonstrated any improved skill. . .and if anything it could be argued that BoM forecasting has become more generic and more dangerous as a business tool!
10
It appears some individuals think they have a patent on using statistics, means, or averages from data to plot, analyze, and hypothesize, to employ logical speculation, determine possible causation or generate scientific discussions which may lead to a better understanding of what is driving the climate to change from something other than the “predetermined CO2.” Weren’t early “scientists” as certain the world was flat and it was the “heretics” and “fools” who did not?
Keep up the great work, Jo and Dr. Evans. Many of us “regular” folks are learning a great deal from both of you!
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As John Robertson said above, “The larger the EGO, the less room for other peoples ideas.”
I wish I could offer some sort of constructive criticism to both Leif and Willis that would create in them a change for the better, perhaps a dose of humility to calm their propensity towards arrogance, perhaps teach an old lesson about knowing what we don’t know or even reaching the point of Not knowing that we don’t know.
For David, I like your approach, manner and laid back attitude in dealing with this. As you said, time will tell. I wish you the best. This approach to science by weblog may indeed be the future.
For Bruce of Newcastle, very interesting and would like to read more of your model. Have you written an article or considered writing one?
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Gregorio – No, I’ve not written it up as the model was designed to be a test for my own personal interest since for a while I was thinking of entering the field (I’m a R&D chemist). It was to test roughly whether sceptics were right that sensitivity is low or IPCC climate scientists were right that sensitivity is high. The results were pretty conclusive – you can argue about error bars and tenths of a degree but based on HadCET its clear that ECS is low, provided you include the overall effect of the Sun.
I put it up on Flickr because of a comment fight here at Jo’s, where someone called Blimey said “please present your own models that describe the observed warming without taking into account greenhouse gas forcings”. So I did. Floored him completely.
If you look at the first graph the full details of the model are given in the description. The paper by Butler & Johnson is here. They wrote it before CAGW was politically sensitive. The advantage of pSCL is it is easy to measure, impossible to fake and is available in a long consistent dataset. Whereas as Mr Mosher and Dr Svalgaard have been saying TSI measurement is not without issues and the dataset available is short. Its very hard to fake variations in the length of the solar cycle and the empirical relationship between solar cycle length and temperature in the next decade is pretty clear. You can see it yourself if you graph it, which I have done here. B&J applied filters to correct for issues such as volcanoes, but even the raw data shows it. (For Leif – yes I have read Lockwood and Fröhlich 2007 several times quite carefully. Its crap, which I can easily demonstrate from the paper. I suspect Lockwood (who I have a lot of time for) has been backpedalling since then, given the comments he has been making on solar influence in the last few years.)
The ~60 year cycle effect on temperature can be worked out by a simple sinusoidal regression curve fitted to HadCRUT, like this. Or you can use a sine curve fitted to the AMO, which is detrended North Atlantic SST. The AMO cycle is persistent over millenia, as found by Knight et al 2005 (in GRL).
The issue as I mentioned is that the IPCC ensemble modellers don’t include these significant variables. If they did their derived values for ECS would come out much lower.
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Why is Lockwood and Fröhlich meaningless? Nir Shaviv
http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/07/nir-shaviv-why-is-lockwood-and-frohlich.html
00
00
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/07/more-strange-adventures-in-tsi-data-the-miracle-of-900-fabricated-fraudulent-days/#comment-1504791
And that corresponds well to David’s Bode Plot.
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Leif, you are being non-constructive and delaying the program. Either leave or shut-up and be mature…
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“delaying the program”
A very constructive contribution has been offering my TSI reconstruction in order to do a much needed sensitivity analysis of Evans’ forecast. So far, Evans has not bothered. To me that speaks volumes.
You mean inferring with the activism-agenda. Well, it must be interfered with as such activism has long left the science behind. To get back on track, Evans should perform the constructive sensitivity analysis I suggested.
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“has not bothered”? See figures 5 and 6 above, and the first figure in an earlier post.
Also, see comment 24.2.1.1.4 above.
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bothered to do it correctly. And you have not graphed ‘my’ dataset. You should do that in a separate Figure with only mine and yours with no smoothing. I would do that myself if I could, but since you refuse to tell us what your data is and how it is constructed, it is hard for me to make the comparison.
—–
You have not bothered to correct your inaccurate and false statements. That would be a lot faster than reoptimizing the model. The double standards are breathtaking. – Jo
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Oh dear.. Leif’s data set has not been graphed..
Sob. sob. sob !!!!
The world must surely come to an end. !!!
roflmao !!
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Griss,
Just by the by, is it just me or does this segment seem to be turning into a ‘dead parrot’ sketch with Leif playing the shopkeeper.
I don’t think he is delaying the program, but I do think Leif is firing well past Top Dead Centre
at the moment.
How many times must he be referred back to his own dataset by Dr. Evans?
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Actually, now you mention it – it is the dead parrot sketch!
Well done James. 🙂
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mixed in with the “argument” sketch. 🙂
A sort of hybrid Monty.
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Dr. Svalgaard, you said “So far, Evans has not bothered. To me that speaks volumes.” You were wrong. Evans had bothered. Admit you were wrong in saying that. It’s easy – just say, “Oops, I said something that wasn’t right.”
Even though you later changed the meaning by adding the words “bothered to do it correctly”, you have been called out on your original statement. Changing the statement after having been called on it is no defense. You made a statement which was not correct. Admit it.
Further, you needlessly used the word “bothered”, which is smarmy and bitchy. It speaks volumes. I think you are a nasty person with no honour. Prove me wrong.
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That’s called bait and switch
20
Also note that Dr Evans was, for a period, referred to correctly. Then as Dr Svalgaard found himself being challenged more intensely, it became Mr Evans, and now we arrive at a stage where it is just “Evans”. That also speaks volumes.
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As loud as the use of just ‘Svalgaard’ in the ’17 highlights of the post’.
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Clearly you have read my challenge and declined to accept it. Therefore you remain in my estimation nasty and without honour.
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Your egotism is unprecedented….
David has had your claims and data for a week or more. Based on his initial statements, he is fully willing to toss his analysis if proven wrong. Since he has not done that I would assume your claims are invalidated.
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If he had he would gleefully have announced that he invalidated my suggestion. Your assumption is that of a true believer in the ’cause’. A member of Team DE.
——
Another case of projection? — Jo
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Fast to accuse but short on allowing the process David chose to mature. Unfortunately, you refuse to understand or trust the process. However, the process will find the truth even if the initial data set is as wrong as you say.
The fundamental fact is that the process takes time and effort. Incremental discovery and improvement always does but it eventually converges onto a truth. This is how progress happens. Nothing happens instantly simply because you demand it.
My question is why are you so fearful of allowing the process to continue at the speed Jo and David are comfortable with? It is not as if you are paying them and they are on your time clock. Yet you expect/demand instant service to YOUR ideas without respecting or even trying to understand theirs.
Like I said: “I suggest something far afield from actual science is going on here and it isn’t pretty. In fact, it is all flavors of ugly.”
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It is hard to find the truth from faulty data, regardless of how fast or how slow the process is.
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Your data set is wrong too. Wrong is wrong and one shouldn’t use wrong data sets by your own principle. I know. You *believe* it is less wrong than the data set David first used because some unidentified magical others *believe* it is better. Yet, you still don’t know what the true values are but *believe* that merely because you *believe* makes it all good. This is NOT science. It is a faith based religion.
If you haven’t noticed, it is difficult to find the truth by simply *believing*. You may accidentally find the truth but you can’t know that you have. You only *believe*.
You can call it the truth but that is like calling a sheep’s tail a leg and saying therefore a sheep has five legs. We unanointed mere mortals hold fast to the old fashion notion that a sheep only has four legs. We don’t have the magical power of transmogrification by which something becomes something else merely by saying it is something other than what it is.
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Leif, I can’t understand why you have so many red thumbs for this statement.
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If you had followed the general lines of hostility on this blog, you might better understand why.
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The hostility starts with the man who claims another scientist is an activist with an agenda whose data was fabricated and blatantly wrong.
The hostility (and irrationality) continues with every comment where the same man then refuses to correct his false and defamatory claims.
We are merely pointing out your flagrant errors. If you call that hostile, it says a lot about your understanding of science.
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“That of a true believer in the cause. A member of Team DE”
Is this assumption the driver of your intolerance and rudeness?
How can there be any true believers in “Team D.E?
We have not seen the complete conjecture yet.
But you continue blathering on, your estimation of TSI is the only “true estimation.
Given the state of our knowledge of the sun is just barely started, your absolutism is pathetic.
You are stereotyping yourself, as the absolute expert on a subject of which we just found out, via solar sensors, that we do not know most of what we thought we did.
As for historic TSI, all guesses are just that.
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See figures 5 and 6 above, and the first figure in an earlier post.
Also, see comment 24.2.1.1.4 above.
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Leif Svalgaard July 5, 2014 at 12:18 pm ”
“If he had he would gleefully have announced that he invalidated my suggestion. Your assumption is that of a true believer in the ’cause’. A member of Team DE.”
Gots to be a BOT Ni one would appear that stupid!
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Leif,
are you trying to say that SORC would not have gone with ACRIM and VIRGO back to 2002?
http://spot.colorado.edu/~koppg/TSI/TSI.jpg
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Don’t know what you mean. ACRIM and VIRGO [PMOD] suffer from a design flaw [let in scattered and diffracted light], so have systematic differences from the better designed SORCE/TIM. In addition there are other known [instrumental or data reduction] errors in ACRIM and PMOD.
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what i am asking is, do you not think that SORC would have the same peak in 2000 to 2002 that ACRIM and VIRGO did? it would be sensible considering BOTH of those sets show that there was a considerable drop in TSI from 2002 to current, so would most likely NOT be due to ‘design flaw’ which would show as a bias, not anomaly.
50
Of the two PMOD is the best [ACRIM has larger errors]. And PMOD suffers from a systematic downward drift due to uncorrected degradation, see e.g. http://www.leif.org/research/PMOD%20TSI-SOHO%20keyhole%20effect-degradation%20over%20time.pdf A drift that has become even worse since, as you can see in the insert on http://www.leif.org/reseach/No-TSI-Difference-Between-Minima.pdf
But SORCE would not have the same peak as PMOD [or even SORCE itself had it been operating in 2001] because TSI simply scales with the sunspot number which now is lower than in 2001.
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well considering the bloodsport statement, are there any refences to the ‘uncorrected degradation’ other than your own slide show?
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Try to click on the reference to the presentation by Schmutz.
or a simpler one:
http://theconversation.com/real-climate-debates-a-report-from-the-iugg-general-assembly-2060 [ignore the climate nonsense and read on to:
“An invited keynote talk by Werner Schmutz describes the radiative energy from the sun: total solar iradiance or TSI.
He concluded that the “data do not support a TSI trend between 1996 and 2008” (from one solar min to the next)”
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So asked for references the best Leif can do is a “Conversation” blog link? And the quote only applies to solar minima, not maxima, and not trends?
The strawman bluster continues. When will Leif admit the obvious — that this is not about trends in solar minima, and not about comparing monthly TSI data from one point to the next? – jo
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Leif,
I am no one’s student, simply trying to understand what is really going on.
I do understand bias as it applies to one’s ego and salary, I deal with it on a daily basis.
I have no ego or bias, I learn new things every day, and understand there could be multiple causes for the same symptom.
Do you?
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“understand there could be multiple causes for the same symptom” So you understand that a forecast of a drop of temperature of 0.1C could have multiple causes and therefore cannot be taken as validation of any given single explanation, especially not when based on input data that is demonstrably wrong.
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@LS
Just one question re. ‘data that is wrong‘
Is david the only one who is using it and thinks it’s OK or there others who think it’s OK too?
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No, you can find this wrong dataset used on many websites that want to promote solar influence. Google is your friend, go find them yourself.
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No, I was simply interested in why you keep saying this data is wrong.
Now I know. But what if David and others are right? Don’t you even give that a moments thought? People were wrong before, specially with something as tenuous as climate data.
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You have to understand , Mark, ….
…… the ONLY correct data set is the one Leif made a guess at. !!!
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You repeatedly talk about being wrong but provide nothing concrete?
Your opinion at this point is less than valid?
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http://www.leif.org/research/No-TSI-Difference-Between-Minima.pdf should suffice for even the most bone-headed. You can prove me wrong on the suffice-bit.
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And if you do not compare apples with oranges but use the same 11 years smoothing average as Dr Evans. What do you get ??
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Silence, it would appear.
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No… I do hear the crickets….
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Brad, “I have no ego or bias” How do you know that?
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Richard Hill
July 5, 2014 at 1:09 pm
Who else would know it better?
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The big disappointment to me is the failure by the critics to address the issues and attack the researchers instead.
MR. Willis has lost ALL the credibility he built over the years and has proven that he is just an ordinary mann and not the great guru he portrayed himself to be. If I read ay of his writing in future it will be with a greater scepticism than in the past. His inaccurate and distorted tirade has not helped Anthony WUWT at all.
MR. Leif could have said “I disagree with these parts for these reasons … How can I help you to improve this so we can see if you are on to something?” Instead he displays typical behaviour I sometimes witness (I have a three year old grandson who is always right).
The problem with science is that (as Leif did allude to) you can be right for the wrong reasons. The Chinese believed tea prevented typhoid, not realising that it was boiling the water that was the reason tea-drinkers never got the disease. So if David’s predictions are wrong, then the hypothesis is wrong – and David will put a red pen through his own work. However, if his predictions come true, then much more needs to be done to demonstrate that he has the right reason.
Finally (while I have your attention, can ANYONE tell me where all this is going by answering two simple questions I have been asking for over three years:
1. what is the ideal level of CO2 we so earnestly and expensively seek. Is it;
a. 400ppm
b. 350ppm
c. 300ppm
d. 250ppm (at which point plants cease growing)
2. what is the ideal average global temperature? We appear to be currently at 14.9C and 17C is claimed to be a catastrophic tipping point, so is the ideal average;
a. 14C
b. 13C
c. 12C
d. 10C
If we do not know where we are going, how will we know when we are there>
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“Common courtesy may seem a quaint anachronism, but without it, logic and reason die on the sword of uninformed passion. ”
Beautifully said. (Except for a missing comma.) This applies not only to scientific debate, but to human society in general. One of the important insights of Confucian philosophy is the vital role that manners and politeness play in maintaining civilisation.
I will probably quote you (with corrected punctuation) fairly often.
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Evans’ ‘model’ predicts [his Figure 2] a drop of 0.6C by 2016-2017 [in two short years]. If this happens, I’ll, of course, concede that a correct answer could be extracted from garbage. If it doesn’t happen, I hope Mr Evans will, likewise, concede that garbage in gives you garbage out.
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For people needing a reminder, here is one: http://www.leif.org/research/Evans-Prediction.png
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I have this air conditioner to sell you Leif, it works by detecting the CO2 in the atmosphere and modulating output air temperature based on content -3.3 degrees per doubling of CO2 over 400 ppm, that should keep the air temperature constant eh? do you want to buy it?
110
I’ll swap it with the London bridge I recently acquired, but actually, where I live I don’t need an A/C so will have to decline your kind offer.
414
I see, so you’re keeping the London bridge, good to know for the londoners here, to know their tolls are going to a good cause.
40
Why the endless gratuitous use of MR when referring to DR Evans MR Leif S?
100
I think that is what passes for subtlety in the world of academic ad hominem.
150
Because he is a nasty little doctor.
60
Leif says: ” I’ll, of course, concede”
But based on your current performance, you will concede nothing — no matter how incorrect you are. Prove us wrong — respond to the quotes in the post.
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“respond to the quotes in the post”
As always, you must be precise. What quotes exactly?
014
I could not have been more precise. See Svalgaard 1 to Svalgaard 17. I’m surprised you have not read the post we are all discussing?
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Hmmm,
I wonder if Joanne and David were being evil knowing they would draw out the whackadoodles by not releasing everything up front?!?!?!
Yeah, they planned it this way to smoke out the faux sceptics!!
Just kidding, or am I??
Gotta admit I am enjoying watching Smellgaard and Etchinback make fools of themselves. Amazing how such intelligent people can lose it under pressure.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
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Are you a “whackadoodl” just asking!
40
whackadoodle
The Grammar and Spelling Police Auxiliary –
50
I played whackamole in a pub in Melbourne once – great fun.
00
And that, they have managed, in spades. 🙂
30
In fact.. “oodles of whackadoodles” “-)
30
Jo, I don’t know why you use a 25 year smoothing as 10 or even 5 years gets rid of most of the noise but gives a much better indication of what is happening most recently. I use a 13 year binomial filter on HadCrut5 but taper it over the record end years until the last data point is a simple mean of the last two years. The tail wiggles around a bit but you get a much better feel for the current behaviour, IMHO. Accordingly I think the global temperature topped out in about 2005 with the NH leading the SH down. The hemispheric difference also maxed out at about that time, NH-SH exceeding -0.3˚C for the first OK with your notch delay theory as all I am saying is the real downtrend is still to come but the signature of the end of the previous (up) trend has clearly appeared, the cest of the wave so to speak.
Don’t fuss too much about Willis and Svaalgaard, I think they are jealous. LS last comment before min ( #46) is a bit precious to my mind. So if we get -0.6 by 2020 instead of 2017 or -0.04 by 2016 he is going to declare your model a fail? If we get a clear -0.2 by 2020 that will be about the same as the cooling circa 1900 – 1910 and will do me for the time being. It will be enough to blow the IPCC and their flock of starlings models out of the sky for mine.
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“So if we get -0.6 by 2020 instead of 2017 or -0.04 by 2016 he is going to declare your model a fail? If we get a clear -0.2 by 2020 that will be about the same as the cooling circa 1900 – 1910 and will do me for the time being.”
As you can see http://www.leif.org/research/Evans-Prediction.png the predicted drop of ~0.6C pertains to a whole decade after 2016, so 2020 should also be 0.6C colder. And in 1900-1910 temps were 1.0C cooler than now, not 0.2C, according to Evans’ Figure 2.
” It will be enough to blow the IPCC and their flock of starlings models out of the sky for mine”
And this bit shows your agenda and bias. Regardless of the science you just want to blow the IPCC. [not that they don’t deserve it, IMHO]
218
According to the HadCrut4 record (as I view the data using a 13 year binomial filter, as I said) the cooling over the decade between about 1900 and 1910 was about 0.2˚C which is what I wrote. I did not say or imply anything else regarding that. I also wrote that I think that the cooling to which Evans refers actually began on about 2005 or so. I think you actually agree that a -0.2˚C drop be it by 2015 , 2016 or 2020 from the ‘peak” would pretty much wreck the IPCC groupie model concensus so just what is my “agenda and bias” that you find so irksome?
You have done a lot of excellent work in the AGW debate but you seem to suffer some of the symptoms of Mann et al methinks. Enviro Guru Ebola shall we call it? Chill out sir, you are not the enemy and please don’t drink the “climate expert” kool ade. In my world an “expert” consists of ‘x’, an unknown quantity and a ‘spurt’, a drip under pressure.
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Of course I am not that far ahead of things to be analysing HadCrut5 but am stll stuck on HadCrut4. When will east Anglia catch up?
🙂
50
“If TSI fell from 1995 then the corresponding fall in temperature should have been evident from about 2006 — but since it didn’t happen that would mean the solar influence is weak”.
Not so fast. I mentioned previously that Usoskin found a 20 year average lag in solar reconstructions over the last 1000 years. It doesn’t have to relate to the 8-14 year solar cycle, a decline can develop over multiple decades, as it interacts in a complex way with changes in ocean phases such as the PDO.
I prefer the 20 year estimate after peak activity from 1985, but since TSI still remained high to at least 1995, best guess is 15-20 years after 1995, so somewhere between 2010 to 2015, or if the decline occurred more from ~2005, a slightly less delay, so somewhere between 2015-2020. Cant be more accurate than that I think, but an interesting debate.
10
Lionell Griffith
July 5, 2014 at 2:56 pm
“is believed to be the actual TSI…”
“believed to be”(?!) Now you are appealing to belief. ”
Do you believe that Evans’ is doing science?
121
Do you “believe” you are?
150
Ah, the pope of *believe* science asking if I *believe* Evans’ is doing science. No, I don’t *believe* it, I know it. When you have knowledge belief is unnecessary and unproductive. If you don’t have knowledge, belief doesn’t add to knowledge and is therefor also unproductive.
I described his process in quite some detail early on. It is the right process for the clean start of an actual science of climate rather than the pseudo scientific process you bring to the table. There is a difference between actual science and pseudo science though I doubt you would know it because you *believe* rather than know, assert rather than demonstrate, accuse rather than prove, and insist rather than watch and learn.
40
get rid of both of them
219
Here, let me help you Leif: “I am just totally pissed that David did not use my data!”
Feel better now?
220
But BS your data is crap MY data is the best in the land so if anyone should be totally pissed it should be me, and here in lies the problem after staring at TSI for God knows how long LS could not figure out what was happening then along comes a lowly electrical engineer with a flair for maths and puts it all together. But the worst part is he did not even use LS data surely that must be a kick in the guts. You spend all your life toiling away at something and in the end it was in vain.
Poor old bugger.
200
The English do have a way with words. I have always liked “Poor old sod.” You can even say it in polite company – in America. In America we have “sod busters” which means “hard worker for little reward”. The connotations ARE different.
61
“sod busters” ?? sounds a bit like gay bashing. Not PC.
00
See my http://joannenova.com.au/2014/07/more-strange-adventures-in-tsi-data-the-miracle-of-900-fabricated-fraudulent-days/#comment-1502433
Which was supposed to be a reply to yours.
10
Well that is odd. Replies seem to be going to a new comment.
This is supposed to be a reply to: http://joannenova.com.au/2014/07/more-strange-adventures-in-tsi-data-the-miracle-of-900-fabricated-fraudulent-days/#comment-1502416
We shall see.
10
Comment threading breaks at times…. prolly from too much BS flying around…
50
Backslider
July 5, 2014 at 6:11 pm · Reply
Good unwholesome entertainment though. It has significantly reduced my perusal of unclothed ladies.
130
I get the impression a lot more than perusal (;-)
00
When I was a student, I was given a book by my tutor. In it he had written:
I am indebted to Dr Svalgaard for reminding me of that advice, and in so doing, reintroducing me to that book.
410
Never stopped reading that same book over and over, believed every word and live happily ever after.
20
Spot on crakar24, spot on. Svalgaard reminds me of Captain Queeg.
40
What, you and Mosh ?
Not a bad idea, then a sensible scientific argument could ensue, rather than one governed by blustering egomaniacs.
220
“Every time we looked around there he was that hairy hound from Budapest. Never leaving us alone, never have I ever known a ruder pest…”
Henry Higgins – My Fair Lady
10
We know who to get rid of.
20
Robert
July 5, 2014 at 3:02 pm
“Please show us the proof that yours is correct, or “less wrong.” ”
The main part of the prediction is the sharp drop in TSI such that the recent solar minimum was considerably lower than the previous minimum. In http://www.leif.org/research/No-TSI-Difference-Between-Minima.pdf I refer to recent measurements that show “Observed data do not support a measurable TSI trend between the minima in 1996 and 2008!” This is from W. Schmutz, SORCE 2011 Presentation, http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/news/2011ScienceMeeting/docs/presentations/1g_Schmutz_SORCE_13.9.11.pdf
I have refer to this several times. Do you ever consult such links, or do you just blow them off without even looking?
122
Perhaps if you learned to behave in a more civil manner people would look at the links you provide. Once again, this appears to be a case of “the data doesn’t agree with mine so it must be wrong.”
In the future perhaps you could provide graphs where there isn’t a large text box containing the point you desire to make situated in the graph covering a large part of the data we’d like to see.
190
You cannot say ‘appears’ if you don’t look.
And should you care to click on the URL given in the box, you will be taken to the original paper. But, no, you prefer to shoot your mouth off instead.
119
Well silly me, you gave us something that you say supports your claim, I say there is a large text box covering the scale on the graph and therefore part of the data so as far as I’m concerned you are hiding something.
How do you know I didn’t look? You don’t do you? You are full of yourself.
Now, why are you hiding the x axis scale behind a text box, you could have just as easily provided the comment and link beneath the graph couldn’t you?
80
Dr. Svalgaard,
I visited your site, http://www.leif.org/research/ , where item N is “TSI-Reconstruction-2014(My Guess)”. In examining that graph I noted that the baseline for TSI doesn’t seem to agree with the baseline as corrected in http://www.leif.org/research/No-TSI-Difference-Between-Minima.pdf which you linked to above. Not sure if I’ve misunderstood what’s being shown so perhaps you could explain why the plots seem to differ.
Thanks, John
10
Roy Spencer in his book ‘The Great Global Warming Blunder’, outlines a theory that solar activity + associated changes in cloud cover + delay times in reaching atmospheric equilibrium + changes in the PDO from negative to positive can account for most late 20th century warming.
His key is that cloud changes are the missing solar amplifier. Worth a read.
If you factor in changes in ocean phases, things start to look grim for the alarmists, because it not only explains the current pause (which corresponds with the negative phase of the PDO), but also predicts that things might start to cool, the exact opposite of what we are being told.
Same as the argument above. If you believe the sun had a lot to do with 20th century warming generally, things might well start to cool over the next few decades.
60
The data is wrong….says who?
TSI reconstructions are guesses and each camp takes the reconstruction that suits their needs. Svalgaard keeps telling us that the Group Sunspot Number (GSN) is flawed, but there are new studies that suggest otherwise. The GSN is used in the Lean(2000)reconstruction.
http://www.landscheidt.info/?q=node/317
The new study suggests the SIDC values before 1848 need a 20% reduction.
Lockwood et al is also on board and also agrees that the L&P data is flawed.
http://www.landscheidt.info/?q=node/328
110
A paper in press [Space Science Reviews] concludes
“Based on these comparisons, it does not seem reasonable to apply a wholesale decrease of the Wolf Numbers by 20% before 1849, as advocated by Leussu et al. (2013).”
Lockwood et al. has a track record of trying to catch up, but they usually do it poorly. In their recent 2014 papers they after a decade of struggle arrive at the same conclusions and reconstructions as we did back in 2003. They should, of course, be congratulated for their ‘achievement’.
118
Lockwood et al are now leading the pack, and correctly acknowledge the work of Leussu et al. There is no doubt there is a modern maximum, your peers are deserting you.
McCracken Steinhilber and Beer are also in opposition to you in regards to solar planetary theory…time to give up Leif.
160
Lockwood et al. have always been trailers, still are.
The planets running the show does not have many adherents, except on the fringe.
But you are trying to hijack the thread for your own purposes. Slither back in your hole, please.
121
No just showing where your peers are deserting you…your time along with Watts is marked.
121
Not at all. The Sunspot number Workshops http://ssnworkshop.wikia.com/wiki/Home reflect what the peers who matters have to say about this. But you wouldn’t even go there, let alone read the supporting papers, would you?
015
David and Jo’s article on this topic is a turning point….the public is catching on. Just loving watching you and Watts take the ultimate fall.
121
You are wasting a lot of time with us “no accounts” Leif. You should be spending your time with “peers who matters” where real work can get done.
Or as they like to say over at http://reason.com/ –> TOP MEN will sort it out.
Good to have a TOP MAN like you with us though So we can find out what the “peers who matters” think.
120
Just because you *SAY* these are the peers who matter, we are to drop and read a bunch of links? You *believe* they are the peers who matter. You should know by now what we think of your sacred *believe*. It is not worth a fart in a hurricane. In fact it is a very good reason not to read the content of your links. After all, we have real lives to live that matter to us. Wasting our time on your petulant ravings is not our idea of living.
10
OzWizard
July 5, 2014 at 3:15 pm
Dear Leif,
“You seem not to comprehend the clear meanings of the simple words written above. Please re-read the post and re-submit your corrected manuscript for marking.”
Indeed, I may not comprehend something, because you do not say precisely what those simple words were, and I don’t like to just guess. So, try again.
019
O/T, but an article in today’s Age reports an appeal by the Anglican Church, as follows:
Would that the government, and the Anglican Church followed this wise advice and “respect[ed] and act[ed] upon relevant independent evidence-based scientific advice” on climate change!
One can only sympathise with Henry II, when he is alleged to have said of Thomas Beckett, “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?”
140
Well I’m an Anglican and the Synod does NOT speak for me!
30
Annie
July 5, 2014 at 5:07 pm
Well I’m an Anglican and the Synod does NOT speak for me!
I’m Jewish and NO ONE speaks for me.
“Two Jews. Three opinions.”
80
I’m an atheist so I don’t know who speaks for me, or if that’s even a possibility. 🙁
60
I know that there is a correlation between sunspots and TSI, but sunspots cause TSI to go down not up.
Is it not the faculae that should be the main focus of attention when dealing with uncertain or absent measurements of TSI?
00
Judging by PMOD TSI and SIDC Wolf numbers…
Over the medium term of 22 years, TSI is proportional to SSN.
In the short term variance over 2 years or less you can sometimes cherry pick places where they move in opposite directions, but just eyeballing it a correlation still looks more plausible than anticorrelation. Intuitively, more dark spots should reduce total output, but it is difficult to show that in the measurements. In particular the SSN high of 1988 is closely followed by a TSI high, not a TSI drop. Also note where the zero line is after normalisation and recognise how far above zero the TSI would have to be wherever SSN is low for the anticorrelation to be true.
I think it’s the medium term effect which is important for these climate forecasts, and on that scale the TSI is clearly proportional to sunspot count.
In the longer term, even the baseline level of TSI can drop, allegedly in a 200 year oscillation. Since we are nearing the end of one of those TSI cycles now, even the statement “TSI is proportional to sunspot count” will soon have less truth to it than it did in the 1980s and 1990s.
10
Relations between the length of a sunspot cycle and the average temperature in the same and the next cycle are calculated for a number of meteorological stations in Norway and in the North Atlantic region. No significant trend is found between the length of a cycle and the average temperature in the same cycle, but a significant negative trend is found between the length of a cycle and the temperature in the next cycle. This provides a tool to predict an average temperature decrease of at least View the MathML source from solar cycle 23 to solar cycle 24 for the stations and areas analyzed. We find for the Norwegian local stations investigated that 25–56% of the temperature increase the last 150 years may be attributed to the Sun. For 3 North Atlantic stations we get 63–72% solar contribution. This points to the Atlantic currents as reinforcing a solar signal.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364682612000417
10
So, where does the rest come from?…. let me guess, frying kjøttboller ?
20
honestly, my understanding with smoothed data you never plot beyond the point at which you can smooth. If you do plot the last few years you use the actual data, you don’t assume anything. Its just a random red line extension that should be labelled as “random line that has nothing to do with any data” rather than suggest it is some sort of extension of data.
08
Matt, that is probably prudent unless you are trying to prevent an artifact. Truncating data can cause artifacts in some integrations and adding a padding point can prevent that. It will also allow some inspection of the end of a trend providing that one understands the error increases at the end of the smoothed trend. It’s my conclusion that there probably isn’t a better way to tease the likely shape of the end of the trend.
Put another way, the smoothing is artificial (grossly erroneous with respect to the original data) anyway, and adding some padding to keep a smooth curve at the end probably doesn’t make it a lot worse than it already is.
20
This jump of ice in 2007 and 2008 could be explained by only by solar activity, because Antarctica is well insulated from the impact of sea temperature by strong ocean currents.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.antarctic.png
20
Whether decrease sea temperatures in the south will lead to changes in ocean currents? It’s only a matter of time.
http://ziemianarozdrozu.pl/i/upload/zmiany-klimatu-zjawiska/cyrkulacja-oceaniczna.jpg
10
Stop the bus! Siliggy knows all about the sun “Especially one pole at a time!”
Elaborate for fun Siliggy 🙂
00
Sparks with so many comments on this thread did not notice this for a while. I was checking unde my comments but this time text searched for “Siliggy”.
No i do not know all about the sun but do have some theories and can point you to a lot of good info. First up you seem to either doubt that the suns poles flip one at a time or have a different take on that.
Just incase you or anyone else doubts that.
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-24977823
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2003/22apr_currentsheet/
http://www.space.com/22264-sun-s-magnetic-field-will-soon-flip-stormy-space-weather-ahead-video.html
10
bobl
July 5, 2014 at 5:03 pm
“providing the models transfer function is something close to reality it will forecast pretty much equally well with any input data.”
But if the input on which the transfer function is trained is not correct, then the function will not be close to reality. The training period should best be the ENTIRE dataset. If the early part, e.g. of temperature, is not reliable, then one might exclude that, but certainly the training period must include data up to present [where it is best] and not [as we learn] stop in 1978.
011
I did not disagree with that, I disagreed that it would “not be valid” unless trained on the whole data set, which is what you said is it not?
40
If the data is of uniform quality, the function should be trained on all the data. If the early data is less good, one can argue that it should not be used, but certainly the newest data should be used, so the training period should not stop in 1978.
P.S. the effect of atomic bomb tests does not look credible. Where is the link to where Evans got that data?
113
But it is not invalid if it does. I am not disagreeing with you here, but invalid is a step too far, your language needs to be more precise, perhaps suboptimal is a good word. I concur on the atomic bomb, something else is at work there, something probably inside the black box. It appears transient so internal variability seems likely. I think more likely it is postwar industrialisation and resultant smog, a problem right up till the early 80s. But given its transient nature it could be just about anything.
30
Siliggy is it you giving me the thumbs down? I think it is 🙂
04
No not me!
Here is a thought for you Sparks. If a current flows through the plasma of space from other stars to our sun and on to more could the path be compared to a transmission line like a waveguide or coax? That is could standing waves develope from distubances independantly on either side of our interstellar connection? If you wonder where the hell this current could come from remember that Q=CV and C is proportional to the inverse of the distance between plates. So all it takes for a huge differential to produce this current is a nonlinear conductive path and a change of distance between two charged bodies.
00
Correction.I did give you a thumb down for the E=MC^2 comment.
11
Figure 2: Time series of 81-day-boxcar-smoothed TSI (top panel) and similarly smoothed sunspot areas (bottom panel) over 1978-2007. The black lines are the observations, and the red bands indicate the +/- one-sigma range about the mean constructed from 1000 realizations of our best-fit model. The fits are quite good through most of the time interval. The gradual, excess downtrend in observed TSI starting around 2003 may be an artefact associated with instrumental drift, or part of a true, long-timescale dimming trend in luminosity. This remains currently under investigation.
http://glory.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/tsi2.jpg
10
And modern measurements show that, indeed, the downward trend is an instrumental drift, as W. Schmutz tells us http://www.leif.org/research/No-TSI-Difference-Between-Minima.pdf
110
Is that correct?
Figure 3: Temporal variation of the total solar irradiance from 1874 to the present, as reconstructed by our physical model. The orange curve shows daily values for a single representative solution, and the thick red curve mean +/- one sigma for 1000 realization of the best fit model.
http://glory.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/tsi3.jpg
10
“And modern measurements show that, indeed, the downward trend is an instrumental drift”
The ACRIM data do not show an “instrumental drift.” They are based on direct measurements, not reconstructions or extrapolations.
http://www.acrim.com/RESULTS/Earth%20Observatory/earth_obs_ACRIM_Composite.pdf
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Kenneth Richard
July 5, 2014 at 5:34 pm
“What percentage of the scientific community agrees with you about the “ridiculously” wrong ACRIM and PMOD data?”
The people at the institution that is producing the PMOD composite tells us that PMOD suffers from degradation problems and that “Observed data do not support a measurable TSI trend between the minima in 1996 and 2008!” http://www.leif.org/research/No-TSI-Difference-Between-Minima.pdf
what more do we need?
Your ‘logic’ is like saying that smoking is healthy because so many people do it.
214
The ACRIM scientists certainly don’t agree that their data suffer from degradation problems. In fact, they present robust evidence that their data are better than the PMOD, relying on actual measurements rather than reconstructions for the ACRIM gap (thus reducing bias and the potential for tampering), and the ACRIM scientists have demonstrated their data provide strong validation for the continued correlation between TSI and temperatures between solar cycles 21-23.
So why do you opine/believe the ACRIM dataset to be “ridiculously” wrong?
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10509-013-1775-9
Our analysis provides a first order validation of the ACRIM TSI composite approach and its 0.037 %/decade upward trend during solar cycles 21–22. The implications of increasing TSI during the global warming of the last two decades of the 20th century are that solar forcing of climate change may be a significantly larger factor than represented in the CMIP5 general circulation climate models.
http://www.fel.duke.edu/~scafetta/pdf/2005GL023849.pdf
PMOD has been widely used in geophysical research. According to this composite, TSI has been almost stationary (0.009%/decade trend of the 21– 23 solar minima [Willson and Mordvinov, 2003]) and by adopting it, or the equivalent TSI proxy reconstruction by Lean et al. [1995], some researchers and the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2001; Hansen et al., 2002] deduced that the Sun has not contributed to the observed global surface warming of the past decades. Consequently, the global surface warming of DT1980 – 2002 = 0.40 ± 0.04K from 1980 to 2002 shown in Figure 2 could only be induced, directly or indirectly, by anthropogenic added green house gas (GHG) climate forcing. Contrariwise, ACRIM presents a significant upward trend (+0.047%/decade trend of the minima) during solar cycles 21– 23 (1980 –2002) [Willson and Mordvinov, 2003].
http://www.acrim.com/Reference%20Files/Scafetta%20%26%20West_Secular%20total%20solar%20irradiance%20trend%20..21-23%20(2003).pdf
Secular total solar irradiance trend during solar cycles 21–23
A series of satellite total solar irradiance (TSI) observations can be combined in a precise solar magnetic cycle length composite TSI database by determining the relationship between two non-overlapping components: ACRIM1 and ACRIM2. An ACRIM composite TSI time series using the Nimbus7/ERB results to relate ACRIM1 and ACRIM2 demonstrates a secular upward trend of 0.05 percent-per-decade between consecutive solar activity minima [during solar cycles 21-23]. The 0.05%/decade minimum-to-minimum trend appears to be significant. If so it has profound implications for both solar physics and climatology. For solar physics it means that TSI variability can be caused by unknown mechanisms other than the solar magnetic activity cycle. Much longer time scales for TSI variations are therefore a possibility, which has obvious implications for solar forcing of climate.
190
PMOD suffers from degradation problems and that “Observed data do not support a measurable TSI trend between the minima in 1996 and 2008!”
Considering that surface temperatures remained flat between 1996 and 2008 (literally—HadCRUT has temp anomalies at +0.392 in 1997 and +0.388 in 2008), wouldn’t having there be “no measurable TSI trend” between those two years serve to confirm, rather than undermine the connection between TSI trends (flat) and temperature trends (flat)?
And since temperatures rose from the (late) 1970s to the 1990s, we should also expect to see an increase in the PMOD version of TSI if we wish to agree that there is a correlation between temperatures and TSI. And, not surprisingly (to those of us who view the ACRIM data as a quality representation of TSI), we find that combining the PMOD and ACRIM data for the 1980s to 1990s period does indeed show a strong positive correlation between TSI and temperature…for both the PMOD and ACRIM data sets. This correlation is detailed here:
http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/pdf/2008GL036307.pdf
The ACRIM-gap (1989.5–1991.75) continuity dilemma for satellite TSI observations is resolved by bridging the satellite TSI monitoring gap between ACRIM1 and ACRIM2 results with TSI derived from Krivova et al.’s (2007) proxy model based on variations of the surface distribution of solar magnetic flux. ‘Mixed’ versions of ACRIM and PMOD TSI composites are constructed with their composites’ original values except for the ACRIM gap, where Krivova modeled TSI is used to connect ACRIM1 and ACRIM2 results. Both ‘mixed’ composites demonstrate a significant TSI increase of 0.033%/decade between the solar activity minima of 1986 and 1996, comparable to the 0.037 % found in the ACRIM composite. The finding supports the contention of Willson (1997) that the ERBS/ERBE results are flawed by uncorrected degradation during the ACRIM gap and refutes the Nimbus7/ERB ACRIM gap adjustment Fro¨hlich and Lean (1998) employed in constructing the PMOD.
130
Dr., would you please comment on figures 5!and 6 now that they have been modified by adding your data. I have developed the habit of deleting any mail from Jo’s site that contains “Leif Svalgaard”.
Best Regards…
20
Dr. Svalgaard, would you please comment on figures 5 and 6 now that they have been modified by adding your data. Does your data support Dr. Evans model.
Best Regards…
10
“I have developed the habit of deleting any mail from Jo’s site that contains “Leif Svalgaard”.”
So my comments would not matter.
But the Figures do not contain ‘my’ data, only Evans 11-yr smoothed version thereof.
On Figure 5 you can see the very large difference.
07
Regrets, I must have inadvertently hit publish before I had completed proof reading. Thank you for you reply.
10
bobl
July 5, 2014 at 5:41 pm
“For example, what frequency range is TSI measured over”
The T in TSI means ‘Total’. TSI is measured over ALL frequencies. The integral from zero to infinity.
28
Leif Svalgaard
July 5, 2014 at 5:50 pm · Reply
bobl
July 5, 2014 at 5:41 pm
“For example, what frequency range is TSI measured over”
It would surprise me greatly if waves with energies of over a few KeV to infinite eV are well measured. BTW for a more poetic rendering of “zero to infinity” we in the electrical field like “DC to daylight”. Of course “daylight” is not infinite. Unless compared to DC mathematically. In the real world there are no DC signals. In reality it is only DC “for engineering purposes”. And then we start looking for variations. Starting with the granularity of the electric charge.
We couldn’t design without the math. And the assumptions. Everything engineers do is wrong at some level. So we like to look at “how significantly wrong”.
In some domains the wrongness is at the parts in 1E16 level or better (frequency). In others a ball park (initial cost estimates) will do.
Knowing what can be ignored is very much part of the engineering art.
My tag line:
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
160
I like that, green thumb
40
Dr S,
It might be except it’s only measured between 200nm and 2500 nm, with some of the very latest detectors going to 4000 nm, the older satellites didn’t even measure that bandwidth. Certainly the spectral resolution of the older platforms is particularly lousy. Then of course there is the issue of the different selectivity of the different platforms and how to make them agree since they don’t even measure the same value for TSI let alone spectrum.
So it’s not really 0 to infinity is it?
90
Lief: “TSI right now is about 0.45 W/m2 higher than in 2003-2005.”
Then why does the SORCE/TIM trends of the last few years appear lower, or at least not higher, on these graphs?
http://spot.colorado.edu/~koppg/TSI/TIM_TSI_Reconstruction.jpg
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/guillermo_image2.png
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/sorce_tsi_reconstruction_feb2013-feb2014.png?w=640
70
I suspect Willis and Leif derive much of their personal esteem from blogging. When someone comes along and challenges their established self established area of expertise the threat is almost existential. The reaction is not surprising. Thing is, if the Evans Notch Filter Theory is correct (and as one engineer to another I’d love to see the IPeCaC brought undone by a self funded engineer!) then their future credibility will be judged on how they responded to the challenge to their assumptive world.
Of course the reaction from the Church of Global Warming will be best understood from an anthropological perspective. Fascinating stuff.
Go David!
130
If we use the tip jar, we can say we helped fund the “unified hypothesis of climate science”. As far as I am concerned, this blog is what the peer review process should look like.
91
Something a mere serf has trouble with is why,
when someone, Dr David Evans fer instance,who
puts forward a falsifiable theory, must be
attacked with personal abuse, when doing such,
putting forth a testable proposition, is the
basis of the scientific method of conjecture
and refutation, What’s ter gain?
beth the serf.
250
Who knows how many drops absorption at the surface of when the TSI will fall by 0.5 W / m ^ 2?
http://glory.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/tsi2.jpg
http://oi58.tinypic.com/wgoxuh.jpg
00
O/T…
Aussie federal politics of carbophobia becomes even sillier with this revelation.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-07-04/glenn-lazarus-behind-clive-palmer-climate-change-move/5570262
Now both the IPCC and ex rugby footballers have more influence over carbon pricing than climate skeptics.
The hilarious part is the way the ABC talks up this guy like he’s a science genius.
00
Strange, looking at TSI, not long ago people thought of it as a constant. Look far from constant ! Hope you are on the right track, …., maybe not. I don’t like it when it’s cold. So I hope there is warming coming that’s way better.
Seem like Svalgaard is kind of angry because you are on his play turf and his anger is because he didn’t see it by himself. Of course they see you as minor to them self and coming with a new Einstein theory that actually may work, well you got enemies. But that’s good, now we know who they really are ! and a little what drives them too ! Not so different from a lot of warmistas 🙂
50
You can see that the TSI exactly mimics the magnetic activity of the sun. You can see that the magnetic activity of the sun in 2006 suddenly dropped. Chart TSI until 2006 behaves similarly as in previous cycles, and suddenly drops. In 2006 there was a jump of cosmic radiation. Is this a coincidence?
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/cfa/solar-radiation-peaks-magnetic-field-b.gif
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/PF-latest.gif
http://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/webform/query.cgi?startday=01&startmonth=01&startyear=2003&starttime=00%3A00&endday=01&endmonth=01&endyear=2012&endtime=00%3A00&resolution=Automatic+choice&picture=on
20
Very well shows this the chart Ap.
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/Ap.gif
00
Let’s see what has happened in the stratosphere in 2006, the southern polar circle.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_ANOM_ALL_SH_2006.gif
00
If ignore this graph 2004 (flaw?) You can see it remarkable decrease in 2006.
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/solar-radiation/pmod-tsi-data-svalgaard-box.gif
00
Well, such a discussion of epic proportion and I am sure will continue. It must greatly exceed the original blogs. I am getting greatly confused jumping from each link in the discussion. It seems to boil down to:
1 the data is wrong ( but where do we find the correct data)
2 the data is correct and the prediction is valid
3 the data is correct but the prediction is invalid.
Must do some research into TSI measurement to decide. Meanwhile await the final instalments before passing judgement.
I think there is a new disease afoot akin to banging one’s head on a brick wall whereupon continually posting the same thing over and over, even after saying this is my final post, needs investigating and should require our sympathy.
20
I do not know why Leif is compelled to repetitively put his egomania on display, but perhaps his personality was trained on bad data.
And wrong is wrong.
61
Recent advances in reconstructions of solar activity can be described thus [I’ll number them for easy reference. Papers and analyses can be given for each point, but are better presented if and when a point is up for discussion]:
1) Variations of TSI are the result of variations of the Sun’s magnetic field.
2) The sunspot number is a very good measure of solar magnetic fields.
3) Variation of the UV flux is due to variations of the Sun’s magnetic field
4) The F10.7 microwave flux is a very good proxy for the UV flux and it at the same level at every solar minimum.
5) The variation of the diurnal variation of the geomagnetic field is caused by the UV and is a very good proxy for said UV since 1781
6) The solar magnetic field is dragged out into the heliosphere and can be measured directly by spacecraft or almost as accurately by its effect on the Earth’s ring current (Van Allen Belts) whose magnetic effect can be measured on the ground, since 1830s.
7) The magnetic effects caused by the solar wind can also be monitored at auroral latitudes, allowing determination of both the solar wind magnetic field and the solar wind speed. Different research groups agree on these determinations.
8) Cosmic Rays modulation depends [inversely] largely on the heliospheric magnetic field.
9) These various determinations [by several researchers] of the solar magnetic field agree, so we know with good accuracy the solar magnetic field back to at least the 1830s, and hence also TSI.
10) The sunspot number has recently been revised and the result is that solar activity in each of the centuries 18 to 20 is very similar: a minimum about every 100 years near the turn of the centuries.
11) There is therefore no Modern Grand Maximum.
12) A result of all of the above is that solar activity reaches almost the same low level at every solar minimum.
13) Early reconstructions of TSI assumed that the solar cycle variation was riding on a varying background level which itself varied as a function of solar activity
14) This background was assumed to be caused by a solar-cycle dependent emergence of small magnetic [so-called] ephemeral regions. Modern measurements show that this assumption is false and that the emergence rate of ephemeral regions is constant in time and thus does not vary with solar activity.
15) Thus, reconstructions that show varying background level [e.g. Lean, Krivova, Wang, and others] are not correct, and conclusions based on them are similarly suspect.
16) All our determinations show that solar activity recently are very much the same as a century ago.
17) This means that the decrease of solar activity from the 1870s to the 1910s is very much similar to the decrease from 1980 to now. In particular, TSI [and any force ‘x’] now is very likely the same as it was 100 years ago
18) If our climate depends strongly on solar activity [be it TSI, magnetic field, UV, cosmic rays, what-have-you] then our climate the last 30-40 years would be very similar to that a century before [even allowing lags of several solar cycles], and it is not.
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Leif said:
Quite a nice summary and a lead into why long-term climate is always the sum of all forcings and related feedbacks, of which solar activity is a minor player– more akin to the natural variability we see in things like ENSO and the PDO. The transition from the MWP to the LIA is a great test case for the “sum of all forcings and related feedbacks” notion. The bigger driver to the LIA seems to the stratospheric aerosols, which increased dramatically in the period of 1225-1275, with 50 years of very active volcanic activity punctuated by the mega-volcano of 1257. This period was the “doorway to the LIA”. The fact that solar output was declining as well from an active period of the MWP (which was also a low volcanic activity period) was an added nudge through this door.
011
Gates, can you dismiss the Dalton the same way ?
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Why would anyone want to “dismiss” the Dalton? Certainly there was a period of lower TSI during this time frame, but there was also significant volcanic activity at the time:
http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-Reconstruction-2014.png
and then see page 13 of this article: http://www.clim-past.net/10/359/2014/cp-10-359-2014.pdf
The Dalton is an interesting period. Lower TSI and higher volcanic aerosols– of the two, from a raw w/m^2 forcing perspective, aerosol effects would be higher. Sort of the last stand of the LIA.
08
By your own standard, all the data reported are wrong. For item 18, are you sure all the right things have been measured and correctly reported? After all, the integral from zero to infinity is rather larger than the energy spectra you report as having been measured. You *believe* the “right stuff” has been but has it really? More faith based religion.
How about purple unicorns with golden horns and pink hooves on Venus? Perhaps if you *believe* real hard and click your heels three times, they will appear and carry away all us mere mortals so we can no longer poke fun at your confabulations.
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Why, Leif, do you prefer reconstructions and extrapolations and proxies—which, as you may acknowledge, can be modified in accordance with the biases of the ones doing the modifying—to the actual, raw measurements of the non-degraded ACRIM TSI data set? Why aren’t actual measurements of TSI better than reconstructions of TSI—or “guesses” as you yourself call reconstructions?
If we had actual satellite data available from the year 1,000 AD that showed the MWP to be 1.3 C warmer than present, would you still prefer, say, Michael Mann’s reconstructed tree ring data that showed the MWP was -0.8 C colder than present?
And then please explain how it is that you claim that “TSI right now is about 0.45 W/m2 higher than in 2003-2005” according to the SORCE/TIM data, but yet all of these SORCE/TIM graphs show that you are wrong…the trend is down in the last 10 years?
http://spot.colorado.edu/~koppg/TSI/TIM_TSI_Reconstruction.jpg
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/guillermo_image2.png
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/sorce_tsi_reconstruction_feb2013-feb2014.png?w=640
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“And then please explain how it is that you claim that “TSI right now is about 0.45 W/m2 higher than in 2003-2005” according to the SORCE/TIM data”
Here is the SORCE/TIM data. See for yourself: http://www.leif.org/research/Monckton-Flaw-3.png
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Then why does this conflict with other SORCE/TIM data that shows TSI declining in the last 10 years? And if there is such a stark difference between one set of SORCE/TIM data and another set of SORCE/TIM data, how does this help to confirm the overall reliability of the SORCE/TIM data?
It looks like it just comes down to a matter of preference for you. You prefer one graph reconstruction (and a reconstruction is a “guess” according to your own wording) to another…and if someone disagrees with your reconstruction/guess preference, you call him incompetent and insinuate he’s driven by an agenda. Hmmm.
By the way, please explain in detail what is wrong with the SORCE/TIM data that shows a decrease in TSI since the early 2000s.
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“Then why does this conflict with other SORCE/TIM data”
There is only ONE SORCE/TIM dataset, namely that put out by LASP that operates the spacecraft. You can find it here http://lasp.colorado.edu/data/sorce/tsi_data/daily/sorce_tsi_L3_c24h_latest.txt
This is simply a plot of that [one and only] dataset:
http://www.leif.org/research/Monckton-Flaw-3.png
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Well, yes, now there is only one SORCE/TIM dataset. But there were past versions/graphs of the SORCE/TIM dataset that contradicted the latest manifestation (which you identify as showing a substantial increase in TSI since 2003).
I was therefore obviously referring to the fact that the SORCE/TIM dataset used to show a decline in TSI since the early 2000s…
http://www.sott.net/article/182868-Examining-SORCE-data-shows-the-Sun-continues-its-slide-toward-somnolence
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“I was therefore obviously referring to the fact that the SORCE/TIM dataset used to show a decline in TSI since the early 2000s”
The SORCE/TIM data goes from 2003 to the present. From 2003 down to 2008 TSI decreased [as it should because the sunspot number decreased] and since then until now, TSI has increased again [as it should because the sunspot number has increased] to be now 0.45 W/m2 higher than in the 2003-2005 timeframe.
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The SORCE/TIM data goes from 2003 to the present. From 2003 down to 2008 TSI decreased [as it should because the sunspot number decreased] and since then until now, TSI has increased again [as it should because the sunspot number has increased] to be now 0.45 W/m2 higher than in the 2003-2005 timeframe.
Then what is the reason for the BEFORE and AFTER screen shots of the SORCE/TIM that are so drastically different—that appeared “overnight” in February, 2014? If the SORCE/TIM data has been on the upswing since 2008, then why did it still show a decline in TSI until February, 2014, when the data dramatically changed (almost magically)?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3175172/posts
The steep fall shown in the graphs for the predictions in part VIII is from 11 year smoothing of the PMOD and ACRIM data. And it’s still there in the updated data (see the update in post VIII). But a funny thing happened to the SORCE/TIM dataset. Anthony Watts covered the strange rearrangement of TSI reported on Feb 6 2014. The SORCE / TIM data changed rather a lot overnight. Previously there were four high peaks in the late 20th Century, but now there was only one, and it was the earliest.
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Leif, why are the spikes downwards much greater than the spikes upwards in you Monckton-Flaw-3 graph ?
Is the sun capable of dropping down to 1357 and staying there ?
10
Because of rare very large sunspots. Here are the ones that were the cause of the huge drop: http://hmi.stanford.edu/Press/18Aug2011/MDI_fd.jpg
“Is the sun capable of dropping down to 1357 and staying there ?”
No, clearly not, unless you have such big spots all the time, which we don’t.
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Here is a data-only plot that supports Leif: http://spot.colorado.edu/~koppg/TSI/TSI_Composite.jpg
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It was very politically incorrect until The Adjustment Bureau got their erasers onto it.
They simply revised the sunspot number?? 🙁 Welcome to the fishbowl.
Soon there will be officially no natural causes of anything.
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Number 18 seems somewhat too firm a conclusion to me, it must be assuming “everything else being unchanged”, which is unlikely to be the case,
e.g. sea ice extent.
00
Sea ice is a response to an external forcing, or is a feedback to an external forcing, and not an external forcing in itself. In this regard, it is much like ENSO. See:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2011GL050168/abstract
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It is not true that the number of spots corresponds to the magnetic activity of the sun. This is seen in the Ap since 2006.
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/Ap.gif
http://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en
Region Number of
sunspots Class
Magn. Class
Spot
2100 9 β CRO
2102 13 β DAI
2104 21 β – γ DKC
2106 12 β – γ DAO
2107 9 β – γ EHO
2108 16 β – γ DAI
2109 20 β – γ EKC
2110 5 β BXO
2111 4 β CAO
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/rt_plots/Xray.gif
00
X factor for me are the oceans, which in the previous 6 short cycles accumulated solar energy. The heat capacity of the oceans is enormous.
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He has copied and pasted this nonsense from the other thread *since* I have corrected him:
“17) This means that the decrease of solar activity from the 1870s to the 1910s is very much similar to the decrease from 1980 to now.”
Solar cycles 12 to 14 were in the Gleisberg Minimum and were far smaller than solar cycles 21 and 22.
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David Evans
July 5, 2014 at 9:54 pm
“I notice PMOD revised their data sometime in the last few months with what looks like a steadily increasing upward revision from about 1998, as if correcting said downward degradation”
PMOD is a reconstruction before 1996 [as the SOHO spacecraft on which the VIRGO sensor sits started operation that year], measurements thereafter. I had pointed out to Claus Froehlich long ago that there were some undetected systematic errors http://www.leif.org/research/PMOD%20TSI-SOHO%20keyhole%20effect-degradation%20over%20time.pdf
W. Schmutz on the VIRGO/PMOD team reports http://www.leif.org/research/No-TSI-Difference-Between-Minima.pdf that there is no observable evidence for a decrease between minima. The reason for the VIRGO degradation problem turns out to be a false assumption: the spacecraft carries two identical sensors; one is exposed to the Sun all the time [so has been in sunlight 18 years], while the other one has a shutter which is only opened for a short time every week [so has only been exposed a few days in total]. The assumption was that the first sensor would degrade, but that the second one would not, and that therefore the difference between their measurements would be a measure of the degradation. Schmutz shows that this assumption is false and that both sensors have degraded. Using data from the PREMOS experiment he concludes that there is 0.2 W/m2 of uncorrected degradation, thus eliminating the difference between the two minima. There should be a 0.05 W/m2 decrease simply because the sunspot number was 5 lower in 2008 than in 1996 and a change of 1 sunspot number equates to 0.01 W/m2 in TSI, but this change is lost in the noise.
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Leif:
Why would you continue to refer to the reconstructed/modified/proxy-based PMOD or SORCE/TIM for TSI data when we have actual, observable, measured data available from the ACRIM data set that has shown a high degree of precision?
http://www.acrim.com/Reference%20Files/Scafetta%20%26%20West_Secular%20total%20solar%20irradiance%20trend%20..21-23%20(2003).pdf
Monitoring TSI with sufficient precision and persistence for a climate database became possible when a new generation of electrically self-calibrating cavity sensors and opportunities for extended space flight experiments became available in the late 1970’s. The TSI record begun by the Nimbus7 Earth Radiation Budget experiment (NIMBUS7/ERB) in late 1978 was continued by the first Active Cavity Radiometer Irradiance Monitor (ACRIM1) during 1980 to 1989, the first experiment designed specifically for high precision TSI monitoring. These were followed by the Earth Radiation Budget Satellite (ERBS) in 1984 and the UARS/ ACRIM2 experiment in 1991. The SOHO/VIRGO and ACRIMSAT/ACRIM3 missions began in 1995 and 2000, respectively, and are the only currently operational TSI monitors.
The uninterrupted series of TSI observations since 1978 can provide a valuable multi-decadal record for climate change and solar physics if the measurement scales of the contributing experiments are related precisely. Key to constructing a composite TSI database is determining the relationship between measurements of two critical non-overlapping experiments: the ACRIM1 on the Solar Maximum Mission (1980 – 1989) and the ACRIM2 on the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (1991 – 2001). Two TSI experiments, the NIMBUS7/ERB and the ERBS, overlap ACRIM1 and ACRIM2 including the two-year ACRIM gap. NIMBUS7/ERB and ERBS comparisons can therefore be used to link the ACRIM1 and ACRIM2 results at the level of mutual instrument precision and traceability.
The set of satellite TSI monitoring results shown in Figure 1 is a plot of the originally published results by the experiments’ science teams. The spread of results in absolute units reflects the bounds of self-calibration uncertainty, which have varied from about ±0.3 to 0.1 percent between 1978 and the present. Results are reported on the experiments’ ‘native scales’, which rely on their independent sensor metrology to represent the absolute radiation scale in the international system of units. The most recent results are considered the most accurate due to continuing improvements in sensor calibrations.
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“Why would you continue to refer to the reconstructed/modified/proxy-based PMOD or SORCE/TIM for TSI data when we have actual, observable, measured data available from the ACRIM data set that has shown a high degree of precision?”
Because we do not have that at all. We have an ACRIM dataset which is a composite of three sets of ACRIM data with a gap in the middle http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-Raw-Data.png and the composite depends on how you bridge that gap. Greg Kopp discusses some of the problems with the datasets [especially ACRIM] http://www.leif.org/EOS/CreatingComposite_Greg.pdf
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Greg Kopp is the one who has shown in the past that there has been a decline in TSI since the early 2000s. So he’s changed his mind now. Changing one’s mind, and consequently, the reconstructions, certainly doesn’t boost one’s confidence when it comes to determining which TSI data set is less wrong than another.
And the TIM baseline is quite a bit different than the PMOD and ACRIM. What’s the justification? Or is this just a preference too?
http://www.sott.net/article/182868-Examining-SORCE-data-shows-the-Sun-continues-its-slide-toward-somnolence
“The TIM measures TSI values 4.7 W/m2 lower than the VIRGO and 5.1 W/m2 lower than ACRIM III.”
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“Greg Kopp is the one who has shown in the past that there has been a decline in TSI since the early 2000s. So he’s changed his mind now.”
Five years ago, TSI had inceed come down from 2003 to solar minimum, but since then TSI has gone up to be now almost 0.5 W/m2 higher than in 2003-2005, so Greg has not changed his mind, the data has simply gone up.
“And the TIM baseline is quite a bit different than the PMOD and ACRIM. What’s the justification? Or is this just a preference too?”
Do you even read my replies? How many times do I need to explain things?
The baseline difference is due to a design flaw of the VIRGO [PMOD] and ACRIM sensors, see e.g. http://www.leif.org/EOS/swsc130036-Kopp-TSI.pdf and