BPSDB

I recently made an earlier attempt at exploring probability in relation to climate.

Michael Tobis (citing Andy Revkin) points to a very nice and more succinct analogy by Professor Steven Sherwood of the University of New South Wales:

The “loading the dice” analogy is becoming popular but it misses something very important: climate change also allows unprecedented (in human history) things to happen. It is more like painting an extra spot on each face of one of the dice, so that it goes from 2 to 7 instead of 1 to 6. This increases the odds of rolling 11 or 12, but also makes it possible to roll 13.
What happens then?
Since we have never had to cope with 13’s, this could prove far worse than simply loading the dice toward more 11’s and 12’s. I’m not sure whether or not what is happening in Russia or Pakistan is a “13″ yet, but 13’s will eventually arrive (and so will 14’s, if carbon emissions continue to rise).

Michael thinks that we have just seen our first thirteen (or possibly our second if you count Australia’s experience in 2009).
He goes on to say

I can define a fourteen easily. We will have rolled a fourteen when there is no controversy at all about whether the given event was in the range of unforced natural variability.

I’m reluctant to argue with someone like Michael – but I guess it depends on how you define “controversy”.

NOAA have published a draft report on The Russian Heat Wave of 2010 (copied and pasted in its entirety by Watts. I do hope he asked for permission to do so).

NOAA point out that Moscow’s average July temperature was 4 standard deviations above the long-term climatology. Since you would expect 99.994% of data values in a normal distribution to fall within 4σ of the mean, calling this a 13 (unprecendented) seems reasonable. And the impact is huge. As Michael points out,

If we consider the Russia and Pakistan catastrophes as part of the same event, we have easily thirty million people directly affected and loss of life in the tens of thousands.

That is without taking crop losses in both countries into account, which is also likely to have a substantial impact.

But can we attribute it to climate change?

NOAA think not:

Despite this strong evidence for a warming planet, greenhouse gas forcing fails to explain the 2010 heat wave over western Russia. The natural process of atmospheric blocking, and the climate impacts induced by such blocking, are the principal cause for this heat wave. It is not known whether, or to what exent, greenhouse gas emissions may affect the frequency or intensity of blocking during summer. It is important to note that observations reveal no trend in a daily frequency of July blocking over the period since 1948, nor is there an appreciable trend in the absolute values of upper tropospheric summertime heights over western Russia for the period since 1900.

So that’s alright then, isn’t it?

NOAA think not:

The 2007 IPCC report highlights surface temperature projections for the period 2090-2099 under a business-as-ususal scenario that reveals +5°C to +7°C warming warming of annually average temperatures over much of Eurasia under an aggressive A2 scenario.

As we learn from our 2010 experience what a sustained heat wave of +5°C to+10°C implies for human health, water resources, and agricultural productivity, a more meaningful appreciation for the potential consequences of the projected climate changes will emerge. It is clear that the random occurrence of a summertime block in the presence of the projected changes in future surface temperature would produce heat waves materially more severe than the 2010 event.

I’d rather not wait for Michael’s 14 to be thrown – but even if the Mediterranean Sea boiled dry I’m sure we would still have inane comments like these at WUWT:

• It’s the sun
• It’s the Moon
• They’re making it all up
• But it’s freezing in …
• But it was warmer in …

etc. etc. etc.

Further reading: Michael Tobis hsd posted a follow-up – worth reading for the comments and the excellent cartoon by Marc Roberts.

IMAGE CREDITS:

[[1] – Wikimedia

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BPSDB

On the left – the official UK government coat of arms.

On the right – the logo used by Christopher Monckton on his presentations.

By far the best comment that I’ve seen on the two images was one by Vagueofgodalming over at Deltoid:

Nice to see the two logos side by side: one can see that in Monckton’s version the chains are unhinged and there is empty space beneath the crown.

You are probably already aware of this, but since threatening John Abraham Christopher Monckton has also attacked Scott Mandia.

Mandia has published Monckton’s letter here.

I guess that Monckton must like the limelight, because he’s certainly attracting it.

Tamino does (yet another) demolition job on Monckton’s statistical skills at Mo’ Better Monckey Business

Moth Incarnate posts a couple of good cartoons here and (with some insight that I had overlooked) here.

Real Climate host a guest article by Barry Bickmore of Brigham Young University entitled “Monckton makes it up”.

Most recently, The Guardian points out that the House of Lords are getting stroppy with him for his continued claims to be a member. They write:

Last month Michael Pownall, clerk of the parliaments, wrote to Lord Monckton, a hereditary peer, stressing that he should not refer to himself as a member of the House of Lords, nor should he use any emblem representing the portcullis.
In a letter seen by the Guardian, Monckton replied this week to Pownall stating that he considered the House of Lords Act 1999, which “purported” to exclude all but 92 of the 650 hereditary peers from the Lords, to be “defective”.

I think that the House had probably hoped that he would just go away, but got fed up with people writing to them asking for clarification (see this recent and entertaining example from Friends of Gin and Tonic).

Presumably we can now look forward to him threatening to sue the UK government – or possibly even Her Majesty.

Those that have been watching him for a while know that he never was a science advisor to Margaret Thatcher, indeed it is usually stated that he never made such a claim. Or so I thought.

A guest post at WUWT by Monckton makes interesting reading (if you can’t bring yourself to visit WUWT the story is also covered by The Guardian).
He writes:

First, what on Earth was a layman with a degree in classical languages and architecture doing giving advice on science to the British Prime Minister, who was herself a scientist and a Fellow of the Royal Society?
Truth is, British government is small (though still a lot bigger and more expensive than it need be). The Prime Minister’s policy unit had just six members, and, as a mathematician who was about to make a goodish fortune turning an obscure and hitherto-unnoticed wrinkle in the principles of probabilistic combinatorics into a pair of world best-selling puzzles, I was the only one who knew any science.
So, faute de mieux, it was I who – on the Prime Minister’s behalf – kept a weather eye on the official science advisors to the Government, from the Chief Scientific Advisor downward.

Well, we know he can count to three since he does so in Latin ad nauseam – but does this make him a mathematician?
He doesn’t appear to have formally studied maths beyond school level, but I guess he could be self-taught.
And knowing something about maths doesn’t automatically make you a scientist, but it generally helps.

But wait – there’s more!

On my first day in the job, I tottered into Downing Street dragging with me one of the world’s first portable computers, the 18-lb Osborne 1, with a 5” screen, floppy disks that were still truly floppy, and a Z80 8-bit chip which I had learned to program in machine language as well as BASIC.
This was the first computer they had ever seen in Downing Street. The head of security, a bluff military veteran, was deeply suspicious. “What do you want a computer for?” he asked. “Computing,” I replied.

You have to be quite old to remember the Osbourne 1. It had a 4MHz cpu, 64K of memory, and two 360K drives.

Monckton apparently used this box for all sorts of things, including:

• Predicting election results
• calculating the optimum hull configuration for warships
• “the first elementary radiative-transfer calculations”

That last one is really spectacular on such a low specification machine. Wow.

Oh, and we can add “Electronic engineer” to his cv as well:

The only expenses I ever claimed for in four years at 10 Downing Street were £172 for soldering dry joints on that overworked computer

(though £43 per year on solder for a single PC (in the 1980′s) suggests a spectacularly dodgy machine, or extremely incompetent soldering, or both).

But we’re not fininshed yet.

From his recent appointment to the UKIP joint Deputy Leader press release we learn that his history includes

2008-present: RESURREXI Pharmaceutical: Director responsible for invention and development of a broad-spectrum cure for infectious diseases. Patents have now been filed. Patients have been cured of various infectious diseases, including Graves’ Disease, multiple sclerosis, influenza, and herpes simplex VI. Our first HIV patient had his viral titre reduced by 38% in five days, with no side-effects. Tests continue.

Surprisingly, I can’t find any information on “RESURREXI Pharmaceutical” as a company. If anyone knows anything about it please let me know.

In summary, Monckton is a real polymath.

So far, we have

• Classicist/linguist
• Journalist
• Political analyst/advisor
• Politician
• Mathematician
• Scientist
• Marine Engineer
• Computer programmer
• Electronic Engineer
• Saviour of the Human Race

The last point does give me an excuse to link to The Scaffold on youtube.

As a postscript, I think the best single collection of Monckton’s follies is at Barry Bickmore’s excellent blog post Lord Monckton’s Rap Sheet.

IMAGE CREDITS:

[[1] – The Guardian

[2] – thatsbraw.co.uk

Comment Policy

Comments that are not relevant to the post that they appear under or the evolving discussion will simply be deleted, as will links to Denier spam known to be scientific gibberish

• The “Mostly” Open Thread”
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• The “Challenging the Core Science” Comment Thread is for comments that purport to challenge the core science of anthropogenic climate change.

BPSDB

I’ve been thinking about doing something like this for a while now.

Every now and them we get comments that are completely off topic, and barely understandable. I’ve decided that rather than just deleting them I’ll save them for posterity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BPSDB

 

The American Chemistry Society and the UK’s Royal Society of Chemistry have joined forces in a transatlantic venture to “help the general public better understand how the science of chemistry can help solve global challenges”.

The first step has just been launched – a pair of mirrored websites with contributions from both organisations. However this is just the beginning:

The Web sites are the first of several planned joint efforts by ACS and RSC to increase public understanding of the challenges facing Earth as well as the chemistry underlying these issues and their possible solutions. The societies also hope to inspire a new generation of scientists to explore solutions to these challenges, and promote the international cooperation that both organizations believe is necessary to sustain our environment and resources for future generations.

Continue Reading »

BPSDB

“It’s beginning to look like a pattern…”

I’m sure that you’re all aware of the recent outcomes of the various “gates” in the recent past, but if you have missed them you can read Richard Black’s take on them here and here.

Of course there are anguished howls of “Whitewash!” reverberating around the blogosphere, but the mainstream media has largely lost interest. Maybe now we can get back to something approaching normality.

Maybe….

Continue Reading »

BPSDB

Christopher Monckton has recently been debunked (again) by John Abraham, Professor of Engineering at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota.

The university is a is a Catholic, diocesan university based in the Twin Cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis. Abraham’s disecection of Monckton’s talk has predictably gone viral, so you’re probably already aware of it – but if you missed it you can find his talk here. Well worth a listen.

Many blogs have already picked up on this. Mockton replies here, and Abraham in turn replies in a guest post at Skeptical Science (which has a further response from Monckton).

Is Monckton getting increasingly strident with time, or am I just imagining it?

Continue Reading »

BPSDB


Guest post by Marion Delgado.
Marion also penned the following brief autobiography:

I am a former talk show host, journalist and high school teacher from central Alaska, and for the past dozen years I’ve been a webmaster in Oregon for both for-profit and non-profit organizations. My background is in math, physics and linguistics. I did some blogging but that blog (a political sci-fi blog) is pretty much in disrepair.

There really is no web presence for me, right now, but a friend and I have reserved greenteaparties.net for future use. The paper I work at has cut its staff in half so everyone there, me included, is a one-armed paper-hanger nowadays, and I’m doing some solar and statistical course-work on the side.

BPSDB
Guest post by Milan Ilnyckyj:

As well as being a contributor here, Milan is a blogger and the editor of BuryCoal.com. He is a graduate of the University of British Columbia and Oxford, and has published academic work on climate change, fisheries, nuclear power, and other environmental topics.
 
 

Climate change deniers have been extremely effective in using the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia and the errors discovered in the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report (IPCC) to confuse the public discussion of climate change and delay mitigation action internationally and in the United States. They know that they don’t need to win the debate. Simply keeping it running by maintaining the semblance of ambiguity is sufficient to stave off the legislative action they want to avoid, and which is necessary for stabilizing the climate.

That said, the signs of climate change around the world are undeniable. The Arctic sea ice is vanishing, species are migrating northward and uphill, the ocean is becoming more acidic, and so on. In a report commissioned by the Aspen ski resort, it was explained that, in a worst case scenario, the climate of Aspen in 2100 would resemble that of Amarillo, Texas. Well before that, change will have become so obvious and undeniable that nobody disputing it will be taken seriously.

Continue Reading »

I’m bogged down in trying to finish a Physics assignment. If any of the regulars feel like helping to keep this blog alive while Mike is absent, then say so in the comments. I’m looking for guest posts.

If you are interested in helping out then just say so below (just “Yes” will do if you are a regular commenter), and I’ll be in touch via your email address.

S2

A new storm is brewing – Monbiot vs Delingpole.

I think I have worked out where commentator James Delingpole is coming from. He pretends to be a climate change denier and enemy of environmentalists. In reality he’s a mole, paid by Greenpeace to inflict as much damage on the anti-green cause as possible. And he’s doing a marvellous job.

So wrote George Monbiot on the 27th January.

Continue Reading »

(Posted by S2)BPSDB
Clippo recently pointed us to Nexus 6, which led to a bit of a discussion about “the worst climate paper ever”.

I pointed out David Archibald’s nonsense (later updated here), but I maintained that the worst I had read (in my opinion) was by Alexander & Bailey.

But I have now changed my mind – there’s a new (old) kid on the block.

Oliver K Manuel, (Emeritus) Professor of Chemistry at the University of Missouri-Rolla, believes that the Sun (and the rest of the solar system) are comprised of the remnants of a supernova that exploded about 5 billion years ago. As a result of this, the Sun is mainly made of Iron – it just has a thin skin of Helium and Hydrogen at the surface.

This pretty much flies in the face of every astronomical paper on the Sun in the last Century or two.

What does this have to do with climate change?

Manuel reckons that the heavy, iron-rich core of the sun is “pulled about” by the gravitational effects of the planets, which causes changes to solar output and therefore drives climate change. This only works, though, because the sun is made of iron – if it really was a ball of Hydrogen and Helium then the climate would not be changing.

I can’t remember the last time I read anything this absurd.

Icing on the cake – he actually cites Alexander & Bailey.

Even better – Plimer cites Manuel.

Manuel’s paper is here.

Bonus points to the first person who can say what Manuel, Archibald, Landscheidt, Alexander & Bailey have in common (other than the Sun).

IMAGE CREDITS:

Image from Caltech

Comment Policy

Comments that are not relevant to the post that they appear under or the evolving discussion will simply be deleted, as will links to Denier spam known to be scientific gibberish

• The “Mostly” Open Thread”
  is for general climate discussion that is not relevant to a particular post. Spam and abuse rules still apply;
• The “Challenging the Core Science” Comment Thread is for comments that purport to challenge the core science of anthropogenic climate change.