CO2: Volcanoes or Man? - It's your choice, not theirs

Blog Science offers the public empowerment. No longer must we suffer years of "education" and be forced to bow down before peer appointed so-called "experts" as they cast down facts upon our heads.

No, those are the old ways. Thanks to the Internet and Blog Science you can now become a science expert in a day and start generating your own science from scratch. You have the potential to be a world famous blog scientist, we all do. You might choose to become a blog chemist, a blog psychic or perhaps a blog geologist. All you need is a blog and a time to write down whatever your brain is thinking on the subject.

And if you don't want to become an expert, Blog Science allows you to become a Blog Science commenter. You can even put this as BSc on your CV. Blog Science commenter is an important role that allows you cheer from the sidelines while boosting the impact rating of the Blog.

Furthermore as a commenter, Blog Science offers you a wide catalog of ideas about the world and lets you choose which one you want to believe. That means you can choose whatever ideas fit in best with your political or religious beliefs. If you want we can also provide you with justifications for your choices if you are later challenged by practitioners of the old ways.

For example I really want to believe human CO2 emissions are too small to matter, and I will find a way to justify that belief.

A warmist blog, tauntingly calling itself "Open Mind", has just attacked Dr Ian Plimer, the 2nd most famous climate scientist in all of Australia*. Dr Ian Plimer's crime? He has chosen to believe volcanoes emit more CO2 than man, as is his right. He has also given generously this gift to the public.

The warmists hate this kind of thing. They want everyone to follow the old ways. They want "geological societies" and "textbooks" to fix so-called "facts" in stone which must not be disobeyed by mere laypeople. They hate it when Blog Scientists offer their ideas in the press or on tour.

In a comment over at Open Mind, William Connolley, the stoat in a boat, thinks he has found a great argument against Plimer:
"That volcanoes aren’t a major source can fairly trivially be shown by just looking at the CO2 record. If Pinatubo was a major source, there would be a sharp jump up when it erupted. But there isn’t."

The words "can fairly trivially be shown" are a red flag. In Blog Science nothing is known with any degree of certainty because everything can be challenged.

For example I would say the reason there is no sharp spike in CO2 when Pinatubo erupted is because scientists have been measuring CO2 on the wrong volcano. They have been measuring CO2 levels on Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii. This argument may or may not make sense, but it's confusing enough that it doesn't matter. In Blog Science justifying one's beliefs is as easy as making it sound like you have.

Furthermore as has been pointed out craploads of times, scientists shouldn't be measuring CO2 inside the craters of volcanoes full stop! Yet still those so-called "scientist" elites march up the volcano each day in their lab coats with their equipment under their arms and and dip their co2ometers into the crater. With each passing year they dip the co2ometers a little deeper down so each year it looks like the CO2 level is rising!

Of course what I have just said there may not be right - it probably isn't because it's just a story I made up - but it will sound like you know what you are talking about if you can go into details such as what Keeling ate for breakfast each morning. The use of imaginative stories to smear so-called "scientists" is encouraged in Blog Science. It adds entertainment as well as smear.

What's interesting about Blog Science is the freedom it gives you. The old ways demanded adherence to a thing called "consistency". Blog Science does not unnecessarily restrict you in such a way.

For example, it might tomorrow become expedient for me to accept rising CO2 is due to man. I might want, for example, to cite the merits of increasing levels of plant food to ward off the coming ice age. Or perhaps I just want to accuse warmists of using a strawman ("Of course I accept man is causing CO2 levels to rise. No-one denies that! What a strawman! The cause of CO2 rise is not the issue. What skeptics are questioning is whether CO2 rise has a warming effect!"). This doesn't mean I have to stop believing volcanoes emit more CO2 than man.

And that's the memo.

*High Admiral Lord Monckton, Child of the Mother of all Parliaments and Guardian of the Pink Portcullis, is the 1st most famous Climate Scientist in Australia of course.

Shock News: Dr Anthony Watts Turns Alarmist. Describes Human Interference in Climate as "Batshit Crazy", "a Powder-Keg" of "Unintended Consequences"

Professor Anthony Watts has betrayed the denialist cause this week by raising undue alarmist fears concerning man-made climate change. Talking on the subject of human modification of the climate on his blog, Professor Watt's announced:

"it’s batshit crazy and a powder-keg for priming a global explosion of the law of unintended consequences."
(link)

Please someone tell Professor Watts to calm down! We all know the burden of proof is on scientists to prove harm. The only evidence presented that human alteration of the radiative properties of the climate will cause any problems is climate models (aka computer games) and speculation. I am sure Professor Watts would be the first to recognize that these aren't sufficient grounds to argue that we must take action to prevent such human interference.

Professor Watts use of the word "powder-keg" is deeply alarmist and implies that the atmosphere may explode. This is ridiculous, I do not appreciate his chicken-littlism on this subject by appealing to "unintended consequences" either. If unintended consequences were cause to avert an action we wouldn't get out of bed in the morning!

Professor Watt's seems like a strong man. He can probably lift weights and I bet he always uses his real name online. So why is he seemingly so scared by a little atmospheric fiddling by man? Watts up with that?

It may be that he simply slipped up, and in his zeal to attack an IPCC proposal he forgot the number #1 rule of climate denial which is to maintain denial of the risks of human influence on climate at all times. If that's the case I wonder if he's fit to be running the world's #1 blog. He must be approaching retirement age anyway. Maybe it's time for my blog to take over the reigns. I can't remember ever accidentally admitting there was a risk from human influence on climate.

I have to stop typing now, but hopefully Judith Curry can pick the "should Dr Watts retire" ball up and string it along for a few more weeks.

Environmentalists Blamed for AZ Wildfires

A raging wildfire that could become the largest in Arizona history is rekindling the blame game surrounding ponderosa pine forests that have become dangerously overgrown after a century of fire suppression.

Some critics put the responsibility on environmentalists for lawsuits that have cut back on logging.

Others blame overzealous firefighters for altering the natural cycle of lightning-sparked fires that once cleared the forest floor.

Either way, forests across the West that once had 50 trees per acre (half-hectare) now have hundreds, sometimes thousands, and much of the landscape is choked with tinder-dry brush.

The density of the growth has fueled immense conflagrations in recent years like the 525-square-mile blaze now burning in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest northeast of Phoenix.

"I think what is happening proves the debate," said state Sen. Sylvia Allen, a Republican from rural Snowflake.

In the past, a 30-square-mile fire was considered huge. "And it used to be the loggers got right on it. Never in the past have you had these huge fires."

Today, it's not uncommon for fires to exceed 150 square miles.

http://nation.foxnews.com/arizona-wildfire/2011/06/10/environmentalists-blamed-az-wildfires

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This story is nonsense of course. You can't attribute a single wildfire to man.

Wildfires have occurred throughout history in natural cycles before man existed.

It is arrogant to claim man can cause wildfires when nature is so much bigger than man.

I personally blame the wildfires on the increase in CO2 plant food which has made these trees grow too big and dry.

Staggering Drop In Global Temperature

WOW that's the biggest drop in global temperature EVER

Note: Pay attention to the green line in the graph, NOT the red line. The red line will deceive you into thinking the world is warming. It's only there for purposes of illustration later. Please ignore it until then.

The current temperature anomaly for March 2011 has just come in at -0.1C. That's MINUS 0.1C which is below the freezing point of water, so how can the arctic be melting?

The total temperature drop highlighted by the green line is almost as great as the entire warming that occurred since 1900! So much for global warming then! If this continues we will enter an ice age next year!

You might remember being told to focus on a similar drop and minus numbers in 2008. You might even remember how important that event was a sign of things to come. The eminent Joe Bastardi at the time described the 2007-2008 drop as "straight out of the book of climate. The pattern is so much like the 1949-1950 La Nina, which was signaling the start of the reversal of the warming of the earth’s climate in the 1930s, ‘40s and early 50s. Only someone choosing to ignore it, or not wanting to see it, would not be cognizant of it."

I couldn't find the book of climate at the library to confirm his claim, but it certainly rings true with what I want to believe. Besides when heavy weights like Piers Corbyn and David Archibald are predicting the world will cool in coming decades, who can argue?

Anyway needless to say Bastardi was right. Temperature just kept falling after 2008 and now it's falling all over again! There was a briefly mild kind of slight flattish temperature bump in 2010, but that was just noise caused by an El Nino and entirely predictable. The current temperature drop however coincides with a La Nina and the last thing climate scientists expected to happen during a La Nina was for global temperature to fall! The cause of the drop is probably because the oceans have turned upside down due to something we experts call the PDO oscillation, which basically means an ice age is coming.

The Side Bar: Trends and Noise

The side bar is a feature I use to stroke my ego teach my readers the "dos" and "donts" of science. Previous side bars have explained precisely why exponentials should not be used and why data should never be plotted

In this side bar I want to explain why the use of noise is preferable to longterm trends for predicting the future.

The use of trends and noise is one of the main sources of statistical disagreement between deniers and alarmists. We of course consult professional statisticians whereas climate scientists don't. In their typical deceptive style warmists insist you should focus on irrelevant long term trends in data rather than short term 'noise'. For example in the graph above a long term trend is depicted by the red arrow, whereas they would insist the green line was just noise. Deniers like me point out that noise is more important than trends, after-all the green line is steeper than the red line and also going in the right direction.

But perhaps the fairest way to arbitrate a scientific disagreement and build some bridges towards reconciliation at the same time is to check what God thinks. In this case God thinks the warmists are wrong, for if God didn't want our attention to be drawn to short term noises why did he build ears on the sides of our heads?

Religious based facts aside, I can prove noise is the most important part of the data. If we ignored the noise in the temperature record and just focused on the longterm trend we would, of all preposterous things, be forced to conclude the world was warming.

The IPCC Forecast Is Simply Wrong

If you have paid attention to the recent congressional hearing on Climate-Gate you will no doubt have heard that forecasting guru Dr. J. Scott Armstrong has proven the IPCC models are outperformed by a simple model

Armstrong argues:

Those involved in the global warming alarm have violated the “simple methods” principle.

He recommends that:

"To help ensure objectivity, government funding should not be provided for climate-change forecasting. As we have noted, simple methods are appropriate for forecasting for climate change. Large budgets are therefore not necessary."

If you doubt Dr Armstrong is a forecasting guru check the testimony:

Dr Armstrong ... is the author of Long-range Forecasting, the creator of forecastingprinciples.com, and editor of Principles of Forecasting (Kluwer 2001), an evidence-based summary of knowledge on forecasting methods. He is a founder of the Journal of Forecasting, the International Journal of Forecasting, and the International Symposium on Forecasting. He has spent 50 years doing research and consulting on forecasting

So yes he's very much involved in forecasting.

We conducted a validation test of the IPCC forecasts based on the assumption that there would be no interventions. This test found that the errors for IPCC model long-term forecasts (91 to 100 years in the future) were 12.6 times larger than those from an evidence-based “no change” model. Based on our analyses, we concluded that the global warming alarm is an anti-scientific political movement.

This is music to my ears, and the ears to other deniers the Internet wide. At last we have scientific sounding justification for our claims that the experts know less than simple folk. We can figure it out ourselves. Oh they might have fancy equations and computers but what really counts is wild ass guesses from those willing to think out of their armchairs.

The conclusion I like to draw is that simple models always work better than more complex models. Sounds right to me. And of course Armstrong is right, he was after-all the first man on the moon.

Glowing recommendations abound. Noone quite understands what Armstrong did, but we share absolute conviction that he's justified our basic dogma:

"I have not heard any testimony but am under the impression Scott Armstrong knows a great deal about complex modeling and has rejected it as failed (at least long term modeling)" - blog comment

An Analysis of Armstrong's validation test of the IPCC forecasting model

But unlike other denier blogs lets go a bit further and actually try to understand what Armstrong did to demonstrate a simple model beats the IPCC models at making longterm forecasts. This is a technical blog afterall.

The validation test Armstrong performed is detailed in his 2009 paper, Validity of climate change forecasting for public policy decision making, co-authored by Willie Soon and published in the International Journal of Forecasting (wait where have I heard of that before?).

What Armstrong did was to use discredited global temperature data published by the university at the center of Climate Gate. But in this case we can trust the data because it leads to a conclusion we want to believe.

Hadcrut3, the temperature data used to test IPCC model and simple benchmark model forecasts.

Armstrong made a simple benchmark model that forecasts temperature. It is very simple, it just predicts that future temperature will be identical to today's. So his simple benchmark model's 100 year forecast starting from 1851 predicts that the 1951 temperature anomaly will be the same as the 1851 temperature anomaly.

Because forecasting single annual anomalies is exactly the kind of thing the IPCC does.

Armstrong first tested his benchmark model against IPCC forecasts made in 1992. Unfortunately this way he could only test a 17 year forecast made by the IPCC and he noted that policymakers were more interested in long-term forecasts (eg more like 100 years ahead, not 17):

"Policymakers are concerned with long-term climate forecasting, and the ex ante analysis we have described was limited to a small sample of short-horizon projections. To address this limitation, we calculated rolling projections from 1851 to illustrate a proper validation procedure."

What he really wanted to be able to do was to test something like a 100 year IPCC forecast made in 1851 against the forecast made by his benchmark model. But just how could he obtain 100 year IPCC forecasts made in 1851 when the IPCC didn't even exist in 1851? Armstrong found a simple solution:

Dangerous manmade global warming became an issue of public concern after NASA scientist James Hansen testified on the subject to the US Congress on June 23, 1988 (McKibben, 2007), after a 13-year period from 1975 over which global temperature estimates were up more than they were down. The IPCC (2007) authors explained, however, that “Global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have increased markedly as a result of human activities since 1750” (p. 2). There have even been claims that human activity has been causing global warming for at least 5000 years (Bergquist, 2008).

It is not unreasonable, then, to suppose, for the purposes of our validation illustration, that scientists in 1850 had noticed that the increasing industrialization of the world was resulting in an exponential growth in “greenhouse gases”, and projected that this would lead to global warming of 0.03 C per year.

Yes that's right, the IPCC didn't exist in 1851, but we can always imagine what they would have said if they had existed in 1851. After-all it isn't like the 0.03C per year warming rate is based on a complicated model. The IPCC models are simple right? 0.03C/year, wherever that comes from, is clearly based on nothing more than the notion that temperature will go up. 0.3C per decade is just a kind of universal warming rate that any IPCC scientist will eventually fixate on, even if that IPCC scientist exists in 1851.

The alternative to making it up would have been to take GCM hindcasts and compare them to HadCRUT. But that's quite involved. The idea here is to take the simpler route. It's simpler just to make shit up. That's one of the principles of forecasting in fact - make shit up.

So now lets compare the simple benchmark forecast with the IPCC forecast. At 0.03C warming per year the 1851 IPCC would have predicted the hadcrut 1951 temperature anomaly to be +2.7C, compared to the actual anomaly of -0.17C. Armstrong's simple benchmark model performs much better, predicting a 1951 temperature anomaly of -0.3C.


The absolute mean error in this case for Armstrong's model is 0.13C error. For the IPCC model it's a massive 2.87C error. The 1851 IPCC loses.

So when you next hear that simple models perform better at forecasting than complex IPCC climate models, now you know the technical details behind that fact. Thank god someone with the competence of Armstrong was brought in to testify before congress on such an important issue.