Why averaging climate models is meaningless

June 14, 2013

This comment/ essay by rgbatduke on WUWT is well worth reading and digesting.

“this is a point that is stunningly ignored — there are a lot of different models out there, all supposedly built on top of physics, and yet no two of them give anywhere near the same results!”

A professional taking amateurs to task!

(Note! See also his follow-up comments here and here.  rgbatduke would seem to be Professor R G Brown of Duke University?)

rgbatduke says:

Saying that we need to wait for a certain interval in order to conclude that “the models are wrong” is dangerous and incorrect for two reasons. First — and this is a point that is stunningly ignored — there are a lot of different models out there, all supposedly built on top of physics, and yet no two of them give anywhere near the same results!

This is reflected in the graphs Monckton publishes above, where the AR5 trend line is the average over all of these models and in spite of the number of contributors the variance of the models is huge. It is also clearly evident if one publishes a “spaghetti graph” of the individual model projections (as Roy Spencer recently did in another thread) — it looks like the frayed end of a rope, not like a coherent spread around some physics supported result.

Note the implicit swindle in this graph — by forming a mean and standard deviation over model projections and then using the mean as a “most likely” projection and the variance as representative of the range of the error, one is treating the differences between the models as if they are uncorrelated random variates causing >deviation around a true mean!.

Say what?

This is such a horrendous abuse of statistics that it is difficult to know how to begin to address it. One simply wishes to bitch-slap whoever it was that assembled the graph and ensure that they never work or publish in the field of science or statistics ever again. One cannot generate an ensemble of independent and identically distributed models that have different code. One might, possibly, generate a single model that generates an ensemble of predictions by using uniform deviates (random numbers) to seed
“noise” (representing uncertainty) in the inputs.

What I’m trying to say is that the variance and mean of the “ensemble” of models is completely meaningless, statistically because the inputs do not possess the most basic properties required for a meaningful interpretation. They are not independent, their differences are not based on a random distribution of errors, there is no reason whatsoever to believe that the errors or differences are unbiased (given that the only way humans can generate unbiased anything is through the use of e.g. dice or other objectively random instruments).

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UK Met Office to hold summit to redefine all weather events as climate (change)!

June 14, 2013

From the ever reliable Guardian (Leo Hickman) comes this story. All weather events will now be taken as evidence of global climate change!

Met Office brainstorms UK bad weather

Washout summers. Flash floods. Freezing winters. Snow in May. Droughts. There is a growing sense that something is happening to our weather. But is it simply down to natural variability, or is climate change to blame?

To try to answer the question the Met Office is hosting an unprecedented meeting of climate scientists and meteorologists next week to debate the possible causes of the UK’s “disappointing” weather over recent years, the Guardian has learned.

Tuesday’s meeting at the forecaster’s HQ in Exeter is being convened in response to this year’s cool spring, which, according to official records, was the coldest in 50 years.

The one-day gathering will be led by Stephen Belcher, head of the Met Office Hadley Centre and professor of meteorology at the University of Reading, and will include up to 20 experts from the UK’s leading climate research institutions.

The “roundtable workshop” will attempt to outline the “dynamical drivers of the cold spring of 2013”, but attendees are expected also to debate the “disappointing summers of the last seven years”. 

Official records show that above-average temperatures in summer last occurred in 2006, a season that had above-average sunshine hours, and below-average rainfall. The only summer since then to give us average conditions nationally was in 2010.

The meeting will also discuss the washout summer of 2012 and the freezing winter of 2010-11.

The Met Office said it had never held a formal meeting in this way to discuss possible causes behind the UK’s unusual weather of recent years. … 

But rather than admit that climate models have become a fiasco, it would seem that the “establishment” is now “circling the wagons” and rationalising to be able to connect all weather events to “man-made climate change” – defined as being anything over and above “natural variability”. Why would the “natural variability” of just the last 150 years be the benchmark. Why would the Little Ice Age or the Roman Warm Period or the Medieval Warm Period not be part of the “natural variability” to be used as the reference? If the flood levels in Germany this spring reached the same level in Passau 500 years ago, why wouldn’t the weather/climate of 500 years ago also be part of “natural variability”?

If the UK spring this year was the coldest since the 1890’s then it surely proves that weather events today are much the same as 130 years ago.  Even the great 2011 Tohoku quake and  tsunami were events that were a repeat of something that happens every 1000 years or so. It  was not “unnatural” just because it had not happened for 1000 years. Anytime a weather event today is merely a repeat of an event which has taken place in the past, then the preponderance of probability is that it is a part of natural variability.

Everything not within a discernible “natural” pattern is not due to anthropogenic effects. It may well be in the realm of what we don’t know that we don’t know.

The Guardian goes on:

…. One attendee at the meeting, Doug Parker, professor of meteorology at the University of Leeds, said: “We are universally finding that the links between the weather and climate communities are increasing and overlapping. Most climate issues reduce down to questions about what weather events are like, and the representation of short-term weather events is a key challenge in climate modelling. People are increasingly conscious that there is a change [to our weather]. There have been informal discussions in our communities about this for a while now. The key question is whether this is down to natural variability alone, or whether climate change is now projecting on to, and adding to, natural variability. I am going to the meeting with my eyes and ears open.”

But – it seems to me – with a closed mind!

A Met Office spokesman said: “We have seen a run of unusual seasons in the UK and northern Europe, such as the cold winter of 2010, last year’s wet weather and the cold spring this year. This may be nothing more than a run of natural variability, but there may be other factors impacting our weather there is emerging research which suggests there is a link between declining Arctic sea ice and European climate – but exactly how this process might work and how important it may be among a host of other factors remains unclear.”

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“It should be warm but it’s cold so it must be global warming” – UN delegate

June 13, 2013

The perspicacity of our delegates to the UN  and their level of argumentation leaves more than a little to be desired.

This interview with the delegate of the Cook Islands to the UN Bonn climate conference (scuppered thankfully by the Russians)  comes courtesy of CFACT. 

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Chaos — Everything moves

June 13, 2013

lorenz

 

From Jos Leys, Étienne Ghys and Aurélien Alvarez, the makers of Dimensions, comes CHAOS, a math movie with nine 13-minute chapters. It is a film about dynamical systems, the butterfly effect and chaos theory, intended for a wide audience.

 

The 9 movies are available here and the first Panta Rhei – Everything moves is below:

 

 

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Reproduction after death: Guppies do it, humans can – but should they?

June 13, 2013

Guppies use stored sperm while humans can use stored sperm. Using the sperm of someone long dead is certainly possible to “create” a new human. The ethical question – if there is one – is the responsibility (whose?) to the child so produced. And this could be even more important if it is also true that the age of the sperm producer at the time of sperm production has an impact on the health of the child. And is there a responsibility to the deceased sperm donor? By agreeing to the storage of sperm does not the donor implicitly consent to the use of that sperm even after his demise unless he explicitly forbids it?

Photo shows guppies.

Guppies are small freshwater fish PHOTO CREDIT: PIERSON HILL.

UCRtoday:

Performing experiments in a river in Trinidad, a team of evolutionary biologists has found that male guppies continue to reproduce for at least ten months after they die, living on as stored sperm in females, who have much longer lifespans (two years) than males (three-four months).

“Populations that are too small can go extinct because close relatives end up breeding with each other and offspring suffer from inbreeding,” said David Reznick, a professor of biology at the University of California, Riverside and the principal investigator of the research project.  “If there are stored sperm, then the real population size is bigger than the number of animals you see.  Also, stored sperm can increase genetic variation in other ways.”

Scientific American:

Is it ethical to use a dead man’s sperm to father a child? Experts are calling for a consensus on policies surrounding this question, which currently vary widely across the country.

It has been possible for a few decades to obtain a man’s sperm after his death and use it to fertilize an egg. Today, requests for postmortem sperm retrieval (PMSR) are growing, yet the United States has no guidelines governing the retrieval of sperm from deceased men, said Dr. Larry Lipshultz, a urologist at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas.

In the absence of government regulations, medical institutions should come up with their own rules so they can handle the time-sensitive and ethically questionable procedures, Lipshultz argued in an editorial published June 5 in the journal Fertility and Sterility. 

Requests for PMSR can come from the wife or parents of a young man who suddenly died in an accident before having a chance to leave a child, and requests can also come from living, terminally ill men who wish to preserve sperm to be used after death.

But the institutions trying to draft a protocol for these situations face a number of ethical concerns. For example, has the deceased consented to have his sperm used for reproduction after he’s gone? Could just anybody request to obtain his sperm? Is it in the best interest of the child to be brought into the world without having a father? …… 

…. PMSR is currently illegal in France, Germany, Sweden and other countries, even with written consent from the deceased. In the United Kingdom, it can be done if there is written consent, and in Israel, the sperm can be retrieved, but then a judge has to decide whether it can be used.

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Biochemical pathway links nail growth to fingertip regeneration

June 13, 2013

We don’t really know why some of our cells keep regenerating and some don’t. Our bodies contain all the information necessary for the growth – or regrowth – or replacement of cells but we do not know – yet – how to trigger or stop such growth. Triggering growth of cells as needed would help us we age and being able to tell cells when to stop multiplying would get rid of our cancers.

We could say that this is a failing of control. All the information necessary is available in us. All the materials necessary are available and all the tools needed are available. But our brains are not capable of giving the specific instructions to grow or to stop to our various cells. If I could I would like to give my knees the signal to regrow some cartilage but I can’t.

This research from the NYU Langone Medical Center is another little step in understanding how regeneration might work.

Wnt activation in nail epithelium couples nail growth to digit regeneration, Makoto Takeo et al, Nature (2013), Published online 12 June 2013, doi:10.1038/nature12214

NYU Press Release: Mammals possess the remarkable ability to regenerate a lost fingertip, including the nail, nerves and even bone. In humans, an amputated fingertip can sprout back in as little as two months, a phenomenon that has remained poorly understood until now. In a paper published today in the journal Nature, researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center shed light on this rare regenerative power in mammals, using genetically engineered mice to document for the first time the biochemical chain of events that unfolds in the wake of a fingertip amputation. The findings hold promise for amputees who may one day be able to benefit from therapies that help the body regenerate lost limbs.  

“Everyone knows that fingernails keep growing, but no one really knows why,” says lead author Mayumi Ito, PhD, assistant professor of dermatology in the Ronald O. Perelman Department of Dermatology at NYU School of Medicine. Nor is much understood about the link between nail growth and the regenerative ability of the bone and tissue beneath the nail. Now, Dr. Ito and team have discovered an important clue in this process: a population of self-renewing stem cells in the nail matrix, a part of the nail bed rich in nerve endings and blood vessels that stimulate nail growth. Moreover, the scientists have found that these stem cells depend upon a family of proteins known as the “Wnt signaling network”—the same proteins that play a crucial role in hair and tissue regeneration—to regenerate bone in the fingertip.
 
“When we blocked the Wnt-signaling pathway in mice with amputated fingertips, the nail and bone did not grow back as they normally would,” says Dr. Ito. Even more intriguing, the researchers found that they could manipulate the Wnt pathway to stimulate regeneration in bone and tissue just beyond the fingertip. “Amputations of this magnitude ordinarily do not grow back,” says Dr. Ito. These findings suggest that Wnt signaling is essential for fingertip regeneration, and point the way to therapies that could help people regenerate lost limbs. An estimated 1.7 million people in the U.S. live with amputations.
 
The team’s next step is to zoom in on the molecular mechanisms that control how the Wnt signaling pathway interacts with the nail stem cells to influence bone and nail growth.

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A mindless pursuit of “equality” does not excuse stupidity

June 12, 2013

Political correctness is not always rational.

“Discernment” is considered a good thing but “discrimination” is not.

“Equal pay for equal performance” sounds good but it is often illegal to pay an incompetent union member less than a competent one. Discerning a good worker can be considered discrimination.

And now it is apparently wrong to avoid the employment of criminals because it could be “discrimination”.

Washington Post: 

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on Tuesday accused two major companies of indirectly discriminating against African Americans by using criminal background checks to screen out workers.

The commission said BMW effectively fired 70 black employees with criminal histories from a facility in South Carolina, even though many had been there for years. One woman with 14 years under her belt was let go after a misdemeanor conviction surfaced that was more than 20 years old and carried a $137 fine, according to the EEOC’s lawsuit. 

The agency also alleged that retailer Dollar General revoked job offers to two black women after conducting criminal background checks. In one case, the EEOC said that the records were inaccurate but that Dollar General declined to reconsider the woman’s application. The other involved a six-year-old drug conviction. …

…… The EEOC is not alone in focusing on the role of criminal background checks in black employment. Since the recession, seven states — including Maryland — have adopted laws that prohibit employers from including questions about criminal history on job applications. ……

Stupid is as stupid does.

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Thank goodness for the Russians

June 12, 2013

It isn’t often that the Russian position is to be admired and even in this case they are doing – in my opinion – the right thing but for the wrong reasons. Anything which blocks the ridiculous UN Panel on Climate Change and its pointless and wasteful exercise in Bonn is welcome. Of course the Russians are only really concerned about the value of the Carbon credits they have stock-piled. Credits they received  for shutting down inefficient industries as being environmental “good guys” but where these were going to be shut down anyway.

This from AFP:

A key panel at UN climate talks in Bonn went into deep freeze on Tuesday as Russia ignored pleas to end a procedural protest, according to a webcast of the meeting and sources there. Supported by Belarus and Ukraine, Russia refused to let work start in the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI), an important technical committee in the climate talks, more than a week after the 12-day negotiations began.

Observers said if the three countries did not back down, the future of the entire UN process to fight greenhouse-gas emissions would be at risk. “It’s a most unfortunate situation,” said Christiana Figueres, head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), as delegates admitted the panel will most likely have achieved nothing by Friday’s close.

The Russians are incensed by what happened at the UNFCCC’s last big annual meeting, held in Doha, Qatar, last December. They complain they were ignored by the conference’s Qatari chairman, who gavelled through a deal that extended the Kyoto Protocol.

The decision at Doha hamstrung Moscow’s planned sale of 5.8 billion tonnes of carbon credits that Russia had amassed under the first round of the Kyoto Protocol.

It had gained these credits not through emissions reductions efforts, but after market pressure forced the closure of CO2-spewing factories following the fall of the Soviet Union.

……..

“If these three countries maintain their positions until 2015, they could wreck the entire process,” one observer warned AFP.

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Parliamentary pigs and taxpayer troughs

June 11, 2013

Apparently pigs and humans share many genetic characteristics:

Researchers, who undertook the largest ever study of the pig genome, found that swine are adaptable, easy to seduce with food and susceptible to domestication – much like humans. 

Insights into the genetic code of pigs reveal the swine and its cousin the wild boar have much in common with humans.

from bellscorners.wordpress.com

This affinity between human and pig behaviour is demonstrated daily – and especially – by parliamentarians the world over. They don’t just feed – they gorge themselves. Perhaps it is the availability of the trough of taxpayers money which triggers our parliamentarians to revert to ancient type. Following the recent revelations about UK parliamentarians and their greed (Trougher Yeo), or in the US for example, comes this story from Australia:

The New South Wales Finance Minister Greg Pearce is facing further accusations about his parliamentary travel, with a Sydney newspaper reporting that he spent thousands of dollars on flights that coincided with sports events.

Last week, Premier Barry O’Farrell initiated an inquiry into claims the minister may have breached travel guidelines by taking a trip to Canberra that was initially booked through his office but was subsequently repaid by the minister.

The move came just days after he was accused of being drunk in parliament, prompting a public warning from the Premier.

Now the Daily Telegraph newspaper is reporting Mr Pearce has made at least $9,000 worth of trips to major sporting events around the country.

It says the events include the Melbourne Cup, AFL Grand Final and Australian Open, although Mr Pearce has denied the newspaper’s suggestions that he travelled to a V8 event on the Gold Coast last year.

I suppose they could all employ the defence that it is all in their genes and it is the fault of the taxpayers in providing them with the temptations which trigger their piggy instincts.

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“Lull in warming even as greenhouse gases have accumulated at a record pace”

June 11, 2013

It’s old news but it is heretical and fundamentally undermines the fanciful notion that man-made carbon dioxide emissions cause global warming. Plain denial of reality is no longer credible though the most orthodox of the warmists continue to maintain their beliefs. The real scientists just get back to work and try to understand what the models have missed and try to improve the models. The New York Times which has been one of the most ardent adherents to the orthodox line can no longer ignore reality.

The rise in the surface temperature of earth has been markedly slower over the last 15 years than in the 20 years before that. And that lull in warming has occurred even as greenhouse gases have accumulated in the atmosphere at a record pace. …

… in a climate system still dominated by natural variability, there is every reason to think the warming will proceed in fits and starts.

Of course the NYT cannot admit it was wrong or that the heretics were right. Instead it commends the “practitioners of climate science” for being “puzzled”. It will take much more before the NYT will reveal that many of these “practitioners” are little more than “charlatans of climate science”

But given how much is riding on the scientific forecast, the practitioners of climate science would like to understand exactly what is going on. They admit that they do not, even though some potential mechanisms of the slowdown have been suggested. The situation highlights important gaps in our knowledge of the climate system, some of which cannot be closed until we get better measurements from high in space and from deep in the ocean.

And then they make their most fundamental error when they write:

We certainly cannot conclude, as some people want to, that carbon dioxide is not actually a greenhouse gas. More than a century of research thoroughly disproves that claim.

But that is a fallacy. There is no direct evidence that carbon dioxide causes global warming. That is a conclusion reached because there was “no better explanation” given the assumption that man was causing global warming. This assumption came first as some kind of religious tenet and the rest has followed.

In fact the carbon cycle itself  is not very well understood as some would claim. We do not actually know how much is absorbed by the oceans. The number – and it is a very large number – used for that comes from equating carbon dioxide production and absorption in some assumed pre-industrial equilibrium which itself has never existed.

Instead of coming to the the most parsimonious explanation which is that the effect of carbon dioxide itself – let alone man-made carbon dioxide – on climate has been grossly exaggerated, the NYT repeats some of the most convoluted fantasies regarding the “lost heat”.

So the real question is where all that heat is going, if not to warm the surface. And a prime suspect is the deep ocean. Our measurements there are not good enough to confirm it absolutely, but a growing body of research suggests this may be an important part of the answer.

Exactly why the ocean would have started to draw down extra heat in recent years is a mystery, and one we badly need to understand. But the main ideas have to do with possible shifts in winds and currents that are causing surface heat to be pulled down faster than before.

The deep-ocean theory is one of a half-dozen explanations that have been proffered for the warming plateau. Perhaps the answer will turn out to be some mix of all of them. And in any event, computer forecasts of climate change suggest that pauses in warming lasting a couple of decades should not surprise us.

Perhaps the NYT would at least concede that the “science” is very far from being settled.

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