JoNova

A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).

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Way back when climate scientists were scientists: Chapter 8, FAR, circa 1990

You’ll find this hard to believe but I get excited about the 1990 First Assessment Report (FAR). It’s very different from wading through the later ones, because it’s remarkably honest, and things are not hidden in double-speak (well, not so much). Scientists behave like scientists and talk of null hypothesis, and even of validating models. Indeed they had a whole chapter back then called “validation”. How times have changed.

This is the short summary of Chapter 8 “Attribution”

Thanks to Alan for sending me this link today (Chapter 8, IPCC FAR).

The “Attribution” Chapter is the part where they try to figure out what “caused” the warming. Chapter 8 says, essentially, “we don’t know, we might never know, our models don’t work, and we can conclude it might all be natural, but then again, it might not.” Got it?

This is in the same era that Al Gore was saying “the science is settled” and “there is no debate”.

What’s clear in 1990 from the FAR was that it was widely admitted that the models were bodgy, and that figuring out exactly what caused the recent warming was very difficult, indeed impossible at the time. There were too many variables, [...]

March 19th, 2011 | Tags: , , , , , | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post | Comments (43)

The debate continues: Dr Glikson v Joanne Nova

Dr Andrew Glikson (an Earth and paleoclimate scientist, at the Australian National University) contacted Quadrant offering to write about the evidence for man-made global warming. Quadrant approached me asking for my response. Dr Glikson replied to my reply, and I replied again to him (copied below). No money exchanged hands, but Dr Glikson is, I presume, writing in an employed capacity, while I write pro bono. Why is it that the unpaid self taught commentator needs to point out the evidence he doesn’t seem to be aware of? Why does a PhD need to be reminded of basic scientific principles (like, don’t argue from authority). Such is the vacuum of funding for other theories that a debate that ought to happen inside the university obviously hasn’t occurred. Such is the decrepit, anaemic state of university science that even a doctorate doesn’t guarantee a scientist can reason. Where is the rigor in the training, and the discipline in the analysis?

Credibility lies on evidence

by Joanne Nova

April 29, 2010

Reply to Andrew Glikson

Dr Andrew Glikson still misses the point, and backs his arguments with weak evidence and logical errors. Instead of empirical evidence, often [...]

April 29th, 2010 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Category: AGW socio-political, Logic & Reason | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post | Comments (176)

How to create a crisis graph in 6 simple steps

One of the main arguments from the IPCC is that essentially, we can’t explain temperature changes any other way than with carbon forcings. This is matched with impressive pink and blue graphs that pose as evidence that carbon is responsible for all the recent warming.

This is argumentum ad ignorantiam — essentially they say: we don’t know what else could have caused that warming, so it must be carbon. It’s a flawed assumption.

It’s easy to create impressive graphs, especially if you actively ignore other possible causes, like for example, changes in cloud cover and solar magnetic effects.

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January 23rd, 2010 | Tags: , , , , , , | Category: AGW socio-political, Global Warming | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post | Comments (43)

The one flaw that wipes out the crisis

Carbon dioxide only causes 1.1°C of warming if it doubles. That’s according to the IPCC. Did you know?

The real game is water.

Researchers made guesses about humidity and clouds in the early 1980s and they built these guesses into their models. We now know they were wrong, not about carbon, but about water in the form of humidity and clouds. Here’s how the models can be right about carbon and wrong about the climate.

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December 5th, 2009 | Tags: , , , , | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post | Comments (171)

CRU data-cooking: recipe exposed!

Thanks to Eric Raymond, famous computer guru and leader of the open-source movement, at ESR, we can see what those sophisticated climate modelers were doing. They’ve found the code from the leaked files, and Eric’s comment is:

This isn’t just a smoking gun, it’s a siege cannon with the barrel still hot.

Here’s the code. The programmer has written in helpful notes that us non-programmers can understand, like this one:  “Apply a very artificial correction for decline”. You get the feeling this climate programmer didn’t like pushing the data around so blatantly. Note the technical comment:  “fudge factor”.

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November 30th, 2009 | Tags: , , , , | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post | Comments (68)

Missing Climate Headlines from May 2009

Undoubtedly the best summary of the current state of affairs is the SPPI monthly CO2 report. The April report contains news that—if there was a free and high quality media—would have generated headlines like these (well, sort of—you get the idea).

Any investigative journalist who was doing their job only had to Google for the other side of the story. I’m not saying those journalists have to agree with us, just that, at the moment most environmental writers think ‘balanced’ means saying, “The world will cook: the question is, lightly toasted OR totally pan-fried’.

Here’s the counter summary of the headlines we didn’t see, accompanied by an analysis you probably won’t see anywhere else.

Planet Unmoved by IPCC Forecast

Despite the power of the authority vested in the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), The Planet appears to be unswayed by the large well funded international bureaucracy, and is similarly immune to following the collected wisdom of the software engineers who compress it’s 1100 billion cubic kilometers of complexity into a PC.

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May 26th, 2009 | Tags: , , , , | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post | Comments (166)