JoNova: Science, carbon, climate and tax » Models

How to create a crisis graph in 6 simple steps

JoNova — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 17:49:04 +0000

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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(Addendum: Since the Skeptics Handbook came out we now know that actually they did care about that warm blip in the 1940′s that the models can’t explain. But instead of changing the models, they changed the data. Thanks to ClimateGate for that insight.)

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Error bars make the graph look more official. (On a graph based entirely on a logical [...]

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Droughts might not be due to carbon-dioxide, says CSIRO

JoNova — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 14:51:28 +0000

Still in the theme of Shock!-The-Media-IS-Reporting-The-News: The Canberra Times announced on it’s front page that CSIRO is not so sure that droughts are due to increased carbon dioxide. Only a few months ago, they announced the exact opposite.

September 2009: A three-year collaboration between the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO has confirmed what many scientists long suspected: that the 13-year drought is not just a natural dry stretch but a shift related to climate change.

Jan 2010: One of the report’s co-authors, hydrologist David Post, told The Canberra Times there was ”no evidence” linking drought to climate change in eastern Australia, including the Murray-Darling Basin.

Back in September, this long study was based on the old trick of using climate models and “subtracting” the natural causes to see what’s left. It’s also known as “Argument from Ignorance”. Since we can’t predict the climate five years in advance, obviously there are factors or weightings in those climate models that aren’t right. Ruling out “what we know” doesn’t prove anything at all, except that there is a lot we don’t know.

When David Stockwell analysed climate models and Australian droughts, he found that random numbers were more likely to predict droughts successfully. [...]

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CRU data-cooking: recipe exposed!

JoNova — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 12:58:31 +0000

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”.

; Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!! ; yrloc=[1400,findgen(19)*5.+1904] valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,- 0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,$ 2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor if n_elements(yrloc) ne n_elements(valadj) then message,’Oooops!’

The numbers in a row, in the [ ] brackets, are the numbers the data are to be altered by. If there were no adjustments, they’d all be zero. It’s obvious there is no attempt to treat all the data equally, or use a rigorous method to make adjustments. What could their reasons be?

East Anglia Data Adjustments

In 1900-1920: “All thermometers working accurately”.

In 1930: “Stock market crash and global depression [...]

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