Editor's Most Important Words

This, also from Wagner's resignation letter, may be his most important words of them all:

With this step I would also like to personally protest against how the authors and like-minded climate sceptics have much exaggerated the paper’s conclusions in public statements, e.g., in a press release of The University of Alabama in Huntsville from 27 July 2011 [2], the main author’s personal homepage [3], the story “New NASA data blow gaping hole in global warming alarmism” published by Forbes [4], and the story “Does NASA data show global warming lost in space?” published by Fox News [5], to name just a few. Unfortunately, their campaign apparently was very successful as witnessed by the over 56,000 downloads of the full paper within only one month after its publication. But trying to refute all scientific insights into the global warming phenomenon just based on the comparison of one particular observational satellite data set with model predictions is strictly impossible. Aside from ignoring all the other observational data sets (such as the rapidly shrinking sea ice extent and changes in the flora and fauna) and contrasting theoretical studies, such a simple conclusion simply cannot be drawn considering the complexity of the involved models and satellite measurements.

Wagner linked only to Roy Spencer's home page, but I suspect he had in mind these specific posts. Really, is there a more consistently political scientist than Roy Spencer?

More on Editor's Resignation

Dr. Wolfgang Wagner

Here is more (and more relevant) detail behind Wagner's reasons for resigning:

So why, after a more careful study of the pro and contra arguments, have I changed my initial view? The problem is that comparable studies published by other authors have already been refuted in open discussions and to some extend also in the literature (Trenberth et al. 2010), a fact which was ignored by Spencer and Braswell in their paper and, unfortunately, not picked up by the reviewers. In other words, the problem I see with the paper by Spencer and Braswell is not that it declared a minority view (which was later unfortunately much exaggerated by the public media) but that it essentially ignored the scientific arguments of its opponents. This latter point was missed in the review process, explaining why I perceive this paper to be fundamentally flawed and therefore wrongly accepted by the journal. This regrettably brought me to the decision to resign as Editor-in-Chief―to make clear that the journal Remote Sensing takes the review process very seriously.”

(Emphasis mine)

Here is a Wagner's biography; clearly he is a quite accomplished scientist in the field of remote sensing.

Breaking: Editor Resigns Over Roy Spencer Paper's Controversy

Shades of the Climate Research kerfuffle: the editor at the journal Remote Sensing has resigned over the controversy of his publication of Roy Spencer's recent paper "On the Misdiagnosis of Surface Temperature Feedbacks from Variations in Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance.”

In his resignation letter, Wolfgang Wagner writes:

In other words, the problem I see with the paper by Spencer and Braswell is not that it declared a minority view (which was later unfortunately much exaggerated by the public media) but that it essentially ignored the scientific arguments of its opponents. This latter point was missed in the review process, explaining why I perceive this paper to be fundamentally flawed and therefore wrongly accepted by the journal. This regrettably brought me to the decision to resign as Editor-in-Chief―to make clear that the journal Remote Sensing takes the review process very seriously.

Spencer says he stands behind his paper and calls this a defeat for "scientific progress."

Week's Best Someecard

Why No Bathrooms in Star Trek?

The opening of Star Trek promises that man "will boldly go where no man has gone before," but why does no one ever use a bathroom in any of the series? I've seen them all, and I've never seen anyone go to the bathroom, or say they had to take a break, or talked to a colleague while they combed their hair in the restroom mirror. They still must have bladders in the 24th century, right? Especially since genetic modification was considered a terrible idea that was tried and then rejected? Even all the other species must take a pee sometime, especially the Klingons, with all that drinking. But I don't remember anyone even mentioning it, even as humor, like the kind of humor they often used on Enterprise. I recall Troi or Riker splashing water on their face from one of those retracting sinks, and one episode opening with Captain Archer in the shower as the artificial gravity cut out, but no one ever does any business. Would that have ruined the certain sense of utopia that Gene Roddenberry tried to convey? Would it have required unsightly zippers in those one-piece uniforms? How do you pee in one of those, anyway? Especially 7 of 9.

And if Vulcans have green blood, what color is their pee?

God Denies....

This is great; from Is Outrage:

God Denies Hurricane Is Punishment for Anything

Posted on August 25, 2011 by Your Intrepid Blogger

CHARLESTON, SC – In a widely-broadcast announcement earlier today, celestial spokespostle and gatekeeper Simon (“Saint”) Peter, speaking on behalf of well-known deity God, stated flatly that Hurricane Irene is not divine punishment for anything. “Sometimes a hurricane is just a hurricane,” the protoPope declared. “Nor will I answer any questions about how an all-powerful, all-loving God can allow things like hurricanes to exist. You guys have to work that out for yourselves.

Oh, and the Creator and Sustainer of All has asked me to specifically tell Pat Robertson, ‘Knock it off.’”

The article continues here.

Isn't it interesting how Michelle Bachmann sees earthquakes and hurricanes as signs from God (or at least jokes about them), but not warming from CO2?

Or that she doesn't see, say, the Everglades as a sign of God's beneficence, but as a potential place to tear up for more fossil fuels? (Even Florida's Republican representatives had something to say about that one.)

"I Just Write the Songs"

"You can get the song for free with technology -- I don't know. I don't understand. That's for someone else to figure out. I just write the songs."

-- Billy Corgan, Smashing Pumpkins, about their freely downloadable new version of "Drown"

The Emissions Trading Mess

Here's an interesting and informative video on the big mess of emissions trading. It's particular to New Zealand, but much of it applies anywhere. It's via Roger Pielke Jr -- read the comments under his post, as it seems some of the economics in the video aren't really correct. In general, though, it shows what a clusterfuck the emissions trading scheme can be, which is simply a reflection of the basic problem there is just no getting around: reducing atmospheric GHGs is going to cost a lot of money, and not reducing them is going to someday cost a lot of money. You can come up with any scheme you want -- it's going to cost a lot of money. The only solution is development of a cheaper noncarbon energy source than fossil fuels. Period.



Coming Clean - New Zealand's Emissions Trading Scheme Explained from Lindsay Horner on Vimeo.


By the way, isn't this beautifully filmed?

Roy Spencer Smarter than Feynman?

At drroyspencer.com:

maxwell says:
August 22, 2011 at 8:17 PM
You know, Feynman had a pretty great quote…well he had many great quotes, but one of my favorites is,

‘I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.’

I know you’re trying to sell some books and move up the list of ‘conservatives liberals love to hate’, but please stick to the science.

Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D. says:
August 23, 2011 at 5:05 AM
I agree *most* scientists are even more clueless about economics than your average joe. I’m not one of them.

Video of Vermont Destruction

A good video overview of the destruction in Vermont from Irene:

http://www.wcax.com/global/video.asp?autoStart=true&topVideoCatNo=default&clipId=6205991&flvUri=&partnerclipid=

(I can't get the video to embed.)

The Scariest Thing Rick Perry Has Said

Of all the crazy things Rick Perry has said or written that are now being revealed, this seems to me by far the scariest:

“Sometimes the rules must protect society at large at the expense of individual expression when that expression is deemed harmful to others and society at large.”

-- Rick Perry, Fed Up! (2010)

I doubt Perry means simply outlawing people from yelling Fire! in a crowded theater. And this from someone who claims to cherish liberty and freedom. But clearly he wants a country that will only tolerate freedom if it's an expression of freedom that he agrees with. Absolutely chilling.

As Dana Milbank writes, Perry is a theocrat. He's dressed up as a populist, but that's just to get elected. I hope voters keep in mind that history shows that it's during times of crisis that the worst people have found a way to power -- but I doubt that they will.

Dana Milbank and Ruth Marcus have more, as does Steven Levingston.

What I Don't Understand About Economics

Here is something I don't understand about economics, and maybe one of my smart commenters can educate me.

Jeff Jacoby has a column disputing that disaster relief and rebuilding has any stimulus for the economy. He notes Bastiat's parable of the broken window. As Jacoby tell it:

A boy breaks a shopkeeper’s window, and everyone who sees it deplores the pointless destruction. Then someone insists that the damage is actually for the good: The six francs it will cost the shopkeeper to replace his window will benefit the glazier, who will then have more money to spend on something else. Those six francs will circulate, and the economy will grow.

The fatal flaw in that thinking, Bastiat wrote, is that it concentrates only on “what is seen’’ - the glazier being paid to make a new window. What it ignores is “what is not seen’’ - that the shopkeeper, forced to spend six francs on that, has lost the opportunity to spend them on better shoes, a new book, or some other addition to his standard of living.

I'm with this so far. But then Jacoby concludes:

The glazier may be better off, but the shopkeeper isn’t - and neither is society as a whole.

Here's where I am puzzled -- why isn't society as a whole better-off? Or, at least, equally as well-off? It's true the shopkeeper isn't better-off and the glazier is. Why is this a bad thing, from a macroeconomic point of view?

My only guess is that shopkeeper is forced to spend money he might have used 'more wisely' (my quotes) -- to expand his business, or buy his wife some earrings, or buy stock in a business so they can built a new product. But then, the glazier is still worse-off and doesn't get to spend that money. If the shopkeeper buys stock the jeweler doesn't sell the earrings and he doesn't pay the earring maker, who then doesn't buy her kid a new pair of shoes. So what's the difference?

This is essentially the same question (isn't it?) of whether it's better for government to tax and then spend money, or not tax and let the citizens spend it himself. Which is better, macroeconomically? And why? Do citizens really make better economic decisions than does the government? If so, in what way?

Sunday

Hadley: 9th Warmest July

Hadley says: July 2011 was the 9th warmest in their record of Julys, at +0.444 C.

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/hadcrut3vgl.txt


PS: 3 significant figures? Really??

PPS: Year-to-date (viz. Jan-July), 2011 is their 11th warmest year.

PPPS: Slope of Hadley temperature anomaly for last 10 yrs (viz. 120 months) is  -0.05 +/- 0.03 C/decade, though R^2 = only 0.03. But for the last 15 yrs it is +0.06 +/- 0.02 C/decade (R^2 = 0.05). So Joe Bastardi is wrong when he says temperatures have been "flat" for the last 15 years.

Hurricanes Irene and Before

Now that Hurricane Irene has hit New York city as only a tropical storm (not to minimize the great damage such a storm can do -- it landed in North Carolina and then New Jersey as a legitimate (Cat 1) hurricane), I wonder if Bill McKibben will rethink his recent column that blamed global warming for Hurricane Irene. Remember, it's hardly unprecedented for a major hurricane to hit that area -- this is from Wikipedia:

• "The Great September Gale of 1815 (the term hurricane was not yet common in the American vernacular), which hit New York City directly as a Category 3 hurricane, caused extensive damage and created an inlet that separated the Long Island resort towns of the Rockaways and Long Beach into two separate barrier islands.

• "The 1821 Norfolk and Long Island Hurricane, a Category 4 storm which made four separate landfalls in Virginia, New Jersey, New York and southern New England. The storm created the highest recorded storm surge in Manhattan of nearly 13 feet and severely impacted the farming regions of Long Island and southern New England.

• "The 1869 Saxby Gale affected areas in Northern New England, decimating the Maine coastline and the Canadian Outer Banks. It was the last major hurricane to affect New England until the 1938 storm.

• "The 1893 New York hurricane, a Category 2 storm, directly hit the city itself, causing a great storm surge that pummeled the coastline, completely removing the Long Island resort town of Hog Island."

• The Great Hurricane of 1938, which made landfall as a Category 3 hurricane and killed upwards of 800 people with $41 billion (2011 dollars) in damage.

Again, I'm not minimizing this hurricane, which as I write this has killed 22 people (16 in the U.S.) with $7 B in damage. But, storms happen.

PS: Thanks to commenter Steve Bloom for mentioning Kerry Emanuel's Power Dissipation Index as an alternative to Accumulated Cyclone Energy. (Also see Steve's comment here.) PDI essentially adds up the cube of a storm's velocity, while ACE adds up the square. Emanuel has a reason for this (details here), which I'm still trying to understand. It's not intuitively obvious to me that that's a better measure; it does, though, track sea surface temperatures:

This graph is from Emanuel's 2007 paper in Journal of Climate.

von Neumann Quote

From the blog of Ben Horowitz:

Surprisingly, More Renewables than Nuclear

Who would have guessed: worldwide, there is now more installed energy capacity for renewable sources than for nuclear, according to a new Pew/Bloomberg survey. (And yes, "installed capacity" doesn't mean "energy production.")

There was $243 B invested in clean energy last year, up 33%. Dismally, the U.S. accounted for only 14% of that -- Europe, 39%. Germany now has more renewable energy installed than the U.S, with 1/4th our population.

China got $54 B of last year's investment, or 22%. Or, $20 billion more than the U.S.

China now produces half the world's wind and solar equipment. We install oil pipelines atop one of the best aquifers in the world from environmentally ravaging tar sands.

Other surprising facts:

• prices of solar panels have dropped 60% in the last 30 months.
• by the end of this year solar modules are expected to cost half what they did 4 years ago.
• Last autumn, Germany's environment ministry reported that renewable-energy jobs had doubled since 2004, to 340,000. Remember that next time a right-winger complains that there are no green jobs.
  

Alberta Tar Sands

Rick Perry's Flu Shot

"The second tack is to run against the lunacy of the opposition. In the same week that scientists announced the discovery of fossils 3.4 billion years old, evidence of explosive growth of early life through evolution, Rick Perry showed he will take his science from the Bible. He called evolution “a theory that’s out there.” If he thinks it is just a theory, he should get last year’s flu shot.

-- Timothy Egan, NY Times, August 26, 2011

Charging Your Car in (one of) Portland's Hip Neighborhoods

You can now charge your electric car at a charging station in one of the hipper neighborhoods in Portland (Hawthorne Blvd SE):

http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2011/08/on_southeast_hawthorne_you_can.html

It may be free -- a commenter to this Oregonian article says that all the charging stations he's seen so far in Oregon are free, as a way for businesses to entice customers:

"...so far all the electric vehicle charging stations I've come across in Oregon have been free to use. Most commercial business will see these as a way to "drive" in some business, kinda like wifi at coffee shops, because of the low cost of electricity (maximum of about $0.23 per hour of charging for the Nissan LEAF).

Personally, I see networks of charging stations coming online charging around $0.50 to $0.75 per hour of charging, with DC Quick Charging (full charge in about 30 minutes) costing about $1.00 to $1.50 per half-hour, but so far nobody has announced any plans."

Someday, probably sooner than we would ever guess, this won't be newsworthy at all....

More on McKibben and Hurricane Irene

While attributing Hurricane Irene to global warming, Bill McKibben also wrote:

Just about the only trauma we haven’t had are hurricanes plowing into the U.S., but that’s just luck—last year was a big storm year, but they all veered out to sea.

which is true (number of tropical storms = 19, major hurricanes = 5, ACE = 165), but 2010's ACE ranked only as 12th highest on the 1950-2010 list, despite it being tied for the warmest year according to NOAA. In particular it was outranked by the years 1950, 1961, 1955, and 1964. He says it was "just luck" that they veered out to sea, which is a classic case of confirmation bias because of course it could just as well be "luck" that Irene has veered up the East Coast.

Ryan Maue, who is with the Naval Research Laboratory in Monterey and who has a PhD in meteorology, and in particular is all over the cyclone statistics, does not see a link between global warming and global tropical cyclone frequency or intensity:

Recent arguments concerning global warming's influence on causing tropical cyclones (hurricanes, typhoons) to become more frequent and more intense has been given much coverage in the media and by some published papers which claim a valid linkage. But observational data shows no such linkage. Despite the global warming of the sea surface that has taken place between the mid 1970s to the late 1990s and the general global warming of the last century, the global numbers of tropical cyclones and hurricanes and their intensity have not shown any significant trends except for the Atlantic where multi-decadal circulation variations in the ocean drive large multi-decadal variations in major hurricane (Cat 3-4-5) numbers.

See as well as his 2009 paper in Geophysical Research Letters.

Finally, I just don't trust McKibben because he is an activist and head of an activist organization that has mouths to feed. They need money, and they see climate change in everything. Last December, in a email to 350.org members sent from Cancun, the site of the climate conference, May Boeve of 350.org wrote:

"Meanwhile, out in the real world, climate impacts are all too visible. Since the negotations began 10 days ago, climate disasters have struck all over the world: flooding in Australia, Venezuela, the Balkans, Columbia, India; wildfires in Israel, Lebanon, Tibet; freak winter storms in Europe and the United States. These events have been devastating--hundreds are dead, and hundreds of thousands have been affected."

Come on. Floods happen. Fires happen. Freak winter storms happen. And hurricanes happen. They always have, and they always will. That doesn't mean that climate change doesn't have an impact or that its something to consider lightly, only that you can't separate out its influence and attribute it in a binary fashion. I think the best statement is something I think Gavin wrote (but now I can't find it): 'There's a little bit of climate change in everything now.'

But that doesn't motivate your funders, I guess.

PS: No, I am not a member of 350.org. I'm not a member of any environmental organizations.

PPS: I am sorry to say something nice about Gavin Schmidt twice in the same day. No, I don't know him, but have met him twice at conferences, and he answers my emails when I ask questions. It's not my fault if he's very quotable.