5 Filters

Of hot years and partial data

Environment
#1

Forgive me for playing devil’s advocate these last couple of days by posting on Environment/Climate issues yet again. I know how this brings out the best in fellow 5filterers.

Among these, but lurking, is @IainDavis whose latest article at OffG is a definite improvement on most of the pieces they have been publishing so far this year. As Iain makes very clear to assert as boldly as the Met Office do that 2023 was the ‘second hottest on record’ really does take some chutzpah given all the gaping holes in the underlying statistics.

Computer models do tend to provide the sort of evidence that their programmers assumed would be the case, not so.

https://off-guardian.org/2024/01/14/was-2023-really-the-second-hottest-year-since-1884/

I think I was in Devon for one of those balmy two weeks that Iain mentions in the article, but somehow escaped without sunstroke. Dartmoor was beautiful but very very wet, much as usual, and Cornwall was like a typical first week at Wimbledon. But that’s England for you.

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#2

Iain is correct to emphasise that the data is provisional. You would expect any robust system to include a percentage of sites being audited throughout the year to pick up any defective weather stations. Where those are detected the only sound response is to exclude that reporting site for every year since it was last audited. Not to extrapolate based on previous years.

To take one manual station (not) at random: the station at Faversham, which recorded the highest ever daytime temperature not all that many years ago, is on what I believe is Crown Estate land at Brogdale. The site used to be operated by the Ministry of Agriculture (under various brands) but has been run by a charity for the last fifteen years.

So: back in the day there would have been at least a few state employees around to report regular, if not daily, recordings. I wonder what resources are available for this these days, especially out-of-season?

(The official Met Office weather station is in the white box)

I wouldn’t want to draw any firm conclusions based on this sample of one…but with the steady sell-off of public assets over many years, the general deskilling and fragmentation of many jobs, and other such factors I would be surprised if readings were as reliable as they used to be or audited as often. I doubt there are many (any?) reporters who care enough to keep their own log of figures. I am guessing that many of the manual recordings are sent in using a password-protected web portal.

Just a few random thoughts. I’m familiar, of course, with arguments about greater population densities and reflected heat from brick, tarmac etc which may distort readings. The Brogdale weather station is now being steadily encroached upon by new estates of poky semi-detached houses, a Premier Inn, Lidl, new roads etc.

In short I share Iain’s scepticism about some aspects of the figures and, in particular, the Met Office’s keenness to share them so early in the year. Will they publish the final (more accurately, the less provisional/audited results) when they are available?

None of which disproves the ‘climate crisis’ hypothesis but really it is a “we are too many” crisis.

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#3

I’ll just make a quick point here that I have probably made before (I only have about 6 things to actually say… I just say them over and over again).

The temperature record is secondary to observed effects of temperature on the planet. We don’t need any thermometers to know that the earth is heating up. Look at the ice extent at the poles for example. Or the increase of extreme weather events that indicate more heat in the atmosphere. Or any number of other factors.

We don’t use thermometers to realise that the planet is heating up - we can see that through direct observation. We need thermometers to try and quantify how much the planet is heating up by - a very different question.

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#4

Sure, but Met Office ought to word their news releases a bit more carefully then. I am assuming the papers more or less cut and paste the whole thing. Insert one or two quotes and the journo doesn’t even need to pick up the phone. (This was what I was taught as a media trainee forty years ago btw, and its a very good reason why news stories seem so alike).

Kobo tells me im 3% the way into Jem Bendell’s Breaking Together btw. A little early for any findings but it reminds me, so far, of Paul Kingsnorth’s Confessions Of A Recovering Environmentalist.

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#5

Thanks @Kieran_Telo - beautiful conclusion:
" I’ve read comics with more credibility than the Met Office’s claim that 2023 was the second warmest year in the UK since 1884."

The Wattsupwiththat site has a long series of reports on the inadequacies of surface temperature gathering which would support Iain’s article.

Incidentally, I hadn’t realised that the article you post actually links to his other articles

which I posted under your “It really doesn’t matter” thread.

cheers

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#6

I’m partial to a bit of hot data myself :slightly_smiling_face: Not too much though.

Here’s a bit of tabloid controversy for when we need to take a break from all that science we’re doing :grin:

In the red corner:

Arctic Ice Loss Rate 20% Worse than Estimated, Says Recent Research

and in the blue corner…

Arctic Sea Ice Soars to Highest Level for 21 Years

Which is right?

I think they may both be misleading, while factual.

The first piece seems to refer to the total weight of ice that has been lost; the miscalculation refers to the ice that breaks off at the edges, that somehow they seem to have neglected.
Does the 20% mean they’ve always miscalculated the ice volume lost? If so would the trend not be the same as before (still a reduction over a long period, I saw in some graph somewhere).
That the piece discusses the impact of the extra water from this extra melting ice would suggest so. It’s not a very detailed report! No link even. But I guess that extra water would be a bad thing - hard to interpret if we’ve been having it all along without realizing.
Does the news indicate a typical modelling banana skin!?

The second piece is no better in terms of reporting. It’s a ‘point in time’ report based on Jan 8th.
The source is partisan-looking blog NoTricksZone

There are graphs on show that only show January. Not sure I can work the thing but

image

This is Number 3 of the slideshow I found myself in that I understood.

The blue line (2023-24) vs the green dotted (2012-13) does at least suggest there was some kind of recovery in the ice in Dec-Jan, though 2012-13 might have been a low year.

It also indicates significant fall over the 40 year median though; not so much in the winter months but that gap is looking big in the summer months.

You pays your money and you pick your links…

Proving - not very much, except most headlines may be agenda-tailored.
Thought it might be of interest.
Cheers

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#7

There’s no way round this @Evvy_dense we’ll just have to look at the 192 pages of search results on “arctic ice” here ( and no doubt elsewhere!)

and these seem to cover only the last 15 years of articles!

cheers

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#8

Thanks @CJ1
Yes there’s probably no getting round the need to look at data. You can always read whoever you find readable that refers to the data, and then look for the other side.

One obvious alarm bell that should have rung during covid is - do you remember every time a new Hydroxychloroquine study came out seeming to reverse the previous one? Yet there was no list you could consult to see ALL the studies. The website c19study.com (and its offshoots, now https://c19hcq.org/) was quite fast off the mark, in a few months - but the trouble is people didn’t know about it.

But most notably, when authorities - and doctors - said there was no evidence that Hcq worked - they NEVER worked with a list of studies. If they did they would have to lie about it.

This was a clear sign of propagandizing - people who keep evidence of what they are claiming out of sight, or at arms length.
Anyone unbiased who claims the science is settled should have the evidence at their fingertips and be splashing it around, and (if the issue is of such burning urgency) probably annoying everybody!
Cheers

Edit: I think starting with Iain Davis (not read his trilogy yet) would be useful. I like his depth and he seems to have an instinct as to when to dig deeper and when it’s a waste of time.
After Covid and the rest he may not be neutral anymore (but who is?)
I wonder who @admin 's go-to data person is!? Does Jem B do data analysis?

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#9

I hadn’t either. I did notice there was reference made to a site listing all the genocide statements of intent- apparently 500! I’ll edit in the link when I find it.

Cheers

Ps here are a couple of links:

" “The intent is the most difficult element to determine,” explains the UN Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect.

“But in this case, the intent” has been made “explicit” in the statements “by the Prime Minister, the President, by senior cabinet members and by the military leaders. These statements clearly constitute the mental element of the crime of genocide,” Hannah Bruinsma, a legal advisor at Law for Palestine, said at the panel discussion.

“We have collected so far 500 statements that demonstrate” the genocidal intent, “often of those in the chain of command,” she added. Such statements of genocidal intent have been made since the early days of the war on Gaza and systematically repeated time and again."

Of course the actual list of 500 is very difficult to find! It may need a note to Hannah Bruinsma, a legal advisor at Law for Palestine.

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South Africa files case at ICJ accusing Israel of ‘genocidal acts’ in Gaza
#10

Deserves to be called Israelgenocideintent.org? :frowning_face:

I think they have the 500+ and are arranging them. There is a table here:
by Desicion makers, Army personnel, Legislators, Journalists and influencers, Public Expressions

Not 500 in yet. They say they’ve still to add: Former government officials.

A pdf here, has about 300.

Cheers

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#11

Hi ED

That the arctic sea ice had been in decline for many decades is not in doubt. I would look to the scientific literature rather than “bnn breaking news”. My experience is that the scientists do a better job of explaining and handling nuance.

(And I think I’d throw the daily skeptic into the bin, personally. Were they the people who were constantly displaying mixed up COVID stats during the pandemic? Maybe I’m mixing them up with someone else…)

Anyway you’re right about point-in-time Vs long term trend. The arctic had been losing ice to warming for decades now in a very clear signal of rising temperatures. Same is true of Greenland.

The Antarctic seems to be a different story (very different geography for one thing). But there are early signs that it too is starting to lose ice.

It’s all very worrying. And the are loads more natural signals like these that indicate a warning planet. No thermometers required.

#12

What a nonsense.

You could just look at any graph of the arctic sea ice over the last 40 years and see the trend.

It’s very clear.

WUWT is like relying on British American Tobacco for a discussion on the health benefits of smoking. Worse than useless

#13

I’ll hold up my hand on the annoying everybody part. I’ve posted a load of links to data on this site over the years. And previous sites that we won’t mention. Quite a lot of splashing in fact.

Did anyone even look at it?

No. In fact posters on this very board have told me straight up that they don’t care what the data says, they don’t believe in climate change and that’s that

No more bothering to post data for me.

The fact remains that the planet is warming and that this is proven beyond doubt.

The fact remains it’s human activity that’s responsible. Again, proven beyond doubt.

The data is out there for anyone who wants to see it… scientists are literally protesting in the streets, getting arrested and even committing suicide in theur efforts to raise awareness.

A paid cadre of corporate sponsored shills like WUWT are doing their best to cast doubt. History still judge those people appropriately.

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#14

I forgot to say @Evvy_dense that I see that the Morrison article sources the data from a highly reputable Danish scientist’s published scientific paper which isn’t just a blog post! Although many observers of scientific peer reviewed papers like John Ioannidis find very little to praise in the majority of them so we shouldn’t knock blog posts from people who have solid track records, imo.

cheers

#15

It’s not proven beyond doubt. Nothing is.

How can it be proven beyond doubt when we cannot model clouds?

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#16

:laughing:

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#17

Admin: And I think I’d throw the daily skeptic into the bin, personally. Were they the people who were constantly displaying mixed up COVID stats during the pandemic? Maybe I’m mixing them up with someone else…

Was it the Daily Expose?

My bin is a dynamic place. The Daily Sceptic were in it for being right wing, but I fished them out after a useful heads up on Test Negative study design, which seemed to be a vaccine advocacy invention with no science behind it.

Really these days we need lots of bins, like the recycling.

What do you do if you find the perfect climate change political group who come up with stuff like this:

Parents who refuse children gender change face seven years in jail in Scotland

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/parents-who-refuse-children-gender-change-face-seven-years-in-jail-in-scotland/ar-AA1mHusw

Cheers

2 Likes
#18

Fair enough. Science does progress by challenging dominant narratives, after all. So where are the studies showing that the world is not warming? Where are the studies showing that CO2 is not rising? Where are the studies showing that the ice is not melting? Where are the studies showing that the frequency of extreme weather events is not increasing?

The study of clouds is important in understanding exactly how rising CO2 will impact the earth. Clouds don’t negate the greenhouse effect. Clouds don’t change the fact that all measurements from land, sea, air and space show the world warming.

As far as I know there are no measurements - literally zero - taken by anyone over the last 100 years that contradict the basic facts that underpin our understanding of climate change and the theories that underpin it.

But I’m open to the scientific studies that show that world isn’t warming. Please post all such studies to the board.

#19

Yes it was - my mistake.

Lol - touché

:hushed:

We live in a crazy world … My approach is to read the papers where I can. Going to the source us usually best

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#20

Reversal of onus? Like saying please show vaccines are killing x% of people. No, they are supposed to be proven safe. I know it’s unfair (:insincere: :smiling_imp: ), but new medicines are guilty until proven innocent.

Also let’s not forget that the case you are making on MMCC is that the world is warming AND that CO2 is the culprit.

If TPTB are making such a case, and requiring massive sacrifices on the strength of it, it requires answering all the objections - not hiding from them or attacking everyone that raises one. They aren’t all shills; and when there is a narrative pushed by The Powers on to The Rest, the rest are disadvantaged by the power disparity that has them scrambling to organise - after which they are accused of being organised - and keep going financially, then the shills and grifters of then powerful (a far easier role to posture reasonableness in) accuse them of shilling and grifting. That big black brush, spreading guilt by association on ordinary people asking questions - it’s a dynamic I’ve pointed out before.
Cheers

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