A graphic tale

This is a wee story of days gone by, imparted to me in the seventies.

Once upon a time there was a small laboratory on the edge of the great unknown. Not too far from Birmingham to be more precise. This little laboratory carried out basic tests on waste water such as sewage effluent, including a test for ammonia.

A simple chemical test was used where a colour develops in the test cell, the intensity of colour indicating how much ammonia is present in the water sample. Light absorbed by the colour allows an ammonia concentration to be read off from a previously prepared calibration graph.

In this case the calibration graph was kept in a drawer where it had been stored for so long that it had become tatty and disreputable as laboratory paperwork usually did in those days. It had never been checked either, until that fatal day when some keen person decided to recalibrate the test and draw a brand new graph on a fresh sheet of graph paper.

Oh dear.

The old calibration graph turned out to be wrong by a factor of two. For years, ammonia concentrations in the effluent had been reported as twice what they actually were.

What to do?

During the following few months, the scientists concerned made a series of small adjustments to their calibration graph, eventually bringing it into line with reality. Nobody was any the wiser, although a welcome improvement in the ammonia levels of the effluent did not go unnoticed.

Not a typical episode in scientific history I should add. It took place in the sixties too. Not a reliable period, yet by analogy it provokes a question. Do climate modellers intend to do something similar if the climate continues to misbehave? Of course in a sense the Met Office already has.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Dead Man's Fingers

Xylaria polymorpha or Dead Man's Fingers growing on a dead tree near Cromford in Derbyshire. Good name isn't it? 

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Lentil-knitters of the world, unite!

If you haven't seen it, there is a fascinating finding from the CERN CLOUD experiment about the possible effect of amines on cloud nucleation in the upper atmosphere.

Amines are atmospheric vapours closely related to ammonia, and are emitted both from human activities such as animal husbandry, and from natural sources. Amines are responsible for odours emanating from the decomposition of organic matter that contains proteins. For example, the smell of rotten fish is due to trimethylamine. The CLOUD experiment's unique ultra-clean chamber allowed the collaboration to demonstrate that the extremely low concentrations of amines typically found in the atmosphere - a few parts per trillion by volume - are sufficient to combine with sulphuric acid to form highly stable aerosol particles at high rate

Source : http://www.interactions.org/cms/?pid=1033278

Animal husbandry eh? Maybe that's one small step for climate science, a giant leap for vegans.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

John Cook's Climate Change Mythbusters 17

This is part of a series reposting material from John Cook's Skeptical Science website. Although he is a physicist rather than a specialist in climate science, he is a convinced "global warmist" and tries to rebut frequently-raised objections to the theory. However, it is always possible to question the data (e.g. this valuable note about measuring temperature) and the line of argument. Please help advance the debate - with facts and logic.

What do the 'Climategate' hacked CRU emails tell us?

Link to this page

What the science says...

Select a level...	Intermediate		Advanced
A number of independent investigations from different countries, universities and government bodies have investigated the stolen emails and found no evidence of wrong doing. Focusing on a few suggestive emails, taken out of context, merely serves to distract from the wealth of empirical evidence for man-made global warming.

Climate Myth...

Climategate CRU emails suggest conspiracy:

“[T]he 1079 emails and 72 documents seem indeed evidence of a scandal involving most of the most prominent scientists pushing the man-made warming theory - a scandal that is one of the greatest in modern science. […] emails suggesting conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more.” (Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun)

In November 2009, the servers at the University of East Anglia in Britain were illegally hacked and emails were stolen. When a selection of emails between climate scientists were published on the internet, a few suggestive quotes were seized upon by many claiming global warming was all just a conspiracy. A number of independent enquiries have investigated the conduct of the scientists involved in the emails. All have cleared the scientists of any wrong doing:

1. In February 2010, the Pennsylvania State University released an Inquiry Report that investigated any 'Climategate' emails involving Dr Michael Mann, a Professor of Penn State's Department of Meteorology. They found that "there exists no credible evidence that Dr. Mann had or has ever engaged in, or participated in, directly or indirectly, any actions with an intent to suppress or to falsify data". On "Mike's Nature trick", they concluded "The so-called “trick”1 was nothing more than a statistical method used to bring two or more different kinds of data sets together in a legitimate fashion by a technique that has been reviewed by a broad array of peers in the field."
2. In March 2010, the UK government's House of Commons Science and Technology Committee published a report finding that the criticisms of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) were misplaced and that CRU’s "Professor Jones’s actions were in line with common practice in the climate science community".
3. In April 2010, the University of East Anglia set up an international Scientific Assessment Panel, in consultation with the Royal Society and chaired by Professor Ron Oxburgh. The Report of the International Panel assessed the integrity of the research published by the CRU and found "no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit".
4. In June 2010, the Pennsylvania State University published their Final Investigation Report, determining "there is no substance to the allegation against Dr. Michael E. Mann".
5. In July 2010, the University of East Anglia published the Independent Climate Change Email Review report. They examined the emails to assess whether manipulation or suppression of data occurred and concluded that "The scientists’ rigor and honesty are not in doubt".
6. In July 2010, the US Environmental Protection Agency investigated the emails and "found this was simply a candid discussion of scientists working through issues that arise in compiling and presenting large complex data sets."
7. In September 2010, the UK Government responded to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee report, chaired by Sir Muir Russell. On the issue of releasing data, they found "In the instance of the CRU, the scientists were not legally allowed to give out the data". On the issue of attempting to corrupt the peer-review process, they found "The evidence that we have seen does not suggest that Professor Jones was trying to subvert the peer review process. Academics should not be criticised for making informal comments on academic papers".
8. In February 2011, the Department of Commerce Inspector General conducted an independent review of the emails and found "no evidence in the CRU emails that NOAA inappropriately manipulated data".
9. In August 2011, the National Science Foundation concluded "Finding no research misconduct or other matter raised by the various regulations and laws discussed above, this case is closed".

Just as there are many independent lines of evidence that humans are causing global warming, similarly a number of independent investigations have found no evidence of falsification or conspiracy by climate scientists.

"Mike's Nature trick" and "hide the decline"

The most quoted email is from Phil Jones discussing paleo-data used to reconstruct past temperatures (emphasis mine):

"I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."

"Mike's Nature trick" refers to a technique (aka "trick of the trade") used in a paper published in Nature by lead author Michael Mann (Mann 1998). The "trick" is the technique of plotting recent instrumental data along with the reconstructed data. This places recent global warming trends in the context of temperature changes over longer time scales.

 

The most common misconception regarding this email is the assumption that "decline" refers to declining temperatures. It actually refers to a decline in the reliability of tree rings to reflect temperatures after 1960. This is known as the "divergence problem" where tree ring proxies diverge from modern instrumental temperature records after 1960. The divergence problem is discussed in the peer reviewed literature as early as 1995, suggesting a change in the sensitivity of tree growth to temperature in recent decades (Briffa 1998). It is also examined more recently in Wilmking 2008 which explores techniques in eliminating the divergence problem. So when you look at Phil Jone's email in the context of the science discussed, it is not the schemings of a climate conspiracy but technical discussions of data handling techniques available in the peer reviewed literature. More on the hockey stick divergence problem...

Trenberth's "travesty we can't account for the lack of warming"

The second most cited email is from climate scientist and IPCC lead author Kevin Trenberth. The highlighted quote is this: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." This has been most commonly interpreted (among skeptics) as climate scientists secretly admitting amongst themselves that global warming really has stopped. Trenberth is actually discussing a paper he'd recently published that discusses the planet's energy budget - how much net energy is flowing into our climate and where it's going (Trenberth 2009).

 

In Trenberth's paper, he discusses how we know the planet is continually heating due to increasing carbon dioxide. Nevertheless, surface temperature sometimes shows short term cooling periods. This is due to internal variability and Trenberth was lamenting that our observation systems can't comprehensively track all the energy flow through the climate system. More on Trenberth's travesty...

The full body of evidence for man-made global warming

An important point to realise is that the emails involve a handful of scientists discussing a few pieces of climate data. Even without this data, there is still an overwhelming and consistent body of evidence, painstakingly compiled by independent scientific teams from institutions across the world.

What do they find? The planet is steadily accumulating heat. When you add up all the heat building in the oceans, land and atmosphere plus the energy required to melt glaciers and ice sheets, the planet has been accumulating heat at a rate of 190,260 Gigawatts over the past 40 years (Murphy 2009). Considering a typical nuclear power plant has an output of 1 Gigawatt, imagine over 190,000 power plants pouring their energy output directly into heating our land and oceans, melting ice and warming the air.

 

This build-up of heat is causing ice loss across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Both Greenland and Antarctica are losing ice at an accelerated rate (Velicogna 2009, ). Even East Antarctica, previously thought to be too cold and stable, is now losing ice mass (Chen 2009). Glacier shrinkage is accelerating. Arctic sea ice has fallen so sharply, observations exceed even the IPCC worst case scenario. The combination of warming oceans and melting ice has resulted in sea level rise tracking the upper limit of IPCC predictions.

 

Rising temperatures have impacted animal and plant species worldwide. The distribution of tree lines, plants and many species of animals are moving into cooler regions towards the poles. As the onset of spring is happening earlier each year, animal and plant species are responding to the shift in seasons. Scientists observe that frog breeding, bird nesting, flowering and migration patterns are all occurring earlier in the year (Parmeson 2003). There are many other physical signs of widespread warming. The height of the tropopause, a layer in our atmosphere, is rising (Santer 2003). Arctic permafrost, covering about 25% of Northern Hemisphere land, is warming and degrading (Walsh 2009). The tropical belt is widening (Seidel 2007). These results are all consistent with global warming.

 

What’s causing this heat build-up? Humans are emitting huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere - 29 billion tonnes in 2009 (CDIAC). Greenhouse theory predicts that more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will trap heat energy as it escapes out to space. What do we observe? Carbon dioxide absorbs heat at certain wavelengths. Satellites over the past 40 years find less heat escaping to space at these wavelengths (Harries 2001, Griggs 2004, Chen 2007). Where does the heat go? Surface measurements find more heat returning back to the Earth's surface (Philipona 2004). Tellingly, the increase occurs at those same carbon dioxide absorption wavelengths (Evans 2006). This is the human fingerprint in global warming.

 

There are multiple lines of empirical evidence that global warming is happening and human activity is the cause. A few suggestive emails may serve as a useful distraction for those wishing to avoid the physical realities of climate change. But they change nothing about our scientific understanding of humanity’s role in global warming.

Last updated on 18 March 2012 by dana1981. View Archives

Printable Version | Offline PDF Version | Link to this page Related Arguments

• Scientists tried to 'hide the decline' in global temperature
• Skeptics were kept out of the IPCC?
• CRU tampered with temperature data
• Peer review process was corrupted
• Freedom of Information (FOI) requests were ignored

 

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

From money to weather to money

Martin Armstrong's latest post advertises Planalytics Inc, a company specialising on business-relevant weather forecasting. According to Armstrong, he was connected with its forerunner, Strategic Weather, and the system employs cyclical models that he claims are far more accurate than traditional forecasting methods.

Armstrong has been interested in cycles for over 40 years, having developed his own "Economic Confidence Model" for investment. It's based on an 8.6-year cycle that when multiplied by the number of days in the solar year (365.25) yields a number approximating to Pi (π), which is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Why this number should be relevant to investment is a mystery to me, but it appears to work for Armstrong.

Anyhow, an approach that started with business is now applied to weather and then back to business - a cycle of its own.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

The bonds of behaviour

It seems to me that one of life’s little problems is conversation, or rather lack of conversation. How many people are there in your particular circle with whom you have meaty conversations. Serious conversations about the existence of God, life on other planets, climate change, political correctness, moral standards or whatever.

Is it related to this dumbing-down we keep hearing about? Maybe not, maybe it’s more fundamental. To my mind it has something to do with the fact, at least I think it’s a fact, that we are not encouraged to be analytical with respect to our own behaviour.

One of the oldest and most enduring social discoveries is the idea that we simply respond to a stimulus in a way that has previously been positive for us and avoid those which have been negative. It goes back at least as far as the pleasure/pain principle of Epicurus, although to my mind the word pleasure has too many physical connotations and peace is often better.

From Wikipedia

For Epicurus, the purpose of philosophy was to attain the happy, tranquil life, characterized by ataraxia—peace and freedom from fear—and aponia—the absence of pain—and by living a self-sufficient life surrounded by friends.

However we describe it, our lives are a record of positive and negative impacts and feedbacks and the way they made us what we are. It’s a simple enough philosophy and very powerful but we don’t make much direct use of it. Yet the rich and powerful have always used it as the primary method of social control. It is used today in mind-boggling detail and presumably always will be.

We don’t seem teach the pleasure/pain principle to children in any systematic way though, even though the idea is simple, suited to role playing and the value of it screamingly obvious. I wonder why?

Perhaps the whole idea is just too revealing?

The rich and powerful still need it as much as ever because they don’t have anything else. So they have to use it covertly, obliquely or at least keep it below the mainstream radar most of the time.

David Cameron’s reference to nudge theory is an obvious example of how the idea is still seen as politically unidirectional – from rulers to ruled. After all, anyone might reasonably ask how Cameron responds to nudges from the electorate. Maybe he responds to winks from his cronies instead.

Sip a cup of coffee and put it down because it is too hot. Stimulus and response – we are bound by it throughout our lives but rarely bring it into the open and admit the mechanical nature of much of what we do – much of what we are. Maybe there is anticipated pain which prevents us from knowing too much about ourselves.

A painful shattering of illusions perhaps?

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Energy Policy: Omnibus Post

For most of the time we are all capable of sailing serenely on in ignorance of how fundamentally our world-views differ from those of others; but once in a while the chasm is illuminated by a bolt from the blue.

One such event happened when Miliband launched his 'energy price freeze' policy.  I and many others in the 'sphere and MSM alike immediately clapped our hands to our heads and proclaimed, that's it ! - he's completely lost it, and shot himself in the vitals on prime-time TV to boot.  We clearly thought the lunacy of it would be obvious to all.

But not a bit of it, because the reaction of other commentators was: a price freeze - so what ?  No big deal, even if it's not something we particularly applaud; and anyhow, the energy companies had it coming. 

In other words, there is no general consensus or shared understanding on some pretty basic energy market concepts.  So here are some responses to the interesting exchanges between 'Timbo', 'BE' and 'BQ' on the comments thread to a recent C@W post.  I'm going to focus on short- / medium-term, (say, out to 15 years hence) because the really long-term stuff is unknowable, thanks to technology shifts we can barely guess at.  (In which latter category I place Timbo's fascinating comments on electricity storage, the Holy Grail of energy policy which would transform the landscape.)

The paramount fundamental is that electricity has staggering high 'utility value', i.e. people (in developed economies) will pay almost any price to get it.  Second only to food, for most people.  (Water comes third because you can generally makes your own arrangements, up to a point.)  By this standard, as Timbo wrote, "...how cheap the grid is.  It's dirt cheap".  And when people will pay almost any price ... things can go horribly wrong.

Notwithstanding various developments in micro- and distributed-generation, and predictions of more to come, the kind of electricity and energy we all want - permanently available, in bulk, almost everywhere we go, and relatively cheap - requires centralised 'organisation' (grids, despatch and balancing systems), if not actually 20th-century style centralised generation.  And this isn't just power for domestic use, schools and hospitals: as BQ said, "you can't run a blast furnace on wood".  The saintly George Moonbat tried very hard to run a self-sufficient smallholding in Wales, and just about managed OK for a couple of years until he had a bad winter - after which he suddenly became a convert to nuclear power.

It used to be thought (and still is, in some dark quarters) that only centralised ownership, or at least centralised control, could deliver the goods: but this was comprehensively disproved in the UK and other regions with the advent of full bilateral (self-despatching) markets at the beginning of this century, which not only confounded the statists dirigistes by working at all, they worked better, and reduced electricity costs as their proponents (incl. yours truly) said they would.  Even the Labour Party still signs up for this, (see Caroline Flint on Brillo's Sunday programme: and the changes that brought it about in in the UK 2001 were put through Parliament by Mandelson) so dissenters are up against it politically.

But there are problems.  Firstly, bilateral market structures, though basically robust, are vulnerable to large-scale interference by the heavy-handed and dull-witted.  This includes many politicians and almost all civil servants.  In particular, there is a limit to how much ill-considered (indeed, sometimes actually infeasible) 'decarbonisation' policy can be loaded onto a market framework without it buckling.   Of course, in this country the rot started under Miliband lui-même when in power - oh the irony - but has been further perpetrated here by t'Coalition (and on an even more manic scale in Germany).  

(As an aside, the chronic state of our Heath-Robinson energy policy makes it very easy for any politician to score a few easy and populist points against it.  That Miliband is the first one to do so on a grand scale, is just hilarious.)

The second point is that those bilateral market structures are relatively new and by no means perfected, even before they started to be messed with.  In particular, (a) liquidity in some parts of the power markets, here and elsewhere, left quite a lot to be desired.  Liquidity, for those who don't have an instinct for it (this includes many politicians and almost all civil servants ...) is absolutely vital for markets to deliver for consumers. Ofgem, which had this forcibly brought to their attention nearly a decade ago, has been farting around ineffectually on the issue ever since.

(b) A related point: the state of competition is unsatisfactory.  There is no reason why the current UK  'supply' set-up - 6 massive players plus a host of lesser ones - shouldn't make for a competitive market.  It is, in fact, more competitive than many people give it credit for.  But there's a damaging, mutually reinforcing effect at work:  unsatisfactory wholesale liquidity makes suppliers migrate towards vertical integration (i.e., becoming generators as well), which further reduces liquidity ... etc etc.  

[To illustrate: Centrica set out in 1996 intending to be a capital-S Specialised Supplier (of gas and power), with no power generation at all and limited gas production of its own (the 'merchant', or 'Enron' model).  But over the years, they found liquidity in the wholesale markets less than satisfactory.  So they have slowly become more and more vertically integrated, to the point where now they have about 75% cover for their supply obligations from their own 'upstream' assets (power plants, gas fields and some large long-term purchases).  This means that, where once they were trading in the wholesale markets for almost all their needs, they are now only trading for 25% (net) of their needs, plus some spec trading etc.]

Two dreadful policy decisions have gravely exacerbated this situation.  The first was to allow large-scale vertical integration by acquisition.  This was of course re-integration, because throughout the whole of the 1990's, Ofgas and Offer (the worthy predecessors of Ofgem) had been preoccupied with breaking up the old verticals (themselves the products of the two big privatisations of the 1980s).  The worst examples of vertical integration by acquisition were (1) Powergen's purchase of Eastern Electricity and other UK assets, followed by E.on's subsequent purchases of both Powergen here and Ruhrgas in Germany; (2) EDF's purchase of British Energy.  These should have been stopped by UK and EC regulators - not because vertical integration is intrinsically wicked, but because the markets weren't sufficiently liquid at the time.  (In fact, truly liquid markets make vertical integration a very dubious commercial proposition - which is the virtuous-circle side of the liquidity picture.  We are stuck with the vicious circle.) 

The second disaster for the liquidity/competition downward spiral is the manner in which decarbonisation is being pursued.  In the UK this means the ridiculous 'Electricity Market Reforms', which - take it from me - undermine liquidity still further, even as ministers and Ofgem continue to pay lip-service to the need for better liquidity.  It's hugely perverse, because several critical aspects of EMR are wholly dependent on there being deeply liquid markets in existence.  They will fail miserably, and piecemeal government interventions of the most grotesque kind will result - the civil servants can hardly contain their excitement at the prospect.  And they will probably keep the lights on, because we can and will pay (see above) - almost any price.

Which brings us back to Miliband's 'price freeze'.  I've banged on too long already to dissect this in detail.  Suffice to repeat: it's bonkers, it's a cheap populist shot, and will have negative consequences far outweighing any limited relief it may deliver to consumers.  Interestingly, in answer to Brillo's questions Caroline Flint (who, it must be said, was quite well briefed) quickly mentioned the really significant new Labour policy, which is to re-introduce something akin to the 'Pool market' (i.e. an end to the bilateral / self-despatch system) which was how things were run here in the 1990's.  It wasn't a disaster, but it was definitely very inefficient.  And - oh, how these things go full circle - it was dreamed up by Oliver sh*t-for-brains Letwin ! (Who still hankers after it, I can tell you, as do civil servants and all the old CEGB dinosaurs.)


This post first appeared on the Capitalists@Work blog



 
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.