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The 2nd edition of Chris Essex and Ross McKitrick’s Taken By Storm: the Troubled Science, Policy and Politics of Global Warming, can be now ordered from Canada stores. (International distribution next spring.) The first edition sold out. |
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From the foreword by the distinguished Sir Mortimer Long-Bore;
I had initially supposed this to be a book of independent thinking and skeptical attitude. My fears were well-founded. The authors recklessly question the widely-accepted doctrines of global warming and the conclusions of the very eminent International Expert Panel on Climate Change [sic]. This is deeply disturbing to me. We cannot allow people to undermine the consensus position on global warming, after all the effort that went into imposing it.
The greenhouse effect is lifting the global temperature to dangerous levels. This is proven by elementary Newtonian physics as used in our most advanced computer climate models. The global temperature is warmer today than ever before in the planet’s history; modern computerized climate models can predict future warming with impressive numerical precision; the greenhouse “fingerprint” has been positively identified in global temperature data. We have complete certainty that our future is imperiled. We observe that sea levels are rising, storms are increasingly violent, droughts and floods ravage the land, animals are dying, and the Arctic ice cap is gone, I am told. One reels at the horror of it all.
The authors are wrong to question any of this. Morally wrong. Nor are the authors even qualified to make commentary on this sublime topic. One is an applied mathematician who apparently works on topics in radiation and fluid dynamics. The other is an economist who studies environmental policy. What claim has either to expertise on global warming or climate change? For tutelage on issues of such importance I counsel reliance on the authority of qualified experts. You may find, as I did, the book An Inconvenient Truth to be greatly informative in this respect.
Just in time for your Christmas lawn chair!
Update – Dr. McKitrick responds to “critics” (that’s a polite word for it) in the comments.
What is about ‘stop feeding the trolls’ that you people do not understand !!! ???
Kate, any way to program so that certain posters have their comments headed;
* ‘Warning; Troll Ahead. Those caught feeding will be prosecuted.’ *
That’s not fair ?? Vandalism is not fair either. And besides, it is Kate’s blog and she can do what she wants.
Everybody deserves the benefit of the doubt — a few times. That, IMO, has long past for some of the trolls here.
de smog is all troll all the time. (Not even nominated for best science blog) Troll comments should be defaulted there 🙂
“Nobody is qualified to become a statesman who is entirely ignorant of the problem of wheat.’ –
Socrates on leaders.
“I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.” – Samuel Butler – now how did he know about AGW?
Albatros: I’ll believe this climate change stuff when you, or one of you climate change heroes, can give a reasonably accurate forecast for next weekend’s weather.
“”put a human face on numbers”. What the heck is that?”
If you can’t understand that ET there is no hope in you understanding any of it. That’s often the problem with the right, you think in black and white. There is no grey in your world. You can’t understand that people have reasons for straying from the norm when committing a crime. By understanding the reasons crime, it can be prevented before it is committed. In doing so live and property can be saved and money can be saved by not needed to support people in jail you adjust the cause of crime before it happens and by fixing the end result.
“Would you please provide some proof that ‘an economist simply lacks understanding…”
Read anything by Bjorn Lomborg (and think critically when you do it ET).
“You admit that we don’t know enough about climate to regulate it! So, how can you believe in AGW? Are you serious – do you think that we humans can ever regulate climate????”
You just love those straw men, don’t you ET? Let me explain it to you in simple terms ET, just for you. We know it’s broken, we know what’s causing it. We don’t know how badly it’s broken. The problem is, with people like you running around, we can’t fix it.
“Are you saying that the leaders of the world’s countries ought to be elected on the basis of their acceptance of AGW and their actions on dealing with it?”
Where did you dream up that I said that? Are you having an imaginary argument with someone else.
“No, my comment about your experience relates to your use of it to assert your opinion that your claims about AGW are valid.”
My claims about the experience you are referring at that point had no connection to climate. Once again you are reading things that are not there.
“Hasn’t it occurred to you that a nation rests on their economic robustness – and that therefore, an economist is a pragmatic choice?”
Absolutely not! The best choice in a leader is one that can think beyond profit in the present and consider the future of the nation. An economist should be kept on hand to advise but that is all.
“No, climate is not based on the mechanical principles of laboratory physics and chemistry. You are making a profound error. Climate is not analyzable by reductionist methods used in the lab. Climate is a COMPLEX SYSTEM and therefore, cannot ever be reduced to mechanical procedures.”
Oh my, you are thick headed aren’t you? Climate cannot be studied in a lab but must be broken down to its elements. You can’t study oxygen isotopes but in a lab, but in order to understand climate and understanding of those isotope becomes necessary.
“No, I’m not an Albertan – or ‘wavering capitalist’. I think, albatross, and that means that I critically examine data – and that’s why I don’t accept AGW.”
That’s unwavering, if you’re going to quote me, at least get it right. If you are not one of those, there are more options listed above.
“…no-one on this planet, or elsewhere in the universe, can tell you the costs of NOT doing these actions. Do you know why? Because no-one knows the effects of climate change. No-one.”
Temper, temper. So if in your mind nobody knows the effects of climate change, we therefore shouldn’t try to avoid climate change. Is that what you are trying to say? Don’t you find that just a tiny bit illogical? This isn’t one of those god will save us moments is it?
I believe I have given you much more credit than you deserve ET. You have so far built several straw men. You accuse me of not thinking critically, but I am now convinced you have no clue as what that means. You are completely illogical. You are arguing about things I have not said and you are completely incapable of thinking in the abstract. I’ve obviously wasted far too much time on you already.
Good night.
“Wouldn’t it be better to have eliminated the reason to commit that crime in the first place? ”
This is brilliant Alby. But——–in the meantime, while we work on eliminating the reasons, lets
lock them up anyhow. I. for one, will feel much safer.
Horny Toad
no-one on this planet, or elsewhere in the universe, can tell you the costs of NOT doing these actions. Do you know why? Because no-one knows the effects of climate change. No-one.”
And I might add no one knows what the consequences of our attempt to control climate change. Since we don’t know if climate change is happening, if it is happening what is causing climate change or if our attempts to stop climate change will have positive or negative effects might I suggest our wisest choice is quit taking courses on climate change and go for a walk in the great outdoors.
There is little point in trying to argue with anonymous trolls like albatross, but for everyone else’s benefit let me respond to some of his points, just to confirm the obvious point that he is prone to making stuff up.
*Christopher Essex has never been involved in the Friends of Science. Not that there would be anything wrong with it, but as a point of fact he has never been a member or an advisor.
*The claim that he is in the pay of oil companies is an accusation against his integrity, and is false and defamatory. Prove it, Albatross, or withdraw it. Otherwise you are nothing but a coward and a liar, hiding behind anonymity to throw around slander.
*The science behind TBS is supported in peer-reviewed journals and by a long list of academic endorsements which you can see at takenbystorm.info. To give 2 examples, our discussion of global temperature was the basis of an article in the Journal of Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamics earlier this year; and the problem of solving the Navier-Stokes equation is the subject of a $1 million Clay Institute Challenge. I could give other examples: the string of recent publications on nonstationarity in geophysical data; the recognition of the divergence problem in paleoclimate; the problems of subgrid-scale sensitivity in chaotic computation, etc. Not that these points would mean anything to someone who hasn’t read the book.
* Albatross, you say you’ve done “far” more than I’ve done in the field. You can see my list of economics and physical science publications at http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/papers.html. My latest is in press at the Journal of Geophysical Research. I have given invited lectures on my science work at universities and labs across Canada and the US. I was one of 12 experts from around the world asked to brief the National Academy Panel on surface temperature reconstructions. You’ve done “far more” than all this in the field of climate science? Prove it.
* I worked on the hockey stick with McIntyre, not Essex. It’s not our side that can’t “get over” the hockey stick — Al Gore keeps showing it, except he mistakenly thinks it’s a Thompson ice core series (http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2335). People who think the NRC vindicated it simply haven’t read the NRC report, much less the Wegman Report, which the NRC chairman endorsed in sworn Congressional testimony. The NRC endorsed all the technical criticisms Steve McIntyre and I submitted: See http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2322 and http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/trc.html.
*John C: the error Tim Lambert got excited about was not in the book. It was a numerical example in a talk we gave. Had you or he read the book you’d know this. And he evidently didn’t mention the correction to the example we promptly posted in response to his email on the subject. It was just a numerical example, and easily replaced.
*Eli Rabbett made a meal out of a numerical example in C, which has been changed to K in the new edition. You and he likely never read the JNET paper where we go into the technical detail, otherwise you’d realize the numerical examples are just illustrative. If you read the book instead of just repeating rumours, you’ll see that these blogotchas are trivial and peripheral to the major points in the book.
To everyone else, sorry for the interruption. Enjoy the book. And thanks, Kate, for mentioning it.
“Prove it, Albatross, or withdraw it. Otherwise you are nothing but a coward and a liar, hiding behind anonymity to throw around slander.”
Lawsuit ? There are people here who know who he is.
And according to AL GORE and the society of cracked urns last year was suppost to be the wose in hurricanes and so far nothing this year ether proving GLOBAL WARMING is awhole bunch of poppycock
Wow, Ross, I thank you for your detailed post, primarily because it’s so late.
All I can say is that was one of the most complete smack-downs I’ve seen in a long time. Note how the troll resorted to hatred after it.
We are in your debt.
That came out wrong, Ross.
I thank you, primarily because it was such an awesome smackdown. Only **secondarily** because it’s so late.
Man, I need to get to bed…
Alby – you were banned once before, and I’ll be more than happy to do it again.
Ross: thanks for your comment. I appreciate the fact that you are willing to join in the conversation.
Thanks also for pointing out that the example was not from a book but from a talk. Tim lists the talk as a “briefing on their book”, can you accept this? In regards to your correcting the “error”, that was well done (and also well done to share your spreadsheet with Tim). However in the bit of the e-mail that Tim posts, you did not seem to think that a correction was necessary and in it claimed that the correction was just another way of averaging and there was nothing wrong with your initial method. Since I have not seen the whole e-mail, is that an accurate summation of it?
In regards to the thermodynamic, I thought your point was that different averaging methods can create large differences in the results. If you use Kelvin as opposed to Celsius then a great deal of this difference goes away.
However, you are correct, I have not read your book. Do you have a spare you could send me (either new or old) 😉 .
Thanks,
John
john cross – if you haven’t read the book, then how can you inform us that there were “several substantial errors in the first edition” and that these errors were the reason for the second printing?
Ross did not “promptly” make a correction. I included his reply to my email in my post. Eventually he did make a correction, which I discuss in this post. McKitrick had to invent a new temperature scale in order to salvage his example.
In his JNET paper he has another go where he takes 30th powers of temperatures. I am not kidding.
If you want a short explanation of what’s wrong with their “no such thing as average temperature” argument, read this post.
et: I never said they were the reason for the second printing; since I was not privy to the discussions about the printing I do not know the reasons. I did say that because there were errors in the first, a second would be necessary.
In regards to the errors, I do not need to have read the book to comment on specific parts of it. For example, does not seeing An Inconvenient Truth mean someone can not say it has 9 areas of misunderstanding? Regarding the specific parts, Ross correctly pointed out that his first statement was from a briefing about the book and he agrees with my second point about C and K and notes that his second edition will correct this error.
“Alby – you were banned once before, and I’ll be more than happy to do it again.
Posted by: Kate at November 13, 2007 9:45 AM”
You will ban me for what?
[deleted – your comments were deleted because you insist on trashing up threads with multiple comments of nearly worthless content. In other words – the very definition of troll behavior. I have a generous comment policy here, but at some point I have to draw the line. – ED]
John, the underlying issue we discuss in the book is that, because temperature is an intensive variable, when samples are taken across out-of-equilibrium subsystems there is no statistical formula that can reduce the field to a scalar, without the resulting number losing the properties of a temperature. Hence there is “no global temperature.” We discussed this in heuristic terms in the book and in formal terms in our JNET article. The spreadsheet example was not meant to show the “right” way to calculate the average, only to show that 2 different averaging rules can imply contradictory things about warming versus cooling. In this sense, the treatment of missing values represents another variant in the averaging rule, which was what I was trying to say to Tim.
Our critics keep saying we’re wrong when we argue there isn’t a formula to reduce a non-equilibrium temperature field to a scalar, but they never produce the formula themselves, they only criticize our numerical examples. But we can always fix the numerical examples, because the theory shows that the common averaging formulas don’t resolve the underlying physical problem. This is not affected by using K rather than C.
We ourselves not trying to sell a “correct” formula, we are showing why nobody knows what the correct formula is, and why this matters for interpreting an increase in an average as “global warming”. There are circumstances where the choice of averaging rule does not matter, but measuring global climate change is not one of them.
I’m afraid I can’t spare a copy of TBS2, but I am sure your local bookstore can find you one!
Tim, anyone can post anything on a blog. If you have a valid scientific argument to make, publish it in a scientific journal. Like I say, if we’re wrong to claim there is no formula for the global temperature, write the formula down and send it to a journal. Good luck. Send me a copy when it’s published.
Ross: Thanks for your comments, but I would like to follow up a little more. First, I don’t agree with your idea of there being no temperature associate with an out-of-equilibrium subsystem. While that may be true, on the atomic level I would say that conditions of local thermodynamic equilibrium do exist. Further more these conditions do provide important information.
I just had a read through your JNET article (I assume it is Does a Global Temperature Exist?). It is an interesting read and I thank you for putting it up on your site. However I would like to look at the example there (Figure 1 Four averages over one thermodynamic system.). (I think you say you have changed it for your book, but I only have access to the article for now.) In it you say that depending on how you define average you can see that the “average” are widely different and can be both warming and cooling.
I would disagree that your example shows this. From your example, calculating the 4 different averages using Celsius I get R-1=3.8, R1=17.5, R2=23.4 and R4=27.7 which seem to agree with the results in Figure 1. However using Kelvin I get R-1=16.7, R1=17.5, R2=17.9 and R4=18.7. So the differences are much less. I also find that they are all warming.
You also say there is no physical reason to take one average over another. I disagree and would say that all we need is a simple experiment to tell us which average to use. In my experiment we take a quantity of matter in a well insulated container and to it add another quantity of matter at a different temperature. We close up the container, wait for a sufficient time and then see what the final temperature is.
Regards,
John
Hi John. Yes, if you have local thermodynamic equilibrium then you have a local temperature. There is no problem as long as the subsystem has a function of state. The problem arises if you try to use an average to define a single temperature over two out-of-equilibrium subsystems. That produces a number that violates the properties of a temperature. It may still be informative, and there are certainly cases where the average is good enough for a specific purpose (like comparing Miami and Toronto in January), but we are arguing it is not good enough for typical applications in discussing global climate change. For example, quite apart from all the problems with proxy data, trying to say if the world is warmer today than in the medieval era would certainly fall into the category where the absence of a formally-defined average matters.
The numerical example was set up to work in C, because people are used to C. If we had only calculated the linear mean nobody would blink at the claim that the system had ‘warmed’, so the example shows that this would change if the averaging rule changed. We could set up an example in K, with no guarantee it would work in C. The fact that the C example doesn’t come out the same in K does not prove that averages computed in K always behave the same.
Your experiment concerns relaxation to equilibrium, not evolution of non-equilibrium subsystems. The mixing issue is discussed at the bottom of page 6. Even in that case the choice of average depends on assumptions about the path to equilibrium.
Thanks for your comments! -Ross
Hi Ross: Good of you to continue with this discussion. We seem to disagree on what systems are in local thermodynamic equilibrium. I would argue that a system where the free path of an atom is small compared to the distance over which the temperature changes. Thus we can consider the atmosphere (for example) to be in local thermodynamic equilibrium.
In regards to your example, I am sorry, but I do not accept your point. The averaging rules that you used were based on physical criteria (i.e. the S-B equation). These need K in order to be valid. While you can argue that there are different ways to take an average, the ways must be based in physics.
And I guess that is the point of my little thought experiment. For certain conditions, we can measure that this measurement provides guidance at to which averaging to use – simple, r=4 or sqrt (A*B). As an aside, I can think of no physical reason to have r>4.
Thanks for such an interesting discussion. Regards,
John