[ale] Disappointed in the recent climate research hack

[Greg Freemyer]

On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 4:15 PM, Jeff Layton <laytonjb at att.net> wrote:
> Sorry for the top posting :)
>
> There are some climate modeling apps that are open-source. You can
> cruise around and find them (e.g. WRF, POP3, CAM, etc.). Some are
> very tightly controlled by the labs (NCAR, UCAR, and universities)
> to prevent and/or control problems. For example, any one could grab
> a random data set, run it through the code, and out pops results that they
> could be used to argue a conclusion one way or the other ("hey the
> application gave me the answers so that much mean they are right!").
>
> The scientific process, as Jim pointed out, is pretty thorough. They look
> at the data itself, the application (both the model and any comparison of
> the resulting application to known data sets), and then the interpretation
> of the data with a microscope.

I've found myself reading back through some archives at
"wattsupwiththat.com".  If you focus on the links to external articles
and ignore the reader comments you get a sense of some of the more
troublesome articles that are being published in the area of climate
change.

A recent one was talking about margin of error in the global
temperature projections.  I have a physics degree and was taught how
to track that through an experiment and determine the overall margin
of error for the resulting calculations.

This article basically said that since none of the popular climate
models had been able to predict the actual climate behavior for the
last 10 years, that the margin of error was too small and thus
recommended increasing it significantly.

I don't think it was a true peer reviewed article, but it was a
publication from a serious climate change institute.  (I don't
remember which one.  Maybe the British Met.)

> This same process s true for many scientific and engineering disciplines.
> If you develop a new model or technique you need to apply it against
> known data sets and compare the results. Only after passing these tests
> is it accepted by the community.

Again, from what I've read, none of the established models pass the
above test given the last 10 years actual data.  I do not think that
is a inflammatory statement.  It appears to be accepted as true by the
majority of the researchers in the climate change field.

The trouble seems to be that to modify a model to account for the last
10 years actual data you have to add in a major addition factor.  That
in turn lowers the effect of CO2.  Not a politically attractive option
at present.

Many argue that adding in solar variation as a factor allows for a
better match to the measure values over the last 30 years or so.  (A
time frame when we do have reasonably good data.)

At present that argument does not seem to be getting much traction in
the Al Gore world of climate change.  Again the issue seems to be if
half of global heating during 80's and 90's was attributable to solar
variation, then only half is attributable to CO2, and thus our 100
year out projections are twice as big of an increase than they should
be.  (ie. Solar variation comes and goes, so it will have no effect on
the 100 yr projections.)

> But as Jim points out, that doesn't give
> you a free ride  - you still have to be very rigorous with applying the
> application to other problems. You have to do simple sanity checks, any
> quick comparisons to simple models, interpret any "strange" results, and
> defend your conclusions. I ran through this process when I was doing
> research. You have to be thorough if you want people to listen to you
> or believe your data - otherwise you are viewed as a "nut" (I guess the
> closest thing in the open-source world would be a troll). While it can be
> a very harsh process from the outside, it usually is viewed as a more
> rigorous process from inside.

>They even argue about the know data
> sets ("test cases") to make sure the data is correct (were the sensors
> calibrated correctly? How did you prove they were calibrated correctly?

I've seen several articles at wattsupwiththat.com raising those very
issues.  But it appears the more broadly used datasets have not had
that level of analysis performed.  And sense the consensus belief is
only a .7 degree rise in global temp in the last 100 years, data
accuracy is a major problem.

In the modern era apparently it is common for temp to be measured near
airports.  But the heating effect of large areas of asphalt is not
taken into account.

Apparently it is still argued whether 1934 or 1998 was the hottest
year in the last century.

> Did you do some basic sanity checks? If so, what where they? What are
> the sources of error in the measurements? How was it measured? How
> is the error source(s) propagated into the measurements? Was the data files
> checked for errors when it was copied from the test systems? How was
> the data checked? On and on).
>
> My area is aeronautical/astronautical engineering and I can tell one story
> where NASA ran some wind tunnel tests with their new cryogenic wind
> tunnel (allows them to get data at conditions they couldn't previously
> achieve otherwise). Turns out they didn't check the data after the test.
> The force
> measurements should have been the same when the tunnel was not blowing
> air before the test started and after the test ended. The problem was -
> no one
> checked that until much later. Oops. NASA ultimately found the problem and
> corrected it but the data was not overly useful at that point so they had to
> go back and redo the tests.

Did you see the major article a couple months ago about the first
passage of the North East passage.  I did.  It triggered my recent
interest in the reality of all the global warming claims. I read a big
article in the New York Times about it.

Turns out it was a specific freight companies first passage.  The
freight route itself has been in general use for 75 years.  Someone
apparently misread a press release from that company and it hit
newspapers around the world that ice was drastically receding North of
Europe / Russia.

Never saw a retraction, but I didn't know to be looking for it until recently.

Greg