Category Archives: Mathematics

Climate Change: Data Or Dogma?

This looks like an interesting (and likely very entertaining) Senate hearing:

Witnesses:

Dr. John Christy
Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science and Director of the Earth System Science Center, University of Alabama in Huntsville

Dr. Judith Curry
Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology

Dr. William Happer
Cyrus Fogg Bracket Professor of Physics, Princeton University

Mr. Mark Steyn
International Bestselling Author

*Additional witnesses may be announced

Stock up on popcorn.

Judith Curry

She is a heretic, who has been cast out of the tribe:

In the run-up to the Paris conference, said Curry, much ink has been spilled over whether the individual emissions pledges made so far by more than 150 countries — their ‘intentional nationally determined contributions’, to borrow the jargon — will be enough to stop the planet from crossing the ‘dangerous’ threshold of becoming 2°C hotter than in pre-industrial times. Much of the conference will consist of attempts to make these targets legally binding. This debate will be conducted on the basis that there is a known, mechanistic relationship between the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and how world average temperatures will rise.

Unfortunately, as Curry has shown, there isn’t. Any such projection is meaningless, unless it accounts for natural variability and gives a value for ‘climate sensitivity’ —i.e., how much hotter the world will get if the level of CO2 doubles. Until 2007, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) gave a ‘best estimate’ of 3°C. But in its latest, 2013 report, the IPCC abandoned this, because the uncertainties are so great. Its ‘likely’ range is now vast — 1.5°C to 4.5°C.

This isn’t all. According to Curry, the claims being made by policymakers suggest they are still making new policy from the old, now discarded assumptions. Recent research suggests the climate sensitivity is significantly less than 3˚C. ‘There’s growing evidence that climate sensitivity is at the lower end of the spectrum, yet this has been totally ignored in the policy debate,’ Curry told me. ‘Even if the sensitivity is 2.5˚C, not 3˚C, that makes a substantial difference as to how fast we might get to a world that’s 2˚C warmer. A sensitivity of 2.5˚C makes it much less likely we will see 2˚C warming during the 21st century. There are so many uncertainties, but the policy people say the target is fixed. And if you question this, you will be slagged off as a denier.’

This is religion, not science.

A Vegan, Liberal Environmentalist

How he went from climate promoter to climate skeptic.

It’s amazing how pathetic the warm mongers’ “arguments” are. It’s one of the ways you can tell it’s not science; it’s ideology and religion.

[Update a while later]

Bjorn Lomborg on the trivial effects of current climate proposals. But the economic impacts would be far from trivial.

Government Data On The “Hiatus”

Judith Curry has some questions:

To what extent did internal discussions occur about the more questionable choices made in adjusting the ocean temperature data?

Was any concern raised about the discrepancies of the new ocean temperature data set and NOAA’s other ocean temperature data set (OISST) that shows no warming since 2003?

Were any Obama administration officials communicating with NOAA about these statements prior to issuing press releases?

Was the release of the land and ocean temperature data sets, which were documented in papers previously published, delayed to follow Karl’s June press release?

Earlier this year, Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., initiated an investigation into possible industry funding of scientists (including myself) who had recently provided Congressional testimony for the Republicans.

While potentially undisclosed industrial funding of research is a legitimate concern, climate science research funding from government is many orders of magnitude larger than industrial funding of such work.

Yup. [Note: She probably didn’t write the headline]

[Update a while later]
More over at her site:

I’ve heard enough behind the scenes (including discussions with NOAA employees) that I am siding with Rep. Smith on this one.

The politicization of climate science has gotten extreme. I don’t know where to start in trying to ameliorate this situation, but Congressional oversight and investigation into what is going on in government labs does not seem inappropriate under these circumstances.

It’s a sad state of affairs that climate science has come to this.

It is indeed.

The Climate-Change Religion

French mathematicians are not impressed:

There is not a single fact, figure or observation that leads us to conclude that the world’s climate is in any way ‘disturbed’. It is variable, as it has always been, but rather less so now than during certain periods or geological eras. Modern methods are far from being able to accurately measure the planet’s global temperature even today, so measurements made 50 or 100 years ago are even less reliable.

Concentrations of CO2 vary, as they always have done; the figures that are being released are biased and dishonest. Rising sea levels are a normal phenomenon linked to upthrust buoyancy; they are nothing to do with so-called global warming. As for extreme weather events – they are no more frequent now than they have been in the past. We ourselves have processed the raw data on hurricanes.

We are being told that ‘a temperature increase of more than 2ºC by comparison with the beginning of the industrial age would have dramatic consequences, and absolutely has to be prevented’. When they hear this, people worry: hasn’t there already been an increase of 1.9ºC? Actually, no: the figures for the period 1995-2015 show an upward trend of about 1ºC every hundred years! Of course, these figures, which contradict public policies, are never brought to public attention.

Of course not.

[Via Steve Milloy]

Narrow-View Cameras

I have a project in mind for which I have some unique requirements. I’d like a low-res, narrow-field webcam, robust enough for all-weather outdoor use. I can’t find anything that meets the requirement in a search, but wonder if anyone has ideas for how to hack one? For instance, if it’s got like a five megapixel sensor, could I easily just look at the center of it, without having to process the whole image? I’ll probably be hitching it to a Raspberry Pi 2.

[Update a while later]

OK, it looks like a standard webcam hooked up to a Raspberry Pi 2, with this software, should give me sufficient power to do what I want.