There are none so blind....

A couple of days ago, I was chatting to a friend in our local watering hole - Yates' in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, UK. I'd been telling him how BBC documentaries had become un-watchable for me, mainly because of the constant and intrusive background music."Don't you watch Attenborough?" he asked "Now there's a guy knows what he's talking about."  I nearly choked on my beer, but said nothing. "It's really getting bad in the Arctic - the polar bears are becoming extinct". I asked why that was. "The ice is melting, and the bears can't catch the seals they feed on". "What do the bears eat in the summer, when there's no ice?" I asked innocently. "They live on the body fat they got in the winter, from eating seals in the winter", he replied. I followed up with a low blow - "Where are the seals in the summer?". "I don't know, on the land, I expect". I had him on the ropes - "Where are the bears in the summer?". He pondered a moment - "they must be on the land too?".

"Then what's the problem - seals on land, bears on land - bears catch seals, bears eat seals, period?". "It's not as simple as that" he parried. "Why is that?". "You're not an expert!" he said. "I don't need to be an expert, just be able to use my brain and think!", He was silent. "You'll be telling me next that penguins in the Antarctic need the ice to catch fish?", His eyes showed a glimmer of triumph - "Yes, they do!". The coup de gras from me "How do they catch fish in the summer, when there's no ice?". He was on the ropes again, and getting desperate "This argument is getting nowhere!".

He just wouldn't see that his "factual" documentaries were only telling half the story, pushing a message of starvation and extinction, climate change and global warming; in fact pushing against the truth. I didn't bother pointing out that polar bears are omnivores, and will eat anything - rotting whale carcasses, fish (yes - they can catch fish!), berries, small mammals, leaves and grass. We still chat regularly. I don't bring up any contentious subjects, and I think he's relieved I don't.

UPDATE: In case anyone thinks I'm talking out of my posterior, here's some current research debunking the idea that reduction in Arctic ice will spell doom for the iconic polar bear:

Demographic and traditional knowledge perspectives on the current status of Canadian polar bear subpopulations 

Abstract
Subpopulation growth rates and the probability of decline at current harvest levels were determined for 13 subpopulations of polar bears (Ursus maritimus) that are within or shared with Canada based on mark–recapture estimates of population numbers and vital rates, and harvest statistics using population viability analyses (PVA). Aboriginal traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) on subpopulation trend agreed with the seven stable/increasing results and one of the declining results, but disagreed with PVA status of five other declining subpopulations. The decline in the Baffin Bay subpopulation appeared to be due to over-reporting of harvested numbers from outside Canada. The remaining four disputed subpopulations (Southern Beaufort Sea, Northern Beaufort Sea, Southern Hudson Bay, and Western Hudson Bay) were all incompletely mark–recapture (M-R) sampled, which may have biased their survival and subpopulation estimates. Three of the four incompletely sampled subpopulations were PVA identified as nonviable (i.e., declining even with zero harvest mortality). TEK disagreement was nonrandom with respect to M-R sampling protocols. Cluster analysis also grouped subpopulations with ambiguous demographic and harvest rate estimates separately from those with apparently reliable demographic estimates based on PVA probability of decline and unharvested subpopulation growth rate criteria. We suggest that the correspondence between TEK and scientific results can be used to improve the reliability of information on natural systems and thus improve resource management. Considering both TEK and scientific information, we suggest that the current status of Canadian polar bear subpopulations in 2013 was 12 stable/increasing and one declining (Kane Basin). We do not find support for the perspective that polar bears within or shared with Canada are currently in any sort of climate crisis. We suggest that monitoring the impacts of climate change (including sea ice decline) on polar bear subpopulations should be continued and enhanced and that adaptive management practices are warranted.

The researchers point out that:

Polar bears evolved from a common ancestor with the brown bear. The range of estimates for the age of polar bears as a species ranges from 4 million years based on deep nuclear genomic sequence data from both paternal and maternal linages (Miller et al. 2012) to 120 thousand years based on the mitochondrial genome (matrilineal) (Lindqvist et al. 2010). If polar bears have existed for the last 4 million years, they would have emerged during the mid-Pliocene approximately 1.25 million years before the onset of northern hemisphere glacial cycles (Bartoli et al. 2005). If polar bears emerged any time prior to or during the previous glacial cycle, they would have persisted through the Eemian interglacial period. During the Eemian interglacial, mean annual temperatures were 4°C warmer than the current interglacial (Holocene) for northern latitudes (Müller 2009), and some northern locations reached temperatures as high as ~7.5°C warmer than the mean temperature for the same area over the last thousand years (Dahl-Jensen et al. 2013). Both scenarios suggest that polar bears are able to mitigate impacts from sea ice decline to an extent not fully exhibited in modern times. Currently, the IPCC predicts globally averaged temperatures to warm ~2°C by 2100 and considers warming of ~4°C by 2100 to be possible although unlikely (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2013). Reduction in the heavy multiyear ice and increased productivity from a longer open water season may even enhance polar bear habitat in some areas (Stirling and Derocher 1993, 2012; Derocher et al. 2004; Rode et al. 2014). The majority of Canada's polar bears inhabit the Canadian Arctic archipelago (Obbard et al. 2010), where 5 of 13 subpopulations are currently and historically ice-free in late summer and early fall (Lunn et al. 2002; Aars et al. 2006; Obbard et al. 2010). Given the persistence of polar bears through the current and previous interglacial periods, and their ability to accommodate extended retreats onshore and based on the empirical observations of climate and sea ice change (S7), it seems unlikely that polar bears (as a species) are at risk from anthropogenic global warming. However, some subpopulations may experience diminished range, reduced productivity and subsequent decline in numbers if sea ice declines occur as predicted (Stirling and Derocher 1993, 2012; Derocher et al. 2004). While there are many projections of climate change that suggest a nearly ice-free Arctic to occur in the warmer months (i.e., September) (IPCC 2007, 2013, Durner et al. 2009; Amstrup et al. 2010; Mahlstein and Knutti 2012; Overland and Wang 2013), there are currently no global climate model (GCM) projections of climate change that suggest a totally ice-free Arctic in any season or month.

.... so there.

 I'll diversify for a moment, because I've never posted anything personal, or connected with where I live. Wycombe is a somewhat "frayed around the edges" town in the Chiltern Hills, designated an "Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty". Here's Yates' pub - well-managed, good cheap food, good beer, relaxed, friendly and hard-working staff, and a correspondingly relaxed clientèle.

Yates', Frogmore, High Wycombe

This is Wycombe High Street, a pale imitation of what it might have been if the local borough council had constrained development and preserved several much older shops and houses.

High Wycombe High Street

There's a street-market on Tuesday, Friday and Saturday. High Wycombe borough was originally "Chepping Wycombe", Chepping being a corruption of the Old English "Ceapen" meaning a town market. I can't find a pic of the whole market, but here's a colourful corner, situated centre-right in the pic above.

Wycombe market - a historical remnant of a prosperous past.

And a couple from the surrounding beechwoods and countryside.

An ancient "dyke" or boundary ditch in the beechwoods about 10 miles from Wycombe.

Bluebell carpet in the spring

Picture-postcard windmill on a windy ridge.

That'll do!

Australia's B.O.M & "Homogenisation" - they must think we're stupid

Australian scientist and blogger Jennifer Marohasy has been leading a small but vocal group campaigning for the Bureau of Meteorology to explain and defend "homogenisation" of temperature data for Australian stations. Their new, improved, value-added and of course, scientifically and mathematically sound database has, in most cases, turned a long-term static or cooling trend into a warming trend. They call it ACORN-SAT. You and I might call it GHCN/GISS outback style - if the present isn't warming to suit their meme, then by god, they'll cool the past, and "prove" local and global warming.

In most cases, the process leads to lowering past temperature data in a series of steps, supposedly corresponding to breakpoints in the series due to station moves, claimed station moves, statistical "discontinuities", or undocumented and therefore unjustified adjustments. Now this was something I could really get my teeth, and my Excel 2000 skills into. Yes, it's the 2000 version - if it ain't broke, don't spend money on a newer version.

I started several draft posts, downloaded shedloads of B.O.M. data, unadjusted GHCN/GISS data, PDF documents, bookmarked scientific literature, created new spreadsheets, chart graphics, googled for images of towns, cities, weather stations. The B.O.M. got very defensive when challenged a couple of years ago. Jennifer and her small group were tilting at a very big and huffily self-righteous windmill. The B.O.M. actually produced some documentation. What right had these upstarts to question their methodology and intent?

Then, a couple of days ago, I had an epiphany; I'd clearly missed something, something very important. The fact was, the B.O.M. has never, ever made the adjustments they'd claimed were necessary! If there's a documented station move, for example from a town out to a rural site, a small temperature change would be expected. In this case, likely to be downward because of the removal of the "urban heat-island" effect. They've identified and quantified such steps in the record at many sites. They believe an appropriate adjustment should be documented and applied, in this case an upward adjustment. The ACORN-SAT database appears not to contain any such adjustments, despite what the B.O.M. has documented, and everyone, until now, has believed.

I'd been looking at the "Station Adjustment Summary" for Amberley, Queensland. There was just one significant adjustment, forward from 1980:

2.  1 January 1980—breakpoint detected by statistical methods.
•  Night-time temperatures started to appear much cooler relative to surrounding                   stations.
•  No accessible documentation for Amberley in 1980, but a breakpoint of this size              would normally be associated with a site move.
•  Min T adjusted by -1.28 °C; no detectable impact on Max T so no adjustments made.

Adjusted by -1.28°C - wouldn't they apply an increase if temperatures "started to appear much cooler relative to surrounding stations"? You'd expect so, but that -1.28°C adjustment was correct - applied to data prior to 1980, thus leaving the "much cooler" data from 1980 onwards unchanged! The shape and trend of the resulting "homogenised" plot becomes identical to what would have resulted from a positive adjustment, but shifted down by the amount of the reversed adjustment. This is the plot of the change to average minimum temperatures for Amberley; for all my graphics, click to see a larger version, or right-click and "save as" to save them:

From the Station Adjustment Summary for Amberley.

The first thing to note is that the "difference" is positive because the author has subtracted adjusted from raw data. If you're comparing A with B, the correct way is to subtract B from A, not vice-versa. Compare 10 with 8, and the difference is 2, not -2. There's no change to raw data after 1980; if post-1980 data was "much cooler relative to surrounding stations", then it remains so. I've plotted ACORN-SAT adjusted against raw for Amberley:

Raw data series (blue) versus ACORN-SAT (red); difference (black)

The raw and adjusted series track together from 1998 rather than 1980 because a second, undocumented adjustment was made after 1996; a 2-step change. From 1980 to 2016, raw minimum trends flat. That's right - no change since 1980. The B.O.M. has what might be termed a "positive attitude" to temperature series; they like to see upward trends - flat or negative has to be "corrected".

Average annual minimum or maximum series are no good metric for measuring or tracking anything, yet they're what the Bureau uses exclusively, and to my knowledge, no other large private nor state-funded meteorological organisation does this. I'll back my up assertions in a future post. In the meantime, here's a plot of monthly average minima for 1978-1983, which spans the Bureau's "breakpoint":

Monthly average minimum temperatures

There's no "step change" evident in 1980. The dip in winter 1982 was caused by a record cold June & July. Minima generally "drifted" down after 1981 to around 1998 - which point coincides with the undocumented adjustment.

Jennifer's campaign focussed on the record for Rutherglen; the story's the same there, though more complicated:

Raw data series (blue) versus ACORN-SAT (red); difference (black)

Raw average minimum and ACORN-SAT adjusted track together (minor differences) from 1974. There's no net upward change due to the claimed adjustments in the Adjustment Summary. I've checked the other Adjustment Summaries, and a few other sites which should show adjustments. In every case, the changes resulted in raising or lowering previous temperatures, not those from the adjustment point forward. The B.O.M. isn't in  the business of correcting anomalies to create ACORN-SAT; they're in the business of changing the past to suit an agenda.

Green Elites, Trumped?

Her's an amazing article from The Wall Street Journal. I've reblogged it, without further comment, from Greenie Watch. It's by Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. Who he? His profile and list of WSJ articles is to be found here.

Green Elites, Trumped

The planet will benefit if the climate movement is purged of its rottenness.

Hysterical, in both senses of the word, is the reaction of greens like Paul Krugman and the Sierra Club to last week’s election. “The planet is in danger,” fretted Tom Steyer, the California hedge funder who spends his billions trying to be popular with green voters.

Uh huh. In fact, the climate will be the last indicator to notice any transition from Barack Obama to Donald Trump. That’s because—as climate warriors were only too happy to point out until a week ago—Mr. Obama’s own commitments weren’t going to make any noticeable dent in a putative CO2 problem.

At most, Mr. Trump’s election will mean solar and wind have to compete more on their merits. So what?

He wants to lift the Obama war on coal—but he won’t stop the epochal replacement of coal by cheap natural gas, with half the greenhouse emissions per BTU.

He probably won’t even try to repeal an egregious taxpayer-funded rebate for wind and solar projects, because red states like this gimme too. But Republican state governments will continue to wind back subsidies that ordinary ratepayers pay through their electric bills so upscale homeowners can indulge themselves with solar.

Even so, the price of solar technology will continue to drop; the lithium-ion revolution will continue to drive efficiency gains in batteries.

Mr. Trump wants to spend on infrastructure, and the federal research establishment, a hotbed of battery enthusiasts, likely will benefit.

In a deregulatory mood, he might well pick up an uncharacteristically useful initiative from the Obama administration. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission quietly is revisiting a scientifically dubious radiation risk standard that drives up the cost of nuclear power.

What a Trump election will do is mostly dismantle a green gravy train powered by moral vanity that contributes nothing to the public welfare.

A phenomenon like Trump, whatever its antecedents, is an opportunity—in this case to purge a rottenness that begins at the commanding heights. The New York Times last year published a feature entitled “short answers to the hard questions about climate change” that was notable solely for ignoring the hardest question of all: How much are human activities actually affecting the climate?

This is the hardest question. It’s why we spend tens of billions collecting climate data and building computerized climate models. It’s why “climate sensitivity” remains the central problem of climate science, as lively and unresolved as it was 35 years ago.

Happily, it only takes a crude, blunderbussy kind of instrument to shatter such a fragile smugness—and if Mr. Trump and the phenomenon he represents are anything, it’s crude and blunderbussy.

As with any such shattering, the dividends will not be appropriated only by one party or political tendency.

Democrats must know by now they are in a failing marriage. Wealthy investors like George Soros,Nat Simons and Mr. Steyer, who finance the party’s green agenda, have ridden the Dems into the ground, with nothing to show for their millions, and vice versa.

On the contrary, the WikiLeaks release of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails only dramatizes what a liability they’ve become, demanding attacks on scientists and even loyal Democrats who don’t endorse their climate-disaster scenarios. Their anti-coal, anti-pipeline, anti-fracking stance especially hurts Dems with union households, which turned out in record numbers for Mr. Trump.

It was always crazy to believe in an unprecedented act of global central planning to wean nations away from fossil fuels, but equally idiotic not to notice that our energy economy is ripe slowly to be transformed by technology anyway.

One greenie who is beyond the need for handouts is Bill Gates, who has made himself non grata by saying the current vogue for subsidizing power sources that will always need subsidies is a joke—an admission of defeat.

Honest warriors like Mr. Gates and retired NASA alarmist James Hansen insist real progress can’t be made without nuclear. Why haven’t others? Because the Tom Steyers and Bill McKibbens would sacrifice the planet 10 times over rather than no longer be fawned over at green confabs. That’s rottenness at work.

There’s a reason today’s climate movement increasingly devotes its time and energy to persecuting heretics—because it’s the most efficient way to suppress reasoned examination of policies that cost taxpayers billions without producing any public benefit whatsoever.

The theory and practice of climate advocacy, on one hand, has been thoroughly, irretrievably corrupted by self righteousness—blame Al Gore, that was his modus. Yet, on the other, it has allowed itself to become the agent of economic interests that can’t survive without pillaging middle-class taxpayers and energy users—exactly the kind of elitist cronyism that voters are sick of.

Without attributing any special virtue to Mr. Trump, he represents a chance for a new start. He might even turn out to be good for the planet.

NASA scientist makes a booboo

Back in 2012, when so-called "Superstorm" Sandy was current news, there were lots of dire predictions of "What is to come". At the time, I bookmarked several newspaper, blog, and other articles. While I was sorting out my links, discarding purely alarmist, inaccurate, and dead pages, I came across this one, and spotted something significant I'd missed at the time. Titled "Superstorm Sandy and Sea Level Rise", an interview with Cynthia Rosenzweig, "a climate impacts expert at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, co-chair of the New York City Panel on Climate Change, and director of the NOAA-sponsored Consortium for Climate Risk in the Urban Northeast.". Wow - she must really know her stuff? She certainly appears to, here's her response to the question 

What kind of sea level rise has New York Harbor seen over the past century?We’ve had roughly a foot of sea level rise in the New York City area in the past century. That’s measured at a tidal gauge near Battery Park just off the southern tip of Manhattan.
The majority of the sea level rise in the New York City region is due to global warming: primarily, because of thermal expansion of ocean water as it warms and secondly, melting of land-based ice sheets.
Land subsidence [sinking] in the New York City area has been roughly 3-4 inches per century, which is primarily due to the Earth’s crust rebounding* from being compressed by massive ice sheets that covered Canada and the northern U.S. about 20,000 years ago near the end of the last Ice Age. Local variations in ocean surface elevation associated with the strength of the Gulf Stream has played a small role as well.

That's fine, but later

How does sea level rise in New York Harbor compare to other parts of the U.S.? What about the global average? Sea level isn’t rising evenly throughout the world. On average, global sea level has risen about eight inches since 1880. So, the New York rate of sea level rise of nearly one foot is higher than the global average rate.

Just a cotton-picking moment, she said that land subsidence in the New York City area was 3 to 4 inches over the last century. That makes true sea-level rise at New York 8 to 9 inches, compared with the global rate of 8 inches since 1880. There was very little if any rise anywhere in the world between 1880 and 1912, a hundred years back from when this article was written. 12 inches is certainly much higher than the 8 for global, but the true comparison is between 8-9 inches and 8 inches. I hope this was a simple mistake. For now, I'll give her the benefit of the doubt.

Is there liquid water on Mars?

National Geographic thinks that there is, based on a paper published by a NASA scientist and seven others. Before going into details, first a few facts about conditions on the surface. The maximum surface temperature is 20°C in direct sunlight, and the minimum is 140°C near the poles. The atmospheric pressure is less than 1% of that on Earth, at about 0.007 bar, or 600 pascals against 101.3 Kpa on Earth. I note that the paper, titled Spectral evidence for hydrated salts in recurring slope lineae on Mars, doesn't mention pressure at all, but does mention temperatures which might allow the presence of liquid water. Let's get this straight, despite media hype, the authors didn't find evidence for liquid water on Mars, but as their paper title says, hydrated salts. They hypothesise that there may be evidence for highly-saturated solutions of salts in the seasonal dark streaks observed on the slopes of Gale Crater. They say "These results strongly support the hypothesis that seasonal warm slopes are forming liquid water on contemporary Mars, but also say "The origin of water forming the RSL is not understood". RSL (Recurring slope lineae) are the "seasonal dark streaks" observed from orbiting satellites.

The strange thing (or is it?) is that several of the authors and other scientists seem to be far more certain of  compelling evidence in interviews than is evident in the published paper. As I said earlier, the paper mentions atmospheric pressure absolutely nowhere. At a pressure of ).007 bar, the boiling point of pure water is 2°C, and temperatures can reach 20°C on the observed crater slopes. Even strong salt solutions would evaporate water at temperatures well below 2°C, and ice (which would be pure water of course) would sublimate - evaporate without melting.

The jury is definitely out on this one, but the press and media are having a field day, presenting what I see from actually reading the paper to be a rather thin hypothesis as confirmed fact.