Missing News: Climate models wrong

Quick item of missing News (via Roger Pielke Snr):There is a new paper published which raises further questions on the robustness of multi-decadal global climate predictions. It is:
Spencer, R.W.; Braswell, W.D. On the Misdiagnosis of Surface Temperature Feedbacks from Variations in Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance. Remote Sens.2011, 3, 1603-1613.
The University of Alabama has issues a news release on it which reads:
Climate models get energy balance wrong, make too hot forecasts of global warming

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (July 26, 2011) — Data from NASA’s Terra satellite shows that when the climate warms, Earth’s atmosphere is apparently more efficient at releasing energy to space than models used to forecast climate change have been programmed to “believe.”

The result is climate forecasts that are warming substantially faster than the atmosphere, says Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist in the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. Read the rest at Roger's Blog

WEB

In ABC parlance the blog is on a well earned break. Back in  few weeks time.

Missing News: Sea level rise on the wane

Simon at ACM has post describing a new paper that concludes that rises in sea levels are "decelerating".
See ACM for the details.
The Australian has this REPORT.

ABC NEWS HAS NOTHING, NADDA, ZIP.

UPDATE (thanks to Anon): ABC catch up with the rest of the planet...Sea rise slow down raises questions
(oddly this report does not appear to have made it as a news item in ABC's News Archive). Note the tone at the end of the ABC article...


Dr Howard Brady, a former geologist and now honorary associate at the School of Biology at Sydney's Macquarie University, says the study highlights the gap between models and historical data.

"Modelling is very important because it can give us some idea of how things interact, but it doesn't necessarily give us an accurate projection of the future," says Brady. "The idea that the science is settled ... that's not true."

Dr Kathleen McInnes, a climate researcher at CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric research, says a range of sources are used to analyse sea levels, including tide gauges, satellites and geological records.

She dismisses claims that sea levels will only rise by 15 centimetres this century.

"The Watson paper is not about future projections, it is about past observations. Drawing any connection is misleading," says McInnes. (Ed. what a ridiculously, uninformed statement, the past is the key to the present)
She says the most recent IPCC report predicts sea levels will rise between 20 and 80 centimetres by the end of this century. (Ed. Like IPCC projections are proving reliable)

"There is a much bigger body of evidence supporting the IPCC projections (Ed.  yeah, those debunked climate models) than there is from single papers in the scientific literature. You have to be very careful when a single paper is cited as though this is the state of the science."

Backward briefing: a case of foot in mouth

ABC's Wendy Carlisle attempts to find holes in the sceptic's case that the effects of man made global warming are exaggerated and ends up with her foot in her mouth. She spends a lot of time attacking individuals and ignores the science. Amateur hour at its best. Her misconceptions on polar bears and sea level rise will go down in ABC factual error history. We look forward to ABC providing similar reports on Tim Flannery, Al Gore and Ross Garnaut.

Jo Nova, whose highly edited interview appears in the broadcast, thoroughly debunks the report...
This is not journalism, Wendy Carlisle
I’m sure Wendy Carlisle thinks she’s helping Australia. The awarded writer who calls herself a science journalist breaks laws of reason, makes a litany of careless errors, ambushes interviewees with false claims, and devoutly stares past hundreds of peer reviewed references as if they don’t exist. Yes, Anything but the evidence!
She thinks hunting through resumes of retired scientists is a good way to inform us about the need for a Carbon (sic) Tax.
It’s a wake up call ladies and gentlemen. This is the state of “science” at your ABCwhere polite discussion and meaningful research has been replaced with tabloid guttertalk.
The ABC is not part of the problem, it IS the problem.

Nano nano

The Green ABC have found a new scare campaign to champion. This one concerns nano-particles in sunscreens. Oddly enough on this subject the ABC find plenty of time to air the views of non-experts.

Here's the current consensus from the Australian Cancer Council:

Nanoparticles and sunscreen

Nanotechnology has been used in sunscreens for many years. To date, our assessment, drawing on the best available evidence, is that nanoparticulates used in sunscreens do not pose a risk. However, we continue to monitor research and welcome any new research that sheds more light on this topic.

Sunscreen formulas and their components are regulated through the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA). In early 2009, the TGA conducted an updated review of the scientific literature in relation to the use of nanoparticulate zinc oxide and titanium dioxide in sunscreens.

The TGA review concluded that:

• The potential for titanium dioxide and zinc oxide nanoparticles in sunscreens to cause adverse effects depends primarily upon the ability of the nanoparticles to reach viable skin cells; and
• To date, the current weight of evidence suggests that titanium dioxide and zinc oxide nanoparticles do not reach viable skin cells; rather, they remain on the surface of the skin and in the outer layer of the skin that is composed of non-viable cells.

The TGA's report concerning the safety of sunscreens can be found at:www.tga.health.gov.au/alerts/sunscreens.htm

Coral Whisperer not listening

ABC has thus far not provided any news of some recent peer reviewed science that shows things aren't so bad on the Great Barrier Reef.
Firstly there's this one that went unreported in June - Disturbance and the Dynamics of Coral Cover on the Great Barrier Reef (1995–2009) by Kate Osborne, Andrew M. Dolman, Scott C. Burgess and Kerryn A. Johns published in PLOS that found: "This study indicates that at the scale of the whole GBR there was no net decline in live hard coral cover between 1995 and 2009."
They also did not provide any news of this paper recently published in the journal Coral Reefs, titled Assessing loss of coral cover on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef over two decades, with implications for longer-term trends by Hugh Sweatman, S. Delean and C. Syms of the Australian Institute of Marine Science that indicates: "The GBR has clearly been changed by human activities and live coral cover has declined overall, but losses of coral in the past 40–50 years have probably been overestimated."
Between them, these papers go a long way to falsify the alarming picture about the state of the reef made by Coral Whisperer Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, including this picture of 2050 painted on The Science Show in 2005: "The waters of the Great Barrier Reef are also 1.5 degrees warmer destroying the conditions for coral growth and leading to annual bleaching events by 2010 and seeing the almost total loss of coral communities by 2030 as huge mortality events role through the system. The reef is unrecognisable. Many of the beautiful fish have gone, coral has been replaced by seaweeds and less appealing organisms."

Seems the corals are speaking, but the Coral Whisperer only hears what he wants to hear. "Selective hearing" is one of the sure signs of confirmation bias, a symptom of Cargo cult science. Censoring alternate viewpoints another one. 

Lies of the climate commission: Part 7 manufacturing certainty

One of my favourite quotes is by the late great Physicist Richard Feynman who described Cargo Cult Science thus:

"But there is one feature I notice that is generally missing in cargo cult science. That is the idea that we all hope you have learned in studying science in school--we never explicitly say what this is, but just hope that you catch on by all the examples of scientific investigation. It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now and speak of it explicitly. It's a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty--a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid--not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you've eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked--to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.

In summary, the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another."

Consider now the following slide from a presentation by the government's Climate commissar, Prof. Will Steffen, titled Climate Change 2009: Faster Change and More Serious Risks. Notice anything missing?

This is IPCC AR4 WG1 FAQ 2.1, Figure 2 -see page 136 of AR4 WG1 Chapter 2. A more complete version of this figure is published in the summary for policy makers (reproduced below from Summary for Policy Makers Figure SPM2 - see page 4). This includes important information about the error range of various forcing components along with an assessment of the level of scientific understanding (LOSU) for various forcings. Note the LOSU of a number of forcings, important in determining the amount of any future warming (or cooling) are described as Low, or Medium to Low. 

The errors for direct aerosols are a whopping 80%, with errors in cloud cover effects even greater. 

In a presentation to policy makers and the Australian public why would Commissar Steffen prefer the incomplete version? Why does he prefer to hide the errors and uncertainties?

Australia's Climate Commission provides a great example of cargo cult science in action. The ABC does the same for journalism.