Missing News: Hurricane activity all time low

Nothing thus  far on ABC News about a new paper published in the journal "Geophysical Research Letters" by Dr Ryan Maue of Florida State University titled Recent historically low global tropical cyclone activity,  (doi:10.1029/2011GL0477110 - in press), that finds that since Hurricane Katrina, global tropical cyclone frequency and energy have decreased dramatically, and are currently at near-historical record lows.

ABC have previously covered news on tropical storm activity:
Climate change to increase bushfires and cyclones

I guess the headline "Hurricane activity at all time low" doesn't really gel with the ABC's climate change sale pitch.

Media Watch Dog

Gerard Henderson sweeps a lovely cover drive to the boundary to chock up 100 posts on Media Watch Dog.
Congratulations Gerard!

To see the Issue 100 follow the link (HERE).

Missing News: Arctic sea ice loss not just reliant on temperature

Back in 2007 when Arctic Sea Ice hit its lowest level in the satellite era ABC reported:
"Sea ice in the northern hemisphere has plunged to the lowest levels ever measured, a US Arctic specialist says, adding that it is likely to be part of a long-term trend of polar ice melt driven by global warming."


Like many aspects of climate science it seems the real story is a little more complicated, as suggested by a new study currently under open review at the journal "The Cryosphere". The paper is titled Recent wind driven high sea ice export in the Fram Strait contributes to Arctic sea ice decline (Link HERE). 

Interesting ABC Science has failed to provide any information about the unique method of peer review at The Cryosphere that makes reviewers comments available for scrutiny.

The review process involves:

The Cryosphere has an innovative two-stage publication process which involves a scientific discussion forum and exploits the full potential of the Internet to:

• foster scientific discussion;
• enhance the effectiveness and transparency of scientific quality assurance;
• enable rapid publication;
• make scientific publications freely accessible.

In the first stage, papers that pass a rapid access-review by one of the editors are immediately published on the The Cryosphere Discussions (TCD) website. They are then subject to Interactive Public Discussion, during which the referee’s comments (anonymous or attributed), additional short comments by other members of the scientific community (attributed) and the author’s replies are also published in TCD. In the second stage, the peer-review process is completed and, if accepted, the final revised papers are published in TC. To ensure publication precedence for authors, and to provide a lasting record of scientific discussion, TCD and TC are both ISSN-registered, permanently archived and fully citable.

Ove Hoegh-Guldberg: the secrets of my success

In conversation Coral Whisperer Prof. Ove Hoegh-Guldberg reveals the secrets of his publishing success:


Marc Hendrickx
Geologist
I'm not getting nasty Ove, I'm merely pointing out some facts. Let's again examine these. For your last 10 papers listed in The Web of Science here is your author position.
1. Validation of Housekeeping Genes for Gene Expression Studies in Symbiodinium Exposed to Thermal and Light Stress: Last author out of 4
2. Mesophotic coral ecosystems on the walls of Coral Sea atolls: second last author out of 7
3. Ocean acidification and warming will lower coral reef resilience: last author out of 7
4. Coral reef ecosystems and anthropogenic climate change: first of one
5. Revisiting climate thresholds and ecosystem collapse: fifth of 12
6. Regulation of Apoptotic Mediators Reveals Dynamic Responses to Thermal Stress in the Reef Building Coral Acropora millepora: last of 6
7. Climate change impedes scleractinian corals as primary reef ecosystem engineers: second of 12
8. Complex Diel Cycles of Gene Expression in Coral-Algal Symbiosis: last author of 10
9. Gene expression profiles of cytosolic heat shock proteins Hsp70 and Hsp90 from symbiotic dinoflagellates in response to thermal stress: possible implications for coral bleaching : last author of 5
10. Shallow-water wave lensing in coral reefs: a physical and biological case study: second last of 8.

Based on the evidence it seems a reasonable contribution from OveH for 30% of these, but it appears only a token contribution for 70%. Most of the these where Ove's students are the lead author.

Congratulations Ove you are the master of the publish or perish system. Is your name there:
1. Because of a sizeable contribution to the work?
2. As a token thankyou from grateful students?
3. As a means to allow a softer journey through the review system for students yet to get a name for themselves?, or
4. Because you insist on putting your name on all your students papers, afterall where would they be without you?

Ove Hoegh-Guldberg
Director, Global Change Institute at Univers…about 12 hours ago
Marc - I am surprised that you are not aware the last author position on publications in many fields (such as marine and molecular biology) goes to the head of the laboratory or research group. This is to recognise the effort that these individuals put into the science, but also as recognition of the funding, experience, and infrastructure that invariably goes into a project. In our field, this is not insubstantial and my calculations have revealed that studies involving molecular biology or field work can often require substantial costs in terms of materials and supplies required to do the science. Obtaining that funding is not an easy task as I'm sure you know.
Life is too short to keep justifying myself to you Marc. Despite your continual insults, my track record and the cohesion of my research group ( some of the finest young biologists in Australia) does speak for itself.
Anyway, enough of this - I have a lab group to run, papers to write, and an institute to direct.

Marc Hendrickx
Geologistabout 11 hours ago
So it was number 4 then! And these are papers you claim as your own. Shame Ove Shame.

Marc Hendrickx
Geologistabout 11 hours ago
In geology we generally take credit for our own work, and not the work of others. If there has been administrative assistance it typically gets a place in the Acknowledgements.

Unjustly appropriating the work of others is one sign of workplace bullying. I pity his personal assistant and his students!
Read the whole conversation at The Conversation.

ABC Productivity Report Update-free fall continues

Past the midway point of June with 3455 stories posted thus far. Equivalent stories posted for the same time period last year, which was ABC's lowest ever output, was 4168. ABC missing over 700 stories in 2011.

Missing News: Greenpeace involvement in IPCC report on renewable energy

The Australian has a balanced report on the recent discovery that the key recommendation from a recent  IPCC report on renewable energy was provided by Greenpeace. The ABC has nothing.


Greenpeace's key role in UN climate study

THE United Nation's peak climate change body has become embroiled in new controversy over its use of Greenpeace and renewable energy industry propaganda in a landmark study on alternative energy.

A headline briefing on the IPCC's special report on the potential of renewable energy, released in Abu Dhabi on June 9, said close to 80 per cent of the world's energy supply could be met by renewables by mid-century, if backed by the right enabling public policies.

Release of the full report this week showed the assumption was based on a real-terms decline in worldwide energy consumption over the next 40 years and was the most optimistic of the 164 investigated by the IPCC.

The issue was discovered by Steve McIntyre, famous for debunking another IPCC totem the Hockey Stick Graph. Steve has a number of posts on the issue:
IPCC WG3 and the Greenpeace Karaoke
Responses from IPCC SRREN
IPCC Sabotages an Interacademy Recommendation
Pachauri: No Conflict of Interest Policy for AR5
Lynas’ Questions
Judy Curry also has an interesting series of posts:
http://judithcurry.com/2011/06/15/an-opening-mind/
http://judithcurry.com/2011/06/17/an-opening-mind-part-ii/
McIntyre and Curry are among the missing voices at the ABC.

Solar minimum and its affect on climate, the other side

Latitude-time plots of jet streams under the Sun's surface show the surprising shutdown of the solar cycle mechanism. New jet streams typically form at about 50 degrees latitude (as in 1999 on this plot) and are associated with the following solar cycle 11 years later. New jet streams associated with a future 2018-2020 solar maximum were expected to form by 2008 but are not present even now, indicating a delayed or missing Cycle 25. Image and text from: http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~deforest/SPD-sunspot-release/

ABC belatedly reported (borrowing from AFP) on a study that suggests the sun is entering a quiet period similar to the Maunder Minimum, which was a 70-year period when hardly any sunspots were observed between 1645 and 1715, a period known as the 'Little Ice Age'. ABC's report provided reference to a recent study by Georg Feulner and Stefan Rahmstorf based on the results of climate modelling that indicated the potential affect on global temperatures may not be significant with just   "a 0.3°C dip by 2100 compared to normal solar fluctuations."

In the interests of balance (lacking in the ABC's report) we decided to ask a real solar scientist. It seems the impact of reduced solar activity may be more significant than the ABC's one sided report suggesting more research is required.

Email sent 15/6/2011

Dear Dr Svensmark,

ABC  News cite a paper by Georg Feulner and Stefan Rahmstorf to suggest that a solar mimnimum would reduce global temperatures by 0.3 degrees by 2100. see GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 37, L05707, 5 PP., 2010 doi:10.1029/2010GL042710 On the effect of a new grand minimum of solar activity on the future climate on Earth

"Here we use a coupled climate model to explore the effect of a 21st-century grand minimum on future global temperatures, finding a moderate temperature offset of no more than −0.3°C in the year 2100 relative to a scenario with solar activity similar to recent decades. This temperature decrease is much smaller than the warming expected from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions by the end of the century. "

I am interested in your opinion on the evidence for a future solar minimum based on recent results in the news and its affect on global temperature for a news story.

Regards

Marc Hendrickx

ABC NEWS WATCH

Received  15/6/2011

Dear Marc Hendrickx,

I have had a fast look at the paper, and as far as I can see the authors are only looking at solar irradiance changes, and effects like the one that I have been involved in, like an amplification of the solar signal caused by clouds and cosmic ray modulation, is not taken into account. We known with good confidence that the terrestrial response to the solar signal is 3-7 times larger than from solar irradiance alone (see for example the work of Nir Shaviv, attached-Using the oceans as a calorimeter to quantify the solar radiative forcing-doi:10.1029/2007JA012989). Now if such effects are taken into account the result would be very different (larger solar influence). So I do not think that the present work is the particular helpful in understanding the solar impact in near future. It is only an estimate of the impact of solar irradiance as determined from numerical modeling. In the coming years the sun will show by itself how important it is.

Best wishes,

Henrik  (Svensmark)

We have requested ABC amend their story.