9 ms·

Now IPCC hurricane data is questioned

21 points by miked 17y ago

ubernostrum 17y ago
Soon, the British press will print the shocking revelation that there is no such thing as "weather", and never has been. Edit: ...and I'm at -2. Guess nobody else remembers that the same British press hyping climate denialism now is the British press which hyped the vaccine/autism link a few years ago? Science journalism in general is bad, but the British papers make most others look like peer-reviewed journals by comparison...
- KirinDave 17y ago
  It does seem like the register spun this fairly hard. Especially in the first half where they talk about the data as if it disagreed with the IPCC and then points out that the IPCC agrees with that assessment.
- Tichy 17y ago
  Sounds like a good idea for an Onion article :-)
- CWuestefeld 17y ago
  If you think an argument is wrong, present the logic and/or evidence to support your side. Meta-discussion doesn't go very far and specifically, ad hominem arguments like discrediting the messenger doesn't do anything to address the veracity of a story -- at least not from the perspective of rhetoric and formal logic. By way of example (and not to say that "two wrongs make a right"), an argument always used by climate-change believers (is there a better term? I don't want to say "supporters") is that they must be considered in the right because a preponderance of scientists agree with them. Yet recently, we've seen that those books were cooked, and that fewer scientists than they claimed were in agreement. Now, does the fact that we now know they were acting unethically mean that we should simply discard everything they've said? I think not; it simply means that we must apply a greater degree of skepticism.
  - ubernostrum 17y ago
    Do not confuse source criticism with the ad hominem fallacy; if certain sources have, in the past, been inaccurate or unreliable, then it is relevant and proper to point this out and to treat such sources with caution. In this case, the criticism is that the sources -- a collection of popular British papers -- have in the past been extremely unreliable in reporting on scientific issues (example: the alleged link between childhood vaccination and autism), and a humorous comment was used to drive home the point.
vannevar 17y ago
The errors cited are absolutely trivial. They are in vague statements like "there are suggestions that" and "it is more likely than not". The overall conclusion of the IPCC was that "there is no clear trend in the annual numbers of tropical cyclones." Far from contradicting the IPCC, the cited study confirms its conclusion.
- jonallanharper 17y ago
  In 2005, the National Hurricane Center's chief scientist Chris Landsea resigned his post in protest at the treatment of the subject by Trenberth. "I personally cannot in good faith continue to contribute to a process that I view as both being motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being scientifically unsound. As the IPCC leadership has seen no wrong in Dr. Trenberth’s actions and have retained him as a Lead Author for the AR4, I have decided to no longer participate in the IPCC AR4." Do you think that's absolutely trivial as well?
  - rauljara 17y ago
    Not to contradict your statement, but this is an often misinterpreted letter. If you read the letter in its entirety, it is very clear that Landsea is talking about the very specific issue of hurricanes and global warming. He mentions global warming several times and never once questions the reality of global warming. It certainly seems to me like he's just taking global warming as a given. The reason he gives for resigning is: "My view is that when people identify themselves as being associated with the IPCC and then make pronouncements far outside current scientific understandings that this will harm the credibility of climate change science and will in the longer term diminish our role in public policy." In other words, he thinks global warming science should influence policy debate. In this instance, he feels the IPCC made a statement it shouldn't have, and it will hinder future efforts to affect policy.
mnemonicsloth 17y ago
Statistically speaking, no one in the climate change debate has read the IPCC reports and journal articles at issue. This is far from ideal, but totally understandable if you've ever taken a look at the damn things. People are obviously interested, though, and I can't believe anyone (again, statistically speaking) actually thinks it's better for the debate to be limited to purely symbolic posturing over cherry-picked details. How hard could it be to write some software to (nucleate a community to) track what's disputed and what's not, how much variance of opinion there is, etc?
- KirinDave 17y ago
  Very hard. The infrastructure to do it simply doesn't exist. Some of the station data and instrument runs are not actually connected to anything, they're on a human retrieval basis.
  - anamax 17y ago
    Human retrieval adds a lot of noise. It's not just how well people do readings, its when (during the day) they do them. No, they don't necessarily read them the same time each day. Moreover, even if we had automated retrieval at the correct time, there are issues with the stations. “The story is the same for each one. The popular data sets show a lot of warming but the apparent temperature rise was actually caused by local factors affecting the weather stations, such as land development." That's from John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a former lead author on the IPCC. These stations, they believe, have been seriously compromised by factors such as urbanisation, changes in land use and, in many cases, being moved from site to site. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7026317.ece http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article702...
    - KirinDave 17y ago
      Just to be clear, you're not making the heat island argument, right? There is definitely concern over absolute accuracy in the collection of this data. However, it doesn't seem like these concerns have somehow debunked AGW, and certainly haven't even put a dent in current estimated global climate change. I get very frustrated when people see the sausage of science being made and suddenly get angry. "What? Scientists are not right all the time? Well then they must be right none of the time!"
justin_hancock 17y ago
It's extremely important to realise that the register is essentially on the side of climate change denial. It isn't shy about it and will only ever present articles that reinforce it's argument. It isn't balanced or reasonable reporting.
- anamax 17y ago
  > It's extremely important to realise that the register is essentially on the side of climate change denial. It isn't shy about it and will only ever present articles that reinforce it's argument. It isn't balanced or reasonable reporting. The "fact" that the register will only report on papers that support a particular view point does not tell us that those papers are wrong, or that they're correct. However, your assertion that it does tells us how you evaluate evidence.

21 points by miked 17y ago

Soon, the British press will print the shocking revelation that there is no such thing as "weather", and never has been. Edit: ...and I'm at -2. Guess nobody else remembers that the same British press hyping climate denialism now is the British press which hyped the vaccine/autism link a few years ago? Science journalism in general is bad, but the British papers make most others look like peer-reviewed journals by comparison...

KirinDave 17y ago
It does seem like the register spun this fairly hard. Especially in the first half where they talk about the data as if it disagreed with the IPCC and then points out that the IPCC agrees with that assessment.
Tichy 17y ago
Sounds like a good idea for an Onion article :-)
CWuestefeld 17y ago
If you think an argument is wrong, present the logic and/or evidence to support your side. Meta-discussion doesn't go very far and specifically, ad hominem arguments like discrediting the messenger doesn't do anything to address the veracity of a story -- at least not from the perspective of rhetoric and formal logic. By way of example (and not to say that "two wrongs make a right"), an argument always used by climate-change believers (is there a better term? I don't want to say "supporters") is that they must be considered in the right because a preponderance of scientists agree with them. Yet recently, we've seen that those books were cooked, and that fewer scientists than they claimed were in agreement. Now, does the fact that we now know they were acting unethically mean that we should simply discard everything they've said? I think not; it simply means that we must apply a greater degree of skepticism.
- ubernostrum 17y ago
  Do not confuse source criticism with the ad hominem fallacy; if certain sources have, in the past, been inaccurate or unreliable, then it is relevant and proper to point this out and to treat such sources with caution. In this case, the criticism is that the sources -- a collection of popular British papers -- have in the past been extremely unreliable in reporting on scientific issues (example: the alleged link between childhood vaccination and autism), and a humorous comment was used to drive home the point.

vannevar 17y ago

The errors cited are absolutely trivial. They are in vague statements like "there are suggestions that" and "it is more likely than not". The overall conclusion of the IPCC was that "there is no clear trend in the annual numbers of tropical cyclones." Far from contradicting the IPCC, the cited study confirms its conclusion.

jonallanharper 17y ago
In 2005, the National Hurricane Center's chief scientist Chris Landsea resigned his post in protest at the treatment of the subject by Trenberth. "I personally cannot in good faith continue to contribute to a process that I view as both being motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being scientifically unsound. As the IPCC leadership has seen no wrong in Dr. Trenberth’s actions and have retained him as a Lead Author for the AR4, I have decided to no longer participate in the IPCC AR4." Do you think that's absolutely trivial as well?
- rauljara 17y ago
  Not to contradict your statement, but this is an often misinterpreted letter. If you read the letter in its entirety, it is very clear that Landsea is talking about the very specific issue of hurricanes and global warming. He mentions global warming several times and never once questions the reality of global warming. It certainly seems to me like he's just taking global warming as a given. The reason he gives for resigning is: "My view is that when people identify themselves as being associated with the IPCC and then make pronouncements far outside current scientific understandings that this will harm the credibility of climate change science and will in the longer term diminish our role in public policy." In other words, he thinks global warming science should influence policy debate. In this instance, he feels the IPCC made a statement it shouldn't have, and it will hinder future efforts to affect policy.

mnemonicsloth 17y ago

Statistically speaking, no one in the climate change debate has read the IPCC reports and journal articles at issue. This is far from ideal, but totally understandable if you've ever taken a look at the damn things. People are obviously interested, though, and I can't believe anyone (again, statistically speaking) actually thinks it's better for the debate to be limited to purely symbolic posturing over cherry-picked details. How hard could it be to write some software to (nucleate a community to) track what's disputed and what's not, how much variance of opinion there is, etc?

KirinDave 17y ago
Very hard. The infrastructure to do it simply doesn't exist. Some of the station data and instrument runs are not actually connected to anything, they're on a human retrieval basis.
- anamax 17y ago
  Human retrieval adds a lot of noise. It's not just how well people do readings, its when (during the day) they do them. No, they don't necessarily read them the same time each day. Moreover, even if we had automated retrieval at the correct time, there are issues with the stations. “The story is the same for each one. The popular data sets show a lot of warming but the apparent temperature rise was actually caused by local factors affecting the weather stations, such as land development." That's from John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a former lead author on the IPCC. These stations, they believe, have been seriously compromised by factors such as urbanisation, changes in land use and, in many cases, being moved from site to site. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7026317.ece http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article702...
  - KirinDave 17y ago
    Just to be clear, you're not making the heat island argument, right? There is definitely concern over absolute accuracy in the collection of this data. However, it doesn't seem like these concerns have somehow debunked AGW, and certainly haven't even put a dent in current estimated global climate change. I get very frustrated when people see the sausage of science being made and suddenly get angry. "What? Scientists are not right all the time? Well then they must be right none of the time!"

justin_hancock 17y ago

It's extremely important to realise that the register is essentially on the side of climate change denial. It isn't shy about it and will only ever present articles that reinforce it's argument. It isn't balanced or reasonable reporting.

anamax 17y ago
> It's extremely important to realise that the register is essentially on the side of climate change denial. It isn't shy about it and will only ever present articles that reinforce it's argument. It isn't balanced or reasonable reporting. The "fact" that the register will only report on papers that support a particular view point does not tell us that those papers are wrong, or that they're correct. However, your assertion that it does tells us how you evaluate evidence.