Global warming discussion III

[DarthFishy]

Who is Philip Lloyd?

Philip Lloyd is Managing Director at Industrial & Petrochemical Consultants (Pty) Ltd (profile archived here). He also lists himself as a Professor at Cape Peninsula University of Technology. This latter may be just an honorary post. My research suggests so but is not definitive.

Philip Lloyd describes himself as a "senior engineer" with the following specialties: Energy, petroleum industry, mining industry, extractive metallurgy, climate change.

Climate change you might ask? It turns out that, outside of his home country at any rate, the closest he has brushed with fame when it come to "climate change", apart from his two WUWT articles, is as Coordinating Lead Author of a chapter of an IPCC report.

Which report? Well it's a 2005 report on Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage.

Which chapter was he coordinating lead author of? It's not exactly a chapter, it's an Annexe. And it's not the first Annexe, it's Annexe II: Glossary, acronyms and abbreviations

Read on for more...

On behalf of all the South Africans who believe the Earth is warming, and that humanity is responsible, I apologise!

Also a single century is only 1.25% of the whole 8000 year period. Also ~1 degree variability means, surely refers to a variability of between -0.5 and 0.5 degrees?

So an increase of +0.85 (almost double the variability) degrees within 1.25% of the whole time period certainly looks like an outlier to me.

Anybody who actually knows anything want to confirm/disprove my thoughts here?

 

[macdoc]

You are correct overall and his analyis is nothing new.

exiting the last ice age the temperature climbed to a high point about 8k year BP. Then as the orbitals changed the planet was slowly cooling towards another bout with the ice.

Then we came along and while .85 is not entirely out of the range it's very much on the high side.....it's where it's going that is the concern and the pace....particularly in the oceans.

This is the combined ocean/atmosphere with a 20th century baseline.....2015 looks ready to blow all the SST numbers out of the water ....pardon the pun.

including these

 

[bit_pattern]

Rajendra Pachauri , as head of the IPCC , surveyed climate research and wrote reports about what it all means.

Those reports get cited by governments around the world and are the reason trillions are being spent on climate change measures.

The IPCC is an unprofessional, scandal-plagued organization. It is led by people with low standards and impaired judgment. We need to stop taking it seriously.

ROFLOL, and what relevance does this have to climate science or climate change?

Pachauri is the administrative head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This job requires very little writing and even less research. The paper reviews and general summaries are prepared by teams of climate scientists who survey the published science of the relevant fields of understanding and fit all the pieces together. Pachauri doesn't decide the science and he isn't even a climate scientist, before he retired earlier this year, his position was largely administrative as is fitting for an economist by academic training. On Feb. 20th this year he was accused of sexual harassment, on Feb. 24, he denied the accusation and resigned from his responsibilities with the IPCC,...again, exactly what relevance does this have to climate science or climate change?

If we want to talk about scandals related to science maybe we could interrogate the goings on at Energy & Environment, which seem to me to be eminently more relevant to whether or not Pachauri fondled his staff member (or even his member, for that matter...)

 

[bit_pattern]

nature is on my side

It's cute you actually believe that. Kind of like a Truther insisting physics is on their side. Tell you what, a challenge... How about you list all the ways you think nature - and by that I assume you mean the observable empirical reality - is on your side (probably start by enunciating what your "side" actually is, are we talking about "warming isn't happening", or the "warming is happening. but..." schools of thought. The we can compare each other's sets of evidence and decide whose has the more credible weight?

Not an onerous challenge, I would have thought, considering your certainty. The only caveat that the evidence must be easily verifiable against peer reviewed literature.

Deal?

I eagerly await your considered contribution to the discussion

 

[bit_pattern]

On behalf of all the South Africans who believe the Earth is warming, and that humanity is responsible, I apologise!

Please, no, I am an Australian - we have a lot more to be sorry for than our antipodean brothers and sisters! We're the people that gave the world the likes of Robert Carter and Joanne Nova, it is US who should be apologising to YOU.

 

[jonesdave116]

You are correct overall and his analyis is nothing new.

[qimg]https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-yoyewRck_T4/VWRqyTsz5kI/AAAAAAAANd4/67noCsa4zJc/s600/Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png[/qimg]

exiting the last ice age the temperature climbed to a high point about 8k year BP. Then as the orbitals changed the planet was slowly cooling towards another bout with the ice.

Then we came along and while .85 is not entirely out of the range it's very much on the high side.....it's where it's going that is the concern and the pace....particularly in the oceans.

This is the combined ocean/atmosphere with a 20th century baseline.....2015 looks ready to blow all the SST numbers out of the water ....pardon the pun.

[qimg]https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-aQViMZugp0Y/VWLxP39jG3I/AAAAAAAANcQ/4aHtZ_WlQwg/s638/NOAA1-42015.jpg[/qimg]

including these

[qimg]https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/--SKUH0XInGk/VUSeKVPiAcI/AAAAAAAANGk/yWfNL6UguVA/s640/Screen%252520Shot%2525202015-05-02%252520at%252520May%25252C%2525202%252520%252520%252520%2525202015%252520%252520%252520%2525205.51.16%252520PM.jpg[/qimg]

Only in the U.S. could you have a government agency flip-flopping between Fahrenheit and Celsius in its presentations! Has anyone told them that Fahrenheit isn't a SI unit? No wonder people are confused.

 

[Dancing David]

.

Several statistics remain constant .....

--- One-hundred percent of the world's climate scientists agree the only possible remedy for global warming is global socialism.

--- Proponents of Global warming are furious at any hint of even the slightest amount of cooling

.

And all you have is appeals to emotion and not significant contributions to the conversation.

 

[Belz...]

The proportion of "made man Co2" to that which is naturally occurring Co2 is NOT significant.

That little bit of extra cholesterol clogging your artery isn't a significant amount compared to the rest of your body's supply, either.

 

[Belz...]

Which only leaves the question of why you are obsessing with a climate change denier web site rather than learning the climate science for yourself from a reliable web site presenting actual climate science, Haig?

Two words: Prefered Conclusion.

 

[W.D.Clinger]

confirmation bias promotes weak science

In a previous post, Arnold Martin promoted a recent paper written by Philip J Lloyd. I have now read the full paper, whose eight short pages contain almost three pages of graphs and tables showing data collected by other researchers, roughly two pages that purport to describe those graphs, one page of references, and roughly two pages of introduction, discussion, and conclusion in which the author states his personal belief that his graphs might cast doubt upon our ability to extract a "signal of anthropogenic global warming" from the noise of natural variation.

Lloyd's argument is statistically illiterate, and his short paper contains several obvious errors that should have been caught and corrected by the editor and peer reviewers. After looking into the journal's academic reputation and the author's own background, however, I am no longer astonished that Lloyd would write such a weak paper or that it would be accepted for publication by Energy and Environment.

This paper is getting a lot of attention from deniers of climate change. Lloyd's ResearchGate page credits him with 30 publications and 23 citations over the course of his long career, but 187 of his 604 downloads came within the past week. Those 187 most recent downloads included 117 downloads of the paper Arnold Martin cited; another 62 downloaded a position paper called Nuclear Power is Essential for National Progress, which was published by a nuclear project management company. According to statistics provided by ResearchGate, 4 of those 187 downloads went to universities.

As he approaches his 80th birthday, Lloyd must enjoy the attention he's getting from Arnold Martin and other colleagues.

Dr. Philip Lloyd, a South Africa-based physicist and climate researcher,

All of Lloyd's academic degrees are in chemical engineering. His 30 publications listed at ResearchGate show no evidence of research in physics. In addition to the paper we're discussing, Lloyd lists one other climate-related article, which was published by the South African Water Research Commission.

Getting back to the paper we're discussing, my previous comments provide a fair summary of it:

Looking at the abstract of the paper, it appears Lloyd is talking about standard deviation of temperature considered as a time series sampled at hundred-year intervals, and is not talking about the standard deviation of temperatures averaged over those centuries. If so, then he's talking about weather, not climate, and his statistics are no more relevant to climate change than the fact that temperatures tend to vary over the course of a day, month, year, or decade.

Lloyd argues otherwise, but his argument consists of statistical fallacies. Lloyd thinks it's next to impossible to detect a rising trend within a time series whose sample-to-sample variation has a standard deviation of the same order as the trend. (More precisely, Lloyd looks at the variation between samples taken 100 years apart within the detrended (!) time series, but that just makes his argument even more fallacious.)

Going beyond the statistical howlers, which might well sound plausible to statistically illiterate readers, Lloyd's paper contains several obvious mistakes that expose the poor quality of its writing, editing, and peer review. Here, for example, is the paper's entire description of its Figure 2:

Figure 2 shows the Holocene to 4 000 years before present for, based upon Ar-N₂ isotope temperature reconstruction⁹.

That isn't even a sentence. It becomes a sentence if we ignore the highlighted word, but that repaired sentence does not explain why the vertical axis of Figure 2, which is labelled "Temperature, deg C", ranges from a low of -34 to a high of -27. Reference ⁹ is "High variability of Greenland surface temperature over the past 4000 years estimated from trapped air in an ice core". If you're the sort of person who wonders whether it's really a good idea to infer planet-wide variability from temperatures that never rise above -27 C (-16.6 F), then you aren't likely to be impressed by the depth of Lloyd's explanation.

I could give several similar examples from the paper, but let's look instead at a statistic that might be more relevant. According to Wikipedia's article on Energy and Environment, the journal that published this paper:

According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2012 impact factor of 0.319, ranking it 90th out of 93 journals in the category "Environmental Studies".

How does a journal achieve that level of objective impact? By publishing papers like Lloyd's. Why does a journal publish papers like Lloyd's? As its long-term editor in chief explained:

I'm following my political agenda---a bit, anyway. But isn't that the right of the editor?

I now understand why Energy and Environment's standards align so well with Arnold Martin's.

 

[Belz...]

--- Proponents of Global warming are furious at any hint of even the slightest amount of cooling.

Yeah because obviously they want things to get really bad.

 

[Mikemcc]

Anything that uses the word 'detrended' in climate publications immediately raises alarm bells unless they are looking for the triggers for internal variability. Tamino has used that to look at residuals to explain the factors involved, but always explains his reasoning. To try and deny the trend using detrended data is ridiculous.

 

[Belz...]

nature is on my side and the planet will never be obedient to fantasy computer models.

(

You seem to confuse model with observation. We observe warming, and we look for causes. You think the theorized cause is the warming, which is insane.

But since you've already accused people here of wanting the planet to warm, why do you want to deny that it does ?

(

 

[CapelDodger]

Rajendra Pachauri , as head of the IPCC , surveyed climate research and wrote reports about what it all means.

Oh no he didn't. And yet you say he did. Why is that?

 

[Trakar]

including these

[qimg]https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/--SKUH0XInGk/VUSeKVPiAcI/AAAAAAAANGk/yWfNL6UguVA/s640/Screen%252520Shot%2525202015-05-02%252520at%252520May%25252C%2525202%252520%252520%252520%2525202015%252520%252520%252520%2525205.51.16%252520PM.jpg[/qimg]

sorry, your last one needs an update:

 

[ehcks]

You are correct overall and his analyis is nothing new.

[qimg]https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-yoyewRck_T4/VWRqyTsz5kI/AAAAAAAANd4/67noCsa4zJc/s600/Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png[/qimg]

exiting the last ice age the temperature climbed to a high point about 8k year BP. Then as the orbitals changed the planet was slowly cooling towards another bout with the ice.

Then we came along and while .85 is not entirely out of the range it's very much on the high side.....it's where it's going that is the concern and the pace....particularly in the oceans.

This is the combined ocean/atmosphere with a 20th century baseline.....2015 looks ready to blow all the SST numbers out of the water ....pardon the pun.

[qimg]https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-aQViMZugp0Y/VWLxP39jG3I/AAAAAAAANcQ/4aHtZ_WlQwg/s638/NOAA1-42015.jpg[/qimg]

including these

[qimg]https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/--SKUH0XInGk/VUSeKVPiAcI/AAAAAAAANGk/yWfNL6UguVA/s640/Screen%252520Shot%2525202015-05-02%252520at%252520May%25252C%2525202%252520%252520%252520%2525202015%252520%252520%252520%2525205.51.16%252520PM.jpg[/qimg]

It's more fun to put that 8000 years ago peak next to the current one.

What in the past took over four thousand years has been overtaken by the last hundred or so, and we're not slowing down yet.

 

[Trakar]

In a previous post, Arnold Martin promoted a recent paper written by Philip J Lloyd. I have now read the full paper, whose eight short pages contain almost three pages of graphs and tables showing data collected by other researchers, roughly two pages that purport to describe those graphs, one page of references, and roughly two pages of introduction, discussion, and conclusion in which the author states his personal belief that his graphs might cast doubt upon our ability to extract a "signal of anthropogenic global warming" from the noise of natural variation.

Lloyd's argument is statistically illiterate, and his short paper contains several obvious errors that should have been caught and corrected by the editor and peer reviewers. After looking into the journal's academic reputation and the author's own background, however, I am no longer astonished that Lloyd would write such a weak paper or that it would be accepted for publication by Energy and Environment.
(...)
Lloyd argues otherwise, but his argument consists of statistical fallacies. Lloyd thinks it's next to impossible to detect a rising trend within a time series whose sample-to-sample variation has a standard deviation of the same order as the trend. (More precisely, Lloyd looks at the variation between samples taken 100 years apart within the detrended (!) time series, but that just makes his argument even more fallacious.)
(...)
I now understand why Energy and Environment's standards align so well with Arnold Martin's.

Sounds fair, I lost a lot of interest in the paper when I noticed the journal it was coming from. I briefly scanned it and threw it in my "dissection when bored" reference collection. Your assessment is in line with my cursory look through. Thank-you for your assessment!

Perhaps I will take some time over this summer and clean out my dissection when bored" files and share them here.

 

[Reality Check]

...snipped rant...
A reporter covers the sex scandal of Pachauri and you attack the reporter

No, Arnold Martin: A reporter obsesses with the sex scandal of Pachauri and you cite the reporter as if it had anything to do with climate science of global warming (the topic of this thread).

I am attacking your display of ignorance of the subject of this thread !

The idiocy of thinking that a sex scandal would change the science that is contained in the IPCC as reviewed by hundreds of scientists should be obvious to the reporter and you, Arnold Martin.

 

[Haig]

Easy: You are repeating a fantasy that there was a Pause / Hiatus in global warming - it was a slowdown in the warming of the surface, Haig !

This is valid science:
Tracking the Missing Heat from the Global Warming Hiatus (really needs quote around the 'Hiatus" but this is just a title)

Time to think again

The Role of Sulfur Dioxide Aerosols in Climate Change

Since CO2 has been shown to have no climatic effect, all efforts to reduce CO2 emissions in hopes of controlling global warming will be a waste of resources.

Out At The Boundaries

My conclusion from all of this, which I think is shared by Dr. Pielke, is that climate prediction is an initial value problem. I say this in part because I see no difference in “climate” and “weather” in that both seem to be self-similar, non-linear, and chaotic.

 

[Reality Check]

Time to think again

Time to display an obsession with cranks - the climate change deniers at WUWT this time, Haig .

You cannot read a lie at WUWT and understand that it is a lie, which leads you to quote that lie ("Since CO2 has been shown to have no climatic effect" is a rather deluded lie)!
ETA:
Wow - you did not comprehend the obvious lies and delusions in that blog post that you cited Haig
Here is a poster with the deluded idea that global warming is due the American Clean Air Acts!
The second blog post is by the climate science ignorant Willis Eschenbach .
It looks like WUWT has really gone to the dark side - a couple of years ago I saw reasonable (if invalid) posts there. Now Anthony Watts is allowing any ignorant or deluded person to post at WUWT.

You cannot read a statement of ignorance at WUWT and understand that it is a statement of ignorance, which leads you to quote that statement of ignorance - weather is not climate .

But we know that you are comfortable with climate change denier lies since you have been citing another one frequently
11th May 2015 Haig: 2. A lie by cherry picking the source and start date about "No global warming for 18 years and 3 months" as easily seen by anyone who looks at the data.
But not for the last week or so maybe you have learned one climate change denier lie.