In the wake of the “Bora Z” incident, I’ve been wondering a bit about the relative impact of different communicators in the climate/science area. Recent arguments involving Judy Curry and Micheal Mann in the twitterverse also got me wondering a bit. My curiosity prompted me to compare the relative traffic of various blogs:
These are the blogs I thought to plot, along with reasons why I selected them:
- wattsupwiththat.com was included because I think it’s likely the highest traffic blog in the climate blogosphere.
- scienceblogs.com was selected both because some climate bloggers are hosted under that umbrella e.g. Stoat, a frequent critic of Judy Curry blogs and Greg Laden. Also evidently BoraZ got his start there),
- judycurry.com because she has been discussed in the recent twitter happenings.,
- realclimate.org because Mann nominally blogs there.
- rankexploits.com to put my blog’s traffic in perspective
- scienceonline.com which isn’t so much a blog as a science communication forum. I think it’s principle activity may now be organizing a once yearly “unconference”. But I selected it for it’s associate with Bora Z.
Had I be able to extract the scientific american blogs from their full site, I would have included them. Collectively, the magazine, it’s videos and other information to get more traffic than WattsUpWithThat.com. But adding it to the list might be a bit like estimating the magnitude of traffic to Andy Revkin’s blog using the alexa rand for the New York Times as a whole.
Looking at this, I was interested to see that, evidently, wattsupswiththat.com gets more traffic than all of scienceblogs.com. Judycurry.com seems to be outranking realclimate.org. I’m not sure what that means, but it may well suggest that despite all the chatter about establishing science communication at places like “scienceblogs” and possibly the blog branches of magazines like “scientific american”, single bloggers establishing their own sites and using their own voices can and do do as well, or better than some of these organized ‘team’ efforts.
Looking at the blogs, I can however say that the ‘team’ blogs tend to look slicker. That is: the layout of “scienceblogs” or “scienceonline” looks expensive (though it likely is not.) They do appear to have layouts designed to monetized as one might expect if there are even a few people in the background who wish these to be self-sustaining ventures that can pay salaries of at least a few people. In contrast, individual hobby blogs do tend to look like what they are: zero budget hobby blogs put together by someone who is focused on content not javascript bells and whistles, monetization or other features.
I know some will point out that traffic to blogs and the artistry of their layout is not the only — or even best– measure for describing impact of any communication. But it is one. It’s also a somewhat measurable metric providing some estimate of the number of people who read discussions whose length exceeds that of tweets.
Visiting Judy Curry’s site always reminds me of Yogi Berra’s statement,’No one goes to that restaurant. It’s too crowded.’
Why would one ever want to read more than 140 characters? #shortattentionspan #soundbites
😉
Edit: I’m told this should read
Y wd 1 ever want 2 read >140 chars?
HaroldW,
Evidently, MichaelEMann has 16,202 followers. He follows 461 people. I’m not sure how anyone can really follow 461 people unless most of the people one follows are quiet. Possibly some of the ‘people’ he follows are just some sort of journal running the equivalent of a feed through twitter and he has some sort of sorting software to filter?
I do follow about 81, but the majority rarely tweet. Some people I initially follow and unfollow if they tweet too much. I assume the same holds for my followers. There are people whose blogs I read, but I don’t follow their tweets.
MikeN, sadly there are about 10 or 12 regular commentators there who regularly drown everybody else out. Most of these act like unruly children. It needs some “stern love” from its blog owner.
MikeN–
I find comment threading difficult. But others love it. Some like to get into conversations there partly for that reason. This does include some who seem to behave like “unruly children”. On the other hand, maybe we can consider those comment threads “the jungle gym” where kids get to be unruly.
Still, I find it difficult to follow the threads.
It’s interesting to see her blog’s traffic now exceeds Real Climate– which if I understand correctly– was established mostly by Mann to thwart what he considers “misinformation” (which might be merely to thwart people who criticize Mann’s view of what’s true.)
Carrick (#120410) –
Yes, it’s unfortunate that certain commentators there dominate (numerically) the discussion at Climate Etc. It would be nice to view the site via a filter which eliminates comments from a specified set of persons, because there are often very thoughtful observations among the chaff.
Sadly, I don’t have the skills to write such a plugin. Maybe when I retire…
HaroldW, I
suspectknow there are add-ons for Firefox already that block comments. Can’t tell you anything about how usable they are, or which ones to get.Lucia, on a similar veins there are add ons that “unwrap” comments. In an ideal world, I would like two panels, a hierarchy (tree view) on the left side that just gives minimal information for each comment (and is clickable on) and on the right a list of comments by date (where the left hand panel can modify which are visible). Good luck using that on a smart phone though…
In another note, in this day and age of inexpensive super-monitors, we see a scramble by the major vendors to accommodate micro screen smart phones, with the hiding or outright removal of features that would only be useful on a large screen.
How ironical is that?
HaroldW,
That would be a wonderful routine. I also find too much chaff at Climate.etc. My solution has been to do a find on the commenters whom I respect and step through the comments reading what they have to say.
One of the things I’ve noticed at WUWT is that a serious technical post will elicit serious technical comments while one of the less serious will produce mostly noise.
I find it interesting that a blog (WUWT) which so often posts stuff that to me, seems a bit silly, maintains a readership among the heavies who show up for the worthy things.
Re: HaroldW (Oct 22 11:44),
There is a Greasemonkey (Firefox only) script called killfile that can block posts for specified users. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been maintained for years and it doesn’t work a lot of places. It’s designed to be modified to add other blogs, but you have to know more than I do to do that.
Carrick
Unfortunately sometimes unthreaded threaded comments are confusing too because people fail to include text that serves as “bread crumbs” linking it to the post they replied to. When comments are unthreaded in the first place, they tend to be more careful.
The other difficulty is that the ‘human-interacting-with-threading’ can be glitchy. Sometimes you see:
Comment A.
Reply 1.
You want to comment on reply 1, but discover you’ve replied to Comment A. The format varies form blog to blog, and things get weird.
Dewitt,
One of the difficulties with Greasemonkey is someone had to go in, look at the html and make sure the greasemoney know how to recognize the author of the comment. Because format can vary, this sometimes required too much user interaction. Plus….what if the blog permits numerous people named Andrew to comment without imposing the requirement they become _FL or _KY and some such? Difficult.
I think twitter plays a partial role here.
Discussion of science at blogs is somewhat interesting. Personally I enjoy Judith’s site the most because the visitors are frequently technically knowledgeable and it is possible to get into some details with others on a particular point.
WUWT tends to publish a combination of science and anti warming propaganda but it seems difficult there to have good exchanges with others.
The “tone†at Scientific American seems to be changing slightly. They seem to be starting to acknowledge that there is “some doubt†that the world will end if we do not begin to implement CO2 mitigation actions immediately. What I notice most at SA is that those commenter’s who used to push the hardest to support the IPCC’s conclusions now seem less confident and “attack†other points of view somewhat less.
Lucia- I visit your site often but rarely comment here. You have posted good summaries of model performance on temperature (I wish you would post a summary of how well the models have done on forecasting the other characteristics there were designed to model) and generally the exchanges of information are interesting. I appreciate you efforts!
Re: lucia (Oct 22 12:46),
When the author was still maintaining the script, you could just email him and he would add the necessary code, minimizing user interaction. However that doesn’t solve the problem of duplicate user names. At The Air Vent, where it worked, however, I don’t think I ever had more than two posters killfiled.
The way people get their info is really rather interesting. I used to go to scienceblogs regularly but its quality diminished when a batch of authors broke off (to form freethoughtblogs) and then the top remaining blogs were poached by Scientific American. Now I only go there to read Orac or to see who Greg Laden or Stoat are bad-mouthing.
I read Watts daily, because it highlights where the interesting topics are going. I seldom read down into the articles but use it as a gauge to tell me what will be trending.
This blog, Dr. Curry’s blog and Climate Audit are on my must read list and I used to comment at Dr. Curry’s blog but found the threaded comments difficult to slog through after a while.
Like you, Lucia, I find it difficult to follow too many people on twitter. I have a small stable of people I follow and a smaller number who follow me. Unlike some I scan through my entire list daily (in the evenings) as most of the people I follow are either bloggers I admire or reporters who link to information interest.
When I tweet I stick to my areas of expertise so don’t generate a lot of new followers, just the same small batch interested in my take on how science is used in environmental decision-making (I don’t tweet climate) and science education.
I’m actually surprised that Real Climate’s traffic has held up that well. I’ve noted that they are doing fewer posts and that the tone has become more sober and less triumphalist about the holiness of climate scientists. And there seem to be a lot fewer comments of the “peanut gallery” variety. Of course, the in line [Response] in green still makes sure no dissent gets a real hearing.
David Young,
“I’m actually surprised that Real Climate’s traffic has held up that well.”
.
They have a core constituency which is never going to go away (left-wing-green-nut-jobs make up most of that core, of course). So long as draconian public policy is not enacted (that is, for ever) the core is not going away. They would get a lot more comments (and traffic!), save for that they do not actually allow anything but comments which are either 1) disagreeing but unhinged, of 2) in agreement. Substantive comments which disagree are not allowed. It is the worst kind of echo chamber.
Carrick,
” It needs some “stern love†from its blog owner.”
I think you are right; moderate 15 or so (and don’t allow Joshua or FAN to comment at all!) and the threads would be much better. But that requires a lot of time investment…I suspect Judy is too busy for that.
The one thing that stood out for me was that WUWT, Curry and your site are moving up in ranking and realclimate and scienceblogs are flat.
SteveF, yes it would take a bit of work, but doable. Joshua has been reprimanded once already. You could focus on the people who post the highest volume.
You can guarantee if you moderate them, like Joshua, they will be glad to pass the word.
The appalling mess which is the comments at Judy’s place could largely be fixed by imposing some sort of quota to cut back on the most prolific commenters. Perhaps no more than three comments per thread per day? A bit like Wikipedia’s WP:3RR in effect.
AGREED, Jonathan Jones.
Time spent at Judith Curry’s place is often wasted because of the many sub-debates and personal – for lack of a better term – vendettas. Your solution would much enhance the experience.
Rob Starkey says
“The ‘tone’ at Scientific American seems to be changing slightly. They seem to be starting to acknowledge that there is ‘some doubt’ that the world will end if we do not begin to implement CO2 mitigation actions immediately. What I notice most at SA is that those commenter’s who used to push the hardest to support the IPCC’s conclusions now seem less confident and ‘attack’ other points of view somewhat less.”
I don’t know how you gauge this. I’ve only noticed that Phil Plait there and Matt Ridley at the WSJ have gotten into it, over the past year. The Bad Astronomer’s Bad Climate Science?
Plait seems unable to rethink anything new about climate change except regurgitating old talking points – something that any PhD degreed astronomer ought to eschew
J ferguson,
The problem I have with WUWT is that many/most posts have major technical oversights and errors. If you try to point out an obvious error, there are an unlimited number of commenters, most of whom wouldn’t recognize science if it jumped up and bit them on the nose, all waiting to shout you down and start a flame war. Actually having a substantive technical exchange is almost impossible. It is pretty much a waste of time.
SteveF,
It’s true that few things provoke a useful technical discussion at WUWT, but wouldn’t you agree that most posts that have defects are at least flagged?
J ferguson,
Yes, somebody will usually try to point out the biggest errors. But unless the comment flys over the heads of the rabble (which can happen if the rabble doesn’t already ‘know’ the commenter) the result is usually immediate attack and accusation of being a CAGW lunatic. Willis’ post on temperature versus cloud cover was a perfect example of the typical nonsense. When Roy Spencer told Willis he was grossly mistaken and appeared unaware of a huge body of existing work in that area, the WUWT rabble went to Roy’s blog to attack him.
This is the only climate science blog I regularly visit. I know I can get the straight scoop here without a lot of greenwash, name calling, personal attacks, or piling on by the peanut gallery. My day job is in a somewhat related field so it is useful to get a “pulse” on the current state of climate science. Thanks to Lucia for keeping it relevant, objective, and civil here.
WUWT- Too many RW kooks.
RC- Too many LW/Green kooks and highly politically motivated moderators.
Climate Audit- Simply too dry for me.
Climate etc- Very relevant topics and I appreciate Judy’s views but it is often overrun by unruly children. It is useful If I avoid the comments.
Oh, never noticed the distribution of comments. The sheer volume scared me away. And I read through all of the unit root posts at Bart’s.
When Jeff Condon posted regularly, he was a good site to visit too.
I like Climate Audit, but wish at times a more moderated tone in the posts when criticizing others works—when saying things that are “obviously true”, sometimes “obviously true” things are wrong.
ivp0—outside of peripheral arguments over silly things, my main reason for haunting this place is “cross-polination of ideas on statistical methodologies”. It’s why Climate Audit is a good site for me too.
And of course I agree with your comment “Thanks to Lucia for keeping it relevant, objective, and civil here.”
ivp0 –
Plus you get haiku!
The main issues that trigger my curiosity is:
1) With respect to communicating anything is WUWT having greater implact than all of sciblogs?
2) If yes (or now) why?
The non-climate issue (since I have been gruesomely fascinated by the Bora Z/twitter storm things) is:
1) Are aspiring SciCom people being given an entirely false impression about the prospects for making a living or impact by going into “SciCom”
2) Did BoraZ really have much true meaningful influence to help those aspiring to enter the SciCom community who he hit on when they thought they were contacting him to get help establish themselves as professionals? Or was his “power” an illusion crafted by self promotion of SciAm, SciOnline and places like SciBlogs?
3) If answer to (1) is yes isn’t part of the tragedy that these young women who BoraZ hit on are trying to get a piece of what is — to some extent– a non-existent pie?
4) If answer to (2) is yes, isn’t part of the tragedy that they were — largely- wasting their time contacting Bora Z at all? Or possibly that somehow the “SciCom” community seemed to suggest that the way into the “network” was to pass through the specific gate where BoraZ acted as gatekeeper?
I don’t have the answers to these (and none are intended as arguments to make any points.) But I’m sort of wondering that.
MikeN (Comment #120458) —
> I read through all of the unit root posts at Bart’s.
And lived to tell the tale!
But… are you sure you didn’t miss one? 😉
I think that people will visit sites that confirm their bias. Over the years my bias has probably swung the full gamut. With the release of AIT and AR4 I remember thinking “Jesus we’re doomed! We’ve got to stop this!”. Then I started checking the “denier” blogs and started thinking “This is shit! It’s obviously the sun!”. Then I learnt about no-feedback 1.2C sensitivity, the uncertainties in just about every aspect of GW, and arguments in favor of the low end of IPCC estimates. This started me thinking “It’s still an concern, but probably overblown.” So I would classify my current bias as that of a lukewarmer and consequently avoid most alarmist/denialist blogs. I still check WUWT regularly though simply because it has the highest volume of posts, of which I skim through one or two a week.
I seem to be progressing towards a “Meh” bias. Climate science appears to be science in slow motion. Now that a planetary emergency seems unlikely, a logical thing to do is to fuggedaboutit. Maybe check back in once a decade or so and vote against any political party aggressively pushing a green agenda.
AMac, I originally thought VS was Victoria Stodden based on a post at BIshopHill, but it appears not to be the case.
Lucia writes “I don’t have the answers to these…” questions.
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2013/science-communication-how-are-things-going/#comment-120463
Jasper Kirkby framed his CLOUD experiments at a CERN seminar in 2009 similarly.
Here’s my two takes. First, if “is WUWT having greater implact than all of sciblogs?” Yes and why?
Last winter and last year, Watts examined traffic at CAGW and skeptic blogs, and found the traffic at the former collapsing, swelling at the latter. This appeared to reflect less the science but political collapse over taking action. Just map the decline in popularity of VP Al Gore as its spokesman in the media and blogosphere; I believe that correlation is meaningful.
Last fall, I attended a seminar at the University of Colorado at Boulder on Arctic ice monitoring held by my old prof Mark Serreze, with many NSIDC notables in attendance, During the Q&A, Gore was slammed as discredited, while Hansen and Mann were both held up as possibly mistaken yet still useful leading figures?
I still cannot wrap my head around that distinction: the rank intellectual dishonesty of it, as well as the empty scholasticism that implies – reflecting a craven nonscientific commitment, most likely. And having left Boulder for some years after two decades living there, and doing my grad study of environmental science elsewhere, the PC-enviro-whactivist echo-chamber that substitutes for real thought evident in the discussion. (Yes, there were no skeptic voices aired at all at the seminar; they’re not welcome. [And no – no Pielke’s attended.])
Meanwhile, in the spring of 2012, just as Gaia theorist recanted his CAGW, a vareity of important skeptic bloggers – Steve at climateaudit, Jeff “Id” Condon, and climate skeptic Warren (???), perhaps your self, lucia, here – went into semi-retirement, or at least became more semi-active. The heavy lifting was done, it seems, and a critically aware middle-ground between skeptics and CAGW was clearly growling as evidenced by the growing traffic to Judith Curry’s blog.
This meant WUWT’s traffic could climb.
What ought to be digested is that here in the US, there is a rabid quality of the fealty to the Church of CAGW, often led by scientists. In the UK, however there is more genuine dialog, often respectful, which is evident in both the London papers as well as at Andrew Montford’s BishopHill blog. There, physicist-modelers like Tasmin Edwards, climatologist Richard Betts, and others, sometimes post comments.
Why the difference? My suspicions is “follow the money.” In the US, the purse is much much larger, the establishment that protects them (AAAS, AGU, enviro-whacko lobbying groups) much more powerful, and hence, crowds out dissenting science and voices. This has been repeatedly reported to affect grad student and doctoral study by ALL the usual suspects (Bill Gray at CSU, being the first one I’ve met) – there is no funding in the US for skeptical research. (Thus, consistent with Terence Kealey’s thesis, a genuine physical rival to AGW – cosmoclimatology – grew from private monies and far away from the US – ie, Svensmark in Denmark and Kirkby of the UK at CERN in Switzerland.)
Hence, the AR5 team[s confront the “pause” this summer and fall, and the alternative scientific literature is too insubstantial to help them out of their laughable dilemma of in defending the Church of AGW’s doctrines (ie, GCMs) versus global temperature data.
Enough of my first response. For the second, the Bora Z/twitter storm and Scicom, I’m only on the bubble looking in. I’m glad that someone else is curious about these goings on and what they might mean.
Perhaps relatedly is the fate of pop science writer Chris Mooney. He’s gotten lots of forgettable and wrong headed attention at Mother Jones mag and blogs. Sometimes, not even young hungry dogs can be taught new tricks: Mooney still insists that Mann’s hockey stick is proven, sound science – the valid basis for passing carbon taxes to meet the threat of CAGW. Church, meet apostates! Please.
. Yes. I’ve been feeling a bit of a lull in myself. I think my general feeling is: We know the AR4 are off. Now, the AR5 is out– but to some extent, I feel less enthusiastic about testing immediately. It seems like it would be nice to wait a year.
Another feature is this: Some less alarmist people are admitting the models are too warm. Maybe not totally overtly, but look at Ed Hawkins graph periodically here He’s willing to show where the observations are (even if he won’t color the models to show that dang spread is not “weather” in any way, shape or form. Dagnabit! And there has been a trasition– in the UK at least– toward some more honest “testing” with people who are real statisticians. (That is to say: Ed is not alone.)
The fact that things are looking up in official channels is actually good.
Oddly, it seems to me that Judy doesn’t see things moving in the right direction, or perhaps not fast enough. But…. really.. I’m seeing a little. But there is still a tension, and I think those trying to maintain the battle lines really want to attack Judy. To the extent they are all flinging poo at her, I can see why she might have trouble seeing that some of those not throwing poo are moving to a bit flagrant chicken-little alarm-ringing.
a few weeks ago, Lubos Motl made an interesting point….the range of that strange parameter – climate sensitivity – has not changed in 30 years…and no one can really describe what happens within the space of “sensitivity”. Climate science might be the slowest evolving of all sciences.
Lucia,
I agree there is some (slight!) movement toward accepting that the models are way too warm; not nearly enough, but some. If the rate of warming continues to be modest for another decade or two, then it is pretty much inevitable there will be no draconian policies implemented, at least not in most places. That means the intensity on the ‘wait and see’ side will not be so high. Seeing the continuing ‘divergence’ probably demotivates the less unhinged of the green wingnuts as well ( the hard core will never be influenced by reality, of course). So the intensity may just gradually decline until catastrophic warming mostly drops off the political radar.
Diogenes- generally, convergence on a correct estimate should happen, even slowly, and even when the earliest estimate was in error, and even when that earlier estimate is taken to be unassailable. The best example in physical science would be Millikan’s Oil drop experiment which measured the value of the electron charge about 1% smaller than the current best estimate of it’s value. You can actually track the estimates over time, and they don’t merely show increased precision, the central estimates actually trend gradually upwards, and all because, apparently, individual scientists would look for reasons, when there result was too far from Millikan’s result, why the result should be lower.
Now when we look at the estimate of climate sensitivity from the official sources, there is no convergence whatsoever. I would suggest this is probably because in this case the social pressure exists not to contradict the official truth, but also that there has been almost no actual attempt to actually measure this parameter, or certainly attempts to do so are either quickly criticized, or simply end up being completely ignored by the official sources that use essentially identical “methods” to produce the same basic set of estimates every few years. Which is that the get a bunch of models that give some range and then through some indeterminate social algorithm, the writers of the reports hash out a range which is roughly the same as that but not quite.
Actually a large part of the problem may be that last step.
SteveF,
The executive branch wasn’t especially interested in AGW in Obama’s first administration. Yes… there was the EPA. But really, no big attempt to get things through Congress. And I anticipate that Obama will do little real push in the next 2 years. He’s going to want to solidify Obamacare, and he is going to have to do work there. Plus… not witstanding his Nobel Peace prize relations with other countries are going sort of sideways. So he’s going to have to dance to other tunes.
That means unless we are all wrong about lukewarming and warming resumes, little will be done by the US for at least 2 years and likely 4 or more. Heck, with the economy as it is, arguments over deficits and things like health care as they are, I don’t see climate change as being a defining issue in the 2012 election. Anyone who tries to emphasize that as “the” major topic will lose. The only thing that could change that is big sustained jumps and very soon.
I don’t really see international moves either. So, for reasons having little to do with “science”, I think no major agreements will be possible for at least 4 more years. If warming does not pick up… drastically reigning in CO2 is going to be a hard sell. Of course there might be modest reining in– but likely “Breakthrough Institute” type paths.
On the other hand, if we see a sudden huge dramatic up turn over the next 4 years, then yes, people will get worried.
Re: lucia (Oct 23 20:39),
I believe the phrase you want isn’t ‘sort of sideways’, it’s ‘ pear shaped’. See for example the latest announcement on intelligence cooperation from Saudi Arabia.
Lucia, the EPA is implementing a carbon emissions regime under the Clean Air Act.
Andrew_FL,
The lack of convergence is probably a combination of the large uncertainty in some key factors and a LOT of social pressure to not reduce the upper range values, since these are what ‘demand’ immediate public action to reduce CO2 emissions. IMO, the convolution of strongly desired policy outcomes (supported by most in the field), which would exist independent of the extent of warming, have so hamstrung the field that both scientific progress and reasonable public policies are being held back. Only time and a continued lack of rapid warming will change this situation.
I actually think that sounds a little too optimistic. So far I see little indication that lack of rapid warming has any effect what so ever on “official” science.
The reason I emphasize this point is that I do get the feeling that in actual studies there is at least some improvement of the range of estimates-very recently at any rate. It’s the “authoritative sources” that evince no progress.
The strategy has and will continue to evolve into what kind of present day crisis or at least an impending crisis will it require to get the masses to clamor for immediate and even draconian government attempts at mitigation of AGW.
Estimates of AGW that would make IL like TN or even FL are not particularly bothersome to most people. It will take something more like a flooding of New York City from rising sea levels and a flooding in the near future that would not allow sufficient time to do something like the Netherlands has done to reclaim and protect land from the sea. Quickly changing pH of the oceans that will not allow sufficient time for organisms to adapt/evole is another crisis waiting to be taken advantage of. Extreme and damaging weather events are another crisis avenue.
Crisis generation that need not be real has always been the path to getting government more involved in these affairs. Scientists and economists are not above providing the “right” answers.
That last part is at least partly just basic Public Choice Theory. The grants and salaries of government to study something are largely contingent on there being a problem that’s worth the government’s time to spend money studying, naturally not much gets published saying there isn’t really much of a problem, because then the government loses interest and the funding dries up.
A great many scientist believe themselves and their colleagues perfect angels in capable of that sort of thing. What economists-the good ones at any rate-know, is that the scientist and politician are as human as everyone else. And they behave rationally, just like everyone else.
Maybe not. But if it doesn’t, it begins to have an effect on whether or not people believe it.
I think that depends upon the people!
Kenneth, the unit root theory may start to take hold. Chinese emissions have rendered an 80% cut impossible. A 50% cut is also impossible. So suddenly all policies are easy to show as a waste of time, even with the models as is. Now, if we switch to unit roots, then as long as CO2 emissions are kept constant, the planet is safe. Thus only emissions cuts from Europe and the US can be considered effective at saving the planet.
I think you’ll find it was pretty easy to show any policy is a waste of time even before that.
There has *never* been a convincing case for doing *anything* about this alleged problem.
this is well outside the topic but, at WUWT, someone has made a post about Canadian climate models:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/24/epic-failure-of-the-canadian-climate-model/
Since they appear to run very hot according to this analysis which I do not fully trust given the source, I am wondering if the great Lucia would be interested in showing what happens to the multi-model mean if these models are omitted. My thinking being that, although all models are wrong and some may be useful, the bad models need to be identified and discarded.
Some odds and ends.
Since Twitter puts the twits of everyone you are following on your home page, you can follow a large number of people if you peek in every hour or so. Whether you should or not depends on your marital status.
WRT Lubos Motl observing that that strange parameter – climate sensitivity – has not changed in 30 years, hell it basically has not changed since Arrhenius. Most of the future uncertainty does and always has been the emission scenarios.
There was something else, but never mind.
Eli,
The two uncertainties are independent. It is possible to influence emissions (difficult, but not impossible). The sensitivity to forcing from GHG’s is uncertain, but only because climate science is not up to the task of accurately determining the correct value. Emissions has nothing to do with sensitivity.
.
Of course, justifying huge added energy costs to reduce CO2 emissions depends on knowing the true value for climate sensitivity. And to paraphrase a well known climate scientist…. We don’t know what the true sensitivity is, its uncertainty has not changed in 30 years, and it is a travesty that after many billions of dollars spent that continues to be the case. Climate science (and Eli) has the policy cart in front of the sensitivity horse. I suggest they focus on getting the horse right, and leave placement of the cart to the public.
Arrhenius’s numbers were *very roughly* similar to the current range, but for *very different reasons* than current models get their numbers.
That’s kind of like saying…
Actually I can’t think of a good analogy.
More specifically, Arrhenius’s initial estimate was pretty much at the very top of the current range, or higher, and he later lowered his estimate to closer to the bottom of the current range, or a little under the middle, depending on the WV feedback as he estimated it. Either way, the fact that this was close to current “official” estimates is mostly a coincidence, and more importantly there is no real range on these numbers, at least the later ones.
SteveF (Comment #120554)
October 25th, 2013 at 6:58 am
“The two uncertainties are independent. It is possible to influence emissions (difficult, but not impossible). The sensitivity to forcing from GHG’s is uncertain, but only because climate science is not up to the task of accurately determining the correct value. Emissions has nothing to do with sensitivity.”
I judge there to be 4 major areas of uncertainties related to AGW and how it plays out vis a vis the human experience.
The first is sensitivity to forcing from GHGs which we know from models outputs using the same scenario have a wide range.
The second is finding a scenario that will fit future GHG emissions. This uncertainty is often, I think, not given its due as being elusive and difficult to predict – and even without governments attempts at mitigation.
The third is the uncertainty of linking a given change in temperature to detrimental/beneficial effects derived from that change. These effects are after all what makes what are otherwise simply abstract numbers into reality for human beings. I would suggest that the uncertainties there are as large or larger than those from sensitivity.
The fourth is given government attempts at mitigation of AGW there are the uncertainties of unintended consequences from these attempts – as is always the case with government actions of these types. Can government make the problem worse and a solution more allusive? I think they can.
The emissions scenarios depend upon vague “storylines” about they way they think the world economy and technology could develop.
You can be sure that none of these will be right for the right reasons, and almost sure none of them will be even right for the wrong reasons.
But I think you are missing a key step. The carbon cycle modeling necessary to turn an emissions scenario into a forcing scenario is not really all that certain either.
I seem to recall much being made of underestimating emissions having happened but nobody asked if this lead to underestimating atmospheric concentrations.
Nobody asked because it didn’t.
Andrew_FL (Comment #120564)
October 25th, 2013 at 10:32 am
“I seem to recall much being made of underestimating emissions having happened but nobody asked if this lead to underestimating atmospheric concentrations.
Nobody asked because it didn’t.”
Interesting. I perhaps will have a fifth area of uncertainty. Andrew, do you have any immediately available data showing this relationship. Surely someone else must have noticed.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #120565)- I’ll have to do some digging. At the moment I recall reading somewhere and seeing some charts that there was a slight underestimate of the emissions trajectory, and much talk about how “it’s worse than we thought” and all that. I recall wondering if the trajectories of actual CO2 concentrations had been similarly underestimated, and seeing some charts indicated that they were not, if anything they were ever so slightly over estimated.
I’ll try and find some up to date data.
Okay here we go:
According to:
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/tre_glob.html
The emissions of the entire world of fossil fuel CO2 in 2008 (the most recent data point) was 8.749 Gigatons (metric) of carbon.
The scenarios with tables here:
http://www.ipcc-data.org/sres/ddc_sres_emissions.html
Give between 8.35 and 8.65 GtC for 2010, an amount the world already exceeded two years before that.
Buuuuut…
If you look here:
http://www.ipcc-data.org/observ/ddc_co2.html
You will see that in spite of the emissions being higher than those scenarios, the concentrations of CO2 are matching where the carbon cycle models would put them decently. Where the heck did the extra carbon go?
I guess you could say that so far the carbon cycle models are getting the right answer for the wrong reasons, but I’m not at all confident they can continue to do so.
Andrew_FL (Comment #120570)
October 25th, 2013 at 1:56 pm
Interesting in light of some of the CMIP5 climate models using carbon cycling in their modelings.
Yeah, I’m currently examining it in more detail.
Seems there are two primary carbon cycle models used to convert the scenarios to concentrations: ISAM and BERN. BERN has slightly too low of CO2 in historical values (that is, lower than measured values back in the nineties, for some reason) for basically all emissions scenarios. ISAM is much closer so is presumably the better carbon cycle model. So far the closest concentrations are A1T and A1FI in the ISAM model, but as I said we seem to have already exceeded the emissions from those scenarios.
I suppose there could have been some decline in non-fossil fuel burning emissions relative to expectations? I don’t know.
did Eli just explode? If sensitivity depends on emission scenarios, when did that enter “climate science”?
Andrew_FL (Comment #120573)
October 25th, 2013 at 3:00 pm
Andrew, I had the idea that the models for AR4 used one of the two carbon cycle models you mentioned to convert emissions to forcing and then used those forcings in the model. I was left to think that for AR5 and the CMIP5 models that some modeled the carbon cycle as an internal part of their models. I think some models did and some did it the old way.
This has added importance for me now and I should go back verify what I think has been done – or somebody hear can clarify for me.
I’ll be honest it’s not entirely clear to me either.
The internal models presumably attempt to include feedbacks from the carbon cycle as temperature changes alter the natural sources and sinks of CO2 and Methane.
Theoretically that could be an improvement, unless of course there were very large uncertainties in the carbon cycle model and the effects are expected to be much smaller than those uncertainties.
Which I think is probably the case.
I guess the useful thing to do would be to see if we could compare the forcing used for those models with a coupled carbon cycle, to the forcing applied to those without it?
“Judycurry.com seems to be outranking realclimate.org. I’m not sure what that means”
my guess on Curry’s blog traffic ‘edge’: unmoderated comments, frequent posting, provocative posts and titles with an anti-establishment bias from an ‘insider’, and possibly greater online interest in contrarianism.
Andrew_FL (Comment #120579)
October 25th, 2013 at 6:39 pm
CMIP5 experiments have been run to better understand the carbon cycle. In other experiments CMIP5 is also looking at feeding observed data into models and then looking the results 10, 20 and I think 30 years out. These latter runs are obviously attempts to shed some light on the recent warming pause and evidently get around the lack of timing the natural fluctuations in the model series.
What I am saying here is that I think the weaknesses in the climate models in addressing important issues that are perhaps not acknowledge directly by the modeling community can be detected from these experiments.
Yeah, I agree.
A_FL:
I see two more years after 2008 in the CDIAC site. The last 3 years they show global emissions of 8783, 8740 (a decline!) and then 9167 Gt in 2010. They also have a preliminary estimate for 2011.
Without looking, I will bet that the Mauna Loa CO2 shows nothing like this behavior in those years.
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/ndp030/global.1751_2010.ems
Re: Lance Wallace (Oct 28 17:31),
Year over year variation in atmospheric CO2 correlates to more than just global emissions. Uptake and outflow from the biosphere responds to temperature and possibly insolation. You can get misled into thinking that it’s all temperature rather than emissions by correlating the rate of change in CO2 with temperature.
Lance Wallace (Comment #120602)-Ah, it would appear the link I found is not the most up to date. Thank you for having me check into that. I have no idea why they have maintained a page with the older data. I guess it’s good but it’s a little confusing.
Anyway, in addition to what Dewitt Payne already said, I would also just point out that one should expect emissions to be related to the change in CO2, so emissions can in fact go down but the level up, since it’s sort of an integration of the emissions over time-well, the emissions, minus that portion absorbed by things that aren’t the atmosphere, like the biosphere and the oceans.
There is some interesting missing understanding here-why, for example, the fraction of our emissions absorbed by the various “sinks” has stayed pretty close to constant over time, implying some growing sink in nature. But that emissions are connected to the increasing concentration is not really something we don’t understand. In fact, that nature has generally been a *growing* absorber of CO2 underscores that point.