Calistoga CA and end of The Dream

As I write this the northern California fires continue raging and Calfire doesn’t expect containment for another week.  Santa Rosa the area’s ‘big city’ has been decimated, quite literally.  Major fires in Mendocino County and around Clear Lake (yet again) with Sonoma and Napa valleys being particularly hard hit this past week.

Right now heroic efforts continue to cut fire-lines and other defenses against the huge Tubbs fire in order to save Chateau Montelena Winery of “Bottle Shock” fame and the beautiful little town of Calistoga at the head of the Napa Valley.

All hinges on the weather.  Beyond a certain point, heat and wind will overcome the best defenses, given a few days of favorable winds/temps and the town has a good chance.  (Saturday turned out to be a good day for them and I wish them well these next couple critical days.)

Not that it’s more important than the other catastrophes going down, but this one’s personal, I know the town and the landscape fairly well so this hurts in a way destruction in places I'm not connected with can't. 

Steele saga - Repost 4/5 - Jim can you clarify your argument?

  

This is a reposting of the forth of five responses I made regarding various aspects of Jim Steele's 1/7/15 WattsUpWithThat 'essay' - in light of Steele's recent comment, I think it's only fair to bring it up again.

Here's an example of my process in action and using these incidents to further my own understanding.  While Jim was off at his private club trashing me, I was trying to find a way to simplify the issues for more constructive discussion.

I tried boiling it down to it's most fundamental and came up with two basic questions for Jim.  I figured this would be a good place to start our debate, but Mr. Steele pretended not to hear.  

How about it Jim, you've had over a year to stew on it.

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Friday, January 30, 2015

Mr. Jim Steele, Can you clarify your argument?

A) That wildlife biologists working in extreme conditions and over continental landscapes make mistakes?

B) Disputing that Anthropogenic Global Warming with it's profound changing climate driven landscapes alterations causes adverse cascading consequences for wildlife and eco-systems (read our biosphere)?  

Peter Miesler Helps Expose WUWT Homogenization Insanity, USHCN #2

Although I've been temporarily diverted from my Steele climate science horror story project, I haven't forgotten about it.  For instance, responding to Steele's outlandish Jan 7th WattUpWithThat post claiming to "expose USHCN Homogenization insanity" I had promised more information, but there are only so many hours in a day.

Fortunately, today there were a couple posts over at SkepticalScience.com that give an excellent review of this topic.  In one Dr. Kevin Cowtan, a bona fide expert in the field explains weather station calibration adjustments, the why and how they're done along with comparing adjusted to unadjusted data.  

The second "bulletin inventories rebuttals to two recent articles by Christopher Booker published in the UK's Daily Telegraph claiming that climate scientists have nefariously manipulated temperature data in order to propagate the "myth of manmade climate change".

With thanks to SkepticalScience.com I'll check this off my list and let Dr. Cowtan and John Hartz take it from here:

____________________________________________

Updated 3/27/2015 with this addition from  Variable-Variability.blogspot.com

Two new reviews of the homogenization methods used to remove non-climatic changes

Two new reviews of the homogenization methods used to remove non-climatic changes

By coincidence this week two initiatives have been launched to review the methods to remove non-climatic changes from temperature data. One initiative was launched by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), a UK free-market think tank. The other by the Task Team on Homogenization (TT-HOM) of the Commission for Climatology (CCl) of the World meteorological organization (WMO). Disclosure: I chair the TT-HOM. 

The WMO is one of the oldest international organizations and has meteorological and hydrological services in almost all countries of the world as its members. The international exchange of weather data has always been important for understanding the weather and to make weather predictions. Its main role is to provide guidance and define standards to make collaboration easier. The CCl coordinates climate research, especially when it comes to data measured by the national weather services.  

The review on homogenization, which the TT-HOM will write, is thus mainly aimed at helping national weather services produce better quality datasets to study climate change. This will allow the weather services to provide better climate services to help their nations adapt to climate change.

Homogenization 

Homogenization is necessary because much has happened in the world between the French and the industrial revolution, two world wars, the rise and the fall of communism, and the start of the internet age. Inevitably many changes have occurred in climate monitoring practices. Many global datasets start in 1880, the year toilet paper was invented in the USA and 3 decades before the T-Ford. 

As a consequence, the instruments used to measure temperature have changed, the screens to protect the sensors from the weather have changed and the surrounding of the stations has often been changed and stations have been moved in response. These non-climatic changes in temperature have to be removed as well as possible to make more accurate assessments of how much the world has warmed.  

Removing such non-climatic changes is called homogenization. For the land surface temperature measured at meteorological stations, homogenization is normally performed using relative statistical homogenizing methods. Here a station is compared to its neighbours. If the neighbour is sufficiently nearby, both stations should show about the same climatic changes. Strong jumps or gradual increases happening at only one of the stations indicate a non-climatic change. 

If there is a bias in the trend, statistical homogenization can reduce it. How well trend biases can be removed depends on the density of the network. In industrialised countries a large part of the bias can be removed for the last century. In developing countries and in earlier times removing biases is more difficult and a large part may remain. Because many governments unfortunately limit the exchange of climate data, also the global temperature collections can only remove a part of the trend biases.

Some differences

Some subtle differences.  . . . Continue at: http://variable-variability.blogspot.com/2015/04/two-new-reviews-of-homogenization-methods.html

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Telegraph {and Jim Steele} wrong again on temperature adjustments

Posted on 24 February 2015 by Kevin Cowtan

http://www.skepticalscience.com/telegraph_wrong_again_video.html

There has been a vigorous discussion of weather station calibration adjustments in the media over the past few weeks. While these adjustments don't have a big effect on the global temperature record, they are needed to obtain consistent local records from equipment which has changed over time. 

Despite this, the Telegraph has produced two highly misleading stories {that are bouncing around the echo-chamber} about the station adjustments, the second including the demonstrably false claim that they are responsible for the recent rapid warming of the Arctic.

Mr. Jim Steele, Can you clarify your argument?

A) That wildlife biologists working in extreme conditions and over continental landscapes make mistakes?

B) Disputing that Anthropogenic Global Warming with it's profound changing climate driven landscapes alterations causes adverse cascading consequences for wildlife and eco-systems (read our biosphere)?  

Can Mr. Steele come clean and explain what his fundamental thesis is?

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I have been wrestling with Mr. Jim Steele's YouTube "Climate Science Horror Story" talk to the IEEE for quite a while because it slammed right into my long-time {some call it} obsession with trying to grasp how people can so easily lie to themselves about something as fundamental as understanding and appreciating how our fantastic, beautiful, bountiful, wonderful planet Earth functions and how our society and we ourselves are damaging it.

Besides the YouTube talk Mr. Steele has a blog "Landscapes And Cycles" and his spiel is that local landscapes and natural cycles are ALL important and that we the people should disregard the global.  His talk ignores that natural cycles and wildlife dynamics operate within the biosphere which is dependent on our Earth's protective atmosphere… which regulates the conditions our biosphere inhabits.  

To me it seems that Jim and his public doesn't want to recognize that we exist within a "global heat distribution engine" and that as with any engine when we supercharge it with extra fuel/energy {just like at NASCAR} that engine will break loose.

Steele's climate horror story, drowning chicks. Who says?

At Mr. Steele's Landscapes and Cycles blog (July 1, 2014) "Blinded by Beliefs: The Straight Poop on Emperor" he writes:

¶1  "Two recent press releases concerning the Emperor Penguin’s fate illustrate contrasting forces that will either advance or suppress trustworthy conservation science."
¶12  "Mark Twain again provides insight to why bad science so easily goes viral having written, 'In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from others.' And apparently scientists suffer the same second? hand folly."

I have been doing exactly that and contacting a number of the scientists Mr. Steele singles out in his YouTube 'climate science horror' series.  More times than not, it's turned out to be our Mr. Steele who is suppressing an honest, open and complete review of the available science.  

This morning I decided to go directly to Mr. Steele and request the source of one of his many questionable assertions.  Where did the claim of "chicks falling into the ocean and drowning come from?  I still haven't heard from him and since this is a public dialogue regarding his vehement public attacks on the integrity of respectable dedicated scientists, I've decided to share the following email. This text has been slightly polished, but I will be forwarding this to Steele and Director Blair after posting.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Question re your "drowning chicks" claim 

January 9, 2015

To:

Jim Steele

cc'd: 

John R Blair, Director of the Sierra Nevada Field Campus

Dr. Ainley

Appendix Steele's penguin "climate horror story" YouTube series, Video 4b

{Since Dr. Ainley took the time to answer my emailed questions and was quite helpful in exposing me to various background and studies I was unaware of, I sent him a courtesy copy of my post and this appendix - to see if he had any objections or suggestions before posting them.

Interestingly, he pointed out that I had not mentioned LaRue 2014, which happens to be the same study Steele's "Landscapesandcycles" (and the rest of the echo-chamber) have been trumpeting as supporting their 'No Worries' attitude towards the changes being observed in the Antarctic.  So I've spent the evening reading through that study and I do think comparing that study to what's being claimed on its behalf will make for a good follow up post, but for now what I have here will do.  Happy learning. }

This appendix goes together with my review of Jim Steele's IEEE "climate horror story" YouTube series, Video 4 part 1 regarding Penguins and condition at the Antarctic.  I've posted it in this stand alone page - so that my review and supporting information can be looked at side by side.

Mr. Steele says at 0:25: "... that population has giving rise to all these the horror stories about them going extinct by the end of the century."

It is a scientific horror story to misrepresent the truth!  

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Steele accuses these papers of being an "extinction horror show" yet you won't find the word "extinction" in them - instead you'll find assessments of conditions and sober nuanced projections based on the available facts.

[1a]

Projected continent-wide declines of the emperor penguin under climate change

Jenouvrier, Holland, Stroeve, Serreze, Barbraud, Weimerskirch, Caswell

Nature Climate Change | Letter | Published online 29 June 2014

http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v4/n8/full/nclimate2280.html

"... We project the dynamics of all 45 known emperor penguin colonies⁵ by forcing a sea-ice-dependent demographic model^{6, 7} with local, colony-specific, sea ice conditions projected through to the end of the twenty-first century. Dynamics differ among colonies, but by 2100 all populations are projected to be declining. At least two-thirds are projected to have declined by >50% from their current size. The global population is projected to have declined by at least 19%. ..."

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[1b] 

Antarctic penguin response to habitat change as Earth's troposphere reaches 2°C above preindustrial levels

David Ainley, Russell, Jenouvrier, Woehler, Lyver, Fraser, Kooyman

Ecological Society of America  |  Accepted: May 5, 2009

http://www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/08-2289.1

"We assess the response of pack ice penguins, Emperor (Aptenodytes forsteri) and Adélie (Pygoscelis adeliae), to habitat variability and, then, by modeling habitat alterations, the qualitative changes to their populations, size and distribution, as Earth's average tropospheric temperature reaches 2°C above preindustrial levels (ca. 1860), ...

Steele's penguin "climate horror story" YouTube series, Video 4a

I'm finally getting to the last of Jim Steele's YouTube "horror stories" to the Life Members of the International Electrical and Electronic Engineers'.  This time splitting it into smaller sections, with this first review going to 5:20 and me looking at Steele's claims regarding penguins and what's happening with the climate/weather around Antarctica. 

Jim Steele's talk offers us lessons in two contrasting approaches to learning.  Pay attention and you will notice that Mr. Steele constantly pushes his own conviction ahead of the information he shares.  Thus he's forced to carefully select and then manipulate his information in single-minded dedication to bolstering his sales pitch. 

I'd call Steele's approach the Lawyerly Method, where all that matters is defending one's client regardless of actual guilt or innocence.

The scientific approach on the other hand, is all about learning and assessing the "guilt or innocence" of the topic being studied.  The scientific approach remains open to new information and surprises and life long learning.  Mistakes happen along the way and are converted into valuable learning opportunities as we move forward.

Contrast that to Steele's Republican/Libertarian world where the mistakes of others are enshrined without the slightest interest in examining and understanding why the mistakes were made or what was learned - instead Jim whittles them into bludgeons for attacking all he wants to silence.  As for their own mistakes... well Jim and his crowd doesn't seem to think they make any… it's tough on the learning process.

This time, rather than interjecting my evidence as I go through the transcript, I use an appendix I've posted in a stand alone page - so both pages can be viewed side by side.  As usual Mr. Steele's words will be in courier font.

Published on Nov 3, 2014

Part 4 from Jim Steele's Presentation to the Life Members of the International Electrical and Electronic Engineers. Jim is the author of "Landscapes & Cycles: An Environmentalist's Journey to Climate Skepticism"

Penguins, Polar Bears and Sea Ice by JIm Steele

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okS2dXsR2gg,

Part A of Video 4 - 0:00-5:20

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[1] 0:00 - "There's been several studies last couple years about the Emperor Penguin going extinct..." {launches into a too cute story about his personal fascination with their habits} 0:25 -  "... that population has giving rise to all these horror stories about them going extinct by the end of the century. …"

~ ~ ~

Here Steele uses the technique of inserting misleading melodrama in order to belittle the seriousness of what is being observed. [1] 

None of the studies were screaming “extinction,” heck I couldn't even find the word used in the scientific literature.  Instead the studies are detailed reviews of a changing environment and how those changes will affect penguin colonies.

Regarding "that" population, we should be clear penguin populations are being studied along the entire Antarctic coastline, nor is this particular colony the only one feeling the effects of a rapidly changing climate regime.

The thing that strikes me about this sort of gloss over - is the shear lack of curiosity all the way around.  No interest in understanding what's behind the headlines, "dismiss and move on" as though none of the details matter -  for many of those details see appendix [1]

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Mr. Steele, time for a reality check.

Mr. Steele having studied your Climate Horror Stories YouTube series and various articles you've been peppering the internet with and considering your noble sounding appeals to Carl Sagan's advice and a "civil" debate, I'm appalled at the ease with which you lie about scientists, their science and Earth observations.  

Though I'd intended to be finished with my "Climate Horror Stories" review a couple weeks ago, commitments and unanticipated distracts keep pulling me away.  Still when I can I've continued on the project, mainly doing research on the various claims in video four, which like the previous videos, have consistently turned out to be disingenuous manipulations of the truth, and occasionally out and out fabrications.  

Yesterday I came across a new website that has done a wonderful job of addressing many questions and arguments in a short concise manner.  Therefore, I've decided to share excerpts with my audience and also to encourage you, Jim Steele, to visit their website in order to carefully read the full content, who knows it may help you grasp the enormity of your willful deception.  It starts with one of your favorite talking points.  

I'd be interested to hear how you would "debate" the lucid arguments they outline.  You are welcome to comment here and I assure you I will post any communication you care to share.  As for your video #4, stay tuned.

Addressing Some Common Questions & Arguments

http://understandit.wordpress.com/addressing-some-common-questions-arguments/

1. “They can’t even predict next week’s weather”/”Models are useless”