Climate Rorshach Test as News
June 10th, 2009Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.
Apparently an AP news article out today on how we don’t know if global warming is making the winds blow with less gusto is not a parody, despite all indications to the contrary. For benefit of readers I have condensed it as below:
Not so windy: Research suggests winds dying down
By SETH BORENSTEIN – 6 hours ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — The wind, a favorite power source of the green energy movement, seems to be dying down across the United States. And the cause, ironically, may be global warming — the very problem wind power seeks to address.
The idea that winds may be slowing is still a speculative one, and scientists disagree whether that is happening. . .
Still, the study, which will be published in August in the peer-reviewed Journal of Geophysical Research, is preliminary. There are enough questions that even the authors say it’s too early to know if this is a real trend or not. But it raises a new side effect of global warming that hasn’t been looked into before. . .
Even so, that information doesn’t provide the definitive proof that science requires to connect reduced wind speeds to global warming, the authors said. In climate change science, there is a rigorous and specific method — which looks at all possible causes and charts their specific effects — to attribute an effect to global warming. That should be done eventually with wind, scientists say. . .
One of the problems Pryor acknowledges with her study is that over many years, changing conditions near wind-measuring devices can skew data. If trees grow or buildings are erected near wind gauges, that could reduce speed measurements.
Several outside experts mostly agree that there are signs that wind speed is decreasing and that global warming is the likely culprit.
The new study “demonstrates, rather conclusively in my mind, that average and peak wind speeds have decreased over the U.S. in recent decades,” said Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University.
A naysayer is Gavin Schmidt, a NASA climate scientist in New York who said the results conflict with climate models that show no effect from global warming. He also doubts that any decline in the winds that might be occurring has much of an effect on wind power.
Has global warming reduced windspeeds with potentious implictaions for wind power?
Well obviously we don’t know, but if you’d like to believe that it does, you can justify that belief by citing Michael Mann. And if you’d like to believe that it does not, you can justify that belief by citing Gavin Schmidt.
Climate science as Rorschach test, film at 11.
June 10th, 2009 at 10:44 am
‘The new study “demonstrates, rather conclusively in my mind, that average and peak wind speeds have decreased over the U.S. in recent decades,” said Michael Mann,’
June 10th, 2009 at 11:33 am
Do you suppose that they will have a falling out over there disagreement? Perhaps Mann will be asked to leave RC and start his own blog denying that AGW doesn’t effect winds? Or perhaps Gavin, being skeptical in this regard, will be asked to recant? Hehe, I guess we’ll wait and see if a discussion unfolds at RC where the two try and convince one another. It would be interesting to see if they resort to censoring one another.
June 10th, 2009 at 11:43 am
Did anyone who worked out this “report” and who did the supposedly scientific testing bother to look at sunspot activity? Sunspots and solar flares have a LOT to do with wind and weather patterns here on Earth. Hmm…
Since NASA says that sunspots are dropping and solar activity is decreasing, wouldn’t that explain lower wind speeds?
That, of course, wouldn’t fit the Gorebot agenda, so they’d ignore it regardless.
June 10th, 2009 at 11:51 am
My understanding (I haven’t read the study, just the buzz) is that they merely identified trends. They did not, in the study proper, attribute them, I suspect. So I can’t see the point in complaining that they didn’t look at solar influences (I would be interested to see the evidence for such claims, BTW) given that to my knowledge attribution was not the goal of the paper.
June 10th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
Like any good Rorschach test the interesting results are in what is seen, not what was shown. From reading the headline I knew nothing would be shown so I just snorted and moved on.
Anyway my favorite response to the test is already taken, “Don’t blame me doctor, you’re the one with all of the dirty pictures”. Maybe something like “Don’t blame me Mr. Gore, you’re the one with all of the exaggerated claims” would work.
June 10th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
My take on the ink blot is the way it shows the impedance mismatch between science and journalism. At command of an editor looking for “news” I gave it a quick look. It’s a neat piece of work, suggesting interesting issues worthy of further examination. Most science is like that – inching forward tentatively. Turning the paper into “news”, however, necessitates a hardening of conclusions and implications that this paper simply cannot provide.
June 10th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
-6-John
I think a big mistake made in this field is that many people assume that science “moves forward” from uncertainty to certain, so a study like this one is just an early indication of what later will become certain.
Of course, as you well know, science moves forwards, backwards, sideways, all at the same time.
June 10th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
2 things I take from this study:
1. While Mann accepts the measured data, Gavin rejects it, BECAUSE IT CONFLICTS WITH HIS MODELS. Models are better than measurements?
2. Reduced average and peak wind speed, would also suggest reduced storm intensities.
June 10th, 2009 at 6:05 pm
The lower wind speed observation is quite likely correct, but the attribution is wrong. If global warming has been winding down, as it appears to be from the climate data of the last few years, then the atmosphere obviously would have less energy, which translates into lower wind speed (as oppose to AWG proponents’ prediction of higher wind speed with increased AGW).
You have to give Michael (the Hockey-stick) Mann credit for at least acknowledging the data. Gavin Schmidt, meanwhile, is obviously still busy burying all contrary data in his file cabinet under “bad dreams.”
June 11th, 2009 at 9:31 am
# Les Johnson Says:
“1. While Mann accepts the measured data, Gavin rejects it, BECAUSE IT CONFLICTS WITH HIS MODELS. Models are better than measurements? ”
As someone who does CFD modeling for a living, I can say it is easy for numerical analysts to construct a “virtual world” for themselves, where their virtual environment substitutes for the real environment. This disconnection from reality I believe is very similar to what is experienced by people addicted to online computer games. Of course, the “computer game” in this case is a poorly documented AOGCM written in very obtuse FORTRAN. See for yourself:
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/modelE/modelEsrc/
June 11th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
[...] across the U.S. might be slowing. Roger Pielke Jr. takes a bite out of the finding at over at Prometheus, and Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann parse the question at Real [...]
June 11th, 2009 at 9:10 pm
[...] of you may have learned of a report indicating a 10% drop in wind speeds across the US. It appears different scientists may have different points of view on aspects of the report. One of the important consequences would be the impact of lower wind [...]
June 12th, 2009 at 1:43 am
I’ve spent two days trying to find a set of graphs that show windspeed variation over the oceans, divided into north and south, Atlantic and Pacific. No luck — they’re a gif, I think, and something to do with ocean productivity. No luck, but…
If one strips out the Folland and Parker correction from the SST record, then the temperature bump from ‘39 to ‘45 matches nicely with a wind excursion at the same time — it was, IIRC, 7 m/sec up at the peak. So I would expect higher temperatures to be associated with higher windspeed unless there is another mechanism in play which is disengaging the wind from the ocean surface — if that were the case then it should show up in cloud data.
JF
June 13th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
[...] Some of you may have learned of a report indicating a 10% drop in wind speeds across the US. It appears different scientists may have different points of view on aspects of the report. One of the important consequences would be the impact of lower wind [...]
June 14th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
[...] across the U.S. might be slowing. Roger Pielke Jr. takes a bite out of the finding at over at Prometheus, and Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann parse the question at Real [...]