Could they be worse?

Nigel Farage, the leader of UKIP, is not lavish in his praise of his party's election candidates, but he does have one thing to say in their defence: "Have you met the cretins we have in Westminster? Do you think we can be worse than that?".

That's intended to be rhetorical, but it's a question I'm going to consider.  UKIP has had only one MP, a defector from the Conservatives who apparently never paid his party subs and changed his mind after six months, so we can't say anything about the quality of its representatives in the Commons.  But it has been much more successful in European elections.  In June 1999 it had three candidates elected to the European Parliament, in 2004 twelve, and in 2009 thirteen.  Altogether, there have been 22 different UKIP MEPs.  How have they got on?

Two of them have been sent to prison.  Ashley Mote, elected in 2004, was immediately suspended from UKIP when it found out he was to be tried for benefit fraud.  In 2007 he was sentenced to nine months' imprisonment.  Tom Wise, also elected in 2004, had the UKIP whip withdrawn in March 2007 over an expenses scandal, and was convicted in November 2009 of False Accounting and sentenced to two years in prison.

Five others have left the party before the end of their terms as MEPs.  Michael Holmes, at that time the party leader, was elected in 1999, but resigned from the party nine months later complaining of "bitterness and infighting".  Robert Kilroy-Silk was elected in 2004 but resigned the UKIP whip after four months, and left the party soon after to found another more to his taste.  Nikki Sinclaire was elected in 2009 but had the whip withdrawn after nine months and subsequently won a sex discrimination case against the party (there was a later rapprochement).  David Campbell Bannerman, elected in 2009, defected to the Conservatives in May 2011.  And Marta Andreasen, followed him in February this year: she described Farage as a "stalinist".

So of the 28 occasions when European electors have chosen a UKIP candidate, there are seven - a quarter - on which their choice was frustrated by criminality or animosity between the candidate and the party.

To put the criminality in context, I've attempted to count all the MPs and MEPs elected in the last three elections in England, Scotland and Wales who have been imprisoned.    Excluding the UKIP MEPs, there are no MEPs and five MPs - David Chaytor, Eric Illsley, Jim Devine, and Elliott Morley. all Labour members convicted in 2011 of false accounting over the expenses scandal (Margaret Moran was unfit to stand trial), and Chris Huhne, convicted this year of perverting the course of justice.  That's out of 188 non-UKIP MEPs elected (I'm counting per election rather than per distinct MEP), and 1902 MPs elected (ignoring by-elections).    So 0.24% of non UKIP MPs and MEPs are jailbirds, compared with 7.1% of UKIP MEPs.

(The Conservatives are not immune: three Tory peers have been to jail - Jeffrey Archer for perjury and Paul White and John Taylor for fiddling their parliamentary expenses.)

It's harder to keep track of defections and other fallings out, but the immediate comparison is that there has been one defection to UKIP - Roger Helmer from the Conservatives.  So UKIP now has eleven MEPs (who they describe as "the UKIP team of 12").

To answer Farage's question - "do you think we can be worse?".  Yes I do.

UK downgraded, not much damage.

Fitch has downgraded UK sovereign debt, following Moody's lead.  Frances Coppola explains why they're wrong - I outlined similar thoughts over a year ago, but she is much more thorough.

Coppola starts by explaining that "For sovereign debt, [a credit rating] is supposed to give investors an indication of the risk of loss due to default".  Yes, but it's hard to imagine a single investor's mind being changed on Fitch's say-so.  The real purpose of these ratings is to get featured in the news.

The principal damage inflicted by the downgrade is on George Osborne and his colleagues, who undertook to "safeguard Britain's credit rating".  And the only people helped by it are the ratings agencies, who have attracted a lot of respectful publicity.  To sum up, a politician has failed to keep his promise, and a publicity seeker has successfully sought publicity.

One Year

One year ago this morning Helen stopped breathing beside me.  On Sunday I'll be running the London Marathon in her memory.  Please give generously in her memory to Arthur Rank House or Sarcoma UK.  Thank you.

Read this blog and win the Superbowl

Astonishing as it may seem, the evidence suggests that Jim Harbaugh, coach of the San Francisco 49ers (an American Football team), does not read this blog.  But he should.

Last night the Superbowl was played between the 49ers and the Baltimore Ravens, coached by Jim's elder brother John (I can't say whether he's among my readers).  And the 49ers fell behind 28-6, before scoring a touchdown with seven or so minutes remaining in the third quarter.  

As my readers know, the best strategy in this situation is to attempt a two-point conversion.  But the 49ers chose to kick for a single point - the possibility of a two-point attempt was briefly raised and dismissed by analysts on the channel I was watching.  The 49ers went on to score two more touchdowns without reply: after the third they went for two points to tie the game, but failed.  The Ravens then scored a field goal to go five points ahead.  The 49ers drove close to the Raven's goal line in the last three minutes, but were obliged by the points difference to go for a touchdown on fourth down rather than kick a field goal, and failed.

Suppose instead that the 49ers had gone for two at 28-12, and failed.  After their next touchdown they would attempt two points again.  If they succeeded, they would try for another two after their third touchdown, leaving themselves either level or two points behind, and if they failed they would kick a point after their third touchdown.  So in the last two minutes they would have been either three, five, or six points behind.  Five or six would have been no different from in the game, but three would have allowed them to kick a tying field goal, with a good chance to win in overtime.

Reportedly Jim Harbaugh is paid $5m a year for his coaching skills, and may be worth more...

False Light

There's been an internet spat between Anthony Watts, operator of "The world's most viewed site on global warming and climate change", and Greg Laden, operator of the world's most viewed site written by Greg Laden.

Deviating from his usual subject of disbelief in anthropogenic global warming, Watts posted an item about a paper reporting signs of extraterrestrial life in a meteorite.  Unfortunately for Watts, the paper appears to be completely wrong, so when Laden read the post he wrote one of his own, mocking Watts, for not being "equipped to recognize this bogus science as bogus".  Watts, fired back a post accusing Laden of being a liar, on the grounds that Laden's screenshot of Watts' post cut off the second line, which qualified Watts' enthusiasm.  Laden was unimpressed.  Watts posted again, asking his readers whether he should launch a "false light" legal claim against Laden.  Laden laughed.

I've got nothing to add about the identification of alleged extraterrestrial diatoms, but I'm interested in the notion that the law in some US states allows bloggers to sue each other over what they've written, especially in view of the way US law has been influenced by the First Amendment.  I Am Not a Lawyer, but I can follow hyperlinks, so I followed the link Watts helpfully provides to a site discussing the "false light" law in Washington DC, where Watts proposes to sue.

The first, unsurprising point is that a false light claim requires "a false statement, representation, or imputation about the plaintiff".  There doesn't seem to be any false statement in Laden's article.  Laden has a screen shot of Watts starting his post with "This looks to be a huge story, the first evidence of extraterrestrial life, if it holds up", which of course is exactly what Watts did write.  It was a bit rude of Laden to cut off his screenshot before Watts' further qualification that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", but that qualification is irrelevant to Laden's point, which is that the paper Watts cited doesn't constitute so much as ordinary evidence.  The screenshot is not a false representation of what Watts wrote.  Laden goes on to say that Watts "was not equipped to recognize this bogus science as bogus", but Watts in his follow up does not disagree, writing "I've never claimed to be an expert in meteors or diatoms".

The second point is that "false light" is a privacy tort.  It's not intended to protect a person in the act of publicizing his views.  I don't see that one can claim to operate a "most viewed site" and claim privacy protection for what one writes on it.

The third point is that, in so far as the plaintiff is a public figure, he has to prove "actual malice", which words carry a special legal meaning that the statement complained of was published knowing it was false or reckless about its truth.  Whereas Laden seems to believe strongly in what he wrote.  Is Watts claiming not to be a public figure when blogging?

The fourth point is that there are strong first amendment protections for expressions of opinion and fair comment.  And Laden was expressing a critical opinion of Watts' writing.

So, to this lay reader, any legal action by Watts would seem to be beyond hopeless.

Introducing his threat of legal action, Watts wrote "I spent yesterday conferring with lawyers about the smear that Greg Laden made against me", but he doesn't actually say what advice the lawyers gave him, resorting instead to the formula "it seems that Laden’s actions in his original and follow up story meet the legal tests for "false light".

I predict that Watts will not sue.

More about Fears of Climate Change

In my previous post, I looked at a recent estimate by Lewis of climate sensitivity to CO₂ doubling, pointing out that Lewis, while not explicitly disagreeing with SOD's data, used his own substantially lower estimate for heat uptake.

On the other hand, Lewis does explain at some length why he prefers a lower number to the IPCC's median estimate of -0.9 W m^-2 for (non-volcanic, mainly sulphate) aerosol forcing - what the IPCC calls Adjusted Forcing from Combined Aerosol-Radiation and Aerosol-Cloud Interactions, or AF_ari+aci for short.  He points out that that estimate is "not what the observations indicate: it is a composite of observational, GCM-simulation/aerosol model derived, and inverse estimates."  He wants to use observational data only, so he takes the figure of -0.73 W m^-2  from section 7.5.3 of SOD, and corrects SOD's estimate of total forcing for the difference.  Paul S, commenting here, says that that value wrongly treats estimates in some source papers of the indirect effect only as the whole forcing - the principal aerosol forcing mechanisms are the direct interaction with radiation, and the first indirect effect, which is caused by a change in cloud albedo resulting from droplet nucleation.

I've looked up the five papers listed on page 7-109 as sources for the estimate.  I present a crude summary of their results:

Paper	Direct	Indirect	Total	Note
Bellouin	-0.5	-0.4	-0.9
Lohmann		-0.85		[powerpoint]
Quaas 2006		-0.53		Using LMDZ General Circulation Model
Quaas 2006		-0.29		Using ECHAM4 General Circulation Model
Quaas 2009	-0.4	-0.7	-1.2	See paper for why it doesn't add up
Sekiguchi	-0.4	-0.9	-1.3	Not including cloud fraction change

To get more confidence in the numbers, I've had a look at the difference between Adjusted Forcing and Radiative Forcing.  SOD estimates a centre value for RF_ari of -0.4 W m^-2, and explains (page 7-45)

AF_ari adds the radiative effects from rapid adjustments onto RF_ari...Rapid adjustments are principally caused by cloud changes...Overall a best estimate for the rapid adjustment is taken to be –0.1 W m^-2...[giving] an assessment for AF_ari of –0.5 W m^-2

So its estimate of the direct effect is consistent with the numbers in my table.

SOD's preferred method for evaluating AF_aci is to back it out from AF_ari+aci:

We produce a best estimate ... for AF_ari+aci in the following way. The global CMIP5 models and inverse estimates are grouped together and a bootstrapping method is used to estimate a mean ... of –0.98 W m^-2. Processing the satellite-based estimates in the same way leads to a mean ... of –0.73 W m^-2... We combine these two estimates into a best estimate ... for RF_ari+aci of –0.9 W m^-2...

The AF_aci is estimated as the residual between AF_ari+aci and AF_ari. We further assume that AF_ari and AF_aci are additive ..., which yields to our assessment of AF_aci of –0.4 W m^-2. Models indicate that RF_aci is less than AF_aci, which implies an estimate of –0.3 W m^-2...

[I think the "RF_ari+aci" there is a typo for "AF_ari+aci"]

Comparing the numbers in my table with the scatter plot in SOD Figure 7.10 on page 7-130, which shows seven points with the largest at about -1.0, it's apparent that the SAT points plotted are for indirect forcing only.  The two values in Quaas 2006 seem to have been plotted separately.  I can't see where the seventh point comes from.  Averaging the six points I've got gives -0.6, and adding a direct effect of -0.5 onto that gives a total adjusted forcing of -1.1 W m^-2.  Whence the big difference from SOD's combined estimate of –0.73 W m^-2?   It's hard to be sure, but it looks very much as if SOD has used the satellite estimates for indirect forcing only as if they're the whole forcing effect.  Three of the papers explicitly disagree with that, because they talk about additionally about the direct effect and a total effect.  The other two papers are clear that they're discussing indirect effects only.  If the combined effect is really –0.73 W m^-2 and the estimate quoted above of -0.5 W m^-2 for the direct effect is good, that implies an indirect effect of only -0.23 W m^-2, lower than the estimates in any of the studies referenced.  This seems obviously wrong.

I've also looked up the seven papers listed as sources for the estimate of RF_ari+aci (two of them the same as above)

Paper	Direct	Indirect	Total	Note
Bellouin	-0.5	-0.4	-0.9
Dufresne	-0.5	-0.22	-0.72	Change in sulphate aerosols 1860 to 1995
Lebsock		-0.42	-
Quaas and Boucher		-0.35	-	Average of results for MODIS and POLDER satellite data
Quaas 2008	-0.9	-0.2	-1.1
Quaas 2009	-0.4	-0.7	-1.2	See paper for why it doesn't add up
Storelvmo		-0.94		Mode of four values

Here simply summing the average direct (-0.58) and indirect (-0.46) forcings gives a total forcing of -1.04 W m^-2. (I think the Dufresne result should be corrected for this purpose by adding in the 1860 forcing, but I've not done that.)

So the sources SOD references suggest an RF_ari+aci of about -1.0 W m^-2 and an AF_ari+aci of about -1.1 W m^-2.

In conclusion, SOD mentions the value of -0.73 W m^-2 only in passing, and does not offer it as an estimate. And the source papers it refers to seem not to justify using it.  Lewis might reasonably have take SOD's explicit estimate for AF_ari+aci of -0.9 W m^-2, or he could have gone to the sources using his preferred method and come up with a consensus value of -1.1 W m^-2.  I think he is not justified in using -0.73 W m^-2.

Using a value of -0.9 together with my previous heat uptake estimate increases the median sensitivity to 1.95.  Using -1.1 increases median sensitivity to 2.29 .

__

It's very possible that this post could be improved by expert interpretation of the source materials.  I welcome suggestions and corrections, and may undertake extensive revision in their light.

[I've omitted throughout estimates and discussion of uncertainties.  Which is not to say that they're unimportant, but I'm concentrating here on the headline numbers.]

Fears of Climate Change

Matt Ridley has attracted some attention with his article in the Wall Street Journal Cooling Down the Fears of Climate Change.  It's not a balanced presentation - for example he repeats the factoid that "global temperatures are no higher than they were 16 years ago" without mentioning that the two warmest years on record were 2005 and 2010.  But the main interest is his account of some work by Nic Lewis, not yet published as a scientific paper, but available on climate-dissenting blogs.  Lewis uses an energy balance method introduced ten years ago by Gregory et al. to get a median climate sensitivity of 1.62K, with a 5%-95% confidence interval of 1.03‑2.83K. That is he predicts that a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide should lead to an global average temperature increase of 1.62 degrees, with considerable uncertainty around that number.

The idea behind the method is that in equilibrium, there's a balance between radiation losses from the earth, and the radiation it absorbs from the sun.  When something happens to disturb this balance - a forcing - the earth's surface temperature has to change to compensate - radiation increase with temperature.  However, it will take some time for the earth to heat up (or cool down) to reach that temperature, in the meantime there will be a heat uptake which must be included in the calculation if one wants to use current data to estimate an equilibrium effect.  One selects two time periods as far apart as practicable, takes an estimate of changes in the various forcings, subtracts an estimate of changes in heat uptake, and divides by the resulting temperature change to get the sensitivity to net forcing.  Then one scales the result to the estimated change in forcing for a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Lewis acknowledges in the comments under his article that this is estimating an Effective Climate Sensitivity rather than an Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity, but it's not clear to him or me why these should be much different (I could be wrong).

When Gregory tried this method, he got a median sensitivity of 6.1K, with a confidence interval stretching down to negative numbers 1.6 K and up to infinity - the method was interesting, but the results were useless did no more than establish a lower bound.  Lewis says he can do much better, taking his parameters mainly from the IPCC's draft of its forthcoming Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), which was recently leaked by a reviewer (anyone could sign up as a reviewer).

The report gives the IPCC's current estimate of sensitivity: I quote from page SPM-11 of the Executive Summary (the whole leaked report can conveniently be accessed on scribd)

Equilibrium climate sensitivity is likely in the range 2°C–4.5°C, and very likely above 1.5°C. The most likely value is near 3°C. Equilibrium climate sensitivity greater than about 6°C–7°C is very unlikely

So Lewis's range overlaps a lot with the IPCC's range, albeit the range is obtained by allowing a model's parameters to vary within their individual error bounds, and the choices that give the low estimates in the IPCC's calculation may be inconsistent with the choices that give the high estimates in Lewis's.

I had a look at the parameters Lewis uses; one section in particular caught my eye, discussing the heat uptake parameter.  (OHU is Ocean Heat Uptake, SOD is Second Order Draft - the leaked version.)  To make it easier to read I've omitted the error analysis:

I estimate 2002–2011 OHU from a regression over 2002–2011 of 0–2000m pentadal ocean heat content estimate...the trend equates to 0.433 W/m², averaged over the Earth's surface...There is no alternative to using GCM-derived estimates of OHU for the 1871–1880 period, since there were no measurements then. I adopt the OHU estimate given in [Gregory 02] for the bracketing 1861–1900 period of 0.16 W/m², but deduct only 50% of it to compensate for the Levitus et al. (2012) regression trend implying a somewhat lower 2002-2011 OHU than is given in the SOD...That implies a change in OHU of 0.353 W/m²... Although Gregory 02 ignored non-ocean heat uptake, some allowance should be made for that and also for any increase in ocean heat content below 3000 m. The (slightly garbled) information in Section 3.2.5 of the SOD implies that 0–3000 m ocean warming accounts for 80–85% of the Earth's total heat uptake... Allowing for all components of the Earth's heat uptake implies an estimated change in total heat uptake of 0.43 W/m²...Natural variability in decadal OHU should be the counterpart of natural variability in decadal global surface temperature, so is not accounted for separately.

The bit about deducting only 50% of the uptake in the reference period is hard to understand, and it's odd that he refers to the SOD value without specifying what it is.  And Lewis doesn't say a word about disagreeing with SOD on this.  So I went and looked up what SOD has to say.  The relevant section is Box 3.1 on page 3-11 of Chapter 3:

It is virtually certain that Earth has gained substantial energy from 1971–2010 — an estimated first-difference change of 273 [194 to 353] ZJ (1 ZJ = 10²¹ J), with a rate of 213 TW from a linear fit over that time period (Box 3.1, Figure 1). From 1993–2010 the estimated energy gain is from a first difference is 163[125 to 200] ZJ with a linear rate estimate of 27 TW. Ocean warming dominates the total energy change inventory, accounting for roughly 93% on average from 1971–2010. Melting ice (including Arctic sea ice, ice sheets, and glaciers) accounts for 3% of the total, and warming of the continents 3%. Warming of the atmosphere makes up the remaining 1%. The ocean component of the 1993–2010 rate of energy gain is 257TW, equivalent to a global mean net air-sea heat flux of 0.71 W m^–2, and that for 1971–2010 is 199 TW, implying a mean net air-sea heat flux of 0.55 W m^–2

The 27 TW given for the 1993-2010 rate is an obvious typo.  It's easy to convert from joules to watts (a terawatt is 10¹² watts): one divides by the number of years then divides by the number of seconds in a year. That tells me that the right number is 287 TW: I suppose the middle digit has somehow been dropped.

It's also easy to convert from watts to watts per square metre, taken over the whole of the earth's surface, by dividing by the earth's surface area.  That gives 0.42 W m–2 as the average rate for 1971-2010, very close to Lewis's figure.  But he ought to be using a figure for 2002-2011, and the rate has increased sharply during the period - I reproduce the chart from page 3-66 of SOD Chapter 3

Reading off the chart, I estimate heat uptake in the last 10 years to have been 113 ZJ, corresponding to 0.70 W m^-2. Subtracting the whole (rather than half) of estimated uptake in the reference period, and redoing the calculation using the rest of Lewis's numbers unchanged, I get a median sensitivity of 1.74 K instead of 1.62 K.

My guess is that Lewis has tended to choose parameters which nudge his estimate downwards, and has been somewhat optimistic in his error estimates.  But even with consensus parameters, this method will produce a significantly lower median estimate than the IPCC's.  It seems worth seeking to understand why.

James Annan comments

I think a lot of what Nic Lewis says seems reasonable, though I also suspect that some of his choices will have served to underestimate sensitivity somewhat. Don't forget, "the ipcc" does no research to estimate sensitivity, they only summarise the literature which generally lags the latest evidence.