Singing about the periodic table

Most people here are probably familiar with Tom Lehrer‘s song – The Elements.

Well, for chemists here’s a new song about the elements – and the periodic table.

Actually, the video version – which depicts the elements in order on the periodic table may be useful as a memory tool for students.

The NEW Periodic Table Song (In Order).

Oh – there may also be a few more elements than in Lehrer’s time too.

Black cat in a dark room – and the role of science

There are some  really excellent quotes on social media – Facebook and Twitter.
The one above really appeals to me. Sure the classifications are broad, and it would be interesting to break each one down. But the main message is certainly one I agree with.

It does summarise the problem very well. But I am sure someone will disagree?

A New Zealand climate change pseudosceptic apologises!

Credit where credit is due, and I admit I never thought I would say this about local climate pseudosceptic Richard Treadgold – but “good on you mate.”

Richard Treadgold, New Zealand climate pseudosceptic and blogger

I have often got into heated debate with this guy – my main concern being his willingness to effectively accuse honest climate scientists, include New Zealand scientists, of scientific fraud. He also has a bad habit of misrepresenting climate science and climate scientists on his blog Climate Conversation Group. I have often raised with him his moral obligation to apologise for such misrepresentation and accusations (see Apologies would be nice).

Without result. But now he has apologised for recently misrepresenting local climate scientist Dr James Renwick (see Hide sticks it to Renwick,  Renowden a scaring warmist,  and  Renwick blames drought on man-made global warming, which has been now changed to Renwick doesn’t blame AGW for drought).

In his post today, Climate porkies from TV One, Richard actually says (and we have to get this on record):

“I apologise to Dr Renwick for misquoting him so badly — that is, over a statement so disastrously incorrect.”

So, good on you, Richard.

This whole incident started with Richards thoughtless endorsement (Hide sticks it to Renwick) of a snakey NBR article by failed NZ ultra-conservative politician Rodney Hide (see Faith, not facts, drives global warming) and I won’t rehash the time line here (read my posts “Incontrovertible” is it, Rodney?,  Confusion and distortion – has global warming stopped?   and  Pseudosceptics are at it again – misrepresenting and attacking climate scientists for details).

Richard admits he wrote his misleading posts “after reading the transcript and studying the video,” but the final blow for him seems to be Renwick’s email which “politely confirmed that he never blamed the drought on global warming: “This is just not so.””

I believe the transcript and video were extremely clear and am surprised Richard’s apology only came after personal confirmation from Renwick  (see transcript at Lack of govt leadership on climate change – Renwick, and video of interview at Q+A: Corin Dann interviews Dr James Renwick).

Mind you, some other climate pseudosceptics are more resistant than Richard. On of the commenters on Richards blog responded to Renwick’s confirmation by accusing him of “splitting hairs.” And one faithful climate change denier on twitter I debated  refused to take the video and transcript as evidence – instead claiming that the offending claim had been made while the camera wasn’t running, or had been edited out. Poor soul.

I am also aware that local climate change pseudosceptics will have not qualms twisting Renwick’s confirmation into another misrepresentation. Some of the commenters on Richard’s blog already seem to be doing so. Renwick’s confirmation – that he never declared global warming had directly caused our recent extreme drought and that there was no other explanation -  to mean he claims that global warming will play no role in future extreme weather events. Richard himslef comments:

“. . it’s useful to have his firm statement on record that weather events are not caused by global warming. Everyone and his dog has been looking around at this warm record or that storm and saying that’s global warming, we’re all doomed. It will be handy to slap them with Renwick’s authoritative statement.”

Let’s be clear, the current scientific thought is that while one can never prove a direct link to specific events, global warming will probably increase the frequency of such extreme weather events in the future. Renwick made this clear in the interview – read the transcript Richard.

Meanwhile, I hope Treagold’s ethical chickens really have come home to roost for good – there are still a few apologies outstanding. For example his egregious  claim that NIWA scientists had manipulated New Zealand temperature data to create evidence for warming (see  his infamous article “Are we getting warmer yet?” and my posts New Zealand’s denier-gate and Painted into a corner?).

However, let’s celebrate this rather rare event – a scientists getting an apology foir their misrepresentation.

There’s a few other New Zealand bloggers who should take note and start thinking about their own ethical obligations.

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Chris Hadfield’s 5-month Space Mission in 90 Seconds

Many people have probably just become aware of Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield in the last week because of his musical video Space Oddity that went viral.

It might be hard to find anyone who has not watched that video. However, Hadfield has starred in many videos from the International Space Station – sometimes singing but more often introducing viewers to interesting facts about living in a zero gravity environment.

This video is a very short (90 seconds) mashup of some of these.

Houston, We Have A Viral Video – Chris Hadfield In Space

Thanks to Chris Hadfield’s 5-month Space Mission in 90 Seconds – Ontario Stargazing.

Confusion and distortion – has global warming stopped?

There’s a mantra circulating at the moment claiming that global warming “stopped 17 years ago.” It is of course being pushed by the pseudosceptics in the climate denial echo chamber. However, even people who should know better have been heard to repeat something like that.

Rodney Hide, a former New Zealand ultra conservative politician has assured us “The world stopped getting warmer 17 years ago. That’s incontrovertible” (see my post “Incontrovertible” is it, Rodney? for my take on that). And one of the commenters on my blog at  SciBlog seems willing to treat Rodney’s assurance as a simple fact. Of course the pseudosceptics proudly and loudly reassert similar claims.

But many of those repeating this mantra are attributing the claim to authoritative sources, like the the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) and leading climate scientists and institutions.

So what’s the truth. Has global warming “stopped?” Are climate scientists saying it has stopped?”

Short answer is actually no. Slightly longer answer is along the lines that the current rate of global temperature increase seems to have slowed, global temperatures may even have plateaued, but that doesn’t support a claim that global warming has “stopped!” Or stopped 17 years ago.

IPCC Chairman misrepresented

Firstly – lets deal with the use of Rajendra Pachauri, Chairman of the IPPC, as a source for this mantra. This appears to go back to a report in the Australian which claimed he  “acknowledged a 17-year pause in global temperature rises.”

Trouble is, there is no record to back up the claim and the IPCC communications office said it does not accurately represent Pachauri’s thoughts on the subject.

The only statement the Australian article actually attributed to Pachauri on this subject is that “global average temperatures had plateaued at record levels and that the halt did not disprove global warming.” And that is paraphrasing Pachauri and not quoting him directly.

As the blog Skeptical Science pointed out (see Did Murdoch’s The Australian Misrepresent IPCC Chair Pachauri on Global Warming?) if he “had he said that global surface air  temperatures have plateaued and that this doesn’t disprove global warming, he would be 100% correct.” And that is what a number of well-known climate scientists also have said. Usually no mention of 17 years and certainly no claim that global warming had “stopped” 17 years ago.

To help clarify I repeat below two figures from my recent post “Incontrovertible” is it, Rodney? These show global air temperatures for the last 17 years and for the long-term – since 1880.

Global temperature anomalies for 1996-2012 (Average annual temperature data from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Sciences),

Line plot of global mean land-ocean temperature index, 1880 to present, with the base period 1951-1980. The dotted black line is the annual mean and the solid red line is the five-year mean. The green bars show uncertainty estimates. [This is an update of Fig. 1A in Hansen et al. (2006).]

As I said about the first figure in my recent post:

“There’s a lot of noise so all we can say from that data is the warming rate is in the range of  -0.02 and 0.17 °C/decade (95% confidence level). That’s the problem with such short time periods.”

Putting short-term trends in context of long-term record

The data in the first figure must be put into the context of the longer term changes. And as the 2nd figure shows a number of short periods over the longer term which had a similar pattern to that in the first figure. It would be silly, especially with hindsight, to claim that global warming “stopped” in 1990, or 1985, or 1975, and so on. Yet this is what some people are doing.

It’s easy to find short time periods where the global temperature trend is not significantly different to zero – that’s the nature of a record with this sort of variability or noise. A record which also results from a number of factors and is therefore not a simple correlation with one cause.

So it is silly to cherry pick a short period and then make an absolute claim (global warming has stopped) – and especially to claim that somehow something happened in 1975 so that “global warming stopped 17 years ago. Think about it. Take that first figure a just select the last 10 years. The trend will also not be significantly different to zero – are we then going to claim something happened in 2002 to “stop” global warming?

No, of course not. The only reason 17 years is mentioned is that one can’t go back further than that without the trend being significantly different from zero. It’s a cherry-picked date – cherry picked to produce a non-significant trend.

Have IPCC models been disproved

Another common claim is that the very recent plateau, or decrease in the rate of global warming proves the scientific climate models are wrong.  More specifically I have often heard the claim that since this plateau has occurred while atmospheric CO₂ levels continue to increase this proves that CO₂ is not driving global warming. Even the claim that the plateau has somehow shown the scientific understanding of the fundamental properties of greenhouse gases is wrong.

The naivety of the last claim is to think that climate scientists  consider CO₂ to be the only factor influencing the climate – they just don’t. Consequently one should not expect to see a simple correlation between global temperature and atmospheric CO₂. Any attempt to understand or model climate change must include many more inputs than CO₂.

As for models in general here is a couple of factors:

1. All models are inaccurate. That’s just the nature of the attempt to understand complex systems – we can’t expect to get things perfect. And when anomalies occur this may actually help us improve the models by incorporating other factors or more realistic physical parameters. Despite this models have important uses as long as we understand their limitations.
2. Models require inputs – inputs which may change, often unpredictably, over time. Therefore it is silly to expect model projections to always be correct or accurate further down the track.

For example, there could be weather conditions increasing heat inputs into the deep ocean which could not have been incorporated several years ago. Or there could have been an increase of particulates from increased coal use which had not been predicted. Political changes can produce economic changes which influence inputs. These are some of the ideas that have been suggested to help explain the current plateau or reduced rate of global temperature increase.

So the real test of the model is not to use inputs based on predictions made several years before, but to update inputs so that the model more correctly represents current situations.

But, more basically, it’s important to recognise that the global climate is complex. Simple mechanisms are not going to explain the details in the global temperature record. So be careful of people who advance simple explanations to discredit the science.

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Video coverage of astronauts’ return to earth next Tuesday morning

UPDATE: Woops! Sorry, I confused the time conversions. The correct NZ times are now present in bold.

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It’s all go aboard the International Space Station at the moment. An external ammonia link was found today (see NASA: Space station power system radiator leaking). This is connected to power systems and steps are changes are being made to isolate its effects.

Meanwhile three of the cosmonauts/astronauts will be returning to earth early next week. Expedition 35 Commander Chris Hadfield of the Canadian Space Agency, Tom Marshburn of NASA and Roman Romanenko of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) will undock their Soyuz TMA-07M spacecraft from the station on Tuesday May 14 NZT (7:08 p.m. EDT May 13), heading for a landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan southeast of Dzhezkazgan at 10:31 p.m. EDT (8:31 a.m. Kazakh time, May 14). They will have spent 146 days in space since their Dec. 19 launch from Kazakhstan.

Chris Hadfield, a Canadian, has been very actively photographing the earth – different countries and cities, and sending the photos out to social media via Twitter. He’s also done a lot of communication via video links to schoolchildren and other audiences. Hopefully the remaining cosmonauts/astronauts, and the new arrivals will make efforts  continue such communication.

The Canadian Space Agency will mark the landing with a “Tweetup” at the Canadian Space Agency headquarters in Quebec. This will include live video coverage of the landing.

Photo: Canadian Space Agency/Chris Hadfield

Activities connected with the departure of the Soyuz craft and its landing can be following live on NASA TV. Coverage will begin Sunday, May 12 EDT, with the change of command ceremony between Hadfield and Vinogradov. Coverage will continue May 13 and 14 EDT with Expedition 35 landing and post-landing activities.

• NASA TV’s full coverage schedule is as follows (I have included both NZT and EDT):
• Sunday, May 12, 3:40 p.m. EDT  — Expedition 35/36 change of command ceremony
• Monday, May 13, 3:30 p.m. EDT 11:30 p.m. NZT– Farewells and hatch closure (hatch closure scheduled at 3:50 p.m. EDT, 7:50 a.m. Tuesday 14 NZT)
• 6:45 p.m Monday, EDT. 10:45 a.m. Tuesday 14 NZT. — Undocking (undocking scheduled at 7:08 p.m. [11.08 a.m Tuesday 14 NZT])
• 9:15 p.m. Monday EDT. 1:15 p.m. Tuesday 14 NZT — Deorbit burn and landing (deorbit burn scheduled at 9:37 p.m. EDT [1.37 p.m Tuesday 14 NZT], landing scheduled at 10:31 p.m. EDT [2.31 p.m. Tuesday 14 NZT]).
• There will also be later video coverage of post landing activities.

The limits of philosophy

Or should I say - “The trouble with philosophy?”

Whatever. The title certainly makes a change from those like “The Limits of science.” How many times have I seen such titles on articles written by religious apologists, philosophers of religion, or even straight non-religious philosophers. These articles usually annoy me because they often set up a straw man – a claim that science has no limits – which no scientists is making.

So it’s nice to turn the tables for a change.

Monty Python’s Football – Philosophers often play for different teams

I often get criticised by philosophers, theologians, philosophers of religion and students of philosophy for making philosophical mistakes – or so they claim. I’ve been told that I should not write about the science of morality if I haven’t read and studied a long list of ancient, and not so ancient, philosophers. Commonly I am admonished for trying to determine an “ought from an is” – a violation of “Humes Law.” And I have been told that scientists should leave questions like origins of life and the universe, or the question of existence of supernatural beings, to philosophers. Such questions, they tell me, are outside the limits of science.

Oh yes, about now I also get accused of “scientism!”

Very often my reply to such criticisms is that there is no such thing as an accepted unified philosophical dogma. That the claims thrown at me come not from philosophy in general, but from a particular school of philosophy. There is “philosophy” and then there is “philosophy.” My critics should be up front and advance their claims as representative of their own philosophy, or the particular school of philosophy they adhere to, not as representative of philosophy in general.

“What do Philosophers Believe?

So I am pleased to see the on-line publication of the paper “What Do Philosophers Believe?“ by David Bourget and David J. Chalmers. This study confirms that philosophers are indeed divided on a number of issues – they hold a range of beliefs which can influence their philosophical thoughts and positions. These beliefs are influenced by a range of demographic and social factors. And philosophers themselves often have a false opinion of the degree to which different beliefs are common in their professional community.

Sean Carroll, at What Do Philosophers Believe?, and Jerry Coyne at The consensus of philosophers, have commented briefly on the paper. Have a look at those articles, or the paper itself (download here), for a full list of beliefs and their degree of support among philosophers. But here are a few which seem relevant to debates I have had here. (Sorry about the briefness of the terms – that’s related to the nature of the survey):

1. A priori knowledge: yes 71.1%; no 18.4%; other 10.5%.

5. Epistemic justification: externalism 42.7%; internalism 26.4%; other 30.8%.

6. External world: non-skeptical realism 81.6%; skepticism 4.8%; idealism 4.3%; other 9.2%.

8. God: atheism 72.8%; theism 14.6%; other 12.6%.

10. Knowledge: empiricism 35.0%; rationalism 27.8%; other 37.2%.

15. Metaphilosophy: naturalism 49.8%; non-naturalism 25.9%; other 24.3%.

16. Mind: physicalism 56.5%; non-physicalism 27.1%; other 16.4%.

18. Moral motivation: internalism 34.9%; externalism 29.8%; other 35.3%.

20. Normative ethics: deontology 25.9%; consequentialism 23.6%; virtue ethics 18.2%; other 32.3%.

25. Science: scientific realism 75.1%; scientific anti-realism 11.6%; other 13.3%.

So I feel vindicated in answering my critics by pointing out the lack of consensus among philosophers on many issues. What right has a philosopher of religion to assure me their arguments against my statements are “philosophical” (and not just representative of a school of religious philosophy)? Similarly, why should I simply take on trust assurances that “philosophy” has a particular position on scientific realism, moral motivations or the nature of ethical norms?

There is “philosophy” and there is “philosophy.” If you wish to lecture me about philosophical positions at least be open about the philosophical school you are representing or adhere to.

No suprise at differences

Frankly, I am unsurprised at the lack of consensus among philosophers. It contrasts sharply with the situation in science – which on most matters has a high degree of consensus. OK, there are debates at the edges – and these can be intense. Remember the scene in “The Big Bang Theory” where a romantic alliance between two physicists broke up because one was a “String Theorist‘ while the other adhered to “Loop Gravity“.  Just imagine the problems they would have raising their children!

Ben Goren commented at Jerry’s website on the poor philosophical consensus compared with science :

“Survey a bunch of scientists on comparable topics, and you’ll find overwhelming consensus that, for example: Evolution is true; Relativity and Quantum Mechanics are basically right on (and anything that replaces either is going to have to reduce to both at suitable scales); that the Earth’s surface moves in manners described by Plate Tectonics; and so on.

Yet these jokers are doing good just to get a slim majority that don’t think that we’re all literally outside of our brains.”

But while we should be aware of the different levels of confidence in philosophical and scientific knowledge this  does not show differences in personal capabilities between the two professions. The difference is exactly what we should expect from the different nature of the two subjects.

Philosophy could be said to be an “armchair” subject. Philosophers reason and think. They apply logic to hypothetical situations. Often scenarios which have no possible reality but are at least “logical possibilities” will get a lot of attention. It’s also not surprising that demographic and social factors can influence philosophical reasoning. Humans are just not very rational and their reasoning often suffers from ideolgical and social motivations.

Science is usually a very much “hands on” subject. Ideas are tested against reality. Scientists are just as irrational (or human) as anyone else – they also easily fall into the trap of motivated reasoning. But the final arbiter of ideas for science is reality itself. Experiments can be performed or observations made to check predictions of hypotheses.

Of course philosophy and science does merge at the edges. There is actually a field of experimental philosophy and good philosophers do pay attention to scientific knowledge. On the other hand some science cannot always be tested in practice – at least with the current technological limits. Some scientists seem to work more like philosophers – and some philosophers work more like scientists.

But let’s get away from the idea that logic or philosophy is the final arbiter of knowledge. That is taking philosophy beyond its limits.

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‘The Unbelievers’ and science

The World Premiere of  the film “The Unbelievers” took place on Monday in Toronto.

The YouTube site for the film’s trailer describes it this way:

“‘The Unbelievers’ follows renowned scientists Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss across the globe as they speak publicly about the importance of science and reason in the modern world – encouraging others to cast off antiquated religious and politically motivated approaches toward important current issues. The film includes interviews with celebrities and other influential people who support the work of these controversial speakers,trailer of the film”

The premiere, and the three later screenings were sold out. I posted the trailer for the film at The “dynamic duo” of science? Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss spoke at the Premiere. But they were also interviewed by Global’s The Morning Show, on Monday morning.

It’s an excellent interview – they were not heckled in the way many US interviewers do. And they managed to calmly present their story about science, and describe their attitude to religion.

Only 12 minutes long its worth  watching. Click on the image below to go to the Global New’s Video.

Credit: Dawkins, Krauss have faith in ‘The Unbelievers’ | Globalnews.ca.

A global warming hoax meme is born – in New Zealand too!

I have said it before – these militant climate change denial/contrarian/pseudosceptics do live in a different world – or at least a different hemisphere (see Australia’s “New Normal?” and Climate contrarians/deniers are cherry picking again). But here I want to illustrate their behaviour in their denial internet echo chamber where they pass on every scrap of information supporting their conspiracy theories of the great “global warming hoax.”

The easy copy and paste key commands on computers has a lot to answer for.

Consider this latest bit of silliness at Richard Treadgold’s local blog – Climate Conversation Group. Richard Cumming, who Treadgold, or at least Richard Cumming himself, considers a very bright scientific investigator, is continually pasting links to scientific papers and other blogs in the echo chamber. Extensive quotes of abstracts and analysis.

His posting frequency is so high I sometimes think Richard Treadgold’s claim the blog receives more than 1,400,000 visits a year may be correct.*

Today he posted a link purportedly to a new paper in Nature Climate Change: Atmospheric verification of anthropogenic CO₂ emission trends by Roger J. Francey et al. It’s behind a pay wall so those without institutional access will have to make do with the abstract.

But see how Cumming presents this paper (in a comment on the ironically titled post by Treadgold “ IPCC created and controlled by activists). He implies an abstract completely different to the real abstract (see table below).

Abstract as implied by Richard Cumming at Climate Conversation Group blog

Actual abstract at Nature Climate Change, 3, 520–524, (2013)

New paper demonstrates temperature drives CO2 levels, not man-made CO2. A recent paper published in Nature Climate Change finds a disconnect between man-made CO2 and atmospheric levels of CO2, demonstrating that despite a sharp 25% increase in man-made CO2 emissions since 2003, the growth rate in atmospheric CO2 has slowed sharply since 2002/2003. The data shows that while the growth rate of man-made emissions was relatively stable from 1990-2003, the growth rate of atmospheric CO2 surged up to the record El Nino of 1997-1998. Conversely, growth in man-made emissions surged ~25% from 2003-2011, but growth in atmospheric CO2 has flatlined since 1999 along with global temperatures. The data demonstrates temperature drives CO2 levels due to ocean outgassing, man-made CO2 does not drive temperature, and that man is not the primary cause of the rise in CO2 levels.

International efforts to limit global warming and ocean acidification aim to slow the growth of atmospheric CO2, guided primarily by national and industry estimates of production and consumption of fossil fuels. Atmospheric verification of emissions is vital but present global inversion methods are inadequate for this purpose. We demonstrate a clear response in atmospheric CO2 coinciding with a sharp 2010 increase in Asian emissions but show persisting slowing mean CO2 growth from 2002/03. Growth and inter-hemispheric concentration difference during the onset and recovery of the Global Financial Crisis support a previous speculation that the reported 2000–2008 emissions surge is an artefact, most simply explained by a cumulative underestimation (~ 9 Pg C) of 1994–2007 emissions; in this case, post-2000 emissions would track mid-range of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change emission scenarios. An alternative explanation requires changes in the northern terrestrial land sink that offset anthropogenic emission changes. We suggest atmospheric methods to help resolve this ambiguity.

Complete misrepresentation, or what!

Actually his implied abstract is just a blog post he has copied and pasted straight from The Hocky Shtick - a companion blog in the denial echo chamber.

A humourous aside though Richard Treadgold lapped up this brilliant bit of research copy and past by Cumming. He commented:

“A gamebreaker! The paper shows quite a different curve from the Mauna Loa graph so they must have used different data ;. . . . .this looks like dynamite.”

Poor soul. Treadgold doesn’t understand that this new paper plots atmospheric CO₂ flux – the rate of change of C – not the actual levels themselves as in the Mauna Loa graph (see below). Of course the curves will be different you fool!

So another climate change denial meme has been born – actually a double barreled one thanks to Treadgold’s little burst of joy:

1.  Francey’s paper “demonstrates temperature drives CO₂ levels, not man-made CO₂.”
2. It also proves that the classic plot for atmospheric CO₂ levels at the Mauna Loa Observatory may be a hoax!

Trouble is – both memes are completely wrong.

Let’s see if they have legs though. Which  will be the next blog in the echo chamber to pass the meme along?

As Richard Cumming commented somewhere else “The internet will do the rest.”

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* We only have his word for that – he has never allowed public access to the statcounter he used to have installed and has recently removed it. He claimed there was something faulty with it because it gave him the wrong results!

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The beginning (of the universe) for beginners

This video - The beginning of the universe, for beginners  – is the premiere of a series of five, first of their kind, collaborations between CERN and TED Ed. The series covers the origins of the universe, dark matter, antimatter, big data and the Higgs boson. The other four animations will premiere at TEDxCERN, another first of its kind event, on 3 May from 2pm – 8pm CEST, and the animated lessons will be available on ed.ted.com starting on 3 May. The webcast will be available to the public on the TEDxCERN website.

The beginning of the universe, for beginners.

Credit: The beginning of the universe, for beginners