Discussion > Julia Slingo at the IoP
Frances Saunders, president of the Institute of Physics, introduced the lecture, telling us she was particularly delighted to welcome JS, first because her work on climate models showed the importance of physics to everyday life, and second because she was a woman, and so critical in supporting the objective of getting more women into physics. A cynic might suggest that these represented the twin pillars of government science: obtaining funding by demonstrating ‘relevance’ and supporting government policy objectives in return.
JS opened by telling us her lecture wasn’t really about climate change at all, but then showed a couple of slides showing how deadly serious our situation was. The rise in CO2 levels in the atmosphere was unprecedented during the last 800,000 years. Citing John Beddington, she told us that climate change was just one part of a dangerous future, playing into difficulties with water and other resources, population growth, food and energy supplies, politics and economics, health and migration. The planet ought to be ‘pretty much in balance’, but it wasn’t. The Thames barrier had been raised more in 2013/14 than ever before.
So far, so predictable, and I began to regret coming to the lecture. But at that point the tone and subject matter changed entirely. JS put fears about thermageddon to one side and launched into an eloquent disposition on climate models. Her immense enthusiasm for using computerised mathematical models to mimic weather systems was immediately apparent. She described the physics that went into the models, showed us the relevant equations, and talked about her drive towards better resolution, showing us how that increased resolution improved the ability of the models to reflect what happened in the real world. Here was a real scientist, making predictions from models, examining them against reality, investigating discrepancies, striving for an ever better understanding of the way the weather and climate work, immensely proud of how these incredibly complex models could simulate such things as global evaporation and precipitation, and the development of hurricanes. Frequently there were animated graphical comparisons between the models and reality, and we were shown how simulations had improved over the years. There was no alarmism here, although we were shown diagrams showing the absorbtion properties of CO2 and an explanation was given as to why these were important. She was open about problems with current models and that there was an immense amount still to be learned, reflecting this in her final slide: the words of Sir Isaac Newton: “I was like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
JS needs a certain amount of fear of climate change to keep the funding coming for ever-larger supercomputers, so it’s hardly surprising she’s part of the “consensus”.
Nevertheless I came away with a much better opinion of her. She hadn’t shown us much about what climate models tell us about the future, and certainly hadn’t blunted my scepticism about the dire predictions we hear so often. But she had given us a better understanding of how weather and climate models work, accepted that there was much still to be learned, and shown us her passion for continuously improving the models to better reflect the real world.
Shotover
Statement from the UK science community
10 December 2009
We, members of the UK science community, have the utmost confidence in the observational evidence for global warming and the scientific basis for concluding that it is due primarily to human activities. The evidence and the science are deep and extensive. They come from decades of painstaking and meticulous research, by many thousands of scientists across the world who adhere to the highest levels of professional integrity. That research has been subject to peer review and publication, providing traceability of the evidence and support for the scientific method.
The science of climate change draws on fundamental research from an increasing number of disciplines, many of which are represented here. As professional scientists, from students to senior professors, we uphold the findings of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, which concludes that ‘Warming of the climate system is unequivocal’ and that ‘Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations’.
http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http:/www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/news/latest/uk-science-statement.html
More than 1,700 scientists have agreed to sign a statement defending the "professional integrity" of global warming research. They were responding to a round-robin request from the Met Office, which has spent four days collecting signatures. The initiative is a sign of how worried it is that e-mails stolen from the University of East Anglia are fueling skepticism about man-made global warming at a critical moment in talks on carbon emissions.One scientist said that he felt under pressure to sign the circular or risk losing work. The Met Office admitted that many of the signatories did not work on climate change.
John Hirst, the Met Office chief executive, and Julia Slingo, its chief scientist, wrote to 70 colleagues on Sunday asking them to sign "to defend our profession against this unprecedented attack to discredit us and the science of climate change." They asked them to forward the petition to colleagues to generate support "for a simple statement that we ... have the utmost confidence in the science base that underpins the evidence for global warming."
Met Office reports on temperature changes draw on the work of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, from which the e-mails were hacked. Phil Jones, unit director, has agreed to stand down while an investigation takes place into claims that he manipulated data to exaggerate the warming trend and tried to block publication of alternative views.
One scientist told The Times of London he felt pressure to sign. "The Met Office is a major employer of scientists and has long had a policy of only appointing and working with those who subscribe to their views on man-made global warming," he said.
Professor Slingo denied that the Met Office had put anyone under pressure. "The response has been absolutely spontaneous. As a scientist you sign things you agree with, not because you are worried about what the Met Office might think of you," she said.
Martin A
Since its opening in 1983 the Thames Barrier has been raised on average 5.8 times a year up to 2013, the highest figures being 19 in 2003 and 15 in 2001. This year it has been raised no fewer than 48 times. I would respectfully submit (m'lud) that that figure warrants further investigation!
Apart from that it sounds as if Slingo is at least an honest woman though I find it a bit hard to accept that someone in her position should continue to trot out all the scary stuff simply in order to keep the funding flowing.
And I don't detect any sort of reservation, still less any sort of apology, about the inaccurate forecasts and the evident preference for her models over observations.
And regardless of how well she came across in the mainstream of her lecture (which from your report she obviously did) she is still locked into the increasingly shonky science of catastrophism which, one must assume, is colouring the Met Office output to the detriment of good science and sensible public policy.
Mike Jackson
Martin A
About 60% to prevent storm surges flooding London and the rest "under periods of high flow over Teddington Weir to reduce the risk of fluvial (river) flooding in some areas of west London including Richmond and Twickenham." Not sure how that works. I would have thought you wanted it down to get the water out not up to back the water up.
In any event that 2014 figure looks highly suspicious and only by including that can Slingo claim that the barrier had been raised "more often than ever before". Apart from that in only four years out of the last 30 has the number reached double figures.
Another scary statistic to frighten us all.
Mike Jackson
MJ: it’s to stop the incoming tide, thus allowing the flood water a whole tidal zone to fill.
Radical Rodent
Ah yes! Of course.
Mike Jackson
Shotover (Sep 3, 5:34 PM) has provided a lively and interesting summary of the Slingo event, for which many thanks.
Here is my take on his summary. A politicised president of the IoP is particularly pleased with the sex of Slingo, since she, the president, wants to see more people of her sex working in physics. Whether that is what they want to do is besides the point – the assertion or presumption that they do, and that given that most physicists are male, is the politically correct one since it highlights an oppression. And 'oppressions', real or imagined, are much loved by those who hate our society and look for ways to change it dramatically. The threat of catastrophic climate change caused by our CO2 emissions is also much loved in this context, since it has turned into the biggest stick yet with which to drive out the false consciousness of the masses that we are actually doing rather well, that great progress has been made, and so on. Slingo contributes to this early in her presentation, thereby providing a reinforcement of the message that has brought so much in the way of material progress to her and her Met Office. Then something strange happens.
As Shotover puts it 'So far, so predictable, and I began to regret coming to the lecture. But at that point the subject matter changed entirely.' She jumps into the world of computer models, a world both sufficiently complex to keep programmers happy indefinitely, and sufficiently simple to provide a vivid world with which an enthusiast can get engaged, perhaps, like any computer games fanatic, becoming not only occasionally oblivious of the real world, but rather disdainful of its relatively messy turmoil of far less distinct/fast-moving storylines. But wait! She is not as bad as some adolescent mesmerised by her computer games. She reports on efforts to compare the climate models with observations, and can show how the programmers have achieved improving matches.
Computer games designers boast of 'using more physics' to increase the verisimilitude of their illustrations, for example by getting improved optical effects, and more realistic movements of objects. Is that a fair comparison with climate modellers? And if they achieve it, does it mean the predictive skill of the models improves? I get the impression that the answer to the latter question is generally 'no'. A lot more detail has been added to models, I presume, over the last few decades, yet the spreads of their outputs seem not to have declined much. We still get the spaghetti, and the wide uncertainty bounds that only recently have shrunk a little from the high end on climate sensitivity in an apparent response to observations which made the high range look too implausible even for the modellers to live with. There remains also the failure to demonstrate skill in predictions (by which I mean being able to turn in a sustained performance that beats simpler methods one might to use to predict climate). There has also been, in the UK in particular, a harmful affect from the models persuading the Met Office to announce, with great confidence,temperature rises which did not occur, mild or dry winters which failed to arise, and wet summers which were not. They have wisely given up the habit of making public their seasonal forecasts. We pay them so much to give us guidance on our climate, and when that guidance is shown to be harmful and wrong over the only timescales in which we can readily check, they keep taking our money and stop giving the guidance over those timescales. But at least Slingo is a woman doing something in physics, so it is not all bad. Or is it?
John Shade
re: Thames Barrier closures --
The graph linked by Martin A was "last updated 2nd April", so those 48 closures took place in only 3 months!
HaroldW
John Shade
Thanks for your kind words. As I hope I made clear, I came away thinking JS was a scientist first and a propagandist second; unlike, for example, Michael Mann. Nevertheless, because of her role, she is frequently called upon by the BBC, Guardian, Ed Davey etc to speak in an alarmist way. I think that means we need to think up better and more sophisticated ways to challenge her, to move beyond "Your models don't work, don't match reality, so they're useless, how can you have confidence in them?". Such as "There are many different explanations for the pause, which hasn't been predicted by your models, what do you think of the current explanations? Are you looking at them in your models? Could a misinterpretation of the role of clouds, perhaps causing a stronger negative feedback, be an explanation? What would that mean for levels of warming on CO2 doubling? Would the Met office consider investigating?" I suspect her answers to that type of question would conclude with some statement supporting the orthodoxy, but my impression was that there would be room for some interesting discussion before that. She wants the models to reflect reality and wants to minimise the 'fudge-factors' needed to do that.
Shotover
HaroldW - if the date on the graph is right (and if I calculated right) then that's an average of about one opening each alternate day.
Martin A
I wondered (in the wee small hours) whether there had been a change of top management at Thames Barrier and that a change in policy meant that they were raising the barrier at every spring tide regardless (eco-activist interpretation of the precautionary principle) but if Harold W is right then that interpretation goes out of the window.
But I do wonder how they reconcile their statement that the barrier is raised once a month for maintenance and testing (see here) with the figures for the overwhelming majority of years unless of course they don't count that in the figures.
Whichever there is something even more mightily suspicious about that figure if it refers only to 3 months.
Shotover
The questions you posit are just the sort that most of us would like to see as the basis for a serious discussion. You are probably depressingly right to say that we would end with the standard (knee-jerk?) "I-speak-you-weight" statement. It would be wonderful if we could persuade her that we are at bottom all on the same side but I doubt she would believe it.
Does she, I wonder, really want the models to reflect reality or would she sooner that reality reflected the models?
Mike Jackson
Martin A, Mike Jackson --
According to this, the 48 closures occurred within a shorter period -- Jan 2 until March 5, including closure during 20 consecutive tides in February.
By the way, there seems to be some inconsistency in how these are counted. The Environment Agency normally counts by season (Sept.-Apr.), e.g. here (see p.10). (Or Wikipedia, which presumably derives from EA data). However, the EA graph linked by Martin A above seems to count by calendar year instead. [Planned maintenance/testing closures don't appear to be counted under either method, only reactive closures.]
HaroldW
I'm going to do one more thread on this event, on which I'll put all my further notes, which I expect to be many. It won't just be this weekend. But hearing Professor Slingo at the IoP on Tuesday, and the conversations I had with Peter Gill, Latimer Alder and Shotover, in particular, I find are acting as a catalyst, both to understand better the Met Office's own view of its work on GCMs and, from that, to develop a more informed critique, both of the models themselves and the other areas where, through no fault of their own, they have become entangled.
The new thread is called In Praise of the Unfinished. Appropriate I thought. Any feedback welcome.
Richard Drake
"through no fault of their own"
It was not my fault, officer.
The Devil made me do it.
Martin A
Well before anthropomorphising the Devil (which some modern theologians frown on) I enjoyed doing the same for the poor models, which, when all is said and done, are merely millions of lines of dumb Fortran. They certainly aren't to blame. All the same, they can seem to come to life, as the impressive introductory moving graphic of simulated global air or ocean currents showed in the IoP lecture theatre, as we waited for Dame Julia. I very much want to consider this aspect
Richard Drake
... including closure during 20 consecutive tides in February.Which would seem to lend some weight to my suggestion that the Precautionary Principle (as interpreted by the eco-nuts) is at work.
Reactive? Smells more like pro-active from where I sit.
Mike Jackson
Mike Jackson,
I don't see that. Looking at the graph on page 9 of the previously-linked presentation, the river flows were protracted over a long period. I don't think pointing to this as a harbinger of climate change is justified, but neither do I see evidence that the closings were unnecessary, and motivated by a desire to chalk up a talking point.
HaroldW
HaroldW
You may well be right but then what they are saying in effect is that February's weather (to use the term a bit loosely) was the worst it has been for at least 30 years and that by a very, very considerable margin.
OR the conditions for raising the barrier have been changed.
It would be interesting to know on how many occasions raising the barrier proved unnecessary as compared with any other February or how the levels were as compared with any previous February, data which I'm sure they will have somewhere.
Mike Jackson
That should be FOI-able (even EIR-able).
Martin A
I would have thought so.
Better coming from somebody in the UK, do you think?
Mike Jackson
It can come from anywhere. I'm in France but have had no problems making FOI requests.
I made a complaint to the Scottish Information Commissioner about a request where the body involved decided it did not want to give me the information. It was investigated and my complaint was upheld. The body involved was compelled to give me the info I had requested.
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/ makes it very straightforward, but you have no need to use that site.
In contrast FOI-ing an Australian public body is less easy - you need to have an Aus address to receive stuff and you need to send them an Aus $ cheque.
Martin A
Thanks.
I'll look into it.
Mike Jackson
A thread to discuss Julia Slingo's talk at the Institute of Physics, 2nd September 2014: Taking the planet into uncharted territory: What climate models can tell us about the future.
I met Latimer and Shotover by cleverly sitting next to them, after quaffing wine with Peter Gill, Piers Corbyn and Philip Foster - and a couple lady scientists interested in the biology of fish and the Martian atmosphere. I agreed with Shotover afterwards (Colonel to his friends) that Slingo was really rather good - on GCMs generally, the Met Office Unified Model in particular and the physics underlying them. And her own personal history. And the kludges and the parameter twiddling. And how hard clouds are. Etc.
Anyway, this isn't my report, this is a thread for at least two of us - hopefully more - to bat it around some more, leading to a main post with the best thoughts (and disagreements) we can come up with. Within a week. I'm willing to do that final synopsis - and everyone will have this longer record if they think I did it wrong. Sound like a plan?