Everyone with a computer can help scientists better understand the universe, or just climate change, according to Phil Done. In the following guest post Phil suggests we all join the The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) community:
"Bored with that aquarium screen saver - worried about the computer being idle and generating greenhouse emissions between blog comments - or do you just want to do something that Ian Mott cannot do on the back of an envelope - BOINC and save the world!
What could make the climate change enthusiast's heart beat faster - help solve the problem faster and make a personal contribution. That little hotspot on Greenland might be yours!
With Climateprediction.net and the BBC Climate Change Experiment you can do just that. You can contribute a small piece of the modelling puzzle.
How does it work?
The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) is a distributed computing infrastructure intended to be useful to fields beyond the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). This software platform is open in that it is free and open source software released under the GNU Lesser Public License. Currently BOINC is being developed by a team based at the University of California, Berkeley led by David Anderson, the project director of SETI@home - a project which uses this software.
It's supercomputing on the grassroots level - millions of PCs on desktops at home helping to solve some of the world's most computer - intensive scientific problems. And it's an all-volunteer force of PC users, who, with very little effort, can contribute much-needed PC muscle to the scientific and academic communities. There are hundreds of millions of Internet-connected PCs, and they're getting more powerful all the time, so volunteer computing can provide computing power and storage capacity way beyond what can be achieved with supercomputers, clusters, or grids. The volunteer computing approach works best for applications that don't need to move a lot of data between processors, but this limitation will diminish as the Internet gets faster.
Of course if you'd prefer molecular biology and speed up GMO research, fighting human diseases, finding aliens in a celestial haystack, or sorting out gravitational waves there's something for you too.
Of course contrarians have warned not to run BOINC software if:
* You are in an urban heat island,
* You'd rather find out what happens to the climate personally, or
* You are not familiar with the MER/PPP parameter settings.Denialists have also suggested we don't need a SETS project - Search for Earthbound Terrestrial Stupidity - it's already been solved. And perhaps you're blogging so hard that your screen saver never appears anyway.
Is BOINCing a western ideology? Are we losing out in the global BOINC? Do only greenies and left wingers BOINC or is BOINCing bipartisan? Are right wingers born to BOINC?
Also, you need broadband, and laptops are not recommended due to heat buildup. See the relevant FAQs."
-------------------------
Thanks Phil.
P Done quoted Annan:
He says "Of course, as you will hopefully realise having read my previous posts about Bayesian vs frequentist notions of probability, there isn't such a thing as a truly objective estimate, since in a situation of epistemic uncertainty, observations can only ever update a subjective prior, and never fully replace it".
This is essentially post-modernism, the belief that objective truth is impossible.
It can be refuted simply - no observations of white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute the conclusion that all swans are white.
Annan's statement has nothing to do with science but the belief that aprioristic belief determines all subsequent observations.
Religion in other words.
And P Done ? Yup, got that.
The following comment is from Phil Done, unable to post for himself because this blogs sometimes blocks seemingly honest comments on the basis of 'questionable' content:
"As they say in parliament - "is the member aware of any alternative policies.. .." Well yes - the enigmatic James Annan has just done a Bayesian sensitivity paper."
He says "Of course, as you will hopefully realise having read my previous posts about Bayesian vs frequentist notions of probability, there isn't such a thing as a truly objective estimate, since in a situation of epistemic uncertainty, observations can only ever update a subjective prior, and never fully replace it". Yup I got that.
So you need to read his paper and the whole post at http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2006/03/climate-sensitivity-is-3c.html and http://www.jamstec.go.jp/frcgc/research/d5/jdannan/GRL_sensitivity.pdf
He goes onto say in the comments:
http://www.jamstec.go.jp/frcgc/research/d5/jdannan/GRL_sensitivity.pdf
We said that a more optimistic (but not completely unrealistic) view might give an upper limit of about 4C at 95%. If I was giving round numbers, I would simply say 3+-0.5 (at 1sd, Gaussian) is a pretty good estimate - that makes
2.5-3.5C is likely (68%)
2-4 is very likely (95%)
Of course low value are equally unlikely too !
from Phil Done.
I will be copying and pasting some of Ian Castles comment from 2.25pm yesterday as a new blog post - but for the moment I have been 'locked out' of my own blog. Except for comments! Jen.
So I still think exploration of the GCM parameter space and the potential for higher sensitivities is well worth doing.
Stainforth et al seem to indicate that domain experts are likely to bias GCM parameter estimates to keep "plausible".
Climate sensitivity is an artificial measure of the sensitivity of global climate models, and of the real climate, to increases in GHG concentrations. It is the stabilised global average warming resulting in models or the real world from a doubling of CO2 equivalent concentrations from the pre-industrial level of about 270 ppm to twice that, namely about 540 ppm. IPCC from its first report in 1990 until now, has assumed a climate sensitivity range of 1.5 to 4.5C, based on expert opinion in about 1989.
No probabilities were attached to these estimates, and they are not connected in any way with the SRES scenarios.
This means that any revision of the range of climate sensitivities alters the probability of global warmings for any given emissions path or scenario. Higher estimates of climate sensitivity increases the perceived risk of higher global warmings, for any given emissions scenario.
Doing a back of the envelope caculation. Consider the increases in concentrations of CO2 to date.
Preindustrial was about 270 ppm. Present is about 380 ppm. Present annual increase is about 1 to 2 ppm, roughly 1.5 ppm on average recently. Add another 94 years at 1.5 ppm per annum and you get another 140 ppm by 2100, or a total of about 520 ppm. And this takes no account of increasing global population or per capita emissions (clearly not true for India and China with their rapid growth in GDP).
Consider present global emissions of some 6 billion people, totalling about 6 or 7 billion tonnes of CO2 (not equivalent, i.e., neglecting methane, N2O etc.). Present global average emissions in CO2 equivalent is about 1.5 tonnes per person. Now assume some 9 billion people by 2100, emitting about 5 tonnes CO2 equivalent each. This gives some 45 billion tonnes total. The highest SRES scenarios give about 30 billion tonnes total by 2100. Thus the SRES scenarios have been conservative, assuming that per capita emissions will not reach the present average in Australia, or the USA (which are about 6 to 7 tonnes p.a. each).
This is back of the envelope stuff, but it shows that the SRES secnarios are not way off beam, whatever the method they used to get them. Anyway, the point is not the SRES scenarios, but what is likely to happen emissions-wise, and what would be the result climate-wise.
But higher estimates of climate sensitivity means the risk is greater that there will be larger warmings.
Ian - thanks for your reply.
Press statement? or what was reported in the press. Do we have a copy? Nature editorialised it incorrectly. I prefer to read the Nature paper itself. It's quite interesting on the unfinished issue of climate model sensitivities and RC suggested they continue.
Do you think the public would have a clue what climatesensitivity.net was about - skin rashes? We could also take affront at the alarmist colour of their web site too.
On hydrogen cars - of course the stuff leaks like crazy and seems to have an effect on stratospheric ozone - so maybe hydrogen is not the panacea we have hoped for. But maybe technology will prevail and we will find a way to generate the substance without CO2 production and distribute it leak-free around the world. Another potential problem is peak-platinum which seems to be needed for fuel cells. Lots of resource issues here once you go mass production and out of prototype vehicles.
In the first paragraph of my long posting, I should have referred to the figure of 11 degrees C as a prediction by climateprediction.net of the increase in temperature that COULD occur with a doubling in CO2 concentrations, not to the increase that WOULD occur. This does not affect the succeeding argument.
Phil, My objection is not to the paper in Nature or to the efforts of the Oxford team to estimate climate sensitivity. If they
Ian C,
Further on scenarios it's interesting to see that in http://www.abare.gov.au/rr06.1/pdf/RR06_1_ClimateAsia.pdf for the inaugural ministerial meeting of the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, ABARE provides a projection for an unmitigated CO2 emissions "reference case" - provided in Fig 4 on page 15. Is this not on the upper end of the IPCC projections.
From the rest I cannot see how PPP versus MER matters. Also Australia's leading agency for such predictions seems more pessimistic that
the IPCC.
So in terms of economists being shut out of the IPCC - at least ABARE seems to be in there? I thoght ABARE were our leading economic organisation on resource issues?
Should we rename "Coolwire" as "Contrarian wire" or Loose_wire?
As usual some selected cherry picking, sleight of hand, and mixing of press grabs and confusion with what's really being researched.
You will notice that Coolwire makes very little detailed analysis of what is being done.
Looking at the actual Nature paper:
The paper desribes work in progress seeing how GCM parameters affect climate sensitivity. The authors make a case that domain experts may constrain their estimates to certain parameters where the intent of question is pre-suggested. And as many have been critical of the IPCC TAR (Lord knows the IPCC reviewers did their best the poor exploited bastards!) the authors are also somewhat critical as how high sensitivities were ignored and paramters constrained. Nevertheless the scientific aspects of the experiment are most interesting
Fig 1 shows changes over time rather than the equilibrium change. So, yes it only shows changes of up to about 8K but these runs are still warming up. A fit to the timeseries shows that an equilbrium change of 11K is to be expected.
As described in the paper the majority of model versions show a sensitivity of ~3.5K but "the shape of the destribution is determined by the parameters selected for perturbation and the perturbed values chosen, which were relatively arbitary".
They go on to say: "Can either high-end or low-end sensitivities be rejected on the
basis of the model-version control climates? Fig. 2b suggests not; it
illustrates the relative ability of model versions to simulate observations
using a global root-mean-squared error (r.m.s.e.) normalized
by the errors in the unperturbed model (see Methods). For all
model versions this relative r.m.s.e. is within (or below) the range of
values for other state-of-the-art models, such as those used in the
second Coupled Model Inter Comparison (CMIP II) project28
(triangles). The five variables used for this comparison are each
standard variables in model evaluation and inter-comparison exercises29
(see Methods). This lack of an observational constraint,
combined with the sensitivity of the results to the way in which
parameters are perturbed, means that we cannot provide an
objective probability density function for simulated climate sensitivity.
Nevertheless, our results demonstrate the wide range of
behaviour possible within a GCM and show that high sensitivities
cannot yet be neglected as they were in the headline uncertainty
ranges of the IPCC Third Assessment Report (for example, the 1.4–
5.8 K range for 1990 to 2100 warming).14 Further, they tell us about
the sensitivities of our models, allowing better-informed decisions
on resource allocation both for observational studies and for model
development."
Coolwire makes a big deal of the fact that few model versions show high sensitivities but as discussed in the paper, this means little if anything about what is most likely.
Doubling CO2 instantaneously is a common technique in simulations designed to study sensitivity. The authors believe it has been shown to make little difference in the final temeperature change. e.g. HadSM3 is shown to have a similar sensitivity to HadCM3
If Coolwire wants to see the results from experiments 2 and 3. These experiments began a few weeks ago. The way this is written up in Collwire is nothing short of mischievous
As usual with "scorching" reports that are "hot off the press" Realclimate had a "real cool" take on the press reports and the paper. (sorry couldn't resist !)
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=115
They did not find notions of 11 degrees warming as reported by the press as credible. BUT -
.. .. .. .. ..
"With this background, what should one make of the climateprediction.net results? They show that the sensitivity to 2xCO2 of a large multi-model ensemble with different parameters ranges from 2 to 11°C. This shows that it is possible to construct models with rather extreme behavior – whether these are realistic is another matter. To test for this, the models must be compared with data. Stainforth et al. subject their resulting models only to very weak data constraints, namely only to data for the annual-mean present-day climate. Since this does not include any climatic variations (not even the seasonal cycle), let alone a test period with a different CO2 level, this data test is unable to constrain the upper limit of the climate sensitivity range. The fact that even model versions with very high climate sensitivities pass their test does not show that the real world could have such high climate sensitivity; it merely shows that the test they use is not very selective.
Our feeling is that once the validation becomes more comprehensive, most of the extremely high sensitivity examples will fail (particularly on the seasonal cycle, which tests for variations rather than just a mean). "
and
"Hence, we feel that the most important result of the study of Stainforth et al. is that by far most of the models had climate sensitivities between 2ºC and 4ºC, giving additional support to the widely accepted range. The fact that some of the models had much higher sensitivities should not be over-interpreted."
The 'Meeting the Climate Challenge' report (around at the same time) tried to quantify what is meant by 'dangerous' interference in climate. All countries including the US and Australia have signed the Framework Convention on Climate Change which obligates them to prevent 'dangerous' interference with the climate system. Actually quantifying what this means is rather tricky. For various reasons (although some are subjective) they suggest that any global warming above 2°C (above the pre-industrial) is likely to be increasingly dangerous. The issue is how one prevents such an outcome given the uncertainty in the climate sensitivity.
So we can add this issue to Ian Carter's SRES scenario difficulties.
Who'd want to be in this game !!
SO - given the importance of sensitivity to the debate gives more power to the issues of sensitivity exploration and analysis of GCM parameters.
RC summed up by saying "Uncertainty in climate sensitivity is not going to disappear any time soon, and should therefore be built into assessments of future climate. However, it is not a completely free variable, and the extremely high end values that have been discussed in media reports over the last couple of weeks are not scientifically credible. "
SO if we all BOINC'ed hard enough - (including YOU Ian C and Ian M and Warwick Hughes!) and they got the results in - and we had some proper analysis and critique we may actually learn something. And we are learning in parameter space that is not usually explored. What a great public contribution. We may even be surprised - but not 11 degrees surprised.
However getting the public in on such research will mean press attention. And the press will grab the sensationalist bits and before we all know it we'll be back "doing a Schneider" wondering how effective or cautious we'll be in our 90 second grab to camera. We know what Warwick and Louis would say regardless of any real information.
And who knows Barrie Pittock may even know something we don't. Having known Barrie for over 10 years I can only say he was ahead of his time. 😉
P.S. I notice even Jen is now going with the warming but keep IPA-safe on the issue of attribution. (OK unfair but you have to try to be cheeky - 🙂 ) The contrarians could do better than doggedly ragging - and come up with a bloody decent explanation for a "natural" variation across the globe. I could give you a tip but that would spoil the fun.
P.P.S.
And thanks to the climateprediction.net guys for a most enlightening discussion. And always for Realclimate being so bloody good.
Time for a Bex and lie down after that rant !
Ian - somehow I doubt it. It's only for those who are interested. Protected by the IPCC my foot - there has still been no substantive case made (IMHO) that the range of CO2 levels are still not covered.
And who has misrepresented what. Is this the Oxford team or the press talking. Are all the results in and analysed. What a feeding frenzy of usual suspects.
And Warwick has been going on about all manner of things for some time with little overall impact. In terms of the UHI story - we're still waiting for a coherent paper telling us what the real position is from all this ongoing nitpicking. But maybe we should just not worry about the ground and just go with the satellite evidence.