Kunj07/openwebtext · Datasets at Hugging Face

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What do you think about Harvey’s alleged behavior? Please share this story on Facebook and tell us because we want to hear YOUR voice!0999334-f4e2898d8d9b107fcf662d673ca47bf0.txt0000644000000000000000000002033000000000000015232 0ustar 00000000000000It’s a well-kept secret, but 95% of the climate models we are told prove the link between human CO₂ emissions and catastrophic global warming have been found, after nearly two decades of temperature stasis, to be in error. It’s not surprising. – Maurice Newman, AC, Chair of the Prime Minister’s Business Advisory Council, writing in The Australian newspaper, May 8, 2015.

As the Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s top business adviser, Mr Newman is a person of influence in Australia so his public statements should be held up to scrutiny.

In a recent newspaper column, Mr Newman said discrepancies between climate model forecasts and recorded temperatures begged the question: “Why then, with such little evidence, does the UN insist the world spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year on futile climate change policies?”

All scientists would agree with Mr Newman that critical analysis of mathematical modelling is a crucial part of science. But it is a logical fallacy to leap from that valuable topic to describing climate change policies as futile.

Climate models: what they can and can’t do

There is a saying in science that “all models are wrong, but some models are useful”. In simulating any complex system, any model will fail to reproduce all facets of the system perfectly.

Mathematical models may be imperfect but they are extremely helpful to predict the weather, design aeroplanes and even test new vaccines. They are essential to modern life. A major part of scientific research is not only developing models, but determining how they are best employed.

When asked for a data source to substantiate his 95% claim, Mr Newman referred The Conversation to research by a range of scientists including Professor Judith Curry from the Georgia Institute of Technology and Professor John Christy from the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Mr Newman said these researchers had identified errors in climate modelling.

Mr Newman also quoted former NASA scientist and University of Alabama in Huntsville research scientist, Dr Roy Spencer as saying:

… the climate models that governments base policy decisions on have failed miserably. I’ve updated our comparison of 90 climate models versus observations for global average surface temperatures through 2013, and we still see that >95% of the models have over-forecast the warming trend since 1979, whether we use their own surface temperature dataset (HadCRUT4), or our satellite dataset of lower tropospheric temperatures (UAH).“

It’s true that over the last two decades modelled surface temperatures have generally risen faster than temperatures recorded in real life. But there are good reasons for that and it doesn’t mean we should take the prospect of climate change any less seriously.

Why don’t the models match observed temperatures?

What Mr Newman described as a "well-kept secret” has actually been the subject of numerous scientific papers

These papers show that the recent discrepancy between projections and recorded temperatures is very likely due to random fluctuations in the climate system. The “problem” is clearly seen in this graph showing that modelled surface temperatures have generally tracked above observed temperatures over recent years.

This graph depicts two well known global surface temperature observational datasets, the UK’s HadCRUT and the US’ NASA GISS.

To understand what’s happening, it is critical to realise that the climate changes for a number of reasons in addition to CO₂. These include solar variations, volcanic eruptions and human aerosol emissions.

The influence of all these “climate drivers” are included in modern climate models. On top of this, our climate also changes as a result of natural and largely random fluctuations – like the El Nino Southern Oscillation, ENSO and the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation, [IPO] – that can redistribute heat to the deep ocean (thereby masking surface warming).

Such fluctuations are unpredictable beyond a few months (or possibly years), being triggered by atmospheric and oceanic weather systems. So while models do generate fluctuations like ENSO and IPO, in centennial scale simulations they don’t (and wouldn’t be expected to) occur at the same time as they do in observations.

Indeed, if some advanced civilisation were to make an exact copy of Earth, the copy would also fail to reproduce the fluctuation associated with the recent slowdown in temperatures. This is not a modelling failure, this is just a fact of life in dealing with complex systems.

So, yes, as the figure shows there are multiple decadal periods in the past where the models either overestimate or underestimate the observed warming. Despite this, its clear that the overall modelled surface warming over the course of more than a century is only off by a very small margin.

Ocean temperatures more reliable

Rather than relying on surface temperature to keep track of global warming, it is far more reliable to look at total ocean heat content or its twin, ocean sea level (which reflects ocean heat content plus land ice melt).

These metrics are far less sensitive to random fluctuations as they don’t suffer from the complications of heat redistribution. Moreover, over 90% of the additional heat from anthropogenic warming goes into the ocean, with only a small fraction going to raising surface temperatures.

Based on these more representative metrics, there is no “pause” in either the observations or in the climate models. Indeed, both indicate increasing rates of change over time.

No secrets here

We have known of the link between CO₂ and warming since the experiments of John Tyndall in the mid 19th century. It’s certainly not a revelation from climate models.

Indeed, by the end of that century, Swedish Nobel Prize laureate Svante Arrhenius had already predicted that large CO₂ emissions would cause substantial global warming.

Modern climate models add considerable value to the well-tested empirical relationships. They resolve the land, ocean and atmosphere and explicitly include the impact of all known drivers of climate change without simply assuming that all change is due to CO₂ (as Mr Newman’s statement would imply).

Critically, this means that we can use the unique fingerprints of each driver to disentangle and attribute the changes in historical temperature to these complex mix of drivers. The planet has clearly warmed over the last 100 years, and climate models demonstrate that natural drivers like the sun are unable to explain this warming. Conversely, the warming is consistent in both magnitude and spatial pattern with our emissions of greenhouse gases.

Verdict

Mr Newman’s implication that discrepancies resulting from the recent climate fluctuation somehow invalidates climate models is incorrect.

Climate models have been thoroughly and critically tested against observations and are able to simulate with fair accuracy the component of climate change caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols as well as natural factors like solar variations and volcanic eruptions.

However, long-term climate simulations do not and likely never will reproduce the timing of shorter-term random fluctuations, like the recent slowdown in surface temperatures. In the long run, this fluctuation, like many before, will just be noise on a gradually increasing temperature signal.

That the discrepancy is a “well-kept secret” is demonstrably false given the large number of scientific papers discussing and trying to explain exactly this issue.

Review

This is a sound analysis that effectively explains the appropriate way to assess the reliability of models. Scientists can glean much scientific insight from comparing observations to model predictions, especially when there are discrepancies between the two. In contrast, the critique of models employed by Maurice Newman does not increase scientific understanding. – John Cook

Have you ever seen a “fact” that doesn’t look quite right? The Conversation’s FactCheck asks academic experts to test claims and see how true they are. We then ask a second academic to review an anonymous copy of the article. You can request a check at [email protected]. Please include the statement you would like us to check, the date it was made, and a link if possible.0999350-825ccc2ae2f35efc3f501434ae679ffd.txt0000644000000000000000000001277200000000000015362 0ustar 00000000000000Two of the three investigations into the actions of Salt Lake City Police officers Detective Jeff Payne and Lt. James Tracy following Payne’s arrest of University of Utah Health nurse Alex Wubbels have finished.

The first — the police department’s internal affairs investigation — concluded that Tracy violated five departmental policies. It found that he acted with conduct unbecoming of an officer. Other rules broken include behaving with courtesy in public contacts, a policy favoring misdemeanor citations over arrests ”whenever possible,” the code of ethics and a standards of conduct policy.

It also found that Payne violated all five of those same policies, plus an additional policy which required him to report his use of physical force while arresting Wubbels — which he did not do.

Of Payne’s actions, the department wrote, “You demonstrated extremely poor professional judgment (especially for an officer with 27 years of experience), which calls into question your ability to effectively serve the public and the Department in a manner that inspires the requisite trust, respect, and confidence.”

To both employees, letters said, “disciplinary action, which may include termination of your employment, is being considered in response to actions on your part which appear to be a violation of policy and/or expectations related to the performance of your job duties.”

Payne’s lawyer, Greg Skordas, responded to the internal investigation’s results. He complimented their accounting of the facts but took issue with some of the results. He said he feels the report wouldn’t have been so harsh if the body camera footage hadn’t been publicly released and believes the report will be used to “justify major discipline … when it’s not warranted here.”

“He made a terrible mistake … But let’s not overstate it because it’s become a YouTube sensation,” Skordas said.

The second investigation — an independent review by the Civilian Review Board — concluded with findings that Tracy did not meet the responsibilities of his position as a watch commander, that both officers should have contacted the department’s legal adviser and that both officers did not understand the laws in question. It also found that Payne violated three department policies — public courtesy, blood draw procedures and his obligation to follow policy and orders.

The Civilian Review Board’s report also noted that no other police officer or security personnel present at the time of the incident intervened. These officers were from both SLCPD and the University of Utah’s campus police department. The security there was employed by the hospital.

Wubbels and her lawyer have named the inaction of those individuals as one of their primary concerns.

Their actions are also under ongoing criminal investigation by the Salt Lake County District Attorney’s office, in coordination with the Unified Police Department and the FBI.

Wubbels had called hospital security when Payne became agitated. They came, but did not intervene in any way, telling her it was a “police matter” in which they couldn’t “get involved.” When she asked a U police officer to protect her from Payne, who was threatening her with arrest at the time, he told her that he would not prevent Payne from arresting her if she interfered with his work because her actions were obstruction of justice.

One U officer, Steven Worona, appears to assist in Payne’s arrest of Wubbels by placing his hand on her shoulder to hold her still. After she was arrested, he approached Payne and Tracy, offering to help them get the blood they wanted.

In a video released online, U police Chief Dale Brophy said, “Having seen the video and firsthand what she went through, and what she tried to do to de-escalate and solve the problem, I think that somebody else — [university] security and/or police — could have stepped up and taken that role from her and been the advocate for her like they should’ve been.”

What do you think about Harvey’s alleged behavior? Please share this story on Facebook and tell us because we want to hear YOUR voice!0999334-f4e2898d8d9b107fcf662d673ca47bf0.txt0000644000000000000000000002033000000000000015232 0ustar 00000000000000It’s a well-kept secret, but 95% of the climate models we are told prove the link between human CO₂ emissions and catastrophic global warming have been found, after nearly two decades of temperature stasis, to be in error. It’s not surprising. – Maurice Newman, AC, Chair of the Prime Minister’s Business Advisory Council, writing in The Australian newspaper, May 8, 2015.

As the Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s top business adviser, Mr Newman is a person of influence in Australia so his public statements should be held up to scrutiny.

In a recent newspaper column, Mr Newman said discrepancies between climate model forecasts and recorded temperatures begged the question: “Why then, with such little evidence, does the UN insist the world spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year on futile climate change policies?”

All scientists would agree with Mr Newman that critical analysis of mathematical modelling is a crucial part of science. But it is a logical fallacy to leap from that valuable topic to describing climate change policies as futile.

Climate models: what they can and can’t do

There is a saying in science that “all models are wrong, but some models are useful”. In simulating any complex system, any model will fail to reproduce all facets of the system perfectly.

Mathematical models may be imperfect but they are extremely helpful to predict the weather, design aeroplanes and even test new vaccines. They are essential to modern life. A major part of scientific research is not only developing models, but determining how they are best employed.

When asked for a data source to substantiate his 95% claim, Mr Newman referred The Conversation to research by a range of scientists including Professor Judith Curry from the Georgia Institute of Technology and Professor John Christy from the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Mr Newman said these researchers had identified errors in climate modelling.

Mr Newman also quoted former NASA scientist and University of Alabama in Huntsville research scientist, Dr Roy Spencer as saying:

… the climate models that governments base policy decisions on have failed miserably. I’ve updated our comparison of 90 climate models versus observations for global average surface temperatures through 2013, and we still see that >95% of the models have over-forecast the warming trend since 1979, whether we use their own surface temperature dataset (HadCRUT4), or our satellite dataset of lower tropospheric temperatures (UAH).“

It’s true that over the last two decades modelled surface temperatures have generally risen faster than temperatures recorded in real life. But there are good reasons for that and it doesn’t mean we should take the prospect of climate change any less seriously.

Why don’t the models match observed temperatures?

What Mr Newman described as a "well-kept secret” has actually been the subject of numerous scientific papers

These papers show that the recent discrepancy between projections and recorded temperatures is very likely due to random fluctuations in the climate system. The “problem” is clearly seen in this graph showing that modelled surface temperatures have generally tracked above observed temperatures over recent years.

This graph depicts two well known global surface temperature observational datasets, the UK’s HadCRUT and the US’ NASA GISS.

To understand what’s happening, it is critical to realise that the climate changes for a number of reasons in addition to CO₂. These include solar variations, volcanic eruptions and human aerosol emissions.

The influence of all these “climate drivers” are included in modern climate models. On top of this, our climate also changes as a result of natural and largely random fluctuations – like the El Nino Southern Oscillation, ENSO and the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation, [IPO] – that can redistribute heat to the deep ocean (thereby masking surface warming).

Such fluctuations are unpredictable beyond a few months (or possibly years), being triggered by atmospheric and oceanic weather systems. So while models do generate fluctuations like ENSO and IPO, in centennial scale simulations they don’t (and wouldn’t be expected to) occur at the same time as they do in observations.

Indeed, if some advanced civilisation were to make an exact copy of Earth, the copy would also fail to reproduce the fluctuation associated with the recent slowdown in temperatures. This is not a modelling failure, this is just a fact of life in dealing with complex systems.

So, yes, as the figure shows there are multiple decadal periods in the past where the models either overestimate or underestimate the observed warming. Despite this, its clear that the overall modelled surface warming over the course of more than a century is only off by a very small margin.

Ocean temperatures more reliable

Rather than relying on surface temperature to keep track of global warming, it is far more reliable to look at total ocean heat content or its twin, ocean sea level (which reflects ocean heat content plus land ice melt).

These metrics are far less sensitive to random fluctuations as they don’t suffer from the complications of heat redistribution. Moreover, over 90% of the additional heat from anthropogenic warming goes into the ocean, with only a small fraction going to raising surface temperatures.

Based on these more representative metrics, there is no “pause” in either the observations or in the climate models. Indeed, both indicate increasing rates of change over time.

No secrets here

We have known of the link between CO₂ and warming since the experiments of John Tyndall in the mid 19th century. It’s certainly not a revelation from climate models.

Indeed, by the end of that century, Swedish Nobel Prize laureate Svante Arrhenius had already predicted that large CO₂ emissions would cause substantial global warming.

Modern climate models add considerable value to the well-tested empirical relationships. They resolve the land, ocean and atmosphere and explicitly include the impact of all known drivers of climate change without simply assuming that all change is due to CO₂ (as Mr Newman’s statement would imply).

Critically, this means that we can use the unique fingerprints of each driver to disentangle and attribute the changes in historical temperature to these complex mix of drivers. The planet has clearly warmed over the last 100 years, and climate models demonstrate that natural drivers like the sun are unable to explain this warming. Conversely, the warming is consistent in both magnitude and spatial pattern with our emissions of greenhouse gases.

Verdict

Mr Newman’s implication that discrepancies resulting from the recent climate fluctuation somehow invalidates climate models is incorrect.

Climate models have been thoroughly and critically tested against observations and are able to simulate with fair accuracy the component of climate change caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols as well as natural factors like solar variations and volcanic eruptions.

However, long-term climate simulations do not and likely never will reproduce the timing of shorter-term random fluctuations, like the recent slowdown in surface temperatures. In the long run, this fluctuation, like many before, will just be noise on a gradually increasing temperature signal.

That the discrepancy is a “well-kept secret” is demonstrably false given the large number of scientific papers discussing and trying to explain exactly this issue.

Review

This is a sound analysis that effectively explains the appropriate way to assess the reliability of models. Scientists can glean much scientific insight from comparing observations to model predictions, especially when there are discrepancies between the two. In contrast, the critique of models employed by Maurice Newman does not increase scientific understanding. – John Cook

Have you ever seen a “fact” that doesn’t look quite right? The Conversation’s FactCheck asks academic experts to test claims and see how true they are. We then ask a second academic to review an anonymous copy of the article. You can request a check at [email protected]. Please include the statement you would like us to check, the date it was made, and a link if possible.0999350-825ccc2ae2f35efc3f501434ae679ffd.txt0000644000000000000000000001277200000000000015362 0ustar 00000000000000Two of the three investigations into the actions of Salt Lake City Police officers Detective Jeff Payne and Lt. James Tracy following Payne’s arrest of University of Utah Health nurse Alex Wubbels have finished.

The first — the police department’s internal affairs investigation — concluded that Tracy violated five departmental policies. It found that he acted with conduct unbecoming of an officer. Other rules broken include behaving with courtesy in public contacts, a policy favoring misdemeanor citations over arrests ”whenever possible,” the code of ethics and a standards of conduct policy.

It also found that Payne violated all five of those same policies, plus an additional policy which required him to report his use of physical force while arresting Wubbels — which he did not do.

Of Payne’s actions, the department wrote, “You demonstrated extremely poor professional judgment (especially for an officer with 27 years of experience), which calls into question your ability to effectively serve the public and the Department in a manner that inspires the requisite trust, respect, and confidence.”

To both employees, letters said, “disciplinary action, which may include termination of your employment, is being considered in response to actions on your part which appear to be a violation of policy and/or expectations related to the performance of your job duties.”

Payne’s lawyer, Greg Skordas, responded to the internal investigation’s results. He complimented their accounting of the facts but took issue with some of the results. He said he feels the report wouldn’t have been so harsh if the body camera footage hadn’t been publicly released and believes the report will be used to “justify major discipline … when it’s not warranted here.”

“He made a terrible mistake … But let’s not overstate it because it’s become a YouTube sensation,” Skordas said.

The second investigation — an independent review by the Civilian Review Board — concluded with findings that Tracy did not meet the responsibilities of his position as a watch commander, that both officers should have contacted the department’s legal adviser and that both officers did not understand the laws in question. It also found that Payne violated three department policies — public courtesy, blood draw procedures and his obligation to follow policy and orders.

The Civilian Review Board’s report also noted that no other police officer or security personnel present at the time of the incident intervened. These officers were from both SLCPD and the University of Utah’s campus police department. The security there was employed by the hospital.

Wubbels and her lawyer have named the inaction of those individuals as one of their primary concerns.

Their actions are also under ongoing criminal investigation by the Salt Lake County District Attorney’s office, in coordination with the Unified Police Department and the FBI.

Wubbels had called hospital security when Payne became agitated. They came, but did not intervene in any way, telling her it was a “police matter” in which they couldn’t “get involved.” When she asked a U police officer to protect her from Payne, who was threatening her with arrest at the time, he told her that he would not prevent Payne from arresting her if she interfered with his work because her actions were obstruction of justice.

One U officer, Steven Worona, appears to assist in Payne’s arrest of Wubbels by placing his hand on her shoulder to hold her still. After she was arrested, he approached Payne and Tracy, offering to help them get the blood they wanted.

In a video released online, U police Chief Dale Brophy said, “Having seen the video and firsthand what she went through, and what she tried to do to de-escalate and solve the problem, I think that somebody else — [university] security and/or police — could have stepped up and taken that role from her and been the advocate for her like they should’ve been.”