tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12007270335448281012024-03-13T10:04:32.201-07:00Kate Has Things to SayI'm a climate scientist. My favorite planet in the entire Universe is the Earth and I can't believe how lucky I am to study it for a living. Obviously nothing I say reflects on my long-suffering employers in the slightest.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1200727033544828101.post-41908963951768843912015-12-08T07:51:00.000-08:002015-12-08T07:51:00.207-08:00Political science<div class="p1">
I am a good American. I love large portions, the open road, and initiating highly personal conversations with strangers. I would rather watch romantic comedies about exploding cars than the classics of world cinema, which all seem to feature wealthy Europeans with protracted and deeply boring marital problems. I do not care for stinky cheese. A British person (named Nigel, as many of them are) once referred to me as “terribly vulgar” and <i>meant it. </i>I’m grateful my frankly disreputable forebears were permitted to immigrate, and hope that others will be afforded the same opportunity and the same welcome. </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
But there are things about this country that I don't love. We may be a democracy, but I suspect that, like “bloody” or “pants", the word is used differently here than in other English-speaking countries. Grueling campaigns in other nations seem to consist of, at most, three episodes of organized frowning at the opposition on television. In America, however, we conduct a perpetual, tawdry, and cruel search for the least qualified among us, and then convince these people to run for office or appear on reality TV (sometimes simultaneously). Elections here require the expenditure of vast sums of money on things such as hysterically inaccurate polls, bad slogans, and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKWlOxhSIKk">truly excellent television commercials.</a> This money must be raised by appealing to “special interest groups” (environmentalists, hamster enthusiasts, “women”) or by coincidental and wholly disinterested meetings with friendly billionaires. The result is dysfunction akin to imperial Rome, but without the extras like gladiator matches, deep-fried dormice, and vomitoria that, I assume, made life more bearable back then.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
One manifestation of this malaise seems to be a rejection of science, at least by the more opportunistic of our politicians. I take this personally. Not only am I a professional scientist, but I enjoy the benefits of science in my everyday life. I love the internet, mostly. I love motorized transit and antibiotics and not having smallpox. There are more intangible things, too. Barring major, irresponsible advances in experimental physics, black hole thermodynamics will not solve the climate crisis. Dark energy is probably not going to make anyone rich. Literally no one will die if we don't quantize gravity soon (although this would be an excellent plot for the next Bond movie; I am available to write and/or star). But still, how wonderful it is to belong to a species that thinks about such things. We can't be all bad if we can land probes on comets and other planets, sequence genomes, and contemplate the multiverse even while sober. </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
For me, though, the most wonderful thing about science is that it lets us <i>talk </i>to each other. We all experience the outside world through the prism of our own tastes, experiences, and biases. Some people have a rough time of things; others are sheltered and coddled. Some people like red; others prefer purple. Some people love dogs; other people are wrong. There has to be some way to engage with the reality we share, some way that we can all agree on what's true enough to get on with. I don't know that what I call "blue" is the same as what you see, but we can agree that the molecules in the atmosphere preferentially scatter particular wavelengths of light. Science is simply the least bad way to identify things that are the same for all of us: things on which we can agree. It gives us common ground. How else am I supposed to share a country with people who voluntarily eat at Applebees or listen to jazz?</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
But sometimes this process tells us things that are disappointing, depressing, or downright frightening. I don't like being reminded I'm going to die someday. I'm sad I'll never travel backward in time, or have a fulfilling conversation with my dog, or acquire superpowers beyond the ability to eat an entire large pizza in one sitting. I wish we weren't changing the climate by emitting greenhouse gases. I hate the second law of thermodynamics. But denying science doesn't make these things any less true or real. And, more than that, by rejecting any semblance of shared reality, it alienates everyone else who has to live there. </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
So why do our politicians insist on saying silly things about science? Is it our fault for communicating badly? I don't think scientists are any worse at talking to the public than anyone else. However, we persist in the endearing but misguided belief that yet another extended report on subjects guaranteed to fire the public imagination (“Bayesian model evaluation”, “tropospheric specific humidity”) will somehow make everyone believe us. And we're not immune to jargon. I imagine I am not alone in believing “stakeholders”, instead of being “engaged” or “integrated”, would be more productively put to use in fighting vampires. </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
It strikes me, though, that there are deeper things at work here. Denying science is fundamentally polarizing: if you lead people to a fantasy world through magical thinking, those of us left behind are less able to understand anything you say. This is a powerful way to elevate the subjective tastes and ideologies that divide us above the realities, however imperfectly grasped, that unite us. By rejecting the scientific method or the results that emerge from it, politicians can create useful cliques: impenetrable to outsiders, and bound together by a powerful shared untruth. It's not surprising that many of them use such an effective tool, but it makes me sad that they do.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="p1">
My Dad's politics are somewhere rightward of Attila the Hun, but, despite the shame he feels at fathering a vegetarian, we are very close. Among the many lessons he's tried to impart over the years (everything tastes better with hot sauce, it is better to die with honor than to ask for directions) is that sometimes it's possible to get along with, even love, people with whom you disagree. But I don't think this would be possible if there weren't at least some common ground. We agree that the sky is blue, the earth is round, the Universe is expanding, and the climate is changing. Science and reason make it possible for us to live together, in the same house or the same world. It gives all of us something to agree on, at least until new discoveries overturn or supplement what we thought to be true. We need more to live together: art, music, the ability to listen to each other. But acknowledging reality is a bloody good start.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1200727033544828101.post-64437090728854335242015-10-14T09:36:00.001-07:002015-10-14T09:36:07.347-07:00The whole, the sum, and the parts<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Climate models are highly misunderstood. A surprising number of people seem to be under the impression that a “model” is basically a large diorama, and that climate scientists are hired based on their ability to safely use plastic scissors, construction paper, and googly eyes. Others understand that climate models generally live on computers, but think of them as a malevolent artificial intelligence along the lines of HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey. (I would like to reassure these people that even the most villainous robot will find it difficult to emotionally manipulate humans when it’s written in FORTRAN and takes like twenty minutes to compile.) Still others think of climate models as some form of incomprehensible but prominent technology developed by annoying millenials (Like Uber, but for imposing global socialism!)</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It does, however, seem to be a common belief that the use of models somehow makes climate science less “real” than other sciences. This thinking betrays a misunderstanding of what models are and why we use them. All disciplines need models: biological, chemical, social, and physical systems are staggeringly large and complex. To make any progress we must reduce them to a scale where they're tractable, comprehensible, and, in some cases, <a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/Fatmouse.jpg">adorable.</a></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But, are climate models good or bad? Without context, this is a silly question, somewhat like “WALRUS: YES OR NO?” or “HOW MUCH CAKE SHOULD THERE BE?” The most realistic climate model would, of course, incorporate </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">everything</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">: the exact state of every water molecule in the ocean, the exact configuration of the atmosphere, an accurate distribution of vegetation and plankton and animals, a simulacrum of me watching something embarrassing on Netflix right now</span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1200727033544828101#1" name="top1" style="font-family: inherit;"><sup>1</sup></a><i style="font-family: inherit;">. </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">By these lights, the prefect model is computationally intractable, prohibitively expensive, and arguably kind of creepy. A truly realistic computer model is basically <i>The Matrix</i>, and that did not work out well for anybody, </span>especially<span style="font-family: inherit;"> by the end of the second sequel. It's also useless: why demand a model exactly simulate the real world when, with a few exceptions (all of whom are currently running for President), </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">we live there?</i></div>
<div>
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></i></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">So if models, like <a href="http://the-toast.net/2013/08/22/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-troubled-male-antihero/">troubled male antiheroes</a>, are neither good nor bad, how can we decide whether they're worth using? The answer depends on what, specifically, we're using them for. Climate models serve many purposes: they help us to understand the dynamics of the Earth system, constrain uncertainty, and highlight different possibilities for the climate of the future. They are particularly useful for exploring counterfactual scenarios in a mad-scientist kind of way: <a href="http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v3/n2/full/nclimate1683.html">what if we covered the entire Earth in wind turbines</a>? What if we set off a giant volcano in London? What if we never existed?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> I'm particularly interested in <a href="http://marvelclimate.blogspot.com/2014/09/our-grubby-little-fingerprints.html">climate detective work</a>, known in the scientific community as "detection and attribution" or, alternately, "attracting the ire of internet strangers with bizarre hobbies". It's important to remember that <a href="http://marvelclimate.blogspot.com/2014/10/our-climates-excellent-adventure.html">many external factors can affect the climate system</a>, and that the small and large-scale sloshing motions of air and water create internal climate variability. If something interesting is going on, like, say, <a href="http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/">a massive increase in global temperatures</a>, we'd like to know if this can be attributed to something in particular: is it purely a consequence of natural climate variations, or is it caused by something external like volcanoes or the Sun or, dare I say it, <i>us</i>?
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">In <a href="http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/10/104010/meta;jsessionid=1EB94A830ADE4240C44CE50942490A21.c1">our new paper,</a> we test the assumption that the recent history of the Earth's climate is statistically equivalent to its response to each individual external forcing: the whole is not greater or less than the sum of its parts. This boils down to the assumption that these forcing agents do not interact significantly with each other. Different forcings act in different ways and at different times: aerosols lead to a cooler, drier climate on average, while greenhouse gases warm the planet and increase precipitation.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Let’s look at the output of two models, both developed at NASA GISS<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1200727033544828101#1" name="top1"><sup>2</sup></a>. The “simple” model (which is still quite complex) is designed to read in <i>concentrations </i>of aerosols, ozone, and greenhouse gases and calculate the climate response. Given the amount of ozone in the atmosphere, for example, it tells us what temperature and precipitation changes to expect.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--pdj6SKRb8o/Vh56a24KVxI/AAAAAAAABKw/tgRJl3va_z8/s1600/Fig_from_ERL.001.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--pdj6SKRb8o/Vh56a24KVxI/AAAAAAAABKw/tgRJl3va_z8/s400/Fig_from_ERL.001.png" width="400" /></span></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The “complex” model recognizes that we don’t change the climate by directly specifying <i>concentrations </i>of greenhouse gases or ozone, but by <i>emitting </i>things as byproducts of industrial processes or energy generation. In particular, we don’t directly change ozone on purpose (I mean, <i>I </i>don’t). Instead, we emit things like methane that increase ozone concentrations down low and <span style="color: #232323; letter-spacing: 0px;">chlorofluorocarbons</span> that deplete ozone concentrations high up in the stratosphere. The more complex model is designed to simulate the atmospheric chemistry that translates these emissions into concentrations, and only then calculates the climate response.</span><br />
<div>
<div style="min-height: 19px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">In the simple model, the recent history of the climate looks a lot like the sum of its parts. Temperature and rainfall trends, on average, are equal to the sum of the effects of aerosols, greenhouse gases, ozone changes, land use changes, and natural factors like solar fluctuations and volcanoes. In the more complex model, this isn’t true anymore, especially for precipitation, because different kinds of emissions are interacting with each other. This complicates the whole business of attribution. It may be possible to attribute observed climate changes to specific phenomena: ozone depletion, for example, or increased aerosol concentrations. But when we go one step further and try to attribute these changes to the <i>emissions</i> that caused them, things get a bit harder.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">So does this mean that one model is “better” than the other? No, and shame on you for passing judgment on them. You don’t know their lives. It does mean, though, that we have to be careful in selecting the models we use, and to ensure that they’re fit for purpose. Climate models are not perfect representations of reality, nor are they intended to be. They are not perfect or disturbing, and they, despite my repeated pleading, do not star Keanu Reeves. They are simplifications, and useful ones at that. The trick is deciding what to leave behind.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<hr width="80%" />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1200727033544828101" name="1"><b>1 </b></a><i>Season Of the Witch</i>, starring Nicholas Cage, if you must know.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1200727033544828101#top1"><sup>↩</sup></a></span><br />
<hr width="80%" />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1200727033544828101" name="2"><b>2 </b></a>As accurately portrayed in Hollywood movies, NASA institutes are invariably headed by an <a href="https://twitter.com/ClimateOfGavin?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor">evil genius with a British accent</a> and staffed by <a href="http://www.giss.nasa.gov/staff/kmarvel.html">gorgeous and charming young blondes</a>.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1200727033544828101#top1"><sup>↩</sup></a></span><br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1200727033544828101.post-61307670779570977942015-02-25T09:09:00.000-08:002015-02-25T09:11:48.400-08:00Reviews and regrets<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I’ve spent the past year working on a study involving satellite observations of clouds. This is somewhat ironic, given that I<i> hate </i>clouds.<i> </i>When I was younger, I spent four years in England and believe I am therefore entitled to good weather for the rest of my life. But, as Sun Tzu said on Facebook, you must know your enemies before you can destroy them. I feel obligated to explain the results, and I will, in a later post. I even remember being excited about them at one point. </span></div>
<div style="min-height: 14px;">
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="font-family: inherit; white-space: pre;"> </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The paper is on a hot topic and has famous, eminent scientists as co-authors so I believe it should have been published without question, perhaps as a climate-themed merchandising tie-in to <i>Fifty Shades of Gray</i>. Unfortunately, it is just now appearing in print two years after we got the results and one year after the last co-author lost any semblance of interest in the manuscript. This is due to the scientific publishing process, which is designed to a) ensure accuracy and quality and b) suck every bit of hope and joy out of the process of scientific discovery. </span></div>
<div style="min-height: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Writing a scientific paper goes something like this:</span></div>
<div style="min-height: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">1. You have an idea, do some work, and get results.</span></div>
<div style="min-height: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">2. You inform your co-authors of your results. They then offer helpful suggestions that result in months more work and a paper that is longer than <i>Infinite Jest </i>and significantly less comprehensible. There are whole sections catering to each co-author’s specific hobbyhorse or area of expertise. For all you know, there is a paragraph on stamp collecting or furries somewhere in the Discussion section. You will not catch this on the five billionth read-through, because you will lose consciousness somewhere on page 3 of Methods.</span></div>
<div style="min-height: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">3. You must decide where to submit your paper. The most prestigious journals are named after abstract nouns and are distinguished by how much they loathe you, personally. Submissions to these journals are generally declined without review by power-drunk “editors”, who protect the delicate eyes of scientific reviewers from your monstrous output. You have poor decision-making skills (why else are you a scientist?), so you decide to prepare your manuscript for submission to <i>Abstract Noun.</i></span></div>
<div style="min-height: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i></i><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">4. Because <i>Abstract Noun </i>believes that the scientific community has not yet been informed of the “internet”, they justify very restrictive word limits on the grounds of “journal space”, as though a “journal” were a thing on paper that people read. This means that you must cut unnecessary things like motivation, methods, and results from your paper. Generally these are shoved in Supplementary Material, a .pdf file of such terminal dullness that no one has ever once, in the history of science, read it.</span></div>
<div style="min-height: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">5. <i>Abstract Noun </i>rejects your paper. If they are kind, they do this outright, explaining helpfully that while your work may be <i>correct, </i>it certainly is not <i>interesting. </i>If not, they find two or three reviewers, one of whom will be unfamiliar with your subject area but toweringly irate at its very existence. <i>Abstract Noun </i>regrets that the reviewers have highlighted serious flaws in your paper and are now undergoing extensive therapy for PTSD. That is, unless your paper is about the global warming “hiatus”, in which case it will be immediately accepted. This is, unfortunately, <a href="http://marvelclimate.blogspot.com/2014/09/i-am-so-bored-with-hiatus.html" target="_blank">not an option for me</a>.</span></div>
<div style="min-height: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">6. The second tier of journals are generally published by reputable scientific societies, and are sometimes referred to as “Society Journals”. I love this because it makes me think of journals with elaborate surnames swanning about country houses wearing fabulous clothes and making each other miserable. The best thing about these publications is the sweet, defensive way they are all called “Journal of [Something]”, as though we might forget what they are. No two journals have the same length or formatting requirements, which means you must risk the soporific boredom of the Supplementary Material for results that should now be included in the main text. You will also find out that all of your figures are the wrong size and color. By this time you will have misplaced the code that generates them.</span></div>
<div style="min-height: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">7. <i>Definitely a Journal and Not Something Else </i>sends your work out for peer-review. You grow up, get married, maybe have a kid or two, all while wondering what ever happened to that paper. Maybe you are truly without peer, limiting the pool or reviewers. Maybe they have better things to do, like not read your paper. Eventually you send a tentative inquiry and receive reviews suspiciously soon after.</span></div>
<div style="min-height: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">8. If you are lucky, the reviews are long, thorough, and moderately on-topic (“Please expand the section on furries”). They will generally ask you to include more references, some of which may even be tangentially related to your topic. It is always an amusing game to check the suggested citations for common authors in order to identify the reviewer. If an author name is systematically, obviously misspelled, this is the reviewer trying to throw you off the scent. Reviewer ID is a dangerous game, however: I harbored a deep and irrational grudge against a mild-mannered British researcher for a year before finding out he was not responsible for the nasty review, but simply a very good scientist with many useful papers.</span></div>
<div style="min-height: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">9. Suppressing every shred of dignity left to you, you write the most obsequious response possible, thanking the editor and reviewers and agreeing with as much as possible (“We agree that the works of Johnn Smmmmyth are seminal contributions”). You bury your refusal to perform additional simulations in the most toadying language possible and hope you get away with it.</span></div>
<div style="min-height: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">10. Your paper is accepted! Congratulations! Or it’s rejected, and you must now re-tool it for <i>Bob’s Journal of Discount Climate Research. </i>If it is accepted, your work is done, except for having to re-do all the figures in different resolutions, transfer copyright and your firstborn to the journal and the NSA, find money to compensate the journal for its hard work in ignoring you for months, and sign everything put in front of you. Your work is now guaranteed to appear before the end of the Anthropocene, subject to constraints.</span></div>
<div style="min-height: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Until this past year, my experiences with the publishing process were somewhat charmed. Reviewer comments were fair, constructive, and useful. Last year, however, everything I touched seemed to get rejected, and in the most brutal manner possible (“I don’t think people should write papers about El Nino anymore.”) Don’t get me wrong- peer review is a great and noble thing, and it is utterly necessary to ensure that papers are sufficiently boring so that scientists can understand them. I, especially, require stringent review because I am relatively junior and extremely irresponsible. If it were up to me, scientific papers would be required to have at least three sex scenes and bonus points would be awarded for submissions in limerick form. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But thing that bothers me about science is that we sweep this under the table, or talk in generalities. We talk about thick skins and toughness, but keep our own experiences quiet. Rejection is not persecution, but it’s a reminder that science is done by scientists, who tend to be human beings. Most human beings are good and diligent, but many are too busy to devote much time to reviews, and some are habitually angry and probably have gout. We should all strive to be fair and helpful even in our negative reviews, and to admit that we, too, have been on the receiving end of rejection. And in the midst of “I regrets” and “We declines”, we should try to remember why we do this in the first place. We will defeat those clouds yet.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1200727033544828101.post-48731140828845422862015-01-27T08:33:00.000-08:002015-01-27T08:33:05.173-08:00Cosmology to climate<div class="p1">
Among my many personality defects is a tendency to be easily distracted. I’m a perfect Aquarius: curious, talkative, and interested in a wide range of subjects, but quickly bored and terrible at seeing projects through to completion. Aquarians can be charming and friendly, but also scatterbrained and frustratingly unreliable. I’m amazed at how accurately a single zodiac sign describes my personality and guides the events of my life. This is even more impressive considering I was born in June.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
I suppose this distractibility is part of why I’m a scientist. There is, I admit, some comfort in believing the natural world can be fully described by arbitrary star patterns. But ascribing vague characteristics to non-kosher food animals and antiquated, unskilled occupations (“cup-bearer”, “virgin”) is, to me, unsatisfactory as a worldview. Astrology is too complete, too neat a system, too full of ready answers. It also implies similarities between myself and fellow Geminis Angelina Jolie and Marilyn Monroe that, while flattering, gloss over the fact that at least one of us is dead. Astronomy, on the other hand, offers a cheerful picture of insignificance in a vast Universe that exists for no particular reason, is ripped apart by a form of dark energy we cannot comprehend, and moves inexorably toward an inevitable heat death. Your average cosmology textbook sounds like it was written by Morrissey. There is no other subject more perfectly appealing to the sullen, misunderstood teenage mind.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
It is, therefore, no surprise that I, a breathtakingly unpleasant teenager, was interested in both early-universe cosmology and a subgenre of poetry that might be best described as “very bad”. Because demand for chapbooks with titles like <i>Staring Into The Void Of Puberty</i> or <i>Shut Up, Mom, You Don’t Understand</i> is bafflingly limited, I made the shrewd decision to enter the burgeoning industry of theoretical physics. I got my PhD at Cambridge, a spectacularly silly institution I can only describe as like Hogwarts but no magic and everyone's in Slytherin. My doctoral project concerned the intersection of cosmology and a particularly hilarious branch of physics known as “string theory”, which resembles astrology somewhat in that it appeals to stoned people and may be completely made up. It does, however, leave ample room to ask questions. For example: “Why is gravity the weakest force?”, “Why are the laws of physics as they are?” or “<a href="http://iopscience.iop.org/1126-6708/2008/12/034" target="_blank">Will a giant bubble of nothing spontaneously eat the Universe</a>?"<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1200727033544828101#1" name="top1"><sup>1</sup></a>
However, in the course of my PhD, I realized that my favorite place in the Universe, or indeed any other Universe, is the Earth. Any corner of the cosmos that contains Venice, Yosemite Valley, and the species that invented single-malt Scotch is pretty special, Copernican principle be damned. And, actually, I've never felt at a major disadvantage in my new field. In fact, there are many advantages to a postgraduate career switch. For example, I find that the worst effects of Impostor Syndrome are mitigated by <i>actually being an impostor</i>. But I'd argue that there are more similarities between the study of the Earth and the study of the cosmos than you might expect.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<b>Small sample sizes </b></div>
<div class="p1">
In the movie <i>Interstellar, </i>humanity, having destroyed our own planet, must find an alternate world on which to live. This means that a brave engineer must spend years trapped in a small space with no one to talk to but Anne Hathaway, a fate he escapes by fleeing into a set left over from <i>Inception </i>and doing quantum mechanics. The film highlights the most pressing danger our Earth faces<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1200727033544828101#2" name="top2"><sup>2</sup></a> and reminds us that for the time being, there is only one planet worth living on. This complicates the statistics somewhat, and means that there is no control Earth to which we can administer placebo greenhouse gases. Cosmology faces a similar problem: if there are multiple Universes, they are causally disconnected from ours and very bad at returning phone calls. This leads to the problem of "cosmic variance": the fact that we have frustratingly few observable Universes. Cosmology teaches you to be comfortable with unavoidable uncertainties. It also makes you comfortable with learning <i>something</i>, even though you can't know <i>everything</i>. </div>
<div class="p2">
<b></b><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<b>Physical Intuition</b></div>
<div class="p1">
I was not an exemplary graduate student. In my second year, it took me over three months to notice that my advisor had left the university and moved to another country. Graduate school is supposed to teach problem-solving skills, discipline, and endurance; I learned how to precisely gauge the absolute minimum level of effort necessary to get by. No one believes me, but I strongly suspect my laziness improves my physical intuition: after all, nothing in the physical world moves unless something makes it. And if nothing else, grad school does teach you that it's impossible, except under conditions that almost never apply in everyday life, to create something out of absolutely nothing. You can get almost everything you need to know from the laws of conservation of energy, mass, and momentum. These principles underpin the equations that describe the birth and development of the Universe, just as they describe the motions of the oceans and the atmosphere. It's terrifying and weird that they would do so, but understanding this <a href="http://math.northwestern.edu/~theojf/FreshmanSeminar2014/Wigner1960.pdf" target="_blank">unreasonable effectiveness </a>would require me to a) read books that are too heavy to take on the train and b) understand words like "epistemology" and "Ansatz" so I accept it and move on. </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<b>Models</b></div>
<div class="p1">
Many people are infuriated by climate scientists' use of models, perhaps because they have seen too many movies about advanced computerized systems that do not end well. On this front, I think we have nothing to fear. The Singularity may be approaching, but it probably won't be written in FORTRAN. But models are an important and unavoidable part of science, whether they're made of <a href="http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/modelE/" target="_blank">code</a>, <a href="http://currents.plos.org/outbreaks/article/obk-14-0043-modeling-the-impact-of-interventions-on-an-epidemic-of-ebola-in-sierra-leone-and-liberia/" target="_blank">math</a>, <a href="http://www.nih.gov/science/models/mouse/resources/hcc.html" target="_blank">mice</a>, or mice writing code. In cosmology, the <a href="http://cosmology.berkeley.edu/Education/CosmologyEssays/The_Standard_Cosmology.html" target="_blank">most utilized model</a> is called Λ-CDM, which sounds like a killer robot from the future but is in actuality bunch of equations that might describe the universe. These equations contain unknown quantities called parameters; you can plug in different numbers for the parameters and check how well the results match observations. Λ-CDM basically says the universe is filled with lots of Cold Dark Matter (CDM) and its expansion is driven by dark energy (described by a single number, Λ). This model works amazingly well, fits the observations, and allows cosmologists to pretend to make progress despite the fact that nobody has the faintest clue what either dark energy or dark matter actually is. This is slightly awkward as together these make up about 95% of all known matter and energy in the Universe, but the model helps us to contextualize our ignorance. It shows us where things we know fit in with things we don't know, and guides future research. It also involves solving a lot of horrible differential equations on a curved surface- a skill invaluable in climate science.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
I don't regret studying theoretical physics, and I still try to follow developments in cosmology. I'm proud to be the same species as the guy who came up with general relativity. But I also don't regret switching. I love studying the Earth, and every day I get to find out something new (or, at least, new to me). I'm happy as a climate scientist and plan to continue until I say something intemperate on the internet or make fun of my boss one time too many. Which, if my horoscope is to be trusted, will happen some time soon. I hear it's a typical Capricorn characteristic.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<hr width="80%" />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="1"><b>1 </b></a>No. <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1200727033544828101#top1"><sup>↩</sup></a><br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="2"><b>2 </b></a>Michael Caine<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1200727033544828101#top2"><sup>↩</sup></a><br />
</span>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1200727033544828101.post-1083453917122076192014-11-18T19:58:00.002-08:002014-11-19T07:50:11.498-08:00The Princess and the Dinosaur<div class="p1">
When I was a kid, I loved dinosaurs. I desperately wanted to be a paleontologist when I grew up, and I practiced for my future career by periodically digging up the front yard and memorizing the full Latin names of various species. My favorite was, naturally, T-Rex, but anything sufficiently big or bloodthirsty would do. My long-suffering parents gave me a set of small plastic dinosaurs, which proved useful for a number of important Kid Tasks like playing house, tormenting my sister, and ripping the heads off Barbie dolls. </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
At preschool, my dinosaurs played well with the toy soldiers and My Little Ponies and spectacularly dull wooden educational toys brought in by other children. But more and more I started to notice how the adults around me reacted. It was never explicit, never stated, but I could see that there was something wrong. One at a time, other girls began to peel away from our little playgroup and profess interests in things that, to me, seemed boring beyond belief: hairdressing, for example, or princesses. </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
And then, one day, it was my turn. The message had finally sunk in: dinosaurs were not for girls. My toy stegosaurus marked me as an outlier, somehow abnormal. I was horrified at the thought of being singled out, and it seemed much easier to transfer my affections to more socially acceptable large, dangerous creatures. This was the beginning of my Horse Phase (an uninterrupted, unsuccessful five-year campaign to acquire a pony) and the end of my paleontologist dreams. I started brushing my hair and decided I would, in fact, like to be a princess, albeit more along the lines of Boadicea than Kate Middleton.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Most of us grownups have forgotten, but the truth is that being a kid is <i>hard. </i>The world is vast and confusing, and you are told many things (“objects still exist even if you cannot see them”, “your little sister and the dog are different species”) that <i>do not make any sense </i>but are nevertheless true. Part of this terrible and awesome process of information assimilation is learning to get along with other people, and kids will naturally seize upon anything that simplifies or helps the process along. It’s reassuring to be part of a group, and terrifying to be out of one. Realizing that unicorns don’t exist and that you will never go to Hogwarts is tough enough without the added pressure of not fitting in.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because, despite detesting math and science throughout my teens, I grew up to be a physicist. The story of how this happened is long and boring; it suffices to say that inspiring college professors matter, and that graduate programs sometimes make highly questionable admissions decisions. It’s hard to know how to express my deep gratitude that anyone lets me do science for a living while at the same time admitting that things have, at times, been a little rough. Because there seems to be some deep-seated, misguided belief that physics and math, like dinosaurs, are not for girls.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br />
****<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Why am I talking about this? I would much rather talk about what climate models have in common with string cosmology (STAY TUNED<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1200727033544828101#1" name="top1"><sup>1</sup></a>) or make fun of the model intercomparison project called FAF MIP. But a recent series of kerfuffles— the New York Times Op-Ed section proclaiming that there is, in fact, no sexism in science, a man wearing an ill-advised shirt and the attendant fallout, the coordinated harassment of women online— make me want to say, loudly and clearly, that we do have a problem. Social pressures that steer girls away from science? Problem. Uncomfortable working environments for grown-up women? Problem. Severe underrepresentation of anyone not white and male? Problem. </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
So what can we do, dear reader? It pleases me to assume that you, like me, are concerned with diversity issues in science, and that you, like me, are lazy, defensive, not in a position of power, and easily distracted. Here are some things that I feel I’ve learned in my short time in science that might be easy and that might help. By no means am I an official SpokesLady for All Women (I believe that is Beyoncé), and others can and will certainly disagree. And this is far from an exhaustive list- I feel things like "don't grope" and "maternity leave" have been covered adequately in other forums.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<b>Be nuanced with your heroes</b></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>It’s natural to look up to people who have done great things, and it’s natural to want to emulate them. Richard Feynman, for example, is responsible for some of the most exquisite and elegant physics in history . He was also, by all accounts including his own, reluctant to view women as anything other than sex objects to be preyed upon. I’m picking on Feynman here because he is a) famous and b) dead and therefore unlikely to send me angry e-mail, but his behavior is hardly unique. There is an unfortunate tendency among young and not-so-young men to emulate Feynman’s negative qualities in the belief that this will make them seem edgy and rebellious, and thus to be the kind of iconoclast who might precipitate a scientific revolution. But treating women badly will not help you understand quantum electrodynamics any more than sleeping with your sister will make you a competent Romantic poet. It is possible to acknowledge great contributions and great faults simultaneously. </div>
<div class="p2">
<b></b><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<b>Recognize the difference between your feelings and objective truth. </b></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Whenever I go to the Boring Gym, the one with no walls to climb, I pass the tedium on the elliptical by reading trashy magazines. This ensures that if nothing else I will lose sufficient weight in the form of brain cells to justify the trip. However, some of the "women's magazines", despite their frankly baffling stance that men loathe sexual contact so much that it must be made bearable for them with elaborate "tricks", contain some solid relationship advice. I feel one of their best tips is to preface statements with "I feel". Naturally, this does not make sense in all circumstances: "I feel that gravity is renormalizable" or "I feel that the climate sensitivity is zero" are not improved by the phrase. However, it might help to somewhat eliminate the tendency to present strong opinions as factual, or to portray the current state of affairs as an apolitical moral Utopia. If someone feels something is a problem- they feel harassed, or threatened, or uncomfortable- and you happen to disagree, the proper response is, "I feel otherwise," not "that is not a problem". Or, just maybe, you could try believing them.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<b>Beware of old prejudices dressed up in scientific clothing. </b></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>I would like to start a web series called "Drunk Evolutionary Psychology", where participants imbibe several shots of whiskey and a bottle of wine and then come up with plausible-sounding Darwinian explanations for social phenomena. However, I worry that this might be indistinguishable from "Real Evolutionary Psychology", at least as it is portrayed in the media, and therefore cause confusion. Dressing biases up with scientific jargon doesn't make them more valid, but it does make them more intractable. One of my least favorite tropes is the claim that while the mean IQs of men and women are equal, the male standard deviation is higher: hence more male geniuses. This argument is always put forth by a man who implicitly assumes that IQ tests measure something meaningful and biologically determined, that one must be a genius to do science, and that the person making the argument is, naturally, in the right-hand tail of the distribution. I doubt that such assumptions would pass any sort of rigorous peer review.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<b>The existence of other Bad Things does not negate a Bad Thing</b></div>
<div class="p1">
The internet's two settings are Rage and Unmitigated Rage, and there will always be something much worse than the topic under discussion. I submit that countering a Bad Thing You Aren’t Doing Anything About with a Worse Thing You Aren’t Doing Anything About isn’t particularly helpful. I know ISIS and cancer and Congress and reality television are terrible things, but their existence neither negates my experiences nor makes me feel any better. </div>
<div class="p2">
<br />
****<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
I'm a grownup now, and a generally happy one at that. And I did become a scientist, through a circuitous and nontraditional route and with the astonishing support of incredible, mostly male, mentors. As an adult, I have skimmed the few paleontology papers that make it into the fancy journals in which I aspire to publish. While I do not completely comprehend their methods, I now understand that "What if two dinosaurs fought a Barbie?" is not considered a valid research question. The field of paleontology is not poorer for my absence. </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
But it breaks my heart that right now somewhere in the world, a little girl who loves math or machines or computers or dinosaurs is having that same realization. It’s wrong and stupid and wasteful that we’ve set up social pressures that serve no purpose other than to destroy dreams. We as a society <i>are</i> poorer for it, and we should feel ashamed. Can you imagine the wonderful discoveries we miss out on because children realize that they’re the wrong skin color or gender or social class or sexual orientation, and decide science is not for them? And, likewise, how many talented boys are steered away from nurturing professions or the domestic sphere by the same monumentally silly pressures? Three-year-old me was wrong: hairdressing and princesses are not boring, and there is nothing wrong with liking them. And dinosaurs, like physics and math, are unequivocally, emphatically, and definitely <i>for girls.</i></div>
<hr width="80%" />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="1"><b>1 </b></a>If you realized this was a terrible modeling joke, 1) congratulations and 2) really, you should be ashamed<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1200727033544828101#top1"><sup>↩</sup></a>
</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1200727033544828101.post-66589696626608224202014-10-13T10:56:00.001-07:002014-10-13T11:37:24.508-07:00Our Climate's Excellent Adventure<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Suppose you were given a time machine and told you could go backwards to any place and period of your choosing: what would you do? Would you watch the pyramids being built? Would you ride with Genghis Khan or debate Socrates? Would you travel to Versailles, Persepolis, or imperial Rome? No, you would not. You would die, probably of bubonic plague, immediately upon exiting your DeLorean. This is because history, as we must never forget, is a deeply unpleasant place to be. </span></div>
<div style="min-height: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">If you gave <i>me</i> a time machine, I would sell it on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDS81Ibazdk" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Craigslist Benghazi </a>and stay here. Call me incurious, but I prefer indoor plumbing, modern medicine, and having a legal status somewhere above "beef cow" to historical adventures with people who have <i>never brushed their teeth</i>. But a society that does not know history is condemned to repeat it, and also to have no TV costume dramas. History shapes our institutions and culture, informs our economic systems and social structures, and provides innumerable opportunities to make fun of the French. We all benefit from knowing a little of it. Even, as it turns out, if we are climate scientists. </span></div>
<div style="min-height: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Every climate modeling group in the world is full of secret historians who simulate the climate of the recent past to understand the climate of the future. They do this by studying changes in things known as “radiative forcing agents”. Although <i>Forcing Agent</i> sounds like a movie in which Liam Neeson punches foreigners, it actually refers to anything that affects the “energy balance”<i> </i>of Earth. You can think of our planet as a spectacularly useless and somewhat overpriced machine that receives energy from the Sun and excretes it back out into space. Despite being so far away from our Sun, the Earth, with the exception of the American Midwest in January, is warm enough to support life. This is a direct consequence of the fact that we have an atmosphere, which traps some of the heat escaping from the Earth’s surface and spits it back down at us. Anything that upsets this happy equilibrium, either by trapping more heat or by blocking the incoming sunlight, is a forcing agent. And the history of external influence on climate is the history of changes to these forcing agents.</span></div>
<div style="min-height: 22px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="min-height: 22px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">THINGS THAT ARE NOT OUR FAULT</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Many Americans of my generation were taught the futility of existence by playing the computer game Oregon Trail in school. In this game, which I assume was designed by Sartre, students guide a wagonload of pioneers across the great American wilderness until they are abruptly informed that their entire party has died of dysentery. This formative experience left me with a keen appreciation of the vagaries of life, and I, like most climate scientists, am interested in studying natural processes completely beyond our control. In the absence of humans, the two biggest forcing agents are:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><a href="http://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/strataer/" target="_blank">VOLCANOES</a> </b>The inner seven-year-old in me will never cease to be thrilled by volcanoes, even if they are not, in fact, made by mixing baking soda and vinegar. Very big volcanoes are fascinating because they can put enough gas and dust in the atmosphere to cool the entire planet. The eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in 1991, for example, cooled the entire Earth and is blamed for disruptions to agriculture, shifts in global weather patterns, and the subsequent popularity of grunge music. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><a href="http://solarisheppa.geomar.de/" target="_blank">THE SUN ITSELF</a> </b>The Sun’s output changes depending on where the Sun is in its cycle and whether it remembered to take its pill. The influence of the sunspot cycle on the current climate is faint and barely detectable, but solar fluctuations have evidently been important in the past.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">THINGS THAT ARE OUR FAULT</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Unfortunately for those of us who prefer to blame our failings on acts of nature, we are directly responsible for other substances that affect the energy balance. The major “anthropogenic” (that’s science for “your fault, personally”) forcing agents are:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><a href="http://dods.ipsl.jussieu.fr/cpipsl/ANDRES/" target="_blank">GREENHOUSE GASES</a></b> The Industrial Revolution is, like binge drinking, monocles, and the Spice Girls, one of Great Britain’s many important contributions to history. The realization that life, or at least profit margins, could be improved simply by digging up compressed dinosaurs and setting them on fire revolutionized our world. And the more enthusiastically we embraced internal combustion, the more carbon dioxide we added to the atmosphere. You can track the beginning of the industrial revolution simply by looking at the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere; there’s a very abrupt and very alarming spike that continues to grow even today.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><a href="http://www.sparc-climate.org/" target="_blank">OZONE DEPLETING STUFF</a> </b>The 1980s was a time of noxious politics, global unrest, and big hair. The latter phenomenon, unsurprisingly, had the most outsized effect on climate. It turned out that hair sprays, along with Styrofoam, refrigerators, and Axe body spray, were destroying the ozone layer. The subsequent ozone hole affected the entire circulation of the atmosphere and led to a rare moment of global cooperation. In what we are now told is an unthinkable act of bravery in the face of corporate opposition, ozone-depleting chemicals were banned and hairstyles improved drastically. The recovery of the ozone hole has proceeded as expected, and is a happy example of the world coming together to fight pollution and Def Leppard simultaneously.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><a href="http://luh.umd.edu/" target="_blank">LAND USE</a> </b>I once went to a museum exhibit about Genghis Khan that had been sponsored by the Mongolian government. In an attempt to reclaim his somewhat checkered reputation, Genghis was credited with a range of important innovations including “diplomatic immunity” and “pants”. I was particularly intrigued by the claim that the Mongols invented environmental protection, presumably by converting most of the population of Europe and Asia into compost. While I do not endorse this as a sustainability practice, it is true that changes in population shape land use, which shapes the climate. When large forests are cleared to make way for cropland, everything from the length of winter to the local temperature may change. Moreover, plants are a sink for carbon dioxide. Clearly, population increases or decreases leave their marks on the land, which slowly but surely changes the local climate and beyond.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><a href="http://tntcat.iiasa.ac.at/RcpDb/dsd?Action=htmlpage&page=welcome" target="_blank">ASH AND DUST</a></b> With the possible exception of a few plutocrats and everyone in that “Gin Lane” engraving, nobody at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution looks like they’re having any fun. This may be because they know they will not live to see our modern age of iPhones and Wikipedia and Kardashians, but it is more likely because they can’t breathe. The famous “London Fog” refers not to a weather phenomenon, but to the noxious fug of factory smoke and ash hanging over the city. Before the advent of clean air regulations and, I assume, Captain Planet, there were no limits to the smoke and dust and particulates that could be spewed into the atmosphere. Climate scientists call these bits of dust “aerosols” to confuse the general public for whom “aerosol” means “hairspray” or “Cheez Whiz”. There’s some evidence that before the West cleaned up its act, we spewed so much ash and dust into the atmosphere that we partially checked the greenhouse gas-caused global warming. There’s also some evidence that China is gleefully repeating the same pattern as we speak.</span></div>
<div style="min-height: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">How do we study the recent history of our climate, given these changing forcing agents? Every climate model that wants to get taken seriously must compete in the Model Thunderdome. This project is known to more serious scientists as the <a href="http://cmip-pcmdi.llnl.gov/cmip5/index.html" target="_blank">Coupled Model Intercomparison Project</a> (or CMIP), possibly because they are unaware that “intercomparison” is not a word. Every independently developed climate model in the world is required to perform the same set of experiments, and then freely make the results of their hard work available for the rest of us to snipe at. Perhaps the most important experiment is the “historical” run, where modeling groups must include our best estimates of changes in all these forcing agents from 1850 onward to the present day. If you wish to join the peanut gallery telling climate modelers where they went wrong, you are welcome to download all this output for free <a href="http://pcmdi9.llnl.gov/esgf-web-fe/" target="_blank">right here</a>. If you do so, you will find many interesting differences, but striking similarities between these climate models. In particular, you will see global temperature decreases after 1991, 1982, and 1963, when Mts. Pinatubo, El Chichón, and Agung blew up. You will see an ozone hole and its attendant effects over the Southern Hemisphere. You will also see a not unbroken, but relatively steady increase in global temperatures which coincide with an increase in greenhouse gas emissions.</span></div>
<div style="min-height: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I have no doubt that this warmer world has changed, and mostly for the better. We have iPads and central heating, and we<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1200727033544828101#1" name="top1"><sup>1</sup></a> no longer believe descent from a specific family of marauding Dark Age lunatics qualifies one to be Head of State. On balance, I believe that many aspects of our modern lifestyle are unspeakably wonderful. But we would be wise to remember that they have been bought at the cost of an enormous increase in greenhouse gas emissions. And the basic effect of these emissions on the climate is clear. There are, to be sure, many things we don’t know completely: how forcing agents interact with each other, for example, or how to disentangle their effects from purely internal climate variability. The only way to know for certain is to invent a time machine and send someone, probably a graduate student, back in time to politely ask people to hold off on the emissions for a while. Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge, there are no time machines. And I wouldn’t risk cholera or highwaymen or Mongol hordes even if there were. I am very dedicated to my science, but there are limits.</span></div>
<div style="min-height: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I wish those of us stuck here in the present could stop arguing about the scientific basics and start thinking about what to do. This is not my job, and I think it’s wise to defer to the wide variety of intelligent people who’ve proposed various economic and policy solutions. I do, however, believe that we could make some progress by listening, and by not ascribing terrible motives to the people with whom we disagree. There are, of course, people so radical that they would like to return to a subsistence, pre-agrarian way of life. There are also people so reactionary they believe England should still be ruled by Richard III, once they finish digging him out of that parking lot. It does not seem to me that either of these groups is particularly representative of the vast majority of people who want both modern comforts and a stable climate. Still, I’m always going to be hopeful about our chances. Comforting as it may be to believe internal combustion is the pinnacle of human achievement, I think this probably underestimates the maddening, frustrating, disruptive nature of our species. We shouldn’t forget that history is a renewable resource: we're always making more of it. </span></div>
<hr width="80%" />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1200727033544828101" name="1"><b>1 </b></a>Most of us, at any rate<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1200727033544828101#top1"><sup>↩</sup></a></span>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1200727033544828101.post-80722942861824293912014-09-25T07:39:00.002-07:002014-09-25T09:21:56.159-07:00Thanks for Your Feedback<div class="p1">
I just hate not knowing things. Well, "hate" is a strong word, perhaps best reserved for truly terrible things like injustice, cruelty, and portobello mushrooms, but uncertainty in general makes me a bit queasy. Unfortunately, my job requires me to confront uncertainty every day. Sometimes I feel I'm in the wrong profession (as a reviewer of my last paper helpfully suggested), but mostly I take this as a challenge. None of us will ever know everything, but we can, as a species, take steps to reduce the gap between slobbering idiocy and complete omnipotence.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
There are lots of things I don't know: why evil exists in the world, for example, or how to apply liquid eyeliner without looking like a punch-drunk raccoon. But the most apropos unknown on this long list is the climate sensitivity: we simply don't know <i>precisely</i> how hot our planet is going to get.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
I briefly discussed climate sensitivity<a href="http://marvelclimate.blogspot.com/2014/09/i-have-high-climate-sensitivity.html"> before</a> to great approbation from the Needlessly Irate corner of the internet, and I thought I'd elaborate a bit more. While increasing the greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere increases the Earth's temperature, there are, give or take<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1200727033544828101#1" name="top1"><sup>1</sup></a>, six processes that could speed this up or slow this down. And, like any famous group of six (the wives of Henry VIII, the <i>Friends), </i>these processes have complex interactions and varying degrees of success. We call them "feedbacks," and they can be positive (speeding up warming) or negative (slowing it down). They are, in no particular order:</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
* <b>MR. PLANCK'S FEEDBACK</b> Max Planck, in addition to being the least embarrassing German scientist of his time, showed that a rise in the Earth's temperature should lead to a very large increase in thermal radiation to space, checking the temperature increase. This results in a negative feedback, albeit one that's incredibly well understood. Thanks, Max.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
* <b>ALBEDO</b> changes: "Albedo", which admittedly sounds like a Mafia henchman of dubious intelligence, is a term we use to describe how shiny the Earth is. If the whole world were covered in ice, much of the sun's light wouldn't reach the surface but would instead would be reflected back out into space like a lonely cosmic mirror ball. The Earth is only partially covered in ice, though, and this tends to melt as it gets warmer. So less and less of that poor disco ball is available to reflect light back into space, and the resulting exposed ground soaks up the sun's light like a fat tourist on the beach. This change, from ice to exposed surface, is a positive feedback.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
* <b>WATER VAPOR</b> "Buy 1 Get 1 Free" specials always end in grief for me, once I get home to realize I've been duped into purchasing multiple things I don't want. CO2 emissions turn out to be similar: with every bit of CO2 we put in, we get an unwanted extra greenhouse gas for free. It turns out that regular old water vapor is itself very effective at trapping heat. And because hot air holds more water vapor, which is helpfully supplied by evaporation from land and ocean, increasing CO2, which increases the temperature, also increases water vapor in the atmosphere. This extra greenhouse gas accelerates the warming- it's a positive feedback.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
* <b>LAPSE RATE</b> While I've never climbed Everest, I've seen pictures of people who have. And they look <i>cold, </i>despite being at basically the same latitude as Tampa. This is because they have more money than sense, but also because temperature changes with altitude; this contrast is called the <i>lapse rate. </i>Thanks to Max, we know that thermal radiation depends very much on temperature. The colder upper atmosphere tosses less thermal radiation out into space than the warm lower atmosphere radiates downward. Putting a bunch of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere changes this contrast and slows down the warming: it's a negative feedback.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
* <b>REFLECTING CLOUD</b> Clouds are the Anne Boleyn (or perhaps the Rachel) of climate feedback mechanisms. They are arbitrary and capricious and if they're not careful, it will end badly for them. Low clouds act like ice or mirrors, reflecting sunlight back into space. The planet is currently cooler because of their presence. Unfortunately, we really, really, really don't know what's going to happen to these low clouds in a warming world. Some climate models predict large changes, some none at all. Some say there will be fewer lower clouds- a positive feedback, and some say more- a negative feedback. </div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8yU0QPzjhQ8/VCQoCvY7bqI/AAAAAAAAA2o/vMeQKqRdAWQ/s1600/SW.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8yU0QPzjhQ8/VCQoCvY7bqI/AAAAAAAAA2o/vMeQKqRdAWQ/s320/SW.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">You guys, seriously, we have no idea what's happening here.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
* <b>INSULATING CLOUD</b> High clouds, by contrast, act like blankets, trapping thermal radiation. The planet is warmer than it would be without them. Again, we're very uncertain what climate change is going to do to these. </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
While we're pretty sure how some of these feedbacks work. we're highly uncertain about others. Worse, we don't fully understand how they interact with each other: do more low, reflecting clouds mean fewer high, insulating clouds? Or vice versa? While we're making some progress, we need to understand all of these moving, interlocking, interdependent parts before we can say for certain how warm it's going to get.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Now, I want to stress: there is a difference between not knowing everything and not knowing anything. Science progresses when we all get bored and more on. Once something seems to work pretty well, no one wants to study it anymore, because a) figuring something out allows us to move on to new and interesting problems and b) the NSF does not fund grants with titles like "FIRE: WHAT IS IT?". This is why modern physics labs are not full of inclined planes and modern chemists aren't still trying to figure out where water goes when you boil it. And probably why poor Pythagoreas never gets cited anymore. </div>
<br />
<div class="p1">
What I am trying to say here is this: there are real questions that are worth answering ("what will happen to cloud cover in the future?"; "how do feedback mechanisms interact with each other"?). But there are also questions that have been answered ("Is CO2 a greenhouse gas?", "Is the observed warming trend likely to be our fault?") and questions that are probably not worth asking ("Is atmospheric science a hoax?"). And focusing too much on the questions that are answered or stupid or disingenuous can get in the way of answering those real, fascinating, crazy-making questions. This is where the fun is, and where I welcome <i>your</i> feedback. You're welcome to offer new ideas, disagree with me, or ignore me completely. Just don't make me eat portobello mushrooms. I'm a vegetarian, not a monster.</div>
<hr width="80%" />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="1"><b>1 </b></a>I'm ignoring things like the carbon cycle here because I don't want to <i>talk</i> about plants, I want to <i>eat</i> them.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1200727033544828101#top1"><sup>↩</sup></a>
</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1200727033544828101.post-29051171082379630252014-09-15T07:52:00.000-07:002014-09-19T08:32:59.415-07:00I Have High Climate Sensitivity<div class="p1">
A while ago I attempted to discuss internal climate variability on Twitter (@DrKateMarvel, if you care). Understandably, this resulted in a torrent of abuse from people concerned that I was advocating the immediate annihilation of the entire human race. To clarify: I actually do like most people very much, although now that I live in New York City I expect that to change soon. And calling someone who disagrees with you on, say, the amplitude of El Niño a violent fascist doesn't strike me as the best way to change hearts and minds. So, to aid in your decision-making <i>vis-a-vis</i> insulting strangers on the internet, here is a helpful rubric for when it is acceptable to call someone a Nazi:</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
A. Are they literally <i>murdering </i>people?</div>
<div class="p1">
B. Do they melt upon contact with certain archeological artifacts?</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
If the answer to both A and B is "no", then perhaps it might be time to reconsider your choice of words. Call me over-sensitive, but it hurts my feelings when you call me names. I don't even like being called Katherine, <i>and that is my actual legal name. </i></div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
It strikes me that this is an excellent and not at all awkward opportunity to segue into a discussion of climate sensitivity. You may call the climate system whatever you wish; it does not have feelings to hurt. It does, however, consist of atoms that together make up the air and water and land and living and dead things that constitute Earth. And the thing about these atoms is that, barring a quantum tunneling event that drastically alters the constants of Nature<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1200727033544828101#1" name="top1"><sup>1</sup></a>, they more or less have to obey the laws of physics. And the laws of physics say that <strike>carbon dioxide atoms </strike>carbon dioxide molecules, which are also composed of atoms, disproportionally absorb and re-emit thermal radiation, making CO2 a greenhouse gas. I also want to clarify that this is not my fault, so please direct your angry mail <a href="http://www.beiberfever.com/">elsewhere. </a> </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
As I discover every day when I try to get work done, the climate system is complicated. If the Earth were boring, like the frictionless ball on an inclined plane that for some reason is expected to inspire schoolchildren to study physics, we know exactly how it would respond. For that we can thank Max Planck, possessor of science's manliest name, who made a) significant contributions to thermodynamics and b) the same facial expression in every photograph. <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cQXmG7gO798/VBb8JcMbe5I/AAAAAAAAA2A/5NnY1L5PuWc/s1600/Screen%2Bshot%2B2014-09-15%2Bat%2B10.48.05%2BAM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cQXmG7gO798/VBb8JcMbe5I/AAAAAAAAA2A/5NnY1L5PuWc/s1600/Screen%2Bshot%2B2014-09-15%2Bat%2B10.48.05%2BAM.png" height="178" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Max Planck (all images from <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&docid=4l80kFCubEnrKM&tbnid=LiEgzC-j4WHBLM:&ved=0CAYQjB0&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FMax_Planck&ei=WfwWVOzHFfGTsQT44ICgBQ&bvm=bv.75097201,d.cWc&psig=AFQjCNE_-VI-JL8gRVWzrfkur5m__C4JEA&ust=1410878934061836">Wiki</a>)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
However, the Earth is not boring (hooray!), and many things could speed up or slow down this warming. These physical processes, like my helpful internet interlocutors, are providing useful feedback. Warming melts ice, exposing darker surfaces below that absorb, rather than reflect, incoming light. Warmer air holds more water vapor, itself a greenhouse gas, but this changes the vertical pattern of temperature in the atmosphere, slowing down the warming. There may be changes to cloud cover, which may have help or hinder the greenhouse warming depending on the type of clouds affected. I wish it were a simple task to add these processes up, determine exactly what's going to happen, and go to the pub for the rest of the day. And it is tempting to throw up your hands, say "it's too complicated! Probably nothing bad will happen!" and then set fire to a lump of coal inside a Hummer because #YOLO. But even though we're not very sure exactly what to expect, the observations make us fairly certain the Earth's total temperature response to our actions and all their consequences- its "climate sensitivity"- is not going to be zero. And uncertainty works both ways. </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
We are all, of course, perfectly free to gamble that climate sensitivity is on the low side, and that the feedbacks that slow warming will triumph in the end. This does not strike me as the best idea, but others may disagree. If you do so, please be civil and kind. The climate's sensitivity is hard to nail down, but mine is pretty high.</div>
<hr width="80%" />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="1"><b>1 </b></a>I wrote my PhD thesis on this. Turns out it's unlikely.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1200727033544828101#top1"><sup>↩</sup></a>
</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1200727033544828101.post-8077884192012174092014-09-10T15:11:00.001-07:002014-09-10T15:23:26.790-07:00Our Grubby Little Fingerprints<div class="p1">
I love a good detective show. My favorites are the BBC ones where all of the actors are reassuringly unattractive, the murderer is inevitably a member of the upper classes, and the mystery is eventually solved by a charismatic investigator with a personality disorder. But I also have a soft spot for American shows where there is a serial sex murderer at large <i>every week</i> and a district attorney is probably involved. I happen to think my professional life would make an entertaining TV show because I am, in effect, a climate detective. It's my job to look at the evidence, determine if the climate is changing, and try to figure out the culprit behind those changes. </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
I hear you asking, "Kate, just what do you do all day besides waste my taxpayer dollars and pray to your false god Al Gore"? Excellent question, hypothetical and unnecessarily hostile internet person! Climate detective work involves looking at the evidence to answer three basic questions:</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<b>1) What does climate change look like?</b></div>
<div class="p1">
You might think this is a solved question (the hint is that it's called "GLOBAL WARMING"). After all, carbon dioxide is a heat-trapping gas, so more heat should make the planet warmer and the temperature should, on average, be rising. But there are so many other things that go into making up the climate- rain, snow, clouds, humidity- that might be affected by all the stuff we squirt into the atmosphere. So, we need to ask: what's the signature of <i>us? </i>Do we leave grubby little fingerprints around the scene of the crime?</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Here's an example: increased carbon dioxide warms the lower atmosphere (closer to Earth), but cools the upper atmosphere (closer to space). I will probably write more about this later but for right now you'll have to take my word for it (or go <a href="http://www.atmosphere.mpg.de/enid/20c.html">here</a>). The "fingerprint" of increased carbon dioxide looks like this:</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
COOLING UP THERE : - { }</div>
<div class="p3">
¯\_(<span class="s1">ツ</span>)_/¯</div>
<div class="p1">
WARMING DOWN HERE : (</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
This is, of course, a highly technical diagram that you are free to use in your scientific work. You're welcome. I want to point out one important thing, though: I <i>did not use a climate model </i>to determine that fingerprint, just my best understanding of how carbon dioxide actually works (plus I had to google the emoticon for "cold"). All of the climate models will show something roughly similar to this because they are also based on the physics and chemistry of the real world, so I could just as easily have determined this fingerprint using a model. But I don't have to.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<div class="p1">
<b>2) Do we see it?</b></div>
<div class="p1">
Criminals on TV are dumb and full of DNA, so they usually leave some forensic evidence around. But they very rarely write their names and occupations ("Sex Murdering") clearly at the scene of the crime. In general, things must be dusted and unfeasibly tan people in lab coats need to frown at beakers for a little bit before the evidence is clear. In climate detective work, the evidence comes from observational datasets- satellite missions, perhaps, or land-based gauges. So once we know which fingerprint we're looking for, we can ask: is this happening in the observational data? Is the signature of what we're doing evident amidst all the other things the climate system gets up to? To go back to our example: multiple satellite missions have now established that the lower atmosphere is warming while the upper atmosphere is cooling. Not climate <i>models, </i>climate <i>observations. </i>We're pretty sure that this is happening.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<b>3) Is there some other explanation?</b></div>
<div class="p1">
Certain people are fond of pointing out to climate scientists that "climate is always changing" as if we never go outside. We are, I am proud to say, very aware of things like "El Niño" and "winter". So we're always on the lookout to see if there's another explanation for what we see. Unfortunately, we can't ask everybody to move to an alternate planet for a couple hundred years while we run some experiments on this one. This means we're pretty much stuck using climate models if we want to get a handle on the world without us. And all those models (there are about thirty independent modeling groups around the world), run without external influences so the climate can do its own thing, basically do not do what we see. It's technically <i>possible</i> to get long-term warming down low and cooling up high without our input, but it's not very likely. It could happen, but it would be weird.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Climate scientists are also aware of the existence of the Sun (although for the British ones it may be a purely theoretical concept). But changes in the Sun's output simply warm or cool the whole atmosphere- the Sun's fingerprint is different than ours. Try as we might, it's hard to blame the Sun for something that clearly has our fingerprints all over it.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="p1">
In short, those are the very, very basics of climate detective work. I promise to write more about the subtleties and some specific examples if I don't get too bored. In the meantime: please, network television, give me a call. I would like to be played by Ice T if at all possible.</div>
</div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1200727033544828101.post-43902879111197818932014-09-08T15:27:00.005-07:002015-06-05T14:14:40.286-07:00I am So Bored With the Hiatus<div class="p1">
Today, in News that Will Surprise No One, the <i>Wall Street Journal </i>has decided to print some nonsense about climate science. Specifically, they latch on to the so-called "hiatus" in global surface temperatures to argue for their preferred climate policy ("Nothing. Ever."). The hiatus seems to go by several aliases these days- "pause", "no warming for 15 years", "CHECKMATE, NERDS!"- but the argument is a convenient one. Because it's true, on one level: global surface temperatures are indeed rising less quickly than the current generation of climate models predict. But, you know, that's like saying the Earth isn't round because it looks pretty flat where you are. That argument might fly if you are, say, a medieval peasant (are you? If so, I am fascinated and you should contact me immediately as I have many questions) but in the intervening years we've learned a lot more about looking at the big picture.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
No serious scientist truly believes that the slowdown in surface warming invalidates greenhouse physics, and the argument really only works if you ignore the massive increase in ocean heat content (I grew up in Ohio, so I, too, know how difficult it can be to remember the ocean exists). This is a picture I stole from the super-impressive Katherine Hayhoe, and it shows where all that extra energy is going. </div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pW34irCG4DQ/VA4tDywV7aI/AAAAAAAAA1g/OMUB2fDCrwk/s1600/OHC.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="243" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pW34irCG4DQ/VA4tDywV7aI/AAAAAAAAA1g/OMUB2fDCrwk/s1600/OHC.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image credit: @KHayhoe</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Look, sometimes the ocean takes up more heat, and sometimes the atmosphere does. This is because the climate system is complex- so complex that people literally do nothing all day but study how the air and water on Earth slosh around and interact with each other. These pitiable people are called scientists, and despite their questionable life choices they are really pretty sharp. While they no doubt appreciate being reminded of the hiatus by you, WSJ writer/internet commenter/angry uncle, you may rest assured that they are aware of it, perhaps even more so than you! The question they are interested in is not, "how come surface temperatures are rising so slowly?" but rather, "why is the ocean doing so much of the work right now, and how long will this last"? </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="p1">
But really, my biggest problem with the hiatus is that it's so very tedious. Talking about it without mentioning ocean heat content and natural climate variability is at best disingenuous and at worst insane, but not in a particularly amusing way. What I don't understand is that, once you've decided to sever all ties with reality, why print the same predictable attacks? If you're going to make stuff up, at least have some fun with it. If I worked for the WSJ on the Fabrication Beat, you would see headlines like "CHUPACABRA ATTENDS DAVOS SUMMIT" or "SCIENTISTS: KATE MARVEL IS JUST THE GREATEST". The problem with the whole narrative that climate scientists are somehow engaged in a massive conspiracy so that Al Gore will be our friend isn't just that it's deranged, it's also really boring. </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com