A Puzzle

Back when Eli was a young bunny, before he took up hip hop and went on world tour,  he roamed the library.  Libraries are odd places, filled with books that appealed to the whims of the librarians, but to make a long story longer, Eli became entranced by several random volumes of Joseph Needham's (aka 李約瑟) Science and Civilization in China.  Needham was a significant biologist who became obsessed with the question of how the West could come to dominate China in science and technology when the Chinese had such a significant lead before 1800. 

Earlier this year, during one of the interminable discussions on early instrumental temperature measurements, Eli thought, well, are there early Chinese instrumental temperature records?  So he wrote to the Needham Institute

Greetings

I am interested if there is any record of Chinese instrumental temperature measurement and Chinese weather records.  In particular, is any of this discussed in published volumes of Science and Civilization in China (prob. V4?)  I ask as I do not have easy access to the complete set of published volumes as per the World Cat and knowing which volume(s) to target would make my research easier.  I find this curious as I am in Washington Dc, near the US Library of Congress and several university libraries, including my own, but so be it.

Thank you for your help.

and got the following reply from John Moffett, the Needham Institute Librarian

JN has a short section on Meteorology in Science and Civilisation in China, Volume 3 (CUP, 1959), pp. 462-496. There doesn't seem to be much since, in English, though you could try this for some more recent information:

http://hooke.lib.cam.ac.uk/cgi-bin/bib_seek.cgi?cat=aff&bib=253407 

Best wishes,
John 

The link is to a book which describes setting up a weather observatory in Hong Kong, not really early times when compared to the Central England Temperature Series

Early China coast meteorology : P. Kevin MacKeown.

• Main author:MacKeown, P. K.
  
• Title:Early China coast meteorology : the role of Hong Kong / P. Kevin MacKeown.
  
• Published:Hong Kong : Hong Kong University Press, c2010
• Numerous personality clashes and financial and other intrigues surrounded the early efforts to set up an Observatory in Hong Kong. Blending personalities, politics and practicalities of studying the weather, this entertaining book provides valuable and informative insights into the public and private controversies growing out of responses to and responsibilities involved in the protection of life and property. This portrait is set firmly in the context of the history of Hong Kong as British colony on the China Coast and its role as a burgeoning commercial port within the trading complex of the Empire. It brings to life many of the people and institutions in Hong Kong and elsewhere on the development of meteorology on the China Coast.

The Meteorology section of Science and Civilization in China which can be read at Amazon is indeed very thin, essentially nothing but surely there must be diaries, planting records and similar from which a non-instrumental record such as the early CET from which a good proxy record can be formed.  Why are there not (or are there) precipitation records (which after all only require the ability to measure volume)?

So Eli has two questions

1.  Why did the Chinese civilization not develop temperature measurement instruments

2.  Are there historical (not proxy) Chinese records of climate which are being used to develop temperature and precipitation measures.

Perhaps some Chinese bunny could help poor Eli's curiosity

(BTW if somebunny can answer these questions for the  Indic/SE Asia or anyone elses home town, feel free to help, temperature measurement appears to have been very late to develop requiring several technologies but as said above, precipitation is easy, and so are planting records).

How's this deal: everyone, including other fossil fuel interests, gangs up against coal

(Ahem.) Wereallyneedacarbontaxorcapandtradebutintheabsenceofsufficientpoliticalwillweshouldturntootherpollitically-viablealternativesfortheshortandmediumterm.

Okay, with that out of the way, here's the basic idea for the US:  natural gas eats coal's lunch but renewable power gets a guaranteed and growing share of the power market. More specifically, natural gas interests support a national Renewable Portfolio Standard guaranteeing an increasing market share to renewables, with some state-level flexibility to make it meaningful and feasible in most states. In return, enviros let better-regulated fracking expand. The deal might need two add-ons:  gas interests support legislation limiting coal exports, and in return, more areas get opened, carefully, to fracking (looking at you, California).

I'm not certain we need a deal on coal exports - enviros can try their luck fighting coal export terminals and rail lines on their own without the help of national legislation. Coal exports to Europe would also fall under Europe's cap, so I could see it being Europe's problem to decide how they'll meet their cap. I also think it's usually better to determine that emissions are caused by the country that emits them, not by countries upstream or downstream in the production chain. On the other hand, this deal is less useful if the coal still gets burnt but in another country. If enviros demand assistance in limiting coal exports though, then they have to offer something in return.

This would be a temporary alliance between natural gas and renewables. After a decade or so of growing renewables and decreasing coal, natural gas would have to start phasing in carbon sequestration and would likely have to be phased out itself. That's a fight in the future, though.

Enviros could turn down this deal, but I'm not sure the present status is better, with fracking sucking up the large scale funding that might otherwise be available for renewables.

Bad Day For Hair

Let Eli count the laughs.

First, the bearded barbarians from the Heartland Institute are forced to bow down to the mandate of Heaven







Then Richard Tol gets a letter from the Editors (why he posted it is a mystery to Eli, but with Poptech on your side anything is as clear as the peace of God.  Willard, of course, is warming up on the ice).

The comment raises a number of issues with the recent study by Cook et al. It is written in a rather opinionated style, seen e.g. in the entire  introductory section making political points, and in off-hand remarks like labelling paper “may strengthen the belief that all is not well in climate research”.

It reads more like a blog post than a scientific comment.

The specification for ERL comments is:

“A Comment in Environmental Research Letters should make a real contribution to the development of the subject, raising important issues about errors, controversial points or misleading results in work published in the journal recently.”

I do not think this manuscript satisfies those criteria. It is in a large part an opinion piece, in other parts it suggests better ways of analysing the published literature (e.g. using a larger database rather than just Web of Science). These are all valid points for the further discussion following the publication of a paper – colleagues will have different opinions on interpreting the results or on how this could have been done better, and it is perfectly valid to express these opinions and to go ahead and actually do the research better in order to advance the field.

I do not see that the submission has identified any clear errors in the Cook et al. paper that would call its conclusions into question – in fact he agrees that the consensus documented by Cook et al. exists. The author offers much speculation (e.g. about raters perhaps getting tired) which has no place in the scientific literature, he offers minor corrections – e.g. that the endorsement level should not be 98% but 97.6% if only explicit endorsements are counted. He spends much time on the issue of implicit endorsements, about which one can of course have different opinions, but the issue is clearly stated in the Cook et al. paper so this does not call for a published comment on the paper. He also offers an alternative interpretation of the trends – which is fine, it is always possible to interpret data differently.

All these things are valid issues for the usual discourse that exists in many informal avenues like conferences or blogs, but they do not constitute materialfor a formal comment.

Then, to make the day perfect, Stevie McI gets slam dunked by the UK Information Tribunal in his appeal of the Information Commissioners ruling that he can't rummage in the CRU files.

Mr McIntyre questioned whether UEA had any intention to publish the 2006 Chronology, or rather, was asserting disingenuously that it was incomplete as a delaying tactic. He suspected that data would reveal ‘academic fraud’ and failed manipulations within the meaning of the term explained by Simons and Simonsohn. The argument we can see of relevance here would be if he were asserting that the 2006 Chronology was as complete as it would ever be and did not relate to unfinished documents, because no report relating to it was to be published. However, we accept UEA’s reasons for the delay in the publication, including the absence of one of the researchers, referred to in Dr Osborn’s [Keith Briffa's illness, during which McIntyre ceaselessly hectored him-ER] evidence and explained more fully in the closed evidence made available to us. We also note that UEA have made very clear that they intend to publish the 2006 Chronology shortly and Dr Osborn’s statement that the various iterations of chronologies have been retained by UEA to demonstrate the soundness of its research techniques and results, and that analysis of them would form part of the intended publication of the research. We doubt that they would run the risk of reputational and other damage by making such a statement to a Tribunal if it were not true, particularly given the veracity or lack of it would be clear in the fullness of time.

Eli has previously written about the genesis of this nonsense, 

So here comes to an end the Heartland Chinese Academy of Science trip, Richard Tol's hissy fit, and McIntyre's Yamal adventure, all on one spring day.

The Shoe Drops on the Table

On Thursday, Eli went to an interesting debate at R Street about whether a carbon tax was the best way to organize the response to climate change.  R Street an offshoot of Heartland, formed when Heartland jumped the billboard shark.  Lead by Eli Lehrer R Street basically represents the interests of the insurance industry, in a lobbying sort of way.  Eli took notes, more on the debate later

James Taylor from Heartland represented the forces of darkness, e.g. the lumps of coal.  Eli had a chance to talk with him later after he did the Gish gallop on another guy (more on that later).  The Rabett provoked by asking what Taylors POV was about the BRICs, the C being played by China, the others being Brazil, Russia and India, and Taylor replied in so many words that China was moving to their side as evidenced by the translation of the NIPCC report and the seminar to be held Sat in Beijing.  Eli remarked in passing and no further, that Taylor would be wise to count his cards.

Heartland just pulled the ace of spades. Their friends in the Chinese Academy of Sciences just posted a demand letter

The Chinese translation of the “Climate Change Reconsidered—NIPCC report” was organized by the Information Center for Global Change Studies, published in May 2013 through Science Press, with an accompanying workshop on climate change issues in Beijing on June 15, 2013. However, the Heartland Institute published the news titled “Chinese Academy of Sciences publishes Heartland Institute research skeptical of Global Warming” in a strongly misleading way on its website, implying that the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) supports their views, in contrary to what is clearly stated in the Translators’ Note in the Chinese translation.

The claim of the Heartland Institute about CAS’ endorsement of its report is completely false. To clarify the fact, we formally issue the following statements:

(1) The translation and publication of the Chinese version of the NIPCC report, and the related workshop, are purely non-official academic activities the group of translators. They do not represent, nor they have ever claimed to represent, CAS or any of CAS institutes. They translated the report and organized the workshop just for the purpose of academic discussion of different views.

(2) The above fact was made very clear in the Translators’ Note in the book, and was known to the NIPCC report authors and the Heartland Institute before the translation started. The false claim by the Heartland Institute was made public without any knowledge of the translator group.

(3) Since there is absolutely no ground for the so called CAS endorsement of the report, and the actions by the Heartland Institute went way beyond acceptable academic integrity, we have requested by email to the president of the Heartland Institute that the false news on its website to be removed. We also requested that the Institute issue a public apology to CAS for the misleading statement on the CAS endorsement.

(4) If the Heartland Institute does not withdraw its false news or refuse to apologize, all the consequences and liabilities should be borne by the Heartland Institute. We reserve the right for further actions to protect the rights of CAS and the translators group.
Information Center for Global Change Studies,

Scientific Information Center for Resources and Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, June 14, 2013.

Heatland's announcement has again vanished but the grovel has appeared (Tip of the ear to Big City Lib) from Jim Lakeley

The following statement was released today by Heartland Institute President Joseph Bast:

 "Earlier this week, the Information Center for Global Change Studies, an Information group of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, published a Chinese edition of 'Climate Change Reconsidered,' translating and combining the contents of two volumes in a series with the same title previously published by The Heartland Institute.

"Some people interpreted our news release and a blog post describing this event as implying that the Chinese Academy of Sciences endorses the views contained in the original books. This is not the case, and we apologize to those who may have been confused by these news reports.

"To be clear, the release of this new publication does not imply CAS and any of its affiliates involved with its production 'endorse' the skeptical views contained in the report. Rather, as stated in the translator's preface of the book, 'The work of these translators, organizations and funders has been in the translation and the promotion of scientific dialogue, does not reflect that they agree with the views of NIPCC.' "

Clearly they hope to have Fred Singer exfiltrated from Beijing with no further collateral damage however, some bunnies, not Eli to be sure, have been web citing like crazy

For those of you interested in how not to dance with the dragon, Stephan Lewandowsky has the instructions

 Anyone familiar with the activities of deniers will recognize that this affair follows a fairly standard three-step template: First, a spectacular announcement is made that is at the very least misleading if not outright mendacious. Then, true skeptics (usually scientists) discover and correct the misrepresentation. Finally, the responsible party retreats into its shadowy lair of irresponsible ideology with an "apology" that blames a "confusion" on parties unknown.

RL Miller has some more

I hope this won't be a useful information resource for very long

Via Wonkbook, a World Bank description of all the carbon pricing schemes in place or that have passed some level of approval at national or subnational levels. More than you'd think, and somewhat cheering when you remember that pricing is only one part of efforts to restrict emissions for many of the listed programs.

I need to really sit down with the part on the regional-level projects in China, but the first thing I wanted to check was Mexico. I had been excited to see a climate change law passed in the country, but according World Bank, not much has happened yet on the national level for a pricing scheme (see page 74). Other things are happening at regional levels in cooperation with California's program.

Hopefully the World Bank's descriptions will become incomplete soon.

Drop the Stick and Back Slowly Away From That Horse Carcass

Leo Hickman reports at the Guardian that he has received a letter from the NIPCC translators in China.  (see earlier post for scene setting about how Heartland is braying about their propaganda being translated).  After some introductory words on who they are the Bunnies get to the bottom (or what is now the bottom, but as they say, developing)

we translated the brief opinions of the 2009/2011 NIPCC reports and arrange a workshop in China, in order to let the researchers in China to know what and how the NIPCC address their opinions.

 On your puzzles and the false information from the NIPCC on website, we claim that, all what we have done on the Chinese edition and the workshop, does not reflect the translators, our center and CAS agree with NIPCC views. As an information group,we try to provide the climate change researchers worldwide information as a third party. we provide such a worshop and the Chinese edition is to promote the discussion or dialogue among the researchers from different research fields or with different opinions. NIPCC's report is a research/discussion object in this workshop.

In the words of the Wikipedia, should Eli let this poor animal rest in peace. . . . Naw =:)

Porky Pies At Midnight

And so begins a very tangled tale, which is yet developing.

The short of it is explained in a letter that a number of bloggers have received from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, but starting there would be little fun. 

UPDATE:  Dana Nuccitelli has more at the Guardian, Leo Hickman has another letter and Eli piles on
 

It actually begins with a web page put up by Eli's friends at the Heartland Institute

CHICAGO (June 12, 2013) – The Chinese Academy of Sciences has translated and published a Chinese edition of Climate Change Reconsidered and Climate Change Reconsidered: 2011 Interim Report, two hefty volumes containing more than 1,200 pages of peer-reviewed data on climate change originally published by The Heartland Institute in 2009 and 2011. . .

and

The Chinese Academy of Sciences will present the new publication at a “Ceremony of Climate Change Reconsidered and the Workshop on International Climate Change Science Viewpoints” on Saturday, June 15 in Beijing with the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) . Click here to read the Academy’s press release announcing the publication of Climate Change Reconsidered.

What! ##% the Bunnies ask, the Commies and the Libertarian Corporatist Right playing together?

The news tell us that  libertarians have developed a fondness for the 中 middle kingdom.  Eli rather suspects it is a misreading of the ethos of the place where bunnies can get away with anything except being noticed or envied by the powers that be, in which case they turn into stew.

Well, the Heartland page has gone up and down and up a couple of times since then.  It now appears to be up, but just to be sure Eli has taken a copy, but the Click Here link to the CAS page is now down, however it remains in the Google Cache where the Rabett reads (up again?)

NIPCC is what its name suggests: an international panel of nongovernment scientists and scholars who have come together to understand the causes and consequences of climate change. In 2009 and 2011, NIPCC publicized two reports named ClimateChange Reconsidered, providing evidences the IPCC ignores and questioning the proposal of IPCC that climate change is caused by human greenhouse gas emissions.

China information center for global change studies of CAS edited and published the Chinese version of “Climate Change Reconsidered: Report of the NPICC” to facilitate Chinese scholars’ understanding the opinions of NIPCC. The International Symposium of Global Changes is held on this occasion to enhance exchanges on the new advancements internationally and researches. A press conference will be held, with lead authors of NIPCC reports Craig D. Idso (USA), Robert M. Carter (Australia), S. Fred Singer (USA) and many other prominent scholars of the field presenting.

The Press Conference is maybe to be at a hotel in Beijing on Saturday.  Developing as they say but the first clue as to what is going on in the website is not the CAS website but the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.  While somebunnies may think that the CAS is  the Royal Academy or the NAS of China, it also runs STEM graduate education in China.  Before 1978, there were no doctoral degree granting institutions in China (something to do with western imperialism) partially explaining why so many Chinese came out to the west for degrees.  UCAS is the overarching institution which runs doctoral training through Chinese universities.  Looking at the downed page, one sees a contact email which points to the Lanzhou Branch of the National Science Library of the CAS

Lanzhou Branch Library mainly collects print and digital resources about earth sciences, resources and environmental sciences, chemistry & chemical industry, nuclear science and electronic technology, as well as documents and information resources on applied mathematics, biology, computer science and other general documents and information. Lanzhou Branch Library has a special collection of literatures about cold regions, arid regions, polar regions, Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, Loess Plateau resources and environment, natural calamities and engineering.

The CAS, of course has a position on climate change.  It is a signatory on the Joint Academies Statement on the Global Response to Climate Change

We urge all nations, in the line with the UNFCCC principles, to take prompt action to reduce the causes of climate change, adapt to its impacts and ensure that the issue is included in all relevant national and international strategies. As national science academies, we commit to working with governments to help develop and implement the national and international response to the challenge of climate change.

and has issued a recent report on the threat of climate change to China

Global warming threatens China's march to prosperity by cutting crops, shrinking rivers and unleashing more droughts and floods, says the government's latest assessment of climate change, projecting big shifts in how the nation feeds itself.

The warnings are carried in the government's "Second National Assessment Report on Climate Change," which sums up advancing scientific knowledge about the consequences and costs of global warming for China -- the world's second biggest economy and the biggest emitter of greenhouse gas pollution.

So Eli imagines that the CAS was none too pleased by the NIPCC report translation and press conference.  Upon inquiry, they responded

Thank you for your attention to the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). The news that you saw on the website of UCAS is actually a careless mistake caused by translation and compilation.

There is indeed a book named "Climate Change Reconsidered" to be published in China by the Lanzhou Branch of the National Science Library,  CAS, with a book release on June 15th. However, this is only a book cooperation between the Lanzhou Branch of the National Science Library and Heartland Institute, and is limited only to copy right trading, with no academic research work involved.

A few CAS experts participated in the translation of the book, aiming to demonstrate different voices in the global scientific field to the Chinese science community, however, that does not mean that we CAS joined the research or agree with their view point; neither does it mean that CAS will decide "promote" the climate "skeptic" view or group.

Attached are the cover of the book and the preface by the president of Heartland and translator's preface by the curator of the Lanzhou Branch of the National Science Library, expressing their own viewpoint, respectively.

UCAS is formerly the Graduate University of Chinese Academy Sciences ( GUCAS) and is renamed as UCAS(http://english.ucas.ac.cn/Pages/default.aspx) in 2012 with the official approval of the Ministry Education of China. It is one of the two universities owned by the CAS, with the other one called the University of Science and Technology of China(http://en.ustc.edu.cn/),

Thank you again for your attention to the CAS and here is our website(http://english.cas.cn/) and the website of the Lanzhou Branch of the National Science Library(http://english.llas.cas.cn/), please stay focused on our research progress, any of your suggestions will be warmly welcomed.

If you have any questions on CAS, please do not hesitate to ask.

Mistranslation is always useful.  But, as Eli said, developing, certainly the folks in Mordor think that they have a win, but maybe not so much as they think as the heavyweights in the CAS take note.  Nails that stick out getting hammered is not only a Japanese principle.

Take Five

For true joy, get them to play together (start the top one first:)

Oxidation of CO

First part of an occasional series

Oxidation of carbon monoxide (CO) to carbon dioxide (CO2) is a vital last step in combustion and the atmospheric degradation of just about any hydrocarbon.  It is slow, taking about two months in the troposphere, but the lifetime is not really slow, like methane (5-10 years) or like forever in the troposphere like the chloroflorocarbons.

As with just about everything, the HO radical, the atmospheric vacuum cleaner, is the species that oxidizes CO.

CO + HO --> CO2 + H

In 2012 Jun Li, Yimin Wang, Bin Jiang, Jianyi Ma, Richard Dawes, Daiqian Xie, Joel M. Bowman, and Hua Guo calculated a new, and much more accurate potential energy surface for this reaction (35000 points).  The paper now has 19 citations.  Recent papers have appeared detailing kinetics (how fast the reaction happens) and the dynamics (how the reaction happens) and the quantum effects (how spooky things happen).  The spooky things turn out to be pretty important.   Not everything is perfect, but their model does advance understanding.. Well it is interesting to Eli and the Bunnies have been doing enough policy stuff and this is his blog so quit complaining.  Of course, there has been a ton of previous experimental and theoretical work. 

Above is a sketch of the overall reaction energetics.   The solid lines are the calculated energies without zero point energy, more familiarly ZPE.  The wavy ones include ZPE. 

ZPE is one of the first and most convincing evidences of quantum behavior and in particular the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.  If the lowest amount of vibrational energy were really zero, then the separation of atoms would be fixed, and there would be no uncertainty in the position of the atoms.  By the Uncertainty Principle, this would require that the kinetic energy involved in the vibration would be unbounded.  Obviously a problem, and the solution is that the vibrational energy is hν (v + 1/2), the lowest simply hν/2, aka the ZPE.

With that out of the way first thing to notice is that the overall reaction, from the reactants at the far left to the products at the far right is really downhill, a net of (29.59-6.97) or  22.62 kcal/mol, or 23.78 kcal/mol with ZPE.  So why is the reaction slow, at the least relatively slow, under atmospheric conditions? 

There are problems both at the beginning (the entrance channel) and the end (the exit channel).

The figure helps, showing the rough shape of the molecules as balls.  Historically (as in it is always done that way but the reasons are hidden in the depths of time) carbon, C, is black, grey in this case, oxygen, O, is red and hydrogen atoms H, are white) 

OH is dipolar, the H end has a more positive charge and the O end more negative.  CO is only slightly dipolar, (0.122 D vs. 1.66 D  for OH), so as the two molecules approach each other the H atom is attracted to the CO. 

In the entrance channel, (looks like a chair) and the cis  configurations, there is a small barrier in the trans(chair like) configuration  (0.88 kcal/mol) and a larger one in the cis(looks like a bowl) configuration (4.35 kcal/mol).  Comparing both to the average kinetic energy at room temperature of 0.89 kcal/mol, it is unlikely that one could get by the cis-TS1 (stands for transition state).  The net result is that collisions where the H atom points to the O atom in CO would not react, simply bouncing back to the reactants while those with the H atom pointing to the C atom might (some would some would simply bounce back to reactants). TS1 involves rotation of the OH and the CO bringing the O atom in OH close to the C atom in CO.

And so begins the dance.

Thought of the day: cage match between fluoride opponents and climate deniers

Rules are the fluoride opponents have to start out convinced that the climate deniers are wrong, and vice versa. I'd like to listen to their arguments on why the other group is wrong (not very interested in their arguments as to why their own group is right). So what happens in the end? Anyone gets convinced?

I'm being slightly unfair here to the fluoride people. Even though I've voted consistently at the Water District to fluoridate and might take some heat in my district for doing so, I think the consensus on water fluoridation being safe isn't at the same level of strength as that of the climate consensus. To clarify, the consensus that fluoridating water is better than not as a general matter for the public health seems pretty strong, but it gets more iffy on the issue of potential side effects.