by Judith Curry
Lindzen has responded to Hoskins et al.
On a previous thread, we discussed Lindzen’s presentation to the House of Commons [here and here], and then discussed the critique by Hoskins et al. [here]. Lindzen has prepared response, posted at GWPF [here]. Some excerpts:
On February 22, 2012, I gave a lecture at the House of Commons explaining the nature of the arguments for climate alarm, and offering my reasons for regarding the concern as being unjustifiably exaggerated. The slides of this lecture were widely circulated. Not surprisingly, the lecture led to a variety of complaints from those supporting alarm. The most thoughtful of these (by Hoskins, Mitchell, Palmer, Shine and Wolff) was a detailed critique posted at the website of the Grantham Institute that Hoskins heads. While there was a considerable amount of agreement between the critics and myself, the overall tenor of the critique suggested that I was presenting a misleading position. The following is my response to this critique. Since both the critique and my lecture focused on the science, the discussion is, of necessity, technical. Moreover, there are distinct limits to what can be covered in a one hour lecture. The following provides more detail than could be included in the lecture.
The critique by Hoskins et al. of a lecture that I recently gave seems to be primarily a statement of subjective disagreement, though it has important errors, and is highly misleading. The critics are, for the most part, scientists for whom I have considerable respect. The following response to their critique will, I hope, be considered to be part of a constructive exchange. Such constructive exchanges are new in the field of global warming, and, perhaps, represent a return to the normal process of scientific discourse.
[read the GWPF paper for the meat of the technical arguments]
In their concluding comments, the critics accuse me of doing a disservice to the scientific method. I would suggest that in questioning the views of the critics and subjecting them to specific tests, I am holding to the scientific method, while they, in exploiting speculations to support the possibility of large climate change, are subverting the method. As one begins to develop more careful tests, there is, contrary to the claims of the critics, ample reason to cast doubt on the likelihood of large risk. While the critics do not wish to comment on policy, they do a disservice to both science and the society upon whose support they depend, when they fail to explain the true basis for their assertions.
Judge Judy’s update: On the previous thread, here was my judgment:
With regards to the Hoskins et al. article. There were weaknesses in Lindzen’s argument, and even some bonafide errors. I agree with Hoskins et al. that Lindzen’s high level of certainty that climate sensitivity is 1C is unjustified. That said, I didn’t find the Hoskins et al. rebuttal to be all that effective. So points go to Hoskins et al. on this one, but far from a knockout.
Lindzen got some points back with his response. He scores a zillion points with me for this statement:
Such constructive exchanges are new in the field of global warming, and, perhaps, represent a return to the normal process of scientific discourse.
NASA kerfuffle
On a recent thread, a number of people have pointed to the letter from 49 former NASA astronauts, scientists, engineers to the NASA administrator. I find these kinds of letters signed by groups of people to be boring and meaningless (meaningful only in the context of the sociology of the debate and what certain people think is a useful strategy).
Andy Revkin devotes a post to this topic. He also links to a statement by NASA Chief Scientist Waleed Abdalati:
“NASA sponsors research into many areas of cutting-edge scientific inquiry, including the relationship between carbon dioxide and climate. As an agency, NASA does not draw conclusions and issue ‘claims’ about research findings. We support open scientific inquiry and discussion.
“Our Earth science programs provide many unique space-based observations and research capabilities to the scientific community to inform investigations into climate change, and many NASA scientists are actively involved in these investigations, bringing their expertise to bear on the interpretation of this information. We encourage our scientists to subject these results and interpretations to scrutiny by the scientific community through the peer-review process. After these studies have met the appropriate standards of scientific peer-review, we strongly encourage scientists to communicate these results to the public.
“If the authors of this letter disagree with specific scientific conclusions made public by NASA scientists, we encourage them to join the debate in the scientific literature or public forums rather than restrict any discourse.”
A good statement from Abdalati, but not all that relevant to the complaints made by the 49. This is picked up in a post WUWT entitled NASA Chief Scientist Waleed Abdalati is Clueless About What James Hansen is Doing With His Position at GISS.
“Such constructive exchanges are new in the field of global warming, and, perhaps, represent a return to the normal process of scientific discourse.”
Yes! Which is exactly why public, signed attacks on AGW as “settled science” by credible, credentialed, intellectually qualified people is so important. First the WSJ letter which is provoking so much good debate, and now the NASA letter which will hopefully do the same.
Such attacks force a response, which calls for a counter-response, and before you know it we’ve got the very thing the warmists dread most…an actual debate!
You are right, pokerguy. Open debate is the very thing the warmists dread most…an actual debate!
I admire Professor Lindzen and the 49 NASA astronauts, scientists and engineers for having the courage to speak out.
All around the globe,citizens are awakening to the fact that basic “Bill of Rights” freedoms and citizen control over government are both at stake.
http://barnabyisright.com/2012/04/12/bravo-to-conspiracy-nut-elizabeth-farrelly/
Four years ago in 2008, the moderator ordered, but workers could not find, the switch to the microphone I used to publicly challenge NAS President Ralph Cicerone and members of the Space Science Board to explain NASA’s actions in promoting flawed climate science that undermined our economy:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10640850/ProgramandQuestionForNASPresidentandSpaceScienceBoard.pdf
As explained here [ http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/ ] Climategate is only the visible tip of a cancerous growth on government science that developed because world reacted in fear to the Reality that Einstein told them about in 1905: E = mc^2; Mass (m) is stored energy (E).
The good news: We are surrounded by abundant energy.
The bad news: World leaders lost contact with Reality.
Definition of Hansenkoism:
1. Imagine there’s is a phenomenon called ‘back radiation’ which increases the IR absorbed in the atmosphere by a factor of 15.5 [Trenberth et. al. 2009]
2. Calculate equally imaginary dangerous warming but because we can’t actually measure it, claim it’s offset exactly by imaginary cooling by polluted clouds plus some real bare aerosol cooling. [Hansen 2011].
4. imagine that there’s extra heat trransfer to the ocean deeps by an unknown mechanism BUT IN TIME IT WILL BE BACK………
3. The only part that isn’t imaginary is the cost.
4. They all lived happily ever after.
5. The End [of democracy, freedom, prosperity, humour and we’ll all wear Chairman Mao suits with Officers denoted by the number of ball point pens in the breast pocket].
PS If ‘back radiation’ was real, passive solar panels would work at night.
Discuss………:o)
google it
Done it: all I get is junk physics:
1. the Earth’s surface radiates energy with the flux of a black body in a vacuum – FAIL [every process engineer knows this, and I’ve been one, it takes ~100 °C before radiation exceeds convection for a flat surface.].
2. GHG molecules absorb IR then thermalise it giving an energy source which heats the hotter earth’s surface – FAIL [ Nahle has reportedly showed no heating when you have CO2 in a thin Mylar balloon. Hence much thermalisation is indirect, pseudo-scattering as another excited GHG molecule emits a photon in a random direction to return Local Thermdynamic Equilibrium. The idea that you follow the original molecule was shown to be junk by Gibbs in the 1890s [Principle of Indistinguishability].
‘Climate science’ is, I’m sorry to say, oxymoronic. There is no ‘back radiation’ as an energy source. OK, you apparently detect it by pointing a radiometer upwards but what that shows is half the ‘Prevost Exchange Field’ by shielding the back of the detector. Until you do that, assuming a normal temperature gradient, there is no net energy flux from cold to hot.
What I perceive is an astonishing failure to think what an experiment actually proves.. Manabe and Wetherald 1967 assumed LW UP = SW DOWN and that was a gross exaggeration. The 2009 Trenberth et. al. Energy Budget is scientific lunacy. to anyone taught standard physics.
It’s about time people realised and backtracked to reality. CO2-AGW has been overestimated by at least an order of magnitude [the other failure is Hansen et. al. 1981 claiming 33 K present GHG warming when ~24 K of that is from lapse rate].
INL working on panels that work at night. And during the day.
But they have to be pointed at the earth or some other thermal mass.
“The nanoantennas target mid-infrared rays, which the Earth continuously radiates as heat after absorbing energy from the sun during the day.”
https://inlportal.inl.gov/portal/server.pt?open=514&objID=1555&mode=2&featurestory=DA_144483
In fact, Mydogsgotnonose, whoever gave you the above information has a darn good perception of reality!
Worked the science out from first principles.
The politics comes from the school of hard knocks.
The key to the whole affair is to identify who decided to introduce imaginary ‘back radiation’ into the climate models thus establishing a classical perpetual motion machine.
However as always with such events, the perpetrator is a minor player simply following orders.
Here is an updated timeline (Friday, 13th April 2012) of the events that marked our journey from the destruction of Hiroshima on 6 Aug 1945 to the present collapse of confidence in world leaders and government science:
1945: Hiroshima vanished because E = mc^2: Aug 6, 1945
1945: United Nations Charter is ratified: October 24, 1945
1946: Solar interior changes from iron (Fe) to hydrogen (H)
1956: Information on “nuclear fires” on Earth is blocked
1967: The Bilderberg standard solar model is formulated
1975: Discovery of local element synthesis in Sun hidden
1977: The scientist that reported the pulsar Sun vanished
1983: New evidence of iron(Fe)-rich solar interior ignored
1986: Challenger disaster* delays planned flight to Jupiter
1989: Fleishmann and Pons report cold fusion discovery
1993: Possibility of nuclear reactor reported in Earth core
1995: NASA hides Jupiter data confirming 1983 discovery
1998: NASA releases data showing iron-rich solar interior**
2001: NASA/DOE/NAS ignore neutron repulsion discovery
2001: 178 SNO scientists report solar neutrino oscillations
2008: Nature misassigns credit for 1993 proposal to others
2009: Climategate emails and documents reveal deception
2012: Actions of Dr. Peter Gleick reveal AGU/NAS at work
2012: 50*** NASA astronauts, scientists & engineers object
– – – – –
*See the CNN video of 1986 Challenger disaster that delayed flight of the probe to Jupiter (below).
**1998 data from Jupiter disproved Sir Fred Hoyle’s and Sir Arthur Eddington’s 1946 conclusion [See Fred Hoyle, “Home Is Where the Wind Blows,” University Science Books, 1994, pp. 153-154].
***Herman Alexander Pope is #50, NASA Aerospace Engineer, 44 years experience (below)
Former Senator and NASA Astronaut, Dr. Harrison H. Schmitt, agrees: We face a Constitutional crisis: http://americasuncommonsense.com/
The problem and solution are summarized here: http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
Such constructive exchanges are new in the field of global warming, and, perhaps, represent a return to the normal process of scientific discourse.
This single reason is enough to take with a grain of salt anything coming from such field.
Graphically => http://bit.ly/HnYPQf
i.e. observed temperatures are below “commitment level”!
IPCC => 0.6 deg C
Observed => 0.4 deg C
There is other news of the week that caught my eye regarding the public debate on climate change. It concerns the continuing diversification at Climate Progress away from Joe Romm. The guest bloggers are less angry/hateful, as much as one can disagree with their facts and analysis. Romm announced the changes on April 10th: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/04/10/461940/an-introduction-to-climate-progress-and-its-top-posts/.
This development is a step forward, but a small step. Might Climate Progress embrace intellectual diversity and scholarship enough to allow dissenting comments? With Romm remaining as editor, I fear not.
P.S. My evaluations of Romm are here: http://www.masterresource.org/category/romm-joseph-climate-progress/
Having skimmed Lindzen’s post at GWPF I think there is a lot of food for thought in it.
“Such constructive exchanges are new in the field of global warming, and, perhaps, represent a return to the normal process of scientific discourse.” Another voice in the wilderness. Maybe there will eventually be enough of us to compell a meaningful conversation.
1 ppm increase in CO2 concentration corresponds to 0.0028 deg C increase in global mean temperature.
As a result, Climate Sensitivity = 280 ppm x 0.0028 deg C/ppm = 0.78 deg C.
http://bit.ly/IgF6o4
There has been a 20ppmv increase in CO2 concentration since 2002 but there has been an overall decrease in global temperarure since 2002
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/co2_data_mlo.html
as demonstrated by the graph on thde front page of the FoS website (www.friendsofscience.org)
The same occurred from 1942 to 1975 as the world cooled as CO2 concentration increased from from about 310ppmv to 330ppmv from 1942 to 1975 once again showing a period of time duting which climate sensitivity to CO2 was opposite to that stated by the IPCC
(http://globalwarming.house.gov/files/HRG/052010SciencePolicy/happer.pdf)
Combined this is 33 years from 1942 to 1975 and ten years from 2002 to 2012 representing a total of 43 years during which there was cooling with increasing CO2 concentration and only 27 years from 1975 to 2002 when there was a temperature increase with increasing CO2.
Moreover there was approximately a 40ppmv increase in CO2 from 1975 to 2002 giving a climate sensitivity of 0.5/40 = 0.0125°C/ppmv CO2.
The world also warmed from 1910 to 1942 by approximately approximately the same 0.5°C but the CO2 concentration increawas a lot less with just a 12ppmv increase representing a climater sensitivity of
0.5/12 = 0.0417°C/ppmv.
When you look at the past 102 years in detail
1910 to 1942 climate sensitivity is 0.0417 for a 0.5°C rise in temperature
1975 to 2002 climate sensitivity is 0.0125 for a 0.5°C rise in temperature
1942 to 1975 there is negative climate sensitivity
2002 to 2012 there is negative climate sensitivity.
With these numbers does your statement “1 ppm increase in CO2 concentration corresponds to 0.0028 deg C increase in global mean temperature.” make any sense?
Norm Kalmanovitch
Thank you for your considered points.
Here is how I came up with the relationship: “1 ppm increase in CO2 concentration corresponds to an increase of 0.0028 deg C in the Global Mean Temperature (GMT).”
I first established the climate pattern for the last 100 years as shown in the following graph.
http://bit.ly/HRvReF
The above result shows excellent agreement between the model and the observed GMT.
The model equation that defines the climate pattern of the last 100 years shown in the above graph is given by the following equation:
Smoothed GMT = 0.11*cos(2*3.1416*(Year-1880)/60)) + (2*10^(-5))*(Year-1880)^2 + 0.0035*(Year-1880) – 0.485
For hundreds of thousands years, ice core samples show a strong correlation between global mean temperature and CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. This correlation must also exist in the last 100 years data defined by the above equation.
To establish the sought correlation, we look at the change in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere with time. The CO2 concentration curve from Mauna Loa of the Earth System Research Laboratory is neither sinusoidal nor linear. Instead, the co2 concentration curve is quadratic. As a result, the correlation with CO2 should be with the quadratic component of the Smoothed GMT given by (2*10^(-5))*(Year-1880)^2 in the above equation.
The correlation between the quadratic component of the GMT and CO2 concentration is shown in the following graph:
http://bit.ly/IgF6o4
The above result shows excellent correlation (R^2=0.997) between CO2 concentration and GMT, and it establishes the following relationship:
1 ppm increase in CO2 concentration corresponds to an increase of 0.0028 deg C in the GMT.
Climate sensitivity is defined as the increase in GMT corresponding to the doubling of CO2 concentration of 280 ppm of the pre-industrial time. This gives a climate sensitivity of 0.78 deg C (=280 (ppm) *0.0028 (deg C/ppm) ). The IPCC’s average estimate for climate sensitivity is about 3 deg C, which is about 4-times higher.
Cheers
So we have had 100 ppm increase in the last century and your formula predicts a change of only 0.28 C. What went wrong with it?
The rest should be natural.
like what?
Celestial, cloud, ocean cycles etc
This is the typical ABC view, Anything But CO2. You don’t know what, but there’s got to be something, anything else, just please not CO2.
That is given by the 0.0028 deg C/ppm with R^2 of 0.997. The increase in CO2 is neither sinusoidal nor linear. It has been fully accounted for.
The CO2 increase is an exponential function with time of the difference from 280 with a doubling time of 33 years. Try fitting that and seeing what the future holds. Or do a scatter-plot of CO2 with temperature like DocMartyn, and figure out the gradient that way. He got 2 degrees per doubling where you get 0.8.
Jim D
Please show me any model that represent the last 100 years climate pattern better than the following model:
http://bit.ly/HRvReF
Please do. The observed GMT should be separated into a smoothed climate pattern and a random noise (weather).
Jim D
Can you expect an R^2 value of more than 0.997? Is this value not good enough?
I don’t call a curve-fit a model. It is just mathematics devoid of nature.
You extracted a quadratic from the data and another quadratic from your own curve and “surprisingly” these two quadratics have a correlation with each other.
I have not extracted any quadratic from the CO2 data. I just drew the quadratic GMT against the CO2 concentration and they correlate with an R^2 of 0.997.
he’s math and physics challenged.
he’s math and physics challenged.
http://bit.ly/HnYPQf
I just believe my own eyes.
Unless he’s lying, he’s a Ph.D. So so much for Mosher’s ad hominem attack.
I’m just a layman, but I find his simple model very appealing. It appears both simpler and more predictive than the myriad alarmist models–I can hear my physics profs describing it as “elegant.” I’m afraid you’ll need a more substantive critique to dismiss it.
I have a problem with my logging name changing. I don’t know what is going on.
So, from where did the CO2 come from that caused the ice ages to come to an end and ‘flip” the climate to warm from cold?
Was it volcanic activity that caused warm periods to ‘turn into” ice ages? if so, why did the ice ages ever come to an end? Why didn’t the ice age just last forever? Is it assumed that ice ages ended because , by some miracle, volcanic activity just ceased? Were their not many periods of ice ages and many periods of warm climate.? Are we to believe that all ice ages ended because, by some major coincidence – in fact each and every time – volcanic activity just ceased during ice ages. ? And even if they did, if it is CO2 that causes warming, how can CO2 build up during an ice age?
During past periods of warm climate, why didn’t the build up of CO2 just
increase and increase until the atmosphere just burned off? Does not CO2 just increase and increase the longer the climate stays warm?
Historically, warm periods in the climatic history of the earth have ALWAYS ended in an ice age. How is this possible if warm periods are characterized by high levels of CO2? How can the earth cool if a CO2 levels are high?
Recent research at CERN showed that cosmic rays have a significant impact on cloud formation. How are the development – or lack thereof – of clouds incorporated into climate models? Implicit in this of course is the affect of the sun on climate.
If computer models cannot model the historic climate how can one presume to predict the future climate?
How is it the the “hockey stick’ graph showed that the Medieval Warming Period never existed when, prior to this graph, no one, ever ever questioned the existence of this warm period?
Is not water vapor the most abundant greenhouse gas? How is water vapor incorporated into climate models? Or, like the activity of the sun, just simply ignored?
The CERN researcher who built the cloud chamber to examine the affect of cosmic rays on cloud formation, etc., showed some pretty compelling evidence that the SUN is the controlling factor as regards earth’s climate. Why has this been ignored?
Just a few questions.
Pssst. It’s not a model. It is what is called a heuristic curve-fit, and it doesn’t do any future extrapolation. If it did it would look like this:
http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/7849/girmatrendology.gif
Note that the curve will continue to show a warming, yet Girma will insist that one must stop it in a few years, even though it is Girma’s curve!. So if that is not allowed, it is just a curve fit. I could have done the same thing by connecting the dots , heck a 4-year-old can connect dots.
You are apparently Girma’s target audience. That is, people that lack any kind of discriminatory skill. Girma, and other skeptics that use the simple-minded gullibility approach, essentiall prey on you eating up their dosage of FUD.
So the question is, and it will always remain a question, as to whether Girma is cliinical or diabolical. Either way, the credility went long, long ago.
WebHubTelescope
Girma is cliinical or diabolical.
Why did WHT write that?
Because my empirical model shown here
http://bit.ly/HRvReF
is an excellent description of the climate pattern of the last 100 years, and it also does a better job of predicting the next twenty years climate than IPCC’s climate models as shown
http://bit.ly/HnYPQf
You be the judge.
It also does a better job of predicting the climate since 2005 than IPCC’s climate models as shown
http://bit.ly/HnYPQf
You be the judge.
Note that the curve will continue to show a warming, yet Girma will insist that one must stop it in a few years, even though it is Girma’s curve!.
I believe in change in the climate pattern. You can extend the curve only under the assumption that the climate pattern of the last 100 years will be identical to the climate pattern of the next 100 years. I have not made that assumption. I cannot make that assumption.
The assumption I am making is the climate pattern of the last 100 years is unlikely to change in the next two decades. Under this assumption I predict a flat global warming trend for the next couple of decades, in contrast to the 0.2 deg C warming of the IPCC.
WHT, the verification period is not too long. Only about 5 to 10 years. We will see whether we have IPCC’s 0.2 deg C per decade warming or my models zero warming.
IPCC’s has already been wrong in its prediction for the last 5 years as shown => http://bit.ly/HnYPQf
WHT
You have plotted the “girmatrendology.gif” assuming that the climate of the last 100 years IDENTICAL to the climate of the next 200 years.
I have not made that assumption. I cannot make such an assumption. Such an assumption is not justified.
That is not my graph.
Please remove my name from that graph.
Please don’t smear my name.
Please remove my name from that graph that you have posted on the web.
Please call it something else.
I hope you respect my request.
I didn’t realize until now how easy it is to put the hex on Girma.
All you have to do is repeat what Girma says and Girma gets all wobbly.
BTW, the answer is no.
I have made my point:
You have plotted the “girmatrendology.gif” assuming that the climate of the last 100 years IDENTICAL to the climate of the next 200 years.
I have not made that assumption. I cannot make such an assumption. Such an assumption is not justified.
That is not my graph.
‘Our interest is to understand – first the natural variability of climate – and then take it from there. So we were very excited when we realized a lot of changes in the past century from warmer to cooler and then back to warmer were all natural,’ Anastasios Tsonis
So you are predicting no warming for a decade or 2 Girma? Sounds about right.
Its your model as it is your formula that I plotted. You own it.
You open a cold carbonated drink and it hardly spews at all.
You open a warm carbonated drink and it spews like crazy.
Did the CO2 make the warm drink warm or did the warm temperature make the warm drink spew more? This is simple stuff. They keep saying that CO2 sensitivity makes earth warmer. Basic Physics says that a warmer ocean will support a higher vapor pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere. What are they thinking? That is easy, they are not thinking.
+1 ” . . . they are not thinking.
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/
The real cause of the end of ice ages doesn’t involve any CO2 at all. it also explains much modern warming [reduction of cloud albedo in the Arctic in the melt cycle spreads over much of the northern hemisphere: the phytoplankton blooms can be seen from space; in the Antarctic they trigger the end of ice ages].
The IPCC models have 4 major scientific mistakes. None can predict climate.
http://bit.ly/HnYPQf
Select excerpts from the letter:
“The unbridled advocacy of CO2 being the major cause of climate change is unbecoming of NASA’s history of making an objective assessment of all available scientific data prior to making decisions or public statements.”
“We believe the claims by NASA and GISS, that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global climate change are not substantiated.”
“We request that NASA refrain from including unproven and unsupported remarks in its future releases and websites on this subject.”
(Attached signatures)
CC: Mr. John Grunsfeld, Associate Administrator for Science
CC: Ass Mr. Chris Scolese, Director, Goddard Space Flight Center
Ref: Letter to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, dated 3-26-12, regarding a request for NASA to refrain from making unsubstantiated claims that human produced CO2 is having a catastrophic impact on climate change.
/s/ Jack Barneburg, Jack – JSC, Space Shuttle Structures, Engineering Directorate, 34 years
/s/ Larry Bell – JSC, Mgr. Crew Systems Div., Engineering Directorate, 32 years
/s/ Dr. Donald Bogard – JSC, Principal Investigator, Science Directorate, 41 years
/s/ Jerry C. Bostick – JSC, Principal Investigator, Science Directorate, 23 years
/s/ Dr. Phillip K. Chapman – JSC, Scientist – astronaut, 5 years
/s/ Michael F. Collins, JSC, Chief, Flight Design and Dynamics Division, MOD, 41 years
/s/ Dr. Kenneth Cox – JSC, Chief Flight Dynamics Div., Engr. Directorate, 40 years
/s/ Walter Cunningham – JSC, Astronaut, Apollo 7, 8 years
/s/ Dr. Donald M. Curry – JSC, Mgr. Shuttle Leading Edge, Thermal Protection Sys., Engr. Dir., 44 years
/s/ Leroy Day – Hdq. Deputy Director, Space Shuttle Program, 19 years
/s/ Dr. Henry P. Decell, Jr. – JSC, Chief, Theory & Analysis Office, 5 years
/s/Charles F. Deiterich – JSC, Mgr., Flight Operations Integration, MOD, 30 years
/s/ Dr. Harold Doiron – JSC, Chairman, Shuttle Pogo Prevention Panel, 16 years
/s/ Charles Duke – JSC, Astronaut, Apollo 16, 10 years
/s/ Anita Gale
/s/ Grace Germany – JSC, Program Analyst, 35 years
/s/ Ed Gibson – JSC, Astronaut Skylab 4, 14 years
/s/ Richard Gordon – JSC, Astronaut, Gemini Xi, Apollo 12, 9 years
/s/ Gerald C. Griffin – JSC, Apollo Flight Director, and Director of Johnson Space Center, 22 years
/s/ Thomas M. Grubbs – JSC, Chief, Aircraft Maintenance and Engineering Branch, 31 years
/s/ Thomas J. Harmon
/s/ David W. Heath – JSC, Reentry Specialist, MOD, 30 years
/s/ Miguel A. Hernandez, Jr. – JSC, Flight crew training and operations, 3 years
/s/ James R. Roundtree – JSC Branch Chief, 26 years
/s/ Enoch Jones – JSC, Mgr. SE&I, Shuttle Program Office, 26 years
/s/ Dr. Joseph Kerwin – JSC, Astronaut, Skylab 2, Director of Space and Life Sciences, 22 years
/s/ Jack Knight – JSC, Chief, Advanced Operations and Development Division, MOD, 40 years
/s/ Dr. Christopher C. Kraft – JSC, Apollo Flight Director and Director of Johnson Space Center, 24 years
/s/ Paul C. Kramer – JSC, Ass.t for Planning Aeroscience and Flight Mechanics Div., Egr. Dir., 34 years
/s/ Alex (Skip) Larsen
/s/ Dr. Lubert Leger – JSC, Ass’t. Chief Materials Division, Engr. Directorate, 30 years
/s/ Dr. Humbolt C. Mandell – JSC, Mgr. Shuttle Program Control and Advance Programs, 40 years
/s/ Donald K. McCutchen – JSC, Project Engineer – Space Shuttle and ISS Program Offices, 33 years
/s/ Thomas L. (Tom) Moser – Hdq. Dep. Assoc. Admin. & Director, Space Station Program, 28 years
/s/ Dr. George Mueller – Hdq., Assoc. Adm., Office of Space Flight, 6 years
/s/ Tom Ohesorge
/s/ James Peacock – JSC, Apollo and Shuttle Program Office, 21 years
/s/ Richard McFarland – JSC, Mgr. Motion Simulators, 28 years
/s/ Joseph E. Rogers – JSC, Chief, Structures and Dynamics Branch, Engr. Directorate,40 years
/s/ Bernard J. Rosenbaum – JSC, Chief Engineer, Propulsion and Power Division, Engr. Dir., 48 years
/s/ Dr. Harrison (Jack) Schmitt – JSC, Astronaut Apollo 17, 10 years
/s/ Gerard C. Shows – JSC, Asst. Manager, Quality Assurance, 30 years
/s/ Kenneth Suit – JSC, Ass’t Mgr., Systems Integration, Space Shuttle, 37 years
/s/ Robert F. Thompson – JSC, Program Manager, Space Shuttle, 44 years/s/ Frank Van Renesselaer – Hdq., Mgr. Shuttle Solid Rocket Boosters, 15 years
/s/ Dr. James Visentine – JSC Materials Branch, Engineering Directorate, 30 years
/s/ Manfred (Dutch) von Ehrenfried – JSC, Flight Controller; Mercury, Gemini & Apollo, MOD, 10 years
/s/ George Weisskopf – JSC, Avionics Systems Division, Engineering Dir., 40 years
/s/ Al Worden – JSC, Astronaut, Apollo 15, 9 years
/s/ Thomas (Tom) Wysmuller – JSC, Meteorologist, 5 years
I suspect that Judge Judy was tired when she overlooked the courage of this talented group from NASA and dismissed their message as another boring and meaningless letter signed by groups of people.
The 49 should have been 50. I signed an early version of the letter and the final version of the letter. My name was left off. That was a mistake.
We are 50.
Herman A (Alex) Pope Aerospace Engineer 44 years.
Intense Climate Theory Study, 4 years.
Earth temperature is not doing what the alarmists forecast.
Ocean levels are not doing what the alarmists forecast.
The Ultimate Climate Model, Earth, produces data and that is all on our side. It may take one year, five years or more, but as Earth data continues to not match the alarmist Theory and Model output, at some point they are done. There is no actual real data that supports the alarmist position. They do, from time to time, cheat and make it look like there is data on their side, but climate gates keep happening to bust their cheating.
Our letter was intended to stop some parts of NASA from taking part in the cheating. It is still our NASA and we do care.
Thank you, thank you, Alex, for having the courage to speak your convictions in public!
I agree wholeheartedly: We paid for NASA; it is ours !
NASA Administrator, Dr. Daniel Goldin, publicly announced that to the world, and to NASA’s non-thinking parasites – [Including some on the podium with him] – when he ordered the immediate release of 1995 isotope data from the Galileo Probe of Jupiter on 7 Jan 1998.
We, tax-paying citizens of the United States, paid over $1,000,000,000 for the Galileo Mission to collect data from Jupiter.
1. Data that discredited Sir Fred Hoyle’s and Sir Arthur Eddington’s 1946 decision that the interior of the Sun is hydrogen (H) rather than iron (Fe).
2. Data that showed both were right before “nuclear fires” consumed Hiroshima on 6 Aug 1945 [Fred Hoyle, “Home Is Where the Wind Blows,” University Science Books, 1994, pp. 153-154]
3. Data that discredited the work of some winners of the Nobel Prize and the Crafoord Prize, before Al Gore, the UN’s IPCC, et al. received theirs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crafoord_Prize
In preparation for the world’s first trans-planetary mission, seven crew members lost their lives in the tragic Challenger Disaster on 28 Jan 1986. This CNN video shows the fate many school children witnessed of Christa McAuliffe, the first member of NASA’s Teacher in Space Project :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4JOjcDFtBE
Perhaps NASA Administrator, Dr. Daniel Goldin, had the above image in mind when he reminded NASA personnel on 7 Jan 1998 that the public owns the data NASA collects !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3VIFmZpFco
– OKM – http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/
So not one person on that list has any climate science credentials.
Perhaps Gavin Schmidt should start telling them how to build and fly rockets.
We went to the moon in ten years with no one in the World with experience doing that. We are quick learners and many of us have been working on this for years now. The only thing that prevents us from having credentials is that the peer-review consensus group have the lock on passing out credentials. We are well into understanding the parts that we need to understand.
There are plenty of intelligent well educated people (or even badly educated people like me) who have devoted a great deal of time and effort to understanding climate science, many of whom have come to very different conclusions than you. I don’t think it’s a substitute for spending years or even decades working directly in the field but I don’t doubt that many such people are capable of discussing the science at a high level. The problem is there is nothing in that letter to indicate that this is true of the signatories.
You should come to Houston and attend some of our Climate Study Group Meetings. Our Members include Climate Scientists.
Climate scientists are taught and/or believe fake physics so must be disqualified from commenting on what has been an appallingly badly run programme based on 4 major mistakes, two elementary, two subtle.
Therefore, the subject has to be overseen by professionals from outside the discipline in order to convert it from alchemy to science.
This may sound harsh but when a discipline bases its predictions on a classical perpetual motion machine [‘back radiation’], hidden by equally wrong cooling by polluted clouds [a second optical effect reverses the sign] it has ceased to have contact with reality.
Gavin has a PhD in Applied Maths. We must presume his expertise in climate science is gleaned from extra-curricular reading and talking to meteorologists and atmospheric physicists. In his every paper, his sole input was in the mathematical modelling. Ergo everyone on the list is as qualified on the subject as he.
However you need no qualifications at all to notice that all the observational data since 1995 contradict the hypothesis. There are many baseless excuses but the fact remains that the hypothesis has already been disproven by any objective measure. The main problem is that objectivity on this issue is in short supply.
‘The 49’ collectively bring zero credentials with respect to climatology, atmospheric physics, or any scientific research field at all. The PhDs among them are all long-retired engineers – what a surprise! JSC doesn’t employ scientists – that Center is the home base for manned space activity. Is it possible they have a political axe to grind with respect to current NASA priorities? This is almost as silly as the Oregon Petition.
You have missed the point. These are old hands who see clearly that Hansen and GISS are taking NASA down with them. It is exactly as silly as the Oregon petition, which is not silly at all.
I agree, David. I warned the Space Science Board in 2008 that NASA’s image would be tarnished by promoting AGW propaganda as scientific facts:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10640850/ProgramandQuestionForNASPresidentandSpaceScienceBoard.pdf
The next year, official responses to information in the 2009 Climategate emails and documents convinced me that the Administrators of NASA and EPA, the Presidents of the National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society, and the Secretary of DOE have little or no more control than you or me or puppets on a string.
Who/what pulled the strings? Probably the instinct of survival, fear of the “nuclear fires” that consumed Hiroshima, and lack of appreciation for Einstein’s insight into the spiritual and physical aspects of reality in E = mc^2.
No, I don’t think I’ve missed the point at all. Most people have no idea that NASA even does science and it’s ludicrous to suggest that the American public at large would see GISS as taking the agency down. The thing that bugs people is that NASA currently has no capability for manned space flight. Animosity between the field Centers goes way back and this simply represents a convenient intersection between that issue and the interests of crackpots like Harrison Schmitt.
“NASA currently has no capability for manned space flight” precisely because tax-sucking, non-thinking parasites – like some that NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin ordered to immediately release data in the above video – destroyed the integrity of space science at NASA.
– OKM – http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/
And as a followup, I would not be surprised if those people who do know that NASA does science, were not aware of some of the science work they are doing – such as terrestrial ecology.
I don’t blame NASA for that, since they have to go where the political winds blow and the funding lay. But every time I see Dr Hansen in the news, with NASA linked to his name, I can’t help but think that an agency that once filled me with pride is not what it once was.
Growing up I wanted more than anything to get into space. Turns out only the very best and brightest qualified, either to go into space or support the mission. Somehow I have a hard time thinking either Dr Hansen or Dr Schmidt could qualify.
Climatology researcher Dr. Mann certainly brings credentials pertaining to the use of tree rings as temperature proxies for years 500 to 1960, but not later. He can prove that they are reliable in year 1000 but not in 2000.
Dear FiveString – wake up.
Not to mention you have to be a skilled climate scientist to be able to read a temperature proxy upside down. After all, non-climate experts don’t have the proper understanding to properly interpret these complex physical phenomena, no matter how skilled they are in other fields.
I’m a professional engineer and a professional scientist. They are two characters; engineers see the big picture and drill down to get whatever science is needed to solve problems. Unchecked, scientists live in a fantasy land.
Climate science went into fantasy. The people who are proving the correct science, like me, viewed the big picture and shouted out – these people have got it wrong, have been systematically fiddling data and are protecting themselves by controlling publication.
Climate science turned into modelling alchemy and outright fraud. Get over it, you’ve been rumbled and 1000s of people will have to retrain into proper science.
I believe constructive exchanges have occurred recently, see: Trends, Change Points & Hypotheses where Tomas Milanovic, Robert Ellison, David Young and others gave Hypothesis III (Climate Shift Hypothesis) and airing. It just so happened to occur on this blog. Other venues like Congress & Parliament serve such forums for constructive exchanges as well.
Its when the exchanges spill out into the street that civility and decorum are abandoned, the science becomes whimsical, and people who care deeply about NASA articulate their indignation at the direction of the agency and the behavior of the current job holders.
The civil disobedience and subsequent handcuffing by the Districts’ finest harkens images of police raids of streetwalkers and other public nuances.
Deja Vu all over again.
The rate of increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration has not kept pace with the increase in CO2 emissions and has remained steady at a rate of 2ppmv/year for the past dozen or so years.
At this rate by 2050 the concentration will have only increased by 76ppmv above the current level of 392ppmv to 468ppmv and even the IPCC does not recognize this level of CO2 as potentially dangerous.
Unless this rate suddenly changes and there is absolutely no indication that it will by year 2100 we will only be at a concentration of an additional 100ppmv at 568ppmv and this too is not considered dangerous by the IPCC because 5.35ln(568/392) = 1.98W/m^2 x 0.75 = 1.48°C so even using the fabricated CO2 forcing parameter and the fabricated climate sensitivity factor there is only 1.48°C of warming possibly predicted by 2100 and this is below the 2°C cutoff dictated by the IPCC as the point at which we must act.
More importantly the global temperature started dropping in 2002 and there is no indication that this cooling trend will end any time in the near future with most predicting that the cooling will last at least until the end of solar cycle 25 in 2032.
This means that there is no possible catastrophic global warming for at least the next two decades and the rate of increase in CO2 concentration even if the ludicrous contention of CO2 being the prime driver of climate change was actually correct; we still won’t be seeing anything more than a pleasant increase in temperature by 2100 so there is absolutely no foundation for any arguments against Lindzen’s commentary that the exxagerated claims of catastropic global warming are completely unfounded and without any scientific merit
The standard response to the NASA letter seems to be, “Hh, but none of the signers are climate scientists.” Which is utterly typical. Instead of substance we get ad homs (as in not qualified). I’m surprised we haven’t heard that they’re all getting checks from fossil fuel.. Just a matter of time probably.
Pointing out that they have no expertize in climate is doing a public service that just might wipe out some of the lies climate deniers have spread that falsely presented these 50 nobodies to the public as renowed authorities on the subject.
They are not exactly nobodies.
And if you want to take a handful of what are mostly modelers as the final authority, be my guess. The fact someone specializes in a field doesn’t mean they can’t be questioned. Part of the problem seems to be that the very experts you as so convinced hold the final word have such a hrad time with any sort of questioning or disagreement with their conclusions. The standard responses are things like it’s simple physics (if the physics are of earth’s climate are so simple, why can’t they model clouds?) or that the questions are not from fellow “climate scientists” and therefore not worthy of answering.
As far as climate expertize goes yes they are nobodies.
Also the 49 letter signers are effectively advocating the silencing of scientists at NASA so don’t try and play the open dialog card.
They are objecting to NASA and NASA GISS making foolish official statements, and quite wisely. Unfortunately GISS is hopeless.
I am not sure they even know what they are objecting to. I think they just suffer the same NASA hatred you obviously share. A hatred born of an anti-AGW contrarianism. NASA are damned because they dare report scientific results on climate and you all want them to stop doing that because you aint liking the answers.
We are not talking about reporting scientific results. We are talking about Federal science agencies taking positions on open scientific questions.
“And if you want to take a handful of what are mostly modelers as the final authority, be my guess.” Wonderful Freudian slip, or was it intentional?
I don’t think that attacking them for being ‘nobodies’ is very seemly from one who hides behind the soubriquet of ‘lolwot’.
His real name is Loltwot. Very close.
This “poster” pushed at WUWT cuts to the heart of the matter:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/astronauts_agw.jpg?w=640
In the top right panel one of the letter signers says:
“I believe in global climate change, but there is no way that humans can influence the temperature of our planet to any measurable degree with the tools currently at their disposal.”
That’s complete BS. The guy doesn’t have a clue about the subject.
Yet climate deniers are pushing these guys as some kinds of authority on the matter. So either climate deniers are so ignorant about the subject that they think the guy in the poster is right – in which case climate deniers can justifiably be ignored until they buck their ideas up and get a grip on the actual science.
Or climate deniers know the statement by the astronaut in the poster is false and misleading, but they are willing to promote the poster anyway as effective propaganda.
There is no 3rd option.
The third option is the guy is right, which he is.
Dr Curry knows he isn’t. And now she knows you have no credibility on the issue either.
Fortunately my credibility is not up to you, nor to Dr. Curry for that matter. But you are one of the least qualified people here to presume to speak for her. It is to counter fanatics like you that she started this blog.
really is that settled. man cannot change the climate
That’s not what he said. He said man can’t change the climate enough to be detected with our present ablity to measure.
Which seems correct to me, given the disagreements between the satelite and land-based data. When the “fudge-factors” exceed the supposed signal, we’re not measuring anything, or so my freshman physics lab professor taught me.
I think man changes the climate all the time with UHI.
NASA agrees. 7C to 9C.
http://notrickszone.com/2011/01/21/giss-providence-in-urban-temperature-adjustment/
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2012/04/10/wind-map-do-cities-change-the-wind-patterns/
qbeamus,
how dare you read mo better than Mo
First define climate.
If you mean long term average weather then it isn’t changing anywhere despite (possibly entirely natural) temperature rises.
If you mean local cooling, heating or precipitation then humans definitely affect it but that doesn’t seem to translate to global affects.
All entirely consistent with “to any measurable degree”.
Get this: The hypothesis was plausible but the actuality is that the effect is negligible. This was all debated long ago when Callendars ideas and methods were comprehensively rejected, largely because of arbitrary rejection of data but also because he didn’t predict the coming cooling. All that is changed now is that money has been made available to look for trouble. And if they keep fabricating doomsday scenarios then the money keeps coming as if by magic.
And astronomer James Hansen can speak ex cathedra about catastrophic global warming and compare skeptics to holocaust deniers and supporters of slavery! My my, LOLWOT, your laughing out loud handle seems appropriate- comic indifference to what you and Hansen claim! Yes, Hansen is a clown! When models are as unskillful as Hansen’s, and he defends their projections like the pope defends the sin of birth control based on natural law- we have an equivalence- called religion. My apology to Catholics whose religion seems far more justified than the religion of catastrophic global warming promoted by its confrontational sect, NASA GISS.
Rutan has a great observation. Say we could control the climate of the earth. Would we make the earth warmer or cooler?
“We”?
Like one world government through democracy?
Or anyone who wants to replace the individual decision power of all of us with his own judgement?
Rutan’s question is fine for an aircraft.
It sucks for a world.
Dr Curry,
I went to NASA’s website and when you read their section on climate change it talks about massive change and disruption to plant, animal and human populations. And the source for all this? Modeling that predicts it will happen. Dr Abdalati’s statement is that of a bureaucrat.
Go on post a link and we’ll see how accurately you’ve reported that, not limited to seeing if you’ve left out mention of any uncertainties NASA mentioned.
GISS does not know the meaning of uncertainty, excapt how bad bad is.
you don’t have a clue
http://climate.nasa.gov/uncertainties/
Just as I said. These are the usual CAGW uncertainties, which only affect how bad it might be — bad, really bad or catastrophic. That CAGW might be false is not among these uncertainties, eventhough the possibility is obvious and well known. This is precisely the blatant official scare mongering that the authors object to, and with good reason.
Why does no one seem to consider that climate change may be good? Why is there an inherent assumption that all change is bad? Surely that is illogical, because it would imply that the current climate is perfect and cannot be improved by any change.
If global warming is bad, then unless the current climate is perfect, global cooling must be good! We are told warming is bad, and we know from history that cooling is bad. Therefore today’s climate must be perfect, which it isn’t.
The times, they are a changin’.
=================
“Why does no one seem to consider that climate change may be good?”
I consider that, but I don’t buy it. IMO climate change is either irrelevant, or it’s bad. I can’t see it ushering in a golden age. I can imagine it being too slight to matter, in relation to everything else that changes. I can also imagine it being significant enough to cause disaster.
ferd berple | April 21, 2012 at 1:41 pm |
Why do you assume it’s an assumption?
Why do you want to get your benefits for free?
Where I’m from, if you want something you pay for it.
Where I’m from, if someone else imposes a harm on you by trespass, you have the right and obligation to extract payment from them for the tort.
The man who pees in the village well doesn’t get to demand anyone proves the harm of his disgusting invasion on the common resource. He bears the full and right wrath of all people.
If people want to drink his product, he can bottle it and sell it to them, so long as he doesn’t bother the rest of the village.
Try this link. What does it say in the 3rd paragraph – Models predict?
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/climate20111214.html
Or how about this one. Care to point out which of the areas of study relate to Aeronatic and Space exploration?
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/climate_partners.html
NASA is reporting the results of studies. They aren’t giving a conclusion they are reporting results as they come in.
It’s sad that evidentially you and the gang of 49 want to silence such reporting.
If you want to believe that running computer models is the same as performing scientific studies of what is happening with the planet’s flora and fauna, fine.
Ask any kid who likes to play computer games to turn on their x-box, slip in say Madden NFL, and have it run a season’s worth of games. It will predict a winner. It also allows you to draft and trade for players – in effect create your own team (read parameters) and run the season again and again.
Now, would you bet the monthly mortgage payment on the predicted winner from the computer game (read model) winning the Super Bowl?
The 49 signatories were not making scientific claims. They were objecting to the politicization of the organization. It is one thing for NASA to collect and disseninate climate data; it is quite another for its chief spokesperson to get arrested protesting the Keystone XL pipeline, while making comparisons between the morality of oil extraction and slavery. You don’t have to be a climate scientist, or a scientist at all, to make that objection.
“We believe the claims by NASA and GISS, that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global climate change are not substantiated, especially when considering thousands of years of empirical data”
Sounds like a scientific claim to me (aside from the strawman in there too)
and:
“For additional information regarding the science behind our concern, we recommend that you contact Harrison Schmitt or Walter Cunningham, or others they can recommend to you.”
Hmm isn’t Harrison Schmitt on the board of the Heartland Institute?
What is you guys explanation for how this letter came to be? Who initiated it? Who wrote it and then got signatures? Was it the heartland institute?
What is wrong with the Heartland Institute? They, more than anyone, are standing up to the government propaganda. When it comes to stopping the CAGW nonsense they are the leaders.
The letter is framed as some sort of grass roots effort by disenchanted NASA employees.
A thinktank writing a letter and then polling tea party members for ex-NASA employees who will sign it doesn’t have the same ring.
Are you mentally ill kid?
Obviously lolwot is on to the “big secret”. The Tea Party, a front for global capitalists, has a master plan to suborn people such as the letter signees into confusing the issue, thus allowing said greedy robber barons to continue to reap huge fortunes, secure in the knowledge that when disaster hits, they will be able to afford protected retreats or high tech arks, leaving the rest of us to our doom.
No it’s simpler than that. Tea partiers will almost all deny manmade global warming, it’s part of the package of “political issues” they take a strong stance on. Even if they don’t understand the subject they will have a strong view.
Out of thousands of ex-NASA employees it’s likely that dozens of them will be tea party members and thus would be willing to sign that letter. So 49 signers could easily just be down to that.
“H. Leighton Steward, chairman of the non-profit Plants Need CO2, noted that many of the former NASA scientists harbored doubts about the significance of the C02-climate change theory and have concerns over NASA’s advocacy on the issue. While making presentations in late 2011 to many of the signatories of the letter, Steward realized that the NASA scientists should make their concerns known to NASA and the GISS.”
lostplot, It’s clear from the letter who organised this, no hidden conspiracy. Now all you need to do is a little research to find the evil-doers in ‘Plants Need CO2’.
lolwot,
You act like Heartland was in a plot to falsely acquire someone’s internal documents, forge phony docs, and damage their opponents. Or you are acting like someone who does not know the difference between lie and truth..
http://hot-topic.co.nz/heartland-lies-and-deceives/
Someone connected to Heartland tries to obtain internal document from Greenpeace by posing as an intern for an environmental NGO.
That’s rich. Last year the NZ High Court confirmed the removal of charitable status fron Greenpeace on the grounds of its “political activities” and that “Greenpeace members had acted illegally”.
The same legal logic should now apply in all countries where Greenpeace operates.
There are a lot of NGOs in the US, mostly of the lefty persuasion, that exist only for political activism. They need to be cut off also.
andrew – The link to the alleged audio recording does not work, so these allegations about Heartland can’t be confirmed. Frankly, this smell pretty fishy.
Hmmmm…. acusations vs. facts. If someone connected with Heartland tried to falsely steal something, I hope they are treated just like Gleick.
cui bono,
I don’t see what that’s got to do with it – it’s Heartland’s behaviour we are concerned with here. Anyway Greenpeace don’t have charitable status here in the UK, i don’t know about elsewhere. I would agree that they are political organisation – they don’t pretend to be otherwise.
hunter, Jim2
I see no particular reason to doubt Cindy’s account. I actually don’t think it’s that big a deal – they tried to be a bit sneaky, it didn’t work. It wouldn’t be worth mentioning if they hadn’t been wining about someone doing a similar thing to them.
“It wouldn’t be worth mentioning if they hadn’t been wining about someone doing a similar thing to them.”
Typo alert. You left an n out of “winning”.
Has anyone measured the incoming light flux and temperature during a series of diurnal cycle’s, with respect to altitude?
A set of weather stations/light meters laddering the side of a mountain comes to mind. Anyone actually done the measurement?
Yet another clear example that opinions with no basis in fact, leave more questions about the state of mind of the pontificators than about the state of the topic they are expressing their opinion on.
NASA does science, and does it well.
Science is about understanding the laws of physics and in using that knowledge and understanding to reliably predict the past, present, and future behavior of the physical world. It is by means of NASA understanding these laws of physics (and applying them through mathematical modeling and engineering) that the forty-nine astronauts were able to go to space and safely return back home.
NASA applies the same scientific approach to studying global climate change. It is the laws of physics that determine how the global climate changes. In studying the basic physics of global climate change, it has become increasingly clear that it is indeed the continued increase and accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere caused by the burning of fossil fuel by humans, that is causing the global climate to warm.
At first thought, it seems surprising (and perhaps unbecoming) that 49 former astronauts would be so gullible as to swallow hook, line, and sinker, the propaganda line put out by the climate denial lobby that there is no global warming problem facing humanity. On second thought, it is also decidedly disturbing that otherwise credible people would find it so easy to believe only the message that they want to believe, in complete and total disregard as to what the actual facts and laws of physics have to say about global warming.
The message that you hear coming from NASA (and GISS) climate scientists that the global climate is warming because of human fossil fuel burning is simply a description of what the observed facts and the laws of physics say about global climate change. Don’t blame the scientists for bringing you this message. They work for the American taxpayer, and the American taxpayer has every right to know what is happening to the global climate system. If you don’t like the message that is coming from NASA on global warming, you should start looking at the facts and physics of global climate change yourself, instead of listening to the climate denier propaganda.
The real message is contained in the observed facts (that atmospheric CO2 is indeed increasing) and the laws of physics (that CO2 causes greenhouse warming to happen), and it is to your advantage to understand all that now before continued global warming leads to irreparable climate disaster, rather than have it be an explanation after the fact, after global climate disaster has happened.
And,
How you doing on that remedial ethics work?
“it has become increasingly clear that it is indeed the continued increase and accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere caused by the burning of fossil fuel by humans, that is causing the global climate to warm.”
But what isn’t clear is if the knock-on effect on water vapor will lead to catastrophic warming. That is what the warmists need to prove. It would be good to have a thread devoted to that, giving the warmists a platform upon which to lay their proof(s).
Andy, you write “The real message is contained in the observed facts (that atmospheric CO2 is indeed increasing) and the laws of physics (that CO2 causes greenhouse warming to happen), ”
We know that. I know of few people who would disagree with you. The point is, how much does temperature rise when CO2 is added from current levels? As I have poiinted out over and over again, the evidence from modern temperature/time graphs, the last 50 years or so, is that adding CO2 to the atmposphere from current levels does absolutely nothing whatsoever to change the temperature/time graph from what it has been for the last 150 years or so. So we know from observations that the climate sensitivity of additional CO2 must be indistinguishable from zero.
“The real message is contained in the observed facts (that atmospheric CO2 is indeed increasing) and the laws of physics (that CO2 causes greenhouse warming to happen), and it is to your advantage to understand all that now before continued global warming leads to irreparable climate disaster, rather than have it be an explanation after the fact, after global climate disaster has happened.”
Seriously? Where are the observations that would cause anyone trying to be objective not to question the argument that AGW drives climate? Science needs to acknowledge that the Earth’s climate exhibits complexity which defies scientific explanation.
We need more and better research which includes all the involved specialties. Thanks
Andy,
I dunno, Andy, I can only speak for myself, but I find that all those high-minded, Mr. Smarty-pants, prophecies-of-doom that you are wont to shake in our faces are getting just a little old.
Remember we had this discussion before, Andy? But let me repeat myself–If you really believe all this doom-butt clap-trap of yours, then you have an ethical responsibility to demonstrate the sincerity of your conviction. You know, Andy, an obligation to demonstrate the sincerity of your conviction by LEADERSHIP! LEADERSHIP FROM THE FRONT! LEADERSHIP BY EXAMPLE!
In other words, no more high-carbon, pig-out (OINK!-OINK! SNORT!-SNORT! GRUNT!-GRUNT! SUCK!-SUCK!) eco-conferences for you, Andy! No siree! Rather, every such conference to be attended henceforth via video-conference so that us poor saps–you know, Andy, the ones who never get an invite to Big-Green’s party-trough, but whose taxpayer pockets are picked to fund your carbon-hoggy good times–might be spared all those CO2 emissions that you spew into the atmosphere, in obscene quantities, every time you show up at yet another of those CO2 conference-wallows of yours. Right, Andy?
And while we’re on the subject of setting the example, Andy, let me say that I think it a mistake for your swill-masters to hold their gross-out, carbon-piggy confabs in locales that are notorious destinations for child sex tourists (Google: “child sex tourism” successively with the terms “Cancun”, “South Africa”, and Brazil and see what you get, Andy). Or, at a minimum, Andy, you might want to suggest to your tone-deaf, boss-hog betters that they at least forbid the use of the locution “It’s for the kids!” by their sty-flunkies, in the meantime. But I digress.
So, Andy, can we, this time, get from you a condemnation of the carbon-swinery and hypocrisy that thoroughly infects the whole greenshirt scam? And, then, Andy, could you promise to never again attend any professional conference except by video-conferencing? And, finally, could you, Andy, call out your carbon-porkie pals by name until they too promise to never again attend a professional conference except by video-conference?
Remember, Andy, we’re talking about “global climate disaster”–your words, Andy–which I hope are not the words of a shameless, two-faced opportunist who talks the talk but doesn’t walk the walk.
A Lacis
The models don’t agree with the observation => http://bit.ly/HnYPQf
Should we not believe our own eyes?
Well said. Sadly, those who “don’t like the meassage coming from NASA on global warming” actual don’t seem to care enough to learn the real science, but would rather listen to pundits, Faux News, or anyone else who is speaking in ways that continuely confirm their uninformed perceptions. Tip to any honest skeptic out there (there is a big difference between an honest skeptic and a denier): pick up a copy of The Warming Papers and step away from Faux News long enough to read it cover to cover.
R. Gates,
“faux news”? Is that a word play on Fox News that you were hoping would make you like less of a partisan jerk? Are you, like Lacis and Romm in that group still trying to rationalize away Gleick’s fraud and forgery?
Is taht the sort of solid science you like that enables you to be clever with “faux news”?
Wow. So impressive.
“NASA does science, and does it well.”
NASA can’t even put a man into space any more, but never mind.
GISS certainly doesn’t do science or debate well. It’s chief blogger vanishes any comments that question the orthodoxy. Its chief scientist makes up his own theories without peer review. They fix, fudge, faf and clobber data until it gives them what they want.
Perhaps, Andy, you could give a date by which Earths atmosphere will be indistinguishable from Venus?
While Greenpeace gets $100m, and sceptics rely on tip jars, all the PR companies are going to be signing up with the alarmists. If the astronauts letter reminds any of the public that the science is not settled, that’s a victory for debate. No wonder Gavin hates it so much.
They don’t put a man in space because they have automation and robots to do the exploration now. The old way is a cowboy mentality, and essentially a form of ego stroking.
Half of those signatories are old mission-control-types who can’t get over the fact that they can no longer bark out orders and expect everyone to jump at their command. That they think that scientists will heed what they sign their name to is pretty laughable.
The following chart is pretty interesting. It compares the GIS temperature series against the vaunted data from UAH that all the skeptics point to.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1980/plot/uah/from:1980/offset:0.3
Apart from a constant temperature offset between the two, there is virtually no difference in the trend and noise. What do UAH (I assume that is Roy Spencer’s group) think they are doing that is anything different than NASA Goddard? This UAH analysis appears to be nothing more than substantiating the GISS analysis.
And since 1998, the trend has been about 0.4 degrees per century, in spite of the fact that CO2 has experienced a consistent uptrend since then.
Jim2 | April 13, 2012 at 10:28 am |
Signal:Noise. Look it .. oh. Said that alrea.. Darn. Forgot. Jim2 doesn’t look up stuff he doesn’t want to know.
WHT – NASA wants to put people into space, which is why it’s trying to transfer funds from its Mars robots to its porkbarrelled SLS. At the current rate of progress, they may get someone to the vicinity of the moon after I retire, when I saw them do it the first time round when I was in primary school.
However, I am more intrigued by your belief in the temperature data. How do we know GISS is anywhere near correct (compare pre-2000 GISS charts for the 20th Century to now)? How do we know the UAH satellites aren’t up the creek? Look at Envisat and its measurements of sea levels (see downstream in the thread) and ask how much do we really know.
Woodfortrees is a wonderful site! Shame that all the data for the last century has been finagled to pieces. All the temperature trends we now know and love for 1980-2012 will in a few years be totally different, just as the trends for the 1930s to the 1970s have been ‘adjusted’ out of all recognition.
It’s like trying to build a house with jello.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1980/plot/uah/from:1980/offset:0.3/plot/gistemp/from:1980/trend/plot/uah/from:1980/trend/offset:0.3
Yep, pretty close
The issues are feedbacks, their signs and missing variables.
DR Lacis,
I have no doubt that NASA scientists do good work. And as I stated above, the fact the agency now seems to getting into areas of reseach that are querstionable with regard to their mission – i.e. terrestrial ecology for one – is not something that can be blamed on the agency. They doas they are told.
Where I see a problem is when someone such as yourself feels the need to accuse the signatories of the letter as being gulliable or having some nefarious agenda. The fact that experience, well educated and intelligent men and women such as the signees can have concern about how aspects of climate change are being presented should be a sign that maybe the small contingent of “experts” don’t have all of the answers.
What is so difficult to understand about those of us who are willing to believe you that a warming planet is – at least in part – the result of human activity – yet stop short of believing that mankind is in dire threat because of it without at least seeing real evidence of it?
When our own EPA declares CO2 a pollutant and does so without following its own guidelines and process requirements, thus making every American a walking point source of pollution. When Dr Hansen calls those of us who want to see evidence of the harm criminals against humanity. When climate scientists say It’s simple, well known physics, idiot! when they know they haven’t been able to model clouds worth squat. That’s when someone like me – one of the 50% of Americans that pays taxes – says hold up for a minute and, as they say in Missouri, show me. And if all you have is the output of a model to show me – well I refer you to my comment above about Madden NFL football.
Labeling skeptics as “climate deniers” will not advance your cause but rather have an opposite affect.
The question still remains to be answered: Can the laboratory experiments showing CO2 effect on warming be transferred linearly to earth’s atmosphere, a complex planetary phenomena?
James Hansen – vedi, vidi, vici? Nope. Far from it.
Complete nonsense. We can model some things very well and other things very poorly. Tryng to use the argument that because one model is ok then all are ok is pathetic coming from an amateur but worse from someone who really should know better.
You argument merely amounts to the hypothesis being plausible but you leap from that shaky premise to thermageddon in a single bound. Yet the plausibility of the hypothesis is not in doubt but the fact remains that given the huge unknowns, the putative warming effects of CO2 can easily be negligible. You cannot use models to verify models, most especially models that are unvalidated and patently unfit for purpose. Hence we need to use obs. And these real “observed facts” report no stratospheric cooling since 1995, no discernable positive feedback in the tropi tropo, no apparent increase in the rate of sea level rise a “pause” in global warming since 1998 and no extra ocezan heat since accurate records began. Each of these were supposed to reveal an AGW fingerprint yet the fingerprint is palpably not there. Individually these can be argued but overall they mean the hypothesis of man affecting global temperature is disproven.
Of course your job relies on thermageddon. Without it you’d have to go and do something else. How does that affect your objectivity?
The idea that objecting to the letter of 49 by claiming NASAA is supporting scientific openness is a real hoot. NASA, like NOAA, is having its science degraded and its capabilitites eroded by obsessing over the AGW hype of Hansen, Schmidt, etc. And, by the way, it is the AGW promoters engaging in fraud, theft, fear mongering and censorship of scientific points of view.
Dr Curry
I’m somewhat surprised that you “find these kinds of letters signed by groups of people to be boring and meaningless”.
My view is that these professionals worked for an organisation that had a world wide reputation, they now see the cancer of advocacy that Hansen and Scmidt and others are engaged in and fear for the reputation of this great organisation.
If for instance your former alma mater started handing out degrees to paying customers who were not meeting the requisite standard would you not be a bit miffed.
Finally why should a paper carrying the names of a few reviewers all closely interconnected who have achieved nothing, carry more weight than the signatories who have achieved much and are well qulaified to comment on the nonsense that is catastrophic global warming?
I find these letters to be pointless because they are brief statements expressing their disagreement, with a list of signatories being a poor substitute for evidence and arguments. Is anyone convinced by these kinds of letters? Especially since they are written by both sides, each with their own list of nobel laureates and other big shots. So this is each group, appealing to its own authority, with both sets of authorities disagreeing with each other. Like I said, pointless.
If you are looking for scientific answers, then I agree group letters are boring and pointless. However to someone that does not fully understand the viewpoints of “the other side”, they serve as a catalyst to encourage one to collect more details. In other words they are of great value to the uneducated.
I would agree that these kinds of letters (by either side of the debate) are pointless from a scientific standpoint, but of course that is not their intent. These are political letters, written and targeted to affect policy by altering perceptions– both public and from policymakers. Clearly the target of the letter from the group of 49 is going after Hansen specifically, but would like to see NASA in general take a more skeptical position as a matter of policy even after Hansen retires. If the group of 49 can ultimately cause one Senator or Congressman or Congresswoman to make any request or even inquiry to the head of NASA about their public stance on the AGW debate, they will have succeeded.
These letters are onl;y pointless if you look at the climate debate as a pristeen scientific debate. But CAGW is at its core political. Letters like this are very powerful in the political debate for public opinion.
No offense to our learned hostess, but she can publish learned articles on uncertainty and run a very interesting and widely read blog advocating a fair an open debate. But in swaying voters, a letter signed by men who have walked on the moon suggesting the public be skeptical of claims of doom and gloom dressed up as science probably carries more weight.
CAGW activists have used these kinds of non-scientific PR open letters for years. It is only common sense that skeptics have learned to respond in kind in the political debate.
If journalists understood the scientific disagreements and uncertainties, and the media treated both sides equally, then I would agree. Unfortunately, the appeal to authority is pretty lopsided toward the alarmists and needs redress, so I respectfully disagree. I also have no problem with NASA engineers, scientists, or astronauts voicing their opinion and find it little different from Hansen’s opinions about catastrophic warming and sea level rise which seem to me to be a reflection of his temperament and/or vested interests rather than science. If the goal is science rather than propaganda, then Judith Curry is absolutely right. Would that it could be so.
I disagree with your assessment that the letters are pointless. As a young project engineer, working as a NASA contractor during the Apollo project, with and for several of the signees, including Buzz Aldrin and Chris Kraft, i share their concern as to what NASA has become. There is a very valid point they are making. While you may be correct regarding the sparsity of their presentation of technical evidence and arguments regarding the science questions, they are certainly correct that NASA, as presently constituted, has departed substantially from the policies and principles that made it a respected organization throughout the world. I understand this feeling. It’s as if a trusted friend or relative has suddenly gone seriously astray. You would want remedial action to be taken before the trusted friend or relative is irreparably damaged.
I hope NASA can be cured, but I’m afraid the prospects aren’t great.
Dear Dr Curry
Thank you for your reasoned response unfortunately you leave me no choice but to send you a letter in a few days time signed by my mates supporting my arguments. :-)
Regards
S
Seriously let’s agree to disagree on this one. Thank you for your efforts in keeping the blog going and especially the way you deal with the small people, myself included.
I am one of your admirers, Professor Curry, but I strongly disagree with your public comment about NASA astronauts, scientists and engineers who had the courage to condemn NASA’s transition into a propaganda tool for world leaders who secretly decided to save themselves and the world from the “nuclear fires” that consumed Hiroshima on 6 Aug 1945 by
1. Uniting Nations
2. Ending Nationalism
3. Hiding E = mc^2
4. Sacrificing Scientific Integrity
5. Sacrificing our “Bill of Rights”
6. Becoming Rulers rather than leaders of nations that respect the Inalienable Rights of People.
Here’s the rest of the story: http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/
And in NASA Administrator, Dr. Daniel Golden’s, statements in the above CSPAN recording on 7 Jan 1998.
Initially, I too had no idea that the Inalienable Rights of People might be determined by the outcome of the Climategate debate.
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
I respectfully disagree with Judge Judy’s take on the NASA letter and others of the same type because they all add to the weight of opinion that simply has to be addressed.
I also disagree that non climate scientists have little to contribute to the climate change debate. I think that all educated people have the ability to discover for themselves whether an argument being put forward holds up.
I also believe that many lay people also have a valuable contribution to make in that their BS detectors can help to keep the b*st*rds honest. However, there are many extremists who remain unrelentingly biased and have, IMO, very little of substance to contribute.
The article starts by saying Lindzen gave a presentation to the House of Commons, this is not true ,he gave a talk in a rented room to an invited audience.
That’s like saying I gave a talk to Congress, when all I really did was stand on the steps outside.
If a meeting room is the same as the steps outside, why go to the expense of building a meeting room?
More typical GWPF halo tactics.
If you can, claim you’re a Lord. Then, in the House of Lords. If you’re a commoner, then claim you’re in the House of Commons.
If you can’t be credible, pretend to be.
If you can’t debate substantive climate science, put up a ‘climate alarm’ straw man and debate that.
Where you can’t meet the evidence, observations, research and discussions of people who soundly disprove your case, then turn to the ‘complaints of those supporting alarm’.
One asks, which of Hoskins, Mitchell, Palmer, Shine and Wolff does the GWPF not have considerable respect for? It may help inform us who the GWPF pack intend to cull next.
After such a start, how is “..constructive exchanges are new in the field of global warming, and, perhaps, represent a return to the normal process of scientific discourse,” anything but stark hypocrisy narcissistically covering a huge error of fact?
Global warming discourses among tens of thousands of civil, earnest, willing participants have gone on for over a quarter century. Civility, sincerity and willingness to be guided by science is hardly an invention of the GWPF. Indeed, it appears the GWPF regard these traits as anathema, by their watermelon-flinging comportment overall.
And what’s with the GWPF telling readers what should be and who should believe, see, and do what? Isn’t that up to, I dunno, the readers to decide?
“..the only thing that is unambiguous is precisely the claimed large measure of ignorance needed to maintain the possibility of risk. As usual, no attention is given to the possibility that the response will be much smaller.”
What an appallingly irrational statement.
Does the GWPF not even know what the word RISK means? It’s entirely the possibility that the response will be much smaller, up to as large as the RISK.
And a whole paragraph of blah-blah-blah that so wildly mischaracterises the statistical understanding we do have of the temperature record, painstakingly mined from improvised collections of data from weather stations to put to some climatological use as to be window dressing on deception and flim-flam and no more.. disappointing. A man who rents rooms in the House of Commons ought behave better.
“..there is little question that Arctic sea-ice has been subject to large variations in the pre-satellite past. Of course, the more important question is what these changes actually have to do with increasing CO2, and this question remains open simply because the small changes in summer sea ice can have a number of causes.”
Wow. Just wow.
We almost certainly have enough weather records, both in actual recorded observations of temperature and precipitation and in historical compilations of extreme conditions as the likes of tonyb ably collate to know if such weather as Dr. Curry recently proved would result from so much Arctic sea ice loss had actually happened.
We can be pretty definite from the massive consilience of evidence that at least a millennium has passed since last the Arctic sea ice extent had anything like its current retreat. The GWPF would have us ignore this, or would conflate and obscure the best evidence, as it flies in the face of the GWPF’s raison d’etre: objection to conclusions they don’t want to believe.
For the GWPF to transparently clothe themselves in the whited sheets of the scientific method they so vainly seek to entomb in their polemics, dogma and deception is just amazingly shameless.
And people wonder why I compare the GWPF to what crawls out from under a rock.
Bart R,
That’s a bit shrill, don’t you think?
Tom | April 13, 2012 at 9:55 am |
When you read it out loud, try to pitch your voice lower.
Bart R, This should be of interest to you,…
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120413145303.htm
you are not alone.
On the other hand Tom, you can do like Bart, and just move youir lips when you read.
Tom | April 14, 2012 at 11:54 am |
Absolutely the research was of interest, when I first heard of it. Imagine if we had 10,000 times that number of high quality real time observations of species numbers and movements worldwide, for a century.
We’d be able to pretty nicely track shifts in habitat, range and survival of species due changing climate, were we to apply such methods. With a few hundred years, and enough climate data, we might be able to correlate the two records and understand (though unlikely ever reliably predict) some of the higher order impacts of anthropogenic factors on biota.
We’d even be able to do something like that for plant distribution by analyses of core samples for pollen spore count and so forth.
Until which, all we know is there’s risk factors with impossible to determine parameters, and the GWPF irrationally treats ‘impossible to determine’ as equal to zero.
Stacey writes: “Dr Curry
I’m somewhat surprised that you “find these kinds of letters signed by groups of people to be boring and meaningless”.”
I also think this is ill-considred Dr. C. You’ve done more than any single individual I know to promote open debate, and these letters promote just that.
She demeans the courage of the writers. It’s not a small deal to them, and shouldn’t be to Judy. Pure science, blessed be its name, is poor cover in the conflict, and not for the cowardly.
============
+1
Sweet words of truth. Thank you. I wish the doc would reconsider.
She demeans the courage of the writers.
They wrote a letter, or in most cases allowed their name to be added to a letter someone else had written. How “courageous” is that?
Well, check out how they have been classified by some of the commenters here.
I suspect Dr. Curry wishes she could write and/or sign an honest letter.
But thats not where Dr. Curry is right now.
Andrew
Dr Curry has the capacity to do both.
What about you?
Stacy,
Dr. Curry is a Warmer. She is committed to the cause.
Andrew
Regarding the NASA letter, NASA’s scientists and engineers *do* draw conclusions from their research — but they are not required to agree with one another. Quite the reverse: honest disagreements among scientists and engineers are both expected and respected.
NASA administrators do *not* specify any sort of “official” conclusions regarding science and engineering — quite the reverse: administrators are forbidden to muzzle NASA’s scientists and engineers. Because history shows plainly that when NASA’s administrators and politicians seek to over-rule NASA’s scientists and engineers, disaster swiftly follows.
We all can imagine a NASA where administrators kept “enemy lists” of individuals whose science-and-engineering ideas were “officially bad” … so that to avoid persecution, large numbers of NASA employees would be forced to post their ideas anonymously … the result would be the worst space agency that can readily be imagined.
Anthony Watts/WUWT has been pushing this letter pretty hard … unsurprisingly, since Harrison Schmitt, the contact person named by the letter, sits on the Heartland Institute’s board of directors.
But it is not clear that Watts/WUWT/Heartland has considered thoroughly the chilling effect that such letters have on scientific discourse.
Do Americans really want to return to the days of “enemy lists”?
Open debate on these issues is not only good, it is absolutely essential. In this spirit, there one very key point in Lindzen’s latest rebuttal that I’d like to highlight, because it is key to much of the debate about the ultimate effects of anthropogenic increases in CO2. He says:
“The critics are, of course, correct on one point (namely my suggestion that anthropogenic greenhouse forcing was already almost equal to that which is associated with a doubling of CO2). According to the IPCC fourth assessment report, anthropogenic greenhouse gases have only added about 3 Watts/m2 (at least by the time of the report) and this is only a bit over 80% of what one expects from a doubling of CO2 though the IPCC allowed that the value might be as large as 3.51 Watts/m2. However, my point was simply that we are hardly far from the equivalent of a doubling of CO2.”
This last sentence is completely unsupportable by any known data, and as much as it forms the core of LIndzen’s (and his cohort Monckton) entire stance on the issue of senstivity, it is a major failure. We’ve not yet seen, nor do we know what the final equilibrium response is, nor of course therefore the climate sensitivity to our current 392 ppmv of CO2, as the Earth system continues to respond in dramatic ways to the current forcing from the increase in CO2 from preindustrial levels. The lag in the final Earth system response to the current forcing (with this lag being primarily in the cryosphere and biosphere) could be many decades. Thus, even if we stopped increasing CO2 today, and could somehow freeze the level at 392 ppm, we don’t know what that final response is, as all the associated long-term feedbacks will not play out for quite some time. To suggest therefore, that the warming we’ve seen in the past century, (let’s just say 0.8C) with a a rise in CO2 of about 90 ppm might mean we are (using Lindzen’s own words) “hardly far from the equivalent of a doubling of CO2” is a statement that he can’t possible know as true, nor is there any scientific evidence at all to support it. Monckton makes much the same point, constantly stating that the transient response to CO2, is very nearly equal to the equilibrium response, and thus implying, as Lindzen does, that we’ve already seen most of the warming that we’re going to get from even a doubling of CO2.
Both Lindzen and Monckton are stating things with confidence that, if they were forthright, they would state with much more uncertainty. We don’t know what the equilibirum response will be to our current levels of CO2, and thus, we can’t possibly know that it is nearly equal to the what a doubling of CO2 from preindustrial levels would be. In as much as it is very unlikely that CO2 levels will stop growing anytime soon, we won’t ever know what the equilibrium response would have been to 392 ppm of CO2, though, if we are fortunate, we might get the chance to guess at what it would have been if we extrapolate backwards and if we manage to freeze CO2 levels at some much higher level in the next century or so with some allowances made for nonlinear behavior in levels between our current levels and that future level.
R. WARMING IS IN THE PIPELINE Gates,
When there is any significant correlation between the alarmists projections and the empirical data, I will become sympathetic to the alarmist view. Fearmongering based on projections and not on empirical data is propaganda. Fear mongering based on projections that for the past 14+ years and the 36 years between 1942 and 1978 largely invalidate those projections is chicken little religion.
R. Gates | April 12, 2012 at 7:46 pm. “current forcing from the increase in CO2 from preindustrial levels. The lag in the final Earth system response to the current forcing (with this lag being primarily in the cryosphere and biosphere) could be many decades.”
Is that an assertion that the period from 1850 to 2010 is not “many decades”? I get ~16 decades. I do, however, appreciate your identification of the period of interest and your mention of lags.
When you are continuously changing a forcing agent, and even are accelerating the rate of change of that forcing agent, as has been the case with CO2 over the past few centuries, the system will never have the opportunity to display an equilibrium response. We’ve not seen the equilibrium response to 392 ppm CO2, and likely never will as ever higher we go with the CO2, N2O, and methane levels.
Climate appears to be a far from equillibrium system, so the concept of an equillibrium response is irrelevant and misleading. The scientific question is if there is any discernible response and the answer seems to be no. Hand waving about accelerating forcing is just that.
An equilibrium response to a given forcing in the Earth’s climate system is hardly misleading or irrelevant and forms the foundation of climate science. Furthermore, even Lindzen and Monckton would not deny that there is a discernible response to the amounts of greenhouse gases that humans have dumped into the atmosphere. Your overall post is a perfect example of what separates a true skeptic from a denier (aka fake skeptic) with you being in this later category.
Whether warming is in the pipeline is a very valid issue. If cloud forcing is a negative feedback, which looks very likely, the accumulated ocean heat content may well be recovery of heat lost during the last few hundred years. The TOA imbalance estimated by Trenberth and Keihl appears to be nearly twice current estimates which have a margin of error nearly equal to the magnitude of the estimate imbalance. Spencer et al. noted that cloud forcing (or feedback depending on definition of the system) where stronger and opposite of the Dessler et al. estimates and there is even a new paper in review by Masters indicating possibly stronger negative impact.
Lindzen and Monckton may be overly confident, but there is reason for them to have some confidence.
Open debate’s becoming a serious issue in Australia. The governing coalition between The Labor Party and extreme left minority party received an official report into media regulation, part of their vendetta against the Murdoch Press. The Report requires media to become more accountable and government has the right to impose professional standards thro their media council, imagine who’ll be on it! Draconian controls are recommended , with no right of appeal and jurisdiction extends beyond newspapers into any internet site. Chairman, retired Fed Court Judge Finkelstein says this is necessary because the general public do not have the resources to make up their own minds on t[he news they receive. Hmm..sounds like good ol’ Animal Farm…
Lindzen’s response provides an excellent model for debate on this blog, both in form and in tone.
@Dr. Curry
re; NASA kerfuffle
Perhaps the meaning is too subtle for you. These are retired folks who can say what they believe without the threat of retribution from their bosses who believe otherwise. They were not protected by tenure when they were younger so if you think of retirement as something like acquiring tenure then you may find yourself enlightened instead of bored.
These aren’t just proverbial rocket scientists, by the way. They’re the real McCoy. The smartest guys in the room wherever they go. They’re the reason we tend to call the smartest of the smart “rocket scientists” for crying out loud. You’d be wise to listen up.
Mr. Springer,
A little empathy may be in order. Imagine, if you will, a group of Burger King chefs coming into your Der Wienerschnitzel to pontificate on the science/art of hotdog preparation. Granted, the BK guys know their stuff, but here they are on your turf, challenging your life’s work. Be honest; might you be tempted to suggest (to your customers) that the burger guys were a bit, “boring” and what they had to say, “meaningless”?
Judith Curry is only human. I believe she shows the patience of Job dealing with Neanderthal skeptics.
Regards,
dz
I am certainly glad that scientists are actually starting to engage in a true debate, instead of the previous “the science is settled” hogwash.
While Lindzen has accepted the IPCC premise that CO2 and manmade GHGs accounts for the majority of current warming (which leaves a lot of skeptics behind), he still assumes that since we don’t know everything about aerosol effects we should ignore them. His reply still says it is a tunable parameter, but neglects to mention that it is most likely somewhat negative (otherwise what about global dimming and indirect effects on cloud brightness and the known cooling effects of volcanic aerosols). If he can justify completely neglecting aerosols, he hasn’t said why.
It should be pointed out that acceptance by scientists is always qualified by a willingness to reconsider.
Says Lindzen and I agree.
“the survival of accumulated snow and ice” is plausible. It’s an ice cold drink and a warm tea in one big cup.
What does the Democrat party create when it kills opportunity and penalizes success and uses taxpayer money to fund filing cabinets full of global warming pseudoscience in an attempt to take over industry and commerce? It creates more dependency.
This is a bigger issue than global warming, the tendency for governments to continually extend their range and interference in people’s lives, reducing their scope for self-reliance and initiative.
…We tried the idea of of universal education but it has been a dismal failure because–as we all have learned–government-paid schoolteachers are more like postal workers handling letters than understanding what the letters actually say. The Education Industrial Complex has become nothing more than dropout factories selling superstition and dogma only presided over by Teachers instead of Teamsters. Greece has prepared the way for the eventual slide of dead and dying Old Europe into ignominy and California is stinking up the place as it tilts into a sea of red ink.
We have a justice system that gives us the right to a trial by a jury.
If only Climate Scientists can give us decisions that relate to Climate, then only Judges can serve on a Jury. Makes sense, right!
No! Climate Science must be judged by a diverse jury. If they only pass in a Consensus Jury it is meaningless.
I repeat!
If they only pass in a Consensus Jury it is meaningless!!!!!
A small but important point. Lindzen did not give his lecture to the House of Commons. Your previous formulation “at the House of Commons” is more accurate. In fact it was a private function chaired by Lord Monkton who, of course, is not a member of either the House of Commons or the House of Lords
I just started reading Lindzen’s piece at GWPF and hopped over to Climate Etc to see if it was mentioned yet because I wanted to highlight this very thing. Of course Judge Judy had got there first. But for me too this is the big story this week and of 2012 – that ‘the normal process of scientific discourse’ is reasserting itself.
Selti1, Girma,
Interesting result. You would improve credibility a little if you were to use a 65-year moving average of temperature instead of abstracting the “quadratic” part of your temperature fit. It would probably give a very similar result, but without the arbitrary nature of the curve fit.
However, that still leaves three significant challenges:- the likelihood of spurious time series regression, the existence of other forcings over the period and the fact that the physics correlation between CO2 and temperature is not postulated as a direct correlation, but as an integral equation.
You may find this article interesting.
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2012/more-blue-suede-shoes-and-the-definitive-source-of-the-unit-root/
Thanks Paul.
the arbitrary nature of the curve fit.
Not so!
Here is how I got it.
Here the 30-years GMT trend graph.
http://bit.ly/HjXkTC
This graph shows the 30-years GMT trend not only oscillates but it has itself a linear warming trend.
Note that the 30-years GMT trend is the slope of the smoothed GMT curve.
That is
d(GMT)/d(year) = 30-years GMT Trend
From the above equation, you can determine the smoothed GMT curve by integration of the above equation as
GMT = Integration of the 30-year GMT Trend.
We have seen that the GMT trend has an oscillating and a linear warming functions. When you integrate the oscillation function the result is still an oscillating function. However when you integrate the linear warming function what you get is a quadratic function. This function increases with time and I believe it is related to the increase in CO2 concentration. Mind you, I am not saying the increase in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is due to human emission. It could be the result of release from the oceans as a result of our warming world since the little ice age.
That is how I determined the following smoothed GMT function:
http://bit.ly/HRvReF
Girma,
OK, I follow the logic. I am not really arguing about the quality of fit. The “arbitrariness” comes from your assumption that that particular functional form is the correct one. For example, the assumption of a straight line in your 30-year trend plot is identical to a starting assumption of a quadratic fit in average temperature after the oscillatory cycles have been removed. You also assume that a simple sinusoidal fit to your 30-year trend data is “optimal” for the removal of the ca 60 year cycles.
I am only saying that these assumptions are unnecessary since you are looking for the “average temp response after the oscillatory behaviour has been eliminated” for cross-correlation. A 65-year moving average will do this for you without the assumptions.
It’s not highly relevant to my main point above, but if you test the residuals from the fit you have here against the original temperature data, you will find that they test positive for heteroscedasticity, positive for auto-correlation and positive for a non-zero coefficient in a quadratic fit. In other words there is evidence of mis-specification. Still a good fit, but why bother when you can do a moving average for the same thing?
Paul
Are not the following residual GMTs independent?
http://bit.ly/HI9XKA
Girma | April 14, 2012 at 6:04 am |
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1940/to:1970/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1940/to:1970/trend
Tell us again how you got an R2 virtually indistinguishable from 1.0 on this data?
Girma,
Your residual GMT’s are not independent. They show a strong auto-correlation at least up to lag 2. (You may be confusing independence and bias?) And, for what it is worth, your test for Gaussian is not a sufficient test for heteroscedasticity. (Try Breusch-Pagan.)
But these are not your worst problems. Since I already had Hadcrut3 loaded, I plugged in the coefficients of your temperature model and generated residuals from your model against the original data. Your model shows massive mis-specification against the data, with extreme structural drift in the early period. It suggests that you have tuned your temperature model to just the data from 1910 forwards? Unless you have an argument to suggest that the first 60 years of data are erroneous, you just can’t do this! It’s a non-starter.
Paul, that is exactly what I am saying.
The early measurements have large uncertainty.
Phil Jones: Temperature data for the period 1860-1880 are more uncertain, because of sparser coverage, than for later periods in the 20th Century.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8511670.stm
Thanks so much for your suggestions.
selti1 | April 15, 2012 at 10:37 pm |
..before we try to explain, we have to first to accurately describe the observed data. Then only the explanation follows.
But you do neither, Mr. Orssengo.
You impose predetermined illusions on raw data with such vigourous and invalid argument as to obscure and suppress any hope you could come to anything resembling ‘explanation’ by those mechanisms you appear most hostile to.
This is reasoning from a foregone conclusion. It’s invalid, and unscientific.
A 65-year moving average will do this for you without the assumptions.
When I tried that it chopped some of the data. I don’t want to lose any data.
Mr. Orssengo, might one point out you already chop off 50 years of the dataset you chose yourself?
It’s utterly disingenuous to make such a claim.
When you tried it, you found your lines no longer tended to support your preconceived notions, so you quickly hid your failure to find a fit and narrowed the options.
And you still don’t even appear to understand why that is fraudulent.
Paul_K | April 15, 2012 at 8:03 pm |
I’m not interested in cataloguing every issue with this latest of many attempts.
No one, I think, misses that there are broad sweeping up and down trends in the global mean temperature data, in the case of the past century summing to an apparent period about sixty years, or 65, or 54, or 67, but also with a rising component difficult to separate from the broader data. (Mr. Orssengo chooses an unexplained linear rising component independent of external factors.
Others know how to measure the rise of a staircase even if the steps alternate between rising and flat, and can see a rising tide even though there are crests and troughs in the waves.)
We can take the most prominent of the four dozen or more regional basins and their associated oscillations, such as the AMO and PDO, and speculate on their teleconnections and on what impacts superposition of the direct effects of temperature in each basin have on the global temperature. That makes rational sense, and the numbers explain much of the recurring rise and fall pattern.
Looking at the correlation of solar cycles to global temperatures — which up to about half a century ago was a very strong effect around 23 years — is likewise valid, when done properly.
Nonperiodic events like volcanoes and some of the strongest of the forest fire events also show short term impact on the global temperature.
Mr. Orssengo’s graph doesn’t remove for these sources of variability before looking at his trigonometric function, which suggests all his plot shows is a sum of independent sources of variability, and is a mere documentation of coincidence.
His narrative doesn’t provide a mechanism to explain the shape of the function.
It’s a failure to not at least mention and address these lapses, given the ambitious claims made. The failure to discuss the weaknesses and limitations of the graph itself is a failure.
The claim of ‘only empirical’ wed to the contradictory invalid claim of predictive power is bizarre. One could fit fifty different empirical models to some randomly selected part of the data and be every bit as ‘predictive’.
It’s not much of an accomplishment to place a wager in this way.
It’s important for science to preserve practices that challenge hypotheses. The hypothesis that best fits the data, such as it is, does remain AGW due largely to GHE. Looked at side-by-side, Mr. Orssengo’s alternative as it is fails to mount much of a rivalry.
However, it does emphasize the strength of natural variability (though its discussions make again, serious mistakes and omissions in handling the topic, so much so as to overconfidently assert a value for the ‘rise’ without remarking on Uncertainty in that estimate), which is important. The body of work associated with the latest graph encourages novel ways to look at the data, too.
The derivative curve from plotting the trends of trends, for example, by the same logic as applied to this graph would predict that the global temperature has lost the capacity to fall after the current low point. It’s an invalid conclusion, but no less invalid than any other prediction from these graphs.
The body of work has come a really long way dragging around the corpse of his idea and bad mechanisms. Some of the things done might have some value, separated from the simple mechanical mistakes and invalid claims.
The thing that must be remembered in any graphical analysis, and especially exemplified in Mr. Orssengo’s exercise in confirmation bias, is that the human eye is suggestible to patterns not actually present, and once the suggestion is there, it is very difficult to consciously shake off the illusion.
I’m reminded of the play “Much Ado About Nothing.”
Bart
His narrative doesn’t provide a mechanism to explain the shape of the function.
Bart, before we try to explain, we have to first to accurately describe the observed data. Then only the explanation follows.
Girma,
I should have added, notwithstanding anything else in my comment above, that your 30-year trend plot is really powerful. I have not seen the data presented this way before.
Thank you Paul.
I am writing an article based on that result.
I have not seen the data presented this way before.
Because it’s such a collection of invalid techniques that no one competent would do it.
Bart R,
I am not happy about Girma’s extraction of the smoothed temperature series, and nor do I think it is legitimate to try to correlate temperature (smoothed or raw) directly against CO2. However, the presentation of the 30-year trend data is perfectly legitimate, and an excellent way of demonstrating the presence of the quasi-60-year-cycle. Why do you think that it is invalid?
Paul
As the effective way to check for a normal model is to construct the normal probability plot, I have done that and the plot shows a straight-line relationship, confirming the normal model for the residual GMT.
http://bit.ly/HQPJy2
Girma | April 14, 2012 at 5:48 am |
Actually, Paul, the effective technique is not to (a) confirm the model against the smoothed curve, or (b) the smoothed curve against the observed data, but to (c) check the model against the observed data.
Which of these did Mr. Orssengo actually (invalidly) do?
Look at his labels and titles. Look at the actual observed unsmoothed data compared to his model.
There’s no way he gets R2>0.99 for his model.
You could expect R2>0.99 for a competent smoothing.
You’re having the wool pulled over your eyes.
When Mr. Orssengo’s various graphs are looked at by people with statistical tools, they’re always able to produce better R2’s with alternate curves to his trigonometric fantasies, even with models as bad as exponential plots.
Unfortunately this kind of statements are seldom made in good faith. More often they are made to tell that my views are well justified and take counterarguments into account but those who disagree with me are unwilling to enter constructive exchange.
What’s balanced for one is totally one-sided for another.
For arguement’s sake let’s say Lindzen’s comment was in good faith.
How would you prefer he should have phrased it ?
The issue is not about how to phrase the argument but about following the logic of the argument in other actions.
Is Linzen ready to open his views to scrutiny in a way that can be accepted as open also by those who disagree with him?
The same can, of course, be asked from the opposing side as well.
The reality seems to be that the discussion has got so polarized that sticking to any views is considered unacceptable by many others, and that many also consider their own views so well justified that they see only one way of narrowing the gap, that where the other side gives up.
Oh I don’t know, When I express a sceptical view I am very often called a flat earther or compared to someone who claims the moon landing were faked. Having participants in the Apollo programme come out as sceptics provides an arrow in my quiver of rhetoric. It might not advance science but AGW policy will only change when the public changes its mind. And for that to happen we need more Apollo astronauts coming out with sceptical views!
Judith said: “I agree with Hoskins et al. that Lindzen’s high level of certainty that climate sensitivity is 1C is unjustified.”
I respectfully disagree. It seems that this is typically the scientific method. You cannot prove a theory, but you can falsify it. A single black swan refutes the all-swans-are-white- hypothesis. No matter how many uncertain white swan, like temperatures, proxies, glaciers and sea levels, if overall climate feedback on greenhouse effect proves to be negative then there cannot be anything that could make the climate sensitivity higher than the basic sensitivity of ~1K, the black swan.
So Lindzen can be as confident about the negative feedback as the certainty about the missing tropical hotspot in the troposphere, the increase in Outgoing Longwave Radiation (OLR) during warmer periods, both supporting negative feedback.
And there is one more, autocorrolation of dataseries, to see if the noise is persistent (positive feedback) or anti persistent (negative feedback). Olavi Karner did that for a lot of climate signals, and invariably found anti-persistence. http://www.aai.ee/~olavi/
How much certainty can you get with positive feedback not found along three seperate lines?
What’s the point of debate? We have no reliable data on anything.
All the land surface stations have their readings regularly ‘adjusted’ by
person or persons unknown. These adjusted readings are then cherrypicked by GISS and Hadley, and used by BEST.
The Envisat readings on sea level have suddenly been ‘adjusted’ upwards as scientists ‘found an error’ (just in time for the satellite to go phut). So now do we believe the ‘adjustment’, the pre-adjustment figures, the other satellites, or the tidal gauges?
Steven Mosher made some points here about Argo measurements. That they weren’t really temperature measurements; that they depended on the method and accuracy of the devices used, the conversion factors applied, and a host of other factors which meant there was no such thing as ‘raw data’. I now get what he meant. If a billion dollar satellite can’t get it’s figures right, what chance is there that *any* data set is worth quoting.
We know nothing – not land temperatures, sea temperatures, sea levels. Just nothing. And after 30 years and tens of billions spent, that’s a disgrace.
How can we have a debate with no reliable data?
cui bono you write “How can we have a debate with no reliable data?”
How about the satellite measurements of “brightness” temperature as per Christie and Spencer?
Jim,
I’d love to believe that at least one data series is pretty much accurate. But at the moment I’m inclined towards a cycical solipsism. Satellites measure one thing which is converted into another? Who knows if any of this is right? And the land, sea, tidal data are all ‘adjusted’ to fit in with someone’s opinion of what they should look like. I just don’t believe anything any more.
Brightness is turned into data by the application of physival theory. radiative transfer equations. agw science. there id no such thing as raw data
phy
Arg phone posting
Mosh at 2.35
That was cryptic even for you :)
tonyb
It is a travesty,
And it is transcendental,
That we imagine so much,
With so little data.
=========
The IPCC claim of CO2 in the atmosphere from 150 years ago to the current readings is almost a doubling by their figures we should be about +3C, why is this not so. Perhaps they are a bit previous in their assumptions.
Given its social and political importance, I have to take a view about who I listen to in this tangled and sometimes acrimonious debate. I do not have the time to engage with the primary literature and in the end the hen-pecking at reality which constitutes much of the academic output in this subject, like others, is a very poor basis for forming an overall judgement about our state of knowledge.
So, do I listen to the hot new PhD’s bristling with intellectual fervour, pumping out their ‘dirty postcards’ to the science journals? Or, do I listen to the entryists to the subject area who carry with them expertise in other areas like maths, astronomy, software engineering but who, perhaps, would not make the grade in their own disciplines are searching for easy pickings in a relatively new academic field? Or, do I listen to those with long and deep academic expertise like the eminent scholar who runs this blog or, indeed, Richard Lindzen, or perhaps some very smart scientists, engineers and astronauts who have long experience in sifting the credible from the crap?
For me its easy. I don’t have the time to read the literature, I have enough trouble keeping up with my own. The IPCC reports whilst useful are riddled with partisanship and bad practice. So, when choosing who to listen to I listen to them all, but in the end I put my faith in the wisdom what comes with experience.
Thanks Prof Ryan,
true that reading original pubs is confusing but the big lie is science is settled. That is political by advocates. When Hansen got arrested for protests on energy systems it destroyed his credibility. The NASA GISS does not just publish science but advocate political agendas which is illeagal for a civil servant. Temp has gone down for 15 years and clouds don’t respond as modeled. We can’t predict El Nino and argue that AMO may or may not exist in nature. So lots of science work to do before we changes society. China and India won’t follow carbon limits anyway so the whole argument is false. In a hundred years the petrolleum era will be done and the earth will recover any minor temp increases. Until the next ice age or plate tectonics opens the Panama canal. The EARTH ABides
Well said.
The Occam’s Razor explanation for the accelerating convergence of satellite adjustments is a simple chain of scientific reasoning:
• the theory of radiation transport really is correct, and so
• CO2 really is a greenhouse gas, and therefore
• the oceans really are warming and the ice is melting, so that
• sea level really is rising, and moreover
• the rise-rate really is increasing, so that
• satellites of every nation really see the rise more-and-more clearly,
• precisely as James Hansen and his colleagues have predicted, and
• the pace of all of these trends is accelerating.
These are sound physical theories, verifiable observations, and testable predictions … and so there’s no need to introduce “enemy list” factionalism and “witch hunt” politics in assessing this chain of reasoning.
Well, it WAS rising. Not so much lately.
/sl_ns_global.png”>TOPEX
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/files/2012_rel1/sl_ns_global.png
The pictures I drew clearly indicate that they are consistent with all the predictions I made. :P
Andrew
But … but … CO2 hasn’t stopped rising, has it? And, in addition to that, the effect of ocean cycles is nullified in the sea level measurement. Whether the heat is in the lower or upper ocean, the sea level measures all of it. So, here we have a situation where CO2 is rising consistently, but the sea level rise has paused. So where is the missing heat now?
Jim2,
I totally get what you are saying. My reply was sarcasm for the people who think that controlling the numbers that make the squiggy lines that “prove” your “predictions” is “science”.
Andrew
So, Bernie, what do you say about the sea level chart?
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/content/2012rel1-global-mean-sea-level-time-series-seasonal-signals-removed
Jim2 | April 13, 2012 at 9:23 am |
Not to answer for Bernie, but you see what happens when two La Ninas hit in a span of 3 years. Not much different from the slight downtick in 1992-1997.
Signal:Noise. Look it up.
Bart
The point of show the sea level trend since accurate measurements have been available is to demonstrate that there is no reliable data to support the premise that sea level is rising at an alarming rate. The IPCC and many who fear warming have published that sea levels “may rise by 1 to 2 meters by 2100. There is no reliable evidence to support such a fear. The FACT that sea level is rising at a rate that will lead to less than a 1 foot rise by 2100 is quite a suprise to those who fear warming, but a fact none the less.
Your comment about La Ninas have nothing to do with the data from 1992
Bart – La Ninas are surface phenomena. The sea level rise measures total heat, not just surface heat. Your analysis is flawed.
Jim2 | April 13, 2012 at 11:06 am |
*bzzt* wrong answer.
La Nina _temperature_ is what appears at the surface. ENSO is an extremely deep phenomenon that profoundly shifts sea level at the equator. Look it u.. Oh. Sorry, forgot, you don’t acquaint yourself with facts.
Rob Starkey | April 13, 2012 at 10:57 am |
Ah. Linear thinking when it suits you, but not when it doesn’t.
The sea level line rise isn’t as fast yet as some pretty well-established analysis concludes there is risk it might do in half a century or so.
By your linear logic, it’s no worry at all. Because see, there’s a line. And lines absolutely mean everything to your logic. They connect all things, because they’re lines. And lines are facts. Lines are the only facts. There’s nothing else but lines.
Oh, except that one end of the line in a La Nina that happens to have some below-trend observations.. that’s unlike the other end of the line with below-trend observations. There’s nothing related there at all, just a line; and we all know, lines mean nothing.
Pick one or the other contradictory position. Stick with it. At least within the same comment.
Bart – you have a real talent for missing the point. Sea level measures heat at all levels. Bzzzt! to you.
Jim2 | April 14, 2012 at 12:53 pm |
Sea level measures heat at all levels.
Thermal expansion seems to be what you mean. There’s more to sea level than that. Which is why there’s noise in the signal.
“onclusions, Observations, Cautions
The satellite sea level data shows no evidence of acceleration in the rate of ice melt over the past 18 years, and the observed reduction in the rate of sea level rise since ~2003 is consistent with a much reduced rate of ocean heat accumulation”
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2011/estimates-of-mass-and-steric-contributions-to-sea-level-rise/
Ah, Bart. Why don’t you just admit what everyone else has figured out already: You are a climate science moron.
Jim2 | April 14, 2012 at 4:44 pm |
From your source: “For what it is worth, I was also surprised by the strength of the Nino 3.4 correlation with satellite sea level, and especially by the lack of time lag.” -Steve F
And really, this analysis has a distinctly biased appearance, doesn’t it? (The comment where the author wishes Hansen dead being one hint.)
18 years to determine anything so confidently about sea level rise only indicates dismissal of Uncertainty and lack of depth.
To project that 10 years will settle what 18 years hasn’t, using only the information contained in 18 years of observations, is a statistical nonsuch.
Your source is guessing, doing it on a blog, disputing peer-reviewed materials without passing peer-review, and patently overconfident.
The data doesn’t differ substantially from Hansen’s own projections; given which, fifty years would be needed to statistically separate the one hypothesis from the other with any degree of confidence.
It’s surprising the author did not take on this issue head on.
Ah, Bart. The drama! The mystique!
Bernie,
Excepting for the lack of evidence to support your explanation regarding slr and warming ice melting dangerously, you are spot on.
At-length answers to the questions asked by Jim2 and Bad Andrew are reviewed in the linked article by Hansen et al. The Scientific Case for Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change to Protect Young People and Nature (2012).
It is instructive to compare the article of Hansen et al. with the NASA letter of Schmitt et al..
Article of Hansen et al. Eighteen authors, all of them practicing scientists, global nationality of authors, extended critical review of theory and data, 104 primary references cited, numerous testable predictions made, submitted to peer review.
Letter of Schmitt et al. Forty-nine authors, none of them practicing scientists, exclusively American nationality, no review of theory or data, no primary references cited, no testable predictions, not submitted to peer review, questions regarding science referred to a sitting board member of the Heartland Institute (Schmitt).
Readers of Climate Etc. are encouraged to compare these two works side-by-side, and to judge their respective science-and-engineering merits.
Bernie
The appeal to authority argument that you have made for the Hansen paper seems largely without merit. Hansen’s paper clearly addresses multiple issues which are outside of his area of expertise (economics as an example). This is not to state that he is necessarily wrong on areas outside of his area of expertise, but it does mean that he has no expertise to comment any more than others.
You also seem to minimize that those who disagree with Hansen, who have advanced technical degrees; are in your opinion unworthy to understand the technical concepts associated with climate change.
Now I won’t claim to know as much about the climate as Ms. Curry or Mr. Hansen, but I think I and many others know more than enough to ask relevant technical questions to determine if the case to support the concept of potential dangerous climate change associated with additional CO2 has been made. Here are a few very simple direct questions to start:
1. What will the rate of warming be for the next 20 years with a reasonably tight margin of error?
2. What will the rate of warming be as a function of a doubling of CO2 with a tight margin of error? Is this consistent with observations?
3. What impact will any potential warming have on any specific location on the planet and what is the relative accuracy of the forecasting method? Why are you confident that a warmer world will be worse overall for the US specifically or for the world overall over the long term?
4. At what rate will sea level rise with a relative tight margin of error and how well has the forecasting method done in predicting the rate of rise over the last 20 years?
Claim: “Hansen’s paper clearly addresses multiple issues which are outside of his area of expertise (economics as an example)”
———————
With respect, Rob, anyone can verify that your post’s claim is wholly incorrect, in that the list of authors for The Scientific Case for Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change to Protect Young People and Nature includes not only scientists, but also scholars in law, medicine, biology, theology, and economics.
Whereas, the Schmitt/NASA letter includes no such broad-ranging expertise, no references to the existing literature, and no reasoning to support its claims. This is perhaps the reason that the Hanson et al. article contains so very much more information than the Schmitt/NASA letter.
Readers of Climate Etc. are encouraged to verify the above assertions for themselves.
Bernie
Would you agree that the simple questions posed require credible answers before making drastic changes in how energy is produced? Do you believe you know the answers to those questions? Do you believe Hansen does?
Rob, the answer is “no” to each and all of your three questions, for the in-depth reasons that are supplied by Hansen’s team of scholars in law, medicine, science, theology, and economics, who reach the following conclusion:
Needless to say, the package of ideas that these scholars have put together is well worth pondering.
Bernie
So you believe all should simply accept the positions of some scientists although they are unable to fully substantiate the rationale for their conclusions to other scientists and engineers? You really believe that is sound reasoning and not just an appeal to authority? Although they claim that “time is running out” they can not substantiate their beliefs by responding to simple questions with reasonable answers that support their conclusions.
In all sincerity, ask yourself why you believe what you do on this topic given that the questions I posted are not being answered by those who propose taking drastic actions. How is your fear of climate change different from a religious belief that is only poorly supported by historical facts, but is accepted on faith?
Readers of Climate Etc. are encouraged to weigh for themselves the relative merits of the Hansen-18 article versus the NASA-49 letter. Rob, it was particularly impressive that you were confidently dismissing the conclusions of the 28-page Hansen-18 article within 11 minutes after seeing its conclusion quoted … surely the in-depth analysis of these broad-ranging scholars has more substance than that?
Bernie,
If Climate scientists can’t answer any of Rob’s questions, then why should anyone pay any attention to their calls for action?
I’m not objecting to them studying climate on my dime. I do have a problem when they push for political and economic action that will impact me without their being able to answer even one of the questions posed by Rob.
Bernie Schreiver
Your reasoning only holds of one accepts Hansen and anyone in his shop -with close ties to Real Climate- as bona fide scientists. Reality is, Hansen ceased to be a scientist a long time ago -how about 1988- having decided to use his positon of influence to become an advocate for the CAGW “cause”. His variously cooking the numbers to fit the alarmist meme has been well documented: credibility terminally shot and case closed.
Bernie, the therefore at the end of your second line is a theory saving non sequiter. GH theory does not predict that ocean temps will rise while atmosmpheric temps do not rise. Quite the opposite. AGWers are trying to use the supposed ocean temp rise to save AGW in the face of nonrising atmospheric temps.
Thank you so much Herman Alexander Pope…as a retired small business owner I have no scientific experience or expertise but I go here and to WUWT on a weekly basis to try to learn and you have made it easier for me. Anyone who fails to learn or listen to you and the other 49 signatores should be labeled as “deaf and dumb” because simplification and common sense destroys their credibility. Also, to counter Hanson and Schmidt NASA should consider re-hiring people like you and your colleagues to bring some balance to this important discussion.
You will probably never know, Adam.
Kim is right. Professor Curry made a mistake. She – probably unintentionally – demeans the courage of the writers.
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/
Yes, I’m sure it’s unintentional. But it’s a curious blind spot. I think she’s looking at this from a too lofty height. Anything that brings more balance is welcome.The more signed letters from credible people, the better.
Herman Alexander Pope (above) is another hero:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/04/12/the-ongoing-debate/#comment-191912
The 49 should have been 50. I signed an early version of the letter and the final version of the letter. My name was left off. That was a mistake.
We are 50. – Herman A (Alex) Pope Aerospace Engineer 44 years.
“NASA does science, and does it well.”
That’s funny. NASA is now a typical bureaucracy, existing its own self-perpetuation.
NASA science? How about crashing Mars orbiters and exploding Space Shuttles? These little problems were not the result of people doing science. It was rather the result of a bureaucratic culture stifling creativity and enthusiasm. People were either too afraid or too lazy to do the right thing.
How about directors of NASA departments jetting around the world to defend eco-terrorists, and taking millions of dollars in rank conflict of interest to their jobs and duty to the taxpayer?
This is not your father’s NASA. The politicians are in total control.
Dr. Judith Curry said, “I find these kinds of letters signed by groups of people to be boring and meaningless (meaningful only in the context of the sociology of the debate and what certain people think is a useful strategy).”
I’d have to guess that our host made this remark about the recent letter to NASA without considering all aspects of the debate over CAGW. The CAGW issue is not merely one about science, but includes significant social costs and public policy implications. The scientists engaged in the debate have not restricted themselves just to the science, but have chosen sides in politics and made recommendations on very costly public policies.
Since we are not governed by a dictatorship of self-anointed experts in “climate science”, the debate is joined by many of us (increasingly so) who are scientifically literate, albeit in other fields than climate. For example, I have studied the climate only for a couple of years now, but I was trained at Ga Tech (where Dr. Curry teaches) with significant amounts of math and physics. Does Dr. Curry think people like me will have no influence on Climate Policy and Science because our opinion is meaningful only to the sociology of the debate?
Well, let me say this non-expert knows enough about science to question: the quality of global temperature data collection and the validity of its processing by climate scientist, the quality of Global Climate Modelling (really did we average epicycle models before Newton?), the data sharing and result confirmation by independent work as required by the scientific method, and the ethics of many climate scientists.
There are many like me that may not understand some parts of climate science who understand enough about science in general to conclude that CAGW is not good science. I guess that the 49/50 NASA letter signers feel they have enough understanding to make their conclusions known also.
No one should dismiss the significance of the letter to “climate science” which is paid for by the public and no scientist should dismiss the implication that “climate science” methods do not support CAGW conclusions.
R. Gates since real world observations have not cooperated with all the catistrophic predictions inspite of adjustments you have now brought in the “final equilibrium response” card. Now I get it, keep moving the target, nc hits forehead. Haven’t seen you over at WUWT for awhile, tired of getting slapped down.
Not sure what “real world” data you are looking at but the Earth has warmed nearly continuously for many decades as it takes in more net energy than it is giving back to space, meaning of course it is out of energy balance, just as would be expected from the continual and rapid growth of greenhouse gases.
In terms of my posting at WUWT, for some reason Anthony began requesting that I use my full real name, which I would gladly do if it was a requirement for everyone. I didn’t especially feel it was fair that I, as one of the few regular “warmists” who posted there, was being singled out in such a prejudicial manner. What if you, “nc”, were singled out by Dr. Curry, to use your real name, without making it a general requirement?
In general though, I have complete confidence I can hold my own against pretty much anyone who posts at WUWT.
R Gates
I always appreciate your comments, although we will rarely agree. We need people who have different views to the ‘consensus’ on any blog and over the years I’ve appreciated yourself, Joel Shore and Scott Mandia, amongst others.
.
For what its worth if there is a rule it should be applied to everyone-I’m not aware of one requiring you to cite your proper name.
Increasingly, people seem to post under bizarre names and there are a number of thread hi jackers who are tiresome. A crackdown on those might be useful at WUWT and here.
All the best
Tonyb (Tony Brown)
Tony,
Diversity of opinion is important, and of course I always appreciate reading your opinions as well. True, we rarely agree, but that’s not the point of discussion is it? For some reason, Anthony singled me out to stop “hiding behind a fake name”, and “come into the light”, and I didn’t recall him doing this to anyone else. A great many of the posters on WUWT use a “fake name”, and so I strongly resented his approach to single me out and thought it was quite unfair and rather surprising, considering his otherwise overall fair approach up until that point. Perhaps he just got tired of having a “warmist” around who knew something more than the average bloke about about climate coming to his house and upsetting his skeptical faithful. Either way, as it turns out, I’ve missed very little by not posting to and no longer frequenting WUWT.
R gates
Its a shame, as you say Anthony is normally pretty fair.
Nom de plumes are a problem only when it is accompanied by unpleasant behaviour and a lot of people who hide behind a fake name can often be abusive or tiresome trolls. I’m obviously not including you in that comment but the increase in bad behaviour has been quite noticeable and I’m hoping to get a large grant to study if it is linked to anonymity and of course climate change :)
tonyb
Good points, Phillip. The notion that only “certified climate scientists” are qualified to make judgements on AGW is absurd on its face, and a transparent attempt to gain power. If you follow that to its logical conclusion we should just forget all about democracy and install Michael Mann as Supreme Ruler. Can you imagine?
Luckily for all of us, science doesn’t rely on judgments. Nor on belief. Science progresses as new data is gathered and analyzed in the context of previous data plus the now-vast amount of theoretical knowledge we have of, in this case, physics and chemistry. Studies that advance the state of the art are peer reviewed and published where anybody with the proper tools can try to falsify them.
There is no democracy involved, and the only reason to talk about consensus at all is to publicly counter the barrage of unscientific politically-motivated nonsense.
The very first objective in the National Aeronautics and Space Act calls for NASA to advance human knowledge of the Earth and of phenomena in the atmosphere. The real absurdity is to claim that the people who do just that should be shut down because it doesn’t fit the political agenda of a vocal minority.
FiveString
How much “new data” was used by James Hansen to adjust the historical temperature record? How much “new data” did Michael Mann collect in order to overturn the MWP? How much “new data” was collected to adjust the Envisat sea level data recently?
The “new results” that stream out of the climate science community are seldom based on “new date”, but rather on models and “reanalysis” based on old data, all requiring a series of judgements made by the modelers and reanalyzers.
Would I be very mistaken to conclude that our esteemed hostess could be the ‘reflexology’ expert ?
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/expert_opinion_scr.jpg?w=640&h=865
If AGW discussion is a purely scientific issue, then why did the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia engage a marketing firm to advise CRU on how to sell it?
Futurra. “The Rules of the Game”. PDF, October 14, 2005 in the original ClimateGate FOI2009.zip
“Evidence base for the Climate Change Communications Strategy
The game is communicating climate change; the rules will help us win it.
Recommendations to the Climate Change Communications Working Group”
Oct 10, 2005
And its sequel: An updated version of “The Rules of the Game”.
Futerra. “New Rules: New Game”. futerra, October 12, 2006. http://www.futerra.co.uk/downloads/NewRules_NewGame.pdf
As engineer (still) working on Launchers’ programs, for both French and European Agencies, I have the greatest respect for NASA’s achievements and for all the guys (engineers, scientists & astronauts…) who made this possible. But I also have to admit that NASA/GISS unbridled advocacy of AGW dogma, without the slightest evidence to support such claims, has brought the whole NASA institution into disrepute.
NASA has achieved bringing man to and safely back from the Moon by applying rigorous scientific / engineering / operational processes, as well as related top level standards that have been designed for that purpose. These processes and standards of course include models’ engineering, verification and validation.
As ridiculous as it may appear, none of the GISS climate modelers has ever applied any of these processes and standards. And as a matter of fact, none of those nice climate models has ever been formally validated. Climate models are only “inter-validated” (see previous posts on Climate etc…) but inter-validation is definitely not the state of the art for models’ validation, especially for such complex ones. A rigorous model’s validation process requires a confrontation between model’s outputs (for various runs with different sets of inputs / border conditions) and tests’ data (obtained with same inputs / border conditions).
Actually the very inconvenient truth is that AGW dogma is fully based on climate models but that none of these models would ever be able to pass any V&V process. Those complex models have proven scientifically inadequate in predicting climate only 1 or 2 decades in advance since their outputs are daily rebutted by observed climate data:
(a) None of these models is able to reproduce the observed cooling trends over [1880 – 1910] and [1940 – 1970] periods
(b) None of these models is able to reproduce the observed warming trend of 0.15°C/decade over [1910 – 1930] period, that is actually equivalent to the one observed over recent [1970 – 1998] period.
Models only reproduce a warming trend of 0.06°C/decade that is almost 3 times lower than observed one.
(c) None of these models has been able to forecast the pause observed since 1998 neither the slight cooling observed since 2002: all of them have predicted a warming of 0.25°C minimum over the past 15 years.
It is actually unbelievable that NASA could have authorized and even promoted such poor scientific processes that indeed constitute a fraud with respect to its own processes and standards. For sure, if NASA had managed the Apollo missions in such a way, USSR would have got to the moon first and most of the 49ers’ astronauts would be dead since quite a long time !
By letting GISS unscrupulous scientists publishing their unsubstantiated results and furiously advocating their unproven AGW dogma, NASA has put its own reputation at risk of public ridicule and distrust.
But the crux of the matter is actually that NASA & GISS needs more the business of climate change than to care about its reputation…
ARES program has been stopped and the shuttle is now relegated to the museum. Their space exploration budget has been severely slashed. So they need to create and maintain global warming scare in order to keep a in the funding stream. It will provide them with interesting satellites projects aiming at monitoring the various aspects of climate change (sun activity, temperatures, ice sheets, sea levels, etc… This is why NASA can’t afford to lose top alarmists but also fund raisers like Hansen, Lacis, Schmidt & al.
Regards from France.
Eric.
+10
+10
Thanks, Eric, for telling it like it is!
Government science has been corrupted to the core because all agencies need “to create and maintain global warming scare [or whatever else the politicians want] in order to keep in the funding stream.”
President Eisenhower warned the nation on 17 Jan 1961 that such misuse of government science might one day threaten the most cherished values of our constitutional government.
Yeah, Eric, you nailed it. +10 from me too.
Eric, would you send me an email please (I’m easy to find), I want to ask you about something. Thanks.
-50 from me. Your post is the typical “I am an engineer” toss job.
You are stuck on big-boys-in-boots glamorous magazine style landing on the moon kind of science, while you belittle the less glamorous but more important form of science to understand how the world works.
Your technical criticisms don’t pass basic scrutiny. Your post is ruled by your own dogmatic stance than common sense or reason. The end where you hint earth observation systems are unnecessary is deeply unscientific and smacks of a desire to bury ones head in the sand.
Among other inaccuracies you write: “Actually the very inconvenient truth is that AGW dogma is fully based on climate models”, which is wrong.
You push the common V&V strawmen:
“none of these models would ever be able to pass any V&V process”
Who says they would? These models are aren’t put forwards to be 100% accurate models of the climate, eg there are uncertainties in clouds and aerosols. Basically you don’t understand what the models show and the reasons it’s taken seriously. It’s not because models are thought to be 100% accurate.
You write: “None of these models is able to reproduce the observed cooling trends over [1880 – 1910] and [1940 – 1970] periods”
But as a skeptic you shouldn’t accept there was cooling from 1940-1970, let alone that there was a warming from 1880-1910. Have you forgotten that the per-satellite temperature records cannot be trusted?
It’s funny how the surface records are accepted by skeptics when it’s convenient to the argument they are pushing.
lolwot, the surface records are accepted, but their accuracy is bad (and cooked). For example, it could be that the late 20th century warming is overstated, so that the global temperatures in the 90s are no warmer than in the 40s (like in the USA). The cooling periods are widely known, even outside the surface records. The models cannot reproduce any cooling trends, except caused by volcanoes (and aerosols in general). Now that the CO2 “forcing” is so strong, even a small reduction in insolation shouldn’t cause cooling, according to the models.
What is your problem with engineers?
And why do you believe that validation of a model is not necessary or invalid as a criticism. If you are developing a model that will predict how a wing will act under certain conditions, don’t you want it to be as close to 100% as possible? Since climate models are are being used as justification for policy decisions costing hundreds of billions of dollars, is it unreasonable to ask that they provide some sort of validation exercise? And shouldn’t they be expected to be as close as possible to 100% accurate? What good is a climate model that is only 75% 05 50% accurate? That’s pretty much like making important decisions in your life using a coin flip.
To lolwot :
——————————————————————————–
“Your technical criticisms don’t pass basic scrutiny”
——————————————————————————–
Yet you are actually unable to provide any critical analysis of the technical issues I raised.
And I’m pretty sure you don’t have the slightest idea of what a scrutiny process is (in the NASA meaning). All aerospace projects are subjected to reviews (PDR, CDR, QR…) aiming at validating the results of each development phase and at authorizing the next one.
But none of climate models has ever been subjected to such a process and you are unable to provide me with any reference of a model validation report or review report.
——————————————————————————-
“The end where you hint earth observation systems are unnecessary is deeply unscientific and smacks of a desire to bury ones head in the sand”.
——————————————————————————-
I never said that Earth observation systems are unnecessary (I work in launchers’ business and I’m happy to have satellites to launch). I just said that NASA is promoting such systems based dubious motivations and unsubstantiated theories.
——————————————————————————-
“…“none of these models would ever be able to pass any V&V process”…
Who says they would? These models are aren’t put forwards to be 100% accurate models of the climate”…
——————————————————————————-
People like Hansen & al are using these models for incriminating human responsibility in global warming, and for promoting very expensive and potentially (probably) harmful policies supposed to reduce CO2 emissions. In such conditions, we shall expect those models to be at least 99% accurate, which is unfortunately far to be the case.
———————————————————————————–
“But as a skeptic you shouldn’t accept there was cooling from 1940-1970”
———————————————————————————–
You missed the point. Those you call “skeptics” are not sceptical about (global) warming but about human responsibility.
Yes temperature data (especially GISS ones) are indeed highly questionable :
(a) Lack of accuracy (not good enough to characterize variations < few tens of a °C : cf Surface Stations project)
(b) Significant but opaque adjustments allowing GISS to hide the inconvenient truth that, the warmest decade in the US has been observed during the 30”s, and to exaggerate warming amplitude.
Yet despite those deficiencies and dubious manipulations, overall trends and variations are correct (even if exaggerated). The patterns corresponding to natural variability cannot be hidden. They are real and can be easily isolated from the T° signal :
(a) ENSO cycle with a period of 3 or 4 years
(b) Schwabe solar cycle with a period of 11 years
(c) PDO cycle with a period of about 60 years
—————————————————————————–
“let alone that there was a warming from 1880-1910”
—————————————————————————–
Sorry but HADCRUT3 data show quite significant cooling (-0.07°C per decade) between 1880 & 1910
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1880/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1880/to:1910/trend
————————————————————————————-
Have you forgotten that the per-satellite temperature records cannot be trusted?
————————————————————————————
We are not those who do not trust satellites data :
– Data showing that the Hot Spot predicted by models is actually missing (cf Douglass & al 2007 : http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/joc.1651/pdf)
– Data showing that climate sensitivity is actually much lower than assessed by IPCC (cf ERBE satellite data as evaluated by Lindzen & Choi 2009 & 2010 : http://www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/236-Lindzen-Choi-2011.pdf)
‘Our interest is to understand – first the natural variability of climate – and then take it from there. So we were very excited when we realized a lot of changes in the past century from warmer to cooler and then back to warmer were all natural,’ Anastasios Tsonis
Yeah – so were we.
Eric, good point about the models not going thru a verification and validation process.
Even worse, they don,t seem to produce temperatures over the last 15 years, then go on to demand acceptance of their results over the next 100. Data is hard to get. just lately doud measures penetrate the surface. Sea level is harder than one would think to measure because the northern contenents are still rebounding from the ice age forcing them down. So a rising tide gage for 150 years has multiple causes. as does all of this complex forcing.
And if one includes guages tied to land, one must compensate readings for subsidance.
To know that sea level is going down since the 1970’s, one only needs to look at the leap second data.
http://popesclimatetheory.com/page28.html
Does anyone know of an answer to this I’ve just thought of. Maybe a reason why climate sensitivity is low is because the spectral frequencies that are trapped and emitted by atmospheric water vapour back to earth are more effective at causing surface water evaporation (because they are better absorbed by water) and hence amplify the rate at which latent heat is removed from the surface ie a negative feedback. Just a thought!
You are assuming sensitivity is low, which is just that– your assumption.
Ok forget the assumption and focus on the physics of what I’ve suggested. Has this been measured?
Water vapour is both a GHG and a particle (aerosol),the later decreases surface solar irridiance ie across the full spectrum,
Haywood 2011 (using the same model as Booth ) found the effect
important eg
The future dimming/brightening in cloud!free SSI is not only caused
by changes in anthropogenic aerosols: aerosol impacts are overwhelmed by a large dimming caused by increases in water vapor. There is little trend in the total SSI as cloud cover decreases in the climate model used here, and compensates the effect of the change in water vapor. In terms of the surface energy balance, these trends in SSI are obviously more than compensated by the increase in the downwelling terrestrial irradiance from increased water vapor concentrations. However, the study shows that while water vapor is widely
appreciated as a greenhouse gas, water vapor impacts on the atmospheric transmission of solar radiation and the future of global dimming/brightening should not be overlooked.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2011JD016000.shtml
But that doesn’t address my point that as the downwelling radiation is in the frequencies that water absorbs essentially does that mechanism act to disproportionately increase the removal of heat from the surface in the form of latent heat of evaporation? Nothing to do with clouds or aerosols.
SOM – Water is a better absorber of thermal IR from back radiation than of solar radiation, and so the former is almost completely absorbed at the ocean surface, whereas solar radiation is absorbed over a large range of depths (including absorption by impurities). If there were no mixing of the thermal energy from absorbed IR and absorbed solar in
the ocean mixed layer, latent heat transfer would come almost exclusively from the back radiation absorbed in the skin layer. It would still be a small fraction of total absorbed back radiation (e.g., 80/345 Wm-2), most of which adds instead to the thermal energy in the mixed
layer, but you would be correct in concluding that back radiation contributed disproportionately to evaporation compared with solar radiation. In fact, the mixing is considerable, and so the disproportion, if it exists, is slight. The mechanisms underlying the mixing are complex, and deserve a discussion of their own, but involve both turbulent mixing and the inhibition by surface warming of convective rise of water heated at depths by absorbed solar radiation. Any relationship to climate sensitivity will be small.
Fred, the net IR radiation is outgoing. Forth radiation > back radiation. I’m sure you know that, but it gets lost in the AGW verbiage.
Fred, we should not be worrying about the 80/345 W/M^2 but the affect of the increase in 345 vs the increase in 80. As the back radiation associated with supposed runaway warming is mainly water absorpsion band related so we need to understand how that affects the amount of change in the latent heat removal from the surface which would potentially become a significant negative feedback vs the positive feedback of increased water vapour in the atmosphere..
That’s irrelevant to a runaway greenhouse effect, SOM, which is dictated by the inability of OLR to increase with temperature as water vapor concentration rises. If you want to look at references I cited in the recent Lindzen thread, you’ll find a more detailed description.
I would add that all heat loss mechanisms – radiative, conductive, and latent heat transfer – are negative feedbacks on temperature, but there is nothing novel about that principle. The latent heat transfer results in the negative lapse rate feedback that partially offsets the positive water vapor feedback. However, evaporation declines as relative humidity increases, and under runaway climate conditions, we would probably lose all latent heat transfer because of atmospheric saturation.
I should clarify the last point. Evaporation wouldn’t cease, but its ability to increase heat escape to space would vanish.
But Fred, are you be sure that the downward radiation from atmospheric water vapour doesn’t differentiate itself by energising water molecules right on the surface of the ocean whereas other radiation may travel maybe a centimeter further but then not be able to liberate water molecules from the surface?
But if rate of latent heat release from surface was to be plotted against the level of downwelling radiation I bet the gradient of such a curve would increase as downwelling increased because additional
downwelling would be absorbed preferentially in the surface layer of the oceans and more evaporation would occur per unit of all incoming radiation as the surface warmed. Has a lab experiment been done to look specifically at increasing radiation on a water surface only in the frequencies in which water vapour absorbs EM radiation? Because of convection upward I bet the humidity at the surface wouldn’t increase much to hinder the additional evaporation.
I’m not sure I completely understand your question, but I think I probably answered most of it above. Both downwelling IR radiation and solar radiation increase mixed layer and sea surface temperature and increase latent heat transfer. Despite the fact that IR is absorbed in the skin layer, there isn’t much “preference” between the two because of mixing, although the extent of mixing may not be complete. Surface humidity at the ocean is near saturation, but as both the surface and air warm, the air gains capacity to hold water vapor, with wind speed an additional critical variable – when there is no wind, evaporation diminishes dramatically. The water vapor absorption frequencies are not particularly relevant to ocean water thermal IR absorption because liquid water can absorb strongly throughout much of that range (the same is true of cloud water).. If that phenomenon was an important element of your question, then the answer is that the specific emission frequencies of water vapor are not particularly important, because the ocean will absorb thermal IR efficiently even outside of those frequencies.
I may not have answered all your questions, but there is no new or unsuspected phenomenon operating here to change our basic understanding.
“then the answer is that the specific emission frequencies of water vapor are not particularly important, because the ocean will absorb thermal IR efficiently even outside of those frequencies.”
Fred, If that is the case then no issue. Thanks.
But Fred, are you be sure that the downward radiation from atmospheric water vapour doesn’t differentiate itself by energising water molecules right on the surface of the ocean whereas other radiation may travel maybe a centimeter further but then not be able to liberate water molecules from the surface?
It is a matter of density – the tight packing of molecules in the liquid phase. IR is absorbed in the top microns – but it is also emitted much more strongly because the ocean is in general warmer than the atmosphere. So you have this 100 odd micron ‘skin’ that is cooler then the underlying water. The ocean must cool in the IR – it is thermodynamically impossible for the ocean to warm from both donwelling IR radiation and SW as the other heat losses – latent and convection are simply insufficient to completely balance the ingoing and outgoing energy. An increase in downwelling radiation means that there is less heat loss from the skin – but whether this translates into extra evaporation is difficult. I tend to think that humidity is even more important over oceans than land.
It is all a bit academic unless there is reliable data on power fluxes at the top of the atmosphere. What there is suggests that cloud is the most important factor in recent climate change. – http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=Wong2006figure7.gif –
Re: Judge Judy’s Update
“NASA kerfuffle
On a recent thread, a number of people have pointed to the letter from 49 former NASA astronauts, scientists, engineers to the NASA administrator. I find these kinds of letters signed by groups of people to be boring and meaningless (meaningful only in the context of the sociology of the debate and what certain people think is a useful strategy).”
As one the 49 signers of “the Bolden letter” we felt it was important that NASA’s high level GISS employees be challenged on their statements to the general public that sound more like propaganda than objective analysis of the current global temperature trends. Statements by GISS’s most senior executive regarding NASA’s GISS database that declared to the general public that “2011 was the 9th warmest year in the historical record” when a more accurate and informative statement should have been that “through 2011, global average temperatures have held steady or declined slightly from 1998 levels” would be more becoming of the scientific reputation we Apollo era NASA veterans strived to establish. Would your readers agree with us that NASA’s science reputation is being harmed by such alarmist statements from NASA’s chief climate science researcher?
Dr. Doiron,
Which is more important: that 2011 was the warmest La Nina year on record, or that 2010 was the warmest El Nino year on record?
Which is more important: that the largest heat sink on the planet, i.e. the ocean, which holds many times the energy of the atmosphere, has continued to gain energy over the past 40 years, or that the atmopshere and ocean both saw their warmest 10 years period on instrument record in the past ten years?
Earth, in totality, and as a energy system, has continued to store more enregy than it is giving back to space. This is the essence of what greenhouse gases do, and increasing those gases as fast as humans have done, means that balance is shifting to the big “S” for Store. NASA is the leading agency in the world for measuring these changes in Earth’s enegy balance and is doing an excellent job in reporting the facts and the science. That they are inconvenient, and don’t mesh well with the paradigm and world view of some skeptics to anthropogenic climate change is a pity..
Gates – the Earth’s energy balance changes with SW much more than LW in recent times.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=Wong2006figure7.gif
Read Wong et al 2007 by all means.
‘The overall slight rise (relative heating) of global total net flux at TOA between the 1980’s and 1990’s is confirmed in the tropics by the ERBS measurements and exceeds the estimated climate forcing changes (greenhouse gases and aerosols) for this period. The most obvious explanation is the associated changes in cloudiness during this period.’ NASA/GISS Indeed there was cooling in the LW in both ISCCP-FD and ERBE.
The moderate increase in ocean warming last decade was all SW – http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=CERES-BAMS-2008-with-trend-lines1.gif
‘Our interest is to understand – first the natural variability of climate – and then take it from there. So we were very excited when we realized a lot of changes in the past century from warmer to cooler and then back to warmer were all natural,’ Anastasion Tsonis
The intensity and frequency of La Nina cause of decadal warming and cooling. We are in a cool Pacific mode for another decade or three. But you can’t really accept complexity and uncertainty can you. That makes you part of the problem and not part of the solution.
Captn.,
Being the beneficiary of complexity and uncertainty, in the fact that I exist at all, I certainly have no problem accepting them. So please don’t go spouting off your nonsense about what I can and can’t accept.
Now, to get back to the science. One small thing you forgot to mention about heat uptake by the oceans, which has been increasing consistently for at least 40 years, is that it is NOT just a result of SW entering, but also the rate at which LW leaves. More downwelling LW from the increasing greenhouse rich atmosphere, alters the thermal gradient of the skin layer of the ocean, meaning heat will flow less rapidly from ocean to atmosphere. This would also be seen in warmer water being brought down to greater depths in the several key ocean downwelling areas around the global ocean, which is exactly what is being seen.
Increasing greenhouse gas concentrations ultimately is an issue of altering the energy balance of the planet through altering thermal gradients. Energy flows less rapidly from atmosphere to space as well as from ocean to atmosphere with the net result being that the planet as a system gains net energy.
Only the post Argo data is even remotely reliable. Prior to that it was guesstimation based on buckets and engine intakes. Everyone in the field acknowledges that fact. View Josh willis’s responses to Pielke: He certainly doesn’t think much of pre-Argo guesswork and he is an uber warmer too. That there is an apparent “missing heat” ie the data doesn’t back up the hypothesis, is admitted even by the high priest of energy balance; Trenberth so why not you? Worse still the warming rate is supposed to increase according to the theory yet it doesn’t even rise now, totally contrary to theory. But of course you know all this and just ignore it because you seemingly prefer to believe in thermageddon.
Gatesy,
I have told you before that the simple radiative theory doesn’t cut it – especially that of the surface. To determine the causes of warming or cooling the simple global energy budget is far more reliable.
d(S)/dt = Energy in – Energy out.
That way you can look at the incoming and outgoing power flux and determine just what the cause of warming was or wasn’t. Otherwise I will simply continue to regard you as a simpleton space cadet.
Regards
Captin Kangaroo
“Increasing greenhouse gas concentrations ultimately is an issue of altering the energy balance of the planet through altering thermal gradients. Energy flows less rapidly from atmosphere to space as well as from ocean to atmosphere with the net result being that the planet as a system gains net energy.”
If we assume greenhouse gas concentrations are warming the oceans, how how much are they warming it, and is it significant?
I assume the oceans are warming, and have been for about 10,000 years, but specific issue is the amount of warming which could be caused by greenhouse gas concentrations.
We have couple aspects.
First when any radiation flux of any type “shines” on the ocean one doesn’t have all the energy of that radiation being adsorbed.
For instance energy of sunlight is not all absorbed by an ocean. It you had heat lamp and shined it on the ocean, not all the energy is converted into joules of heat.
Another important aspect is that how much energy is absorbed by any substance vary depending upon how energetic or warm it is. And roughly the cooler something is the more energy it can absorb [or gain in term increasing the amount heat it has in terms of joules of heat energy].
A frying pan in the sun, reaches a certain temperature and thereafter does not gain any more joules of heat. By putting frying pan on block of ice, and it will then be cooler and be able absorb more energy.
Or at some point in temperature of object, an object need to transmit energy [conduction, convection, or radiation] before it receive more energy from the sun [or other source of energy]. This applies to molecules of CO2 in terms of these molecules radiating energy or it applies to solids or liquids [such the skin of ocean surface].
So if focus on just these two aspects, we have the total amount heating of oceans by atmospheric greenhouse gases which arrive at square meter of ocean, and the percentage of that energy which is converted into joules heat per square meter.
A primary way that an ocean could shed heat is from evaporation. Other ways include mixing with cooler deeper water [wind & waves] and/or with surface air. And finally heat can be conducted which for a few reasons liquid water does not conduct heat well.
So with radiant energy of CO2 which traveling at speed of light [and if you could see it, it would be glowing to some extent] one say it could warm ocean if ocean cooled so as to allow it to absorb any energy.
One could have situation [which is improbable] where the emits a photon, the photon hits C02 gas molecules, which cause molecule to emit a photon, which hits same molecule of water, which emits of photon, and this continue. And a thing could occuring and have nothing to do with the heat of the water or the air.
Analogy it could the endless chattering on the internet could have little to do with science, or it could have a lot to do with science, or even both, to some degree, perhaps depending time of time or direction of the wind. But whatever the case, it nice to start with how much chattering is occurring and then maybe look at nature of the chattering- perhaps per byte Twitter is having a less or more of an affect.
Harold H Doiron, PhD:
“Would your readers agree with us that NASA’s science reputation is being harmed by such alarmist statements from NASA’s chief climate science researcher?”
No, but I think your reputation is being harmed by your own statements.
You claim: “Statements by GISS’s most senior executive regarding NASA’s GISS database that declared to the general public that “2011 was the 9th warmest year in the historical record” when a more accurate and informative statement should have been that “through 2011, global average temperatures have held steady or declined slightly from 1998 levels” would be more becoming of the scientific reputation we Apollo era NASA veterans strived to establish.”
But temperatures haven’t declined since 1998 in the GISS temperature record as you claim:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp-dts/from:1998/plot/gistemp-dts/from:1998/trend
In the letter you gave no reasons for what GISS had done wrong. Now we see your reasons are erroneous.
GISS’s “most senior executive” also understands a bit more about what affects global temperature than perhaps you do. Theres a good reason why calculating a trend since 1998 and expecting that to be a meaningful test of global warming is wrong.
Get off your high horse and remove that chip from your shoulder. This isn’t flying rockets, you have no auto-expertize on this subject to warrant your appeal to self-authority.
Giss is the only record that show this rise. All others show a levelling or decline. Neither the Giss rise or any decline is significant; hence no rise is statistically accurate. That Giss is higher than the others is based apparently on extrapolation across the Arctic; ie just making the numbers up. You knew this Giss was the iffy outlier though; every alarmist knows it. That Hansen gets to adjust his data as well as preparing models that attempt to match that data is a practise that would be criticised in other fields as it leads directly to confirmation bias.
Irrelevant. The claim Doiron made was that Hansen had misreported his own temperature record. He hadn’t.
Besides that, HadCRUT4 shows a rise, so does UAH and so does BEST if you add an ocean record like HadSST2. The only popular record that show a decreasing trend since 1998 is RSS.
As for statistical significance – that cuts both ways. You can’t claim temperatures are flat when the uncertainty includes the possibility they are rising. And climate scientists had this all covered if people would have just listened to them: the famous 30-year period we are supposed to use for assessing climate change. It’s there for a reason.
Thanks, Dr. Doiron, for having the courage to speak out!
Big Brother is in fact totally powerless over Reality, but a surprisingly large number of folks inadvertently encourage tyranny to develop out of fear for themselves.
Thanks to the courage of a few, future generations may be spared from “headless” tyranny of politically-correct concepts that have replaced our unalienable rights to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/
The assumption that only those who believe in AGW and post the name “climate scientist” on their office door, are qualified is just patent BS.
Hmmmm … the patent office slides further down hill.
Folks
Do you think the following sample can be modeled as a normal distribution?
http://bit.ly/HHuKPh
Hi Girma.
Its not formally a normal distribution but looks quite close.
why Eric?
-2.33 sigma value close to a (cumulative) probability of 1%
Average very close to 0 and close to a (cumulative) probability of 50%
+2.33 sigma value close to a (cumulative) probability of 99%
If you make the difference between observed monthly data and 37 months smoothed data (HADCRUT3) you indeed obtain a normal distribution with :
Mean = 0
STDEV = 0.103
1% value (+2.33 sigma) = 0.24
0.1% value (+3 digma) = 0.31
Thanks Eric
Have you seen my separation of the noise from the signal for hadcrut3 below?
http://bit.ly/HRvReF
When compared to IPCC models, it surely provides a quite perfect hindcast of past climate (which is normal since your model is fully based on these past data) and a much more credible forecast for its further evolution (note that Scafetta has published about similar kind of model, pointing out astronomical influence on natural variability, but also highlighting the poor ability of climate models to reproduce past climate data or to make any credible forecast… : see http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/reprint/astronomical_harmonics.pdf).
Yet I wouldn’t talk about noise. The “high” frequency signal you call noise actually corresponds, at least partly, to the superposition of oscillations with shorter periods.
You have well identified the 60 years period corresponding to PDO oscillation, but beside this one there is also :
– A signal with a 11 years period corresponding to Schwabe Solar cycle
– A signal with roughly a 3 years period corresponding to ENSO.
Those signals can be easily isolated from T° data by using adequate smoothing.
Moreover, it is also probable that the polynomial you are using to simulate the background trend actually corresponds to a long period oscillation (typically 1 millennium long) with peaks in 1100 AD (MWP), 100 AD (RWP), 1000 BC …. It would be preferable to also simulate the background trend with a COS function.
The pressure groups continue to pursue a scientist politicos count both sides when the conversation should center around the causes of Global Cycles or Warming (as it were). Most of the temperature changes of our atmosphere is sun driven. It is well known that the sun functions on a 11 year cycle. and has a magnetic field that flips on each cycle. As the solar rays penetrates the atmosphere most are driven off by the magnetosphere and the ozone layers. The atmospheric pressures varies with altitude and reverses at known stages. On these reversals, pollutants and gases can form.
The CO2 being one of the minor components forming a crust that is said to reflect down the suns rays reflecting off the earth. If that is so, the CO2 is reflecting the sun’s rays directly up and away from the earth. The net is the rays reflected back up which causes a net cooling. …. what about; The ozone layer ??? Releases from Photosynthesis ?? It has been well known that cows emit more methane than humans emit CO2.
http://www.redicecreations.com/ul_img/1037magnetosphere.jpg
From: http://www.redicecreations.com/article.php?id=1038
The sun on my world observes a daily cycle. It rises in the east, it drives its furious chariot westward in an arc across the sky to plunge into the darkness in the west.
============
Very True. That is but one of the many cycles of our Sun, Including inner cycles.
Lake
The shape of the peak of the cosmic waves alternates from sharp to flat in alternate solar cycles, leaving two of one kind of peak and one of the other in an approximate phase of the PDO. If the shape of the cosmic ray peak has climatic significance, this is a mechanism to fit cool and warm phases into a cycle of the PDO.
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Laketahoe, out of fear of the “nuclear fires” that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 Aug 1945 and 9 Aug 1945, respectively,
a.) The United Nations was established on 24 Oct 1945, and
b.) We started getting misinformation on energy (E) stored as mass (m) in the cores of stars, galaxies, and atoms in 1946.
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/#comment-105
This effectively reversed the discovery by Copernicus in 1543 that a fountain of energy at the center of the solar system, Sol, emits a stream of heat, light, fields and particles (energy) that bath the planet, sustain life, and control the entire solar system, including Earth’s variable climate: http://tinyurl.com/7qx7zxs
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
http://www.omatumr.com
Huh?? No, no. Capernicous Is still valid.
Lake
Yes, Lake, Copernicus is valid.
1. SSM (standard solar model of hydrogen-filled Sun) is invalid.
2. Yukawa’s model of attractive forces between neutrons is invalid.
3. AGW (anthropologic global warming from CO2) is valid.
False models of reality were promoted after 1945 to hide energy (E) stored as mass (m) in cores of heavy atoms, planets, stars and galaxies.
See: http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/#comment-142
“Neutron repulsion,” The Apeiron Journal 19, 123-150 (2012) http://tinyurl.com/7t5ojrn
Correction:
3. AGW (anthropologic global warming from CO2) is invalid.
Testing
I’ve just attended a very interesting conference given by 2 NASA’s veterans at ESA, and dealing with “Lessons learned”. 42 cases of mission failures (Launchers, Satellites, aircrafts…) have been presented and analyzed, in order to stick out the key lessons and management rules aiming at preventing such kind of failures, and thus ensuring mission or project success.
Among those lessons & rules the 2 following ones are fully applicable to the climate science, but also provide a very interesting insight about the “49ers” background and motivations.
(1) Test Test and Test : All NASA’s (numerous i.e. more than 90%) successes have been built onto rigorous and extensive development, validation and qualification test programs.
(2) IV&V : Simulation cannot provide any evidence or validation material unless it is strongly anchored onto real life i.e. onto experimental data and/or observations. This implies that any model / simulation have to be subjected to a rigorous IV&V process, according to NASA own standards.
The crux of the matter is that climate science mainly relies on very complex models & simulations, with only poor attention paid to the observations, and that none of the nice climate models has ever pass any IV&V process.
NASA’s veterans perfectly know about those huge shortfalls in the climate science, and they have been educated in the culture of testing and of rigorous validation processes, as key drivers for ensuring missions’ safety and success. This is exactly why they cannot support any longer those of their younger colleagues who are bringing NASA into disrepute by applying such poor processes and forgetting the tremendous experience that NASA has accumulated along the past 60 years.