by Judith Curry
The warning signals from the planet are clear. Now is the moment for our commu- nity to adopt the rallying cry of sea kayakers confronted with conditions too challenging to handle alone: “Time to raft up!”. – Chris Rapley
Chris Rapley’s recent Commentary in Nature has been mentioned on the previous thread Activate(?) your science. Time to raft up: Climate scientists should learn from naysayers and pull together to get their message across. Some excerpts and comments:
Rapley defines the problem as follows:
Evidently, the voices of dismissal are trumping the messages of science. A significant factor in their success is an effective communications strategy, which the climate-science community has yet to learn or use. An initiative to redress the balance is crucial if policy-making is to be based on evidence, and if the risks of further prevarication are to be made clear. As politi- cal scientists Daniel Sarewitz, Roger Pielke Jr and others have pointed out, from the perspective of policy, “We know enough!”.
JC comment: ‘We know enough’ for exactly what? To understand what the scope of the risk is? To understand what decisions are best to minimize the risk, in the context of other confounding socio/economic/political issues? Heck no, we don’t know enough. We are operating under conditions of deep uncertainty.
So wherein lies the problem? Rapley seems to ‘get it’ to some extent:
A first step is to understand how the dismissal of climate change is tenable when the evidence to the contrary is so extensive and compelling. Much has been published on this by social scientists and psychologists, but that does not mean that it has been read, understood or assimilated by the climate-science community.
Part of the problem is that researchers are busy and overwhelmed by information. A lead author on one section of the upcoming report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) told me that more than 800 papers had been published on her subject in a single year, leaving little time to read more broadly. It is understandable, therefore, that there is a tendency to skip material from unfamiliar fields and authors. But to be of value to society, climate scientists need to master ways to communicate their results effectively.
JC comment: Rapley makes this comment in context of climate scientists ignoring the social science research. But it is deeper than that, in the sense the sense that very few climate scientists have the breadth to really assess the broader aspects of the science, and accept the judgements of their ‘peers’ (e.g. the IPCC) on topics outside their personal areas of expertise. Which leads to Michael Kelly’s ‘invisible hand’ whereby second order evidence (i.e. who supports a particular perspective) becomes more important than the primary scientific evidence.
There are also some uncomfortable truths to confront. The unauthorized release of e-mails from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, in November 2009 — known as ‘Climategate’ — has left an aftermath that still needs to be cleared up. The climate-science leadership, fixated on delivering more of the same research and seemingly oblivious to changing realities, has lost its way. In my opinion, the community is in denial about these issues. We climate scientists — from disciplines both natural and social — need to align our purpose, re-establish our legitimacy, identify and understand our target audiences and decide how best to express our message. Above all, we need to develop a new, coherent initiative to engage collectively and actively in the political and public discourse.
JC comment: I agree 100% with the bolded text.
In terms of a solution, Rapley provides the following thoughts:
So what is a climate scientist to do? First, we must recognize and accept that, whether in discussion with decision-makers or the public, we are inextricably embroiled in the policy debate. The science is complex, the projections are uncertain and the social implications are great. We need to respond to questions that go beyond facts, such as ‘What does this mean for me?’and ‘What are our options?’.
JC comment: the problem is that scientists spent decades insisting that there is only one option.
As Roger Pielke Jr discusses in his book The Honest Broker, we need to choose the role that is most appropriate to a given situation and make that choice clear. To draw attention to the risk to food supplies of an increased probability of extreme weather events is to act as an ‘issue advocate’. To lay out the climatic consequences on the global food supply of the broadest possible range of mitigation alternatives is to adopt the role of an ‘honest broker’. There are dangers. To stray into policy-advocacy or activism is to step beyond the domain of science, and risks undermining legitimacy through the perception — or reality — of a loss of impartiality.
When faced with implacable disagreement, non-experts must decide who to believe. The issue of trust is therefore paramount. And therein lies a problem.
I propose that, as a public statement of our ideals, climate scientists should agree and commit to principles of professional conduct — possibly through an equivalent of the medical profession’s Hippocratic oath. These principles would cover standards of work, issues of impartiality, transparency of process or accessibility of data, and a willingness to engage positively with non-specialists.
JC comment: Now THIS is interesting. However, my concern is that much of the climate science community is so far gone that they can’t get past their perceived imperative to shoot down ‘deniers’ as the apogee of responsible professional conduct.
The climate-dismissive think tanks and organizations have been effective because they have understood and put into practice the insights of social science. They deliver simple messages that are crafted to agree with specific value sets and world views. Their flow of commentary is persistent, consistent and backed up with material that provides deeper arguments. Their narrative is spread and amplified by sympathetic sectors of the media and politics that they have nurtured in person.
JC comment: that is indeed an insightful analysis.
In contrast, the climate-science community delivers messages to policy-makers and the public that are often highly technical and detailed. These tend to be fragmented, emphasize uncertainty and are oblivious to the emotions and associations that they trigger. There remains a widespread reliance on the flawed information-deficit model, in which non-experts are viewed by experts as empty vessels who can simply be filled with the ‘truth’.
JC comment: I haven’t come across too many mainstream climate scientists that are over emphasizing uncertainty. The persistent attempt to paint weather extremes as being caused by global warming indicates that they are indeed quite savvy about appealing to emotions associated with each weather disaster.
Regarding the vast body of evidence on which all climate scientists agree, we need to offer a narrative that is persistent, consistent and underpinned by compelling background material. We need to appreciate that the things we climate scientists don’t agree on — nuanced disputes at the frontier of our field — are not relevant to policy-making other than to define the current limits of what we know. And we must engage with newspaper editors and politicians in person.
JC comment: now here is where I have some substantial disagreements. Its not just about disagreement among scientists, is about having credible estimates of our uncertainty and the humility to acknowledge that there are large areas of ignorance. Understanding uncertainty and areas of ignorance is essential for effective decision making under conditions of deep uncertainty. And the success of the ‘dismissives’ is not contingent on the ‘dismissive’ scientists themselves engaging with newspaper editors and politicians, but rather the boundary organizations such as think tanks and advocacy groups. So getting more scientists personally engaged with newspaper editors and politicians is a scary thought, unless they pay attention to the issues I raised in the previous post Activate(?) your science.
Some interesting insights on Rapley’s piece from Watch the Deniers:
We have done all that can be done to explain the science of climate change and there are many excellent reference sites to which people can venture if they so decide. What we need to talk about are the value question as it is the answers to these that will define who we will become and how our society will look and function.
It’s understandable that people would be uncomfortable with such unknowns. We need to be part of a community with shared values to feel content. In the “debate” over climate change, we hear predictions of how the future might look and how foolish “deniers” are for not understanding science proven over a 150 years ago.
This isn’t only counter-productive, it also dehumanises the issue completely. The global climate has changed many times before without human influence or consequence. This time it is personal. We need to make our debates and communications just as personal if we are to do the best we can for future generations.
JC comment: As the climate community continues to struggle with the ‘communication’ issue and the failure of their ‘call to action,’ we are slowly seeing some insights develop within this community. As far as this type of article goes, Rapley shows some insights.
Rhetoric
And while we are on this general topic, lets revisit Joe Romm’s new book. Last week I wrote:
I just spotted this new post over at RealClimate, written by Mann, entitled “Language Intelligence,” about a new book of this title by Joe Romm. Well I haven’t read the book (don’t intend to), but it sounds like lessons in propaganda to me.
When I think of Joe Romm and ‘rhetoric’, the following phrases come to mind:
- ‘makes me want to put my head in a vise’
- ‘the most debunked scientist on the planet’
Both of these make me cringe. But back in the days when I was in close communication with Romm and reading early drafts of his book ‘Hell and High Water,’ I recall that he had a chapter in the book on ‘rhetoric’, which was sort of interesting. So I went to the amazon.com site, and took a closer look. Amazon’s ‘Click to LOOK INSIDE’ feature provides a substantial sampling of the book. It provides interesting historical (and current examples of powerful rhetoric. And he has clearly delved into the scholarship on rhetoric, and the book includes extensive endnotes.
The climate blogosphere dittoheads are gushing about Joe Romm’s book.
One of the reviewers at amazon.com (Lenz) makes this interesting statement;
Romm gives conflicting goals for his writing the book. At location 2033, he writes:
“My goal has been to help you become more persuasive and less seducible. If you have already begun to speak differently and listen differently after reading this book, then I have succeeded. If you are wittier on Twitter and have headier headlines, then I have succeeded.”
That goal is at best neutral in the climate change debate, since “you” in the above paragraph can be readers on either side. It might actually be an own goal. The opposition pays more attention to these matters in the first place and therefore may be expected to profit more from the excellent teaching in this book.
In contrast, the last paragraph of the “Afterword” reads:
“I did not write this book expecting to end the debasement of the political language, but rather to give rhetorical ammunition to those fighting the good fight in the face of the fiercest foes.”
That would indicate that Romm is not trying to help everybody (including fossil fuel propaganda peddlers), but only climate activists.
Is such a thing possible? Can anyone write a book that improves the “language intelligence” of climate activists while leaving that of their opponents unchanged?
It could be done. All one would need to do is apply the principles developed in this book to climate activism. For starters, show what the most effective “extended metaphor” or “frame” for the issue is.
JC comment: until they get to the point bolded above, this whole strategy isn’t going to work
And finally, Romm has just posted an article on the ‘language intelligence’ (or lack thereof) of Mitt Romney.
Funding climate research and paying for the IPCC cost more than the budget of many medium sized nations. The problem with climate science is not in communication, it is in the second word; ‘science’.
If the scientists who are attempting to change the global political/economic system has faith in their work, they would not need to lie, cheat and mislead.
As it happens there is more ‘fudge’ in their work than in a confectionery factory.
Agree, and the mainstream science media has been too complicit in all of it. Nature, Science, etc demonstrate clear unscientific pro-warming bias.
Yes, indeed, the cancerous growth that started on government science as a seemingly unimportant falsehood in 1946 expanded to include the UN’s IPCC, the US NAS, the UK’s RS, Nature, Science,JGR, PNAS, MPRS, etc. before surfacing as Climategate in Nov 2009 !
http://joannenova.com.au/global-warming/climategate-30-year-timeline/
In 1998 their ability “to lie, cheat and mislead” was even captured by a CSPAN video recording of NASA belatedly releasing isotope data collected during the 1995Galileo probe of Jupiter – a space flight that directly cost US taxpayers ~ $ 1,000,000,000 !
The voices of dismissal are trumping the messages of pseudo-science with observations: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7Ln-HZsfnk&feature=em-uploademail
Yeah, Doc, and not even nice enough to invite kids in for tours.
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I don’t agree that this is the main problem. I think scientists are focused on providing the wrong information for policy decisions. I think what Nordhaus’s Book “A Question of Balance” [1] does is provide guidance to scientists as to what information is needed. Scientists seem to spend most of their time trying to reduce the uncertainty of climate sensitivity. But they’ve been at that for well overt 20 years and making little progress at reducing the uncertainty. Meanwhile, they seem to be doing little to reduce the uncertainty of the far more important parameter (for reducing the uncertainty in the economic cost-benefit analyses): the damage function.
I suggest, the information being churned out by scientists is not focused towards meeting the needs of policy makers.
[1] Nordhaus (2008) “A Question of Balance” http://nordhaus.econ.yale.edu/Balance_2nd_proofs.pdf
It’s a bit amazing to learn a Romm whose blogging style is “diuretic diatribe” thinks he can give useful advice on rhetoric.
diuretic diatribe, good one :)
Go Team!!
Is that the same as “verbal diarrhea”?
If a tree of dismissal falls in the wilderness, how come everyone hears it?
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Will learn to proof read….
‘The overall slow decrease of upwelling SW flux from the mid-1980’s until the end of the 1990’s and subsequent increase from 2000 onwards appear to caused, primarily, by changes in global cloud cover (although there is a small increase of cloud optical thickness after 2000) and is confirmed by the ERBS measurements.’ http://isccp.giss.nasa.gov/projects/browse_fc.html
‘In summary, although there is independent evidence for decadal changes in TOA radiative fluxes over the last two decades, the evidence is equivocal. Changes in the planetary and tropical TOA radiative fluxes are consistent with independent global ocean heat-storage data, and are expected to be dominated by changes in cloud radiative forcing. To the extent that they are real, they may simply reflect natural low-frequency variability of the climate system.’ R4 s 3.4.4.1
There is much confounding eviidence – not only the TOA flux which suggests that all warming in the satellite era was cloud radiative forcing – and the ability to gloss over confounding informattion shows a mind set in its ways.
There will continue to be confounding evidence. The models pretend that the climate is based on a neat tidy sphere that is in perfect balance. The majority of the heat capacity much greater solar insulation are on the southern half while the lower thermal mass upper half generates the temperature anomalies. They start off comparing apples and oranges and have not quit yet.
With the southern oceans getting well over 40Wm-2 more forcing in winter (your summer), the rule of thumb cloud albedo impact is hilarious. thermal mass wise, the Earth would look like a jumbo egg with the big end in the south, while they fiddle fart with the small end data thinking they are doing something.
There are oscillations because there is a thermal imbalance built into the system causing those “unforced variations”.
You should take Curry up on the offer to write a post on land use and environmental impact, BTW.
Practically all the movers and shakers are concentrated in the northern hemisphere hence the focus on it.
Robert I Ellison, climate scientists now appreciate that we live upon a planet whose dynamics is deterministically predictable upon a time-scale of days-to-weeks, turbulent upon a time-scale of years to decades, and predictable again — in accord with principles of energy balance and entropy flow — upon generational time-scales.
That is why your post’s implication of uncertainty is just plain wrong, eh? :shock: :sad: :cry: :!:
We are coming to realize that climate-science doesn’t need to “raft up” … climate-science needs a bigger boat. :shock: :sad: :cry: :!:
This is common sense … mighty sobering common sense … eh Robert I Ellison? :shock: :sad: :cry: :!:
Fan is the quintessential ‘climate communicator’. He deliberate ignores rational points made by others and distracts using unimportant information and eye catching crap.
C&C keep haulin’ on big line.
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John Sidles just wants to stand out. From the bowtie to the blue & yellow bling in his comments. Evolution has produced others like him. Like this:
http://tinyurl.com/8m6gemy
‘Recent scientific evidence shows that major and widespread climate changes have occurred with startling speed. For example, roughly half the north Atlantic warming since the last ice age was achieved in only a decade, and it was accompanied by significant climatic changes across most of the globe. Similar events, including local warmings as large as 16°C, occurred repeatedly during the slide into and climb out of the last ice age. Human civilizations arose after those extreme, global ice-age climate jumps. Severe droughts and other regional climate events during the current warm period have shown similar tendencies of abrupt onset and great persistence, often with adverse effects on societies.’
‘Abrupt climate changes were especially common when the climate system was being forced to change most rapidly. Thus, greenhouse warming and other human alterations of the earth system may increase the possibility of large, abrupt, and unwelcome regional or global climatic events. The abrupt changes of the past are not fully explained yet, and climate models typically underestimate the size, speed, and extent of those changes. Hence, future abrupt changes cannot be predicted with confidence, and climate surprises are to be expected’ Emphasis mine.
‘Researchers first became intrigued by abrupt climate change when they discovered striking evidence of large, abrupt, and widespread changes preserved in paleoclimatic archives. Interpretation of such proxy records of climate—for example, using tree rings to judge occurrence of droughts or gas bubbles in ice cores to study the atmosphere at the time the bubbles were trapped—is a well-established science that has grown much in recent years. This chapter summarizes techniques for studying paleoclimate and highlights research results. The chapter concludes with examples of modern climate change and techniques for observing it. Modern climate records include abrupt changes that are smaller and briefer than in paleoclimate records but show that abrupt climate change is not restricted to the distant past.’
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10136&page=R1
Although the headline on my Quadrant article (http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2010/02/ellison) ‘everyone is wrong’ was the editor rather than myself (as I did point out) – there is a sense in which everyone is wrong including myself. I have nil confidence that I understand even a fraction of the complexities involved or have imaginatively created a conceptual model that captures even partially the immense and dynamic energies cascading through the powerful mechanisms of the Earth’s climate system. So I anticipate surprises and can’t really agree that Fan has a transcendent knowledge that allows prediction – indeed I think he should broaden his knowledge base. One of the things that seems surprising to many is that the world is not warming for another decade or three. I emphasise that this is not prediction – but emerges from the current state of low frequency climate variability.
‘In principle, changes in climate on a wide range of timescales can also arise from variations within the climate system due to, for example, interactions between the oceans and the atmosphere; in this document, this is referred to as “internal climate”. Such internal variability can occur because the climate is an example of a chaotic system: one that can exhibit complex unpredictable internal variations even in the absence of the climate forcings discussed in the previous paragraph.’ (The Royal Society Climate change: a summary of the science I September 2010)
Quoting broadly form the IPCC, the NAS and The Royal Society seems insufficient to bring Fan and friends kicking and screaming into the 21st century. It is a shame because continued increases in emissions as economies grow is a risk in the dynamical system of Earth’s climate. The rational responses seem both simple and inevitable. It includes reducing black carbon and tropospheric ozone and increasing organic in agricultural soils. This has other benefits in increasing agricultural productivity by 70% by 2050. But it also includes environmental conservation and restoration, safe water and sanitation, health and education.
As I indicated in this comment – http://judithcurry.com/2012/08/30/activate-your-science/#comment-234589 – there is a clamour of issues (how’s that for a collective Beth?) in the public sphere competing for attention. Some fundamentally important issues fall off the radar due to a collective obsession with ‘global warming’. The thinking that emerges is one dimensional where in the real world the need is for pragmatic policy with multiple objectives and which builds resilience in both natural systems and human societies.
Fan is very much a case in point. The inability to see past a fixed idea limits the debate to the inconsequential and hinders real progress.
I will see what I can do to expand the comment.
Why don’t you see what you can do to edit it so it makes some sense. Reading it is like trying to find the way through a fog.
You might have to take it up with the NAS or The Royal Society – either that or read some of these sources and go through the difficult process of learning. I know it makes your rain ache.
Robert, I find your writing hard to read, but I think my comment was rude, and I apologize.
Is shoving the climate really hard, like doubling CO2, much more likely to cause these abrupt changes?
Jim D, Nudge, CO2 is a nudge not a shove.
http://redneckphysics.blogspot.com/2012/09/frame-of-reference.html
Of course that depends on how you look at things :)
A nudge is as good as a shove when you’re on the edge of a cliff. And it is a hefty nudge, being several times stronger than the variations that produced the LIA and MWP.
JimD, that kinda depends on the direction of the nudge :) Especially since the MWP and LIA were only regional events, doncha know.
The system is characterised by sensitive dependence to control variables – and this could include carbon dioxide. Hence the risk of abrupt change. This was stated by the NAS in their publication, the WHOI and myself for what it is worth. But the cause of warming in the satellite era is still cloud cover change and the rational responses are the path of pragmatic policy with multiple objectives.
Jim D
First of all, there is no sound basis for thinking we are on the edge of a cliff.
That’s simple fear mongering.
Then, as far as “doubling CO2” is concerned, I’ve pointed out to tempterrain on the “CE at 2” site why it is highly unlikely that a doubling of today’s CO2 level will occur over this century, as it implies that the per capita CO2 generation will increase 4.5-fold from today to 2100 (it only increased by 10% from 1990 to today).
http://judithcurry.com/2012/09/01/climate-etc-at-2/#comment-235031
Finally, even if CO2 concentrations did reach twice the estimated “pre-industrial” level, this would not result in an alarming increase of global temperature, as I showed tempterrain.
Relax and rejoice.
Max
Lol. Chef Hydro, in as little as ten years, the abrupt baby. The earth is like that TV show about girls who did not know they were PG until labor started. A libertarian mother earth is hatching a just-in-time, abrupt baby before the dire predictions of the kooky leftist climate scientists can come true. Not just before 2100, maybe before 2020. That’s on the edge, baby.
Robert Ellison
An article exploring aspects of chaos theory and abrupt climate change has been posted here…
Comes up.. not available.
Isn’t available on that site anymore – so the Quadrant link is broken. The topic is covered here – http://judithcurry.com/2011/02/03/nonlinearities-feedbacks-and-critical-thresholds/ – much better I would think. The paper addressed is available and is an easy read.
Scenario 1: Conveyor slows down within next two decades.
Such a scenario could quickly and markedly cool the North Atlantic region, causing disruptions in global economic activity. These disruptions may be exacerbated because the climate changes occur in a direction opposite to what is commonly expected, and they occur at a pace that makes adaptation difficult.
Scenario 2: Conveyor slows down a century from now.
In such a scenario, cooling of the North Atlantic region may partially or totally offset the major effects of global warming in this region. Thus, the climate of the North Atlantic region may rapidly return to one that more resembles today’s—even as other parts of the world, particularly less-developed regions, experience the unmitigated brunt of global warming. If the Conveyor subsequently turns on again, the “deferred” warming may be delivered in a decade.
Congrats on actually reading something. Are you aying that there are risks in a dynamically complex Earth system? Well – duh.
Scenarios are of course only that. ‘A final clue emerged. Analysing satellite and in-situ ocean data, the researchers said a large amount of pack ice and fresh water was exported into the northwest Labrador Sea in the summer of 2007. This froze the following winter, significantly extending the ice edge farther offshore. As a consequence, cold air from the North American continent travelled farther over ice, instead of warmer ocean waters, remaining cold until it hit warmer open water in the middle of Labrador Sea. The resulting temperature contrast helped trigger the sinking process.
The scientists noted “that the increased liquid and frozen freshwater flux into the Labrador Sea was probably tied to the large export of sea ice from the Arctic Ocean that contributed to the record minimum in sea-ice extent observed in the summer of 2007. Ironically, this disappearance of Arctic sea ice, which has been linked to global warming, may have helped trigger the return of deep wintertime [water sinking] to the North Atlantic.’
http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/viewArticle.do?id=54347&archives=true
Let’s try another scenario. ‘Although Arctic sea ice has been trending downward since we started monitoring it with satellites, 2007 saw a sudden and dramatic drop, one that the ice has never really recovered from. All but one year since then has seen ice minima below previous trends…
With the exception of 2009, all recent years have seen exceptional summertime ice melt. This has a dramatic effect on the local conditions. Over the summer, the open ocean absorbs far more light than would have been reflected by the ice, allowing it to retain heat. In the autumn, it returns some of that heat to the atmosphere, warming the air above the Arctic. This erases a lot of the difference between the Arctic and more temperate latitudes, which makes it very difficult to form a polar vortex. In short, the missing ice forces us into a negative Arctic Oscillation, and the increased likelihood of cold winters in various places across the Northern Hemisphere. That in turn causes a weaker, meandering jet stream that tends to stay stuck in specific patterns for longer.’ http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/06/colder-winters-may-be-new-normal-due-to-melting-arctic-ice/
Or – ‘When the Sun’s magnetic output is low, winters in Europe tend to be cooler than average – whereas higher output corresponds to warmer winters. That is the conclusion of a new study by physicists in the UK and Germany that looked at the relationship between winter temperatures in England and the strength of the Sun’s magnetic emissions over the last 350 years. The group predicts that, global warming notwithstanding, Europe is likely to continue to experience cold winters for many years to come.’
http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/article/news/42299
Maybe both. I wish I knew what might trigger a collapse in thermohaline circulation and runaway ice and snow feedbacks that will plunge the world into a new glacial in as little as a decade.
I read it a long time ago. That’s why I laugh at Chef Hydro every time he references WHOI.
I laugh at Capt a Roo and his brazenly manipulative sockpuppet antics. Interesting that he would be rewarded for those shenanihans with the invitation to a top-level post. I say go ahead, as it would reinforce the trend into a downward crackpot spiral
Go team!
And yet neither of you are capable of making a rational argument at all. JCH quotes a couple of scenarios from the WHOI but for what purpose is unknown. I quote from the NAS, The Royal Society, the environmental research web, Mike Lockwood in arstechnica (rather thought the original paper might be a little difficult for him), IPCC AR4, NASA/GISS, etc. etc. I thought he might want a discussion but no – just a snark.
Webby does his best to be as abusive and content less as possible – dropping in with the silliest snarks at the slightest provocation. Whan he is not lauding himself for a facility to fit curves in both a theory and data less zone. It would surprise me if he ever said anything that was technically correct – even when limited to the simplest aspects of radiative physics. There are many mad theorists on the internet and webby is up there with the best. Such as the atmosphere warms the oceans by transmitting SW.
There are many others – he is certainly an embarrassment to team warmist.
Who are these people and what do they want from me? What do they want in general? It is a mystery. I think I will resume my attitude of profound contempt.
Robert I Ellison | September 2, 2012 at 3:37 am | Reply
“With the exception of 2009, all recent years have seen exceptional summertime ice melt. This has a dramatic effect on the local conditions. Over the summer, the open ocean absorbs far more light than would have been reflected by the ice, allowing it to retain heat.”
That is not accurate. First of all the albedo of water rises sharply as angle of incidence increases:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7f/Water_reflectivity.jpg
The low sun angle inside the arctic circle makes shortwave insignificant:
http://oceanworld.tamu.edu/resources/ocng_textbook/chapter05/Images/Fig5-7.htm
So yer basically all wet about the albedo difference between water and ice having any significant effect inside the Arctic circle.
In fact just the opposite to what you image happens in reality. Latent and radiative heat loss is effectively blocked by ice. So the warm water coming up from the tropics on the conveyor can dump heat far more efficiently through open water.
Think of Arctic sea ice like the thermostat in the typical automotive water cooling system. As the water gets warmer the thermostat opens up wider to allow more water to reach the radiator. This is the same as warmer water from the tropics melting ice which widens the path to the radiator or cooler water allowing more ice to form and thus restricting the path to the radiator.
This does inspire confidence in your thinking, Robert.
David,
‘Earth’s climate system is complex, often responding nonlinearly to both natural and anthropogenic forcings. Some of the feedback processes in these nonlinear responses are straightforward and have predictable consequences. Other feedbacks are less intuitive, occasionally leading to surprises that can catch society unprepared. The severe winter weather experienced in parts of the United States and Europe during the past three years appears to be one of the surprises resulting from enhanced warming of the climate system. New observational and modelling studies (Francis and Vavrus,2012; Liu et al., 2012) provide strong evidence linking the recent decline in Arctic summer sea ice extent to more frequent winter outbreaks of extreme cold and snowfall in the Northern Hemisphere’s middle latitudes.’
The statement you refer to was labelled a scenario and contained within quotation marks. Far from wanting to defend arstechnica – I gave 2 conflicting scenarios on influences on the Arctic Oscillation in the context of connections of wind and ice to thermohaline circulation. The billion dollar question – what will cause temperatures to drop 10’s of degrees in places in as little as a decade. Big question – what’s the answer?
But you are grossly misled by simplistic and dogmatic thinking. Obviously there are seasonal differences in insolation that need to be taken into account and a simple annual average serves no purpose at all. The rest of it makes no sense at all merely an oversimplified, ignorant narrative.
I generally read statements like think ‘of Arctic sea ice like the thermostat in the typical automotive water cooling system’ – and move on before reading any more. And in fact did so this time.
But it is generally what I take to be rudeness I most object to. In future if you want a response I suggest you drop the personal slurs on my thinking. Better yet – take your worthless comment and p_ss off.
Cordially
Robert I Ellison
Tis true, the atmosphere transmits visible radiation. The atmosphere has a window with a wavelength range where it transmits (i.e. does not absorb) electromagnetic energy. So the “SW” radiation that penetrates the ocean does incorporate as heat, and thus leads to a rise in temperature as it tries to reach a steady state.
The Bush Skippy certainly does not understand basic physics very well. He thinks this is some “mad theory” as opposed to textbook knowledge. He lashes out in anger over his deficiency in being able to separate fact and fantasy.. That is too bad, and so sad.
Perhaps it is the sun that warms the oceans rather than the atmosphere as webby claims. It is a matter of fitting the actual physics into an unphysical idea that heat diffuses from the atmosphere to the oceans using an equation with an ‘effective diffusion’ factor. He talks abusively but has very little understanding of even the basics of atmospheric physics let alone wider knowledge of hydrology, oceanography, chemistry, biology, etc. It is a fact that electrical engineering is an inadequate basis for understanding climate.
Chief, I think Webby will have to do some revision here soon. He has seriously underestimated the southern ocean heat sink potential. Surprisingly, simply comparing the standard deviations of the individual LOTI regions would make most take notice. All that weather down there surely moves a lot of heat around.
Well *THAT’S* your problem, Robert I Ellison! :) :) :)
You require a better appreciation that the physics of decadal-scale turbulence are such that
(1) The First Law Energy is strictly conserved, and
(2) The Second Law Entropy strictly increases.
The Two Laws apply widely in systems engineering. They explain why (for example) the flight-control computers of a 787 are based upon accurate flight laws (as they are called), even though the airflow over the wings and through the engines is fully turbulent. Amazing! :) :grin: :lol” :!:
Similarly, the flow of heat through our planet’s ecosystems is fully turbulent … and yet upon generational scales, we are learning our planet’s “flight laws.”
One of which is: “Don’t let the CO2 levels get too high: the planet will not recover.”
Which is like: “Don’t let a 787 get too slow, too low: the aircraft will not recover.”
It’s not complicated, Robert I Ellison! :!: :!: :!:
Almost all flows are turbulent – but dynamical complexity or deterministic chaos if you will – is a different thing. Turbulent flow is said to be described quite well by the Navier-Stokes partial differential equations. The PDE are chaotic as Edward Lorenz discovered in his famous 1960’s convection model. That is – the solutions diverge exponentially over time within the bounds of feasible values for the many parameters that are poorly understood or approximately estimated. It is the reason why weather forecasts are possible only for a week or so at most. Climate models have for the same reason an irreducible imprecision that could only be evaluated in a systematically designed model family.
‘Prediction of weather and climate are necessarily uncertain: our observations of weather and climate are uncertain, the models into which we assimilate this data and predict the future are uncertain, and external effects such as volcanoes and anthropogenic greenhouse emissions are also uncertain. Fundamentally, therefore, therefore we should think of weather and climate predictions in terms of equations whose basic prognostic variables are probability densities ρ(X,t) where X denotes some climatic variable and t denoted time. In this way, ρ(X,t)dV represents the probability that, at time t, the true value of X lies in some small volume dV of state space. Prognostic equations for ρ, the Liouville and Fokker-Plank equation are described by Ehrendorfer (this volume). In practice these equations are solved by ensemble techniques, as described in Buizza (this volume).’ (Predicting Weather and Climate – Palmer and Hagedorn eds – 2006)
All very simple Fan of more BS?
I have clearly stated any number of times that emissions should and have gone so as to outline numerous methods and technologies for doing so. Energy technology and farming will be fundamentally very different in 2050. Regardless – most warming in the satellite era was the result of changes in cloud radiative forcing and there are implications for the future evolution in climate in this. Uncertainty rules on timec]scales from days to years – and you don’t understand you are sadly and grosly misinformed.
That is – emissions should be reduced. I’m a little tired. Bye Fan – it’s been swell.
‘Recent scientific evidence shows that major and widespread climate changes have occurred with startling speed. For example, roughly half the north Atlantic warming since the last ice age was achieved in only a decade..’
Not sure what your point is JCH. Do you ever have one or do you just have a perpetual snark on? Drop in with a silly comment just for the hell of it?
There is no irony – intentional or otherwis – Joshua. Sarcasm perhaps. Learn to recognise the difference and don’t simply reflexively repeat your foolishness.
Chef Hydro – I sincerely do think you can boil water.
@rie
I think that you’re supposed to read JCH’s remarks and say to yourself:
‘Omigosh that sounds terrible and scary and frightening and may even be unprecedented. I can feel damp underwear already. How should a sensible man react to this truly appalling news?
I know, I will immediately suspend all my critical faculties and do whatever JCJand his friends tell me to do . And its such an important mission they are on that it would be rude of me to ask the to justify their doomsday claims or show their data and methods. I’ll just keep quiet and do exactly what I’m told. After all they are Climate Scientists!
And mere mortals such as me can’t even begin to understand the heights of intellectual achievement that they have reached, nor that the could reach so low as to explain it to me in simple understandable terms or answer simple questions.’
Did you do that yet, or have you not yet read the memo? Its the one entitled ‘Attention Earthlings’ and it comes from the Intergalactic Program for predicting Civilisation Collapse (IPCC)
Lati,
It is the cryptic nature of the remarks. We are meant to divine the meaning but all I get is a sense of self importance. It is more clearly a snark rather than a serious contribution to the discussion. I quote the science and we get a comment about boiling water. Do you think it is an attempt at Delphic obscurity – a prophecy of boiling oceans as warming continues?
It is all very pointless.
Cheers
@RIE
‘Contributor’ JCH does nothing more than illustrate the truth of the old proverb that it is better to keep schtumm and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and prove it.
Robert I Ellison | September 1, 2012 at 4:59 pm said: ”suggests that all warming in the satellite era was cloud radiative forcing ”
Robert, ”all warming” is a loaded comment – there was NO any warming!!! Stop hallucinating!
‘Cloud radiating forcing” is EMPTY TALK. WATER VAPOR IS not a GLOBAL warming gas, same as CO2! .All proven beyond any reasonable doubt:http://globalwarmingdenier.wordpress.com/2012/07/20/water-vapor/
OSTRICH TACTIC BACKFIRES ON THE END. Your fear of the teal profs will give you insomnia, unless you are prepared to confront it.. Be fair to yourself and learn some truth – you don’t have to use truth; but is good for you, to know more than IPCC’s drivel
I have no fear apart from engaging with monstrously deluded.
Hard to keep track of the “own goals”.
I keep track of the own goals with the climate clown page. Robert also has the Idiot Tracker.
I count 30+ own goals by crackpots pretending they have unlocked the secrets behind AGW. And that is just among those that comment on Climate Etc.
Is that not right to do that? Does it make you angry? It’s not right to get angry. Have a laugh. Own goals are fun to watch. It’s only sports after all. Why not enjoy the crackpottery?
One needs some levity on the raft.
Webster, “I count 30+ own goals by crackpots pretending they have unlocked the secrets behind AGW.” Now wait, I unlocked the secrets of the Ice ages, AGW just got in the way :)
With 30 differing theories, we should be seeing 30 factorial arguments in the giant clown cage match. We don’t because they are each lost in their little world, or belong to team skeptic and working together to increase FUD.
It’s the only kind you’ve ever scored, or will.
Dr. Curry, I don’t think you grasp Rapley’s point of view. He already believes in the integrity of the CAGW pushing community. He just wants to put lipstick on the pig by giving lip (stick) service to this oath, and help them to regain credibility they keep throwing away with their ongoing behavior.
The IPCC keeps singing about how transparent they are. The Thompson’s point to a few scraps of data and call it complete archiving. GISS is forced to open their code appear multiple embarrassments. Gergis archives the data used, but not the data screened out and calls it sufficient. The list goes on.
The only shred of hope in his statement is this:
And again, they will tell you they already do that, with RealKlimate and SS.
The IPCC keeps singing about how transparent they are. The Thompson’s point to a few scraps of data and call it complete archiving. GISS is forced to open their code appear multiple embarrassments. Gergis archives the data used, but not the data screened out and calls it sufficient. The list goes on.
Where the AIRS data? Top and bottom of troposphere still not released -why not? What they did release was the conclusion, that to their astonishment carbon dioxide was not at all well-mixed, but lumpy, and, that carbon dioxide couldn’t be playing any significant part in global warming.
For an ‘industry’ that is wasting billions of taxpayer money on promoting solutions to their unproven problem why haven’t they enough money to fetch accurate measured data?
http://co2insanity.com/2010/08/08/satellite-gate/
http://co2insanity.com/2011/03/04/as-another-nasa-climate-satellite-explodes-%E2%80%93-conspiracy-or-incompetence/
The climate-dismissive think tanks and organizations have been effective because they have understood and put into practice the insights of social science. They deliver simple messages that are crafted to agree with specific value sets and world views.
Yea:
I know there is pressure to present a nice tidy story as regards ‘apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the proxy data’ but in reality the situation is not quite so simple.
When protagonists for the policy outcomes of climate knowledge understand that humility is the key to to acceptance, then, and only then, will the milieu appreciate and accept their expertise. The arrogance shown by prophesying ‘we know best’ and ‘you must do this’ creates a wall of resentment in both political and public spheres.
It is a big pill climate scientists are asking mankind to swallow, for it to go down it needs to be coated in the sugar of peace. Labeling unbelieving patients as nut jobs and deniers would be a idiotic practice for any Medico.
The reality of climate scientists hubris is often displayed, allowing the public to contemplate the suggestion ‘they don’t have a clue what they are doing’.
A common thread in neuro-scientists speaking about knowledge of the human mind is the level of their humility. Invariably they say “we used to think ….. but now we believe….” and “we would like to know more about …”. They readily admit their limited understanding of our teeny weenie brains. Contrast that with the lack of humility by many in climate science. They could make me more receptive to their message if they showed a little more humility and emphasized how much they dont know.
Messages of science (IN PRIVATE):
We don’t understand cloud feedbacks. We don’t understand air-sea interactions. We don’t understand aerosol indirect effects. The list is long.
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=1079108576.txt&search=mwp
Voices of dismissal:
http://bit.ly/OsdxJf
whoops you left part out:
“I also think people need to come to understand that the scientific
>> uncertainties work both ways. We don’t understand cloud feedbacks.
>> We don’t understand air-sea interactions. We don’t understand
>> aerosol indirect effects. The list is long. Singer will say that
>> uncertainties like these mean models lack veracity and can safely be
>> ignored. What seems highly unlikely to me is that each of these
>> uncertainties is going to make the climate system more robust against
>> change. It is just as likely a priori that a poorly understood bit
>> of physics might be a positive as a negative feedback.”
The Climate System is Robust.
Flawed Climate Theory and flawed Climate Models that continue to project conditions that do not happen are not Robust.
Actual Data is well inside the range of the past ten thousand years!
THAT IS ROBUST!
When the sky is not falling and the data shows that the sky is not falling, we can very safely ignore the alarmists who say the sky is falling. Look at the data.
you are misinterpreting the data.
You are ignoring the data:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:2002/plot/rss/from:2002/trend
lolwot | September 1, 2012 at 6:35 pm | said: ”we don’t understand clouds feedback’
WRONG lolwot, you don’t want to understand, because doesn’t fit your theology. Clouds are like sun- umbrellas – intercept part of the sunlight high up during the day, where cooling is much more efficient – therefore = cooler on the ground during the day. At night clouds slow down cooling = warmer nights – overall those two factors cancel each other. Clear sky = hotter days / cooler nights (extreme temp) – cloudy = cooler days / warmer nights = milder temp. WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT TO KNOW? EVERYTHING IS KNOWN! Stop kidding yourself, same as the telescope http://globalwarmingdenier.wordpress.com/climate/
Here’s the rub:
Regarding the vast body of evidence on which all climate scientists agree, we need to offer a narrative that is persistent, consistent and underpinned by compelling background material.
What exactly do you agree on and where is the compelling background material to back it up?
Myrhh
The “vast body of evidence on which all climate scientists agree “ is NOT empirical scientific evidence, based on actual physical observations or reproducible experimentation, as is called for according to the scientific method.
Instead it is the result of model simulations backed by theoretical deliberations (ex. “our models can only explain it if we assume…”).
As a rational skeptic, I want to see the former. The latter does not impress me, because it is only as good as the assumptions fed into the models.
Max
Max,
Probably you need to come up with a new web identity if you wish to be considered a ‘rational skeptic’. Anyone who’s previously used terms like scam and hoax has blown their credibility in that regard.
Sorry, TT.
My skepticism of the CAGW claims is quite simple, as I have stated many times.
They are not supported by empirical scientific evidence.
Really quite simple actually.
Max
PS Since you are unable to cite such specific empirical scientific evidence, I assume that you accept the CAGW claims on some other basis: e.g. religious belief, argument from authority, psychological doomsday syndrome, political preference, etc.
As a rational skeptic, I require empirical scientific evidence.
I declare myself the winner….so there!!
The “vast body of evidence on which all climate scientists agree “ is NOT empirical scientific evidence, based on actual physical observations or reproducible experimentation, as is called for according to the scientific method.
Instead it is the result of model simulations backed by theoretical deliberations (ex. “our models can only explain it if we assume…”).
Which is all they can do because they don’t have any empirical show and tell which should be the first principles input into their models. How can anyone model climate change by excluding the Water Cycle? By excluding rain from the Carbon Life Cycle? They don’t even realise these are missing..
There’s never any internal coherence in their explanations because they don’t have real world around us empirical concepts of the physics involved.
For example, their basic atmosphere is empty space and not the heavy fluid gas ocean Air, and their molecules are ideal gas which go zipping at great speeds through this volumeless space thoroughly mixing as only the imaginary gas in an imaginary container in an imaginary lab can do – they can’t have any sound in their world. Their molecules have no weight so can defy gravity and no attraction so they can exclude separation of gases in Air and rain from the carbon cycle, and so maintain the illusion that carbon dioxide is thoroughly mixed and can’t be unmixed by its own molecular momentum in ideal gas diffusion. But then, they also give Brownian motion as an explanation for well-mixed! And they do this with completely straight faces.. And if these explanations are questioned they come back with ‘well-mixed’ by the turbulent atmospheric winds, having no idea of our wind system, in which this isn’t feasible, to get their claimed ‘thoroughly well-mixed and can’t be unmixed like separating out again ink from the water it’s been poured into’.
Chris Rapley’s “Regarding the vast body of evidence on which all climate scientists agree” comes from the same meme as the commentator on his piece says: “In the “debate” over climate change, we hear predictions of how the future might look and how foolish “deniers” are for not understanding science proven over a 150 years ago.”
What they are failing to appreciate is that there is no such critter, there is no such science proven that they can base their models on. That’s why they can’t show and tell, why they can never fetch all the supposed hundred years of empirical experiments, and why they play at models instead – inputing a bit here, tweaking there – they haven’t the faintest idea what they’re doing. They have zilch concept of the real world around us.
And so this meme believed by those like tempterrain, but whenever asked to produce this well-known proven science they fail to fetch. How can this be so difficult for them to find if it is all so well proven by experiments?
Instead what they’ll find if they do take up the challenge to go and fetch, is a mess of lies about its existence. All they can produce in way of experiment for any of their claims is the mind game of Spencer and the silly sleight of hand heating carbon dioxide of Gore/BBC. They don’t understand that the explanations they’ve been given for such examples as the bottle of scent opened in a classroom and ink poured into a glass of water are not the actual processes taking place, they get ideal gas and Brownian motion explanations because they have no convection in their empty space atmosphere of ideal gas. And so they don’t realise that convection has been excised so they can all play and argue about ‘heat transfer by radiation in empty space’.
Anyone who does explore how the very simple basics of real physics have been manipulated to create their imaginary world can’t help but see it must be a deliberate hoax, because it’s very clever tweaking and magicians sleights of hand by some/one who had to know real physics very well indeed to put together such a package. And kept going by the memes drummed into young minds through the education system and so ‘mindlessly’ regurgitated because these impossible physics properties and processes are now ingrained as if real world facts, such as ‘shortwave in longwave out’.
The problem is not that they are having difficulties communicating this supposedly well-known physics promoting AGW, it’s that they don’t realise they don’t have it to communicate.
Amen to that.
Talking about changing the message to be aimed at ‘target audiences’ aren’t we really admitting we are in the realm of more politics and marketing and less science? Or, is that kind of talk simple code for schoolteachers are so smart they have to dumb down their messsage so the rest of us see their superior intelligence and agree to be led by them?
Am I the only one tired of hearing alarmists continuously dream up new conspiracies they are supposed to be working against? At what time will the asylum nurses finally break the party?
When the vibrations from the projections shatter the walls.
================================
an’ de walls came tumblin’ down…
[But, hey, that wasn’t our Joshua.]
Romney communicated magnificently with the blank stare after the reference to the sea levels ceasing their rise. That blank stare said everything that needed to be said.
Maybe someone should post an article about Romm’s “language intelligence” when it comes to things that are truly important for a U.S. President to know.
Hmm…
Why is it that all the people who really know how to solve humankinds many problems are driving Taxi’s, cutting hair or researching climate?
We are used to relying on consensus of scientists to provide us with solidly based theories of things that cannot be proven (continental drift, evolution, …). The climate science community seeks the same kind of respect from the public but it does not have the solid basis of other areas. Furthermore, there is a greater difference. Our lives do not change fundamentally whether the theory of continental drift is correct or not. Our lives would change drastically if the alarmists are right and their advocated policies were adopted. To achieve an 80+% cut in carbon emissions by 2050, I guess we’d have to live in some primitive manner, not to mention continuous global economic depression. As a result, we demand even greater proof than for continental drift or evolution; yet the proof is not forthcoming.
True, true the only proof we have is about things that are not alarming at all and nothing we could do anything about anyway. “Which is riskier, trying to follow the climate-change rhetoric of the IPCC and Green groups by warping world economics and politics to deal (impossibly) with climate change, or facing up to the economics and politics of the real world. Completely changing the world’s economic and political basis for something that actually may not happen – and will most certainly not occur exactly as predicted – is for me a much, much riskier proposition, especially when one takes into account the fact that there will be benefits, as well as problems, from climate changes. Just remember that, if one takes all the models that exist for climate change, not just those of the IPCC, the error bar is for a change of between -2 degrees Celsius to nearly 7 degrees Celsius (a nine degree Celsius error bar in all). Even I think that climate is likely to vary (all the time) within such a range. It tells us nothing. It is a tautology.” (Philip Stott)
To achieve an 80+% cut in carbon emissions by 2050, I guess we’d have to live in some primitive manner, not to mention continuous global economic depression. As a result, we demand even greater proof than for continental drift or evolution; yet the proof is not forthcoming.
As a first step we need at least the quality and competence of evidence presentation as business uses for making hundred billion dollar investment decisions. We don’t have anything like that. The quality of the documentation and evidence presentation is dismal. And almost all of it is not focused on providing the information needed for such investment decisions.
Yes
Just follow Pat Swords’ exposition on the Bishop Hill website. He now has a Court decision to the effect that the EU, British and Irish Govts are deliberately ignoring their obligations under the Aarhus Convention (which they all signed) to supply transparent data on the costs vs benefits of the ruinously expensive subsidies for windmills
No answer from these Govt entities, of course. My bet is that this will continue to be ignored, and there is no practical way of enforcing the Court decision
Ian l8888,
That was a fantastic effort by Pat Swords. It is rare to have someone who is a very senior engineer in the profession with enormous on-the-ground experience and skills with pollution control and environmental law in many countries in the EU. he then brought that to bear to show the EU has been breaching UN environmental laws by mandating renewable energy schemes throughout the EU countries without making any attempt to conduct the proper environmental financial impact assessments. The pages of the forms they have to submit where this information is intended to be submitted has been left blank. Pat Swords has been working through the process to get the UN Ombudsman to take the EU Environment Departments to court. He succeeded and has won some very significant victories. He has posted a few excellent comments on this thread for anyone interested:
http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/05/21/co2-avoidance-cost-wind/
Again, yes of course, Peter. I’ve been following the economic and engineering arguments on “renewabubbles” as base load for about 20 years now
But:
“He succeeded and has won some very significant victories”
Despite Pat’s admirably tenacious efforts, I did ask him Quo Vadis ? He says that the general populace now has to push the issue. From your own experience, you know that a large majority will not make the effort to understand this issue. This applies to Australia as well. The MSM dismiss this as too complex and far-removed from the “average citizen”
The point of political power is insulation against populist urges, or re-focussing them.to suit other non-transparent agendas. Voting politicians out of office changes nothing if the incoming groups cannot force the bureaucracies to change. I think that is where Pat is at now, unfortunately
IanI8888,
Thank you for that update on the difficulties Pat Swords is having. I haven’t kept in touch with what he has been up to for a while. I can imagine the lack of broad support is very frustrating and draining. I agree with your comments about the political realities. All we can all do is continue to try to educate people – those people who are interested and willing to consider, objectively, the information presented.
On that matter, it is an eye opener to come to a web site like this and find, amongst the many super bright, intelligent, educated people and many experts in their field, there is still an enormous amount of ideological belief controlling what they are willing to consider and what they will reject without even considering it.
The belief demonstrated by so many people that renewable energy can be an important instrument to reduce emissions is amazing. It is especially amazing how so many of these people have absolutely closed minds on this subject.
When I see such closed minds, and tied to their ideological beliefs, I don’t trust them to be objective about anything.
Judith Curry
Amen!
But this would be counterproductive for IPCC, whose political “consensus process” does just the opposite in order to sell its (C)AGW message.
Max
Was not the attempted marginalization of William Gray and the employment by the Left of the rhetoric of ‘Holocaust denier’ to compare skeptical scientists to Nazis? And, when we hear of a ‘consensus’ are we not being treated to the collectivists’ form of truth ‘finding’ and truth ‘making’ and ultimately the enforcement and ‘truth control’ according to government-funded science authoritarians?
We are seeing the re-writing of history and the corruption of science. Even now global warming alarmists refuse to admit that MBH98 (aka, the ‘hockey stick’ graph) is a proven scientific fraud.
Which ever side you are on, you have to admit this video “Downfall of Sea Ice” is masterful. It takes aim at Watts.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/02/quote-of-the-week-i-guess-were-just-beyond-evil-now/#more-70273
Apparently, this was posted in response to the same clip from the opposite side entitled “Hitler’s response to Watts study”. Equally funny.
should be …reaction… if you are looking for it on Youtube.
There appears to be a small industry around this clip on Youtube. they also have his reaction to the Obama victory and the Joe Paterno firing.
In Noah’s day it was “time to ark up”
[Ya gotta love that kangaroo..]
… but a pity about the unicorns:
And Noah looked out through the driving rain
Them unicorns were hiding, playing silly games
Kicking and splashing while the rain was falling
Oh, them silly unicorns
There was green alligators and long-necked geese
Some humpty backed camels and some chimpanzees
Noah cried, “Close the door because the rain is falling
And we just can’t wait for no unicorns”
The ark started moving, it drifted with the tide
The unicorns looked up from the rocks and they cried
And the waters came down and sort of floated them away
That’s why you never see unicorns to this very day
WUWT/Anthony Watts sure is ramping-up the denialist rhetoric!
LOL … a reasonable guess is, that Anthony’s surprise is this: he’s finally gotten around to fixing the egregious scientific errors in previous WUWT claims of “surprises”!
Uhhh … or did those WUWT claims disappear without a trace? ;) ;) ;)
Perhaps climate-change denialists don’t “raft up” when their claims are falsified … instead they submerge! :) :grin: :lol: :!:
The world wonders! :) :grin: :lol: :!:
I think the professional organizations like AMS could present the sprectrum of views of members in their statement on “climate change.” They should canvas their membership and present what % believes what, and let the members decide the questions on the questionairre.
Scientists in general should acknolwedge in there public statements that there exist views held by other scientists that don’t completely agree with theirs.
Christy, Spencer, Lindzen, and other skeptical scientists should be welcomed into the fold of climate science.
Scientists have been their own worst enemy WRT pushing the farce of a monolithic view.
I’ve never really understoon why climate scientists think it’s so hard to communicate. Debate is wonderful forum for exchanging ideas. If the consensus science is good and the sceptics have it wrong, they ought to easily win debates. If they do, they will convince me. However if they insist on preaching with no challenging questions allowed, I will continue to look at much of the field with suspicion.
Take a read of “Why I Won’t Debate Creationists” by Richard Dawkins
http://old.richarddawkins.net/articles/119-why-i-won-39-t-debate-creationists
Scientific debate happens in the journals. I could switch around your argument to ask why if skeptics have such a good point, how come they don’t publish it to peer review?
lolwot
Re: peer review, a good starting place is:
1100+ Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skeptic Arguments Against ACC/AGW Alarm
NIPCC Reports
CO2Science
where’s the “good point” then? point to it. Are you claiming that Idso 1998 is the skeptic’s argument? Or is that superfluous?
Something that caught my eye in your first link, David.
http://www.populartechnology.net/2012/05/truth-about-judith-curry.html
Ouch. It would seem she’s not immune to contrary evidence and has had a change of heart since Katrina-is-the-new-normal hysterics circa 2006 but there’s a sure a big plate of crow in the above link. One might wish she not choke on the feathers.
I have respect for Dr. Curry on this. She is honest, open, and courageous. She has enough of all three of these attributes to change course and admit she was wrong. Unless climate scientists can do this very thing, climate science will be dead in the water. It is already flapping and splashing.
lolwot
Yes I recommend you study Idso 1998.
“CO2-induced global warming: a skeptic’s view of potential climate change “(PDF) (Climate Research, Volume 10, Number 1, pp. 69–82, April 1998) – Sherwood B. Idso
He provides 8 different ways of measuring climate sensitivity – As I recall, they were all lower than IPCC’s lower bound.Combining IDSO with IPCC shows that published climate sensitivity varies by an order of magnitude. So much for IPCC’s 90% confidence. That climate sensitivity variation in turn depends strongly on how clouds are treated.
e.g. see: “Some confirmation of Spencer’s cloud hypothesis – it is getting less cloudy and warmer at the same time”
Recall Roy Spencer’s expectation:
Nigel Fox of NPL quotes IPCC that 97% of the uncertainty is in clouds. Fox shows how satellite measurements could be improved by an order of magnitude.
Providing this order of magnitude improvement in measurements would hopefully be complemented with improvements in the physics of cloud models. Together they could reduce the present enormous variance in models and the very strong warming that is > 95% above the 32 year observed satellite temperature trends.
Sean,
CAGW scientist/activists have never had trouble communicating. Right up until Copenhagen they were on a roll. The hockey stick, pictures of dead polar bears, front page headlines on disappearing glaciers, scary graphs with swaths of red. They communicated just fine.
The problem arose when others who disagreed realized where they were headed, and how close they were to getting there. Those who had seen this political dance before now had alternative means of bypassing the filter that progressive media has had in place for decades. The internet, talk radio, Fox News had broken the virtual progressive monopoly on disseminating information to the voters.
Those stupid voters started to hear just what the progressive CAGWers had in mind – decarbonization. Just what exactly that meant as far as massive tax increases and giving control over the energy economy to bureaucrats. And then they started hearing that the science wasn’t as settled as advertised.
As voters were made aware that that light they saw at the end of the CAGW tunnel was a freight train headed straight for them, they got antsy, and Copenhagen collapsed.
Ever since it has been one attempt at “reframing” after another. As if they can just repackage their progressive policies as something else, and fool enough voters until they can sneak their policies through by some anti-democratic means. Oh, such as having a bureaucracy take control of the energy economy through the ruse that CO2 is a pollutant.
Now, not only were they thwarted at Copenhagen, but the crown jewel of their movement, a hard left progressive administration in control of the U.S., is on the verge of meeting the same fate.
Grab a box of popcorn, sit back, and enjoy the show. It’s going to get even more entertaining around here the closer we get to November 6.
Check Lindzen + Choi (2009/2011) or Spencer + Braswell (2007), among others
Max
What about the points made here though? Eg people arguing that climate sensitivity is indistinguishable from zero. Why aren’t they being published to peer review?
People claim they want a debate but they aren’t putting their arguments into a cohesive publishable form and then submitting them to where the debate happens.
Are you one of those people who can’t sleep because someone is wrong on the internet? :)
For peer reviewed skeptic publications , manacker says
“Check Lindzen + Choi (2009/2011) or Spencer + Braswell (2007), among others”
Don’t forget Morner’s peer reviewed forecast of a little ice age by mid-century
http://www.eike-klima-energie.eu/uploads/media/Moerner_Science_environm_sea_level_3_11_Paper_534.pdf
Morner also believes you can find gold with a pointed stick. I think he may have written a book on the subject.
I don’t care much for Lindzen. He thinks second-hand tobacco smoke may not be harmful. I find it intolerable.
“Climate dismissive”?! What (meaningless but obviously) derogatory label will they dream up next?! There seems to be no end of products that emanate from the alarmists’ language laundry.
But that aside … I find this virtual “flood” of wailing and moaning about their inability to “communicate” somewhat amusing. I guess they must be calling Pachauri a liar; or perhaps they are unaware that as recently as July 2009, when he was articulating his “vision” for AR5, Pachauri had declared:
It is worth noting, perhaps, that IPCC-nik, Andrew Weaver’s contribution to this dissemination, in 2007, included a depiction of climate change – as revealed in AR4 – as “a barrage of intergalactic ballistic missiles”.
Instead of blaming the message of the “climate dismissives”, perhaps Rapley, Romm and others of their ilk would do well to re-visit the words of the UNEP’s Joe Alcamo who, during the course of his keynote address at the Bali meeting of the IPCC on Oct. 26, 2009, warned:
.
I have no quarrel with these communicator-wannabes who choose to put all their eggs in the CO2 basket. However, I do resent their insistence that this is the only “solution” and that, therefore, that’s where I should put mine! And I’d really appreciate it if they would indicate that they have some understanding of the phrase “multi-billion dollar price tag”.
IMHO, it would also help if they would cease and desist their perpetual onslaught of insults to the intelligence of the lay public.
Climate dismissive:
Hey Climate! You’re fired! :P
The voices of dismissal are not trumping the message of science except within the conservative media bubble. Mostly skeptical voices are just laughed at in general scientific audiences as well as in more mixed or international audiences. Some here might have experienced that if they dared to speak to the general public about their views that they display here. They really have a problem being taken seriously because they often couch their arguments in political agendas, or just kooky science. Even the moderates that just want to spread uncertainty would be met with a ho-hum reaction because that message is not at all as compelling as melting sea ice and droughts. I would say that this is the main communication problem in the debate, and the skeptics need to learn to get their science together into a better message rather than each having their own world view. We can’t have a debate until the skeptics have a sensible argument against AGW, but saying climate is not going to change isn’t suited to visual advertising as much as climate change itself is, so they have an unfortunate disadvantage there. I think this is why they bring in the political/scientific conspiracy theory, just to make climate non-change more interesting to a certain type of person.
The skeptic’s efforts at debate can be summed up by Watt’s recent flash in the pan paper. Loads of hoo-hah about dramatic not-very-IPCC implications, but they can’t gather together a coherent argument that survives scrutiny.
Polling suggests Rapley and Romm may be correct that there is a communication problem.
“When asked to weigh in broadly on this debate, the majority of Americans say most scientists believe global warming is occurring. By contrast, 7% say most scientists reject the existence of climate change, while 32% say most scientists are unsure.”
http://www.gallup.com/poll/153608/global-warming-views-steady-despite-warm-winter.aspx
That’s 39% of the sample who wrongly think most scientists don’t believe global warming is occuring. Although perhaps this isn’t a communication problem at all. Perhaps 39% of the sample simply don’t want to believe it so deny it.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2012/2
Forget the polls and opinions. Look at the actual NOAA data.
Earth is not warmer than 1998. People who believe actual data are not wrongly thinking. These are the people who do think right.
Those polled were not asked whether the world was warming, but whether most scientists think it is. Overwhelmingly most scientists do. This has been very clearly communicated to the public.
So that 37% got it so wrong suggests there might be a denial issue here no?
Suggests to me that your statement
‘This has been very clearly communicated to the public’ is not supported by any evidence. You don’t need to postulate anything about ‘denial’
.
I don’t see how it could have been communicated any more clearly.
@lolwot
‘I don’t see how it could have been communicated any more clearly’
I think you make my point for me. But in case it has still escaped you, the measure of how well a message has been communicated is how well the supposed recipients have received it.
If that has failed, then the problem is that the sender has failed. It is not that the supposed recipients are too stupid/denialist/sceptical to understand it.
And your inability to imagine a better way does not indicate a fault in the receivers either,
Even most skeptics think the world has been warming. Move on. Nothing to see here.
Communication is a two way process – it requires listening as well as talking.
Jim2,
You’d better head over to WUWT and let them know.
Oh My God, here we go with the cherry-picking of global temperature in 1998 again. Don’t the people who do this know how silly it makes them look?
“JC comment: Rapley makes this comment in context of climate scientists ignoring the social science research. But it is deeper than that, in the sense the sense that very few climate scientists have the breadth to really assess the broader aspects of the science, and accept the judgements of their ‘peers’ (e.g. the IPCC) on topics outside their personal areas of expertise. ”
It’s actually quite simple.
Yes climate as subject as is any subject is vast and many unknowns.
But the basic problem is political. Socialism doesn’t work. There vast amounts of history which supports this. The whole concept that one can impose top down solutions. The idea there is a burning need for unity- that
we must become the Borg. That stupidity that we can create better world via regulation and the worship of the State.
The idea that the Soviet Union was close to being right rather going completely the wrong direction.
The disease isn’t the human, it’s the socialist self projecting.
Idea that there may be too much freedom.
Rather than this world needs a lot more freedom. We need more free trade, and freer markets.
That people of this world need more energy, not less or the same.
That stagnation and uniformity is not a paradise, it is a hell.
That the only thing China is doing right is a focusing on increasing it’s the amount electrical power and willing to allow some limited type of free trade- it encourages export, mainly. And that one thing socialist used understand, that industrialization leads to better life for all it’s people. And of course that “industrialization” is evolving process rather some static thing of 1900. And if you want more evolution of “industrialization” look to those countries that do this, rather than those try to copy it. These countries are free oppose the State controlled.
The enemy of this world is not the US- it’s the socialist and/or State controlled states.
That equality is not a natural right. Rather opportunity is a natural right.
That travel is natural right. That interfering with people interacting with people is violation of the natural rights of humans- the restriction of people leaving any country- is the surest sign that the government is evil- and must be overthrown. And that free countries should attempt welcome immigrations- at least, visiting. Because people should have right get out of countries which oppressive to them. Or leave countries which are merely poorly governed. That slavery is essentially being unable to leave the prison or plantation. That the State does not own the people within it’s boundaries and has no right to dictate what they can do.
In a nutshell you’ve really laid out the skeptic’s motive for denying the science: Political ideology.
So hell bent are climate skeptics against their fears of a one world government (or just increased taxes) that they decide they cannot accept AGW and so find excuses to that end.
Having a political view has nothing to do with skepticism – for most skeptics. You jump on that bandwagon, though, because it is a useful ruse for you.
It is only a coincidence that a good predictor of skeptics is that they are supporters of an unregulated free-market and have individualist attitudes according to several surveys, most recently Lewandowsky.
That would explain why they don’t believe in crony capitalism and wasting money. It might also explain why they prefer reasoned arguments that look at all sides over emotional ones.
Is Lewandowsky the one that said he polled skeptical websites but none of the major skeptical sites were ever contacted? I’ll be curious to see how that story plays out.
Just informally looking at the posts here bears out Lewandowsky. I don’t see any left-leaning skeptics. The other study by Kahan showed that individualist politics was a better predictor than scientific literacy of climate skepticism. In the US, the Republican platform has no mention of the word ‘climate’, but informally they all think it is a hoax, hence the lack of a statement.
Actually, the GOP platform does mention climate, but only to dismiss it as a threat, and it is never heard of again. Noting that the military, for sure, and oil companies, are planning for the open Arctic,for example, this seems like an oversight.
Let me try to explain it to you one more time. People who value individual freedom, free markets, and rational, limited regulation don’t want to see the government get more control over their lives. This is a MOTIVATION to look into the science more deeply than the average joe. The science is wanting. Do you get it now??
The biggest motivation and actual ability to look into the science is from the scientists themselves, and 90+% of them support AGW, together with a collection of independent scientific societies.
” In the US, the Republican platform has no mention of the word ‘climate’, but informally they all think it is a hoax, hence the lack of a statement.”
I doubt the Republicans are so united. Nor all so clever.
But since the democrats don’t think it’s a winning issue,
there is probably some agreement among Republicans about not focus on it in terms plank of the party platform.
Personally I don’t fear that Romney if elected would allow something
like cap and trade- unlike McCain who probably would push the republican to accept this nonsense.
What Romney says
“Speaking at a closed-door fundraiser Thursday in Pittsburgh, Romney’s position on the causes of global warming continued the rightward shift that has been underway for several months. “My view is that we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet. And the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try to reduce CO2 emissions is not the right course for us,” he told donors at the Consol Energy Center. ”
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20127273-503544/mitt-romneys-shifting-views-on-climate-change/
The article is correct he is shifting “rightward”. But even if Romney thought we should trillions of dollars on it, economy is in such bad shape, that no politician can support spending billions or trillions on it.
In other words I don’t think at present McCain would even support it.
What McCain said:
January 7, 2008 04:30 PM
“I will clean up the planet,” McCain said. “I will make global warming a priority.”
McCain often says that he wants to reduce dependence on foreign oil and that he wants to increase the use of nuclear power. His usual line is that these efforts also will help reduce global warming. But yesterday, appearing before a crowd of several hundred in this relatively liberal city, he focused solely on the environmental argument. He didn’t mention nuclear power. He was appealing directly to the state’s sizable environmental community, which includes many independent voters who are taking one last, close look at McCain. The widespread perception is that McCain is battling for the independent vote most strongly with Democrat Barack Obama.”
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2008/01
/mccain_vows_to.html
unlike Obama, McCain could done something with “bipartisan support”
Which would been dreadful.
No where is the world in 2012, except Australia, is global warming a priority. And with Australia it’s will only result in political suicide.
Jim D. It is obvious that you are quick to speak concerning matters of which you know very little. Your fate is to be tossed into the “Trivial” bin.
I think most climate skeptics are driven by political ideology. The science stuff is just a dressing applied afterwards to either fool themselves or fool others into thinking they decide based on the science rather than politics.
gbaikie has made a political comment and got favorable responses, which is a symptom of his specific political view being pervasive among climate skeptics. That’s not a coincidence, anymore than specific religious beliefs among evolution skeptics is coincidence.
Climate skeptics attack AGW for two reasons:
1) because it threatens their strong individualist ideology. Any need for a restriction on carbon emissions is seen as bad because it threatens government intervention and tampering in the free market. To quote gbaike: “this world needs a lot more freedom. We need more free trade, and freer markets.”. While I think this is indeed true, I suspect climate skeptics take this too far and follow the logic: AGW can’t be true because the world needs it not to be true.
2) Because ultimately with enough of them doing this, AGW becomes seen as the position of the enemy of their ideology (eg “leftists/socialists/greenies”. Then you start getting climate skeptics who decide simply on this basis. First they ask “what should my position be on AGW politically?” and then “Okay, and what scientific justifications can I give for this?”
This is why places like Jo Novas blog, WUWT and Steven Goddard’s blog are so popular as they satisfy a demand for sciency-excuses. I wonder if there isn’t an element of guilt in there somewhere.
lolwot
So you don’t see yourself as an ideologue? You don’t see yourself as politically partisan? You don’t see the contributors to Climate Etc. that share your beliefs as politically driven ideologues?
“I think most climate skeptics are driven by political ideology. The science stuff is just a dressing applied afterwards to either fool themselves or fool others into thinking they decide based on the science rather than politics.”
+ 1 x10^16
This has been apparent for some time, which is why the tone-monitors and pearl-clutchers are wasting their time lecturing people on how to chat nicely with the militantly ignorant, ’cause, you know, if you just explain the science nicely, they’ll suddenly get it.
@Michael (whoever the f*ck he is)
You wouldn’t know science if it bit you on the ass (which would be anywhere because you’re all ass). You “carefully explaining” what you do not know is a real knee slapper. If I ran into you at a cocktail party spouting your nonsense I’d embarrass you so thoroughly in five minutes you’d be in tears.
Oh, you brute!
“In a nutshell you’ve really laid out the skeptic’s motive for denying the science: Political ideology.”
Right. The manufactured fear isn’t working.
It’s a Gore fail.
Get over it.
It only *works* for fads and would never actually go anywhere other perhaps starting WWIV.
“So hell bent are climate skeptics against their fears of a one world government (or just increased taxes) that they decide they cannot accept AGW and so find excuses to that end.”
What’s wrong with wanting lower taxes and not having a world government?
EU isn’t even particularly desirable for the Europeans- why is 10 times more of that kind of mess desirable? The EU even has some sense considering the history of Russia. [Perhaps the frozen wastes tends to make people yearn for warmer clime.]
The EU is a good preview of what a world government would be like – only a world government would be 100 times worse.
lolwot, since you mention Plass earlier, you may want to check out the link I left for JimD. http://judithcurry.com/2012/09/01/rhetoric-and-rafts/#comment-234821
It appears science didn’t end in 1995, actually, it took a leap forward in 2002.
BINGO ! Political ideology is motive for AGW denial.
Market worshippers can’t accept the market’s failure to address the consequences of AGW, so they deny there are consequences.
Conspiracy theorists fear governments agreeing on the need to take action on AGW will lead to world government, and the U.S. will be disadvantaged.
And it’s also motivation for all the bandwagon jumpers on the other side and for the most activist scientists. Back in the 70’s when there were a few years when climate scientists thought it was cooling (yes, I know it was only for a few years, read the sentence again) it was also hyped to be a looming catastrophe and the culprit was modern society and fossil fuels. Ehrlich’s population bomb nonsense was also against modern technology as is much of the green movement. If you are predisposed to think that man is ruining the planet and the oil companies are evil then you will naturally be more inclined to believe this kind of stuff.
I can only speak for myself. As a scientist who also happens to understand how a free market works I can assess the science and then if I think there is a case for AGW or CAGW I can separately assess HOW best to combat it. Those are separate issues. Being somewhat skeptical in general may be something that links the two but I am perfectly capable of being objective and being convinced. Hence I fall into the luke-warmist camp. I accept that the planet has warmed, that CO2 should theoretically cause warming and that there may be either positive or negative feedbacks. I am not yet convinced that there will be a 3C warming in the next 90 years. And I think a 1-2 C warming over 90 years is not necessarily catastrophic.
But it is silly and self-serving for anyone to act like one side is all pure and rational and the other side the opposite. Again, I think some people on both sides need to grow up and learn to assess things objectively.
Many good points.
+
It’s the arrogance, alarmism, and advocacy of the experts that turn off the general public. If you have been observing something, or doing something your whole life and somebody shows up that is supposed to be educated in the field and tells you that you don’t know what you are talking about it turns you off from the scientific field. Because my brother, a life long rancher and farmer, doesn’t have a PHD it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t know how to raise cattle or care for the land on his own ranch. The ranch has been in the family for 130 years. I think he knows a little something about “sustainability”. You can see advocacy and alarmism in science everywhere…nutrition, safety, climate, wild life, etc. For me, Johnny Q. Public, you get to where you simply refuse to believe any of it without seeing it for yourself.
“that they can’t get past their perceived imperative to shoot down ‘deniers’ as the apogee of responsible professional conduct.”
‘Denier’ is just a label applied by people who think they have something to deny. A true scientist would never use the term because they know there is always room for fresh discovery.
What we need is more debate among climate scientists. both written and verbal debate. Judith has provided the ground for written debate. It is true that many writers in these columns have not been able to express the nitty-gritty of their objections and this may deter busy people from replying, but many of the objections spell from good science and deserve to be taken seriously. IPCC authors have to stand by what they have written and be prepared to defend their views. Of course we are all trying to identify a tiny long term signal embedded in a lot of noise and that alone is sufficient cause for conflict. So the first thing we need to agree on is a suitable smoothing formula – one that will faithfully show long term effects but reject short term noise. It is not critical but we do need to reject the sun-spot cycle, so I favour the 11 year central moving average as I know many others do. The disadvantage is that we are always 5.5 years behind knowing the present value. But no matter, there are separate means of determining whether a trend continues to the present. It is interesting, but not reassuring, that all the models favoured by the IPCC seem to diverge for ever.
“‘Denier’ is just a label applied by people who think they have something to deny. A true scientist would never use the term because they know there is always room for fresh discovery.”
Like maybe we’ll find out HIV doesn’t cause AIDs after-all.
The claims that HIV does not cause AIDS are dated. At the time of the claims 20+ years ago it was still plausible but unlikely. It’s no longer plausible. What you should look at is whether the HIV->AIDS skeptics from 20 years ago are still HIV->AIDS skeptics today? It’s not a crime against science to be wrong. It’s a crime against science to be wrong and not admit it. Sort of like you not admitting the error in the CO2-global warming link. Even as atmospheric CO2 has risen 8% in the past 14 years the global average temperature of the lower troposphere has declined. This is as factual as factual gets in science yet you cannot come to grips with it because it means you’d be admitting you were wrong. Classic denial. You da denier now, little buddy. I just be da skeptic vindicated by the data in this past decade.
And by the way – I was never skeptical of the HIV->AIDS connection nor of the age of the earth at 4.5 billion years nor of all life on this planet being the result of descent with modification over billions of years. That said, proofs are for mathematics. In science we have best explanations and ranges of confidence in those explanations. The above are best explanations with a high degree of confidence however it is not outside the realm of possibility that they are incorrect. Admission of the entire range of possibilities is critical lest hubris develop to the point where we think we have all the answers to the point of believing there are no more unknown unknowns. There are plenty of known unknowns and God only knows how many unknown unknowns.
Alexander Biggs claimed: “A true scientist would never use the term because they know there is always room for fresh discovery.”. This comment is typical fodder for climate skeptics. It is both a sound-bite berating their opponents, while making their own aspirations for science sound very noble.
Yet a little prodding on my part induces David Springer to admit there isn’t always room for fresh discovery in science. So Biggs claim is revealed as nothing more than fluff.
Behind the preaching of climate skeptics is a great deal of hypocrisy, which largely goes unnoticed because they rarely have to practice what they preach. But when they do it is very revealing. Like how Anthony Watts was totally against science by press release until he came into position to do it himself.
David,
Cherrypicking 1998 as your starting point isn’t as clever as you think.
Now a “skeptic vindicated by the data in this past decade” would have to look at the temp trends from 2002-2012, or the last full decade 2000-2009 compared to previous decades.
What’s that data telling you David??
Getting really picky, we’d also note that a real skeptic claiming to be interested in being factual, wouldn’t just look at lower trop temp’s as a measure of global av temp, but would include measures of OHC.
Deniers, OTOH, will eschew all this for silly cherry-picking of convenient dates that they know will fabricate the answer that they want.
December – November
1997 to 1998 – #Mean: 0.584167
2004 to 2005 – #Mean: 0.603333
2006 to 2007 – #Mean: 0.6075
2009 to 2010 – #Mean: 0.638333
What goes down, still goes up. Because?
lolwot et al.
“Last decade” = 2002 to today
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2002/to/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2002/to/trend
Looks like a cooling trend to me, lolwot.
Are you denying the observed data?
Max
Look it’s positive
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:2002/to/plot/uah/from:2002/to/trend
Recent polling in the US suggests denial of the theory of evolution is more popular than denial of AGW.
53% of those polled said they believe human activities are primarily responsible for recent warming.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/153608/global-warming-views-steady-despite-warm-winter.aspx
In contrast only 47% say they believe the scientific consensus that man evolved from non-human ancestor species.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/21814/evolution-creationism-intelligent-design.aspx
Are the scientists in both cases failing to communicate? Or is it actually that sizable proportions of the population are willing to deny science if it contradicts their deeply cherished ideologies?
For evolution the ideology is religious. For climate change it’s political. We see on threads on climate etc that a large number of posters frequently produce politically inspired outbursts ranting against their ideological villains. For climate skeptics it’s “liberals and socialists”, for evolution skeptics it’s “atheists”. Both reveal the respective ideologies at work.
That reveals the great uncertainties in both fields.
“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” (Sign hanging in Einstein’s office at Princeton)
I think in both counts – evolution and climate – the understanable reaction is to secular, socialist overreach. In the case of evolution – the claim that evolution doesn’t need God. With climate – it justifies a revolutionary reframing of social and economic systems. Both a nonsense.
With evolution I would suggest broadening the consideraton to include the nature of time itself. ‘Surprising as it may be to most non-scientists and even to some scientists, Albert Einstein concluded in his later years that the past, present, and future all exist simultaneously. In 1952, in his book Relativity, in discussing Minkowski’s Space World interpretation of his theory of relativity, Einstein writes:
‘Since there exists in this four dimensional structure [space-time] no longer any sections which represent “now” objectively, the concepts of happening and becoming are indeed not completely suspended, but yet complicated. It appears therefore more natural to think of physical reality as a four dimensional existence, instead of, as hitherto, the evolution of a three dimensional existence.’
Einstein’s belief in an undivided solid reality was clear to him, so much so that he completely rejected the separation we experience as the moment of now. He believed there is no true division between past and future, there is rather a single existence. His most descriptive testimony to this faith came when his lifelong friend Besso died. Einstein wrote a letter to Besso’s family, saying that although Besso had preceded him in death it was of no consequence, “…for us physicists believe the separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one.”‘
There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy – numbnut. Where have I heard that before.
Because I’m a simple man, chief, I need you to dumb this down a bit.
Does this mean that you are saying that people who believe in creationism and/or reject the theory of evolution do so because of the “overreach” of leftists?
Not sure what he meant myself. But he does not speak for me or any other climate realist, just himself. Just because you find a few things you can poke fun at on sites like this (whether you have a point or not, varies with your target) does not prove anything. I am a scientist. I know and understand how evolution works. I don’t really believe in god. I have doubts about the current level of certainty in climate science and am perfectly willing to wait ten years to find out how the projections of the models do.
I really resent the fear mongering, derision, etc. from a few of you who are so certain you are right about everything. I also resent the impact such bullying behavior has had on discourse in arenas other than climate blogs and how true debate has been rare. This is a natural consequence of it being politicized, converted into sound bites, and given a patina of moral outrage so that anyone who disagrees with you is both stupid and evil. Grow the hell up. The constant nonsense about how the skeptics are so well funded and their message so well packaged is laughable. Then people like Gleick get themselves into trouble and find out they have been wrong all along but the fear that there are powerful forces (fat-cats, oh my) cause them to have moral lapses. Now I’m beginning to wonder if some of the people that prowl skeptical blogs and such are actually getting paid to do so. Ironic if they became what they falsely accused others of being.
Bill –
I attribute chief’s rather bizarre and paranoid delusions about leftist boogeymen to no other than him. In fact, I take pains to distinguish chief’s fantasies about politics from his take on science – which strikes me as rather sophisticated and well-reasoned. Yes, when he mixes his politics with his science overtly, as he has a habit of doing, I do also notice that and consider it significant.
You have never found me attributing any of those beliefs to you as you claim. Not once. I am far from being certain that I am right about anything, let alone everything.
Bullying behavior? Chief attributes creationism to pissant progressives, and I become a bully for laughing at him? Perhaps I’m a bully because someone writes that climate scientists are like Darth Vader and I laugh? Or because I laugh when Judith thinks that the climate scientist as Darth Vader is insightful enough for comment in approval?
Where did I write anything about climate “skeptics” being well-funded, let alone “constantly?”
Where did I defend Gleick?
But yes, I am well-paid by “the team” to write comments on blogs. I get paid extra when people attack me and wholly fantasize about my beliefs despite having no evidence. In fact, chief is one of my minions, who gets a small % of my fee to post his political rants. Devious, aren’t I?
“This is a natural consequence of it being politicized, converted into sound bites, and given a patina of moral outrage so that anyone who disagrees with you is both stupid and evil. Grow the hell up. The constant nonsense about how the skeptics are so well funded and their message so well packaged is laughable.”
They both come from the meme production department of AGWSF Inc.
To discourage bystanders from agreeing with contrary views Beria suggested to Stalin that those holding such views be called insane, because ‘people don’t want to be associated with ideas from those who are mad in case they are themselves thought mad’ – from there played out by having ‘dissidents’ incarcerated in mental institutions. So “stupid and evil” of this technique.
The second is sleight of hand deflection from themselves of their own motives held by attributing these motives to objectors. They are the ones well funded, they are the ones well organised, they are the ones backed by big Oil money, and so on, to the meme deniers.
CRU for example was set up with Oil money and government interests pro-nuclear and anti-coal, the ‘greenies’ the emotional energy to be tapped in achieving their aims, and these interests can get convoluted – Gail’s post here a good quick look at the well-funded by Oil wondering what they’re doing..:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/31/friday-funny-quote-of-the-week-the-healing-rift/#comment-1068689
Of course.., it all leads back to the bankers who became adept at manipulating governments by backing both sides in conflicts between rival royalty and now adept at manipulating devoted groups of ideologists. The bankers funded the Russian Revolution, or rather, took the grass roots anti-serfdom movement and imposed Marxism on it after using the anti-tyranny energy to set it in motion – hence Lenin remarking that it might appear that he is heading the movement but there’s someone else driving the car..
A p.s. to my post, a good introductory precis of the history of the banking cartel, and a more in depth look at the subject:
http://www.iamthewitness.com/books/Andrew.Carrington.Hitchcock/The.History.of.the.Money.Changers.htm
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-money-masters/
DocMartyn | September 1, 2012 at 11:01 pm |
“You have no problem disbelieving in Hinduism, or in Druidism, or Islam or Mormonism, and neither do I.”
Actually I do have a problem disbelieving those and others. Therein lies the rub. Positive atheism is a faith. Science is agnostic. Do you really believe with utter confidence you’re just a self-aware accident that resulted from a random dance of atoms? Honest introspection and that’s what you come up with? Seriously?
‘The only reason an angel can fly is that they take themselves so lightly.’
Militant athiesm inevitably comes from the left. Religious people understandably react to nonsensical claims that science shows that God does not exist. But my advice to the spiritually inclined was to move past the evolution/creationism dichotomy to a broader consideration of the nature of time itself.
Think of it as a Manichean struggle of light and dark in the space/time continuum – the way of the Jedi in four dimensions. ‘There is light within a man of light, and he lights the whole world. If he does not shine, there is darkness.’
Pissant progressive – try not to be. Up lighten – friend Joshua.
“Militant athiesm inevitably comes from the left”
I am not.
” Religious people understandably react to nonsensical claims that science shows that God does not exist”
The difference between you and I is that I believe in one less God than you do.
You have no problem disbelieving in Hinduism, or in Druidism, or Islam or Mormonism, and neither do I.
Mind the step…..
Fantastic comment Chief!! How about changing light and dark to on and off or… nothing and something. This duality might account for all possibilities.
Jim
BTW, chief – I’m an agnostic. I respect the power of faith and many people who have strong religious belief.
Another theory of yours right down the drain, eh? Stick to the science, chief. You won’t constantly be wiping egg of your face.
Not a militant atheist or a leftie Doc – which is it?
Odd – I don’t have beliefs. I sometimes wonder about the nature of time and space and I think that relativity doesn’t need evolution in a big picture kind of way. I have consciousness – and my human consciousness is a numinous experience of the presence of God and the oneness of the universe.
‘To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.’
The problem, however, revolves around the perennial conflation of creationism and climate scepticism. It is tedious and a logical fallacy to boot.
Before this was misdirected – and I certainly bear some responsibility – my simple observation was that people respond to green socialism and militant atheism by reacting in the best way they can. That there exist more nuanced understandings in both cases is lost in simplistic demagoguery.
Joshua,
You should be wary of arguing from the personal to the universal. To say that you are a duck and you quack therefore all ducks quack is not a logically necessity.
I haven’t had a political rant in ages. Let’s see what we are up against.
‘Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.’ CS Lewis
‘Very few people, even among environmentalists, have truly faced up to what the science is telling us. This is because the implications of 3C, let alone 4C or 5C, are so horrible that we look to any possible scenario to head it off, including the canvassing of “emergency” responses such as the suspension of democratic processes.’ Clive Hamilton
Well gee I would like to agree that you have the inside running on enlightenment principles – but I do worry about your fellow travellers. Communist sympathisers in the west used to be called useful idiots. Do you think you might be taking your sympathies too far?
Cheers
Think of it as a Manichean struggle of light and dark in the space/time continuum – the way of the Jedi in four dimensions. ‘There is light within a man of light, and he lights the whole world. If he does not shine, there is darkness.’
Oh please not Manichean – they thought matter was evil. Hence the damned matter of original sin doctrine. I rather like ‘we are created male and female in image and likeness with the capacity to bring, good or evil, light or darkness, out of ourselves. And my favourite view of the creator is one passed down from milleniums ago: “and maybe he doesn’t know how it all came about”. I think God created us because he got stuck on the conundrum.
@ Ellison
+1
“Recent polling in the US suggests denial of the theory of evolution is more popular than denial of AGW.
53% of those polled said they believe human activities are primarily responsible for recent warming.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/153608/global-warming-views-steady-despite-warm-winter.aspx
In contrast only 47% say they believe the scientific consensus that man evolved from non-human ancestor species.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/21814/evolution-creationism-intelligent-design.aspx”
I wonder what poll result of question: “Are human activities are primarily responsible for human evolution”
Note by the way that it is only human origins that is doubted, not the evolutionary origin of species. This is a common confusion that warmers like to play on. Given that we cannot even explain the origin of human language there is some sense to this evolutionary skepticism. The mechanism of human cognitive origin awaits discovery.
“Note by the way that it is only human origins that is doubted, not the evolutionary origin of species. ”
And we know humans didn’t evolve from any currently existing species of primate- not any ape, not any monkey.
Instead humans evolved from creatures that currently do not exist.
And where exactly does the human creature appear in history.
And what I was thinking about: is human evolution strictly biology- or
does the human evolution involve culture. E.g was the development
language something that separates the species [was the transition point or missing link from non-human to human. Was technology- fire, making stone tools. Was some kind nature event- something that traumatized or inspired. Which came first, song/music or words.
Then the other thing regarding this topic, is where life come from? Did life originate on earth or perhaps somewhere else in solar system. Space alien garbage. An alien development scheme of spreading life throughout universe.
Something we could call God start it?
Maybe some sort of extra- dimensional influence.
Or was some kind rare accident that occurred somewhere around 4 billion year ago. Keeping mind this accident happened once and it’s hasn’t occurred a second time in the last 4 billion years- as far as we know.
Though suppose some could assume it’s possible that any second an
“alien” life form could start on planet Earth.
Or one could assume only the type life on earth is the only possible life. Or there are other “alien” life on planet earth which we aren’t aware of, yet.
Or something else.
As David Wojick writes:
Did this occur when Australopithecus evolved to Homo?
Is this step simply an archeological classification?
Or did the earlier species already have language and thought?
We’ll probably never know.
Yet we do know with fairly good certainty that humans evolved from earlier species that appear to have resembled apes.
So the evolution of the human species may still have many unknowns, but there are also some fairly empirical scientific data (archeological, etc.), which support the theory of evolution of homo as well as other species. There have also been many attempts to scientifically falsify this theory. All have failed.
These empirical data do not yet exist to support the CAGW premise, which itself is not even falsifiable.
IMO lolwot is on a slippery slope, when he brings up parallels between evolution and CAGW.
Max
“So the evolution of the human species may still have many unknowns, but there are also some fairly empirical scientific data (archeological, etc.), which support the theory of evolution of homo as well as other species. There have also been many attempts to scientifically falsify this theory. All have failed.”
Despite your claims that the science behind the evolution of man is on sound footing, nevertheless 46% of US people disagree with it. Why is that? Does that indicate the science isn’t settled? Does it mean scientists have failed to communicate or have lost trust (piltdown man! haeckel’s embryos!)?
No. It’s because those 46% of the american people are wedded to an ideology so strong that they must deny the science so inconvenient to them. Yet typically they do they will not admit this. Skeptics of evolution rarely admit they deny the science because of their ideology. No, they construct arguments and excuses to justify why their position is scientific. To lend it credibility. They attack the science, they appeal to the uncertainty monster. They claim the science isn’t settled, that their interpretation is just as good. They claim there are flaws in evolution that render it impossible.
This is precisely why the subject is so relevant to climate change, because the actions of evolution skeptics mentioned above is precisely the same pattern of actions climate skeptics undertake. So we must ask ourselves where the similarity ends. How much a role does ideology play in the climate skeptics rejection of the science?
lolwot
US belief on evolution is totally immaterial to the topic here, which is CAGW.
For evolution the basis may be “religious” (as you write), but for CAGW it is “scientific”.
There is no empirical scientific evidence to support CAGW.
[There is such evidence to support the Darwin theory of evolution.]
And that is the key difference between the two.
Max
No denial of CAGW is political not scientific.
Here’s a test: What are your political beliefs?
My bet is that like all the other CAGW deniers you will be a libertarian/individualism anti-go ernment-interventionalist ideologist.
“No denial of CAGW is political not scientific.”
I would say denial of CAGW, is not accepting a belief;
that CAGW is pseudo scientific belief.
That science tends to indicate the sea levels will not
rise more than 1 meter before 2100.
That CAGW believers thinks sea levels will rise more
than 1 meter before 2100.
Science indicate that CO2 levels have not been a major
element in climate change and causing global warming or
cooling.
That CAGW believer thinks CO2 is the primary cause
in climate change and causing global warming.
CAGW believers hold the idea that CO2 has already
caused climate related disasters. Or some of the CAGW
has already occurred and in future will have in store far more
severe effects. The list of these effects is very long- and is an
indication of CAGW believers unreasonable unscientific religious
beliefs.
CAGW believers think the IPCC projection of the effects of
increasing CO2 level in the future are understated.
Whereas past IPCC projections have not been understated,
but rather have been wildly overstated.
Despite this, the trend IPCC reports have become more shrill
and unscientific with CAGW believers clinging to the belief that IPCC is underestimating the effects of CO2.
There documented evidence that IPCC is unduly influenced
by CAGW believers. And that IPCC uses propaganda created
by “environmental advocacy groups”
Belief in CAGW is belief of a potential threat that needs addressing. Just as belief in the threat of nuclear war is belief in a threat that needs addressing. Neither beliefs require certainty that the threat will occur, just that it should be taken seriously possibly to the point of taking action to mitigate it.
“Belief in CAGW is belief of a potential threat that needs addressing. Just as belief in the threat of nuclear war is belief in a threat that needs addressing. Neither beliefs require certainty that the threat will occur, just that it should be taken seriously possibly to the point of taking action to mitigate it.”
Greenpeace had zero affect upon reducing the chance nuclear war.
Irrespective of their idiotic propaganda.
Having nuclear weapons has not resulted in nuclear war.
The threat of nuclear war was directly related to the USSR [which wanted to impose it’s hideous imperial order upon the world].
As the current threat of nuclear war is mostly Iran- they too have twisted vision that includes the rest of us.
Though Pakistan and Russia are part of the mix in terms being potential cause of nuclear war.
What has deterred nuclear war is the US having so many nuclear weapons which it has caused use nuclear weapons to be not be a useful to win a war.
So if anything has stopped nuclear war is has been the 70,000 nuclear warheads which the US has made over the decades.
And present reducing this stockpile further only makes sense if the threat of nuclear war is no longer a viable threat. And economic costs, balanced against any possible lessening of this nuclear weapon deterrence which may a contributing there to be a nuclear war.
If Iran uses nuclear weapons, we should willing make Iran into a glass parking lot- and having a region of Iran we can thereafter leave as uninhabited park as reminder of their folly.
It is unlikely Iran would be so foolish [though publicly they seem quite crazy], but we also should stop Iran from making nuclear weapon which it will use threaten it’s neighbors or use
in way it they may [foolishly] think it can deny it’s involvement [terrorist attack].
The making nuclear weapon [even the attempt] is violation of treaty
and ignoring violation undermines the international treaty.
If Iran wasn’t hell bent on dominating the world, we should be encouraging Iran’s use nuclear energy. And since that may or may not be wise, if can’t assist Iran with peaceful use of nuclear energy, we should significantly step up any help those countries which are the least likely to use the technology to make nuclear weapons.
The peaceful use of nuclear energy is the other half of this nuclear treaty- we have failed significantly in this regard.
This failure in in small part related to efforts by such groups as Greenpeace. These types of movements have been effective it reducing the use of a clean and safe source of energy.
And of course Greenpeace has another feather in it’s hat of annoying a countries such as Japan that has culture that eats whale meat. Greenpeace has been effective at doing stupid things but has not been useful in terms of lessen of human conflicts which could possibly result in nuclear war.
So Greenpeace has done damage rather any observable benefit in regard to nuclear war, and in regards to any future consequent of AGW it seems to continuing it’s noble tradition.
And US belief on evolution is *very* relevant to the climate debate.
If we acknowledge that large parts of the population are prone to denial of science due to their religious ideology/bias then we must examine climate denialism in this light too.
@lolwot
Ahem!
It is supposed to be ‘global warming’. Not ‘US warming’.
Constant raising of a very parochial and localised religious issue makes you look like a total dickhead in the eyes of the approx 6.75 billion earthcitizens who do not come from the USA. The world is not limited to just the 51 states.
Wrong lolwot. Evolution, tobacco, and the shape of the Earth have nothing to do with the majority of climate skeptics. It does not matter how many times you “communicate” this – it still won’t be true.
I will just have to keep communicating it then until people examine it more closely. Not necessarily you, but maybe lurkers and others would be interested to hear about the similarities between the two and can perhaps provide some insights.
It’s your time lolwot. Waste it as you see fit.
lolwot
You are missing the point.
I may be a one-legged royalist, but that has nothing to do with the scientific validity of the CAGW premise.
This premise has not been validated by empirical scientific data from actual physical observations or reproducible experimentation, so it remains an uncorroborated hypothesis.
It is not even falsifiable.
Politics is a side track, lolwot. Concentrate on the real issue (or lurkers will conclude that you are simply trying to fog things up here).
Max
You write:
“the CAGW premise…has not been validated by empirical scientific data from actual physical observations or reproducible experimentation, so it remains an uncorroborated hypothesis. It is not even falsifiable.”
A creationist might say: “The evolution of man has not been validated by empirical scientific data from actual physical observations or reproducible experimentation, so it remains an uncorroborated hypothesis. It is not even falsifiable.”
Earlier you wrote: “So the evolution of the human species may still have many unknowns, but there are also some fairly empirical scientific data (archeological, etc.), which support the theory of evolution of homo as well as other species. There have also been many attempts to scientifically falsify this theory. All have failed.”
I would say: “So CAGW may still have many unknowns, but there are also some fairly empirical scientific data (archeological, etc.), which support the theory of CAGW. There have also been many attempts to scientifically falsify this theory. All have failed.”
Judith, we need a blog session on “climate ignorance”. I have my list of favorites. I would be interested in yours and those of the others who contribute here. After thoroughly discussing the defects in our knowledge, we can invite Rapley, Romm, Hansen, and others to respond to the specifics. Lets have a good blog climate debate.
What I “dismiss” is not the possibility that the consensus may be right in the end, I dismiss that the knowns in climate science outweigh the unknowns enough to influence public policy. The IPCC process has failed to convince me that the science is mature.
Until I am exposed to a good grass roots debate, I will remain in the “unconvinced” state.
good suggestion, i’ll pick up on it at some point
looking forward to it.
Max
Second and third pars – nicely put.
What is normal is one of my favorite unknowns. The climate is bi-stable which appears to be mainly due to the totally different hemisphere heat capacities and time constants. What appears to be regional in some cases is global but dampened or amplified in other regions, causing a range of “sensitivities” to different forcing.
Judith Curry,
You might consider doing an article on “control” because, control is the central issue in the climate science narrative: Controlling the narrative. Controlling the content of the message. Control over who are the messengers. Control over the science itself.
You might find that the difficulties that climate scientists encounter in their narrative is an issue of “locus of control”. Once people find that some action requires that the locus of control migrates to others, these people resist that movement and actively struggle against the message, as people realize they are loosing locus of control from: “me” to “them.”
And therein lies the rub. The difficulty of climate scientists to communicate their view of the world’s future and the necessary steps to remedy its destructive course is perceived as requiring everybody else to relinquish their own locus of control. Not a likely scenario.
Climate scientists have morphed into Darth Vader, enamored by the power of the Dark Side. Controlling the debate. Controlling everyone’s future.
Jedi Knights have a certain romantic appeal.
good point. Trenberth has lamented the growing influence of economists in the climate debate, seems to think that climate scientists should be calling the shots.
It seems pretty straightforward to me that just as the IPCC has WG1, WG2, and WG3, the true climate scientists (as opposed to climate activists) really don’t have any particular policy recommendations. The only question to be answered by the scientists is what is your forecast, and how sure are you about it. The policy side should be economics and engineering.
I thought this was obvious and uncontroversial. The fact that the IPCC is organized around this division of labor means that this was the understanding twenty years ago, and I don’t see how anything has changed since then vis-a-vis the division of labor.
“Climate scientists have morphed into Darth Vader, enamored by the power of the Dark Side. Controlling the debate. Controlling everyone’s future.”
Yes. It is a good point.
Climate scientists are Darth Vader. Profound. Perhaps you could turn it into a post? You know, to deepen the conversation about the science and move it away from activism?
Seriously, do you get paid for this? I will be out of here in a bit but any time I come here I see you have made 100’s of posts. Are you a paid shill?
Actually its a clever allusion to a climategate mail in which Phil Jones exclaimed “The Empire Strikes Back!”. True. You cant make that shit up
The only economist I have seen in the climate debate has been Paul Krugman, who has had a sensible view of the subject, and can bring an interesting perspective in. E.g.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/21/dicing-with-the-climate/
Practice your Espanol with this:
http://www.nacion.com/2012-08-27/Opinion/las-falacias-de-paul-krugman.aspx
PK luxuriates in another universe, while harvesting low-hanging sweets from socialist non-States.
Wow Jim. Thanks so much for that link. Just what I want to read. An editorial by Krugman. He gets plenty of “air time”. He does not need your plugs.
What, you don’t read my posts?!!
The modelling basis of the IPCC scenarios was discredited about 12 years ago by leading statistician Ian Statistician and David Henderson, former head of the OECD’s economic division. Peter Lang draws on the work of William Nordhaus. Australian economists prominent in the debate include Warwick McKibbin, Henry Ergas, Ross Garnaut and Des Moore, but they are not alone.
Krugman did excellent work on international trade theory and spatial economics, both of which I drew on in my economic policy adviser role. But since he became a prominent op-edder, he is regarded by many, including me, as having become highly partisan and much less rigorous.
Faustino said:
“The modelling basis of the IPCC scenarios was discredited about 12 years ago by leading statistician Ian Statistician and David Henderson, former head of the OECD’s economic division.”
______
Well, who could argue statistics with Ian Statistician ?
Aw come on, Faustino, you just made his name up, didn’t you !
I presume that should read “leading statistician Ian Castle”, Faustino. Formerly Australia’s Chief Statistician.
Faustino –
I do read your posts. Sometimes. And this post led me to something interesting – the McKibben-Wilcoxen Blueprint.
I’ve looked it over find much there to chew on. Unfortunately, it is also to some degree largely based on a false premise:
Sorry – forgot to close the quote after the section I had in bold. Obviously, the excerpt ends with “…. without any adverse consequences.”
Krugman quoting Hansen:
“But Hansen et al make a stronger point: life as we know it evolved to fit the historical range of planetary temperatures.”
Sure, but AGW deniers don’t give a damn about future generations. Them and the “here and now” is all they care about.
MAX_OK “Sure, but AGW deniers don’t give a damn about future generations. Them and the “here and now” is all they care about.”
The confidence of the believers in truth of their beliefs allow them to demonizes the infidels. It is like Deja Vu all over again :)
Krugman has never been sensible about anything.
Judy, have you notice that Trenberth style energy disgrams are being removed from the blogsphere?
Take a look at Wiki and read the wonderful new disclosure
Note on accompanying images: These graphics depict only net energy transfer. There is no attempt to depict the role of greenhouse gases and the exchange that occurs between the Earth’s surface and the atmosphere or any other exchanges.
They have removed the Trenberth diagrams of this style
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/Figure1.png
You ask and ask how they can have an asymmetric emission band and where it is in the atmosphere and then they go and rewrite their propaganda.
I have a draft post forthcoming on this topic, waiting for publication of a paper by Graeme Stephens.
Kind of hard to determine what Trenberth really thinks absent copies of candid thoughts emailed to his team members, innit? ;-)
The travesty groweth.
DocMartyn that change on wiki was made in 2008. You claim it’s a new change?
It’s amusing to see skeptics demanding some kind of honest debate while they are content that their ranks are plagued with people coining ludicrous conspiracy theories all the time.
lolwot, pants on fire.
The Trenberth style diagrams disappeared after I called out Chris C for his abortion of a paper with Trenberth.
Ri, I presume mean ProAGW climate scientists, not climate scientists per se. This is common confusion. Climate scientists per se have no narrative. They just have a debate, with many sides and many voices. The primary reason that the ProAGW narrative is failing is that there is the debate. The narrative cannot overcome this simple fact.
They say the Global T, on The Death Star, is set way too high all the time.
Dr. Curry, be careful what bolded text you agree 100% with. I think the message referred to at the end is CAGW, which may be a false message. Climate science per se need have no message, other than scholarly publication, as with any science. Moreover, until the great debate is resolved there can be no message.
>+1
Hey, this is turning out ter be the best post, evah :-) x10.5
“owever, my concern is that much of the climate science community is so far gone that they can’t get past their perceived imperative to shoot down ‘deniers’ as the apogee of responsible professional conduct.” – JC
This is just silly and needless hyperbole.
The reality is that ‘shooting down’ is something that only a relatively few climate scientists do, and they would spend only a small part of their time doing it.
Judith needs to “align our purpose, re-establish our legitimacy, identify and understand our target audiences and decide how best to express our message.”
Because the ‘target audience’ will continue to mostly ignore her when she uses these dubious rhetorical devices.
That climate science has a target audience is the problem.
Climatology is a broad field. It has Physics, Chemistry, Meteorology, Geology, History, Computer modeling, Experimental measuring and analysis, etc., etc. Only a super smart person, generally called a polymath truly is capable of being expert in most of the required subjects at one time. All real people, including almost all so called climatologists, only see a small portion of the issue. Scientists and engineers working outside the broad area of emphasis called climate science are generally just as qualified to read reports and judge the validity of the claims made by climate scientists as the so called experts. It seems that a large number of very smart scientists and engineers from many field have taken upon themselves to read up in depth on the AGW and CAGW issue and take it to task. Meanwhile only a few of the many supporting scientists not directly working on the issue have read up in comparable depth. They seem to be biased by the media and a few people like Gore and Hanson, and by the IPPC, rather than bothering to do independent review (which does take significant effort).
I am curious where the repeated claims of energy company support and non-scientific reports and blogs from skeptics comes from. I have read reports and blogs on both sides of the issue, and find both sides to have good and bad advocates, but the CAGW side has the VAST majority of funding, media support, and even governments support, but the skeptics seem to have the most desire for honest debate, and have better arguments to my mind. That is not to say there is no AGW, but the case is not made that it is significant.
Quite so.
You only have to go to down this list
http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php
to see skeptics have by far the worse arguments.
Don’t be so obviously silly. SS presents the weakest form of each skeptical argument, ignoring the strong, science based versions.
The SS argument listing does, however, demonstrate the complexity of the debate.
What’s the “strong, science based version” of ‘it’s the sun’ or ‘jupiter is warming’??
I see….there isn’t one.
lolwot | September 2, 2012 at 5:21 am |
You only have to go to down this list
http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php
to see skeptics have by far the worse arguments.
A list of strange rebuttals. What on earth is this one?:
172: “Removing CO2 would cause most water in the air to rain out and cancel most of the greenhouse effect.”
? You don’t have rain so what do you know about it?
Water already rains out of the Air cooling as part of the of the Water Cycle, and, it is heat which causes it to evaporate and rise in air which is how it gets to be in the atmosphere in the first place; it will do this whether carbon dioxide is there or not.
All pure clean rain is carbonic acid, which shares the same residence time as water in the atmosphere, 8-10 days, so can’t be accumulating for hundreds and thousands of years, but comes down to Earth every time it rains.
The Water Cycle which AGW has taken out of the energy budget to pretend there is such a thing as the Greenhouse Effect, cools the Earth from the 67°C it would be with our atmosphere but without water, think deserts.
What have you got here? More SuperMolecule CO2 not only able to defy gravity to accumulate into a blanket, but physically keeping water molecules into the atmosphere?!
How when it’s busy bouncing off oxygen and nitrogen in elastic collisions?
The SS tactic is to present a simple minded version of each skeptical argument, then rebut it with one or more scientific counter arguments. They ignore the scientific skeptical responses, which are well known. This is CAGW deception at its best.
“The SS tactic is to present a simple minded version of each skeptical argument”
Yet the skeptic arguments are fundamentally simple minded.
As Micheal said “What’s the “strong, science based version” of ‘it’s the sun’ or ‘jupiter is warming’??
Myrrh it’s odd that you would go all the way down to 172, down the end where all the least common skeptic arguments are and miss all the very obviously bad skeptic arguments near the top.
And perhaps you didn’t realize you can click on 172 to get the explanation.
lolwot | September 2, 2012 at 9:47 am | [In reverse order]
And perhaps you didn’t realize you can click on 172 to get the explanation.
Yes I did realise, thank you. It doesn’t answer my specific question, do have a go at answering it.
Myrrh it’s odd that you would go all the way down to 172, down the end where all the least common skeptic arguments are and miss all the very obviously bad skeptic arguments near the top.
Not odd at all, as I’ve been discussing this lack of Water Cycle and no rain in the Carbon Life Cycle in discussions here, but you’ve reminded me of why I began exploring these aspects – because I couldn’t find discussions on them at all. Which is how I came to realise that this imaginary fisics had been introduced into the education system so successfully that both AGW/CAGW and those anti the AGW concept itself thought it basic real physics. And even those who worked with and so understood real heat transfer and the lack of convection in the AGW fisics energy budget would be nonplussed on being told that visible light can’t heat matter and would come back with various rebuttals such as UV giving sunburn proves shortwave can.. And variations on this.
I began to explore these less common themes because I couldn’t find any discussions on the “carbon dioxide well-mixed” meme and asked the PhD in physics who had been giving me information of the AGW claims when I said I was interested in knowing more, because I didn’t know there were arguments about it, and he explained the ideal gas scenario (he taught at university level and set exams on the subject).
At first he said it was impossible for carbon dioxide to separate out of the atmosphere because it was so well mixed when I said it couldn’t be well mixed because it was heavier than air. When I posted examples from real life showing how carbon dioxide separated out (mines, breweries, volcanic venting), he took out his post where he’d said it couldn’t (he was a moderator). It was then I began wondering how such a strange teachings about carbon dioxide could have got into the education system as he was obviously oblivious to how nonsensical the molecular physics he was teaching.
To make sure I fully understood him and his AGW claims of carbon dioxide being an ideal gas, and as he’d conceded that carbon dioxide could separate out and pool on the ground, I suggested the following scenario:
There is a room where carbon dioxide has pooled on the ground. Nothing is changed to alter the conditions in which the carbon dioxide first pooled; no work is done, no windows opened, no fans put on. I said the carbon dioxide will remain pooled on the ground because it is heavier than air, he said it it wouldn’t, that it would very quickly diffuse as per ideal gas properties and become thoroughly mixed unable to be unmixed without a huge amount of work being done (like separating back out ink which had been poured into a glass of water).
He said they would thoroughly mix as ideal gas molecules which have no mass, volume, weight or attraction speed through the empty space atmosphere under their own molecular momentum and bounce off each other in elastic collisions. Where of course then there is no gravity – and so the claims their strange carbon dioxide molecule can stay up in the atmosphere and accumulate, not because it’s defying gravity, but because they have no gravity in their empty space atmosphere because their molecules are ideal gas and not real, there’s nothing for real gravity to work on.
So yes, the uncommon questions because it appears that no one else has picked up on this to the extent of exploring why they teach these impossible basics and how they explain it.
And then I got involved in a discussion in which someone wondered where Trenberth’s missing heat was, and I looked at the cartoon and read many explanations of it and realised that AGW fisics had taken out of their cartoon energy budget the direct heat from the Sun, the beam thermal infrared which is the Sun’s thermal energy on the move, saying it couldn’t get through the atmosphere and played no part in heating the surface and had given its property, Heat, to shortwave which as mostly visible is Light and not Heat – the meme “Shortwave In Longwave Out”.
They’ve done this so they can pretend that any actual thermal infrared measured downwelling from the atmosphere is ‘backradiation’ from the upwelling thermal infrared of the “Out”. Very simple, very clever.
Of course it wouldn’t fool someone who knew this was nonsense, who worked with such for example and knew the difference, but for the general science teaching for oiks who have no reason for practical applied knowledge it suffices to promote AGW, enough repetition and even well-educated scientists in other fields will take such fisics on ‘trust’, believing it standard basics that visible light can heat oceans for example when in the real world water is transparent to visible light, and so on.
A lot of the confusion in arguments is created because of this, not only as above, but also for example when someone is arguing from real world physics using particular terms and being answered by a completely different physics to those same terms without either side realising this. The recent spate of ‘gravity’ arguments re radiation come to mind, the word is practically taboo on WUWT..
It really is a fascinating aspect to explore, but you have to know basic, but simple, real world physics to be able to spot what has been tweaked by AGW, and, because the fantasy fisics is so ingrained see how it is used as the basis from which to extrapolate without any appreciation how extraordinary these extrapolations are.
If you do ever come to see how faked the fisics I hope that you won’t take it too hard, it is not a reflection of your intelligence that you thought it real, it is an intricate scam created by subtle sleights of hand from a thorough knowledge of basic physics and a whole generation now knows no different..
..and when you’ve gotten over the anger, what I’ve spotted so far is just the tip of the iceberg because this takes in so many disparate aspects of science, others have spotted the tweaks from knowledge of their own fields and all I’ve done is put some of them together and explored how the tweaks were made.
I do hope you take the time to investigate this for yourself, to check out if what I’m saying is true or false.
Well now that was refreshing.
+1
++
Clear thinking, well-presented.
That’s a fact.
A (continuing) catalogue of collectives:
A raft of deniers,
A ship of fools,
A fleet of kayakers, (beached.)
A sea of complexity,
A clamour of issues,
A fog of uncertainties …
As much as just the very “climate science” and “community” mantra goes rampant in this text, it clearly doesn’t see how this in itself always was part of the problem itself. In my book, one out of at least broadly fields involved with climate: atmospheric physics, geosciences and astrophysics, declared itself “climate science” and “the climate scientists”. The rest is history. To cut it short: where is the great article debunking substantial solar-climate coupling? You’d think it be called for before placing so much overall faith in OA-GCM development, without having it handle this empirical coupling.
“but the skeptics seem to have the most desire for honest debate, and have better arguments to my mind”
The most desire for a debate, probably, but “honest,” probably not. I see too much cherry-picking by people calling themselves skeptics.
If you think their arguments are better, why have they not convinced NAS and NSF that their arguments? I doubt you will find a single scientific society that says their arguments are better.
My previous post was in reply to something
Leonard Weinstein said. I forgot to mention his name.
Faustino said:
“The modelling basis of the IPCC scenarios was discredited about 12 years ago by leading statistician Ian Statistician and David Henderson, former head of the OECD’s economic division.”
_______
A paper by Holtsmark and Alfsen of Statistics Norway, Research Department, takes issue with Castle and Henderson.
http://www.ssb.no/publikasjoner/pdf/dp366.pdf
Romm: “My goal has been to help you, (team,) become more persuasive and less seducible.”
Conversely,
“” Our goal, (team,) is to help them, (sceptical idjits,) become more persuaded and more seducible.””
Maybe they should try candy, flowers, music, and wine.
Or beer, dope, steak, and potatoes… but hey, that’s just me.
:)
“Climate-dismissives” is yet another clueless soundbite that reveals only the authors holier-than-thou attitude. Catastrophe-dismissives would be the correct phrase. Few dispute the sound science but there is just too little of that and far too much of the flaky variety; conclusions led by assumptions and bolstered by bad statistics, huge error margins and scads of mere opinion trying to masquerade as “evidence”. It is by no means an anti-science attitude to demand better science on which to base policy.
The trouble is that scientists are being political without even realising it; they just don’t bother any more to discount other sources for change other than an increase in CO2 because they already decided that is the cause a priori. because that is what they need to assume to get a paper accepted for publication by their peers; all of whom have fallen into the same groupthink.
The first thing that needs to be acknowledged by the community of hubristic planet-saving hypocrites is that skeptics have been mostly correct thus far while catastrophists have been almost completely wrong. That simple truth might just illuminate their foggy perspective and open up their minds to rational thought. Maybe then they’ll appreciate that their cures are worse than the putative disease.
“Few dispute the sound science but there is just too little of that and far too much of the flaky variety”
[citation needed]
As far as I see there are plenty of commenters here, at WUWT, at Jo Nova’s blog, at Steven Goddards blog, who support arguments of the flaky variety. Even you.
You claim “they [scientists] just don’t bother any more to discount other sources for change other than an increase in CO2 because they already decided that is the cause a priori.”
This is wrong. Scientists have looked at various sources and they find CO2 is the best explanation. It isn’t a priori.
A better subject of discussion might be the failure of skeptics to acknowledge their own flaws and failings.
With a complex system there are likely to be a huge variety of “flaky” concepts, like “A better subject of discussion might be the failure of skeptics to acknowledge their own flaws and failings.” instead of a more general discussion of all the failings and divergences of theory from reality. Like the consistent over estimation of climate’s sensitivity to CO2.
http://redneckphysics.blogspot.com/2012/09/frame-of-reference.html
I guess it all depends on your perspective :)
Capt’nDallas
I have read and reread the reference you have provided on numerous occasions. This is the first time that I have understood it.
Now to the Southern Ocean. Wasn’t there a recent paper talking about the Southern Ocean, its role in the conveyor belt bringing warm water from the Arctic overturning and the Southern Ocean was found to be colder than expected when measured?
To me, that suggests there is less warm water traversing from North to South; which means there is less heat energy in the system than is supposed; which means that there is no heat energy missing, just lost in computation.
RiH008, pretty much. The southern oceans with the Antarctic heat sink aided by the circumpolar currents and wicked ass winds maintain a nice stable temperature/heat capacity in the 24S to the southern sea ice region of the globe. So that would be the region to use for a basis of an energy balance. If you start wrong, you will finish wrong. Kinda why frame of reference is important in thermodynamics even if some PhDs in thermodynamics happen to disagree, Lucia.
The 1995 regime shift was an equalization of the energy imbalance between the hemispheres, nothing more.
I am sorry you understood, that means you have a bit crackpot in ya :)
Capt’nDallas
“wicked ass winds” in the roaring 40’s.
Lost starboard engine on account of “propoising” in the seas which reached and battered the lifeboats.
Won’t be the first time I asked myself “…what the hell am I doing here?”
Yah. A bit of a crackpot.
None of the skeptic arguments are relied on for policy afaik. But the idea that the Sun dominates the climate (by whatever mechanism) just happens to be the old consensus position and may very well be the new consensus position in 10 years time if the current pause turns to a cooling. The fact that solar-induced feedbacks are now fully accepted as the driver of ice ages on a macro-scale means that we don’t actually need CO2 to explain anything on a micro-scale. Natural effects in fact have been used by some consensus scientists to explain everything up to 1985 (Lockwood) and the pause after 1998 (Hadley – admittedly one of several competing guesses), which leaves a scant 13 years of unnatural variability – just at the time of the pdo shift as it happens. Ergo we cannot rule out natural variability as easily as some would like. Alas there is no funding down the natural variation road. That some very good science is being done in that regard is almost by accident.
Citation of the flaky science? Try everything cited by the IPCC. Every single impacts paper is based on model results that are unfit for the purpose because the models cannot be used for downscaling. Why do they use models for impacts papers then? Because local climate data always shows nothing alarming is happening! That entire part of IPCC reports is seemingly even written by activists.
In fact pretty much everything based on models is suspect, especially the conclusion that admittedly very poorly understood effects could be modelled sufficiently well to eliminate them as heating agents. “Looking for your keys under the light” is the polite term.
So now take away the models and we have the data and the theory, Yet everyone knows the data is patchy, error-ridden and the sought-for signal is smaller than the error margins. Then we have the paleo stuff which is getting a little better now but which is recovering from the very low point of MBH98 and is also too thin and patchy for such huge extrapolations as have been carried out. This limitation used to be well understood.
That leaves the theory. Well we used to have the idea that the signal would be easily found in the new SST data due to Argo floats but that led to the “missing sink” nonsense where new theory was invented ad-hoc that was contrary to the laws of physics to explain the fact that the data just plain contradicted the previous theory. We also have an IPCC endorsed “fingerprint” of stratospheric cooling which has not been evident since 1995. Now we have the touted idea that there is some connection between recent extreme events and CO2. That trumps any guesswork any skeptic may come up with because there is neither data nor theory to support it.
Basically then the mountain of “evidence” is no more than a mountain of hubristic opinion from pretend experts. Now if you want to believe in worst-case scenarios all well and good but don’t pretend that a mountain of evidence supports it.
“The fact that solar-induced feedbacks are now fully accepted as the driver of ice ages…”
Well that’s wrong right away.
jim 2 September 2 @ 9.46am:
Hmm …that should work, lol.
lolwot
The “perprective” of a rational skeptic is quite simple: if a premise or hypothesis is not supported by empirical scientific data derived from actual physical observations or reproducible experimentation, it is an uncorroborated hypothesis, not reliable scientific knowledge.
The CAGW premise is not supported by such scientific evidence.
Nor is creationism, for that matter (although it has nothing top do with CAGW, our topic here)..
Neither of the two are corroborated hypotheses, let alone reliable scientific knowledge.
Ball’s in your court.
Max
CAGW is supported by radiative transfer databases of the atmosphere, so you might need a rethink there.
Catastrophic AGW is so supported?
Please explain….which catastrophe would you like me to be dampening my underwear about today?
If you disagree, perhaps you can formulate a nifty theory explaining why
Because Carbon Dioxide is part and parcel of the Water Cycle which cools the Earth from the 67°C it would be with our atmosphere but without water, ergo, there is no greenhouse gas warming, ergo there is no carbon dioxide gas warming and anthropogenic or otherwise irrelevant.
Myrrh, few things in climate are simple. While you are still a bit misguided, CO2 does need help transferring heat in the atmosphere, whether that heat is from conduction, convection or radiation. In the Antarctic you could increase the CO2 concentration 300 times and only see a small change in retained heat. In the tropics, CO2 transfers more heat to water vapor stimulating upper level convection, a cooling feed back. CO2 has its maximum impact under just the right conditions, which is why it has confounded so many bright people. It is non-linear, without knowing what normal is, you cannot separate CO2 warming from natural variability. It does though have a radiant impact.
Like I said though, the CO2 radiant interaction is a small part of AGW. Land use may not have an immediate warming impact, but after enough time it will impact weather patterns changing the distribution of energy. In some places that is a good thing, in others like the Sahel and southern Siberia, not so good a thing. Face it, you can’t change up to 15% of the surface of the Earth without having some impact on climate. er… Ergo :)
You’re missing my point. Carbon Dioxide is fully part of the Water Cycle, which cools the Earth around 52°C to 15°C from the 67°C it would be with our atmosphere but without water.
Ergo – unless you can show how extra carbon dioxide can affect the 52°C cooling by the Water Cycle to raise the temperature of the Earth +x°C from the 15°C, you cannot make any such claims for it increasing the Earth’s temperature, regardless which method of heat transfer you choose to use..
But your claim was specifically anthropogenic GW by radiation, so you would have to then narrow it down, not only to the amount of radiation’s contribution of the various methods of heat transfer, but, to that within the narrow confines of anthropogenic contribution – which, as I’ve pointed out elsewhere, is indistinguishable from volcanic.
So, your statement as it stands, that radiation proves AGW, has some way to go before you can make it with any degree of confidence, and until you can show this by actual physics and data you cannot make that claim. You have not shown any steps towards proving it. You have not proved it.
CAGW is not supported by anything. AGW is supported by radiant physics.
From step 6, “Current forcings (1.6 W/m2) x 0.75 ºC/(W/m2) imply 1.2 ºC that would occur at equilibrium. Because the oceans take time to warm up, we are not yet there (so far we have experienced 0.7ºC), and so the remaining 0.5 ºC is ‘in the pipeline’.”
The pipeline appears to have run dry. Most of the ocean heat uptake since 1950 appears to be due to recovery from cooling due to volcanic forcing and natural internal oscillations. That implies that half or more of the “(so far we have experienced 0.7C)” is not related to greenhouse gas forcing. A simple mistake given that data available is northern hemisphere dominated. Thanks to satellite data, which is accurate enough, despite Trenberth’s denial, it is becoming more evident that water vapor is not only not an amplifier of CO2 forcing, but a regulator of global temperature range.
You should really update your references :)
CAGW follows from the existence of AGW just as nuclear war follows from the existence of nuclear weapons.
@lolwot
‘CAGW follows from the existence of AGW just as nuclear war follows from the existence of nuclear weapons’.
It does? Please explain.
CAGW is not supported by anything. AGW is supported by radiant physics.
AGW can’t be supported by radiant physics because the only radiant heat direct from the Sun to the Earth’s surface capable of heating the land and oceans has been excised. And its processes given to Shortwave which is incapable of heating matter.
If you can’t even get that right then you have absolutely nothing to say about radiation and anything you make up about it supporting AGW is consequently irrelevant and the product of the imagination only. Not even good enough to be science fiction, but is science fantasy created through the looking glass, impossible fisics for which you can never produce any empirical data or experiments because there can’t be any – real physics describes what is possible and what actually happens.
Show and tell how physically visible light direct from the Sun heats land and oceans.
Myrrh, reality check needed here. Lets not get into this topic on this thread. We had almost 10,000 comments on the skydragon thread discussing the greenhouse effect, with thorough debunking of crackpotty ideas by numerous people holding Ph.D.’s in molecular physics, physical chemistry, mechanical engineering, etc.
mryrrh, “AGW can’t be supported by radiant physics because the only radiant heat direct from the Sun to the Earth’s surface capable of heating the land and oceans has been excised. ”
The atmosphere has to be capable of retaining some heat and releasing excess heat. The greenhouse effect is the atmosphere portion of the regulation of heat capacity. AGW is more than just CO2. Land use change and black carbon allow more energy to be absorbed. While the oceans are the big dog in charge, 30% is land which is more seriously impacted by the anthropogenic changes that impact the absorption and distribution of energy. Those changes are to a point amplified by CO2, so yes Myrrh, there is AGW. The questions are to what degree is the A causing the warming and what part of the various A impacts are the most critical.
If you disagree, perhaps you can formulate a nifty theory explaining why :)
BTW, I am not in charge of the, Greenhouse Effect/Global Warming/Climate Change/Climate Disruption terminology of the week.
Captdallas, sorry, missed the correct reply button, my reply is now above.
Myrrh, reality check needed here. Lets not get into this topic on this thread. We had almost 10,000 comments on the skydragon thread discussing the greenhouse effect, with thorough debunking of crackpotty ideas by numerous people holding Ph.D.’s in molecular physics, physical chemistry, mechanical engineering, etc.
Judith, I have to admit that I haven’t followed the skydragon arguments much at all, I’ve seen some in passing and have been amused at some of the extreme reactions to them, thinking particularly of Willis Eschenbach who does have a way with words.. [grin]
I have pulled up the skydragons thread and aghast at the length.., put in a search instead for “visible light” and “thermal infrared”. Visible light got three hits from two posts and thermal infrared got none at all. I actually have never seen anyone else making the argument I make about this, so restricting me by putting me in with the arguments from the skydragons and their take on the greenhouse effect is rather going to cramp my style, not that I expect you to like my argument any better as radiation is one of the aspects I analyse.
Specifically, that thermal infrared direct from the Sun has been excised from the energy budget and its property of heat has been given to shortwave, the meme “shortwave in longwave out”. This is impossible physics.
Not matter how many PhD or self proclaimed physics experts say otherwise. Visible light from the Sun cannot and does not heat matter. Thermal infrared, the Sun’s actual thermal energy on the move to us can and does heat the Earth’s land and oceans, and us as we absorb this.
Unless you (generic) can show that “Shortwave in” is physically capable of heating land and oceans we can have no weather at all from that budget, let alone work out climate change.
Man-made global warming is backed by empirical data and experiments on the absorption properties of greenhouse gases and the transmission of radiation in the atmosphere as well as measurements of trends in atmospheric trace gases. Further observations and measurements of the oceans, atmosphere and biosphere coupled with paleoclimate data from the Earth’s climate history, form the basis of strong evidence that human activity will dominate the global temperature trend in the next decade.
The history behind the emergence of a scientific consensus on this matter is summarized at length here:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm
The threat of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) logically follows from the existence of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) just as the threat of catastrophic nuclear war follows from the existence of nuclear weapons.
lolwot, the threat of catastrophe does not logically follow one’s inability to understand a problem. The grand pubahs of AGW don’t even have a clue what normal should be, they only know the past 33 years with reasonable accuracy and some of the doddering “emeritus” proponents seem to think data ended in 1995.
If you had a clue, you could use 1995-2010 as a baseline and back calculate the warming by region and find out that someone screwed the pooch. It is do over time lolwot :)
That’s an awesome idea – use the most recent 15 yrs as baseline, and warming just disappears!!
Micheal, you are so silly. Using the most recent 15 years just changes the relative baseline of the data, not the warming. The object is to determine what would be the proper base line, and figure out what there is an unexpected reduction in variance in the recent data, why the stratosphere cooling abruptly changed in 1995, why the sea surface temperature warming rate drastically reduced in 1995, why the MWP and LIA where not regional than global events, why the models uniformly diverge from reality between 2000 and 2005 and why the rate of ocean heat uptake is also reducing. Just those silly little “i”s and “t”s that require dotting.
You wouldn’t understand being an academic. Engineers, though actually have to make things work :)
Micheal, though as an academic, you are more likely to make few typos :)
….and it’s just so terribly convenient!
Let’s always make the baseline the most recent 15 yrs to fit in with our pre-existing beliefs!
Go Team Skeptic!!
Good point. Engineers, unlike academics, understand the importance of getting all the little details right.
You know, like making sure that your “t’s” get dotted. :-)
Micheal, it is soon to be all the rage :) Since the Earth is far from being a perfect sphere and with the southern hemisphere having much greater thermal mass and 1413Wm-2 in Austral Summer versus 1321Wm-2 in Austral winter from solar insolation, it only makes sense that the Northern hemisphere is more sensitive to changes in forcing. It is absolutely amazing how much satellite data is available and how remarkably accurate that data is.
Since you are educated, perhaps you would like to this nifty little bastardization of mathematics I added in an update just for you.
http://redneckphysics.blogspot.com/2012/09/frame-of-reference.html.
I haven’t finished yet, but it looks like 1921 to 1950 would be a good base line or 1995 to present, to compare the internal oscillations of climate. That still doesn’t change the trends, just makes attribution a touch easier :)
Capt’nDallas
From update:
With uniform warming there should be an increase in the variance of the data.
Why should there be an increase in variance in the data?
Skippy,
At least 30 yrs is better than the ridiculous 15 you were proposing.
The CO2 Problem in 6 Easy Steps
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/08/the-co2-problem-in-6-easy-steps/
“CAGW follows from the existence of AGW just as nuclear war follows from the existence of nuclear weapons.”
Nope, the C requires water vapor feed back tripling the CO2eg forcing and the “in the pipeline” impact. Not that other thing may lead to varying degrees of catastrophic consequences, a doubling of CO2 won’t.
Per Raypierre, “a tendency for the state to relax back to an equilibrium with a certain time constant. What’s more, that time constant is proportional to the climate sensitivity”
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o252/captdallas2/climate%20stuff/whatsnormal.png
That is an indication of a “regime” change in circa 1995. That is not what one would expect to be “in the pipeline”.
An exit strategy, that’s the ticket! lolwot should start working on an exit strategy :)
“Nope, the C requires water vapor feed back tripling the CO2eg forcing and the “in the pipeline” impact.”
And nuclear war requires nuclear weapons to be launched.
I always say that AGW is pure science, CAGW is social science. The AGW part dispassionately deals with changes to the planet (WG1 in IPCC terms). The C part is about the impact of those changes on the people (WG2 in the IPCC).
AGW is pure narrative. Not a lick of science. I used to think there was at least some science but despite falsifying evidence from ARGO buoys and satellites showing no warming for 14 years, and global average temperature in lower troposphere falling for the past 10 years, falling a LOT in the past 2 years, despite CO2 rising 8% during that time, the CO2->warming linkage lives on. That’s how dogma works not how science works. In AGW-land science, like Elvis, left the building. It’s been a travesty since 2009 and has only become a greater travesty since then. Trust Trenberth in the climategate emails where it never occurred to him he’d be quoted.
The land temperature is rising faster than expected (skeptics think urban effects impact Canada and Siberia where it is rising fastest), deep ocean heat content rise accounts for the forcing change, and sea ice is disappearing faster than expected, cloud cover is reducing negating negative feedback theories, but otherwise the skeptics are doing fine with what’s left (which is…?).
Deep ocean heat content is an unmeasured quantity. ARGO buoys dive to 2000 meters. The average depth of the global ocean is 4000 meters. The missing heat is still missing. It was not found hiding in the ocean.
Of course land temperatures are rising faster but whether that’s expected or not depends on who you ask. I certainly expected it. The radiative physics of water reject the lion’s share of downwelling infrared as latent heat of vaporization. Greenhouse gases don’t have much effect on anything free to evaporate. Rocks don’t evaporate. Ocean does. Hence over the ocean you get a muted environmental lapse rate and cloud deck that is about 100 meters higher for every CO2 doubling with little if any rise in water temperature. Ultimately the global climate is controlled by the ocean so if greenhouse gases have a limited effect over the ocean they have a limited effect on the entire globe.
Look for a continuation of global cooling for the next 20 years. Then look back on the past 60 years, subtract the average amount of warming per century since the end of the Little Ice Age, and you might discover a bit of anthropogenic warming.
before 1998 and after 1998
jim2 | September 2, 2012 at 9:40 am |
“I have respect for Dr. Curry on this. She is honest, open, and courageous”
Not quite as brave as you might think. The robots.txt for this website turns away indexing which means nothing you write here, including the articles Curry posts, turns up on web searches. Why would anyone do that you might ask. Go ahead and ask! :-)
Uh, that would be that I have no idea what you are talking about. I am not that savvy in the ways of the internet. if you use wordpress and can tell me how to do these things you say I am not doing, then I will certainly take a look.
You used to be able to find search for Google cache versions of Judith’s posts. No longer. I previously found that a post had changed after the fact of posting (it reverted to a draft version due to some technical glitch) – but when I recently wanted to she if she might have changed a post without making a notation – it was no longer possible.
Technical advice needed to address these issues
First question: Are you hosting this blog, or is it running on WordPress’ servers?
wordpress.com
Then it’s under their control.
Delete the following file. If your host won’t allow that find a different host or live with the fact that none of what you or anyone else writes here is indexed by Google. Personally I’d be a bit more civil if it wasn’t for the fact that this all disappears into the aether as fast as its written. Archive.org doesn’t crawl it either.
http://judithcurry.com/robots.txt
Thx, but this is way beyond my ken. I think i might have fixed this by changing the privacy settings.
It could be under WordPress control but I tend to doubt it. Most people want their blogs indexed and so this would be viewed very negatively. That said I haven’t done any work with Worpress in a few years and even then stuff under the hood was limited as I had a server technologist who did most of the heavy lifting. The following may be of some aid:
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/robotstxt-8
I’m not sure how common the problem but others have experienced it and it seems to be a mis-parameterization of admin-accessible attributes.
http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/http://judithcurry.com
This is very convenient for internet authors who don’t care to have their words come back later to haunt them. I suppose I must again apologize for suspecting foul play when ignorance can also explain the situation. Conspiracy theories are just so much more entertaining compared to rampent incompetence which is just downright depressing. Pass the Prozac.
If something bad happens and its a choice between conspiracy and stuff up, it’s nearly always a stuff up.
Could an anti-luke-warmer or anti-Judith Curry person planted this file?
If you know anything about wordpress.com, can you tell me where I find anything on robots.txt. I would like to fix this, but i have no idea how. From my wordpress.com dashboard. wait a minute, i think i found something, on privacy settings, site visibility. I might have fixed this. I certainly did click this myself; might have been a default or something done by the tech who set up the account for me.
Thanks for calling this to my attention.
Perhaps that’s not such a good idea making this site indexed to Google (the comments that is, the top-level posts are perfectly OK). Unassuming Google users searching on keywords such as AGW will get to all the crackpot theories on Iron Sun and Sky Dragons and get dragged into the murk.
Google actually has a serious problem with indexing garbage. For example, well-intentioned people placed auto-translated Japanese onto sites after Fukushima, and that was riddled with errors and completely misleading reporting.
There is no easy way to get rid of this stuff once it is up there.
http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-03-25/tech/30096560_1_google-search-algorithm-web-site
Sites like Blekko and Wikipedia exist to exercise some editorial pruning, however marginally effective it is. Stem the tide of the stupid.
Dr. Curry is part of the vast lukewarmer conspiracy. The mundane flaws of wordpress are actually her attempt to keep all of you from bringing your brilliant eloquence to a wider audience. She is secretly funded by big text book.
Bwahaha!
Of course, you could save yourselves the aggravation and just stop taking advantage of her hospitality to comment on her inadequacies here. That’d teach her.
GaryM | September 2, 2012 at 7:26 pm | Reply
“She is secretly funded by big text book.”
Good one! LOL
CE is indexed and archived now!
JC was successful in finding the right switch.
Now if she could just find the right switch to turn off the corruption in climate science…
glad to hear that the site is fixed, thx for your help
spam has just exploded, a byproduct of being searchable I guess
And make sure you don’t call out the casual insult whatever you do.
Integrity? Laughable.
Judith, that’s to be expected. Bots crawl the internet looking for links to use for many things, including spam. Once your site became searchable, links to it started appearing in many more places, and thus it was found more often.
It’s an unfortunate consequence of making your blog more accessible.
Spambots are a fact of life on the internet, if you let the legitimate bots in.
Judith, I decided to test out Google’s indexing, and I noticed something that may be considered a problem. This site has daily/monthly archives, and currently they’re being indexed by Google. This means people can get results directing them to the abbreviated excerpts in the archives instead of the actual posts.
That’s bad for two reasons. One, it can be annoying for the user. Two, each site has a certain rating in Google that determines how high it will appear in search results. That rating gets spread across all the pages Google indexes. By sharing that rating across pages you don’t want searched (such as monthly archive pages), you decrease the amount available for the pages you do want searched (blog posts). This affects how highly your posts posts show up in Google search results.
It isn’t necessarily something you need to worry about, but it could be worth looking into. To fix it, you’d want to add “rel=nofollow” in links to the archives. Unfortunately, I don’t know what you’re using to add the calendar section to your pages, so I don’t know how easy it would be to make those additions.
captdallas2 0.8 +0.2 or -0.4 | September 2, 2012 at 12:43 pm | Reply
“CAGW is not supported by anything. AGW is supported by radiant physics”
captdallas2 0.8 +0.2 or -0.4 | September 2, 2012 at 12:43 pm | Reply
AGW is supported by radiant physics of an approximate rotating spherical black body.
Fixed that for ya.
On a real planet mostly covered with water maybe not so much. When an interglacial period starts the temperature shoots up like a rocket then hits an impenetrable ceiling. Why? Happens time after time after time in the Vostok cores as far back as we can look. No one falsified Ferenc M. Miskolczi’s Saturated Greenhouse Effect which basically holds that as partial pressure of CO2 rises water vapor declines and the result is a wash. There is arguable empirical support for this in the radiosonde humidity record but that record has weaknesses which make it arguable much like the rest of the pre-satellite era data.
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/The_Saturated_Greenhouse_Effect.htm
I reckon’ many here have never even heard of this.
David my statement, AGW is supported by radiant physics is correct. I did not go into detail about the limits or feed backs that provide the limits. But you are right, most don’t appreciated that water vapor is both a regulator and a GHG or that CO2 also has a limited regulating effect. AGW though includes land use and black carbons which are much more important issues.
Black carbon’s net effect is debatable. When airborne it shades the surface. We know what shade does. Land use changes can go either way as well. If you funnel off water from impermeable cover into narrow channels it drastically decreases evaporative cooling of the surface and you get the infamous urban heat island. On the other hand if you take water of narrow channels like rivers and spread it out as irrigation water for crops you get the opposite effect.
So I am not objecting so much to your use of AG as much as I am to the W because the W for warming could be a C for cooling or an N for neutrality. Indeed even the climate boffins can’t make up their minds and blame global cooling, both recent and episodes in the past century on cooling aerosol emissions dominating warming GHG emissions.
David, “the W because the W for warming could be a C for cooling or an N for neutrality.” It does look like it can be, but it looks to me like the AG limits the C part pretty much. The range of natural variation globally looks to be +/-1.5C if you exclude the Antarctic and highest Arctic. I think we are at the high end of natural variability instead of the low end because of high northern latitude expansion of agriculture and industry. That is different than shorter term warming or cooling due to various types of farming and irrigation since permanent agriculture gradually changes the longer term climate.
So it is not so much the amount of forcing but where the forcing is applied and how long. The net effect should be a smaller range of natural variability.
Hmmm … when the small black carbon particle absorbs visible or otherwise sunlight, it will re-radiate in the IR. It should behave more-or-less like CO2 in that regard.
More or less meaning it will tend to radiate IR. CO2 does not absorb visible light like black carbon.
No, black carbon doesn’t behave like CO2 at all. It affect the albedo of the surface. Greenhouse just traps the longwave that’s leaving the surface. BC makes longwave out of shortwave. It aggravates the GH effect, but it causes warming in and of itself, unlike GH. It’s more powerful than the GH effect.
Politically-funded climate scientists as a whole agree to start being honest?? Never gonna happen, the stakes for politics are too high. (Which is why Mann and the other Climategate Crooks to this day escape censure and still have their jobs).
Since the really big millstone around the Consensus’s neck are the deep and apparently inextricable ties between professional misconduct and the Consensus view, Rapley is surely right about getting climate scientists to commit now to professional conduct.
I can think of no greater way of winning over swathes of skeptics (and maybe even deniers) in one fell swoop, than by giving those climategate crooks their marching orders.
It’s complete BS that would win over swathes of skeptics. You only have to visit skeptic blogs to see how eager they all are to believe/invent any old BS to deny the science. As if “giving those climategate crooks their marching orders” will change that.
No, the case I suspect is two things:
1) various skeptics/deniers wrongly imagine the science they don’t like will disappear if certain scientists are removed.
2) various skeptics/deniers hope to use such an event as propaganda to further leverage their attacks on the science.
Rapley defines the problem as follows:
The Hippocratic Oath has never prevented physicians from taking on cranks and snake oil salesmen. In fact, science denial is a huge problem for the medical community, from AIDS denial in parts of Africa to vaccine denial here at home.
The problem we face here is not science denial, but rather bogus, advocacy science posing as the real thing (hiding data, hiding the decline, sabotaging peer-review ….. ), and no action being taken against it.
A climate science Hippocratic Oath could in principle address this issue, and move mainstream climate science away from its characteristic snake-oil salesmanship as revealed in Climategate, towards real science.
There’s no empirical evidence for any wrongdoing by any climate scientist in the fake scandal “Climategate.” The only person who failed ethically in Climategate was the hacker. But thanks for playing!
Dogma and suppression in science is the worst thing for science.
Fortunately denialist dogma did not make much headway in the scientific community before they shut it down.
Denialist dogma? You mean climate change denialists? The warmists who deny climate change? Then we agree.
Actually the only reason no one went to jail over Climategate revelations is because the statute of limitations for criminal misconduct in UK freedom-of-information law had expired.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Information_requests_to_the_Climatic_Research_Unit
“A 2008 FOI request by David Holland for emails discussing work on the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report was refused by the university. In November 2009 he alleged that CRU emails posted online discussed deleting the emails he had requested: in January 2010 the Deputy Information Commissioner told a journalist that this indicated an offence under section 77 of the FOIA, but prosecution was time-barred by statute of limitations. Newspapers misrepresented this as a decision in relation to raw data, and the issue was discussed by the House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee inquiry, which found there had been a lack of openness. The ICO decision published on 7 July 2010 stated that this potential offence had not been investigated as it was time-barred.”
I’m not sure which is your larger character flaw, Robert, stupidity or dishonesty.
As Robert intimates, there is absolutely nothing ethically wrong with withholding tax-funded data from those you suspect don’t agree with your politics and/or findings. Or faking Hockey sticks etc etc. If something is politically correct, then that is the end of the matter, period.
That’s it Robert, just deny what is plainly obvious to the whole world. Yeah, that’ll ‘work’, Robert, ie play right into the hands of those you oppose, by making sure Climate Science never puts its house in order, and so continues to be seen as shysters. Deniers everywhere will love you.
+lots
‘Trust Us, We’re Climate Scientists. We think that we’re the only ones around who are qualified to tell you how to run the planet for the next few hundred years. Sure, some of us have only a dodgy and arms length relationship with the truth and escape prosecution only on technicalities. And absolutely nothing we’ve ever forecast has come to pass. But you need to trust us because we’re the experts. We know what’s good for you’
That’s a really good sales pitch. Where do I sign? Here, have my wallet and my house and my children’s and grandchildren’s future. I know you’ll treat them right. After all you are the experts.
Agree, the oath means nothing, actually it increases the hypocrisy. Transparency is the best tool in the box.
That’s why Heartland will be disclosing all their donors and all the “scientists” on their payroll. ;)
LOL
I don’t care for Heartland, only for my side (liberalism). I can’t stand any wrongdoing on my side.
JFI ‘Heartland’ has no traction or influence his side of the Big Pond. Nor the Cock Brothers. They are both unknown outside True Believers who use them a s bogeymen to scare the children if they won’t eat their greens.
We have Moonbat and Charlieboy instead.
The GWPF get plenty of exposure.
Neither will I defend Heartland. We have NCSE on one side and Heartland on the other, opposite sides of the same coin. Robert is math-challenged inasmuch he seems to believe that wrong plus wrong equals right.
Robert
The key question here is:
“Who are the snake oil salesmen?”</em
Think about it a bit…
Max
Robert | September 3, 2012 at 7:11 am |
“Fortunately denialist dogma did not make much headway in the scientific community before they shut it down.”
Fortunately they weren’t able to shut down the satellites which track global average temperature of the lower troposphere. As long as that remains operational and showing global cooling like it has for more than the past decade all the arm waving pal reviewed model based AGW narratives mean precisely jack diddly shlt. Sucks, don’t it? For you I mean.
“If I Were JC”
If I were JC,
I would see with some alarm how my scientific discipline has lost public credibility and trust
I would see that this has been caused by the politicization of climate science
I would see that a prime reason for this has been the political “consensus process” of IPCC, which rejects any scientific views and findings that conflict with its “consensus view”.
I would read with dismay in the Climategate emails how ethical rules have been bent or broken by some members of my profession in order to support the “consensus process”.
I would see that IPCC, itself, has been guilty of manipulating data and exaggerating risks associated with AGW, in order to support the “consensus view”.
I would hear the shrill calls for immediate action at the policy level, although I know, myself, that the existence or extent of any real potential threat has not yet been established scientifically.
I would see that the climate blogosphere has moved from being primarily supportive of the “consensus view” to being largely skeptical of this view.
And I would act to try to reestablish the image of my profession and, hopefully, to get a bit of sanity into the whole process:
– By encouraging open and unbiased communication among all interested parties, not only those directly involved in climate science or policy.
– By using the vehicle, which accomplishes this most quickly: the blogosphere.
– By participating in forums, where the scientific/political interface relating to climate are discussed.
– By contributing to new climate research.
– Not by attacking my colleagues whose opinions may differ from mine, but by openly discussing the uncertainties, which still exist regarding the validity of the “consensus view”.
But I’m not JC.
I’m just an interested observer, who may share many of the concerns.
Max
Jim D | September 2, 2012 at 6:15 pm |
What’s left is satellite temperature data showing -0.10C/decade cooling trend (and accelerating) in global average for the lower troposphere for the past decade.
Global warming stopped. Regional warming may continued but on a global average the lower troposphere temperature is declining. Who’s the denier again?
Myrhh
On the subject of visible light not being able to heat things up…
I posted some youtube videos of kiddies lighting stuff on fire with cheap visible light lasers. I found at least one each for you in visible red, blue, and green lasers. I then offered to pay you $100/minute to let me trace patterns on your skin with a visible light laser provided the first minute was free of charge.
Did you ever respond to that?
Your assertion that things cannot be heated with visible light is demonstrably false and just about everyone but you knows it which places you squarely in Crankville, USA. What in the bloody hell convinced you to go so ridiculously far off the reservation?
Repeat out loud, “the Sun is not a laser, the Sun is not a laser, the Sun is not a laser” and if that is not sufficient to get you thinking about the differences…
..try cooking your dinner with your remote control.
The energy budget promoting AGW is shortwave from the Sun heating land and oceans, your responses merely irritate, but they do show your lack of knowledge of the properties and processes of the different energies from the Sun. This is the problem.
It’s a very real problem. If you knew what they could and couldn’t do on encountering matter you would see how ludicrous it is to say that Shortwave heats land and oceans – it takes the great energy of Heat, the actual thermal infrared direct from the Sun to move the molecules of matter into vibrational states to raise their temperatures, to raise the temperatures of ocean and land – and this is what it takes to get our weather. We would have no winds and storms without this.
For people discussing ‘climate’, you are abysmally ignorant of the basic natural properties and processes of matter and energy of our Earth and atmosphere, of the differences. Science is about differences.
Abysmally ignorant of the kind of energy it takes to cook your dinners.
Shortwave/Solar is not thermal energy. Visible, UV and Nr Infrared are not hot. You cannot feel them. They are in the category Light, not Heat. They do not raise your temperature, they do not heat you up, because they cannot. They cannot move your matter into vibrational states, kinetic energy, heat. They are not physically heating up the Earth’s land and oceans.
You have taken out of your AGWScienceFiction energy budget the only beam energy from the Sun to us which is capable of heating us up, the actual thermal energy of the Sun capable of heating up land and water to give us our massive winds and weather systems created from the great differences of temperature between volumes of air at the equator and the poles and the differences locally as for example inshore and offshore winds.
Shortwave from the Sun can’t make this happen.
This is your basic premise, your claim, real scientists would rise to the challenge to prove their basic premise..
Max,
“Then, as far as “doubling CO2″ is concerned, I’ve pointed out to tempterrain on the “CE at 2” site why it is highly unlikely that a doubling of today’s CO2 level will occur over this century,”
Hopefully you’ll be right, and humanity as whole will be able find a way to decouple CO2 emissions from GDP. Or GWP should that be be?
But do the maths. 5% growth, from now to the end of the century means we’ll have a world economy in the year 2100 which is 67 times as large as it is now.
Drop that to a more modest 3% growth, and it will be ‘only’ 13 times the size it is now.
So, with these figures in mind, a mere doubling of CO2 concentrations by the end of the century might seem to be an optimistic target.
To say nothing of the large carbon stores in the northern permafrost, in methyl hydrate deposits, and now it seems under the Antarctica ice sheet as well.
Anthropogenic atmospheric CO2 doubles at 560: 280 preindustrial plus 280 AACO2. We’re at ~394: 280 preindustrial plus 114 AACO2. AACO2 has been doubling every 31 years, and there should be enough demand and supply to double it again by 2043: 280 preindustrial plus 114 AACO2 plus 31 more years of AACO2 = 508 ppm. That would leave 52 ppm in 57 years of human ingenuity. My bet is on human ingenuity gettin’ur done by 2070.
JCH
Your assumptions are false when you write.
“there should be enough demand and supply to double it [atmospheric CO2] by 2043”
This is (to put it politely) balderdash. Come back down to Earth, JCH.
UN estimates that global population growth will slow down dramatically over this century (as I pointed out to TT).
“Anthropogenic” meansgenerated by humans.
Humans are not going to use 4.5 times as much fossil fuel on average than they do today by 2100 (per capita use increased by 10% over the 20+ years from 1990 to today, so it is reasonable to assume that this might increase by up to 50% over the remainder of this century, but not by a factor of 4.5).
So if human population growth slows down dramatically, so will human CO2 generation. Right?
A reasonable business-as-usual projection (possibly on the high side) would be that CO2 levels will reach 580 to 600 ppmv by 2100, not 780 ppmv as suggested by TT.
Max
actual levels by 2100 depend not only on human emissions but also natural feedbacks. Could contribute less or more.
lolwot
Postulated “natural” GHG feedbacks are exactly that.
No one denies that these could possibly occur.
It’s just extremely unlikely, since this never happened before.
The Paleo-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) interval is sometimes cited by CAGW proponents (such as Richard Alley) as proof of CO2 as cause for rapid temperature increase (estimated at around 6°C), during which period an estimated 6,800 Gigatons of carbon (as CO2 equivalent) are believed to have been released into the ocean and atmosphere (roughly five times the amount contained in all optimistically inferred fossil fuels on Earth today).
This obviously did not occur as a result of human fossil fuel combustion, but it is suggested that massive submarine volcanic eruptions caused by breakup of continents with massive methane release from clathrates were the root cause.
But that is all obviously another story.
Hollywood could make a nice scary film about all this though.
Max
Carbon stores in northern permafrost will be a boon to agriculture but they’re too dilute to be an energy source. It remains to be seen whether methane ice on the seafloor can be economically harvested. As of now it cannot be harvested and my bet would be that before the technology to do so could be invented and deployed the instant power of the sun will be efficiently harvested and converted into liquid hydrocarbon fuels by synthetic organisms which are even now being designed. Synthetic biology is a done deal at this point with nothing but reverse engineering of natural biology between where we are now and where we need to be. Where we need to be is cheap, clean, safe sustainable energy. Expensive sustainable energy does not represent progress and neither does cheap unsustainable energy. We need both and far too many people on both side of the great cultural divide advocate for one or the other unacceptable solutions. Clean and safe are secondary concerns but synthetic biology gives us those too. Safe is perhaps a concern according to many because if you can engineer a synthetic organisms that can produce good things you can also engineer synthetic organisms that produce bad things i.e. biological weapons of mass destruction. Both are probably inevitable. Certainly the latter is because it’s always easier to destroy something than to create something.
tempterrain
Your assumptions are “continuous growth” at substantial rates (3% or 5% per year).
However, UN projections (plus others) estimate a dramatic slowdown in population growth.
From 1970 to 2000 this was 1.7%/year compounded.
Most recently it is around 1.2%/year.
The UN projections have global population slowing down to one-third the current level over the entire remainder of this century, i.e. to 0.4%/year – with population reaching around 10 billion by 2100.
I have pointed out to you that (based on CDIAC data on CO2 and Wiki world population data) per capita human fossil fuel consumption has increased by 10% from 1990 to today..
In order to reach a level of 2x today’s level of 392 ppmv (=784 ppmv) by 2100 the average per capita fossil fuel consumption would have to increase to 4.5 times its present level.
This is pure fantasy, tempterrain.
[I’ll be glad to go through the figures with you again, in order to allay your fears and calm you down.]
Cheers.
Max
It only needs to triple by 2100 to 6 ppm per year to average 4 ppm/yr leading to an increase of 400 ppm to about 765 ppm by 2100. Tripling by 2100 is reaching 100 Gt CO2 per year by then. As the world population may increase by 50%, this amounts to a doubling of the per capita value. There is a lot of room for this because the global per capita is about a quarter of the US per capita.
Take a look again at the UN spreadsheet, and look at the “Low Band” page. It is the only one that has been accurate (and only at its lower edge). It projects peaking around 2035 at <8bn,, with accelerating decline thereafter. Depopulation is more likely to be the great fear by 2100 than overpopulation.
Max,
Emissions are more related to the increase in the size of the economy than population. Over the course of the 20th century emissions rose by a factor of 13.
http://serc.carleton.edu/images/eslabs/carbon/fossil_fuel_emmisions.png
If the same happens again this century ………………
And the population change in that time was what?
LA,
Approximately a factor of 3.8.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population
I’m sure you should be capable of looking these sort of stats up for yourself. Next time you present your thoughts on CE, why not look up some facts and figures and base your opinion on them. That’s called rational thought.
Latimer Alder
Good point.
Human population increased more than 4-fold from 1900 to today (from 1.6 to 7.0 billion)
This is an exponential rate of around 1.3% per year.
UN estimates that it will reach around 10 billion by 2100. This is around 1.4X today’s population, or an exponential rate of 0.4% per year.
There is another major difference working in the same direction: motor vehicles.
These were practically unknown in 1900, but as the result of Henry Ford and others became widespread over the next 110 years. They now exceed 1 billion motor vehicles worldwide.
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2011/08/23/car-population_n_934291.html
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/vehiclesandfuels/facts/2010_fotw617.html
Today, roughly 5 GtCO2/year of the total 30 GtCO2/year are emitted by motor vehicles. In the USA, roughly 1/3 of the CO2 emissions come from motor vehicles.
These emissions will undoubtedly continue to grow, but not at the rate seen from 1900 to today.
CDIAC data tell us that total per capita human CO2 emissions increased from 0.33 tons CO2/year in 1900 to around 4.8 tons today, or an exponential growth rate of 2.4% per year.
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/ndp030/global.1751_2008.ems
This growth rate has slowed down considerably: there was around 10% increase from 1990 to today, or an exponential rate of around 0.5% per year.
So there are many factors at play, which tempterrain ignores in his oversimplified extrapolations.
Max
Max,
To continue: World production increased by a factor of 37 in the 20th century which corresponds to about 4% growth on average. In recent years that has averaged 3.2%
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product
So there doesn’t seem to be a 1:1 relationship between growth and CO2 emissions but they are linked. The challenge in the 21st century will be to break this link completely and have the situation of rising production and falling overall CO2 emissions. That’s where carbon pricing comes in of course.
tempterrain
You are oversimplifying in your extrapolations (see above post to Latimer Alder).
Yes. World production and CO2 emissions are linked. World production and world population are also linked. There is no way that these links will be broken.
And yes, the challenge is to produce more goods with less energy use (as is happening all over the world without any direct or indirect carbon tax). [“BTU accounting” became a standard procedure in the chemical industry as far back as the 1970s.]
But I truly believe that we have beaten this dog to death and should move on to something else.
Max
Max,
I’m not happy about you beating this dog! Its still growling and has asked me to point out that if emissions have risen by a factor of 13 in the 20th century and population by a factor of 3.8, then emissions per person would have risen by 13/3.8 = 3.42 or 342% not the 10% you’ve previously claimed.
It looks like you are still using that dodgy calculator which I’ve previously advised you to change!
tempterrain, your comment happened to be the first one to catch my eye as I was going through my RSS reader’s stockpile of unread comments (personal life has gotten in the way for a while). Naturally, I was curious how one person could come up with 10% while another came up with 342%. Unfortunately, it turns out the answer is you’re being silly. You say:
Notice the part I made bold. Compare it to what I make bold in the following quotes:
Perhaps you should explain to the dog 1990 to today (2012) is not the 20th century. Or perhaps you should try not turning to such silly sources as dogs for arguments on scientific topics.
tempterrain
I hope you have read Brandon Shollenberger’s post through a few times, so it can sink in.
Pertinent facts are:
CDIAC estimates tell us that human CO2 emissions have increased from 0.53 to around 33 GtCO2 per year from 1900 to today.
At the same time, human population has increased from 1.6 to 7 billion (exponential growth rate of 1.35% per year).
So the per capita rate of CO2 emissions rose from 0.33 t/year to 4.8 t/year (this represents a total increase of 14x or an exponential rate of increase of 2.4% per year).
Over the more recent period 1990 to 2012, the overall per capita CO2 emissions rose by 10%, while population increased from 5.3 billion to 7 billion (or continuing at an exponential rate of 1.35%/year).
IPCC estimates based on ice core data that the atmospheric CO2 concentration was around 292 ppmv in 1900; Mauna Loa measurements tell us that it is around 392 ppmv today. This represents an increase of around 34% over the 112 year period.
Most recently the rate of increase has leveled off at an exponential rate of around 0.5%per year.
Let’s assume (as IPCC does) that the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration is a direct result of human CO2 emissions alone.
If we assume that, as an upper limit, the current exponential rate of increase will continue to year 2100, despite the dramatic slowdown in population growth, we arrive at a projected 2100 atmospheric CO2 concentration of 392*(1.005)^88 = 608 ppmv (this lies somewhere between the IPCC model projections based on “storylines and scenarios B1 and A1T1”)
IMO it is safe to assume that this will be the upper limit for year 2100.
As pointed out to WebHubTelescope in earlier posts, the absolute upper limit to be asymptotically approached some day in the far distant future, as constrained by total fossil fuel availability on our planet (WEC 2010), would be a theoretical 1,030 ppmv.
But I’m convinced that long before we reach that level we will have developed all sorts of competitive alternate energy sources for all end uses including transportation, and that the remaining fossil fuel resources will be used only very sparingly for higher value added end uses, and only exceptionally for combustion.
As the NASA video clip shows, leave it up to the applied scientists and engineers: they will come up with the solutions for tomorrow, not by arbitrarily throttling back our standard of living based on an outdated doomsday fixation, but by coming up with innovative new solutions to increase our quality of life.
Max
Jim2, “Hmmm … when the small black carbon particle absorbs visible or otherwise sunlight, it will re-radiate in the IR. It should behave more-or-less like CO2 in that regard.”
I would be more concerned with the longer term black carbon effects like accelerating snow melt. That would not be easy to see in the temperature record because it would only kick in when it was exposed. If the black carbon didn’t get carried off with melt water it could enhance melt in different years, like Greenland this year.
Most black carbon falls onto open ocean where it does nothing in changing albedo. It does however shade the ocean while airborne above it. Anything that provides shade lowers the temperature below and raises the temperature above. I’m getting a bit burned out googling today and guest will be arriving shortly but if you google soot site:uncommondescent.com you should find an article by me 4-5 years ago citing the relevant study.
Black carbon accelerating snowmelt – ask anyone who’s lived for a decade or two somewhere there’s snow on the gound most of the winter alongside a highway with 18-wheelers going by. The soot from their exhaust will almost blacken the snow nearest the highway when the spring melt gets going and it is most definitely the first snow to disappear. This same effect plays out everywhere but not to such an obvious extent that you can’t help but notice with the unaided eye. As Yogi Berra says “You can observe a lot by just watching.”
Yep, you have the immediate obvious impact which reduces the length snow stays on the ground. That has been used by farmers for centuries to speed up snow melt for planting and also to prevent snow mold on winter wheat crops. So since the early 1800s and the steel plow, there would be a lot more agricultural expansion allowing more black carbon and wind eroded soil to help further expand agriculture into areas formally snow covered. That reduces the chances of a new glacial period, which is a good thing I would think.
Teasing out the “good” Anthropogenic looks like it requires a longer time frame and a different baseline. If I wanted to reinforce the CO2 etc. raqdiant impact, I would pick the 1951-1980 base line to add ~ 0.3C to the “bad” Anthro. If I wanted to highlight the “good” Anthro I would pick 1920 to 1950 as a base line. That is not solving the problem though, it is just picking your bias.
To reduce the bias, I think sticking to regional or just the oceans is the ticket.
http://redneckphysics.blogspot.com/2012/09/using-southern-oceans-baseline.html
That is mainly oceans approach. The Southern South American reconstruction is in the more stable temperature region. You can average southern Hemisphere reconstructions without losing as much signal. Once you get to the Northern Hemisphere, averaging just produces a flat stick for whatever you are looking for because of the stronger regional oscillations, but the blade on the southern hemisphere is smaller because there is legitimately smaller oscillations due to the thermal mass of the oceans. From that, unless CO2 forcing started in 1600AD, at least 0.25C of the warming is natural recovery enhanced by what appears to be land use. I don’t think there are many higher latitude or elevation farmers that would like to give up those gains in growing days.
I seem to recall pix of pits where black carbon accumulated in the ice. It appeared that the BC was washed into depressions which then deepened as the BC warmed the pit. Not sure what the ultimate effect of the BC was WRT what % it melted.
Here’s the source of my memory …
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2010/06/melt-zone/balog-photography
Yep, that tends to flush out NH ice which is why the Greenland ice cores are shorter and have more melt issues. Before mega agriculture, wild fires and spot burn agriculture would have done the same thing.
WebHubTelescope | September 3, 2012 at 11:06 am |
“Perhaps that’s not such a good idea making this site indexed to Google (the comments that is, the top-level posts are perfectly OK). Unassuming Google users searching on keywords such as AGW will get to all the crackpot theories”
Of course. The unwashed masses don’t have the keen intellect of anonymous cowards like WebHubTelescope in order to separate the wheat from the chaff, right?
You’re some piece of work.
Judit Curry:
”’We know enough’ for exactly what? To understand what the scope of the risk is? To understand what decisions are best to minimize the risk, in the context of other confounding socio/economic/political issues? Heck no, we don’t know enough. We are operating under conditions of deep uncertainty. – – –
– – – But it is deeper than that, in the sense the sense that very few climate scientists have the breadth to really assess the broader aspects of the science, and accept the judgements of their ‘peers’ (e.g. the IPCC) on topics outside their personal areas of expertise. Which leads to Michael Kelly’s ‘invisible hand’ whereby second order evidence (i.e. who supports a particular perspective) becomes more important than the primary scientific evidence.”
Why ‘are we operating under conditions of deep uncertainty’? Analogously to my experiences related to multidisciplinary problems of metallurgical processes, any missing of proper cross-disciplinary approach to problem may cause conditions of deep uncertainty when solving the multidisciplinary problem of climate warming, too. To reach a working solution for the problem of recent warming you have to assess aspects of the natural science properly in its entirety.
For instance, when beeing assessed the influence of anthropogenic CO2 emissions on the recent climate warming there is no proper cross-disciplinary approach used in reality. It is based only on hypothetic climate models embraced by IPCC. There are ignored essential findings in reality. Without any evidence in reality, the climate model calculations show only what kind of assumed parameters would be needed that anthtropogenic warming would be within probabilities.
Based on findings in reality we can express that even the recent increase of carbon dioxide in the atmoshere is a consequence of warming and not vice versa; see e.g. link http://judithcurry.com/2011/08/04/carbon-cycle-questions/#comment-198992 . This implies that human CO2 emissions have not controlled the the recent increase of CO2 content in atmosphere, and that the anthropogenic CO2 emissions have so a minimal influence on climate warming, that it can not be found by measurements in reality.
The risks related to the increase of anthropogenic CO2 emissions seem to be minimal.
“For instance, when beeing assessed the influence of anthropogenic CO2 emissions on the recent climate warming there is no proper cross-disciplinary approach used in reality.”
Yes there is.
“It is based only on hypothetic climate models embraced by IPCC.”
No, it’s also based on paleoclimate and experiments and observations of atmosphere and greenhouse gas absorption spectrums. The models themselves are based on a stack of empirical data. Dismissing them as “hypotheses” is not good enough. You have to explain why the best calculations we can run continue to show significant warming from a rise in CO2. It’s not a fragile result. Over a century of people working on this question and running calculations of various sorts and complexities and they keep finding significant warming from a doubling of CO2. Even with resolution increases in the models and additional processes it hasn’t gone way. You too lightly dismiss all that.
As for CO2 your analysis is wrong. Human emissions are the cause, you confuse transient levels with longterm accumulation. You also never explain the sudden sharp CO2 jump in the ice core CO2 records, or are the ice core records not “findings in reality”?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Carbon_Dioxide_400kyr.png
The greatest risk at this time is overreacting to poorly understood science. Unless you have some reason for believing in the positive feedback boogieman, CO2 isn’t a problem. The poor predicting skills of the models have produced an ever growing difference between predicted temperatures and observed temperatures, globally. Regionally we’re all over the map. Great Britain has been freezing and the US is roasting (except here in the PNWet). Arctic storms in August have pushed much of the ice up against Greenland, exposing great expanses of seawater to the coldness of space. Even while it looks like a serious melt, that exposure is going to allow a lot of heat to leave the Earth system. That breakup of the ice into scattered chunks is aggregating and re-freezing even as we speak. Antarctica is growing mass all the while – what’s up with that? Sea levels, the one true tell tale of global warming is telling no tales.
Right now Australia, Japan, the UK, California, and other economies are self-abusing themselves with cap and trade which will do squat for CO2 levels not that that will matter. That this anti-human political comedy can grow beyond these areas into the world at large is the risk to be most concerned about.We are far away from having enough data to understand what is happening with the oceans, the interaction between the atmosphere and the oceans, the role of clouds and the sun, and even cosmic rays.
A secondary great fear is some nutter nation with the capacity to do so is going to do something really stupid to re-engineer the planet. Genetically engineered oceanic biota (what can go wrong?) is one such nightmare idea and surely there are others.
Your own position seems to be we need to do something to come up with a justification to do something. We don’t now have a justification and it is a travesty that we do not. This is the same problem I have with Junior. He’s jonesing to decarbonize but hasn’t made a convincing case why it is important AT THIS TIME.
Excellent!
Myrrrh | September 3, 2012 at 4:54 pm | Reply
“Repeat out loud, “the Sun is not a laser, the Sun is not a laser, the Sun is not a laser” and if that is not sufficient to get you thinking about the differences… ”
I need you to explain to me the difference between a blue photon coming from the sun and one coming from a blue laser. Good luck with that.
You need to investigate it for yourself. Because, you are the one claiming this AGW energy budget is real. It is your claim, I’ve challenged you to prove that shortwave from the Sun directly heats land and oceans, because if it can’t, you have no way to have any weather at all on your world because you’ve excised the thermal energy beam, aka thermal infrared, aka heat, aka longwave, aka the Sun’s thermal energy, the Suns heat energy on the move to us. Which in the real world is what heats us up, heats up matter, gives us our dramatic weather, because it can, physically, can.
I do appreciate it’s getting more difficult to find real world pages on light and heat …, but there are some normal ones around:
“The eyelids limit the amount of light that can enter the eye, but their tissues are thin, delicate, and vulnerable to the chronic effects of exposure to UV radiation. The eye’s surface, the cornea, admits light and screens out nearly all of the UVB radiation in sunlight, protecting the lens and retina. The lens filters UVA radiation and absorbs light in order to focus on images.” http://www.lighthouse.org/eye-health/prevention/sun-damage-prevention/
Visible light direct from the Sun is benign. If the Sun’s visible light was of the same type as a laser we would all be blind, as it is, only those believing the AGW shortwave in longwave out are..
What’s the difference between a blue photon from a laser and a blue photon from the sun? If you didn’t know where it came from describe an experiment which could determine the source.
Blue photons from a laser are in phase and in a very compact beam. Photons from the Sun are not. That being said, don’t stare at the Sun!!
David Springer – you’ve been pointed in the right direction to investigate for yourself so stop avoiding my question.. It is your claim that visible light heats matter, prove it. Show and tell. Because, if you can’t, then you have no weather on your Earth. And if you have no weather what the heck do you know about climate?
What you claiming this all and singular consistently fail to appreciate is you don’t even have a junior school level sense of the physical world around us. You don’t know the differences between solids, liquids and gases and certainly don’t have any sense of the differences in scale between a gamma ray and radio wave, a particle of visible light and a photon of heat or the difference in their effects on meeting matter; between Light giving sight in the conversion of visible light to nerve impulses and photosynthesis in the creation of sugars in the conversion to chemical energy and the effects of actual heat energy, thermal infrared which physically moves the whole molecules of matter into vibration heating it.
You’ve been drip fed the line that visible light/shortwave is a great energy macro powerful and you believe it because you have had no reason to doubt it, until now. Now, I’m asking you to relate your beliefs to the actual physical world around us. Tell me how visible light from the Sun physically heats water and land which is what it needs to do to get our weather, without which we would have no winds which first come about from the intense heating of land and ocean at the equator.
This is your claim and I am trying to point out that your (generic) concepts of our actual physical world around are impossible in practice. Put your hand into a fire and feel the HEAT. That’s the energy it takes to HEAT matter, to put matter into vibrational states, kinetic, to raise matter’s temperature, to cook your dinner, to raise the temperature of ocean and land, to create our massive winds and weather systems. Show and tell how shortwave from the Sun heats matter, heats the molecules of water of the ocean and the rocks and soil of the land you’re standing on to achieve this.
In the real world what I am telling you is bog standard basic physics, but none of you can understand the difference between http://infraredheaters2.tripod.com/ and http://www.littlegreenhouse.com/guide3.shtml
You say the second does the work of the first in your claim “shortwave in longwave out”.
You have given the properties and processes of thermal energy, heat, to light.
You have to tell me the physics of your “shortwave in” heating the Earth.
For pity’s sake.., ask those who taught you, ask each other. Don’t ignore this, don’t avoid it.
Basically, if light heated up matter, they wouldn’t put lights in fridges.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKRFmpWLTwg
“You know that little light stays on”
It appears the people who rafted up early have a head-start on.
http://esa.org/portland/
But for some perspective:
Not all of our operations are totally affected by plagues of unavoidable utterly deep uncertainty.
That’s when you’re sunk.
Some of our operations are affected somewhat by some uncertainties of varying depth.
That’s what rafts are for.
Since when are social scientists considered climate scientists. All this seems like circling the drain to me. To say skeptics are more skilled in rhetoric or social science is to miss the point completely. Responsible skeptical interpretation is based on evidence contrary to theory, as it ought to be. Who cares about prose? Scientists coming together to be better policy advocates ignores Eisenhower’s caution about confounded government policy and science and is in the opposite direction from traditional scientific inference.
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CAGW activists are clearly practicing and advocating for mission-oriented science. And they are accomplishing their mission: They have already convinced most politicians and every victim of school orthodoxy about how mankind imperils the planet. This orthodoxy depends on ignorance both of proper scientific rules of inference and emprical evidence about climate variability. The reason skeptics are not alarmed is precisely because they are cognizant of traditional science methodology, have examined the evidence re CAGW, and found ample reason to reject the enhanced forcing aspect of CAGW theory. Giving serious attention to sociological studies of skeptical thinking is symptomatic of malaise in the climate science community. I note finally that such malaise only affects climate science and environmental science. Math, physics and chemistry marches on unscathed. Thank goodness for small favors.
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